LoudounNow LOUDOUN COUNTY’S COMMUNITY-OWNED NEWS SOURCE
[ Vol. 3, No. 18]
[ loudounnow.com ]
March 15, 2018 ]
Home Improvement and Real Estate
21
Purcellville Names New Town Manager BY PATRICK SZABO After nearly a year of temporary fill-ins, the Town of Purcellville finally has a permanent town manager. The Town Council on Tuesday night vot- Patrick Szabo/Loudoun Now ed 5-1-1, with David Mekarski Councilman Doug McCollum opposed and Vice Mayor Nedim Ogelman absent, to appoint David Mekarski to the post. The action follows 10 months that saw four other town officials act in the role. “I chose this community from what I could discern on the webpage,” Mekarski said. “I would characterize myself as a servant leader—first and foremost I’m here to serve.” He outlined four objectives that he has for the town—protecting and enhancing the community’s quality of life, enhancing the town’s revenue capacity, focusing on growth management and smart governance, and simply “getting the job done.” Mekarski has more than three decades of municipal management, planning and economic development experience and is a certified planner with the American Institute of Certified Planners. He most recently worked for 12 years as the village administrator of Olympia Fields, Illinois—a 3-square-mile community with a population of 5,000. Before resigning that post in November, he was being paid nearly $175,000 annually, according to openthebooks.com. Mekarski is also the former city manager of Vero Beach, FL. In 2005, he resigned from that post under pressure from the City Council after being accused of mismanaging money that the city allocated to help cover costs incurred from Hurricanes Frances TOWN MANAGER >> 54
Douglas Graham/Loudoun Now
Construction is well under way on the Ashburn Station Metro stop, and at the same time county supervisors and state delegates are brainstorming ways to pay for Metrorail.
County Supervisors: State’s Metro Funding Bill Worse Than Nothing
O
BY RENSS GREENE ver the weekend, state legislators nearly unanimously passed a bill to fund Metrorail that county supervisors say will gut transportation funding in Loudoun and Northern Virginia. The bill has won accolades from legislators in other areas and Loudoun’s own Chamber of Commerce for filling Virginia’s estimated $154 million portion of Metro’s annual funding gap, but local government leaders like Supervisor Matthew F. Letourneau (R-Dulles) say Loudoun taxpayers “would have been better off with no bill.” Letourneau chairs the board’s finance committee and the Metropolitan Wash-
Taking money from the NVTA for Metro puts a heavier burden on Loudoun. Loudoun is responsible for 7.5 percent of Virginia’s share of Metro costs, but about 18 percent of NVTA funding—so shifting money from the NVTA means Loudoun is paying a bigger share of Metro’s costs. And Loudoun board Vice Chairman Ralph M. Buona (R-Ashburn) said using grantor’s tax money for Metro is even worse for county taxpayers. That is a tax on real estate transactions—and Loudoun has one of the busiest real estate markets in the state. “Grantor’s tax collection per capita is the largest in Loudoun in the region, and yet Loudoun’s contribution to METRO BILL >> 53
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“So very happy we switched to Hunt Country. My only regret is that we didn’t do it sooner. How much money we would have saved…However, we finally made the right choice about our propane. For years I have been receiving offers from other companies offering low rates, only to find out you have to enter a contract with them. It never made sense to me that you could drive around town and shop for fuel for your car, but not for your home. It’s nice to see that a business owner understands this and caters to the customer. We received our first delivery this past Saturday and the owner himself brought it out. The service was excellent. Of course, I’m not surprised,
ington Council of Governments. He said the bill is bad for Loudoun because it strips money from the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority, which funds hundreds of millions of dollars of transportation projects every year, and redirects that money to Metro. That includes funding from the region’s grantor’s tax, its transient occupancy tax, and its gas tax, among other sources. The only new money expected to result from the bill is $22 million from a gas tax floor in the Northern Virginia region. The state is expected to contribute $30 million. “The way that they did it was sort of the easiest way for them, which was to grab a whole bunch of money that was obviously tied up in road planning projects, and redirect it,” Letourneau said.
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