Movement on Klingle Road

The Examiner is reporting that Mayor Fenty and Ward 1 Council Member Jim Graham have earmarked $2 Million for infrastructure preparations in advance of an $11 Million rebuild of the east-west connection through Rock Creek Park.

Ward 3 Councilmember Mary Cheh is supportive of the status quo, maintaining the bucolic form of the short stretch from the parkway to Woodley Road.

Proponents of the road include residents of Mt. Pleasant and Adam Morgan who prefer a more direct route to points west. Others include certain Cleveland Park residents who suggest that the chronic vehicular back-ups on Porter Street are more environmentally damaging than simply rebuilding and maintaining the road.

This will be interesting to follow going forward.

Woe is Me, ANC

DC Watch, the city-wide political discussion is often filled with interesting tidbits of information about the inner workings of the halls of the Wilson Building. This week's installment has an entry from ANC 3E Commissioner Anne Sullivan:

On March 18, I testified at Chairman Gray’s Public Hearing Roundtable on ANCs on behalf of the ANC 3E. A common complaint that was heard on all nights of the Advisory Neighborhood Commission testimonies was that the ANCs are not given “great weight.” I illustrated how this phenomenon occurred recently in ANC 3E when public land and development rights to part of the elementary school land and part of the library had been put up for sale over the objections of the ANC, and none of the resolutions passed by the ANC regarding this sale had been given any weight. I discussed that the land was being sold without the government’s going through proper evaluations and determinations (according to the DC Code) that the land was not needed for public use and could be spared to sell off to a developer.

I talked about Councilmember Cheh’s role in all of this, and I stand by everything in my testimony. The main part of my testimony begins around hour mark 1:50:00 of this video: http://www.octt.dc.gov/services/on_demand_video/channel13/March2008/03_18_08_COWLEG_4.asx, but the questioning by Council Member Cheh (Ward 3) begins at hour mark 2:01:40. I believe the councilmember exhibits outrageous behavior. I hope that standards of conduct are established in Council Chambers to prevent this type of abuse in the future.

So Commissioner Sullivan is firmly standing behind her allegations against Councilmember Cheh.

And now, the ANC 3E supporters are following a Clinton-esque repetition of the outrage:

The bullying here reminds me of the bullying Commissioner Sullivan
experienced from CM Cheh. It's virtually content-free and designed to
cow someone with inconvenient/damaging facts into silence, rather than
to bring new and more reliable facts to light.

Irony here?

ANC makes an Issue of Public Hearing

The City Council recently held its oversight hearings on ANCs. ANC 3F Commissioner Frank Winstead took the opportunity to post a portion or the proceedings on YouTube. As part of the video, Winstead made the following observation:

Councilmember Cheh unleashed her vast repertoire of lawyerly oral attacks upon Sullivan. Cheh sent a message to Commissioner Sullivan, ANC 3E and all the communities of Ward 3. What happens in the backroom of Suite 108, 1350 Pennsylvania Avenue, the DC Council Offices of Mary Cheh is of no concern to the public.

The implication, of course is that ANC3E (with the concurrance of Frank Winstead) has some sort of "smoking gun" implicating Councilmember Cheh and Roadside Development in the oft-discussed Tenley-Janney PPP.

(Side note: This is the same ANC Commissioner with the public tagline "I’m Frank Winstead reminding you to help control the criminal population spay/neuter your lawyer today".)

The announcement by Winstead on the Tenleytown Listserv was met with some interesting comments:

As someone who was in fact cross examined by my SMD ANC rep at a
zoning hearing last Spring and was told in writing by another that
perhaps I should move to another neighborhood since I disagreed with
her I have no sympathy whatsoever for a member of an ANC that has
over the years taken umbrage at anyone who disagrees with them
despite presiding over meetings with an average attendance of about
20 people.

If you are going to put something in writing with such flimsy
evidence, especially unsubstantiated allegations that imply improper
behavior, you had better be prepared to answer questions about your
allegations.

As they say if you can't stand the heat you should get out of the
kitchen.

Good for CM Cheh for standing up for herself - she was elected by an
overwhelming majority of this Ward despite a vigorous campaign of
opposition from the small group of anti-growth activists who
dominate public meetings in our community and I hope she will
continue to appropriately assert that she does in fact represent
this community and forcefully push back against and the scurrilous
behavior of these same naysayers.

and

the ANC publicized its "causes for concern" document here, the
ANC engaged in what could charitably be called "amateur
lawyerlyness." An observer with a more jaundiced eye would call it --
were the target not a public official -- libel. It is hardly
surprising that the target of the misleading statements, a real
lawyer as it happens, took the author to task."

Marc Fisher on Wilson High School

Yay to the parents and neighbors of Wilson High School in northwest Washington, who are refusing to let the D.C. school system ignore concerns about a wave of violence that has hit the school since the city transferred dozens of students from the juvenile justice system and alternative schools into Wilson. With some new ninth graders now as old as 16 or 17 because they'd been left back several times, the school is suffering from a series of incidents in which older students have been harassing or assaulting younger students. Chancellor Michelle Rhee acknowledged the problem at a community meeting this week, and now the challenge to the system is to move out those kids who cannot behave decently and assure a safe environment for the great majority of students who are there to learn.

Another Pedestrian Struck on Connecticut Avenu

NBC 4 is reporting a hit and run at Connecticut Avenue and Nebraska Avenue this morning. The elderly woman struck has suffered life-threatening injuries.

UPDATE: The elderly pedestrian was killed in this incident according to updated reports on NBC4.com.