Post #442: Open space: There has to be a better way.

Note:  I accidentally posted this before I was finished.  As of 12:20 PM 11/1/2019, the post is now done.

The picture above is what I would term a typical AM rush hour on Maple, looking down 123 toward Oakton.  The blocky gray building is the (then) unfinished Chick-fil-a-car-wash.  And this post is my plea for the Town of Vienna to contemplate this picture for one minute, and then re-think its entire approach to “open space” under MAC zoning.

 

Continue reading Post #442: Open space: There has to be a better way.

Post #441: Sunrise lawsuit, continued …

When we last left our intrepid lawyers, the Town had filed a motion Craving Oyer and Demurrer in response to the Sunrise $30M lawsuit (see Post #353).  Then the initial hearing was postponed (Post #405).

Well, that Craving Oyer thing seems to have boomeranged a bit.  To the lay person (me), it appeared that the Town wanted to burden Sunrise with a significant documentation burden.  Turns out, the court says that’s the Town’s problem, not Sunrise’s problem.

Here’s part of Post #353 describing “Craving Oyer”.

The first part of the Town’s filing is “Craving Oyer”.  They are asking that Sunrise be required to supply (many) supporting documents for their allegations.  ... (including) a copy of the relevant video or audio recording, the minutes from that meeting, any staff materials provided in that meeting, any other previously-undisclosed internal staff memos that were generated on that topic prior to that meeting, and so on.  And so on.  And so on.

...

So that’s the first Alice-in-Wonderland aspect of this.  The Town is asking the Court to require Sunrise to ask the Town for recordings that only the Town has, and then provide them to the Town (and the Court), in order to verify that what Sunrise says was said, was said.  Before they’ll even consider discussing what was said.

I assume that was mostly about burying Sunrise with burdensome documentation requests.  And it did seem just-plain-nuts that the Town owned the documentation, but was asking Sunrise to provide it.

Either I misread the original request, or the judge saw it more-or-less the same way I did.  On 10/25/2019 the court issued an order requiring the Town of Vienna to provide all that stuff.  And then for both parties to get together and agree that this does, in fact, represent the relevant legislative record.

(Kudos to Shelley Ebert for getting a copy of the order from the Fairfax County courts.)


Provide a legible and intelligible record.

I included a picture of the actual court order above because it makes a point.  It’s legible, but only just so.  In fact, I am struck by how much it reminds me of an old-fashioned physicians’ prescription.  It’s a pre-printed form, with a blank on which some highly-trained professional hand-writes the orders.

I don’t think physicians do that any more.  Prescriptions are now mostly done electronically.  And so, outside of writing a check — itself a dying art — I can’t recall anything in the past decade or so where the legibility of somebody’s handwriting actually mattered.  Or where it was deemed proper to have somebody jot down an important order, hand-written, rather than type it in.

(If you know what a cancelled check is, raise your hand.  You, with your hands raised, you are now officially old people. )

Perhaps its more efficient.  It’s certainly quaint.  And it requires someone with a legible hand, so that everyone involved knows what the order actually says.

Which brings me to my point.  A lot of that “legislative record” consists of video and audio recordings.  Having spent the last year making audio recordings and dealing with the Town’s audio and video, in my opinion, the Town ought to be required to provide certified transcripts of the recordings.

This is for two reasons.  One, members of our Town boards and councils are frequently almost unintelligible.  Some, like the Town Manager, are simply soft-spoken individuals.  Others have poor microphone discipline, particularly in meetings where they must manually activate and de-activate their microphones as they talk. And everybody slacks off for work sessions.  Without an official transcript, it’s going to be hard to get agreement as to what, exactly, was said.  I can’t imagine the lawyers in this case working directly from the audio file.

Two, the recordings themselves are almost useless if you want to find particular items within a meeting, because there’s more-or-less no “index”.  There’s no “word search” function in an audio file.  That’s why I type notes as I record the meetings, along with the time, so that I have some written “index” that I can word-search to find items.

Anyway, without a transcript, not only can you not find items within the recordings, I’ll bet there will be disagreement on exactly what was said.  If they are serious about using this stuff, I think they need a transcript.  They need a pro to work through all the barely-intelligible stuff and write it down.

Killing two birds with one stone.  And, as I noted in an unrelated posting, I think that showing Town Council members the transcript would be a good teaching tool.  My experience is that when you are confronted with a literal transcript of your own public blathering, you quickly learn to be more succinct in your speech.  And that, by itself, would greatly shorten our Town Council and other public board meetings.

 

Post #440: CORRECTED: The 10/30/2019 Planning Commission meeting.

My last meeting review (prior post) was second-hand.  This one is third hand.  And unsurprisingly, given that, I got some key details wrong, which I have now fixed. 

Briefly, the extension of the MAC moratorium passed on a 6-3 vote.  The moratorium extension will now be considered by the Town Council at its next meeting, and presumably the MAC moratorium will be extended to June 30 2020.

Continue reading Post #440: CORRECTED: The 10/30/2019 Planning Commission meeting.

Post #438: Red-light cameras, speed cameras

The Town of Vienna Transportation Safety Commission frequently gets requests from citizens to have the town install a red light camera or speed camera at some problematic location in Vienna.  These cameras would then be used to catch red-light runners and speeders, and presumably reduce both speeding and red-light-running.

At the 10/29/2019 meeting of the Transportation Safety Commission (TSC), a representative from the Town of Vienna police department summarized Virginia law regarding speed cameras and red light cameras.  And the short answer is no, the Town isn’t going to install speed cameras or red light cameras, for some very good reasons. 
Continue reading Post #438: Red-light cameras, speed cameras

Post #437: Consent agenda

This is just a brief pointer back to Post #404 .  Posts are soon forgotten, and this one has become timely again.

Councilman Majdi has been asking the Town to consider using a consent agenda approach to speed up Town Council meetings.  (That is, all the non-controversial routine business would be packaged into a single agenda item and voted on just once, rather than having a vote on each individual item.)

At the 10/22/2019 Town Council meeting, Town Council directed staff to look into this consent agenda approach.  (Although, weirdly, that item is not on the agenda posted on the Town website.  You had to have been at that meeting to know that was on the final agenda.)

This analysis will including finding out which local governments use it.

To cut to the chase, the answer is that more-or-less all local governments in this area use a consent agenda approach, except Vienna.  That was the point of  Post #404 ).

Here’s hoping that the Town adopts this, and many more such measures, to speed up Town Council meetings.

Post #436: Threshold of traffic misery

This post is mostly for benefit of the people in my immediate neighborhood.  This is about the study that Town Council called for, of the neighborhood bounded by Courthouse, Nutley, and Maple.

I went to the Transportation Safety Commission meeting last night with one goal in mind.  I wanted a clear answer to what I thought was a fairly simple question.  Boiling it down, in the context of the Town’s decision to allow high-density housing along Maple via MAC zoning, my question had two key parts

Will the Town of Vienna act prospectively, to preserve a low-traffic neighborhood, and defend it against the traffic increases brought on by MAC development?

On the first part — prospectively — I got a clear answer.  The “prospective” part of this study is that the Town will take existing traffic counts, and add the projected traffic increases from approved MAC projects to them.  So for this study, the Town will not use existing traffic, they’ll construct a projection of traffic by tacking on the developers’ estimates of traffic to be generated by their new buildings.

Putting aside the quality of those projections (e.g., Post 364), all this means is that the Town will repeat the same calculations that the developers of 444 and 380 Maple did.  The sole difference is that they’ll refresh the traffic counts.

On the issue of acting to preserve a low-traffic neighborhood, the answer was not at all clear.  So, major caveat: What you will read next is my reading of the tea leaves, based on what was said.What I got, when I pushed the question, is that they weren’t going to consider that at this point.  But my impression, when the dust had settled, is the following:

My best guess is that no, the Town will not act to preserve a low-traffic neighborhood.  I’m guessing — actually, I’m fairly confident — that the next step in the Town’s study will be to compare the projected traffic in each neighborhood with the existing standard that the Town uses to determine whether “traffic calming” measures may be warranted.  I.e., the threshold used to determine whether or not to put a speed hump on a residential street.

In other words, literally the only difference between this study (of our currently low-traffic neighborhood) and the Town’s standard analysis for traffic calming will be that the Town will add in projected traffic from the approved MAC buildings, based on the developers’ projections.

To summarize where I stand on this:  My wife and I bought our house in large part because it was in a quiet neighborhood adjacent to Maple.  The Town then changed the zoning to encourage the construction of high-density housing (“mixed use”) along Maple.  The result — so far — is approval of two large new buildings whose users will almost certainly view my street as a convenient cut-through.    We were hoping that the Town would act to try to preserve the quiet character of the neighborhood.  We were hoping the Town would act to offset some of the negative impact its rezoning decisions would have on my neighborhood.  We were hoping it would do what it could to prevent my street from turning into yet another of those Vienna streets whose residential character is marred by high traffic.

In short, we were hoping the Town would act to clean up the mess this is going to make of my neighborhood.  And, as I read the tea leaves at this point, the answer is no, they won’t do that.  We have to wait until traffic trashes our neighborhood, to the same extent as it trashes the rest of Vienna, before the Town will feel any obligation to do anything to reduce the impact of the changes that it caused by rezoning Maple.  So, if I have interpreted this correctly, only when we get to the point that we’d qualify for (e.g.) a speed hump, under the standard rules, will the Town consider taking action.   As I read it, projected traffic on our street will have to exceed the standard threshold of traffic misery before the Town will do anything.

So — again, assuming I have interpreted this right — the Town simply isn’t in the business of preserving quiet neighborhoods.  That’s not on the agenda.  It isn’t in the business of trying to maintain quality of life, as far as traffic goes.  Not even when it’s the Town’s decision (to rezone Maple) that’s degrading quality of life in a neighborhood.

Finally, we got a clear indication of how little the Town is not willing to do.  Department of Public Works stated, unambiguously, that they will never recommend any type of no-entry or no-turn-during-rush-hour signs.  The (sole?) rationale is that such signs merely divert traffic to other streets.  Town Council may always override that decision if it chooses to do so.

(I’ll explain why this no-sign policy matters critically in this case.  The Tequila Grande/444 Maple West project is going to result in maybe 250 adults living at the corner of Maple and Nutley.  Who knows how many will be added when and if the rest of that block redevelops under MAC.  The path of least resistance, connecting them to southbound Nutley in the AM rush hour, is probably going to be my little street.  But a cheap and simple no-right-turn-during-rush-hour sign at Maple and Wade Hampton would prevent that.  Another one at Pleasant would do the same there.  But if neither one is an option, we’re going to have to ask for much more radical changes than just putting up a sign.)

And, weirdly, that’s completely consistent with the rest of it.  The message is that we all have to be equally miserable from traffic.  Even if it’s the Town’s rezoning decision that creates the traffic in your neighborhood.  The Town simply has no interest in keeping a peaceful neighborhood peaceful, regardless.

Well, at least it’s good to know the rules.  The clear takeaway from this is that if you are planning to move to Vienna, don’t buy a house near Maple.  And by all means, buy on a cul-de-sac.  Because anything else puts you at risk for being in a high-traffic neighborhood.  And if your neighborhood is as unlucky as mine has been, the Town won’t act until your neighborhood hits the required level of traffic misery.  That’s my best guess for how this will all shake out.


Codas and minor technical notes.

First, I guess that some will read this posting and consider it nothing more than pleading for special treatment.  But I look at it more as a question of cleaning up your own mess.  It’s not as if this additional traffic came out of nowhere.  It’s a result of the Town’s actions.  The Town’s decision to rezone Maple is going to add a mess of traffic to my street.  And because we have a pleasant neighborhood now — relatively low traffic — the Town will likely do nothing to clean up that mess. Or, more to the point, do nothing to keep that mess off my street.

Second, as envisioned, this is a one-off study.  It does nothing new, and it does nothing to modify the MAC rezoning process.  There isn’t going to be any standard set of “neighborhood protection” measures to be added to MAC.  And I think that makes sense, because there’s no intent to protect the Maple-adjacent neighborhoods.  The fact that the additional traffic is cause by the Town itself — by its decision to rezone — makes no difference.

Finally, maybe my neighborhood was the last quiet neighborhood adjacent to Maple.  So maybe the Town just plain doesn’t have to worry about trashing any more neighborhoods with MAC development, because the rest of the streets connecting to Maple either don’t go anywhere, or are already trashed by traffic?

My guess is, no, that’s not right.  Because no matter how bad traffic gets, it can always get worse.  So I suspect that this problem isn’t going away.  Neighborhoods that are going to bear the brunt of the additional traffic generated by these MAC projects are going to continue to raise objections.

But at least when this study is finished, we’ll all know what the rules are.  My best guess, at this point, is that the only accommodation the Town will offer will be to add projected traffic from a new MAC building to their standard process for determining whether a street qualifies for traffic calming.  And so the clear messages are 1) MAC projects are going to dump more traffic into your neighborhood and 2) tough luck.  Until you’re as miserable as the rest of Vienna, it’s not the Town’s problem.  The Town will not, in fact, try to clean up its own mess.

That’s how I see it.

Post #434: TSC will have some further information on the MAC-adjacent neighborhood traffic study tonight.

The Town Council — specifically Councilman Noble — asked the Transportation Safety Commission to undertake a study of the neighborhood bounded by Nutley, Maple, and Courthouse.  Outlined in red above.

That was, in fact, discussed at the last Transportation Safety Commission (TSC) meeting, documented in this post.

Apparently, there’s going to be some discussion of that at tonight’s TSC meeting.  In fact, they’re going to lay out the entire workplan for this item.  But I only know this because a) my neighbor emailed them, and then b) emailed me when he got a response.

So, Where’s Waldo?  Here’s a copy of the TSC agenda for tonight.  Find the discussion of the MAC-adjacent neighborhood study.  If you can intuit where that is, you’re a better person than I.

AGENDA-60

The final kicker here, in addition to no public notice of this, is that there’s a different meeting, tonight, for residents of Wade Hampton and adjacent streets to meet the people who (are?  may be?) buying the rights to develop at 380 Maple West (see Post #432).    So, don’t expect anyone from my neighborhood to be there.  Not only did we not know this was on the agenda, all the civic-minded among us will be at the other meeting scheduled for tonight.

If my neighbor hadn’t emailed Town staff about this, I never would have bothered to go to the Town website, pull up the audio recording, and listen through it — on the off chance that this traffic study would be mentioned.  Let alone go and seek clarification (see next post).   As hard as I try to keep up with these things, I really shouldn’t have to find stuff like this out purely by happenstance.