Dear PoP: “Our sidewalk of shame – mea culpa”

“Dear PoP,

My name is Scott Parker, with the Mormon Church on Capitol Hill (522 7th St SE). It was mentioned in “More Sidewalks of Shame – What to do?”.

I just wanted to apologize for not getting a portion of our sidewalk cleaned sooner. We cleared a single path this afternoon (Fri), and have another little crew working on it right now (as of 6:05 pm Friday) to clear away the ice. Our church has no professional clergy – we all have regular jobs and volunteer our other time for church stuff – which also means we have no church office. That’s why no one could be reached there. But if anyone needs/wants to get a hold of me now or in the future, they can email me at scottparker1 [at] gmail.com. The volunteer church member tasked with clearing the sidewalk moved away since last winter, and we forgot to have that assignment covered. Sorry about that. That’s entirely our fault and we’ll get it fixed. We did do better last year, and shoveled that stretch multiple times. (My back can attest to that ;) Also, the plow that comes is not a church member, just a contractor, and is hired regionally, not by us, but we’ll try and ask for him to pay attention to this as well.

I’m from the area and have lived here on the Hill for the past 8 years (on East Cap for a while and then just off Constitution for the past 4), as do most of our congregants, so we care about getting this stuff taken care. Sorry again for not being on the ball this year. We’ll do better.”

And in other positive clearing sidewalks news, from Rob Mandle, ANC Commissioner 4C10:

“A quick email to the Mayor’s Team (Carly Skidmore and Brandon Starks) and the AFRH (Old Soldiers Home in Petworth) sidewalk has been cleared!”