Two Comrades Running Unopposed For Glorious RA Board Seats; One Seat Contested in Bourgeois-Style "Election"

Most glorious news, bourgeois homeowning comrades! Five of our brothers and sisters in our earth-toned union have agreed to run for three seats in this year's plebiscite election for the RA Board. As per usual in recent years, two of the three seats are unopposed. Give us some good blockquote, BFFs at Reston Now:

Lake Anne/Tall Oaks Director Eve Thompson, the current board secretary, will run for re-election, but as an At-Large candidate. Opposing her will be newcomers John Bowman, who has been active in RA’s Transportation Advisory Committee and the Reston Citizens Association, and financial professional April Tan.

Ken Knueven, former RA Board President, currently fills the At-Large seat up for election. He cannot run again because RA Bylaws prohibit more than two consecutive three-year terms by board members.

North Point District Director Dannielle LaRosa, who was appointed to the board in summer 2014 when former North Point Director Tim Cohn resigned for health reasons. She was elected by North Point district residents in 2o15 to fill the remaining one-year of the term. She is now running unopposed for the full three-year term. LaRosa currently serves as the RA Board Treasurer.

Running unopposed for the Lake Anne/Tall Oaks District Director is Sherri Hebert, who has been active in the citizens group watching Tall Oaks redevelopment. While two of this year’s races are uncontested, a 10-percent quorum is required to make the election official, RA says.

At least one of the races is contested. After years of complaining about uncontested seats in board elections, we're starting to run out of Soviet clip art to use. We mainly blame that softie Gorbachev, but being an RA board member is admittedly a pretty thankless job. When people think "community service" or "politics," the first thing they think of is probably not their homeowner's association. Unless, of course, they love paint swatches and extensive design guidelines. But we digress!

The problem is that the RA board actually makes important decisions about whether our money gets spent on referenda to purchase waterlogged lakeside properties... or bocce. It also decides exactly how hard it plans to fight against the vaguely inevitable paving of our open spaces with the county and the courts. So yeah, we guess it kind of matters, and for reasons beyond forcing the RA to hold another election if they don't meet the steep barrier of that 10 percent quorum.

You can read each candidate's official statement here (PDF). Or, for your convenience, we've included a fancy "word cloud" below, like it's 2007 or something:

Shout out to the 20190! And committees!