President Bill Hendrickson spoke at the April 13 City Council hearing on the the DRCA's support for maintaining current operating hours for city libraries and for keepijng the Warwick Village pool open, as well as providing some thoughts on the planned opening of a Walgreens store in Del Ray. 

 

Our April 8 membership meeting will explore a major reason why the City’s tax rate and your taxes are going up again this year and why they probably will continue to go up in the future.
 
The short answer is the City’s capital budget, or its investment in new and existing public facilities.
 
The City has had a major backlog in capital projects for many years. A basic reason appears to be that past City Councils have chosen to allocate more to social services than to new and existing facilities.
 

 

The DRCA has responded to a City staff request for suggestions on how the future new Walgreens in the 1500 block of Mount Vernon Avenue could be made as neighborhood-friendly as possible. The company representing Walgreens is willing to consider some voluntary actions to make the project more compatible with the neighborhood.
 
On April 1, Kristen Gedeon, co-chair of the DRCA Land Use Committee, sent a letter on behalf of the DRCA board and her committee to Faroll Hamer, director of the City’s Department of Planning and Zoning. The letter includes a variety of recommendations, built on the guidelines and planning principles of the Mount Vernon Avenue Business Area Plan as well as conditions that staff routinely includes in applications for similar businesses that require a special use permit (SUP). Because Walgreens needs only a building permit, it is not subject to many conditions on its operations. To read this letter, click here: 

 

In this essay, long-time Del Ray resident Bob Wood writes about how the neighborhood has changed in recent years and how its character was of a different nature not too long ago. 

 

Walgreens has indicated it wants to open a store in the building at the corner of Mount Vernon and East Monroe avenues now occupied by two antiques stores, a Laundromat, and two small retail stores. 

 

The Land Use Committee recently discussed an application to vacate part of a city-owned right-of-way off East Alexandria Avenue near Mount Vernon Avenue. The application for vacation has been withdrawn, but the committee is asking that a number of issues that developed surrounding the application be reviewed. Read the letter here:

 

The City has released a summary of suggestions by residents for improvements at Simpson Park. Click here to read:

 

For past issues

 

The City's presentation on Traffic, Transportation, and Connectivity from the Del Ray Community Meeting on November 29th at the Mount Vernon Community Center can be downloaded by clicking here.

 

Click here to download memo from Rich Baier, the City’s director of Transportation and Environmental Services, regarding traffic issues affecting East Howell and East Custis Avenues. A meeting on traffic issues has been tentatively set for Thursday, Nov. 29, at the Mount Vernon Recreation Center.

 

The memo provides ...

 

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