Justin Wilson would be the first to tell you that his term as mayor has not gone as planned.
When Wilson was elected in 2018, after defeating former Mayor Allison Silberberg in the 2018 Democratic primary by 1,259 votes, he did so assuming that the biggest challenge he would have to face was the planned shutdown of the city’s Metro stations in summer 2019.
“I think the good news is we handled the adversity of that well,” Wilson said. “… All of that was great, but then, obviously, there’s been a couple other things that have happened in the last two and a half years.”
To the editor:
The May 8 mayoral debate hosted by the Alexandria Democratic Committee highlighted the big differences between Allison Silberberg and Justin Wilson. My three biggest takeaways from the evening were their different approaches to density, the environment and civic engagement.
Silberberg is clearly the right choice if you care about these issues. She believes in smart growth – an approach that takes into account how a development will impact the city’s infrastructure, flooding, school capacity, affordable housing and the surrounding neighborhoods.
As she said at the debate, she believes that when we consider a new building, it shouldn’t be super-sized to the max in an out-of-scale, overbuilding kind of way. Wilson’s approach is to develop everything to the max. He has never met a development he didn’t like and accepts donations from developers. Silberberg doesn’t take funding from developers.
City Council candidate Bill Rossello literally has widespread involvement in the Alexandria community.
A Baltimore native of Puerto Rican descent, Rossello moved to Alexandria in 1988 and married his wife, Bonnie, a year later. During his more than three decades in the city, Rossello has lived in three of Alexandria’s distinct neighborhoods – Old Town, North Ridge and Seminary Hill.
According to Rossello, his long-standing connection to the city and its residents distinguishes him from most of the other candidates running for council in the June 8 Democratic primary.
“The rest of the folks are relatively, you know, they haven’t lived here very long, they haven’t seen a lot, they don’t really understand, in my mind, the full context of where we’ve been as a city,” Rossello said.
Erosion along the Taylor Run stream banks. (Photo/Missy Schrott)
Protecting the environment is not easy, nor cheap. A person or entity can say they’re for environmental protection – or for a city to even have an Eco City designation – but then fail to prioritize the environment when making their choices.
In our opinion, the City of Alexandria has talked the talk but failed to walk the walk on issue after issue for some time.
In just the last few years, environmental preservation has taken a back seat when the city has made decisions about where to place the Potomac Yard Metro Station, the development of a pristine forest at Karig Estates, the chopping down of the 150-year-old pin oak at the high school and the use of destructive natural channel design to do stream “restoration” projects.