Alexandria City Public Schools received the bad news from the State Department of Education this week. T. C. Williams, our “flagship” high school, has failed to meet adequate yearly progress for six consecutive years and now faces major restructuring under State and Federal guidelines.

Alexandria’s Business License Tax is due on Monday, March 1. Business owners like myself are now scrambling to fill out the newer and more complex forms and to find the cash to pay the bill.

In another example of the increasing complexity of life in the 21st century, the City decided to collect a great deal more data about businesses that are licensed here.

The great snow came last weekend as predicted and Alexandria responded. In my column of last Sunday I made some observations on our city’s snow removal efforts for the big storm in December. Let’s see how the City handled this one.

First the City nailed King Street pedestrian crossings. When the usual snow shoveling crew appeared on Saturday afternoon to clear the handicapped ramps it looked like business as usual. Sunday afternoon, however, a pair of skid loaders worked their way up King Street clearing the intersections for easy pedestrian passage. The result was amazing.

The T.C. Williams boys basketball team posted a very fine record for the first two months of the season winning 12 and losing only 3. That all changed in a heartbeat last Monday as the presence of two ineligible players was revealed. All wins were forfeited leaving the team with an 0-15 record.

We had another huge snowfall yesterday. Snow totals are always imprecise but it is clear that we were near or just above 20 inches. This is our second monster storm of a winter that has also seen 3 other smaller storms and that brings some good news and some bad news.