Northwest Georgetown April ANC Update

Hello and welcome to your April Northwest Georgetown ANC update!

Spring is here! And with the magnolia and cherry blossoms comes the need to sweep them up and take them away. As a reminder, if you have bags of garden waste, you need to place a request with 311 to have the city pick them up. (You also have to make sure to put the waste in paper bags in the first place).

The Department of Public Works has not exactly covered itself in glory with how it has handled leaf and Christmas tree pick up this past year. This service was supposed to happen on a comprehensive basis without the need to call 311. As we all saw, this simply didn’t happen. Leaves and trees remained on the sidewalk for months. The north part of my district (above Q St.) was particularly neglected. While the city did eventually collect the bulk of the leaves and trees, to this day bags and other detritus remain.

During our ANC meeting last night, a representative of the Mayor’s office explained that one of the possible contributing factors to this failure was that the supposedly sophisticated tracking system that was used to ensure total coverage of the all the city’s blocks was unable to distinguish between when the trucks were picking up the leaves and when the trucks were simply driving by. This seems like a fairly obvious flaw that should have been anticipated!

In either event, at this point the best approach to finally getting the bags of leaves to be taken away is to make a 311 request. Sadly, I can tell you that there is currently a three week wait for such requests. I pressed the Mayor’s representative last night for that time to be brought down substantially. With the spring rains we have, the bags cannot hold up that long.

Until that delay comes down, my best advice is for neighbors to organize 311 requests for the block moving forward. If you stagger the requests, multiple houses can put their bags out together and avoid the delay. It’s not an ideal solution by any means, but may be a reasonable hack for an unreasonable situation.

Change in Leadership at the Georgetown Community Partnership

The Georgetown Community Partnership (GCP) does not have the flashiest name. It could be describing almost anything. A book club? A farmer’s market? A small scale insurance company? Of course it’s none of those things. It’s actually one of the most important and successful projects that the Georgetown neighborhood has seen in decades.

The GCP came about as a solution to the acrimonious fights that took place between the neighborhood and the university every ten years due to the school’s campus plan renewals. Essentially what would happen would be that the two sides would duke it out over the renewal (sometimes in court) and then spend the next eight years or so stewing in anger over town gown issues until exploding in another supernova with the subsequent renewal.

Wiser heads finally prevailed with the 2010 renewal process. Rather than letting issues build up over a decade, the new model involved the creation of a standing platform for the school and the neighbors to address the problems while they happen. The steering committee oversees a group of active working groups each tasked with tackling long standing issues that come from a major university and hospital operating in a residential community such as transportation, trash/rodents, an off-campus life.

Most importantly, the steering committee is led by two co-chairs: a VP from the university, and a representative from the ANC. Since the creation of the GCP, the ANC’s representative has been one of my predecessors on the commission, Ron Lewis. The GCP has truly been Ron’s baby, as he was instrumental as ANC chair in its creation. And he has remained dedicated to its success ever since.

To a lesser extent, I was also involved in the creation of the GCP and served on the transportation working group for several years. But it wasn’t until I joined the steering committee as an ANC commissioner that I saw the full scope of the GCP in action and the role Ron played in keeping the ship on a steady course.

But the time has come for Ron to hand off the reins to his successor. The whole ANC is hugely grateful that he has found a worthy (and, more importantly, willing) successor in Rick Murphy. Rick, another long time Georgetown resident and former ANC chair, has large shoes to fill in the role, but the ANC is fully confident in his ability to step in and continue the success that Ron made routine. Thus the ANC designated Rick our co-chair for the GCP at our meeting this week. Best of luck to Rick and congratulations to Ron on his many years of success and well earned retirement!

Volta Park Cleanup This Weekend

There will be a park clean up at Volta Park this Sunday at 8:30. I’ll be there so if you’re itching to give me a piece of your mind, come and join me in picking up trash as you fill me in! There will be a Tunes for Tots session from 10-10:45 following the clean up.

Speaking of Volta Park, Councilmember Brooke Pinto has requested funds in this year’s budget to allow for a renovation of the playground and the installation of a splash pad. Both would be huge improvements for the park. If you would like to see these requests actually funded, reach out to the Mayor to request she include it in her budget proposal!