An Alexandria for All Seasons
There are rhythms to life in Alexandria. Seasons, if you will. We’re just about to wrap up Parade Season, for example, a time of year in which the citizenry throngs the streets of Old Town to celebrate men in kilts, men in wigs, and men in kilts again over a stretch of approximately 10 weeks (feels like three). Earlier in the fall we had Unplanned Water Features Season and before that Random Fireworks Season. Right now, however, we’re about to head into Budget Season, which for those residents that closely track and participate in civic affairs has long been the focus of annual advocacy and engagement with city council.
One of the things that has made the past year unusual (aside from, you know, the threatened spankings) has in fact been the volume of off-season (so to speak) public engagement. The conversations about zoning and the proposed entertainment district in Potomac Yard have driven the kind of public testimony, local news coverage, yard signs, comment section wars—the whole shebang—that we typically only see in the spring when we make our opinions heard on the exclusion or inclusion of a particular element of the budget. In fairness, more year-round engagement on a variety of issues is most likely a net good—we here at ALXtra can’t get enough of people getting into the weeds of local issues—but it has also definitely been different in a way that we hadn’t entirely put our finger on until now.
Because now it is, in fact, Budget Season! The manager’s budget was released last Tuesday kicking off a process that will run until May 1 and include waypoints like the advertisement of the maximum tax rate (next week), add/delete proposals from members of council (early April), and work sessions throughout March and April. Here are the key toplines because we know not all of you have had the chance to read the Budget in Brief (which is still long) or Justin’s newsletter summary (which is somehow even longer?).
The manager is proposing a $911.3 million operating budget for FY25 (which starts July 1) alongside a $2.33 billion capital improvement program that runs until FY34 (so, ten years). About a third of the operating budget goes to city personnel costs, and about a third of the operating budget is transferred to ACPS. The proposed budget fully funds the increase requested by the school superintendent (around 4% more than last year), it has investments in retaining public employee talent (2% market rate adjustment), and it covers our annual commitments to the city workforce covered by collective bargaining agreements (police, fire, and some municipal staff).
And there’s a whole lot more than that which you can dive into yourself on the city’s genuinely thorough and helpful budget website, including this great section of budget questions asked by members of council and answered by an unblinking and over caffeinated Mayor Wilson hard-working members of the city budget staff. Now, as we’ve established over the course of many newsletters we are very smart [Editor’s note: well, one of us is] and we are very good at math [Editor’s note: Jesse’s not] so you’ll just have to trust us when we say that this budget definitely maths a lot of math [Editor’s note: Jesse wrote that]. But budgets also tell a story, and that’s what we mainly want to focus on today.
The story of Alexandria’s FY25 budget is one of a city that wants to live up to its values but those values are starting to look like too little butter spread over too much toast. We want to pay hardworking public servants what they’re worth. We want to fund our schools. We want to keep DASH fare-free. We want to get people into homes through affordable housing programs, and keep them there with investments in eviction prevention measures. On the capital improvement side, we’re paving streets and managing stormwater and investing in transit and building schools. Every single one of these is an important priority and drives quality of life outcomes that everyone in this city deserves and expects. These are investments and commitments that we have to make, but the revenue necessary to make them is coming from an increasingly limited and structurally brittle source.
The story this budget tells is not some rom-com where after some hilarious misunderstandings related to food allergies and unusual (but secretly endearing) hobbies the couple resolves their different opinions about funding food distribution hubs and gets together. Neither is it some pulse-pounding action movie that gets people up and out of their seats cheering for the hero to yippee-ki-yay our commercial property tax base deficiency away for good before the credits roll. This story is more like the latest MCU movie—it’s really long, it’s a ton of money, it’s connected to everything, you sort of remember some of the characters from last time, but you also need to watch the next one to see if things work out.
We’re just at the start of a long process, and if you care about some (or all) of the things we’ve talked about here or if you’re just a fan of math [Editor’s note: like Jesse!] you should plan to make your voice heard in the months ahead. To be the city we want to be—the city we need to be—we have to make tangible the values that inspire and motivate us. A budget is only a soulless aggregation of numbers if that’s all we let it be. It can and should be more than that. It should be the manifestation of the commitment we all make to one another every day by living here, by saying that together our resources are more than the sum of each part.
Things You May Have Missed Because You Have a Life
NPR’s Morning Edition national broadcast featured ACHS students’ Black History Month showcase of poetry, dance, and theater!
Alexandria’s Amtrak station was the second-busiest in Virginia last year with 327,285 rides. Congratulations to the 27,285 riders who along with Mayor Wilson’s 300,000 personal train trips made this achievement possible.
Several Alexandrians spoke on panels at the SXSW EDU conference and festival in Austin this week. It must have been wild to travel to a city that’s known for being “weird” since Alexandria is so normal in every way, just an incredible culture shock. Crazy!
Local Discourse Power Rankings
Not in My Potomac Yard (Last week: 2). In the three months since the December announcement that he planned to bring two professional sports teams to the Commonwealth of Virginia, Glenn Youngkin has: revealed a surprising degree of illiteracy with the General Assembly’s legislative process, dragged his feet on negotiating directly with the people involved in approving his top-priority goal, said Democrats do not believe in America, let his state party call the Speaker of the House of Delegates a felon, watched his Lieutenant Governor unforgivably deadname a Democratic member of the legislature, endorsed an insurrectionist for President of the United States, and just generally been an enormously ineffective and incompetent goober about this whole thing. The only conclusion that can be drawn from this is that
tall people shouldn’t be allowed in positions of powerhis height is his only favorable and redeeming characteristic, and it’s pretty obvious to anyone watching that this be-vested schmuck has been wildly in over his head the entire time.Universal Suffrage (Last week: NR). Fellas, is it bad when people are allowed to vote? If recent coverage in local media and chatter in comment sections and listservs is to be believed, yes, yes it is. Some local politics knowers have apparently decided that all the past and current ills experienced by this city flow directly from the wellspring of deciding to [checks notes] move our local elections to dates that make it easier for more people to participate. And look, if this is what you actually believe, that’s fine. Do you. But please just see your argument for what it plainly is—a case for rolling back the clock to a retrograde understanding of access to the franchise, and if that’s what you’re aiming for don’t just stop with calendar hijinks! Go big! Measles are already making a comeback in 2024, why not bring back poll taxes too!
You Idiots Are Doing This Road Wrong (Last week: NR). The city’s new parking enforcement contractor issued 4,000 tickets in its first month, and all we can say is: how fucking dare these people do their job so efficiently? Under the terms of their agreement with the city they have an incentive to find as many violations as possible, which is bad because it infringes upon our ability to break the law with impunity. This is America! The United States Constitution guarantees our right to pull over in front of the Taco Bell Cantina while we pick up our order which naturally we will not be tipping on. Parking citations? More like civil rights deprivations!!! No one in this city will know the true meaning of freedom until private vehicle storage on public roads is fully subsidized by the state. Other modes of transit, however, must never receive a single cent from the government because that would be communism.
You Idiots Are Doing This Road… Right?! (Last week: NR). The city announced last week that there were zero traffic fatalities in 2023 despite the valiant efforts of local motorists. When reached for comment, Maryland drivers vowed to try harder next year.
Hanging (With) Chads (Last week: NR). It was Super Tuesday this week, and while the topline results were both predictable and relatively uninteresting, we did learn that 676 of our fellow residents voted for Marianne Williamson to be the Democratic nominee for president and 2,494 of you voted for Vivek Ramaswamy to be the Republican nominee for president… and honestly we just want to get those 3,000 people together for a hang because that party seems like it would be fun as hell. We talked about rom-coms earlier and “She likes crystals. He likes Kristallnacht. From the studio that brought you 17 Dresses, it’s a madcap romp about finding love in the places you least expect” sounds like a blockbuster to us.
Alexandria’s Hottest Club Is… Outside
Speaking of the rhythms of life in Alexandria, let’s check in on where we are meteorologically:
Hell yes!! Deceive us, spring!!! We are so ready for your warm embrace, we don’t even care if more cold weather is waiting around the corner to punch us in the face with additional misery. That’s a problem for Future Us. [Future Editor’s note: hey, ouch, what the fuck?!] Right now Current Us needs this illusory “spring.” We open our arms to it wholeheartedly, though it is the Fake Alexandria of seasons. Winter has been long, y’all. We’re tired of not being able to feel our noses and toes, and of our fingers turning weird colors when we forget to wear gloves outside, a totally normal problem that all the readers of this newsletter definitely experience.
So count us among the stir-crazy masses suffering from an acute case of spring fever. We refer, of course, to the restlessness and exuberance that comes with the changing of the seasons–not to be confused with the ailment from the 1700s commonly known as Spring Disease, which involved “fatigue, malaise, easy bruising, bone pain, hemorrhaging of the scalp and gums, and poor wound healing.” It turned out that one was just scurvy. A lot of people back then forgot to eat a single fruit or vegetable all winter, oopsies! Fortunately, here in Alexandria our bodies are chockablock with vitamin C thanks to our relentless consumption of pizza sauce, and we are physically ready to enjoy all the best that this fickle season has to offer.
And what a lot it has to offer! We can take the dog on longer, more adventurous walks. We can bike without developing frostbite, snotcicles, things of that nature. We can roll our car windows down–which has the handy side benefit of allowing us to scream directly into the faces of reckless drivers when they come within six inches of mowing us down in the crosswalk. But mostly we can drink outside.
That’s right, even this week’s on-and-off drizzle can’t stop us, if it’s over 55 degrees that means we’re imbibing alfresco. Morning coffee at a sidewalk table, happy hour at the beer garden—all times of day and types of beverage are fair game for outdoor consumption. The air is fresh and we are thriving. Yes, we’re doing the same thing we would normally be doing indoors, but that thing is ten times more exciting when done without the artificial confines of walls. This is a fact. After all, when you’re sipping your mocktail or what-have-you outside, you’re surrounded by beautiful greenery, or the peaceful Potomac, or perhaps a scenic parking lot in an industrial zone. Traffic might be whizzing past you, adding a little frisson of danger to your sauvignon blanc. Perhaps there are dogs near you. Cute ones! There are babies. There are children running around the industrial zone parking lot screaming at each other. You’re glaring at the parents. You are the parents. But you’re glaring and/or parenting outside, so by definition you’re having fun!!!
To be clear, thirsty humans are not the only ones who are psyched about the advent of spring (false or otherwise). The trees are blooming suuuuuper early. It’s not time yet, trees! But like Paula Cole singing the theme song for the turn-of-the-millennium teen drama “Dawson’s Creek,” they don’t want to wait. Redbuds are popping off. Daffodils are doing their thing, they don’t give a shit what the calendar says. Can you blame them for being confused? It was the warmest February on record. Scientists might say that’s “concerning” or “bad,” but on the other hand: pretty!
But back to the thirsty humans—this time, double entendre intended. With everyone outside enjoying the warm sunshine and the arboreal blooms, romance is in the air, and the Hallmark Channel is on it. Every year around this time they produce a lineup of movies with spring themes, tragically none of which are about Marianne Williamson and Vivek Ramaswamy voters, but we do get gems like Easter Under Wraps, about “Erika, a marketing director at Cavendish Chocolates, who goes undercover to find out why sales are down and meets handsome chocolatier Bryan,” and True Love Blooms, in which “urban gardener Vikki fights to save her community garden from a real estate developer. But it's not just the flowers that are blooming this spring–there’s also love.”
Which got us thinking (because we have rom-coms on the brain this week)—the possibilities are extremely ripe for a spring Hallmark movie set in Alexandria. Consider: a meet-cute at Greenstreet as two budding horticulturalists reach for the same bag of lobster compost. An enemies-to-lovers romance about neighbors on opposite sides of the arena debate engaged in an escalating yard sign war! A melodrama in which anonymous commenters flirtatiously bantering in the comments under an ALXNow article about street repaving turn out to be two people who are already in a relationship with each other like the characters in the piña colada song!!!
Whew, is it getting hot in here? We’re gonna go step outside to cool off (and also to drink). Tell us your own ALX Hallmark movie pitches–and your favorite local patios/streateries/industrial parking lots–in the comments!
The Alexandria Times Quote of the Week
“Still, the Euille-Hoffman situation is, as high school students say, ‘Not a good look.’”
As we’re always saying, it’s important to use language that resonates with today’s youth when discussing the potential negative inferences of undisclosed money transfers.
We Get Letters
Reader MM writes in response to the Feb. 23 issue:
On the GW Cult, beyond the inordinate focus on him by tourism marketers, there is a very legitimate reason for raising him up. As the hero who repelled the British and gave us independence, as the first President of the United States he could have been anointed President for Life. Yet he chose to step down, establishing the lasting tradition of peaceful transfer of power. It enshrined a precedent that lasted until Jan 6, 2021.
Keep up the incisive snark!
Fiiiiiine we guess George No Middle Name Washington did some cool and good things that left a lasting impression on the formative character of our young nation and established norms regarding the responsibility that comes with great privilege and our shared obligation toward sustaining this collective experiment in self-determination and shared prosperity but we still meant what we said about his teeth.
One Awesome Thing in ALX
Sticking with the movie theme of this week’s issue but taking a highbrow swerve—the Oscars are this weekend! Something exciting always happens on Hollywood’s biggest night, like the wrong movie’s name being announced or grown men slapping each other in the face, but this year something even MORE exciting is happening because one of the nominees is from Alexandria!
Jack Fisk, nominated for the production design of “Killers of the Flower Moon,” graduated from Francis C. Hammond High School in 1964 (back before it became a middle school with light pole placement struggles). While we recognize that certain things were probably different here sixty years ago, we’re confident that Alexandria’s immutable characteristics helped shape him into the craftsman he is today. For example, living in a city obsessed with early American history must have prepared him to create sets with period-accurate materials. Leaded window glass in the forts in “The Revenant,” early 20th century house paint colors in “Flower Moon”... are we sure teenage Jack didn’t serve on the BAR? It’s also unsurprising that he ended up working on every Terrence Malick movie, as all the pretentious whispered voiceover narration pondering the meaning of nature, life, and the universe would have felt pretty familiar to him after attending even one Alexandria city council public hearing.
We can’t wait to tune into the show on Sunday to find out if he wins! (Also, to watch this.) Either way though, we’re so proud of Alexandria’s ongoing awesomeness in the arts as our city continues to punch above its weight on the international stage. We’re crushing it in the film industry (did we mention that Jack Fisk went to Hammond with some guy named [checks notes] David Lynch?), we’re killing it in music… we even produced a famous puppeteer! We hope our community keeps fostering this amazing slate of talent through efforts such as the city’s arts grants program so that we can keep celebrating creative Alexandrians for many awards seasons to come.
You can follow Becky @beckyhammer.bsky.social and Jesse @oconnell.bsky.social on Bluesky, or you can e-mail us anytime at alxtranewsletter@gmail.com.