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HomeMy Public PortalAbout2020_tcwsmin0810Council Work Session August 10, 2020 Council Chamber, 25 West Market Street, 7:00 p.m. Mayor Kelly Burk presiding. Council Members Present: Ron Campbell, Thomas Dunn, Suzanne Fox, Vice Mayor Martinez, Neil Steinberg and Mayor Kelly Burk. Council Members Absent: None. Staff Present: Town Manager Kaj Dentler, Deputy Town Manager Keith Markel, Interim Town Attorney Martin R. Crim, Director Public Works and Capital Projects Renee LaFollette, Director Planning and Zoning Susan Berry Hill, Director Economic Development Russell Seymour, Deputy Director Public Works and Capital Projects Bud Siegel, Management and Budget Officer Jason Cournoyer, Transportation Engineer Calvin Grow, and Clerk of Council Eileen Boeing. Minutes prepared by Executive Associate Corina Alvarez. AGENDA ITEMS 1. Electronic Participation for Vice Mayor Martinez and Council Member Dunn Vice Mayor Martinez and Council Member Dunn requested to participate in the Council Work Session electronically due to the health and safety concerns associated with the Coronavirus. Mayor Burk, Council Member Campbell, Council Member Fox and Council Member Steinberg were physically present at the meeting. MOTION2020--187 On a motion by Council Member Steinberg, seconded by Council Member Campbell, the following was proposed: To allow Vice Mayor Martinez and Council Member Dunn to electronically participate in the August 10, 2020, Town Council Work Session The motion was approved by the following vote: Aye: Campbell, Fox, Steinberg and Mayor Burk Nay: None Vote: 4-0-2 (Vice Mayor Martinez and Dunn absent) 2. Items for Discussion a. Rock Spring Farm Text Amendment Ms. Susan Berry Hill provided an overview of the request for a zoning ordinance text amendment pertaining to the Rock Spring Farm. Council and staff discussed the following: • By -right use or special exception for bottling plant • Performance standards • Planning Commission recommendations • Public hearings • Process timeline • Resolution 1IPage Council Work Session August 10, 2020 It was the consensus of the Council to allow staff to initiate a zoning ordinance text amendment to amend articles to add spring water bottling plant as a special exception use in the rural estate district and to develop use standards and definitions (Campbell, Dunn, Fox, Vice Mayor Martinez, Steinberg and Mayor Burk). b. CARES Act of 2020 — Non -Profit Grant Awards Mr. Markel stated that this item was coming back to Council with recommendations from the Community Grant Review Committee on the disbursement of CARES Act funds. Council discussed the following: • Review Committee recommendations • Increased funding • Spending report and qualified/certified spending • Town liability and tax liability • Outreach program • Leesburg nonprofits • Return of funds to the County • Distribution of all funds • County auditing and return of funds It was the consensus of Council to accept the recommendation of the Community Grant Review Committee to fund 26 nonprofits with a cumulative grant request of $865, 311 and to equitably distribute the remaining balance of $134,689 in undesignated Nonprofit Grant funds to these same organizations (Campbell, Fox, Vice Mayor Martinez, Steinberg and Mayor Burk). c. CARES Act — Spending Plan Update and Second Round Funding Mr. Markel presented an update of the spending plan and staff's recommendation for the second round of funding. Council discussed staffs recommendations and took a straw vote on the following items: 1) Accept 2nd round funding (No consensus — Mayor Burk, Vice Mayor Martinez, Steinberg). 2) Allow for the use of the remaining $2, 360, 000 in undesignated funds allocated for the Small Business Grant to be used for a second phase grant with revised criteria and distribute the remaining $134, 689 to non profits among the awarded nonprofits (Consensus — Campbell, Fox, Vice Mayor Martinez, Steinberg and Mayor Burk). 3) Expand to a 4th tier for businesses $0-$25, 000 with a criteria for a loss from the previous year (Consensus — Fox, Campbell, Vice Mayor Martinez, Mayor Burk). 2IPage Council Work Session August 10, 2020 4) Return $1 M of the second round funding to the County specifically earmarked for non profits (Consensus — Fox, Steinberg, Mayor Burk, Campbell, Vice Mayor Martinez). 5) Return the remaining second round funding to the County to distribute (Consensus — Steinberg, Vice Mayor Martinez, Mayor Burk, Campbell). 6) Accept all of the funding with more local analysis (No consensus — Fox, Dunn). 7) Virtual Learning Center for Town staff out of Town's $200K allocation (Consensus — Campbell, Mayor Burk, Vice Mayor Martinez - majority consensus as Council Member Steinberg was out of the room during the straw vote). d. Annual Capital Funding Request to the County of Loudoun - Fiscal Year 2022 Ms. Lafollette presented the Town's Capital Improvement Program request to Loudoun County for Fiscal Year 2022. Council and staff discussed the following: • Route 15 and Edwards Ferry Road project • Battlefield Parkway project funding • VDOT and NVTA funds • Loudoun County owned and operated facilities • Pedestrian or transportation -related improvements • Criteria Loudoun County funding • Westpark Golf Course • Town -wide traffic study and Courthouse expansion It was the consensus of Council to add the purchase of the Westpark Golf Course and $250K for a Town -wide Traffic Study to the Capital Improvements Program for County Funding (Campbell, Fox, Vice Mayor Martinez, Steinberg and Mayor Burk). e. Traffic Flow and One Way Streets in Downtown Mr. Calvin Grow provided background information on Council's request to discuss traffic flow and one-way streets in the Downtown. Council and staff discussed the following: • Downtown -wide traffic study • Royal Street improvements • Capital Improvements Program, County funding • Traffic study recommendations • One-way streets • Courthouse expansion • Church and Market Street project • Light at North and North King Streets • Modeling software 3IPage Council Work Session August 10, 2020 f. Loudoun County Board of Supervisors and Leesburg Town Council Relationship & Potential Standing Committee Mr. Dentler stated that Council requested this item be placed on the agenda in June of 2019 and it was deferred to November 2019 until the Board elections. He added that the item was later postponed to March 2020. Council and staff discussed the following: • Council Committee to the Board of Supervisors • Joint Land Management Area • Annual budget requests • Capital Improvements Program funding • School Board and Board of Supervisors relationship • Letter to Board of Supervisors • Selection of Council Representatives • COLT meetings with BOS representatives It was the consensus of Council for staff to draft a letter to send to the Board of Supervisors requesting a Standing Committee (Campbell, Dunn, Fox, Vice Mayor Martinez, Steinberg and Mayor Burk). 3. Additions to Future Council Meetings Mayor Burk asked to add a proclamation for Payroll Week. It was the consensus of Council to move forward with a motion on this item at the September 8 Council meeting (Campbell, Fox, Vice Mayor Martinez, Steinberg and Mayor Burk). 4. Adjournment On a motion by Council Member Steinberg, seconded by Vice Mayor Martinez, the meeting was adjourned at 10:10 p.m. Clerk of Council 2020 tcwsmin0810 4IPage August 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: [unintelligible 00:02:06] I need a motion to allow Vice Mayor Martinez and Council Member Dunn to electronically participate in the August 10th, 2020, Town Council Work Session. Council Member Neil Steinberg: So moved. Mayor Burk: So moved by Council Member Steinberg. Second? Council Member Ron Campbell: Second. Mayor Burk: Second by Council Member Campbell. All in favor indicate by saying aye. Council Members: Aye. Mayor Burk: That's 4-0-2. All right. Our first item for discussion is Rock Spring Farm Text Amendment. Council Member Tom Dunn: Madam Mayor? Mayor Burk: Yes, sir. Council Member Dunn: When you call on an agenda item, could you note what tab it is because, on the agenda, I don't see any tabs listed. Unless do you all see tabs listed? Mayor Burk: No, the tabs are gone. It's just the A, B, C. D, E. That's where if you're using your computer, that's where you get the information. You click on the A. Council Member Dunn: Is it possible for the Clerk to mention what tab it's in when we get to an agenda item? Mayor Burk: Eileen, are you comfortable doing that? Eileen Boeing: Ma'am, they're just numbered as they're on the agenda. This would be item 2A. Mayor Burk: Okay. 2A. All right. Rock Spring Farm Text Amendment. This is a fun one. Susan Berry Hill: Thank you Madam Mayor, Members of Council. Before you tonight the first item on your agenda is a request for zoning ordinance text amendment pertaining to the Rock Spring Farm. A request has been made by the family that owns Rock Spring Farm. John Cook has made that request on behalf of the family. There's a reason behind the request which I'll get into. This slide shows the property which is at the Southwest corner of West Loudoun Street and Dry Mill Road. You're probably very familiar with the property and you've driven past it many times. This map splits up the property areas one and two or area one, in particular, is known as the Sledding Hill. Areas one and two are currently used for grazing cattle. Area three is where the home is. Area four is where the outbuildings are for the farm. As you probably know through the letter that Mr. Cook sent to you all, this property has been used in the past and the history of it as a dairy farm. Relevant to tonight's discussion is the fact that it has been used as a water source for the Town of Leesburg. The family would like to use it as a water source Page 11 August 10, 2020 going into the future and there's a reason for that. They want to preserve the farm and they are looking at a creative approach to trying to provide revenue stream to be able to do that. The proposal that was in your letter suggests that they would like to bottle the spring water from the well that is located on the property and it's shown on this map as H2O, water, that's where the spring well is. The proposal tonight is to change the zoning ordinance to allow the use of a bottled watering operation. We do not have that use in the zoning ordinance. Right now this property is zoned, areas one and two are zoned R8. Areas three and four and the H2O area are zoned R4 residential and they are overlaid with the H1 historic district as well. The proposal tonight is to request from you an initiation of the zoning ordinance text amendment and that would be to add bottling plant as a special exception used in the RE district. RE district is the closest district we have to agricultural districts. We do not have any agricultural districts because really this may be the only farm that really is in the Town. RE was the closest district. It's a large lot district, it's intention is for preservation of land. Staff felt that this was the closest district that the family could request a rezoning to. What they're asking for is the inclusion of bottling plant in that district. That's what this text amendment would be. It would also be to add performance standards. Obviously our conversations with the family centered around, "Well, what kind of operation would a bottling plant be and how would that work within a residential area?" Mr. Cook is here tonight. If you have any questions about the specifics for the bottling plant. This would be something staff would explore extensively with the Cook family, if you were to initiate this text amendment. Mayor Burk: But it really wouldn't be appropriate to talk about the bottling plant yet, because this is just about changing the zoning. Susan Berry Hill: This is changing the ordinance. My note at the bottom of this slide is, and this is particularly, the Council knows this, but for any residents who might be listening to this, this is not to allow a bottling plant on the Cook property. The text amendment is simply to allow them to ask the Town to put a bottling plant on the property. That is what's before you. The steps here, if this were to be initiated is to change the zoning ordinance to include bottling plant in the RE district. If approved, then the family would need to submit land development applications to the Town for rezoning of the property, from R4 to RE. Then secondly a special exception application, staff would be recommending that this bottling plant be only established through a special exception process, which allows Council to control what the —and review the impacts of the plant. The family would submit those two applications, the rezoning and special exception. Then thirdly, they would be responsible for working with State agencies on any State permitting that would be required to establish the business of bottling spring water. Those are the steps involved in this. The letter that you received from Mr. Cook goes into other things that they would like to do with the property. For example, using areas one and two, maybe for a park and maybe talking to the Town about a park. They have other plans, or they thought of other ideas for the house itself and the long-term use of the total property as a historic venue. Tonight those things are not on the table. This is strictly talking about the text amendment to allow for bottling plants to be a part of the RE district. That is what's before you. You do have a resolution that's on your agenda tomorrow evening. Should you approve that resolution, that simply directs staff to begin work on amending or drafting language to amend the zoning ordinance to include the bottling plant as a use, and then particularly to work on performance standards for how a bottling plant might be most appropriately operated. The question before you tomorrow night will be whether or not you want to initiate the zoning text amendment. That is all I have. Again, Mr. Cook is here. If you've got any questions about this plan, I'm sure he'll be happy to answer them. Page 21 August 10, 2020 Mayor Burk: I will be asking Mr. Cook if he has a presentation in just a minute. I'm a little confused with your saying that if we decide today that we want to move forward on this and have it for a vote tomorrow that we will be doing a zoning ordinance amendment plus we will be doing performance standards? Susan Berry Hill: Yes, that would be a part of the zoning ordinance text amendment. Mayor Burk: Okay. For the bottling plant. Now I understand. Susan Berry Hill: Article 9 of the zoning ordinance has many use standards, for all types of uses that are permitted in the zoning ordinance. We would be working on particular parameters for a bottling plant. Mayor Burk: Great. Thank you. Is there anyone else that has any questions? Yes, Mr. Steinberg? Council Member Steinberg: Actually just one. In amending the text, does this become a by -right use in RE or is this a use allowed by special exception in the RE? Susan Berry Hill: We would suggest that it be a use through a special exception process. Of course, that's up to Council to decide, ultimately. If you felt like it should be a by -right use, perhaps you'd want to give us that direction either tonight or tomorrow and we will draft the language as such. Otherwise, I think we would approach it as a special exception. Council Member Steinberg: Thank you. Mayor Burk: Anyone else? Ms. Fox? Council Member Suzanne Fox: Thank you. What are the by -right uses for the RE district? Susan Berry Hill: It's largely a residential district but there are some commercial uses, such as a veterinary clinic, a kennel, a recreation center. Those uses, I believe, are all special exception uses. Council Member Fox: There's nothing by right then for REs? Susan Berry Hill: There are some things by right that are-- I'm trying to remember. I don't have the ordinance with me but they're largely residentially related. Another thing was a nursery, a landscaping nursery. Again, that's special exception use. Council Member Fox: I get the picture. Rogers Farm across from Loudoun County High School and the old Meadowbrook area, were those RE as well? Susan Berry Hill: No. Council Member Fox: Those weren't? Susan Berry Hill: No. Council Member Fox: I was just trying to figure out what else I could compare this to. Susan Berry Hill: There are not too many properties in the Town that are RE, to be honest. Council Member Fox: This is unique. What I like about this is it blends our history and something that's uniquely Leesburg. I would tend to be a nod on this one. Thank you. Mayor Burk: Anyone else? Mr. Campbell? Council Member Campbell: Thank you. I just want to confirm, it's probably more for the public just in terms of process. This initiation will allow this to go to the Planning Commission. Planning Commission Page 31 August 10, 2020 will make recommendations. This also allows for a public hearing. This is just a step and not a long process, hopefully, but a process where all sides can be heard, public input can be gathered, the professional staff report, and the recommendation back to Council before Council finally votes on the text amendment. Susan Berry Hill: That's correct. There are public hearings scheduled for the Planning Commission as well as Town Council. Those are advertised in the newspaper. We don't post text amendments, but they're advertised so the public will know about it and be welcome to come and make comment. Council Member Campbell: I know in today's environment, anticipating a little timeline might look like, might be a little risky, but for the sake of risking this, could you give us a shot at a timeline? Susan Berry Hill: I'm thinking that the text amendment will probably take a couple months for staff to research and draft the language. Then when you get into the public hearing process, it's usually good two months between-- To meet the advertising requirements for the Planning Commission as well as Town Council. I'm guessing four to five months. Council Member Campbell: At best end of the year and worse the beginning of next year. Susan Berry Hill: Yes. Council Member Campbell: Thank you. Mayor Burk: Any additional questions? Council Member Dunn: Madam Chair? Mayor Burk: Yes? Council Member Dunn: A couple of questions and comments. Thank you. I'm for initiating this. A couple of things that if staff and Planning Commission could consider in doing it. A couple of concerns I have is that while we have few REs in Town, one thing we might want to consider is to make this not just a special exception but also give this property especially with the size that a special zoning designation in which the functions will only happen at that particular type of a destination or location. Excuse me. I would just be concerned that others in the public might feel that since a residential of some sort is allowed to do bottling, then why can't my home brewery be a location in which I may be able to start some bottling in another type of residential area and ask for exceptions for that? Another thing that if it were to become an issue that maybe the bottling can be done at a different location and then the source of the product can be at the farm. Again, maybe just a consideration. That would be my concern. Is that it doesn't become something that other residential areas in Town feel that they can go out and start bottling and becomes a regular function where microbreweries and wineries are being set up in people's basements. Just a consideration of a possible whole other zoning designation for this specific area so that it doesn't grow into something bigger that we weren't intending to do. Thank you. Mayor Burk: Okay, is that it? I assume, okay. Mr. Cook, do you have anything you would like to add? Do you have a presentation of any sort? John Cook: [unintelligible 00:17:22] Mayor Burk: That's okay. Could you come to the mic? John Cook: Yes. Page 41 August 10, 2020 Mayor Burk: Thank you. It's hard enough to hear us with the mask on. John Cook: Can I take it off? Mayor Burk: Yes, absolutely. John Cook: I think you all know what the family is trying to do. Was it Mr. Martinez a moment ago? Mayor Burk: Mr. Dunn just spoke. John Cook: Mr. Dunn. My thought on that was limited to natural spring water that's potable. I came tonight to answer questions. I've had a chance to meet with a bunch of you and speak with you. I know you read my letter. I'm not going to waste your time, because I know you're busy. I just like to say that I was talking to my mom and dad today. They said, "John, this is a win, win." I believe that. Mayor Burk: All right, thank you. Thank you very much. Anyone have any questions for Mr. Cook? All right, thank you very much. John Cook: Yes, ma'am. Mayor Burk: I appreciate you coming. Are there four people that are interested in taking this forward to initiate? I think you have everybody. All right. Vice Mayor Marty Martinez: Yes, I do. Mayor Burk: Mr. Martinez, Mr. Steinberg, Ms. Burk, Ms. Fox and Mr. Campbell and I believe Mr. Dunn. Kaj Dentler: Madam Mayor, [unintelligible 00:18:38] it's on the agenda [unintelligible 00:18:40]. Council Member Dunn: You put me down as a yes for that, correct? Mayor Burk: Yes, we did. Kaj Dentler: Is Council comfortable with moving it to Consent for tomorrow night or leave it where it is on location? Mayor Burk: I'm fine with it on Consent. We all agreed to it. Council Member Fox: We did all agreed to it but I have one question. Miss Berry Hill mentioned that we would have performance standards. We don't have that in the actual resolution. Do we? Susan Berry Hill: Yes, I believe you do. Council Member Fox: You do? Okay. Susan Berry Hill: It's inclusive of changes to the articles five, nine and 18. Nine is the article that addresses use standards. Mayor Burk: Alright. Council Member Campbell: I just have one more comment for Miss Berry Hill. Again, along with Councilwoman Fox, I just want to make sure that we actually see the full resolution that we vote on tomorrow night. Everything that we want in the resolution should be in that resolution. We've learned nothing to be added at a different-- I have three minutes, thank you. Nothing to be added at a different time. Thank you. Page 51 August 10, 2020 Mayor Burk: All right, thank you. The next one is the CARES Act 2020, the Nonprofit Grant Awards. Mr. Markel, you're doing that one? Keith Markel: Good evening, Mayor and Council. We have two CARES items on the agenda this evening. The first is the Nonprofit Grant Program and coming back to you this evening with recommendations from the Community Advisory Group and answer any questions you may have about those organizations that are selected by staff and by the Review Committee for funding for your consideration. I also have Russell Seymour, Economic Development Director here with us this evening and we have Jason Cournoyer, our Budget and Management Officer to answer any questions since they've been very close to this project from the start. Mayor Burk: You are too tall. Keith Markel: Just as a little background information for those who may not be familiar with this program. The CARES Act are these Federal dollars approved by the United States Congress, distributed to the State, distributed down to Loudoun County, and Loudoun County distributed a portion of that to the towns based on population. The Town of Leesburg received just shy of $4.8M of CARES Act funding. All the monies must be spent by December 30, 2020. Any balance remaining goes back to the County, which then in turn goes back to the State. At your meeting on June 9th, you all approved a resolution that directed a million dollars of that total allotment of CARES funds to go towards supporting nonprofits in the community that are helping those in Leesburg who are being impacted by the effects of COVID, whether that be financial or medical impacts. You also set a cap on these grants of $50K. Staff on CARES Team put together an application. We launched that back in July and from July 15th to the 22nd. This was the grant application that was online program, where local and regional nonprofits anyone providing services in Leesburg could apply online using our Laserfiche system and submitted those applications to us. You all received copies of those as well. You can see who all applied. There were 31 grants in total that were received. Staff did initial review just to make sure that they met the minimal qualifications. Of those, four were removed because they did not meet the qualifications. They are great nonprofits doing lots of good in the community, but they were not directly related to COVID-19 so they were removed. One withdrew because they did receive the full amount of funding that they were requesting from Loudoun County. They also voluntarily took their name out of consideration. Once we were finished with our screening, just to make sure that the minimum requirements are being met, we had a five -member Community Grant Review Committee review these and that group consisted of Nicole Acosta, Donna Bohanon, Enrique Gonzalez, Tony Howard and Margaret Morton. They were good enough to spend some time with these applications reviewing them, because they are so familiar with the community and the community's needs and they provided their recommendations and feedback to us. Based on their review, and the Town's evaluation, they are recommending for you 26 nonprofit organizations. They further recommend that four of those 26 received funding in excess of what those organizations asked for in their applications. You'll see they're the Catholic Charities, Help for Others, Loudoun Free Clinic and Ampersand Project are all recommended to receive additional funds for your consideration. Three of those were above the cap that you all set at $50K, just wanted to point that out. How this breaks down, you allocated a million dollars to nonprofits, their total recommendation accounts for $865,311 so that leaves your remaining balance of $134,689 that is unspoken for at this time. Your recommended next steps this evening is to adopt a resolution that would allocate these funds. The Town would look to distribute these funds to these nonprofits as soon as possible so they can start taking effect in the community. The nonprofit's would have to provide a spending report to the Town Page 61 August 10, 2020 showing how they are spending the funds and meeting the grant criteria and the criteria of the CARES Act, and that again, all funding must be spent by the end of the year. We have a draft resolution in your packet and happy to discuss or answer any questions and again, I have Jason Cournoyer, and Russell Seymour with me. Thank you. Mayor Burk: Does anyone have any questions? Mr. Steinberg? Council Member Steinberg: Roughly $800K was awarded, and you're saying there's a balance of $130K. The balance awarded included the amounts, you said there was recommendation for more than was requested so that figure, the $100K includes those funds as well. Keith Markel: That does include the increased amount that the Review Committee recommends. Council Member Steinberg: Then at some point we have a decision to make about what to do with the balance. Keith Markel: That's correct. Mayor Burk: Is that not the next item? Keith Markel: It is, yes. Council Member Steinberg: Thanks. Mayor Burk: Ms. Fox? Council Member Fox: Okay. Thanks. Sorry. I was just counting. There's four who were recommended to receive more. Could you explain why we would give them more? I understand I think the $50K ones, I still would like to know why the extra $20K was recommended. However, there is one that requested $7,5K but got $10K. Can you expand on that a little bit? Keith Markel: Sure. They're on the screen. You've got those four organizations that the committee recommended increased funding towards and it was just based on the belief in-- Just the committee's recommendation based on how they understand the communities, how the organizations operate in the community and the need that those organizations serve. You'll see they're all large, for the most part, except for the smaller, the Help for Others is the smallest of these three organizations and that was just rounding up. They asked for seven thousand and change and this would take them up to an even $10K. I did reach out to all four of these organizations and heard back from all but the Free Clinic and the three, Catholic Charities, Help for Others and Ampersand Project, all were very appreciative of the recommendation from the committee and said that they would be able to spend these funds in the allotted time by the end of this year. They said certainly, these additional funds would be put to good use, and they certainly have that need. Council Member Fox: The spending report that you referenced, when is that due? Keith Markel: We don't have a firm date yet from the County, as I recall, but we do have them filling out a survey based on the County's requirements that we show how these funds are distributed, how these funds are used by these organizations and then that's provided back to the County and for the Town's record keeping. Council Member Fox: The report would come after these funds are distributed? Keith Markel: Correct. Council Member Fox: Well after -- Page 71 August 10, 2020 Keith Markel: Se we distribute these funds if you take action this evening within the next week or so, and then they would have these monies to be able to start working in the community. They've already agreed to meeting all the requirements of the CARES Act and the requirements of the Town's application process. They've already checked off and signed off on that at the initiation of the application. Once they do that, they can start spending immediately and then they just report back how they spent those funds, that they were consistent with CARES Act. Council Member Fox: 1 was wondering for the businesses. I've had a few businesses ask me if there would be a tax liability to this grant at all. Is there any tax liability whatsoever? Keith Markel: I can't answer that. I'm not aware how the Federal government will treat that. Council Member Fox: Who would be able to answer that? Keith Markel: We can look into it, certainly. But that goes into tax law. We're distributing the grants and how those grants are taxed by the Federal government would be outside of the Town's purview. Council Member Fox: As far as the County is concerned, one of the, I guess, ways that it could be distributed was through them. They gave us that option. As we talked about that a little bit, as far as I remember, there should be some cross-referencing. If businesses or nonprofits got some money from the County, then it stood to reason that they couldn't get it again through here. You were telling me earlier that that's not true. Keith Markel: Right. That was never part of the program as it was adopted. If nonprofits received money from the County and there are nonprofits in this list that have received grant allocations from Loudoun County - Mayor Burk: Good catch. Keith Markel: -they would be able to get both. The only criteria is that you couldn't pay for the same thing twice. They can't mislabel, pay for this purchase and then pay for that same purchase again with Town money and then use that money for something else that wasn't qualified. As long as they're all using the monies that are allocated to by Loudoun County, or by the Town or by another State grant or other grants out there. There are a number of different revenue sources coming to these nonprofits now because of the great need. As long as they're not double applying it to the same project we don't have an issue. Council Member Fox: I get that. But how would we know whether they're applying it? The report is not due until we don't know when. If we do allocate monies, and they have money from other sources, how would we know? Would we be liable for any of this money? They said there's got to be an accounting where we are held to account for this. When we report to the County if there is some cross over, what happens? Keith Markel: They've certified that they will spend this money appropriately and consistently with the requirements of the CARES Act. That's on them, how they spend these funds, knowing that there are these criteria, and they need to report that back to us that we then provide that record back to the County to certify. Council Member Fox: If they're certified, that relieves us of any liability and any payback to the County? Keith Markel: That's a legal question. I will turn to see how far that liability extends to the Town. I think as staff, we feel comfortable that we've built in a lot of safeguards in that certification when they've made that application, but our attorney may be able to speak more to that. Martin Crim: Can you repeat the question, please? Council Member Fox: If the funds are certified, and the recipients of funds certified they're going to use the funds in a certain way and they end up either not using them that way, or they have paid the Page 81 August 10, 2020 same items with two different sets of money after the audit is all done, how would that affect the Town and taxpayers? Martin Crim: We might have to repay the funds to the County, to be repaid to the State, to be repaid to the Federal government. That would be our exposure. If it turns out that the entity did not spend the money appropriately, we would try to recover the money from the entity, but we potentially have to repay that. Council Member Fox: Okay. All right, and this is something we're just not going to find out until those reports come in, correct? Keith Markel: If they put in their application, how they intend to spend the money, and they've certified that they will spend the money appropriately and those safeguards are the same safeguards that the County has, there's really not much more that we could do there. Council Member Fox: The last thing, we discussed some of the using these funds in different ways. We're opening the streets. One of the things we did discuss is having a program to contact some of the more vulnerable folks in our society in Leesburg, elderly and shut-ins and things like that. I don't see any allocation for that anywhere. What happened to that? Keith Markel: Well, we talked about partnering with a nonprofit. Again, the Town does not keep any of that demographic information internally so we won't have that list. 1 think you cited Plano, Texas as a locality that had that setup, but they're running their Health and Family Services Program. The Town doesn't have that program in place. I think when we last discussed, we felt, at least I expressed that that would be a role best taken on by a local nonprofit. They may have access to that information. Council Member Fox: Have we contacted any of them? Keith Markel: None have applied that do that sort of service. No. Council Member Fox: We're just not going to do the service at all? Keith Markel: If you know of an organization that would be capable of doing that function, we certainly can talk to them. Council Member Fox: Okay. Thank you. Mayor Burk: Mr. Martinez, Mr. Dunn, do you have any questions? We always look up at the ceiling -- Vice Mayor Martinez: Just a comment that I support what's going on. I would like to, I understand, Keith, you said that you were going to be telling us what your plans were for the rest of the money that wasn't allocated. Mayor Burk: That's the next item. Keith Markel: In the next item we're going to solicit your feedback and your direction on how you felt it best be appropriate to look at this remaining balance of $130K and change. Vice Mayor Martinez: Thanks. That's all I got. Mayor Burk: Mr. Dunn? Council Member Dunn: Yes. Could you tell me on the list, Keith, how many of these entities are actually located here in Leesburg? Keith Markel: Their addresses are on the application. I don't have the breakdown right in front of me. It would take me some time to go through the 26. I would say probably a good number of them are in Page 91 August 10, 2020 Town, but again, they're not just serving in -Town clients. For example, Loudoun Hunger Relief, you could say that's a Leesburg -based nonprofit. Their offices and distribution centers are here in Leesburg, but they serve all of Loudoun County. The lines when you're talking about the nonprofit community certainly don't stop at the Town jurisdiction. You'll find a lot of these are regional in nature that serve a variety of customers. What we did ask for them is to specifically call out in their application, how they will be helping and supporting those folks here in Leesburg that are being impacted. If they're helping folks in Arlington, that's great, but the grant money that they're getting from the Town of Leesburg needs to be directed to the folks here in Leesburg. Council Member Dunn: I imagine that's probably going to be pretty hard to track where the money is being spent geographically. I was under the impression that we were looking for organizations that are actually in Leesburg to say that the parameters were, if they're helping people in Leesburg, then I'm not sure why we didn't get requests from the International Red Cross or any other international organization that can claim that they're doing work here in Town. My only concern is that while I'm all for giving away money, especially when it's not mine. We are, according to the Town Attorney, on the hook for making sure that it is being distributed properly and I don't know that we have anything in place that we're going to ensure that the funds are spent where they say they're going to be spent or how we can even enforce that, should we find out that it's not being spent, and then we run the risk of being, as I said, on the hook for funds that may not be spent properly. I'm a little concerned that the committee and staff had worked on it, decided to go outside the parameters of just working on entities that are here in Town, and using a metric or matrix that would say, "Well, if they're helping people in Town." As I said, that could be the International Red Cross helps people in Town. I think it would've been good, had we known tonight that what businesses or what entities are actually here in Town. Of the businesses that we gave money to, were all of those in Town? Keith Markel: Yes, that was a requirement. That all the businesses did need to be located. That's the private -side business grant. Council Member Dunn: Okay, because I would think that businesses that are outside of Town, that they also have customers inside the Town. It seems like a different set of criteria for the nonprofits versus the for -profits. Again, if Council decided not to go that direction, I had been for letting the County go ahead and administer this program for us and I think that if we were going to look at regional donations, if we're going to go outside of the Town limits for what we're supposed to be providing relief for, which is Town organizations, we should have gone ahead and let the County administer this. Frankly, at this point, I would not be opposed of just letting us be the evaluators of who the giving is for and then turn this program back over to the County before we start giving away the money and let the County be responsible for giving away the actual money based on our research. But then they're responsible for any funds that are spent inappropriately. That would be my recommendation is we've done the work at this point and now turn the funds completely over to the County and let them work on distributing it. Thank you. Mayor Burk: Mr. Campbell? Council Member Campbell: Yes, thank you, I do appreciate all the hard work that's gone into the programs and applications. I did want to take a look this afternoon, just to look at their plans for supporting Leesburg, and again, even what I understand about the County, there's no absolutes that these organizations won't necessarily do something different but all you can do is ask them their plan. What we certify is that we have reviewed their spending plans, and we believe what they're going to spend it on is appropriate. That's what we certify. As I look at most of these organizations and when their spending plans are about rent assistance, hunger relief. There's one that even has some capital structure project and another for a refrigerated box truck. Those are probably pretty easy to see if they happen or don't happen. How they're related to Page 101 August 10, 2020 COVID-19? I guess, again, we have to certify and justify that that's an appropriate expenditure. There on this list because you deemed them appropriate. The thing I would've done differently, and still going to fight for different, is this distribution of not only the $134K of redistribution. I don't think that is justified that the $20K addition go to the four. I might've justified them getting $10K because there are other needy organizations and I can't imagine anybody on this list would say, "Don't give me more money." I think that's the difference. How do we pick winners and losers when they're all serving a human need? I would redistribute that whole $60K. I'd leave help for others alone, the whole $60K plus the $134K and redistribute it to others on this list. There is no money to give back. Let's give it all away. I'm not sure if the committee looked at that or thought about that. I don't know what conversation they had, but there's no reason for us to leave any money on the table. Keith Markel: I don't think that they disagree with you. I think that the question came down to a matter of capacity. Some of these organizations are smaller in nature, and they ask for a specific amount of money that they would be able to spend appropriately in the time constraints that they had put on by the CARES Act. I think if you wanted to go that route, which I think is a fine direction, but I think we would want to confirm with every one of those organizations that they would be able to receive that money and use it appropriately in the timeframe. Otherwise, we would redistribute it among the remaining balance. Council Member Campbell: I'd have to believe for the groups that applied, other than the four that weren't eligible, these are the ones that really took some time to see a need. Even if some of the redistribution is only $5K or $10K, we're not talking about taxing their organizations in terms of a human capacity. Actually, and you could answer this question, I'm more concerned about our organization because I read that a lot in the staff reports about the extra work. The County has outsourced the auditing function to KPMG. How are we going to handle internally, the auditing function? Again, if we're liable, I want to make sure either we can do it or that's maybe something we should buy too. Keith Markel: Well, our numbers are much smaller, obviously, than the County. At the current time, we feel that the certification sheets that were submitted with the application, as well as those surveys that they'll be completing later this fall, is what we're being asked to provide to the County. We feel that we can handle that in-house at this time. Council Member Campbell: All of the organizations that say they got to provide rent assistance, understand that that rent assistance has to go to the landlord and not an individual. I don't know their programs. I don't know. You know their programs? I'm not trying to get into weeds, but this is where we get trapped, because if they give it to individuals, they've already spent it inappropriately. I don't know who works with these programs to make sure that they can actually perform the way they've asked to use the money, like the VFW club. Now, they say with the veterans they've given money before, they obviously have some experience. I was pleasantly surprised to see that. I just want to make sure that while people have certified that they're going to spend it a certain way, they absolutely understand the legalities of how to spend it. I know that's not our job and responsibility, but it becomes our liability if they don't do it right. I really would like to redistribute the money so we don't give any back or because it was for a specific purpose. I believe some of the other organizations could use it as well. If they can't use it after we call around. I don't know how you want to proceed on that. Do you want to get a list of ones that I might recommend and others may share it tomorrow, and then we vote on it because we can't vote till tomorrow, anyway? Keith Markel: I think this rolls into that second discussion here for a second CARES item, looking at the current spending plan and tweaks to that spending plan. One of those questions is looking at these remaining funds. I think based on your direction you provide staff this evening, we can rewrite the resolutions any which direction you prefer. Page 111 August 10, 2020 Mayor Burk: All right. We'll hold that discussion until the next thing. I don't have a problem with them not being located in Leesburg. Reading over the plans, the few that I saw, they were all very good about being specific as to how they're going to help Leesburg. 1 know I have referred a number of people to the Catholic Charities for their rent, and they know the rules pretty carefully. They knew where they had to pay the rent and it didn't go to the individual. I'm sure that these people, these organizations that have put forward this information, know what they have to do and how they have to get it, where it has to go to and that sort of thing. I don't have any problems with that. I'm not concerned about that at all. They've been going through this and they know that there's requirements, and they have to follow the requirements very carefully. I think all of these are very worthy of the effort. I would be concerned with the one that we'd have to be very careful, some of these organizations, as you say, are small and cannot spend that money in that amount of time. We're setting them up to be a failure at that point. That would be something we need to be careful of. Like Mr. Campbell, and I think everybody else, we would like to give all of the money away. I don't have any problems with that. I'll be interested in the discussion, because I have a couple of ideas too, and I'm sure everybody here does. Thank you. Yes? Council Member Fox: What would be the downside of-- The work is done. We had a committee opine on this. What would be the downside of handing this off to the County for distribution, thus foregoing any liability of any sort? Keith Markel: I don't believe that they would take the money back at this point and reallocate it based on the direction that you all provide. They, obviously, at the start of this, the Town can take the money and distribute it as it sees appropriate, or it can remain with the County and they will distribute it on a County -wide basis as they've done with their own funds. Council Member Fox: Okay. Keith Markel: I don't think that they would be open to receiving these funds back now at this point in the process. Council Member Fox: Okay. Kaj Dentler: Which is second funding. Mayor Burk: Okay, but we do have - Keith Markel: Right. The next item here we'll discuss is the allocation of the second round of funding from the State to the County, to the Town and that's a decision point for you all this week is do you want to accept the remaining balance at $4.8M in second round funding? The County again has agreed to keep that money and use it in their County -wide programs that also benefit in -Town businesses and nonprofits that serve residents in Town, or they will be happy to distribute it to the Town as they did for the first round. That's a decision point for you. Mayor Burk: Well, if that's the first part of this section C, I'm fine with us distributing it myself. I'm okay with that. If staff feels that it's too arduous a task at this point, I would take that into consideration. I don't know how anybody else feels about it. The one thing I wanted to bring up was I had an email from an older lady who does not have the ability to drive. She asked if there was any chance that the Town could provide masks and hand sanitizers to the seniors that might request it. It's very difficult for her to find it and to get it. I know that Hamilton is doing it for every resident. They are providing masks and hand sanitizers. I don't know if that would be something that we could spend the money on, that would be helpful. It's a request that one of our residents has made. I did go buy masks and hand sanitizers and take it to her but she talked to me about that there are others that are in her situation and that that would be most appreciative. I don't know if that would be something that we could spend the money on. Page 121 August 10, 2020 Keith Markel: It's a qualified expense. The only question is can we buy enough of it to make the impact that, I think, you'd be looking to make. I've reached out to two local nonprofits here, Ampersand and Loudoun Hunger to see if they'd be willing to be distribution points. They both very happily agreed to be those distribution points where they have drive-throughs and a good connection with a lot of the population that may need these services - Mayor Burk: Yes, but that doesn't have the seniors, they don't have - Keith Markel: The seniors would be able to go to those. We're trying to find a way that we can distribute it safely so we could have publicized and show that we can have those supplies ready to be picked up. We could have other, certainly, Tots of other ways to distribute as well. But I was just looking at two examples if we're looking for a low contact way to provide these to vulnerable populations. Mayor Burk: We need to think about the fact that they can't drive. Ms. Fox, you had something you wanted to recommend? Council Member Fox: Yes. Mayor Burk: You're about the people checking on - Council Member Fox: Yes. That is something that we've talked about before, but it doesn't sound like any nonprofit. I didn't realize we had to identify a nonprofit in order to get that started, I suppose. I would like to see if we can do that research or do I just do that on my own? Keith Markel: I don't honestly know personally, or we could put out feelers, but if you're talking about reaching out to the senior population, I believe it was in shut-ins and folks. It's a great program, but we don't have that list of information, so we'd have to find a group that has a good list of that information that we could use. Council Member Fox: Will the County have it? The Agency on Aging for the County? Keith Markel: We could certainly look into that. Council Member Fox: Would you? Keith Markel: Yes. Council Member Fox: Okay. Mayor Burk: Mr. Steinberg? Council Member Steinberg: [unintelligible 00:49:01] Mayor Burk: Not right now, Mr.-- You're losing your opportunity. Mr. Campbell? Council Member Campbell: Hi. We're talking about section C right now, right? Item C. Yes? Mayor Burk: Correct. Keith Markel: Are we on to the next topic? Let's bring up the slideshow. Council Member Campbell: I just wanted to be clear because I know you had a presentation, but I didn't want to start responding before your presentation. Mayor Burk: You're lucked out. Page 131 August 10, 2020 Council Member Campbell: While you're getting that up, I do have an idea about using the CARES Act body and the Town could hire labor, rent some trucks, put out notices, canvas the neighborhoods and give out supplies as an option. It would do a couple of good things while it would put people to work, as well as get to neighborhoods where people don't have the transportation. But somehow if we give people notice, put out some flyers because now everybody has the Internet, put banners on some of the trucks, and let people know they'll be in certain parking lots on certain days and we do it for a week or two. That's a reasonable expense. Again, the time and energy to hire the staff, I get that, I'm just throwing out an idea until you're ready for your second presentation. Keith Markel: Here we are, the Second. This is, again, just a look at our current spending plan that you all adopted back in June, and then a discussion on the second round funding, your preferences there. I won't rehash all the facts here of that $4.8M that came to the Town. These funds cannot be used to replace lost revenue, so the Town does need to provide this funding out to the community in the business grants, the nonprofit grants, and paying for internal costs associated with COVID. You broke them down at that point, a little over $3M for small business grants, $1 M dollars for those nonprofits, and $772K and change for the Town's COVID operations or increase costs to run budget. I've got Russell Seymour here and he can answer more specific questions for you, but just at the high- level overview, we had the small business grant program that was based on the parameters that the Council adopted back in June. Two tiers. The first tier was a $2,5K grant for businesses that had annual taxable revenue of $25K to $100K. Then a second -tier, a $5K grant, for businesses, a $100,001 to $1 M. The requirements they had to have 1 to 50 employees, so its a zero employee businesses where you're the single employee for your business. You've got a 25% revenue loss for your business within that defined period of time, you're in good standing with the Town and you're in business prior to March 1 of 2020. We had this open in the early part of July, we had 249 applications received. We had approximately, and this number is changing slightly because we had a number of businesses that incorrectly submitted information on their 25% loss and as we've been clarifying any clarifying information from them, this number is increasing slightly, but roughly, we've got 30 businesses in that tier one, that $2,5K grant, and 118 businesses in that tier - two, that $5K grant for a total grant award right now of $665K. That leaves your remaining balance of $2.36M, a significant portion of the grant remains undistributed. All these funds will be going through the Loudoun Economic Development Authority to provide this to the businesses, towns, and localities that are not able to write direct checks to private businesses in Virginia, and we would hope for that distribution to begin here in the next few weeks. Again, we've talked about the nonprofit grant, the $134K remaining for the balance there. We have the Town government response. We've been using money internally to address COVID issues as well. We've been purchasing cleaning supplies, personal protective equipment. We've been closing King Street for the past two weekends now and we'll continue that through October for extended outdoor dining, which has been very successful and the restaurants have been very appreciative of that. We've purchased things such as mobile signboards for public notifications. We've made modifications to Town facilities, including Plexiglas screening, new keyless door access, touchless features in bathrooms, all those things to try to slow the spread of the virus. We're asking for you all to consider two resolutions here and provide direction to the Town. The first resolution is to modify the first round distribution spending plan, so we have a few modifications to propose to you. Then we have resolution two, so if you decide you want to receive County funding for that second round, that same amount that we received in the first round, that $4.8M asking how you would like that to be distributed if the Town is going to take that on and providing parameters for that. To go onto the modifying the current spending plan, just wanted to share with you our recommendation of how we could distribute the remaining balance of that money that has been left undesignated at this point. What we're proposing to do is increasing, actually, first off, adding a third tier of business. Instead of stopping at a million dollars, we would go up to $2.5M business so we capture some of those larger businesses. Page 141 August 10, 2020 Mayor Burk: That's a good idea, yes. Keith Markel: Increasing the grant awards for each tier, so we've got the two existing tiers. Moving tier one from $2,5K to $5K, moving tier two from $5K to $10K, and creating tier three at $15K in grant. As part of this, we would propose that we make all first -round grant recipients whole by providing whatever difference you all would allocate in the second go -round at a grant. If they got $2,5K in that first grant application, without having to apply again, you could provide them that second check of $2,5K and that would take them to that newly established tier one number. We would extend the window for receiving applications. We're trying very quickly to turn this around fast, so we had the grant window open for a week. I believe that's what the County had as well, but now that we've done this first round, we could extend that window out so we could have it open for several weeks to allow more businesses a chance to apply. We also recommend allowing businesses to come into good standing and then apply. We had a number of businesses that applied and then found out that they did not have business license, they did not have a current business license, they had outstanding bills due to the Town for whatever reason, so when they made those payments that didn't put them in good standing in time to apply. What we'd propose now is, if you find that you don't have a business license, you do, now you can go in and apply for the grant. On the nonprofit side, we can discuss that in a moment here. What we are proposing is you all looking at the existing list of those that were vetted by Town staff and then ultimately selected by the Review Committee and selecting those that met the mission that you all have established for the Town. If there are specific projects or needs that you felt needed to be more fully funded in the community, then select those organizations that you felt could best provide that service within the timeframe. I think that's what the Review Committee did, they looked at some of the larger organizations, Catholic Charities, Loudoun Hunger, Free Clinic, those are large operations that are very capable of distributing money and resources quickly and have that capacity built in already so we're not asking too much strain on a smaller nonprofit. Then on the third here, which is the government response, we are proposing using not adding an additional allocation to the government response bucket, but actually redirecting some of the funds within that bucket to fund a virtual learning center and childcare for dependents of Town staff. Now that Loudoun County has gone to 100% distance learning this fall through the end of January, we are running into an issue, as many employers are running into, where we have employees with young children or school -aged children who are running into childcare issues and running into schooling issues. I think what that may mean for us going into the fall is that we're going to see a reduced capacity of our Town staff because not only are they Town employees but they also now have to become de facto teachers in their households. In the spring semester, we saw a number of parents needing to spend more time at home being with their children, making sure that they had a safe environment for them to do their distance learning. What we propose here is to stand up a program just, again, for Town staff so that we have our operational readiness with our Town crews going into our busy seasons for a lot of public services, and so that they can bring their kids to a safe environment. They can go work for the Town, do the Town's business, and then come back and pick up their child at midday or at the end of the day. We're proposing that to you as well as a childcare component for younger children, toddlers to K that can be used within Ida Lee's existing preschool capacity and within our daycare room there where parents have a safe place to drop off their kid. We have seen a tightening of that market here in the community and has been difficult for our Town staff to find childcare. Our second round of funding would be resolution two which would be do you want to accept the funds for that second round. We already discussed and so we can open up the discussion there and see where you all would like to go. Mayor Burk: You didn't say where was the center going to be located? Page 151 August 10, 2020 Keith Markel: We're right now looking at Ida Lee, the lower level of Ida Lee partition space and design with enough features. Mayor Burk: There could be a number of computers located there. Keith Markel: They would have school -issued laptops, and so we have Wi-Fi there in capacity and a network to run that. Mayor Burk: Okay, but you do have Wi-Fi. All right, thank you. Mr. Martinez, do you have any questions? Any comments? Any thoughts? Vice Mayor Martinez: I'd like to defer. I'm still thinking about some of the comments, some of the bullet points he mentioned. Mayor Burk: I'm sorry, we couldn't understand what you said. Vice Mayor Martinez: That's all right. I said I will defer right now. I still have some things I want to think about before I start talking about them. Thanks. Mayor Burk: All right, Mr. Dunn? Council Member Dunn: Yes, on the daycare idea. That would be for Town employees? Keith Markel: That's correct. That's what we're proposing. Council Member Dunn: So it wouldn't be open for other individuals, it would just be for helping Town employees with daycares that they can go and do the Town's work. Keith Markel: That's correct, and we would scale the size of the operation based on the need of the Town staff. We have surveyed Town staff and we have approximately 50 children in the families that have expressed interest in providing some, or where they have concern over what they will be doing for childcare and remote learning this fall. Council Member Dunn: Just a little bit of concern on that. I would not want us to take on additional liabilities, especially with the pandemic, of caring for other people's children. However, I would be interested at adding to people's paychecks the amount needed for them to go out and get their own childcare services. I don't think that that's necessarily the role of government to start taking on. I'm actually not thrilled that the Town government secured almost $800K of taxpayer money, yet we couldn't even give away $700K to businesses. When we talked about this the first time, I specifically pointed out -- Mayor Burk: $700K? Council Member Dunn: Excuse me? Mayor Burk: We're confused, $700K, is that what you said? Council Member Dunn: I didn't know that this was a question and answer time during my time to speak, but if you have a question, you can go ahead and pause the clock and I'll be happy to try and answer it. Mayor Burk: That's okay. Continue on, Mr. Dunn. Council Member Dunn: Why, thank you. As I was saying, the Town government secured over $700K of this taxpayer money for themselves as a money grab for COVID, yet we couldn't even give away $700K to businesses. When we brought this up a few weeks ago, I specifically pointed out that the amount of money that we were looking to give away, one, I suggested lowering the threshold of business Page 161 August 10, 2020 profitability so that businesses with lower incomes could benefit from this because this would be a much greater benefit to them. The fact that you're looking at giving $15K potentially to a $2.5M business is almost laughable. That is 0.006%, less than 1 % of that business' income, to try and go through applying for a $15K grant. The grants should have been larger, and they also should have been offered to businesses that have lower threshold, below even $25K. It was set at the time, oh, that's a hobby, it's not a business. There are three business owners on Council that I know of, and trying to come up with $25K in this marketplace right now is tough. My business was just getting established and it's all completely flat and I'm losing hundreds of dollars per month. Yes, there are businesses that could have benefited from even smaller amounts of funds. What you're seeing is the fact that you only had a few hundred businesses willing to do this, it shows that the amounts just weren't enough to really be of a significant benefit. I would suggest raising the amounts that you're giving away, benefit the companies who have already applied and give them the opportunity to get even more funding, and rather than just looking at raising the threshold to 250, also considering lowering the threshold down below the $50K. Because if a business is making $25K and they have an opportunity to get $5K, that represents a greater benefit to them than a business that, Keith, what's our current threshold, $100K or is it a million? Keith Markel: I'm sorry, the current what? Council Member Dunn: The current threshold. What's the high right now, a million or--? Keith Markel: The high is a million, but you all lowered it to $25K in June, so $25K-businesses were able to apply and we did have many apply for them. Council Member Dunn: Right, we lowered it to $25K, but as I'm saying, there's probably a number of businesses out there that could be very viable businesses, but they're not even making $25K and would really benefit from a $2,5K boost. A $100K or $1 M business getting $10K is almost not even worth their effort to try and apply for that. It would be interesting to find out where the breakdown was in the businesses. For example, do you have the breakdown of what the grants were that you gave out? Keith Markel: Yes, let me go back to that slide. Council Member Dunn: Where is that? Keith Markel: I'll go back to that. Yes, it's in the item, but I'll go back to the slide here and see if we can find that for you. For tier one grants, the $2,5K grants, we had 30, for tier two, the $5K grants, 118 currently. Council Member Dunn: Okay, so 118 were in the second tier and 30 in the lower tier, and that second tier, that went up to a $1 M? Keith Markel: That's correct. Council Member Dunn: Do you know how it's broken down as far as the business' income level that they were at, of the grants that were given out, what the income levels were? Keith Markel: We have that information, but I don't have it in front of me. We would have to compile that into something. It's in their application, but it's not compiled in a way that would be easy to look at. Council Member Dunn: Okay, I'll ask my other questions during the next three minutes. Thank you. Mayor Burk: All right. Mr. Campbell? Page 171 August 10, 2020 Council Member Campbell: Yes, thank you. Again, a question of, not blame but analyzing what happened. I have two questions around the small business grants. The first is the $2.3M that was unspent, does that automatically stay with the Loudoun County Economic Development Authority? Keith Markel: No, they only receive the money that the Town distributes to them for that distribution, for those awarded businesses, so the balance remains with you. Council Member Campbell: So we didn't speak to that piece other than we have 2.36 in terms of what should happen with it because if we put that 2.36 on top of the new 3.4, we have a bigger burden. Now I'm trying to figure out, and the burden is only this, it's good news, it's spending money, helping businesses, but without a plan to help them after we've seen what had happened. So 30 businesses out of the 467 you told us were originally in this group, so less than 6.5% of those eligible businesses receive funding, and our target was, and I'm saying target, 43% could be eligible based on how we originally looked at this. Then a second group, 118, it was about 13.4% of the eligible businesses, but our target was 58%. My question is about what did we learn? What can we do to improve our ability to give more money away? Keith Markel: I'll invite Mr. Seymour up. Council Member Campbell: Please. Russell Seymour: Good evening, Madam Mayor, Members of Council. Mr. Campbell, you were asking about what we could do? Council Member Campbell: Based on what we learned. Russell Seymour: We learned a couple of things, and I want to start out by saying we intentionally made that cap $1M in this case. We did it for one main reason and that is when you look at what some of the other localities were doing, including Loudoun County at the time, they were capping it, they were going after slightly larger companies. Leesburg is made up of a lot of very small companies that pretty much have a service -based background. Those are the restaurants, those are the venues that we're seeing that we were trying to target specifically to help them. Whenever we talk about going down and looking at 30 and 18, those may not have been the highest numbers that we had originally anticipated. I will tell you a lot of our small businesses, our government contractors are located within our HUBZone. In many cases, a lot of them did not require or were not under that 25% threshold that we had talked about. One of the other fees that we've looked at in going after this, we are helping those businesses now. We are now also talking directly with Loudoun County because for the first time, we're going to be able to actually do something at the same time Loudoun County has been. We missed that the last time. Loudoun County had their money that was out. Nothing had been allocated to the towns yet. I know in talking, we were dealing with a lot of the businesses that had questions. We got many phone calls from businesses that thought they didn't apply for the Leesburg one because they thought they had applied for it already, when in retrospect, they had applied for the Loudoun County grant. They hadn't heard from it yet, so they missed the window. A lot of the things that we're talking about and Keith mentioned about making those changes, and including expanding that time are exactly what you're talking about, Mr. Campbell, these were lessons learned. These were lessons learned in watching what Loudoun County did the first two rounds in coordinating now our efforts with them, including tying in some additional marketing that gets out to these businesses. Council Member Campbell: Thank you. The second piece then may be helpful. We asked businesses who qualify based on last year's revenue. We asked them to qualify also by experiencing a 25% drop. We had some business that had made a million and one dollar last year, and based on that criteria, they couldn't qualify even though they had experienced a 25% drop. I'm asking us to reconsider that Page 181 August 10, 2020 the economic loss has to be factored in on last year's number, but how else can you judge a 25% loss other than say, well, there's a 25% decrease in this year's business? If you track actual to actual, it's 25% loss based on what they earned last year even though their actional performance may be down this quarter or last quarter. All I'm saying is I think we'll have more businesses eligible to apply. Russell Seymour: A very intelligent gentleman made that recommendation right before our meeting today and I did take those notes down, so that is something we certainly can look at. I think the other thing you need to factor in on this though, as well is the fact that we looked at that 25% decrease, and everything you're saying is absolutely correct, but we also looked at they had to be in business by March 1st. That was really them basing a lot of their losses on that first quarter. Most of the businesses did not experience a loss until they really got into their second quarter because if you recall, January, February, March of this year, business in many cases were actually doing better than where they had been in previous. Now we've got a full two quarters to look at as we're going through this, and so those businesses that have been drastically impacted, we're going to be able to pull them in as looking at that second quarter of information. Council Member Campbell: So then my third point, and this will come to some recommendation at some point or tomorrow evening, now we're going to have over $5M to redistribute among the same pool of folks. Is it fair for us to take all of that money when the likelihood of us distributing all of it is not a high likelihood even if we expand our pool, and let Loudoun County distribute some of it to other businesses that do have a need? Because the other side of me says we shouldn't hold onto money just to hold onto it when there's a great need in our community. If we can't spend it and we give it back at the end, businesses might close, and they might lose opportunities based on they could have maybe survived had there been more resources available. I think we have to look very seriously, this is a recommendation, how much money should we take based on how much we actually think that we could be successful in helping business. Russell Seymour: Absolutely. That's a very good piece. One of the things we don't want to do is hold on to the money, and at the end of this, I don't think any of us want to turn money back in in December that could've gone to actually help some of the businesses in our community. The two factors that we're talking about when we're looking at doing this B or phase 1 B and then possibly looking at phase two, we're actually expanding the number of business. We're basically over doubling the size of the businesses going up to that $2.5M. Obviously, we're going to have a bigger pool in that. Tying in some of our collective marketing will help us address that as well. You had mentioned about giving money back. The County has given us three options for a phase two. Option one is, here's your money, you do it. Go through our EDA, we'll distribute it, we're done. Option two is you don't, we do it as the County, but we're going to put it into our program and the Town will not have any say in it. It will be dispersed to all Loudoun County businesses in the same format. We won't be able to basically target any of the Leesburg businesses. The third option, and this is the one that the staff was bringing forward this evening to Council was a hybrid that allows us to take a portion of that money, put together a program, but at the same time if there's money that's leftover, we can push that over to Loudoun County and not move forward with that, let them do it. The only difference is staff will be very involved in working directly with the Loudoun County Economic Development staff on that third option, the hybrid. Council Member Campbell: Thank you. In the little time I have left to talk about the nonprofit grant redistribution, again, I think that we could be creative. Obviously, we're spending all that money because we're going to get another million dollars. If I heard you right, we would take the million dollars and redistribute it to the nonprofits that we've already given money to, is that correct? Keith Markel: The remaining balance of that first million. Page 191 August 10, 2020 Council Member Campbell: Not just the remaining, but the new million. Keith Markel: You haven't made an allocation yet. One, you'd have to agree to accept the $4.8M. Two, you have to come up with a spending plan of how you want to do that. That's totally up to the Town Council's discretion if you wanted to do something similar to what you did the first time where you put a million dollars for nonprofit. You could put zero towards nonprofit, you can put more than a million dollars. It's your discretion. Council Member Campbell: So there's no recommendation right now about the nonprofit grant program? Keith Markel: No, there's no recommendation on any spending plan for round two of funding. Council Member Campbell: So if I were to look at what we set for round one, which I did go back to look at, is there any reason why we would do it any differently? We wouldn't recommend a number like we did the first time? Keith Markel: There's a whole lot of reason why you may want to go one direction or another. Council Member Campbell: I know, but that's what I'm asking, what did the staff learn through this process to help us make those recommendations? Because we'd just be shooting from the lip. We're dependent upon staff and your learning to say is it worth our effort to give any more money to nonprofits? Now, I'm going to tell you, I would say yes, but you might tell me no based on the trouble it caused, the extra work. Let me ask this very clearly. From the staff, if the Council would say, "We want more nonprofit grant money," the staff sees that as a value in terms of the work and helping our community. Keith Markel: It's a tricky one to answer because the County has a nonprofit grant program. You could decide that it's more efficient and more clear cut to have a single County -wide nonprofit grant program. I know there's been some concern tonight over are you a Leesburg nonprofit, are you a County nonprofit, are you a regional nonprofit? If you want to benefit a large nonprofit like Loudoun Hunger, or Salvation Army, or Catholic Charities, those are organizations that provide services far wider than the Town of Leesburg. If you want them to benefit, you could say, "County of Loudoun, keep the allocation of CARES funds that came from the State, you all distribute it through your nonprofit program" knowing that that nonprofit, the benefits will also benefit residents of the Town. That's one way to look at it. You could also see a benefit of having it more localized at the Town level and say there are nonprofits that we may identify more specifically than Loudoun County could, and therefore, we'd like to make that designation because you could be more fine-tuned in how you allocate those funds. Council Member Campbell: You're not going to tell me what the Town staff would say, I get it. Keith Markel: I don't know the answer. Council Member Campbell: You're doing the work, you're reading the applications, we're just seeing it for the first time. I think there's a value for us to take the money, absolutely. To be more directive, to help our community rather than dependent upon the County, that's a no-brainer for me. Yes. Mayor Burk: Ms. Fox? Council Member Fox: Thanks. A few quick questions. I wanted to just follow-up on this. No, I'll leave that for later. First thing I wanted to ask is Ampersand Project, going back to the nonprofit from before, they're not a big nonprofit like you were describing Catholic Charities and other things. Pretty much, they're ending their services at the end of September is what we heard last time. Why would we try and allocate $70K as opposed to the 50? Keith Markel: They asked for $50K. The recommendation from the Community Review Committee was 70 and an additional $20K. I called up directly to talk with Peter Burnett and asked him, I said, "The Page 201 August 10, 2020 committee is recommending to Council that you receive an extra $20K. Should Council want to make that award, would you be able to spend that money by the end of the year?" He said, "Fantastic. Yes, I could. The more money we have, the longer we continue the program." They've seen the need, they've been setting these dates. They were going to end around the 4th of July, then they had additional funding. They were able to go to September. The more money they have, the longer they will go. Council Member Fox: I see, so you said they'll just go ahead and stretch it out. Keith Markel: When the money runs out, when they stop receiving those, that's when they will have to cease operations. Council Member Fox: The second point I wanted to make is agree with Council Member Dunn about the thresholds and the tiers for the businesses. I would say if you're going to go up, go down as well. Just run the gambit for that because it looks like we can handle that, especially if we accept the other allocation. I would say go down from $25K. If you want to go up to $2.5M, great, but go down as well. That would be my recommendation. As far as businesses are concerned, we talked about Economic Development helping us out with all this, is it just the businesses, and nonprofits, and the towns? Are they the only ones who are eligible to receive these funds? Because, what I'm thinking, when you talked about this program for the Town staff, it gave me a little bit of pause because I see this happening with the schools too, or the schools say, "Keep your kids at home," and then they're providing daycare for teachers' kids, which is totally counterintuitive to me, anyway. I see that happening here. Why wouldn't we just set up a program to help parents procure somebody who's in the house with their kids who can oversee things if they have to go to work, or if they have to work upstairs so that way, you create jobs there and you also create an opportunity to keep those kids socially distanced and away from the school -like atmosphere. Why can't we do something like that and put some funds toward that as well? Keith Markel: As sort of extra financial compensation to those parents? Council Member Fox: Yes. Keith Markel: That's something we could look into. I know there's probably some legal issues there that we probably have to evaluate because we'd be giving certain dollars to some and not others, but could look into that. The other thing is just the difficulty of finding folks to provide that care when we put out a charge. Council Member Fox: That would be on the parents to do that. Keith Markel: That's the issue, if they're ultimately not able to find that care in home care, then we haven't solved the problem. They might have the resources to pay for it, but if you can't find the person, that may be a challenge. Council Member Fox: That's probably a challenge and I get that, but that's something we probably shouldn't worry about. Now, if the parent needs it and they find out, well, I don't know if this is in my budget to bring somebody in, then they have somewhere to go for that. I don't think we should be trying to solve the problem of trying to find people for them, that would be on them, and if they can't, then they probably wouldn't be able to partake of the program. I think it'd be nice to have that option just in case because my daughter was asked to do this and I thought, "What an ingenious idea?" Come in and sit with my kids while I'm upstairs doing this so that they can make sure they stay on task learning that those opportunities are out there. With unemployment the way it is, I think you probably have some people who'd probably be willing to take advantage of something like that. It's just do parents have this money? They need to go to work, maybe they might not have that money. I thought that would be a good idea and it solves two problems with one action. The last thing I had, where is it? Oh, okay, is it possible to take the funds and distribute them to businesses that we know are here in Leesburg and leave the nonprofit portion to the County or is it all one package? Page 211 August 10, 2020 Keith Markel: For the second round of funding? Council Member Fox: Yes. Keith Markel: Again, you all haven't had a defined spending plan, so you could say to the County we only want to accept $2M of the $4.8M allocation or $1 M. You pick the number. There is no predefined buckets of where that money has to go at this point. Not until you all establish a spending plan for round two would you have to. Even once you establish that spending plan, there is nothing that says halfway into the program, you couldn't say, "You know what? We don't have that nonprofit need, we're going to move that over to the business side." Council Member Fox: Okay, so that's a possibility. Keith Markel: Total flexibility on the Town Council. Council Member Fox: All right, thank you. Mayor Burk: Mr. Steinberg? Council Member Steinberg: Thank you. Okay, first things first. What kind of feedback did we get from larger grossing companies in Leesburg in terms of this program? Or did we get any kind of feedback or questions as to why they were excluded? Keith Markel: I'll ask Mr. Seymour. He made a lot of those phone calls, so he might know something. Russell Seymour: No, sir. We did not get a lot of feedback from the larger companies that they had a feeling that they were excluded. I know there were a number of businesses that were just over $1 M that we had spoken to that did not apply because of that. I think that's one of the reasons why. Council Member Steinberg: Did not apply because of? Russell Seymour: Because we have such a cap at $1 M, and so they were just over that or they were either close to it or over it. That's why we expanded it for that $2.5M, but no, to answer your question, we've not heard from the larger businesses that have said that "we should be included." Council Member Steinberg: When we talk about $1 M or even $25K or $50K, we're looking at a gross revenue figure, are we not? We are not looking at net revenue. Russell Seymour: Correct. Council Member Steinberg: So actual profit, we're looking at what they're taking in. A million -dollar company with a gross revenue may still only show a $50K profit at the end. Russell Seymour: Absolutely. Council Member Steinberg: In which case, $15K is not necessarily something to sneeze at. How many of these larger companies are actually within the Town limits that might benefit? Keith Markel: I'm just going to grab my notes right now, but Jason probably knows this off the top of his head for that evaluation for that next tier. Russell Seymour: We're looking at expanding the numbers, I believe, Jason, we were about 77, somewhere in that area percentage -wise if we expanded it? Jason Cournoyer: Yes. Page 221 August 10, 2020 Russell Seymour: Of total businesses, so if we expand that number up to 2.5M, we'll be at least being eligible, we'll be covering close to 80% of all the businesses. You're looking in the high 70s for that number. Council Member Steinberg: The high 70s in terms of? Russell Seymour: As far as the number of businesses that would fit within the category. Council Member Steinberg: Would fit within. Keith Markel: In terms of businesses in Leesburg you'd be capturing I think. Russell Seymour: Correct. Council Member Steinberg: I'm just curious about how many of the largest companies will actually fall within this category of a million -plus or two million -plus or three million? Russell Seymour: If we go up to 2.5M, we'll be expanding it probably I think it's about another 15% from what we had the first go around. When you look at that million to 2.5M, we're going up an additional 15% to 20%. Council Member Steinberg: Again, I don't want to be repetitious, but have we had some feedback from any of the larger companies saying that some of these funds could be useful to them? Russell Seymour: We have not heard back from our largest companies. No, sir. I think a lot of that, too, is in following the lines that we've heard from the other jurisdictions, that 2.5M seemed to be that threshold. In looking at what some of the other localities, I know Arlington County was a good example, they had a very difficult time in identifying and passing money out as well. Council Member Steinberg: So it's not just a Leesburg problem. How nice to know. Russell Seymour: No, sir, it isn't. A lot of it does. It really gets down to the types of businesses. If you look at the applications that we have received on this, most of them are exactly the types of businesses that I would have anticipated; the restaurants, the breweries, these are your small shops, your startup stores, those are big ones. The other businesses, we had our HUBZone meeting a couple of weeks ago that the Mayor had sat on, and one of the factors that they told us when we asked them, they said, "We're fine. What can we do to help other businesses?" Council Member Steinberg: Were you surprised by this number of 249 in terms of applications? Was your expectation that we would have seen many more applications? Russell Seymour: I think based on just the number, I had anticipated that we would receive more, but as we got through this, and I think if you look at what we're proposing for round B, a lot of that was to address that. Doing it now at the same time the County is, extending that time period so that they have an additional time period, not just a week open and close. We put a program out, it addressed a lot of businesses, but now we're making those tweaks to make it better. Council Member Steinberg: Before we look at the nonprofit side, would it be a simple solution if we simply raised all of the allocations to all the businesses to a much higher level than we started out with thinking that the money was going to simply vanish overnight given the number of applications we thought we would receive? Russell Seymour: I think if you look at the amounts that we're proposing for this second round or this B end second round, we're doing that. We're raising it up, we're actually talking about lowering some of the other thresholds as well to make them more inclusive. The one thing that I thought was very interesting in the meeting I had with Loudoun's Economic Development on this was then they were talking about the amounts of funds. I asked them, I said, "We're talking about going up to 10K more that." They said, "We're stopping at five. We did a couple at 10, but we're not going any higher." Page 231 August 10, 2020 I said, "You guys have got larger businesses, why not go higher for some of these?" They said, "The more you go higher, you're increasing the opportunity of basically misusing the funds because now you're putting more out." It's an interesting concept. It's one I hadn't thought of when we were talking about it, but that was something that we got from them. That's why they're capping it at 5K doing some at 10, but unless something changes, they're not planning to go any higher than that. Council Member Steinberg: It seems to me that that speaks of a less than 100% trust in your system. If you've established that the companies qualify in the first place, then it seems to me the actual amount you're allocating is not secondary, but it's the least of your worries, as we say. Looking at the nonprofits, if we went back to all the nonprofits who applied and were granted allocations and talk to each one of them, would they be able to spend more money if we gave it to them? I'm pretty sure Ampersand could as you said. I know the only reason they had these cutoff dates was because it was of funding. I know they're doing more than food. They are distributing all kinds of things out of that little building that Peter's got there. Getting to the original question, could they actually spend the money if they got? Keith Markel: I can say fairly confidently that all of them would not be able to. If you look at some of the applications, they're very specific about the number of households that they serve in Leesburg, and they just don't have that need in place currently. Things might change, but right now, there were some that were very specific, and that's why you'll see some pretty specific amounts of a few thousand here or 7K there because they just have a finite amount of work that they do within the organization. Council Member Steinberg: What about the larger organizations then? Specifically, there are some much larger organizations, if they had substantially more money, would they have trouble spending it by December 31 st? Keith Markel: From just the brief conversations I had, no. The three that were recommended by the committee to receive the extra $20K, they all quite willingly said, yes, they'd be able to spend that money appropriately. Council Member Steinberg: Out of curiosity, how many of these organizations are actually Leesburg organizations? Of these larger organizations, nonprofits, how many of them are actually Leesburg specific? Do you know? Keith Markel: When you say Leesburg, define it. Council Member Steinberg: They only serve Leesburg. Keith Markel: They only serve? Council Member Steinberg: Yes. Keith Markel: I don't think there's any on this list that only serve Leesburg. Council Member Steinberg: Exactly, so in my opinion, a nonprofit, whether it's Leesburg -based or Loudoun-based, if it's serving all the residents of both the Town, of course, and the County, then I think we're doing the work we're supposed to be doing. Now, if I understand this correctly, we're going to have about $7.2M to spend, is that correct? We have 2.36 leftover plus 134 plus another 4.8. Keith Markel: Correct. Council Member Steinberg: All told, okay, so I don't see any reason why we should go in and reallocate the distribution that we've already made to the nonprofits. I think we need to figure out how we can funnel more money to the largest ones who are doing the good work. We have food, we have healthcare, rent, school is starting, so we have school supplies and these nonprofits are in much better position to provide these services and supplies than we are. Childcare for Town employees is interesting. For all these kids who are working at home, laptops, and pads, and all these things that many students can't afford and don't have adequate Internet access. Page 241 August 10, 2020 There are many number of ways I should think we could get creative in terms of distributing these funds. That shouldn't be a problem. I think going back to the NGOs would be a great way to start plus possibly raising the ceiling for some of the businesses to better support them. Thanks. Mayor Burk: The question I was going to ask you just slipped out of my head. I don't even know where it is, but it seems that we are at a point where we need to send a message or direction to staff. You have made a proposal, what changes do people want to make in the proposal? We need to get four votes to bring it forward, so let's have that discussion now. Keith Markel: You're speaking to the nonprofit? Mayor Burk: No, I'm speaking to your program care here. The CARES Act that you've just put forward on how to spend the money. Some people had some different ideas of things they wanted to add. Keith Markel: I think the first question before you is, do you want to accept the second round of funding? That will determine everything on the second two resolutions or at least the third. The first resolution is awarding the nonprofit grant gifts. Number two would be modifying our current spending plan. Number three would be looking at do you want to receive the second round of fundings, and if so, how to move about? Mayor Burk: Now, I'm going to ask, do we have the intention to accept the second round of money? Is that what you need to know? Keith Markel: That's part of this evening's discussion. Mayor Burk: Do we have four people that want to accept the new CARES Act funding, which is what? Four -point something. Keith Markel: $4.8, roughly. Mayor Burk: Four point eight. Keith Markel: It's the equivalent amount of a first round. Council Member Campbell: I just have a question or clarification. Mayor Burk: Mr. Campbell, go ahead. Council Member Campbell: It's mainly, I would accept some of it, but not all of it, so I don't know if we're at that point to talk about a hybrid model or not a hybrid model, but, but to blanketly say I'm going to support all 4.7, I'm not at that point yet. Mayor Burk: That's the point we are, to hear from everybody what are they willing to accept, what ideas do they have so that staff knows when they leave here tonight what we want for tomorrow to vote on. Council Member Dunn: Madam Chair? Mayor Burk: Yes? Council Member Dunn: Madam Chair? Mayor Burk: Who is this, Mr. Dunn? Council Member Dunn: This is Mr. Dunn. I have a couple of questions, if I could, from staff. Mayor Burk: Three minutes. You have three minutes to ask the question. Page 251 August 10, 2020 Council Member Dunn: I'm not sure if the numbers that were given are adding up, so I just want to make sure that we're clear on what our Economic Development Director said, that if we raise the limit on the businesses to 2.5M, that that's going to give you, I believe you said approximately 22% more businesses, is that correct? Mayor Burk: He said 15, I thought. What did you say? Russell Seymour: I'm looking, and Jason's pulling it up now. We've run numbers on it. It's my understanding, and we can certainly verify this this evening, that if we expand it up to the 2.5M, we will be covering about 77% of the businesses within Town. That, Mr. Dunn, is strictly from memory right now, but we will have that exact number for you if not this evening, by tomorrow morning. Council Member Dunn: How many businesses do we have in Town? It's 25, 27, 28, what is that number? Russell Seymour: How many businesses to it? Jason Cournoyer: About 25 hundred. Russell Seymour: About 25 hundred, give or take. Council Member Dunn: You gave a number out earlier that you said that you would expect to have about 22% more businesses that would fall into that category up to 2.5M, is that what I heard you say? Russell Seymour: What I was talking about, sir, was if we were looking at getting up to that 77%, I would anticipate that we're looking at about a 20 or so percent bump up from what we're doing now as far as expanding the net for eligible businesses. Instead of going after a smaller group, now we're broadening that range, and I would anticipate, and that's what we're looking at now to get you those actual numbers. Council Member Dunn: So 22%, I assume you're basing that on the number of applicants that we already got, which were 250. Did you say 250 rounded up? Russell Seymour: No, sir. That is 249, but no, sir. What I was looking at is basing that on the number of registered businesses that we have in Leesburg, looking at how many of those businesses are under a million, and then how many are between a million and 2.5M. Council Member Dunn: That would be 22% more, is that what you're saying? Russell Seymour: Wait a minute, we're getting the numbers down, Mr. Dunn. Keith Markel: We'll let Jason could come up here to share. Jason, come on up here. We'll look through this chart. Council Member Dunn: While you're doing that, just going to Mr. Campbell's point is that if you take the difference between the businesses that you have already tried to do and increasing that 22% and getting $15K to 22% more businesses that are in that gap, that represents $825K. You're still way off the mark of 7.1 M. If we're going to look at and we're going to accept all the funding, I think we need to look at a plan that truly has a way of distributing the funding. I would offer up the suggestion that rather than looking at a tier system, which we were woefully short on being able to provide funding for that and I think just raising it up another tier level, if you do the math, we're not going to come anywhere close to giving away that money again. Might I offer to Council to consider that we offer a flat amount? If it's 2,5K businesses divided by 7.1M and even leaving more money for nonprofits, which we didn't give away all the nonprofit money, that would allow us to offer for any business that wants to apply that has a business license to apply for about $2K to $2,5K in funding related to COVID and apply to it if Page 261 August 10, 2020 after the end of the year show that they spent the money. That way, any businesses in Town could be eligible for it, getting a grant of $2,5K or $2K, whatever the number shakes out to be, and it's fair for everybody. You're going to probably come a whole lot closer to spending the funds than not. I'm for, again, giving away anyone else's money, but I want to make sure we actually do give it away and don't end up with the same results we already have. Thank you. Mayor Burk: Okay, so the first question on the table is to -- Vice Mayor Martinez: Madam Mayor, may I have my turn? Mayor Burk: Yes, Mr. Martinez. Vice Mayor Martinez: Okay. I'll try to be quick, but first comment, the money that we're giving away is not free money, it's money that we as taxpayers had paid for, so I want to make sure that if we do it, that it's done right. Mr. Markel, can you confirm with me that there's potential of us losing employees because our parents cannot find adequate daycare? Keith Markel: I don't know that we lose the employee, but we certainly know that we're going to have diminished capacity and we saw that in the springtime, and I think that's a concern that a lot of working parents have here that we've heard from our staff and from the survey that our human resources staff distributed to town. We're looking at as many businesses are right now is how do you protect your workforce and keep your operational capacity at near a hundred percent going into this time when there's going to be a lot of competing interest in households. This is one solution we saw that was not going to be local tax revenue paid for, it's certainly a need that families have, and it's something that we can fund through CARES and we felt that there was an economy of scale by offering it to the Town staff at a Town facility versus going individually. Vice Mayor Martinez: Correct. Also, I would say that the new business model for this current situation is that employees are being able to work at home because if not, they would not be able to work because they can't find adequate daycare that protects their children and so this is a new business model where we're working, we are allowing our employees to work from home. Now, if we need them to be on -site, an advantage to keeping our employees happy and providing the right care would be to provide some limited daycare at Ida Lee and in that terms, I have no problem with it. Would you also say the limits we impose on our nonprofits is probably the reason why we weren't able to give the full million away? Keith Markel: I'm sure that yes, there would be some of those on this list of 26 that would have asked for more had the cap not been at 50K. Vice Mayor Martinez: My suggestion is that maybe we need to remove the cap and lower the dollars. Also, would you say that-- I was going to make a point that Neil made on the large businesses and million -dollar businesses. When our profit margins are falling, 15K may not seem a lot to somebody who is not-- doesn't have the businesses that generate a million, but when your profit margins are so small, especially in today's economy, they all need help. Any help we can give them, we need to find a way to give it to them. As far as the feedback from all the companies of all different sizes, what kind of feedback have you got? Have you had them complain about the fact that we're not giving out enough money or et cetera? Keith Markel: You asked were they complaining that we're not giving them enough? I have not heard that. I think everyone is appreciative of anything. They made the application, so obviously, they felt the need and we have been getting phone calls recently saying, "Hey, when's that money going to get here?" Because this is a process, and we do have to get banking information, then supply this to the County's Economic Development Authority to distribute the funds. We do know there's an urgency there, we do know that there are a number of these businesses that have been looking for that check to arrive. Vice Mayor Martinez: In essence, all the companies that we're trying to serve have not been upset as much as they've been appreciative of what we're attempting to do. Page 271 August 10, 2020 Keith Markel: No, we've heard lots of appreciation. We've reached out to the community and talked to some of them and anecdotally. You ask why didn't we spend all this money. It's not uncommon regionally that we didn't hit the mark. We were surprised ourselves, the number of applications that came in we thought there'd would be higher. We don't know to read that as a good sign or a bad sign. In some indications, it might mean that things aren't quite as dire as in some certain aspects of the market. We do know that we talked to a few businesses and we asked them, "Hey, did you think of applying?" They said, "Yes, I thought about it but didn't get to it or wasn't sure that that was for me or didn't know that the need was there yet." As this drags on, that need may change and they may be applying for the County or for future Town grant if that's available. There are a lot of factors that go into how many applied and why they applied and why they didn't apply, so we couldn't have a full list of that right now. Vice Mayor Martinez: Madam Mayor, since I didn't have a chance to have my initial five minutes since I deferred it, can at least ask one more question? Mayor Burk: Yes. Mr. Martinez. Vice Mayor Martinez: One of the things I would love to see us try to do, is create a subsidy, a fund that subsidize our residents who need help with their utility bills. I don't care whether you have a hundred thousand -dollar home or a $2M home, this current situation that we're in, it's putting a lot of stress on all of our residents. I would like to see us try to find some way that if a resident come in and say, "Look, I haven't been able to work for six months. I need some help with my water bill." I would like us to find some way that we could use some of this money to have subsidize them because of the COVID-19. That's all in. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Mayor Burk: Thank you. I go back to the original question that you asked us, that do we want to accept the $4.7M of the new money that's coming in for this CARES Act? Do we have four people that want to accept it? Vice Mayor Martinez: Yes. Mayor Burk: Myself, Mr. Steinberg, Mr. Martinez. All right, so you don't want to accept the money, but I'm assuming you want to change something. Let's start talking about what changes you want to make. Council Member Campbell: The changes, we have to accept with a plan. We're going to have $7.1M, not $4.7M, that we're going to have to find a way to spend. It is the new money on top of the old money, and we don't have a plan yet in place. The reality is if we decide that we're better off spending $5M and we can come up with a plan that we accept whatever amount that brings us up to $5M, and we leave the rest of it back to the County. Again, I'm not hearing in any level of confidence from any of the conversation that we can redistribute successfully, the 2.3, the 134 or the new 4.7. This is where we need guidance. I'll keep saying in front of the staff, about the level of confidence. Otherwise, I'm just picking a number out of a hat, but if we just say, let's take all the 4.7, we take the 2.3, we keep the 2.3, we have the burden of the 134K and no plan, then what have we done? As the second piece of this, then to come up with a plan after we say we want the money - Keith Markel: It's totally your decision. You don't have to make the decision- Kaj Dentler: Hold on a second. Let me just jump in to try to address your question. You brought it up twice. I am confident that the Town staff can get the initial 4.7M distributed. We're talking 134K in nonprofit money, more or less. There was this suggestion earlier, I think you made the suggestion. It is worth to give all the 26 agencies an opportunity to get additional money from that 134K. We could start with the ones that did not receive numbers above the 50. Keith would have to make sure that they could take more money, give everybody an opportunity. I think that we can distribute that remaining nonprofit money. To give you a little level of confidence. The business money, what I've heard from staff in conversations is, "Yes, that we're confident that we can move the remaining $2.3M by moving the thresholds up and increasing the opportunity." I think we can accomplish that. Page 281 August 10, 2020 Now, that being said, there's 4.7 more million coming, if we want it. That's a different discussion. My personal opinion and I've stayed out of it and allow the staff to work on it and give you opportunity to react, if you want to do nonprofit money out of the new 4.7, let the County do it, stay out of it. They're already going to do it. We know the businesses aren't all located in Leesburg. They can't serve just Leesburg. It just isn't the way it works. Since they're already in that business, if you want to serve that element, then take some amount out of the 4.7M, pick a number. It doesn't matter to me, it's up to you. That leaves business money or new programs. We've got to get the money out and it has to be spent by the end of the year. Unless you're going to increase business opportunities, I think it's unlikely that we can get rid of that money, the new money. You may want to just leave it with the County entirely, and let them handle it and we focus on the 4.7. Ultimately, it comes down to your level of confidence. From what I've heard today, not only from past conversations and some of your concerns which are valid, there's different opinions. I'd leave the 4.7M to the County and let them deal with it for businesses and nonprofits and stay out of it. I am concerned if we get into programs, you had a, I heard you say, a nice idea that I like. You've mentioned one, and you've mentioned one, but the more we get into trying to create programs, even with the daycare that we're talking about doing, we're going to get stressed, stretched out, and we're not going to be successful. We do not have the capacity to take on a whole bunch of new programs. That, I would fear that we would fail. If you want to take some of the 4.7M and summarize as new money, I would focus on businesses because that's going to be a lot of our biggest return. If you want to keep it in the nonprofit world, identify amount or whatever. I don't think you'd be making a mistake if you want the County to take the whole 4.M and just manage it, as you preferred to be done. That's my direct personal opinion. I think that I am concerned that how we manage the 4.7, but if you want us to do the additional, you're going to need to be specific on what you want us to get done so we can get moving, we don't have time to wait and we won't make it because again, it has to be spent by the receiver by the end of the year; it's not just us giving it away. I don't know if that helps you or hurts you, but I'm going to do some very direct advice and what I would recommend you do, consider. Council Member Campbell: That does help. Then what I recommend and what based on what I heard, is that we can spend the money we already have taken from the first round; the 2.3 and we can redistribute 134. I do believe our nonprofits need money moving forward, I understand about the County and I want to be specific to Leesburg as well as businesses. I would only suggest we take another $2M and leave 2.7 on the table for the County and we try to be creative with that $2M? That would be my suggestion. Mayor Burk: All right, do we have four people that would be interested? You're going to have to help me, Mr. Campbell, on this. You are suggesting that we keep the 2.3 and the 1.34 and spend that? Council Member Campbell: Right. We already have the nonprofit reallocation for the 134. We already have a plan to redistribute the 2.3 to the businesses. Mayor Burk: We do? Do we have a plan? Kaj Dentler: Yes. Mayor Burk: Okay. All right. So do we have four people? Council Member Campbell: Then only take $2M from the new money from the County in phase two. Kaj Dentler: Correct. Council Member Steinberg: So, we're looking at a total of about 4.5, right? Somewhere in that neighborhood? Page 291 August 10, 2020 Kaj Dentler: Yes. If you want to break up the vote on that basis, is what I would do. I think your straw vote, that would make it simpler for you. Do you want to distribute the remaining 134K to nonprofits as evenly as we possibly can make it of the 26 that have applied by giving them all a chance to take more in concept and then to spend the remaining 2.3 in business based on the increase criteria that we have done? Council Member Fox: Just the increase, not anybody with a business license? Council Member Campbell: That could be phase two. Kaj Dentler: Well, that's phase one. Phase one, round two of phase one. Mayor Burk: You said round two. Keith Markel: You're saying anybody with a business license in Town? Council Member Fox: Yes. Keith Markel: Yes, that would not be able to be funded with the remaining. It would be a very small amount if you were to write a check to every business license in Town with the 2.3M. Council Member Fox: No, no, no, no, anybody who has a business license is allowed to apply. Kaj Dentler: Yes, you have to a -- Mayor Burk: You have to have a business license. Council Member Fox: That's what I'm saying. It's not just increasing it to 2.5. You said 25K to 2.5M. I'm saying, like Mr. Dunn said, anybody with a business license can apply. Kaj Dentler: Just to be clear, I'm saying that to receive the grant award, you've got to have a business license and up current. I don't think that we should be providing grants from Federal taxpayer dollars to businesses who are not in compliance. Mayor Burk: No, and she's not asking that. Council Member Fox: I'm just saying if you have a business license and you don't meet that 25K [crosstalk]. Kaj Dentler: Oh, 1 want to I'm okay with that. I apologize. Council Member Fox: It runs the gamut. Keith Markel: If you've got an interest in, again, that's in one of those philosophical questions. You've got 317 businesses in Town that don't pay anything, they don't have any earnings, any taxable earnings, or they're a business that exists but they don't really function. They pay for the business license, 25 bucks and you're done. If you're looking at that, then you'd have to look at the criteria, you're looking at to show a loss, or you're just saying any business can apply or -- Council Member Fox: You do the criteria, you can do the loss. Sure. Keith Markel: You've got a lot of different businesses out. That's why we tried to find where could the money be the most useful to. Council Member Fox: I'm just saying don't limit who can apply for it, that's all. A criteria should stay. Page 301 August 10, 2020 Keith Markel: So we would establish criteria for a wide variety, the zero -earning business, and the $20M-a-year business. Council Member Fox: Yes, if it's zero earning that means a drop 25% or whatever it is to look at the criteria is from the last year, that's all. Keith Markel: We could try to put something together and share that with you tomorrow, but it would be -- Mayor Burk: Okay. We have on the table, not on the table, it's not a motion, but we need to have four votes that are willing to take the money, the 2.3 and the 1.34 for the nonprofits, redistribute it, and then use the plan that we have in place. Ms. Fox is suggesting that we go down and instead of having three tiers, you'd have four tiers because you would have zero to -- Keith Markel: Twenty five thousand. Mayor Burk: Twenty five thousand, twenty five thousand to -- Council Member Steinberg: I've got a question on that. Kaj Dentler: Would that be - Mayor Burk: Wait, let me just get-- I got to make sure I'm talking about what I'm talking about, I got to know what we're doing here. Okay. Do you have a question on that? Kaj Dentler: Well, can I ask you a question? Would that-- so you said 300-- approximately 300 businesses that have no taxable -- Keith Markel: Yes, they don't earn a penny. Kaj Dentler: Right. Would that, Ms. Fox, would that be, as an example, each of those 300 businesses would be eligible for $2K, a thousand dollars? Council Member Fox: How do we know they don't earn a penny? If they're paying their $25 business license fee, they didn't make $50K or something like that. How do we know they're not earning anything? Keith Markel: They report that on their annual BPOL. Council Member Fox: Okay, so you have 300 that report zero. Keith Markel: We've got the breakdown. For example, we've got 317 businesses that report zero earnings for the year. We have 176 businesses that report earnings somewhere between zero and $4,999. You're trying to cover a lot of businesses. Kaj Dentler: Six hundred businesses ballpark. Keith Markel: Right. Just giving you examples of-- it's hard for us, we'd have to understand what you'd be looking for criteria, how much you'd be wanting to make as a grant for some of those. Council Member Fox: Well, it stands to reason and I could be wrong that if they're reporting zero this year, they probably report zero last year and the year before and the year before that too, am I correct about that? Kaj Dentler: Possible. Council Member Fox: Possibly. I still think you should open it up to-- if you say $1 or something-- if it's zero- if it's zero in perpetuity, then no. Page 311 August 10, 2020 Mayor Burk: Okay. Well, Mr. Steinberg. Council Member Steinberg: Whose criteria is it for the 25% loss? Is that ours, is that some arbitr-- Keith Markel: Yes, that was something established by the Town. Council Member Steinberg: Are we saying we are going to do away then with the 25%? Keith Markel: We were recommending in the second grant process to go through would be lowering that to 15% loss. Council Member Steinberg: 15% loss. Keith Markel: The new number, just to open again and cast a wider net, we had 25 and we're recommending to you to go to 15% loss. Council Member Steinberg: Out of curiosity, if we took funds, at what point, or could we actually return them to the County and say, we know we're not going to make it, we're going to give it back to you? Is that a misstep or is that a possibility? Keith Markel: That's an option, absolutely. Council Member Steinberg: What would be the drop dead date for us to be able to do that to give the County time to disburse funds? Keith Markel: They're going to be going through their round two distribution and their grant program. We've been in calls with them this past week, discussing that when they've offered the hybrid model of them helping us using their application process. They're going into that now. We could return this money right back to them very soon and they could redistribute that as part of their program. Council Member Steinberg: One final question. Are there any needs that the Town has, we did not allocate that much money, I think it was about $795K, most of which I think we spent on IT needs, although I assume there some PPE stuff. We need to maintain services to be able to provide for the residents in a trying time, are there needs that the Town has that we might satisfy with some of these funds? In the end, we are providing -- Keith Markel: [crosstalk] to that 770K that was already allocated for Town response. The direction from you all was to really have it be outward -facing as much as possible, so we have looked to cover the essentials and what can we qualify for CARES funding that can replace local tax revenue for, so that's what we're trying to apply this. Facility modifications, extra staff time, cleaning all those things that we've talked about are all being covered by this. Within that, we propose to reallocate for that virtual learning center for our employees' children, but that's the only new program within that already existing allotment that we are proposing at this time. Council Member Steinberg: I recognize what the direction was before, but I'm not sure any of us realized how difficult it was going to be to actually disburse the funds. I understand why we were reserving less for the Town and more for businesses and nonprofits, but in the end, it seems like we have more than enough for the businesses and nonprofits and there may be needs that could be fulfilled for the Town as well. That's a consideration. Mayor Burk: We got Mr. Campbell who said that - Council Member Dunn: Madam Chair? Mayor Burk: Yes, Mr. Dunn? Page 321 August 10, 2020 Council Member Dunn: Thank you. We threw around a lot of the numbers here over the last couple of minutes. I think staff was making a mistake when they said we could change it to 15%. A 15% loss is less of a loss than 25% loss. I don't think that's what we meant to say by loosening the standards, we could change it to 15%. That would make it even tougher to get the funding. I still think that the numbers that we are throwing out, I've just done some back of the envelope numbers, and we're still not spending the amount of money that we currently have without even asking for new funding. Unless we truly loosen the reigns up on this and have a system that allows businesses to apply by just simply saying, "My business has been impacted by COVID, and I will put to use the $2K grant by the Town of Leesburg, and make sure that it's spent before the end of the year," that that's going to be an easier process and ensure that more of the funding is spent. I would be for asking for all the $4M additional if we were able to give the money out to businesses that just asked for it and then showed that they spent it. That way, all businesses are being able to benefit by about the same much. Right now, the way we're talking about, we are not going to even spend the money that we still have lying on the table. The numbers just don't add up. The additional two $2M is only $800K. I just did the numbers for if we had the same amount of results, but you're not talking about changing the lower number results, but added the dollar amount, that's only another $650K. I really think we need to have a system whereby more businesses are brought into the fold and we'd still have money left over to put money toward the nonprofits. Thank you. Mayor Burk: All right. Mr. Campbell asked that would there be for people that were interested in the $2.3M being- their plan that we've brought forward again for the businesses, and the 1.34 for the nonprofits. Are there four people? Then I'll get to your suggestion, but are there four people that are interested in doing the 2.3 and the 1.34 as explained tonight? Council Member Steinberg: [unintelligible 02:03:23]. Are we talking about $2.34 plus $134K plus [inaudible 02:03:27]? Mayor Burk: No, we're just talking about the 2.3 and the 1.34. Council Member Campbell: They want to split the question. Mayor Burk: That's what he is proposing because there's a plan in place to use it. Then the nonprofit we'll redistribute. That's what's on the table. We're not talking about the $4.7 or whatever at this point. Are there four people that are interested in and following up on that? I would say yes. Council Member Dunn: I have a quick question. I have a quick question on that. Mayor Burk: Mr. Dunn, what? Council Member Dunn: Real quick question. It sounds like we're making a decision on two things. One is a dollar amount and one is saying, this is how the plan that you want to spend that dollar amount. Mayor Burk: I'm just trying to cut -- Council Member Dunn: [crosstalk] before the dollar amount, but not the plan. Mayor Burk: We have the plan in place. The 2.3 will go towards the businesses and the 1.3 for the nonprofits. Are there four people that are interested in it? Mr. Campbell, myself, Mr. Steinberg, Ms. Fox. All right. That goes forward. Vice Mayor Martinez: Yes. Mayor Burk: Mr. Martinez. Now, Ms. Fox, you are recommending what? Council Member Fox: I'd like to recommend that we make a stand [inaudible 02:04:53] the businesses that can apply for this go up to $2.5M if we want to, but also down to a dollar, I guess. Page 331 August 10, 2020 Mayor Burk: You're asking for a fourth tier? Council Member Fox: A fourth tier, I suppose, yes. Mayor Burk: Do you understand, by the fourth tier, she's going to zero to 250? Keith Markel: What I recommend is that we put something together and bring that back to you for consideration, just so we make sure that we can lay it out - Mayor Burk: Well, let's see if people are interested in doing that, okay? If there's four people that are interested in doing it, then you would come back with it. Are there four people that are interested in adding that new tier for the zero to $2,5K? Keith Markel: Twenty-five thousand dollars. Vice Mayor Martinez: [unintelligible 02:05:35]. Mayor Burk: Twenty-five thousand [crosstalk] Excuse me. $25K. Yes. Who just spoke? Vice Mayor Martinez: Marty. Mr. Martinez. Mayor Burk: Yes? Vice Mayor Martinez: On adding that new tier, is there going to be a requirement that they have generated revenue the previous years, or are they going to be able to qualify with zero revenues? Mayor Burk: What would you envision, Ms. Fox? Council Member Fox: What I would envision is they still have to meet the criteria that we set for a loss. I would guess that they would have to have revenue the previous year. Mayor Burk: All right. Did you understand? Vice Mayor Martinez: They may have zero revenues, but they lost money because didn't make money to cover their costs. They're not just people holding a business license just to hold a business license. Council Member Fox: I would say that they would have had to have some positive revenue and they've lost whatever criteria, the 25% or 15%, whatever we're going to adopt in order to qualify. It would still go through that process. Vice Mayor Martinez: I can go along with that. Mayor Burk: Okay. Are there three others? Ms. Fox. Mr. Campbell. Mr. Steinberg? No. Mr. Dunn, are you yes or no? Council Member Dunn: Are you asking me a question? Mayor Burk: Yes. Are you a yes and a no on adding a new tier to the plan? Council Member Dunn: I would be for the new tier, but I don't like the previous cash requirements to it. [crosstalk]. Mayor Burk: Excuse me. That's part of it. Are you still for it knowing that that's part of it? Council Member Dunn: For that part of it, I would have to say no. I'm for the rest of it though. Mayor Burk: Okay. I'm going to have to rule that as a no then because the question is on the new tier. Page 341 August 10, 2020 Council Member Dunn: I would love to offer a change then if you don't have the four votes for that. I'd like to offer the same thing Ms. Fox is suggesting. Mayor Burk: Excuse me. There is four votes for that, yes. That's not a problem. Council Member Dunn: I thought you didn't have four votes. Well, that's why I asked. Mayor Burk: Mr. Martinez, Ms. Fox, Ms. Burk, and Mr. Campbell. All right? Are there any other changes on the old money? Just for another term. The previous money? Yes. Russell Seymour: Madam Mayor, if I may just for staffs question. When we look at the businesses, I think we can show if they had a 15% or 20%, whatever that number is drop from the previous year. The one thing I would put out is I think if we're going to give a business a grant of let's say $2,5K, it's a low amount, we do have to make sure that in 2019, when they were doing well, that they did make more than $2,K. I understand where you're going with the dollar, but as Keith is mentioning it, if a business made a couple dollars or $500 in 2019, to give them a grant, then of more than triple of what they made in 2019, I don't think that's what you were looking for. Council Member Fox: I understand that what you're saying. Russell Seymour: Okay. We can work those numbers. I just want to make sure I had it clear. Thank you. Mayor Burk: You all understand? Everybody understand? Now we have the question of, do we want to accept the $4.7M or do we want to return it to the County, or do we want to do some different? Keith Markel: You may wait and you may want to discuss it further. There's nothing that says you have to accept it right now. If you don't want to accept it at this point, you can wait and discuss that in September and ask staff to come back with any information they may have based on a proposed spending plan, or if you all want to work on a proposed spending plan. We brought it to you this evening because we know time is ticking. Mayor Burk: Yes, it is ticking. Keith Markel: The longer we wait, the harder it is - Mayor Burk: We won't be back until September. Keith Markel: Correct. Council Member Fox: My only proviso is that we allow the County to take care of nonprofit. That's what I would recommend. Mayor Burk: Do you have an amount that you would like to recommend? Council Member Fox: No. We went with $1 M before. I'm workable with that. Whatever Council decides. Mayor Burk: Are there four people that are willing to take $1 M of it, $1 M of the 4.7 and use that, send it back to the County to distribute for nonprofit. Do we have four people that would be willing to do that? Ms. Fox, Mr. Steinberg, Mr. Campbell, myself. Vice Mayor Martinez: Mr. Martinez. Mayor Burk: Mr. Martinez. Now we have to decide do we want to talk it tonight, do we want to talk about the 3.7M that's left, or do we want to have direct staff to come back with a plan and bring it and have that discussion in September? Mr. Steinberg would like to have the discussion in September, do we have four people that are interested in having that discussion in September? Page 351 August 10, 2020 Council Member Campbell: Can I just get a point of clarification? Mayor Burk: Yes, sir. Council Member Campbell: Because I think timing of the process is critical. Given that, everything that we do is going to have to be approved by the Board of Supervisors, they meet first of September. Now we're talking mid -September for money to be spent and distributed, probably not until October. The reality of getting that money out and people spending it is real tight. If we can't make a decision now on, again, that's why I just threw out $2M as a number and then we can work a program, decide, and then take the County out of it that way. We've got to get the programs gone because if we want to be helpful, now's the time to be helpful. We have to decide on a number even if it's not an absolute. Mayor Burk: Would it be better to simply send the whole thing to the County since they're all set up and ready to go? Keith Markel: That'll be the fastest way to get that out in the public. Mayor Burk: With the caveat that we want the $100K to go to the nonprofits. Council Member Campbell: One million. Mayor Burk: Pardon? Council Member Campbell: One million. Mayor Burk: One million. I'm sorry. Thank you. Is there four people that are interested in doing that? Mr. Steinberg? Vice Mayor Martinez: Yes. Mayor Burk: Mr. Martinez, myself, Mr. Dunn. Council Member Dunn: No. Mayor Burk: With the caveat that $100M, the $1M has to go to the nonprofits, oh, and Mr. Campbell. We will tell them to go on that they can take -- Keith Markel: There's a resolution tomorrow evening directing that the full second round of funding stay with the County with $1 M of that to be directed towards nonprofit. Council Member Dunn: Madam Chair? Mayor Burk: Yes, sir? Council Member Dunn: I would like to offer I'd like to offer up that we accept the whole funding as long as the funding is going to be going to businesses in Leesburg with a more liberal process than the one we currently have that allows all businesses to apply regardless of their level of income. Mayor Burk: We just had four votes that said that we would be keeping it at the County level. Are there four people that are interested in Mr. Dunn's motion? Ms. Fox? That does not pass. Thank you very much. Keith Markel: The nonprofit issue, we had a resolution for the nonprofit distribution for tomorrow evening. Kaj Dentler: They've already did the remaining $134K. They've already decided that. Page 361 August 10, 2020 Keith Markel: You're comfortable with the allocation as is presented from the committee this evening, the 800? Kaj Dentler: Yes. Mayor Burk: You're going to spread out the others. Keith Markel: I just know there is a discussion about this. Kaj Dentler: I think the one I didn't hear if you have a preference at this point was the $200K for the daycare virtual learning setup for employees. Mayor Burk: We decided to send that [crosstalk]. Kaj Dentler: Is that removed? Mayor Burk: Yes. Keith Markel: That's within the current spending plan. Kaj Dentler: Right. Mayor Burk: That's within the current spending plan? Keith Markel: There were two solutions for the second item, the first was modifying the spending plan, the second one was whether or not you're going to receive the County's funding. Kaj Dentler: What I've heard, you've addressed everything in the existing money, the 4.7. You've addressed everything that I've heard with the exception of the $200K for the employee daycare. I didn't hear that you had, as a corporate body, whether you want to do that or not. I heard different thoughts. You've addressed everything else in the initial money and the new money. I think that's the last thing that's missing as far as direction that we can then set up for your vote for tomorrow night. Mayor Burk: Are there four people that want to provide $200K so the Town could set up a facility, what's -- Keith Markel: A virtual learning classroom. Mayor Burk: A virtual learning classroom, do we have -- Keith Markel: Within our existing allocation of the Town COVID response funds, the $772K. Mayor Burk: Okay. There are four people that want to do that. Mr. Campbell, myself, Mr. Martinez. Anyone else? All right. Mr. Steinberg is not here. So that does not pass. Kaj Dentler: Okay. AU right. We'll set it all up for your final vote tomorrow night based on what we've heard tonight. Thank you. Mayor Burk: Okay. Thank you. All right. The Annual Capital Funding request to the County of Loudoun. Renee LaFollette: Good evening, Madam Mayor, Members of Council. I'm here tonight to talk about our Fiscal 22 Capital Improvement Program request to Loudoun County. It's that time of year again where they've requested that we send an application to them, but our applications are due September 30th. The criteria for the projects is for Capital Projects to facilities owned by the County located within the Town, but operated by the County or a pedestrian or transportation -related improvement that benefits Loudoun County. The Town staff, Capital Project staff, Public Works staff, and Budget look through our CIP, and the proposed projects are the five listed above. Page 371 August 10, 2020 Which are Route 15 North Bypass, Edwards Ferry Road interchange project for 5M which we have talked to Loudoun County about. Evergreen Mill Road widening for 6M. The traffic signal, which I know a number of you are interested in moving forward in the CIP for full funding. Three bus shelters that were not funded with our CDBG application, and then lighting on the Washington Old Dominion trail. A little bit more detail on the Route 15 Bypass Edwards Ferry Road Interchange, we have $5.4M available in the bank so to speak, from our NVTA allocation. We had originally 7.4, we've spent 2M on the IGR, leaves us 5.4M. We need approximately 10M to do design to get to final design. We've been talking with Loudoun County, NVTA and, VDOT, on how we can move the project forward. We would need $5M in order to move that project forward. We are in the process of putting our Smart Scale application together for this project as well for funding that would start in August of 2025 fiscal year 26. Our Evergreen Mill Road widening project. We requested funding for this project previously from Loudoun County in the amount of $6M, which they granted in fiscal years 20 and 21. They granted that because we extended the project across the frontage of Heritage High School. We asked for an additional 3M last year. That was put in one of their out years. Our request this year is for 6M to move the 3M forward into an earlier fiscal year that corresponds with our construction for this project, and an additional $3M based on additional engineering work that shows our increased cost and construction, utility relocation, and land acquisitions. The Sycolin Gateway traffic signal, we're requesting the full funding for that project of $758,600 in order to move that project forward. It's currently in our CIP in fiscal year 2024 for design and construction. We're asking for that money earlier to move that signal forward. Town -wide bus shelters. The three that were not funded and are the next three in high ridership numbers are two on Fort Evans Road at Cedar Walk Circle one in each direction and then the bus shelter on Clubhouse Drive and the cul de sac. The last project is W&OD Trail lighting. This is a project, Reston did a similar project on a section of W&OD Trail. This one would go basically from where the Volunteer Rescue Squad is on Catoctin Circle around to Loudoun County High School connecting to their facilities, but it is also a pathway that a number of workers in the businesses on the east end of that trail use to get back and forth to work and home. With that, I will open it up for questions. Mayor Burk: All right, Mr. Campbell, question? Council Member Campbell: On the Route 15 Edwards Ferry Road project, how much did we borrow from that project to complete the Battlefield funding program? Renee LaFollette: Approximately 5.8M? Council Member Campbell: Is that the reason why we're in a hole there? We knew there was going to be a deficit when we did it. Renee LaFollette: Yes. Those were RSTP funds from VDOT that we moved over. VDOT has reprogrammed those funds in, but in out years and the money that we have from NVTA in 5.4M has a sunset date on it in fiscal 23, I believe. We're trying to move the project forward and its one of those if we get momentum, we have a better chance of getting the funding. Council Member Campbell: Well, I know there was a lot of cooperation and a lot of money moving around from many sources to finish the Battlefield interchange, so I'm just hoping that people will be -- not have a short memory, but have an appreciated memory. We need cooperation once again. Obviously, this is a high-level project and I realize its in the really out years, but if anything could be moved up, I'd be supportive of that one. Thank you, I think people just needed to hear why we're in a situation. Renee LaFollette: That's part of the reason that we put this project here. At the staff level, we have had conversations and included Mayor Burk and the Council Member Fox in conversations with NVTA and Loudoun County or the supervisor's chair, since she is the chair of NVTA, looking for some cost - sharing to try and drive some interest and Loudoun County has expressed interest in helping us with Page 381 August 10, 2020 that $5 M, so we figured this would be a good way to memorialize the fact that they were in a cooperative mood when we spoke with them last. Council Member Campbell: Okay. Thank you. Mayor Burk: Ms. Fox? Council Member Fox: Just to follow up on that cooperation piece there; this is an ask and this is not a loan, it's a? Renee LaFollette: It's an ask. Council Member Fox: It's an ask. Okay. Thank you. That's it. Mayor Burk: Mr. Martinez? Vice Mayor Martinez: I have no comments. Mayor Burk: Mr. Dunn? Council Member Dunn: Yes. We can ask for additional things. Is this what you're asking for also if there's anything we want to add to this? Renee LaFollette: If there are projects that you would like to add, we can talk through that. We picked the projects from the CIP that met the specific criteria that the County laid forward for eligibility on the projects. Council Member Dunn: You're talking about any CIP project or specifically road projects? Renee LaFollette: They can be any pedestrian, transportation or facility project that deals with and benefits Loudoun County. If it's a facility that's owned and operated by the County, and we're doing improvements that are pedestrian -related or transportation -related in front of one of their facilities, connecting their facilities, those are the types of projects that meet the criteria laid forth. Council Member Dunn: Okay. Are we able to ask for funding for-- Is this what-- I guess the question I'm asking is you're talking about the criteria just for things that are related to Loudoun County and Loudoun County transportation, or can we ask for funding for other items? Renee LaFollette: They have to have -- Council Member Dunn: Would that be at a separate time? Renee LaFollette: Their letter to us had two very specific criteria. One that it's a capital project to facilities owned by the County or located within the Town, but operated by the County and the second one is that it's a local pedestrian or transportation -related improvement that benefit Loudoun County and their facilities. That limits the number of projects we have that meet that criteria. Council Member Dunn: Okay. If we wanted to find out if they are willing to fund either through Leesburg giving the funds to Leesburg, or they were willing to fund themselves the purchase of Westpark golf course, then we could ask for that because that could in essence be a County facility that we're requesting for them to acquire. Renee LaFollette: I'm thinking. Jason Cournoyer: Yes that's an interesting way of looking it. I can say this, and maybe this helps. The Council is welcome to petition the Board of Supervisors at any time for funding. I believe we've had this conversation multiple times. This is the formal process for the CIP funding request. This is an annual Page 391 August 10, 2020 process where anything like that, any partnership for funding at any time could be requested by the Council to the Board. I don't know if that -- Council Member Dunn: If you could get closer to the mic; I can't hear you. Jason Cournoyer: That's a first for me. Mayor Burk: I think it is. Jason Cournoyer: Yes. I was just saying, sir, if I need to repeat the whole thing, that that's an interesting way to look at this. It's an annual process, it's pretty formal that the criteria is pretty limited. The Council is always welcome to petition the Board directly for funding. I don't know we could add that in. Another criteria in the past has been it needs to be identified in our CIP so I would raise some caution that although Westpark is a hot topic now it actually isn't in our CIP. Perhaps going into this next fiscal year of development that the Council maybe memorialize that into the CIP. Council Member Dunn: I guess two approaches on it, they're kind of parallel. One would be a request that the County consider the purchase of Westpark for the benefit of the citizens of the County and having a trail system that the citizens can enjoy. The other part would be that the Town look at purchasing West Park directly from the owners and ask for funding from the County to help us purchase it to benefit the citizens of the County and having walking trails that all citizens in the County could utilize. Obviously, that would require staff to immediately go forward and look into discussions with the property owner for the purchase of Westpark but again I would only be interested in doing that if we could get funding from the County for that effort. If it's possible to add that to the list of possible County projects that we would like to have invited into Town I would like to see it added so that we could use our County tax dollars that the Town contributes putting back to use in the Town which is what we're doing with these other projects. Thank you. Mayor Burk: Mr. Steinberg, have you spoken? Council Member Steinberg: The list is fine. The only thing I would recommend that we throw back at the County would be the $200K that they turned down the last time for the Town -wide traffic study that would be directly affected by the Courthouse expansion. Thank you. Mayor Burk: I guess you need some indication from us if you have four people that are interested in it. The first proposal was to include the purchase of Westpark with the County funding. Are there four people that are interested in that discussion being added to it? Ms. Fox — Council Member Dunn: Yes. Mayor Burk: Mr. Dunn, Mr. Steinberg, Ms. Burk. You have four. The other one is adding $200K into it from what we had last year about the traffic study in front of the Courthouse. Do we have four people that are interested in that one? Renee LaFollette: Two fifty. We asked for 200 last year. Clarification on cost will be 250. It will be 250. Mayor Burk: 250. What do you -- Renee LaFollette: Two hundred and fifty thousand. Mayor Burk: Okay. 250. Renee LaFollette: Versus 200. Page 401 August 10, 2020 Mayor Burk: Do we have four people that are interested in that? Mr. Campbell, Ms. Fox, Mr. Steinberg, anybody in the air? Vice Mayor Martinez: Yes. Mayor Burk: Mr. Martinez. Vice Mayor Martinez: That's fine. Mayor Burk: All right. There you go. Renee LaFollette: This is not on the agenda for tomorrow night, but can it be added? The draft resolution. It doesn't have to be. Kaj Dentler: Yes, if you want to add it, if you're comfortable with it. It'd be better if you go ahead and vote on it tonight, it gives us time to get all the documents ready and submitted by the deadline. If you're comfortable with that -- Mayor Burk: We finished that. We just need to know either for people that want to vote on it tomorrow. Mr. Campbell, Ms. Fox, Ms. Burk, Mr. Steinberg. Vice Mayor Martinez: Yes. Mayor Burk: Mr. Martinez. Mr. Dentler: Would that be consent or just on your-- I mean, do you -- Council Member Fox: Consent. Kaj Dentler: Okay, consent? Mayor Burk: Yes, consent is fine I would think for. Kaj Dentler: You sounded like you're all there, so, all right, we'll put on consent. All right, thank you. Mayor Burk: Thank you. All right, the next one is the Traffic Flow and One -Way Streets in Downtown. Calvin Grow: Madam Mayor, Members of Council, we're here tonight to talk about traffic flow and one- way streets in the Downtown. Give you a little background. Council requested a comprehensive Downtown study. We've got a number of different projects in the Downtown that we have the County garage that was built, was 851 additional parking places. Also, we have the Church/Market development, which is moving forward with 116 residential units. We have the King Street Station with 64 residential units, which is in just right there at the W&OD trail in South King Street. Then the possible rezoning of the Virginia Village with 647 residential units. Council also wanted us to look at how to prevent bottlenecks of the two signalized intersections at King at Loudoun and Market. Also, evaluate streets that could be made one-way and improve safety in the Downtown. Also, look at evaluation of the future traffic signal at North King and North Street, which was recommended by the County's traffic study in the Courthouse expansion. Town staff is recommending a three-phase approach to this, this larger study. The first phase would be no construction. It would be something that we could do in a short timeframe. The second phase would be a midterm and this is part of the CIP already, the Royal Street project. We'll talk about that. Also, the third would be the long-term complete comprehensive study in the Downtown with recommendations. Under the first phase, I'm just going to go right to the map, the first phase would be looking at turn restrictions at North Street and North King and also Northeast Street and Cornwall Street with the Page 411 August 10, 2020 parking garage. As the people leave, the parking garage in the [unintelligible 02:33:25] and as traffic builds back up again, I was in there last week and I counted under 50 cars in the parking garage. I know that it's going to come back. That would be something we'd come back to Council with. Once that traffic builds up again, there's problems at the intersection there at North Street and North King. Also, another short term under the first phase would be what could widen or make Wirt Street one-way between just right out here with the Town office between Loudoun Street and Market Street. Currently Wirt Street is already one-way up to North Street and this would just be a continuation of that. The other Phase I could be Liberty Street. Every streets already one-way, except for a small portion between Loudoun Street and the Town Liberty Street parking lot. That could be a Phase I project. Phase II, like I said, is already in the CIP. It's Royal Street improvements. It's something that Council had talked about before. It's improving sidewalks along Royal Street and also storm drainage and parking. We've had RK&K do a traffic study in this area, because again, it's attached to the Council agenda and it's a marked draft. We're still reviewing it. What's happened is that as we look at this project and we put the sidewalks in and keep the parking in, we're going to have to make some of these streets one-way. That's another project and that's Phase II. Again, the Phase III would be the study that you voted on tonight, would be the $250K study that could be added to CIP and that would incorporate a larger area in the Downtown area. It would incorporate some of the development in that area. When we look at Catoctin Circle, it would be recommendations on one-way streets or a number of different things in that modeling that would take place in that larger area. I'd be glad to have any discussion or input from Council regarding the phasing plan or anything else that is in that memo. Mayor Burk: All right. Mr. Steinberg? Council Member Steinberg: Thanks, Calvin. Obviously, there are a lot of questions and answers here. We have a long way to go. The Royal Street project, that's been in the CIP for some time, so that's just sort of a side issue with this whole thing. I guess it's part of this discussion, because you're talking about trying to add parking spaces? Calvin Grow: No, what's happened with that was we started the just some kind of preliminary, looking at the Royal Street improvements, and if you put a five-foot sidewalk on either side of the street and then you leave the parking, the existing parking, you're not going to have room enough to have two- way traffic on that particular street. We're going to have to come back and with Council or whatever, and make some decisions on that project. We may have to make Royal Street one-way, at least parts of it, one-way. Council Member Steinberg: From Liberty to King Street, is that what you're-- That's what I understand? Calvin: Well, it'd be from Liberty Street over to Church Street, yes. Council Member Steinberg: It's Church. One-way on both sides of King? Calvin Grow: Well, again, there's recommendations in this study and we'll have to come back and that'll be, a later Council meeting, and then we'll have to come back and make some decisions. There may be some possibility if we go with a four -foot sidewalk, maybe on one side, then maybe we could keep that two-way traffic, but that will be something that we'll have to come back to Council with that. But there is some parts of it that probably will have to be one-way, especially the portion between Liberty Street and Wirt Street. It's very narrow at that point and the Fire Marshall has told us that we have to have at least 20 feet to have two-way traffic. Council Member Steinberg: Okay, but that's been a conversation we've been sort of involved in the expectations. I'm more interested in the broader conversation about the Town -wide traffic study, or at least there's the Downtown traffic -wide study. I'm not sure why, for example, we wouldn't want to take White Oak into consideration and even Crescent Park as developments that are certainly going to add Page 421 August 10, 2020 a lot of traffic to the Downtown area. As we know, of course, the Courthouse expansion, and if and when Church and Market ever actually happens. I think those is the amount of development in some of these projects that are due to potentially come online that caused the greatest concern, and so we were looking at the potential for maybe one-way Market Street going westbound and Loudoun Street coming eastbound and then-- So how's that going to affect the flow of traffic throughout the Town? Well, in this immediate area. Obviously, that would then involve what we may or may not do to Wirt Street and all the other side streets. They would have to be taken into account, and reading through the street report, I'm not sure- - At this point, I'd be in favor of saying just taking Wirt Street and creating that one-way section between Loudoun and Market. I understand there's an issue with the pre-school there that we need to deal with, but I would personally be hesitant to start creating these little changes and then have to come back in and then we basically get everybody back on the same page as if we start doing a more wholesale change throughout the-- Excuse me, I just need to pull something up here. Here we go. I think restricting the left-hand turns is probably a simple and easy enough thing to do. I think people still have questions about whether or not, in the end, we want to do a traffic signal at North and North King-- A proposal of mine I think it was, was to consider possibly creating a little one-way section from King Street on North to the parking garage entrance if and when Pennington ever opens up. Actually, I guess it will at some point at this stage. I wasn't sure if in doing this study that was even considered as a possibility. We might also want to think about eliminating one parking space and I know we're trying to increase. The way the parking comes all the way to the corner on North Street at King, I think creates a somewhat dangerous situation. Perhaps removing one parking space eastbound to just push the traffic back off of that intersection a little bit might probably be advisable. I don't know. Getting back to the school, do we have any idea what their expectations are from the Town? In making changes to Wirt Street, have they expressed anything specific or is this just something-- What are our obligations in that case? Calvin Grow: Well, it was just a request that they felt that there was an accident there that might have been caused by people coming in into the daycare, and they couldn't get in. There was parents that couldn't get in. They were frantic and stuff. Again, there's no obligation on the Town to accommodate that on Wirt Street, that way. It was just a request that we had and we put that in the Council report. Council Member Steinberg: I recognize. We should certainly try to work with them if we can. I'm just not sure that a piecemeal approach for that specific thing would necessarily be a good idea when you start changing patterns in the way people think. I suppose it's possible they could look at staggered pickup and drop-off times, which I think was mentioned in the report. I was a little concerned about trying to force traffic. If we created Wirt Street one-way, then that would start to force more traffic on the one-way section of Liberty, which is a narrower street than Wirt Street is. I'm not sure that that would be a good idea. Out of curiosity, how do you model for a theoretical one-way? How does that work? Calvin Grow: What we did is we used Synchro. It's not necessarily a modeling software. It looks at just individual intersections. What we did is really simple, is we just took the traffic that was-- we're using Wirt Street and we moved it over to Liberty. I think it ended up being-- Currently, per day there's about 1,700 vehicles a day on Wirt Street, and about 1,200 on Liberty Street. I think it moved over about, let's see, 270 vehicles a day moved over to Liberty Street by doing that, which is only about 30 vehicles during the peak hour. Council Member Steinberg: Can you speak to what you consider a realistic timeframe for when we might actually see the broader study, this Phase 111 that you're talking about? Calvin Grow: Well, if we receive money from the County, we could start that process. The big problem right now is traffic counts. Nobody's doing traffic counts. We have counters out there that are counting cars. We're down about 20% traffic, and usually during the summer, we're down in the Town about 10%. Our peak hours are still really low. I think the traffic's being spread out over the day, but we're not getting -- Page 431 August 10, 2020 If we receive the money and then we want to do some updated counts, what we would do is we probably use the existing traffic studies that we have in the Downtown. We have a number of different traffic studies that were done as part of these developments and we try to incorporate that into the model and look at some of the counts that we had previously before COVID. Council Member Steinberg: What's a realistic timeframe for when we might actually expect some kind of idea of the changes we made decide we want to make Town -wide? We talked about five years, six years, seven years? Calvin Grow: Well, to complete the study? Council Member Steinberg: Yes. Calvin Grow: I think they could put the model together. We could get some recommendations back to Council in a year, I think. Council Member Steinberg: Well, I guess, in the end, my opinion would be the sooner we could do it, the better. I realized money is definitely an issue, but I also of the opinion that if we wait for all this stuff to come online, then we may have waited a little bit too long. If there's any way that we as Council or staff can help make this happen as soon as possible, though, I think that would probably be the way to go. Thanks. Mayor Burk: Mr. Dunn, do you have any questions? Council Member Dunn: Yes. Thank you. Calvin, I didn't see in here. Point it out to me if I missed it. Were there any review of making-- We've heard a lot over the years about one-way for different directions on both Loudoun and Market. Was there any consideration of that? Calvin Grow: Well, its part of the comprehensive study that would be looked at to make Market to Loudoun Street one-way. We don't have in the Town have that kind of modeling software to do that. Even Loudoun County doesn't have a modeler that could do that. VDOT's got one modeler that does some modeling then for VDOT, but there's some consultants out there that do that. That would be something that would look at the comprehensive study and look at the one -ways. Council Member Dunn: It's not in the packet that you gave us then, correct? Calvin Grow: That's correct. Council Member Dunn: Why would we have not considered even putting that in the packet for review? Calvin Grow: Well, we had that. That's -- Council Member Dunn: [unintelligible 02:46:39] instruction over the years. Calvin Grow: Well, I know the Phase III they would look at the one-way streets in the Downtown. That would be part of the options they would look at, would be one-way streets on Market and Loudoun, but that's in Phase III study with the complete model. Council Member Dunn: Because I was looking through Phase III, and you mentioned one-way streets, and you've already talked about some of them, but you're saying that there is consideration in Phase III for making Loudoun and Market one-way? Because I didn't see it in there. Do you know where it is? Calvin Grow: Yes, sir. It would be part of the-- It would be -- Council Member Dunn: [unintelligible 02:47:21] what page it's on or -- Page 441 August 10, 2020 Calvin Grow: Well, we just mentioned the fact that we didn't look at one-way streets, and that would be one of the things that they would look at would be, because it's obvious that that would be something that we can look at from Y to Y, making Market and Loudoun Street one-way. It's not necessarily in it, but we do talk about one-way streets. Council Member Dunn: If we were interested in seriously studying that, you've given a lot of other things that we were looking into, how do we know that Loudoun/Market will be included in that, because it's not included in the package here? Calvin Grow: Well, again, you're looking at a comprehensive study. Like Council Member Steinberg mentioned the fact that maybe we do a larger study area. As part of that area, they would look at not just Market and Loudoun Street one-way, but maybe parts of King. Once you put the model together, the model is going to probably look at what's the best options for the Town. Council Member Dunn: I guess, I'm not trying to beat a dead horse here, but you've got a lot of options that are available to the Town already in the packet. I'm just curious why the most obvious one and one of them was probably been talked about for decades, why it's not in there already? Is this just a reason why it's not in there when so many other options are? I may be missing something. Go ahead. Renee LaFollette: Council Member Dunn, the one-way pairs option was not specifically listed because it needs to be part of the larger study, because it will have impact beyond just Loudoun and Market Streets. It will have an impact on King Street. It will have an impact on Catoctin Circle and a number of the other residential streets. To call it out individually, would put too much onus on that one single area of study in that larger comprehensive study. It would put way too much focus just on that particular issue. We left that as just an overall large scale study, looking at everything within the area that's outlined in red and then we would add the areas that were discussed with Crescent Park and White Oak. Council Member Dunn: Again, forgive me, I'm from Arkansas. What you just said seemed like, if it has such an impact, you would want to have it included in how it relates to all the other things you want to talk about, not just recognize it as singling it as it's too big to deal with. Again, I guess I'm just not understanding the process that went through getting us to this point. I would hope that the end result is, is that as we look at all these options, the option for making Loudoun and Market one-way different directions, and then obviously having to move parking over to the other side of the street, et cetera, and how that impacts all the other streets and that you said the homes in the area is something that we consider doing in this comprehensive plan and not just saying, "Well, we're going to deal with these other streets first and then we'll consider Loudoun and Market some way further down the line." You're telling me that this is going to be Market and Loudoun will be a consideration in the overall study and comprehensive plan, correct? Renee LaFollette: Yes, sir. Council Member Dunn: Doing them one-way, not just leaving in their current status? Renee LaFollette: Correct. All options will be on the table with that Loudoun study. Council Member Dunn: Thank you very much. Okay, thank you. Mayor Burk: Mr. Martinez? Vice Mayor Martinez: Well, it's pretty interesting. Your potential, the planning you're going. Is part of the reason you're not focusing on Market and King is the public's perception that if we start talking about it, they're going to panic a little bit, the business owners and such? Calvin Grow: No. All the options are on the table. When you start to do a major traffic city like this and you start to put the model together, there's certain things that were going to sip through and they're Page 451 August 10, 2020 going to end up being looked at. That's pretty obvious that that's probably something that's major that will be looked at. There wasn't anything on the staff saying, no, we're not going to bring it up, because everything's on the table at this point for the comprehensive study. Does that answer your question? Vice Mayor Martinez: Yes, no, it does. I'm just remembering the issues we had quite a bit ago when somebody brought up the idea of one-way street in a Market and King with Loudoun and-- Was it Wirt? I forget. Anyway, it doesn't matter. I look forward to hearing more from you. Thank you, Calvin. Mayor Burk: Mr. Campbell? Council Member Campbell: All right, Calvin, now we're going to dig deep. Good job. I appreciate that this is a process and modeling does require questions and conversation and more information. I just like the broader approach to it and I appreciate it. Thank you. Mayor Burk: Ms. Fox? Thanks. Council Member Fox: I tend to agree with a few of my colleagues that when we brought up this as a work discussion or a discussion topic, we were pretty interested in Market and Loudoun, the one-way. I can appreciate maybe looking at that and then seeing how it would affect everything else. I tend to agree with Council Member Steinberg that changing things now and then maybe having to change them again down the road might not be the best thing for residents and even for visitors too who have been here quite a few times. The $250K that we just asked for from the County, the CIP, that's for this study particularly? Calvin Grow: That would be for the Phase III, the comprehensive study [unintelligible 02:54:05]. Council Member Fox: If for some reason that came through, could we get this ball rolling, especially, and include the Market and the Loudoun Street, that study, get that in there? Because I think that's the meat of it for most of us. Calvin Grow: Yes, ma'am. We would also look at a number of different things. If we did the one -ways at that point, parking might be an issue also when we add parking, I put the one -ways and that kind of thing. Yes, that would definitely be part of it. Council Member Fox: Maybe the next thing, just see if we can get that in the CIP at this point, then that wouldn't be such a burden for us if it were granted through the County and maybe we can get that process started. Correct me if I'm wrong, I thought we had a discussion about the light at North and King and we kind of agreed that none of us really wanted it. Am I correct about that? Calvin Grow: We were with the Council and talked about that. We talked about North Street making it one-way. I think when staff was here before and we've kicked that around with staff and said, is there something maybe we could do before we make streets one-way up there on North Street? Could we do some turn restrictions to see if that would work and just force people to go to the North and use Battlefield Parkway, because at that point, there's a lot of capacity. Once you make a street one-way, it's permanent. We can reverse it, whatever. We were trying to look at some-- maybe a Phase I where we put some turn restrictions in first if the signal became warranted, if something out there, all of a sudden now, people are back, they're using the garage, it's full. Everybody's leaving at five o'clock. There's major problems right there on the street and we're going to have to make some decisions and we thought maybe the turn restrictions may help in an interim. Council Member Fox: I'm talking specifically about the light, that the signal is-- that's what I got from this as you're talking about the light at North and King. Calvin Grow: Yes. The light there in North and King Street, it's not in the CIP, so Council has not put it in the CIP. I would say that you're not for the light there. I've heard that from a number of different Council Members that they don't want it, a light in Town. It's not a good place to put a traffic light even though it was recommended by the County, is their traffic engineer. They recommended to put a signal Page 461 August 10, 2020 there, there's no turn lanes. It's a narrow street. It would be difficult to tie the two signals together, because they would have to be tied together, the one at Loudoun, and also if we put something in there, but we think there's some other options beside that. Council Member Fox: Okay, good. Because I felt like you were recommending we resurrect that streetlight. Okay. Calvin Grow: No. Council Member Fox: All right. Then for the Wirt Street one-way, I tend to agree again with Council Member Steinberg. That's a wider street, I think maybe a turn restriction or two in this process, that might be helpful, but I don't know if a one-way is-- I'd rather wait to see what happens with Loudoun and Market first before I consider that. Thanks. Calvin Grow: Does that include Liberty Street too? Council Member Fox: Yes, I agree that Liberty Street's very, very narrow, Wirt's wider. It's just you have to go into Downtown if you're trying to get-- so you're parked between Liberty and Wirt and you want to make that right and go South and get back to western part of Leesburg or whatever. That will no longer be possible which is strange to me, but Wirt can handle that to a capacity at least on that stretch. That's what I'm saying. Calvin Grow: Yes. Mayor Burk: All right, so everybody had a chance to speak. Thank you very much. That report most certainly is very thorough. We do have a lot to do and there's a lot of ideas on how to do them, but I do agree with what everybody has said that we don't need to be doing small changes and then have to change them back again. The only other thing I would ask is that we need to take consideration that people that live there on those streets. There's been a lot of changes for the people that live around Pennington and we need to be careful that we're not making changes that will affect them negatively, so thank you. Thank you very much. All right. The next item is Loudoun County Board of Supervisors and Leesburg Town Council Relationship and Potential Standing Committee. Mr.-- Kaj Dentler: Very short update. This is an item that Council requested back in, I think, it was June of '19. Mr. Campbell had asked for a discussion that Council agreed upon on Council -County relationship. We deferred that until the Board elections in November and then in March, I believe Ms. Fox asked for a discussion that Council agreed upon in regards to a standing committee between the Council and the Board similar to what the Board has with the School Board. That is what is before you and that's the background. That's whatever you want to do. Mayor Burk: Anyone have any questions? Any comments? Mr. Campbell? Council Member Campbell: I guess the delay has been good, because it seems to be time for a more structured relationship, particularly if we entered into a more structured relationship that has financial and other operational benefits. I think, again, the deficit of not having a codified relationship in a JLMA has certainly at times worked against our better interests. I think the question has been asked and not fully answered. What is our relationship with the County and how do we work together on a municipal government basis? Whether or not the County I think wants to talk about it or not, I think we still need to discuss what we think works best for this community and this municipal government in relationship with the County. It comes up every year. We're talking about, well, what do we ask for, and what do we get? We have two funding mechanisms, our annual budget request, and then the CIP request. Every year, in fact, we come away less satisfied with the response. Page 471 August 10, 2020 I think the School Board, LCPS, has an excellent model of meeting. Whether it's with the whole board or finance committee or something, and it just seems to be a big hole that the largest municipality as a Town and a Commonwealth has no direct relationship for government -to -government conversation. That's why I brought it up. I think it needs some direction to look at how we pull that together. I would propose that we try to, at first, try to formalize what we think our relationship should be. Whether it goes anywhere or not, it doesn't stop us from asking, at least we seem to ask for everything else except a relationship. I just brought it up again, because I thought it was time. Mayor Burk: All right. Mr. Steinberg? Council Member Steinberg: Well, I would agree with Councilman Campbell that we do need to establish a more solid, friendly relationship with the County. We're both trying to serve our constituencies and I mentioned before that the Town of Leesburg constituency is also a County of Loudoun constituency, so anything we can do to better improve the relationships between our two governing bodies I think would be a good thing. I'm not exactly sure how we will do this or the shape it will take, but I think it's definitely a positive that we should work towards. Thank you. Mayor Burk: Ms. Fox? Council Member Fox: I will echo both my colleagues' comments. If we do do this, though, is this the time and place to discuss how it will be done or do we initiate something? How does this work? Mayor Burk: That's up to us. You do what you want to do. You want to send a letter and ask for them to start the consideration, the discussion or if you want something else. Council Member Fox: Well, I guess we got to get them on board too, so yes, I guess that would be the best thing. I'm tired. Sorry. Mayor Burk: Mr. Dunn? Council Member Dunn: Thank you. Yes, I think this has some merit. I'm always a little suspect about additional committees, but in this case, I think that an option could be that, one, I would recommend that the meetings be publicly announced that they'd be held in public, that they not be in closed sessions, that it be two representatives from Council and two from the Board of Supervisors, and that I think it would also be good if a corresponding staffer would be there, whether it be the top of each governing bodies' government, like the Town Manager, et cetera, or the assistant. I think too that it should not be going into with the-- just looking to get glad-handing and support from everybody's fellow, lovely agreed upon political partners, but it seems to be that the looking for and offering dissenting views and all of Council's input or all the Board of Supervisors' input, whether that was in the majority or the minority should be considered. If Mr. Martinez could go on mute, it would be helpful, because there's a lot of background noise coming from there. Thank you. I think that the committee should bring up the issues that are deemed important from Council and as I was saying, if there's a majority opinion that is going forward, then the committee should discuss that, but they should also have the ability to discuss what the objections might be to the majority, because I think it's good that the opposing views also get heard. I think as far as a timeframe, as far as setting something up, something like this up, it should be a -- rather than waiting for election times, I would recommend that it'd be an annual appointment and that at each appointment, it's somebody different being assigned to that position, it's not the same people each time. Again, it gives a differing of opinion. The only thing I can point to that Mr. Campbell graciously pointed out during the last attempt was that when there were meetings being set up by the Board of Supervisors, they selected who they wanted to meet with and I think that was in an effort to get favorable opinions and responses. Frankly, I think that Mr. Campbell and I were left out of those, because we would have actually given a true response to how we really felt about certain situations instead of just garnering an agreement. I think that if this Page 481 August 10, 2020 committee were to move forward, that they go forward with an agenda that Council's agreed on and that the Board of Supervisors agreed on. Obviously, we are two separate governing bodies and we have two separate sets of priorities. However, I think one of the biggest issues that seems to be continually missed at the County level is that we are, in fact, part of the County and they seem to like to make sure that we remember that we're part of the County when they want to control our JLMA, but when we look for funding for things in Town, much like we talked about tonight or agreements that they should be doing certain functions that are automatic in other parts of the County, all of a sudden we have to have special agreements to get those done or all of a sudden the funding isn't equally disbursed. I think that we would need to go into it knowing that some meetings are going to be good and some meetings aren't going to be that good, but that is as Mr. Campbell puts it, is part of a relationship and as I recall, you don't propose marriage on the first date. It takes the time to build a relationship and there's good and bad parts to relationships and-- but I think that this could help us going forward. Thank you. Mayor Burk: Thank you, Mr. Dunn. Mr. Martinez? Vice Mayor Martinez: Sure. I don't disagree with what everybody says and I do know we need to do something, but in the current environment, it's not going to be easy and I would not be surprised if we hold our hand out to collaborate that it gets slapped a couple of times, but we can always continue to move forward and I always offer that fig leaf and-- or not, whatever leaf it is, and move forward and stop talking about the past. One thing I am going to talk about, though, is that I'm really sick and tired of people talking about partisan politics. This has nothing to do with partisan politics, it never has. There's only been one person on Council that continually brings it up and it's because they're trying not to play off theirs. My feeling is, is that we've always been nonpartisan and that we've always tried to do our best with the County and all we can do is continue to move forward and that's all. Thank you. Mayor Burk: All right. I do need to give some credit to Chairman Randall. After our last discussion, I did go to her and ask for a set meeting time and things of that nature, and the concern was that we are one Town, there are six others that would require additional seven meetings and she was not very comfortable with that concept. She did agree that at the COLT meetings, which happen once a month, where all the mayor's meet, that she assign two people, two board members, to be representatives and liaisons to that committee, and it is Ms. Umstattd and I believe it's Caleb Kershner, Supervisor Kershner. They come to the meetings and we discuss what all the different towns are dealing with and that sort of thing. The Chair has been meeting with the mayors once a week for the last about two months during all this COVID issues that we're dealing with. She's been very open to talking with us, like I said, every week and it's been very productive. However, there is four people that would like to start the process and see where it goes, we can send a letter asking for the process to begin. Are there four people that are interested in bringing that forward? Vice Mayor Martinez: Yes. Mayor Burk: All right. Yes, you got four people. Other than Mr. Steinberg, Mr. Martinez, I suspect it's all of us. We can move forward on that. That takes us to additions to future meetings. Mr. Steinberg? Ms. Fox? Mr. Campbell? Mr. Martinez? Vice Mayor Martinez: No, I have none, but I also want to apologize for forgetting to mute. Mayor Burk: All right. Thank you. Mr. Dunn? Council Member Dunn: I have nothing. Thank you. Page 491 August 10, 2020 Mayor Burk: All right. I do have one and it came in the form of a letter on behalf of the American Payroll Association that seeks to have support for a Payroll Week in Leesburg. This week is the designation in which Labor Day occurs as Payroll Week would go far to recognize the importance of the contributions of citizens who work to support the American dream. We do this every year. She even has included the proclamation wording. If there are four people that would allow us to move forward on that and give a proclamation for payroll week, please let me know. Vice Mayor Martinez: Yes. Mayor Burk: Mr. Steinberg, myself, Ms. Fox, Mr. Campbell, and Mr. Martinez. Do I have a motion to adjourn? Council Member Steinberg: So moved. Mayor Burk: Second? Vice Mayor Martinez: So moved. Mayor Burk: Second, Mr. Martinez? Vice Mayor Martinez: Okay. Mayor Burk: Seconded --All in favor, indicate by saying aye. Opposed? All right, thank you all. Page 501 August 10, 2020