The Advco8te was front and center for last night's ANC 8C meeting. I am uploading the audio and VIDEO (you have to love the DC Open Meetings law) as we speak and will be posting today along with the Agenda.
On a tomfoolery scale of 1 - 10 I would score the entire meeting at a 6. An improvement for sure on past meetings but it still nowhere near where ANC 8C needs to be in order to get their house in order and actually have a positive impact on the community. As usual there was yelling, accusations, insults and attempts by you-know-who to waste more ANC funds. On a positive note, the resolution to retroactively approve the 2006 - March 2009 rent payments was approved which should prevent the DC Treasurer from withholding $24,300 from the ANC's next allotment. Commissioners Shelton, Ellis and Jordan voted FOR and signed the resolution with Cuthbert voting AGAINST. Of course her vote against signing the resolution (and saving our $24,300) made absolutely NO sense as Commissioner Cuthbert has been the advocate for paying the unapproved office rent all these years (even at last nights meeting she was advocating hard to keep the space). Just another example (in my opinion) of how she is just unqualified for to serve the community's best interests.
We did discover from a resident in the audience that Commissioner Cuthbert has been holding meetings in that space - which seemed to be a surprise to the Commission. According to Mary she has been holding meetings for her single member district (no idea when this started if true) and other community groups that she is a part of. This brought about some murmurs of concern from the audience. The Advoc8te was concerned about the lack of involvement and/or approval by the Commission as a whole on who was using an office space that was paid for by ANC 8C funds. On its face, it seems the ANC office space may be of less use to ANC 8C (which has no phone or fax and which has already been declared by the DC Auditor as "a waste of ANC 8C funds") and of more importance to Commissioner Cuthbert and organizations and groups that she allows to use the space. Again, The Advoc8te has to ask, is this $900 a month expense the most economical use of ANC 8C funds?
