In This Edition

Buildings account for 39% of total energy use, 68% of electricity consumption and 38% of all carbon dioxide emissions. When buildings are built efficiently, redevelopment can be a powerful force to reduce our energy demands and improve our environment. 

In 2009, the City Council adopted Alexandria's first Green Building Policy. The policy laid out a series of expectations of the development community, including LEED Silver for non-residential development and LEED Certified for residential development. The policy included flexibility so that developers could utilize other standards to ensure environmental sustainability of their development. 

Meeting the standard requires a myriad of different techniques. Simply put, green building reduces the energy and water usage of buildings, while creating more livable homes and better spaces for work. 

While these efficiency improvements are certainly positive for the environment and livability of these spaces, they are also extremely important to the affordability of residency. For those reasons, they were included as components of our recently adopted Housing Master Plan. 

Since the adoption of the policy, 58 projects have been reviewed, with 42 of them complying and obtaining some third-party certification. In total, 91% of the approved new development floor area met the new policy. 

Yet a lot has changed in the five years since the approval of this policy. Green building strategies have gone from being a novelty and luxury to being a market standard.

It may be time for Alexandria to look at our policy and decide how to improve it for the future. Fortunately, our Environmental Policy Commission is looking at this very issue and will be shortly bringing recommendations to the Council.

I'm hopeful that we can continue to strengthen our development community expectation to ensure sustainable development that lessens the impact on our City's air and water. 

Regardless of your politics, this has not been a good year for those committed to good government in Virginia. 

A former senior appropriator in the House of Delegates now sits in Federal prison. He is fighting to reduce his sentence for trading his office for a part-time job. 

The Department of Justice is investigating possible criminal wrongdoing in the resignation of a State Senator, who allegedly traded his resignation for a job for himself and a judgeship for his daughter.  

Perhaps the greatest humiliation of all, our former Governor and First Lady now await sentencing for a myriad of felony convictions related to improper dealings with a corporate CEO. 

Last week, our current Governor issued an Executive Order creating a Commission to make recommendations to improve public confidence in our government. 

I've been around politics and politicians since I was in elementary school, and the vast majority of politicians are good people who honestly serve the public trust. But some aren't. 

The Code of Virginia is fairly permissive when it comes to regulations on elected officials. However, it relies on timely and accurate public disclosure. 

At the local level, we largely have to live by the rules from Richmond, but we do sometimes have the ability to go farther to ensure the integrity of our government.

About 11 years ago, Alexandria became one of the earliest jurisdictions in Virginia to post local campaign finance reports online. Anyone can easily review who finances the campaigns of Alexandria's elected officials. 

In 2009, I along with Councilman Smedberg and then-Councilman Krupicka, successfully sought approval from Richmond to impose new restrictions on land-use applicants. Specifically, the new laws we adopted require land-use applicants to reveal any financial interests that they might have with policymakers. 

All elected officials in the state are required to submit an annual Statement of Economic Interests, which is available for review at any time at our Clerk's office in City Hall. These reports are frequently covered in the media. 

What else? What do you recommend to help sustain trust that the policymakers for Alexandria are always serving in the public trust. Your suggestions are always welcome! 

For a variety of reasons, our local judges stay out of most City Council issues. During the Spring budget process, the Council received rather extraordinary testimony from the judges of our Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court and our General District Court.

The judges that appeared before the Council came to urge us to supplement the salaries of the clerks that work in the courthouse and handle the very important paperwork documenting a variety of legal actions. 

They spoke of the high turnover and inexperience in their workforce in justifying the need for a local supplement for their employees. 

In the end, the Council chose to phase in a limited supplement of the salaries for these clerks to ensure the efficient and accurate administration of justice.

In doing so, these two courts joined our Commonwealth's Attorney's office, our Sheriff's Department, our Public Defender's office, our Health Department, our Circuit Court, our Court Service Unit, our Registrar's office, and others in receiving supplements from the City.

What makes these agencies unique? They are all State agencies. 

In each of these situations, the Commonwealth is providing inadequate funding for these agencies that provide service to our residents. In order to fill the gap, the agencies come to the City for supplemental funding. The City has a choice between asking our taxpayers to make up for the Commonwealth's neglect, or allow these important services on which our residents rely to fail. 

While we may complain a bit, in local government we typically take the responsible course, and ensure that our residents receive the services that they deserve. That's what makes it all the more frustrating when other levels of government try a different approach. 

Due to many of the same factors challenging the City's finances, the Commonwealth was faced with a $2.4 billion budget shortfall. While the Governor and the General Assembly did make some difficult cuts, they unfortunately employed a tiresome tactic which has become altogether common. They passed the buck to us. 

The mechanics of the arrangement just approved by the General Assembly and Governor are that local governments around the Commonwealth will be forced to return a portion of funding that we adopted our budget on. 

A bipartisan collection of leaders in Richmond are quoted extolling the virtues of a deal that they claim avoids tax increases and protects K-12 education funding.  However the effect of this deal is simply to force local governments around Virginia to raise taxes and cut K-12 education funding instead. 

Governments of every level are dealing with challenging budget situations. It doesn't serve the public very well when only one level is making difficult choices.