Author: chogan@directresearch.com

Post #548: Yeah, a post about coronavirus – UPDATED

As of Friday 3/13/2020 it looks like FCPS is going to address this issue in the worst possible way:  Close the schools, but with no deadlines stated.  You can read their notice at this link.  A one-day closure was scheduled for Monday, but schools are now closed today as well.  This was probably inevitable, given that Loudoun County schools closed, and now that several states have closed schools statewide.  At this point, I would not expect Fairfax to reopen the schools any time soon.

Today, the Ancient and Honorable College of William and Mary announced it was going to on-line classes.  This will bring my daughter home for a while.

Having the current epidemic it hit home like that tends to focus one’s attention.  Hence this post.  For what it’s worth.  I made my living as a health economist, so that’s the viewpoint you’re going to get here.  Let’s look at the numbers. Continue reading Post #548: Yeah, a post about coronavirus – UPDATED

Post #547: The flip side of your declining 401K

The actual 2020 figure is nominally $34.5M.  But it’s not quite as simple as that.

This is just a quick post to calculate what interest rate the Town paid on its (nominally) $34.5M bond issue sold yesterday.  The results of that bond sale are reported on the Town’s website at this link.

The Town agreed to issue bonds with a $34.5M face value, a 1.86% nominal interest rate, and a $3.1M premium.  That last bit — the premium — is the confounding factor.  That extra money is the reason that the true interest rate isn’t 1.86%.  And neither the Town nor any other social-media-type discussion that I have seen has managed to explain it correctly.

So let me explain exactly what that is. (And, separately, in a different post, I’m going to try to track the premium dollars from prior bond issues, because they effectively are not reported with the Town’s capital accounts.  I tried but failed to do that last year, with the 2018 premium.  Those dollars have to be reported somewhere, I just have to find them.) Continue reading Post #547: The flip side of your declining 401K

Post #546: Last night’s Town Council meeting

Cedar Lane I-66 bridge will (probably) close for six months, starting before this summer.

There wasn’t much to last night’s (3/10/2020) Town Council meeting.  The Town has already posted a link to its recording on the Town’s website (but no link to the recording is posted yet on the Granicus site). The meeting materials can he found at this link. Continue reading Post #546: Last night’s Town Council meeting

Post #544: A brief comment on the Proposed Patrick Henry Parking Garage*

* and library.

Question 1:  What do these localities have in common:

  1. Fairfax County.
  2. Loudoun County.
  3. Arlington County (I think).
  4. Prince William County

Answer?  None of these localities has a library built into the first floor of a multi-story parking garage.  Or, at least, none that I could find after spending some significant time with their websites and Google Maps.

Question 2:  If you propose to spend millions of dollars building something in a way that nobody else has ever chosen to build, do you:

  1. Pat yourself on the back for originality.
  2. Rethink what you are doing, because maybe there’s a reason nobody does it that way.
  3. Never even to look to see how anybody else does it.

Answer:  Unfortunately, I get the feeling for the Town of Vienna, the answer is going to be 3.  They aren’t going to stick their heads up, look around, and see if they can find even one example of a library on the first floor of a parking garage.

Anyway, the genesis of this posting was my attempt to find even one library, in NoVA, built along the lines of the proposed Patrick Henry Parking Garage and Library.   The idea was that I’d ask the Town to visit that building, talk to the people who use it, and so on, before committing to the current library-under-garage design.

But the result is that I couldn’t find one.  Maybe I just missed it, but as of now, I think that’s a correct finding.  So if we build this, it’ll be the only one for many miles around.

I don’t think that’s a good thing.  I’d say that this fact, by itself, ought to give a sober person pause.  But if the Town never even looks for a real-world example of what they are proposing, they’ll never even realize quite how unusual their proposed library is.

Post #543: Genteel panic buying

Source:  Target website.

I went shopping at the Pan Am Safeway last night and, for the first time, there was clear evidence of some panic buying going on.  But after a while, I noticed that this was of a different sort than occurred at Home Depot (Post #535).

So, what do these things have in common:

  • Shrimp-flavored ramen
  • Unsalted saltine crackers
  • Generic toilet paper

It’s what remains after what I can only describe as genteel panic buying.  Sure, we’re hoarders, but we’re only going to hoard the good stuff.  So the list above is among the items that remained nearly untouched, even as shoppers attempted to clear the shelves of the more desirable stuff. Continue reading Post #543: Genteel panic buying

Post #542: Needless risk

Source:  Town of Vienna.  This is the agenda for tonight’s Town Council meeting.

Dear Town Council and Planning Commission:  Please extend the MAC moratorium, right now.   Please don’t wait until the last minute, because that’s looking like an increasingly risky strategy.

If you agree with that, you don’t need to read the rest of this.

Edit:  I needed to make two corrections to the original post.  One is for the Vice-Mayor, which I misstate.  A more substantive correction is that, in this case, the Planning Commission’s role is purely advisory.  They would make a recommendation to the Town Council, but Town Council could chose to ignore such a recommendation.

Continue reading Post #542: Needless risk

Post #541: A couple of corrections: Beulah Road Park; $9M parking garage.

Here are a couple of non-correction corrections.  The first is fact, the second is speculation/reason/guesswork.

Fact is that the Town referred to its 8-acre Beulah Road property as a park for decades before it decided to use it for mulching (Post #526).   The documentary evidence for that is overwhelming (see first section below).

Speculation/reason/guesswork is that the town roughly doubled the estimated cost of the Patrick Henry Parking Garage, out of nowhere (Post #531), as a ploy to get somebody else to pay the full cost of the garage.  Funding agencies will want to see the Town pay half the cost.  But the Town wants somebody else to pay for all of it.  So, just claim that it costs twice as much as it actually does.  That’s a fraud, but so is the claim that this garage will serve large numbers of Vienna Metro commuters, which is how the Town justifies asking for regional traffic congestion relief funds for this.

Continue reading Post #541: A couple of corrections: Beulah Road Park; $9M parking garage.

Post #539: MAC moratorium schedule revisited – CORRECTED

 

Calendar GIF from Calendar GIFs

Source: Tenor.com

Edit:  The main point of this post may be moot.  Town Council member Noble has reminded me that he has already asked that Town Council rescind MAC zoning entirely.  (Technically, Town Council would refer a motion to the Planning Commission to rescind all of MAC.)  That motion would be made at a Town Council meeting in late April or early May, at the same time the Town Council approves the consulting contract for rewriting the Town’s zoning.

At that point, if successful, MAC would be rescinded, and zoning on Maple would be by-right zoning under some variation of the commercial zoning that we have now.  Any MAC-like elements would have to be embodied in changes in the commercial code, not in revision of a separate MAC zoning.

I’m not clear on the details, but my guess is that this still entails a very tight schedule.  My understanding is that this change in the zoning rules requires two public hearings.  If so, the schedule here would have to be replaced by an equally strict schedule for rescinding MAC prior to the end of the MAC moratorium. 

So there’s still a fast track that has to be adhered to.  It’s just that the content of those hearings would be for rescinding MAC, not for extending the moratorium.

Just a reminder about unfinished business.  Briefly, the Town now needs to undertake a multi-step process to extend the MAC zoning moratorium.  May not seem like it, but the time available to do that is fairly short.  Let me walk through it.

On 11/4/2019, the Town Council extended the moratorium on new MAC zoning applications through June 30, 2020 (reference).

On 12/9/2019, they passed a motion to fold review of MAC zoning into the complete rewrite of all the Town’s zoning (reference).

On 12/9/2019, they didn’t extend the MAC moratorium.  That’s still left to do.  Instead, the minutes from that meeting read, in part, that our new zoning czar (Post #487) should provide ” … determination of a realistic moratorium period for the MAC zone based upon the scope of work identified.”

In other words, we are now waiting for Planning and Zoning staff to tell us how long the MAC moratorium must be extended.  Then Town Council has to go through the lengthy legal process to create that extension.

And that all must happen in the next four months.  And my point is, deadlines are approaching for getting that done.  In particular, Town staff have just about two months left to tell Town Council what that “realistic moratorium period” must be.  And then all the legally required steps for extending the moratorium have to go off like clockwork, from that point forward.

Detail follows. Continue reading Post #539: MAC moratorium schedule revisited – CORRECTED