HomeMy Public PortalAbout2015_tcwsmin0608 Council Work Session June 8, 2015
Council Chambers, 25 West Market Street, 7:30 p.m. Mayor Kristen C. Umstattd
presiding.
Council Members Present: Kelly Burk, David Butler, Thomas Dunn, II, Suzanne D.
Fox, Katie Sheldon Hammier, Marty Martinez and Mayor Umstattd.
Council Members Absent: Council Member Dunn left at 9:15 and returned at 9:45
p.m.
Staff Present: Town Manager Kaj Dentler, Deputy Town Manager Keith Markel,
Town Attorney Barbara Notar, Director of Parks and Recreation Rich Williams, and
Executive Associate I Tara Belote.
AGENDA ITEMS
1. Work Session Items for Discussion
a. Downtown Parking Task Force—Proposed Recommendations
Richard Smith, Downtown Parking Task Force, introduced the other
members of the Task Force: Kate Armfield, Paige Buscema, Alexis Belton,
Jerry Hill, Alicia McFadden, Gigi Robinson, and Carrie Whitmer.
Key Points:
• Tasked with developing ideas to incentivize all-day parkers in the
downtown to relocate to alternative parking areas that are less
convenient so that more convenient parking is available for short-term
parkers.
• Met over four meetings.
• Brian Boucher provided information to the Task Force on zoning
issues.
• Peter Burnett provided some history and knowledge of the parking
situation to the Task Force.
• Some issues include:
o Lack of sidewalk continuity.
o Needed sidewalk repairs.
o Lack of lighting.
o Distance between outlying parking and target destinations.
• Currently available public parking includes:
o Liberty lot— 106 spaces
o Semones lot—68 spaces
o Pennington lot—202 spaces
o Town garage— 372 spaces
o County garage—290 spaces (only available to the public on nights
and weekends)
o On-street parking— 148 spaces
• Detailed data collection showed that the garage is only 56%utilized on
an average weekday.
• Highest occupancy in the town garage is the evening of First Friday.
1 Page
Council Work Session June 8, 2015
• Surface lots had an average utilization of 40%.
• Proximity to destination is a large factor in the lack of full utilization of
surface lots.
• On-street parking shows 41% average utilization.
• Why so much vacancy?
o Signage—needs uniformity and clarity.
o Poor pedestrian experience—lack of continuity and crumbling
infrastructure.
o Distances over two blocks.
o Disregard of regulations —cheaper to get a ticket than to pay to
park.
o No escalation of fines for repeat offenders.
o Town garage is uninviting—cramped, dark, with poor signage.
• Demand exceeds supply in the southeast quadrant of the downtown.
• Short-Term Recommendations:
o Improve signage to parking lots.
o Improve pedestrian experience to parking lots —widen sidewalks,
ADA accessibility, and contiguous sidewalks.
o Improve lighting.
o Potentially install speed tables to slow down vehicles and improve
pedestrian experience.
o Reduce speed limits throughout downtown.
o Identify parking project that will receive Payment In Lieu
payments.
o Raise Payment In Lieu payment to reflect the true cost of structured
parking.
o Town contributes a portion of the Payment In Lieu payment
towards structured parking.
o Amend Section 11-44 of the Town Code regarding proximity to
public parking— do not allow credit for proximity to the County
parking garage.
o Increase parking violation fees—higher fines will increase
compliance and increase turnover in more sought-after spaces.
o Implement a graduated fee scale to penalize repeat offenders.
o Make all spaces in the town garage a three hour max parking with
meters.
o Floors above the first floor of the garage would be free.
o Rented spaces remain in the basement.
o First floor garage payments would be through a payment kiosk.
machine to eliminate the need for attendants, booths, and gates.
o Eliminate the parking validation program and first hour free policy
in the garage.
o Parking garage staff would be used for enforcement.
o Re-stripe the parking garage spaces to give more space for larger
vehicles.
21Page
Council Work Session June 8, 2015
o Establish drop off/pick up zones to allow those who are elderly or
impaired to wait for a ride to park further from their destination.
• Recommendations would result in a net gain of income.
• Long-term recommendations:
o Credit and debit kiosks for on-street parking payment.
o Structured parking in the southeast quadrant utilizing a
public/private partnership or a partnership with Loudoun County.
• Next steps:
o Council review of the report and recommendations.
o Schedule a follow-up meeting with the Task Force to review the
recommendations and discuss implementation plans.
Council Comments/Questions:
• Dunn: On the graphs you have showing the on-street parking, it would
be good to know what days of the week these are. It looks like almost
consistently on every street there is really two days each week that we
start to peak out or reach our highest points in the occupied spaces on
on-street parking and do you know what that corresponds with? What
is going on that is causing those two days per week—obviously they are
work days I would assume, unless they are weekends, but I would
doubt to be the case. Do you know what is happening on those two
days a week?
Staff answer: They are color coded. The blue bars represent weekdays,
and the red all represent weekends. We picked one of the days—you
will see Saturday and Sunday afternoons tend to be very high on-street
parking demand days. You will see we measured mid-morning/mid-
afternoon on every day of the week for the entire month so we captured
the full snapshot of what is happening in the months.
• Dunn: The red days, again, are the weekends?
Staff answer: Correct. That would be the same on all the charts, so
whether you are looking at the street parking, the surface lot parking or
the town deck—they are all color coded the same way.
• Dunn: You also had—I didn't add up the numbers of what you had on
the charts; but, I don't think—it looks like you maybe just took the
larger concentration of meters because it doesn't look like each chart
represents the total 148, is that correct?
Staff answer: That's correct. There is the total cumulative chart and
you will see individual streets. We just pulled out some of the streets
that were high traffic streets— so King Street/Loudoun Street section
just to really show you where the concentration of the parking was.
• Dunn: Do you have the data on those less concentrated? My guess is
those numbers probably have greater availability of parking.
Staff answer: Absolutely.
• Dunn: Did those areas reach red on the weekend also?
Staff answer: Not to the same degree that King Street and Loudoun
Street would, but everything saw an uptick on the weekends. But those
3IPage
Council Work Session June 8, 2015
that we left out were the maybe 50% occupancy. We have all the
information, if you want to see that.
• Dunn: You used the term quite a bit about the pedestrian experience
and the impact the pedestrian experience has on parking. Where are
you getting the information from?
Task force answer: The data suggests that the lots—for example, the
Liberty lot or the Pennington lot is under-utilized and in our walk
through, we see going back to the lack of continuity, dim lighting and
the items that were put forth and some public feedback from some of
the members of the Task Force in what we are hearing in that parking
down there—what about the sidewalks? What about getting there on
foot? Its fine that its close, but getting there on foot is not—is easier
said than done. While the space is there, you have to walk in the road
in dim lighting, or what have you.
• Dunn: You use that phrase quite a bit and it almost sounded like
people—because the pedestrian experience is not good, I'm choosing
not to park.
Task force answer: In some instances. That's not the sole reason they
are not parking there, but it plays into the formula as a portion. At least
if it was better lighted and the sidewalks and such was there and in
good shape, it would incentivize people—make it more friendly and
inviting.
• Dunn: Do we have detailed recommendations—obviously, the
pedestrian experience is a broad term, yet that may not be true for every
location that people are walking from. Do we have some detailed
information as to some improvements you are suggesting in those areas
where you feel that the pedestrian experience is the most detrimental.
Task force answer: The Task Force did not identify specific locations.
We did give a few examples and I'm not sure how to point to them, but
I think some of the examples that we gave are on the way to the Liberty
lot where the sidewalk just ends or the sidewalk was uneven, crushed,
what have you. So, to answer your question, there was some examples,
but we did not detail specifics.
• Dunn: Do you think you can provide that information because
otherwise if we are looking at this and saying "well, we've got to
improve the pedestrian experience", then all of a sudden, we've got a
whole new round of downtown improvements we are going to be
looking at spending money for and I don't know if we are prepared to
go that direction. So, if you can take a look at your notes, possibly, and
provide some additional information about exactly where you are
looking at. We've got 40 feet of improvements we would like to see on
X street and what you suggest that being. It would be when folks are
looking for a place to park, I would think they would seek out the
parking space and worry about how to walk afterwards. They might do
that once and decide I'm not going to do that again, but in essence,
what is driving what? Is it the "it was such a bad pedestrian experience,
4jPage
Council Work Session June 8, 2015
I'm choosing not to park there anymore", or the other way around. So,
I'd just like to get some more detailed information about this whole
pedestrian experience concept. I also want to thank you all for doing a
tremendous amount of work. What I found in this is I don't know that
there is a lot of new, general information, but what you did was put
some facts and figures to ideas and concepts that I think have been
already floating around, which is great because otherwise we are just
making anecdotal ideas and you all may have found when you went
into it, I've got certain ideas about where we are at in parking and all of
a sudden you say, "This is not what I expected to see". What it looks
like to me, is really something that we have been saying for years—is
that there is plenty of available parking in downtown. It looks like
generally speaking—depending on how you want to look at this
percentage, whether you look at percentage of space, or percentage of
time, that generally you've got a 40% chance of finding a decent
parking space downtown, which is pretty good. Theoretically, you
could say most of the time, you've got 100% chance of finding parking
downtown because on every street, I didn't see one, there wasn't a time
—granted you weren't there 24/7, but there wasn't a time that you
could not find parking on almost any street within the study. So, we
often hear, I drive around and around and around and I couldn't find a
parking space. I don't know what day they were doing it, but it wasn't
on these days. So, it will be interesting to see where we take this. I
know that we've already done some action, but again, I'd like to hear
more about this pedestrian experience and if you are really talking
about some major improvements of the pedestrian experience to and
from walkways. I would like to hear more about that, but generally I
would have to say looking at the information you have here, that
people can park downtown and if we did no pedestrian experience or
no improvements, they would still find plenty of parking downtown.
That may change based on business improvements and greater traffic—
foot traffic downtown, but from what I'm seeing here it looks like there
is plenty of parking downtown. Generally speaking, almost any time
you come down—weekends might be a little bit of a challenge, but even
on those weekends we are not maxing out. What we don't know is how
many of those people on the weekend got to that 80 %level and
decided I'm going to go ahead and head back to Ashburn where I came
from or whatever. Do you know that—I guess it would be hard to tell—
how many people turned around and didn't stay because they really did
drive around and it was on one of those 80% days. What was the
highest day you had percentage wise? Did you ever hit 90? I saw 82 a
couple of times.
Staff answer: It depends on where you are talking—in the deck, the
highest day was the First Friday night in March. It reached it's highest
capacity for the whole month. Streets maxed out on Saturday
afternoons—those are the highest. Depending on the street segment—
5IPage
Council Work Session June 8, 2015
King Street would have been fully maxed out at that time. So, you
would have to circle the block.
• Dunn: It was great to see—I'm glad you pointed out that it was on the
weekend, because again, it was anecdotal discussions that we had in the
past. If you had told me that the greatest need for parking was on the
weekend—it wasn't during the work week, I probably wouldn't have
believed you. What I would love to see is what we want to get to and
I'm sure the business folks downtown want this —I'd love to see red
lines all the way across.
Staff answer: One of the interesting things we saw in the data was that
the weekends had the highest demand for on-street parking, but that
was actually when the deck has less demand. So, we think that is a
messaging or signage issue so people coming to our downtown on those
Saturday afternoons for restaurants or shopping maybe aren't familiar
with the downtown, aren't familiar with the deck. If we made the deck
more obviously public and inviting and free, that they would be more
willing to use that space and not be frustrated with having to drive
around the block looking for on-street spaces which are fully
maximized at that time.
• Dunn: Or being able to find those more satellite locations. And again,
I don't think that those people are choosing not to park there just
because they feel the walking experience, they feel the pedestrian
experience is going to cause them to change their mind about coming
downtown because now that I've found a place to park and I've
actually decided to park here—you know what—I don't know that I
want to do this because there is not a sidewalk there or it is crumbling
or so forth. That is up for debate. But, again, thank you for the report.
It was very informative.
• Butler: The good news is I think most of my questions were answered
on the tour. I thank you for the walking tour. That was a great idea.
But, I am looking forward to chewing on these a little bit and I suspect
Council may have another work session soon on it because there is
some quick hitters that we could make here and kind of prioritize these
to decide which ones we want to go after first. I think it's a good
exercise for Council. Like Tom, I think that the data you have
collected is outstanding—that it really helps a lot. I was surprised by a
little bit of the data. Like, I have been saying for quite a while that I
didn't think the garage was utilized as heavily during the day as people
suspected and it is utilized even less than I thought. So, I think that
some of the changes that you recommend, like making the spaces wider
—great ideas. I think we should make some of that happen. Nights and
weekends, it is clear that we do not have a parking problem at all, but
we may have a parking communication problem or marketing problem.
I think that a lot of people don't know, say that the County garage is
open and this kind of thing. That should be relatively easy to fix. What
I'm getting is around King Street area, we don't have a parking quantity
6IPage
Council Work Session June 8, 2015
problem. There are si a e and other issues gn g ssues that we need to deal with.
Like at the Market Station area, we do have a parking quantity
problem, so that is something we need to address. Of course, one of the
big wild cards in the whole thing is we have some discussions with the
county on the courthouse. As that goes through, they are putting in a
huge parking garage. Now it is not in the direction that you
recommend the parking garage, but it is a parking garage. They will be
over-parked for quite a while. Is there some way we could work with
the county and figure something out? I don't know. I guess we will
know that over the next few months. That might be something that can
bear some fruit. In any case, I just want to let you know, I think it was
a fantastic job and I appreciate all of your work. It has given Council—
this was not just good general information—these are specific
recommendations that we could take and move forward with. I am
looking forward to that.
• Burk: Dave's last comment was quite a compliment to you, because I
think he was a little skeptical when we decided on doing this. So, it is a
great compliment to you guys. First off, the tour was great. That was
absolutely what we needed and was very, very helpful. It also
answered a great deal of my questions. My husband and I walk around
town a lot. We try to get four miles—sometimes we get more. I never
feel unsafe, no matter what time of the day or night, we've never felt
unsafe, but we have run into streets that are difficult because of the
sidewalks—Liberty being one of them, that you are walking down the
sidewalk and the sidewalk is gone. So, if it dark as it is on Liberty and
you are not familiar with it, it could cause problems. I understand that
if you are going and using that lot and you walk up towards the town
and you can't find the sidewalk, or you are afraid you are going to trip,
I would imagine that would have a negative impact on you. I want to
know—that picture right there—who put the pole in the ADA spot?
Was the pole there first? I mean, come on.
• Butler: These kinds of things float around on Facebook a lot. That one
could be added right to it.
• Burk: It could. Let's make a handicapped spot that people could get
their wheelchair out and put a pole in the middle of it. I really
appreciate the specific examples that you give. I think the idea of speed
tables are a great idea. I would like some feedback from the police and
fire and rescue people if that is an impact to them at all. But, I think if
it could work out, that's a great idea—King Street sometimes seems like
a racetrack. People are going so fast that slowing them down would be
a great idea. I like the recommendation of the first floor. I don't know
if there is some way—Dave and I were talking about doing an app—or
something that you could pay on your phone kind of thing. Having the
first floor you pay for—you know, have individual meters, and then the
rest of the floors above are open—that's a great idea. I think that's
really neat. Definitely widening the spots. There are places I will not
7IPage
Council Work Session June 8, 2015
park because I know I'm not going to be able to get back in because the
spaces are so close. The kiss and ride spot was very interesting, but I
was trying to imagine where that would go. Did you guys talk at all
about where that might be located?
Task force answer: We didn't identify specific locations. There were
ideas tossed around of some underutilized areas that are either parking
spaces or utilized some other way converted to something like a Kiss
and Ride that would...
• Burk: That would make sense and you see people doing that—stopping
right in the middle of Market Street dropping someone off.
Task Force Answer: One north of Market Street and one south or
something like that.
• Burk: Right, and I'm sure that we can tease that out as we get more
into the meetings, there. And then, would we—this is a question for
you, Kaj, would we have to follow this up—to continue with this
would it be necessary to have some sort of study conducted to identify
what locations do need to be improved, what sidewalks need to be
improved—what would make walkability much more conducive to
people. Would that require a study of some sort?
Town Manager: Yes, we can do that in house to give you an idea of
what the challenges are versus paying someone to do that.
• Burk: Then, don't we have a certain amount of money from the in-lieu
parking that we have already?
Town Manager: We have some.
• Burk: Maybe some of that could go towards some of those
improvements.
Town Manager: Possibly.
• Burk: Thank you. This is really a very good report and I really
appreciate all the effort and work that went into it.
• Martinez: (unaudible).
Task force answer: Yeah, the data revealed a lot that brought detail to
maybe thoughts that we thought or thought negatively of. But the idea
—what it brings to light is obviously the convenient spots —those are the
spots that are most used and the focus being trying to incentivize people
to use the less convenient spots.
• Martinez: (inaudible).
Task force answer: I don't remember the specific numbers but a
structured parking space—the cost of such is a variable that is
dependent on soils and construction materials, but generally speaking
you are at$20,000 per space. Right now, the parking in lieu fee is
somewhere about the $6,000 range and that isn't even getting you
started. Increasing that was our recommendation, but increasing it to
the full $20,000 may not be the right path. Correct, 10,000 and then the
town bears the other 10,000 as sort of a partnership and a strategic way
to get funding.
8IPage
Council Work Session June 8, 2015
• Hammler: Well, I too will start with my deep gratitude. It was a
y p gr great
walking tour, one of the best reports I have ever read. I will say that I
know in 2003, we spent$50,000 on a consultant and I think your report
was far more valuable, so thank you so much. I guess, I'll be brief and
just summarize some of the same things you've heard, but I just feel, I
too, would like to reiterate some of the key points that you've made and
where I agree so that we can move forward and take action. As far as
our existing garage, completely agree on things like making it more user
friendly, getting rid of the gates, adding the visitor information, more
lighting, restriping, not having locked gates on Loudoun Street—maybe
just have one exit there that will facilitate some other improvements we
are making on Loudoun Street. So, those are also great ideas. Loved
the loading zone—kind of the Kiss and drop or Kiss and Pick up area.
One idea I mentioned on the walk was possibly not having a full time
police spot. Maybe that could be converted to that area, but make it
very user friendly with benches. In terms of the technology, I was
thinking the same thing that Marty just mentioned—not only things
like Bango, which we know cities like Alexandria have incorporated
extremely effectively in meters because literally nobody carries cash.
They just don't. It's an inconvenience and another one of those reasons
not to go downtown. But, an app that just literally—if we could at least
investigate, as Marty has mentioned, sensors for all of these lots to be
able to check on a smart phone, Oh, I can definitely park here. I guess
that does get back to the fact that I love the idea of having the first floor
of the garage metered and the rest free—great idea there. In terms of
the pedestrian accessibility around the downtown, the only thing I'd
like to add is one of the things we mentioned on the walk—which is if it
is possible to ensure that folks aren't putting their trash cans right in the
middle of the sidewalks, which simply makes it very difficult to get
around—whatever we need to do to follow-up on that. And, in terms
of the southeast, completely support the fact that it makes no sense then
to have this parking in lieu because "the county garage is there", when
in fact you can't account for that. As far as the town, more tactically
providing money for payment in lieu for that fund, I would support
getting really serious about where that long term garage needs to go and
figuring out what that public/private partnership needs to look like so
that we can actually have that on a capital improvement plan and look
at the financials and look at the right partner—whether it's a
performing arts type of educational venue that we want in the
downtown as another anchor—it could trigger that type of investment.
Look at that in detail versus coming up with some sort of hypothetical
matching figure and we never achieve this long term goal. I know we
referenced Frederick Maryland as an example of a city for whatever
reason, perhaps they got grants because they are flooding, but they
made a commitment to building garages and ultimately that became an
economic catalyst. So, in summary,just really appreciate what a
91Page
Council Work Session June 8, 2015
tremendous job you did providing very important, actionable, short
term, you know, low hanging fruit that we as a Council can move
forward on and support looking at that prioritization—the financials, so
that we can put dates to that action plan as well as start looking at the
longer term in getting each of those projects solidified. The only
question I have is actually for Kaj. Because one of the back to the
central point of why you did this task force—the problem of how you
create incentives for long term parkers to go to long term spaces. But,
Kaj, that is really a question for you, because one of the main
recommendations is for town employees to park somewhere other than
the town garage. At some point you need to provide guidance to
Council on what your decision is or what you feel the hurdles are for
making that happen and/or for what you would do to help facilitate
making it happen. A related aspect of that is when we are looking at
the partnership with the county, you know, what you would
recommend in terms of those partnership elements with the county
because clearly you need ask Tim Hemstreet that same question.
• Fox: I wanted to thank each one of you for your efforts. I enjoyed
walking with you today and I enjoyed getting to meet you and I
enjoyed getting to know some of you better. I, too, think this was an
excellent report. A lot of things I didn't think about. A lot of things to
think about. I think that we are addressing some of these things
already, such as signage and it was nice to take a walk, as a pedestrian
just to see where some people might stumble—some sidewalk issues
and everything like that. I agree on most of these recommendations.
There are a few I might question, but the parking—the increase in
parking violation fees totally, totally makes sense. I guess one of the
biggest without me going over everything else everybody else just said, I
think one of the biggest questions I would have is the long term goal of
allowing for alternative payment systems. I was wondering if anybody
did any sort of research on what the cost might be of that—staff or the
Parking Task Force. Is there any sort of information that you have that
you could give us that we might want to take a look at?
Task Force answer: Actually, I believe we did. Do we have any
numbers on the alternative payment kiosks.
Staff answer: The kiosks was were Scott Parker has done the most
research on it. We are looking at l Os to thousands of dollars of initial
capital outlay to buy those structures. As far as the pay and go or the
pay now through different apps, there are certainly user convenience
fees—I am sure there are some transaction fees on the management side
of things. We have reached out to a few companies but we haven't had
any meetings yet or any walk throughs of their products. We don't
have the specifics yet, but if that is a direction of you all want to start
heading, I think based on the discussion and wanting to have some
follow-up meetings with you all with the task force, we would be happy
to start getting into those details and report back.
1O1Page
Council Work Session June 8, 2015
• Fox: Have you done any comparisons with any different municipalities
in Virginia about what they do?
Staff answer: We haven't yet.
Task Force answer: And one point I would point out is in one of the
slides that you saw, the increase in revenue that the new set up would
provide, so at$30,000 a year in the first year, who knows, you may pay
for that.
• Mayor: Very good report to all of you and a couple of questions. Your
recommendation, I think, is for potentially a garage in the southeast
quadrant. Presumably, if it is more than two blocks from the
destination, you might figure people won't park there—extrapolating
from your thoughts on Liberty Street parking lot. Did you guys, when
you thought about a parking structure in the southeast quadrant—did
you think about the possible location of it? Did you take into
consideration how far it would be to walk from that parking structure to
whatever businesses or offices it is intended to serve and what was your
conclusion?
Task Force answer: We certainly discussed that. That was a little bit
more challenging of an item, as far as the whole two block radius.
Given that you are getting a parking structure at the Pennington lot,
placing one immediately southwest of Market Station, again the
challenge is not only financially there, but if you could somehow
discuss and be able to provide a structured parking in, for example, say
the Bowman parking lot—if you were able to do that, share the cost of
that, and give the current land owner the bottom floor, per se, or
something strategic like that. We discussed it, but no specific location.
We did not come up with specific locations.
• Mayor: Did you take into consideration the plans at Courthouse
Square do have a parking structure there? They have multiple thoughts
on it, as they have expressed to me, anyway. They have expressed the
possibility of allowing paid parking for people not in the building itself,
but people could come and use spaces there during the day and would
pay for that privilege. I don't know that they have really settled on any
one particular plan at this point, but you imply a very logical thought,
which is they are going to want it for their own use first and only public
use if there are additional spaces. Did you discuss the plans of the
Board of Supervisors to put a three deck garage on the Pennington lot
and that, I know the third level, which is a $2 million addition to their
original plan would provide about 169 spaces. I am extrapolating from
that that the other two levels might also provide about 169 spaces. Did
you look at whether that is close enough to the county government
center and Market Station to provide any parking for them? I'm getting
a shaking of heads in the background.
Task Force answer: I don't believe that was specifically discussed.
Staff answer: We looked at the numbers and if you look at parking that
is currently in that lot—Pennington is woefully underutilized. County
11 Page
Council Work Session June 8, 2015
staff aren't even parking in that lot to walk to the facility now. The
County was running a shuttle bus for a short while this past fall that
connected Pennington to our Liberty and to the County building and
they discontinued it because they were only getting three or four riders
a week on their shuttle bus. It is just one of those things—kind of out of
sight, out of mind. We don't know if maybe it was the distance or just
a line of sight issue, but Pennington is not utilized except for motor
pool and some of the court facilities folks are using it for that. We
figured that a parking deck, unless there is a major shift with the court
expansion—you know, a major increase in demand, we don't see that
right now with being a major parking destination for folks walking to
the core downtown to do shopping/dining—you mid-town King Street
and Market.
• Mayor: Okay, thanks. You did a really nice job outlining how many
spaces are in each particular area and you've got 290 spaces in the
county parking garage. Tim Hemstreet, at a recent meeting, indicated
that he has got 400 employees in the County government center. Do
you think that is accurate? So, they have about 100 fewer parking
spaces in the county garage that they might need. There is some
speculation that the reason they agreed to put a third level on the
Pennington deck was to accommodate those county employees on top
of the expanded courthouse needs. Now, here is one thought that
someone smarter than I came up with—because putting the third level
on the Pennington garage is going to be a real problem for the residents,
I think, on Wildman Street, on Ariel and on Marshall, because they are
going to see it. It is going to show about the trees and it will have
potentially 20 foot lights on top of it, would it make more sense for the
county to only build the two levels and then partner with the $2 million
it would then not have to expend up there—partner with the town and
the private sector down closer to where the parking need actually is—
near Market Station/southeast quadrant. Is that something you guys
would be interested in thinking about?
Task Force answer: I think I can speak for us in that in our discussions
the biggest demand is that southeast quadrant. If there was a way to
reallocate that$2 million to the southeast quadrant and find a way to
provide whether it be surface or structured parking—parking in general
in that southeast, that is your biggest need right now.
• Mayor: I appreciate—this is really good work that you've done so
thank you very much, all of you.
• Martinez: My mic was off—can I start all over again?
• Hammler: I really appreciate that great suggestion, Kristen. One of the
things we noticed on the walking tour is that particularly in the
southeast, there are privately owned lots that have been observed as
being greatly underutilized. We certainly brainstormed that it makes
sense in the short term to at least consider whether we could enter into
some sort of agreement to rent those spaces,just to have more spaces
121Page
Council Work Session June 8, 2015
available in the shorter term. I just wanted to bring that out because we
had talked about it. The other thing that we had talked about, that Gigi
had brought up, which I thought was a good point, is if one of the
longer term goals is to encourage infill development, by definition, it
will have to go where the existing spaces are for the buildings. All the
more reason to get serious about structured parking as relates to the
long-term infill development plans for the downtown.
It was determined that next step would be a work session.
b. Skate Park
The three Council representatives that attended the meeting with the
School Board and the County offered their perspectives.
• Burk: We met on June 4 with the representatives from the School
Board—three representatives from the School Board and three
representatives from the County. I believe there was at least one
additional school board member that came. I can't remember if there
was an additional county member that came. So we were presenting to
the six individuals. I went over the information on the history, where
the site is, how much effort we have put into it and that at present it is
at its end of life. It needs to be repaired and that we were looking to
find out - that someone from the county had reached out to one of the
Town Council members to discuss a partnership, so we were there to
talk about a partnership. I made the point that we would be interested
if they wanted to take over the whole thing—that we might be
interested in having them help fund part of it. We might be interested
in having them move it to the school site— any sort of partnership, we
would be willing to consider. They listened. They were very polite. It
was a very nice meeting. It became—in the discussions, it became very
clear that the school site will not become available any time soon. We
are looking about 10 years out. The County representatives talked
about how they would want to master plan it. They haven't done that
yet. The site itself will not be available for about ten years. We talked
very briefly about the location—if we didn't move it to the school site,
that our police had some issues with the location—but there were other
locations on the site that might work. They kind of indicated, most of
them, indicated that at this point, they might not be willing to move the
skate park to the school for the reasons stated before. We emphasized
the fact that we had a timeline and we very much wanted this to get
done. We have it on our CIP for this year—for 2016. They said that
there was no way that would happen. It couldn't be done in such a
short time, but they did leave the door open to a future partnership that
perhaps in the future when the site does become available, that perhaps
that would be a good time to talk about partnerships. There was a
reference made at one point by the chairman, Mr. York, that perhaps in
13IPage
Council Work Session June 8, 2015
the not too distant future, there could be a partnership even if it stayed
on Catoctin Circle. So, we left there with the idea that in the future
there could be a partnership. I'm not sure that anything would become
immediate. There was a fair discussion—everybody asked questions
and everybody was interested, but it just doesn't seem to me that the
timeline was going to accommodate what we were looking for, but I
did leave optimistic that in the future there is the opportunity to perhaps
to have a partnership and they would be willing and open to listen to
that and have that discussion. At this point, it is for the future.
• Mayor: When you say in the future, did you get a sense is this the ten
years in the future?
• Burk: Yes. I mean the discussion could start now, but that the
partnership in earnest would not really begin until the school site
became available and they were not anticipating that for 8-10 years.
• Hammier: First of all, Keith and Rich did a great job with the
presentation. And Kelly did a lovely job as Vice Mayor representing all
of us. It was only 30 minutes, so my first observation is given the fact
that half of the time, by necessity was taken up by the presentation, and
that, you know, there were three different groups represented, it wasn't
realistic to think that we were going to get into a meaningful discussion.
That being said, I definitely took away the key point that Chairman
York mentioned, which is that there is a great opportunity for the
county to be a partner regardless of where it goes. I had a slightly
different interpretation of the dialogue regarding, you know, the
necessity to wait ten years to determine whether it could go at Douglass
and I actually called Kaj right after the meeting, because I felt as much
as we had a very quick conversation, side bar conversation, with Eric
Williams and Tim Hemstreet, and to just try to distill what we
collectively tried to discuss, but really couldn't get into—that we need
to determine where and how they can meaningfully discuss this even if
they have the opportunity to do it between now and even this summer
because we won't be initiating anything until then. For instance,
Chairman Morse, said that it seems like a natural fit, but can we get this
all done in three months? So, in other words, they knew there was sort
of a fire drill in terms of can we react so quickly. So, yes, by that
definition, time lines would be insurmountable, but on the other hand,
realistically, if we got more specific in terms of getting guidance in
terms of in the short term—even within the ten year span, is it possible
that between parks and rec at the county and Douglass determine
would you be willing to put it where the inline skating park is because
staff believes that would be the most logical place. How and who
makes that decision and they have to look at how much the inline
skating park is used. Get them that opportunity, or Chairman York
mentioned possibly the finance committee would take a look at this on
the county side. So, I think we have to be realistic that they have to go
through some sort of follow-up and our staff needs to talk with each
141Page
Council Work Session June 8, 2015
other and scope things out a little more with greater clarity in terms of
realistically where it could go at Douglass and if not, what and how a
partnership could be constructed on the Catoctin site given that we
know we have certainly a desire for the Fire and Rescue to expand and
the county could be a great partner in making that happen, hopefully
with some funding that could be part of this partnership. Bottom line is
we reiterated that we know this is a regional amenity based on what we
know about skate parks —so there is a great opportunity to work
together and I feel optimistic that we should keep trying to do that. So,
again, it was hard to get everything done in 30 minutes, but we
certainly, I think, kicked off the discussion but we have some follow-up
to do.
• Fox: So, there were three of us and of course there is going to be three
different opinions. If you'll indulge me, I have a lot of feelings about
this, so I wrote them down. First of all, I was grateful that they were
very—thank you to the both of you for being there and for doing that
presentation. That was helpful to them. I did get that feedback,
although, I believe this was probably a lost opportunity, even though
there was a staff presentation, we did have one council member
basically take charge of most of the comments and happened to be the
one who was most opposed to the location to begin with, so it
perplexed me a little a bit. I thought we were leaving out some good
stuff there. What was focused on was the burden that the relocation
would place on both the schools and the county, while insisting that the
project be completed immediately, so as to rule out time for proper
deliberation and vetting. So, I'm not saying we don't—everybody has
the right to either oppose or like the relocation; however, I just feel like
we had the opposing view point trying to make the case for the
relocation, which I found kind of odd. In addition, several individuals
from both Council, the county and the school board seemed to imply
that the school board would have to cease operations at the Douglass
facility in order for the relocation to occur. I think this was a
misunderstanding and it made it difficult to discuss the issue. It is clear
that the skate park could be co-located with other recreational facilities
at the Douglass School while LCPS operations do continue there. A
case could be made that we essentially told the School Board that we
really don't want to do this, which had some members scratching their
heads that evening, going, well do they want to do this or do they not
want to do this. It seems like, hey, we want to do this, but we've got
this timeline so we really don't want to do this —that's what it seemed
like to me anyway. Then, there were a couple of other issues that came
into play that I wanted to address. We do have a couple of neighbors
to the park—one is Dulles Motor Cars, the other is the Rescue Squad.
When we initially took the issue up, of course I think we probably all
assumed that the keeping of the skate park in its current location had
been properly vetted including cooperative discussions with the skate
151Page
Council Work Session June 8, 2015
park's two neighbors, the Rescue Squad and Dulles Motor Cars;
however, I don't think it has been fully considered and I don't think the
impact of keeping the skate park in place has been considered with
these two adjacent properties. We all did get an email, Mr. Saghafi was
present. He is the owner of Dulles Motor Cars. He did indicate to me
at that meeting—we kind of talked afterwards and he indicated to me
that he had not been consulted in any way. He also brought up some
issues that place a considerable burden on his operations. You know,
we talked a little bit about liability issues —they were asking us why we
wanted to do this so quickly, why is there such a timeline to do this so
quickly and the Vice Mayor basically said we face some liability issues.
So, he kindly explained to me he had some liability issues as well and I
don't think we've thought those through either. I do believe that this
Council, on many occasions, has presented ourselves as a business-
friendly Council and that Leesburg is a pro-business town, but we
haven't done anything to bring this man and his business into
discussions even though we are his neighbor there. Rescue Squad
location—there has been some developments on that as of late. It has
come to my attention and I think I've forwarded you all a
memorandum that I received from the County about keeping the skate
park in its current location—how it might jeopardize the ability for
heavy rescue in Leesburg's future, so we might be dealing with some
sort of public safety problem of no heavy rescue in Leesburg in the
future, and I think that might be something we want to take a look at,
too, as we go along. I believe, and I this is just my personal opinion,
that the most reasonable path forward could be to relocate the skate
park, divide the property, grant a portion of it to the Rescue Squad,
maybe in lieu of yearly donations we make—you know, the yearly
stipends we make, so that they can make that appropriate expansion
and then maybe we can sell the remainder of the property to the highest
bidder to finance in full the relocation and construction of the skate
park. At this point, given how important this outcome is to the town in
light of the new rescue squad information, we probably should have
worked much harder to make a compelling and attractive proposal to
the school board to relocate that skate park. I don't believe that was
done. I really think we need to take into account the way we vet things
and take into consideration ramifications and alternate options as we go
forward. Initially, when this was all brought up during the budget
session, there were two reasons that I even took a look at the skate park
during budget season. One of them, was to improve the relationship
with the county, which I perceive as strained. And the other is because
it seems to me a good opportunity to use taxpayer dollars more
effectively, and I think it is good and necessary to look at some of our
wants with some outside the box thinking.
• Rescue Squad: I would first like to ask a few questions—where was the
memo—who was it from?
161Page
Council Work Session June 8, 2015
• Fox: Loudoun County, Virginia, Department of Fire, Rescue, and
Emergency Management—from W. T. Brower
• Rescue Squad: Because today, there was multiple emails —we have not
entertained—the Rescue Squad is a wholly owned business in itself—it
is a 501(c)3. It owns that building along with the part of the town. If
you don't understand the situation. We have an agreement with this
town—that property. So, if we leave that property, it becomes this
town's property again. We paid a $1. Mr. Brower was never requested
to ask anything for it because that is the process that Mr. Reid has put
forth with us. We came here, your Town Council, and discussed this
with the Mayor and staff and various other people to do some work
with them with the town. Mr. Brower has taken it from Mr. Reid to do
this. We have not been brought into that picture until the last couple of
days. Email shuffled today and throughout the weekend have been
actually shared with the rest of the people—some of the other people
here, and basically provided information that we did not. We told Mr.
Brower that we did not request that and did not have any conversations
at Fire and Rescue. We are not being moved down to Evergreen Road,
which is what they are saying. Mr. Reid brought that out in the
conversation and email also. They are planning to build something at
the lower part of Evergreen. They were going to put one engine
company and one ambulance there. That was the plan and we are
involved in that also. The other plan was, is for us, to stay where we
are. That is the middle of our response area—that location. The thing
is, we are asking is, and I hear this come up—we have done the
research at our facility. There are plans based on what some of the Fire
Rescue people want to do. Not exactly what the Rescue Squad wants
to do. They want to add on to it. They've asked and we have given
alternatives to the staff and some of the people—we will make our ways
around to each Council member here. We will be getting to you and
everybody else also before the 22m1 of the month to discuss it with you
and the alternatives such as getting a part of it and moving out onto that
property or even moving the skate park over towards the Dulles auto
area. We have not entertained discussing and making conflict for the
constituents that you people have, which is your skate park people. We
don't want to become part of that political conflict either. Because, we
actually asked for the purpose of the Mayor and various other
members of this Council to discuss it with you people to go ahead and
do that so that we can make a proposal to you to either get that or build
another building on the other side of the skate park that is there now
and then have the parking and the building. We have already discussed
that. Mr. Reid was not involved in it until late stages, but he came to us
and has fired multiple emails at it, which we have copies of, and he was
never requested to do it. Mr. Brower actually responded back and said
I never did that and that was sent to Mr. Reid, Mr. Hemstreet, and that
has come out of it and shown that we have told him from our President
171 Page
Council Work Session June 8, 2015
and the Board members, which I am one of them and there are four of
us that make for <extension> that we did not request that of the
county. I explained to some people tonight that the funding comes to us
through our budgetary process. Our building is a whole part that we
put together with you, this Town Council, back in the 70s, the
agreement, and Mr. Clem was the Mayor. But they were really sure
with that and basically showed us—that we bought it for$1. The
whole agreement says, and it is five or six pages, we will stay on that
property as long as we are not there anymore. We paid for that
improvement. That was our mortgage. Our mortgage has been paid
off for the last ten years or so. So, we did our mortgage. We've paid it
off. We have been working our operation. There is an issue with the
county, with us, where they produced an agreement for staffing of that
heavy rescue squad. Every rescue squad agreement has nothing to do
with our expansion process. There is a problem with space overall, but
this is another thing that we are very upset and concerned about
because they came to us for this thing for training, as a group, and they
put an agreement in front of us that is totally unacceptable. Our
attorneys took it and tore it apart. This is what they gave us and this is
what the attorneys sent back—you can see it is all red. They red lined
it. We were going to discuss this with them tomorrow in their finance
committee meeting. All the emails came back and shows from these
people involved in this and really, to me, is a political mess. There are
some people doing some political things that we don't want—we came
to this Council because we work with you and this town—we are in a
building that is part of this town and our specific area is the Town of
Leesburg. We are on that property and we want to work with this town
for that property. We understand that there are other underlying things
that are going on, but we don't wish to have certain people—I don't
care who they are—politicians, whatever, play the fact that we need to
go over there to move the skate park. Because, like I said to the Mayor
and Mr. Martinez and to Kaj Dentler, your constituents are the people
in the skate park. I sat there for five meetings and watched skate park
people talk. There are 200-300 people that walk around that talk about
this. I've heard the history of it from Mr. Clem and from Mr. Elgin.
They are both relatives of my wife. He is my father-in-law. Mr. Clem
and Mr. Elgin is the uncle through marriage. I know the history. They
are the ones that set it up with Mr. Dentler, to have that skate park for
the kids. They paid for it, so to pull it away from them, it is going to be
a blot on some of us too, because they are going to blame us. We don't
want that on our squad either. I wouldn't think that a politician would
want that on them either because they are your constituents and there is
more people that are coming there. What got me the best was that they
got a$20,000 loan from this town and they paid it back in three
months, those kids that built that. They paid it back. They built the
skate park. We put some maintenance into it over time, but it has
181 Page
Council Work Session June 8, 2015
brought the kids there and they've done it and they are still there. Now
you are going to do something that is really worthwhile to make it
bigger. That's great. We don't disagree with that. We would like to
have something of it. I don't agree, as a taxpayer who lives here in this
town and a taxpayer in this county, to sell that piece of property to
Dulles Motorcars or anybody, because it is a town piece of property.
Us, as emergency services, we are for the town, we are here to serve the
town. We would like to take part of it, not all of it. We would like to
see the skate park still next door—move it over or something like that.
That's what we discussed—multiple alternatives with the people and
that's what we are discussing with everybody. I think there is some
issues with it. I think we have some political issues going on between
the county and this group and for the people in this community, our
society—civil society in our community, we need to work with them to
see what they really want, because I see it in this room as well as other
places. That's what they want—they want to see it taken care of. I
don't like to play the politics with it, but I will sit here and tell you
exactly what is going on because I will be very truthful.
• Butler: Rich, do you happen to have a layout of what the new skate
park will look like?
Staff answer: The drawing that is depicted here—this is taking into
account should the skate park be rebuilt in its existing location. To the
left is the Fire and Rescue Squad. Coming down the front is Catoctin
Circle. Dulles Motor Cars is on the other side of the treeline. The
additional parking and additional greenspace adjacent to Dulles Motor
Cars is the existing gravel lot. Obviously, the park itself, the amenities
shown there are just for example. Those are not amenities that might
specifically be in the park, but they just kind of show how it can lay out.
• Butler: So in discussions with Fire and Rescue about moving the
parking lot to the other side of the skate park or anything like that?
Staff answer: Staff, no. I know there has been some discussion at the
Council level with the Rescue Squad regarding that. Could we move
the skate park over on the gravel area and provide a portion of the
existing skate park lot, yes, we could do that. I do not have a drawing
as to what that would depict itself like, but I know from a square
footage standpoint, it could be done; however, there would be an
increase in cost in doing so, but physically it could be done.
• Butler: And the increase in cost would be why?
Staff answer: Based on our estimate, it would probably be similar to if
it were to be relocated to a new site, because we are adding impervious
surface to the area, so you would have to deal with all the stormwater
management, all the engineering work and everything, so you are
probably looking at an additional $200,000 once you take all those
components and put them into play.
• Butler: So a parking lot that is shown there with the two cars, that
would continue to be gravel?
19IPage
Council Work Session June 8, 2015
Staff answer: The parking lot that has the two cars, that could be gravel
or that area is actually small enough where you could pave over that
parking area and it not count towards your stormwater issues. The
small 12 spaces there. It really does not look to scale. There is much
more green space that is created in the background—up near the top
where the four trees are. Proportionally, that two car parking lot looks
very...
• Butler: Okay, I got to be honest with you. If you flip that 180 degrees,
I'm not seeing where there is going to be a whole lot more impervious
surface.
Staff answer: No, there would be a whole lot more impervious surface
because the 12000 square feet of skate park itself goes over onto the
gravel lot and that becomes the impervious surface.
• Butler: Yeah, but you just told me that the 12000 square feet in the
parking lot is a small enough area that it wouldn't matter.
Staff answer: The parking area is only about this size. This is the
parking area that was depicted in that drawing. This 12000 square feet
of skate park is really going to fill in that type of area there. It is
significantly larger.
• Butler: Who's cars are there right now?
Staff answer: Currently, those are vehicles that are part of Dulles
Motor Cars employees that are parking on that space. We have
designated that area as skate park parking only and they will be towed;
however, this area is still getting parked by first come, first served.
Typically it is mostly Dulles Motor Car employees.
• Butler: In the new plan, all that goes away—it is turned into trees.
Staff answer: Correct. Should the park be built on its existing site or if
it is relocated over onto the gravel lot, it would become the skate park
and the skate park designated parking.
• Butler: Okay, I don't have any more questions other than it is not at all
clear that we have an optimal design at this point. But, that's alright. I
won't push it anymore here.
• Martinez: Thank you for your comments. I appreciate it. I know that
we are going to be working together and I want to do what we can to
accommodate the Fire and Rescue to make sure that they stay where
they are at and they also get the growth because I think they are a great
value for the town.
• Burk: Just, if I understand it, you are saying that we can locate—that
the Rescue Squad is interested in taking part of the property, but is
willing to share it with the skate park—that you are not looking for the
skate park to be relocated.
Rescue Squad answer: Relocated off of that property, somewhere else
like the Douglass public school—we are not interested in that. That is
up to you to plan that. That is something that came out of this group or
the other group. We looked at it and initially the two alternatives we
talked about with some of the council and staff was to move it over, like
20IPage
Council Work Session June 8, 2015
we just showed you, or leave it there and build another building on the
other side and use the other as all parking—working with you to park
around it. We are thinking if you moved it over, as he has shown here,
that parking area can drive through bay, you can take a look down
around that <animal> station, that's about the parking we've got in the
back part. We get about 15 cars. That's our staff during the day. At
night time, it goes up to 25 and some of our cars are over in that
parking lot now in the dirt lot. They are scared to get towed. We said
if they get towed, we would call the Mayor or call one of you. But,
they are there overnight because we go up to about 20 cars at night.
We don't have any space. If we have a meeting or a training that goes
on there, it fills our lot and a lot of times all the other cars are there, so
we pack it in. There is no parking. It is kind of landlocked. Our two
alternatives, that we asked—when we were asked to see, is that one if
you keep it there, we put another building on the other side because we
do have space issues inside, but also work with parking so that we can
use the parking with the skate park that is there. We have to go to the
skate park a couple of a month because people fall. They do come
knocking on our door. It happens, or move the skate park over. We did
discuss with our members and we put it in front of them. We discussed
if it moved over, we talked about the delta between the regular parking
pad and moving it over to there, when we were discussing that. But,
Mr. Colvin and I and the committees talked about with that, we would
initially work with you and get it moved because we want you to have
the skate park and the constituents to have a skate park. That is the
biggest thing, I think here. The other part would be our primary thing
right away is parking until we get our mortgages in place and our
complete architectural stuff to put out—it wouldn't go any further—it
would be in the front part of the building that we would come out and
then have the ride through bays because they are unsafe right now
having to back in all the time. You would still have a large area of
parking. We would not be completely moving that whole building off
over to the side bigger. We would put the front part probably out to the
start of the front parking lot in that area.
• Burk: And would, by doing one of those two alternatives, would that
impact the company that it could not service the town? Some of the
emails are going around saying that leaving the skate park there will
impact the company and you won't be able to have heavy vehicles and
you won't be able to service the town.
Rescue Squad answer: The comment on the heavy vehicles was
because we were not going to sign their agreement. The training part
and their agreement to staff it there and we asked them to move it out
because we don't have enough space in this station to bunk people at
night for the living space. That is why we are looking at the addition.
The other part is the safety factor running through our bays—we don't
have run through bays, we have just front bays that we have to back
21 IP age
Council Work Session June 8, 2015
into. Plus, the parking. Those are the three things. In addition, being
up in the front would add more office, more training and more bunking
space—living space. Bunking space right now is limited where at night
we have—and this is based on our call volume—our call volumes are
going up 10-15 percent per year. We are over, like you said, on our
actual thing we came in to talk to you about—we are over 4500 calls
out of that station right now. That station was made back in the day
when there were 800 calls, in the 80s. It was started at 800 calls—we ar
up to 4500, so we are up 10-15 percent per year. We have five
ambulances there. We have two boats, a command vehicle, a utility
vehicle, and another ALS response vehicle and a <canteen>. It is all
cramped in there. So, we need to have proper bays which would be
fixed, but we need the space for the offices, the bunking and capabilities
to hold more people in the building to provide more response. Because
we are pulling in people from outside the area to help us. The other
day in the fire here, a big incident like that, we had two of our vehicles
volunteer, and one paid vehicle that's there out of our station and then
the rescue was there. That was just out of our place and there were still
five other ambulances. We are trying to keep up with the other stuff
and the expansion in our call volume is what making this go. I think—
and I know this for a fact is that in future 2018, we are going to put
something down on Evergreen Road, which I think is Leesburg South,
is what they call it. We are supposed to put one ambulance, which is
what they are calling for, and then the fire department engine down
there. That would have one out of here, but in the meantime, we don't
have any space to do anything. We can't even house those people in
that space. We need space. You are talking out the front, the front part
of it coming across, and then the back part not having any.
• Burk: But having the skate park stay there does not negatively impact
your expansion?
Rescue Squad: The thing that would happen negatively, we don't think
so if we put another building on the other side. We could still do it.
We have discussed this with the Mayor and Marty and a couple of
others. It doesn't have to be there, we could use another spot for offices
and more training area. It does separate your operations to a point, but
it still does the thing. We don't have to have ride through bays and still
be able to have it safe. We can put extra vehicles over there. We can
put the training and the offices over there and still have operationally in
the main building where they can put more bunking where the offices
used to be. In fact, we could do that and another building would house
the ambulances on the other side. That was the second alternative that
we were talking about. We did come to the alternative and we also
understand the third spot, which was to move was there. We said
that's fine too. It wouldn't affect us as much, asking them for land. We
would ask that the land be with our own building—an agreement if we
leave that property, it goes back to the town.
22IPage
Council Work Session June 8, 2015
• Burk: I just wanted to say, at our meeting—I'm sorry, Suzanne, that
you came up with such an impression, but everybody had the
opportunity to speak, but you chose not to speak. Katie spoke and I did
and that's fine. But, I tried to stay as neutral as possible and present the
information as best I could.
• Martinez: If we move the park to the left, brought it down a little bit,
we have the skate park, you have the ability to expand and have drive
through bays and parking for everybody. That would probably be a
win/win because you'd have plenty of parking at night because we
don't plan on having the skate park open after 10 o'clock or 9 o'clock or
whatever it is. Parking would then be resolved. So, that would be a
win/win. The additional cost is $200,000. The question is where do
we come up with the difference.
Rescue Squad: I'd have to go back to the membership and explain that
to them—like we said, we'd like to be able to start out—once we get
our mortgage in place, and our architect and parking piece to work with
everybody. I don't think that would be a problem with us. We'd just
have to discuss—initially we talked that we could go up to $500,000,
and that could be a problem that we have to look at.
• Martinez: You said it was an additional$200,000. How hard would it
be to come up with a rough draft plan of what that could look like? Is it
going to cost another month?
Staff answer: Those were rough preliminary numbers —I worked with
Capital Projects. We could sit down and hash through them again and
try to get a closer thing. I guess the challenge would be if we went
further along and went into some sort of formal engineering process,
then we would be expending funds in order to get that number.
• Martinez: The thing is, the current skate park is surface layer—if we
are going to do it anyway, we are going to have escalate and dig and
just shifting it over a few feet—we would be digging anyway. So, I
guess I'm just- $200,000 to me seems like something we can work with.
You have options you can present us on how we can do this. I would
like to see a drawing, if Council is okay with that, of what it could be.
• Butler: If it costs an extra$200,000 to move that over, then you guys
have real problems. There is no chance it is an extra$200,000 and I
will give you an example why. What is the surface of the current skate
park?
Staff answer: The skate park is 12,000 square feet.
• Butler: Instead of spending$200,000 for all this stormwater
management, which seems to explode the cost of every project that we
have, what would is the cost if we just bust up the asphalt? It probably
would be a lot less than $200,000, I would imagine, right?
Staff answer: I would assume so, yes.
• Butler: Those are the kinds of options I would prefer from staff rather
than just saying it is going to cost an extra$200,000 for stormwater
management. We are going have the same discussion tomorrow night
' P a g e e
Council Work Session June 8, 2015
that as far as I can tell, we are spending$800,000 on stormwater
management and I have no idea why. So, I would like to build on what
Marty said and I would like to have a work session on the skate park
design to try to accommodate the rescue mission.
• Katie: There may be four members that have already made that
decision, but just in the interest of our work session discussion, if I
could just explore a couple of other ideas. First thing that I heard from
Mr. Saghafi was today when he sent an email, so if I may just take a
minute—I did appreciate Mr. Skinner being able to speak to us at the
work session tonight just so that I can mention a couple of things as we
are vetting this is the best place, given the different things we are
thinking about here. "Let me tell you what it has been like to be a
neighbor to the town's skate park. On a daily basis during peak skating
weather, countless skaters and bicyclists cut through my property to get
to the park. Many young kids come from the neighborhood behind my
car lot. In the process, many of my cars have been scratched. This is a
liability I deal with every day being open seven days a week. Another
liability issue for me—what would happen if a child was to be struck by
a vehicle driven either a customer or one of my employees. Of course, I
can post proper signage to not trespass, but I guarantee the first day I
will have to call authorities and possibly have a young child arrested.
So, you can see the dilemma. I have instructed my staff to allow these
kids to pass and not report them, but not because I don't want to, but
because I'm not sure I could forgive myself if any one of those kids
were hurt on a very busy Catoctin Circle. I have dealt with this for the
past 10 years, so it seems like this is the opportunity to say something.
The current skate park is awkwardly placed on the parcel between a
private business, a busy car wash, and an emergency center. No other
park space is adjacent. The skate park belongs in an area that serves
families like the one at Lake Fairfax. I personally have taken my
children to the skate park and my daughter was bored stiff, while my
son enjoyed his skate boarding. I believe that many families would
appreciate the opportunity to visit a facility where amenities are
available for all ages. I also would be more likely to stay at the park if it
accommodated children of different age groups. Currently there are
children being dropped off directly on a very busy road, or children are
coming through my business property at a busy time of day causing
damage to my inventory. I would appreciate your taking my business
concerns, as well as access and safety concerns into account before you
decide to begin work on a skate park. I am a neighbor to the skate
park, I live this every single day." I bring that up because that is
actually something that was brought up in terms of the joint meeting,
which is if we are able to get some feedback from the school board in
terms of their willingness, you know, staff's recommendations, say to
put it in a specific place, like the inline skating park, there are other
things to do at that park for children of all ages and arguably some of
24IPage
Council Work Session June 8, 2015
these concerns could be eliminated. I P ause there, because an action
there, to me, if we could get a majority of Council to support at least
getting an answer, is sending a letter to the school board to get an
answer. I think we simply don't know or have that feedback from them
as to whether they would explore putting the skate park on the current
Douglass site and if so, where and under what circumstances. I would
personally would appreciate that answer via a letter or appropriate
communication to get that answer. A related question though, that I
don't think we've fully vetted, is if we do move it, it will cost more,
similar to what we are talking about here—it costs more to even move
the skate park on the existing site, so where is that money going to
come from? So, at least my initial motivation for even considering
another spot, is the land value is $2,905,500. The assessment has been
close to $3 million. I know that we don't have kind of the majority
support that we would even consider selling town property. A basic
question that I had before I would even consider that is, this is located
in the Crescent District, so by definition, if we were even to entertain
selling it to be able to get the money to free up some funds, not only for
additional other projects but just the cost associated with the additional
construction costs, would we have to sell to the highest bidder, even if
that bidder didn't conform to the Crescent District Master Plan—like
for instance, let's face it—expanding parking spaces is not what our
vision is for that property.
Staff answer: Thank you for asking that, Ms. Hammler, because I
wanted to correct a statement from a couple minutes ago. When the
town sells public property, you do not have to bid it out to the highest
bidder. That is only for leasing. So, if the town wants—if this town
council wants to sell any public land, you can sell it to whomever you
want through a purchase and sale and deed. You just have to have a
public hearing and it has to be a super majority for most public places
such as parks.
• Hammier: That's very helpful. The other aspect of this is clearly
coming to terms with the scope of a partnership with the county,
period, particularly because I believe they should be a partner with the
future of, you know, how we construct, you know, helping the rescue
squad and what their needs are on this land. Just, as a footnote, we
know that we are having a separate discussion with them relative to,
you know, some of the financials, their needs. I don't think we can
assume that we would just, you know, for a $1 give this land away
particularly in light of the emergency reimbursement fund coming into
the rescue squad and trying to see how that pans out this year and that
we are the only municipality that is not getting reimbursed. There are a
lot of moving parts when it comes to, you know, helping and figuring
out how best to work that out, but no matter what, I think the county
needs to be part of that as well as what is a regional park amenity. We
haven't even discussed whether we would even charge fees to non-town
251 Page
Council Work Session June 8, 2015
residents, if we decide this is going to be our own. But, certainly I
would rather approach them that this could be open to all county and
town kids, because I do think it would be a benefit to them. So, I
would appreciate sending a letter from the Council to get an answer so
that we are clear and we are not hypothesizing based on a very, kind of
quickly run meeting, that we know what their intentions are—if they
need more information to make a proper decision and then we can look
at the benefits of, you know, supporting the other competing interests
on this property and find the best place for the skate park.
• Fox: Just a couple of things. I just want to be clear—Mr. Skinner,
there is no way you'll leave that place. We don't want you to, so I
want to be clear that is what you are saying to us.
Skinner: I agree.
• Fox: I'm sorry, you intent to stay in that location in Leesburg. We
would prefer that. I want to be 100% clear.
Skinner: That is our preference.
• Fox: Because that's not the impression I got, so I wanted to be sure.
Skinner: There was an email, that I want to be clear to you—on those
emails that are going around—that come from specific people,
<inaudible> that said is already the understanding—and I am sure they
are misunderstood—because they thought that we would be moving a
lot of our stuff down to Evergreen Road. We are not. We are putting
one vehicle down there. <inaudible> because when we did the study—
we did studies on it, we studied that it is right in the middle of the call
area.
• Fox: Which is where we would prefer it. Okay, that was one question
—a clarifying question that I had. One observation that I had as I sat
and listened to some of the comments from the skaters that did come
into chambers and talk to us —correct me if I'm wrong, but I got the
impression that they wanted a skate park, but that they wanted a skate
park. They were okay with it wherever. That's where I kind of went
somewhere else with it. I don't see why it needs to stay in the same
place, but that's just my impression, so I wanted to put that out there.
And thirdly, I just wanted to address the fact that yeah, the school
board would love to have some more information, would love to have
some more time to vet that information. I'm not sure that is what
Council wants, but that is what I took away from it as well. Just to
address Kelly's quick comment. I did have some opportunity to speak,
even though I refrained from speaking at that meeting, because there
were a lot of things going on in my head and I think I refrained because
the discussion we needed to have was between us and not between
them and us. That's why I kind of held back there.
• Mayor: So, what I'm taking out of this, is the following: The Rescue
Squad is willing to work with the town, but you definitely need to
expand and you are willing to either expand into the current skate park
site which would require the town to move the skate park either farther
26IPage
Council Work Session June 8, 2015
west on the current property or move it off the property Y entirel . The
Rescue Squad is also willing to work with the town and instead of
expanding in to the current skate park site, build a second building on
the west side of the skate park to accommodate your expansion needs.
So, you guys are trying to be very flexible in how you are working with
the town. I think a letter to the school board is a very good idea. The
impression I have right now is the school board is on an entirely
different and much longer term time line than the town is. The council
would need to decide whether the council wants to delay this project
because unless the council takes an affirmative act to delay it before
July 1, the project does go forward to refurbish the skate park on its
current site. I don't yet know whether there is a majority of council
that wants to delay, but I have the impression that the delay we are
looking at with the school board is a ten year delay, not a few months,
not even one or two years, but a ten year delay. If that is a wrong
impression, the sooner we get that clarified by the school board, the
better. So, I think a letter asking for clarification is a very good idea.
There are three competing interests in this area. One is the Rescue
Squad, which I think has the most important interest because it is a
public safety operation and it is beneficial to every citizen in the town.
The second interest, of course, is the people who want to use a good
skate park and the third is Mr. Saghafi, who is very tightly packed on
his current site and would like additional parking, which he currently
now has, even that being provided on the gravel lot is probably
insufficient. I have spoken with Mr. Saghafi in the past about whether
he would be able to, speaking of parking structures, put a parking
structure on his lot—that would be expensive and might have the
additional difficulty since that whole area, I believe, is old town landfill,
of being more expensive than it would be in other parts of town. So,
there are three competing interests for that site. All of them are
extremely important. I would say the Rescue Squad has to be given
precedence because it has the critical public safety interest in this mix,
but the other two interests cannot be ignored. I personally am not wild
about delaying the refurbishment of the skate park. The Rescue Squad
has discussed the possibility of having the town—I'm not saying they
are wild about it— about having the town decrease the town's annual
allocation to Rescue to cover the additional costs of moving the skate
park in order to accommodate the Rescue Squad. The advantage of
building a second building is the expansion probably wouldn't cost the
Rescue Squad more money than just building out from the current
building, but it also would enable us to just refurbish and save the
$200,000+. The cheapest option for the Rescue Squad and for the town
is just to allow Rescue to build a second building. The other option
would be Rescue expands their current building into the skate park, we
have to move the skate park, which drives the cost up, according to staff
estimates, by$200,000 —we annually give Rescue about$200,000 so
271 Page
Council Work Session June 8, 2015
would we ask Rescue to forgive us for not donating$200,000 to them
one year. That is what we are looking at.
• Hammier: Remember the value of the land—has intrinsic value as well
over a significant amount of time. All of that needs to be taken into
account.
• Mayor: Sure. I don't personally have a problem with us continuing to
own the land and allowing Rescue to build on it, the same way that it
was done before and not charging them a sales price. I am perfectly
content. It is a public function enabling them to expand without
charging them the sales price that we might otherwise get.
• Hammier: My only point is it is an opportunity for the partnership with
the county. They are a partner in that base and I think we need to bring
them to the fold. I would appreciate your encouragement on sending a
letter and focusing in on being as specific as possible to staff
recommendations to try to get answers. Would you be willing to put
where the inline skating park is—perhaps give them one or two
concrete recommendations and what their timeline would need to be so
that we could hopefully get an answer back and know whether the time
line is suitable or not.
• Mayor: I know that both school staff and county staff, I think, have
been talking to our staff and all we've gotten on timeline is they have a
long timeline. It is a ten year timeline. It is not a one month timeline.
If there is any way they would be interested in accelerating to meet our
timeline, that would be great. I'm not optimistic, but I agree it is worth
a letter specifically requesting that.
• Martinez: We keep talking about the value of the land. I'm looking at
the value of the people the Rescue Squad serves. My feeling is
whatever value the land is, is nowhere near the value of them being
there, saving our residents. Anybody who had to use them in the past,
would probably say the same thing. Dollars have no value when it
comes to saving lives and having them here serving our people. As far
as I'm concerned, you can keep talking about dollars. I'm not. I'm
talking about people.
• Burk: I was going to, under new business tomorrow, I was going to ask
if we could write a letter to the school board and to the county and
thank them for meeting with us—taking the time to meet with us. So,
perhaps you could include that in the other letter.
• Butler: When we get to additions to future council meetings, we can
discuss the specific recommendations we are going to make out of this,
or are we discussing them now?
• Mayor: This would be timely, if you want to discuss them now.
• Butler: So, A, you want to send a letter to the school board asking if
their time could be accelerated?
• Mayor: Finding out exactly what timing they anticipate.
• Butler: Okay, so do we have four votes for that? Is that something that
staff could craft for tomorrow so we could vote on it?
281Page
Council Work Session June 8, 2015
Staff answer: Yes.
• Butler: The second one is I would like to have a work session on skate
park design for two reasons. One, it looks like on our current design,
we are going from about 40 parking spaces down to like 12 and I don't
think that is going to serve anybody's needs particularly. Although I
like the trees and everything else, I think we need a lot of parking
spaces here. I would like to discuss that. And the second thing is it
shouldn't cost anywhere near$200,000 to move the skate park to the
other side. I think there are other creative solutions that staff should
and could come up with that would make the difference—the delta in
cost much, much smaller to the point that it is trivial. So, I think that
would be an important discussion to have. It is appropriate for the
Rescue Squad and would give the Rescue Squad more options and
would benefit us—we'd have the same benefit either way.
• Hammier: That's the work session idea, but if I could follow-up on if
we, as a council, decide that it is going to stay where it is, it would be
helpful to get, whether it is a letter, an answer from the county, in terms
of specifics supporting expansion of the squad building and
contributions to the land. I think that's an opportunity for the council
to be able to get guidance from them about how they would contribute
to the skate park as well as the expansion of what is arguably also a
significant county responsibility and it would help us given that we are
providing a regional resource and obviously we are supporting as best
we can, the Rescue Squad. Whether we think that is a letter sooner,
rather than later, I would support getting an answer on that—being very
specific that we are considering expanding—excuse me, moving the
skate park around to accommodate the needs of the squad and then
determine what the land value is and the costs associated with it so that
we can get some feedback from the county. I should add, you know,
that it is not unprecedented. The county has provided a$1 million for
the Ashburn Volunteer Fire Station as well. They definitely make
significant contributions and I think we should be doing our fiduciary
responsibility to be getting that as well from the county.
• Mayor: So that would be to explore the possibility of having the county
pay us the market value for the land on to which the Rescue Squad
would expand. Is that what you are thinking, Katie?
• Hammier: I am just brainstorming. I have been saying from the
beginning that this is an opportunity for a partnership for the skate park
as well as supporting what we are trying to do to do our best to support
the Rescue Squad.
• Mayor: Is that what you are looking for? Okay.
• Hammier: It's an idea. The land value and they may want to help pay
for the building, or whatever it is that they can contribute. If we get
paid for the land, that offsets the construction cost of moving the park.
• Martinez: I was just going to say—I mean it doesn't hurt to ask the
County to kick in a little bit, if they can.
291Page
Council Work Session June 8, 2015
• Burk: But, that's different than asking—maybe I misunderstand you—
but are you asking them if the company needs to expand?
• Hammier: No, I'm not. I am, at every step of the way, trying to figure
out a tactical action item to get better engaged with the county on what
I heard loud and clear, that they really need to explore a partnership
with us. So, we have got a lot of moving parts, if we stay on the
existing site. There certainly would be opportunities to explore that—
we don't even know yet if it is even possible to move to Douglass until
we get an answer from the school board. So, I support isolating the
possibility given we are having a work session about moving the skate
park on the existing site, that they would anticipate how they could
contribute if it stays there, supporting us, making that happen.
• Mayor: What I'm taking from it is, I think Katie wants in the letter—
this would go to the county more likely than the school board, a request
that they let us know whether they are willing to pay us the market
value of the additional square footage that the Rescue Squad needs to
put on town land. That's what I'm taking out of what Katie said.
• Hammier: I'm open to better suggestions, but determining a proper end
goal for a partnership with the county to help achieve what we are
trying to do on that land.
Rescue Squad: I need you to look at something first—it now becomes
county property, not town property. You can't go back. Every other
fire company has been a private entity like us, a private, incorporated
entity, a 501(c)3, has made them sign agreements and they become part
of the county. They give us, like I explained to you and some other
people, we go into budget with them ,<inaudible> they will take a look
at your mortgage and they will pay for that, but you are going to lose
that in this case.
• Hammier: It sounds like we have to have the work session to begin
with to look at the cost differentials and then explore—maybe while we
are getting answer from the county and we are doing this concurrent
work session, we can be exploring ways that we can, in fact, get the
county involved in a partnership, whether they might make a
contribution to the skate park for the difference in price and we don't
charge regional users or something, but I want to keep that open in our
discussions, if we may.
Staff answer: May I suggest that we move forward with the letter that
you approved tomorrow night to the school board to clarify if Douglass
is in play. If we determine that Douglass is not in play over the next
couple of weeks, then we know where we stand. Then, we can
continue with the work session discussion, flesh out some details of
what is a win/win, what are some potential costs. I know Mr.
Williams has given you a number, but he is not the engineer who is
going to develop the number. Once we know those details, whether we
are going to Douglass, or staying at Catoctin in some fashion, then we
can pursue discussing with the county for potential funding, but I
301 Page
Council Work Session June 8, 2015
would suggest one step at a time. If we go too scattered, we will come
back with nothing.
There was consensus to direct staff to draft a letter to the school board
for a vote on Tuesday evening.
2. Additions to Future Council Meetings
Council Member Dunn: "There was a memo item in here about the H-2 and it
was—I think it needs to be elevated to a work session at this point because the priority
was set for that back in 2012-13 and now we are looking at it going on to somewhere
in 2016, according to the memo. Somehow I just can't imagine priorities set by
Council are taking four years to even get addressed. I would like to see if we can get
this at a work session that we can come to some clearer, faster direction to staff on
what to do with the H-2 and just discuss some of those options because I think the
path that staff is heading down based on this memo is I just see it continuing to be
extended and extended and I don't think that is the direction Council had selected
years ago".
There was Council consensus to have a work session.
Council Member Dunn "I don't know if I'm ready for a work session yet. I'd
like to work with staff a little bit, if it is okay, Kaj, on the drive through. If you look at
the memo on it, again, I think that some of the direction on—I think that the way we
are reviewing drive throughs is almost prohibitive of even having them at all. Again,
I think that there might be some areas that we could find some middle ground that
can be more business friendly and still look out for the interests of the citizens. But, I
will get with staff on that, if it is okay, Kaj on that and maybe we can see where we
need to go from there on it.
Vice Mayor Burk: "I was wondering and it doesn't have to be any time soon,
but I had a couple of residents contact me about neighbors that have those temporary
pods in their driveway and when I asked about it, I was told that there is no
requirement. They can be there forever. So, I was wondering if we could get some
sort of memo explaining what are the possibilities to make them not be permanent. If
they are supposed to be temporary structures. One person in their neighborhood, it
has been up there for six years. It doesn't have to be tomorrow. I don't know if you
have to vote on it."
There was consensus to have this item on a future work session.
Council Member Hammler "I will disclose tomorrow night that I had a great
meeting today with folks who have long been involved in bringing a performing arts
centers to downtown or the town. One of the great ideas that Stilson brought up this
morning, that I know Kate Trask was also involved in is given that a truck flew off the
second floor of the garage and landed on the benches right on the town green, turning
lemons into lemonade, it is a great opportunity instead of just reconstructing the
31 I Page
Council Work Session June 8, 2015
benches, create a permanent stage. I know staff spends a lot labor hours for Acoustics
on the Green and our many events and it could be beautifully landscaped and
integrated with the benches to be able to bring that to the town green. I would
appreciate having brought this up with Kaj and I even thought about it there is even
some initial designs that Bill Ference did. So, whatever Kaj deems is the next
necessary action just to bring it to a work session or a memo, but I would appreciate
Council considering that and looking at the costs to make that happen. Hopefully,
the insurance covers it."
There was consensus to support a work session discussion for this.
3. Adjournment
On a motion by Council Member Martinez, seconded by Council Member Butler, the
meeting was adjourned at 9:•51 p.m.
Clerk of Council
2015 tcwsmin0608
32IPage