Council ponders ’03 agenda

(Published January 27, 2003)

 

By ANDREW MOISAN

Staff Writer

The D.C. City Council has begun priming its legislative agenda as it enters a new two-year council period, which began Jan. 2, with issues ranging from police presence to voters’ rights topping its priorities.

The 13-member council plans to meet in late February to formally discuss its plans, and an official published copy of the agenda will be released shortly afterwards, said Mark Johnson, press secretary to council Chairman Linda W. Cropp.

Other issues on which council members said they plan to focus include education, affordable housing, development and health care. An informal survey of council members found that even those who represent one of the city’s eight wards say their objectives concern not only issues within their respective wards, but across the District.

Councilman Adrian Fenty, who represents Ward 4, said his top priorities for the next two years include improving schools, working to increase police presence and making progress on development issues.

Fenty, the youngest member of the council, was especially adamant about improving public schools throughout the city. He said he hopes that bettering schools will make residents feel more comfortable and encourage a greater sense of community.

Fenty didn’t offer a list of specific schools targeted for improvement, saying all schools in the city need some help.

“There is no parent here who says, ‘This is utopia,’” Fenty said.

Councilwoman Sandra Allen spoke of issues prevailing both citywide and in Ward 8, which she represents, and said she intends to focus on social service issues, such as homelessness, literacy and welfare.

“We need to ensure that there are steps needed to prepare those coming off of welfare for the real world,” Allen said.

Among Allen’s other top priorities are economic and community development.

“When you attract business, you attract jobs,” she said.

Allen, whose ward is one of two situated east of the Anacostia River, an area long defined by socioeconomic decay, wants also to bring amenities to deprived neighborhoods throughout the ward, such as sit-down restaurants, recreational facilities and grocery stores.

Though there are small, scattered stores from which residents can purchase groceries, Ward 8 remains devoid of a single supermarket akin to establishments such as Giant or Safeway.

Allen linked local real estate and commercial growth to an issue of almost uniform concern for many council members: police presence.

“If a person were about to buy a house, they’d want to know they had police protection,” Allen said. Both “people and businesses would benefit” from beefed-up policing, she said.

Councilman David Catania, one of four members elected at-large, said he is concerned about workforce development – specifically, job training – and homeownership and prescription drug issues.

Catania has been “working with legislators from other states on softening prices” of prescription medication, he said. Catania also continues to be one of the council’s major proponents of affordable, public health care.

Councilman Jack Evans said he aims to make dealing with financial matters his prime citywide objective over the next few years, while also focusing on issues in many of the neighborhoods in Ward 2, which he represents.

Evans chairs the council’s Committee on Finance and Revenue, which focuses on the city’s annual budget and financial plan and ensures the city has enough revenue to fund its budget.

Public safety concerns will also take precedence for Evans. Elaborating, he said he plans to stress improvement in a “whole arena” of police issues, such as increasing police presence throughout the city, cutting response times and curbing the city’s homicide rate.

The homicide rate in Washington, a city that was once called the nation’s “murder capital,” increased slightly in 2002, making it the highest it’s been since 1997, according to the Metropolitan Police Department. Homicides so far this year have maintained the same pace as last year at this time.

In Ward 2, Evans cited an array of objectives covering neighborhoods such as Shaw, where he wants to see the new Washington Convention Center completed “on time and on budget” in March. Also in Shaw, a neighborhood where Evans said crime is “difficult to deal with,” affordable housing will be a top priority.

In Logan Circle, another neighborhood in Ward 2, fixing abandoned housing and establishing plans to accommodate parking once the new convention center opens will keep Evans busy in a concentrated effort toward public service in his ward.

Councilman Phil Mendelson, another at-large member, said progress in education, voters’ rights, utility regulations and labor issues will be of prime importance to him for the next two years.

In regard to voters’ rights, Mendelson expressed apprehension, saying, “I’m not optimistic that we’ll make big strides, but we have to make progress.”

Blurring partisan lines, Democrat Mendelson said he doubts the Republican-controlled White House or Capitol Hill will be any more sympathetic toward the voters’ rights issue than most Democrats have been in the past.

In what he called a “successful strategy,” Mendelson asserted that national attention to voters’ rights in the District might be the catalyst needed to push the issue into the forefront of legislative concerns.

“Not many people know that D.C. doesn’t have voting rights,” he said.

Efforts to reach Chairman Cropp, At-Large council members Harold Brazil and Carol Schwartz, Ward 1 Councilman Jim Graham, Ward 3 Councilwoman Kathy Patterson, Ward 5 Councilman Vincent Orange, Ward 6 Councilwoman Sharon Ambrose, and Ward 7 Councilman Kevin Chavous were unsuccessful.

“There’s a lot going on in the city, and these are very difficult economic times,” Evans noted. “We need to make sure people have their wits about them.”

 

Copyright 2003, The Common Denominator