From: amglassart@yahoo.com
Subject: ABUSE OF POWER the theft by City Council of McMillan Park
ABUSE OF POWER
Tour the magical spaces of McMillan Park, http://vimeo.com/111638481
and please consider donating to our legal fund to stop the city’s plans
to demolish and sell our park: https://www.crowdrise.com/savemcmillanpark
National Register of Historic Places McMillan Reservoir Historic District (http://www.nps.gov/nr/feature/places/13000022.htm )
I love the things the Council-members care about and the things they really don't care about. The city is a hazardous "obstacle course" just to take a walk, because our sidewalks, trains, buses, even trees are not cared for competently by mediocre DC agencies under this government's charge, but Council-member McDuffie worries about two auto repair shops .
McDuffie being concerned with air quality is a bad joke. He is, right now, ramrodding the mammoth Vision McMillan Partners development onto the last and only 25 acre carbon absorbing, clean air and oxygen producing green space in our area, in the entire city! Paving over our green space with 3000 asphalt parking spaces, adding 6 private streets boxed into a cul-de-sac, with 20,000 additional automobile trips a day. Right on top of a catastrophic infrastructure failure of sewage flooding into homes, and in the middle of currently failing intersections. Where 7 DC hospitals are served by ambulances and fire engines, regularly, hopping the median and advancing into oncoming traffic, endangering everyone regularly, on N. Capitol, due to the existing unacceptable congestion.
The McMillan Sand Filtration Site , North Capitol and Michigan Ave. You may not be familiar with this open , green recreation area, simply because the McDuffies, Bowsers, Grossos, Mendelsons and Grays of our government, who purport to be our representatives, have kept all DC residents, and international visitors fenced out for over 28 years. They even cancelled fascinating Bloomingdale ANC tours of the underground 20 acres of filtration vaults, to suppress public interest as to what a neat "great space" we own. They have relegated our historic heritage to the bulldozer and banal development, see
www.visionmcmillanpartners.org the"Monstrosity on Michigan avenue".
A $billion rip off of public land, privatized for private corporate profit, brushing aside, actually suppressing, the real DC communities 28 years of requests, projects, community plans, and much more imaginative healthy adaptive re-use of our land. Who controls the city government, who is watching the Fox?
Though McDuffie was not even knowledgeable of the issues and history or the Federal Historic preservation covenants attached to the original 1987 sale of the site, he rushed through, City Council hearings, and ignored dozens of DC residents concerns for air quality, traffic, and our basic depravity of decent outdoor recreational green space.
For the last 8 years the DC govt, Deputy Mayor for Economic Development, convicted felons on the Council, Harry "Tommy" Thomas Jr, Kwami Brown, Michael Brown and Vincent Gray, himself, illegitimately placed in office by fraud, bribery and conspiracy to commit million dollar campaign violations, and Council members not yet charged, or not directly criminal, have colluded in an anti-democratic and coercive process.
Including DC govt. hiring a Baltimore PR firm (Jamie Fontaine) to subvert community input and "neutralize the opposition"!
Long time activist for McMillan Park, Brookland landscape architect Mary Pat Rowan reveals the PR firm “astroturf campaign” in this City Council Committee Oversight hearing with Muriel Bowser. Now, Mayor Bowser has ignored the violation of citizens free speech, and right to participate un-intimidated in city government, and even ignores false statements by Deputy Mayor M. Jefffrey Miller, in his City Council testimony, denying city money paid for the carpetbagging PR firm subversion of our rights.
The air qualityin reality is poor, do to this abuse of power and malfeasance in office, even Ron Machen's Federal Prosecution of Gray's corrupt mayoral campaign, is obviously being stifled while Gray gives away the kitchen sink to VMP, and hands off this theft of public assets to Bowser! It is this smell, that DC residents have become so used to, they act as if it doesn't stink, and damage public health, and the future of our city, a delusion!
Our democracy functions by the requirement that our representatives keep the electorate informed of what the government is doing.
Who has received an update on real choices for McMillan from their Council-member or Mayor or staff?
How did the Mayor, who is required, in order to move the $billion privatization through the City Council, declare "there is no longer any public need for 25 acre McMillan Park". How does he manage to block out 25 years of community petitions, requests, how did he examine their options, and provide any choices?
What City Council member held a forum, held a hearing to develop our choices, not only dictate their will, and force it down our throats. Community participation is not 200meetings, condescending ploys of developer charrettes? As if this is community input, controlled and dictated and limited to the plan of our institutionally corrupt, and racist system. We have no referendum, no commission to study the options, no objective evaluation at all, and we don't even have an estimate by the developer of the cost DC government is strapping you with,X $100's of millions, to engineer the ludicrous job of preparing the site for construction pads to erect huge buildings on, inappropriate in every way! While inadequate tunneling is supposed to mitigate the flooding issues obviously increased with 10,000 VMP toilets flushing away.
They never researched the option the people requested to see the feasibility of restoration and returning the park to public benefit. The international movement for sustainable urban planning and adaptive re-use, preserving the site, no demolition,(the most ecologically sound potential) has been blocked out by politicians giving lip service to such environmentalism all the time.
Mayor Gray has two Sustainable DC(lip service) plans that call out for saving McMillan Park from every page, a hollow document, waiting to achieve its fake results in 2035, while non- stop over urbanization is characterized as "moving forward", certainly for Trammel Crow (already doing $2 Billion in DC development) and wealthy new comers to the city, they are moving forward and moving in! But grocery stores belong on the street grid, and innovative housing and comercial are not an excuse to destroy park land.
It is hard to avoid common sense and healthy planning for a gracious town, services, parks, functioning sewers and other imperatives, but the city government is working to avoid their responsibility full time. Lip service, blind eye, turning the head, a cold shoulder, avoidance, ignoring thousands of citizens, and subverting us with "astroturf" fake grassroots campaigns, none of them were elected or appointed for this.
The City Council tucked their unanimous vote to, hand out $100's of millions in public land and treasure to Trammel Crow, in a few minutes, in the last session of the year. A unanimous vote for $billion DC public land and wealth transfer to private development with no questions asked, no speeches, no concerns raised, just lined up like duck pins.. This is a body of politicians who debate, and give speeches, are verbose, to decide how many feet of sidewalk you need to park a food truck! Not a single question from Mary Cheh, David Catania who told me personally, " I am not well informed about McMillan. But, Mrs. Cheh said my ideas were "inspirational", a Glen Echo arts/education campus, Wolf Trap concert stage, skating, training young people in building trades, underground agriculture and aquaponics, community ownership, but not interested in raising one thing, not a peep. All normal activities cities use re-purposed sites for all the time- parks are development! No questions, how odd!.
Ironically Mr. Grosso and Mrs. Cheh, support "sustainable agriculture", and a food and nutrition hub, perfect for McMillan. We could be feeding our city, insulating ourselves from drought emergencies in California and Central America, where most of our food is produced. We have water supply crisis breaking out in our area as well, even WW1 chemical warfare contamination of ground water near our water supply at Dalecarlia,,,so saving the Sand Filtration Cells for clean water security makes sense as well, not to demolish this "protected " historic site for very ugly condos and medical office towers. We need open fresh air, green space for healthy activities, to keep us out of the doctors office not to build them there. Any city in the world would have benefited from this recreational resource years ago, it is your government and it's business partners at Vision McMillan, refuse to allow a democratic choice, the joining of corporation and government- fill in the blank, __fascism_!
How did each Council-member, the Mayor, the Deputy Mayor, the Zoning Commission, the HPRB, and lastly Mayor's Agent, inform the electorate and how did they gain informed consent of the governed to give away a $billion publicly owned 25 acre green space in the center of our city, informed consent? Not by the ballot referendum or any public forum, discussion panel, poll, or anything at all. The developer put on coercive community meetings, hired a PR firm to fake community support and organize, stacking hearings with repetitious testimony by groups like The Coalition for Smarter Growth, funded by the same developer.
The Mayor's Agent is a special judicial process in Office of Historic Preservation (also under Office of Planning as are every single evaluative agency) where Gray's appointed Agent can determine the "special merit" of the VMP plan and bypass all the DC and Federal Historic Preservation Laws that protect the site from demolition and incompatible construction. This decision is yet to be handed down. So the Zoning decision, the City Council vote giving a $billion deal to the developers,,, is not coercive? How are the people of the district of Columbia served by this pressure, coercion of the official, by the officials, we have hired to protect the commons?
Almost 30 years of wasteful, destructive "stewardship" have come down to this, it must be rejected! There is no legitimate process, just gang all the pressure on and have 4 offices in the same agency corrupt oversight and evaluation of itself!
We have the right to participate, decide the future of our city, UN-intimidated, and our agencies cannot be trusted to evaluate each other in a collusion that has consistently and totally blocked the communities needs, and common sense priorities.
I encourage everyone to get involved, join the law suits to block this dictatorial process, and massive theft of public assets.
McMillan Coalition for Sustainable Agriculture
amglassart@yahoo.com
Daniel Goldon Wolkoff
1231 Randolph St. NE
202-232-8391
Great summary of how greed, cash, ignoring the public and worst of all, ignoring the land and its value as a green space, are the values of our elected officials. Vote them all out next time!
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