Civics 101 -- Alexandria City Manager Mark Jinks announced to Council at last Tuesday night’s meeting that he had completed his review of the proposed Old Town Business Improvement District for the downtown area and concluded that the time was not right to create a BID.

To the Editor:
I went to Kingstowne Cleaners in the Kingstowne area of Fairfax County, VA yesterday (Aug. 24) to pick up alterations.

To the Editor: 
Disappointed that this has become a platform for venting of dislike dare I say "hate" language.

To the Editor:
Are any of us reasonable, compassionate people surprised at President Trump's recent racist, hateful comments following the tragedy in Charlottesville, VA?

To the Editor:
I grew up with two parents in the Army, and they raised me to believe that we owe our men and women in uniform the highest debt of gratitude for their service. As a liberal, I believe that the greatest form of gratitude is to keep our men and women out of harms way as much as possible, only using military force as a last resort when all other options have been exhausted, and the necessity of the desire is without question.

Opinion: Lee Mortimer

Unlike in most democracies, U.S. congressional elections follow a "winner-take-all" model. One person is chosen to represent all the voters of a district -- with the result that large numbers of constituents who did not support the winning candidate may feel left out. It's hard to feel "represented" by someone you voted against.

By Alexandria Mayor Allison Silberberg
Yesterday, only a few days after the unthinkable occurred, the park around our Simpson Field and our streets reopened. The large baseball field will reopen today, June 18th. Together, we are resilient. We are a blessed community. 

The Alexandria City Council would serve our community well by passing an ordinance ensuring that the police department’s data collection is being accomplished for all arrests as well as for traffic stops, frisks, citations, searches, and other types of detentions. This ordinance would make such data open and accessible to the public, provide a valuable tool for analyzing how the data relates to the functioning of our city and treatment of our residents, and it would show that the police department is willing to be accountable to the community.

To the Editor:
There is something surreal in what the Alexandria City Council did last week in approving a whopping 5.7 cents per hundred increase in property taxes for 2018. The City Manager had proposed an increase of 2.7 cents that would have provided very adequately for current and future city needs, including a substantial increase for the schools.

Opinion: Cody Wofsy, Staff Attorney and Skadden Fellow, ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project.
Monday marks a critical next stage in the legal battle against President Trump’s Muslim Ban executive order. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, in Richmond, Virginia, will hear legal arguments in a case, International Refugee Assistance Project v. Trump, brought by the ACLU and National Immigration Law Center.