March 2021 Newsletter

Happy spring, neighbors!

H Street Farmers Market Opens this Saturday

This Saturday, April 3 is the first day of the H Street Farmers Market! It is open from 9am to 12:30pm at 800 13th St NE and you can learn more here: https://www.freshfarm.org/markets/h-street-ne.

Outdoors Office Hours

Next Saturday, April 10, I’ll host outdoors office hours from 10:00am to noon at the H Street Farmers Market – 800 13th St NE. Stop by and say hello if you feel safe! As always, I’m also available via email at robb.dooling@anc.dc.gov or 6A06@anc.dc.gov (both go to the same account).

Reducing Crime

We recently saw several shootings (no reported injuries) in the area of the Azeeze Bates apartments in the southeast corner of 6A06. I am in touch with the property manager and they agreed to share this contact information with all neighbors. If you live nearby:

For all neighbors: to help us deter crime, break-ins, and package thefts, please consider participating in DC’s security camera rebate program if you don’t already. Renters, homeowners, churches, and many others are eligible for this program where you receive a rebate after purchasing a security camera and registering it with the Metropolitan Police Department: https://ovsjg.dc.gov/page/private-security-camera-rebate-program 

Serve Your City / Ward 6 Mutual Aid

Thank you to neighbors who have advocated for ANC 6A to make a grant to Serve Your City / Ward 6 Mutual Aid, which is doing invaluable work in partnership with Miner Elementary School’s Parent-Teacher Organization to help our neighborhood through the pandemic. 

ANC 6A has committed its entire grant budget for Fiscal Year 2021, but I am requesting that ANC 6A vote to allocate an additional $3,000 to the grants budget so that we may make additional grants to Serve Your City / Ward 6 Mutual Aid for pandemic relief.

H Street Updates

I helped write a rare joint letter from ANC 6A and ANC 6C to Mayor Bowser and several DC agencies calling for urgent safety changes to H St NE after multiple crashes and deaths:

  1. Transit-only lanes
  2. Wider sidewalks
  3. Pick-up/Drop-off zones

These are the same three requests as in the January letter from 25 H Street small businesses. I am cautiously optimistic about what our coalition can accomplish for the entire corridor from Union Station to Hechinger Mall: the DC Office of Planning is now coordinating with DDOT on a response to our letter. 

DDOT also informed our ANC that we would receive an update by the end of March on the sidewalk extensions on the H St NE intersections with 7th, 10th, 11th, 12th and 14th NE as well as a speeding camera in the 1300 block of H St NE.

Capitol Fence

In ANC 6A’s April 8 meeting, we will consider a resolution asking for no permanent fencing on the Capitol grounds. Many thanks to the folks at https://dontfencethecapitol.com/ who sent our ANC a report on the impacts on pedestrian and bike access, which we are using to inform this resolution.

Commissioner Keya Chatterjee (6A01) and I recently protested at the fence calling for DC statehood.

MoveDC Survey

March 31 is the last day to take DDOT’s MoveDC Survey. As former Commissioner Aaron Landry said, the number one reason to take this survey is because “the next decade of community meetings about transportation projects will have people shouting ‘x% of District residents said y and z need to be prioritized.’ Today you define those variables:” https://movedc-dcgis.hub.arcgis.com/