HomeMy Public PortalAbout2020_tcwsmin0210February 10, 2020 – Town Council Work Session
(Note: This is a transcript prepared by a Town contractor based on the video of the meeting. It
may not be entirely accurate. For greater accuracy, we encourage you to review the video of the
meeting that is on the Town’s Web site – www.leesburgva.gov or refer to the approved Council
meeting minutes. Council meeting videos are retained for three calendar years after a meeting
per Library of Virginia Records Retention guidelines.)
Mayor Kelly Burk: Tonight we start the Town Council work session February 10th, 2020 and we have
an annual comprehensive financial review presentation from Mr. Rose and he has asked for 20 minutes.
Is there anybody that has an issue with that? All right. Mr. Rose.
Clark Case: I’m Clark Case, Director of Finance and Administrative Services for the Town and I would
like to introduce David Rose, he is the Town’s financial advisor. He helps the Town with [inaudible
00:02:22]
Mr. Rose: Madam Mayor and Members of Council I appreciate the opportunity. By all means, feel free
to interrupt me. Again, I will move quickly. I said don't feel free to interrupt me. How's that?
Mayor Burk: We'll let you go and then we'll ask questions.
Mr. Rose: I'm here with what I think is some very solid news, at the same time, a little bit of caution.
With that said, all of you should have in front of you our outline of what is going to be on the screen. I
am not going to review every page, but as Clark indicated, we have had the good fortune of working
with you now and I personally for about three decades.
What we'd like to do tonight as you work towards kicking off your budget for '21 deliberations is just to
put some context and some framework. What we did in 2019, just to go backward for a moment, is we
effectively set up both the general fund as well as utility funds, capital funding. We got you set at a
moment in time so that over the next five years you are basically locked into some funding opportunities
with a minimum out of line debt service. The reason for that is because interest rates are highly
favorable. We also want to make sure that we don't, in any way add, any unnecessary, I should say,
burden to your overall debt service and put more pressure on the general fund.
In addition, because rates have been very positive and you have such strong ratings, you saved about
1,000,007 last year, over 20 years. Meaning you locked in about 1,000,007 with a series of refinancings,
which, again, you all approved unanimously and we appreciate that. That's just going to further take
some of the burden off of the town.
Your ratings were reaffirmed as all triple, triple-As. You set in motion of five-year rate plan for the utilities
which will be further amended over time based upon the WIP, which I'll talk about in a few moments.
Lastly, as I think you would all expect of a triple-A, you were fully in compliance with all your policies.
Our goals and objectives tonight are really a couple fold. Number, one just to give you a state of the
town's finances from our perspective as your financial advisor, talk a little bit about your capital program
and also some of the challenges that you face heading into the '21 budget cycle and beyond. A little bit
of a market update. As I said, we were able to take advantage of very strong interest rates last year.
You can see what happened while they started the trend upward about 13, 14 months ago. Federal
Reserve did some things. They actually went the opposite way over the course of this time last year
throughout the rest of the year. We seized on that to do that refunding that we talked about.
Having said that, this is a graphic that's maybe a little difficult to follow, but suffice to say that what we're
trying to show here is that after the first couple of years, basically, we have not seen rates this strong
in decades. That's really what this says. Credit ratings; we are one of five towns in Virginia that have all
AAA ratings. Again, you ended up coming out of the last recession in 2009-2010 and doing the things
you needed to do in 2014-2015 timeframe, you moved to that AAA. Everything we're talking about
tonight does nothing to harm that AAA but continues that trajectory.
What is it that the AAA is based upon? Well, there's really four criteria. Economic base, which is
something that happens over time. Yours is very strong. Demographics and financial performance,
likewise, those two make up almost two-thirds of a rating. Then below, what makes up anywhere
between a fifth and a third of those ratings, is management. The things that you're doing tonight, doing
tomorrow, the things that you have us do and that you do with staff, that's all considered management.
You are considered management, not just the folks that are called the administration. You as the
Council are considered management as well. That's a critical piece.
Finally, believe it or not, the smallest component is actual debt. Not immaterial, but again, it's all the
other things that allow you to have debt is what, again, makes up a credit rating. Just in brevity, Moody's,
we wanted to show you they've put you at AAA stable outlook. They have said, basically, some of your
credit strengths are strong financial position supported by long-term financial planning. That is really,
really important.
At the same time, they're also cautionary and they're telling you that you could see a downgrade if
things such as the economic base was to deteriorate, something you don't have a lot of control over.
That's more of a regional national thing, but a deterioration of reserves and liquidity. I'd like to point out
that when you upped your policy from basically 15 to 20%, you are at that policy now, there is no fluff
to that policy. We want to make sure that you do everything you possibly can to keep it at that level. I
would point out that that level that you're at right now, that 20%, you basically are right there just slightly
above the Virginia AAA city averages. It's about 18.5%. You're right there at 20%. From our perspective,
that's basically one and the same.
Historic financial results. There's a whole lot on this page, but I'd just like to point out this. You once
again had a structurally balanced budget, but the revenues that exceeded the expenditures was less
than a million dollars. I want to point out there was not much fluff to this result on your end. Basically,
as I jump ahead and look at your '21 proposed budget, I would say that keeps the same philosophy of
really keeping it tight. One of the things we want to make sure everyone recognizes is that, again, we're
right at our fund balance. We do have a structurally balanced budget, you do conservatively estimate
your revenues, you are good about keeping your expenditures in check, and you did that again.
Also, because of doing that this past year, you were able to do the planned transfer of about $6.7 million
to a variety of things including that capital assets replacement program. What I like about where you
stand in 2020 going into 2021 is that you are taking care of the needs that you have to. Again, I don't
want to give anyone the sense that you've got a lot of extra dollars, I don't see that. I really don't.
If indeed we find inevitably there's going to be a downturn, I don't care who's in the White House, I don't
care who's in the legislature, I don't care who's in the Congress, it's always cyclical. When it finally
happens, some of these revenues, you'll see, again, are vulnerable. You can only do so much on
expenditures. We just want to be careful. I just want to point out that cautionary tale.
Unassigned fund balance. This is, again, your rainy day fund. You went to 20%. You're right there,
$11.6 million at the end of 2019 is that number. You've done a good job. You've made that commitment
to stay in that level. Again, I think that's important going into 2021. Again, you can see where you were
back in 2011 after 13 fiscal years, you moved it to the new policy. Again, you're either at or above that
policy over the last half dozen years.
Why is it important to have that unassigned fund balance? I'm sorry for keep beating that drum. Really,
we are because a lot of governments don't operate like a lot of individuals. Your money doesn't come
in the same every month. You just don't operate that way. No local government does be it Virginia or
anywhere else. You have to have a certain amount of dollars to avoid, frankly, doing short-term
borrowing just to pay bills.
The second thing is it helps with credit ratings. The credit ratings are what allowed us with good interest
rates to turn around and save some extra dollars in the debt service. In addition, we also know that
there is going to inevitably be storms, damages, what-have-you, and you need those dollars in the short
run, even if FEMA and others ultimately pay you back. Then, finally, having fund monies like this in the
fund balance will help you have the strongest credit rating because there's probably no stronger, more
important thing, I've said this before, than fund balance as it relates to your credit rating. It's just the
way the rating agencies are. They look at cash as king, and that's how they think about it.
Budgetary planning. Basically, the staff and I have talked at length about where things are. We
understand your process. We started talking about this last November, if not sooner. Here we are with
the introduction tomorrow night, and again, of course, the final adoption sometime in March. What we
wanted to see in terms of the 2021 anticipated revenues, again, a very solid, real property tax increase
in the 3% to 5% level. We're understanding, again, that every penny on the real estate is about
$800,000, roughly, and you also have a very diverse revenue source.
One thing I'd point out is your real estate makes up only about a quarter of all of your revenues. That's
both good and bad. The bad part about it is, again, some of those other revenue sources can be
vulnerable to a slow down if you have it. Again, the good side though, is that they are very significant.
The last point here is your meals tax. You are very competitive with your meals tax, 3.5%. Every 0.5%
as you can see there is over $800,000. That's important.
One last thing I would point out, and that is your real estate tax rate is not only competitive with your
neighbors but when you combine that with the County’s tax rate, collectively, the citizens here in
Leesburg are the second-lowest tax levels in all the region of very highly rated local governments.
You're the second-lowest. Only Middleburg is roughly about a penny lower.
Expenditure trends, there will continue to be increases as estimated. I really do think that this is a no-
frills budget that's being proposed. Again, we know, for example, that there is going to potentially be
some things that will be looked at in the unassigned fund balance. Again, we really want to ask you, it's
easy for me to say, I know I've not been elected, but to be vigilant as it relates to keeping that fund
balance up.
A couple of things here just in a summary format on page 22. This is just for your edification. If you were
to look at any number of these sources, and I want to point out, we are not advocating for any of these,
we're just simply showing you what the relative impact is of a variety of different potential revenue
sources. That's all we're trying to do, and you can get a sense of what that might mean in the 2021
budget. Again, not advocating for it, but just to give you a perspective.
Now, I want to turn to the utility funds. Remember, we have, of course, both a general fund, which is
tax-supported, and then we have a self-supporting utilities fund which comes and gets paid for solely
by user fees. Those that use it, pay for it, and it's in very good shape. However, there's tremendous
pressures on the utility fund coming. As a result of that, the good news is that in 2019 you had a very
strong year, you had a very solid, if you would, increase in terms of dollars, and half of that increase of
that roughly 9.8 million was from onetime connections.
Again, we've seen those can come and go, those are called availability fees or connection fees. All the
same, it's hookups, if you would, of the system. At the same time, you were able to add the fund balance.
The cautionary tale here is that even in spite of doing that, you still need to continue to do those rate
increases because, and I'll show on the next page, the amount of capital that's known is about 32 million,
but the amount of capital that's unknown by virtue of the WIP is to come.
That is just going to be something that we're going to all have to deal with not just here in Leesburg, but
statewide, perhaps nationwide. That right now is in the form of being a variety of different regulatory
battles, maybe even little legal battles. In reality, my experience of almost 40 years is there's going to
be dollars, there's going to be needs. There's going to be over and above that 32 million. I would point
out that that 32 million that we've got here set up over the next five to six years that will be taken care
of basically by the 4.5% rate increases that you've got and that have been put into place and will be
continued, hopefully, with your blessing, to be put into place.
Just to give you a perspective. Inflation is about 2% and so over and above inflation, we're looking at
about 2.5%, which really is the tie-in to all those additional capital needs that you've got to fund, as well
as just a natural increase with regard to a growing town and all the expectations. I'm almost done. I
know, Madam Mayor, I've got five minutes and I am almost certain I promised not to go past that.
Existing town-supported debt service. Here's the bottom line. The Town is in excellent shape. We pay
our debts off at basically a rate that's three times faster than if we had our own home. Typically, after
10 years, the average homeowner pays about 25% of the principal. You pay off 81-82% of the principal
in 10 years. That's putting you in a really strong position to do some things and to continue to do some
things.
With that said, you've got a lot to do. Your capital program, and again, we're in the second year of this
basically six-year capital program, a rolling program, if you would, is a little over 200 million. Having
said that, a portion of that is circled up there. It's both general obligation bonds, some revenue bonds,
as well as some lease financing. All told, that's all part of the mix of what we talk about in paying off
quickly and allowing you to layer that in.
Once again, you can see later on where these uses are. I'm not going to belabor that, it's really all over
again. It's keeping the town with great services because, let's face it, this is one of the really special
towns in the entire country. It's expected that you will have these things provided for the citizenry.
Capital funding strategy I alluded to earlier. We set up this past summer, last summer, I should say, two
lines of credit. It matures in 2023. It's fixed at about 2.5% and we only pay as we draw it down. The
good news there is, again, we're really in a very strong position. We're minimizing out-of-pocket costs
and we feel good about that. It helps with your ratios. What we then did here, just to show you, is we
took the existing debt on the left-hand side, we layered in the 25 million or so as if it were done over the
next four to five years. On the right-hand side, we have a new projected debt service.
I will point out that we've assumed that when we take out this debt, it will be at 5%. If we were to take
that out today, we're at half that interest rate. We're at 2.5% today, the same as what we are with the
line. Again, who knows where it will be in the next couple of years, but we're in a position of strength.
That said, even as we layer in new debt, we do not see us going above the current level that you set
aside for debt service. We're in a good position to layer that in. Again, part of that is because you pay
your debts down so fast, you've really been in a good position.
That said, right here, this is one of your two critical debt policies. Debt service, percentage of
expenditures, it's a fancy way of saying how big is your credit card. What we've said your policy is no
more than 15 cents of every dollar goes to debt service. In 2017, you hit the high watermark. You were
basically right there. Here we are in 2020. We are barely above 12%. In 2021 and on out, we actually
see that percentage just getting stronger.
I will point out there was a time that we worked with the Town and you were about 21% or 22% back in
the 90s. You just couldn't help it. It's just where it was. A lot of these projects, such as Town Hall that
was funded in 1990 and the Police Station in '97, all of those debts came in about the same time, and
that's what sent up your debt service.
Lastly, here, your other debt as a percentage of assessed value, you're very, very strong. This is
extraordinarily good position, and that's going to stay that way. With that, I have 45 seconds left, and I
really appreciate this. Thank you, Madam Mayor and members of Council. I'm happy to answer your
questions.
Mayor Burk: Thank you. Is there anyone at this point that has any questions on this? Mr. Thiel, Mr.
Steinberg?
Council Member Thiel: I know it's a lot to digest right now, but I look forward to reading this and want
to thank you very much for sitting down with Clark and the team and continuing to provide excellent
work for the Town. Thank you.
Mr. Rose: Thank you.
Mayor Burk: Mr. Steinberg?
Council Member Steinberg: I'd like to thank you for your support and your report. The meals tax,
estimated the 815,000 is based on current operations or is it also based on known and anticipated
future operations?
Mr. Rose: I'm not sure I know the exact-- Clark?
Mr. Case: Just current.
Mr. Rose: Just current.
Council Member Steinberg: Just current?
Mr. Case: That's based on last year's actual, '19 end of year.
Council Member Steinberg: Okay. Thank you. That's it.
Mayor Burk: Okay. Ms. Fox?
Council Member Fox: Thanks. I did take a quick gander through it before we came here tonight, so I
do have quite a few questions if that's okay.
Mr. Rose: That's all right.
Council Member Fox: I'll go backward. Since you ended with the existing tax-supported debt service
on page 26 there, are there any variables that would affect this if we had a downturn in the economy or
anything like that?
Mr. Rose: Good question. All of this debt is fixed rate. We don't see any risk from that perspective,
number one. Number two, to the extent that if there is potentially a downturn in the economy, historically,
when the economy tends to slow, we tend to see interest rates go lower. That's sort of not what has
happened this past year, the economy stayed strong and yet interest rates have still come lower. Again,
this is sort of confounding us.
I think the important thing, Councilwoman Fox, is that the Town is in a solid position, there's no spikes
expected in debt service. We will be in a mode when we do convert some or all of this in the future, to
be in a position of strength and to continue to see that our debt service will again continue to be less
than it's been relative to the size of the budgets.
Council Member Fox: That's what you told us to expect. We've had pretty good economy since we've
made this plan. I was just making sure that what if we had some sort of deep recession somewhere?
Mr. Rose: Let me say one more thing. I'm glad you asked that question because the way in which the
line of credit is set up, if you have a deep recession, and let's say it happens tomorrow, God forbid it
happens tomorrow, the reality is, in the line of credit, you're not required to go forward on virtually any
of those projects. Maybe you started a few, but the point is, you really have the position of saying, "We
may want to have this project or this project, but if there's a recession, we're going to slow it down." You
have the ability to do that, and keep the pressure off of the debt service. That's one of the advantages.
Council Member Fox: We would revisit it?
Mr. Rose: Yes. You always have that ability to revisit it, but the way the line of credit is set up, we're
not in a position where we've now issued permanent debt, where it makes it very more cumbersome to,
in effect, retire the debt. We're in a really good position if things do go south economy-wise.
Council Member Fox: Okay. Next question, page 22. Could you quickly explain the admissions tax
levy? I didn't quite understand that.
Mr. Rose: I will turn to Jason here.
Mr. Cournoyer: Again, this is a potential revenue source that we did. It's just a menu. Admissions tax
is generally for sporting events at venues that have such as theaters, movie theaters. It's an ad volume
tax so it's based on a percentage of the ticket price. It's deployed across the State. There are other
jurisdictions that do it, usually, with large arenas, college towns, things like that have these surcharges,
if you will, these taxes on top.
Council Member Fox: Okay. Thanks. Page 16, what rating did we have when we had a 15%
unassigned balanced fund?
Mr. Rose: I'm sorry?
Council Member Fox: What rating did we have when we had the 15%?
Mr. Rose: We were in the AA category and then we moved that number up, we moved to AAA.
Council Member Fox: What's the dollar difference between the 15% and the 20%?
Mr. Rose: The dollar difference spent on the year, let's go to it, 11 million, I'm rounding off here. 20%
as at $11 million. More than likely, if we were at 15%, we'd probably be around $8 million. It's a
difference of about $3 million.
Council Member Fox: Wow. That's a big jump, isn't it? That's only $3 million, $11 million and then
down to $8 million. Okay. I'll save that for budgets, that's not necessarily what I need to. Fixed rate, this
is way back at the very beginning when you were giving the introduction. You were talking about having
a fixed rate of a certain amount of dollars per year at a 2.561, so $25 million and refinancing that at a
2.561% rate. Which means that the 25.5 million, if my math is correct, that's a little above 653,000 per
year?
Mr. Rose: If you have it all taken down. You've only taken a very small fraction of that down.
Council Member Fox: Why did you separate the 25 million from the 32 million?
Mr. Rose: Because one is the general fund, the 25 million is the general fund and the 32 million is paid
back eventually from the user fees on the enterprise fund. That's the idea. One is truly separate from
the other.
Council Member Fox: I wanted to point out that if we used the enterprise fund, and we used the 32.5
million line of credit, that's over 832. You're talking about a possible yearly finance charge of almost
$1.5 million?
Mr. Rose: It could certainly be that, yes.
Council Member Fox: What were we paying before?
Mr. Rose: Well, here, I'll just show you. That's great question here I'll show you. You were paying more
before.
Council Member Fox: Or now, I guess.
Mr. Rose: Right here. If you go to page 26, on the general fund, I don't have utility fund in front of me.
I think you alluded to, Councilwoman Fox, I'm rounding off here, about 600, 000 or 650,000 for the
general fund. If you take a look at 2020, your total debt service is 7.4 million. If, for example, you were
to take all of that down, which you're not expected, that's going to last you for about five years, that
money. Think of taking down in increments.
As you take that money down, then of that 625,000 or so, let's think of it as one-fifth of it or one sixth of
it, that'll add to the 7.4 million. At the same time, if you take that down and you say to yourself, "Okay,
in 2023, if you look here, your debt service in 2023 is $6.7 million. Today, it's 7.4 million." You're
basically, when we term that out, that 600,000 you're adding, you're actually going to be paying less
debt service in six years than you are in today's dollars. You're in better shape.
Council Member Fox: My very last question leads me to the number one thing that you said is you
wanted to help us develop a multi-year capital improvements program funding strategy for the Town's
upcoming general government and utility capital needs. This is all CIP. What if the town was in a
position, at some point in the near future or in the distant future that the opportunity might arise that we
could pay for some things in cash, what would we do then? What will happen?
Mr. Rose: Well, it would be great. If you do pay for some of that in cash, and we love to see that
because we like to have a good rated local government like yours does what we call both a combination
of PayGo, which is cash and debt. Clark can talk a little bit about that or Jason can talk a little about
that, but that's the goal, is to not just do. If you look at your CIP, there is a variety of other sources
beyond the bond side, and we encourage that.
Council Member Fox: That would be worked into that plan, is what you're saying?
Mr. Rose: Of course.
Mr. Cournoyer: I think every time we build the CIP, we are trying to leverage all other non-debt revenue
sources first. Just to add one thing, the way the line of credit is really working is that we don't pull out
permanent financing or batch before we spend it. The timing of the project, how it progresses and then
we can use the line of credit effectively to follow the expenditures. Then when it reaches a certain point,
we can then issue permanent debt.
We're not being burdened by principal payments or anything like that of going for a $10 million issuance
for a project that takes three years to construct. We can go at the end of three years.
Council Member Fox: Is there any prepayment penalty on any of this? Okay, thanks.
Mayor Burk: Mr. Campbell.
Council Member Campbell: Mr. Rose, it's so good to see you again.
Mr. Rose: Likewise. Thank you.
Council Member Campbell: Always look forward to our exchanges. This one, no different in the sense
of I think the questions that you raised for me in the presentation, probably more so than in previous
years, are very much tied to the budget and where we are, and the impact on our credit rating. That
seems to be the central driver for a lot of the decisions that we've made, how to maintain this triple-A,
triple A.
I do have a question as we look at the economic base on the chart on page 11, the demographic
characteristics that seemed to weigh heavily into the rating. I wonder about the factors that could lead
to a downgrade that you mentioned on page 12. It almost seems to be the same view of the socio-
economic indicators. My question is, are we talking about demographics and people? Are we talking
about wealth? Are we talking about the demographics that would say the average wealth or education?
What are we really talking about?
Mr. Rose: I think it's all of those things together. I think it's talking about the health which leads to wealth
of the overall area that you're in here in Northern Virginia. This is considered a really very desirable
place for businesses to land and for people that are highly educated to get jobs. That's when they talk
about the demographic characteristics, we've got a lot of that. You have a lot here. [crosstalk]
Council Member Campbell: Let me ask you a good and bad question. It's a good question, but it may
be bad because I'm asking you to answer it. Is building affordable housing a good thing or a bad thing?
Mr. Rose: I think the key here is this, everything within reason. We basically need to recognize that we
have basically a spectrum of wage earners and we have a spectrum of jobs. Not everyone's going to
be a rocket scientist, or not everybody's going to be a physician. We also recognize that there are going
to be folks that basically just are going to be good solid, if you want to call it, workers. You need housing
for that as well. That's the little part of the challenge. Yes.
Council Member Campbell: The health of our local economy, even as we look at the budget, meal tax
is also keeping our local businesses alive. We're a small business economy. If we don't have the
workers and they don't have the housing, we can't keep our local businesses alive. I guess we can
agree that's not a good thing.
Mr. Rose: Well, interestingly enough, one thing that surprises a lot of people is that Loudoun County,
and I mean the County because we see some of those County-wide statistics. One might think that
there's a lot of big companies here, which there are, but the overall majority of jobs are tied into small
businesses and it has been that way at Loudoun County for decades. I'm not sure that many people
realize. You're right. It's about a lot of small businesses.
Council Member Campbell: As we look at, again, the budget and forecasting to solve our long-term
obligations and whether it's a capital improvement program, it's interesting, again, the impact on
technology decisions as we've had to move in a different direction away from the County, and now we
have to fund a lot of projects that are still being cost estimated. A lot of those decisions haven't been
factored into this projection but will also have a serious impact on whether or not we stay at this
unassigned fund balance contribution that we're currently at or we raise taxes. Your advice would be to
continue to protect the unassigned fund balance, but then our balances how do we look at taxes
because there aren't a lot of other revenue streams?
Mr. Rose: I have the easy job. I realize that. You've got the hard job. You do. All I can do is point certain
things out and unless you understand the relative consequences of those. Again, that's my goal here
to be here tonight is just to say, you're doing a lot of the right things, you're in a good situation, you've
got a lot of good policies. Hopefully, you can continue to be in that mode.
Council Member Campbell: No, I appreciate that. That's why I'm bringing it up. I want to reaffirm those
items that have those consequences and their interrelationship to decisions that we make and how they
affect this AAA rating. That's why I really appreciate the decisions that you've given us that aren't
necessarily decision points, but I hope that we can turn these into decision points because those
challenges I know the staff are working on now and will present. Those are the decisions and
intersections of those decisions that we'll have to talk about.
Again, my final point and I am staying with the credit rating because that seems to be the primary thing
to protect for a number of good reasons. I'm not sure how the credit raters view this. Is it a good thing
or a bad thing to project tax rate increases? I think while we can look at other revenue sources as
potential ways to earn some additional revenue, the majority of the big number ones have a tax
implication.
Mr. Rose: To answer that question, again, here's the way the rating agencies look at things. They have
a two-pronged test. It is your willingness to meet your obligations and it's your ability to meet your
obligations, willingness and ability. The ability is clear in all of your demographic information, and your
financial information. Your willingness is what they also look to.
The rating agencies, per se, like myself not elected, are comfortable and get comfortable when a local
government says, "We believe and we demonstrate that we need to raise taxes." They don't see that
as a black mark if you’re raising of those taxes keeps you competitive with those around you, and the
greater economy that you're a part of. That's hopefully the answer for you in terms of that, how they
look at it.
Council Member Campbell: Then the other piece, I guess, it's just more programmatic for me. Again,
we're going to have new obligations placed before us, I believe, in the next budget that aren't here
today. As we look at forecasting 30 years from now or even 10 years from now, I just want to know how
we can expect an update to the information presented here. As we look at what we've finally
accomplished in terms of a budget this forecast may significantly change or it may change. Will we be
able to get some forecasted update to this document after we've done our damage?
Mr. Rose: I would say that that's going to be the decision of the staff, if they want us to come back and
work with them on that. Hopefully, we do it with your neighbors and we have in the past. Hopefully, we
get to do that. It's a natural progression to what we do with all of you. We certainly can be back if that's
the desire of the Council, and again, working with staff.
Council Member Campbell: Thank you.
Mr. Rose: Thank you.
Mayor Burk: Mr. Dunn? Mr. Dunn, no questions? All right. I have a couple of questions. Most of them
have been answered. Everybody's pretty much asked them. I had a question here about the cushion.
Do we have enough of a cushion? Is there something we should be doing in regard to it? You answered
that question that we have to keep that in mind but we most certainly are in a good place at this point.
The one question, and you have it in here, does it make sense to budget for a service that we don't
know how much it's actually going to end up costing? I'm thinking about something like snow removal.
How do you do that if you don't know how much it's actually going to end up costing?
Mr. Rose: Well, I think what you do know is if you take a look at the last several years, and again,
whether it's snow removal or you got the tornado just a couple days ago, unfortunately, national news
on that. The question is, how do you budget for it? I think you take a look back at the last several five
years or so and say, "Okay, what is an average of these types of incidents, and what's the dollars tied
to it?" Then that's maybe the segue way to what you may be think about if you can put away into
subsequent budgets.
Again, and we saw this, Madam Mayor, it appears to me, and maybe I'm wrong on this, I may be getting
out of line, but I don't believe we really have that in the current budget. Again, and that's just because
snow may or may not come. Again, we could have tornado season and we can have all sorts of bad
hurricanes and other things. I do think it's a good idea to have that. That goes back to the point that our
unassigned fund balance is right there at the minimum. I'd like to see it increased if possible.
Mayor Burk: You have reiterated over a couple of times that the reserve that we have put aside, we
need to continue doing that. That's important to the agency and it's important to our budgeting process
and it's important to have that money there and reserved should we need it for things in the future.
Mr. Rose: I think so. One thing for the citizens, when that money is sitting there, it's actually earning
interest and it's further helping the general fund. It doesn't just sit there idly at all. Also, as I said, it also
keeps you from having to do any short-term borrowing to pay bills, which is just a natural cycle of local
governments. That's really one of the big important facts.
Mayor Burk: It keeps us from having to borrow to pay for things that we could pay in cash.
Mr. Rose: Yes. It's a waste of money to go borrow to pay the bills and all of that. It's just not a good
practice and certainly not one that AAA governments are expected to have.
Mayor Burk: Do you happen to know, is the County considering to add admissions tax in their budget
this time, do you know that?
Mr. Rose: I don't pretend to know. I don't know.
Mayor Burk: We don't know that. It hasn't presented its budget, so we don't really know. You talked
about the utility fund being in good shape now. It's important that the utility fund continue to pay for
itself. At what point should we start thinking about discussing, planning any sort of expansion in regard
to utilities?
Mr. Rose: Well, I think you're already in that process. Staff has already started that whole process. Amy
is here, I know that she could always speak to that. In fairness, throughout the year, and I alluded to
that upfront very quickly, we as both an extension of your staff have been meeting with Amy and with
her folks and all of that with the consultants that you have, the consulting engineers, to talk about how
these expectations are going to be met, and when. That's happening.
I think we talked about, and you correct me, and I think of a separate presentation at some time about
the next steps on the utilities once there's some other information that's put together over the next
several months. With your blessing, we'll be back to present that, again, with staff on what you're asking
about.
Mayor Burk: Is there any policy that you see that we should be looking at changing for the next--?
Mr. Rose: No. We've looked at your policies, we do on a regular basis. For the moment, again, I use
that for the moment, they seem to be still in line and we're comfortable.
Mayor Burk: All right. Well, thank you very much. Does anybody else have any questions at this point?
Mr. Martinez, did I forget you?
Vice Mayor Martinez: Yes, you did.
Mayor Burk: I'm sorry. You can thank Councilmember Fox for letting me know that.
Vice Mayor Martinez: I forgot to turn my light on, so my apologies. I want to thank you again for coming
here and giving us this presentation. I appreciate your discussion on the AAA bond rates, and how long-
term-wise that really saves us borrowed money in the long term with lower interest rates and the fact
that, because of that, we're able to pay down our debt a lot faster.
The question I have is, you've gone over all our different policies and all our different positions on
assets, liabilities, all these other revenues, expenditures and we're in a pretty good spot. My concern is
how reactive are these agencies to changes in policy? Let's say we decide as a Council to change the
way we do business in a certain way that they may not look unfavorably, how reactive are they to just
downgrade us?
Mr. Rose: Well, I think what they do is, again, you look at this mix here on this page. They look at
whatever change of policies, philosophies, and say to themselves, "All right, what have you done within
these various four quadrants that have maybe chipped away at what they've had for you as a score." A
lot of these are basically a composite of all these different four factors or sub factors too. Again, it just
depends. It really just depends on the severity of certain things and whether or not--
They will typically give you a warning. They will do that. They have you right now as a stable outlook,
which is, you can't get any higher as AAA than a stable outlook. There's no such thing as a AAA with a
positive outlook, it's just a stable outlook. There's no quadruple-A. The point is, if you're a AAA with a
negative outlook, that's a warning. You're not, and you haven't been, I want to stress that, but if certain
things happen, and that happens, I'll be up here to let you know that if you want. You may decide that's
not that important a thing, that's your call.
Vice Mayor Martinez: Another question I have is on debt itself. I know that in the private sector,
especially young kids getting jobs and stuff, if they don't have credit, in other words, if they're not in debt
and paying off that debt, their credit ratings are terrible until they start buying a car, paying it off and all
that stuff. My concern is right now the typical debt ceiling recommendation is 15%. We're close to that,
but we're going to be paying it down to 12%, 10%. Is there any percentage that may affect our ratings
if we pay off that too fast or too much?
Mr. Rose: No. Again, I think the way they think about it is as long as you're within your policy, that's
number one. Number two, there is a fallacy that some folks have, they think, "If we have no debt, then
we'll be AAA into perpetuity." That's not correct either because as I pointed out right here, the debt is in
case of Standard & Poor’s, it's only 10% of everything else which 30% by Standard & Poor’s is, do you
have structural balance in your budget? That's three times more important than the debt levels.
Again, that's the way I would answer that. You do pay your debts off well. That's why I told
Councilwoman Fox we are in good position to lay on that debt that you're talking about. We're not getting
complacent about it. We're not getting cavalier about it. We're just saying, "Okay, we're in good position
but we do know we've got a bunch of needs coming up."
Vice Mayor Martinez: One of the things that I know is that somewhere down the line, we're looking at
debt service going down, but somewhere down the line, we're going to have to incur more debt to do
some of the big infrastructure changes that we've ignored over the years and that we now need to get
out and do. Again, that's where for me the balances is. What do we have in debt now and when can we
start to incur debt? How fast do we pay off the current debt?
I do know that there are trigger levels on which, if we have the cash on hand, we could pay off debt, but
it has to be after so many years. I don't know if we're near any of those yet and where we can be. I
would assume that somewhere in the next year or two, that we will be getting reminders that, "Hey, this
thing comes due." We can pay off this debt and we have the cash to do it or we have the cash to pay
some of it off. What that does is it gives us a little more leverage, a little more room to incur future debt.
That's what I'm looking at is somewhere down the line where we incur future debt.
Mr. Rose: Again, I think where you are your debt is paid off so quickly that here is that blue, is that new
debt layered in. Again, in 2021, the year that we're coming into, the fiscal year, 2021 will be about
12.25%. 2017, we were about almost 15%. We've come down considerably. When we layer in that 25
million, which is not going to be the final 25 million you need, we know that, your debt percentages are
still below where they were in any of the previous years. That's the point I was trying to make to all of
you through Councilwoman Fox's questions which were really good.
The reality is, we are in position that if, as you said, this Council decides that there is a significant jump
over and above what's factored in here, for capital, we're still going to have some room to play with
going forward. That's the takeaway. It’s the general fund I’m talking about, of course.
Vice Mayor Martinez: My questions and comments are basically saying that we would not only-- You
mentioned the fact that if we were to lose revenue in the future, we're still in a good spot to do it. No
matter what happens, whether there's a recession or we continue to generate more revenue, or however
we're doing it, we're in a good spot to be flexible, dynamic, and all the different ways of managing this
budget and managing our revenues?
Mr. Rose: Yes, sir.
Vice Mayor Martinez: Thank you.
Council Member Fox: Just a quick follow up question, actually, to what Mayor Burk talked to you about.
Our unassigned balance fund, you mentioned that we earn interest on that. Correct?
Mr. Rose: Yes.
Council Member Fox: Okay. Right now we're at a level where we really shouldn't be spending any
more this fiscal year. Does that take into consideration the interest that we made? How much interest
do we make on $11 million?
Mr. Rose: Clark, he'll know that answer.
Mr. Case: Well, I don't have the amount we make right off the top of my head, but we're making around
I think-- We make about 1.75% every month.
Council Member Fox: Put that in dollar figures, if you can.
Mr. Case: Jason? It's about $67,000 a month all funds. About half of that is utilities’ money.
Council Member Fox: That's 35,000 a month?
Mr. Case: 35,000 a month. Yes.
Council Member Fox: Have we've been spending that, town manager?
Mr. Case: We program that in the budget. We budget for it, and it gets spent as part of our budgeted
money. We budget it and we spend it.
Council Member Fox: When you say at that line, we've spent that interest?
Mr. Case: We spend that in the budget process based on the prior year's actual. We budget for next
year what we made last year in investment income unless we think it's going down. There's a risk it
could go down, but our expectation is that we will make what we have programmed into the budget for
the coming year.
Council Member Fox: This just follows in my head that if we are at a level where we really can't dip
any more into our unassigned balance fund without going down under 20%, that there's no cushion
from this interest. That's what I'm asking.
Mr. Case: That's correct. What it implies is that the interest we're budgeting assumes you've got 20%
in the unassigned fund balance. If you dip down below that, you don't have that money to invest and
the investment income you're projecting you will not get.
Council Member Fox: Thanks.
Mayor Burk: Mr. Dunn?
Council Member Dunn: Thank you. Madam Mayor, your discussion triggered a question. Can we use
general funds to supplement shortfalls in the utility fund?
Mr. Rose: You have that ability if you want to do that. Yes.
Council Member Dunn: How does that affect ratings? If our rating is going to be-
Mr. Case: However, the Town's policy right now does not permit that. You would have to change your
fiscal policy.
Mr. Rose: Let me add to, and again, there's a reason why the Town policy doesn't permit that. That's
because we would see that as really a very negative practice. I think it would be viewed-
Council Member Dunn: Can you repeat that? I didn't hear that last part?
Mr. Rose: We'd see that as a negative practice, number one, because you really are expected, if you're
highly rated like you are, to have an enterprise fund. In its very nature, an enterprise fund is its own
separate fund, based upon, again, those that are using the services or paying for those services. If the
general fund was to supplement that, it does several things. Number one, it fights the integrity of both
the general fund and the utility enterprise fund because it puts more stress on the general fund. Number
two, it makes the enterprise fund no longer self-sustaining.
With all of that, that's the type of thing that could absolutely have negative implications in many, many
ways. It could have implications negatively in regards to, let's say, the general fund in a downturn, puts
again, extra stress on because dollars have to come from somewhere. I shared here, your general fund
basically was solid and strong, but it wasn't overly. There wasn't a plethora of extra dollars. At the same
time, the enterprise fund, because of the nature of the future, is really going to have significant capital
needs. Again, to try to supplement from the general fund, it's just not good best practices. It's just not.
Council Member Dunn: Even if we change our policy, it would still be considered--?
Mr. Rose: Again, I think what Clark was saying, and you correct me, Clark, is a policy that right now
you don't do that. You certainly legally can do that, but we would not recommend it. I think staff and
ourselves are totally in alignment.
Council Member Dunn: Even if we changed our policy, it would still not be considered a best practice?
Mr. Rose: That's correct. It would not be considered a best practice.
Council Member Dunn: Thank you.
Mayor Burk: Thank you very much. I appreciate the information. It was nice to see you again. Thank
you, gentlemen and Lisa. Our next discussion point is design standards in the Gateway District. Mrs.
Berry Hill.
Ms. Berry-Hill: On January 14th, Council asked for a status report on the Gateway District
development. If you all remember, the Gateway District will replace the H2 overlay district. It will be
composed of both regulation and guidelines. We have developed a schedule for-- Well, in particular,
Council was interested in whether or not we could move forward the development of the regulations for
the Gateway District. The answer was yes. The schedule that was included with your packet includes
the schedule for moving forward with that portion of the project as well as completion of the project. The
short answer to your question is that the Gateway District regulations are planned to get to you by April
28th for a public hearing.
That item would include a new section to the zoning ordinance which is setting up the establishment of
the Gateway District. It's kind of the nuts and bolts, if you will, of the overlay. We have that currently in
our ordinance for the H2. We would do the same for the Gateway District. It would include the
boundaries of the new district. You basically looked at those boundaries in February of 2018 and
endorsed those boundaries. It would be bringing forward those five segments that compose the
Gateway District.
The third component would be the new design regulations which would address building and site
design. Those would be included in this new section of the zoning ordinance. That is planned to get to
you by April 28th for public hearing. We're targeting the April 2nd public hearing at the planning
commission. If they need a second meeting on it, they could take it to their second meeting which I think
is the 16th. Then it would get to you on April 28th. I'm here to answer any questions.
Mayor Burk: All right. Thank you. Does anyone have any questions at this point? Mr. Thiel.
Council Member Thiel: Two quick questions. The five segments are not changing from the H2 to the
Gateway District? They're not changing?
Ms. Berry-Hill: They are.
Council Member Thiel: They are?
Ms. Berry-Hill: Yes, they are. The H2 work group had recommended an expansion of the district. Right
now, the H2 currently is East and West Market, North and South King Street. It is just a certain distance
from the centerline of those streets. The new districts are drawn to exclude single-family detached
residential areas, but they also have expanded in certain areas too to include more nonresidential area.
It includes those four segments and a new segment, which is Edwards Ferry east of Heritage Way.
Council Member Thiel: Then the second is you mentioned that the building and site designs, will that
come forward to council on April 28th as well with Planning Commission approval, hopefully, or
guidance?
Ms. Berry-Hill: With a recommendation. In March, we have a number of different feedback loops
planned into our schedule to take the draft to the BAR as well as the Planning Commission for some
feedback. We're hoping to introduce the whole regulatory portion of the Gateway to them before it gets
to public hearing.
Council Member Thiel: I know this has taken a long time. It's been a long time coming. April 28th, I
know, can't come soon enough for you and the staff and Planning Commission. Thank you very much.
Ms. Berry-Hill: You're very welcome.
Mayor Burk: Someone else have questions? Mr. Dunn.
Council Member Dunn: Thank you. I don't think what is being brought forward for is not to ask for the
zoning ordinances, but just to give a little history. The design standards for the H2 were placed as a
top-four priority by Council almost five years ago. Staff came back with various reasons as to why that
could not be met and it's still not met. The Crescent District was passed in 2006 with the need to
complete design standards, and in part, those were approved seven years later in 2013. The same
process that was used in the Crescent District is very similar to the process that's being used for the
Eastern Gateway where encompassing the whole thing of regulations, street design, streetscape,
building setbacks and design features. Now we're in a situation where the Crescent District has not
been as successful as we hoped, and we're looking at having to redo part of that district. The form-
based code was also considered in part of that, and that ended up being so cumbersome for much of
what I just mentioned that it's little used and developers weren't thrilled about it. Citizens weren't thrilled
about it and were getting next to no results.
In our zoning ordinances, zoning ordinance 7.10.6, which has, in my opinion, nearly 70% of the design
standards that we could use in the Eastern Gateway already written up for the Crescent District, but as
I put it this way, it's almost like these design standards are a puzzle. We dump the puzzle out, we say,
"Here's the puzzle." You don't get to see the top of the box that shows you what the picture looks like.
That's what Council keeps throwing back to staff on saying, "We want more clear design standards that
actually don't just list architectural features, but can put together those architectural features so that
they look like true architectures that we can say this is Neo-Roman, this is true colonial, this is classical."
Our design standards in the Crescent District don't have that. Staff has told Council that we don't want
design standards. Staff has told the Planning Commission, "We don't want design standards." Yet
Council keeps coming back and saying-- I was at a meeting when you and one of your other members
were there and the former chair was saying we want design standards, and you were suggesting you
really don't. You want to give the flexibility to the developer.
I think I'm quoting you pretty close on that. We're saying, "No, we want to determine the way our Town
looks, not leave it to the developer who can pull together all kinds of different features and just give us
Petersons' projects out by the airport." That's a good example of had we had design standards, we
could have shown them and said, "No. Here's what we'd like to see, not what you're giving us." All I'm
asking for in this is, rather than having you doing the regulations beforehand, is give us design standards
first because you have it down here that it's going to take about four months to get those done.
I would rather have those done at the front end of this project, which is now, so that those design
standards could always be pulled out at any time saying, "Here's design standards that we're using for
the Eastern Gateway District. Consider using these in other parts of Town." Right now we don't have
that. All we have is a puzzle with no directions on how to put it all together. We're leaving that to the
developer to do. In September, we asked for the design standards to be completed by the end of the
year. Staff came back in either late October, early November, saying, "We don't have time to get it done
or we can't get it done," whatever the reasoning was, "We're going to need to take more time."
Then in December came back and said, "We've got to hire somebody to help out." Why if there was
somebody needed to help, I don't know why that wasn't done back in September. Now a priority that
Council has repeatedly set for staff that this is a high priority for us, keeps getting pushed back much
like it's been done many times before. I just don't want to see this be something that ends up as the
same results we've had in the past. The design standards, I'm asking to be moved forward so we can
see that they get done on the front end of this. I'll save the rest of my comments for my follow-up three
minutes. Thank you.
Mayor Burk: Does anyone else have anything they want to-- Mr. Campbell?
Council Member Campbell: Again, a general question, I was looking at a lot of the new areas in the
H2. I know some involve some commercial areas, some don't that are right next door, some involve the
site that's not even belonging to the Town, at this particular point, by the Union Cemetery. I just
wondered some of the thinking that might have got into.
I know I'm not specific, but maybe just in general, some commercial areas and not other commercial
areas, some are going to be built out, like by Battlefield and Fort Evans Road, and some have already
been built out but right next door. They're included and they're not included. Was there some deliberate-
- I know there was deliberate thinking but maybe you could help me for including some and not others.
Ms. Berry-Hill: The boundaries of the Gateway District?
Council Member Campbell: Yes.
Ms. Berry-Hill: The H2, as you know, are the two entry corridors to the Town. The purpose of that
district was to heighten the aesthetic considerations for development in those corridors, so the Gateway
District continues that, and the H2 work group had recommended expanding that to include not only the
current corridors but also the Edwards Ferry. Their thought was, increase the area, the non-residential
areas within that district so that it covers more the design standards, and guidelines would cover more
non-residential areas in those corridors.
Council Member Campbell: Just a couple of areas, and we can talk about it later, just seem to be a
little arbitrary as to why they were included, and certainly the Union Street School property is nowhere
near that Gateway area as an entrance into Town, so thank you.
Mayor Burk: Anyone else have anything they'd like to add? Mr. Dunn?
Council Member Dunn: Thank you. I've got a paper copy of it, but if you have your tablets and you
want to look at the timeline of this to see what I'm talking about is the review of site design guidelines
don't happen until May 5th. All I'm asking is can we please move the design standards up to the priority
level at which Council had been trying for, not just months, most recently, literally years to get design
standards in our Town, can we please move that to the front of the project instead of the back?
Having been doing this, as I know a couple of other Council members have been doing this for some
time, is when you started to get into the H2 discussions, the form-based code discussions, the Crescent
District discussions, everybody has a different interest. They all want their interest to be at the top. What
happens is it becomes very cumbersome to meet everybody's wishes. We overload the process by
what do you want the streetscape to be? How do you want the grid network to be? What kind of
regulations are we going to have for usage?
Then what happens is the real goal from what I think Council has said, especially most recently, which
is our primary focus is on design, ends up being put to the side because the whole project becomes
way too cumbersome. I'm just asking, and the reason why I brought this up for tonight is can we please
move the design features to the front? Especially seeing how in the Crescent District, in our zoning
ordinance, you already have many regulations that can be addressed by what you're talking about, this
regulatory process in the beginning.
If we have the design features, true architectural designs that give a palette, using your staff's term,
give them a palette to which developers can use when they come into Town and say, "I know exactly
what the Town of Leesburg is looking for. They've given me a puzzle, but I don't have a picture to look
at, but I actually do now have pictures to look at. I can say, yes, I can build my buildings to look like
that. Thanks for the information. We'll go forward and do it." It streamlines staff's workload and it
streamlines the developers’ workload and gives the citizens the Town with the buildings that they're
looking for.
Then continue on with your project to do the streetscape and do the regulations that you can change
based on the regulations you already have. That's what I was hoping for us to gain by this, which is to
have staff move the design features up to work on immediately and have them done by, say, June.
Versus the fact that we ask for it in September, and it's now February and we still aren't any closer to
actual design features. Thank you.
Mayor Burk: Ms. Berry, do you want to--? [crosstalk]
Ms. Berry-Hill: Yes. We have moved up the design regulations. Sometimes that's used interchangeably
with the word standards. They mean the same thing. Ordinance requirements that has been moved up
in our schedule. That's to get to April 28th.
Mayor Burk: Those have to be done first, is that what you're saying?
Ms. Berry-Hill: Those are done first, and then we will continue working on the guidelines. That's part
two or phase two of our project. We are going to be working on those basically March through the
summer. Those should get to Planning Commission for public hearing in October, and November for
Town Council public hearing.
Mayor Burk: If you were to switch it around, what would be the result of switching around?
Ms. Berry-Hill: We heard loud and clear that Council wished to have the regulations come first in our
process. That was discussed on December 9th, and we have done that. This schedule reflects what
Council direction was on December 9th, or the request on December 9th.
Mayor Burk: This would all be finished by July, it would be all completed?
Ms. Berry-Hill: This project includes regulation and guidelines, they're to be used together. Our project
addresses the regulation first, those will come forward on April 28th, you'll have a public hearing on
that. If Council approves those regulations on April 28th they'll go into effect the next day. Then we will
continue working on the guidelines and if those are approved in the fall, those will go into effect to be
used with the regulations. Does that make sense to everybody?
Mayor Burk: It's fine. Ms. Fox?
Council Member Fox: I don't have any questions but Council Member Dunn has requested a minute
of my time and I'd like to grant it to him. A minute of my time to Mr. Dunn.
Council Member Dunn: Again, when it was brought to us in December, we were not given an
opportunity to even bring up the idea of changing it around, the meeting moved along too fast. That's
why it's happening now, almost two months later, to ask that the design features be brought forward.
What I'm asking for tonight is if there would be four Council members to direct staff to move the design
features to the front of this, and work on the zoning ordinances later, because we already have very
similar ordinances already in place.
In fact, the fact that you have ordinances done and no design guidelines to manage to those ordinances,
still leaves us with designs not happening. I'd rather know and I think that when the Eastern Gateway
was being discussed, you heard it loud and clear from Council members saying, "Please give us design
standards." We wanted those and it kept coming back that we just weren't getting what we wanted, so
that's what I'm asking for is can we please move the design standards forward in the planning process,
move the zoning ordinances to the end of the project? Thank you.
Ms. Berry-Hill: If I may answer that, the design standards are in the zoning ordinance. What staff heard
from Council was that you wanted the teeth to implement what would eventually be the guidelines.
That's what we have done, we have moved the standards development, the zoning ordinance, up front
so that we would have regulatory control for any applications that would come in in the Gateway District.
The guideline development will continue from now until early next fall, and that would be go forward for
a second public hearing in the fall. Once this is all done, it is complete, the Gateway District will be
complete.
Council Member Dunn: This is not what you showed.
Ms. Berry-Hill: It is. I'm sorry it's not clear but the schedule shows-- Eileen do you have the schedule?
It's attachment one. In your packet it looks like this.
Mayor Burk: Right, we have it, yes, "Public hearing on zoning ordinance regulation, staff development
of site design guidelines," page 2, WG revised, review.
Ms. Berry-Hill: If you look at the schedule of April, public hearings on the zoning ordinance regulations.
That's showing public hearings at the Planning Commission on April 2nd and at the Council on April
28th. Those are the regulatory standards, the teeth, if you will, for design, site design and building
design, so those will be adopted first and go into effect first.
Then we would develop the guidelines which are the how to.
The regulations say, for example, you shall have four-sided architecture. The guidelines will tell you the
different ways in which you should be able to do that and address all the different aspects of a
developers' project. This public hearing would happen in the fall for those, and if adopted, would
complete the Gateway District.
Council Member Fox: If I'm reading this correctly and please correct me if--
Mayor Burk: I'm sorry. You gave up a minute so you have two.
Council Member Fox: It's a quick question. I see and I understand what you're saying, completely
understand, but what I'm reading here is it's going to be June and July that we're drafting building design
guidelines, part one and part two. I don't understand, if we're doing that in June and July, how that's
part of our April decision?
Ms. Berry-Hill: It's not, so you're going to have two decisions. One is on the regulations, the standards
if you will, the teeth. That sets in place your district with the new boundaries, the new ordinance, and
then the specific site and building design regulations.
Council Member Fox: Okay, and you don't feel like that is inverted, which the one should come before
the other?
Ms. Berry-Hill: No, I think you can do them. In fact you had asked that question on December 9th, Mr.
Dunn had asked the question, "Could we do the regulations first?" The H2 work group looked at that
and said, "Yes, that's a good idea." That is the process that we have, are working towards right now. It
sets the regulation in place. Then the guidelines are under development and they explain, as I said, the
how to. Here's, "You must have four-sided architecture." The guidelines will say here are things that
you need to consider when you do it, but it's not necessary that those be in place for the regulations to
be in effect. Those can be independent, but they are intended at the end of the day to work together.
Council Member Fox: Okay. I guess my last question would be, if any application comes before us or
this area and they want to use this as a guide, and they start their process and they say, "In March I'm
going to submit an application for such and such," and we don't have these things in place until June
and July, what happens? Are they grandfathered in with what they present?
Ms. Berry-Hill: If you got an application or the Town got an application, they would be subject to the
regulations as they're approved. If the design regulations are approved on April 28th, they go into effect.
Any application in the Gateway District would be subject to those regulations.
Council Member Fox: Without the specific guidelines?
Ms. Berry-Hill: Yes.
Council Member Fox: They don't have to adhere to the specific guidelines that come later?
Ms. Berry-Hill: The guidelines would be developed in the timeframe. If that application continues
through 2020 and then to 2021, the guidelines are adopted, then in fall they would be applied to that
application.
Council Member Fox: I see what you're saying. I feel like that's a little bit of a moving target for anybody
who's putting in an application. That just seems what it would be like to me.
Ms. Berry-Hill: Well. That’s the process of the zoning process. If things change, that's a risk a developer
takes when they submit their application.
Council Member Dunn: Thank you. Can you scroll up please so we can get to May, June? No, that's
down. I need to get to May, June. Stop. I want you to notice in May, BAR on the fourth, site design
guidelines, the seventh, site design guidelines. The next category in June is building design guidelines.
We're talking about building designs. That's what we're looking for. Just to be clear, in December, I did
not ask you to come forward first with regulatory standards in the East Market Street. I've been looking
for years for building design standards and that's what I'm asking you to move forward.
Ms. Berry-Hill: Again, that's what we plan to bring forward to you on April 28th, is the building design
standards. On April 28th, that is what will be coming forward to you. That’s what I'm saying, yes, design
regulations.
Mayor Burk: All right. Then I assume there's nothing forward, we need to move forward on at this point
and this will progress onward, and we will get to that point so that April, the developers will know what
we expect and will have to follow what we are telling them they have to design. All right. Thank you.
Then we'll move on.
Council Member Dunn: I would still ask if there's four head nods for Council to ask staff to please
move the building design standards forward in this project, because this is not based on this chart that
staff says they're working on, the building design standards are not coming till later.
Ms. Berry-Hill: Standards and regulations are the same thing, and this says that we will bring forward
the design regulations and district boundaries on April 28th.
Mayor Burk: So there's nothing to change, you're saying there's nothing that we would be changing?
Ms. Berry-Hill: This is what we plan on doing is bringing forward those design standards or regulations,
they're the same thing, forward first in the process.
Vice Mayor Martinez: The only question I have is, let's just say, four nods on the dais say we want it
sooner, what would that cause for your current workload to drop everything and get these design
standards done?
Ms. Berry-Hill: We're working on them right now and they will go to the H2 work group on February
28th for their meeting on March 4th, I believe, and we will have a second meeting with them March
16th. We will also have our March 18th, I think it is, we go to the BAR on the 16th and the Planning
Commission on the 19th.
Vice Mayor Martinez: You're doing what Town Council asked you to do?
Ms. Berry-Hill: Yes, correct. In March is our work plan to work with the various groups that need to see
this and have input to it, or add those forward for the Planning Commission public hearing on March
13th, and then they'll hold their public hearing on April 2nd. That I think we're moving ahead with what
we believe the Council wanted us to do.
Mayor Burk: Mr. Thiel?
Council Member Thiel: I think I can help. A joke came into my head and I'm not going to say it, but I
think if we just add the verbiage up, the same verbiage that is in June and July to the April 18th, I think
that would suffice because it's basically the same thing is what you're--
Ms. Berry-Hill: No, not quite.
Council Member Thiel: So the guidelines and the building standards--
Ms. Berry-Hill: Standards and regulations are in the zoning ordinance as, "You shall do this."
Guidelines are something that are more flexible but they are telling an applicant how we would expect
them to do it. The guidelines are more flexible, the regulations are a must-do, so they're two separate
things. The regulation standards are the must-do, the guidelines are, "You should do it this way."
Council Member Thiel: If we added the verbiage of the guidelines, standards to the April discussion--
Ms. Berry-Hill: We're not going to be ready for the guidelines in April.
Council Member Thiel: Okay, thank you.
Mayor Burk: All right, Mr. Dunn asked if there were four people that wanted to move these guidelines
ahead of the regulations. Am I saying that correctly, Mr. Dunn? Are there four people that are interested
in doing that?
Council Member Thiel: One quick question. When would be a reasonable timeframe to move this
forward, because I do remember Council asking for this sooner rather than later? We don't want to
overburden you. I want this to be done correctly because this is a guideline that could remain in
Leesburg for a long time, hopefully. When would be a responsible timeframe to move this forward?
Ms. Berry-Hill: We feel like we can get the regulations done and that's one of the things that's most
important is to send the signal to developers, "This is what you must do."
Council Member Thiel: The framework of the foundation, a standard structure.
Ms. Berry-Hill: We feel like that was a good suggestion to put that first in the work plan and get that
knocked out, get it done, get it effective, and then work on the guidelines which are going to take a little
bit more time. We're working with a consultant to help us with our illustrations and graphics for those,
and that will take a little bit more time.
Council Member Thiel: We think that's going to be June timeframe?
Ms. Berry-Hill: Yes. I projected three separate steps of that, the streetscape, the building design and
several months to address building design. That is projected to be worked on over the summer.
Council Member Thiel: Thank you.
Mayor Burk: Back to the question, are there four people that are interested in having the design
guidelines moved up over before the regulations, switching, turning it around? Are there four people
interested? Mr. Dunn, Mr. Thiel.
Council Member Fox: I can support it, if it doesn't happen-- What they're trying to do, I understand
what they're trying to say and I think I can support that.
Mayor Burk: So, Ms. Fox. There's only three so that doesn't move forward. Thank you, I appreciate
that. The next one is the letter to the editor of the Loudoun Now, and there's no staff. We have a staff
letter but there's no staff presentation. Mr. Thiel, do you want to start this?
Council Member Thiel: I believe Mr. Dunn brought this up.
Mayor Burk: Dunn do you want to start this?
Council Member Dunn: We'll have the officer kick this off. No. Yes, I brought this up because I felt
that it was important for us to take issues up using the rules of Council, which we have our rules of
procedure, we have Robert's Rules of Order, and we have what I consider part of our rules of procedure,
our ethics policy. I felt that it was important to-- rather than having people doing Wild West, deciding
what they're going to determine what rules are and how they'll operate outside the bounds of Council,
to bring this up under those rules, which was to address the letter that was written by Mayor Burk, Vice
Mayor Martinez and Council Member Steinberg.
The letter claimed that Ms. Notar was being fired as a result of four Council members' concerted strategy
to assist the Loudoun County developer in his attempt to subvert the planning processes of the Town
and the County, not because of her work performance. The information on Ms. Notar's employment
status, contract compensation, was gathered by the Town Manager and shared with other Council
members as he chose. At no time did Mayor Burk, Vice Mayor Martinez or Councilman Steinberg
contact, to my knowledge, any of the other four members, being Fox, Dunn, Campbell and Thiel, prior
to sending their letter to the editors on or about January 20th.
While the letter was not a formal Council document, the writers chose to affix their titles of office to give
the public a false impression of authority and a Council position statement. While there's no rules about
this for Council, by going to the press with this personnel issue, this letter, the letter writers were
tempting to garner a public response in order to change a majority Council decision that hadn't even
happened yet. Council deals with two employees only, the Town Manager and the Town Attorney, both
of whom serve at the pleasure of Council and at will of employment status.
Council has no rules about disclosing personnel issues in public, nor would any reasonable person
think that such a rule should be needed, as it would be understood that you would not disclose personnel
issues in public. As public servants we are all hired and or elected, and we are subject to certain public
scrutiny in our job performances, in following the rules of Council set forth in Robert's Rules of Order,
and the letter writers, Mayor Burk, Vice Mayor Martinez and Council Member Steinberg, were given an
opportunity to handle this issue between the members of Council.
I had written them an email asking them to denounce their letter, as Robert's Rules suggest if you have
an issue with another member, go to them individually, and that's what I did. I wrote an email to those
members and asked them to denounce their letter and apologize, and seeing how they had chosen a
very public venue to go forward to the public with this issue, I felt that it was equal to the task to go
ahead and make their announcement or denouncement of their letter and apologize. They chose not to
do it publicly nor in closed session.
In accordance to Robert's Rules of Order, the Town Council, they're in working session to discuss
further action and that's what this has brought forward tonight. Partial remedies could include no action
at all, a discussion about the possible rule changes about employment disclosure to the public, which I
would be, again, amazed that we would even have to consider that, a public letter from the whole
Council stating its position on employment confidentiality, assigned to and agreed to by all members, a
public letter condemning the actions of the letter writers, or formal censuring of the letter writers.
Should any of these actions be taken against Mayor Burk, Vice Mayor Martinez, and/or Council Member
Steinberg, these last two items being a public letter of condemnation or a formal censuring, according
to Robert's Rules, there should be a trial set to determine that, and giving them an opportunity to state
their case, and that would be done in closed session. I reserve my other comments for three minutes
remaining. Thank you.
Mayor Burk: This point, Mr. Campbell?
Council Member Campbell: Yes, it seems in the intervening weeks, there's been a lot of additional
false information, specifically false allegations that are based on this premise of there was this urgent
need to act. Because of these false allegations alleged against myself, Councilwoman Fox, Mr. Thiel,
Council Member Dunn, that there was this urgent need to publish this in the paper. I have since spoken
to some others saying that, and correct me if I'm wrong, we had not yet had a meeting. The process,
as it were, for evaluation was still open. There was no vote that was scheduled or scheduled to be
taken.
Council had yet to meet as a body, and outside of any other timeframe that we've done similar and had
similar conversations, this was in line with that timeframe, if not slightly ahead. The question comes
back then, what was this fierce urgency that caused such-- I believe, certainly outside the legislative
authority of these three individuals, and certainly in regards to better than best practices, but looking at
state and federal regulations in regards to disclosure of employee personnel information, certainly could
be viewed as a violation and it's certainly a breach of that confidentiality.
Whether we have a rule or not, our rules are not all-encompassing as a Council. As we look at, again,
this series of false allegations, the false assumptions about what motivated this particular behavior and
the outcomes that are trying to be delivered, it begs the question to be answered. I know we had some
answers in a closed session which cannot be disclosed and why it's important to have it in public session
for the public then to understand the rationale of the action and the rationale of the potential remedies.
I think there's been a lot of misleading of information, a lot of one-sided bias in terms of stories being
told, and inaccuracies, blatant inaccuracies that demand a defense.
It's strange in this world that we live in today, that this whole balance of no one being above the law,
and it could be one-sided as it applies, and yet, more than just allegations, but having proof and having
witnesses to that proof is demanded by some and not by others, but it's okay to behave in such a way
as to spread false allegations and not be held accountable. Somehow, that seems to be what the law
of the land is about as well, no accountability. I think we're all accountable in a way that says, could
there have been a different meeting, or different format set up rather than a letter to the editor?
Certainly, there could have been any one, two or three could have called a special meeting if there was
some sense of urgency which I don't know was delivered. There were different methods, but if there
was only one method for the expected outcome of spreading lies and allegations, then I guess, using
Council procedure and Council rules certainly would have been ruled out, and was ruled out to move
forward. I'm certainly interested in moving forward for full disclosure and discussion of what has been
alleged in the newspaper. Certainly, we know it is not reasonably or rational to talk about any personnel
action in any public forum.
Mayor Burk: Mr. Thiel?
Council Member Thiel: I'd just like to say that we're all here to do a number of things, but the first and
foremost we're here to serve the citizens of Leesburg and make this Town a better place to live. We all
have different thoughts, we all have different opinions, but that is the reason we are here, to better the
Town that we live in, so whatever happens, I want us to think of that during this whole process. There's
a lot of work that needs to get done in this Town and this childish behavior needs to get put on the back
burner.
We need to squash this as soon as possible because there's a ton of work that needs to get done.
That's basically all I really wanted to say, I hope we can put this behind us and look forward to the future
of what Leesburg has in store.
Mayor Burk: Ms. Fox?
Council Member Fox: Thanks. In my opinion, the trouble with some of the colleagues that are involved
with this, it's not what they don't know, but that they know so much that just isn't true. I feel I'm going to
go ahead and decline to swing at a ball that's been pitched in the dirt so maliciously and personally,
and I'd rather focus on what we can do to prevent this sort of action in the future, maybe craft some
policy to go forward. I do think it's unfortunate we even need to articulate or formalize rules about
confidentiality and communications in respecting confidentiality, especially that of an employee, but I
think we're going to have to go ahead and take that route.
I don't know when it is appropriate to talk about it, but there are several things that I feel we really do
need to address. I don't know if tonight's the night to address it but I think it should be soon. Some of
these things include ideas about communications that include confidential information. One of the
issues we had is that there was some conversation with some staff, and I feel even if we didn't have a
closed session, anything that's confidential, that should probably be discussed in closed session, would
be the type of thing that we must treat as confidential. Like when an email goes out or something like
that, and it says it's privileged and it's confidential.
What about a phone call, a phone call between a staff and a Council member? There was a level of
trust that was pretty much violated there, in my honest opinion. I do think we need to formalize the Town
Managers and the Town Attorney’s evaluations. I think we found some issues with that through this
entire process. I think for those evaluations, it's up to us to decide whether we want to do this, but with
these two appointments that we have stewardship over as a Council, I feel we should go to closed
session and it shouldn't be an option not to discuss any type of employment.
Then there's some other things that I’ll bring up the evaluation process. I took a look at some content
in one of the contracts and I think we've relegated-- I don't know when this happened, but we relegated
the evaluation process to our Town Manager, I think we should bring it back to the Council. We might
want to also talk about and consider disclosing campaign donations at every vote we take, because
that seems to be an issue with what's going on here tonight.
Mayor Burk: Mr. Martinez.
Vice Mayor Martinez: No comments.
Mayor Burk: Mr. Steinberg?
Council Member Steinberg: Madam Mayor, thank you for the opportunity but I have no comment at
this time, thank you.
Mayor Burk: All right. The only comment that I have is what I have said before, that when we have a
Town employee who has done a great job, who is highly regarded, who goes above and beyond, I will
do everything I can to make sure that that employee is treated with dignity and honor. That particular
situation was not what was happening, so I will move on from there. We do have a request from Council
Member Fox that we look at the formal evaluation process, and we probably are lacking in regard to
that. Do we have four people that would like to take that forward?
Council Member Campbell: We still have rebuttals, three minutes on the same point.
Mayor Burk: Well, she brought this forward.
Council Member Campbell: I understand but we haven't finished our conversation. That's the process.
Mayor Burk: Yes, okay, go ahead, what do you want? Go ahead. Three minutes.
Council Member Campbell: It's funny that we talk about, again, evaluations and yet no process was
completed, basically barely even started, before we talk about fair or unfair treatment. It's this letter that
actually resulted in more unfair treatment of any individual could cause because it disrupted our ability
to have conversations. Conversations were actually being scheduled and those conversations were
prevented from happening because of a release of a letter, so to talk about fairness and a process and
openness, and to talk about what an employee deserves and every employee deserves.
I said just with the Town Manager's evaluation to vote, to not have an evaluation was unfair to him as
a process. That it's not about whether or not a person is doing right or wrong, it's the entitlement of
understanding the relationships, what's working, what's not working and how to move forward. That
never was able to happen and that was unfair to any individual.
I think, again, according to the comments made by a Council Member Fox about having a process and
understanding what that calls for us in responsibilities, is important, and it has been a duty that has
been not upheld on our side, to place the Town Manager in an unfair situation without an outcome of a
process and only have one question really being asked when there's more issues than that, was our
responsibility and not his. So to say that there was a need to drive to an open letter to the public and
not us ourselves is certainly, if anything, other than false, but certainly not honest and why this action
was taken.
Mayor Burk: All right. We have a request-- Yes, Mr. Dunn?
Council Member Dunn: The Council operates on a majority rule, four members or whatever majority
constitutes based on the numbers at the meeting. It has its own rules procedure. It uses Robert's Rules
of procedures unless otherwise stated. All the writers of this letter were given the opportunity to use any
of these rules and they chose not to. This is not an issue of-- not to counter Council Member Fox's
desire to go and look at our rules of evaluation, but I think it's important for people to know that two
employees are subject to Council review. They're appointed personnel, they're not hired employees.
They operate within our employee manual under different guidelines than our employees do, and they're
subject to Council's political-- This is a political body and political decisions are made. Frankly, I think
that any further action on this is to give credence as if there was a problem with the way Council has
operated on this issue in the past, and that is not the case. This deserves no more attention than any
other political stunt that comes down the line that should not be given credence by this body. The only
other formal action that ever took place by Council in my memory was with former member Mayor
Umstattd, when Council chose to take action on letters that she had sent out.
Then the option that was taken was just to send out an announcement saying we don't approve of these
actions but did not address the person involved. Further, my position has been that this is not an issue
dealing with this developer, this is not an issue dealing with a conflict of interest. If there was a true
conflict of interest that any Council member felt was going on, then that is a legal issue and they should
take immediate action. It will go nowhere, because this wasn't a conflict of interest according to the
rules of the Commonwealth. Now having said that, I don't know anybody from the developer.
I couldn't pick one of the developer's representatives out in a line-up. I've never seen a donation from
the developer and this is about providing a service to an existing Town customer, of sewer service. The
development was not to take place in the Town. It did not have tax implications to the citizens of
Leesburg. If there were, I'm not sure what those would be unless it was-- well, it's taking money that we
could have had. I don't think there's any other actions needed because this was just a political stunt
which really deserves no more consideration. Thank you.
Mayor Burk: All right. We have a request from Council Member Fox to future work session on the
evaluation process, is that what you were asking for?
Council Member Fox: Yes.
Mr. Dentler: Madam Mayor, may I just jump in? Council has already directed me to schedule a work
session discussion on the evaluation process for the Town Manager and the Town Attorney. I currently
have it on the May 11th work session, it can move up, it can move out, it's entirely up to you, but you've
already directed to do this, it's just a matter of when you want to do it.
Council Member Fox: When is the ethics discussion?
Mr. Dentler: April 13th work session. Could be on the same night if you want or separate.
Council Member Fox: I don't want to wait till May. I would prefer to have it in April. I don't know if we
can combine the two, but April's fine by me.
Mayor Burk: I have no problem combining the two, so that's fine. All right. Does anybody have any
additions to future council meetings? Mr. Steinberg?
Council Member Steinberg: No.
Mayor Burk: Mr. Thiel.
Council Member Thiel: None.
Mayor Burk: Mr. Martinez?
Vice Mayor Martinez: Yes. I met with the community of Heritage Way on Saturday night and they do
not want the bus shelter, and there was at least 50 people there. We talked with staff on it. What I'd like
to do is bring it back under reconsideration of my vote and bring it back for a vote.
Mayor Burk: Reconsideration. Let me go back and look at what the rules are for reconsideration.
Council Member Campbell: He has to be on it.
Mayor Burk: You had to be on the prevailing side, so you were?
Vice Mayor Martinez: I was.
Mayor Burk: Okay. All right. Are there four people that would like to bring this back for discussion, to
consider reconsidering the motion?
Council Member Dunn: I don't think you need four votes for that technically. I think, Marty, you have
the ability to bring it up as an item as long as it doesn't interfere with another motion in play at tomorrow
night's meeting, you can bring it up for reconsideration at the next two following meetings which
tomorrow night would be one of them.
Vice Mayor Martinez: Well, I just wanted to bring this forward tonight so that everybody is aware of
what's going on.
Mayor Burk: My directions say a majority vote but that's all right. That's how we'll see that further.
Okay, so this will come to you.
Vice Mayor Martinez: I'm hoping we can put it on for tomorrow and get it done sooner than later.
Council Member Dunn: That's fine. You don't have to.
Mayor Burk: We will put this on for tomorrow's meeting.
Council Member Dunn: It's supposed to be non-controversial things going forward but Marty, you have
the ability to do it. You can bring it up tomorrow night.
Vice Mayor Martinez: I know that, I'm just being considerate and letting the Council know what I plan
on doing.
Mayor Burk: You had something to add?
Ms. Newton: What you voted on last time was whether to authorize the filing of the certificate of take,
which already got filed by the deadline on January 31st. We can give some consideration to what's the
best way to put this on the agenda for tomorrow. I'm not sure.
Vice Mayor Martinez: The bottom line is what I want to do is stop the building of the bus shelter and
however we can do that. I know I was on the prevailing side when we approved to move forward with
it, so I just want to stop the process. I've talked to staff and I believe we are in a position where we have
not gone out for a quote, we haven't put out any RFPs. All that's been done is some of the design and
the grant work, and we should be able to stop the process without having to put anybody… Go ahead.
Mr. Dentler: I think we can work to provide you a motion that would allow you to consider that action
tomorrow night.
Vice Mayor Martinez: Thank you.
Council Member Dunn: Just as a point of clarification, technically, unless staff has a different view
than what they just said, you can't do a motion to reconsider once an action that was taken by the vote
had already been moved forward. It sounds like as the Town Attorney has said, that the action has
already taken, but if, Kaj, you're saying you can reverse that action which I think is the end goal, I'm all
for you doing that because I'm not for it either.
Vice Mayor Martinez: Right. The point is, we can do this as long as nothing has been done to move
forward with the construction. In other words, if there has been a proposal for bid and we've awarded
it, or if they started work and we award, in other words resources are committed for the project, then
we can't do anything, but as long as we're in that phase between what we voted on and then actually
committing resources, we should be able to stop it.
Council Member Dunn: Unless they've already taken the property.
Mayor Burk: [crosstalk] Excuse me, gentlemen, let the Town Attorney--
Ms. Newton: There is a process for invalidating that certificate, and what I want to give some thought
to on your behalf is what's the best way to bring up a motion to make that happen.
Mayor Burk: All right. We'll be looking at it tomorrow. Ms. Fox-- Are you done? [crosstalk]
Vice Mayor Martinez: Yes, I'm done.
Council Member Fox: I do have something. Just real quick, I wanted to see if we can get an update
of where we were at looking at the traffic patterns for Market and Loudoun Streets. I think we brought
that forward before but I'm not quite sure where we are if that's on some work session.
Mr. Dentler: Can you tell me the location again?
Council Member Fox: The traffic patterns for Market and Loudoun Streets.
Mayor Burk: Are you talking about going to one way?
Council Member Fox: Yes, we wanted to have a discussion on this because that came up with the
Church and Market application a while back. We kicked that around and I thought we put it on a work
session.
Mayor Burk: Is that associated with the study that we were asking the County to fund, Mr. Dentler?
Mr. Dentler: I'm looking. On the April 13th work session, we have an item titled traffic flow and one-way
streets in downtown. I believe that is what you're referring to?
Council Member Fox: That's it, thank you. Then two other things. I was just noticing that there's
parking, there is a yellow zone right in front of the old Loudoun Times-Mirror building that has been a
loading zone forever, and I can only assume it was for that building because I never see anything there.
Is there a way we can establish some Town parking there?
Mr. Dentler: We can look into that.
Council Member Fox: Would you need four head nods to look into that?
Mayor Burk: Yes.
Mr. Dentler: If you'd like to do that.
Council Member Fox: Along with that, I'd like to have a discussion about a dedicated Uber and Lyft
pick up area because things-- I think that's an interesting concept now that things are changing a little
bit with people coming into Town.
Mayor Burk: All right. Are there four people that would be interested in that? Ms. Fox--
Council Member Dunn: Where?
Council Member Fox: We don't know yet.
Mayor Burk: Well, we're talking about the loading stop in front of the Times-Mirror building that's no
longer there, so are there four people that would be interested in pursuing that? Mr. Thiel Mr. Steinberg,
Mr. Martinez, myself, Ms. Fox, everybody.
Council Member Fox: Just real quick, along with that, did we used to have some wayfinding signs
that are no more pointing to our garages?
Mr. Dentler: Well we do have wayfinding signs that take us to different garage points or in other places
as well.
Council Member Fox: Okay, I've just got some feedback that there are people coming into Town and
they're like, "Oh, I'm here but I don't know where to park."
Mr. Dentler: Well, some of you have been here a long time, you know this conversation goes round
and round and round, but clearly, yes, some people can't find where to park, but at the same time, our
parking garages are full, our downtown is busy. We can always do better, but we can't make it perfect
for everyone, so we can have a conversation, we can look at different things, but I think we will always
have this discussion that the signage is never quite right. When you walk around Town, you see the
garages are full and people are finding places to park.
I do think that one area that we need to focus on for parking is how to maximize the use of the
Pennington garage, and that requires a different level of communications and strategies, so I think there
is some value in what you're raising. I don't want to dismiss that, and that's something that we're already
looking at, if that's helpful for you.
Council Member Fox: Thanks that's it.
Mayor Burk: Mr. Campbell? Mr. Dunn?
Council Member Dunn: I don't know if this would be a memo initially or if it even should be a work
session first to find out how much more work we want to do on this, but that would be to basically since
we can't get the County to go along with city status, we can't get the State. The Commonwealth took
along city status is the possibility of us suing for self-rule which would basically have us go past the
State or persuade them to release the moratorium, or at least have us consider self-rule, but I'd like to
find out more information about the possibility of that.
Thank you.
Mayor Burk: Are there four people that need to do that one that would like to have that information?
Miss Fox. Mr. Dunn, Mr. Thiel and Mr. Campbell, so that moves forward. All right, I have just a couple
of things. Some of us have met with Mr. Rappaport, he is the owner of the retail in the Village of
Leesburg, and he has asked for us if we would initiate a text amendment to allow doggy daycare and a
cattery, which the name envisions whole bunch of other things, but the doggy daycare would be where
people could drop off their dogs.
It would also allow dogs to stay overnight if something were to happen and they could not accommodate
the dogs going home. The cat place, of course, the cat cafe would have cats there overnight, they would
be changing them out every month or so, the ones that aren't adopted. Are there four people that would
be willing to support initiating a text amendment for doggy daycare extension and the cat cafe?
Council Member Fox: You mean a work session?
Mayor Burk: Well, the staff, they have no objections to it and they don't feel that there was a need. It
would be nothing more than they could add, but if you prefer to have a work session on it, we can have
a work session on it.
Mr. Dentler: Are you also, Mayor, asking for an initiation of a text amendment on this topic, then staff
will do the homework and they'll come to you with an explanation of what it is. [crosstalk] This will start
the process in order to do all that.
Mayor Burk: They'll come back to us and explain what it is and what it means and what the implications
would be, but these are two businesses that want to open in the Village of Leesburg and the Village of
Leesburg would like to have them there. This would just be to initiate, not to support at this point. Mr.
Martinez, myself, Mr. Thiel, Mr. Steinberg, Ms. Fox and Mr. Campbell, okay. I also have a request for a
proclamation from the Providence Baptist Church. They are having a ceremony, a service for Mary
Wiley, who is 104 years old.
They believe she is the oldest African-American person in Leesburg.
Unfortunately, their service is before our next meeting. I would like to request that we, tomorrow night,
have a proclamation for Mary Wiley, for us to give to her at the ceremony on February 23rd. Does
anybody have an objection to that? Do I have four people that are willing to do that? Mr. Martinez, Mr.
Campbell, myself, Mr. Thiel, Ms. Fox. All right, that will be on the agenda for tomorrow, and we will all
be getting invitations for February 23rd.
We now have a closed session, and the wording is right on here. I move to enter closed session,
pursuant to Virginia code 2.2-3711A. One, regarding the assignment, appointment promotion,
performance, demotion, salaries, disciplining or resignation of the town attorney. Is there a second?
Seconded by, I think it was hoarsely seconded by Mr. Martinez. All in favor, indicate by saying aye.
All: Aye.
Mayor Burk: Opposed? That is seven zero. All right, we are going to move over to the other room. I
would prefer that we move over to the other room so that we can sit around the table and talk about it.
Mayor Burk: In accordance with Section §2.2-3712 of the Code of Virginia, I move that Council certify
to the best of each member’s knowledge, only public business matters lawfully exempted from open
meeting requirements under Virginia Freedom of Information Act and such public business matters for
the purpose identified in the motion by which the closed meeting was convened were heard, discussed
or considered in the meeting by Council.
Mayor Burk: Mr. Dunn.
Council Member Dunn: Aye.
Mayor Burk: Mr. Campbell.
Council Member Campbell: Aye.
Mayor Burk: Ms. Fox.
Council Member Fox: Aye.
Mayor Burk: Mr. Martinez.
Vice Mayor Martinez: Aye.
Mayor Burk: Mr. Thiel.
Council Member Thiel: Aye.
Mayor Burk: Mr. Steinberg.
Council Member Steinberg: Aye.
Mayor Burk: And myself is aye. Is there a motion to adjourn?
Vice Mayor Martinez: So moved.
Mayor Burk: Moved by Mr. Martinez seconded by … was it Mr. Dunn? Mr. Dunn All in favor.
Council: Aye.
Mayor Burk: Opposed. That passes 7-0.