News & Notes

PAGE 12 |JANUARY 5 - 11, 2023

LOCAL

FALLS CHURCH NEWS-PRESS | FCNP.COM

News-Press Community News & Notes

WELCOMING 2023 at the Ireland’s Four Provinces restaurant in downtown Falls Church Saturday night, braving the rain and the cancellation of the Watch Night festivities, was this motley crew at the News-Press table. (News-Press Photo)

VA DMV Connect Coming to the American Legion Building

The Falls Church City DMV Connect visit is held twice a month, usually for 10 days, on 5 consecutive days of one week, and then 5 days of the next week (frequently it’s the 2nd and 3rd weeks of the month) at the American Legion Building, Post 130, located next to the W & OD Bike Trail, at 400 N. Oak St, Falls Church, VA 22046. The Connect’s hours are from 9:30 a.m. — 3:30 p.m. They close for lunch for 1 hour from 12:30 to 1:30. It is mostly by appointment, through the DMV’s website under “DMV2Go or DMV Connect” and then under “Falls Church American Legion,” but the DMV Connect staff can usually accommodate walk-ins, so please do come by. Walk-in opportunities can occur when there are cancellations, noshows, and overbookings.

Creative Cauldron Announces Festival Line Up

Creative Cauldron’s popular annual “Passport to the World of Music Festival” featuring some of the most talented and diverse musicians in the Metro D.C. area and beyond will launch on January 6th and run through February 4, 2023. Always billed as an opportunity “to tour the world without ever leaving Falls Church,” the Festival is curated by Wammy Award-winning artists Ken Avis and Lynn Veronneau. It features musical styles and genres from folk, Latin, jazz, blues along with global musical traditions. The “Passport to the World of Music” Festival is sponsored by Ken Trotter, JD Realtor TTR Sotheby’s International Realty.

F.C. Offers Christmas Tree Disposal Info

In the City of Falls Church, Christmas trees are collected for free on Wednesdays in January and February. Plastic bags, rope, tinsel and other decorations should be removed.

For Fairfax County collection customers outside towns like Vienna, Christmas trees will be collected from Jan. 2 to 13. Lights, decorations and stands must be removed to ensure trees will be collected. After Jan. 13, schedule a brush special collection for Christmas tree removal.

If one doesn’t receive curbside collection services from the City of Falls Church or Fairfax County, check collection policies with a private hauler. The City of Falls Church says residents of apartments and condominiums with private trash and recycling services should take Christmas trees to the I-66 Transfer Station, 4618 W. Ox Road, Fairfax, VA.

Falls Church Irish Dancers Win Top Honors

Four dancers from the McGrath Morgan Academy of Irish Dance claimed top honors, each bringing home their respective age group’s first place trophy from the Irish Dance Teachers Association of North America (IDTANA) Southern Region Oireachtas, held in Orlando the first week of December.

Those dancers are: Isabella Renzi, U12 Girls Champion, two-time champion; Aisling Reynolds, U14 Girls Champion, five-time champion; Jessie Welgos, U16 Girls Champion, four-time champion; Meghann Mullarkey, U18 Girls Champion, two-time champion.

The Oireachtas (pronounced Uh-ROCK-tus) is a three-day regional championship where Irish dancers compete to qualify to participate at national and world championships.

In addition to the solo championships, the school won first and second place in the team drama competition and second place in the girls under-12 ceili competition. In addition to the four winners, eight McMa dancers qualified to compete at the world competition in Montreal this spring and another 10 qualified to compete at the national competition in Nashville in July, including Molly Mostow, Falls Church resident and Meridian junior, who was a member of the first-place drama team.

FOUR DANCERS FROM THE FALLS CHURCH-based McGrath Morgan Academy of Irish Dance won their respective age group’s first place spot at the regional competition in Orlando earlier this month. Pictured above is the academy’s ceili team, who placed second in the girls under-12 competition. (Photo: Marianne Weaver)

Students Donate to F.C. Homeless Shelter

The Franconia Elementary School Student Council has donated $1,500 to the Falls Church Homeless Shelter. The presentation was made by a Student Council member during an interview for the school morning show. The fourth and fifth graders on the Student Council also operate a student store and sponsors fundraisers for local charities throughout the year.

F.C. Arts Calls for Entries for “Texture” Exhibit

Photographers are invited to explore how visual or tactile surface characteristics of objects or scenes can be enhanced or downplayed through the manipulation of light and angle. Because texture may either be real or implied, participants are also invited to take a broader look at the topic and to submit entries that convey texture through the basic or overall structure of an image. Submissions for the exhibit are due Sunday, February 5th at midnight.

The exhibition will be held from March 4th to April 9th. The juror of the exhibition will be Ronald Beverly. Juror’s Choice and People’s Choice prizes will be awarded courtesy of a donation from DuBro Architects and Builders.

Keegan Theatre Announces Cast of “The Lifespan of a Fact”

The Keegan Theatre is pleased to announce the cast and creative team of the acclaimed serio-comedic play “The Lifespan of a Fact,” written by Jeremy Kareken & David Murrell and Gordon Farrell, making its DC Premiere at Keegan January 28 — February 25, 2023.

About the play: Jim Fingal is a fresh-out-of-Harvard fact checker for a prominent but sinking New York magazine. John D’Agata is a talented writer with a transcendent essay about the suicide of a teenage boy — an essay that could save the magazine from collapse. When Jim is assigned to fact check D’Agata’s essay, the two come head to head in a comedic yet gripping battle over facts versus truth.

The cast of “Lifespan” includes Colin Smith as John D’Agata, Sheri Herren as Emily Penrose, and Iván Carlo as Jim Fingal.

FCNP.COM | FALLS CHURCH NEWS-PRESS

LOCAL

JANUARY 5 - 11, 2022 | PAGE 13

Shields Summarizes Remarkable F.C. Achievements of 2022

by Nicholas F. Benton

Falls Church News-Press

The first day back at work at the Falls Church City Hall this week began with a conference call among division leaders that focused on the City’s monumental achievements in the last year. City Manager Wyatt Shields outlined a detailed summary of the achievements of 2022 as the City government strove to serve the needs of “government, residents and businesses working together to improve our community.”

He summarized how the City’s key values include its 1. Small Town Character in an Urban Setting, 2. Economic Sustainability and Vitality, 3. Safe Streets for All, 4.Social Equity, Inclusion, and Affordable Housing, 5. Public Safety, 6. Environmental Sustainability, 7. Effective and Responsive Government Services, and 7. Effective and Responsive Government Services: Public Meetings.

“The highlights of the review were built on the foundation of dayto-day service to the community that all City staff take pride in,” he reported.

“In that daily work lies our strongest connections with the Falls Church community. As City resident, activist, and employee Annette Mills said at her retirement party, ‘We are most effective when we are working together, residents and government working hand in hand.’ I keep her words framed on my wall as a daily reminder of this truth.

“As the year 2022 draws to a close, it is good to take stock of some of the accomplishments of a very productive year. The City Comprehensive Plan lays out a vision and key objectives for our community and this Year in Review is organized along key values identified in that plan.”

The accomplishments presented in the 2022 summary report include the following, presented in the shorthand form used in the report. The City of Falls Church:

Completed Washington St. Plaza and history panels. Maintained flower baskets in the downtown commercial district.

Sponsored numerous special events including Memorial Day, Concerts in the Park, and more. Installed holiday lighting on Broad Street up to West Street.

Completed a new Wayfinding Sign program to help visitors find key attractions.Created a Park Master Plan for the two-acre “Fellows Property” adjacent to Oak Street School.

Developed an “East End Area Plan” to set a vision for a vibrant future for the Eden Center and adjacent properties on the east side of the City. The plan is scheduled for adoption in March 2023.

Executed a 99-year ground lease for the West Falls project to help pay for new Meridian High School.

Approved building permits for over 1 million square feet of new commercial development.

Executed an economic development agreement to bring a new movie theater to Founders Row.

Executed an agreement with Virginia Tech and Converge LLC to facilitate the development of a new Virginia Tech National Center for Smart Construction and other commercial uses on City owned land in Fairfax Co adjacent to Meridian H.S.

Issued permits for the Broad and Washington project which includes Whole Foods anchored retail, a theater for Creative Cauldron, and public parking.

Issued permits for Founders Row II, which will begin construction in 2023.

Created the new Little City Gift Card program to support shopping at local businesses.

Provided small business grants to help recover from the economic impacts of the pandemic. Completed traffic calming measures on Oak St. and Lee St.

Installed new sidewalk to the Tinner Hill Historic site. Installed new sidewalk on S. Maple and Tinner Hill Rd.

Developed plans for traffic calming solutions for the Greenway Downs neighborhood for review by residents. Completed Maple Ave & S. Washington St intersection safety improvements.

Completed a Bicycling and Facility study with Virginia Tech with recommendations that will be incorporated into the Bike Master Plan in 2023.

The City Council approved lowering speed limits to 20 miles per hour on smaller residential streets in the City. New 20 mph signage and enforcement will begin in spring 2023.

Developed engineering plans for pedestrian and bike safety improvements for Park Avenue from Washington Street to the Mary Riley Styles Library.

Issued a contract for reconstruction of the Oak Street bridge with enhanced sidewalks, with construction to start in the Spring of 2023.

Acquired three additional properties in Virginia Village to preserve them as affordable housing. Executed a Memorandum of Agreement with Wesley Housing to a) manage the five quadplexes in Virginia Village as affordable housing, b) acquire additional properties, and c) redevelop these properties into modern affordable housing.

Executed an affordable homeownership program agreement with NHP Foundation to purchase and rehabilitate homes and resell them with covenants to preserve them as affordable.

Conducted an assessment of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the city government workforce and began implementing recommendations from that assessment.

The Human Services Advisory Committee hosted a community workshop on race relations in the City of Falls Church with over 150 residents participating.

Intervened on behalf of rental tenants to resolve landlord tenant problems

Created a new scholarship program to cover youth sports and summer camp fees based on participants ability to pay to assure that all in the community have access to these programs. 75 percent of uniformed Police Officers and Sheriff Deputies have completed Critical Incident Response training to help officers recognize mental health issues and intervene with safe practices for the individual, the officer, and the community.

City Police and Sheriff implemented body worn cameras for uniformed officers. City Police and Sheriff continued to implement the key recommendations of the Use of Force Review Committee. Implemented the second year of the City’s restorative justice program for non-felony youth offenders.

Office of Emergency Management conducted training with condo associations to help them plan for extreme weather, prolonged power outages, fire evacuation, and other emergencies.

Office of Emergency Management conducted training exercises with school staff, library staff, and the faith community to prepare for a gun violence emergency. City sponsored Drug Take Back Day for safe disposal of unused prescription drugs.

Purchased a flood prone property in the Tripps Run Floodway to reduce flood risk and expand the Cavalier Trail. Achieved the second highest scores in Virginia for flood risk mitigation through FEMA’s Community Rating System (CRS) which results in a 20 percent reduction in flood insurance premiums for property owners in the City.

Lifted the state of emergency for Covid-19 after over two years of public health measures to protect the community and critical services.

Achieved a Recycling Rate of 59 percent, the highest in Northern Virginia and second highest in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Recognized as an EPA Green Power Partner for purchasing at least 25 percent of electricity from renewable sources for City operations.

Continued transition to fuel efficient fleet, with two electric buses for City schools and electric vehicles for Police Command Staff and Public Safety Aides. Purchased bio diesel fuel for Public Works heavy trucks and equipment. Achieved 20 percent reduction in carbon emissions since 2005.

Launched Community Energy Planning to accelerate the City’s transition toward renewable energy sources to meet goal of 50 percent reduction of carbon emissions by 2030. Issued contract for construction of the Trammel Branch Stormwater Project to reduce flooding in the Shadow Walk, W. Columbia Street area.

Completed the Laura – Poplar Stormwater connection to reduce flood risk for homes in this area. Began construction of Wren’s Branch stormwater improvements to reduce flood risk in the Van Buren / E. Columbia neighborhood. Achieved LEED Silver Certification from the U.S. Green Building Council for the recently completed Mary Riley Styles Public Library renovation.

Won a $4 million state grant for Stormwater Improvements, approved by the Virginia General Assembly. Implemented a 5 cents per plastic bag tax to encourage the reduction of single use plastics that are harmful to the environment. Maintained AAA Bond ratings.

Adopted a budget that fully funded the School Board request and general government services and reduced the real estate tax rate by 9 cents, to $1.23 (12 cent reduction over two years). Maintained financial reserves at or above adopted policy of 20 percent of annual revenue to ensure resilience against emergencies or economic downturn.

Produced informative videos for the Capital Improvements Program and budget videos to explain the key services and costs in every departmental budget. Published 52 issues of the Falls Church Focus online providing timely news on City programs and events.

Mary Riley Styles Public Library named a “4 Star Library” — one of only six statewide.

The library began its strategic planning process with a community survey and workshops. The library strategic plan will be finalized in early 2023. The library redesigned its website to make it easier for patrons to access online materials and services.

City Council adopted a two-year work plan to prioritize key goals and vision of the City Comprehensive Plan.

Completed a Compensation Study to ensure government pay is competitive relative to market, to retain and attract a high performing workforce. 40 City employees graduated from the Supervisors Academy, a three-day course on leadership and management best practices to serve the community effectively.

The City Treasurer completed a competitive bidding process for city banking services which will result in $441,000 savings per year on bank fees and better interest rates.

Executed an agreement with VDOT for a $10 million Smart Cities grant in partnership with Virginia Tech.

The School Board and City Council worked together on the Revenue Sharing Principle to allow greater planning and predictability in the annual budget process.

The City Council held 34 regular meetings and work sessions, 37 committee meetings, 34 Agenda Planning meetings, and 10 City Council “Office Hours” meetings. Council approved 20 Ordinances and 48 Resolutions, which included budget adoption, land use and community development applications, affordable housing acquisition, transportation grant applications, and a new policy on equity and human rights.

Issued 29 Proclamations reinforcing the welcoming nature of Falls Church and its respect for different identities, cultures, and ways of life; recognizing those working to ensure the safety and sense of community within the City; supporting environmental sustainability measures; and providing a platform for important public information and awareness for community issues.

City Boards and Commissions held 193 public meetings with City staff to shape new policy and programs. Responded to 179 Freedom of Information Act requests.

Maintained the ability for public participation in all public meetings both remotely and in person after the COVID Emergency Declaration was lifted. Posted video recordings of all Council and Board and Commission meetings to promote transparency and public information.

PAGE 14 |JANUARY 5 -11, 2023 FALLS CHURCH NEWS-PRESS | FCNP.COM

What Rain? New Year’s Eve Revelers Won’t Be Held Back

WHILE STEADY RAIN CAUSED the cancellation of all outdoor Watch Night events in Falls Church on New Year’s Eve, lots of folks found lots of ways to usher in 2023 in style. examples here including the Andrew Acosta band (top left) and Falls

Church Mayor David Tarter (standing, bottom left). (P�����: G��� M�����)

FALLS CHURCH NEWS-PRESS | FCNP.COM OUTLOOK JANUARY 5 - 11, 2023 | PAGE 15

How to Destroy a Brand, Musk Style

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NEW YORK TIMES

True story: When I won the Nobel Prize in 2008, Princeton quickly set up a special event on campus and reserved a parking space for me in front of Robertson Hall. But when I drove up in my 2004 Jetta, the security people frantically tried to wave me away. They clearly didn’t find it plausible that a laureate would be driving such a modest car.

I’m still driving that car today.

The point is that I’m not one of those people who cares much about what he drives. (No doubt I act out my egotism in other ways.) But many people do, in fact, use their cars to symbolize their status — indeed, their identity.

There’s no point being censorious. Conspicuous consumption is a very human thing, going back as far as civilization itself. Over time, however, the form has changed. These days, it’s relatively hard to tell how rich people are by the clothes they wear, which gives other status markers such as cars a more important role. Also, in modern times people use consumer goods to display their values as well as their wealth. A fancy pickup truck sends one kind of message; a Tesla sends another.

And yes, speaking of Tesla, today’s column is partly about Elon Musk.

As I wrote in my last column, the main reason to believe that Tesla’s huge market value doesn’t make sense has little to do with Musk’s antics at Twitter. The problem instead is that Tesla’s dominance of the electric vehicle market is already fading as we speak, so the company is unlikely to generate the kind of extraordinary long-term profits that would justify its stock price.

That said, Musk has indeed been acting very oddly — and in ways that seem almost perfectly calculated to drive away his best customers.

After all, what does it mean to buy a Tesla? It’s a luxury car, but there are other luxury cars. What’s special about a Tesla is that it’s an electric, zero-emission luxury car — one that purports to be a glitzy ride to a sustainable future.

Also, until just the other day, Musk himself was widely seen as a cool guy. And cool in a futuristic sense: His company sends rockets into outer space; he was living with a popular musician who released an album inspired by the science-fi ction novel “Dune” (a book that, by the way, was recently made into a terrifi c movie).

So what message was someone sending by driving a Tesla? Basically — I don’t think I’m being unfair — it was: “I’m rich but I’m woke.” Mock that stance all you like, but it really did increase Tesla sales. And it means that many Tesla buyers are probably also Democrats.

I’m not just guessing here. The other day, a friend of mine who writes under the nom de internet Invictus used New York state data to compare county-level political leanings with Tesla registrations. Sure enough, in 2020, counties that voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump — they do exist, even in New York — purchased far fewer Teslas per capita than those that voted overwhelmingly for Joe Biden.

Charles Gaba, known for, among other things, his documentation of the correlation between political leanings and vaccination status, has replicated these results for several states.

There are a lot of Teslas in Westchester County, a wealthy and very Democratic New York suburb that includes Scarsdale, and hardly any in Steuben County, a very Trumpy area southeast of Buff alo.

To some extent, this may refl ect the fact that people in Westchester have more income. But despite what you sometimes hear about the parties reversing class roles lately, Americans with incomes over $100,000 still vote Republican by a fairly large margin. What has reversed is the educational divide: College graduates have become a Democratic bloc, which supports the view that what we might call the Tesla divide is also linked to the culture war. And Westchester has far more college graduates than Steuben does.

Tesla, then, is a brand whose customer base largely consists of wealthy cultural liberals who were attracted in part by Musk’s perceived with-it persona. Given all that, Musk’s public embrace of MAGA conspiracy theories is an almost inconceivably bad marketing move, practically designed to alienate his main buyers. What’s going on?

To a large extent, Musk may simply be revealing who he always was — basically, a typical technology oligarch. In general, authoritarian instincts and contempt for the little people are a lot more prevalent among the Silicon Valley elite than people realized when information technology still felt cool.

Even among his class, however, Musk stands out for his lack of impulse control. This was obvious, if you paid attention, long before he bought Twitter. More than four years have passed since he called a cave rescuer who rejected Musk’s off er of a minisubmarine a “pedo guy.”

Furthermore, Musk’s behavior is becoming even more bizarre. (A favorite line of mine is that people get worse as they grow older because they become more like themselves.) Since when do captains of industry respond to random critics by mocking their imagined anatomies?

Now, as I wrote in my last column, Tesla was probably headed for a fall eventually, even if Musk had been who his fans imagined him to be; the economics of the electric vehicle business just aren’t conducive to long-term market domination. But Musk might have been able to postpone the day of reckoning, at least for a while, if he had managed to hide who he was from his best customers a little longer.

By PAUL KRUGMAN © 2022 The New York Times

Cheer Up! The World Is Better Off Than You Think.

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NEW YORK TIMES

Enough with the doom and gloom! Our planet may be in better shape than you think.

Human beings have a cognitive bias toward bad news (keeping us alert and alive), and we journalists refl ect that: We report on planes that crash, not planes that land. We highlight disasters, setbacks, threats and deaths, so 2022 has kept us busy.

But a constant gush of despairing news can be paralyzing. So here’s my eff ort to remedy our cognitive biases. Until the pandemic, I wrote an annual column arguing that the previous year was the “best” in human history. I can’t do that this year. But I can suggest that broadly speaking, much is going right and this may still be the best time ever to be alive.

Where 2022 excelled particularly was in technological strides.

Solar power capacity around the world is on track to roughly triple over the next fi ve years and overtake coal as the leading source of power globally. Technical improvements are constant — such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers’ developing a way to produce thin and fl exible solar panels that can turn almost any outdoor surface into a power source.

There are parallel breakthroughs in batteries. Batteries, boring? No! They’re one of the most exciting frontiers of technology, making remarkable advances crucial to storing green power. Likewise, nuclear fusion as an energy source marked a milestone in 2022. Green hydrogen is also gaining ground and could be useful for shipping and energy storage.

The upshot is that we are in the midst of a revolution of renewables that may soon leave us far better off . If things go right, we’ll be able to enjoy cheaper, more reliable and more portable power than ever before. Truly cheap energy, whether from solar or fusion, could be transformational: For example, it could run desalination plants to provide the fresh water that we’re running out of.

To be clear: Climate change remains an existential challenge. What’s new is that if you squint a little, it is now possible to see a path ahead in which we manage — barely — to avoid calamity.

Health tech has likewise made immense gains. Scientists are making signifi cant progress on vaccines for malaria, refl ecting what may be a new golden age for vaccine development. Immunotherapy is making progress against cancer. (Among other feats, it is keeping one of my friends alive.) A new gene-editing technique may be able to cure sickle cell anemia; Bill Gates argues in his annual letter that the same approach may eventually off er a cure for HIV/AIDS as well.

We haven’t even mentioned the progress in artifi cial intelligence, including ChatGPT. (No, it did not write this column.)

And of course, technology is not taking leaps just in research labs but is fi ltering down to improve individual lives. I’m writing this on the family farm in Oregon with the help of our new Starlink internet service that is beginning to empower rural America (and has been a game-changer for Ukrainians as they humble their Russian invaders).

It’s true that what may be the most important trend in my lifetime — historic progress against global poverty — has stalled because of Covid-19, climate change and the impact of the war in Ukraine on global food prices. But it has not collapsed.

“The pandemic dip was not that bad on many outcomes,” said Esther Dufl o, an MIT professor and the youngest person to have won a Nobel in economic science. “It was much less of a cataclysm for Africa than for us.”

Indeed, World Bank researchers estimate that the number of people living in extreme poverty actually declined a hair in 2022, although the fi gure remains higher than on the eve of the pandemic. The number is about the same as it was in 2018 — and much better than in 2017 and previous years.

Remarkably, preliminary estimates suggest that global child mortality continued to fall during the pandemic. A child is now about half as likely to die by age 5 as in the year 2000, and one-quarter as likely to die as in 1970.

I don’t minimize the global humanitarian crisis, and we must do better. Children around the world are suff ering malnutrition that permanently impairs their faculties. Young girls are being married off . Displaced boys and girls are missing school.

But David Beasley, executive director of the United Nations World Food Program, notes that although the world is facing “a perfect storm” of calamities, the world responded with an outpouring of assistance and an international push to allow exports of Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea. These measures have held off full-blown famine at least for the time being.

“Quite frankly,” he said, “it could have been so much worse.”

You may have winced when I wrote above that “this may still be the best time ever to be alive.” That’s deeply contrary to the public gloom. But would we prefer to live at some other time when children were more likely to die?

Max Roser of the indispensable website Our World in Data puts the situation exactly right: “The world is awful. The world is much better. The world can be much better. All three statements are true at the same time.”

So all the bad news is real, and I cover it the other 364 days of the year. But it’s also important to acknowledge the gains that our brains (and we journalists) are often oblivious to — if only to remind ourselves that progress is possible when we put our shoulder to it. Onward!

By NICHOLAS KRISTOF © 2022 The New York Times

PAGE 16 |JANUARY 5 - 11, 2023

OUTLOOK

FALLS CHURCH NEWS-PRESS | FCNP.COM The Shameful Open Secret Behind Southwest’s Failure

Zeynep Tufekci

NEW YORK TIMES

Computers become increasingly capable and powerful by the year, and new hardware is often the most visible cue for technological progress. However, even with the shiniest hardware, the software that plays a critical role inside many systems is too often antiquated, and in some cases decades old.

This failing appears to be a key factor in why Southwest Airlines couldn’t return to business as usual the way other airlines did after last week’s major winter storm. More than 15,000 of its flights were canceled starting Dec. 22, including more than 2,300 this past Thursday — almost a week after the storm had passed.

It’s been an open secret within Southwest for some time, and a shameful one, that the company desperately needed to modernize its scheduling systems. Software shortcomings had contributed to smaller-scale meltdowns, and Southwest unions had repeatedly warned about it. Without more government regulation and oversight, and greater accountability, we may see more fiascos like this one, which most likely stranded hundreds of thousands of Southwest passengers — perhaps more than 1 million — over Christmas week. And not just for a single company, as the problem is widespread across many industries.

This problem — relying on older or deficient software that needs updating — is known as incurring “technical debt,” meaning there is a gap between what the software needs to be and what it is. While aging code is a common cause of technical debt in older companies — such as with airlines that started automating early — it can also be found in newer systems, because software can be written in a rapid and shoddy way rather than in a more resilient manner that makes it more dependable and easier to fix or expand. As you might expect, the former is cheaper and quicker.

It’s a bit like constructing a building. If you had the option of not adhering to strict earthquake or fire codes — i.e., if there was little or no regulation or oversight — it would almost inevitably be cheaper and quicker to skip such niceties. The building might look and feel the same to its inhabitants — as long as there was no earthquake or fire. But if there were an earthquake or fire, the “debt” would be paid by the endangered inhabitants of the building.

Which brings us back to Southwest. Throughout the past year, members of the flight attendants union picketed in front of various airports as part of contract negotiations. One protest sign they carried? A placard declaring “Another Victim of SWA’s Outdated Technology,” with a graphic showing a stuck software progress bar. In September, they put the same sign lamenting the company’s outdated technology on the side of a truck and drove it in circles around Love Field (Southwest’s core airport) in Dallas as well as the nearby Southwest headquarters. In March, in its open letter to the company, the union even placed updating the creaking scheduling technology above its demands for increased pay.

Likewise, in October 2021, when Southwest experienced another cancellation crisis, the president of the pilots union pointed out that the antiquated crew scheduling technology was leading to cascading disruptions. Even as then-Southwest CEO Gary Kelly objected to the pilots’ claims, saying Southwest had “wonderful technology,” he conceded that their tools could use improvement.

That improvement seems not to have occurred.

Lyn Montgomery, president of Southwest’s flight attendants union, told me that currently, when hiccups or weather events happen, the employees have to go through a burdensome, arduous process to get things sorted because Southwest hasn’t sufficiently modernized its crew scheduling systems.

For example, if members of a crew from Buffalo, New York, don’t arrive in Baltimore because their flight was canceled, the employees have to manually call in to let the company know where they are and get hotels arranged for them.

Lyn told me that employees had sent in screenshots that showed their being left on hold on the phone for three, six, seven, eight, 12 hours, and even one of 17 hours, just to let the company know their whereabouts and get hotel rooms arranged. During such waits, they could “time out” — a phrase relating to a Federal Aviation Administration safety requirement that mandates a certain amount of rest between flights. The result is that once the employees managed corporate contact, they weren’t allowed to fly — even if they were at an airport with a flight that needed them. Online forums are full of employee accounts of such misery.

Meanwhile — extending our example from above — Southwest would have to find a crew in Baltimore to replace the one that never arrived from Buffalo. But the potential candidates in Baltimore might also be on hold for hours, trying to let the company know their whereabouts.

You can see how this can easily cascade to a systemwide halt, as happened this past week.

You might be wondering how Southwest can lose track of where the crews are, and why anyone has to call in at all, since the company presumably should know exactly which flights got canceled and who flew where, based on passenger lists. Southwest did have an old system, but Montgomery says it broke down during even mild hiccups, forcing employees to have to call in.

Why can’t the crews simply notify the company of their whereabouts via an app or a website, and even get their hotel assignments that way? John Brant, vice president for product strategy at Arcos, a company that sells workforce management software to airlines and other companies, told me that that’s how it works for many other airlines. But that’s yet another layer of software that has to be written and integrated into whatever software the airline uses for scheduling personnel.

Southwest concedes that technology played a role in the fiasco, but without acknowledging past decisions contributing to why this happened now.

“Our systems were overwhelmed by the scale of the disruption,” Chris Perry, a Southwest spokesman, told me. “We had available crews and aircraft, but our technology struggled to align our resources due to the magnitude and scale of the disruptions. As a result, our crew schedulers tackled the issue manually, which is a tedious, long process that takes time and trained resources to accomplish.”

Such breakdowns resulting from technical debt are often triggered by external events like weather and can be worsened by other dynamics, such as the fact that Southwest has more “pointto-point” flights than most airlines, which use a hub-andspoke model, where passengers are ferried to major hubs like Atlanta and Dallas from their origin and then put on planes to their final destinations. But the point-to-point flight model — which has its advantages — doesn’t fully explain how Southwest still couldn’t start flying its regular schedule until a week after the storm had passed.

So why didn’t Southwest simply update its software and systems?

Well, if you are a corporate executive whose compensation is tied to stock prices and earnings statements released every three months, there are strong incentives to address any immediate problem by essentially adding a bit of duct tape and wire to what you already have, rather than spending a large amount of money — updating software is costly and difficult — to address the root problem. Then you can cross your fingers and hope that whatever catastrophe may be in the making erupts under someone else’s future tenure. Such bets often pay off since, increasingly, the plight of a company’s customers and employees is divorced from the immediate fortunes of its current top executives.

In 2020, for instance, Kelly’s compensation was a record $9.2 million, despite the fact that the company lost more than $3 billion that year because of the pandemic, and the compensation for the median employee fell by $35,000, to about $66,000. (The company said Kelly’s compensation had been set in place before the pandemic.) In the years leading up to the pandemic, while the company’s aging scheduling technology groaned, the company spent $8.5 billion of its excess cash on purchasing its own stock — a common practice among airlines that helps increase the value of the stock, the main form of compensation for many executives. Then, when the pandemic hit, like other airlines, Southwest received billions from the government in grants and low-interest loans. Kelly, an accountant who became the CEO of Southwest in 2004, retired this year with an estimated net worth in the tens of millions of dollars, so the crisis did indeed occur under someone else’s tenure.

Ultimately, the problem is that we haven’t built a regulatory environment where companies have incentives to address technical debt, rather than passing the burden on to customers, employees or the next management.

What would proper incentives look like? It would differ by industry. For airlines, it might mean holding them responsible for the problems their miserly approach causes to the flying public. To start with, they could be forced to compensate passengers for delays or cancellations that go beyond reasonable expectations because of weather or events outside their control. (Europe has such a rule, though the implementation has hit a lot of snags.)

Companies can also be substantively fined for major failures like this one. But if the fines are too small, companies will just see them as a cost of doing business and carry on.

For example, after the 2017 Equifax breach, which exposed sensitive information from 143 million Americans because the company failed to institute a routine security update to its software, the company agreed to pay a penalty of at least $575 million to the Federal Trade Commission. That may sound like a lot, but it was just a few dollars per affected customer and a mere 15 percent of the company’s revenue in 2018, the year after the hack. I’m sure Equifax would have much preferred not to have been fined, but it was still a cost the company could endure — especially those lucky enough to inhabit the executive suites. Equifax CEO Richard Smith did resign. But despite the failure and the fine, he also collected $18 million in pension money on his way out the door.

This is why we can’t just keep turning the operation of more and more of our infrastructure to antiquated software and self-interested executives. Technical debt is real debt. It will eventually be paid by someone. And unless we take steps to hold companies and executives accountable for preventable — and foreseeable — failures, it will be the public that keeps paying.

By Zeynep Tufekci © 2022 The New York Times