To the Editor:
Our City Council hardly hesitates to backhandedly dismiss citizens’ thoughtful concerns about whatever deal-du-jour City Council fancies — Ramsey Homes, Woodbine, Colonial Inn, North Old Town Giant site, hardly used bicycle lanes on King Street Hill, La Bergerie, etc. These all are more recent than city hall’s controversial Waterfront Plan. In several of these examples, a City Council supermajority backhandedly dismissed impacted property owners’ petitions, each time insisting the project would benefit the whole, even if implying dismissively that maybe nearby residents would bear the brunt of these changes’ immediate impacts, they should shut up and suck it up.
How city hall caterwauls, no differently from citizens whose concerns it so backhandedly dismisses, when the shoe is on the other foot and city hall’s concerns about traffic, parking, etc., the same concerns citizens have raised about many of the projects city hall has OK’d, are backhandedly dismissed by the Northern Virginia Transportation Commission hell-bent on siting a ferry stop on Alexandria’s waterfront.
Doesn’t city hall grasp that, even if nearby residents and businesses would bear the brunt of ferry service’s immediate impacts on traffic, parking, etc., ferry service would benefit the whole community: Senator Warner and Representative Beyer could replace sitting in traffic with a straight shot across the river to Capitol Hill. Ferries would take cars off the most congested commuter routes to D.C.’s waterfront. Our military and homeland security facilities are indispensable to public safety and civic well-being. Once in a while, we have to make some reasonable sacrifices to accommodate these facilities which serve us all.
As Councilwoman Pepper put it so aptly about the ferry, “They get the benefits, we pay the price, and what’s the problem?” How many times has City Council said the same to its citizens when the shoe was on the other foot? Rather than remonstrating against a ferry stop on the Old Town waterfront, which benefits the whole, city hall needs to work overtime to get the feds to agree to site it at the Wilson Bridge where it impacts us least.
Our mediocre city government apparently cannot see more than one move ahead. Did they not foresee that their one huge “ask” from the feds to encroach on national parkland and environmentally sensitive areas for their Potomac Yard Metro station to suit economic development would obviate their ability to beseech the feds again? How much credibility will be left after another “ask” allowing buildings commemorating our WW II war effort to be demolished for another of their developments? Let us hope that, in spite of their political incompetence, the feds will graciously allow us a third huge “ask” when this one affects something the feds really want.
Dino Drudi
Alexandria