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HomeMy Public PortalAbout2021_tcwsmin0816Council Work Session August 16, 2021 Lower Level Conference Room II, 25 West Market Street, 5:30 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: Deputy Town Manager Keith Markel, Deputy Town Attorney Christine Newton, Director of Planning and Zoning Susan Berry Hill, Senior Planner & Project Manager Scott Parker, Senior Planner Richard Klusek, and Clerk of Council Eileen Boeing. AGENDA ITEM 1. Remote Participation MOTION 2021-159 On a motion by Council Member Steinberg, seconded by Council Fox, the following was proposed: To allow Council Member Cummings to participate in the August 16, 2021, Work Session electronically in adherence to a public health protocol. The motion was approved by the following vote: Aye: Bagdasarian, Fox, Vice Mayor Martinez, Nacy, Steinberg and Mayor Burk Nay: None Vote: 6-0-1 (Cummings abstain) 2. Item for Discussion a. Legacy Leesburg Town Plan Update with the Planning Commission Council was joined by the members of the Planning Commission for the discussion: Chair Gigi Robinson, Commissioner Ad Barnes, Commissioner Al Barney, Commissioner Earl Hoovler, Commissioner Rick Lanham, Commissioner Brian McAfee and Commissioner Keith Reeve. Council, Planning Commission and staff discussed the Legacy Leesburg Town Plan Update. Topics of discussion included: • Commercial/Residential Taxes • Conversion of Commercial Land • Mixed Use Development Design • Affordable Housing • Transportation and Traffic • Developing a Transportation Plan • Post-COVID Actions • Parking and Payment -in -lieu 1 'Page Council Work Session August 16, 2021 • Crescent Design District • Walkable communities • Support from the Transportation Committee Next actions for the Planning Commission include: • Examine the 30, 50 density • Examine the 50/50 taxing • Review parking options at the Liberty Lot • Create a definition of affordable housing • Make the Plan easy to read Staff to research what historical traffic studies for major roadways are available for use by the Planning Commission. 3. Adjournment Mayor Burk adjourned the meeting at 7:•20 p.m. Il2 r Clerk of Council 2021 tcwsmin0816 2IPage August 16, 2021 — Joint Planning Commission & 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.leesburqva.qov 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.) [Technical audio issues did not capture the start of the meeting.] Susan Berry Hill: Tax fund to go to residential or what could be attributed to nonresidential. So, the proposed strategy is general, and it says the goal is 50%. Mayor Kelly Burk: 50% taxes from residential and 50% taxes from commercial. Susan Berry Hill: Commercial. Mayor Burk: Commercial. All right. Planning Commission Chair Robinson: The goal is not to count them twice, you either pay the taxes to the Town. It's not geared towards how the residents are spending their money, be it in stores or restaurants, etc. It's who pays to the Town and it's very easy to figure out who's attributing what taxes. We think we've got that done. The next one was conversion of commercial land and I believe we resolved that also. We have asked that redevelopments and new developments focus on commercial land and not on retail. We think that we have that issue also done. Council Member Neil Steinberg: Can I ask a question, ma'am? Mayor Burk: Excuse me. Yes? Council Member Steinberg: Ma'am. Mayor Burk: Yes. Council Member Steinberg: Okay. The first thing in the fiscal policy is to achieve a 50-50 split between residential and commercial. Does that then mean we need to adhere fairly strictly to our commercial side and not be in the habit of rezoning commercial land to be residential if we want to maintain this formula. Is that what we're advocating here? Planning Commission Chair Robinson: It means that from now on, if you want commercial only, this will have to be offset by, I presume, residential only. If you have a piece of land that you want to treat as commercial and it's zoned commercial and you have proffers that are going to put commercial on that, then you are free now to have other land so that that balance is kept. Council Member Steinberg: Okay. When you say other land, I'm not quite sure. Planning Commission Chair Robinson: If one developer has commercial and another developer has land, you'll have to figure out how to do the 50-50 on it. Council Member Steinberg: All right. Okay, so that's the question. Are we obligated, are we not in a better position, I guess, for residents if the balance is actually higher than 50-50? Why would we rush them to a residential application if we can actually attract more commercial, assuming any zoning on any particular property? From a Planning Commission standpoint, are we not in a better position to simply maintain more commercial than residential? Must we try to keep a hard targeted on this 50-50 balance? Planning Commissioner Ad Barnes: Can I say something? Mayor Burk: Of course. Page 11 August 16, 2021 Planning Commissioner Barnes: See, it used to be 60-40. 60% commercial tax bring it in and the 40% residence. Though what we were talking about and all of us don't agree because seven of us, we all have our own ideas. But when the land is already commercial, so we don't have that much commercial land in Town, we change it to residential. All mix -use. Either one of them, should be prohibited to do that because then what you're losing, but once your commercial part is gone, we have nothing there to build on. Council Member Steinberg: I understand. Planning Commissioner Barnes: We have to be very hesitant, if we do change from commercial to resident. Otherwise, we're going to lose all. We don't have that much. Council Member Steinberg: I fully appreciate the concept of not rezoning commercial to residential. Planning Commissioner Barnes: See, that's right. That's right. Council Member Steinberg: Absolutely appreciate that. Planning Commissioner Barnes: Yes. Council Member Steinberg: Okay. So, my question is, in a given application, must that application necessarily balance to the 50-50 or can it not still meet? Are we in a better position if the commercial percentage actually runs higher than residential? I ask that question understanding that in Leesburg since we do not have schools, even residential can be a net positive. Nevertheless, it seems that the objective here is to ease the tax burden on the residents. Planning Commissioner Barnes: Yes. We used to have 60-40. Council Member Steinberg: Understood. Planning Commissioner Barnes: That's the way we used to have. Planning Commission Chair Robinson: Okay. I understand the question and that's going to be something Council needs to discuss if they wish to maintain that. Council Member Steinberg: All right. Thank you. Mayor Burk: Okay, let's hold back questions until we go through all of the issues and then we'll do the roundtable. Planning Commission Chair Robinson: With that, I'm going to jump to another one with these mixed -use development design. We had a section in the plans that had suggested designs for Market Street, from Mom's Apple Pie clear up to Red Roof. We had designs for the old Walmart area. Those have been taken out of the plan because all of that suggested that it was going to be mixed - use of a density anywhere from 30 to 50 units per acre. We took that design out. We had three things that were done, out of the ones that we looked at. On the mixed -use, in my opinion, still open is the amount of mixed -use. Still in the plan is a desire to have 30 to 50 units per acre. In my humble opinion, they do not produce tax revenues that support the services that they demand. So, that is still a concern to me. I'm going to presume that it is still a concern to the rest of the Planning Commission in so far as if that is the mandate and so stated in the plan, with residential on top and revenue coming from retail on the bottom, and retail rather rapidly disappearing because of electronic ordering. I don't know how the residential on the top is going to support that kind of retail to make it worthwhile. So that was another concern of mine. The affordable housing strategy, we really did not touch upon. Early in the game, we decided that that was your bailiwick that we were going to leave that up to you. It is a County program run by the County, and they have the rules. At that point, we decided we're not going to get into that because we Page 21 August 16, 2021 don't have anything other than to say, "We've got some areas that you can have affordable housing in our developments, and the rest of it is left to the County." We did not get into that. Transportation and traffic. We still need to have an overall transportation plan. We do not know where we are right now. It is my opinion that we need to move traffic in this Town. I think that the major lights that we have along East Market, along Edwards Ferry, along Catoctin and along King Street, need to be looked at. I am not a proponent of having development dictate our transportation. And yet, that is the only way we seem to have transportation accomplished in the Town. My concern with application transportation plans is that the application really doesn't discuss very wide outside of its application. For example, if we're going to look at Virginia Village, it's not going to go to something beyond the light at Catoctin and King. Mayor Burk: Could I ask you, when you are giving your examples, let's make some imaginary examples. Let's not use real life examples for the point. We know what you're addressing, but I don't want us to. Planning Commission Chair Robinson: Any application that we get will probably not go more than an eighth of a mile beyond its boundaries. Mayor Burk: Okay. Thank you. Planning Commission Chair Robinson: Therefore, I don't think that you're getting a very good transportation plan out of it. When you have multiple applications that may affect the same half -mile, quarter -mile around the various applications, you can't really get a gist of what should be done in order to correct those and to lessen the impacts. We need to figure out also how we're going to react to some things that are happening to us rather close -in. We have an application I think that's been floated into the County that is a silly millimeter off our boundary. It's going to be 1,200 plus dwelling units. I don't know what the effect is going to be on Evergreen or Battlefield or Seven or South King Street, etc. I don't know how we're going to plan for those, but we know that things like that are going to happen, and we should have something that we're hazily planning for. We talked about post-COVID. And post-COVID was one of the things that we looked at as far as buildings and how to get them as clean as possible. Any other things as far as communication, whether it be electronic or what have you, we looked at that. We sort of let, I think the post-COVID rest for a while. I don't think we brought that up as one of the stronger issues. If we want to go back to that, I don't have a problem doing a plan amendment afterwards on them. We brought parking up, payment in lieu became one of those things that we thought, "Why do we have that?" It does not seem to solve anything for anybody. The average parking space and the debt is $27,000 and we're asking about a third of that. We're asking, is that necessarily a good idea? We need to look at our parking. We need to find out if we're going to densify the Town to 30 to 50 dwelling units per acre. We better have a real good idea of where we're going to put trailers or we're going to put trucks because people are electricians, plumbers, landscapers, etc., and we better have a real good idea how we're going to park those people. Did I skip anything? Can we start with those? Mayor Burk: Yes. Definitely, we can start with it. That's fine. Mr. Cummings, I always forget everybody on the phone, so I'm going to start with you. Do you have any questions for the Planning Commissioners? Council Member Zach Cummings: I don't know if you all can hear me or not? Keith Markel: We're having some audio issues. He can hear you all, but we're not able to hear through the speakers. Mayor Burk: Don't let me forget. Page 31 August 16, 2021 Keith Markel: Yes. Mayor Burk: Okay, fix it. All right. Ms. Nacy? Council Member Kari Nacy: What part of the plan, where is it outlined this so I can reference it directly, the 30 to 50 units per acre? Do you have a reference page for that? Planning Commission Chair Gigi Robinson: Page 92. Council Member Nacy: Thank you. I just want to look through that big picture concepts of how it fits in. For the transportation plan, at least my assessment of where things are coming from is right there. I guess my ask of the Planning Commission from this meeting would be, how do we put something in place that is solvable to move forward with the rest of the plan that we're not hung up on transportation plan? I know there were a few other things you outlined, but it seems like you all were able to talk through and work through a lot of that in your last meeting on Thursday, but transportation seems to be the linchpin where it is hung up. I guess my ask would be, what do you need or what do you want to have it look the way it needs to look so that it can move forward? Do you have something in mind? Do you have a solution? Planning Commissioner Barnes: I can answer to that question too. Mayor Burk: Mr. Lanham. Planning Commissioner Rick Lanham: Well, I believe, I know that the State Code says if we're going to adopt a comprehensive plan, there has to be a transportation element to it. I think staff has done a traffic study, which the State could also say, "You have to give to VDOT. VDOT has to make sure that what speed proposed is consistent with what they're looking at too." It's based on the proposed planning system. I think that's at VDOT now. That's like the traffic study that takes into this —[phone ringing] --I apologize. Planning Commission Chair Robinson: Can I interject that it's VDOT roads, only just the VDOT 7 and 15? Mayor Burk: Okay. Planning Commissioner Barnes: You're done? Planning Commissioner Lanham: Yes. Sorry, guys. My father just got out of the hospital. I should have left that off, though. Planning Commissioner Barnes: That's up for you, why don't you go talk to him. Planning Commissioner Lanham: That's all right. He's a big man. He'll be all right. Okay. Anyhow, I know there's been some traffic work that has been done in space on the Town Plan. I'm not sure what we're looking for, in terms of any changes to that. VDOT says it's okay if it's based on something that's been scoped by Town staff. It works. I think we need to accept that. If we don't like the planned land uses in the plan then and it's too robust and the traffic plan is okay I would assume that the traffic would get better given the level of service to C+ or something. I guess what I'm saying is, I guess, I don't think traffic has been completely forgotten with the whole process. I think it's out there and it's going on another parallel track that we don't review. It's the Town and staff at VDOT review. I just want to put that out for you. Mayor Burk: Okay. There is one thing. I'm concerned that we're going to go around in circles if we're all giving our own opinions. You guys have taken votes on these. Is that correct? Planning Commission Chair Robinson: No. Page 41 August 16, 2021 Mayor Burk: These are just opinions. Never mind. Go ahead. Ms. Robinson, I would assume that you will recognize the Planning Commission, big meeting? Planning Commission Chair Robinson: Yes, ma'am. Mayor Burk: Thank you. Planning Commissioner Barnes: You're done? Planning Commissioner Lanham: Yes. Go ahead. Planning Commissioner Barnes: I see that for any Town plan, County plan, or any plan, the most important part in the whole thing is transportation. If you're going to develop something, you got to know how we're going to move the traffic, how it's going to affect. Now, so far, all these years, we've been depending on the study from the builder. Whatever the builder's brain says, and this is what we take for gospel. We have been doing this, "Hey, they say that consultation study shows it passes," but all these years, I have never ever seen a transportation plan fail when a builder brings it because they're not going to fail. They have to say, "It's failed, they're not going to build anything." That's a very bad way to go about depending on builders or developer on the traffic plan. I have never seen one fail when they brought it because they're paid person and it is a numbers game. You can adjust any way you want to, and it doesn't show like Chair said, how any plan that if you're building something, it's going to affect two, three miles away from there. That's what you're going to do. Plans are coming out with a lot of homes and if passed, it doesn't affect anything in reality. Right? All our roads at five o'clock is lined up to my store, you know where my store is, all the way to the bypass. Telling me it doesn't fit, you bring in more places, more homes, and more buildings, and they will have traffic. Instead, it will work. It doesn't work right now. We have to alleviate the problems we have already here. Adding more to it and telling me that is fast is just not. Just the logic says no. Planning Commission Chair Robinson: Thank you. Anyone else on transportation? Earl? Planning Commissioner Earl Hoovler: Yes. I would just add a couple of things to that, what Ad says is true. That you tend to rely on the developer for their transportation plan. I think before we even get that step, it's a really good job of reviewing this traffic studies that the developer provides given the fact that they're not responsible for fixing Town wide problems. They do have that issue that the Chair referenced that they are not able to do a Town wide. We can't appreciate exactly Town wide, particularly what development space exactly. But in today's world, the developer defines what the priorities are in terms of what happens on their property. Council Member Steinberg: I'm sorry. Are you saying the developer-- What did you just say? I couldn't hear. Planning Commissioner Hoovler: Should I take my mask off? Council Member Steinberg: Not necessarily. Mayor Burk: Could everybody speak up? We all are masked. Planning Commissioner Hoovler: All right. I have to shout. I'm breathing in so it's not really -- Planning Commissioner Keith Reeve: Earl, I can hear you. Planning Commissioner Hoovler: You're going to interpret for me. Planning Commissioner Reeve: Okay. Page 5) August 16, 2021 Planning Commissioner Hoovler: Developers, typically, they prioritize what development gets done and they bring their applications to us. The Town staff that I mentioned, they do a review with the developer to make sure that that development's not going to have an adverse impact on the traffic. They look at that development, they can't really address Town wide issues. But from a traffic planning perspective, any traffic study that they initiate a traffic study Town wide, my sense is that where we develop a model and engage in doing that. That number one would be very expensive to do, to maintain that. If we did a traffic study that would probably be as good as the day it was published. Then as we bring in the development from the applications, we have to go back to that traffic study and revise that based on the development comes in. It's a tough thing to address. The Town has to make some of the investments in some cases, but the developer typically expect them to help us solve our problems for us. Those just my observations. Council Member Nacy: May I ask the follow up question to you from staff perspective. Mayor Burk: Yes, you can. Council Member Nacy: The plan itself is the transportation portion of it like an addendum to it. It's not in the actual plan itself or it is in the plan itself? Susan Berry Hill: There's a transportation improvement plan that is a companion document. Council Member Nacy: Okay. Susan Berry Hill: It was prepared by a consultant in consultation with staff. That was also shared with VDOT. That transportation improvement plan, also the consultant looked at our CIP and developed that plan looking at what they perceive the problems to be in the Town and where we should be focusing our resources. The attempt is to use that transportation and plan as we look at land development applications and to talk with developers about what their role might be in making those improvements. It's also to use it as we consider our CIP and what we should be programming into our CIP. Council Member Nacy: Okay. Thank you. Mayor Burk: Mr. Steinberg is biting the bit over here. Council Member Ara Bagdasarian: That was nice. Mayor Burk: That's all right. Okay. Ask your questions. Council Member Steinberg: All my questions? Since we're talking about transportation. Okay. I recognize what they're saying. We do a Town wide transportation study and it's dated the day it's done. I also recognize that right now we are working in isolation because we deal with application specific and the very narrow area around them and it doesn't necessarily give us the whole picture. For example, we have the southern part of Town with no fewer than five, six developments, either they're in progress or coming online. That area including 15 and King Street and Catoctin Circle are going to be really something to behold. There's no question about it. Planning Commissioner Barnes: Inundated. Council Member Steinberg: Inundated. I know the developer can't deal with Town wide issues but we can. I would ask the Planning Commission and staff what's the answer then? Look, I've lived in this area all my life. There isn't an election held where the promises are made, we're going to fix transportation, and it never happens and it only gets worse. Let's talk to the Mayor today, I was on the beltway a couple of days ago, it's a moving parking lot when it's moving. When there's the slightest bit of a hiccup, then it comes to a screeching halt. While we're not capital [inaudible] necessarily, we certainly have parts of our transportation system that at certain times of Page 61 August 16, 2021 the day somewhat shuts down. East Market is an example, the bypass heading west over the flyover and up the mountains is certainly another, and an accident in any number of areas brings us to a screeching halt. We can't solve all of it, but is there no way for us to plan transportation better than we have ever done before or that we might do better as we approach future development here with our demands as opposed to what we're necessarily presented with. Are there no alternatives here? Is this the best we can do? Because if it is, okay, but then we need to be prepared to tell people, "Well, this is the real world and so don't get your expectations too high." I'm asking because you're the Planning Commission, your staff, and you're right, we're the Town Council and in the end our decision, but we need all the information we can get. That's my first question and a long one. Planning Commission Chair Robinson: I'll take a crack at it. I think that our major thoroughfares need to be studied. I don't think the entire Town from Kincaid to Exeter needs to have traffic studied up, but our major through roads need to be looked at. We need to find out why are lights which are supposed to be timed aren't working, why they're not moving people through. We need to find why we're not taking another very hard look at one lane East Market and Loudoun. We need to understand that if today's traffic is the best we're going to get, then to top it off with 30 to 50 dwelling units an acre is only going to exacerbate it and therefore you need to make a decision, I'm satisfied with traffic now. I'll do a few things to update it, but I'm done otherwise. Planning Commissioner Barnes: Could I answer that too? Council Member Steinberg: Well, that's up to your Chair. Planning Commissioner Barnes: Okay. Planning Commission Chair Robinson: Just a sec. Keith? Planning Commissioner Reeve: I'd like to apologize number one for being late. We all get hung around work, but I can are you ready, Neil? 17 minutes it took me from Battlefield Parkway to get to Plaza Street just now. 17 minutes, okay? There's no excuse for that, none. We take a look at applications and when we do our traffic studies, we study a certain specific portion of where that development happening, and it's wrong. We follow that because VDOT says, "This is what we should follow." Unfortunately, VDOT doesn't live in Leesburg, we do. When we take a look at these new subdivisions and developments that want to grow within the Town of Leesburg, the last thing I wanted to do and I've said this on the Planning Commission is look like Arlington and Clarendon Boulevard. I don't want that for our Town. What's happening right now is when we follow these VDOT regulations that have an effect on what we plan for within our subdivisions and our development here within the Town, it's unexcusable. We shouldn't be following what VDOT says. We need to make our own plan. That chokehold that you have at the beginning of King Street all the way to the bypass is unacceptable, including Battlefield all the way into Plaza. There's absolutely no reason it should have taken me 17 minutes to get here. You're right, we do need to do better at planning that and that's why we're here. That's why we're having a little bit of a delay here too. Mayor Burk: What is it that you are asking that you would like to see and have the ability to do? What is it that the Planning Commission would like to? Do you need more time? Do you need more resources? Do you need more information? What do you need to move forward with this section of the transportation? Planning Commission Chair Robinson: I would say, yes, we need to have some more resources for it. We need to have some transportation experts. We need to put a list of things which we have listed in the plan and put a date on them, certain dates, so that we get that done, such as like light Page 71 August 16, 2021 timing, such as one way in, such as making sure that the lights when they turn from EMS go right back to the right time, so that the light doesn't just constantly trip, etc. We need some more of that. And we need somebody to come and help us go through this, so that we can say, "Well, this will work for right now. Now, what happens when I start pouring in housing?" Mayor Burk: You're looking for a transportation expert? Planning Commissioner Hoovler: Yes. Sorry for interrupting. I think we need a little more time because, personally, for me, we really haven't had-- This issue was raised and discussed on, I think in July. There were some discussion throughout the plan review. Some of the things that the Chair is bringing up, I think are valid points. I don't think we as a commission really had an opportunity to talk in detail about a lot of these issues that come up. Now, maybe I think one of the things that some of the members have been asking for is direction from Council in terms of policy, where do we want to put some of our resources. Some of the suggestions the Chair is making are, I think having seen some of our consultants have been transportation experts, but they don't live here. They've looked at some of our data and they've probably looked at some of the past studies, but I don't know the degree to which they provided that much input into the traffic. I think we need more time to really discuss some of these issues, especially in the transportation. Planning Commission Chair Robinson: Mr. Barnes. Planning Commissioner Barnes: Yes. Another thing, a Town plan I think has to be understood what it is. A Town plan is for 10, 15 or 20 years from now going to be the same plan that we're going to be following. We have to put thought, time, studies in it to make a Town plan. It's not like it's a, "Hey, there's a deadline and this is we want you to meet." That's not a good thing. That's not the way it's supposed to be. There is no deadline. It is not an application from a design that we have to act in 100 days or 20 days. You got to understand what a Town plan is, otherwise, you won't be asking us to do it in a hurry. Not understanding is what causes us to do it in a hurry. It's not like you cook something and put it on the table then you say that it's ready to eat. It's not. It takes time. It takes two years to do the Town plan. To do it right, we should have time to do whatever we need without a deadline on it, then we can work with the staff. The staff is very capable of doing it, but they can't do it if they're under the gun to meet certain time or Planning Commission is under the gun to meet certain time. To have a right plan, we have to have a time and freedom of doing the right way, because Planning Commission is the one makes the Town plan and we have to sign off on it. This Town plan is right now where we are, it's not ready to sign off and it's going to take time. Actually, people go at it a little bit, they say, "What's holding you up?" That's wrong. Mayor Burk: Okay, I got it, time, is very important. Mr. Martinez, did you have some questions you had? Vice Mayor Fernando "Marty" Martinez: Well, I have comments more than questions. I agree with the timeline for the Town plan. We shouldn't rush it, but the Town plan itself should be flexible. You said it's a 20 -year document. Well -- Planning Commissioner Barnes: No. I'm just implying it would-- [crosstalk] Vice Mayor Martinez: No. Let me finish before you comment. The Town plan should be flexible. What I mean by that is, nowhere should we hardwire some rezoning and other things into the Town plan. We should be able to be flexible enough that if there's a vision or situation where we need to make changes, we should. My concern is, and I 'l l give you the classic example. Now, I've been on Council since 2002 and I've seen a lot of these different iterations. I've also have changed my position on certain things because Page 81 August 16, 2021 of my experience. The concern that I have with the Town plan is that we need to make sure that we don't box ourselves into a corner when we write it. The question I do have for staff, the Chairman of the Planning Commission mentioned the 50-50 ratio. My question is, is that even possible? Do we have enough land that can be converted to commercial that will give us a 50-50 percentage? If we don't have enough land and the only option is to build up, which I don't think we want to see that either. Is there potential for 50-50? Susan Berry Hill: We did broach this draft language with our Director of Finance, and they felt like this goal was reasonable. It depends on, it's not just tied to green field development, but how well you're utilizing your redevelopment opportunities in the Town as well. I don't want to speak for Clark, but he and the DFAS team were comfortable with the wording of this. Vice Mayor Martinez: Do you know what the actual ratio is today? Susan Berry Hill: If you were to ask Cole Fazenbaker that question, he would give you a spreadsheet that will make your head spin and it makes his head spin because it's hard to attribute taxes that come in to specifically residential or non-residential uses. That's why they did not want, they did not recommend that it'd be that specific and the language that it used to be. Vice Mayor Martinez: When I first got on Council, I would have said 50-50 is a goal that we can achieve. Because of our limited potential for property redevelopment or new development on vacant property, I just wondered if we're ever going to really be able to achieve even 60-40. The problem is, is the business model today, four years ago, office space was not as much of an issue as it is today. Office space is virtually dead as far as any new potential building and all that because of the business model. Most small businesses are going to telecommuting. A lot of those business offices are going vacant and staying vacant. The question is, is how are we going to repurpose the vacant business office space today? Can we repurpose them to do something else? That's the kind of flexibility I think when you put it in the Town plan is, there are paradigm shifts that make business model today a lot different than it was four or five years ago. The other one, you mentioned, Gigi, about the conversion of commercial land, can you expand on that a little bit? Planning Commission Chair Robinson: I'm sorry. Can I? Vice Mayor Martinez: You made a comment about conversion of commercial land. Can you expound on that a little? Planning Commission Chair Robinson: Sure. The pictures that we had in the design, we're going to take, for example, a very large stretch of commercial and currently is parking lot, stores, a couple of stores and put a great deal of more green space, a large piece of green space. There was going to be retail on the first floor and residences on the second, third, fourth floor, etc. That is rezoning the commercial from pure commercial, which it is right now into a mixed -use residential and in my opinion primarily residential. Again, because I see the flight of retail. We don't have it right now, and it seems like it's closing down fairly quickly. That is what I mean by taking commercial space and rebuilding them. Vice Mayor Martinez: Well, on that, this goes back to my argument about business office space. If retail and office space is leaving, we have to figure out a way to either zone it or change the zoning or do something to have the ability to repurpose it into something else and stuff. Planning Commissioner Hoovler: Do you mind? Vice Mayor Martinez: No, I'm not done. Planning Commission Chair Robinson: He's on a roll. Vice Mayor Martinez: She's learning not to stop my roll. Thank you, Gigi. There we go back to mixed -use design. I think we need to have more mix use design in some areas that were traditionally commercial or industrial. I give you an example. The property that we had at Villages of Leesburg that Page 91 August 16, 2021 was at the County was supposed to be industrial. They rezoned it and changed it to residential, which screwed our zoning. We had to step back and regroup. Being able to say, "Rezone that to a mixed - use," might've given us the flexibility for other things to happen for the Town. I think eventually we did that. Did we not rezone that property? Susan Berry Hill: Which property? I'm sorry. Vice Mayor Martinez: The one by Village of Leesburg that was in the county that they changed to residential from industrial. Planning Commission Chair Robinson: That's Hunter Trap. Susan Berry Hill: The Hunter Trap? Richard Klusek: Are you referring to the golf course? Vice Mayor Martinez: No. That's a whole different ball of wax. Planning Commissioner Lanham: Yes, that sounds a little-- [crosstalk] Mayor Burk: Ca you ask a question? Vice Mayor Martinez: So anyway, I just think having that flexibility will not put us in a spot where we hardwire it into, we'd have preference, but we also have to have that flexibility to change it in case things like that happen. As far as transportation, we can talk and debate transportation all day, but the bottom line is we got to have input into VDOT roads. Now, I don't know if any of you know this, but you probably do. Leesburg, Loudoun County has no major Federal freeways in it going through it, so we get no Federal dollars. All our stuff has to be State. I will say the State has been very generous allowing the County and Leesburg in building those overpasses and stuff. We have to have more say or at least input into what their future designs are going to be on Highway 7 and Highway 15, especially that little triangle north of Town that is a mess. We need to have that, but I think more importantly is we need to look at our own roads and figure out how we could do that. For example, Catoctin, I think with Washington and those other ones, we blocked off the roads for a long time for no reason, other than that's what we said we were going to do. What we need to do is create more throughways where people can go through, Catoctin and Washington and-- I forget the other name. Planning Commissioner Al Barney: Queen. Vice Mayor Martinez: Queen. Planning Commissioner Barney: Prince. Vice Mayor Martinez: The fact that now people can go through them, I no longer have to drive through different neighborhoods just to get my part of Town if I want to avoid the mess on 15. We need to take a thorough look at our streets to help our residents get through. Other than input to the State on the VDOT Roads 7 and 15, we need to really look at what we can do to improve our roads, either by making them thoroughfares, widening them, adding curb and sidewalk to them. Then the last thing on transportation, I think we really need to look at is alternate means, bike trails, walking trails, give people another way to come into Town or go to other parts of the county. Now, on the flip side of that, we also have to really look at what can we do for local bus routes. I remember a few years ago a resident that lived in the apartments at Westpark was trying to get to the Wegmans Shopping Center. It took her two -and -a -half hours. She had to go to one spot, wait for the next bus, that she had to go to the next spot. We have no true direct routes that can go through Town and get to a place. There's no way anybody should get on a bus and take more than an hour to get from one Page 101 August 16, 2021 part of Leesburg to the other. We need to find ways to move our people around the Town as far as transportation itself. As far as parking tax, tax the cars a couple of thousand dollars and maybe people stop using them. No, seriously, that's just a joke. Seriously, as far as parking goes, one of the comments I made at our last meeting as we're talking about private -public partnership with the Liberty Parking Lot. I said it was time that we need to stop waiting for people to save us. We need to go out and do something on our parking lot. There's going to be some investment, but if we do that and we put the parking there but make it flexible enough that if somebody wants to put a building on top of the structured parking, then we are solving our own problems and we made the investment. We're not going to get saved by a developer on Liberty Parking Lot unless we take the initiative to fix it first. There's that. The thing that really bothers me right now is affordable housing. I'm sure all of you know that the trailer park has been sold. Those are people who are desperate in need of affordable housing. What are we going to do? What are you going to do to find places for those people who are now going to be displaced? There is nothing in the plan that tells us that the Town of Leesburg is going to make affordable housing with policy. We need to do something about all of that. That is something that I think we really need to look at. Go back to transportation. I read the transportation plan. I'm really happy that they have a lot of what I mentioned in it, including, we need to get-- If we want to solve 15 Bypass, we need to get overpasses at Edwards Ferry Road and Battlefield Parkway. That's going to solve a lot of our issues with traffic going north. I don't know how many times I've had people excited about the fact that they can get on 7 from the Bypass and go all the way into Sterling without a traffic light. Now, mind you, it gets slow, but there's no stopping. There's no parking lot on 7. I think that was another one. I think I probably overdid it, but I covered all my questions. Gigi, I want to thank you for letting me go on my roll. Mayor Burk: All right, Ms. Fox. Council Member Suzanne Fox: Thanks. Yes, I've had a few things. Well, I'll start with transportation first because that's where we have some concerns. I took a look at our community outreach in this new plan, in this draft plan. Both in the wants and in the needs, the traffic was a huge concern. I feel like that needs to be addressed, first and foremost, but transportation and traffic plan is not something that we should be overlooking. I understand about VDOT and I think the feedback is that VDOT does not come into Town and live here. We have very few streets to deal with here in the Town, and so that's something I think we need to give the Planning Commission the time to assess, to vet, to give us some input. I have no problem with that whatsoever. Going back to the Town plan. I agree with Chair Robinson, that the Market in Loudoun Streets, the east -west one way is something that's needed. We had asked staff to take a look at this before and when that happened staff came back with something other than the east -west. I think it would behoove us to probably ask staff to take another look at the east -west because I think that is something we want to do as it should be incorporated into the Town plan. Also, you mentioned the lights and the timing of the lights. Another big choke point in our Town are the two lights that are just feet from each other at Fort Evans and Plaza Street. We've been trying as a Council to concentrate on that because that's a horrible point. With more infill development, that'll even be a bigger problem because some of the transportation studies don't come all the way out this way. That's why I would rather have that transportation study because infill inside downtown, I think wherever, especially the new applications that are coming has not taken that into consideration. That's probably one of my hugest sticking points, is we need to know, especially and that's a good segue into the next thing. Staff, I have a question for you about the Crescent Design District. Susan, I took a look at the 2006 Plan and I saw what you sent me for the current boundaries. Unfortunately, I lost my internet. I can't Page 111 August 16, 2021 get it back. I'm trying to figure out the boundary at the Catoctin and King, where that boundary is for the Crescent District at that intersection. Where is that boundary now? Is that part of the Crescent District? I couldn't tell with the red dotted lines. It looked like, no. I was trying to figure out where that boundary is because I take a look and there's a whole corridor of commercial right now and that's within our plan right now. That's what's been adopted. I'm trying to figure out where the Crescent District begins and ends in that area. Susan Berry Hill: The Crescent Design District both in the plan and in the regulatory district includes the east side of Catoctin and South King Street. It does not extend to the west side of-- Is that right? Richard Klusek: It does a little bit. Susan Berry -Hill: It does a little bit. Okay. Sorry. Richard Klusek: I have the map in front of me if there's a specific property that you're interested in on front of your -- Council Member Fox: The whole corner there, gosh, there's a redevelopment that wants to take place. It's that whole corner there. I wanted to know the percentage of that property that's in the Crescent Design District. Planning Commissioner Reeve: Virginia Village. Council Member Fox: We are trying not to -- Mayor Burk: He doesn't know the name. Planning Commissioner Reeve: No names. Susan Berry Hill: It's on the east side of South King Street. Crescent Design District extends southward from Catoctin Circle down to Crescent Park. That rezoning is all in the Crescent District. Council Member Fox: Not north of it. Not north coming toward downtown. Correct? Susan Berry Hill: Yes, it stops right north of Catoctin Circle. It's Crescent for a reason. It goes around the downtown. Council Member Fox: Okay. I ask that because of the commercial corridor that we have implemented right now. I was wondering if the Planning Commission has taken into account the current Crescent Design District with your calculations for commercial. When you say you want the 50-50, is that with this Crescent Design District, as it is right now? Planning Commission Chair Robinson: It would apply to all districts. Council Member Fox: It would apply to all districts. Ok. Again, when we talk about hardwiring this Town plan, I agree with that. As far as the Crescent Design District is concerned, have you all discussed how effective the Crescent Design District would be with this Town? How it has been and how it would be in the future? Planning Commission Chair Robinson: Can you do that once more without a mask? Keith Markel: Gigi, I'm sorry to interrupt. We've lost connection with Mr. Cummings. I don't want him to miss this discussion here. Could we dial him in through the phone and then pick up that answer? Council Member Fox: If I can remember my question, yes. Planning Commission Chair Robinson: Please. Page 12j August 16, 2021 Mayor Burk: You were asking about the effectiveness of the Crescent District. Council Member Fox: Okay, effectiveness. Council Member Cummings: Hello. Eileen Boeing: Hello, Council Member Cummings. Can you hear us okay? Council Member Cummings: I can. Yes. Eileen Boeing: Okay. You're now part of the meeting. Thanks. Council Member Cummings: Again, thanks. Council Member Fox: My question was about the effectiveness. The past effectiveness is 2006 of the Crescent Design District on our Town, and how it would affect us going forward with the Crescent Design District, the way it's designed right now. With that corridor of commercial, I wanted to know how that would affect the ratios of tax base, I suppose. What if some of the things along that corridor were redeveloped to something different? How would that affect that count? You don't have to answer me now. Planning Commission Chair Robinson: I am sort of stuck for an answer because -- Mayor Burk: It depends on what they [inaudible]. Planning Commission Chair Robinson: Redevelopment along Market Street, which is part of the Crescent Design District, we're going to lose it to more residential with commercial on the bottom floor. That's also going to happen. I'm going to presume, especially now that the through streets can be put through so that I have a more grid -like opportunity up at the top of the hill where the trailers are right now, which is also part of the Crescent Design District. I'm going to be able, I guess, to put through those roads that we're looking to put through. I don't have an answer. It's going to depend on what they put in there. Council Member Fox: All right. Planning Commissioner Lanham: Question, I guess in terms of the financial impact. Council Member Fox: Financial impact. I'm taking a look at the way-- [crosstalk] Planning Commissioner Lanham: We really wouldn't know because right now it's done in Crescent Design District. If somebody wants to develop that by right, they develop it by right under the Crescent Design District. They want to rezone the property based on the comprehensive plan, they have to do water and sewer studies, they have to do traffic studies, they have to do a fiscal impact studies. If we don't have confidence in it, we need to develop a fiscal impact analysis or model that we have confidence in. That way, we dial it in a little bit closer to what the answer is. There was a statement made earlier about traffic studies, VDOT doesn't tell its developers and the Town what the traffic study is going to say. Developers don't tell the Town either, the Town tells the developer what they have to study. They tell the developer, "We want you to look at these intersections, and we want to go outside of these intersections to take these traffic counts. We want you to look at that." If the Town and VDOT in a scoping meeting with the developer doesn't ask for enough intersections or to expand the scope of it, then kind of like shame on the Town and VDOT. Council Member Fox: Okay. Isn't that policy though? That's policy, that's on us, it's not on the staff [crosstalk]. Planning Commissioner Lanham: Yes, it's a requirement. When someone submits a rezoning application, they have to have a scoping meeting with the Town, and VDOT to decide what the scope of the traffic study is going to be. It's not the developer who says, "I'm just going to study this, and it's Page 13! August 16, 2021 going to look good." Same with the physical impact analysis they have to come up with that. We rely on public works and engineering staff to make sure that the sewage that comes out of the site doesn't go into a 2 -inch line, it is a big line. We have to have confidence in that. If we don't have confidence in that, that's an issue. When we brought it up to about 30 to 50 units per acre, that is a lot of units. That is a lot of them. Council Member Fox: That is my next point. Planning Commissioner Lanham: If they can't meet that, and they're fiscal impact analysis shows they are upside down and they are 20-80, or the traffic, it's a complete disaster, it's a F minus, minus. Then we need to have confidence in that to say that. Even if VDOT and the Town come back and says, "You know what? It's going to be good, it's going to work," and we don't believe it, then we need to be disingenuous to say, "Come back with all this traffic data," when really, we just don't like 30 to 50 units per acre, we should just say, "15 to 30, or 15 to 20, or whatever." I just don't think we're going to get there. Planning Commissioner Barnes: Madam Chair, can I add to that? Planning Commissioner Lanham: We talked about the plan for six or eight more months with the Planning Commission - Council Member Fox: One second Planning Commissioner Lanham: -and you're going to have a [unintelligible] Council Member Fox: I want to clarify. Crescent Design District-- I'm stuck on this right now, I'm sorry about that. What are the units per acre allowed in the Crescent Design District? Susan Berry -Hill: It allows up to 50 units per acre, I think. Council Member Fox: Okay. To Marty's point before, we don't want to be building up, but if we do have this, we would be building up. There's no if's, and's or but's about that. Gigi, I'd like one more clarification. You said we need to redo commercial. What would we do that to? Planning Commission Chair Robinson: I'm sorry, to redo commercial around the Town? Council Member Fox: Yes, you said we would have to. Yes, around the Town. You said, "If we redo commercial, we would have to redo it to something." What would we redo commercial to it? Say things are closing down, retail's closing down and we have some commercial spaces [crosstalk] Planning Commission Chair Robinson: We said if it's a by right development, they could go in and take down one of our biggest shopping centers and make it residential. Council Member Fox: Okay. Planning Commissioner Barnes: Can I say something, Ms. Gigi, if it's all right? Planning Commission Chair Robinson: Yes. Planning Commissioner Barnes: Okay. Mayor Burk: Before you begin though, I do want to state that we are at 6:30, we've got two or three more people that haven't spoken yet. Planning Commissioner Barnes: I just want a quick -- Mayor Burk: I know, but I want everybody to realize that we are on a time. Planning Commissioner Barnes: Okay. I'll do half a minute because I've got to get out of here soon. Page 14l August 16, 2021 Mayor Burk: Okay. Planning Commissioner Barnes: Ms. Fox, the problem with us right now changing the limited commercial spaces that we have, the shopping center, or whatever you want to call it, we're changing it to residential without realizing that one resident with two or three kids costs the Town a lot of money because the schools and all that, they don't pay enough taxes on their property to support even one kid in the school. The school costs about $12,000, $13,000 a year to keep a child in a school. Council Member Fox: Seventeen, but who's counting. [laughs] Planning Commissioner Barnes: Yes. Do you know what I'm saying? Council Member Fox: Yes. Planning Commissioner Barnes: The more residents you bring in, the more cost it is to the Town, and a lot of them jiggle the number, "Oh, they will do this, they will do--" No. It costs more money to the Town if you have residents with their kids. I'm blessed. God bless them. I want kids and I love kids so that's not the point. We've got to be very mindful of how many residents we bring in Town that will offset the-- If we brings a lot of homes, then it offsets the tax, 50s, 60s, it's going to 20 [unintelligible] Council Member Fox: Those are my questions. I will let somebody else have a chance. Mayor Burk: All right. Mr. Bagdasarian. Council Member Bagdasarian: All right. Thank you. First of all, I appreciate everyone's time and dedication to this whole process because this really is, honestly, it's a pivotal time, especially coming out of COVID and all that, that's one of the areas that you have addressed in here. I'm actually here because of this whole Town plan process that was stated in the focus group back in 2019. What I love about this Town plan process, was really capturing the input of the community in a way that we've not really done before. I was part of the Town plan process in 2005 to 2012, we really focused on the commissions and getting their input. I think it's incredible that this is part of the process. But it's not about me. It's not about you. It's about the community, what's best for the Town. I have my own opinions. Everyone has their opinions. What I specifically love about the Town plan are pages 10 through 34, which is really not about the design in the weeds. This is 30,000 foot level. This is the vision, the aspirations of concerns about what the community wants for the Town, guiding principles, measuring positive growth and change. Those are all captured in the first section of the plan. That should be the lens on how we view future decisions impacting the Town, those elements. One of the key things, one of the guiding principles is transportation, getting around Town, and that is clearly a significant issue. One of the things that I think is important, is to look through the lens of a 21st century future versus a 20th century. 20th century was all about cars. 1950s, big parking lot, strip malls, getting around in your car. That's drive in's, drive in movie theaters, you name it, it was car - centric. We're moving more towards a more walkable community where people don't want to get into their car to get everywhere. They do prefer more of a mixed -use environment, downtown as we call them. Mixed use has been around for thousands of years, that goes back to Shoes. The owner of Shoes used to live upstairs while he had the first floor as a repair store. That's a traditional mixed -use model, if you will. Looking at things from the 21st century lens, there are certain things that we can do when it comes to transportation, utilizing technology, having parking sensors. In the garages, people not driving around looking for parking spots. They know, "Oh, I can go here, I can park in the garage at this point in time." Timing the streetlights, having smarter street lights. Traffic signals, smart traffic signals that allow traffic to flow based on the actual utilization of that road. There are things that we can do and take advantage of from a 21st century perspective. I think that's very important. Regarding the transportation, thank you for clarifying the whole process about the developer and the Town funding the trip. I say yes, let's expand that. Let's expand the radius of impact. One thought and suggestion is -- Page 151 August 16, 2021 Unidentified Speaker: [inaudible] Council Member Bagdasarian: Exactly. Thinking outside the box and thinking, 21st century, how can we connect people without getting in your car, and when you do get in your car finding better ways to get people around? Hopefully, post COVID, more people, to Marty's point, are going to be working from home. They're going to want to just leave it. I'm that person right now, I leave my car at home, I walk everywhere. Walk for coffee, walk to go shopping, walk to meet people, leave the car in the driveway. I think there's more of that going to happen. It's hypothetical right now. We're hoping it's a hypothesis, so we'll see if we're going to get to that point. Going back to traffic, it's a big deal. I don't think that the Town plan alone is going to solve that. I think Council Member Nacy mentioned this at our last meeting, which I tuned in from the West Coast. The Traffic Committee. What if the Traffic Committee became a full-blown Traffic Commission and was tasked with being proactive about looking for traffic solutions for the Town on an ongoing basis. Because to the point that was made earlier, if we do a full-blown plan right now, it's going to be outdated in a year from now but if this is an ongoing process, when you have developers bring a new project to the table, let's expand the radius and let's have the Traffic Commission work proactively. Make them a Commission, not just a Committee. I don't know whether it's a Committee. That's something we could change, l'm sure. Have them focused more on that basis. Planning Commission Chair Robinson: Expand the radius of the developer study? Council Member Bagdasarian: Yes. Let's do the impact. Let's look at the impact. Planning Commissioner Barnes: It is a big impact, though. Planning Commissioner Lanham: We all know that. Planning Commission Chair Robinson: Okay, sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt you. I just wanted to make sure I got it right. Council Member Bagdasarian: It's all right. I [unintelligible] right now. Then just the last thing, going back to the whole mixed -use, when I was the economic development chair, one of our strategic initiatives was to expand the downtown as of 2004, 2005, but it's been that the downtown, because if you're going to have a higher density growth and then mixed -use, it should come from the core out. It should come from the core out and you're expanding the downtown, because that aids in the walkability, that aids in people's ability to get around without being in their cars. It also creates opportunities for affordable housing, because those units that if you're going to have higher density, I know nobody wants them. Any density needs to be predicated upon what can the infrastructure support and have that be data - driven, and that data is accessible, it can be attained. It does create opportunities for affordable housing when you do increase the density. Once again, more so in the core of the Town rather than on the outskirts of the Town. That's the-- final thought, once again, it's the COVID. I think things are going to change, I think people's behaviors, we don't know exactly what's going to change to, as Vice Mayor Martinez's point. Commercial office space is changing dramatically. The question is, how can new uses for those vacant commercial spaces be utilized with the lens of the Town plan, like some arts programs or something that can bring people in there. As far as retail is concerned, it's experiential retail that's going to succeed and survive. It's not going to be places that are just surviving on low prices and commodity items, it's got to be an experience to come in. Obviously, that's where restaurants and some of the craft beer and wine places are doing. It's part of the experience. It's not just a good service. That's it once again. I really appreciate all the work you guys are doing. This is a fun process for sure. Mayor Burk: Thank you. Mr. Cummings. Planning Commissioner Barnes: Just don't bother us, leave us alone, and we'll take care of [unintelligible] Page 16J August 16, 2021 Mayor Burk: Mr. Cummings, do you have any comments? Council Member Zach Cummings: Can y'all hear me? Mayor Burk: Yes. Council Member Cummings: Okay, perfect. I just had a question. I know that I heard from the Planning Commission members that they needed some more time to work on the plan. Is there anything else besides time? I know we've talked about time and then everyone talked about everything else. Is there anything else that you all needed from the Town Council? Mayor Burk: We do have a short list that we have developed in the discussion. You probably missed part of it when you got cut off. Council Member Cummings: Okay. I guess my only question, my last question would be to staff is we don't have —time is a very broad meaning, so without pressing the Planning Commission to tell us what exactly they mean by more time. My question to staff is, we have a contract with the consultant to work on the Town plan, work with a certain amount of money. What is extending the timeline on developing do to that line item in the budget? Susan Berry Hill: Our contract with the consultant was extended from May to October. It was initially to terminate in May. We thought the project would be done by then, so we extended it through October. We are almost 95% spent on that contract. If we need additional input or help from the consultant, I've heard some discussion tonight that we may need some additional transportation help from our consultant team. We may need to ask for some supplemental funds to get us through the Planning Commission and Council discussion of the Town plan. Mayor Burk: That's probably okay. Is that it Mr. Cummings? Council Member Cummings: We don't know what-- We don't have [inaudible]. Is there a cost to extend that contract? Mayor Burk: Sure. Susan Berry Hill: Yes. We'll have to determine what we're going to need from the consultant, they'll need to give us a cost on that. Then we would need to get that approved. Council Member Fox: Madam Mayor, may I speak to that really quick? Mayor Burk: Yes. Council Member Fox: When COVID hit and the consultant said we couldn't do a lot because of COVID, it kind of shut everything down. That is also a deterrent. That was also something that kept us from getting to May. Why again would we pay extra to extend it? Because during that time that we were paying for it, we weren't getting the productivity. Just a little [crosstalk] Susan Berry Hill: We did get. What we couldn't do was, go out to the public and do our outreach as we had planned. When COVID hit, that was at a point where we were going to have a preliminary draft ready. We were going to go out and get public input on that, and direction and guidance to that and we couldn't do it. What we did instead is, we took our best efforts based on the input that we'd gotten and the consultant worked with staff on developing that first draft. That's what we did pretty much in 2020 during COVID. That's where we're at, Council Member Fox: Okay. Council Member Nacy: Madam Mayor. Mayor Burk: Just one second. Or go ahead. [crosstalk] Page 171 August 16, 2021 Council Member Nacy: Oh, I was just going to say - Mayor Burk: Mr. Cummings, do you have anything-- Are you finished at this point? Council Member Cummings: I'm just saying-- My one final comment. The Town plan is our roadmap for those who want to invest in our Town and for our citizens to know where the Town is moving. Yogi Berra said it best, "If you don't know where you're going, you're going to end up somewhere else." I understand it's a big job, but I have a real concern giving carte blanche for time for the Planning Commission to finish the work on this when they have so many other major projects on their plates. I would really urge Council to really think long and hard about what time means and I don't believe it should be a blank check. I think there's a cost associated with this financially but there's also a cost associated with getting the Town plan put in place, because like Vice Mayor Martinez said, "This is not a final document. It's a living document, it changes." I just caution us that when we talk about time, let's try to nail down what time means. Mayor Burk: All right, thank you. Kari? Council Member Nacy: Yes, I was just going to say quickly, what I thought I heard from the majority of the Planning Commissioners was that they didn't love the transportation input from our current consultants and that maybe we need to look at an alternate transportation professional. I would just say, before we throw more money at something we're not happy with when it comes to transportation, we find an expert that lives here maybe. That's what I thought I heard the Planning Commission say. Mayor Burk: I'm not quite sure they said that. [crosstalk] There's a couple of things I want to get on the table. The first one being, thank you all for all the hard work you're doing. We really appreciate the fact that you're here tonight and that you're here listening to us. You've been working on it for a long time. For you to take the time to listen to us, we really appreciate, because we do have some concerns. Staff, my gosh. You've been living and breathing and eating this for a year and a year and a half, and I know you're probably sick to death of it [chuckles] and you would like to move on. I want to thank you for all of the hard work that you've put into it, and wanted to encourage you, don't get discouraged because of the discussion tonight or any other discussions. Everybody is trying to get to a point where this document is the best that we can do. And so it's not to say that what you have done is not good or what you have done is not good, it's that we're having the discussion, we may have to be flexible enough to make some changes and some new ideas and look at things differently, but at no point is anybody saying that the staff is not doing the job it should have been doing. You've done an excellent job and we really appreciate all of your efforts and want to make sure that you realize that. That was important for me to make sure. The 30 to 50 unit is an old history for me because I voted against the Crescent District all those years ago because of the 30-50. I thought it was too dense, and I still have problems with it being a little, it's too close to Arlington, Alexandria vision. That's not the vision that I have for Leesburg. I understand things have to change, we can't be doing acre houses in the Town or anything of that nature. I would really ask you to look at the 30 to 50 units and see if that really is where we want to be at this point. The plan is very important. It is something that will come to us, and we will have to look at with tough eyes, but we know that you guys are going to go through it and that you're going to make it a document that we can really be proud of and that we can work with. Mr. Martinez, you're being quoted for the fourth time. Vice Mayor Martinez: Well, thank you. [chuckles] Mayor Burk: The trailer park and the affordable housing issue is a concern. I don't know where that's going, we don't know who bought it or what's going on there, but that most certainly is true. What Mr. Bagdasarian said before about how, he and I walk everywhere. We're always walking downtown, you'll always see us around, but we live close enough to do that. If I live where you live, Kari, I Page 181 August 16, 2021 couldn't walk. That would be too far. The whole concept of being able to be a walkable community is very important, but you also have to consider that core concept that he was talking about, building from the middle out. I think the whole idea of walkable communities is very attractive to so many people, whether it's walking or riding your bike or anything of that nature, and even if you can't be the one to walk to it, I've heard people say that they moved here because they love the idea that people can walk downtown. Keep that in mind while you're doing it. Then my last comment is Parking In Lieu. I hate Parking In Lieu. It doesn't solve the parking problem. It doesn't pay for the parking problem. I know the developers don't like it. They always say to me, "I don't get anything for it," and I say, "Yes, you do. You get not having to build the parking spaces." To look at that again would be something I would encourage you to do. It is most certainly not paying for any sort of parking situation. At the same time, we do have the issue with parking as we all moan when we talk about parking. That's as much as we have for you tonight. Is there anything that you would like to share with us tonight? Planning Commission Chair Robinson: I'd like to ask each Commissioner if they have comments, if you don't mind. Mr. Barney. Planning Commissioner Barney: Yes, I do. Thank you. I'll try to be very, very brief. My first is a thank you to staff. They work really, really hard, really diligent, and they're in the middle of all this all the time. I thank you and we thank you. We know how difficult it is at times. We may not always give you the answers or the support that you think you're going to get from us. It's kind of the way it is. I have a question regarding a comment in our last meeting. Maybe I dozed off, I'm not sure. It was a long night. Staff commented in our last meeting that we could gain better access to some of the traffic studies. I think Commissioner Barnes had made a comment that, it seems like every time something comes through a plan, it is approved with traffic. They've done their study, but it always comes back approved. Nothing ever has come back and his many, many years and I am speaking for Ad right now. Now, he can say this tonight, but every time it's 100%, this is good, and if we look at where we are today, we're not good. We've not been good. Similar situation, a gentleman come to my home office today and it took him about 20 minutes to get into Town, he said, just from where he was. He lives in Lansdowne. He was coming into Leesburg and said, "How difficult is this?" This was just today. That's just one example. To Councilman Marty Martinez, his comment, "This is a living document." I totally agree with it. I think we are very, very close. I'm speaking for the Commission right now. We're very close, I think, to being able to deliver something. Someone asked about time, I don't think we're months and months away, but I do think that we're missing something very important in the plan. If we address the traffic concerns in very generic verbiage, we address and acknowledge it without actually having anything that resembles a plan, I think is how we see it. We haven't talked about, "Yes, traffic. We're going to do this or we're going to do that." It doesn't let a person who's going to be investing in this Town understand the full obligation and what's really required. I just think that it's missing. I think if it's a living document, I do think there's a way that we can word it in such a way as, I can't say your name, but you understand what I mean. If there was a committee dedicated as a Commission to truly identify this as an ongoing part of our plan, that would at least appease some of the people that are making an investment in this community. Maybe we have to reword it better, but I don't want it to be sugar-coated with words without action behind it, because we could talk about it all day, come here five years from now, we've build a huge community over the lifecycle, whether it's a 5 -year plan, a 10 -year plan of a community that's going to go up the Village of Leesburg for example, that would have a major impact in a -- Let's call it a six or seven-year time period that would strangle the traffic. There is no doubt about it. I'm for building it, but I'm also for having a plan, a traffic plan. Okay? Someone mentioned the tax code. Do we not have a way to identify and separate our tax base right now, clearly? I'm just going to challenge it as a citizen and as a business owner. I don't know why it has to be such a difficult breakdown. I haven't read it, I haven't reviewed it, but I don't think numbers Page 191 August 16, 2021 are that hard to manage. If I'm a citizen, a resident versus a commercial business, I don't know, maybe we can talk about it in a different discussion. I'm just going through my notes here as we were talking. No answer to this. That was rhetorical at this point. The trailer parks. I personally, everyone on the Commission will tell you, I have a problem with not having affordable housing. I'm not talking about free housing; I'm not talking about welfare housing. I'm talking about real ADUs. We have an obligation as a Town that builders are coming here and we should do something. Every time we have a meeting, and someone says something, I ask those builders and developers. They're always setting the bar at the minimum or below the minimum. Why can't we find a number and just say, "Look, this is where we're going to be at. Yes or No?" I'm going to leave it at that. I feel that we have obligations to provide access to affordable housing. Traffic. Transportation. I don't think I have any more other than that. I think we're really, really close and if the plan-- I put it in my notes, some of you might have read it. How do we make the plan a little bit easier to read? It's not super difficult. Things like having a glossary, electronically being able to connect the dots a little bit better, I think that can happen. Also, it's a living document so it doesn't have to be the way it is today, we can make that adjustment with the document to be a little bit more electronic - friendly, possibly. I give it back to Madam Chair. Planning Commission Chair Robinson: Super. Brian, anything? Planning Commissioner Brian McAfee: Yes. Again, thank you again to staff. You have the patience of a saint. [chuckles] Lots of long nights and [crosstalk]. Quite the journey to put this plan together. I do agree, I think that we are close, I'm very much looking forward to our scheduled work session on a recent application that came through so that we can see what the logic is behind the traffic study and get a better understanding of how they get their results. I believe that there is possibly a missing dataset. Not that the results were incorrect, but perhaps there was incomplete data in order for them to get to the results that they have. The results that they presented to us said that there was not going to be any increase in traffic, which took many of us by a very large surprise. I'm looking forward to seeing that additional information about what logic, what algorithms were used in the traffic study. I think that will help guide us with any documentation that we need to improve upon on. Thank you again. Mayor Burk: Thanks, Brian. Keith? Planning Commissioner Reeve: Thank you. Once again, staff, you guys know you do a good job. I hope you know that. We appreciate you. I want to thank the phone calls to Scott and other members of staff who take my calls to answer my questions, because I'm new at this. As I look back, affordable housing comes out of everybody's mouth, but we have yet to determine an actual definition of what affordable housing is. Is it market affordability? Okay, because one of the applications we heard was, a policeman is supposed to be able to afford a house in Leesburg. Well, at an average salary of $66,000 for our policemen, they're not going to be able to afford a $400,000 condo. End of story. If we're looking at our ADU units that are coming up. If you look at the VHDA cycle and how that affects us, that unit gets turned over back to the marketplace after 15 years. Really? Then how are we keeping those ADU units affordable for our people in Leesburg? It's not happening. We have to come up with a definition and force ourselves to abide by it because it's at the tip of my tongue, but I don't want to hear somebody tell me as a developer, me being a builder that I have to give you X amount of ADU units. If you're not going to keep it in the system, make sure that those firemen, those policemen, those nurses, those people that provide us with service at restaurants actually can keep these in the system to be able to afford it. By all means, please give us a definition. We want it. Okay. It's something that's really important to me so I apologize if I get emotional about it. Tax. Commercial versus Residential. Neil, you're a business owner here in Town. I don't know of a single residence in my neighborhood that pays BPOL tax other than us business owners. When we talk about tax and affordability, it's not one for one, it's not 50/50. Your business owners pay more tax than your residential owners pay. We pay taxes on the computers in our office. I pay full retail tax on the vehicle that I drive. Page 201 August 16, 2021 When you get your personal property tax on your vehicle, you get a discounted fee as a residential customer, not your commercial customer. If that's the way it's going to be, we need to make it one for one so when we do lose that commercial tax base, that residential tax base has to be paying an equal amount. I had a meeting with a Council person here earlier of last week that said, "I'm not raising taxes." I get that. But if we want to make it even, you got to make it even, and it's not even. Your commercial tax rate is higher than your residential. End of story. Fix it. It's not just a Leesburg issue, but it's also a Loudoun County issue. We need to be able to speak loud enough for the County to be able to hear us as well. Density, it's huge for me too. We talked about our density at our last meeting, and we're talking about living and working in the same areas that we actually stand around in the end. That's not going to happen unless you have massive density issues like you have down in Arlington. Once again, I'm with the Mayor. I don't want to see Arlington in my backyard. That's why I live here. I appreciate you all coming in time wise. When I got this in February when I joined the Commission, I was brand new to the Planning Commission. I was brand new to planning. I didn't even know a plan existed. For every residence in my neighborhood in Kincaid that I've spoken with has no clue about this plan. Zero. When we talk about a Town plan, this whole community outreach, we got a lot of people that came in and understood it, but the majority of Leesburg doesn't understand what this plan is. We need to do more community outreach. When it comes down to time and understanding what this plan is all about, you had two brand new Commissioners that came on. It took me four months to truly get my head wrapped around what we were doing. When I ask you for time, it's time for me to understand how I can help you. I hope that we don't get hamstrung with the amount of time that we have to be able to give you something that we feel proud of. Thank you. Mayor Burk: Thank you. Earl? Planning Commissioner Hoovler: Okay. Just a few comments. Despite my [inaudible] early initial reservations about this playbook approach, I think the time plan has over these last six months, come back home to me. I think it's a unique and a good approach, and I thank staff and the consultants for helping us to get there. I think the Town plan itself is very close to being complete. We need to make some tweaks. We need to complete our punch list and come to some resolution into what those punch list items need to be resolved. We also need to work through, especially with transportation. I agree wholeheartedly with what's been talked about in terms of affordable housing. I think we need to be more focused on that, but I don't want this to be an open-ended process, if they need it to be. We need focus and dedicated to finish this off in a reasonable amount of time. I think a few more meetings would do it, for me anyway. I think we're almost 90% there. I think with staff help, they've given us some options in terms of how to resolve these issues. The biggest thing, I think transportation, and I think we're going to need some feedback from Council, continued feedback in terms of what we're trying to do collectively from a transportation perspective. Also, our elected leaders at the County level, they need to help us with these regional planning issues to make sure that we're an equal participant in that process. I think we really are almost there. I just think we need to have some time with the other Commissioners to talk about some of these issues. I don't think we have fully vetted all of the issues that we had while we had that, trying to go through it. But I think generally, the way I see the plan now, we're almost there. Planning Commission Chair Robinson: Mr. Barnes? Planning Commissioner Barnes: Yes. Affordable housing, I want too, but see, build it close to the core of Leesburg. There could be no affordable housing building close to or around the core of Leesburg. We just got the Crescent Park Development Apartments. They're selling for $800,000 to $900,000 right up there right now. A friend of mine and he's a customer of ours, he bought a house for $800,000, he sold it for $900,000. He went back and bought another one that's at King Street from Knutson Builder. He liked them so he bought another one up there. Affordable housing is very hard to put between $800,000 and $900,000 homes and build the affordable housing. Page 211 August 16, 2021 The only way I think truly we can solve the affordable housing problem, is like we used to have at one time at Loudoun House. It is used to be Loudoun House. They changed it, they redeveloped it. It was private owned, but it was like the County participated in there, there's a lot of people who were living, those who couldn't afford the complete rent. Leesburg will never have a house, it cannot be built there, especially close to the core. Close to the core is going to be expensive. That's the highest - priced houses close to the core. If you want affordable, you have to go a little bit outside the core of downtown to build some affordable housing, not in downtown. The land is too expensive, the whole thing is. It's got to be, I hate to say it, a project. That's where the people put affordable housing, in projects, but we don't have to call it that. It's got to be some complex where housing is cheaper, and no developer will build affordable housing that the people can afford between $800,000 and $900,000 condos. If you build it close to Town, it's going to be that the price is going to be, it's not going to be cheap. It's going to cost them more money, the land is more money. The core is expensive, away from the core, it gets cheaper, as you live away from the main core. We've got to think about that. The affordable housing in downtown is not coming. We can't do it. I can talk about it all my life. I've been listening to it since '74, affordable housing, and it doesn't add. You can't have it. We've got to come up with new ideas for that, not the way we think. Also, this wording, the builder comes down so you could live there, work there, but I said, "All right." I go to Wegmans almost every day in that complex, go to eat there, and I haven't found one person who lives there and works there, not one. Never found one. There's nobody, lives there and works there. People go to live there, they go to someplace else to work. They're not working there. We have to take away that mantra, live there, and work there. That's a slogan. It sounds good but it doesn't work. There's no way we can afford upstairs and come down to work in a restaurant, work in small stores, can't do it. We've got to get away from that talk too in the Town Plan —live there and work there. That doesn't work. So those are just ideas. Mayor Burk: Mr. Lanham, do you have comments? Planning Commissioner Lanham: Yes. I don't have a lot to add that others haven't already added. I think hearing affordable housing is important as transportation is important, really. I know the document that got put together wasn't just, "Here consultant, draw something up." There were a lot of meetings and I wish everybody from the community went but that's just the reality, not everybody goes. They're taking their kids to soccer practice or going on vacation to Hawaii or whatever. I went to most of the charrettes and listened to the presentations and I know that what's in the plan is what people recommended or that they came for that. I know mixed -use, and I don't think people said they want 50 units per acre or 100 units per acre but I think they asked for mixed -use. They asked for this and that. I think staff is doing a really good job as always, and I've always said that. I think one thing that could be helpful is when, a comprehensive plan, we can be specific but it's really a general document. There are other things that codify stuff like the zoning ordinance, the DCSM and the subdivision ordinance and other things. I think we need to understand what we want to see for affordable housing. Is it for sale? Is it for rent? I think firefighters and teachers and all that are great. I've got two kids that just got out of college. Not that I want them to move out of the house, but I know they can't buy a $900,000 place either. I think affordable is big deal but what do we want? We're not going to figure it out in the comp plan. Comp plan is an aspirational document. I won't say it's a guide because people will be like this. [unintelligible], that's fine. But the details codified in in zoning ordinance, the meat and potato is how it's going to be administered. What I don't want to do is spend seven months getting into weed stuff, I think we need to make the statement. What are we looking for? What's our vision for the Town, and that those kind of statements in detail will be the next phase when the zoning ordinance is updated or things to go into DCSM. Those are the implementation measures of it. I do this for a living. I can understand how all the documents work. The comprehensive plan isn't the be all, end all that's going to solve all of our problems and all that but it is extremely important Page 22! August 16, 2021 document, but I just don't want to get so bogged down on the issues that we are now starting to get ready to review the thing for five more years. I think we're pretty close. I'm new too on the commission. I've been on it before and I followed along. I didn't just come to two meetings. That's my scope, I understand pretty well. I understand what we're talking about. I said I really didn't have much to add and boy I talked a lot. Yes, that's all I have. Planning Commission Chair Robinson: I'm going to take away from this, I hope, that we're looking at transportation and we're looking to find out where we are and where we're going, take the low - hanging fruit and run with it and as we get further into it, we can transfer a Committee to a Commission, if that's your decision. Mayor Burk: That's a discussion for another time. [crosstalk] Planning Commission Chair Robinson: I understand but right now, what we're looking for is transportation directed, let's take what we can right now, move forward with it, quickly go through the Transportation Improvement Plan, make sure that all those things in there look good, and move forward. Mayor Burk: Well, I want to ask you, the plan-- it's recommended in a briefing paper here that you would certify the document on October 7. Are you asking for more time? Are you ask -- Planning Commission Chair Robinson: Can I ask if I got what we're supposed to do before I tell you when we're going to do it? Mayor Burk: Looking at the transportation solution, I would ask you, I think we all would agree that the definition of affordable housing would be part of the document and that the assembly would have to look at how are we going to implement it but that we asked for expanded ratios in the development of the traffic studies and that the document be easier maybe to read electronically, if that would be possible and should-- All of that can be done. Planning Commission Chair Robinson: You are expecting a transportation plan, you want us to examine the 30, 50 density, you want us to examine the 50/50 taxing, you want us to examine the parking, liberty being a possible solution. You want us to come up with a definition of affordable housing, and you want us to make it easy to read. Mayor Burk: Yes. [chuckles] Planning Commission Chair Robinson: Would you have an expectation of when you think that might be done? Vice Mayor Martinez: Tomorrow. Mayor Burk: No. Planning Commission Chair Robinson: Don't let anybody leave. Mayor Burk: That's why I'm asking you. The recommendation is October 7. Is that not a feasible recommendation at this point? Planning Commission Chair Robinson: I'm off all this month, the rest of it, I have two meetings in September, and you want me to certify in October? Mayor Burk: No, I'm asking you, what is it that you feel? Obviously, that October 7, you don't foresee that happening at this point. Do you foresee by the end of the year? Page 231 August 16, 2021 Planning Commission Chair Robinson: Yes. If we can gather at least one more meeting per month, September, October, November, I think by December we can get this out, but you've given us six items right here and the transportation is awaiting further input. I don't know how long that's going to take but presuming it's ready to go in September and we all agree to one additional meeting per month, I would take December is a very likely certification time. Mayor Burk: Staff, is that reasonable? You can handle waiting till December? December feasible? Yes, no. Susan Berry Hill: I'm sorry. What was the question? Mayor Burk: Is December feasible for its final vote of certification? Susan Berry Hill: If staff feels it is? Yes. Mayor Burk: Okay. Council Member Bagdasarian: I have a question. Mayor Burk: Yes. Council Member Bagdasarian: Just to clearly define, what is the scope of the transportation plan that is being expected to be included in the [crosstalk] Planning Commission Chair Robinson: I started down that, and that is, what our major roads and where do we stand today? That would be Edwards Ferry and the lights on Market Street, Catoctin, and King. Four areas took me to get where we are today. Then we need to take a look at what the transportation is, how much we can get our lights timed, intelligent lights. I thought we have them installed, evidently, we don't. We need to also take look at possible one-way. When can we start that? What are the obstacles? What can we overcome? Do we want a six month study on it, a three months study to find out what the real problems are? Whether it's loading, etc. The transportation study is going to try and go, I think, for the low -hanging fruit to begin with. After that, I think we'll have more aspirational things like lots of older bridges and things like that that are not necessarily nickel and dime. Mayor Burk: [crosstalk] I'm sorry. I think it's important to state that the Chair of the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority is Chair Randall. We are getting funding from the Transportation Authority and she does work with us in that capacity. Go ahead. Susan Berry Hill: Question. Are you asking that the transportation discussion now address specific changes to, for example, one-way. The Town as you know, the Plan right now has a strategy that says the Town will consider one-way system downtown. We have that already in the Plan. Are you asking for additional analysis now about that or some of these other things that you've mentioned, prior to taking action on the Town Plan? Planning Commission Chair Robinson: Yes. Susan Berry Hill: Okay. That's a game changer [crosstalk] Council Member Bagdasarian: If I may -- [crosstalk] Susan Berry -Hill: What [unintelligible] has, there's no way we can finish that by the end of the year, if we're doing that. Keith Markel: I'll point out, we have a major CIP project that you all have been talking about for several years, quarter of a million dollars of a master transportation plan and study of what to do and Page 24J August 16, 2021 undertaking of looking at that level of intersection impact, looking at projects, how they all interrelate to each other and looking at something as significant as one-way pairs in the downtown is going to be a major undertaking, which you all committed to but it's in the CIP and it's nothing that can be accomplished in the next few months, nor is there funding for it. Council Member Bagdasarian: If I may. Mayor Burk: Yes. Council Member Bagdasarian: As far as direction is concerned, if we can relieve the Planning Commission of that level of detail at this point and keep it at from more of just higher level, because that's where there might be opportunities with CIP or with the traffic or the transportation committee to dive into next, it's going to be an ongoing process. If that would, I don't know if the Council would be willing to reduce the scope of the transportation aspect for the Town plan at this stage so we could dive deeper into it. Planning Commission Chair Robinson: Without making use of what we've got, we'll simply say that this list of CIP items is our transportation plan and that's that. If that is what the Council would like to say. Council Member Bagdasarian: Right. Planning Commission Chair Robinson: If that's where you're looking, I would recommend, we can just drop it right now and say, "Gee, we have this transportation thing that's says here are the list of things that we think is a good idea and there's 15, 20 some out of those in the CIP, and we'll just leave it at that. You guys figure out what you want to do." Planning Commissioner Barnes: And leave us alone and we give it to you. You figure it out. I'm not going to sign on it. As far as the Town plan goes. Planning Commission Chair Robinson: I have no way to plan for deeper density. I have no way to plan any of this stuff. I don't even know where I am today. Mayor Burk: Where is this study on the CIP? Keith Markel: I got to check here. It's not this year. It's something. When we discussed the one-way on a few streets downtown, that was something we said, "Well, you need to go on a broader slogan." Mayor Burk: Right. Because the merchants really objected to the one-way. They don't like that idea. You're going to give them a problem. Planning Commissioner Barnes: CIP is not a transportation plan. Keith Markel: The study is funded through the Capital Improvements Plan. It's a separate whole transportation study [crosstalk] Mayor Burk: The study which they're going to look at. Planning Commission Chair Robinson: If I take the transportation out, then all we need to do before we hand this over to you, is examine the 30, 50 density, the taxing of 50/50, the parking at Liberty, the affordable housing definition, and make it easy to read. Mayor Burk: What about Parking in Lieu? Planning Commission Chair Robinson: Parking in lieu. That's your decision. That's in the Code. Mayor Burk: Oh, okay. [chuckles] Planning Commissioner Lanham: Right, true. Page 251 August 16, 2021 Mayor Burk: That's true. You're right. Thank you. Planning Commissioner Barnes: Anyway, that would make an incomplete Town Plan. Mayor Burk: Well, then you're looking at we having that study in a year or two. Are you ready to put this aside? Planning Commissioner Barney: Do we not have a study in the last 18 or 24 months that gets us somewhere close? We're not talking about some 20 years from now and we're looking at something, with all the construction that's happened, we've got the Battlefield, crossing [inaudible]. There was studies in comprehensive for there. I can look at other areas where things have been done. Is there any data or information that can be provided from something that was fairly recent within the last 24 months? Keith Markel: Sure, because every major project is going to have a very large-scale transportation study component to it. The courthouse in downtown, there are many intersections in the downtown. You look at the interchange project over at Battlefield, looking at the impact it has all along East Market Street corridor. All those projects, look at the elements and [unintelligible] plan was that's incorporated into this very large transportation study. We'd take all of those plans, incorporating them and having them talk together, looking at a master transportation plan in the greater downtown. That's something that's a very [crosstalk] Planning Commissioner Barney: So historical data does exist? Keith Markel: Sure. All those plans individually are accessible and can be reviewed, for sure. Planning Commission Chair Robinson: So, the overpass of Battlefield will give me the level of service at Fort Evans and Plaza? Keith Markel: Yes. They model it out to those [crosstalk] Planning Commission Chair Robinson: Then I don't know what the problem was when we asked what's the existing status of those intersections. Keith Markel: Yes. How they're functioning today. Planning Commission Chair Robinson: All I'm asking for is level of the service on the big intersections. That's all I'm asking for. I'm not asking for huge studies. If you've already got those, that's all we need. Keith Markel: I believe they exists. [unintelligible] I'm speaking out of turn here with those studies, but we can certainly look into it and we'll pull together everything that we have. Certainly, that's all available. Planning Commission Chair Robinson: It's just the four big roads. Once we got that, then at least we know where we are. Planning Commissioner Barney: Couldn't we have the traffic coordinator pull those up, and let's say we have a special meeting, and we sit in there and we go through it. Somebody from staff would be able to highlight certain things. We can have an open discussion and look at how this matches to future growth, possibly. I think that-- Am I saying that right? This is what we would like to do? Keith Markel: Sure. Planning Commissioner Barney: Okay, yes. [crosstalk] I don't think we have to pay for anything extra. Let's try to dig into what we already have, which is historical data, and try to work off that. We don't want to give a blind yes. We don't want to just say yes because it sounds good. We want to say Page 261 August 16, 2021 that we've got a little bit of meat, we're going to allow it to be a living document still and we're going to try to address it as we move on. I think we are being greedy here. We can make it happen. I don't think we have to keep this going further. I don't want it to go further. Planning Commission Chair Robinson: If we already know that we've got C or D, at Catoctin and King and I'm going to add 250 houses right there, I got a good idea what's going to happen, don't I? However, with the lights timed and I know how their timing, I feel like at 250, it may go unnoticeable, but we need to have some idea where I am today because I can't even start. If we can get those studies, that I think would be a great deal. Keith Markel: Great. Mayor Burk: Are we -- Planning Commissioner Barnes: Let's go home. Mayor Burk: [chuckles] Thank you all. Very good. [crosstalk] I think we have marching orders, that we know where we're going? Again, thank you to everybody for all of your hard work. Council Member Fox: This was productive. Thank you. Appreciate it. Page 271 August 16, 2021