News and notes from Reston (tm).

Friday, December 17, 2010

RA Assessments Up, Terraset Dug Up, and Disappointingly Tasteful Holiday Lights: A Random Stroll Through Reston News

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  • A week after pointing out the awesome midscale retail opportunities to all the good little boys and girls at Reston's Fake Downtown gritty urban core, Santa did his best Navy SEAL impression, splashing down at Lake Anne with a dozen armed commandos elves. The U.S. State Department can neither confirm nor deny that a good time was had by all, though fortunately we have a heavily armed contingent of Germans with their own Christmas traditions to keep us safe from further incursions.

  • Happy holidays from the Reston Association! Your assessment will be $540 next year -- up a mere $25, but at least "the same amount that was previously forecast in the budget."

  • Sunrise Valley and Terraset Elementary would both be renovated ahead of schedule -- in 2013 instead of 2015 -- if the school system gets its way. As part of the work, Terraset Elementary could actually be dug out of the ground to look more like a normal elementary school, angering Mole Men everywhere.

  • Herndon apparently has a "miles-wide mass of underground bedrock" which will make Metro development difficult there (but please the Mole Men). But folks are all up in arms about The Other tall buildings!
    "Fifteen story buildings?" asked Virginia Clarity following a neighborhood meeting hosted by the town on Dec. 1.

    "That is too tall. You'll have to crane your neck to look up at it. Four to six stories would be alright, but 15 is just too much."
    Also people might drop pennies off the roofs, making a hole straight through to China, creating a tunnel that would bring even more immigrants to our welcoming neighbor to the west.

  • Much as Mardi Gras represents a final night for debauchery before the austerity of Lent, you'd think the holidays would be the one time of the year we could safely thumb our noses at the DRB with gaudy multicolored light displays. But the place our BFFs at Patch named as the best decorated house has nothing but tasteful white lights. Whazzupwiththat, Reston?

  • Dec. 21 is the deadline for nominations for the Reston Community Center's annual Community Service Award, given as part of RCC's MLK Day celebrations.

  • The Unitarian Universalist Church of Reston has a new minister, though you're free to believe or disbelieve that based on your own wishes.

  • Some dude chemist Tyler Coplen at USGS is altering the atomic weights of 10 elements. If you hear a loud explosion from South Reston, don't say we didn't warn you.

  • Maximus won a $361 million contract with California's children health insurance program, which will involve, we dunno, strapping reimbursement forms to dolphins.

  • State Del. Ken Plum's new gig? Ken the Magician. No, really.

18 comments:

  1. As a former Terraset student, I would be bummed to see it get unearthed. It was neat to think we were kind of undergound. And would they change the name? Terra-at ground level? Terra-on top of?

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  2. Are you sure that loud popping sound come from the direction of USGS isn't actually the sound of gunfire coming from Stonegate? I think the whole Tyler Coplen experiment story is just an attempt for Hudgins' to cover for her main constituents.

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  3. Peasant From Less Sought After South RestonDecember 17, 2010 at 3:45 PM

    Anon 12:22

    Easy. With apologies to Indiana -- Terra Haute. Or, perhaps Terrarising (although that does sound a bit too similar to terrorizing...)

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  4. Actually, Terra Haute means high land. If Terraset becomes unearthed, maybe it could be called Supra Terra.

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  5. Terraset WAS the coolest elementary school in Reston. The awesome solar panels and the underground situation was so cool. As kids at recess, we go play on the roof and climb up the pyramid on top.

    What a shame some lame fools have no imagination and want the unique character of the school removed.

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    Replies
    1. I used to love climbing the pyramid!! It wasn't easy to do that...

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  6. From the Uplands of RestonDecember 18, 2010 at 4:51 PM

    It's Reston resident's tax dollars washing away.
    The designs of Terraset and Sunrise Valley were set in the "open school" fad. Modular classrooms. More flexibility precluded crowding.
    The space is needed now to place all the children of residents doubling up in rentals, and the new families promised by redevelopment. Note, those schools will still have trailers.

    Ken Plum and Janet Howell ensure that 70-80% of our state taxes do not return to Reston, and Hudgins ensures that our county taxes go elsewhere.

    Examples include, but are not limited to not funding maintenance on the Government Center's HVAC system or not ensuring the Herndon-Monroe parking garage was built right, but sending that money to social support programs and helping the county government become the largest low-income land-owner in the county. There are other examples out there.
    Finding them could be an exercise for the reader, or a local IB civics class.

    The taxpayer's ROE of expanding Section 8 housing and being a refugee city is not high. You can look it up in the budget. Look at the spending rates vice revenue to see where the problem started. Also, Rail to Dulles is seriously underfunded for maintenance. This will directly impact Reston residents.

    We get the government we deserve.

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  7. My kid asked me today if I would stay in Reston when he goes to college. I said, "well, when the metro kicks up the price of our house to a can't resist value, I'll sell, and then I'll stay in the area but NOT in Reston proper because I don't want to pay RA fees." However, I'll still use the paths and all the other stuff that everyone else gets to use without paying for it...

    I am SO SO tired of this community blindly pouring their votes and money into people who do not represent their best interests. Yet the voters are so wedded to party politics that they cannot conceive of voting for someone other than a DEM -- even if that DEM is screwing them at the county, state and federal level. YOU get what you deserve folks! I voted for something else. ANYTHING else!

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  8. Anon 4:51 Ken Plum and Janet Howell responsible for tax money not coming back to Reston? That is hilarious. It is all of Northern Virginia, including Reston, that subsidizes the rest of the state. To single out Ken and Janet for that is stupid and willfully ignorant. If the votes were there to change the state taxing and spending structure so it was equitable, the entire Northern Virginia delegation would vote for it, except perhaps for those wedded to party politics on the conservative side of the aisle. Party unity and all, you know.
    You KNOW that there are many examples of waste and misspending of state and local tax dollars for low income people but you just can't be bothered to actually find any examples that make any sense at all? Have the IB students do it, yea, that's the ticket! That's not wasteful of stupid.
    Anon 8:49 RA dues = $45 a month. I agree with you- you should move out of Reston, but why wait?
    Why do either Anon 4:51 or 8:49 want to live in a place where their neighbors are so stupid as to blindly vote without any thought at all as to the results? Or maybe, just maybe, the vast majority of people who vote understand perfectly well what they are voting for and it is Anon 4:51 and 8:49 who are out of touch with reality. Neither of them appear to be able to imagine any reasonable person disagreeing with their point of view. Or wait, are they the same person?

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  9. The comment about USGS blowing up South Reston made me chuckle

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  10. Have to agree with Anon 1:19. In the southern portion of the state (read: the entire Commonwealth except NoVa), there are a lot of republicans in office. If we had republicans in office here do you think they'd do much fighting within their own party to bring that money back here or would they walk the party line in order to not upset their Republican buddies? I really think it's a lose-lose situation either way. Not enough Democratic power to bring the money back here and the Republican's likely wouldn't even try once they got elected.

    There's only one option.

    Secede! NoVa is it's own state ya'll! Then the rest of the state can stop screwing us over.

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  11. Have to agree with 10:45-secede!

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  12. I'm all for Secession. Do you think that we can get the French to help back us in our bid, like they did back in the 1770's? We could even make La Madeline the Official Eatery of the New Republic of Northern Virginia.

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  13. The New Dominion of Northern Virginia!

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  14. If it's to be a Dominion, HKCD, then where are the Bejorans and Cardassians?

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  15. Is anyone missing the obvious freedom song, "yankee doodle went to town, riding on a pony, stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni. grill that is, swimming pools, movie stars..."

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  16. "You KNOW that there are many examples of waste and misspending of state and local tax dollars for low income people but you just can't be bothered to actually find any examples that make any sense at all?"

    All of them are "examples". Subsidizing low income housing right in the middle of one of the richest and priciest counties in the country is not just a waste, it's a crime.

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  17. Anon 11:02-Are you a troll or a grinch?

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