The BRMCA Board of Directors wants to notify the community of several important decisions that it has made recently regarding the roads. The first decision was actually made last year by Prince William County Public Works when they unilaterally changed the roads maintenance and snow plowing contract to replace the BRMCA Roads Committee POC to be a county-determined POC. In essence, the county has removed all influence that the BRMCA has over snow removal and roads maintenance projects and priorities and reassigned it to a single county appointed Designee. The county named Alan Bradburd as the snow designee, but has not named a roads maintenance designee.

This change renders moot any organized input from the BRMCA and the community roads committee, so the Board of Directors voted to suspend the operations of the roads committee until further notice. We have notified Supervisors Candland and Stewart of this decision.  (Roads Committee letter). The county never contacted us directly about this change and has not explained how their designees are selected or how the community is supposed to coordinate roads issues. For now, we have been directing residents with roads issues to directly contact Supervisor Candland’s office ((703) 792-6195 or Gainesville@pwcgov.org) or PWCPublic Works.

In the appendix of our letter, we reminded the county of over 40 roads issues that the roads committee, in its last action, has identified that have not been addressed.

Until the county provides us additional details and wants to move forward together and in good faith, we will regretfully keep the committee in hibernation.

The county and its contractors have also used the lower BRMCA Clubhouse lot at 1803 Ridge Road for the storage of road gravel. The use has expanded over the years from temporary storage of gravel to semi-permanent storage of dirt, rocks, and other debris. It’s become quite unsightly, and we’ve had a growing problem with contractors mistaking it for a landfill, and have been dumping their own materials there. A county ordnance governing such construction materials storage lots requires a fence around them to hide the lot. The county asked the BRMCA to lease the lot to them so that they could erect a fence to close off the storage yard.

Meanwhile, the BRMCA has made major improvements to the clubhouse and spent quite a bit of money to enlarge the upper parking lot. It’s been a popular improvement, judging from the number of cars which have used it for recent storm parking. Our rental use of the clubhouse has been growing, both because it’s now a really nice rental facility and because of the recent closure of the Evergreen Fire Station to rentals.

The Board has decided that we will not lease the lower lot to the county and will use it instead to support additional parking to both the clubhouse and to the lower field and picnic area. We have also asked the county to remove the piles of material within 30 days.  The county owns other property on Bull Run Mountain that can be used for gravel storage during winter storms or storage of debris, and we will support temporary use of the lower lot for paving projects.  We are convinced this action will cause not impact on roads maintenance.

As always, the BRMCA welcomes community comment, suggestions and feedback about our activities on the mountain. We will keep the community informed if the county offers any changes to how roads maintenance issues can be coordinated.