This and That: A Random Scoot Through Reston News

• The tax districts that will pay for the stations along Metro's Silver Line are one step closer to reality.

  Following a public hearing, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors unanimously adopted a proposed resolution to create the tax district. The board will meet Dec. 21 to formally establish the district, as required by state law.
  
  The additional real estate tax paid by commercial landowners in the proposed tax district will provide $330 million of the county's estimated $850 million share of the $5.28 billion total cost to extend Metrorail from Falls Church through Tysons Corner, Reston and Herndon to Washington Dulles International Airport and Loudoun County.
  
  Another special tax district, which surrounds the future rail stations in Tysons Corner and at Wiehle Avenue in Reston, will generate about $400 million in commercial property taxes.
  
  The county has not finalized where the remaining $120 million will come from, but it could come from bonds backed by the county's commercial and industrial tax, an existing tax of 11 cents per $100 of assessed value that commercial landowners pay to a fund for county transportation projects.

  But what's a measly $120 million among friends?
  
  
• Meanwhile, some of the people who live in the fancypants subdivisions along the Toll Road want new sound walls to protect their sylvan neighborhoods with names like "Hallcrest Heights" from the unsightly noise made by the train as it carries proles people past their homes -- though in reality, they should be more concerned about the smoke from the track fires. Of course, this isn't an issue in Reston proper, as the original Reston master plan forbids residential development along the Toll Road... at least until that plan is modified as part of the ongoing redevelopment deliberations. We're OK with that, so long as the new projects don't have dumb names like "Hallcrest Heights."
  
  
• A Reston family is suing Virginia Tech over their son's 2007 suicide.

  The suit, filed in Fairfax County Circuit Court on Friday by William and Elizabeth Kim, seeks $43 million from the university's Care Team in connection with the suicide of Daniel Kim, a senior at Tech at the time of his death.
  
  According to the filing, Daniel Kim committed suicide on Dec. 9, 2007, after telling friends and family members that he felt he physically resembled shooter Seung-Hui Cho and that he "was ashamed of being Asian." The suit claims that an online gaming friend, Shuan Pribush, who was a student at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, contacted Virginia Tech and warned them of Daniel Kim's suicidal tendencies about a month before Kim killed himself.
  
  Daniel Kim was a 2004 graduate of South Lakes High School in Reston.

  Regardless of the legal outcome, there are no winners in this case.
  
  
• Fancypants venture capitalists from San Francisco bought Reston-based medical software firm QuadraMed for $126 million. And what did you do at work today?
  
  
• A memorial service for Arts Council of Fairfax CEO Ann Rodriguez was held on Dec. 2.

  The "celebration," held at Reston Community Center's CenterStage theater and hosted by the Arts Council, was much like the longtime arts, business and civic leader herself -- joyous, genuine, heartfelt and fun.
  
  As an overflow crowd of hundreds of friends, family and colleagues awaited the formal start of the program --aptly held in Reston, a place where Rodriguez lived and "thrived" for 34 years -- a buoyant six-piece Dixieland band set the tone. At a later reception, a Mariachi ensemble represented another of Rodriguez's favorite musical genres.

  
  
• There are a lot of depressing stories in this wrapup, so here's one that's slightly more optimistic: Fairfax County is expanding a power soccer league for wheelchair users that got its start last year in Reston.
  
  
• The only shocking thing about this story is that it didn't happen in Reston:

  A Medal of Honor recipient in a dispute over his right to fly the American flag in his yard will have another week before D-Day -- when he'll be forced to take down the Stars and Stripes or face legal action.
  
  Ninety-year-old Col. Van T. Barfoot, a veteran of three wars, initially was given a 5 p.m. Friday deadline to dismantle his flagpole or face a legal battle over violating an order from his townhouse community association in Henrico County, Va.
  
  Barfoot, who fought in World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam, was told in July that he could not put up his freestanding flagpole in his Sussex Square neighborhood — but he installed it anyway.
  
  On Tuesday, he says, he got a letter from the homeowners' association telling him the 21-foot pole he erected in September violates the community's aesthetic guidelines.
  
  "This is not about the American flag. This is about a flagpole," the association said in a statement, insisting that Barfoot directly violated its board's July ruling.
  
  "Col. Barfoot is free to display the American flag in conformity with the neighborhood rules and restrictions. We are hopeful that Col. Barfoot will comply."

  How exactly are you supposed to display an American flag without a flagpole? The answer to that question will keep the DRB busy for weeks.