The Board met for 20 hours over two days for our September regular meetings. Public comment took up more than the usual amount of time and I found myself thinking often about those 3 important questions: What good? For whom? At what cost? Many items involved balancing the needs of specific groups of people who came to express concerns about being harmed too much by our efforts to improve services for the county as a whole. Some of the items that brought out the most speakers were: A request from the Berkeley Condominium that we remove a permit condition giving Arlington an easement that … [Read more...]

I hope everyone is looking forward to the fall after some time to relax over the summer. Although we have some meetings between our regular County Board meetings in July and September, August is a quieter month for the Board, and so it is a time to slow down, to reflect a bit on where we’ve been this year, and to look ahead. The unexpected and horrific events in Charlottesville continue to reverberate for me, as they do for many. The Board received many emails expressing distress at what happened and concern about the ways Arlington remembers the Confederacy. I believe it is time for us to … [Read more...]

Our July meetings had some interesting and some difficult issues. Regulations affecting homes A family that wants to tear down an old house and build new found themselves in the middle of a controversy when they learned they were on a “pipestem” lot and had to come to the Board for approval to build. As is so often the case in Arlington, some neighbors didn’t like the size, location, or look of their proposed home and came to tell us. We first heard this issue in June, but delayed our vote to July to allow time for the family to work things out. With help from staff, cooperation with … [Read more...]

Its almost time for the Kennan Garvey Ride to help Phoenix Bikes move into its new home. I encourage anyone who likes to ride a bike to sign up. You can ride for as little or as far as you like on a great bike path that Kennan and I loved and rode often. Despite the heat now, it has been fairly cool for the ride for the past 3 years. I won’t be able to ride this year, but I signed up anyway. I’ll be there for the beginning and plan to help out at one of the rest stops on the ride. If you can’t ride, would you sponsor me with a donation? Or sponsor another rider? Or volunteer to help at the … [Read more...]

I hope everyone enjoyed a good July 4th holiday. I always give thanks for those who have formed and protected our nation over the years, and for my own opportunity to provide some small public service to Arlington. Transportation: Getting Around Arlington and Across the Region Metro's General Manager, Paul Wiedefeld, came to speak with the Board about the current state and future of Metro, which is crucial to this region's economic growth and quality of life. He discussed how Metro needs a dedicated source of funding so it can have some certainty in budgeting. This will be hard political … [Read more...]

This Tuesday is primary day in Virginia. I want to share information about how you can vote either in-person absentee or on Tuesday. I hope you will join me in voting for Ralph Northam for Governor and Susan Platt for Lt. Governor. You can vote in-person absentee at 2100 Clarendon Blvd, 3rd floor: today, Thursday, June 8th until 5 pm, tomorrow, Friday, June 9th from 8 am to 5 pm, or Saturday, June 10th from 8:30 am to 5 pm. You can vote on primary day, this coming Tuesday, June 13th from 6 am to 7 pm at your regular polling place. You can find your polling place on the Arlington County … [Read more...]

May was a light month for Board business. Of all the items we covered, I found our votes to move the Gilliam Place affordable housing project forward to be particularly delightful. There was real community cooperation. APAH (the developer) and the Arlington Presbyterian Church (the land owner) worked together to preserve a small portion of the site as a neighborhood park. Arlington Presbyterian Church's generous land donation preserves several lovely trees and helps maintain our sense of community along Columbia Pike. Everybody wins! As anyone who follows economic development issues in … [Read more...]

I hope you are enjoying the lovely, if cool, weather. This is a quick reminder that the Arlington Democratic County Board & School Board nominating caucuses are this week. These caucuses will almost certainly determine who will be our next school and county board members in November, so they are important although very few people are expected to vote. You have three opportunities to vote: Tonight, Tuesday, May 9th, 7 - 9 pm at Key Elementary School, Thursday, May 11th, 7 - 9 pm at Drew Model School, and Saturday, May 13th, 11 am - 7 pm at Washington-Lee High School.   The … [Read more...]

After a packed meeting last month, our March meeting was quite a bit lighter, in part because we are working through our budget as we prepare to adopt it in April. FY 2018 Budget As I shared last month, the County Manager's budget proposal is online. He designed it based on an assumption of raising the tax rate by 2 cents. Each penny on the tax rate is about $7.4 million in revenue for the County, and a 2-cent (or $14.8 million) increase would allow us to pass a budget that continues current services while also covering additional costs for Metro and our rising school population. In … [Read more...]