What More Can Arlington Residents Do for APS?

Hey, Yupette,

I'm a parent of an 18 year old daughter who's a Real Millennial (born in 2000) who graduated from APS and who's in her first year at a state university. I was a PTA parent for several years, and as my daughter went through the grades I became more and more unhappy with the total Democratic control over Arlington's public schools. To the extent I will NEVER vote for a Democrat who's running for election or re-election to Arlington's School Board. Certainly not Barbara Kanninen.

Like other APS parents I had to keep my mouth shut while my daughter attended APS. No longer.

To say I was unhappy that my daughter attended class in a trailer classroom while a hundred parents who moved out of Arlington dropped their kids off at my daughter's school in the morning and picked them up in the evening (usually after extended school day activities) would be an understatement. Then there was (and is) the secret APS program that's relocated hundreds of children whose parents were and are economic (not political) refugees from Central America to Arlington. Then there was and is the traffic through my neighborhood because APS allows parents who live a block from a school to drive their kids to school and builds big turn-arounds to facilitate that. Then there are the Taj Mahal schools themselves, built with every amenity that has little or nothing to do with education but too few classrooms.

But what really aggravated me and other parents was that, no matter how many relocatable classrooms, no matter how much traffic, no matter what the costs are imposed on students, parents, taxpayers, everyone, neither the County Board nor the School Board would let go of in-fill urbanizing the County. Every year, more of the same.

Latest Taj Mahal schools will cost $130 million. When will it end? All we wanted was a good basic pre-K through 12 education for my daughter. She didn't receive one because APS is all about sports-entertainment-recreation aka 'enrichment activities'.

Thanks for this blog.

Mike P

'Your County Board Is Insane for Allowing Electric Scooters in Arlington'

Hello,

Like many other Arlington residents AY saw and heard reports of serious injuries resulting from electric scooters ridden inside the Beltway. So AY wanted to see how dangerous electric scooters are. We did a Google search on 'Bird electric scooters crashes injuries' and 'Lime electric scooters crashes injuries'

Short answer. Electric scooters are VERY dangerous and should have been banned from Arlington, not given a 9 month trial in Arlington, including during the Winter. Cities like Nashville, San Diego, Santa Monica, and Los Angeles have either banned or severely limited the places where electric scooters can be ridden.

Only persons who are either elected or a candidate for public office in Arlington who have expressed concern about electric scooters are Audrey Clement and John Vihstadt. The representatives from the Bird and Lime scooter corporations, who attended the last County Board meeting, were only concerned about their corporations' bottom line.

When AY spoke with an attorney at a personal injury law firm that has been deluged with complaints about injuries from Bird and Lime scooters she stated: 'Your County Board is insane for allowing electric scooters in Arlington'.

AY

Activists Demand DeFerranti Resign From Housing Commission

Hey, Yupette,

I and other Arlington residents have become exasperated with Arlington's so-called 'Affordable Housing Program'. This program has completely failed to construct and renovate workforce housing to serve the needs of Arlington's workforce. The County's AHIF and other housing funds have been used to gentrify the workforce out of Arlington, while approximately a thousand new jobs which pay below the 'living wage' of $15 / hour are created in the County annually. The 'affordable housing' being constructed and renovated is actually expensive middle class and upper-middle class housing for persons and families with incomes from $55,000 to $85,000 / year.

How expensive? Consider that the housing non-profit which owns The Carlin Retirement Home on Carlin Springs Road is seeking $42 million in financing to renovate a 161-unit 20 year-old building with almost all the apartments 1-bedroom, or more than $260,000 per unit. Hard construction costs are $10.6 million or $66,000 per apartment and soft costs of $9.1 million, or $56,000 per apartment. The County Board will vote whether to loan the Carlin's owner and developer $3 million at the next County Board meeting and the Staff Report for the Consent Agenda item can be viewed on-line.

A renovated Carlin Retirement Home would include every possible residential amenity. The Staff Report is unclear about whether very low income seniors would continue to live at The Carlin or whether The Carlin would gradually transition to moderate income senior housing. Housing Commission member and County Board candidate Matt DeFerranti constantly states he wants the County Board to break with the past but he constantly votes on the Housing Commission for the same old same old extravagant deals that enrich the Democratic Party's Old Guard -- when he bothers attending Housing Commission meetings.

Time for Matt DeFerranti to resign from the Housing Commission and for the County Board to appoint housing activists who won't just rubber stamp every extravagant housing deal the Housing Commission takes up.

L.K. 22201

Clement Decisively Wins CivFed School Board Debate

Hello,

A.Y. asked a couple of Arlington residents who regularly attend Arlington Civic Federation meetings to report what occurred during the School Board debate between incumbent Democrat Barbara Kanninen and her Independent challenger for School Board Audrey Clement.

No contest. According to A.Y.'s correspondents Audrey 'wiped the floor' with Barbara.

While Barbara concentrated on bringing more of the 'same old same old' extravagant spending to the School Board and APS, Audrey asked what Arlington residents are receiving for their tax dollars except Taj Mahal schools with declining standardized test scores among their students, especially minority students.

This year's CivFed candidate debates will (again) be broadcast and re-broadcast over Arlington Independent Media. Stay tuned to what the local media who transform boosting the status quo into ad revenue have to say about this debate. BTW, the Amazon Post reporter who supposedly covers Arlington politics appeared at the CivFed meeting, after about 8 months when she wasn't seen in Arlington at all.

Cindy, 22206

ArlNow Played...North Fairlington Pays

Hello,

Remember all the fun the ArlNow news blog had with the raccoon over-population in North Fairlington aka Fairlington Villages?

The raccoon over-population was the result of no effort by the North Fairlington condo association aka Fairlington Villages to control the raccoon population in North Fairlington for many years. As with other condo associations in and around Fairlington, it was/is the decades-long practice of FV residents to leave trash in kitchen trash bags on the curb for morning pick-up 6 days a week. Squirrels, birds, opossums, and rarely raccoons, would occasionally forage for food among the curbside trash. Wildlife tearing into trash bags was a recurring, but manageable, problem.

As for raccoons, occasional raccoons attacks on FV residents occurred over the years, but nothing was done except to warn FV residents - until recently.

After two raccoon attacks within weeks the FV Condo Association finally realized raccoons posed a significant risk to residents. Enter ArlNow whose Publisher, Scott Brodbeck, lives in an undisclosed location in North Fairlington. ArlNow being the tabloid it is, raccoon sightings were continually reported and there were many comments about raccoons this and raccoons that.

So what actions did Fairlimgton Villages take as the result of ArlNow's constant negative stories about raccoons?. The condo association ordered raccoons trapped and euthanized - and 15 raccoons were. End of problem, right? Wrong.

FV decided to install trash bins throughout North Fairlington. No more wildlife foraging in trash bags. But North Fairlington being mostly in Arlington County the Arlington Way determined the final outcome of ArlNow's Raccoon Saga. The FV condo association is spending $15,000 per trash bin location to create landscaped Taj Mahal trash bin locations, like the one under construction in the photo. Total cost several hundred thousand dollars.

Speaking of 'Journalism' being an oxymoron in this region, a few hundred thousand is nothing compared to how much Amazon is going to cost us once the Amazon Post finally reports the Amazon-Arlington deal.

Cindy, 22206

ACPD Completely Disinterested in Multi-Modal Safety

Hey Yupette,

Only a couple weeks until the school year begins. So ACPD will be interested in multi-modal safety -- for a couple weeks as that relates to neighborhoods around schools. Rest of the year - forget it.

ACPD only wants to ticket drivers of motor vehicles, for anything and everything. And chase 'bad guys', including bad guys driving motor vehicles (with the exception of pursuing bad guy vehicles at high speed).

Multi-modal safety isn't even on ACPD's radar. How did we get to the point where, in only a couple months, electric scooters are ridden recklessly all over the County, dirt bike and ATV riders from DC feel free to cross into the County, raise hell for awhile, and ride back into DC, where pedestrians have to dodge group bike rides on sidewalks, bicycle bozos won't yield to pedestrians in crosswalks, and when a bicyclist runs into a motor vehicle the cops automatically blame the vehicle's driver?

So how much longer before a pedestrian who gets hit and hurt by a bicycle in a crosswalk sues multiple parties, including the County. Not long. Will be interesting to see how many lawsuits end up being settled via the County Board's agenda.

Susan, 22203

Local Media: Fake News, Phony Journalists

Hi Yupette,

Thanks for this news blog.

Wanted to let you know I no longer believe anything the D.C.-area Media publish. It's all Fake News, disseminated by phony 'Journalists'.

They're all addicted to New Urbanism - Growth for the Sake of Growth, like the other VIPs who get to micro-manage our lives Inside the Beltway. Consequences? What are Consequences?
They deluge us with propaganda press releases from local governments, non-profits, and for-profits, many printed/published as 'infomercials', more fake news.

They're only concerned about ad revenue, obtained from not offending anyone. Investigative Journalism? What's that?

Washington Post is the worst. Almost all of their 'Staff Writers' have been through J-School and should know better.

Dana, 22207