The Washington Post has picked up on a memo from Dennis D. Husch on his proposal to confiscate bikes in Herndon.
Town officials want to step up police activity and zoning enforcement where the workers gather, ban carryout alcoholic beverage sales downtown and remove the pay phones that the workers use to call their home countries. They want to institute a permitting process for homeowners to rent out rooms, in hopes of reducing the number of workers living in crowded conditions. They also want to confiscate bicycles — a common mode of transport for the workers — that are parked illegally in public places. Dennis D. Husch
I wrote an email to Mr Husch, which he hasn’t taken the time to reply to yet. I did get an email from Connie Hutchinson the Vice Mayor of Herndon saying the Council, as a whole, has not discussed Councilman Husch’s proposal yet and she is against the proposal of confiscating bikes in the public right of way.
I also had a lengthy emails conversation with Bill Tirrell who is on the Herndon Council. Although he has been supportive of installation of the traffic signal at W&OD and Elden and agrees that we need more bike racks in Herndon, he is siding with Mr Husch and feels that confiscating bikes in the public right of way is an appropriate response to illegal residents in the Town of Herndon even though it will also be targeting legal residents.
Councilman Husch did reply and said that Virginia Law already prohibits bicycles from being chained to signposts or left in the public right of way. VM Hutchinson has no choice, she is sworn to support existing law. And, the public right of way has nothing to do with the W&OD trail.
For those uninformed the public right of way is defined as the space from the edge of the sidewalk on one side of the street to the edge of sidewalk of the opposite side of the street.
I just checked my mail logs and I see no emails from Dennis.Husch at herndon-va.gov or any references to husch in the logs other than my out going message to you. You may be falling foul of my spam filters, I only accept email from properly configured email server to reduce spam, though you should have seen a bounce back message saying delivery failure. If you would be kind enougth to post the full text of your email as a comment here I would appreciate it.
In regards to your comment could you post references to the law you are referencing to so we can all review it.
My reference to the W&OD trail was only in regards to the improvements to the crossing that have been made at Elden. However since you bring it up, the W&OD trail is a major part of our town and travels through the heart of Herndon. What impression do you think it leave if a vistor using the trail chains their bike to a sign post in the public right of way (which is common practice in the biking community when no bike racks are available) only to find it has been confiscated by the Town of Herndon?
I just a searched at https://leg1.state.va.us/000/lst/LS851340.HTM and find no reference to bicycle and public right of way, I also reviewed all the entries for a search on bicycle and didn’t find anything that references chaining up in the public right of way. So Councilman Husch would you be kind enough to post the sections of Virginia Law you are referring to.
Thanks