A public hearing on restricting through-truck traffic, plus votes on a new town ordinance and motions to proceed with three items funded in the town budget are all on the Clifton Town Council agenda.
THE COUNCIL will hold its next meeting Tuesday, July 5, at 7 p.m. in the Clifton Town Meeting Hall, 12641 Chapel Road in Clifton. At its last meeting, June 7, it adopted a Fiscal Year 2006 town budget of $220,000 which takes effect this Friday, July 1.
"In this budget, we set aside seven or eight thousand dollars to pave the parking lot where the caboose is," said Clifton Mayor Jim Chesley. "We also allowed about the same amount to pay for additional, underground [utility] conduit."
As part of its franchise agreement, Cox Cable will put its cable underground between the railroad tracks and Ayre Square. "And we want to provide Verizon this capability, too, at a later date," said Chesley. "So we'd like to put in additional conduit to be there when needed."
Furthermore, he said, the town is about ready to settle on the nearly 10-acre property next to the flood plain that the Northern Virginia Conservancy Trust bought last year. "We're buying back 64 percent of it, and we put money in the budget for this purpose," he said. "That was always the intent, for us to share the cost with them."
When the land was purchased last year to preserve it as open space, said Chesley, Clifton didn't have the money to help buy it. But now it's able to do so because it'll be reimbursed by the federal government.
So at its upcoming meeting, the Town Council will make motions on each of these three items — the parking lot, the conduit and the land purchase — that would enable Clifton to go ahead and spend the money it already approved for these projects.
In June, the Town Council held a public hearing on a new town ordinance that would create a low-impact commercial district in Clifton. The town Planning Commission is recommending approval of the ordinance, and now the Town Council must decide.
RETAIL WOULD not be permitted in that district; the council members want it only used for either office space or residential. Chesley said no one seemed to have any strong objections to the ordinance during the public hearing and "we anticipate it being passed at the [July] Town Council meeting."
Clifton also wants to strengthen the action it took in 1994 that led to signs being posted along highways, recommending that through-truck traffic not travel on Clifton and Henderson roads. It worked well for quite awhile, but this type of traffic seems to be on the rise again.
At issue are all the tractor/trailers, dump trucks and multiple-axle trucks not having a local origin or destination in the town. And at its June meeting, the Town Council passed a resolution to request that the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors bring this matter to the Commonwealth Transportation Board and ask that the through-truck prohibition be made permanent.
"It would include roads not just in the town, itself," said Chesley. They are Clifton, Henderson and Old Yates Ford roads in Fairfax County and Yates Ford Road in Prince William County. "We'll have a public hearing on it in July for further public input," he said. Someday, said Chesley, he'd like to see all the roads currently having signs saying "not recommended for truck traffic" replaced by signs with pictures of trucks and "big, black X's through them."