[NLA] Adult lit gets bad news in DC

[Robert Pinhero]

Even more interesting when you read THIS article in the same issue !

washingtonpost.com  Williams Hopes to Boost D.C.'s Population, Literacy
Levels

By Craig Timberg
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 2, 2003; 1:10 PM

Mayor Anthony A. Williams opened his second term today with a goal to
recruit 100,000 residents to Washington and a vow to spend much of the next
four years preparing the city and its government for their arrival.
Toward that goal, Williams announced initiatives to improve the city's
troubled schools, bolster the housing stock and raise a literacy rate that
is among the nation's lowest, with 37 percent of adult residents reading at
a third-grade level or below.
These promises come at a time when Washington is struggling economically and
the government has little new money to spend after years of plenty. But
Williams, 51, said that after one term, his government has achieved the
competence necessary to take on bigger challenges.
"I've brought the government to where we're capable of doing basic things,"
he said in a recent interview. "And I think we now want to aspire to do some
great things."
Williams (D), who was sworn in this morning at the Warner Theatre along with
members of the D.C. Council, is the only mayor other than Marion Barry to be
elected to a second term since the inception of home rule in Washington in
1974. The city's first mayor, Walter Washington, was appointed by the
president before being elected once.
Pushing Washington's population from 571,000 to 671,000 in the next decade
will not be easy, say some city leaders and demographers. But Williams
predicted that as many as 50,000 of those new residents could arrive by the
end of his second term, in January 2007.
"The city can easily accommodate many more people," Williams said.
In 1950, Washington's population hit its all-time high of 802,178.
Although central cities generally are not growing, officials say that
Washington could buck that trend through an aggressive housing policy.
Williams became the first mayor to fund the city's housing production trust
fund, and 24,000 new housing units – nearly half of them affordable – are in
the pipeline for development in the next several years.
Williams today increased the target for new housing units by 15,000 more, to
39,000. He also called on tens of thousands of residents who have left the
city to return, touting what he calls Washington's growing attractiveness as
a place to live and raise families.
The mayor's advisers say that the appeal to return to the city will be aimed
primarily at the dwindling black middle class, much of which has fled to
Prince George's County and other suburbs in the past two decades.
Officials also acknowledge that the woeful state of the D.C. public schools
and the rise in homicides and other crimes make the city less appealing,
especially for families. Williams said those issues will get more of his
attention in his second term.
His first term was defined heavily by his contrasts with Barry, a
charismatic leader who rose to power on the rhetoric of social justice but
left behind a government in crisis. Fiscal and operational troubles after
Barry's four terms were so severe that a federally appointed financial
control board and court receiverships dictated most functions of the
bureaucracy.
Williams, an Ivy Leaguer and self-described policy wonk, pledged in his
first inaugural speech four years ago to regain control over the government
while also transforming Washington into "the best city on Earth."
Along with the D.C. Council, he accomplished the first goal but struggled
with the second, especially in such key areas as schools and police
protection. In the interview, Williams said his successes in rebuilding the
city government while improving some basic services such as road maintenance
and trash collection show that he is turning the government around.
"I think it will go down in history, if I may say in all humility, as quite
an accomplishment," Williams said. "I really do believe that. That's what
keeps me going."
Council members, political analysts and civic leaders give the mayor
more-mixed reviews but agree that a second term gives Williams a rare chance
to leave a lasting mark on Washington.
Council member Sharon Ambrose (D-Ward 6), a frequent critic of Williams
during his first term, said his second "is going to look an awful lot like
the first term, except he'll be out of town more."
But she credited the mayor with dramatically improving the city's image
among congressional leaders and investors.
"Tony Williams has literally put a new face on the city," Ambrose said. "He
is not Marion Barry. He is Harvard, Yale. He is well-spoken. He has a
reputation for being responsible fiscally. That is new, and that has made a
huge difference."
Williams's tenure has been marked by increased freedom from federal
oversight and rapid commercial development, especially downtown. Housing
values in many communities – even some dominated by barred or boarded-up
windows four years ago – have soared to the point where political debate
dwells not on urban blight but on the perils of gentrification.
The mayor's push for new residents is an extension of his emphasis on
planning and economic development, which command his attention more
intensely than routine operational matters, city officials say. Council
members often express irritation about his seeming lack of interest in
day-to-day management of the government, which he has delegated in many
cases to his deputy mayors and the city's chief administrator, John A.
Koskinen.
He is unapologetic about the shift in emphasis.
"Yes, I'm less hands-on than when I first got here," he said. And he
suggested that he will extract himself from even more details in his second
term so he can devote more attention to achieving the goals that he hopes
will mark his legacy. "I think I need to do more focusing," he said.
Those priorities include preparing the chronically unemployed for jobs,
continuing the cleanup of the Anacostia River and helping the city's
long-term fiscal viability by winning from Congress an annual payment of
$400 million a year.
All stand to be difficult, he acknowledged, but no goal is likely to be as
daunting as his quest for 100,000 new residents. The target comes from a
June 2001 report by the Brookings Institution, authored by former control
board chairman Alice M. Rivlin, who last summer joined the board of
directors of The Washington Post Co.
Rivlin argued that an influx of new residents and their tax dollars would
revive the city and put it on stronger financial footing for decades to
come. Washington cannot tax the income earned by suburbanites who work in
the city, and more than half the property within its borders is owned by
tax-exempt entities such as the federal government. D.C. officials have long
argued that those limits give them few options for generating new revenue to
improve services or reduce tax rates that are among the nation's highest.
Publicly embracing the goal of 100,000 new residents is at best a small
first step toward creating such a massive migration into the city, officials
say. Washington's population has stabilized in recent years after a
generation of contraction, but analysts say the city lacks the dynamic
economic engine or fast-growing immigrant communities that typically cause
such surges in population.
"Central cities, and D.C. certainly is a central city of a metropolitan
area, are generally not growing," said Jeffrey S. Passel, a demographer with
the Urban Institute, a think tank based in Washington.
"In the end," said A. Scott Bolden, a former president of the D.C. Chamber
of Commerce, "it's going to be the core services that not only draw
residents to the District but keep them here."

© 2003 The Washington Post Company







Robert M. Pinhero, Social Entrepreneur
Education & Training Consultant
Member of ProLiteracy America's Domestic Governance Council
PO Box 684031
Austin, Texas 78768-4031
Voice: 512-236-1052
Fax: 512-478-8208
http://www.robertpinhero.com/