Arlington Board Unanimously Elects de Ferranti As New Leader

ARLINGTON, VA — Arlington County Board unanimously elected Matt de Ferranti on Monday to serve as its new chairman for 2021. Katie Cristol was chosen to be the new vice-chair.

"Last year, in our first meeting of 2020, the Board was celebrating a decline in our office vacancy rate; our budget prospects looked better than they had in years; and we looked forward to a year of investment and prosperity," de Ferranti said, at Monday's board meeting. "Tonight, one year later, we are worried about our health, hunger, preventing evictions, and helping our children, who have been distance-learning and isolated from their friends for months."

After leading a moment of silence to honor the 182 Arlingtonians who have died due to COVID-19, de Ferranti said he would be focusing in the new year on "stabilization" and recover, as well as building a community that was committed to racial and economic equity.

"Our health care response to COVID 19 is clearly the biggest issue we face as a community," he said. "Arlington’s COVID infection test positivity rate is above 9 percent, well above the 5 percent threshold the Center for Disease Control and Prevention uses to assess the risk of a surge. We face daily case and hospital counts that are close to the highest we have seen. We must get the vaccines out quickly to our health care workers, nursing home residents, essential workers, seniors, and, eventually, our community as a whole."

The new board chair identified the lack of "middle housing" in the county as a problem that needed to be solved.

"Missing middle housing types are necessary because the status quo on housing is not sustainable," he said. "Arlington is a very desirable place to live — the cost of buying a home here has continued to increase over the last 10-15 years relative to wages because demand has been greater than supply. That means that without changes in our housing supply the 60 percent of Arlington residents who currently rent cannot realistically save up to buy a place."

In addition, de Ferranti said it was time for Arlington to reckon with its failures regarding racial and economic equity.

In 2020, the county took several steps in this respect, including adopting body-worn cameras for Arlington County Police and launching a review of the police department's policies and practices. A report on this review will be released early this year.

"We appointed a Chief Race and Equity Officer who is committed to creating a county where everyone sees themselves in the work being done," de Ferranti said. "We adopted a framework for implementing Restorative practices for conflict resolution and launched Dialogues of Race and Equity. We set in motion public processes for renaming Lee Highway, changing our logo, and renaming streets, buildings and public spaces whose names do not align with our community’s commitment to racial equity."

Cristol echoed de Ferranti's focus on helping the county recover from COVID-19 and addressing the "missing middle housing" problem. She was also hopeful the county could began tackling the "climate emergency."

"There’s reason to feel hopeful for action in these early months of 2021; both because of the incoming presidential administration’s prioritization, and because closer to home, we’ll complete the update of the Community Energy Plan Implementation Framework," Cristol said. "That means adding specifics to our big, bold goals for renewable energy and carbon emissions reduction, and more detailed plans for expanding decarbonizing our government activities. I’m looking forward to some spirited discussions about our transition to electric vehicles in the County fleet, helping community members access renewables, and other critical topics."

Outgoing board Chair Libby Garvey thanked county staff and the community for their support during 2020. She also congratulated de Ferranti and Cristol on their new roles on the board.

"With you at the helm we have a great leadership team to lead us through this next year as we work to stabilize and recover," she said.