The debate over lighting the fields at Williamsburg Middle School is making a comeback.
At its meeting tomorrow (Tuesday) in July, the County Board will charge a working group with leading a community process to evaluate whether or not to light the Williamsburg synthetic fields.
Police responded to the 4800 block of Rock Spring Road just before 6:00 p.m. for reports of an accident at a residential construction site. Subcontractors at the site had been removing large trees from the property and were using a backhoe to load huge sections of the trees onto a flatbed truck.
The 30-year-old victim had been trying to secure the tree sections onto the truck when a log weighing in excess of a ton rolled off the flatbed and crushed him. Police say the two other workers at the site did not see the accident, but heard a large noise and rushed to assist the victim. The other workers managed to remove the log, but the victim is believed to have died instantly. Police and medics pronounced the man dead upon arriving at the scene.
The three winners out of 16 entries to Rock Spring Garden Club’s 2014″Garden of the Year” were announced last week. The winners, pictured above, mix natural beauty with sustainability in their backyard gardens.
“We are so thrilled to win!” first place gardener Mary Jennings told ARLnow.com. “I love that the garden gets some exposure and might encourage others to think of big ways to transform our Arlington outdoor living spaces to be enjoyable and conservation-minded.”
A FedEx truck crashed into a preschool building in north Arlington this afternoon.
The accident happened on the 5000 block of N. Little Falls Road, in the Rock Spring neighborhood. The truck driver somehow lost control, sideswiped a minivan, jumped the curb and ran head-first into the Rock Spring Cooperative Preschool.
The Arlington School Board approved the final design and budget for the $46.5 million elementary school adjacent to Williamsburg Middle School on Thursday.
The 28-classroom building, at the corner of N. Harrison Street and 36th Street, will have a 630-student capacity and is being built to help alleviate elementary school overcrowding in North Arlington.
In a separate vote, the board voted unanimously to delay a decision to install lighting until 2015, when it will form a working group of community members for a full discussion on the potential for lighting the synthetic turf fields.
The lighting on the turf fields was the sticking point for many of the two dozen speakers during Saturday’s board meeting. Several members of the Rock Spring Civic Association spoke against lighting the fields, and condemned the County Board for not following its own procedures in considering the lighting.
The field and lighting proposal was floated as an optional part of the Arlington Public Schools plan to build a new elementary school on the Williamsburg Middle School campus. The design of the school was approved in February and construction is expected to begin next year.
The proposal involves the construction of two synthetic turf fields next to the school, with lighting installed for the field farthest from the surrounding neighborhood. Arlington Public Schools spokesman Frank Bellavia says the school system currently doesn’t have the money necessary for the synthetic fields and lighting — about $2 million — so supporters are hoping to convince Arlington County to pay for the project.
