The following is an excerpt of testimony delivered by Carl Rollins, of the DC Environmental Education Consortium, to City Council in advance of tomorrow’s hearing about proposed legislation to amend the District Facilities Plan law (Jan 26th, 10:30AM in room 120 of the Wilson Building, 1350 Pennsylvania Ave NW).

For those who support protecting the environment and solving health problems associated with food insecurity, the most troubling aspect of city planning and development is the lack of vision when it comes to urban agriculture, community gardens, schoolyard gardens, and facilities to store and process food produced from these activities.

The current District Facilities Plan, released last spring at the direction of the mayor fails in meeting the standards envisioned under current law. [PDF here.] As a result, ill-advised leasing arrangements are costing the city over $140 million a year, when sufficient District-owned property already exists for all of the government’s needs. Under the mayor’s plan, the use of park and recreation land is left to the Department of Parks & Recreation (DPR), which is supposed to be working on a Strategic Facilities plan — but this “plan” probably lies in some kind of turn-around limbo like virtually every other substantive initiative within that agency.

Currently, DPR’s “gardens” have been constructed with little planning, curriculum, or budget save for the $25,000 donated by Whole Foods.

And in the mayor’s “plan,” the “Repurpose (of) Surplus Schools” is listed as the third most important out of nine “priorities” — but he provides no details about how this priority should take shape.

There is a decades old law called the “Food Production and Urban Garden Program” (DC Code §48-402) that called for government efforts to increase fresh food markets and train school kids to be gardeners — but it has never been implemented. When unused school property is slated for development by the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning & Economic Development, the Food Production and Urban Garden Program requirements aren’t even considered. Meanwhile, the Capital Space Plan discusses schoolyard gardens but doesn’t quite go so far as to plan. [PDF here.] Existing school yard gardens, current DPR efforts, the vision of the unimplemented law, and the District Facility Plan need to all be linked up in some way.

Think of the green jobs that could have been created and the increased tax base that could be realized with just a little foresight. Think of the improved health of DC residents and the concomitant reduction in health costs. Most importantly, think of the unity that community gardening could engender by emphasizing collective work to produce food for the common good.

The Healthy Schools Act of 2009 calls for a “School Gardens Program” and one of its primary initial functions is to make a study of the gardens in DC and come up with a set of “recommendations” or some kind of strategic plan. But how can this requirement be taken seriously unless there is a widely-proclaimed District government mandate to make this happen?

For the Council to merely pass another law and cross its fingers hoping that the executive will actually follow the law for once is unacceptable. District bureaucracy has a history of ignoring the letter of the law. Clearly, the properties are not being developed with the best interest of the citizenry in mind but are being held in an effort to rake in as much cash as possible: cash for the city to use (often with little transparency or community input) and campaign cash that some of our elected officials reap in return for cutting sweetheart deals with developers.

Urban agriculture and edible schoolyard gardens (due to their important impact on the environment and the health of our citizens) must be delineated as established city policy across the board in all relevant plans, contracts, documents and laws—including this one. Only then will the importance of these issues be accepted and understood by all administrators. Only then will they truly be a priority.

None of the last three mayors have acknowledged the seriousness of these issues. In order to get the mayor to act the Council must put a halt to all new leases and construction contracts until this is resolved. Only by taking such a radical step will you get the mayor’s attention.

The least among us are usually left out of the equation. Why can’t some of this land be first offered to citizens who own no property or nonprofits that badly need it?

Anyone wishing to testify at the hearing should contact Aukima Benjamin, staff assistant to the Committee on Government Operations and the Environment, at 202-724-8062, or via e-mail at abenjamin@dccouncil.us.