Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

‘Off on a Tangent’ at Twenty

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Website 1.0!!! (replica)
Website 1.0!!! (replica)

Twenty years is a long time. Well over seven thousand days. Two-hundred and forty months. Five presidential terms. The time between the first flight of the Boeing 747 (1969) and the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989). The time between the beginning of the great depression (1929) and the establishment of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) (1949). The time between the election of President Ronald Reagan (R) (1980) and the new millennium (2000).

It is also roughly the amount of time between when I launched my first web site . . . and today.

Many details of the timeline are lost to the fog of history, but here’s what I’ve been able to piece together. In the fall of 1995, I was in the eighth grade at Franklin Middle School in Chantilly, Virginia. I was sitting in my math class, likely not paying much attention, when somebody entered the room to make an announcement: they were looking for students who were interested in computers to work on some project. I was interested in computers (and not very interested in anything else going on at the school), so I volunteered.

At some point, a number of us volunteers got together with some staff members and learned that what they wanted to do was create a web site for the school. We had some business partners who arranged for a bunch of us middle schoolers to take an introductory course in hypertext markup language, or HTML, which is the language that (still today) tells a web browser how to display a page on the Internet.

I knew that the Internet existed, but that was about all I knew about it before that class. My family had an account on CompuServe, an online service much like its main competitors, America Online (AOL) and Prodigy. They had begun including access to the Internet along with their own curated services, but I was not very impressed when my father first showed it to me. I don’t remember what specific page we tried to bring up, but I do remember that it took forever just to load a couple of smallish graphics. We were probably on a 9600 baud modem at the time, although we might have upgraded to 14.4k. My impression was, unless speeds got a lot better, the Internet was not going to catch on. Luckily, speeds got a lot better.

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Virginia General Assembly, 2015

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Commonwealth of Virginia
Commonwealth of Virginia

The Virginia General Assembly is composed of two houses, the Virginia House of Delegates and the Virginia Senate. Members of the House of Delegates serve two-year terms, and members of the Senate serve four-year terms, elected at a two-year offset from our gubernatorial elections. This year, both houses are standing for election.

British colonists established what is now called the General Assembly in 1619 at Jamestown, where it was called the House of Burgesses. It moved to Williamsburg in 1699, and then became the General Assembly in 1776 when the American colonies declared independence. It moved to Richmond when that city became the state capital in 1780.

The Virginia General Assembly is the oldest extant legislative body in the western hemisphere.

Virginia Senate, 13th District

The Virginia Senate is the upper house of the General Assembly. There are forty senators representing forty districts across the commonwealth. Today, the Republican Party holds a narrow twenty-one seat majority, and the Democratic Party holds the remaining nineteen seats.

The Senate’s thirteenth district includes much of northern and central Loudoun County, as well as an area of southeastern Loudoun and an area of northern Prince William County. Communities in the thirteenth district include Hamilton, Hillsboro, Gainesville, Lovettsville, Purcellville, Round Hill, South Riding, and Waterford.

Read more . . .

Loudoun County Board of Supervisors, 2015

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Loudoun County
Loudoun County

Article VII Section 5 of the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Virginia establishes that each local government must be governed by an elective body. In Loudoun County, this body takes the form of a Board of Supervisors, which has responsibility for all local legislation, budgeting, and appointments. It operates under the authorities and limits set forth by the Virginia General Assembly.

The board is composed of nine members, all of whom serve concurrent four-year terms on the same election schedule as the Virginia Senate. The chairman is elected in a county-wide at-large race, and the remaining eight members are elected by voters from each of the eight named county districts. Currently, the Republican Party holds a unanimous eight-seat majority. One seat is currently vacant.

Chairman

The Chairman of the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors is the leader of the board and the highest local elected official.

The Incumbent: Scott York (I)

Incumbent Chairman Scott York (R) has served four terms as Chairman of the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors, and is seeking reelection. In his current term he was elected as a Republican, but has sometimes served as an independent. This year he is running as an independent.

York has been an active member of the community, having served on the Loudoun County Planning Commission for many years and then serving one term as the Sterling District representative on the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors before being elevated by the voters to the office of chairman. As chairman, he has presided over an incredible period of growth in Loudoun County, and the county has done a reasonably good job of keeping pace with that growth.

Read more . . .

Loudoun County Constitutional Officers, 2015

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Loudoun County
Loudoun County

Article VII Section 4 of the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Virginia establishes a number of elective local offices that must be filled in every city and county. These offices are Treasurer, Sheriff, Commonwealth’s Attorney, Clerk of the Circuit Court, and Commissioner of Revenue.

The people elected to these offices serve four-year terms, except for the Clerk of the Circuit Court who serves an eight-year term. Elections are typically held in the same year as Virginia Senate elections. This year in Loudoun County, all of these offices, including the Circuit Court Clerk, are up for election.

Treasurer

The Loudoun County Treasurer has responsibility for billing and collecting local taxes, including property taxes and car decal taxes, as well as for investing and disbursing county funds. Treasurers serve a four-year term.

The Incumbent: H. Roger Zurn Jr. (R)

Roger Zurn (R) has served five terms as the Loudoun County Treasurer and is seeking reelection. Before being elected treasurer, Zurn worked over twenty years in the banking industry and served two terms representing the Sterling District on the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors.

Zurn has been well regarded as county treasurer, and has been recognized with numerous state, local, and national awards. The county’s books have received a clean audit each year since 1996, and the county has never lost money in its investments. Zurn’s office was the first in the Commonwealth of Virginia to offer an online tax payment option, and the first to offer e-billing.

Read more . . .

Loudoun County Ballot Issues and Other Offices, 2015

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Loudoun County Bond Referendums

Loudoun County
Loudoun County

Article VII Section 10 of the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Virginia requires local governments to obtain voter approval to issue bonds (i.e., contract debt). Government debt should be used sparingly, and only for large and necessary capital projects that cannot be funded through general funds and tax revenues.

Public Safety

Voters in Loudoun County, Virginia, will be asked in a referendum to authorize the county to issue up-to $2,940,000 in general obligation bonds for public safety purposes. Specifically, the county intends to acquire fire and rescue apparatus, although the referendum also allows the debt to be used for “other public safety projects throughout the county.”

Loudoun County is among the fastest growing counties in the United States, and our fire and rescue services must maintain a high level of effectiveness and keep pace with population changes. Our county is also one with unique challenges. We are bordered by a river, a major international airport, and a mountain range, and we are a mix of urban, suburban, and rural areas.

In other words, our fire and rescue services need to be able to handle pretty much anything. They may be called upon to serve at water rescues, plane crashes, hiking injuries, chain-reaction freeway crashes, office building fires, farm injuries, and cats stuck up in trees.

The county has allocated over $71 million to Fire, Rescue, and Emergency Services in the 2016 fiscal year. It is unclear why almost $3 million more should be raised through public debt instead of also being provided from the general fund. The schools, with a budget of over $1.2 billion, could probably spare $3 million without even noticing it. But at the same time it is critical that all planned public safety purchases move forward, so I reluctantly endorse a YES vote on the public safety bond referendum.

Read more . . .

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.