What is the purpose of an ANC? Do they have any real powers?

[Anonymous]

I want my current ANC member to challenge Charles Allen next time, but what can she run on? What do they even do?

[Anonymous]

https://ggwash.org/view/43008/advisory-neighborhood-commissions-explained

What a particular ANC commission does varies greatly. Some just come to a few meetings, while others are engaged, active, knowledgeable, and effective advocates for their communities.

Why do you want your rep to challenge Charles Allen? I'm in Ward 6 and generally think he does a decent job, but I readily admit there's plenty I don't know. I would honestly appreciate if you would share your thoughts and experiences.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I want my current ANC member to challenge Charles Allen next time, but what can she run on? What do they even do?

Your ANC person might be great, but Charles Allen has the job as long as he wants it. He is very good at community engagement, he is generally pretty smart, even if I don't agree with him all of the time. Your ANC Commissioner would need to pick and issue and hammer it incessantly for the next three years. And, people would need to agree with her.

[Anonymous]

I wish one or more of the ANCs in Ward 4 would challenge Brandon Todd: he's worthless.

[Anonymous]

ANC 3C chair Nancy MacWood is pretty much the gold standard for ANC heads: intelligent, diligent, fair and highly effective. She runs rings around most DC officials because she learns s subject thoroughly. A lot of us wish that she had run against Chen, but she didn’t.

[Anonymous]

ANCs legislatively carry "great weight" at decision making bodies-so at Council or Zoning commissions. ABRA/booze licensing, they can make or break development over obstruction or ignorance at the development process. Some ANCs are great, others are absolutely bat shyt crazy. OMG, the stories I could tell....

[Anonymous]

In fact, cash political contributions by developers and other economic special interests carry far “greater greater” weight in DC.

[Anonymous]

People talk smack about Mary Cheh but she is the bee's knees. You call her office and $hit gets done. I will vote for her as long as she wants to keep serving.

Problem with a tree down? Call her office!

Problem with a neighbor's tree? Call her office!

Problem with pot holes in streets? Call her office!

Problem with pretty much anything? Call her office and her people with take care of it. True story.

She truly is great and takes her job seriously.

Glad Petar gave it a try and I know he has his followers. But come on.

Leave the governing to the responsible adults.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:ANC 3C chair Nancy MacWood is pretty much the gold standard for ANC heads: intelligent, diligent, fair and highly effective. She runs rings around most DC officials because she learns s subject thoroughly. A lot of us wish that she had run against Chen, but she didn’t.

OMG no.

She is effective at running roughshod over her fellow commissioners and is stuck in 1986. Her neighborhoods commercial district is suffering and she still thinks her main purpose in life is to keep CP from becoming another Adams Morgan.

She also has a very Republican version of states rights when it comes to ANC districts - if it is in her district then it is no one else's business what goes on there but if it is in someone else's district well then everyone had better do what she says because well she has been on the ANC for like 40 years now and knows best. Even though she is utterly befuddled by how the city is changing for the better while her neighborhood is not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:ANC 3C chair Nancy MacWood is pretty much the gold standard for ANC heads: intelligent, diligent, fair and highly effective. She runs rings around most DC officials because she learns s subject thoroughly. A lot of us wish that she had run against Chen, but she didn’t.

An anti development zealot who was also an ANC commissioner ran against Cheh and was crushed.

[Anonymous]

Nancy MacWood has been a respectable public servant for her neighborhood, but she has taken positions that have materially harmed her neighbors and the commercial area and now for almost 20 years, we can see the results very starkly.

Yes, she is very smart and knows alot about zoning and historic preservation, but sometimes when you are so focused on your little corner of the world, time passes by before people notice that, whoa, maybe she was wrong and now what do we do?

She was wrong on Giant.
She was wrong on the NCS Gym - which could have been open for neighborhood use;
She was wrong on the Commercial Overlay that has negatively impacted the Connecticut Avenue strip and until Cathedral Commons/Giant, was negatively impacting that area.

And no, she would never have been able to beat Mary Cheh. Perhaps if she had run in 2006 when Kathy Patterson stepped away, she might have had a chance, but no way, since.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Nancy MacWood has been a respectable public servant for her neighborhood, but she has taken positions that have materially harmed her neighbors and the commercial area and now for almost 20 years, we can see the results very starkly.

Yes, she is very smart and knows alot about zoning and historic preservation, but sometimes when you are so focused on your little corner of the world, time passes by before people notice that, whoa, maybe she was wrong and now what do we do?

She was wrong on Giant.
She was wrong on the NCS Gym - which could have been open for neighborhood use;
She was wrong on the Commercial Overlay that has negatively impacted the Connecticut Avenue strip and until Cathedral Commons/Giant, was negatively impacting that area.

And no, she would never have been able to beat Mary Cheh. Perhaps if she had run in 2006 when Kathy Patterson stepped away, she might have had a chance, but no way, since.

You should stop peddling this lying trope. Do you know that Commissioner MacWood had the ANC hire an architect and asked Giant to engage with the ANC and the community on a new store back in 2005? This was several years after Giant/Ahold breached an agreement with the DC government to build a new store. MacWood brought Giant back to the table.

[Anonymous]

Who gives a fig about Giant and Cathedral Commons, which are a design embarrassment to Upper NW? Just cheap generic dreck. Within three years after Wegmans, etc. opens blocks up the street, Cathedral Commons may just be a Dollar General, nail salons and a homeless shelter.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Nancy MacWood has been a respectable public servant for her neighborhood, but she has taken positions that have materially harmed her neighbors and the commercial area and now for almost 20 years, we can see the results very starkly.

Yes, she is very smart and knows alot about zoning and historic preservation, but sometimes when you are so focused on your little corner of the world, time passes by before people notice that, whoa, maybe she was wrong and now what do we do?

She was wrong on Giant.
She was wrong on the NCS Gym - which could have been open for neighborhood use;
She was wrong on the Commercial Overlay that has negatively impacted the Connecticut Avenue strip and until Cathedral Commons/Giant, was negatively impacting that area.

And no, she would never have been able to beat Mary Cheh. Perhaps if she had run in 2006 when Kathy Patterson stepped away, she might have had a chance, but no way, since.

You should stop peddling this lying trope. Do you know that Commissioner MacWood had the ANC hire an architect and asked Giant to engage with the ANC and the community on a new store back in 2005? This was several years after Giant/Ahold breached an agreement with the DC government to build a new store. MacWood brought Giant back to the table.

That's great. But she won her first election on the back of working against the original proposal in 1999, which was for a modest two-story building and *gasp* a three story parking garage, 1 and 1/2 of which would have been underground, and no north parcel development. Killing that original proposal is what led to the, what, 15 year delay in a new grocery store for the neighborhood and forever made Cleveland Park a laughing stock across the city. Look at how money has flowed to all corners of the city and now our commercial strip is stale.

[Anonymous]

I stand corrected, 2000, not 1999.

https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/cleveland-park/conversations/messages/1369

Nancy was elected on the basis of posts like this.

How did that turn out? We ended up with a worse development and a smaller store and 14 or whatever years of acrimony.