Northwest Georgetown June ANC Update

Hello and welcome to your June Northwest Georgetown ANC update! What incredible weather we’re (finally) having! Just in time for it to immediately turn to the brutal summer heat with swarms of mosquitos!

Alert: Aggressive Late Night Ticketing

The community—including the ANC, CAG, the University, and many others—have been pleading with the Department of Public Works (DPW) to restore regular and aggressive parking enforcement to address the huge and persistent problem of people coming to Georgetown and parking all day long with no consequences. It seems like DPW finally heard a portion of that message, but with some fairly infuriating misunderstanding of the problem.

Over the past month or two, a DPW ticketing officer has been showing up in the middle of the night (i.e. between 11 pm and 1 am) and ticketing residents for “standing or parking in the bike lane”. But rather than ticketing cars for actually parking in the bike lane (i.e. double parking), the agent is targeting cars which are parked in the legal parking lane but whose wheels are slightly parked across the bike lane line. In other words, they have parked slightly over the line by a few inches.

This has been happening at least on 33rd St., but I suspect it is happening on other streets in Georgetown with bike lanes.

To be clear, this is not cases where the car is actually obstructing the lane. I know this because I’ve gotten some of these tickets. I didn’t immediately realize I actually received these tickets, unfortunately, because DPW appears to have moved away from actually putting the ticket on the car. They mail it. But by the time it reaches you, there’s a good chance the the initial 30 days has passed and the fine is doubled (even though it’s not really due for 60 days).

On Saturday, my neighbor alerted me to having observed the agent ticketing cars late the previous night. I checked the system and saw that I had been issued multiple of these tickets over the past two weeks (again, with no notice). This is a real bummer since the tickets are $150 each.

Having been alerted to the fact that the agent was issuing tickets for de minimis violations, I pulled my car in as close to the curb as possible.

So it was with a great deal of surprise and anger that I discovered on Sunday morning that the agent came by again late Saturday night after I pulled my car as close to the curb as possible and gave me yet another ticket.

This is how I was parked (I swear to God I did not move it after getting the ticket):

This was considered “standing or parking” in the bike lane according to this aggressive ticketing agent.

This is frustrating on many levels, most obvious being that DPW tells us time and again that its staffing prevents it from being able to adequately enforce flagrant violations of the 2 hour limit day-in and day-out in Georgetown. But apparently they can pay a DPW agent overtime to drive to Georgetown in the middle of the night to address a problem that does not exist.

(To be clear, I bike to work every single day. I completely agree that blocked bike lanes is a problem. It’s one I encounter daily. But I have never met a single fellow cyclist who has complained about cars being parked an inch or two over the line. Especially not in the middle of the night.)

I admit, my car has a wide footprint. (It’s not helped that the parking lane on 33rd St. is only 80 inches wide, not the regular 96 inches). And maybe this agent is targeting just me as a result of this mismatch. But my neighbor has observed the agent taking down other car’s plates. So I suspect I am not the only one caught up in this misguided sweep.1

I have reached out to DPW and Brooke Pinto’s office to address this situation. If DPW has the resources to go after residents for these extremely de minimis violations, then surely they can start ticketing commuters who park on the streets all day? But in the meantime, I strongly encourage residents to be careful when you’re parking your car adjacent to a bike lane. Let me know if you have been getting any of these tickets (you may need to check online).

Volta Park

On a more happy note, hopefully you can come out and support the Friends of Volta Park this Thursday night for their spring cocktail fundraiser. (Funnily enough, tickets are also $150 bucks. But hopefully I’ve just saved you from at least one $150 buck ticket, so consider this found money and send it along to Volta Park!) I hope to see you there!

The work on the ball field appears just about complete. The grass needs a bit more time to set in, though, before they’ll open it fully. I’ll let you all know when the final opening is announced.

Lobby Bar and New Cannabis Shop

At the end of April the ABC Board held the protest hearing concerning the Lobby Bar’s liquor license renewal. I led the questioning for the protesting parties. I feel confident that we demonstrated that the bar is in routine violation of its settlement agreement, particularly with regards to the summer garden (i.e. the outdoor patio) hours. We asked the board to not renew the summer garden.

The board did not make a decision yet. We have post-hearing submissions due this month. After that point, the board will have several months to decide. We’ll see.

For what it’s worth, residents have observed that the bar does not appear to be open anymore. The bar owner stated during the hearing that it was closed for renovations for several weeks. It appears to have been more than that and residents haven’t observed any actual renovations occurring. “Closed for renovations” is often a white lie that bars and restaurants say when actually they’re closing for good. Time will tell if that’s the case here. In either event the license will continue until it’s cancelled, so we will continue to push to have the summer garden removed.

On a different note, next door to the Lobby on 33rd St., the building that has a massage parlor is applying to be a licensed cannabis shop. This location appears to be within 400 feet of Capital Connect, a license cannabis retail on Wisconsin Ave. This should make the 33rd st. location ineligible to host another licensed cannabis shop. I’ve made inquiries with ABCA on this.

If this location is actually allowed to host a cannabis shop, understand that this will not be a redux of the unlicensed pot shops that pockmarked this stretch of Wisconsin Ave. just a few years ago. The shops that are licensed have been opening under fairly strict settlement agreements that have so far been effective, as far as I can tell. I would seek to get a similar agreement for this location that would be especially sensitive to not allowing cannabis to be smoked on the premises. Stay tuned.

1

The city releases a dataset of every parking ticket. But the most recent dataset is from February. I am confident that once the May report is issued it will reveal this crack-down in Georgetown.