Ward 3 In Profile

A Part of but Apart From the City

By Cindy Loose
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 11, 1998; Page J01

This is the sixth in a series of ward profiles.

Snow blanketed the city. Plows were nowhere to be found. Major thoroughfares were closed to all but skiers and the most valiant drivers with four-wheel-drive vehicles.

The beleaguered residents of the city had no relief after the blizzard of 1996, but many managed to find a scapegoat. They blamed Ward 3.

It was the hottest rumor in the storm-plagued town: Everybody else was trapped, but west of Rock Creek Park in Ward 3, the streets were clear. As one 90-year-old woman from Petworth in Northwest Washington put it, over there, everything was "clean as a whistle."

"It was such nonsense," recalls Shay O'Neill, who at the time had volunteered to drive her Jeep all over the city to transport kidney dialysis patients. God had not spared Ward 3. Nor had the mayor dispatched equipment to remove God's handiwork.

This is an election year in a city that some have described as racially polarized. At times, Ward 3, overwhelmingly white and much more affluent than much of the District, seems to be the odd man out. It is geographically distinct, bounded by the park to the east, Maryland to the north, Georgetown to the south.

If the neighborhoods of Ward 3 were newly constructed suburban towns, many would be hailed as innovative, exciting models for the nation. They incorporate many of the so-called new ideas in town building:

Front porches and rear garages encourage communication among neighbors. Leafy streets invite foot traffic, as do shops and businesses built within walking distance of homes. And there is a mix of income levels, ages and races.

Apartment buildings along Connecticut Avenue, for example, offer housing to the elderly and to recent college graduates settling into their first apartments -- just blocks away from multimillion dollar mansions.

A few steps from the stately historic homes of Cleveland Park, where old money clusters, are apartments housing primarily poor immigrants just getting their start. The ward is 79 percent white, 21 percent minority.

Many residents are what tax collectors fondly call "cash cows." With no need for welfare or other social services, and with no children in public schools, the cash cows submit to high taxes with relatively little expected in return.

But despite the appearance of some neighborhoods, Ward 3 is not a suburban town. Its inclusion in a troubled and largely impoverished city makes its riches stand out as something just as easily envied as admired.

Residents of the ward last year had a median income of $64,800 -- or nearly three times the income of Ward 8, the city's poorest and predominantly African American. Whether some politicians create resentment against Ward 3 or merely exploit it, it is rarely far beneath the surface of any debate.

Ward 3 seems pleased with its council representative, Kathy Patterson (D), who is up for reelection. But the approaching elections generate less interest than discussions of Congress and the D.C. financial control board, whose creation three years ago was largely welcomed here.

Today, however, about the best anyone says is that they are cautiously optimistic. They express hope in Camille C. Barnett, the city's chief management officer, and Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey, and they note seeing more street cleaners and fewer potholes. But they express disappointment that things haven't moved faster, or deeper.

"I welcomed the control board, but I didn't expect them to be so, so undemocratic," said Marilyn Myerson, of Forest Hills. "But they've made some good hires, and hopefully things will improve a little."

A widely held resignation in the ward echoes the moment in the movie "As Good as It Gets" when Jack Nicholson surveys his psychiatrist's office and asks the other patients, "What if this is as good as it gets?"

But that's the prevalent attitude among residents without children in the public schools. Public school parents are unhappy campers.

Yet home sales in the area are booming, and to a person those interviewed said they love this city and wouldn't want to trade it for any other place in the metro area.

"People tell me that if I moved to the suburbs, I'd have all these wonderful services," Myerson said. "The problem with that is, that then I'd be living in the suburbs."

If Ward 3 schools were getting more than their share, as some politicians have alleged, then why, asked Kate Hill, would her children sometimes have to wear coats and mittens in the classroom at Lafayette Elementary?

Hill, president of the Chevy Chase school's Home School Association, said that year after year, the system has promised a new boiler. It was in this year's capital budget, and the latest promise was that work would begin in May. But as of May, there was no sign of action.

"This year, they put in a temporary boiler that temporarily put out heat," Hill said. "Some areas of the school were 106 degrees, and some areas were 61 degrees and the kids sat in coats." And when the temporary boiler turns on every half-hour or so, entire classrooms shake and rumble, as if an jumbo jet were taking off just outside the door.

Like many parents, Hill is infuriated at the system's broad failures, both here and elsewhere in the city.

"Am I angry? That's putting it mildly. Because it's the kids who are getting jerked, not just my kids but every kid in the city. At best, D.C. is an equal opportunity abuser."

It doesn't help her blood pressure when leaders make a scapegoat of Ward 3. Every school in the ward has the problems that plague schools citywide -- schools with bad gutters that could be simply fixed but instead are left to threaten the entire foundation, schools that would lack books unless parents made weekly runs to public libraries.

Sometimes it seems, she said, that city leaders are more concerned about making sure everyone fails equally than about making sure the tools are there for everyone to succeed.

Hill said Ward 3 schools are among the most crowded in the city, and she is fed up with the divisive talk.

"You can't blame people in the city who believe Ward 3 gets more -- they've been fed this by people who promulgate it for political gain," she said. "The misconceptions on both sides mean people can't find common ground, and that works to the politicians' advantage. It give them more power and less need to be accountable."

Accountability would benefit every resident of the city, she said, and she wants the system to start by producing a line-item budget and by getting accurate counts of personnel and students.

"Putting together a readable budget and counting personnel is not rocket science," Hill said. "Their inability is called corruption -- there is somebody who doesn't want to see this changed. Administration after administration changes the leaves, but the disease stays rooted."

The schools of Ward 3 are famous for their improvisation and parent involvement. The parents' relative affluence and organizational skills mean they are able to raise more money than schools in poorer wards. They often purchase things one would expect the system to provide -- such as water coolers, insulation, copying machines and telephones.

At one school, parents have done so much plumbing and wiring work that they were afraid to be identified, saying they suspected their work was not up to code but better than nothing.

Despite the frustrations, most parents of Ward 3 elementary school students are happy, but few gatherings are complete without discussing a routine question: What are you going to do once your children finish elementary school? The path to private school already has been taken by about 10,000 Ward 3 students.

"It's the saddest thing," Hill said. "I believe in public education. I believe in the idea of people from all walks of life getting the equal footing of an equal education.

"But there is only so long you can beat your head against a wall because it feels so good to stop."

In a city where homicides are endemic, Ward 3 is nearly immune.

"There is usually one, maybe two murders a year, and always some kind of extenuating circumstances involved," said Kathy Smith, of American University Park, who devotes hours each week to monitoring crime and the police force.

People in Ward 3 worry more about car radio thefts than drive-by shootings. The ward suffers some break-ins, purse snatchings, car theft, vagrancy. And although things are good by comparison with many other wards, crime remains troubling. Those like Smith, who have made crime watching their civic duty, feel some cause for optimism.

"I was very hopeful when the control board came in. I remain optimistic even though it's not been as easy as everyone first thought," said Smith, who is part of a citizens' advisory council that meets monthly with the 2nd District commander, meets regularly with the chief and publishes a newsletter called Street Smart.

Her optimism, however, is clearly a delicate thing.

"Over the years, things fell into the abyss slowly, and we didn't understand how bad it was. Now, maybe we still don't realize how bad, but we know it's bad, and people are talking about it. That's hopeful."

And even when you work with one agency of government and see progress being made, you often run into roadblocks in another branch.

For example, at one of her meetings with police Cmdr. Jacqueline Barnes, Smith learned that a huge amount of police time is eaten up by responding to false burglar alarms. Many of the false alarms come repeatedly from the same businesses with cheap or malfunctioning systems.

"In the 2nd District, almost a third of all calls are false alarms, but two officers have to be dispatched in case it's the real thing," Smith said. A report shows that of 73,550 calls last year, 20,000 were false burglar alarms. Some businesses logged a false alarm nearly every day.

It was a real eye-opener, Smith said, and she began pushing for rule changes that would allow the police to fine businesses or homeowners whose alarms repeatedly summoned them falsely.

"The rules were finally published, and police were ready to go. But the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs said they didn't have people to log in the fines, receive the money or adjudicate the tickets if someone protested," Smith said.

So the false alarms keep ringing.

Mayor Marion Barry once described Ward 3 at the 3-T Ward, the T's being trees, traffic and taxes. By that definition, Marjorie Rachlin would be the tree lady.

She's tree coordinator for Advisory Neighborhood Commission 3F, chairwoman of a beautification project called the Friends of Connecticut Avenue, and a primary force goading city officials to prune and plant.

Whatever she does citywide, she noted, she "always has to take into account the resentment, the fear that you're going to get more than what someone considers your fair share."

She says she understands: "The resentment is due to the income differential; we are wealthy over here." That's the key, she said, to understanding why some people in Ward 3 seem complacent.

"If you don't have kids in the public school, you're not that affected. Life just goes on unless you have some kind of emergency."

Yet she is disappointed with the control board and gets frustrated. The city's tree department, for example, has been stripped of personnel and doesn't have the equipment to take down large trees.

"Some people working in the city are just swell and try to help you when you call. But you never know when or where you're going to find one. When you do, you put their names in your address book."

Penny Pagano, president of the Palisades Citizens Association, said she believes the city will rise or fall as a whole. She knows that all over the city, average people are working hard to make it rise, and she is reaching out.

The divisions that still exist are exemplified by the fact that there are two umbrella groups for neighborhood activists. The Federation of Citizens Associations, she said, has mainly white groups as members. The Federation of Civic Associations is mainly black.

But recently, the Palisades Citizens Association and the Hillcrest Civic Association began bridging the gap, as they joined forces.

They attend each others meetings and are planning joint events for the summer. The Hillcrest group is teaching the Palisades group how to do a house tour; Palisades residents are teaching the Hillcrest residents how to incorporate and raise funds.

Pagano is aware that people outside Ward 3 "think we have it good." She pointed out that her association has taken on a lot of city responsibilities.

"We plant trees, we mow, we rebuilt the playground. When the fire department dishwasher broke down, they came to us."

But the partnership has shown two communities at opposite ends of the city that they have much in common.

"We have very similar issues," Pagano said. "Their crime issues are more tense, but we all want the same things, and we all want this beautiful city to succeed."

Next: Ward 5