Dear Friends,
I hope everyone is preparing for a happy and safe Thanksgiving with family and/or friends.
Libby’s Local List
Before I report on our November meetings, I want to let you know some of my plans for after I leave the Board December 31. I plan to use the funds still in my campaign account to start a local PAC, which I will call “Libby’s Local List.” The purpose will be to support good local government with occasional gatherings to talk about local issues and to provide contributions to good candidates and incumbents on a local level and across the region. Local government will become increasingly important as our federal and state-level governments will likely become increasingly dysfunctional. I will change my website to become more of an aggregator of good articles and thoughts about local government and to provide ideas for finding our way through the upcoming MAGA era. My good friend and treasurer, Fran Zorn, will be stepping down after many years of helping me to make sure all the financial t’s were crossed and i’s were dotted, so I am looking for a treasurer of my PAC. Let me know if you are interested. It should not require much time, and I think my PAC will be fun.
Board Meeting Items
Our November Board meeting agenda was quite full. I’ve covered a few of the items below, but you can find a good and more complete summary here: https://www.arlingtonva.us/About-Arlington/Newsroom/Articles/2024/Arlington-County-Board-Wrap-up-for-the-November-2024-Meetings
Transforming Outdated Office Space
Last Saturday, we adopted a new Adaptive Reuse Policy to transform outdated office buildings into vibrant, multi-use spaces. While our new “class A” office buildings are doing well, we have many commercial office buildings built forty to sixty years ago that are not. We think about 78 of 326 commercial office buildings are at risk of financial distress, and their owners are paying out more for mortgages and other expenses than they are earning from the building. Nor will the building sell for anything near what it was worth a few years ago. This is only going to get worse over the next few years. New flexibility includes streamlining changes for the use of the buildings themselves and/or allowing unused space in parking garages to be used for things like storage or dog runs. Vacant buildings are good for no one. I am pleased that we are providing needed flexibility so building owners can more quickly adapt to new conditions in ways that will not adversely affect neighbors.
Sharpshooters for Deer
We also amended our code to allow sharpshooters working for the County to shoot deer. Arlington is one of the last jurisdictions in the region to not cull its deer population. I think Bambi was the first movie I ever saw, and I still remember how upset I was when his was mother shot. However, as I’ve written before, the overpopulation of deer is destroying the undergrowth and young trees in our forested parks which are home to many species of birds, small mammals, and insects. That undergrowth is also partially made up of young trees which are our future forests. It is important that we rebalance nature as best we can to allow our forests to renew themselves and provide habitat for all the creatures, who need it to live….including deer, just not too many deer. It will take a year before the shooting actually begins, and it will only be done in winter months when visibility makes it safest. Over the next months, we must hire the sharpshooters and determine the best locations for them to work. We also plan to donate the deer meat to food banks and will need to decide how to distribute the meat and hire butchers to prepare it for distribution.
Budget Outlook
The Manager presented staff’s financial and economic outlook, which you may want to watch on the Board’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5tsJSTPoAg&list=PLg2Yc0utvhQ_ndiz7W1oSwAH3OzrDP6au&index=2, please fast forward to 6:00:00.
The situation for next year’s budget will be far different from the budget we passed for this fiscal year. The next several years will be difficult. The commercial vacancy rate and depressed worth of old office buildings is starting to be felt in reduced tax revenues. While our new adaptive reuse policies and efforts to increase commercial resiliency will help, it will take years for our County to adjust to the new normal (after the pandemic). There will not be any significant American Rescue Plan Act money from the U.S. government as there has been the last few years. We have been preparing for this by using less and less each year in anticipation of it running out, which has been a helpful strategy the past few budget cycles, but now these monies are gone.
We are seeing more and more need for food and housing assistance as inflation affects workers at the bottom of the pay scale who have always struggled and whose wages have not kept up. Metro funding is a perennial issue, but it is getting more and more acute as the Region works to find dedicated funding for the system that will reliably supply the resources needed to keep this crucial transportation system going. Local funding cannot make up for all of Metro’s funding gap, however, we will be asked to do a lot. Finally, our schools are facing a large budget gap. They have been using large amounts of one-time funds to close their funding gaps in the past several budgets. While the school budget needs will not go down, the one-time funds to cover their gap are severely diminished.
EHO/Missing Middle Appeal
Finally on Tuesday, we voted to appeal the judge’s ruling in Nordgren v. Arlington County Board, which is the EHO/Missing Middle case. We considered trying to adopt a revised ordinance, but determined that it is not possible to do because of the legal construction and substance of the judge’s ruling. This ruling, if it stands, would have impacts that extend well beyond our EHO policy and impact decades-long understanding of how land use decisions are made and implemented by local jurisdictions in Virginia. These major concerns must be addressed and clarified by a higher court. If you are interested, our website has the full trial transcripts and details the evidence presented by the County.
As always, I hope this newsletter is helpful to you, and again, wish everyone a safe and happy Thanksgiving.
Best,
Libby
P.S.: I much appreciate the very positive feedback from my newsletter after the election. Here is a podcast called Next Comes What: https://sites.libsyn.com/555737 that I have found clear-eyed and helpful. The first part is pretty grim, but the second part has “glimmers of hope” and indicates what we should be doing now.
