County Board - Regular Meeting

2:22:50•MCMaureen Coffey

Thank you, Mr. Byrne. On to our next speaker.

3:09:53 – 3:17:03•JSJulius D. "JD" Spain, Sr.

Well, thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to everyone who took time out of their busy schedule to be with us tonight. I think these opportunities are not just unique and a new direction for this county board, but it gives us an opportunity to really get a pulse of what's going on in our community. I know my colleagues will probably cover a lot, so I was taking notes. And I just want you to know that I take every testimony Seriously. Some of the themes that stood out tonight were housing affordability and development. They were, quite honestly, most of the prominent concerns that we heard. But

3:17:04 – 3:25:40•TKTakis P. Karantonis

Thank you, Mr. Chair. First of all, it's a good thing to see that this format is working and that people are taking advantage of that. We are thinking continuously about how to improve it, how to make it possible for you to pose questions, get answers here, and make it an even better and more meaningful gathering. The second thing I wanted to say is something that wasn't said by one person, Ms. Laura, who referred to the tragic events around the attempted abduction of Mr. Mejia by ICE. Today, this morning, at least three Arlingtonians were abducted by ICE. Two of them at the very least at thei

3:25:51 – 3:34:09•SCSusan Cunningham

Thank you Chair DeFronte for trying to wrangle us. It is no easy task, I assure you. How to not repeat. I think we all heard a lot of very passionate and mostly really thoughtful and caring testimony. So thank you all for being here, for supporting one another in large part and for listening to one another. Because this is our community and while it is hard and we have many different opinions and different cultures and backgrounds, the ability to be together to grapple with the challenges that we face is really, really important and always moves me. I will start with the biggest issue that we

3:34:29 – 3:42:44•MCMaureen Coffey

Sorry. Great, thank you. Hard to know where to begin when you've got 86 speakers in one night, but Mr. DeFerranti has prompted me to begin with Ballston Park as one of the board's study liaisons, which for those of you who don't know, we had a handful of speakers here tonight about the study. Ballston Park is one of our kind of original LIHTC committed affordable properties here in Arlington. It's a garden style apartment in the Buckingham, Ashton Heights, Ballston adjacent neighborhood, and their affordability is expiring in December of 2027, which is just over a year from now. Given that, an