Posts about Public Involvement

Therefore, she said, they decided to require a signature on all letters. Otherwise, "we can't authenticate it should somebody come back later" and say the testimony is false.

Mendelson seemed skeptical. "It might be worth looking at that some more," he said. He pointed out that if someone brings a petition signed by a number of residents, OZ doesn't necessarily authenticate them either.

Bardin never explained why it is so important to authenticate each piece of testimony. The Zoning Commission can read letters from people with and without a wiggly line at the bottom, and give each the weight members think it deserves. If they want to give more credit to letters with an ink design at the bottom, fine, but what's the harm in accepting the letters? For that matter, did this one email 10 years ago cause great harm in a zoning case? It seems unlikely.

Mendelson asked me whether allowing emailed comments would encourage people to create online petitions. He pointed out that he had received over 500 emails on an issue last year (he didn't specify, but it could have been Uber). It's easier, he said, to just click on a petition, and does that mean as much?

I replied that while getting a lot of form emails might not show as strong a depth of passion as when people write individual letters or even come to testify at a hearing, it's important information. Councilmembers could know that a lot of people cared enough about Uber, or yoga taxes, or other issues like those to send an email.

Perhaps making it hard for people to give their input might have an upside from the staff's point of view; they have to deal with fewer documents, and the commissioners have to read a shorter record. But it also deprives many residents of a voice in this process.

Hopefully Bardin will heed Mendelson's gentle suggestion and reevalute this policy. In the meantime, please support this effort by writing your comments in cuneiform on a clay tablet, firing the tablet, plating it in bronze, and shipping the resulting plaque to Zoning Commission for the District of Columbia, 441 4th Street, NW, Room 200-South, Washington, DC 20001.

Residents might be more able to keep up on what's going on with a website DDOT launched today for the project.

Oh, and does the above screen capture mean that DDOT has selected "District At Your Doorstep" as the streetcar tagline?

The website includes a presentation from last night's meeting. It includes updates on the work to construct the western turnaround at Union Station, a power substation at 12th and H, a pocket track on Benning Road, and the eastern turnaround at Oklahoma Avenue this year.

Also on the matter of communication, DDOT has withdrawn the car barn designs from tomorrow's HPRB meeting. In a letter to preservation staff, DDOT Director Terry Bellamy writes:

It came to our attention over the weekend that several individuals, including Area [sic] Neighborhood Commissioners and other key neighborhood stakeholders were unable to view the presentation/application submitted by DDOT to the Board. In immediate response to the inquiries received we posted the concept drawings on the DDOT and DC Streetcar Program websites for review on Monday, February 25. We feel that appearing before the Board on Thursday, February 28, will not provide the stakeholder community with adequate review time.

Therefore, in an effort to allow for sufficient review time, we respectfully request that a hearing on the concept drawings be moved to the next regular Board meeting currently scheduled for March 28, 2013. Our goal, as an agency, is to be forthcoming with our community partners as we move through this process and we believe postponing our review date will assist with these efforts.

It did seem odd that DDOT has shown two sets of renderings to the federal Commission on Fine Arts and HPO but had little public outreach about the designs. They have met with a number of ANCs and community associations, though. The new design looks fine and should go ahead, but public input is an important component as well.

Gray is unequivocal: More cars are not the future

Mayor Vincent Gray opened his remarks with a clear message: There might be a lot of traffic, but more cars are not the answer. Instead, the District will invest in streetcars, buses, biking, and walking.

Gray cited his sustainability plan which aims to have 75% of trips in the District happen by a mode other than driving. Cars still have a place, surely, but the District has to grow other modes more than driving.

Oh, and he promised the H Street streetcar will be rolling by the end of 2013, and taxis will have credit card readers by summer.

DDOT director Terry Bellamy, DC Councilmember and transportation chair Mary Cheh, and her colleague Tommy Wells all echoed Gray's fundamental theme of multimodalism. Bellamy pointed out that everyone walks for part of their trip, even when they drive, take Metro, or another mode. Wells emphasized equity: the District needs to help all groups of residents reach jobs safely and on time.

When is transportation not really about transportation?

A panel discussion brought together author Christopher Leinberger, Slate economics blogger Matthew Yglesias, and equitable transportation advocate Anita Hairston of PolicyLink.

The panel's title was the "future of transportation" in DC, but the panelists ended up talking quite a lot about broader urban planning issues. Perhaps this is partly because DDOT put two authors of books about buildings rather than transportation on the panel, but also because transportation is often not really about transportation.

Christopher Leinberger said, "a transportation system's goal isn't to move people. It's economic development. The means is by moving people." He argued that many departments of transportation have their mission backwards. They focus on moving vehicles and freight as much as possible. That's wrong; instead, transportation is a means to an end.

The means also directs the end. Build highways, and you fuel "drivable sub-urbanism," to use his term from The Option of Urbanism; build transit, and enable walkable urbanism. In our region and around the country, the market demand now is for more walkable urbanism.

By not having enough walkable urbanism, Yglesias added, what does exist has become very expensive. That fuels a perception that walkable urban places are just for the affluent, but that only arises because we aren't building more walkable urban places fast enough.

DC could fund this transit and associated economic development if it set up a "value capture" system, said Leinberger, to get some of the value the streetcar creates and plow it back into transportation. The right system could even make the streetcar profitable, he said. But there's no time to waste. It's like in Back to the Future, Part 2 where Biff has the sports book listing what will happen in the future. Well, we have the book now, said Leinberger, and yet we aren't preparing.

Meanwhile, he said, DC needs a comprehensive strategy for affordable housing, and lacks one today. Hairston, too, emphasized how important it is to remember equity when making these investments. What about the public health for those who live near new transportation infrastructure, or the unbanked who can't as easily take advantage of programs like Capital Bikeshare?

Hairston noted that today, it's not possible to get to 60% jobs by bus in one hour from east of the Anacostia River. She hopes the District can at least reverse that and make 6 of 10 accessible within an hour.

A public meeting was genuinely fun

I've been to a lot of boring public meetings. The moveDC Ideas Exchange might have been the most entertaining and interesting. It certainly didn't lack for manpower (and womanpower), as almost every DDOT employee was working one of many stations.

At one, people could nominate the street they think is DC's worst. Another let you place color-coded string on a map showing your commute, with the color telling whether it's by bike, bus, Metro, driving, walking, etc. There was even a photo booth.

One table let you design your ideal street cross-section, with sidewalks, medians, bike lanes, bus lanes, or whatever, then take a picture, print it, and post it on a wall. You could draw on a map of proposed CaBi stations or write parking ideas on sticky notes to go on a wall.

Greater Greater Washington contributor Veronica Davis moderated the panel and got some major praise from DDOT director Bellamy as well as plaudits on Twitter for a very interesting session.

Tough customer Alex Baca even tweeted, "I am THE BIGGEST whiner about the utility of the public-input process, but @wemovedc made today's #IdeasMoveDC a really fun time."

Of course, it might be a little easier to make a session fun when there's no proposal half the participants have shown up specifically to fight against, as in the Office of Planning's recent zoning update sessions. It's worth watching to see, first, what kind of plan DDOT devises out of all these stickies and photos and yarn, and second, if all these interactive booths give any kind of serious plan a better shot at becoming reality.

The 8 zoning update meetings will become another crucible for different views to duke it out. It's already been happening for months on neighborhood email lists in Chevy Chase, Tenleytown, and Cleveland Park, and in public meetings for Montgomery County's zoning update, which is confronting similar issues.

There's been a lot of emotion in the emails. Often, though, people are upset about a lot of changes that have little or nothing to do with the zoning update. It's even a little ironic that this zoning update, which is quite timid in many ways and which bends over backward to change little in single-family neighborhoods, is engendering so much ire.

Some of this passion stems from outright misinformation, like the emails from Chevy Chase resident Linda Schmitt, who's become the chief organizer against the zoning update. She came out guns blazing this spring against the zoning update, even though about half of the things she claims the zoning update will change aren't actually true.

An email last week on the Chevy Chase list continued the same pattern, with well-written, scary, and largely false warnings about OP schemes to "break down the barrier between 'residential' and 'commercial'" (the very limited "corner store" provision wouldn't even apply in Chevy Chase or other single-family neighborhoods at all), "allow 22-foot high expansion of garages for apartments" (a provision which OP has since removed), and "eliminate automobiles" (utter hyperbole).

Some of the replies there and in previous discussions cited changes that had absolutely nothing to do with the zoning update. Maybe they were about teardowns and McMansions, which have already been coming to Chevy Chase, and which the zoning update won't hasten one bit. (Had residents constructively suggested ways to curb this during the early phases of the update, instead of just trying to discredit the entire process, maybe they could have done something about the problem instead of leaving it as a boogeyman.)

Even if these changes have little or nothing to do with the zoning update, they are real for people who are scared about change. The District (and nearby suburban jurisdictions) is indeed changing. It's been the policy of at least the last 3 administrations to try to attract more residents to DC. Many find this exciting, while others find it frightening.

When the Office of Planning is proposing a fairly broad though conservative change to the zoning code, especially when some neighborhood leaders are constantly accusing them of a secret conspiracy to radically remake DC, it's going to draw a lot of passionate testimony, whether relevant to the specifics of the zoning update or not.

That's why you also need to attend. The upcoming meetings will be critical in either pushing OP to retreat further, or to stand their ground, or even to advance in some important ways where the zoning update doesn't do enough. They will shape the media coverage of the issue and give Zoning Commissioners an early sense of public opinion.

Please mark your calendars and try to attend the one nearest you, or more than one.

• Saturday, December 8, 10 am-noon at 1100 4th St, SW, 2nd floor (in Ward 6)
  
• Tuesday, December 11, 6:30-8:30 pm in Ward 2
  
• Thursday, December 13, 6:30-8:30 pm in Ward 8
  
• Saturday, January 5, 10 am-noon in Ward 1
  
• Tuesday, January 8, 6:30-8:30 pm in Ward 3
  
• Wednesday, January 9, 6:30-8:30 pm in Ward 5
  
• Saturday, January 12, 10 am-noon in Ward 7
  
• Wedneday, January 16, 6:30-8:30 pm in Ward 4

OP says they will release locations for the other December meetings this week. There is one per ward, but you don't have to go to the one in your own ward; all meetings are for all residents.

Also, sign up for Pro-DC below to get reminders about these meetings and updates about what you can do to help support positive changes in DC.

David's GGW blog [http://www.greatergreaterwashington.com] is the main link to the Millennials, who the Pew Research Center brand as the "American teens and twenty-somethings currently making the passage into adulthood. Like other generations, they have begun to forge their personality: confident, self-expressive, liberal, upbeat, and receptive to new ideas and ways of living."

The city's decision makers have turned to a blogger to help forge partnerships with this young group of followers, and to lead them in the direction of poor decision making. Gracious streets have become clogged with bike lanes, bus shelters are lit up with advertising, and national parkland is threatened with children's play equipment. David's followers, Oboe, Goldfish and Hogwash, to name a few, express themselves by routinely mocking anyone with differing opinions. And, even the City Paper's Housing Complex newbie, Aaron Wiener, has adopted his predecessor's disrespectful tone.

The city may awake one day and discover that the Millennials are no longer here. They've moved on to the sounds of a different piper, faraway places, and fun and games. They really didn't care about the future of Washington, they cared about good times and easy living for themselves.

Technically, I am probably not a Millennial, as the cutoff is usually set around 1980 to 1983 and I was born in 1978. But regardless of the definition, you can just substitute "kids these days" for "Millennials" in Karl Jeremy's letter. I am, regardless, a member of a younger generation of DC residents than the typical reader of themail.

Parks are for children, too

As a few people noted on Twitter, it's astounding to hear, among a list of complaints, that playground equipment "threatens" our national parkland. There are far too few playgrounds in our federally-controlled local parks, in fact. And if accommodating children is not one of the purposes of parkland, what is?

Yet an attitude has developed that sees our parks as all formal gardens, pieces of sculpture for people to look at (or drive past) but not really experience or enjoy. Perhaps that comes from the decades when many people saw the District as a place only to get away from, or from past National Park Service superintendents who found it easier and cheaper to maintain unused parks.

The historic visions for these parks don't support this view. The McMillan Commission, which largely defined today's National Mall, recommended playgrounds by the Washington Monument. Instead, the monument grounds ended up as a barren hilltop, and the area to the south is more a freeway interchange than any kind of common.

Karl Jeremy's statement suggests that Washington, DC should not be a place for children. For a long time, relatively few families with children stayed in the city. We heard the same sentiment from the man who claimed everyone moves to the suburbs as soon as they can, and stirred former Mayor Tony Williams to retort, "that's an old movie." (Perhaps that gentleman was Karl Jeremy, which might be a pseudonym, as Google searches for his name turn up nothing relevant besides themail).

Younger people are not leaving the city

Karl Jeremy writes, "The city may awake one day and discover that the Millennials are no longer here." This is the key sentence. Karl Jeremy thinks the young people who don't agree with him on planning and transportation will soon leave, as previous generations largely (but not entirely) did.

That's not happening. Greater Greater Wife and I plan to stay right here. So do many people we know. Sure, some have bought houses in Bethesda (which is itself urbanizing and changing), but many more have not even though they have a child or two. Many move in search of better schools, but in many of the wealthier neighborhoods and a growing number of other neighborhoods, the schools are good enough. Some more members of my generation will move out over time, but far fewer than in decades past.

Karl Jeremy talks about teens and twenty-somethings, but this might be where his slight misuse of the term "Millennials" is actually relevant, because a lot of the people he's complaining about are actually in their late 20s and 30s (I am 34). Once, young people right out of college might live in DC for their first jobs on Capitol Hill or in the federal government, but a second cohort, often with law or other graduate degrees, settled outside the District; now, the JDs are staying.

Neighborhood debates over change often do break down at least somewhat along age lines. "Disrespectful" Aaron Wiener wrote from the Babe's meeting about "a crowd, it must be said, consisting mostly of older white women; one woman—opposed to the project, naturally—was actually knitting throughout the meeting." (Knitting, by the way, has been picking up many younger adherents as well.)

I don't want to see a generation war, and lament every time the ridiculous term "war on cars" comes up. Karl Jeremy's words, though, are pushing a metaphorical war on young people. 1964's maxim "Don't trust anyone over 30" has turned into "Don't trust anyone under 50."

Baby boomers have contributed enormously to our society (and done some damage as well). Generation X and the Millennials will do the same. We don't need boomers to step aside and let young people run everything, but we are entitled to the same respect as other adults. Karl Jeremy can disagree about whether Smart Growth (a term and movement created by boomers) is good planning, but not about whether District officials ought to work with younger people.

Carolyn Sponza, chair of the American Institute of Architects' advocacy committee, also addressed this issue. In 4 recent focus groups, AIA and the Office of Planning found that residents wanted to be more engaged in urban planning and policies, but weren't sure how. Participants didn't know how development happened, or they didn't know the best way to get involved with their local agency or ANC.

The focus groups also found a hunger for stronger connections between neighborhoods because "sometimes best practices don't quite make it across ward boundaries" as well as a desire to improve DC's public spaces by making them more inviting and usable.

The event's panel echoed these concerns. The panelists, including residents from Friendship Heights, downtown, Hillcrest, and Anacostia, discussed how useful the ANC system is (or isn't) when it comes to promoting citizen engagement, and whether citizens who live very close to a proposed development have too much say over the project's outcome compared to those who live farther away but who also have an interest in the development.

A key theme of the night was citizen engagement, specifically how to engage the "silent majority" of citizens thought to be in favor of development but who don't get involved. As panelist Veronica Davis, a Hillcrest resident and founder of Black Women Bike, put it, "When people like something, they don't say anything."

Sometimes objections have nothing to do with the development itself, but fears of the development's impact on the neighborhood. Panelist Charles Wilson, an Anacostia resident, spoke about his experiences with neighbors who were worried that new development would lead to increasing home values which would drive them out of the area.

As with any DC discussion of urban planning these days, the phrase "dog parks and bike lanes" came up. Davis said that this phrase, as well as the phrase "long-time resident," were part of a code for race that allowed residents to "talk over one another." Members of the audience expressed their agreement; another panelist, Sue Hemberger of Friendship Heights, adding that local politicians frequently stoke this division to score easy points.

While no conclusions were reached at this event, it demonstrated that there's a vibrant community interested in these issues. The next step is making sure everyone is given the opportunity to be heard. One way to do that could be through web tools the forum showcased. Popularise allows people to comment and vote on how to develop a building or space, while its counterpart Fundrise enables people to directly invest in a local property.

DC's unprecedented growth presents challenges, but also enormous opportunities. The question is: what are we going to do with them? How can DC grow without losing its character?

Is there a "Plan" to displace residents?

In 2003, when Williams was mayor, he set a goal of attracting 100,000 new residents over the following decade. A recent survey now shows the District is gaining people at a rate of a thousand a month.

Some in the audience expressed suspicions that this is part of a devious and covert plan to drive members of old Washington communities out of the city. Williams disputed the concept. "The notion that there is a plan may sound good, but it's crazy," he said, and noted that as mayor, he supported programs like the Housing Production Trust Fund to preserve affordable housing.

Offering a reality check of sorts for skeptics, O'Connell added, "Marion Barry is glad to sit down with developers." During Barry's mayoralty, "investments were made that were part of 'the plan'" such as building the Verizon Center downtown and the Reeves Center at 14th & U Streets in the mid-1980s.

"The value of real estate has more of an impact than policy," said O'Connell. "Apartments are being built on 14th Street not because of policy but because it is the best place to build apartments in the country." Williams consented that "the market moves faster than the city." From bike lanes to new neighborhood branch libraries, panelists and audience members agreed that public policy decisions and capital investments made years ago guide current trends.

Neighborhoods need to be involved in shaping growth

Neighborhood revitalization is at its best when residents can work with government to regenerate from within, argued Casarella. She cited the successful restoration of homes in historic Anacostia through the Office of Planning's Historic Homeowner Grant Program as an ideal example of a working partnership between the city and neighborhood residents to direct change instead of just reacting to it.

Commercial and residential development in designated historic neighborhoods passes through Advisory Neighborhood Commissions, which receive "great weight" at the final level of agency review, said Caserella. "You are the most important planner."

"When was the last time that ever mattered?" an audience member called out. "I have to dismiss your cynicism," Casarella said, reflecting the overall belief of the panel that Washington's active neighborhood level associations influence both planning and economic development.

Panelists discussed how parks can be an irreplaceable public good for a neighborhood when an audience member asked the panel to predict the future of development "east of the river which is 15 years behind what has happened on U Street."

"It is very hard to add green space later," O'Connell said, alluding to ongoing development in NoMA where "they missed planning a park." With development projects either in the early stages or waiting to break ground throughout Wards 7 and 8, O'Connell cautioned residents to remain vigilant in maintaining their natural recreation space. "Poplar Point is 110 acres and 70 acres is set aside to be a park. I would be careful to make sure the 70 acres stays," as the project slowly moves toward development.

Whereas previous conversations in the Humanities Council series have been emotionally charged, the evening's conversation featured a more reasoned tone, with mature and insightful analysis. Most people were able to agree on at least a few things: as the city grows in population, neighborhoods will respond differently, but the best response is when residents engage constructively in the process. That gives residents both a sense of ownership over their neighborhood, and a voice in decisions that guide local development.

On the other hand, renters—usually younger, transient and prone to skip out after a few months or years—are viewed as more apathetic to the plight of their surroundings, since they will likely move on in due time anyhow. And an under-involved population implies a less-than-vibrant civic culture. Barry may have resorted to hyperbole with the drug dealers line, but the perception is there.

Does homeownership really encourage civic engagement? A study in next month's issue of the Urban Affairs Review tackles the question. Looking at data collected from a group low- and mid-income homeowners and renters over four years, researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill find that owning a home can indeed inspire someone to get involved with the community—so long as the ownership is sustained.

The study assumes civic engagement stems from three overarching factors: Financial self-interest, more general self-interests (such as neighborhood amenities and social ties), and rates of mobility. Of these, it appears that mobility—how often one moves or stays put—is the strongest. From the report:

This research also points to the importance of considering mobility when exam­ining causes of civic engage­ment, particularly instrumental civic engage­ment. Our findings indicate that homeowners and renters are affected differently by residential mobility. For homeowners, moving may prompt them to become more involved in neighborhood groups as a way to establish ties with others and integrate in a new community. Renters who move, however, are less likely to turn to civic participation as a way to build new social network ties.

Meanwhile, new homeowners were no more or less inclined to join a neighborhood group than a renter in the time before they bought a house. After purchasing, however, their likelihood to participate increased fourfold. And homeowners who return to renting are "no more or less likely to be involved in neighborhood groups than people who have never been homeowners." This isn't the case if an owner simply moves to a different house, in which case participation rates remained relatively constant.

Policy-wise, the study concludes that measures aimed at increasing homeownership rates in low-income neighborhoods can help precipitate a robust civic life, which in turn may bring about a better overall quality of life. However, beyond simply increasing access to homeownership, these policies would have to ensure it can be sustained.

Cross-posted at Next American City.

At the meeting, performance officer Andrea Burnside insisted that these rules are just setting an absolute lower bound, not a target for everyday service. Michael had talked about that in his article, but it doesn't really change the situation; setting a target that's very low and too easy to meet can drag down expectations in the future. Perhaps responding in part to feedback from riders and blogs, federal member Mort Downey asked that the standards be tighter for regular service, though they'll remain undefined.

Last night, spokesperson Dan Stessel emailed Michael to suggest that it would have been better for us to wait until after the presentation, on Thursday. It doesn't appear that anything was wrong in our initial article, but moreover, this misses the point. If Michael and Unsuck and others had waited, the board committee would have approved the policy and never heard from riders about the issue.

Public input process is broken

WMATA's board procedures put riders in a catch-22. Many board members want to hear about a proposal first; after all, they're the board. But when they hear about the proposal at a committee meeting, they then give feedback to staff, and often approve the policy right then.

Committees comprise the entire board, so all members have had their say and voted; approving it at the official "regular board meeting" is then just a formality. The board recently reorganized committees so they only have a subset of members, but other interested members can always attend a meeting, and the committee meeting remains the most important venue for policy discussions.

When do riders get to speak up? Before the presentation, there are only a few days to review the online board packets, and WMATA actually recently shortened the lead time on most presentations from 6 days to just 2 or 3. Some presentations don't go online beforehand at all.

Plus, it's hard to understand a policy just from the powerpoint. It doesn't have all the information, and isn't packaged around being understandable to the public. Bloggers and the press often write about the proposals anyway, but they don't have all the information, and WMATA staff often refuse to talk about the proposals because they haven't gone to the board.

After the presentation, though, it's largely too late.

There are better ways

Other agencies have better processes. Yesterday, for instance, the National Capital Planning Commission also got a presentation on a plan for the L'Enfant Plaza area. But the purpose of the presentation was to brief the board and then issue the plan for public comment. Board members didn't vote on it or ask staff to make changes, they just got a briefing. They will then discuss the plan in more detail later, after residents have been able to read it and weigh in.

WMATA could easily do something similar. Make the presentation, and don't even necessarily post the powerpoints online, but then have a period for public comments. The board would have to avoid giving guidance or taking a vote at that meeting, and bring the issue back later.

Alternately, staff could issue proposals in a more packaged way for comment, before board members see it, and give riders a chance to speak up before it goes to the board. The board members could get an electronic copy first, but they would have to recognize that this means they will hear about proposals before they get a formal presentation.

The Riders' Advisory Council's 2010 report on WMATA governance (whose committee I chaired) recommended a "clear and accessible public input process," and a task force of DC, Maryland, and Virginia transportation officials echoed this recommendation. So far, the WMATA board has not addressed this issue.

Until they do, riders will feel shut out, and bloggers and reporters will have no choice but to write about policies based on limited information in a way that annoys WMATA staff. That's too bad, because there's an easy fix.

Members of Pro-DC don't need to agree with every element of the zoning update. I don't. But we also believe that DC will grow and change regardless of public policy, and that our zoning should shape that growth in a positive way that improves the quality of life, increases amenities, and strengthens affordability for all residents.

In coming months, there will be some major battles over the zoning update that cut to the heart of how people see DC's future. These positive changes won't become reality unless decision makers hear from residents who share the vision. I hope you will join the email list, and ask your friends to do the same.