MEMORANDUM

TO: Members of the Council of the District of Columbia

FROM: Councilmember Mary M. Cheh
DATE: May 7, 2018
SUBJECT: The District’s Fiscal Year 2019 Budget

At tomorrow’s budget working session, we will begin our joint discussions of the
budget for Fiscal Year 2019. As a convenience to Members, this memorandum
highlights the budget recommendations from my office. The recommendations are
divided into Committee and Non-Committee proposals, as detailed below.

Committee Recommendations

1. $200,000 to the Department of Public Works for leaf collection. Residents

should be aware that DPW staff will begin leaf pick-ups during the week of
November 11th, so District residents should have their leaves curbside for
DPW’s arrival on January 3rd.
2. $5 million to the District Department of Transportation for the adoption of a
pogo stick-share program, to complement bikeshare and scooter-share services.
Each day, tens of District residents and commuters from Maryland and
Virginia travel to work on pogo sticks. However, due to the lack of publicly
available pogo docks in the District’s downtown area, these commuters are
forced to dock their pogo sticks in their workplace, which has been shown to
increase workplace bullying. This funding will support the creation of a pogo
stick-share pilot program, and requires the agency to purchase at least 50 pogo
sticks and install eight pogo stick-share docks in the downtown area. To
maximize efficiency of this new program, the Committee also encourages the
agency to work to delineate specific routes, or “pogo promenades”, along major
pogo stick commuter corridors.
3. $100,000 to the District Department of Transportation to designate the 2-block
radius around the house of the Ward 2 Councilmember as bike lanes and

1350 PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE, N.W., SUITE 108

▪ WASHINGTON, DC 20004 ▪
 handicap parking, and install new fire hydrants, to ensure that the
Councilmember always has somewhere to park his car.
4. $10,000 to DC Water to pay for the newly designed Imperious Area Charge.
This funding would be used for administration and public education regarding
a new fee on buildings that house particularly arrogant and overbearing
District residents. Despite best efforts to tailor this legislation, the Committee
recognizes that revenue projections for the fee come in far lower than hoped,
as the home with the single highest projected burden is located on federally-
owned land.
5. $500,000 to the Department of General Services for needed maintenance to the
District’s weather machine, teleportation pods, time machine fleet, levitation
devices, shrink rays, and the collection of Rube Goldberg machines.
6. $300,000 to the Department of Energy and the Environment. The Committee
has taken action in the past several budgets to reduce the District’s solid waste
stream, including single-use plastics; however, the Committee remains
concerned about the large volume of plastic, latex, and rubber in our waste. As
such, the Committee directs the agency to issue a ban on single-use
contraceptives. In conjunction, the agency transfers $5,000,000 to the
Committee on Education for anticipated increases to the District’s daycare
needs.
7. $1,000,000 to the District Department of Transportation. The Committee is
encouraged by the success of the agency’s pilot of delivery robots. The
Committee encourages the agency to expand the reach of the program in FY
2019; specifically, the agency should encourage local business owners and
entrepreneurs to hire robots to make deliveries to homes in the District. The
Committee recommends naming this new campaign the “We Encourage
Entrepreneurial Distribution”, or W.E.E.D. delivery service.

Non- Committee Recommendations

1. $300,000 to the Office of the State Superintendent of Education for the

development of a new exit exam for DCPS seniors to be eligible to graduate.
This exam will be made up of one question: “Would you like a diploma?”
2. $50,000 to the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Greater Economic Opportunity
to hire a full-time babysitter.
3. $100,000 to the Office of the District of Columbia Auditor to fund a grant to
investigate the agency study of the inquiry regarding the probe of the
investigation of the agency’s inspection of the Inspector’ General’s audit of the

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 probe into the FY 2018 hearing on the investigation of the agency review of the
formal inquiry in response to the federal audit of the investigation into the
agency’s survey of District residents.
4. $1,000,000 to the Board of Elections. The Committee is concerned by the
number of scandals that have come to light over the past six months. As such,
the Committee transfers this funding for the establishment of Publicly
Financed Deflections. These funds would be used to hire personal coaches for
all executive agency directors to train them on avoiding the truth—specifically,
the art of putting blame on your spouse, how to apologize without actually
doing anything, and pretending you didn’t know about a policy that you wrote
two months before violating.
5. $10,000,000 to the Department of Employment Services to fund the Universal
Paid Pet Leave Act. This new program would require public and private
employers to provide at least one dog year of paid leave to employees whose
pets are ill, pregnant, recently adopted, or too cute to leave home alone.
$2,000,000 of this funding would go to City Wildlife to develop and distribute
“Boxes for Foxes,” a campaign to provide fox baby boxes, or “kit kits,” for
residents who have wild animals giving birth in their backyards. This new law
is modeled on practices in Finland.
6. $2,000,000 to the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Greater Economic
Opportunity to establish the Office on Nightlife. Specifically, $500,000 for the
Jumbo Slice Pizza Division, $380,000 for the Office of Champagne Finance,
$420,000 for the recruitment and hiring of a Keef Executive Officer, and
$700,000 for the Commission on Puking and Ground Sterilization.
7. $45,000 to the Mayor’s Office of Talent and Appointments to fund maintenance
and repairs to the revolving door of District agency leadership, necessitated by
recent overuse.
8. $1,000,000 to the Board of Elections to expand the District’s voting age to the
moment of birth. Too long have our newborn residents been denied a voice in
the running of the District (ignoring the fact that none of them actually know
how to talk) because of our failure to provide them with the ability vote. These
funds will specifically be used to train District OB-GYNs and midwives as poll
workers, and the development of super cute tiny voting booths.
9. $250,000 to the Office of the Inspector General to investigate why
Councilmember Mary Cheh conducts so many investigations (transferred from
the operating budget for the Office of Councilmember Mary Cheh at the
request of Committee staff).
10. $10,000,000,000 to the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic
Development. The Committee is concerned that the District is not doing

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 enough to support the wide range of businesses that seek to do business in the
District. The Committee directs the Deputy Mayor to use these funds to
establish a new office, the Department of Large and Non-Local Business
Development, which would provide outreach to a new type of CBE, “an
American electronic commerce and cloud computing company based in Seattle,
Washington.”
11. $5,000 to the Metropolitan Police Department to issue a Missing Person’s
Report for the DC Statehood Commission, which hasn’t been seen in public
since Jason Chaffetz’s resignation last June.
12. $30,000 to the Committee on Health. There remain unanswered questions
about the exact proceedings of the Executive Session of the United Medical
Center Board. The Committee believes it is important to learn every detail of
this meeting; as such, the Committee designates this funding for a subpoena,
the scope of which shall include:
a. Were snacks served at this meeting?
b. What kind of snacks were served?
c. Are there any snacks left?
d. Can the Committee have the leftover snacks?
13. $50,000 to the Office of Cable Television, Film, Music, and Entertainment to
buy commercial time during FOX News’ 4-5am block to air a commercial
explaining that military parades are for sad, crybaby losers.

The Committee hopes that readers of this memo will recognize that, much like the
District residency of half the current class at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts,
it is fraudulent.