Wrapping up some loose ends

We were very excited to get such a quick response to our post about food deserts in the form of a follow-up email from the research director at the organization that produced the report we wrote about and a comment from the geographer at the DC Office of Planning who created the map.

That wasn't the only post to receive high-level feedback. In the first post after our introduction, I took Giant grocery stores to task for not taking the time to clean up around their new sign. This post was accompanied by a letter to Giant's Consumer Affairs Department, and here's the response we received on Friday, April 2:

Thank you for contacting us about your Brentwood store. I apologize for the delay in responding to your email. After receiving your email, I contacted our construction department and they tell me that the area around sign was cleaned the day after the new sign was put up. As you know, we celebrated the grand reopening last Friday. We hope you like your newly remodeled store.

Thanks, again, for contacting us. We appreciate hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Deborah Riley
Consumer Affairs Supervisor

After that post, Jaime wrote about a new corollary to the Broken Windows Theory, which she dubbed Broken Scooter Theory. After submitting requests to the Metropolitan Police Department and the Department of Public Works, and not seeing any progress from either organization, we emailed our councilmember (Harry Thomas) and his constituent services director, requesting any help they could provide.

The following morning, the scooter was gone. Coincidentally, later that morning I ran into Councilmember Thomas at a Casey Trees planting event in Eckington, and I spoke with him about the scooter, thanking him for taking action to clean up our alley. I also found out that the councilmember grew up on our block in Trinidad! Small world...