Northern Virginia Sierra Club Endorses Alan Howze for Arlington County Board

Campaign finance laws may let the Koch brothers spend as much as they want on elections, but they make it much harder for local conservation groups to get involved in local elections. Tax-exempt non-profits known as a 501c3s can't get involved in elections and it costs something like $10,000 to set up a 501c4 political wing, so if your group only has a budget of, say, $75,000 for the entire year, having a say in local politics can be prohibitively expensive.

The Sierra Club makes campaign endorsements a priority on the national, state and local levels, and it's desperately needed to elevate conservation and transit-oriented growth in races like this:

The Sierra Club is pleased to announce its endorsement of Alan Howze in the Democratic Caucus on January 30 and February 1 for the the Arlington County Board.

Running in a strong field, we are endorsing Mr. Howze given his depth of knowledge and understanding of the key environmental issues facing the County, including his support of the Columbia Pike streetcar, which the Sierra Club supports as vital to the future of the growing community along Columbia Pike. In endorsing Mr. Howze, we recognize that such a significant investment in transit will require close monitoring by the County Board and its staff. We applaud Mr. Howze all the more for so clearly outlining the long-term benefits of the streetcar, which the Sierra Club views as the defining transit investment in Arlington – perhaps as significant to the County in promoting smart growth as Metrorail was to the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor a few decades ago.

When I ran for Virginia House of Delegates in 2009, Alan was one of my Democratic primary opponents and I told campaign volunteers at the time that if I hadn't been running, I'd have voted for Alan. Considering the winner of that primary, Patrick Hope, has been a great delegate and one of Virginia's most progressive state legislators, that's saying something.

Since then, Alan has worked as a certified home energy auditor providing residential energy audits & efficiency improvements, served as president of the Highland Park-Overlee Knolls Civic Association, and has been active in local Democratic politics. Plus - and TOTALLY MOST IMPORTANTLY YOU GUYS - he was a supporter of Westover Beer Garden in its battle to protect fun from overzealous county regulators.

The proposed Columbia Pike Streetcar has become a key issue in this race and Alan understands that this issue isn't just about whether the project can pass some economist's dry cost-benefit analysis - Columbia Pike needs and deserves this investment. Throwing some new buses the Pike's way would save money, but it wouldn't provide the redevelopment spark of a permanent investment in streetcars, sending a clear message to prospective residents and businesses that pinching pennies mattered more than making life on the Pike better. Also, it's odd that one urban streetcar project would get such scrutiny when suburban road projects get truckloads of money dumped into them without the austerity crowd blinking an eye.

So if you're in Arlington, go vote for Alan in this weekend's Democratic caucus and in the special election in early April (date TBD). And even if you're not in Arlington, go like Alan's Facebook page, because conservation candidates everywhere deserve your support.

Pleasing NIMBYs Means Less Affordable Housing

Construction isn't even finished yet, but already Arlington, VA has seen 3,600 people apply for 122 new units of affordable housing, according to a Washington Post report by Patricia Sullivan.

But there's one thing the article doesn't say: Arlington shrank the size of the affordable housing complex to please neighbors:

In preparation for its proposal, [Arlington Partnership for Affordable Housing] staff met with many stakeholders in the Arlington Mill community to hear concerns and ideas. From these meetings, it reduced the number of units to address concerns of the Park Glen community that the complex was too large for the space, adjacent  to the Park Glen condos; and some of the concerns about the density of the project with resulting traffic and crowd-control issues.

From an APAH presentation on the project:

Responds to community issues and County goals: The building height was lowered and the unit count was reduced from 192 (256 bedrooms) units to 122 (245 bedrooms) units.

Note that this building is only about four stories. I've literally heard some people who live on Columbia Pike say allowing a building like this to be eight stories would turn Columbia Pike into lower Manhattan.

Artificially limiting the amount of housing a developer can build comes with real-life consequences. By limiting height, restricting the number of units, or in the case of suburbs, mandating each unit be built on a certain lot size, you're telling a certain number of people they're not allowed to live there and will have to look elsewhere for housing.

When at least 3,600 people are in such urgent need of affordable housing, every unit counts. As Slate's Matt Yglesias has detailed, limits on building size in urban cores have devastating effects.

Fortunately, the tide is slowly turning in favor of allowing taller buildings and denser developments in urban centers. Boston Mayor Tom Menino's newly-unveiled affordable housing plan does just that.

The Washington Post's Selective Transit Austerity

$140 million for the Columbia Pike streetcar that would give people a cheap, less-polluting way to get to work and draw people to a sorely under-utilized area? A waste of money! Spend it on something else instead! Anything! Like, uh, how about education? Clearly, if you support the Columbia Pike streetcar, you must hate kids!

$110 million to upgrade just one road interchange for drivers (Route 29 & Gallows Road in Merrifield), while leaving it insufficient for pedestrians and bike commuters? Still waiting to hear from the Washington Post editorial board on how that could be better spent on schools. Should be any day now.

My point is not that Columbia Pike streetcar is more worthy of funds than the Route 29 interchange. My point is that maybe at a time of crazy low interest rates when a lot of people need work, we should be doing every project we can. By the time we need to start paying it back, the economy will have recovered - and if it hasn't, we're screwed anyway.

And if you have to resort to "but what if we spent it on free health care for puppies instead?" to make your argument, maybe you should re-think your case.

Answering President-Elect Obama's Call to Service

With a noontime wind chill in the single digits, I wondered if today's Arlingtonians for a Clean Environment cleanup to answer President-elect Barack Obama's call for a weekend of service would even happen. Instead, I arrived at Arlington Mill Community Center to find a dozen people already picking up trash from Four Mile Run and the surrounding area, another dozen grabbing bags and getting instructions, and another dozen still pulling up.

I managed to fill one bag from the steep southern bank of Four Mile Run before my numb face and feet told me it was time to leave the rest of the cleanup to the eager kids scrambling all over. In fact, that was the best part of the event -- watching the children bounce rocks on the frozen stream, . One excitedly yelled, "Mom! Look! An animal bone!" He held up something smaller than a chicken bone -- but he'd found this in the wild!

ACE is also partnering on cleanups on Sunday and Monday, you can get details at ArlingtonEnvironment.org. To find more MLK Weekend of Service events near you, visit USAservice.org.

Wind chill-proof volunteers:



Four Mile Run passes under Columbia Pike:



Noticed a phone under the ice. That's one cleanup item that'll have to wait for spring:



Bags of trash collected by the volunteers and the prize for the day's oddest find - a car bumper:



Finally, The Green Miles and his collected trash: