The Ralph Stanley Greenway

Ralph Stanley

I first came to Loudoun County in 1937 but I don’t remember much about that year. I was just beginning to focus on my new world. But I do remember the County in the 1940s. My dad thought he was a farmer, but was smart enough to realize that he could not support a family this way, so he continued to practice law in Washington. For as long as I can remember we drove from Washington to our farm just south of Leesburg on Goose Creek and Little River almost every weekend and spent every summer here while my dad commuted to Washington. (Read: All Roads Lead to Home)

I have a vivid memory of every crossroad along Rt. 50, the fastest route until Rt. 7 was improved. We would often stop at Tysons Corner to gas up at the Esso station, the only commercial business there at the time. When taking Rt. 50 we gassed up at Mr. Gilbert’s Esso station.

Many years later in 1980, I started a business in Leesburg and commuted everyday from Chevy Chase, Maryland. So you can understand how excited I was when Ralph Stanley walked into my office in the late 1980s and told me he had a plan.

Ralph was the Father of the Greenway, in my opinion, the finest road in all of Virginia. He was the genius that conceived the idea and brought it to reality. We are all the better for it, even if you never drive on this road. Make a short list of what has had the greatest economic impact on Loudoun County. The Greenway must be close to the top.

Take a short 14-mile drive along this road. You will see commercial, retail, and residential developments. During my early trips to Leesburg, there were only fields and farm roads. Today driving west on your right you will see part of the Information Superhighway, one of the largest server farms that feed the Internet. This high-tech farm, no cows or hay here, is nestled close to the Loudoun County Parkway. This highway opened after the Greenway and connected Rt. 7 to the north and Rt. 50 to the south. Next is the community of Ashburn, which before the Greenway opened, was bankrupt. Pass under bridges that, like the Parkway, connect the northern County to the south. Along these roads pass not just vehicles, but commerce. This commerce flows, not just north and south but west to Leesburg and beyond.

Some believe the Greenway was named for its beauty and its treatment of the environment. When I think of the Greenway I see the color of money - green. It was and is Ralph Stanley’s road. We should all be grateful. He made our lives richer and more enjoyable in every way. It truly is the Ralph Stanley Greenway. It should be named just that.

This is not the first time I have written about this amazing road. If you want to take a trip down memory lane, but not a super highway, read:
What Happened to Free Markets?
Private Highways
Free Markets - part II (Tolls)
The Italian Way

Lessons learned?

Tuesday, November 2nd sent a strong message to elected officials in Washington.  “Listen to the voice of the people.  If you do not, you will be out of a job.”  Having refused on several occasions to move the Town of Leesburg Election Day from May to November, the majority of the Town Council may learn this lesson.  (I wrote about this issue and the popularity of moving Election Day to November last month in an article Let Democracy Work and published it in Loudoun Leadership.)  The public comments, letters and emails to the Town Council overwhelmingly supported moving the Town Election Day.  Yet the majority of the Town Council voted No on a resolution to change the Town Election Day to November.  How can anyone not be in favor of getting the largest turnout for an election, unless they have some hidden agenda?  You can read Dave Butler’s and Kevin Wright’s reasons as explained to The Washington Post “Great Start” for Leesburg petition on Town elections.  Does this make any sense to you?  Not to me.

One Leesburg resident, Barbara Bayles-Roberts, who spoke to the council on this subject, developed a petition to place this issue on the ballot for next November.  I was one of about ten volunteers who stood at the polls on November 2^nd collecting signatures on the petition.  The support for the initiative was amazing.  There was more interest in signing the change petition than in talking with the surrogates for the two National candidates who were handing out literature.  Over 2,300 signatures were collected.  That’s more than voted in the May Town elections in 2008 and close to the number who voted last spring.

Barbara and her band of volunteers are continuing to collect signatures.  Watch for them at supermarkets, and other popular gathering places in Leesburg.  You can find more information on this effort at www.novembervoteyes.com.

Let Democracy Work

For over a year the Town Council has been debating moving the Town Election Day from even years in May to November.  They have been advised by the State Board of Elections, and studied the effect of change from a May date by other towns and cities in Virginia.  At the last Council meeting a public input session was held so the Council could get an understanding of how Leesburg residents felt about changing this date.  The Council received 45 comments from citizens who spoke in person and/or sent emails to the Council.  Of these 43 indicated that they were in favor of moving the Town Election Day to November.  Only two were opposed.

In the last Town election held in May this year, less than 2% of eligible voters voted.  This embarrassingly low turnout has been the same for many years.  Voting is not a subject that most citizens have on their mind in May.  I have helped many candidates running for the Town Council and Mayor for over ten years.  I have gone door-to-door talking to residents, and have been amazed, despite all the yard signs and newspaper articles, at how few actually knew there was an election in May.

November is National Election Day.  It is a National holiday.  Schools are closed, and most businesses grant employees extra time off to vote if necessary.  The turnout in the Leesburg District of Loudoun County exceeded 30% in the last November election.

Even years in November sees the largest turnout at the polls.  Every four years the Presidential election takes place in November.  The airways are full of election news and ads.  You may not like it, but your phone and door bell will ring with election messages.  This is what we do in a democracy.  However, in May you are seldom disturbed by election news.

May elections tend to favor the incumbents.  Their base will turn out regardless of when the election is held.  The incumbents only have to get a few supporters to the polls in order to assure another term.  The members of the Town Council who have opposed a change to Even years in November are all long term incumbents.  The incumbents opposing a change will use every excuse to delay a vote - a need to study the law, a need to hear from citizens, etc.  The need now is to bring this issue to a vote.

On Tuesday, October 12th the Town Council will be holding a work session to discuss a resolution to formally move the elections from May in Even numbered years to November.  (The input session I mentioned above was deemed not an official work session necessary to move a resolution forward to a vote as two Council members wanted to do.  This is another example of a delaying tactic on the part of some incumbents.

I urge you to either speak at the work session on October 12th or email the Town Council at council@leesburgva.org with your thoughts on this issue.  I hope you will agree that the Town Election Day should be on Even years in November.  An Even year is important as it will result in the largest turnout by a factor of 10.

AOL: the Rest of the Story

About the same time America On Line was founded in Vienna, Virginia, British Aerospace, another company in Fairfax County planned to build a flight simulator facility.  British Aerospace was located in an office building next to Dulles airport on the east side of Route 28 in Fairfax County.

Nicholas Graham recently wrote an excellent article in the Loudoun Times Mirror, AOL Turns 25.  A companion piece A Landmark Loudoun Land Deal Back in 1996 tells the story of how AOL came to Loudoun County.  Why British Aerospace moved to Loudoun County and built their North American Headquarters into which AOL settled 10 years later is another interesting story not known to many.

It all started with the Leesburg Airport.  I was developing a business at this airport in the early 1980s.  (See A Tale of Two Airports) One big problem was that there were no business jets based at the Leesburg Airport.  I soon discovered that there were no business jets in all of Loudoun County including Dulles International Airport, the only other airport in the County where business jets could land.

The reason soon became apparent.  Loudoun County had a personal property tax of 5% on aircraft and other equipment.  There was no such tax in Maryland and the District of Columbia.  Washington National Airport, now Reagan National, BWI in Baltimore, Frederick Municipal, and many other Maryland airports had many based business jets.  I was on the board of the Loudoun County Chamber of Commerce and convinced the Board to help me lobby the Board of Supervisors to eliminate the personal property tax on aircraft.  I arranged for Frank Raflo, the Chairman of the Board, to visit with the CEO of MCI, Orville Wright. (I didn’t make that name up.)  MCI was planning to buy two business jets and was considering basing them at BWI. These were $30 million airplanes.  The choice of paying the $3 million tax each year in Virginia as opposed to paying nothing in Maryland was easy.  I told Raflo that the economic impact of just these two airplanes would far out-strip the small sum being collected on the few small airplanes based in the County.  Wright confirmed my numbers.

Raflo convinced the Board.  The vote was unanimous to reduce the tax from 5% to 1%.  The rest is history.  Within a year four large jet hangars were built at Dulles.  MCI now had four jets, and Exxon/Mobile, and Gannet moved their business jets and flight departments to Dulles. Many others followed.

British Aerospace discovered that Virginia law classified flight simulators as aircraft.  When Fairfax County refused to lower their tax, British Aerospace built three simulator buildings in Loudoun County on property near their headquarters but on the west side of Route 28 in Loudoun County.  The building housed three $15 flight simulators.  Next they built their North American headquarters building on the same land.  Ten years later BA left and AOL moved in.

A Tale of Two Airports

For over 50 years I have watched the development of the Northern Virginia general aviation airports.  For almost 15 years I was deeply involved in the development of the Leesburg Airport.  In 1957, shortly after getting my pilots license at an airport in Alexandria, now long gone, I took some of my family for a flight out of the Leesburg Airport, then know locally as Godfrey’s cow pasture.  Arthur Godfrey, a radio and early television personality, gave this airfield land to the Town so they could swap it for the land where the Leesburg Airport now stands.  The new Godfrey Field opened with a paved runway in the early 1960s.  I was a Naval Aviator by this time.  I next visited this airport after leaving the Navy in the mid 60s and made several glider flights from there.  I returned again in 1980 to find the airport all but abandoned.

I quit my day job, and for almost 15 years, took on the task of changing Godfrey Field from a field into a real airport.  For most of these years the strong bond I formed with my company and the Town of Leesburg created great things at the airport.  I attracted a major FAA facility to the airport, which financed the building of water and sewer lines from the Rt. 15 by-pass down to the airport.  I built a jet fuel farm and 50 hangars, including the first jet hangar.  By the end of the 1980s the based aircraft population had grown to over 200, fifteen of these were business jets.

Then the political climate changed and the Town Government took over.  The entrepreneurial spirit died, and apparently so did the airport, at least financially and as an economic engine.  Today there is one business jet at the Leesburg Airport.  The jet hangars are all but empty as is the terminal building except for two flight schools.

All the other general aviation airports in northern Virginia closed in the 1970s except Manassas, Leesburg’s main competition.  The Manassas Airport was founded at its current location in 1963 with a single 3,700' x 100' paved runway, a rotating beacon, maintenance hangar and office.  This was almost identical to the Leesburg Airport at that time.  But today the there are stark differences.  Over 40 business jets are based at Manassas and one at Leesburg.  At Leesburg there are 3 hangars over 12,000 square feet for business jets.  At Manassas there are 18 hangars in this class.  Almost 3 million gallons of jet fuel are consumed annually at Manassas and only 200,000 gallons at Leesburg.  Major companies like Micron Technology occupy land adjacent to the airport.  Nothing even close to that is in Leesburg.

Manassas Airport has grown into a major reliever airport for the Washington region, while the Leesburg Airport struggles.

I have some thoughts about how Leesburg could begin to play catch up or at least stop stagnating.  I will save that for another post, but first I would like to have your thoughts.  Leave your comments here, or send me an email.

There's a Trail for That

The Department of Transportation’s mission is to "Serve the United States by ensuring a fast, safe, efficient, accessible and convenient transportation system that meets our vital national interests and enhances the quality of life of the American people, today and into the future."  Under the DOT is the FAA, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), The Federal Transit Administration (FTA), and the Federal Maritime Administration (FMA).  So now maybe we will have under the DOT: FAA, FHWA, FRA, FTA, FMA and be adding FBA, the Federal Bicycle Administration, to that alphabet soup.

Recently Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, who likes to ride his bike in Washington’s Rock Creek Park on the weekends, has decided that the government is going to give bicycling the same importance as automobiles in transportation planning and the selection of projects for federal money.  A manufacturers' blog called the policy "nonsensical."  One congressman suggested LaHood was on drugs.

WWRD

After watching Sarah Palin give her speech at the Republican convention in 2008, I turned to my wife and said, “I felt like I was watching Ronald Reagan in high heels.”  In the Outlook section of the Washington Post (March 7, 2010) Steven Hayward wrote an article, Would Reagan Vote for Sarah Palin?  Hayward wasn’t really trying to answer this question, but was telling those trying to make themselves in Reagan’s image what this man was really about and how he became the leader we all remember.  He reminds us that Reagan voted four times for FDR, the ultimate populist and promoter of big government.  He ends by warning would-be Reagan heirs, “To pull it off, one thing above all is required: Do your homework. Reagan did his.”

After reading Barry Goldwater’s The Conscience of a Conservative in 1960, I finally understood what my father had been trying to explain to me.  FDR’s liberalism, big government, and high taxes were the wrong fork in the road.  Later I realized that Goldwater was both a Conservative and a Libertarian.  (If you wonder where you stand on the political spectrum, take The World’s Smallest Political Quiz.)

Hayward reminds us that Reagan described conservatism in populist term.  In October of 1964 in a speech, A Time for Choosing (worth reading again, I did), supporting Goldwater’s candidacy for President, Reagan warned, "This is the issue of this election, whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that an intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves."

As a populist Reagan would have admired the Tea Party movement.  Hayward says, “Reagan would have seen them as reviving the embers of what he called the prairie fire of populist resistance against centralized big government -- resistance that helped touch off the tax revolt of the 1970s. That movement was often dismissed as a tantrum, but when The Washington Post called California's 1978 anti-tax Proposition 13 a skirmish, Reagan replied that if so, then the Chicago fire was a backyard barbecue.”

Of course there is no answer to Hayward’s question on the vote, or the acronym WWRD, What Would Reagan Do?  But he concludes with the thought, “Wittingly or not, Palin hit the nail on the head in her keynote address at the Tea Party Convention last month when she said, Let us not get bogged down in the small squabbles; let us get caught up in the big ideas. To do so would be a fitting tribute to Ronald Reagan.  Hayward writes, “Meaningful limits on the size of government is one such idea, and it offers a substantive opening for Palin and other would-be heirs to Reagan.”   Makes sense to me.