Docket Digest

(Wednesday) March 10, 2010

By Carla Branch
alexandrianews.org

Last night the Alexandria City Council accepted a $5000 check from Dominion Virginia Power for Freedmen’s Cemetery; deferred action on a request to hold a half marathon through Old Town to National Harbor and a plan to create another bipartisan citizens commission to look at changes to local elections; and approved moving forward with planned improvements to the King/Beauregard intersection.

Legislative Director Bernie Caton reported that the Virginia General Assembly is still debating the fiscal year 2011 budget. “They are supposed to adjourn on Saturday but it is still unclear what will be included in a compromise budget,” Caton said. “The House of Delegates has agreed to some fee increases although not nearly as many as the Senate proposed.

“We still don’t know what’s going to happen with K-12 funding although it looks as if the move to redistribute the at-risk student funds is not going to move forward. We still believe that there will be cuts here but don’t know how much,” Caton said.

The City’s proposed changes to the Red Light camera law was rejected earlier in the legislative session. “However, there was another amendment to the legislation that accomplishes the same thing and allows civilian personnel to look up tag numbers so that sworn personnel don’t have to spend their time doing that,” Caton said.

Proposed gun legislation abounds. “I have seen more proposed gun legislation than ever before and the governor seems inclined to sign most of it into law,” Caton said.

The law that allows patrons to carry weapons into businesses brought protesters to the Starbucks on Union Street. “There is little we can do about that but Starbucks could certainly prohibit weapons on their property because they own it,” Caton said.

King-Beauregard Intersection Improvements

Council passed a resolution asking the Virginia Department of Transportation to move forward to acquire needed rights-of-ways for the proposed improvements to the intersection at King Street and Beauregard.

Since the 1990′s, the City of Alexandria and Arlington County have been jointly working on transportation solutions for the intersection of King and Beauregard Streets. Improving this intersection has been discussed at least since the late 1970′s. In joint meetings, City and Arlington County staff, as well as elected officials from both jurisdictions, identified the subsequent intersection constraints:

• Lack of intersection capacity. (Primarily due to turning traffic and poor access management)

• Lack of accommodation of non-motorized modes of travel. (Pedestrian and bicycle modes)

• Poor accommodation of transit.

These project goals were revisited in FY 2000 as the cost, desirability and realization of the then proposed separated grade interchange came into question. Elected officials and staff reconvened to re-examine design alternatives which could accomplish the project goals, minimize right of way acquisition and improve aesthetics at this City gateway. After several meetings and considerable public input in 2003, the project was scaled back to a major intersection improvement project.

The current proposed at-grade improvements will add an additional left turn lane in each direction on King Street, medians and a 10-foot shared use path on portions of King Street and North Beauregard Street. The improvements will increase capacity and safety through the corridor and result in a reduction in delay of 31% in the morning rush hour and 19% in the evening rush hour.

City staff has held numerous meetings with the community and representatives of the adjoining municipalities of Arlington and Fairfax Counties and this input has been considered during the development of the plans. In addition, VDOT hosted two community meetings in April 1999, and June 2002. City staff met with the affected property owners in April 2007, and a citizen information meeting was held in May 2007. City staff recently met again with the affected property owners on October 14, 2009, to discuss the process for acquiring the necessary easements and right-of-way from private property owners and held a public meeting on November 19, 2009. The City received many comments from businesses and their patrons. Because of the secondary benefits this project will bring in dealing with BRAC-133 traffic, a presentation was also made to the City’s BRAC-133 Advisory Group. This was also docketed for and discussed by the Alexandria Transportation Commission.

Two main concerns discussed by the public were the proposed medians affecting ingress and egress to some of the business and residential properties and the loss of parking spaces along North Beauregard Street. Access will be provided to all properties either by a new signal or accommodation of U-turns at signalized intersections. U-turns will be allowed at the completion of the project and will be evaluated periodically as part of operational assessments of the intersection. Impacts to parking will be assessed during the right-of-way process. The property owners will be accommodated or compensated for any impacts created by the project and including loss of parking. Every attempt will be made to provide as much parking as possible. Upon receipt of this resolution, VDOT will review and approve it and obtain Federal authorization to commence right-of-way acquisition. Arlington County staff is also requesting a resolution from their County Board to reaffirm its support of the project.

The design is currently at the 65% design phase. This project is scheduled to begin construction in the fall of 2011.

Deferrals

A private organizer would like to hold a half marathon race through Old Town to National Harbor on Sept. 19, 2010. The special events committee recommended denial because the race would be disruptive to residents and is planned for a weekend just after another race in Old Town.

“Almost every race takes this same route and will be very disruptive to residents,” said Councilman Paul Smedberg. “We have not seen permits from the other jurisdictions and this application is incomplete. I don’t know why we are even discussing this.”

Vice Mayor Kerry Donley would like to support the race. “There are some marketing reasons to approve this but we should try to work with the organizers to come up with a different route,” he said. “I am going to propose that we defer this item for 30 days to give the staff time to work these things out.”

Also deferred, until Saturday’s public hearing, was a proposal to let a citizen’s commission consider any additional changes to local elections. Council voted last year to move local elections from May to November but decided not to ask for any further changes from the General Assembly this year.