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County Staff Recommends Fairlington Farmers Market

Published August 12, 2014 at 10:00AM

The request, by farmers market organizer Field to Table, will eventually be heard by the Arlington County Board and will include a public input process. If approved, the Fairlington Farmers Market will be the ninth in the county.

“After careful consideration, the Arlington County Department of Parks and Recreation has determined that a farmers’ market is an appropriate use of the open space adjacent to the Fairlington Community Center,” The DPR said in a statement. “The site’s location, characteristics, context of the surrounding neighborhood, circulation and parking access appear to favorably support a farmers’ market.”

News

Board Reverses Non-Resident Surcharge Hike for Sports Programs

By Morgan Fecto

Published June 18, 2014 at 6:15PM

The Board’s FY 2015 budget called for its non-resident surcharge to increase 50 percent. That would have significantly raised annual fees for three clubs: Arlington Aerials, the Arlington Tigers and the Arlington Aquatics Club.

Vocal protests from the teams and impassioned speeches from the youth team members at Tuesday’s Board meeting led the Board to reverse course and even reject a compromise endorsed by county staff. The Board rejected their April decision by a 3-1 vote, and also rejected County Manager Barbara Donnellan’s revised recommendation to reduce the fee increase to 30 percent.

News

County Could Lower Non-Resident Sport Fees

By Ethan Rothstein

Published June 11, 2014 at 11:30AM | Updated June 11, 2014 at 11:56AM

Swim meet at the Dominion Hills pool (Flickr pool photo by Ddimick)

When the Board adopted the FY 2015 budget in April, it approved a 50 percent surcharge for participants not living in Arlington to participate in clubs like the Arlington Aerials, the Arlington Tigers and the Arlington Aquatics Club. According to the county, the surcharge resulted in annual fee increases for those clubs of between 12.9 and 30 percent.

The Board will deliberate over County Manager Barbara Donnellan’s recommendation to reduce that surcharge from 50 to 30 percent in FY 2015, with plans to increase the charge to 40 percent the following year and up to the adopted 50 percent in FY 2017.

News

Residents Petition Parks Dept. Over Softball Field Conditions

By Ethan Rothstein

Published June 6, 2014 at 1:30PM

A group of residents in North Arlington have launched a petition, aimed at county Director of Parks and Recreation Jane Rudolph, to protest the conditions of the softball field at Greenbrier Park.

Diamond #1 — which is the home field for the Yorktown High School varsity and JV softball teams and is used by the Arlington Girls Softball Association (AGSA) — has several patches of dirt in the outfield grass and the petitioners say the warning track between the grass and the outfield wall has drainage problems to the point that, after it rains, water “collects in deep pools several inches deep along the entire block wall in left field.”

Around Town

Arlington ‘Spraygrounds’ to Open This Weekend

By Ethan Rothstein

Published May 22, 2014 at 2:30PM

Spraygrounds at Drew Model School (via Arlington County Dept. of Parks and Recreation)

The facilities are located at Drew Park (3500 23rd Street S.), Virginia Highlands Park (1600 S. Hayes Street), Lyon Village Park (1800 N. Highland Street) and Hayes Park (1516 N. Lincoln Street).

The spraygrounds will be open most days between this weekend and Labor Day. You can see the schedule, which may vary on holidays, for each individual park at the county Parks and Recreation website.

Around Town

Naturalists Ask Residents to Look Out for Box Turtles

By Ethan Rothstein

Published April 8, 2014 at 12:00PM

As the weather has warmed up, Arlington’s box turtle population is coming out of hibernation and making its way onto roads and lawns. That has led county naturalists to ask for the community’s help in helping to protect the shelled reptiles.

While turtles have effective defensive mechanisms against predators, Arlington’s only native land turtle species is vulnerable to cars and lawn mowers, Long Branch Nature Center naturalist Cliff Fairweather wrote in an email to neighborhood newsletter editors.

Around Town

Renovated Rocky Run Park Re-Opens

By Ethan Rothstein

Published April 7, 2014 at 2:30PM | Updated April 7, 2014 at 6:05PM

(Updated at 6:05 p.m.) The $3 million renovation to Rocky Run Park in the Courthouse area are complete and the park is now open to the public.

The renovations, which were approved by the County Board in November 2012, include two lighted basketball courts, a lighted synthetic turf for drop-in play, a new playground area with equipment for 5-12 year-olds, a picnic shelter and bathrooms. The park, at 1109 N. Barton Street, had its mature trees preserved while the equipment and facilities were reorganized around them.

News

County Board to Consider Dedicated Funding for Baseball, Softball Fields

By Ethan Rothstein

Published March 13, 2014 at 5:00PM

Currently, the county collects fees from all leagues that use county fields — for youth, it’s $8 per resident and $20 for non-residents. It’s $100 per team per season for adults — but there is no dedicated funding stream for the improvement of baseball and softball fields. The fees have, to this point, been used to fund the replacement of soccer and other rectangle fields with artificial turf.

If approved, the Field Fund would be segregated, and fees collected from using diamond fields would be reserved just for those fields. In addition, staff is asking the Board to dedicate $85,000 in seed funding for the field improvements.

News

Snowy Trails Frustrate Bike Commuters

By Courtney Battle

Published January 28, 2014 at 6:05PM | Updated January 28, 2014 at 7:49PM

(Updated at 7:50 p.m.) The effects of last week’s winter storm were felt by one group of commuters for days following the last snowflake.

The inconvenience of traveling in the cold and sometimes icy conditions proved not only difficult for those traveling by car, but also for local cyclists. At Saturday’s Arlington County Board meeting, resident Gillian Burgess expressed her concerns about clearing bike trails after snow storms occur in the area.

Around Town

Arlington to Conduct Deer Census

By Ethan Rothstein

Published January 17, 2014 at 12:00PM

Arlington’s Department of Parks and Recreation is organizing its first “Deer Day” on Tuesday, Jan. 28 from 5:30 to 6:00 p.m. Parks officials are attempting to take “a snapshot census of the deer population in Arlington.”

Arlington Natural Resources Manager Alonso Abugattas said if residents can “go to the nearest park” or just spend a half hour looking through their backyard and count the number of deer they observe, it will help Parks and Recreation officials estimate the number of deer in the county.

News

Morning Notes

By Katie Pyzyk

Published December 11, 2013 at 8:30AM | Updated June 29, 2018 at 3:22PM

Home Prices Fall — Arlington was the only jurisdiction in the D.C. metro area to see a drop in home prices last month. The median Arlington sales price in November was $498,500, down 2.1 percent from last year. [Washington Business Journal]

Big Difference Between ‘Near’ and ‘Next To’ Metro Stations — It’s no surprise that real estate closer to Metro stations is more valuable, but what may be surprising is for how high a price such properties can be sold. Looking at the five stations along the Orange Line’s Rosslyn-Ballston corridor — which is deemed one of the hot areas for development — researchers found that properties one-twentieth of a mile from a station (264 feet) can fetch more than a 30 percent premium over those just a quarter mile away. [Washington Post]

News

County Offers Explanation for Higher Aquatic Center Costs

By Katie Pyzyk

Published December 10, 2013 at 10:30AM

The aquatics center, scheduled to open in the summer of 2016, had been projected to have an annual operating deficit of $1 million to $1.3 million. That number has been upped to $4.3 million. But Department of Parks and Recreation Director Jane Rudolph said in a statement that comparing those numbers is not comparing “apples to apples.”

Rudolph explained that the original numbers published in the 2012 Capital Improvement Plan were in “2012 numbers,” whereas the new estimate is adjusted for inflation with “2020 numbers.” The statement reads, in part, “The 2012 tax support number — of $1.1 to $1.4 million if presented at a 2020 level would range from $1.4 million to $1.9 million. The 2020 tax support number presented in the November 2013 revenue and expense forecast ($4.3 million) was at the maximum of the range (as it should have been). The apples to apples increase in estimates is $2.4 million.”