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During the County Board’s recessed meeting yesterday (Tuesday), Board members directed County Manager Mark Schwartz to arrange more opportunities to submit logo ideas, while considering rejected designs.
“I do like the idea of looking at a few additional logos,” Board Chair Matt de Ferranti said. “Providing this one additional short opportunity might give us broader ownership of this decision.”
Schwartz said the community will have an update on what this extension will look like “later this week.” The Board vote on approving a new logo will likely be pushed from June to September, he said.
“I recommend we extend the time for citizen submissions and ask our group to pore over those,” he said. “Let’s see if there are any new nuggets or old ones that we can send back to the Board for further work.”
Units in the Serrano Apartments, a high-rise housing complex on Columbia Pike, have three things going for them: they are spacious, have nice views, and are affordable.
“But if you go inside those units, the reality is totally different,” said Janeth Valenzuela, who has been advocating for better living conditions for Serrano tenants for two years.
Mice and rat infestations. Balconies with broken glass and rust. Dirty HVAC units with water damage underneath. Shoddy maintenance.
These are just some of the problems inside the 280-unit apartment building at 5535 Columbia Pike, not just according to Valenzuela, but also the Arlington NAACP, immigrant and tenants’ rights group BU-GATA, interfaith clergy group VOICE Arlington, and the Asian American Pacific Islander Civic Engagement (ACE) Collaborative.
April 28, 2021 at 10:45am
Arlington County Manager Mark Schwartz aims to have a new police chief in place within the next month or two.
And this police chief, he said during a meeting last week, must appreciate Arlington’s diversity and understand how different communities react to police presence.
“Our police officers meet with residents, visitors and those who work here during the most stressful moments of their lives,” he said. “I’m looking for a chief who understands our community gains strength from its diversity.”
The police department has been without a permanent leader since September, when the former police chief M. Jay Farr retired, citing souring relations with the County Board as one of his reasons for leaving. Acting chief Andy Penn is leading in his place.
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The majority of Arlington homeowners will face higher property taxes, after the County Board approved a budget that holds the property tax rate steady.
The Fiscal Year 2022 budget includes $1.4 billion in spending, a 3.5% increase from last year’s budget. Of that, $530 million will go to Arlington Public Schools, which will pass its final budget next month.
Earlier this year County Manager Mark Schwartz proposed a budget that would have only boosted spending by 1.4%, calling it a “transition budget” appropriate for the challenges presented by the pandemic.
The new county budget includes millions in additional expenditures, thanks to higher-than-expected business tax revenue and an expected $46 million in federal funding for Arlington’s local COVID-19 response from the American Rescue Plan, to be split between this year’s and next year’s budgets.