In a mailing that went out last month, Comcast told Arlington County customers that they would be getting “The World of More” — the company’s phrase for a slew of additional high-definition channels — on March 15.
Alas, that date has come and gone and the channels are nowhere to be seen. In fact, the only noticeable change in the past two weeks is that customers can no longer receive basic cable channels without a digital converter.
The house was built in 1881 by Harry Gray, a bricklayer and a former slave in the Arlington household of Gen. Robert E. Lee. Despite the fact that the house stood alone on a 10 acre piece of farmland at the time, Gray built it in the Italianate style of fashionable townhouses he had seen in the District. The architecture was a statement about how far freed slaves had come since the Emancipation Proclamation.
“The dwelling represents the monumental shift from slaves to freedmen for African Americans in the years following the Civil War,” a National Park Service document states. The house sits at present-day 1005 South Quinn Street, near Columbia Pike and adjacent to what was once a thriving Freedman’s Village.
Update at 1:55 p.m. — Dominion spokeswoman Le-Ha Anderson says: “Approximately 5,000 customers lost power this afternoon for about 30 minutes. We are still investigating the root cause of the outage, but in the meantime, were able to reroute the flow of electricity to get customers restored quickly and safely.”
A major power outage has been reported along the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor.
The board’s 3-1 vote to reject the proposal came after nearly 75 speakers — including neighbors, student athletes, nuns and local gadflies — spoke both strongly in favor and strongly against the O’Connell lighting plan.
(Board member Barbara Favola recused herself due to her work for Marymount University. The lighting proposal called for Marymount’s athletic teams to be granted partial use of the fields.)
Arlington has had to make service cuts in each of the past two budgets as taxes and other revenue sources dried up. After 2009, assessed property values suffered their first year-over-year decline since 1995, prompting the county to hike property taxes to make up for what otherwise would have been a dramatic loss of revenue.
When it comes to real estate taxes, the county can always increase the tax rate for an expected revenue shortfall. But one area that’s largely out of the county’s control is the funds it receives from the state. And in the past four years, overall state funding to Arlington County — excluding schools — has dropped $18 million.
On-going utility work has kept the far left-hand westbound lane closed well past its originally planned July 2010 reopening date. We heard in September that the lane would likely be closed through the end of last year. Alas, construction crews are still working and westbound Route 50 is still reduced to just two lanes.
VDOT spokeswoman Jennifer McCord says the lane will reopen in mid-April “if the weather cooperates.”
Last American WWI Vet Buried in Arlington — Army Cpl. Frank Buckles, the last surviving U.S. World War I veteran, was laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery yesterday. Earlier in the day, President Obama and Vice President Biden stopped by to pay their respects as Buckles lay in repose in a cemetery chapel. [American Forces Press Service]
Underground Explosion Rocks Pike Townhouse Complex — An underground explosion caused a manhole cover to fly across the backyard of a townhouse complex near Columbia Pike yesterday morning. Firefighters are still trying to determine what caused the blast, but a strong gasoline-like odor could be smelled in the area. The gas also apparently caused fires to start near water heaters inside the townhouses. The complex is across the street from an auto repair shop and next to Four Mile Run. [ABC 7]
