It has been a month since DCPCA’s 10^th Annual Meeting and it’s about a month until 2007 is nothing more than a memory. As I was on a little vacation break over the Thanksgiving holiday, I spent some time looking back on the year thus far, and forward to what 2008 will bring. It feels a little odd. So many things we have worked on for years feel like they are on the horizon of success, while new challenges await strategies, work plans, and fresh energy. Straddling these two sides of the work is always a test of how well we stretch, balance, and juggle. It’s really an art to stay grounded in the world of competing priorities, interspersed with putting out fires – or starting them.

Everyone knows that DC is a city deeply divided between the haves and have-nots. But we didn’t know until recently that the District’s “economic renaissance” of the past decade hasn’t actually made things any better for DC’s low-income households. In fact, things have gotten worse on average, and economic disparities are at an all-time high. DC now appears to have two economies – one that is moving forward and one that is stuck.