Taxes, housing and pedestrian safety were among the issues that County Board candidates debated in their first debate of the general election season.
“We are in a fiscal challenge,” said County Board Chair Matt de Ferranti, a Democrat who is being challenged by independents Audrey Clement and David Sisson. The three took part in a candidate forum sponsored by the Arlington County Civic Federation yesterday (Tuesday).
De Ferranti, who is seeking a third term, asked voters not to blame the all-Democratic County Board for the situation. He said the Board has been addressing major shifts connected to the pandemic era and a changing commercial real estate market.
“What Arlington has been about is evolving, adapting to the next challenge,” he said at the forum, which took place at VHC Health.
Sisson, however, said de Ferranti was providing “no real ideas.”
“The 20% [office] vacancy rate is going to be a long-term problem,” Sisson said, pressing for stronger action by county leaders on commercial-to-residential building conversions.
Sisson, who has made increasing housing stock the key tenet of his campaign, said replacing aging office space with new housing would be a fiscal win for the county.
But it may depend on who occupies that new housing.
If new residents come without children, that would probably be a net financial plus for the county government’s tax coffers. But if instead the new arrivals are mostly families with school-age children, the tax revenue from new residential properties likely would not offset the $25,000-per-student cost of operating the county’s public schools.
Office-to-residential conversions have long been a talking point for Clement, who pressed for them in her earliest runs for office. At the time, county officials and Democratic candidates largely dismissed the idea as unworkable — but many have since embraced it.
“That’s exactly what we should be doing,” de Ferranti said. “We as a Board should be taking those actions.”
Clement said that if county leaders truly are committed to affordability, they should find ways to cut the $1.7 billion annual county budget and reduce the overall tax burden on residents.
“It will drive people on fixed incomes out of the county,” she said of the tax rate.
Earlier this year, Board members approved a 2-cent increase in the real estate tax rate, which came on top of assessment increases.
Clement pressed county leaders to lobby New York City businesses interested in relocating to Arlington. De Ferranti ignored that proposal, and Sisson said it was not a realistic approach to meeting Arlington’s broader fiscal challenges.
“The workable solutions we need are the ones we can implement ourselves,” he said.
Candidates also fielded questions about traffic safety and the use of e-bikes in Arlington.
“We need to step it up” in addressing threats to pedestrians and bicyclists, said Dixie Duncan, a Glencarlyn resident and Civic Federation delegate.
All three contenders voiced concerns about the impacts of e-bikes and similar mobility devices.
“We have to regulate more to protect safety,” said de Ferranti, while acknowledging that state law restricts some powers of localities to address the issue.
“Our authority is not unlimited,” he said.
Both Sisson and Clement said they have felt increasing unease on trails and roads as the equipment proliferates.
“People don’t need to walk, run or ride in fear of their lives,” Clement said in pressing for lower e-bike speed limits and greater enforcement.
At the forum, Clement attacked the current state of the nation’s two-party political system.
“Compromise can’t happen in this toxic political environment,” she said, calling for the election of more independents.
De Ferranti in 2018 defeated independent incumbent John Vihstadt to win a County Board seat. Four years later, he defeated Clement and Adam Theo, winning about 61% of the vote in the three-way contest.
On Aug. 4, de Ferranti defeated James DeVita and Julie Farnam in the Democratic primary to advance to the general election. Those three, plus Clement and Sisson, had squared off in a June forum sponsored by the Arlington Chamber of Commerce.
This race is Sisson’s first bid for elected office, while Clement has been running as a self-described protest candidate for more than a decade.
County Republicans did not field a candidate in the race.
Like the primary, the County Board general election is being conducted under ranked-choice rules. Voters are able — but not required — to rank the three candidates in order of preference.
The ranked-choice process does not kick in if any candidate receives more than 50% of first-choice votes among voters.
This will be the third County Board general election race run using ranked-choice voting. In the first two, Democrats J.D. Spain, Sr. and Takis Karantonis received a majority of first-choice votes.
The Sept. 8 Civic Federation meeting also included forums for candidates running for School Board, treasurer and 8th District U.S. House of Representatives.
Democrats are strongly favored in all local races. But Civic Federation president Nicholas Giacobbe said the annual forum provided a chance for local voters to evaluate all candidates on the ballot.
“There are lots of different opinions, lots of different positions,” he said at the event’s conclusion.
Early voting for the Nov. 3 race begins Sept. 18.
