What a day for a parade it was in Old Town on Saturday, Dec. 6.
The wailing of bagpipes sailed through Alexandria’s historic streets as thousands of community members gathered to watch the 54th annual Scottish Christmas Walk Parade.
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Alexandria will conduct a sewer pipe repair project next week, temporarily shutting down an Old Town North roadway from Monday, Dec. 8 to Thursday, Dec. 11.
One northbound road lane will be shut down near 1201 E. Abingdon Drive to repair an 18-inch combined sewer pipe, according to the city.
With less than a month until its adoption, city officials are pushing Alexandria City Public Schools leaders to make further cuts to the district’s 10-year Capital Improvements Program, stressing budget constraints.
The $340 million CIP proposal exceeds the city’s recommendation by $54.5 million and arrives during a period of expected citywide budget cuts. Officials underscored the need to limit budgets across the board during a City Council/School Board Subcommittee meeting on Monday night, which followed two ACPS work sessions to fine-tune the proposal.
Dozens of protestors continued their calls for Alexandria to divest itself from Israel, decrying the tenuous ceasefire with Hamas that’s been in effect for a little more than a month.
Standing under the covered stage outside City Hall at Market Square on Tuesday night, members of Alexandria for Palestinian Human Rights and their supporters held a candlelight vigil and sang songs, read poems and asked the city to stop working with companies they accuse of war profiteering.
New digital modernizations and a refreshed website are coming soon to Alex311, Alexandria’s customer service program.
Alex311 staff gave a presentation on the forthcoming redesign during last night’s City Council legislative meeting (Tuesday). The updates call for investment in tools like chatbots and virtual agents with multilingual capabilities.
The city of Alexandria plans to honor World AIDS Day with an evening of choir performances, testimonies and education next week.
The city’s annual World AIDS Day Commemoration invites residents to remember those lost to HIV/AIDS, celebrate progress made for people at risk or living with HIV/AIDS and stand in solidarity against stigmas surrounding the virus. The event is scheduled from 6:30-8:30 p.m. next Monday, Dec. 1, at the Nannie J. Lee Recreation Center on 1108 Jefferson Street.
Civic-minded Alexandria residents who want to help lead their city have an opportunity to serve on a board or commission, and the deadline to apply is approaching soon.
Applicants must be city residents, and otherwise a special waiver will need to be approved by City Council. Committee assignments can last between two and five years, and residents can only apply for one committee at a time. The online application deadline is 5 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 29, and the following openings are available:
Facing a decline in job growth, a struggling commercial real estate market and a climbing population, today (Friday) Alexandria released the draft of its first economic development strategy in nearly two decades.
The 63-page ALX Forward draft plan makes a number of recommends to reverse negative trends, including leveraging economic opportunities in Old Town North, Eisenhower East, the West End, and Potomac Yard; retaining local businesses and attracting high-growth industries like artificial intelligence firms; and strengthening support for the city’s entrepreneurial ecosystem.
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For the sixth year in a row, Alexandria has received a “perfect score” from an annual evaluation of United States cities by a national LGBTQ+ rights nonprofit.
Alexandria earned a maximum score of 100 points on its Municipal Equality Index scorecard from the Human Rights Campaign, the city announced yesterday (Wednesday). The score accounts for factors like non-discrimination laws, protections for LGBTQ+ employees and fair enforcement of the law.
City staff laid out numerous possible policies for preserving affordable housing in Alexandria and preventing tenant displacement at a meeting yesterday (Monday).
The city is seeking to update its 12-year-old Housing Master Plan with solutions to address needs over the next 15 years. In a virtual seminar on the Housing 2040 Master Plan, Housing Program Manager Tamara Jovovic and other staff members discussed dozens of possibilities based on input from stakeholders, literature reviews, public meetings and a survey of roughly 1,200 residents.
A new flooding assessment and map have identified watersheds in the West End as some of Alexandria’s most vulnerable flood zones.
Areas considered most at-risk of flooding include the Potomac waterfront, Four Mile Run and Hooffs Run — as well as new additions like Holmes Run, Cameron Run and Backlick Run, according to a map shared by Flood Resilience Plan (FRP) project leaders at a meeting Monday night.