Category: Town of Vienna, VA

The Vienna Town Council met last night to consider a few items of business.  You can find the agenda and meeting materials on this web page.

Land at 440 Beulah and 114 Locust converted to government use.  The main item on the agenda was to get the ball rolling on legally allowing a couple of parcels of land in Vienna to be used as part of the new police station project.  The properties in question are the area directly adjacent to the existing police station (114 Locust) , and a house out on Beulah Road (440 Beulah), adjacent to the “Beulah Road Mulch Yard”.  The Town bought that Beulah Road house back 2018, but refused at that time to say why it had bought it.

Unsurprisingly, that proposal passed unanimously.  That was pretty much a given, as they’ll have to rezone at least the house next to the police station in order to build the new one there.

As I understand it, this was just the first step – amending the Town’s comprehensive plan to allow this.  I have the vague impression that they’ll have to come back and redo this, for the rezoning proper, in order to satisfy all the legal requirements.

Town account balances.  A second item of business was one that I think I haven’t seen before, which was a report on the Town’s financial assets — its investment balances.  Given the property values and incomes in Vienna, it should come as no surprise that the Town is in good financial health and has tens of millions (30-ish million?) of dollars invested in various interest-bearing accounts.

I still have not quite puzzled out why I haven’t seen this before, and why I’m seeing it now.  Either I wasn’t paying attention when I researched the budget last year, or this is a new report.  I can recall looking for and being unable to find information on account balances, but simple incompetence on my part could easily explain that.

Councilman Noble will not run for re-election.  The only surprise in the meeting was that Councilman Noble will not run for re-election, citing (I believe) the need to care for a relative.  I think everyone of a certain age can empathize with that.  And those not yet of that age can be glad they haven’t had to deal with it yet.

To me, the right context for this is the controversial vote to approve 444 Maple West, against considerable citizen opposition.  The vote was 5-2.

Of the five voting in favor:

• Three have chosen not to run for re-election.
• One was defeated in the last election.
• One is running for mayor.

Of the two voting against:

• Both are running for mayor.

In hindsight, that vote, plus the simple passage of time and the occurrence of life events, appears to have been as much of a watershed moment as you are likely to see in the politics of a small town.  But only in hindsight.

As an aside:  I assume the Town will have its recording of this up soon, so I do not plan to post my own recording of the meeting.  I also have to admit that I didn’t much pay attention during the discussion of the police station item, and maybe I’ll replay the tape and see if there’s anything else worth reporting about that.

 

My wife tells me that some people object to my use of the word “fraud” in a recent posting (Post #515, but Post #446 does a better job of explaining the issue).  Fair enough.  If everybody is happy about what I write, I’m doing something wrong.

In this post, I’m going to explain how I got to that point.  Briefly, a year and a half ago, I was just sincerely trying to make sense of puzzling behavior by the Town w/r/t the Mill Street garage.  But as the Town’s claims got nuttier, I amped up the rhetoric correspondingly.

I’m going to end this post with a suggestion that would guarantee that this entire taxpayer-financed transaction is above-board, with no hint of fraud.  This suggestion would be cheap and easy to do.  It embodies the essence of good government.  And I am quite sure the Town will never, ever do it.

My suggestion:  Monitor the outcome.  That is, measure and report on Metro commuters’ actual use of these garages, once they are built.  I’m not even saying that the Town should give the money back if it turns out that this was a fraud mistake.  I’m just saying that the funding agencies should demand to know how effective their spending was, at achieving the stated goal of creating a commuter garage.  And if it turns out that this was a complete waste of money from their perspective, then at least they will learn something.  With luck, they will know better the next time somebody tries to pull the same scam make the same implausible argument.

Caution:  high horse ahead.  We can tolerate the occasional wasteful spending decision by a local government entity (NVTA or NVTC).  But we shouldn’t tolerate willful ignorance about the level of waste.  Instead, we should require that these government entities acknowledge and learn from their mistakes.  Just like any real business.  And that feedback loop needs to be built into the system.  And so, anyone receiving tax funding to build a “Metro commuter” garage ought to be required to provide an accurate measurement of the extent to which Metro commuters actually use it.  That’s all I’m saying.  I hope that makes sense.

---

Some history on this issue

I’ve been trying to make sense of the Town’s actions in this area for more than a year and a half.  That’s when I first found out just exactly how the Town had convinced the NVTA to fund half of the (now defunct) Mill Street garage (see this post dating to June 2018).

I was such a do-bee *, **, *** on this that I actually researched and developed a suggestion for how that garage might best serve Vienna commuters (as the basis for a slug line).  That’s how hard I was trying to make sense of this, at that time.

* Sadly, I find myself sincerely and without irony quoting Romper Room.  Youngsters in the readership here (meaning, anyone under about 60 or so) will have no idea what I’m talking about.  Think of it as reactionary propaganda — religious, patriotic, and social — aimed at the most vulnerable and gullible segment of the population, broadcast over the public airwaves.  It was as if  Sesame Street had been conceived by the John Birch Society.  Clearly, it succeeded at its insidious task, as I will probably remember the phrase “Do be a do-bee, and don’t be a don’t-bee” long after I’ve forgotten the names of my children. 

** This “do-bee/don’t-be” dichotomy is a widely-used method for embedding conventional social norms in literature aimed at young children.  For example, it was later adopted by children’s author Richard Scarry in his classic religious propaganda Busy Town series.  There, the (presumed) brothers Pig Will and Pig Won’t take the place of the gender-neutral Do Bee and Don’t Be, and are repeatedly used to demonstrate behaviors deemed socially acceptable and unacceptable, respectively.   By portraying Good and Evil in a concrete fashion, such authors directly impress their notions of right and wrong onto their target audience.  The sincerity of these characters (as propaganda tools aimed at the vulnerable pre-school popoulation) should be contrasted to the frankly tongue-in-cheek Angel/Devil imagery aimed at older, more rational children, such as the shoulder angel/shoulder devil debate in the animated classic “The Emperor’s New Groove“.

*** Upon close examination, other characters in Scarry’s “Busy Town” series were even more disturbing.  For example, the town butcher was portrayed as a pig, and yet had clearly identifiable hams hanging in his shop window.  I still wonder what message the author had in mind with that.

For the Mill Street garage, the Town only pretended that half the spaces would be for commuter use, and only asked for half the money to build the garage.

But in later iterations, for the proposed Patrick Henry garage, the Town’s story grew more absurd.  When the Town applied to the NVTA for money, it proposed that 100% of the spaces be used by commuters, prompting me to write my “absurdum” post (Post #446).  My point being that if this actually worked out as the Town suggested — if all the spaces were in fact used by commuters — then the garage would do the Town no good.  There’d be no spaces left for its actual use, which is to provide shopper/diner parking for local merchants.   But by saying that 100% of spaces would be used by commuters, it could then ask for 100% of the cost of the garage to be covered.

And in this most recent round (applying to NVTC for money), the Town is proposing that fewer spaces be used by commuters, but it’s still asking for 100% of the cost of the garage to be covered.

My guess is, the request that 100% of costs be covered is driven by our capital budget, where the Town is planning to borrow and spend vastly more in this year’s cycle than it has ever done in the past.  So much so that it had to assume the Patrick Henry garage would be “free” in order to get the numbers to work out (e.g., Post #488, Post #504).

Now, with that as perspective, surely you can put that all together the same way I have.  So far, the Town has done the following:

• Claimed that half of one garage, on Mill Street, would be used by Metro commuters, and asked for 50% of the cost of that garage to be covered.
• When the Mill Street garage fell through, blithely moved the money for that, to a different proposed garage on Church street, where the money would cover 59% of the garage.
• Claimed that 100%, of a different, larger garage (Patrick Henry) would be used by Metro commuters, and asked for 100% of that garage to be covered.
• Claimed that some smaller share (?) of spaces (certainly, a smaller count of spaces) would be used by commuters, in that same garage, and still asked for 100% of the cost of the garage to be covered.

This is in a Town that, prior to this, has done very close to nothing for Metro commuters.  (Well, they built bus shelters, starting back in 1977.  But not a lot, lately, for sure.)  And a Town where, if people were of a mind to park and catch a bus to Metro, there are copious opportunities for street parking right now (detailed in Post #447)****.

**** “… I count at least the following residential areas, with street-side parking, within walking distance of a bus stop for the 463 Fairfax Connector bus:  Kingsley-Meyers; Tapawingo; Roland-Mendon-Ceret; Moorefield-Princeton-Princess; Wade Hampton-Millwood-Glen; Pleasant; Berry; East; and virtually all the residential streets beyond East that connect to Maple.  That isn’t even counting the other bus routes that have some Metro connection.”

When I put that all together — the totally implausible story about commuting, the existing market test that shows people do not park/bus to Metro despite ample current opportunity, the repetition of the story for two different garages, and the morphing of the story over time — I come to the firm conclusion that the Town’s story is just that — a story.  It’s an untruth told for the purpose of achieving financial gain.  And that’s the definition of a fraud.

---

A simple fix:  Just come clean about the results

The introduction says pretty much all that needs to be said about this.  Given that nothing will dissuade the Town from doing this, and given that the Town has already gotten millions of dollars (for the Mill Street) garage with this story, it’s clear that this is the Town’s story and they are sticking with it.

My sole suggestion, then, is that the agencies providing the funding actually measure the effectiveness of their spending.  Require that the Town accurately count the number of parking spaces actually used by park-and-bus-to-Metro commuters.  This is the only way to close the loop, and force the funding agencies to admit what they have done — mis-spent funds that were intended for congestion relief, to give Vienna shopper/diner parking for local merchants.

Fill in your favorite aphorism here:

• Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
• Better late than never.
• Experience is simply the name we give to our mistakes.

My point is that, like anyone else, governments need to learn from their mistakes.  And in the case of government, that feedback needs to be built into the system.

If you really don’t think the Town is committing fraud here, then there should be no objection to building in that feedback.  If we are proud of getting taxpayer funding in this fashion, we should be proud to measure the results and to make that measurement publicly known.

The main topic of discussion at last night’s (1/27/2020) Town Council meeting was the proposed Sunrise assisted living facility.  Spoiler:  it passed.  The only other item of interest to me was the Town’s application for funding for a Maple Avenue parking garage.  That also passed.  The meeting materials are on this Town of Vienna web page.

There were a handful of surprises at that meeting.  The first surprise is that the Town has already posted its video at the link above.  That’s extremely helpful for citizens who want to see what went on while these topics are still hot.  I won’t bother to post my audio file, but I will post my Excel “index” file at this Google Drive link.  That Excel file is a running summary of what was said when, during the meeting.  My times will only approximately match the times in the Town video.

---

Continue reading Post #517: Last night’s Town Council meeting

The last item on tonight’s (1/27/2020) agenda ticks all the boxes for me.  This is the item whereby the Town Council asks yet a different taxpayer-funded organization to pay for the new commuter garage in Vienna.

Wait, you didn’t know there was going to be a commuter garage in Vienna?  That’s no surprise, because there isn’t going to be one.

I mean, why on earth would anyone drive through this …

… in order to get to the middle of Vienna, park in the new commuter parking garage, then take the (once-per-half-hour) bus back down Maple Avenue, in order to get back to the Vienna Metro?

Nobody’s going to do that.  But our Town government is happy to lie about that, if that fraud means somebody else will pay for the proposed shopper/diner parking garage at the Patrick Henry Library.

On top of committing fraud against the taxpayer by lying about commuter use of this garage, this item has several other features worth noting.  All of which I’ve touched on before.  It’s more-or-less a microcosm of … well, pretty much how I view Town government.

• Keep Town Council/Public in the dark.  There’s no copy of the staff presentation in the Town Council meeting materials.  This is now standard operating procedure by the Department of Planning and Zoning, and serves to keep both Town Council and (particularly) the public in the dark as long as possible.  Consistent with SOP, if anyone on own Council dares to slap their wrist over this (yet again), DPZ will offer to send them a copy after-the fact.  And the public?  Anything sent out with the meeting packet itself has to be public information, by law.  But if they don’t send it out?  Well, you peasants can FOIA it if you want to have a copy of it.  You can see my writeup of this tactic, as the new norm, in the middle of Post #480, which discusses FOIA issues in general.
• Ask for a rubber-stamp approval.  Heck, they didn’t even bother to provide a copy of the two items that the Town is backing with this resolution.  I.e., the story here seems to be “just say yes, you don’t need to bother your little heads about the details of what you’re endorsing”.  If that’s not the definition of rubber-stamping something, I don’t know what is.  (And note that the story about the garage continues to change, see below).
• We’re already overspent the capital budget.  The Town is already so over-spent on its capital budget that it needs this free shopper-diner garage, or it’ll have to scramble to find the money.  So Town Council has no choice but to endorse the fraud.  (See, e.g., Post #504, Post #488, Post #485.)
• The story keeps changing.  The number of “commuter” parking places in this proposal is less than the number in the prior funding proposal the Town Council approved for the NVTA.  (Versus this new funding proposal, to the NVTC — see last item).  Arguably, that’s because the last proposal, for money from a different local government agency, was totally absurd.  So our story about these fictional commuter parking places continues to morph, even as we apply to additional entities to pay for them.  (See, e.g., Post #447, Post #446).
• The only option on the table is just plain ugly, but nobody will object.  The only viable parking garage plans result in a new library that squats under a parking garage.  See illustration, and see, e.g., Post #367, Post #369, Post #371, Post #372.
• Ready-fire-aim.  The Town will, eventually, get some consultant in to tell it how many parking places it actually needs.  But only after it has already funded both a Church Street “commuter” garage and this Patrick Henry “commuter” garage.  Call me cynical, but I bet the consultant ends up telling the Town that it somehow, though sheer guesswork, funded exactly the right number of spaces, whatever that number turns out to be.  (See, e.g., this post or Post #481 for discussion of other ready-fire-aim studies, or Post #510 for the parking study, or this post from a year ago about the economic development plan that will justify MAC zoning after-the-fact.  The point is, ready-fire-aim is the Town’s normal mode of operation in this arena.)
• Ludicrous cost. The current lie (to NVTC, as opposed to the previous lie, to NTVA) is now stated as a request for $5.5M to buy 84 “commuter” parking places, or $65,000 per putative commuter parking place.  That’s exceptionally expensive, and doesn’t even factor in a reasonable utilization rate (i.e., doesn’t even account for the fact that commuters aren’t going to park there).  See e.g. Post #447 for how the “commuter” garage cost-benefit analysis ought to be done.
• We have two local government agencies handing out cash?  Where do I stand in line?  Yes, the first application was to the NVTA.  That’s the organization we suckered into paying for half the Mill Street Garage 59% of the Church Street Garage, or whatever-the-heck portion of whatever-the-heck actually gets built, if anything.  (See Post #491 for explanation.)  I mean, it’s the taxpayers’ money, so it’s not like anybody needs to care about it, or anything.  So, whatever. Noted above, we’ve already put in an application to NVTA, promising that all the parking places in this new garage will be for commuters (Post #446).  But this new application, for funding the same garage, is to NVTC, and I don’t think we’re promising every space is a commuter space.  (But how can I tell, since there’s no copy of the actual proposal posted.)  In any case, we haven’t scammed them yet.  In short:  Two different taxpayer-financed tax spigots, two different applications.  The names are so alike that staff stumbled over the acronyms at the last Town Council session on this.

Except for that last point, I’ve documented all of this before, so I don’t see the need to write this up again.  Read the prior posts if you want the details.

I have been told by friends that I need to keep going on this blog.  And so I will grudgingly try to grind out posts on a fairly regular basis.

That said, there seems to be little point to doing the extensive homework required to support the factual and logical accuracy of these posts.  Facts and logic are ineffective tools of rhetoric in the modern era, and my insistence on that approach is more a remnant of old habits than it is an effective means of mass communication.  I’ll go so far as to say that most readers don’t give a rat’s ass about factual accuracy, mine or anyone else’s.  After all, the central two-part concept of social media is that that we are each empowered to have strongly held and firmly expressed opinions, yet none of us is burdened to do even the slightest bit of homework so that we know what we’re talking about.

So it’s high time that I got with the program.  Logically, stridency, rather than accuracy should be my goal.  And so, in the toxic spirit of righteous cluelessness that is so central to internet-based discourse, let me dive right in.  I’ll try to keep this one short, to the point, and fact-free.

At the last Town Council session I attended, the following statement was expressed by the Director of Planning and Zoning, and duly echoed at various points by pro-MAC Town council member(s).

We have to wait to 2021 to revise the Town Comprehensive Plan because 2020 Census data will be available then.

Continue reading Post #512: Census nonsense from Town government, and the larger lesson to be learned from that.