The Right Note

The Right Note is a biweekly opinion column. The views expressed are solely the author’s.

It would not be 2020 without at least one unexpectedly strange story from our County Board. Last week it was revealed by the Washington Post that Christian Dorsey’s bankruptcy claim was dismissed with prejudice for “an overt act of misrepresentation.”

This is the second time in recent memory that Dorsey has had a very public revelation of difficulty with being forthcoming after last year’s failure to disclose a $10,000 improper campaign contribution. And for the second time in a year, he has received a less than enthusiastic vote of confidence from fellow Arlington County Board members for his continued service. Board Chair Libby Garvey said she backed Mr. Dorsey “despite his personal financial issues.”

On Saturday, the Arlington County Board moved ahead and approved its legislative package. Included in the requests are the ability to lower speed limits below 25 mph and to install speed cameras. This is on top of last week’s revelation that the County Board would use tax increases to fund spending priorities like ranked choice voting and collective bargaining.

Also on the docket was the Board’s move forward to advertise changes to its residential parking program. If you live in a house with a driveway, your ability to park on the street will be cut in half even if parking on your street is never a problem. The program will not take into account if you have multiple generations living together who need access to cars to commute to school or work where Metro is not a viable option. And in order to pay for a program that will issue fewer permits, the proposal would more than double the parking fees. It is another anti-car, completely arbitrary change that will be forced on many unsuspecting Arlingtonians very soon. It should not be passed under the cover of a pandemic.

This is the last column of 2020. Presumably, the next one will be after Arlington County Board Members have made their vision speeches for the New Year. Almost certainly, the speeches will be filled with a look back at the challenging year behind them. And the Board will no doubt paint a picture where they will have no choice but to ask homeowners to pay considerably more to help them “dig out of a hole.”

Between now and then, they should talk to the small business owners who are barely hanging on in the face of COVID restrictions. They should talk to families who have lost jobs and taken pay cuts. And they should talk to parents who are struggling to balance work with helping their kids get through the virtual school day.

Ask them all what their priorities are from their local government. Then the board Members should consider rewriting those speeches and reordering their priorities.

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

The Right Note is a biweekly opinion column. The views expressed are solely the author’s.

The County Board has issued guidance for the Fiscal Year 2022 budget and left all options on the table.

In other words, property owners should prepare for their real estate taxes to go up. The Board also began to lay the groundwork for a tax on plastic bags and cigarettes. This will all be done in the name of COVID-19.

However, the Board is prioritizing funding to do two things that are completely unrelated to fighting the impacts of the virus.

First, Board Members signaled they going to fund Rank Choice Voting in local elections. The question is of course, why? Outside of John Vihstadt’s wins in 2014, Democrats have not seen a race where their candidate fell below 60% let alone 50% in recent memory. This is something that is not only unnecessary, but at the very least could be shelved until a better budget year.

Second, the Board intends to take advantage of a new state law that allows them to prepare to enter into collective bargaining with public employees. While the Board did not put a price tag on this optional item, it is just the tip of the iceberg on additional costs to the county budget moving forward. It will also give future Arlington elected officials less flexibility in the face of a budget crunch like the one we are facing now.

Arlingtonians will have their chance to listen to a presentation by County Manager Mark Schwartz on December 9th. It is the next step in the process wherein the County Board will convince us we have to raise taxes to pay for a “scaled back” budget. But it is clear that not all budget priorities for next year are urgent.

Tax increases and interesting spending priorities are not the only controversial issues to look forward to in 2021. The County Board intends to vote to restrict the ability of homeowners to obtain parking permits. The Planning Commission will receive a presentation at its meeting tonight.

And, the School Board will vote this week on the first changes to elementary school boundaries. The School Board will hold a public hearing tonight which you can watch online.

The public is obviously focused on how COVID-19 is impacting them. These times demand restraint and caution from our elected officials, so we should watch what they are doing closely.

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

The Right Note is a biweekly opinion column. The views expressed are solely the author’s.

Just as in years past, it is time to dedicate a column to the annual closeout process. Usually, it calls for the closeout funds to be set aside to avoid future tax increases as well as for better budgeting and revenue estimates. But it’s 2020 and nothing is normal.

Every year the County Board over-budgets and over-taxes. According to this year’s report, the County ended Fiscal Year 2020 with $15.6 million in unspent and unobligated funds or 2.5% of department operating budgets. By comparison, last year it was $13.1 million or 2.2%. The schools ended the year with $27 million in unspent budgeted funds which hopefully will be applied to offset this year’s, and next year’s, budget needs.

Revenue generated from taxes, on the other hand, was flat for the first time in recent memory. However, that was mostly driven by COVID-related drops in sales taxes, hotel taxes and meals taxes. Real estate revenue was up by $13 million. And Arlington did receive nearly $20.7 million in federal COVID-19 assistance, about $13 million went toward the 2020 budget.

Each year in recent memory, the County has set aside much of the closeout funds toward the succeeding year’s budget. This year is different. County staff recommends that $13.4 million of the $22.4 million available be set aside for the current fiscal year and just $5 million for FY 2022. Unfortunately, the recommendation did include another $2 million slush fund for the County Manager to spend without coming back to the Board. In this time of COVID, the County Board should not be taking this hands off approach to any spending.

Much continues to be made of as much as a $84-95 million “budget shortfall” for the current fiscal year. However, Arlingtonians should keep in mind that between the general budget and the schools in FY 2020, there was more than $42.5 million in unspent budget. In addition to the $13.4 million in closeout money, County Manager Schwartz also outlined another $19.7 million in money available from the CARES Act, service reductions and debt refinancing. So already the current year gap may be as small as $9 million if actual spending trends continue as they have in previous years.

You may be thinking, this is a good year to have been “conservative” with our budget estimates. But remember, we also have reserves that we have been putting money into for years to account for a “rainy day.” Those reserves total $99.8 million, including $10.2 million for FY 2021 COVID expenses and $4 million to account for FY 2021 revenue declines related to COVID. This $14.2 million likely can be used to eliminate the current gap altogether.

Keeping in mind the unique nature of 2020, Arlington officials are making some strides to tighten up the budget. At the same time, it is safe to say we are nowhere near the need for a huge tax increase or massive spending cuts next year. The Board may take a different view as they are set to unveil the budget guidance for FY 2022 sometime later today. Hopefully it will be taxpayer friendly, realistic, and build in a great deal of flexibility.

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

The Right Note is a biweekly opinion column. The views expressed are solely the author’s.

In the race for County Board, Libby Garvey, who courageously bucked her party and backed Independent John Vihstadt, is on the ballot this year.

Let’s face it. She is going to win. Her opponent is perennial candidate Audrey Clement, and Democrat turnout will be through the roof. Democrat loyalists will vote largely according to their sample ballot — hypocrisy on the redistricting amendment aside.

If you haven’t voted yet, consider writing someone else in for County Board.

Why cast what amounts to a protest vote? First, while Libby Garvey had often taken a cautious approach on gold plated community projects, the impact seems to have waned since John Vihstadt’s departure. Recently, she cast the lone vote to continue the rushed, poorly conceived, and eventually unenforceable sidewalk gathering ordinance that all four of her colleagues rightly chose to jettison. The Board, under her leadership, still took an August break rather than working through the challenges raised by COVID-19. The budget process is more uncertain than ever, yet the Board is backing even more debt.

So, if you want to send a signal to the County Board that we are watching how they run the county during these uncertain times, register 30% of the vote for someone other than Libby Garvey.

There are even bigger issues at play as we move into 2020 election and beyond. In the Progressive Voice column yesterday, there were a number of suggestions of what Republicans are for versus Democrats.

A philosophical point was made, and one that we hear a lot, that Republicans allegedly want to create an environment where people disdain government. Democrats on the other hand, according to the article, want a bigger, stronger government.

There is no doubt that as a party Democrats favor bigger government.

What most Republicans want is efficient and well-run government, appropriate and limited to its role at different levels. There are things local governments should do, state governments should do and the federal government should do. And we prefer that all levels of government empower the people as much as possible.

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The Right Note is a biweekly opinion column. The views expressed are solely the author’s.

Thumbs up to the School Board for announcing the pathway for bringing kids back to school in person this year. According to the most recent update, Arlington Public Schools are on track to bring back students who need direct support this month and begin the in-person hybrid learning option in early December. After the false start this summer and a refusal to disclose specific metrics for the return, APS has a big communications hurdle to overcome over the next two months.

As parents continue to work through the logistical issues around their ongoing “home e-learning academies” and balancing their own work responsibilities, APS also put forward its proposed boundary changes for Fall 2021. According to APS, 1,400 students from Ashlawn, Science Focus, Glebe, Long Branch, McKinley, Taylor and Tuckahoe schools would be impacted, and the School Board will approve the changes December 3rd. There is no good time to finalize boundary changes, but the middle of pandemic school from home seems less than ideal.

Also of note, APS stated that the “data used in this process comes from elementary school enrollment on September 30, 2019.” First-day enrollment this fall was 911 fewer than a year ago. And APS has not yet announced the September 30th number for this year. Nothing in the announcement discussed how APS is taking into account any decrease in enrollment this September, or which schools are most impacted by it. We can only assume they believe enrollment will bounce back, but it is a question the School Board should answer before moving to a final vote.

Interested parents can join the first virtual meeting on the changes Wednesday evening and ask questions.

Thumbs up to the County Board for voting to end the sidewalk gatherings ordinance. Four members of the Board rightly recognized the ordinance as constructed was unworkable and did not continue to forge ahead anyway. The Board should consider looking for other unworkable ordinances to get rid of in the future.

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

The Right Note is a biweekly opinion column. The views expressed are solely the author’s.

At this month’s September 12 meeting, County Board members initially expressed general support for changing the county logo.

At the September 15 recessed meeting, the Board announced it would start a process to not only change the logo, but look at any name throughout the county that may need to be renamed or symbol that needs to be changed.

After three days of reflection, the Board seems set to move forward with the logo change. Instead of moving expeditiously to do so, the Board decided to make it part of what is almost certainly going to be a drawn out decision making process.

There are two practical questions that have to be answered considering the extensive use of the logo throughout Arlington: how much would changing it cost and how long would it take?

Once the Board knows the answer to these questions they should be able to announce the process, timeline and cost to select a new logo and put it in place. Instead, we are weighing into a nebulous timeline of the “Arlington Way” which will not start until 2021. It will drag this process out and almost certainly ensnarl it in controversy with any number of other things people will want to see replaced or renamed — see the renaming of Washington-Liberty High School.

As part of this process, one can only imagine that the name of our county will also be up for debate. We are named after the Arlington plantation that contains the house the County Board is now objecting to as a logo. The County Board will almost certainly face that question as part of this process. And if they think the same logic does not apply, then they should state why.

Hopefully the County Board members will rally around the idea that our foundational principles give us the opportunity to redeem past failures and move forward to create a more perfect union. Arlington County can stand as a place that does not need to change its name in order for it to be known as a place that unequivocally rejects racism. We can focus our time and efforts on lifting people up in our community by providing access to educational opportunities and reducing governmental barriers to economic opportunity.

A final note on the logo. At the Board meeting, Takis Karantonis held up his business card to the camera and said the logo “doesn’t represent me.” If Mr. Karantonis or any of the Board Members object that strenuously to the logo, they should stop using the taxpayer-funded cards immediately and purchase their own without the logo until the change is made. That would be a real protest.

The Board also received an update on the budget impacts from the pandemic. The projected slow down in revenue is within a range where the Board can make smart financial decisions utilizing close-out and contingency funds without piling a tax increase on our community as we continue to recover next year.

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

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.

On November 3rd, Virginians will have the opportunity to vote for a constitutional amendment requiring an independent redistricting commission.

After years of campaigning for it  and eventually passing it through the General Assembly on a bipartisan basis, Democrats across Virginia have reversed course. They are tripping all over themselves looking for an excuse to vote against it. Arlington Democrats rejected the yearslong efforts of Delegate Rip Sullivan and will ask voters to oppose it on their November sample ballot.

Some of us have maintained for quite some time that the idea was a false promise of reform. Map drawing commissioners would not be directly accountable to the voters, and elected officials could shrug off blame if the results from a commission were tilted in favor of one party or the other. Moreover in places like California, “independently” drawn maps do not necessarily result in districts that reflect the makeup of the state. Democrats there successfully pressed for their favored map.

Over the years in Virginia, Democrats suggested Republican opposition to a commission process was political. They argued that a Republican majority in Richmond simply wanted to maintain a partisan advantage. “Politicians want to pick their voters,” they would say.

However, nearly a decade ago a Senate Democrat majority drew the current Virginia Senate lines. They lost the majority under those lines in 2011 and 2015, only to gain it back again in 2019.

House of Delegate Republicans drew most of the current lines (judges redrew some of them prior to the 2019 elections). While the GOP held the majority for much of the decade, including a number of Republicans sitting in seats won by Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, they lost it in 2019.

Now that Democrats are on the verge of the redistricting commission becoming law, they are claiming the amendment is not quite good enough. In other words, if Democrats defeat it now they can rewrite the proposed amendment and tilt it in their partisan favor since they do not need to rely on Republican majorities controlling the General Assembly in order to pass it.

In the meantime, if they are successful in defeating the amendment the Democrats have the added bonus of being able to draw all the lines themselves without any Republican input. They can lock in General Assembly majorities and safe Congressional seats by picking their voters in 2021.

This politically driven about-face screams hypocrisy of the highest level.

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

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.

Two weeks ago, Arlington Public Schools abruptly reversed course and decided to start the school year with all virtual learning.

As a reminder, in a June school survey 73 percent of Arlington parents indicated they would be comfortable sending their children back with safety protocols in place. As of mid-July, approximately two-thirds of parents had already signed their children up for the hybrid in-person model.

APS announced they would re-evaluate the decision for October and beyond. According to the APS website, they are committed to resuming instruction in the classroom “as soon as possible.” With that in mind, it is time for APS to answer the following:

1. How does APS plan to measure the impacts of the all distance learning model on academic progress?
2. What specific COVID-19 related metrics will the APS use as a basis for a decision to return to in-person instruction and how will those be communicated to students, parents and teachers?
3. What guarantees do parents have that APS will not reverse course on a future reopening decision that meets the metrics, supporting scientific studies, and CDC and Virginia Department of Education guidelines at the behest of the Arlington Education Association?

Last week the Arlington County Board voted to join the lawsuit against the Trump Administration’s move to exclude those without lawful immigration status from the apportionment count. It took less than one minute to pass. It was not on the agenda. There was no real debate about why Arlington should join one of multiple lawsuits. There was no mention of how much it might cost the Arlington taxpayers.

For those who do not follow constitutional terms of art for a living, apportionment is the way states are allotted seats in the United States Congress. It has a corresponding impact on the Electoral College.

Constitutional experts on both sides have argued, and will continue to argue, whether this move will withstand Supreme Court scrutiny. If it stands, however, it would not impact how states can use Census data to draw congressional or state legislative districts. The Virginia Code says we have to use the most recent decennial population figures from the Census. In other words, Arlington would not lose any strength of representation in Congress or in Richmond unless the Democrat-controlled General Assembly changes the rules.

Excluding those without lawful immigration status from apportionment also does not impact the overall Census count. The Census Bureau is continuing the effort to count everyone, including the use of in-person visits beginning in August. As federal programs use population counts not apportionment, Arlington’s $50 million annual assistance for transportation, housing, emergency services and school lunch programs will see no impact from the change.

You may agree with the decision to join the lawsuit. You may not. But why were our County Board members unwilling or unable to spend even one minute each articulating the rationale for a decision to join a congressional apportionment lawsuit prior to taking a vote?

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

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.

After the sudden school closure and the controversial decision not to teach any new material to our kids this spring, Arlington Public Schools have been wrestling with the question of what school will look like this fall.

According to the recent APS surveys, 73 percent of parents are comfortable with sending their children back to school with safety measures in place. Just 9 percent of parents said they were not at all comfortable. Conversely, only 38 percent of teachers want to go back while 39 percent said they were not comfortable going back to school.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommended that the goal should be for students to be physically present in school this fall. The benefits of, among other things, face-to-face learning, nutrition, social skills, counseling services and physical activity contribute to the overall health of students. The report weighed available scientific evidence of the impact of COVID-19 on kids:

Although many questions remain, the preponderance of evidence indicates that children and adolescents are less likely to be symptomatic and less likely to have severe disease resulting from SARS-CoV-2 infection. In addition, children may be less likely to become infected and to spread infection. Policies to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 within schools must be balanced with the known harms to children, adolescents, families, and the community by keeping children at home.

In late June, APS announced a compromise position. They created a hybrid learning model so kids could get back in the classroom two days per week. They also gave parents the ability to elect an all distance learning plan for their kids. Thousands of parents had already signed their kids up for their preferred option.

Arlington teachers began pushing back almost immediately. The pressure culminated in a statement by the Arlington Education Association yesterday which called for APS to abandon its plan and conduct classes in the fall by online-only learning.

Today, new APS Superintendent Francisco Durán abruptly reversed course. In an email to parents, he announced school would resume online only in September. And instruction will not begin until September 8th, two weeks later than planned.

Parents, particularly single parents, who do not have the option to telework will have to decide on how best to ensure their kids are cared for, and participating, during online learning. This would have been difficult three days a week, and it just got harder.

Hopefully Superintendent Durán will provide a more complete explanation in future communications. And hopefully our students will not be put at too much of a disadvantage because of today’s decision.

Disappointing GOP Performance

The Arlington voters have been open over the years to competing points of view on local decisions. While Democrat Takis Karantonis ultimately took 62% of the vote in last week’s County Board special election, the performance of Susan Cunningham proved that there is still some appetite for an independent voice. But after Republican Bob Cambridge received just 5% of the vote, the Arlington GOP has some serious work to do moving forward.

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

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.

Back in mid-March, no one could have fully predicted just how long or extensive the lockdown for COVID-19 would be.

Over the past three months, the County Board moved the most essential functions of governing to online platforms. Essential services and public safety continued largely without interruption. A modified budget moved through a revamped public comment process, though not without a couple blips. For example, the county’s pay plan set to take effect on July 1st still says County Board members will receive a raise. There has been no public announcement on how they will deliver the promised fix to prevent the raise from taking effect.

On June 9, the chairs of 25 county advisory groups wrote to the County Board and raised concerns that these avenues for public input were unnecessarily lying dormant. Despite plenty of online options, meetings were not happening at all. It was not until May that county officials unveiled a plan to determine how staff and other resources would be allocated as well as how meetings would be prioritized. Based on the county guidance, many groups may effectively be shelved for the remainder of the year.

The defenses of the County Board on Saturday rang a little hollow to the thousands of county residents who have been successfully teleworking for the past 90 days. Most of us participate in multiple video conferences every week — often multiple times on the same day. Meetings that used to take place in person simply moved online. Screen sharing is enabled. “Rules of the road” for recognition to speak are quickly developed. It has changed the way we exchange information.

Surely Arlington officials could do better than “we’re working on it” by now.

Restricting public input in this way is one concerning trend. On today’s County Board agenda is a report on the County Auditor’s work plan that should also raise some eyebrows.

For fiscal year 2021, the County Auditor is proposing new audits into COVID-19 cost reimbursement, non-profit funding allocations, housing grants, and risk management. These are all fine areas to look into for a robust audit function.

Unfortunately, the County Board never fully embraced the auditor’s role to identify waste and efficiencies on behalf of the Arlington taxpayer. They have not dedicated significant staff resources to evaluate a $1.5 billion budget on a regular basis. As a result, there have been just a handful of audits produced thus far.

According to the draft work plan for the coming year, the Auditor is suggesting they stop the audit of economic development incentives — presumably without a report. The audit was supposed to be done by the end of last year and feature a look into the taxpayer-subsidized Amazon deal. It was taking the place of a jettisoned audit of business improvement district activities which should have been done as well. If no audit is ever produced on the Amazon deal, it represents a disturbing loss of promised transparency. And it is being quietly jettisoned during this time of a pandemic and civil unrest.

The work plan is also proposing that an audit of real estate assessments and appeals be postponed until some unknown date in the future. The message from the County Board appears to be: taxpayers will just have to wait on accountability if they get it at all.

Surely the County Board can do better.

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