The value of Alexandria’s total residential tax base has outpaced its commercial tax base, according to the city’s Office of Real Estate Assessments.
Over last year, the city’s overall real estate assessments increased 3.82%, or $1.7 billion, to reach a total of $43.88 billion, according to a report that the City Council will receive at its legislative meeting tomorrow (Tuesday) at City Hall (301 King Street).
It’s been a busy week in Alexandria.
As teachers fought for a pay raise, Alexandria City High School (ACHS) students walked out of the classrooms in protest against Alexandria City Public Schools leadership stonewalling a lunchtime program.
After years of discussion and debate, Alexandria’s City Council unanimously voted to approve a resolution funding a collective bargaining agreement between the City of Alexandria and the local firefighters union.
The agreement includes funding for many of the problems raised by Alexandria firefighters over recent years, from long hours to improved infrastructure.
The Alexandria City Council could be signing a lease tonight for the new ‘West End City Hall‘.
The council is scheduled to review a 10-year lease agreement for the future home of the city’s Department of Community and Human Services at 4850 Mark Center Drive tonight (Tuesday). If approved, the City’s Health Department’s lease for the Redella S. “Del” Pepper Community Resource Center would go into effect on March 1.
A redevelopment vote (item 6) that was meant to be part of the consent calendar — items generally approved without controversy — ended up taking up a large swath of a City Council meeting this Saturday and became the center of a discussion about how hard the city should push for “voluntary” affordable housing contributions.
The topic at hand was the conversion of the non-residential upper floors of 1225 King Street into 12 residential units. There was little contentious in the presented redevelopment plans, but it sparked a discussion of how the city should be handling affordable housing in the increasingly popular residential conversions.
At a City Council meeting last night (Tuesday), Alexandria Mayor Justin Wilson unveiled the next stage of plans to ramp up the renaming of streets that honor Confederate leaders, the Washington Post first reported.
While the city has renamed the Alexandria portion of Jefferson Davis Highway and removed the Appomattox statue, streets honoring Confederate leaders like the “Gray Ghost” John Singleton Mosby or Ku Klux Klan founder Nathan Bedford Forrest still exist around the city.
Alexandria is hoping to get $400,000 from the state to help with resurfacing — particularly for the city’s iconic King Street.
The City Council is set to review a grant application to the Virginia Department of Transportation’s State of Good Repair program.
While flags on private property are mostly unlimited, a new resolution (item 16) heading to the City Council next week outlines some specifics on which flags can fly from city flagpoles.
It’s a topic that can be controversial — in 2015 the city finally prohibited the flying of Confederate flags on city poles.
(Updated at 1 p.m.) The first set of buildings in the West End project — the start of a massive redevelopment of what was Landmark Mall — were approved at a City Council meeting this weekend.
Developer Foulger-Pratt won the unanimous approval of four blocks of the sprawling development, consisting of residential, commercial and medical offices.
Among the many topics covered in the legislative package, Alexandria is sending to the state is a proposal that could make it easier for locals who are not citizens to join the Police Department and Sheriff’s Office.
At a meeting last week, Legislative Director Sarah Taylor told the City Council about a proposal she received from Alexandria’s Sheriff’s Office.
As the City of Alexandria gets ready to kick off its advocacy for the upcoming general assembly session, one of the main talking points is how the city could use more help from the state in handling affordable housing.
Meronne Teklu, speaking on behalf of the Economic Opportunities Commission, the Landlord-Tenant Relations Board and the Alexandria Housing Affordability Advisory Committee, told the City Council this weekend that each of the groups expressed concerns about the rising rate of evictions.
