Northwest Georgetown November ANC Update
Hello and welcome to the November Northwest Georgetown ANC update!
Parking
I wanted to jump right into it with a question I hear about all the time: parking.
This is obviously a perennial problem for Georgetown, but several factors seem to have converged to make this problem even worse. Those include the rise of work at home, the shopping/dining renaissance that Georgetown has experienced in recent years, and the collapse of enforcement during the height of Covid. There’s probably nothing to be done about the first factor. And there’s probably nothing we’d want to do to erase the second factor. And that leaves the third: enforcement.
The simple fact is that a lot of people learned a lot of bad driving-related behaviors between 2020 and 2022 (or so) and it will take a lot of effort to unlearn them. The worst of these behaviors involve reckless driving, but for this particular topic it’s enough to point out that a lot of people figured out that they could drive to Georgetown and park all day long without any consequences. This was literally true for several years when the city simply stopped giving tickets. And sadly it has continued to be effectively true as the city’s enforcement efforts have come up way short.
I have been involved with several efforts to increase the scope and effectiveness of the parking enforcement, particularly for my district. One of these initiatives grew out of the Georgetown Community Partnership with the university. Through its annual transportation survey, Georgetown determined that a large number of students and staff of the school were coming and parking illegally in west Georgetown.1 The school acknowledged that this a problem and committed to work with the GCP to address it.
This effort led to periodic meetings with the Department of Public Works (DPW), which maintains the parking enforcement for the city. DPW agreed to increase the amount of enforcement around the university (i.e. west Georgetown, Burleith and Foxhall Village). I’m sure my constituents are skeptical, but DPW has reported that it now dedicates two parking enforcement officers to this area every morning. (And this is strictly an anecdote, but Georgetown did start getting complaints from its staff about how many tickets they were getting.)
But this is clearly not enough. So I wanted to describe several longer term fixes that are coming online or are just over the horizon:
More License Plate Readers
It’s important to understand how parking enforcement is currently handled. An enforcement officer needs to first see a car without a Zone 2 sticker and manually log it in his or her hand-held device. Then he or she has to come back more than two hours later, notice the same car, and then manually record the violation. The agents can get good at this, but there is only so many cars a human can track and record like this.2 It leaves a great deal of wiggle room for our daily scofflaws.
The answer to this is to use automatic plate readers. These are scanners attached to DPW vehicles which enable the agent to simply drive down a block and all the cars will be logged into the system. And the same cameras will tell the agent that a car on the block has been parked for more than two hours. This increases an agent’s ability to patrol by an order of magnitude. Now an agent can patrol an entire neighborhood in the time it used to take him or her to do a handful of blocks.
But the problem is that currently DPW has only ten such license plate readers for the whole city. That means that we simply cannot expect Georgetown (let alone west Georgetown specifically) to get constant coverage from one or more of these readers. The good news is that the city is looking to increase the number of these license plate readers from ten to one hundred. The “yes but” news is that the Council has not yet authorized this expansion. It is currently before the Committee for Public Works, chaired by Councilmember Brianne Nadeau. (So if you’d like to help: send her an email!)
Reimbursable Detail
Hopefully the license plate readers will finally get funded and purchased in the near future. However other options are also potentially coming. One of the more interesting ideas being considered would be reimbursable details for parking enforcement.
“Reimbursable details” is a term which refers to a program whereby private businesses can arrange with the city to be assigned MPD officers to provide additional security. It’s win-win: the business gets the dedicated policing, and the MPD officers get paid overtime.
The idea being considered is to extend this concept to parking enforcement. Essentially organizations like Georgetown University would be allowed to fund their own dedicated parking enforcement officers. In conjunction with the GCP, these officers would focus exclusively on west Georgetown, Burleith, and Foxhall Village.
The bill is currently in front of that same Council committee chaired by Coucilmember Nadeau. I am hopeful it will be passed by next spring. This has the potential to dramatically increase the amount of parking enforcement in our neighborhood, which could finally “unlearn” all those bad habits adopted during the height of Covid.
Georgetown Visitation
Another likely source of the daily parking crunch in west Georgetown is Georgetown Visitation. We are working with the school to address the situation of students or staff parking around the school all day. The school’s zoning order states that Visi is supposed to prohibit this behavior. Unfortunately, this appears to be another case of learned bad behavior. For instance, one resident reported to me the other day that she asked a Visitation student from Virginia why she was parking all day on 35th St. The answer was that she didn’t have anyone to car pool with (a requirement to park on campus) and so she just takes her chances with the tickets. Her luck is mostly good on that front.
In a meeting with the school recently, the leadership committed to doing more to “police” around the school for this. To that end, if you do see a car frequently parked by a Visi student or staff near the school. Please let me know and I will pass the report on to the school (2e02@anc.dc.gov).
In short: Yes, parking is an issue and we are working on it!
Leaf Collection
The city is rolling out its annual fall leaf collection effort very soon. Like last year, the collecting will occur in stages, depending on your location.
Georgetown is split into two zones for these purposes: 2C and 2D. The letters are all that actually matter. So basically if you live east of Wisconsin, you’re in group C and if you live west of Wisconsin, you’re in group D.
The way it will work is that when you’re time comes, you are instructed to gather all the leaves that you want collected (including leaves from street trees) into the tree boxes on your block. If there are no tree boxes by your house, just rake them into a pile by the curb. You do not need to bag the leaves.
To avoid people gathering the leaves too early and them simply blowing or washing away, the city is not publishing a pick up schedule ahead of time. You will be alerted with a door hanger and online two weeks ahead of the pick up time. (I’ll also try to give you a heads up). You will be given a date at which point the leaves should be gathered. For what it’s worth, the city is starting with group A at the end of October.
There is a map to track the progress here.
New Embassy in Our District
Our little neck of Georgetown is getting another embassy3 (or diplomatic mission, at least). The Embassy of Romania is taking over the former Long & Foster building at the corner of Reservoir and Wisconsin. I do not believe this will be the actual main embassy building, since Romania currently uses a former mansion on Embassy Row. So it will likely be a supplemental facility.
The building has its own lot, so I do not believe there will be any diplomatic parking spaces taken from Reservoir or Wisconsin, but I will report to you all if there will be.
Reelection
I am running for reelection! I am the only candidate on the ballot so I decided to spare people from more political signs or door knockers. But if you want to discuss any issue affecting you in our district, don’t hesitate to reach out at 2e02@anc.dc.gov! Even though I have no formal competition this year, I still want to earn your vote!
Quick Updates:
ANC meeting Monday night.
The tavern at 33rd and Wisconsin has changed its name from Creme to the Lobby. The same management remains and, rest assured, that the terms agreed to during the liquor license process will continue to apply. The agreement runs with the license, so name or even ownership changes don’t affect the agreement. The tavern will likely open within a month or two.
Happy Thanksgiving!!
By “illegally” I mean they park for more than 2 hours without a Zone 2 sticker. Students and staff are also not even supposed to park for less than 2 hours under school guidelines, but obviously the city can’t enforce that. In case you’re wondering, Georgetown undergrads are also not permitted to have a car even if they live off campus.
There is also a daily shift change that complicates matters. One agent may first notice the car, but he or she may leave before two hours has passed. The car will still be in the “system” so another agent will be able to give a ticket during the second shift. But they might be less likely to notice the car the second time around since they didn’t log it the first time.
I say “another” since we already have the African Union embassy.