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.

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.

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/display.php?id=15080

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.