Post #318: Motion to rescind

Tomorrow (7/15/2019) the Town Council and Planning Commission will hold a joint hearing on a motion to rescind the approval of 380 Maple West (37 condos plus retail, Wade Hampton and Maple).

I have discussed the background for this in several posts but my best explanation for how we got here is Post #309.

I have just three things to add at this point.

1:  It’s just theater.

Having sat through dozens of such meetings over the past year, and having seen the Town Council approve 444 Maple West despite massive public opposition, I’m pretty sure that the “public hearing” portion of this meeting is purely for show.   It’s a legal requirement, so they have to do it.  But Town Council members already know how they will vote on this, and nothing that the public has to say will change those positions one bit.

By contrast, I have seen the Planning Commission modify its position in response to public comment.  But Town Council?  On this issue?  Nah.  Not gonna happen.

So, by all means, show up and speak.  Be heard.  Sit through the hours (?) of discussion.  Listen to our elected representatives give their speeches.  But realize that, absent the legal requirements, they could have gotten this piece of business over with in about five minutes.   Call the roll, vote, and leave.

Why am I so sanguine about that?  Because …

2:  The game is rigged.

In order to approve 380 West, in the presence of a protest petition, at least five Town Council members had to vote in favor of it.  (It used to be six, but Town Council changed that after the initial defeat of the Marco Polo proposal, one of the many times they doubled-down on MAC zoning (Post #227).

So, logically, anything under five “yes” votes for 380 — i.e., anything over two votes to rescind 380 — ought to result in rescinding the decision,.  They are revisiting a decision that required five “yes” votes.  Anything under five, now, means that the original motion would not have passed.

Under that interpretation (undoing the original decision), three or move voting to rescind would result in rescinding the original decision.  Three or more would have been enough to block the original approval.  Logically, three should be adequate to rescind the approval.

But wait, maybe that’s not fair.  Maybe this needs to be treated like any other motion before Town Council, and should require a majority of Town Council members voting in favor of it.

Under that interpretation (treat as any other motion), four or more voting to rescind would result in rescinding the original decision.  That’s a simple majority of the Town Council, that’s the way business is normally conducted.  And that’s consistent with why this is being revisited in the first place — three-quarters of votes cast in the May election were for anti-MAC candidates, and those now account for a majority of the members of the Town Council.

Under either of those interpretations, the motion to rescind would pass.  Which is precisely why the Mayor and Town Attorney aren’t going to do either of those things.   The rumor I have heard is that they are going to require a super-majority of “yes” votes in order to pass the motion to rescind the 380 approval. 

Because …. ?

Because they win, in that case.  Under that interpretation, five people would have to vote to rescind the decision.  Absent a miracle, that will not occur, as Council members DiRocco, Colbert, and Noble can be counted to vote against rescinding the 380 approval.   I’m sure there will be some legalese solemly spoken in order to bless this decision.  But the reality of it is, the remaining pro-MAC Town Council members would not win in any sort of fair fight.  But only idiots opt for a fair fight when they control the rules.  So they have taken the last two weeks to gin up a rationale that lets them win.

Which merely underscores that ….

3:  We need to vote the three remaining pro-MAC Town Council members out of office next year.  (Or, at the least, give it a good try).

Up to now, when challenged, the pro-MAC Town Council and Town employees have simply doubled-down on every objectionable aspect of MAC zoning (Post #227).  And this next meeting will NOT be the last of that of that doubling-down strategy that we have seen so far.

Why?

Because this latest episode shows that if you control the rules, and have Town staff working for you, it doesn’t really much matter that you are in the minority.  It doesn’t much matter that the most recent election should have sent a fairly strong signal about what the majority of Vienna citizens want, with three-quarters of votes case for anti-MAC candidates.

If you hold the reins of power, you can use them to ignore the results of the last election, in the hope that the next election will turn things around for you.  Given that attitude, the only option for people who oppose the current MAC setup is to prevent that from happening.  The only option is to try to vote the rest of them out, if we can.

I don’t say that lightly.  I’m pretty much sick of this issue.  But there hasn’t been the slightest indication that the pro-MAC forces are willing to consider material changes to the existing law.  I.e., Almost nobody wants to get rid of MAC entirely, but a large fraction of the population appears to want smaller buildings and more green space (as outlined in this post based on a survey of Vienna residents).  But all we have seen so far is more sleight-of-hand, such as the offer to replace the useless 15% “open space” requirement with what would in all likelihood be an equally useless 10% “gathering space” requirement.

In summary, for those who have been following this issue closely, it’s absolutely no surprise that those in power would bend the rules in their favor.  Recall that after the original Marco Polo proposal was turned down, those in power changed the voting rules to try to ensure that would not happen again.  This latest twist is just more of the same.

 

Post #317: D-I-Y alerts for Town business relevant to you.

I have finally figured out a way to set up automatic notifications that should send me an email when some forthcoming Town meeting contains an item of interest to me.  It’s not perfect, but it’s the best I’ve been able to figure out so far.  I believe that few people realize this can be done.   So I thought I’d share, just in case you would care to do the same.

The problem.

Suppose that you have a particular interest in (say) trash pickup in the Town of Vienna.  And that, any time this is discussed in a public meeting, you’d like the Town to notify you in advance, e.g., send you an email a few days ahead of the meeting.

Nothing on the Town of Vienna website will allow you to do that.  Or, at least, nothing that I have ever found.  The Town has an Alerts system, but that’s for things like tornadoes and street closings and such.  The Town website would allow you to set up an RSS feed for the Town Calendar, but if that worked, that would notify you every time the calendar changed for any reason.  (And I have my doubts that it does work, based on the community connections section of the Town’s RSS feed page.)

Near as I can tell, before I figured out my current approach, the only way a citizen could be aware of what the Town will discuss is to wait for the Town to post the meeting agenda, then go to the Town website and look at it.

The (partial) solution.

Rely on the Legistar (Granicus) website to do that.  The Town posts meeting notices and agendas on the Legistar website for its four main governing bodies:  Town Council, Planning Commission, Board of Architectural Review, Board of Zoning Appeals.

Legistar allows you easily to set up an account, and then set up alerts based on any set of keywords or phrases that you wish.  Either click the “sign in” link in the upper right corner of that page cited above, or click the “Alerts” link.

Set up any number of alerts based on more or less standard Boolean phrases using AND and OR and NOT.  (So, if I wanted to hear about trash pickup or recycling, I would ask for … “trash pickup” OR recycling.  Search appears to be case-insensitive.  You cannot search for special characters.)

If you click for daily alerts, in theory, the Legistar system will check daily for any new items posted on the Vienna page that mention those words or phrases, and email you if they find a new one.  You can add CC email addresses if you have friends who want to piggyback on your alerts.

Because the Town posts the agendas and meeting details only a few days before each meeting, this should give you a timely reminder of a meeting you would like to attend.

Limitations and caveats.

  1.  You have to trust that the Granicus/Legistar system will work.  They serve thousands of local governments, so it’s a fair bet that it works.
  2. Only those four boards (TC, PC, BAR, BZA) are posted to Granicus/Legistar.
  3. Other important commissions in Vienna (e.g., Transportation Safety Commission) are NOT posted to this website.  The only way to know what those other commissions are doing remains to check the Town calendar (on the Town’s website) to see if they have posted a new meeting agenda.
  4. The search function appears to check the title of each listed agenda item, but does not search through the contents of the attached documents.

Still, this is better than nothing.  And it’s the best method that I have found so far.

 

Post #309: The July 1 2019 Town Council meeting

This is just a notice to bring something to your attention:  The Town Council is going to consider a motion to rescind its recent approval of 380 Maple West (37 condos plus retail, Wade Hampton and Maple).  This will be the last agenda item at its 8 PM July 1 meeting.

You can find the relevant meeting materials on this web page.

I’m not going to opine on the legal issues behind this, but I will comment on the context arising from the recent Town of Vienna elections.  Mainly, this is not unexpected.

In Fairfax County, they (typically) do not let the Board of Supervisors make land use decisions between the election and the seating of the new Board.  In other words, they don’t allow lame-duck Board members to decide land use (zoning and rezoning) issues as they are going out of office.

They do this for several good reasons.  Probably the most important is that you don’t want individuals who are not beholden to the electorate making these significant (and permanent) decisions about land use.  In particular, you don’t want to allow them the opportunity to make one last grand gesture in favor of any one particular development or policy without having to face the consequences for such an action.

This May’s Town election replaced two pro-MAC Council members with two new anti-MAC newcomers.  In round numbers, 75% of the votes cast in that election were for anti-MAC candidates.

And, unsurprisingly, given what appeared to be a fairly strong mandate from the voters, Councilman Springsteen asked the Town to abide by the same rule that Fairfax County does.  He asked that land-use decisions be deferred until the new Town Council could be seated.  He asked that the lame-duck Town Council not engage in that business.

He was ignored.  At the last Town Council meeting, the Town Council a) approved 380 Maple West, b) turned down the Sunrise assisted living facility at  and c) appointed and re-appointed various pro-MAC actors to Town Boards and Commissions (e.g., Planning Commission).

But, as it turns out, government bodies can change their minds.  They can rescind something that they recently passed, according to Robert’s Rules of Order.

Somehow, given the hustle-up and hardball style that the pro-MAC forces have used to move these projects through the system, I doubt that they’ll allow this motion to rescind to be considered.  From what I hear, the pro-MAC Councilmembers that remain are still in denial about the recent election.  They continue to maintain that the “real” Vienna is solidly behind them. (Without evidence or analysis, but what else is new.)  So it will take another election to settle that point one way or the other.  In any case, there’s been zero indication of any willingness to accede gracefully to the apparent will of the people.  All I can say is, what happens Monday night will be remembered, and I for one will try to make sure it is clearly remembered for the next Town of Vienna election.

Post #308: The tear-down boom (again), and the McLeanification of Vienna

The main point of this article is to show you a few graphics that I stumbled across.  So let me get that out of the way up front.  I’m not sure there’s a lot of point to this posting beyond that, other than quantifying what you already know:  They sure are building a lot of big houses in Vienna.  And, at the end, I suggest one possible change in zoning policy:  Letting them cut those big houses in half — as duplexes — would provide a type of less-expensive family-oriented housing that is really getting scarce here in Vienna.


The data:  Single family homes for sale

Per Redfin (with full attribution and acknowledgement of copyright), below is a map of single-family houses for sale in Vienna VA.   I’ve followed that with equivalent maps for Oakton, Fairfax City,  Falls Church, and McLean. These are followed by table showing relevant data for each location.

Take a minute to study the dollar values on the maps, or on the summary table following the maps. Scan for houses under $1M and under $500K.  Do the dollar values for Vienna seem a bit “rich”, compared to your understanding of these communities?

Continue reading Post #308: The tear-down boom (again), and the McLeanification of Vienna

Post #305: This week’s schedule as an example of Town governance

I send out an email, once a week to inform people of MAC-related public meetings in the Town of Vienna.  It’s not as easy as you might think, because the Town tends to be … sloppy … about keeping citizens informed.  In this post, I’m going to walk through this week’s calendar and point out a few things.

First, a summary: 

Number of public meetings:  4

Meetings with agenda posted:  1

Meetings with reliably-available recordings:  2

Continue reading Post #305: This week’s schedule as an example of Town governance

Post #296: Marco Polo/Vienna Market continues to evolve

This Friday, 6/14/2019, at 8 AM (yes, AM) in Town Hall, the Board of Architectural Review (BAR) will again examine revised plans for the Marco Polo/Vienna Market project.   It will be interesting to see how this evolves. I put in a series of drawings below to show how the Church Street view of the building has changed, ending with the drawings to be examined this Friday.

Looking forward, I think the more interesting question is how the BAR’s changes will be enforced.  For the time being, let’s assume the BAR and the builder can agree on a building.  After that, then who, exactly, is in charge of making sure the actual building matches that agreement?  As with the changes in the plans, does the Director of Planning and Zoning have the final say as to whether a building is substantially similar to what was originally agreed upon?

If so — if enforcement is in the hands of the individuals who played a key role in creating this mess — then these BAR meetings take on a tinge of theater of the absurd.  The BAR can demand any degree of architectural sophistication that it deems reasonable.  And then, when it comes time actually to build the building, that can all be erased by the Town bureaucracy.

So, it will be interesting to see what the BAR and the builder can agree to.  It will be more interesting still to see what actually gets built, and whether it bears anything more than a passing resemblance to any agreed-upon building.

Continue reading Post #296: Marco Polo/Vienna Market continues to evolve

Post #293: Please vote tomorrow, June 11

Tuesday June 11 is the Democratic primary.  Among the offices that are open are the Chairman of the County Board of Supervisors, and the Member of the Board of Supervisors from the Hunter Mill District.

Polls are open 6 AM to 7 PM.  Bring a photo ID.  Even thought this is the Democratic primary, a) any registered voter may vote regardless of party affiliation, and b) it will likely determine who will win these Board of Supervisors seats in the November general election.

If you are unsure of where your polling place is, you can use this on-line tool.  Type in your address and it should tell you where to to go vote in this year’s primary election.

This election is marked by developers spending a significant amount of money on behalf of some candidates.  You can see Post #292 for the surprise quarter-million-dollar push on behalf of Maggie Parker in the Hunter Mill District (largely funded by her employer, Comstock Partners), or the nearly-$1M effort to elect Tim Chapman as Chairman, largely self-funded.

The ViennaVotes.com website has access to profiles for all the candidates for the Hunter Mill district.  The Fairfax League of Women Voters has a non-partisan description of the election with links to information about the individual candidates.

 

Post #292: Hunter Mill campaign finance update: A quarter-million-dollar surprise

This is a followup to Post #280, where I laid out the campaign finances of the Hunter Mill District Democratic candidates for Board of Supervisors.  A colleague tipped me off to the fact that things have changed materially since I posted that, and so that post requires an update.  To be clear, Maggie Parker raised and spent about $250,000 in the past two months, far more than any other Hunter Mill candidate.

Recall that, in Virginia, anyone can give any amount of money to any candidate for state or local office.  The only requirement of the Virginia Campaign Finance Disclosure Act (CFDA) is that the money must be reported to the Commonwealth by the candidate’s Political Action Committee (PAC).   That reporting is the source of the following information.

Continue reading Post #292: Hunter Mill campaign finance update: A quarter-million-dollar surprise

Post #288: Just keeping to the schedule, that’s all. In no way should you interpret this Monday’s Town Council meeting as giving the finger to Town of Vienna voters.

This Monday, June 3, the Town Council meeting will have two different public hearings, on two different MAC buildings, in the same meeting. Not only will the Town Council (almost surely) pass the 380 Maple West proposal (39 condos plus retail, corner of Wade Hampton and Maple), they will also take public comment on the Sunrise Assisted Living facility planned for Maple and Center.

Why the rush, you may ask?  Particularly in the context of the shady bait-and-switch that occurred for the Marco Polo project — still unresolved and not subject to any investigation or explanation by the Town.  Particularly in the context of the Chick-fil-A-car-wash, where Town Council apparently just didn’t realize that the drawings provided by the developer did not provide accurate representations of the size and location of the building.

They are in rush because the new Town Council is seated July 1.  Town staff are therefore working diligently to ensure that the Town Council approves these buildings before members-elect Patel and Potter are seated.  Patel and Potter campaigned against the MAC statute as written, and their election takes away the pro-MAC majority that currently dominates Town Council.

Now, if you simply count votes from the last Town Council election, identify Bloch and Hays as the pro-MAC candidates and the others as anti-MAC, you would find that a stunning 73% of votes were cast for the openly anti-MAC candidates, in this year’s Town Council election.

You might think that would give the pro-MAC Town Council members pause?  But that’s not how this has worked.  When challenged or questioned, the pro-MAC Town Council members have simply doubled down on MAC (Post #227).

So, with that as history, then of course, if almost three-quarters of Town voters said “please put a stop to this”, it’s completely predictable that these folks would move full speed ahead.  In Fairfax County, they would not even allow a vote like this during a political transition, because you don’t want lame duck politicians — no longer beholden to the electorate — making important land use decisions.  But in the Town of Vienna, it’s just business as usual.