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Georgetown schools to spruce-up on Beautification Day

Saturday, August 21 2010, from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m Serve DC and the DC Public Schools will hold DCPS Beautification Day 2010. DCPS  welcomes volunteers for landscaping, trash pickup, planting flowers and other external beautification efforts.  

You still can volunteer to work at our local schools or other schools across the District:

• Hardy Middle School--1819 35th St. NW
• Francis Stevens Education Campus -- 2425 N St. NW
• Hyde Addison Elementary School -- 3219 O St. NW

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He's not there . . .

Eighty to a 100 people crowded into Busboys & Poets last night to hear incumbent and Mayor Adrian Fenty and his opponent Council Chair Vincent Gray present their positions on Green issues. However, there was no Fenty, no green-clad volunteers with clipboards and no Fenty spokesperson inside or outside the restaurant.  For reasons unexplained by Fenty, he chose not to schedule this forum.  Perhaps the topic – Sustainable and Local Business – was less important than a forum or meeting conducted elsewhere at the same time for the absent Fenty.  But for whatever reason, Fenty gave Gray an uncontested stage on which to talk directly and convincingly to voters about his policy positions on green transportation, Smart Growth and effective support of green businesses.  

Gray took a luxurious 12 uninterrupted minutes to explain how the District, the only urban “state” in the union, is a leader in green laws, including requiring new construction to meet LEED standards. Then he hit softball after softball question out of the park.  There was no one there to respond to Gray’s statement that Fenty had raided the energy trust fund to meet other District needs, an action that Gray said he would never take as mayor. Similarly, there was no candidate there to challenge Gray’s explanation of his support of a controversial streetcar system, which he said would become a well planned transportation option in his administration.

Last night’s forum planners say that they proposed several dates and gave over a month’s notice when they invited Fenty to participate. The forum joins a growing list of campaign events the Mayor has failed to accept and has left Gray uncontested access to large blocks of voters. 

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Heavy rains spur sandbag offer from D.C.

The Department of Public Works announced Tuesday that District residents may pick up sandbags (up to four per household) at its New Jersey Avenue and K Street, SE site (entrance on New Jersey at I Street, SE).   The sandbags weigh between 40 lbs. and 50 lbs. and residents will need to load them into their vehicles.  Weather forecasters predicted rain storms starting around 9 pm Tuesday that could cause flooding. 
 

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Few Ward 2 voters switch parties – there are just more of them

Ward 2 voters held firmly to their party affiliations as the District's August 16th deadline for changing political parties came and went.  Interestingly, 1,946 new voters increased the Ward 2 roster without changing the percentages of party membership: there are still 65% Democrat voters versa 12% Republican, with the Statehood Greens, Independents and to a variety of minor parties filling in the difference.

Apparently voters across the District did do some switching in order to participate in the hotly contested mayoral democratic primary.  According to the Post, “Preliminary numbers showed that 2,068 voters who declared "no party," often dubbed independent, and 308 Republicans changed their affiliation to Democrat from January through Monday morning, according to the Board of Elections and Ethics. Several hundred members of the Statehood Green and other parties changed their affiliations, too.”

All this as a new study finds that Republicans Are Happier Than Democrats.

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