Arlington County Government, VA Technology, 29 Mar 2011

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From YouTube: NewsMakers for March 2011

Description

This edition celebrates March as Including People with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Month, attends the Woman of Vision Awards ceremony and covers the opening of a new County Schools joint Network Operations Center

A

Welcome to newsmakers this edition celebrates women's history month and the annual women of vision awards and the opening of a new shared school county government network operations center. First, though, we attended the proclamation ceremony declaring march, including people with intellectual and developmental disabilities month.

B

Today is an annual proclamation that we've been doing for many years in the county, and it's a time when we use an entire month of the year to highlight to help us remember what we should do all year long, which is to honor people with developmental disabilities and to include them into the fabric of our everyday lives.

C

Now, therefore, I mary hines on behalf of christopher zimmerman, chairman of the county board of arlington virginia, do hereby proclaim march 2011 as including people with intellectual and developmental disabilities month in arlington.

B

I think it's important to remember that people with disabilities have more abilities than disabilities and that there are more things they can do than cannot do and we need to relate to them as if they were part of the community and not a separate group within the community.

A

Each year, the commission on the status of women, gathered to celebrate an arlingtonian with the woman of vision award. This year's winner was linda dunphy, director of doorways for women and families, and co-founder of the arlington non-profit network.

D

You want to read.

E

I'm very honored to receive this award amongst so many talented and honored women tonight.

D

The commission on the status of women studies, all types of things, from affordable housing to domestic violence and those are issues which, unfortunately, we're still dealing with on a day-to-day basis here, so we're lucky enough to serve as an advisor to the county on things like the budget and also to honor women, who are doing wonderful, fantastic things in the community who are increasing access to education, who are who are co-chairing and chairing the turkey trot which brings in money to local organizations and who are also working to end homelessness and domestic violence.

D

So those are all wonderful and important things.

E

For me, leadership is, is about inspiration and inspiration is about being in spirit, and I've always trusted my intuition, because I I believe it's divinely inspired. So I don't take credit for any of this. I get inspired by something much greater than myself and I thank you for this award.

A

Arlington county government and the arlington public schools are looking for ways to share costs and save taxpayers money. One success story was the dedication of a new county school joint network operations center or knock.

F

This uh event that we're celebrating today really is a good example of the kind of work that arlington county and arlington public schools have been doing together for a number of years now to try and collaborate wherever we can in ways that number one improve the delivery of the services that each of us are responsible for, um but also achieve efficiencies and economies, to get a better value for the dollar.

F

For the taxpayers, who support all of what county and schools do, and while we're at it to find ways to to exemplify the kind of behavior that we're trying to encourage. And I'm thinking here of things like energy efficiency. And I know this collaboration reflects all of those things.

G

It is a very collaborative facility. It was once upon a time the space you're in right now was used to do maintenance on school buses. So the facility has now been transformed from a garage like a jiffy lube kind of configuration to a state-of-the-art network operations center that both the county and the schools can share.

H

And we worked with schools and said you have this warehouse space? Can we do something joint together and also provide schools with backup, and so this was a not a really difficult negotiation.

H

We worked really closely together to get it to this point and staff took it from there and did a magnificent job and it's a perfect example of something that makes sense and uh was easier for us to do, because we work together on so many other projects. I.

I

Also think it speaks to the creativity, people have ideas and then making those ideas come to reality. I'm going to give my colleague here a lot of credit, because this is one of her brainstorms.

J

Behind me, you see the public safety racks and, frankly, this is going to be the back up to our ecc 911 capability, with some of it that that equipment will be sitting in here. That means a lot. Schools are going to put equipment in here we're going to put our equipment in and there's still space to, add, more so kudos to the schools and to the counties and both staffs that work very hard to make this happen, we're delighted that we're continuing our collaboration.

K

No, I think it's great, I think it's fantastically referred to as a recycled building, because I really think it is a recycled building and it's just it's really smart to do, and I think you talk about the cooperation and it's we're working together. But it's because we both work for the citizens of arlington and we.

D

Know when we work together.

K

It works better for everybody, and this is just a wonderful example of it. It's great. It's called.

B

Excellent cooperation.

A

That's it for this current edition join us next time for brand new newsmakers.