health department

What’s Next: High Time for Marijuana Reform

By ARLnow.com

What’s Next with Nicole is a biweekly opinion column. The views expressed are solely the author’s.

There is one thing I have found that my libertarian Republican and social justice Democrat friends can mostly agree on — it is high time Virginia passes marijuana reform.

It is my opinion that: 1) marijuana should be governed similarly to alcohol, legal at age 21; 2) doctors at hospitals or assisted living facilities should be able to administer prescriptions to anyone; and 3) we should create an automatic expungement process for people previously convicted over 21 and have a clear path to expungement for those under 21 for both marijuana and alcohol.

Right now the legislature is favoring bills HB 972 by Del. Charnell Herring (D), and SB 2 by Arlington state Sen. Adam Ebbin (D), both supported by Governor Northam (I will refer to these as “the favored bills”). In the favored bills, jail time is eliminated, a reduced civil fine of $50 is implemented, the possession amount to be charged would increase from half an ounce to one ounce, and an expungement path would be created.

These are good first steps, but we can and should do more.

Decriminalization vs. Legalization

The favored bills would decriminalize, not legalize, marijuana possession for adults. While a step in the right direction, I believe this is a missed opportunity.

Perpetuating an underground marketplace for sale is bad policy for two reasons. First, the government cannot impose a sales tax on something that should be a known transaction. In Colorado after just 5 years of legalization, the state has collected over $1 billion in tax revenue. Second, selling on the black market provides opportunity for marijuana to be mixed with harmful substances and makes it difficult for consumers to understand the breakdown of THC vs. CBD in their product, to the detriment of public health.

HB 1507 introduced by Del. Jennifer Carroll Foy (D) and supporters by Arlington’s Del. Patrick Hope (D), would support legalization.

Medical Marijuana

There are currently only five facilities, one in each region of Virginia, that can administer medical marijuana. HB 347 by Del. Glen Davis (R) would allow for two facilities in each region, and SB 185 by state Sen. Siobhan Dunnavant (R) would allow nursing homes and assisted living facilities to administer cannabidiol and THC-A oil.

Again, while these are steps in the right direction, this will not do enough to fight the opioid epidemic. I am surprised by a lack of movement here by Democrats.

Expungement

The favored bills would allow a person to petition for expungement after fines have been paid. If we are just going to decriminalize, this seems inherently discriminatory to those who cannot afford a lawyer and an unnecessary bureaucratic hurdle that should just be an automatic process. This automatic expungement for marijuana offenses and underage alcohol possession would be tackled in SB 289 by Sen. Creigh Deeds (D), and SB 306 by Sen. William Stanley (R).

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UPDATED: Boil Water Advisory Lifted, Glebe Road Back Open, But More Repairs Necessary

By ARLnow.com

Update at 12:15 p.m. — N. Glebe Road has reopened but crews will need to return for follow up work “in a few days,” the county says. Photos posted earlier today show the sinkhole fixed and the roadway re-paved.

Update at 10:15 a.m. — The boil water advisory that much of Arlington has been under over the past couple of days is now lifted. Arlington’s Dept. of Environmental Services made the announcement Sunday morning.

Arlington County issued the following press release Sunday morning:

Arlington County has lifted the Boil Water Advisory.

Following the large water transmission main break on Nov. 8 at Glebe Road and Chain Bridge Road, residents and businesses in Arlington can resume using tap water for all purposes.

Water customers are advised to run their taps for a few minutes to release any air and sediment that may have accumulated following the break. Emptying and cleaning automatic ice makers and water chillers is also encouraged.

A series of rigorous tests have determined that the system is safe following the significant water main break early Friday, Nov. 8, that caused pressure drops in several locations across the County. Because of significant pressure loss before the 36-inch transmission line was bypassed, Arlington issued a Boil Water Advisory for affected areas of the County as a safety measure.

Tests identified no potentially threatening bacteria in the system as a result of the break, and samples met Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standards. The County consulted with the Virginia Department of Health (VDH) to ensure the water system is safe for public use.

Arlington County appreciates the patience and understanding of its residents, businesses and their customers as staff followed procedures that place public health and safety as the highest priority.

The incident also affected portions of the Arlington-linked DC Water system, which has also been deemed safe following tests.

The section of North Glebe Road damaged by the break near Chain Bridge is expected to reopen to traffic Sunday afternoon. Because of the complexity of the break, permanent repairs and restoration will continue later this week, depending on the weather.

Earlier: A large portion of Arlington County remains under a boil water advisory, as crews make progress with repairs following a large water main break near Chain Bridge.

The boil water advisory is in effect until at least Sunday, Arlington’s Dept. of Environmental Services said Saturday morning.

N. Glebe Road, meanwhile, is still closed, but expected to open by Sunday evening — a shorter closure than the initial worst case scenario of extending into next week.

Among other neighborhoods, the boil water advisory is in effect along the Orange Line corridor from Rosslyn to Ballston. That has prompted changes at local stores and restaurants, from soda machines shut off to bottled water used to wash hands in bathrooms.

The CVS in Courthouse, meanwhile, ran out of most packs of bottled water on Saturday, the Washington Post reported, and Starbucks stores up and down Wilson Blvd are not serving hot coffee — leading some customers to get “a little nasty,” a manager told the Post.

More via social media:

Ed Talk: Equity in Arlington Education

By Abby Raphael

Ed Talk is a biweekly opinion column. The views expressed are solely the author’s.

For the second year in a row, Niche has ranked Arlington Public Schools (APS) as the best school division in Virginia.

The Niche rankings are based in part on standardized test scores in reading and math, averaging the test scores of all students. While Arlington can be proud of the quality of its schools, such rankings based on aggregate data hide the disparities in academic achievement among different student groups.

Virginia Department of Education data shows startling gaps between white students and others in reading test scores in Arlington for 2018-19: a 56 point gap for English learners, 40 points for students with disabilities, 31 points for economically disadvantaged students, 28 points for Hispanic students, and 22 points for black students.

There are significant disparities in other subject tests results as well. And different outcomes for different groups of students extend beyond test scores to gifted programs, advanced studies diplomas, school discipline, measures of wellness, and extracurricular activities.

One way to address these disparities is to focus on equity and APS is doing just that. Equity is an APS core value described this way: “Eliminate opportunity gaps and achieve excellence by providing access to schools, resources, and learning opportunities according to each student’s unique needs.”

The School Board plans to expand on this by adopting an equity policy, likely in November.

The School Board’s equity policy should draw on the work of Destination 2027, an initiative of Arlington’s Public Health Division working to achieving health equity by 2027.  The Destination 2027 Steering Committee’s final report recommends that equity can be put into action by asking four questions:

  • Who benefits?
  • Who is burdened?
  • Who is missing?
  • How do you know?

The School Board should include these questions in its equity policy, as the County Board did in its recently adopted equity resolution. Eliminating opportunity gaps and achieving excellence for all students means asking these questions in the School Board’s decisions about the budget, capital improvements, boundary changes, policies, programs, and hiring.

The School Board is investing in its commitment to equity by hiring a Chief Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Officer, which will report to the Superintendent and be responsible for instructional equity, recruiting and retaining diverse staff, and developing partnerships with the community. The County Board should make a similar investment in its upcoming budget by including a Chief Equity Officer in the County Manager’s Office to coordinate its equity work and partner with APS.

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UPDATED: Nova Mac and Cheese Fest Cancelled, Would-Be Attendees Shred Organizers on Social Media

By ARLnow.com

(Updated at 3:50 p.m.) A queso catastrophe has local macaroni and cheese fans feeling blue today.

The Nova Mac and Cheese Festival, scheduled for this coming Saturday in Ballston, has been cancelled, according to messages on the event’s ticketing and Facebook pages.

The full message:

We are writing to inform you that in response to challenges that would have impacted the overall quality of the event, the team for NoVa Mac and Cheese Festival has made the decision to cancel the event planned for October 5th in Ballston, VA. We sincerely hope to return to the area with the event in the future. We are sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused and we are grateful for your interest.

We are issuing full refunds to all ticket holders (Full 100% Refunds will be completed this week). In addition, we are offering free admission to our Richmond, Va Mac and Cheese festival the following weekend (October 12th) for anyone who was a ticket holder to our NoVa event. If you have any further questions or concerns please feel free to contact us at [email protected]

Thank you

There’s no word on why exactly the plans melted down, but an Arlington County memo obtained by ARLnow.com suggests that only a half dozen mac and cheese vendors had submitted the required paperwork for the event.

“Although our Special Events team members worked diligently to assist them, as of Friday the organizer only had (6) confirmed food vendors that submitted the required paperwork and were approved by Public Health,” wrote Leslie Pelzer, the manager of the county’s Office of Special Events. “The [organizer] has expressed that they would like to re-apply in the Spring 2020.”

Despite the promises of prompt refunds and free admission to the Richmond festival, in the Facebook comments customers were none-too-pleased about the turn of events.

“Don’t they know better than to mess with our beloved mac n cheese,” wrote one. “These are fighting words.”

“This is basically the Fyre Festival,” said another.

Others pointed to the cancellation of another macaroni and cheese festival in Leesburg earlier this year and suggested a nefarious pattern, although the events were apparently organized by different entities.

Mac and cheese festivals seem to be something of a cottage industry. The organizer of the Ballston event has other upcoming mac fests planned in Richmond, Baltimore, Scranton and Pittsburgh. Yet another festival, organized by a different local events company, is planned for Oct. 26 in D.C.

Courtesy photo

Arlington Training Hundreds To Combat Opioid Overdoses

By Airey
1/5

Arlington is training hundreds of people to use the opioid overdose-reversing drug naloxone in hopes of saving lives amid the opioid crisis.

The free trainings last a little over an hour and teach participants how to recognize an opioid overdose and to administer naloxone, also known by the brand name Narcan. As of Tuesday night, officials said Arlington has trained 644 people and given away 518 boxes of the drug.

Studying to Save Lives

Emily Siqveland is the county’s coordinator for the state-funded Revive program, which provides the training materials for the classes.

“I often remind people that addiction is similar to diabetes,” said Siqveland, in front of the half a dozen people who showed up to the Arlington Mill Community Center Tuesday night to take one of the classes.

“You can make lifestyle adjustments to manage your diabetes,” she said. “Addiction is the same. You can make lifestyle changes to manage the addiction, and you still need treatment. It’s still a chronic and relapsing disease.”

In addition to talking about how addiction works, Siqveland showed attendees how to administer the little white nasal spray as part of the county’s “multi-disciplinary approach” to tackling the opioid crisis.

Arlington began marshaling representatives from county agencies, local non-profits, and APS in 2017 to form an Arlington Addiction Recovery Initiative (AARI) to find solutions and hold several town halls.

One of the group’s more recent tasks was choosing how to spend $258,000 in state grants for treatment and prevention services.

One way AARI allocated the funds is a new ad on the side of local Metrobuses, featuring the county’s opioid resources page, plus “remembrance trees” currently on display in the Shirlington, Columbia Pike, and Central libraries until September 3. People can add a leaf to the trees in memory of someone they know who died from opioid addiction.

Addiction by the Numbers

In Arlington, police reported 53 overdoses in 2018, 11 of which were fatal.

The data indicated that seven fewer people died overdosing on opioids in 2018 compared to 2017 (19). However, the overall number of opioid-involved incidents (153) in 2018 remained steady after jumping to 157 incidents in 2017. In all, 50 opioid overdose deaths have been reported in Arlington since 2014.

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Progressive Voice: Scammers Prey on Older Adults — We Need to Do More to Stop Them

By Progressive Voice

Progressive Voice is a weekly opinion column. The views and opinions expressed in the column are those of the individual authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of their organizations or ARLnow.com.

By Del. Patrick Hope

An elderly constituent recently contacted my office upset over a phone call from someone claiming to be a Deputy with the Arlington County Sheriff’s Office. The caller accused my constituent of failing to appear for jury duty and said a warrant for his arrest was coming unless he paid a fine.

My immediate instinct was that this was a scam. We contacted the Arlington Sheriff’s Office and confirmed that it was. Fortunately, no money was exchanged, but it’s easy to go from being the target of a scam to the victim of one.

Scams are a growing problem–and we need to do much more to prevent them. Other examples reported to me include “utility companies” threatening to shut off services if not provided immediate payment; the “IRS” collecting fees for unpaid taxes; and family members allegedly having suffered an illness requiring payment. Scams can come through a phone call, email, or door-to-door salesperson. Someone may offer computer tech support and then gain access to the victim’s computer and bank accounts; a scammer may say you’ve just won a sweepstakes and need to wire money to pay fees, or offer to do home repairs, especially after a storm.

Scammers’ favorite targets? The elderly and other vulnerable adults, due to isolation, disability or cognitive impairments. A recent study lists Virginia as having the fifth-highest rate of fraud crime targeting older adults, noting “More than one in five Virginia seniors fell victim to elder fraud in the past year.” It estimated $1 billion was stolen in roughly 265,000 cases. And this was just what we know, since the vast majority of cases go unreported, often because of the victim’s embarrassment.

Unfortunately, it’s not just strangers who financially exploit elderly and vulnerable adults. It’s frequently a relative, caregiver or someone in a position of trust. The Virginia Department for Aging and Rehabilitation Services reported 1,016 cases of financial exploitation in 2015. But since most cases go unreported, the agency estimated there were probably more than 44,000 incidents that year. With an estimated average loss of $28,000 per victim, such exploitation costs victims $1.2 billion.

Bank tellers are often the last line of defense when it comes to preventing financial exploitation. This year, the Virginia General Assembly passed a law to give financial institutions the ability to refuse a transaction if they believe it may involve financial exploitation. This law also empowers those institutions to report their good faith suspicions, with immunity, to their local or state adult protective services.

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Progressive Voice: Let’s Keep All Arlington Kids Healthy This Summer

By Progressive Voice

Progressive Voice is a weekly opinion column. The views and opinions expressed in the column are those of the individual authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of their organizations or ARLnow.com.

By Sheila Fleischhacker

It’s unthinkable any child goes hungry or experiences “summertime anxiety,” which is associated with summer’s unstructured nature and is marked by the lack of predictability in what each day is going to look like or, for some children, whether there will be enough to eat.

Yet hunger among Arlington kids does exist. One in 10 Arlington Public Schools (APS) middle and high school students reports having experienced hunger. A third of APS students qualify for federally assisted school meals — from less than 1% at Tuckahoe to 81% at Carlin Springs.

“Many Arlington children rely on school meals,” explained Charles Meng, executive director of the Arlington Food Assistance Center (AFAC), which served more than 12,000 people last year. “During the summer, our families face higher food costs on already-tight budgets (an estimated additional $800 per child).”

All APS summer school programs offer federally supported meal services. Any child not enrolled in summer school can participate in summer meal services at Barrett, Carlin Springs, Kenmore and Hoffman-Boston. “While enjoying a delicious school breakfast with Carlin Springs students, I have seen first-hand how dedicated our schools are to getting students excited about school meals,” observed Matt de Ferranti, an Arlington County Board member. “It’s inspiring to hear about creative solutions to ensure access to healthy meals while decreasing stigma, such as breakfast in the classroom at Oakridge and Hoffman-Boston.” Strengthening each school’s local wellness policy is another important tool.

Outside of school, Arlington’s community centers, parks and recreational centers, childcare centers, Boys & Girls Clubs, faith-based organizations, and others participate in federally assisted programs that provide free, healthy summer meals to children. SummerFoodRocks helps locate meal sites or text “FOOD” to 877877 and, after providing an address, you will receive a message about free summer meal sites.

Individuals can engage in partnerships or volunteer opportunities such as developing innovative transportation approaches to sites or providing musical entertainment during lunchtime. AFAC, for instance, depends on more than 2,200 volunteers to help bag, distribute, drive, glean or grow food for participating families.

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The Right Note: Progress Report for the Chairman

By Mark Kelly

The Right Note is a weekly opinion column. The views and opinions expressed in the column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ARLnow.com.

Reading through the remarks of Chairman Christian Dorsey from last week’s “State of the County” address to the Arlington Chamber, I was not surprised to find that the Chairman pronounced our status as “excellent.” But what is his report card so far?

Once again, the Chairman predictably talked about our bond rating and the customer satisfaction survey. He also talked about a desire for county officials to collaborate with the community. He took credit for ongoing improvements in public safety, economic incentive deals, and the county’s yet to be launched efforts to streamline the permitting processes. For keeping the trains running on time, Dorsey gets a C. This grade would have been a B if the Board had not claimed financial hardship before passing a 6.2% spending increase and a potentially massive pay raise.

Nothing new has really been accomplished when it comes to affordable housing, despite promises to the contrary. This is not unique to Chairman Dorsey. Every Board member talks about the rising costs of living in the county. In a 2018 speech, Dorsey himself previewed support for increasing housing density and reducing the size of single family houses that could be built on lots in order to combat market forces. However, little ever seems to change except for raising our property taxes, making it more expensive to live here. Grade: F.

Keeping an eye on Amazon. The county approved the package to finalize the deal and can claim a small victory as the online retailer agreed to send $3 million back to the county’s “efforts” on affordable housing. A lot is still to be determined here. Grade: C+.

Equity remains a high priority buzzword for Chairman Dorsey. No one really knows for sure what new policies he is seeking to implement or goals he is seeking to achieve, though he did discuss child care and public health.

Last year, Dorsey suggested Arlington should create a consumer protection bureau to make sure everyone is treated fairly. He also suggested it might mean an examination of county housing policies to ensure diversity is being achieved. Maybe we will need to wait till Dorsey’s wrap-up speech at the end of the year to find out what equity outcomes he accomplished? Grade: Incomplete.

Last but not least, Dorsey also gets an Incomplete for glossing over the subject of our schools in his speech. Despite the fact that the County Board cited the schools budget as a primary reason for increasing our property tax rate this year, Dorsey did not address it in his speech, except for brief mentions while discussing equity and diversity.

You can assign your own grades to Dorsey’s chairmanship so far. And remember, he still has six months to pull them up.

Mark Kelly is a 19-year Arlington resident, former Arlington GOP Chairman and two-time Republican candidate for Arlington County Board.

Summer Has Started and ‘The Lot’ Beer Garden Is Still Not Open

By ARLnow.com

Today is the summer solstice — pools are open, schools are out, the Fourth of July is around the corner — but the planned 22,000 square foot beer garden outside Clarendon is still shuttered.

“The Lot,” owned by local restaurant scene veteran Mike Bramson, was originally supposed to open in the summer of 2017. Then that got pushed back to the summer of 2018. Then spring of 2019. After some additional construction, Bramson told Eater he was anticipating an opening earlier this month.

Located at 3217 10th Street N., at the busy corner of 10th Street N. and Wilson Blvd, The Lot looks mostly complete from the outside. There are new trees, a fence, picnic bench seating, string lighting, a pergola and a pair of large signs. What there is not, yet, is any sign of life.

Bramson did not respond to requests for comment from ARLnow, but a review of Arlington County permitting activity shows that his efforts to get county permitting and zoning officials to allow him to build new bathrooms and a food prep area, and to open the beer garden, have all been rejected.

The issue seems to be existential for Bramson’s would-be business. In short, there does not appear to be a legal mechanism to allow a standalone, permanent beer garden in Arlington County.

The reason for the rejection of The Lot’s zoning applications to open as an outdoor cafe, county officials say and permitting records indicate, is that under Arlington County code an outdoor cafe must be an accessory use to a physical, indoor restaurant. Furthermore, an outdoor cafe can’t have more seating than the indoor restaurant.

The Lot has no indoor seating and was planning to serve food from food trucks.

“The building permit under review is for interior alterations to the existing building; to create restrooms (required by Inspections Services Division) and a food prep area (required by the Public Health Division) in order to use the outdoor café area and beverage trucks,” Gina Wimpey, spokeswoman for Arlington’s Dept. of Community Planning, Housing & Development, told ARLnow via email.

“Since they included the outdoor café space in the permit, Zoning cannot approve the café space in the absence of a restaurant with indoor seating (required by the Zoning Ordinance),” Wimpey added.

Luckily for The Lot, there does appear to be a possible workaround. It could figuratively latch itself to a nearby restaurant — Bramson’s Social Restaurant Group owns Pamplona and Bar Bao in Clarendon — and operate on a temporary basis.

“They can open the outdoor café as a short-term use associated with other restaurants within 2,000 feet, but it must have more indoor seats than the proposed outdoor café,” Wimpey said. “This has been discussed with the applicant and they’re working towards a solution. Until the Certificate of Occupancy for the short-term use is issued, the building permit cannot be issued.”

So why can The Stand, a Social Restaurant Group-owned food kiosk in Crystal City, continue serving without indoor seating? Because it technically isn’t considered an outdoor cafe under county code.

“1601 Crystal Drive [The Stand] currently has a Certificate of Occupancy for a food service kiosk and has had one in this location since at least the late-1990s,” Wimpey said.

Beer gardens have been blossoming around the D.C. area over the past few years — including in Arlington, next to bricks-and-mortar restaurants — and are a popular warm weather destination. But Wimpey said there is no movement in Arlington County’s policy-setting ranks to allow stand-alone beer gardens.

“There isn’t anything planned in the proposed 2019-2020 work program,” she said,.

County Officials Announce Plans to Tackle Health Inequalities

By Airey

(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.

Photo via YouTube

Morning Notes

By ARLnow.com

Caps Player Abandons Car on Glebe Road — “Monday was media day for the Capitals, their first practice of the postseason. [Lars] Eller was on his way to MedStar Capitals Iceplex when suddenly, his car broke down… in the middle of Glebe Road.” [NBC Sports Washington]

Task Force Ices Snow Proposal — “Thirteen of the 14 voting members of the task force ‘do not believe the county has made the case that snow operations on [the large government parcel at Old Dominion Drive and 26th Street North] must be expanded, especially given the small number of annual major storms.'” [InsideNova]

ACPD Marks Alcohol Awareness Month — “Alcohol Awareness Month, recognized each April, is a public health program designed to increase outreach and education on the dangers of alcoholism and issues related to alcohol. More than 300 establishments in Arlington County hold Virginia ABC licenses permitting the serving and sale of alcohol.” [Arlington County]

Amazon May Pay for Public Transit — “Amazon has actively promoted the use of public transit, such as by paying the full cost of its employees’ fare cards for light rail, buses and ferries — a perk that it is considering extending to new employees in Arlington. The company boasts that only a quarter of its Seattle employees commute to work by driving solo. Nearly 1 in 3 use transit, and more than 1 in 5 walk.” [Washington Post]

Arlington Touts Bike Benefits — “The County continues to build on the bicycle’s unique ability to provide clean short- and medium-range transportation that requires far less infrastructure and resources compared to automobile traffic.” [Arlington County]

Water Main Repairs Complete — Updated at 8:35 a.m. — Repairs to a burst 12-inch water main in Crystal City have been completed, but several roads in the area remain closed. The water main break cut water service to several buildings in the area, including a hotel. [Twitter]

Flickr pool photo by Kevin Wolf

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