“Make it happen faster.”
It’s been the rallying cry for countless local residents who have suffered from multiple floods in the last few years. City leaders have promised to expedite stormwater projects, but now admit that many improvements could be years away at best.
The city is starting work on a new municipal fiber optic network, but while the project should boost internet speeds at city facilities and schools, the big news for most local residents is higher internet speeds could be a few years and a few contract negotiations away.
Two coils of plastic tubing were wrapped up at the dig site this morning (Monday), where city officials stuck shovels into the ground. One will carry the new municipal network, but the other — added at minimal expense — will be empty for now but built to house a future network put into place by a private provider.
What a week in Alexandria.
Public uproar over Sunday’s flooding spilled out throughout this week, which continued to be threatened by near-daily flash flood advisories from the National Weather Service.
Danielle Reynolds has actually gotten therapy because of the summer flooding of her Del Ray basement. The family is stuck in a quandary, as moving away isn’t affordable, but neither is spending tens of thousands to continually redo their basement.
“I’ve sought therapy to deal with this, because you can’t move away,” Reynolds told ALXnow. “You can’t afford to buy another house in the area, you love where you live, your kids are friends with all the kids in the neighborhood. You just feel really stuck, and unfortunately there’s not a whole lot that I can do.”
One of the most brought up terms in Alexandria development discussions is Development Special Use Permit — or DSUP — but despite being one of the building blocks for city planning is also one of the more confusing aspects of development.
Karl Moritz, Director of Planning and Zoning for the City of Alexandria, said a DSUP is a type of permit that comes up whenever a development could be seen as having a substantial impact on the neighborhood around it.
As the city’s zoning ordinance nears the 30th anniversary of its last major overhaul, a new process starting this year will look at whether it’s worth continuing to edit and adjust the 1992 document or if the whole thing should be put to pasture with the city starting over fresh.
The zoning ordinance is the guiding document for the city’s approach to all-things-development, from parking requirements to environmental management.
The Alexandria Fire Department is buckling under the strain of a staffing shortage and forced overtime, as firefighters, EMTs and medics say that their operations are not sustainable.
Alexandria Fire Chief Corey Smedley says that staffing shortages within the department, which underwent a restructuring in June, is resulting in an uptick in holdovers (forced overtime).
The Office of Historic Alexandria (OHA) is working through a new project that will help educate on a period of the city’s history rife with confusion and upheaval: last year.
In an office where items considered artifacts are usually arrowheads or ship timbers, City Historian Daniel Lee said his office has started a different kind of collection.
Alexandria will likely be getting an influx of funding from a statewide opioids settlement, but how much and where exactly that funding will be going remains to be determined.
The City Council met last night for a special session — interrupting the brief summer break due to the need to have a decision the city should join the Virginia Opioid Abatement Fund and Settlement Allocation Memorandum.
One of the most high-profile uses of American Rescue Plan funding in Alexandria is the city’s foray into providing a guaranteed basic income for some of the city’s lowest-income residents. At a meeting today (Monday), leadership of the program shared new information about how the program will work.
Kate Garvey, director of the department of community and human service, outlined the basics of the program in a Zoom meeting today.
Former Alexandria City Public Schools administrator Tammy Ignacio says her 30-plus years of experience will help take up the slack since six of the nine members of the School Board aren’t seeking reelection.
“I am well aware of the complexities of running the school system,” Ignacio recently told ALXnow. “I’m excited for the work. I feel like I still have work to do. I think what I can bring to the table is expertise in living the life of an educator and as a parent in the school system.”
