HomeMy Public PortalAbout2024_tcwsmin0408Council Work Session April 8, 2024
Council Chamber, 25 West Market Street, Leesburg, Virginia, 7:00 p.m. Mayor Kelly Burk
presiding.
Council Members Present: Ara Bagdasarian, Todd Cimino -Johnson, Zach Cummings, Kari
Nacy, Vice Mayor Neil Steinberg, Patrick Wilt, and Mayor Kelly Burk.
Council Members Absent: None.
Staff Present: Town Manager Kaj Dentler, Deputy Town Attorney Christine Newton,
Deputy Town Manager Keith Markel, Chief of Police Thea Pimat, Airport Director Scott
Coffman, Public Works and Capital Projects Senior Engineer Karin Franklin and Clerk of
Council Eileen Boeing.
Minutes prepared by Deputy Clerk of Council Lyndon Gonzalez.
AGENDA ITEMS
1. Items for Discussion
a. Leesburg Police Department - 2023 Crime Report
Leesburg Police Chief Thea Pimat presented Council with the 2023 Crime
Report. The report highlighted the number of calls for service received in 2023 and
broke them into two categories. While there was an increase in calls since 2022, the
numbers are still below the pre-COVID calls.
Council and staff discussed the item.
No further action requested by Council.
b. Ait ort Traffic Control Tower
Mr. Scott Coffman gave Council an update on the development of the new air
traffic control tower and provided a timeline for when the Siting Study would be
completed. It was reported that there has been a 61% increase in air traffic over the
last five years and is driving the need to keep a control tower at the airport. After
Federal and State funding, it is projected that the Town will be responsible for
approximately 2% of the cost of the control tower.
Council and staff discussed the item and what limitations the Town can place
on the Airport.
Staff will counsel with the FAA and the Town's outside counsel to be prepared to
discuss the restrictions at the joint work session with the Airpon Commission on May 8, 2024.
2. Additions to Future Council Meeting
a. Proclamation Requests
i. A proclamation request was received to proclaim Leesburg - Daybreak
Rotary Club Day at the April 23, 2024, Council Meeting.
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Council Work Session April 8, 2024
It was the consensus of Council to add this proclamation to the April 23, 2024,
Council Meeting agenda.
ii. A proclamation request was received to proclaim April 27, 2024,
Arbor Day in the Town of Leesburg at the April 23, 2024, Council
Meeting.
It was the consensus of Council to add this proclamation to the April23, 2024,
Council Meeting agenda.
b. Future Council Meeting and Agenda Topics
Mayor Burk asked for a consensus from Council that remediating the Liberty
Lot site was a consideration.
It was the consensus of Council that a request to remediate the site would be considered.
Mayor Burk requested Council consider holding a joint meeting with the
Planning Commission to hold a joint Public Hearing to consider the Zoning
ordinance text amendment initiated at the April 9, 2024, Council meeting.
It was the consensus of Council to hold a joint Public Hearing on May 2, 2024, with
the Planning Commission to consider the proposed amendments.
Council Member Cummings requested information, prior to the joint meeting
with Council and the Airport Commission on May 8, 2024, on what is allowed or
not allowed to be built at the airport.
It was the consensus of staff to incorporate this into the May 8, 2024, work session
with the Airport Commission.
Vice Mayor Steinberg requested Council consider a supplemental funding
request of $43,000 for the Leesburg Performing Arts Center Business Plan by Webb
Management be added to the April 9, 2024, Council meeting for approval.
It was the consensus of Council to add this to the April 9, 2024, Council agenda.
Vice Mayor Steinberg requested Council consider initiating a Zoning
Ordinance text amendment to allow data centers by Special Exception in all zoning
districts be added to the April 9, 2024, Council agenda.
It was the consensus of Council to add this to the April9, 2024, Council agenda.
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April 8, 2024
3. Adjournment
On a motion by Vice Mayor Neil Steinberg, seconded by Council Member Cummings, the
meeting was adjourned at 8.22 p.m.
Clerk of Council
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April 8, 2024 — 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: [inaudible] Tonight's Town Council Work Session of April 8, 2024. Our first item
tonight is the Leesburg Police Department Crime Report.
Thee Pirnat: Good evening, Madam Mayor and Members of the Town Council. To start off the crime
report, I'm first going to go over our calls for service for 2023. We had a solid increase of 43,160 calls
as compared to our 2022 numbers where we only had 33,811 calls. We are still below our pre-COVID
call volume, though, so this is not very alarming. Additionally, you will see in the next slide many of
these calls are the result of proactive police work.
Here's our top 10 calls as initiated by the community on the left. Then you have the top 10 calls our
officers initiated on right. You'll see on the left the community member -initiated calls, the top 10
totaled to 8054, but our officer -initiated calls total 20,895. A majority of these officer -initiated calls are
quality -of -life issues addressing things like traffic, parking violations, and extra patrol requests that we
receive.
All right, before I get into this very busy table and the following very busy tables, I'm going to explain
to you a little bit the methodology here. The second to last column is the percentage change from
2022 to 2023. The very last column is the percentage change when you take the three prior years
2020 through 2022, and their average as compared to 2023. Because I think that's a better way to
actually track a potential trend.
Now, the percentages are there for everything, but the ones you really want to pay attention to are the
green and the red. A green number is a statistically significant change downward, which is good.
Where red is going to be the opposite, that's going to be a go up, that's going to be bad. If it's in black,
that's because it's a single -digit crime, and there's really not enough of a sample to really consider a
percentage increase or decrease, or it could be that there's just not a statistical change.
Our crimes against persons, I do want to draw your attention to the category of forcible fondling or
sexual assault, we had a 29% drop in 2023 from 2022, but when you look at the three-year average,
were actually at a 20% increase. Now, 2020 does skew some of our crime data because it was an
anomaly due to the fact that you had less contact between people.
I also want to note that in certain crime categories, and this is certainly one, that an increase here
could be just an increase in reporting and not the actual incidents. In the case of sexual assault, we've
had a lot of media interest and a lot of education. I think that it has generated a lot of extra reporting
due to the awareness, and that's not necessarily a negative thing.
The areas that have been consistently increasing over the last few years when you look at the three-
year average are aggravated assaults, which is up 13%, simple assault which is up 20%, and
intimidation, which is up 30%. When you look at our crimes against property, we've had an increase in
destruction vandalism type cases up 23%. I'm just going over the three-year average comparison.
The extortion blackmail is up 48%, which you can thank social media apps for that increase. That's
where we are seeing a lot of that. False pretense is up 72%, that's often the crimes we see with gift
card scams or Bitcoin scams. Shoplifting has a significant increase with 59% over the previous three-
year average. Theft from motor vehicles also increased 51% over the previous three-year average.
Impersonation is going up at 50%, but still below pre-COVID numbers. Just for comparison, in 2019,
we did have 41 of those cases as compared to the 27 cases we had last year. We had notable
declines in credit card fraud, that's down 17%. Wire fraud, which is down 16%. Robbery, which is
down 44%. Theft of motor vehicle parts down 7%. Then other larceny types are also down 7%.
Crimes against society. We certainly had some increases here, drug violation is up 27%, and drug
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equipment violations are up 62%. We are seeing issues with the vape pens, or the vape pens are in
the hands of minors, which is why you're seeing these offenses here. In some cases, they are laced
with THC or marijuana -type substances. That's some of the issues we're seeing.
There's also been a substantial increase with weapon law violations. Part of this is due to the schools
are very diligently reporting weapons found in the schools now. If a child brings a BB gun or a
pocketknife, they're letting us know and it's going to be classified as a weapon law violation by code
and that's how we're writing it. That's even in the case of the schools handling the situation
administratively due to the child's young age or any other circumstances.
The increase in the pornography/obscene material is up 184%, so certainly some that is attributed to
our efforts working with the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, but also a lot of these
reports have to do with juveniles sharing inappropriate pictures of themselves with other juveniles.
That's why we're seeing a lot of those as well. I do apologize there is a typo here in the last row, the
row with a total group A offenses. The number should read 2149 for 2020, not the 2458, that number
was actually from 2019. Overall, the Type A crimes are up 15% in 2023 from 2022. The previous
three-year average should read 29% increase instead of 24%.
Now our Group B arrest, there's some staggering increases here with the exception of the trespassing
offenses most of these offenses are directly related to alcohol or alcohol -related crimes. Group B total
arrests have gone up 66% over the previous year, and a total of 111% over this previous three-year
average. However, in 2019, the number of Group B arrests was 361. We still have not returned to our
pre-COVID numbers, because I know a lot of those percentages are very alarming but please
remember we're just recalibrating to what we were.
Overdoses have certainly drawn a lot of public attention in recent years, and rightfully so. Every
overdose is certainly a tragedy. Our overdoses are down compared to the previous year, we had 30
where we had previously 35 and 36, so that is good news. However, we still had five fatal overdoses
last year, which is pretty consistent with our previous two years. All five overdoses did involve adults,
three of the five fatal overdoses were linked to opiates. Two of those three are directly contributed to
fentanyl.
Our crash data here, good news is that we had zero fatalities. We did have a slight increase in
crashes last year from our previous year. We had 1469 crashes. PD is property damage only crashes.
You see personal injury and then hit and runs the top sector there. These are still also below our pre-
COVID numbers of pre -2020. An area of concern, however, is those attributed to alcohol which you
saw on our previous slides there. 34 crashes last year we determined to be alcohol related. This is the
highest number we have seen since 2018 when we had 36 alcohol -related crashes. Just as
concerning is the number of crashes with personal injury involving our pedestrians.
In 2023, we had 14 crashes where 21 pedestrians were struck. That's compared to 2022 where we
had 9 crashes with 12 struck pedestrians, in 2021 with 3 crashes involving 4 struck pedestrians.
We're certainly monitoring that and that's an area concern for our pedestrian safety. Our highest crash
locations, probably not a surprise to anyone here, number one location is East Market Street in
Leesburg Bypass. Officers responded there were 101 times last year for crashes. Number two was
East Market Street at Battlefield Parkway. We responded 91 times for crashes.
Third was Edwards Ferry Road in Leesburg Bypass Road. We responded a total of 49 times. Our
officers are doing their best to make our roads safer. In 2023, they made 81 DUI arrests, which was a
23% increase from 2022. They issued 3,294 traffic citations, which is up 55% from the previous year.
Additionally, they provided 4,034 warnings, which is an increase of 158% from the previous year. Our
officers are out there, and they are very active. With that, I will open it up to questions.
Mayor Burk: Thank you very much. [inaudible] questions. Mr. Bagdasarian. [inaudible]
Council Member Ara Bagdasarian: Yes, please. [inaudible] Do municipalities do client surveys to
see how safe people feel [inaudible] do you do that or does any municipality do that?
Thea Pimat: We actually have one online now. We do have a survey, we were asking them how they
feel. We did push that out as a press release and people can go online and take that survey. That's
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separate from the survey with some people who have called us and asked for us to respond. We
wanted to have more of a general how do you feel, but its certainly not reaching everyone so we can
readvertise that and then we get more feedback.
Council Member Bagdasarian: Last year [inaudible] crimes but the data shows something that's
different [inaudible] feel or they feel safe.
Theo Pirnat: 1 believe that online survey, we had 94% positive reviews so far. They do feel safe and
we are safe. At least we had zero homicides last year which is good news, right?
Council Member Bagdasarian: Its good news. Thank you.
Theo Pimat: Your welcome.
Eileen Boeing: [inaudible]
Mayor Burk: [inaudible] Okay. Is that better? Is that working? Okay. Dr. Cimino -Johnson.
Council Member Todd Cimino -Johnson: Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you, Chief for the
presentation. I guess my first question is, after looking at this, what is the remedy? What do we do
that we're not doing now to see these numbers start to go back down?
Thea Pirnat: Obviously, alcohol's a big issue. We have a lot of events, and a lot of establishments
that are attracting people for those events that include alcohol. That's a factor that were trying to
address. It's not just the events, though. 11 is local individuals that were encountering. We routinely
lock up people for being drunk in public because we find them passed out on the road, but it has
nothing to do with, like I said, any sort of establishments. It's unfortunately individuals making bad
decisions.
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The individual who's been staying-- who's homeless at a bus shelter was actually arrested last night
for being intoxicated in a public place. We're seeing that. It's just a matter of services, but they're not
always willing to take services. Like I said, where it's across the spectrum there. As far as the
pedestrians being struck, that's certainly concerning. I've seen other jurisdictions entertaining things
like no right on red. That's something to take into consideration.
Council Member Cimino -Johnson: Okay, and based off of this, are you putting together any type of
suggestions that we should take up to start to see these numbers come down?
Thea Pirnat: What I'm doing internally is our staffing is a lot better. We're actually are looking at
starting an evening shift where were seeing more calls for service between that 3:00 and 11:00 p.m.
We'll up our staffing on that, and were also going to, with that launch, more of a bike team so that
there'll be a selective enforcement detail. They won't be tied to being dispatched to calls. We can
send them to areas where we know we're having issues proactively and address those. That's
something I'm doing internally. As far as suggestions, 1'11 have to continue to look at that and see what
might work.
Council Member Cimino -Johnson: Okay, and then I'm assuming the police officers have all seen
these statistics?
Thea Pirnat: Yes.
Council Member Cimino -Johnson: Okay. Thank you.
Mayor Burk: Vice Mayor Steinberg.
Vice Mayor Neil Steinberg: Thank you. Thanks, Chief Pirnat. What is impersonation, out of
curiosity?
Thea Pirnat: Impersonation has to do a lot of times with sign -in and pretending to be someone else
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like on a credit card. That's what we see there.
Vice Mayor Steinberg: Okay.
Thee Pimat: It's tied to the fraud offenses.
Vice Mayor Steinberg: Its okay. Out of curiosity, looking at the statistics for alcohol related crashes,
do we yet see, or are we evaluating crashes involving intoxication by marijuana?
Thea Pimat: That is actually an offense category. We had zero arrests for that. Its in the Group B
offenses. We did have zero arrests for it. It's a little harder for us to detect obviously, we have to do
blood work on someone. We no longer can search vehicles for plain smell, as you know.
Unfortunately, yes its a crash. Do we detect alcohol or do we detect marijuana? So far it's only been
alcohol that were detecting. Not to say that there's not a mix sometimes, but so far --
Vice Mayor Steinberg: Alcohol is by far the greater issue.
Thee Pirnat: Yes, most certainly, yes.
Vice Mayor Steinberg: Okay, thanks, Wth the crashes at East Market and Battlefield, now, that's a
bypass. Are we talking about, I assume maybe westbound coming off the bypass onto East Market or
are we talking about on Battlefield, for example, coming off of Market heading east and trying to, say,
cross four lanes of traffic to make a left turn at the light to go to Lowe's?
Thee Pirnat: Yes, it's a little complicated because that's going to be the intersection associated. 1t
could be just prior or just after, but it is going to be the eastbound traffic-- sorry, the westbound traffic.
Vice Mayor Steinberg: So its mostly the westbound traffic and were not seeing a big issue again
with cars exiting off of eastbound Market onto Battlefield and then trying to cross those lanes of traffic
to make that left turn.
Thee Pimat: We are seeing that as well, yes.
Vice Mayor Steinberg: You are?
Thee Pirnat: Yes. It just didn't make the top three.
Vice Mayor Steinberg: Okay. Well, what would be required there, because that's a pretty short step
trying to get off that ramp and then over to the light? Are there any solutions for that?
Thea Pirnat: It should not be permitted at all. It should actually be an extended median because
there's no way to safely cross that many lanes in that shorter distance because you need to establish
a lane change, establish a lane change, and it's just not possible. Yes, that should not be permitted.
Vice Mayor Steinberg: Are you suggesting at some point we may have to prohibit a left-hand turn,
and do a U-turn further up?
Thea Pimat: I would say yes, you do not want them coming off of Market Street making the right and
immediately making the left. They have to proceed straight and find an alternative.
Vice Mayor Steinberg: Something to consider. Is that entirely within the purview of the Town?
Thea Pimat: I don't know if you need VDOT for that particular road or if that's a State —or Town
owned road. I'm not sure on that one.
Vice Mayor Steinberg: Thank you.
Mayor Burk: I just had a couple of questions. The number in regard to shoplifting, that's a substantial
increase. Is that the organized crime type where they run into the stores in a group and take
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everything off the shelves?
The Pimat: It is organized retail theft. It is not the smash-and-grab that we've seen in some localities.
We have not had that here. What were seeing is more individuals working in twos or threes where
they're trying to distract someone that works there while someone else is grabbing the items. They'll
hit multiple stores while they're in Town. We've actually just had a conversation, regional conversation
the Chiefs did, about what's going on and brought in our Commonwealth Attorneys. They'll hit us,
they'll hit Loudoun, they'll hit Fairfax, they'll hit Arlington. They're targeting us.
They're actually finding our locations before they even come here. We're seeing them from other
jurisdictions. That's a regional thing right now. They're looking at pharmacies right now, it's where
we're seeing a lot of thefts, which is a new trend that's come up. We always have the big box stores
we certainly see in our outlets, the cosmetics and the fragrances, anything that they can resell, that's
what were seeing is primarily getting struck right now.
Mayor Burk: There's nothing you can do about the resale part because that's what makes it attractive
to steal all this stuff and then to be able to sell it.
Thea Pimat: We are actually in the process of working with Federal partners on that because that is
an issue, so Homeland Security is involved because of the fact that it's a racketeering potentially type
offense. We're partnering with them on some options that we can do- That's a regional effort that
were all doing. The new law in Virginia last year that was passed where we could do an aggregate
total to make it retail theft is more organized than what if it's just a single shoplifting incident.
Mayor Burk: Is there a way to separate this out? Is there a potential number? Is there a way to
separate it out to smaller businesses as opposed to the outlet with--?
Thea Pimat: We do have that data. We do track the outlets versus other locations. Even the ABC
store, sometimes there's shoplifting there, the gas stations. Those are lot of times the teenagers after
school going in and stealing stuff. Yes, we do have that broken down.
Mayor Burk: That would be interesting to see it.
Thea Pimat: I can provide that to you.
Mayor Burk: The drunken disorderly, is that solely because that's a [inaudible] increase or any of
the separate categories, can they be put together?
Thea Pirnat: Yes, there's been some merging of categories over the last few years including peeping.
Peeping was merged with all other offenses. They've merged several of them. I'm not sure of the
reason, but they did do that. That disorderly conduct actually includes the drunkenness. I added that
that's not how it actually reads if you were to look at our report, but it includes all that. I want to make
sure you were aware of that. It's not just the merging of categories. We certainly see an increase from
previous years, but still below what we were in 2019.
Mayor Burk: Below the 2019 looking [inaudible], but it is quite a lot.
Thea Pimat: It is a lot.
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Mayor Burk: Then to back up on what Dr. Cimino -Johnson said, what do you do with this data? What
do you do with it as Chief [inaudible'?
Thea Pimat: We obviously use it for our patrol efforts and some of our efforts. Like I said, shoplifting
is definitely on our radar, so we are looking at ways to, like I said, partner with our regional partners,
share real-time information. The State has actually come out with a program where well get more
real-time information from them to help us share with other agencies and them share with us.
As soon as we get a photo of someone that shoplifted, like I said, in Loudoun County, Fairfax County,
they're going to be sharing it with us. We know within days they're going to probably be here. Our
Crime Analyst is doing a good job of sharing those bulletins. Those are things that were doing.
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Certainly, the traffic where we see where the violation or the crashes are, you're seeing increased
traffic response there as far as enforcement. That's why you've also seen the increase in proactive
numbers where officers are writing tickets and citing warnings for that. Yes, we do use it to target the
crimes that we can target, as far as prevention.
Mayor Burk: Would you have it categorized Leesburg as the safe Town?
Thea Pirnat: Oh, very. Yes.
Mayor Burk: Even those [inaudible]
Thea Pirnat: Yes, absolutely.
Mayor Burk: All right. Anyone else have any questions? Do you have a question?
Council Member Zach Cummings: No.
Mayor Burk: Thank you very much for your report. It's very interesting. [inaudible]
Thea Pirnat: All right, thank you.
Mayor Burk: All right. Our next item, Air Traffic Control Tower update. Hello, Mr. Coffman.
Scott Coffman: Good evening, Madam Mayor and Members of Council. Thanks for the opportunity to
give you a quick update on where were at with the development of an Air Traffic Control Tower at the
Leesburg Airport. I wish I had a much clearer road map, but we're still developing where this tower is
going to be. I'll first give you some background on where's the airport at and what's been going on
lately. If you live in Leesburg, you've probably seen a lot of airplanes flying over on these busy spring
days. Our traffic in 2023 was up to nearly 90,000 takeoffs and landings. I think that's a metric for the
airport. That's a 61% increase over the past five years, so the airport's been getting busy.
Just this first quarter, the first three months of 2024, up 27%, so some busy days at the airport. Just to
give you a background, that's what's driving the need to keep a control tower at the airport and
construct an appropriate one. Leesburg has very congested airspace. We have a lot of challenges as
an airport. We're not out in the middle of Kansas where we have all this airspace around us. We're in
the V of the Dulles runways which is only nine miles from our airport, so our airspace is limited
horizontally and vertically. We're stuck below the Dulles airspace. That's why a lot of the planes that
you see coming in and out of, mainly southwest Leesburg, are flying low. They're not allowed to go
higher into the Dulles airspace.
That's where our control tower is important to keep those airplanes separated and on a proper route
in and out. It's a congested airport. As I said, were busier than ever. There's been some days over
500 takeoffs and landings. Another reason for a tower is diverse types of airplanes and diverse types
of pilots. Not only does Leesburg got a little Cessna going 90 miles an hour with a student pilot in it,
we also have corporate jets coming in at 140 miles an hour all mixing into that same space, all
headed to that same runway. That's where the tower is providing a level of safety that the airport
didn't have in its first 50 years.
Safety is the benefit, efficiency, we talk about efficiency, FAA likes to hear about efficiency, but that's
really a byproduct. We want to keep the airport a safe place to operate. This is a graphic that I
received from the FAA that I sent to the Board of Supervisors when we were talking about the Village
at Clear Springs, which is going to be developed underneath the flight path. You can see all those
gray tracks. Those are the tracks that are honestly annoying some of the neighbors that live around
the airport. There are a lot of practice touch and goes, that means they're landing, taking off again,
going around a circuit and landing again.
Then the green and the red are more like your business flights that are flying in and out on a flight
plan where they're going to a farther destination. That's one day, that was a 500 -plus day. A lot of
flying going on at our local airport. We've had a control tower at our airport since 2018. For the first
five years, it was under the FAA's NextGen. That's their Next Generation Development Program for
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the FAA. Under the Remote Tower Program, as many of you know, that abruptly ended last May, we
leased and installed a mobile Air Traffic Control Tower, which is a lot less of a looker than our remote
tower system is.
The good news was that the FAA did agree after some pushing by the Town to continue staffing the
control tower, keeping our airport safe. One of the provisions of that agreement was that the Town
constructs a permanent air traffic control facility. The FAA wants us to build an Air Traffic Control
Tower. I think that's important when we talk about grant funding and the eligibility of this tower for
grants. We actually started, we moved from the FAA's NextGen research arm into the Federal
Contract Tower Program. That was always a long-term goal. We wanted to use the remote tower as
the facility, but it was that FCT Program that funds the controllers year in, year out.
There's currently six full-time controllers working at Leesburg. There was actually a Federal study that
noted that contract towers- these are contract personnel that work under contract with the FAA -much
more cost-effective. I think it was over 40% more cost-effective than Federal towers with direct
Federal employees, with exactly comparable safety performances. FAA contract moved to Midwest
ATC, so all of our controllers changed employers in October, and the tower continues to stay open
about 10 hours a day.
Karen Franklin from the Town's Capital Projects division and I are working hard to build that new
control tower. This is a process as all things Federal and FAA are spending their money. First thing
we need to do is identify three candidate sites. That's our Siting Study. It's been underway for several
months. We are now in line to participate in what's called a VISTA. It's a virtual reality recreation of a
control tower, so to make sure that they can see the ends of the runways and over the buildings and
the sun's not going to glare off the roof of the terminal and all these human factor type things.
We hope to have that done this summer. It's one of the pieces that's subject to the FAA's schedule
and not ours. That's a challenge in scheduling this and giving you a good, clear answer of when
things are going to happen. Once the FAA approves the site, we pick a site, they approve it. They
conduct a safety risk panel. Safety risk assessments are very much a part of the FAA's process in
everything they do. Then the Town has a choice to build where we think it's most appropriate for the
airport in the long term. The cost of it. I'll show you in the next slide. We're considering three sites.
One is to the right of the airport terminal. That's my preferred site. Site number two is in a grass area
towards some of our hangers. That one has more challenges to build because of storm water. There's
no roads or less infrastructure there. Then the worst just to kind of fill the placeholder is site three
across the airport, next to At Home store on the airport property. That would be the worst. It's in
wetlands. It doesn't have a road. That's really what our pricing is based off of too. When you see in
your CIP $20 million, that's what were looking at having to bring in all that infrastructure and build on
the west side.
Once that Siting Study is done, then we work on an environmental— something I'm used to doing. I do
a lot of the categorical exclusions for the airport. That's an environmental checklist, but if we are
building an area that has wetlands or something more environmentally challenging, then I will have to
have a contractor --a consultant do an environmental assessment. Even the largest worst -case
scenario would be an actual EIS an Environmental Impact Statement. That can take a long time. If we
build an exit terminal where were building on pavement, probably a categorical exclusion which would
save some time on the project and money.
These two things, the Siting Study and environmental will be reimbursed under a future design grant
from the FAA. This is preliminary work. Then we go to tower design and hire an architectural
engineering firm that's going to put the tower design together. It's not just the building, it's all the
equipment that goes into it. Radios, telecommunications, weather, all those systems are actually
probably just as complex as building the structure.
Then finally, I'm going to skip ahead. I'm running out of time. I see some yawns. Tower construction.
We're expecting it to be three stories plus the cab, which is the working space above. Quite a bit of
space that has to go into that building to support the operation, but all that can fit in a three-story
tower. Project funding, I think the key thing to tell you is that this is not a project that I think the Town
is going to pay for directly 100%. Federal funding is 90%. There's a lot of programs for funding from
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the Federal Government. A lot of it's the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law that was passed several years
ago. The state always matches 8% on federal projects, which leaves a 2% share for the Town of
Leesburg.
Right now, the airport is receiving entitlement funding --let me explain some of the funding programs
and I'l l answer questions afterwards. Entitlement money means this is dedicated to Leesburg. We are
currently dedicated $850,000 a year through 2026. It was a five-year program, and we spent the first
year on a north hangers project. We have three -and -a -half because there's a little bit of extra that was
put towards north hangers.
[beep sound]
[chuckles] Can I have another minute and then 1'11 wrap it up? Thank you. AIP, that's our normal
program that funds the airport projects. Then there's two other Bipartisan Infrastructure Law programs
that we would like to apply for that would fund the construction of the control tower. Costs. I think the
big thing I want to harp on here is the project that's listed in your CIP is $20 million. If it's built next to
the terminal on existing land, and we're just building the building, they've given us a ballpark of about
half of that, about $10 million. That's why I am being unclear about the total cost of the project
because it depends on which site it's going to go on.
Schedule, we'll have to have the siting done and hopefully the environmental the remainder of this
year. That'll put us in position to go to design. I'd like to apply for bipartisan infrastructure entitlement
for money for the design. It's much more flexible on when they'll grant us the money. Some of those
other programs open up only once a year. I think that's my time.
Mayor Burk: Thank you.
Scott Coffman: Thanks.
Mayor Burk: Does anybody have any questions?
Scott Coffman: Did I cover it all?
Mayor Burk: Vice Mayor Steinberg.
Vice Mayor Steinberg: Thank you. Thanks, Scott. I'm still not clear on the difference between the
Contract Tower Program and FAA towers.
Scott Coffman: If you go to the control tower at Dulles Airport has FAA Federal employees working it.
The lower at Leesburg has contractors working for it. The FAA contracts out to three different
companies that divvy up the US. The controllers at our place work for Midwest ATC. It's a company.
Vice Mayor Steinberg: Okay, thanks. [laughter] Just out of curiosity, they shut down our virtual
tower, but they're going to test our whole design virtually. Is that correct?
Scott Coffman: [laughter] That's correct.
Vice Mayor Steinberg: Okay. Always interesting. I guess there's no hope for us to getting-- that was
closed down so we can free up our airspace, right? No, okay. Thank you.
Scott Coffman: In all seriousness, I'd love for Dulles to raise their airspace to give the planes over
Leesburg a little more altitude as they're coming in and out over.
[crosstalk]
Mayor Burk: Mr. Bagdasarian.
Council Member Bagdasarian: Thank you, Scott. Just a couple of quick questions here for you. The
mobile control tower that's currently in operation, is there a duration on how long that will continue to
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operate?
Scott Coffman: The agreement with the FAA was for us to build a tower within five years, which is
pretty much what the schedule is looking like. Hopefully, we get ahead in some places. We know
some places are probably going to take a little longer in that process.
Council Member Bagdasarian: If it took six years, would we have an issue with that?
Scott Coffman: I think we'd have go back to the FAA because we actually have an agreement with
them to build a tower within five years. It's a little frustrating because a lot of the timelines are their
control, not ours.
Council Member Bagdasarian: If you could just refresh my memory as well, what is contributing to
the increase in air traffic that we've seen over in last four or five years? Especially the last couple of
years, it seems.
Scott Coffman: COVID changed everything. I think when COVID first occurred, our traffic spiked. I
think there were more flights at Leesburg than there were at Dulles for a short period of time. I think a
lot of personal people went to aviation. It had already been trending up because of the pilot shortage
and people wanting to learn to fly to move to airline careers. We see that still today. ATP is one of the
nationwide schools that trains people for the airlines. They're at Leesburg and they're flying quite early
in the morning, unfortunately.
Council Member Bagdasarian: Is that trend going to continue in 2024 based on what we've seen in
Q1 this year?
Scott Coffman: I think our traffic will continue to increase. Right now, the airport is full. The Inn is full.
I have a waiting list for both hangars and for parking spaces, so were not adding airplanes to the
airport.
Council Member Bagdasarian: Thank you.
Mayor Burk: That gives me the opportunity to talk about flight schools. If you look at the map the
majority of the flights are flight schools.
Scott Coffman: Yes.
Mayor Burk: [inaudible] Can we give them a time that they can't start before 7:00 and they have to
be done by 9:00?
Scott Coffman: It is a challenge, and it's something that Kaj and Chris Spera, the Attorney, and I are
working on with outside counsel. There are airports that have successfully implemented that, but
usually, they're geared towards regulating jet traffic. A lot of the Federal laws about aircraft noise are
applicable to jet traffic and not flight schools. They just don't even recognize that a little two -seat
airplane is a noise issue, but it obviously is at Leesburg and other cities in the U.S. There's a Town,
Rocky Mountain, out by Denver, 280,000 flights a year, most of them flight training. Their government
and citizens are also having the same struggle with this huge increase in traffic.
Mayor Burk: [inaudible] that we couldn't say to the flight schools, you cannot start before 7:00. You
cannot continue after 9:00.
Scott Coffman: I want to, and we have put out voluntary noise abatement guidelines, and we ask all
of our schools to do that.
Mayor Burk: It's not working.
Scott Coffman: It's not working. One of the things, I'm looking at a lot of other airports to see what
are they doing because the FAA, they really tie our hands on what we can do. We can't single out a
certain type of flying, like flight training. You have to regulate it all. The airport in Florida, that is
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Naples, has long had a big noise problem. They're right in the middle of their community. They call out
the violators. Here's the planes that were violating the curfew. Here's their addresses. Here's who is
doing it. It calls them on the spot. I don't know that that's super effective, but it's one way that they're
combatting --getting compliance with their curfews, in particular.
Mayor Burk: 11 would be better than moving out of [inaudible].
Scott Coffman: Yes.
Mayor Burk: Right now [inaudible] but they're not seeing any results.
Scott Coffman: Evergreen Meadows is in a -
Mayor Burk: Yes, it is. [crosstalk]
Scott Coffman: -it's in a spot.
Mayor Burk: I guarantee they're going to approve it [inaudible], except they'll be in the County, so
they have to deal with it. Can we --right now, we have how many flight schools?
Scott Coffman: There's five.
Mayor Burk: Can we limit the number of flight schools?
Scott Coffman: You cannot, but there's no space in the Inn, kind of situation.
Mayor Burk: You can't have any more than five. I understand that.
Scott Coffman: You can tell me, "Scott, don't go build more ramps for more flight schools, and then
there won't be more planes"
Mayor Burk: [inaudible] There's no way-- right now we're limited to five, but we can't get them down
to three or two. Or?
Scott Coffman: I will have to get back to you when I talk to the Town Attorney because the FAA
regulates the airport business activity and how we don't economically discriminate.
Mayor Burk: [inaudible]
Scott Coffman: I don't know if I want to speculate up here on the podium. A lot of our traffic is flight
training at the airport.
Mayor Burk: Is there an economic impact?
Scott Coffman: Of course, to those schools, those businesses.
Mayor Burk: [inaudible]
Scott Coffman: Yes, they all buy fuel. There's a financial impact to the airport. I don't know. I think
that's great for our future discussion. [laughter]
Mayor Burk: Okay, we'll have it. The control tower, if that were to come in place, would that allow the
planes to be higher when they take off or will they still be limited by Dulles airspace?
Scott Coffman: The control tower will not change the airspace of the airport from what it is today.
Mayor Burk: Somehow, we've gotten ourselves into this predicament of allowing houses too close to
the airport, and [inaudible] it's going to be more and then having now to review that is what you are
saying.
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Scott Coffman: It is a challenge. I look at a lot of case law on other airports that have tried, a lot of
them are very similar to our airport. There's an airport, I don't remember where on the West Coast,
that tried to fine people planes for making early left turns, just like over the Evergreen Meadows, and
the FAA shut them down. There's an airport also in California that tried to put in curfews, like hard fast
curfews, not the voluntary stuff, and the FAA shut them down. They didn't meet their criteria. It is a
hurdle to get over. I want to work with Chris and our outside aviation attorney to see can we get past
those hurdles.
Mayor Burk: [inaudible is something we can do. We ought to look at doing that in your discussions.
Right? Oh, Dr. Cimino -Johnson, you have questions now?
Council Member Cimino -Johnson: Yes, thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you, Scott, for your
presentation. Piggybacking off what the mayor was saying, is there any way we can charge a fee if
they take off between these hours as opposed to, say between 9:00 to 5:00 it's nothing, but after five
o'clock in the evening until nine in the morning, it's a $100 every time you take off.
Scott Coffman: I can look into that. I don't have all the clear answers because the FM requirements
are so cumbersome. I wish I did have a very clear map of how far our boundaries can go. A lot of
municipalities have pushed their boundaries, like I just gave you some examples, and the FAA tends
to push back. The FAA puts so much money into the airport. They want it to be available and open for
public use without discriminating, whether you're a flight school or a jet operator, and they leave it on
the municipalities to regulate the land use and not build homes around the airport. Which is why we've
spent so many evenings in Board of Supervisors chambers opposing yet another thousand homes
under the flight pattern.
Council Member Cimino -Johnson: Then when are the leases up on these flight schools at the
airport?
Scott Coffman: It varies. None of them is longer than five years.
Council Member Cimino -Johnson: Who controls the price?
Scott Coffman: The Town.
Council Member Cimino -Johnson: We could jack it up a thousand percent if we wanted to if we
wanted to get rid of a flight school?
Scott Coffman: Again, back to the FAA, and I can send you some of the language so you can see
what we have to deal with is you can't economically discriminate against one particular company. It's
supposed to he a level [crosstalk].
Council Member Cimino -Johnson: We also need to make money for the airport so we could raise
the rent. I mean, that's legal.
Scott Coffman: Yes. The airport's required to charge reasonable rates and establish a system of
reasonable rates and charges. I don't know that you could actually price them out. I think the FAA
would say that you're economically discriminating against this class of business.
Council Member Cimino -Johnson: What is the estimated high and low cost of the tower to the
Town?
Scott Coffman: The high cost's at $20 million. I'm going to grab Karen from capital projects if you
don't mind.
Karen Franklin: Yes, were not done with the Siting Study, so we don't have those numbers yet.
Giving you numbers is only going to mean were giving you a number that may not be right.
Council Member Cimino -Johnson: That's fine. I can use an estimate, right now.
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Karen Franklin: The high end is what you see in your CIP right now. We're very hopeful that we wont
be higher than that number and were actually feeling a little bit more confident that we're going to be
lower than that number. Whether its all the way down to $10 million, again, we don't know that
answer yet, so to tell you that we hope its going to be $10 million, that's probably lower than I would
feel comfortable telling you right now. I think in the fall when we get the Siting Study done and we
know where were landing, we're going to have much better numbers for you.
Mayor Burk: [inaudible] landing.
Karen Franklin: I didn't realize.
Council Member Cimino -Johnson: When you say $10 million, you mean $10 million to the Town or
$10 million total for the project?
Karen Franklin: Yes, total cost.
Council Member Cimino -Johnson: What's in the CIP? What number?
Karen Franklin: $20 million.
Council Member Cimino -Johnson: $20 million, and I guess 2% of that would be to the Town.
Where's that money coming from?
Karen Franklin: That's a good question. Scott was talking about some of the options. We have some
money through the BIL that we can use to get us through design if we can't get another source. Then
we have several funds that are tower specific that were going to have to do. I think well have to do
some lobbying to get high priority to get those funds. If we don't get them one year, then we're waiting
until the next year to get the funds potentially to be able to move forward. That's where we're less
clear how its going to land because some of those funds we can only ask for at a certain time of the
year. If we miss it by a couple months, were waiting for the next application cycle to apply as well. We
also have other very important projects running concurrently with this one at the airport that we're
using our ACIP, the six -year plan that we've already got set that doesn't have the tower funded in it.
We're having to look for two pots of money, so to speak. It's a bit challenging for us. Scott, may want
to add something.
Scott Coffman: Was your question about where's the local match coming from? Where's the Towns?
Council Member Cimino -Johnson: Right, I want to know -
Scott Coffman: Where's the 2%?
Council Member Cimino -Johnson: -are the residents going to be paying for the tower?
Scott Coffman: No. Actually, if you look in the pro forma in the back of the budget book, it shows the
airport generating a profit not only last year but the next few years that it will help fund those type of
projects.
Council Member Cimino -Johnson: Thank you.
Council Member Bagdasarian: Thank you. Just a couple more questions. I know we have a joint
session in the books for discussing the future of the airport, and it's on who used to live right there at
Evergreen Meadows. I know 20 years ago when there was only 1 or 2 or 3 flight schools, it was a
non -issue. It's really the last couple years, I think, since COVID, like you pointed out, Scott. We see a
massive increase in air traffic above the neighborhood, which obviously is of concern. For our joint
session, it would be great to see an economic and financial impact by use for the airport so we can
make some decisions based on the actual data. What revenue does a flight school generate versus
other uses like direct financial impact. I think that would be great for that joint session so we can,
especially beforehand. Thanks.
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Mayor Burk: Vice Mayor Steinberg.
Vice Mayor Steinberg: Thanks. Yes. Is there any one flight school whose behavior is more
egregious than others in terms of noise, or is it pretty much evenly spread across the board?
Scott Coffman: No, the Mayor says were not doing anything, but we are --
Mayor Burk: No, I didn't. I didn't say that. I said the people think you're not doing [inaudible].
Scott Coffman: People, okay.
Mayor Burk: I didn't say that. [crosstalk]
Scott Coffman: People think were not doing anything. We are doing things behind the scenes. I am
calling out people, particularly on the curfew where it's very cut and dry. If your airplane was out doing
those gray circles at 6:45 in the morning, I'm down in your office saying, "What's going on? You guys
agreed that you would follow these guidelines to help us get along better with the community." We are
following up on those. [laughter] I don't always get direct communication to the residents, but were
doing those things. We created a map. A lot of pilots use an iPad for their charts.
They can download a file onto their iPad that shows those neighborhoods in red, so they actually can
see where the neighborhoods are. Because sometimes as you're flying the plane, you're not really
paying attention to neighborhoods. It's just all trees and homes. We're trying different things and
looking a lot at other airports and what they've done.
Vice Mayor Steinberg: Just to be clear, even if the budget came in at $20 million, the Town's share
would be approximately $400,000.
Scott Coffman: I'm not going to come to you and ask you for $20 million for this project.
Vice Mayor Steinberg: No, I understand that. That's the 2%. Even at the top -most figure, its not a
staggering sum to the Town. That's almost certainly going to come in at about half of that, or likely.
Scott Coffman: Hopefully, if we build on those sites, either next to the terminal or next to the
[crosstalk]
Vice Mayor Steinberg: Yes, I just don't want people to freak out at the reality of the overall project
and then not realize that the Town's responsibility is far less,
Scott Coffman: That is a good thing about the airport is that pretty much 98% funding on those
Capital Projects.
Mayor Burk: All right. Thank you. Again, I didn't say you weren't doing [inaudible].
Scott Coffman: [chuckles] I genuinely worry a lot about the residents at Evergreen Meadows. It's a
very difficult problem to solve because they are at the very end of our runway. No matter what we do,
there's airplanes that are going to overfly their neighborhood. We're trying everything we can to send
planes to the south. We also have to deal with the Federal contract tower that sometimes prioritizes
the bigger picture of what Dulles Airport is doing and where to send our planes. I do spend my
evenings worrying about how we can help them. I realize it's a bit of a emerging problem for the
airport. Thanks.
Mayor Burk: I am not saying you're not doing anything. Okay. I have a request for two proclamations.
One of them is that Council Member Cimino -Johnson who wants a proclamation for Leesburg -
Daybreak Rotary Club Day. Do I have four head nods for that? All right. Noble Atkins, Urban Forester
with Department Public Works and Capital Projects would like to have a proclamation for 2024 for
Leesburg Arbor Day, April 27th. Are there four votes for that? All right. That's all I have at this point.
Anybody on this side have any future Council meeting agenda items? Nobody here. Anybody on this
side?
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Council Member Cummings: I just have one, I make sure. Mr. Bagdasarian brought up having the
economic data for the airport before we have our joint meeting. 1 didn't know if that's something we
need get forehead nods on to ask for that memo.
Mayor Burk: We can do that. We have four people that would like to have that meeting? That's
everybody.
Council Member Cummings: Perfect, that's it.
Mayor Burk: [inaudible] Vice Mayor [inaudible]
Vice Mayor Steinberg: Oh, that's me. I have two things. One, I sent an email to the Council
regarding funding for paying for a consultant to do an in-depth study on the performing arts center at
Liberty. As I said in the email, the study is designed more for the actual creation of and functioning of
a performing arts center and has not a whole to do with whether or not we decide to remediate. As I
explained, we have existing funds that were allocated for study to the project group. There are
remaining funds in the remediation study. Mr. Keith Markel can probably verify the difference. I think
we'll need somewhere between. I don't know, around $5,000 or $6,000 to make up the difference to
get to the $53,000 plus, which is the price of the study.
Mayor Burk: How much money have we spent on the project so far?
Keith Markel: To date, you allocated $30,000 for study money, and you've spent about $20,000 of
those dollars to two outside consulting firms to put together reports and studies and analyses. You've
got roughly $10,000 left of the $30,000. Then what Vice Mayor is proposing is taking the additional
funds that are in that project fund for the remediation study that we did over the past summer to put
towards the project study.
Mayor Burk: [inaudible]
Council Member Patrick Wilt: Just a couple of questions for information. This is a joint private -public
partnership. We've allocated some funds, we've allocated staff time, et cetera. Has the private group
brought forward any cash to fund these studies and such? Are they putting skin in the game?
Keith Markel: I think the biggest thing that they have funded, and I don't know what dollars have
changed hands, if any, is that they've done a lot of architectural design and site layout design work
using DBI as the architecture firm that's put together the different schematics and different layouts that
you saw during the presentations over the past few months.
Council Member Wilt: If we proceed with this, does it make sense to do some cost -sharing with the
private group?
Vice Mayor Steinberg: We could ask.
Mayor Burk: That was the intent. We sent out the RFP.
Council Member Wilt: Because I haven't seen an update in the last year that this has been going on
that the private group has put in any cash to advance this concept which presumably they're going to
profit from if we proceed with it.
Vice Mayor Steinberg: I don't know that we've ever specifically asked them for the financial outlay
that they had put, but I could certainly get you that information. I suspect that privately and
individually, they have spent a fair amount of money of their own on this project. We can get that if
you'd like.
Council Member Wilt: I know we spent additional money just on staff time, which has not been
dollarized. I've not seen a report on how many staff dollars we've committed to this in the past year
also.
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Keith Markel: To your point about the private side investment and what they might stand to gain,
what they're proposing now through the current plan is that the performing arts center will be publicly
constructed, publicly financed, and publicly operated, whether that be by the Town or with a third
party. They are not, as the current proposal is looking to own or operate any aspect of the [crosstalk] --
Council Member Wilt: No, I understand. I'm talking about there's a hotel proposal and a residential
proposal, which are going to be very profitable. I understand. I'm talking about the entire proposal. A
second thought is I'm wondering about this has been about a yearlong effort so far, and from the last
update we heard, it struck me that with the remediation route, that this is a bit of a money pit with $17
million to throw into remediating that site. If we don't remediate it, it seemed like it was a suboptimal
maybe option. Does it make more sense at this point to disassociate this investigation of the utility of
a performing arts center from the Liberty Street lot site and make this a more generic investigation for
the benefit of the Town as a whole?
Vice Mayor Steinberg: I would offer to Councilman Wilt that that's exactly what this conversation is
about. There is no hard decision yet on the Liberty Lot. We may well come to the conclusion that the
Liberty lot site is not going to be appropriate. There have been conversations about alternative sites.
All that aside, we still need more generic information about what this type of operation requires and
what it means to the Town.
Council Member Wilt: That's fair. I would like to, the Liberty Lot, I think, is a parking alternative for
the Town. It's an underutilized asset. I know there's a piece of business coming up shortly to remove
parking spaces from South King Street on the street, which reduces parking. I'm about to close my
parking lot because Goosecup customers use mine because they're not aware of the Liberty Street
parking lot, and there's no entrance from King Street to use it. Moving forward to make that asset
more useful to relieve some of the parking issues, is there a timeframe we can put to determine
whether this performing arts center will use that site or move on to another site so that asset can be
optimized?
Mayor Burk: Was there a question? Maybe the way we should go buy in is to see, first off, are there
more people that are in favor of paying [inaudible] fee to remediate the site. [inaudible] Would that
be okay?
Council Member Wilt: Sure.
Mayor Burk: [inaudible] Do you have objection [inaudible]
Vice Mayor Steinberg: No.
Mayor Burk: Are there four people who would be interested in remediating the site [inaudible] at the
estimated cost of $16 million?
Keith Markel: $17 million on the high side.
Mayor Burk: Are there four people who are willing to -
Vice Mayor Steinberg: Have a conversation.
Mayor Burk: -have that conversation. [inaudible]
[laughter]
Vice Mayor Steinberg: The reason I say that is because Mr. Markel has been very instrumental in
exploring potential outside funding sources. We recognize that where we had more optimistic hopes,
those may have been overly optimistic, and yet we do know there are some outside sources for
funding that we may qualify for. I would just throw that into the mix of the question and say, "Yeah, I'd
be in favor of going forward with that." [laughter]
Council Member Wilt: How do we accelerate this? After a year of study, we have some maze. We
may qualify for something.
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Mayor Burk: We can get exactly [inaudible] --
Council Member Wilt: I'm wondering about our property taxes. We spent $16 million to remediate 2
acres for a private partnership when we brought up trying to help our properly taxes and our utility
rates in past discussions. That's a lot of money to be thrown at something. We're concurrently having
other discussions about cost of living in Leesburg.
Mayor Burk: I guess what I'm trying to is do we have four people that would be willing to get $16
million [inaudible] without being [inaudible] money was coming from perhaps [inaudible]. Are there
people that would be interested and willing to commit that money to remediate the site at the Liberty
Lot? 1'11 just leave it at that, unless there's anything you want added, Mr. Wilt, to that motion.
Vice Mayor Steinberg: I would just have one comment about that if we're going to take this vote first.
Yes, this conversation involving this project has taken longer than we thought. I think that is probably
a result or is created by the fact that we weren't aware of all of the moving parts and the complexity of
this issue. 1 honestly think the County is about to find that out in their efforts, except they don't have a
remediation situation. We recognize that there was another site that didn't require remediation. This
whole project might have a different look. Philosophically, personally, I would be in favor of
remediation, but I'm concerned about the more directness of this question lacking what I feel is a
complete picture about this site.
Because it may become moot if we decide that site is not appropriate for the performing arts center.
Then it's up to us to decide if we're going to, with some environmental consciousness, decide we
should remediate the site no matter what goes there. Of course, in this discussion, we realize that
were we to remediate, it creates extra space. Then when we're talking about parking, that becomes a
whole different project. That's why I think trying to answer this question about remediation right now, I
don't know that were ready to do it, is my point. Thanks.
Mayor Burk: Do you still want it to go forward, Mr. Wilt?
Council Member Wilt: From my perspective, I can answer that question.
Mayor Burk: I'm willing to bet there's not four people, 1 willing to be there's four people that would
accept the $16 million. I'm making that guess. 1 haven't asked anybody or anything like that. The
question on the table is, are there four people that are willing to keep the $16 million in? Let me put it
this way, keep the $16 million in the project at this point? Are there four people that are willing to keep
that $16 million set aside to find out if we need to remediate the site for whatever reason? Are there
four —
Vice Mayor Steinberg: Is that a question?
Mayor Burk: Yes. Are there four people that would be willing to keep that in place? Raise your hand.
Yes. To keep the money in place to remediate it at this point. You're a yes. You're a yes. You're a yes.
There's four. [chuckles]
Council Member Wilt: Then can we get a projection on getting some clarity on the utility of the
Liberty Lot site, seeing that it has been, what, 13 months so far with this study. It feels like were still at
a state of high ambiguity. At what point can we definitively say, "Liberty Lot is a useful asset for this
purpose, and we'll move forward," and well essentially reserve it for this purpose;' or, "It's not
appropriate;" and then that asset can go on with its current purpose and be optimized for that?
Mayor Burk: Do we have an estimate of how long we think this study would go if we had this study in
place?
Keith Markel: The study that is being proposed --
Mayor Burk: Are we going to get back to [crosstalk]
Keith Markel: The one from Duncan Webb Management, that would be looking at the operations of
the performance center. Now, I think they have in their scope here looking at three different locations.
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It's not will it work at Liberty. It's more of that philosophical question, I think, Council has wrestled with
for some months is, is Leesburg in a position right now where you're really advocating for a
performing arts center, regardless of location? Liberty Lot might be the spot for it. We know there are
huge challenges with that site. Not the dump being the biggest, but there are a lot of other ones there,
too.
If that site turned out to not be the site for you, do you still want to see a performing arts center
somewhere, some way in Leesburg in the Town limits? If your answer is yes, you would like to
continue with that evaluation, then this study helps evaluate two additional sites as well as the Liberty
Lot site, as well as the economic impacts and all the cost pro formes of what it would look like a year
in the life of a performing arts center for Leesburg, what your investment-- That's that question.
Mayor Burk: How long would that take?
Keith Markel: The study itself I'm guessing is probably a three to six-month study. You have that --
Vice Mayor Steinberg: He didn't give us a firm --
Keith Markel: Based on what I'm seeing here, it looks like a three to six-month study.
Mayor Burk: Could we say that the report has to be back in six months?
Keith Markel: Yes.
Mayor Burk: [inaudible] Would that be useful?
Council Member Wilt: I think that's legitimate in terms of longer -term planning purposes. I'd,
hopefully, get some definition at that point. Because I think we paid for two studies so far, and I'm not
sure that brought any clarity to the question that was on the table a year ago. It does seem in terms --
this question, which I just paraphrased, should a performing arts center be in Leesburg at all? We
spent a year studying the Liberty Lot as a site for it, and now we're questioning whether we're going to
fund another study. It's like should there be one at all? That seemed like that should have maybe
been the first question.
Keith Markel: I think you'll find in Louise Stevens' reports, there's a lot of comprehensive data that
looks at the market overall. She looked at that site. How do you squeezed and squish everything to fit
there? There's also a much bigger conversation about the community needs and impacts on other
performance spaces and trying to find that sweet spot of size and design and relationship to existing
facilities in the region. There's a lot of good information there.
Council Member Wilt: Was that usable or do we have to find a new study?
Keith Markel: No, it's usable information. Very usable.
Council Member Wilt: What the new study --
Mayor Burk: For that particular site?
Keith Markel: For that site, but also in the broader context of how big, how many see that auditorium,
the things within a 50 -mile radius that would have an impact on what audience do you capture and
what performances could you bring in here and looking at those costs. I am hoping, this is a
conversation I believe that we're just going to have on Wednesday. I was looking at the scope that's
proposed here and see what existing data that Ms. Stevens has already pulled together to hopefully
fill in some of the gaps that they don't have to reinvent the wheel, is my hope.
Mayor Burk: You can steal it back if you want. Mr. Bagdasarian.
Council Member Bagdasarian: Yes. I think that Mr. Wilt's concerns are obviously very founded.
Obviously, we need to determine whether or not were going to do something with the Liberty Street
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Lot. Are we going to remediate or not? I think the original concept obviously was all about, "Let's
remediate." We initialize maybe $3 million, approximately, and then we learn that we have to transport
it far outside the area, which increases the costs. Being part of this committee, this joint task force
were going to call it, we've been through a lot of different iterations and putting the different pieces of
the puzzle together, it certainly has gone from being a Liberty Street project to a broader performing
arts center project for the Town of Leesburg.
The Louise Stevens' study in 2010, what, I think, 2010 to 2012, really clearly laid out the feasibility of
a performing arts center, the need and demand for a performing arts center in Leesburg including
Loudoun County, they're looking at one as well. Clearly, the demand is there. We don't need to re-
study that. I think at this stage, we've come to a number of different possibilities. I think we're all ready
to move to the next stage of this project. Certainly, this other study, I hate using the term study, this
analysis of funding sources, how business operations are going to work are going to be key to this,
whether it's going to be at that location or other locations within the Town. Yes, ultimately, Liberty
Street, are we going to remediate or not? We need to come to decision on that sooner rather than
later.
Mayor Burk: We just decided.
Council Member Bagdasarian: Oh, we did? Where was I? We kept it in the budget. As far as
actually moving forward, that's the key thing. Then moving forward with this study, as the Vice Mayor
mentioned, the funding for this next project that was brought up is coming from previously allocated
funds. I think it's additional $5,000 that would be applied towards this, the current study.
Keith Markel: Additional $5,000 applied?
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Council Member Bagdasarian: The Webb, Duncan Webb study.
Keith Markel: We're looking about $43,000 to close the gap of the remaining funds from the study
money. I think if you direct us to move in that direction, well find the dollars either from the
remediation study budget or from some other source.
Council Member Bagdasarian: Thanks.
Mayor Burk: Mr. Cummings' mumbling over here. Go ahead. Tell us what you think.
Council Member Cummings: One quick question. How much are we looking do we need to add for
this study?
Keith Markel: Right now of the $30,000 you allocate, you've got $10,000 left. We've got about
$43,000 of additional money from other Town sources.
Council Member Cummings: It's not going to cost $40,000, is it?
Keith Markel: The study is a $53,000 study.
Council Member Cummings: I went into the wrong profession. [laughter] I have just two comments,
not to muddy the waters here but one -
Mayor Burk: Go ahead [crosstalk]
Council Member Nacy: [inaudible]
Council Member Cummings: I will. The Governor signed our parking authority legislation. Do we
need to bring that? I know it's not a snap our fingers, and now we have a parking authority. I know
there's a lot that goes into that, but part of the idea of going after that was to create an authority that
allows us to bond projects and is time now to bring that into the conversation.
Keith Markel: 1 think there are a few more decision points for you before we get to that spot. The real
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push to create the parking authority was to allow the authority to lease the land for the senior
affordable housing back when they were originally proposing to build a senior affordable housing on
publicly owned parking lot land. The authority would let us do that. If they don't build the senior
affordable housing and there's more of a sense from, I think, the group that the senior affordable
housing doesn't fit that site, I think some felt that way from probably the start that there's just trying to
pack too much onto that 2 -acre site, if that component comes out, then the parking authority is less
critical because you wouldn't need that to be able to do the lease.
Now, if you're looking to finance major capital construction of building parking garages and you
wanted to really bring your parking rates up and you wanted to have that installation to have the
authority be the agent to do that, then you might want to consider that parking authority.
Council Member Cummings: I thought that was why, I didn't remember. Then my last point 1'll make,
where I am on this whole endeavor is it's feeling less and less, after our last meeting, like a public -
private partnership and more just a public project. I have some concerns with that. I'm all for
remediating the site there and taking care of the potentially toxic lead and whatever else we've found
in that site. I'm concerned with the true nature of this public -private partnership. Then to hear that the
county is now looking at a public performing arts center also makes me a little nervous because we
should be trying to find a way to work with them on making their project maybe coincide with ours.
Hopefully, we can try to bring them into the conversation as well.
Mayor Burk: Yes, Mr. Steinberg.
Vice Mayor Steinberg: Since this conversation has gotten pretty involved, a couple things. One,
since we brought up the Parking Authority, this was something that was recognized early on in our
conversation. As you can see, it took us to this point because it had to go through the legislature to
get it. We didn't even know if we would have it until a couple of weeks ago. That's a testament, by the
way, to Delegate Martinez, not Vice Mayor Martinez, Delegate Martinez, that we got that through.
That's a big piece of this puzzle. All of these working pieces have been very complicated.
When I mentioned that I'm not sure the County knows what they've gotten into, their project on the
surface seems very different from ours. By the way, Mr. Webb who is proposing this assessment of
our project is well aware of that and does not see it as a competing interest, by the way.
Mayor Burk: By the way.
Vice Mayor Steinberg: They're 9 or 10 months down the road in their PPP before they even get start
to getting any answers. We have also considered the fact that it's possible the County might want to
be involved in some way in the Town of Leesburg. We'II see about that. That's why I say this is a
complicated problem, and it's why we haven't arrived at any firm solutions yet. I will take Council
Member Cummings' concems to the next meeting, and we can talk about the shape of the public -
private partnership as well.
Mayor Burk: That is an important component because that whole thing was we were supposed to
give you the property, we would remediate the property, and now it's yours. You create a performing
arts center, and it's gotten to where the Town is going to do it. The Town's going to maintain it. The
Town is going to run it. I'm not telling Mr. Steinberg anything he hasn't heard from me many times, but
I'm most certainly concerned that we haven't gotten to a solution or a proposal at this point. The thing
about the parking authority that concerns me, if we take out bonds, the Town is still responsible for
those bonds, aren't they?
Keith Markel: Yes.
Mayor Burk: Which then just makes it even more about the Town as opposed to this partnership
thing. I think we've all had time to talk about it. We've agreed that well keep the remediation on the
table. Mr. Steinberg is asking us if we would approve the $40,000 addition to do a study. I guess I
would be okay with that because it's very specific, but as far as I'm concerned, that's it. We have to
get the answers from this study, and we got to make a decision. We can't keep doing this. That's
where I am at this point. Yes, Mr. Wilt.
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Council Member Wilt: 1'11 support it. I would like to see a hard deadline -
Mayor Burk: We'll put the six months --
Council Member Wilt: -about three to six months. I'd like to see a hard scope item that tells us, yes,
no, performing arts center, yes, no, site, yes, no, or like, "It's pretty good. It's terrible." Something
more definitive than we've seen, after a year.
Mayor Burk: You want the thumbs? You want the thumbs?
Council Member Wilt: I'd like smiley face for good, or frowny face, or some sort of chart, but
something that's actionable and decisionable.
Mayor Burk: Right.
Council Member Wilt: I'd like to see the private partnership throw in a quarter of this cost.
Mayor Burk: Okay, now I have to know, are there four people that are willing to support adding the
$40 million? [chuckles]
[laughter]
Vice Mayor Steinberg: Absolutely.
Council Member Cummings: We almost got a [inaudible] [laughter]
Mayor Burk: Whoops. The $40,000 to do the final and comprehensive study on this topic. Are there
four people?
Council Member Cimino -Johnson: Yes.
[crosstalk]
Mayor Burk: Total, right?
Keith Markel: The total price tag is $53,500 -
Mayor Burk: Oh, thank you.
Keith Markel: -for the study. This would be using the remaining balance plus the $43,000. We'll put
this together in a resolution for you tomorrow night for action if this is the direction you want me to go.
Mayor Burk: It's $50,000 something. Is that a yes? All right. We got four people for that one, or five
people that one. We will move forward on that.
Vice Mayor Steinberg: One more thing.
Mayor Burk: Get out.
Vice Mayor Steinberg: No. Good movie though. I've had a discussion with the head of our
Community Development Department and Town Attomey's Office. They prepared some timelines for
us. I would like us to consider fast -tracking within the Zoning Ordinance, rewrite all data centers are
by special exception, in all zoning districts. Do that immediately. I believe our Assistant Town Attorney
has some information for us.
Mayor Burk: You're on. Oh, you just turned yourself off. You're on.
Christine Newton: Sorry about that. If you have your four head nods, and you were to put an
initiating Resolution on your agenda for tomorrow evening and pass that Resolution, your normal
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process would require notice by publication. You don't need placard notice or letters. In order to do
your normal process where the Planning Commission has one public hearing, you have another that
would look like advertising for a Planning Commission public hearing on May 2n° and for a public
hearing for you all on May 14th.
There is a way to speed that up slightly by about 12 days if you were to have a joint public hearing,
which is possible under the State code and our Zoning Ordinance. That would look like a joint public
hearing on the Planning Commission's normal meeting night, May 2nd,
Mayor Burk: That sounds reasonable. If we have four people that are interested in doing this. Let's
do the first part. Do you have a question?
Council Member Cimino -Johnson: I just have a comment. Thank you, Council Member Vice Mayor
Steinberg, for bringing this up. I don't know if you saw the map that James David sent to us an hour
before our meeting. I live right where all these by -right data centers could go. I know my residents,
where I live would not like to see data centers all along that street. Thank you so much for doing this.
Mayor Burk: Now, this doesn't preclude it, you know doing a special exemption because it still could
get there. Just wanted to make sure you-- Are you asking a question?
Council Member Kari Nacy: [inaudible]
[laughter]
Mayor Burk: All in favor of doing --
Council Member Nacy: [inaudible] four votes.
Vice Mayor Steinberg: Are we voting on the general concept here, or are we also voting on --
Mayor Burk: Yes. You're voting on the general concept, and then we'll do the dates, see if you want
to do a joint meeting.
Vice Mayor Steinberg: Thank you.
Mayor Burk: Generally, do we want the data center issue to be a special exemption? That's
everybody but Mr. Wilt. The next question is, do we want to have a joint meeting with the Planning
Commission, May 2nd?
Christine Newton: [inaudible]
Mayor Burk: That will happen [inaudible] --I wonder if 111 be around May 2rd.
Vice Mayor Steinberg: [inaudible]
Mayor Burk: That's a Thursday. All right. I asked anybody here on this side, anybody on this side just
to-- Is there a motion to adjourn?
Vice Mayor Steinberg: So moved.
Mayor Burk: Is there a second?
Council Member Cummings: Second.
Mayor Burk: AR in favor?
Members: Aye.
Mayor Burk: Opposed? All right.
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