Agency
Performance Oversight Hearings Fiscal Year 2015-2016,
Committee of The
Whole
Testimony of
Daniel Goldon Wolkoff
amglassart@yahoo.com
March 2, 2016
MCMILLAN
PARK-The biggest land theft since Manhattan!
With some edits
added since testimony was submitted.
Our Declaration
of Independence states:
“government’s
derive their just powers from the consent of the governed”
Please Council
members, contact me to explain how you developed consent from the
people of DC, for the “surplus” of McMillan Park to Vision
McMillan Partners and their alliance with DMPED (Deputy Mayor for
Planning and Economic Development). Tell me about the forums you
held, the polls you took, the community meetings, Ballots cast, and
all the analysis you did of the various options you presented your
constituents. Tell me how your Committee hearings are not a charade,
blocking public input in reality! I see the empty seats on the dais,
and have seen our 15 copies of testimony thrown in the recycling bin
before the Committee of the Whole has completed its hearings. I
expect each Council-member to read my testimony,
contact me and explain how they gained consent of the people on this
land transfer, explain to me and all of the District, how they are
executing their responsibility to provide oversight of
this massive multi-billion dollar development project.
The United
States Constitution First Amendment guarantees OUR right to “petition
the government for redress of grievances” Please Council-members
explain to me how the DMPED/VMP hiring, in Dec 2013, of a Baltimore
Public Relations firm, Fontaine Company, who’s
stated goal is to “neutralize opposition” to VMP's
oversized development of McMillan, is not a violation
of the citizens constitutional first amendment rights?
What does “provide continual cover to elected officials”,
actually mean? Why did these consultants, VMP, hire
Carmen Group with our money to lobby our own officials, spending
$100,000 just for one appointment with David Grosso, tell us please,
how is that ethical? And why are we the taxpayers being
forced to foot this bill?
Is this the
way the business of the people of The District of Columbia is to be
conducted?
Please explain
how DMPED project Manager Shiv Newaldous and Deputy Mayor E. Jeffrey
Miller can commit perjury in sworn testimony to Chair Bowser on
Feb. 11, 2014. They lied to the Chair that DMPED did not pay for the
Fontaine agency, despite his signature on the invoice from Dec. 2013.
So please explain to me, are Mayor Bowser and current
Chairman Phil Mendelson guilty as well, as they cover this up,
are all you city officials guilty of “obstruction of justice”?
Chairman Mendelson said it was “kind of a PR
nightmare”, well yes, it’s ACTUALLY a criminal violation of the
peoples first amendment rights!
Shoving
VisionMcMillan Partners (VMP) and all their lies and
manipulations down the people’s throats is the “nightmare!”
Then Mendelson, himself, proceeded to lie about
McMillan Advisory Group support for VMP, at the
“surplus” 5 year extension. Thus committing Bowser’s successor to
the same crimes you are guilty of, and to this
grotesque project. By 2022 she will likely
be working directly for the developers, whereas now she
just does their bidding against the “public interest”. The
“revolving“ door with Trammel Crow, DMPED Jeff Miller's
former employer and a parade of DC officials going in and out of
Holland and Knight would be illegal at the Federal Govt. and you act
proud? It is disgusting, The District of Corruption!
The Mayor and
City Council have dictated to the City, and the People, that OUR
public land be given away in “massive corporate welfare FRAUD.” There is no attempt to gain consent; and Fontaine is impersonating the
community, “neutralizing opposition”, with the stated “goal”
to “shift community dialogue and general perception to that of
majority support for VMP plans”.
Council-members
please explain to me how this is not deserving of a class action suit
in Federal Court for $100’s of millions, to bloody the nose of our
“out of control”, and dictatorial government as it continually
sells out public interest and “The Commons” to corporate
interests for private profit at the People’s expense!
Democracy doesn’t
end the day after an election, and Mayor Gray was not elected, rather
installed by campaign and electoral fraud, bribery, at least 3/4
million dollars in illegal contributions and obstruction of justice.
Our Federal Prosecutor, Ron Machen, said DC corruption in your
Council offices, and the Mayor's, “tests our resolve”. Imagine
the scope of the “cover-up”, if he had no “resolve”.
Mayors have lied
about 75 years of expressed, voted on, and testified to, public need
for McMillan Park in false declarations. It was said “there is
“no public need” for the “surplus and disposition”
declaration on McMillan which also calls for “increased
competition.” It is this City Council’s blatant acts of
criminality, collusion, and rubber stamping of subordinate agencies
here at DMPED, OP (Office of Planning), HPRB (Historic Preservation
Review Board), and the DC Zoning Commission that justifies criminal
charges and prosecution.
Council members,
I recommend you get on the right side of the law on McMillan because
you’re running on arrogance, and abuse of power, little else, not
legality, this shear delusion isn’t going to sustain you forever.
Thank God for Elissa Silverman the only Council member who voted in favor of the people, and
Auditor Kathy Patterson who are honest, and in the rare honest vote,
tried to deny Mayor Bowser 7 years to pull off this “No Bid”,
“Exclusive Rights”, “Abuse of Power”, and massive “land
Theft.”
Pope
Francis
"We
have created new idols.
The
worship of the ancient Golden Calf has returned in a new ruthless
guise
in the idolatry of money and the dictatorship of an impersonal
economy lacking a truly human purpose"
Successive
administrations, and the DC City Council, have colluded with private
development conglomerate Vision McMillan Partners (
www.envisionmcmillan.com
), to transfer massive public wealth and publicly owned 25 acre
McMillan Park, the last large open green space in the city, to
private corporate profit.
Over $300 million
in subsidies, no legitimate developer would need in this hyper real
estate market, including the government paying all the
pre-development and land preparation costs, and almost $11 million in
consulting and legal fees, are all highly unusual.
The issue is the
theft from the people of District of Columbia, and the Nation, of a
significant work of landscape architecture and industrial design, by
its own Mayor and City Council and subordinate agencies who have
failed to protect the people of Washington and violated the law.
These officials
have committed theft, of the historic protected work of
turn-of-the-century master designers, brought to Washington by
Senator McMillan, an important historic site, a critical public
amenity, and a potentially lifesaving backup system for clean water.
Our clean water system is currently being threatened by ground water
movement of contamination from WW1 chemical warfare American
University laboratory waste dumps in Spring Valley, adjacent to the
Dalecarlia Reservoir.
The McMillan Sand
Filtration Site, a registered National and DC Historic District, on
“Emergency Evacuation Route”, North Capitol, is DC’s Central
Park. Parks are development for the people.
We can become
founders and create a conservancy, when the “Monstrosity on
Michigan Avenue”, a mammoth National Harbor office and condo park,
is defeated. If VMP/Gray/Bowser’s McMillan Town Center is such a
great idea, let’s get a section of Rock Creek Park ceded to DC and
build it there. Or at Washington Hospital Center, where extensive
parking lots cause horrible storm water runoff and sewage flooding in
Bloomingdale. We can put VMP engineering experience to solving that,
rather than constructing 50 buildings, massive medical office towers,
700 condos and 3000 parking spaces, right on top of this preexisting
failure.
Enjoyed from 1907
to 1941 as DC’s only racially integrated park, we still have
African-American seniors who remember the community activities and
sleeping out on the breezy embankments and reservoir on steaming DC
summer nights.
Does the civil
rights and social justice history explain the Army Corp of Engineer's
fencing off the site in 1941 for fear of Axis sabotage, but never
reopening it at the end of WW11? Why was the predominantly
African-American community denied its healthy outdoor green space
when privileged upper NW was lavished 5 times the parks, Rock Creek’s
stream valleys, wooded hiking trails, Civil War fortifications, and
other natural and beneficial space. Can anyone imagine a 25 acre
green space in Georgetown or Chevy Chase fenced off with barbed wire,
excluding the public, for 75 years! The “just” answer to obvious
racial and economic class discrimination is opening McMillan Park.
We need a
fascinating large outdoor “great space” in the center of the
city, not massive corporate welfare abuse, and 20,000 more cars on
area streets where the air already stinks with the highest air
pollution measured in DC; and, where ambulances and fire trucks are
regularly blocked by traffic congestion, NOW!
Adaptive re-use,
the repurposing of historic sites, so successful around the world,
would preserve the 20 acres of “underground filtration cells”, 12
foot high acre sized masonry galleries perfect for numerous community
and commercial activity, including sustainable urban “indoor”
agriculture. Five times more productive than surface farms, no
pesticides, little water use, providing millions of pounds of fresh
ripe, vegetables and farmed fish. The “farm to table” movement
for our restaurants, an end to “food desserts”, with community
owned urban farms, a “nutrition/exercise hub” to improve the
health of our residents and visitors to this tourist destination. We
can train our youth and under-employed in masonry, carpentry, urban
agriculture, and technology careers restoring the site and running
the farms. Quality oriented restaurants with wine cellars located
right there could use the nutritious and organic foods produced on
site.
Vision McMillan’s
massive development, with millions of tons of pollution and carbon
emitting concrete structures, requires demolition of the 20 acres of
underground masonry galleries, and decades of construction on the
site.
Saving the
underground for adaptive reuse, will preserve the entire 25 acre
surface park for generations to enjoy, including community gardens,
DC Wolf Trap and Glen Echo type entertainment events, and other
creative uses, not corporate profit.
We reject as
illegal the “collusive partnership” between “our
representatives” and connected corporate developers, given a no bid
“exclusive rights agreement”, rubber stamped by subordinate DC
“regulatory” agencies, working for the interests of the developer
and against the community.
The Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development, Jeffrey
Miller, himself a former VP of the lead developer, Trammel Crow, has
hired an “Astroturf” PR firm from Baltimore, Jamie Fontaine, to
violate the people's “First Amendment” rights to “petition
their government for redress of grievances”.
Long
time activist for McMillan Park, landscape architect Mary Pat Rowan
reveals the PR firm's
“Astroturf” campaign in this City Council Committee Oversight
hearing with Muriel Bowser, and Historic Restoration artist
Daniel
Goldon Wolkoff, explains adaptive re-use of restored McMillan Park.
The Mayor and
City Council have dictated to the City, with no attempt to gain
consent, and Fontaine is impersonating the community, “neutralizing
opposition”, with the stated “goal” of “shift community
dialogue and general perception to that of majority support for VMP
plans”. They have a “talking point”, harped on by Bowser “the
site was never a park”. Finally, Office of Planning Architectural
Historian, Kim Williams, wrote the nomination to the National
Register of Historic Places years overdue, and the site was
designated a park. It was originally designed by America’s
Foremost Landscape Architect, Fredrick Law Olmsted Jr., as has been
related by Bloomingdale seniors in oral histories.
National
Register of Historic Places nomination
(http://www.nps.gov/nr/feature/places/13000022.htm )
She
describes a remarkably intact, fascinating, even charming,
engineering marvel, the worshipers of profits are asking to demolish
and over build and
super urbanize it into a crass suburban medical office and condo park
like
Tyson's Corner.
We
want to preserve our “great outdoor” space for decent air,
exercise, nutrition, and help keep our people out of the doctor’s
office, not build massive medical offices.
Public land for
public needs, like a DC Wolf Trap outdoor concert stage for
festivals, plays, music with sunset vistas will enhance our city.
We need a Glen Echo type arts/education campus for young and
families. Glen Echo Consortium (MD Parks, National Park Service, and
Montgomery County) offers 90 pages of classes and activities 365 days
a year.
We need your help
to fight, this “monstrosity” of massive hideous construction, in
historic Bloomingdale, in the courts. The DC government, like so
many, destructive to the environment and public health, needs a
bloody nose. A lawsuit for this violation of our rights, is needed,
we must remind them who they were elected to represent, and Save
McMillan Park!
Pope
Francis
"We
have created new idols.
The
worship of the ancient Golden Calf has returned in a new ruthless
guise
in the idolatry of money and the dictatorship of an impersonal
economy lacking a truly human purpose"
McMillan
Coalition for Sustainable Agriculture
Daniel Goldon
Wolkoff, amglassart@yahoo.com
People have asked
me about our water system and how it works, so here is a very well
detailed article about this important item in our lives.
http://greenrisks.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-dalecarlia-reservoir-and-water.html
Contact your Council members, speak up at your ANC meetings. Don't let the government give away what should be a big park for you. Demand that a portion of this park be opened for public use in time for this summer. Seventy five years with a big fence and no public use is an outrage.
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