Waynesboro City Council approves parking fines increase: Takeaways from Monday night's meeting
WAYNESBORO — It was a quick Monday night for a short-handed Waynesboro City Council, but that included plenty of important information for residents from parking fines to potential changes to development on Windigrove Drive.
Let’s take a look at what the council worked through at their regular meeting.
Hotel, motel, Holiday Inn? Waynesboro Place development could see new uses
Back in 2010, the city approved a planned unit development (PUD) on Windigrove Drive, known as Waynesboro Place. The area was divided into separate blocks with designated uses, and the applicant, Rosser Avenue LLC, applied to expand the usages in block two to include hotels and motels as an accepted use last year. Currently, there’s a wide variety of accepted uses including retail, recreation and entertainment, offices, and grocery stores, but hotels and motels were not allowed.
Last August, council held a public hearing for the request, and residents sounded off about the impact of the development on traffic and pedestrian safety in the area. The topic was tabled to allow the applicant to conduct a new traffic impact study for the development. In January, that traffic impact study was submitted to Waynesboro, and showed that the estimated daily trips for hotel and motel use along with planned development for general office and medical space wouldn’t increase the number of daily trips past the cap of 3,782. The analysis set the daily trips at 3,776.
The planning commission and staff both recommended that the application be approved. Council will consider passing the amendment at their next business meeting on March 27.
Parking fines increase in the city
At their last meeting near the end of February, city council heard a proposal to increase parking fines in the city to bring them more in line with other jurisdictions in the area. On Wednesday night, council approved the increases unanimously, doubling the fine for parking violations from $10 to $20.
The comparison to other jurisdictions, including Staunton and Lynchburg, showed that Waynesboro’s fine structure was almost 50% of the fines leveed by surrounding areas. The idea with changing the fines was to help deter individuals from violating parking ordinances for personal convenience.
The ordinance also lays out the process for contesting parking violations and for how the city and police department will act in the case of delinquent fines.
Grant money could be coming for emergency services in Waynesboro
Council approved a pair of resolutions authorizing city staff to apply for grants to help local emergency responses, including the Waynesboro First Aid Crew and the fire department.
The first grant application is to replace an ambulance for the Waynesboro First Aid Crew, as they have one vehicle that is reaching the end of life. The city provides around $145,000 in support for the crew every year, and there’s no restrictions on how those funds can be used. The authorization allows the city to use their allocations to the first aid crew towards matching a rescue squad assistance grant of $282,000.
The other grant application was for a federally-funded fire and emergency response assistance (S.A.F.E.R.) grant which requires no local match. The goal of the grant is to increase the number of trained frontline firefighters in localities and bring them closer to recommended staffing standards from the National Fire Protection Association. The grant would come in at $1,927,000 over three years. The city’s application would fully fund nine new firefighters, broken up to three per shift, to bring Waynesboro closer to NFPA standards. According to director of finance Cameron McCormick, those changes would make the grant application more competitive. City staff is planning a fire department update, including a staffing update, sometime before the grant is awarded.
Quick hitters
Vice mayor Jim Wood was absent from the meeting to attend to a death in the family.
Concerned residents continued to sound off on issues at the Shenandoah Valley Animal Services Center during the citizen comment period, questioning the practices of local animal control and the training of staff at the shelter.
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—Akhil Ganesh is the Government Reporter at The News Leader. You can contact him at aganesh@newsleader.com and follow him on Twitter @akhildoesthings.
This article originally appeared on Staunton News Leader: Waynesboro City Council approves parking fines increase: Takeaways from Monday night's meeting
