Has the following happened to you?
You’re in a car, bus or on a bike, waiting at a traffic signal. The traffic light turns green, but a driver in front of you doesn’t budge. Other drivers honk, and you see the perpetrator hurriedly putting down a phone and mashing the gas pedal.
The Arlington County Board members voted last night to give themselves the ability to raise their pay by more than 50% next year.
Currently, Board members are paid $55,147 annually while the Board Chair is paid $60,662. Board members set a salary cap for their jobs every four years and last night voted for a significant hike.
Now that she has defeated incumbent Theo Stamos, Tafti is likely to have the opportunity to keep her campaign promise while in the prosecutor’s office.
More from the candidate’s website:
(Updated at 9:25 a.m.) Summer is great. Warm weather, cookouts, swimming pools — everything.
Well, not everything. There are some downsides to summer in Arlington, of course. It’s hot and swampy, mosquitos abound, frequent storms ruin your outdoor plans and, thanks to all those summer vacations, there’s less going on and less excitement.
Kaine Event at Federico’s — Updated at 8:55 a.m. — “On Monday, May 13, U.S. Senator Tim Kaine will hold a roundtable in Arlington with fair housing advocates to discuss the work ahead to ensure equal access to housing for all Americans and address discrimination that LGBTQ Americans continue to face as they search for homes.” The event is now being held at 9 a.m. at Federico’s Ristorante Italiano (519 23rd Street S.) in Crystal City, per an updated media advisory.
Amazon Hiring for Alexa Job in Arlington — Among other open job positions for Amazon’s HQ2 in Arlington, the company is now hiring a “Principal Product Manager” for its Alexa Experience team. [Amazon]
(Updated at 10:45 a.m.) Last month Arlington County announced that it would stop recycling glass collected curbside.
The decision, which only applies to the county’s residential recycling pickup and not to offices and apartment buildings, was explained as a matter of economics — it’s more expensive for the county to recycle glass than it is to incinerate and dispose of it in a landfill.
This year, half of all calls to your mobile phone could be robocalls, according to predictions by call protection company First Orion. And ARLnow wants to know: have you noticed more robocalls to your phone?
There were 27.2 million robocalls placed to 703-area-code numbers in March, per call tracker YouMail, and 13.2 million calls to 571 numbers.
It was an April Fools’ Day joke, but an interesting one.
The Rosslyn Business Improvement District, riffing off the much-ballyhooed but not-actually-happening Rosslyn-to-Georgetown gondola proposal, floated an idea: a zip line over the Potomac.
Late last week, a mini legal bombshell dropped: Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring issued an opinion that Arlington County can, in fact, initiate a renaming of Jefferson Davis Highway (Route 1) within its borders.
After years of unsuccessfully pushing for state legislation to allow it, the Arlington County Board can now just go ahead and pick a new name for “J-D Highway” and ask the Commonwealth Transportation Board to make it so, bypassing the change-resistant General Assembly.
Over the weekend, the Arlington County Board voted unanimously to approve an incentive package that will help bring Amazon and its expected 25,000 or so jobs to the Pentagon City and Crystal City areas.
The approval followed impassioned public testimony from about 100 speakers.
Hope: No Impeachment Filing Yet — Updated at 9:50 a.m. — Del. Patrick Hope (D) says he’s delaying filing articles of impeachment against Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax (D), who is facing two accusations of past sexual assaults. “An enormous amount of sincere and thoughtful feedback… has led to additional conversations that need to take place,” Hope said. [Twitter, Twitter, Twitter]
More Trailers for Arlington Tech — “Students coming into the Arlington Tech program at the Arlington Career Center for the next two years may find themselves spending more time in trailers than they had thought, and more time than School Board members are happy about.” [InsideNova]
Update at 11:45 a.m. — The Washington Post is now reporting that Amazon is “reconsidering” its New York City plans.
EXCLUSIVE: Amazon is thinking of pulling out of New York HQ2 deal, because of strong opposition from local politicians. Northern Virginia could get some or all of the jobs slated for NYC. https://t.co/hn6ImP5toF
