Another Friday, another week, another robocall, and you’re still hanging in there. Good for you.
Here’s a few tips from this reporter on how to stay on top of what’s coming down the pipeline for Arlington residents.
First off, expect some road closures in Clarendon for the 7th annual arts festival taking place 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday.
Secondly, the story yours truly penned about the end of days for Mister Days remains one of the most read one our site. So we thought you should know that bar owner Robert Lee is hosting a second “last call” party for the bar tomorrow (Saturday.)
This means you can say goodbye to Mister Days tonight or tomorrow, but whatever you do, don’t sleep over.
And in other news, did you know there’s an election going on?
Well if not, never fear: ARLnow has all the speed read info you need. Start with this reporter’s overview of all the candidates, and then check out this week’s “legislative lookbacks” on our state senators and delegates if you want to start brushing up before the primaries.
Other things to brush up from this week’s coverage around the county include:
Lastly, how do you like our new look? ARLnow debuted its shiny new design last week and we’re eager to hear what you think. (Unfortunately it contains zero gondolas.)
The Board voted 4-0 to approve its proposal for the school system’s next fiscal year budget. One member, Barbara Kanninen, abstained. Final budget approval is set for May.
Voting stretched late into Thursday night as members weighed five amendments detailing how funds could be cut to reduce the $6.7 million budget shortfall.
Members approved four amendments that together shaved $1,163,330 off the budget by proposing to:
Eliminate an anonymous reporting hotline
Eliminate APS HR’s budget for computer replacements
Eliminate two Technology Support Positions, one Foreign Language in elementary schools position, one full time HR position, and two assistant director positions in assessment and transportation
Reduce funding for postage, evaluations, and clerical substitutes
Reduce printed report cards
Reduce Foreign Languages at Key School
Reduce travel reimbursements, and increase student parking fees
Another approved reduction was for the fund that provides employee service awards and special events — hours after the School Board celebrated 168 teachers in front of the dais for their decades of work in APS.
A new indoor cycling studio with a social mission is opening soon in Rosslyn (Photo courtesy of Good Sweat)
A new indoor cycling studio with a social mission is opening soon in Rosslyn (Photo courtesy of Good Sweat)
Arlington’s newest indoor cycling studio “Good Sweat” is set to open next weekend with $1 class packages and an altruistic mission.
The exercise center will hold a grand opening celebration next Saturday from 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m. at its studio in the Rosslyn’s Colonial Village Shopping Center at 1711 Wilson Blvd.
Between April 15-20, Good Sweat customers can buy an unlimited week pass for $1.
After April 22, drop-in classes will cost $28 and class packages will cost $99.
“At Good Sweat, we are committed to giving you the best sweat of your life, all while improving someone else’s,” founder Alessandra “Ali” Hashemi said in a statement. “Arlington is the perfect location for Good Sweat’s flagship studio. The local population is fitness focused and extremely socially conscious.”
Hashemi previously told ARLnow she expected to open in March after raising $26,000 in donations last fall to build the studio, exceeding her original $25,000 goal.
The company intends to donate a portion of all proceeds for charity.
Employees and clients from the nonprofits featured each month will also get discounts at Good Sweat, reported the Washingtonian. Other proceeds will subsidize low-income customers who want to go for a spin at Good Sweat, Hashemi has said.
Arlington Festival Of The Arts crowd shot from 2016 (Courtesy Howard Alan Events)
Arlington Festival Of The Arts crowd shot from 2016 (Courtesy Howard Alan Events)
Several road closures are planned for this weekend’s Arlington Festival of the Arts in Clarendon.
The 7th annual arts event runs from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday on the 3000 block of Washington Blvd. The free festival is set to feature handmade paintings, jewelry, ceramics, glassware and more creations from around 150 artists.
ACPD announced the event will prompt a number of road closures between 4 a.m. Saturday and 9 p.m. Sunday including:
Washington Blvd between 10th Street N. and Clarendon Blvd, except for one lane of traffic which will be open eastbound.
N. Highland St. between Washington Blvd and Clarendon Blvd.
11th Street N. between N. Highland and N. Garfield Streets, except for delivery traffic.
Southbound N. Garfield Street will have eastbound left turns open to Washington Blvd, according to police, though additional road closures may be necessary. Police are encouraging attendees to take Metro or ride-hailing services, as parking will be limited.
Drivers should watch out for “No Parking” signs in Clarendon near the festival this weekend, according to ACPD.
Amazon is planning to award four Arlington schools with a $10,000 grant for robotics programs.
Abingdon, Hoffman-Boston and Drew elementary schools, along with Kenmore Middle School, have been selected for the grant along with 96 other schools nationwide, according to the statement released this morning.
Amazon is also awarding grants to 13 schools in D.C., six in Alexandria, and two in Prince George’s County.
The “Amazon Future Engineer Robotics Grant” funds the costs of starting up a robotics club and registering it with FIRST, a non-profit that hosts robotics competitions. The awarded schools will decide how exactly to spend the funds, reported the Washington Post.
The round of grants comes a month after the Arlington County Board approved an incentive package to welcome the Amazon’splanned second headquarters in Crystal City.
The deal has drawn repeated controversy from local activists who criticized the $23 million in incentives and $28 million in transportation upgrades offered by the county if Amazon meets certain job creation benchmarks. Critics have also expressed concern over a part of the deal where the county agreed to forward public records to Amazon without redacting filers’ personal information.
Schools were eligible for the grant based on their proximity to Amazon’s sites and their participation in the federal Title I program that awards additional funding for schools serving many low-income families, per the Post.
Amazon is doling out the robotics grants via its “Future Engineer” charity which is funded by a $50 million the tech and retail giant pledged to invest in STEM education by providing students with computer science courses, scholarships, and internships.
This year, half of all calls to your mobile phone could be robocalls, according to predictions by call protection company First Orion. And ARLnow wants to know: have you noticed more robocalls to your phone?
There were 27.2 million robocalls placed to 703-area-code numbers in March, per call tracker YouMail, and 13.2 million calls to 571 numbers.
That’s up from 17.2 million robocalls to 703 numbers in March of last year, and 8.5 million calls to 571 numbers.
One Arlington resident who’s definitely getting spammed with robocalls is FCC Chairman Ajit Pai. “Last Week Tonight” host John Oliver set up a robocall system to call Pai every 90 minutes and leave a voicemail urging him to take action to reduce robocalls.
First Orion’s prediction that robocalls will make up half of all cellphone calls was based on an analysis of 50 million calls which showed an increase from 3.7 percent of cellphone calls were robocalls in 2017 to 29.2 percent in 2018.
It may be a reason why one analysis of monthly calls by caller ID provider Hiya found people now only pick up their phone about half the time it rings.
Sen. Janet Howell is running against Republican Arthur Purves for her bid for reelection
Arlington’s representatives in the Virginia State Senate worked on legislation addressing issues like healthcare, green energy, and teacher’s pay this year.
Three Democrats represent the county in the state Senate — Janet Howell, Barbara Favola, and Adam Ebbin. All of the senators are running for re-election this year.
Virginia’s 2019 legislative session lasted from January 9 to February 24. Here’s what each state Senator said were their biggest legislative accomplishments during that time. (We asked the same of Arlington’s House of Delegates delegation earlier this week.)
Sen. Adam Ebbin
Ebbin has served in the state senate for seven years, following eight years in the House of Delegates. He currently faces no Democratic challengers to his campaign for re-election.
The senator told ARLnow through a spokesman Wednesday he was “pleased to make progress” on legislation about “renewable energy, criminal justice reform, as well as career and technical education” during this year’s session:
SB1779 will permit localities to establish renewable energy net-metering programs. Net-metering can help counties, cities, and towns grow their local economy. Municipalities will save taxpayers’ money through developing and using green energy, generating savings that can be invested in local priorities such as schools, public safety, and infrastructure. […]
SB1612, which I have worked on for several years with Senator Bill Stanley (R-Franklin) would have ended the suspension of driver’s licenses for court costs and fees. Though this bill died in the House, Governor Northam introduced a budget amendment to reinstate 627,000 Virginians licenses during our one-day veto session on April 3rd. Unwarranted license suspension disproportionately impacts economically-disadvantaged Virginians without making our communities safer.[…]
I was also able to pass SB1575, which allows college professors to teach dual-enrollment career and technical education courses without additional licensure. This will make it easier for school divisions to offer para-professional career preparation in cybersecurity, EMT and pharmaceutical technician certification. High school students will no longer have to travel to off-campus sites to earn credit towards education in specialized fields.
A rendering of Dirt, coming to the Ballston Exchange (courtesy of Dirt)
Menu offerings at Dirt (courtesy of Dirt)
The new location of Dirt restaurant in Ballston is hoping to open next week.
The fast-casual, health food eatery will “likely” welcome its first Arlington customers next Wednesday, April 17, though the exact opening date is not yet set in stone, said spokeswoman Kyle Schmitz.
Schmitz said there are “a couple of finishing touches” left to do to the menu but otherwise customers will be able to order most of what’s on the online version.
Dirt’s menu features paleo-approved bowls and sandwiches as well as trendy toasts and breakfast dishes tailored for post-workout recovery with ingredients like activated organic chia seeds. Offerings also include 11 “sustainable proteins” add-ons like vegan plant protein powder and cashew ricotta.
The Miami-based chain first announced plans for its 1,800-square-foot space in the ground floor of the Ballston Exchange in November.
At the time, the chain’s backers said they eyed Ballston for expansion because of “the energy of the neighborhood,” and the rapid growth of businesses at the Ballston Exchange and the Ballston Quarter development across the street, where several restaurants have opened doors since March.
The restaurant says it will be donating 1 percent of all proceeds from its seasonal items to the Arlington Food Assistance Center.
County officials are trying to drum up participation in the next U.S. Census — a year before the feds start surveying and counting.
Arlington has joined other neighboring jurisdictions in creating a group called “Complete Count Committee” tasked with convincing residents to fill out the 2020 Census form when it arrives next April.
Wanda Pierce, a Nauck resident who co-chairs of the committee, said the group is “representative of all different types of organizations, ethnicities, religions, everyone across Arlington, because to reach a lot of the hard-to-count populations, we have to have those members on the committee,” per a press release.
“The U.S. Census Bureau cannot conduct the 2020 Census alone,” the website for the committee reads.
County Board Chair Christian Dorsey also signed a proclamation calling on “the Arlington community to rise up as leaders and partners in this effort to reach 100% participation in the 2020 Census campaign.”
“It’s not enough to want to count everybody,” said County Manager Mark Schwartz at the event. “We’re going to have to go out and tell people that we want to work with them to make sure they are counted.”
Each member of the committee is tasked with recruiting at least 1,000 Arlington residents to take the annual survey, per the committee’s website.
Previously, Principal Planner and co-director of the Arlington County Census 2020 campaign Elizabeth Hardy spoke at a March meeting with the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments where she noted the county began 2020 census preparations in 2018.
“This time I feel like every resident is in a hard-to-count community,” said Hardy, who worked on the awareness campaign for the 2010 census.
She said there “were a lot of lessons learned” from the 2010 campaign, and that this time around the county planned to share more resources with neighboring jurisdictions.
The census is administered once every ten years by the federal Census Bureau.
Next year’s Census has drawn controversy after Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’s decision to collect information about respondents’ about the citizenship status, a largely unprecedented move that’s been criticized by civil rights advocates and defended by President Trump.
The most recent Census estimate of Arlington’s population — made in intervening years between official Census counts — was 234,965 as of July 1, 2017. That showed Arlington’s population has continued to grow, from 230,050 in 2016, 226,908 in 2014 and 207,627 from the last Census count in 2010.
Every level of government studies the population data gleaned to make funding decisions. The number of people counted also determines how many House of Representative seats each state is awarded.
(Updated 17/04/18) Arlington County officials are calling for action on health disparities among residents in two new reports released this week.
Officials outlined a plan for an “oversight entity to provide governance” on health equity policies as part of a report released yesterday (Thursday). The 27-page document includes the plan in a bid to reduce a 10-year life expectancy gap that exists based on where in Arlington you live, as first reported in 2016 by the Northern Virginia Health Foundation.
The “Destination 2027 Steering Committee” was formed last year to close that gap, stating that, “the presence of health inequities in Arlington is inconsistent with who we are and what we value as a community.” The committee is made up of 40 local organizations including the Virginia Hospital Center, police and first responders, and most county departments.
Details for how the group plans to achieve that are starting to come to light, including an open data project around health in the county.
“We are working to share a dashboard with data about health outcomes and community conditions,” Kurt Larrick, Assistant Director of the Department of Human Services, told ARLnow. “So stay tuned with that.”
“The public policies that have led to how our neighborhoods operate, how schools operate, how transportation occurs, often have some population’s benefit and others that are burdened,” said Reuben Varghese, the county’s Public Health Director, in a video yesterday. “And so that can lead to these groups having different life expectancy or other health outcomes.”
Yesterday the county also released the 2019 Arlington Partnership for Children, Youth and Families (APCYF) Community Report which noted “striking disparities” in kid’s health that were “based on factors such as income, race and ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, and level of English proficiency.”
Some of the report’s findings include:
Hispanic youth were four times as likely to be obese as their white peers.
Ten percent of high school students reported going hungry at home.
Students with individual education plans (IEPs) were less likely to feel like they belonged in their school community compared to students without IEPS.
Forty-two percent of LGBT youth said they had been sexually harassed and were more likely to be depressed than other youth.
The total number of kids who said they received the necessary help for their depression “was so low for Black and Asian youth that a percentage could not be reported.”
The 56-page report compiled data from local, state, and federal sources, including the new APS “Your Voice Matters” survey and the 2017 Youth Risk Behavior Survey.
“Nothing in particular was surprising, we noticed that the data confirmed many assumptions that we have heard,” Kimberly Durand, the coordinator for the partnership, told ARLnow.
“For example, Child Care and Mental Health continue to be of concern, and the data that we have compiled confirmed that,” she said.
The Steering Committee’s action report also shared some research from previous years that indicated:
Black residents in Arlington are hospitalized for asthma-related medical issues eight times more often than white residents.
Hispanic youth are 11 times more likely to become teen parents than their white classmates.
Arlington residents report poor mental health when earning less than $50,000 a year.
Durand’s youth report did found some improvements often associated with better health outcomes. Last year, 75 percent of Hispanic youth and students learning English graduated on time, compared to 61 percent graduating on time in the 2012-2013 year.
Arlington may have been nominated Virginia’s second healthiest county last month, but researchers have long noted residents’ health varies greatly across geographic, economic, and racial lines.
“While we may not be responsible for creating these conditions, each of us owns solving them,” said Destination 2027 co-chair Tricia Rodgers.
Owner Nick Shauman and Beverage Director Chelsea Gregoire told ARLnow they like to have a good time
Local Oyster features a house oyster called “skinny dipper” sourced from southern Maryland
The seafood joint has hired 16 people so far, Shuaman said.
The baskets by the counter will host a variety of seafood
Baltimore-based seafood joint Local Oyster may open their new Ballston Quarter location as early as next week, staff say.
Founder and co-owner Nick Shauman said he’s planning a soft opening next Thursday, April 18, pending final permits (which, it should be noted, don’t always come through on time).
“We’ll definitely be shucking oysters and pouring beers,” Shauman said confidently. “Fingers crossed.”
The eatery will feature a full kitchen, beer lines, and big metal baskets awaiting oysters as well as claims, lobsters, scallops, mussels, crab legs, and catfish. Today (Wednesday) a back wall was decorated with a wall of buoys, and bright red metal stools fresh out of their packing are lined up around wooden high-top tables.
For next week’s hoped-for opening, Shauman plans to serve up a special limited menu.
The full menu includes cocktails, wine, beer and cider, in addition to its oysters and clams, soups, sandwiches and lobster rolls, crab cakes, and vegetable sides.
Local Oyster sources its oysters from its farm in southern Maryland, the True Chesapeake Oyster Co., in Southern Maryland. Shauman said the Ballston location will carry their house oyster, dubbed the “skinny dipper.”
“We are no frills seafood,” said Beverage Director Chelsea Gregoire. “We do it well, we do it local.”
Gregoire said she’s developing a cocktail menu that makes diners “feel like they’re at the beach” and focus on fresh fruit and tasty spirits “to go with your shrimp salad sammie.”
Shauman told ARLnow that Local Oyster has hired 16 “badass bartenders and shuckers” so far.
“This whole thing started as a pop-up about six years ago,” he said of Local Oyster’s origins in Baltimore’s Hampden neighborhood, where he says he just might know some Honfest ladies willing to journey to Ballston for the restaurant’s grand opening.
