Does ANC Stand for Annoyed Neighbors Complaining?
Maybe it’s because I’m new to the D.C. area, but I can’t seem to figure out the purpose of attending ANC meetings.
I thought ANC meetings were created to form active communication between political bigwigs—they are bigwigs, right?—with everyday D.C. residents. But after attending my fifth (and maybe last) meeting last night, all I’ve noticed are older community members complaining about loud music and speeding cars.
Last night I attended the Petworth community’s ANC 4D meeting at MPD’s 4th District. In a rather small corner room, about 20 community members gathered for more than an hour discussing ways to improve their neighborhood dog park.
The meeting sparked up when one resident asked the commission board if her petition for new speed bumps was reviewed since the last meeting. When she realized no one had a clue what she was talking about, another 15 minutes were spent with the crowd discussing the inefficiency of the ANC and why nothing ever gets done.
I heard several soft mumbles from a few residents—“this meeting is pointless”—and from others slight snoring sounds.
At another meeting I attended last month, I noticed a mass of empty chairs as community members discussed corner store closings and trash on the sidewalks.
I asked 4D-03 Commissioner Robert Whiddon what he thought the overall problem with ANC meetings is:
“The D.C. government preys on empathy,” he says. “Nothing is going to change because the people in the community are OK with being docile citizens. The mayor comes to the meetings and gives out his personal cell phone number telling people to call with concerns, but he is not going to call these people back. There are simply too many people with small issues that matter to them.”
“But 20 people coming to a neighborhood meeting is sad. In an area of over 1,000 residents, our meetings should be packed. It’s just pathetic. We need to get people out to these meetings by buying food, giving away prizes, or awarding raffles.”
Another problem he says is the overwhelming number of ANCs in the district. There are currently 37 ANC commissions and more than 250 representatives in all eight wards. Whiddon says that with 37 geographic clusters complaining about traffic lights, reckless teenagers, or the need for speed bumps, there is no way that the D.C. government is going to take anyone seriously.
People give up, he says, when it takes almost two years to get a rotting tree taken out or stop sign put in.
But guess what? It’s still true that you can’t fix something if you don’t do anything about it. ANC elections are coming up in November; petitions to be a political bigwig can be picked up in early August.
6 Responses to “Does ANC Stand for Annoyed Neighbors Complaining?”
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May 21st, 2008 at 3:24 pm
There are many problems with ANCs, but the second biggest problem is that there is no significant training infrastructure to support civic engagement and deliberative processes for ANC commissioners and civic organizations. Without it, you can guarantee that there is a lot of mucking about.
Another problem, no dedicated office and/or meeting space. In other cities, neighborhood councils even get some quality staff assistance.
But the #1 problem is what I call governmentalizing how people conceive of problems and how they should be addressed. What happens is that the idea of self organization, empowerment, and self help gets replaced with thinking that government is the solution to every issue.
But actually, there need to be more ANCs in some places. E.g., in Ward 5, the ANCs are so big, they bring together SMDs from wildly disparate areas, when smaller ANCs could better focus on areas-issues of common concerns.
May 21st, 2008 at 3:55 pm
Some vintage CP reporting on the issue–”Democracy Inaction” by Ta-Nehisi Coates, May 29, 1998:
http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/display.php?id=15080
May 21st, 2008 at 5:07 pm
I think an eventual answer may be to give the ANCs more authority and turn them into a sort of House of Delegates branch of the legislature.
As it is, the only power the ANCs have is through limited zoning authority and “voluntary” agreements. With this limited authority over these niggling issues, you’re bound to end up attracting only people who feel like bitching about little niggling issues like speed bumps and the volume of a bar’s music.
If however, the ANCs were like the House of Reps to the Council’s Senate, they’d attract a lot more attention.
Of course, they’d have to improve significantly the way they handle themselves. But that’s sort of a chicken and the egg problem, eh?
Along similar lines, I think some group once advised the council to expand the number of CMs. I believe most cities of DC’s size have more.
May 21st, 2008 at 5:13 pm
Can you imagine if the DC gov actually gave a crap. ANC is a waste of time and everyone knows it.
May 21st, 2008 at 10:31 pm
ANCs should simply be eliminated as they currently exist. They are unpaid elected positions. People who serve are generally either busybodies or have some self interest which gets them involved in the first place.
If the ANC position becomes a “house” to the Council’s Senate, then there would need to be much fewer elected positions, and there would need to be some stipend or salary (even if it was say 20k a year) to go with it (Council members are paid over 100k for a part time position). However that kind of money would demonstrate a largesse and an unnecessary bureaucratic layer to a city of 600,000 people.
Most DC Agencies ignore the great weight that ANC are supposed to have because many of their actions appear on agendas which are not well publicized or are altered at the beginning of a meeting to include controversial items. One can look at ANCs throughout the city for different levels of financial or legislative abuse.
May 23rd, 2008 at 8:42 am
I hope he said “apathy” not “empathy”