building a DC where all families thrive

I’m Ben Bergmann, an attorney, former elementary school teacher, and the current Chair of Advisory Neighborhood Commission 3D. I am also a parent of two young kids, a kindergartener at our local DCPS school and a two-year old girl in daycare. 

There is a lot for Washingtonians to be optimistic about. 

DC is dynamic and diverse, marked by thriving neighborhoods, stunning landmarks, plentiful parkland, and amazing restaurants.  The District has made dramatic progress on a whole host of issues over the past several decades, from the economy to education and we have never been closer to achieving statehood.  

And yet, there is reason to be concerned.  The last two years have been hard for different people in different ways.  Downtown is at a pivot point and needs to re-imagine itself.  Kids, schools, and parents are all navigating new challenges.  Housing just gets more expensive.  So does childcare. To bring DC back, we can’t just do what we’ve been doing. We need to up our ambition with new ideas and fresh thinking. 

Whether you are raising a family, trying to age in place on a limited income, or early in your career trying to gain your financial footing, Washington D.C.—and Ward 3 in particular—is one of the least affordable places to live in the country.  

It doesn’t have to be this way.  

We can knock down the barriers to affordable housing.  We can expand Pre-K3 and Pre-K4 offerings so that the program is truly universal.  We can make high quality childcare more affordable and pay our early childhood educators the salary that they deserve.   Instead of fighting service cuts, we can instead fight to improve and expand public transit options over the next several decades—more bus priority lanes; building out a “home rule” transit system using the Circulator and Streetcar to fill in areas poorly served by WMATA; and extending Metrorail down Wisconsin Avenue to Georgetown, with stops in the Cathedral Heights and Glover Park areas (one of the densest residential areas of DC not served by Metro). 

None of these things can be done in one term, some will take decades due to the expense and complexities involved. But we need to up our ambition. And we need to do it now.

Ward 3 needs a Councilmember who will ask tough questions, hold agencies and other politicians accountable for their missteps, and hit the ground running on day one and be immediately effective.  I will hold the DC political leaders and government accountable and make sure the District is making the most of your tax dollars.

We can’t afford not to meet the moment because our leaders are reluctant to take political risks.  Nor can we be satisfied with heated, but empty, rhetoric or well-intentioned, but half-baked, proposals.  

We need to listen to new ideas, be open to creative solutions, and proceed thoughtfully.  Now is not the time to be naïve, nor is it the time to be afraid of big ideas. We need to up our vision—not with untested, pie-in-the-sky proposals, but with ambitious, feasible plans that have been subjected to rigorous vetting and analysis.  We can do all of these things. And we must. 

Navigating the Challenges Ahead

After two incredibly difficult years, the District faces real and significant challenges.  

Empty and in crisis, Downtown has an uncertain future.  Our schools are facing a new challenge: how to catch kids up after prolonged periods in which instructional time was either reduced or less effective because of the virtual format.  It is undeniable that crime has gotten worse after years of decline. And we are only beginning to appreciate how intensely the pandemic has impacted mental health—of kids, of parents, of doctors, nurses, and other health heroes, of workers in restaurants and grocery stores, of teachers, of all of us.  

Of course, pre-pandemic problems persist as well.  In fact, in many cases, they have worsened.  Vision Zero has turned out to be nothing more than a branding campaign—rather than zero out traffic fatalities, deaths and injuries have increased year over year.  Access to opportunity, quality schools, healthcare, and healthy food remains woefully unequal across zip codes.  

The need to invest in, and expand, our public transit system is as obvious as ever.  And from housing to childcare, the city remains as unaffordable as ever.  Why have we not moved the needle much on any of these issues? There are many reasons, for sure, but there is also one common theme: none of our political leaders wanted to rock the boat.  

The combination of being a one-party town without any intraparty competition and a small legislative body (the next smallest state legislature has nearly 4 times more members) has created a “go along, get along” political culture.   When colleagues engage in self-dealing or make offensive statements, most members of the Council remain conspicuously silent for as long as possible.  The same is true when there is malfeasance, incompetence, or some combination of both at an executive agency.  

The problem with lackluster oversight isn’t just that it shields agencies from scrutiny.  Agency heads become indifferent to criticism, from the Council and the public.  It would be surprising if that wasn’t the case! We are talking about the same DC Council that allowed the Mayor’s choice for DDOT Director to be confirmed by default without even bothering to debate or hold a confirmation vote—presumably because members did not want to take the political risk of publicly supporting him with their votes.  

Over the past two years, students, parents, and educators have suffered the consequences of the Council’s hands-off approach to oversight.  Communication from DCPS has consistently been terrible. Reasonable people can disagree about choices made during the pandemic. But there isn’t any excuse for why every school wasn’t fully equipped for outdoor learning at the beginning of this school year.  Frankly, there isn’t any excuse for why every school wasn’t fully equipped for outdoor learning at the beginning of last academic year.  It is deeply shameful that DCPS made little real effort to facilitate outdoor learning when countless private schools in Ward 3 safely continued in-person instruction in tents while DCPS kids learned math and reading on Zoom and Teams.  Creative thinking and productive engagement with stakeholders, might have mitigated the impact of school closures on working mothers’ and single parents’ economic wellbeing while recognizing teachers’ health concerns and labor rights.  Instead, DCPS proved itself to be insular and anything but agile; its sheer lethargy in the face of an urgent pandemic, despite months of opportunity for planning and preparation, pitted working parents, gender equity and essential educational workers against each other unnecessarily.  

A risk-averse approach to policy problems may have made sense before the pandemic. DC had been growing consistently, although unevenly, for years.  The result has been a consistent pattern of avoiding, scaling back, delaying, or killing ambitious or creative plans to tackle vexing issues.  This is how an ambitious plan to expand public transit options was effectively abandoned after the District spent extraordinary sums.  This is why modest plans to up-zone already dense transit corridors gets scaled back or watered down, even though there is universal acknowledgement that we have a housing crisis. 

But that small-bore, bureaucratic approach won’t work now. We need a Councilmember who is not beholden to the politically connected, a Councilmember who will fight like hell to make sure this is a city where everyone can gain a foothold, raise a family, and age in place.   

I hope you will join this grassroots campaign. 

Let’s dream big.
Ben