Author: Elena

Here we go again folks.  For all those people with their axel’s rapped around a pole over the tax rate, bad development’s like Stonehaven is what ultimately drives our taxes into the ground.  Who builds the schools to support these developments?  Yes, that’s right, taxpayers.  Who builds the roads to support the several thousand people now crowding roads?  Yes, that’s right, the taxpayers.  Who has to build more firehouses and hire more police?  Yes, that’s right, the taxpayers.

Stonehaven is a wolf in sheep’s clothing and the Grizzly Football leadership (via their most recent blast  email begging members to support Stonehaven), once again, is doing the bidding of Wally Covington and Corey Stewart.  It wasn’t enough that they were instrumental in providing cover for the intrusion in the Rural Crescent via Avondale?   If the Grizzly leadership team had any sense, they would understand that advocating for massive development will NOT solve our infrastructure problems, it will only contribute to more overcrowding of schools and roads. Sort of like needing to lose weight but eating hot fudge triple ice cream sundaes in hopes you will drop a few pounds.  BTW, if only that were true!

Corey Stewart, lo many elections cycles ago (well, only 2006 actually), ran on a smart growth platfrom, I even had one of his huge signs, practically a billboard, on the frontage of my property “Corey Stewart, Supporting Smarth Growth”!  Guess what project was his poster boy for a poor land use decision that would ultimately cost tax payers?  Yes,  you are correct, Brentswood.  Well, Stonehaven is simply a reduced reincarnation of Brentswood.

I hope our BOCS votes no tomorrow to initiate this CPA, if Corey, Wally,  and Pete truly want to wear the mantle of low taxes, they have no choice but to vote no.  Turning a few hundred housed into a few thousand  houses is fiscal stupidity, plain and simple.

write to the BOCS and urge them to just say NO and protect your tax dollars!

[email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

[email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

Who doesn’t see the writing on the wall with this transportation bill!  You have roads being approved that will open up rural land, like the north-south corridor, and a convenient new taxing ability by certain Northern Virginia localities in order to build more roads in their jurisdiction.

So, NOW developers will have an excuse to build in undeveloped areas that will need massive new road infrastructure and who will foot the bill for that expense?  Hmmm, I imagine we will.  And Corey, who is vocally and fervently supporting this new unneeded cargo transportaion road to Dulles Airport, is trying to sell us the snake oil that he won’t tax Prince William County residents?  Not buyin’ it folks and I hope you don’t either.

Our Board of Supervisors has been relatively silent on this massive transportation bill and its subsequent taxes on Virginia residents, but let us not also forget, their silence on the north south corridor.  How is that road financed?  By the Governor’s tax bill.  And where is Corey’s outrage……yes, once again, that is crickets you hear.

No, Corey, you aren’t allowed to feign outrage over taxes on one hand while your support a detrimental road that will dissect PWC.

No Corey, you are not  allowed to be self righteous over the state daring to give localities the ability to tax residents for roads when you clearly advocate for a road that you know full well will open up all kinds of cheap land for high density development.

I invite citizens to attend the meeting on the North South Corridor this evening, 7:30, at Bull Run Middle School in Gainesville.  Stand up against unnecessary roads in PWC and new taxes . Delegate Hugo and Supervisor Candland need to hear community voices first hand.

So my question is, while Corey bloviates about saving taxes, yadayadayada, what is he doing about saving tax payer money when it comes the creation of the outer beltway, a major road that will  be used as a cut through for trucks to Dulles?

I question why allowing the state to use PWC , like a cheap one night stand for developers,  would ever be our best interest? Has Innovation been forgotten, is she now the too old and unattractive for commercial?  The Bull Run Observer had an article in their paper, giving number for jobs that had been added by companies.  It was in single and double digits, my friends!  The grand total was a little more than 100 jobs.  In a county of 400,000 I was embarrassed.

Here are some basics from Leesburg Today.

The latest version is the Commonwealth Transportation Board’s designated Corridor of Statewide Significance, called the North-South Corridor, which would link I-95 to near Dumfries to Rt. 7 east of Leesburg. Options to develop a four- to six-lane road that would provide a new western access to Dulles Airport has been under study for the past year.

In Prince William County, detailed planning already is under way to extend the Prince William County Parkway from its I-66 terminus to Rt. 50 in Loudoun, including a Manassas Battlefield bypass that would have north-south traffic skirt the western edge of the national park along Pageland Lane and Sanders Lane. That road would link to Northstar Boulevard and then to Belmont Ridge Road in Loudoun. From there, an eastern spur, either along Rt. 50 or to the north, would move traffic to Rt. 606 and Dulles Airport.

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June 27 1929 – December 27,2012

Edgar May, he was the rarest of politicians.  He never hungered to be more than a state representative or to help those who he felt were the  voiceless in our society.  He was a pragmatist, working across the aisle in order to get the job done, he was magical in his way of bringing people together to solve a problem.  He was a true Kennedy progressive and I feel his loss personally, he was my dear godfather.

I wanted to share his story because for me, he is a symbol of everything in American that is possible, that is good, that is right.

He escaped on the last boat out of Switzerland in 1940 with his younger sister (Madeleine Kunin, she would later become the first woman Governor of Vermont) and his widowed mother.  You see, they were Jews, escaping the horror of the Nazis.  Most of Edgar’s French relatives perished in the Holocaust, even his favorite uncle who has served as a father figure.
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Moonhowler recieved very sad news yesterday.  One of our regular posters, “Bear”, passed away from a sudden health complication.  She had a wonderful relationship via internet with Mr. Bear outside of the blog, sharing music weekly and general communications of life and family.

We send our prayers out to his family and we acknowlege the value of his comments and willingess to share his thoughts on the blog.

RIP Bear.

 Obituary

So, as I am making my blueberry pie, intermittently I hear this loud boom sound, like someone is blasting through rock somewhere.  My husband, who is off from work says to me, “I think that sound must be the concrete truck across the street, but damn, that’s loud.”

A short time later,  Alanna calls (you know, anti bvbl Alanna) and says “Holy crap, do you year that loud booming sound” and I say “yes” and we try to figure out where the hell  it is coming from.

She decides to call the non emergency number and is told that it is Quantico is running drills, but because of the especially low cloud cover, the sound is traveling especially far today!   Apparently they have been getting numerous calls from the Gainesville and Haymarket today.

Been here 11 years, never heard this before!

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

“I knew that day that the ideologies of my past career were no longer relevant to the future that I want, that I demand for my children. Friday changed everything. It must change everything. We all must begin anew and demand that Washington’s old way of doing business is no longer acceptable. Entertainment moguls don’t have an absolute right to glorify murder while spreading mayhem in young minds across America. And our Bill of Rights does not guarantee gun manufacturers the absolute right to sell military-style, high-caliber, semi-automatic combat assault rifles with high-capacity magazines to whoever the hell they want.

Scarborough shared what so many of us have been struggling to express.  I am not anti gun, but to throw my hands up and say all we can do is arm more people, well that just isn’t an acceptable solution to me.  We must deal with this crisis in a comprehensive manner, from all angles.  There is no perfect solution, but we must, as a nation, at least try.

Thank you Joe Scarborough.

You know the old saying?  Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.  Well, citizens saw a whole lot of that during December 11th’s BOCS meeting.

How well most of us remember when a certain blogger was able to intimidate the BOCS into an immigration policy that was little researched and backed by a nefarious anti immigration group called FAIR.  However, at least we knew the name of that blogger!

Moonhowlings, for some time, has been expressing our sincere reservations about the tactics of a certain blog.  From erroneous attacks about furniture to personal attacks about the mannerisms or physical features of BOCS members, our discomfort has been growing.

Corey and Pete Candland have now joined forces to promote the idea of a flat tax.  The debate I saw occur yesterday was mostly reasoned and fair.   I saw a process that made me proud to be a resident of Prince William County.

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I believe this has become such a sensational story because the moment was captured unbeknown  to the officer and the man he was helping. I hope this story will serve as a reminder to all of us that a simple act of compassion, regardless of whether anyone else ever sees it, can have a real positve impact for a fellow human being.

On a cold November night in Times Square, Officer Lawrence DePrimo was working a counterterrorism post when he encountered an older, barefooted homeless man. The officer disappeared for a moment, then returned with a new pair of boots, and knelt to help the man put them on.

The act of kindness would have gone unnoticed and mostly forgotten, had it not been for a tourist from Arizona.

This is what I mean, had this woman from Arizona never “recorded” this exchange, for eternity, this act of kindess would have been a solitary moment in time.  Instead, the whole world can revel in this officers kindness, wondering, , if WE would have noticed this man who had no home with blisters on his feet.

The officer, normally assigned to the Sixth Precinct in the West Village, readily recalled the encounter. “It was freezing out and you could see the blisters on the man’s feet,” he said in an interview. “I had two pairs of socks and I was still cold.” They started talking; he found out the man’s shoe size: 12.

As the man walked slowly down Seventh Avenue on his heels, Officer DePrimo went into a Skechers shoe store at about 9:30 p.m. “We were just kind of shocked,” said Jose Cano, 28, a manager working at the store that night. “Most of us are New Yorkers and we just kind of pass by that kind of thing. Especially in this neighborhood.”

I hope, instead of vicariously relishing in this moment of compassion, that we will challenge ourselves to find OUR better angels and help a fellow soul in need.

Does anyone here remember the dressing down that Chairman Stewart gave to Supervisor Candland when the BOCS was adopting the 2012 tax rate?  I sure do!  Corey was appalled by the very suggestion that we not fund our critical services to the residents in this county.  Many, including myself, were quite surprised that Corey would find the fortitude to defend the defenseless that surely would have been the most effected had such a low tax rate been adopted.

Let us not be too hasty though, that was THEN and this is NOW, well by now, I mean several months later.  The “NOW” now means Corey is back stumping for his next move up and out of PWC.   In the Washington Post article entitled “Corey Stewart Proposes Deep Cuts to Social Services Programs in Prince William County”, Corey is clearly back to politics as usual.

In a letter to supervisors, Stewart outlined $9.6 million in potential cuts that would significantly reduce funding for the county health department, the Juvenile Court Services Unit and substance abuse treatment for jail inmates, among other services. He  also proposes eliminating some funding for nonprofit groups, including Legal Services of Northern Virginia.

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As much as we all get wrapped up in National Politics, we can’t ignore critical land use decisions that effect our daily lives.  Prince William Conservation is the only PWC watershed non profit, citizen fueled organization, that works hard to ensure that our environmental concerns are addressed.  Land use decision are not just about building houses, its about where you build them also.

How do we see the future of PWC?  What will it look like?  Will we look like Fairfax or Loudon?   Geez, I hope not!  This county’s leadership still has the opportunity to really shape our community for generations to come.    We need to ensure that citizens have a “voice” at the table.  PWCA has proven its leadership in that arena.

The conservation of our environment isn’t just about pretty trees, its about fiscal responsibility, its about our general quality of life!

If you really want to make a difference, I invite you to attend the open annual meeting.  There will be great food and great conversation!

We hope you can join us!

Conservation Subdivisions: Sustainable Development or Green Sprawl???

Special Guest Speaker Cliff Fairweather Naturalist & Local Conservation Advocate

Suggested donation $50/each Tickets are available online here or click here to RSVP by mail.
* Casual attire; reception includes wine & soft drinks, tasty hors d’oeuvres, time to mingle and meet new friends