Last month, President Biden signed the American Rescue Plan into law. This sprawling and comprehensive piece of legislation provides significant resources to Alexandria's residents, our businesses, our schools and our local government.

Alexandria's government will receive $59.4 million from the legislation, divided into two allotments, one to be received next month and the other to be received in May of 2022. All funds must be spent by December 31, 2024.

Prior to the enactment of the legislation, the City Manager recommended a framework similar to how the City utilized previous COVID relief funding, I have pushed for us to broaden our thinking. I believe we should use this money to create sustainable structures that will not only help us recover, but benefit the City for decades to come. Furthermore, given the substantial resources that ACPS will be receiving, I believe that Alexandria's expenditure of these combined resources should be closely coordinated to ensure the maximum benefit for our community.

Last month, the City Council reviewed a new framework for the expenditure of these funds. There will be community engagement over the next few months with Council adopting the final plan for Fiscal Year 2022 in July.

Additionally, the House of Representatives is bringing back what used to be known as "earmarks" and will now be called "Community Funding Requests." Later this month, Council will be discussing input we will provide Congressman Beyer's office on the types of project priorities the City will suggest.

In May of last year, the City received our first tranche of Federal CARES Act money. We have put that money to good use in benefiting the residents and businesses in need in our City.

In June, as we were on track to fully expend the $13.9 million that the City received, I wrote to urge the quick release of the second tranche of funding. At the end of July, the Governor announced the allocation of that money to address the significant need that remained.

While jurisdictions around the country have faced real criticism for frivolous expenditure of these scarce funds, the City committed early in this crisis to ensure that we effectively used these funds to assist our residents and businesses who have suffered during this crisis and that we leave no dollar on the table. I believe we did just that.

In February, the City Manager presented his proposed Operating Budget for Fiscal Year 2022 (July 1, 2021 - June 30, 2022) and his proposed Capital Improvement Program (CIP) for Fiscal Year 2022 through Fiscal Year 2031. This began City Council's annual budget process, which will culminate in the adoption of the budget on May 5th.

You can watch the City Manager's presentation of the budget to the public, which was recorded shortly after the presentation to the City Council.

The budget is being considered and adopted against the backdrop of an extraordinary set of constraints and uncertainty. In November, the City Manager presented his initial outlook for the upcoming budget at our annual Council retreat.

Shortly after the presentation of the budget, state law requires that the City Council adopt a ceiling for the real estate tax rate that might be considered during the budget process. Once that rate is "advertised," the Council cannot adopt a rate that is higher, but may go lower. While I wished to advertise the City Manager's proposed rate or $1.11, the majority of the City Council voted to advertise the current rate of $1.13. This means that while the real estate tax rate may decrease this year, as the City Manager has proposed, it cannot increase. This does mean that 2021 will be the fifth straight year without a real estate tax rate increase in Alexandria.

The stormwater utility fee will be doubling (as addressed in last month's newsletter) to address stormwater management and Chesapeake Bay clean-up mandates. This fee is paid by all property owners, including non-taxable properties. The new annual fee will be $78.40 for condos, $117.60 for townhomes, $280 for small single-family homes and $467.60 for large single-family homes.

The City Manager has again prioritized our schools, with 35% of all new revenue proposed to go to our schools, and full funding of the School Board's approved operating budget request. 

In additional the budget documents linked above, all questions asked by members of Council during the process are posted, along with answers, online for the public to review. Any request to change the proposed budget must be initiated with a budget question, so it is a good window into the thoughts of your elected representatives. 

Let me know your thoughts!

Yet our four Metrorail stations (soon to be five) serve only a small portion of our 15.5 square miles. On an average weekday, almost 24,000 people board a bus, either DASH or Metrobus. 

The Alexandria Transit Vision Plan is the City's effort to rethink our buses. At the end of 2019,  DASH approved the most significant "re-imagination" of its route structure in its history. 

This new route structure will be introduced in September of this year. To coincide with the implementation of this new route structure, I will be proposing that we use this opportunity to make DASH free for all riders. Free transit will expand ridership by an estimated 23%, bring riders back to transit following the pandemic, help achieve the City's environmental goals and disproportionately benefit our lower-income residents. With ridership depressed due to the pandemic, the initial cost to implement this change is dramatically reduced. The City Council will ultimately determine the future of this proposal as we work to finalize our budget this month.

Communities around our nation have done the difficult work of rethinking their bus route networks to improve frequency of service, reduce route duplication, and ultimately serve more riders.  Houston's overnight route network transformation helped spur growth in ridership at a time when transit ridership was dropping elsewhere. 

To provide a factual basis for this effort, a "Transit Choices Report" was developed. This report is a compendium of data on our existing transit network, designed to support this significant undertaking. 

At various points over the years, I have written in this newsletter attempting to relate the national conversation on policing to our experiences in Alexandria. 

Before the end of last year, the City Council received the initial feedback from our staff on Council efforts to explore alternative response techniques, focused on efforts to use non-police response for quality-of-life complaints, homelessness, behavioral health crisis, intoxication and beyond.

In February, the City Council unanimously approved the creation of the Alexandria Crisis Intervention Co-Responding Pilot Program. This new program will pair a dedicated behavioral health clinician with a trained behavioral health police officer to respond to calls for service regarding residents in need of behavioral health crisis intervention. This new program will provide residents in crisis with more specialized services to ensure safety of the individual in crisis and the community.

In September, the Council received an initial proposal for alternatives to improve civilian oversight. While I was comfortable bringing this proposal to the public for feedback, my colleagues wished to see further alternatives. You can watch the discussion of Council on this matter online.

Last month, the Council held a Special Meeting specifically to review a new draft ordinance for the creation of an Independent Community Policing Review Board, make amendments and advertise the ordinance for public comment.

The ordinance unanimously introduced by the Council will now be docketed on Saturday April 17th at our public hearing beginning at 9:30 AM. Public testimony is accepted that day and Council is expected to take final action on the proposal.

We have officers that participate in training designed to address implicit bias in policing. 

In the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, our Police Department and our Sheriff's Department provided summaries of use of force guidelines, procedures and practices for public review and comment.

In November, our staff brought to the Council a study on the costs for implementing a body-worn camera program for the City's public safety agencies. The proposed budget includes a comprehensive proposal for such a program, but it is not funded at this time.

In 2017, the City released a first of its kind external study and analysis of five years of Alexandria Police traffic citation data. Conducted by the Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy at George Mason University, this effort looked at over 91,000 citations issued from 2011 - 2015.

In February of 2018, the City Council adopted this procedure as policy to ensure that this type of accountability and analysis remains a practice in the future. 

Since that time, the analysis has been conducted annually, with the 2019 data released last year. With the adoption of new legislation during the most recent General Assembly session, our Police Department will work to modify data collection and reporting to comply with new mandates.

To ensure that the conversation does not end here, our Police Chief Michael Brown has appointed a Community Advisory Team to advise the Police Department on these issues. 

In three weeks, Alexandria Democrats can begin voting to choose their nominees for statewide, state and local offices.

Alexandria Republicans have chosen a local canvass and a state convention to select their nominees.

This November, Alexandria voters will elect a Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, members of the Virginia House of Delegates, Alexandria Mayor, Alexandria Sheriff, Alexandria Commonwealth's Attorney, all six members of the Alexandria City Council and all 9 members of the Alexandria City School Board.

On Tuesday June 8th, all City polling places will be open from 6 AM until 7 PM for the Democratic Primary.

The June 8th Primary will be used to select the Democratic nominees for Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, Alexandria Mayor, Alexandria City Council and the member of the Virginia House of Delegates representing the 45th District (the eastern end of Alexandria).

Last year, Virginia introduced "no-excuse" early voting, so voters have three choices to vote in the June primary:

I'll see you at the polls!

In February, the City Council unanimously approved the redevelopment of the Heritage at Old Town. The approval of this project redeveloped 140 aging affordable housing units, renewed their affordability protection for 40 years and created an additional 55 new affordable housing units. This effort will be subsidized by the creation of 555 market-rate units on the site.

This was the first development under the approved South Patrick Street Housing Affordability Strategy and it demonstrated that the City could create and preserve 195 affordable housing units without spending a single taxpayer dollar. As the City continues to employ an "all of the above" approach to addressing affordability in our community, this project provides an important example of how we might use our land-use authority to create affordability, in this case "deep" affordability, supporting residents who earn as little as 40% of our area median income.

Across the plan area, along Route 1, 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 and could be redeveloped at any time. For this phase of redevelopment 244 of those units will be redeveloped.

Inaction would have meant 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 planning process that ultimately led to the adoption of our strategy.

In approving the strategy for preservation of the affordable housing in this area, the City created a new zoning tool, entitled the "Residential Multi-Family" zone. This new zone allows for an increase of density up to a 3.0 FAR (Floor Area Ratio), if a third of the new density is designated as committed affordable housing.

For a quarter of a century, the City has been working to bring an inline Metro Rail station to Potomac Yard. Just before the end of 2019, we broke ground and formally began construction of that station.

You can watch my remarks at the groundbreaking, as well as other remarks from those who participated, including the Governor, in the video the City has posted from the event. 

You can review an update of construction activities, including photos on the City's website.

On the front page of the Final Environmental Impact Statement for the Potomac Yard Metro Station are the seals of four entities: Federal Transit Administration, Department of the Interior, WMATA and the 

The Potomac Yard Metro project will facilitate the creation of up to 26,000 new jobs and will bring up to $2 billion of new tax revenue to the City (over 30 years). It removes thousands of vehicles from one of the most crowded corridors in our City. It promotes the creation of the kind of walkable community our City has long desired in Potomac Yard. 

In 2008, along with then-Councilman Rob Krupicka, I proposed a new start to efforts to bring Metro to Potomac Yard.  We included language in the City's Transportation Master Plan explicitly calling for a new station at Potomac Yard. We also tied the construction and funding of Metro to the development occurring in the Yard.   

The result is a funding plan for Potomac Yard Metro that not only leverages the development activity in Potomac Yard, but also does so without requiring the contributions of General Fund taxpayers.     

The largest environmental, economic development, and transportation initiative in our City's history is being accomplished using one of the most innovative funding mechanisms used anywhere in the country.     

Last month, hybrid students began returning to Alexandria City Public Schools (ACPS) buildings. This was welcome progress in efforts to bring our students back to in-person education across the City.

On March 16th, students who had selected hybrid learning returned to classrooms for two days a week. Over 4,000 students are now in classrooms part-time.

ACPS has indicated that they will announce plans after Spring Break to accommodate those families who are fully virtually but now wish to switch to hybrid learning. Additionally, they are exploring a third day of in-person learning for those students requiring Social, Emotional and Academic Learning (SEAL) supports. With new guidance from the Centers for Disease Control, reduced distancing requirements will now facilitate the return of additional students.

The City's Health Department has worked closely for months with ACPS to support a safe return to classrooms. Alexandria was the first jurisdiction in the Commonwealth to begin vaccinating our teachers. Governor Ralph Northam came to Alexandria to witness the first vaccination. We will continue to push to explore existing City facilities that may be repurposed to support the return to in-person learning, either in the spring, summer or in the fall if necessary. The City will ensure that our schools have the financial resources that they need to bring students back safely. I cannot envision a higher priority.

There is no question that policymakers influencing school decisions want to see our students back in school. As a parent of two ACPS students myself, I share that desire. The health benefits of students being in school together are considerable.

Just over 44 years ago, the Virginia Supreme Court invalidated the collective bargaining rights of public sector employees in Virginia. At that time, 19 Virginia jurisdictions, including the City of Alexandria had some form of collective bargaining with public sector employees.

Under legislation adopted by the Virginia General Assembly last year, localities in Virginia can again allow their employees to collectively bargain on the conditions of their employment.

Last month, the City Council held a special meeting to consider a complicated ordinance that would make Alexandria the first jurisdiction in Virginia to bring back collective bargaining.

This ordinance is now docketed for public hearing and final passage on Saturday April 17th, at our hearing beginning at 9:30 AM. Members of the public are welcome to sign-up to speak and provide input as Council works to finalize this ordinance.

The right to collectively bargain is a core human right enshrined in the United National Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

As we return to this process, I look forward to a constructive relationship with the organizations that our public-sector employees may select to represent them.

Getting around is central to our daily lives, even in the midst of a pandemic. The ability to get to places of work, education, worship and play shapes housing decisions for most of our residents. Your local government expends a significant amount of your tax dollars and civic energy working to improve your ability to get to those places that you want to go.

I chair the Planning and Programming Committee of the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority (NVTA). In the fall, our committee received a sobering presentation showing the impacts of the pandemic on transit ridership, road usage and non-vehicular transportation (walking and biking). While it showed that our world will come back to normal, it will clearly be a while.

But we cannot use the pandemic as an excuse to cease progress in improving mobility in our City in the short-term and beyond. Over 12 years ago, the City brought together a group of residents who developed our first comprehensive Transportation Master Plan. This plan was the first time the City approved a transit-oriented vision for our future, designed to ease the impacts of congestion and provide alternatives to our residents beyond the single-occupancy vehicle.

Led by a group of Alexandria residents, we are working to update this plan for the future. Yesterday, our staff released the draft plan for review by the public, focusing on:

Once you have reviewed this draft plan, we would like your input. The deadline for input in this phase is April 30th.

If you have not been receiving my campaign updates and you wish to receive information on this new campaign, please drop my campaign a line and we'll get you on the list for the campaign.