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NEWS: INFIGHTING DELAYED HOUSING DEVELOPMENT IN ANACOSTIA FOOD: WHY JAPAN IS WOOING
NEWS LOOSE LIPS Rehab Rumble
Darrow Montgomery/File
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After years of infighting, four Anacostia homes will be livable again. Is this a development model that works?
By Alex Koma @AlexKomaWCP
Nearly five years ago, four dilapidated, abandoned homes in Anacostia were stuck in a tug-of-war between Mayor Muriel Bowser and the D.C. Council. But these days, the city-owned properties are housing families again for the first time in decades.
It took years of bureaucratic battles, fundraising, and construction, but the nonprofit the L’Enfant Trust has finally sold off two of the homes and now has a third on the market. It’s an outcome that might have once seemed unthinkable for neighbors who have been urging the District to do something—anything—with the historic homes for the better part of the past 20 years. And it’s a bit of a win for Council Chairman Phil Mendelson. He believes it’s a clear example of how the city could better use its own land to house people, and how it often fails to do so.
“My only regret is that the city has done nothing to scale this program to [include] more houses,” Mendelson says. “These houses are no longer vacant and blighted, and we’re getting taxes on these properties from families who live in them.”
Mendelson was the driving force in engineering the transfer of these four properties to the trust, which agreed to renovate the homes using private funds and make them available to homebuyers of more modest means, an approach that Bowser fought tooth and nail. She tried instead to award the project through a more traditional solicitation and picked the Development Corporation of Columbia Heights to manage the process in defiance of Council legislation favoring the trust, specifically.
But that deal fell apart in no small measure due to Mendelson’s resistance (he used budget language to block Bowser from spending affordable housing funds on the homes, among other maneuvers). Over the administration’s frequent objections, he insisted that the Council had the authority to hand the properties over directly to the trust. As much as anything, it became a fight about who has power over land in the city, and how local leaders can put vacant properties to productive use as they address D.C.’s housing crisis.
“We just got caught in the arm wrestling between the Council and the mayor’s office,” says Lauren McHale, the trust’s president and CEO.
Bowser relented and handed the homes over in 2018, and after three years of work, the first property (at 1518 W St. SE) sold last February for $410,000. The trust found a buyer for 1326 Valley Pl. SE by September (for $649,000) and nearly closed on a deal for 1648 U St. SE before negotiations fell through at the last minute, McHale says. She hopes to start work on the fourth and final home, at 1220 Maple View Pl. SE, once the trust can finish fundraising to meet a projected $2 million price tag.
McHale says the three other properties weren’t quite that expensive—the group budgeted $500,000 for each one, though she says costs have reached up to $730,000, depending on the house in question. But, in general, McHale stresses that the trust is “taking a huge hit on these properties” financially, considering they come with affordability requirements. The Council’s legislation stipulates that buyers can make no more than 120 percent of the area median income (about $154,000 for a family of four) but McHale says the trust has so far sold to people earning much less than that.
That’s not a model that can work for most developers, even those handling affordable projects, who often count on market-rate units helping to offset the costs of affordable apartments. But in this case the land, often the most expensive part of any development play, came completely free of charge. McHale says her organization also scored a low interest loan from the preservation-focused 1772 Foundation, with the $1.5 million investment seeding their efforts. It helps, too, that the trust earns a steady (if modest) income stream from managing easements on historic properties throughout the rest of the city.
“We’re able to take this money that we’re raising largely in Northwest and put it into Southeast,” she says. “And we’re doing this to keep these affordably priced and make sure existing residents have a chance of acquiring these. … We don’t want to go in and change Anacostia. We don’t want to push anybody out.”
But could this really be a model elsewhere, as Mendelson hopes? It’s quite far from being a comprehensive solution to the city’s housing woes, but it could be a small way to make a difference, particularly when it comes to affordable homeownership (a frequent point of emphasis for Bowser and lawmakers alike).
The city’s Department of Housing and Community Development controls plenty of other vacant homes and lots that could be handed over to similar nonprofits: up to 150 as of 2016. A spokesman for the agency said it doesn’t currently control other properties that are in quite the same situation as the Anacostia homes, but it’s safe to assume there are plenty of promising opportunities, especially in neighborhoods like Anacostia that are finally starting to see more development (and higher prices as a result).
“I would like to think that DHCD has learned from this,” Mendelson said. “But I see no evidence of that so far.”
A DHCD spokesman said the agency works “every day to transform vacant and blighted property into affordable housing opportunities for our residents,” but also said that “DHCD has not been engaged by the L’Enfant Trust regarding other properties.” Mendelson believes the agency should be doing that engagement proactively, but he was unsure of any methods he could use to force officials to do so.
McHale says she sympathizes with the agency, to an extent. She suspects officials didn’t take action in Anacostia for so long because they knew how expensive the process would be, considering the homes are in a historic district and therefore come with complex standards for rehabilitation. And there are certainly many other demands on the agency’s attention (and its dollars) when it comes to affordable housing issues in the city.
But that isn’t an excuse for inaction. McHale says the District could easily have chipped in a small amount of funding to help the Anacostia project get off the ground (had it not gotten stuck in the turf war between the legislature and the executive) and there’s no reason it couldn’t do so elsewhere. Ditto for other foundations focused on these issues, she says, considering that most of the trust’s support has so far come from out of state.
“We’re the developers of last resort on properties like these,” McHale says. “There’s a reason other developers aren’t clamoring for these buildings. … It takes a lot of time and a lot of money.”
Courtesy of the L'Enfant Trust House on Valley Place SE circa 2017
Rehabbed house on Valley Place SE in Anacostia
Triple Threat
High school junior Nyckoles Harbor II is a five-star football recruit, runs a 20.79-second 200 meters, and has a 4.5 GPA.
Jamison Michael
By Kelyn Soong
@KelynSoong
Ask anyone close to Nyckoles
Harbor II for athletes he should be compared to, and they’ll likely respond with a list that includes some of the most accomplished pro sports stars of all time: Usain Bolt. Deion Sanders. LeBron James. Even Bo Jackson, the first professional athlete in history to be an all-star in both the National Football League and Major League Baseball.
“He’s Bo Jackson,” says Rafiu Bakare, the head track and field coach at Archbishop Carroll High School. “That’s what I talk to my friends about: This is Bo ... When he walks in the room, you know what it is. ... There’s a presence that permeates the place.”
Bakare isn’t referring to an Olympian or NFL player, but rather a 16-year-old junior at Carroll. It may seem like over-the-top praise, but that’s how much potential Harbor’s coaches and supporters see in him as a track athlete, football player, and student. They envision a not-so-distant future where he is an Olympic medal contender in track and a top NFL prospect.
Harbor isn’t fazed by the comparisons and predictions. He welcomes it—especially after his most recent accomplishment. Last month at the Texas Tech Under Armour High School Classic track and field competition in Lubbock, Texas, Harbor ran the 200-meter dash in 20.79 seconds—a personal best and the fourth-fastest indoor 200-meter dash ever by a high schooler. His 100-meter personal best of 10.31 seconds is also an elite mark for runners his age.
“I’m a showman, so I like to give people a show,” Harbor says. “That’s what I do.”
And if everything goes to plan, this is just the beginning of Harbor’s journey to the grandest of sports stages. In addition to being one of the fastest high school sprinters in the country, Harbor is a 6-foot-6, 220-pound five-star football recruit with more than 40 college offers from programs like the University of Alabama and Clemson University. He intends to compete in both track and football in college, run at the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics, and then play in the NFL. Few professional athletes have ever excelled at both sports at the highest level.
“This kid is really an anomaly,” says Robert Harris, Carroll’s head football coach. “In 27 years of coaching some great players and guys that went on to play great Division I football and went on to the NFL, I’ve never seen or had an athlete like this before.”
Pamela Crockett immediately called her sister after track practice ended. She needed to tell her about the 8-year-old boy that had just joined the Full Speed Athletics youth track club, based out of Prince George’s County, that she coaches.
“He’s going to be incredible,” Crockett remembers telling her sister, Tracy, a former track and field standout at the University of Virginia. “He’s probably going to be the best sprinter to come from this area.”
It didn’t matter that Harbor had yet to run in a single competition. Crockett saw in him a natural talent and desire to improve that made her think, What am I witnessing?
Track wasn’t Harbor’s first sport, and he wasn’t even supposed to be in Crockett’s group. Born in D.C. and raised in Largo, Harbor first played football when his parents signed him up for a local summer camp at age 8. Whenever he scored a touchdown, Harbor would experience severe asthma, so his youth football coach for the Patuxent Rhinos suggested that he run track to improve his breathing. Harbor’s parents attempted to enroll their son in a track club at the same sports complex as the youth football team, but the roster was full and the club wasn’t accepting more kids. Harbor was devastated.
“That was the worst day of my life,” he says. “I was crying.”
But, by a stroke of fate, Harbor later ran into one of his friends from the football team who informed him about Crockett’s team. His parents gave the coach a call, and Harbor has been with Full Speed Athletics, a youth track club for kids ages 6 to 18, ever since.
Harbor also tried basketball and soccer as a young kid, but never gravitated toward either sport. “He couldn’t understand the concept that you’re supposed to pass the ball in basketball,” Harbor’s mother, Saundra Bobbitt-Harbor, says. His father, Azuka Jean Harbor, is a Nigerian American who competed for the U.S. men’s national soccer team and several professional clubs in the U.S. and Nigeria during a career that spanned multiple decades. It didn’t take long for Azuka to realize that his son would not be following in his footsteps.
“I looked at him, and I said, ‘You’re too tall. You can’t play no soccer,’” the 6-foot-1 Azuka says with a laugh. “That’s how that conversation went. I just looked at him; he doesn’t have the coordination.”
Azuka adds that while he takes plenty of pride in his son’s athletic accomplishments, he’s long emphasized an academics-first approach. “I always say to him, ‘I want other people to remember you as a good student,’” Azuka says. Nyckoles has taken that directive to heart. He has a 4.5 grade point average at Carroll and has dreams of becoming a nurse and eventually attending medical school.
Harbor’s determination in any field is something that his coaches have noticed. He was not a starter on the varsity football team his freshman year at Carroll, but has, within two seasons, established himself as one of the best football players in the area. Harbor plays tight end, receiver, outside linebacker, and defensive end, and also competes on special teams. “We may hand him the ball out of the backfield next year,” Harris, the football coach, says.
Harris describes Harbor as a “fierce competitor” who doesn’t like to lose. “He is his biggest critic, and pushes himself,” he says. There are times, Harris recalls, when Harbor will get upset with himself if he doesn’t complete a tackle the way he wants. It’s the same energy he brings to the classroom. “He doesn’t want a B-plus,” Harris says. Crockett can attest. She says that Harbor will voluntarily repeat a repetition during a track workout if he doesn’t hit the prescribed time.
Asked where, at 16, he gets his ambition and motivation, Harbor laughs and says: “I hang around a lot of old heads, a lot of old people. I sit in the garage with my uncles and they talk, drink beers. They give me sodas. We just talking … and having a good time watching football ... And they just basically tell me they’re proud and they just want me to do all this. They want me to live my dream.”
That dream involves not just the NFL, but Olympic track as well. Harbor loves both sports and doesn’t think it makes sense to limit himself to just one. Plus, he says, being busy keeps him out of trouble—or even the perception of trouble. There can be consequences, Harbor believes, when that’s not the case.
“With my athletic ability, I’m blessed to do two sports at a very high level,” he says. “So with me doing both, it just makes it better for me and my family, because I’m always into something … I’m not out in the streets … I can keep myself occupied.”
Harbor’s deep, gravelly voice belies his young age and playful nature. The sun has set and the track at Carroll is barely visible by the time practice is over on a recent January evening. The team is preparing for the Millrose Games at the Armory in New York City, and the runners get ready to head inside the school away from the freezing temperatures, when Harbor jumps on the back of Carroll’s assistant track and field coach, Victor Blackett, for a piggyback ride.
Blackett carries Harbor—all 6-foot-6 and 220-pounds of him—around, before the two get into a debate of who is taller. (“If he’s 6-6, then I’m 6-6 and 1/8th,” Blackett says.)
The word “generation” comes up often in conversations about Harbor. Crockett says that he “has the ability to be one of those true once in multiple generation athletes.” Bakare calls Harbor “one of those one-in-a-million kids” for his athletic skills and academic achievements. Harris, a former math teacher, puts the probability of him being a professional athlete in track, football, or both at “99.998 percent.”
But Harbor is still a kid in many ways. After running a 20.79-second 200 meters at Texas Tech, he says “about 30 people” came up to him for photos and selfies. It was a new experience, and he didn’t sign any autographs because, well, he doesn’t have one yet. “I gotta learn that,” he says. Although he is considered a celebrity on campus, he doesn’t see himself that way. “He’ll walk in a room and light it up, but he makes everyone comfortable,” Harris says.
So perhaps, with so much ahead, the best comparison for Harbor right now is simply himself.
“It sets a ceiling sometimes, when you make comparisons,” Blackett says. “If we create our own lane and create our own tower, the stars become our limit versus what did such-andsuch do? And then you’re trying to match what that person did. So if I had to compare him to anyone, I’ll compare him to the next Nyckoles Harbor, so he can set his own ceiling.”
Nyckoles Harbor II
THE ANSWERS ISSUE
After more than 40 years of reporting on D.C., you’d think that Washington City Paper would know the answer to most inquiries our readers may have about life in and around the District. But D.C. is ever changing, and so are our readers, meaning questions will naturally arise. And so, once again, we’ve arrived at the Answers Issue, our annual attempt to figure out these conundrums that vex Washingtonians.
Of the dozens of questions readers submitted this year, some yielded easy, though not widely known, answers, while others proved more complicated. Our writers worked the phones, sent countless emails, rifled through pages of public records, and scrolled incessantly through the social media accounts of a former elected official to bring you this information. They even managed to discover an unclaimed land that might be in D.C. or might be in Arlington, depending on how you interpret maps and ZIP codes.
Settle in and prepare to learn more about D.C.’s weird and wonderful ways. Maybe reading these questions will prompt questions of your own. Jot them down—there’s always next year. — Caroline Jones
Photographs by Darrow Montgomery
Why don’t wards 3 and 7 have a 3A/7A ANC?
ANC 3A and 7A used to exist in wards 3 and 7, respectively, but they are no more. “It bothers a lot of people,” says Gottlieb Simon, former longtime director of the Office of Advisory Neighborhood Commissions. So what happened? There’s a story for each:
ANC 3A used to encompass Georgetown. Yes, Georgetown used to be in Ward 3 until after the 1980 census, when redistricting shifted most of the neighborhood to Ward 2. Only a tiny fraction, known as the Shackleton Sliver after former Ward 3 Councilmember Polly Shackleton, remained in Ward 3 so as not to redistrict the Georgetown resident out of a job. When Georgetown (and therefore ANC 3A) became part of Ward 2, officials were faced with the question of what to do with the other commissions. If 3B becomes 3A, then 3C would become 3B, and 3D has to become 3C. It gets confusing quickly.
As for ANC 7A, which includes Fort Dupont, Benning HeightsSimple City, Fort Chaplin, Woodlawn-Payne Cemetery, Fort Mahan Park, and D.C. General and the DC Jail—we now call that 7F.
Simon says about 10 years ago when D.C. redrew ward and ANC boundaries, some folks in ANC 7A were concerned about the reputation the commission had earned and thought it would help to rebrand. The redistricting committee didn’t object, and so the commission reemerged with a new name.
“And that, children, is why there’s no longer a 3A and a 7A,” Simon says.
Does D.C. have any unique borders or enclaves/exclaves? It is interesting that Theodore Roosevelt Island and National Airport are still within the District.
Believe it or not, the airport is its own jurisdiction. National is technically not part of D.C. proper, and even though it’s across the Potomac River and adjacent to Arlington, it’s not part of the city or the county. This is, at least, according to Rob Yingling, a spokesperson at Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority.
Despite this, the airport doesn’t collect taxes (of course) or have its own ZIP code. The U.S. Postal Service, Yingling says, incorporated the airport into the 20001 ZIP code. This is reflected in the address of 1 Aviation Circle on the airport’s official website alongside the location, which is curiously specified as Washington, D.C. A quick Google search, though, indicates that the airport is located in Arlington, at the 22202 ZIP code, and this same information is shared on the airport’s official Facebook page. No wonder there’s so much confusion.
—Michelle Goldchain
noticed that the station has not employed a full-time sports anchor since Sherree Burruss left the station in December 2019 for CBS Sports. (Cary Chow and Dave Johnson were technically NBC4 freelancers, not salaried employees; Chow is now working in corporate communications, and Johnson continues as the sports director for WTOP, in addition to his work as a play-by-play radio voice.) After Burruss left, NBC4 had begun interviewing candidates to replace her when the pandemic arrived and sports events shut down, according to Matt Glassman, the assistant news director for NBC4.
NBC4’s website currently does not list a full-time sports anchor that works solely for the station. (Moisés Linares is listed as a sports anchor for Noticiero Telemundo 44 on NBC4’s sister station, Telemundo 44/WZDC, and contributes to NBC4 News.) FOX 5 also does not have any dedicated sports anchors. Darren M. Haynes is the sports director/anchor and Sharla McBride is a sports and news anchor for WUSA9. Scott Abraham and Olivia Garvey handle on-air sports coverage for ABC7.
NBC4 also has been using reporters and hosts from NBC Sports Washington on its broadcasts. Both stations are located in the same building. Glassman adds that NBC4 still has an off-air, behind-thescenes sports staff, and says the station is “absolutely not” ruling out bringing back a full-time sports anchor. “We’re always evaluating what we need and who we need and all that kind of stuff,” he says.
—Kelyn Soong
There are a host of build-a-bowl poke places throughout the D.C. region, among them Poke Papa, Poki DC, and Poke Dojo, that allow customers to
What happened at Channel 4 sports?
Are local station sportscasters no longer a thing?
The best poke in D.C. is at Tiki Taco near Dupont Circle, right? All those make your own Chipotle-style places are bullshit poke, right?
pile on toppings such as cucumbers, crab salad, cilantro, pickled ginger, and edamame. Are they bullshit? I’d like to offer an analogy. Some sushi rolls you find in the U.S. are filled with ingredients such as cream cheese, mango, and jalapeños and drizzled with sweet and spicy sauces. When I taught English in a small town in Japan, I showed my students what counts as sushi in the U.S., and watched their jaws drop. Sushi in Japan is far more austere, often to showcase the quality of the fish. Poke in Hawaii, which is excellent even in grocery stores, takes a similarly simplistic approach. Ahi tuna is cubed, tossed in soy sauce and sesame oil, and mixed with whatever’s on hand: raw onion, chopped nuts, or a special kind of seaweed. Tiki Taco adopts this more traditional approach, as does native Hawaiian-owned Abunai Poke. I sampled them both in January and slightly preferred Abunai Poke for its freshness and flavor. Abunai owner Akina Harada would likely agree with the question asker that some of the Chipotle-style poke places don’t cut it. She has playfully dissed them in the past. Shortly after Poki DC moved in nearby, she plastered stickers that read “Aloha, it’s POKE, not POKI!” on customers’ meals. As with traditional and Americanized sushi, both styles of poke can be delicious.
—Laura Hayes
It’s not just the business community lacking shame! In Evans’ post-Council life, he’s become somewhat of a low-key influencer. He hasn’t brought dad jeans, boat shoes, and ten-gallon hats back in style (yet), but scroll through Evans’ Insta and you’ll see a Georgetown socialite who scarcely misses an opportunity to break out his tux and yuck it up with old pals or see the new James Bond movie.
Mayor Muriel Bowser makes regular appearances on Evans’ feed: at the RAMMYS, the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington’s annual awards gala; standing by his side at a gathering marking the anniversary of the March on Washington; and at her birthday celebration, along with Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks.
Council Chairman Phil Mendelson has also taken several opportunities to pose with his old pal, like at the D.C. Chamber of Commerce’s annual gala (along with former Councilmember Michael Brown). As did Sen. Joe Manchin and Bowser advisor Beverly Perry, who are seen cheesin’ with Evans at the Economic Club of Washington, D.C., breakfast last October.
Evans’ ’gram also features pictures from Nantucket, at Caps games with Ted Leonsis and Jack Davies, and shots of him having an absolute ball putting his feet up while sitting in some pretty choice seats near the dugout at Nationals Park.
In one particularly tantalizing post on Facebook last fall, Evans posed alongside a salad and Bill Regardie, founder of the defunct Regardie’s magazine.
“Great stories and discussing future plans,” Evans captioned the photo. The receipt on the table appears to read “CRIME CRIME CRIME” and “Jack Evans 2024.” Prepare yourselves. —MR
Fashion is subjective, so I spoke with two local stylists: Ting Lin and (my friend) Michelle Barsa. Shorts “can be done if done right, and at the right time,” says Lin, who started a fashion consulting business four years ago. That means wearing them in warmer months. “Then people will get it: It’s not like, ‘Oh that person made a fashionable choice. Maybe they’re just hot,” says Lin.
“It’s really important to distinguish the ‘D’ in the ‘DMV’ here,” Barsa adds. “Shorts are a totally different fashion phenomena once we leave the District.” Within city limits, Barsa argues shorts norms can be distinguished by neighborhood: “In Capitol Hill, anyone should feel free to wear their khaki shorts, particularly if they’re embroidered with some sort of oversize Atlantic sea animal.” In upper Northwest, there’s an abundance of “shorts with a purpose” (think cargo), and in Bloomingdale and Shaw, where D.C.’s alleged hipsters congregate, shorts “may be fine here, particularly if they’re worn ironically and/or with tights and
Jack Evans committed multiple ethics violations and voters renounced him at the polls, yet based on his Instagram he is warmly embraced by D.C.’s business leaders. Do they have no shame?
What is D.C. shorts etiquette? It seems like some folks (hipsters, the fashionconscious) never wear them. Is there also a demographic element? Age? Race? Are they just for White dudes? (Athletic shorts are excluded from this analysis.)
boots,” says Barsa.
Lin says race doesn’t come into play much (but notes that a lot of White guys wear shorts to brunch). Barsa adds that Black people follow an unwritten rule: “If your legs be ashy, DO NOT wear shorts no matter how damn hot it is.” Age often plays a role in what type of shorts people are wearing. The younger crowd can be a bit more adventurous, Lin says, while older folks typically wear longer shorts in more subtle colors and patterns.
As for the idea that “more fashion-conscious people never wear shorts,” Lin calls bullshit: The fashion-conscious “can do a lot with shorts. They know how to outfit them. And it’s all about outfitting.” In short, shoes matter. “If you’re doing shorts and sandals, you’re really Cali,” says Lin. “Or Florida.” —Sarah Marloff MPD data on arrests doesn’t have a “porch pirate” subclassification under its “Theft” category, so it’s tough to distinguish thefts of packages outside residents’ homes from burglaries and other types of theft, according to an MPD communications staffer. But D.C. has experienced a rise in package thefts during the pandemic and most recently around the holidays, according to resident reports and surveillance video.
Despite the unclear data on porch piracy versus other types of theft, we do know MPD has apprehended pirates. D.C. residents might recall MPD’s #ReturningChristmasJoy Twitter campaign in 2018 after officers arrested a man carting off 13 packages that weren’t his, then returned the packages to their rightful owners. On May 10, 2021, MPD arrested Sterling McGlaughlin, 28, of Northeast D.C. with charges of six counts of “Theft Two” for stealing unattended packages from residences in Northeast and Southeast, according to an MPD statement. In the District, these porch pirates can get slapped with fines of up to $1,000 if the item is worth less than that amount, and larger
Has the Metropolitan Police Department ever apprehended and brought charges against a porch pirate and what were the legal consequences, if any? Are all the theft videos just pointless?
Some of the weed and mushroom “gift” suppliers also have DMT. Is basically anything giftable now in DC?
Well, sure, pretty much anything can be giftable. But is it all legal? That’s a different question.
Adam Eidinger, the proposer of Initiative 71 and co-founder of DC Marijuana Justice, tells City Paper that the District is “one of the safest spaces” for substances such as DMT because it’s “not a priority.” This is thanks to Initiative 81, which passed in November of 2020, making entheogens, such as psilocybin, among the lowest law enforcement priorities for the Metropolitan Police Department. But just because it’s a lower priority, that doesn’t mean that it’s legalized.
When it comes to cannabis, District voters passed Initiative 71 in November of 2014, legalizing the recreational use of cannabis, but a rider Maryland Rep. Andy Harris introduced has blocked the city from legalizing and taxing the sale of recreational cannabis ever since.
Currently, the only legal way D.C. residents who are 21 and over can acquire cannabis is by first getting a physician recommendation for medical cannabis, then completing an application through the Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration for a physical medical cannabis card, and thereafter visiting any of the approved dispensaries in the city. Those who are not D.C. residents can purchase from D.C.’s dispensaries if their jurisdiction has been extended reciprocity.
For those who want to remove all the aforementioned steps and the many fees that come with them, gifting is always an option. Even so, the legal limit for gifting cannabis is a maximum of one ounce per person. Even under Initiative 71, it still remains a crime to receive money, goods, or services for any amount of cannabis.
Gifting in D.C. has long been scru-
tinized by members of the public and especially government leaders. According to Eidinger, though, those who buy cannabis and other substances “have nothing to worry about … It’s the seller that has to be concerned in the District of Columbia.”
But is basically anything giftable now in D.C.? It depends on who you’re asking and if they happen to be wearing the color blue. —MG
Yes, if businesses count. As of Jan. 28, seven commercial businesses have received citations, at $150 a pop, for not keeping their portions of the sidewalks snow-free and accessible to foot traffic this season. Additionally, two residences have received snow-shoveling warnings, according to Nancee Lyons of the Department of Public Works, the city agency tasked with enforcing sidewalk shoveling. If those warnings turn into citations, the fine for residents who fail to shovel is $25. —SM
In search of an answer, City Paper scoured the most recently available 990 tax forms for as many charter schools as we could get our hands on—no thanks to the D.C. Public Charter School Board, which publishes 990s on its website but hasn’t updated the records since 2019.
Instead, we relied on ProPublica’s database of nonprofit tax records. Most schools’ forms were easily accessible, but some proved too elusive. In any case, the documents we reviewed reveal that at least 20 schools pay their top executives more than $200,000 a year. For context, Mayor Muriel Bowser’s annual salary is $220,000, Chancellor Lewis Ferebee makes $280,000 per year, and Christina Grant, state superintendent of education, makes $202,363 per year.
The last time City Paper examined charter school pay, Carlos Rosario International Public Charter School’s CEO Allison Kokkoros was the highest paid charter school leader, earning a whopping $541,000 in compensation in 2017. For the 2019-2020 school year (the most recent information available), Kokkoros was knocked off the top spot but remains in the top five.
The highest earning charter school leaders are:
Patricia Brantley, CEO of Friendship Public Charter School, who made $390,645;
Linda Moore, founder of Elsie Whitlow Stokes Community Freedom Public Charter School, who made $382,276;
Susan Schaeffler, founder and CEO of KIPP DC, who made $341,216;
Kokkoros, who made $319,430; and Joe Smith, CEO of Eagle Academy Public Charter School, who made $299,218. —MR
Hot and humid D.C. summers along with the incestous, swampy corruption among the political class that meets here makes this myth difficult to resist. But it is, indeed, a myth, according to DC History Center historian Jane F. Levey. It’s one of her favorite topics.
“It’s a question of language,” Levey says. “So if you say, ‘Washington was built on a swamp,’ period, end of thought, that’s a total myth. If you want to be more specific about it, yes, there were a lot of springs and creeks and marshes here in the territory that was chosen for Washington. But that was because ... at the beginning, you needed water in an era when you didn’t have plumbing and pipes and running water the way we do today. So that was a good thing that was going to support the city. And then it became, in the 20th century, a political canard. And it’s been thrown in our face ever since.”
But as to who started the myth, that’s a lot more difficult to answer. Back in the 1800s, people used the word “swamp” and “marsh” pretty much interchangeably, according to Levey.
“I don’t think anybody has ever been able to come up with patient zero on the myth,” she says. “It’s just not a possibility. And that’s because it’s such a complicated discussion of how the language was used.” —KS
Eun Yang anchors News4 Today at NBC4, where she recently celebrated 20 years of employment. She explains that the two scripts need to be different colors so the anchors know which stack to grab if the teleprompter goes down, but the colors don’t matter. “Some anchors do prefer a color, whether it’s tradition, habit, or superstition,” she says, likening the situation to preferring blue pens or black pens. “Personally, I don’t care what color a production assistant hands me. It depends on what paper is available and what the PA can load into the printer at that time.” —LH
Has anyone in D.C. actually been fined for not shoveling snow from their sidewalk?
Which charter school executive made the most bank at the expense of resources going to traditional public schools? Who started the myth that D.C. was built on a swamp?
On Channel 4 News, one anchor has a yellow script/notes, and the other has pink. Why those colors? It’s often one male and one female anchor, but it’s not pink and blue. It couldn’t be green because of the greenscreen weather map.
