Arlington County Government, VA Here/Now, 5 May 2008

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From YouTube: Here/now: Know Your...County Board

Description

A segment of AVN's monthly magazine show, "Here/now", "Know Your..." provides a behind the scenes look at how our county government actually works. In this episode, we learn what it's like to serve on the Arlington County Board.

A

Last month, lloyda sakira took us behind the scenes in the county manager's office to see how the county really works and we've got plenty of email from viewers asking for more of the same. So this month, it's onward and upward, as we find out what it's like to serve on the county board.

B

Hi, my name is loida and today we're going to find out a little bit more about the county board and what they do hi. uh We have an appointment to see the chairman. Can you tell me where his office? Oh sure, if you it's in the back, it goes straight to your left. Thank you sure.

B

Hi hi, I'm looking for the chairman of the county board. Well,.

C

That will be me, welcome hello and welcome to hello.

B

Oh, it's great to meet you. My name is lloyd. I am.

C

B

If we can learn a little bit more about the county board and how everything works in this county sure.

C

Well, welcome to my office. This is the office of the chairman this year. I happen to be the chairman. We have five board members and each run at large. H4 mail runs at large. That means throughout the whole county. Everyone comes out to vote um and uh you know we get elected um now the there's a rotation for the chairmanship and this year I happened to be the chairman for the first time and uh yeah, I'm a little busy these days.

C

You know, and uh you know we set policy- we when a big issue comes up for, for example, land use or how it's going to be used or how it's not going to be used. We talk about it, we have big meetings with long projects and at the end we make those decisions, whether we accept it or not. We also set the tax rate, which is a very involved process. The whole budget process that we go through every year, where.

B

Does that all happen.

C

Yeah, well, you know we have what we call the county boardroom, the meeting room. In fact, let me show you, let me show you where it is it's over here. Thank you yeah. So it's back here, oh great, this is the back door. We'll go in get to know the secrets this. This is the secret entrance yeah. So this is where we come and have our public meetings. You know this is um where um a lot of the activities go.

C

This is uh opponents, usually reverse the other way looking facing the dies and the residents have a chance to sit there. If we have a large crowd and people take turns uh the uh at the podium, then telling us what happened. So this is what's happening.

A

I'm currently being persecuted for my political and religious beliefs. First I'd like to thank all five of you over.

C

The past two weeks.

B

Many problems in my neighborhood thank you for your service. Thank.

C

B

Amendments motions and all this other terminology that is not really familiar to someone to an average resident. Can you tell us a little bit more about that and where we can find information well,.

C

You know, I fully agree that it's not easy to understand, sometimes that we're get caught up in this acronym thing and then this government speaks stuff and, as a matter of fact, I had that frustration when I first came to the board, and so one of my one year, one of proposals I had was to come up with translated device of government speak so that people can understand the basic terms that we use uh citizen's guide to county board meetings.

C

uh Terminology you know and and if you imagine how difficult it is to learn in english, can you imagine if you were speaking another language, and so what I did also is. I had to translate into espanol para que la persona.

C

You can request it puede perlo, and we can. We gladly get one to you.

C

These are the five seats for each of the board members and what I call these. These are the seats of the people and I happen to sit in this chair over here. This is the chairman's seat this year and, with this gavel, welcome to the board meeting my job is to facilitate the meeting, keep it running, keep it moving and move on to the different subjects to keep things going. So this is where a lot of the action takes place: health, which has two parts, our own physical health and the health of the environment.

C

But I tell you what not all the action takes place here in the boardroom? Actually, a lot of the action takes place out there in our meeting rooms and our board offices and working with staff. So we do a lot of hard work.

C

We look at the plans proposals, one very important point, and when the residents come and meet with board members, they can meet with either one board member at a time or with a maximum of two board members at a time, because if three members are together, then it's a public meeting and that would have been advertised and we just simply cannot do it.

C

Thank you laura for stopping by now I gotta go back here to this work. So I'll see you later thank.

B

A

Thanks loida and thanks to walter tejada for taking the time to answer our questions. Remember if you want to know your county government, better email, your questions and ideas here and we'll try to get them answered for you.