The Georgetown Current
Wednesday, March 2, 2016
Vol. XXV, No. 31
Serving Burleith, Foxhall, Georgetown, Georgetown Reservoir & Glover Park
Pepco merger may not go forward
DECADE OF DOMINANCE
■ Utilities: Mayor, regulators
at odds over settlement terms
By BRADY HOLT Current Staff Writer
Exelon Corp. may abandon its long-fought, controversial effort to acquire regional utility company Pepco, with the D.C. Public Service Commission and Mayor Muriel Bowser finding themselves
at odds over the merger’s terms. The merger has been hotly debated in the District since it was first announced. Civic activists derided Exelon’s environmental record and questioned whether the District could effectively regulate a Chicago-based energy giant. Meanwhile the utility companies, the business community and eventually Bowser and most D.C. Council members said the merger would bring improved reliability
and financial benefits to the city and local ratepayers. But as of The Current’s deadline yesterday, the $6.8 billion deal was on the ropes, essentially due to a $25.6 million disagreement between city officials and one member of the District’s independent utility regulatory panel. Last fall, Bowser had negotiated a series of conditions with the utility companies, including the See Pepco/Page 5
Fillmore Arts again facing budget cuts By CUNEYT DIL
Current Correspondent
Brian Kapur/The Current
Georgetown Visitation’s girls basketball team, coached by Mike McCarthy, throttled Bullis 55-36 to capture its 10th straight Independent School League AA title on Sunday. See story, Page 14.
The communities of five Northwest elementary schools are scrambling to undo a nearly $600,000 budget cut to Fillmore Arts Center that would spell an end to the long-standing program. D.C. Public Schools says the city spends double the amount per pupil compared to other schools to continue the program, which serves 1,700 students from Key, Ross, Marie Reed, Hyde-Addison and Stoddert elementary schools. The students are bused every week to the arts center in Georgetown to take classes in arts, drama and music. Two dozen parents and school members huddled last Tuesday at a Friends of Fillmore meeting to strategize opposition. As of yesterday evening, over 1,000 people have signed a change.org petition calling for the program’s funds to be restored. And supporters See Fillmore/Page 9
Brian Kapur/The Current
D.C. Public Schools officials said they would rather fund arts programs in individual schools than bus students to the center at Hardy Middle.
City seeking input for Palisades Library redo
Event recalls neighborhood’s often-neglected black history
By BRADY HOLT
■ Georgetown: Residents
Current Staff Writer
D.C. Public Library officials are preparing to unveil a concept for the modernized Palisades Library, which will retain the existing structure and footprint but thoroughly upgrade the interior and possibly relocate various functions. The 1964 building at 49th and V streets NW has generous space and a boxy shape that lends itself to many potential configurations, library officials said at a public meeting last Thursday. The $8.2 million modernization is scheduled to begin in late 2016, and the library would reopen about nine months later. Early plans a couple of years ago called for a far more expensive project that would have involved fully replacing the building. Officials now expect to make minor facade upgrades and replace the win-
gather for book’s anniversary
Brian Kapur/The Current
The $8.2 million renovation will focus on the interior of the aging building at 49th and V streets NW. dows, but to generally leave the structure intact. The project will also include gutting and replacing the interior of the building, its furniture and most of its mechanical equipment. “We feel as though the city has given us a very appropriate amount of money to do what we need to do with this library,” David Saulter, the library system’s director of capital planning, told residents at See Library/Page 16
By MARK LIEBERMAN Current Staff Writer
Milton Hamilton has been coming to Georgetown since he was a little boy to attend the First Baptist Church — one of the few remaining connections to the neighborhood’s black history. Hamilton is now a parent himself, with a 14-year-old daughter, and he says a lot has changed since his childhood. Georgetown’s demographic shift — away from a
substantial proportion of workingclass African-Americans, to a population primarily comprising affluent whites — is now so far in the past that he doubts many people remember it. He sees teens walking around the neighborhood, and wishes they knew more about the ground on which they tread. “They don’t know Georgetown used to be black,” Hamilton said. “It’s been lost in the last generation.” It was impossible to ignore Georgetown’s black history in Gaston Hall at Georgetown University last Wednesday. Hilton See History/Page 18
NEWS
SPORTS
SHERWOOD
INDEX
18 years of film
Earning their stripes
‘Allow extra time’
Calendar/20 Classifieds/29 District Digest/4 Exhibits/21 In Your Neighborhood/26 Opinion/10
Organizers expand festival to feature broader selection of local, global movies / Page 2
Wilson’s girls basketball team knocked off Anacostia to win its first title since 1993 / Page 13
Riders won’t wait forever for Metro to sort out its host of operational issues / Page 10
Police Report/6 Real Estate/17 School Dispatches/12 Service Directory/27 Sports/13 Week Ahead/3
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