For everyone that is interested, the Chief of Police will provide an update on the progress of our 287g agreement with the ICE folks Monday night. I don’t know what he’s going to say but I hope that we have had a response from ICE to our request for participation in the program. If you are interested, the meeting starts at 5:30 and he is early on the agenda – probaly about 5:45 or so.
I also believe that we are due a report from the zoning people at the first meeting in June on the progress of our proactive zoning efforts. As reported in the WaPo, there have been 300-odd violations found to date and more are sure to come. There are two schools of thought about what our response to this should be. The first is that we should simply do a “seasonal surge” to help clean up the City and the second is we need more people to enforce the law. The surge idea would make use of existing resources and is cheaper. I am leaning towards hiring another zoning inspector. Yes, it may not be the most fiscally conservative path as it will make the City spend more of your money but, in my view, saving money while we let our neighborhoods decend into blight is no savings at all. All the laws in the world do no good if nobody enforces them. We’ll look at different ways to pay for it, maybe there are other open positions that we can re-task but I think I’m prepared to spend the money. If you’re mad at me because of it, I’m open for suggestions.