The Reply to CM Brown's Recent Email

FW: send to Bloomingdale
Fri, Mar 2, 2012 at 9:27 AM
To: "Sadler, Carol (Council)" <csadler@dccouncil.us>, dmeadows@dccouncil.us, "Brown, Michael (Council)"
<mbrown@dccouncil.us>

Councilman Brown-

While I appreciate your staff taking the time to follow up with me, given our exchanges on Twitter, I would have expected to hear from you.  Unfortunately, encouraging MPD to "monitor the area and assess fines for egregious violations" is not going to stop the problem.  Former Councilman Harry Thomas, Jr had also asked for MPD to enforce parking in Bloomingdale and as you can see from the photos which are on the blog, Where Would Jesus Park in Bloomingdale, the enforcement by MPD has not slowed or deterred the problem.

When I first Tweeted at you, it was when I heard that you were looking at ending student's abilities to park in DC because it was frustrating neighbors in Spring Valley.  While at first glance, student parking and Sunday church parking might seem to be mutually exclusive, they are not.  While students studying in DC pay for the ability to park in the city, folks who attend church here on Sundays are able to park for free, with one big difference.  Those attending church are often times illegally parked.  As a result of DC not enforcing parking regulations in neighborhoods on Sundays, these illegally parked vehicles often times will never be ticketed.  The result is extremely frustrated DC residents, who see folks attending church not being ticketed, for the same violation that Monday through Saturday would be ticketed by parking enforcement.

As a resident of DC, I believe that the ability for people to park illegally to attend church must stop.  I had hoped based on your previous messages on Twitter that you were more willing to help us out in Ward 5, as we attempt to function without a current member on the DC Council.  However, today when I received a forwarded message, crafted by your communications director, I now know that your offer was a gesture.
I assure you, that I will continue to address this issue with my neighbors.  While I know in the past, this issue has not met with much success in previous mayoral administrations, I will press to make this a bigger issue until one of my elected officials decides they want to help out the tax paying citizens of the District.  As I told former Councilman Thomas, you have a responsibility to the citizens of DC and not to residents of Maryland and Virginia that come here to attend church.  Your responsibility to the DC residents is to work to address our concerns about illegal parking on Sundays, through something more meaningful then asking MPD to monitor the situation.  Given the spike in robberies in the District, I would argue that MPD has more important things to do than write parking tickets because DC does not wish to send parking enforcement officers into neighborhoods to enforce parking laws on Sundays.  I will remind you that DC does have parking enforcement officers who enforce violation in the downtown corridor on Sundays, but there has never been a push to have them come into the neighborhoods to do them same.  It is ironic, that parking enforcement writes tickets to people on 6th St NW between M and O Sts, who don't move their parallel parked vehicles on Sundays for back in angle parking which
is permitted during the hours that churches in that area have services.

I hope that in the future you and I can work together to make a serious attempt at addressing this issue.  When you are ready to work for the residents of Bloomingdale and other Ward 5 neighborhoods affected by this same issue, please feel free to let me know.

Sincerely,
Brice
Resident of the Bloomingdale Neighborhood