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.
We have an obvious north-south divide in Arlington County. One state highway uniquely crosses the entire county from north to south — Glebe Road, Route 120.
Traditionally, Arlington has planned along horizontal corridors including Route 50, Columbia Pike, Lee Highway, and Washington/Wilson Boulevard. This is likely because these major road arteries were designed to transport people from the suburbs of Virginia to Washington D.C. These arteries also happen to be in central Arlington and literally divide Arlington between north and south.
Right now Arlington has an opportunity to rethink and expand our public feedback process. Since the pandemic began, in-person meetings have been canceled and our county and school system’s public engagement processes have been required to adapt.
More than half of the school advisory committees were canceled for just a month and began meeting again in May via Microsoft Teams.
(Updated at 10:25 a.m.) This year has certainly not been normal. Between the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, and the disproportionate impact that COVID-19 has had on black and brown communities in our country, we continue to need to dig deep and to understand the why, to reflect, and to do better.
I watched the split screen of President Trump advocating the usage of our military against protesters across the country in his Rose Garden address, with another screen showing Arlington County Police on the front lines advancing against peaceful protesters prior to curfew in D.C. I was dismayed and broken-hearted. This was so inconsistent with the images I had been seeing of ACPD helping to block traffic and handing out water to peaceful protesters.
The Centers for Disease Control updated guidance to slow the spread of COVID-19 by suggesting multi-unit buildings such as apartments and condominium buildings:
“Clean and disinfect shared areas (laundry facilities, elevators, shared kitchens, exercise rooms, dining rooms) and frequently touched surfaces (e.g. tables, hard-backed chairs, doorknobs, light switches, phones, tablets, touch screens, remote controls, keyboards, handles, desks, toilets, sinks) using EPA-registered disinfectants more than once a day if possible.” April 25, 2020.
Congratulations to Takis Karantonis for his victory in the Arlington County Democrat’s special election nomination process. Takis is a longtime leader in our community having served as the executive director of the Columbia Pike Revitalization Organization, the president of his civic association, and is genuinely a person of good character. I will be proud to support him in the upcoming July 7th special election.
Fill out your absentee voting application here. Due to COVID-19 you may cite “my disability or illness” as your reason for voting by mail.
It has been a strange few weeks. While life seems to stand still, so much is happening in our community.
Close Street Lanes
Coronavirus in Arlington has increased ninefold in just ten days. This is all with extremely limited testing resources. We need more tests and we needed them last week.
America just hit the highest number of individuals filing for unemployment in history. Unemployment insurance filings in Virginia jumped from just 2,706 last week to 46,885 this week — a 17-fold increase. People are losing their jobs and they’re losing them quickly.
(Updated at 2:15 p.m.) Tax and budget season is upon us. County Manager Mark Schwartz has released a recommended budget of $1.396 billion, including increased tax revenues from increased assessments and increased county expenditures.
While I will not go into specifics of this year’s budget, I would like to begin a dialogue about systemic changes that the County Board should consider in the long-run about how we levy taxes.
(Updated at 2:45 p.m.) Mental health wellness is something that has unfortunately been a scapegoat or justification for a number of policy issues to become “unfixable.”
From gun violence and suicide prevention, to long-term healthcare, to test taking and education, a binding thread is a need to focus on mental health. Without the ability to change our national system, what is it that we are doing here, and what are opportunities for improvement?
