Town Considers Public-Private Partnerships

Vienna could soon look to public-private partnerships to design, fund and build public facilities in town.

At its work session Monday, the Vienna Town Council was supportive of developing Public Private Education Act guidelines, which would allow the town both to solicit private organizations or individuals as partners in one of its building plans, or, accept new project plans for facilities and infrastructure developed by private sector entities.

The guidelines were made available to localities through the Public-Private Education Facilities and Infrastructure Act of 2002, which gives them the authority to develop certain types of public projects through public-private partnerships. The act was developed from the thought that private involvement in building municipality infrastructure could speed up the completion of much-needed projects or make them more cost effective.

The act can be used to build most types of public facilities, ranging from telecommunications infrastructure to schools or wastewater treatment plants, according to the act.

Draft guidelines Town Attorney Steve Briglia presented to the town council at its Monday work session were based off a similar document used by the City of Winchester, Va., which have used the strategy for several projects within its downtown revitalization, he said. Fairfax County also has a similar agreement in place; George Mason University used a private-public partnership to build the parking garage near its arts center, Councilman Michael Polychrones said.

Briglia said he consulted another lawyer who said the town would only have concerns if they were like "a lot of jurisdictions that look at [the guidelines] that have terrible credit. They can’t bond and they use them just as financing tools," Briglia said, recounting the conversation to the council.

"That's not what we're doing. We have — we're doing it for flexibility where we can barter with private entities that have options that we don't have and put some things on the table," Briglia said. "We get those benefits."

A part of that flexibility could be design-build projects, Briglia said. Before 2002, municipalities had to go before the General Assembly to get authority for those types of project.

The guidelines would also be helpful to the town as it considers projects that would fall

Much of the guidelines are required by the state, but the town could amend sections not bound by those requirements in the future, Briglia said.

The council was also supportive of review fees, a stipulation not required by the state but used by many other jurisdictions with guidelines in place. It would ask corporations submitting unsolicited project plans to pay 2.5 percent of "the reasonably anticipated total cost of the proposed qualifying project," which would fall between a minimum of $2,500 and a maximum of $50,000.

Briglia added language into Monday's draft that would allow the council to waive those fees under certain conditions.

Assuming the guidelines move past the Feb. 6 public hearing, the council would likely adopt them at its Feb. 27 meeting.

"I see no downside to this," Briglia said.

The public hearing is scheduled for the council's regular 8 p.m. meeting Feb. 6 at the Vienna Town Hall, 127 Center Street S.