HomeMy Public PortalAbout2016_tcwsmin0111 •
Council Work Session January 11, 2016
Council Chambers, 25 West Market Street, 7:30 p.m. Vice Mayor Kelly Burk
presiding.
Council Members Present: Dave Butler, Thomas Dunn, II, Suzanne Fox, Katie
Sheldon Hammler, Marty Martinez and Vice Mayor Kelly Burk.
Council Members Absent: None.
Staff Present: Town Manager Kaj Dentler, Deputy Town Manager Keith Markel,
Town Attorney Barbara Notar, Public Information Officer Betsy Fields, Zoning
Administrator Christopher Murphy, Paralegal Carmen Smith and Clerk of Council
Lee Ann Green
AGENDA ITEMS
1. Items for Discussion
a. Leesburg Listens Presentation
Betsy Fields gave a presentation about the public input tool, Leesburg
Listens, that will be implemented by town staff to get feedback from the public
through an online forum.
Key Points:
• Allows staff to solicit feedback from the public in an online forum
• Same program is used by Arlington.
• Comments are public by registered users.
• Unregistered user's comments go directly to staff.
• Once an outcome is decided on the topic, it can be posted on the site.
Council Questions/Comments:
• Burk: Will people's names be associated with their comments?
Staff answer: There are two ways to do it. They certainly have to
associate their real name with their account when they register with the
site. Then, we can choose when we throw up a topic if we are going to
allow anonymous comments or not. So, that's a topic by topic choice
that we can make. So, there are some topics that if someone doesn't—
their name isn't going to be associated with it, you know, on the forum,
we might get more honest feedback. So we might choose to allow
people to make anonymous comments, but we can turn that on and off.
• Fox: Just out of curiosity, how did we gather this information before?
Staff answer: How did we gather this information before?Not very
well, honestly. We hold public hearings. You know, there would be
items—press releases that go out about various topics, but we really
didn't have a direct way of gathering this information. This is intended
to supplement the public hearing—you know, members of the public
coming to commission meetings and council meetings. It is actually
something new that we are doing and really enhancing our ability to
engage with the residents of Leesburg.
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• Dunn: Where did this idea originate?
Staff answer: There are three leading platforms and staff saw a number
of them demonstrated at various conferences and it has been a topic of
how to engage with residents and using technology to do so. So, it was
mostly staff initiated. The planning and zoning department, in
particular, is very excited about it.
• Dunn: And we are looking at a $7,000 cost for this?
Staff answer: Yes.
• Dunn: and who on staff is going to be in charge of this?
Staff answer: I am.
• Dunn: How long as Arlington had theirs?
Staff answer: I don't know.
• Dunn: Can we find that out?
Staff answer: I certainly can. If you look at their list of closed topics,
that might give you some idea of how long they have been doing it.
Dentler: I can add in that this cost was included in the approved
budget. It is not a new request.
Staff answer: I can find out how long Arlington has had it. There are a
number of other localities within the Commonwealth that use this
platform as well. There is a similar platform through Granicus called
Speak Up. I know that Blacksburg and Lynchburg both use it.
• Dunn: But this would not be part of the public input process for public
hearings?
Staff answer: No, sir. Let me amend that. You could certainly invite
comment on a topic related to a public hearing, but it would not be part
of the formal public hearing process.
• Dunn: And I would think it would be better to have people's, if it is
part of town government, that people should be required to state their
name and address rather than anonymous. Anonymous usually gets
you complaints that are more strongly worded than if they were putting
their name behind it. Anyway, if it is part of the public process, I don't
think there should be any anonymous involved. If they want to be
anonymous, send us a letter, but anyway I think that's the only
question I have.
• Burk: In the open comments box, is the person's name going to appear
there. Because I agree with Tom on the anonymous versus non.
Staff answer: Let me go back to Open Arlington and show you. I think
you can see— so you can see this one's name is not shown. It would be
at the top of whatever their response is. It looks like they allowed this
one to be—this is the whole survey and name not shown—that is who
the person is. It looks like they may have allowed anonymous
comments on this one. But that is where it would show up so you can
read everybody else's feedback.
• Dunn: Who would be putting in the—who would be opening the
comments for the forum? Would it be—can the public create their own
thread?
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Staff answer: No.
• Dunn: Not questions. It's a forum, correct? Can they start a topic?
Staff answer: No.
• Dunn: That caused me a little bit of concern because I mean one if it is
anonymous and should staff get raises then every staff member would
go in and say yes and Kaj would say it 20 times. He would have 50
aliases.
Staff answer: Again, each participant can only give one response—can
only take the survey once. You can see here this is a summary that has
some bar charts in it as to how many people answered each question.
• Dunn: And when do you need a decision on this?
Dentler: We don't need a decision from you. This is an informational
item since you approved it in the budget. We just wanted to give you a
review of what we are doing and if there is a reaction that you have that
you are not comfortable with, we certainly can make adjustments. But
based on what was approved in the budget, we are ready to implement.
Staff answer: We are already talking with staff about other topics to
throw up there and know that Planning and Zoning wants to do some
stuff about East Market Small Area Plan and I've talked with Lisa
Haley about the budget questions.
• Burk: Sure, there will be a lot of opportunities. I hope we can get it out
to people so that they will know how to use it. But, I think this is really
neat and will be a good addition to the information that we are getting.
Thank you.
• Butler: A couple of questions. One is I have a bit of concern about
creating topics that speak to town policy before they are vetted by
Council, so that is something to think about. For example, the hours,
or as Tom mentioned, raises, which I know that was tongue in cheek,
but if Council hours —if the public thinks that Council hours being
expanded is a great thing, but Council has no intention of paying for
the additional personnel that would entail—town hall—what did I say?
Town Council— okay, Town Council is always open 24/7. But Town
Hall if it is open for another three hours, how would that get funded
and all of that. I am just using this as an example because it came up.
Similarly, I would hope that those kinds of questions might get vetted
by Council first. The second thing is I would be careful how you word
the questions, which is going to be another reason why to talk to Town
Council, because we talk to a lot of people and you say what hours is
town hall open and they will say that town hall is open on the evenings
and on Saturdays because I can go into the lobby and go to the
restrooms, but the town hall services to pay a bill is not open the same
hours so I could see how somebody could be confused perhaps by a
question that is phrased you want to expand town hall hours. And if
somebody sees that the town hall is open from 8:30 to 5:00 then they
might think that well you are closing early, how am I going to—I can't
use the restrooms after 5 any more because it is closed. So, at any rate,
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that is just a couple of the concerns. I mean generally I think it is a very
good idea, but the devil of course is always in the details.
Dentler: That is good advice. We appreciate that. For full clarification
on the town hall hours, the intent is not to expand it so that there is a
cost. It would be adjusting schedules so that we are spreading our staff.
We have staff who like to come in early, staff who like to stay late. It
would not be our intention to add any cost to that, but your question is
dead on.
• Butler: It's great. As long as we know ahead of time—perfect.
b. Telecommunications Antennas
Chris Murphy gave a presentation on small-cell distributed antenna
systems (DAS).
Key Points:
• Current regulations pertain to antennas, monopoles, and pole mounted
facilities in non-residential districts.
• Mr. Donohue of Donohue and Stearns made a presentation explaining
DAS and stated that Leesburg needs an improved communication
network and proposed the extension of DAS into residential and
planned zoning districts as a by-right use.
• Currently, staff is unaware of any areas in town where coverage is
problematic, but acknowledge that the growth of smartphone
ownership may require more bandwidth in the future.
• Since poles are not defined as structures in the Leesburg Zoning
Ordinance, antennas cannot be mounted there as they can only be
mounted on structures.
Council Comments/Questions:
• Butler: One question I had—and generally to answer the questions
does Council wish to make the location of all of these things by right?
Not necessarily. We can certainly make more of them by right,
especially in business type districts, I think. Residential districts—some
questions. Obviously when we say allowed by right in HOA districts,
but let's say a residential property owner wanted to put six or eight of
them on their roof. Would that be okay? I'm not sure I'm okay with
that. One, if somebody wanted to put one on their roof and you know,
it's their roof and their house and these don't look like they are going to
be too horrible looking. They are not very tall. Somebody can have a
chimney that is just as tall, probably, but you know people could go
crazy, especially if there is some monetary advantage for the
homeowner. What's to prevent him from having them? I don't know.
Does that make sense?
Staff answer: To help out with that—I do know that in Fairfax County,
the applications are by right, but when you go into their zoning
ordinance, the use standards for these is like this long. So, they have
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thought about it and they have a system in place. Now, could we
simply cut and paste that and put it into ours? That is something to
look at. So, it probably addresses that, but we'd want to make sure.
• Butler: Sure. That's the biggest one I thought about. I am sure there
are other ones as I think about it, but I think cutting and pasting and
starting with Fairfax's is probably not a bad idea. In any case, but in
general, I think this is a good thing. It is better than those enormous
monopoles all over the place, right?
Staff answer: Well, you would still have the monopoles. DAS systems
were meant to fill in holes.
• Butler: Right. I am not saying they would replace current monopoles,
but they would reduce the applications for new monopoles,
presumably.
Staff answer: That's not how I understand it, but it may. I am not an
expert on it, but I understand that the DAS systems are supplemental to
the poles and it won't eliminate them all together.
• Butler: No, and I wouldn't expect it. No.
• Fox: I did have a few questions. I was just wondering—are there any
health implications that have been studied?
Staff answer: Well, the thing about health implications —because of
federal law, no telecommunications systems can be denied on the basis
—I believe, of health effects. That's federal law. You cannot deny them
based on health.
• Fox: So, in theory, if we somehow said okay, by right in residential
and we had all of these DAS systems in the residential area, we would
not—we are not supposed to be worrying about what might happen in
that residential area as far as health concerns?
Staff answer: That is correct. Federal law prohibits it.
• Fox: Alright. That's interesting. Availability of data is important to
infrastructure as roads and utilities are, so I think that we should at least
give it a look—vet it a little bit to see where we want to go with this but
I think one of my biggest concerns would probably echo Dave's
concerns with what it would look like in residential areas and so forth.
So, that's where I stand with it.
• Burk: Do you have any idea what the push back was from the citizens
in the Mount Vernon area?
Staff answer: I don't know that. I don't know that there was any. I
just talked to the planners there to get information about the
application. I did not discuss with them the review—I think it is a new
application. Because they are still looking at it to determine what
process it involves —whether it requires commission permits, etc., so
there is no public input at this point. I don't know if there is any push
back from the citizens of the Mount Vernon district.
• Burk: So, do we have enough interest from the Council to pursue this?
Do we have four people who are interested in doing that?
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Council Work Session January 11, 2016
There was consensus to carry this item forward to initiation. Staff was
directed to add it to the Consent Agenda for tomorrow night's meeting.
c. Pre-Planning Process: Task Force on Potential Police/Sheriff
Efficiencies
Kaj Dentler stated this item was requested in April for discussion.
Key Points:
• Would suggest that Council select two members.
• Would request that the Board select two members.
Council Comments/Questions:
• Butler: I am not sure that—first I think it would be better once we have
a full council before we nominate people. I think that a great thought
would be is this something that we should get going now with a brand
new board of supervisors and a police chief that is going to be retired
soon or is this something that we should start say in April after the
Board of Supervisors has got their budget out of the way and we have at
least an interim police chief on board. That might be a better time, I
would think, to move forward with this and at that time, give Council
members time to think about who they might like on the task force.
That is just my opinion.
• Hammler: If I may, we have deferred this because we actually
postponed it since last April because we were waiting for the November
election. I would prefer that we get started as soon as possible, at least
generating ideas within a sub-committee structure before the budget
because ultimately, if there is ways that we can find cost savings by
having the police department and the sheriff department work more
cooperatively, it is in the best interest of our citizens and tax payers.
So, I would support moving forward as soon as possible. To that end,
relative to you know, the timing of Chief Price retiring, I think the
timing will be important for us to gather these ideas for whoever
becomes the new leader of our own police department. To some
extent, a lot of the great ideas are going to be coming from the staff
level. One specific example is Deputy Spurlock. He actually is with
the Sheriffs department, but he has worked for the Police Department.
So,just being able to find sources of folks that have perhaps worked in
both organizations. You never know where a good idea is going to
come from. So, I would support nominating any two members of our
council who are willing to take the time to do it. If nobody else would
like to do it, I would certainly be happy to serve.
• Fox: I believe that this is nothing but beneficial and I agree with Katie
that perhaps if we got this started sooner rather than later, we could
find some savings for this fiscal year as well, so I would support moving
ahead with this at this time.
• Martinez: I concur.
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• Dunn: The only thing I would suggest, rather than moving forward
with two people— I don't know the views of those two people and I
think that we should have the opinion of Council moving forward to
meet with representatives of the Board of Supervisors rather than just
having two people take their opinions to the board. For example, Katie
mentioned that it should be something coming from staff. Well that's
fine, but we have already heard from staff with their opinions on some
things and it may not line up completely with where Council's policy
setting would be so I would recommend that we might want to have a
committee of the whole at least pound out a couple of things that we
would like to have the subcommittee move forward with to the county
than just two people going forward with their feelings and it is not
necessarily the feelings of the whole council or at least four members of
Council. But, I don't think that we should delay that. I don't think we
should have delayed it back in April and frankly this shouldn't be
something that is being directed by the chief changing positions because
again it is council's policies, not just chief. For example, we have
talked about before the SROs and the county already gets a substantial
savings by using Leesburg Police. It was the chief's impression that
they should be wearing blue uniforms. Frankly, I don't think it would
be a problem with them having brown uniforms on and them coming
from the Sheriff's department. Those are the things that we should
discuss, I think, before we just send two members off to see what they
can figure out.
• Burk: Kaj, can we schedule that soon?
Dentler: Absolutely. I can certainly have that scheduled prior to any
meeting. It is still going to take time for the board to establish if they
want to move forward, who their representatives are, when the
meetings would be, but yes, I can have a meeting scheduled in advance.
• Fox: I'd like to nominate two people—Katie and Tom.
• Dunn: I can do it, but I may go forward and have completely different
views that I would be willing to represent to the county than you would
like me to. So, that's what I am saying, if Council wants to appoint two
people now, I think that's okay, but I would rather you all wait until we
at least have one discussion on what are the general policies that we
would like to go forward with and hear what those people's views are.
If those people's views are not going to be supported by what council
wants, then their enthusiasm for bringing forward Council's position
may not be as good.
• Butler: So, you are suggesting...
• Dunn: I would say have at least one work session.
• Butler: Have the work session and then find two people whose views
tend to be generally aligned with whatever Council comes up with?
• Hammler: I think our general policy is we have a work session as a
whole and we take a vote and whatever the majority determines are the
priorities would be exactly what the two members of Council would
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move forward to represent the group. I can't imagine any scenario
other than obviously during a work session everybody is free as an at-
large member to bring forward as many good suggestions that
represents even their personal views, but certainly I would think that
would be our official representative role so I don't think we have to
wait to pick two people, but I am happy to do either way.
• Burk: Well, I agree with you there, Katie. I think that all of us will—
once that selection is made, if we have had the meeting and we have
voted on it. I trust that you or Katie or all of us would carry that
position forward. So, I would have no trouble doing it now, but if you
all want to wait until the meeting, that's fine.
• Fox: It looks like the majority of us want to wait.
• Hammier: that sounds like four of us want to do it now.
• Burk: Who's the four? You, Marty, I and who else?
• Fox: I don't mind.
• Dunn: Waiting or going forward?
• Fox: I don't mind moving forward.
• Burk: So, you have nominated Katie and Tom. Do you need a second
for that? For tomorrow? And we could take other nominations if so
desired.
d. Appointment/Selection Process for Mayor and/or Council Member
Barbara Notar reviewed the memo that included information about the
process.
Key Points:
• Mayor Umstattd resigned on 12/31/2015.
• Resignation triggered a vacancy.
• Vice Mayor will perform duties of Mayor until a mayor is elected and
qualifies.
• State Code Section 24.2-225 governs vacancies in any elected
constitutional or local office if there is no other statutory or charter
provision for filling a vacancy in the office.
• Council or the Circuit Court makes an interim appointment of mayor.
• Leesburg Town Charter prevails and states that the vacancy shall be
filled for the unexpired term by a majority vote of the remaining
members of the Council.
• If the Council fails to fill the vacancy within 90 days, such vacancy
shall be filled by the appointment of the judge of the Circuit Court of
Loudoun County. Circuit Court does not have to appoint; however,
this Circuit Court is likely to do so.
• Remaining members of the Town Council may appoint a sitting
Council Member or a qualified voter of the election district(registered
to vote and a resident of the Commonwealth for the past year).
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• If the Council appoints a qualified voter of the election district, once
sworn in will serve as Mayor until a mayor is elected in the November
2016 Mayoral election and takes office. No special election shall occur
under State Code provisions.
• If a Council Member whose term ends in 2016 (Butler, Dunn,
Hammier), like the mayor, the remaining members of the Council have
90 days from the vacancy to appoint a qualified voter of the election
district to fill the vacancy created by the resignation. If the Council fails
to act, the Circuit Court will appoint. No special election would occur.
• If a Council Member whose term ends in 2018 (Burk, Martinez, Fox),
the Council must within 15 days of the vacancy petition the Circuit
Court for a special election to fill the vacant Council seat created by the
resignation. Council has 90 days to appoint an interim Council member
to serve until the special election.
• State Code mandates when special elections can occur. They must be
on a Tuesday and will be held on the date of a General Election, unless
requested for a different date. Cannot be held on the same day as a
primary election (March 1) and they must not occur within 50 days
prior to a general or primary election.
Council Questions/Comments:
• Fox: The only question I had is about the term ending for interim
Mayor. The interim mayor's term ends when the newly elected person
is sworn in. So, you are talking December, not January?
Staff answer: Correct, well—it is usually January when the new
members are sworn in.
• Fox: I was sworn in in December, so I was just wondering about that.
Staff answer: Whenever you are sworn in, that's when you start.
• Hammier: You mention a majority of the Council chooses the interim
mayor through an appointment process. There are a number of
Council Members who are currently not feeling very well, for example.
Does it have to be four people or if hypothetically somebody was absent
would it be a majority of the remaining members.
Staff answer: Must be four.
• Hammier: I just wanted to clarify that because you said a majority.
Staff answer: If someone abstains, that takes your vote out. It is going
to be harder to come to a conclusion. If you are sick and absent, that's
going to be harder to come to a conclusion. Must be four.
• Hammier: What is the estimated cost for a special election?
Staff answer: I don't know that. We can find that out.
• Hammier: I think it is like $17,000, if I remember from previously
asking this question—I just want to put it on the record.
Hypothetically, you think if we requested a special election to fill a seat
on Council, that it would be towards the beginning of that date range—
early March, versus August which would mean we would have a
vacancy for an awful long time.
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Staff answer: I assume the court will give you a date. Whichever date
you request. They will try to accommodate you. So, if you want it
earlier, they would call for the election earlier.
• Butler: I just want to clarify that. We only can ask for a special
election if the Vice Mayor, Marty or Suzanne is appointed as mayor.
Staff answer: Correct.
• Dunn: I had asked you an email question the other day. I hadn't had a
chance to go back to it. You may have answered already but could the
court in its appointment process actually call for an election?
Staff answer: No. I don't think so. That would be going against the
statute. They'd appoint. Remember, they have not, as far as anybody
can remember—they have not appointed anybody to a governing body.
I have talked to town attorneys, I have talked to Bob Sevila...
• Butler: You mean in the state of Virginia or in this district?
Staff answer: In the Loudoun County—there are all kinds of war
stories about other counties, but I am just concerned with this court.
Mr. Dunn, no, I don't think they would do that.
• Burk: So, do we want to talk about how we are going to do this
tomorrow, or do we feel comfortable enough with the process that we
will ask for nominations tomorrow—vote on them, if we have someone
from the Council who gets nominated and voted on. What do we do if
we don't and how do we advertise it? How do we get people to put
their names in from the public?
• Butler: What we have done the last two times, which interestingly, you
have missed both of them—one coming, one going. You know, we just
started and went around the dais. Somebody said I nominate blah,
blah, blah and everybody voted. And then we kept going around until
somebody got four. We hadn't had a chance— an opportunity to find
out what happens if we go around the dais 57 times and we don't get
four. So, I guess that's an interesting question we can answer
tomorrow, but I think we should also include tomorrow doing that is to
advertise or at least be prepared to have a motion to advertise for the
paper and set up some logistics because my personal feeling is that it is
really critical to get this position filled one way or the other before the
next meeting because we can't—we have a number of things that are
potential close votes that are going to like start piling up behind each
other if we don't have somebody in this position, so whatever the
logistics are...
Staff answer: And I do have sample motions in your packets regarding
publication of an advertisement.
• Burk: But I have a question— if we go around the dais and we don't get
somebody from the Council, we will need to advertise.
• Dunn: We don't have to.
Staff answer: If there is a voter of the district that you are all
comfortable with already, then you can nominate that person.
• Burk: Without resumes.
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• Fox: So, say we got through the process of finding somebody to fill the
mayoral seat. What if that would open up—and it came from within.
That would open up a council seat. What is the process for advertising
for that?
Staff answer: It would be the same thing, if you wanted to advertise, it
would be the same thing. And we have done that before. A couple of
years ago. We have a sample advertisement when Mr. Reid went to the
Board of Supervisors and we put out an advertisement to fill his council
seat. We have done that before and we got resumes and the Council
looked at the resumes.
• Fox: It would be advertised then.
Staff answer: Put in the paper and advertised. Yes.
• Burk: But we are not going to advertise for the Mayor's position. We
are going to advertise for the Council's position, but we are not going to
advertise for the Mayor's position?
• Butler: We could do either or both.
Staff answer: We could do either or both.
• Burk: Well, think about that. How you want to handle that aspect of
it.
• Hammier: I do think though that probably what we need to discuss is
sort of the way the sample resolutions have been worded. At some
point, four council members presumably would have to choose which
avenue to take to fill the interim mayor position. I just want to state for
the record kind of where I am coming from as relates to the interim
mayor position. For me, it is different for the interim mayor position
than any previous time we filled a Council member, because Council
has an established SOP as relates to if the Mayor isn't currently here.
Then I would feel comfortable appointing the Vice Mayor or if the Vice
Mayor were not there, it would be by order of seniority. We have very
experienced council members here who have been serving this town in
an elected role for seven to eleven years. Most of all of us have served
as vice mayor. Certainly the feedback I have gotten from the
community is that the expectation is that we would fill the interim
mayor position from somebody who is currently on Council, so that
would be my position as relates to filling the interim position and as far
as filling the Council member remaining seat, I certainly could support
looking at the person who won the fourth number of votes in the last
election, which I think would be a strong methodology that our citizens
would appreciate and in that case, it is actually Kevin Wright, who is
very experienced when it comes to coming on board right before the
budget. It is a really critical year. I think we have to look towards
people who have a great deal of experience to lead us forward in things
such as a very tough budget that we have coming up. So, I would look
for support from members of Council about how we fill the interim seat
for Mayor from the council and I would support the council member
seating the fourth number vote, but otherwise if that is not something
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supported by Council, we certainly could very quickly look for
applications from the community.
• Martinez: My particular comments have to do—we have a couple of
people who have already shown interest in being mayor that are on this
council. I would like to not have the mayor's position be a political
football where things are getting thrown back and forth, which is why I
would not advocate selecting somebody from on Council to take the
position. I would like for us to go forward with tomorrow. If we can
get four people to agree that we bypass putting anybody on Council as
interim mayor and that we go ahead and start either submitting names
that we want to be interim mayor or start asking for resumes from
people who are interested in being the interim mayor.
• Dunn: I think that it would be better to have somebody from within
Council serve as the interim mayor and whether we choose somebody
from council for interim mayor or if that doesn't happen somebody
from outside of council is selected or the replacement of that Council
member's chair, I think that person should be someone the public has
already expressed votes —they have already expressed a desire for that
person through a voting process. I think that there is a lot of people—I
have seen it in the past. We saw it at the county level. A lot of people
come forward wanting to get a hand me over a free seat and I get to
play council member and I think that anybody who wants to be in this
position should have already put their name before public scrutiny and
had at least some vote cast in their favor. Not just to say hey I would
like to serve on council and I have never done it before. There is not a
rush. There is votes coming before us. I don't really see a lot of split
votes. I don't think that we have to rush to do this. I think that to say
that we have done certain things in the past a certain way—we have
never had a situation like this. Katie, if I take your view of whoever got
the most votes before, then I should be interim mayor because I am the
only one up here that has actually run for mayor before, so I have got
the most non-succeeding votes for mayor. So, I am not necessarily for
having to go out and seek applications for people who are interested in
the position, because I'd rather it be somebody who has either tried to
run in the past or maybe somebody from our commission structure. I
think there is people within our commissions that could qualify for that.
Anybody that you bring in, they don't necessarily know what the
current issues are. I think, too, overall this is definitely a political
process. Anybody that tells you that it is not means that they are ultra-
political and there is a lot of factors that are involved with this that
move forward to the November elections. I also think that anybody
who should they be chosen from outside and they have never run for
office before, I would want to see their written statement that they have
no intention of running in November for any office because I am not
giving them a leg up for a slam dunk being able to move in one
direction or another for a political seat come November. That's my
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Council Work Session January 11, 2016
view. I could go a number of different ways, but I guess we will have to
see how nominations turn out tomorrow.
• Burk: Well I have made my position clear.
• Fox: I have a couple of other things, if I could just put on the record. It
is pretty important to me that the person who does become interim
mayor has the ability to step in at a moment's notice, run a meeting,
and is familiar with that process. I think any number of people up here
could do that. Has also been vetted by the good people of the town of
Leesburg and through the election process, I do believe that has
happened as well, but the most important thing to me is can this person
come in and take on an immediate challenge should one arise and
that's basically what we are here for is for the protection of you know,
to serve the people of Leesburg in that capacity. I attended a seminar
last month where I learned about some emergency preparedness things
that would happen and I remember the gentleman turning to our
previous mayor and said Madam Mayor, make sure the person who
succeeds you knows what is going on inside that town so that if
something does happen, they can step right in and take care of it. So,
that to me is of the utmost importance and that would be a huge factor
in my decision.
• Burk: Great. Like I said, I have made my decision clear. I think that
there are people in the community that could do that. Suzanne, I
understand where you are coming from and I think this process will be
very interesting tomorrow. Thank you all for your input.
2. Additions to Future Council Meetings
Fox: I think we have taken care of the telecommunication cells. I don't know
if we have to say anything more about that, but that is one thing I would like to add.
I am sure that would have to go to public hearing.
On a motion by Council Member Martinez, seconded by Council Member Fox, the
meetiAa urned at 8:39 p.m.
Clerk of Cou it
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