Saturday, July 18, 2009

What Happened to Philanthropy?

Need a cultural center for your theater group? An EMS vehicle for your neighborhood fire station? The address to visit is 2100 Clarendon Blvd. What happened to philanthropy in Arlington?

11 comments:

Sheesh said...

If John Antonelli and Mike Staples are so concerned about the shortage of EMS vehicles they should start a "fill the boot" campaign to raise funds to purchase additional EMS vehicles. If they want to see how that is done they should visit Falls Church.

Anonymous said...

Yupette, three corporations are mentioned as being on the Board of Directors of the Cultural Center - Boeing ($4 billion in profits in 2009), Vornado Realty ($1 billion in profits in 2009) and Monday Properties ($250 million in profits in 2009). Before that happens, Arlington County will strip its budget for the next 3 fiscal years to run the Cultural Center

Cherry Dale said...

Philanthropy? Fire and EMS? The County paid the fabulously wealthy Koons Auto Empire $5.5 million for a vacant lot to be used for the new Cherrydale fire station

Anonymous said...

Philanthropy? How about Reverse Philanthropy? Like bonus density to developers for installing federally mandated environmentally-safe products in new buildings? And county government-produced press releases that the local media publish as "news"?

Disgusted Conservative Lesbian said...

The goal of Arlington County Government is to recreate Arlington as Neverland-on-the-Potomac. That started with the Signature mess and will continue.

Westover said...

DCL, they piss me off too. Half of everything that plays in live theater here is garbage. The other half is mediocre. Let Sondheim fund the local revivals of his plays. How about a little tax relief for the middle class?

Dennis said...

The local media are lazy. Arlington pols want to trade votes for special favors to special interests. Arlington's corporations are looking for corporate welfare. And more corporate welfare. And still more corporate welfare.

So you won't see the local newspapers, chamber of commerce, AM radio station, local pols, and community leaders coming together to raise funds for a new EMS unit. At least not in Arlington Virginia.

Westover said...

I am pretty upset about the neighborhood conservation "improvements" to my street in Westover. All we needed was the street repaved and a better street lighting system.

What we got from the NC program was a median constructed in the street that makes backing one's vehicle into the street very difficult. And street lighting that puts the light onto our homes not the street.

Even when we get "improvements" for our tax dollars they are expensive and badly planned. Moreover, we have to compete with other neighborhoods to obtain them.

So, speaking of philanthropy, isn't that what the neighborhood conservation system is? We have to beg for our taxes to be spent on us.

Anonymous said...

Yupette, want to see a great local newspaper and its blog?

Go to sungazette.com

Anonymous said...

Speaking of McCaffrey, his neighbors are trying to get some infrastructure upgrades from the County and are being completely ignored. Scotty's too busy reporting on the Fall live theater season to notice.

Mary said...

The idiotic County Board is giving federal stimulus funds to the Washington Shakespeare Company, on top of the Fisette Cultural Center funding and the local arts grants funding. This performing arts group apparently has zero fund raising ability.