$90,000 Calendar May Not Be Page-Turner

The D.C. Department of Public Works spent more than $90,000 to mail 2005 calendars to all city households in an effort to bolster its image.

The 32-page, full-color calendar features photos of tow trucks, abandoned cars and piles of garbage, along with general information on department programs but few specific dates and schedules for services. The pages for August display a large photo of a sanitation truck and advice on how to remove dead animals. September contains a photo of a parking enforcement officer and a booted car.

"There are residents who don't have any idea what we do," said department spokeswoman Mary Myers, who came up with the idea for the calendar. "This seems like an excellent way to tell people what we do."

Critics said it is a waste of money and paper that will only add to the amount of garbage the department has to pick up.

Jim Dougherty, an environmental activist who sits on the mayor's environmental council, said he has been after city government to do more to publicize recycling and other conservation efforts. But he questioned whether the calendar is the way to go about it.

"They handed it to me and I said, 'Thanks, but no thanks. I don't need the extra paper,' " Dougherty said.

The calendar, sent to 275,000 homes in the District, is in addition to brochures on leaf collection and bulky and hazardous waste that the department mails out during the year. Those two brochures cost $28,000 each and will still have to be sent this year, Myers said, because the information in them wasn't finalized in time to be included in the calendar.

Indeed, the only specific dates noted on the calendar are those for Christmas tree collection (Jan. 3 through Jan 8) and the dates when street sweeping ends (Jan. 3) and resumes (March 21). For recycling, hazardous waste, bulk trash and other pickup schedules, the calendar refers residents to phone numbers or Web sites.

Myers said the actual calendar portion of the new publication was never intended to be that useful.

"The dates are really secondary," she said. "The primary information is the description of basic services offered by the city. We were looking for a way to present this information about services in a way that people would keep it around for more than a few days or hours. A calendar format seemed to fit the bill."

Myers said that Public Works is in some ways "an invisible agency" and that "trash collection is something that we all pretty much take for granted until it goes wrong. We really need a way to communicate with people in a new way."

Although it is called the "District of Columbia Department of Public Works 2005 Calendar" and features the DPW logo on every page, Myers said the calendar was paid for by the city's Storm Water Management Task Force, which is made up of the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority and the departments of Public Works, Health and Transportation.

The $56,000 in printing costs and $35,000 in postal fees for the calendar came from storm-water fees collected from WASA customers under the city's federal storm-water permit. DPW officials decided to spend part of their share of the $3 million in storm-water fees on the calendar instead of other activities.

Mohsin Siddique, acting director of the Stormwater Permit Compliance Administration, said he views the calendar as public education.

"We need to reduce storm-water pollution," Siddique said. "The more educated people are, the less pollution."

Myers said the calendar was produced as inexpensively as possible.

"This is clearly not a fancy document," she said. "These are pictures that we have taken, and from the weight of the paper and the design, this is not exactly a corporate annual report. It was made to be interesting for people who want information about public services."