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Articles
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| My, how time flies ... ! |
VOICE writes, "My, how time flies ... !
BY TOM SHERWOOD
And we're not even talking about all the kids who had to go back to school after a too-quick summer.
We're talking about Mayor Adrian Fenty.
It was a year ago that Fenty swept to his convincing primary victory in the mayor's race over then D.C. Council Chairman Linda Cropp. A year ago! Doesn't it seem more like six or seven months?
A lot has happened since then.
Mayor Fenty settled into a studio chair last week at Washington Post Radio. That station is going off the air soon — too few listen to it — but Mayor Fenty was ready to talk about the past year and what's next. "
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For nearly an hour, your Notebook and WTOP reporter Mark Segraves fired questions at the mayor, covering nearly 20 topics of all sorts.
He said he's looking forward to council public hearings on how much he's paying his top officials. And he said he'd meet soon with Redskins owner Dan Snyder to talk about maybe having the team build a new stadium at the site of RFK once baseball moves.
Here are a dozen other quick-hit topics for all you folks who weren't listening:
1. The mayor said he's heard enough media reports that some female firefighters may be acting as prostitutes to take the need for an investigation seriously.
"The firefighters who are out there doing their hard work are the first ones who want us to expose these bad apples," Fenty said, hinting that background checks on firefighters will get tougher.
2. Fenty said his decision to kill government e-mails after six months stemmed from technical issues rather than an effort to hide stuff.
The choice really riled up reporter Segraves, who likes to file Freedom of Information Act requests. "You did this with no public hearings, with no input from the public," Segraves fumed.
The mayor said he could reconsider the issue but didn't commit to it.
3. Fenty replaced Police Chief Charles Ramsey as soon as he took office, but the mayor said he'd have no problem recommending Ramsey for the open police job in Baltimore.
4. The mayor is not certain if, when or where the D.C. police department is going to move its headquarters. But he said he's going full-steam ahead with relocating the 1st District's headquarters in Southwest — at least temporarily — to make room for construction of a desperately needed forensics lab.
5. Fenty doesn't think the city could get away with putting tollbooths on city bridges, but he did say he would like to see some sort of commuter tax on suburban-dwelling downtown workers if the Congress ever gets around to it. And he said his Department of Transportation is looking at a "congestion tax" in some parts of downtown, but he is nowhere close to deciding whether it's a good idea.
6. Fenty supported the citywide ban on smoking in public places. The law allows affected businesses to ask for exemptions, but Fenty said none has reached his desk so far.
7. Fenty said the first week of schools went pretty well (and there was only scattered criticism of him in media reports).
8. He said the city is constantly trying to improve its emergency-response capability, but "so much of it depends on the nature of the attack."
9. The mayor promised to pay some attention to a D.C. Appleseed report that deadbeat dads are a real problem in the District. Appleseed says the answer is job training and jobs for dads because they want to pay child support but just can't.
10. Fenty said he will decide by October whether the city will get meters in city cabs, but first he wants to poll cab drivers, among others.
11. The city may decide to privatize the D.C. Lottery in exchange for a big, upfront payment. That's still under discussion, the mayor said.
12. He said he has cut back his security detail and often drives himself (as he did to the radio station) because he knows the city and has been driving since he was 16. "That's what I'm used to."
• A bridge not that far. There was great news this past week for commuters who use the South Capitol Street Bridge — also known as the Frederick Douglass Bridge. All 77,000 drivers who traverse the bridge each day could blow their horns in praise because the bridge is open again.
Kudos to the D.C. Department of Transportation, its engineers, workers and contractors who got the project done swiftly and — everyone hopes — well.
South Capitol Street is now on the way to becoming a distinctive boulevard instead of the industrial route it's been in the past. The revitalized bridge and roadway are bound to open up both Southeast and Southwest Washington to new eyes that see the potential for a lively in-town community that includes the new ballpark.
"In just two months, the entire look and feel of the neighborhood where the Douglass Bridge touches down has been transformed for the better," Mayor Fenty said in a statement. "Much more work remains ahead, but [the] reopening signals the rebirth of the South Capitol Street corridor as a grand urban boulevard."
A lot of the street work — including new curbs, sidewalks and trees — should be in place by April of next year, just in time for the stadium opening.
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Posted on Sep 12, 2007 21:43pm.
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