Over on the main site where I have announcements I posted something that our ANC Jim Berry sent out yesterday. It’s about the Armstrong School over on P Street. CAPCS, the organization that bought the school and is renovating it so that sometime before the Second Coming it will be an arts school, is requesting DC bond money. What does this mean? I have no clue, complex finances this early in the morning makes my brain hurt.
However the problem our Great Leader (until Anita takes over) has was he didn’t get notice of the bond hearing until this weekend, for a hearing TODAY. The letter was dated on the 21st. He got it on the 25th. Yes, there was Thanksgiving in the middle of it so that mucked things up.
Anyway, if you are a stakeholder (ie you live close to the Armstrong school) and you’re not doing anything today around noon, you may want to scoot on down to a Committee on Finance and Revenue meeting at the Wilson Building, room 120.
UPDATE:
Neighbors,
I contacted the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development the first thing this morning and learned that the hearing proposed for today at Noon would be postponed. According to Mr. Gregory Johnson, the hearing was noticed in the newspaper on Saturday, November 11, 2006 and the notice that was sent to me on November 21, 2006, was a reminder. Nevertheless, he told me that the DC Revenue Bond application from the CAPCS would not be considered today, largely because of issues admittedly related to the inadequacy of the notice to the general public. In this regard, he asked me to share the below notice with you.
Because I haven’t had an opportunity to review the application, I don’t know how I feel about its contents. On the one hand, if the CAPCS wants to borrow money from the city in order to renovate the historic Armstrong building and open the originally proposed charter school, then I can live with that request. On the other hand, if the CAPCS wants to borrow money from the city to build housing in order to finance the renovation and opening of the charter school, then I am strongly opposed to this strategy.
As you know, I have a little more than 30 days to continue to serve as commissioner from Single Member District 5C01; hence, I am developing a transition document for Anita Bonds that will include a list of the issues I have been working on as well as an outline of the status of each issue. My desire and my plan is to make the transition process a seamless one, so I also plan to sit down with Anita and Kris Hammond, the Commissioner-Elect for Single Member District 5C02, to discuss the transition document with them as well as to pass along to them copies of any files or documents that they might be interested in retaining for their respective records. Perhaps needless to say, the ultimate disposition of the Armstrong School building will be near the very top of my list!
Best,
Jim Berry
ANC 5C
well i hope this school for the arts really happens so creative kids from this part of town and east dont have to schlep all the way to Western High(35th and Resevoir Road NW)for classes.
“Western High”? Is that a 20th century reference to the Ellington School for the Arts?
Duke Ellington would have never been allowed to go to school at Western. So naming it after him was kind of mean.
One could consider the naming mean. I prefer to consider it poetic justice.
it’s hardly justice for kids to travel from barry farm to georgetown(where there’s no metro)
this sounds like a great thing!