Last month I led a conversation in Loudoun County to determine how a group of committed women activists could best serve our community.
One of the attendees shared her experiences of a teacher mishandling a racial situation involving her son. The next day I received an email from the Arlington NAACP asking for more details from Arlington Public Schools (APS) on the “current policy and procedures for staff, students, and families to report acts of discrimination and bigotry.”
Earlier this year, I had the privilege of joining the board of the Alliance for Housing Solutions (AHS).
The Alliance advocates for affordable housing in Arlington that meet the needs of all income levels and stages of life. This includes both committed affordable housing developments that are income restricted for low-income residents and market-oriented solutions such as ADUs (Accessory Dwelling Units) that will provide unsubsidized lower-cost housing.
Over the weekend, in the midst of a pandemic, some local restaurants and bars were surprisingly crowded.
With sports leagues, recreational programs, major events, schools and many other facets of everyday life suspended or cancelled, in an effort to flatten the curve of COVID-19 cases, the sight of revelers crowding D.C. area bars and restaurants prompted some outrage on social media.
(Updated at 2:15 p.m.) Tax and budget season is upon us. County Manager Mark Schwartz has released a recommended budget of $1.396 billion, including increased tax revenues from increased assessments and increased county expenditures.
While I will not go into specifics of this year’s budget, I would like to begin a dialogue about systemic changes that the County Board should consider in the long-run about how we levy taxes.
Despite over five years of multiple contacts with County government, residents in the Arlington Forest and Bluemont neighborhoods are justifiably frustrated by the County’s lack of progress in protecting pedestrians crossing Carlin Springs Road.
The County has failed these neighborhoods in two respects. First, it has failed to take the decisive actions needed to protect pedestrians at several dangerous intersections. Second, it has failed to give sufficient weight to the views and knowledge of neighborhood associations and residents who offered highly relevant on-the-ground observations, surveys, and data.
Last fall, Virginia voters gave Democrats total control of all levers of power in Richmond.
Delegate Alfonso Lopez had bragged that they could complete the work of a lifetime in “two afternoons.” It turns out that it took the new majority a little longer than that to tackle their agenda. In fact they had to take the unusual step of extending their session by a day to get their work done.
(Updated at 9:55 a.m.) Coronavirus has arrived in Arlington, with a local resident and a worker in Crystal City testing positive for the disease. And the fourth and fifth case in Virginia were subsequently confirmed in Fairfax and Spotsylvania County.
While this is obviously big news, given the impacts the disease is having on both the economy and the health of those who contract it, let’s for a minute allow for some optimism: the stock market is back up this morning, perhaps the authorities will be able to contain the outbreak before it gets much worse, and just maybe COVID-19 will not prove to be as deadly as originally feared.
By Wesley Joe and Carly Lenhoff
Public conversations about juvenile justice can quickly escalate into pitched battles. They involve some of the highest stakes: fateful decisions about the future of children. Unfortunately, these conversations often devolve into unproductive conflict. While some disagreements are inevitable and healthy, many become needlessly mired in unproductive disputes over basic facts. Arlington Public Schools (APS) can reduce some of this deliberative drag by collecting and sharing more data, and by making its existing data more accessible.
Daylight Saving Time is this weekend, so we’ve moved the clocks forward and published the weekend discussion post a bit later than usual.
The official time change happens early Sunday morning, when clocks will “spring forward” an hour and everyone will lose an hour of sleep. While you’re setting the clocks forward, don’t forget to check and replace your smoke alarm batteries.
ARLnow is moving to remove old crime reports from internet searches.
After a review of past articles, we made the decision to keep the crime report articles on our site, but to mark each as pages that should not be indexed by Google, Bing and others.
(Updated at 2:45 p.m.) Mental health wellness is something that has unfortunately been a scapegoat or justification for a number of policy issues to become “unfixable.”
From gun violence and suicide prevention, to long-term healthcare, to test taking and education, a binding thread is a need to focus on mental health. Without the ability to change our national system, what is it that we are doing here, and what are opportunities for improvement?
With rising property assessments, the Arlington County Board sees no need to raise taxes this year.
The Board on Tuesday advertised a maximum property tax rate unchanged at $1.013 per $100. The question is: should the rate be lowered?
