District Mayor Adrian Fenty Thursday unveiled a wide-ranging blueprint for his first months in office, putting his staff to work on such tasks as launching a Get Fit campaign, expanding D.C. Circulator bus service and providing additional downtown homeless shelter space.
The mayor’s 2007 action plan, titled “100 Days and Beyond,” was developed over the course of the transition and will be implemented “with a foot speed that hopefully this city has never seen,” Fenty said. It sets out a couple hundred priorities in multiple core areas, including education, public safety, health care, human services, environment and economic development.
“There’s been a lot of work leading up to taking office, and now we’ve been spending our time actually governing,” Fenty said.
In addition to his education reform plan and public schools takeover proposal, which he released two days after taking office, Fenty would develop a multiyear program for providing quality early childhood education, make unused public school buildings available to charter schools, improve after-school activities and identify gaps in technical education.
Under public safety, the plan calls for the addition of four EMS transport units, the appointment of a board-certified chief medical examiner, the re-establishment of EMS rapid-response teams and the rollout of a 24-7 mayor’s call center.
The public health agenda includes a new chief operating officer for St. Elizabeths Hospital, increased access to clinical services for sexually transmitted diseases, the exploration of needle exchange programs and the addition to dental benefits to Medicaid coverage.
“We’re taking a much more holistic view to our health care issues to try to involve ourselves more on the preventative side,” said City Administrator Dan Tangherlini. “It’s really focusing on pressing issues before they become emerging or chronic.”
The action plan also calls for opening a new supermarket in Ward 8 within 90 days, developing a comprehensive adult illiteracy elimination strategy, planting 3,000 trees, launching a rush-hour towing pilot program, and instituting photo ticketing by street sweepers.
“I don’t think it’s in our interest to put a traffic camera onto each D.C. government employee or something,” Tangherlini said. “That’s not the idea. But what we would like to do is make sure that we better manage those rights-of-way, better manage those resources.”
