No fun (continued)... the proposals for a DC Planning Commission

(I had to work, so I missed the presentation last week. I'm told that many of the points raised in the entry below were discussed and answered in the session...)

Something I wrote yesterday...

Right now, I am working up a piece with the working title "DC doesn't have an office of planning, it has an office of land use." That isn't a cut against the people who work there, or the director, but about the fact that the DC Office of Planning deals pretty much just with land use. Meanwhile, there are at least four simultaneous planning exercises being conducted in the city, where the Office of Planning isn't really involved: (1) the hospital care (I mean health care) planning process associated with the National Capital Medical Center; (2) the DC Public Schools planning process; (3) the DC Parks and Recreation planning process; and (4) the DC Libraries Task Force planning process.

Separately we have at least three active "urban renewal" efforts (and I use that term deliberately, in all its connotation) underway, the: (1) Anacostia Waterfront Initiative (+/- baseball); (2) the Great Streets initiative from DDOT; and (3) the New Communities program. Not to mention other ongoing activities by DHCD, the Housing Authority, the Home Again Initiative, Community Development Corporations, etc.

Would a "Planning Commission" in fact be charged with addressing and shaping all such planning efforts in the city, or those merely associated with the purview of the DC Office of Planning?

Would a "Planning Commission" have staff and the ability to do oversight (comparable to the Independent Budget Office in NYC) to really be able to vet proposed or implemented programs to ensure the best possible chance of success?

Look at the library planning process as one example. The "blue ribbon task force" didn't even want to release any of the planning documents in advance of the upcoming public "listening" sessions. It was only prodding by one of DC's leading do-gooders, Dorothy Brizill, that goaded the library system into releasing the reports.

And I am concerned how so many people see a planning commission as a solution I guess to a somewhat disconnected governing structure in the city, where citizens feel excluded perhaps from the process?

Who appoints members to the Commission? Likely the Mayor and the City Council. Do you think that people who look at these issues "perhaps a bit more broadly" have any chance of being appointed to such a body? I'm doubtful.

I have many differences of opinion with Anne Renshaw (I don't know her personally), but so did the Executive Branch of DC Government I guess, because she wasn't reappointed to the Board of Zoning Adjustment. Again, I am not sure how I feel about the MLK Library (I love libraries but I don't love that one) but Alex Padro is no longer on the Library board for a reason. When Charles Cassell bucked Mayor Barry on the vote over MCI Arena, he wasn't reappointed to the HPRB. Etc.

Then again, I don't know how you successfully integrate alternative thinking into bodies, systems, and structures where there is tremendous pressure to go along. At least I haven't figured out how to do it, not yet.



Index Keywords: civic-engagement