You don’t see this too often, if ever, in Arlington County – three of the five members (Maureen Coffey, JD Spain, Takis Karantonis) absolutely RIPPING one of the other members (Susan Cunningham), and for good reason. Basically, what happened is that, with essentially zero notice, one of the Board members – Susan Cunningham – introduced a motion on the highly complex (and controversial) issue of zoning/”Missing Middle”. To put it mildly, her colleagues were NOT pleased with her…about the process, for sure, presumably also on the substance in at least a couple cases. Here’s the timeline, from what I’ve been told, re: how this went down, from a good source – followed by video and a partial transcript of what went down on Tuesday night:
- Apparently, the first Susan Cunningham told anyone on the Board anything about this was to Chair Matt de Ferranti at “like 7 pm, between leaving closed session and returning to the public meeting”
- Cunningham then “Teams messaged it to [County Board member Takis Karantonis] at 7:57 pm”
- Cunningham then “Teams messaged [County Board member JD Spain] at 8:19 pm”
- Cunningham then “messaged [County Board member Maureen Coffey] at 8:30 pm and she started the motion at 8:31 pm”
- “She did not provide staff any prior notice whatsoever.”
Definitely not cool by Susan Cunningham, and you can see from the following video that her County Board colleagues – all of whom are Democrats, by the way, and all of whom normally are highly professional and polite to each other, at least in public – were not pleased AT ALL.
For more background on Arlington’s “Missing Middle”/”Enhanced Housing Opportunity,” see:
- “Missing Middle” zoning case could have statewide implications (“Opponents filed lawsuits, and now the Supreme Court of Virginia is hearing a case about how the zoning challenges should work.” – May 27, 2026)
- Virginia Supreme Court agrees to take up Missing Middle lawsuit (May 19, 2026)
- Video, Updates: Arlington County Board Hears Public Comment From ~250 People on “Missing Middle” Housing Proposal (March 18, 2023)
- BREAKING: Judge overturns Missing Middle zoning changes (September 27, 2024)
- Video: Arlington County Board Votes Unanimously – Albeit with Significant Internal Differences in Approach – to Move Ahead with “Missing Middle Housing” (January 25, 2023)
Susan Cunningham: “I have one additional item before we break for this summer. And I’ve debated about how to bring this up, because we have been very busy. But I do want to name what we’ve been hearing from the community and I think we had a bit of a robust conversation on Saturday and we’ve been having lots of conversation with community members across the year. I think we will want to have a conversation sometime in the next 4 to 12 months about EHO [Enhanced Housing Opportunity, aka Missing Middle]…the permit caps which will be expiring and what if anything we can do in the near term, medium term while we’re waiting on the courts, the very slow court,s deliberate courts I suppose, to get to an end of a number of tangles and conversations. And so, I’m going to share this motion. And I think it’s probably not the right motion. And so, I want to honor that, because we haven’t vetted it all the way through up here. And so I fully recognize that we will probably not proceed with it today, but in the spirit of wanting to share with the community that we might get to it in the fall, I feel like it might be worthwhile. And I’ll say in particular, I had the opportunity to visit with Dr. Alfred Taylor yesterday and I asked him what’s his advice for all of us? And he was very gracious and very sharp as always. And he said, you know, the number one thing for our community is you’ve got to hold space for conversation. We are more on the same page than we realize, and we need to have conversations, have hard conversations, really make room to listen and deliberate and listen some more. And so it is in the spirit of that wisdom that I bring this forward…
Matt de Ferranti: “And just for context and while you’re proceeding, Dr. Taylor’s a longtime leader in our community who is in his mid 90s, I believe, or 93, who’s not not feeling well and he’s in hospice and it’s not a secret, but I just thought I’d add that context if that’s okay.”
Susan Cunningham: “So I think each of you know that I’ve asked repeatedly whether there are any options to opt out of the legal proceedings and revisit and refine the policy and move on with our community that we all represent based on land use principles, refine the policy based on land use principles. Unfortunately, the legal technicalities have made that impractical impractical. Instead, after consultation with our county attorney, I offer the following motion for your consideration. I move that the Board add to its agenda at the September county board meeting an action item on its own motion to consider an initiating resolution to consider zoning text amendments related to the annual limit on permits for expanded housing option development and specifically consider implementation data comparison to other jurisdictions that have adopted similar housing diversification policies including any permit caps or phasing mechanisms employed employed by such jurisdictions and options for adjusting the permit cap levels.”
[…]
Matt de Ferranti: “…I learned about this, you know, a little bit ago, like within the last two hours, and I didn’t know that it was focused on caps. My position on EHO has not changed. But, you know, we might have a Supreme Court decision and I also have not paid much attention to the cap’s timing, because I don’t know whether it’s total or not total. So, that’s the context. I’m not in a space to second, but I wanted to give context if there’s anyone else who would like to speak to it.”
Maureen Coffey: “I think I just want to share primarily my disappointment that this is the way that you’ve gone about this. I think the fact that this is news on the dais to three of your five colleagues and that Mr. de Ferranti only learned about an hour ago about this is truly just not respectful to us as your colleagues. And I think the fact that also our staff were not aware that this was something that you planned to do is to me just not acceptable. There’s room for us to disagree on the policy. There is room for us to have discussions. But frankly, this is not the way to go about it. And to surprise everyone with this, it’s a disservice to the point that you’re trying to make and the work that you’re trying to get done because it it just puts us in a horrible position now, where none of us have had the time to think it through, none of us have had the time to have a conversation with you except for perhaps Mr. de Ferranti in the five minutes between close session and coming out here, to actually discuss what the motivation is, what the purpose is, how we could or could not want to go about this. And so I feel deeply uncomfortable with this. And I think that is the primary thing that I want to communicate is this is not what we expect out of each other. This is not, you know, again, it is not that we all have to agree on every single thing. Lord knows, I’ve been on the losing side of motions and I’ve been the one upset up here that things aren’t going my way and that’s fine, but not because people didn’t have time to talk to me or at least respect that I deserved a conversation. And so that’s mostly what I am feeling right now. And I don’t see how this Board can cohesively do the work that we need to do if this kind of a thing is repeated…”
J.D. Spain: “So, I just found out about this a few less than 30 minutes ago, Ms. Cunningham. And I feel a certain kind of way because probably an hour ago, I was sitting here talking about how we were coming together. And I often I have said in my 20 months to be on this Board that there’s a wrong way to do the right thing. We don’t like surprises. I don’t like surprises. And I also I’m going be honest with you, I’m not even going to use his name, because to use a person’s name like that in the situation that they’re in in this moment as part of discussion, it’s really bothersome to me, because that’s not right. And it’s one thing about we all need to come together in this moment, that’s true. We’re going to have these courageous conversations. But this feels like, you know, the 11th hour, staff doesn’t know, I didn’t know. And you and I have talked… I’m always about being transparent, you and I have talked a lot in the past 24 to 36 hours . This never came up! So why now? And I’m just trying to figure out, are we trying to get like talking points or something on ArlNow? Like I’m not playing that game. And everyone knows where I’m at with EHO. I am not about going back. But I think the manner in which it has happened today, it really wasn’t done in the right way. And I don’t know Mr. County attorneys, I probably wouldn’t even entertain the motion. But it’s just this was not the time nor the place to have this conversation. We could have had it tomorrow. We could have talked about it in our meeting come up in August and I feel really blindsided by it. So, just, you know, I love all of y’all, but I probably wouldn’t have done this tonight…”
Takis Karantonis: “…Everything has been said, I mean. I’m very sorry, Ms. Cunningham, but this is not acceptable – period. In all the dimensions that you have heard, plus one. This is politics and pure politics. I’m sorry. You cannot credibly say that there is no space for discussion that was not offered to you or in any frame. You let me know at 7:57 p.m. So one logical conclusion would be that you are not interested in discussion. You are interested only in the public exposure and your own political benefit here. So fine, so be it. We are political, this is policy. It’s also politics. But I don’t believe that you chose the right instrument to engender a productive and trust building conversation. Not with me. We will have this conversation, but with the community. How do you want the community to trust you? The community that is not on your side, which is a significant part of this community. And by the way, would immediately run and ask, ‘what was that’? How do you want to deal with this? If you were the one who always said, ‘oh my god, this was forced on the community and everybody was you know taken by surprise despite the four years of previous discussion etc.’ You are basically not only replicating the same, but you are basically you know slapping it in the face. So you make yourself completely nonviable from the point of view of credibility. I do think that what you heard was about maintaining community trust, and I’m sorry, but I think this is a bad moment and better we overcome that and forget that.”
