(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?
Peter’s Take is a weekly opinion column. The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ARLnow.com
Despite mounting evidence that Arlington County government’s past designs for stream “restorations” are fundamentally flawed, the County persists in moving forward with these flawed designs at Donaldson Run Tributary B (“Trib B”), Gulf Branch and elsewhere.
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.
Last week Arlington County Manager Mark Schwartz unveiled the proposed budget for the next fiscal year. The budget includes a record $550 million for Arlington Public Schools. It also includes raises for all Arlington County staff, including larger raises for public safety employees. And it grants more paid family leave as well as increases dependent care benefits.
Progressive Voice is a biweekly opinion column. The views expressed are solely the authors’.
Virginia’s presidential primary is March 3, so the editors of Progressive Voice asked Arlington supporters of a few Democratic presidential candidates to answer this question: “How would my candidate be best at connecting with undecided voters across the U.S. to show how Democrats can reflect and serve them?” (The choice of candidates to cover was solely that of the Progressive Voice editors.)
