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HomeMy Public PortalAbout2023_tcwsmin1113Council Work Session November 13, 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, Vice Mayor Neil Steinberg, Patrick Wilt, and Mayor Kelly Burk. Council Members Absent: Kari Nacy. Staff Present: Town Manager Kaj Dentler, Town Attorney Christopher Spera, Deputy Town Manager Keith Markel, Chief of Police Thea Pirnat, Director of Finance and Administrative Services Clark Case, Economic Development Director Russell Seymour, Director of Public Works and Capital Projects Renee LaFollette, Emergency Management Coordinator Alex Fitch, Deputy Director of Community Development Brian Boucher, Leesburg Police Major Vanessa Grigsby, Leesburg Police Lieutenant Jason Allegra, Leesburg Police Sergeant Ed Martin, Stormwater and Environmental Manager Chad Minnick, Traffic Engineer Niraja Chandrapu, and Clerk of Council Eileen Boeing. Minutes prepared by Deputy Clerk of Council Lyndon Gonzalez. AGENDA ITEMS 1. Items for Discussion a. Chief of Police 100 -Day Report Leesburg Police Chief Thea Pirnat presented Council with her 100 -Day Report. The report highlighted recruitment efforts, employee wellness, community engagement/crime prevention, educational and awareness campaigns, and inter- agency coordination. The Chief spoke about the increase of mental health -related calls, the impact on public safety, and suggested adding a co -responder unit position, pairing a Clinician with a trained Officer on these calls. Council and staff discussed the item. No further action requested by Council. b. Speed Cameras in School Zones Chief Pirnat presented Council with information concerning the usage of Photo Monitoring Devices in school zones to aid in speed reduction enforcement. Council and staff discussed the item. It was the consensus of Council for staff to research vendors and present their finding to Council for future action. c. Downtown Parking Strategies Follow-up Discussion Mr. Keith Markel, Mr. Brian Boucher, and Ms. Niraja Chandrapu presented Council with various downtown parking strategies. Discussion included the Town Parking garage, use of the Loudoun County Pennington Lot, public on street parking spaces using the ParkMobile app, residential parking permits in the downtown and the payment -in -lieu program. Wage Council Work Session November 13, 2023 Council and staff discussed the downtown parking. Council considered the following actions: • Modify Residential Parking Permit Program Yes • Raise the fee for payment -in -lieu No • Keep thefee as is for payment -in -lieu Yes • Change the radius in proximity to structured parking from 500' to 1000' No • Consider the use of parking technologies in the Town Garage Yes • Consider increase in Town Garage parking fees No 2. Additions to Future Council Meetinr a. Proclamation Requests There were no proclamation requests. b. Additions to Future Council Meetings Council Member Cummings requested a Work Session on amending the Zoning Ordinance to discuss parking lot standards in the 11-1 District. It was the consensus of Council to add this item to a future Work Session agenda. c. Council Member Cimino -Johnson asked if there was an interest to meet with the Virginia Legislators separately from the VML function on November 30. It was the consensus of Council to meet with the Legislators at the VML function on November 30, 2023. Council took a recess from 9:06 p.m. — 9:11 p.m. 3. Closed Session a. Stormwater Management Program MOTION2023-776 On a motion by Mayor Burk, seconded by Council Member Cimino -Johnson, the following was proposed: I move pursuant to § 2.2-3711(A)(8) of the Code of Virginia that the Leesburg Town Council convene in a closed meeting for the purpose of consulting with legal counsel and applicable staf regarding matters ofregulatory compliance. The motion was approved by the following vote: Aye: Bagdasarian, Cimino -Johnson, Cummings, Vice Mayor Steinberg, Wilt and Mayor Burk Nay: None Vote: 60-1 (Nacy absent) 2]Page Council Work Session November 13, 2023 Council convened in a closed meeting at 9:12 p.m. Council convened in an open meeting at 10:00 p.m. MOTION2023-177 On a motion by Mayor Burk, the following was proposed: In accordance with Section § 2.2-3712 of the Code of Virginia, I move that Council certify to the best of each member's knowledge, only public business marten lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements under Virginia Freedom of Information Act and such public business matters for the purpose identified in the motion by which the closed meeting was convened were heard, discussed or considered in the meeting by Council. The motion was approved by the following roll call vote: Wilt — aye, Bagdasarian — aye, Vice Mayor Steinberg — aye, Cummings — aye, Cimino -Johnson — aye, Mayor Burk — aye. Vote: 6-0-1 (Nary absent) 4. Adjournment On a motion by Vice Mayor Steinberg, seconded by Council Member Bagdasarian, the meeting was adjourned at 10.01 p.m. Clerk of Council 2023_tcwsmin1113 3lPage November 13, 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.leesburgva.gov or refer to the approved Council meeting minutes. Council meeting videos are retained for three calendar years after a meeting per Library of Virginia Records Retention guidelines.) Mayor Kelly Burk: Long two minutes. Welcome. I want to open tonight's Town Council Work Session of November 13, 2023. Our first item for discussion tonight is the Chief of Police 100 -Day Report. Chief Pirnat. You better run, Mr. Bagdasarian. [chuckles] Thea Pirnat: Good evening. Is this on? Mayor Burk: Is it on? Theo Pirnat: I might've turned it off. Good evening and thank you for this opportunity. The goal of my first 100 days was really to take in and assess the state of the Department, get a preliminary idea of where we are as an agency and what direction we should be headed. We have lots of strengths as a Police Department along with some areas of opportunity. I will provide some highlights here tonight with other areas covered more in depth within my report. It must be stated that the Leesburg Police Departments greatest strength, though, is the staff. We have great employees working here who are extremely committed to the town and to the Departments mission of public safety. Significant portions of this report were compiled with input and information provided by them. As far as opportunities, I detailed in my report where I think the Police Department staffing number should be based on the town's population. As of today, I would encourage and support a Needs Assessment Study for the Police Department to really project our future needs in line with Leesburg's projected growth. I think that the Police Department has a great compensation package, but encourage reviewing some additional benefits for better retention such as increasing night shift differential and military leave allotments. We have great equipment, but there is space for better management to ensure we are budgeting for and replacing items with appropriate end -of -service life cycles. We are currently exploring better analysis tools as it pertains to data for internal and external sharing purposes. The trained advance in law enforcement have grown each year with a combination of legal mandates and community expectations. We would benefit greatly from assistance with a dedicated position for more in-house training and to ensure monitoring and compliance with our training needs. Our staff demographics, overall, extremely diverse. We have 16 employees and are bilingual or multilingual. This does not include our current recruit class which is coming out this December or our next recruit class which starts in January as we have additional language skills in both classes already. These numbers are inaccurate as informed today. We, actually, have 92 employees total so were doing well an recruiting. There are some differences with our demographics between sworn and non -sworn staff, but were doing well with our recruiting efforts to attract and hire qualified applicants who reflect our community. The Leesburg Police Department's brand is community engagement. We pride ourselves in our interactions with the community members. We participate in the standard national nights out and coffee with a COP events, but we really do so much more. Our free Summer Youth Camps run by our school resource officers are the gold standard for connecting with today's youth, and its not just the youth we connect with. If we're invited to eat breakfast with the residents of a senior center, we're coming for that event as well, and we do everything in between. This is not seen as a duty assignment. It's part of our culture. The police -community relationship is authentic and positive, and you don't have to just take my word for it. In September of this year, we launched a community survey tool where text messages were sent out to seek feedback on how our Page 11November 13, 2023 dispatchers and officers are doing in response to some calls that were responded to. To date, we've received a 36% response rate, and the survey has over 91% of those responses being positive. We display these responses on a monitor in a hallway for our patrol officers to see and also in our dispatch center for the employees there to see. A sample of the responses posted here on the slide where one of the community members wanted to pass along how the officer treated their family with respect, and were pleased with that interaction. We make our best efforts to keep the community informed of crashes, police activity, and will often seek their assistance in helping solve crimes. We will also share when further investigative steps have changed. Some previously provided information to the public in the interest of maintaining community trust, and these are just some examples. We've done this well with only one dedicated position in our Public Information Office. I believe this strength will only get better with a second dedicated non - sworn position, which we hope to have in place in early 2024 as we already have an applicant and background for us. The best way to fight crime is often to prevent crime, and we make every effort we can to educate the public on trends to make them less likely to be a victim. Sometimes we partner with other public safety agencies to do so, passing along information from them, or just a joint educational campaign. Here are some examples of some things from this past year. The Leesburg Police Department has a great working relationship with the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office, the Virginia State Police, and the Loudoun County Fire and Rescue Department. We work well with our federal law enforcement partners, other regional law enforcement, along with public and private organizations when it comes to supporting our community. Everyone is willing to share information, coordinate training, and pool resources in the name of public safety. Good news is our attrition and vacancy for our sworn positions indicated with the S, and our non - sworn positions indicated with the NS, dropped in 2023, and we are on track for even lower numbers in 2024 with incoming hires. Recruiting efforts are going well, and retention has also shown signs of improvement. We're very proud of these efforts. The town is very safe with low crime overall, but we are seeing more calls for service across all categories, which impacts the workload for both officers and dispatchers. If we keep at our current pace for this year, by the end of 2023 our criminal calls for service will be up 20% service calls, which often include things like missing persons or mental health calls, will be up 18%, and traffic -related calls will be up 33%. Many of these traffic calls are self -initiated, and we are seeing more citations, more warnings, and more DW arrests year-to-date, excuse me, for the first three quarters of 2023, as compared to our three-year average for the entire calendar year. That's a significant increase. Our officers are being proactive in their efforts to enforce traffic laws to ensure safer roads, but they're also exercising a great deal of discretion by writing 55% more warning tickets on the first three quarters as compared to the average previous three years. The goal remains voluntary compliance. While our vacancy rates and attrition rates are doing well, I think it's important to point out here that our operational vacancies are significantly higher than our 15% sworn staff vacancy rates. That's because we have several recruits and training or those that have been hired, so they're not operational yet. There is an extended period of time with academies being nearly six months and field training being nearly three months before they're, actually, going to be out an the street and assisting us. Unfortunately, we have more operational vacancies and investigations and traffic because these positions have needed to be held in order to support patrol. We won't be able to fill these anytime soon due to the training lag. They will remain vacant temporarily until we can staff our patrol. This is a significant situation that our retention and our recruiting efforts are going well, but we really won't fill it for another year. One area of concern is mental health -related calls and the impact its had on public safety in recent years. Our officers may get dispatched to a person in emotional crisis or a person that's attempted to self -harm or made threats to do so. There are several ways we can handle this, but it's not uncommon Page 21November 13, 2023 for these calls to end with an Emergency Custody Order where the person may be involuntarily taken for a mental health evaluation. Sometimes these will get converted to a temporary detention order where they are held for treatment requiring the availability of a bed space at a facility. Unfortunately, there has been limitations on bed spaces in Virginia in recent years. These calls are very time-consuming for law enforcement for all these reasons. In 2022, we averaged 9 hours and 20 minutes per call. Most of these calls would have involved multiple officers, at least initially, and some perhaps for the duration of the call, depending on the circumstances. mats why I suggested adding a co -responder unit position where a trained officer is paired with a clinician in part to help alleviate some of the time on these calls. This unit would take lead on some of these calls, and a mental health professional in the field would be more efficient at assessing one's needs than just an officer. This is something Loudoun County is already pursuing, and Fairfax County is also already pursued. Another call that were seeing here in Leesburg is shoplifting. Leesburg is a great destination for visitors for many reasons to include the shopping district. Unfortunately, that has also made us a destination for professional retail thieves to target as well. Shoplifting is often at organized crime and has increased both nationally and regionally. In Leesburg, the first three quarters of 2023, we are nearly 26% higher in reported shoplifting cases than our previous four-year average for entire calendar years. This is also just reported. We don't always get initial reports. Some of these stores wait till they have the same person several times before they call and report. I believe a dedicated unit to combat the crime is necessary. It will relieve some calls for service from patrol and provide us with a group of officers who are well -skilled and collaborating with our retail community to prevent and investigate shoplifting. I can't under -emphasize the importance of employee wellness and public safety. It is critical to retaining healthy employees throughout their career. The oversight of our program did fall under a lieutenant, but it made sense to push that down to a sergeant level which we did. We're piloting a facility dog program with a Golden Retriever named Mooney. As you can see from the photos, he's already a fan favorite with our staff. The station expansion will include a rest or quiet rooms for officers between their night shift and court start times. One room will also be prioritized for nursing mothers when needed. We will bring back our gym for fitness. The previous space had to be reallocated for office space. The newly appointed Peer Support Sergeant suggested a meditation labyrinth, which we were able to accommodate with the space in our future courtyard. This is very progressive steps that were taking to ensure our officers and dispatchers are well. We still need to solidify a professional partnership with the clinician in order to meet statute requirements for a peer support program in Virginia. There is also a need to prioritize employee wellness with a dedicated position and that position would also focus on field training and overseeing a membership program as these areas overlap and ensuring long-term healthy employees. I suggest the department needed as many as 117 officers and 50 non -sworn positions to support the town's current population. This was based on national averages and comparing our numbers to some other agencies nearby with population smaller than 50,000. Again, I would support a Needs Assessment to really get a solid analysis done on the staffing based on population crime and workload factors. I did outline 29 key positions that I believe are our priority to meet our needs. I really do feel the Leesburg Police Department's running with a bit of a skeleton crew. There's additional sworn positions I also added. Next steps, this assessment is still ongoing. This was just in the first 100 days. I'm still meeting with people. I'm still looking at the data, still getting a better idea of what we need moving forward. Key priorities will be business process improvements, exploring technology and equipment needs, identifying grants for funding and training enhancements as we also continue to focus on filling our vacancies. The building expansion project is going well and that provides us some great opportunities for all these enhancements that were looking forward to. I appreciate your time and attention. I'd like to open it up to questions. Page 31November 13, 2023 Mayor Burk: Thank you. Thank you, Chief. Appreciate it. Anyone has questions at this point? Council Member Cummings? Council Member Zach Cummings: Yes. Wanted to just ask you to highlight a little bit more. You were talking about the mental health -related calls and the co -responder clinician. If you could just walk me through what that position entails. You mentioned the county, have they initiated it or they're planning to initiate it? Theo Pirnat: They have, actually, initiated. They have approval for three additional positions within the Sheriffs Office. Loudoun County Mental Health provides the clinician position so that has been approved by the Board of Supervisors. They will pair up. They're still trying to figure out the hours appropriate for it and, obviously, hire for those positions. I had a discussion with them, because of the population size of Leesburg, they will not be coming into Leesburg to handle calls here and they will only handle calls outside the town of Leesburg. Council Member Cummings: Okay. Your suggestion is to look at one position of a clinician? Theo Pirnat: I think one position to start initially would be a great idea. Council Member Cummings: Okay. Thank you. Mayor Burk: Vice Mayor? Vice Mayor Neil Steinberg: Thanks. Back to the mental health. I realize this number is only through the third quarter. The number of calls may, certainly, equal or exceed 2022, but the time spent seems to be substantially reduced, both for total time and per average time. Why is that? Thea Pirnat: That could be any number of reasons. It could be also because it's seasonal. As we go into the end of the year, we, actually, get more mental health calls which reduces the availability of bed space. These previous numbers are based on a full calendar year, so I do project that our total time will, actually, go up. I don't think that we're going to hit 2022 numbers, but I do suspect that we're going to be higher than what you're seeing right now. Vice Mayor Steinberg: Okay. One other thing. I mean, my observations, this seems to be increasingly so as years go by, drivers are remarkably impatient and you see people running red lights with impunity. It's not even close. How do we think to address that? As I understand it and that may come up in the next conversation, we are not permitted traffic cameras at intersections other than what we're going to discuss later. How do we address that issue? Thea Pirnat: I pointed out, our traffic unit is understaffed right now. Vice Mayor Steinberg: Yes. Thea Pirnat: We're missing some valid positions there and then, currently our patrol shifts were down to two, where we, typically, have three or previously we've had three. Having that overlap does provide us a little more proactive activity with our officers. I think getting our staffing up will help. The camera program, we could have four, potentially, at the next presentation, really doesn't go into the red light cameras because it's focused on the school zones, but there is potential to explore four red light cameras within the town. Vice Mayor Steinberg: Does the state permit us to do that? Theo Pirnat: Yes. Vice Mayor Steinberg: It does. Okay. Thank you. Chris Spero: If I can jump in really quick. There is a limit based upon the population of your jurisdiction. Unlike what the Chief will be talking about for the School Zone Enforcement cameras, your population pursuant to state code limits the number of other types of enforcement cameras that Page 41November 13, 2023 you can have. The red light ones, but I think the chief I agreed that based on our population and applying the stakeholder, we can have four. Mayor Burk: Mr. Bagdasarian? Council Member Ara Bagdasarian: Thank you, Chief. It's a good thing Council Member Nacy is not here because I have a few questions for her. The first thing is congratulations on your first 100 days. That's wonderful. Secondly, a couple questions. As far as SRO training, is there any difference between the town SRO training and the county's training expectations for SROs? Thea Pirnat: They actually train together. Council Member Bagdasarian: Oh, they do. Okay. Thea Pirnat: It's the same. Council Member Bagdasarian: Okay. That is good. You mentioned prevention, obviously, that's the goal. That is the goal. Do we have mechanisms in the town for citizens, if they see something to say something, to submit information, if there's anything of a concern? Thea Pirnat: We do have some online reporting options that you don't have to be contacted, so you can do that. We will partner with crime solvers and other programs of that nature. Anytime we have and so we're seeking information, we try to advertise. You're welcome to submit and you can submit anonymously. Council Member Bagdasarian: Okay. Great. Obviously staffing is a challenge right now, and so if we could crack that code, that would be amazing. Thank you very much. Thea Pirnat: Thank you. Mayor Burk: Council Member Wilt? Council Member Patrick Wilt: Thanks, Chief. Yes, a couple of things. First thing I wanted to get clarity on the assessment that we're working on a skeleton crew. In terms of the operational vacancy slide that you had, those are current numbers, I assume. The authorized 87 and actual of 66 total staff. Thea Pirnat: That's sworn. Just sworn staff. Council Member Wilt: Sworn staff. Sorry. Thea Pirnat: Doesn't really count not sworn. That is correct. Council Member Wilt: Okay. In that case, are you referencing that the current status is on the skeleton crew, or is the authorized number needing to be changed? Thea Pirnat: I believe the authorized number needs to change. Council Member Wilt: Okay. We'll see something on that in the future about what the expected force level needs to be? Thea Pirnat: I provided some statistics in here based on the national, based on 2019 the US department of Justice recommendation of 2.4 per 1,000 residents. Council Member Wilt: Okay./ must have missed that. Thea Pirnat: 17 sworn would be the recommendation. Council Member Wilt: Where's that in the presentation? Page 51November 13, 2023 Theo Pirnat: In the report. Council Member Wilt: Oh, in the attached report? Theo Pirnat: I'm sorry. Yes, it's in the attachment. Council Member Wilt: Okay. All right. Then the next thing I did want to understand, 2022 and the mental health related calls, where we had the highest number. Well, the second highest number, but then the 9 hour and 20 minute is an average resolution time. We know what went on in 2022 that made that so complex. Thea Pimat: We did see an increase, unfortunately, through some, I'm going to say residual almost from COVID with impacts from people not getting their normal services in 2020. They were getting telemedicine, they weren't seeing their therapists, other things. We have seen an uptick in mental health calls ever since. I think that that's one of the things that spiked in 2022, just the residuals. Council Member Wilt: Okay. Simply as an extended consequence. Thea Pirnat: Yes. Council Member Wilt: Okay. Then in 2023, at least the resolution time is not up at nine hours yet. Thea Pirnat: Not yet. Council Member Wilt: We think same of that's resolving itself? Thea Pirnat: Hopefully some of it is resolving itself, but, again, I caution with us having the - Council Member Wilt: A holiday season. Thea Pirnat: -last couple months of the year, the holidays. Council Member Wilt: Right. Okay. Thea Pirnat: We do tend to see an uptick in those call volumes. Council Member Wilt: Okay. The last thing I wanted to inquire on, the shoplifting. Thea Pirnat: Yes. Council Member Wilt: In the pie chart, it looks it's out of two location issue primarily, the outlet mall and Target. Thea Pirnat: I did explain in my report, with the outlet mall, a couple stores within the outlet malls are reporting to us. With Target, Target has one of the most robust loss prevention programs, probably of any retail. In any retail store out there, they're very cooperative to Police Department. Fantastic cameras, fantastic investigators. I commend them on the fact that we are seeing these numbers it's because they're catching it and reporting it to us. Council Member Wilt: Okay. We think that's a bit of an aberration of paying attention Thea Pirnat: I think they're paying attention. I think, like I said, we do have stores that choose not to report to us. I think there's a lot of stores that aren't here. I think if we had a dedicated retail staff team, we would be able to get a little more cooperation, perhaps, from those stores on their processes. Council Member Wilt: Okay. For example, on, at least making its own slice of the pie, Walmart doesn't show up. Page 6INovember 13, 2023 Thea Pirnat: Walmart is not within our district right now. Council Member Wilt: Oh, the joint management there. They're not in our reporting? Okay. Thea Pirnat: Yes, they're not included. Council Member Wilt: Costco. Theo Pirnat: Costco is one of these. I think there's 88, I can't remember. [crosstalk] Council Member Wilt: Okay. It's one of the smaller business. Thea Pirnat: They've had less than 10 reported calendar year. There is one store on here that didn't make it in the first three quarters, but technically they're on here now from villages of Leesburg, and they get hit often and they're reporting to us. Council Member Wilt: The suggestion of adding the retail theft team, the focus area then would be what? A broad focus across retailers? Do you have some particular target areas? Theo Pirnat: We would, certainly, target the areas where we know. Certainly, with, obviously, the outlets that the villages, like I said, has a couple of locations that we know are being targeted. The big box stores are, actually, targeted often. Like I said, they have their own loss prevention programs, and they're pretty good about calling us and letting us know. Sometimes, like I said, they'll wait till the same person's in there like the third, fourth time, and they feel like they've built the case, and then they'll call and say that person's in there again, and we'll respond there. That team would be available for those responses instead of patrol officers. Council Member Wilt: Okay. Thank you, Chief. Mayor Burk: Council Member Cimino -Johnson? Council Member Cimino -Johnson: Thank you, Chief. Also, congratulations on the first 100 days. Thea Pirnat: Thank you. Council Member Todd Cimino -Johnson: I just have a couple of questions. The first one is retirement. We know that, nationwide, retirements are going to start increasing if they already haven't. Do you have any idea in the next five years what retirements look like? Thea Pirnat: I have the significant retirements coming in my Dispatch Unit. I have at least four retirements coming within the next three years, and there's only 12 authorized there. That is very significant. I put in here an actual full attachment report. One of my proposals is that we permit a flex program that they could come back on a contract basis, like a substitute teacher program for our dispatchers because that would benefit us. A lot of our workforce, I did some analysis on our age. 10-11 years is our median age, which is goad. We do have a lot of, especially officers that are young or officers eligible for retirement. I know I have at least three commanders eligible for retirement off the top of my head. I have a retirement coming in December from a Traffic Unit. We're going to see some retirements. Council Member Cimino -Johnson: Okay. What is the procedure there? Other than just general recruiting, are we doing something different to start getting more people in the pipeline? Theo Pirnat: Ideally, we start dual and covering for those positions once we're fully staffed. I know, like I said, I've had two dispatchers in for May, next calendar year, April, and I think November was the other one. We have two current vacancies, so we're trying to fill those vacancies. Once we get those vacancies filled, there's no reason for that April vacancy that we're not because of the turnaround time on the dispatcher as well. Not just the hiring, but their training could take as long as Page 71November 13, 2023 two years. We're doing it in less than two years, but the state allows for a two-year training program. We should be, once we get full staffing, hiring in advance with those retirements, especially. Council Member CiminoJohnson: Okay. Is there a priority to what we could do to incentivize and get more officers? Theo Pirnat: I think, like I said, our compensation is really helping us right now. We do get a lot of interest for that. I think it's when people were in the door, it's the little things like the night shift differential is a dollar and a quarter, so it's hard. Someone new coming in here, you got to work night shift. Another thing that is hurting us is opportunities. I've done four exit interviews since I've been with the Leesburg Police Department. One officer did relocate out-of-state completely, but he told me he was going there because it was a slightly larger department. It felt like there was more opportunities. He could move around, do different detective -type things. I think having some growth, and internal growth opportunities would be beneficial for us for both recruitment and retention. That is one of the things that we have to compete with other agencies, and we're losing on with Loudoun County Sherriffs Office, for example. Council Member Cimino -Johnson: Okay. Then what about the non -financial incentives, like allowing facial hair and tattoos? Theo Pirnat: We currently have a draft policy. We're looking at that right now. I've already met with the Diversity Commission for Input. We met with the NCAAP also just for their input as well. We are exploring that. We have a draft policy for our take-home vehicles to expand that. There are things like that in the pipeline already. Council Member Cimino -Johnson: Awesome. Okay. Thank you. Thanks for the good work. Thea Pirnat: Thank you. Mayor Burk: 1, too, would like to congratulate you on your first 100 days. I'm sure it was quite interesting to be new to the whole process. I have some questions in regard to the mental health - related calls. When we have a mental health call and the person has to go to a facility, does our officer have to stay with that person until there is a bed found and then transport them? Theo Pirnat: They have to stay with them through the emergency custody order period to make sure they're evaluated. Once they're evaluated, decisions made about the temporary detention order, that is where they have to stay with them, yes, until there is bed space, and that's where there's often a delay. Then they transport that person to that location. That location could be St. Petersburg. That's one of the reasons we have such a high number on those calls is where the beds are, actually, located when we have to transport. Then we turn them over to the facility, and then were done. Mayor Burk: Someone on your staff would have to go to where the person lives, find out that there is a problem, take them to the emergency room. They get evaluated, they've got to stay there, then the hospital finds them a bed somewhere, mental health facility, and it could be anywhere in the state? Theo Pirnat: Yes. Mayor Burk: Conceivably, they could be days that they're off while they're transporting-- Thea Pirnat: It's not been days. It's never been days, but it has extended beyond a 12 -hour shift, which is how we have that nine -hour average. Mayor Burk: I know that you talked about having, I'm not sure if you said therapist or- Thea Pirnat: Clinician. Mayor Burk: -somebody with the officer. Would that then mean that both of them would have to stay? Page 8 November 13, 2023 Thea Pirnat: No. I would not use them for the hold and the transport. I would just use them for the initial assessment and talking to the person. Sometimes what benefits us is if they're willing to voluntarily seek assistance, because then they go without us holding them against their will. I think a clinician would benefit us there. We might be able to avoid some of these ECOs and TDOs that we're seeing right now. I would not use them for transport, no. Mayor Burk: I would imagine all of the Police Departments are dealing with this issue. Thea Pirnat: Yes. Mayor Burk: I know the sheriff has talked about it . Is there any regional solution to this that people can share responsibility, or? Thea Pirnat: One of the things that's been explored and not entirely successful yet is that transport option to go to a private corporation, essentially, to handle the transports, but they're not finding the level of availability that they originally contracted for, is my understanding. That is something that I've seen in the region other agencies are trying. Mayor Burk: Because it seems like not a particularly good use for an officer to be sitting in an emergency room or in a hospital room waiting for something to happen when it could be doing something else. If we could find some other solution to that, that's very perplexing. I know that we're not the only ones dealing with it. I understand that. Gash, it would be nice if we could come up with some alternative to that. The next one about the shoplifting. We know that shoplifting now has become quite a significant part of organized crime. These are organized groups that do come in and just clean out the shop and go running out the door. Have you had the opportunity to meet with the Commonwealth Attorney to talk about prosecuting these cases, clarifying what is the role that our officers in this prosecution of these, what has been called in the past, minor misdemeanors? Thea Pirnat: I've met with our current Commonwealth Attorney a couple of times. We did not specifically talk about shoplifting. We talked about domestic violence. sexual violence. Those were the kind of our main topics at the time. It's a new code that passed July 1 about the organized retail theft and to enhance penalty. We have just made one recent charge on that, so it hasn't gone through the court process yet. I do expect the Commonwealth Attorneys cooperation on this. It also involves otherjurisdictions, the new code. It's an aggregate for the last 90 days. If they shoplifted in a jurisdiction in Prince William, Henrico County, we can still use it for prosecution. It doesn't have to be here. It could be in one of those jurisdictions. I'm confident we'll see more prosecutions in that area. Mayor Burk: We're up in the air as to who's going to actually be the Commonwealth Attorney, but I hope that you will meet with whoever to clarify it. From what I understand, from the letter that she sent to the Mayors, the present Commonwealth Attorney, some of these cases are not being prosecuted, and they expect the town to do it, the town officers to do it. They're most, certainly, not lawyers. They can't subpoena people and stuff like that. I hate to put that on them. I'm hoping that conversation will be had again- Thea Pirnat: Of course. Mayor Burk: -to straighten that if there's a possibility. There was a lot of things in your report, but one thing stood out, the firing range. We have so many law enforcement agencies around here, you mean we can't share a firing range? Each one has to have their own? Thea Pirnat: It's not that each have to have our own. We don't get priority. We call and say that we have range availability date. The third weekend, March, for example, we are competing with other agencies that have already booked that time. That's the difficulty that we're finding. We're limited within the weeks are available to us. Loudoun County Sheriffs Office, I talked to Chapman about this particular issue, they're willing to give us range time. We can get range time. I don't want to say we're not getting range time, but not at our discretion that we would like. Page 9INovember 13, 2023 Mayor Burk: That's the discussion you really need to have with the Sheriff and the other departments that have firing ranges that you access to it. Theo Pirnat: Like I say, we can go to other jurisdictions and use their range, but that does take our officers out of the town for longer periods of time. It's going to limit how many hours we can get. That's just one of those things, but there are options, yes. Mayor Burk: It's my understanding from the positions needed that you're looking for 28 new positions, that's above and beyond what is authorized already? Thea Pirnat: Yes. Mayor Burk: That's correct. We haven't filled those ones that are authorized yet. Theo Pirnat: That's correct. Mayor Burk: I know you're hoping for the best, but perhaps it'll be an interesting discussion come budget time. Thea Pirnat: Of course. Mayor Burk: Thank you very much. We really appreciate your coming in and speaking to us about this issue and we look forward to continuing dialogue. Thea Pirnat: Thank you. Mayor Burk: I believe you're up next. Theo Pirnat: I am. Mayor Burk: [chuckles] Theo Pirnat: We're going to talk about speed cameras in our school zones. In 2020, the General Assembly did pass a code that would permit us to have speed monitoring devices in our highway work zones, in our school zones. We're just looking at school zones right now is my understanding. That's what this presentation will focus on. We do also have the options, we discussed the speed cameras with limited numbers to four based on our population. Just to understand what the speed monitoring devices are, they do use radar or lidar detection, and they produce the image of the vehicle in violation. For a school crossing zone, obviously, there's strict code on what that means. Its going to be a clearly marked location within a school where you're going to see, obviously, a pedestrian traffic and other motorist. They are required to be marked. We have Winko-Matics there at those locations. It start 30 minutes before the school, 30 minutes after the school. Referenced this code, you could, actually, have the speed cameras within use for the entire duration of the school day, not just when the Wnko-Matics are on during the entry and exit times with the school. Something to keep in consideration. As far as requirements, so there's no limit on how many speed cameras you have in a jurisdiction. We get to set up speed cameras in every single school zone, if we wanted to. You would need an ordinance to do so. That third bullet, I'm sorry, is incorrect. That had to do with the red light cameras. We do not have to do any traffic study. We are required to do a public awareness campaign and we are required to have signage within a 1,000 feet of where we're going to have the speed cameras in school zones. The system may be privately owned, but their compensation cannot be tied to the number of violations. We don't have to run our own camera program per se. We can bring in a third -party vendor to assist us with this, which is what I would recommend for a number of reasons. The data does have Page 10INovember 13, 2023 to be purged within 60 days based on state code, that can't be maintained by the vendor or anyone else. We are required as an agency to report our statistics on these cameras to the Virginia State to police to include the number of violations and the fines that were collected. These are just a couple of images. The one on the left is a sample of what an affixed pole system would look like. The bottom is the actual speed camera device. The one on the top is an infrared camera. What that is used for is the image at the top right, which takes a picture to show in proof that the W nko-Matics were on. I know it's been an issue in some jurisdictions, so I would recommend any solution we pursued, certainly, included that option as well. We're required to have the signage and this is just an example of signage. We're not hiding the fact that there's cameras because our goal always is compliance. Site studies would be required for a fixed solution, so we could have a portable system or we could fix it to a pole, which, again, I think that's where I would recommend we go for. This was for red light. Is this is wrong? Oh, we're good on this one. I'm sorry, We're going to look at crash data, speed data mitigation efforts. Many vendors will fund the roadway studies and we did do one already. Sorry, in three school zones. We have another one underway right now, so were getting some input on what it looks like. The owner of the vehicle is, actually, responsible for any sort of camera violation that's issued on these. It does have to be set at least 10 miles above the posted speed limit by code, but we could set our own. We can make it higher than that. If we wanted to say 13 miles per hour, we don't have to stick to 10. We can be generous if we choose to do so. The signs must be posted and it is only a civil penalty and it can't exceed $100, so they wouldn't have points on their driver's license for a moving violation, which is what would happen if an officer were to cite the same offense. A law enforcement officer must affirm the violation took place. These aren't just randomly sent out. We do have to have a verification process in-house in place for this to work. The summons is sent to them via first class mail. They're welcome to contest the ticket just like any other traffic ticket, and it will go to General District Traffic court here. Based on input from staff. These are the locations that we do believe we have some concerns with the speeding, and so these are the areas if we were going to start, we would suggest those five schools listed there. Cool Springs Elementary, Balls Bluff Elementary, Harper Park and Tolbert Elementary, Tuscarora High School and Frederick Douglas Elementary. That's based on safety school blitzes and other things and complaints we received. Those are why those are of concern. We did, like I said, work with one vendor just for one traffic city in over two days. This did include the entire school duration, not just this time the Winko-Matics were on. During that timeframe, daily average was 676 moving vehicles, going 10 miles over the speed limit in these school zones. That just tells you the volume out of 2,300, so over a third of the drivers were going way too fast. If we use a vendor, we need minimal staff because they can do an initial verification. They'll check the ticket, they'll check that camera, they'll make sure everything lines up. Like I said, we would have a second internal person just to affirm, then it is a violation. Then depending on whichever solution, there may be a permit required, and that's, like I say, if were doing a fixed pole system or if we do a portable system. There will be some cost, obviously, associated with the initial installation of the camera equipment. Some of the vendors will, actually, take care of that as part of the contract. The fines for the program, basically, are covered by the offenders. I got ahead of myself. My apologies. I think I'm missing-- My apologies. I have a different slide here. I'm sorry. The funding is paid by our violators to offset the program. I did talk to another Chief if there was any downside to this, and she told me there was none. Everything coming from the tickets is, actually, covering the cost of the program. Couple jurisdictions did say they were, actually, overwhelmed initially by the volume of violations that they were seeing. They initially tried to run the program with off -duty officers, like on an overtime assignment, and that just wasn't working. One of them, actually, started contracting with some recent really retired officers. That's how they were able to do it. The officers could, actually, sign in from home and check the Page 11 November 13, 2023 tickets essentially. There's no space allocation needed for it, but they are responsible then for going to court if there's any contesting the ticket. Our recommendation is, it is something that we believe it's worth pursuing just on a smaller level initially in this just a limited number of school zones, just so we can manage the program, get a feel for it and see how it works. Some of the vendors were telling us that we may see as much as a 90% reduction in speeding by the end of the school year, which again, is our goal for safer streets. As we talk about our staffing limitations and ways to make the town safer, I do believe this is a potential solution utilizing technology. I'l l open it up for questions. Mayor Burk: Thank you. I called every one of the Principals at the High School, Middle School and Elementary School, and each of them would like to have it tomorrow if possible. Truly, nobody was opposed to it at all and felt that it would be very, very helpful. Thea Pirnat: I, actually, talked to the Superintendent of Loudoun County Public Schools and he had no objections either. Mayor Burk: The one thing that I'm surprised that Catoctin Elementary is not on this list of locations. They have a serious problem there because it is Catoctin Circle and people just, "I say Hail Mary before I across the road," because it's just like a raceway. Is there a reason that Catoctin wasn't included in this? Thea Pirnat: These were just the top five that the staff recommended based on information we had. It doesn't mean we wouldn't use the other, eventually evolve to those other locations, but these were the ones that we know, for sure. Battlefield, like 1 said, we use that for a test study for a reason. Mayor Burk: Is there any way to get Catoctin put on the list just to--? Thea Pirnat: We're, actually, doing an additional speed study now. Is that one of the schools we're doing? Is Catoctin Elementary School one of the schools we're doing right now? Ed Martin: Sorry? Thea Pirnat: The test? This test study. Ed Martin: Yes. I believe the second company was putting a study there at that location. Thea Pirnat: We're doing a five-day study in several other locations right now, including that one. Mayor Burk: All right. Thank you. Council Member Bagdasarian? Council Member Bagdasarian: Are you surprised? [laughter]. Yes. Thank you again. In fact, speaking of Catoctin Elementary, a young Kevin Miller, eight -year -old third grader at Catoctin, actually, brought this up to me, I don't know, maybe five months ago. The whole idea of having speed cameras and to modify behavior, that's the whole thing is how do we modify behavior? The other question is, why not? Like, why would we not do this? It's an absolute no-brainer. I've seen the statistics where it's decreased incidences of speeding by 90%, which is very important. I just think it's an important thing that-- it's part of a multi -layered school safety approach. Is it correct, Chief, that these can only be installed in school zones in Virginia? We can't install speed cameras like in Downtown Leesburg. Thea Pirnat: That is correct. We can install them in school zones and construction zones. [crosstalk] Council Member Bagdasarian: Construction zones Thea Pirnat: Work zones are the other location. Council Member Bagdasarian: Okay. No, it makes perfect sense. Thank you. Page 121November 13, 2023 Mayor Burk: Council Member Cimino -Johnson? Council Member Cimino -Johnson: Thank you for your presentation. A couple questions. First, aren't there crossing guards out there every day at the schools for students? Thea Pirnat: We do have crossing guards. Are you asking about specific locations? Council Member Cimino -Johnson: I thought all the schools had crossing guards. Thea Pirnat: They do, if there's a need for them. It depends on the location. Some schools may have more than one. It's not specifically necessarily a school as much as its crossing near a school, it could be in the middle of a neighborhood just depending on where they know there's going to be foot traffic. Council Member Cimino -Johnson: Got you. Okay. Then how much does one cost just for one site? Thea Pirnat: The cameras vary. Like I said, we talked to a couple different vendors, so it could be, I think one quote was like 4,900 per camera. You, typically, going to need two cameras per just one school zone. Some of them told as low as 2,000. Its varied, Some are charging a flat fee for the camera, but they're telling us they assume their risk, basically. If for some reason the fees then come in, don't cover the cost of the camera, we're not getting billed for that. Then some of the vendors are saying that they charge per camera and then they'll charge a processing fee per ticket per that Because like I said, they're doing that initial verification. We've only talked to two vendors so far. We're talking to a third right now. We'll get a few more details after they complete their speed study. We'll have a better idea maybe which vendor direction we want to go in. We're just doing the initial. Council Member Cimino -Johnson: Okay. Then the speed study you did, the 676 violations, was that all over 10 miles an hour? Thea Pirnat: Those were 10 miles over there. Yes. Council Member Cimino -Johnson: Wow. Thea Pirnat: That was the duration of the school day, not just during when the Winko-Matics were on, we would be able to control that, which way we want to go with that. Council Member Cimino -Johnson: Wow. Anybody pull these people ever? [laughs] Thea Pirnat: I don't know if we did during that day. That is something that there's a control for as well that we would double check to make sure, because we still want officers, obviously, enforcing those violations as well. That's why there's those controls in place. If that person got a ticket from an officer, we would, obviously, pull the civil ticket too, so they wouldn't get double tickets. Council Member Cimino -Johnson: Okay. Okay. Then you said it had to be under $100, is it like $99, $95? Thea Pirnat: It could be exactly $100. We could make it $20, we can make it $100. Anything in between, it doesn't really matter. Council Member Cimino -Johnson: Got you. Okay. Well, $100 would've netted us $67,000 from these just these two days. [laughs] Okay. Yes, I think I'm good. Thank you. Mayor Burk: Thank you. Council Member Cummings? Council Member Cummings: Just to reiterate what the Mayor brought up about Catoctin. As someone who walks across the crosswalk to take my son to school and back and forth, I can tell you that that Catoctin, in general, from Market Street to the bypass, really is pretty rough. We need a Page 131November 13, 2023 combination of speed cameras to help slow folks down at the school district there, but also look at how we design our roads as well, I think would be an important piece of slowing traffic down on Catoctin because it's a wide road. This is all tied to the blinking school zone signs. Who controls how long the school-- because it's only for school time. It's not all day long. Correct? Thea Pirnat: It can be all day during the school day. The Wnko-Matics will start 30 minutes before the school and go and then they stop obviously once everybody's in class, there's a window. Yes. The school actually sets those times. Council Member Cummings: The school does. One thing I would ask, when we're going to install this. I know in elementary they have Casa, which is for kids who are after school when there are parents that are picking up and then they have after -school programs. Not shutting it down right at 2:15 or 2:30, keeping it extended for that period. We can talk to the schools as well and make sure that they're thinking of that as they're setting up the lights. Thank you. Thea Pirnat: Thank you. Mayor Burk: Vice Mayor. Vice Mayor Steinberg: I think the common theme is location. I recognize that the North King Street in general is probably an area where people tend to speed but Tuscarora High School sits pretty far off the highway, honestly as do Smart Mill and Francis Hazel Reed. As Council Member Cummings said and the Mayor, you would think that the catoctin circle and Loudoun County High School area, which I think there's far more pedestrian traffic would be better candidates with perhaps a couple others. Is the vendor who decides whether it's a fixed camera position versus a portable camera position, how does that work? Thea Pirnat: It's part of the site assessment. We'll work with them and decide what we want and what they're capable of doing. Vice Mayor Steinberg: How does the review process work? You have these cameras capturing data and I assume there's a hard drive or whatever that-- Thea Pirnat: I think it's cloud -based. Vice Mayor Steinberg: Cloud -based. Okay. Thea Pirnat: The vendor themselves will have their staff that they'll review it, like I said, they're looking at those pictures. They're making sure that everything's working and that the tags clear, things like that. Once they see that, they'll basically hit send where it's then uploaded for our officer to sign on, do the same thing. They're checking it. They will have the schedule. Obviously sometimes the schools forget to turn off their Winko-Matics on a day that's not a school day. That's something that we're aware of. Those tickets would automatically be purged. Our officer would take care of that. The vendors are responsible for calibrating the cameras. There's a lot that goes into what the vendor does on their end. They help us with the initial court process to explain the technology, get it accepted in the courts. That's why also I said when we start we should start small with just a few schools to get through those initial hiccups and then we can expand in future cycles. Vice Mayor Steinberg: I'm sorry. You said the data is deleted after 30 days? 60 days? Thea Pirnat: 60 days. Vice Mayor Steinberg: 60 days. Okay. All right. Thanks Mayor Burk: Council Member Wilt. Page 14lNovember 13, 2023 Council Member Wilt: Thank you. I wanted to understand the efficacy. The cameras and the vendor represents that as having a 90% reduction in speeding violations. Is this more effective equally or less effective than having officers at sites? Theo Pimat: The reality is we would never be able to stop 676 cars in a day. Council Member Wilt: That wouldn't be the intent either. The visible presence of officers slows down and calms traffic and such. Theo Pirnat: Of course, it does. We could post an officer there, write a handful of tickets but then the next day the officer's still not there. Our other option is assign an officer to every school zone every day. That's becomes a staffing issue. This is something that augment but I think a moving violation from an officer with points on your license is certainly more impactful than a civil fine. Council Member Wilt: Intuitively I'm wondering about that, if I see an officer's car or if I have an experience with a warning or see somebody having an experience versus receiving a photograph in the mail two weeks later, that feedback loop. Not that I'm really overly skeptical of vendors' representations and sales presentations but do we have any efficacy data from other departments saying what they've experienced rather than vendor data? Thea Pirnat: That was information from other departments that they provided to us based on their long-term use of the-- When I say long term, their entire calendar year. They showed us what the first six weeks looked like versus the last six weeks of the school year for an actual-- another district, another jurisdiction I should say. Council Member Wilt: At least that I feel more confident in than -- Theo Pirnat: I will say the advantage of the speed cameras is you speed that once and your officer stops you and gives you a ticket versus you get two weeks later. You know that speed camera's there, you're not speeding through that school zone again because you know every single time you're going to get a ticket. You might take your chance that maybe an officer's not going to be there. Council Member Wilt: Then we're saying the financials, the violation, citations pay for the system. Is there any overage or underage of that? Where does excess funds go? Theo Pimat: The Town gets to decide how that gets spent. If it's run by the state, it has to go to a literacy fund or a public safety. If it's run by a jurisdiction with a passing of an ordinance, it goes to the general revenue and the town can decide where that revenue goes. Council Member Wilt: All right. Thank you, Chief. Thea Pirnat: You're welcome. Mayor Burk: Council Member Cimino -Johnson. Council Member Cimino -Johnson: Thank you. I just have a follow-up question. If someone says -- so they go through that speed camera every day for two weeks and they don't know they've done that, it's still just $100 a fine and no points? Theo Pirnat: No, so we actually have the option. We did talk to them about that. The initial campaign is an awareness campaign. We're flagging it. We're putting something out on social media. We can actually set it up with warning tickets initially. They would get that warning in the mail that says, you are violating, this as a warning, don't do it again. We can also set it that you only get so many tickets within a period. You could set it for the first, like you say, there's going to be a lag, so we know we don't want them getting-- if they go through there in the morning, go through there in the afternoon, we don't want them to get two tickets a day. They get it two weeks later, it's 14 or 10 tickets. We don't want that. We can set it that in the first 30 days, you're topped out at two, three tickets, whatever we think is reasonable and that's after the initial warning ticket period. We have options there and we drive that decision. Page 151November 13, 2023 Council Member Cimino -Johnson: Then does it matter if they go 10 over or 25 over? Is there still no difference? Thea Pirnat: There's no difference. It's still a max of $100. Council Member Cimino -Johnson: No points? Thea Pirnat: No points. Council Member Cimino -Johnson: Okay. Thank you. Thea Pirnat: You're welcome. Mayor Burk: All right. Do you need anything from us tonight in regard to this particular issue? Thea Pirnat: No. Mayor Burk: I think you can see that people are interested- Thea Pirnat: Absolutely. Mayor Burk: -in pursuing it. We'd like to hear more about it as it goes along. Thea Pimat: We'll continue to do our research on it. Mayor Burk: Okay. Thank you. Thea Pirnat: Thank you. Mayor Burk: Our next item is the Downtown Parking Strategy follow-up discussion. Mr. Markel has asked for 15 minutes. Does anybody have any problems giving him 15 minutes? Well, if you don't get there sooner, you know. Keith Markel: We can do 20. What do you think? Well, good evening, Mayor and Council. Back again with you this evening to talk about the downtown parking strategies. We last had this discussion back in May. We had a straw polling on the part of the council to focus in on some certain subject areas. The group has worked on those over the last several months and are coming back this evening to present to you what we found out and get further direction from you on those topics. Also, a few things have happened since we last met. As you know, we had a very busy summer in the parking garage with a lot of disturbance and a lot of repair work being made. I'm happy to report that those large tasks are complete and the garage is much more operating in a normal fashion. You'II see that reflected in the September parking counts. Also, the Loudoun County Courthouse complex expansion has now opened. Their parking lots, although operating differently, in some cases with the Simonas lot, is primarily a handicap parking lot with some general parking at different times of the day and weekend, are all reopened as well. We'll start to see things move back into a normal parking pattern as those settle in. We also had our annual parking counts. If you recall, we do this count every September. We've been doing this for about the past six years or so. What we use this is looking at the trends of how our facilities are operating. We count every day of the week for the full month of September the town parking garage, on -street parking, surface slots, everything that is in the public realm. What you can see here really confirms many things we've talked about over the years, which is we have available parking in the town. If you look at that chart there up in the top left side there, the average percent of town hall garage space is occupied. You'II see that's a daily average for the full seven days of the week. You'll see at no time do we ever exceed 75% average occupancy within the garage for a day's count. You'II see many times were below 50% in those cases. You can see we do have capacity in the garage many times out of the week. You'II also see Friday and Saturday evenings are our busiest Page 16lNovember 13, 2023 times. On Friday evenings tends to be our highest use of the garage. You'll see that usage coming in at 83%, Saturday close behind at 71% for those evening counts, when we have our busiest activities in the downtown restaurant scene. The weekend town hall garage occupancy rates by time slot, you'll see we count at three different times throughout the day, mornings quiet and, as you'd expect, gradually growing over the course of the day. This is the average of Saturday and Sunday. You'll see that 6:00 P.M. number a little bit lower than what you'd see on the Saturday average itself. I also want to point out that of the 110 garage counting events, so we count several times a day every day of the week for the full month, so it's 110 counts in total. You'll see that only seven times out of all those counts did we exceed 75% total occupancy in the garage. That tells the story that we do have spaces available in the garage, which is our heavily used asset in the town. You'll see the numbers for on -street and surface lots are less used than those. Really, it comes down to a messaging issue, how do we communicate where the available parking is and how much is available to give the drivers the confidence to go find that parking? Here you'll see the surface lot occupancy by time and day, and you'll see we counted Liberty, Madison, and the Pennington lots here to give you an idea of what we're looking at here. Pennington lot comes in with the highest, and that's the county -owned surface lot. That has a lot of court traffic, and that's why you're seeing that at 80% for those weekday mornings when they're doing their most business. Then you see the rest of the weeks and the weekends on all those facilities there is ample parking in all those areas. Wth that, I will well turn it now over to Brian Boucher to talk about the other topic we had which is on -street parking and our ParkMobile system. Brian Boucher: Good evening everybody. One of the other things that was discussed back in May was the parking strategies for on -street parking, and I'm going to give you a little information about the parking that we have. What you see here is a ParkMobile map that shows the 17 ParkMobile zones that we have in the town of Leesburg. There's 137 pay -to -park spaces in here. It's $1.50 an hour. You pay between Monday through Friday between 8:00 AM and 5:00 PM so those are the times we charge. Of course, we don't charge on holidays, Thanksgiving through New Years, of course, after 5 o'clock, so that's where the spaces are. Now what you see here, and this is the great thing about ParkMobile, you can get some really good information through the system. This is a table that's showing the occupancy rate for each of these 17 zones from March 1st through September 30th. Why then? Because it was only in March that we no longer had any coin -operated on -street spaces. If you take a look at the zones, you can see its zone number, where it is, the number of spaces, the maximum occupancy, that's the maximum occupancy ever achieved there during this seven -month period, then finally, average occupancy Monday through Friday 8:00 PM to 5:00 PM. When you look at this you'll notice that the top zone had an average occupancy of 61%. It did achieve when you see maximum occupancy at certain times of the day, it can achieve and on certain days, it can achieve 100% occupancy in this zone, but most of the time it does not, so that's why you get the overall average is 61%. As you see, it goes as low as the 3% and those are the ones that are down by the Presbyterian Church down the Market Street. You see quite a range there, but what you'll notice is it's 61% our max. When you talk to the experts who write about this say what do you want for on -street parking, they say about 85% is the goal of occupancy. If you get 85%, that's high, that's up there, and that's when you got to be shuffling people into your parking structures or other spaces because these things are really getting over -utilized and people probably are getting to queue up trying to get these choice spaces. Since we have an average occupancy of 61%, what that indicates is from this standpoint that we don't really have an on -street parking problem in the town of Leesburg because there is a lot of availability during the day for these pay spaces. Again, there's only a couple of them that ever achieve a 100% [inaudible] in a second. One of the phrase used, dynamic pricing strategy. If you've got some spaces that are just really heavily utilized maybe you charge more for them because then people instead of paying that higher price will go park in the parking garage, someplace else where the parking is cheaper. Remember in a garage it's only first two hours free, dollar an hour after that so that's one of the reasons you'll do this. Page 17INovember 13, 2023 If you took that 85% occupancy rate and you looked at where it actually happened you'd find that on North Street, King Street on Thursday and Friday 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM so that's going all the way out of those zones. It's the top one, very top one, almost out up there, it's kind of in a little business area. They're pretty full at times. At that time they are full, Then of course right out here from the town hall the second one there you'll see that on Fridays from 12:00 PM to 3:00 PM these four spaces here fill up pretty good just right outside the entrance to the garage on Loudoun Street. Then the other ones are right up on Market Street across from the Courthouse, the Old Courthouse. Those handful of spaces will also fill up at certain times of the day, very heavily utilized. The thought of this was that you could perhaps reevaluate your cost of these spaces, maybe change it, make it a little more expensive during these times to get people to park elsewhere. Looking at it, because this is fairly rare downtown, and in these spaces, if they are full, there are still other on -street spaces available. Might have to go a little far, but they're available. Increasing the price here at this time might not do a whole lot other than make some of the most convenient spaces you have more empty when really these are convenient spaces and should be heavily utilized. The suggestion is that they're not really to the rate of utilization that would justify a dynamic price increase for it. What staff would recommend instead, I think, is that we gather more data because we have the tool to do it now, and reevaluate this at a later date, and see if it could be more effective then, because again, the goal here is to create occupancy on -street where justified. We want them to use spaces in certain places, but we'd also if those spaces are getting too full, try to get them into the parking garage where we were showing that we do have cheaper parking and it's available or farther down the street. Again, because the occupancy is only 100% on rare occasions, we don't think it's really justified yet to start changing the cost on these spaces. All right. With that, I'm going to turn it over to Niraja Chandrapu and residential permit parking, which is everybody's favorite. Niraja Chandrapu: Good evening, everyone. Mayor Burk: Could I get you to pull down the mic closer to you? Thank you. Niraja Chandrapu: Thank you. 1 keep forgetting every time. We have about 17 residential parking zones in the town of Leesburg, out of which seven are in the H1 District. There are two types of residences in the residential parking in H1 District. Some residences have driveways and some do not have driveways. Very recently in June, we have initiated a pilot project where we allowed two-hour free parking for visitors, and that is on Wrt Street and on Cornwall Street, and that has benefited both the residents as well as the visitors. Now we are thinking about extending this program to the whole H1 District. We have a strategy and our strategy is to combine all the parking zones into one zone. In order to implement this, there might be a need for a town code change for which we may have to work with the town attorney office for that such that the designation of zone is inconsistent with the state code. Right now, we have this. The pilot program is on Wirt Street between West Market and Cornwall and as well as on Cornwall between Liberty and King Street. We are thinking about expanding this to other streets where the residences have the driveways, which, for example, on the North Street, the one which is yellow in color, the parking spaces are still available during the daytime. During my observation, I saw only one car being parked in the residential parking permit zone. There we have a potential to change that into a free two-hour parking for the short-term visitors in the town. I don't think there will be a one approach that would fit for all streets. We will tailor our approach based on the needs of the street. We will evaluate the street one by one and the evaluation would include a parking survey site characteristics and accessibility of that street to the businesses and then public input. Based on that, we would see if that really makes sense to implement that to our short-term parking for visitors. Once we allow residents to park anywhere within this zone, since we have thought about doing everything into one zone, there is a possibility that it might open up some parking spaces for the streets which do not have driveways. At a later date, we would conduct another parking survey to see if we could extend that to our free parking for visitors on those streets. Again, it depends on the evaluation process. Now I turn it back to Brian. Page 181November 13, 2023 Brian Boucher: Another thing that was discussed in May was what's the cost of an actual structured parking space now compared to the pay -in -lieu fee that the town currently charges. That's what we'll talk about here. The fee is $8,000 adjusted by the consumer price index annually. Cost of a structured parking facility, there's a lot of variables, how many levels are you going to have? How many spaces do you want it? Are you going to have to dig under? Is going to be below -ground parking? That type of technological resources, remote resources to let people find the place are you going to put it in? Is there architectural treatment, et cetera? You put all these things into the mix. Turns out there's a lot of people who talk about the cost of public parking. One study, one group, that's literally what they do. They build public parking structures all over the country, a private firm, and according to them, cost gone up about 4% in 2022. The average cost of a parking space in DC and again, they look at pretty much the whole US metropolitan areas in DC it costs you $28,000 plus for a parking space, and understand that doesn't include the land, it doesn't include the engineering, it doesn't include financing, if you have upgraded architectural standards, et cetera. $28,000, then add those things. Well, looking at it, land is a big thing in the downtown for Leesburg. If you're going to buy an acre of land, if you can find it, it's going to be about $1 million probably. If you had a 400 -space parking structure, that's $2,500 added to the cost of each space alone for the land. Taking a look at all the variables that we could find, talking with a lot of folks, staff came up with what we think is a reasonable estimate of what it would cost in Leesburg today, which would be $32,000 per space. That's including the land, the building, and the fact that we have architectural treatment would be required. Now, a lot of people do payment in -lieu. In fact, there's a study a few years ago that looked at 46 jurisdictions throughout the world, really somewhere in Europe, somewhere in the United States and it looked at what they charge for these pay -in -lieu fees. Mayor Burk: Keep going. Brian Boucher: I can keep going. Thank you. What they found was, if you generally speaking, they don't charge the whole amount for the actual cost to a developer of creating a parking space and the reason for that is simple. If you make it the exact cost developers will say, if 1 got to pay you for that and don't know when I'm going to get anything, I'll just have onsite parking or I won't build here, or I'll put more surface parking. The goal is to try to find that fee, that's enough to get real money to build a public parking facility, but at the same time induces developers to use it. When they do pay for that, they are going to ask you, particularly if you raise it, where's this money going and when is this new parking going to be available? Looking at it and looking what some other people do, staff just points out that if you increase the fee of $16,000, that would be about 50% of the actual cost of building a parking space in Leesburg. When we get to the point, we're going to do something like that. Now another thing that we were asked to talk about is our rule, what we call the 500 -foot rule and it's our parking exemption rule. This is the rule, fill just read it to you because even I have trouble remembering it. It says, no parking is required in the 61 District for any existing building used or rehabilitated for a non-residential use that is within 500 feet of a municipal parking structure. I've got a map up there, and this is easier to understand. Where those circles are, are the areas that -- the municipal parking facilities are the Town Hall Garage, Liberty Street Lot, and the Pennington Lot, by ordinance, we don't count the County Government Center, but we will count the Pennington. When you take a look at those circles, you see where if you've got an existing building and you're going to use it for commercial use, non-residential use, you do not have to supply parking. We're just going to assume that hey, 'We want you to maintain the structure." There's no parking required. If you're outside of those circles, but you're still in the B1 District and the 61 District is in green on this map, that's our commercial district. If you're outside of it, you have to supply 50% of the required parking, that's the rule. The idea was, what if we expand this to about 1000 feet? What would that look like? If you do that, the B1 Districts about 85 acres overall, this would include 78% of the district itself. You got about 22% outside of it, and staff counted about 77 structures that are currently outside of it. These are existing structures that would now be inside it, which would mean if they change the use, they will not be required to supply any parking. Page 191November 13, 2023 Now, this doesn't talk about building something new. If they build a new building, if they add on new square footage, you have to provide that parking either through pay in Lieu or actual on site or offsite by easement. I'll just give you one quick example. If you have one of these 77 structures and its now included here and it was 1800 square feet office building, and they said, I want to make this a restaurant, our parking, that would mean 12 spaces would be necessary for the restaurant use. Since you're converting it, and you are within this expanded area, you would not have to supply any parking. We would just say because of the proximity, you're in this exempt rule, just go ahead and build your building. The way it is today, if someone's out, I mean they're outside of the 500 foot in that same scenario,' Hey, I want to make this building into a restaurant." 12 spaces, they'd have to supply six. If you expanded it out, what you're doing in that area where people would have to supply half, they wouldn't have to supply any parking spaces. Of course, the result of that would be more pressure on the public spaces that we supply downtown. Okay. All right. Keith Markel: All right, so some of the last final topics that we're looking at from our last discussion, one was parking space monitoring technology. What tools are out there that can provide better driver feedback where we have available parking? I wanted to let you know that we have been evaluating this. We've got three proposals in to looking at different technologies that can be integrated with mobile apps, with our town website that people will be able to remote in using the ParkMobile app and actually see where available parking spaces are, the most convenient spaces are. You can see here just some photographs of some of the vendors that we're talking to. They have different configurations, some have cameras, some have pads that you drive over. All of them have elements of public signage that you can locate outside the garage or elsewhere in the downtown that would all be linked together, so they could direct folks to different lots based on parking availability. Very convenient, very easy for the general public and their visitors to understand. Those prices now are ranging in the 70 to $200,000 range depending on the features and the technology being used. One of the more affordable options is to use what they call level counting, which is not a camera based system, but it's actually counting within the parking garage. Every time you go up the ramp to a level, it would count that level so you can see how that would provide general feedback on the number of spaces, but not that red light, green light specific space identification that you may have seen in some of the Loudoun County parking garages. We also looked into the private lot leasing opportunities and to date we have not found any viable options, but we will continue to look for those opportunities as they may present themselves. We also talked about parking ratios for downtown properties that will be fully evaluated through the Zoning Ordinance rewrite. Then we also talked about the parking authority creation. This is something that as we're looking at the Liberty Street lot, there's a specific need for an authority, whether it's economic development or parking when it comes to leasing of land. Parking authorities can also be that independent authority that would set pricing and regulatory rules for any of the public parking opportunities in the town. They can also borrow funds and those sorts of things. This is something that is not currently authorized for the town of Leesburg. It does take act of the general assembly and delegate Reed who is outside of the town limits, but has graciously agreed to sponsor the legislation for us in the 2024 general assembly session. That is coming up here in just a few months. Wth that, we will conclude our remarks and be happy to answer any questions or discuss any of this in more detail. Mayor Burk: Thank you. Does anybody have any questions on this? Mr. Wilt? Council Member Wilt? Council Member Wilt: Thanks Keith. I wanted to get a general sense. I'm thinking of the topic of the first part of the presentation on the garage, the surface lots and the street parking. I guess the sense I'm getting average occupancy rate 61% in street along with the garages and such. I think I heard the terminology that we have capacity. Is that the takeaway? Keith Markel: That's what staff would present to you, yes. If you're willing to walk, especially-- and we have certain times not to say that the garage doesn't get full. We know that folks come down here on those first Friday nights and it is a full garage, at lunchtime or on a Wednesday, its a full garage, but if you're willing to walk a few blocks, you'll always find free parking in Leesburg. Page 20INovember 13, 2023 Council Member Wilt: Okay. Parking capacity is not a pressing issue right now. Thinking of the B1 with potential infill developments in the future and the uses were anticipating, is there any projection of capacity, adequacy, or needs in the future? Keith Markel: No, honestly, I don't know. Maybe Mr. Boucher would know if-- I don't believe we've done any modeling of what potential developments could impact the available parking today. Council Member Wilt: If I extend that, one of the things from the public -private partnership of the Liberty Street Lot was a hope to get additional public parking. We're saying -- Keith Markel: A small amount of additional perhaps depending on the model and also additional use, which would create more demand as well. Council Member Wilt: Sounds like maybe that's not so useful because were saying we've got capacity right now. It's not a pressing issue, that takeaway? Keith Markel: Depending on the use though. With that model, it had different components, additional residential performing arts center, but then you also have the benefit of that symbiotic relationship of that use wouldn't need the parking all the time so in the times when it wouldn't be needing the parking, it could be shared within the downtown for other needs. Council Member Wilt: We already have capacity with our existing. Part of this, one of the things that back in I think March or April that was going to be in the consultants' evaluation, was the One -Way Streets with angle parking. We decided not to look at that because not really a need. right? Keith Markel: The One -Way Streets and the downtown traffic modeling is underway and Niraja can speak to that if you have specific questions. Thal will be considered. Council Member Wilt: My only question there was I would anticipate if that became a path to pursue that. In terms of the capacity, the angle in parking, there's going to be more density than the parallel parking now. That would be an opportunity to add capacity but were saying our existing capacity is perfectly sufficient right now, so that might not be a driver for that. Just trying to make sure I understand the nature of the situation for parking today. In that regard, you talked about the 500 to a thousand feet and Brian mentioned there'd be greater stress on the existing parking if we change that to a thousand feet but we've got capacity anyway. Stress would be-- maybe stress isn't the right word. It would be accommodated? Keith Markel: It would preclude folks from providing onsite parking. It would just relieve the requirement for them. Council Member Wilt: Presumably that parker then would then look for the public parking, which sounds like we have capacity to accommodate it anyway. That right? Keith Markel: In 2023, we do. Yes. Council Member Wilt: The parking in -lieu, because we've done this for some time. The theory is that this money will then be used to build structured parking. We have a account that's holding these funds or? Keith Markel: We do. Council Member Wilt: How much is it at right now? Keith Markel: I believe we're in the neighborhood of $400,000 right now. Council Member Wilt: If we wanted to build a parking structure, they would start at? Keith Markel: Wouldn't come even close, but it would help with some of the study and design work. Page 21INovember 13, 2023 Council Member Wilt: It's really not fee. Parking in Lieu's never going to pay for a structure. Keith Markel: It's never going to pay, no. Its always priced well, well below. Even what a surface - based would cost. Council Member Wilt: Whatever we set that fee at is not going to accomplish anything it sounds like. The next thing, in terms of the parking space monitoring technology, this would be strictly for the town garage. Keith Markel: You could start there. It can work in surface lots or other garages and they can all be networked together. Council Member Wilt: The only one we have, the Liberty lot, which is only 120 spots. You can see them all, you don't really need much technology there. Keith Markel: Only if you wanted to reinforce to drivers who are not yet in Leesburg, if they're looking on the app and they say, "Oh wow, Liberty Lot has 83 spaces available, let's just go there and park." Just to reinforce that understanding. Council Member Wilt: It also sounds like we're never over 75% anywhere. Anywhere they even show up, they're going to find a parking spot Keith Markel: Most of the time. Council Member Wilt: I'd just be interested to see what the cost of that would be because, from this, it doesn't sound like there's much of a need at this point. Keith Markel: In the parking garage, it has benefits because you do see where the first and second levels will fill up. If people see a sign -out front that says, "full level one, full level two, level three has 18 spaces still available." That will immediately send them right to the roof and they're not going to be circling around those lower levels looking far a space. Council Member Wilt: You have to drive around those levels anyway, the way the garage are designed though. Keith Markel: To some degree. Council Member Wilt: All right. Thanks again. Mayor Burk: Council Member Bagdasarian? Council Member Bagdasarian: Thank you, Mr. Markel. You forgot the only time that the garage is all filled when Frayed Knots is playing in downtown, that's the factory under - Keith Markel: It is grid -lock downtown. Council Member Bagdasarian: Of course. Exactly you have buses coming in, though interesting enough, I actually prepared a memo, I was going to share with council in advance of this meeting and in your report actually covered 90% of what was in there, at least. I'm appreciative of all that. What's interesting that one of the studies you shared previously, I think it was the one from maybe six years ago showed that the parking garage capacity was much higher at any given time, 99%, more frequently than it is currently. Do you think there are factors that are in play, more people commuting or living downtown and people taking ride -shares or are those other factors that you think are making an impact on that? Keith Markel: It could be and a lot of its anecdotal, we feel that it has busier-- the patterns are changing. We're seeing busier Friday nights now, and busier Saturday evenings now. Maybe 10 years ago, we were seeing busier weekday, with different business models and business trends, and the way that people are working. Also, remember, these numbers that you're seeing here are only coming Page 22INovember 13, 2023 from a September count. It's a snapshot in time, it's one month out of the year, different months might trend differently. We know when it's free parking in the garage, December gets very busy but that's not really a fair time to count availability, because we've changed the rules. We've made it all free parking where we see occupancy increase. There are different certain seasonal trends to it, we picked September early on, just because we felt that was a fair month where it doesn't have a whole lot of holidays in it. People are getting back to their normal routine. We figured that was fairly a good proxy for the year. Council Member Bagdasarian: Well, and as everyone knows, I'm a huge fan and advocate for having the technology, the counter signage especially in the garage, because that will provide real time data, long term, not only does it provide-- you always hear anecdotally, I spent hours just driving around the parking garage and going from level to level. If you come in right off the bat know there's three parking spots on the third floor. Okay, there you go but not only does it provide that benefit from a customer experience perspective, but we also obtain real time data and we could actually make decisions based on that data that's being collected in real time every day 24/7. I would say we should move forward that in 2024, I think we proved that in our budget two years ago, I think it's something we should definitely move forward with now and at least start with the town garage. I know that part of the issues are, well, the rates are really may not justify the cost for that. I think it's also important to look at what are we charging in the garage? What hours are we charging as far as rates? Is there any less value of parking in the garage, and weekends and evenings versus during the day? Is there any reason why we should not be charging for parking during those times as well. It would help cost justify that. I think that's important to look at. Interesting stuff with the dynamic pricing. It's actually wonderful to see, because part of the reason why I brought this up months ago, was to anticipate future parking needs. Do we need additional parking, structured parking in the town? If there's additional infill development, does that justify or require additional parking and structured parking in the town? It's great to see that we have plenty of parking right now. It's just a matter of communicating that parking. I know, part of the whole process is the signage. I've seen, we've added additional signs in the town, I still would like to see more of your internationally recognized like, P signs for parking. They're certainly signs there but I think making it easier for visitors and guests to find parking is important. A bunch of stuff here. 111 try to cut the short here. Lets see. Where's my list? It'd be interesting to see what the impacts of the 500 foot parking, minimum parking requirements are for the 500 foot if it was lifted. I know this came up earlier for residential as well as commercial. If keeping it at 500 feet, this is not moving to 1000 feet, what would that impact be? Would that require additional public parking? Would that make an impact on that? Then finally, the question is, how effective is payment in lieu? Is it a program that's worth continuing or should we look at other options instead of a payment in lieu program? That's not direction. That's just the question that I'll pose. Then the last thing I have, I know that the town plan talked about having a downtown parking plan, obviously this, what you came back with today is pretty comprehensive but the question is, do we need to move towards a more comprehensive parking strategy plan as outlined in the town plan? Would be interested in your opinion thoughts on that? Keith Markel: I was hoping that was a rhetorical question. Council Member Bagdasarian: No. Keith Markel: It really comes down and so much of this, it's hard to give a concrete answer because so much of it's philosophical. Where do you see the public investment, and where do you see private investment? Different communities handle it different ways? Some feel strongly that it's private investment that needs to cover the cost of these parking facilities, and that the developer's responsible for that. Other places take the approach that it serves the public good and its from customer service and attracting visitors to your downtown and creating vibrancy that it's worthy of public dollars to create these facilities. You don't have any public structure parking in your CIP. Page 23INovember 13, 2023 One of the thoughts is if you wanted to do the all in model of public provides the parking, you put in a parking garage or two into your CIP, now you have a purpose for those payment in lieu dollars that would go towards, and you could start building that justification and collecting funds for that project. You could say no, were happy with the way that the town is developing and the downtown vibrancy where it is today, and our current parking satisfies that need, and you just want to keep status quo. That's another perfectly good answer. I think were presenting to you a cafeteria plan of different ideas and models out there. Honestly, we don't have a real strong push one way or another, but I wouldn't personally recommend spending a lot of money on a lot of additional studies. We've had a lot of those over the years unless you're really ready to make some major shifts in philosophy or really wanting to go into more of that brick and mortar, concrete design of structured parking in the town. Council Member Bagdasarian: I think just two final things and then -- Mayor Burk: Oh no, you said you had a final. Now you're going on the final. Council Member Bagdasarian: This is the final, final. The final final. This is the epilogue. The two things that I feel very strongly about that I think we should consider. We already funded the technology for the parking garage, for the parking counters and all that. I think we should implement that as soon as possible, and I think we should also look at our parking rate structure in the garage, whether it's the current rates, the two hours free. Should we implement ParkMobile in the garage and get rid of the arm, whatever, but I think that looking at that I think those are two priorities that we should consider. It'll offer better experience for residents, visitors, to the downtown, and I think it'll help fund itself. That's it. Thank you. Mayor Burk: Council Member Cummings? Council Member Cummings: Yes, I have one question. Can someone explain to me the Pennington lot? Is it a County? The County owns the lot? Do we have any agreement with the county to use the lot? I'm not saying we should extend the 500 foot rule, but could we incentivize employers to have their employees park in the Pennington lot rather than parking here in the town lot. Do we have that option or is it? Keith Markel: I don't know how we would incentivize that. We can certainly through advertising and marketing, we've talked about those. You talked about the shuttle concept. The County's still running their Courthouse shuttle from the Pennington lot during workday hours, but it is a County owned, County managed lot. Currently they've opened it to the public at no cost for both the surface lot and the substantial number of spaces in their structured parking garage. Council Member Cummings: We don't have like an agreement with the county or anything? Keith Markel: No. Council Member Cummings: Okay. I just was curious. I know we talk about it all the time but now we want people to park there, but I didn't know if we had some sort of effort. Keith Markel: That is the largest concentration of parking resources that we have in the downtown, and it's just a three block walk from market street, but it doesn't have the utilization that we'd hoped for. Council Member Cummings: Then just one comment. I think the one thing that I've heard from a number of folks investing in the downtown through redevelopment and other development. One of the items I think that could also help us as we're analyzing and moving forward with parking, and its something I'm going to bring up later, is streamlining and cleaning up the zoning ordinance on parking for the historic district as far as the size of parking spaces, the size of the width of-- in the egresses and ingresses and things like that. Currently in the zoning ordinance, we have a design for a Costco or a Walmart, that type of parking lot, even here in the historic downtown, and obviously that doesn't work. We have to look at adjusting and cleaning up some of that language so I'll be asking about that later future work session. Page 24INovember 13, 2023 Keith Markel: Okay, all right. Mayor Burk: Council Member Cimino -Johnson. Council Member Cimino -Johnson: Thank you for your presentation, everyone. I just have a couple questions. The first one is about the ParkMobile occupancy rate summary. Does the average occupancy or max occupancy include people who do not pay? Keith Markel: They do not. That is one area where we would come up short because it's only calculating those folks who are using the app and paying. Those who are coming in mooching parking for 20 minutes here and there, we're not catching those. Council Member Cimino -Johnson: Okay. Occupancy could be higher theoretically? Keith Markel: It could be. Council Member Cimino -Johnson: Okay. My second question is, all the spots all around town that is ParkMobile, are they all the same time limit? Keith Markel: They are. Yes. Council Member Cimino -Johnson: Okay. I think this might be a question for Russ, but have we had businesses ask like, "Hey, could you make these three spots 30 minutes or 15 minutes as opposed to two hours?' Because they want people to come in and out. Keith Markel: Seeking shorter timeframe, sorry Russ. In front of the post office, I believe we have, what are they, 15 minutes or so? I don't know that they're ParkMobile regulated. Those are the only two short duration parkings I know as well as the loading zones that we have downtown. Council Member Cimino -Johnson: Okay. Russell Seymour: Typically the only time we get those questions are depending on the type of business it is. For office space, those types of businesses know for some of the restaurants that are doing delivery service in particular, as Keith mentioned, it was the loading and unloading zones. You'll do get requests for those and we've had some that have said, "Can we just block these sections off for that use?" Council Member Cimino -Johnson: No business is asking to make it just a short time that they can pay for that spot. Russell Seymour: You've had some businesses yes, sir, that have asked or requested, they've made a request to block it off so that you have, instead of going where it's an hourly parking rate, you would come in there and say, all right, you've got an hour to park there or you've got an offloading and unloading so about 30 minute parking spaces for those, but nothing that has been cutting down those rates. No. Council Member Cimino -Johnson: Okay. Thank you. Then my — Keith Markel: Fair point in case you want, you can pay a portion of the hour. You don't have to pay the full two hours if you only want to be there for 30 minutes. Council Member Cimino -Johnson: Right, but I'm thinking about businesses saying, "Hey, my customers are coming and picking up something, I don't want them to be here more than 10 minutes because we have people coming in and out constantly." Instead of giving someone two hours to park there so you got cars moving constantly. Keith Markel: In the downtown on South King Street for example, we've got this 20 minute loading, unloading, passenger pickup stamped concrete areas. Highly used for that purpose. Page 251November 13, 2023 Russell Seymour: I apologize, I misunderstood the question, thought you were talking about parking rates and dropping down the time of it. As far as people coming in and dropping things off for businesses, we tied to that as part of the loading as well and looking at the loading zone. That was wrapped up actually in our discussions that we're having with regard to the loading and unloading. That's where those comments have come in about allowing people to be able to come in, drop something off, pull out but it's tied to that discussion. Council Member Cimino -Johnson: Excellent. Thank you. My final question is about payment in lieu. Have we talked to developers on what they would pay? [laughs] [crosstalk] Keith Markel: We've talked to lots of developers and what they would like to pay and we can put payment in lieu. It's a tough topic and Brian's been living in that world for many years Brian Boucher: For this, we didn't go out and ask what people thought they would pay. We just went to look at what's the cost, what do other jurisdictions do to capture that cost and that's really where we left it. We didn't go out to the development community and say, "Hey, would you pay for example, $16,000 far space?" Because most of them will say, No I don't want to pay $8,000 now" [laughs] Council Member Cimino -Johnson: Thank you. Keith Markel: The big complaint we hear is that its not going to do anything. It doesn't get me anything and you don't have any plans to build anything. It's just going into this magical pot that we haven't touched in many years. In the parking study in 2015, the group came back and said, payment in lieu is fine, it makes sense, but it would be good to have a project that you're pointing towards with those funds so that people realize that they're paying towards something. Council Member Cimino -Johnson: When was the last time that was used, as one payment? Keith Markel: Payment in lieu? Council Member Cimino -Johnson: Parking in lieu, yes. Keith Markel: Payment in lieu wasn't too long ago. We have those every so often with the last increase. [crosstalk) Council Member Cimino -Johnson: The last time someone payed for. Keith Markel: The last time somebody actually purchased space. Brian Boucher: We've had one this year. One space. This is a down year so far. We've only had one space purchased this year. It's about 240 spaces total over the years. Council Member Cimino -Johnson: Okay, Thank you. Mayor Burk: Vice Mayor. Vice Mayor Steinberg: Well, thank you, Madam Mayor. I have an important question. Where's the Madison lot? [laughter] Page 26INovember 13, 2023 Keith Markel: The most underused lot. Its a great lot. It's right on Harrison Street. It's in front of the commercial development there as part of Crescent Place, and it's actually a town -owned lot. Mayor Burk: Okay, wait a minute. Give me that again. Keith Markel: It's right across from Ratio Park. It's signed. We have the bus shelter there and you have the bike shop and a number of those retail establishments. Vice Mayor Steinberg: Where the love sculpture is. Keith Markel: Exactly. Yes. Vice Mayor Steinberg: All right. That makes sense. That clarifies that. Keith Markel: It was built by the developer, dedicated over to the town and they did not want to keep it. It's a town public lot. Vice Mayor Steinberg: Lucky us. Keith Markel: It replaced an old lot that was there back in the Barbara and Ross days. Vice Mayor Steinberg: I'm not sure which one of these questions to ask first. I'll ask. What is the crystal ball look for us for the next 10, 15, 20 years? What do we honestly expect traffic modes to be or become? Do we have any clue? Is there any offering in industry out there that says this is what as a municipality you might expect to see in terms of how people are getting around and parking and all that? Keith Markel: No. Vice Mayor Steinberg: All right. That means the planning is still pretty much on us. It's more or less. Keith Markel: What's the downfall look like? What redevelopment happens? What do you hold those folks to? Vice Mayor Steinberg: As we look at pay in lieu and all these things, and several times the conversation has been predicated on people willing to walk. If people are willing to walk, then the whole thing falls apart. Would it be a good idea, when we talk about structured parking, if that's a direction we think we might go in, which better utilizes land by the way in an area where land is becoming increasingly more and more expensive and unavailable. How do we get at this for structured parking? Could we better utilize the streets if we started eliminating street parking and improve traffic flow, one way streets notwithstanding. I'm not sure where we're going with that yet. Is it a good idea from an engineering standpoint that we think about having fewer cars parked on the streets? I know that might not be a particularly popular idea for some businesses, or even some residents for that matter, but it starts locating the parking in various specific situations and people are willing to walk. We're simply better utilizing our resources, the expense, not withstanding. What do we think about that concept? Keith Markel: It's definitely a school of thought out there. Vice Mayor Steinberg: [laughs] Keith Markel: "Do you want bike lanes? Do you want wider sidewalks?" All those things. You're fighting in a very narrow right of way. Vice Mayor Steinberg: Exactly. Keith Markel: Especially designed in the 1750s. Page 271November 13, 2023 Vice Mayor Steinberg: Especially in an area precisely with very narrow streets and in an area where increasingly as projects come online. We know, or at least we hope that Virginia Village is going to get built and Kevin Ash's Hotel possibly and several other projects in the immediate downtown area, including on the corner of Loudoun and King in the black shutter building. The Liberty lot is still under discussion. That's an important component here in terms of structured parking. There's going to be increasing demand and pressure on what we have, regardless of what studies now demonstrate in terms of availability. I appreciate that, but if we think, again, it might be simply better to start viewing this thing more holistically and saying, we really should get these cars into several more -centralized locations, and if we have to incorporate shuttles or what have you, maybe that works. That's something we have to plan for. Obviously these are 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 -year projects that not to mention figuring out how to pay for them. Now, the discussions with the Liberty lot, there has been willingness expressed by certain developers to enter into long-term leases, which also helps offset the cost of the parking. The $16,000 is an interesting figure. In payment in lieu, let's say you start charging $16,000. All that does is it allows the developer to move forward. It doesn't guarantee anything in terms of parking for the project or even for the town. It's a pot of money, but I'm not sure it's a very specific kind of an answer that addresses the problem assuming we have one. Now, let's assume we don't have one. We still start thinking about it in terms of future planning. Again, where will we be 5 years or 10 years down the road? If were not going to address it till then, then were behind in the planning process. I know this has been an ongoing conversation for any number of councils, and years, and so on, but I'm not sure we've arrived at the proper solution yet. Thank you. Mayor Burk: Okay. I've got some questions. [chuckles] Is there any chance, as Council Member Cummings pointed out, the Pennington lot is so underused, it's striking. It's a huge garage, has lots of space, very few people use it. The surface parking, the part of it very used during the day, pretty much, but this garage is sitting there so underutilized. Is there any possibility of having a conversation with the County to do a joint marketing program to get people to use it? It's an asset that sits there and doesn't get used at all. I would think they would want to see people in there. Is that anything that we've ever thought about, or talked to them about, or could we do a marketing plan together, or put up signs that indicate that that's public parking there? Keith Markel: I don't know that they would see a big benefit in a marketing campaign because they built what they needed to build for the courthouse, and that's not their business to be concerned with our downtown parking needs. Mayor Burk: But they overbuilt. Keith Markel: They overbuilt. Mayor Burk: Tremendously overbuilt, so I would think they would want to have it used. Keith Markel: I don't know, that's a question we could ask them. We have put up additional signage that we talked about several months ago. More signage is yet to come. The County, as part of their courthouse project, did add additional and updated signage, so we have beefed up signage directing people, especially where we were lacking before, when you're coming from the east, down Edwards Ferry Road, and from that direction to sort of peel people off and send them back to that garage and that space. With these on -site parking counting signage, here we could have digital signs throughout downtown that doesn't have to be right next to the garage, but you could have as you're coming on East Market Street, a sign saying, Pennington Lot, 380 spaces available. That would just kind of reinforce to everybody that if pull up to the Pennington Lot, you've got your choice. Those sorts of opportunities exist, as well as any sort of other marketing campaigns that Russ and Ms. [inaudible] may be willing to entertain. Page 281November 13, 2023 Mayor Burk: I would think wed want to think about that. Keith Markel: There are wayfinding signs as well. We're going to be beefing those up and there's a wayflnding study to refresh the amount of signage out there. Mayor Burk: Again, we don't want to oversign. Keith Markel: No. No. Mayor Burk: We most certainly need to get into that. The parking in lieu discussion always infuriates me. Developers know this, because they'll come in just as you said, and they say, "You're asking for $8,000 and I get nothing from it. I don't get a parking space, I don't get a guaranteed parking space. I don't get that, I don't get anything, da dada." You get the opportunity to not have to provide a parking space. A $30,000, $40,000 parking space. Don't come in here and tell me that you're not getting something because you most certainly are getting a great deal to not have to pay for these parking spaces. The one thing that has me concerned, and I will bring this up individually as we go along, but I just recently had a meeting with the business people downtown, and parking was one of the things that came up for them. That's a very central issue for them. If you don't have the parking spaces, people aren't going to stay. They're not going to come here. We're trying to encourage people to have these day trips to come down here. That's all really good, and it's working. We're getting lots of visitors here, but if you don't have parking, people, they'll just drive through to the next place. We need to be very careful when were considering all of this. Most certainly we don't have the demands of a Costco or something like that anymore downtown, but we need to be careful that we don't assume everybody wants to walk, and everybody lives nearby, and everybody comes down to the downtown. I live within walking distance, and I can tell you one neighbor and I are the only ones that walk downtown. The other ones, if they want to go downtown, they drive. Behind me, there's much less people walking, I can tell you that. [laughter] Mayor Burk: Behind you, behind you. Then the other thing, I need a clarification on the 500 -foot rule. Brian, what did you say about if you're out of the 500 feet, you have to provide half of the parking? Brian Boucher: Yes, in the H-1 Overlay District, which covers the B1, if you're outside of those rings, there is still a bit of a reduction in parking. You only have to supply half the parking that would normally be required by the ordinance. Literally, those are the two things inside the-- You're either in 500, where you're exempt, or you're outside of it, where you supply half. Mayor Burk: By half? Brian Boucher: Yes. Mayor Burk: That's a pretty generous - Keith Markel: Subsidy. Mayor Burk: -subsidy that we're giving you there. Then the 1,000 feet, you may as well just say there's no parking required. Because it covers just about everything. Keith Markel: For existing. Anything new, it would have to still park itself under this rule. Brian Boucher: One other thing 1'11 just mention, we have some pretty interesting rules downtown. If you have existing parking and you're within 500 feet, and you say, "I want to add onto my building and 111 just take where that parking is and 1'11 put my building there." The way the ordinance is written, Page 29INovember 13, 2023 because that's existing parking, look, you don't have to have it because it's existing. If you want to take it away, you have to do the pay in lieu fee for that. If you're going to build a building on existing parking or, "I'm going to put my building here inside the 500 feet," you pay for the parking you were moving, the spaces, and then you also pay for the parking for the square footage you're adding. That was, I think, put in there to inhibit people from just making the whole downtown one big building. Mayor Burk: Exactly. Oh, I see over at the other end. Brian Boucher: Oh boy. Mayor Burk: Let me make sure I've gotten all my questions before we begin. I think so. I think I got most of them. The residential parking zone in the H-1, I was a little concerned, but that's the H-1. There's no apartments. We don't have any restricted parking apartment developments, big. That would've been a problem to put them together. Then I chuckled when you said Loudoun Street in Town Hall on Fridays from 12:00 to 3:00. Could that be somebody from the Tally Ho, the big bus? That's all I've got right now. Mr. Bagdasarian. Council Member Bagdasarian: Your comments, Madam Mayor, prompted a few things. A couple things. Going to your point about meeting with the downtown businesses and the need for downtown parking goes back to parking technology. Knowing that there's parking available and where that parking is available. It also lends itself to our brand promise of the hometown of the 21st century. I'm going to keep beating that dead horse. The second thing regarding Pennington, I know that's come up a few times tonight, I think the best way to fill the Pennington lot, and we're not going to do this obviously, is if we charge $10 an hour for the town garage, $10 an hour here, free parking at Pennington, I think that's probably the most effective way to do that. Clearly, the town garage has plenty of capacity right now, but if we do really want to drive people to Pennington, that would be the way to do it, is to charge market -based rates for that. That is possible. I don't know if were going to do that, but that's if we really want to drive people to the Pennington lot. Thank you. Mayor Burk: Council Member Wilt Council Member Wilt: Thanks. Just one thing. I wanted clarity on the figures. I heard the number for payment in lieu, we've sold 240 spaces in the program to date. Keith Markel: Over the past 20 -- Brian Boucher: Yes, over the past 30 -some years. Council Member Wilt: Was that all at $8,000 a spot? Brian Boucher: No, really, until 2015 when it was created, it was $3,000 and it stayed the same for over 20 years. It was only changed back in 2015. Then they put a consumer price index, escalator clause up. Council Member Wilt: That's where my math went awry. I didn't come up with $1.9 million. Brian Boucher: [crosstalk] where the amount of money go. Council Member Wilt: Thank you. Mayor Burk: There's a couple of things that we need to give direction to staff. Let me see. Let me get to it. The residential permit parking and changing that to making it one big district by and large, and then allowing two-hour commercial parking during the day. Am I describing that correctly? Nirija Chandrapu: Two hours free parking for visitors. Page 30INovember 13, 2023 Mayor Burk: Two hours free parking for visitors. Keith Markel: That's after Nirija does her analysis. There might be some places where that doesn't make sense. We're especially concerned around the Courthouse. We don't want people coming in and parking or making it impossible for residents to be able to get spaces. Where the survey shows that there is a good turnover of vehicles traffic, that it would make sense to do that. It's been a very successful prototype there on Ward Street. Mayor Burk: Are there four people on council that would like to see that? You're asking to look at it? You're asking us to allow - Keith Markel: General endorsement. We may need to come back to you with a code change or not, so we're still trying to iron that out from a legal perspective. If you all are in general support of that, that would he the path that we would head down. Mayor Burk: Do we have four people? Yes, are you -- Council Member Cummings: I'm sorry. I know I'm pulling an Ara here. Have we approached the residents yet about this idea? Keith Markel: We have. Niraja Chandrapu: [inaudible] Mayor Burk: Would you get to the mic so people can hear you? Thank you. Niraja Chandrapu: We will do that during the evaluation process because that is the time when we have the public hearings, and that is when we would hear their input. Council Member Cummings: I just want to make sure folks understand the program so that we don't have a bunch of emails to the Town Manager. Kaj Dentler: I can chime in here a little bit. For one, we have implemented this program on Ward Street and Cornwall, and it's been very effective. It's two hours for anybody to park. If you're a resident in the program, you can park there as long as you want. It has been very effective. Two, the reason it's come back for Council discussion to see if you want to expand that in the downtown is because the downtown, the hotel on South King Street that we were talking about, raised concerns from residents immediately nearby on Royal Street, there would not be enough parking. Once we implemented the program on Ward Street and Cornwall, it proved effective to me and to staff, it is a valuable tool to expand that in the downtown so residents in the program can have a spot, they're confident. If they don't move their car, they're not going to be ticketed. Others who come in and for a short time can park for two hours. Mayor Burk: Are there four people that would be interested in pursuing that? Indicating that we're interested in it. I think that's everybody. That's 6-0-1. No, it's not because we didn't vote. This is a Monday. Sorry. Keith Markel: Your straw poll. Mayor Burk: It was a straw poll. Sorry. [laughs] I know. It didn't do that way. No, it didn't go that way. The next one that we need to give direction is the payment in lieu. Are we interested in raising the payment in lieu cost? Are there four people that are interested in doing that? That doesn't move forward. The next one is the structured parking, general jurisdiction to what? Is this about the rates, the structured parking, payment in lieu, and structured parking? Keith Markel: Was that what Brian spoke to you there? Page 311November 13, 2023 Kaj Dentler: I think, Mayor, in regards to payment and lieu, the discussion has been over the years for as long as I've been with the Town for sure. Do we increase the fee? Council doesn't show any interest of doing that Do we do away with the program or leave it as is? I think those are your three options that have been on the table for 20 years. I think that's what you should be focused on. Do you want to keep it? Do you want to get rid of it? Mayor Burk: Are there four people that want to keep the program as it is now? For the time being. Council Member Cummings: Without changing the route. Mayor Burk: For right now. That straw poll says yes. Keeping it the way it is now. Next one is the 500 -foot rule, or going to 1,000 feet. If you're 1,000 feet close to the garage, you don't have to provide parking. If you're 500 feet, you don't have to provide parking. Outside of that 500 feet, you have a dispensation of having half the required parking. Do we have four people that are interested in keeping it at the 500 -foot rule? Keeping it at 500 feet from the garage. That moves forward. Parking space technology. Everybody's for that one, right?. We're moving that one forward. At least in downtown parking ratios. We are not looking at increasing the rates at all. Is that one of the ones you wanted to - Keith Markel: We didn't propose any rate increases for parking. Oh, except for if you're talking about the variable rate on the on street space, which we aren't recommending at this point. Mayor Burk: You're not recommending that right now. Okay. No increases at the garage. Yes, Mr. Council Member Wilt Council Member Wilt: One other thing. It didn't come up tonight, but the topic of the Liberty lot, and that's been within this public private partnership discussion. One of the last meetings we had highlighted the remediation costs of $17 million for that Where is that standing now? Because if that's not going-- I mean, do we put a spike in that and say we move on from that concept to do something else with a Liberty lot? Or where is that standing? Because that does involve parking. Mayor Burk: It does. We sent the members of the commission to talk about it one more time and they're going to come back in December with a recommendation. A report and a recommendation. Probably we should allow that to happen in December to hear their arguments pro or against and make the decision come December. Council Member Wilt: Okay. The expectation then would be either we found a path forward or were done with it so we can move on to something else. Mayor Burk: Right Correct. Is that everybody else's understanding at this point? Okay. Did I give you everything you needed? Did I go through everything? Is there anything I missed? Got it. Keith Markel: We're good. Mayor Burk: Okay. You can move forward even though you went over your time by 10 minutes. Keith Markel: I know. I filled every minute of that, yes. [laughs] Mayor Burk: Okay. Thank you all. Appreciate all the information. We now are going to go into a closed session. Oh, you want to go do that first? {laughs] Okay. Does anybody have any future items for the agenda? Council Member Cummings: I have Mayor Burk: What do you have? Page 32INovember 13, 2023 Council Member Cummings: I had like to see if there's four head nods. I know that we are in the two year window of not amending the Zoning Ordinance, but I'm gonna ask for a one because don't tell me I can't do something. No, I'm just kidding. It's a minor one, regarding parking space, dimensions, internal vehicles, circulation and parking lot landscaping limited to the H-1 District, and were asking, staff is aware of this. This is for some folks who are doing re -work in the historic district. They're just asking for an update in the Zoning Ordinance for recommendations regarding reducing parking stall dimensions for lots of a certain size, parking facilities of a maximum number of spaces and maximum percentages of spaces in a parking facility. Additionally, allowing for modifications for travel aisle widths. Mayor Burk: Geez. Council Member Cummings: [laughs! Yes. Mayor Burk: [laughs] Yes. Council Member Cummings: It's just a number of things to clean up some opportunity for folks, not taking away spots, not actually looking to add spots as we talk about parking within the historic district. The staff needs flexibility in the Zoning Ordinance is written. My concern is waiting two years for the full Zoning Ordinance to be rewritten, could drastically change the environment that these projects are happening in. Mayor Burk: Did you have a question? Council Member Cimino -Johnson: That are we - Mayor Burk: You're asking for zoning changes for all of those things that he listed? Council Member Cummings: It essentially - Council Member Bagdasarian: [unintelligible 02:00:37]. Council Member Cummings: Yes. Here, let me give you the quick and dirty of it here. It essentially allows flexibility in the current Zoning Ordinance. What we currently have is whether you're building a parking lot in the historic district or you're building a parking lot outside the historic district, you are working off the same required space sizes and-- I keep forgetting this word, I apologize. Travel aisles, whereas the site constraints are smaller in the historic district. Staff needs some freedom and some flexibility to help design these. Mayor Burk: First off, is staff asking for this? Is this coming from staff? Council Member Cummings: This is coming from me. Mayor Burk: Okay. Then go ahead. Mr. Wilt. Council Member Wilt: Yes. I had a constituent talk to me about this also. My understanding, I guess, Kaj, I've heard that staff supports it in that allowing staff to have flexibility. An example I was given was in the 131, a private driveway aisle and staff has no flexibility, is required to be 24 feet wide. King Street itself for public transit is only 21 feet wide and that sounded strange to me. Then also in terms of the historic district parking, we've been talking about parking in terms of providing capacity of parking, that there's a minimum eight feet, six inch on private lots for parking but the town garage itself is sized at seven feet, six inch wide parking spaces to provide that amount of capacity. Mayor Burk: Since I was hit by the car in the parking garage, I'm a little biased here, so I don't know. Council Member Wilt: Again, it sounded interesting to allow, my understanding is the request from staff wasn't to mandate this but to give them case by case flexibility to study the case and is accommodate it. Page 33INovember 13, 2023 Mayor Burk: Is there anybody from staff that's here to talk to this because we have been asked not to make these changes? Brian Boucher: Yes, 1'11 say this in the Zoning Ordinance, the parking standards for space are the same throughout town. In the garage when it was created, we used to have a thing called compact spaces which are 7.6 feet wide, the garage, there were a number of those in the garage, of course, we retried the town garage to make them about eight and a half. Our standard is nine. Typically our standard is nine. There is authority in the downtown area to deal with the commercial entrances coming out onto the road but once you get back beyond it, we just apply the normal parking standards that we apply elsewhere in town. There's no flexibility built into the Zoning Ordinance to change any of the parking standards. That's the width, the dimensional standards I'm talking about here. Mayor Burk: Are there four people that want to request that staff? Did you want to say something before I finished? Vice Mayor Steinberg: Well, I guess basically what is the ordinary procedure then for making this change to give staff the flexibility other than four head nods here? We don't generally work this way? Brian Boucher: Well, there are ordinance requirements, so they'd have to be built into the ordinance if you're going to give administrative flexibility to these standards. It would be in the Zoning Ordinance. I don't know how it would affect the DCSMR Design and Construction Standards manual. There might be a part to play there. I'm not as familiar with the standards I got Vice Mayor Steinberg: Do we need to see language that we can actually approve for this or? Brian Boucher: It depends on what-- often you all will initiate Zoning Ordinance amendments and have a general idea and then ask staff to come back with some type of recommendation. Then you'll consider that and decide whether or not you want to go forward with initiating something. That's what's happened on many occasions. Mayor Burk: Let me ask it this way then. Are there four people that want to do what Brian just said? Which was that we will ask you to go and look at it and come back with a recommendation. Brian Boucher: Come back and just give a little report with the -- Council Member Wilt: Yes. Perfect, that was my intention. Mayor Burk: Yes, of course. Is that good? Brian Boucher: Is there nothing 1 can say to get us out of this? No. Too late now? All right, thank you. Mayor Burk: All right, thank you. Anyone else have anything they want to add? Yes, sir. Council Member Cimino -Johnson: 1'11 look at you, Madam Mayor for this but I sent an email today about the meeting with the Virginia Legislators, I didn't know if this is a place we would bring that up. Mayor Burk: Well, sure. Let me make sure, do you want to find out if there is an interest in meeting with the legislators separately from VML? Council Member Cimino -Johnson: Yes. Mayor Burk: Because VML is having the Legislators meet at Tuscarora on November 30th, I think it is. My only concern is that the Legislators are very, very busy and being really lots of places and lots of people would they come to two places, two times coming to Leesburg? It might be hard for them to accomplish doing that, but if we feel strongly, if people feel strongly about it and four people want to do it we most certainly can do it but I don't know how many well get to be honest with you. Page 34INovember 13, 2023 Council Member Cimino -Johnson: Yes. I just feel we need to meet with them as soon as possible to put our priorities in front of them even if I have to keep doing that so they won't forget Leesburg. Mayor Burk: No. Council Member Cimino -Johnson: Marty Martinez will never forget Leesburg. Mayor Burk: Tell us that he won't forget it. Council Member Cimino -Johnson: I think it's important that we talk to them as much as possible. Mayor Burk: I would agree but I think right now they're getting ready to go into session, so they're in the holidays and stuff. It might be better for us to meet with them at the VML function, especially since they're paying for it. Are there four people that want to have a separate meeting. Reception, meeting, that can be determined. A separate meeting with the legislators outside of the VML meeting that's November 30th. Council Member Cimino -Johnson: That's fine. Thank you. Mayor Burk: All right, anyone else? Okay, then time to go into closed session. Okay. Do you want to take a five minute break? Council went into a recess from 9:06 p.m. - 9:11 p.m. Mayor Burk: I move pursuant to 2.2-3711(A)(5) of the Code of Virginia that Leesburg Town Council convene in a closed meeting for the purpose of consulting with the legal counsel and applicable staff regarding matters of regulatory compliance. All in favor? Council Member Wilt: Second. Mayor Burk: Second. Thank you, I knew I was missing something. Second, thank you. All in favor? Members: Aye. Mayor Burk: Opposed? That passes 6-0-1. All right. Council convened in a closed session at 9:12 p.m. Council convened in an open session at 10:00 p.m. Mayor Burk: Alright. In accordance with Section 2.2-3712, gentleman, gentleman [laughter], in accordance with Section 22-3712 of the Code of Virginia, I move that Council certify to the best of each member's knowledge, only public business matters lawfully exempted from the open meeting requirement under Virginia Freedom of Information Act and such public business matters for the purpose identified in the motion by which the closed meeting was convened were heard, discussed and considered in the meeting by Council Member Mr. Wilt? Council Member Wilt: Aye. Mayor Burk: Council Member Mr. Bagdasarian? Council Member Bagdasarian: Aye. Mayor Burk: Ms. Nacy? Council Member Nacy: Aye. Mayor Burk: Vice Mayor? Vice Mayor Steinberg: Aye. Page 35INovember 13, 2023 Mayor Burk: Council Member Cummings? Council Member Cummings: Aye. Mayor Burk: Council Member Cimino -Johnson? Council Member Cimino -Johnson: Aye. Mayor Burk: Mayor Burk aye. With Ms. Nacy not present. Do I have a motion to adjourn? Vice Mayor Steinberg: So moved. Mayor Burk: All in favor Members: Aye. Mayor Burk: Opposed? 6-0-1 Page 361November 13, 2023