To the Editor:
As Alexandria voters ponder their June 9 choice for mayor, they should evaluate the players as though it were a sporting event rather than a political contest. They should assess the wins, losses and errors of the three combatants. They need to factor in how long they’ve been on the field, remembering that even Super Bowl and World Series winners reach a point when it’s time to hang up their cleats and leave the contest to those with fewer years and more new ideas. Sports analogies duly apply to politics, for even an outstanding player like Winston Churchill stayed in the game too long and eventually lost at the polls. As they note with our mutual fund assessments: “Past performance is no guarantee of future gains or losses.” Keep that in mind for candidates who were mayors in the present and the past but may not be the best choices for challenges in future. Merely counting past years in office is not always an indication of “successful” efforts in office.
As you evaluate the three candidates, whether you score their policies as wins or losses may depend on whether your views are shaped by the positive impact on non-resident developers versus the non-positive impact on tax-paying residents. Take your scorecard and pencil and decide on the outcomes for: the BRAC in the West End; the Waterfront Development plans; the redesigns for Del Ray; the condo blitzes throughout the city which ignore the reality of future school children in those locations; the elimination of the Open Space Fund and reduction of needed staff for our parks; the paralyzing traffic and gridlock on Duke, Van Dorn, Seminary and I-395. And as a “bonus” point, how do you feel about VDOT, which now stands for “Vicious Destruction of the Terrain” for those who live in its path?
We can either vote for the two candidates who can repeat their failed policies of the past, or we can look to the future, with our vice mayor, Allison Silberberg, who favors an inclusionary approach for measured growth and development to develop better revenue sources. We are “bench warmers” who have sat through endless hours of council meetings which ignored the will of the residents, and we favor someone who will use the team approach to run our city.
Kathleen M. Burns
Alexandria