Bureaucratic Inertia: Tale Of 2 Hinges

Long Wait for Repair of Park Gate Stokes Anger

How long does it take the District government to repair two hinges on a busted gate?

In the case of an Adams Morgan playground, would you believe a week?

Six weeks?

Try 10.

And that wasn't the end of the ordeal: 48 hours after the repair, the gate broke again, and workers were dispatched for another repair.

Anyone questioning that chronology need only check with Mindy Moretti, the advisory neighborhood commissioner who harangued the Department of Parks and Recreation with e-mails about the broken gate from June 21 through Aug. 31, when the first repair was completed.

Her persistence embodies tenacity in the face of bureaucratic inertia.

"It is simply incomprehensible to me how your Department can fail to fix something as vital as this gate to the children's area," Moretti wrote in one e-mail. "I have no idea what it requires to be properly fixed, but it absolutely must be fixed and fixed NOW."

John Webster, a parks spokesman, agreed that the repair took too long.

"We need to be more conscientious and copious," he said in a telephone interview.

Webster said he could not fully explain why the repair took 10 weeks, except that the agency's attempt to hire a welder became bogged down in the bureaucracy. He said officials ultimately turned to a parks employee with "some welding experience."

The delay, Webster said, was unusual for an agency that oversees 308 parks and 67 recreation centers. "To my understanding, this is not the rule, this is the exception," he said.