Last night, the Janney SIT announced its categorical opposition to a public-private redevelopment project involving the school's land in the following email sent to Janney parents:
An Update on the PPP and DCPS' Modernization and Expansion Plans for Janney
September 17, 2008
To the Janney Community -
The School Improvement Team (SIT) would like to update you on several important developments regarding the City's public-private partnership (PPP) plans and the District of Columbia Public Schools' (DCPS) modernization and expansion plans for Janney.
For the last year, and as recently as July of this year, the Janney SIT has offered conditional support for the concept of a PPP with the goal of securing a modernized and expanded Janney facility within a short time horizon. After careful consideration of the needs of the school and the sentiments of the Janney community, the SIT is withdrawing previously stated conditional support for this initiative. We are optimistic that the necessary modernization and urgently needed expansion of Janney can be completed through an effective Master Facilities Plan process without ceding land to a private developer. The SIT will advocate for timely modernization and expansion through this process.
The SIT appreciates the feedback we have received from the community so far and we welcome your questions and input going forward. A detailed Q&A regarding the current situation is located at the end of this letter, along with information on how to contact your SIT representatives. We are communicating with the City early next week, so if you have comments, please let us know as soon as possible.
The following factors have led us to this conclusion:
-- On September 10, 2008, DCPS issued an official draft of the Master Facilities Plan (MFP). According to the MFP, Janney is slated to begin modernization in 2013 and construction of an addition in 2014. Based on our current understanding, the modernization and addition are scheduled to occur at this time, regardless of whether the PPP moves forward. To view the official draft of the Master Facilities Plan, please go to http://opefm.dc.gov/pdf/DC_Master_Plan_2008.pdf.
-- None of the plans submitted by the City's selected lead private developer (LCOR), nor by any other developer, have thus far met the set of conditions stated by the SIT. We are skeptical that there will ever be an acceptable proposal given that the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development (DMPED) has failed to engage in meaningful discussion with Janney. The City's PPP process has been opaque. We doubt both the City's intent and their ability to satisfy our basic conditions including green space preservation and an earlier time schedule for modernization and expansion. To read a history of the issue and previous letters issued by the SIT, please go to http://www.janneyschool.org/PTASITPPP/Library%20development/librarydevelopment.htm.
In light of repeated unacceptable plans from LCOR and the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development, the failure of the City to engage Janney in meaningful dialogue, and confidence that Janney's modernization and expansion plans can be completed in a timely manner by DCPS without a loss of Janney land, the SIT believes that the Janney community should no longer offer to cede part of its campus to advance a PPP.
We encourage you to review the Q&A that follows. If you'd like to contact us, we'd be happy to talk with you:
a. "Office Hours" -SIT members will be available in front of the school on Friday, September 19 at these times: 8:20 - 9:00am; 3:00 - 3:30pm
b. Comment Card - Stop by the SIT table at the times listed above, grab a comment card, fill it out, and drop it in the comments box that will be located at the SIT table. Comment cards will also be available in the Janney office.
c. Email and Phone - Shoot us an email or give us a call.
Please see the attached document for a Q&A regarding the current situation.
Best regards,
Janney SIT
Friday, September 19, 2008
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Just when you thought the deal couldn't get worse...
It's been a big "news" week for this project and, as usual, most of the information came our way as the result of FOIA requests and conversations with the developer rather than from direct communication between DC officials and the community. The short version is (a) Janney has been kicked back to the end of the school modernization queue, (b) LCOR won't be building or renovating the school, and (c) we can thank Mary Cheh and Allison Feeney for both of these developments.
As the following timeline indicates, the continued pursuit of a public-private “partnership” for the Janney/Tenley-Friendship library site is delaying not only the construction of the library, but the school’s modernization project as well.
October 31 – The Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development (DMPED) issues a “Solicitation of Offers” for a public-private development project that would involve rebuilding the Tenley-Friendship Library and modernizing/expanding Janney Elementary, while adding a residential building to the site. Private developers are offered public funds to build both the library and the school.
February 28 – All three developers who submitted proposals are given the opportunity to present them to the public. LCOR’s presentation includes a detailed site plan for Janney’s expansion and modernization.
March 31 – Janney is placed at #8 in queue in a draft Master Facilities Plan (MFP) submitted to DCPS officials by their consultants, FHAI. Both the budget and the timeline for Janney in this plan are totally inconsistent with the budget and timeline for the school that was laid out in DMPED’s Solicitation of Offers, suggesting that, thus far, there has been no coordination between DCPS and DMPED regarding the Janney modernization project.
April 28 – DMPED officials Neil Albert and Eric Scott insist that Janney is number 100-something in the MFP queue; at this point, they are unaware of DCPS’s March 31st draft MFP.
July 10 – The Mayor announces that he has decided to pursue the public–private option and has chosen to negotiate exclusively with LCOR. LCOR’s press release that day says “LCOR will develop the school and library while developing the nearby apartments.”
July 12 – CM Cheh urges Neil Albert to “co-ordinate with those responsible” to act on Allison Feeney’s suggestions that the way to engender community support for the PPP is to shut down the possibility that Janney could be near the front of the modernization queue without a PPP and to put Allen Lew’s shop in total control of Janney’s modernization project.
Sept 10 – DCPS makes its new MFP public and Janney has now been moved back to the end of the modernization queue. LCOR VP Tim Smith tells ANC special committee members Anne Sullivan and Sue Hemberger that his company will not be designing or building any of Janney’s facilities; that will be a DCPS project under Lew’s direction. The only thing DCPS is deciding with respect to the LCOR deal is how many parking spots it wants to buy in the underground garage.
The assertion that Janney was moved up in the queue only because of the PPP flies in the face of all of the evidence. If it were true, we’d expect Janney to move forward rather than backward after the Mayor’s July 10th announcement, but the opposite happened. Janney’s scheduled completion date went from 2012 (March/pre-PPP draft) to 2014 (September/post-PPP draft).
A paradigm shift in DCPS’s approach to school modernizations is what lead to Janney's move to the front of the queue in March. Right-sizing is the new priority and that meant relieving overcrowding (and increasing capacity at successful schools) as well as shutting down low-performing schools to eliminate excess capacity in the system. On this model, Janney belongs near the front whereas on the older model, where the priority was fixing the facilities in the worst condition first, Janney had been near the end.
And the fact that the current anticipated completion date (2014) is earlier than the anticipated completion date under the older pre-takeover Master Facilities Plan (2015) has absolutely nothing to do with the PPP. It’s an artifact of the new regime’s decision to modernize at a much faster pace, and move through the whole queue in the next 5 years. Under the new draft MFP, no school modernizations are scheduled for completion after 2014. And, incidentally, the start dates in both the pre-takeover MFP and the current version are the same -- 2013. The claim that Janney’s modernization schedule has been hastened as a result of this PPP is pure fabrication and, as Allison’s email suggests, it’s a fabrication whose circulation is urged by those whose primary motive at this point is to promote a PPP rather than to get better facilities for the school sooner.
In addition to Cheh's advice to Neil Albert, there's another reason why the prospect of a public-private partnership would argue for postponing Janney's modernization. Odds are, Allen Lew has reached the point where he now assumes that the PPP is a done deal and he is planning accordingly. It woudl be a real nightmare to stick with the consultants' proposed 2011/12 Janney modernization if LCOR were working on the adjacent site simultaneously. So in his position, the rational thing for Lew to do would be wait to start the Janney project until after LCOR is basically done and gone. The other option would be to modernize Janney before LCOR is even ready to break ground but, in the absence of any site planning/campus design efforts or even a binding decision about how much land Janney will lose to the deal, that's just not feasible.
Currently, no one is engaged in site-planning for Janney. LCOR will plan its apartment/library building (in conjunction with DCPL) and acquire Janney land to build that structure. Janney’s modernization/expansion will be planned only after its campus shrinks.
This is precisely the outcome that the ANC special committee has been arguing against for over a year now. It should not be the case, when public land is at issue, that private developers have their needs met first, while the school is forced to make do with the land left over. It’s a perversion of priorities and an evasion of the law. The right approach is first to figure out how to best meet our facilities needs, reserve the land that’s required to do so, and, then, if there’s land left over, consider whether, how much, and what kind of private development makes sense for the site.
Janney will end up with less -- not more -- as a result of this deal and it’s not even a “we’ll take less to get it sooner” scenario any more. Maybe DCPS gets some revenue (but not much – which is why DC government forbade the developers from information about the financial structure of their proposal during public presentations) from this deal, but it’s not revenue that is needed for school modernizations which already have an ample and dedicated funding source. And, of course, it’s always the case that DCPS could raise money by selling off schools or the land under them. But DCPS’s function is to provide schools not make real estate deals. We’re not getting something for nothing or something extra here. We’re liquidating irreplaceable assets in an area -- and on a campus -- slated for growth. It’s a short-sighted decision that will be detrimental to both the school and the neighborhood.
As the following timeline indicates, the continued pursuit of a public-private “partnership” for the Janney/Tenley-Friendship library site is delaying not only the construction of the library, but the school’s modernization project as well.
October 31 – The Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development (DMPED) issues a “Solicitation of Offers” for a public-private development project that would involve rebuilding the Tenley-Friendship Library and modernizing/expanding Janney Elementary, while adding a residential building to the site. Private developers are offered public funds to build both the library and the school.
February 28 – All three developers who submitted proposals are given the opportunity to present them to the public. LCOR’s presentation includes a detailed site plan for Janney’s expansion and modernization.
March 31 – Janney is placed at #8 in queue in a draft Master Facilities Plan (MFP) submitted to DCPS officials by their consultants, FHAI. Both the budget and the timeline for Janney in this plan are totally inconsistent with the budget and timeline for the school that was laid out in DMPED’s Solicitation of Offers, suggesting that, thus far, there has been no coordination between DCPS and DMPED regarding the Janney modernization project.
April 28 – DMPED officials Neil Albert and Eric Scott insist that Janney is number 100-something in the MFP queue; at this point, they are unaware of DCPS’s March 31st draft MFP.
July 10 – The Mayor announces that he has decided to pursue the public–private option and has chosen to negotiate exclusively with LCOR. LCOR’s press release that day says “LCOR will develop the school and library while developing the nearby apartments.”
July 12 – CM Cheh urges Neil Albert to “co-ordinate with those responsible” to act on Allison Feeney’s suggestions that the way to engender community support for the PPP is to shut down the possibility that Janney could be near the front of the modernization queue without a PPP and to put Allen Lew’s shop in total control of Janney’s modernization project.
Sept 10 – DCPS makes its new MFP public and Janney has now been moved back to the end of the modernization queue. LCOR VP Tim Smith tells ANC special committee members Anne Sullivan and Sue Hemberger that his company will not be designing or building any of Janney’s facilities; that will be a DCPS project under Lew’s direction. The only thing DCPS is deciding with respect to the LCOR deal is how many parking spots it wants to buy in the underground garage.
The assertion that Janney was moved up in the queue only because of the PPP flies in the face of all of the evidence. If it were true, we’d expect Janney to move forward rather than backward after the Mayor’s July 10th announcement, but the opposite happened. Janney’s scheduled completion date went from 2012 (March/pre-PPP draft) to 2014 (September/post-PPP draft).
A paradigm shift in DCPS’s approach to school modernizations is what lead to Janney's move to the front of the queue in March. Right-sizing is the new priority and that meant relieving overcrowding (and increasing capacity at successful schools) as well as shutting down low-performing schools to eliminate excess capacity in the system. On this model, Janney belongs near the front whereas on the older model, where the priority was fixing the facilities in the worst condition first, Janney had been near the end.
And the fact that the current anticipated completion date (2014) is earlier than the anticipated completion date under the older pre-takeover Master Facilities Plan (2015) has absolutely nothing to do with the PPP. It’s an artifact of the new regime’s decision to modernize at a much faster pace, and move through the whole queue in the next 5 years. Under the new draft MFP, no school modernizations are scheduled for completion after 2014. And, incidentally, the start dates in both the pre-takeover MFP and the current version are the same -- 2013. The claim that Janney’s modernization schedule has been hastened as a result of this PPP is pure fabrication and, as Allison’s email suggests, it’s a fabrication whose circulation is urged by those whose primary motive at this point is to promote a PPP rather than to get better facilities for the school sooner.
In addition to Cheh's advice to Neil Albert, there's another reason why the prospect of a public-private partnership would argue for postponing Janney's modernization. Odds are, Allen Lew has reached the point where he now assumes that the PPP is a done deal and he is planning accordingly. It woudl be a real nightmare to stick with the consultants' proposed 2011/12 Janney modernization if LCOR were working on the adjacent site simultaneously. So in his position, the rational thing for Lew to do would be wait to start the Janney project until after LCOR is basically done and gone. The other option would be to modernize Janney before LCOR is even ready to break ground but, in the absence of any site planning/campus design efforts or even a binding decision about how much land Janney will lose to the deal, that's just not feasible.
Currently, no one is engaged in site-planning for Janney. LCOR will plan its apartment/library building (in conjunction with DCPL) and acquire Janney land to build that structure. Janney’s modernization/expansion will be planned only after its campus shrinks.
This is precisely the outcome that the ANC special committee has been arguing against for over a year now. It should not be the case, when public land is at issue, that private developers have their needs met first, while the school is forced to make do with the land left over. It’s a perversion of priorities and an evasion of the law. The right approach is first to figure out how to best meet our facilities needs, reserve the land that’s required to do so, and, then, if there’s land left over, consider whether, how much, and what kind of private development makes sense for the site.
Janney will end up with less -- not more -- as a result of this deal and it’s not even a “we’ll take less to get it sooner” scenario any more. Maybe DCPS gets some revenue (but not much – which is why DC government forbade the developers from information about the financial structure of their proposal during public presentations) from this deal, but it’s not revenue that is needed for school modernizations which already have an ample and dedicated funding source. And, of course, it’s always the case that DCPS could raise money by selling off schools or the land under them. But DCPS’s function is to provide schools not make real estate deals. We’re not getting something for nothing or something extra here. We’re liquidating irreplaceable assets in an area -- and on a campus -- slated for growth. It’s a short-sighted decision that will be detrimental to both the school and the neighborhood.
By any means necessary?
The following email, obtained through a FOIA request, shows Councilmember Mary Cheh passing on Janney SIT Member Allison Feeney's recommendations as to how to engender support for the PPP. Cheh endorses Feeney's suggestions and urges Neil Albert to implement them. Interestingly, a crucial compoenet of this strategy is to preclude the option that the community wants most -- speedier modernization of Janney without a private development on its campus.
From: Cheh, Mary (COUNCIL) [MCheh@DCCOUNCIL.US]
Sent: Saturday, July 12, 2008 11:37 AM
To: Albert, Neil (EOM)
Subject: Fw: Support for the Tenley PPP
These are all very good suggestions which I hope you will co-ordinate with those responsible and pursue. And, in general, there is a need for as much communication as possible to counter the misinformation being spread out there. Thanks Mary.
Mary M. Cheh
Councilmember for Ward 3
Council of the District of Columbia
1350 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. Suite 108
Washington, DC 20004
Tel (202) 724-8062
mcheh@dccouncil.us
www.marycheh.com
-Sent using BlackBerry
-----Original Message ----
From: allisonfeeney@starpower.net
To: Cheh, Mary (COUNCIL)
Sent: Sat Jul 12 1 l:07:06 2008
Subject: Support for the Tenley PPP
Council Member -Council Office Mary Cheh
1350 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20004-3003
Dear Council Member -Council Office Cheh,
Thank you for moving ahead with the Tenley Library private
public partnership. This decision for a mixed use project
demonstrates the forward thinking that we celebrate for our
neighborhood.
I believe that there are a couple of statements that the city
could issue that might help the community come together in
support of the project:
I was told by Eric Scott that Allen Lew's shop will be
completely responsible for Janney's modernization, that LCOR
will not be responsible for determining the design and program.
If this is true, and this fact was made public, I'm sure that
would ease the concem of many in the community.
To quell the concern that economic factors are driving this
process, it would be beneficial for the Mayor to announce that
the Deputy Mayor for Education will be as involved in the
process as the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic
bevelopment. Reinoso is well trusted in Ward 3 and that would
help assure the community that the school's needs will be well
represented in the process.
ANC3E is selectively leaking out a 3/31/08 draft of the MFP that
shows Janney as #8 for modemization. They interpret this
document to mean that Janney was being moved up anyway or has
already been moved up and will necessarily stay moved up. You
certainly must realize that if the community could kill the PPP
and have Janney remain in the #8 spot, most in the community
would choose that option! I believe that this is another case
where the ODMPED or Mayor has to come out and state (if true)
that Janney will only move up if the PPP happens. Now that this
document has been circulated, it is no longer good enough to say
it the other way round.
I thank you for moving forward on this Partnership, and I certainly
hope to hear increased and improved communication from the DC
Government as the project evolves.
Sincerely,
Allison Bamard Feeney
4519 Chesapeake Street NW
Washington. DC 20016
From: Cheh, Mary (COUNCIL) [MCheh@DCCOUNCIL.US]
Sent: Saturday, July 12, 2008 11:37 AM
To: Albert, Neil (EOM)
Subject: Fw: Support for the Tenley PPP
These are all very good suggestions which I hope you will co-ordinate with those responsible and pursue. And, in general, there is a need for as much communication as possible to counter the misinformation being spread out there. Thanks Mary.
Mary M. Cheh
Councilmember for Ward 3
Council of the District of Columbia
1350 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. Suite 108
Washington, DC 20004
Tel (202) 724-8062
mcheh@dccouncil.us
www.marycheh.com
-Sent using BlackBerry
-----Original Message ----
From: allisonfeeney@starpower.net
To: Cheh, Mary (COUNCIL)
Sent: Sat Jul 12 1 l:07:06 2008
Subject: Support for the Tenley PPP
Council Member -Council Office Mary Cheh
1350 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20004-3003
Dear Council Member -Council Office Cheh,
Thank you for moving ahead with the Tenley Library private
public partnership. This decision for a mixed use project
demonstrates the forward thinking that we celebrate for our
neighborhood.
I believe that there are a couple of statements that the city
could issue that might help the community come together in
support of the project:
I was told by Eric Scott that Allen Lew's shop will be
completely responsible for Janney's modernization, that LCOR
will not be responsible for determining the design and program.
If this is true, and this fact was made public, I'm sure that
would ease the concem of many in the community.
To quell the concern that economic factors are driving this
process, it would be beneficial for the Mayor to announce that
the Deputy Mayor for Education will be as involved in the
process as the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic
bevelopment. Reinoso is well trusted in Ward 3 and that would
help assure the community that the school's needs will be well
represented in the process.
ANC3E is selectively leaking out a 3/31/08 draft of the MFP that
shows Janney as #8 for modemization. They interpret this
document to mean that Janney was being moved up anyway or has
already been moved up and will necessarily stay moved up. You
certainly must realize that if the community could kill the PPP
and have Janney remain in the #8 spot, most in the community
would choose that option! I believe that this is another case
where the ODMPED or Mayor has to come out and state (if true)
that Janney will only move up if the PPP happens. Now that this
document has been circulated, it is no longer good enough to say
it the other way round.
I thank you for moving forward on this Partnership, and I certainly
hope to hear increased and improved communication from the DC
Government as the project evolves.
Sincerely,
Allison Bamard Feeney
4519 Chesapeake Street NW
Washington. DC 20016
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
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