Archive for the ‘News’ Category

Occasionally, victims fight back and give the bad guys what was coming to ‘em. Such was the case early Sunday morning when a man approached two women who were walking home in the Buckingham neighborhood.

Police say the man lifted one woman’s skirt and touched her inappropriately. Then, the woman punched him, and two men chased him off.

More details on the suspect from this week’s Arlington County crime report:

SEXUAL BATTERY 09/05/10, 4200 block of N. Pershing Drive. On September 5 at 2 am, two women were walking on the sidewalk when an unknown man approached them. He lifted one woman’s skirt and touched her under the skirt. She punched him, and two men chased the suspect off. The suspect was a white Hispanic male in his early 30’s, 6’ and 180 lbs. He was wearing a blue and white plaid shirt with black jeans and black shoes.

The rest of the crime report, after the jump.

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A group determined to kick frog legs off American menus came to Ballston over the weekend to protest in front of Uncle Julio’s Rio Grande Cafe.

Fifteen demonstrators, including two George Mason University students and eight elementary and middle school students, held homemade signs calling for Uncle Julio’s to stop serving frog legs.

“Uncle Julio: Stop driving frogs to extinction,” one young girl’s sign read.

The protest was organized by Save the Frogs, a California-based group dedicated to saving “the world’s remaining amphibian species.” This was the second time this year the organization held a protest outside the Ballston Uncle Julio’s. The non-profit has also demonstrated outside Uncle Julio’s restaurants in Maryland and Texas.

“America is on track to overtake France and Belgium to become the number one frog-eating country on the planet,” Save the Frogs founder and Manassas native Dr. Kerry Kriger said in a statement. “The frog leg trade is responsible for the spread of infectious diseases, the depletion of wild frog populations, and the spread of harmful invasive species”.

The CEO of Uncle Julio’s has previously denied that the chain’s frog legs come from an endangered species or are raised in an unhealthy environment.

Photos courtesy Save the Frogs

Miriam Gennari, the Green Party candidate for school board, made her case for why she should replace incumbent Sally Baird last night. To Gennari, the biggest challenges facing Arlington Public Schools come down to sustainability and environmental stewardship.

“The questions that we’re going to face have more to do with our environment than anything else,” Gennari said. “As we continue to plan our community to become more dense… we have to determine how we can best make those transitions while not having a negative affect on our children.”

Gennari touted her fight against styrofoam in school cafeterias two years ago. She also questioned the nearly $100 million spent on a Washington-Lee High School that opened in 2008 and is already overcrowded.

Baird, meanwhile, emphasized student achievement, saying she wants to continue her efforts to boost the graduation rate.

“First and foremost, we’re about helping kids achieve,” she said.

Baird recounted that when she ran four years ago, the student population was declining and someone asked if she “would have the courage to close a school.”

“There are generational trends going on here, so we have to be very careful about how we manage it… understand that in some places where the population is growing it’s not going to keep growing,” Baird said.

Both candidates were asked about the planetarium, which was set for closure under the superintendent’s latest school budget. The 40-year-old facility was saved by the efforts of the Friends of the Planetarium, a coalition of concerned citizens who agreed to raise funds for renovations.

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Olympic track and field star Carl Lewis will be on hand at Washington-Lee High School this afternoon to help launch the newest chapter of the Best Buddies program.

The nine-time gold medalist will meet W-L students and tell them about the volunteer program, which encourages students to build one-on-one friendships with intellectually and developmentally-disabled individuals.

Lewis’ appearance will take place in W-L’s auxiliary gym at 1:00 p.m.

Best Buddies chapters are already in place at Wakefield and Yorktown high schools, and at the H-B Woodlawn and Stratford secondary programs. In Virginia, Best Buddies International operates 25 chapters which count more than 10,000 participants in total.

“Do you believe in the Constitution, and do you follow it?”

That’s the question one man really, really wanted to ask of the three 8th District congressional candidates at a Civic Federation-sponsored debate Tuesday night. The moderator tried to move on to the next question before the candidates could answer, at which point the man began yelling.

Eventually, the candidates answered the question to get the guy to stop screaming. It’s not clear whether he actually expected anyone to answer “no.”

We have audio of the exchange, below.

At a candidate forum sponsored by the Arlington Civic Federation, Republican Patrick Murray kicked off the post-Labor Day campaign season with an aggressive assault on the economic and spending record of ten-term incumbent Democratic congressman Jim Moran, previewing what will likely be a spirited two months of campaigning.

“Congress… is full of career politicians who are addicted to spending your taxpayer dollars and who will say and do anything to get re-elected,” Murray said in his opening remarks. “At the heart of that, ladies and gentleman, is my opponent, Mr. Moran.”

“For 20 years, he has spent taxpayer dollars… and what has it gotten us?” Murray asked. “We’ve got deficits as far as the eye can see. We’ve got unemployment that continues to go up. We’ve got $13 trillion of debt.”

Moran readily admitted that he has used his seniority on the House Appropriations Committee to steer money to the 8th District. But he said the money has made life better here — primarily by producing jobs.

“I earmark a lot of money through the appropriations process,” Moran said. “I do support federal spending, and I support the federal government… I’m doing everything I can to keep federal facilities here.”

Moran noted that Arlington has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country and has recently been named a one of the most “livable” communities in the nation.

Later, Murray took a shot at a television appearance in which Moran said the economy had recovered.

“Jim just doesn’t get it. The other day on Hardball with Chris Matthews, he [said] ‘I don’t know why everyone is so upset… the economy is recovered,’” Murray said to cackling laughter among his supporters. “On what planet has it recovered?”

During a question and answer session with Civic Federation delegates, Moran was asked about a glossy, 16-page newsletter his congressional office mailed out over the summer at taxpayer expense.

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It’s a packed house at Virginia Hospital Center’s Hazel Conference Center, where a debate between the local candidates for congress, county board and school board is about to get underway.

First observation of the night: lots of Murray signs on George Mason Drive on the way up to the hospital. Didn’t spot any Moran signs.

(Update: The first controversy of the night. The county Office of Voter Registration tweets that candidate signs are prohibited until 30 days before the election.)

The congressional candidate debate between incumbent Jim Moran (Democrat) and challengers Patrick Murray (Republican) and Ron Fisher (Green) started at 7:45 p.m. Patrick Murray spoke first, and received loud applause.

Update at 8:00 p.m. — Murray largely focuses on Moran, and Moran talked mostly about Moran. Moran also received loud applause, mixed with some whistling.

8:05 — Question for Moran on his controversial mailer from the indefatigable Bob Atkins. Moran says the mailing cost some $100k, not $1 million as Murray alleged. Murray on glossy mailer: “I thought it was a quarterly stock report from Goldman Sachs.”

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A county panel could approve major renovations to part of a historic housing complex as soon as tomorrow night.

The Arlington Tenant-Landlord Commission is scheduled to hear arguments for a plan to renovate the 162 Colonial Village apartment units owned by Wesley Housing Development Corporation. The hearing will take place at 7:30 p.m. in Azalea Room (lobby level) of 2100 Clarendon Boulevard.

The plan calls for major upgrades and configuration changes, including new windows, kitchens, bathrooms and insulation. The grounds will also be improved, with new walkways and lighting.

Currently, there 109 one-bedroom and 53 two-bedroom apartments among Wesley’s Colonial Village portfolio. The non-profit expects the post-construction mix of units to be 90 one-bedrooms, 57 two-bedrooms and 14 three bedrooms. Seventeen apartments would be constructed to be compliant with Americans with Disabilities Act accessibility specifications.

If approved by the commission, Wesley hopes to begin renovating small batches of apartments starting in April 2011. Affected residents would be moved to either a vacant unit or to another apartment complex, with the moving costs at least partially paid for by Wesley. The entire renovation process is expected to take about a year.

Some tenants will not be allowed to move back in after renovations, however. All but 33 of the new apartments will be placed into the Low Income Housing Tax Credit program.  This fall, Wesley will begin interviewing tenants to determine whether their household income is low enough to qualify for the program. Tenants who don’t qualify may be able to move into one of the 33 market rate apartments, or may be forced to move elsewhere.

The income threshold for an individual is $43,500 or below. For a five-person household, it’s $67,080 or below.

The apartment buildings set to be renovated are 1702-34 North Troy Street and 2101, 2103, 2105, 2107, 2109, 2113 and 2115 North 18th Street.

Wesley, which is based in Alexandria, receives part of its funding from Arlington County.

At 6:30 this morning, school buses were streaming out of a county facility near Shirlington, on their way to pick up students for the first day of school. It’s the start of a ritual that will continue every school day until the start of next summer.

In all, about 120 buses will pick up about 10,000 students county-wide this morning. Another 11,000 will walk or be driven to one of Arlington’s 34 public schools.

Arlington Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Patrick Murphy started his own first day ritual at the bus yard, doing a live shot on the Fox 5 Morning News, greeting bus drivers, and talking to a video crew with the school system’s TV station.

Asked about emotions and expectations on the first day of school, Dr. Murphy emphasized the importance of maintaining student engagement after the new-ness wears off.

“It’s exciting, it’s starting new, but the first day should be just like every other day,” Dr. Murphy said. “Everybody can be great on day one — it’s about being great every day.”

More photos after the jump.

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Arlington Democrats chowed down on homemade chili and talked up their slate of candidates at the party’s annual Labor Day Chili Cook-off.

A crowd that included county board members, school board members, state legislators, elected county officers and Democratic donors gathered outside the Lyon Park Community Center for the end-of-summer tradition, which also featured drinks, music and a moon bounce for the kids.

Guests of honor included the three local Democrats up for reelection this year: county board member Chris Zimmerman, school board member Sally Baird and congressman Jim Moran. Virginia House of Delegates minority leader Ward Armstrong was also on hand for the afternoon event.

The cook-off was largely an upbeat affair for the well-entrenched local party, though the gloomy national outlook for Democrats was on the minds of many.

“If the election was held next Tuesday, we would lose the majority in the House and the Senate,” Moran told the crowd, citing polling data.

“But the election isn’t being held next Tuesday,” Moran continued. “This will be a good election, we’re going to turn this around… let’s get it done.”

“This is really an exciting time to be a Democrat,” Zimmerman said during his brief remarks. “There is so much at stake across the entire country.”

Later, Zimmerman — who’s facing both a Republican and a Green Party opponent in November — said he isn’t taking anything for granted. Already, he has started knocking on doors, attending public events and holding fundraisers.

“Realistically, we have to work for this one,” he said, noting that there is no U.S. Senate or presidential race to mobilize Arlington’s Democratic base this year.

In his speech to the gathered Democratic faithful, Moran let on a bit about how he plans to run against his Republican opponent, Patrick Murray.

After voicing strong support for President Obama’s agenda, the ten-term congressman blasted Murray’s conservative stance on social issues.

Moran said Murray is on the wrong side of the “civil rights issues” of abortion, gay marriage and the military’s Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy.

Moran, Zimmerman and Baird and their respective opponents are all expected to participate in a debate sponsored by the Arlington County Civic Federation tonight. The debate will be held at 7:30 p.m. at the Virginia Hospital Center Hazel Conference Center (1701 N George Mason Drive).

More photos from the cook-off and a list of winners of the various chili categories, after the jump.

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