Tasty Morning Bytes – Lunch Dates, D.C. General and Education Reform
Good morning, DCentric readers! Here are your breakfast links:
Obama-Gray meeting set for Wednesday “President Obama and D.C. Mayor-elect Vincent C. Gray will break bread together Wednesday at the White House, a meeting the two Democrats began penciling in the week of Mr. Gray’s victory in the general election. The lunch follows Mr. Gray’s breakfast meeting last week with Education Secretary Arne Duncan, with interim Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson also in attendance.” (Washington Times)
Social services with nowhere else to go end up at D.C. General complex “Every time he walks in, he gets depressed, Poindexter said. “They closed this place down for a reason,” he said, waving his hand at the sprawling parking lots, run-down brick buildings and the grassy tracts that have become his front yard. “If they wasn’t going to tear it down, leave it closed. Turning it into a shelter is like going backwards.” (The Washington Post)
Who Wants a Park? “Urban land is extremely valuable, and city governments are generally far too quick to limit development on it. Limited development hurts everyone, including the poor…Sometimes, government use of city land for one thing or another, including the occasional park, is justified, but the use of regulation to deliver these ends fuels the pernicious idea that land obtained in such ways is somehow “free” — there to be appropriated by the local government for whatever is deemed by city officials to be the highest and best use. It isn’t.” (ryanavent.com)
D.C. needs to cut up the credit cards “This fiscal year, D.C. taxpayers will pay $412.9 million to service $7 billion in long-term debt, including the city-built baseball stadium…A city that has to resort to payment extensions to meet its basic debt obligations has no business spending additional money on a streetcar system, a city-financed hotel, a new soccer stadium or any of the myriad “economic development” ideas that depend on other people’s money for their success.” (Washington Examiner )
Education reform: Have business-savvy officials improved big-city schools? “In Washington, Mayor Adrian Fenty was voted out at least in part over opposition to the controversial reforms of Chancellor Michelle Rhee, who resigned shortly after his primary loss. In Chicago, Daley, who will be replaced next year, is letting his successor name a permanent schools CEO to replace Mr. Huberman. “People have in too facile a way interpreted mayoral control to mean stability,” says Jeffrey Henig, an education professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College. “What the D.C. case in particular demonstrates is that it’s no guarantee.” (Christian Science Monitor)