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ARLINGTON, VA. - Yesterday the Arlington Chamber of Commerce, with premier partner NVC and co-hosts Alexandria Chamber of Commerce, Loudoun Chamber of Commerce, and Northern Virginia Regional Commission, hosted the 9th Annual Northern Virginia Regional Elected Leaders Summit, sponsored by Dominion Energy.
More than 200 business, government, and community leaders from across the region gathered for the summit held at Northern Virginia Community College, Alexandria Campus. The program was moderated by NBC Washington Reporter Joseph Olmo and consisted of a panel discussion of local elected leaders of jurisdictions in Northern Virginia: Juli E. Briskman, Vice Chair of the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors; Libby Garvey, Arlington County Board Chair; Jeff McKay, Chair of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors; and Justin Wilson, Mayor of Alexandria.
Beginning with economic development, Libby Garvey, Arlington County Board Chair, emphasized her support for a robust network of internships for students and workers to develop skills. "We need a lot more paid internships; these opportunities just don't happen enough," said Garvey. She noted the success of the Arlington Talent Program, a paid internship program run by Arlington Economic Development and Exelaration that recently graduated a cohort of 25 interns, adding "That's something that the region really needs to be doing more of."
Jeff McKay, Chair of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, discussed Fairfax County's approach to adaptive reuse of office buildings as a component of modern development. "It had less to do with COVID and more to do with... creating places where people want to be," said McKay. "What we were seeing in the county is a lot of businesses and offices moving to places in the county where people want to be; which is along transit lines, in mixed use communities."
Also on the topic of economic development, Juli E. Briskman, Vice Chair of the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors, articulated the need to consider child care as a key issue facing residents. "Two-thirds of the people who left the workforce during COVID were women, mostly because of the child care issue. This isn't just a family issue - this is a workforce issue, it is a business issue," noted Briskman.
Shifting gears to the topic of housing, Justin Wilson, Mayor of Alexandria, noted that housing policy "is the rare place where local government has most of the authority." Regarding division on housing policy reform, Wilson added that "in order to have coherent and consistent housing policies, you have to build support. We have to work with the public to help them understand how we connect new policies with problems we're seeing."
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