Category: Town of Vienna, VA

Post #513: Light trespass and protecting housing adjacent to Maple

The Chick-fil-a-car-wash is in the process of getting some exterior modifications to reduce light trespass, that is, excessive and annoying spillover of light onto adjacent properties.  In this case, the spillover is from the interior lighting of that building onto the nearby townhouses.  Councilman Potter championed this change on behalf of the adjacent neighborhood.  Approval for those modifications was supposed to occur at the last meeting of the Board of Architectural Review (BAR), but was postponed.

So, good for them, for being willing to make the changes to reduce their light trespass.  But you have to ask a) why does a brand new building need this retrofit, and b) is this a one-off problem, or a generic problem that needs to be addressed for future buildings as well?

The answers, as far as I can tell are that a) the Town only checks for light spillover on paper, not in the field, and those paper estimates of light spillover have many shortcomings, and b) yeah, there are already indications that this is an underlying problem that should be addressed more broadly and more proactively.

What I’m saying is, don’t think of this as some sort of one-off mistake.  It’s a single example of a generic shortcoming of the zoning process.  It should be addressed as such.  In much the same way that I argued for changing the code to require closing in garages that face residential areas (to control noise pollution), the Town needs to step up its game and provide real checks on light trespass from new commercial development. Continue reading Post #513: Light trespass and protecting housing adjacent to Maple

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

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.

Post #506: Tonight’s Town Council meeting

There are at least three interesting agenda items for tonight’s Town Council meeting.  You can find the meeting materials on this page.  One has to do with “vacating” town alleyways (i.e., selling the land to an abutting land owner).  A second has to do with the Town setting a goal for the “level of service” on Maple Avenue, that is, a goal for the most congestion it will tolerate before trying to do something about it.  Third, the Town is finalizing plans to hire a contractor to tell them how much it will cost to put the utility lines underground along Maple. Continue reading Post #506: Tonight’s Town Council meeting

Post #505: Revisiting #2: Let’s move the Noah’s Ark meeting into the 21st century.

Read Post #480 for the definition, and Post #495 for how this applies to Town’s decision to establish the rules for rewriting all the zoning in Vienna in private, out of the public view.

In a nutshell:

  • Under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), any time three* or more members of a public body gather to discuss public business, that’s a public meeting.
  • All public meetings have to be open to the public, unless there’s some well-defined reason for having a closed meeting.  The statute identifies a specific list of such reasons (e.g., personnel actions).
  • A meeting of two members of a public body is not a public meeting.  It has to be three or more.

* Or, if a quorum is fewer than three.  So if there’s a two-person subcommittee, if those two people meet to discuss public business, that’s a public meeting.

OK, now think like a bureaucrat.  How do you dodge the clear intent of the Virginia FOIA, and manage to hold a meeting of (e.g.) seven members of the Town Council, but bar the public?

Simple:  You break your meeting up into little pieces, where each piece only has two Town Council members present.  Let me term each such piece of the overall meeting a “meetinglet”.

A single meetinglet, by itself, is more-or-less useless.  But now, instead of one meeting with all seven present, you hold a coordinated series of meetinglets, one after the other, with Town Staff providing information on what has been said in all prior discussions.  For legal purposes, instead of that being treated as one meeting of seven people that has been broken up into meetinglets, the law treats each meetinglet separately.

Hence, “Noah’s Ark” meeting, because you bring in the Town Council two-by-two.  You break the seven-person meeting into a series of two-person meetinglets, and presto, it’s legal.

Continue reading Post #505: Revisiting #2: Let’s move the Noah’s Ark meeting into the 21st century.

Post #504: Revisiting old business #1, the mystery of the additional $7,000,000 2020 loan

I don’t quite have the heart to write a post summing up where we stand on MAC zoning.  Which is how I should start the new year.

So, in the meantime, I’m revisiting a few old issues, mostly those that I find puzzling or annoying.  Today’s issue is both.  Today’s post is about the Town’s forthcoming $28M — or-is-it-$35M? –2020 bond issue.

Mostly, I’m revisiting this because, upon reflection, what the Town said about the $35M borrowing authorization simply reeks of baloney.*  They said that the last $7M of borrowings was added with no purpose in mind, and it would be used to add to the reserves in the capital fund.

* I realize baloney does not reek, but my wife made me change this from the original wording.

The sole point of this post is to point that out, as clearly as possible, that this is nonsense.  And then to take a pure guess as to what’s actually going on.  The Powers That Be in Vienna will or will not inform the peasantry of the true reason for the additional loan (i.e., the spending of the peasantry’s tax dollars), at some point, as they deign.  Or not.  All I can do is point out that what they said in that meeting about the additional $7M in borrowings isn’t plausible. Continue reading Post #504: Revisiting old business #1, the mystery of the additional $7,000,000 2020 loan

Post #503: 21/150

Image Source:  Linked from the Dominion Power outdoor lighting website.

Maybe it’s because I’m so burnt out, writing about the Town of Vienna.  Maybe it was an exchange I had with somebody where I said that if you actually look at the “olde-tyme” streetlights along Maple, they look like hell.  Maybe it’s the fact that the Town is going to place four of those lights along Wade Hampton.   Maybe it’s just my knee-jerk reaction to quantify the data wherever that can be done cheaply and quickly.

In any case, the title of this post is the count of olde-tyme “acorn” streetlights that are burnt out (21), out of the total of such lights (150) along Maple.  In round numbers, one out of seven street lights along the “nice” section of Maple (Courthouse to East Street) is burnt out.

Just FYI, it took me about 5 minutes to count them, by taking a drive along Maple.  So this is the count, as I was driving by.  It might be off by one or two.  But it’s materially correct.

Continue reading Post #503: 21/150

Post #501: Hebrews 13:8

In memory of my dad, who I’m sure would appreciate the joke, because I stole it from him.

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Source:  https://gifer.com/en/gifs/impatient

 

3:  Hebrews 13:8.

If it’s not funny, re-read it and place more emphasis on the first two words.

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5:  Warning:  Recorder got bored and left early

2019-12-16 Town Council Work Session audio file.mp3

https://vienna-va.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=719394&GUID=75A75570-641E-451A-BAC5-D73402CC6D30&Options=info&Search=

 

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Source:  https://gifer.com/en/gifs/thumbs-up