anyone else dislike Greater Greater Washington?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:GGW's agenda -- which is the developers' agenda -- is to turn much of upper NW Washington into a dense "urbanist" environment. Tall mixed use everywhere, and they'd even like to up zone single family home areas. But we like our semi-suburban neighborhoods, with their leafy, green spaces. Why should everything become cookie-cutter?

This is not correct. They tend to support dense mixed use on commercial properties on the state avenues. For the SFHs they want to make it easier for homeowners to add accessory dwelling units.

One or two commenters there believe (as does Matt Yglesias of VOX) that the the SFH areas should be upzoned to allow THs, as the "missing middle" but I don't think there has ever been a GGW post supporting that, and its not a main item of discussion on GGW. ALso GGW's agenda is much broader than upper NW - they discuss other parts of DC, and the suburbs as well.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:GGW pretends to be a volunteer blog, but it's an "astroturf" organization (faux grass roots), that is funded by big development companies, law firms dependent on a zoning practice, etc. One of GGW's more absurd moments came when they threw a developer-funded happy hour down the street from Judiciary Square the night of the marathon hearing on the mayor's proposed sweeping changes to the Comp Plan, which are sought by big development interests. GGW tried to use free drinks to attract Millennials to go over and testify in favor.

This is not true - it is mostly volunteer funded and run.

But it's a nice talking point for the paranoid of change crowd.

b.s. The developer sponsors are all listed on the website.

I thought it was a volunteer blog, run by progressive policy types. I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t take outside money.

They most certainly do, mainly from the developers they're astroturfing for:

https://ggwash.org/supporters

Yawn.

Apparently only 4.2% of their budget comes from corporate sponsors:

https://ggwash.org/view/41647/corporate-sponsorships-how-greater-greater-washington-does-and-doesnt-work-with-businesses

And they rarely have pieces that advocate for a particular project so even here your point isn't substantiated by what is published in the blog.

You are just pissed you've been forced out of the listserve echo chamber where you used to dwell and have to respond to arguments that are more cogent than the drivel you post here.

A GGW supporter talking about "echo chambers" is pretty rich, considering that whole blog is one big echo chamber, with like 40 like-minded commenters who show up daily and barely anyone else (dissent -- or pointing out GGW's factual errors -- is not tolerated).

Have you ever had a problem with a comment you've posted to a GGW piece being refused or deleted or edited without your knowledge?

Have you ever submitted a piece to GGW for publication and had them refuse to run it?

[Anonymous]

GGW endorsed Del Pepper in Alexandria. A woman in her 80s, who, this election cycle, barely prepped for debates or bothered to answer candidate questionnaires.

[Anonymous]

Resurrecting this thread, as I had to think before any response.

Today July 15, 2018, METRO employees are voting on a METRO employee strike.

Virginia and Maryland just pledged half a billion dollar each, for METRO over the next ten years.

Virginia nor Maryland governors suggested opening the "compact" so as to facilitate METRO financing. I personally wrote Governor Northam and my representatives to not vote this way.

DC in response added a "surcharge to UBER and LTFT" something my family uses due to METRO outages. So, we pay through taxes as well as commuter surcharges. Great.

If DC, as Greater Greater Washington discusses, adds a "surcharge" in addition to METRO and UBER/LFYT, will DC be as valuable to commuters as Northern Virginia and Maryland?

I believe the obvious answer is "NO".

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:Resurrecting this thread, as I had to think before any response.

Today July 15, 2018, METRO employees are voting on a METRO employee strike.

Virginia and Maryland just pledged half a billion dollar each, for METRO over the next ten years.

Virginia nor Maryland governors suggested opening the "compact" so as to facilitate METRO financing. I personally wrote Governor Northam and my representatives to not vote this way.

DC in response added a "surcharge to UBER and LTFT" something my family uses due to METRO outages. So, we pay through taxes as well as commuter surcharges. Great.

If DC, as Greater Greater Washington discusses, adds a "surcharge" in addition to METRO and UBER/LFYT, will DC be as valuable to commuters as Northern Virginia and Maryland?

I believe the obvious answer is "NO".

Please discuss the Metro issues here:

http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/739343.page