Saturday, June 02, 2007

ANC 3E and the Tenley Library-Janey Roadside Proposal

According to posts on various listservs from ANC 3E Commissioner Anne Sullivan, ANC 3E has been engaged in a series of "community discussions" regarding the Tenley Library/Janney Elementary/Roadside development proposal.

The ANC 3E has established an ANC 3E Special Committee to explore the Roadside Development proposal for a public/private/partnership to build a residential complex on the Tenley Library and Janney School sites. The committee has met twice (May 25th and June 1st) and plans two more small group meetings before convening a large community-wide meeting to disseminate information gathered from the special committee meetings sometime at the end of June.

The minutes from these meetings are available on the ANC 3E website. According to the Commissioner, and in repsonse to questions, the make up of the Committee:

ANC 3E Commissioners, ANC 3F and 3C Commission Chairpersons, different subject matter experts and representatives of various community groups, Roadside Developement personnel, the library, St. Ann's Church and school and government agencies will be attending the meetings, and the composition of the group will change depending on the topic of the meeting. For example, June 8th's topic will be Janney School's needs and how the partnership might meet those needs. We will focus our questions and information gathering activities on the school at this meeting, therefore attendees will be representatives of the school, school system and various other community members.

The Special Committee meetings are not open to the public due to space constraints and logistics. We are trying to be as inclusive as possible with our group's composition, though, to elicit questions from many different perspectives. We hope that the posting of the minutes will lend as much transparency about this process as possible.


Attendees to the first meeting included:

Amy McVey, Chairperson ANC 3E
Carolyn Sherman ANC 3E03
Lucy Eldridge ANC 3E04
Anne Sullivan ANC 3E05
Monsignor Godfrey Mosley St. Ann’s
Deacon Robert Whitaker, St. Ann’s
Ben Ketchum, Assistant Principal, St. Ann’s Academy
Frances Anderson, St. Ann’s Parish Council
Nancy MacWood, Chairperson, ANC 3C

-So 4 out of 5 ANC 3E Commissioners (Was the fifth, Commissioner Primor asked to participate?)
-ANC 3C Chair Nancy MacWood (whose ANC is not contiguous with this area)
-No representation from the Janney Community (leadership, parents, etc.)
-No represenation from ANC 3F, whose boundaries include a large number of Janney families and is immediately adjacent to the area.

By the way, are there rules about having a quorum of ANC Commissioners and public meetings? Even though Ms. Sullivan is posting the minutes, the after-the-fact announcement of these meetings, and the fact that all of the stake hodlers and the community are not present when a majority of Commissioners are present in an official capacity does raise some questions.

According to documents from the DC Office of ANC's website:

ANCs are subject to the open meetings provisions of D.C. Official Code § 1207.42(a), and ANCs are not permitted to close meetings to the public unless “personnel or legal matters are discussed.” D.C. Official Code § 1-309.11(g).

(The "open meetings provision" specifically states, "All meetings (including hearings) of any department, agency, board, or commission of the District government, including meetings of the Council of the District of Columbia, at which official action of any kind is taken shall be open to the public". Perhaps ANC 3E considers this to not be in effect because no action will be taken?)

Further, given the meetings being held by Councilmember Mary Cheh, why are these meetings being conducted at all?

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Also, no representation from Cityline.