A Better Budget
Today, the Committee on Public Works & Operations unanimously passed our revised budget, which recommends adjustments to the Mayor’s budget to the full Council. It comes after months of performance oversight hearings and budget oversight hearings where we heard from residents, businesses, organizations, and government agency personnel.
The committee and I, as chair, are committed to preserving and strengthening critical services, from trash collection and composting services to streamlining business licensing and ensuring sufficient staffing to handle administrative claims and human rights protections.
Here are some of the highlights:
Keeping Our City Clean and Livable
We will continue the standalone public restrooms pilot program that I funded last year, with five “Thrones” units, including one that will be placed at or near Columbia Heights Civic Plaza.
With funds from Councilmember Janeese Lewis George, we also added funds to hire four new inspectors to enforce solid waste violations that impact residential and business neighborhoods across Ward 1 and the District.
Public Safety
Creating safe communities requires us to invest in human services, education, support for our youth and for adults struggling with homelessness, poverty, substance use disorder and mental health issues. That’s why I have invested in afterschool and summer programming for students, street outreach to those in need, and why I’m supporting the establishment of a stabilization center in Columbia Heights.
In this budget process, I transferred funds to preserve the Office of the Ombudsperson for Children, which I created through legislation in 2021. It’s at least the second time we’ve had to protect the office from attempted elimination by the Mayor.
This small office has a significant impact on the lives of children, especially those simultaneously involved in foster care and the juvenile justice system.
In our committee budget, we were able to transfer funds and contribute to addressing violence through prevention efforts, policing, and prosecution:
Prevention. We were able to continue the pilot outreach program that provides support to people living with substance use disorders in Ward 1 commercial corridors in Columbia Heights Mount Pleasant, Lower Georgia Avenue and U Street and the outreach program on T St. This benefits individuals and creates healthy neighborhoods.
Policing. We responded to resident requests by adding two mobile police surveillance cameras in the ward.
Prosecution. The Committee report adds staff to the city’s crime scene services in the Department of Forensic Sciences.
We also expanded the Department of For-Hire Vehicles’ capacity to enforce ride-shares, taxis and other services by adding new officers and funding the replacement and acquisition of new vehicles and we’ve enhanced DPW’s ability to target scofflaw vehicles by funding automatic license plate readers to be installed on tow cranes.
In the budget recommendations from the Committee on Judiciary & Public Safety, chaired by Councilmember Brooke Pinto, I’m glad to see support for prevention efforts, such as violence intervention, literacy training, Safe Passage, and expansion of the OAG’s truancy reduction program. I’ve supported all these approaches and will support them in the FY 25 budget.
Supporting the Rights, Health, and Wellbeing of Residents
The Mayor’s budget cut or eliminated key protections and supports for D.C. residents and my committee was able to restore many of those.
We restored positions in the Office of Administrative Hearings that will improve timeliness in resolving administrative cases that have a tangible effect on residents’ lives, for benefits like SNAP and unemployment insurance.
This budget helps protect renters, by restoring an investigator in the Department of Licensing and Consumer Protection to ensure compliance with corporate property owner disclosures, so that bad actors can no longer hide behind opaque LLCs.
It reduces the backlog of cases of discrimination, by adding specialists at the Office of Human Rights and protects vulnerable populations and promotes fair housing practices by restoring funds to the Fair Housing Program in that office.
And we provided funds for the completion of a LGBTQ+ Community Center next to Howard Theater that provides wraparound services, such as counseling, job opportunities, HIV/STD testing, education, and more.
There is more work ahead of us – both in this budget and beyond – in the areas of housing, homelessness, pay equity, schools, just to name a handful. Our Committee recommendations are not final – they will be incorporated into a revised budget that reflects the work of all the committees and then go to the full Council for review and a series of votes.
When we first received this budget, like many of my colleagues I had a lot of concerns. On Thursday, the Committee moved recommendations that restore funding to critical programs, bring back agency positions needed to provide residents with the robust services they need and expect, and bring to life important programs and services that we’ve passed in the past two years and will reach and benefit District residents living in all eight wards.