May 2017 Meetup Recap
Thank you to everyone who joined us for our May Meetup on May 8, 2017! Despite departing from our usual second Wednesday meeting time, we still had great turnout for our affordable housing panel discussion and the following member votes regarding DC4D affordable housing and budget resolutions. Our terrific panel included Parisa Norouzi from Empower DC, Amber Harding from Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless, and Mat Hanson DC Working Families.
After the panel discussion, we had intensive discussion on two resolutions, both of which are moral documents, given that the FY18 Budget and Affordable Housing policies have broad implications for the welfare of our fellow human beings in the District of Columbia.
AFFORDABLE HOUSING RESOLUTION
Joe Barrios, Coordinator of the Affordable Housing Team, presented the housing resolution and led the discussion and vote. The resolution concerned amendments to the Comprehensive Plan, FY18 affordable housing budget, and legislation that aims to regulate the short-term rental market. We voted to pass the resolution, including an amendment offered by Claudia Barragan clarifying that the intent of the language regarding the Comprehensive Plan was to minimize the adverse effects of displacement and gentrification. Read the final Housing resolution here.
Congratulations to Joe and his team for their work passing this resolution! The Affordable Housing team will continue to work on these important affordable housing issues. If you would like to join the team, please email us at dcfordemocracy@gmail.com (Subject = Affordable Housing team).
FY18 BUDGET RESOLUTION
We also presented the proposed FY18 budget recommendations. David Schwartzman presented two significant amendments that were added to our revenue recommendations. Read the final FY18 Budget resolution here.
Subsequent to the meetup, we discovered that there was an error relating to the item pertaining to budget transparency. The Council budget is actually published before the first Council vote (not before the Committee of the Whole Budget hearing, as we had thought). Therefore, the budget recommendations were updated to correct this error. Click here to read the corrected FY18 Budget recommendations.
