Local
Local firm working toward a greener D.C.
Local gay businessman Joe Andronaco said his sexual orientation was never an issue in the workplace. (DC Agenda photo by Michael Key)
Ask someone how to save the earth from ourselves and you likely will get a range of advice. Trade your gas-guzzler in for a fuel-efficient hybrid vehicle, or better yet, an electric car. Attach solar panels to the roof of your home and use them to wean your house off of non-renewable resources. Invest in tree replanting efforts.
Local gay businessman Joe Andronaco has a less expensive, though admittedly less sexy suggestion that he says will not only have a greater collective environmental impact, but will also end up saving you money before too long: have your home inspected for energy inefficiencies, and take steps to address those inefficiencies.
“Conservation is something that doesn’t require new technologies or a major investment,” said Andronaco. And with an estimated 75 percent of the city’s carbon emissions coming from building energy use, the potential environmental benefit “is huge.”
Andronaco not only sees value in conservation, he also believes there is a good business opportunity there. Last year, he helped launch a company called Access Green, which conducts home energy audits in the greater Washington area. The company’s base product, the knowledge audit, provides homeowners with valuable information about their home – where air is coming into the house, which appliances are creating dangerous chemical emissions, and how their energy consumption stacks up against comparable dwellings, to name but a few of the items addressed in the audit.
“One of the biggest issues with green,” observed Andronaco, “is follow through. You can talk green all you want but are you going to get it done?”
For those who choose the company’s premium product, the fulfillment audit, Access Green technicians will come to your home and make some of the repairs and upgrades recommended in the knowledge audit, from changing out HVAC filters to caulking windows and doors. It is this marriage of green advice and implementation that Andronaco says sets his company apart as an innovator.
“We come with a trades knowledge to green,” said Andronaco. “We know how to practically do the things that will achieve the savings. There are lots of inexpensive, couple-hundred-dollar items that can save you thousands.”
Access Green is part of a larger corporation called USA Technologies, a $12 million business that Andronaco has led since 2003. The well-known local commercial heating and air conditioning company Argent, which received the Angie’s List Super Service Award for the past two years, is also part of USA.
“We really take a whole house approach to the way we do systems,” explained Andronaco. “Before you do something like put a new heating or air conditioning system into your home, you really need to do a whole house analysis.”
Access Green is the first company that Andronaco himself has launched, along with lawyer David Julyan and environmental lobbyist Sam Brooks, known by many locally for his spirited attempts a few years ago to win a seat on the D.C. City Council. Brooks and Julyan are principals of 360 Green, a firm that markets green knowledge and services to the business community.
Andronaco was born in Caracas to a Venezuelan mother and an American father. The family moved to Miami when Andronaco was eight and he lived there until going to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to get a degree in history. He got his start in business while working for local utility giant Washington Gas. After leaving D.C. briefly to get his MBA from the Wharton School of Business, which he received with honors, Andronaco came back to D.C. and again worked for Washington Gas before leaving to pursue his dream of being an entrepreneur.
Though Andronaco has been openly gay since his days at business school, his sexual orientation isn’t something that he trumpets in the workplace. So imagine Andronaco’s surprise when his mentor, USA founder Mike Berard, an elderly, staunchly Republican, Vietnam veteran he befriended while working at Washington Gas, called Andronaco into his office to discuss Andronaco’s “lifestyle.”
“He goes, ‘I’m not going to have someone run my business and be in a closet.’ I said, ‘Mike, some people might be offended.’ He said, ‘I don’t give a shit. If they have a problem, I’ll fire them.’”
Aside from one of the company’s top salesmen expressing misgivings about how company morale would fare with a gay man in charge, a line of questioning that Berard quickly shut down, Andronaco said he has received zero negative reaction in the workplace.
“Most people thought that especially these sort of roughneck good ‘ole boy electricians and HVAC guys would have issues, but they don’t,” said Andronaco. “People are multi-faceted and you can’t take them for caricatures that are created by the media and even by ourselves.”
The 43 year old is quick to stress that being gay is just one facet of who he is, and he is extremely active in the wider community. He sits on several local boards of directors, including Goodwill and the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Washington, and is active with the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund as well. He is also on the D.C. Mayor’s Green Collar Jobs Advisory Council and the Sustainable Energy Utility advisory board, which partners with the D.C. Council to administer sustainable energy programs. In 2008, he was recognized by the Washington Business Journal with a Greater Washington Minority Business Leader Award.
A proud D.C. resident, Andronaco lives with his partner in the Northwest neighborhood of Crestwood. Their 1925 Dutch colonial home doubles as a training and demonstration facility for his company. Earlier this week, in fact, Andronico’s colleagues at Argent used his house to demonstrate how to install programmable thermostats.
Andronaco is also a strong supporter of the city and he sees expansion of the green economy as a way to boost the District’s tax base and address its high unemployment rate. He made a conscious choice to base Access Green in the District, along the H Street corridor in Northeast, and said he likewise makes a point of hiring city residents.
Access Green conducted more than 200 home energy audits last year. According to Sara Loveland, who left her job at D.C. Greenworks last year to be Access Green’s chief operating officer, 2010 is already off to a strong start.
The company is working with the Corcoran on its green roof and recently it scored a contract with the Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative to be the sole provider of home energy audits for SMECO clients in Prince George’s and Calvert counties. They are also busy supporting legislation before the D.C. Council right now that would simplify funding options for energy efficiency improvements and renewable energy products.
“The homeowner wouldn’t have to go through a credit application as long as they have equity in their home,” explained Brooks. “If they move before the loan is paid off, it’s attached to the house and stays there. “ This is an innovative way to finance energy improvements, particularly for homeowners, that Brooks said will solidify D.C.’s place at the leading edge of the green movement.
Brooks is quick to note that this legislation is one of the rare instances where the public interest is perfectly in alignment with the interests of “green collar” businesses like his, a trend he sees continuing.
“The better a firm like ours does,” he said, “the closer the government comes to realizing its object to reduce the city’s carbon footprint.” Moreover, he added, there is opportunity here for private sector companies like Access Green to provide market-based solutions to environmental challenges, rather than rely wholly on the government for leadership.
Said Loveland: “People are so dazzled by super sexy projects like solar paneling. Not enough attention is paid to conservation. We can generate all the alternative energy we want, but without conservation we won’t achieve the results we need to meaningfully reduce our carbon footprint.”
The Access Green knowledge audit currently runs $249 while the fulfillment audit starts at $599. For more information on Access Green’s products, visit http://www.greenerhome.com or call 202-559-6061.
District of Columbia
GLAA releases ratings for 18 candidates running for D.C. mayor, Council, AG
Mayoral contender Janeese Lewis Geroge among those receiving highest score
D.C. mayoral candidate Janeese Lewis George, a Democrat, is among just four candidates to receive the highest rating score of +10 from GLAA D.C. who are competing in the city’s June 16 primary election.
GLAA, formally known as the Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance of Washington, has rated candidates for public office in D.C. since the 1970s. It rated 18 of the 36 candidates on this year’s primary ballot for mayor, D.C. Council, and D.C. attorney general based on its policy of only rating candidates who return a GLAA questionnaire asking for their positions on a wide range of issues, most of which are not LGBTQ-specific.
Among the candidates who did not return the questionnaire and thus did not receive a rating, according to GLAA, was Democratic mayoral contender Kenyan McDuffie, who along with Lewis George, is considered by political observers to be one of the two leading mayoral candidates running in the Democratic primary.
GLAA President Benjamin Brooks said that when the McDuffie campaign learned that GLAA announced it had released its candidate ratings and McDuffie was not rated because a questionnaire from him was not received a McDuffie campaign worker contacted GLAA. Brooks said the campaign worker told him they didn’t initially believe they received the questionnaire but they discovered this week that it landed in the spam folder of the campaign’s email account.
Brooks told the Washington Blade he informed the campaign worker it was too late for GLAA to issue a rating for McDuffie since the submission deadline for all candidates had passed. But he said GLAA will allow McDuffie to submit a completed questionnaire that it will post on its website along with the questionnaire responses of the other candidates who submitted them to GLAA.
Lewis George and McDuffie, who each have long records of support for the LGBTQ community, are among a total of eight candidates running for mayor on the June 16 primary ballot: seven Democrats and one Statehood Green Party candidate. In addition to Lewis George, GLAA rated just two other mayoral candidates. Rini Sampath, a Democrat who self identifies as queer, received a +6.5 rating, and Ernest E. Johnson, also a Democrat, received a +4.5 rating
Under the GLAA rating system, candidate ratings range from a +10, the highest score, to a -10, the lowest possible score. In its ratings for the June 16 primary, the lowest score issued was +4.5. GLAA said in a statement that each of the 18 candidates it rated expressed strong support for LGBTQ-related issues in their questionnaire responses, indicating that the overall rating scores reflect the candidates’ positions on mostly non-LGBTQ-specific issues.
The three other candidates who received a +10 GLAA rating are each running as Democrats for the Ward 1 D.C. Council seat. They include gay candidate Miguel Trindade Deramo; Aparna Raj, who identifies as bisexual; and LGBTQ ally Rashida Brown. The only other Ward 1 candidate rated by GLAA is LGBTQ ally Terry Lynch, who received a +5.5 rating.
Ward 5 D.C. Councilmember Zachary Parker, the Council’s only gay member who is facing two opponents in the Democratic primary, received a +7 GLAA rating. The two challengers did not return the questionnaire and were not rated.
“In seven out of 10 of our priorities, every candidate indicated agreement,” GLAA said in its statement to the Washington Blade in referring to the candidates it rated. “Total consensus on core issues signals that whomever is elected to Council and mayor, we should expect to hold our elected officials accountable to our goals of protecting home rule, resisting federal overreach, advancing transgender healthcare rights, and eliminating chronic homelessness in the District,” the statement says.
“While candidates agree on the basics, they distinguish themselves in the depth and creativity in their responses, and their record on the issues,” according to the statement, which adds that candidates’ full questionnaire responses and ratings can be accessed on the GLAA website, glaa.org.
Like past election years, GLAA does not rate candidates running for the D.C. Congressional Delegate seat or the so-called “shadow” U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate seats.
With the exception of one question asking about transgender rights, none of the other nine of the 10 questionnaire questions are LGBTQ-specific. But most of the questions mention that LGBTQ people are impacted by the issues being raised, such as affordable housing, federal government intrusion into D.C. home rule, and access to healthcare and public benefits for low-income residents.
One of the questions asks candidates if they support decriminalization of sex work in D.C. among consenting adults, which GLAA supports. Lewis George is among the candidates who said they do not support sex work decriminalization at this time. The other two mayoral candidates that GLAA rated, Sampath and Johnson, said they support sex work decriminalization.
In the race for D.C. attorney general, GLAA issued a rating for just one of the three candidates running: Republican challenger Manuel Rivera, who received a +4.5 rating. Incumbent Democrat Brian Schwalb and Democratic challenger J.P. Szymkowicz were not rated because they didn’t return the questionnaire.
D.C. Council Chair Phil Mendelson (D), who is running unopposed in the primary, received a +6.5 rating. Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen, who is facing three Democratic challengers in the primary and who is a longtime LGBTQ ally, received a +6.5 rating.
In the special election to fill the at-large D.C. Council seat vacated by the resignation of then-Independent Councilmember McDuffie to enable him to run for mayor as a Democrat, GLAA has rated two of the three Independent candidates competing for the seat. Elissa Silverman received a +5.75 rating, and Doni Crawford received a +5.6 rating.
Finally, in the At-Large D.C. Council race GLAA issued ratings for five of the 11 candidates running in the primary, each of whom are Democrats. Oye Owolewa received a +9; Lisa Raymond, +7.5; Dwight Davis, +6.5; Dyana N.M. Forester, +6; and Fred Hill, +6.6.
The full list of GLAA-rated candidates and their detailed questionnaire responses can be accessed at glaa.org.
Rehoboth Beach
From the Capitol to the coast: Rep. Sarah McBride shares Rehoboth favorites
As summer kicks off, Congresswoman Sarah McBride shares her favorite Rehoboth spots.
Each year for the past 19 years, the Washington Blade has kicked off the summer season with a quintessential tradition — a party in Rehoboth Beach. The annual celebration is well known among Blade readers as the unofficial start of summer and beach season. (This year’s event is May 15, 5-7 p.m. at Diego’s featuring remarks from Ashley Biden.)
Two weeks ago, the Blade sat down with Sarah McBride (D-Del.), the first openly transgender person elected to Congress, to discuss her first year in office. While reflecting on key milestones and challenges ahead, she also shared some of her favorite Rehoboth spots and what the beach town means to her.
“I love Rehoboth,” the state’s sole House member told the Blade, beaming from her office in the Longworth House Office Building. “I love Baltimore Avenue, and love going to Aqua and the Pines.”
Both Aqua and the Pines have long served as staples of Rehoboth’s LGBTQ community. From the Saturday night lines stretching down the street off the main drag to the Sunday tea dances, the venues have helped cement Rehoboth as one of the top LGBTQ beach destinations in the United States dating back to at least the 1940s, when LGBTQ federal workers would escape the pressures — and often prying eyes — of Washington for a queer haven along the Delaware coast.
While attitudes and the community itself have evolved over the decades, Rehoboth today can still feel like an extension of D.C. — only with more Speedos and sandy flip-flops. Conversations that begin in Washington about politics and nightlife often continue beachside, shifting from “What’s Bunker’s theme tonight?” to “Who’s DJing at Aqua?”
When asked where she likes to dine in town, McBride highlighted one longtime favorite while also teasing a new addition she’s eager to try.
“Drift Seafood and Raw Bar is one of my favorite restaurants,” she said. “I actually ran into a Rehoboth restaurateur the other day while I was at Longwood Gardens for the tulips — which were beautiful. The restaurateur just opened a new restaurant on the south end of Baltimore Avenue that I’m excited to try. It sounds like an Indian fusion restaurant.”
When asked whether she frequents Poodle Beach — the longtime LGBTQ section of the shoreline — McBride shared that she prefers a quieter stretch of sand a bit farther north of Rehoboth’s gay beach scene.
“I usually go to Deauville, which is just north. It’s right there in between the boardwalk and Gordon’s Pond and North Shores.”
Regardless of where she chooses to unwind from the pressures of Washington and Dover, McBride was clear about how much both Rehoboth and Delaware mean to her.
“I love Rehoboth. I love the restaurants there. This is the professional privilege of my lifetime, getting to represent Delaware.”
“One of the things that I love is seeing how much goodness there is in this state,” she shared. “I represent more people in the House of Representatives than any other representative. Unlike most members who represent exclusively urban, suburban, or rural districts, I represent all three. Delaware demographically looks like America.”
She went on to say that representing a state whose demographics closely mirror the country as a whole gives her hope for the future — something that can at times feel elusive within the often-divisive halls of Congress.
“That means every day that I’m here, and every time Delawareans come to visit me, I get to see the full diversity of this country and this state on display. I get to see the goodness across that diversity, whether it’s diversity of identity or diversity of thought. It makes me even prouder to represent a state that time and time again judges candidates not based on their identities, but based on their ideals.”
She ended with a simple but hopeful message about her state and its people.
“Our politics are too often defined by hate. I’m glad Delaware and Delawareans are showing that a different kind of politics is possible.”
District of Columbia
Anti-LGBTQ violence prevention efforts highlighted at D.C. community fair
Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs organized May 8 event
Detailed advice on how LGBTQ people can avoid, defend themselves against, and prevent themselves and loved ones from becoming victims of violence, with a focus on domestic and intimate partner violence, was presented at a May 8 LGBTQIA+ Safety in Numbers Community Fair.
The event, organized by the D.C. Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs, included five workshop sessions and information tables set up by 14 LGBTQ-supportive organizations and D.C. government agencies or agency divisions, including the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department’s LGBT Liaison Unit and the D.C. LGBTQ+ Community Center.
Also playing a lead role in organizing the event was the D.C. LGBTQIA+ Violence Prevention and Response Team, or VPART, a coalition of D.C. officials and leaders of community-based organizations that work with the Office of LGBTQ Affairs.
The event was held in meeting space in the building where the Office of LGBTQ Affairs is located at 899 N. Capitol St., N.E.
The workshop topics included de-escalation training on healthy relationships, bystander intervention, self-defense training, violence prevention grants, and suicide prevention.
“This will be a public safety and violence prevention event where community partners will educate attendees on various methods of violence intervention and trauma-informed practices,” according to a statement released by the Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs prior to the start of the event.
The statement adds, “We will have live demos, interactive games, and workshops focused on strategies for self-defense, protecting vulnerable communities, increasing access to mental health resources, providing tools for recognizing domestic violence/intimate partner violence signs in intimate relationships, and assistance for substance abuse.”
Sonya Joseph, associate director of engagement for the Office of LGBTQ Affairs, told the Washington Blade that studies have shown rates of domestic or intimate partner violence are higher in the LGBTQ community than in the community at large.
“Domestic violence and intimate partner violence are two very big prevalent issues in the LGBTQ community,” she said, adding that some of the workshops at the event would be providing “training on healthy relationships and how to recognize and prevent intimate partner violence and the signs of it.”
About 35 to 40 people attended the workshop sessions.
Experts specializing in violence impacting the LGBTQ community have said domestic violence refers to violence among people in domestic relationships that can include spouses but also siblings, parents, cousins, and other relatives. Intimate partner violence, according to the experts, refers to violence perpetuated by a partner in a romantic or dating relationship.
These D.C. based organizations or agencies that participated in the LGBTQIA+ Safety in Numbers event, and which can be contacted for assistance, include:
• Defend Yourself
• DC LGBTQ+ Community Center
• American Foundation for Suicide Prevention
• Joseph’s House
• Us Helping Us, People into Living, Inc.
• MCSR (formerly known as Men Can Stop Rape)
• MPD LGBT Liaison Unit
• Volunteer Legal Advocates
• DC SAFE
• Destination Tomorrow
• D.C. Office of Victims Services and Justice Grants
• Life Enhancement Services
• ONYX Therapy Group
• U.S. Attorney’s Office for D.C.
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