Preview: ANC 5D October 2020 Meeting

There is an Advisory Neighborhood Commission meeting tonight on Zoom, starting at 7pm. On the website, find the calendar on the sidebar and click on "ANC 5D Public Meeting" for the Zoom link. Here is the Agenda, which is subject to change. These are some bullet point notes for ahead of the meeting, but they may not be correct after the meeting itself, which I’ll recap tomorrow.

• D.C. native, civil rights icon and non-voting Delegate to the US House Eleanor Holmes Norton (above) will be dropping in. There’s no information about why, but she’s running again (as she has every two years since 1990) and leading the fight for statehood in congress.

#ANC5D will be hosting @EleanorNorton this month for an important conversation about her work in Congress and answering questions. Please join us online or via phone. https://t.co/tjdPD1UyAF

— Sydelle Moore (@sydellebelle) October 6, 2020

• After this there are only two more meetings with this group of commissioners, which has dwindled down to four at most meetings, barely making a necessary quorum. Next term, Moore and Blacknell are the only commissioners running for re-election (although two former commissioners, Henderson and Butler, are running), so things could look and run substantially different. Notably, tonight the ANC votes on a budget for the next fiscal year, which will impact the next group.
  
  
• The ANC is making use of their new consent calendar, which is a slate of voting items they review in advance and vote on all at once in the meeting, to speed things up. But it can be a little unclear what everything is if you’re hearing about it for the first time at the meeting, so here are the items:

1. Asking DDOT for a traffic study on 19th Street between Benning Road and M Street.
2. Asking DDOT to make the 1900 block of H Street local parking only.
3. Asking DDOT to put up a “DEAD END” sign at the alley entrance behind the 1900 block of H Street.
4. Contracting a virtual assistant company for the ANC.
5. Changing Atlas Brew Works’ alcohol license from brewer to retailer.
6. Approving an alcohol license application for the rooftop of Union Market.

• There are a number of other voting actions scheduled, including several requests for grants. A couple of the presenters from the September meeting are back with itemized requests. In recent months the ANC has approved some grants, but it’s still sitting on nearly $100,000. Some commissioners are eager to approve any reasonable request and others are urging patience to wait and see how much allocated expenses (like funding some violence interruption efforts) are going to actually cost.
  
  
• Will a MPD officer log on? In recent months the appearance of police representatives has been inconsistent. Commissioners have debated resolutions about changing the police budget while also requesting more enforcement and availability.

• Commissioner Moore said last meeting that the ANC would not be making time for candidates to campaign, but noted that anyone can speak during Community Feedback & Questions at the end. I look forward to hearing from candidates who take one minute (maximum) to introduce themselves.

More tomorrow after the meeting!

Photo courtesy of Tim Evanson through a Creative Commons license.