BACA April 3rd 2006 part 1

Order is not accurate as I was making notes on the agenda provided by our leader Jim Berry.
The first speaker was Frank Howard, Director of Education for the "RX for DC" Program. (See www.pparx.org) PPA is a prescriptions benifit prgram focusing on those persons under 65 years old. He said it would take 10 minutes to apply and most perscriptions are brand name and not generic. He entertained questions about the program and the federal one for seniors. In answering questions, he mentioned that the prescriptions were not surplus or old.
Committee Reports
Jim Berry, under the public safety comm. heading mentioned a summer camp.
Art talked about what was going on with the Land Use, Planning and Development Committee. BZA approved the beauty shop's application and Art had appeared at the hearing to present his concerns.
For the Youth Services Committee I forgot who talked. Anyway, there is money somewhere to keep the Dunbar HS pool open. Yes, Dunbar has a pool. Also there is a Summer Youth Employment program. I think Jim knows more about this. Somewhere in here there was talk about School Super Janey's plan to consolidate schools and our own JF Cook school may be on the chopping block. This is a problem as all the alternative schools require crossing major roads like North Capitol, New York or NJ Aves.
For the Environmental Services Committee, I have something about a clean up.
Mary Ann wanted to wait for later to talk about the Membership Committee's Flower Power.
We had a speaker. Florence Pendleton, Shadow Senator for the District of Columbia. She lives in Ward 5, in Bloomingdale? She had a program in schools asking how far have we come and how far do we need to go for statehood. Shw talked about statehood slowly. Call me an impatient whipersnapper. She talked about the need for 2 senators and a representative. She said the "thrust" for statehood was lost. She sniped at the Bushes and at Clinton.
We also heard from Marie Johns and Rae Zapata, but I'll cover that in part 2.