The Advisory Neighborhood Commission 2E convened in its monthly public meeting Tuesday evening to discuss the alleged improper acquisition of parking decals by university students, the cessation of Saturday service at the Georgetown DMV branch and an update on crime in District 2E, among other topics.
Currently, only students who live outside of District 2E, which includes the university, can receive a reciprocity permit that is required to park in the residential neighborhood. Residents at the meeting said they have noticed an increase in the number of student cars parked in front of their homes for extended periods of time, alleging that students have been improperly issued parking decals.
“It is my understanding that Georgetown students who live near campus should not have permits of reciprocity,” one Prospect Street resident said. Students who live away from campus should not have cars parked in front of residences for days or weeks, she added.
DMV Director of Customer Service Jackie Stanley said that some permits may have been issued in error. “Because students who live in other parts of Ward 2 can legally obtain reciprocity permits, what we have to do is go through our files and check specific cars [which may have] incorrectly received such permits,” she said,
Washington, D.C. DMV Director Sheryl Hobbs Newman underscored the need to find whether or not such permits were incorrectly issued and then, if necessary, work “to find causes of why these permits may have been mis-issued.” Newman also said that these “problems have been compounded by redistricting.”
Lt. Brian Bray of the Metropolitan Police Department briefed the assembly on recent crime, which consisted of mostly robberies and burglaries. “There has been a 19 percent crime reduction in upper Georgetown and a 5 percent reduction in lower Georgetown,” he said. Several attempted robberies were foiled because of alert community members, Bray said.
The ANC also discussed the termination of Saturday service at the DMV satellite office in Georgetown. Newman justified the decision of the DMV. “There are a number of factors that went into the deliberation about what to do with respect to [the DMV branches in] Georgetown and Brentwood,” she said. “Some of them had to do with our ability to staff those offices adequately, but the largest factor was the fact that we had resource constraints.”
Such constraints, Newman said, stem from the city’s $323 million budget deficit. “Every agency in the District of Columbia has been forced to make concessions, and we wanted to be as fair and equitable as we could across the District of Columbia,” she said. “The one thing we did not want to do was have residents not be able to get service Monday through Saturday.”
Newman said the DMV decided to keep all three offices open five days a week, with Brentwood and Georgetown open Monday through Friday and the main office at 301 C St., NW, open Tuesday through Saturday. “Currently the Georgetown office does not provide full service on Saturday. By keeping C Street open on Saturdays, we can continue to offer full service at the largest branch, which will be fully staffed on Saturdays,” she said.
Parking for the Georgetown office, located in the Georgetown Park mall, is often too limited, she said, and the C Street location would provide ample parking on Saturdays. “Given our inability to adequately service the large volumes of people on Saturday at both Georgetown and Brentwood, we concluded that offering full service at C Street on Saturday would best serve district residents,” she said.
Both commissioners and residents were divided between continuing Saturday service at the Georgetown branch. ANC Commissioner Mark Ryan said retailers at Georgetown Park disliked having long lines from the DMV spill into the mall. Commissioner Bill Starrels disagreed, saying that shopkeepers preferred the excess business the DMV attracted on Saturdays.
“To curtail the hours of the Georgetown office would not make sense to anybody,” Starrels said, “I fail to see the logic behind such a move.”
Newman discussed the remote possibility of continuing Saturday service in Georgetown only if the city can correct its budget woes. “If we can fix the city’s deficit, there may be additional money and we can submit requests for givebacks,” she said.
The ANC approved its budget for the fiscal year 2002-03 with a slight increase in expenses. About 75 people attended the meeting. The ANC will hold its next meeting on Oct. 29 at 6:30 p.m.
