Private School Seeks Public Space

An editorial from the Northwest Current, December 9, 2009, followed by a response a week later:


A dream of fields

Neighbors have rejected the Maret School’s proposal to construct an athletic field at Ward 4’s Upshur Park in exchange for exclusive access to the space from 3:30 to 6 p.m. during the school year.

While we thought Maret’s plan was worthy of consideration, we respect the residents’ decision and appreciate the considerate way all parties handled the discussion.

Access to parkland is a sticky subject in Northwest D.C., where many private entities find playing fields scarce and residents carefully guard their public spaces. Any plan that would appear to take over a public park is certain to face resistance, especially when a well funded private school is behind it.

Even though Maret requested access for only two-and-a-half hours a day, the idea of restrictions on a public field can be unappealing to many.

Residents were also understandably concerned that the changes to the park would make it less useful to the community. And some noted that the work could impact the D.C. Parks and Recreation Department’s plans to rebuild a playground and install a dog park there.

Maret officials said they are always looking for fields and would still be interested if community members change their minds. Perhaps once the city-funded work — expected to begin in the spring — is done, the parties can revisit the idea.

http://www.currentnewspapers.com/admin/uploadfiles/NW%20Dec.%209%203.pdf

(page 12)


From the Northwest Current, December 16, 2009:

Maret field proposal was not fully vetted

VIEWPOINT
CHARLES G. MYERS

Your Dec. 9 editorial “A dream of fields” started with a misconception. Neighbors did not reject the Maret School’s proposal to construct a first-class athletic field at Ward 4’s Upshur Park in exchange for exclusive access to the space from 3:30 to 6 p.m. weekdays during the school year. In fact, Ward 4 Council member Muriel Bowser rejected the proposal without consulting the neighborhood at large.

I have lived four blocks from the park for 35 years and raised two children without the benefit of adequate park or athletic field space in our neighborhood. I am currently a member of the board of the Friends of 16th Street Heights Parks and was present when representatives from Maret presented their proposal to our group in August. This was several months after their initial presentation to us in a meeting at the Department of Parks and Recreation headquarters.

After much discussion, we concluded that the existence of too many opinions — ranging from enthusiastic support to pointed skepticism — prevented the group from taking a formal position on the proposal. Instead, we recommended that community meetings be held to obtain a broader sense of our neighbors’ thoughts on the proposal’s value.

This was conveyed to Council member Bowser in a meeting in early September that included Ximna Hartsock, then interim director of the parks department. The proposal had been sketchily presented at an Advisory Neighborhood Commission 4C meeting a month earlier, but it was the last topic at 9:30 p.m., after all but a few of the attendees had left, and it had not even been on the published agenda.

Maret’s proposal to the D.C. Department of Parks and Recreation was to spend as much as an estimated $4 million to construct an artificial turf field, substantially larger than the current field, without encroaching on the 2010 plans to rebuild the pool and park space already there. The school said the area would be large enough for overlapping full-size baseball, football and soccer fields. Maret expected exclusive use of the field for two-and-a-half hours weekdays during the school year and roughly five hours on three or four Saturdays in the fall. It also planned to use the field some of the two weeks before Labor Day, although that time was never specifically defined. The Department of Parks and Recreation would then have been able to manage the remaining time for both open community use and permits for use by youth and adult sports groups.

The project promised to solve a number of problems the community has faced for many years. The current softball field and tiny soccer play space are mud holes in wet weather and too small for use by any sport other than baseball for 10-year-olds. Youth sports organizations in our neighborhood suffer from a shortage of quality athletic fields, and we have no artificial turf field in Ward 4. The Columbia Heights community has few parks large enough for pickup soccer games.

The arrangement would have provided Maret exclusive access for approximately 12 percent of daylight hours during the year and would have been in place for 10 years. After this, Maret would have relinquished all rights unless an extension was negotiated. The community would have gotten a first-class field maintained by private funds while benefiting thousands of children and adults within our community — at no cost to the taxpayer.

After the meeting in September, Council member Bowser told the Department of Parks and Recreation that she did not want to pursue this opportunity. I asked her why in a conversation several weeks later. She said the community did not want it. I pointed out that the community members had never been given a chance to voice their opinions in a public meeting with the proposal fully visible.

It is unfortunate that our neighborhood was not given an opportunity to review the proposal and to decide its value for ourselves.

Charles G. Myers is a resident of Crestwood.

http://www.currentnewspapers.com/admin/uploadfiles/NW%20Dec.%2016%201.pdf

page 11

Fenty Hanky Panky

Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Northwest Current
Council refuses to ratify contract

■ Parks: Legislators return
project funding to agency

By ELIZABETH WIENER
Current Staff Writer


The D.C. Council yesterday refused to ratify a controversial construction management contract to oversee a dozen stalled park and recreation projects. Council members said the $4.2 million contract with Banneker Ventures is, in the words of Ward 3 member Mary Cheh, “irregular and unlawful — on all levels unacceptable.”

The council then voted to return funding for the individual projects to the embattled Department of Parks and Recreation. Actual construction will be overseen by the Office of Public Education Facilities Management, headed by Allen Lew, who has won wide praise for actually getting numerous facilities renovated or built.

“This is not a perfect solution, but it allows projects to move forward without circumventing the laws of the District of Columbia,” said Ward 5 member Harry Thomas, who chairs the committee on parks and recreation. “We resent having the council put in the position to clean up a mess not of our own making.”

“We have projects with clearly problematic contracts, and on the other hand, communities promised these projects,” said Council Chairman Vincent Gray.

Tuesday’s unanimous vote was the latest step in a saga that began in October, when the council learned that nearly $50 million in parks department funding had been funneled through the city’s economic development office to the D.C. Housing Authority — all without council approval.

The total amount at issue is now close to $100 million. The council is supposed to review all contracts for more than $1 million. Tuesday’s vote rejected a $4.2 million program management contract awarded to Banneker Ventures, which was supposed to oversee individual park projects across the city.

Attorney General Peter Nickles asked the council last Friday to approve the contracts retroactively. Without emergency action, he said, the individual projects would run out of money and be stalled.

They include improvements to Justice Park and the Parkview Recreation Center in Ward 1; parks at 7th and N streets and 10th Street and Massachusetts Avenue in Ward 2; the Guy Mason Recreation Center and Newark Street dog park in Ward 3; Raymond Recreation Center in Ward 4; and five more facilities in the eastern part of the city.

Nickles said emergency action was needed because the council froze the transfer of funds for the projects while it investigated the contracting scandal.

“Abandoning any of the projects would likely result in additional costs due to civil actions and claims from involved parties,” the attorney general wrote. He recommended quick council action “to avoid construction delays, community frustration and costly litigation.”

But the council was not swayed. It takes nine votes to pass emergency legislation, but even normally reliable allies of Mayor Adrian Fenty and his administration would not buy in.

“We cannot move the city forward on the basis of illegal contracts,” said at-large member Michael Brown, a frequent Fenty critic.

The council will also ask Nickles to conduct a “full investigation” of possible illegalities. Cheh said the inquiry could result in the recovery of money already spent and “consequences” for city employees who approved “unlawful actions.”

An oversight hearing last Thursday revealed further irregularities like those that have already eroded the council’s confidence in the handling of capital dollars. The project management contract awarded to Banneker Ventures has caused particular concern.

For example, council members learned that Liberty Engineering and Design, a subcontractor for Banneker, has already received some payments in violation of the original contract. That document says subcontractors can’t be paid until their individual contracts are approved by the housing authority — which hasn’t happened yet.

Housing authority officials testified that Banneker submitted six invoices after its contract was finalized in July, some reflecting work done before the contract was officially signed. Four were paid, according to Deborah Toothman, the housing authority’s chief financial officer.

The total paid so far is $1.9 million, including $387,850 invoiced for Liberty Engineering, owned by Sinclair Skinner, an outspoken friend and fraternity brother of the mayor. Omar Karim, Banneker’s founder, testified that Skinner is also a friend of his, and had
worked as a volunteer for his firm two years ago.

Adrianne Todman, the housing authority’s interim executive director, said she read the Banneker Venture contract this fall, realized that subcontractors like Liberty should not be paid yet, and held up payment of the last two invoices. “Prior to my reading, there was some misinterpretation [of the contract] among my colleagues,” Todman testified.

Skinner was asked to appear at the hearing, but he declined. He will be subpoenaed for another council oversight session Dec. 21.

The council also learned that, on the eve of its latest oversight session, the housing authority board voted to approve an amended contract with Banneker, upping the total cost of projects it would oversee from $50 million to $99 million. Under questioning, officials said the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development requested the action.

Todman said parks projects added to the original contract had increased that contract’s scope, and the board needed to approve the increased dollars before the document was presented to the council. “The intent is that the contract that would finally get to the council reflect the full scope,” she testified. “The intent is to be more transparent.”

Again, council members were skeptical. “I was flabbergasted when [economic development officials] recommended they increase it from $50 to $99 million,” said Ward 8 member Marion Barry. “What made you think this was the solution?”

“You’re just giving away the people’s money,” said at-large member Kwame Brown. “Whoever signed this contract should be fired. And in the middle of this, the DCHA board approves a bigger contract?”

Council members also pointed out that some of the projects in the Banneker contract were either not approved by the council — a separate process from approving contacts — or not funded for the current year.

In response to queries from The Current, a spokesperson for the economic development office
acknowledged a “mistake” in plans to upgrade the Chevy Chase Recreation Center and playgrounds on Livingston Street, one of the projects assigned to the housing authority and then to Banneker Ventures.

Spokesperson Sean Madigan said his office had submitted a “reprogramming” request to the council last February to move funding for the project up from 2012 to 2009. “We assumed it had been approved and we proceeded with work. But the reprogramming was actually not approved,” Madigan wrote in an e-mail.

The Banneker contract also includes at least two projects — Parkview in Ward 1 and the N Street park in Ward 2 — that council members said they have not specifically authorized. “Funding was originally made available out of a general improvements line and some members believed we should have submitted for a reprogram, yet we disagree,” Madigan wrote.

Karim, Banneker’s founder, testified under subpoena at the council hearing last week. He said he started the firm five years ago “to change the world, starting in Washington, one neighborhood at a time.” The firm now has nine employees, including staff with engineering, architecture and law degrees.

Karim, also a fraternity brother of the mayor, denied any favoritism in the award of the project management contract. “Possible government missteps” do not involve his firm, he said. “I have nothing to do with any government function,” he testified.


http://www.currentnewspapers.com/admin/uploadfiles/NW%20Dec.%2016%201.pdf

I Have Watched This Before

Replacing principal at Hardy is decried
D.C. chancellor accused of trying to squeeze out minority students

By Bill Turque
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 6, 2009

Sarah Bax, an award-winning math teacher at Hardy Middle School in Georgetown, goes back many years with Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee, once her trainer in the Teach for America program.

But Bax had a warning for her old mentor Friday night, after Rhee announced her decision to replace Patrick Pope, the popular longtime principal.

"This is a grave, grave error," Bax said. "This staff will not be here when Mr. Pope is not here."

Bax was part of a standing-room-only crowd of parents, teachers and students infuriated by Rhee's decision to change leadership at the school, home to a highly regarded arts and instrumental music program that draws a predominantly African American student body from all wards of the city.

Rhee said Pope would finish the academic year at Hardy and then begin planning a new magnet middle school for the performing arts. He will be replaced this summer by Dana Nerenberg, principal of nearby Hyde-Addison Elementary, who will run both as a unified pre-kindergarten through eighth grade program.

Rhee, who promised that Hardy's arts curriculum would not change and that the school would remain open to out-of-boundary enrollment, is looking for ways to retain more of the city's white middle class families, who usually leave the public school system after the fourth or fifth grade.

But in a tense and often angry two-hour session in the school cafeteria, punctuated by calls of "liar" and "no BS," Rhee was confronted by accusations that she wanted to squeeze minority students out of Hardy to make it more palatable for white families from neighborhood "feeder" schools. Some said the neighborhood wants to "take back" Hardy now that a $48 million renovation is complete.

Rhee, who has held meetings over the past year with parents at nearby elementary schools such as Key, said they have long been confused by Hardy's application process, which she said left the misimpression that it was not a neighborhood school open to all within its attendance area.

Members of the Hardy community said that was insulting and absurd and that elementary parents have heard years of presentations from Pope and his teachers about how Hardy operates. They also took issue with meetings Rhee has held with feeder school parents over the past year while failing to consult with Hardy's parent leadership.

Jeffrey Watson, who sent two sons to Hardy, said neighborhood parents stayed away because they were not comfortable with the racial composition of the school.

"Don't play games with people in here. We're not stupid," Watson said. "Rather than having private meetings with them, tell them to walk on over."

Rhee said she found the suggestion that race factored into her dealings with neighborhood parents to be "extraordinarily disconcerting."

"In none of the conversations that I have had about Hardy, with parents either at school currently or at the feeder schools, has anyone said they were said they were concerned with the racial makeup of the school," Rhee said.

But Pope's fate remained the focal point of the emotionally raw evening. Many were upset by recent public statements, one from a Rhee staff member and another from Deputy Chancellor Kaya Henderson, that there would be no leadership change. The audience repeatedly asked Rhee to reconcile her praise for Pope's record with her decision to replace him with a much younger, less experienced elementary school principal who would have to split her time between two buildings.

Asked whether she offered Pope the option to stay at Hardy rather than accept the planning job, Rhee said: "I gave him the offer. He accepted the offer." Pope attended the meeting but did not speak. Asked afterward whether he was offered a chance to remain, he declined to comment.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/05/AR2009120501580.html

TVs And Energy Efficiency

By 2011, greener screens in Golden State

By Paul Farhi
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 27, 2009

Nick Canzoneri weighed several factors when he went shopping for a new flat-screen TV at the Best Buy in Gaithersburg earlier this week. He wanted the right brand ("Sony. I've had one for 20 years. I tend to stick with what I like . . .") and the right price. Size mattered, too. Canzoneri's son talked him into the enormous 52-inch model he was trying to wedge into his Toyota sedan.

Suffice to say, environmental considerations weren't at the top of Canzoneri's list.

Soon, they might be.

Those big, bright flat-panel TVs suck down far more power than the puny cathode-ray tube TVs they're rapidly replacing. Which is why regulators and environmentalists -- who usually reserve their passion for shrinking rain forests, melting glaciers and gas-guzzling SUVs -- are turning their attention to the once-humble TV set.

Last week, after two years of debate and study, California became the first state to challenge America's heretofore unquestioned love affair with its TV set. A state panel established the nation's first energy-consumption limits for TVs up to 58 inches wide. Regulations for larger sets will be phased in later. The new rules do not affect TVs for sale now, but they will require TVs sold in California to use about a third less power by 2011 and about half as much by 2013. TVs that can't meet the standards would be banned from sale in California, which accounts for 10 percent of the 35 million new TVs sold in America every year.

The prospect of the government messing with its citizens' God-given right to a super-size TV turned what might have been a mundane regulatory proceeding into a shot heard around the world. At least three other states (Washington, Oregon and Massachusetts) and two national governments (Canada and Australia) then said they, too, would consider energy limits.

Television has long been accused of being a cultural polluter, but the California Energy Commission's move touched off debate about how much our national TV habit has contributed to fouling the physical environment as well.

The energy commission estimated that TVs account for 10 percent of household electrical use in the state, once "related devices" like digital recorders and game consoles are included. But the Consumer Electronics Association, which opposed the new rules, says that figure is misleading since it covers all of a household's electronic devices, from iPods to computers. The Arlington-based trade group estimates that the TV alone accounts for no more than 3 percent of a family's monthly power bill.

Further, the group warns that the new regulations could raise prices, limit consumer choice and stifle innovation not just in California, but nationwide, as manufacturers redesign their products to comply with the state's new law. The most vulnerable may be power-hungry big-screen models, sets that use the less efficient plasma technology, and a new generation of TVs that offer 3-D picture or combine the functions of a TV and a personal computer.

"It's not this generation of TVs that you have to be concerned about, it's the multi-function TVs of tomorrow," says Jason Oxman, the Consumer Electronics Association's senior vice president of industry affairs.

What's more, the new regulations include technical requirements that could prompt a costly overhaul in TV designs, says Jon Fairhurst, a manager for Sharp Labs, the U.S.-based research arm of the Japanese set manufacturer. To save power, he says, new TVs would have to turn off automatically when attached to a DVD player that is turned off, something no TV does now.

"As far as I know, there are no TVs that pass the standard," Fairhurst says.

State officials and environmentalists say it's about time that TVs followed other appliances whose energy use is regulated, from air conditioners to hot-water heaters. Powering down the set will not only save consumers money (roughly $8 billion over 10 years, or about $31 per household annually, according to a state report), but it will eliminate tons of greenhouse gases that otherwise would be generated by power plants.

Without the regulation, the state would need to build a $3 billion power plant to keep up with demand, the state commission says.

"Whether it's refrigerators or TV sets, anytime anyone has proposed regulation, the rallying cry is always the same: 'This will stifle innovation,' " says Noah Horowitz, senior scientist of the Natural Resources Defense Council, the environmental group. "Well, refrigerators are far bigger today, they have more features, and they use one-quarter of the power they did 25 years ago."

Hundreds of TVs already comply with the 2011 and 2013 standards, says Horowitz, and squeezing efficiencies out of noncompliant models won't be hard or expensive. Photo sensors that automatically adjust brightness and contrast based on ambient light add little to the cost of a new set, he says.

Vizio, a leading HDTV manufacturer based in Irvine, Calif., will have no trouble complying with the state standards by 2011, says Ken Lowe, a vice president and co-founder. This includes the company's largest set, a 55-inch model. "If little old Vizio can do it, I'm sure the bigger guys can do it, too," he says.

The irony of California's action is that it comes in the home state of the movie and television industries, which have their own concerns about the regulations. The Digital Entertainment Group, a nonprofit organization that represents 70 Hollywood studios and DVD manufacturers, has called them "arbitrary and inflexible limits" that could impede the introduction of new digital products.

The Hollywood group, like the manufacturers association, says that if consumers want energy-efficient TVs, they can find them now. Most manufacturers submit their products for review to the Energy Star program, which flags the most efficient appliances, including flat-screen TVs. The program, run in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency, has power standards similar to California's new limits. The difference is, Energy Star's standards are voluntary.

Either way, choosing a new TV could soon come down to more than price, brand, size and picture quality. As he puzzled over how to get his humongous Sony Bravia home the other day, Nick Canzoneri acknowledged that it may be time to start paying attention to the underlying cost of vegging out in front of the set: "Electricity isn't cheap, and it isn't getting any cheaper."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/26/AR2009112602164.html



Given our TV habits, what we need is a big, flat, green screen

By Curt Suplee
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Watts up, Doc? They certainly are, thanks to the increased power demands of today's supersized flat-screen TVs. And that worries energy sentinels. So a couple of weeks ago California -- continuing in its role as the national Trendinator -- issued new efficiency standards mandating that by 2011 all TV sets with a display size smaller than Mount Rushmore must use 33 percent less energy to be legal for sale. In practical terms, this new television rule probably means the entire U.S. market will shift accordingly.

That's a good thing, and it could have a significant impact. But it's no reason to demonize the technology. Never mind hysterical news reports about the new regs, which described flat-screen TVs as "energy hogs" and "major power guzzlers." Somebody needs to switch to decaf. A 25-inch "tube" TV, the sort most of us watched for years, uses about 100 watts. Today, an average 47-inch liquid crystal display (LCD) TV consumes around 200. That difference, in itself, isn't exactly going to drain the power grid. Even monster plasma screens that need 400 to 500 watts aren't profligate per se. In fact, viewed solely in terms of cost per square inch, a set that uses four times as much energy as a 25-inch tube but produces an image more than four times larger is actually more efficient. As you might expect with TV, it all depends on how you look at it. (And if you're looking at screen sizes above 58 inches, the new California rules don't apply. Size matters.)

That doesn't mean TVs shouldn't be improved. But the trouble, as they used to say, is not in your set. It's in us. Americans now spend a record 151 hours a month watching TV, and the average household has 2.6 sets on the premises -- one per person. Plus, these sets are tricked out with all sorts of gaming gadgets such as PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, each of which draws something like 200 watts -- as much power as or even more than a 47-inch LCD itself. Throw in a Wii or two, a DVR and a sound system, and pretty soon your family-room energy demand is about the same as a strip mall's. Blaming TV wattage for this state of affairs is like blaming the national fat boom on Twinkies and potato chips.

For many households, TVs and their outriggers now account for fully 10 percent of total electric consumption, up from 3 percent in the 1980s. Sure, that's still only $8 to $12 a month -- a modest sum compared with the $30 monthly national average cable bill. But the new TV standard is not about saving money. It's about avoiding the need for more power plants and thus more schmutz in the air.

From that perspective, even a small efficiency increase can make a difference, especially in watt-conscious California, where the average home consumes a mere 580 kilowatt hours per month, compared with 1,200 in Virginia, 1,100 in Maryland and 800 in the District. Fortunately, help is on the way. For LCDs, there are new methods of illumination. That's important because liquid crystals are really smart engineering, but they're not very bright. That is, they don't emit light. They only control its passage by way of a special talent: If you hit the crystals with an electric charge, they twist around and change their orientation, sort of like the slats in a Venetian blind.

In an LCD screen, the crystals are sandwiched between two glass plates along with a set of transparent electrodes -- materials that conduct electricity. Behind the whole sandwich is a light source. According to a pattern of signals sent by the set's electronics, the crystals at each pixel (short for picture element -- the individual dots on your screen) either block the outgoing light or allow it to pass to the front of the screen. That ever-shifting pattern of pixels makes the picture.

Of course, something has to provide the light, and fluorescent tubes have traditionally done the job quite nicely. But light-emitting diodes (the ubiquitous "LEDs" found in cameras, digital clocks and other electronic gear, updated traffic lights and so forth) are a lower-power alternative. Hence the recent advent of "LED TV," a phrase that really means an LCD system backlit by LEDs, which are approximately 40 percent more efficient than conventional fluorescent systems.

LEDs are simple and literally really cool: Each diode contains two kinds of semiconductor material. One type has a surplus of electrons; the other has regions where electrons are absent, known as holes. If you run voltage across the LED, electrons from one type combine with holes from the other and emit light as they do so. The process produces very little heat. And the LEDs, which are basically just big transistors, last a long time.

It may be harder to reduce power demand in plasma sets. These units get their stunning display from a completely different process: At each pixel, a current zaps a tiny quantity of trapped neon or xenon gas, giving it so much energy that it blows the electrons right off the atoms. As the electrons return to their original locations, they emit the extra energy as high-frequency (chiefly ultraviolet) radiation. The UV in turn strikes minerals that glow red, green or blue depending on their chemical composition. Each pixel is its own light source. So when one is off, it's really black -- thus providing dramatic contrast ratios.

Some plasma TV manufacturers are already making progress in cutting energy consumption, and the task can't really pose an insuperable challenge to the nation that brought you high-fiber Pop-Tarts and Chia Pets in the shape of Abraham Lincoln. Just watch that space.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/30/AR2009113003056.html

DC Underage Drinking Laws Lax

Washington Post - The Answer Sheet
By Valerie Strauss | November 30, 2009; 12:17 PM ET

Telling teens not to drink isn't enough: One story

It was a typical high school party in Montgomery County: Dozens of teenagers got together to have fun, and as always seems to happen, kids started to drink. In fact, most of them did, and a decent number got good and drunk. Some were doing shots, including one girl who who wound up on the floor, so incoherent that other kids began to worry about her condition.

A boy, one of the few teens who had not been drinking, realized the girl needed help. He and some other kids put her in the backseat of a car, and the boy, afraid to call 911 and expose his friends to possible arrest for underage drinking, called his parents for help.

They instantly gave him first aid advice, found the closest hospital and told him to drive the girl there. They also called the hospital to ask whether the girl’s friends who had been drinking could enter the emergency room without fear of being arrested. The answer was no; there was no guarantee.

So the sober boy, the kid who was responsible enough not to drink and who was smart enough to get help for this girl, took her in, and, may have saved her life. He also contacted the girl’s parents, who showed up at the hospital, grateful to the boy who had kept his wits about him.

The only reason the sober boy knew what to do is because he is responsible and actually talks to his parents. They have discussed what to do in this situation. The parents, instead of simply telling their kid not to drink, explained how to get help when necessary.

That is a lesson that bears repeating, because simply telling kids not to drink is not enough. I’ve looked at rules for parties that some schools have given to parents and that are posted on parenting Web sites, and the ones I saw did not advise parents to tell their kids to call 911 if they or someone they are with gets in trouble.

Some colleges and universities have wised up and are teaching students how to recognize the signs of alcohol poisoning and what to do. But frankly, that’s too late: This information should be taught before high school.

Another thing I wondered was this: Why should kids who want to help another in this kind of situation have to worry about legal trouble when a life may be at stake?

A few years ago in Loudoun County, some kids who were drunk left a friend in a park because they were afraid to get him help--and the boy died, according to Kurt Erickson, president of the Washington Region Alcohol Program, sponsored by Geico, Inc.

That prompted some members of the Virginia legislature to sponsor legislation for a “good Samaritan” law that would essentially let underage drinkers “right a wrong” by helping out another underage drinker without fear of serious penalty. The bill has never passed.

Erickson said that Maryland doesn’t have a “good Samaritan” law either, but the real problem in the greater Washington area is the District.

In the nation’s capital, underage drinking is not a criminal offense, per a 2004 District Superior Court ruling. Unfortunately, the Metropolitan Police Department doesn’t have the ability to pursue civil penalties, so, Erickson said, kids from all over the region come to drink in the District.

“It’s a virtual playground for underage drinking,” he said.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/telling-teens-not-to-drink-isn.html

Parking History At The National Building Museum

On the spot: Putting parking in its proper place

By Philip Kennicott
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 1, 2009

Let's look at the parking data points. Last month the National Building Museum opened an exhibition devoted entirely to the subject of parking, its architecture and social history, from the highs and lows of parking structure design to historical artifacts -- a 1930s guidebook listing parking lots open to African Americans -- that prove no matter what odd thread you tug in the fabric of Americana, you often get the same, dispiriting story. The exhibition coincided with a mostly overlooked convention, the Parking Show of Shows hosted by the National Parking Association, which held its annual meeting at National Harbor a few weeks ago. Which came only a few days after The Washington Post reported on a scandalously high-priced and underutilized parking garage built with public funds in Columbia Heights.

Three parking narratives, with three very different morals. The Building Museum's fascinating and comprehensive "House of Cars" exhibition takes parking for granted, and from that assumption tries to cover the subject dispassionately. It proves that parking structures needn't be ugly, that they were once more routinely beautiful and integrated into the urban fabric, and that even today they can be architecturally daring if real architects are allowed to explore the poetry of the structure. The Parking Show of Shows -- an exhibition for parking professionals that featured the cutting edge of parking technology and design -- didn't just take parking for granted as a necessity, it loved everything about parking, from the latest designs for sustainable lighting fixtures to a new age of robotic parking valets that may revolutionize the way we store our cars.

But it was the odd story of a parking structure in Columbia Heights, built by the city with $40 million of taxpayers' money, that may be the most pertinent data point in the future of parking. Here was a classic case of how good intentions can get fouled up with old-fashioned civic extortion. The retailer Target demanded the garage as a condition of moving to the city. The city built it. But something strange happened along the way: The expected hordes of drivers didn't materialize. They came by foot, by Metro, but not in cars, at least not in the numbers projected, and now the lot is losing money, costing the city some $100,000 per month.

Stories like this, popping up around the country, may portend a seismic shift in how we think about parking.

A colorful history

But first, the history. Almost every type of modern structure, from prisons to hospitals to airports, has been anatomized by someone, and parking structures are no exception. In January 2008, author and historian Shannon Sanders McDonald visited the Library of Congress to lecture about her book "The Parking Garage: Design and Evolution of a Modern Urban Form." McDonald was an adviser to the National Building Museum exhibition (which received funding from the NPA), and the spirit of her book pervades much of the current show. Parking, they both demonstrate, is far more interesting than anyone ever thought.

Early cars were remarkably sensitive little beasts, more hygienic than horses (which left manure in the streets, and sometimes their mortal carcass, too), but also more sensitive to the elements than today's cars. With leather seats, open tops and finicky engines, cars needed protection from cold and rain, and thus early parking garages tended to look like other buildings where we store things. They were often masonry structures, sometimes with windows, built to a scale in line with local neighborhoods. Look at an early garage, and it's not necessarily clear that it's a garage.

Which is to say, early garages weren't as hideously ugly as the famous Cage Garage -- built in 1933 in Boston -- which appears in McDonald's book and the National Building Museum exhibition. As cars grew up, as gasoline became an all-weather commodity and cars became comfortable cocoons with sturdy metal shells, garages no longer needed to be impervious to weather. The Cage Garage was essentially the garage we are all so sadly familiar with today: a forbidding stack of open decks, a perfect example of form following function and an even better example of why form shouldn't always follow function. It was torn down in 1985, but the damage was done. A basic tolerance for ugly parking structures, a particularly soul-killing type of architecture that would blight whole neighborhoods and rend the urban fabric of so many once-walkable downtowns, had entered the American system.

Because parking, after all, was a necessity.

Or perhaps it was a right, a fundamental freedom that came hand in hand with the freedom to drive, to be mobile, to push out from the gritty city farther and farther into the once-green hinterlands. Without parking, there could be no driving. And that sense of parking as a fundamental right expressed itself in the self-park garage, most of them just as ugly as the Cage Garage. But self-parking also meant absolute freedom to come and go, to keep one's own schedule. And avoid any of the social interaction that you might have had waiting for your car.

As self-parking became the parking ideal -- you can see how aesthetically appealing it was in historic videos which show cars ascending gentle ramps with almost voluptuous ease -- parking garages were redesigned with safer and more negotiable ramps. But self-park came at a cost: You couldn't fit as many cars in. Which meant that garages got bigger and more forbidding in their appearance.

The exhibition deals with this issue clinically, exploring the innovations in ramp systems and latter-day efforts to hide and cloak the garage with a more genial face. But there was no hiding the damage these buildings were doing. A 1967 photograph from Anchorage shows a gigantic parking structure dwarfing everything around it, as if the city itself is an afterthought.

There was an era, says Sarah Leavitt, curator of the National Building Museum show, when cities took pride in these structures. But that pride, based on the sense that a modern city couldn't progress without adequate parking, hid a darker indifference to the historical fabric of the city. The exhibition also includes before-and-after shots of a block of F Street NW, showing the loss of two historic buildings to a hideous parking garage built next to the Hotel Washington. It also includes an image of one of the most notorious parking garages in the world, the Michigan Theater in Detroit, made by slamming concrete decks into the shell of a classic and beautifully ornamented movie house. To this day, people still park there surrounded by the ghostly architectural shadow of a building once meant to please and delight.

Dealing with a nightmare

The self-park lot didn't have to be ugly. Santiago Calatrava, the Spanish architect, managed to design a not-hideous garage for the Milwaukee Art Museum; the parking structure expresses its form both honestly and with graceful and appealing repetitions of gentle, rounded-V-shape supports. But for all the beautiful images of parking done well, it's the nightmare images that haunt one in this exhibition. Some of the most fascinating material is found in a room devoted to parking as seen in contemporary art and popular culture. In film, we find a recurrent trope: the parking lot as site of social discord, violence and anomie. In the 1961 film version of "West Side Story," the boys rumble in a parking lot. In 1976's "All the President's Men," Deep Throat unfolds his unbelievably big conspiracy in a subterranean, and empty, parking lot.

The emptiness of parking lots haunts the imagination of several contemporary artists, including Carsten Meier, whose large-format photograph of a vacant top deck of a garage in Columbus, Ohio, makes the space feel post-apocalyptic. The same whistling emptiness can be felt in a video by Peter Rose, and in a sculpture by Rita McBride, which reproduces the bracingly spare lines of a standard, open-deck garage in nickel silver. But without cars. Two ideas emerge from this room: that parking has always been the dark side of the driving dream, and that the geometric ugliness of so many garages is a byproduct of architects who were, in fact, aesthetically drawn to the plain, simple planes and angles of the form. Architects often have strange ideas.

None of this metaphysical angst was on display at the Parking Show of Shows. At one booth, J.A. Uniforms was hawking handsome five-button red vests with epaulets, modern-day livery for the old-fashioned valet. Across the room, Woody Nash of Boomerang Systems was promoting the "world's only free-roaming" robot valet. It's a fascinating system that harks back to the days of the old automated garage. By retrofitting existing garages with sensors, crawling robots can slide under your vehicle, lift it and carry it to a parking spot without opening the driver's door.

"They can move laterally and spin on a dime," Nash said. "And they never take coins out of the coin holder."

But the future isn't all bright for the National Parking Association. Away from the exhibition hall, with its free-flowing red wine and mini-burgers, participants gathered to hear lawyer and lobbyist Vincent Petraro describe how he helped keep at bay a New York proposal to institute "congestion pricing" in the gridlocked south end of Manhattan. This new user fee would charge drivers entering the zone from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Proponents hope it will clear up the streets, clean up the air and generate revenue. Petraro worries that it will hurt business. He cites London, which instituted a similar plan in 2003.

"Yeah it worked, if you want to create a ghost town," Petraro says of a city that at last check was anything but a ghost town.

Congestion pricing, says Prof. Donald Shoup of UCLA, could hurt the bottom line for parking lot owners. The power of that bottom line was obvious throughout the Parking Show of Shows, where even bright signs -- environmentally sustainable lighting and other improvements to design -- were predicated on their cost savings. But Shoup, who studies the economics of parking, is interested in a different, more civic-oriented bottom line. He argues that parking is yet one more element of the basic American infrastructure that hasn't been subjected to the basic rules of the market. Cities all too often under-price their parking meters, which explains why drivers tie up traffic cruising for a cheap space. And for decades cities have required developers to include parking as part of new construction, which hides the real cost -- economic and environmental -- of parking.

Which brings us to Columbia Heights, and yet another parking boondoggle. But this may also be the future of parking: Less is more. Most of the larger discussion of parking, including the dialogue at the National Parking Association and to a somewhat disturbing extent in the National Building Museum exhibition, is predicated on the idea that parking is a necessity. That it can be improved, but not eliminated. Even the act of studying parking as an evolving architectural form all too often seems to legitimize that form. But the emptiness of that lot in Columbia Heights, and the nightmare images on display at the "House of Cars" show, suggest that we may not be nearly as addicted to parking as we once believed.

There may, in fact, be life after parking, especially if cities begin to treat it more like smoking -- a public nuisance to be pushed to the limits of the urban infrastructure -- than a public right, to be accommodated no matter what the cost. And those haunting images of empty lots and vacant parking decks? Perhaps they were fantasies, not nightmares, portents of a better, more rational, healthier and greener world.

One can dream.

House of Cars Through July 11 at the National Building Museum, 401 F St. NW. Call 202-272-2448 or visit http://www.nbm.org.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/29/AR2009102905230.html

Pleasant Plains, DC

The District's Overlooked 'Bull's-Eye'
Pleasant Plains Strives To Make a Name for Itself

By Ann Cameron Siegal
Special to The Washington Post
Saturday, October 17, 2009

District residents and community groups are working to get one Northwest neighborhood some recognition -- because few people even know it exists.

E. Gail Anderson Holness said her community of Pleasant Plains is "the bull's-eye of D.C." Holness, who serves on the Advisory Neighborhood Commission for Ward 1, moved to Pleasant Plains more than two decades ago because of its proximity to Howard University. She graduated from Howard's law school in 1981. "Some neighbors have been here over 40 years," she said. "Their children grew up with each other."

Defining Pleasant Plains is not an easy task. Its boundaries shift depending on who is describing them. Real estate agents use narrower parameters than the community's civic association does, probably for marketing purposes. Nearby communities, such as Columbia Heights, have names that are better known.

Located north of Florida Avenue and east of Sherman Avenue, Pleasant Plains has brick, dormered Wardman-style rowhouses and Federal-style houses, including many with front porches set 20 steps or more above street level.

The bustle of Georgia Avenue seems to melt away on the residential side streets. Residents gather at small local hangouts, such as Sankofa Video and Books, Soul Vegetarian, and the Howard Deli -- a fixture in the community since the 1930s.

In the 1700s, Pleasant Plains was the name of a large colonial estate stretching from present-day 16th Street NW to Howard University and owned by the Holmead family. Over time, chunks were parceled out, eventually becoming the neighborhoods of Mount Pleasant, Columbia Heights and Park View. Today's Pleasant Plains is what was left over, said Sylvia Robinson, a resident and co-founder of the Pleasant Plains Neighborhood Network.

Jo Strowder and Margaret Weusi bought their home more than a decade ago. "It's brick with hardwood floors, a sunroom, a finished basement and parking in the back," Strowder said. Because of shallow bedrock, not all Pleasant Plains houses have basements.

Strowder said she appreciates the camaraderie on her street -- an atmosphere that reminds her of her childhood in the 1950s and '60s. "Residents are concerned about keeping their properties up," she said. "We holler across the street and water each other's yards."

A year ago, Ian and Sarah Pienik moved next door to Strowder and began transforming their steep hillside into a garden. Ian Pienik rattles off the name of each neighbor who donated plants for the project. Strowder, whose own yard has a plethora of thriving plants, said of the Pieniks, "These two are setting the pace as far as yards go."

The Pieniks bought a fixer-upper because they wanted to put their own thumbprint on the house, Ian Pienik said. "There's a Mount Pleasant feel to it," he said.

Efforts to revive what Holness referred to as "a community's community" are multifaceted. Residents are relying on individual initiatives to define their neighborhood. For example, since the Pieniks landscaped the tree boxes in front of their early-1900s house, others on the block followed suit.

Robinson, a former computer analyst, grew up a few blocks away in Petworth. She is now working to create ties that bind Pleasant Plains residents together -- keeping them abreast of civic issues and encouraging them to become active members of the community.

Catalysts toward that end include the Pleasant Plains Civic Association, the Emergence Community Arts Collective and Mentoring Works2, all part of the neighborhood network.

Darren Jones, president of the civic association, grew up in the neighborhood and bought his own home there in 1993. "My family has always been involved in the community," he said. He graduated from Banneker when it was a junior high school, and his niece recently graduated from Banneker High School.

The arts collective arose from Robinson's dream of creating a center where neighborhood residents could get to know and learn from one another. During the two years of work it took to get the once-dilapidated building at 733 Euclid St. NW into shape, she found a volunteer spirit she hadn't expected. What started out as a request for one weekend of assistance turned into a lot of volunteers contributing more than 650 hours of manual labor.

Robinson also discovered the house had an extensive history helping women and children through difficult times. For three decades, beginning in the 1930s, it was the Meriwether Home for Children. Today, the "Emerging Women" exhibit tells the story of those connected with the building's mission.

The arts collective opened in 2006 and hosts art classes, social activities, educational seminars and support groups.

Mentoring Works2, which also started in 2006, engages local youths in community service projects. It is devising a network for door-to-door newsletter delivery. "One of our biggest obstacles [to community networking] is communication," Jones said. "Many of our older residents aren't connected to e-mail."

The Pleasant Plains Neighborhood Network is also working on a walkable heritage trail that will highlight 18 points in the neighborhood's educational, industrial and business past. Residents are being proactive in trying to define the incoming Howard Town Center along Georgia Avenue, rather than leaving all the decisions to developers. Emerging as Pleasant Plains "want-to-haves" are small, sustainable businesses; sit-down restaurants; and a grocery store. "We don't want to see big-box stores," said Jones. Plenty of those are available in nearby Columbia Heights.

New landscaping and speed-control measures are slated for Sherman Avenue, which has become a major commuter route as drivers bypass Georgia Avenue. A planned tree-lined median strip will reduce Sherman Avenue to one lane of traffic in each direction, returning that street to a neighborhood boulevard rather than a thoroughfare. With all the changes on the horizon, Strowder said she stays in Pleasant Plains because "there's so much going on in this little microcosm of a community, including all that's available at Howard." In fact, a lot of Howard alumni live in this neighborhood, said ANC Commissioner Thomas Smith, a Howard grad himself. Pleasant Plains is "a melting pot within a melting pot," said Smith.

Jones, a reference librarian at the Library of Congress, said, "This is a great place for public transportation." Robinson, who doesn't own a car, agreed, listing the four Metro stops within walking distance. (They are Georgia Avenue-Petworth, Columbia Heights, U Street and Shaw-Howard University on the Yellow and Green lines.)

For Holness, Pleasant Plains will continue to be difficult to define "until you name something after it." There are celebrations for Columbia Heights Day and Georgia Avenue Day. "Maybe it's time to have a Pleasant Plains Day," she said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/16/AR2009101600084.html

Pleasant Plains resident Sylvia Robinson fulfilled a dream of creating a thriving community center. (By Ann Cameron Siegal For The Washington Post)

Pleasant Plains

Saturday, October 17, 2009

BOUNDARIES: Park Road NW to the north, Florida Avenue NW to the south, Warder and Sixth streets NW to the east, and Sherman Avenue NW to the west. (The civic association extends the western boundary to 14th Street.)

SCHOOLS: Harriet Tubman Elementary School, Park View Elementary School, Garnett-Patterson Middle School, Howard University Middle School of Math and Science, Banneker High School, Cardozo High School.

HOME SALES: Thirty-one houses are on the market, from $149,900 (for an as-is shell) to $519,700, according to Sheila Cross Reid, president of Avanti Real Estate. The median selling price over the past few months was $334,800.

WITHIN WALKING DISTANCE: Four Metro stations on the Green and Yellow lines, shopping, restaurants, Columbia Heights, the U Street corridor.

WITHIN 10 MINUTES BY CAR: National Zoo, Rock Creek Park, George Washington University, the White House.

Pleasant Plains residents on Fairmont Street NW share plants to landscape their steep front yards.