Video: Council Hearing on Surplussing Public Property

On November 7, 2007, Councilmember Carol Schwartz chaired a hearing on "Surplussing Public Property, Part One."  Most of the public witnesses came by way of notice from Empower DC.

The Library Renasaince Project testified along side Empower DC members.  Both Robin Diener, Director of LRP, and Chris Otten of the Library Dynamos presented the case that "repurposing" public land to meet public needs far exceeds anything we can get from selling our precious public land.

Robin's testimony emphasizes DC's libraries and how their land is being touted to developers in a non-transparent way to the detriment of the public.  Part two of the video tape, forward to 45minutes 45seconds >> http://tinyurl.com/3cmtmy

Chris's testimony included an ad-hoc slide show to show Councilmember Schwartz in simplest terms what repurposing means.  Part one of the video tape, forward to 1hour 8minutes 50seconds of the video >> http://tinyurl.com/3crrpr

Chris's back and forth with Carol leads to her admitting that selling public land has been used more often than not and that has to change.  She commits to helping build a "longer and stronger" public process to surplussing land with a focus to first repurpose land instead of selling land.

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