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Honorable Linda Cropp
Chair
City Council of the District of Columbia
441 4th Street, NW
Washington, D.C. 20002

Dear Chairman Cropp:

As you know, the Office of Planning is leading a major city-wide campaign to promote residential and commercial development in our neighborhoods. We do understand why Mayor Williams wants to see more construction, investment and tax revenues.

However, there is a difference between development and revitalization, and these efforts are not being handled with openness, concern, and genuine respect for the taxpayers and the residents who live in the city and for the impact development will have on our neighborhoods.

Instead, in community after community, we find that our city planners meet with developers behind closed doors and endorse projects without any community input. And our experience is showing that even when outreach occurs, it is limited and ineffective.

For example:

* In Takoma, a community with a long history of civic activism, the Director of the Office of Planning endorsed a 106-unit townhouse project at the Takoma Metro Station without contacting a single community group.

* Community leaders have registered similar disapproval with OP's role in proposed development at Fort Totten, Brookland, Petworth, Rhode Island Avenue, and the 49-acres of Soldiers' Home on Harewood Road, N.E.

* Residents who participated in a planning effort for development at McMillan Park, at North Capitol and Michigan Avenue, were given little or no information about nine major projects slated for the area or how these projects might affect each other and the surrounding communities.

We are also disturbed about the increasing and secretive role of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) in development throughout the city.

WMATA and the Office of Planning are behaving as though WMATA is a private landowner with no responsibility to neighborhoods. It is a publicly-funded agency that needs to hold its own public hearings before it makes decisions about development and land sales. The Office of Planning is consulted by WMATA on their developer-selections, but it is prohibited from revealing anything to the community. This is bad public policy and the city council needs to stop it.

We need an independent Office of Planning that is not directly under the control of the Deputy Mayor for Economic Development. And we need changes to ensure an open process that recognizes the role of neighborhood groups, the Advisory Neighborhood Commissions, and the city council --- before development decisions are made.

Sincerely,

Regina James, Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner 5B03
Interim President, Brookland Civic Association
1363 Adams Street, N.E., Washington, D.C. 20018

Mary Baird Currie, Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner 5A06
1120 Michigan Avenue, N.E., Washington, D.C. 20017

Darcy Flynn, Advisory Neighborhood Commissoner 5A08
1206 Newton Street, N.E., Washington, D.C. 20017

Tony Norman, Chairman, McMillan Park Committee
533 Gresham Place, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20001

Thomas Rooney, McMillan Park Committee
3425 14th St., N.E., Washington, D.C. 20017

Angela Christophe and Michael Ivey, Petworth Community
501 Upshur Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20011

Sara Green, Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner 4B01
7106 Piney Branch Road, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20012

Ruth Foster, Member, Working Group, Takoma Small Area Plan
6601 Piney Branch Road, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20012

Leonard Rubin
7218 Blair Road, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20012

Cynthia M. Reid, Chair, Concerned Neighbors of North Michigan Park
1276 Delafield Place, N.E., Washington, D.C. 20017

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