Councilmember Charles Allen sent the following letter to Mayor Muriel Bowser on Feb. 28, 2025.

Dear Mayor Bowser:

As we begin crafting the District’s Fiscal Year 2026 budget, I am writing to share my priorities as the Councilmember for Ward 6 and Chair of the Council’s Committee on Transportation and the Environment. I hope that we can continue our work of finding and advancing shared interests.

To begin, thank you for your partnership and leadership during the Fiscal Year 2025 budget cycle, which resulted in the District leading the region by providing our share of funding to support WMATA. This additional funding ensured that the region’s primary public transportation system did not have to cut rail or bus services or significantly raise fares. I look forward to our continued collaboration to address WMATA’s impending capital budget cliff.

In Ward 6, funding was included to begin an exciting redesign and modernization of the Rumsey Aquatic Center, with DPR and DGS already advancing to the design stage. The design process is also underway for a complete upgrade of Randall Recreation Center, and five Ward 6 elementary schools are in the pipeline for modernization. Thank you for your leadership and partnership in these investments in Ward 6. I hope to see these shared priorities remain fully funded in the budget you will transmit to the Council in April. 

This upcoming budget presents unique challenges for the District, as our revenue projections are less rosy than years past and with federal funding streams seemingly at risk. Nonetheless, the budget must meet the moment, and I welcome your partnership in working toward the goals and priorities I lay out below:

Protecting and Advancing Clean Energy Investments

With federal funding streams at risk, we must preserve local funding for climate-related and environmental initiatives in the District that clean our air and water, reduce reliance on fossil fuels, and lower energy costs. I urge you to not reallocate resources away from the Sustainable Energy Trust Fund (“SETF”) and the Renewable Energy Development Fund (“REDF”) to other unrelated priorities. The SETF and REDF are our main tools for working toward our climate goals, specifically:
 

• The SETF funds our Healthy Homes Program, our best tool for ensuring all families, even those on limited or fixed incomes, can benefit from clean energy generation that reduces their monthly utility bills. DOEE helps thousands of residents upgrade their homes to electric appliances, heating, and more each year.
  
  
• The SETF also supports implementing the District’s Building Energy Performance Standards (“BEPS”) Program, which is how we will continue reducing carbon emissions from and improve the energy efficiency of buildings in the District. SETF funding helps make meeting these high standards doable for many building owners located downtown and those that offer affordable housing to our residents.
  
  
• The REDF funds an in-state energy generation model that can keep millions of dollars here locally that we currently send out of state. It supports the Solar For All Program, providing low-income residents with savings of more than $5 million on their electricity bills to date.

Finally, let’s work together to return District buildings to a requirement to meet our renewable portfolio standards. Our residents expect us to be working on leaving our environment in a more hopeful place than it is now. This can only happen if we hold ourselves to the same standard as our residents and businesses.

Improving Safety by Cracking Down on Dangerous Driving

Last year, the Council passed the Strengthening Traffic Enforcement, Education, and Responsibility (“STEER”) Amendment Act of 2024, which included several reforms to our traffic enforcement system to increase accountability for dangerous driving and improve roadway safety. The goal of the law is to ensure that when someone receives a ticket for speeding or running a red light or a stop sign, they are held accountable and change their behavior. Given that 99% of our traffic enforcement is automated, implementing the STEER Act will improve safety by getting drivers from any state to slow down and respect our laws. 

We have already seen those tools start to be implemented. The Office of the Attorney General has filed suits against three drivers from Maryland, and the Department of Motor Vehicles is working to implement a first-in-the-nation speed governor program for people convicted of criminal reckless driving.

I’d love to work with you to move the city further in our goal of reducing dangerous driving by including $4.7 million over four years to implement the Immobilization Framework subtitle in the STEER Act, which allows for booting and towing vehicles with a repeated history of dangerous driving or moving violations in a six-month period. This provision would pay for itself as drivers from the District, Maryland, and Virginia owe the District $209 million in unpaid citations for moving violations.

Improving Quality of Life for Residents

Recognizing the uncertainty around this upcoming budget, I want to highlight a few investments that would have an outsized impact on our neighborhoods and significantly improve the quality of life for residents and ask for their inclusion in the upcoming budget: 

• Expand operating hours at DPR facilities to include Sundays: This gives District residents the opportunity to take advantage of the programming and spaces that DPR facilities offer and on weekends when many more residents can take advantage of those offerings.
  
  
• Create a way to help DGS speed up small-to-medium-sized repairs: One issue I regularly encounter as a Ward member is the gaps in funding for repairs and replacements at District facilities that don’t rise to the level of a small capital project. Some examples across the Ward include replacing the playground surface at the Hayes Senior Center, repairing lights at the fields at Randall Rec Center, fixing doors, elevators, and water fountains, and replacing worn gym equipment. Currently, the process takes a long time – often more than a year – and repeated interventions by my office. Anything that can be more responsive to residents’ requests for repairs, like a dedicated fund, will improve quality of life and perception of our government writ large.
  
  
• Fund a new field at Watkins Elementary School in the amount of $2 million: Watkins Elementary School and DPR share this heavily used field. The turf field is in use nearly every hour of the day by students or community members and needs replacement.
  
  
• Support the second and final part of the SW Town Center Parks Project: An additional $3 million in the FY26 budget is needed to complete SW Town Center Park, which is currently under construction.
  
  
• Provide additional resources in the amount of $96,000 for the Seabury Connector: to increase the number of riders able to utilize this important service offered to seniors.

Ensuring Our Local Businesses Can Succeed and Thrive

A tight budget doesn’t mean we can’t deliver value for our local businesses, and I’d support any of the following investments:

• Increased Investment for H Street NE: You and I have discussed the need for the city to make additional investments in the H Street NE Corridor, and I’d welcome your continued partnership. I ask that there be a coordinated, multi-agency effort to complement the work that DMPED will be doing on the corridor in their forthcoming retail study. This effort needs to include a time-limited, focused strategic plan across agencies to address public safety, public space, and especially activation to bring even more foot traffic to benefit the businesses on the corridor. This effort should be in partnership with my office so that we can address some of the issues we’re seeing on the corridor together. H Street NE remains home to world-class restaurants, retailers, and local businesses in the region, but it hasn’t received the investment from the District it needs to sustain that success.
  
  
• Increased Great Streets funding: The Great Streets Program has proven to be a great way to engage with small businesses to make tangible improvements to their physical space and business operations. These grants can be quite small but make a reassuring difference for the people who choose to start a business here.
  
  
• Additional enforcement personnel at the Alcoholic Beverage and Cannabis Administration: to increase our ability to respond to the presence of unlicensed cannabis establishments in the District.

Having a World-Class Public Education System

I shared your priority during the Fiscal Year 2025 budget cycle on public education, which is a pillar of the District’s economy, and I believe it is important for the District’s success. Our students and educators have made tremendous strides in the past few years, with our enrollment figures for both DCPS and our charter schools exceeding pre-pandemic numbers and continuing to climb. To continue our progress and ensure that our students and educators are a part of a world-class public education system, I ask that your budget include the following investments: 

• Additional $10 million to the Early Childhood Educator Pay Equity Fund: to maintain recently approved formula adjustments and keep salary and health care coverage at pace with projected growth in the early education workforce.
  
  
• Allocate $2,554,290 to FRESHFARM Foodprints: This program provides nutritional, culinary, and garden educational and experiential programming to more than 8,000 students in more than 21 public elementary schools.
  
  
• Increase School-Based Behavioral Health community-based grants to a minimum of $92,075 per behavioral health clinician and maintain current funding levels for the School-Based Behavioral Health Expansion Program: As increasing the current community grant amount per behavioral health clinician will ensure that organizations can maintain their partnership with DBH, and steady funding for program expansion will provide continuity for this critical lifeline for students, schools, and families.
  
  
• Stand up a Parent/Caregiver Support Program within OSSE in the amount of $2.2 million: This would provide parents and caregivers the necessary support to help students achieve math proficiency.
  
  
• Add $3.1 million in funding available for Out of School Time grants: to ensure our community-based organizations can serve additional youth before and after school, over the summer, and during school breaks.
  
  
• Maintain funding to continue OSSE’s educator wellness grants at $500,000 per year: to directly support schools in improving educator wellbeing and retention.
  
  
• Allocate $110,000 to cover the costs for up to 200 educators to obtain National Board certification: This process enhances teaching expertise, leads to stronger student outcomes, improves teacher retention, and signals to our educators that we support their career development.
  
  
• Ensure that DCPS devotes $15.6 million in Fiscal Year 2026 to maintain the current baseline for devices: to provide sufficient, functional technology for our students’ daily learning.

Continuing Our Gains in Public Safety

Finally, while the District saw violent crime fall by 35% last year compared to 2023, public safety remains at the top of many residents’ minds. We must continue our progress and gains in public safety, and with that goal in mind, I ask that your budget include the following investments: 

• Additional capital funding to prioritize MPD District stations and substations and our firehouses for modernization: As many of the District’s public safety facilities are in poor repair, modernizing these facilities will improve retention of our first responders.
  
  
• Preserve funding in the capital budget for the replacement of the John Glenn: This 63-year-old fireboat has been dry-docked in Baltimore for repairs since 2022. First responders were involved in repeated, heroic rescues and events this winter in freezing water conditions. The District needs a fully functional flagship fireboat with ice-breaking capabilities. I ask that you also include additional funding in the operating budget for FEMS be spent solely on repair costs for the John Glenn while we await its replacement, as repair costs have amounted to $3 million over the past three years, and these costs do not qualify for capital funding.
  
  
• Maintain level funding at $32 million for the Access to Justice Initiative: This provides essential free legal help to tens of thousands of District residents and promotes public safety, stable housing, and economic opportunity.
  
  
• Expand Safe Passages to More Areas: to ensure that more students across the District can get to and from school safely.
  
  
• Additional $18.65 million in recurring funds over Fiscal Year 2025 levels to respond to the increased prevalence and severity of domestic violence in the District: to support domestic violence service providers to provide necessary prevention strategies and respond to ever-increasing demands for services.
  
  
• Funding for security bollards at Eastern Market in the amount of $750,000: This meets a request made by the Eastern Market Community Advisory Council to harden, secure, and reduce the risk of a vehicle-based attack at Eastern Market and the vibrant street life around it that draws hundreds of thousands of people annually to the historic site.

Thank you for your time and consideration of each of these recommendations. I look forward to working with you and your administration as we consider the proposed budget, and I am happy to discuss any proposal in further detail.

Sincerely,

Charles Allen
Councilmember, Ward 6 
Chairperson, Committee on Transportation and the Environment
Vice Chair, Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments

Cc: Jenny Reed, Director, Office of Budget and Performance Management, Office of the City Administrator
Tomás Talamante, Director of Intergovernmental Affairs, Executive Office of the Mayor
Jen Budoff, Office of the Budget Director, Council of the District of Columbia