In our beloved City of Falls Church today, one of the more important elections for three (out of seven) contested seats on the F.C. City Council is being held. Sadly, projections are for a low turnout in this “off-off” year race. The News-Press has endorsed Vice Mayor Letty Hardi, Planning Commission chair Tim Stevens and Housing Commissioner Justine Underhill, all preferred over new City resident and first time candidate Erin Flynn.

      When voting today, citizens should consider what having Flynn on the City Council will mean for Falls Church. Her decision to side with the noisy minority that opposed modest changes to the City’s transitional zoning suggests that she will likely take the role of contrarian on the Council, and while one may think that can only be good for the sake of diversity of opinions, consider that it took more than two years for the Council to finally vote to approve the t-zone changes because of an insistence on more and more hearings. The final 5-2 vote was unchanged from indicators months earlier.

      While thorough debate and evaluation of important issues is always good, holding up the implementation of important legislation for an inordinately long time is not. I am not suggesting that Ms. Flynn is a mini-Sen. Tupperville (the U.S. senator from Alabama who has held up important military confirmations for way too long to drive home his support for abortion bans), but the efficiency of the governmental process in F.C. that gets credit for a lot of the good things happening here, where healthy tax cuts are accompanying good development, may come to suffer.

      Among other things, this is why I am supporting the Falls Church Forward team of Hardi, Stevens and Underhill today.