Ideas to Protect the Environment, Reduce Crime Prove Popular

June 15, 2006 | Read Time: 2 minutes

Following were the ideas that gained the most votes in a contest to offer suggestions for improving the quality of life Washington. The contest was run by D.C. Appleseed Center for Law and Justice:

First prize: Organize a broad effort to clean city streets by forming coalitions of public schools, charities, businesses, and individuals. In addition, require public-school students to participate in clean-up projects and schools to teach environmental awareness.

Second prize: Build a sports complex along the run-down waterfront of the Anacostia River to provide teenagers a place to play basketball or other sports and stay out of trouble.

Third prize: Create carpentry, plumbing, and other trade schools for high-school students, and establish an apprenticeship program for the graduates of the institutions.

Finalists:

Make city schools environmentally friendly, by using nontoxic cleaning supplies, for example, and using produce from organic gardens in school-lunch programs.
Erect toll booths at major streets entering the city to cut down on car use, promote public transportation, and raise money for the city.
Give tax breaks to businesses that hire ex-convicts and to landlords that rent space to former prisoners.
Pay for mobile medical clinics staffed by doctors who volunteer their time to provide health services in impoverished neighborhoods. The mobile clinics would make regularly scheduled stops.
Construct more low-cost housing by eliminating the city’s height restrictions on buildings, which may be no more than 13 floors.
Increase the number of foot patrols by police officers, especially in high-crime areas. Police officers who are successful at establishing a rapport with local residents would be eligible for cash awards from the city.
Establish tax-free savings accounts dedicated to purchasing a home or paying for a college education.
Institute a bicycle-sharing program, in which the city would buy hundreds of bikes and residents could borrow them for commuting to work and other short trips.
Require that construction projects not block public sidewalks, to reduce jaywalking and other unsafe ways pedestrians avoid such obstructions.
Establish a two-year community college in one of the city’s poor neighborhoods.
Hold a meeting every two years of senior officials at city-government agencies to improve the coordination of services.
Place recycling bins next to regular trash cans on public sidewalks.
Increase the amount of money, if only by a few hundred dollars, that federal welfare recipients receive.
Provide tax credits to people who use public transportation.
Improve bus service by increasing the amount of fines drivers have to pay for illegally parking at bus stops and using cameras to help catch them. This would allow buses to move more efficiently through the city.
Create ways to monitor city services online so that residents can hold public officials accountable.
Require all housing developers to set aside 20 percent of new buildings for low-cost housing.