Mayor Justin Wilson: Alexandria's Housing, Bike Lanes, and the End of an Era
This week, Michael is joined by Alexandria Mayor Justin Wilson to discuss Alexandria's recent move to approve Zoning for Housing/Housing for All -- a bid to expand the city's housing supply by eliminating single-family-only zoning and to fight discriminatory housing policies. He talks about the rationale and the effect--estimated to convert fewer than 70 of the city's 9,000 single-family lots. They also take a trip down memory lane through Wilson's mayoral history--highs and lows from his first-ever election launch party (which Michael attended back in 2007), all the way through recent changes to bike lanes, bus lanes, renaming streets, and responding to COVID.
Episode Transcript
Michael Pope
I'm Michael Pope. And this is Pod Virginia, a podcast coming to you today from Alexandria City Hall. We are in the office of the Mayor of Alexandria, who's just finishing up the remainder of his second term in office. He recently announced he will not be seeking a third term. And he's joining us now on Pod Virginia. Justin Wilson, Thanks for joining us.
Justin Wilson
Thank you so much for having me. This is great. I'm excited.
Michael Pope
I'm also very excited; thank you for joining us. We have to start with zoning-for-housing. This was a unanimous vote among members of the Alexandria City Council to eliminate single-family zoning.
Justin Wilson
Single-family only zoning.
Michael Pope
So explain this to our listeners who may have heard of what happened in Arlington with the missing middle. Now, Alexandria has kind of done the same thing. What exactly is zoning for housing?
Justin Wilson
Well, first of all, zoning-for-housing was a package of a number of different zoning changes, not just the changes to our single-family zoning. We need to step back and look at why we're in this conversation. We're in this conversation because of the incredible price of housing. And the appreciation that we've seen every year has made Alexandria largely inaccessible to folks of moderate incomes. The average single-family home assessment is going to hit a million dollars next year when we do our assessments. The average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in the city now is $2,100. Unless you are someone who is making $90,000 a year or more, Alexandria is not a place where you can easily live. And so we have been looking at a variety of different ways to address that problem. And one of the areas we have been focused on is looking at our zoning code. I am looking at what barriers exist in our zoning code to both the creation of additional housing to help address some of that need, as well as some of the historic inequities that have existed in our zoning code and how we address those. So, this has been a multi-year effort. But about a year ago, in consultation with the community and really responding to feedback from the community, we decided to package this all together and talk about it as one package as opposed to going one by one to look at different changes. So, our staff brought a package of zoning changes to us, and the formal package was brought to us at the beginning of September. And some of these arcane things are changing the way we calculate open space in townhouse zones. Changing the way we look at industrial zones and how we allow the development of industrial zones. And then some of them are much bigger. And obviously, the one that got all the attention was the changes to our single-family zoning.
Michael Pope
Well, let me ask you about those changes to single-family zoning. If you take the word family out of you and replace it with a unit, you could have a single-family lot that has one unit in it, which would be the house. But you could also potentially, depending on how large the lot is, tear the building down and put a four-unit apartment complex there, put a four-unit townhouse unit there, right?
Justin Wilson
Well, there are two major changes that our staff recommended and then ultimately were approved by the Planning Commission and then the City Council to effect single-family zoning. The first was we got rid of the definition of the word of family, we got rid of the family definition.
Michael Pope
Now I've heard you explain this. And it's actually very compelling. Explain what it means in the code in terms of the exclusionary nature of the word family.
Justin Wilson
Almost every jurisdiction in America that has a definition of family and their zoning code has drawn it directly from the United States Supreme Court decision out of Euclid, Ohio. So, when we talk about zoning in America, we call it Euclidean zoning, which is based on that case. And the definition of family is very clearly specified in that Supreme Court decision. So, every jurisdiction that adopted zoning codes that regulate this grabs the exact definition. It spells out which people count as family members. And it spells out literally their relation, your grandmother, your grandfather, and what and how they are defined as family. And those are the people who are allowed to live in your house. Alexandria has a zoning code that includes or had a zoning code that includes that family definition and spells out who can live in your house and says that we cap the number of unrelated adults that can live in your home.
Michael Pope
So, who was responsible for enforcing unregulated adults? Was the city of Alexandria responsible for enforcing this?
Justin Wilson
So our Planning department was responsible for it. And as I would often say, enforcing this zoning code would ultimately require the administration of a blood test. And the story I tell a lot is one that happened near me. There was a townhouse in Warwick Village that was frequently used for pilots who were flying in and out of DCA. They shared this townhouse, and each one had a bedroom. And it was used 24/7, obviously, because pilots are coming in all the time. And they would just sleep in these bedrooms. Frequently, the neighbors would complain and say that there are more than four or five unrelated adults here at this house. They're using it, and so the planning department would show up, the planning inspector or zoning inspector would show up and say, Hey, we've had an accusation that this is going on.
Michael Pope
This is a pilot flophouse.
Justin Wilson
It's a pilot flophouse. Exactly. And the pilots were all trained to tell the planning staff, Oh, no, we're all related. We're brothers. And they all look different, right? And of course, of course, what's the staff going to do? Right? Because the answer is if they are brothers, it's legal. But if they're not brothers, it's illegal. And so it's it's a largely unenforceable provision that exists in our zoning code. And so the first thing we did was get rid of that. And what we've moved to is basically driven by the building code about what is considered unsafe. So now it's a maximum number of people based on the property size. It's really driven around what fire professionals say is an unsafe amount of people that can be in the unit. Which I think is a much more appropriate way to regulate crowding in a unit. Not focusing on the relations of it. The joke that people use is that the Golden Girls would be illegal under the city's zoning code. The other change we made that referenced is how you can use these previously single-family lots. So today, you are only allowed to have one dwelling unit on a single-family lot. You could have one housing unit on that lot; no matter how big the lot is, it is one housing unit. The code now allows up to four housing units on a previously single-family lot. However, we did not change anything else. So, we did not change the required setbacks, the allowed height, the open space required, or the tree canopy rules. So essentially, we have not allowed you to build anything that you could not build before. But we have changed how you can use what you could have built before.
Michael Pope
So the feedback you're getting from the Golden Girls is, thank you for being a friend. But the feedback that you're getting from opponents is this is overdevelopment, and the schools can't handle the kids. And the sewer system can't handle the waste and the gutters can't control the flooding. What do you say to those concerns about over-development?
Justin Wilson
Well, first of all, growth and development is always going to be a source of controversy in local government. That's the of any local government in the world. I think we were very careful in this proposal to analyze the infrastructure impacts and ensure that this was something that could be accommodated, given the existing infrastructure that we have as well as the contemplated infrastructure in the future. That's the reason that we didn't see a proposal in which some advocates wanted to increase height to allow more lot coverage to get rid of some of our setback requirements. We didn't see that proposed as part of this package because we were trying to be informed by infrastructure. But let me take each of those one by one because I think it's important to show how we've kind of looked through this. So, as it relates to sanitary sewer infrastructure, the developer of any property in the city of Alexandria has to pay a sewer connection fee. In fact, our sewer connection fees are some of the highest in the region. And that funds the infrastructure required to support the sanitary sewer needs of any housing unit. And that's true in this proposal as well, as is the storm sewer infrastructure. This is what what causes some of our inland flooding. So, any new development in the city has to fully offset the stormwater impacts of that development. And that is required; they have to come to City Hall and show how there will be less runoff from their property after development than there was before. Thus, development actually reduces the storm sewer impact of sites afterward. And that's the reason that we don't see any of this inland flooding in the new development areas of our city, Carlyle and Potomac Yard. We don't have any flooding issues there. We have flooding in older established neighborhoods where we have yet to see a lot of this large-scale development. School capacity. You know, this is where I feel like we have to beat back some myths on school capacity. And I think the numbers are very, very compelling. In the city of Alexandria, 89% of the students that are in our schools live in a house that was built 30 or more years ago. So most of the kids in our schools are in older homes in our city, not anything that we built recently. Even more stark is that, if you look at it, most of the development that happens in the city is newer multifamily development. That's mostly what's being built here in the city. 3% of Alexandria school students today live in a multifamily market rate housing unit that was built in the last 30 years, only 3% of the students. And so development, at least the development of the last 30 years, is not driving our student enrollment concerns. It's the development of the 50s, 60s, and 70s. That is driving our student enrollment challenges here in the city of Alexandria.
Michael Pope
Okay, we could actually do the entire podcast about zoning-for-housing. But I do want to ask you one more question about zoning for housing. Which is that in your newsletter, you described it as a monumental change during the actual process of making the thought a reality. All these guardrails were thrown upon this thing. And it's actually a much more modest proposal than what you originally wanted. So the scale of this thing is about nine thousand, I think, of single-family parcel lots that might be affected by this potential new zoning tool. And the expectation from your staff is that in the next decade, only about 66 of those parcels will see this zoning change explained. I explained the metric here that we're looking at in the next decade: 66 parcels of land might be chopped up into one, two, or three units, or four units.
Justin Wilson
So, 66 lots could be impacted, yielding a total of 170 odd actual housing units.
Michael Pope
That's not a lot.
Justin Wilson
Which is not a lot. Which means a net increase of about 100 housing units for single families.
Michael Pope
That's phase one in the single-family areas.
Justin Wilson
That's based on what we approved last week. And this is a very modest change. I think there are a couple of reasons for that. So, first, we wanted to constrain this discussion to infrastructure, to the infrastructure that we have, and we didn't want to strain our infrastructure more than we needed to. Two, I think there was a recognition that we have a lot of development approved around the city, we have a lot of development that could be built over the future, all around our city. And so, to the extent that the city needs to continue to meet our housing needs, we're going to be able to do that around the city. Now, I think I had plenty of people who would say, given all that, then why not just take the single-family off the table. And this is where I think the history is really important. And it's what informed this conversation from the beginning. You know, we brought in a professor from the University of Mary Washington, Dr. Krystyn Moon, who did a whole bunch of research as part of this effort on the history of how housing has been developed in the city of Alexandria. She researched the history of restrictive covenants, which shaped a lot of our portfolio of single-family neighborhoods in the city. And there's a great document that she put together that details that history.
Michael Pope
The document is very helpful in explaining how this is Jim Crow zoning. These restrictive covenants that she spends a lot of time documenting show how properties could only be owned by Caucasians; that's the language they use, the restrictive zoning, or people who are not of African descent. And it's not like there's one or two of these things. They're like hundreds of them.
Justin Wilson
No, they were all over. It's been interesting because I think you can see the neighborhoods; as you look at the document, you look at where these were used because they were only used during a certain era. The restrictive covenants kicked in after the Supreme Court had basically made legal explicit segregation in housing. There was a period where you just, you just didn't allow black people to live in certain neighborhoods, and the government could enforce that and did that.
Michael Pope
Richmond actually had a document that did that.
Justin Wilson
Exactly, and we had, I mean, listen, the town of Potomac in Delray, right there. It was founded as essentially a white supremacist neighborhood. And so, over time, the Supreme Court made that illegal. And so, unfortunately, throughout our history, there has been a remarkable amount of creativity that has been employed to exercise this racial bigotry. And they moved to these restrictive covenants to restrict properties to not allow anyone other than the Caucasian race to live there. What's also interesting is that those documents were not the only thing they put in there. So they also put in other restrictions. Some of them seem arcane. They would have setback requirements, and no commercial activity could happen. One of them I saw in Northridge would say the property could never be sold for less than $5,000. It had to be a minimum of $5,000. That was a restrictive covenant. You know, things like that. And so, over time, a Supreme Court decision made those restrictive covenants illegal. So they went away, or they were unenforceable. But a lot of those provisions, those remaining provisions that were not the discriminatory ones, ended up in zoning codes. The city pulled many of those in the zoning code setback requirements, the prohibition on multiple housing units; those were all things that kind of rolled from restrictive covenants into zoning. And you know, not all of them have the same discriminatory intent. However, it is a fact that if you look at the demographics of our predominantly single-family neighborhoods today in the city of Alexandria. You compare them to the rest of the city, which is predominantly single-family neighborhoods, which are whiter areas; they are mostly white areas in most of the city. The rest of the city, where we have more multifamily housing, is much more diverse. And that's why I would suggest it's not an accident. It's not an accident. These policies are working as they originally were intended. It's not to say that people who oppose changes to single-family zoning are doing so because they want their neighborhoods to remain segregated. That's not what that suggests. But it is to indicate that there are systems in place that were put in place for very intentional purposes that are continuing to achieve those purposes today.
Michael Pope
Okay, so you have announced that you will not be seeking a third term as Mayor Alexandria has three-year terms. So you're not seeking another three-year term. What's next for you? Mayor Wilson and a lot of people think that you've got your eye on Don Beyers's congressional seat. Do you want to run for Congress?
Justin Wilson
No, I have no idea. I feel like the people who suggest that don't like me because I can't understand why anybody would look at the United States House of Representatives today and say, I hope a friend of mine goes and serves in that body. I mean, they're literally beating each other up like they're actually fighting. We have had multiple members resign in the last week, including one today. They're all fleeing the place. We got one under indictment; they just expelled one, right? Why on earth would anyone want to do that job? I thank the folks who do it and do it well. And Congressman Beyer, I hope he does it for many, many years. He's a good friend, and he is a great representative for us. I hope he continues to do it. But I have absolutely no desire to go to the United States House of Representatives. No way.
Michael Pope
What if the seat opens up? If Beyer decides he's not running for reelection? Would you be interested in running for any congressional office, then?
Justin Wilson
No, no, I really don't. This sounds like that SNL skit with John McCain and Tim Russert. If an alien kidnaps Congressman Buyer, would you then run? Okay, no.
Michael Pope
So, let me ask you about what I call the era of Justin Wilson. So, we talked about zoning for housing. The other two things I would put as key bullet points in the Justin Wilson era are bike lanes and bus lanes. So, let's talk about these seminary road bike lanes, which our listeners might not know. This created a huge controversy here in Alexandria, where the city government decided to take away traffic vehicle lanes and parts of the road that were devoted exclusively to automobiles and add some bike lanes, and people kind of lost their heads over it. Justin Wilson explains why you're taking away space on Alexandria roads and handing them over to bicyclists.
Justin Wilson
Well, let me first of all say I'm going to answer these questions. But I also want to talk about all the school buildings we built. I want to talk about the infrastructure investments in sewers and big important things. These are important, and they were certainly issues that animated community input. But I think in the grand scheme of things, they're not that important.
Michael Pope
You're taking issue with my description of the era of Justin Wilson, point taken.
Justin Wilson
But I will definitely talk about this. It is funny, I will say, not just on the seminary bike lane. But when we did the King Street bike lanes first, which was really the first controversial Complete Streets project in the city.
Michael Pope
Didn't the Wall Street Journal?
Justin Wilson
I was about to say there was a Wall Street Journal op-ed on that project. And then there were several national press hits on the Seminary project, which is just bizarre. What's your thing with bike lanes?
Michael Pope
Like, why are you handing over the space on Alexandria roads that had previously been devoted to cars, and you're letting bicyclists use them? What's your problem?
Justin Wilson
I'm not, I'm not. So first of all, we have designed roads in our country to move cars as quickly as possible. That is how we designed roads. Since the automobile age, Old Town has obviously been a little different. But since the automobile age, that's how we've designed roads. And I think what we have come to reckon with over the last decade or two is that doing so is a trade-off with safety. It's a trade-off with quality of life as well. And so we, as a city, ever since we adopted our Complete Streets policy and our Vision Zero Plan, have really been trying to rethink how we use road space. And I'm just trying to make the analogy that when we're dealing with road space, it's kind of like a budget. You have a finite amount of resources, and you have to divvy them up to different things. It's the same thing on roads; you have a finite amount of asphalt, and you have to divvy it up to different uses. And we have traditionally given almost all of it to cars. And it's great if you want to quickly move around the city in a car. But it comes with trade-offs, it comes with trade-offs of safety; we have deaths and serious injuries on our roads, from pedestrians as well as drivers. It comes with the quality of life impacts, politically during the pandemic; I mean, so many people are out walking, and how much they were appreciating or noticing gaps in our sidewalk network and things like that. So what we have been trying to do with road configuration changes all around the city, not just those two that you mentioned, is changing some of that allocation. So, in the case of King Street, we got rid of some parking that was not being utilized in the section of King's from Callahan. We created bike lanes, which also served to slow down traffic because it narrowed the roads; there's a lot of good data on the fact that drivers drive slower in narrower lanes.
Michael Pope
This is the infamous road diet.
Justin Wilson
This was actually not a road diet per se; the King Street section Seminary was a road diet. And then the second part of King was a road diet. But the first section to the train station was actually not a road diet; we actually didn't get rid of any travel lanes there.
Michael Pope
When you talked about the theory of using these kinds of things to slow down the speed of traffic, that's kind of the logic behind the road.
Justin Wilson
That is the logic behind road diets and narrowing lanes, and people generally will drive as safely as they feel like they can drive. So if you design a road for them to go quick, they're gonna drive quick. And so, in the case of the seminary, we had four lanes there; it was connected on either end by two-lane roads. And so we didn't need four lanes, and we ended up getting rid of two lanes. We added a turn lane in the middle, and we added bike lanes; it slowed down traffic and made it safer. We created a sidewalk where there wasn't one on one side. While there are still people who are upset with it and don't like it, I think my last campaign and 2021, when I walked those neighborhoods, I heard from a lot of people who said they had opposed it, and when we did it and thought it was crazy. But they had come to appreciate that it was it was okay.
Michael Pope
Okay, restoring integrity to Alexandria. All right, well, let me also ask you about a similar issue, which is the bus lanes on Duke Street, a major thoroughfare. People currently use it in their single-occupancy vehicles. But you could also change the configuration to take away some of that space that is used by traffic and put buses so there are bus-only lanes that you, as motorists, cannot use. If there were a lot of similar dynamics here with the politics of who is supporting it and who is opposing it, Explain why it might be a good idea to have space on Duke Street or any major thoroughfare set aside, specifically just for buses.
Justin Wilson
Well, let me set some context, which I think is important in the kind of what you call Justin's age.
Michael Pope
The era of Justin Wilson.
Justin Wilson
I don't know what I think about the Justin Wilson era. But we just opened a metro station in May. A $370 million metro station. It is very exciting, and we've been talking about it for a quarter of a century. It is great; we're really excited about it. However, you can only build metro stations sometimes, and you can't spend $370 million. And so we have to find ways to move people around the city more efficiently that don't cost billions of dollars to do it. And so we've been very focused on during these last several years on bus buses; we have redone the entire Dash bus network, we removed fares, and consequently, we are seeing some of the fastest post-pandemic ridership growth in the nation. In the nation, we far exceeded our pre-pandemic levels. And every month, we keep setting records on the dash system. So what we are doing is we are proving that if you give people relevant transit service that gets them where they want to go quickly, they will ride it. And so we need to figure out ways to further expand that because you are never gonna build enough roads to get people around the community. Most of the traffic on arterial roads is cut-through traffic, as people use the city as a cut-through. And in most of the areas of our city, we wouldn't even build additional lanes if we wanted to. We don't we don't have space without taking away property and condemning things. And so we are looking at how we make our bus systems even more effective. One of the things that we've been able to do, we did on route one, is set aside dedicated lanes so that buses that can carry much higher capacity than cars can quickly get through those corridors without being stuck in traffic from cars. And so we laid out a vision really now almost, almost 20 years ago now coming up on, 15 or 16 years ago, a vision for three dedicated transitways in the city, one going north to south on the East end, which is now in place That's unreal one, one going north to south and the West end Van Dorn Beauregard connecting Van Dorn Metro all the way to the Pentagon, and then one going East to West on Duke Street. And so we just approved the Duke Street. And we have funding in place using Virginia Transportation Authority funding. A couple of years ago, it approved the Westin one, and there's funding in place for the next one. And this is part of the future. This is how buses can be even more productive and quicker, carrying more people up and down these corridors, and on a corridor like Duke Street, which is our biggest transit corridor, there is a lot of bus service there today. Still, also our biggest vehicle corridor, this is going to help people traverse that corridor quicker as they get through our city.
Michael Pope
All right, you just said something that is not on my list, but I do want to ask you about it. And one of the names you rattled off just then was Beauregard, who was a Confederate General. You have had it as a personal mission to find street names that are Confederates and remove them. Explain why this was a goal for you in the era of Justin Wilson and also what the future of General Beauregard is here in the West End.
Justin Wilson
You know, it's interesting; I actually would concede that this has not been an issue that I was always very passionate about. And I have come to be more passionate about it. So, I did remove the law from our books back in 2013. That had been there since 1963, which required us to name all new North-South streets after Confederate generals. So we had a requirement of that in our city code. We got rid of that. But we had basically ignored that law for a long time. So, it was more symbolic than anything. We also renamed Jefferson Davis Highway and made Richmond Highway consistent with Fairfax County. But I'll be honest with you: Despite having a number of colleagues, Councilman Geary, and others who were very vocal proponents of renaming a lot of streets, I was a little resistant for a couple of reasons. One, we have a lot of streets named after some pretty bad people.
Michael Pope
Lee, Columbus, Beauregard, there are a lot of them.
Justin Wilson
Even beyond the Confederate. That's right. Even beyond the Confederates, we have a bunch of others who are some bad people and did some bad things. And so I was concerned about disruption. You know, people navigate by your street names, and so, you know, renaming is pretty late. Some of these big arterial roads all at once would be enormously disruptive to kind of getting around the city and its practical concerns for homeowners and business owners and things like that. But I think I finally came to the point. And honestly, it was when we were down when I made the pilgrimage as part of our Equal Justice Initiative and went down to Montgomery, Alabama; I was talking to a couple of the people on the trip, and they mentioned the street names in Alexandria. And then, right before that trip, I went to a lecture as part of the Alexandria Library Company meeting last year with Professor Ty Seidule, who has written very eloquently on this topic and kind of reconciled his own understanding of the lost cause.
Michael Pope
It was one of the best Alexandria Library Company lectures ever in the history of that event.
Justin Wilson
It was a wonderful one; I fully agree with that; it was great. We've had some good ones, but that was a great one. And I read his book, and he talked in that presentation about how Alexandria really takes the cake. There's a lot of communities that got really into Lost Cause commemorations, but Alexandria, woo, especially when it comes to street names, we went, we went really overboard as he, as he talked about, and he gave us the full list. And so I think I got to a point where I said, God, this is so hard to defend. Practical concerns aside, it is hard to defend. And obviously, if you go to Germany, or you go anywhere in Europe, where Nazi had occupations. You don't see any of these, you know, you don't see street names, you don't see statues to these folks, because they recognize that's a part of their history that should be in museums and commemorate it and learn from, but not celebrated as that way. And so I put out a proposal that said, basically, let's balance the administrative and disruption concerns by saying, let's not do them all at once. But let's say that we are going to do them, and we'll do three or four years. And so that's what we are doing now. The naming committee just made a recommendation, and they're going to be coming to the council soon, and we'll be talking about it. Hopefully, I can act on these recommendations. But we also tasked, and my favorite part of this effort, our Historic Alexandria group to help us develop the list of names of people we should be honoring. And really go through our history, particularly focusing on women and minorities who have been ignored by history in the city, and come up with a good list of people whose accomplishments we should honor and commemorate. And what's been incredible to look at is just all the great research they've done and the folks who really should be celebrated. So I'm excited about that aspect of it. And I think this is something that's going to continue for years to come. We have a lot of streets to get through. And there are some ones that really need to get done.
Michael Pope
Before we move on from the concept of the era of Justin Wilson, I'm gonna let you make amendments to my list here. I think I heard you say schools and sewage, right. How would you describe the era of Justin Wilson?
Justin Wilson
Well, I think what's been exciting is we have been able to, with the support of our residents, and with a great team on city council on a great city staff, we have been able to tackle a lot of things that have been outstanding for a long time and in bring closure to them. So whether it is opening a metro station, which we've been talking about for 25 years, or getting a landmark mall redeveloped, which is underway. Something else we've been talking about for 20 years is tackling some of these sewer issues, both the combined sewer issues here in Old Town, the largest infrastructure project in the city's history. As a storm sewer issue city-wide, our sanitary sewer issues. We've invested well over a billion dollars in sewers and water, addressing our school capacity challenges by building five schools over a decade, the largest period of new school construction in the city's history. Addressing one of the fastest-growing school systems in the state. You know, these are the types of things that we have done, kind of working together as a community. And I'm really excited about it. I think we have made a lot of accomplishments. And it's one of the reasons why I have to admit this is a really hard decision to step away from. And there's a lot of stuff I really want to do in the future. And there are things I would be excited to see to fruition that we're working on right now. I feel comfortable doing so because of what we've been able to accomplish during this time.
Michael Pope
Now, it's time to stroll down memory lane. Mr. Mayor, I'm going to have you get into the time machine and go back to May of 2007. Vice Mayor Andrew McDonald announced that he was resigning. And so there is a special election. You are a candidate. I went to your kickoff party, which you served some great food; by the way, it was one of the best catering jobs I've ever been to at any political event.
Justin Wilson
It was My Bakery cafe, which doesn't exist.
Michael Pope
You gave a speech, and I quoted you in the newspaper, and this was the quote: we need to envision a future without Virginia paving, unquote. Flash forward to 2023, and Virginia Paving is still going strong on the west end near a metro station; how is it that you would want to, as a candidate, envision a future without Virginia Paving, and yet it's still around,
Justin Wilson
Well, first of all, it's going, and we actually just finalized the sunset on when they leave.
Michael Pope
Don't industrial uses also deserve a place and Alexandria?
Justin Wilson
That was actually part of the debate back in 2007 about the role of industrial space and, I think, in the city. My view is that heavy industrial is different from industrial-industrial and light industrial. I don't think there is a place for heavy industry in the city of Alexandria in the long term. And I think those heavy industrial uses will need to go away, and that's ultimately what we did at Virginia Paving. It will go away, and they know that, and they're working to transition. I think light industrial neighborhoods serve industrial, plumbing supply, you know, that kind of stuff. You need that in the city; you need a functioning city to have that sort of stuff. But heavy industrial should go away. And it is kind of funny that you read that quote; it reminds me of how important that issue was back then; we just came off the vote. And it was a very controversial vote on the council about whether to allow them to continue operating. And I remember that.
Michael Pope
The decision was to allow them to continue operating. There were lots of people who were really, really PO about that. And I think your campaign was trying to tap into that a little bit of that anger.
Justin Wilson
I think that's right.
Michael Pope
Yeah. Okay. When I interviewed you about being a candidate, I asked you a question I asked all candidates, which is: why are you doing this to yourself? It's a question I stole from Mary Kim. Mary Kim always asked this. Why are you doing this yourself? Let me read you your bullet point list here from your first campaign. This was your goal, for if elected, I would do X, Y, and Z. Abolish the personal property tax stickers.
Justin Wilson
Yeah!
Michael Pope
Tax Increment Financing for Landmark Mall. Create an economic development Czar to downsize the capital improvement program. When I asked you about examples, you thought the capital improvement plan was too large and should be downsized. And when I asked you about examples of which specific projects would you like to see pulled out of the CIP? You had no examples. So that was your list from 2007. Several of these have been accomplished, right? You, in fact, are able to abolish the personal property tax stickers. What about tax increment financing for landmark mall?
Justin Wilson
That's basically what we're doing. We're not doing formal tax increment financing. We're doing what I would call kind of a rich man's tax increment financing the city, which is basically using the tax increment to finance some of the infrastructure.
Michael Pope
Okay, so check on that one. What about the economic developments? I don't think Alexandria has a Czar.
Justin Wilson
As part of the ADP, we do have a great leader, Stephanie Landrum, who leads our economic development partnership; we do have a liaison in the city who operates and works with her. I'm struck by that last one I was
Michael Pope
The CIP should be a downside.
Justin Wilson
Yeah, I was wrong. I want to be very clear: I was wrong.
Michael Pope
That's why you couldn't have any examples, I suppose.
Justin Wilson
And I can't believe I said that to this day. Now, I'm frustrated. I don't remember saying that.
Michael Pope
I think candidates get in a little bit of a trap because they're not expecting the follow-up question of okay, which specific product do you want to downsize? Give me some examples and a lot of candidates; that's when they sort of trip over the question.
Justin Wilson
So what I remember about that first campaign was that we were just coming out of when the real estate market peaked in the early 2000s. And there was a lot of anti-tax anxiety because we were seeing double-digit assessment increases for a number of years during the beginning of the 2000s. And so everyone was concerned about their rising real estate tax bills, and the council was constantly lowering the tax rate to relieve some of that pressure. Remember the whole 3% thing? So the funny thing about the 3% thing was that their whole cause was they wanted the council to limit the growth of the annual budget to 3%. So 2007 hit, the recession hit, we adopted negative budgets, and for the first time, we had a 2% reduction. And so I was laughing years later, I was like, 3% god, we would love to have that kind of growth. That would be great. Yeah, I think I was trying to respond to some of that anxiety. But I picked the wrong victim, in my view, because I think what I've developed over time after that is more of an ideology that says that you restrain your operating budget, you restrain the budget, the side of the budget that covers staff and ongoing expenses, but you actually invest heavily in capital. That's where you make your investments. So school construction, roads, sewer, sidewalks, municipal facilities, including the one we're sitting in right now. That's where you, that's where you spend your money. And that's a philosophy I've honed over 14 budgets now. But it was not. It was not something I had at that point.
Michael Pope
highlights from your first term and office were ridding the streets of unwanted copies of The Washington Examiner.
Justin Wilson
I remember you weren't very happy about that, as I recall.
Michael Pope
And also engaging in what I would call hardball tactics to collect city taxes. A list that includes till taps, bank liens, garnished, wages, and even property seizures. Budget Director Bruce Johnson called it fiscal waterboarding.
Justin Wilson
I remember that well; I remember that well. Yes, yes, oh yes. That was a great discussion. Yeah, my favorite was till taps, which were legal; it was primarily for businesses that weren't paying their sales tax or dining tax or something like that. We had the authority, and we still have the authority, under state code, to send the sheriff's deputy over to their cash register and basically take the money out of the cash register necessary to pay their taxes. So I don't know that we've ever done that. But it's a good tool to have in the toolbox.
Michael Pope
So that was your first term. You didn't have a second term immediately because you lost three reelection, which must have been a devastating blow. Tell me about that night of losing the election and not being able to have a second term on the Alexandria City Council.
Justin Wilson
I think what made that so surprising was that it taught me a lot of lessons. First of all, I will tell everyone who will listen that that was the best thing that ever happened to me in my political career. It didn't feel like it at the time. And I just want to be clear about that. It felt devastating at the time because I never saw it coming. I spent the whole months leading up to the election with everywhere I'd go around town, everyone's like, You're gonna be fine. Why are you campaigning? Why even out knocking on doors? What are you doing? And you're fine; everyone's gonna vote for you. Because I was talking to the kind of insiders, the City Hall insiders have watched council meetings and followed every move. But what I didn't realize is that's a small sliver of our community, and most people go about their daily lives and don't follow what's going on in city government and don't know what's happening. And if you're not communicating with them, they don't have any idea. And so I did not see it coming. And so it was shocking. And it took me a couple days to kind of break out of that. And realize I can move forward, but I was pretty bummed out for a little while. But the reason I say it was the best thing that happened to me is, I think, first of all, it reminded me and taught me that there are a lot of things that are more important than elections. And I got some great three and a half years back with my family for a little while, which was wonderful. But then it also helped me realize that when you're in the office, you need to have urgency because you never know how long you're gonna get in the office and that you need to tell your own story. After all, voters will not figure it out. Just because, and I've run six campaigns in the city. And it wasn't until my fifth campaign, my Mayor's race in 2018, that I got to a place where when I would knock on someone's door, they would finally know that there was a reason that they should know who I was. And if they remembered anything about me, it would usually be that my wife had a baby in a car. And that would be basically the only thing they would know about me, typically. I got a lot of media coverage; I did get a lot of the front page of the Metro section. So, save me a lot of money on birth announcements. Um, so you got to tell that story. And so I've always been very focused on kind of aggressively communicating to residents, not just my newsletter, but making sure that I'm constantly reaching out to people who have written me about issues and responding to emails and giving people information about their government. Doing so also helps me be a better representative because they let me know what they think constantly. And that's great, that's what you want. And so I think it made me a very much more effective member of the council, and it just helped me kind of give me perspective. I think if I had won that reelection, I would have been a very different politician going forward, and not in a good way. So I think I think it was a good thing for me.
Michael Pope
This was the point when you entered the Al Gore period of your time in office or not an office where you said, you told me I'm going to gain 30 pounds, grow a beard, and win a Nobel Prize.
Justin Wilson
I only did one of those. I only did one of them.
Michael Pope
The beard did not survive.
Justin Wilson
The beard did not survive. I typically do not shave, and we're on vacation. And we went down to the Outer Banks. Shortly after, I lost, and I didn't shave. And then we were driving home. I asked my wife if it was all right if I didn't shave it off when I got back to town. And she's like, all right. I think she had a soft spot for me because I just lost, and so she let me deal with it. So I grew it out. And I had it for a little while. Then, when I got rid of it after she told me I needed to get rid of it, Everyone would come up to me and say, oh my god, I'm so glad you got rid of it. I looked so stupid.
Michael Pope
You make a comeback. You returned to City Hall, and you eventually became the vice mayor and the Mayor. I want to ask you about what I call the Game of Thrones atmosphere in Alexandria politics. So there's a long backstory here going all the way back to at least 1985 When Jim Moran unseated longtime incumbent Charles Beatley. The backstabbing continued in 2015 when former Mayor Carey Donnelly decided he was going to challenge current Mayor Bill Yule, which led to Allison Silberberg unseating Bill Yule, and then you unseated Allison Silberberg. Why is Alexandria politics such a Bloodsport?
Justin Wilson
I don't think we are a Bloodsport. I think we have a very genteel approach to politics here in the city. But I do think that in the last several years, there have been a couple different visions that have been articulated. And generally, as I said earlier, I think its land use is probably the dividing line and kind of how we think about growth and what the role of growth is in our city. But I think there's been other divides. And it's interesting. I think, obviously, very different from what I've heard. I wasn't around for the 1985 race, as well as some of the proxy battles that occurred after that, because they were different camps, you know, the Beatley, Moran camp, and all kinds of things. And from what I've heard, it sounds like the party was much more divided back then than it is in these recent races. But yeah, there are different visions. And I also think the other thing that's going on here, too, in recent years is the general election has become less relevant to who sits on the city council. And so more of the divides are happening within the party or within the Democratic Party, and that's just a consequence of the fact that the general elections haven't been very competitive.
Michael Pope
One development during your time in office as Mayor has been the addition of scooters all over the place. Everywhere you look, there's a scooter, which, when they first showed up, caused people's heads to explode. What do you make of the scooters in Alexandria?
Justin Wilson
You know, it's interesting; I've never written one, despite people thinking I ride them all the time. I do ride bikes a lot. I don't ride scooters.
Michael Pope
People think you're gonna run for Don Beyers sear; they think you ride a scooter everywhere you go. I think a lot of people who don't like you have what I would think of as Justin Wilson's derangement syndrome. You've never ridden a scooter?
Justin Wilson
No, I've never written a scooter. No, there was a picture of me on a scooter. It was at our Earth Day event. Several years ago. It was in a parking lot at George Washington Middle School. And I got on a scooter with Del Pepper and John Chapman.
Michael Pope
Safety hazard.
Justin Wilson
Yeah, exactly. But I didn't go very far. So, I've never written one out in the wild. I don't find them relevant. I use Capital Bikeshare for that same purpose, and that does everything I need it to do. I will say that when they came out originally, I believed that they were a fad and did not believe they would last very long. I have been surprised, though, at how many residents of our city find them very compelling to their lives. And I remember being with a business owner down on Union Street, meeting with a business owner who owns an office business down on Union Street, and then telling me about how much their employees love taking the scooters from King Street Metro. They get off the Metro and take the scooters down, kicking them back up again at the end of the day, and how great it is for their quality of life. And so it is compelling for a lot of our residents, and it's actually almost a perfect market. Because if they weren't used, the companies would get rid of them pretty immediately. And they're used all around our communities. So I think we still have to manage them, obviously, make sure they don't block sidewalks and cause problems. It's also amazing. I've traveled all over the world, and they are in a lot of cities.
Michael Pope
Paris got rid of them.
Justin Wilson
Paris did get rid of them. It's funny. When I went to Paris in 2019, I saw why they got rid of them. They were overrun with them. They're everywhere in Paris. In fact, I would say probably more than any other city I've seen in the world, just everywhere.
Michael Pope
So, one more thing I have to ask you about in terms of your time as Mayor is the pandemic shutting down Alexandria. What was that like for you as Mayor of the city.
Justin Wilson
I mean, that was definitely the toughest time to go through both. I look back at it now; it seems like a movie, it feels like a movie because it was just such an extraordinary time. And I will focus on the bright spots. The partnership of the chief elected officials of Northern Virginia was closer than I've ever seen. I forged a partnership with my counterparts. My counterpart is in Prince William Loudoun and Fairfax. I've known the Fairfax chair for a long time. Still, we all, and then my counterpart in Arlington, communicated constantly during that process. And then, in turn, communicated on behalf of the region, with the governor, with federal officials, and folks all over the place. And it was we were all going through the same thing. And we were all going through something that nobody else had ever been through, who was alive. It was extraordinary. And I think what was so different was there were people in Alexandria who went through life and never needed much out of the local government. They don't have kids in the schools, they don't call the police, and their houses are not on fire. You know, they don't don't really ask a lot of that government. But during that period of time, everyone in our community needed the same thing from their government; they were looking to their government to keep them safe. And ultimately, when vaccinations came out, they were looking for vaccinations. It was just an extraordinary time, and I think it taught me. I think it taught a lot of people in the community about some of the inequities that exist in our community and how that challenges how we provide services, help people become more aware of the people that live in their neighborhood, or in there, in their community and, and what their needs were and how they were might be different than their own. And it was this feeling that we were kind of all in it together. And so I saw a lot of positives, some negatives too certainly; I saw some things in our community that were ugly, but it was an amazing time and at a time that I still am kind of trying to come to grips with and take stock of as an experience. And I'll probably do that for a long time to come.
Michael Pope
Yeah, there is one more topic I want to ask you about, and then a trivia question to end the podcast. So, I'm curious about the 2024 election. Justin Wilson will not be on the ballot. But there obviously will be candidates to run for this open seat. First time in 20 years. We've had an open seat for the Mayor. Alyia Gaskins. Yeah, so the last time there was an open seat was after Donnelly announced that he would not be running for reelection, and Bill Yule secured the nomination with no opposition. There were no other Democrats who ran against Bill Yule in 2003. Now, we are expecting a Democratic primary. We've already got one candidate,
Justin Wilson
But that was a great general election. Bill Yule vs. Bill Cleveland
Michael Pope
vs. VanFleet. Townsend VanFleet was an independent candidate in that race.
Justin Wilson
Was he in the 2003 race, or was he in the 2006 race?
Michael Pope
In any event, Republican Bill Cleveland vs Democrat Bill Yule. And, of course, that's when he is initially elected. So it's been more than 20 years since there was an open seat for Mayor. The last time, there wasn't really a democratic primary because there was no opposition to Bill Yule. This time, we've got some opposition because we have announced candidate Councilwoman Alyia Gaskins, and we're also expecting Vice Mayor Amy Jackson to announce. I don't think that's happened quite yet. She hasn't responded to my emails quite yet. But we are expecting her to run. Allison Silberberg tells me she is not running. So we're likely to see a two-person race here, Alyia Gaskins vs. Amy Jackson, Justin Wilson; who are you endorsing in this race?
Justin Wilson
I've said that I'm going to stay out for now. I reserve the right to change my opinion on that at some point. But at this point, I'm gonna let the race develop. I do think, though, that this is a community that has always responded to a positive message about the future of our community. And so I hope that all the candidates who get in this race or are going to tell folks what they're for and how they think our city should evolve and change over time. And I think that's what the voters of the city are usually looking for. And I think, when I've been successful, that's what we've tried to do.
Michael Pope
So here is the trivia question about ending the podcast during your first campaign for Alexandria City Council back in 2007. You were asked about your favorite book, your Republican opponent, and that race was a guy named Bill Cleveland; we just talked about Bill Cleveland; this was your opponent in your very first race for this special election to fill the seat vacated by Andrew MacDonald. Bill Cleveland told me his favorite book was the Bible. What book did you say was your favorite book? When I asked you that question?
Justin Wilson
I probably said the city budget.
Michael Pope
You did, in fact, FY 2008 Alexandria City budget; what does that answer say about you, Justin Wilson?
Justin Wilson
I love reading, but I only have an opportunity to read for fun when I'm on vacation. And so most of the time, I am stuck reading, things like that, although I do enjoy reading a budget. And I do think that a budget tells you a lot about a community and tells you about its community's values. And we've always had very readable budgets; our LNB staff is great. And they do a great job of prepping good budgets. But yeah, no, I like reading the budget. So now, whether I will do that as religiously after I get out of the office as I did during the office and before, I don't know, we'll see. But I'll certainly scan it. It's definitely, definitely, a good read. It'll be interesting to see how things that I made part of the budget and made consistent components remain as they go through time.
Michael Pope
Alright, the Mayor of Alexandria, Justin Wilson, thanks for joining us on pod Podginia. Thank you so much for having me.
