Arlington students will still have Columbus Day off next year, after the School Board rejected a proposal to send students to class on the controversial holiday.
The Board unanimously adopted an attendance calendar for the 2019-2020 school year at its meeting last night (Thursday). Students will still get the chance to stay home on Oct. 14 this year, while staff will have the day set aside for “professional learning.”
Philz Coffee has now opened its doors in Ballston, marking the chain’s first expansion into Virginia.
The coffee shop opened this week in the new Ballston Exchange development, located at 4121 Wilson Blvd.
Fresh off running seven marathons on all seven continents in just seven days, Arlington resident Michael Wardian isn’t slowing down.
Wardian, one of the county’s most prolific athletes, says he’s planning to run three more marathons in D.C. this week. He’s planning to finish one each day, starting tonight (Thursday) and running through Saturday.
Four years ago, Arlington officials spent $4.1 million to build a 10-mile fiber optic network aimed at allowing local businesses to get cheaper access to higher-speed internet — since then, the fiber has just sat in the ground, almost totally unused.
At the time, county leaders championed the construction of the “dark fiber” network as a transformative step for Arlington. Though the county is barred by state law from offering internet service itself, officials envisioned smaller internet service providers working with local tech firms to “light” the fiber, providing county businesses with a powerful new option to access the internet at blazing-fast speeds.
County Democrats and local activists are planning a series of community forums to talk through the issues of race and sexual assault that have roiled Virginia politics for the past week.
With all three of the state’s top Democrats — Gov. Ralph Northam, Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax and Attorney General Mark Herring — now mired in scandal, many within the party are searching for a way forward. There’s no telling whether any or all of the group will resign, leading to quite a bit of uncertainty at the top ranks of the party’s leadership.
Republican lawmakers have scuttled Gov. Ralph Northam’s proposal to ramp up state funding for affordable housing, a move that’s irked advocates hoping for more state help as Amazon starts to move into Arlington.
GOP leaders in both the state Senate and House of Delegates have now put forward budget proposals without the $19.5 million spread across two years Northam had hoped to see flow into the Virginia Housing Trust Fund, a program offering low-interest loans for developers hoping to build reasonably priced housing.
(Updated at 10:30 a.m.) It seems as if Arlingtonians craving Taco Bell may have a while left to wait for one of the chain’s four restaurants in the county to re-open.
The Taco Bell near Yorktown, at 4923 Lee Highway, shut down back in September as its owner sought to tear down the restaurant and completely rebuild it.
Two more companies are planning to bring their dockless scooters and e-bikes to Arlington in the coming days.
Spin will soon be dropping its electric scooters around the county, while Jump will offer both e-bikes and scooters in Arlington. Both companies currently operate in D.C.
Democrats across Virginia have been shocked by yet another scandal today (Wednesday), after Attorney General Mark Herring admitted that he also once donned blackface at a college party.
Herring called a sudden gathering with the General Assembly’s Legislative Black Caucus this morning to deliver the news, then released a statement to that effect shortly afterward. Herring said he dressed up in a wig “and brown makeup” in order to imitate a rap artist when he was in college, explaining it was due to a “callous and inexcusable lack of awareness and insensitivity to the pain my behavior could inflict on others.”
Embattled Gov. Ralph Northam has signed a bill to send up to $750 million in incentive cash to Amazon, quietly sealing the oft-discussed deal to bring a new headquarters to Arlington.
Northam put pen to paper on the legislation last night, a day before it was set to become law without his signature. An identical companion bill is still pending in the state Senate, but Northam’s approval and the General Assembly’s overwhelming support of both pieces of legislation likely means its passage is a mere formality.
The Capital One bank branch along Columbia Pike now plans to shut its doors this spring.
The bank started notifying customers last week that the branch, located at 3532 Columbia Pike, will shut down on May 9, according to company spokeswoman Amanda Landers.
New legislation working its way through the General Assembly could set new state standards around dockless scooters and e-bikes, giving localities like Arlington full authority to ban the vehicles on sidewalks and regulate where they’re parked.
A bill from Del. Todd Pillion (R-4th District) unanimously cleared the House of Delegates Monday (Feb. 4), setting the stage for state lawmakers to pass their first regulations governing the devices since they began popping up in Arlington and other urban communities around the state last summer.
