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Home My Public Portal About2011_tcwsmin0613Council Work Session June 13, 2011 Council Chambers, 25 West Market Street, 7:30 p.m. Mayor Kristen Umstattd presiding. Council Members Present: David S. Butler, Thomas S. Dunn, II, Katie Sheldon Hammier, Ken Reid, Kevin Wright and Mayor Kristen Umstattd. Council Members Absent: Fernando "Marty" Martinez. Council Member Dunn left at 8:32 p.m. Staff Present: Town Manager John Wells, Deputy Town Manager Kaj Dentler, Town Attorney Jeanette Irby, Director of Engineering and Public Works Tom Mason, Director of Plan Review Bill Ackman, Director of Finance Norm Butts, Economic Development Manager Marantha Edwards and Clerk of Council Lee Ann Green AGENDA ITEMS 1. Work Session Items for Discussion a. Downtown Parking Design Milt Herd: I thought what I would do, Mdm. Mayor, and members of the Council is to just give you a very brief overview of the process and general outcome of this effort and then the design folks can explain some of the details. I think, first of all I'd say we're pleased to be here after this three months of hard work and pleased to present you with a plan for improvements to King Street that enjoys broad support from the businesses and property owners on King Street and adjacent areas. We want to thank council again for giving us the opportunity to work on this and develop a plan that allows the residents and businesses to speak as a unifying voice to you all and then for you all to be able to speak in a unified voice to county and state agencies regarding what people want for this area. I think when we began this process a few months ago, no one could guarantee success but we can now say we did it. And it feels good. It's thanks to the dedicated and energetic efforts by many, many local businesses and property owners here and residents. And to an extraordinary contribution of time and expertise by more than a dozen local planners, architects and engineers who donated to the town pro bono more than 300 hours and $45,000 worth of their time. They did this out of goodwill for the town because it's our town and we want to make it better. As you know, I think you know some of the details and process, but a brief summary. We began our effort after getting permission from you to undertake this effort. We began with a planning meeting at the Lightfoot restaurant on March 31. We laid out the sequence of meetings, locations and times and we had four design workshops, April 28, May 12 and 13, and then May 19 at which we did most of the work. Between the 13th and 19th session, during that week we opened the studio for what we called merchant mornings where for two or three hours we allowed, invited and hoped that merchants and other interested people would come in informally and look at the plans as 1 1 Pad e Council Work Session June 13, 2011 they were formulating and give us further input and feedback and have discussions. That was very effective. After the 19th, the design team took all that input through the 19th and created this final drawing. Then a bunch of them took this drawing around to individual stakeholders and met one -on -one to discuss it with them and give them an opportunity to show their support by putting their name on it. We had more than 50 stakeholders participate in some or all of those for design sessions. We had many others follow the progress through word -of- mouth, through news accounts, and also through an e -mail list which numbered in the hundreds where we sent out summaries of each work session right after it was completed. So the outcome of this effort is, I think, strong and broad support for this new plan. We have shown this plan to most of the business and property owners in the downtown. We haven't had time to put it in front of every single one, but remarkably no one has opposed it. We are not aware of any voiced opposition. Everyone certainly has different levels of support in their own mind. Everyone we have asked to sign it has done so. So it seems like the unity of support and enthusiasm is remarkable, if not impressive. Currently we have about 100 signatures on the plan indicating support and the overwhelming majority of those are on or related to King Street in one way or another. At the March 31 meeting at the Lightfoot, you will recall, Mdm. Mayor that you indicated it would take the support of at least 20 merchants in the area to persuade the town Council to accept a new alternative plan. We now have far, far more than that. More importantly, the stakeholders have resolved the most divisive issues that separated them when this process began. Many who were in vocal opposition to each other now come together in mutual support of this. Just to give you a flavor, there are nearly 100 names on this, are people who did have varying disagreements when we started this. n1 throw out a few prominent names that you'll know who have signed this: Stanley Caulkins, Waily Wang, Don Devine, Robin Peacemaker, Mike Caroll, Butch Porter, Peter Burnett, Neil Steinberg, Shirley Pearson, Howard Armfield, Carrie Whitmer, you can go on and on right up and down the street and I think we have most of the people. So the path ahead to success is once the Council has accepted this plan as a concept, engineering, design, cost details have to be refined. It will require, most likely, some further discussion with VDOT, but we are quite confident that we can negotiate those refinements with VDOT. I don't think VDOT is going to be a barrier. We do believe that the cost, while they require similar study, we believe that they will be in line with the cost of the alternative that has already been approved by Council last fall. With that, I'll turn it over to the designers who are here to explain the details But I think I could say that you now have an amazing plan for an amazing place created by amazing people through an amazing process. We are very glad to work on this and hope it will bring greater success to the town. Dieter Meyer: Alan Hansen will come up and join me in the presentation. We have a number of other professionals who worked on this I 21Page Council Work Session June 13, 2011 think we would like to get to chime in on some of the details including Dave, Kevin and Julia. Mayor: And if Paige or Butch, if either of you wants to come up and sit at the table, you are welcome to as well, if that would be at all helpful to you. Meyer: what I'm going to do is run through the basic design concept that we came up with here and Al will run through a few of the specific details and then will get some input on some specifics including the engineering, tree selection, those kinds of things. The challenge here, of course was to come up with a plan that really satisfied a lot of desired needs, the desire to keep parking, which we have succeeded in doing. There are 11 parking spaces in one of the blocks and 10 on the other +3 loading spaces and interestingly enough, in one of the parking spaces, if you look closely there are motorcycles parked directly in front of the establishment that usually has some motorcycle riders as customers. So essentially all the parking is there. In addition to having parking, there was desire to enliven the street and have the ability to have, at least at times, to take advantage of a wider sidewalk and also the desire to have street trees. Of course, we are very limited in our space only having about 45 feet of overall width. So the solution that really presented itself was to maintain a drive lane and sidewalks in the sections were we currently have them, but to really relook at the section where the parking currently is. We came up with the term flex zone in some of our discussions of the area that is really the parking lane because the idea is that this is an area that can be used for multiple purposes. It can be used for parking and as you can see, we have managed to work in seven street trees in each block which will work tremendously in softening the appearance of this block by being able to have these trees. These trees can be carefully selected so as to not obscure signage and to work well in the urban environment. We have a landscape architect here who will address that in detail shortly. One of the other interesting features is that the way this design works, we actually have them located in raised planting beds at the locations that they are. What that ends up helping do also is define this lane that we have as a flex zone a little better as being a flexible area. There raised planting beds with the trees also help break up the long line of parked cars. Because you will end up seeing that you have is two or three spaces, a tree or two, three or four spaces, a couple of trees, a couple parking spaces and so on as you work your way down the street thus making it only generally a couple of cars between trees. I think the most we have is a section right here where there are four parking spaces between trees. Alan Hansen: what I like about the outcome of the effort here is we didn't just look at two blocks of street and say "Gee wouldn't it be nice to put a tree at every 20 feet or every 25 feet or every 30 feet, what does it look like If you look at the trees, that's right there are seven I never actually counted them before, seven on either side north or south of Market St., every corner, the intersections have trees, so alright that takes care of four of the trees. Then we 31Page Council Work Session June 13, 2011 have trees that provide kind of a marker or identification location for every one of the crosswalks that we proposed, so that's six more. So, really what's left...Oh, sorry, there is one more...there is the alley north of Market Street... Street. Meyer: It's actually a driveway that goes to the back of 19 North King Hansen: A tree on either side, so what does that leave? Two in the whole design, so we took a long row of parallel parked spaces and said alright lets break that up with a tree. The point is that it really grows out of the organization, the system, if you will of putting the two blocks together and when you step back and look at it... for those that can envision it, it will be a beautiful street, but it didn't just come from "let's just pop in a tree every 20 feet It grows out of the way the street works. Meyer: And that's a great point, Al. There is a rational basis for their placement based on some of these naturally occurring elements. It's interesting when you lay the two blocks next to each other, it's almost the perfect mirror image of itself in terms of the placement. For architects such as ourselves, these are the kinds of things that make us just go giddy with the way when it all works out, it's like the universe is just working out perfectly like you would naturally want it to. Hansen: The architect, Lou Kahn, said order does not necessarily imply beauty, but I honestly believe in this case we got both. Meyer: Indeed. So this is defining the flex zone. The other important point here regarding the flex zone is the idea that it can actually be used for different purposes at different times as the community decides it wants to use it that way. With that, I'll turn your attention a little bit to the sections that we have drawn here. The idea is that the parking lane, most of the time may very well be used as parking but there are times when by careful placement, and what we have proposed here is sleeves in the street where removable bollards can be placed on one side or the other to help define the space as either being parking or at special occasions, say its First Friday and you're in the springtime and the idea is that you might like to have street cafes, you can simply eliminate the parking for whatever section that you want. It doesn't have to be all the block, it's totally flexible and that's the whole idea here. It's up to the community to decide how once you set space and you actually end up with about 16 feet of width in order to have walking space and this flex zone. You can see it in the illustration here where you can get some outdoor seating all the way along the block or in parts or whatever makes sense. Herd: from a process standpoint one way we got consensus here was to consider the parking lane being defined in this area that the default condition is parking In special cases you would put these bollards in as a temporary 4 1Pagc Council Work Session June 13, 2011 measure to allow it to be pedestrian but the default is that it's parking So we are primarily trying to protect parking but get some ability to be flexible to widen the pedestrian way. Meyer: there are number of ways that the transition between the parking and the sidewalk area can be done and that's a detail that can be worked out as a next step. We share two options here, one where the rolled curb rather than a straight curb, it's a little more... How would you describe it? Rolled curb was sort of the idea you to come up with there. Hansen: You get a transition between the two. It controls the movement of the water rather than the trench drain concept you would have on just the sloping scheme. The downside of the rolled gutter, if you look at our newest neighborhoods, those concrete gutters are rolled and if your car gets off track far enough, you let go of the wheel, it will throw you back into the roadway where you are supposed to be. So, its kind of a safety issue too compared to the old curbs...old curb design. The downside is to put a table on it, if you don't do that right, and chairs...you are going to have high and low. So, it may be that the better concept is the first one where you start at the sidewalk level and then slowly the elevation goes down into...what is that...that's five feet for the sidewalk and add another eight feet for the parking lane where the flex zone is as you call it. But we were reminded in the charette that the crown is in the road as that comes out, you are not going down steeply because you are also meeting the road as it comes off the crown. All those are details that have to be worked out. They need to be worked out. If Dave Bowers wants to add anything to that, we were kind of hoping that John Martin would be here...our traffic engineer. It can work. There is no question that it can work. It has worked in other places, but I think as far as practicality and flexibility, the first scheme with just the sidewalk that... Meyer: Just a steady slope from one end to where it meets the street with a trench drain picking up...again this has been done in many communities. Probably...again that's up to the engineering to work out the final details as it works through the overall process but both schemes can work is really the point we are trying to make there. Hansen: the other thing that is important. One of the concepts that was... That came out during the discussion with all the stakeholders was the importance of authenticity. That this be... Continue to feel like a historic community in that authentic materials be used so what is proposed is use of paving materials, a variety of different types that are... And it's just to talk about really these couple of blocks but that really define this as being the center of town. The spot that is special compared to really all the other streets around. So the idea is to define your sidewalks, your parking or flex zone, your travel way by using different types of paving materials be at brick, smooth cobbles, 5 Page Council Work Session June 13, 2011 other types of pavers, whatever it might end up being as the design works its way through. Herd: And we were not specific about what those materials were. We just called them paver type 1, paver type 2, paver type 3. Further definition is appropriate as the design moves forward. But the idea is that a crosswalk looks different than a parking space, which looks different than a sidewalk. Or a street. Meyer: the other key issues were the desire to remove visual and pedestrian interfering clutter from the walks. To come up with a better way to collect parking fees be it limiting parking by chalking tires and not having meters or having meters at specific locations where you go swipe your card through to pay that way, maybe one location on each block so that you don't have all the meters throughout the entire space. Being very careful about coordinating placement of signage so that if you have six signs that are needed, you try to do it on one pole that's a judiciously located rather than doing six poles for six signs and those kinds of things. Also, the idea of street lighting was to try to actually mount them to the buildings. Or very close to the buildings and have them be on the standards in order to get them out of the line of travel. I thought the idea of mounting them to the buildings was quite an interesting one. The other item related to lighting was quality of light which was very important and some of our research we found that LED lighting has reached the point where very high quality light can be achieved in terms of color rendition and natural look. The city of Berlin has traditionally had gas lights throughout the city and they were, of course, expensive to maintain and expensive to actually use but the residents of the city very much liked the traditional look. LEDs are available now that actually mimic the color and light quality that you get from a gas flame. So a large number are being replaced in Berlin. We thought that was an interesting idea to try to get that really traditional, historic gas flame quality of lighting within these blocks to add to that historic authentic character that came back over and over again as being the desire that everybody really wanted to achieve. Herd: I'm back on the pavers and wanted to touch on it, regarding safety, because we have been on the subject of the pedestrian controlled. I think it's great that the group that we had were engineers and architects because everybody has got their own tool box of ideas. I haven't used one of these or put them into a project that we worked on, but I certainly liked the idea and we saw some of the photos. The crosswalks actually have pedestrian activated controls on either side, I think that's LED actually in the paving surface so that when a group or a person is ready to cross, they hit the button and along either side of the crosswalk you get some lights that are activated for a period of time for crossing. Now that's a feature. You could do the design with it or without it but we know that safety is a huge item in here and we are all for that. 6IPage Council Work Session June 13, 2011 Meyer: while you are touching on some details, a couple of them that you were very much involved in was the design of the centerpiece and the courthouse lawn area, if you want to touch on that a little bit. Hansen: I guess I have known Cate Maginnis Wyatt for about 10 years now and became acquainted with Journey through Hallowed Ground, what is it, 190 miles between Gettysburg and Monticello and it is a great effort. It is going to be fantastic, the planting of 620,000 trees for the lives that were lost. It's just a great effort for generations. Everybody will look back and say "glad you did that I asked her during a presentation that she was making, what is distinctive about Leesburg and the Journey. She thought a second and said there are two things. One is it's a gateway... its sort of la and lb. One is it's a gateway; 1 a is it a gateway to the national mall to the center of our government and 2 is it's a gateway to Dulles International Airport and that's unique in the string of pearls called the Journey. So, we started talking about what is a gateway, how does it work? What are some great gateways around the world and a lot of that discussion goes beyond this presentation, but we thought what if there was a way that we could mark the center of the town and in it note the distance between here and Gettysburg and here and Monticello and here and Harper's Ferry, and here and Washington DC because that's the crossroads, that's the gateway. How might you do that? Well, it turns out that we have actually discussed this with people who do these things and they can build an emblem for the street. They can do it in cast iron or something like that, but they can also do it in colored glass and that really started in the same town, actually Berlin, where they did emblems in the streets and they cast the glass and its very thick and you set it down in the asphalt and its good for 500 years. Is it done that way? Do you do it with banners? Is there another way to do it? There may be, but the concept is that you mark... You helped the build the system. The Journey through Hallowed Ground is only going to work if there some continuity as you go through the towns, the Frederick, Marylands; the Leesburg, Virginia; Orange, Virginia.... All the towns along the way you're going to see the system. Otherwise if everybody's doing their own thing nobody's going to recognize they are even on a journey. That is the thought. We had a little chat with Cate about that and of course she was enthusiastic. She went right through the roof. She was excited. She said well why don't then we come up with something. For instance, we will get Frederick to do one, but they won't have the Washington, DC and they won't have the Harpers Ferry, they could, but everybody has got Monticello and Gettysburg as common points. Just measure off the miles and as you go through town on 15 on the Journey, then you can mark your progress. That's thinking systematically. That's the concept. Is it above and beyond what you have done before, but it costs more money? Sure. Could you do it in another phase in the future? Sure. But, what's key is if you want to do that, we just need to think of it holistically and say alright, what utilities do we need to 7IPage Council Work Session June 13, 2011 adjust. What do we need to do to prepare that piece of real estate to make yourself an emblem for the Journey. The other one, the courts. I am just going to keep it simple and say that the concept is to open sidewalk space and probably double the width that we have now both on King Street and Market Street. The idea is that the gates and the rotary would be moved... we have it various ways. I think the rotary stays were it is and the gates come back. It gives you an opportunity... I'm sorry, the fencing would come back and the gate would stay in this case. It gives you an opportunity to build some wonderful furniture, whether its metal, wood, or teak... whatever you have seen in great places. One of the places that comes to mind is George Washington University, they have got some great benches and then they have plaques in the benches and also on the ground. That may be a way to teach such a rich history. There may be with every one of these benches some piece of history, so as you walk along, read, walk along and read. Then, there is the sycamore tree at the very corner, which I'm just being real frank there... but I have heard that it's healthy and fine and I have heard that it's not. Nevertheless, it's there and it's large and we are going honor that. So, the idea would be to leave that edge where it is, closer to the corner but then create a quarter circle back on it as a kind of a planter edge and maybe its not higher than 18 inches off the sidewalk. Meyer: That's kind of what we are thinking, all the other ...start tying together. You know how you do all those things. Hansen: A place to sit and actually be an area someone all they need to do it get from Market Street over to King, they can cut around to the back. That's the American way, if you find a shortcut, you take it. There was no real discussion, as necessarily of lighting there were anything other than the movement of the fencing back and making the front presentation with street frontage very pedestrian, even more pedestrian scale to give people a place to sit and stop and rest. Herd: This is the only part of the plan that goes beyond the normal street lighting plan and it would entail working with the courts and the county to resolve and approve that concept, but it did get a lot of positive reaction during the charette process as it emerged. So, hopefully we can work with the other government entities to make that happen, but it is a little bit of a distinct development, in that regard. Hansen: One of the other details that came up was the location of the original buildings on the site... That's a great story in itself. If we know where all those urges are and so on, we could actually build that into the paving pattern and again I could see incised pavers and so on to tell the story of the original walls, courts and so on of the buildings that are at that important corner. So I think that again, we've heard it over and over again, we've got 8 1Page Council Work Session June 13, 2011 great history here. We don't do the most fabulous job of telling the story and I think all of this helps tell the story and I think if we could do it, right Dieter? At least late at night in the process we thought we could do that, it would be possible to get the edge is inscribed into... You've got a redo the paving anyway you might as well put the pattern of the old buildings into place and tell the story. Meyer: ultimately, I think what we all wanted to get to and pretty much have achieved here is true consensus. Everybody's on board with the plan. I haven't heard anything negative and we have all had.... I have my favorite parts and I might do this slightly differently and somebody else might do something else slightly differently, but everybody overall, I think, has been very much on board that this is a good plan, that it would really enhance these two blocks tremendously. I think we are very, as Milt pointed out, ...and the process really worked nicely and we are very happy about that. I think I touched on all the main points of the design, but what I wanted to do was maybe invite a couple of the other design members, the engineering and landscape architects up to maybe talk real briefly about some of the engineering thoughts and the kinds of trees we might... Butler: maybe we could wait to see if there are questions related to some of these items? Hansen: That's fine. By the way, I just wanted to add here that this has been a first. I have been at this, for me and my career, I have been at this 37 years, I have never had a situation where we came in and were kind of helpful, I hope, mid process. I will say that the number of people that are supportive is exciting and that is an amazing thing in itself and I think it's the open process. If someone is a stakeholder, can kind of get their thumbprint in it and say you know this is important, let's talk about it. This is an incredibly vetted scheme here. It looks simple when it's all said and done but the amount of discussion that went into every little piece of it has been lost. In fact, the American Institute of Architects has asked me when we're all done to write an article for publication both statewide and nationally because they haven't heard of anything like this exactly either. Herd: We worked really hard with everybody to resolve the parking and balance of flexibility with the parking. It was very, very difficult and sensitive and part of it was the certainty that the parking would remain. That's why we had this very fine tuned idea and the default was preserving the parking lane protected by those bulb -out above grade tree wells that really lock in that as parking lane and provide further protection to pedestrians. Regardless of what kind of curb you use, you will have that protection. We had to have assurance that the parking as laid out there was solid. It really was the crux of reaching broad agreement across those viewpoints. That's really the heart of this thing from a consensus building process. 9iPage Council Work Session June 13, 2011 Mayor: We are going to Council Members and see if there are any questions or comments and then see if any members of the public have any questions or comments. Tom? Peter Burnett: Madam Mayor, I had two points that were missed in the presentation. One, the LED bulbs you don't need to go to Berlin to find them. You can go to Purcellville, Virginia. Martha Semmes tells us that she put those in and they have a life of about 10 to 15 years per bulb and the town of Purcellville is already recognizing electricity savings based on the cost of those bulbs. Secondly, the tree bump outs have the potential and Mark Thomas and others who worked on this count can talk about a little bit more than I can, and that is to be rain gardens as part of the EPA regulations that we know are coming... How to get points for filtering Street water and all that. So that's a helpful point. Lastly, the area in front of the courthouse could be an opportunity to solve this somewhat ongoing debate about where the free speech goes... those issues with having it... some people don't particularly care for what it looks like on the lawn. We thought perhaps it could be some built and attractive frames where the free speech could be put and taken down properly and would not be quite so messy as it is on the courthouse lawn but still accommodate and have it not be considered government speech, which is a plus. Those are three more points. Dunn: my first overall question is what is the cost difference between what we had originally and what you're proposing now? Mayor: If staff has any ideas on that...jump in. Scott Parker: We have not had the opportunity to review this to answer that question. Dunn: I think he said there is a cost increase. No? Hansen: we are doing further research on cost and trying to get a rough estimate. We believe it will be in line with the approved plan you approve last September. Hammler: Madam Mayor, if may... I know we all Mayor: Tom does have the floor. Dunn: Thank you Madam Mayor. Because I know we broke this down, John, in sections and there were certain funds allocated to each section. I know we have an overall budget of $5 million, is that correct? For the whole downtown improvements. 10IPage Council Work Session June 13, 2011 Wells: I think its $3.8 million. Dunn: $3.8. So it looks great. It looks like though it should cost more. Because it looks to me were putting more materials in. But if you are saying you can still get... What is this phase going to cost us currently? Reid: I think it was $950,000, right? Dunn: and if it should be, it's not a big deal I guess right now. We'll find that out as we go forward. Should this portion cost more, my recommendation would be that if you're still willing to keep it in the same overall budget of 3.8 for all the downtown improvements, and this will cost a half million more, then you're going to have to shave the half million dollars off some other portion of the downtown of improvements. But right now, we just don't know what that is, is what you are saying. I'm still not overly sold on this midblock crossing of the street. I see safety issues with that all the time. I see just today in Katie's neighborhood, I saw people stopping for a biker on the crosswalk on battlefield Parkway. The biker is a car, not a crosswalk. If the person wanted to be in a crosswalk, he gets off the bike and walks across. So they were stopping traffic on the right lane and somebody is taking out of the left lane getting ready to pass them because they didn't know why they were stopping and hit the brakes because the biker was there. Most of the problems at crosswalks are pedestrians don't know how to use them. They think that gives them the right -of -way to go ahead into traffic and they must stop because they're there. I'm still a little hesitant on these midblock crosswalks. You also made me a little more nervous with now you put trees at the intersections with crosswalks which is going to cause shadowing which is possibly going to be growing bigger and could block off certain people or smaller children. I don't know what you're talking about as far as... So that's a concern for me that I think we need to keep in mind. I'm glad that you brought in the trees, but hopefully it does not become a safety issue especially since you put them at these intersections. Did you say that you are going to have... I was zoning for a second there... I was just thinking about something else... Did you see were going to have some type of a light that would be letting people know that somebody is attempting to cross? A flashing light? Hansen: Did we have any photos of that? I had it in the charette. That would be a special feature that at least you could make provision for, at least initially at least get the power and so on in there even if you couldn't afford it. But no, they are just flush, almost like the lights on the floor of the airplane. They just flash when somebody crosses over. Regarding the trees, again, it was a design charette. We drew a circle and it's a tree. The truth is, you would want a high canopy so people could be under there. I agree, it could be... 11 Page Council Work Session June 13, 2011 Dunn: There are kids that are going to be hidden by that. The shadow of the trees could... I'm just saying that it is something that.... Hansen: I think it could be carefully designed. I mean there was talk... That's why we had a landscape architect... You select the right trees so you don't cause exactly that kind of problem. Dunn: I'm no expert in this, so I defer to staff who has probably experts that can look at this, but you normally, I think, do not design streets and crossings and put trees right where that is at. They are normally back a little bit, but this looks like they are right there. Again, something we might want to be aware of. You mentioned the transition from parking to more pedestrian. What is the trigger that would cause you to take that parking space and saying now it's going to be for pedestrian or we're going to put tables out there. What is that trigger? Herd: We talked a lot about that and that would have to be an administrative process of some sort because it's designed later on. We could not resolve all of the mechanics of that. The principal is the default is parking and that the property owners and businesses have a major say in how those decisions are made and managed. It would presumably be a combination of town officials and property owners. Admittedly, it's delicate, but that's a whole separate project to work out the details of that. The key, though is that it is based upon the will of these merchants, that it's collaborative and the default is parking. Special events, whatever, how much authority any one individual would have for the space in front of their enterprise, that's subject to further discussion. Dunn: I think that, and while I'm glad to hear that everyone has signed off, because a lot of people have... especially a lot of people who had been opposed to it. So that's good to hear. I'm just... That trigger point that you just mentioned... And this is the devil in the details that you still have to work out, if I recall this parking is what sent you all back to the blackboard. This is the issue that we still haven't gotten set. If you could figure out... well we are going to do it during certain hours. Well, if it's certain hours, that means that maybe businesses are closed during those hours, but there is more activity downtown. So, if you all could maybe come back with what would the possibility of triggers be... Hansen: the key thing is here, this process narrowed that gap between those that wanted no change in the parking and those who wanted to be much more ambitious. It narrowed it down to a very fine point. That's where we are. I think we had the consent of the people who participated in this to push that forward. They said we're solid enough with that, we trust we could work out the management issue. You don't have to do that now. You can improve this 12IPage Council Work Session June 13, 2011 concept, trusting that yes we will have a collaborative process with respect to everybody's opinion and work it out. Dunn: We're there any ideas? Hansen: Yeah, well we talked about First Friday, for instance. Maybe that's what you start with as an experiment. Just First Friday. See how that goes. Maybe it's Friday and Saturday night after a while and if people are happy with that, see that's the beauty and that's what we were trying to get is the flexibility so that if it doesn't work, you don't hate it, you haven't lost anything. Dunn: And what again would you denote that it is no longer parking? What type of physical feature would you have there? Herd: Removal of a bollard post. It could even be as temporary as you could call it a stanchion. There are a lot of design details with that too. The idea is that it is temporary, it is removable. It's not permanent. You don't just move it around. You take it out or you put it in. So, it's very much like the temporary stanchions that you use now in special events. Dunn: What would go into that space once parking is removed? Is it a design that it would be tables? Are you leaving it just more pedestrian space? Hansen: if you look at these types of communities, what you see when there isn't parking there is... And forever restaurant it's a natural... A street with 68 tables and chairs in this area, two seaters. Old town Alexandria, you see that scattered all up and down the block. Just tiny little things but they really enliven the street. In front of a shop it might be that there's a sidewalk sale going on where they can bring some of their merchandise out into that area. Or it's a place where the sandwich boards are set so that the pedestrian way is kept clear. However the community decides they want to use the space in those circumstances. Burnett: It could be a Saturday morning rummage sale in Leesburg. Any yard sale, art show. It could be any number of things. Dunn: I would suggest if that is the case, then maybe the bollards could have some safety features to it. Now you are moving closer to the traffic. Hansen: that's the intent. That's exactly... They are there to keep the cars from getting into it. It's one of those things that one of the options would be to have one on either side of the parking lane. When you have parking it's on the sidewalk side helping to protect the sidewalk. When it's being used as table or walking space, you put it out on the street side. You have two holes, 131Page Council Work Session June 13, 2011 one post and you can go back and forth between those two locations. Nobody is having to manage. The process really could work quite well. Herd: It's a key point, though, that the beauty of this solution, I think, from a consensus standpoint is that you don't ever need to put in bollards if you don't want to. The default is pavement, curbs and sidewalk and that's it. You don't have to ever do anything. If you decide in the future that you want to use the bollards to capture more space for pedestrians, or you don't have to. The design stands on its own. I think that's how we got the agreement between those two points of view. Hansen: Or for that matter, you could just put the sleeves in the ground and just cap them. Put a little brass cap on it or something. Meyer: I think that was the general thought. Yes, while you are building it, you put it in because it's not very expensive to put in while you are doing all the rest of the work. Hansen: If I might, could I just take 30 more seconds and just talk about the cost a little bit, because we have discussed that. The thought is that... and the way it was presented, the scheme had sort of a base idea. These things we need to make the beginnings of an amazing place. Then their special features... Whatever the fencing, the emblem, the crosswalk lighting. We talked about it, it sort of like buying a car you've got this base car and if you want these additional features it's more. I think that's probably the best way to go forward with it is whoever is providing you with cost before, so it's apples to apples and say okay here's a base number and here's these eight different features and let's price them independently and, most importantly, prioritize those features. Then you match your budget to it and of the eight, you can put in four, or six, or two or whatever it is. That was the concept, but we didn't have your group that was doing the estimating. So there was no point... We wanted to make sure we had apples to apples, not apples to bananas. Dunn: So where's the dealer undercoating in this? Just a couple of other quick questions. You brought in the courthouse again. That was kind of on the table originally, got off the table, have you discussed this option with the county. Hammler: They said they had not. Burnett: We are scheduled to speak to the courthouse committee. Their chair, looked at it and he likes it and thought it was worthy of careful consideration by the committee. It is scheduled to go in front of their committee two weeks from tomorrow, on the 28 Of course, it's a tripartite relationship. It's the courts, belongs to the county both of them want to the town. So all three want to work in deference with each other and see what 14 1Page Council Work Session June 13, 2011 works best. We know that the courts are concerned about the archeological sensitivities. They are also concerned about the dignity of the institution. Both of those will need to be respected and it is clear that is so. We literally won't know how to respond to that until we have talked with the committee and have heard what their concerns are. Dunn: And are you talking about removing the fence and gates around the courthouse? That's going to stay? Because you mentioned the shortcut there at the corner. Hansen: It would just be a little circle around the tree and the fence would move back. Burnett: As you will recall, the ULI suggested removing the fence entirely, but nobody liked that idea. This is thought to be something that would be a middle zone and animates the street is the idea. A place to linger and a place for people to sit. Dunn: The last one for me is... this might be more for staff. I don't think we were planning on doing both blocks at the same time, or we're we? I thought it was going to be one part of King Street or were we going to do both sides. Parker: The project we had approved has King Street from Royal all the way up to North. Meyer: The one thing I wanted to respond to... you had talked about the midblock crosswalks and I wanted to touch on that. There was a lot of support... one of the reasons that it's here is there was a lot of support from it from the community. That was the main reason. I think we started out with one and got actually specific requests to add a second one in. Herd: Dieter uses the word support, but I would say the word was more like demand. That was the very beginning of the first.... This has got to be saved. Hansen: A good example of where this works in a very similar manner is in Frederick, just the Saturday before last in the area where Carroll Creek intersects with Route 355, the main drag running through there. They actually have a situation that is very similar to this, where in fact they have actually raised the street and the sidewalk all in the same level and the only separation is the bollards actually in that area for about a space that length. Because there are so many pedestrians that are crossing in this area, pedestrian has become king. The cars wait for the pedestrians because there are so many pedestrians that are crossing in those areas. It can work. And it has worked in similar communities. Part of what happens is by narrowing the streets and 15 11' a ge Council Work Session June 13, 2011 introducing the street trees, and this has been shown all over the world, it changes the mindset. It becomes a pedestrian zone as opposed to a car zone and if pedestrians feel more comfortable and cars are like "hey, I'm now in an area where people are king" they slow down because there is no choice and it really does work. Dunn: I thank you for your efforts. I thank everyone for going back to the chalkboard again and sticking with the process. I think key for me is the safety issues. It looks like a good design here. It sounds like there are a number of details that we still need to work out. I hope that what we have going forward is that we don't have the yeah, but you told me that this is going be parking and now it has turned into picnic tables. That, I don't want to hear going forward. But again, I thank you all for your efforts. I do have to leave in just five minutes, but we are not voting on anything tonight. Again, thank you and also I just wanted to mention as a note for the thing I sent an email to about my EAC appointee. Again, thank you all for your efforts. Mayor: Katie, you have been very patient. Would you like to go next? Hammler: Oh, I simply was going to follow -up on the cost question, which was we had teed up that question, I think more specifically, how long will it take until we get a cost estimate is just how I would have asked the follow -up question. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Reid: Thank you. This is really incredible work and an incredible large group of people who were involved. A lot of specialists and so forth. I'm sort of inclined to support it since it is going to keep the parking. Let me just start by asking how many spaces are going to be lost? Are there going to be any spaces lost? Meyer: I can tell you that there are ten parking spaces and two loading spaces in the south block and 11 parking spaces plus one loading space in the north block. I think that's preserving... Herd: I think its two lost on the south block and one lost on the north block. It depends on how you count them and how you define them. Because right now, there are places that are marked off and I'm not sure how available they are on the south block. Reid: So, two lost on the first block, but basically South King. And then one on North King. Herd: That's a worst case scenario. It may be better than that, but that's the worst case. 16 Pa Council Work Session Reid: The bollards, I pictured being something akin to what they use in front of the capitol to keep truck bombs from... I pictured these small little concrete things. Herd: They come in all shapes and sizes. Reid: You mean it's like a pole? How high is it? Hansen: Three feet. June 13, 2011 Reid: Three feet? Okay. So it kind of looks like what you see on Michigan Avenue in Chicago with those little chains like that. But they are removable, though. And the decision to move it would be what the town manager, the town council... what's your thought? Hansen: In conjunction with the community's desires. I think that's something that the community comes in and says we'd like to try... like we were saying, maybe it's just on First Friday... Reid: You mention First Friday, but what I am thinking of is something like the Wine Kitchen. I think they have expressed an interest in having tables. So there could be a situation where they would be able to have tables and you would put the bollards out into the street and there would be no parking in the front. And so let's say further down the road, if let's say there is a change of heart by certain businesses and they want outdoor seating. Let's say there is a restaurant that wants it... you see what I like about that idea is as long as the town... I can envision a situation... I am a process person, so I can envision a situation where somebody applies to the town manager and if there is an objection, they can go to the town council... sort of like when we do residential parking or something like that. That's what I'm intrigued... that's what really, really intrigues me about this. But what you are talking about doing is removing the existing brick and essentially making that level with the street so you can have parking there or could you keep the existing brick and then have... remove the curb and then have a slope? Hansen: I think that's generally the idea. It's just very gentle. Reid: So what you are saying is we could actually keep the existing brick? On the sidewalk... Butler: No. The whole sidewalk slopes, right? Hansen: That's a detail.... Herd: It could be the sidewalk, then the slope and you could have a rolled curb. There's a lot of... 171 Page Council Work Session June 13, 2011 Reid: But it's a slight incline so a car could park... If the car door opens up, it won't hit the bollards? Hansen: But the point is, trying to match exactly something that is old... that has been there for decades, it's hard to do anyway, so like you say the flex piece, the parking piece... you don't have to match, it doesn't have to be the exact same color. Reid: If we can keep the existing brick, I bet you we can keep this down in price. But is that the interest of the committee or not? Or do you want to basically strip everything on both sides? Burnett: We anticipated that as you recall, Al said there will be different surfaces. It is entirely possible that the existing brick sidewalk could be relaid. There are different patterns. Some is laid with more, some That could all be cleaned up. Reuse that brick. Reid: I like that idea because you see, the concern that I have is the precedent that it might set where businesses on Market and Loudoun might want the same and I don't think we have a plan to do that work. But improvements that we approved are basically Loudoun southwest. So, there's another thing I like a lot. I really like that a lot. I'm going to have to stand up for the next couple of questions because I want to be able to look at this properly. There is no... how come there wasn't... I kind of like the idea of having the full four corners.... Hansen: I think that's the intent. The intent is not to change any of that. That is just kind of where we stopped drawing. Herd: This is volunteers at 9:30 at night. It's a concept. Reid: You know... I'm from Missouri. Show me. In fact, I went to the University of Missouri School of Journalism, so that's where I got the expression from. Okay, so as we move down the block, you are now talking about two midblock crosswalks. You are talking about a pedestrian activated signal. Hansen: That's a possibility. Sure. Reid: Now, John, the lighting contract that we have...isn't it for pole based lighting, or can we do what Dieter is talking about and put them on the buildings? Wells: We would have to go back and check that. 18 P age Council Work Session June 13, 2011 Reid: Okay, well I think that's a question. Herd: The other option is a pole that is pushed up against the building but still be... Reid: And again on this side of the street, is the existing sidewalk. You are just drawing it in. Now, over here you have that. They used the term freedom of speech area? Free speech area? Burnett: First amendment. Where the Einstein stuff and the Ramadan and the Creche and all the things that are on the courthouse lawn now in these wooden frames that some of us regard as kind of ugly. Reid: What? What are you talking about? Ramadan? You mean the atheist displays? Or the Nativity scene? Burnett: All those different things are within the fence and some people regard that as being government speech condoning those things and they prefer to see it not on a government location. If it were outside of that fence it might solve some of that problem. It would also solve some of the appearance by having a somewhat more attractive looking area. Reid: That's what you are talking to the courthouse committee about. So, as you go down this way, of course you have the four crosswalks What's this in the middle? Hansen: As we were talking about, that's the Journey through Hallowed Ground, the concept of an emblem that marks where you are in the Journey. And that could say town of Leesburg or something. It's a concept. Reid: Are these trees, John, are these part of the other plan to put them there or Wells: This is different. Hansen: We have arranged it differently. Yep. Reid: We are still waiting to replace the trees on Loudoun because of this whole thing. So you are not widening these sidewalks? Hansen: No, it is widened there. Reid: oh it is widened there. Okay, very good. So you're bollards along here... Is that a midblock crosswalk there? Burnett: It's about where Shoes is. 191Page Council Work Session June 13, 2011 Reid: and you want one there too. And this over here is what? Hansen: that's an alley that goes to the back of 19 N. King St. Nothing is done with that. Reid: all right. I'm very impressed. I'm very, very impressed. And I was a real skeptic of this, as you know. Of course, the cost is going to be the key thing John. So I really think that staff needs to come back with that and the parking kiosk would be somewhere along there which is what we've been talking about doing, right John? We've been talking about... Marty has been really big on this one. I think its a good idea to get rid of the meters. That gives you more space to move... I see Peter nodding... We have a lot of clutter on King Street. There's not a lot of parking loss, okay. The area you call free speech is intriguing. I'll be intrigued to see what the courthouse grounds committee thinks about that. As long as the decision making on the bollards can sort of rest with the town manager and the town Council, I think I'm pretty cool with that but I am concerned about the crosswalks. You're right, Peter, it is in fact you want to have more pedestrian friendly but King Street is a major north -south corridor that gets at least 12,000 cars a day. I don't know what the VDOT statistics are of late but that 12,000 number could be about four or five years old. I don't believe there's enough stopping distance, especially for this crosswalk. That one's a little bit better, that one down there I don't know. I know that Mr. Parker said it needs to meet VDOT requirements. But if it were kind of a situation where we could test it out with just paint at first, with your signals, that might be an idea. Although, I will say I'm concerned about precedent. This Council, I believe Katie you can correct me if I'm wrong, did we put a crosswalk signal at Oakcrest Manor and King? Hammler: No. Reid: no, we did not. So there are a lot of people around town... Hammler: We were trying not to over engineer that corner with the Virginia Tech memorial. Reid: Okay, yes, so you see and there are parts of town that want this and parts of town that have sidewalks. So for me trying to keep the cost in line in doing all this seems really, really good. Those are really my comments for now but I think we need a staff report on the cost and impact. Oh, one other question. If you were going to have that slope and we have a storm drain, is this going to create any flooding or flood control issues? Hansen: we think that it won't. I know that was one of the things that David Bowers, as part of our team, looked at it. He seemed to think that this was entirely doable. 20 1Pag e Council Work Session June 13, 2011 Reid: So we don't have to add new sewer capacity for extra.... Wells: Staff has to look at this plan. Reid: and we can't plant one of those trees on the sewer caps so we can reduce our phosphates in conjunction with this project, John. We might as well kill two birds with one stone. Person from the Audience: (inaudible).. meet that EPA standard and collect (inaudible)... Butler: They are too small. No, the amount of space is too small. Reid: Oh, it's too small? Okay. Hansen: It's relatively small, but every little bit helps, as they say. Reid: Very good. Hansen: justify can respond one thing. You mentioned VDOT and I think... There was some members of the team that contacted various sources in VDOT and I think the one quote that I liked was "it's a brave new world, VDOT is moving towards more flexibility with design standards" and they are actually much more willing to work with the localities if they have a special street like this. Those are some details that we need to work out, we know. But we also hear it straight from the horse's mouth that they are willing to work with you much more than they used to be. Reid: we understand that but it's just that the traffic committee has looked at these midblock crosswalks and because of the fatality that occurred in front of the post office many years ago when that went in, they have been very, very skeptical about putting them in even on residential streets. We just got one on Tavistock drive and it was... It took three years. So now we are talking about putting them on a street with 12,000 cars and you are talking about putting three of them. So, I still think we need to do a study of the stopping distance because we are going to have a situation where maybe they are only usable on weekends. I don't know. I don't know how we can police that when we are giving encouragement to people to cross when you have that... It might be best just to test it out with painted stripes and see what happens. Hansen: what I was trying to get at... it's not just that, but in general, there are things in here right here... our street is not as wide as what was originally talked about, but again VDOT will work with us. We don't have to let something that is in the book be a stopper to the whole thing right now. 21 Page Council Work Session June 13, 2011 Reid: But we can also try just one midblock crosswalk and see if it works, rather than putting all three in at once. But this idea you had about putting in the little corner there for... You call that the First Amendment corner... It's kind of like in Hyde Park in England where everyone gets their chance to stand up on a soapbox. That's an intriguing idea to deal with this whole controversy that we've been dealing with over the last couple of years with the Nativity scene and all the other issues. I would be very interested to see what the reaction is. Again, I'm glad we called a cooling off on this, Katie. I really am. We really came up with something that's very, very novel. Hansen: Ken, if I might. I've been thinking about what you said about the existing sidewalk and maybe we could reuse the pavers. Of course this sidewalk here also is existing pavers. If this drawing were redone and it showed that, it would show a lot less new paver surface. This is actually showing a lot more sort of fresh and new and expensive. It really isn't there. I appreciate what you said, because the truth is it's not that much area. I mean... You are not building all that. That's a good point though. Butler: Thank you, Madam Mayor. While on one hand I think it's wonderful that we all came together on this design and all agree. The difficulty that I see is that while you have reached consensus on the general design, in some respects you have basically kick the can down the road to what's the process for deciding where the bollards are. I doubt highly you would reach consensus on that very quickly. Certainly, I would not agree that first Friday is even the most appropriate time to move the bollards. For instance, since most of the shops on the street that have objected to removing all of the parking all close at five o'clock or six o'clock at the latest, and the restaurants all serve dinner six o'clock on, I don't know why we would move the bollards every evening. Six o'clock, move the bollards, and put up the tables. Again, I'm not sure were going to reach consensus on that so before I would be willing to sign off on this design are change anything that we've already approved, I think we would need a specific process of how we are going to go about moving the bollards. I would hope that that process would not include the town Council because I have no desire to be sitting here every single meeting and have three or four different resolutions on bollards, which is what would happen. The wine kitchen might want to have bollards removed here, and somebody else down the block would say no because more of this and that and that would be a complete total mess. This Council, especially has shown itself willing to flip flop on numerous occasions depending on who and how many people come up to the mic. So I would hope that the people that are on King Street would agree that they probably don't want the pressure to come to Council meetings all the time to discuss moving bollards. I would encourage us to immediately start working on an administrative plan on how the bollards are going to get placed and bring that plan forward and agree on that plan now and make sure that... Lightning has to strike twice and the Council has to be unanimous six 221Page Council Work Session June 13, 2011 meetings in a row, in order to change that plan. Because that's the key to the whole thing. Without that this plan and however nice it looks and however potentially flexible it is, will not have a material difference on the number of people within the downtown without the bollards plan. Herd: Mr. Butler, I would really urge you not to hold up this concept or the resolution for the process that may change many times in the coming years. You are talking about physical infrastructure that gets built. You can go ahead and build this without resolving the bollards question because the default is you never remove the bollards. Butler: I understand that and that's exactly why I will never approve it without the plan. Herd: but still it's a big upgrade from not doing anything. Butler: I understand that. But it costs a lot of money and it's a pretty upgrade but it will make no material difference to the number of people within the downtown without transforming the sidewalk. The whole idea of the downtown improvements, in my opinion in the first place, was to provide on- street dining, arts, and entertainment on King Street. If we are not doing that, to me the entire $3.8 million is not going to have a material difference to the amount of people that come downtown. The whole idea is to bring more people downtown. People will not come downtown, trust me, I've talked to over 100 of them that live outside the bypass. Not one of them is interested in coming downtown more than once no matter how pretty it looks. They are not interested in pretty, it does not affect them. What affects them is the actual substantive change and every time I talk to them about on- street arts, entertainment and dining their eyes light up and they say I would come downtown for that. If I talk to them about street trees and lights and pretty brick and everything else and I say "would that bring you downtown They look at me like I'm cross eyed. They say there's not a chance I would come downtown if that's all you're doing, why are you spending $3.8 million of my hard earned tax dollars to essentially make no change other than visual effect. That's not why I don't come downtown, I stay away from downtown and it has nothing to do with whether there are brick sidewalks or regular sidewalks It has to do with the hours the shops are open. It has to do with the types of goods that are in the shops, it has to do with the types of places that I can go and all of that. The fact that it's going to look pretty is not going to make me come downtown more than once to look at. So if we don't have some kind of a substantive, transformative change it's just simply not worth the money. Hansen: if I might, on a couple of things. One is the people we had collected for these sessions were a combination of stakeholders, shopkeepers, and design professionals. 23 IPage Council Work Session Butler: how many customers outside the bypass? June 13, 2011 Hansen: but here's the point, when you have design professionals together, the answer to every question is it's a design problem. So as Dieter said, what we were trying to do is design a flexible system not the way the system would operate. We knew we couldn't go there, we didn't have the authority to go there but we at least designed a flexible system somebody else has got control. Because we're wasting our time in the evenings with all these people to create the operating system. So, we didn't do it, specifically for that reason. Butler: I'm not saying that it was your job to do that. Okay, I think this is a fabulous design job. Okay.... Jim Sisley: This is setting the table. There are other commissions that are working on a retail strategy. The EDC has a meeting tomorrow morning and one of the charters for that is talk about several always or strategies to help make the two blocks, four blocks area more enlivened and functional. The next week, they have another meeting to talk about retail strategies... what suggestions might we be able to help advance that would keep the shops open longer and kind of prove the point if you can develop a consistent brand for downtown so that the public's expectations are met when they come to the district, there are cetain services and functions available to them, the entire district lifts up and operates in a way that really does attract people to the area. The question that Council member Reid asked was how many customers do you talk with. We talked with a number of customers at the time and one of the consistent statements was we want on- street dining. There are people that we talked to, old- timers, people been in the district for a while kind of scratch their head. It's the difference between the consumer mindset. This applies to the infrastructure. There's no doubt that some code will be written that will manage the bollards in a way that is consistently acceptable to the community, merchants as well as the customers. Then there will be other operational parameters that will be advanced to help the district operate in a competitive manner. But, it's imperative that you pass this infrastructure plan and not hold it up so that all things are decided at one time. Burnett: the thought was that the market would speak. If the opportunity is there, the merchants have an opportunity to make more money and do more with the bollards in place we can go back. If it's not working they won't. The notion is that free market will speak to that very issue and I think a lot of people agree with you that they're going to be a lot of folks that are looking to have those bollards out there because on- street dining is very popular. But what have an answer to that when we actually do it. Butler: and I understand all that, but the kind of argument to that is the free market in an area like the downtown can take a long time to find out 24 (Pa gc Council Work Session June 13, 2011 before it changes. It can take a long time. The other thing is the free market works great as a whole. It doesn't always work great by an individual business. There may be an individual business that if the bollards are out is going to fail quicker and if the bollards or not there is going to fail slower. But we have to look at the entire downtown is whole. I'm fine moving forward in figuring out what the costs are going to be and some of these other details and things to figure that out. But if we pass this without at least having a framework or at least a starting point for the bollards, then I think all we've done is kick the can down the road and spent a lot of money doing it. As we know exactly who's going to be at the microphone saying we don't want to move the bollards and who's going to be at the microphone saying we do want the bollards and it will be the exact same people that three months ago were saying we want the old design versus we don't want to doing anything. Guarantee that. So we need to have a framework for the bollards, otherwise you haven't solved the primary issue. Solving that primary issue was not your issue. I understand that perfectly. It's a Council issue and the Council needs to do that before we start spending money on design. Just back up a little bit, if in fact this design ends up being a bit more expensive than the other one, I certainly can find about $600,000 in the current design that I would drop in a heartbeat because I think it adds no value. I think all of you can figure out what parts they are. In case I haven't mentioned it, I walk out of the parking garage probably 50 times since we started talking about that and I see little to no value to move the curb and that was pretty expensive, if I remember. So, I think we need to really tighten our pencils a look at some of the stuff. One question, let's assume that the courthouse says no we don't want to change anything because Judge Horne's name is probably not over there is it? I just want to make a point that if the courthouse changes get nixed, that's completely separable to the rest of the design. Because I don't want somebody on Council in two weeks or four weeks or whatever saying "well, if we can't do the courthouse, then that pretty much kills the whole design That's not true at all? Totally separate? Good. None of these crosswalks are raised? Hansen: again, that's still a design issue that can.... Depending on how you do some of the things... You could make this entire area for instance all the same level.... Kind of the reference to the Frederick example because that's exactly how it is at the Carroll Creek intersection. Why that area sort of is inherently safe is because there is more pedestrians than there are cars. If the cars come too close, the pedestrians can pick up the cars and throw them out of the way because the balance of power shifted. That again, is a detail that can be done in a variety of different ways. Butler: well, to me it's less of the detail and more of a critical piece to the entire design. What I like about the original design, was the raised crosswalks and this happened two or three years ago when the original ULI design, they had raised crosswalks and I think it may have very well been my favorite part of the entire design. The last one we had, one raised crosswalk 25 'Page Council Work Session June 13, 2011 and I was hoping for two but I could live with one. This one has zero, that's a problem. Because unlike my good friend Ken Reid, I don't want 12,000 cars to be coming down the street every day. I want to limit the number, I want it to be an irritant for the cars. Reid: I didn't say I wanted it, that's the reality. Herd: The basic hope here is that they would be raised as a traffic calming feature, recognizing that ...(inaudible). Hansen: Let me just point something else out though... in essence with this scheme where the one single slope that goes all the way across the street, essentially the whole street is a raised crosswalk because essentially you have put it all on the same level. Butler: Here is the issue, when the cars are coming down the street, do they stay at the same level or do they have to go up and then down? Hansen: I don't know that that's really matters one way or the other. Again, citing the example that I did, you have entered a pedestrian zone. Milt had some pictures from his trip to New Zealand where essentially it was the same kind of idea. It's not the bump up, it's the fact that the cars and the pedestrians are at the same level that creates that effect psychologically. Herd: It's also as Dieter said earlier when you had all these elements together the basic change from staff design issue was to convert these two blocks to a more pedestrian dominated environment and you give that signal to the cars. That's what this achieves and there is a whole bunch of elements that achieve that and they can be refined and some can be traded off. That's the design details that have to be cost evaluated but the crosswalks have that element of being raised such that they would slow traffic. The whole idea is to convert to a pedestrian dominated environment and there are all these techniques to do that. Butler: I think it does a good job. What I would really like is this little gizmo in the middle here. If that was raised up like two feet so that cars had to go around it and create a mini traffic circle there and we got rid of the traffic light, that would be awesome. Hansen: Journey through broken bumpers. You would need to carve off the corners of all these buildings, unfortunately.... Butler: I'm not sure you have room, although I have seen them that size in Seattle, but I'm not sure there is enough room. 26 Council Work Session June 13, 2011 Hansen: I guess you do have your soldier statue in old town Alexandria on Prince and Washington, which has a statue of the confederate soldier right in the middle of the street. You do have to go around it. I remember when I was down there, I did see it hit off its pedestal one time. Butler: But in any case, that's a wonderful traffic calming feature. The harder we make it for cars on that street, the more of them are going to take alternate routes and go around the bypass, which is a good thing. I am glad that you mentioned about the street trees being taller and out -of -the -way because I had an opportunity to visit Brambleton shopping center and there is literally some trees where I could not see the name of the business until I was about 10 feet away because I had a look around the tree.... Near the movie theater. There is a few places like that so I'm thinking oh my Lord if we had the trees and they look like that on King Street that would be a problem but it sounds like you guys know what you're doing and you won't make the same mistakes and are good with the trees. The one thing I really, really like about this is because you don't have to have the street wider for the fire marshal because the street doesn't really get any narrower so you've still got enough with all the equipment and everything else. But when the bollards are out you actually get a much wider sidewalk then you would've had in the old design. Either way if you go out and set tables in the parking lane, there's easily room for dining... Well I would because you don't want people on the sidewalks going like this all the time, but maybe you do. You still have a lot more room than you did in the other design and there's no question that you have room for full on- street dining and everything else. That I like a real lot. I'm pretty much done. I don't want any of you to think that I don't like the process or I don't like the design. I think it was an awesome job and I had a chance... Just by chance I was down seeing when you guys were having a meeting once and I thought it was wonderful. I'm glad that.. It was a very interesting meeting that we had that few meetings ago where we ended up getting four votes to allow you to go and do this In fact somebody should write a study about that meeting. Go back and look at the tape and see everything that happened... It was pretty wild. In any case, I'm absolutely delighted that whole process happened and you have so many names here. There's no question that we need to move forward and get costing and everything else with an enormous pressure on staff to find reasons to say yes. Hansen: If I might just respond again. I'm dangerous if you give me time to think about your comments. But the comment is this. You talk to people outside the bypass and so on and they said new bricks and new lighting and it'll bring me downtown to the center of Leesburg. I think it's a great point and I support you on that. The bottom line is people aren't here for benches and they're not here for street trees, they're not here for bricks. What do designers really do? What are they really doing whether it's an interior, a building on the street? They create the stage upon which the world acts. It's easier for you to do your job here than in somebody's basement recreation 27 1Page Council Work Session June 13, 2011 room because the space is designed for this activity. The point is, you want to design that space for the activity and I agree, when you have the stage, it's set up and it works and it's flexible, then the activities can happen that will bring people downtown. I agree, I'm an architect and I will come down for brick crosswalk. Butler: We just have to make sure that those activities do happen. So like with this room, the excellence of the design of this room would be lost if we had poorer processes to pick council members, for instance. That's a necessary part. Hammler: We are fixing that at the next election. Butler: Yeah, you're right. We are fixing that. We have a good process to pick council members... at any rate, that's a completely separate issue beside the point. Hansen: That's what we have been doing is working on a stage. Herd: Picking up Alan's point about the process, you used the idea of your concern about kicking the can down the road. I would like to offer the idea of moving the ball down the pavement. We have closed the gap. It's not locked tight shut, it's much closer. Butler: I do understand. I give everybody that worked on this all the credit in the world. I just don't want people to think that there isn't still yet a fundamental issue that needs to be resolved. It is the narrower fundamental issue, okay, and it's probably more easily resolved than before. I'll definitely give you the credit. Hansen: $45,000 worth at least, is what we figured it is actually worth. Herd: (inaudible).... Butler: I understand and I'm flexible in that way. I just need to mention that. I don't want people coming out and just saying...total victory when this is excellent and it's wonderful and it's definitely a victory, but still... Hansen: It's still just the stage. Butler: So, every time I'm talking about the process, I'm kind of looking at John to say okay get your thoughts together because no doubt it will be staff that comes back with some kind of recommendation of a process to figure out how to get to the end. Anyway, I've talked too much now. 28 1 P Council Work Session June 13, 2011 Hammler: Well, I'm not sure which metaphor to start picking up on, whether it's the acting, the football, I don't know about kicking cans... But the most important thing is absolutely thanking everybody, certainly those that picked up the ball and got everybody behind it instead of different factions fighting over the ball. I think what you've done is remarkable, which was an early challenge that we as a Council faced which is this incredible diversity of very successful independent businesses and trying to come to a consensus is extraordinarily significant. So I know we have a lot of hard facts we have to look at. We have already addressed the ones that will be coming back to Council, most notably the cost, the situation with the courts, VDOT, storm water, things like legislation like 693 which might impact our ability to even determine whether we can impact any business whatsoever so there are significant ones. To me what you have already achieved is so very significant which is the sentiment that we can find a way to work together and come to a new level of cooperation. Something this comprehensive, this innovative that is going to lead this town into the future. As much as we are going to be looking at the hard facts, those things that I would put more in the softer category are just as significant which is the feeling that people want to come down because of the whole atmosphere and the attitude that we are in this together, we did this together. When Dave was kind of focusing on a few of the negative things, I couldn't help but think of something very subtle but very significant even in the recent couple of interactions that I have had which is our very own Giant. I don't know what they've been doing lately but it's been so subtle. Every single time you walk in that store now, everybody, every single employee is asking you "can I help you find something They all seem so happy to be in that store that I cannot wait to go back. I think this is the beginning of this attitude, this renewed cooperation which had me go to that night were we had just seen two brand -new options the night before and would've left us with such a sense of division that we would've lost a lot. You have already achieved so much thanks to your leadership and I look forward to the additional information on working through this. I'm positive that we will come to a great conclusion. Wright: thank you. A couple of questions. A guess a few technical ones, kind of going through your major design features. The sidewalk options either the sidewalk the rolled curb, that was something that had been discussed, reviewed, and set aside on previous engineering of this project. I guess the concern becomes what kind of changing condition or change in position from an engineering standpoint gives you guys the feeling that you have addressed the engineering concerns especially where you would tie back into the street with the standard curb? Hansen: I don't think there is an engineering issue, I don't think there ever was. These things are buildable. They get built all over the place. This is not of such complexity that solutions cannot be found. Certainly in our time we didn't figure out every last detail but we had John Martin from Kimley 29 1 Page Council Work Session June 13, 2011 Horn, a traffic engineer; we had Dave Bowers from Stantec, a civil engineer with oodles of experience in town and some others and the general opinion was this is entirely buildable. Isn't that basically.... (inaudible).... Herd: let me respond, Kevin asked a specific question... Wright: Let me give you a follow -on as you are responding... as a real estate facilities manager by training, when an architect tells me its buildable, I get really scared because anything is buildable. They built the ski slope over in the desert. Anything is buildable. We have a budget. So, that's my follow -up. Hansen: Reasonably buildable. We will put it that way. Are you asking a specific question about converting the sloped flex space into regular curb? Every one of these blocks and every one of these intersections starts and stops with this planter bumpout. You and I were sketching that section that's in here that the planter is six inches high as any curb would be and the road surface starts at zero on one end and goes all the way over to six inches or... a number of inches upward, so that vertical surface is used for that transition in elevation. Every one of these starts and stops. So, as soon as you hit the blocks and as soon as you get to the outside edge of it, you are back into curb. So, sure there is more details. The flip side of it is we did our best to take it up to a schematic design and it needs development and we are worn out so we will let other people help us with that. Burnett: Let me help on that answer a little bit. As I understand it from discussion with VDOT, if you go look in their traditional standards manual, is this plan allowable under their standard manual? no. Is this plan normally something they would look at in a location like this and approve under their waiver process? absolutely. We found many, many communities that found that was what they had to do. Wright: my concern on the curb as someone who has had someone park in front of one of these downtown businesses that I might have used to work at and they parked too close to the curb and all of the water then immediately went into my business, my concern on the curb is not as much the VDOT approvals, as making sure that the stormwater is managed and contained and does not go rolling into the businesses. That's my rub. Hansen: If anything, this is an opportunity to improve on it. Wright: I definitely like the different materials I think that was something we started to capture in the last discussions. I like the curb bumpouts. I do have the question, that will obviously have to be worked out in the details in the site distance and the placement of where the regulations 30IPage Council Work Session June 13, 2011 may bite us. The parking meters, I think that was one we were all on board on. Unnecessary signs, I get. The light poles, I have a practical question that I guess would have to be followed up on is not only can they be mounted to the walls and how that would work... I think the other question is that is funded by grants and when we are trying to balance all of the funding and does that work out. If we lose the grant based on a change of fixture, then we have significantly changed the budget. So that's just something that jumped out there. Hammler: Kevin, can I jump in and mention something? Wright: Please. Hammler: speaking of grants, I was keeping my comments to a high level but I was going to follow up tactically. One thing Cate Wyatt is so good at is leveraging her amazing initiative and actually getting grant money to accomplish things so I think our opportunities to work with the Journey to be able to find some aspects of this. I would absolutely suggest that we do that. Burnett: Kevin, I will tell you that Martha Semmes says that the VDOT lighting grant program has become considerably broader in choices of lights. They have added the LED bulbs. They have become very green and energy conscious so there is much greater flexibility and choice in that program. Wright: I like the common unit given before because it kind of helps get your head around the base idea... So you've got the base plan and on top of that you got your options. So for the base plan right we've got the parking lane, the street trees, the bump outs that are containing the street trees, the crosswalks and the different surfaces and some of the aspects become what if anything were able to do with the courthouse, the emblem, those type of items. A lot of this is capturing some of the same themes that were in the previous design. The previous design was trying to lock those corners down to keep it two lanes of traffic. You've got it a little better defined with the bump outs. A lot of it is this core design with some enhancements. I guess where one of my questions come from a process standpoint is so we've got what has been defined in the e -mail received over the weekend as a consensus plan, we've got a bunch of signatures here and a lot of folks that support it. I guess in my mind is kind of what or where are the breaking points on that consensus. So as we start going through the process, I think you've already answered the question on the courthouse lawn. My rub, my first rub in reaction to the courthouse lawn is guys, asked, answered. If you want to go fight with Judge Horne, have at it, but we have kind of been there, done that. We have enough trouble with things coming out of the courthouse. The question becomes, if that drops off, do a bunch of signatures drop off? 31IPage Council Work Session June 13, 2011 Burnett: I can tell you, I spent a fair amount of time street walking on the last few days taking this around and I think that two very interesting issues were prominent. You have touched on both of them. The first issue that came up was how will the bollard situation be managed. There seemed to be unanimity that shop owners don't own and therefore should not control the parking spaces immediately in front of their space. This shouldn't be something that's left to the helter skelter decision making process of individual shop owners up and down the street. That said, a lot of folks felt that it should not be left exclusively to the town council. They did not want council dictating and saying we are just going to leave the bollards up now and there is no parking lane. So the consensus seemed to be, and I think it does need more work, that there are to be some kind of committee process that included some authority of the town but a large component of the most affected people on those two blocks. That was something that came up most. I think that was the general consensus. The other was an extreme attraction to the courthouse lawn feature because it's so exclusive, so pristine, if you will. Sanitized, there's no lights, there's no furniture, there's no landscaping, there's nothing on those two sides of that block. We're looking at a plan... you have a restaurant across on Market Street, but I will say I chaired the courthouse committee for six years and Judge Horne... it may be your view that Judge Horne controls all things on that courthouse lawn. He has gone to great lengths trying to democratize that process. Yes, his views are extremely important and his views carry a lot of weight. I will tell you, he listens to his committee and I think the committee... you saw what they voted on that sent our friends on the Board of Supervisors a little askew. But I think this needs to be looked at carefully and I'm sure its going to get a fair vetting by the courts. I don't think it should be characterized as a fight with Judge Horne. I think it's a careful analysis of what's best for the community. I am certain that committee wants to do that just like the rest of town. Herd: can I follow up and speak to Mr. Butler's concerns too. Peter pointed out the delicate balance of the bollard management. I think what we heard from people, and the others can correct me if I'm wrong, I think what we heard is there's a trust to go forward with this plan because it does walk that tightrope on that issue with the acknowledgment that there would be a fair process going forward. I would think that you could meet Mr. Butler's concerns that by a policy statement on how you will approach this management without necessarily a working out all the details because that might take a lot longer. I think you can do it because the spirit is there for that. The spirit is there that yes we want to open this up. We know there'll be some give and take on parking. The people most concerned about parking are willing to live with that trusting that we've got a fair process that they'll have some great influence on. Were right there with that. All we need is a policy, we didn't have that as part of this. We talked about it a lot, but we didn't write it up. 32(Page Council Work Session June 13, 2011 Wright: and to go back on the bollards for second, as I think he stated a couple times before we got kind of wrapped into how they go up which is the process to be defined, what I heard you say three or four times now is kind of the default condition is parking. It would be kind of a special event or occasion that will cause those bollards to go up but the default position is parking. Hansen: it would be in and then, are some other decision making process to be... I think the fear... Wright: There would be something defined that would cause them to go up other than, "I'm bored with parking, let's put up the bollards Hansen: The fear clearly was they didn't want setting up a flexible area to then become maximum pedestrian all the time. That was the fear. So, with that in mind... that's why it is such a delicate balance. I don't think those concerned about parking were so insisting that "oh we can't show it" or they wouldn't have endorsed this plan. They were respecting and trusting later on we would have a process that they could rely on. Meyer: You were asking what is the make or break of this whole plan. It's the flex lane. It's having the flexibility... That lane what we call the flex lane is the whole plan. Wright: I guess the final concern or rub that I have as this came forward, first I have to give you all the compliments in the world to come back with what was a consensus recommendation. I was not as optimistic as perhaps others were. I did, after the vote, get my Kevlar vest on which unfortunately exactly matched one of our other town staff members as we walked around downtown and did encourage folks to participate in the process. So I'm very glad to see this come back. What the hope and the goal was as we were originally coming into it and maybe this was just my hoping goal, was that we would get a recommendation that could be acted upon that we would be able to say okay here's a recommendation, here's our plan, this is that without kind of doubt or uncertainty. So by the end of June, put a stake in it and it's done. The challenge with this plan is there some engineering concerns. There are some VDOT concerns, there are some courthouse discussions that don't necessarily allow us to put a fork in it and be done and just simply be moving forward to design and construction. With your conversations with the community and folks that participated in this process and have signed off on this process, do they understand that those risks and those discussions are going to take longer time or are they expecting this to be closed and have a certainty come the end of June, in July. Herd: I think they understood more what was needed, particularly with VDOT, but I think the timing, correct me you guys, the timing of we need formal action versus when engineering drawings are prepared, I'm not sure 33 (Page Council Work Session June 13, 2011 that was really in anybody's mind. It was more reaching agreement and knowing going forward recognizing that details have to be defined and VDOT would have to... Burnett: We shared the major designs features sheet that you have and I think the last point on there is that VDOT negotiations would be necessary and prices would be necessary. I think the unstated piece was there is a default to parking and the parking is intended to remain as parking as wanted and needed. That there would be a process initiated by you all, probably, to deal with the bollard placement. Wright: Because my concern, as we move forward, and I would want to get an idea from staff, I don't know if you have it tonight, of what the timeline is for cost because I think that's probably going to be the fastest thing to get followed by some of the engineering concerns followed by the VDOT concerns of when we could kind of get the certainty because my fear is we go okay we like this plan, we get the costs and the costs are in line. Greatly like the costs. We get X point down the road and things start breaking. VDOT says I don't care, yeah we may have said X, but it's Route 15. So, no. As we start running into walls and things start peeling off, my concern is does this fracture. That's a concern that I have with something that still has a lot of moving pieces. Maybe it's just standing knowledge meaning that those moving pieces are there and some sort of process to deal with them. There are several moving pieces that could cause some significant changes. That flex lane, I think stays in one way or another. There some design aspects there but there some aspects that are at risk based on where we end up at. That's the only other concern I have floating in my mind. Hansen: it would be a normal procedure if you are excited about the concept to be supportive of the concept recognizing that by nature it will be refined as it goes forward and it's a pro bono group, so we took it as far as we could knowing it needed refinement. That's all you're really doing is supporting, what we would call I suppose in the normal architectural world, schematic design, design development, construction documents. You know it's schematic design supportive of the schematic. Wright: one other thing, I think we've talked about the bricks. Whatever we do with the bricks it needs to be consistent. As you walk up and down the block now there's bricks that have mortar between them, bricks that don't. Whether we're reusing the bricks, not reusing the bricks, that's way more in the weeds than the Council needs to get into. We have similar challenges if we don't reuse all the bricks and there's bricks left in the inventory, I'm sure we have more than enough maintenance projects to line up on the other streets. I wouldn't worry too much about the other bricks. I think the other thing, as we look at the cost and the approach to this, I don't want to cut anything out of the CIP project or any other project to get this funding. So, we're going to have 341Page Council Work Session June 13, 2011 to make the funding work. We've already taken enough out of the CIP, and we've heard that from the business community that, while not everybody might like all the aspects of the plan, the business community bought into the whole plan and we should not start deleting one in favor of another. Mayor: first of all, I really appreciate all the hard work as every other member of Council has said and the fact that you worked so hard to keep on point which primarily was to find a way to keep the parking on King Street. I know Milt really worked hard to make sure the group kept to that primary point, which is what I think all seven members of Council supported what we directed you, or asked you to look at this. I agree with Kevin's statement that I don't want to see money taken from any other part of the downtown project that has already been approved for this presuming this costs more. But I think that for Paige and others it was paramount that their buy -in was dependent on the other parts of the downtown improvements that have been approved staying in place and not deleting those for this. There are some really neat ideas. I love that central marker on Washington DC, Monticello, Harpers Ferry, and Gettysburg. That, I think really is a memorable part of this. I don't know how feasible it is to mount streetlights on the old buildings. I don't know if structurally they'll handle it that well but the idea of putting them up closer to the buildings, if that is possible within whatever funds might be provided for that purpose, I think it's worth looking at. The Journey Through Hallowed Ground, I'm glad you've been in touch with them. I don't know what kind of trees you're imagining, I suspect you're looking to the town to figure that out. I think Dave may have been the one that raised the concerns about trees obscuring business signs. Before going forward with street trees, I've had a couple of discussions with Kate on whether the Journey definitely wanted King Street to be where the trees go or whether she consider Battlefield Parkway, which has been a big project for Katie as an alternate. She is set on King Street to the extent that if council goes forward with street trees, we can make it consistent with what the Journey is proposing. That also would be worth looking at. The bollards, I think we're spending more time talking about bollards than anything else. I know some of the business community just hates the whole idea of bollards. I guess for me, and I don't want to get into this level of detail, but this plan brings me down a very detailed level. Where are we storing the bollards? We're talking about sleeves, pipes, I guess they could go down during the day and come up at night. Where are we storing any additional tables and chairs? These are small businesses. Do you anticipate the town storing all of this and bringing it out every night or every First Friday? Those are details that Council will need to at least be somewhat familiar with as this goes forward, if it does. I'm a little nervous that this whole emphasis on the community deciding where the bollards are. It is beginning to sound like we're bringing back the downtown management authority, which many of the merchants were extremely nervous about. I'm not sure what you envision for bollards table and chair management but we could lose some merchants that might buy in without that downtown authority if we insist that it has to be put 35 1Pa;e Council Work Session June 13, 2011 into place in some way to handle all of this. Again, too much detail but I'm thinking okay, you're thinking of sloping the area between the sidewalk and the center of the street and would bring chairs and tables on that. Are we putting anything on that, because tables and chairs don't really like slopes. I don't know what you envision there. I still have a lot of questions about how this is all going to work. Dave raised, I think a superb point, that without entertainment, without things to do in this area, no amount of beautiful improvements is going to have a long lasting impact. VDOT, is as you pointed out, I think Peter may have said it, is much more willing to be flexible and look at flexible designs. I just spent about an hour and a half with some VDOT folks from the Northern Virginia Office and they emphasized that especially when it comes to a historic district design, they want to work with the localities, but they are always going to be concerned about public safety so to the extent that any of this would jeopardize public safety, no matter how flexible VDOT wants to be I'm afraid they might not be that flexible. I'm also not optimistic that we could move the fence back on the courthouse green nor am I a big fan of taking what you propose to be a truly beautiful aspect to this project which is that public space... It's going to look even worse having all the billboards that are showing up on the courthouse screen where right now they are somewhat hidden by the fence, is going to look even worse if we have a space where we're going to now put them out even closer to the street. On the other hand, maybe that would encourage the courts to support this because suddenly they can get them off the courthouse green. I don't know if there's any of that thinking going on but it's going to be an eyesore no matter where... Unless I guess you say you could have a case and everybody gets an 8 1/2 by 11 sheet and that's where their public statement is in a display case and they don't get big bill boards. I don't know what the solution to that is. But I do know conservative moms with small children are not going to be feeling comfortable sitting in front of something that espouses a liberal position and liberal moms aren't going to be comfortable sitting in front of something that's a very conservative position. So you are sort of destroying potentially the willingness of the public to sit there if it suddenly becomes a fight between different political philosophies in that area. But again, I'm not at all optimistic that the courts will go along with moving the fence back. Again, as it's been said before, the cost of this is going to be a concern. How much more? And you all have been very candid that it probably will cost more, how much more? Kevin raised a very good point on the bricks. I know Ken feels we can cut the cost by using the same bricks. I don't know if that will cut costs or just add to them. And maybe just cheaper to bring in regulation type bricks that are made and put them all in place and take out the old bricks and use them on other projects. We don't know what the cost implications are. I do think we need to look at the cost implications. I'm not as optimistic as you guys are that we're going to be able to meet the storm drainage requirements that are imposed on us by federal laws as well as state law with the proposal you've got but one thing I'm really, really happy about is you have found a way to preserve parking. I'm really thrilled by that. I would just say one thing, not every shop 361Page Council Work Session June 13, 2011 closes down a five or six. China King stays open for dinner. I know Walley is very concerned that come five o'clock or six, she will lose all the parking in front of China King. I want to make sure that restaurants that are dependent upon people being able to drive in, park, run in get their food and go are not put out of business by this plan. I like your attempt at flexibility. I think it has some potential but the devil is in the details. We will need to look at costs, what happens with storm water. We don't what it flowing into the Tally Ho or anyplace else or Stanley's building. We will have to look at public safety when it comes to the transportation improvements. But really, it's a quite impressive plan that you've come up with. So I appreciate it. Paige, did you want to say anything on behalf of LDBA before I see if any members of the public have any comments? Paige Buscema: Thank you, Madam Mayor. The devil is in the details. It's been said. There are two options for curb options. The reason why there are two options there, I think the general consensus is the rolled curb is desirable because it continues to delineate actual parking there, but again it comes to cost. Because we don't have costs, we can't say yes we advocate one way or the other. So the bollards, I bristle at a community group that is put in place to say when we have parking and when we don't but I would not bristle at the thought of having set guidelines on how we accurately use those. I think they are an important key element to this project and I think others would agree with that. Mr. Reid, Ken Reid, brings up a very valid point that part of what we started out with this project is visual continuity all over the town. You don't want to over design two blocks and then leave the rest of the town still feeling disjointed. The key here is to keep the visual continuity. I think as you move forward, I think you will be cautious and pay closer attention to that kind of that kind of continuity. I may possibly speak to this tomorrow evening, but that's all I have now. Thank you for the opportunity. Mayor: Thank you. Is there anybody else here from the public or business community who would like to say anything on this at this time. You also have the option of Tuesday night, tomorrow night, at 7:30 speaking as a petitioner, if you want to think about. Seeing nobody, so we'll come back to Council. Reid: well we budgeted two hours for this and I just wanted to wrap up because we have some closed sessions and the utility discussion and Dr. Seibel is here and has been waiting patiently. Is there a consensus that we can at least ask staff before coming back with a design to look in fact whether this will meet the regulations, storm, street light issue, VDOT. Just look at that first and then come back with cost estimates? They will have to have their consultant design something detailed, but before doing that, they might as well look at the bigger issue about whether in fact it's going to pass VDOT muster. 371Page Council Work Session June 13, 2011 Wright: They should be able to get a cost estimate from a schematic plan. Because if the cost is way out of scale, that may change the scope of discussions that we need to have with VDOT or others. Wells: we would look at the cost like we would any capital project based on conceptual design. Of course the cost gets more refined as the design goes on. Reid: Kevin, I thought you wanted to look at the regulatory stuff first. Wright: there's no point wasting time on the regulatory stuff that we can't pay for it. Butler: the regulatory stuff will take longer. Wells: The regulatory issues will take longer. Reid: Well, we have to look and see whether the stormwater... the storm issue, the drainage issue is feasible. Wells: That's an engineering issue, not a regulatory issue. Hammler: Madam Mayor, I think we have all summarized those key points. We know we need to look at the facts; so the question is how long will each of them take. So if staff could at least advise... Wells: I'll need to come back with a game plan, because I have heard about four or five different issues that staff will need to follow -up on minimum. Based on what I have heard tonight, some can be done earlier, some will take a little longer. Let me bring a list back of what I heard and estimates of time of what I think it will take; what will need to be involved and what makes the logical sense of the order to go through. Some things make sense to do earlier rather than later. I can work with staff in at least sketching out a game plan. Reid: I think that the group, though, Peter should still go ahead and talk to the courthouse grounds committee about that idea. But, I think one of the things they want to ask VDOT is about the number of these midblock crosswalks just to get a read as opposed to one. Hammler: madam Mayor, this is just a broader point related to an issue we are discussing tomorrow. The one word we haven't mentioned all evening is actually bikes. To the extent that we are looking at a comprehensive bike /pedestrian plan for the entire town, and the goal to increasingly find ways to bring people from outside the bypass to the downtown and other places to ensure that we have anticipated the safety of 381Page Council Work Session June 13, 2011 bicyclists, the circulation, anything related to what we will be discussing tomorrow night as well. Jim Sisley: That's one of the topics on the EDC downtown community discussion tomorrow. b. Utility Rate Follow -up Wells: Madam Mayor and Council Members, at your last meeting a number of recommendations were made by the utility rate advisory committee regarding dealing with the high use surcharge and the high water users. Those recommendations... That recommendation was looked at by Council and was felt that the cost implications of that regarding the overall rate structure and how it affected different users within the town and within the whole system was not something that Council was comfortable with doing. Council was very clear with the committee that the work they had done responded to their question... Responded to your question which was to provide information with the goal of looking for, hopefully a quick fix solution to the issue that met certain standards which was revenue neutrality, minimizing the impact on all the customers with limiting of the changes that would be proposed or attempting to be proposed to just a small number of those affected. What the Council asked me to do based on the good work that the utility rate committee had done, was to look at further options and see if there was a way to refine the committee's recommendation in a manner to help minimize these impacts, try to achieve greater revenue neutrality to a large degree and tried to deal with the overall rate issue. Bottom line is, if you look at the report which I think was fairly clear, we looked at a number of different options. I met with URAC over the past couple of weeks and actually they were kind enough to continue working with the model with me and looked at a range of options which you will see on the second attachment. Their original recommendation report is provided to you. They looked at a number of different options, actually there were 12 of them presented but you could mix and match and make even more options if you care to. The idea was to try to find an option that minimized the impacts of any changes especially on some of the lower users which in a sense, the Council was saying don't change the fixed charge. At least that's what I heard. Because changing the fixed charge would virtually guarantee most of the users would see some type of adjustment. I couldn't help myself, I looked at options that minimize the fixed charge adjustment, the utility rate advisory committee came back with a $34 fixed charge. I looked at options of 16, 18, and $20. Those are stand alone and if you're look at attachment 2 you'll see those as basically options seven, eight, and nine. I also looked at the incremental difference in changing the winter quarter options two different versions of effective winter quarter +3000, 4000, 5000, 7000 and 9000 gallons. Then there options putting both fixed charge increases at a lower level with some of the various options. Bottom line is if you look at the total line on each of those options, you'll see that without really affecting the fixed rate charge it's hard to bring down... Using only the rate change on the effective winter 391Page Council Work Session June 13, 2011 quarter plus X number of gallons and still having meaningful change on high usage bills. It's really hard to get there without a fixed rate charge. The lowest we got to in looking at winter +9000 was 5.3 Reid: Which column is that, John. I'm sorry. Wells: Winter +9. Reid: That's winter +9, but not doing anything with the fixed rate? Wells: That's correct. One of the comments made when I talked to the utility rate advisory committee last weekend was really looking at beyond winter +9 was meaningless in terms of its impact on those customers affected by the higher rates. So I stopped at that point thinking that was some good advice. If you take that thought that we really need to look at not changing the fixed rate, looking at what the revenue implications might be, and of course if you look at winter +9, everybody would see a reduction in their bill. We would also see a reduction in the revenue to the utility fund. The question is could we sustain that. I went through some quick analysis looking at projections for revenues for the balance of the year, and we're a little low on revenues. We're under spent on expenditures. The bottom line is we are projecting to be pretty much on target for the year so there's not a surplus of money that we can say if we change the rate structure there is a built -in surplus that we can now build a higher projection off of. That wasn't an option. Looked at the idea, councilmember Reid suggested looking at potentially charging town facilities for utilities. We looked at the notion of charging Ida Lee and town hall as some of the larger users. That in and of itself doesn't work, because first of all a 5% reduction in revenues, a 5 to 6% reduction in revenue is about $700,000 shortfall in terms of total revenue. The revenue charge for those facilities is about $300,000. So there's still a gap, too, I'd wouldn't necessarily advocate that charge because there's a broader picture of interactions between the fund, the general fund in the utility fund that ought to be taken into account in terms of who charges what. Right now we're doing the simple method which is we just don't charge anybody except for direct cost of services provided, which is the basic charge back that we do for the airport and for utility fund for time used. So, the $300,000 doesn't offset the $700,000. The $300,000 probably isn't a good number in and of itself and as I think I projected about $15,000 or to be more precise $13,507. We will see if I'm right next month with that as what we would have as a surplus in the fund based on activities within the current year. The fund in total is still negative and the Council has approved a plan over a five year period that if we looked at the pro forma for the utility fund that will be in the adopted budget, the rate structure you have in place right now with the rate amounts as projected to increase over the next five years puts you on solid ground by 2015. So, we didn't want to go backwards from that overall plan so looking very hard at this there a way to achieve that same level of long term financial stability, provide 40 !Page Council Work Session June 13, 2011 the break that the council is looking for and not upset the overall apple cart with a lot of other people who don't have an issue right now? The short answer to that is no. The recommendation that I came back with was rather than continuing to search for something that I don't think exists professionally, that the best use of the time from the utility rate committee at this point would be to move on with the broader desire that the council has had that's in the motion for the URAC to begin looking at a broader rate study. Go ahead and engage the consultant, have them work with the committee, the committee is very supportive of that recommendation. They didn't make a motion. They asked me what I was going to recommend and based on the numbers that I had seen, I said unless I find something different over the next week that's what my recommendation would be. I would've liked to have brought something back that was the silver bullet, but I don't think it exists, and still do what were attempting to do. Dr. Jason Seibel: I think, yes I do. I support a lot of what John has said here. I think what's interesting throughout this entire process is... And maybe use the analogy of is this like moving chairs around the deck of the Titanic. At the end of the day, what I don't see ultimately is a solution that's going to appease everybody. There's no silver bullet here there's just no silver bullet. So if you look at the upper echelon and some of the impacts on the behavior of how people are going to use their utility and use their water and water their lawn, that sort of thing, there could be adverse effects to the utility fund. If you attempt to spread and bring that upper echelon down a bit, then you're going to effect may be individuals are the base rate. If you don't want to effect... Yet you want to bring down the sprinklers and not a fact the base rate, then you've got a push it to businesses. You're just going to push around. There really is no silver bullet and I think the URAC has become an expert at these numbers. Quite frankly, it's my understanding that the recommendation that was done by the first URAC is very much closely in line with the second time around. I'm personally not, just personally for me, and not convinced that evening continuing on to a tiered rate is going to yield any silver bullet. Somebody is going to have to make a very hard decision of how that's going to affect the community. The other thing I will say, at least with respect to the base rate, is I know that when the recommendation came on the base rate, it would be political suicide or whatever you want to call it... The unpopular option to adjust that. But I think part of that needs to be considered is whether the base rate accurate to begin with. So we're having to make up the difference of an artificially low base rate with respect to the overall revenue that's required. It's just getting pushed northward. I think getting through some of the research that the URAC has done, identified some best practices throughout the country which is the base rate should be able to service your debt as well as basic operations. If you are always dependent upon the revenue of the utility, if you have a light summer and it rains all summer long, you put the utility at risk of being cratered over the course of the year from a cost point of view of inadequate income because of these ups and downs and kind of vice versa. 41 IPage Council Work Session June 13, 2011 Have a very dry summer, people have 1000, $1500 bills. I don't think this summer you're going to find that people are going to be as frantic about their water bills because of a couple things. Number one, personally for me, I've turned it on but I've used it once whereas I had been running it through four times a week because of the unseasonably gorgeous mild weather we've had to date. I think that you need to give us at least... the URAC some visibility to where you want to see the pressures go because I think we're going to keep bringing dead rocks... no, no don't touch the base... no we need to fix this.... Someone has really got a come down and say we are willing to spread here X, Y, or Z. That's my personal opinion. Reid: I agree with you. I think that this is an example of kicking the can down the road. If we don't come up and do something, I think that the proposal by the committee was maybe a little too generous to high -end users. I've got an example of a bill where I hate to use the word windfall, but the reduction for somebody would be about $200 versus they were paying about $500 and even with the rate increase about $367. When I put forward this resolution in the fall, it was not my intent to give a windfall to high water users. I would also like to add that the idea of charging Ida Lee was discussed by URAC, I didn't just come up with it. I mean but what I'm wondering is... I still believe we're late into the year... Just a couple of questions. Is it possible to do some kind of a... Because the winter quarters been set, can anything be done retroactively if we adopt something tonight? The concern that I have from what Norm said at the last meeting or in April and it totally bowled me over was that we are too late for the summer. The idea here was to try to mitigate the complaints that we had last summer about what happened because of the 2009 change to the methodology, but can something be done retroactively? Wells: can we do something retroactive, meaning if we change the rates go we go back and... Reid: if we went to winter +9 and reduced the fixed charge increase after hearing assuming Council adopts it, the concern I had was it wouldn't be in effect for the summer. Norm Butts: one of the problems is these things all sound great when you're discussing winter +9 but to get into it and actually do the programming it becomes a little more complicated because right now sewer is 100% of water which is an easy calculation, it's programmed in and it's working. If you go to winter +9 and you have to ask essentially for different questions I think in terms of programming changes. What's the winter quarter, what's +9, and then if actually uses less than that choose that, if not go to winter +9. There are a number of things in there that makes programming more difficult. It's going to take some time and it's going to cost some money. We don't know, because you haven't decided on what you want to do, how much time it's going to take. 421Pag Council Work Session June 13, 2011 Reid: That's the problem. If we came up with something that was a little bit more less generous on the reduction on the high -end, we still would have to... We can do it tomorrow night probably. I think Council would want to massage it over, we have to do it in two weeks, we have to advertise for public hearing which would be the first week in in July, John? Wells: it's an ordinance change so yes, you're probably looking at July. You could probably make the first meeting. Reid: So, then it would take you a couple of weeks to come up with something so the best we could do is probably the third quarter bills, right? Wells: at best. But again, the math doesn't work with winter +9 unless you are going to add a fixed rate charge too. Reid: and that's what I'm talking about because if I look back at the URAC report it basically said that they look that other systems around the country and is our fixed charge too low? Wells: Short answer is yes. Reid: It is. What Jason says is probably correct, may be one of the problems we've had through the years is our utility Department goes out at the fairs and says conserve water and gives you all these gadgets and everything but Mr. Munoz said, and I hope I'm not misquoting him, if anything we should be encouraging consumption given our debt load and everything. But the way to do it is not telling everybody to go out on water your lawn. It's by raising the fixed charge. It's by having a higher fixed charge which would, if we did it on the lower end John, raises bills what $12 a quarter maybe, or are you talking about $16? It's a net increase of $12. That's what the net is, right Dave? So you are charging people on the lowest end, like my business, is a good example. Small businesses that don't use a lot of water. I don't know if residential users are that low, there are probably some who are, are going to be talking about paying at most $72 per year, but there is so many of them... Butler: It's a quarter and there is four quarters. Reid: Okay, so it's $48 more per year, but what we are doing is at least demonstrating to the high end users and most likely also our General Assembly people who were not very nice to us with that bill, and the Board of Supervisors that we at least are making a good faith effort to try to do something, because you are right, Jason, and I think I have talked to Dave about this at length, if you go to a tiered rate system, you could still have the same political problem where members of Council may not want to do something. I think what I am interested in doing is something where it would 43 1Page Council Work Session June 13, 2011 be... I have to defer to my colleague here because he is a real expert on this or Mr. Wright. I may disagree with him on a lot of issues, but I will definitely say they are clearly more expert on this than I am and of course, all you folks are now experts at this. You have to do something that would reduce that potential decrease on the high end and raise it as little as possible on the lower end. By doing that, we also have a system where we can shield ourselves against cases where people don't use a lot of water and then the utility fund does not have the money to pay its bonds. And I see you nodding. Does that sound reasonable? Seibel: and we talked quite a bit. As URAC has stated that the current rate structure essentially advocates water conservation but it is a double -edged sword because if you advocate use, which one would argue to drive up revenue, then you have this big delta between the winter and the summer. So your using millions, millions, and millions of gallons. If you're not careful what will happen is your summer usage will exceed your capacity and then you end up building out the utility all over again and you're in this unbalanced situation. It really is a very fine line between policy that drives water conservation or usage and the actual fees that back it up. So that's kind of what my first thought is. The second is, I still believe our base rate is still artificially low. It's going to have to come up some in order to align with what the rest of the nation is doing and not have these ups and downs in the income of the fund. This is where the policy and the fine lines command. If you bring a consultant in, and I think URAC has gone quite a few steps ahead of what a consultant is going to come in and do. But at the end of the day, the consultant is still going to look at the town Council and say where do you want me to put the number. It's got to come somewhere because the bottom line is we have to have the revenue. I think everybody agrees in URAC if we start zeroing in on these numbers that we need to preserve the financial stability of the fund and zero it out. That's what these complex spreadsheets that it been developed are intended to do. Reid: I think also, I will tell my colleagues, that there were some members of the committee who were a little upset after the last meeting about some comments that were made but I think that you've been real good pros, but I think we created this committee in 2007 under the guise of trying to form a consensus. We had a tiered system, Dave was on that committee in 2008 and none of us wanted to step up to the plate to make a motion to institute that system. We thought we were going to win the case. And we did eventually win the case, Mdm. Mayor. I just think that we need to show people because we so frequently have a problem out there potentially especially with the new board of supervisors getting elected of people who have this perception in mind that we are somehow being unfair. And we are not being unfair. I think that... Hammler: I'm not sure we are talking about unfair rates tonight. 44 !Page Council Work Session June 13, 2011 Reid: I'll just leave it at that. Hammler: It's not even germane to this topic. Reid: I think that we got a lot of complaints last summer and I was trying to avoid that. I think that if John could have done these numbers last fall,... He told us that he did not have to bring it to a committee. Butler: thank you Mdm. Mayor. I think you bring up three excellent points. One is that money doesn't grow on trees and the Council can't just go out and pick it. That it's a zero -sum game here. So if you're interested in making water bills lower for some segment of the population, we have to make water bills higher for another segment of the population. There's just no other choice. Now politicians are very reluctant to do... To make those kinds of choices. Just look in Washington where we want to reduce the deficit, but we don't want to raise taxes and we don't want to reduce Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and national defense which are the only four items that make any difference. Hammler: Or interest deductions on mortgages. Butler: well nobody wants to change that either so they are at a stalemate. We're going to continue to have large debt for the foreseeable future. So here on the Council the easiest option in cases like this is to have a reasonably significant reductions for a small segment of the population and have very small increases for the very largest segment of the population, which is exactly what the URAC is recommending, that lawn waterers get some not unreasonable deduction and every user in the entire system gets a small increase. If the Council, which brings us to the second point, is unwilling to make a decision like this, which should be the easiest type of decision of this type, there's almost no way that it's worth going forward with the tiered rate structure. Because the tiered rate structure is much more complex. There are too many different options. It's not worth going forward unless Council identifies ahead of time who is the population that you want to have the bills go down and who is a population that you're willing to have their bills go up. Because without that, I could design in 6 min. about 1 million tiered rate structures. But if you tell me that businesses that use a lot of water, we want their bills to go way up, I could design a tiered rate structure with that. If you tell me you want the total bill to go up for everybody a little bit, I could design a tiered rate structure for that. But if you don't tell me who you want to hurt, who you want to have the bill go up, that it's impossible to come up with a tiered rate structure that's going to pass Council. Hammler: Are you going to answer that question? Who do you want to help and who do you want to hurt? 45IPage Council Work Session June 13, 2011 Butler: No, because that's another step ahead. Because it brings a third excellent point, the fixed rate needs to increase for whole lot of reasons. You mentioned the bond covenants, you mentioned the fact that compared to most other utilities it's too low. The third one which I think is the biggest thing is that our revenue in the utility Department is at risk. If we don't do what we're planning to do, we are going to be... Have a shortfall in revenue and we're just going to have to jack up rates for everybody or raise the fixed fee to come out even. The reason is because not only are we not having a very hot summer but if you look at economically... If you look at any business if there's a certain small segment of the population that you're trying to derive all your revenue from, they will find a way to stop paying that revenue. The lawn waterers are going to decide they're just not going to water their lawn as often. If we are relying on them for a significant portion of the revenue, that portion of the revenue is not going to be there and we're going to have a shortfall. So their bills are going to come down whether we do it or not. I will guarantee it. It doesn't matter what business you're in, what markets, this is going to happen sooner or later. So we really don't have much of a choice but to come up with some solution now that's going to increase revenue otherwise were going to have our backs against the wall. And in another six months, John's going to come and say were not meeting our revenue targets and this year our bond covenants are right on the hairy edge so we're not going to be meeting our bond covenants and then were all have to go and do something and hire a 25 or $50,000 consultant to come in and tell us what we already know what we need to do. The easiest thing is to just do it, solve the short -term problem and then figure out if we want to do something long term and have a discussion about whether we want to conserve water, spend a lot of water, save money for small water users, save money for businesses... Whatever we want to do, figure out all that policy first and then have the URAC go off and do it. Or alternatively, we don't need to worry about a tiered rate structure, just kick the can down the road for about three years, hope the power plant comes online and they buy 4,000,000 gallons a day of our gray water. That will help. When that happens, our utility rate will become solvent but until that happens, if it happens, we are not in a good place right now. We have to make hard decisions and we cannot look to Washington for that kind of leadership. They are not doing it. It's small localities like this, we have to do it. If they're not leading, we will or we should. Mayor: okay Dave, are you running for Congress are delegate? Hammler: I was just going to say I don't think you should run for any higher office, he should stay right here and make these tough decisions. Reid: One of the best Dave Butler speeches I have ever heard. Butler: it didn't have anything to do with running for anything. It's just that I get concerned with when John said we were to raise the fixed rate, how 46IPage Council Work Session June 13, 2011 else are we going to fix the problem? We've got a raise something on somebody. Hammler: John, could you follow up on the point that Dave is making... He sounds somewhat alarmist as it relates to the timing at which the Council needs to make a decision to ensure we don't, obviously, not meet our bond covenants... That we don't run into that same problem that we actually ran into the very first time, which is we couldn't do a second public hearing, we had the vote that very night because we didn't have time based on floating the bond. So could you advise on the timing in which Council needs to make a decision so were not risking any revenue shortfall. Wells: right now, based on the projections we have, at this point we're slightly shorter of revenue in the current year. Part of the reason for that is we implemented part of the rate structure late in the year, we did not have 12 months of experience with the rates as they said today. So in some ways, we actually made up a little bit of ground. We were about $200,000 short on revenue, or I project we will be, but we have made it more than that in expenditures. So we basically managed our way to a balanced operation for the current year. The Council doesn't have to take a vote for the next four years. You have voted for a series of rate increases that are already in place. Those, as projected right now, should be sufficient to meet our requirements. I do agree with Council member Butler, this is a tenuous fine line we're walking because there are a lot of variables in play and we are not sitting with a large surplus. We have no surplus, let's be honest. We are starting from a deficit and digging our way out. We do have a low fixed charge, which means as Dr. Siebel mentioned and Dave and others have mentioned, we are at the whims of the weather in many cases, as the economy has an impact on businesses, on residences, they're going to change their usage, by having a lower fixed fee because we have a lot of fixed costs. If we don't pump any water out of the plant, we still have to pay our full debt service. So our fixed costs that even the URAC proposed two weeks ago of $34 is not the full fixed cost. Hammler: so, if I may summarize just in terms of my question, despite the fact that we have for years set out in terms of the rate increases for solvency, you would recommend that we in fact anticipate making a decision in some shorter time. Because we are fmding based on what is now approaching 12 months that we don't have the kind of surplus or question that we need. When do we need to make a decision? Wells: the recommendation that I still stand behind is the one that's in this report, which would be to bring in the consultant to look at the broader study. But I agree with Council member Butler, before we just say go off and do that, I think there's some specific guidance that the URAC has done some research on that we can come back and get some upfront direction it would be very helpful. Making a small tweak in this rate analysis that we have provided, 47 1 P Council Work Session June 13, 2011 may be contrary to where the overall rate structure might go anyway. So rather than dragging everybody one place right away... Hammler: that's sort of where my feeling is based on even just listening to Council members Reid and Butler at this point which is for instance, Ken is mentioning in as early as 2 to 4 weeks we have to... We have this urgency of this perception which I didn't agree with the point as much as I appreciate what you're trying to accomplish, as you're somehow mixing this perception that you still feel there is some unfair surcharge which is linked to high water usage and you're mixing those two things up. I think, despite the fact that we went all the way to the Supreme Court, we are at a lower than 50% surcharge as it relates to, I think the point you're trying to make. So I'd like to put that aside and as it relates to the more central issue, I think we've got to do it once, do it right, be consistent with the methodology, be able to articulate what the methodology is which would lead us to yes. We need a consultant, answering the tougher question which is who do you want to hurt or not. The metaphor I come up with is a tiered rate structure to meet seems to be leading us down the path where yes, if you're using a lot more, a surcharge... If you're watering your lawn for instance, yes you would pay more and yes it might trigger some elasticity of demand that we have to anticipate but to me I would rather protect those that do conserve water... I'm happy to state that and in addition to that, I do think this Council needs to start articulating that we may need to raise the fixed charge as we have already intended to because it's a very cost effective valuable service and it's that a valuable rate. I agree with the earlier point that was made by the committee which is that predictability, which comes from a fixed rate as well as predictability of the bond markets is very important things that we want to do as well... Create that level of predictability. So... if you want to jump in... Wells: I was just going to make the point that URAC has already taken a look at some of the issues. Both URACs have taken a look at many of these issues and I think while we will be looking at bringing in a consultant, I think the work of the committee is valuable, not just from some of the technical work, but to help frame some of this policy questions. At last week's URAC meeting, they divided up a number of jurisdictions that have different rate structures. I don't want to fixate on the tiered system because even members of URAC have said that may not be the ultimate answer. They are starting with that as the basis, a beginning, but they're not ready to say that is the definitive structure that you should go with. Basically we backed into the rate analysis, the rate structure that we have based on the court case. We did what the judge said and I think there are some opportunities for Council to decide what policies and what... What do you want your rate structure to do? How do you want to handle conservation, how do you want to handle fixed costs, how do we put ourselves on solid footing in the long run? We are okay right now, but again we are walking... 481Page Council Work Session June 13, 2011 Hammler: but getting back to setting the right tone that it's not unreasonable that a rate of inflation would be accounted for year after year. Which is why I think the Council would have to make the decision about taking 15 years of never having rate increases and deal with that. Those are the types of policies that need to be anticipated. Wells: I think that's important to recognize. That's one of several policy questions councilmember Butler raised that ought to be discussed on the front end so that we don't keep bringing back recommendations. Hammler: if I could just make one last point as relates to conceptually, the concept of elasticity of demand at the highest level, people that spend a lot of money watering their lawns for instance. You know, I bought a new car after 10 years and the reason why I refuse to buy a new car was I couldn't believe people spent that much on personal property taxes and so many people buy expensive cars. It was mind boggling to me. Well eventually I had to buy a new car but I think that whether we like it or not, that's the base of the taxation for personal property tax in the county based on what we are allowed through the general assembly and at some point there'll going to be people who can't afford water the lawns. We have to figure out, quite frankly in a rational way, what segment of the water usage set of customers those are and I agree, I guess Council has to weigh in, whether we agree that there needs to be a possible trigger and that they may pay a little bit more because water is not a necessity. Seibel: I think the only urgency discussion is whether you want to do something for the summer or not. If the decision is no, then I'm not sure how much the "urgency" is. Hammler: Which is my original question... what is the urgency? Seibel: at the end of the day, it's to do something kind of now, next four weeks, six weeks, or do nothing and wait until... Hammler: I think there are bigger risks in trying to have some knee jerk reaction and not do it properly... do it once, communicate well with the customer base and not flip flop. Butts: if I could, talk a little bit about fiscal integrity of the system irrespective of where URAC is in the discussion where what Council's trying to do to provide some relief to certain classes of customers. If you recall, last fall we had Davenport come in and give you a briefing on the fiscal integrity of the system and the necessity to restructure some of our debt to help us going forward. We put together a six -year pro forma that took us out to 2017, not only for the general fund but for the utility fund. We're not in bad shape in terms of where we will be in 2015 when the last increase you have approved kicks in. Obviously in 2016 then we will have to revisit the assumptions that 491 Page Butts: Assumption based on what for high water users? Council Work Session June 13, 2011 we made up to that point. But if I could, just briefly in 2010, we ended the year... I'm talking gain or loss from operations not capital improvements, just operations... We thought we would have about a $2 million deficit, if you will, or loss from operations... It was $1.7 million, significant but less than what we had anticipated. We estimated at the end of this fiscal year, that will decline another $200,000 to 1.5 million. So significant, but trending down. With the restructuring that were going to do in 2012, and again we've got rate increases programmed in every year, in 2012 we anticipate we will then have a gain from operations of about $659,000 which will start to bring our cumulative deficit down to the point where in 2015 the cumulative deficit will disappear, and then of course start up again because there is no more rate increases programmed in. So there is no reason to panic and terms of the fiscal integrity of the system... I want to make that clear. We will pay our bills... Based on the assumptions that we have made. Now there have been some indications of whether we have a wet summer or dry summer... Those things are very difficult to predict ahead of time, but really not in bad shape from what we had programmed going forward. I just wanted to make that... There's no reason to panic anymore than necessary. Butler: Can I jump in with a quick question, if you don't mind? Since we haven't billed for the summer months yet, what kind of assumption are we making on revenue, especially for high water users? Butler: in other words, are you assuming then that the amount of water that we are going to use is not going to change significantly from last year? Butts: yes, I think that what our assumptions are based on our historical assumptions so we don't go in and look at what the forecast is for the summer in terms of rainfall, it's basically a straight line historical projection. A straight line doesn't necessarily always turn up, but it is based on historical data. Butler: I understand that. So, my concern is that you are looking at it from a finance perspective, which is exactly your job. You are not looking at it from a business perspective, which is not your job. Because we cannot use historical norms for those assumptions because we made a significant change in the rate structure to a certain class of customers in September 2009, that wasn't noticed until probably August /September 2010. So, my feeling is that could have a significant impact on our revenue and I think if you talk to some of the high water users you find that is likely to. I am not sure we are in a position to have noticed that yet. If we are going to have.... If that is going to have a significant impact, we won't know for another three or four months and by then it will be late. My concern is that is that last fall one of the reasons that we restructured our debt, which was our original plan was to be on the 50 1Page Council Work Session June 13, 2011 hairy edge of our bond covenants the first year and a half. We knew that. Okay, we restructured because of the bond covenants. What if we are below our bond covenants again because we have shorter or less revenue than anticipated because of this structural change that we made which is the first major structural change in a long, long time. So, our revenue assumptions, I am certain they are not as valid as they used to be. The question is whether they are valid at all at this point and I don't know that and that makes me nervous. Hammler: can we make a reasonable assumption based on what you are proposing, based on what we now know? Which would lead us to do we need to act are not, which is back to do we need to.... Wells: it's always going to be safer to raise your fixed charge because you're taking out the flex... Uncertainty of some of the variables that are yet to come. I think that's the point that Council member Butler is stressing is there are things we don't know or can't predict and that's what the committee had recommended as well. To minimize that, you raise your fixed charge and that takes that uncertainty out. That also has an impact on almost every user in town with the exception of the high user if you drop the... Or if you add the winter quarter +9. Based on the numbers we have looked at, trends or part of it. We also ended the year in a higher position than in fiscal 10. I have a couple positions I'm holding vacant in the department, so there are things that we are being cautious about. I can't say I've got it covered, but I also don't know that we are ever able to predict with any certainty in the general fund or any fund exactly what the numbers are going to be, but we monitor them monthly and if we have to, make adjustments. Along the way we were to bring something back to Council. That's what we would do. I can't tell you that the property tax is going to be what I predicted it would be or sales tax or meals tax. Butts: again, I think John, we've cut according to pro forma... We have cut operating expenses by over $200,000 between this fiscal year and budget for next fiscal year. With our restructuring, we are cutting our debt service costs by about $1.3 million. We are programming in some slack, but I agree with you we don't really know what the summers going to bring. I think in hindsight we programmed in the water rate increases over a five -year period, that was the prudent thing to do. We should've done also is we should've programmed in increases in fixed charges, and we didn't. We kept them level at $7.20 for water and $7.20 for sewer. Had we increased them appropriately with increases of 10% or 5% a year, it would've gone up and we should probably consider doing that. Reid: we had a consultant for that and that was where we had a gun to our head because of the court case. 51 i Page Council Work Session Butts: we did raise the fixed charges from $6.40 to $7.20. We did raise them some. Reid: Yes, we did, but we didn't look at the inflation factor. Hammier: That goes to a fine point, Madam Mayor, if I may. That begs the question about the consultant we used. Why wasn't that recommended originally and are we using the same one moving forward? Wells: We would be starting fresh. Hammier: We need to choose wisely those advising us. Hammier: Madam Mayor, I think that's the only area of criticism that we have had, which is as a council, why weren't we advised by the professionals that we needed to address that so much earlier. That has never been answered, but that is water under the proverbial bridge. June 13, 2011 Wells: I would suggest choose wisely and don't rush. The last time, it was a forced march that a lot of people spent a lot of nights and weekends on here. It was our best work in a limited period of time. I would like to do one rate study before I leave where I am not doing with a gun to my head. Wright: So, I think the one thing we have heard is we know there is an issue. The trick is, this particular recommendation we asked for a solution to one of the issues... the utility rate structure, I think has at least four. The reason we asked that is "hey, is there a way to fix it So, as I think I said the last time around, the Utility Rate Advisory Commission went and looked at it and the answer is no. If you want to fix, here's how to fix it. Even in the warm up meeting before the recommendation, they were like "you have a different problem" which is you don't have a large enough fixed fee and you have no margin of error. What my hope had been is that we were cranking through more revenue than we expected to crank through so there was this buffer we could use to come back down and kind of even the keel while we then looked at the longer term. The bottom line is we don't have that buffer, which means we need to look at the bigger picture. In my mind, you have got the 100% sewer charge, which we talked about. We got the winter summer high use trigger. There are two issues with that, one is its existence and, two the fact that if you go 1 gallon over since we bill per thousand, you go 1000 gallons over it goes all the way back down to the first gallon used. Then you've got the high water users that use lots of water all year round I think it was referred to on previous councils as people who wastewater all year round don't pay the trigger, but those that have the high summer trigger get hit with it. That also deals with folks whose winter quarter is 0 to 1000 and their summer is 7000. If they don't know to have a calculated, then they get hit. The other item that's been talked about is the fixed rate is too low and we got to index it. 52 1Pagc Council Work Session June 13, 2011 It's been flat. The interesting thing with the fixed rate is while we did not make a significant change to the fixed rate last rate study on the residential base, we pulled those fixed rates down on the larger meters. So we actually lower the fixed rates. So kind of hindsight being what it is, oops. So I have no interest in kind of making a short -term answer because if I've got a go to the user base and change the fixed fee, which I've basically been told we need to do, I get that. I only want to go there once. I don't want to artificially rush a process to solve one of the problems and then do a longer process to solve the other three because after we get done getting shot after a rush process, not too anxious to do the other one. So I would wholeheartedly support moving forward... Kind of having URAC or you guys kind of frame those simple questions, pick one, what do you want to see... Help the frame that rate discussion, have a work session about helping frame that rate discussion... similar to what we have done with some other work sessions. I know that Planning Commission did it as they were working through form based code of here is the question, which ways do you want to go to get a pulse or a feel so that we can come up with the baseline framework of what we know we are looking at. Because I think if history teaches us anything, the rate structure that was adopted that kicked up all this fun was rushed because "oh wow, we actually looked the utility fund, we have seen that it was basically being balanced by all of the connection fees coming in. Those were coming in for capital, we now have to deal with capital expansion, we don't have enough money So, we had to move fairly quickly, you didn't have as much time to make a decision, so that one got rushed. The last decision was basically made for us. The judge said differential shall be x. Make it work. We had 30-45 days to do that. I would agree, if we are going to do it, let's do it right. Let's do it thoughtfully. Because in that manner, I agree with Dave we are going to have to make a difficult decision. We are going to have to change the fixed fee because the interesting thing is even the fixed fee that you guys recommended seems kind of off. Why do debt service? It should be like the utility lines maintenance, because no matter what, whether I use anything or not, those utility lines have to be hooked to my house. So utility lines maintenance budget and the administration budget divided by the number of users or water units, that should be the fixed fee. That was higher than what you all came up with, so they came up with a pretty good one. There is definitely a conversation that needs to happen. The other thing is, there is not a sense of... is the question do we want to do something this summer? Yes, there is a risk that the customers may change their behavior and that may cause us a revenue adjustment and we may need to manage it by expenses, which we did the last time we had an issue there. There is some room to move. The other thing is the problem statement so the people who are getting hit can currently address that problem on their own while we sort out the right answer from a broader term whereas if we make this kind of wholesale change and then have to go back and make another change, the folks we hit, which will be everybody that can't adapt for that. You know, the 4000 gallon user is not going to be able to offset that impact. So, I would argue we have a means to look at that longer term. The 531Page Council Work Session June 13, 2011 other thing is I got to do the trip to the General Assembly and talk to the Board of Supervisors about the issues with the legislative issues that we have had with Richmond. I described to them in detail the 100% sewer billing and the issues and how that is impacting those that have a high differential between the winter quarter and the summer quarter, which is primarily folks watering their lawn. I won't quote anybody word for word, but there was not a high amount of concern for that issue because if you look at it, Loudoun Water has the same thing from implementing their tiered structure. Loudoun Water was just more honest, they just billed it all to the water, where ours a portion of it is sewer. They put in a tiered structure that has the same impact so it is not a different issue. The General Assembly was not worried about the impact on high water users, they were worried about a differential between customer A and customer B in the same situation paying rates and how that differential was created, not folks that have chosen to have a higher amount of water usage. So, I don't see the legislature coming and slapping our hands because we are taking our time and being thoughtful in how we are setting rates. Mayor: Very good points. My concern, and it is a long standing concern and it continues, is it is so very easy for people who make a lot of money and have a job to think that $48 or $88 more a year is nothing. No. That is not the case. Leesburg has a lot of residents who do not make much money. So, when we talk about increasing the fixed rate, please keep them in mind. We have residents in this town who are down to their last $5 every single month of the year. Last $5. They can't afford a fixed rate increase unless we are combining that with the kind of tiered rate that actually holds their bills stable or lowers their bills. So, I agree with those on council, who have said... and I think Kevin and Katie have especially made this point... let's look at it carefully and take a broad look at it. Just because we are fortunate enough to have jobs, doesn't mean everybody in town is in that posture. All of us who went door to door last year probably saw what I saw, which is an unprecedented number of Leesburg residents who have lost their jobs. This economy is not moving forward in a way that we are able to float every boat. There are still people hurting out there financially so I don't want us to go forward and just jack up the fixed rate and it may not mean anything to any of us at the table, but it is the difference between survival and not surviving in this town to an awful lot of residents who just fall below the radar because we have more money than they do. I think, take our time, do it carefully, do it right, but just remember not everybody in this town feels they belong to the wealthiest county in the country. A lot of them don't belong and they are struggling every day. That is just the point I would make. Anything else? Reid: John, I just want to ask you a question about the charging of the water for the town. We just saved about $150,000 on insurance. We are saying that even if we applied that to this one time or came up with a policy for charging for town water, it is not going to make a difference? 541 P age Council Work Session June 13, 2011 Wells: It's not enough money to make up. To get to a meaningful reduction without changing the fixed rate, you would have to generate $700,000. Reid: $700,000 but if we changed the fixed rate up slightly, then you could probably close the gap. Wells: I wouldn't recommend it. Reid: I hear what you are saying, but that is also... you can also look at that as a subsidy for people who use the pool, that basically the taxpayers are subsidizing people who use the pool, and you have Ida Lee that has fees and it has revenue stream that can charge that... Wells: What I would recommend is as part of the broader, more thoughtful rate study is what should we do in terms of charge backs? What should be counted, what shouldn't be counted? Norm and I were talking about that today. There are other factors that different funds can and should charge each other that haven't been the tradition here in town. It's not inappropriate, but we might want to look at a more complete accounting in those senses. But, I wouldn't want to suggest tonight that we pluck one out or make a policy change without the broader... Hammier: For the record, the issue of Ida Lee not being charged for water came up years ago. Wells: Yes, I understand it did. Reid: And it has just been something that has happened over time. Most of that $300,000 is probably for the rec center, it's not for Town Hall or the Police Department. The $300,000 is primarily the... Wells: It's the Rec Center and Town Hall. But I would recommend that we look at... I would take it further than just the pool. I would say what... how should we look at interfund transfers. I am having an extended discussion with the airport commission right now regarding what are the appropriate charge backs between the funds there. So, this isn't an isolated discussion. I would just recommend in and of itself, there is not a quick fix to it. It is not going to materially change the answer to any of the questions you have in front of you and rather than just simply saying "let's make a policy change tonight I would not recommend that, but I would make that part of a broader.... Reid: Yes, John. I think it would also be nice to know whether in fact most of the folks who would be affected by an increased fixed charge and 551Page Council Work Session June 13, 2011 whether in fact they are homeowners, apartment dwellers or whether they are businesses because there is a perception out there that somehow we are going to be screwing people. I would also like to remind you that when I have asked for a lower tax rate, the response that I have heard from some Council members is that it's only... can we up it from 19 to 19.5 or 18.5 to 19.... I forget. But I was very upset about that. The response was that it was only a seven dollar a month increase. So, now we are talking about, what... $48 a year but we increased taxes on people a lot of whom are paying county taxes on top of that. So, Dave it doesn't sound like we are going to get any kind of votes here. If you want to come up with something with me, if you want to put something on the agenda, maybe we could try to see if Marty or Tom would do it... Hammler: The thing that I thought Kevin... I liked how you netted out all the key points that we need to look at in the larger picture, but as it relates to this short term decision, it strikes me that we will actually learn a lot over the next several months and we need to take all that into account as we are looking at the long term trending and determining if and what we need to be doing with all those different elements. So, it would minimize the risk unless there is some overarching risk with bond covenants or not meeting the bills. But Norm has already answered that questions, so I would suggest that there is probably not a necessity for a short term, reactionary decision. Reid: I don't know how the URAC is going to be interested in working on this, if it is possible that it is going to come back and there is going to be members of the committee who see the tiered structure and they are going to see that certain people are going to be paying gobs more and we are going to be back where we were in 2008 where we had a room full of people. We had one minority report and that held the sway of the council. I'm not really confident that a consultant or, like Dave says, is really going to come up with the issue, but we have been told by staff that the fixed rate is too low. We probably should have indexed it to inflation. Why don't we just have John come back with a proposal on the fixed rate and parallel? Wright: The reason that this will work better if we do a thoughtful process as opposed to just having John go "well let's make the fixed rate this If we continue to reach out for a quick fix, there is not one. If we do a quick fix... look at the last two times we did a quick fix. We did a quick fix. We spent four years and God knows how much money going to court because of the way we fixed it. We did a quick fix the last time partially because the judge helped us, so thanks! And we have created the current problem that we have been talking about now for hours and hours and hours. We do another quick fix, we are not going to solve these problems. We are going to create another unintended consequence, which is why we would do it in a thoughtful manner, which is why the start of that thoughtful process would be a work session going over what do you envision as a rate structure, how do you want 561 Pa ge Council Work Session June 13, 2011 us to work on it? Kind of a Q &A that allows URAC to frame the discussion, move forward and do it in a thoughtful manner as opposed to this... I don't understand this advocating for a quick fix when the entire discussion we have had for the last 45 minutes has basically laid the groundwork for why that is not a good idea. Reid: Well, they have studied this for six months. I don't consider that a quick fix. Butler: The reason we were talking about it and the reason why it's an excellent idea. I have heard very little about why it's a bad idea is that I seem to recall six or eight months ago when multiple council members, which did not include me, were screaming in the council meetings about these poor people who were coming to the microphones that had enormous bills and we needed to fix it right away. We all decided as a council to do a two stage fix. Let's find a short term thing that will fix it for the high water users and then we will consider whether a longer term fix for tiered rate structure. Any council members that thought at that time that they were going decrease high water user bills without increasing other people's bills was living in fantasy land because we all knew we're at a hairy edge of revenue. So now the URAC has worked for six months to come up with the short term fix that we asked them to come up with. Now all of sudden we think it's the stupidest idea in the world and we are not going to have any part of it. Why? We can talk about all the reasons about how we don't want to have a short term fix because look at these other short term fixes and blah, blah, blah. The fact of the matter is that Council doesn't have the nerve to say we are going to increase the fixed fee. That's the bottom line. Bottom line because this short term fix has absolutely nothing to do with the short term fixes in the past. You know exactly why in 2005 what the short term fix was that caused us to go to court. It didn't have anything to do with the rest of the rate study. Okay, the fact was the rate study was wrong and the economy tanked and that caused us to have to do it a second time. The fact that we did the second one that the judge helped, the judge didn't help the results of the rate study. What the judge helped was put a gun to our head and say we had to get it done by X period of time. If the judge had given us that headline, we would've had to do it anyway with a gun to our heads because the revenue of the utility fund was falling off the table and we were behind in our bond covenants. It really didn't have a whole lot to do with the judge. I'm okay with not fixing the bill for high water users. I said before, people who complain about the price of water where they are taking clean water and throwing it all over their lawns, there's other things that they should complain about. So I'm okay if we don't fix that. What bothers me is the URAC went out and spent six months doing exactly what we asked them to do and they came back with the simplest possible fix that we could imagine and now all of a sudden, we think it's horrible and we want them to go off and study for another year a much more complicated solution 57IPage Council Work Session June 13, 2011 and then we have some expectation that when the URAC is going to come back we are actually going to approve it. We are 0 for 2 with the URAC now. Reid: Actually 1 for 3 because we did approve Snowbirds. Butler: Okay, well Snowbirds. Yeah, okay I guess we will give them that, but both times the URAC came back with something that was really simple and really easy and maybe was so simple and easy that it was obvious to Council who was going to get hurt by the change. Maybe the answer is for the URAC to come back with something that's so complicated that nobody on Council understands that and if we have our consultant say it's going to work. So maybe baffle us and we won't understand what we're voting for until eight or 10 months after. The other thing, the consultants are great to come in, but consultants are not developing policy. In every structure that we... We're studying that we have had before and I can go back and show you basically it was council. Our staff that said here was the policy, tell us what the numbers need to be in order for us to be revenue neutral or positive. That's what the consultants did. In fact, there were sometimes when the consultants were like well okay we don't understand why you really want to do this, but we're fine, we're just crunching the numbers. That's what consultants do, crunch the numbers. Maybe we need to look at a different consultant and say we want somebody to help us generate policy and come back with recommendations for policy, because the number crunching is easy compared to the policy. We need somebody to come in and say this is who you ought to hurt, this is who you want to help and this is generally the kind of structure that you want. And if we buy off on that, at least we're a little bit ahead of the game but my expectation is very low that we will approve the rate structure that the URAC comes back with. I'm kind of disappointed. Hammler: I sincerely appreciate all your expertise and all the time you put in and all you do with all the water issues. As I'm distilling your summary thoughts, and quite frankly I'm sitting between two very knowledgeable people. I don't think it's as complicated as you try to make it sound because there are some pretty rational policy decisions that clearly... I think we have learned, we will start incorporating such as inflation. But I do think that Kevin articulated some of the larger picture issues as we did task the committee to try to determine how to fix one. We realize that there's a series of things we're trying to fix which is why we all agree, at least the three of us agree, take the time to do it right. The one thing that I think is complex is all the information about the fact that this is a mess. I think we need to fix that. This whole broader issue of doing it right, doing it thoughtfully. We've got to stay focused on that and being reasonable which can only be achieved through the continuation of the hard work of the committee and what staff will bring back analyzing the factors. 58 IPage Council Work Session June 13, 2011 2. Additions to Future Council Meetings Hammler: Request by VML regarding our thoughts on the pact. Clerk of 2011_tcwsmin0613 Reid: a. Discussion on spending the $30,000 on the South King Street trail intersection with Route 15 bypass. b. Virts Corner discussion with Dominion Power, Comcast and Verizon and ask why it is taking so long to get utility relocations. c. Plat for Mt. Zion cemetery. 3. Adjournment On the motion of Vice Mayor Wright, seconded by Council Member Butler, thm Ming s adjourned at 10:50 p.m. 59 1Page