Well, gangs and violence, anyway.

A City Desk reader captured this sight with a cell phone cam yesterday morning, around 10:30 a.m., on the 1500 block of Marion Street NW:

The reader explains: 'Took some photos yesterday of 6 kids from the Mayor's Conservation Corps rolling [a] joint and smoking pot....I did call the police but they didn't show up before the kids finished up. You can see a lighter and smoke in the photos. You can tell what he's smoking from how he's holding it. :-) I could smell it...(don't ask me how I know what it smells like).'

(Because the alleged tokers are likely minors, City Desk has blurred their faces.)

Plenty of folks at this point (hat tips: Scott's Take, DCist) have pointed out that the Mayor's Conservation Corps---part of the city summer jobs program---have spent their first days on the job handing out paper doorhangers.

Many of them have ended up on the street and sidewalks, and then there's the obvious irony of promoting a green initiative by distributing tons of thick paperstock around town.

LL called up the D.C. Department of the Environment, which runs the Green Summer Jobs Program, and asked spokesperson Alan Heymann about the doorhangers and the ironical elements at play.

The point of the doorhangers, Heymann says, is "to announce to the community that the conservation corps is going to be out doing this type of work" and to solicit project suggestions from residents.

But why use dead trees to do so?

"Not every resident of the District of Columbia is on a listserve or a blog," he explains.

In any case, they're printed on 100 percent recycled paper with vegetable inks, 100,000 of them have been printed, and they're being distributed everywhere the corps operates---which is pretty much everywhere but Ward 3. (Not as much work there, Heymann notes, but if you have a suggestion for a project there, call 535-2325.)

Soon the kids will move on to more substantial work---some have already started tree box inspections. "This is kind of by way of introduction," Heymann says. "It's a long summer."

And in any case, Heymann says, kids shouldn't be tossing the hangers on the ground. "When we get a report [of littering], we send the kids back out to fix it," he says. "We certainly don't want any litter on the ground."

Fenty has committed to accommodating all comers, even though last year's program went more than $30 million over budget under a similar lack of constraints.

In recent days, the spiritual godfather of D.C. summer jobs has made it clear he doesn't share Hizzoner's expansive view of the program.

"I'm not going to participate in this craziness," says Ward 8 Councilmember Marion Barry, who started the Summer Youth Employment Program as mayor in 1979. It's widely regarded as one of Barry's political masterstrokes, engendering almost unanimous and endless goodwill from an entire generation of Washingtonians.

Barry, however, is not sold on Fenty's plans, he tells LL.

For one thing, through his council committee, he has proposed cutting $20 million from Fenty's proposed $42.9 million budget for the 2010 program. To do that, he recommends that the program be scaled back from 10 weeks to 6 weeks, that registrations close on April 1 rather than continue through the summer, and that participation be capped at 21,000.

And, as far as this year's program goes, he wants to see a spending plan. Two weeks ago, Fenty announced he was seeking to double the $21 million he'd originally budgeted. To do that, he's asking the council to tap a "community benefit fund" associated with the Nationals Park authorization, though no spending plan has yet to be submitted.

"You're asking for trouble," Barry tells LL---intimating a tough council fight to get the supplemental spending approved.

Fenty's approach to the program, Barry says, "teaches these kids bad habits"---that anyone who applies is simply handed a job. Some of the placements are made in the private sector and federal government, but the vast majority of kids are employed by the District government.

Barry's objections come at the same time that the Brookings Institute's Greater Washington Research program has raised questions about summer jobs---a effort providing "uncertain, uneven, and sometimes really bad outcomes"---sucking up the vast majority of the local dollars spent on employment programs in the city.

No matter what happens with the funding, Barry says he vows to hold weekly oversight hearings into the operations of the program---all 10 weeks of the program, "even during the council recess."

"I'm gonna put pressure on him," Barry says of Fenty. "I'm gonna blow the whistle if it ain't right."

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Just look at the program's Web Site: "Welcome to Mayor Adrian M. Fenty's Summer Youth Employment Program for 2009," reads the banner headline.

Politicians are know for attaching their names to everything in sight, but not usually to programs which nine months ago had imploded in a cloud of overspending and fraud. Others might have scaled back expectations, but not Fenty. At a press conference at Ballou Senior High School this afternoon, he announced it's full steam ahead on summer jobs.

The details for SYEP 2009, such as they exist so far, are impressive. The registration process is online-only.Three times as many slots have been offered by private employers. All sorts of database checks are in place to prevent mass fraud. A top private contractor will be handling payroll. And 3,000 kids have already signed up.

Joseph P. Walsh, director of the Department of Employment Services, was hired to make this thing work above all else---he replaced Summer Spencer, who was forced out after last year's debacle---and Fenty pumped up the "sweat equity" Walsh has poured into the program in his three months in office.

Perhaps most impressive is the fact that private employers have increased their commitment after last year---from less than 400 positions to more than 1,000 this time---after some business types expressed sotto voce disillusionment with what happened last summer. Walsh says he's been on a speaking tour of local business groups---he namechecked the Federal City Council, the Greater Washington Board of Trade, the D.C. Hospital Association, and Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington---to ease concerns. "A lot of them wanted to hear what was new this year, what we're going to do differently, to sort of restore that confidence," Walsh says.

After the presser, Fenty joined a group of Ballou students in a computer lab as they went on laptops to sign up for jobs. The computers worked fine, but the building didn't: As reporters filed into the room with Hizzoner, a tile fell from the ceiling onto a table, breaking apart.

Hope that isn't an omen.