HomeMy Public PortalAbout2015_tcwsmin0727 Council Work Session July 27, 2015
Council Chambers, 25 West Market Street, 7:30 p.m. Mayor Kristen C. Umstattd
presiding.
Council Members Present: Kelly Burk, Thomas Dunn, II, Suzanne Fox, Katie
Sheldon Hammler, Marty Martinez and Mayor Umstattd.
Council Members Absent: Council Member Butler.
Staff Present: Town Manager Kaj Dentler, Deputy Town Manager Keith Markel,
Town Attorney Barbara Notar, Director of Finance and Administrative Services
Clark Case, Assistant Director of Finance and Administrative Services Mike
Goodrich, Interim Information Technology Manager John Callahan and Clerk of
Council Lee Ann Green
AGENDA ITEMS
1. Work Session Items for Discussion
a. Transparency Initiative
Members of the Technology and Communication Commission (John
Binkley, Eric Byrd, and Tom Coleman) presented their initiative.
Key Points:
• Only asking for support of the policy statement so that the
Commission can work on the initiative.
• No request for obligation of funds or commitments to timelines.
• Morgan Wright, owner of Safelock, discussed how to use
information to drive economic development.
o Access to information creates a progressive atmosphere.
o Creating relevant technology so that people can self-serve
themselves to obtain information.
Council Member Comments/Questions:
• Fox: I took a look at everything and I think transparency is always
a good thing. I wanted to know a couple of—what you are after
tonight is an approval of a policy statement, am I correct?
Speaker: Correct.
• Fox: And is just for the town or overall? Is there an economic
development bent that you are trying to establish, or is this
something for the town website?
Speaker: This would be from data that the town has that is going to
be valuable to both businesses and educational institutions and
coincidentally to the town itself. One of the great—look at case
study after case study in data transparency—open data— one of the
largest consumers of open data is governments themselves. Many
cities have found that once they make this information available
through these open portals and to these open platforms, staff uses it.
It is actually easier to access and much more efficient. Outside of
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efficiencies inside the government, because you are looking for
inside of the town government, what we are looking at being able to
do is to drive economic activity, like you were just hearing about
from Morgan and one of the things I would like to do is to make
Leesburg more attractive for educational institutions and
researchers so that we could attract additional entities to the area.
• Fox: How does this differ from what we have on the town
government website, the OpenGov, financial transparency portal?
How does what you are proposing differ from that?
Speaker: In two primary ways, [inaudible]. The first way is that
site that you are referring to is primarily a visualization tool, not
necessarily what we would refer to as straight, open data. Now, it is
powerful and it is useful, but we are talking about making
information available in essentially its native form, not something
that has a presentation layer to it where you can go to a website and
create graphs. We are talking about much more raw data that is
going to be much more useful to businesses that are trying to do
their own analytics and also saves the staff time, etc. in terms of
preparing that data. So, we are not talking about a lot of expense in
terms of pretty graphs or fancy websites. We are just talking about
making the raw data available. The second area that is different,
you are talking about beyond just financial information. Any
information that would be essentially discoverable by a FOIA
request, that is not protected by Virginia State law would be made
available and why would we not do that if that is something that
would be effective in driving and stimulating economic activity and
also attracting new entities from an educational, academic and
business perspective.
• Fox: You mentioned cost. I know that is probably not a discussion
for tonight, but have you—I was just looking at some of the Google
analytics that we don't have many hits on this. Do you expect what
you are proposing to have to have a lot more traffic?
Speaker: We are and there was two primary reasons to that. So,
the financial data is very cyclic in nature. So, during budget cycles,
etc., you will see spikes in that traffic. So, any individual period of
traffic on that site might be a little misleading, but the second aspect
of this is that there has not been a real effort to publicize this. So,
part of the plan that we are talking about going off and creating is a
way to publicize and raise awareness of this. Other cities have
actually combined both awareness and cost efficiencies by doing
things like Hackathons. There are actually national Hackathon
days when you bring in essentially people from the community who
actually work on some of the actual infrastructure for the open data
initiatives or work on applications that utilize that data. There is no
cost to the town at the same time it raises awareness. So, there is a
couple of different things that we have—areas on our clipboard that
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we have to raise awareness. We are looking at working through
some of the various educational institutions in town. There is a
whole historical component to this that we were looking at
exploring. Is this something that we could do in conjunction with
the schools. Then, as I said, there really hasn't been a lot of
promotion around the open data that we already have. Even if it is
never used extensively directly, the idea would be that it is an
indirect relationship. Companies, institutions will come and use
that data and then that would be made available, mostly through
value added elements like Morgan was talking about. It is not
necessarily anything we are going to get massive hits on directly
because again we are talking about doing this essentially in a very
bootstrap fashion, making data available in the raw form, so it is not
going to be something that a lot of people are going to just go to the
website—it is not a very user friendly environment, but it is a data
heavy, value rich environment for the people who know how to use
that data. It is not about necessarily the direct access numbers, it is
about who is taking that information and then using it in a way that
is going to drive economic activity and research.
• Fox: Madam Mayor, reading the staff report, one of the only
concerns that I had was the fiscal impact study that there hasn't
been one yet. So, would we be—if we went ahead and had some
sort of action on this tonight, that would open up discussion about
the fiscal impact study?
• Mayor: A fiscal impact study, of course is going to consume staff
resources,just to do that study, but if the council were seriously
considering implementing what the commission is requesting, then I
think we would need a fiscal impact study because I could see this
being extremely expensive and we would want to know are we
putting out there items that nobody in the public is ever going to
care about, but are we spending l Os of thousands of dollars to do it,
so we are going to have to be evaluating that issue.
Speaker: If I could just add one thing to that. I think there is a
couple of different ways that we are thinking about that. What we
would like to do is through the policy statement, we will go off and
create a plan that you could then do a financial impact study on and
that plan would be both phased and tailored exactly to those kind of
concerns. There could be off ramps essentially in terms of hey we
are not seeing a return on investment here that we expected. We
are not talking about something that would be a huge up front
investment and you know, then the hope and a prayer that it is
going to work. We are talking about iterating in a very agile
fashion. A lot of us are from start ups. We are used to doing things
on shoe string budgets and iterating it and bootstrapping it as we go.
That's what we are talking about.
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Other speaker: I hate to try to over simplify this, but I want to
oversimplify it. What we are not talking about doing is building a
website where you go and look at the data and all of these graphs
and all this fun stuff. What we are talking about is releasing the raw
data. It sits in a file, probably on multiple servers at this point and it
is ones and zeros and numbers. So, what we are talking about and
what the trend is all across the county is that governments are
making this data, as Morgan said, that is already available to people
through a public information request, available in a block of data so
that they can take the data and look through it and figure out how
to sort it and try to present it. This is actually what Open.gov, the
website Open.gov does. They take the data that our staff sends
them and they pretty it up. Okay? We are not saying we want to
pretty it up. So, the cost of this is going to primarily be in figuring
out what's the process to make sure that the process that needs to
not be released, isn't released.
• Fox: You mean scrubbing, correct?
Speaker: Yes, so it needs to be scrubbed and redacted— so it needs
to be appropriate before it is released to the public. That is the
primary cost because once it is ready to release to the public, it is
basically a file that you copy onto a server and then if people want
it, they come get it. We don't have to do anything with it. We just
leave it there. Now, the value of that—is very, very difficult to
quantify. Here is a reason—Morgan and I were talking on the
phone earlier. He mentioned nobody wanted an iPhone before
there was an iPhone because nobody knew it existed, so this is why
I liked his application that he created. He, because of his
background, recognized that there was this information available
about sex offenders, specifically. Nobody else knew that this
existed, but he knew that this data was available, so he accesses the
data and then he creates as an entrepreneur creates everything that
needs to be done to be able to deliver it to the public. We don't do
any of that. None of the people who hold that data did any of that.
He just accesses the data. So we are talking about making the data
as easy to access as possible so that people then can figure out what
they should do with it. Now, the impression part of that is actually
the really important economic driving part here. If Leesburg is not
seen as a technology friendly environment to work in, then tech
companies won't come here and that is pretty straight forward. So,
if we are tight and we are behind the curve on this and by the way
we are in danger of being behind the curve on this— a lot of other
municipalities and a lot of other government entities are doing
exactly this thing and they are releasing all this information. That is
potentially going to hold us back from getting the kinds of
companies that we want to actually settle here, not because they are
coming here specifically for that data. That is the hard part to
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understand. It is because we are all about making sure that they get
what they need and we do release whatever can be released. It is
more of an attitude kind of thing. Does that make sense?
Other speaker: We have also looked very hard for quantification of
what the value of this value—the direct economic value of this data
is and while I can't give you something that is specific to the town
of Leesburg, I can tell you that McKinsey and Company, a pretty
well respected consulting company, pegged the value in the US at 3
trillion dollars sitting in towns and states in open data in direct value
—not indirect. Direct value— 3 trillion dollars. That's about 1.1
percent GDP, they are estimating a buck for organizations,
organizations usually being countries or states or towns. They
estimate about a 1.1 percent bump in economic activity.
• Hammier: I appreciate all the tech commissioners who are here this
evening—John, our chair, Eric, our official spokesperson as relates
to so many key topics and above all, Tom Coleman, who is casually
sitting in the back but he has really been a passionate driver behind
this important initiative and has really kept the focus and moved it
forward. I was fortunate enough to be your liaison, so I won't take
up much time, because I am sure my colleagues have many more
questions but I fully support the policy statement. I know you are
going.to go back and are very, very sensitive about all of the cost
concerns but already know that you are developing really important
partnerships, not only in the entrepreneurial community but the
Sunlight foundation, other municipalities that are in fact taking the
lead and I'll just pick up on the key point you made about in fact we
are lagging behind. I think it is absolutely critical that the largest
town in Virginia where the county seat of one of the fastest growing
towns in the county, right here in the center of Silicon Valley east in
Northern Virginia where there is so much activity and potential that
it is critical that we take this leadership role so I will look forward to
continue to work with you on this and I hope my colleagues will
support it.
• Martinez: So, you mentioned some data that we are talking about
putting up. I am assuming things like budgets, you mentioned the
police reports. What other types of data are you looking at that we
are going to now put up there? Anything specific? Especially
towards economic development?
Speaker: Part of my work that I did with the Center for Digital
Government, we do the 50 Digital States Performance Index and
we look at these same issues. What information do you want to
make transparent. We are talking everything from GIS
information, utility, power, to water. All of the things that may not
be apparent to somebody who is sitting on one side, even us. But
some entrepreneur, some academician, some university is going to
look at the information and say what makes Leesburg unique. For
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example, for the airport, for this for that, whatever else and they are
going to want to be able to pull in data from multiple sources to do
all different types of analysis. Having that information available is
going to make it easier to analyze the information, easier to produce
reports and I will tell you kind of circling back to the cost issue, part
of our advice at the Center for Digital Government to our states, to
our counties that we work with, is don't look at a one year plan.
Look at a five year plan. When you start standardizing interfaces to
access the information technology, you lower cost, you lower
barriers to entry. You lower staff time, IT time that it takes to
support it. What happens is over a five year period of time, you not
only have repaid your initial investment, you have a cost savings
because now you have eliminated all of the service that has to be
done to be responsive to public records requests and servicing other
types, sharing of information between departments. I would say
that you just don't adopt a data transparency policy, but you also
look at standardizing the information sharing interfaces between all
your different departments so that information flows freely and then
all you have to do is flag what information is either protected and
what information would be responsive to a public records request.
The minute you do that, the system takes care of itself because
things that are protected require then the consumer or the citizen to
come in and make an official public records request. You now
analyze it, produce it, but otherwise you let the free flow of
information. You let the market take the information and have at
it.
• Martinez: So, what you are saying is the savings is in that the staff
is not creating these graphs or these charts, you are allowing the
businesses to come in and make them themselves and make their
decisions based on the raw data not on what has already been
created by somebody else.
Speaker: Right, and to your point, if you put a graph out, that is
your interpretation of the data, but I want the raw data. I am
actually going through a survey right now, market data for a large
company I am working with. I am actually working with a Ph.D, a
statistician, but it gets back to all of that—here is the raw data. I
said, well I get the raw data, now help me turn it into something
that is presentable. I could take a set of raw data and I could create
a thousand different presentations out of that, but again it goes back
to, I think, what you are looking at is don't look at a one year plan,
look at a five year plan. Don't look at what it is going to cost you
tomorrow—look at what the cost of not doing it will be five years
from now.
• Martinez: So, going back to the economic development you were
talking about. When we are looking at this raw data, we are looking
at businesses coming in looking at the different areas for
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development, you know, what's a variable there via our GIS
information? What kind of services can be provided and they are
getting all that analysis on their own dime, not on ours. That is
where the cost savings comes in.
Speaker: Exactly. So, part of what we are asking you to do, we
realize is a little unusual. Okay? Typically the governmental
process doesn't really work like this and we get that. This is why we
are keying on what we call the iterative process. We don't know
what data. We don't know how much it is going to cost you,
because we haven't looked at that. So, rather than spend a whole
lot of time, and a whole lot of effort and a whole lot of staff time
coming up with a plan to say here is the way we think that should
happen, we figured we would come and ask you if you wanted us to
do it first. So, essentially, this is us doing that and saying look, we
feel that it is important to have this policy, and once we have your
blessing that yes, we want to go investigate this and our goal is to be
able to release whatever is releasable, then we will go back and
create a plan with staff that makes sense—that is a multi-year. Tom
and I have talked a couple of times, but we don't have an end time
goal. It might take ten years to do this, we don't know. It is going
to be phased in over time. It is not like we are going to come back
next year and ask for $300,000 for something.
• Martinez: My next question is you mention some date of August 1.
What are you actually looking for on August 1, 2015?
Speaker: All we are asking for now is a blessing and approval of the
policy statement that allows us to then go and start to really
investigate what is it we should be doing more specifically. Then,
that would come back to you before anything actually gets done and
you would approve or not approve and we would figure out what
the plan needs to be moving forward. We would take it slow. We
are not going to come in and try to disrupt what staff is doing
already. They already have a hard enough job. We actually want
to ultimately make things easier for them, so we are not going to
come in and blow things out next year and suddenly ask for a whole
bunch of money and the costs on something like this are, I think
Morgan and I were talking about—I use the phrase ridiculously
cheap to do something like this because there is no website to build.
There is no front end. There is no making it pretty. It is all working
with the data files.
• Martinez: So, you a policy for transparency by August 1st and you
want it to include the eight principles of open government and data
redaction plan. So, what are the eight principles? Now, I am not
going to expect you to tell me them now, but those are things that
you want us to vote on that—I didn't see it.
Speaker: It should be on the next page from that.
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• Martinez: I was trying to scroll through there and it wasn't coming
up on my iPad, but now I understand what you are talking about
because I know when I get, you know, we have people coming here
with their charts and their stuff, for example, the county. They had
their own little spreadsheet—immediately those don't add up. A lot
of times I want to see the raw data and let me create my own chart—
my own stuff so that I can interpret it the way I want to see it, not
how you want me to see it. I think that's the true value of having
this raw data out there. I do understand what you are trying to do
and I have no problem with it. Other than my biggest concern is the
culture we are trying to change in the town staff and how they are
going to have to figure out how they are going to do this. How are
we going to put this data on there? How are we going to make it
accessible. Those are just my questions or my
comments/statements, whatever. Thanks a lot. I really appreciate
the initiative.
Speaker: I understand, but one thing. You were saying what would
it look like? What it would look like is one webpage with a listing
of what they call open APIs —application programming interfaces —
somebody says I want this data, they connect with. That is all the
work that it takes. That is what it would actually look like. One
webpage, 50 links and that is it.
Other speaker: It would look like a webpage circa about 10 years
ago.
• Martinez: Anyway, I don't have it. Your eight principles are not
on the document I brought up.
Speaker: I also have some case studies that we can put up on one of
the town sharepoint that talks about some of the other towns and
cities that have used open data.
• Martinez: I take it back. I did find it. It was embedded in the
document, not at the end.
• Burk: Thank you very much for coming. I just have one question.
Can you give me the names of some localities that are using this
now?
Speaker: I mean there is quite a few. The leaders, I think,
Montgomery county.
• Hammler: There is an entire book that was distributed. It has a ton
of good examples.
• Burk: I would just like two or three localities in the area that are
using it.
Speaker: Okay, so Montgomery County is probably the best
example locally here. The Sunlight foundation speaks highly of
their efforts and is going to hook us up essentially with their staff
over there that have been working on that so that we can get the
benefit of some of that local experience. I apologize, we actually
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spoke to another town in Northern Virginia but we are blanking on
the name at this exact moment. It is quite extensive.
• Burk: So, Arlington, Alexandria, Fairfax County—they don't use
it?
Speaker: Almost all of them have at least a rudimentary type
program, something along the Open data website.
Other Speaker: So, there is nothing to use. In that sense, I am not
sure I understand the question. I kind of get, you know, is anybody
else doing this in the world? Well, the report that we presented—
the Open Cities report had, I don't know how many are in there,
but there are literally hundreds of localities and states who are doing
this initiative. The federal government...
• Burk: I don't doubt you were—I am just trying to find out if there
are any locally that I could reach out to talk to. That's all.
Speaker: Sure. I tell you what? We can absolutely get you that
information as follow-up to this. And we can try to get the contact
at Montgomery County, which would probably be very easy.
• Burk: Thank you.
Speaker: And I am pretty sure the state of Virginia just did an open
data census, so we can even get you some...
• Dunn: Thank you, it was probably about a year and a half ago that
Tom Coleman called me on the phone and I think I had some
burgers on the grill and he had me on the phone and then I had to
put hotdogs on the grill. I think I am still eating that barbeque in
the freezer, he had me on the phone so long, but I did appreciate
you calling me and bringing this to my attention. I am glad we are
finally here. I know this has been a slow train coming and
hopefully we can take it home from here. You know, there is nearly
1800 municipalities in this country when you consider towns, cities,
townships, counties and states. I would not be ashamed if no one
else was doing this and we were the leaders. That is a good thing.
It is good to hear some other communities are doing it, but this is
definitely something Leesburg should not be feeling shy about being
in the forefront thereof. By the way, you have in your report here,
you only have seven of your eight principles. So, I don't know what
the other one is. You have got complete primary timely accessible,
open format, nondiscriminatory and license fees. If you know what
the eighth one is, that would be great.
Speaker: We actually combined. We combined two of them. It is
the machine readable and open format. We actually thought they
worked better together.
• Dunn: Just want to be open, right?And you know, I would tend to
agree that I don't see much of a cost in this except for possibly staff
time and even that should be fairly minimal because I don't know
what we are using any carbon paper anymore these days. If we
have it, Kaj, let me know because everything is done electronically
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so it would be just taking it from one pile of electronic format and
J g p
putting it over to another pile, if needed or just allowing people
access to where it is currently sitting because I don't know anything
we are doing that's just handwritten. It is all in e-format, so it just
allowing people to get equal e-format. There might be some
archival costs, potentially. Also, I wanted to point out this was one
of the primary objectives for the diversity commission. One of the
things they wanted was to be able to have more access to
government information and how they can help the diversity
community get that information so this falls right in line with what
another commission is already working on and I encourage you all
to get with the diversity commission. You all can marry up their
goals with this goal. I know that the last time you were before us,
you had a mission statement that you wanted us to approve. I think
for the most part, Council was falling in line with it. They wanted
to hear some more information, but it was one of those statements
that sure, who wouldn't want to do this. Well, that was the easy
part. Saying it—that you want to do it is easy. Acting it is the other
and hopefully we don't just make this a feel good statement that is
actually an action statement. That we actually go forward and take
action on this and as much as possible open up the information to
the public about government. I am fully supportive of this and I
appreciate all of your efforts. Thanks for coming tonight.
Speaker: I think that it is important to point out that part of the
reason why we want to take the approach we are taking is to keep
the costs down because there will be staff time involved in this in
some way, shape or form both in planning it, figuring out what
needs to be done and then implementing it. It is not always just as
easy as saying oh there is a file here and I'll move it over here. It is
a lot more complicated, and you know that. I just want to make
sure everybody is clear that this is why we want to take our time
and we want to get the policy understood so that then we can sit
down and go okay what should the plan to implement this be over
time so that it doesn't cost a lot— so that we are able to do it with a
minimum of staff time and get all of the benefits without having to
spend—that is extremely important to this iterative process and the
entire commission is totally onboard with that. So, thank you for
reminding me. I definitely want everybody to understand that is the
approach we want to take.
• Dunn: And I am glad you pointed that out too, because I know one
of the things that we are voting on tomorrow night—it is something
small, but I noticed that on tomorrow night's agenda, we have an
item that is dealing with move to rescind the approved minutes for
the regular session and then I look back at tab 12 and I am looking
at the minutes and we have now decided to go with a verbatim
minutes while we have video and people can listen verbatim to what
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we are saying, I guess some on Council felt that there is a need to
get this written down. Well, unless it is an automated system, or is
somebody actually required to listen to it and type it down. You
have got to listen and type. Talk about staff work intensive.
Hopefully there are ways to maybe getting around that that voice
recognition programs, if we really have to get this automated, that
this could be something that the staff doesn't have to do it. It would
be really interested in finding out how much time is involved in
typing out these verbatim minutes and seeing if there is another way
of doing it. To me when there is other ways of people to get this
information, i.e. to watch a video, that this is really a—to me a
waste of staff's time. I would hope that wouldn't be something that
if there is alternatives, I would hope that the commission doesn't go
forward and say, well we really want to get this done. It is going to
take a lot of staff time. I would look for are there alternatives to
having to do that. Again, thanks for coming out.
• Mayor: I really appreciate your presentation. I especially
appreciate your awareness of the cost concerns that Council
members might have. I do share those cost concerns. I mean, I am
looking right now at Palo Alto's budget. Palo Alto is generally
considered to be one of the top municipalities for open government
and having just about everything you can online, but I am looking
at their IT department expense and it looks like it is going up to
about$7 million in this fiscal year. We don't have that kind of
money here. Our annual budget is between about$47 and 50
million and to dedicate more than 10 percent of that to IT is going
to be a tremendous hit on our taxpayers. So, I am a bit concerned.
I think that you have a great point when you say that once you have
the system in place, there may be less staff time needed, but to get
this in place I think is going to require tremendous staff time and
that is staff time for which we will not be compensated the way we
are for FOIA requests. So, we are going to be asked, possibly—you
guys are very cognizant of cost concerns, but if we are going to be
asked to dedicate a lot of staff resources, even in the beginning , to
something that may not have much interest for the public, you can
see the hurdle that some of us may need to get over. I think it
would be interesting to see if you took, say the Loudoun County
website and Leesburg's website, which you think works better. I
find it very difficult to find any information on Loudoun County's
website but they do have a lot of information on it. So, when you
are talking about having all the raw data out there, you need to have
in mind not just people who are very well educated in technology
like you, but also your average citizen who needs an easy way to
access information and I don't think the county is there yet. I think
ours is a bit more user friendly in certain areas than theirs. I agree
with the Vice Mayor—if you can provide Virginia jurisdictions that
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you feel are doing a top notch job, then we can take a look at how
much of a budget they are dedicating to this and look at if what
they've got out there is of much interest to the public. I did
appreciate the points you made that maybe it is not of interest now
—your iPhone point, maybe it's not of interest now, but it might be
in the future. I can see where you are coming from with that, but
I'm not sure we can afford the Tesla of systems and maybe a
Hyundai is going to be more affordable for our people in town. So,
that's where I am coming from, but I think it is an interesting
concept.
Speaker: Let me just say that most of us on the commission are
business men and women and make our living in the technology
sector and are very used to living within budgets and living within
our means and very cognizant of the controlling costs. We will
approach this in an iterative and staged fashion, which will allow us
to control risks both from an operational perspective and from a cost
perspective and from a staff perspective as well. I am really quite
confident, this is not something we have just come to on a whim.
We have worked on this for over a year now inside the commission.
I am very confident that we can find a way to move forward,
minimally in an incremental fashion in a way that is at least going
to set us down, you know, this path. No one here thinks we have to
do it in one fell swoop or we have got to eat the elephant with one
bite. I think we are well aware of the realities and the practical
difficulties and are preparing to meet that challenge and come back
to you with a plan that you will be comfortable with.
Other speaker: And I really like the idea of shooting for the
economic development that Palo Alto has. I think that's fabulous.
We could solve a lot of problems if that could happen.
It was decided that endorsement of the policy statement could be
brought up under Additions to Future Council meetings, if so desired.
b. Downtown Parking Task Force Recommendations
Keith Markel stated he would like to go through the Parking Task
Force's recommendations.
• Five hundred foot rule for public parking—Task force recommendation
is to remove this option as relates to the County parking garage:
o Consensus to remove this option for proximity to the county parking garage.
• Sidewalk improvements for pedestrian access to the Liberty Street
parking lot—Task force recommendation to add a CIP project to
improve walkability in this area:
o Hammier: I'm a maybe.
o Dunn: I may have been a maybe. I'm not sure. I guess my issue
was which is going to come first—improvements to the lot or
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improvements of how to get to and from the lot. Then the other
thing was is there the possibility of directing people another way
where there is ADA compliance?
Staff answer: There is no ADA walkability whether you go down
Liberty Street, whether you down Wirt to Royal. All of those have
significant problems and no sidewalk.
o Dunn: Okay and the other thing was I guess before I can say yes,
let's go forward, what are we looking at as far as cost. Where
would you put the sidewalks, how much of that is public land versus
we would have to get easements and we probably don't have any
information on that at this point. To me, I think we need to do a
little more research on this before we can go green light.
o Burk: So, would the sidewalk improvements, if we suggested that,
would that start you on doing what Tom just asked?
Staff answer: Yes.
o Burk: So, we wouldn't actually do anything yet, we would just be
getting the information that Tom is asking for.
Staff answer: That is correct. We would just start the process for
staff to develop a plan of attack to see what is feasible.
o Burk: Does that change your vote, Tom?
o Dunn: No, I think what I was saying is I would like to get more
information to know whether we can go forward. How much wider
are we going to have to make the sidewalks...would we ever get to
ADA compliance? Because there are sidewalks in town that are not.
Staff answer: Next year's CIP process, so you would have to
approve it as part of that program that you would want to actually
move forward.
o Dunn: Because I believe we do have some sidewalks in town that
are not ADA compliant and in order to get there would be pretty
tough to do. That is what you deal with the historic district, but
yeah, I would like to hear from staff what we are dealing with as far
how we get from point A to point B on this concept.
o Hammier: Well, Madam Mayor, for a number of these I guess it is
hard for me to just react and say yes or no because at some point
you sort of have to ask how is it going to help us get to the bigger
end goal, which is we are trying to increase x number of short term
spaces in these quadrants and we need x number here, x number
here, and in the case of Liberty, I know for example we are
anticipating that there is really not enough spaces there. We
couldn't even put all of our town employees there. So, I guess my
basic question tactically, would be well how much staff time is it
going to take to even come up with the estimate for us to get more
information. Obviously, we wouldn't make a decision until next
fiscal year, but if it doesn't take a lot of staff time ultimately, or even
engineering costs coming up with what is a reasonably accurate CIP
project, then I wouldn't necessarily have any issue with getting the
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information. So, I'd be a yes in that case and there is more
questions I have.
o Martinez: Still trying to figure out what Katie said.
o Fox: I just wanted to be sure that some of the sidewalks we are
talking—when we went on that little walk from Liberty Street down
Royal Street, are those the type of things you are talking about at
this point—where the sidewalks were just falling off and there are
no—you know, there is just no way it is walkable? Is that what you
are talking about?
Staff answer: Not to that extent, where we walked down the length
of Royal Street and saw a lot of issues all the way to South King and
beyond. In this case, you can see just from this photograph where
you have asphalt right up to the front door of those homes along
Royal Street, this is the one major avenue of walkability from the
Liberty parking lot down Royal and then across Loudoun Street to
get to this facility or downtown. There you can see where the cars
are parked on the right hand side, the sidewalk stops mid-block into
large shrubbery. So, that is not an option there. So, if you are
walking from this building, for instance, you have to walk in the
street for a good portion of that walk. Same goes on Liberty Street
by the Thomas Birkby House. That sidewalk ends halfway along
their property frontage—you have to walk down into the street with
no handicap ramp to transition you up or down.
o Fox: So, it is just this piece you are talking about.
Staff answer: The immediate concern here is getting walkability
from the sidewalks we have on Loudoun Street back to the Liberty
parking lot. Not a full streetscape project for all of Royal Street.
o Mayor: One of the concerns that I always have on proposed
sidewalk projects is this is, if I sound critical, I am not being critical.
I think staff and you have done a great job, but the implications of
this are potentially we are going to have to take either people's
parking spaces or we are going to end up taking their property to
accomplish this and that is information we don't have in front of us.
I don't know—I would say yeah this sounds great, as long as we
don't have to remove any parking spaces and don't have to
condemn anybody's land, but if we do have to do either, then it is
looking not so great to me. It is hard to give you a yes or no in that
situation.
Staff answer: We can have staff gather some more data—not the
full engineering detail or a big expense, but maybe look at a higher
level of what sort of issues we would run into and see if that is
helpful to you all.
o Mayor: That would be helpful to me, anyway. I don't know if
other council members feel the same way.
o Dunn: I would also like to know how legally, if we do anything to
the lot, do we have to improve the sidewalks for ADA compliance.
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Staff answer: If ou improve the lot itself? And there are no
Y p
recommendations to improve any aspect of the lot.
o Dunn: Are we required to do anything with the sidewalks for ADA
compliance? If we recommend that staff has to use that lot, would
we have to do that?
Staff answer: That would be more of a legal question. You would
have to make accommodations at the very minimum for mobility
issues because you are not providing ADA access.
o Hammier: Which, is I guess what I did not articulate as clearly as
you did, but that is where I was trying to strategically understand
what is the ROI as relates to we will gain this many short term
spaces which is one of the main goals of this task force here if we
are able to accomplish more long term spaces based on investing in
say the sidewalks and these improvements there. It is achieving the
long term goal based on knowing what the costs and the benefits
are. So, I'd appreciate the additional information.
o Burk: I have a feeling that any of these that aren't four yeses are
going to have to require more information. We ought to just go
through the ones that have fours and then bring back the rest with
more information.
Staff answer: We have to know what level of information. Maybe
we can talk about those that are more on the fence issues. So, if
there is enough concern there, I'd say just put this aside for six
months or if you'd actually—how much detail you'd like us to work
on because some of these do require a good bit of effort to get more
information.
• Passenger pick up and drop off zone. Task force recommendation did
not include a specific area, but they liked the conceptual idea to have
someplace for people to wait.
Consensus was to implement this recommendation.
• Increasing the fee for meter bags.
Consensus was to increase the fee as recommended.
• Increasing the fines for parking violations.
Consensus was to increase the fines for parking violations as recommended.
• Increasing the Payment in Lieu fee.
2. Hammier: I plan to bring this back under new business, but these
are two central aspects of$6-7.5 million question, which is at some
point how do we get a new parking garage built. I will defer to
perhaps two weeks from now, but I don't think we are going to fix it
by tweaking the parking in lieu fee. We have to approach it as a
project and figure out how to do a public partnership.
3. Dunn: And that was sort of my question too — on number 6, I guess
my issue is that if we are never—to go to Katie's point—if we are
never going to actually going to get enough money to build a
parking garage through the parking in lieu, why would we even
consider raising it to the cost to make a space? We would never get
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there. I don't think you'd have 300 parking in lieu fees at$20,000 a
piece because that's what it costs for a parking space. That doesn't
even get you the cost of the parking garage so...
Staff answer: I would only work if you were in a partnership with a
public/private partnership perhaps or working with the county as a
contribution towards the overall deck or you put it under general
funds and this was used to offset some of those expenses. No, I
think we all agree that payment in lieu itself isn't going to build up a
war chest big enough to build the structure.
4. Dunn: So that's what I would like to know too, is if we are going to
raise it, what is the end goal? Right now, what we do it for, the
money doesn't go to much of anything other than defray costs in
relation to parking, but it isn't getting us additional parking spaces.
Staff answer: I think the task force concern was reflecting an
amount, but it is not a realistic amount, so it is a rather arbitrary
number to come up with. If it doesn't actually create a parking
space, it is not even enough to create a surface lot space let alone
structured parking. We need to center that more to a realistic
number. So, that people who are not providing parking, they are
actually providing at least the money in place of that to be used in
some form or fashion down the road.
S. Burk: I think you started on the point that I was going to make is
that Parking in Lieu means that you are not providing a parking
space and so a developer that comes in—if they provide their
spaces, they are paying for those spaces in their development. So, if
somebody comes in and they want to develop something and they
don't want to have parking, it is a lot cheaper to do a parking in lieu
one time than to build those parking spaces that we need. So, to me
it is not necessarily for the parking construction of a parking garage
necessarily, it is that you are trying to encourage them to make their
own parking spaces so we don't end up with this shortage of parking
that we've got because it is cheaper again to put that one time
payment for that parking in lieu than to actually pave the whatever
you need to do to make a parking space. For me, it makes perfect
sense to increase the payment because we are trying to get people to
—we have a parking shortage, but parking in lieu does not help us.
6. Dunn: But that is the point I was trying to make too is that you
would have to get to a lot of those parking in lieu fees to get to the
point where you could actually build a parking structure or even a
surface lot.
7. Burk: Right, but for me I am not looking at this to pay for a parking
structure, necessarily. I am looking at this as a way of encouraging
the developer to make his own parking so that we are not short
more parking because they give us this one time fee and then they
don't have to worry about parking anymore. They don't have to
take care of it whereas the other developer who puts the parking in,
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he pays for it, it is there, the person gets to use it. To me, it is
helpful to make sure that more of them will be willing to make
parking spaces. That's all.
8. Dunn: That fee would have to be substantially higher, then. I think
you were suggesting$20,000, correct?
Staff answer: Hitch it to something realistic, so either it is a surface
lot or a structured lot. Taking the average cost of that as being
$12,000 —20,000 or even higher. That leads into the next portion of
that, you know the town contribution—realizing that$20,000 is a
pretty high price tag as a new business trying to establish itself
downtown that one of the ideas that the task force had come up
with was the town, being a partner in that expense and contributing
to that to help offset the cost to the business. This did not get many
yes votes from any of you all, so we can move past that one.
9. Hammler: I don't know where and how this might make sense, but
just in the context of when we were discussing capital intensity
factors, for instance, I was wondering if there were a way for us to
consider where if there is say a developer that wants to come into
the downtown and has converted say retail or kind of non-
residential and wants to turn it into residential, there could perhaps
be a guideline for—like a capital intensity factor to contribute to
something like parking in the downtown. Is that conceivable? It
just seems to me that we are getting a number of applications that
are once again just all residential and you know we talked about
schools and other things that are not directly helping us say from an
economic development perspective in the downtown and perhaps
there is an opportunity for us to articulate that better. So, I don't
know what or how we would do that, but to me it just kind of falls
under the umbrella of the capital intensity factor discussion as it
relates to this zone.
• Mobile Payment apps for parking—Task force recommended a new
system for people to be able to pay from their smartphones.
10.Dunn: The other issue is how this would tie into some of the other
initiatives. That maybe why you have the maybes on there. It
sounds like a great idea, but how is that going to tie into kiosks and
other things you have on the sheet. It sounds like a good idea.
11.Fox: That was my concern too, Tom. Thank you. I was a maybe
because I didn't know if we would try to have both a mobile app
and a payment kiosk as well. I see you are moving on to Payment
Kiosks, which can be pretty darned expensive. I wanted to know
the fiscal impact of having one or the other as opposed to both.
Staff answer: I think because of the cost of the payment kiosks, we
would only be looking at those for the parking deck itself. That
would allow us to have the fewest number of payment kiosks. The
pay and go or park mobile would be used out on the streets around
town where we just can't make the economics work to put payment
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kiosks every block or so based on the charge that we have hourly for
parking, we just could never make those things pay for themselves
and the upkeep and maintenance on them.
• Payment Kiosks for first floor parking garage parking to replace
payment booths that are currently used at the exits to the parking
garage.
o Fox: You said the initial cost is $14,000-40,000. What are the
ongoing costs?
Staff answer: I don't have specifics on that, but we are working on
getting a full proposal from a few companies. I would say up to
maybe $1,000 per year, plus you have got the daily or weekly going
in and making sure there is money, paper, coins, tickets, all those
things. There is a daily operational expense from a staffing
standpoint.
o Burk: Frederick has these, so you could most certainly call them
and ask them.
o Dunn: I would recommend one centrally located kiosk per level.
The garage is not that big on each level. You are not walking that
far. I have been to plenty of garages where you usually have to
walk a good distance. Generally people are—the kiosk is going to
be located near where you either enter the garage from a building or
exit it. And then, I also recommend that rather than having it be a
system that is having somebody to monitor— since we are going
automated, it seems like we are defeating the purpose by making it
where you print the ticket, put it on the windshield and then it has
to be enforced by somebody seeing if there is a ticket. I recommend
that you draw a ticket,just like you do now. Upon leaving the
garage, you go to the kiosk, put your ticket in, make your payment
and then it gives you a five or six minute window to exit the garage
and then the gates lift up when you put your paid ticket at the exit
kiosk. I think that, again, if you are going to have an automated
system, why would you have the enforcement be relying upon
humans to enforce it. Just let the automated system enforce it.
Staff answer: The thing that makes that difficult—one of the things
that the task force really felt strongly about was increasing the
friendliness factor of the garage. They felt that the gate coming
down to go into the deck, the gate to leave the deck—not going in
because you are going to pull the ticket, but just the overall
openness of the deck in not having any confusion about how it
works. So, I think that was their concern.
o Dunn: But it becomes unfriendly when somebody starts giving you
tickets because they are monitoring whether you have paid or not.
Staff answer: It will be clearly posted if you went that route. The
second concern is if you went with the proposal that calls for the
second and third level free. Then those people, it wouldn't work
because they are going to have to get out of the garage and they
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would have to have some sort of ticket to open that gate. How
would it be able to decipher well I was on the second floor so I was
free, so I get to go through without paying versus...
o Dunn: That is if you went that route.
Staff answer: So, if you went with that paid with the ticket like
Frederick has in their garage, on your way out you pay
automatically at the kiosk then all three levels would have to be
charged parking.
o Mayor: Question, Keith. One of the main irritants, I think too,
certainly Dave Butler and others about the garage currently is the
arm that blocks you from entering the garage,just immediately so
you have to stop and you have punch a button and get a ticket, then
the arm comes up. I think Dave and others would probably like to
just eliminate that arm, but if you eliminate that arm, don't you risk
having lots of people just scooting out of the garage, going the
wrong way out?
Staff answer: It's certainly, I'm sure, a possibility, yes.
o Mayor: I can't recall how other garages do it, but my suspicion is
that most of them have an arm that only goes up when you grab the
ticket?
Staff answer: Usually, that's what I have seen.
o Dunn: They don't let you have a free for all. I have never been in a
garage that said just come on in and go on out.
o Martinez: Normally, you get a ticket going in and they let you go
in, but they don't let you go out.
Staff answer: Get your ticket, and like you say, you pay. You
know you feed it back into the machine. It has the time stamp on it
so it knows when you came in. The company here that you see the
picture of, it actually reads the license plates now. It is fully
automated. So, there is no ticketing involved on the way in. It has,
like you have on a police car, it does a scan of your license plate—
holds on to it. As you go out, the other scans the plate on the way
out and it automatically brings up the tally on the machine on the
kiosk on the way out—you pay it and the gate opens. There are all
sorts of scanning—they keep changing as the technology gets better.
They are watching.
o Mayor: Most of us wanted the removal of the gates but is that
actually not going to be feasible?
Staff answer: Well, it is kind of contingent on how you all want the
payment system to work. If you feel strongly that they pay on the
way out at a gate, then we are going to have to keep the gate.
o Fox: Actually, mine has probably more to do with the first, second,
third floor—charging for the first floor, keeping the second and third
floor free. I think that is counter-intuitive and I wanted to talk a
little about that as well. I am trying to understand why we would
charge somebody to be on the first floor, when the second and third
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floor parking is mostly town employees and we are charging
somebody to come in and spend a dollar, two dollars, three dollars,
however much they are in town for to go have lunch. It is kind of a
discouragement in my opinion.
Staff answer: The task force thought about this long and hard. We
had a number of business owners in the downtown who were on the
task force. They felt that there is a convenience factor, so people
and some of them self admitted that they would much rather park
on the first floor, come in and pay and go about my business.
Others said they would rather go up a level and have the
inconvenience of being on the second or third level, having to walk
the stairs or take the elevator but then not pay. So, it gives people a
choice—whether you want the convenience of the first floor, or if
you are willing to take some extra time and go up. One of the big
things, I think you were smart—when you set up the task force, you
included a lot of folks who weren't business centric downtown but
are actually residents in the community and they said from their
own personal experience that they come in and they cruise through
the first level of the deck, if it was full, they would leave. They
might leave Leesburg. They might go to dinner somewhere else
because they dislike the convenience factor and the comfort level of
being on the same level. A lot of people don't like the ramps. We
have a uniquely styled deck where you are on a flat surface and you
ramp up to the next level and you ramp up to the third level. A lot
of them don't like that claustrophobic nature of that ramping
system, so they felt if they couldn't get on the first level, they were
out. That was, again, kind of addressed in the free on the second
and third. Kind of encouraging people to move up and still give the
people a free option in the deck.
o Dunn: I, and I don't need to go into what I was talking about
before, but I will follow-up with Suzanne's—somehow I just don't
see somebody who is concerned about the ramps being less
concerned for a buck off. In other words, I will pay to park on the
lower level only because I don't like the ramps, but I will go ahead
and go up to the next level since it is free. I don't know if that
argument is strong there, but whatever. I would encourage us to
just pay for all levels unless there is something we are doing that
blocks it off from use. There are parking garages that do this too. I
am sure you have been to them. They will block off a section of the
parking garage where you can't enter because it is full or it has now
been filled by town staff and therefore we encourage you to use one
of the lower levels. If those are paid levels, then so be it. If it is
town staff you want to block it off, they have got to get in by a
certain time or you know they can't get in. A lot of times, it is just
cones that they use to block it off, so it is not like it is an arm or a
chain or something. But, I would encourage us to either consider
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charging on all levels or if you are going to keep it reserved for town
staff with it not being paid, at a certain point is blocked off so the
general public can't get up to those levels.
o Burk: How many town employees park in the spaces?
Staff answer: How many town staff use the deck on average? We
are in the 50-60 vehicle range, depending on the weather and the
time of the year.
o Burk: So that is a substantial number up on the top decks.
Staff answer: It is. About half of the top deck is used by town staff,
maybe a little more.
o Burk: I actually like the idea of you paying for the first floor for the
convenience of the first floor and then the other levels are free, but
that does cause an issue. I hadn't thought about it with town staff
parking there, taking almost half of those spots.
Staff answer: A little more than half of the upper level. The second
level, which you can see now stays fairly empty. That picture is
actually a second level photograph there. You can see the number
of spaces at any given time that are open. What they thought was
that by making that second/third level free, you are encouraging
more people to utilize the deck. The goal is to get higher utilization.
o Burk: Right. Get them off the street. Get them up in there. Right.
That makes sense. When you said half, you weren't saying half of
the parking spaces in the whole garage, you were saying half of...
Staff answer: Of Level 3. More than half of level 3 is taken by town
staff.
o Burk: That's different then. I thought you were talking about the
whole...
Staff answer: Oh, no no no. The deck has got 371 space and I am
looking on average when we did the counting in March, we had
between 50-60 town staff in the garage.
o Burk: We will get to the other question I have on that, but okay so
you've got the majority support for 9, 10 and 11 and 12, I guess.
Okay.
o Martinez: I think it is confusing and [inaudible]. I think it is
confusing to have paid parking on the first floor and free parking on
second/third floor. I think that if you are going to park in the
garage and you are charging one floor parking, you ought to charge
them all. I don't think those people who do not like our ramps and
do not like to come in our garage—I don't think that there is enough
there that is going to make a difference on the rest of the people who
will. I think having a payment kiosk on each one where you can
pay, prepay and then leave. It is probably a better idea than having
just one kiosk on one floor. But, I just—having gone through a lot
of parking downtown and going through all types of different things
—mobile apps, and/or the kiosks on each floor and every floor
paying is the simplest way to do it and trying to do it any other way,
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for me, it would add confusion to the people who are parking there
and others.
Staff answer: I should add one more detail here that the task force
discussed is with the mission of trying to free up short term parking
spaces, they saw payment on the first floor would encourage longer
term parkers to go up, because if you are an all day employee you
are going to go to that second, third floor. People just by their
nature aren't going to want to park on the first floor all day long and
perhaps and spend that money so that would create that churn on
the first level. If you did charge at all levels, you might want to look
at how you treat that first floor to still keep that churn.
o Martinez: So how do you get the second and third floor parkers
through the gate? Do you give them a pass that says you can now—
you don't have to pay?
Staff answer: That's why the task force recommendation was no
gates. So, the payment would just be enforced as on-street parking
is enforced on that first level. It is tricky when you try to have two
different styles in the same deck.
o Martinez: Right, and my feeling is that if you charge for the parking
and if you are going to allow employees to park on the lot, then you
give them a badge that allows them to go through the parking, but
you should always have a gate to keep them from leaving without
paying, you know. And every one of those parking spots should be
charged and if we are going to allow staff and employees to park,
then they should have a way to get out. I mean, that's what we do.
We have our little badge, so I park—I don't park—my carpool guy,
he parks for free. Everybody else pays. He just pulls out his badge,
hits the thing and he is gone. Everybody else has to go through the
payment thing.
Staff answer: That's how the deck works for town staff currently.
o Martinez: Right and so that could still be the same, but we should
not give away parking on the second/third floor and make it more
confusing. Because, I tell you if I went up there, I'd park and you
let that gate open, I am going to drive through it.
Staff answer: But, if you park there for any period of time, the
enforcement, the same person who is out writing tickets on the
street, would do a walk through the deck and make sure that you
have something displayed or you've got payment on the kiosk
tracking the time, so that there is an enforcement component. You
could perhaps get away with it and you get lucky and they don't
have enforcement making the rounds. I am sure we'd lose some,
but I think we would still be writing a good number of tickets if folks
aren't paying.
o Martinez: Yeah, but then we become the ticket town. I'm done.
o Dunn: I had a question. My view would be is either charge for all
levels—staff gets through already with their badge or one of the
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other options that I think was on here, I think, was don't charge on
any level because I think the confusion—there is going to be plenty
of confusion with first floor parking and then the other thing is I
think you were losing this, Marty, is when do they find this out?
Because they have to turn and make a commitment to use the
garage and what's the sign going to say? First floor parking$1,
second floor parking 2 or 3, oh, I don't like either of those options
and I am afraid of those ramps anyway and then also what is first
floor? Is it Loudoun Street First Floor is the same as Market Street
first floor?
Staff answer: It would all be signed. That is one of the items here.
o Dunn: Because it is split.
Staff answer: Exactly. We don't want any la, 2a, 3a and b's.
o Dunn: To me, I think we are setting ourselves up and I can already
hear that finance and town manager are going to be getting all kinds
of calls about yeah, I was here, and I didn't...I mean we will be
issuing refunds all over the place, but I think that it needs to be one
of those things where we are charging all levels or no levels.
o Fox: I agree. I think it would be tough to manage and I also believe
if it is going to be all floors, or no floors, you still whatever happens,
you still keep the long term parking, those who buy the spaces, we
can still have the revenue from that. That is the basement spaces,
am I correct?
o Hammier: I think this was the honorary Kevin Wright suggestion a
long time ago for whatever reason never got implemented, but if we
as a council decide to go with what Dave has always
recommended, which is no gates, no fee, cordon off the first floor
for a couple of hours in the morning when people who want to
come all day can't park there and then open it up. That might be
that compromise to ultimately keep that lower level for the shorter
term folks that aren't coming all day long, who have to be at work
by say 9 or whatever time because I would lean towards keeping it
simple at this point if we want to encourage short term parking and
keep it simple and promote that perception that there is plenty of
parking probably the thing to do is make it no cost. It is only what,
a buck an hour? It is almost just not worth worrying about.
o Fox: Let me just put this out there. If we did have free parking, we
wouldn't have to pay for an app. We wouldn't have to pay for any
kiosks. Kind of a win/win situation. Just saying.
o Burk: You'd still have to do the app because that's street parking.
o Fox: Okay, well I think an app would be cheaper than kiosks. Just
a thought.
o Mayor: A third member has joined the nos and we are not sure
who was in what category initially, but I would say I guess item#10
is kind of up in the air at this time, so I have to see where Dave is on
it. Go on to your next one, Keith.
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Council Work Session July 27, 2015
• Keep the $1 per hour rate in the garage, which is a slightly incentivized
rate versus the on-street$1.50 with the goal to get on-street parking
freed up.
• Removal of gates and payment booths.
• Reallocate staff to additional parking enforcement. If the manned
booths are discontinued, staff could be used for street enforcement.
o Dunn: I would like to see the cost of enforcement versus the
revenue generated—expectations.
Staff answer: You have already got that person on staff so it would
just be a matter of them sitting in a booth or are they out on the
street writing tickets.
o Dunn: Right. If we did away with the booths and the cost to
enforce is now more than the revenue generated, then you wouldn't
need them at all.
Staff answer: You don't. You actually make a great deal more with
enforcement on the street than you do in the garage.
o Dunn: But, I'd like to see those numbers.
Staff answer: I can get you those numbers. Just to give you an
idea, they make about$40,000 annually in what people are paying
with cash and check going out to the booth about$100,000 from
expired meters on the street.
o Dunn: But are we actually enforcing that?
Staff answer: We are—that is actually collected revenue.
• Widen parking spaces in the garage. Task force felt strongly about
widening some, if not all of the spaces.
o Martinez: Well, I was going to say that I could understand the rest,
but where you have two parking spots, if you would just enforce
that only compact cars could park there and get the big cars out and
ticket them. I like the idea of having a space for a compact car,
where the small cars get in. If we are going to do that, we need to
enforce whenever anything bigger than a compact car comes in,
ticket them. Say, look, you know, this isn't just your private parking
spot.
Staff answer: And they are not taking two spaces when they are
going into that. It is self regulating. If you want to park in that
space, you can, if you don't, you don't. People are using them.
Some people obviously feel okay with it, but I have been in there a
number of times watching folks get into the space and then realize,
wow, the door is really snug to try to get in.
o Martinez: I know that when I park my compact car next to another
compact car, I have no problem and I have no problem getting out.
It just bugs me when I park and a big SUV parks next to me and I
can't even get into my car. That's a problem.
o Dunn: The other thing you could consider for those spaces is use
those for handicap spaces and then trade out another handicapped
space somewhere else, or just add those as handicapped spaces. I
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notice that many times our handica pp ed spaces aren't being used.
But, if we think we need more, those might be ideal for a
handicapped spot versus...
Staff answer: We have the proper number and we have added some
over the years when the deck has been redesigned a few times —
configuration. We do try to keep those handicapped spaces close to
the doorways and elevators,just for convenience factor. If we put
handicapped out in the center, there is a pretty long path that goes
out to the car.
o Dunn: Those are the only two in the center?
Staff answer: Those are the ones that have the concrete walls
between the ramps.
o Burk: And getting out would be a real problem, if you are
handicapped.
o Dunn: You could possibly consider those for motorcycle spaces
too. Because I don't think we have any motorcycle spaces in the
garage.
o Fox: Have you quantified how many spaces we would lose in the
garage, if we did that?
Staff answer: No because we wanted to see what your thoughts
were on this. We could go as much or as little as you wanted to
depending...I highlighted here that long run where you could see—
we have got 20 spaces in a row. We could take out one space, two
spaces, depending on how large you wanted the space to be and
then share that loss—that 8 1/2 feet among however many spaces are
left. I think that the thought among staff was that the diagonal
spaces are appropriately sized. They are easy to get in and out of.
The hard part is where you come in and try to make that 90 degree
turn into a space that you can see on the ends of the garage. That is
where the extra space helps in making that turn, especially if you
have a larger wheel based vehicle. The diagonal spaces are fairly
easy to get in and out of for most all vehicles.
o Dunn: To the right, is that first floor Loudoun? Because that is the
exit, correct?
Staff answer: Yeah, if you are looking, that is Market Street on the
right, Loudoun is on the left.
o Dunn: One of the things that I was going to suggest on that, is I
don't think on that level you have any handicapped. Is that correct?
Staff answer: Level 2? Level 3 has handicapped.
o Dunn: Level 1 Loudoun.
Staff answer: No. Because you don't have a ramp down from
Level 1 B to Loudoun side.
o Dunn: Except for the car ramp.
Staff answer: Except for the car ramp, which is not handicapped.
o Dunn: But if somebody is still wanting to exit the garage to
Loudoun and they need wheelchair accessibility, I was going to
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Council Work Session July 27, 2015
suggest the two spaces, or the spaces that are closest to Loudoun
Street. You have the two spaces that are on the other side of the
gate. You could make that as one handicapped spot or any of those
four or five that you have along the Loudoun side as being
handicapped. A couple of those. Just a suggestion because there
are no handicapped spaces on that side if somebody wanted to just
exit the garage from there and go on out to Loudoun Street.
Thanks.
• Paint the interior of the garage a bright color.
Consensus was to paint the interior white.
• Install exterior signage on the deck wall to make it more inviting.
Consensus was to add wall mounted signage to the outside of the garage to
make it clear that it is public parking.
• Welcoming information kiosks—repurpose the parking booths.
Consensus was to repurpose the parking booths to display welcome
information.
• Eliminate the parking validation program.
Consensus was to eliminate the validation program if there was an option
for free parking in the garage.
o Dunn: Just a note on the validation process—the only way it
could be validated is unless you had attendants or the merchants
had a way of coding the ticket to either affect the kiosk or affect
the exit gates. Just keep that in mind depending on where we go
forward, that process may not work.
• Continue to rent the basement of the garage.
Consensus to continue this program.
• Update signage in the garage.
o Dunn: Do the colors have to match the colors that are allowed
by the BAR? Is that considered an indoor sign, which means
that the BAR has review? We do have limits on the number of
colors that we can use on our downtown signs. That may
actually be why that is that color. You might want to look into
that.
• Signage that directs folks to other parking options should the deck
be full.
o Hammler: How would we monitor if the garage was full.
Staff answer: The signs would just be there.
Consensus was to update signage as recommended.
• Additional safety features in the garage such as mirrors, emergency
call boxes, closed circuit camera that record activity in the deck.
• Should the Council want to make the second and third level free,
the task force felt that would necessitate the need to move staff to
Liberty Street.
o Mayor: They are leaning towards yes.
Staff answer: We have tracked usage at Liberty—although there
are sufficient spaces for all town employees, if we were the only
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ones there, but we are not. We are finding that there are not
sufficient spaces to accommodate 50-60 extra cars every day
during the work day. Even if you directed employees to park
out of the garage, we would not all be able to park on Liberty.
We would have to park wherever we could find a spot. We
would do whatever you want, but it is not as simple as saying
move to Liberty and all the spaces are adequate. It does not
exist in today's supply.
o Dunn: My view is let the staff stay there. We haven't hit the
tipping point in the garage at this point. If and when we get
there, we can make that decision at that time. There is no use in
disrupting staff's parking patterns when as we saw by the
pictures, second and third levels are free—we can't even give
them away.
Staff answer: Well, they are not free now.
o Dunn: Okay, but they are still not being used. As you said, the
top level is not being used either. I would just say leave it as is
until we reach that point where we need to make a decision.
o Martinez: I agree. My reasons are basically I just don't like the
idea of having our staff having to walk to Liberty through the
town and thunderstorms that we are having, snow, any kind of
weather event, if there is any construction around. I would
much rather them be in the garage. I think it is a perk that our
staff..
o Mayor: Alright, it is shifting back. I am hearing, one, two,
three, four against moving staff to Liberty at this point.
o Burk: Maybe we could find some sort of incentive, if they did
use the Liberty Lot, they could get...
o Mayor: A free ice cream cone.
o Burk: Maybe something more.
o Martinez: But that is really not a bad idea.
o Hammler: That is exactly what I was going to say, Kelly, but I
was also going to say it doesn't have to be an all or nothing
thing. There could be departments that have a competition
between departments or rotation schedule, but tying into
incentives. Totally different, but parallel example, leading to
what my main point is on the county the results from the task
force pointed to the real need for additional spaces where the
county garage is, so depending on how the vote goes tomorrow
night on the court house appeal, I will be bringing back for new
business or discussion how we can reach out to the County
administrator to talk about county employees and how to figure
out ways that he might be able to create incentives. I know they
have got a shuttle bus, but at some point work through that issue
a little bit more, but the example I was going to use is county
related too, which is you know they have health benefits that
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Council Work Session July 27, 2015
they offer. A lot of companies give incentives if you don't take
company or organizational set of benefits. If their incentive is so
low, that nobody takes advantage of it so it has to be a good
incentive and I think it would be deeply appreciated to keep
increasing the perception that there is plenty of parking.
o Fox: I just wanted to bring it back around to the fiscal part.
There were a lot of ideas that were thrown out that we liked as a
group, the painting, the signs, things like that. So, at this point
are you going to go do some kind of fiscal impact study and then
come back to us? What pot does that come out of? Is this
general fund? Is this CIP? Where does this all—how will it be
paid for if we go ahead with these things.
Staff answer: We can come back with that information.
Consensus was for staff to return with a resolution to approve those items that there was
a clear consensus to implement. Those items without a clear consensus will return for work
session discussion in September.
2. Additions to Future Council Meetings
Council Member Hammier: "I would appreciate putting on the agenda in two
weeks, the open data transparency policy statement. Council will be receiving the
original power point that lists that policy statement. I have already forwarded the
open data document that has a lot of background municipal examples and one
additional phrase, which is directing the commission to reach out and brief and
discuss this with the economic development and diversity commissions."
It was decided to put this on the agenda for Tuesday, August 11 for a vote for
support.
Council Member Dunn: "The only other thing I would like to bring up at a
work session is to discuss staff and probably the diversity commission getting with the
county on the idea of creating a cultural diversity awareness center in the four
buildings on Edwards Ferry Road". There was no support for this. Council Member
Dunn verified that he could bring this up for a vote at a future meeting.
Vice Mayor Burk "I was wondering if I could get a memo from the town
manager regarding the Standing Residential Traffic Commission's structure. It is one
of the most unique structures I have seen in all of our commissions. I would like to
take a look at it and at some point in the future, have a discussion on whether it is the
best way to set up this particular commission. She also requested a memo on the
support team".
These memos will be provided to Council.
Council Member Fox: "Ideas for future meetings, I believe. Just real quick, I
did have a concerned citizen talk about Royal Street and how all the cut through
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Council Work Session July 27, 2015
traffic is affecting Royal Street. I don't know if this an issue for the SRTC, but she
asked me to ask the Council to maybe have staff look at that situation (between King
and Church). In people's haste to get out of town, they are taking that street and taking it
fast". It was decided that the concerned citizen should ask the Standing Residential
Traffic Committee to look at possible solutions.
"I would like to ask that the Council consider asking staff to talk to the owners of
Dulles Motor Cars seeing how we are getting a lot of information—a lot of emails about
the skate park and the potential move. I think that it is in our purview to talk at least to th
Dulles Motor Cars because there may be some sort of switch in location. I know that we
have gotten a letter from them. I just think it is our due diligence to follow-up with them
and just bring any kind of information back to the Council to consider as we consider the
skate park."
Staff will follow-up with the owners of Dulles Motor Cars acknowledge his
request and ask for elaboration of his request.
"As we were talking about the transparency issue and the tech issue tonight, I have
been approached about possible cell pods being put on town property, but the person who
approached me said that there is nothing in our ordinances that would support that or even
address that."
It was noted that the citizen should touch base with Planning and Zoning to
identify locations in town which would be appropriate for this type of use.
3. Adjournment
On a motion by Council Member Martinez, seconded by Council Member Dunn, the
meeting w s adjarcrned at 9:52 p.m.
Clerk of Cori'161
2015 tcwsmin0727
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