The Right Note

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

If you have ever attended a Saturday morning County Board meeting, you probably know it kicks off with a public comment session at 8:30 a.m. If you want to hear about the issues buzzing in the community, public comments are a great place to start.

What could be on the docket this week?

The county brought in a podium, loudspeaker, Congressman Moran, and three County Board members to have a ribbon cutting for a sidewalk in Pentagon City. This monumental event comes on the heels of losing the National Science Foundation to Alexandria and the Signature Theater bailout. Maybe this event falls into the “any port in a storm” category?

Speaking of the Signature Theater, Treasurer Frank O’Leary reports he received the delinquent tax payment bailout for the property. For those counting at home, this has no real impact on our bottom line other than an accounting maneuver to erase a debt, with exactly zero public hearing time on the subject. In essence though, each and every one of Arlington’s approximately 210,000 residents just contributed about $1.20 to the arts. The remaining question is, how does the theater plan to pay next year’s bill or is this just going to be an ongoing line item in our budget?

The urban agriculture report is in, and it attempts to strike a middle ground on backyard hens — saying larger yards could have them provided they meet certain conditions. Many people believe that regardless of the conditions, permitting any hens will cause an enforcement nightmare for the County. The ball is now in the Board’s court, or coop.

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

According to a 2009 announcement, the Artisphere was supposed to be open 12 hours a day, seven days a week, attract over 250,000 visitors a year, become profitable in three years, and spur additional economic development in Rosslyn.

Two years later, the Artisphere produced massive first-year operational cost overruns and revenue shortages that would require escalating taxpayer subsidies for the foreseeable future. County Manager Barbara Donnellan produced what she deemed “a much more realistic plan.”

The new plan has still failed to put the Artisphere on a trajectory towards self-sufficiency. The bottom line is that we have pumped millions of taxpayer dollars into it, and the Artisphere is still nowhere near fulfilling the promises the County Board made to us, not once but twice.

Last week, we learned that the County Board had voted unanimously to bail out the Signature Theater to the tune of $250,000. The bailout covers the theater’s delinquent taxes — taxes they chose not to pay in an effort to “control expenses”. This bailout led one newspaper to deem the theater “too fabulous to fail.”

How would this have gone over with Treasurer Frank O’Leary if the offender had been anyone but a county-backed project? Quite possibly, it would have been sold to pay the debt.

Instead, the County Board essentially made a simple spreadsheet maneuver. The taxes were magically marked as paid courtesy of the rest of us who pay our taxes every year while controlling other costs in our budget. The money is still in the general fund to be spent elsewhere this year, while the theater is simply off the hook.

If you reach back into your memory banks, you may remember the County Board’s approval of another theater project in January 2012. As part of site plan concessions, the County will receive a black box theater on Wilson Boulevard. The County will pay to fill in the developer-provided shell, but it will make out well on the lease, at $1 a year. This is a similar deal to the 15 years of free rent for the Artisphere. The new theater will likely not be saddled with the repayment of a huge construction loan, something Signature still owes to the tune of $7.8 million.

So, will the financial honeymoon end soon after operations begin as it did with the previous two projects? According to the press release announcing the new theater last January:

“County staff will work with the Arlington Commission for the Arts and others to develop a business plan and economic options for the operations of the theater. These will address a series of cost, use and operational alternatives for review by the County Manager in the preparation of future budgets.”

Hopefully these are not the same county staff who assisted with the Artisphere’s original business plan or its “new” and “more realistic” plan. Of course, if they can count on the County Board for ongoing subsidies and bailouts, creating a business plan is little more than an intellectual exercise anyway.

The bottom line is Arlingtonians deserve more accountability than we are getting from our taxpayer-funded arts endeavors.

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

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

On the way down to Richmond for the GOP convention, I found myself in the stop and go (mostly stop) traffic caused by the hazmat incident that shut down I-95 south for four hours. After slowly making our way around some back roads, my wife and I arrived at the junction of highway 17 and I-95 just as the interstate was being re-opened.

While waiting for the traffic to move, I spotted a man walking in the middle of the highway with water bottles and realized it was none other than Terry McAuliffe. The Democrats’ presumptive nominee for governor was politicking with fellow stranded motorists — a smart political move. There is no question that McAuliffe has a larger than life personality, an asset he is sure to bring to the campaign trail this year.

Before the Republican convention was gaveled to a close the next day, Virginia Democrats were attacking the Republican ticket as “too extreme for Virginia.” If that sounds familiar, it is precisely the same rhetoric they used unsuccessfully four years ago.

My counterpart here at ARLnow, former chairman of the Arlington Democrats and current State Democratic Committee member Peter Rousselot, got the memo and joined in the attack. In fact, he has written multiple columns attacking Republican nominee Ken Cuccinelli. In last week’s column he even presumed to know what Arlington Republicans would think about the entire 2013 GOP ticket.

Rousselot’s most recent column did drop the specific criticism of health clinic regulations, presumably in light of the horrific Kermit Gosnell case in Pennsylvania. At the same time, Rousselot has written exactly zero columns supporting his party’s candidate. I do not recall that there has even been a single supportive sentence in his columns for McAuliffe.

This “attack first” strategy should not come as a surprise. McAuliffe failed to impress Democratic primary voters four years ago. He was called out as a forum shopping candidate with little to offer Virginia Democrats. He eventually lost the nomination contest convincingly to State Senator Creigh Deeds, who went on to lose to Governor McDonnell by more than 17 percentage points in November.

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

As the fiscal year winds down here in Arlington, I wanted to touch on two lesser known facts about the budget process.

Fact Number One: When the County Board passed the tax rate increase last month, it applied retroactively to January 1st of this year, not to the next fiscal year which begins July 1st.

If you have a mortgage, that new obligation is settled between the County and the financial institution you make payments to each month. Chances are your escrow account has more than enough cushion to cover the difference. If you have paid off your property, you will be writing the bigger checks immediately to cover the costs. If you rent, your landlord has probably built this assumption into your rate increases as your leases are up for renewal.

Fact Number Two: The county underestimates revenue collections every year for the budget that is approved. For fiscal years 2010 to 2012, the average was $37 million – roughly 3.5 percent on average each year.

It is more than a bit disheartening that every year we bring in more revenue than is estimated, yet we are always hearing about budget “shortfalls” as the reason to increase taxes.

What does the County Board do with the excess revenue? They spend it on new projects outside of the regular budget process in what is known as the “close-out” process. The close-out process is in place primarily to allow the Board to re-allocate millions of dollars that have been budgeted for, but not spent, for a variety of reasons.

If the Board had applied all of the excess revenue in last year’s close-out to offsetting this year’s budget, we could have seen our tax burden held steady without cutting one penny from the services promised as part of this year’s adopted budget. The Board did carry forward $12.9 million from last year’s close-out process to apply to this year’s budget, so I guess we can be grateful that our taxes were not raised even more.

It is still a few months before the County Board will close the books on fiscal year 2013. The unfortunate reality is that the close-out process will once again result in additional spending projects rather than giving us a little tax relief.

The County Board should start by explaining why county staff consistently underestimates revenue year after year. The Board should commit to end the use of the close-out process to spend money on items that were not vetted as a part of the regular budget process, nor to raise total spending for the year over the adopted fiscal year budget.

In short, the Board should confine its close-out decisions to re-allocating already budgeted spending and treat the adopted budget each year as a ceiling, not a floor.

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

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

This is not news, but the Democratic party controls every elected office in Arlington.  While we witnessed a rare, and extremely close, intra-party endorsement contest for sitting School Board member James Lander last week, the accountability for what our elected officials do falls primarily on the press and the public at large.

However, a competitive electoral process with candidates from across the spectrum is healthy, and one we need to see more of here in Arlington.

Running for the County Board twice myself gave me the opportunity to talk to thousands of Arlingtonians from across the political spectrum. When I write about concerns with major spending projects, or the levels of taxation and debt, or the frustrations of business owners, it comes from listening to people. And, I can say for certain, even before I opened myself up to the comments section here, that Arlingtonians are not shy with their opinions.

Over time, many of the people I’ve spoken with have just accepted that our County Board will do what it wants, regardless of any public protestations. I remain eternally optimistic. I believe if we make it a priority to consistently hold our elected officials accountable they will either change their course of action, or the voters will eventually change it for them.

Look at what my counterpart from the left Peter Rousselot has had to say many times in his take. He has called upon his party to have even more competitive primaries. And, he agrees with me that the county’s spending priorities are currently out of whack.

Living in Arlington is certainly a choice for most of us. I appreciate my neighbors and enjoy my relatively easy commute into the District. My children attend our public schools and play in our recreational sports leagues. And, the church we attend is just a short drive away in Alexandria.

Even though our quality of life in Arlington is relatively high, the way to make it higher is not for our County Board to continually dream up new ways to spend our money. Instead, we should hang that big ‘Open for Business’ sign on the door. We should demand independent accountability with an Inspector General. We should put our county’s checkbook online in real time, and then ask if we are getting our money’s worth for our tax dollars.

You have to evaluate for yourself whether you believe a change in leadership would produce better results. Would new ideas and a fresh perspective be a welcome change? If so, you have the power to help make that happen. There is still time to file as a candidate for office this fall. You can actively support a Republican, Green or Independent candidate who does file. Or, you can become more vocal by speaking up in your civic association, at County Board public comment times, and at other public meetings. But please, if you agree that a little change would be a good thing, do something.

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