Appreciating RCA's 2013 Citizen of the Year

By RCA President Colin Mills

It’s time once again for one of my favorite duties as RCA President: announcing our Citizen of the Year.  With so many dedicated citizens doing good work in the Reston community, I am delighted that we can honor some of those well-deserving folks.  I love reading the nominations we receive, and learning about the citizen volunteers that make Reston such a special place.

RCA is all about the power of Reston’s committed citizens to achieve great things.  It may be fashionable to be cynical about what individuals and citizen groups can accomplish in a world of big bureaucracies and institutions.  But RCA is built on the belief that with hard work and dedication, our citizens can move mountains.  This year’s winner is a shining example of that belief in action.  It gives me great pleasure to announce Kathy Kaplan as our 2013 Citizen of the Year.

Kathy joins a proud tradition of RCA Citizen of the Year award dating back to 1976, people like Embry Rucker, Janet Howell, Jim Allred, Claudia Thompson-Deahl, Dave Edwards, and last year’s winner, Cate Fulkerson.  As you know if you’re familiar with this award, the criteria for selection are as follows:

1. The nominee has been a Reston resident for at least 5 years.
2. The nominee’s actions are consistent with the goals of Reston, and of RCA.
3. The nominee’s actions have contributed to the quality of life in Reston.
4. People in need of help have benefited from the nominee’s actions.
5. The nominee’s deeds were done without thought of personal benefit or recognition.
6. The nominee is not currently serving as an elected public official or a member of the Board of a major community organization (RA, RCA, or RCC).

Kathy is the sort of active, engaged citizen that every community needs.  She reads the kind of long, boring official documents that most of us can’t be bothered with.  Sometimes, those documents contain some interesting surprises.  For instance, in the spring of 2013, Kathy found out about plans that had the potential to do serious damage to Fairfax County libraries.

This included the infamous “Beta Plan.”  You may have read about it last summer and fall.  RCA passed a resolution opposing it last August.  If you have heard about it, you can thank Kathy for you dedication perseverance, and leadership in bringing the plan to light.

Through research, conversations with knowledgeable sources, and numerous FOIA requests, Kathy uncovered a grim picture of the future of our library system.  In addition to the Beta Plan – which would have slashed library staff, de-professionalized position requirements, and eliminated specialized positions for youth librarians – Kathy discovered that the library budget had been reduced by a third over the last six years.  Even worse, she discovered that the library had reduced the size of their collection by a quarter-million items since 2005, and that many books in good condition were being thrown in dumpsters and destroyed.  Not donated to book sales or given away to charities – destroyed.

As a longtime book lover, Kathy was rightly horrified at what she learned.  But she didn’t just write a letter to the editor or grumble about it under her breath.  No, she swung into action.  She identified County librarians and library supporters who were also concerned about the changes, and worked with them to get the word out.  She wrote emails and letters to County officials, community organizations, and media outlets.  She helped get over 2,000 signatures on a petition to stop the Beta Plan.  She met with County staffers and elected officials to learn more about the library issue and to show them what she had found out.

The turning point for the issue came when Kathy acquired and shared photos of library books sitting in a dumpster.  This had been alleged previously, but now there was visual evidence.  These photos led Providence District Supervisor Linda Smyth to do some dumpster diving of her own; when she retrieved books in good condition that had been thrown out, the resulting outcry really focused attention on the problems in our libraries.

Thanks to the efforts of Kathy and her colleagues, the Library Board and the Board of Supervisors voted to eliminate both the book-trashing program and the Beta Plan.  With continued public support, we should see the library’s funding restored in future County budgets as well.  This was a tremendous win for citizen activism, and it wouldn’t have happened without
Kathy’s dedication and tireless work.

Since Kathy is a Restonian and the Reston Regional Library was one of the targets for the Beta Plan, RCA was one of the first organizations she contacted with her discoveries.  When she shared what she had learned, frankly, our first reaction was disbelief.  How could this be happening to such a valuable County resource?  But when we followed up and discovered that what Kathy said was true, we were gratified that Kathy had done the leg work and let us know about the Beta Plan and the book-culling before it was too late to act.

If the only thing that Kathy did for Reston was her library activism, it would have been enough to make her a deserving Citizen of the Year.  But Kathy is a longtime Restonian, and she has done much more for the community.  She has served as an interpretive naturalist at the Vernon Walker Nature Center, and she has taught art workshops to kids at RA camps.  She is an award-winning author and illustrator.  And she has created bronze relief sculptures for the September 11^th Memorial at Brown’s Chapel, and the Woodland Gardens at the Walker Center.  Kathy is a woman of many talents.

We will be honoring Kathy in a ceremony at RCC Hunters Woods in the coming weeks.  I’ll share the date and time as soon as it is finalized.  I hope you’ll join us to honor a woman who showed that you can fight City Hall – and that individual citizens can make a big difference in our community.  

Statement on Comprehensive Plan by Colin Mills at Board of Supervisors Hearing, January 28, 2014

The following statement was delivered by RCA President Colin Mills at the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors hearing on the proposed amendment to Reston's Comprehensive Plan on January 28, 2014. The Board of Supervisors voted to defer the decision on the Comprehensive Plan amendments until February 11.

Good evening.  My name is Colin Mills, and I am president of the Reston Citizens Association.  RCA has participated on the Task Force review of the Comprehensive Plan since its beginning in 2009.  In that time, in addition to attending every meeting, we submitted over a dozen papers to the Task Force containing detailed analysis and recommendations, and we submitted many comments as the draft plan progressed.

RCA is a staunch supporter of the Silver Line; like most Restonians, we eagerly await the opening of the Wiehle station later this year.  And we believe that if the development around the Silver Line stations is done right, it can enhance Reston and help ensure that we remain a thriving, attractive community for decades to come.

Unfortunately, we believe that the plan before you falls short in several key areas.  I’m here tonight to discuss the ways that RCA believes the draft plan should be strengthened to sustain Reston’s values and quality of life.

One of our greatest concerns is transportation.  The Dulles Toll Road corridor is Reston’s biggest transportation bottleneck; it divides our community in half and is the source of our greatest traffic jams.  The Silver Line will bring a lot of traffic to our community, and careful planning is needed to avoid gridlock on our streets. 

The Rosslyn-Ballston corridor has been cited as a model for Reston to follow; traffic in that area has actually improved over time as development has occurred.  Unfortunately, the County Department of Transportation’s modeling suggests that won’t be true for Reston; our traffic is projected to get worse — in some cases, much worse — if the plan goes forward as written.

The models show that we’d face average delays of up to 5 minutes per intersection around the stations.  String several of those intersections in a row and add in spillover effects, and the Toll Road turns into a virtual wall between north and south Reston during rush hour.  That level of gridlock just isn’t acceptable.

Another of the plan’s shortcomings concerns athletic fields.  The development near the stations will bring over 35,000 new residents to Reston.  Those residents need places to play: not just pocket parks and playgrounds, but athletic fields as well.  The plan calls for only 3 fields to be built in the transit areas.  There aren’t any fields there now, and the Park Authority says the new residents will demand the equivalent of 12 new full-size turfed and lighted fields.

So if they need 12 fields, and the station areas will have only 3, where will the rest of the demand go?  Into the rest of Reston.  The Park Authority expects that existing Reston fields will be turfed and lighted in order to meet the demand.  But the plan is silent on where these enhanced fields should go.  Reston’s existing fields are well-used, and many are paid for by us through RA assessment dollars.  We believe that the fields serving the transit areas should be located within the corridor or at least within walking distance. 

Our last major area of concern is implementation.  Here, we’re not concerned about what’s in the plan, but rather, what isn’t there.  The plan’s language is important, but it must be paired with guidance about how to achieve the goals and objectives laid out, and how to ensure that the plan’s constraints are followed.  RCA produced a paper on this subject, and its title has become a mantra for us throughout this process.  That title: “Planning Without Implementation Is Empty.” 

Implementation is where the rubber meets the road.  If the desired placemaking and transformation of the Toll Road corridor is going to happen, implementation will be a vital piece of that.  If this vision fails, or if the development comes at the cost of Reston’s quality of life, our citizens will look to our elected officials for blame.  It’s in everyone’s best interest that we get this right.

We are thankful to Commissioner de la Fe for recognizing the importance of this issue in his follow-on motion regarding transportation funding.  RCA and others stressed transportation funding as a key issue unaddressed by the draft plan.  It is essential for turning our vision of the station areas into reality.

However, transportation funding is only one piece of the implementation puzzle, and Restonians are anxious to know how the whole puzzle will come together.  If the plan doesn’t call for the creation of a separate implementation entity, as the Tysons plan did, then we need follow-up to determine how implementation questions will be addressed, how Reston’s citizens will have input, and who will ultimately be responsible.  If implementation isn’t someone’s responsibility, it’s no one’s responsibility.  We can’t let that happen in Reston.

Also, speaking of funding, we do not support another special tax district on existing Restonians to fund transportation or other corridor-related improvements.  The rest of Reston shouldn’t foot the bill for the infrastructure that the transit areas need.

We’ve come a long way in developing a vision for transforming Reston and the areas around the future stations, but our work is not done.  The plan still falls short in key areas – especially transportation, parks and rec, and implementation – and that runs the risk of preventing Reston from growing and thriving in the future.  We urge the Board of Supervisors to ensure that these shortcomings are addressed before approving the draft Comprehensive Plan.  Thank you for your time and attention.

Statement on Comprehensive Plan by Terry Maynard at Board of Supervisors Hearing, January 28, 2014

The following statement was delivered by RCA Board member and Reston 2020 Committee co-chair Terry Maynard at the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors hearing on the proposed amendment to Reston's Comprehensive Plan on January 28, 2014. The Board of Supervisors voted to defer the decision on the Comprehensive Plan amendments until February 11. 

Reston 2020 Prepared Statement to BOS Re Draft Reston Master Plan

RCA Honors Kathy Kaplan as 2013 Citizen of the Year

At Monday night's Board meeting, RCA officially selected Kathy Kaplan as the 2013 Citizen of the Year.  Kathy was recognized for her tireless and dedicated efforts to stop the proposed library "Beta Plan" and protect Fairfax County's libraries from cuts to funding, staff, and collections.  Below is the is the text of Kathy's nomination, submitted by Terry Maynard.

With great pleasure, honor, and admiration, I nominate Kathy W. Kaplan for RCA’s 2013 Reston Citizen of the Year for her exceptional work in stopping a Fairfax County Public Library (FCPL) Strategic Plan to undermine its libraries in the name of organizational efficiency. As one of two “guinea pigs” for this strategic plan, Reston Regional Library was ground zero for this degradation. The key features of the ill- considered County library strategic plan included:

• Reducing the County library budget by a third over the last six years;
• Culling books throughout the system, a quarter-million of which had already been destroyed;
• Drastically reducing the library staff, including plans to reduce the Reston staff by one-third;
• De-professionalizing library staff requirements by replacing certified librarians with “customer service specialists” who may or may not be knowledgeable of library science; and
• Eliminating Youth Services—librarians and collections—throughout the library system.

Without Kathy’s leadership, unswerving dedication, and perseverance, the County’s libraries would likely still be on a downward spiral with the Reston Regional Library as a “guinea pig” in that effort. Kathy’s extraordinary efforts were singularly consistent with Reston’s goal of providing a high quality of life for people of all backgrounds and was, in fact, an inspiration for  an August 2013 RCA Board of Directors resolution calling on the Board of Supervisors to abandon its wrong-headed FCPL Plan.

Among her activities beginning this summer and fall:

•  She identified and began to work with County librarians and other library friends deeply concerned about implementation of the County strategic plan;
• She wrote letters and e-mails to County officials, community organizations, and media (including an interview with the Washington Post) noting the planned decimation of the libraries;
• She encouraged residents to  sign an online petition calling for the County Library Trustees to stop and re-evaluate the Strategic Plan before implementing the “beta plan” for Reston, a petition that ultimately garnered more than 2,000 signatures;
• She  acquired and shared photographs of the books thrown in a central library operations dumpster that led Supervisor Patty Smyth to personally visit the site, bring back several current books in good condition, which she showed to senior library and County officials whom she told to stop destroying books
• She conducted extensive research on the County library’s plan and activities, including a review of eight years of County Library Trustee minutes
• She acquired through FOIA requests at considerable personal expense important FCPL documents detailing the destruction of more than a 400,000 books in recent years
• At the request of the Fairfax County Federation of Citizens Associations (FCFCA), she drafted an FCFCA report on the FCPL Strategic Plan that detailed the Strategic Plan and its impacts; and 
• She met with senior County staff and elected officials several times to learn more about the strategic plan and to share the results of her research.

As a result of her efforts and the efforts of those she worked with, the Library Board of Trustees recommended and the County Board of Supervisors approved on November 18, 2013, a resolution “to eliminate the process that led to the trashing of hundreds of thousands of books and also throw out a controversial plan to reduce the number of librarians and children’s services in county branches.” The Trustees are to come to the Board with their further recommendations early next year.

Reston Regional Library is the County’s busiest library with circulation exceeding one million items per year despite its small size and outdated facilities.  It is a focal point for community access not only to books and magazines, but to online subscription services not readily available to residents. It has a substantial children’s wing vital to exposing small children to the joys and knowledge of reading. It also emphasizes the needs of new citizens and those with handicaps.