The Right Note: Bringing Back the New Year’s Day Meeting?

The Right Note is a weekly opinion column. The views and opinions expressed in the column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ARLnow.com.

It’s August and the County Board is on its annual summer hiatus, so why not talk about bringing back an annual holiday tradition?

Last year, incoming Board Chair Libby Garvey convinced her colleagues to move the New Year’s Day organizational meeting. Garvey’s rationale was that it was easier on the families of county staff and Board Members not to come back one day early and work for a couple of hours.

The Sun Gazette noted last week that presumed 2018 chair, Katie Cristol is at least open to the idea of moving the meeting back to its traditional place on January 1, which is a Monday this coming year. The story touched on the number one reason to end the one year experiment of moving the meeting – the public was not as interested in attending.

While some of the rhetoric can seem stale, or even empty, it is the one time each year that Arlingtonians can hear from each Board Member on their individual priorities, not on the pressing issue of the day. Sure, the same speeches can be made a few days later, but this year proved, it’s not quite the same.

6,204 Reasons Democrats Are Unlikely to Win the Virginia House?

Politicos from across the country will be watching our November elections here in Virginia and studying the results to see what it foreshadows for the 2018 mid-term Congressional elections. Democrats in the General Assembly and their activist supporters on the left are excited about the prospect of winning House of Delegate seats across the Commonwealth as well as holding the three statewide elected offices.

Delegate Rip Sullivan is Chairman of the Democratic Caucus in the Virginia House. As part of his leadership of the Democrats’ efforts to win control of that legislative body, he launched Blue Dominion PAC last year.

ARLnow gave Sullivan a recent shout out for his efforts. But as the races are heating up throughout Virginia, Sullivan’s PAC reported raising just $4,296 in the most recent quarter and having $6,204 in the bank.

To put that in perspective, the PAC could send out about 12,000 of those full color, oversized post-cards you receive in the mail around election time. That’s roughly 700 for each of the 17 districts Democrats need to flip.

In terms of attempting to help win these campaigns, that is drop in the bucket and an anemic effort from a member of the Democratic leadership who represents one of the wealthiest districts in Virginia. Maybe the excitement to toss all the Republicans out of office is not quite as widespread as the Democrats think?