Milan and Rayner do a U turn

By Valerie Cury

For a third time since the council vote on Nov. 14, 2023, Council Member Chris Bertaut tried to get the majority of town council’s approval to remove the Northern Collector Road from the 2009 Purcellville Town Wide Transportation Plan. At the Jan. 23 Town Council Work Session, the new majority on council voted 5-2 to wait years until a study is done before considering the removal of the Northern Collector Road. Council Members Carol Luke and Chris Bertaut voted against delaying the removal.

Just two months prior, in a Nov. 14, 2023, town council meeting, council voted to approve easements necessary to build a water tower near the Mayfair community – with the caveat of immediately removing the Northern Collector Road from the town transportation plan. Removing the NCR from the plan would make it more difficult in the future to extend Mayfair Crown Drive to Fields Farm Road. 

In addition, the County Department of Building and Development, Land Development Division has asked the applicant of the proposed Valley Commerce Center, which is across the road from Mayfair to put in an alignment for the Northern Collector Road. The potential alignment is directly across the road from Mayfair Crown Drive on the conceptual plat.

In a memo on Sept. 8, 2023, county staff wrote, “Staff notes the proposed right-of-way dedication for future north collector road. Staff questions if a temporary turn around will be provided until such time that the future collector road is completed as a through road.”

At the Nov. 14 meeting then Council Member Erin Rayner, a resident of Mayfair said, “If we vote to approve this [easement we need] immediate action to update the amendment to the Comprehensive Plan to say that road will not go through. We’ll put it to an end – that argument. So, I think it’s a good idea.”

At the same meeting Mayor Stan Milan said he agreed with then Council Member Ron Rise Jr. who said the council should take immediate action after the easement is approved “to amend the Comprehensive Plan and update the 2009 Transportation Plan to reflect those intentions. We should make the intention clear that there’s no intention to connect this road [Mayfair Crown Drive to Fields Farm Road which would also be known as the Northern Collector Road].”

Said Milan, “I would like to echo the comments of Council Member Rise. It’s imperative that we do make known that the intent is not to connect to the Mayfair Crown Drive.”

At the Jan. 23 work session, Bertaut said he was bringing back the issue before council and “there is a list of changes that reference individual citations of the Northern Collector Road” as well as the mention of extending O Street. 

O Street is currently a dead-end street, but Casey Chapman has spoken about his desire for the town to extend O Street from 21^st Street through to Hatcher Avenue. Extending O Street would dump traffic from Chapman’s approved Vineyard Square project onto Hatcher Avenue. 

The Vineyard Square project was approved 13 years ago by the Lazaro council, and since Chapman has all the permits, he can build the project at any time. 

Said Council Member Chris Bertaut at the Jan. 23 meeting, “This list is coming around the 3^rd time to town council and the intent here is to amend not to revise the transportation plan, the difference being that in amending we simply take out dated or no longer functional references to projects or structures that either are not recommended by the comprehensive plan or perhaps should never have been there in the first place.

“One of the arguments we’ve heard on previous rounds of discussions is that we need to revise,” Bertaut said, adding that would be a “top to bottom long range” goal.” He said that completing a revised plan would take at least 2 years between putting the money into the budget and executing a complete revised plan.

Bertaut said the town didn’t put the NCR into the 2009 Transportation Plan using any study. “They just copied and pasted from the county long range transportation plan. We just dropped it in place.”

He said that to be consistent with the town’s comprehensive plan – which was updated in 2020 – “there’s a specific recommendation to remove the NCR from the town’s plan. It says the town council does not approve of the NCR.

“So far we have had nothing but verbal assurances from our county elected officials that the NCR itself is dead. The county however has done nothing to remove the NCR from its own transportation plan.”

“The action item here is to direct the planning commission to once again review the references to the NCR and remove them where they do not make sense,” said Bertaut.

Vice Mayor Erin Rayner said, “It’s bad policy to ad hoc-ly [sic] remove something from our transportation plan.”

Cutting off further discussion Rayner then said, “So, with that I move to end the consideration of the removal of the Northern Collector Road and O Street as referenced in the 2009 Transportation Plan and end considerations from the planning commission regarding this topic until a new town wide transportation plan has been completed.”

Her motion passed with a majority. Mayor Stan Milan, and Council Members Mary Jane Williams, Caleb Stought and Kevin Wright joined Rayner to shut down discussion and action from the planning commission about removing the Northern Collector Road and O Street from the 2009 Purcellville Town Wide Transportation Plan.