This spring, Alexandria Living Magazine sent the following questions to every person running for City Council as of May 2024. The answers from Kirk McPike are below. See links to all other candidate questionnaires here.
McPike currently serves on City Council in Alexandria. His campaign website is at www.kirkmcpike.com.
Have the current efforts to improve affordable housing been sufficient? Why or why not?
Alexandria’s efforts to address our housing crisis, particularly regarding the need for more affordable homes, have been necessary but not sufficient. For too long, the City failed to grapple with the need for more housing supply and dedicated affordable housing, which created a deep hole that present efforts are attempting to fill. We are approving new dedicated affordable homes at a much-improved rate, but often these projects are slow to be built because of funding challenges for private developers or a lack of sufficient resources in our Affordable Housing Trust Fund. The City needs to do a better job partnering with non-profit developers, in particular, to construct 100 percent affordable buildings, accessing federal affordable housing funds, and expanding the share of our revenue dedicated to affordable housing. We should also be more willing to use the bond capacity of ARHA and the IDA to help needed housing projects advance. I have been a strong advocate for housing affordability on Council, and will continue to work diligently on this challenge if reelected.
What can be done to make sure the increasing population density in Alexandria doesn’t hurt quality of life?
New people coming to Alexandria enrich our community, bring vitality to our neighborhoods, provide new customers for our businesses, and keep Alexandria a thriving, beautiful place to live. When building new housing to address our local and regional housing crisis, we must be thoughtful of the impacts of that housing. Every new project is assessed for impacts on schools, flooding, green space, traffic, carbon emissions, and other quality of life factors. We must continue to hold developers working in our city to rising standards to ensure that new housing in our City is having a net-positive impact on these measures. We can also impact this through City policies by leaning into transit-oriented development, improving our green building standards and green space requirements in small area plans, and improving funding for our schools and transit systems. Thoughtful planning can ensure that we maximize the positive impacts of welcoming new people to our City while minimizing the challenges related to development.
How can the city make public transportation a more viable and attractive option for residents?
Alexandria’s DASH bus system is a regional leader, and one of our City’s greatest assets. It leads its regional comparators in ridership rebound since the pandemic, and is routinely setting new ridership records thanks to the success of the new route network and free fares. We need to build on this success by implementing the bus rapid transit proposals along Duke Street and in the West End, which will better link the various neighborhoods of our City. WMATA is just beginning a year-long process to plan for a better-connected regional transit system, one in which improved WMATA bus service could allow us to expand DASH service into some of our less-served neighborhoods. The City must also work with WMATA and our delegation to Richmond to establish a reliable funding stream for Metro. DASH is great for getting around Alexandria, but we need a well-functioning train system to connect to so that our residents can move throughout the region, as well. Every year that I’ve been on Council, I’ve voted to preserve and improve DASH bus service. I will continue to be an advocate for DASH and Metro if re-elected, because they are essential to keeping our City moving, to addressing our carbon reduction goals, and to growing our local economy.
What do you think is the most important factor in making the roads safer and more efficient for everyone?
The City has made great strides on roadway safety in recent years, and in 2023 there were no fatalities on any Alexandria roads. However, a tragic accident earlier this year has highlighted that we still have challenges to correct. Whether one is driving a car, riding the bus, biking, or walking, they should be safe and protected on Alexandria’s streets. I was proud to support increased funding for our Complete Streets office, which is our strongest program to improve safety and efficiency for all users of our roads. As someone who often bikes around the City, I’ve seen the improvements in safety thanks to our bike lane network firsthand, and I am excited that we will soon be deploying flexposts to provide further protection for bikers. We have improved daylighting at intersections across the City, reworked complicated intersections to improve efficiency and safety, and approved the Duke Street in Motion project, which will reap major benefits for all users of that critical corridor. I have also supported sidewalk improvements, including the completion of a sidewalk near Polk Elementary to meet our Safe Routes to Schools goals. I will continue to support the Complete Streets program for as long as I am on Council, to make our roads safe and efficient for every Alexandrian.
What are the biggest challenges facing Alexandria’s smallest businesses and how can the city better support them?
Small businesses in Alexandria, and our region, face a wide variety of challenges, including access to funding capital, difficulty finding or retaining employees, disruption caused by the flooding that impacts many neighborhoods in our City, and the impacts of the pandemic and inflation. During my time on Council, we have expanded funding for Visit Alexandria to help attract more regional tourists to shop at our stores and visit our restaurants. We’ve supported AEDP as it has created a small business program to help local businesses access grants and strengthen their connections with the City and other businesses. We’ve made major strides in working to correct our housing crisis, which will make it easier for employees and operators of local businesses to build their lives in our City. We have also invested heavily in transit, infrastructure improvements including flooding abatement, and other quality of life issues that often impact businesses. I believe there is more that we can do. We should assess all of our permitting, licensing and BPOL tax payment procedures, as well as those in our neighboring jurisdictions — and when we find something that another locality is doing better we should bring that best practice here. We also need to expand support for businesses that have traditionally struggled to connect with City services and access capital. Alexandria is already an amazing place to live — we need to ensure that it is the best place in Northern Virginia to own and operate a business, as well.
Do you think Alexandria should return to ward representation? Why or why not?
I oppose returning Alexandria to ward-based representation, because I believe that our at-large system continues to serve our City very well. We are a geographically small City of 15 square miles, but we often face big challenges that require everyone to take part in addressing. For example, it is very unlikely that if Alexandria had wards that we ever would have taken on the flooding that impacts Del Ray and Rosemont — there is little chance that representatives of other neighborhoods in the City would have been willing to support the costs of this effort, which their constituents would have had to have borne without any benefits to themselves. Our at-large system means that every Councilmember must consider and respond to the needs of every resident, and recognize the interconnected nature of the challenges and opportunities we face. In other jurisdictions, ward systems often foster competition between neighborhoods instead of cooperation. I am proud to have worked with residents from across the City during my time on the Council, to address issues both big and small, both citywide and hyperlocal. Every resident has access to every member of the Council. Our current system has produced the most diverse Councils in the City’s history, and our present Council includes members who live in neighborhoods across Alexandria. I believe this system is working well, and that we should maintain it.
What is something you don’t like about Alexandria that you want to change?
Alexandria is a wonderful place, but like every community we have challenges that we need to address. However, we often do not have the legal authority we would like to have to do so. Our tools to induce the creation of housing at needed levels of affordability are limited. Our options for addressing noise challenges related to devices like gas-powered leaf blowers are severely curtailed. We do not have the ability to set a local minimum wage, to make our tax systems more progressive, or to implement strong policies supporting workers and the unions that represent them. Due to Virginia law, when Alexandria wants or needs to take an action beyond the specifically-prescribed powers granted to us by the Commonwealth, we have to request authority from Richmond. In the past, we have successfully won expanded powers from Richmond, such as our ability to put a fee on plastic bags and the speed cameras that we have deployed in our school zones. As a member of the City Council’s legislative subcommittee, I have met with legislators in Richmond to give Alexandria more local control, so that we can implement the policies our residents want to see.
How do you feel about the fate of the Potomac Yard Arena development proposal and how do you think the city should go about developing that location?
Council members must always be open to carefully considering any proposal that could have a positive impact on our local economy and tax revenues. When it became clear that the process in Richmond was not going to result in a proposal that would fit the needs of our City or address our local concerns, I supported dropping the proposal. Though the arena is behind us, the questions of how to rebalance our revenue sources and how to catalyze the sort of redevelopment the City has long sought in North Potomac Yard remain. Given the new metro station, there is no question that this area is going to be a key part of growing our commercial revenue. Because the land in question is privately owned, the City will have to be a partner in the process of finding the right use for it. I believe that entertainment uses remain the most viable option, perhaps paired with small office uses linked to the soon-to-open Virginia Tech campus next door. No major economic development project has occurred in Alexandria in more than a decade without the City’s involvement and support, so we must be prepared to work with the Alexandria Economic Development Partnership and the landowner to find the right way for the City to use the tools available to us to find a proper use for this space, and to finally transform North Potomac Yard into the mixed-use space with commercial, restaurant, retail and residential uses that the City’s plans envision.
Do you think the current city staff is able to effectively serve all the development that is happening or do you think the city needs to hire more people?
Our City staff do an amazing job, and we should all be proud of their commitment to the people who live, work, and learn in our city. Like our neighboring jurisdictions, we have staffing vacancies that we need to fill. Further, our staffing levels haven’t changed much in more than a decade, while the number of residents in Alexandria and programs we provide have grown significantly. We have talented staff doing more for more residents, but at some point the lack of staff capacity becomes a problem for achieving our goals. During my time on Council, I have been proud to support the expansion of important City offices, including our Race and Social Equity Office, the Office of Climate Action, the City Communications Department, and our Complete Streets team. I think these are a few examples where we have invested in additional staffing to help find solutions, better coordinate between departments, and increase transparency. We have also taken steps to address significant vacancy issues amongst our first responders and mental health therapists. We have also created an ongoing process to assess pay and categorization in our City departments to avoid losing talented staff to regional competitors.
What would you tell a resident who doesn’t feel safe living in Alexandria?
Everyone deserves to feel safe and be safe in our community, and during my time on Council we have increased investments in public safety to make this a reality. In 2022, I fought for and achieved increased pay for our first responders, which set the stage for the successful negotiation of two historic collective bargaining agreements with our firefighters and police officers. Those agreements are designed to address our staffing and overtime challenges in those departments. We have also invested in new technology to help law enforcement to track gunshot incidents and identify the shooters. We have also created the Alexandria Co-Response Program, ACORP, which pairs trained mental health professionals with police officers to ensure that we provide Alexandrians in crisis with the support they need. The City will soon be hiring a new police chief, which will give us an opportunity to rethink many of our department’s procedures and beats, to put more resources into areas that need them and to improve connections between our police and the communities they serve. We have worked hard to address these challenges during my time on Council, and I will always prioritize public safety.
If you had to convince someone to vote for you in one sentence, what would that sentence be?
During my first term on Council, I have taken my experience as a chief of staff in Congress and my time on our city’s budget committee and put it to work to make real progress on challenges including housing affordability, flooding, and supporting our first responders and schools — and if re-elected, I will keep working every day to improve and protect the Alexandria we all love and call home.
