Opinion

The members of the Arlington School Board are beginning to ramp up the pressure to increase tax rates this year in order to gain more flexibility in the APS budget. While the County Board will almost certainly advertise a higher rate to give themselves options heading into the budget process, the School Board was not going to wait before getting on the record supporting it.

The fear is that the County Board will not raise the rate, or not enough in the School Board’s view, and instead ask everyone to tighten their belt a little. While the term “austerity” is being thrown around, our elected leaders’ use of austerity may not be the same as the average person would define it.

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.

It is hard to put into words exactly what to make of the past week for Democrats in Richmond. If someone had pitched the storyline to a Hollywood producer, it might have been rejected as too unrealistic.

Last week, I questioned the political wisdom of newly minted Arlington County Board Chairman Christian Dorsey’s comments regarding just how hard, or not hard, a Board member should work.

Dorsey pondered aloud just what a member’s role should be and questioned whether it was a good thing for someone serving on the Board to go above and beyond the call of duty. He called this hard work “not helpful.”