Response to someone flaming me on the DupontForum:
<<…Previously, Dupont didn’t have an open forum. An official BCCing his/her mailing list is a lot safer than one posting where anyone can reply-to-all. The fact is, a commissioner can blow off anything he or she chooses with very little chance at repercussions. My posting got the issue to the commissioner in whose district the issue is.
ANC commissioners don’t have any real power that each commissioner doesn’t carve out by forging personal, trusting, relationships with people who do have power. That anyone is willing to serve at all amazes me. I can count on one hand the number of people I know who have gotten some of those 34,000 city jobs from their ANC experience. Sure about 10 City Councilman were ANCs but about 1000 people have served on the ANC in the time that 10 had a step up
What I’d prefer to spend my time on is improving policy. I can’t fix every streetlight but I can tell DDoT what is wrong with their process for fixing them. I like to think of fixing potholes and chasing around drug dealers as what I have to do to learn how the system works so I can better tell department heads how to better do their jobs. Sometimes department heads appreciate that. Lots of them don’t. If anyone would like me to BCC them on (or forward to them) every email I send for a day, you’d get a good sense of what we really do.
What frustrates me is when people aren’t responsive to calls to constructively express discontent at the dysfunctionality of the government. If I got more of those responses, I wouldn’t mind the kvetching at me (on my listserv). Your government stinks. Annual Oversight Hearings are coming up. Sign up to tell the City Council what is wrong with any agency and even with the ANC. People not willing to spend 5 minutes on the phone, probably aren’t going to be writing testimony for a Council hearing.
727-1000 is getting pretty good.
Rob Halligan
Dupont ANC>>