Community meeting on new draft Comprehensive Plan language for Reston's neighborhoods and more, September 13, 2014

The following are a press release concerning a planned community meeting on new Comprehensive Plan language for Reston's existing neighborhoods, convenience centers, and the commercial area north of Baron Cameron Avenue.  It is followed by the 74-page document.

We strongly encourage all Restonians to participate.  The future of your neighborhood may depend on this new Plan being right.

   Draft Strawman--Reston Master Plan, Phase 2--Neighborhoods & Convenience Centers

"Shall we just go ahead and close our libraries now?," Letter to the Fairfax County Library Board of Trustees from County Librarian, September 7, 2014

From: Charles Keener <ckeener20005@aol.com>
To: csfegan <csfegan@verizon.net>; karrie.delaney <karrie.delaney@gmail.com>; mpkoplitz <mpkoplitz@yahoo.com>; pmdando <pmdando@fcps.edu>; cutrone.michael <cutrone.michael@gmail.com>; kriscabral <kriscabral@aol.com>; suzannelevy <suzannelevy@cox.net>; donheinrichs <donheinrichs@msn.com>; clements_jl <clements_jl@verizon.net>; micseadon <micseadon@gmail.com>; josephsirh <josephsirh@cox.net>; wjasper <wjasper@cox.net>
Sent: Sun, Sep 7, 2014 6:35 pm
 
Subject: Shall we just go ahead and close our libraries now ?

Shall we just go ahead and close our libraries now?

Dear Fairfax County Public Library Board Trustees,

This may seem like an extreme question but after year after year of watching Fairfax Libraries being destroyed through relentless budget cuts I think it is a legitimate inquiry.

Since the 2008/2009 budget cycle in which the County declared libraries as a non-essential service we have seen cut after cut after cut.

Hundreds of library staff have been terminated and entire classes of library staff have been eliminated.

Our materials budget has been slashed beyond recognition.

The declining quality and quantity of the books on our library shelves reflect this.

Fairfax County has fallen to the absolute bottom of area jurisdictions in the support it provides to its libraries.

Even County leadership has acknowledged this - admitting that the cuts have gone too far, in some cases cutting to the bone or beyond.

The Board of Supervisors recognized this and made a very modest move toward reversing the situation with a commitment of $250,000 each year for 4 years to bolster the library's material budget.

There is talk from the Trustees of rebuilding FCPL.

There is even a Staff Day theme of "renewal".

Yet all of this appears to be only empty rhetoric as here we go again with MORE CUTS to the library.- as staff and public are only now beginning to recover from the "Beta" nightmare, which was itself spawned and "justified" by this same relentless slashing of funds for our libraries.

Please let us be crystal clear: More cuts are NOT the way to rebuild or "renew" our libraries.  It is time to say NO.   It is time to say ENOUGH!

The County Executive demands yet more reductions and the library administration readily provides more staff positions to be eliminated as no longer necessary.

These are, of course, some of the very same currently vacant positions which the library administration assured the Trustees and staff would all be filled.

I doubt that the front line staff who have struggled because of these very vacancies in their branches would agree those positions are unnecessary. No doubt we can all look forward to lots more unwelcome transfers of staff to branches they do not want to go in order to spread the ever-shrinking staff even more thinly.

There appears to be absolutely no will left anywhere in County or library leadership to fight for truly first class quality libraries in Fairfax County.

Instead, all I see is resignation to yet another cut and yet another step in the downward spiral of FCPL.

Is this really what we all want?

Or are there others who agree with me that the time is long overdue for the Trustees to absolutely reject this trajectory and SAY NO TO ANY MORE CUTS?

Isn't it time to REFUSE TO COOPERATE IN ANY WAY with the further degradation of our libraries?

The Trustees should be DEMANDING an INCREASE / the RESTORATION of funds for Fairfax Libraries - NOT in any way accepting ANY more cuts going forward.

In the face of the relentless budgetary onslaught we have faced over the last several years it is hard not to just despair and just give up.

But if we do give up , I do not see a viable Fairfax library system existing in the future. 

We might as well just surrender now then - close the libraries and sell their assets.

I have no doubt the land and buildings will bring the County a pretty penny from developers.

That should please County leaders who have always given those interests far more sway in their decisions than the well-being of our libraries ever merited.

I write this on the week of my 40th anniversary working for Fairfax County Public Library.

Will FCPL survive another 40 years the way things are going?

I fear not.                                        

                                             

                       Charles Keener      September, 10, 2014

Lake Anne Fellowship House Plan Falls Apart, RestonNow, September 3, 2014

RestonNow's Karen Goff reported yesterday:

Plans to redevelop Lake Anne Fellowship House have been put on hold indefinitely — and it looks as though some current residents of the affordable housing for seniors may have to pay higher rents in order to stay in the building.

Fellowship Square and Novus Residences had been working for more than a year on plans to tear down the senior housing in need of remodeling and rebuild on the site 140 affordable housing units as well as 285 market-rate housing units.

Most of the balance of the article focuses on comments by Edward Byrnes, a member of the Fellowship House Foundation board and chair of its Lake Anne Redevelopment Committee, and a letter he wrote to the County withdrawing their application with a bitter tone, generally blaming the County for the outcome. 

In fact, the outcome was one of Fellowship House Foundation's own making, aided by NOVUS Residences, an area developer.  The Foundation's proposal explicitly ignored two key provisions of the Lake Anne Comprehensive Plan, modified a few years ago after a decade of community participation in its development.  Those two key provisions are:

• The total number of apartments allowed on the property redeveloped on its own would not exceed 320 units.  The Foundation and NOVUS proposed 425 units, the maximum number permitted IF the property were developed in partnership with other nearby areas in a single plan.  That condition was not met.

• Any redevelopment of the Lake Anne Fellowship House should accommodate ALL the low-income residents in the new development or in the immediate Lake Anne area.  The Foundation and NOVUS proposed throwing out the residents of 100 apartment units, offering them useless Section 8 vouchers to "go fish" for affordable housing elsewhere.  

Terry Maynard, Reston 2020 Co-Chairman, responded to the article--and especially Byrnes' sour commentary--in the comments section of the article as follows:  

While I appreciate the difficulty the financial hardship this turn of events may put all LAFH residents in, let's be perfectly clear: The so-called "safety net" Section 8 vouchers that offered " "Permanent, Portable Direct Housing Subsidies To All 240 Residents For The Rest of Their Lives" were not worth the paper they would have been printed on.

There is NO available Section 8 housing in the Lake Anne area or Reston, and there certainly isn't enough in the County for all 240 LAFH Section 8 residents. And, as I said here before, you can't live in a voucher. (See the dialogue between NOVUS President Seldin & myself in the comments on an earlier RestonNow article here: http://www.restonnow.com/2014/... )

At least now the residents of LAFH will have the option of staying or leaving based on their own decision, not the greed-driven motivation of developers.

I appreciate very much that County officials stuck to their guns and to the Lake Anne Master Plan--which took a decade to develop--that called for any redevelopment of the LAFH property to house all the residents in the Lake Anne area. Moreover, the NOVUS redevelopment proposal was for 425 apartments, a quantity of apartments allowed ONLY under the plan's "consolidated" option, that is, in coordination with the Crescent Apt. area and the LA plaza parking/office building at the minimum. Of course, this proposal didn't comply with that requirement as Republic is developing the other two areas independently.

In short, the management of Lake Anne Fellowship House and NOVUS Residences has no one to blame for the failure of their proposal other than themselves. They tried to bully the County into ignoring its own Planning Commission and Board approved plan, using the prospective displacement of the less fortunate residents of LAFH as leverage, and their cynical plan to profit failed miserably.

LAFH management still has 2 years to have approved a redevelopment proposal that meets the requirements of the Lake Anne area plan: One that provides subsidized housing locally for all current residents and proposes to build no more than 320 units as permitted under the "redevelopment" option--that is, without working with others in the Lake Anne area, a course of action they could have avoided years ago.

And thank you to the County for sticking to the Lake Anne Comprehensive Plan. We all will weather this storm.