The following message is a response to the The Save the Pimmit Hills Barn group prepared by Cindy Kwitchoff and does not represent the views of the PHCA.
The Save the Pimmit Hills Barn group has been active promoting saving the old barn on Cherri Drive instead of letting Fairfax County provide the property to a County organization that would build a home for six elderly mentally and physically disabled County residents who have no family members living to care for them anymore. The organization would provide them 24-hour care.
The Save the Barn group instead proposes to turn it into a 1) Community Center, 2) Community Club House, 3) Garden Plots, 4) Museum for Dairy Farming, 5) Children's Park, or 6) Sports Equipment Storage.
The Pimmit Hills Center/School on Lisle Avenue is actually already a fully-functional Community Center. And the barn has been used for years to store sports equipment for McLean sports teams until now. Pimmit Hills has many playgrounds in our parks already.
What has yet to be addressed is the actual funding plans for implementing any of these venues. How will the land be paid for since the land around here is worth more than our homes? How much are the renovation costs and who will pay for the renovation to make it a useable space with utilities? Who will pay for the regular maintenance/upkeep of the structure and property? Who will pay for the staff that would be required to run a dairy museum. How much does a cow cost? What about re-zoning and Fairfax County regulations?
At the September meeting, one of the suggestions from the Barn group was to tax Pimmit Hills residents to pay for the costs. What is your opinion on this?
The Barn Group has set up a survey asking for your input. You can take their short survey here.
FYI Addendum
A few months ago, a resident sent PHCA a message saying we should have a pool in Pimmit Hills. PHCA asked if she would be interested in leading a team to research the issue with Fairfax County, find out the re-zoning regulations, how much the land would cost, how would it be paid for, what would be the cost of the installation of a pool and pool house, how many employees would need to be hired to run the pool, who would pay for their salary, what were the costs of the regular maintenance of the pool and property, what were the legal and insurance costs, etc. She never responded. Several board member did find out an initial cost to build a community pool was well over $300,000.
PHCA is a volunteer citizens organization that has no legal authority to enforce dues payment or regulations. We have 1,642 homes but only 286 citizens have become paid members, thus the Association doesn't have a lot of money.
PHCA recently had to spend money to buy liability insurance to protect Board Members from being sued like the legal threat against the Board in March over voting on the Pimmit Hills Barn. Unfortunately, it took 37 paid memberships ($20) to cover the cost of this insurance, something PHCA has never needed to have before.
