Although Arlington will benefit from rising property values this year in the form of higher tax collections, the Board still must make tough choices when it comes to deciding what to fund and how to fund it.
County Manager Barbara Donnellan has recommended keeping real estate taxes steady at 95.8 cents per $100 in assessed value, following a year in which the rate jumped 8.3 cents. The Board gave itself the flexibility of raising that rate slightly by advertising a 96.8 cent rate.
Cooper joined TBD last July, a month before the site launched. She was formerly a contributor to DCist.com and a reporter for a Long Island newspaper. No word yet on her future plans.
TBD is in the midst of layoffs and will likely not replace Cooper or her Arlington coverage.
The plan, however, is a bit more complicated than it initially sounds.
The shift would only happen during rush hour. The affected Blue Line trains would travel from Franconia-Springfield, across the Yellow Line bridge and over to Greenbelt via the Green Line.
This news organization would act as a hub of a local news ecosystem, a gateway through which a regional audience could be introduced to the work of independent local journalists and community blogs.
On Feb. 23, 2011, the dream died.
With the federal government getting out only two hours early, the roadways were already jammed with traffic as heavy snow started to fall around 4:00 p.m.
“Instead of having a staggered rush hour, like you typically do, you had everybody leaving at the same time… right as the storm hit,” said state police spokeswoman Corinne Geller. “Roads started deteriorating rapidly, and the vehicles started sliding into one another.”
After a ten-month nationwide search, candidates for the job include the current interim city manager and three former or soon-to-be former city managers who all left amid allegations of improper conduct
“I don’t believe this search was conducted in the best, most transparent way,” Savannah Alderman Tony Thomas told TV station WSAV.
The bill would raise the tax on cigarettes from the current $0.015 per cigarette to the national average of $0.0725 per cigarette, or $1.45 per pack. Virginia currently has the lowest cigarette tax in the U.S.
The bill would also raise the tax on snuff and other tobacco products. Cigars would be taxed at 50 percent of the wholesale price, up from 10 percent.
A reader, Christine, wrote in to ask about a parking ticket she recently received in Courthouse. Here’s her story:
I’m writing because I’d like to find out if any of your other readers have had the same issue I ran into last week. I received a $50 parking ticket for pulling front-end first into an angled parking space in Courthouse. These are the spots right next to the big AMC lot (cannot remember what street). Apparently the parking spaces were “Back-in Only”, which I failed to notice (admittedly this is my own fault). What I don’t understand is why Arlington is charging me $50 for pulling into a spot facing the wrong direction?! It’s not as if I was parking in a zone I didn’t have a permit for, or parked over a line taking up two spaces. It also seems like a pretty easy mistake to make, considering the street is 2-way and there is only parking on one side.
It’s not so much that the Comcast customer service agents themselves are that bad, it’s just that the customer service system in which they operate seems to be designed with the sole purpose of minimizing cost at the expense of producing meaningful solutions to customers’ problems and complaints.
Comcast has a partial monopoly in Arlington. Sure, Verizon FiOS and satellite TV are available to single family homes and certain apartment buildings and condos. But for many apartment and condo-dwellers, Comcast is the only game in town. The only option for those folks in the event of an unresolved grievance is to either grin and bear it, cancel service and forgo cable and/or internet altogether, or complain to the county’s cable administration office and hope for the best.
It’s fun to make New Year’s resolutions. It’s not as fun, however, to keep New Year’s resolutions.
If you’ve made a resolution, what are the chances that you’ll keep it? Approximately 360 days from now, we’ll check back and compare our personal predictions with the actual resolution success rate.
Bishop O’Connell High School wants to spend $6 million renovating its football and baseball fields. The renovations would add new artificial turf to the football field, making it doubly usable as a regulation soccer field.
The renovations would also add lights to both fields, so they can be used after the sun goes down. The school has agreed to limit hours of use, however.
Arlington Police make at least one arrest per day thanks to the cameras, which snap photos of passing license plates and compare them to a database of stolen cars and wanted subjects. According to an article that appeared in the Los Angeles Times earlier this week, the cameras can process up to 100,000 license plates per hour.
“It’s quick and efficient,” Arlington police Capt. Kevin Reardon told the Times.
