Looks like folks who are in favor of more grocery choices and competition in Skyland are going to get it. District lawyers say the plot of land Walmart is planning to use for the Ward 7 store is not restricted by Safeway's covenant with the city to prevent competition:

City officials, including Deputy Mayor Victor L. Hoskins, initially said [the covenant] was an issue they were working through, but now say they are interpreting the covenant as not applying to a lot where a Wal-Mart store would be built.

The Office of the Deputy Mayor of Planning and Economic Development received an opinion Wednesday from attorneys in the Office of the Attorney General, said Jose C. Sousa, a spokesman for Hoskins.

Rappaport Cos, the lead developer of the Skyland site, previously submitted a design for the land that was city-approved and places a “big box” store on the lot. The covenant would apply to two other lots, Sousa said. “This covenant may apply to other possible retail users in the future,” he wrote in an e-mail.

Of course, that's only one side's version of the covenant. According to the Post, Safeway is staying mum for the moment.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

With the first vote on the city’s new redistricted ward map set for Thursday, Ward 6 Councilmember Tommy Wells and his supporters brought bullhorns to Lincoln Park last night to protest the proposed 17th Street dividing line that would send the eastern edge of Capitol Hill into Ward 7.

As Housing Complex's Lydia DePillis has pointed out, the Ward 6 residents up for grabs are tying themselves into knots to keep the current boundaries intact. At last night’s rally, they summoned the specter of Kingman Park—absorbed by Ward 7 during the District's last redistricting a decade ago—to warn that nearby Rosedale could fall into the hands of an unresponsive councilmember, though none of the speakers referred to Ward 7's Yvette Alexander by name.

“It’s not working, because I’m not across the bridge, I’m over here,” said Hannah Lewis, a volunteer at the Rosedale Recreation Center who lives in Kingman Park and wants her neighborhood moved back into Ward 6. She waved a "Save Kingman Park" sign during Wells' speech in front of Eastern High School, following a march along East Capitol Street.

With chants like "don't gerrymand, we're in command," some protesters complained that there's no way Wards 7 and 8 can represent their interests.

"The folks across the river, they have a whole other set of issues and a whole other set of things going on, and we’re going to be such a small percentage of their constituency that they’re really not going to care," said Patrick Crowley, a former board chairman at Congressional Cemetery.

Wells called the proposed dividing line—17th Street SE at Barney Circle to 17th Street NE at Benning Road—"dumb," but all of the territorial goodwill for Kingman Park and Hill East presents a problem: If Ward 6 takes Kingman Park back, the population imbalance across wards will get worse, not better. When pressed for his solution, Wells pointed to his fellow council members for ideas.

“Is Ward 5 part of the solution?” he asked. “Is Ward 2 really part of the solution? There are other wards that border Wards 7 and 8 that are just untouched.”

Some Rosedale residents were convinced that if the council sends the neighborhood to Ward 7, the neighborhood’s black voting base would be left behind.

“My community will lose a voice and will lose resources once we become Ward 7,” said Sondra Phillips-Gilbert. Before the council sets its sights on bigger goals, she complained, the city needs to focus on drawing fair boundaries that won’t split up neighborhoods.

“How can you ask for statehood when you’re busy disenfranchising and gerrymandering communities?” she asked.

Photos by Nick DeSantis

Vincent Gray: 226

Adrian Fenty: 64

Leo Alexander: 6

Sulaimon Brown: 1

Michael Green: 1

Ernest Johnson: 0

****

Guess which celebrity Mayor Adrian Fenty brought along for the mayoral forum and straw poll this morning in Ward 7. Ronald Moten? Wrong; nobody controls Ronald Moten (though he was there).

The big star was none other than former Phoenix Suns great Kevin Johnson. (Who, as we all know, is also the mayor of Sacramento and the future Mr. Michelle Rhee.) Johnson, wearing a Fenty sticker, posed for pictures with Hizzoner and his supporters after the forum. And he told LL he won't be doing much more campaigning for Fenty in the next two months.

"I've got a city to run," Johnson said.

LL tried to get Johnson to take a public swipe (a la Magic, Jordan and Barkley) at LeBron James for "taking his talents to South Beach," but Johnson wouldn't bite.

As for the forum, you ask? Fenty was probably glad for the moral support while facing a sometimes hostile crowd. Ward 7 is Vincent Gray country (the council chairman and mayoral candidate served as the ward's councilmember and lives in a previously illegally fenced house there). Fenty was booed so strongly when he attacked Gray's record as former head of the city's Health Department Department of Human Services in the '90s that the forum's moderator had to step in and lecture the crowd.

"What's wrong, you don't want the facts?" Fenty said to the boo birds.

Fenty also got feisty during his closing statements, when he accused Gray of improperly awarding the city's lottery contract to one of his friends.

"Who has the cronies?" Fenty said

Gray got a nice little dig in himself, when he said as mayor he won't "expand the fire department to the Dominican Republic."

LL will update with the straw poll results once they become available.

But "east of the river" isn't settling too well with relative newcomers to the area. Some of these people want to call the region "River East," an appellation that summons images of plush, new homes and green pastures. Champions of the new name have coalesced in an organization called (logically) River East Emerging Leaders (r.e.e.l.).

This is a gentrification battle. Old-timers don't like the idea of rebranding the area. The story quotes 35-year Anacostia resident Bessie Brown as saying, “I hate it.”

Though I am not a resident of the territory in question, I vote for "River East." Not on ideological grounds, but rather for the sake of simplicity. It's two syllables shorter. It's simpler. Change can be good for a name.

According to new D.C. Police data [PDF], there has been a total of 36 hate crimes committed in the District  as of September 30. That's about the same for 2008 and 2007's totals of 38.

By far, the majority of hate crimes have revolved around sexual orientation. As of Sept. 30, there have been 31 such crimes reported. There could be many more. As WTOP's Mark Segraves pointed out on his must-listen Ask The Chief segment, sometimes officers do not report hate crimes as hate crimes. [In a recent hate-crime incident I did some reporting on, D.C. cops did not report it as a hate crime].

On the WTOP segment, Police Chief Cathy Lanier did admit that since the report was issued, sexual-orientation based hate crimes have jumped to 35.

Numbers can be debated. But one number can not: the rise in sexual orientation hate crimes in Wards 7 and 8 [police districts 6 and 7].

In 2008, 13 percent of sexual orientation hate crimes took place in these wards. So far in 2009, the number jumped to 32 percent.

On a side note, only two councilmembers—Yvette Alexander and Marion Barry—voted against the gay marriage bill. Who do they represent? Wards 7 and 8.

*photo by Darrow Montgomery.

A little more than a week ago, news broke that at least three percent of District residents have AIDS or HIV. This provoked Shannon L. Hader, director of the city's HIV/AIDS Administration to now-famously compare D.C. to West Africa. When pressed by Loose Lips at a press conference, Hader stated that our rates of infection were twice as high as New York City and five times that of Detroit.

As LL pointed out, the bigwigs at the press conference—Mayor Adrian Fenty, Councilmember David Catania, et al.—defensively argued that the part of the reason for the high infection rates is that the city is just testing more people. Case in point: testing is now routine at the D.C. Jail.

But this epidemic is not a new epidemic. In fact, it's been called an epidemic too many times to count. Perhaps the reason this story didn't provoke serious outrage and more press conferences and men in white coats discussing infection trend patterns is that this is an old story.

"This is the number one [public health] priority of this government," Fenty told the Washington Post. That quote was from an April 5, 2007, story headlined: "Fenty Renews Fight Against HIV-AIDS; Mayor Promises Strong Effort, Plans To Pick New Agency Chief." In the story's first graph, the mayor "pledged" to "put an end to this crisis."

While Fenty has recently received high marks from local watchdogs DC Appleseed, you don't get to a more than three percent infection rate by accident. Along the way, there have been screw-ups, questions about funding, and more than enough declarations to do better. A quick Nexis search reveals just a little bit in how we got to this point:

• A Jan. 4, 2007, Post story reports that the city's AIDS/HIV Administration chief was stepping down after 16 months. The city would be forced to find a new chief—its third in two years—to head up the agency. The Post wrote: "The HIV-AIDS administration has had almost a dozen directors in its 21-year history. [Marsha Martin]'s predecessor, who held the job just 11 months, was fired after D.C. Appleseed issued a report critical of the city's response to the epidemic."
• In the same April 5, 2007, story quoted above, the Post notes: "The mayor's promise of momentum follows a year of ups and downs for the agency, which leads the city's response. It launched a testing campaign last summer, drawing national attention with its goal to encourage all District residents between 14 and 84 to find out their HIV status." The campaign netted a huge increase in people getting tested but it also fell well short of testing several hundred thousand residents (total tested: about 48,000). And "the data collected at the test sites were not complete enough to provide the demographic breakdowns needed for the best prevention and treatment planning."
• In a March 10, 2007, story, the Post wrote about funding to nonprofit groups who deal with AIDS/HIV prevention. It reported that in 2005, D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray had noticed a "disparity" in funding—of the 121 nonprofit groups and agencies who received city dollars, not one cent had gone to a nonprofit based in Ward 7. Two years later, Gray was able to funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars to nonprofits who would target Ward 7 and Ward 8. But why did it take Gray two years after he realized this disparity to get funding? Where were other councilmembers on this issue? The Post story noted that these wards had the highest rates of infection in the city. And then there's this little nugget: The District would shell out an additional $300,000 to help these organizations "to implement training and help with writing grants." That's a lot of money to teach a nonprofit Grant Writing 101. That's a lot of money for "training." Effi Barry—who's expertise on the issue was what?—had been assigned to coordinate the Ward 7 part of the initiative.
• In late June 2007, the District government announces that it will launch a massive outreach effort aimed at teenagers and young adults. "We want to push the envelope....We have to be aggressive," Fenty says in a June 28 Post story.
• In late September 2007, the District pulled out of the condom producing business. The Post reported in a Sept. 29 piece that "as many as 70,000" government condoms were returned due to complaints related to the "mustard-yellow packets' durability and appearance." The District's outsourced condom producer agreed to replace the mustard-yellow packets with name-brand Trojans. The Post noted that "in addition to the inventories sent back in the past several days, the department's HIV/AIDS Administration still had 350,000 condoms that were never distributed....The Health Department has promised to retool the entire condom distribution program."
• A Nov. 26, 2007, Post article cites a District report calling the city's infection rates "a modern epidemic." The report was the first of its kind since 2000. "District health officials have long been faulted for the lack of HIV information and lagging AIDS data," the Post wrote. "Not until forced by federal funding requirements did the health department start tracking HIV." The city report found that more than 80 percent of the HIV cases were among black men, women and adolescents. Among women, nine in 10 were African American. The article quotes a letter Fenty had written that accompanied the report's release. He wrote: "We must take advantage of this information with the sense of urgency that this epidemic deserves."

The new report released last week revealed a 22 percent increase in the number of infected individuals from this 2006 study.

For the last two days, I've had the pleasure of driving around Ward 7—specifically in and out of the Nannie Helen Burroughs Avenue NE corridor.

I had spent a ton of time there four years ago for a story about a father who got burned out of his house after he started fighting the local hoodlums. The hoodlums had great nicknames and a terrible alibi. The father had amazing kids, an antique shop on 14th Street NW (that's no more), and a failed dream to turn that home into a real home (it had a pool in the backyard).

Without a huge investment in development, it was interesting to see what has survived, what is boarded up, and what has overcome serious obstacles.

That particular pocket has a lot going for it–great access to transportation with a Metro stop nearby and of course, 295. It also has good green space including one well-kept park and a creek that runs behind Gault Place NE.

The Wendy's is gone. The liquor store just off Hayes is gone. The key shop appears dead. The Dean Ave Cleaners is still around. I didn't see Wiggles or Baldy or Beaver.

Their perch has grown boards like so many other properties.

My story took place along the 4400 block of Gault. The apartment building that was boarded up four years ago is still a shell. In fact, most if not all the boarded up places I saw then are still vacant.

The only change: the burned-out house is now occupied. There's a vintage Volvo in the driveway.

Ward 7 Councilmember Yvette Alexander has been waiting in the wings, a back-bencher, for nearly two years. While colleagues presided over important council committees, Alexander held no such portfolio.

But today that all changed. Alexander is chairing her first hearing as the new chair of the Committee on Aging and Community Affairs. On the docket is an examination of mayoral nominees to the Commission on Human Rights. "I feel pumped!" she exclaims.

When asked to explain her take on her job in vetting the mayor's people, Alexander states, "I understand the mayor's vision, but I want to understand the individual nominee's vision."

And what about chairmanly conduct? Does the new committee chief take cues from colleagues with respect to running a hearing? Any role models? "I'm a very compassionate person. I don't use my chairmanship as an interrogation," she responds.

So you're not going to be David Catania? "I didn't say that."

By Mike DeBonis