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HomeMy Public PortalAbout2023_tcwsmin0522Council Work Session May 22, 2023 Council Chamber, 25 West Market Street, Leesburg, Virginia, 7:00 p.m. Mayor Kelly Burk presiding. Council Members Present: Ara Bagdasarian, Todd Cimino -Johnson, Zach Cummings, Kari Nacy, Vice Mayor Neil Steinberg, Patrick Wilt, and Mayor Kelly Burk. Council Members Absent: None. Staff Present: Town Manager Kaj Dentler, Town Attorney Christopher Spera, Deputy Town Manager Keith, Planning and Zoning Director James David, Economic Development Director Russell Seymour, Planning and Zoning Deputy Director Brian Boucher, Police Captain David Smith, Police Sergeant Edward Martin, Transportation Engineer Niraja Chandrapu, and Clerk of Council Eileen Boeing. Minutes prepared by Deputy Clerk of Council Corina Alvarez. AGENDA a. Item for Discussion a. Town Code Section 32-143(0 - Parking of Certain Commercial Vehicles Within Residential Districts Mr. Spera gave a presentation on current parking restrictions in the Town's residential zones, the three exceptions to the prohibition, the recent amendment regarding mobile homes and the request from a resident to allow parking of commercial vehicles in residential zones. Council and staff discussed the item. No further Council direction. b. Downtown Parking Strategies Messrs. Markel, David, Seymour, Boucher, and Ms. Chandrapu gave presentations on various downtown parking strategies for Council's consideration. Council and staff discussed the strategies. Council provided straw poll direction as follows: Downtown Parking Strategy Straw Poll • On Street Pricing Adjustment Yes* • Modify Residential Parking Permit Program Yes • Town Leasing of Private Parking Lots Yes • Garage Space Monitoring Technology Yes • Trolley Shuttle Service No • Review Downtown Parking Ratios during Zoning Ordinance Rewrite Yes • Modify the 500 ft Rule for Downtown Businesses Yes • End the 'Payment in Lieu of Parking" Program No** • End the "Payment in Lieu afParking" Program Yes*** • Initiate Creation of a Parking Authority Yes * with Town Hall Garage included in the assessment **as written ***to look at increases the per space cost of the parking -in -lieu program with discussion of potentially eliminating in the Mare 1 Page ITEMS Council Work Session May 22, 2023 Clerk of Council 2023 cwsmin0522 b. Additions to Future Council Meetings Council Member Cummings requested that staff research potential areas for additional downtown parking structures. It was the consensus of Council to add this item to a future work session for discussion. Council Member Nacv asked about the LAWS request. Mr. David said it is already part of a future agenda item. c. Adjournment On a motion by Vice Mayor Steinberg, seconded by Council Member Cummings, the meeting was adjourned at 9:11 p.m. 2IPage May 22, 2023 — Leesburg 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.Ieesburgva.gov or refer to the approved Council meeting minutes. Council meeting videos are retained for three calendar years after a meeting per Library of Virginia Records Retention guidelines.) Mayor Kelly Burk: I'd like to open tonight's meeting of the May 22nd, 2023, Town Council Work Session. Our first item for discussion tonight is the Downtown Parking Strategies. Christopher Spera: Mayor Burk, they switched the order on you. Do the first item is the Town Code Section 32143-C. Mayor Burk: It is what? Christopher Spera: The consideration changes to - Mayor Burk: The commercial vehicle one? Christopher Spera: -commercial vehicle changes. Yes, Ma'am. Mayor Burk: All right. Okay. Christopher Spera: Which is why I was down here instead of at my usual place of residence. You'll recall that when we made the change to the parking section with respect to mobile homes, there was a person who came to that public hearing that urged us to consider additional changes with respect to commercial vehicles associated with mobile businesses. There was a request from, I believe it was Council Member Nacy that we add this to a work session for further discussion. That's what we're doing this evening. I went a little too far. This is operator error. As you recall from our discussion of the mobile home section, there's prohibitions in our Town Code prohibiting certain types of vehicles from parking in residential areas. They include commercial vehicles, trailers, vehicles over a certain weight, vehicles with three axles. There's three exceptions to that. If a commercial vehicle is engaged in providing services to a resident, a homeowner within the residential area, then they are allowed to be parked within the residential area while they're performing services. There's what I call the moving van exception, a commercial vehicle for up to 48 hours to load and unload furniture or equipment, and then there's a very specific one for utility generators during a loss of power. Those are the three exceptions. When we did the mobile homes amendment to this, we talked about why we would make that change for mobile homeowners- My thought process, and I believe the thought process that was accepted by the Council was that this is private property used for personal purposes, non-commercial, and allowing a 24 -hour period to load or unload your mobile home was not an unreasonable imposition on your neighbors for the limited number of times during the course of the year when you might be using your mobile home. That was adopted back in April. At the same time, we got this proposal. That the resident asked for with respect to his mobile business vehicle, which was a trailer, as you recall, was that he wanted any mobile business to be able to park its vehicle, whether it be a trailer or mobile vehicle itself, say like a food truck, that they have an eight -hour free pass. Then if they're performing an event, then they can have 72 hours on either side of the event to park the vehicle or the trailer. That was what the ask was by the resident. My office looked at it. We spent substantial time talking with the Police Department about this. We already have an exception for when a commercial vehicle is actively engaged in performing services. That's already legal. That's already something that we allow. The biggest problem I think from the Police's perspective, and we share it, certainly and Captain Smith is here, if you have any Page 1IMay 22, 2023 questions of him, but enforceability is just so hard. How do you know if it's a mobile business owned by a resident that happens to live in the neighborhood, or it's somebody who just has a work truck that they took home with them? That they're not really a mobile business, but they like the convenience of having their work vehicle at home? Or it's just somebody that needs a place to park their vehicle that's more convenient than parking it someplace else. It's so difficult to enforce. That is the third bullet there that basically any commercial vehicle that's owned or operated by somebody who lives in that neighborhood arguably could be a mobile business. I don't know that really has any meaning in the context of parking. I suppose you could drill down to it over the course of time, but is something like this really worth a three-hour or four-hour investigation by our Police Department to try and figure out if this thing is legally parked or not? Separate, apart from the enforceability, there are other negative impacts which really, I think, are primary from my office why we don't support this proposed change. Obviously, commercial vehicles tend to be much larger than regular cars, so they take up a lot of space. The limited parking within the residential areas is one of the reasons why we have this restriction in place. I think this would be potentially an unfair use of the limited parking spaces that we have. The other safety concern, and this is something both my office and the Police Department shared, is these large vehicles do restrict visibility. Thais one of the safety reduction by decreased visibility posed by these large vehicles in pedestrian, and potentially children is a cause of concern. Then also just more from a land use perspective, having commercial vehicles parked in a residential area changes the character of the neighborhood. For all those reasons, the Town Attorney's Office does not support the change. Separate apart from the enforceability problems, which I think are very fair for the Police Department to raise. That's our position on this. I'm happy to answer any questions you may have, and as I indicated, Captain Smith is here as well. Mayor Burk: Does Captain Smith wish to say anything in regard to this? David Smith: No, ma'am. [unintelligible] Mayor Burk: Would you mind coming up to the mic just so that people can hear you? David Smith: I would just echo the concerns of Mr. Spera. We've had significant discussion about this particular topic and these vehicles. Primary concern to me is the enforceability. Obviously, your position to set the Town ordinances for the t=Town, our job to necessarily enforce them. I would see a significant amount of time but have to go into the enforcement to do some research which could unintentionally result in ignorance of the-- Or officers ignoring what-- Putting the time into follow up on one of these type things. I think at the end of the day, there are definitely safety concerns, you start parking larger vehicles with pedestrians, people, and coming out from behind them, what do you want your neighborhoods to look like? Things of that nature was we opposed, we talked to RVs and things of that nature. I think it's a convenience thing as far our residents that own those things. Its for non-commercial purpose. I think this is a little bit different and limited, but my primary concern would be with the enforcement and the amount of time that would be needed to figure out, does this person live here? What's the purpose of this? When is this person's next event where they would need the 72 hours, or 48 hours, or 24 hours? Is this person supposed to have a schedule? Where am I supposed to go for this information? It looks like to me it'd be an enforcement problem, that is my primary concern, along with some of the same concerns that presented here for the Office of the Town Attorney. Mayor Burk: Thank you. Appreciate that. Does anyone have any questions at this point? Mr. Bagdasarian. Council Member Bagdasarian? Page 2IMay 22, 2023 Council Member Ara Bagdasarian: Yes, thank you. If there's an HOA that permits this, which regulations override the other, if they're permitted by an HOA, for example? Christopher Spera: Normally, I don't— This is a complaint, Captain Smith, correct me if I'm wrong, but this is a complaint -driven process. Normally, if it's allowed by the HOA, we're not getting complaints. That would be the de facto prevailing rule, if it's allowed by the homeowners' association, we are likely not going to get complaints, and this is, we enforce based upon complaints. The Police have other things to do rather than drive around town trying to figure out if they're going to take a commercial vehicle. De facto, the HOA rules would prevail. Council Member Bagdasarian: Okay, thank you. Mayor Burk: Council Member Wilt. Council Member Patrick Wilt: Yes. Thanks, Chris. I think when this came up at the meeting a few weeks back, I was thinking this was about the ability to park while they were granting services, but there's actually an exception that permits that currently. Christopher Spera: That's correct. Basically, if they're already engaged in parking, or providing services for a resident in the area, that it's allowed. Council Member Wilt: Okay. Christopher Spera: Then what this gentleman wanted to do, he was to park his trailer near or adjacent to his home to, which is the trailer commercial vehicle, so he could prepare it for events, he wasn't providing services, he basically wanted to just park it there to stage it before and after, and to me, that's really no different than a plumber or a carpenter who might be able to take his or her work vehicle with them, and for convenience, park it adjacent to their home because it's easier to get in and out, and that's really not consistent with residential parking and the character of residential neighborhoods. Council Member Bagdasarian: Okay, these two points on page five, mobile business parking up to eight hours in a residential area, and that's without providing services, that-- [crosstalk] Christopher Spera: That was part of what we asked for. That's correct. Council Member Bagdasarian: Then parking for six days around an event? Christopher Spera: Yes, those were the two asks. That's what was proposed by the resident. To me, what we've got in the code already is, while you're actively providing services, you've got a safe harbor, and the responding officer would not enforce if let's say it's a landscaping service, and you can see the people out there working, and there's the commercial vehicle, but they're providing services. There's no enforcement action necessary, or even this gentleman with his trailer, which is the specific gentleman with the axe throwing business, if there's an event at someone's residence while you're in the course of the event. I'm sure, Captain Smith's officers, if it's a couple of hours before and they're setting up or a couple of hours after and they're cleaning up, they're not going to enforce in that situation either, but what this gentleman wants is multiple days before or after. Council Member Bagdasarian: Is the topic he's getting at his own residence? Christopher Spera: Yes. Council Member Bagdasarian: Okay, so not at the event site - Christopher Spera: That's correct. Page 31May 22, 2023 Council Member Bagdasarian: -which our current ordinance takes care of? Christopher Spera: Yes, sir. Council Member Bagdasarian: He's looking for, he's running this operation from his residential home with this large commercial vehicle? Christopher Spero: That is how I understand his request Yes, sir. Council Member Bagdasarian: Yes. All right. Thanks, Chris. Mayor Burk: Nacy? Council Member Kari Nacy: Thank you. Mayor Burk: Council Member Nacy? Council Member Nacy: Wth that instance where it is his private residence, he's got it parked, could he have it there for 48 hours to load/unload, would that fall under that bullet to load/unload it? Christopher Spera: We have interpreted that really more for construction where it might take a while to unload heavy construction supplies. Where bricks or something like that that might take a substantial period of time to unload or a moving van that might be loaded over the course of a couple of days. To me, I don't know that if he was just going to pull up by his house, and park, and load or unload for an hour or two, I doubt there'd be any enforcement action taken because by the time we responded, he'd be done. What he's looking for is a much larger window of time and I think that's - Council Member Nacy: To essentially park it. Mayor Burk: -too much of a burden to put on your neighbor, is my judgment. It starts to change the character of the neighborhood. Council Member Nacy: Thank you. I agree. I think what we have is sufficient. Mayor Burk: Council Member Cummings? Council Member Zach Cummings: Thank you. Just my question was similar to what Council Member Nacy brought up. I just have a concern with the exception for that 48 hours to load/unload furniture equipment, because I think as the resident who was here and asked for this, I could see him not understanding why that doesn't apply to him. My concern, and I understand that we need it, sometimes there has to be some exceptions to the rule, and you can't write something to work for everyone. Personally, I don't want to change the dynamic of our neighborhoods. That's why I don't support the overall ideas that he's looking for but I am concerned with, after this conversation, with that exception for the parking of commercial vehicles for up to 48 hours to load or unload furniture equipment. Because I think just -- it's vague enough to create potential issues for residents who are like this gentleman just looking to if it was trying to keep it within that 48 -hour period. Mayor Burk: Mr. Cummings, the way that my office interprets that, and the advice that I would give the Police if they ask me the question is that as a homeowner engaged in my private activity as a homeowner, I might have furniture delivered, or I might have construction supplies delivered to my home to build an addition, or to swap out my furniture or whatever. So, I view that as somebody coming to provide service to the homeowner in the course of their private activities as property owners as opposed to commercial activity by the homeowner in a residential neighborhood. That's sort of the distinction for me from an enforcement perspective. Page 4lMay 22, 2023 If it takes two days to load up the moving van because of the amount of furniture and other materials in the home, okay, but that is not commercial activity by the resident. That's the resident exercising their private rights to move or to change out their furniture. To me, that's really the tipping point, is are we engaged in commercial activity by the homeowner in a residential neighborhood versus having a service come to them that might take a little bit longer time, like unloading construction materials or furniture. Council Member Cummings: Sure. I understand. I still think, ultimately, if it comes to the point where the Leesburg Police are called, and it has to come to you, this exception has already caused issue for one of our residents. That's my concern because it's not clear. I personally, hearing your argument for the 48 hours to load/unload furniture or equipment in those instances, I'm not sure I buy the difference between that and someone pulling up their ice cream truck, let's say, let's change their ice cream truck to load for the next day's ice cream venture, and it sits there 24 hours. Ultimately, this only affects a small number of neighborhoods because most HOAs in my experience don't allow commercial vehicles to park on the streets. That's just my concern. I understand what you're saying as far as reading of the law and your legal opinion. My concern is when it gets to that point, LPD has already had to deal with it. We have upset residents because of this potential exception that I think if I read that exception and have the Police at my door, I'm saying, "Well, I fit that exception." To have someone say, "No, you don't because it's not a furniture truck" I just think it creates too much uncertainty, and I think unfortunately, once we get to the point to have to have that conversation, we've probably upset a resident, and I don't want to put LPD in that position because that's not their job. That's not what they're there for. It creates friction between the town and our residents. That's my only comment. Christopher Spera: Certainly, if it's the will of Council to change that section, but that was a section that predates certainly me. That was not something that we amended, that was something that we inherited. We can certainly tighten that up if that's the will of the Council. To me, I feel pretty strongly that the interpretation isn't super hard because, if it's a private party not engaged in commerce, then I think it fits the exception. But if they're engaged in commerce, I think that it doesn't. That's just my interpretation, but to me that makes a pretty clear line of demarcation. Mayor Burk: Oh, you didn't have your mic on, so I didn't call on you. Vice Mayor Neil Steinberg: I'm sorry. Mayor Burk: Vice Mayor Steinberg. Vice Mayor Steinberg: I apologize. Oh, thank you. That's who I am. Very good. Mr. Spera, out of curiosity, can the resident park the vehicle, including trailer, in the driveway if it will all ft there without any issues? Christopher Spera: Yes. Vice Mayor Steinberg: It just can't be on the street? Christopher Spera: Yes. This only relates to the Town's right of way. Vice Mayor Steinberg: Well, good. I see the 72 -hour period before and after is unreasonable, and I can see where some people might even take advantage of the 48 hours, but I think that allowance for businesses servicing particular residents probably works pretty well. In an HOA, that's entirely up to them. I'm more than willing to allow for staffs interpretation, and not make any changes here. The whole reason we've created residential and commercial areas in the first place is to have this division. Even in heavily urban areas, commercial vehicles are typically not permitted to park long term in residential areas, so I'm satisfied that that we've got the right direction here. Thanks. Mayor Burk: The other day I was in a neighborhood, and there was a particular plumbing company. They had multiple vans, commercial, that identified the company and all that parked an the street in Page 5IMay 22, 2023 front of various homes, which caused me to question, did they have that many plumbers in those neighborhoods or was this just scattering out the vehicles? When I talked to people, they were scattering the vehicles, and made for a very difficult parking situation for that neighborhood, but they also made the same point that you made, which was it truly changed the character of that neighborhood. They were looking for some relief in regard to that themselves, and just that particular issue. Mobile businesses have been around, they're not new. Plumbers, our mobile businesses, electrical workers, and stuff like that, all those -- Christopher Spera: Food trucks have been around for decades. This is not really a new phenomenon, Mayor Burk, I agree with you. Mayor Burk: It's just different businesses now are involved in it Let me make sure I understand this. If the neighborhood was holding an event and the trailer was there for the event, that's fine? Christopher Spera: That is already covered by the existing exemption. There is no-- [crosstalk] Mayor Burk: It's just a matter of parking it in front of your house for an extended period of time for the intent of loading or unloading it, perhaps that's not the best place to do it, and it doesn't have to -- [crosstalk] Christopher Spero: Right. Now you're engaged in commercial activity for yourself as opposed to for a customer. If your customer is in the residential neighborhood, you're covered by the exemption, but when you're just servicing it for yourself, you're engaging in commerce from your residents. I think that's a distinction. Mayor Burk: Anyone else have any questions? Do you need us to do anything on this tonight? Christopher Spero: It you tell me no changes are necessary, then I am done. Mayor Burk: Is there anyone that wants to make a change on this? Then I would say no changes are necessary. Thank you very much. Christopher Spera: Thank you. Mayor Burk: Alright Now, the next item is the Downtown Parking Strategies. Keith Markel: Another short item for you this evening. Mayor Burk: Mr. Markel. Keith Markel: Yes, ma'am. All right. Well, thank you. I've got 10 minutes here. So, were probably going to need a little bit more time than that to get to this. What we have for you this evening is a consolidated parking topic item based on your conversations that you had at the January Council planning retreat, as well as some other items that you've brought up in recent months. What we've done since a number of these items have some overlap into each other, we consolidated them all into one mega item, if you will, to talk through this evening. We've got the whole team here with us to share with you some slides, to answer questions as you have them and discuss some along the way. How we have it set up, you're prerogative, but we have it set up so the presentation will flow through different topic areas based on different themes that you all have brought up. At the end of that theme, we'll pose a straw poll question for you that you all can provide feedback on, and that will help guide staff as to future steps that you may want us to take if that's acceptable. Mayor Burk: Fine. Page 6IMay 22, 2023 Keith Markel: All right. Let's get into it. I' ll just give you just a brief overview. I know this is a topic for those of you who have been on Council for a while. We've talked about some of these elements in the past, but just to give you an idea of our existing conditions, we have obviously a variety of different parking opportunities in the Downtown. We've got 336 surface lot spaces on public lots themselves. We have over 1,4K garage spaces between three structured parking facilities. We have on -street pay - to -park spaces. We have on -street free spaces. We have on -street loading and passenger drop off and pick up spaces that were designed over the past several years as we've seen trends in the way folks use the Downtown, many years ago before Uber was a thing, you didn't have this need for passenger drop off. Now we have golf carts, we have ride -sharing programs. We've created and evolved our Downtown parking strategies over the years as demand has shifted, and maybe it's time to look at some of these elements again. Just to give you an idea of just a breakdown of these spaces within the Downtown, you can see those highlighted yellow areas. Those are our public parking facilities that are owned either by the Town or the County. The County having the Pennington parking lot and garage. They manage that, but that is free and open to the public. To give you a little idea on parking demands, every year in September, we have been doing an annual parking count. We do an audit of the Town's public parking facilities, is on -street within the Town's parking garage, and then our surface lots as well as the County's surface and garage, Pennington facility. What you'll see here, and it varies obviously because different times of the day and the week, you'll see parking demand shift. On average, you'll see on our pay -to -park spaces, those former metered spaces now the ParkMobile spaces, we're seeing an occupancy rate in the month of September for 2022 of 47%. Within the Liberty Lot, our surface lot, we have a general average occupancy of 41%. These counts were taken mid -morning and mid -afternoon. Then the Pennington Lot seeing slightly higher use there at 48%. All of those below the 50% mark as far as utilization, again, on average. If you're there Friday evening, you'll see a much different situation where you might be pushing 100% occupancy. We also look at the Town parking garage. Lots of data is collected there, but just to give you a quick snapshot, if you look at times when the counts, and we do four counts during the day on weekdays, and three counts on the weekends, each day of the month for every day of the week. You'll see that within those counts, if we had to count that at any time exceeded 75% or greater occupancy in the garage, we counted that as what you'll see on this bar here. In 2017, you'll see we had 15 occurrences where garage capacity was at 75% or greater. In 2022, you'll see that number climbs up to just shy of 25 times where we've seen those counts exceed. You can see there's a trend. Obviously, COVID has messed with the statistics. We didn't even do counts in 2020 because it just wouldn't have meant anything with everything being closed. You'll see in 2021 to 2022 major increases in the Downtown. We all can see that anecdotally by the success of the Downtown businesses, we've seen parking demands. If you're here on a Friday night, you'll see lots of vehicles circling the parking garage looking for spaces. With that, I will turn it over now to James to talk to you a bit about the managing of the parking demands. There it is. James David: Thank you, Mr. Markel. Good evening, Madam Mayor, and Council. I've got two slides and they're about managing parking demand. Just a little bit of context before we get to the discussion question. One popular approach to managing parking demand is through pricing strategies. Usually, this is in a Downtown environment. The basic premise is to adjust the cost of on - street parking to achieve a target occupancy rate. If you follow Dr. Shoup, he thinks that the occupancy rate of curbside parking should be 85%. What that means is on every block, you have one to two open on -street parking spaces at all times of the day. To achieve that occupancy rate, you vary the cost of on -street parking such that the Town can charge the lowest possible rate to still achieve that one to two vacant spaces per block. Now, the best pricing strategies can vary based on the time of day and the location, and perhaps that's something Page 71May 22, 2023 that could be enabled by the Town's new parking technology with the ParkMobile app in different areas of Downtown, and the thought behind that is that you have different levels of demand based on what time of day it is and where it is Downtown. Now, charging the right price for on -street parking could also have some other benefits, especially coupled with cheaper or free garage parking. The theory is that if the on -street parking is more expensive and creating turnover, then that basically creates incentive far long-term visitors and employees to seek out the cheaper parking in the structured parking garages, and then that lends itself to that theory of park once and walk, which helps with Downtown vitality, as well as better for the environment, getting people out of their cars and walking around Downtown. Now, some other benefits could be you free up on -street parking directly in front of the businesses. If there's a little bit more turnover, that means there'll be more spaces for those short-term patrons that are going right to a targeted business, and then, of course, there is some argument behind the cost of service being tied more to the motorist, and less obviously to the taxpayer of funding free parking on the streets or parking garages. Just a few thoughts there in terms of pricing strategies. That leads us to what is the Town doing right now. Well, we have the beginnings of a pricing strategy. For our pay -to -park spaces on street, they are a $1.50 per hour, and there's also a processing fee of 450, and then in our Town Hall garage, the first two hours are free, and then it's a dollar per hour thereafter. That's a good first step, but then the question that has been raised by at least one Council member is, "Do we need to adjust the on -street pricing, raise it above the $1.50 per hour to park on the street?" And if the majority of the Council says yes or maybe, then a little bit more direction would be helpful on what are we trying to achieve a target occupancy rate, are we open to dynamic pricing, et cetera. I think well pause and poll the Council. Mayor Burk: All right. Then you're asking for direction to develop a modified pricing strategy that would increase the $1.50 per hour fee to park on the street? Is there any questions on this, Mr. Wilt? Council Member Wilt: Yes. Just for clarification. The target objective would be to reach an occupancy rate of 85% so there's 15% availability at all times, each block? James David: Correct. Council Member Wilt: We currently have the $1.50 in place, and on slide four we say our on -street pay -to -park, were at 47% occupancy. James David: Let me go back to slide four here. This is during the annual September counts, which is a certain time of day. Mr. Markel can give you the context on that. Keith Markel: That would be the mid -morning, mid -afternoon on the month of September. There are other times, so Friday afternoons at 3:00 PM you may see occupancy in the 80% to 90% range. On a Monday morning, you might be in the higher range, but on average, were seeing 47%. Council Member Wilt: Just trying to speak apples to apples. We're talking about a target of 85%, so at the $1.50, and we're talking about increasing it so we can achieve that. What is the apples -to - apples metric comparable to the 85% that were at right now? James David: Let me just clarify. The 85% is not based on measurement of where we are right now. It's actually just common practice. I don't know for certain where we are in terms of the $1.50 relative to occupancy rate at all times of the day. Council Member Wilt: Okay. I guess, I don't know, is there a need to modify the $1.50 at all because I'm not sure I'm understanding the data? Page 8IMay 22, 2023 James David: Yes, I think that as part of this, If we're directed to go forth and study it, we certainly need to bring back what is the $1.50 achieving at more times during the day, and some of the peak times during the day. Council Member Wilt: Would part of that be as I'm hearing some of the discussion depending on the day of the week, the time of the day, utilization changes. Is part of this to change the $1.50 by time of day, day of week also, or is the $1.50 fixed, and the intention would be to maintain a fixed rate? James David: Currently, it's a fixed rate. Keith Markel: Fixed rate. James David: Some of the other examples across the nation is that you do make it dynamic based on those demands, but were not doing that right now as a Town. We could look into it as part of this. Council Member Wilt: Okay. I'd be interested in understanding the issue more thoroughly because the data doesn't communicate to me right now. James David: Understood. Council Member Wilt: All right. Thanks. Mayor Burk: Mr. Cummings? I mean, Council Member Cummings. Council Member Cummings: That's all right. I know the September numbers were taken in September 2022. What was the system for the on -the -street parking to pay? Keith Markel: [inaudible] meters and of the ParkMobile payment. Council Member Cummings: It probably isn't really truly reflective of the new system with the ParkMobile? Keith Markel: We haven't done a count yet where we've - Council Member Cummings: Sure. Keith Markel: -just been on the ParkMobile. Council Member Cummings: It's not September yet. Keith Markel: Right. Mayor Burk: You're quick. Council Member Cummings: Look at that. I'm the smartest guy up here. No. Following what Council Member Wilt was trying to get at, I believe, if the goal is to increase usage, increasing the price to me at this point doesn't make sense without the data - James Davide: Sure. Council Member Cummings: -because we haven't tracked it. From my own personal anecdotal responses that I'm hearing from our business owners and residents, there's a concern for the ease of use of the ParkMobile parking. There's a lot of folks who visit the Town and shop, especially during the days and the mornings that don't have smartphones. If you don't have a smartphone, it makes it more difficult. Page May 22, 2023 I actually would have liked to see us either keep or install the dual system, what used to be at the lot down here on the Church and Market area where you could use your credit card to pay, and then get the little slip, or you could use your phone with the app. I think, for me, what's important is ensuring that when folks come to visit or our residents come Downtown, that they have a true ease of use for the system. I wish we could reevaluate the ParkMobile to see if it's really-- It may be the most efficient, best system for the Town to use, but is it the most efficient and best system for our residents and the visitors here at the Town of Leesburg? I actually had someone complain because they said that the meters were like a real nostalgic throwback, and it really made you feel like you're -- which I laughed at. I'm like, I didn't know parking meters invoked that much emotion, but I guess it does. As far as the question of the $1.50 fee, I would not support raising that fee, especially without the data showing us that we're at that, where we are with this new ParkMobile. In fact, I'd actually ask us to consider looking at a more user-friendly system that looks at an ability for folks all over the spectrum of technology use and comfort to help ease their use of coming to visit Downtown. Mayor Burk: Council Member Bagdasarian? Council Member Bagdasarian: Yes. I brought [unintelligible] favorite book here for reference if you needed it, by the way. Excellent reading. Great by the bed stand if you need to fall asleep. Dr. Shoup does go into the science of parking, and he does advocate for market -based pricing and dynamic. I could see where the questions we're looking at dynamic pricing based on the time of day, the volume. If you come down to Downtown Leesburg on a Friday night, you're not going to have 47% available parking. I think it is definitely worth looking at that. To Council Member Cummings' point, having, I don't know what the cost implications would be to have a dynamic system that takes credit cards and a little slip in conjunction with that. That's not what were talking about here though. This was not in this report, and I don't know if we could add it to this, but also looking at the parking garage parking fees. I think that should also be market -based. If we're not charging parking, then the taxpayers, they might not drive vehicles or own vehicles are covering the cost for that. Just back of the envelope math here, so even if parking was three dollars an hour in the garage, which it's certainly not outrageous, at 75% occupancy and just for one hour a day over the course of the year, that would generate $1.21 million of revenue that can be reinvested in the Downtown for improvements. Maybe bearing power lines, funding the Main Street program. I think that keeping that the money that's generated from parking in the Downtown can be used to improve the Downtown, keep that revenue here, but also work on the value, because parking does have value, and certainly there can be free parking a little bit further out. But if you're going to park right in the heart of the Downtown, I think there's value there. I personally think that, and Dr. Shoup believes that we should be charging market -based rates for that, and we'll determine what is the right rate. Is it $1.50? Is it $3? Is it $5? We don't know that. This ties into the counter discussion. I would like to add that to this, either this straw poll or another item doing the parking garage pricing adjustment. Mayor Burk: Thank you. Council Member Cimino -Johnson? Council Member Todd Cimino -Johnson: Thank you, Madam Mayor. My question is, if we would vote yes on this, does that mean you would develop a pricing strategy, and then you come back to us? James David: Yes. Council Member Cimino -Johnson: Not implement it? James David: Correct. I think it would behoove us to actually get the data to marry up apples to apples to look at occupancy rates at all times of the day now, and different days. Page 101May 22, 2023 Council Member Cimino -Johnson: Thank you. Mayor Burk: Council Member Nacy? Council Member Nacy: Thank you. I agree with what everyone's been saying with, let's go ahead and study it. Going into the city often for work, and they use ParkMobile in most places. I would be curious to know what the cost would be for one of the standalone where you get out of your car, you go, you use your credit card, and you take your slip back like Council Member Cummings was saying. Just maybe have some of those strategically placed for some of our residents who may not have access to a smartphone. Mayor Burk: Vice Mayor Steinberg? Vice Mayor Steinberg: Thanks. The 500 service fee, who pays that? Keith Markel: The parker. Vice Mayor Steinberg: The parker pays that. Keith Markel: It goes directly to ParkMobile. The Town does not collect that. It's the third -party processing fee. Vice Mayor Steinberg: Can the end user choose less than an hour out of curiosity? Keith Markel: Yes. Vice Mayor Steinberg: Parking time? Keith Markel: Yes. Vice Mayor Steinberg: Anything they want. Okay. A theme I think that's going to be running through this conversation through the various parts of this thing now is that we either are coming to or need to come to the realization that parking is an expensive provision for the Town. In my view right now, currently, what we charge is too cheap. I agree with Councilman Bagdasarian. I'm not sure there's a halfway point here. We've made the leap of faith, so to speak, in the ParkMobile choice, which is obviously more efficient and less expensive in terms of its maintenance and everything. I recognize that it does create a certain difficulty for some people who are not technologically adept. Although I've seen people in the streets in DC looking at these kiosks that take credit cards in total confusion. In the end, I'm uncertain as to how much better a solution that is. It is a transitional period, like a lot of things, but I'm not sure going backward and investing more money is a good idea. I believe that the study for the rate is absolutely warranted, and I'm not uncertain that the rates don't need to go up in the end. Thanks. Mayor Burk: Originally, the setup came about because we charged for the garage, but we didn't charge for the parking on the street. The idea was to try to get people to move them to the garage, and have people parked temporarily in the street so you would charge them more than the garage. I'm not sure that that's happening. Although the garages most certainly are more full than they used to be. To see that the Pennington Lot is full at 48%, that was pretty surprising to me. It doesn't seem like it's utilized that much. That's good to hear that people are using it. I hope that has something to do with having the golf carts be able to bring them into Town and that sort of thing. The $1.50, the whole idea was to get people using the garage, get people off the street so people could just park there temporarily. So, I'm not sure if that is goodbye. The other thing, though, I would request, if this does go forward, we need feedback from the businesses that this will affect. That's really important to get some input from them as to what they would see would be the advocation for it or not, and what would be the impact to their business. If we Page 11May 22, 2023 change the question to direct staff to develop a modified pricing strategy that worked to increase the $1.50 per hour fee to park on the street and to look at the parking in the garage, the fees in the garage, that would be what we were all talking about. Council Member Bagdasarian? Council Member Bagdasarian: To your point, this is a perfect opportunity for a Main Street program, right? For the business community to share their input. This may be a project or an initiative that the new organization provides some input on. I think that this is exactly what Main Street is for, for situations like this. Mayor Burk: That's true. Vice Mayor? Vice Mayor Steinberg: Mostly for the public's information, rd like to remind everyone that in the parking garage, it is free for two hours. That is absolutely an incentive for people to move off the street spaces and into the parking garage. Mayor Burk: Then everybody's asked their questions. Then I'm going to ask, do we want to direct staff to develop a modified pricing strategy that would increase the $1.50 per hour fee to park on the street. along with looking at the parking garage's fees? Are four people that are interested in doing that? Do you need everybody's name? Eileen Boeing: [unintelligible] Mayor Burk: Okay, so there were six people. You didn't raise your had? Okay, so six of us move forward. Thank you very much. James David: Thank you. Mayor Burk: The next one is the Residential Permit Parking. James David: I'm going to pass the baton to Niraja. Niraja Chandrapu: Good evening, Madam Mayor, and Council members. My name is Niraja Chandrapu and I'm here to discuss about the residential permit parking. There are certain streets in the Town that have been designated as the residential permit parking zones. The program is implemented where the residents are experiencing difficulty in finding on -street parking space because of non-residents frequently occupying on -street spaces. Currently, we have 17 residential permit parking zones out of which seven are in Downtown. This program particularly protects the street parking for residential properties from the daytime business users. For requesting a residential permit parking there is a process which requires a petition from the residents and after that the staff will conduct a parking survey. There will be a public hearing after the parking survey with the Town Manager and the last thing is the Town Managers approval. This map shows the total 17 residential parking zones in the Town of Leesburg. Here is a graphic that focuses on the Downtown area. You could see seven residential parking zones in the area. The restrictions provide protection for the residential properties from the Downtown workers and visitors. However, this would increase demand for parking if the spaces are vacant. Town staff frequently monitors these zones and as such, I can share an example. Wirt Street between East Market and Cornwall, as well as the Cornwall between the Wrt and Liberty Street. The streets were not utilized enough for parking by the residents. As such, the Town Manager initiated a public hearing for a potential withdrawal of residential permit parking. In the public hearing, we heard the concerns from the residents as well as from the business owners. After careful consideration of many factors like public input, survey counts, before and after public hearing, and follow-up discussions with the residents and the business owners, the Town Manager decided to pilot a modified program. Page 121May 22, 2023 The modified program was implemented, as you can see on this graphic that is marked as black streets, which is Wirt Street between West Market Street and Cornwall, and Cornwall Street between Liberty and Wrt Street. The modified program allows two-hour free parking for non -permit holders and a continuous unlimited parking for the permit holder vehicles. This would increase the space utilization and convenience for the non-residential parkers. Six weeks ago, this program was implemented and since then there have been no complaints from either the residents or the business owners. Furthermore, we got a request from another resident located on Cornwall Street requesting a similar approach to be implemented on their street. Therefore, the staff recommends implementing the same approach for all and proposed residential permit parking zones in H1 District to provide fair and equitable solution for the residents as well as for the business owners. Wth that, we come to the Council question regarding the Modify Residential Permit Parking Program. Mayor Burk: All right, thank you. I appreciate that. Is there any questions on this one, this item? I have a couple questions. Wirt Street and whatever we do, the residential parking permit will still have to go through the process of they have to get so many signatures. Niraja Chandrapu: Yes 50% of the residents located on the street need to sign for a petition. Mayor Burk: Okay. My concern centers around the Wirt Street and Cornwall Street. Those two are very unique streets. I'm not sure that if you're looking at those to being the best example of a pilot program because everybody has a driveway where they are. Everybody has an opportunity to park, they don't have to park on the street unless they want to. I'm just not sure, I'm not opposed to looking at it but I'm just thinking Wirt Street and Cornwall Street may not be the best and only example. That's all. Niraja Chandrapu: Okay. Thank you. Mayor Burk: Anyone else? Well, then do we want to modify the current zoning to broader area zones that allow two-hour parking for non -permit holders and unlimited parking for permit holders within a specific zone? Is this model that has been successfully piloted on Wirt Street and Cornwall Street based on that? I would just caution that we look at other streets too. Niraja Chandrapu: Sure. Mayor Burk: Do we have four people that would be interested in asking staff to move forward an that one? Council Member Bagdasarian, Nacy, myself, and Vice Mayor. Oh, and Dr. Cimino -Johnson. That is a yes, move forward. Okay, thank you. Niraja Chandrapu: Thank you. Mayor Burk: The public party keen alternatives. Russell Seymour: Yes ma'am. Good evening, Madam Mayor, Members of Council. Just continuing our discussion this evening, looking at possible alternatives for public parking. We've focused on where the public parking is. Now we're looking at, there are approximately 2K private parking or off- street parking areas that are in the Town of Leesburg. One of the things that we've noticed in talking with a lot of these property owners is that while these properties or the spaces are used predominantly during working hours, really after 5:00 PM they're underutilized. If there's an opportunity you may recall the Church Street Lot that we had leased for some time that we had used for some of our parking, doing something similar to that but looking at some of these areas that are not on the main streets, they're behind some of the buildings, so you don't see them necessarily. There are, like I said, approximately 2K spaces in the Town right now that may be an opportunity for us to look as a potential alternative. Wth that, I get to go to my yes or no maybe question a little sooner, and we'll answer any questions that you have. Mayor Burk: Thank you very much. Mr. Council Member Wilt? Page 13IMay 22, 2023 Council Member Wilt: Thanks, Russell. How many private parking spaces you say might be applicable? Russell Seymour: Well, we're looking at just right around 2K spaces privately -owned spaces that are in the Town of Leesburg. Now, obviously, 2K aren't going to be available but it's giving you an idea of how many spaces there are. Council Member Wilt: Are we focused across Leesburg or is this B1 or what's the geography? Russell Seymour: I would say the extended Downtown area. Council Member Wilt: Okay. Russell Seymour: All walkable. Council Member Wilt: Would the target for the availability you said be after normal business hours after 5:00 PM on weekdays and such, is that the goal? Russell Seymour: I think we would look into it just across the board. The comment I mentioned about five seems to be the information that we get from them, but I would suggest that we look at it across the board. Council Member Wilt: Okay. There wouldn't necessarily be a distinction in signage or something for visitors. It would be public parking this way, not public parking during these hours, for example? Russell Seymour: It could be either way, and I think that's what staff is asking, is to at least take a look at that. Depending on the lot and depending on that particular lot's usage. Council Member Wilt: Okay. There would be signage if we did this kind of a lease? Russell Seymour: There would need to be, yes. Council Member Wilt: Okay. All right. Thanks, Russell. Mayor Burk: Council Member Cimino -Johnson? Council Member Cimino -Johnson: Thank you, Madam Mayor. I read this direct steps to engage with Downtown property owners. If we say yes to this, does that mean you go out immediately and do this? Because the way I look at this is it's not just one solution. All these are comprehensive - Russell Seymour: Exactly. Council Member Cimino -Johnson: -The whole thing, right? Okay. Russell Seymour: No. The way we looked at this was to go out and start the conversation. Take an inventory of what's there. We know most of the spaces, we know the property owners. Some of them have already talked to us just as these discussions have been becoming public. They've brought things up or questions to us. It's really going out talking to them, coming back with an idea of this is what's available and this is the information to even see if this is a valid opportunity. Council Member Cimino -Johnson: Okay. Thank you. Mayor Burk: Council Member Nacy? Council Member Nacy: Thank you. How would the leasing work? A flat rate or would we share the parking cost, put ParkMobile in there and share it? What would be the-- Or would that be something you would be--? Page 141May 22, 2023 Russell Seymour: would think that-- and I don't speak for our Attorneys Office. I think that would be something that we would want to look at, but we'd want to stay consistent. Whatever we did for one space or one lot, we'd want to continue to do it across. Council Member Nacy: Okay. Christopher Spera: Yes. There'd be multiple ways to do it. I agree with Russell though. Whatever it is that we choose to do, it would be consistent across the board. Seems to me the easiest thing to do would be to share the revenue, so that the revenue that the property owner gets is based upon the actual usage. That would be legal. You could do it that way. The other way to do it would be to do a flat fee to the property owner, and then if it's successful, the Town gets more. If it's less successful, the town gets less. Just off the top of my head, my thought would be to share the revenues, and that way it's a true partnership. Each party bears the same risk of overuse or underuse. Council Member Nacy: Okay. That's something you could come back and give us some potential example. Russell Seymour: Give you options. Absolutely. Mr. Markel just told me as well that when we did the Church Street Lot, that was a flat rate. We paid the flat rate and then the Town received the income coming back from the parking. Council Member Nacy: Okay. Thank you. Mayor Burk: Council Member Bagdasarian? Council Member Bagdasarian: Yes. I like the idea of the shared revenue, by the way. I'm sure if we did use like a ParkMobile, it would be start after five or something like that. If you don't need to pay for parking if you're there. Aside from Church Street. have we done any other partnerships like this up to date that you're aware of? Russell Seymour: Where we paid for the public? Not that I'm aware of. That was the primary lot that I've-- Since I've been here. I believe that's the only one I've known. Council Member Bagdasarian: Okay. Thank you. Mayor Burk: Oh, your lights went out. Who else? You turned yours on? Vice Mayor Steinberg: I did. Mayor Burk: Yes, Mr. Steinberg. Vice Mayor Steinberg. Vice Mayor Steinberg: Thank you very much. Okay. The idea of leasing is interesting, but as we go through a number of the components of this discussion, including pay in lieu, 500 -foot rule, 1K -foot rule, and all these other questions. I think we have to keep in mind if a long-term goal is going to be less impervious surface, more pervious surface, and a better use of land in general, then I think the conversation about structured parking in the end is going to have to be considered. That kind of parking would also allow for shared parking by the way, by both property owners and users. I'm not even sure. Do we have a clue as to what areas might accommodate this particular concept? Russell Seymour: Yes, we do. We have a couple of spaces that we have talked about with some of the property owners. I do want to take a good inventory of all of it and put it together. None of them, that I'm aware of, are either right on King Street. Most of them are off the-- I won't say off the beaten path. They're all within walkable distance of the Downtown. They're in close proximity but most of them are behind the buildings, behind the primary lot. We can talk about the areas around Tuscarora, back in that area of the Crossings back there. There's some spaces back there. Vice Mayor Steinberg: Well, specifically as it pertains to the H1, 51, I think increasingly we need to consider land use and how we can best accommodate both parking and then accommodate the best Page 151May 22, 2023 use of the land. I recognize it's going to be in the end of a far more expensive endeavor, but it's probably something that we're not going to be able to avoid in the end. Thanks. Mayor Burk: Okay. Do we want to direct staff to engage with Downtown property owners of underutilized parking lots to see if there is an interest in leasing spaces to the Town for public use? Are there four people that would like to do that? All right. It's everybody-- Okay. Thank you. Russell Seymour: No, Mayor Burk: You're not done? Russell Seymour: You don't need to give me a sit down yet. Mayor Burk: I do have to say, Mr. Markel. Russell Seymour: Keith gave me a couple more slides I get to work on here. Mayor Burk: You may not hear me say this very often, but it actually is warm in here. You might want to -- Keith Markel: Oh, oh! Mayor Burk: Alright. Russell Seymour: We'll see it. Please let the record show that I did not wear a tie this evening just because-- We talked about directional signage, and we had looked at where we have directional signage. Currently the Council obviously has an approved signage plan that will be implemented. Signs will be installed later this summer. For that, the County Courts will be installing updated and additional wayfnding signs. In addition to that, Economic Development and Public Works are working together right now. We have applied, Economic Development has applied for an additional Department of Housing and Community Development grant that would give us some additional funding to add or to both look at a study for additional wayfnding signs with the intention of hopefully being able to add that. We've talked a lot about the signage right on the main areas and we hear all too often from businesses that that's great, but were the next block over. Those are parts of the directional signage that were talking about that would incorporate the additional parking. Mr. Bagdasarian, I believe that goes back to what you were saying too about advertising for those spaces. Those would be part of that. Also wanted to mention Pennington Lot, I believe the Mayor made a-- I'm sorry. Mayor Burk: You don't have a question for the directional signage? Russell Seymour: No, ma'am. There was no questions that we had. Keith Markel: You've already approved that in the budget -- Mayor Burk: Oh, is that right? Keith Markel: -- so that will go in later that summer. Mayor Burk: Ironically, what was it? Four years ago, we had a study to see how many signs we had and we ended up taking down signs because we had so many signs. Dejd vu. Go ahead. Sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt. Russell Seymour: Very good point. We talked about the Pennington Lot, and I believe Madam Mayor, you brought up a good paint and that was the 47% usage. That surprised me too when I was looking at that number because one of the things we've heard repeatedly over and over again is that Page 16]May 22, 2023 the Pennington Lot is not utilized. I think when you certainly look after hours when a lot of the business or a lot of the visitor activities going, I would say at that point the Pennington Lot is not utilized. There's more that we need to do. When I looked at, I took a survey of some of the local websites addressing when they talk about where the Downtown parking lots are. Pennington Lot was not on some of those sites. Some of the ones we looked at. Talking about Downtown visitors, educating them about and having them educate their customers next time, you come in. Really using them as a resource, whether through Main Street program, but using our businesses as a resource to come up and really not only tell us where people were parking, but also be able to have them highlight to their customers where the parking are. Obviously, social media advertising, updating our parking maps as well, and then looking at reestablishing some type of parking shuttle service. One of the things that we've heard from our business community a number of times is that, people will want to park right in front of the business here. The same people will drive to DC, park in a garage, and walk halfway across DC, wherever they want to go. They're used to that. They're not used to that here in Leesburg. Part of it's going to be a reeducation, but one of the things with the Pennington Lot and it really does tie into signage, you can't park where you don't know. If you don't know that the Pennington Lot's there, it's out of sight out of mind. Being able to identify that, put additional signage Downtown that direct people to the Pennington Lot, but then also provide those directions before somebody ever comes to Leesburg. I think there are going to be important parts of this. With that, I will turn it back over to Mr. Markel. Keith Markel: We'll move on to the next focus area, which is that technology enhancements. I know we've talked a little bit about this already, but to touch again on the ParkMobile feature, that app payment system that we first introduced back in 2016, and that was the combination of pay with coins and pay with ParkMobile at the street. We saw about a 50/50 split between users, how they were paying through those systems. As you know, in January of this year we transitioned to the all -app payment and pulled the meters out because the technology and the pay meters was out of date. It wasn't supported. The system presented some cyber security risks and to upgrade it would be a six - figure cost to go to a new coin collection system. It's just not where communities are headed. We've made the decision to go with the all -app payment. We did look at the walkup payment kiosk similar to that T2 system that you had in the Church Street Lot. When you look at those, there is the cost benefits analysis of it. It has points of failure in it. It has printers, it has screens, it has readers, it has to have a cellular connection, it has to have power. All of those issues make those a bit of a challenge and more maintenance. When we're looking at a small parking staff, we looked at what was our opportunity to keep up with those systems and we recommended going with the all -app payment system. The other advantage that Leesburg has is we're a fairly small footprint in the Downtown. You're within a few blocks of walking to free parking even if you don't want to pay on -street, on -street may be the most convenient if you're going to a certain store, but the garage, again, offers free two-hour parking. Nights and weekends it's free. Liberty Lot's free, Pennington Lot's free. Everything within about three blocks can get you to free parking if you don't want to pay with the app on the street. The app itself does allow not only for smartphone, but you can call from a traditional phone to make a payment as well on that. That's a little bit of background of how we got there. We also talked, in the past few years, about the garage space monitoring technology to provide an indication for those passing by the structured parking lot to see if there are spaces available. You've all seen this at One Loudoun, at Reston, Dulles, all has these features where it has sensors built into the garage, looking at those parking spaces and providing visual cues to the motorist as to whether or not there's a space available. Looking at this, they can be retrofitted into existing garages. The cost is about $550, give or take to install these per space. When you look at a garage the Town size, you'd be looking about $200K of an Page 17[May 22, 2023 investment to put that in place. Something that you've funded in the budget, we have $150K currently allocated in the budget. Additional funds most likely would be necessary based on our preliminary discussions. This is something hopefully that we'll get into here in the next year or so as we start to have staff time to get into this in more detail. This question here really is simply just if you want us to continue on that path, you've allocated the funds. We assume that you still want us to continue with that, but since we haven't done it yet, we just want to make sure that's still the direction that you all feel. Mayor Burk: Council Member Nacy? Council Member Nacy: Yes. Mayor Burk: That was it? Council Member Nacy: Yes. It just made me think of I think it was the Valor Awards where we went to National Conference Center and they don't have this kind of technology. It was completely full and everyone got to the top of the garage and it was just bottlenecked for it. You couldn't turn back around. I know that that's happened a couple of limes up here, especially during really, really busy, when the streets are closed, that sort of thing. I think this is well worth the investment to avoid accidents in the garage, cars getting hit, stuff like that. A little sign out front that says, "Sorry, this is full" That's worth its weight, I think right there. Mayor Burk: Council Member Cummings? Council Member Cummings: Yes. On the ParkMobile app, I just had a couple questions. The first is, this was done by staff and there was not a public hearing or a public process to the converting to an all -digital parking payment system, correct? Keith Markel: That's correct. Council Member Cummings: Okay. Then one question on the signage. Was the signage approved by the Board of Architectural Review or did it get an administrative--? Keith Markel: We consulted our Preservation Planner, and so the mock-ups that we had, we wanted to stick with something traditional. We used the Town's branding color, so that would stay consistent with the other wayfinding signs you'd see in Town. But as a public informational sign, it does not need to go through the full BAR approval process. It's treated as a street sign. Council Member Cummings: Okay. As far as the garage space monitoring technology, I just have a hard time spending $550 a parking spot for a garage that the first two hours is free. I'm not advocating eliminating the first two hours free, because I think it's a service to the residents and to our visitors to have that discount, if you will. It just puts me in a situation where I don't want to harm the budget The money could go somewhere else to see a return on our investment. I remember I was with Kari at the Valor Awards, so I know we were both hunting for parking spots. I get that, having parked in the garage quite frequently, I haven't hit that same situation very often. There's, I think, enough spots, and if you get to the top, it's easy to navigate around. I just personally can't see spending $550 per space. I think it was $150K is the total budget for the parking garage at this point I do just want to continue to highlight that I've heard from our small business owners as well as residents and visitors on the ParkMobile. My hope is that maybe there's an option to at least, if not install these multiple use payment systems to at least highlight the options of the garages and other places to where folks can pay with a different card rather than just on their phone. Mayor Burk: Council Member Wilt Council Member Wilt: No, actually, questions have answered. Thanks. Page 18IMay 22, 2023 Mayor Burk: Okay. Council Member Bagdasarian? Council Member Bagdasarian: Okay, great. Thank you, sir. Yes. I don't know how many hundreds of pictures I sent to the Town Manager here of different parking garages with the counters, but we're the Hometown of the 21st Century. I agree the fact that if it's free parking were having that, I think it adds additional value. That's why I think looking at the pricing structure, the cost, the rates for the parking garage play into this, but the other aspects that this provides is real time data, like actually knowing outside of September that day or week that we actually do the count. It tells us when the highest frequencies are, what the rates are at any given time. It provides a lot of data. Now, I know that I did some research years ago about this, and there are different options. Obviously, if we have parking indicators per spot, that's substantially more expensive than a Parking Logix type approach where it counts cars in and out. It just tells you how many spots are on each level, which would fit within this budget. I think I saw the quote from that, I could share with you. I think this is a no- brainer as far as I'm concerned. It's beyond a no-brainer. Any parking garage should provide that information, especially in 2023, if not 2024. Yes, I think it's a no-brainer, so I appreciate it. Mayor Burk: Vice Mayor? Vice Mayor Steinberg: Yes, the lowest level in the garage, those are leased spaces. Are they leased 24 hours a day or its a 9 to 5. Keith Markel: Monday to Friday, 8:00 to 5:00. Vice Mayor Steinberg: Okay. Whatever system we install would have to include the garage in its entirety? Okay. Real quick, back to the Pennington, you said the use rate was up to about 48%. Is it possible that number is being affected by the fact that our garage is under construction and same of that's spilling over to the Pennington? Keith Markel: It has. The Pennington number comes from the surface lot. It doesn't account for the garage. Vice Mayor Steinberg: l see. Keith Markel: You see the number is much lower because the garage gets very low utilization. That's just the lot. Just the surface lot. Vice Mayor Steinberg: The lot. Keith Markel: So, that's Monday. I guess it's every day of the week, mid -morning, and mid -afternoon. It gets a lot of Court traffic parking there. Those mid -morning, mid -afternoon numbers reflect business parking there for the Courthouse. Vice Mayor Steinberg: Okay. The garage is still primarily underutilized, I guess, is what you're saying? Keith Markel: Yes. The Pennington garage has very high vacancy. Vice Mayor Steinberg: Okay. All right, that's good to know. I think we should pursue the study on this idea, or actually we've already budgeted for it, so I guess were going to go for it. I think that feedback is probably a good idea. People can-- Is this a system you can-- Again, you install an app and you can get feedback from the system. or do you have to actually see it visually? Keith Markel: I think there's ones out there that will feed an app. You can reserve parking spaces in advance in some fancier facilities where you'd be having a higher pay to park rate, where you could reserve a spot. We won't be looking at anything that elaborate, but going with a system that would collect that real-time data and then allow that, at least from the staff side to be able to log in and see what our usage look like. Then you could start looking at that pricing structure. Remember, you all Page 19IMay 22, 2023 provide free parking nights and weekends here and some of our trends now we're really shifted to our heaviest parking is nights and weekends. You come in here on a Friday evening at five o'clock, you're not making a nickel on any of the parking, but its got its highest utilization rate of the year are these Friday nights. If you started pushing your charging to 8:00 PM, or 9:00 PM, you could be looking at a new revenue stream. Saturdays for a certain period of time, you could really be looking at new revenue stream. This would help you understand that. Vice Mayor Steinberg: Exactly and that's of course, part of larger conversation. Okay, thanks. Mayor Burk: I have a couple of questions before I go back to Mr. Bagdasarian. I have two cautions. One, we need to look at the Reston model because Reston changed their garage setup, and they decimated the town center. They're only now beginning to come back but its been a very long process for them, they realized they made a huge mistake. They overcharged, raised the rates too much, and made it too complicated but we need to make sure that were taking that into consideration when we are thinking about all of this. The directional signage, I know we've already approved it, but I still want to give you a warning to not overpopulate with signs. Seriously, we did have a study and they did take down a large number of signs. Now we're looking to put them up maybe we could combine things and stuff of that nature. The marketing for the Pennington Lot that is a County lot Keith Markel: It is. Mayor Burk: For us to spend a lot of effort and work on that, we better be careful because they could at any point change it and say, 'Now this is a private, this is not. This is only for the Court uses," and that sort of thing. I don't think they're anywhere near that because nobody's using the garage at all. I think that's something we need to be aware of as were doing whatever plans were doing. The work with Visit Loudoun, I'd love to see us. I'd love to see Visit Loudoun doing more for the Town. If we can incorporate that, that would be well worth the effort. The parking, the garage spacing, monitoring technology, we already approved the $150. I would think that we would move forward with that. Council Member Bagdasarian? Council Member Bagdasarian: Yes, thank you, [unintelligible]. I'm a loser. Vice Mayor Steinberg, yes, most of the services have an app that can be integrated into the website so it can tell you even before you leave your house, how many spots are available at each level of garages. I think its about providing better customer service and adding value. The right question and I think that could satisfy a lot of issues regarding the technology. The parking garage currently, so it accepts cash, and does it also accept credit cards? Keith Markel: And debit cards. Council Member Bagdasarian: Okay. I think it's an education campaign to make people aware, if you don't have an app, you don't have a smartphone, there are options for you in the garage as well. Keith Markel: That's on our website, that's on our rack card literature and that sort of thing. Mayor Bulk: And the other thing I wanted to make — The point I wanted to make was about the Pennington Lot, the shuttle service is provided by the County to the Courthouse. It's not around Town or anything like that. It's to the Courthouse. That's the intent of it. That being said, anybody else? Okay. Confirm that the Town Council is still interested in implementing a parking guidance system in the Town Hall garage that would visually alert drivers to open parking spaces. The Town has $150K budgeted for FY -2024, additional funds would likely be needed. Are there four people that would want to see that happen? Okay. That's six people going forward on that one. Keith Markel: All right. Thanks very much. Mayor Bulk: You're still here? Page 20IMay 22, 2023 Keith Markel: Sorry. All right. Next focus, sorry, Public Transportation and Pedestrian Safety. The Mayor gave a great segue because here you can see an image of that shuttle bus. This is the small shuttle bus that the County is using now to move Courthouse employees and Courthouse customers around from the Pennington Lot to making that loop. It makes a stop in front of Shoes and makes a stop near the post office and then travels down backup Harrison Street. Gives you an idea of what public transportation in the Downtown could look like if we added in an additional shuttle once the Courthouse construction is completed. We understand is the County's intent, I believe, to end that shuttle service once the pathways and sidewalks are fully opened again. They may keep that longer; we just don't know. Obviously, we know that public transportation can do a few good things to help people move around the Downtown, around the greater Town. It reduces perhaps parking in the Downtown demand. The County currently operates the fixed route system in the Town as well as the County. We have three fixed routes within the Town, as well as the safety ride shuttle across the bypass. That's fully funded by the Town; the three other fixed routes are funded by the County, and we do buy some additional hours on one of those routes for the weekend. Here's just a map showing you how this works. We've had conversations for a number of years now with Loudoun County Transit. We believe there's a better way to lay these routes out, and I think they agree with that as well. They just haven't had this as their top priority because they've had a lot of other issues with Metro and the commuter bus systems and a lot of the things they're working with. They've helped us make some modifications when the new Walmart opened up out of Compass Creek to change that route to cover that, to make sure our residents were able to get access out to those spaces. We believe there's probably a more efficient way to run these routes, and that could also mean tying in a Downtown route or a shuttle that we could talk about here. The Downtown trolley, you'll remember that. From '04 to '13 ran in the Downtown. Mayor Burk: Yes, it did. Keith Markel: It was funded significantly through a Federal grant program for rural communities. When our census numbers increased, passed a certain threshold, that funding dried up and the trolley went away. The question now is, is this something that you all would like to revisit? Having come back and having take a look at what a Downtown shuttle trolley could mean for Downtown businesses, employees, and ways to tie into those parking facilities that are underutilized. Again, we're talking about the Pennington garage here primarily. How could we integrate this with the fixed -route bus system so that you could use this trolley system to then lie in at a hub to take it out to Village at Leesburg or other paints within the County? We've had preliminary just put out feelers to Virginia Regional Transit as well as to Loudoun County Transit. Still working with them on some preliminary concepts, but really the question for you all this evening is, is this something you would like us to continue to pursue and come back to you with some options and some costing on what a Downtown trolley would look like? Mayor Burk: Mr. Bagdasarian? Council Member Bagdasarian: Okay. Thank you very much, Mr. Markel. Part of this, and I think this was in the memo, I think good is the cost of the park once and get around. We have visitors coming in. The last time we had the trolley, Downtown Leesburg closed at five o'clock tor the most part. We didn't have a Village at Leesburg. I think we're in a very different place right now, and we obviously want to encourage people to park once and get around, visit some other areas of the Town. Part of the whole philosophy is to be distinctive from a standard bus service. This is really designed for tourists, for residents to get around and experience different aspects of the Town. I think it's absolutely worth looking at this again. Mayor Burk: Council Member Nacy? Page 21May 22, 2023 Council Member Nacy: I think Council Member Bagdasarian just made a good point that might have answered my question, but I'm just trying to recall the trolley from 2004 to 2013, and if I remember correctly, it was empty a lot. Mayor Burk: It was empty all the time. Council Member Nacy: It just drove in circles empty. Not sure about that one. Maybe taking into consideration that things have changed drastically in Downtown since then. 1 don't know if there's a way we can even study it before we commit it, but just not sure. Mayor Burk: Vice Mayor? Vice Mayor Steinberg: Thanks. My initial thought was it did drive around empty, but as we say, that was then, this is now. I think it would be at least useful to have some data to base a solid decision on. Honestly, I'm not convinced a trolley is a great idea. We do have a private business that's now running routes throughout the Town. at least on the weekends. ,at are their hours of operation, cartwheels, do we know? Keith Markel: I don't know. Mayor Burk: I'm sorry. Vice Mayor Steinberg: Cartwheels. Mayor Burk: It's all the time. Vice Mayor Steinberg: All the time. We do have a private concern that's offering that service. I wouldn't want to compete with them, but it would still be nice, I think, to have some data on which to base decisions. I guess we should look at it. That'd be about as far as I would go at this point. Thanks. Mayor Burk: Mr. Bagdasarian? Council Member Bagdasarian: Yes. Mr. Markel, are you envisioning this basically connecting the different destinations like Downtown Leesburg, the Outlet Mall, Village of Leesburg, Virginia Village, et cetera? Keith Markel: It could, and I think we've laid out a few different models. One is a real core Downtown, just parking to the core H1 district. We've had a second model. It's slightly larger that would take you down to Virginia Village in the future there, with that large development of residents who will be looking hopefully to come into the Town, maybe don't want to do the walk, or don't want to do the walk back. Maybe tying to some of these near, just slightly outer ring developments. Then the full model, which would take you out to the Village of Leesburg and go that far out with it. We also have the fixed routes that are also doing that similar design, so you don't want to have too many buses going in the same way. If we had a trolley that did that, we'd probably want to look at tweaking the fixed route so that we weren't doubling up on that capacity where it wasn't needed. I think it's really going to depend on the affordability, the costing, and the ridership demand, and bring those numbers back to you if you all want to pursue that and look at that. Mayor Burk: I'm concerned that the County provides these shuttle services, and If we start then providing the trolley, then they'll stop doing the shuttle service, then it'll be back on us again. I recently was at a VML meeting, and I asked this question of the mayors and the Board of Supervisors that were there. The majority of them were not happy if they had a trolley, were not particularly happy with the results. It didn't seem to attract what they anticipated it would, but many of them are getting grants from the rural policy, something, something and so they're using those grants to pay for it. Keith Markel: It doesn't cost them a lot to run it, so Orange and Front Royal and other side. Yes. Page 22IMay 22, 2023 Mayor Burk: I would be concerned that it is competing with the business. Would we as a government be competing with the golf cart business? All those things together would make me very reluctant to be willing, even interested in following up on this. But we'll see what everybody else-- anybody else have -- Okay. We want to direct staff to develop detailed plans for a Downtown trolley shuttle to provide public transportation from parking facilities to Downtown destinations. That didn't make it. All right, nice try. The next one, pedestrian improvements. Keith Markel: We'll talk just a bit about that public transportation and the walkability. As you remember back in the 2015 study for the Downtown Parking Taskforce, one of the big elements that was pulled up by that group was really looking at pedestrian improvements, walkability, the convenience, the comfort, the safety levels, because a lot of that lies into the willingness for people to walk just a little bit further to public parking spaces. Here's just a few pictures. The Courthouse construction project has been great for walkability, but if you look at what Church Street is there, you wouldn't expect that to be the primary route to an 800 - parking space parking facility. I know were limited with the Downtown design that we have, and there's only so many things you can do, but anytime-- and its not really a question here, but just a reminder, when our Capital Projects come up, anything that we can do to enhance the sidewalks, enhance the pedestrian experience, increase the lighting, all those things that really make it more walkable and more comfortable for people to use these spaces. You also see two other examples here. Liberty Street, so in front of the Thomas Birkby House, along their frontage with their new improvements, they've now provided a very nice public sidewalk that is handicapped accessible, and its got a great ramp, and it's a ramp to nowhere because then it ties into no sidewalk on the other side that is the Town's Liberty Street parking lot. We know there are hopefully good things in the future for the Liberty Lot, whatever that may turn out to be, but we realize that there are pedestrian links and connections here that still need to be made. Then here's another example of Church Street where those improvements are happening for the Courthouse. Just because we have limited public right of way, you can see the obstacles that still present themselves in the sidewalk. If you're in a wheelchair, you're pushing a stroller, that's not the best sidewalk for you to be walking to the Pennington parking lot. All right. We'll go to the next focus area, which is the regulatory framework and 111 invite Brian up to take this one. Mayor Burk: We're not doing any voting on this one? We are not voting, straw voting? Brian Boucher: I'll have some things you can vote on, so well try to make up for it. Mayor Burk: Oh, good. Brian Boucher: What the topic is right now is the regulatory framework, and that's essentially our zoning rules for parking Downtown. Some of you may recall that back in 2018, the Town authorized a study of the Downtown parking. One of the conclusions of the study was if you look at Leesburg as a whole, the Downtown is, well call it semi -urban. Semi -urban, because we don't have the mass transit that some truly urban areas do, but the way the buildings are arranged, the walkability, the compact nature of the buildings, the layout, is semi -urban, the rest of the Town is suburban. It's typical suburban look. Our parking regulations Downtown at that time, pretty much were the same for uses, whether you were suburban or Downtown. By uses, I mean what you require for a multi -family unit of two bedrooms, what you require for retail office uses, they were the same. As a result of that study, there were some changes; several things changed. Our requirement for offices, we became a little more generous Downtown retail, a few other things, but that's really where it stopped. Most of our uses are the same. The parking requirements are the same Downtown as outside of it. Recently we had the hotels, which you all made an amendment to, again, try to do something a little bit different Downtown. We have these specific ratios for Downtown uses and then we have some other things Downtown. When I'm saying Downtown, they apply within what we call the H-1 Overlay District. It's really the Page 23IMay 22, 2023 Historic Downtown. It's made up of the B-1, the LRHD, which is where a lot of the housing is as you go on the north side of Town. It also includes the County properties, which are generally zoned GC. We have these other parking alternatives that apply. One is shared parking, and that's, again, if you've got a couple of uses because the priorities are at different times of the day you may be able to have an agreement in a mixed -use situation to reduce it. We also have offsite parking in the Downtown. Offsite parking has to be approved by the Planning Commission. It has to be within 1K feet of your property. The difficulty over time has been that property's really expensive. If somebody's got something, somewhere Downtown, they usually don't want to lease it for parking. Valet parking, we allow. Again, you have to have a private place to put the parking that you're going to do as your valet parking. An interesting thing is building additions. If you have a building Downtown, its existing and you add on to it, you have to provide the parking for the square footage of that addition or even new building based on the use that's in it. We do have a mechanism where the land development official can actually reduce that for various reasons that are in the ordinance. These are some of the regulatory things that we have Downtown. I'll talk about the 500 -foot rule in a minute. This really leads to this question. We've got a comprehensive rewrite of the Zoning Ordinance that you all have authorized, and it's going to be conducted in the coming year. The question here for you to guide us on is, do you want staff to examine or provide recommendations on possible modifications for Downtown onsite parking requirements for residential and non-residential uses as part of this comprehensive Zoning Ordinance rewrite? We'll get some help from the consultants on this. I said staff, I say the consultants too. That's really the question. Do you want us to re-examine the parking use regulations we have Downtown? Again, as I've told you, most of them still replicate the parking requirements we have in the suburban area. That's the question. Mayor Burk: Mr. Cummings? Council Member Cummings: Yes, I just had one quick question before we ask the question. On alternative parking, if there's an applicant that would want to use parking lifts in the Downtown area, do we count that as a spot on its own, the lift itself, or is it not counted into the number of spaces? Brian Boucher: Do you mean the area of the apparatus on the ground? That's a question I've never been — Council Member Cummings: Is it one spot or is it two spots? Brian Boucher: If you've got two, we'll let you have two, if you've got a lift where you can put another one up there. Just so you all know, Church and Market is this building that may be built. You've seen them clear away some things down there for it. That was one of the options that they had, that they could use lifts in their parking garage to increase the parking total, so yes, we would count them as additional spaces. Council Member Cummings: Okay, thank you. Mayor Burk: Council Member Bagdasarian? Council Member Bagdasarian: Why yes, thank you. No, I think one of the things that people love about the H-1, the Historic District, is I've characterized it as historic urbanism. It was all built before automobiles so you have narrow streets, and the use of buildings are very different from the way they were structured in what you cannot do today. The question is -- the land in the H-1 is valuable -- the question is, are surface parking lots the best use of land in the H-1? Is that what we want more of? I would support this. Looking at our different options, how do we make the Downtown more people - centric, more pedestrian -centric but yet address the real issues of parking cars. Mayor Burk: Vice Mayor, are you -- Page 24IMay 22, 2023 Vice Mayor Steinberg: Well, just to echo that and know that this conversation is going to involve virtually everything that's coming after it in the end. Yes, we need to rework the regulatory framework and yes, we need to consider all these other things that are part of it. Mayor Burk: How many times have we looked at parking ratios in the last 10 years? Brian Boucher: I was a young man then, had a full head of hair. Not a gray strand anywhere. Mayor Burk: This must be like the 5th time I've been involved in it, but anyway. Anyone else at this point? Okay, then, do we want to examine and provide recommendations on possible modifications for Downtown onsite parking requirement for residential and non-residential uses in the Downtown as part of the comprehensive Zoning Ordinance rewrite? Are there four people that want to do that? Okay, that's everybody. Yes, sixth time's the charm. Brian Boucher: I'm going to go to something a little more specific here in one of our Downtown regulations and everybody knows it or calls it the 500 -foot rule and it's basically this. If you take an existing building Downtown and you're going to rehabilitate it for non-residential use, so you're going to put a non-residential use in there, if you're within 500 feet of what we call a municipal parking facility, that is the Town garage, it's Liberty Lot, it's also the Pennington Lot but we specifically exclude minor ordinance at the County Government Center lot. If you're within 500 feet of one of those for this non-residential use, you do not have to provide any parking. In other words, we assume that the parking is going to be taken care of by the public parking on the street. Recently, there was one Downtown developer who was asking about whether or not that 500 -foot rule should be expanded. It's for a project that hasn't gone forward. The question remained, is this something that we should look at? It's, I think, important for you to know that when you go beyond that 500 feet, if you're anywhere in the H-1 overlay district, again, it's really the Downtown but you're not within 500 feet, you have to provide half of the parking that's normally required. That's the rule. It's a two-part rule. Five hundred feet, you're free of it for non-residential. Go farther than that, you provide half till you get to the outskirts of the H-1 overlay district. The question here is, is this something, again, worth looking at? One of the reasons these rules exist is exactly that. It's because back in the day when the Council was looking at Downtown, they didn't want to tear down existing structures or storage structures to provide surface parking. They also wanted to provide an incentive to more development Downtown to take over existing buildings and invest in them. That was the basic rationale for why these rules got created. The question is now is this something, as we're doing this rewrite, you might have already considered that in the last vote, really, that we'd be looking at this. We just wanted to specifically ask if this is something that you all think should be reconsidered as well, or at least re-examined when we're looking at the Zoning Ordinance rewrite. Mayor Burk: Council Member Cimino -Johnson? Council Member Cimino -Johnson: Thank you, Madam Mayor. The 500 feet, do you have a recommendation on what that would look like if we said yes, let's expand that? Brian Boucher: I think one of the things we would do is we need a little more information compiled because we don't want unintended results that hurt parking Downtown so that it's not convenient for visitors and people who live here. I think it's something we would be looking at to see how far could we go, what could we do to maybe change that rule. Council Member Cimino -Johnson: Thank you. Mayor Burk: My concern, Brian, with this, is our parking situation is such that our parking garage has become very popular and is used a lot. Now will we end up having an impact that we don't intend that the parking garage now becomes an unattractive place because there's no parking spaces there because businesses are parking there during the day? Council Member Bagdasarian? Page 25]May 22, 2023 Council Member Bagdasarian: Thank you, sir. I know this applies to businesses. What about existing residential and redevelopment for residential? Brian Boucher: Well, that's one thing that it could, and I'm glad you brought that up because generally, you have to provide residential parking Downtown. There is an exception within 500 feet of the Town garage. If you were, let's say, to build an apartment building, you could purchase by paying in lieu 10 spaces. You're not free. The 500 rule really doesn't say you don't have to provide any parking. What that particular 500 rule says is we'll let you buy 10 residential parking spaces. The rest you have to physically provide through either onsite or through one of the alternatives we talked about That's generally the rule there. Council Member Bagdasarian: Are we currently leasing spaces in the garage to residents if someone says, hey, for $1K a month, we want to lease a reserved parking spot? Brian Boucher: Actually, I do not know the answer to that question. Perhaps Keith? Keith Markel: No, we have a permanent reserved space in the basement, so you could have your space with your number on it. We have an unreserved space, so you could have just a pass to come into the garage for a fixed monthly rate, and you park anywhere in the garage. That only works for Monday through Friday, 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM. At any other time, it would be a first -come -first -served space. Council Member Bagdasarian: A potential alternative in lieu of, because right now, I don't think we've ever utilized the in lieu of funds for actual parking. Is that correct to date? Keith Markel: Only for the Church Street Lot. We used it for the development of the Church Street Lot with the payment systems, striping and upkeep. Brian Boucher: And Liberty Lot too. I think once upon a time we use some of the funds there to restripe the Liberty Lot Council Member Bagdasarian: I just don't know. I think it's worth looking at as an alternative because I think a lot of these things are starting to come together as more of a comprehensive approach. Is it possible, is it feasible to, in lieu of, you need to lease a parking spot in the garage, if we can support that? I don't know yet. Mayor Burk: Council Member Wilt? Council Member Wilt: Thank you. On this topic of the 500 -feet rule, when I've inquired about it in the past, I was told that 500 feet was a number that was selected. It wasn't based on any capacity considerations or pedestrian behavior. It was randomly selected in some regards. Today in the B-1, do we know how many businesses are actually excluded by the use of this? If it was increased or removed, what the impact would be at all? Brian Boucher: I don't know the number in answer to your question, but I think it's one of the things we would try to figure out, look at. We've just never done that type of analysis up to this point. Council Member Wilt: Okay, because if its [unintelligible] I can think on South King where my business is located, I think there are three businesses excluded. It's a de minimis number. If we found out [crosstalk] Brian Boucher: You're just beyond the 500 feet. It hits up a little above you. Council Member Wilt: Right, throughout the B-1, I'm going to guess it's actually de minimis in total. That would be good to understand. I'd be in support of understanding this more. Thank you. Mayor Burk: Vice Mayor? Page 26IMay 22, 2023 Vice Mayor Steinberg: I know I'm going to sound like a broken record. I wouldn't honestly invest a whole lot of time in modifying the 500 -foot rule since I think it involves so many other factors, including the next thing that's coming up, which is payment in lieu. I would be in favor of abolishing that program altogether. We've got a sum total of $400K -plus in an account, which in today's dollars will buy us about eight spaces and the proverbial ramp to nowhere. I don't think it's served us well. I'm not sure the 500 -foot rule is serving us that well anymore. We know the Town garage has got limited capability or it's a limited resource as is the Liberty Lot. We have seen that as we are losing areas, which has been substantial of late because we lost the Church Street Lot, we lost the lot to the County's expansion. We are off a number of surface spaces. Maybe that's just as well, because as I said before, I think we need to start considering something other than surface spaces and looking at this is infrastructure in the same way as we view water and sewer infrastructure and start considering serious pro rata arrangements or leasing arrangements because we keep applying our parking needs against the same limited resources that we've got. I believe we're going to get caught short if we don't start looking at a much longer -term plan. I'm not particularly in favor of modifying the rule at this point Mayor Burk: We have two questions before us. The first one is to examine and provide recommendations on possible modifications for Downtown onsite parking requirements for residential and non-residential uses in the Downtown as part of the comprehensive Zoning Ordinance rewrite. Are there four people that want to do that? There are four people that want to do that. Parking ratios. Again, the sixth time, the magic time. Okay, we got the four votes. That's all we need. Then the next question is to initiate the expansion of the 500 -feet distance requirement for existing Downtown buildings to utilize public parking facilities as an alternative for onsite parking. Are there four people that want to do that? All right, you got four people on that too. Brian Boucher: All right, you're not done with me yet. I have payment in lieu to discuss. Mayor Burk: You can just go to the end for that one. Brian Boucher: I will throw out a little of the propaganda stuff we put together, staff, and you take it as you will. Real quickly, this program has existed since the mid -'80s. It's only in the 11-1 District, so it's only Downtown, nowhere else in Town. Current price of the space is $8K. We raise it every year under the Consumer Price Index, whatever that incremental cost is. Yes, as Council Member Steinberg has said, we've got over $400K in the fund right now and the funds have to be used for establishing parking Downtown. Two other things I want to mention is over time, 253 spaces have been purchased, at least that we can find records for. That adds up to, if you took what that would be in surface parking, it's about 1.7 acres of Downtown that could be surface parking. I just want to show you a few of the projects that had bought spaces that are Downtown. If you look at these, in most cases, it was a supplement. They couldn't provide all of the onsite parking because of space limitations, so they used this. If you look at 7 West Market Street, which is Paul Reimer's building, that all the parking they purchased for that particular one, the same for 116 East Market Street which you know is across from the County Government Center, they purchased all of their parking spaces and then built the building on the site because of site constraints. One other thing I want to say, what the question for you is, do you want to initiate removal of the option for developers to pay the Town as an alternative providing on -site parking that is currently included in the Zoning Ordinance? It is something that, again, its the option of the developer. If they look at their site and think they don't have enough room or they want to develop the site, they can purchase these spaces now. If you take the option away completely, I will just say, then you will have to provide the parking on -site, or you will have to locate it somewhere through one of those other alternative methods, either off -site or through shared parking. If you just go back, I will just say if there was no option, I think it is fair to say that of these buildings, two of them would not have been constructed, and the other three would be smaller because more Page 27IMay 22, 2023 room would have been needed for on -site parking. Just something to consider in the history of this ordinance. Now, what we get for it money -wise, I think that's another question but that's really what wed say, do you want to initiate the option to just remove it, or do you want to at least maintain it as an option? Mayor Burk: How much does it cost for a single parking space, generally? Brian Boucher: I did some research on that. There's actually groups that look at it Republic and you can say around here, about $80 a square foot, about $27K of space but that's not counting the land, that's not counting if you have to do specific architectural facades like we would have to Downtown. Keith was showing you the types of systems you can put in parking garages now to tell whether or not they're full. It doesn't include any of that. This is really the concrete of building the thing on a structured parking. That's assuming about 300 spaces in the parking garage. Mayor Burk: How many spaces have we put into parking in lieu? Brian Boucher: 253 have been purchased over time. Mayor Burk: How many spaces are in the garage? Brian Boucher: Roughly 362. Mayor Burk: Thank you. Council Member Cimino -Johnson? Council Member Cimino -Johnson: That was going to be my question. That's a little shocking to hear. I'm not very familiar with this. I'm a developer, come in, I want to build a building Downtown, I don't have any room for parking. I get the option to choose? Brian Boucher: Its your option. Council Member Cimino -Johnson: The staff and Council have no say in this? Brian Boucher: Right, it's a private developer option but one thing you get when you pay this money, and the complaint, you hear about it from developers all the time, I think the Mayor has heard it more than shed liked to recall, is they will say, "But you don't give me a dedicated parking space for it" Mayor Burk: I get nothing for it. Brian Boucher: That's it. You pay this fee, the parking is going to be public wherever that is. If you pay $1K, we don't go, okay, you get these spaces in the Town garage, because, again, the cost of actual parking is much more. But I think it's because we have a certain amount of public parking in the past that was created to, again, give that incentive to invest in Downtown, build new buildings without tearing down old buildings, without creating new surface parking lots. That was the intent. What we've done over time, just a little bit of history, the Council, the first 20 or so years of the program it was only $3K, and then it got raised to meet the Consumer Price Index increase from the time at least from 1986 and then so we had to every year, but it is a fraction of the cost of an actual parking space. Council Member Cimino -Johnson: Could we raise it? Brian Boucher: I will say this and it's something, again, I felt one of you would mention that because in the Town Plan, there's actually one of the strategies that says to take a look at the payment in lieu and look at the actual costs of maintenance and constructing parking and consider updating the fee to more closely approximate or approximate the cost of actually providing the parking Downtown. Council Member Cimino -Johnson: You're saying it's upwards of $27K a space? Brian Boucher: I think that's reasonable. Page 28IMay 22, 2023 Council Member Cimino -Johnson: Okay, thank you. Mayor Burk: Mr. Bagdasarian? Council Member Bagdasarian: I think a lot of this, at least in my mind, I think I'm more of a maybe because looking at the results of the regulatory framework and parking ratios I think would have an impact an the direction we take with this. Brian Boucher: It definitely could. Mayor Burk: Council Member Wilt? Council Member Wilt: I'm wondering what the overall philosophy or strategy is. In the Downtown area if its considered an urban area, then do we want to try to provide community parking through these public means, or do we want to force parking to individual lots scattered around this urban area? I think that would inform what we do with this. ,at is the philosophy? Brian Boucher: I think that's one of the things you all get to decide, but it's really that in some Downtown areas you provide more public parking. The tradeoff, what the Town gets from that, the expense of that, is you get more investment in the Downtown and hopefully more tax revenues through a more heavily used urban area and hopefully one that's maintained better. Council Member Wilt: Because my thoughts are -- I would more go to structured parking. I don't know if the Town garage was structurally ever engineered for an additional level than it currently has. Brian Boucher: I think it was engineered so that it won't— Keith is telling me no. It can't take an additional level. Council Member Wilt: Looking at haw to create a structured parking opportunity at the Liberty Lot. How to do other things than isolated, small, individual parking responsibilities scattered in an urban area. Thank you. Mayor Burk: Mr. Cummings? Council Member Cummings? Council Member Cummings: If we were to remove the payment in lieu, what are the consequences? Brian Boucher: If you had an infill lot Downtown that was small and somebody wanted to put a building on, and 1'11 just use it because we have examples. If you look at 7 West Market, there once been a building there and it was empty for a long time. Paul Reimers built that building there. If he had to supply parking on it, his argument was I couldn't actually build the building because it's very small. The lot was very small. It was less than 4K square feet. You'd lose some of that infill type of development because they simply couldn't fit a space on it. For larger projects, the people who have invested in the payment in lieu have believed some of them, and you've seen some of them before, Mr. Kevin Ash, 1'11 mention that you know some of these are his buildings, will say that Downtown our parking regulations are a bit too stringent. They're paying for, again, suburban parking in a more Downtown area so the parking ratios themselves should be reduced. They'll pay the money because they believe there's enough parking Downtown so that their businesses will not be badly hurt by doing this. In the case of some of those, all of them from Mr. Ash, he has some of the parking on site. He does have parking on site. Its a matter of can you put all of it on -site or is it better to purchase some of it to have a better-- What developers get from this, obviously, is you get a more developable area on your property, which can be Downtown, very valuable. You also don't have to pay the full cost for providing a parking space which all of them know is a lot more than the 8K that they would pay in today. It benefits both ways, 1 guess. Page 29IMay 22, 2023 Council Member Cummings: What does staff recommend from a professional standpoint on payment in lieu? Brian Boucher: Geez. Council Member Cummings: Not to put you on the spot. Brian Boucher: 1'11 just say this. Having been here a long time and seeing it, I think there were problems with the payment in lieu. I think the fee is a little under what it should be for the value that it gives. But on the other hand, I think in an urban area like Downtown, I think it has its pluses, its advantages. Council Member Cummings: Just to reiterate, I heard you say the amount needs to be brought up to date but the use of payment in lieu in general its still useful in this urban environment. Brian Boucher: I think so in Leesburg. The way Leesburg is still situated today, I think there are opportunities for people where they could use it that I think could complement the Town. Council Member Cummings: Thank you. Mayor Burk: Mr. Bagdasarian, have you spoken on this issue? Council Member Bagdasarian: I have. Mayor Burk: You have? Okay, I ' l l came back to you then. Council Member Nacy? Council Member Nacy: I just wanted to clarify [unintelligible]. Did you say the $8K was from 1986? Brian Boucher: No, actually until 2015, we charged $3K. It didn't increase between 1986 and 2015. Land went up a little bit in Leesburg in that period. The Council did increase it, but its always been an issue far Councils how far do you go because the concern is if you raise it too high so let's say, approximate the full cost of parking, maybe they won't do those infill because they'll suddenly say, wow, I've got to pay a lot of parking. Council Member Nacy: Maybe. Brian Boucher: Maybe. Council Member Nacy: That's a big maybe. Brian Boucher: 1'11 just say, the fee has been a lot less than the required, so we've seen it happen in a number of places Downtown. Council Member Nacy: 2015 is the $BK. Everywhere [crosstalk] Brian Boucher: It was $6,2K and we've raised it to $BK, just simply by the Consumer Price Index annual increases. Council Member Nacy: You said, in your research, likely $27K per space is more -- Brian Boucher: That's again without some of the bells and whistles that you need like the land. It doesn't include those costs. It's actually in an urban environment constructing for space. One thing 111 tell you, oh, well, that sounds really high. When they build these things, they consider about 300 square feet per parking spot, or 9 by 18 is like 162, why? You need travel lanes. You need to get cars in and out and those take up a lot of space. Council Member Nacy: Interesting. All right, thank you. Page 30IMay 22, 2023 Mayor Burk: Vice Mayor? Vice Mayor Steinberg: Thanks. A couple of points I want to be sure aren't lost. One, we're also serving a residential community as well as the business community. It's the residential community that sometimes suffers the greater inconvenience here, and they have fewer alternatives. I want to take care that we're not allowing the business community simply gobble up all the parking, and then leave our residents high and dry. I appreciate Mr. Boucher's caution with the $27K figure. He keeps emphasizing that's not it. I think we really need to be thinking more of $35K to $40K per space when all is said and done. To the point about one applicant looking for changes in the ratios, we have other applicants who say they're more than willing to enter into very long-term leases per space to satisfy the success of their project should they occur. There are alternatives. In the end, if we take a good planning approach, and it offers success for everyone, including the residents and the general business welfare of the Town, especially the Downtown then I think it behooves us to do the responsible thing and look at real strategies. Mayor Burk: There's just one caution I want to bring forward is while we are not where we were 10 years ago even, were still not truly urban. We're not in Arlington, we're not a Washington DC, we're not Chicago. We don't have transportation alternatives that the other locations have. We don't have the heights the other locations have. When we refer to urban that makes me tum my head a little because we're not really urban but we're not suburban anymore, either. We got to come up with something in between. We have to be careful, as Mr. Steinberg just referred to the fact that we can't squeeze out our residentials. That's something that we really need to consider further and I'm not sure if-- Well, I won't say that. Anyway. I'm just cautioning be careful with the term because we really aren't an urban paradise yet. Brian Boucher: I will reiterate. A study we did did call us semi -urban because we lacked the mass transit that would make us truly. Mayor Burk: Height and density. Brian Boucher: Yes, some of the other. Mayor Burk: Council Member Bagdasarian. Council Member Bagdasadan: That's why it's historic urbanism. It's capturing the essence of-- Yes, it is. I'm going to get a tattoo on that. I just want to make sure I have this clear. 7 West Market, if that was developed as an office space, would they need to provide parking based on their location? Brian Boucher: Yes, again. I'll tell you why. Because if it's an empty space and you build new, remember, the 500 -foot rule says for existing buildings. If you build a new structure, we're going to tell you, you have to supply the parking required for the use that you're going to put in that structure. It's got to be on -site, or you could do offsite parking, but again, it's not very realistic I think historically in Leesburg because of value of land. Yes, build a new building, you have to supply the parking, and if there was no payment in lieu option that would have to be on -site or through one of these other alternatives. Council Member Bagdasarian: Are any of these buildings -- were redeveloped? Brian Boucher: No, all of the buildings you see there except for down a building to build that. they existing structures that were the 203 Church Street they tore Council Member Bagdasarian: Oh, yes, right. Brian Boucher: The building was already gone on 7 West. 116 Market Street there had been a building there, but it had been demolished I think due to a fire, and then there were some low Page 31lMay 22, 2023 commercial buildings. One-story commercial buildings existing where 116 Market Street is. 7 West Market Street again, there were some but what do we -- Keith Markel: They caught my typos here so [unintelligible] saw. Mislabeled these, bad cut -and - paste job. You'll see we have the wrong address for a few of these. Mayor Burk: 7 West Market is West Loudoun. Brian Boucher: Yes. That's actually on East Market. The one up on the left is on East Market Street coming down on the 203. Keith Markel: If you're not thoroughly confused by my labels. Council Member Bagdasarian: Okay. Brian Boucher: I was looking at the buildings. I wasn't thinking too much of the labeling. Keith Markel: This was actually an [unintelligible] structure. Mayor Burk: That's it. Brian Boucher: Yes, and around it. In these cases, if they took down buildings, some cases, buildings were long gone, some they had been destroyed by fire, and then others were just small industrial -type buildings or commercial buildings that were removed. Council Member Bagdasarian: Okay. Alright, I'm good. Mayor Burk: Okay. Brian Boucher: Is she good? Mayor Burk: You never can be sure. Wait a minute. We better go fast before you think something. AR right, then on this one, you're asking if we're interested in ending it and I have a few -- Brian Boucher: Right. They [unintelligible] to end it. Mayor Burk: Can we add something afterwards? Brian Boucher: You can. I think if it still exists, this is certainly something we could look at in the future. Mayor Burk: Okay, I have four people that want to initiate the removal of the option for the developer to pay for the Town as an alternative to providing on -site parking that is currently included in this our Zoning Ordinance. That would be just two of us. Okay. Vice Mayor Steinberg: Wait a minute. Mayor Burk: What? Council Member Cimino -Johnson: I am a maybe. Mayor Burk: You're a maybe. Oh, well, maybes don't count. I'm sorry. Council Member Cimino -Johnson: It's an option though. Mayor Burk: Okay. They did give you an option. You got a maybe. Page 321May 22, 2023 Brian Boucher: What is that exactly? Is that a yes or no? Mayor Burk: No, it's a maybe. Brian Boucher: It's the halves that add up to one or it's a half of two? Mayor Burk: You got to get two maybes. Do we want to direct staff to look at increasing the cost of providing or for the parking in lieu? I'm not saying that right. Council Member Nacy: [unintelligible] Mayor Burk; Yes? Council Member Nacy: If we do that, could we still have the option to get rid of it? If we just decide it's not worth the money? Is that totally off the table? Brian Boucher: I'd say what were asking for is direction from you all and obviously, you guys can always change your mind in the future based on other evidence or what you think at the time, but what were asking now is that there's this idea of getting rid of it. Now it's been talked about, a lot of people have mentioned it. We just thought wed bring it to you and see if you wanted to consider that as were going forward, that's something you definitely want to do. Council Member Nacy: Okay. Mayor Burk: Did you want to finish it? Okay. Council Member Cimino -Johnson? Council Member Cimino -Johnson: Yes, just a follow-up question. When was the last time this was used? Brian Boucher: Oh, not that long ago, I'd have to look. We have a list. We get a lot of small, where they buy two or three. It's used, it's alive. Council Member Cimino -Johnson: Okay. Thank you. Mayor Burk: I'm going to go with Vice Mayor for Mr. Bagdasarian. Vice Mayor Steinberg: Well, rd like to see at least reworded to say that consider a substantial increasing the payment in lieu with the view in mind of eliminating it at some point down the road. Mayor Burk: Okay. Vice Mayor Steinberg: Maybe sooner rather than later. Mayor Burk: All right, keep that thought. Mr. Bagdasarian? Council Member Bagdasarian: The reason why I'm a maybe is that if you look at this as a Gantt chart, right, I think that what the outcome of parking ratios and alternative parking, the regulatory framework, I think, at least from my perspective, will help inform this decision. Looking at this holistically. It's like one step and then moving on to this. Mayor Burk: Holistically, historically, you like the H's. Council Member Bagdasarian: I do. Page 33IMay 22, 2023 Mayor Burk: Okay, all right We have said that we were not going to get rid of it, but we want to consider what Mr. Vice Mayor Steinberg said. Looking at increasing it substantially, okay. The majority on that one. All right. Brian Boucher: Okay, thank you. Now back to you. Keith Markel: All right. We're in the homestretch here. Mayor Burk: I'm just so excited at spending this much time on parking. Keith Markel: Aren't we all. Again, no question here. We're talking about the future planning and a number of you have alluded to these things. We've got a number of things in the future. How to be thinking about that philosophical question of is this the public responsibility to provide this parking? Is it still the private side to provide that? Something that won't be answered tonight but something you can be thinking about. We know there is an opportunity presenting itself for Liberty Street Lot. We know that we have an asset there that can be developed in a lot of different ways with parking opportunities built into that, and then we also have the changing transportation models that will be the continual changing force in the Downtown needs. One of the things that came out of Liberty Street discussion, and I know there's been conversations with you from the proposing parties there, was the creation of a public parking authority to replace what is really now a Town staff function where the Town manages and operates and takes care of the day-to-day issues with our public parking facilities. Just to give you just a quick overview of the public parking authorities and Chris Spera can answer in more detail, this does require State legislative action so it would be something you'd have to petition the Virginia Legislature to provide this authority for Leesburg. There are a few different reasons why localities go this route, and there are a few localities our size or smaller that already have parking authorities based on specific needs. One thing is that it takes the financing out of the General Fund issues, and they stand alone separately. They have separate borrowing power and the risk that's associated with financing for parking facilities does not impact the Town's debt limits or credit ratings. Secondly, liability issues. The liability is separated from the Town's general liability, so they have their own liability with parking authority if you had issues within your parking garage. The third one, and the reason why the proposing entity with the RFP for Liberty Street is interested in a parking authority is that the authority has the ability to lease its assets longer than 40 years. Forty years is the cap for local government, but parking authorities can lease longer. When you're looking at long-term land leases or parking space leases to make other elements of their proposal work, looking at something at larger than 40 years is their incentive for that. There are lots of pros and cons with parking authorities. Who has control, the funding, the apparatus of a parking authority that you'd have to manage and maintain. Those are all things to consider if you wanted to go deeper into that discussion. The question really is do you want us to initiate that discussion of going into a more detailed plan for a parking authority and coming back to you with what that structure of the cost and the overall framework would look like? Mayor Burk: Okay. Mr, Cummings? Council Member Cummings? Council Member Cummings: Yes. I just had one quick comment on one of the earlier slides here. There's land and I was just trying to look up the exact streets, but off of Harrison near Tuscarora Mill, that's a parking lot right now. I believe NVR Homes owns the land. I would love to see us look just like Mr. Seymour talked about earlier in the presentation about talking to private lots. I'd also like us to look at potential opportunities for public -private partnership to do structured parking. We obviously don't want to take up too much Downtown land for parking structures, but I think there are a few, especially land that is either somewhat in or in floodplain. You can use commercial parking Page 34IMay 22, 2023 is a use in a floodplain. I would like us to look at that as an option for whether it is an official public - private partnership, or we find a way creatively to maybe get a parking structure and lease it back from a person. That's something I would just like to throw out there. Mayor Burk: May I get clarification from you? Council Member Cummings: Sure. Mayor Burk: Are you talking about doing this through a parking authority? Council Member Cummings: I think we have to still probably have that conversation about whether we want to move forward because it sounds like a tedious process, at least, to have to go to Richmond and get approval to do that. Maybe this is something we had our conversation about a lobbyist or someone to work on our behalf. Maybe that's a reason to look at talking to someone because I do think a parking authority would be a worthwhile vehicle for the Town as we're studying. Vice Mayor Steinberg: Point of information, Madam Mayor. Point of information. Just to clarify, we do have to go to the State, but the fact is the State has already granted the parking authority method to seven jurisdictions and the feeling is it would be nothing more than an insertion that we could easily accomplish in the upcoming session if we wanted to include Leesburg. Plus, there is another entity, and perhaps Mr. Spera could enlighten us on that called The Recreational Facilities Authority and I don't know how they did -- Mayor Burk: We're straying away. We're talking parking. We're not going recreation right now. Vice Mayor Steinberg: They're both parking. Christopher Spera: Parking is fun. Mayor Burk: Are you really going to make him talk about recreational authority? Vice Mayor Steinberg: [unintelligible] Mayor Burk: Are you actually going to make him talk about it now? I was going to say something. Never mind. Christopher Spera: When you get as specific as that, you have to limit it to. I don't think unless the parking was used in conjunction with the operation of a recreational facility, you could construct parking through a recreational authority. Reverb. Mayor Burk: No, buts. Is there any other questions and concerning about the parking authority? Do we want to direct staff to develop a detailed plan for initiating the creation of a parking authority? Details would include authority structure, cost, and overall framework. Do we have four people that are interested? Everybody's interested. So, okay. Move that forward. Keith Markel: All right. Mayor Burk: Are we done? Keith Markel: That is the end of our list, so I thank you for your patience. Mayor Burk: Can't we talk more about it? Keith Markel: The night is yours. Thank you. Mayor Burk: Okay. Seriously -- in all seriousness, this is a very good way to do this. I appreciate you breaking it up like this. Page 35IMay 22, 2023 Keith Markel: Thank you. Mayor Burk: I think it was very efficient. Thank you. Future council meetings and agenda topics. Council Member Cimino -Johnson? Council Member Cimino -Johnson: I have nothing. Mayor Burk: I'm sorry. Council Member Cimino -Johnson: I have nothing. Mayor Burk: Nothing. Thank you. Mr. Cummings? Council Member Cummings: I just want to not to belabor the parking conversation -- Mayor Burk: But you're going to. Council Member Cummings: -but I will. I would like to see if we could either have a future Council work session or if staff feels they can pull together a memo for us at least to begin conversations on looking at potential spots and opportunities for an additional structured parking facility within the Downtown area. Mayor Burk: Are there four people that would like to have staff look at additional parking areas for a Town garage? Correct? Council Member Cummings: Yes. Mayor Burk: Okay, got four. More than four. Ms. Nacy? Council Member Nacy: I just had one quick thing which I wasn't sure if this needs to be added or if it's something that can be answered, but we got that email from LAWS about the text amendment. I just wasn't sure if that was something that we can have a discussion about or have a clarification about. James David: I could field that one. There already is an item coming to this Council to discuss and initiate adding congregate housing as a use to the Zoning Ordinance. That LAWS memo is in reference to this. Council Member Nacy: Perfect. Thank you. Mayor Burk: Mr. Bagdasarian? Council Member Bagdasarian: Nothing. Mayor Burk: Mr. Wit? Vice Mayor? Vice Mayor Steinberg: I have nothing. Thank you. Mayor Burk: Did I get everybody? Did I miss anybody? Vice Mayor Steinberg: Just you. Mayor Burk: Okay. I have nothing. I want to talk more about parking. Adjournment. Do I have a motion? Vice Mayor Steinberg: So moved. Page 36IMay 22, 2023 Council Member Cummings: Second. Mayor Burk: All in favor? Council Members: Aye. Mayor Burk: Opposed? Alright. Okay, you got the scissors? Russ Seymour: I got the scissors. Page 37IMay 22, 2023