It costs a lot of money to live in the neighborhood around Georgetown University. When neighbors sign their mortgages or leases, they’re getting a few things besides a place to live: frenemy status with students and the University, and the ability to live in the Georgetown they’ve always dreamed about.
Of course, every neighbor’s dream of Georgetown is different, so they have to settle their differences in verbal combat. That’s what the Advisory Neighborhood Commission, which meets monthly in the Georgetown Visitation School, is for.
Once a month, seven elected commissioners (including a student commissioner) from the areas around Georgetown, meet their constituents and hash out neighborhood issues. It’s old-fashioned representative democracy, replete with all the cranks and intra-commission rivalries that it entails. What’s notable, besides the copious amounts of caffeine the commissioners consume, is how seemingly mundane issues can take on life-or-death qualities for a small group of neighbors.
Take Monday’s discussion of the trolley tracks on O and P Streets. The tracks are the closest thing the ANC has to a white whale, which makes ANC Chairman Ron Lewis the commission’s Ahab. Lewis and his crew have been pursuing stability-increasing projects on the streets for years, crossing streetcar-history-loving neighbors, who want to retain the tracks. Now that the District Department of Transportation seems ready to shore up the streets, with the possibility of saving the tracks, it seems both the ANC and preservationist Georgetowners have won.
But a win for the ANC creates a whole new set of losers. Construction will take 2 years, meaning residents on O and P srteets will have years of waking up to jackhammers and maneuvering their cars around excavators.
The G2 bus, which currently runs on O and P, will be rerouted, meaning another set of neighbors will have their street compressed. It’s a heavy issue for about 30 people, leading to a tense moment in Monday’s meeting. A man demanded to know what the colored lines on a map meant.
Meanwhile, Commissioner Lewis counter-demanded that he wait until later to examine the map. It’s not high drama, but serves as an illustration of the frequent tension that can flare up at meetings.
Georgetown neighbors get flak from students for complaining about everything. Literally, everything. Once, a neighbor complained about Georgetown raising the height of the new science building, even though it could only be seen from inside the University. Someday, she argued, she might walk through campus. Restaurants who want to add a few more seats and tables are routinely denied, just because neighbors think Georgetown is already wild enough.
But the residents have, by buying or renting in tony Georgetown, paid a hefty fee for this right to complain. None of them will ever see their personal Georgetown realized, of course, which makes all the squabbling and maneuvering at an ANC meeting touching, and more than a little sad.
To see Will squabble and manouver, email him at wsommer@georgetown voice.com
