Viewpoint: Lessons learned from Parking Reimagined
By Donna Jacobson
I served for approximately a year and a half on the Fairfax County Parking Reimagined Working Group, whose members were appointed by district supervisors. As a result of my experience, I believe that many in Fairfax County government seem oblivious to residents’ concerns. They give the impression that residents need to be “dealt with” as opposed to being represented and protected.
Of course, Fairfax County needs to continue to evolve and grow; however, Fairfax County government needs to do this by working with residents.
Fairfax County residents should think about what they want from their government and elected officials. We need leaders who want to represent residents and will instruct county staff to respect their needs.
In this election year, please pay close attention to the candidates running and vote for the ones who will value your needs and opinions, versus those who believe in streamlining county processes to eliminate residents’ voices.
The Parking Reimagined amendment to the Zoning Ordinance was passed unanimously by the Board of Supervisors on Sept. 26.
Both the Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors had made some changes to the proposed amendment, which thankfully resulted in fewer parking reductions for multifamily housing. The Director of Land Development Services now has less authority than originally proposed to make administrative adjustments to parking requirements.
The board adopted two follow-on motions. One requires county staff to monitor data related to the adopted changes in parking requirements to assess their effect. The other calls for staff to establish a readily accessible link to a webpage, which would permit the public to sign up for an electronic listserv and be notified when a request is made for a parking adjustment.
Related story: Planning Commission amends and recommends approval of Parking Reimagined
The parking amendment is more resident-friendly because of these changes. We all owe a debt of gratitude to all the community organizations that spent a significant amount of time analyzing the amendment, informing their members, and communicating with county staff, planning commissioners, and supervisors about their concerns.
However, as one of the members of the Parking Reimagined work group, I am concerned about the significant amount of time and resident feedback that was needed to get county officials and staff to consider how the parking amendment would affect residents.
Many unanswered questions remain regarding the responsibility of Fairfax County government to its residents.
Moving forward, is Fairfax County government going to be more receptive to resident feedback or are residents going to have to organize and work strenuously to have their concerns heard? Are community meetings going to be an exchange of ideas or remain a “marketing spiel” for how the county wants to proceed? Are residents going to have to analyze future zoning amendments with a fine-tooth comb to ensure that they are reasonable?
These are some of the bigger questions that arose from my experience with Parking Reimagined and questions that I think all residents should be concerned about, especially as we head to the polls to elect our leaders.
“I believe that many in Fairfax County government seem oblivious to residents’ concerns. They give the impression that residents need to be “dealt with” as opposed to being represented and protected. ”
Thank you for sharing your insights.
Pretty sad state of affairs. Let’s vote in some new leaders.
as further evidenced by the staff proposal to eliminate leaf vacuum service and withdrawal of same for the time being while staff ‘educates citizens on the virtues of ‘leafing’ leaves in place. I am reminded of the saying–the beatings will continue until morale improves.
This is a developer friendly amendment, in my view. Lowering required number of parking spaces and not financing public transit are at odds for the future. Both cannot exist in thee same space. Follow the budget problems at METRO – WMATA as it is not adequately now. In middle and mixed to lower income areas the public is in no position to buy into Electric vehicles and nor will the trades-workers be able to continue servicing the homeowners and job sights, without their vans and work trucks. Allowing the reduction for parking requirements in new development has the makings for direct and future problems. “Re imagine” the buildings with current parking that in the future are being left empty – and then repurpose the space at al later date.
This description of the frustrating process of fighting to inject a small dose of reality into county planning is accurate. Where this started was the totally idiotic proposal to require only o.4 parking places per bedroom for multi-story residential units. Donna Jacobson is to be commended for alerting Annandale residents to the preposterous idea, which was based on the ideologically driven notion that making parking costly and inconvenient would force people to abandon their vehicles and use mass transit. Even with the revisions, parking will still be reduced significantly despite the documented increase in per household vehicles. Required parking can be drastically reduced in Annandale if there is only one bus stop located in the vicinity– hardly a realistic option to car ownership and the associated need to require on-site parking places. There was a time when residents could rely on the professionalism of county staff, but the Parking Reimagined experience made me skeptical and distrusting. The changes proposed in the final days were still flawed, but the Board of Supervisors nonetheless was determined to ram it through without allowing for meaningful citizen input. If we want to preserve our quality of life, residents need to be vigilant and prepared to object to the next ill-conceived proposal.
If the parking lot pictured served a large retail store like Target, all of those parking spaces would be needed.
Two rebuttals:
– the only “limit” put in place was in very limited areas of Tysons. everywhere else is subject to minimums, but can build as much parking as deemed necessary
– your questions at the end ignore that the majority of email and live comments on parking reimagined were from residents that were for the changes, or thought they didn’t go far enough. There was absolutely an exchange of ideas – and neither side got everything they wanted.