HomeMy Public PortalAbout2021_tcwsmin0726Council Work Session July 26, 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, Director of Finance and Administrative Services Clark
Case, Director of Economic Development Russell Seymour, Director of Utilities Amy
Wyks and Clerk of Council Eileen Boeing.
Minutes prepared by Executive Associate Corina Alvarez.
AGENDA ITEMS
1. Items for Discussion
a. Commercial Space Demand Changes and Potential Impacts on Downtown
Mr. Russell Seymour gave a presentation on demand trends regarding
commercial space, current residential development projects and recent rezonings
of commercial space to residential.
Council and staff discussed the item.
b. Customer Online Payment Options and Service Fees
Mr. Clark Case gave a presentation on the various options available to
residents for payment of business taxes, general invoices and utilities and related
third party service fees. Mr. Case also informed Council of the cost to the Town if
it were to absorb these service fees.
Council and staff discussed the item. Council requested a review of the
Paymentus contract when it is renewed relative to eCheck fees.
It was the consensus of Council to review the Paymentus contract at the appropriate
time to assess fees for eChecks. It was also the consensus of Council to have all of the fees
listed on the Town's Web site versus only being available on the Paymentus site.
c. 2022 General Assembly Legislative Program
Mr. Keith Markel presented Council with a draft of the proposed
legislative program for the 2022 General Assembly for its consideration and
suggested next steps.
Council and staff discussed the item. Council Members will send the
Town Manager their legislative priorities by July 30.
It was the consensus of Council to have the Town Manager compile the legislative
priorities for approval at the August 10 Council Meeting.
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Council Work Session July 26, 2021
2. Additions to Future Council Meetings
Council Member Fox requested a one-time donation to the Loudoun Freedom
Center for the preservation of the Sycolin Cemetery site and to add this item to the
August 10 Council Meeting for approval.
It was the consensus of Council to add this item to the next night's meeting (July 27, 2021)
for approval.
Council Member Steinberg requested a Work Session discussion on recycling.
It was the consensus of Council to add a Work Session discussion on recycling.
Mayor Burk requested a Work Session discussion on the Council's Ethics Policy.
It was the consensus of Council to add this to a future Work Session for discussion.
Mr. Spera requested that Council members send their inputs regarding the Ethics
Policy to his attention by August 10, to allow time to prepare the item for discussion on
September 13.
3. Adjournment
On a motion by Council Member Bagdasarian, seconded by Council Member Steinberg, the
meeting was adjourned at 8:38 p. m.
Clerk of Council
2021 tcwsmin0726
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July 26, 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: All right, let me open tonight's Town Hall Town Council Work Session of July 26th,
2021. Our first item for discussion tonight is Commercial Space Demand Changes and Potential Impacts
on Downtown. This is Mr. Seymour.
Russell Seymour: Good evening, Madam Mayor and Members of Council. I realized by making this
presentation this evening, I'm probably putting somewhat of a target on my back because I'm sure we'll be
having some calls after this, but this information that is going to be presented tonight is from a CoStar
database. CoStar is one of several but is by far the largest tracking system. If you are a commercial broker,
if you have property, whether it's retail, office, regardless industrial/flex space, typically, you'll find it listed
on CoStar.
What I've done is put together, it's basically a snapshot in time. Last week we cut and pasted this. You can
start to see some of the information that's out there, and you'll see two markets. You'll see both the Town
of Leesburg on the left, and then Loudoun County in general on the right. As we go through this, one of the
things that you'll notice is starting with a vacancy rate. Now you see the vacancy rate, and this is of office
space, that it was at a high, obviously, prior to 2011 in the Town, and you see that over the years, it
continued to drop.
The idea that Leesburg was starting to see more interest in office space coincides with this. If we go back
to 2013, we were at almost 30% vacancy rate. That dropped. It actually dropped to below 10% for a short
time right before COVID hit. When COVID hit one of the things that we saw, and we talked about this, was
a lot of the one -office businesses, you may be an accountant, you might've been a therapist, typically, you
had office space, you found out now that you could actually work from home, and so we started to see that.
We noticed the uptick in that. Likewise, if you look at the Loudoun County, same thing. You're seeing the
same type of up and down movement. Obviously, theirs actually going up a little bit more in the future, but
a lot of that too has been with the different types of office use. I'll skip over this for time. When we look for
retail space, somewhat of a different story. Retail space, you can see where it was high in Leesburg and
then dropped pretty significantly.
The vacancy rate for retail space, we enjoy a very low 4%, 5%, 6% vacancy rate until we hit the 2018/2019.
One of the things that started happening in 2019 is you started to see online users, so groups like Amazon,
Walmart is shifting a lot of theirs now to online servicing. When you start to see that, you start to see a
pretty big jump in looking at '18, '19, '20 and '21. You can see a pretty significant increase in vacancy for
retail space and that really has a couple of things.
COVID played a role in that, but you can also look at the graph and look at the numbers and realize it
started prior to COVID, and a lot of that had to do with the online. The other piece of it is we talked about
being over retailed and this is something that we've talked about. I've talked to other economic development
directors around Northern Virginia. That is something that the market, it's a big plus. It's a very good
investment for a lot of property owners as is residential.
Unfortunately, though, the market becomes saturated and if you look at some of our developments, and I'll
use the Village at Leesburg, for example, the office space is predominantly full. It's the retail space that is
vacant and they've been having trouble with on some occasions, and I think you see that more and more.
One of the things you all notice on this one, this is showing you the market rent versus the asking rent. I
want you to notice something on the Town of Leesburg.
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The blue line is the asking rent, so for many of those years, and office is just the opposite, but with retail
space, you see the asking rent in Leesburg was well below the market rent until about 2017, and then you
look at what has happened with the asking rent. The rent that they're getting now for retail space far
exceeded what the market rent was doing in Northern Virginia. When you look at Loudoun County, they
were up over the market for a short time in 2017, and then now they've pretty much followed the market
rent. Leesburg has been that big expansion, that big jump.
We talk about e -commerce, we talk about total sales versus e -commerce sales. This graph is really
interesting when you look at it. Retail sales, total retail sales stayed about that 5% increase all along. You
look at what the e -commerce has done over that same time period. It's not only operated a little bit higher
but look at the jump in 2019. Now, I put on there what we've seen so far in the first quarter of 2021.
You can see the difference, but you can also tell where we are depending on if you're looking at retail versus
online retail. Now, physical retail still the numbers outweigh e -commerce, but e -commerce is rapidly
catching that. When you look at the big picture, this has to do with growth rate that we're seeing. The current
development projects. We talked a little bit about this, but I wanted to get to this one in particular. You've
heard me talk a lot about what we have left and what we have lost space -wise.
I think this chart really lays it out. If you look at-- I asked our PIO officer to look at some of the information
that we had and give me some examples of what we've seen recently. You have areas like the Brickyard
that was originally supposed to be 187K square feet of office and retail. Rezoning came in and it is now 59
townhouses. Likewise, River Creek Village, we had 134K square feet of office retail, what became of it with
62 townhouses, and the list goes on down through this.
The one that I'll notice is in the middle, you see that Village at Leesburg building that was the vacant lot that
fronts up to the parking garage. They came in a couple of years ago, wanted to change that to residential,
that lot is still vacant, there's been nothing on it. In the meantime, the office space pretty much out there is
pretty full, if not complete. I wanted you to see this so you can see where retail/residential, it's been a value
to the Town, but I will also tell you that while is very true, you've probably all heard this, that residential does
make money for the Town.
I will also say that if you had two investments and they were the exact same risk -wise, you got a 1% return
on investment or 20% return on investment, chances are you're going to go with the 20%. What we're
looking at here is trying to protect the area that we have left and make sure that we don't continue to lose
the space. The other piece that some of you heard me say is talking a little bit about the idea that, "Oh, it's
going to be a mixed -use."
Mixed -use is a very powerful term and there's a lot of good mixed -use examples out there. What you rarely
see is, well, we're going to come in and build the flex office space first. Rarely, in fact, I don't think you've
ever seen that, I know I haven't. Typically, you come in with the residential pieces first. While that's good,
you can look on that list, and there's at least one example up there that we're fighting and working right now
with the details of trying to make sure that the residential was built, and now it's time to build the other and
they're not willing or ready to do that at this point.
The other thing that happens is we get the residential uses in, the idea that, well now we're going to build
flex office space, industrial flex space. That really ties Council's hands, because now you have a lot of
people that live there that are your constituents that didn't realize, and maybe for whatever reason were not
told what the other area was zoned as. When you get into that situation, then that comes in and puts
pressure on the Council.
What I'm looking at is trying to identify ways to try to avoid that as we're moving forward with this. The last
thing I want to mention is when we look at our areas and how this impacts Downtown, Downtown is a good
solid niche market. What you see in our expansion and in our retail Downtown have been things that you
typically won't buy online. Plus downtown in and of itself is a destination. People want to come Downtown,
they want to be Downtown.
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When you're looking at this idea of this other commercial space around us, I don't see that having a
significantly negative impact not anywhere near as much as I see the fact that we're still losing everyday
residents to go work someplace else. That market and when you talk particularly with Downtown restaurants
and you talk to Downtown retailers, more often than not, they'll tell you Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,
Thursday during the day, nothing. Sometimes in the evening, nothing.
Friday, it jumps up, Saturday and Sunday are great. The reason being is that we lose that entire section as
we have the housing, but we don't have the places to put the employment in the Town of Leesburg.
Residential market, the strongest market and we've seen probably, I think if you look across certainly
Northern Virginia, residential is booming and it certainly is the option that makes the most money for the
property owners and for the developers. I would argue that we have an area right now that is well residential,
and we need to protect our commercial space as much as we can. With that, eight seconds over.
Mayor Burk: Thank you. Ms. Nacy, do you have any questions?
Council Member Kari Nacy: Just a quick question and thank you, that's very informative. This is probably
a broader question for multiple departments, but you can answer it in particular for yourself. What do we do
to work with property owners now to ensure that they understand what we're looking for and how
collaborative are we as a staff before it gets to the Council point where we're saying, "Okay, hey, we
understand you want 400 apartments, but this is what we need. Could we meet somewhere in the middle?"
How do we approach that?
Russell Seymour: I think you'll find the staff does that. I'm always going to be on the one side, which is,
though, we got to do this, but usually Planning will corral me in a little bit, but you'll see that and staff does
work with that. The problem though is the development community, in general, is very used to being able
to come in whatever locality they work with because they look at they're driving the deal, and there's been
a track record of that changing over to allow that.
When staff is working with the development community or their representatives, it's almost as if staff realizes
no matter what they say, no matter what pieces are in there, it's not going to be something that the
development community has to worry about at that point. I think across the board, the staff has worked
really hard and I give a lot of credit. They're following the zoning ordinance, but it does change.
Mayor Burk: Mr. Bagdasarian?
Council Member Ara Bagdasarian: Thank you, Mr. Seymour. How does this impact the direction of
economic development in any way, if it does at all?
Russell Seymour: We have a good problem. People want to be in Leesburg. They want to be in here so
much though that we have to pick and choose, and we're in a position now, Leesburg can pick and choose
when it happens or what happens. From an economic development standpoint, I have to fight tooth and
nail for every piece of commercial space that we have left and it concerns me when I see it flipping because
it's a pattern that's being repeated over and over.
How that affects my job, my job is less, more now trying to bring in prospects and we're trying to really
convince the Town Council, but also work with developers in saying that we understand, but my job is to
look out at what's in the best interest of the Town. I will tell you if I was a developer, I'd be doing the exact
same thing because that is where their biggest return on investment is. I'm trying to find that, hey, return on
investment is important, but I'm looking and focusing on the Town's return on investment.
Council Member Bagdasarian: Are there any gaps right now that we're experiencing? I know years ago,
we did a retail gap --
Mayor Burk: Study.
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Council Member Bagdasarian: - study, exactly. Are there any needs that we have right now in the Town
that are not being met that can be?
Russell Seymour: I think the best way to look at that is, I look at the number of positions or the types of
jobs that are coming from the State. I look at each quarter, I get a report what comes out of the Economic
Development State Office and it's manufacturing, it's technology -based, it's government contracting, it's
medical technology. Those are the main projects that are coming in. Those are areas that fit well with us
here. Obviously, we have quite a good base for all those.
I would say, in addition to that, I'd also say, look at our residents, where are they working? If they're here
and they're working, where are they going and that needs to be our target market.
Council Member Bagdasarian: Is there other increased opportunities for teleworking, co -work space in
the Town right now?
Russell Seymour: Co -working space is something that started really good well with our Hub Zone and
you're seeing, I think we have about six of them now that are in place. That will always be there I think to
the extent that we have the Hub Zone and we're able to utilize that. I though don't see that that's going to
be something that's going to be a great expansion over the next five years.
I think what we are going to be able to see is that flex office space that you see out at like, for example, the
Leesburg Tech Park-- I was out there with a group today looking at what's there and it's continuing to grow,
they're continuing to build. St. John's has been looking for other areas to build those types of buildings, they
just can't get anybody to sell them the property right now.
Council Member Bagdasarian: Great. Thank you. Appreciate it.
Mayor Burk: Ms. Fox?
Council Member Suzanne Fox: Thanks, Russ. Just one quick question. As I was listening to this and I
understand that the pick and choose. I feel like Leesburg is in a great place. I agree with you that it's a great
place to live. When an application comes to us, we sit here and we consider the pros and cons, but if
Council decides to deny, we've been told we have to state the reason to deny. This is probably a legal
question for Chris, is the fact that we just don't want to have it a good enough legal reason to deny an
application?
Christopher Spera: Typically one of the factors for approval or denial is consistency with your plan and
consistency with your zoning. Many of these, I wasn't around for most of them, but I'm assuming that some
of these required a change in zoning to go from what it was originally planned for to what it became. You
don't have to change the zoning. If it's inconsistent with the zoning, that's an easy no, and that's a pretty
defensible no.
Council Member Fox: Okay, that's basically what I needed to know. Thanks.
Mayor Burk: Mr. Martinez, Vice Mayor?
Vice Mayor Fernando "Marty" Martinez: Thank you, Russ. I think we all know that there's a paradigm
shift in how businesses are going to start doing their job. When we talk about remote telecommuting and
office hotels, so to speak. My concern is density and housing. No matter what we do, the more homes we
build, the more traffic we're going to get that stays there. It's one thing to have a commercial building where
traffic comes and goes, but when we build more homes, that traffic's pretty much permanent. That's just my
concerns and we've all talked about this many times before, so I appreciate your presentation.
Russell Seymour: Yes, sir.
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Mayor Burk: Mr. Cummings?
Council Member Zach Cummings: Sure, thank you. One quick question. What type of incentives do we
have to pick and choose? You mentioned picking and choosing what businesses we bring to Leesburg,
what type of incentives do we have at our disposal to use, to try to entice the businesses we want to be
here in Leesburg?
Russell Seymour: You have a number of opportunities. The Town does not have an incentive program in
place right now, and we've not needed to do that. Right now, we are currently, Economic Development is
looking at two incentive programs that we hope to be able to bring back before Council with the
understanding that this will help guide us and really bring in those types of businesses that fit well within
our existing pattern.
Council Member Cummings: Perfect. Then you mentioned those types of businesses. Do you have a
sense of the breakdown for commercial, especially office space currently that's occupied, what the
breakdown of the industry is?
Russell Seymour: I think you can look at, and really, it depends on where you're at. If you're in the Hub
Zone, you're going to see a lot of government contracting. I think when you look at either even the MEC
building where I was, predominantly government contractors, tech -based companies, we're seeing those. I
think one of the best examples that we have is The Building People. If you look, they went from the MEC
to their own space, now they actually own a four-story building in Town and they're expanding it.
Those are not exceptions. I really and truly believe that we could experience more of that if we had the
available inventory. We almost lost them and so whenever I look at the types of businesses that we're
seeing, I can't give you a percentage breakdown. Medical is starting to really increase right now. That has
been something, and I think you're going to see it more and more. There's a good example of, we had a
brewery that was going back in and decided that they were not going to go back into this space that they
were in.
One of the reasons was, and having that conversation with that owner, one of the reasons was is when
they went back in to talk about the lease and negotiating it, they found that the landlord or the building
owner was really not interested in negotiating because they had three or four other office users that were
ready to move right into that space. We're seeing that uptick in need right now.
Council Member Cummings: Then just finally, a little bit general of a question, but when you're out looking
at space to fill, who are the partners that you're working with? Is it the County Economic Development
Authority, is it the State? Are you working with all of those folks? When they get an inquiry about someone
looking for space, do they come to you?
Russell Seymour: We do. What we've done recently is I really opened up our discussions with the State.
We've had them out here on a couple of occasions to actually proof and go around and look at the product
that we have so they can get an understanding. I don't want them to ever not realize what Leesburg has.
We have a good relationship with Loudoun County. I talk to Buddy on a regular basis, and I think that we're
seeing some projects come out of that, but Leesburg really, it comes down to space, and it comes down to,
we can market the Town and if we had available space, we could market and fill that space. It's just going
to be a matter of getting that product to market.
Mayor Burk: Oh, you're done. Mr. Steinberg, I'm sorry.
Council Member Neil Steinberg: Thanks for the presentation, Russell. In a certain way, this is hard to
rectify with what we actually have going on in Leesburg. For example, Walmart, which has an astonishing
internet presence, just built one of the largest Walmart's I've ever seen right here in Town. In fact, Compass
Creek is almost entirely made up of retail operations with the exception of ION and obviously, Microsoft,
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which is not in the Town, but At Home, just opened up there. There are plans for some restaurant facilities,
a gas station, and so on.
St. John's is completing a wonderful flex office space on Sycolin Road without any residential component
whatsoever, and at Meadowbrook, they actually want to rezone residential into commercial retail. So how
are we supposed to look at these examples and apply it in a cogent fashion Town -wide and figure out what
we're planning for, or do we have too much of this and not enough of that? Are we saturated in an area or
not?
Russell Seymour: A couple of things. First of all, when you talk to Walmart, you won't see any more large
supercenters built. I had an opportunity of working with them in my previous life, and one of the things that
they talked about is, they had a three million square foot distribution center and they were taking and cutting
off one million square feet to do nothing but online sales. That's their new model now. Even if you go to this
new Walmart that we have in Compass Creek, you have a drive -around area where you can order, drive
over, pick it up, and go out.
I don't know that you're going to see that many more of those built. I think that's probably one of the last
ones, certainly in Virginia. When you look at the retail component, you're at a point now where when you
build more retail, you're only going to be stealing from other retail stores. Unless you bring in stuff or types
of businesses that are not already here, that are maybe outside of our area, the more restaurants you build,
the more different types of venues that you put in, your base is pretty much consistent.
Now, you are getting a lot of residential growth, and that will help, but I think when you start to see retail
being built around, and we talk about even the Crescent Design area and seeing the retail expansion, that
will have an impact on Downtown because you're not going to see that specialty retail component that you
normally would have. Compass Creek, I think you may see change a little bit too. I understand the plans
that are in, I also understand that there's nothing that's there yet, they had a couple.
Council Member Steinberg: They're moving earth in a couple of places.
Russell Seymour: Right, but I'm talking about even across the street, one of those sites too. They've had
different ideas or different changes in their ideas now, I guess is the best way to put it, and we're starting
to hear more about that. Residential is good in certain areas, I think we have a lot of it, we have a lot that's
already on the books that hasn't been built out yet that's going to do more to sustain the growth of the Town.
The piece that we're missing is that employment piece. That's why I don't even think that we have to go
after retail. Retail's here, retail follows the money, but we do need to be able to come back and find places
that we can generate employment opportunities for the citizens in Leesburg. We find a way to do that,
you're going to benefit your retail across the board more than just simply building the houses.
Council Member Steinberg: Okay, but it still gets to the question of how you plan for that, so, for example,
with regards to Meadowbrook, it's already residential, so it's sort of a reverse situation. Do we want to avoid
rezoning residential back into a commercial?
Russell Seymour: No, I think that how you avoid that, and Meadowbrook aside, but I'll look at just, in
general, is as we're starting to develop the new plans, we're talking about the Route 7 corridor plan. Looking
at what could go out there, understanding that developers right now and landowners, their primary focus is
going to be residential first, retail second. Everything else lasts and that's going to be their focus.
From a Town standpoint, I wouldn't recommend that we start looking at trying to change back to residential,
anything that's been zoned already commercial, but I would make sure that as development projects come
in, that the Council take a long serious look at what's needed and not always the fact that it has to be
rezoned just because right now, that's seems to be the best option for the development community.
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Leesburg doesn't have a problem getting developers coming in and we don't have a problem getting
businesses that are interested in us, and we don't have a problem getting residents to come to Leesburg.
We do have a problem of space and we've got a limited amount left.
Council Member Steinberg: We have a slight problem with developers honoring their commitments in
certain situations, obviously. That folds right into this conversation because they're going to echo exactly
what you just said and tell us, well, that there's no market for that right now, but we can't plan to the market.
Russell Seymour: Nor should we really, and I look at it from this standpoint, the retail market is probably
the most saturated it has ever been. Now you're seeing that people that were starting to shop from home,
COVID just really sped that whole process up, but it was already heading in that direction. You could order
something now in the morning, and a lot of times, it can be at your house that afternoon. I think that that's
been a big change in people's mindset.
Council Member Steinberg: Okay, thank you.
Russell Seymour: Yes, sir.
Mayor Burk: I just want to comment on your slide here. We've got nine different development projects, the
Brickyard, East Quarter, Oakland, Stratford, Village of Leesburg, Towns of Kincaid, Tuscarora Village,
Crescent Park, and Crescent Place. That's almost, if I'm not mistaken, I think every one of those was a
rezoning.
Russell Seymour: Yes, ma'am.
Mayor Burk: Council, at some point or another, looked at it and said that they would rather have townhomes
than commercial.
Russell Seymour: It would be office flex space, [unintelligible].
Mayor Burk: Right, and to lose the amount of commercial space we've had here really should make us
pause because as you say we're beginning to run low on space and these townhouses, while great people
live in them, that's wonderful, they don't do anything for employment as you have stated a couple of times.
When we are considering rezonings, we should make sure that whatever is being proposed is better than
what is already in the plan.
I'm not sure that we look at that, nor do I think we consider employment as one of the components we need
to look at, and does that change, add a quality of life to the people here already in Leesburg? I'm glad you're
bringing it to our attention, I hope that we will all take pause to think about what this means. There'll be a
number of rezonings coming forward, so we need to really take our time and think about what is it that we
want Leesburg to look like and be like, so thank you.
Russell Seymour: Thank you.
Mayor Burk: All right, our next topic is the Customer Online Payment Option and Service Fee.
Clark Case: Good evening, Mayor Burk, Vice Mayor Martinez, Members of Council, members of public.
My name's Clark Case, I'm the Director of Finance and Administrative Services for the Town. I'm here with
Amy Wyks to present some information on how the Town's online payments systems are structured and
how service fees are part of that picture. The Town provides seven different ways that customers can pay
their bills, five of which are free, and two of which have convenience fees.
The various methods provide flexibility and choice to our customers about how they want to pay their bills
and when. The service fee -based options are structured such that a customer is paying the provider of the
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service, the Town receives none of the convenience fee. The convenience fees are used to pay for the
software and the servers and cybersecurity and all the things that go into providing an online payment
system to the public that's very state of the art.
We, not very long ago, finished implementing the system we have and it integrates directly into the Town's
financial systems and it is a state-of-the-art system but it isn't free. When people want to use that system
to pay and pay with a credit card or a debit card, they're paying the provider for the system's cost, they're
paying for the extension of credit, they're getting another 30 days in which to pay their bill, and they're also
paying for any perks or points that they're getting on their credit cards.
These are the current available ways you can pay. You can go online to your bank. If you go to your own
personal bank and you them get on your system and you put in your customer number and you put in your
account number with the Town and you hit pay that online check. It doesn't actually print the check that
check is intercepted and is delivered to the Town overnight. We book that against your account the next
business day and that service is free. There is no charge to pay online through your bank.
Additionally, you can go on to the Town's website, you can sign up for automatic payment, which means
that you go in and fill out the form one time and then you will get a bill from us that says, "Don't pay this bill
this as an advice." Then on the day your bill is due, we will go in and draft your account and pay your bill
for you. You don't have to do anything, you only have to do it once and it's free, and it's very inexpensive
for the Town.
Then there's traditional mail. You can always decide to put that 55 cent stamp on it and mail it to the Town
and there's no fee for us to process that. It goes to a lockbox provider, they digitize it and give it back to us
in a very efficient electronic format. You can walk in and pay across the counter. We have people who are
there who are perfectly willing and happy to speak with you, who are bilingual.
We also have three drop boxes; one at the police station, one on the corner of Wirt and Market, they're
available 24/7, and then there's one inside the Town Hall by the payments area. You walk in and there's a
line and you don't want to wait in the line, you can just drop it in the payment box there. We do have two
areas that do have the service fee. One is if you want to call in on the telephone 24/7 on holidays, evenings,
weekends, that's through the Paymentus system.
It will handle English and Spanish and it does have a convenience fee. They take credit card, a debit card,
or an electronic check. The last one is the online system where you go on to the Town's website, you say
you want to pay with a credit card or a debit card or a check and it takes you over to the Paymentus site
and it is processed there and there is a convenience fee for that. Again, the third -party service fees are also
available for business tax payments and general invoices up to $200K.
The e -check payment for the business cost them 50 cents, which is less than a stamp to mail the check. If
your business wants credit, then that's extended at 2.5% of the cost of the bill. Some businesses need the
credit to get by, others don't want to pay it, others do the e -check. Utility payments for water and sewer bills
can be paid up to $500 online and through the portal for a flat transaction fee of $3.95. That can be paid by
credit, debit or e -check.
The e -check option does allow a water bill to be paid up to $5K. The service fees, if the Town decided to
pick up the cost of the service fee and pay for the credit card and the debit card costs for the customers, if
it was just for the existing number of people and nobody switched over to pay with a credit card who was
not paying before, the cost will be $14K to the Town if it was made free to the customers, and if every
customer decided to pay with a credit card, it would be $652K in costs to the Town.
The reality is we're probably in the middle somewhere in there. There are a lot of people who are not going
to pay with a credit card even if they can, and a lot of people do not have credit cards. The Utilities Fund
cost if the existing number of people who currently pay with a credit card the Town paid their fee for them
Page 8I July 26, 2021
would be about $91 K a year, and if made free, the customers and all the customers who pay with a credit
card, it can be up to $282K.
All of the funds, the Utilities Fund and the General Fund if they combined it, it would be a minimum of about
$105K and maybe a maximum of $934K a year if the Town decided to pick up those payments. I have a
missing slide here. When you look at the current payment profile, across the whole Town, about 32% of the
transactions are paid with a service fee, so about 30% of the people pay with it and about 70% of the people
elect to use one of the free payment methods.
In terms of the number of transactions, about 85% of all of the online payment transactions are Utilities
Fund payments. Our volume in terms of the number of transactions processed are very heavily for Utilities,
and only 15% of the transaction volume are General Fund, which is primarily business bills and parking
tickets. The dollar values though go the other way because business taxes and things like meals taxes and
BPOL are so much larger dollar amounts, 53% of the dollar volume would hit the General Fund, whereas
only 47% of the dollar volume would hit the Utilities Fund.
If you look at this slide, this breaks out where you can see that the service fees are paid on 29% of the
transactions for the General Fund and 33% of the transactions that are paid with a convenience fee are on
Utilities Fund, so it's not greatly different. Basically, roughly 70/30. In summary, there are five payment
options that are free to the customers, two that have a third -party service fee. The majority of the customers
use the free payment methods.
Absorbing or paying the third -party service fees for the customers would cost the Town anywhere from
$105K to $935K a year. There would be some rate in tax rate implications if the Town chooses to do this.
It doesn't do it now, so it's not built into the expenditure budgets of the Town. Eventually, the rates would
probably, in water and sewer, have to raise about 1.5% to absorb it. The tax rate would probably have to
go up about three-quarters of a penny on the tax rate. With that, if you have any questions, we're here to
answer.
Mayor Burk: Thank you. Mr. Cummings, do you have any questions?
Council Member Cummings: I do. What is the company that we use to do our payments?
Clark Case: We use our Paymentus.
Council Member Cummings: Paymentus, thank you.
Clark Case: It's a very well-known industry system and it's significantly a step up in terms of technology
from what the Town was doing before.
Council Member Cummings: Sure. I'm assuming we have a contract with them to do this, is there any
room to negotiate that service fee or is that a flat fee they require everyone to pay?
Clark Case: We conducted an RFP and that's the fee they give. We have asked them are there ways to
change those fees and for the most part, they say that's our business model.
Council Member Cummings: Then question maybe for the Town Attorney. Who's liable, I was going to
say if, but I really think the question is when our consumer data is compromised? Is it the Town that's going
to be liable for that compromise or Paymentus?
Clark Case: If the compromise is through Paymentus, Paymentus is liable for that. If the compromise is via
the Town, then the Town would be liable for that.
Council Member Cummings: Who determines where the compromise happened?
Page 91 July 26, 2021
Clark Case: Forensic cybersecurity people would probably wind up determining that.
Council Member Cummings: Because I'm new, when you all negotiated the RFP for Paymentus, was
there ever an option to create your own online payment platform that's a Town of Leesburg -specific that
doesn't require a service fee?
Clark Case: The Town has always charged a convenience fee primarily because of the cost to the tax rate,
so there's never been a time when the Town did it itself. You can always build your own, but then you have
to be PCI compliant, which means you have to meet a lot of industry standards, you greatly increase your
exposure for if you are hacked for that credit card data. Right now, none of that credit card data resides on
the Town's network.
That's all kept out at Paymentus, so to get in and get that information, they have to get through a much,
much more formidable cybersecurity grid to get into Paymentus than to get into the Town.
Council Member Cummings: Okay.
Clark Case: We do our very best, but they have a lot of resources that they're protecting information with
that we simply would never have.
Council Member Cummings: Is there any program in place, whether with the Utilities Fund or at the Town
for the money coming into the General Fund, where if someone's unable to make a payment via one of the
free options that there is a program to waive the fees for a hardship or one time, an economic issue, is
there any program like that in place?
Clark Case: No, we don't have any programs to waive the fees. We will put people on payment plans and
frequently do that allows them to spread that out. Most don't pay that with a credit card, but some can, but
we do not waive the fee because it's a Paymentus fee. We do not receive any of the money.
Council Member Cummings: Sure. One thing I will just point out is credit card and debit card, which debit
cards are not technically credit cards, but I understand that they're categorized the same way, so thank
you.
Clark Case: Yes.
Mayor Burk: Mr. Bagdasarian?
Council Member Cummings: No questions at this point. Thank you.
Mayor Burk: Mr. Steinberg?
Council Member Steinberg: Thanks, Clark. Out of curiosity, why is the utility bill limited to $500?
Clark Case: That's primarily a fraud prevention issue. A person can actually pay more, they just have to
pay another $395 for the next $500.
Council Member Steinberg: Fraud prevention, okay, I understand what you're saying, but I'm not sure
how fraud prevention comes in to the equation.
Clark Case: I don't want to get too technical about it, but the reality is that when you have very large dollar
amounts, people can come back and retroactively challenge it. Then they disappear having credited out a
large payment on a credit card, and then they disappear, move out of State and you're left holding back
trying to track them back down. By putting the $500 limit on it, it prevents that from happening, but it's also
how Paymentus has structured their program.
Page 101 July 26, 2021
To provide the flat $395, that's their cost basis at the $500 limit. You could get a higher limit, but the fee
then would be higher, and we're trying to keep the fee relatively low on a transactional basis.
Council Member Steinberg: What is the fee if a credit card is used at the counter?
Clark Case: There is no fee for a credit card used at the counter.
Council Member Steinberg: Does the Town not pay a fee to the processor?
Clark Case: The Town does absorb that fee now. That is a holdover from Visa and MasterCard rules that
say you can charge a convenience fee for an online or IVR type payment, but across the counter, you could
not. There was a court case recently that has overturned that rule, but the Town has not changed its policy.
A lot of that is because there's a lot of customers who have become acclimated to this and come in and
paid their bill. That's why they come in, is they're not willing to pay for the convenience of paying online.
Council Member Steinberg: Is it a different processor at the counter as opposed to online?
Clark Case: It is and it's a less expensive processor.
Council Member Steinberg: I see, okay.
Clark Case: Because there's not a system admin fee implied in it, it's just the credit cost.
Council Member Steinberg: Okay, thanks.
Mayor Burk: Ms. Nacy?
Council Member Nacy: All good.
Mayor Burk: Vice Mayor Martinez?
Vice Mayor Martinez: I also understand that if we were trying to have our own system, you'd end up having
to hire a whole bunch of staff, both on IT and finance to handle the security and other things. That's why I
think this is a good example of outsourcing unless we want to really build a system that really for the Town
would be cost-effective.
Clark Case: Marty, when I was in Winston-Salem, we had one person who just did utility bill web payments,
and one person would just reconcile the backend on it, and one person who just did the General Fund
payments, so we had three people processed this. That's all they did.
Vice Mayor Martinez: Right and I appreciate the presentation. A couple of questions I have are just pretty
basic. When you're doing over-the-counter payments, do you have the technology to allow the tap on the
card or other?
Clark Case: I don't believe we have the tap yet. We do take the chip cards, but I don't believe we have the
tap yet.
Vice Mayor Martinez: Okay, and is there any way that you can use Venmo or PayPal for payment?
Clark Case: We do. If you use Paymentus, you can pay via Venmo or PayPal. There's a long list of ways
to pay.
Vice Mayor Martinez: How do we get that information across? Because --
Page 11 1 July 26, 2021
Clark Case: It is in the Town's website.
Vice Mayor Martinez: It is in the Town's website?
Clark Case: Yes, it is in the Town's website.
Vice Mayor Martinez: The reason I'm asking is I made a bad or an assumption that you had other ways to
pay, I just didn't know what they were, and that's why I threw this question out, which means that if I don't
know, there's probably quite a few people that don't know. I just wonder, do you have in place when
somebody calls and questions you, you can say, "If you don't want to use a credit card, use Venmo. If you
don't want to use Venmo, use PayPal."
They all now are starting to charge certain fees for certain amounts of money, so either way, they're going
to be paying a fee. What about the credit card fee that we're paying over the counter that we're absorbing,
is there currently anything in place that we don't have to do that, or are you just grandfathering it in for now?
Clark Case: It's just been grandfathered in, it would require a Council action to change it probably, and
we've just not wanted to make a change that would disturb the current customer relationships.
Vice Mayor Martinez: How many transactions would you say over the counter?
Clark Case: It's on my chart. Let me go back.
Kaj Dentler: 13%.
Clark Case: Yes.
Kaj Dentler: Exactly. I'll check with accounting.
Vice Mayor Martinez: So we're not talking about a huge amount of money.
Clark Case: Yes, right. 6% for the credit card. Check at the counter is 7%, the credit card at the counter is
3%, so yes 3%, but not a lot of people are doing it.
Vice Mayor Martinez: All right, and I would imagine the cash payments are pretty low too.
Clark Case: Cash would probably be my number one thing to get rid of. We categorize that in with check
at the counter for this draft, so I don't have cash at the counter. I regard the checks and the cash to
interchangeably, but cash is expensive. You have to have a person take it to the bank, you have to count
it, you have to count it down. There's a lot of handling with cash.
Clark Case: I can understand the issues they had when AOL was going to get rid of their modems, and
there was another one when Verizon or Comcast went digital and you no longer had an analog station
broadcasting. So those are things that eventually, we're going to have to deal with, but I think, for now, I'm
happy with it.
Clark Case: We'll get the card tap when we replace the current credit card readers which we do on a cycle.
It's a new technology and we just don't go out and replace them because there's another new technology.
We get that when we do the next round of replacements.
Vice Mayor Martinez: I think of a kiosk where I can bring up my credit card on it then leave.
Clark Case: Yes, there's a lot of people who like that technology, but again, it always comes with a fee
somewhere.
Page 121 July 26, 2021
Vice Mayor Martinez: Understood.
Clark Case: You need to contract with grocery stores so that you can pay your water bill at the grocery
store and at Walmart and places like that, but again, it comes with a fee and we're trying to keep the rates
low.
Vice Mayor Martinez: Understood, thank you. I appreciate your presentation.
Mayor Burk: Ms. Fox?
Council Member Fox: Thanks. I do have a couple of questions. Going back to the credit card issue, I
understand credit card fees, this is very convenient. I totally get that. Let me just reiterate what you said
about the card payments at the window. Why is there no fee for that? I know you gave an explanation but
I can't remember.
Clark Case: It's a holdover from Visa and MasterCard rules and the credit card companies have an industry
standard and they set rules that all the merchants have to follow. The rule that Visa and MasterCard had
imposed on all the merchants was that you could not charge a convenience fee for a person paying in
person. You could only charge a convenience fee if you were providing online or phoned -based payment
service.
Council Member Fox: Oh, that makes sense.
Clark Case: There was a court case that overturned that, so legally, we could change and start charging
the convenience fee at the counter and evidently our revenue collector would very much advocate that, but
at this time, we have never taken it on as a change to bring before Council.
Council Member Fox: That makes sense. Thanks. I don't have a problem. Looking over it and thinking
about convenience, credit card is a convenient. My issue comes with the e -checks. We have 30% of the
people who choose a different option. Those are the folks we're hearing from, which is why we're talking
about this tonight. I take a look at the staff report and it says any business tax payments or general invoices
up to $200K get a $2.49 cent credit card fee or a 50 cent e -check.
Which is fine. I think 50 cents is-- I think the industry standard is between 30 cents and $1.50 if I'm correct.
So 50 cents is wonderful, but when you go to pay your $100 water bill with an e -check, you pay $3.95. I
don't understand that disconnect. Why is it okay to pay 50 cents here and 3.95 for utilities for the same
service?
Clark Case: We've asked Paymentus this question numerous times. Their response to us has been, "That's
our business model. That's how we structure the payments." I think it has a lot to do with how much manual
processing happens with an e -check. If you go online at your bank and you write us an electronic check
transaction off your bank account, that's free, but the bank knows your bank routing and transit number, so
you don't have any opportunity to miskey it.
Whereas if it's an electronic check, you key in the bank routing number and you key in your account number.
If you make a mistake, that check's going to bounce and it comes back on to Paymentus as a bank returned
item fee, they then have to manually process that and credit it back against the account. It then comes
back on the Town's account as a returned item. We get hit with a $35 fee as well.
Paymentus is not charging you for the transaction fee that's going through, they're charging you for all the
manual handling we have to do on the electronic checks where people miskey it. Some people are probably
being a little cynical miskeying that because by the time you track all that through, they've gotten an extra
30 days to pay. Then they'll come back in and pay it on a make good. That's a lot of back -end processing
Page 131 July 26, 2021
for a company who makes its living off automated payments over the web and over the phone. They're
hitting our customers for a premium for that back -end processing for the payments that fail.
Council Member Fox: That bothers me because that's not the consumer's fault. I read the staff report and
it brought up equity, I'm just trying to figure it out. Explain to me the equity in this is paying $200K for a 50
cent e -check fee, and somebody's paying their $100 water bill for a $3.95 fee. I just don't see how that's
even good for anybody. I feel like we need to actually revisit that, maybe with Paymentus and see if we can
negotiate something different because I don't believe that that is "equitable."
Clark Case: As I said, we've tried to negotiate it with them. Right now we have to wait for the contract
renewal.
Council Member Fox: When's that?
Clark Case: It's coming up. We're talking to them about it now. I have not gotten a response from them that
says that they're willing to change anything.
Council Member Fox: I guess, Madam Mayor, one of the things I'd like to have Council think about is
maybe looking at that contract and see what we can do about bringing that e -check fee down to a point
where it's easier for folks to pay via e -check for that service because that's what we're hearing from them.
Kaj Dentler: I think the one clarification, correct me if I'm wrong, to your question, what we are facing in
that particular case, the e -check, the customer, they've entered the wrong date and then it falls on the
business to rectify that behind the scenes, so the business is incurring more costs because the customer
made an error in the input.
Council Member Fox: Could it have happened with the other ones too?
Kaj Dentler: [Unintelligible] is that you as a customer may even say, "This has happened and I'll increase
the amount of effort to clean that up [unintelligible] so that's what they're charging for to deal with that,
versus when you pay for your bank routing number [unintelligible] error involved. [Unintelligible] you're
describing, that's why it is inequitable, from what [unintelligible] because you, as a customer inputted
erroneously [unintelligible] that the business now has to clean that up and incur additional cost
[unintelligible]. That's really the difference from what I've heard [unintelligible].
Council Member Fox: I get that, but what I'm asking is, and utilities is different, because you have just
everybody putting in their input, but the people who pay their tax payments, and pay any sort of invoices,
they don't go through that same process?
Clark Case: The volumes are very much lower in the businesses. The dollar amounts are bigger, but the
numbers of transactions are much smaller. That's the reason why they're charging more as they're getting
a lot more volume in returns from the individuals than they're getting from the businesses. That's the reason
for the differential. Our position on it is we offer-- the free payment is online, we're covering the costs, and
putting that in the next day.
Anybody who's got online banking and if they're coming in online, they've got online access, can access
that method and it's free. The people who are coming on and wanting to key in their bank routing and transit
numbers are the people who are creating a risk of a higher cost for the provider. That's why the provider's
charging more for it.
Council Member Fox: You've checked with other municipalities and they have the same premium as well?
Because I've actually looked into that and a lot of municipalities don't even charge. Some of them don't
even charge for e -checks.
Page 141 July 26, 2021
Mayor Burk: Sorry.
Clark Case: There are technical reasons why they don't charge that I'm not sure I want to go in this forum,
but the reality is that most people do. Almost all the towns charge the convenience fees. They're fairly
similar to our convenience fee. Each one is slightly different because they have different volumes of
transactions and they may or may not have a third -party provider.
Most of the towns either use OPay, or use Paymentus. Most are converting over to Paymentus away from
OPay because it's an older technology and harder to use, which was a big motive for why the Town
switched. I'm trying to think. Loudoun County takes the e -check free because then the treasurer has your
bank account number. If you don't pay your bill, he has better access to your information. That's why he
accepts it for free.
Council Member Fox: Interesting. I still think we should take a look. I think they got a great deal. I'm not
sure we're getting the great deal, but I would still like to take a look upon contract renewal if Council says
it's okay. Thanks.
Mayor Burk: We'II get back to that in one second. Let me have Mr. Bagdasarian ask his question.
Council Member Bagdasarian: Thank you very much. Like with anything, we need to make a decision,
do we build our own payment system or do we contract or buy? With any third -party processing, there's
going to be a convenience fee. Even if we build our own system, there's going to be credit card processing
fee regardless of the convenience fee, which is part of --
The one thing Ms. Fox's comment there, typically, when it comes to EFT or direct pay through your bank,
that's typically a lower fee, because in most systems, you are required to manually enter your bank account
and routing information manually. They don't allow you to copy and paste just to ensure the integrity of the
data, so that's important. From a business perspective, I love the fact that there-- I've been waiting for years
for over a decade to actually have online payment options with the Town and so that is a premium.
There's the convenience factor which okay, that's a business decision. Are we willing to-- There are several
free options for payments but with convenience, there's also a fee associated with that. I completely
understand that. It's good to see that there are a number of different options for that. That's the one thing I
thought was interesting is that typically with a bank, e -checks, typically those are almost nothing when it
comes to fees because there are no credit card processing associated with that. There are safeguards put
into place when it comes to entering the data to ensure the integrity. I was a little surprised to see that.
Clark Case: The e -check is the one thing we debated back and forth with Paymentus about numerous
times. They've stood firm on it and they've not been entirely forthcoming as to why. That's why I'm convinced
it's the manual back handling of the returns that are the issue for them. They are a payments automator
and they are not really staffed and equipped to do that. That means they have to add more people to
manually process it. That's why they're structuring their fee the way they are.
Council Member Bagdasarian: It is possible for the Town to build our own processing system, but there
is a cost associated with that. Is it worth it at the end of the day with the ROI?
Clark Case: There is a cost and there's a risk because if you build your own, then you have all that payment
information on your network, and if it gets hacked, you're directly liable for it.
Council Member Bagdasarian: Right, and that requires additional insurance and other factors -
Clark Case: Could be millions of dollars, if you got hacked, for every resident in Town's checking account
and credit card numbers.
Page 151 July 26, 2021
Council Member Bagdasarian: Thank you.
Mayor Burk: Mr. Steinberg?
Council Member Steinberg: Just one further question. It seems to me in this day and age of technology,
I mean, I have paid by e -check in a couple of situations, the transaction wouldn't even go through if the
routing number and the information were inconsistent. Why is it that Paymentus can't manage that simple
thing, it seems?
Clark Case: Well, usually what gets caught is the routing number. Most of the banks can trap a bad routing
number, most of the online systems can, but there's no good way to know whether your account number at
the bank is correct. The ones that typically slide through the edits are the account numbers being
transposed or incorrect, rather than the routing number. Usually, you can check the routing number to say,
"Does it agree to what we have on file for the major banks?" Now, if the person's banking with a more
obscure credit union or something like that, we might not be able to process it that way, but it's the account
numbers that usually is where the mistakes are made.
Council Member Steinberg: Okay, thanks.
Clark Case: We don't yet have real-time ability to confirm account numbers. It would be nice if we did.
Mayor Burk: Okay, Ms. Fox, did you -
Council Member Fox: I agree with Council Member Steinberg on that. It's their business too, you know
what I mean? I just don't like the disconnect between what one person can pay and what the other people
pay utilities, everybody has to have utilities, you know what I mean? That is what gets me but there's five
other options that we have. I guess, for lack of something better, that's so 1990s, we're in 2021, this is
something that everybody is starting to do.
I know that we still have a lot of people who don't want to use it, but that number is going to grow. I think
we're just going to hear it more and more and more, honestly, that why are we paying to pay for our water
and our sewer? Why do we have to pay this extra fee? They don't think of it as a fee, they just think of it as
extra tax. I can't disagree with them. I just feel like we owe it to them to check into it and owe it to folks to
do that.
Mayor Burk: Are you asking for-- Mr. Cummings?
Council Member Cummings: Sorry. One question. When you mentioned it being everything online, I did
pull up the Town website. I just had one quick question. It doesn't give the actual fee, it says that there are
fees that will be applied, but it doesn't say 3.99, 4.99, 7.99. Is there a reason for that?
Clark Case: Yes, it's $3.95 for each $500 of water bill. The fees can vary between the water bills and the
business taxes. You get the fee presented before you approve the payment. At that point, you know exactly
what the fee is going to be.
Council Member Cummings: I understand that. I guess I'm looking at the-- I get what you're saying, but it
only goes to $500 and if you're a business tax, it's a different amount. Economics like psychologists talk
about when folks are at their lowest financially, and that they have actually done studies that folks are
thinking at an elementary level, not at whatever they may be, best college degrees, they might be master's
degrees. For me, what I would think is, it would be nice at least on the utility because as Council Member
Fox said, that's a need. You have to have water, you have to have sewer.
It would be nice to at least have on the front page of the Town website, "This is the fee that will be applied
for up to $500 of your water and sewer bill." I think the less folks need to click around because once you
Page 161 July 26, 2021
click on that Paymentus, you have to then log in. If I'm scrambling around, I'm already at a point where I'm
maybe not able to pay the full amount or something, I don't need to click through three different websites
and then have to come up with a login. I personally think it would be great if we had those fees addressed
directly on the Town's website because the folks I talked to, they don't know Paymentus from Town of
Leesburg. It's all Town of Leesburg to them.
Clark Case: It is relatively transparent. They click on their billing on the Town's website, it automatically
transfers them to the Paymentus site. At that point, they can see what the fees are.
Council Member Cummings: You have to log into the Paymentus site to get those fees. A logging in is a
big step for most people.
Mayor Burk: Alright. I'll go to Ms. Fox first. You are requesting--?
Council Member Fox: I'm requesting that as the contract comes to an end and we go to review the contract
again, we question the fees, and we take a look at other options if the fees aren't going to go down and we
don't get a direct response as to why.
Mayor Burk: Are there four people that would be willing to have that move forward? Everybody. Then did -
Clark Case: Can I have a point of clarification? Are you talking specifically about the e -check?
Council Member Fox: Specifically. I totally get the credit card. Credit cards are convenient. I get it.
Mayor Burk: Mr. Cummings, did you want something to move forward in regards to the website?
Council Member Cummings: Yes. If it takes Council action to add the fees directly to the Town of
Leesburg website, then yes, I'd like to see those on there.
Clark Case: [Unintelligible]. We can do that.
Amy Wyks: I'll look at the specific Utility pages and add it.
Mayor Burk: You don't need four people. Thank you. Thank you very much. That was very interesting. Our
last item for tonight is the 2022 General Assembly Legislative Program.
Keith Markel: Mayor and Council, I'm here tonight to share with you the draft proposed legislative program
for the 2022 General Assembly session coming up here in a few months. As you recall a few years ago,
our local delegates and senators have asked that we provide our information to them a little bit sooner, so
they have more time to work on it on their end and prepare their legislation. That's why we come to you
here in July, to begin the discussion and see where you all would like to go with this.
What we're asking for this evening is to begin the review and the editing process of the documents and
when you're ready, to adopt the resolution to adopt the legislative program, but that does not need to
happen tomorrow night. You do have the draft resolution in your packet, but if you want more time to work
with us, certainly this can go over the next few months as well.
A little background here. As you all know, the session doesn't start till January. The second Wednesday in
January. This year is a long session year. Once this plan is adopted by the Council, we always set up those
meetings. We've done group events in the past. Last year and last few years, I guess we did one -on -ones,
two -on -ones with our local legislative representative. You have some options here to be thinking about as
we move forward in the program.
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You'll also notice that the draft this year, it looks a little different than we've done in years past trying to
simplify things and make it a little more easy to find information. We've consolidated the legislative agenda
and the position statement into a single document and we've assigned them by category. We have subject
matters broken down so that it's easier to find specific information.
We also added a new element this year, which is specific budget funding requests. You have legislative
requests, and then they can also add in amendments to the proposed budget. When we've asked for large
ticket items, and the two that you'll see in here now are those interchange improvements, those multimillion -
dollar projects, those are added in now as a separate section for budget requests.
Just to hit a few of the highlights here for you for this year's program as we've started out, and again,
certainly, you all can add to these as you all feel necessary, or as your priorities indicate. What we've put
in here as our general topics under the general category is overtime pay and this is something that in the
last session, they omitted the ability for local governments to compensate employees with comp time.
Previously, we had employees of a certain pay class, they could receive comp time. Now, everybody except
for police officers must be paid out in cash for the additional hours beyond the normal hour's work. This is
something that HR has identified and we have employees that would like to see this come back, so to add
that comp time as an option for compensation. We have continued on with having the remote meetings of
advisory board to be able to be fully virtual. We still have that in this year's legislative program and then
we're also working still with the County on that item to have memorandums of agreement with the County.
As you've known, what we've discussed in the past, there are a lot of areas where the County provides the
service, but they do require a memorandum of agreement or understanding between the localities. We feel
this is something that if we're not asking for something unique or different than what other residents in the
unincorporated areas of the County would receive, that that would be the default that the County would
provide that service within the Town limits.
Only in cases where we wanted a different service or a modified service from what the County provides,
would we then memorialize that with a memorandum of agreement or understanding. For position
statements, we have a few new items here. I'll just hit two of them. I won't try to pronounce this, but this is
something that was brought up by Utilities Department.
The PFASs. These are chemicals that are found in the environment, manmade chemicals found in drinking
water in some instances and this is something that the State may be looking to put regulatory limits on and
testing requirements on. The water providers and wastewater providers here in the State have come
together and are asking the State do not implement any of these limits until the EPA has finished doing
their testing and really look at a nationwide limit versus the State coming in and trying to set limits
prematurely. This is something that we've added in for consideration, also marijuana sales tax. This is a
new thing now.
As we know, marijuana in the next few years will be able to be legally sold here in the Commonwealth. This
is something that we're asking that the State would be responsible for the collecting and distributing of
marijuana sales tax, based on the point of sale of where the marijuana is sold. We've added that in as well.
Next steps for you is to discuss any of these things. We can go through it line by line tonight, or you can
review it and we can come back later, add and remove, modify as you see fit, and then move on for adoption.
I'll answer any questions
Mayor Burk: Okay, well I have a number of questions here. The format, I think is an improvement, but I do
have some questions. What's the difference between a legislative priority and a position statement?
Keith Markel: The priority is that we're asking for them to specifically draft legislation for action in this
upcoming session. Now whether they choose to do that, that's their prerogative, but a legislative priority,
this is something that we were asking legislation to be drafted on. If it's a position statement, it's something
that we either feel strongly about, or we feel that will be coming forward as a legislative item in this coming
session. This is a position that the Council will take and be on record with so that as legislation comes up
Page 181 July 26, 2021
and things, as we know, move very quickly, we know where the Council's position is, so we're able to
articulate that to our legislators when they call up and say, "Hey, how do you all feel about X or Y7' We can
refer to this and hopefully this captures your sentiments.
Mayor Burk: Well, then if you go from general topics where you have legislative priorities and then position
statements, and the next one is land use, you have legislative priorities, none at this time. Then you have
position statements. We really have no legislative priorities? We don't want to ask the General Assembly if
they would determine that the lines need to be buried rather than go overhead anymore or anything along
those lines. To me, that looks that doesn't look very good, that we've got legislative priorities, none and
then you got position statements, and then you go to the environment, legislative priorities, none, utilities,
all the way down.
Keith Markel: I understand where you're coming from and we can certainly modify the approach, or if we
don't have a priority, if you all do not have a legislative priority, we can remove that so it doesn't look empty
for you or if you do have priorities. What we used is last year's document as our base and went from there
and then met with the department directors to see if they had any specific legislation that they really felt
strongly about, or if they, as members of different organizations, based on their subject area, had any
specific legislation that they were going to be pushing for.
Knowing that if it's a legislative priority, that's something we are asking in this session for them to develop
legislation on. That means we've really got to put in that effort and really advocate for that, and really hope
that one of our local legislators will pick that up and really carry that for us. We want to be careful that what
we're asking for is truly important to them.
Mayor Burk: Well then maybe we should just not have that. If there's no legislative priorities, maybe we
shouldn't put that in there and just leave it off.
Keith Markel: [Unintelligible].
Mayor Burk: That would be my suggestion, but the 1.7, the higher education presence in Leesburg, that's
been on there for --
Keith Markel: [Unintelligible].
Mayor Burk: I've been on here, how long? I think that ship has sailed. I don't know that we really need to
have that on there anymore and so I would suggest that we remove that at this point. In the environmental
section, I was surprised that there was nothing on recycling, which I know the EAC has been talking about
extensively, especially glass recycling and what is the State doing to help localities figure out what to do
with glass. It's a very volatile situation where nobody knows what they take, what they don't take. I know
that the electric recharging stations are another big one that they've talked about, and plastic bags, although
I think that's something that we're going to talk about here before too long. Then for the land use, I know
that they have frequently talked about burying overhead lines and can we get the ability to require that
power companies bury their lines and phone companies bury their lines, rather than continue to have them
overhead. Those are just a couple that I know of, just talking with the different commissions that I work with.
Anybody else have anything? Mr. Bagdasarian?
Council Member Bagdasarian: Well, yes. Would it make sense to, as we did with our priorities for the
Town Council, to share our individual priorities with the Town Manager and bring those back and
incorporate those into this doc? Because when would this be submitted?
Keith Markel: It's really at your discretion.
Council Member Bagdasarian: Okay.
Page 191 July 26, 2021
Keith Markel: Sooner, rather than later -
Mayor Burk: The sooner the better.
Keith Markel: -is better for our local legislative delegates, but in the next few months, would be fine. The
County, for example, won't be bringing this up to the Board until September.
Council Member Bagdasarian: I do think it would be it'd be strong to have some legislative priorities for
the sections that make sense because most of them are-- there's nothing there right now and I know that
there are certain factors that we would like to incorporate into that.
Mayor Burk: All right, so you would like to suggest that everybody send to the Town Manager our priorities
within those areas?
Council Member Bagdasarian: Yes, if there are priorities, and we'll see if there's overlap, and then we
could discuss and agree to which ones we want to submit as part of our plan.
Mayor Burk: So is that possible to be able to have at the next meeting?
Kaj Dentler: Sure. [Inaudible].
Mayor Burk: Okay.
Kaj Dentler: [Inaudible].
Mayor Burk: Everyone does cover at least one Commission, so most certainly, I would suggest you take
whatever the Commission has been talking about in dealing with also. Thank you. All right, we'll do that.
Everybody's onboard for that one. Yes, yes. Okay. All right. Anything else?
Council Member Bagdasarian: No. That's it. Thank you.
Mayor Burk: Okay. Kari? Ms. Nacy?
Council Member Nacy: I just had-- which I guess I could ask these in an email too, but I just had a couple
of questions on-- Newbie, what some of these things mean, but like under finance, transient occupancy tax.
Help me there.
Keith Markel: 6.1?
Mayor Burk: Yes, 6.1.
Council Member Nacy: Okay. Yes. Sorry --
Keith Markel: Online booking through one of the online companies.
Council Member Nacy: Like Airbnb? Is that what you mean?
Mayor Burk: Orbitz.
Council Member Nacy: Whatever the difference?
Keith Markel: This I believe, is more about online travel. Travelocity or Orbitz or something like that, where
you'd be booking your hotel room online.
Page 201 July 26, 2021
Council Member Nacy: Got you.
Keith Markel: They're not paying the same transit occupancy tax on the sale of that room as you would if
you walked up to the counter at the local hotel.
Council Member Nacy: Okay. Thank you. That makes sense. Line of duty act, is that something that we
pay locally right now?
Keith Markel: It is.
Christopher Spera: I'll jump in. The line of duty started out as a State -funded thing. If an officer or other
emergency service provider died in the line of duty, there was a certain level of funding, certain level of
benefits that's provided to the family. That started out as a State -funded thing, and then the State decided,
"We'll let the localities pay," and that's where we are today.
Council Member Nacy: Okay.
Christopher Spera: This is to try and get the State to come back —
Council Member Nacy: Just kicking it back to them.
Christopher Spera: -to get it back to where it was.
Council Member Nacy: That makes sense, and then HB 599, law enforcement assistance funding.
Keith Markel: [Unintelligible] —that was funding. It is interesting, this is again the State, how they slowly
just tweak things as the years go by to the advantage of the State, and it's more of a financial burden to the
localities.
Kari Nacy: [Unintelligible].
Keith Markel: They initially had a formula how they assign their dollars to localities based on a number of
different things. Then in the past few years, they've had an appropriation amendment in the budget that's
modified that they're not giving localities the money at the same ratio that they once did. Now, we've
changed the text this year from last year's, because we have seen an increase in funding. We're not making
what we would have had the formula have been consistent for the past decade, but we have seen an uptick
in the last few years but that's based on per capita.
As the Town grows, our 599 funds come in, but it's not based on the formula that was adopted as part of
the 599 legislation. They've said, "Here's the formula, but, oh, wait, we're not going to use that formula
anymore. We're going to use what's in the budget appropriation," and they do that each year. What we're
asking for, and all localities would benefit most likely, is if you'd go back to the original formula, they'll be
distributing more funds to Leesburg.
Council Member Nacy: That makes sense. I think that was my major ones. Thank you.
Mayor Burk: Mr. Martinez?
Vice Mayor Martinez: A couple of things that I think are missing, that is a priority for me. One is, we go
back to environmental, and we go back to glass recycling, and the regular recycling. Obviously, glass is no
longer part of the recycling ideas that we had before because of the weight and all the other stuff that we
needed. Our recycling is now no longer picking up glass.
Keith Markel: Well we are.
Page 21J July 26, 2021
Vice Mayor Martinez: We are but -
Keith Markel: It's still being recycled, depending on how you define recycling, but of course you have to
think about what are we asking the State to do. Do we want them to [unintelligible] glass recycling? Do
we want them to develop recycling markets for glass material?
Vice Mayor Martinez: I want them to go back and revisit the whole recycling strategy and include localities
being able to work on the glass recycling. I personally would love to see the State have glass recycling
centers where we can send it to thema and then they can use it for whatever roads or whatever they want.
Did they have a strategy and how we can go further down in the future on this kind of recycling strategies?
That would be something that I would really-- I also noticed that we really have no position on broadband
within the Town. I don't know what the County's is but Town -wide broadband and I would like to see the
State implement some kind of strategy, where all the different localities can provide that broadband to all
sectors. Then, in other words, support the VML's position on the broadband.
Keith Markel: Is it to reach households who may not be able to afford it? Because if you look at
communities, Leesburg is covered.
Mayor Burk: We're covered.
Vice Mayor Martinez: I understand that -
Keith Markel: We're not [inaudible].
Vice Mayor Martinez: -but there are still some people that can't afford to have access to broadband. It's
not just building a broadband network, but allowing people to have access to it, that could not access it
before. If it means giving them basic Chromebooks or something so they can access the internet, to have
a strategy to do that.
That was another one. The recycling is a big one. One of the things that I mentioned before that I really feel
we need to focus on is solar power and how we're going to use that in the future. That ties in with the electric
cars and everything else we're doing. We're all transitioning to electric power things and we need to have
a supply to power those things and the only way we're going to get that is through solar energy. Thank you.
Council Member Bagdasarian: Mr. Steinberg?
Council Member Steinberg: Thanks, Keith. Well, the first thing is a nerd question. Maybe we let Amy go
too soon. What are the sources of polyfluor alcohols substances in water? I know it's used in nonstick pans,
but since that particular substance is brought up, what's the overriding problem with them in general and
where does it come from?
Keith Markel: It doesn't break down that stuff that [unintelligible].
Council Member Steinberg: I understand, but how is it winding up in the drinking water?
Keith Markel: [Unintelligible].
Council Member Steinberg: You don't know where it's coming from? Okay. I get that. Why shouldn't the
Town --
Keith Markel: [Unintelligible]. It may not be and I should clarify in case someone is watching. There's
nothing saying that Leesburg has an issue with that or it is in our drinking water, but just nationally, it's
something that concern is growing for this in certain areas where you have heavy manufacturing and
Page 221 July 26, 2021
packaging and those things, production facilities around the country that maybe have this leach into the
environment that becomes more of an issue there. We have no reason to suspect that it's something
[inaudible].
Council Member Steinberg: The recommendation is that we have the State follow EPA guidelines on the
level of MCL. Why shouldn't we expect Virginia to do higher requirements if we feel the EPA is not doing
the job that it should be doing?
Keith Markel: That could be, but I think the request from the organization is that, "Well, let's wait and have
a study, something that's reasonable", not do a knee-jerk reaction, perhaps. I think we saw that in this last
session where I think there was a lot of good intentions in legislation, but they moved so quickly and maybe
without doing enough study that they approved things that didn't have the full understanding of what the
ramifications are. If they approved something, and set limits that maybe were unrealistically low, and then
all localities are now required to test for this, and then implement new systems to treat this, would it be
premature versus waiting for a more definitive answer from the EPA after more thorough research?
Council Member Steinberg: I assume that we're in favor of a timely notification of bills in the upcoming
legislative sessions because it gives us time to react one way or another, whether it's a positive or negative.
Keith Markel: Correct. [Unintelligible] financial impact.
Council Member Steinberg: What is the State's intent in eliminating the BPOL?
Keith Markel: Every once a few years, that will come up. Thankfully, nothing has been approved to date,
but it's always something that some legislator will bring up. VML always has it in their program and we've
had it in ours to just say no, BPOL is important. Don't go touching that. That's a major source of revenue
for localities.
Council Member Steinberg: Then finally, our issue with the County and the memorandums of
understanding, is that a parochial thing or is this something we see statewide?
Keith Markel: That's a good question. This year, we were hoping that there would be more outreach with
other localities and work with VML. Just the uniqueness of this year wasn't something that we were able to
work with VML on. Then legislators usually and I think we've had this on for the last two years, maybe. I
said, "Well, is this just a Leesburg-Loudoun thing?" Right now, it seems like it's a Leesburg-Loudoun thing.
We've heard over the years, I know, probably a decade ago, I remember was Herndon or Vienna had the
same issue with Fairfax County with their building officials. It's not unique, but we might be the ones feeling
it the worst right now. If you're finding other localities that maybe have a more tense relationship with their
neighboring locality or their county that they're associated with, this could be an issue. I'm sure we're not
the only ones out there, but we haven't done a lot of research into it.
Council Member Steinberg: Okay. Thanks.
Mayor Burk: Ms. Fox?
Council Member Fox: Thanks. Just a couple of clarifications. I just want to make sure I got that right. The
water issue, that's for water treatment. It's not for bottled water. I've been reading a lot about bottled water.
It's just for water treatment municipality, things like that?
Keith Markel: Right now, we're looking at this from the municipal water supply.
Council Member Fox: I just needed that clarified and the overtime, hourly pay, that's just for hourly, correct
and not salary?
Page 231 July 26, 2021
Keith Markel: That's correct.
Council Member Fox: I just want to clarify that. Okay. Then are we going to have an opportunity to get
together with our legislators? We have in the past. We've suspended that a little bit. Will we have that
opportunity?
Keith Markel: It's totally up to you all. If you want to go back to having the dinner or lunch, or a meeting
here at Town Hall, certainly, whatever y'all comfortable with.
Council Member Fox: I just didn't know where we were with that. I would advocate for doing that and
holding this open, just in case there's something that we want to talk to them about, and just hold it open
until we have to hand it over. That would be my preference, because things come up, and then we'd have
to go back and change it. I'd rather just hold it open and get our priorities in, and sometimes priorities
change with some Council members too. I just rather get it in, when we have a chance to talk to them and
plead our case, so to speak.
Keith Markel: It's good to have corporate direction, so having at least consensus that this is your program,
these are the things that you want to advocate for so that when we do have that meeting, you have your
list, you say, "This is number one or number two or number three. If you're going to submit something on
behalf of the Town, we really ask that these are the things that you focus on", because they want to know
what's most important to you and what's important to the Town. Because they have a finite number of bills
they can offer, they can only advocate for so much. They've only got so many hours in the day. If you all
really come down to those things that are most important, that helps them, I'm sure.
Council Member Fox: Oh, yes, I'd like that. I like the process that Council Member Bagdasarian put forward
so that we can whittle it down, I suppose. I think that's beneficial for us, but of course, that's Council's
decision.
Mayor Burk: The thing we have to keep in mind is that staff and I met with all of them last year because
they weren't meeting in -person. Their request was that we get this to them as soon as possible because
they have to put bills in early. Before they get down to Richmond, and I forget last year was it early
November, they had to have all their bills in?
Keith Markel: I can't recall when. Usually mid -December is when.
Mayor Burk: I know that they've moved it up. That's all the request they made was that if we could please
get it to them as soon as possible so that they could have it to move forward.
Keith Markel: They need time to do the research, if they have questions, if they want to talk to the legislative
team that they can work with them.
Mayor Burk: Everybody is going to go through this. We're going to send things that you would like to see
added and included and sent to the Town Manager. He will send it back to us, and we'll discuss it at the
next work session, and get it hopefully done at the next work session because we don't meet-- August, we
only have one meeting and then September-- If we need to, we can move it to September. We really should
get it done during September, I would think. Is that all right with everybody? Four people. Okay. All right.
Ms. Nacy, anything that you want to add to our future agenda meeting?
Council Member Nacy: [Unintelligible]. Yes but I'm not ready.
Mayor Burk: Okay. Mr. Bagdasarian?
Council Member Bagdasarian: Not at this time. Thank you.
Page 241 July 26, 2021
Mayor Burk: That's fair enough. Ms. Fox?
Council Member Fox: I'd like to put forward another proposal. I would like to either have a conversation
or just propose that we vote tomorrow night on a one-time gift to the Loudoun Freedom Center for $25,740.
I'm sure you're wondering how I came up with that, so I'd be happy to have a conversation about that, but
this would be something given in the name of preservation to assist with the responsibility of preserving
some of the site work there.
Because, we have in the past valued preservation. However, I really think it should be with a specified
purpose that this goes toward preserving and enhancing historic elements of the Sycolin Cemetery and not
toward revenue -producing enhancements. Either a conversation or if anybody has questions now. I don't
know if you'd allow that.
Mayor Burk: Are there four people that would be interested in having a vote on this tomorrow-- How much
are you asking?
Council Member Fox: It's $25,740. [Unintelligible].
Mayor Burk: Alright. Yes, sir?
Council Member Bagdasarian: I'd like to learn how you came to that number.
Council Member Fox: Well, we have 6.3 acres of Sycolin Cemetery there. I came to this because
remember the last time Kaj told us that we had about $3,3K a year in maintenance costs. I asked Kaj how
much less would we pay when we gift some of this land. It will be about 26% less. I took that $3,3K multiplied
it by 26%, and got $858 a year savings. Looking forward, I looked forward about 30 years because if we're
not going to give it over, I'm sure that's going to stay in our possession for the next 30 years, and we would
have to use it. That came out to $25,740.
Mayor Burk: So 25K?
Council Member Fox: Yes.
Mayor Burk: Are there four people that would want to vote on that tomorrow? All right. That will be on the
agenda for tomorrow then.
Council Member Fox: Thank you. That's it.
Mayor Burk: Mr. Steinberg?
Council Member Steinberg: Thanks. Since Vice Mayor Martinez brought it up, I'm not sure we want to
wait for the State regarding recycling glass or otherwise. I'm getting a lot of questions about our recycling
program. What is and what is not recyclable, especially plastics. It's a little discouraging to have to tell our
residents, 'Well, you can recycle it, but a lot of it's winding up in the landfill anyway." I think this is an issue
that, as several other jurisdictions looked at, this is something we really need to take out and figure out
what we're going to do one way or the other.
Mayor Burk: What are you asking? I'm sorry.
Council Member Steinberg: That we have a conversation about our recycling program.
Mayor Burk: Conversation about recycling, okay.
Page 251 July 26, 2021
Council Member Bagdasarian: Can we include where things go? What is actually recycled, what goes to
a landfill, et cetera?
Council Member Steinberg: Yes. Anything you want.
Mayor Burk: Excuse me, Mr. Martinez. Did you have a question?
Vice Mayor Martinez: Yes. I would assume that that would include the different classes of recyclables,
where they're put, et cetera.
Council Member Steinberg: Well, we currently have a single -stream recycling program that isn't working
very well, so the conversation can —
Mayor Burk: Yes.
Council Member Steinberg: -involve all of those things. Absolutely.
Mayor Burk: Yes. Are there four people interested in that? All right, so that's everyone. Is that it, Mr.
Steinberg? Mr. Cummings? Mr. Martinez? Did I ask you already?
Vice Mayor Martinez: Yes, nothing.
Mayor Burk: The only thing I would like to add is that we really need to work on this ethics proposal. We
brought it forward and it died. We really need to get that taken care of and finalized. Are there four people
that would be willing to continue that discussion at a work session? Mr. Martinez, are you yes, no? Mr.
Martinez is no. Everyone else is yes. All right.
Christopher Spera: Madam Mayor, if I may. I think that what might be helpful is to replicate the process
that Mr. Bagdasarian-
Mayor Burk: I was just going to say that.
Christopher Spera: -just talked about. If everybody just emails me, if you look at the document I gave you,
if there's some that you don't like, tell me.
Mayor Burk: Right.
Christopher Spera: If there's some that you want a modification to, tell me. If you think there's something
missing, tell me. Then I can pull all that together and I can come back and report to you at a future work
session, "Here's the ones everybody seemed to agree on. Here's the ones that everybody seemed to have
problems with." That might streamline the process and will give you the opportunity to give some feedback
and we can figure out what the issues are that need to be added or taken out.
Mayor Burk: All right. When do you think this will be on the next work session [unintelligible] September?
Kaj Dentler: [Unintelligible] September.
Mayor Burk: Right. If everybody could have it-- I hate to tell people to wait till September because
everybody will forget. Could we have it before the next meeting? To Mr. Spera, would that be reasonable
for everybody?
Council Member Bagdasarian: I think so.
Mayor Burk: For the next meeting. Not tomorrow. The August meeting.
Page 261 July 26, 2021
Christopher Spera: The August 9th and 10th. If you have it to me before the August 9th and 10th session,
then I could have it ready for you for the first work session in September.
Council Member Steinberg: If Mr. Spera doesn't receive anything from one or two of us, can he assume
that we're satisfied with the work he's done already?
Mayor Burk: Yes. If you don't get something from somebody, then they're okay.
Christopher Spera: Speak now or forever hold your peace.
Council Member Nacy: I was just going to say if you don't get something from me, could you remind me
that you didn't get it?
Christopher Spera: Okay.
Vice Mayor Martinez: Actually, and all the stuff that we ask, it would probably be a good idea to remind us
because I do a brain dump as soon as I walk out of chambers.
Mayor Burk: All right. Motion to adjourn?
Council Member Bagdasarian: So moved.
Mayor Burk: By Council Member Bagdasarian. Seconded by Council Member Steinberg. All in favor?
Council Members: Aye.
Mayor Burk: Opposed? That passes 7-0.
Page 271 July 26, 2021