Trash, lawn damage and safety were among factors Fairfax County supervisors considered before unanimously agreeing Sept. 10 to expand the Madison Residential Permit Parking District (District 11) around the Vienna-area school.
Local residents petitioned the county government to expand the district along Carey Lane between Jerry Lane and Vale Road, saying large numbers of James Madison High School students routinely park in that area.
That resulted in “unreasonable burdens of access to their property caused by the parking of non-resident vehicles during school hours,” said Henri Stein McCartney of the county’s Department of Transportation.
The school’s permit-parking area already covers Carey Lane south of Vale Road.
Virginia code lets county supervisors establish or expand such parking districts if they are within a 2,000-foot walking distance of a high school’s entrances and/or 1,000 feet from property boundaries of an existing or proposed high school.
Supervisors first must receive a petition requesting such an establishment or expansion and the document needs to be signed by people representing at least 60 percent of eligible addresses in the proposed district and more than half of residences on each block face of the district.
At least 75 percent of land abutting each block in the parking district must be developed as residential. The county charges a fee of $10 for each petitioning address before establishing or expanding such a parking district.
The petitioning blocks in the Madison High School case are within the required distance from the school and its property lines, county officials said.
Expanding the parking district will cost the county government about $1,125 to produce and install related signage.
The public hearing was among numerous ones originally slated for July 30, but deferred to Sept. 10 because of a failure by county staff to comply with new legal-advertising requirements imposed by the state.
Julie Foley, who lives at 2400 Carey Lane, told supervisors that residents moved forward with the petition because students were littering in the vicinity and their vehicles were damaging property owners’ front lawns. That section of the street also has no sidewalks and there barely is enough room for emergency vehicles to enter, she said.
The county is undertaking a pedestrian-improvement project at the Vale Road intersection about 50 feet away from the affected area, noted Supervisor Walter Alcorn (D-Hunter Mill), who moved for the parking district’s expansion.
“I agree that this is not a great place for people to be running across the street, students or otherwise,” he said.
