DC is dirty because Muriel Bowser is bad at her job

[Anonymous]

Just walked through a bunch of Ward 1 today.
There is trash everywhere, the parks are run down, the garbage cans are not emptied.

And then I hear parents complaining about the Ward 1 council member.

What????

This is purely a mayoral problem. The agencies are run by the mayor. DPR runs the parks and it is terribly run, so its people don’t do their job. DGS is supposed to fix broken equipment. Same. DPW is supposed to clean the streets. Same!

The agencies are NOT DOING THEIR JOBS. Because they are poorly run.
The council has almost no influence over this - if people complain to them they just go to the mayor.

It’s the mayor’s fault!

Why aren’t people blaming Muriel Bowser?
Makes me crazy. We can’t fix things in a democracy if the public doesn’t know who’s at fault.

[Anonymous]

DC isn't dirty.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just walked through a bunch of Ward 1 today.
There is trash everywhere, the parks are run down, the garbage cans are not emptied.

And then I hear parents complaining about the Ward 1 council member.

What????

This is purely a mayoral problem. The agencies are run by the mayor. DPR runs the parks and it is terribly run, so its people don’t do their job. DGS is supposed to fix broken equipment. Same. DPW is supposed to clean the streets. Same!

The agencies are NOT DOING THEIR JOBS. Because they are poorly run.
The council has almost no influence over this - if people complain to them they just go to the mayor.

It’s the mayor’s fault!

Why aren’t people blaming Muriel Bowser?
Makes me crazy. We can’t fix things in a democracy if the public doesn’t know who’s at fault.

The only stuff that she is cleaning up are the dollars being thrown at her by her Big Development “supporters.”

[Anonymous]

Imagine simping for Brianne Nadeau.

[Anonymous]

The mayor is bad but the council isn't doing oversight. Even at the performance oversight hearings they don't ask hard questions or follow up. They should be calling in the heads of dpw, DMV, oag, DDOT, and mpd every month and improving traffic safety and enforcement. They should be calling in mpd and the US attorney every week and figuring out why arrests aren't turning into prosecutions. Then they need to take the info they get and use it to make legislation or budget choices. But most of the council members are not smart enough to do this. They literally can't identify problems, then choose goals, then write bills that would achieve those goals, then pass those bills, then allocate appropriate funding, then monitor implementation. It's embarrassing but I doubt most of them would even be able to lay out that sequence and hope to achieve it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DC isn't dirty.

I guess you haven’t been to Ward 1 recently.

I love my city and my neighborhood but the litter has gotten horrible.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DC isn't dirty.

I guess you haven’t been to Ward 1 recently.

I love my city and my neighborhood but the litter has gotten horrible.

Maybe organize a litter clean up? It's been known to help.

[Anonymous]

Not all of the parks are run by the city. Many are NPS.
As to your rant about the mayor, I hope you’re doing your part. Cleaning and dealing with litter are done according to a schedule. It’s impossible to tell whether the schedule isn’t being followed, the workers are lax, or if the staff are doing their job on, say, Monday morning, and people are littering after the parks are cleaned - and before their next scheduled cleaning — not something I’d describe as a problem with the mayor, unless the concerns are being both reported and ignored.

[Anonymous]

They all suck. Mayor, council, most of the agency heads. This is a sad, backwards city that cannot be great because it is limited in its governance.

I've lived in DC for nearly 3 decades and fir a long time I thought the key was self-rule and statehood. I no longer think that, because DC has such awful leadership and nothing about that would make it better. Also we will never, ever get statehood. Not politically feasible.

So now I think we should carve out a federal district around Congress, the mall, and the nearby federal buildings and retroceded the rest to Maryland. It won't fix everything but it allows us to grow up and be a real boy which I think will help us attract actual skull and talent to leadership roles. Plus if succeeding in DC was a step stone to governor or Senate it gets more appealing and also means fewer people simply cashing out after their stint in DC government.

I'm sick of it all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Imagine simping for Brianne Nadeau.

Brianne Nadeau definitely has plenty to be criticized for, but keeping Ward 1 clean is not her job. It's the mayor's.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They all suck. Mayor, council, most of the agency heads. This is a sad, backwards city that cannot be great because it is limited in its governance.

I've lived in DC for nearly 3 decades and fir a long time I thought the key was self-rule and statehood. I no longer think that, because DC has such awful leadership and nothing about that would make it better. Also we will never, ever get statehood. Not politically feasible.

So now I think we should carve out a federal district around Congress, the mall, and the nearby federal buildings and retroceded the rest to Maryland. It won't fix everything but it allows us to grow up and be a real boy which I think will help us attract actual skull and talent to leadership roles. Plus if succeeding in DC was a step stone to governor or Senate it gets more appealing and also means fewer people simply cashing out after their stint in DC government.

I'm sick of it all.

Someone will be happy to buy your place for 7x-9x what you paid for it when you move.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DC isn't dirty.

Yes it is.

Go somewhere in Ward 5,7 or 8 without a commercial corridor with a BID or an active community association and you’ll immediately see what the rest of DC would REALLY look like without concerned citizens and businesses keeping up appearances.

This city is a cleverly disguised third world sh!thole.

[Anonymous]

Ward 3 isn’t much better. Graffiti, trash, and marijuana smoke on most of the commercial corridors. We been trying to get a homeless encampment in our residential neighborhood removed for weeks and the city and councilman don’t seem interested in helping. What happened?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They all suck. Mayor, council, most of the agency heads. This is a sad, backwards city that cannot be great because it is limited in its governance.

I've lived in DC for nearly 3 decades and fir a long time I thought the key was self-rule and statehood. I no longer think that, because DC has such awful leadership and nothing about that would make it better. Also we will never, ever get statehood. Not politically feasible.

So now I think we should carve out a federal district around Congress, the mall, and the nearby federal buildings and retroceded the rest to Maryland. It won't fix everything but it allows us to grow up and be a real boy which I think will help us attract actual skull and talent to leadership roles. Plus if succeeding in DC was a step stone to governor or Senate it gets more appealing and also means fewer people simply cashing out after their stint in DC government.

I'm sick of it all.

So, What’s it like back in wherever you lived nearly 3 decades ago?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They all suck. Mayor, council, most of the agency heads. This is a sad, backwards city that cannot be great because it is limited in its governance.

I've lived in DC for nearly 3 decades and fir a long time I thought the key was self-rule and statehood. I no longer think that, because DC has such awful leadership and nothing about that would make it better. Also we will never, ever get statehood. Not politically feasible.

So now I think we should carve out a federal district around Congress, the mall, and the nearby federal buildings and retroceded the rest to Maryland. It won't fix everything but it allows us to grow up and be a real boy which I think will help us attract actual skull and talent to leadership roles. Plus if succeeding in DC was a step stone to governor or Senate it gets more appealing and also means fewer people simply cashing out after their stint in DC government.

I'm sick of it all.

Someone will be happy to buy your place for 7x-9x what you paid for it when you move.

It's cute you assume I bought a house when Ioved here 30 years ago. I guess I should have but I was waiting tables. I overpaid for a condo a few years back and I hope to sell it for 50-100k over what a paid when I leave. But the condo market sucks so I might just break even. At least I'll get the forced savings aspect of paying a mortgage instead of rent.

People in this board always think everyone is rich. It's fascinating.