To the editor: 

I thought our City Council is supposed to represent the interests of its citizens. Consequently, I was surprised and disappointed to learn that two Council members have become cheerleaders for Monumental Sports & Entertainment. 

Councilors John Chapman and Canek Aquirre recently took time off from their jobs to go to Richmond. Their purpose was to urge the House Finance Committee to approve the legislation that, if enacted, will fund the move of the Washington Capitals and Wizards from Washington, D.C. to Alexandria. 

Foremost, my disappointment was because, a week earlier, Chapman and Aquirre – along with the rest of City Council – listened to citizen concerns about Monumental’s plans. Their responses to citizens’ questions and concerns were conditioned by “if” or “should” the teams move to Alexandria. 

I suppose we should be grateful to Chapman and Aquirre for dropping all pretense that they care about citizen concerns. Consequently, their comments to the House Finance Committee were not about the fact that financial projections have not been made available to citizens, or the assured congestion we’ll experience or the additional cost for the extra police needed to manage the substantial game-day crowds and traffic and the inevitable accompanying crime. 

Nor did they say anything about the unseemliness of building any structure, much less a large arena, atop mushy soil; neither did they promise an environmental impact statement would be prepared to assure compliance of local, state and federal conditions for building structures on unstable soil. 

Foremost, they apparently said nothing about the half billion dollar risk which Alexandria taxpayers will bear for repayment of the debt Virginia will incur to buy the arena and the unstable land on which it will sit. And they uttered not a peep that our property taxes will invariably increase because of all of this. 

–Jimm Roberts, Alexandria