From: blair-rowan@starpower.net
To: HistoricWashington@yahoogroups.com
Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2014 19:19:13 -0400
Subject: [HistoricWashington] Council Testimony: Business-As-Usual at McMillan Park
Testimony to the Public Oversight Hearing on the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development, by the Committee on Economic Development `(Councilmember Muriel Bowser, Chair)
Wednesday, 9 April 2014
Philip Blair, Jr.
Business-As-Usual at McMillan Park
My name is Philip Blair. This testimony is mine only: I speak for no group.
First, congratulations on your victory in the Democratic primary.
However, in two ways, that election was a repudiation of business-as-usual
in the this city. Mayor Gray lost the confidence of many in our city. In my
ward, Ward 5, many felt that they simply could not vote for the Mayor whose
administration rode rough-shod over the local community in an attempt to
make a bus parking lot of Crummell School, a historic site in Ivy City, or
to destroy McMillan Park as a historic site.
But more troubling for the future of the District than a vote against the
current Mayor was the low turnout, a statement that many of our
fellow-citizens did not see someone to vote for.
There is a cancer growing on the political system of our city, and the
Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development is at the
core of the tumor. A baleful symbiosis between large business interests and
politicians eager for financial backing seems to determine what DMPED will
do or not do, and how.
Take, as one example of the problems, the issue of single-source,
non-competitive contracting and political influence in the contracting
process. As you know from your service on the WMATA Board, this has been an
issue at WMATA, and a case involving the Shaw/Howard Metro station
development plans was a black eye both for WMATA and for another D.C.
Councilmember then on the WMATA Board.
I and other citizens interested in the plans for McMillan Park have written
to each Councilmember and to some in the Administration to protest the fact
that the Vision McMillan Partnership was charged by the District to develop
the site with no competitive bidding process. If this is legal, it should
not be. Without question, it is appallingly bad public policy, and an
invitation to abuse, dishonesty, and fraud.
We already see that abuse. The Historic Preservation Review Board, under the
purview of the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Development, has
approved of the "demolition"-their word-of the federally protected
historical site at McMillan, after opining on the colors of the new
construction. They ignored constraints on the development of the site
involved in the transfer of this tract to the District. They permitted
demonstrably false assertions by Vision McMillan Partners that the tract had
never been a park. The HPRB has acted as a lap-dog of the developers,
abdicating their duty to act professionally without a political agenda.
Revolving-door hiring practices at DMPED, sadly not unprecedented in recent
history, link the developers and DMPED.
"Astro-turfing" has been used to create the appearance of citizen support
that cannot be seen on the ground. This astro-turfing might well have been
at direct public expense, except for our protest. Now it is at second-hand
public expense. Inconvenient facts have been made to disappear. We still
have no public document recording the legally-required "surplussing" hearing
of last June: there has been enough time passed since to conceive and
deliver a baby, twins or triplets even.
Whoever is the next mayor cannot afford to let this kind of
Business-As-Usual continue. And the Council of the District of Columbia
should already be attending to these problems more aggressively.
Philip Blair, jr.
1518 Kearney Street, NE,
Brookland, DC 20017
blair-rowan @ starpower.net
202.526-8821
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