Loading...
HomeMy Public PortalAbout2021_tcwsmin0510Council Work Session May 10, 2021 Council Chamber, 25 West Market Street, 7:00 p.m. Mayor Kelly Burk presiding. Council Members Present: Ara Bagdasarian, Zach Cummings, Suzanne Fox, Vice Mayor Martinez, Kari Nacy, Neil Steinberg and Mayor Kelly Burk. Council Members Absent: None. Staff Present: Town Manager Kaj Dentler, Town Attorney Christopher Spera, Deputy Town Manager Keith Markel, Chief of Police Greg Brown, Director of Economic Development Russell Seymour, Director of Plan Review Bill Ackman, Director of Public Works and Capital Projects Renee LaFollette, Stormwater and Environmental Manager Philip Jones, and Clerk of Council Eileen Boeing. AGENDA ITEMS 1. Items for Discussion a. Storm Water Management — Tuscarora Creek and Town Branch Mr. Bill Ackman and Mr. Philip Jones presented Council with an overview of stormwater management in the Town of Leesburg and reviewed the areas and reasons why some areas are prone to flooding. Council and staff, including Ms. Renee LaFollette, discussed the item. b. Liberty Lot Redevelopment Mr. Russell Seymour and Mr. Chris Spera provided an overview of the Liberty Lot Redevelopment concept and the legal steps required to request proposals for the redevelopment. Council and staff discussed the item. It was the consensus of the Council to proceed with issuing a Request for Proposals (RFP) for a public/private partnership for the Liberty Lot Redevelopment and confirm the parameters of the request with Council at a Work Session (date to be determined) before the request is issued. c. Leesburg Police Department — 2020 Crime Report Chief Greg Brown presented Council with the Leesburg Crime statistics for 2020. Chief Brown noted the statistics that were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Chief Brown advised Council he would be returning in the coming months to provide them with the Leesburg Police Department's annual report. Council and staff discussed the item. d. Civilian Oversight Body for Leesburg Police Department Mr. Chris Spera reviewed the State legislation relative to Civilian Oversight bodies and the inability for Towns to create an Oversight Body. Mr. Spera noted that the Town of Leesburg Police Department could be subject to a Civilian Oversight Body comprised on Loudoun County residents but that it 1'Page Council Work Session May 10, 2021 would not be applicable to the Sheriffs Department. Mr. Spera confirmed for Council that they could establish an advisory commission but that it would not have the same powers as a Civilian Oversight Body. Council and staff discussed the item. It was the consensus of the Council to seek an Advisory Opinion for the Attorney General's Office regarding the Town's interpretation of the State Law. It was the consensus of the Council to hold a Work Session to discuss the formation of a task force who would be tasked with what type of body should be created, who the membership should be, and to create a charter. 2. Additions to Future Council Meetings a. None. 3. Adjournment On a motion by Council Member Steinberg, seconded by Council Member Bagdasarian, the meeting was adjourned at 9:13 p.m. • Clerk of Council 2021_tcwsmin0510 2 Page May 10, 2021 —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: Let's call to order tonight's May 10th Town work session. There is no one that is participating electronically. Our first item for discussion tonight is stormwater management Tuscarora Creek and Town Branch. Bill, you're going to be doing this? Bill Ackman: Good evening, Madam Mayor, Members of Council. I'm here tonight. I've got Renee LaFollette and Phil Jones with me from Public Works. We're going to try to get through this quickly. As requested at your March 9th meeting, staff put together a brief presentation on the drainage associated with Town Branch and Tuscarora Creek. Topics we want to touch tonight include, why we see flooding in our neighborhoods? What caused the flooding and the degradation of the Town Branch and Tuscarora Creek and what regulations are in place today to prevent further flooding and degradation of our streams? There are many CIP projects that have been done over the years as well as some that are planned in the future. Also, we're going to touch briefly on the importance of the Town's MS -4 permit. Why do we see continued flooding in our neighborhoods? Well, many of our older neighborhoods didn't have stormwater management at all. They came into the Town, the developers developed it. There were no stormwater ponds. There was nothing to control the runoff. You can imagine rain falling on the ground when it's trees and grass it absorbs into the ground. When it becomes pavement and rooftop, you have a lot more flow that comes off the ground. Today that isn't the case. We have stormwater management ponds but back in the day, we did not. Mayor Burk: Bill, may I interrupt you for a second? Is this one not working? You can go on. Bill Ackman: We have a progression, pre -1990, 1990 to 2014 to today. Here's a couple of projects that did not have stormwater management, Country Club, Beauregard Estates, Ashton Downs. You'll notice those are some familiar names and there's a lot of CIP projects associated with that. Silver Oaks, Oakview, Prospect Hills, Belmont, Virginia Knolls, Towns of Vanderbilt, Lowenbach. Here's an interesting one. There's over five square miles of drainage that comes from the County and undetained into the Town. In 1990, the DCSM was adopted in the Town and it was adopted-- the portion of the regs that came in that dealt with stormwater management included minimum State regulations. Projects after 1990 required stormwater management to control the volume of the water. In other words, at any given time, there's no more water leaving the site than what left the site pre - development. In 2008 there was an update to deal with water quantity and water quality so that not only the quantity of the water leaving but also the quality of it was much better. In 1990 prior to 2008 it was water quantity only. Some of the projects, Potomac Station, Kincaid Forest, Stratford, Foxridge only had water quantity only. Then between 2008 to 2014 we started dealing with water quantity and water quality. Some projects include Villages at Leesburg, Lowes, Crescent Place, and a few others. Then in 2014, the State came along as some of you may recall, and made us up our regs again. Not only they make the release rate coming from the site even lower in some cases than pre -development but also strengthen the quality of the water that was leaving the site. In 2014+ here's a quick summation of some of the projects that have the latest regulations associated with it. White Oak, Tuscarora Village, Leesburg West, Crescent Park, Courts Expansion, Pennington Garage, Shops at Russel Branch, Potomac Station Market Place, Brickyard, King Street Station, East Quarter, Leesburg Tech Park, Douglass School, and North Star School and there's many more. Something else that happened in 1990 was the Town created an overall regional stormwater management plan. In that, there were four major ponds that were just part of that. Exeter, Strafford, Greenway Farms, and Meadowbrook. Exeter, Stratford, and Greenway Farms are all constructed. Meadowbrook is Page 11 May 10, 2021 under construction. With that, I'm going to turn it over to Phil to talk about some of the projects that we have in the books and the ones that we have that are done, and the ones that are on the book now. Phil. Phil Jones: Thanks, Bill. As Bill noted my name is Phil Jones. I'm the Stormwater Manager in Public Works. The map you see up here are areas in red that over the past years have flooded in Town. You can see that they're generally clustered around several of the large streams that run through Town, being Tuscarora Creek and Town Branch. I'm not going to go through all of them here with you today, but a couple I'd like to draw your attention to. In the upper left-hand corner near Market Street is Town Branch at Mosby Drive. That's an area in the past year where we dealt with a lot of stream bank erosion and our stream restoration project is proposed. At the confluence of Tuscarora Creek and Town Branch toward the center of the map is the site of our recently completed Tuscarora Creek stream restoration project. Then in the lower right-hand corner, just outside the Bypass, the area in red there is Beauregard Estates. Where we have there recently added a Lawson Road pedestrian bridge project and where we have recurrent flooding of some of those properties and stream bank erosion. We're going to go through now some past capital improvement projects that have been done to alleviate drainage issues. A lot of these were added in 2008 after Hurricane Hanna swept through Town and flooded a lot of areas. The picture you'll see there is in 2011. Tuscarora Creek flooded the community of Virginia Knolls. A project which I'm sure all of you are familiar with is our recently completed stream restoration project along Tuscarora Creek. Along the left, you'll see prior to the project, the stream had a lot of stream bank erosion, which was pushing sediment downstream. The project came in and has stabilized that, adding a lot of natural features back to the stream. The Town has gotten a lot of water quality credits from that project to help meet a lot of our regulatory requirements with the State. As you'll note from that map, this area experienced a lot of flooding in addition to stream bank erosion. The project proposed a lot of flood mitigation design elements including a wall between the floodplain and the adjacent Virginia Knolls community. The hope moving forward is that that'll alleviate a lot of the flood issues they've had in the past. North King Street drainage improvements. That project sought to replace a series of old deteriorated undersized drainage infrastructure from North King Street to Wirt Street downtown. The project added curb and gutter and added a properly sized reinforced concrete pipe in that area which has alleviated the drainage issues. The section at Dry Mill Road near Loudoun County High School used to be recurrently closed when large storm events came through Town. The capital improvement project for this area added storm sewer pipe and after the project, the flooding issues have been eliminated or resolved. About 800 feet of Woodberry Road were improved around 2008. It used to be open sections of drainage ditch which were then converted to curb and gutter and storm sewer system. Prior to the project, when it would rain, water would tend to stand after the storm in the ditches. Obviously with the addition of curb and gutter and storm sewer pipe that very nicely eliminated that drainage concern. At Colonial Square along Edwards Ferry Road, the parking lot which you can see on the left there used to flood during high -intensity rainfall events. That was due to an undersized corrugated metal pipe that was underneath the parking lot. The project came in and installed two parallel runs of concrete box culverts which added a significant amount of drainage capacity underneath the parking lot and has subsequently eliminated the recurrent flooding issue. At Fort Evans Road, sections of the road which used to be open ditches have been converted as part of that project to curb and gutter with storm sewer. That project also instituted what is called a stormwater management pro -rata share program where developers along that corridor contribute to offsite stormwater management measures. Browns Meadow Court, on the left you can see prior to the project there was a lot of overland flow, which was leading to standing water and some flooding of residential properties in that community. The project came through, added storm sewer inlets, storm sewer pipes under the ground, which again has very nicely alleviated the standing water and flooding issues. Some future drainage projects that have been added to the CIP. You'll see on the right, this was from last week at Lawson Road. That pedestrian crossing has degraded over a number of years and the CIP project that's upcoming will put a new pedestrian crossing across the stream at that spot. That Page 21 May 10, 2021 project will also alleviate some upstream erosion issues which have been again developing over a number of years. As we talked about a little bit, Town Branch at Mosby Drive is a stream restoration project that has been added to the CIP. That'll again try to eliminate some flooding issues and a lot of erosion that's occurred over the past several years. The Royal Street and Liberty Street drainage projects seek to remedy some localized flooding in some of the downtown areas as well. That will most likely be addressed by the addition of some storm sewer capacity in those sections. Then finally the Town's MS4 permit also called Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System Permit, in case you want to get a tongue twister there. The Town is required through the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality to utilize six minimum control measures to reduce pollutants and protect water quality for downstream areas. With that, I'll open it up to questions. Mayor Burk: Thank you. Very interesting. Eileen Boeing: Madam Mayor. Mayor Burk: Yes. Eileen Boeing: Can you give us just a moment to bring the screen up and down? It's going to make some noise so I didn't want to do it when someone was speaking. Mayor Burk: Sure. Eileen Boeing: Thank you. We hope so. [pause] Council Member Bagdasarian: I don't think there's any power going to the projector in the rear room. Eileen Boeing: We just flipped the breaker to see if we could get it to come back on and it didn't come back on. Mayor Burk: Nice try though. [laughs] All right, we'll have to be using just one screen, and Suzanne, your neck will probably fall off. That being the case, Suzanne, do you have any questions? Council Member Suzanne Fox: Just a couple of questions, thank you. In our report here, it said it was after or prior to 1990 when most of this degradation came about. Of course, that predates me but I hear a lot about how much things have worsened because of other things that have been built upstream. I guess those two things don't compute with me because people thought it was great before some of these projects were built recently. I'm just trying to figure out why, before 1990, has most of the degradation occurred? Bill Ackman: I can tell you, based on regulations, we have reduced or made sure the developer reduced the amount of water leaving the site at any given point in time. Water does flow a little longer, though, because it's detained over time. That could potentially be part of it, but I think another big part of that is also once the damage is already done it's going to progressively get worse as time goes on. It could just be coincidental that as time goes on they start to notice it. When a new project gets constructed, occasionally, you will pay attention to things that, maybe, you didn't pay attention to in the past. Then there's Mother Nature. Mother Nature has been brutal to us in the last few years. We've seen more what we call 100 -year storms or 1 %-chance-of-occurring storms occurring a lot more often than we did in the past. Those storms are not detained by the ponds. Council Member Fox: How many projects has the Town done in the past, I don't know, decade to mitigate some of the things that have happened prior? There were no requirements of any sort of developer to do any stormwater mitigation. How many projects have we had? Page 31 May 10, 2021 Bill Ackman: Seven or eight, Renee? Renee LaFollette: In the past 10 to 15 years, we've done a number of capital projects that were all added to the CIP in 2005/6 timeframe. We're talking Dry Mill Road, Browns Meadow, Colonial Square, at Edward's Ferry, Fort Evans Road, North King Street Drainage. All of those are in the older sections of Town where those developments were done prior to a lot of the regulations being in place. On a couple of the projects that finally made their paces through, the Tuscarora Creek project, for example, that we just finished and have the ribbon cutting on Saturday. I will say that once you start seeing the degradation, we noticed this with Tuscarora Creek as we were going through the design process, once that degradation starts it's almost like it accelerates. It starts occurring faster and faster and faster so you start noticing it more and more because you're starting to see that cut -down in the channel faster and it becomes more prominent. Council Member Fox: Right, thank you. This map here with all the stormwater management regional facilities and flooding area, are we going to be doing things to all these areas, or is that just a heads - up for the future? Renee LaFollette: From a CIP perspective, the Town Branch at Mosby project is in the CIP in '23, and if we get our Slack grant, that could possibly be moved into fiscal '22. The area around the confluence of Town Branch and Tuscarora Creek was the Tuscarora Creek stream mitigation and flooding project that we just completed. The one up in the further reaches of Tuscarora Creek through what is the golf course we've done a couple of small drainage projects along Country Club Drive. Then the one further down near Lawson Road, that section of Tuscarora Creek is the pedestrian crossing and some stream improvements. We also have another project in the potential futures in that area for a potential stream restoration from the Bypass towards Lawson Road and the area in north of Edwards Ferry, that's marked number one. That area there is a part of Lowenbach and then the area going into Carrvale. All of that drainage was handled with the last phase of Lowenbach. Council Member Fox: Do we see any end in sight to this? Renee LaFollette: The areas that have shown the flooding that are shown on this map, we have dealt with probably 90% of that. It's probably the reaches of Tuscarora Creek outside of the Bypass and then potentially through the Westpark Golf Course. If that goes into a conservation easement we wouldn't be doing anything most likely with any of the drainage up there unless it is impacting private properties. Council Member Fox: Ok. Thank you. Just one more quick question for our staff. I know the answer to this but I still want you to answer it. Which is better for stormwater mitigation, gravel, or asphalt. Bill Ackman: I'm sorry what was that again? Council Member Fox: Which is better for stormwater mitigation, gravel or asphalt? Bill Ackman: It depends. Council Member Fox: On what? Bill Ackman: It depends on the type of soils that are underneath the gravel. Certain soils just really don't take the water. They can be clays, they can be rock that it just doesn't infiltrate and it just runs right off. In some cases, asphalt can be better because you can collect it easier and put it into a storm system, and control the outfall. Council Member Fox: Alright. Thank you. Mayor Burk: Interesting. Mr. Steinberg. Page 41 May 10, 2021 Council Member Neil Steinberg: Thanks for the presentation. Let me ask you a couple of questions as it pertains to the County since we made mention of County situations outside the Town limits it still affects us. Do we know which developments specifically we're most affected by? I know we have Shenstone and Beacon Hill up the mountain and several other situations that I suspect those could potentially I guess contribute to either Town Branch or Tuscarora. Are we aware of the type of outflow we see from areas like that that affect us? Bill Ackman: I don't know that we've studied it. If you look at where Tuscarora Creek comes into the Town, you can see how desegregated the stream is there just as you're coming down Dry Mill Road. You can actually see the stream right there and all that water's coming from the County. At that point, five square miles is a lot of area. To my knowledge, none of those subdivisions up there had stormwater management. I could be wrong. Also, the VDOT original Route 7 four lanes did not include any stormwater management. Now the climbing lanes did but the original Route 7 did not. Council Member Steinberg: Well that's funny. That leads to a question I had which is how much does the Bypass contribute to this issue and what is the County's current responsibility and their potential future responsibility in helping alleviate both quantity and quality of water in the Town system? Bill Ackman: That's a million -dollar question. Council Member Steinberg: Multi -million, I suspect. Bill Ackman: Yes, multimillion -dollar question. Good point. There's nothing that would make them today have to go back and retrofit anything. VDOT has-- Phil touched quickly on an MS -4 Permit — which deals with water quality which is basically phosphorous nitrogen and suspended solids. All that is related to the amount of water that comes down through a channel. In that flow combined throughout the State, VDOT has their own MS -4. They Statewide have a permit. They may do nothing in this part of the watershed and do things in other parts of the State within the right away and meet their MS -4. There's nothing that really says they have to come back and retrofit. Council Member Steinberg: Retroactively? Bill Ackman: Yeah. Council Member Steinberg: Which is still continuing with the County. What is our responsibility in the JLMA where we're providing utilities to development which may not then wind up in the Town? Who deals in the design standards? Of course the County. Of course, I assume they have to meet similar requirements and new development. Is that then in effect taken care of even though we have no say it? Bill Ackman: For new developments, that's correct. Council Member Steinberg: For new development. What are the responsibilities of HOAs in both newer and older neighborhoods? How will they be impacted in the future in terms of having to live up to current standards? Bill Ackman: The way the State code is written today they're only responsible for the stormwater management facilities that were put in place at the time of the development. In other words, if the development had no stormwater management they would not be required to construct any new facilities whether it be stormwater quality or quantity. Those developments that had water quantity in that area between 1990 and 2008, they're not required to do anything with water quality. All they have to do is continue to maintain the facility so that it functions in a manner in which it was designed. Council Member Steinberg: When we have a large stormwater management area like Exeter and we know we recently completed negotiations with them as to who owns the dam what will their future responsibility be, especially if our 110, 100% model continues to fail us or at some point who's responsible for increasing the catchment of an area like that? Page 51 May 10, 2021 Bill Ackman: They would be required to maintain the entire pond is my understanding through a settlement agreement. They wouldn't be responsible for making the pond any bigger or smaller based on future regulations unless the State came in and said all existing ponds have to be upgraded to current standards which I'm not sure they can do. Council Member Steinberg: Our current standards always up to the States. For example, you've already mentioned that we've been caught a little flat-footed with the 100% assumption. At what point do we reevaluate volumes of water and then apply those in the future to management areas? Can we do that on our own or do we have to wait for State guidance before we can? Bill Ackman: We don't have to wait for State guidance. However, it is a pretty complex science. For example, a few years ago, Loudoun County reduced the amount of water that was anticipated for certain storm events. The Town did not. We assumed a higher volume of water falling from the sky even though the State and the County lowered theirs. In that case, we've already looked ahead to say, "Hey, what about if rainfall intensities increase over the years?" We don't want to be caught lowering our standards and then having things designed that create flooding and other issues. One of the things we did about a year ago is I had one of my engineers research rainfall data over the last five years. We found that the numbers that we have in the DCSM today are almost dead on. Had we reduced and gone to what the County had we would see more flooding. Council Member Steinberg: Might we expect a recommendation from the staff at some point that we take a hard look at these projections and decide that we need up the levels? Bill Ackman: What we do is about every year we go back and look at the rainfall statistics to see if the numbers we have in our books match what's in the actual rainfall. What we've found so far is they do match. As far as to be able to predict out, I don't know how to do that. I think that's something where we would probably have to have a special consultant come on board and start guesstimating those types of numbers. Council Member Steinberg: Then in the staff report, there's a reference to small MS -4s What's a large MS -4? Bill Ackman: Phil, you want to take that? Phil Jones: Fairfax County would be an example of a large MS -4. It's based on population in essence. The Town of Leesburg is a small MS -4. Council Member Steinberg: Then finally is the Town in a position in any way to control the use of herbicides Town -wide as opposed to just on Town property? When we start talking about quality versus quantity, what steps are we permitted to take in order to accomplish that? Phil Jones: I'm not sure from a legislative perspective what we're allowed to do on that. I'm sorry. Sorry, it's the [inaudible]. From a legislative perspective, I'm not sure what we're-- I'd have to get back to you on that. I know that from an MS -4 perspective, we have the public outreach mechanisms that we do in terms of mailers, and public outreach, which we're required to do as part of our permit. We preach best practices on a lot of those types of programs. Council Member Steinberg: Well, it'll be nice to have an answer on that. Thank you. Mayor Burk: Mr. Cummings. Council Member Zach Cummings: Thank you. Thank you, staff, for this report was really thorough, and a lot of great reading. I appreciate that. I just have a few questions. One of the things mentioned tonight, and in the report, some of the management doesn't matter, because it's things are happening outside of the Town limits. Are there any upcoming County -wide developments that you all have concern on with regards to the stormwater management as it comes into the Town? Bill Ackman: All future developments will be required to meet the minimum State standards, which is very similar to our regulations. I don't have a lot of concern as far as if we were to take a development Page 61 May 10, 2021 in five years from now after it's been designed in the County. One of the things that I mentioned earlier was the rainfall intensity difference. There may be a little bit there. Storm pipes maybe just a little undersized but typically, there's enough fluff in there just in the calculations that it could make a difference. For your average rainstorms, probably not. Your larger rainstorms, maybe. That also has an impact on the amount of water that gets released from stormwater management facilities, as well. Do I have great concern? No. Do I have some concern? Yes. Council Member Cummings: Is there a current procedure in place or practice when a development is happening outside of the Town but affecting the waterways that come through the Town, that staff works with the County to just go review any plans to provide an opinion or, just highlight for the County staff, that this could potentially cause an issue with the Town? Bill Ackman: Yes. We get referrals for every project that's within the JMLA, and then we would make some more tight comments. Council Member Cummings: Perfect. You mentioned obviously, your rainfall figures are ahead of -- You're projecting well ahead of others. Is there anything else that would need to be updated here in the Town in the DCSM for future development or redevelopment here in Leesburg? Bill Ackman: Not at the moment. I think we have, for example, one of the things that a lot of people ask me questions on all the time is overland relief. Overland relief is something that the County doesn't really have a hard procedure on. Their regulations are a little looser than ours. What our 100 - year overland relief does is any new buildings that are going in, under today's standards, we make the developer look at the new buildings and make sure that even with a 100 -year flood, that doesn't go into our storm system, that it routes around those buildings, so they don't flood. That's one of the reasons why in the newer neighborhoods, you're not being requested to have CIP projects. Council Member Cummings: Sure. Perfect. Then I know the give or take 10 neighborhoods that were developed before the 1990 standards were put into place, are there any that don't have any kind of stormwater management systems, storm sewers, and anything like that, that we may in the future need to look into putting in place? Bill Ackman: I believe most of them have storm sewer systems. They just don't have anything to manage the volume of water that get into them. Council Member Cummings: No plans in the future to add a pond or any retention facilities. Bill Ackman: Not at this time. Other than what's in the CIP. Council Member Cummings: Sure. Then my last question is just, beyond pipes and cement or rock. Is there any other type of mitigation that can be done for maybe, when an area floods and then you have some standing water as it recedes, that's non, like I said, pipes, non -gravel, just maybe something that's not traditional? I thought about and I think we're going to be meeting with some residents over in Lawson Road, talking about putting some high water -consuming trees in an area. Is there anything like that that the Town can be looking at in the future to help mitigate some water issues? Bill Ackman: Each site is a unique process. What we would suggest is in each one of those areas, we would look at different alternatives to find the correct solution. Renee LaFollette: I'll add too, that the challenge we have with a lot of other types of mitigation, like rain gardens or ditches that can absorb more is the geology of Leesburg. We have a lot of clay and a lot of fat clays, and that is not conducive to water perking or saturating the ground. It tends to sit on the surface. If you've ever looked at your backyards, when you don't get a lot of rain, it cracks real bad. That's because of the types of soils we have. Without doing an extensive amount of excavation, to put in the proper drainage, it becomes very expensive, and they're maintenance intensive. It's very expensive on the back end as well. Council Member Cummings: Thank you so much. Page 71 May 10, 2021 Mayor Burk: Mr. Martinez. Vice Mayor Fernando "Marty" Martinez: Well, I have a few comments. When we talk about the developments being done I remember one of the biggest issues with Lowenbach was that Exeter was built, and they did everything that was required to them but we didn't anticipate that the runoff would flow into Lowenbach and start filling in basements that never been flooded before. Which is why we had to do that major project to upgrade the Lowenbach neighborhood. That's just a comment from what I know. How has the drainage system upgrades to Lowenbach been? Renee LaFollette: Since we finished the Lowenbach project, I have not received any drainage complaints from Prince, Catoctin, Blue Ridge, Washington. There haven't been any complaints. Vice Mayor Martinez: Not only that the neighborhood looks great, but I haven't seen any complaints either. Sycolin Creek, Goose Creek, not necessarily in the Town, but they're in the JMLA. We're now seeing developments being put there. The reason I brought up Exeter and Lowenbach is that I don't want to see these developments going in the JMLA impacting the creeks and then impacting the neighborhoods surrounding the JMLA and Leesburg. What do we have in place to check those to make sure that whoever is developing those properties not only take care of their neighborhood but surrounding areas like the Creek and Leesburg? Bill Ackman: Loudoun County has their own stormwater management team. We're trusting them to take the hard look at that since it's in the County and they're responsible for managing the stormwater in the County outside of the corporate limits of the Town. Vice Mayor Martinez: Do we get a review? Bill Ackman: I'm sorry. Vice Mayor Martinez: Do we get to review the plans? Bill Ackman: If it's outside the JMLA, we often just don't know what they're doing out there. Vice Mayor Martinez: If it's within the JMLA. Bill Ackman: If it's in the JMLA they send us a referral and we try to take a quick look at it. Vice Mayor Martinez: I hope you take more than a quick look on the stormwater management because that can be pretty nasty at times as you know. Floodplains. How does all that stormwater management help with floodplains? Bill Ackman: That's a good question. Vice Mayor Martinez: Because I would love to see Westpark if we're going to make it into a park find some way to mitigate the floodplains with all the drainage and stuff that just sits there. Bill Ackman: Floodplains are looked at for flows that don't make it into the storm drainage system underground, or assumes that the storm is so large, that the full capacity of the underground pipes are at their maximum. The water is running along the roads, along the ditches, in the backyards around the structures. It makes its way to the lowest point, which is what we call the floodplain. FEMA has very specific requirements in managing that. As a development occurs, the Town doesn't regulate the 100 -year storm. Any increase in runoff from the 100 -year storm potentially does make it to the creeks but by the time it gets there the thought is those creeks are already pretty well full. It typically doesn't create additional degradation. Some, yes, as Renee mentioned, once the creek banks start to fail, it escalates much quicker. Because there's not a requirement by the State to detain the 100 -year storm. [crosstalk] Page 81 May 10, 2021 I'm sorry. Vice Mayor Martinez: Can we just not allow them to happen. Bill Ackman: I'm sorry? Vice Mayor Martinez: Can we not just ban 100 -year storms? Bill Ackman: Yes, let's do it. [laughter] We'll get a big umbrella that says Town of Leesburg and put it over to the Town. I like that. Vice Mayor Martinez: In Exeter, I noticed there's another Creek that you had highlighted Cattail Branch. Not very big and looks like it goes under 15. How is that doing? Bill Ackman: My understanding is that that stream is well protected, and it's in pretty good shape. In fact, there's a rare form of trout that is further downstream out in the County. For example, when Tuscarora High School was built, everywhere in the floodplain, you'll see a lot more trees in that area. They were very concerned about water heating up and affecting that trout population. You'll see a few more trees in the open space than what was required. That came through I think it was our Department of Environmental Quality at the time. They set an order to give the schools the permits, they had to have so much shade over the property to keep the water from heating up. Vice Mayor Martinez: The other thing was, are there any areas in Town because we're all talking about drainage and flooding and all that, that we can replace asphalt with gravel where it makes sense? I know we're talking about the Liberty parking lot, but I'm talking more of what's surrounding us and maybe having a plan that any development comes up that we replace the asphalt with gravel so that it will drain. If the earth underneath the gravel cannot take it, we can do that. Never mind, I can see you thinking way too hard. [laughter] Come back. Bill Ackman: Where I was going, just real quickly is the Zoning Ordinance would need to be updated to allow that as a surface. If we were to allow it, then we would probably want a specialized system. In fact, right now we're looking at a project that's a very small office building that wants to put a parking lot in its rear yard. We're talking about letting them do a gravel parking lot but it's under very specific circumstance. They're going to use washed gravel to keep the dust down so it doesn't affect the neighbors and they're going to put it in a grid system so that it doesn't spread and start to creep. It's a loaded question. There's a lot to it. Is there an opportunity to do that in certain situations? Yes, and we're already doing it. Vice Mayor Martinez: When you're driving through Town, you see a lot of the small businesses in Town, narrow driveway, but in the back is half a dozen parking spots. That would have been a good opportunity to maybe go to gravel, if it was possible. Bill Ackman: Potentially yes. Vice Mayor Martinez: Yes. I'm just looking at that. What drives the requirement to upgrade drainage systems? For example, in the southwest, say all of a sudden there's a need, what drives that? Besides people saying, "My basements are flooding." What would make us look at a deeper? Again, if you want to come back to me on that. Bill Ackman: No. I'm trying to formulate the answer in a way that makes sense. If there's a new development coming in in an area where there's a known drainage problem, then we're very stringent Page 91 May 10, 2021 on each outfall. The new stormwater regulations require that each individual outfall gets looked at to make sure that it doesn't increase runoff. Under the old regulations prior to 2014, you can take a bunch of water and dump it over here, as long as you release that equal amount less over here. It was a balancing act. Vice Mayor Martinez: This goes back to developments that are being put in like Exeter was. They did all the right things, but we didn't look just a little bit further on how that would impact the drainage systems in Lowenbach. Bill Ackman: That was probably a good example. I don't know a lot about that design, but I would guess under the old regulations, they may have released less over here and released more here and that may be where part of the problem came from but it was within the regulations at the time. That's no longer the case. Vice Mayor Martinez: Right. Good. The last comment, question I have is, you're talking about clay soil, and not really doing well with water or heat. What about the limestone we have? It seems like Leesburg is either clay or limestone underneath the surface. Bill Ackman: It certainly is something we look at with each development. We require core borings especially with certain times types of stormwater management so that they can tell us what is in that exact area. Occasionally we'll even get into areas that have sinkholes. This is a little mindboggling here but imagine a sinkhole in the middle of a field and that water makes its way to this sinkhole today and goes down. What seen downstream is nothing. When you put asphalt over that and you release it at the pre -development rate assuming no cavern underneath, and then you release it at that higher rate. Now downstream properties are going to see an increase in water. What we make developers do today and again, 10 years ago, this didn't happen, but we make them do core borings and geotechnical trying to find those areas. Then there's a factor that goes into the stormwater management ponds that make them hold even more water. A good example of that is White Oak. White Oak has that factor in it. Vice Mayor Martinez: Okay, great. One of the reasons I asked is, Exeter over the last 10, 15 years has had two sinkholes, we had to deal with. Three? Yes. It's a lot of fun, especially trying to figure out how to shore it up. Bill Ackman: We certainly have a lot of interesting geology here. Vice Mayor Martinez: Yes, we do. I want to thank you for your presentation and taking my questions. I know there were probably a little tough --not tough but obnoxious. I appreciate it. Bill Ackman: You just made me think. [laughter] Mayor Burk: Ms. Nacy. Council Member Kari Nacy: Thank you. 1 don't have a whole lot. This is really, really informative and very thorough. Thank you. Catoctin, what just recently happened with the elementary school? Was that the County's responsibility for that stormwater issue that we had those couple of residents come in? Is that is that on the County to take care of? Bill Ackman: Yes, the County is handling it as part of the proffers that are associated with that development. That's an interesting one because there's not an approved plan out there that shows what exists today. Over the last 30 years or between the school making improvements, and that and the neighborhood's coming in, things weren't quite built the way they were supposed to be built and their sheds where they're not supposed to be. There's a lot going on there but yes, the school is responsible to reduce that runoff to minimize the impact on those residents. Council Member Nacy: Yes, because that was some pretty crazy videos that they had of when it was flooding. Page 101 May 10, 2021 Bill Ackman: We're actually looking at that plan right now and we are scrutinizing it. Probably a whole lot more than the schools would like us to. I would rather the schools be mad at me than you guys. Mayor Burk: Smart move. [laughter] Council Member Nacy: My other question was about the piece of property that's across Evergreen Mill Road from Meadowbrook and it was a floodplain and they came to get approval to go to FEMA and asked to fill it in, I guess it wouldn't be a floodplain. Do you know where that's at in the process? Bill Ackman: Yes, again, another project that has come in trying to do the bare minimum and we have been very tough on them and we're working with them right now on some solutions. One of the solutions that I believe Council Member Cummings mentioned was additional trees and that is exactly what they're going to do to help mitigate some of that. You will see a lot more trees going in there if they follow our recommendations. Council Member Nacy: Yes, because it was that Evergreen I don't know the name of that neighborhood was having some flooding issues from that. Good. That's really it. Your report was so thorough. Thank you. The only other thing I was going to say was just for fun if anyone ever wants to see a video of my husband paddle boarding, the creek behind our house when it flooded. It was like whitewater. Mayor Burk: Mr. Bagdasarian. Council Member Ara Bagdasarian: Yes, thank you very much for the presentation. Just two things. You guys really covered most of the questions that I had. The first one is where exactly in the creek are the trout located? [laughter] Mayor Burk: They're down by the streams. Bill Ackman: In an undisclosed location. [crosstalk]. Council Member Bagdasarian: Okay. We'll talk later. No, really, the only other thing is the JLMA and the implications on developing the JLMA and making sure that we have parity with the County's stormwater management team. It is a joint and there's planned development on that property. I just want to make sure that we are in parity. Bill Ackman: We typically make a comment that we would request them to use the higher intensity values and then the developer will come into the County and say, but we're meeting your regulations and then they fold they use the County's regs. Council Member Bagdasarian: That's it. Thank you very much. Very informative. Appreciate it. Mayor Burk: All right. Well, thank you. Your report was very interesting. I just have a couple of questions. One is, I never thought I would hear a discussion on stormwater and the word fluff together. That was interesting. [laughter] When we talk about the pavement and the increase in the amount of pavement many of us have mentioned alternatives. Do we ever look at permeable asphalt? Is that something that's ever considered? Page 111 May 10, 2021 Bill Ackman: We do, especially, on private property. It can be very expensive to maintain. For example, if we use permeable pavement asphalt, it's very expensive to lay, very expensive to maintain. It's a little softer than what you typically get on your general road design. It probably wouldn't wear as well and be a lot more expensive to maintain for the Town to put it on a public road. What we do is we often request the applicant to consider impervious pavement. We've gone to as I mentioned earlier in some cases, gravel with a special design. We've mentioned pavers. There's a product called pervious concrete. As ridiculous as that sounds, it's out there. If you ever want to see a demonstration come to my office, I have a little piece of it. We can put it under the sink and it literally flows right through it. There's been a couple of applications of that in parking lots around Town as well. Mayor Burk: I know Vienna and Herndon both Vienna's police station their parking is all permeable. I know Herndon has also a couple of their parking places. I'm glad to hear that we're considering it and encouraging it. The concrete sounds interesting. It is amazing as I was reading your report that none of this really started happening until 1990. Even though the Clean Water Act came into place before that, the fact that we didn't look at stormwater is just amazing to me. The catch-up that we're playing now is very obvious. I'm hoping that in the end, it will make it so that these streams are cleaner and better for us in the end. That is kind of shocking. Then my last question to you is the pond at Meadowbrook, is it ever going to be not muddy. Bill Ackman: Someday, yes. It will not be muddy. Mayor Burk: Are you sure? Bill Ackman: I promise. Mayor Burk: All right. Thank you very much. Appreciate that report Bill Ackman: Right now that pond is used as a sediment pond so it's expected to be a little muddy but once everything's done it should clear up. Mayor Burk: Good. Because it's pretty muddy. Thank you all very much. Thanks. All right. Our next item up for discussion is the Liberty Lot Redevelopment. Mr. Seymour. Russell Seymour: Good evening Madam Mayor, Members of Council. I'm going to start out by wishing all eligible members of Council, a very belated happy Mother's Day. I wanted to start out by talking a little bit about our Liberty lot facility. That's the Town -owned property in downtown. For location. It starts at location. You can see it's just by the Town Branch park area. It is an area that had many uses over the years. Give you a little bit better idea of where it is. Currently, it's being used as a parking lot and then a facility for our Public Works office as well. The zoning for this area, it's twofold. One it is included in our historic overlay district and our downtown area which is depicted by the area that's outlined there in blue. It is zoned B-1 which is community development or specifically downtown business district. Here's the zoning. Rather than reading all that I highlighted one area that I guess the original or the initial zoning classifications is B-1, community downtown business district is established in recognition of the mixed -use core area as the center of Leesburg employment, tourism, and specialty commercial activity. I think that ties in very well that statement with a lot of what we've seen going on in the downtown area. Then also a lot of the requests that we've been getting for space in our downtown area. From an economic development opportunity for the Town and looking at this space, significant interest as downtown remains a very desirable location for both business development and redevelopment. We've had a number of requests for space in our downtown area. There's been a significant amount of interest. Then also we've had some unsolicited requests for proposals looking at this site as well. Greater use opportunity for the site. I think we can all agree that a parking lot, while important, we're starting to see that and other opportunities downtown. We do now have land that is about a little over two acres, 2.03 acres I believe, that is almost in the heart of our downtown area, zoned for commercial type use and its Town ownership. There's a lot of Page 121 May 10, 2021 opportunity there for that. We've mentioned about it being Town ownership but also add to it, that puts the opportunity or provides Council the opportunity to direct the development of that site. When you look at directing development of that site, don't look at or consider just that one, two -acre site, also look at and consider the impact you'll have, or the opportunity for the surrounding businesses and surrounding area, so this truly puts the Town in a very good position. We talk about space for holding events, meetings, and those types of uses to bring and keep business -generated activity in downtown Leesburg. One of the things that you'll hear talking about or a lot of our businesses talking about is right now, they're going out of Town. They can bring people in. We have a lot of government contractors in our area. They stay close, sometimes in our hotels, but a lot of times they're leaving our area and they're having meetings outside of our area because we do not have that space. We have a Hub Zone. We have a number of attractions to this area. We have a number of larger businesses to this area that have told us point-blank, a number of occasions, "We're tired of having to leave Leesburg to have a meeting." That is something that factors in. Also, as part of your packet, there is a segment or actually a memo generated from, Beth Erickson from Visit Loudoun. It talks a little bit about the demand generators as a part of this. You'll see that in your packet of which they're referring to as I believe it was 76%, was the number that they looked at those types of businesses that were coming in, that were actually looking for some type of meeting space in Loudoun County. That is an important factor that I think is something that we've seen a lot of requests for that, but is something certainly we've had to, unfortunately, turn away for a number of years. Finally, this evening, I wanted to talk a little bit about the staff recommendation. Staff recommends that Council pursue a public -private partnership or similar mechanism and the development of this site in a manner consistent with expanding the economic tourism opportunities in the downtown Leesburg area. From an economic development standpoint, I believe it's going to have the best positive impact, not only on the Town, in general, but also being able to look at bringing something, an activity downtown that is going to have a significant positive impact on our local or existing businesses down there. That said, I want to turn it over to our Town Attorney, to talk a little bit about the legal impacts of it or the legal process, and then we'll both be here to answer any questions you may have. Chris Spera: Thank you, Russ. I have no presentation beyond the good-looking slide that, Russ put together that says "Legal discussion." I simply wanted to touch on a couple of points with respect to public -private partnerships. As some of you are I'm sure aware, you adopted a set of guidelines for public -private partnerships back in 2018. I have reviewed them. The law has not changed since that time and those are in good shape, so the guidelines that you adopted in 2018 are still in play. For the newer Council Members and who may have not touched on this before, basically, a public -private partnership can come about in one of two ways, either the government can solicit almost in an RFP like process, solicit proposals on a particular parcel or group of parcels, or someone from the community, a developer could come in and say, "I've got an idea for this in an unsolicited way." Under either situation, there's a period of time for multiple bids or proposals to come in and whatever the project ends up being, there's a set of allowed or eligible uses that have to remain once the project is done. There could be private elements, but it cannot be exclusively private. There has to be one of these eligible uses that remains as part of the project. It does not have to be the entirety of the project, but it has to remain as part of the project. I don't think it makes a ton of sense to go into too much more detail about that at this point. I think what we as staff think is the right play at this point is if you have an interest in us exploring the possibility of a public -private partnership for this site, then let us apply the guidelines you adopted in 2018, generate something for you to look at. We wouldn't put it out as a solicitation until after you've had a chance to review it at a subsequent meeting. Then, if you're comfortable with what we've developed, then let us put that out on the street and see who might be interested in working with us within the requirements of our guidelines and the State law. With that, I am done. Russell and I are here for any questions you may have. Mayor Burk: Okay. Thank you very much. Yes, we did work on that previously. Council Member Nacy. Page 131 May 10, 2021 Council Member Nacy: I don't think I have any questions right now. Mayor Burk: Okay. That's all right. [laughter] Council Member Bagdasarian. Council Member Bagdasarian: Yes. Thank you, Mr. Seymour, for the presentation. The overview, it makes perfect sense from so many different perspectives, and everyone's heard me say as many times, whatever project does that we do look on it for consideration, we have to ask, how does this align with a Town plan? You've done an excellent job as far as setting the stage, as far as the economic development viability and the need for that. One question I do have is regarding the viability of the site because it is built on the old garbage dump, would it makes sense for the Town to conduct a soil sample or soil study, or environmental study on the physical property, so any potential partnership would have that in advance on what is actually possible on that site? Russell Seymour: I will only give my personal thought or recommendation on that particular question. I believe it'd be in the Town's best interest to go ahead and initiate the RFP process or the PPP because there are certain factors that would be negotiated moving forward with that. Rather than doing that ahead of time, and there would be a fair amount of money that would be involved in paying for that study, it's a good thing to have, but at this point recommend, let's open the door, let's see what comes in that could be part of a negotiation for the Town later on. Chris Spera: Okay. I tend to agree with Mr. Seymour on that it really depends on the nature of the project. For example, I may have shared this with some of you in prior discussions, back in Alexandria, we had a project that was on the site of a former fuel oil supplier. There was a spill, a tank leak, a substantial amount of it became a Virginia DEQ remediation site and it was a big deal. This was not a public -private partnership, this is a private development, but the project that got approved there had a substantial amount, I believe it was three levels of subsurface parking. The project that got approved, involved digging a big hole because of the subsurface parking, which, in effect, remediated most of the contaminated soil. The development project and nature of the project presented a solution to the contaminated soils. I think what Russ is alluding to is that potentially we may have something here where if somebody is going to dig a big hole anyway, I'm not saying that that's exactly what the project would be, but if a proposal comes in, it's got subsurface parking or something else subsurface that they may have to do the soil analysis anyway, and us paying for it in advance doesn't really save much. Council Member Bagdasarian: Yes. Thank you very much. I think someone should definitely consider pursuing it. Thank you. Mayor Burk: All right, Mr. Martinez. Vice Mayor Martinez: In the past, we've had these private -public partnerships. We've tried to and haven't been as successful as I would have liked it to be. I'm looking forward to this. I know we have -- [coughs] Excuse me. We've had issues with mitigating the environmental has been a big stopping point and other things. My biggest concern about any development is not to lose a whole lot of parking spaces but what we're putting there and hopefully, that whatever we do as part of the RP, that we have a minimum number of parking spaces we want to maintain. Whatever it is, whether it's multi - structured parking or other stuff. I like the idea of a potential cultural center and other stuff. I think having something there right next to the Town branch can be really attractive. I've always wanted to do something with that property to make it work and draw people into Town. I'm looking forward to seeing what the RFP is going to say, what we're going to ask for, and hopefully, we can get some entrepreneurs or investors who want to invest in the Town of Leesburg. Thank you. Mayor Burk: Mr. Cummings, do you have any questions? Page 141 May 10, 2021 Council Member Cummings: Thank you. I have no specific questions, just very supportive of moving forward with an RFP on this. Mayor Burk: Right, Mr. Steinberg, do you have any questions? Council Member Steinberg: Yes, I do, Mayor Burk. [chuckles] First, a couple of legal things. The PPEA language talks about educational but then goes on to say, any improvements necessary are acceptable. Why do they make the distinction with an educational facility and then go on to say do anything you want in effect? That's what the language seems to say in our staff report. Chris Spera: What this does is it tracks what the State code says. Council Member Cummings: I'm sorry, I can't. I think we've all -- Chris Spera: This tracks the State code. Council Member Steinberg: No, I understand. What I'm asking, in our considerations even though the acronym PPEA indicates educational facility, additional language in describing it says, "Any improvements deemed appropriate." Do we actually have to be concerned with the educational facility part of the acronym? Chris Spera: It is construed very broadly. Council Member Steinberg: Very broadly, okay, that's what I thought. Also, when it comes to competition even though I would never advocate that we not foster competition, is the Town in a position should a proposal come forward that we simply deemed right from the beginning was so superior, can we choose to accept a single proposal? Chris Spera: When an unsolicited proposal comes in, there is still a requirement that there be some bidding. Council Member Steinberg: That there is competition? Chris Spera: That we open for counter -proposals. That doesn't mean you have to accept any of the counter -proposals but there is a requirement that. Council Member Steinberg: But you have to review them, okay. Chris Spera: Yes. Council Member Steinberg: Getting into the review process, the staff report talks about depending on the kind of proposal somewhere between a 280 to 350 -day review process, am I understanding that correctly? Chris Spera: That's correct. Council Member Steinberg: Just to consider the various proposals, that has nothing to do then with once a proposal is accepted, the ordinary or usual review process that would then follow? Chris Spera: That's correct, that is the, for lack of a better term, open review time for consideration. Council Member Steinberg: Okay. Russell, give us if you can, your guesstimate as to what kind of, if we get started on this, then what kind of time frame are we potentially looking at? I know it's not a tomorrow kind of thing, this is years in the making but can you give us a rough idea of the kind of time frame you might think? Russell Seymour: Really, I think that's going to come down to the Town and the Council and how quickly we can move through this. What I mean by that is I think there is significant interest in this property right now. I'm not concerned about getting responses to the RFP or the PPP or however we Page 151 May 10, 2021 put it out. I think it's going to be going through the legal process, the recommendations, having Council sort it out and choose, but I do think you'll have several proposals. Council Member Steinberg: Thank you for that. This is a minor point. Have we given any thought to where we'll relocate that storage facility that's currently on the property? [chuckles] Russell Seymour: No, that is a very good question. I was looking to see. I think -- Council Member Steinberg: We can cross that bridge when we come to it. I'm just curious. To address Councilman Bagdasarian's concern, yes, obviously the soils underneath the asphalt or whatever is underneath that asphalt will be a real concern. It has been suggested and I think it's a good one that we get the County involved because the Town's part may well be the responsibility of excavating it, which will require a lot of study but again, not a bridge we're going across until we get to it but thanks for the presentation. Mayor Burk: Council Member Fox. Council Member Fox: Yes, I've got a few questions. Thanks. First question, I heard you say Russ that we both had unsolicited and solicited — or have we had no solicited projects come in? Russell Seymour: No solicited at this time. These are unsolicited proposals yes. Council Member Fox: How many have we have? Russell Seymour: We've had, I know two groups that have showed interest in the last I'll say the last six, eight months, and there's been additional interest or shared interest since then, as well. Council Member Fox: All right. Let's see, have all requisite fees been paid for unsolicited proposals? I read that they had to be I'm just wondering? Russell Seymour: At this point, I'm going to say these are not official unsolicited ones, these have been discussions that have been put out. Chris Spera: That is correct, that these are not formal unsolicited proposals invoking the act but rather simply, "Hey, we're interested. Do you want to talk to us about this?" More exploratory than formal. Council Member Fox: Got you. Okay, but staff has looked these over thoroughly correct? Russell Seymour: We've had discussions with the both groups that have looked at this, and we have read through their proposal. Yes. Council Member Fox: All right. Real quick question on the eligible projects, I took a quick glance through the part three that says eligible projects. I went through the entire list and I know, at least one of these proposals has a residential factor to it. Is the 3.1.8 that's where that would fall under is a residential component to this? The other question I had along with that is, it says any building or facility and 3.1.2 that meets the public purpose and is developed or operated by the public entity. If we have some sort of residential component to this, does this say that the Town would have to operate this as a public for the public purpose and a public facility? Chris Spera: No, there has to be a qualifying element that it does not have to be in its entirety. The entire product doesn't have to be one of these things but a component of the project has to be one of these things. Council Member Fox: Okay. You're saying the educational piece or whatever we want in there has to be Town but the residential can be private? Chris Spera: Correct. It can be a combination, but there has to be a public component that remains, it does not have to be the entirety. Page 161 May 10, 2021 Council Member Fox: All right. Russ, was it your suggestion that whatever component is in there, the Town remains in control of that component? Russell Seymour: I believe going through this process, you have an opportunity right now to direct that development, whether that is something that the Council then decides to sell the property outright. I believe holding the ownership of that property right now so that you have an opportunity as Council to direct that development. Now, if you choose to keep it after that that would really depend upon the proposal that comes in, you'd have to look at it from that standpoint. If it was something that you viewed as being in a shorter term, maybe a stopgap measure some type of development for that or there's an opportunity even to have a partnership with another entity coming in. I'm looking at it from the standpoint of just the Council being able to keep their options open as long as possible. Council Member Fox: What do you see as any pitfalls to a PPEA? Russell Seymour: With any of these, it really comes down to we need to make sure that we're advertising we get it out as broad net as we can and have Council look at as many different options for that. First and foremost, it would be an opportunity for Council to really look at that property, realizing the other options that we've had for that area, or some of the issues that we've had downtown in Council have a pretty good understanding of what they want for that property. That will carry a lot of weight going through this. Council Member Fox: Okay. The only reason I asked this because it seems from what I'm hearing from Council, it seems like we've tried this avenue before and it didn't quite work out for us so I want to avoid whatever we did before. Russell Seymour: I think we'll be able to do that. I think there is interest now. There's not as much property left or remaining downtown. It is a target for a number of developers. We're bringing this to you because we've been approached in the last six -eight months with regards to this. There is a lot of interest, not only in downtown, but in that particular site. Council Member Fox: Ok. Thank you Mayor Burk: I would just say that I would be very interested in pursuing this, do we need to have four head nods to bring this forward? Kaj Dentler: Yes. It would be good to know. It appears that everyone is in favor moving forward. Mayor Burk: We're not putting this on the agenda tomorrow or anything like that? Kaj Dentler: No. What we will do is based on what we've heard is proceed with developing the RFP for a public -private partnership, Mayor Burk: And bring that back. Kaj Dentler: Define that process, bring it to you, confirm this is what you want, and then go for it. Mayor Burk: I would like to make sure that we do have four people that would be interested in doing this. Are there four people that would like to see this go forward? [laughs] It's back in your ballpark. Thank you. Council Member Bagdasarian: Great. This one quick. Whether it's solicited or unsolicited, we still put it out for an RFP process. That's just what's initiating the public -private partnership. Is that correct? Chris Spera: That's correct. When you get an unsolicited proposal, somebody comes in and says, "Hey, I'd like to do this with this piece of public land." Even if you think it's the greatest idea in the world, there's still a period within which you have to make it open for other competing proposals. Council Member Bagdasarian: Thank you. Page 171 May 10, 2021 Chris Spera: That's the distinction. One where we're soliciting bids, the other a bid comes in unsolicited. You still have to open it up after that unsolicited bid comes in to other potentially competing proposals. Vice Mayor Martinez: Can I make a comment? Mayor Burk: Do you have a question? Vice Mayor Martinez: No. I just want to say, Russ, you are so good can I see the draft tomorrow? Russell Seymour: Absolutely. Mayor Burk: Next one is the Police Department. This is the 2020 Crime Report. Greg Brown: Yes, it is. Good evening, Mayor Burk and Council Members. Mayor Burk: Yes. Greg Brown: This evening, I will be providing you an overview of the Leesburg Police Department Crime Report. This overview will focus on calendar year 2020, which presented a number of challenges from the pandemic to police reform both of which have caused interesting changes in how the Police Department operates. Crime and the way we fight crime will look somewhat different this year due to new legislation fashioned to usher in police reform. We are working diligently to provide guidance and training to our staff to ensure that we not only adhere to the new laws but continue to provide and deliver exemplary police services to the residents, the Town of Leesburg, its businesses, and its visitors. The Leesburg Police Department will continue in its proactive measures to ensure the Town remains one of the safest communities in the region and the State. The pandemic caused us to limit our interaction with the public, change and create policy and temporarily suspend many of our outreach programs but it did not affect how we address crime or serve the public. Due to the state of emergency and subsequent closings, we saw a substantial decrease in our calls for service for calendar year 2020 recording only 35,585 calls, which is 12,677 less reported calls for service in 2019. The next slide is just a multiyear comparison. In recent weeks, we have begun to see an increase in calls for service, which is indicative of a slow return to normal levels this time last year. As you are aware, the Town of Leesburg enjoys a relatively low crime rate in comparison to other jurisdictions its size making this one of the safest communities in the region. To accomplish this, the Leesburg Police Department utilized the statistical crime and trend analysis combined with empirical observation and assessment of quality of life issues. This proactive approach allows us to get out in front of issues that could otherwise present opportunities of crime. Before we get to the actual statistical data, I want to first provide you with a synopsis of how we collect and report that crime data. In 2013, the Leesburg Police Department was certified to begin collecting and submitting to the FBI's National Incident Based Reporting System, better known as NIBRS. Prior to that, we used UCRO, which is Unified Crime Reporting System. This allows for a more comprehensive data entry resulting in a more accurate reflection of the incidents and occurrences of crime in a given locality. Arrests are broken into two groups of crime. Group A offenses and group B offenses. This allows us to more accurately break down crimes against persons, crimes against property, and crimes against society, which are group A offenses and group B offenses which are considered to be a lesser crime or a nuisance -related offense. In summary, the benefit of reporting under NIBRS is that it provides greater specificity and reported offenses in arrest, collects more detailed information on each crime, assists in giving context to specific crime problems, and allows our crime analysts greater analytical flexibility. For the purpose of this presentation, and to respect time to review the data generally under Group A and Group B offenses and not go line by line. Please refer to your documents more specifically to the LPD crime report presentation will break down in classification of various crimes and percentages. Page 181 May 10, 2021 In this slide, you will see the more serious crimes which is our crimes against persons. You will note the insignificant changes in comparison to 2019. Crimes against property accounted for 55% of the reporting of Group A. While crimes against persons accounted for 26%, which is what you're looking at now. Overall crime in these categories were typically down minimal or stable. The criminal offenses that did increase are still within an acceptable and reasonable range in respect to five-year projections. You can see crimes against property for 2020. Overall, arrests were down by 13% in Group A offenses, and one could theorize that this is due in part to the pandemic, which is probably the better assumption. As you can see in Group B, arrests are substantially down by 50% in 2020. Again, we can theorize these numbers have been directly impacted by the pandemic. This is different than what we would normally do in these instances. I've had conversations with a number of Council Members in regards to reporting and responding to victims of domestic violence and ensuring that they get the services that they need. Typically, this will be reported under Group A, but I broke them out for you guys to get a general view of the illustration of exactly what we're doing in regards to domestic violence. Over the last several years, law enforcement began more closely tracking statistics to better assess and allocate resources working with our community stakeholders to assist victims of domestic violence. In 2020, we saw a decrease in reported domestic violence. Leesburg Police Department pushed out several public service announcements to encourage victims to reach out despite the pandemic. Again, we can theorize that due to the pandemic, some of our victims were reluctant in reporting because many times they have to return to the same household. We've worked very closely with our community stakeholders to push out these PSAs and reach out to folks to make them feel more comfortable reporting these things. Domestic violence is a very serious issue and it goes across all demographics, and also socio-economic status. It's something that we take very seriously here. The Leesburg Police Department's analyst is actually a crime and traffic analyst and also tracks traffic data to assist our traffic management unit in the deployment of resources to address traffic -related issues in our community because traffic or crime that is our biggest problem in Leesburg. You will notice again, a substantial decrease in motorists contact and crashes for calendar year 2020. Next slide, you will see our top four intersections for motor vehicle crashes in descending order from 2019 to 2020, which also decreased as well. Again, statistics are read across statistics can be somewhat challenging to report. There are even more challenging to report when you have crime but there is a substantial difficulty in reporting when you don't have crime. I can tell you that Leesburg remains a very safe community. Overall you can see the Town of Leesburg actually experienced a decrease in crime during the calendar year 2020. Be forewarned that the next year's crime report may or may not show and I say may or may not show a substantial increase in offenses in arrest as we return back to normal calls for service. This will not be indicative of an increase in crime but more so that we are returning to normal. Thank you for your time this evening. I told a few of you that this was going to be very brief. If there's anything I love and I love everything about Leesburg and being the Chief here. What I really love is not having to fight crime the way I have in other areas of the County. This is a good report if you ask me and I'm hoping that we can continue down this avenue for 2021 report. Any questions? Mayor Burk: Thank you very much. Mr. Martinez. Vice Mayor Martinez: Chief, we all can look at those stats and pretty much assume the ones that did increase were because of the pandemic and people being frustrated. The rest, I agree with you that we're probably going to see a return to normal, so we shouldn't be too shocked. I do appreciate your Police Department and its work and I want to thank you. One thing I noticed you didn't mention was we had a big controversy last year, nationally, about the Black Lives Matter and the policies that they asked us to implement. I would have loved to have seen a note in there that you address those issues way before there was a Black Lives Matter concern. You understand what the value of implementing those policies, especially, for me, is the de-escalation. Not running in there as a lone ranger, but more as somebody who's trying to work out the situation. I appreciate that. I think a little note. The reason Page 191 May 10, 2021 I'm bringing it up is I think it's a comment that needs to be made that you've done everything you can to adhere to those policies before they're even put out there. I appreciate that. Thank you. Greg Brown: I appreciate that. Actually, it will be in the annual report presentation, which will be coming to you later on this year. I'm hoping by the third quarter. We're working on it now. This is actually just a crime report. The annual report will focus on those policy changes and some of the social justice interaction that we have with the public. Mayor Burk: Ms. Nacy. Council Member Nacy: I don't have any questions, just thank you very much for the thorough presentation. It's definitely a good thing to see low crime rates for sure. I appreciate your service and your leadership. Greg Brown: Thank you. Mayor Burk: Mr. Bagdasarian. Council Member Bagdasarian: Thank you, Chief Brown. I appreciate it and everything you're doing. Since this is not the annual report, this is just about the numbers and statistics, how does the broader community measure the safest communities in America, the safest communities in Virginia, et cetera? What metrics are used to gauge what that is determined by? Greg Brown: Well, there are several private companies that actually do that for us, some insurance companies out there that put out reports. In the beginning, I was actually putting those out, but because they're private companies, I don't do that. I base my comment off of one of the safest towns per capita and region off of Conn's report. I cannot release those statistics just yet because they have not completed and authorized us to release the Council government's chief report. Hopefully, that comes out in the next few weeks. I think either June or July, we're authorized to put that out. I'm pretty sure that you will receive a copy of that showing exactly where we stand within the ratings. Council Member Bagdasarian: In general, is it crimes per capita? Greg Brown: Is crimes per capita. Yes. It's crimes per 1,000. Council Member Bagdasarian: Thank you. Mayor Burk: Ms. Fox. Council Member Fox: Chief. Greg Brown: Hello. Council Member Fox: Thanks for being here. I really think that your service has been one of the best things that happen to this Town's law enforcement. I hope you don't go anywhere anytime soon, but to stay. Thank you. Greg Brown: Thank you. Council Member Fox: [clears throat] I think this is a great report. There's a couple things that I'm wondering about, change in crimes. Now, I know that there's a lot of redefining and a lot of stuff going on down there at the State level. Has anything been redefined, any of these stats been redefined so that it makes the stats look better, or are we just doing plain better? Greg Brown: If I understand your question, do you mean just for calendar year 2020? Council Member Fox: Yes. Between 2019 and 2020. Did anything happen to any of those definitions? Page 201 May 10, 2021 Greg Brown: Well, most of that legislation didn't take effect until January 1st, March 1st and July 1st, so it would not have affected that calendar year or 2019. Council Member Fox: Got you. I didn't see any stats about offenders that might have come from out of the area. Do you have any stats on whether the crimes that have been taking place that we see here, are they pretty located with us, or are people coming out of Town and coming here and committing these crimes? Greg Brown: That varies. A lot of the cases, and I'l l use indecent liberties with a minor, those individuals are coming from out of Town. Some from our local area but more times than none, I see individuals coming from other counties and sometimes other states. Shoplifting rings. We identify those individuals they're coming anywhere from North Carolina, from Baltimore, from PG County, from West Virginia. It depends on the actual actual crime. Most of the domestic violence your partners know, or the partner is known, a lot of the assaults and some of our robberies, the offender was local but those other cases, shoplifting, rims being stolen, things of that nature, those individuals are usually identified from out of the area. Council Member Fox: I guess the silver line when that finally does if ever, service the Ashburn area do you expect an increase? Greg Brown: I'm sorry. Council Member Fox: The silver line. Greg Brown: Yes. That's something I've been talking about since even prior to me even coming here. My last job, two of the stations were going to be in my station area. I started sounding the alarm even back then. I think public transportation is a good thing, but there are a whole set of problems that comes with that. Even though we are 0.8 something miles or eight point something miles away from the silver line or the last stop, I would suspect that we probably will see some increase in certain types of crimes. Council Member Fox: One last thing I noticed that we had zero incidents with human trafficking, but I've heard that we have an issue, does that mean we don't have any issue at all or we just haven't had any? Greg Brown: That doesn't mean that at all. Again, I've spoken to a number of Council Members in regards to human trafficking, which has been identified as a big problem in Northern Virginia, but you have to have a victim and you have to have a victim that's willing to cooperate. Many times that's the difficult part in pushing forward with that type of offense. Council Member Fox: We're pretty much aware of what's going on. It's just that nothing's coming out. Greg Brown: That would be correct. Council Member Fox: Thank you very much. Mayor Burk: Mr. Cummings. Mr. Cummings. Council Member Cummings: Thank you, Chief Brown. Appreciate your time and your service and your fellow officers of service. One quick question because I know this is not the annual report, but something I hear in the community and see on my own street is traffic, and speed is definitely an issue. It's going to continue to build from last year because of getting back this return to normal. Is there anything that you're doing or you're putting into place now that more folks were on the road post pandemic or almost post pandemic to help slow folks down? Greg Brown: We never stopped and we have pretty-- I don't like using the word aggressive, particularly in today's times, but we have a pretty aggressive response to traffic because that our biggest problem in Leesburg. Beyond our traffic management unit, of course, our regular patrol officers are actually out there. Now, as I told Council in my first year, when I came here, I got questioned as to why we saw the decrease in traffic tickets being issued. Page 211 May 10, 2021 If you guys remember that was 2016 and that was post -Ferguson. What we were trying to do was to establish positive relationships with our public. I had units err on the side of issuing warnings and using that interaction with the public as coachable moments is what I call them. Of course, they going through the system, if they get pulled over the next week, of course, they get a ticket. As far as what we're seeing now, we never changed how we address things, particularly in our construction area which we are pretty sure each one of you received complaints on that. We really ramped up our enforcement efforts in areas that were being reported and areas that we did traffic studies on to ensure that we were providing the right amount of service and not over -enforcing a particular problem. That is a big issue unfortunately we're hearing as a result of some of the things is that sometimes law enforcement has the habit of over forcing. We want to make sure we throw the right amount of resources at an issue to address a problem without shaking the community up too much. Council Member Cummings: Follow up exactly what you were talking about. Are you working with Public Works and other staff in the Town to help layout traffic calming, areas that you're seeing a lot of issues that need some traffic calming issues? I look at my street on Valley View. It's the main thoroughfare between Catoctin and Loudoun Street and to get on the Bypass and we need a stop sign or something there. Are you working with staff there? Greg Brown: You can't tell that I'm smiling under the mask, but I actually am smiling under the mask. Again, this something that I learned when I was station commander in my old agency. As that is probably the most problematic traffic area in the County. I think Leesburg is a very close second. Back down there, I worked very closely with VDOT address issues because we were actually having fatalities. We're doing the same thing here with DPW in regards to working with Sean Baroody, looking at traffic light timing. Our TMUs works very closely with monitoring those types of issues. Also, looking at signage, looking at speed combing issues, things of that nature. A lot of times what we find is when we go out to these neighborhoods and we do a traffic study or something of that nature -- Because we have to go off the data. We have to pull resources off the data so I'll talk to speeding directly. A lot of times we don't see what the residents see and when we get there, the folks who are actually violating the law are therefore residents, then they ask us to leave. That's kind of comical. In regards to actual signage, and I think I could use Russell Branch as probably our most recent example, how we worked with the community, worked with DPW to address signage issues, to ensure that pedestrians could cross the street back and forth. When I talk about empirical observations, that's just not with crime, that's also with traffic. We don't know what we don't know. If people are identifying issues within their community with traffic and they want to see something done, we encourage them to call in. We don't take it lightly. We'II work with Renee, make sure we get a traffic study done, and address it accordingly. Council Member Cummings: Just one last final question. We have the Standing Residential Traffic Committee. Greg Brown: That's correct. Council Member Cummings: I know you and your fellow officers and staff work directly with. Are there any changes or any additions needed with the process that we use here in the Town that may help? We're growing like crazy. There's more people moving here. There's more houses being built, more roads being added too. Is there anything that you would see in the next couple of years that we would need to improve upon to ensure we're keeping an eye on the traffic and the speeding and everything that goes with it? Greg Brown: That's a very difficult question because I think each incident of traffic problem is unique in and of itself. Each has to be handled individually. I think we're doing a pretty good job now, I think working collectively with the community and working with the other Town departments, conducting studies, enforcing when we have to. We really try not to over -force. I think that resolves most of the issues or most of the complaints that we receive from the community. We have a good working model Page 221 May 10, 2021 but it's hard to forecast and project what issues will come about in regards to increased traffic besides more problems. I have to be very general, more problems. Madam Mayor: Mr. Steinberg. Council Member Steinberg: Thank you. Thanks, Chief Brown, for your concise report and heading up what's obviously a well -run local police department. You addressed, early in your remarks, what may seem to be an obvious point, and that is that the pandemic might be held primarily responsible for what we see as a 26% drop in the calls for service. Is there any feeling that also because of the pandemic that certain crimes may have been underreported and possibly have affected the numbers? Greg Brown: Yes. That is a very great possibility. I used domestic violence as an example of a crime that we think was underreported. I would suspect there's a lot of crime that has not been reported to us during the pandemic. Can't give you an exact percentage, but I would suspect that would be accurate. Council Member Steinberg: Well, thank you for that. Now, in looking at the numbers, it's interesting because some of them seem to be upside down. We might expect because of the pandemic to see decreases in certain crime. Interestingly enough, we see a 64% increase in burglary and entry when you might expect a lot of people to have been home on a regular basis during the pandemic. We see a decline in drug use and narcotics offenses and yet you might expect that to spike during the pandemic. When you analyze these figures, is there any way to look at those and say, "What's going on here, or this factor may or may not explain that particular number?" Greg Brown: What we don't see and what we don't have evidence on is problematic in and of itself. We can theorize all day long in regards to the burglaries as to why they increased. Many of those burglaries were tied into, for instance, we had one situation where an individual was doing rooftop burglaries. They were just every other night but they were going through establishments, through the roof and -- Council Member Steinberg: They weren't stealing the rooftops. Greg Brown: No, they were stealing underneath the rooftops. We did see an increase in there. Our stats are so low from the start any change is going to throw our percentages off. You saw the one homicide that we did have last year. If you don't look at those numbers from 2019 to 2020 and you see 100%, if you don't look at that you're going to start panicking and thinking Leesburg is the most dangerous place in the world. You have to be very careful when you look at the differences of I think it was 63 the year before and went up to 85 I'm not looking at the stats. I'm trying to recall that from memory. When you look at that, it really isn't significant and it is in line with the five-year projected occurrence of offenses through crime analytical studies. If that makes sense. Council Member Steinberg: It may be an unattainable answer in the end but thanks for the information. Greg Brown: I was tempted to bring our crime analysts with me because she can better explain the stuff than I but I told her to stand down but next year I'll bring her. Council Member Steinberg: Can you explain closure rate because you would think in domestic violence that you've got the parties at hand and so I wonder why the closure rate hovers around a little more than 40%. What am I not understanding about that figure? Greg Brown: I think I put a note on slide for that because I knew that question was going to come up. The above chart looks at the total count of cases and arrests. This does not include multiple charges per case or multiple arrest charges. All of those things get figured into the formula for actual closure rate. The closure rate is year by year. However, an arrest from 2015 may have occurred in 2016. I'm not a crime analyst but they have a particular program that they put all this data in and it spits the information out to us. A lot of times it's a crime occurring at one period of time. It's multiple charges and that's how they come up with the particular closure rate on instances. Page 231 May 10, 2021 Council Member Steinberg: It isn't necessarily that we're looking at 50% plus of the cases are never resolved. It's just the way the numbers get skewed. Greg Brown: In 2021, cases from 2020 can end up being closed but only account for closure rates in regards to the calendar year 2021. Council Member Steinberg: Okay, thank you very much. Mayor Burk: How many officers do you have? Greg Brown: We are authorized at this time 90. Mayor Burk: Actually have 90 off? How many openings do you have still? Greg Brown: We currently have 12 vacancies for sworn and one for non -sworn. Mayor Burk: How many of your officers experienced the COVID virus? How many had to deal with that? Greg Brown: We actually put a survey out but as you know, the survey is only as good as the respondent rate and we didn't get a whole lot of people answering back. The numbers are not accurate. Mayor Burk: Just curious because it would be very interesting to see how many officers ended up getting sick with having to deal with the [crostalk]. Greg Brown: I can give you a roundabout number because we have what we call an infectious control officer which is now basically a full-time position as a result of COVID. We actually did track those and in 2020 I think, and I'm speaking off the top of my head. We had no more than five confirmed positive cases. No more than that. That's not to say that there were other individuals that had been infected and we didn't know, but five confirmed where we had to actually go through the CDC mandated response and put people on notice and so forth and so on. We had no more than five. Now I think that's directly-- I'll speak about this during the annual report but I think that's directly attributed to Leesburg being on the forefront with addressing this issue effective February 26"h of last year when a lot of our sister jurisdictions waited three to four weeks after we did. We got ahead of it, we put policies in place. We assigned somebody to actually be able to communicate with the CDC and the Health Department. We started addressing those issues earlier and came up with policies to respond. That's my theory is the fact that we got on it. We had lower numbers in comparison to other agencies in the area our size. A lot of other agencies experienced a whole lot higher rates than what we did. Off the top of my head, if I'm not mistaken, for 2020 I only recall no more than five positive confirmed cases of COVID-19. Mayor Burk: I would assume that that would intact your ability to have officers on the street because if they're in contact with and they have to quarantine and so you must've had some officers quarantined. Greg Brown: We were lucky because our call for services went down. We had to reallocate resources. We ended up taking school resource officers because they were assigned to the school and rolling some of them into traffic management unit and some of them to actual patrol shifts. It didn't impact our service delivery like you would think because of the schools being closed and decreased calls for service. We didn't feel the crunch in regards to being able to respond and remaining fully staffed throughout the year. Mayor Burk: Do you know how many of your officers are vaccinated? Greg Brown: I'm sorry, ma'am. Page 241 May 10, 2021 Mayor Burk: Do you know how many of your officers are vaccinated? Greg Brown: We also sent out a survey for that as well and our respondent rate was very low. If 1 report that it's not going to be an accurate reflection of exactly how many people. If you think citizens are private, ask a bunch of cops for information and you'll find out what privacy actually means. Mayor Burk: Is there a program to encourage them to get vaccinated so that you aren't in a position where people are getting sick. Greg Brown: Yes, internally that infection control officer he worked with me to send out internal service announcements. We send out we worked very closely with the Department of Health and (nova to ensure that they were aware of when and how to get vaccinated the different types of vaccines, symptoms that would occur after we sent out a full blast of information to try to make them more comfortable with actually becoming vaccinated. It was internal. I heard a lot of people say they were going to do it whether they did it or not, I cannot accurately report that. Mayor Burk: Interestng. !just have one question about the numbers. In 19 we had one arson and then in 20 you had four. Is it the same person chance [chuckles] or was it four different incidences? Greg Brown: Madam Mayor, I knew somebody was going to ask that so I had Chelsea pull. I said I need an explanation for that because that wasn't what 300% of whatever it was. It was something crazy. For 2020, we had a Trump sign that was set on fire which was able to be extinguished quickly. We had a dumpster fire possible suspects were causing an incident in a nearby store. We had a United States postal service mailbox set on fire. The suspect was identified in that case it was emotionally disturbed person. Fire marshal and postmaster declined prosecution on that. Then we had some ceiling tiles and one of our middle schools set on fire after a student held a lighter too close to the tiles during mock Memorial service for a recent celebrity death. I took the liberty because I knew somebody was going to ask me that question so I made sure I was comfortable. Mayor Burk: You were prepared. Very good. Then the last thing I' ll end up with is that the crossing guard at Catoctin Elementary School when they started back a couple of —what a month ago now or a couple of weeks ago —she was having problems. People were no longer stopping and if you know the crossing guard, that's amazing because she'll be out in the middle of the street chasing cars down. She called the Leesburg Police and the Leesburg Police came and were a big help to her and started writing tickets. People started realizing that school was back in place and they needed to stop. She wanted to make sure that I thanked you for making sure that the Leesburg Police cooperated and help make the kids safe, so thank you. Greg Brown: Thank you very much. We're here to help. Mayor Burk: And Mr. Bagdasarian, you have another question? Council Member Bagdasarian: One final thought before we move on to the next item on the agenda which ties into it but I appreciate your work. Some of the discussion really led me think the fact that we need to be deliberate about building a culture of safety. Safety is not solely law enforcement. It's emergency management. It's the crossing guard, it's pedestrian safety, it's traffic calming. All of these things together help build that culture of safety and so appreciate your work. I think we need to look at things from that holistic perspective as we approach things and move forward, so thank you again. Greg Brown: Appreciate that. I'll just add to that is something that I've always said and that is my job and the job of the folks that are out there actually doing the real work is not just to fight crime but it's to maintain and decrease the fear of crime and that is very important. Crime is one thing but when you reduce the fear of crime and community gets involved when you start getting reported or reports. Lots of time, people are afraid to call in. If you reduce that fear, that's when you get into a good situation with your community and you can better and more effectively fight those issues. Council Member Bagdasarian: That's an index that should be measured as your fear index? Page 251 May 10, 2021 Greg Brown: Yes. Council Member Bagdasarian: Walking alone at night. Those are certainly factors that all come into play, but great point. Greg Brown: Thank you. Mayor Burk: Thank you very much. We appreciate the information and all your hard work. Greg Brown: Thank you. Madam Mayor: Mr. Spera. Chris Spera: Madam Mayor, thank you. This is essentially a reprise of a presentation I gave to you back in December. I believe the Vice Mayor had asked about revisiting the issue of civilian oversight bodies with respect to law enforcement. As we talked about back in December, I guess this is new for the three new members of Council. The General Assembly passed some laws in late 2020, created authority for certain civilian oversight bodies with direct regulatory authority over certain law enforcement entities. Here's the laundry list of options available if a locality were to choose to put an oversight body in place. Creation of oversight bodies is not mandatory. None of the optional powers are required. There is a whole menu here of choices for those localities that are eligible to put one of these oversight bodies in place. They can conduct investigations, can receive complaints, issue findings with respect to use of force, other types of misconduct. If enacted, can make binding disciplinary determinations regarding police officers, investigating their recommendations and practices and procedures, review and issue findings on internal investigations, look at annual expenditures, public reports on their own activities, or other types of duties like this. The issue that we talked about in December, and that I will bring it up again here, is that Leesburg and Loudoun County fall into an odd place with respect to how this law was drafted. The State Code Section 9.1601 does not include the Sheriffs Department in the types of entities that can be subject to one of these oversight boards. The primary law enforcement entity in Loudoun County is not subject to having an oversight board put in place. Moreover, only a locality as defined in the code can create a civilian oversight board. Towns are not included, only counties or cities. We have a Police Department, Loudoun County doesn't, they have a Sheriffs Department, but as a Town we're not defined as one of the localities that's able to create one of these things. It gets even a little bit stranger in that the localities, either a city or a Town, they have the authority for their oversight body to regulate a number of different types of police departments. Those include Town police departments or campus police departments that are within their geographic boundaries. We find ourselves in an odd position with respect to the way that this State Code Section is drafted where we don't have the authority to create a police oversight body ourselves. Our Police Department could be subject to one created by the County. To be fair to the County, they have not said that they want to put one in place to oversee our Police Department, but the State Code section would allow them to do so. At the same time, the primary law enforcement agency within the County would not be subject to oversight. It's a very oddly impacting State Code section with respect to how law enforcement is done in Leesburg, in particular, and in Loudoun County in general. The Mayor, Mr. Markel, and I brought this to the attention of our legislative delegation early in the year. We briefed each of them on exactly this, I believe with each of the Chiefs of Staff for each of the elected officials. I shared a memorandum that I wrote detailing this gap. They all seem to acknowledge, oh gee, I didn't really think about it that way and said that they'd that they look into it, but we haven't heard much back from them since that time. What I briefed you on December is where we find ourselves now. Nothing has changed with respect to the State law. Given that, we can certainly renew our request with our legislative delegation, but there are also some things that we can do short of a full-blown civilian oversight board. We can create a task force or other type of commission, although purely advisory in nature, that could start looking at some of the same things, some of the same issues that the oversight body might Page 261 May 10, 2021 eventually regulate if the State law is changed and we're allowed to create one. That may be a way to start identifying what the needs might be, do we need one of these things in our community for our police force or not, or if we need one, what is the scope? These are all issues for you and perhaps creating one of these task forces or some other advisory commission or ad hoc commission might be able to start exploring in advance. I believe that legally, that's all we can do at this point. We do not have the authority to go ahead and embrace the full-blown civilian oversight commission. For those of you who were here in December, I apologize for the redundancy, for the new Council Members, that's where we find ourselves in. The law has not changed in the interim. Happy to answer any questions. Mayor Burk: Mr. Cummings, do you have any questions? Council Member Cummings: Thanks. Because the legislators meet at their appointed times and at this point they're not in session to give us an answer and fix any issues in the legislation, is there another avenue that we could go to at the State level to render an opinion, if you will, on the way the legislation was written? Chris Spera: Certainly ask the Attorney General if he agrees with my interpretation, but that would be an advisory opinion by the Attorney General but that wouldn't change the law if the law in fact needed to be changed. Council Member Cummings: Sure. The Town of Purcellville has an advisory commission that works with their police, if we were to go down that route and the law did change, what's the process to either bring that body that we create into line with the new law or disband it if the law doesn't change. What are we looking at here? Chris Spera: If you created an advisory commission, one that's not undertaking all those enumerated powers, but simply working on your behalf and giving you advice with respect to what they find and what they observe, you could do one or two things. You need to take that entity. If the law changes and you're empowered and you have the political will to do so, you could convert that thing into the formal oversight commission or you could disband it and create a completely different entity. Those would be your options, but to me, until there's something clearer, I would advise against doing anything more than creating an advisory body. If you think about it, you run into a whole series of problems. If you just say, we're going to do it anyway, and we do it. Then let's say you empower that entity to investigate and make findings or do discipline, well, all those findings and disciplinary proceedings would be subject to potentially legal challenge with the way that the code sections currently drafted. I think without getting clear guidance or a change in what I believe to be very unfortunate drafting, I think it's a pretty dangerous path to blaze ahead with something any greater than an advisory group or a task force with advisory authority. Mayor Burk: Mr. Steinberg. Council Member Steinberg: Thank you, Chris, for the presentation. The law specifically includes counties are you saying the only counties with police departments then are subject to this law that any County with the Sheriff's department does not have to comply? Chris Spera: No, that's not what I'm saying at all. Definition of a locality is construed to mean a County or city as the context may require is the direct language of the State code section. The issue with respect to Sheriffs Departments is that Sheriffs Departments, whether a County creates one of these entities or not a city or County, a Sheriffs Department is not subject to their jurisdiction. Council Member Steinberg: It seems decidedly odd that would indeed be the case. If the Town of Leesburg decided to create an advisory task force of some kind, to what extent would the local law enforcement department have to comply with any requests made by the task force? Page 271 May 10, 2021 Chris Spera: I think it would be what they request would be what the request is. If it's a request to share information, to have a meeting, to have a discussion both of them technically work for you. They would have to comply. If you tried to give that task force or advisory body more than information gathering functions to render its advice to you then perhaps the Police Department would be appropriate in saying no. Council Member Steinberg: Quite the quandary. I respect your legal opinion. I would offer that getting at least an advisory position from the Attorney General so that nothing else when we get back to our delegation for next year we'll be in a stronger position. This obviously is something that needs to be clarified much sooner rather than later. I would offer the Council that we should move in that direction get an opinion from the Attorney General. Chris Spera: I have no objection to asking for one but I did not feel it was my place to ask for one without a mandate from you. Thank you. Mayor Burk: Ms. Fox. Council Member Fox: I was looking through some of the things that the General Assembly said that this body could do and it looks like investigate. How they investigate? What they have access to in order to investigate? Do you have any ideas or is it just so broad you don't know? Chris Spera: All that I can use to answer your question, Ms. Fox is the way this implemented in other places. For example, in Charlottesville, Charlottesville created an oversight body and they believe they created three staff positions to help administer all these duties. There was a staff person as I understood it who was driving to liaise between the Charlottesville Police Department and the commission. There were administrative staff that were to help you collect information and if the commission said, "Please get me these statistics. Get me these reports", their job was to collect it and prepare it and share it with the commission. Essentially, there were staff added on the part of the locality to help facilitate these functions. Council Member Fox: What does that due to liability issues? Chris Spera: I honestly can't really say how that weighs in. I suppose that if a civilian investigative body made a finding that an officer had acted inappropriately that would be a piece of evidence that could be used in a civil action but it would certainly not be dispositive. I don't think the court would be bound by such a finding but it would certainly be a piece of evidence that would weigh in some factor in the course determination. Council Member Fox: I'm reading there's disciplinary determinations that we would have to so the State is giving a civilian body all these powers is what they're doing. Chris Spera: The State is giving the locality the authority to vest the civilian body with these powers. It's your locality's choice which if any of these powers they choose to give the civilian oversight body. Council Member Fox: Chief might be better to answer this, how is discipline carried out right now in our Police Department? I'm just trying to figure out why we're even looking at this. Greg Brown: We have a very robust discipline matrix that we use that determines the level of discipline as a result of a sustained violation. They're grouped into categories with the most serious category being category E which is termination. What I did when I first got here is we formally announced a really formal process began to address discipline issues not just through the vetting and oversight of our internal policies but very early on in the process now bringing in human resources and we actually look over the intricacies of the offense. Then we brought in the Town Attorney and then we come to a consensus and collective for any discipline is actually applied, we then present to the Town Manager. A lot of jurisdictions do not do it that way. Page 281 May 10, 2021 I started doing this way before police reform became not way before but prior to this most recent pursuit of a police reform to ensure that officers were getting treated fairly and that the individuals that were reporting issues to the police department that they were being heard and their assessment of our service was being fairly reviewed. That process is probably a little bit more so than most jurisdictions do but I can assure you I put in that it's a process that I used to use my last agency. That process, I always brag about this, has never put us in a position where there's been any type of civil litigation or even grievance. Out of the four years and the multiple disciplinary issues that we've had here in Leesburg, none of them have been grieved. We have a very, very robust and thorough process that we currently use here to address any type of police complaints. Council Member Fox: Would an advisory board be beneficial to you? Would you feel like the department would benefit from it? Greg Brown: I look at an advisory board and that gives me an opportunity to educate. I think that is part of the problem that we as localities and this is not significant to Leesburg but it's because the public is uneducated in police process and police procedures. Quite honestly they really don't want to see us until they need us. To be able to have advocates through learning and through familiarization and so forth and so on, I think is definitely a benefit at this time. Council Member Fox: Ok, thanks. Mayor Burk: Thanks. Ms. Nacy. Council Member Nacy: Thank you. That was going to be one of my questions as well. Councilman Fox, I appreciate you asking that and then getting it clarified. I think that I weigh on the side of the way a manager might look at it. If we have an issue with an employee we've hired someone that we trust to take care of that issue and implement. I agree with the Chief in that if an advisory board is helpful to him as an educational tool then great, let's look at that. I would be against how this is written an oversight body that can investigate, that can make disciplinary determinations. I think we need to rely on the people that we hired and trusted to hire to carry out those policies and those things and then we should be the oversight body on whether or not they're doing their job in that capacity. It is good to hear from the Chief that he thinks an Advisory Commission, maybe something like we have now with our other Commission's for educational purposes, would be helpful. Mayor Burk: Mr. Bagdasarian. Council Member Bagdasarian: Yes. Well, thank you. First of all, clearly, the legislation is flawed. The biggest oversight is the legislation itself, and not allowing the towns that have the ability to review its own processes, etc. I do think that, if it makes sense, if there is value to having an Advisory Commission, I think that's fine. I think that would make sense but I think as far as reviewing the different models. If the legislation is changed next year, I think that that's certainly one of the things they can look at and there are different models. The models that were listed, there's also the appeals board. Rather than having direct oversight every single day, there's a process of an internal affairs as the result is not satisfactory, there are other options. Looking at that is important but obviously, we don't want to send a group of people on a wild goose chase right now if the legislation is not going to change in the future. I agree with Council Member Steinberg about getting the opinion of the Attorney General on where that is just to ensure that and we obviously need to know where the legislation is headed through our elected officials on the State level. Mayor Burk: Anymore? No, just Mr. Martinez. Vice Mayor Martinez: When I brought this up for work session, I specifically said oversight/advisory commission, because I know the issues we have with the oversight and the fact that there is no way this Town unless the County implements it on there. We're not going to get an oversight committee until legislation changes. My hope is that if we need it, we have an Advisory Commission. Now, I'm Page 291 May 10, 2021 not saying we should go out and implement an advisory commission right now, what I'm asking for, is to put together a task force or ad hoc committee that looks at the need, if there is a need for an advisor commission, not just to-- Like the Chief said, "My main goal is to educate the public, and let them understand what we Town are doing and working with our Police Department." I would like to see us do a task force to look at the need if we need an Advisory Commission, ways we implement it, who do we put on it? That is my main goal, is that we need to look at it and see what do we really need. It could be the task force that's looking at this may say, "You guys are doing so well. You don't need an advisory commission. You got everything you need in the current Police Department and the policies." That's all I'm asking for. I'm not asking for us to implement an oversight committee. I'm not asking us to implement an advisory committee. What I'm looking for is some group, commission, task force to look at, do we need to do this and if we do, how do we do it? I'll be honest, right now, if you were to ask me to implement an Advisory Commission, for the Police Department, I'd probably go to the Police Department say, "Well, what do you think? What do we need to do?" That's what I'm looking for is the task force, and part of that task force job would be to educate themselves on the Police Department and policies, and all the different statistics in crime and with the mitigation issues that the Police Department implements. That's what I'm looking for. Chris Spera: You certainly have the authority to do that. Vice Mayor Martinez: I don't know if the Council is willing to put together a task force but if we do, then we need to work a session to sit down on how are we going to staff it. How are we going to put people on it to achieve our goals? Thank you. Mayor Burk: We had Mr. Steinberg, you have another question? Council Member Steinberg: Comment. Mayor Burk: Well, Mr. Steinberg go ahead, do your comment. I'm sorry. I should have let you go first. Council Member Steinberg: Well, I just want to concur with Vice Mayor Martinez's comments and I would also like to point out that we are, I feel, extremely fortunate in the quality of the individuals we currently have running our Leesburg Police Department without question. That may not always be the case and so I think it would be shortsighted of the Council to not at least explore the idea of having an Advisory Commission should we at some time face a situation where it is required that we are not caught short and then have to play catch up. Thank you. Mayor Burk: All right. Mr. Steinberg made a request that we send a letter to the A.G requesting the clarification on the legislation. Are there four people that would be interested in that letter? Okay. Then Mr. Steinberg, Mr. Cummings, Mr. Martinez, Miss Burk and Mr. Bagdasarian. Mr. Martinez, you're asking for another work session to talk about creating a task force? Council Member Steinberg: Creating the task force and who do we think should be - Mayor Burk: The parameters of that task force. All right, are there four people that would be interested in doing that? Yes, Mr. Bagdasarian. Council Member Bagdasarian: Just to add that, the parameters, the membership, and also the charter obviously. Mayor Burk: All right, are there four people that are interested in doing that? The same group again. Chris Spera: I will write the letter to the Attorney General and then the Town Manager and I will work on your second work session. Mayor Burk: Okay, great. Thank you. I appreciate that. Then that takes us to future Council meetings. Miss Nacy, do you have any additions to future Council meetings? Council Member Nacy: No, ma'am. Page 301 May 10, 2021 Mayor Burk: Mr. Bagdasarian Council Member Bagdasarian: I've got a list here. Actually, no, nothing. No, we're good. I'm good. Mayor Burk: [laughs] All right. Council Member Bagdasarian: I know you were like, "No. Please, please. Mayor Burk: Mr. Martinez. Council Member Martinez: When are we going to see the airport commission ad hoc committee's recommendation? Mayor Burk: That's at the next meeting. Council Member Martinez: Is that at the next meeting? Okay. Kaj Dentler: That's scheduled, Mayor Burk: Isn't it the next meeting. Kaj Dentler: Yes, if you go around, I'll look that up and I'll come back. Mayor Burk: But it is scheduled. Council Member Martinez: Okay, yes. I was looking for it and I guess I keep looking at the wrong place. Thank you. Mayor Burk: Mr. Cummings? Mr. Steinberg? Council Member Steinberg: Well, I may but I just don't know where we put them at this point. I'm going to say, no. Mayor Burk: Do you have a date? Kaj Dentler: Yes, May 25th. Public hearing. Mayor Burk: Miss Fox? All right, do I have a motion to adjourn? Oh, wait a minute. Town Manager, do you have anything that you want to add at this point, no. Kaj Dentler: I do not. Mayor Burk: Okay, motion to adjourn. Council Member Steinberg: So moved. Mayor Burk: So moved. Second? Council Member Bagdasarian: I second. Mayor Burk: Okay, Mr. Steinberg and seconded by Mr. Bagdasarian. All in favor? Council Members: Aye. Mayor Burk: Opposed? Passes. All right, we'll see you all here tomorrow. Page 311 May 10, 2021