But not everybody loves apartment dwellers. Over and over and over again, I've heard homeowners grumble about the prospect of a bunch of renters coming into their neighborhoods; people almost universally prefer condos. Take ANC 2A's objection to rentals at Eastbanc's West End Project. From the anti-internet Northwest Current:

But neighbors worry apartments could attract more undergraduates to a community already saturated with students. Condos, commissioner Asher Corson said, would appeal to a base of residents who are more committed to remaining in the community and engaging in local issues. "The consensus is that condos provide more benefit to the community than rentals," he said.

(Corson, a 2007 alumnus of George Washington University himself, says he owns his condo). Then, of course, there's Burleith's opposition to more students at Georgetown University, mostly on the grounds of real estate devaluation. In response to the Washington Post's editorial on the subject, Burleith Citizens Association president Lenore Rubino wrote:

The most serious consequence of this dramatic expansion is the conversion of single-family, residential row houses into transient student group rental homes. Of the 535 houses in Burleith, for example, 166, or almost one-third, are student group rentals. In the next ten years, if only 30 additional graduate or undergraduate students come to live in Burleith, there could easily be a loss of ten or more houses.

It's telling that she considers rental houses to be "losses." As if the people who inhabit them could not possibly be constructive members of a community.

Opposition to rentals isn't just a wealthy, Northwest phenomenon. Councilmember Marion Barry proposed—and is still pushing—to ban new apartment buildings in Ward 8 entirely. He agrees with the Burleithians and West Enders that people who rent don't have the same stake in their community. But Barry also thinks that renters are the most susceptible to being pushed out as gentrification advances, and that the best way to prepare these neighborhoods for the onslaught is to make them all into homeowners.

It saddens me to see this antipathy towards the 52 percent of D.C. residents who, according to the 2010 census, rent instead of own. It costs a crapload of money to buy real estate in this town, and banks aren't exactly throwing money at people without impeccable credit. What's more, housing demand is trending towards rentals: According to a new study from the Center for Regional Analysis, the District would need about 76,000 new apartments if it were to house all the new people with jobs in the city by 2030, and only 46,000 new for-sale units.

And besides, people who rent are also those who bring a city much of its dynamism: They may not be around forever, but while they are, they'll buy things and go out to eat and patronize art. They are no less capable of participating in their neighborhood associations, forming communities of interest, and maybe buying when it makes sense financially.

Perhaps this is an obvious point. That makes it even more surprising to encounter so much distaste for anything other than single family homes.

Mr. Barry holds court. (Lydia DePillis)

It was a conversation that promised to be interesting, with this headline: DOES GENTRIFICATION MEAN ERADICATION? The office of Councilmember Marion Barry convened a panel of Ward 8 Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners and community members last night to chew over the question, and at his behest, a group of interested citizens will continue to chew it over and maybe even come up with some recommendations.

Without quoting soundbites from the many speeches—which ranged from the platitudinous to the pointed and impassioned—let me break out the major takeaways.

1. Given that white people aren't really moving into Ward 8 to any measurable degree, the discussion didn't dwell on race. Though that was an undercurrent, the fear of gentrification—helpfully defined on the meeting's agenda in terms of displacement—centered more around the potential for investment to price older residents out.
2. Also given that wealth isn't exactly flowing east of the river yet, displacement doesn't seem to be an imminent threat. But H Street Main Street director Anwar Saleem, along with several longtime H Street business owners, were there to remind the crowd that the new people can come before you realize it, and you may not be able to expect help from elected officials (they're none too happy with a new retail incentive program that excludes barbershops, hair salons, phone stores, and liquor stores*).
3. The most raw split is between those who see poverty as something that's almost impossible to escape and in need of substantial government investment, and those who focus instead on the need for residents to bootstrap their way up. ANC Commissioner Ab Jordan, frequently referencing the deterministic Markov chain, excoriated fellow commissioner Darrell Gaston—a younger guy who's after Barry's seat—for calling black people lazy after Gaston argued that gentrification could be a good thing and that the government makes it too easy for Ward 8 residents to live off public assistance (Clarification, 12:56 p.m. – Gaston did not call black people lazy; that was Jordan's interpretation).
4. Of course, people spend their time fighting about the causes of inequality and who to blame for it, but mostly agree that the answer is more and better education for all ages.

Barry himself, naturally, stole the show. Without referencing his proposal to actually outlaw new apartment buildings in the ward, he admonished the crowd that those areas with the most renters were most vulnerable to gentrification, and advocated preparing more residents for homeownership. Before leaving, he called upon the room to stay involved—because goodness knows the gentrifiers are.

"We have a lot of gentrifiers who are blogging, who are tweetering," he said. "Those who are gentrifiers want to justify what they do. And some of what they do is not right."

—-

* Corrected from an earlier version; nail salons are not excluded from the grant program.

What much of the base looks like. (Lydia DePillis)

Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling, the 905-acre military enclave located on D.C.'s southern corner, is walled off from the rest of the city, with four gates that demand identification before you're allowed to enter. Most of the 13,200 people who work there don't live there, and those who live there have all their needs provided for without ever having to leave.

A few months ago, the D.C. Council passed a resolution blasting an environmental assessment for the Navy's long range master plan, saying that it increased the installation's isolation from the rest of Ward 8. Since then, the base's public relations staff has been working overtime, meeting with the District's economic development team and Ward 8 Councilmember Marion Barry, to demonstrate that they are trying to integrate with the rest of the city. Really!

"Contrary to what some people think, we're not a closed base. The citizens can come if they have a reason to be there," says public affairs officer Joe Cirone. "We exist to help people. We are Ward 8 residents. We consider ourselves part of Ward 8."

What does he mean by that, exactly? Well, they just did their first ever job fair with the District's Department of Employment Services, collecting 93 applications for six full-time job opportunities. The base's fire trucks are deployed to help flight blazes in D.C. and Prince Georges County. There's a bowling alley that civilians can come use, if they sign up for a league. The area's Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner lives on base. They're even working to build a playground in Ward 8, although the money isn't quite there yet.

The gigantic and forbidding Blanchard Barracks.

But in a lot of ways, the base doesn't contribute much—usually just by virtue of standard operating procedure. All of the goods in the Army and Air Force Exchange Service's "Target-like" store, which is open only to members of the military, are exempt from sales taxes. Although base commander Captain Anthony Calandra apparently commutes by bicycle most days from Alexandria, the private vehicle is king, in part because funding restrictions make it difficult to arrange a shuttle from the Anacostia metro station (those rules also complicate Cirone's desire to start a bikesharing system for getting around within the base). There are 719 privately-built townhouses that the military doesn't own, but Cirone didn't know if they're on the D.C. tax rolls; D.C.'s Office of Tax and Revenue says they're not. To help employees who can't or prefer not to live at Anacostia-Bolling, a housing office has contracts with 120 apartment buildings for rooms at lower rates, only four of which are in the District.

All of D.C.'s military installations are closed off to the city to some extent. You can't just wander onto the 272-acre Armed Forces Retirement Home. Walter Reed Army Medical Center closed itself off to casual visitors after September 11, 2001. The Navy Yard is also closed to the public, and has only hesitatingly opened up its riverfront to connect to Yards Park.

And as much as JBAB brass might want to reach out, they're limited in the degree to which they can become an economic engine for the city. At the Ward 8 Community Summit a few weeks ago, I chatted with some of the JBAB officials about that problem.

"What's not well known is that Captain Calandra is like the landlord of an office park, and the tenants in that park don't really work for him," said Naval District Washington corporate information officer John Imparato, referring to users like the highly-secure Defense Intelligence Agency and the White House Communications office. "We provide services to our tenants, but they have a mission. We can't tell them how to hire. It's like if you have an apartment, and you want to paint a wall, the landlord is limited in what he is allowed to tell you. You can't put holes in the wall, but you can certainly put a carpet down."

"I think a better parallel would be a shopping plaza," added Calandra. "I own the plaza, but I don't account for the hiring practices of the individual stores in the plaza."

The very Pleasantville-esque townhouse section.

So of course, District politicians and officials can't have unrealistic expectations of their military neighbors. But they can ask for as much cooperation as possible on transportation, communication about available jobs, and any measures that would encourage employees to live in the communities surrounding their workplace. From the talk, at least, JBAB is willing to meet them half way.

"Experts in the Military Cut!"

One of the two chid development centers, which enroll 668 children between them.

The food court, one of several eating options on base.

Gentrification fighter for life. (Darrow Montgomery)

Oh, Marion.

Despite all his talk about bringing economic development east of the river, Councilmember Marion Barry is planning to introduce legislation tomorrow that would actually forbid new apartment buildings in his ward. It's a very short bill, stating simply: "No District of Columbia government agency shall issue any permit for the construction of any apartment buildings in Ward 8," unless they're already underway.

So... why cut apartment buildings, arguably the biggest growth sector in the U.S. construction industry, out of the housing plan for a depressed area?

According to Barry, it's all about encouraging homeownership, which stands at only 24 percent of residents in Ward 8. Instead of developing apartment buildings, he wants to get all the boarded-up houses renovated and occupied, with city-subsidized home loans to help people buy them. Because it's homeowners, not renters, who help improve the area.

"Renters, by their very nature, don't keep up their neighborhoods like homeowners would," Barry tells me. "Renters will allow drug dealers in the neighborhood. It's a fact. It's a doggone fact."

And he's not buying all this Richard Florida bullshit about flexibility in housing being the key to economic progress.

"The American dream is to own a home. And black people have not gotten the American dream as much as they need to," Barry says. "Somebody can rent for 20 years, and has no equity in their unit at all."

"I've thought about this," Barry finishes. "It's not a kneejerk reaction."

Dix Street and Eastern Avenue. (Lydia DePillis)

There are few reasons to go to Dix Street NE, far on the city's northeastern border. It's got a handful of small churches, some nice parks, and some industrial warehouses that may or may not be vacant. Though inhabited, it feels empty, with only a few dubious-looking carryouts and liquor stores in the way of commerce.

But local real estate players have big hopes for the dormant main street. Already, construction is underway and units are selling at Eden Place, a 63-unit townhouse development priced according to income and family size. UrbanMatters, a development partner on Eden Place, also plans to build 39 affordable units on 62nd Street, using land sold by the District last year. Beulah Baptist Church owns a chunk of land between 59th and 60th Streets, and wants to attract retail to help the area become a neighborhood-serving commercial hub—as recommended by the Office of Planning in a small area plan completed three years ago. 

Perhaps the biggest thing the little neighborhood has going for it, though, is the planned development of a Walmart blocks away on land owned by the District of Columbia Housing Authority. While the other three planned locations have generated some resistance, there's been little action in Ward 7 other than an ongoing effort to negotiate a community benefits package with the developer. The infusion of retail would bolster the case for living in an area where the nearest substantial grocery store is in Maryland. As things stand, sales at the Glenncrest development across the street from the Walmart lot have slowed to a trickle—in a city with as much need for housing as D.C., there are still about 50 units left.

Of course, Walmarts historically haven't been great for local main streets.

But with next to nothing there now, more retail could lead to increased residential density that would support the kinds of businesses that don't compete with Walmart and add to quality of life. It's the kind of opportunity that Marion Barry's Ward 8, with a Walmart plunking down just south of the D.C. border near National Harbor, will likely never get.

Walmart incoming!

To the barricades! (Nick DeSantis)

There’s a knock-down, drag-out fight inthe Wilson Building over redistricting, and politically active residents are incensed that they’ll be moved from one ward to another.

“For some, this may seem a logical, easy solution,” says a member of one affected Advisory Neighborhood Commission. “I call it racial gerrymandering and believe it is detrimental to east of the river and to the city as a whole.”

Faced with petition drives and squads of citizen lobbyists, councilmembers plead with residents to accept the changes, saying that political boundaries don’t have much of an impact on how most people live their lives.

“It is not the end of the world,” the D.C. Council chairman insists. “We will still have the same alliances. We will still have the same friendships… All of us need to be one D.C.”

That was 2001.

Then as now, the city was going through the Census-mandated process of redrawing its political boundaries, and Wards 7 and 8—having lost population in proportion to the rest of the city over the previous decade—needed to gain territory. Then-Council Chairwoman Linda Cropp saw the east-of-the-river pieces of Ward 6 as the most logical places to transfer, incensing residents who felt that having a ward span the Anacostia River was essential for the city’s civic life. They said the same thing ten years before that, in 1991, when then-Ward 6 Councilmember Harold Brazil raised a tidal wave of resistance to a plan that would absorb historic Anacostia into Ward 8. That time, he won.

In 2011, the most pitched battle is again on the banks of the Anacostia, with Ward 6 Councilmember Tommy Wells seeking to protect his southern and eastern flanks from encroachment by even more shrunken Wards 7 and 8. Current and former residents of Ward 6 have responded by mobbing community meetings and rallies and deluging members of the redistricting committee with calls and emails, demanding that greater Capitol Hill be kept together.

To hear them talk, ward boundaries are ten-foot-high brick walls over which residents can’t socialize, shop, or coordinate community activities. At a town hall a couple weeks ago, a woman who had moved to eastern Capitol Hill from Kingman Park—which was redistricted into Ward 7 last time around—started tearing up as she imagined the prospect of being kicked out of Club 6 yet again. “Nobody ever came to see us. We were left alone,” she said, of her time in Ward 7. “It’s so frustrating that you want to do that to us.”

This decennial anguish, of course, belies the fact that ward boundaries don’t actually mean much, unless you’re redrawing them. Historically, they’ve dictated residential parking zones, but the council is working to change that. According to Washington D.C. Association of Realtors president Suzanne Des Marais, there’s no discernable affect on property values from being in one ward or another. And meanwhile, the borders that really do matter—historic districts, police districts, and school districts—aren’t affected one bit.

So why does anyone care what ward they’re in?

Most fundamentally, it’s about the virtues of the person who represents you. That’s what you voted for, after all—unless, of course, you’re among the 78 percent of District residents who didn’t care enough about municipal representation to turn out for last September’s primary election, a figure low enough to raise the question of whether anyone cares what ward they’re in, or knows. D.C. is a city of neighborhoods, and that’s the main geographic layer residents identify with.

Still, your ward councilmember can be the ultimate level of appeal for disputes that need resolving, roads that need fixing, and taxes that need abating—constituent service, after all, is the lifeblood of local politics. (Naturally, councilmembers became a lot less useful when earmarks were banned).

Which means many of the arguments from Ward 6 residents for staying in Tommy territory had to do with how attentive he’s been to their daily needs, and how councilmembers Marion Barry or Yvette Alexander might be less eager to oblige.

“I call up Tommy three or four times, he gets it done like that,” one man told redistricting committee member Phil Mendelson at a community meeting. “Two or three days, no problem. Sell me on the services that I’m going to get from Ward 7.”

That’s fair enough. But Wells knows that his constituents’ loyalty—or their aversion to the alternatives—wouldn’t go far with those in charge of redrawing the map. After all, the answer to the complaint, “I don’t like my councilmember,” is the same no matter what ward you’re in: Work to vote them out. So along with parking issues, he asked them to keep their dislike for Barry or Alexander out of their lobbying, and focus instead on their feeling of togetherness. “I really think it’s who you identify with,” Wells said. “You don’t identify as being a suburb of that neighborhood. You identify as being contiguous with these neighborhoods.”

But what does that mean?

You identify with the places you shop and eat. Maybe you spend lots of time on Barracks Row and H Street, and would like to have some small measure of influence over how it develops, perhaps through activity on an ANC. But say you live 10 blocks away, and all of a sudden don’t belong to Ward 6. Will you all of a sudden be completely voiceless? Hyperlocal government should consider the views of those within a reasonable radius, even if their address isn’t on the right side of the line. If government agencies don’t, business and civic associations are much more forgiving.

You identify with the school your kids go to. Wells used the popular Eastern High School and Eliot Hine Middle School as rallying points, saying that the schools in Ward 6 had developed a unique working relationship with each other that would dissolve if they got booted off his turf. But no matter how the political lines get drawn, no voter’s kids will be forced to switch schools. Can Wells possibly have that much more influence than the school chancellor’s choice of principals, or the degree of parental involvement? And besides, shouldn’t clusters of schools be working across ward boundaries, anyway?

Perhaps your concern lies with something that isn’t built yet, like the 67-acre mixed-use neighborhood that’s supposed to rise on the site of D.C. General Hospital and the buildings around it. Residents of eastern Capitol Hill have pushed for development there for years, and fear all that work will be wasted if they’re suddenly no longer in the same ward. But whether development moves forward has much more to do with the priorities of the mayor and the guy who chairs the Committee on Economic Development, and attractiveness of the site for financing and tenants, than the ward councilmember; development follows the demographics of a neighborhood, and whether the people behind it think they can make money, not the politician who represents it.

Most of all, though, you identify with the people you say “hi” to on the street, the church you attend, the parks where you picnic, the friends’ houses you visit. As much as Wells has worked to foster a sense of community, those bonds know no ward boundaries—but they do tend break down more along racial and socioeconomic lines. And a lurking presence in every redistricting discussion is the degree to which people don’t want to have anything to do with the other people over there.

That means that like many disputes in D.C., there’s a race and class element to the ward fight—even if it doesn’t fall out the way many of them do. Gladys Mack, the ANC commissioner from Rosedale who is protesting the plan to put her district in Ward 7, admits this: She’s the only black person on the commission, and says that redistricting would put her mostly black constituents into an almost entirely black ward, which does nothing for racial understanding.

“We have a mixture. It’s not all one view,” she says, of her neighborhood. “Whites don’t learn from whites, blacks don’t learn from blacks. Poor don’t learn from poor, rich don’t learn from rich.”

—

If there is any positive value to havingdiverse groups in one ward, asking people on both sides of the river to work together can’t hurt. That’s what residents of Chevy Chase found out after being redistricted against their will from posh, white Ward 3 into predominantly middle-class, African American Ward 4, which is mostly on the other side of Rock Creek Park. ANC Commissioner Gary Thompson says it’s been “refreshing” to stretch past that historically inviolate social boundary. And despite the apocalyptic rhetoric of a decade ago, the only way to know which parts of the Barnaby Woods neighborhood are in Ward 3 or in Ward 4 while wandering the area is to look at whose campaign signs are posted.

The redistricting committee tried to build some connections, by putting enough of Ward 6 into Ward 7 that whoever represents Ward 7 won’t be able to ignore the turf west of the river. That seems like a better solution than annexing pieces of Ward 5, which have even more green space and fewer bridges to cross from one side of the river to another.

Still, those about to be redistricted are dead-set against it, despite Mendelson’s protestations that they shouldn’t be. Which raises the question: Should the line-drawers care? Should simply demonstrating a desire to be in one ward or another be enough to get you there, even if it’s based on affinity for a given councilmember, instead of more nebulous arguments about neighborhood cohesiveness?

Well, yes and no. After all, during redistricting, councilmembers get to choose whom they represent. In a democracy, people are supposed to be able to choose who represents them. Obviously, the law itself is a built-in check on redistricting-as-popularity-contest. The more people who move to a given ward, the more territory that ward will have to lose next time around.

Maybe instead of balancing wards as perfectly as possible, the committee should try to move as little territory as necessary to keep wards about the same population. Why split more people up from their elected officials than required by law? Equal representation is important, of course, but only to a point: Practically speaking, having more or less of a fraction of a councilmember’s attention matters a whole lot less than being suddenly represented by someone you never voted for.

But should the groups that come out and yell loudest to stay in one ward or another be obeyed? Not if they make arguments like the ones I heard most often during meeting after meeting after meeting. It’s nice to feel like part of the club, but in this case, membership matters a lot less than it seems.

Jack Evans has HAD IT with raising your taxes.

Committee on Finance and Revenue chairman Jack Evans rejected a host of the Mayor's proposals on Thursday, calling it "inconceivable" that the District could raise taxes while proposing a $10.82 billion budget–the largest in its history. Offering deep cuts to social services as the only alternative, he said in yesterday's committee meeting, was a false choice.

"I don't know whose in charge, but whoever's in charge is doing an abysmal job, that we are spending that amount of money and being presented with these social issues," Evans said, calling the hike-taxes-or-put-homeless-people-on-the-streets narrative a "Washington Monument" strategy:  "Put the worst things out there, scare everybody, and maybe they'll do what we want. I find that to be a very very unprofessional approach."

Accordingly, his committee's report–which passed over Councilmembers Marion Barry and Michael Brown's objections–does the following:

• Rejects the Exemptions and Abatements Information Requirement Act of 2011, which would require an economic analysis of all proposed tax breaks and an annual report detailing the progress of the developments that received them. Groups like the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute have argued that this is the only way to make sure tax incentives are well-spent, but Evans' committee says the bill's benefits aren't worth the $1.15 million it would cost to implement over four years, which bill sponsor Michael Brown thought was ridiculous. Evans plans to introduce a Tax Commission that would look at incentives as well as "revenue enhancements."
• Repeals combined reporting, if sufficient money can be identified in next quarter's revised revenue estimate to cover the $22.6 million in new taxes the budget anticipates to collect by requiring multi-state corporations to pay income tax on the revenue they make in the District, rather than shifting it around. Which is odd, considering that Evans was for the measure in March.
• Rolls back parking meter increases, an increase in the parking garage tax from 12 percent to 18 percent, limitations on itemized deductions, a new income tax bracket for those making more than $200,000, a six-percent tax on live theater ticket sales, and employer standard deduction withholding (read the report if you want to know what that is). Getting rid of all these taxes would cost $119.48 million*–out of the $127 million total package of proposed hikes–and is subject to revised revenue estimates that show an increase of at least that much.
• That said, the committee was fine with imposing a 36-cent-per-pack wholesale surcharge on cigarettes, a franchise tax, and a few other things that aren't worth explaining.
• The committee also wants to restore the Ballpark Community Benefits Fund and the Neighborhood Investment Fund, and keep the Circulator fares at $1 per ride.

All this will get hashed out in a televised Council roundtable session on Monday morning–tune in!

* Updated to reflect repeal of parking garage tax.

Battleground D.C. (GGWash)

UPDATED BELOW Saturday, 11:20 a.m.

As a Census-mandated vote on redistricting the city's ward boundaries vote looms, Tommy Wells has a PR strategy for keeping his territory intact in the face of an attempted land grab by Marion Barry. The important part: Don't make it about Marion Barry.

“With Ward 6, with how well it’s working, the real principle is keeping contiguous neighborhoods together,” he told a group at Arthur Capper Senior Homes on Wednesday, when someone asked what their talking points should be. “I think that’s got to be our message to the council. It’s not about parking stickers, it’s not about personalities of councilmembers, it has everything to do with why our ward is working so well.”

But really Tommy: How much do ward boundaries, in themselves, affect “neighborhood continuity?”

School boundaries aren’t affected. Neither are police districts, or historic districts (someone actually asked about those at another redistricting meeting last night). Nothing’s stopping you from living in one ward and going to church in another. It’s quite possible to organize community events across ward boundaries. Councilmember Phil Mendelson is emphatic that wards don’t affect property values; moving a piece of Chevy Chase from Ward 3 to Ward 4 made no noticeable difference. Wells touted the fact that the Ward 6 ANCs are some of the best-functioning in the city, and work together very well—but why couldn’t they still work well together if one were in another ward? ANCs are largely autonomous bodies; there’s no inherent reason why ANC 6A couldn’t work with 5B as well as it can with 6B. The Ward 6 exceptionalism argument just doesn’t hold.

What ward boundaries do affect: Parking, since residential parking permit policy is decided on a ward-by-ward basis. Also, membership in political clubs, like the Ward 6 Democrats.

Most critically, though, they affect who represents you. And that’s the real reason why border neighborhoods like Near Southeast, Rosedale, Hill East, and Near Southeast are adamantly opposed to leaving Ward 6 for Wards 7 or 8. The Ward Sixers who turned out to last night’s meeting adore Wells, to the point where people asked why the ward populations had to be evened out at all (the answer: Not doing so would be unconstitutional).

“I’m willing to make that sacrifice, and dilute my vote in order to stay in Ward 6,” one lady declared.

But the Wells lovefest is only one side of this story. The other is an intense aversion to Barry, which manifests itself as disinterest in reaching across the river for any reason, and arguments that the Ward 6 "community" is intrinsically and insolubly different from whatever's over there in Barry territory.

It would be a “real travesty” if we have to “mix with Ward 8,” one guy said. “We hope and we wish for success for Ward 8, but they’re not there yet.” The whole crowd yelled in assent at statements that the Anacostia was a barrier that shouldn’t be breached—at least on their end of it. One woman even said she would kill herself if she were made to live under Barry. (Of course, there’s not much love for Ward 7 either. “I know two people there,” said one woman, who lives on the border. “What do Ward 7’s businesses have to do with where I am?”)

Given the outcry, it seems unlikely that Barry will get a big chunk of Ward 6. The “contiguousness” and “compactness” criteria for redistricting create a strong case for pulling all of Fairlawn into Ward 8, which would bring it up to the right number. Ward 7 would then need to cross the river into Ward 5, potentially around the Arboretum. Those neighborhoods haven’t made as much of a ruckus about wanting to stick with Harry Thomas. (Thomas says he’s going to start making a ruckus about it himself, promising to organize meetings with his constituents similar to those held in Ward 6. “I think it’s irresponsible for him to try to deflect it to another ward,” Thomas said, of Wells. “It’s unfortunate that he’s engaging in a political attack, when to me the response is, he has the ward that has the growth, and because of that growth, he should be the ward that’s affected.”)

Does Barry actually think his bid for a piece of river west will succeed? Who knows. But whether or not it does, Ward 6’s unwillingness to be annexed into Barryland is already creating ugly rhetoric about why Ward 6 should have nothing to do with river east—which Wells, in his effort to avoid personally maligning a colleague, doesn't tamp down. I doubt those arguments would be as vehement if Ward 8 were represented by someone who didn't strike such visceral fear in the hearts of greater Capitol Hill people as Barry.

—–

UPDATE, Saturday, 11:20 a.m. –

Wells called to make a case for why ward boundaries are more than just political—as Mendelson, who as an at-large councilmember might not have as good a sense of these things, repeatedly argued. For one thing, there are ward education councils, and Wells says Ward 6's has banded together to create a cohesive plan for their middle schools. For another, ward-specific "public affinity groups" like political clubs are actually important, because they define the boundaries of civic engagement. Finally, pots of money for some things—like alley repaving, for example—are divided up on a ward basis, and if you're not on board with the ward's in-crowd, you might get the short end of the stick.

"Unfortunately, at times, community influence on the allocation of public resources makes a difference," Wells notes.

At the Arthur Capper meeting, he'd spoken of the disadvantage of being split off from a ward's political power center.

"We can not have ANC commissioners that are substantially removed from Ward 6 making decisions about zoning and other issues that directly impact the neighborhoods that are closer in," Wells said. "And that’s another reason why we can’t be balkanized."

"The councilmember wants you to know that he supports whatever the community wants," said Richardson.

"But," she continued, "he doesn't want to see the streetcar go past the Anacostia Metro station. He'd rather see all that money go to education." This had the majority of those gathered at Matthews Memorial Baptist Church standing up and cheering.

The reaction to Richardson's statement is a good summary of how many folks at Saturday's meeting seemed to feel about the forthcoming Anacostia streetcar line—that is, they either don't want it running where DDOT has anticipated it would run, or do not want it at all. And, there's still plenty of confusion about how the streetcar will come to be; it's not likely that money slated for the streetcar could be rerouted to education anyway, especially given DDOT's intention to secure federal funding for the project.

Saturday's forum—required by the federal National Environmental Policy Act—was a follow-up to a previous public meeting held in January, at which many attendees expressed displeasure with the proposed alignment along Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue SE. In response, DDOT spent Saturday morning doing their best to demonstrate why the streetcar would be good for Anacostia (which came down to the rather boilerplate talking point of "economic development") and discussing 10 potential alignments in small-group sessions.

All 10 plans (which will be posted online this week) have the streetcar running in the area between the 11th Street Bridge and the Anacostia Metro station and are variations on alignments along the CSX tracks, Railroad Avenue, Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue SE, 14th Street SE, or 13th Street SE. In some cases, the lines are split, so that inbound and outbound streetcars would run parallel but not side-by-side.

Many concerns came to light in Housing Complex's small group, not the least of which was that the streetcars were being built not for residents of Anacostia and nearby neighborhoods, but for "outsiders"—which seemed to mean Department of Homeland Security employees, commuters (whether affiliated with DHS or not), and potential new residents.

While there is no way to tell precisely who will be riding the streetcar until it is built, the alignment options drawn up by DDOT do appear to cater more toward Anacostia's residents than commuters or DHS employees. Most do not run west of the Metro station, in the direction of the St. Elizabeths campus.

Other concerns addressed by the audience included the impact on local businesses, especially with regard to loading and unloading merchandise; whether the streetcar will increase traffic in Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue, which is already fairly congested with buses and cars; whether on-street parking will disappear; and what a ride on the streetcar would actually cost.

Despite the apparent skepticism, DDOT thinks there is support for the streetcar. "Although many members of the community are 'skeptical' or have concerns about the project, there are many members in the community that are also interested and excited about the project," wrote project manager Circe Torruellas in a follow-up email. "This is what makes the planning process so interesting and exciting. What the NEPA process allows is for a space for them to come together and discuss these concerns and desires in order to help inform the decision making process on which one is the preferred alternative (be it no build or one of the streetcar alternatives)."

Within the next several months, DDOT will come up with a "locally preferred alternative", taking into account environmental, historic preservation, and traffic studies among other analyses. The Federal Transit Administration makes the final determination, and will consider community comments as part of its decision–which means DDOT will need all the charm it can muster.