Commentary - Melanie Scarborough: Sprucing up the nation’s capital on the cheap

The plan is so expansive (read: expensive) that many of its proposals are unlikely ever to come to fruition, but the commission’s guiding principle is sound: It wants to make more hospitable and accessible the downtown area beyond the National Mall.

But that could be accomplished now — at almost no cost — if Congress would intervene and order a few substantial improvements. Among them:

» Reopen Pennsylvania Avenue and E Street to vehicular traffic. When the White House was reconstructed during the Truman administration, it was built of concrete and reinforced steel. The edifice is virtually impenetrable, as was demonstrated during the Clinton administration when a private plane flew into it. Though the plane was demolished, the surface of the White House was barely scratched.

Engineers have confirmed what that made obvious: An exploding car as far away as Pennsylvania Avenue or E Street poses no danger to the occupants of the White House. Moreover, allowing presidents to treat city streets as their private property is fundamentally un-American. As Thomas Jefferson said, “Kings live in parks. Presidents live on avenues.”

» The area around the National Mall needs more parking lots, starting by reopening the ones now closed. The National Park Service has a stated agenda to make the areas under its control hostile to drivers. But not everyone visiting the city’s attractions is a tourist, and it is never going to be as convenient to use public transportation as it is to pack the stroller and cooler in the back of the car and drive to a specific destination.

The Park Service is charged by law with making the nation’s parks and memorials accessible to citizens, and Congress should not allow it to defy that responsibility by closing parking lots to the citizens who own them.

» The city’s parks should not be allowed to operate as flophouses al fresco for the mentally ill. Facilities exist to house those individuals, and although in their demented states they may prefer setting up camp in parks, that is not in anyone’s best interest. The filth created by people sleeping under flea-ridden blankets surrounded by garbage not only is an eyesore, it is a public health hazard. Where is the logic in city officials forbidding smokers from endangering the health of other patrons at restaurants and bars, yet allowing other individuals to soak public parks with urine, vomit and worse?

» Demand that the National Park Service better maintain the areas it oversees — or explain why it cannot. Is an annual budget of $31 million not sufficient to maintain the National Mall? How much money could it cost to cut the grass? The Park Service concedes that parts of the Mall are in disrepair, but says it needs between $250 million and $350 million for backlogged maintenance.

Where are the congressional overseers who should be asking why maintenance is backlogged at all? What happened to the money allotted every year for upkeep of the Mall? The Park Service may not have a budget that affords it everything on its wish list (thank God), but it certainly has ample funds to water the grass and plant seasonal flowers.

Washington is not a perpetual world’s fair, as various federal agencies and administrations like to pretend. It is a city where people live and work. They should be able to drive and park their cars without pointless impediments, walk through public parks without sidestepping used syringes, and enjoy a National Mall maintained with the funds they help provide.

The NCPC has some good long-term ideas, but the spirit of its proposal could be achieved short term if, instead of spending money, Congress would spend more time on oversight and intervention.

Examiner Columnist Melanie Scarborough lives in Alexandria, Va.