​DRCA is an active civic association that is administered by elected volunteers. DRCA is not affiliated with any political or religious organizations or, with the Donaldson Run Recreation Association (DRRA) the neighborhood pool.
​​​Our goals are to:
​
-
Promote information sharing about issues affecting the neighborhood
-
Provide leadership and advocacy about neighborhood interests
-
Preserve and enhance the assets of the neighborhood
-
Promote a sense of community
​Membership: If you live in the neighborhood, you can become a member of DRCA by paying dues which are $20 annually. Additional information regarding membership can be found here.
Other sources of information and discussion about the neighborhood include the Donaldson Run Civic Association's Facebook group and the Donaldson Run NextDoor account.
.png)
.png)
.png)
​President's Letter
​June 2026
Bill Richardson
bill@drca.org​​
​​
As the school year ends and vacations begin, we have scheduled our last membership meeting until the fall for Wednesday, June 10, at our usual time and location: 7:30 p.m. (with a social half-hour beginning at 7:00) at Taylor School. We have two principal items on our agenda, and hope you will be able to come to hear about these.
Jessica Kaplan, a member of the board of the Arlington Historical Society (AHS), will be describing their partnership with the Black Heritage Museum in their “Stumbling Stones” campaign, entitled “Memorializing the Enslaved in Arlington, Virginia 1669-1865.” The goal of this project is to identify locations and (where possible) identities of slaves in Arlington during this period, and to mark these locations with engraved bronze plaques or “stumbling stones,” resembling the markers for Holocaust victims in Germany. AHS has so far identified two locations in our neighborhood as owned by slaveholders. One was Caleb Birch, and the proposed location of the marker would be near Birchwood, at the intersection of Wakefield and 26th Streets. The other was Robert Donaldson, with a location near the native plant garden in Potomac Overlook Regional Park.
We will also be providing you with information on some new state laws of particular interest to our neighborhood, enacted during the recent session of the Virginia General Assembly. These include a tree canopy bill sponsored by our delegate, Patrick Hope, on which we worked closely with him and others. Another of these imposes some controversial restrictions on local zoning authority, including the “Faith in Housing” legislation designed to expedite approvals of affordable housing developments by churches and other nonprofit organizations.
Finally, at our June 10 meeting, we will be holding our biennial elections for DRCA officers and directors. Although this year we have made additional efforts to encourage a greater diversity of participants on our board, in the absence of volunteers all of our current board members have agreed to serve for an additional two-year term. The proposed slate is listed in the article in this newsletter.
Our constitution specifies a limit of eight years for service as President, unless no other candidates are available. At ten years and counting, I am past my sell date, so I have advised the board that I will be stepping down as president in 2028 if elected to another term at our upcoming meeting. Our Nominations Committee, chaired by my predecessor Anne Wilson and including Deirdre Dessingue and Stephanie Tebor, are already hard at work at exploring options for the future. Again, we anticipate vacancies on the board in two years, so please let them know if you are interested in joining.
I hope to see you on June 10 for our last meeting before the fall, and to hear from you on these or other issues of concern to you.