This rendering of the DC Archives is as viewed from across Van Ness Street, looking northwest.
ANC 3F is hosting a special meeting at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, September 6th with UDC officials and the DC state archivist about plans to build the first permanent home for the District’s government archives. As DCist reported a month ago:
“There are property records signed by Frederick Douglass, a longtime recorder of deeds for the city; a will for Alexander Graham Bell; Duke Ellington’s birth certificate; and tens of thousands of square feet worth of other official documents that tell the story of the city’s people.”
The District wants to build the new facility on the UDC campus where Building 41 now stands, which will require an amendment to the campus master plan. The Zoning Commission holding a hearing on September 21st, and before that, ANC 3F commissioners will be voting at their September 19th meeting on whether to lend their support to the amendment.
But first, the commission is hosting a special meeting on September 6th for “community clarification and discussion” about the project. UDC General Council Avis Russell, UDC Chief Operating Officer David Franklin, and State Archivist and Public Records Administrator Lopez Matthews are scheduled to appear. The agenda and Zoom link are below.
Dr. Matthews also spoke about the project and answered community questions at ANC 3F’s July meeting. You can watch the presentation and read our summary here.
ANC 3F – Special Meeting Agenda
September 6, 2023; 7:00 pm to 8:00 pm
ANC 3F is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting at bit.ly/anc3fmeet
Welcome (7:00pm)
Call to Order (7:01pm)
Roll Call (7:02 pm)
I. Adoption of the September 6, 2023 ANC 3F meeting agenda (7:03pm)
II.) Regular Agenda – Information Items (ANC 3F will not take a vote on these items) (7:04pm –
7:30pm)
– Community clarification and discussion on the proposed plan to replace UDC – Van
Ness Campus Building 41 with the DC Archives.
A. UDC Building 41 – General Council, UDC, Avis Russell; Chief Operating Officer, UDC, David Franklin (7:04pm – 7:14pm)
– Options in the 2020 UDC Van Ness Master Plan
– Impact on gardens, and garden relocation plans
– Update on UDC Student Housing
B. DC Archives Plan – State Archivist and Public Records Administrator for DC, Dr. Lopez Matthews (7:15pm – 7:30pm)
– Design and Structure
– Demolition and Construction plan
– UDC/OPR partnership
– Opportunities to the Community
C. Questions & Answers (7:31pm – 8:00pm)
III. Adjournment (8:00pm)
For public comments ahead of the special meeting, please email us a
[email protected]. Include name and street address.
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Mary Beth Tinker says
I was at a meeting of the ANC3F Schools & Universities committee last Tuesday, where the President of UDC’s Graduate Student Government Association, John Irungu, and other students explained why they are opposed to the plan to demolish Building 41 and replace it with the DC Archives.
They asked to be on the agenda for the Sept. 6th “public meeting”, but have been refused.
Why have students been excluded from the plan? And why are they not on the agenda for Sept. 6th?
Green Eyeshades says
I copied the link at the top of ANC3F’s website which is labeled with an envelope icon (for e-Mail). The actual email address for ANC3F’s commissioners under that link is this:
[email protected]
Notice the “WPENGINEGPOWERED” label in the middle of that link.
Without a functioning calendar page or up-to-date pages for Archive, Agendas, Meeting Minutes, Video Recordings or Resolutions, it is impossible for anyone in the community to know what ANC3F is doing or whether it has expanded the agenda for tonight’s meeting about UDC Building 41 and DC Archives. There is no version of the agenda for tonight’s meeting that is available to the general public on ANC3F’s website.
There was no advance public notice on ANC3F’s website of the committee meeting for the Schools and Universities Committee last Tuesday. The link for that committee on ANC3F’s website appears to be years out-of-date:
https://www.anc3f.com/schools-and-universities-committee
Perhaps ANC3F sent out emails to some members of the community about that committee meeting last week, but it didn’t announce the meeting publicly. Forest Hills Connection has been striving to give our neighborhood advance notice of important ANC3F activities, as shown by the main blogpost. But the Connection can’t do everything for ANC3F. The Connection can’t do ANC3F’s job for them.
ANC3F has a statutory duty to keep our community informed of its government actions. It is failing miserably at its duty. It is failing to hold DC government agencies accountable for their hilarious incompetence.
I would be surprised and pleased if some of our ANC3F commissioners were among the 97 ANC commissioners city-wide who sent a letter to DC government executive and legislative branches demanding accountability and reform for DC’s 911 emergency dispatchers:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/09/05/911-calls-dc-advisory-neighborhood-commissioners/
But we have no idea which of our ANC3F commissioners may have joined that effort, because they have been ineffective at running their own website.
It now appears likely that ANC3F’s failure to hold DC agencies accountable is what enabled DC Water and its contractors to fail and refuse for five months to tell us what toxic chemicals were released from the Soapstone sewer repair during the last three “Shots” of pipe relining that were done in late March or early April 2023 (Shot Three, Shot Four and Shot Five). DC Water has still not released any new chemical specific laboratory test results for Shot Three, Shot Four and Shot Five despite promising to do so in its August 17, 2023 public meeting:
https://www.dcwater.com/projects/soapstone_sewer