ANC5C meeting

agenda

links to some groups that were on agenda

i went to the first anc5c meeting of the year tuesday night. it was amazing to see that we got out at 9 pm. i went to a few dupont circle anc meetings back when i lived over there in anc2b, and there were times when the meetings ran for nearly 5 hours. of course, we didn't cover all the of the things listed in the full agenda for this meeting (only really got to item seven), but what was covered was handled well.

the officers were elected as follows:

chair: Anita Bonds
vice chair: John Salatti
treasurer: Allison Defoe
financial secretary: Barrie Daneker
recording secretary: Silas H. Grant, Jr.
corresponding secretary: Kris Hammond
in addition, Marshall R. Phillips, Sr. was chosen as parlimentarian, Mary Lois Farmer-Allen was chosen to be the historian, and Derrick Holloway was selected to be the sergeant-at-arms.

the only election that was truly contested was that for vice-chair, where Marshall Phillips, John Salatti, Derrick Holloway, and Barrie Daneker ran, and after one round of voting, Phillips and Salatti were tied. in the second round of voting, salatti won 6-5, with chairperson Bonds casting the deciding vote.

presentations from Michael Henderson of the MPD, councilman Harry Thomas, Jr., Pat McGuire of Trinity University, Heather Deutsch from Rails-to-Trails, and Larry Williamson from a WASA subcontractor were all pretty well received. i won't go into depth, as i'm sure more information will be found about these presentations elsewhere.

as we were approaching 9 pm at this point, and many people were getting up and leaving the meeting, the last presentation was given by Alice Thompson, the neighborhood services coordinator appointed by mayor Fenty. Ms. Thompson was certainly animated, and talked a good talk. i have to admit, i was quite concerned with some of her glib assertions though.

she promised that speed cameras would be coming for every block of north capitol from new york avenue up to michigan avenue. a citizen of bloomingdale asked why R, S, and Seaton have brick sidewalks while Randolph does not. Ms. Thompson quickly promised to look into brick sidewalks for Randolph. she even said she'd be interested in brick sidewalks herself. some of the ANC members were visibly concerned with Ms. Thompson's promises of quick results on many of these issues.

interestingly enough, as the meeting wrapped up, Ms. Thompson came back to talk to the Randolph Place resident about brick sidewalks, and she admitted that she didn't care for brick sidewalks, because she said the city does a poor job maintaining them.

i was a little concerned with Ms. Thompson's demeanor at this meeting. though some of the things she promised went over quite well with people, she seemed to be promising to do things that she wanted (she claimed as much a couple times) without getting wider community input. to his credit, Mr. Phillips made sure to admonish her a couple times that she has many other constituents that she should make sure to consult first.

the remaining items were skipped over. the amount of chatter in the room was so great at this point, that, with me sitting in the back of the room, i couldn't hear what was going on up front. suffice it to say, i believe the rest of the agenda was postponed for the next month's meeting.

please comment if i got anything terribly wrong here.