Sarah Bagley has four cell phones sitting on her desk, and promises not to buy a fifth if she’s elected to the Alexandria City Council this fall.
By day, Bagley is the executive director of D.C.-based nonprofit Chisom Housing Group and manages 20 affordable housing communities in 11 states across the country, although none are in the D.C. Metro area. One phone is personal, one is for work and the other two are resident service lines.
Monday night was a clinic in anti-establishment thinking, as the final group of City Council candidates opined on such issues as transparency, the Seminary Road Diet, the elimination of school resource officer funding and shifting from an at-large to a ward system.
It was the third and final Council forum with the Seminary Ridge Civic Association, which last week featured two virtual panels with the other candidates.
School Board chair Meagan Alderton is pushing for the last-minute addition of an aquatics facility to the planned Alexandria City High School expansion, noting that the addition would help toward rectifying a longstanding racial disparity.
Alderton said Alexandria is guilty of the same nationwide disparity in swimming proficiency, with lack of access to pools for Black Americans creating disproportionately white aquatics sports teams. It’s a disparity Alderton said the city can start to push back against with a new pool at the Minnie Howard expansion planned as part of the high school overhaul.
On January 6, Alexandria City Council candidate Kirk McPike was sheltering in place at the U.S. Capitol with his boss, Democratic Congressman Mark Takano.
The world watched as American politics reached a boiling point, and McPike says that the experience was heartbreaking. As Takano’s chief of staff, McPike directed that all staff stay home that day. He and Takano were eventually evacuated to the Longworth House Office Building, where they rode out the proverbial storm.
It was another busy week in Alexandria.
For the second week in a row, our top story was on T.C. Williams High School teacher Gregory Elliott, whose D.C.-based go-go band Experience Unlimited was featured at the Oscars.
(Updated 5 p.m.) Statements on the Seminary Road Diet and government transparency were the highlights of Thursday night’s Seminary Ridge Civic Association candidate forum.
Thursday night’s forum (the second of three events) included City Councilman John Taylor Chapman, former School Board Member Bill Campbell, Meronne Teklu, Republican candidate Darryl Nirenberg and Bill Rossello.
School Board vice chair condemns City Council elimination of School Resource Office program — “Without surveying the larger community, they made a decision that frankly their backgrounds don’t qualify them to understand the ramifications of their actions. It’s still puzzling, even after a 2.5-hour exchange by council, what problem council was trying to solve, as the SRO program has not only been highlighted to be a successful partnership, but also there was no evidence to suggest otherwise.” [Alex Times]
Investigative journalist Nick Horrock dies — “Perhaps the best example of his courage came in 1968 when he was trying to expose problems in the prison system. His head shaved, he went undercover as an inmate at the Maryland State Penitentiary. With only the warden and the governor aware of why he was truly there, there was no special protection from either the inmates or the guards. He survived unscathed, he wrote, he won accolades and prizes but he was awash in fear when he was doing it.” [Gazette]
The Seminary Road Diet took center stage Tuesday night, as City Council candidates met in the first of three West End forums.
City Council candidates Canek Aguirre (incumbent), Alyia Gaskins, Kirk McPike, Patrick Moran and Sarah Bagley were the first batch of candidates to speak at the Seminary Ridge Civic Association candidate forum.
What a week in Alexandria.
Our top story this week is on Gregory Elliott, a special education teacher at T.C. Williams High School. Elliot also goes by the name of “Sugar Bear” for the D.C.-based go-go band Experience Unlimited, and their song “Da’ Butt” from the Spike Lee movie “School Daze” was featured at the Oscars, along with actress Glenn Close dancing to it.
Vaccination in Alexandria could open up for ages 12 to 15 soon after the Pfizer vaccine recently cleared federal approval.
In a recent update to the City Council, Alexandria Population Health Manager Natalie Talis gave an update on where the city is so far in vaccination efforts and what, including the vaccine age expansion, is ahead.
Both figuratively and literally, last night’s mayoral debate brought brought longtime rivals Justin Wilson and Allison Silberberg back to their old turf.
The Del Ray Business Association debate touched on new issues, like recovery from pandemic, but some of the more telling moments were when host Julie Carey reopened old wounds from 2018 that had never healed. The debate also focused on several issues around Del Ray, where Mayor Wilson began his civic career and where former Mayor Silberberg frequently hosted many of her campaign kick-offs and rallies.
