Well, the "community meeting" sponsored by the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development (DMPED) was even worse than their format led me to expect. They got off to a good start by announcing that they were providing only 8 days for public comment. And, yet again, the deadline they imposed seemed deliberately chosen to preclude official action on the part of the affected ANCs. Project Manager Eric Scott promised that they would put copies of the developers' public presentations up on the web the next day, but that didn't happen. After a few days of lobbying, Neil Albert agreed to extend the comment period to the more customary 30 days. But, still the powerpoints didn't appear online, so the ANC asked for 30 days from the date of posting. Arguably, it took testimony at a Council oversight hearing to get them posted and then they went up without announcement and on a different website than the one previously established for community contact on this project.
But back to February 28th. So here we had the spectacle of a community meeting when the community wasn't entitled to speak and where no written information about these complex projects was made available before or during the meeting. The lethargy in the audience was palpable -- and yet inscrutable. There were no displays of enthusiasm for any of the proposals but no expressions of disapproval either. In short, no one in the roon knew what other people were thinking and that's exactly what DMPED had in mind. Comments are to be submitted via email -- i.e. privately. And then DMPED will represent public opinion as supporting whatever DMPED wants to do.
The one argument that could have been made for DMPED exerting such tight control over information in this context would have been that because this was the first time the public would see these designs, it was important to ensure that complete, coherent, and comparable information was presented and that developers could not present misleading accounts about what they could accomplish on the site and when.
But given both the character of the restrictions (how can anyone make an informed judgment regarding which deal is the best or whether any of these deals is worthwhile without seeing the bottom line?) and their implementation, it's clear that what DMPED is trying to censor is hard truths rather than seductive fictions.
Roadside, whose unsolicited proposal prompted this RFP, offered a timeline that claimed that it would have a 120-150 unit condo building with a couple of levels of underground parking built by July 2010. This despite the fact that the land hasn't been surplussed, Roadside hasn't been awarded the PPP, the project hasn't been designed yet, and it will necessarily involve a PUD and/or a map amendment. And that's before we get to (censored) questions of financing. When the powerpoint presentations finally did go up, it took a magnifying glass (virtual or literal) to see that Roadside's calculations were based on obvious fictions. They planned, for example, to be given the deal a week later (on the day the comment period would have ended!) and to file their PUD application the Monday thereafter. Council approval of any sort wasn't in their plans, and they assumed DCPS would hand over funding for the school modernization project 4 years earlier than the RFP indicated. All this fine print was illegible in their presentation, of course -- but the conclusion it led up to was in a large boldfaced font. And this was a presentation the Deputy Mayor's office pre-cleared?!
What to do? ANC 3E's special committee on this project (of which I'm a member) decided we'd hold our own uncensored community meeting the next week. We invited all the developers and posed them a series of basic questions about project specs in advance. Two of the three participated (Roadside had a prior engagement) and the meeting fell like a minor vindication of democracy. It was a friendly and quite informative discussion which required no more policing than asking people to form a line to ask questions and periodically reminding them of the time. Alas, no representative from DMPED (or any other part of DC government for that matter) was present to witness the spectacle.
As the result of the March 6th meeting (and Roadside's submission of written answers to our question on March 12th), the community now has access to much more information about each proposal. But the problem is that it's all self-reporting on the part of the developers because DMPED ignored the ANC's recommendations that the RFP provide for expert vetting of finances and construction timelines by OCFO and OPEFM (Allen Lew's department). And, of course, DCPS's plans still haven't been presented.
While the Fenty Administration has repeatedly claimed that "none of the above" is always an option with respect to this RFP, it's not providing (or seeking) the information necessary to determine whether a PPP (which will, in any event, use DCPS's already budgeted capital funding to modernize and enlarge Janney) offers any advantage over simply moving Janney up in the queue to address its overcrowding.
I really hope that people outside our neighborhood will pay attention to what's happening here. This project is supposed to be a model for the rest of the city and, if that's true, we're all in trouble. DMPED is eager to make deals -- not plans -- and is willing to run roughshod over communities that resist. What's really perverse is that DMPED doesn't seem to know or care whether the deals it's so eager to make are even good ones. And DCPS seems to be showing similar proclivities. Who knows what will be left of public land, public schools, and public debate a few years from now if we keep headed in the current direction?
For those interested in the specifics of the proposals, the three Developer presentations from February 28th, the March 6th Meeting notes, and a table comparing the project specs for each proposal are all available at http://www.anc3e.org/minutes.html.
