On Thursday (July 10), the Alexandria School Board will elect its chair and vice chair for the 2025-2026 school year.
Last month, current Vice Chair Kelly Carmichael Booz announced that she would not seek the vice chair or chair positions, leaving the question of her succession open. Rief is currently supported by several Board Members for reelection to a third term, according to sources.
Allison Silberberg has something to say.
The former Alexandria mayor says she has received a great response after launching her own Substack on July 1. So far, she posts once a week with “Allison Silberberg’s Plain Talk,” weighing in on the recently passed Big Beautiful Bill in Congress (BBB) and the devastating flooding in the Texas Hill Country.
Among the movers serving Alexandria, VA, 495 Movers stands out for a simple reason: its local hourly rate includes packing materials, furniture disassembly and reassembly, and protection for floors, walls, and elevators. The company has been in business since 2009 and has completed more than 20,000 moves, a number that keeps climbing.
Anyone who has hired movers in the DC area knows the familiar pattern. A low hourly rate wins the call. Then the invoice arrives with a charge for boxes, a charge for taking the bed apart, a fee for the stairs, and another for the elevator. By the end, the number on the bill has little to do with the number in the ad. 495 Movers was built to avoid that.
495 Movers is a full-service moving company serving Alexandria and the rest of the DMV, founded in 2009 by people who had worked as movers for several other companies first. They wanted to do it differently.
“We wanted to take a different approach, offering a simple, honest, and transparent approach for the customer,” said Moti Kachlon, co-owner at 495 Movers. For local moves, that meant building the most common extras into the hourly rate. Seventeen years and more than 20,000 moves later, the company is still growing.
Alexandria is a hard place to move. A truck on an Old Town block gets watched by neighbors, property managers, and a family wondering whether the sofa will make the turn on a staircase built long before sofas got this big.
Old Town’s rowhouses have narrow staircases and tight turns, which is why large furniture often has to come apart to get out. Del Ray’s bungalows and rowhouses have basements that hold more than anyone remembers. And condo and apartment buildings in Carlyle, Potomac Yard, and the West End often require movers to carry a certificate of insurance and book the elevator, with building managers who care a great deal about scuffed hallways. The street adds its own complications, from cobblestones to limited curb space.
That’s the context for how 495 Movers prices its work.
For local moves, the rate covers four things that many movers bill separately:
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New research from the Pew Research Center reveals a stark reality about how Americans consume news. While 74% of Americans regularly encounter paywalls when searching for news online, only 17% actually pay for journalism. When people encounter a paywall, only 1% pay for access; most either look elsewhere for free content (53%) or give up (32%).
Good morning, Alexandria! Today is Wednesday, July 9, the 190th day of 2025. There are 175 days left in the year.
⛈️ Today’s weather: Scattered showers and thunderstorms, mainly after 3 p.m. Partly sunny, with a high near 92. Heat index values as high as 101. Calm wind becoming south around six mph in the afternoon. The chance of precipitation is 30%. Showers and thunderstorms tonight before 2 a.m., then scattered showers between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m. Patchy fog after 10 p.m. Low around 72. South wind around five mph, becoming calm in the evening. The chance of precipitation is 80%—new rainfall amounts between a quarter and half of an inch are possible.
If you are interested in learning more about Continuing Care Retirement Communities (also known as "Life Plan Communities"), whether for yourself or for a loved one, please join our free workshop on Wednesday, November 4 from 5:00-7:00 at the Arlington office of Long & Foster. We are hosting this workshop in conjunction with Lisa Bates of the Williamsburg Landing community, which is a particularly excellent model of the way these communities work, and one you may wish to consider!
– How do Continuing Care Retirement Communities work?
– What do they offer?
– How much do they cost, and what are the financial models offered?
– How do you how to evaluate them, and choose the one that's right for you?
– How do you make a plan for a move like this?
– How do you handle a lifetime's worth of possessions?
An employee at Inova Alexandria Hospital has been fired, and the Alexandria Police Department is investigating after a patient’s credit cards were stolen from a room at the hospital and used at a nearby store.
A woman in hospital scrubs with an Inova lanyard around her neck was later identified by an Inova Alexandria Hospital staffer, according to a recently released search warrant affidavit. The police have filed no charges, and although Inova did not disclose the employee’s job title, the hospital system confirmed that the employee is no longer employed at the hospital.
ALXnow has uncovered more details on the suspect charged with the May 26 quadruple shooting in Arlandria.
Cristian Gonzales Gomez, the 21-year-old Falls Church man charged in connection with the firefight, was in jail for 14 months until earlier this year for possession with intent to distribute Schedule I/II drugs to juveniles and possession of a firearm on school grounds in Fairfax County in 2023.
Congressman Don Beyer (D-VA) joined scientists from across the nation on Capitol Hill today to showcase research that has been halted due to grant cancellations by the Trump administration.
Congressman Beyer, who represents the 8th Congressional District of Virginia (which includes Alexandria), spoke at “The Things We’ll Never Know: A Science Fair of Canceled Grants,” a three-hour event hosted by House Democrats on the Science, Space, and Technology Committee in the Rayburn House Office Building Foyer. More than twenty researchers whose federal grants have been terminated presented their work to lawmakers and discussed the impact of the funding cuts.
The National Weather Service has issued a Severe Thunderstorm Watch for Alexandria and much of Northern Virginia until 9 p.m. Tuesday evening (July 8), as the region faces a dangerous combination of extreme heat, potential flash flooding, and damaging winds.
The watch covers 22 counties in Virginia, including Alexandria, Arlington, Fairfax, and Prince William, along with portions of Maryland and the District of Columbia. Meteorologists warn that scattered severe thunderstorms will be capable of producing damaging winds throughout the afternoon and evening hours.
Alexandria residents will have the opportunity to spend an evening with bestselling author Adriana Trigiani on Friday, July 25, at a special fundraising event benefiting the Campagna Center at the George Washington Masonic National Memorial (101 Callahan Dr.).
The evening will feature Trigiani in conversation with Christine Gunderson, a former television journalist, Capitol Hill press secretary, and debut novelist. The event celebrates “the power of storytelling, literature, and conversation” while raising funds for one of Alexandria’s oldest nonprofit organizations.
