Date: Fri, 3 Apr 2015 16:55:33 -0400
From: magchairman@gmail.com
Subject: McMillan Advisory Group: Agenda for our April 9th monthly meeting -Kirby
McMillan Advisory Group monthly meetingThursday, April 9th, 7PM, All Nations Baptist Church(corner of North Capitol St. & Rhode Island Ave. NE)(MAG meets on the 2nd Thursday of each month)Open to the public.Tentative agenda- Approval minutes for the March meeting- Update on MAG representatives and active/inactive status- DMPED updates and responses to MAG questions from March meeting- Discussion of upcoming hearings:- April 23 Phase II buildings presentation to the HPRB(does the MAG wish to testify or submit written testimony?)- Mayor’s Agent hearing on subdivision of property- April 23 Council DMPED budget oversight hearing- Public circulation of MAG activity, such as website- Discussion of neighborhood traffic impacts including reach out to DDOT- Continuing discussion of MAG position on the Master Plan for the siteTwo new items since this first draft went out, items for discussion at the meeting:
- The Mayor’s 2016 budget is available online
- The subdivision of the McMillan site will be presented to the Mayor’s Agent on May 18th.
Thank you! -Kirby--
Kirby Vining
Tom Sherwood Mc Duffy wants Mc Millan to be a DC-wide issue.
ReplyDeleteCouncil memberM cDuffie said "many people in DC know nothing about
McMillan" at City Council hearings.
Hearings that are a charade, and community input is consistently ignored.
Hearings where half of the required 15 copies of testimony are thrown in
the recycling bin before the hearing is concluded. demonstrating a
contemptuous system of burying our input as soon as testified. Committee
members do not attend their own hearing, then how many go find the
testimony or go dig up and read the "record", to be informed, so our
democracy can function?
I see the democratic requirement of gaining "informed consent of the
governed" is not a concern for any Council Member.
Mayor Bowser declares McMillan is a "done deal", before the Historic
Preservation Laws are carried out by the Mayor's Agent,,,
so it's a "fixed deal" with no pretense of "due process", what the powerful
want is what happens regardless.
Let's get the answers to some obvious questions:
-Who consented to keeping McMillan fenced off with barbed wire for 28 years?
-Who consented to paying $9.3 million, when the federal Govt. offered the
site to DC for FREE as long as it remained park and green space?
-How much money has been wasted, $9.3 million for over 28 years?
-What has the District government wasted on lawn mowing, blowing out
pollution, for 28 years, at possibly $250,000 a year to Spectrum
Management,
on a site nobody can walk on the lawn, or picnic?
-Which neighborhood in DC would allow a large greenspace to be fenced off
and access blocked for 28 years? Waiting for the real estate market to be
so "hot", that the "chosen" developer will make $billions" on the public
land "giveaway"?
-What citizen voted for "surplus" law that, the City Council empowered
itself to dictate "land give-aways", the reverse of Eminent Domain and
avoids federal oversight? McDonald behind the Lincoln Memorial next, or
7-11?
-How does the DC govt. manage to waste over $40million, and pay it's
development consultants $6 million, and then hold a vote at the end of this
corrupt process, that can stop the entire mess cold, and waste every penny
of the tax payers money?
-How can a legal process of carrying out the provisions of the Historic
Preservation Act be objective, when the Mayor's Agent (appointed by Gray)
is in mid deliberation on demolition of the protected, registered historic
site, and subdivision of the unitary site, when it is simultaneously zoned
for mega development, and the City Council has "surplussed" the $billion
site to private corporate ownership?
-How can this be described as a democratic process , involving community
input, when it is openly labeled "approval process", not even called
evaluative, objective or in any way "protecting the commons"?
-The Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development a Gray appointee
has with VMP, hired Jamie Fontaine, Baltimore PR firm, to run a fake grass
roots effort, "neutralize opposition", "and provide cover to politicians",
and muzzle the media, how is that ethical, and democratic?
-How can lead developer, a paid DC contractor//consultant spend $10,000 a
month on the Carmen Group, top gun lobbyists, to visit Council members
Cheh, Grosso, Bowser, Alexander and Barry,,at about $40,000 each appt. when
we are the client?
-WHO IS MINDING THE FOX!
VMP tells us they have "thematic elements visioned" WOW!
ReplyDeleteVMP keeps saying, they will capture all storm water.
The adaptive re-use that would really capture and use the water, and keep the Sand Filtration facility available for clean water security. VMP is getting our tax millions of dollars to pay it's expenses for demolition of the Sand Filtration Site,,,our land, protected historic structures, and a life saving facility, as hemispheric drought emergency threatens our food supply, and water. We all need to join the lawsuit to stop the demolition.
VMP is already in the $300 million range, out of our pockets!
The 20 foot diameter, 5 mile mitigation tunnel, is another $157 million gift form taxpayers to VMP. They cannot do the development on the site without the tunnel. The combined storm water and sewage problem had reached crisis level. The tunnel is for VMP,, and is being promoted as "Neighborhood Protection", which is another scam. They let the neighborhood flood for 30 years,,,never cared when African Americans owned these homes being damaged. When yuppies bought,, and put in basement apartments and suddenly the DC govt. gave a damn. Had this flooding been in Kalorama, they would have re-built the entire sewer system and that is exactly what was deferred by WASA for 180 years. The separation of sewage and storm water is exactly what is needed, but they ignored it for so many decades,, it's now too expensive..Too expensive to do the right thing.
Jeff Soule of American Planning says that the amount of runoff from Washington Hospital Center parking lots is still going to overwhelm the tunnel, during heavy rains.
Why isn't Office of Miserable Planning addressing the WHC parking lot issue,,,why is Jemal building a parking garage at the Brookland Metro for Children's National Medical Center? There is some reason, one being Trammel Crow and EYA want the big fancy McMmillan site to make more money than actually addressing the problem across the street at WHC.
Notice DCwater is cancelling a tunnel project right in Rock Creek Park, they will get "green infrastructure",,nice trees, ponds, drainage, recharging curbs,,,BECAUSE, no big development is going to happen there, no Armed Forces Retirement home 80 acres, more development than the Pentagon, no McMillan VMP,,, also the people who live in this upper NW area are not going to go through the disruption as being experienced in Bloomingdale. All to avoid proper upgrading of the sewers!
The Mayor GrayTaskforce on Bloomingdale Flooding, wrote that the problem goes back to the 1830's, what BS,,The problem is WASA not doing proper work for 180 years,,,get real, you gonna blame people in 1830!
The real problem with storm water runoff , is that it never goes into the ground, like nature intended
The Office of Miserable Planning and DC Zoning allow any amount of paving, parking lots, impervious surfaces( like the recent unnecessary parking lot at Franciscan Monastery, right over similar flooding at Brookland Metro). The near total paving over of the land, keeps the storm water from percolating into the ground and recharging, and maintaining the "ground water table". so that is why when we have even slight drought, like in not so past years, the trees start to die, and small, newly planted trees need irrigation bags, their roots are not deep enough to get water from the ground. We all see how incompetent the City is in replanting, then maintaining trees.
All the storm water runoff going into the waste treatment plant is environmentally destructive and a failure of DC WASA to restrict urbanization like McMillan, 3000 parking spaces on that mediocre development is too much paving. The tree cover, and the natural cycle of streams, are what DCWater is destroying.....No streams either as they are also "ground water",as well.
McMillan Coalition for Sustainable Agriculture