The Varied Rush and Recreation Expansion in Reston ARCH moderators questions

I was fortunate to see this morning a "Varied Rush," a colorful little bird which is very rare in this area that some avid birders had spotted in their back yard (near Reston but not in Reston) and have opened up their house as a kind of morning mecca for fellow birders. Your arrive between 7 and 9 just walking in the door and then looking out their back window. It won't be here long as it's the mating season and will probably fly up to Ohio where there are more of them. Email me if you want the address at Sharpeningman@yahoo.com

ARCH MODERATOR QUESTIONS:
RA CANDIDATE FORUM, MARCH 3, 2010


1. A joint RA-RCC initiative last year proposed building a major new recreational multiplex in Reston. More recently there has been talk of an alternative that would involve covering the Lake Newport tennis courts and pool and possibly putting lights on the Brown's Chapel ball fields. Do you think Reston is in need of additional recreational facilities? If so, which ones and should it be RA or some other organization that is responsible for building the facilities you feel are needed?

1.) I advocate flexible thinking. What do I mean by this? Some have said we need more swim lanes. Yet I often find myself swimming in the RCC pool that is either empty of other swimmers of has very few other swimmers in the pool. Often we double up, have two swimmers in one land. I think the idea of a need for more swim lanes is rooted in a specific time say 3:30 to 6:00. I would before constructing additional indoor swimming try to get people to swim at other times.

The Reston Association had built a water volley ball court. Yet I noticed there is rarely a actual game of volley ball there. I wanted to get a game going and wanted to put up a sign up and suggested it a Reston Association meeting. Though this was viewed positively it actually took two years going through the beauraracy to actually get them to put up an actual sign. But then no one showed up to play water volley ball. So I concluded that no one wants to play water volley ball in Reston, though it might seem like a good idea. (I have written about this so much. Last year I was over at my vegetable patch where I saw to my surprise people actually playing water volley ball, had they I wonder read my many letters to the editor and actually come to play?).

All of this suggests to me that we need communication. We can’t have a few people deciding on some sort of sport complex with a broader understanding. How many know that there was a actual ski slope complete with chair lifts in Reston. It probably looked good on the brochures but was never much used. Maybe a active skier encouraged it’s construction with out a sensible look at our winter temperatures.

We need two way communication in Reston in order to develop good recreation plans.

On the indoor tennis we need to know how many other similar upper middle class communities also subsidize indoor tennis? Is Reston lacking on indoor tennis courts while other upper middle class communities are providing them for their residents. I remember as a boy growing up in Sleep Hollow there were what was called bath and racket clubs. We were a member on one but often snuck in the other one to go visit friends.

How many want to play tennis in the winter? I like to go boating but it just has no appeal to go in the winter. I recently bought some black long underwear from the Cabella catalogue. It’s some kind of high tech and will wick moisture away and actually keeps you very warm even in the winter. What if a tennis player had some of this black underwear? Would that allow them to play tennis longer then is now commutable. How much of the winter would then be unplayable then because it was too cold for people to play in even in this black underwear? Would Reston at large want to raise the dues in order to pay for people to play tennis instead of wearing black long underwear? It’s actually healthier to be outdoors in the sunshine especially in the winter. If it were too cold to play tennis even then would it be cheaper to send everyone who wanted to play tennis to some other facility rather than build and maintain one?

But I would listen to compelling information that indicated that Reston needed to build indoor tennis courts because somehow Reston was behind other communities in their construction. I recently heard from someone who at 72 had just learned to play tennis and said it transferred their life.





2. The RA Board last year was unsuccessful in gaining approval for its headquarters referendum and ultimately withdrew from participating in the proposed RA-RCC rec center initiative. Do you think these were worthwhile initiatives that simply lacked adequate member support or do you think there were broader lessons from these experiences that should influence how RA does business going forward?

3. The RA Board has said that it hopes to convince future residential property owners within the RCIG that they should become part of the Reston Association. Tell us how you would pitch that proposition to those property owners.

4. What do you view as the three most important recommendations that should come out of the ongoing Reston Master Planning exercise and what actions if any would you recommend the RA Board take to advance those recommendations?

5. Some within ARCH believe that the RA Board has recently convened in executive session more than what may have been required (especially during the run-up to the headquarters referendum). What is your view of the use of executive session as a tool and whether or not it has been too frequently employed?