We began this evening with
our national anthem. Anthems are often ordinary songs that
speak to us in extraordinary ways; songs that tap into the
deepest of our shared values; songs powerful enough to inspire
us to allegiance.
The question of why songs become anthems –
official or otherwise – is worth thinking about tonight.
Our country's unofficial second anthem, America the Beautiful,
was written in 1893 by English teacher and poet Katherine
Lee Bates, from Falmouth, Massachusetts where my family has
spent many summers. She had traveled west and been awed by
our nation's stunning landscapes. These words open the final
stanza:
"O beautiful for patriot dream, That sees
beyond the years…"
"…Patriot dream that sees beyond the
years." The power of these lines lives in the shared
values they tap into – the value of looking beyond the
expedient and the easy; of digging in and doing the much harder
work, the work of building the place that we will one day
pass to our children, and to theirs. The value of thinking
beyond electoral time frames. The value of pausing before
we act and asking what history will say of us.
The people I have the privilege of sharing this
stage with tonight were elected to lead our county in what
strikes me as an historic act of commitment to the kind of
county we want to leave as our legacy. On March 31 –
the day I announced my intention to run for the office I have
sworn to uphold tonight – I stood on this spot and told
you that this election would be about "the heart and
soul of Fairfax County." Happily, that is precisely what
it turned out to be.
That day I asked these questions:
"Do we want to move forward with excellent
schools, low crime rates, and careful stewardship of the environment,
or are we going to turn our community over to those who will
sacrifice the quality of life we treasure to a narrow ideological
agenda?
Will we promote a county in which diversity
is celebrated, or suspect?
Will we continue to invest in our public education
by hiring the best teachers, or will we allow it to decline
in a morass of wedge social issues, larger classroom sizes,
and vouchers?
Will we maintain the safety net we have so carefully
built to help neighbors in need, or let it fray? Will we stand
with our public safety employees and give them the tools they
need to protect us, or will we retrench and just hope for
the best?"
On Nov. 4, this community gave its decisive
answer to those questions. That day, with our votes, we made
a promise to each other. Tonight we gather to take an oath;
not only those of us on this stage, but all of us; an oath
to begin to keep that promise.
We must continue the vigilance and training
which has made us the nation's safest large jurisdiction and
tackle the growing threat of gangs. For all of us, but especially
for our children, we must keep that promise.
To keep our promise to each other we must take
the commitment that has created the best-performing school
system of its size in the country, and turn it toward the
challenges of unfunded mandates and the 12,000 students still
in trailers; we must fight for adequate funding for our at-risk
students, accelerate our school construction schedule and
invest in our professional teachers. We must keep that promise.
To keep our promise means tackling the congestion
that mars our quality of life. We must move forward with a
plan to extend rail to Tyson's and on to Dulles; we must make
pedestrian and transit improvements in the Richmond Highway
corridor and throughout the county; we must explore public-private
partnerships wherever they make sense; improve problem intersections
and continue to give commuters the transit choices they need.
We must keep that promise.
Fairfax County is overly reliant on the property
tax. To keep our promise we must get Richmond to pay its bills
and help us diversify our revenue base to provide homeowner
and senior tax relief. The Governor has begun that process
and we must take the opportunity he has given us. We must
keep that promise.
Fairfax County has made great strides in reclaiming
its environment by hiring the first environmental coordinator,
mapping our perennial streams, protecting the Occoquan Watershed
and the Chesapeake Bay. But to keep our promise we must do
more; to restore our streams, to better-manage our stormwater,
to improve our air quality and continue to preserve our remaining
open space. We must keep that promise.
Our region faces an unprecedented crisis in
affordable housing. The people who work in this community
ought to be able to live in this community. We must devise
incentives to preserve our existing affordable housing stock,
expand our Affordable Dwelling Unit Ordinance, and work to
assure that our teachers, police and firefighters can afford
to live in Fairfax County. We must keep that promise.
None of these promises can be fulfilled in a
four-year cycle, but all of them can be and must be pursued
with our utmost vigor. Redeeming these promises will require
bipartisan cooperation in the General Assembly in Richmond
and throughout our region; and I pledge tonight to work with
Republicans and Democrats on behalf of all our citizens.
A song is the creation of a single lyricist
or composer. But an anthem must be the creation of the entire
community. And the power that transforms a song into an anthem
can also transform a community.
"Oh beautiful for patriot dream, That sees
beyond the years."
The people of Fairfax County have "seen
beyond the years." You have chosen to invest in "the
patriot dream" that Katherine Lee Bates gave voice to
over 100 years ago, the vision of the community we have created
together from our deepest core values.
I have already taken my oath tonight, but now
I give you my pledge: a pledge to keep before me that vision,
our vision, which IS the heart and soul of Fairfax County;
my pledge that whenever I take action as your chairman, it
will be with the full measure of what those actions will mean
to the Fairfax County that you and I have promised to our
children.
- Gerry Connolly
