At last week's confirmation hearing for Historic Preservation Review Board nominees, preservation groups and hyperlocal elected officials—even the board's former chairman, Tersh Boasberg—lined up to support the appointment of Nancy Metzger, who's been the Capitol Hill Restoration Society's point person on preservation for 16 years now. She's a fierce advocate for historic districts around the [...]

Back in November, we heard that Mayor Vince Gray had finally nominated two people to stick around past their already-expired terms on the Historic Preservation Review Board and two more to fill pending vacancies. It was a relief, given that only two members of the nine-person board haven't had their terms expire.
Well, turns out two [...]

Yesterday, Councilmember and guardian-of-all-things-warm-and-fuzzy Tommy Wells held a marathon roundtable on urban agriculture in D.C., bringing folks from all over the city to describe how they cultivate their gardens. As precious as land is in D.C., there's actually still a lot of it that could be put to good use—the challenge is securing the right [...]

Earlier today, there was a fairly typical tiff in the Wilson Building: A councilmember wanted to make a constituent eligible for a tax abatement, and the bean counters pushed back. In this case, it was Tommy Wells who was trying to help out Safeway, which wanted its Southwest branch to be able to claim the [...]

Earlier this week, Councilmember Tommy Wells introduced legislation that would fundamentally alter the way Eastern Market operates. Pretty much everyone agrees that the change is necessary: Currently, the market is managed by the city, which can't respond quickly enough to funding and administrative needs that change day to day. Wells' bill would simply create a [...]

Elected officials don't have to be corrupt for citizens to lose confidence in them. They can sometimes just not have their priorities straight. Here are a couple examples from recent days:
1. Getting rid of a swath of special purpose funds. Michael Neibauer reported last week that the 2011 and 2012 budgets yanked more than $1.5 [...]

Well, leave it to Councilmember Tommy Wells to break the late night news: Scott Kubly, who has been in charge of the District Department of Transportation's Progressive Transportation Services Administration since 2009, is stepping down. Kubly is perhaps best known for his management of the streetcar, but his portfolio also includes the Circulator bus and [...]

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 [...]

As you may have realized, people in Ward 6—especially those east of 17th Street SE, which looks like the proposed dividing line—really, really do not want to be redistricted into another ward. So much so, in fact, that a number of them wondered why D.C. couldn’t just buck the constitutional principle of one man, one [...]

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 [...]