Archive for 'Editorials'

Editorial: Buy in to local shopping

Editorial: Buy in to local shopping

Alexandria’s independent bookstores, like the ones highlighted on page 5, are hopeful reminders of local entrepreneurial spirit. The Book Bank is 11 years old, while Already Read Used Books opened in 2006; both have survived and [...]

Editorial: New budget ideas squash status quo

Editorial: New budget ideas squash status quo

Residents, community leaders, elected officials and local media will put the newly proposed budget under a microscope over the next several months. But as a whole the spending plan, presented Tuesday night by relatively new Alexandria [...]

Editorial: Police must be public informants

Editorial: Police must be public informants

The Alexandria Police Department responded with serious force to a call of a gunshot fired in broad daylight in Old Town last week. Roads were closed and a special operations unit guarded the scene as heavily [...]

Editorial: Animal control officers: in harm’s way

Editorial: Animal control officers: in harm’s way

Alexandria’s police officers do an excellent job of keeping city residents safe from crime — in 2010, city crime reached a 45-year low. Our police officers are well-trained, well-equipped and normally on the scene quickly if [...]

Editorial: A plan for progress, not ruination

Editorial: A plan for progress, not ruination

The waterfront debate will come to a boil when upward of 80 speakers convey their support or consternation for City Hall’s waterfront plan at a public hearing Saturday. At its end, elected officials likely will vote [...]

Editorial: Criminals have it easy at City Hall

Editorial: Criminals have it easy at City Hall

Government employees have a target on their backs as the country wades slowly out of recession. Secure public sector jobs and guaranteed pensions anger people struggling to make living locally and nationally. A lot of that [...]

The Alexandria Times’ New Year’s resolutions

The Alexandria Times’ New Year’s resolutions

The year of 2011 was the year of red-light cameras, a failed private school endeavor and city employees embezzling taxpayer dollars. A vicious murderer was brought to justice; a new town crier was christened; the business [...]

Editorial: On the waterfront, knee-jerk reactions are not solutions

Editorial: On the waterfront, knee-jerk reactions are not solutions

The waterfront plan work group hadn’t yet released its long-awaited, 142-page dossier of recommendations for improving the city’s blueprint for the Potomac shoreline before critics were rallying, once more, against anything and everything connected to City [...]

Editorial: Council should delay redevelopment in low-income Arlandria like it did in high-income Old Town

Editorial: Council should delay redevelopment in low-income Arlandria like it did in high-income Old Town

If the Alexandria City Council wants to practice random enforcement of justice, it will vote to approve the mammoth, sprawling, six-story Arlandria Center nearing fruition in the Arlandria-Chirilagua neighborhood. If it wants to take an egalitarian, [...]

Editorial: Sprinting toward an arbitrary finish line on the waterfront

Editorial: Sprinting toward an arbitrary finish line on the waterfront

It appears the end is in sight for the waterfront development plan. The question is, should it be? After two years, countless city meetings, scores of letters to the editor, an alternative waterfront group boasting its [...]