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The Next Campaign
I try to keep politics out of this monthly newsletter.
If you have not been receiving my campaign updates and you wish to receive updates on this new campaign,
please drop my campaign a line and we'll get you on the list for campaign updates.
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Community Police Academy
Sign up now to participate in the Alexandria Community Police Academy.
This acclaimed program is one of the Police Department's key public outreach efforts.
There are now two options for participation: the full 10-week program and a new abbreviated 1-day version.
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Helicopter Study
To provide a forum for community discussion a feedback to the Department of Defense on this issue, Congressman Beyer is hosting a meeting on Tuesday January 16th from 7:30 PM - 9:30 PM at Arlington's Abingdon Elementary School at 3035 S. Abingdon Street.
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Become A Police Officer
The Alexandria Police Department will be hosting exams to evaluate those who wish to become Alexandria Police Officers.
On Saturday, January 20th, the Department will host exams at 8 AM at 3600 Wheeler Avenue.
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Drug Take Back
Do you have unwanted or expired prescription medications?
The Alexandria Sheriff's Department, in cooperation with the Substance Abuse Prevention Coalition of Alexandria and The Neighborhood Pharmacy, will be conducting another "Drug Take Back" event.
The event is free and anonymous.
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Be A Snow Buddy
Snow Buddies work across our City to help residents who are unable to clear snow during inclement weather.
Sign up today!
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Christmas Tree Recycling
The tree must be placed in your normal trash collection location on your regular collection day.
Remove all ornaments, tinsel and stands.
All trees will be ground into mulch and made available to residents in the spring.
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Happy New Year!
I hope you are having an enjoyable holiday season. I am excited to be into 2018 and hopeful the year will be full of accomplishment for our community.
While Dr. Hutchings currently leads the Shaker Heights, OH schools, he is no stranger to ACPS. Having grown up in Alexandria, graduated from our schools, and later worked in our schools, his hiring is a homecoming.
I look forward to working with Dr. Hutchings as we collaborate to ensure every child has an opportunity at success.
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Fueling the Bus
Motor vehicles are the largest non-stationary sources of greenhouse gas emissions. One of the City's most significant efforts to reduce emissions and fulfill our obligations in battling climate change are our investments in mass transit. While most of that investment goes to the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), for over 30 years the City has run the
DASH Bus system to serve our local needs.
Wildly popular with its riders, DASH also achieves operational and financial performance that is the envy of systems around the country. DASH carries a little over 3 million passengers per year.
After years of hybrid purchases, 52 of the 86 buses in the current fleet are now hybrids.
With a recent change in leadership at DASH, the Board of Directors delayed scheduled bus replacement to allow the new leadership to reevaluate the replacement plan.
With a few years of replacement money awaiting this decision, the Board had assembled $13 million. Continuing the previous policy of hybrid purchases would have allowed the purchase of 17 hybrid buses with these resources. Given improvements in the technology of the diesel buses, as well as cost considerations, the DASH General Manager proposed to the Board of Directors using the funds to instead purchase 27 diesel buses, which would allow the replacement of
all of the much dirtier, older, diesel buses remaining in the fleet.
Currently some buses on the road in the City are nearly 18 years old. This is far longer than their normal life and these buses are significant polluters compared to the remainder of the fleet.
The Council had a detailed conversation on this plan and the opportunities and challenges for transitioning the full bus fleet to a more sustainable power source.
You can watch the discussion online.
I am certainly not excited in taking a step backwards in the sustainability of our bus fleet. I am hopeful that we can use the savings from these diesel purchases to accelerate the electrification of our fleet. The City Manager will propose a path forward for such a transition as part of his proposed Capital Improvement Program in February. DASH also believes that this may be a good project for funding under the forthcoming
Volkswagen Settlement funds.
As electric transit bus technology matures and comes down in cost, the City can and should lead the way by putting these cleaner transit vehicles on the streets of Alexandria. I am committed to making this happen.
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Some municipal government efforts see quick results. Some efforts take a few years. Our efforts to achieve cleaner waterways will take decades, but the payoff will be for multiple future generations.
Early in the last Council term, the members grappled with the challenges that the City faced from Federal environmental regulations that govern how we handle sewage from homes and businesses. Those efforts culminated in the adoption of the
City's Sanitary Sewer Master Plan.
Our federal obligations for cleaner water do not end with waste water. The City also has significant obligations to protect waterways from polluted storm water. The
City's MS4 Permit Program spells out specific pollutant reductions that the City must meet over a 15 year time period.
In the end, meeting these obligations will be expensive. Current estimates have the costs at $65 - $100 million dollars over the next 15 years, including $33 million over the next five years.
As proposed in 2010, the fee would apply to all property owners (regardless of their taxable status) and be assessed
 based on the
impervious surfaces on their property. Essentially the fee would be structured to be a user fee for the City's stormwater handling.
In adopting the budget in 2010, the Council instead chose to simply raise the real estate tax and dedicate a portion (a half cent) of the rate to stormwater projects. Essentially, the decision was to fund stormwater management based on the value of properties rather than the amount of stormwater runoff they create.
That funding has proven insufficient to cover the City's obligations. Based on the staff's current projections, the City will need to spend an additional 1.27 cents beyond the dedication, for a total of 1.77 cents on the City's current real estate tax rate. Ultimately, to address our obligations, annual spending will need to rise to $6.67 million per year. To address this mandate in later years, the annual spending will need to be even higher.
Alternatively, the Council could have increased the real estate tax dedication to continue funding these costs using that mechanism.
There are pluses and minuses of both approaches.
With the current real estate tax funding approach, 58% of the costs are today paid by residential tax payers and 42% by non-residential tax payers. Yet stormwater runoff is caused by impervious areas. The distribution of impervious areas is 63% non-residential property and 37% residential.
Funded as a component of the real estate tax, it is tax deductible on federal and state income taxes (subject to the new limitations on these deductions).
With a Stormwater Utility Fee, the cost burden would shift. Residential fee-payers would pay 37% of the stormwater costs and non-residential fee-payers would pay 63% of these costs.
For many property owners, this will reduce their cost. This will also require non-taxable property owners (places of worship and non-profit properties primarily) to cover their impacts on the City's stormwater system.
The fee would be assessed on the impact the property has on stormwater runoff in the City as opposed to simply the valuation of the property.
For residential properties, our staff devised a relatively simple tier structure with 4 tiers (Condo, Townhouse, Typical Single Family and Large Single Family) for different types of residential properties. For non-residential properties, a calculation based on impervious areas on a property was implemented.
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At the time, the murders of police officers and controversial uses of lethal force by police officers had prompted a furious national conversation. Communities around the nation were drawn into a polarized debate unnecessarily pitting the lives of those who protect and serve against the lives of persons of color.
In the past year, the national conversation has only intensified with further tragedies and injustices capturing the nation's attention and demanding local response.
Here in Alexandria, we have worked to address the issue from a position of strength.
We have a highly skilled police force that draws on the diversity of the community that they police. The department is taking new steps to improve the diversity of the workforce in future recruiting efforts. We are fortunate to have a Sheriff's Department with a sworn workforce that similarly represents our community's diversity.
Our officers participate in training aimed at de-escalation of volatile situations. We outfit our police officers with non-lethal force options to assist in the de-escalation of these incidents.
Believing as Justice Brandeis did, that "sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants," the City has worked to improve the transparency of data related to policing in Alexandria.
The goal of this review was to identify possible areas of biased policing. While the study authors provide significant detail as to the challenges of bench-marking this type of data, the result of the study should prompt further analysis and conversation.
With the report and the
release of the actual raw data, our Police Department has gone beyond what most departments not under consent decrees have chosen to do.
Yet the efforts continue as we work to provide a level of transparency that increases public confidence in the great work done by the men and women who serve our community every day.
These changes include expanded data collection, expanded public reporting, and continuation of resident oversight for use of force data and complaint review.
At a challenging time for the relationship between law enforcement and the communities they serve in many jurisdictions around the nation, it's incumbent upon Alexandria to continue to lead the way. I'm confident that these proposals are positive steps in that effort.
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Reacting to Federal Change
A year ago I used this newsletter to write about the need for our City and region to better prepare for dramatic reductions in Federal spending and the impacts those reductions will have on our economy.
As a result of the Federal
Budget Control Act of 2011 and the failure of the resulting "Supercommittee," the nation was introduced to the so-called "
Sequestration." The Sequestration imposed across-the-board spending cuts to a variety of Federal spending. It was designed to never happen, but it did.
A year ago, the new Administration was preparing to make their own mark on Federal spending.
Significant reduction were proposed
 that would dwarf the Sequestration cuts of 2013. If cuts of over $1 trillion per year are enacted, the consequences for our region and our City would be catastrophic.
Again, the relative merits of these spending reductions are a discussion for another time. The impact of them will be dire for our City. We must prepare for the worst and respond accordingly.
All of these reductions will disproportionately affect our region and our City. They will impact direct Federal revenues to the City, consumption taxes paid to the City, and eventually our real estate market.
Rather than panic, I suggested to my colleagues that the City should develop an "Emergency Plan" to respond to this threat.
I believe that any such plan should include tactics to prepare the City's fiscal condition, deploy new economic development tools, and provide for land-use initiatives.
With the recent passage and enactment of the
"Tax Cuts and Jobs Act," the challenges continue. While some of the challenges associated with this legislation were removed during the process, it still contains changes that threaten our region and our City.
The cap on the deductibility of State and Local taxes (so-called "SALT") is aimed at high-income/high-property value areas around our nation; including most of the jurisdictions in our region.
The City did see about $6 million of real estate tax pre-payments late last month as homeowners rushed to maximize deductions in 2017 before they will be limited in 2018. Recent IRS guidance largely ended that activity, and the City is now processing any refunds that are requested. The legislation also largely eliminated Advance Refunding Bonds. Essentially, these are municipal versions of a mortgage refinancing. The City has aggressively taken advantage of lower interest rates to replace more expensive debt with lower interest debt. These changes have saved Alexandria's taxpayers millions. The legislation also more strictly limited the mortgage interest deduction. That change will also impact expensive real estate markets such as Alexandria's, with most analysis suggestions reductions in values.
Unfortunately, the City is very much on the defense with the changes currently coming from Washington. I'm hopeful that the City can move quickly to address these threats.
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Route 1 Affordable Housing
Later in this newsletter, I write about the challenges in preserving public housing units. Equally as challenging is the preservation of affordable housing units that are ending their designated affordability periods.
In the southwest corner of our City there are 319 affordable housing units that are for various reasons at risk. For 215 of the units, they are under
Project Based Voucher agreements that are on the verge of expiring or have expired. For the remaining 104 units, they are market-rate affordable units that currently accept
Housing Choice Vouchers.
Inaction likely means the loss of these affordable units over time. In an attempt to devise proactive measures to maintain the affordability of the housing, the City applied for and received grant funding from the Virginia Housing Development Authority (VHDA) to launch
the new
Route 1 South Housing Affordability Strategy planning effort.
This new planning effort began last month and you can watch the meeting as well as review the presentation from that kick-off session.
There will be four community "pop-up" sessions this month to discuss the plan area and its opportunities and challenges.
The planning process will culminate in a 5-day planning "charrette" from February 26th - March 2nd.
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Host a Town Hall in Your Living Room!
My regular series of Town Hall Meetings continue!
You supply the living room and a bunch of your friends and neighbors. I will supply a member of the Alexandria City Council (me) with the answers to any of your questions about our City.
Just drop us a line and we'll get a Town Hall on the calendar! Thanks for the interest!
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Upcoming Issues
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The
Alexandria Redevelopment & Housing Authority (ARHA) is an independent entity, with a City Council-appointed Board, but separate from the City. ARHA utilizes Federal funding from the US Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD) to provide housing to low-income residents of Alexandria.
ARHA directly manages and controls 1,079 units of affordable housing. In addition, ARHA manages the City's Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher program, which utilizes Federal funding to provide assistance for another 1,906 low-income families to reside in privately-owned housing units. Together, this is approximately 4% of the City's overall housing stock.
At the federal level, we have seen dramatic changes in how public
 housing is managed and developed. In the past, the Federal Government had been a proactive participant in bringing about the redevelopment of public housing. This was demonstrated in Alexandria when the City used
HOPE VI funding to redevelop 100 units of Public Housing into
Chatham Square. This mixed-income development incorporated both market-rate and public housing.
Going into 2017, the Federal Government was forcing changes in public housing with its inaction. Today, HUD only funds 73% of every dollar required to operate Alexandria Public Housing units. The balance of revenue that ARHA collects as rent is not sufficient for sustainable management of their properties, and this is likely to get worse. The impact of
current Federal budget proposals on housing programs could be cataclysmic.
With aging properties sitting on valuable land, ARHA must look at the highest and best use of its land to preserve housing for low-income residents in our City.
Over 30 years ago, the City Council adopted
Resolution 830, which committed the City to the replacement of any public housing unit that was displaced by redevelopment. In past redevelopment efforts, replacement units have been obtained and created throughout our City.
In 2008, the City Council adopted the
Braddock East Master Plan, which called for redevelopment of several aging public housing properties. By allowing additional density near existing transit, it was designed to encourage private partnership in the redevelopment of this housing.
Aligned with this Plan, James Bland Homes
have become Old Town Commons. This redevelopment activity has proven successful in providing a sustainable model for mixed-income housing in our City.
In the fall of 2014, with these experiences and lessons behind us,
As they continued through the process, ARHA narrowed the number of properties down to five: Andrew Adkins, Samuel Madden, Hopkins Tancil, the ARHA Headquarters building, and Cameron Valley.
The ARHA Redevelopment Work Group, on which Councilman Chapman and I serve, along with the ARHA Chair, the ARHA Vice Chair, and the Planning Commission Chair, is tasked with coordinating the work between the City and ARHA.
ARHA has chosen development partners for each of the five remaining properties:
Andrew Adkins: Alexandria Opportunity Housing, LLC, an affiliate of Clark Realty
Samuel Madden: Alexandria Opportunity Housing, LLC, an affiliate of Clark Realty
Hopkins Tancil: EYA/Penrose/JBG
ARHA Headquarters: EYA/Penrose/JBG
Cameron Valley: Bozzuto/Wesley Housing
Given resource constraints at the staff level, as well as the need for Federal tax credits to make redevelopment feasible, these projects have now been sequenced.
Redevelopment of Andrew Adkins, a property located on West Street facing Braddock Road Metro, is proceeding first.
A little over a year ago, the
Andrew Adkins process began with a
kick-off meeting for the community to meet with the redevelopment team. Since that time development partners have been submitting concepts to the City's Planning and Zoning staff for review and comments.
In early June of last year,
the revised concept plan was presented to the City Council in a worksession for comments and discussion. Since that time, there has been substantial discussions between the City, ARHA and ARHA's private development partner. These discussions have focused on concerns regarding:
- The number of public and committed affordable housing units to return to the site
- The integration of committed affordable housing and market development in the new complex
- The application of the City's Affordable Housing Density Bonus program
Unfortunately, we were unable to get the City, ARHA and ARHA's private development partner all on the same page to proceed with the original schedule for approval of the project last year. We are now aiming for next year's tax credit cycle, which is also coming up quickly.
Much of the new affordable housing creation the City does today is in partnership with non-profits. One of the goals of a modernization of Resolution 830 will be to reflect that reality and ensure that our preservation commitments do not just apply to public housing units, but across the spectrum of affordable housing.
We have an historic opportunity to partner with the private sector and provide new housing for a variety of income levels near existing transit in our City. This effort will also provide financial stability for ARHA in the face of continued change at the Federal level.
230 KV Transmission
The most important occurrence at the first meeting was the release of Dominion Virginia Power's
proposed routes. Each of these routes have negative impacts for our community.
As this process concluded, Dominion believed that the urgency behind the proposed transmission line had subsided. The process was then delayed for some time to allow them to analyze their studies.
Ultimately, the decision about the necessity of this transmission line and its routing will be made by the State Corporation Commission. However, the City and its residents will have some opportunity to help shape that decision.
The City continues to have significant concerns about this proposal and the potential impacts on Alexandria.
The City reconvened the community group and a series of meetings were again held.
The Council adopted a resolution opposing any above ground routing, and identifying the "least objectionable" routes as ones that either:
- Used the existing CSX railroad right of way
- Used waterways, both Four Mile Run and the Potomac River
- Used the George Washington Parkway
Dominion then formally notified the City that they will finally file with the State Corporation Commission. That filing was to include two routes, the route utilizing the CSX railroad right of way, and an alternate scenario where Dominion "reconductors" an existing route primarily outside of the City.
Yet that did not happen.
In November, Dominion returned to the City with another update. Given the extensive costs of utilizing the CSX railroad right of way, Dominion would now like the City to consider whether we could support their utilization of a route along or near Potomac Avenue. In exchange for this change, Dominion indicated a willingness to "significantly" increase the compensation they will provide to the City.
Use of Potomac Avenue would potentially have a several adverse impacts to the City that would need to be considered carefully.
To consider the potential trade-offs associated with such a change we are again reconvening the community group.
Clean Water
In 95% of our City, stormwater (run-off) is collected and returned to rivers and streams with very little treatment to remove pollutants accumulated from roads, parking lots, and other surfaces upon which it falls. Separately, sanitary sewage is sent to the
Alexandria Renew Enterprises wastewater treatment facility where it is treated and later returned to waterways as clean water.
However, in a 540-acre section of Old Town, a Combined Sewer System still collects both sanitary sewage and stormwater together and sends it to the wastewater treatment facility for its final disposition.
In addition to the impact that this has on the cleanliness of our rivers and streams, this type of overflow is strictly regulated by law primarily the Clean Water Act.
The City has always been in compliance with all permits for the operation of the system, releasing amounts of sewage within the limits permitted and has conducted targeted sewer separation activities along with redevelopment and other planned activities.
Essentially, this permit requires the City to work with the community to adopt a new Long Term Control Plan. The plan reduces
the presence of dangerous bacteria in the flow that is returned to the water. The new plan was submitted to the state last year.
The Plan, to be implemented over the next two to three decades, is a significant undertaking. It will be disruptive to some areas of our City and it will require $125 - $188 million, primarily funded by ratepayers as an addition to bills from Alexandria Renew Enterprises.
The Combined Sewer System has four outfalls:
- CSO-001 which discharges into Oronoco Bay
- CSO-002 which discharges into Hunting Creek
- CSO-003 and CSO-004 which both discharge into Hoofs Run
The permit requires that the City address CSO-002, CSO-003, and CSO-004.
The plan proposes to use a variety of solutions between now and 2035 to reduce pollution from CSO-002 by 80%, from CSO-003 by 99%, and from CSO-004 by 99%. This would provide for a total pollution reduction of 86%.
This reduction is achieved by:
- Construction of a 10-foot, 1.6 million gallon tunnel to address CSO-003 and CSO-004
- Construction of a three million gallon storage tank to address CSO-002
- New "green" infrastructure (improvements to the permeability of surfaces)
- Targeted sewer separation (typically funded by developers in the context of redevelopment)
As a result of the new legislation, the City must work to engineer and implement a solution to CSO-001 on a more accelerated timeline than we believe feasible.
The challenge is significant. We certainly did not plan to rectify CSO-001 on the timetable that the Commonwealth has provided. Even with the unreasonable timetable, Alexandria remains ahead of many jurisdictions around the nation on this issue. Stormwater planning and work coordinated with redevelopment activity has left us better situated than most. This is not a new issue for Alexandria.
To fund these obligations, the City Council adopted a 30% increase in the Sanitary Sewer Maintenance fee that is paid on Alexandria Renew Enterprises bills across the City. The estimates are that ANNUAL 30% increases will be required going forward.
These projects will cost a little over $100 million in 2017 dollars. With Fairfax County now sharing roughly a quarter of the cost, the City's commitment is expected to be $76.5 million.
While this money will only materialize if it survives the upcoming legislative process, it is a good start in raising the necessary resources.
The committee will work to narrow down the alternatives and make a recommendation in the early part of the new year.
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apiece, and the hybrid buses cost $700,000. Yet it was believed that the combination of the fuel savings and potential maintenance savings would cause the total cost of ownership to be lower over time for the hybrid buses. With reduced emissions, fuel consumption and particulate matter, this switch was in alignment with the City's