Political Quotes

“I ask that $570,000 in local funds be restored to the advisory neighborhood commissions. These neighborhood elected bodies were included in the original Home Rule Charter to allow residents at the block and neighborhood level participation that would otherwise be unavailable to them. ANCs keep neighborhoods from being overloaded with liquor stores and porno shops and from being disproportionately affected by transfer stations or illegal dumping. ANCs keep parks from becoming open-air drug markets, and the Anacostia River from being polluted by people who dump refrigerators and contaminated waste. ANCs assure community comment and feedback on matters such as the placement of facilities and thus save the central government from making many mistakes. No government agency could possibly monitor daily the minutia of neighborhood life and ensure rapid responses to neighborhood needs. Without the ANCs, the District's huge loss of population would have been far greater. The almost 300 unpaid commissioners achieve what it would take a legion of civil servants to accomplish. The ANCs have already taken a 50 percent cut in funding since 1994, forcing some out of business and leaving citizens in many District neighborhoods with no neighborhood representation. So great have been the cuts and so detrimental to the neighborhoods that the control board actually recommended a $78,000 increase in funding for FY 1999, not zero funding, as proposed here.”