(Updated: 3/26/19) As ARLnow reported earlier this month, County Manager Mark Schwartz has proposed significant cuts to Arlington’s subsidies for various arts programs:
“Schwartz plans to close the Costume Lab and Scenic Studio Program located at the Gunston Community Center (2700 S. Lang Street), which provide[s] scenery construction space and costume rentals for local arts groups. That will involve laying off two employees who staff the programs, a savings of about $180,000 each year.
As Arlington continues to prepare for Amazon’s arrival, justified concerns have been raised about the impact of Amazon’s coming here on our environment, our parks, and our schools.
Concerns relating to the environment take place in the context of a Virginia legal system that reserves to the state, rather than municipalities like Arlington, many decisions regarding regulation of products and practices that harm our environment.
On Feb. 23, the Arlington County Board voted to advertise a 2.75-cent real estate tax-rate increase for calendar year 2019.
As ARLnow.com reported:
Arlington residents and County government have had a tortured, fitful relationship with streetlights — a key piece of infrastructure on which everyone depends.
That relationship is complicated by the fact that Dominion Energy — not Arlington County government — owns a majority of Arlington’s approximately 19,000 streetlights (Slide 4):
A year ago, my fellow ARLnow.com columnist, Mark Kelly, posted a column welcoming the legislative defeat of a bill sponsored by House Del. Patrick Hope (D-47th District). Hope’s bill would have granted the County Board the option to utilize a ranked-choice (or instant-runoff) voting system in County Board elections.
Ranked choice voting has been adopted in an increasing number of jurisdictions, including San Francisco, Oakland, Utah and Maine.
Two stories posted on ARLnow.com last week underscore the urgent need for the County and School Boards to expedite long-range public facilities and fiscal planning.
The first story (“Never Let A Crisis Go To Waste”) quoted various activists and County Board members stressing the need to make Arlington housing more affordable by up-zoning in order to substantially increase housing supply. (Up-zoning = approving more dense development than permitted by current zoning.)
Like many other states, Virginia has a partisan redistricting system. Partisan redistricting has served us poorly.
Background
On Tuesday (Jan. 29), the County Board approved a contract for a new A/V system for the Aquatics Center.
It first appeared from a reading of a county staff report (Item 23 at pp. 2-3) that the “soft costs” of the new A/V system were being paid for out of a total of $3.2 million in “new funding.”
In her summation at the end of the County Board’s Jan. 12 Amazon “Listening Session” at the NRECA building, Board member Katie Cristol said she wished there were a magic lever to pull which would produce affordable housing. Her regretful conclusion: there is no such lever.
But our Board is focused intently on looking for levers to make housing more affordable — even if those levers aren’t magical.
At its Jan. 8 meeting, the Arlington County Civic Federation (Civ Fed) passed a resolution 66-17-3 regarding the Level of Service (LOS) recommendations for athletic fields contained in the latest draft of the Public Open Spaces Master Plan (“PSMP” or “POPS” plan). (LOS is an acronym for Level of Service.)
Among many other provisions, the Civ Fed’s two-page resolution calls upon the Arlington County government to “withdraw the specific LOS athletic field recommendations” from the POPS plan.
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.
On Jan. 9, Virginia House of Delegates member Michael Webert (R-Fauquier) offered legislation (HB 1886) that would, if enacted, establish:
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.
The 2019 Virginia legislative session begins on Jan. 9.
