November 17 – 23, 2016
Fa lls Chur c h, V i r g i ni a • ww w. fc np. c om • Fr ee
Fou n d ed 1991 • Vol. X X V I No. 39
Falls Church • Tysons Corner • Merrifield • McLean • North Arlington • Bailey’s Crossroads
Inside This Week Police Seek Info After Dog Bites Woman
After being bit by a dog on Sunday evening, a woman may be forced to undergo rabies treatment if the animal who bit her on Park Avenue in Falls Church is not located sometime in the next week. See News Briefs, page 9
F.C.’s Homestretch Gets ‘Local Love’ Renovation
Homestretch, a Falls Churchbased nonprofit fighting to reverse the root causes of homelessness, received something of a makeover last month as part of a new program from e-commerce and cloud computing company Amazon.
In Historic Meeting, Leaders of F.C., Arlington, Alexandria Share Goals Tuesday’s Event in Alexandria May Set New Precedent
by Nicholas F. Benton
Falls Church News-Press
He said that in his travels to rural areas, such as Southwest Virginia and upper Maine, in the past year, he saw no Hillary Clinton signs and nothing but Donald Trump signs. “It turned out that three out of four rural voters voted against Hillary. Had it been only two out of three, she would have won.” “Half of the small towns in Southwest Virginia are boarded up,” he noted, “and in upper Maine there are ‘for sale’ signs everywhere. Homes there that
A straight nine-mile shot down Route 7 from the City of Falls Church brought members of the Falls Church City Council and key City staff members right to Durant Center, a block of Rt. 7 in downtown Alexandria, on Tuesday night. That’s where and when an historic, first-ever meeting of its kind was held, bringing together the leaders of three adjacent Northern Virginia jurisdictions – Falls Church, Arlington and Alexandria – to discuss common issues in transportation, emergency communication services and the regulation of popular new unconventional businesses. “You can find the entire history of the U.S. along our common Route 7 corridor,” Falls Church Councilman David Snyder told the group. Indeed, from farm to market rolling roads and their toll gates, to George Washington’s Alexandria church’s connection to its mission outpost that became the Falls Church, to key Civil War sites in Bailey’s Crossroads and Munson Hill, to the first rural chapter of the NAACP and much more, the route abounds with history. Alexandria’s claim to Revolutionary War era history is acknowledged in its use of an official “town crier” in the mode of that age, and such person, appropriately costumed, showed up Tuesday night to ring a bell and read a parchment loudly with the agenda for the evening’s meeting. Falls Church Mayor David Tarter spoke up, saying he wants one of those for Falls Church (it hasn’t clear if any of the other F.C.
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See page 8
Charles M. Blow: Trump’s Rural White America
As I watched last week as protesters took to the streets in big cities, what struck me was the vast and growing divide between America’s rural and urban populations and their politics and sensibilities. See page 13
Press Pass with Maia Sharp
Maia Sharp said she got the name for her latest album, The Dash Between the Dates, during a conversation with her wife. Her wife’s father had just died and they were sitting on the deck of their house. See page 20
Index
Editorial..................6 Letters....................6 News & Notes.10-11 Comment......... 12-14 Food & Dining......15 Sports..................17
Calendar.........18-19 Crossword...........21 Comics, Sudoku & Critter Corner.......21 Business News....22 Classified Ads .....23
ASSEMBLED FOR THE FIRST TIME in history, elected leaders of three adjacent Northern Virginia jurisdictions – Falls Church, Alexandria and Arlington – gathered in Alexandria for an important sharing of regional initiatives in transportation, emergency services and Airbnb regulation Tuesday night. (Photo: News-Press)
Rep. Don Beyer Tells News-Press Why Election Day Went as It Did by Nicholas F. Benton
Falls Church News-Press
Democratic U.S. Rep. Donald Beyer Jr., re-elected with ease last week to a second term in the Congress from the 8th District of Virginia that includes the City of Falls Church, said that while he is “just getting over being stunned and grief stricken” at last week’s presidential election, and told the News-Press in an exclusive interview yesterday that he’s planning what he hopes to accomplish the next two years and predicted that 2016 could be a very good year for
Democrats to make major gains toward majorities in the Congress. Beyer weighed in about last week’s election, saying that while job growth has been strong, no American troops are dying overseas and America’s water is getting cleaner, still, the persisting reality was embedded in the survey question, “Do you think America is on the right or wrong track?” “The ‘No’ percentage for that question remained stuck at twothirds,” he noted. “As much as anything, that was probably the main indicator of how the election would go.”