Category: Town of Vienna, VA

Post #695: Town of Vienna Election Day

Source:  CBS news article on voting in the 1918 pandemic.

For those of you who have lost track of time under the stay-at-home order, today is Election Day this year in the Town of Vienna.  You may vote at the Community Center, or you may drop off your absentee ballot in the absentee ballot drop-off box at the Fairfax Government Center.

Source:  Facebook page for ViennaVotes.

If you ordered an absentee ballot, and now have decided to vote in person, take that ballot with you when you go to the Community Center to vote.

The County will be doing what it can to make this safe, including the standard social distancing measures, giving each person a new pen (instead of re-using), and having the persons running the polls in masks and gloves.  For your part, you’d be well-advised to wear a mask.  As I understand it, the County cannot require that, and will not provide disposable courtesy masks on-site.

FYI, the turnout so far (from returned absentee ballots) is slightly higher than the turnout from the 2019 election.  Based on that, my guess is that there isn’t going to be much of a crowd if you want to vote in person.  In all likelihood, more-or-less anyone who has wanted to vote, already has.

My endorsement

Which makes this last bit almost superflous:  I already offered my endorsement, and why (Post #658):  Majdi, Dahl, Patariu, and Wright. 

Let me just give an ongoing example of why I’ve voted for them.

If you’ve read this site, you know I really objected to MAC zoning.  The Town is now preparing to eliminate MAC zoning.  And yet, I am not celebrating.  Why?  Because they aren’t really doing any such thing.

They’ve left it, in all but name, in the Comprehensive Plan, they’ve hired a consultant to rewrite the zoning in accord with the Comprehensive Plan.  Town staff are now having closed monthly meetings with local builders, regarding the rewrite of the Town building codes.

Basically, Town staff are in the process of making MAC-like construction by-right construction along Maple.  The only thing that has changed is that this is all being done by Town Staff, out of the public eye.  

And the only person who has even so much as questioned any of that, on Town Council, has been Majdi.  (Ah, and I guess Patel, a bit.)

I hope you can see the logic here.  Townspeople were, on average, so irked at MAC that they voted some Town Council members out.  Several other pro-MAC Town Council members decided not to run for re-election, both last year and this year.  The result is that just one of the original pro-MAC Town Council is still in the running:  Councilmember Colbert, now running for Mayor.  And despite that fairly clear set of will-of-the-people moments, Town staff , with cooperation of some current Town Council members, continue to press the MAC agenda.  They’re simply keeping it out of the public view.

And exactly one (ah, maybe two, I think I Councilmember Patel also raised her voice) members of current Town Council even bothered to question any aspect of that.

Majdi dared to question it, in public.  And for behavior like that, he’s been ostracized on Town Council.  Whereas I think we need more of that, and less of the Town’s work done behind closed doors, in private meetings with developers, and so on.

Our Planning Commission, under former chair Gelb, added a clause to their by-laws, that private meetings with developers have to be reported, in Planning Commission meetings, after-the fact.  Current Town Council can’t even see its way to doing that.  Instead, meetings between Town Staff who are developing regulations, and the builders who will benefit from those regulations, have been made a regular part of the process.  Cozy, I guess that’s the term.  If you think that’s going to lead to a pro-resident set of regulations, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you.  All that, with only one voice objecting.

So, for that at least, he’s got my vote.

 

Post #675: Meanwhile, back in Vienna, VA, it’s the gestation period for son-of-MAC.

I have been asked once again to post on Town of Vienna issues.  This directly relates to MAC zoning, so it gets back to the original purpose of this website.

I refuse to take a lot of time with this.  So here goes.

1:  You may recall that the Town passed MAC zoning in 2014.  Then, in 2015 or maybe 2016, depending on who’s counting what, the Town revised its comprehensive plan to match what MAC zoning called for.  And, to be clear, yes, that is in fact backwards, and no,  that’s not how it’s supposed to work, and yes, that’s another classic ready-fire-aim episode by the Town of Vienna powers that be.

But that’s what the Town did.

2:  There’s currently a moratorium on new MAC applications.  This ends in June.  The Town needs to extend that, as I have already described, prior to the pandemic (Post #542).  At the Monday 4/27/2020 Town Council meeting, they made the formal motion to start that in progress.

3:  But, in fact, the plan is to set this up so that the outright repeal of MAC zoning will be Councilmember Noble’s last act in office.   (Why the last-minute high drama, I don’t quite grasp, but it is what it is.  I only ever worked with business people, not politicians, so the fact that I find this un-business-like really isn’t a deciding factor.)  I wrote about that in Post #539, after Councilman Noble corrected a post that I wrote about the moratorium.

4: At the last meeting, Councilmemeber Majdi, with support (only) from Councilmember Patel moved that, if we’re dropping MAC from our zoning, then, logically, we should also drop those MAC-like provisions from the Comprehensive Plan.  Because, ultimately, if you follow the letter of the law in Virginia, any subsequent zoning has to match the Comprehensive Plan.   (The fact that Vienna ignored that, when passing MAC in the first place, is water over the dam.)  If you leave it in the Comprehensive Plan, then you haven’t really killed it. You’ve just pretended to.

5:  That was met with strenuous objection from the usual cast of characters.

6:  Let me now explain why.  In a nutshell:  If you leave it in the Comprehensive Plan, then you haven’t really killed it.  You’ve just pretended to.  And that’s the point of leaving it in, from the Old Guard’s perspective.

6.1:  The Town is moving ahead with its quarter-million dollar consulting contract for rewriting the entire Town of Vienna zoning code.

This, despite the fact that all of those cute little “community engagement” activities that were part of the work plan, for getting “citizen input” on the zoning, are no longer possible.  (And will certainly be inadvisable for the forseeable future.)  Thus, to me, anyway, revealing just how little it matters what citizens think about this.  It’s almost as if the Department of Planning and Zoning already knew what answer it was going to get, without needing input from the citizens.

6.2:  If the MAC-like provisions (medium-density mixed-use on Maple) remain in the Comprehensive Plan, the Town’s quarter-million-dollar zoning consultant must include that as part of the overhaul of commercial zoning.  That’s literally written into the Scope of Work for the contract.  Zoning must match the Comprehensive Plan.

6.3:  So, by keeping the “MAC” portion of the Comprehensive Plan, the Old Guard and the Department of Planning and Zoning guarantee that MAC lives on.  The new commercial zoning will be Son of MAC. Because they have successfully fought to keep it in the Comprehensive Plan, and have required that the new consultant tailor the revised zoning to match the Comprehensive Plan.

So the new zoning for Maple will have those MAC-like provisions, but they will now be by-right zoning.  No more messy public hearings and such.

And Town Council can pretend to have clean hands about new development along Maple.  Oh, we didn’t do that.  We had an expert consultant tell us to do that.  It’s by-right, there’s nothing we can do about it.

7..  And so the upshot of a 1000-signature petition against 444 Maple West, and defeating incumbents in the last election, with a huge voter turnout, and so on ….  The upshot of all of that is to have son-of-a-MAC crammed down our throats as by-right development. 

8.  If you wonder why I endorsed Majdi, wonder no more.  His position on this is forthright, logical, easy to grasp, and matches what (e.g.) Fairfax County does.  If you are sincere about getting rid of MAC zoning, then strip the MAC-like provisions from the Comprehensive Plan.  Zoning is supposed to match the Comprehensive Plan.   Doing anything but that is just a smoke screen.

And if you wonder why I can’t stomach the Old Guard any more, it’s exactly for crap like this.  In the middle of a pandemic, with high risk of a global great depression, with the US Senate talking about amending the law to allow States to go bankrupt, with public gatherings extremely inadvisable even where not outright banned … they’re just continuing to push their agenda.

Next thing you know, Planning and Zoning will be meeting with developers, figuring out how they can best tailor the new zoning to meet their needs.  While you, the public — you’re in lockdown.

I guess from their perspective, if life hands you lemons, make lemonade.  But man am I sick of these people.

I have other things to worry about.

 

 

2020 Town elections, my endorsements

It now appears that the Town elections will take place as originally scheduled, on May 5th.  You still have a few days to request an absentee ballot.  Your request must be received by the registrar by 5 PM 4/28/2020.  5/12/2020  (The change in date is due to the 14-day delay just announced by the Governor.) Anyone may vote absentee, in this election, due to the pandemic.

I’ve been asked to state whom I am going to vote for, and why.

I’m voting for David Patariu for Town Council, and for the folks he’s running with.  That includes Pasha Majdi for mayor, and Chris Wright and Andrea Dahl for Town Council.  Their website is here.

Why is that?  Continue reading 2020 Town elections, my endorsements

Post #612: Election confusion on two fronts

First, it looks like the Governor is trying to get all May elections postponed until November.  I think that’s the correct thing to do, all things considered.

Second, there still seems to be considerable confusion in Town over campaign finance laws.   Twice in the past two days I’ve seen or hear of things that lead me to believe that many people in Town still either don’t understand what the law is, or are deliberately misrepresenting what the law is.

I heard that, sometime in the past couple of days, somebody claimed that a sign was illegal because it had some candidates names, but no “Paid by …”  line noting the source of funding.  That’s wrong.  And we all know that’s wrong, because we’ve never had “paid by” lines on the yard signs before.  And I also see that, this year, one candidate actually does have a “paid by” line on her signs.  That’s also wrong, if she’s trying to convince people she’s complying with the CFDA.  But as long as we all recognize that’s just a bit of let’s-pretend, I think that’s harmless.

If you actually want to comply with the CFDA, you have to have duly-constituted and registered Virginia Political Action Committee.  I know because I did that last year, to make sure I understood the process.  And detailed what the CFDA does and does not do, on this website.

Looks like it’s time for a refresher course on the Virginia CFDA.

In a nutshell, no campaign finance disclosure laws apply to Town of Vienna elections.  That’s the way it has always been, ever since Virginia pass the Campaign Finance Disclosure Act.  (CFDA).  The only change this year is that they’ve added a clause that says, if you spend $25,000 or more, as a candidate, in a Town election, then yeah, in that case, you have to obey the CFDA.

So, briefly, with citations as to source:

Campaign finance law for Virginia Towns with under 25,000 population.

There are none.  So let’s start with the basics.  No campaign finance laws apply to Town of Vienna elections.  I wish they did (Post #272, from May of last year.)  Not unless the Town Council slipped in a piece of last-minute legislation. Or a candidate is planning to spend more than $25 grand, which I think is way beyond unlikely.

So if somebody tells you that (e.g.) some sign is illegal because it doesn’t comply with Virginia law, they just haven’t read the law.  Or they are trying to pull a fast one on you.  If somebody puts a “paid for” line on their signs, they’re either trying to convince you of something that’s not so, or they’re planning to shell out more than $25,000 in their election bid.

But that last one is easy enough to check.   If somebody’s complying the the CFDA, and that “paid by” line has any legal meaning, they have to have a Virginia PAC.  No PAC?  Then a “paid for” line is just an additional bit of election-year nonsense.  It’s easy enough to search all the active Virginia-registered PACs, right at this link.  Have a look for yourself, if you care.

It’s a simple test.   Got a PAC?  No?  Then any “paid for” line you see is the politician’s variant on “guaranteed not to turn pink in the can“.

So let’s all go read the law, because boy am I tired of having to explain this.  And, interestingly, it changed since the last time I looked at it:

This is § 24.2-945. Elections to which chapter applicable; chapter exclusive.

The provisions of this chapter shall apply to all elections held in Virginia, ... except nominations and elections for ... (iii) town office in a town with a population of less than 25,000, ....

Emphasis mine. But they’ve added a new exception since last year.  If you spend in excess of $25,000 on the election, you’ve got to abide by the CFDA:

The provisions of this chapter shall be applicable to a candidate for a town office in a town with a population of less than 25,000 if (a) such candidate accepts contributions or makes expenditures in excess of $25,000 within the candidate's election cycle

And then it goes on to say, or if the Town votes to put itself under the CFDA.  Herndon actually did that about 7 years ago.  But not, to my knowledge, the Town of Vienna.  Last time my wife brought this up at a Town Council meeting (Post #507).  That was met with roughly the same reaction as a fart in an elevator:  Dead silence and dirty looks.

Why do I know the law?  Because I bothered to go through all the steps to form a legally-registered Virginia PAC (Post #272).  I needed to know, first hand, exactly how burdensome it was, before I suggested that the Town vote to put itself under the CFDA.  I even wrote up a guide to doing all the steps required to form a legally-registered Virginia PAC.  I offered to make that guide freely available to anyone who wanted it if the Town ever voted to put itself under the CFDA,.  My wife got up in (one, several, I forget) Town Council meetings and pleaded with the Town to put itself, for reals, under the CFDA.

Which is also why I find people who don’t know the law, but throw it around to intimidate people, or mimic it to impress the gullible, I find that irksome.

Actually complying with the CDFA requires some significant effort.  There are a lot of legally-required reports that must be filed, for example.  I went through that, myself, forming a PAC, because I did not want to recommend that the Town put itself under the CFDA if that process was impossible to comply with.

But the short and simple answer is, the CFDA simply does not apply to Town of Vienna elections.   This year.  Just the same as it didn’t apply in any prior Town election.

Unless you plan to spend $25,000 or more.  That’s the only change for this year.

Post #556: RESCINDED: Mail-in absentee ballot, can anything be done?

I take this all back.   My wife just found a story in today’s news stating that Department of Elections will allow anyone to use a mail-in ballot, in light of the epidemic.  Use Reason 2A.  Those are now official instructions from the Commonwealth.

This is the reference.

Skip the rest of this. Continue reading Post #556: RESCINDED: Mail-in absentee ballot, can anything be done?

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 #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 #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.