Brookland resident Daniel Wolkoff: Urgent action for DC City Council - McMillan surplus and land disposition

Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2014 10:35:18 +0000
Subject: [HistoricWashington] Urgent Action for D.C. City Council - McMillan Surplus and Land Disposition

Neighbors of McMillan, for addresses and phone numbers just go to DC City Council, on line. 

Trying to get a City Council member's attention by email is a lost cause. The City Council members ignore all our emails. This is a decade long effort to ignore the concerns of DC taxpayers and our children. I invite all concerned residents to join my lawsuit, in DC Superior Court, to appeal the improper Zoning Commission decision to super urbanize and demolish McMillan Park.

The media is doing a concerted avoidance, "bias by omission". The Washington Post, so totally pro corporate, is busy taking a stroll down Memory Lane in the wake of Ben Bradley's death. Reliving the days of Watergate, with Woodward and Bernstein, and The Pentagon Papers, while  not reporting 100's of protestors arrested in civil disobedience at The White House to Stop the Keystone Pipline, no real coverage of McMillan the "disposal" of our 25 acres by the City Council, Mayor and the development conglomerate.
                    

On McMillan, Mike DeBonis, avoids it, but Roger K. Lewis column in the Real Estate section paints a glowing column on the development that doesn't mention anything of the downside, the opposition, hundreds of testimony, petitions, zoning issues, etc. Of course, Roger K. Lewis is on Kojo, and Kojo puts people on mute the moment they call in and mention McMillan. The miserable local developer in VMP, EYA has become a WAMU corporate sponsor and is spreading advertising money all over the place.
            

I love all the local TV News stations, reporting for days if Marian Barry has an outstanding parking ticket but not a single reporter has ever covered dozens of McMillan DC government hearings, meetings, protests, town  halls. How much local political news can you fit in, in the 3 to 4 minutes before they go to the Redskins?
            

Local media, the very few mentions, have been contemptuous of the public, Washington business journal "The McMillan Soap Opera Goes On". The City Paper once upon a time muckraked the DC government regularly, but totally pro development, a rag. The only place for info is Scott Roberts Bloomingdale Blog, but it's a national issue.

National Register of Historic Places nomination (http://www.nps.gov/nr/feature/places/13000022.htm) by the DC Office of Historic Preservation's  Kim Williams.

Our DC government has been governing without informed consent, and doesn't care, as Miss Bowser dissed my questions at BNCA , 90% off the district has no idea what is going on, it's a Private Pig Fest! I think the figure for the Surplus land disposition is negative $3.65 million, when developers all over the world would pay tens or hundreds of millions. VMP once approved and land handed to them will undoubtedly sell it to Japanese, or Chinese developers, and walk with the money. 

The Council has been lobbied by The Carmen Group, Grosso, Cheh had meetings, and I assume anyone else potentially on the fence. The Jamie Fontaine PR firm, was hired, by Jeff Miller the Deputy Mayor (which he denied to Bowser oversight hearing Feb. 11th, 2014), and they have faked community support, or "neutralized opposition" and "created the appearance of support", so the government has kept its own agencies as oversight, and bought an "astroturf campaign" from Baltimore.  http://youtu.be/uXkOgHV7Lhw 

            

I would ask the council member and staff, if they have ever been on the site, or in the mystical underground 20 acres of masonry "vaults". Please ask how does Mayor Gray find out what all the public needs are for the 25 acre green space? Get responses in writing, an do not let these DC government hacks blow us off! The exclusion of the public, and the determination that the city Council has no responsibility to represent the Ward or At- Large,  clearly has got to change now.

                                                           

Long story short, I would call our representatives, McDuffie, At-Large members, Gray, and staff, and demand that your needs for the 25 acre green space be acknowledged. We have the environmental concerns, water security, urban food and nutrition hub, http://youtu.be/ILzWmw53Wwo  cool breezes, community gardens, sunset views, not tunnels between rows of condos and offices.
               

Get answers not insults, on this *absurd* declaration that " there is no longer any public need" for the land at McMillan. I would also blame each of these hacks, for the way they kept it fenced off, wasted about $40 million, which if the green space was in a white upper income section of DC, would have certainly been spent on safely opening up  access to the public, and not flushed down the overflowing sewers.
           

Thank you from all the neighbors around the Park,

Daniel Goldon Wolkoff
McMillan Coalition  for Sustainable Agriculture
1231 Randolph Street, NE
Washington, DC 20017
202-232-8391