Undue Process

Many cities have slogans or catchphrases that come to define their identity. “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,” for example. “The city that never sleeps.” “Keep Austin weird.” While some of these are intentional branding choices, it also seems like phrases can attach to cities organically if the people who live there repeat them often enough. Under this operating theory, Alexandria’s slogan is now “Please fill out this survey about Ewald Park.”

Seriously though, have you all noticed how many rounds of input the city has been soliciting on projects these days? For the Ewald Park revamp, they’ve done three surveys and two community meetings over the past year, plus two open houses, multiple tables at city events, and presentations at civic association meetings—all for a park with an improvement plan that was approved a decade ago. But that’s far from the only example! Just look at the Market Square redesign. According to ALXnow, “The project team conducted extensive community engagement with more than 40 meetings and outreach events to inform the design process.” What!!! That is too many meetings! Especially before sending the design to the BAR, which recommended further changes (because of course it did). This trend holds true with school redistricting’s multiple sets of draft maps and dozens of meetings, as well as with the Waterfront Park flooding project’s multiple design iterations and a civic engagement timeline on the city’s website that extends from 2019 through 2029 (we’re so tired). If this keeps up, the city’s going to start sending out survey mailers stuffed inside other survey mailers like Matryoshka dolls for local governance nerds.

Why is this happening? We have a couple theories. One is that the city might be overcorrecting after years of being yelled at for not listening to people enough. A cohort of Longtime Residents have made a Full-Time Hobby of criticizing local officials for making decisions without consulting them on their views every five minutes. If this is the reason for all the surveys… we get it. We hate being yelled at too! It’s stressful! It’s also likely that the city is demonstrating their commitment to bring new and underrepresented voices into the conversation, and the ramped up engagement efforts are part of their strategy for doing so. City staff have made a point of meeting people where they are and actively seeking input from a wider range of perspectives, as opposed to passively listening to whoever feels like weighing in—and they should be commended for doing so.

But it also seems like, at some point along the way toward pursuing this admirable goal, someone decided that the city needs to strive toward a mythical “perfect” public engagement process that results in full community buy-in and project designs that meet everyone’s needs. Of course, like simply walking into Mordor, this just isn’t possible. For one thing, there are Alexandrians who use process concerns as a smokescreen for their underlying disagreement with substantive decisions when they’re on the losing side of the debate, and those people will not be satisfied by any number of surveys or meetings or pop-up listening sessions. Setting that dynamic aside, it’s just a fact that residents of this city have conflicting wants and needs that can’t be reconciled by talking it out. And also that there are people who can’t or don’t want to be reached for comment no matter how hard we try.

Yet in the trying, projects can get buried in endless process, with absurdly long timelines that stretch our collective patience (see, e.g., the friend of ours who announces periodically that the Ewald Park saga is turning him into the Joker). We’re all in favor of the city striving for better public engagement, but “better” does not always mean “more.” It can even undercut our goals: research indicates that repeated questionnaires and polls create survey fatigue and lower response rates, leaving space for the usual suspects to continue dominating the conversation like usual. It’s also just… annoying. If the public outreach folks at RPCA communicated with their romantic partners the way they do with residents, their asses would be repeatedly dumped for texting “Hey, just following up on your thoughts about tree placement!” at 2am. 

There’s a broader policy conversation happening these days around the concept of “abundance,” the idea that we need to move faster and reduce process in order to construct the things America needs—housing, energy infrastructure, pizzerias, what have you. Both sides of the debate have compelling arguments because while we unequivocally need these things (well, maybe not the pizzerias), the processes getting blamed for slowing down progress often have real benefits, like environmental regulations that protect fragile ecosystems and prevent development from disproportionately burdening vulnerable populations. There are genuine tradeoffs to consider before eliminating them.

The kafkaesque engagement process that Alexandria feels compelled to complete before constructing so much as a scooter corral feels of a piece with this debate. The difference here is that we’re not adding additional steps to gather expert data about potential impacts so we can make an informed decision, but basically just to solicit endless streams of opinions. Do we really need to do this? Especially when we know that the people who engage regularly in public input opportunities are more likely to be against things than for them?

To be clear, some amount of input is critical to ensuring that government is doing what the public wants—we’re certainly not trying to pull an RFK Jr. and say the city should stop listening to residents entirely. We’ve also written before that it’s good to have patience because many projects do in fact take time. But patience is not infinite, and process should have limits. We need to Goldilocks our way to a happy medium here. Our elected leaders and their staff need to make decisions that are responsive to public sentiment, and they need to do it without excessive delay. This is why we have a representative democracy, we don’t have time to poll the entire population every time we want to resurface a sidewalk. When it comes to governance, it’s fine to take things slow at first and make a few pit stops to ask the locals for directions—but at the end of the day, we need to stop spinning our wheels and get the show on the fucking road.

Things You May Have Missed Because You Have a Life 

• Habemus budgetum! Council approved it last week, so unless the city manager has suddenly taken up vaping, that explains all the white smoke we saw emanating from the City Hall chimneys. There were actually a lot of commonalities between our budget process and a papal conclave: days of deliberation, several rounds of votes, and people who deeply dislike JD Vance.
• Virginia Tech students have designed and built a new sculpture by the Potomac Yard Metro that’s really cool and aesthetically in the same tradition as some of the recent Waterfront Park installations. TBD whether it will follow in their footsteps by including interactive elements that pose an imminent threat to viewers’ physical safety.
• Solarize Alexandria is back! You should sign up to get solar panels if you’re worried about climate change, or the volatility of fossil fuel markets, or power outages during extreme weather events, or expensive electricity bills during a trade war and possible recession, or the collapse of civilization, actually you know what you should probably get solar panels and therapy.

Local Discourse Power Rankings

1. Is Our Children Learning (Last week: NR). Well they’re not learning about the First Amendment, apparently! A proposed rewrite of an ACPS policy related to student journalism appeared to significantly curtail the tough, independent reporting of the phenomenal high school newspaper Theogony (or as it’s to be renamed under the new policy, the Superintendent-Approved Journal of Positivity, Gratitude, and Line-Toeing). This kicked off a firestorm of discourse about censorship and heavy-handed management on the part of district leadership. It’s gone so far as to even gain national attention from a piece in Nieman Lab that ran yesterday. None of this is a good look, and it’s the latest in a long line of ACPS actions that may start as benign or even well-intentioned, but are quickly poisoned by the central office staff’s culture of stonewalling, obfuscating, and spinning. This is a school district that is flatly incapable of communicating clearly and openly, or of being receptive to critical feedback without bristling and lashing out. Again, there are big important questions here about free speech and censorship and those should get thoroughly examined (and at a school board meeting last night they were, resulting in the pausing of the policy following robust student and community advocacy)—but for us there is an equally important element to the story, which is that no one was inclined to give ACPS the benefit of the doubt, and that is in and of itself a major problem that district leadership should really reflect on and take steps to address.
2. Alexandria… What Even Is it, Man? (Last week: NR). A chunk of Fairfax County has been impersonating our city for quite some time now, and the movement to claim Shirlington as Alexandrian territory has a long and storied history [Editor’s note: pretty sure that joke started in like, 2022, but okay]—so we get that confusion over our municipal borders is nothing new. But some things have been happening lately to make us realize that “Alexandria” is even more fluid of a concept than we thought. ALXnow is running content completely unrelated to our fair city all of a sudden? The Zebra is awarding “Best of Alexandria” honors to businesses that are practically in Prince William County?? All of this is giving us an existential crisis. Who are we??? Is Alexandria a legal entity, a state of mind, or just anything within a 15-minute drive of the Yates Pizza Palace Coming Soon sign? Are we merging with the other northern Virginia jurisdictions into one mega CityCounty? Please just tell us we don’t have to be part of Loudoun. We don’t want to be part of Loudoun!!!
3. Spring Broken, Part Two (Last week: 2). And we thought coming back after one week of vacation was bad! This month is effing brutal. Have you all ever heard it referred to as “Maycember”? It’s busybusybusy like December, but with none of the abnormally rotund public Christmas trees and all of the Google Calendar meltdowns. Folks, we are IN THE THICK OF IT. We’re buying gifts for teacher appreciation week. We’re volunteering to chaperone field trips. We’re racing across town to deliver our kids to a piano recital, a soccer tournament, and a talent show that are all scheduled within the same 90-minute window. We’re swiping away ominous ParentSquarel messages that begin with “Just a reminder…” We’re sweating and we’re not sure if it’s because of the humid weather or the mental strain of trying to accomplish all of this without absolutely losing our shit. But through it all we nod and smile like we’re totally fine—because there are only five more weeks until summer break, when we can finally relax, because the summer camp schedule is simple compared to… [checks notes] oh. Oh no.
4. Hot to Logo (Last week: 4). Not content to merely make news with their logo and mascot (rawrrr) brand refresh, DASH was right back out there this week turning heads with an ACHS baseball collaboration. The bus system and the baseball team worked together to create our own Alexandrian version of an MLB City Connect jersey, which the local nine wore in a game on Wednesday night. We are famously pro swag here at ALXtra [Editor’s note: evidence suggests Jesse doesn’t even own t-shirts that aren’t repping some Alexandria business or another] so we wholeheartedly endorse this extremely cool promotion–which also included reading “DASH facts” on the PA system in between half innings! DASH facts!!

Alexandria’s Hottest Club Is… An Economic Development Summit

Pop quiz, hotshot. It’s 3pm on a Thursday afternoon—do you know where your fellow residents are? For once you’d be wrong if you guessed “stuck in traffic on Braddock between Kenwood and Cameron Mills,” and that’s because they were all in a hotel ballroom in Carlyle at the city’s economic development summit. Conceived of in the wake of the Potomac Yard entertainment district failure, the summit was positioned as a remedy to the breakdown in shared understanding and vision of what our city needs economically, and the opportunities our leaders should pursue to get us there. Given that it had been decades since any similar effort, this was a long overdue conversation anyway.

At this point you’re probably thinking “didn’t you two dopes just subject me to an entire essay about how there’s too many public meetings but now you’re saying this one was a long overdue remedy??” and okay, that’s fair. But we have a) never promised there is any sort of internal logic or consistency to this fine publication you hold here in your hands but also b) that’s not what the opening essay said [Editor’s note: please stop yelling at our readers]! This summit was not a process point, there was no decision being made or endpoint being worked toward. This was an effort at level-setting on shared knowledge, a chance to provide insight into the challenges the city faces, and a forum for high-level opinions about who and what we are. Through a word cloud, obviously.

All jokes aside, it’s pretty great that the city put the time and effort into such a well-organized and substantive event. These are weighty topics with big consequences and when planning for this started they couldn’t have possibly known that it would take place against a backdrop of a regional and global economy upended by a bunch of clammy ghouls who think global trade works the same as how they close real estate transactions by betting on who will miss a putt. It’s cool to give people a public opportunity to say what they love about this city. Even better if you let them do it with post-it notes!

So yes, we are a city that loves a summit. We are a city that loves a policy summit even more. But mostly we are a city that loves to get things done, collectively. Only time will tell if this summit built a foundation of shared vision that helps ensure our future planning processes go more smoothly, but at the very least we know one very crucial and critical idea is getting the increased publicity it deserves:

Overheard in ALX

From the very thorough (and quite helpful) redistricting update blog written by School Board members Kelly Booz, Chris Harris, and Ryan Reyna:

At our April 22 community meeting and April 24 School Board meeting, we reviewed the newest iteration of redistricting proposals—what we’re now calling the Shape Maps: Square, Circle, and Triangle.

So when we started off, the maps were colors (Green, Yellow, Purple, Orange). Then the maps were more colors (Blue, Red, Indigo). Then apparently we ran out of colors(??) so now the maps are shapes? And we’re sorry but it is impossible to have a serious policy discussion about things labeled “Square” “Circle” and “Triangle” like we’re preschoolers having an intense strategy discussion about that box where you have to push the shapes through the right hole. And as of yesterday, now the shapes have numbers!! Triangle has been joined by Triangle 2 and Triangle 3 like we’re trapped inside a Phil Jackson play-calling wet dream.

We are trying so hard to stay on top of this redistricting process but there have been so many maps and so many changes it honest to god feels like the consultants are using this old dril tweet as their work model.

One Awesome Thing in ALX

It is only sort of true to say that Don Beyer has a great head of hair. It is true in as much as the congressman from Virginia’s eighth district sports full silver locks that would be the envy of men many decades his junior, but to describe this as “a great head of hair” somehow falls woefully short of capturing the complete impressiveness of his coiffure. It might better be described as a majestic mane, always perfectly put in place, and conveying a sense of solidness and stability that says he’s here to put things right. It is the hair of a man that can fix things, and cares enough to do so. It is quite simply, and in sticking with the theme of this segment, awesome.

Don Beyer, the man attached to the hair, is pretty awesome too—evidenced most recently by last weekend’s job fair for fired, displaced, and disrupted federal workers. Partnering with all of the local municipalities in his district, and hosted at Alexandria’s GW Middle School, the event featured employers from a number of different sectors like accounting, finance, health care, and information technology, all eager to connect with the many, many talented regional residents so thoughtlessly discarded from federal service by Elon Musk’s pubescent goons. Event planners expected somewhere around 300 attendees and ended up with more like 2,000 people over the course of the afternoon, a number which both validates the urgency of this event even as it shocks the conscience with the sheer scale of need demonstrated. We are grateful to live in a place that steps up for its residents in the face of hard times. We are blessed to have elected leaders with the compassion and awareness to plan an event like this. And we’re truly fortunate that one of those elected leaders is Don Beyer [Editor’s note: very eloquently stated] and his great head of hair [Editor’s note: goddamn it].

You can follow Becky @beckyhammer.bsky.social and Jesse @oconnell.bsky.social on Bluesky, or you can e-mail us anytime at alxtranewsletter@gmail.com.

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