LOUDOUN COUNTY’S COMMUNITY-OWNED NEWS SOURCE
LoudounNow
[ Vol. 4, No. 50 ]
[ loudounnow.com ]
[ October 31, 2019 ]
■ PUBLIC AND LEGAL NOTICES - PAGE 33 ■ NOW HIRING LOUDOUN PAGE 48 ■ RESOURCE DIRECTORY PAGE 49
Renss Greene/Loudoun Now
Construction continues on the Metro station at Loudoun Station in Ashburn on a rainy day.
Silver Line Schedule Thrown in Doubt Again BY RENSS GREENE Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority officials overseeing the project to extend Metro’s Silver Line into Loudoun have dismissed contractors’ completion schedules as “unrealistic” and lacking credibility, casting doubt on an already-delayed mid-2020 forecasted opening date. The airports authority is overseeing construction of phase two of the Silver Line extension—in other words, the extension of the Silver Line from Fairfax, through Dulles Airport and into Ashburn. According to the September monthly
progress report, Capital Rail Constructors—the consortium of contractors working on the project—submitted a schedule report in September that included “misleading and incorrect logic, violations of the contract schedule specification, and unrealistic assumptions, and therefore it lacks forecasting credibility.” CRC’s subsequent submission in October did not address the changes the Airports Authority required, and conflicted with CRC’s own internal schedules, according to the authority. The contractor currently forecasts finishing work in June 2020 and achieving operational readiness after two months of testing. The authority also rejected Hensel
Phelps Construction Company’s forecasted schedule for work on the rail yard at Dulles Airport, citing conflict with the contract, inaccurate forecasting, and missing activities for the work. Loudoun County Supervisor Ron A. Meyer Jr. (R-Broad Run) told his colleagues at their Oct. 17 meeting that at a recent Northern Virginia Transportation Authority Meeting, there did not seem to be much middle ground. “The Metro report … was a little bit—I wouldn’t say shocking, but it was a little bit eye-opening for me,” Meyer said. And he said the friction between Metro and the Airports Authority over problems with Silver Line construction “are rather
substantial and escalated at this point.” “Metro’s perspective seems relatively hardened, that they won’t accept anything but totally redoing what has been wronged,” Meyer said. But that, he pointed out, could potentially mean years of delay. “We need to be thinking a little bit more pragmatically, obviously demanding that the contractor right the wrongs, but at the same time not taking an absolutist position that we’re not willing to negotiate at all,” Meyer said. But Supervisor Matthew F. Letourneau SCHEDULE >> 54
Big Ballots, Big Turnout Expected Tuesday: Know How to Vote BY RENSS GREENE Loudouners going to the polls on Tuesday, Nov. 5 could be facing an unusually large crowd—and will be facing an unusually long ballot, according to Loudoun County Registrar Judy Brown. Already, absentee voting is about
double where it was in the last local election in 2015, she said. That year, Loudoun issued 4,923 absentee ballots by mail and in person, with 4,111 used to vote. Others were never returned or were taken in person to a polling place on election day and replaced with a ballot. This year, the county has issued
about 7,400 absentee ballots so far. And with a week to go until the election, she said the registrar’s office is getting busy. “We had 238 people in the office yesterday [Monday], which is the most we’ve had in any one day,” Brown said. “It was actually higher than what we
had on Saturday, so things are starting to pick up. We’re prepared for at least a 50 percent turnout, although we kind of don’t expect that that’s what we’re going to see.” But the biggest backup, she said, ELECTION >> 54
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