HomeMy Public PortalAbout2014_tcwsmin0224 Council Work Session February 24, 2014
Council Chambers, 25 West Market Street, 7:30 p.m. Vice Mayor David Butler
presiding.
Council Members Present: Kelly Burk, David Butler, Thomas Dunn, Katie Sheldon
Hammler, Marty Martinez, Kevin Wright and Mayor Umstattd.
Council Members Absent: None.
Staff Present: Town Manager John Wells, Deputy Town Attorney Barbara Notar,
Deputy Town Manager Kaj Dentler, Director of Planning and Zoning Susan Berry
Hill, Director of Plan Review William Adman, Deputy Director of Planning and
Zoning Brian Boucher, Assistant Town Manager Scott Parker, Director of Economic
Development Marantha Edwards, Research and Communications Manager Betsy
Fields, Director of Parks and Recreation Rich Williams, Director of Finance Norm
Butts, Deputy Director of Finance Kim Williams and Clerk of Council Lee Ann
Green
AGENDA ITEMS
1. Work Session Items for Discussion
a. Downtown Improvements Verbal Update
Scott Parker was present to answer questions.
Key Points:
• Marketing Plan is coming together
• Waterline at the East End Triangle will be replaced
• Will be meeting with Mom's Apple Pie to make sure she is ready
Council Comments/Questions (Verbatim discussion follows):
Burk: Why hasn't meeting with Ms. Renshaw happened yet?
Staff answer:: Meeting needed to occur after plans were completed. Will sit down
with her and talk to her after the plans are completed so that plans can
be finalized—probably in two weeks.
Burk: She is very concerned. I want to ensure that you are both speaking the
same language. Make sure that happens because the last thing with the
legs. She listened to one thing and you were thinking another and so it
caused a little distress upon her.
Staff answer: We have met with her three times in the last week and let her know
exactly what we are doing. We have gotten her feedback on that. We
have no surprises in store for her. The goal is to show her final
drawings and get her last little bit of input once she sees the final
drawings and that will most assuredly happen.
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Burk: All right. And you said the final marketing program is going to the
next meeting?
Staff answer: I cannot promise that for the next meeting, but we will do what we can
to have that to you as soon as possible.
Burk: Okay. Then I will hold my questions on that until then.
b. Legislative Update
Betsy Fields stated the General Assembly session is starting to wind
down.
Key Points:
• One more full week left of committee meetings
• Anything that is not reported out of committee this week likely will be
left in committee
• Provided Council with an updated report about bills of concern
• Monitoring budget amendments now as they go through the process
Council Comments/Questions (Verbatim discussion follows):
Hammier: Given our priorities last week and forward, is there anything that you
need from Council that would facilitate achieving our goals
legislatively?
Staff answer:: I do not think so. I think at this point we have made our position
known on some bills.
Hammier: I would definitely appreciate getting copies of your testimony in terms
of when you are presenting to the committee. I am sure you do this,
but it was interesting—when we were preparing, Kelly and I, for the
local transitional local issues with the governor-elect, how very well
prepared so many elected and appointed officials came to that meeting
and what was most meaningful was when they communicated bottom-
line dollar to their specific municipality. So, assuming we do that when
we communicate in terms of even the 50-65% threshold, you know how
that impacts Leesburg in terms of impacted tax rate citizens and just in
terms of other influential powers.
Staff answer: (inaudible) communication taxes when I testified.
Hammier: I felt like I was not fully prepared in that regard in terms of having
Leesburg specific data— it sort of came full circle in terms of asking
VML. Long story short—the more we can get those kind of talking
points, we can make additional phone calls.
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Wright:: I guess just one follow-up. John, the funding for primary pavement in
cities and towns. What I heard is they fixed it, but how much did it
cost us while it was broken? So, if you could take that away and come
back.
Staff answer:: I could give you a guess, but let me calculate it out.
Burk: If it is blank in here, it means it has not gone to final vote?
Staff answer: That is correct. So, if it is blank in here, it has not reported out of
committee or had any action. So, in other words, some of them will
say was assigned to a subcommittee and the subcommittee
recommends reporting. But if it just says the house committee and the
status is blank, it means it has been assigned to that committee, but
nothing has happened yet.
Burk: Will something likely in the next week happen?
Staff answer: If nothing happens within this week, it will be left in committee. Now,
in some cases there are companion bills in the other house or the other
chamber and so they could just be letting it go knowing the other bill is
going through to final. For example, on the top line of our Hot List
summary on the first page, the precious metal dealers bill, you will see
that the senate bill had been reported to the House General Laws
committee, but the house bill has already passed both the house and the
senate so there really is not a need for the House General Laws to take
up that bill because it has already been through.
Butler: I have a couple of quick questions. One is with the 1084 and 578 bills.
If the only point of those bills is to codify rules, why do they need to do
it? I mean, couldn't we still get sued in federal court, then, in an
unfortunate requirement?
Notar: Because in order to sue in federal court there has to be a federal
question or diversity of citizenship, which does not usually occur in
land use cases. So, land use cases happen most of the time in state
court. I assume that is the reason.
Butler: I was just thinking if the supreme court ruled on it, why do we need to
codify it?
Notar: That is a good question because constitutional cases are not always
brought in federal court. State court is usually easier to make a very
simplistic explanation, but most times in land use cases we go to state
court. I assume the purpose of the bill wanted to make attorney's fees
and other things easier for state court litigants.
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Staff answer:: Plus, its unconstitutionality, not just of the U.S. constitution, but of the
Virginia constitution as well.
Butler: Well, in any case, assuming that this continues on its path, we will need
some direction and some guidance going forward on a lot of these
applications. I have one other question that is probably something that
is on your radar, but do you just happen to know if anything has
happened with the E-Sea Resolution? There was a bill moving forward
to require textbooks in the Commonwealth.
Staff answer:: E-Sea—the Sea of Japan—I think it went through. Meaning the
General Assembly will be over for the year. Council Member Hammier
had asked for the voting record of all of our legislators and I will
provide that once the session is over.
c. Healthy Eating Active Living Resolution
Marissa Jones of the Institute for Public Health Innovation gave a brief
presentation regarding the Healthy Eating Active Living program.
Key Points:
• Obesity rates are rising
• At the current rate, 50% of Virginians will be obese by 2030
• Development becoming more automobile centric
• Two parent working families means less time for homemade meals
• Referring to obesity as a precursor to chronic disease
• Obesity related medical expenses medical expenses were $3.38 billion
which comes out to an additional tax burden per resident of$222
• Today's youth is the first generation in modern history that has a
shorter life expectancy than their parents
• Partnership with VML
• Not about telling people what they should or should not do, but helping
make it easier for people to make healthy choices
• Free technical assistance on policy adoption
• Serve as a model to help make policy goals a reality
Council Comments/Questions (Verbatim discussion follows):
Burk: We have a vibrant farmer's market and a wonderful community garden
that has a waiting list. People want to get on it for years. We have a
number of retail stores. We use joint facilities. We work to complete
streets. Our general plan—we do look at walking. A lot of the work
we do goes into this.
Jones: So, first of all, it sounds like first of all, you might be a great candidate
to serve as an example for other municipalities in Virginia, which
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would be eat. You go to our website. The web address has 54
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policies, which we provide technical assistance on.
Burk: There are other things we can do?
Jones: There are other things. There is also a lot of value—including a look at
—you know, if there is anyway we can afford more. I know things that
you want—so for example, one of the towns in Maryland I work with,
they have some privately owned land and they have an informal
agreement and we are working with them on establishing a
memorandum of understanding with the landowner to formalize it in a
three year agreement. So we can formalize something you are already
doing. I would invite you to take a look at the website.
Burk: Thank you.
Wright:: So, following up on what Council Member Burk had mentioned. So, a
couple of things I do not think we can do. I saw the one in your mixed
use picture where there was permitting for businesses based on amount
of fresh food. I am pretty sure the state has not enabled us to do that.
So, as a Dillon Rule State, that one would not apply in Virginia. I
guess the main thing there would be opportunities for is obviously the
awareness aspect of it— a lot of the facilities stuff we are doing. The
one thing that is different, I think with towns and cities and all that are
a little different. In Virginia, a town does not have the public health
responsibility that hits the county, so we have more the zoning impact
and those items. But, the one thing I was interested in—I do not know
if you have any more background on, is obviously we keep trying to
build our wellness program for our employees, partially because we like
them, but also because we also like our insurance rates to go down
versus up. Can you give a little more background on how you would
help with that type of effort?
Jones: Sure, so we can support you to adopt a work place wellness policy that
can either mean the wellness committee does a workplace wellness
assessment and identifies where there are some opportunities. Is it
increasing opportunities for physical activity, is it increasing
opportunities for healthy food, is it doing an assessment of what is in
the vending machine. Are there any opportunities to put a couple more
healthier options in there? Again, sorry to invite you to our website.
Wright:: I'm already on it.
Jones: Okay, on work place wellness, people will call us to do work place
wellness. There are draft policies that you could take a look at. We
also have a workplace wellness specialist that I would be happy to
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connect you with. She has worked with municipalities on figuring out
what else they can do.
Hammler: Marissa, thank you. Excellent presentation. I know just the feedback I
got at VML from some of the other municipalities is that they were very
inspired and took to heart how very important it is to formalize the
great things that they are also doing and finding new ways to keep
offering new opportunities to their citizens and I completely agree with
Kelly. It is very fortunate—I frequently say to myself—it is amazing
the opportunities we have in Leesburg to make some unbelievably great
choices and the resources that we have. But to the extent that we can
begin to measure where we are and citizens may want to continue to
come forward with ideas for how we can do better. Examples of Kelly
has been extremely instrumental from a leadership perspective with
where and how we can look at how to integrate art, but I bring that up
because, you know, then we start looking at development opportunities
from a zoning perspective and we start asking ourselves and become
accustomed to asking ourselves how does this tie into our goals for
asking, you know, proffer money for art and I think we can begin to set
that tone as relates to some of our zoning questions and capital
improvement types of opportunities to again reinforce the things that
we are moving forward on the bike lanes, the pedestrian orientation of
development. Marty has been a real leader in terms of working towards
our bike lanes, for instance. He is our Parks and Rec Commission
liaison, so to me it makes sense to have our Parks and Rec
Commission, perhaps take a look at this as well and come back with
some policy recommendations for how we can formalize this, perhaps
add language to our Town Plan with some of our goals. To your point,
this is about quality of life for citizens, which is a major goal of this
Council. It is about keeping costs low from a tax perspective and it sort
of opened up the General Assembly conversation talking about, you
know, you mentioned the transition on local issues, we keep asking the
state to look for ways to reduce costs on Leesburg, but this is also our
way of saying we are going to take responsibility and try to lower our
tax burden from a health care cost perspective back on the state and
keep, you know, promoting that good message of partnership. One
idea I had, was we have been looking at a new sister-city relationship
with a city outside of Paris and it occurred to me because I often hear
that folks that are in the Mediterranean area or even certain areas of
Asia have certain eating habits and lifestyle habits that are more
conducive to overall healthy living, whereas Americans tend to more
into processed foods and making different decisions and that leads to an
opportunity for us to open up the dialog and, again, build relationships
and learn healthy habits from a sister-city. So, I think it would be great
for us to kind of take a step back and come up with some great ideas
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and leverage all of the great resources that you have as well as finding
the fund the specific things that we can bring forward.
Jones: Great. Thank you.
Butler: A couple of quick questions. How is the Institute for Public Health
Innovation Funded?
Jones: So, like I said, the Institute for Public Health Innovation serving DC,
Maryland and the Commonwealth of Virginia—we have a number of
different funding sources, a lot of federal grants, a lot of state grants.
We are funded by numerous county and state health departments. We
have funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
This particular initiative is funded by Kaiser Permanente as part of their
community benefits. I am sure you know that nonprofit hospitals have
to provide community benefit each year. This is what Kaiser does.
Butler: Thank you. I can see the bicycle lanes —I think that is a huge thing. I
really think the Parks and Rec Commission working with our staff
could look at the streets comprehensively. I think like where could we
potentially squeeze lanes down a little bit and potentially put in other
bike lanes. I go to other cities and, you know, a lot of their streets tend
to be narrower, but they have bike lanes also on the sides. What more
we could do for that, I think that would be a good idea. I think, maybe
Bill Ference working with folks—we talked about the park in front of
the parking garage. Maybe we think about potential active parks
instead of necessarily just a strict passive park. In fact, in all of our
parks, is there things that we can do that would encourage exercise—
even in a Raflo Park or something. Is there something—what could we
put in those parks that might encourage people to exercise. But, other
than that—I think this is great. I was wondering—can we get that map
—is that on your website?
Jones: I can send that to you. It actually has it year by year so you get to
watch like oh, when did the colors change. When did this happen.
Wright:: It's depressing.
Butler: If there is a link—maybe where it goes step by step. Maybe, what we
can do from an education standpoint—like maybe putting foodinc on
our website—things like that. I think that if everybody in Leesburg
watched that movie or a similar one, that our habits might change a lot.
I also would be interested in—I hear comments from a few people like
why does—how come you go to a fast food place and a salad costs
more than an entire happy meal? What are the dynamics around that
because that obviously—because a salad versus a happy meal—ten
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salads versus ten happy meals you are going to start going from blue to
rust colored in a real hurry.
Jones: So, [inaudible].
Butler: From an education standpoint. I have no desire to fight the fast food
industry. That is for other people. But, at least knowing why the fast
food industry is the way that it is and how the financial dynamics work,
I mean I think that is a great education for everybody.
Jones: And sometimes understanding why local produce from farms costs
more recognizing that farmers need to make a living too and that you
are supporting your farmer's market, you are supporting the global
economy and sometimes that people understand that, they are more
willing to pay a little bit more for that kale or...
Butler: Or how is a cow treated at the local farm versus a cow treated at some
place—a mass produced hamburger factory—something like that.
Hammier: I think that is why your statistics on the cost of healthcare are critical
because that is what is not captured in how cheap a processed meal is
versus the option to choose to be more healthy which might cost a little
more but the cost of all the chronic issues are significant and I am
actually reminded of Matt Knox Singleton, who is head of INOVA
System, had mentioned you know, what we do well is we are really
good at—we can do the emergency care, but it is much more difficult,
even medically, to manage chronic issues and I think that is where we
can really create a partnership.
Jones: I think we can either pay for it now and you have a happy, healthy life
—a high quality life, or you don't pay for it now and you have diabetes,
hypertension, may be other chronic diseases. So, there are all kinds of
shapes. It will be great if Leesburg is interested and can articulate it's
commitment. It sounds like you are doing so many things. I have been
walking around and oh, my God, look at these crosswalks and bike
lanes and [inaudible]. It seems like a really great place to live and I
would love to help publicize the work that you are doing. Let other
people know that you are an example, a leader, in Virginia. I look
forward to working with you in the future.
Butler: There is an example resolution in our packet. Is there any enthusiasm
from Council to move that forward?
Hammier: I would think so.
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Wright: That's fine. I don't know if you want to send it to Parks and Rec first
and have them refine it? I know the example resolution I saw on the
website had a ton of different options.
Hammier:: That would be a good idea—if we could get Parks and Rec involved to
make the resolution—and come back with a version for us.
Wells: We will send it there first.
Butler: Sounds like a great idea.
d. Parking Payment in Lieu
Brian Boucher stated would answer any questions on the subject of
parking payment in lieu.
Key Points:
• Cost per space for a parking structure downtown is estimated to be
$19k-22k
• Current payment in lieu is $3k
• Current payment in lieu is unchanged from 1987
• Council direction is required to change the parking payment in lieu
amount
Council Comments/Questions (Verbatim discussion follows):
Butler: At one point, we kicked around a couple of different numbers. Do you
remember what those numbers were?
Wells: I think the $20k number was the structured parking number.
Boucher: Right and then there was —it might have been 9 or 8 thousand, there
were ideas of perhaps different gradiations, of the number would be
rather than kicking up to do something that would be $20k which
would be quite a change, perhaps some other figures in between were
discussed but there was not any formal decision.
Wells: Nothing was initiated at that time. So, the question is do you want to
initiate something—you would not have to set a number now on the
initiation. You would go through your process to bring that back.
Butler: Okay. Katie?
Hammier:: I would absolutely support bringing back a new figure. We are clearly
going to have to increase revenues in order to meet our goal to continue
to look at opportunities to increase—you know, a structured parking
garage and other types of things. I guess as you are bringing that back,
the only thing we really need to think through is why wouldn't we
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relative to the opportunity cost of anything we are trying to achieve.
Otherwise this seems straight forward in terms of what we need to be
doing.
Wright:: So, a process question. So, we do a resolution to initiate and then is it
an ordinance change—the actual fee or how does that work?
Boucher: We would do a resolution because I do not think it is an ordinance, it is
actually—
Wright:: So, the fee is actually set by the Council. John, what is the one thing—
I would certain support the resolution to initiate. The one thing I
would be interested in is if we took—when we set it last time in 1985, if
you could do—
Wells: The math...
Wright: Just for the cost of inflation. What that would be versus...your other
process was fairly logical and then the other thing is if there would be a
way to almost phase it in. So, if the end game we know is going to be
$20k, but do it over a couple of years. Is there some logical way to
phase that in? Then the only other question would be—much like the
availability fees, if we prorated some of those payments if there may be
a payment structure we may also want to look at. The short answer is I
think we are overdue in looking at this. I know we talked about it a
couple of times and we took a dramatic pause and I think that pause
has been long enough.
Martinez: No comments.
Burk: I do have some questions. At the present, how many spaces have been
purchased? How many spaces are in that garage?
Boucher: Approximately 370.
Burk: And developers have purchased 320 of them?
Boucher: Approximately 200 right now. With developments coming in the
pipeline, we anticipate it will be 320.
Burk: What about people who are living in the neighborhood using the
parking garage to park?
Wells: Let me correct that. When somebody pays to buy out of the parking
requirement, that does not give them a space in the garage.
Burk: Okay. That is not clear.
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Boucher: Normally, you have to provide parking on-site or through some legal
agreement off-site in a certain proximity to property. Only in the H-1
district does this apply to. We have payment in lieu, which would
allow you, for commercial development to pay $3,000 for space rather
than to provide that space on-site or off-site. It does not buy you a
particular space anywhere in the H-1 district. It just means you are
relieved of that obligation and the thought was that the money would
be used as off-site parking to provide other means and generally it is the
town.
Burk: That is my other question. Does it go into the General Fund? Or does
it go into a fund for the garage?
Wells: The last time we talked about this, there was the direction from the
Planning Commission and Council to basically segregate those funds,
which we do, so they are not in a separate enterprise fund.
Burk: But they are identified separately.
Wells: They are identified separately.
Burk: Is it just one time?
Boucher: Yes, you pay it once and then you have fulfilled your obligation.
Burk: How much money do you have in the account?
Wells: Less than $200,000.
Burk: How much would it cost to make a garage? To build a garage?
Wells: There are other options in terms of surface parking.
Boucher: Surface parking would be substantially less. The thought, as we were
doing this, because of the confines of the downtown area, kind of the
end game would be structured parking.
Burk: I would be interested in this, but I would think we would send this to
the Economic Development Commission to get their input on it. Have
we done that? Has it gone there before?
Boucher: No, this is kind of an information memo, really.
Wells: Not in this edition. It may have years ago, but if we want to get the
current Economic Development Commission...
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Burk: I would think we would want to get the input of the business
community before we proceed any further.
Wright:: Especially with the phasing—how we might want to phase it. That is a
good point.
Dunn: So, what you are saying—we would need to get another 190 of these at
$20,000 to be able to afford to build a parking garage?
Wells: After you adopted the increased rates, yes.
Dunn: Right. And are next step is going to be doing what?
Wells: I think the next step was to find if Council was interested in making a
policy change and it sounds like there is interest in pursuing further
discussion of that option and the first step would be to go to the
Economic Development Commission, if I am taking what I have heard
so far. And bring that back to Council.
Butler: Because it would be a resolution only, then we would not have to
officially initiate anything.
Wells: That is right.
Dunn: So, we get feedback from the EDC and then should we decide to go
forward from there, we go to Planning?
Wells: I don't believe it requires Planning Commission action. It is not an
ordinance.
Boucher: Unless you all directed us to go there, it would not.
Dunn: And you said that we have sold about 200...
Boucher: in about 27-28 years.
Dunn: How many applications do you have so far? What is the need?
Boucher: We figure with just the things that are—these are things that are either
approved site plans and are awaiting development or are very far along
in the process —in other words are approaching site plan approval, we
need approximately 120 spaces —that people have the right to purchase.
We expect when those site plans get approved, when they go to pull the
building permit, they will come in and purchase those spaces. It is
approximately 120 more.
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Butler: All right. It sounds like we would get some opinions...
Wells: We will go to the Economic Development Commission and ask that
they put that on their next agenda and get feedback then bring that
information back with a timeline. I am sensing you would like to see
how a phased program—what numbers we might be looking at and
how might those be phased in along with some of the other numbers
that we would speak to, what's in the pipeline right now that might
be...
Wright:: And if we kept up with inflation, what the number would be...
Burk: I would think we want to make it at least feasible that it would
discourage developers from not having enough parking—it would at
least give them pause. It would be at such a rate—not at$20,000 or
anything—it would be at such a rate that it would be— it would make
them pause and make them think it would be cheaper to have it in my
development rather than have it somewhere else.
Hammier:: Speaking of incentives, you know the key premise from a Frederick,
Maryland perspective is the investment in a parking spurred
commercial development. We seem to have no problem getting
parking built in when it is for residential development. How would we
structure it to create more of an incentive for the commercial offset by
what we always get with the residential.
Wright: One thing to say—one remembers, in the area where they allow
payment in lieu, it is only allowed for commercial. Residential must
provide...
Boucher: There is a few small exceptions.
Wright: Right.
Boucher: There are certain lots that are under a certain area under 4000 square
feet. Maybe 16 spaces.
Butler: We did that not too long ago.
Boucher: Yeah. Residential still has to provide parking. Either on-site or through
some sort of legal agreement within 300 feet of the site.
e. Comprehensive Parking Program
John Wells stated that this is Council's discussion.
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Key Points:
• New handicapped parking spaces have been added in multiple spots
around the downtown.
• Bus service as part of the overall parking and transit issue—will be
coming before the Board of Supervisors at a summit on March 10 —
prior to the next Council work session.
• Council looked at alternate routes using a hub/spoke system to
promote greater use of the bus service and bus service funding
• Letter to the Board of Supervisors indicated the Town will fund the
Safe-T-Ride and Saturday trolley service.
• Board of Supervisors should take responsibility for setting the routes
and funding the balance of the system.
• No action was necessary on a PPEA for the Liberty Street lot; however,
this could be revisited as conditions warrant.
• Items needing review and direction from Council: Payment in Lieu,
on-street parking rates, town-wide meters, parking apps to deal with
locating availability, garage parking rates.
• Items having received direction from Council, funding will be provided
in next year's budget: Downtown parking signs, improving garage
signage, garage emergency call boxes (potentially FY 2016).
Council Comments/Questions (Verbatim discussion follows):
Dunn: A couple of things, and I know we have gotten push back from Tom
Mason on this, but I just went by there today and did a foot
measurement on it. The street is wider—Loudoun Street is wider west
of Wirt Street with less of an incline than it is east of King Street where
you can barely get by with the parking spaces that are there, yet you can
add three, maybe even four parking spaces west of Wirt Street on
Loudoun where the road is wider, then we have got five or six east of
King Street on Loudoun. One of the recommendations I would make
is switch out three or four of the spaces —we are not losing any because
it is very tough to get by on Loudoun Street east of King Street with
those parking spaces where they are. The street is very narrow there
and if you are two trucks dueling it out, it is not going to work. The
other is—I did not quite see it in here— is we have got the information
on attachment two about the parking meters. I have kind of a running
personal joke that the reason why the toll goes up is to pay for the toll
collectors. It is kind of the same way with our parking meters. It is
almost costing us as much to employ people to collect the parking
meter fees as it is to pay the parking meters. What I would like to see
us do is remove the parking meters and go with a one parking station
per block or possibly two if it is a bigger block where people walk up to
that one station put in their cash or credit card. They then take the
ticket that tells them what time they parked and they put it on the
dashboard of their car. I think a similar program inside the parking
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garage could also be done where people either pay to—most likely end
up paying to enter the parking garage and then their ticket they slide
back into the machine that allows them to get out of the parking garage.
But I think to try to go to more automated systems in the long run are
going to much more cost effective. The other thing was the—I did not
see in here was the Royal Street parking issue for those folks who had
some concerns about not being able to park in certain types of days. I
know we talked about it a few times, but I do not see anything here that
addressed it. We talked about different solutions for them but did we
ever get that addressed?
Wells: Let me go back. I think I recall that there were a number of options
available. We had a public hearing. We did not hear a clear direction
as to whether or not we needed to add—I am trying to remember which
way the discussion was going, but I think the bottom line conclusion
was at that hearing it was determined that we did not need to make any
additional changes on Royal Street. Now, we can bring that back
again. The last public hearing we had was not terribly definitive, if you
will, in terms of public feedback and based on the number, because
what we were looking at there, if I recall, at the number of businesses
versus residential, was a split neighborhood. It seemed to be working—
we were doing fine where we were at based on the last public hearing.
Again, I will be happy to recount that. That is off the top of my head.
Dunn: Well, one of the other suggestions that I had was on, I think it is North
Street, could be handled similarly as Royal Street—and that would be
allow people in downtown who have residences have permits and those
permits would allow them—when the permit is affixed to their
windshield—then somebody enforcing would not issue a ticket because
they have a permit to park there. Whereas, for example, on North
Street, I think you can get additional parking if we put a meter, i.e. this
one meter system per the block. On North Street west of King, I think
we could pick up some additional parking from folks visiting the
courthouse. But the people that live there can park normally after
hours. They did not have to pay the meter because they have a permit
to park there. I think a similar thing can be done on Royal Street, or it
could possibly be done in certain businesses much like we are talking
about payment in lieu. There might be businesses that would want to
pay a higher fee to allow for permitted parking. Just an idea to throw
out. But, today it seemed like the concept of permits, which we have
already used in town, so we have, I believe ordinance that already
addresses permit parking because we do that on other streets...is it
North Street again or is it...
Wells: There are three or four areas that have a residential permit parking
program.
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Dunn: So, this would allow us to just plug and play that same concept and
would allow for people leaving in the morning, coming back in the
afternoon. The businesses that need it for most of the day, they would
have it and then their customers are paying for the parking meters, but
the residents are not having to pay for parking meters. So, that is—and
there are a couple of streets that I think we could possibly maximize
some additional parking spaces. I do not have that with me, but I did
know about the ones on Loudoun Street and Wirt. One or two parking
stations per block rather than local parking meters and also using the
same type of system for the parking garage. Looking to get automated.
Wells: The one comment that I will make—I really want Council to have the
discussion—which is one factual comment we are finding is that given
the amount of on-street parking is that the kiosk type of parking may
not be cost effective on the streets. Clearly it is in the garage. No issues
there. On the streets, what we are finding is some of the preliminary
work, and I think that is where the memo you have attached to your
item speaks to what some of the costs are regarding the use of kiosks or
the one system type—you take out all the meters—go by spot 10, put in
money for that. I don't know that we would come out ahead on that.
That may be less cost effective than what we are doing now. There
might be a way to still do what you are suggesting, Council Member
Dunn, maybe do it with a newer style, but unfortunately it will be a
meter at the spot as opposed to the one singular item, but we can
continue to look at that. Some of the cost numbers that we came up
with were pointing us in a different direction.
Dunn: The other thing to take into consideration—that is again, because we
are making about$16,000—if my memory served...about$16,000 in
meter fees, but then you also have the cost that you are employing
people to go take the funds out of there, to monitor the fees and so
forth. You also have the aesthetics. And as much as I love bagged
meters, as a beautiful thing to see, I would rather not be seeing that.
And I think one small kiosk that is a quarter of the width of that
podium looks better than a bunch of...
Wells: Aesthetics, the kiosks win out. But, one question to add to your list of
discussions to where you want to head with parking overall is parking
rates that we are charging are fairly low. Even if we were to take out
some of the costs, whether it is staffing or having to drain the meters
with the coins, we may want to have a conversation about what we
charge for rates on the street. Again, if we are trying to put those
nickels, dimes and dollars into a fund to help improve parking, whether
it is a structure or add additional spaces on the ground, or improve
signage or buy an app system that can direct people to where those
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spaces are at, you may want to look at parking as something that is a
limited commodity that has a value to it. Again, that is a policy
discussion.
Dunn: There is a—and we can go back and forth in this discussion, but there is
a cost to free parking. And I know that since we have a couple of
representatives of our Economic Development Commission here
tonight, it would be interesting to hear how much more business the
downtown merchants receive when they had free parking for a couple
of months around Christmas versus when it was paid for parking at the
same period years before. Frankly, I had seen what being a downtown
merchant myself or at least a downtown business owner at one time, I
personally witnessed business owners using that free parking during
that time and that was not quite the idea that we were looking for. But,
let's see—I think that was it for—what was the cost of the kiosks?
Wells: Scott, do you recall what the kiosk numbers are?
Parker: Between $8,000-15,000 each depending on the functionality.
Dunn: Okay. Any idea how many of those—how many blocks do we have
meters on right now?
Parker: The main issue John is referring to—if you take Loudoun Street, for
example, for the improvements that we just did—typically what we had
is you will have an arrangement where we will have two spaces and a
big driveway, two spaces, driveway, another two spaces. We looked at
about$10,000 each for a kiosk on each side because all communities
that do that, do what you said they do—what you had suggested which
is have a kiosk on either side of the block for if you park at one end you
have a convenience so if you are going in that direction you do not
have to walk all the way up the block put your money in, come all the
way back and then put it on the dashboard, whatever, and go the other
way. What we found is we just did not have enough spaces per block
to justify having a kiosk at two ends. We looked at a variety of
locations, not withstanding the removal of parking on King Street. We
looked at Market Station, where it is the same scenario where you
would have one space, then a long route open for a fire hydrant or what
have you, then to put$25,000 of kiosks at either end just did not seem
cost effective to us from that analysis.
Dunn: How about—I know this is probably wacky, but why not just put one
kiosk in the middle?
Parker: The possibility is there to do that, but even with that, you would have
one kiosk that would be serving seven spaces that would be over an
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extremely large block area. That would be a pretty significant walk to
that. That could be done, yes.
Dunn: And, the few places that I have seen them, in DC and in Alexandria,
their blocks are much, much longer than ours and the distance to walk
to them is less than 100 yards that people are going to have to walk, I
think, from any parking place in town to get to a kiosk per block. The
issue is to see how few we can get by on and what that cost would be.
Burk: Well, a couple of things. One, again I would think this might be a
question that we would want to ask Economic Development. Sorry,
Jim. If I had my way we would not charge for any parking. We would
leave it open and have it accessible for anyone as they wanted it. But, if
we are going to keep the fees, then I would be interested in finding out
what the business community thought would be accessible—not
accessible—what would be a good fee to charge. One thing I would
like to see on the list is having some charging stations. Adding into the
garage area. I looked at the list that said what problems are we trying
to solve and I would have put them in a little bit different order. I think
that communication of available parking is something that we need to
work on and improving the experience and uniformity of lighting, I
think we are beginning to work on that. Those were the things that I
would be looking at. If I were to look at it, some of those meters are
not even used anymore. They have the red cover on them that is now
pink because they are all faded from the sun. I don't think they are
bringing us any great amount of money. At this point, I would be
looking at no metering and no cost at the garage. But, I would most
certainly be open to the discussion if someone would like enlighten me
on why it would be better to keep them.
Martinez: No comments.
Wright: So, a couple of things. John, pulling up the email I sent you the last
time we deferred this conversation...
Wells: And I am going to write it down this time.
Wright:: So, the first thing is, with the parking garage, kind of following up on
what Council Member Dunn brought up—the gates and the gate
houses go and you replace those with the payment stations because the
one thing I have watched this ever since that garage was built—people
see the gates and the gate houses and they back out and they leave.
Even on the weekends when the gate is up, they stand there and they
stare at that little ticket thing for like five minutes to figure out if it is
free. I remember way back when I was younger standing there waving
people through when I was at the movie theater on weekends—go! So,
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if it is —if the guard towers are gone—and better signage and if you
have the kiosks there on the center of each floor, on Saturdays or
Sundays or whatever will say "Free" —go away. So, it is a little easier
to manage. Get rid of the gates, replace them with the payment station.
That also allows us to take credit cards because fewer and fewer people
are carrying cash now. The one thing—right in the garage is it a dollar
an hour now?
Wells: I think the first hour or two is free and your maximum rate is five
dollars for the day.
Wright: Okay. It is like a dollar an hour?
Wells: It is like a dollar an hour after the first free period.
Wright: Did we ever get that synced with—I know the first two hours are not
free, obviously on the street, but is it a dollar an hour on the street or is
it something different?
Wells: It is 0.25 for 30 minutes.
Wright: But to sync it, you have also got to take plastic. I would—I mean I
would like to see a mock-up of what we would do because after we did
the— and you got the voicemail from me—after we did the Loudoun
Street improvements I said don't put meters back up until after we can
talk about this because if they do a stand of meters along that it destroys
half of what we did to improve that block, so I would like to kind of see
what the kiosk would look like and I do agree with Tom, one kiosk on
the center of that Loudoun Street block is a reasonable walking
distance.
Wells: I think that is going to be the discussion to have.
Wright: I think a picture would be worth...
Wells: We can do that.
Wright: Worth more words. That is something we need to vet through, because
we are going to kind of get the discussion of if a kiosk doesn't work, do
we really put the stand of meters back up? Yeah, I know there are
credit card accepting meters, but we went to the effort to make more
space and make that feel more open and then we are going to put a
stand of metal posts back up.
Wells: We are back to two hour free parking and shopping.
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Wright: And that is the decision. Do we just give up the two hours free and
chalk tires. I think that is where that discussion goes. Then, following
on the meters, as Council Member Burk mentioned, the far out meters
that have been bagged for a couple of years now, as an experiment...I
think it is time to figure out the results of the experiment. Either get rid
of the meters or take the bags off. Then, at the Liberty Street lot, I will
tell you what the results of the experiment—the six spaces that have a
meter and the other 500 that don't—unless you are going to buy 500
meters, which I know you are not, those meters are gone. So, that was
that. Clear signage and I think we have made progress on this since we
last talked about it, but the signage has to say "parking".
Wells: Yes. No letters.
Wright:: Not random names. You have made progress on the permit parking
thing. People know they can actually park down there now. We have
talked about this a little bit. Get the restrictions off the Liberty and
Harrison lots. People can actually park there.
Wells: We think they are gone.
Wright: And then, the Liberty Street lot, I mean at some point we have to make
that look like a parking lot. There are still the old abandoned buildings
from when that used to be the town shop and all that.
Burk: It still is, isn't it?
Wells: Actually, those are now all used.
Wright:: Okay. We need to make it look like— sic Bill Ference on it.
Burk: He can fix anything.
Wright:: It needs to look a little more inviting than it does.
Wells: Fair enough.
Wright: Let's see here. Meters and then, the changeable sign at the county lots.
I know we have them. They never get flipped around. It needs to
become someone's job. And then, that is for the main county lot and
then for the other lots— the court lots—the same thing. We need to get
a way to flip those signs around—even if it is something that is
mechanical that is on a timer that does it. And then, this is more of a
longer term one—so the county is going to do something with the
courts lot. They are probably going to do structured parking and/or
expand the big lot—Pennington. As the county is looking to do that,
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we should look for opportunities to partner with them because if they
are going to build a garage and we pay for an extra deck that is a win-
win for everybody.
Wells: And that is one of the ideas. Before they were thinking of a parking
deck at Pennington, one of the options of using our small amount of
cash for Payment in Lieu was when they were originally going to just
expand that lot as surface parking, we were talking about using our
dollars and just expand it even further, adding more spaces. So,
whether it goes horizontal or vertical or both, that is a good opportunity
to partner.
Wright: You have got a lot of parking that goes stale after 5 and on weekends
because there is a big sign that says don't park here that if we could
strike the right agreements and flip the signs around at the appropriate
time, that frees up a bunch of parking. It is just a matter of getting folks
aware of it. But, every time—I know I park at the county garage, but I
park at the county garage and head over to Puccio's—every time as I
am walking out of the garage, I see the thing that says I can park here
on weekends, but no one outside gets to see that.
Wells: One of the things we might want to reapproach the county for the next
time we talk to the County supervisors is to look at the opportunity for
a different type of sign. That is where we ended up at—was not the
first choice. The first choice was to have something actually on the
building that would protrude out as opposed to having to drive by.
Wright: Then you could just get it to flip on a clock.
Wells: That's right. It would be good to ask that again.
Wright:: When we asked, did we say they had to pay for it?
Wells: No, we offered to pay.
Wright:: They still said no?
Wells: I think we need to raise the level.
Wright: Did you not ask nicely?
Wells: I asked nice.
Wright: We will have someone else ask.
Wells: We will have someone else ask, yes.
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Wright:: So, I guess this is a process question. So, we have thrown a bunch of
stuff out. You have sent the same memo a couple of times and we talk
about it and we do this. So, assuming the after action here is you are
going to take a couple of these and bring it as something—a structured
conversation?
Wells: What I am hearing is go to EDC. Get some feedback on some of the
items we have talked about. Maybe we will wait until after everybody
talks, but if there is a general direction in certain areas, or at least
narrows the field a little bit, then I can bring something back very
specific as opposed to a wider range of options. Simple question that I
can tell you makes a big difference in the universe is do you want to
have free parking in the garage or not and so if that is where everybody
is at because one of the things that stalled us before was there was a
discussion as to whether we wanted to have free or not—how to tie that
in with the downtown improvements because we can put the
equipment in to have paid parking in the garage, but if you are going to
have free parking, you don't need it—or you don't need the kiosks
there. So, this is very helpful because I have certain on-street items. I
have got payment in lieu items—what could those dollars be used for.
There are a couple of strategies for meters on the street which is strike,
kiosk or meter...
Burk: Or none.
Wells: Or none—well the none is the strike. Well, actually there is a none
which is you could park there indefinitely. We could talk about that
one because of the impact of businesses parking in front of their stores.
Wright: Spaces won't recycle.
Wells: What we are going to do with the garage and then long term, is if we
want to try to start looking at a model like a Frederick, Maryland, or a
Staunton, Virginia. Unless we want to pay for the parking out of the
general fund, do we want to encourage whether its proffers, whether its
payment in lieu and create a little parking—I don't want to call it an
enterprise fund— do we want to look at partnering opportunities with
the county, private developers to add more structured parking? I think
the key there is are we going to charge? The street parking does not
generate enough money to make a difference. It is going to be the
garages.
Wright:: And the garage has more operating costs which is why I advocate—I
advocate for charging in the garage for two reasons. One, it has more
operating costs and two if you make it free, it becomes—unless you are
going to add enforcement, and chalk tires on the first two levels it is
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going to get overwhelmed with commuter parking. In the street, I think
you have got to do a balance of okay to continue to have us be able to
collect fees we do —this is how much it costs us for the credit card
swiping meters or the ugly line of poles or we do the kiosk and then we
figure it out—is the kiosk or the cost of the meters and the cost of
operating the meter program worth it or do we just say two hours and
chalk them and be done with it? I think two answers—what we are
doing with the meters on the street in downtown and overall parking on
the streets in downtown and the plan for the garage to get rid of the
guard gates and do kiosks or whatever we are going to do there—those
are things we need to know before we break ground on King Street.
Wells: And we can—based on what I have heard so far and any additional
conversation—we can bring that conversation back with feedback from
the EDC.
Wright: I think you have got a frame with what you hear now—with what you
guys know professionally—I think you have got a frame of
recommendation. Let EDC laugh at it, provide feedback and bring that
back for discussion at Council fairly quickly.
Hammier: I will try to compartmentalize my comments because ultimately in
active discussion so back to, I guess, summarizing the first and then
perhaps parking these ideas in key places in terms of short term, some
of the longer term, mid term, and long term around their utilizing and
managing existing spaces to create partnerships, reducing demand for
parking in a creative way—even in the context of what we were talking
about in the HEAL presentation and backing into the revenue question,
which is how much do we charge based on specifically what we
determine are our goals for the requirements for parking from the
premise that we are not going to have citizens fund this on the back of
the taxpayers. Rather, we are going to come up with a plan to be able
to anticipate what the ongoing need is based on goals such as economic
development long term. So, a couple of specific things: 1) that in these
major categories, if you will, there are several things I have already
heard and that we have talked about before which is —as Kevin
mentioned, you know eventually soon we will be in a position to have
the town talk to the county about a partnership on the courts. But in
the meantime, we know that there is underutilized surface parking, so it
is a question of—you look at the North Street—if you look at the
County garage, lack of promotion in terms of the availability on peak
hours that the parking is available, but the coordination between the
outreach of the customers coming downtown is not being properly
coordinated, if you will. I think the town can be a broker with that
working with private sector businesses that may want to take the lead in
getting many different private sector involved where that kind of
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cooperative partnership would make sense in the short term, so I would
certainly welcome having staff engage in determining where that kind
of operation could happen if private sector businesses that may want to
be able to have valet service and have cars park on North Street in the
evenings—to bring—you know to have a hub and spoke ability to get
their customers in a very business friendly way to where they want to
go. You know, the context of reducing the demand for parking, if you
will, I just wanted to re-discuss something that I had mentioned that I
had heard at DATA, which is a private sector application. Again, I
don't think that the government has to pay for this application. We
may just be a facilitator but this application called Ride Scout, which
the Dulles Area Transportation Association brought forward is literally
an existing application where citizens can go on and find out how to get
somewhere to get a ride very efficiently to where they want to go. I
think it has to be vetted and it makes sense to vet something like that in
a higher economy of scale type of situation, so I would welcome having
staff kind of look at that or have the EDC look at this particular
application that might be cooperative with the county to see if that
makes sense as an innovative opportunity, to again reduce the need for
parking and as far as the question of do we pay for—continue to have
folks pay for parking either in the garage or elsewhere—I think we need
to have a very specific determination once we determine that we are
leveraging the existing surface parking based on how to manage
different peaks, if you will, when we are getting more and more folks
coming downtown for all the activities we are going to be generating
and all the good opportunities for some of the capital projects going on
and we know that we talked about things that may require technology
that may in the long term— once we determine what the imbalance is
with spaces that we still need. Certainly some of our long term
economic goals, some big picture catalysts for commercial development
downtown that may require us to need structured garage that we need
to back into with both the parking number as well as it make take us x
number of years but if there is going to an anticipated pay rate to get us
to where we need to go and we are communicating what those
measurable goals are. The other kind of final area for me is more
tactical and short term and I would appreciate having staff take a look
at where we can determine where there might be requirements for other
targeted customers that we want to cooperatively facilitate the parking—
not those that are coming in the evening we think for a long time, or
coming for a specific purpose and might just get a ride back and forth
from a surface lot, but many want a pedestrian drop off or what I would
call a quick pick up option, so if staff could take a look at Loudoun and
Market Street and look at need for turnover, which would be quicker
than chalking the tires after two hours of free parking so that we have
this more of a balance between the needs of the parking based on the
targeted customers, you know, the orchestration, if you will, in terms of
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trying to meet the demand, or in some cases reduce demand to be able
to get people where they need to go to downtown. So those were kind
of—I could summarize the few, but I will write it down, but it is asking
staff three very specific things in terms of the creative partnerships with
the county and private sectors to leverage surface lots, looking at
reducing the need for parking which would be having staff look at the
county—be able to bring back to the EDC something like a Ride Scout
—and looking at the parking fund as it relates to determining the
parking charges that we need to charge to get us where we want to go
but have that as part of a plan so we can measure it and get us where
we want to go with measured goals and I think part of that will, in fact,
a little more research on this Frederick, Maryland, I think case study,
which is, you know, wait, wait, wait and then build a garage or are
there specific goals we are trying to achieve and do we need to come up
with a different type of partnership, structured parking solution to get
the revenue that we need to make that happen.
Butler: Okay, John. I have a couple of things that seem like there are some on
Council that would like to make the garage free and some that would
like to continue to have it charged, but I think there is a—it seems like
we are moving towards a consensus that we really need to get rid of all
the hardware that is outside the garage.
Wells: Absolutely.
Butler: Plan to do that as soon as possible is probably a great idea. Now the
street parking—I am not in favor of having free street parking because
you want to encourage turn over on the street parking. In fact, a lot of
towns have found that while free parking on the street feels business
friendly, it is not. In fact, what you want to do is, you do not want to
match the parking garage pricing on the street. You want the street to
be significantly more costly than the garage. That encourages turnover
and reduces significantly the chance that someone is just going to park
themselves in front of the business and stay there forever. You don't
want that. You want to encourage people to move into the garage and
I they happen to go out of the garage and they spend four or five hours
downtown, great! That's exactly what we want. We do not want
somebody to park their car in front of a business and stay there for four
or five hours. That is not what we want. Now, whether you do it by
parking meters and they do have pretty good parking meters nowadays,
or you do it by kiosks that are in the middle of the block or something
like that. I think that is a fair, reasonable thing. I will not be in favor of
just going around chalking tires because—in fact, I don't think it really
works and the time variability is too high. You know, if you happen to
be parked there right after the chalker left, you get a lot more free time
than somebody else. In my experience, it just causes stress on the
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motorist, because they do not have specific indication of when the
person is going to come back. So, it is more of a gambling spot. And
the last thing I heard is that we should do something—we need to come
up with some options for the Liberty Street lot. You know, do we just
make it better so that it actually looks like a parking lot instead of a
weird thing in the middle of the somewhere. Should we do a PPEA
with a potential parking garage. Do we do something there so that it
give Jan Zacharias the spots—we promised him a certain amount of
spots. We could build a commercial building there. I don't know what
the answer is, but I think that sounds like...
Wells: I will package that, send a summary to Council for FYI and also send
the relevant sections on to the EDC. I will provide updates on the
items you can begin looking at immediately.
Dunn: One other thing, John. Over the weekend, Wirt Street is—what is our
parking situation there officially? Both sides parking?
Wells: On Sundays, I believe it is because of the church service that was
accommodated. Based on the amount of demand. You do not have
that much traffic on that street on the weekends.
Dunn: Something else we might want to consider is— and I don't know if there
are any other streets in town where we have special parking
considerations like that, but we may want to consider looking at any
that we do —that we allow more liberal parking standards after business
hours—so those businesses that open up in the evening—people want
to be able to park closer, they can do so parking on the street after 6 for
example—Wirt Street you can park on one side the whole length of the
street. That would be again, something that would either be done
through meters or a sign—free parking after 6, something like that. I
don't know if there are any other streets like that.
Wells: I don't know off hand. There are always little quirks here and there.
We can bring that back. Well, this has been real helpful. What I will
do, like I said, I will summarize what we talked about tonight so we
don't wait until the next time—we will keep the emails —I will make
sure I got this first and then we will keep track of where these different
pieces are at. Some stuff can come back earlier rather than later.
Dunn: I was going to say, can we put a date on this? I'd hate to have this thing
—it seems like all we have done tonight is rehash everything we have
done already. So, I know we were going to try to get a detailed
discussion on it but we are still now bumping it off now to EDC and we
don't have anything solid that we can refer to yet. June 30, the last
June meeting— does that give you enough time?
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Wells: There are probably a few items that we can report back earlier, but
some of the things that may take a little longer. What I can suggest is,
have an end date for everything by June 30. There may be some items
that we can knock off prior to that—that I can report back to you on.
Wright:: I'd like to knock off the meters and what we are doing with that. We
are going to break ground on King Street most likely in the next budget
year. You need budget money to buy those things, we should probably
talk about it in the next two months.
Wells: What I will do in the summary is put in order the things that have to go
first based on some construction decisions and then items that maybe
we can resolve quicker—other things that get referred places may take a
little longer. We will work with the June 30 end date for everything—
at least get it all back here, but I will give you a road map between now
and then with the different pieces.
Dunn: Thank you.
Burk: I think we have accomplished—I don't think this was a rehashing,
totally. I think it was a—there was some things that we have taken care
of and gotten off the agenda and we just added some more stuff. So, I
think...
Dunn: There wasn't any action—that was the point.
Hammier: Can I just say two other very quick things? The technology, which is
something we have discussed in the past, but the garage. If there was a
way to do what Dulles airport does and say you know there are 37
spaces on the second floor, there are you know, 75 on the top floor. It
just gets back to managing—directing people to the garage. How much
is that going to cost? Does that make sense? And back when Tom and
I were on EDC we—that was when we discussed meters way back
when, Tom, if you remember—that report which was a$50,000
consulting report—what I do recall was that the meters and the staff
time would have cost more than what we would have made in the
meters. So, I know you are going to be managing that through this
process as well. I just wanted to make sure that the revenues including
what we have to pay for the technology all make sense.
Wright:: Tongue in cheek— is there a way to do what Dulles does?They just
randomly change those numbers. There are not actually those spaces
on those floors. I can do that with a message board and some random
numbers that change every couple of hours.
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Hammier:: As long as people know that there are plenty of spaces in the garage
during the day, we are good.
Butler: As long as we are directing people to the garage, we are good.
f. Economic Development Update: Ambassador Program
Jim Sisley, Chair of the Economic Development Commission, gave a
presentation on the Economic Development Commission's proposed
Ambassador Program.
Key Points:
• Concept would increase uncompensated economic development
resources
• Would report trends that affect the commercial tax base to staff and
Council
• Goal would be to help protect the town's commercial tax base
• Ambassadors would be acquired in the same manner that other Boards
and Commissioners are acquired through an appointment process
• Program's effectiveness would be tested
• Training would be provided to Ambassadors
Council Comments/Questions (Verbatim Discussion follows):
Hammler: Thank you for the briefing, Jim. It looks very ambitious. I know it has
been coming for a long time. I guess my only question is do you think
there is a way to kind of start small and just kind of get started and
bring back some feedback because this seems extremely comprehensive,
if you will. Recruiting and preparing a group of ambassadors.
Sisley: Simple answer is yes.
Hammier: Great.
Sisley: I am approved to bring the concept forward. I can offer an opinion
about that. But, yes I believe it is in the best interests of everybody to
start in a small format and not employ 40 or 50 ambassadors. Just do a
few.
Hammler: I just appreciate the fact that you all already are great ambassadors—
our EDC. So, thank you for all you do.
Wright: A few things. [inaudible], so I am comfortable with the concept, but I
think the devil is going to be in the details. One of the details I think
that we are really going to need to understand is the training and the
vetting process and kind of who is going to qualify and select those
ambassadors because while they are not going to be on town payroll
and whatever, they are going to be—in one way or another
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representative of the town so you can make sure they have the right
information and the right training and are not misrepresenting the town
either intentionally, God forbid, or more likely unintentionally. To
make sure they have the right information. The one thing, I am
worried about, while this gives us additional resources, it is not without
a resource impact. So, there is a resource impact up front for that
training and that vetting process. A lot of that training process would
probably be within the EDC and Economic Development staff, but it is
going to involve other areas of, you know, HR and Legal and those
things of kind of what you can and cannot do. When this comes back
for kind of final direction, I would expect there to be some fiscal impact
statement along with it of, you know, what the staff time impact is.
The other thing is, I would also expect a plan of probably staff, of
where you have got, you get the reports, they get circulated out, as we
had talked about earlier today, those reports are going to have—they
are going to generate actions. So, who is going to then have the
responsibility to take those actions from those reports or those meetings
of hey I talked to XYZ Business, they have this concern. We need, you
know, we need XYZ Department Head or whatever to get back to him.
Who is going to be responsible to capture those action items, give them
out to the appropriate staff resource and then make sure they get closed
so we track them. The good thing about getting out and talking to folks
is we get more information. The bad thing is the more you go out and
talk to folks, the more work you come up with. As a project manager, I
know there is times the technical people on my team say "please stop
talking to business folks and asking them if they need anything because
they keep saying yes". So, that's I think one of the things that is not
identified there. We have got kind of the reporting process but kind of
what is going to happen to the reports —how are those going to get
administered? The worst thing that could happen—even if we start
small, we have five folks go out, have five meetings, there are ten action
items come out and we don't do anything. Now we have five people
that are more mad than they were before.
Hammier:: I think that is the benefit of starting small. So, that we can look at this
in terms of the process.
Wright: Right, but no matter how small you start, if there is not a plan to take
that action item and give it to someone else, it is just a question of how
many people you made mad.
Sisley: A couple of things. There is a lot that's not on there because it is not
finished. It is a concept. We had, as I said, on the EDC map for six
years. It is widely published. What we are trying to do is come to
Council and just basically take this now and tell us to stop and if you
think we have a chance at success, let us go back and flesh out the
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details so we can brin g it back. What we didn't want to do is take a lot
of time and effort inside the EDC to come up with a full plan and
present that and hear you hated it. So, this is an attempt to come and
ask permission to go back and finish fleshing out the details and bring
back a better, more complete plan. I do agree the goal of the program is
not to create a giant never-ending inbox. What we want is to be able to
distill from the efforts real information that can help make policies. I
understand there are details that we haven't presented yet. We are
looking forward to coming back.
Wright:: Then, one other that I thought of after we'd hung up is kind of
determine who talks to who so kind of who is going to give the
assignment list out because obviously there are going to be some
businesses that either based on what they are up to or perhaps their past
history or a working case, that is going to be one staff is going to take
versus delegating to an ambassador or at least it is not going to be a new
ambassador because it may not be a fun meeting. What that
assignment roster looks like—is there a hot topic business that maybe
has a different sensitivity to it rather than the other unleaded 2500
businesses that are out there. Then, I guess, I had a question for staff. I
don't know if they want to answer it now or later. But how do you
guys engage today. Obviously, you guys have a lot things you do, but
what is your engagement process with businesses. Is it more that you
get enough folks that call you that those are most of your business
touch points or like how are you out there engaging with folks,
businesses today.
Edwards: Well, we get calls driven by a sign issue or an expansion issue, so there
are some circumstances that generate a call. There are other signs that
we get. There are other indicators. You know, we personally missed
one—the Ben Franklin. There are other clues and there are other trends
that we see and that drives us to talk to a particular business. So, those
calls that come in that we problem solve. But, there are also those calls
that we see indicators and trends and information that is going out that
we think is important to have a conversation. And we learn from you
all.
Wright: So, would you say its 60% reactive and 40%proactive contacts or is
most of it reactive contacts at this point.
Edwards: I would be guessing. I would really be guessing. I would think it is—
we have over 2700 businesses existing in town and we get them in a
variety of mechanisms. We have valid conversations with them at
Chamber events, at different functions. Those can be real meaningful
conversations and I would qualify those as important conversations.
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Martinez: I like the idea of going small. One of the things that concerned me is
you talked about the retail gap and how you are going to measure that
and what kind of market analysis is going to come along with that.
What the shortfall is between what we have and what we could get—
what could make downtown even more viable. The other one is you
said you identify trends. How did you go about doing that? Right
now, I don't think you really need to answer me as much as understand
what I am trying to get at. The big thing is when we start talking about
these gap analysis' and these trend analysis and we had made mention
about measurement—how are you going to measure your success
against what we are doing today to how this helps? That is it. You
don't have to answer now. Just ingest, think and maybe come back.
Sisley: We will make sure we come back—if you approve this —we come back
with the answers.
Burk: A couple of things—the one thing I think is very important for the
Economic Development Commission, in my opinion is if we approve
this, we need to be committed to it. It may require additional staff and
with them able to have that information before they go into a
tremendous amount of detail they are going to come back "oh we have
to hire an additional person and oh we are not willing to do that at this
point budget-wise". So, I think it is very important that we—somehow
we can get that—I don't think we can do that before we get all the
details. But, there has to be that fiscal impact before they go into a
tremendous amount of detail, as far as I can see. Because, you are
going to end up doing all that work. Like I said, then it turns out that
you will need additional staff or won't. That is what people have to
know. That is what Council is looking for. I don't know how to do
that. John, do you have any ideas on how to look at this before they
actually go into details or should we let people work on it and then
have them come back?
Wells: My thought would be to have the Economic Development Commission
vote on it. I and other staff members can work with them as they are
working their way through it. Part of the questions can be what type of
conversations are we going to have and we can speculate now or when
we get to the EDC about follow-up on signs, follow-up on utilities,
follow-up on zoning questions, and how those are going to be funneled
through to be followed up on by the staff. I think we can figure that out
without getting to the very end. I will need to hear a little bit more but
I think we can work cooperatively together to bring something back. I
do not think we have to do one versus the other. I think we can do it
together.
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Wright:: Kelly, if I may on that. John, would you be able—I guess as you do
that conversation, maybe determine a threshold of—hey, based on the
conversations you are doing—we shouldn't be going out and generating
more than blank action items so that's—we can't accommodate more
than five ambassadors on the street.
Wells: And that's a good way of looking at it. There is going to be—certainly
going out is going to generate conversations and follow-up. Where
those questions lead us and how many questions are coming in at any
point in time, yes, we will need to look at some thresholds.
Hammier: If I may jump in on the topic, because it raises a red flag. If all of a
sudden it is triggering the requirement for more staff—I am not
suggesting that is what you proposed—but if it does trigger that
question, this becomes counterproductive because the goal is to
increase commercial revenue to offset the residential tax burden and if
we start increasing the residential tax burden for this type of program, it
becomes counterproductive, period. And then, the other thing is—you
just reminded me of this other key thought, which is, you know, back to
the fundamental premise, which is we are trying increase commercial
tax revenue, this has I think an important facet of, kind of if you will,
maintaining the existing business base, but perhaps at the opportunity
cost of increasing and diversifying the economic base with new business
development. Those are the areas that we would want to increase
resources because there is going to be a high pay off.
Wells: If I may, let me speak to the issue of staffing because I don't want it to
look like just because we go out, we talk to people, there is going to be a
need for more staff. Right now, if a business—there is some level of
confusion. Let's use the water availability fees. There is an example
where if a business knew up front by visiting with an ambassador what
the rules are, or what the requirements are, then there is likely to be less
of an issue on the back end. I can tell you personally how much time I
spend along with Marantha, Jim and some other staff members on the
fact that a particular business did not have that information up front.
So, in some ways, while we may generate questions on the front end,
we may be saving time on the back end. Sign issues are another one.
Where if the business knows what—truly understands what the
regulations are on the front end with signage, that may result in less
violations or less concerns. Just because we are talking and generating
follow-up, that follow-up may solve more lengthy follow-up on the back
end.
Hammier:: As long as there is an efficient process to capture where there may be
some level of misunderstanding and that becomes a trigger for better
communication on the website.
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Wells: Absolutely.
Hammler:: In other words, to broadcast what we are finding is something that
needs to be communicated.
Wells: I can tell you that any time an availability fee problem comes up, it is a
very time consuming issue because the business does not know it up
front, they are usually at the tail end of wrapping up their business
deal...
Burk: Why wouldn't they know it up front?
Wells: I will let Jim explain why they don't know it up front.
Sisley: Without naming names, we had those come after they signed the lease.
After they spent an very large amount on doing their interior
improvements only to find out when they came to get their business
license, why they waited that late to get their business license, is a
problem, but at that discussion to get their business license—at the
counter they said, they talked to the water department about the
availability fee and they were like "well, what's that?". So, it was
literally everything was stopped.
Burk: Does that happen often?
Sisley: It happens more than we want it to. There have been other incidents
like that. Our [inaudible] comes from businesses trying to open and
being surprised by additional layers of policy.
Burk: So, how would the ambassador program help that? Now, I am a little
confused. How would your ambassador—wouldn't need need to come
in until after?
Sisley: Just think of it as a [inaudible] you would have Joe Citizen and they
want to open a business. They want to start a cheesecake shop in town.
So, as a real estate professional I will have a discussion that they should
stop looking for real estate and go to the town and find out what they
need in order to have that kitchen and what they want before they look
any further because that would disqualify some properties and make
other properties look okay. People do that, they are driven by this
curiosity and the uninformed glimpse of potential [inaudible]. It makes
them blind. We can introduce them to what the policies are so that
they make a decision about a location in as qualified a fashion as
possible. That is not the only point—people want to put up additional
signs. They may want to expand their footprint beyond what is
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allowed, they may make a decision without permission. It increases the
number of discussions with businesses so that they know where the
policy interface is with the municipal corporation.
Burk: How would you do that if you don't know they are opening a business?
Or am I asking for too much detail at this point?
Sisley: You are probably asking for too much detail and I don't have any
answers to it. Businesses are all on their own. They never touch or talk
to anybody else. But the vast majority, we could.
Burk: I think this could be a tremendous asset for the town, if we could get it
working. I think it would be very exciting. I don't know of any other
town that does it, do you?
Sisley: There are others that have done it successfully. The Loudoun Chamber
had an ambassador program for quite a while and the information that
came out of it was "invaluable" to the Chamber.
Burk: So, we could actually go look at other locations and how they do it.
Sisley: We would have to provide that as a precursor to the presentation.
Burk: So, it would be a great opportunity to help businesses and do all the
things we want to do. I do have—and I would be very interested in the
details of the training—what you talked about. I had envisioned going
and talking about signs. I had envisioned them talking about their
business. How is your business going, what is it doing, how is it
working, is there something the town needs to do to help? I did not
realize we would be getting into a little more minute detail. That's fine.
I will be—that is going to take quite a bit of training.
Sisley: If I may? The discussion within the EDC was more about the positive
and negative trends that affect a business and less about becoming staff
—a replacement for zoning staff or any other staff member. That is not
the paradigm. I know this is a paradigm shift in the way that the
Council thinks about people that represent the town, but we are, that is
the intended purpose is to go out and sit down and identify positive and
negative trends so that we can bring those back earlier than we have in
the past and also have those much more granular discussions than what
we have had where we have asked people to come to a larger room for
discussions.
Burk: The other one I would be very concerned about and you are going to
have to really work this is conflict of interest. You are going to have to
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be careful that you don't get realtors helping a new—I only picked
realtors because you—
Sisley: That's okay.
Burk: Getting—advising another realty company and maybe not giving them
the whole information because it's a competitor and there would be a
problem with that and that sort of thing, but again is going to come out
in the details. I understand that. But that is something...
Sisley: That is something a really solid policy...
Burk: That is going to be really important. I think that is going to be
something you are going to have to work on. Those are the two
concerns that I would have, but I think this is a great opportunity.
Gosh, you know, the fact that you are willing to put all the time into
this is great.
Dunn: Well, I am all for this. I think the—I mean the very last words I left
with the EDC when I left the EDC was that I hope that you get out and
get more EDC members to the community and get more businesses
recruited. I think that what I have heard so far tonight, though, was
that this was talking more about business retention than business
recruitment. One of the biggest things for me, and as you know, Jim,
and for anyone else who is in business, nothing happens until the sale
takes place. Until we sell Leesburg to prospective businesses, then as
already has been mentioned, alls we are going to do is try to maintain
our current tax base. What—I look at this as an ambassador as
somebody who goes out of country— outside the town limits. Goes and
gets businesses. Otherwise, you are just a delegate. That's semantics.
Sisley: [Inaudible]
Dunn: Who cares what you call it. I am more concerned with the fact that we
need to be better recruiters of new business. That is always one of the
questions that I have. How many businesses can we point to from start
to finish that the Economic Development Commission or Department
can point to from start to finish that we brought into the town.
Sisley: Can I answer? According to the Dashboard, something in the sense of
a dozen and in excess of 100 new jobs.
Edwards: Since January. The Hubzone has been in place since January.
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Dunn: So, you went out and talked to a dozen businesses and said you need to
do business here in Leesburg rather than where you were thinking of
doing business.
Sisley: Or more. [inaudible] historic underutilized business zone that we were
graced with as a result of the census. We put on a number of public
events where we published it, advertised for it. We invited people
through various different mechanisms. They would come. We did
presentations. Those people have decided to open their businesses here
and hire more than 100 employees.
Dunn: Great. If you can get that list for me, I would love to see it. Hold on
Katie. They will get it for everybody, I am sure. How many
commercial realtors have you talked to? How many of them are in
Leesburg or how many of them market to the Leesburg community?
Sisley: That is a count that [inaudible]. I can't tell you the entire group. I can
tell you that we have two events every single year where we invite a lot
of realtors from around the region. We also invite new businesses to
come. It is one of those concise ways for somebody to see spaces they
could occupy in the Town of Leesburg so we have—do we have 60-75
realtors that we communicate with?
Edwards: Close to 75.
Sisley: Okay, 75. If you have an active business license doing real estate—
commercial real estate—I didn't count any of the residential real estate
brokers that are here—we touch them every single time we have got a
piece of real estate. [inaudible] the town subscribes to Costar, which is
a paid subscription service. Actually Costar links to [inaudible] to get a
lot of listings up to date [inaudible].
Dunn: How many business property owners do we have in Leesburg? I'd be
interested in finding that out. Do you know, Marantha?
Edwards: I do not have that information. [inaudible]
Dunn: I don't care if they are on our [inaudible] or not. How many business
property owners do we have because those are the people you should be
—you talked about a lot of issues about dealing with signs, utilities,
zoning—they are the ones who are making the decisions as to rent or
sell to that business. The renter is there, but they are the ones putting
their name on the line. It would be good if those people know so that
they can ensure a successful business occupying their property—that
they know what the town issues are. They can tell, but it would be
good to know that we have at least done our job in informing them. I
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am not talking about where we have good or bad relationships, I am
just recommending do we know who they are and are we willing to
know what leads in the town are to help ensure their business is
successful by having a good sale or rental. A company goes out of
business if their property does not help them.
Sisley: Part of that answer is yes. I did not answer your first question
[inaudible]. If you go to a business and they take care of you. You tell
a couple of people. You and I go have lunch. I will tell you that I had
a business experience and I know that you are looking for that—you
need to go and frequent that business, but if I go someplace and they
really make me unhappy I have been known to tell 10-20 people, post
something online and that conversation goes viral and it goes broad.
So, the answer to the positive side of the equation where we are
reaching out to try to bring new businesses into our community—the
best thing we can have for people who have businesses in our
community that will have that two or three person conversation—I will
hear somebody is thinking about a new business location—they are the
ones that are going to tell them please come to our town because these
people are very business friendly. How we get them to do that is by a
more frequent touch, [inaudible] so they understand what the town can
and can't do. So they understand what things even positively or
negatively affect the business so they can help Council create proper
policies.
Dunn: This may go back to again some previous areas, how would a
prospective business know to reach out to an ambassador? I know that
they could possibly look out to—that may go to the combination of
dealing with a realtor, dealing with the property owners and so forth.
What can you do—you mentioned it, Marantha—that you talk about it
quite a bit—what can you do to actually stop a business from actually
going out of business?
Edwards: Just as a point statistic, 80% of—and this is a statistic from the
International Business Development Council— 80% of job growth
comes from existing businesses, so that's not to say that prospecting
isn't important. It certainly is, but job growth comes from existing. To
answer the question on trying to help businesses, that is part of the
conversation to have with businesses is to go and find out if they are
having issues with hiring folks, are they having issues with retaining
people, are there lifestyle issues in the community. We often talk about
the cost of living. You know, those are the kinds of conversations that
we try to help the businesses with—we are not looking to help folks
with their business plans, necessarily, but it is ways to exchange ideas
and share those conversations that I have had with somebody else that
may say Barbara Notar's business is at risk—how can I help her? What
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kinds of ideas can I come u p help with to hel facilitate additional deeper
conversations to help her business get back on track, whether it is
referring her to the SBDC, whether it is referring to a number of other
opportunities. So, those are the kinds of conversations, if somebody is
interested in having those conversations with an economic development
professional.
Dunn: Okay. Let's see. You mentioned, Jim, something about a business that
—businesses you looked at that were helped to prevent leakage, usually
to the east. What has the business community done to absorb some of
that leakage since you had those two meetings?
Sisley: I am aware that my [inaudible] impending failure or recent past failure
of some of the businesses that are highly dependent on discretionary
income—hair salons are in a particularly difficult position.
Dunn: You had to pick hair salons?You had to pick hair salons?
Sisley: We had leakage or a gap, if you would, so hair salons started
[inaudible]. There are some people that view soft goods, design, and
interior furnishings. We have a gap in drapes and other soft goods for
the home, so they have gone and making drapes and pillows and other
soft goods. They have expanded their product line. Just because you
explain that to them, does not mean they will get it. Ladies boutique
here in town, without mentioning any names, she expanded her
product line, [inaudible] she filled that gap and she is selling
[inaudible].
Dunn: Have you gotten any new businesses in town to fill some of these gaps?
Sisley: Are you asking me personally, or are you asking us as the EDC?
Dunn: As a town. Have we seen new businesses filling that gap?
Sisley: [inaudible] but the businesses that are taking it are actually the existing
businesses and the reason for that is even though we publish on the
website the gap analysis [inaudible] there is only so much passive
posting of information that you can put out there and there is only so
much [inaudible] so the ambassador program is going to kind of
[inaudible] and start to level that [inaudible] symposiums that we have
where the existing businesses [inaudible]. Now we have a couple
business ideas that came, and I can't tell you whether or not they
decided to start businesses.
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Dunn: You mentioned the availability fee issue. Do you know of any
businesses that have foregone coming to Leesburg because of the
relative—even with the staggered payment process that we have?
Sisley: I do and I will tell you that the staggered payment process really helps.
It helps most because we stagger payments for people that have water
availability fee above $25,000. I believe what we have done with
portability of availability fees is a huge first step. Allowing property
owners to transport that availability in property that they own. What
that has done is free up credit to help new businesses come in without
necessarily having to pay the entire fee all at once. I know businesses
that have failed because of the water availability fee, at least that is
what they claimed. [inaudible] any business that has come to the town
and inquired about the water availability fee and how to work with
town staff to get into place.
Dunn: I kind of agree with the idea of going small, but I already feel like we
have. We have already been small with this concept for seven or eight
years and if we are going to go small, go small quickly and ramp it up
as soon as we have got some results. The last thing I will say is that as I
started, nothing happens until sales take place, but unless you have
goals that are measurable and attainable— and I think too often in the
EDC, and I go back with the EDC a long way, we talk a lot of theory.
I want to see results. We talk about some results, and that is good to
hear. I want to hear even better results. We should be looking at this
program. I think that the key factor in it is what are the measurable
results. We cannot measure theory. We can talk about it, but what are
the [inaudible] going to be. Set those goals and meet it.
Sisley: I am selling concepts. Hopefully I have been successful. I really
appreciate your time. I really appreciate the time that you have given
us. Do I have a nod to go forward?
Butler: Yes, I think so. Definitely.
Sisley: Thank you so much.
Butler: I think this is a good idea, but I think it is—we have to be clear on what
the mission of the ambassador is. I have heard about three different
missions go around the table. Okay, staff supplementation,
shepherding businesses through the process, or getting feedback on
what friends are and where businesses can thrive, where we may be
able to improve things. I am not sure we can do it all and I think we
want to make sure we know exactly what your goal is going in to this
kind of a thing. One of the things that I definitely do not want to have
happen—I don't want this to be like we are going to save a business
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program. I do not necessarily want to save businesses. If there is some
surprise that a business has that may make a difference in whether they
turn around or if there is some piece of advice like here is a leakage
report and if you do something else or something in addition to this—
that's a good thing, that's okay, but I absolutely do not want to spend
town resources propping up businesses that should not be propped up.
That is not our job. Hair salons —if the town runs out of disposable
income or reduces their disposable income and hair salons get hit, that's
capitalism. If Hobby Lobby comes in and Ben Franklin goes out, that
happens. It is not our job to make sure that does not happen. If there is
a business that does not have a strong of a business model and they go
under and they are replaced by a stronger business, maybe one that is
more apt to capture more money from town residents, or people outside
the town, that is a great thing for the town overall. It sucks for that
particular business, but when you look at it from a town-wide
standpoint, we can't be in the business of—
Martinez: Subsidizing.
Butler: Subsidizing, you know, businesses that for whatever reason,just aren't
making it. What we can do is make sure that they have the information
at their fingertips and are not surprised and we can listen to trends
about what we can do to make our processes effective. Thank you very
much, Jim. It was great.
Hammler: I just have a few comments. I think through this discussion, it has been
interesting because I think what would be helpful for Council to have as
you are coming back with your reports. Hopefully staff has access to
this or can collate it along with Council's goals, but conceptually—the
premise was increasing commercial revenue. We talked about, well
80% of job growth comes from existing businesses—so you are going to
go and talk to existing businesses, presumably because you want to
increase jobs and we talked a little bit about maybe disposable income
is decreasing and so there is a leakage of certain businesses based on
decreasing disposable income. Those are important points and pretty
interesting trends, John, which I think gets back to I think the whole
notion from a macro perspective is we are trying to focus on
commercial revenue. We are trying to focus on those jobs that are
probably more high wage in nature, because guess what you have high
wage jobs, you have more like them and you start attracting more types
of retail. Wegman's did not come here because we have a quaint
downtown. They came because there is a [inaudible] of measured
income that we happen to be in the center of. We have to keep looking
at that dynamic which gets back to do we just get a job growth—a job
growth that happens to be low wage. I think we are trying to build a
stable, diversified base and it is getting at those—you know, you are
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going to have the outreach, you know, helping based on this
information, but we have to be in line with those big picture goals too.
g. New Business Launchpad
Marantha Edwards stated the team that worked on this project includes
Finance, Utilities, Planning and Zoning and the Town Manager's office.
Key Points:
• An online starting point for new businesses
• Part of the continuum of business process improvements
• Press release went out today on the Leesburg Launchpad
• Speed of business has increased
• Vetted through the Economic Development Commission and the Small
Business Development Center and the County EDC
• Working on a home based business model
• Walks the prospective business owner through the process from site
selection to ribbon cutting
• Addresses all parts of the town process including necessary permits,
licenses and applications
• Utilizes existing tools available to the Town
Council Member Comments/Questions (Verbatim discussion follows):
Burk: Well, I just want to congratulate you. It isn't easy to get all that
information in one place like that. I know it was a lot of work and I
think it is a great asset. I know that it is going to make it much easier
for people to get help from Economic Development and all the different
departments and make it easier for everyone to start a business.
Appreciate it. I think it is great. I was very excited when you showed it
at the Economic Development Commission meeting.
Martinez: I deal with this stuff all the time, Sharepoint. Building an application
off Sharepoint. I was glad to see you guys are using the power that is
there. I know sometimes it feels like you reach in that drawer, you pull
out a bunch shoelaces and try to untangle the knots and figure out
where they go and sometimes that is a lot of what I am dealing with
Sharepoint. I like it. It is a great job.
Wright: Good job. No additional comments.
Hammier:: The different links with specific things that businesses have to do—how
many require coming to Town Hall, versus being able to do them
online? That is a rhetorical question, because obviously we have a lot
of things to catch up on. We are working on fixing that. I guess I am
bringing that up because time is of the essence if you are a new business
owner. You click on it and you go—I have to go to town hall to get my
business license? I have to go to town hall to get my zoning permit? I
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have to go to town hall to pay my business property tax? That is what
we have got to fix immediately to get this thing really working properly.
Then, as far as just the world in which we live, you know having—I
don't even know if this is possible considering resources, but if usually
someone just wants someone to chat with—they don't want to submit a
form. They want to be able to chat immediately.
Edwards: We did talk about that.
Hammler: You will get there. You have also mentioned things like— someone
might just want to click on a quick video that could be that two minutes
to say, you know, somebody that they can visualize it—here is what I
did. Just personalize it. So, I think there is a few more things. Great
start. I know we are headed in that direction.
Butler: Thank you. I think it is great. Thank you very much.
h. Consideration of Elimination of Personal Property Proration
Norm Butts stated they are proposing the elimination of the personal
property tax proration program that is currently in place.
Key points:
• Currently the taxpayer pays taxes on personal property in the
proportion to the amount of time the property is situated in the Town of
Leesburg
• Process is complex
• Causes taxpayer confusion
• Elimination will simply and enhance customer service
• Fiscal impact is dependent on general economy
• Town Code will need amended in four separate places
Council Comments/Questions (Verbatim discussion follows):
Hammier:: Well, a couple of things come immediately to mind. I remember sitting
through the finance forum that we went to Kaj, and this sounds exactly
what we were trying to fight in terms of how BOS VRS became
structured. The sort of we are going to find one point in time and that
is going to be end of it. Where I am using examples, Norm, of standing
in lines and saving taxpayer time, is because our system is absolutely
antiquated and we are working on fixing the online bill pay. We are
working on fixing the fact that this should be instantaneous and easy
and we aren't doing it. And so, yes, it is taking a ton of time of staff
and it is taking a ton of time of people coming to park at town hall and
stand in lines, but that is not the problem. So, to me that is the
fundamental underlying issue that we have got to address. Once we
address that, I am happy to consider this but to me it is going to create a
sense of[inaudible] and I would be curious to know of the jurisdictions
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that don't have reasonable online bill P a Y in terms of that customer—
that public customer service for their citizens for these types of
transactions.
Wright: So, Norm, the largest thing with the proration is you guys have to go
back and basically figure out when people bought a car and recalculate
their tax bills as opposed to getting the tax roll on—much like the real
estate tax—you get the tax roll on Jan. 1 —that's when we cut the bills
for. I think that's what you are proposing here. We get one set of tax
rolls. You cut one set of bills. We don't have to do a calculation if
someone changes their car mid-year.
Butts: It is very simple. For the taxpayer, all they would have to do if they
bought a new car during the tax year is contact us and we would send
them a new decal to put on the new vehicle.
Wright:: Then they would get the tax bill in the subsequent year. Going through
the list of things you are looking at, so at first I was a little worried but
then John gave me the back story of how all this started. I won't make
him tell it again but it was basically a revenue grab of by doing— at the
time it was a revenue grab by the government. When I first looked at it,
it was like is this something we are doing to try to get more revenue, but
in actuality it is something to try to get less. It is simplify, cut one bill,
be done with it. Of the changes you are looking at making, the only
one that makes me nervous is changing the payment due date of
moving it from October 5 to May 5. I think we are going to need—I
just want to tread carefully there.
Butts: What happens there— if I might. In the transition, the way this would
work, is that 2014 would be a tax year. 2014 would be a tax holiday.
So, there would be no tax collected in 2014. The first time we would
start collecting taxes in October in 2014, we would collect them in May
of 2015. It would be in the same fiscal year, so there would be no
impact on the budget, but—
Wright: Ah!
Butts: We had thought of that. Obviously.
Wright: So, I wouldn't get an October bill followed immediately by a May bill.
I would just get...
Butts: You would get a May bill. And the impact of that would be to declare
a tax holiday, essentially for 2014. There would be no tax paid by a
taxpayer in 2014. I think one of the things that we found with the
larger jurisdictions, their tax rate is so much higher than ours—our tax
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rate is a $1.00 per$100. If you look at Loudoun County, for example,
it is $4.25 per $100. Some of the counties are $5 per $100 and even one
of the counties was $6.50 per$100. So, they have a much higher tax
rate so there is more money. They are bigger so they have economies
of scale with staffing and the county does this where they have biennial
payment and we only pay once a year. So, this would move the
payment from October 2, which is the County's second payment in the
tax year to May 5, which is the County's first tax payment, so it would
still sync up with the County.
Martinez: What is broken?
Hammier:: Apparently, the issue of even talk about economies of scale of staff.
What is broken is...
Martinez: What is broken? I don't want to hear all the other stuff. What is
broken?
Hammier: You cannot pay your personal property tax via an online system. You
can't just essentially have a simple transaction...
Martinez: So, what does that have to do with what Norm is talking about? You
see, I understand what Norm is saying and I understand what you are
saying. But, right now, we are not talking about online bill paying and
the problem we have with it. Let's focus on this issue. The online bill
paying and all the other financial issues you have....
Hammier:: This fiscal impact does not include the value of the time that would
have been saved by taxpayers.
Martinez: You can throw so much stuff out there.
Hammier: That's underlined in bold.
Martinez: So, anyway. What is broken? I still don't understand why you make
such a big deal out of that when I am looking at it—this town because
of our budget cutting and because of a lot of things we did—a lot of
stuff you are complaining about has not been able to be implemented
because they haven't got the funds to do it. Now, if you want these
things to happen, pony up.
Hammier: Marty, if you want to talk about the online bill pay, I sat through the
presentations and it does not require any upfront funding, period.
Butler: We can talk about that at another time.
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Hammier: We aren't talking about that. I am just saying it needs to be fixed.
Martinez: You slammed Norm on something that is totally irrelevant to the
discussion today.
Hammier:: No, it's not. It is completely relevant to this discussion.
Butler: Do you like Norm's idea or don't you?
Martinez: I have issues about the fiscal stuff. I like the idea that I can buy a car on
January 2, sell it on December 31 and get another car and not have to
pay tax.
Butts: You could [inaudible] the system.
Martinez: The point is, people when they buy a car, they are buying other things.
They are not looking to —that is the least of their worries.
Butts: You are going to pay a state sales tax if you do that. You will not save
any money overall.
Burk: I am good.
Butler: I'm good. The only question I have is when you say it is basically
revenue neutral, that kind of implies that you are reducing staff by 0.75
FTE, right?
Butts: Well, what we are going to do is we are going to take those efficiencies
—the definition of efficiency is you can do more with the same amount
of money or you can do the same with less money. What we would do
is redirect those resources to things we have not been able to get to over
the years, like field audits and other taxes and collection activities. It is
not like we would reduce three-quarters of a staff person. We would
redirect those resources. At least that would be my first
recommendation. Obviously, it is up to the Town Manager how he
funds...
Wells: And I would tell you, clearly the collection effort and accuracies in
billing would be the highest priority to have so the fiscal impact, I
would hope that we would see greater collection of delinquent taxes
based on the redirection of those resources. If you were to cut
positions, you would save those dollars. My thought is given the goal
of personal property in general and meals tax, whether you are doing
field audits, or stepping up collection efforts working with the Town
Attorney's office, I would be— I think it would be fair to say we would
generate more than the cost of the individual, if not two times over.
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Butler: Well, if you didn't then...
Wells: Then we would...that's right—we would come back with that
recommendation. Right now, especially in a couple of the different
categories I think we have enough practical experience to know that
putting those efforts towards collections— and we would see those
results in the following year's audits.
Butler: In theory, I could save real estate tax by buying my house and moving
into it a week after the assessment, right?
Wells: Assessments are based on January 1. That's right.
Butler: So, if I move into my new house—or I build a new house on January 2
and move in— okay, then I have saved real estate taxes for the year.
Butts: I think they go through and do it a supplemental.
Wells: It's called a supplemental. There is a supplemental tax bill that goes
out. If you move in from another state, you are going to get a tax bill
for part of the year.
Wright: They will get you at closing because you will pay your proportionate
share.
Butler: Yes, but if it move in...the point is, if it is a greenfield, okay, I am
assessed at—the lot is worth$100,000...
Wright:: Yeah, they won't get you until next year.
Butler: How many people do that just to save taxes for the year, right?
Wright: Marty does.
Butler: Marty does. Marty builds a house and then he moves. The point is I
think the dollars here are low enough that people are not going to be
making those types of decisions based on saving a few bucks of taxes or
not.
2. Additions to Future Council Meetings
Council Member Burk asked that Council vote on the ability of the American
Red Cross to put flags up in town through the month of March. On the advice of the
Town Attorney, it was decided to not follow through with this as it would open the
door for any organization to be allowed to put flags up in town regardless of the
content of the flags.
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Council Member Wright asked for an inventory of stray parcels and street
stubs, etc.
3. Adjournment
On a motion by Council Member Martinez, seconded by Council Member Wright, the
meeting was ad'•urned at 10:27 p.m.
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