Reply to DCPS students shafted again - sign petition to keep Jelleff field public

Forum Index » DC Public and Public Charter Schools

Reply to "DCPS students shafted again - sign petition to keep Jelleff field public"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I have nothing to do with Maret, Hardy, their rival schools, or the neighborhoods.  I'm just a DC resident trying to get my head around the issue.

In 2008 DC borrowed $15ish million at 5ish% interest to buy a property in Upper Georgetown and then gave the sports team.at Maret, a private school in Woodley Park, exclusive access to the property for a decade in exchange for up to $2.5m in renovations and improvements with a life span of 10-20 years.  DC however was still responsible for general maintenance and the exclusivity arrangement meant that DC has to pay to transport the public school sports teams across the street to other DC owned facilities.  Now they want to re-up the arrangement for another 10 years at only $900k.

I'm struggling to see the benefit of this arrangement for DC.  It's already cost us way more, in interest alone, than what Maret has contributed and now they want to re-up for 10 years and reduce their "payment" to $900k.  Why is the DC Government spending $1+m per year on Maret's sports teams?

Did Maret use their connections to get us a sweetheart deal on the land?  Am I missing something?[/quote]

According to the testimony by DPR, the timeline was more like:

2008: BGC was broke and needed to be bailed out. No one would buy them. So DC bought them. The facilities were unusable for any regulation sports, and largely derelict.

2009: DC struck a deal with Maret to renovate and maintain the facilities for 10 years with a further 10 year option if Maret proved to be "Good Partners" Silverman asked DPR what defined a "good partner" and DPR responded "If they upheld their end of the deal" I understood that to mean that if Maret let the field go to blight, DPR could end the contract.

2019: In the agreed upon time frame, Maret basically went to DPR and DPR agreed that they had been "good partners" and signed the papers to extend to the originally agreed 2029 date if Maret put in a little more money to redo the fields and help  renovate the clubhouse.

So what does DC get: They get top of the line facilities that they don't have to pay a dime to maintain by charging Maret over $1000/hour for the privilege of having 10 of the prime hours per week.

I'm guessing that you don't really care about the reasons since you are parroting the same talking points as so many of the other sock puppets on here though.[/quote]

No, I'm looking at this from the perspective of DC.  It costs us almost $1m per year to service the debt, keep the lights on and transport Hardy. Maret is paying less than 20% of the cost of owning that property and getting exclusive access.  DC should either get primary use, break even on cost or sell it.

Improvemts are pointless if they won't last past the end of the contract and residents don't get to use them.  You're asking DC taxoayers to spend $1m per year on this field.  hat are we getting for our money?[/quote]

Has DPR released any documentation that states any costs associated with Jellef? Citations please, then we can discuss.
If Jellef is rented out for 16hrs a day, and Maret only uses 10% ten DC gets the other 90% at no costs.

[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics