Postal Over "Hysteric Condos"

As author of the post, Matt Zenkowich, why don't you create a site that reveals all of the back room dealings, bribes from developers, and cronyism that is rampant in Vienna... Oh, wait - that's already been done. Thanks HV.com! :-)

Don't throw the baby out with the bath water, Matt. Feel free to inject some value. George and Maud just raised the Parks Department budget 10%, $250k to $2.4m, to pay for more basket weaving activities at the Town Green and at the Community Center. Do you support 10% more fun and games activities and the requisite tax increase when the tax base is decreasing because of waning property values and the stagnant commercial business in town? You should have some reason for your vote besides this blog's attitude.

Well, you can huff and you can puff, but you can't blow away the truth. This site exists simply because 1) Reporters like Brian Trompeter, don't report the news, and when they do comment on Vienna activities, they are biased, one sided and clearly slanted, and 2) The TOV elected officials have been getting away with incompetence for years. This site is making a difference if nothing else to getting people out to Vote and 3) This site brings an avenue to people who wouldn't otherwise be able to "see" how our elected people are treating our citizens. Why do we not have all our meetings on TV?

Am I the only one slightly annoyed by this? I'd rather pay for a sticker than hundreds more in property taxes. How come every day I feel like I'm paying out the wazoo for the Town Green project?!

Vienna Officials Make Changes to Budget Proposal
by BRIAN TROMPETER, Staff Writer
(Created: Thursday, April 19, 2007 7:21 AM EDT)

Town of Vienna officials announced on April 17 that they would eliminate the town's automobile decal and its associated fee and make up for the lost revenue by increasing Vienna's proposed real estate tax from 19.61 cents to 20.22 cents per $100 of assessed valuation.

The tax increase will cover $235,896 of the $257,000 in lost revenues. Town officials also will save $14,244 in administrative costs associated with the vehicle-sticker program and will not have to provide $6,860 in tax relief now that the program has been eliminated.

Fairfax County eliminated its auto decal and fee last year.

Town officials also have budgeted $255 more to give stipend increases of 15 percent, instead of the proposed 10 percent, to members of town boards and commissions.

The Vienna Town Council will hold a public hearing on the budget on Monday, May 9 at 8 p.m. at Vienna Town Hall.

Oh, goody. So I get to pay $100+ instead of $40, while all those renters at the Cedar Park Apartments get a free ride.

I'll remember that on election day.

I certainly hope that no federal government (DOE) employee would be using government (IT) resources for non-official use. This might just be an ethical violation.

Nice racist comment, "Patrick St. Resident". But do you really think that immigrants who rent in Vienna don't see rent increases when their landlords' property taxes go up?

/ Nice racist comment, "Patrick St. Resident". /

I fail to see how that was a racist comment. The person didn't mention any race or nationality, only that all the renters at the apartments wouldn't have to pay the tax.

Apparently, you aren't really from Cedar Park, or you would know how many cars there are at the apartments, and why there might be a problem with homeowners having to foot the bill.

Wonder what your agenda is "Cedar Park?"

C'mon guys (Matt Z., et al):

Keep posting pointless "this website is bad/ this website is racist/ this website is CRAZY" posts.

We are SO clever... TEE-HEE!

it's important to keep this website factual & accurate. No pointless name-calling or unsubstantiated criticism.

Just the facts:

After purchasing the house which, I might add, is situated between two parcels of commercial use buildings, the post office on one side and a church which is rented out for commercial activities, we looked into making it an old Victorian book-store-coffee house. Interesting, before we bought it, the town and the Historic Board had no interest what so ever in that property. For years they didn't even include it on their Walk on the Hill pamphlets even though it is in "their special historic district."

Well, we thought a nice quaint coffee shop book store would be nice, but now, introduce Maud into the story. Absolutely not! And now the rumors about us selling it to the post office for expansion. We (all 6 owners, don't want to sell it to the PS or to anyone else for that matter. We have entertained ideas of putting a nice restaurant there, and as mentioned above, a coffee shop, or book store, or maybe even a professional building like a doctors office, or something along those lines.

But, we have been met with a brick wall, because of the petty actions of Maud Robinson and her cronies. They would rather see the house the way it is now, rather than have any improvements that would benefit the whole town. And Yes, benefit us to. We did not buy it to make millions, if you can show us how to do that, tell us. That house was for sale, and it was, as stated above, and old house that was simply ignored nestled between the post office and the Knights of Columbus building.

Yes, it's true. The Historic Board is not about historicity and all. Look at the homes there: more than 85% of the home have been built within the last 10-15 years. The district is there simply because a small group of people want to yield power and make decisions. I have seen good honest people turned away from building and purchasing a home in their district simply because one of Maud's anointed committee members did not like the builders they were going to use to build their new house. If you don't think that that is wrong, you should vote for Maud.

If you don't believe that this type of behavior can happen in our beloved Vienna, you need to come down to their meetings and see them in action. Why do you think they don't want their meetings taped and broadcast?

Sincerely,

1/6th Owner of Green House

Nice sentiment Anne, but when I asked this site to substantiate some of its criticisms, I got called names. The proprietor of this site and most of its contributors don't seem to agree with your code of conduct.

MORON:

Are you starting up your "this website is bad" posts again?

You wanna hug it out?

Thanks for proving my point, Catch-22.

I must commend "Owner (Part 1/6th) of said Green House" for a pretty reasonable discussion of what's up with the Green & Purple Chateau. If the rest of you tried to reason with people instead of treating everyone as enemies, you might find yourselves making fewer enemies. But what do I know, I'm a MORON, right Tractor Man?

Visionary - I never see you responding to any of my posts regarding sidewalks, useless parks, etc.

Where do you stand on all of that stuff?

Where do I stand on sidewalks, useless parks, etc? I love sidewalks. In fact, when I was house shopping 14 years ago, I wouldn't consider houses unless they were in neighborhoods with streetlights and sidewalks. As a result, I live in a house where my kids can walk to school, I can walk to the Metro, and we can all walk to the community center and the Maple Avenue corridor totally on sidewalks. During the time I've lived in Vienna, I've seen sidewalks added farther down my street, and anyone who ventures south of Maple Avenue must have seen the huge effort that's been going for a pretty long time to install sidewalks along Center Street, so it's dishonest for this site to continually assert that the town won't build sidewalks.

We need more sidewalks, and I filled out the sidewalk survey to lobby for the most important places to put them. I guess I could have bought a house that had no sidewalks, waited a few years, then started screaming about the lack of sidewalks along with 1000 other grievances large and small, but that's not how I live my life.

Where do I stand on "useless parks"? I value green space. By and large, the amount of green space in the DC area keeps getting smaller and smaller. More is better.

I don't have a position on "etc". But have you noticed that posts seem to be disappearing from this web site again? That comment from the 1/6 owner of the Purple/Green house seems to have been replying to someone called "just the facts", and I can't find a comment signed that way. Any idea what question they were answering? Any idea why the comment was deleted?

To Visionary:

You consider the town green an "addition to green space?!" I've lived here just shy of 35 years and the green space has never gotten smaller (Glyndon, Southside, Yeonas, Waters, Caffi, Meadowlane, et al) with the exception of the old "town green" where the INOVA emergency sits. Personally, buying the old Lowes would have been great to add to the CC and Caffi Fields (but, we've gone rounds about this before).

The Town Green does not add significantly to green space as nearly 1/3 of it appears to be concrete. The expenditure to get us to this point, in my opinion, is not worth the price tag considering my real estate taxes just went up.

Interesting how you picked your house - I based my decision upon the school district. I thought that was the most important issue for me. There were certain schools I preferred over others. Since we have both been here since 1993, traffic is significantly worse. If you bought a house with no sidewalks 14 years ago, traffic may have been manageable but now it is not. But, we all know that sidewalks do not prevent fatalities in this town. You can be standing on a sidewalk and have your life taken from you.

It's pretty hard to avoid going to a good school if you live in the Town of Vienna, so sidewalks trumped micromanagement of exactly which elementary school my kids attended. I guess if you're afraid of minorities, you'd avoid Marshall Road, but my kids have done very well there (although in the interest of full dislosure, I'm two-for-two so far in them getting sent off to other schools for gifted services after a few years at Marshall Road).

I've never heard of someone getting run over standing on a sidewalk in Vienna. When did that happen? You could also get struck dead by a chunk of frozen toilet liquid falling from one of the dozens of planes that go overhead every day in Vienna, but that doesn't mean it actually happens.

>>You could also get struck dead by a chunk of frozen toilet liquid falling from one of the dozens of planes that go overhead every day in Vienna, but that doesn't mean it actually happens.

So you really believe plane toilets dump at will... and you're ok with that?

You are kidding right? You are actually going to make a joke about this. Shame on you.

OK, I've heard the "you're a racist" comment dropped 2x in the past few days. Mainly at people who support HV.com and are against Maud. To even begin to imply I am a racist for looking at schools is just about the dumbest argument, but I do note a tone of defensiveness. I feel like I know you now - you're a GT parent. I remember those not-so-fondly having been a product of Fairfax County's GT program.

Let's look at the many reasons why someone would buy a house based on schools in Vienna:

• Do all the kids from the elementary go onto the same intermediate? (at mine elementary, they do, unless GT). At many elementary schools they could be split between several intermediate schools.

• What is the elementary's reputation among parents? Do they like the teachers? Principal?

• Size of elementary?

• What intermediate school will they attend? I did not prefer to go from Kilmer to Madison because it is a much smaller number of kids who do this versus Thoreau to Madison and the transition can be very hard (I know this from experience).

• What HS will they attend? (preferred Madison for many reasons including location of Marshall on Route 7)

• Will my kids be able to walk to elementary? (yes) Walk to High school (yes)? I will not buy a car for my kids to drive to school and bus riders have to be on the bus at the crack of dawn.

• Will the HS have AP classes or the IB program?

• Do most of the neighborhood kids go to the base school or elsewhere (private, parochial, etc)?

Racism? Check Seeman's family and Maud's anti-HUD stance. Racism is alive and well there. For good measure, don't forget to check the historic district drawn with Maud's blessing between white and black homes: white you are in, black you are out. Isn't it perverse that the people who actually can be proven to be racist wring their hands and point everywhere except themselves?