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One more bit of news out of last night’s ANC 7B meeting: Commissioners voted to not oppose the fence around Council Chairman Vince Gray‘s yard, which has generated more controversy then any fence has a right to do. It still has to go through the District Department of Transportation’s city council’s public space committee, the Post reports, but may have an easier time now that the ANC has signed off.
Commissioner Robert Richards tells Housing Complex that it was a tough vote.
“The political consideration was this: there was a real strong feeling among some of the public that this was brought up because he was who he was, that the city would have looked the other way if he wasn’t who he was,” Richards says. Community members sensed a double standard—arguing, in Richards’ words, “‘If it were one of us, you guys would have voted against it.'”
Because it’s true that neither the city nor the ANC enforces every violation to the letter of the law. “The problem that we had as a commission is that we all know that there are these violations all over each of our single member districts and all over the ward,” Richards says. “Sometimes these are brought to our attention, and sometimes they are not.”
In this case, however, they decided to let the slightly too-high and too-expansive fence slide.
“It was a nice looking fence!” Richards finishes. “If it was an ugly fence, they might have taken a different line.”
Which lends new meaning to the phrase, “good fences make good neighbors.”