What’s Next with Nicole is a biweekly opinion column. The views expressed are solely the author’s. Today’s post was guest written by Nicholas Beirne.
Nicholas Beirne is a lifelong Arlington resident. His best Whitlow’s memory: Ryan Zimmerman buying him a drink on his 21st birthday, on Thanksgiving eve, oh so long ago. Whitlow’s Crew, you will be missed.
A majority of Arlington’s affordable apartments are not built into typical new apartment or condo buildings, but rather separated into their own building complexes.
Over the course of decades this has created segregated housing in Arlington. Although the dynamic is improving, the equation and incentive structure at the heart of this issue must change.
TW: suicide, mania.
Arlington has begun an effort to improve mental health services in our community with dollars attached to these priorities. Taking this initial first step is significant, but we still have miles to go. Next Tuesday you can learn more about this topic at the Civic Federation monthly meeting.
Arlington is beginning to wrap up an important long-term plan for Arlington street safety: Vision Zero.
In July 2019 the County Board resolved to the concept that no death or severe injury in Arlington County streets or trails is acceptable. To achieve these ideals staff and community members have joined the Vision Zero Network to create a comprehensive plan based on analysis of traffic collisions in the county.
This year every campaign finance reform bill is expected to die in the General Assembly. That is extremely problematic considering we aren’t even aiming for federal standards.
Federally, candidate committees have a $2,800 limit on donations from individuals per election or $5,600 if there is a primary and general election that year, and corporations are banned from contributing at all. Nonaffiliated PACs (thanks to Citizens United) can accept $5,000 from individuals per year and corporations are able to contribute.
While Virginia prohibits municipalities from banning dogs based on breed alone, this discrimination still persists in housing.
In Arlington where 70% of homes are in multi-unit buildings, and 60% rent, this law is essentially rendered useless for a majority of our population.
This week Metro released a devastating budget for FY 2022 in order to balance a $500 million deficit.
In more ways than one this pandemic has continued to exacerbate systemic problems that already exist in our society, and Metro’s budget is one of those evident examples. There are multiple reasons why even with federal stimulus that we will continue to have budget issues for the foreseeable future.
Hope is an action. It is fairly useless unless you put in the work. Our democracy depends on participation.
If you believe in stability for our democracy; believe that we are in a climate crisis; that healthcare is a human right; love is love; science matters; and that we must regain global leadership… vote for Joe Biden because our hope for a better future depends on it.
Have you or your kid attended All American Sports Camp, Patriot Girls Basketball Camp, Orange Line Sports Camp, or Mojo Volleyball Camp?
Representatives from all of these organizations showed up to a recent Sports Commission meeting to voice their concerns over the new way summer camps will be administered, their ability to pay hourly employees, and new cost burdens on families.
At the beginning of this month, Metro took a step into the 21st Century by allowing SmarTrip to be added to Apple Wallets.
A Google spokesperson also said they plan to roll out a Google Pay version later this year. This move has significant short term benefits, some improvements that are needed to improve equity, and in the long term will provide a significant boost to the efficiency of our entire bus system.
In many ways our workforce is changing, both due to COVID-19 and as Arlington’s economy continues to evolve.
As a community it is important that we study this impact on both our employment rate for our community’s personal economic vitality and our commercial office occupancy rate that contributes to 20% of our county tax revenue.
Get ready for a data dump. Arlington’s 2020 Profile was recently released and it is full of eye opening statistics.
Overall Arlington is a young, multi-family building community, with prices that continue to soar, as we continue to lose racial diversity. We are also very eco-friendly in our transportation and an incredibly healthy county that is supported by vast community resources.
