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EDITORIAL
Where are we headed?
(Published March 8, 2004)

The Williams administration’s focus on neighborhoods for planning and service delivery has helped instill new pride among residents of many long-neglected sections of the city.

That’s a good thing.

But in many ways, this focus on "neighborhood action" – without a companion vision of Washington as a unified community – has fostered a myopic view of residents’ place in the city. Little emphasis is placed on the "big picture" when residents at neighborhood meetings are asked continually to draw parochial lines that fail to consider the impact of their decisions on the rest of the city.

And that’s a bad thing. It’s also a self-serving attitude that assumes taxpayers’ dollars matter only in their own back yard.

Six years ago, when this newspaper was founded in the midst of calls for new political leadership, The Common Denominator described Washington as "a city in desperate need of a leader" and decried "years of broken promises, mismanagement and cronyism." An editorial published on Aug. 24, 1998, called for a new mayor "who has learned how to build coalitions … to bring together the [District’s] many constituencies" and observed that "the distance between most residents of Ward 3 and Ward 8 remains shamefully unbridged."

Six years later, those observations remain largely valid.

Washington has changed tremendously since Anthony A. Williams took over as mayor in 1999. But whether that overall change has been positive or negative for D.C. residents depends greatly upon where people live.

And the gap to be bridged between the city’s haves and have-nots seems to be growing wider, as housing becomes less affordable each year even to upper-middle-income families. As longtime residents are priced out of the city by rising rents and higher taxes, the community is – bit by bit – losing its soul. Many residents who supported long-awaited "economic development" in their neighborhoods are now starting to feel the "community" within their neighborhoods slip away.

Mayor Williams and the D.C. City Council need to chart a clear course for where they are leading the 570,000 residents of this city – a course that recognizes and serves the community’s needs as a whole.

Perhaps the only clear picture of where the city is headed has been presented to the public in terms of economics and real estate. However, political leaders – who must face the voters – need to recognize that a balanced budget and beautiful structures alone do not build community.

People build communities, and it is the responsibility of political leaders to create policies that help the people sustain and improve their community. Displacement of thousands of D.C. residents during the past few years should disturb city leaders. But the apparent lack of any "cradle-to-grave" philosophy behind policy-making by the Williams administration and the current city council calls into question whom they are serving.

It’s inaccurate to say that D.C. political leaders have no vision for the city’s future, but their vision is decidedly blurred.