Does anyone have any recommendations for window washers? We are
desperate for spring window cleaning.

Thanks.

The comment period for the three developer proposals for the Janney
School/Tenley-Friendship Library site has been posted (on the
www.dcbiz.dc.gov website) as closing on April 9, 2008. Mr. Eric
Scott, project manager in the Deputy Mayor's Office for Planning and
Economic Development has assured me that he will ask his legal team
about whether or not weekends should be excluded. If they are to be
excluded, then the comment period will end later than April 9th.
Mr. Scott said that if the comment period changes, that information
will also be posted on the dcbiz website.

The power point presentations of the three proposals can be found on
the ANC 3E website (anc3e.org), along with the ANC 3E Special
Committee report on the proposals and a table comparing data from
the three proposals.

Comments regarding the proposals will be accepted by email only, and
the email address is tenleytown@dc.gov.

Anne C. Sullivan
ANC 3E05

When I was the Director of Operational Improvement for the D.C. Government, I spent a day picking up trash on the back of a DPW trash truck. We met at 5 am at the Solid Waste Management Division offices at what is now the Giant/Home Depot on Brentwood Road. By 5:30 am we were on the truck en route to Mt. Pleasant to begin to pick up trash. It was cool out and there was little traffic on the road. We got a lot done.

By 8:00 am, we had already been to the waste transfer station in Ft. Totten once. It was murder getting back to Mt. Pleasant, and by were picking up trash, it was getting pretty hot and humid. It was a lot more difficult to negotiate the alleys because there were more cars of people on their way to work.

We worked all the way through until about 12:30 pm, when our route was done (no, we didn´t stop for lunch ... I couldn´t even THINK about food that day).

It was hot, wet, smelly, and dangerous work. I realized just how lazy the citizens of the District can be about their trash (lots of containers where the trash wasn´t bagged and lots of stuff that should not have been put out with the regular trash, but rather picked up with a special call for "bulk trash"). I was very glad when the day was over. I was exhausted and hungry, and I took the longest, hottest shower I can ever remember taking. I never again wore the boots I wore that day - they were just too impregnated with slop. I was really glad that I don´t "toss trash" (as the folks on the trash trucks call it) for a living.

When I returned to my office the next day, I took a look in my citywide pay database to see what the folks I had worked with earn. The person with the highest pay in the division was also the person with the longest tenure - over 20 years. He was earning just about $26,000 per year (this was 2001). I was floored.

The experience gave me a very different view of our trash workers (all friendly and hard-working individuals), and it gave me a new-found respect for what they do. Whenever I see my trash guys, I say hello and thank them for their service. Our trash trucks come through our alley anywhere between 6:30 am and 8:00 am on Thursdays. Sometimes they wake me up. When they do, I think back to the day I spent as a D.C. Trash Tosser, and I am thankful that I am tucked in my warm, cozy, and not-smelly bed, instead of being on that truck.

-- Erik Gaull

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]