Revisiting My Old Blog

I haven't posted on this blog in 3 years. Reading some of the old posts today was fun. Even though community blogging took off in DC since I stopped posting here, I still have ambivalent feeling about blogging. I've been posting rarely at HalliganProjects.com and frequently at the Dupont Forum. And I've been trying to stay out of DC politics as much as I can. If I were to start writing, I'd start a DC Gov Scandal of the Week blog; there'd be plenty from which to choose.

On My (Nearly Abandoned) Turf

Patrick Thibodeau

<< Hello Rob H. I don’t think Velvet is making fun of the cops. Oh it may look that way alright but go back to the beginning of her thread on this subject.

You may not like the criticism that some bloggers share about the DC PD but I’ve read enough of it on other blogs over the past year to say that the problem we’re facing is the PD isn’t reading the blogs.

But since we’re going down memory lane here, on the blog you once had you shared a letter you received about the police: http://dcgovcustomerservice.blogspot.com/2005/08/i-just-dont-how-many-times-i-can-say.html

So instead a badgering someone about attending a dog and pony show of a meeting, why don’t you restart your blog, share more of the letters and insights you get as an ANC Commissioner. Take a leadership role as a public official.

I’ll put you in the live feed so everybody can read it.

cheers
kob >>

I enjoyed your encouragement when I began this blog. I just didn’t like blogging as much as I liked my other public publishing venues. CCing the DupontForum when getting aggressive with the US Attorney was something he could understand. No one in my DC activism circles knows what an RSS feed is.

I wasn’t badgering her. I was hoping she’d try to do some good rather than act like Stephen Colbert’s character. It’s not a dog and pony show. We’re developing valuable lines of communication. And I spend almost all my time on my community leadership. Just ‘cuz I don’t do it in this blog, don’t hold it against me. I’m out there and sending 50 emails a day.

Rob Halligan

Resigning from ANC to take DCCA Presidency

My election as President of the Dupont Circle Citizens Association is looking certain. I’m going to resign my ANC seat this month. I’ve enjoyed being a commissioner more than I could have imagined. If you knew me four years ago, you wouldn’t likely have guessed that I’d be the DCCA President. All this started for me with me getting mugged. My reaction was that I should do something positive as a response. Some people may dispute whether most of what I’ve done is positive, but they wouldn’t likely dispute that I’ve gotten a lot done. I plan to have a bigger impact from my new position at DCCA.

I’ll start at DCCA at the May meeting. The ANC seat would have to sit empty until January if I don’t resign by April 27. I’d like to find a good replacement and have sent my constituents (whose email I have) instructions on how to run for the seat. I could spend time teaching my successor the ropes; it’s not like I’m going anywhere. Contact me if you are (or have someone who is considering) running so I could help. None of the projects I’m working on will get dropped. I’ll likely keep doing my Public Safety Committee work and running the DupontForum.

Good neighborhoods don’t just happen; they are created, nurtured, and maintained. If we all do what we can to pitch in this will keep getting to be a better place to live and work. If more people do three hours a month the jobs of community work, we should better be able to attract people to do the jobs that are presently too time-consuming. There’s still lots of low-hanging fruit in neighborhood problem-solving.

Rob Halligan

202 319 1313

My ANC email (Rob.Halligan@DupontCircleANC.net) will be shut down. Please start using RobHalligan@bigfoot.com.

Flame Response

Response to someone flaming me on the DupontForum:

<<…Previously, Dupont didn’t have an open forum. An official BCCing his/her mailing list is a lot safer than one posting where anyone can reply-to-all. The fact is, a commissioner can blow off anything he or she chooses with very little chance at repercussions. My posting that got it to the commissioner in whose district the issue is.

ANC commissioners don’t have any real power that each commissioner doesn’t carve out by forging personal, trusting, relationships with people who do have power. That anyone is willing to serve at all amazes me. I can count on one hand the number of people I know who have gotten some of those 34,000 city jobs from their ANC experience. Sure about 10 City Councilman were ANCs but about 1000 people have served on the ANC in the time that 10 had a step up

What I’d prefer to spend my time on is improving policy. I can’t fix every streetlight but I can tell DDoT what is wrong with their process for fixing them. I like to think of fixing potholes and chasing around drug dealers as what I have to do to learn how the system works so I can better tell department heads how to better do their jobs. Sometimes department heads appreciate that. Lots of them don’t. If anyone would like me to BCC them on (or forward to them) every email I send for a day, you’d get a good sense of what we really do.

What frustrates me is when people aren’t responsive to calls to constructively express discontent at the dysfunctionality of the government. If I got more of those responses, I wouldn’t mind the kvetching at me (on my listserv). Your government stinks. Annual Oversight Hearings are coming up. Sign up to tell the City Council what is wrong with any agency and even with the ANC. People not willing to spend 5 minutes on the phone, probably aren’t going to be writing testimony for a Council hearing.

727-1000 is getting pretty good.

Rob Halligan

Dupont ANC>>

Will Mayor Williams Leave Us a Mountain of Bad Debt?

The below piece was in this Month’s DC North. The DC Fiscal Policy Institute does great work pushing the political conversation in a responsible direction. The DC City Council passes 1000 to 1500 laws and resolutions each year. If they would stick to pressing issues, we would see some serious improvements in this city.

<<Will Mayor Williams Leave Us a Mountain of Bad Debt?

Ed Lazere

For Mayor Williams, it’s seven years down and one to go. Combined with his three years as Chief Financial Officer, Williams has been a leading figure in the city for a decade. That allows him to claim a lot of credit for bringing us from being in debt and junk-bond status to surpluses and A+ bond ratings. As we start 2006, the finances of the District of Columbia are stronger than ever.

But a lot can happen in one year. I am starting to get nervous about the fiscal legacy Mayor Williams will leave his successor. From a hugely expensive baseball stadium, to a heavily subsidized hotel, to a new hospital that many health experts say is the wrong prescription, the mayor is pursuing a number of initiatives that are bold but not necessarily wise. The combined price tag is staggering.

Gandhi and debt??

Don’t get me wrong. I think DC should use this opportunity to start tackling some of its most serious long-standing problems. It’s the right time to be thinking boldly. Fixing dilapidated schools that were neglected for years is key to the city’s future. Preserving and building housing that is affordable to low- and moderate-income families is needed to keep us from going the way of Manhattan and San Francisco. And something has to be done to help residents gain skills that will connect them to the area’s good-paying jobs.

Boldness along is not enough, however. Given limited resources we have to set smart priorities and strategies. In a number of high-profile projects, I don’t think that is what we’re doing right now. The decisions made in 2006 on these projects could have serious long-term effects.

	Total Cost	DC Share
Baseball Stadium	$667 million	$647 mil
Convention Center Hotel	$670 million	$170 mil
National Capital Medical Center	$400 million	$200 mil
Sursum Corda New Community	$558 million	$290 mil
Total	$2.3 billion	$1.3 bil

.......Baseball Stadium: In the past month, cost estimates have jumped from $535 million to $667 million. While stadium deals in other cities normally put the burden of cost overruns on the team, Mayor Williams offered to cover it all. He tells us not worry because the economic spin-offs will outweigh any costs, ignoring the economists who have studied the impacts of new stadiums for decades unanimously and have concluded that this doesn’t happen. (Williams actually says that he doesn’t believe them or their research.) The fact that Mayor Williams is willing to bring baseball back to Washington at any cost – forgoing the price cap that other mayors and governors have insisted upon – is perhaps the greatest sign that his fiscal responsibility instincts have atrophied horribly.

Convention Center Hotel: When the city committed to building a convention center that ultimately cost $850 million, were we told that the city also had to have a huge hotel to go along with it? Maybe they did, but I certainly don’t remember. Now plans are firming up to put $170 million of public funds from “Tax Increment Financing” into a $670 million privately-owned hotel. The notion behind TIF is that this subsidy is paid off using the new or “incremental” taxes flowing from the project. That makes sense if the area would not otherwise be developed without the subsidy. This is not the case for the site of the hotel, which is prime real estate and will generate tons of taxes from some other development if the hotel is not built. So the $170 million is really a cost to the city. It is not free money.

National Capital Medical Center: Mayor Williams also wants a new hospital on the site of the former DC General to be part of his legacy. Almost everyone agrees that a health facility is needed there, but health experts say we don’t need another 250 hospital beds. The new hospital, which would be owned and operated by Howard University Hospital, would cost $400 million, with DC putting in at least half. No one has been able to tell me where that money would come from. Howard says that the hospital will be self-sufficient after three years, but this relies on overly optimistic assumptions. Moreover, because it would be privately owned, it is not clear NCMC would serve anyone who comes through the door, regardless of insurance or ability to pay. The community would be far better served — and at a lower cost — by a facility that has an emergency room and urgent care center and a full range of diagnostic and specialty care services. But that doesn’t sound as sexy as a new “Level One Trauma Center” hospital.

New Communities: Robert Bobb and associates have worked tirelessly over the last year to develop a plan to re-develop the area around Sursum Corda, a housing development faced with foreclosure in an area that has both serious crime and drug problems and gentrification pressures. Only in DC. The plan is to invest $558 million to create a new into a mixed-income community, with additional funds going for a new school, rec center and medical clinic. This “New Community” would be funded in part by borrowing against future revenues going into the Housing Production Trust Fund. The city’s goal to preserve affordable housing and coordinate other services is laudable, but the cost of the project on a per-unit basis is incredibly high. Meanwhile, in other parts of town, tenants have been told their plan to buy their building before it goes condo is too expensive. New Communities may be the right way to go, but I am not convinced that officials have determined that this is the best long-term strategy for preserving as much affordable housing as possible.

One of the things that ties all of these projects together is debt. In each case, the city’s share of the project would be supported by borrowing money in one way or the other. On paper, it looks like it’s doable. But the District of Columbia already has a lot of outstanding debt — more per capita than any other jurisdiction — and our Chief Financial Officer is waving a red flag. Dr. Gandhi recently sent a letter to Mayor Williams noting that our debt would soon exceed levels considered safe by industry standards. He wrote that “District policymakers must be judicious about additional borrowing and set priorities among projects…” I agree.

You may have noticed that schools were not included in the list above. That is because Council Member Kathy Patterson has come up with a novel way to fund school modernization efforts. Rather than issuing bonds, the normal way to fund construction projects, she has put together a package of tax deferrals and revenue enhancements to directly fund $1.3 billion in school facility improvements over the next 10 years. This plan is not worrisome because it is fully paid for in advance. But that also will make it hard to get it through the DC Council. She wouldn’t have to do it this way if borrowing capacity were not so tight.

This is backwards. Funding schools should be at the top of the list, not pushed off. This is just like the bumper sticker that say “Wouldn’t be great if schools got what they needed and the army had to have bake sales?” While Mayor Williams and others would argue that building a baseball stadium doesn’t conflict with schools — and he may be right technically — it certainly looks bad to be piling on debt for the stadium while telling schools we cannot borrow more for you.

It’s not too late to get it right. The DC Council can make wise choices and avoid getting us into costly long-term obligations that are not top priorities. The next mayor better be praying that it’s so.

Ed Lazere is the executive director of the DC Fiscal Policy Institute (http://www.dcfpi.org/), which conducts research on tax and budget issues that affect low- and moderate-income DC residents.>>

FW: How many DC bureaucrats does it take to change a light bulb?

In celebration of DDoT Director Dan Tangherlini's promotion to interim head of Metro, I resurrect an old email to him.

Rob Halligan

-----Original Message-----
From: Rob Halligan (ANC 2B01 Commissioner)
Sent: Tuesday, November 11, 2003 2:07 PM
To: Dan.Tangherlini@dc.gov
Cc: Bill Rice; Ann Simpson-Mason
Subject: How many DC bureaucrats does it take to change a light bulb?

Director Tangherlini:

As an ANC Commissioner it is very easy to give up on making simple improvements in your constituents' lives when every nearly every 727-1000 request we make ends up taking 6 months and an average of 6 follow ups to achieve closure with something like getting a light bulb replaced or a parking sign re-hung.

I've made at least 20 contacts over the 2 street lamps (listed below) that are out. I'm sorry to have to come directly to you but no one of the numerous people I've been shuffled between in your department has managed to fix these 2 lights since July, and no one has been able to tell me that they don't have power to the pole. I've driven around with a guy showing him the poles, button-holed people a receptions, participated in conference calls, and sent emails. The magnitude of the Kafkaesque ridiculousness and inefficiency of this is hard to fathom.

They are:

Dead "Historical" Style light at SE end of the 1700 block of Riggs.

Dead "Historical" Style light in front of 1748 S Street.

Please fix these bulbs before we have another mugging under them,

Rob Halligan
2B01

-----Original Message-----------

Ms. Simpson-Mason:

I acknowledged your efforts and praised everyone's responsiveness. However, activity and progress are not always correlated. The system needs reforming.

It's not the additional request response with which I had a problem. It's the 3 problems that have been going around and around for numerous cycles over months that have me concerned. Instead of everyone "managing the issue", why doesn't someone actually get on a ladder and change the light bulbs and the one globe.

Efficiency is something someone whose property tax bill has doubled in the past couple years would like to see.

Rob Halligan

If dropping some light bulbs by my office would be the solution, I'd be game. I'd have preferred to repair my sidewalk myself than go through what I'm still going through with DDoT.

-----Original Message-----
From: Simpson-Mason, Ann (DDOT)
Sent: Tuesday, October 21, 2003 11:42 AM
To: 'Rob Halligan (ANC 2B01 Commissioner)'; Gross, Steven (DDOT);
Simpson-Mason, Ann (DDOT)
Cc: Nwadike, Callistus (DDOT); Laden, Ken (DDOT); Ray, Clark (EOM);
Subject: RE: Request for MPD Stakeout on 1700 block of Riggs

Commissioner Halligan:

Steve Gross has been very responsive to your requests and we will work to make sure that the additional locations are inspected and fixed as soon as possible.

Ann

The Gingko Hits the Fan

As a follow-up to my July 8th "Urban Forestry Administrator Doesn't Care About Our Gingko Hell": A week after the below email (and several others) DDoT Urban Forester Caldwell "stepped down", suddenly. I don't know if I had anything to do with that but I hope so. CM Schwartz's staff said they'd get back to me and hasn't.

<<
Administrator Caldwell - Thanks you. James Briskow (sp?) did call July 13th to say he inspected some of the trees in the neighborhood. Were you out of the office since May 17th? (I’m answering this from the beach, and I’m a volunteer.) May 17 is the day I reported the spraying had not worked (and many times since then). That's almost 2 months on a season-critical complaint. Everyone I know who works in the private sector would get fired for managing a customer service request as you did.

Mr. Briskow (sp?) reports that by the time you assigned him to inspect the trees, it was too late in the season to re-spray and that the trees were poorly sprayed in early May (if at all). He said he would have a crew come around to shovel up the gingko berries. He also said he thinks the gun sprayer doesn’t work and that you should go back to the fan sprayer.

Director Tangherlini – you’ve been CCed on all these emails. You are ultimately responsible for customer service. This is an all-too-typical encounter with DDoT. Why do you run your department this way?

CM Schwartz - I watched all your oversight hearings and I testified that DDoT typically operates this way. What have you done in your oversight role to stop DDoT from abusing its customers?

I suggest the entire senior staff at DDoT sweep ginkgos to smell what your mismanagement is putting us through.

Rob Halligan
Dupont ANC
>>

The Director is a "Financial Guy"

DDoT has not yet spent any of the road and alley funds for fiscal 2005 (which ends in 45 days). If you are sick of having a 4-wheel-drive alley, that complete mis-management should incite you to storm the Reaves Center.

They have these beautiful maps of each ward with different color lines on alleys indicating the year they plan to re-pave or re-rebuild which alley out to the year 2010. Yeah right, that'll happen! It's a beauticul fiction.

"A lotta small cities are actually comic operas with real estate taxes"

Listen to Chris Lydon on Open Source on how local news is changing:
Hyperlocal Journalism

Terms such as Civics Nerds, the tinfoil-hat-brigade, real estate porn, and the anvil of democracy hit right where I'm aiming.

I just don't how many times I can say...

I write a lotta emails like this and I'm still unsure whether I ought to be blogging them.

-----Original Message-----
From: Rob Halligan (ANC 2B01)
Sent: Monday, August 15, 2005 6:15 PM
To: 'Mark Bjorge'; 'Dan (DDOT) Tangherlini'; 'Bill (DDOT) Rice'; 'Ramona Burns'
Cc: 'Carlson Klapthor'; .... Carol Schwartz (carol.schwartz@dc.gov)
Subject: RE: Hansen # 994-996, Hansen # 978-412, and a attempted murder

....and the repeated acts of prostitution committed in that spot since the light went out...and the numerous car break-ins under the out light.

We've also been trying to get a light on Twining Court for YEARS where there is major drug dealing going on.

I just don't how many times I can say: DDoT's inability to get the trees cut back and to maintain lighting is a major public safety problem. Even saying it on TV numerous times and in Oversight Hearings doesn't seem to change things.

Rob Halligan
Dupont ANC

-----Original Message-----

From: Mark Bjorge [mailto:mlbjorge@yahoo.com]
Sent: Monday, August 15, 2005 5:32 PM
To: Dan (DDOT) Tangherlini; Bill (DDOT) Rice; Ramona Burns
Cc: Rob Halligan; Carlson Klapthor;....Michele Molotsky

Subject: Hansen # 994-996, Hansen # 978-412, and a attempted murder

Dear DDOT Officials:

Please see to it that the broken streetlight on the 1600 Block of Church Street NW, between 16th and Stead Recreation Center, is immediately repaired. When I called today, ticket number 994-996 had been marked as completed. Ticket number 978-412, submitted on 7/15/05, also for this matter, continues to be marked as "Open".

Though DDOT has known or should have known for 2 months to repair this light, as the reported attempted murder at this location last night shows, the light is was still out, and people are still thereby endangered.

Thank you in advance for your anticipated immediate attention. I've copied information on the reported attempted murder at this location below.

Sincerly,
Mark Bjorge
202-.....
ANC 2B05

Subject: Possible Incident Last night Outside of Church Place
Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2005 09:04:45 -0400

I can’t imagine that I am the only one that heard this last night at about 1:30 am, but there were shrill screams of “help me help me don’t kill me hellllp!!” coming from Church Street last night. It was a man screaming VERY loudly at someone else. I couldn’t quite see the people but it lasted several seconds so I called 9-1-1. For several minutes while the dispatcher asked me what was happening it continued, moving to the back ofour building. The man kept screaming “Help Help”. I asked the dispatcher why it was taking the police so long saying that it sounded like this man really was in danger of being killed and she said “We have no cars available in your area because there has also been a shooting nearby.”

Eventually (about 10 minutes later) I told her that no one was screaming anymore and she said that she would still send a car to “the area”. I watched out the window for about 15 more minutes and no car came. I hope that this was nothing more than a loud drunken dispute that eventually fizzled, but this highlights the need to be vigilant behind out building, especially until the street light is fixed. If you call the police, they may not come.

name redacted | Managing Director

.... Corporation |

A Sense of How Bad...

So far this year Boston has had 41 murders with less than 700 police officers. In DC MPD alone has over 3500 officers and 117 murders so far this year. And we have numerous other policing entities. Boston has more people than Washington. These simple facts give one the sense of what a mess we still need to clean up.

The City Council passes over a 1000 laws a year. With all that legislating, why is the government still only-half functional?