A photo montage featuring the David M. Brown Planetarium bathed in the light of a full moon will be the centerpiece of Arlington's 2017-18 car decal, selected in a community vote that featured record turnout.
"It's an iconic part of Arlington," said Wakefield High School sophomore Amy Kohan, whose depiction of the planetarium was the winner selected from among more than 200 submissions by Arlington high-schoolers.
The announcement of the selection was made at the Jan. 31 County Board meeting. It is "one of the highlights of the year for us," County Board Chairman Jay Fisette said.
"We are all winners," said Treasurer Carla de la Pava, whose office sponsors the decal-design competition. The effort, now in its 13th year, represents a collaboration between the arts, teens and local government, de la Pava said.
Kohan's design will begin appearing this summer on a total of 160,000 vehicles garaged in Arlington. While decals have been phased out by some Virginia jurisdictions, de la Pava said they remain a vital enforcement tools that help the treasurer's office keep delinquency rates low and pull in $80 million in personal-property-tax revenue per year.
The 235 student submissions included 74 from Wakefield, 71 from Washington-Lee High School, 69 from Yorktown High School, 11 from Bishop O'Connell High School and 10 from H-B Woodlawn Secondary Program. They were winnowed down to four finalists by a panel of community notables in December, then opened to public voting.
A total of 3,260 votes were cast, coming from all corners of Arlington and representing an increase of 78 percent from a year ago.
Kohan and the other finalists – Sydney Machion and Marjorie Henriquez of Wakefield and Schuyler Workmaster of Bishop O'Connell – each received cash prizes from Arlington Community Federal Credit Union.
Kohan, who was entering the competition for the second time, first shot a photo of a full moon, then several weeks later went out and photographed the facade of the planetarium, located on North Quincy Drive near Washington-Lee High School.
Like many Arlington students, Kohan first became acquainted with the facility when younger. "It was one of the things I looked forward to visiting every year in elementary school," she said.
The planetarium now has added meaning, Kohan said, because it memorializes David M. Brown, a 1974 Yorktown High School graduate who went on to earn a medical degree, serve as an officer in the U.S. Navy and become an astronaut. Brown was among those killed in the February 2003 crash of the Space Shuttle Columbia as it re-entered the Earth's atmosphere.
When the county school system nearly a decade ago proposed closing the planetarium, the community rallied to keep it alive, and it has prospered under a private-public partnership.
The decal competition was the brainchild of then-Treasurer Frank O'Leary, who saw it as a way to add some panache to an otherwise mundane function of his office. O'Leary's successor, de la Pava, has kept it going.
While the competition has been in place for 13 years, Arlington residents have been required to affix decals signifying payment of personal-property tax next to their state inspection stickers since the late 1960s. Before that, metal strips were attached to the bottom of license plates, signifying payment.
The Jan. 31 County Board meeting was just one public forum where the finalists and their teachers will be honored. The School Board will salute them on Feb. 16.
De la Pava noted that none of the four finalists was a senior this year, and all will be eligible to compete again.
"We'll hear from you next year," she said.
While Kohan designed the winning 2017-18 decal, she won't have the opportunity to drive around displaying it on her own car, as she's still too young for a driver's license.
Source: www.bing.com
