To the editor:
I just reviewed one of the most widely viewed campaign ads posted by Mayor Justin Wilson. In it, Wilson takes credit for: “A new hospital at a redeveloped Landmark Mall, [five] new schools over the next decade, the largest-ever investment in our sewers, nearly a thousand units of new affordable housing, ending fares on DASH Buses, the Potomac Yard Metro opening in a year, expanding transit in our West End and much, much more.”
What do these things have in common? Wilson has promised several, in one form or another, since his last campaign. But not one of them is a straight line even on drafting paper. Only one has happened temporarily, and it’s not clear that it’s permanent. One of them requires substantially more than $1,300 per household in public expenditures even to meaningfully start.
The actual results of his administration include:
• An unregulated, large-scale slaughterhouse that is subject to no granular or specific compliance regulations addressing waste, odor, particulate emissions or traffic, and that I believe lied on the record in order to obtain private legislation, in the form of a Special Use Permit, that is already damaging nearby businesses.
• A completely needless and harmful road diet on Seminary Road, installed for the private benefit of a handful of his supporters, against the written advice of the city’s fire department, snarling traffic and creating real and continuing hazards.
• The ongoing destruction of some of the city’s last remaining forested parcels that are essential to absorb and channel water and mitigate the city’s catastrophic flooding that has become progressively more frequent and severe.
Wilson’s wonderful record is fiction – an aggressive and theatrical festival of self-congratulation. In fact, Wilson’s administration has worked nothing but harm for most of the city.
Wilson and his compliant voting proxies Canek Aguirre and John Taylor Chapman have built a legacy of destruction and threaten to permanently change the face of the city. Each of them deserves to be remembered. And none of them deserves your vote.
-Mark C. Williams, Alexandria
