November 2021 Newsletter

Good evening, neighbors!

Public Safety Walk: Tuesday, December 7, 4:30pm, Miner Elementary

Next Tuesday, December 7, Commissioner Laura Gentile and I are hosting a public safety walk, starting in the Miner Elementary parking lot at 4:30pm. We’ll walk down 15th St NE and the 1500-1600 blocks of F St NE. Please let me know if you have any special accommodations requests. I hope to see many of you there, and I’ll share a summary of the event in my next newsletter.

Our neighborhood experienced a fatal shooting at 15th & F St NE on November 13 and an armed carjacking at E St & Tennessee Ave NE on November 24. 

In response:

  1. MPD has increased their presence in the area of the Azeeze Bates apartments.
  1. We’ve invited MPD, the Mayor’s office, Councilmember Allen’s office, and other DC government agencies to the public safety walk.
  1. I plan to request additional violence interrupters in our neighborhood in early 2022 ANC meetings, particularly after the success of DC’s Cure the Streets violence interruption program that you can read about here: https://oag.dc.gov/cure-streets-data-dashboard. Cure the Streets just announced an expansion to Petworth, Ivy City, and other neighborhoods, and I believe our neighborhood, alongside Rosedale, is an ideal candidate.

Leaf Collection

Our beleaguered Department of Public Works recently emailed Commissioners that they are “approximately 10 days behind schedule” on leaf collection because of personnel changes. They also indicated that: “if leaves are not collected within 14 days past your scheduled collection date, please call 311 to schedule a missed leaf collection.” See leaf collection dates here: https://dpw.dc.gov/service/leaf-collection.

If you run into our front-line workers, please do thank them for serving us throughout the pandemic and institutional constraints outside of their control. This can be as simple as saying a quick thank-you to your bus driver or bikeshare/scooter rebalancing crew.

Maryland Ave NE

I’m continuing to work with DDOT, Councilmember Allen, and the mayor’s office on recent changes to Maryland Ave NE. The bioretention areas and gardens around G/Elliot/14th St NE that were due in September continue to suffer delays, which we badly need to resolve before winter weather. Neighbors can contact the Maryland Ave project team at MarylandAveNEProject@gmail.com and follow their progress at https://www.marylandavesafety.org/. 

Regarding the Chik-Fil-A drive-through, DDOT informed the ANC today that they erred in painting a bike lane for a few hundred feet east of 14th St NE, which was not in the Maryland Ave NE project plans. DDOT removed this bike lane last week but committed to begin a Bladensburg Road planning project in December that could incorporate pedestrian and bicycle connections between the Maryland Ave NE bike lanes and Bladensburg Road. This project is a grand opportunity to significantly enhance the safety of the Starburst intersection where the two corridors meet and improve walkability.

Regarding residential parking spots removed on the 1400 block of Maryland Ave NE, DDOT has not yet responded to multiple ANC contacts, but we plan to host them at an ANC 6A Transportation and Public Spaces Committee meeting in mid-December focused on the area around Chik-Fil-A. As always, we’ll post the agenda on https://anc6a.org/agendas/.

Redistricting

Thank you to all of the neighbors and commissioners who spoke up against our small residential 15th St NE becoming a ward border! The DC Council redistricting committee noted that ANC 6A was the only ANC to submit recommendations in advance of their final map proposal. I know many neighbors also individually wrote to Councilmembers Silverman, Bonds, and Henderson, so I am especially proud of us today. 

Our advocacy was partially successful: to my surprise, the DC Council’s redistricting committee’s final map proposal did not draw the border north of 15th & C St NE. However, we shouldn’t declare victory just yet. We should show solidarity with our neighbors around 15th St NE south of C St NE—who were just as instrumental in supporting the political unity of our neighborhood around Miner Elementary School. 

As I’ll continue to emphasize, many of us would love to live in either Ward 7 or Ward 6. Our concern is proposed ward boundaries that use narrow residential streets such as 15th St NE as opposed to any wider street. Even 8th St NE (with no elementary schools) and/or 11th St SE (a significant thoroughfare with fewer residences) would serve as more suitable ward borders. Under the redistricting scenario where northern 15th St NE becomes a ward border, ANC 6A residents who live on the west side of 15th St NE and send their kids to a redistricted Miner Elementary a few feet away will not be able to vote for the Ward 7 State Board of Education member representing Miner. Our rich history of ANC 6A grants to Miner, Ward 6 Mutual Aid tabling in the Miner parking lot, and 6A meetings inside Miner would face similar challenges. Residential parking boundaries and school enrollment boundaries will not change, but all political boundaries will change, affecting our ward councilmembers, Board of Education members, and ANC representatives.

(Screenshot of the DC Council redistricting committee’s map proposal, which draws a Ward 6/7 border that follows the Anacostia River to the East Capitol St NE bridge. The border then runs west on C St NE and then south on 15th St NE.)

Special ANC 6A Meeting on Redistricting: Thursday, December 2, 7:00pm, Zoom

You can create your own redistricting map and/or fiddle with various proposals’ boundaries here! https://dcredistricting.esriemcs.com/redistricting/. 

Weigh in on redistricting with all of the other volunteer ANC 6A Commissioners who have generously agreed to host a special meeting on Zoom at 7:00pm this Thursday. See our agenda and link here: https://anc6a.org/agendas/.

Our usual ANC 6A meeting covering other hyperlocal matters will take place on the second Thursday, December 9. This meeting and other committee meetings will wrap up my first full year as Commissioner, and I can’t wait for next year. I want to again thank my neighbors, campaign supporters, and everybody who helped us improve access to local politics with ANC 6A’s new Zoom meetings that broke public attendance records; new Google Group with 1,000+ neighbors; DC’s newly funded Office on Deaf, DeafBlind, and Hard of Hearing, and more.

(Some of the ANC 6A “family” enjoying post-Thanksgiving “pies in the park.” Left to right: Webmaster Renee Dworakowski, Community Outreach Committee member Stefany Thangavelu, Commissioner Laura Gentile, Economic Development and Zoning Chair Brad Greenfield, Commissioner Sondra Phillips-Gilbert, Commissioner Mike Soderman, Commissioner Robb Dooling, and Chair Amber Gove.)