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Description
Arlington County Board Member Libby Garvey's remarks at the Board's Organizational Meeting on January 2 2018.
A
Next
to
our
Dean,
our
longest-serving
member,
miss
Garvey.
Thank
you,
madam
chair,
and
thank
you
everyone
for
being
here
happy
new
year.
It's
great
to
have
you
all
here
with
us
either
right
here
now
or
we're
tuning
in
I
want
to
congratulate
our
new
leadership,
Katie,
Krystal
and
Christian
Dorsey,
and
welcome
our
newest
member
Eric
got
shot
and
John
by
said,
I'm
happy
to
have
you
back
again
too.
A
So
this
new
year,
we
even
again
inherited
a
strong
County
from
past
leaders,
which
includes
Jay,
Fassett,
I,
think
Jays,
watching
from
Mexico,
so
from
here
Jay.
Thank
you
for
your
leadership
last
year
and
the
past
20
years.
You
helped
leave
us
in
a
really
good
place.
Indeed,
we
have
many
blessings
to
count
this
January.
Second,
we
have
an
outstanding
professional
staff
and
a
community,
that's
educated,
informed
and
involved.
Despite
challenges.
Over
the
years
we
have
a
healthy
economy,
a
solid
infrastructure
of
facilities
and
services
and
schools.
A
Thank
you,
school
board,
and,
as
always,
though,
we
have
challenges
and
I'd
like
to
just
talk
about
a
few
of
those.
Our
first
challenge,
I
think,
is
becoming
a
solid
board
team.
The
five
of
us
but
I'm
sure
we're
going
to
meet
it.
All
five
of
us
bring
different
experiences,
skills,
abilities
and
perspectives,
and
that
is
a
great
foundation
for
any
team.
A
good
team
maximizes
its
strengths
and
its
of
its
members
and
minimizes
their
weaknesses
and
I've
already
seen
four
of
us
here.
A
Do
that
and
I'm
quite
sure,
it's
gonna
fit
in
well
and
strengthen
our
team.
The
more
this
board
realizes
our
potential,
the
better
our
staff
can
work
and
the
more
our
community
can
realize
its
potential.
A
well-functioning
board
is
the
key
to
serving
our
community.
Well
I'm
delighted
that
so
many
of
us
are
focusing
on
one
way
or
another
on
communication
with
the
people
that
we
serve.
This
is
another
challenge
we
have,
and
we
all
realize
we've
got
work
to
do.
A
Communication
is
never
easy,
particularly
in
a
diverse
community,
as
we
look
forward
to
a
year
of
unprecedented
uncertainty
on
the
federal
level,
it's
clear
that
communication
and
engagement
will
be
more
important
than
ever.
Last
year,
our
new
communications
team,
led
by
Brian
a
Helfer,
worked
on
providing
smaller
and
more
intimate
settings
for
discussions
to
complement
the
traditional
large
forums
and
workgroups
that
we
have
and
we've
each
helped
in
our
way,
I
plan
to
continue
my
series
of
book
discussions
as
part
of
this
effort
and
I'm
excited.
A
Our
chair
will
be
working
with
our
commission
leadership
to
provide
smaller
settings
to
talk
about
big
ideas,
I
think
that's
great,
but
collectively
I
think
we
all
still
need
to
do
a
better
job.
Setting
the
context
for
our
discussions
when
I
joined
the
board
almost
six
years
ago,
I
saw
that
an
advantage
of
newer
board
members.
It's
is
that
they
see
issues
a
lot
more
like
regular
people,
who've
not
been
living
and
breathing
County
issues
for
years.
A
You
know
when
you
spend
a
lot
of
time,
sometimes
decades
on
issues
like
sector
plans
and
site
plans
where
to
locate
a
school
or
a
childcare
center,
how
to
design
a
playground.
It
can
be
all
too
easy
to
forget
that
for
the
people
affected
by
any
particular
site
plan
or
playground
or
childcare
center,
it
may
be
the
first
time
they've
ever
really
thought
about
local
government
or
had
any
contact
with
us
beyond
paying
taxes.
A
So,
while
such
issues
can
feel
like
business
as
usual
to
staff
board
members
and
commissions,
they
can
be
totally
new
and
really
unsettling
to
just
about
everyone
else,
and
sometimes
we
forget
to
answer
to
ask
and
answer
that
most
basic
question:
why
are
we
doing
this
so
in
2018,
will
be
working
on
context
setting
as
part
of
the
effort
to
improve
our
public
dialogue?
We've
posted
on
our
website
a
guide
draft
guide
on
civic
engagement
and
I,
encourage
everybody
to
check
it
out
and
comment.
A
Clear
and
consistent
methods
to
foster
public
dialogue
should
help
us
all
shed
more
light
and
less
heat
on
issues
before
us
and
thereby
increase
the
effectiveness
of
our
conversations.
Indeed,
I
believe
improving
civic
dialogue
and
general
civility
in
our
discussions
is
another
challenge
for
us:
we're
working
on
a
code
of
conduct
for
public
discourse
as
part
of
that
draft
guide,
and
hopefully
we
will
conclude
with
some
simple
and
generally
accepted
statements
of
how
we
conduct
our
civic
discussions.
A
We
cannot
afford
to
waste
time
and
energy
on
ineffective
conversations,
happily
we're
not
starting
from
scratch
in
creating
a
good
public
dialogue
where
people
learn
about
an
issue
its
context
and
why
we're
talking
about
it?
We
already
have
many
avenues
for
discussions,
and
these
include
our
long-established
civic
organizations
like
the
Civic
Federation
committee,
100,
the
rotary
lions
and
optimist
clubs.
These
all
have
different
purposes,
but
they
also
our
building
blocks
for
civic
engagement
with
a
natural
structure.
A
To
inform
people
about
issues
foster
back-and-forth
dialogue
for
this
and
other
reasons,
I'm
delighted,
our
Civic
Federation's
joining
us
again
to
start
off
this
new
year.
Besides,
our
long-established
groups,
I
look
forward
to
engaging
some
of
the
many
new
activist
groups
that
have
sprung
up
in
the
past
year.
There
is
a
lot
of
energy
out
there
on
national
issues.
An
involvement
in
national
issues
often
introduces
people
to
the
importance
of
their
local
government
and
I
welcome
and
encourage
these
groups
and
their
members
to
get
more
involved
locally.
A
So,
let's
face
it,
local
government
is
where
the
rubber,
often
quite
literally,
hits
the
road.
Now
all
that
said,
I
want
to
be
clear
that
efforts
to
strengthen
civility
should
not
take
anything
away
from
honest
and
sometimes
difficult
conversations
in
dialogue
or
from
telling
us
where
we
need
to
improve.
A
We
in
government
need
always
to
work
to
build
trust
that
we're
listening
to
our
residents,
even
when
the
discussions
are
difficult
and
our
ultimate
decision
is
not
the
one
they
wanted
and
I
recognize
that
people
get
understandably
frustrated
when
our
government
services
are
not
working
well
and
our
efforts
to
improve
are
not
immediately
apparent.
Our
former
manager
hired
a
business
Ombudsman
and
our
current
manager,
Marc
Schwartz,
went
one
better
and
hired
a
resident
Ombudsman.
A
Now,
both
Shannan
Flanagan,
Watson
and
Robert
sharp
have
put
a
human
face
on
government
for
for
businesses
and
people,
and
they
provide
important
support
and
guidance
to
those
having
trouble
navigating
our
processes.
What's
better,
they
share
what
they
learn
with
the
staff
and
with
us.
So
we
can
improve
for
everyone.
So
in
2018
we
will
continue
working
on
improving
our
governments,
our
customer
service,
and
we
still
have
a
long
way
to
go
in
some
areas,
and
this
is
another
challenge.
A
Last
year
at
this
time,
I
said:
I
look
forward
to
be
a
being
able
to
say
soon
that
you
could
pay
for
permits.
Online
well
soon
has
come
and
gone,
but
you
still
cannot
pay
for
pyramids
online.
I
understand
that
in
just
a
few
more
months
we
will
have
this
most
basic
of
services
available.
So
I
expect
that,
in
my
remarks
here
next
year,
I
will
be
celebrating
online
payment
as
an
early
success
of
2018.
A
A
For
me,
good
government
is
all
about
our
board
and
our
community
working
together
as
effectively
as
possible,
because
if
we
do
that
I
know,
everything
else
will
fall
into
place,
I
think
of
Arlington.
Actually,
as
one
big
team,
we
want
to
maximize
our
strengths
and
minimize
our
weaknesses.
2018
will
be
challenging.
I
suspect
we
will
need
to
have
serious
and
difficult
discussions
about
setting
priorities
and
sticking
to
them.
A
As
a
number
of
my
colleagues
have
already
said,
we
will
need
to
work
together
more
than
ever,
if
we're
to
preserve
what
we
love
about
our
home,
but
looking
at
where
we've
been
and
who
we
are
and
confident,
we
have
the
resources
we
need
and,
most
importantly,
I
think
we
have
the
political
will
to
it's
going
to
be
a
year
of
challenges,
but
also
a
year
of
opportunities
is
going
to
be
exciting
and
there
I
say
it:
fun.
I,
look
forward
to
working
with
everyone
to
build
a
better
and
better
Arlington.