County Board - Regular Meeting

good afternoon it is 1202 and we are trying to get us started with this early bill and grateful for staff for being here all of us joining thank you colleagues very much I'll just say this is our second to last to my knowledge substantive new material work session in our CIP. We'll have our last on June 23rd, and then we'll have commissions and public hearing on this in July 7th and 9th, if I recall correctly, and just trying to give context and then trying to send it over to Mr. Spain, who will lead us through this work session. Mr. Spain.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and good afternoon to everyone. Before I turn this over to the county manager, I just want to kind of set the stage for today where we'll be talking about Transportation, Metro, and debt. We do have a proposed run of show. And as I've shared with my colleagues separately on email, we're going to try to keep up with the standard that our vice chair has set last week and be very mindful of our time. So this first segment will begin here at 12. We'll get the presentation for transportation for about an hour and 15 minutes. Then at 1.15 we'll have our discussion with the board for 45 minutes. We'll pivot at 2 p.m. with Metro for 15 minutes, then at 2.15, Metro discussion at 10 minutes, 2.25, debt presentation for 15 minutes, and 2.40, debt discussion for 10 minutes, followed by a 10-minute buffer at 2.50. And we will end at 3 o'clock. We will end at 3 o'clock. that said the the clerk will after the presentation have our timer up so we can really be aware of what's going on i would ask my colleagues to as we always do is kind of keep our questions directed to the content and so we can get right to the matter so over to you mr county manager thank you mr spain members of the board um we're going to dispense with any sort of fluffery and turn it right over to sarah crawford to go into we have a lot of material to cover over to you sarah

Great, thank you so much. Again, my name is Sarah Crawford. I'm the Assistant Director of Transportation for the county, and I'm here joined in presentation by Vijaytha Huffman, our Transportation Capital Funds Manager. We also have our Division of Transportation Director Dan Neighbors with us to answer any questions that might come up along the way. So starting out, we'd like to just ground ourselves in the conversation on the capital improvement program by noting that staff with the county manager have put together a program of projects that advance our county goals. We have the newly endorsed vision for the Arlington County Multimodal Transportation Plan, along with the six goals that are listed on this screen. That, coupled with a number of other county initiatives, we believe we are advancing a 10-year capital improvement program that does advance not only county transportation goals, but other county goals as well. So just to review some highlights and takeaways that we have to start out with that we will cover in greater detail in this presentation. The CIP, while constrained, does include our ongoing commitments to major projects and programs in our corridors as well as our neighborhoods. We are continuing the transformation in Crystal City and Pentagon City. We will be beginning the core of Roslyn implementation, and we will commence studies on Langston Boulevard to realize projects later in the CIP time period. We also have a number of bicycle connections included in the CIP. And for transit, we have several larger scale transportation, metro rail transportation improvements that will enhance capacity at our metro rail stations while also continuing the commitment for arts service as well. Vision Zero is an important multifaceted program that we include in the CIP by way of our Street Safety Improvements Program. This is the capital, the transportation capital portion of the Vision Zero program. However, Vision Zero is, as we've discussed before, a shared responsibility amongst all county agencies, departments, and residents. Our pay go and bond requests are limited to state of good repair functions, which we'll cover in this presentation. I would like to transition a bit to some of the constraints that I mentioned earlier. We have local funding for multimodal studies. That is our commitment to ensuring that we advance projects with the best possible analysis and concept development. However, in the later years of the CIP, we are under a constrained environment and we do not have local funding to implement recommendations from these studies. We will be reliant on external sources for that. And to get a little bit more into detail on the revenue challenges, since the last CIP, we've lost over $100 million in TCF, our transportation capital fund, and TIF, the tax increment finance area for Crystal City and Pentagon City. This is due to reductions in revenue projections and translates to roughly 30 to 35% loss of local funding to projects and programs. This was significantly impactful as we were trying to develop a CIP that continued our commitment to the community and to safety. How this manifests itself in this capital improvement program is we are relying more on external funding requests in this CIP. We have had to remove local funding from a number of future projects and programs and will instead apply to external agencies to ensure that those projects advance. We have committed to keeping our local funds on important programs that relate to safety, operations, and program support. And finally, we have proposed in the CIP to bond to the Transportation Capital Fund, which will leverage both CNI and MBTA Local. This is a revenue fund, and the proceeds from these bonds will be paid by debt service from the Transportation Capital Fund. It's fully enclosed within that fund. And our funding sources that I wanted to go into a little bit more detail on, I mentioned our transportation capital fund. It has two components, our commercial and industrial tax and MBTA local. These can be used for transportation purposes only, but there's slightly different eligibilities which are outlined in the state code. Most of the funding for our program comes from these two sources, as well as tax increment financing for Crystal City, Pentagon City, and Potomac Yard, which implements infrastructure for both parks and transportation. We have a number of external sources that are mostly state and regional. Most of the federal funding that we receive is administered by the state. However, there are several grant opportunities that we intend to apply for directly from the federal government. We've not been successful in the past. Most of these programs, both the state and regional programs, have very specific eligibilities for consideration of projects. And that's one of the reasons that we've ensured that all of our studies are funded locally so that we can collect the data that we need and develop the concepts for projects to meet the requirements for these programs so that we can be most competitive and try to assure success for the projects that are now more reliant on external funding sources.

So the next slide shows our proposed 10-year CIP. It is $1.5 billion. It's about 17% lower than FY25 adopted CIP. And part of this is not surprising, because after all, we have completed some major projects. Like our Columbia Pike multimodal streets program is pretty much wrapping up. Our art operations and maintenance facility was completed. So some of it is not surprising at all. As you look across the dollars across the years, about 60% of the spend is anticipated in the first five years. And this is because we have a couple of large projects in those years. For example, our Boston West entrance project is there, our Crystal City to DCA connection project is there. Looking down at the funding sources, a few things to note. One is we are relying much less on federal funding in the CIP than in the prior CIP. However, to the point that Ms. Crawford made, we are relying much more on state and regional funding. So in totality, our reliance on external funding is up. Looking at TCF and CNI and TIF, two important sources of local funds, those are both dramatically lower than the prior CIP. Revenues have been falling in the last few years, and then when you look across the CIP horizon, they're relatively stagnant. NVTA local is the one bright spot, as that relies on sales taxes. And then one item that is new, as Ms. Crawford mentioned, we are proposing to bond TCF for the very first time. So the penultimate row under new funding you'll see is TCF bonds. We have $83 million. We actually have a slide where we're going to get into some more detail on that. But this is the first time we have had this in our CIP proposal.

The next slide.

looks at our proposed CIP by program and also post an implementation adjustment. So first looking at the programs, Complete Streets and Transit, those are two of our major programs with capital projects in them. Maintenance CapEx, also is actually dramatically lower versus CIP. Maintenance capex is the capital we need to maintain our assets in a state of good repair. And the reason it is lower is because of better quality of our assets. Our pavement and our bridges are both in better condition. And so we have been able to scale back the funding. Transportation program capital administration, it is the one exception, which is considerably higher, CIP over CIP, but I should point out that that $99 million that you see includes almost $40 million of debt service associated with the TCF bond issuance. And finally operating costs of 135 million is predominantly the operating costs that we pay for art service, both current service as well as future art service expansion. So 104 of the 135 is for that. And then the balance roughly 31 million is almost entirely for capital bike share operations. And then looking down at the bottom of the table, you'll see the implementation adjustment. So consistent with our prior CIPs, we are recommending that we do apply an implementation adjustment factor to the CIP. It averages out to about 20% across the 10 years, and this is consistent with what we've done in prior CIPs. And the reason that we recommend the implementation adjustment is what we do recognize is that our programs and projects encounter various delays, and delays that are entirely outside of our ability to manage them, because it's third party actions, whether it is securing easements from third parties, or whether it is waiting on a private developer to move on the development, or it could be waiting on Vomara or VDOT to provide their approval for our project. And it is really impossible for us to guess which projects are going to be impacted by delays. We just know that there will be some delays. And so we prefer to not probably adjust project by project. And instead, what we recommend is just applying an implementation factor across the entire CIP. And this has actually worked really well for us when we consider where we've been in terms of actual expenditures relative to the implementation adjusted CIP. So post-implementation adjustment, the CIP that we are proposing is $1.2 billion. On the next slide, we look at the key changes in this CIP relative to our adopted CIP. So on funding, as Ms. Crawford mentioned, we have seen dramatic reductions in revenues from TCFC and I and TIF. And consequently, we are relying more on external funding and we are also proposing for the first time to bond TCF. In terms of specific project and program changes, there's a few items to highlight. So first of all, because of funding constraints, while we do have some studies, in prior CIPs, we would then have placeholder money in the later years to implement the projects that came out of the studies. But in this CIP, we don't. To the extent that as we have projects that are recommended by studies, we will have to seek external funding to actually implement them. Next, the other thing we want to highlight is project cost escalations. And these escalations have impacted the entire portfolio. We have been impacted on complete streets projects. We've been impacted on art, the transition to ZEB, on the courthouse elevators project. But in particular, the project cost escalation has really impacted the signals program. And Mr. Nabors is actually going to walk through the components that all go into a signals upgrade so you can understand. But that has escalated to the tune of 60% to 70% relative to the assumptions that we made in our FY25 CIP. So it's really fairly dramatic. The other thing I want to point out, which is different from the CIP, is so similar to our adopted CIP, we are proposing to transition our arc fleet from CNG over to battery electric buses. However, in our prior CIP, we had been a little cautious. Based on the industry information, the reports we were hearing, we had assumed 1.3 BEBs would be needed to replace every CNG. However, as you are well aware, we've had four BEBs that we've been piloting. And based on the information that we've been gathering from the pilot, we are actually comfortable assuming a ratio one to one. And this, of course, as you can imagine, has had a big positive impact on our CIP. And one of the consequences is that in the last CIP, we had the need to purchase land within the 10-year CIP period. And in this CIP, that land purchase has been pushed out past the 10-year CIP period. Because between our art operational maintenance facility and our light maintenance facility, we have adequate parking for the buses that we are envisioning having at the end of the CIP period. Now the next thing I wanted to highlight is in the revenue constrained environment that we've had to put the CIP together in, we've had to really think hard about what programs and projects to fund and which ones to not advance. And in this revenue constrained environment, we made the decision that we will continue funding and maintaining the funding for street safety improvements, as well as future art service expansion. Because at the end of the day, safety for the traveling public and access to public transportation are two of our core values. So we felt those were the two things we really had to make sure that we maintained the funding for. And finally, as I've already mentioned, we were able to reduce the funding for paving and bridges. And this is because of the good condition of assets. The next slide just is a graphical depiction of the numbers that we have just reviewed. So I'll actually call your attention to the pie chart on the right in particular. And here are just a few things to point out. As I mentioned, we are relying much less on federal funding. And you can see the sliver at the top, sort of the blue sliver. It's really quite small. It's just 1%. However, you will see that the state funding, the regional funding, those are substantial pieces of the pie. And then I'll also call your attention to the green little quadrant towards is the bottom of the pie chart. That's a TCF bonds. And that's the 83 million that we are proposing by way of TCF bonds. And that is new in the CIP. It accounts for 5% of the funding in the CIP. On the next slide, we get into some more details on our proposal to bond TCF. Now, the most important point to make about the slide is that these are revenue bonds. And what that means is that they are excluded from our general fund debt policies. And that means that they will not count towards the 10% limit. And furthermore, the debt service will be paid out by TCF, not from our general fund. The other important point that I wanted to highlight about this slide is as we put our CIP together, we made efforts to delay the issuance as much as possible. So you will see that there is no issuance being contemplated in FY27 or FY28. The first issuance is in FY29. And given that we were able to delay it, between now and when we prepare the next CIP, it is possible that there are a few things that shift. It's possible that we have a better revenue picture. It's possible that some of our project delays are greater than we are anticipating. So it is entirely possible that we will be here two years from today and be telling you that we can further delay this. But as of now, we have the $83 million of debt issuance in our CIP, and it is comprised of $65 million on TCF CNI in fiscal 29 and 30 and $18 million on TCF NBTA local. And while we are able to use the proceeds for projects across our portfolio, we have just chosen for simplicity to apply $58 million to the Boston West Entrance project and $13 million for art bus purchases. So the next slide now, we are moving to our geo bonds. So for the geo bond referendum for this November, we are proposing 23.5 million. And this is actually 27% lower than we had anticipated for this November in our adopted CIP. And the biggest thing that has shifted is paving. So you can look at the table, and our number one user of bonds continues to be paving. But paving is dramatically lower because of the good pavement conditions. And then the next two lines that you see are street lighting and signals and ITS maintenance. Now, these are the only two programs in this list where our geo bond request for this November is actually higher than we had in the last CIP. It is really being driven by the fact that we made a conscious decision, because PAYGO is so constrained, and these programs are funded by PAYGO and by bonds, we made a conscious decision to try to shift away from PAYGO and towards bonds for these two programs, and hence the bond request is higher, but the PAYGO request for both of these programs has come down. And actually, just by way of interest, I took a trip down memory lane. And just to take a look to see what are we anticipating for this November by way of a geobond request, right? What is really interesting to see is that the geobond request that we anticipated in the fiscal 19 CIP was actually $32 million. So I found that just fascinating, because here we are almost 10 years later, and we are looking at a referendum of 23.5. And also on the signals, I did want to actually turn it over to Dan, because he was going to go through some of the components of signals cost.

Thank you, Vijay. You were on a roll there, so I didn't want to jump in with that look. So, yeah, like Vijitha was explaining in terms of signals, this is really exciting because, as you know, our signals are very important for controlling right away and sometimes separating different modes, right? Pedestrians from motorists, bicyclists, et cetera. So... The costs are driven by a lot of things. I'm just going to give you a little bit of background first in terms of what are the different components. Because a lot of it, you really can't see. It's not evident, right? Because it's not a fancy thing. So with a signal project, there's the underground infrastructure, the utilities, the electrical, which is something that is unknown going into a project. And you don't know until you get a survey. And you kind of figure out what the conflicts are. And there's a lot of stuff. and are right away under our streets. The other thing that you get with the signal project are the advanced signal systems. We have video detection, and that detects not only vehicles but bicyclists to call in the different phases of a signal. There's also the accessible pedestrian signals, which is part of American with Disabilities Act requirements. There's also the new poles, and what you don't see is the poles, how far they extend up, they extend that far down. There's the civil improvements, too, which is, you know, adding the ramps, getting things to ADA accessibility. And then finally, there's other utility improvements that happen because any time you change the curb, you're looking at storm weather and other things that just help improve the overall infrastructure. so what's driven the cost increase is labor and material so those things have increased greatly over time in those different components for example the cabinets that control the signal you see that at one of the corners of the signal and that's where all the components are the brains if you will the signal over the past eight years that's increased by 47 percent The video detection systems, which we rely on to call in the signal phases and accommodate everybody that's trying to traverse that intersection, that has increased by over 93% over the past eight years. There's other things, I mentioned the signal pole, how high it is, it also goes pretty deep. That has increased 150% over the past eight years. So these increases are really what has driven our ask. Now, what we do as we move forward is we're looking at being a lot more strategic in those signal projects that we take on. We're mainly focusing on county roads in the county right-of-way, partnering with VDOT on locations within the VDOT right-of-way, but looking at where those different components all have served some sort of need and kind of using that as our priority to move forward with those types of projects. Okay, thank you for that, Vijay.

So on this next slide, we have attempted to depict sort of the story of TCF and TIF. So the graph combines TCF and TIF, so our three funds, TCF CNI, TCF NVTA Local, and TIF. And the blue line on the graph shows the ending balances at the end of each fiscal year. The red line on the graph shows expenditures. And so what you'll notice on the graph is that if you look back to the fiscal 21-22 time frame, our balances had accumulated to over 200 million. Because we had various projects that were slowly moving through the various steps. For example, Columbia Pike, we were slowly trying to get all of our easements and all of that. And then after that peak in fiscal 21-22, you can see a big drop from fiscal 22 all the way to fiscal 26. And that is the result of some huge local fund outlays. The biggest one was Columbia Pike Streets Project, which used up almost $100 million of local funds in that period. And then I've listed several others. Crystal City East Entrance, that project does have substantial grants, But the project in its totality costs almost $150 million. So naturally, we've had to also rely on local funds. And then aside from that, several others that I've noted are out operations and maintenance facility, boundary channel, Pentagon City second elevator. So that's like the big drop from 22 to 26. And then the next big drop that we're anticipating in the CIP is from fiscal 27 through fiscal 29, where, again, we have some large outlays that I've noted. Once we get past fiscal 29, the ending balance settles at about $20 to $30 million. Now, what is not shown on the graph, which is also a key factor in what you see here, is how a growing amount of money is going towards operations and program administration. If you look all the way back to 2018, it was only 11% of the revenues that were going towards program administration and operations. But then we started paying for out routes out of these funds. And the percent then stepped up. It went up to about 20% to 23% starting in fiscal 19. Last couple of years, it's jumped all the way to 35% to 40%. And when you look across the CIP, by the time you get out of fiscal 36, 60% of our revenues for TCF and TIF are actually getting used up by operations and program administration, and this does not even count debt service. If I were to layer on the debt service on TCF bonds, which of course TCF will be paying for, it really is 78% of our revenues. So when you consider that, we really only have like 22% of revenues at that point to pay for various things, including all of our ongoing needs, like our signal upgrades. And once you pay for all of that, you've got almost nothing left for the projects. So again, just wanted to give you a sense of the bigger picture for TCF and TIFF. And that's actually a good segue to the next slide, which is that we are relying heavily on external funding in the CIP. So the CIP assumes that we will be able to leverage 600 million of state, federal, and regional funds, in particular In the CIP, we have almost $300 million. Actually, 300, not almost. We have $300 million of new regional funds that we hope to secure. And we have a number of projects and programs that are heavily relying on our ability to secure the regional funds. I mean, by way of example, the courthouse elevators project, which is over $60 million, almost entirely we're expecting will be funded by regional funds, except for a couple million dollars of developer contributions. We have also art fleet expansion. We have 11 new art buses that we plan to purchase to support the art service expansion entirely funded from regional funds. But even beyond that, when we look at something that the Langston program, Langston Multimodal Program, We will be funding a couple of studies in the coming years with local funds, but once those are completed, any projects that are recommended from the studies, we are relying on state and regional funds for that. And of course, state funds continue to be extremely important for our art fleet program. So just, you know, this again, just really, it is worth emphasizing that this is a very big assumption in our CIP. The next two slides look at developer contributions. So the first of the two slides are the developer contributions that we have already received. We have about $10 million that are programmed in the CIP, and the table shows the projects that they're programmed towards and the site plan that the money came from. And then the next slide shows that we are anticipating almost $26 million in future contributions based on the site plans that have been approved. Now, it is worth noting that some of these site plans are coming up for amendments and revisions, and the numbers may change. But the numbers that you see here are what is currently in the site plans. I've noted the years that we have programmed the funding, and we've done our best to try to delay when we hope to use the funds because we have no control over when these funds will be received. They're not tied to our project milestones. It is tied entirely to the milestones that the development achieves. So, you know, that is a risk because really there's not any movement on, I would say, almost all of these.

Okay, now we will shift to the portion of the presentation where we'll go into greater detail on the programs and projects included in the CIP. Understanding we have 45 minutes for that portion of the presentation. Moving to the next slide. We included this slide in our presentation on the budget so I won't go into a lot of detail other than to say the CIP continues our focus on ensuring that not only our projects but our operations included in the CIP take into account equity and looking at how we can best ensure that all users including those who rely so much on some of our programs are able to get where they need to go when they need to be there. I did want to focus on one project in particular though, the Arlington View Trail. We are hoping to move to construction later this year. Certainly, we hope to issue a construction contract. We are awaiting VDOT coordination with FHWA to secure approval on easements, and we hope they'll get that sorted out in the next couple of months. But I did want to highlight why this is an important project. If you notice the two pictures on the screen, The aerial image on the left is from right when Shirley Highway opened back during the construction of the interstates. And as you can see, if you look really closely, the former streets, you can still see kind of the remnants of the right-of-way under the interstate highway. And those used to be connections. Those used to be connections in neighborhoods of color that historically across the United States, the interstate system was built directly through. And so it's important that we ensure that we provide connectivity through this project to allow, attempt to recreate through a bicycle and pedestrian connection, the ability to traverse more comfortably from one side of 395 to the other. This has been included in numerous planning documents over the years, as well as a use permit that was approved for the Army-Navy Country Club back in 2010. And as I mentioned, we hope to be in construction later this year or early next year, depending on timing with the Virginia Department of Transportation. I'd also like to highlight a couple of recent accomplishments, both those that have moved into construction, such as the Arlington Ridge Road Bridge, as well as massive projects that we've completed, the suite of projects along Columbia Pike, the Army-Navy Drive Complete Street, and some smaller neighborhood projects on North Ohio Street, for instance, and phase one of the South Carlin Springs Road project that you see on the screen. That did require numerous easements along that portion of South Carlin Springs, and we have secured easements from every property owner abutting South Carlin Springs for Phase 2. And finally, we are hopeful that the transitway extension will open to the traveling public this summer. So moving into how we fund our transportation vision, I've pasted the vision on the screen and highlighted in orange some of the key words that are important to us as staff as we bring forward projects. I did mention at the beginning that the CIP is mainly comprised of projects and commitments that have been ongoing for a number of years. But as Ms. Huffman mentioned, we do need to make sure that the CIP also reflects our core values. So we did ensure that our ongoing programs related to safety in neighborhoods, such as the Neighborhood Complete Streets program. Vision Zero and our Signals program are fully funded. We did also ensure that operations for Capital Bike Share and art operations funded through the CIP are continued as well, so that people have choices to get where they need to go when they would like to get there. Ms. Huffman did a great job overviewing the greater reliance that we have on external funding requests. And I think the important thing to note there, it's not just that we lost a lot of funding, it's that more of our funding is programmed more towards these ongoing programs that are important programs, such as Vision Zero, Neighborhood Complete Streets, but also our ongoing operations to ensure that our transportation network as a whole is still functional. And so how do we get to capital projects? We start with planning. We are currently in the midst of a really exciting effort to update our multimodal transportation plan. We hope to bring this to you for your consideration this fall. That helps set the high level policy that grounds the specifics of our capital projects. We also look to regional and state plans to understand regional connectivity because we are part of a larger region, a multi-state region. And we also have our other long-range planning efforts, our sector plans and corridor plans that are really important because they set specific guidance for how transportation improvements will be implemented over time. That allows us to continue with studies and analyses that identify specific concepts and capital projects to bring forward. This then allows us, on the next slide, to figure out how we program those in the CIP. And I'm going to take a moment to orient us with this slide. We divided our portfolio into roughly three categories of programs. Neighborhood streets on the top, minor arterial improvements in the middle, and major arterial improvements on the bottom. The pink bars represent local funding. The teal bars represent when we would apply for external funding. And the purple bars represent when we would use that external funding. And so for smaller projects that are likely not eligible for our external sources, we're able to perform studies, develop concepts, initiate design, complete design, and then move into construction roughly within a four-year period. This varies based on complexity and scale and scope, but it's a pretty reliable sort of mid-time frame, I would say. For minor arterial improvements, they're a bit more complex and require a little bit more in the way of construction, for sure. The study concept design phases may not be that much longer than a smaller project, but they typically have more involved related to construction, whether it's more disruption in the right-of-way, more utility coordination, other partners such as WMATA, VDOT, whatnot. If we look at something that was developed in a study that is upcoming and we need to apply for external funds, we would want to apply after we have a concept design. And so I've noted in teal that would be roughly year three. Because of the way external funds are available to us, we're typically applying for funds three to six years into the future. So this slide represents a best case scenario of when we could begin in purple to use those funds. And for smaller arterial projects, we can generally apply for design and construction at the same time since we have a pretty good idea of what the construction cost would be without going into a greater level of design. And so this project that possibly could be completed in six years with local funds would take 10 or more years with external sources. And now for our major arterial streets, everything takes longer because there's so much more complexity and so much more right of way involved in these projects. And just the nuance between this and the minor arterial is that we would only apply for design funds to begin with. We don't know how much we would need for construction until we really get into design, understand the complexities above and below the surface, and vet this with our internal and external partners. And so we could begin design, but we would then apply for construction probably midway through design, with construction not beginning until year 10. We just wanted to make sure that as we're talking about trade-offs and constraints and needs for external sources, that we grounded what that looks like for various projects in our portfolio. And now moving into our projects, one of the things we wanted to identify as we move through the projects is what is the relative risk? We've talked a lot about funding risk, but there's also some of the risk elements that we've learned from doing some of our past projects from our large-scale metro expansion projects. to our complete streets projects such as Columbia Pike. If you remember on the west end of Columbia Pike, we uncovered something in the middle of design that was unforeseen. We've taken steps in the middle of construction, sorry. We've taken steps now in design to try to avoid that in the future, but sometimes, as Ms. Huffman mentioned, we just can't foresee what's coming down the pike. So this little risk graphic will be on each of the projects, and I'll go through why we've identified high, medium, and low risk. We'll start with transit. We'll move through alphabetically and I'll try to cover this within the next half an hour or so. So we start with our art bus replacement and expansion. I won't go into a lot of detail on this because Ms. Huffman did cover it when she was speaking earlier. But we have agreements with the state that we are able to get significant reimbursement of state funding for replacement buses. And those are on a timeframe that we work with the state to ensure that we're applying as we approach the end of useful life for our buses. So that is a fairly low risk cost proposition. However, we're still new to the environment of battery electric buses and that environment across the country with two vendors is evolving. And we believe with the best information that we have at our hands right now, the costs or the funding that we've programmed in the CIP will be enough to cover the costs as projected right now. That could change in the future and that is a risk we need to be aware of. Similarly for the fleet expansion, same issue with the battery electric buses and cost, but these are fully reliant on external funding requests and our success with those requests. I won't go into a ton of detail on this slide because Ms. Huffman did cover a lot of it earlier in the presentation. I think the biggest message here is we do have the ratio of one to one replacement versus the one to 1.3. We are in the midst of reviewing our four bus BEB pilot right now and with the cold winter months and with their performance on the terrain in Arlington, we feel fairly confident very confident that we can maintain the one-to-one ratio. That was an unforeseen concern that we had in the last CIP and seeing that performance in real time has provided us with great comfort and that also translates to not having that additional land purchase in the CIP, which also was a significant cost savings. We will have to make improvements to the art operations and maintenance facility and the light maintenance facility for charging and accommodating VEBs as the fleet fully transitions. So that is still a cost in the CIP. And we're not quite sure yet how we're handling battery replacement. Some jurisdictions are choosing to just let them run as far as they let the buses run in terms of useful life. Do we replace them mid-cycle? We haven't determined that yet, but we did include funding in the CIP should we need to. This slide I won't go into a great detail on, but I did want to note that as we transition the fleet more to battery electric buses, the cost of operating the buses will increase as the cost of energy increases. It's just a reality of the electric market at this moment. And while this is not included in the CIP in terms of an overt line item cost expense that you see on your screen, this will be important as we enter into future operating budget conversations that we just felt to be Completely transparent, this information is provided as we advance our transition to battery electric buses. We also have our art service expansion funding in the CIP. There's two elements on this slide I wanted to cover. One is funding for our fiscal 27 art service recalibration. There will be a supplemental appropriation upon CIP adoption for $850,000 of TCF to cover this recalibrated root structure for the art 75, 77, and 55. We looked at the TSP that was adopted several years ago. Based on existing ridership and changes, particularly after COVID, we made some changes, recalibrated our expectations for service and expansion, and that's yielded improvements to these three routes for on-time performance and peak period service frequency. We also have funding in the CIP for future service expansion that will be based on information from this recalibration, but we're also undertaking a network redesign of the ART service over the next several years, which will feed into a new transit strategic plan that's also accounted for in the CIP in roughly 2032. We have several improvements in the CIP for bus operations. We are currently under construction at the East Falls Church Station. And while our project is under construction, as I referenced earlier with Columbia Pike, there are still things that we are working out, both with our partners and partner property owners, VDOT and WMATA. We don't anticipate any cost fluctuations or any schedule issues, but just the reality of construction in that incredibly constrained environment, we thought it prudent just to note there is still some risk in this project. For the Shirlington Transit Station expansion, we have external funding to expand capacity at Shirlington Station. We are undergoing additional study to see what options we could take beyond what's the sort of low hanging fruit on the site. It's an incredibly constrained site and in order to fully or more meaningfully expand capacity, we may need to look at easement, negotiations or property acquisition or potentially demolition or relocation of the structure to provide for more bus transfer capacity. So there is some risk still involved in this project, but we're hopeful that we'll be able to find a solution. We have a very large metro rail expansion project at Ballston. It's adding a west entrance at Vermont and Fairfax. You can see from the image on the screen that it's adding a stairwell at that intersection with elevators you can see in the distance on the screen. We're in active procurement right now for a design build project. We're really excited about this project because it will add capacity and a western egress to more development located west of the existing station, but also it will improve safety and passenger throughput at the station. As I say, we are under active procurement, so there is still some risk relating to cost, funding, and schedule, but we do anticipate issuing a contract later this calendar year. We have two other Metrorail station expansion projects. The Crystal City Metrorail East entrance is under construction, and we anticipate completing next spring, which is incredibly exciting. We have made incredible progress on this project in partnership with Clark and the JBG Smith, and it allows us to, again, expand capacity at that station through reaching additional development to points east from the Crystal City Station. As with all incredibly complex projects under construction, there's minimal risk, but we did want to identify that since it is an incredibly complex project. We have an application in right now to the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority on Courthouse Metro Rail Station. We will be Transitioning a old compressed slow elevator to two high-speed elevators. We have previously been unsuccessful with previous requests, which is why the funding on this project is a risk. We're not sure where we will stand once MBTA makes its recommendations, which are imminent. This week or next week, we should be able to find out if we've been successful or not. We have not yet begun design, which is why cost and schedule are uncertain as well. We have two technology projects in the transit portfolio which are really exciting. We have a number of different systems through which we operate right now and we will be consolidating that to one system which is a huge efficiency and will allow for greater performance management and reliability understanding of the service. We also have transit signal priority built into the CIP on a variety of different corridors, and we will be continuing to explore that with our engineering and operations group to ensure that the signals and the buses are communicating with one another. The risk here, though, related to the effectiveness of transit signal priority is without a dedicated lane, you're moving in traffic. And we can try to coordinate the signals and the technology as best we can, but it's an imperfect system when you don't have dedicated lanes. We're really excited about the next generation bus passenger info initiative. This will take information from that consolidated technology system and upgrade passenger facing route information so you on your phone can have up to the minute exact precise timing of when your bus is going to come. There's going to be accessibility features with QR codes and information installed at the bus stations as well so that people at the stations are able to see that same information. Transitioning to the Complete Streets portfolio, I'll move through and highlight some of the projects within each of these programs. As we've discussed in the past, there are a number of projects within all of our programs, and we'll bring out the most relevant that are closest to fruition. There are a number of projects that are in the later years of the CIP that are not fully developed. that I won't be going into as great detail on. So in the Bike Arlington program, I've highlighted two projects. The Arlington Memorial Trail is a project between Arlington National Cemetery, roughly near the metro station there, down to roughly Joyce Street and Columbia Pike, a little bit north of that. It will provide a significant north-south bike connection that doesn't exist today. incredibly constrained right of way, fully owned by either the federal government or VDOT. And so we're working with the federal government right now and VDOT to begin the environmental process to determine how we would be able to fit this trail. It's kind of threading a needle on this location. But we do have partners that are willing and interested in this project, so we're hopeful in that sense. But again, this project relies on external funding, and we've not been successful in previous rounds. We're hopeful to find success, especially once we get through the NEPA. If we don't find success now at the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority, getting through the NEPA and having more detail and concept I think will position us better for other sources. We have a number of different segments of the Arlington Boulevard Trail, and I think this is probably our most diversely funded project. We have federal earmarks, federal funding, state funding, regional funding, two types of regional funding, and local funding. And there's about five different segments included in the CIP that we're moving forward on various timelines. Because of the external funding request, that is a risk there since we haven't secured all of the funding yet, but we are hopeful as it will really provide great east-west connectivity through the central portion of the county. I put two other projects on the slide. Capital Bike Share is a program of its own. The CIP funds not only the operations that Ms. Huffman mentioned earlier, but it also funds expansion stations. And so altogether, the operations, maintenance, replacement, and expansion of the bike share network is around $40 million. This is increased from the last CIP mainly because of the e-bikes. They're incredibly popular, but they're incredibly expensive to operate and replace. So it's a service that we believe is important to provide because of how many people have taken trips on e-bikes, but it is a cost. And finally, while we no longer have a extremely active Columbia Pike streets program, we are continuing the Columbia Pike bike boulevards. We have several smaller improvements that are moving forward. At this time, a signal at Glebe and 9th Street that is pending VDOT approval. We're also hoping to get a couple of other improvements on the western side of the pike on 8th Street. There are some really visionary improvements that will require significant funding and environmental work, namely a bridge across Four Mile Run at 9th Street, which would be a really great enhancement, but we don't have that funded in the CIP, and we have included it in our ongoing study. So for Crystal City and Pentagon City Streets, we have two sector plans that grounded the project work in this portfolio. The Crystal City Sector Plan was adopted in 2010 and outlined a number of different improvements that with redevelopment would help transform that area of the county. We have a number of projects that are ongoing that realize that transformation. We have 15th Street South and Clark Bell, which will provide a trail connection north to 12th Street. That's under construction now. You can see it on the bottom right of the slide. The Army-Navy Drive protected bike lanes are also under construction, which will connect into the recently completed Army-Navy Drive cycle track. CC to DCA, multimodal connection, is a really transformative structure that will connect the VRE station, which is under design by VRE, to the DCA metro station. It's about a thousand mile walk from a train to the ticket line. Well, it's not a ticket line anymore. I guess it's just security. Everyone has e-tickets now. But that project will be really transformative not only to people in Crystal City but for folks who can take the train and make that connection. We are currently awaiting VDOT and FHWA concurrence on a delivery method and we hope that they'll come to a consensus on our approach in the next several months so that we can move forward with our design contract hopefully later this year. And finally, in the Crystal City Streets portfolio, we have our Long Bridge Drive connection. As you all know, the Virginia Passenger Rail Authority is building the Long Bridge Rail Bridge, which will provide better service connecting the CC to DCA, but it will also provide a bicycle and pedestrian bridge that will link much more safely DC to Crystal City. To ensure that we preserve the integrity of the improvements at Long Bridge Park, we are proposing to build a trail connection along Long Bridge Drive to connect that bike bridge to Crystal City and the Crystal City Bike Network. We also have a study in this portfolio on South Hay Street to realize and to study improvements that were flagged for consideration as part of the Pentagon City Sector Plan adoption in 2024. We have two slides on improvements outside major corridors. We are implementing improvements from the formal run area sector plan. Those will commence within the next couple of years beginning with a restriping proposal as part of our paving program this summer. We also have improvements on North Sycamore Street that will be completing design shortly and then moving into construction shortly to complete by 2029. This does require permits and approvals from VDOT, but we're working closely with them. We have a number of studies within this portfolio that we will be beginning on the heels of the adoption of the multimodal transportation plan. Most of the studies have been paused during that effort, and our first study that was given to us as a priority is the Carlin Springs Road corridor study, which I believe we're doing traffic counts now. And we will be doing a high injury network audit this summer through our Vision Zero program. And we'll be kicking off this study later this year. I also included the Fairfax Drive study. It's in the Rosalind Ballston program. But in our list of studies, it just felt like it was hanging out in that program. We'll get to the links and studies on that program. That will begin in fiscal 28, and then as you can see, we can pretty much accommodate one, one and a half studies every fiscal year, so they flow in a yearly fashion after that. A couple additional projects in the improvements outside major corridors portfolio, we are continuing improvements along South Carlin Springs. We have phase two moving forward. As I mentioned earlier, we have all easements, but you never know what you're going to find in construction, and that is an incredibly challenging corridor to maintain safe travel for pedestrians and bicyclists while also maintaining travel for motorists. We have our project on South George Mason Drive from Arlington Boulevard to Columbia Pike. That has a smattering of funding, including a federal earmark, as well as other sources of funds. And we have really good partners with the National Foreign Affairs Training Center and Army National Guard. And we are moving forward into design for that project. There is a major utility relocation that is part of it, which will be a challenge moving forward. But we'll find out more as we move forward through design. This is one of the next projects down South George Mason Drive at Four Mile Run, as well as South George Mason Drive from Columbia Pike to the county line. That is now fully reliant on external funds. This was one of the programs or projects, I guess, that we did have to shift to fully external funding. We have external funding requests for all segments into Northern Virginia Transportation Authority, but that is a risk to see if we're able to successfully secure those funds or not. We also have, as you all are familiar with, it's an incredibly challenging intersection at 4 Malloran Drive. We hope to have a grade separated crossing of the W&OD Trail at that point, but there's also a major utility running through that corridor, so that will be a challenge as we move through development. And finally, we are under construction along Walter Reed Drive, hopefully completing the traffic signal at 9th Street so that it is functional when the Career Center opens next school year. And then we'll be commencing the rest of our project following that. I shouldn't say hopefully. We will have it open. And moving on to Langston Boulevard, as Ms. Huffman mentioned, this was another one of the programs where, because the studies are underway, we do not have local funding identified for future improvements. We are nearing completion of the first portion of the study. It's for areas two and three, looking at intersections, which will be implemented with private development along this portion of Langston Boulevard. we will be beginning the langston boulevard area 5 study in fiscal 27. it's um as i mentioned we can accommodate one one and a half studies per fiscal year so while south carlin springs will kick off this fall we see langston boulevard kicking off this winter after we kind of get that kicked off we move on to the next one but that will begin in fiscal 27 and they take roughly 18 months give or take and we'll wrap it up in fiscal 28. And as I mentioned, once we get a handle on what improvements come out of those studies, we will know rough magnitude of cost in terms of design or construction. So I can absolutely guarantee that the 48 million identified here in external funding requests, it will change and it will likely go up in the next CIP because we'll have a better understanding of what the scopes are and what discrete projects will move forward. it's mostly a placeholder that shows us and you all and hopefully the community that we have a commitment to bring forward recommendations that were identified in the Plan Langston Boulevard effort in 2023. I also, oh sorry, I just, I wanted to mention, this is the only place I include a VDOT project, but we do work closely with VDOT to help them implement projects in their right of way. We will be applying for Smart Scale, which is a state source for improvements at Langston Boulevard and Lynn Street on VDOT's behalf. This will be a VDOT project, it's not in our CIP, but I just felt important that we flag that VDOT takes on projects in Arlington as well. This will be contingent on a successful application, and so of course there's risk there. Neighborhood Complete Streets is a relatively small program, but it addresses a number of concerns that are identified by members of the community, be they residents, business owners, staff, that identify locations that are challenging to navigate, namely as a pedestrian or bicyclist. The Neighborhood Complete Streets Commission governs that process for project selection through a list of ranking criteria that the board has accepted. They actually have a funding hearing coming up on June 15th to approve the next slate of funding for projects for the next fiscal year. The three projects on this slide are advancing and hopefully will be complete within the next year. These are relatively small projects that generally improve sidewalk access. The Roslyn Boston Arterial Improvements Program improves streets and sidewalks in that corridor. We have one soon to be very active project on Wilson Boulevard at the 10th Street intersection. This will be fairly disruptive, mainly due to ensuring maintenance of traffic for pedestrians and bicyclists so that they can safely move through the area while it's under construction. We also will be advancing a project at Fairfax Drive and Kirkwood to improve safety at that intersection. Improvements made during that project will not preclude outcomes of the study I referenced on the previous slide. So as that study advances, we'll be advancing design on the improvements at the intersection to ensure that is seamless. The two projects in the center of the screen implement recommendations that came out of the Roslyn Sector Plan, which was adopted in 2015, and the Corps of Roslyn Transportation Study, which was adopted in 2019. These are major, major improvements that will reimagine the center of Roslyn and be incredibly disruptive during construction. The massive undertaking is the Fort Myer Drive tunnel, which we're calling the Fort Myer Drive multimodal improvements. We will bring that to grade so that the intersection of Wilson and Fort Myer Drive will be at grade and the streetscape will be much more friendly to bicycles and pedestrians and incorporate transit improvements. It's incredibly expensive. We are beginning concept design this summer, which is really exciting. But through that, we hope to learn more about all of the utility conflicts under that area and all of the other elements that we'll have to coordinate. As Ms. Huffman mentioned, it has a number of different outstanding developer contributions that have yet to be realized. So that is a funding risk for this project. The North Mead Street project improves connectivity from the southern portion of Roslyn across North Mead Street Bridge to Iwo Jima and other points of interest south of Arlington Boulevard. This project was fully locally funded in the previous CIP. We are now relying on an external funding application. We are developing a SPART scale application that we will be submitting, but that is an additional risk on this project in terms of our ability to advance it if we're able to secure that funding. Our street safety improvements program I mentioned earlier, it's really the capital hub of our Vision Zero program and it has two main components. Our strategic network analysis and planning, which is where we do a lot of the tactical improvements that follow our high injury network safety audits and other system wide safety assessments. where we pilot tactical improvements, like you can see the school slow zones on the screen. You can see a picture from one of the safety audits there as well, where staff from multiple disciplines within the county do site visits and identify what are the critical safety issues that we have here. We also move into quick builds and try to handle safety improvements at intersections or other key conflict areas in ways that are extremely quick and tactical. That can be anywhere from striping and ballers that you see on the screen to a lighter capital improvement with concrete work. As Mr. Neighbors mentioned earlier, not just related to traffic signals, but other elements of construction have increased. We're trying to keep the quick builds quick and cost effective, but that is a risk that we have to factor in as we move forward with that program. And finally, our Walk Arlington program is a pretty small program, but focuses solely on a project that is dedicated to pedestrian improvements. We have a spot improvements program that implements missing link type projects that are potentially around some of our partner agency projects. I know we just worked with DPR on a sidewalk connection to one of their park projects. It's just money that we set aside for as needed projects. We did have to reduce that slightly in the CIP given the funding constraints. We do feel that balanced with Vision Zero and some of our other programs, we will still be able to maintain our commitment to providing sidewalks. We have two additional projects I'd like to highlight. It's the Lorcom Lane sidewalk that we have under design and we'll be moving forward to construction to complete in fiscal 28. We also have an application in for funding at Glee Road and North Quincy Street or North Henderson. It depends on which way you're going from that intersection, which will greatly improve pedestrian connectivity. It is a challenging intersection for pedestrians and a lot of pedestrians rely on it every day. VDOT is a partner in this. We are basing the design on their study that they completed, but we will need their approvals throughout the process. I included on this slide some additional projects that are more infrastructure focused. Mr. Nabors reviewed in detail our traffic signals program and some of the constraints there. While we do commit to local funding towards this program, given the constraints in the CIP, we are relying more on federal funds in the future to ensure that it remains fully funded. We have our ITS system which is all the technology at the signals that we operate and maintain as well as the operations portion of transit signal priority. We have responsibility for maintaining our street lights throughout the county so this program includes pay go bonds and a small amount of TCF for that. And finally our parking meter and parking technology program. We are hoping to secure additional external funding for expanding the performance parking pilot locations, but we still have to maintain that infrastructure of our parking meters.

Moving on to our bridge program. So we have bridge maintenance on the left. So our bridge maintenance program is to ensure that we can maintain our 38 bridges and culvert in a state of good repair. It's rare that we add to our inventory, but in the last two years since our last CIP, we have gone from 36 to actually 38, because we added a pedestrian bridge in the Buckroft neighborhood and a culvert at our operations and maintenance facility. The proposed CIP is 10.6 million. It is PAYGO and bonds. Bonds is about roughly three quarters of the funding request. And we do rate our bridges on a scale of zero to nine. It's a rating system developed by FHWA. And as part of our biannual inspections that we do, which is also an FHWA requirement, we rate off our bridges. And our goal is to be between six and seven, which would put our bridges at the satisfactory to good rating. Currently, the rating averages 6.4 across all of our bridges. And once we complete the construction of Arlington Ridge Road Bridge, all of our bridges will be above 6. And talking about the Arlington Ridge Road Bridge construction, that is part of our bridge renovation program that you see on the right. And the proposed CIP here is 21.7 million. It's a mix of funding sources. Most noteworthy is that the city of Alexandria is paying for 50% of the cost for the Arlington Ridge bridge construction and the construction for that is underway and we are expecting to have it completed by fiscal 28. Then our next slide is our paving slide. And here, the graph that you see is the standard graph that we show, where you can see the blue line is the funding, and the green line is the PCI, the Pavement Condition Index. And at the top of the slide, you can see the scoring. So the index is from 0 to 100, developed by the Army Corps of Engineers. And our goal is to be between 75 and 80. Now, we are well within that. We measure PCI every fall, and last fall it was measured at 83.2, barely unchanged. But the reason we show you the historicals is because you can look back, and there were years when we had really low PCI, and we realized we had to invest in our roads. And what is important to see in that graph is that PCI lags investment. So if your road conditions fall into a state of disrepair and you start investing, it takes several years to get to a better PCI. The other thing I'll mention is while we're feeling pretty good about our PCF 83.2, and on the one hand, you might feel like, well, that's barely changed after the bad winter that we had during fiscal 25, right? But there was something different about this winter. The difference is that the winter we had over fiscal 25, there was a lot of snow, but the ice wasn't so bad. And the equipment that we have that plows the snow from the streets doesn't really actually even touch the pavement. So it doesn't hurt the pavement. This winter, our most recent winter, had a lot more ice. Now, when it comes to getting the ice cleared off roads, we have to scrape the ice from the roads. And the scraping... actually does hurt the pavement. So it'll be interesting to see where our PCI is this fall, because we went through another bad winter, but another bad winter that actually had ice that had to be scraped off the pavement. The other point I did want to mention is our proposed CIP is 126 million. It is a combination of bonds and PAYGO. Bonds are roughly 90%. They pay for the mill and overlay. And what I did want to mention is The cost of mill and overlay has a liquid asphalt adjustment index that is linked to oil prices. And as we all know, oil prices have shot up in recent months. They're very volatile. It's hard to know where they're going to be going next. But that index currently is tracking about 30% higher than what is in our contract. And there is significant risk. So the team is watching it very closely, running scenarios. But there is a risk to our bond request because of this liquid asphalt adjustment index.

Okay, so wrapping up, we have two slides left. This just reviews a lot of what we've discussed today in terms of the assumptions that we've made building the CIP and the risks that we acknowledge are built in. One thing we didn't highlight quite so overtly is the future cost of art service is roughly unknown. We haven't developed the network redesign at this point to know specifically what the service will be. We're beholden on operations contracts to deliver that service and those fluctuate as they are renegotiated. As I mentioned before, we're in the Boston West Entrance RFP process. That is a risk. Developer contributions for the core of Roslyn projects. I'll reiterate about the studies, but also any recommendations for system-wide improvements from the multimodal transportation plan update. We don't have local funds programmed for those. We've talked about inflation factors across a number of different programs. And again, our reliance on external funding requests is not only a risk, but is also a potential for delay of improvements. So closing out, we do still believe that given all of these constraints, the CIP does advance goals of our current policy and incorporates Vision Zero not only in street safety improvements but into the entirety of our program. We have also goals from the community energy plan to ensure that we're increasing opportunities for people to change their mode and move around by transit, bike, or bus. Transit, bike, or, yeah. I feel like I missed one. Walking, I was like there's something not right with this. That was my last slide. So this is only possible though because we're leveraging TCF. I don't think we emphasize that quite enough. It's not just the revenue reductions and our reliance on external funding. It's the programs that are continuing over time and the increases to operations costs Even without revenue reductions, we still would have been challenged to ensure that we're bringing this portfolio forward. We've discussed a number of the different risks and challenges. I think we just touched on easement negotiations, but that is a complexity that we have to realize given the right of way that we have. We're in an incredibly constrained environment. We don't have new space to build into, so we're reliant on those who abet our projects to be project partners. And that often takes time and give and take. And finally, while we do have some technology enhancements built into the CIP, technology evolves over time. And as nimble as we are, we can't anticipate everything. So that remains something that's kind of in the back of our minds as to how we will look towards future CIPs to address. And then finally, how are travel trends changing? We'll find out and hopefully have that information to build into the next CIP. And with that, we're happy to take questions.

Thank you, Sarah. Ms. Crawford, right on time. Right on time. So, and to, you know, Mr. Nabors and Ms. Hoffman and the entire team, thank you for a very thorough update. I think what you're going to hear from us, and we have 45 minutes, is overall talking about our priorities and delivery and funding some of our, you know, slated priorities and so forth. I have a bucket. The areas that we're gonna talk about, and I shared this with my colleagues, we're gonna spend about 15 minutes talking about complete streets or asking questions about complete streets. Then we're gonna move over to Arlington Transit for about 10 minutes. We're gonna do some maintenance and funding for about 15 minutes. And then we'll close it out with others. The hope and the expectation is that we will be done with our segment here at two o'clock. So I'm looking to see if there's any lights on for my colleagues as we talk about complete streets. Do I see any lights? Mr. Chair, thank you. The floor is yours.

I think I only have one question in this area and it is probably for Ms. Crawford and Mr. Nabors together. You said a couple of times that we had every easement on both sides, but it may be between, on Carlin Springs, but it may be between certain roads. When we went out last week, was thoroughly impressed but there were still a couple of easements that we were left and i'm not this is not gotcha it's just trying to understand where we are and i think you may know the best but whatever you guys think as to who should answer in the context well i can start saying you're correct you know when we did the walk through we had the project manager who explained that there are still some easements that we're trying to get on the west side of the street okay that's great that's fine unless

I think we had to go back and get additional easements.

Okay.

So we have an initial easement, and now we're getting easement 2.0.

Great. That's fine. Just thank you for the work in that area. That is my only question in this bucket. Thanks. Thank you, Madam Vice Chair.

Yeah. I'm going to assume this fits in this category. It's a little bit of a more technical question, but it's just not as close to me as normal. A little bit of a technical question. that doesn't have like a line item in the CIP. But one of the things, in addition to our tactical speed bumps that I hear about the most from our residents for pedestrian safety is the hawk signals that go in flashing on either side of the street. And I will also say, even as a driver, it is one of the things that I most notice when we do install a new one in terms of my reaction as a driver and the visibility it provides. But I also know they are very expensive. And so I wonder if you could share a little bit about what they are costing these days and then how we identify where they go and how quickly we get those into the cycle or not.

Sure, just one clarification. When you say the signal, you mean like the flashing beacons that have like the triangular, yeah, okay. Those, they cost, there's a range, you know, depending upon right of way, things like that. So those are funded through our SSI programs, street safety improvements. And those usually get implemented as part of a quick build. We do have a rating where we just basically are going through the list from the highest priority to the lowest priority. And the priority is really, There's a lot of factors that go into that. It's safety that's quantifiable, safety data, traffic, exposure for pedestrians. There's multiple things. We also look at equity emphasis areas. So, you know, we've been you know, completing about five of those per year on average. And so that's kind of what we can do as part of our funding level. You know, over the course of the past eight years, we went from about three of those devices, and now we have over 35, 36. We're in the process of implementing more. The benefits we see out of those is we do get better driver yielding. So we still have locations that we're working through this year on completing. We just had one recent I'll say success with Langston and Buchanan, adding that one as part of a process working with VDOT. A lot of these are on VDOT roadways, which does take us more time to implement. So did I answer your question, Ms. Coffey?

I think other than providing me an exact dollar amount, which is okay.

Oh, an exact dollar amount. Well, I don't know if I have an exact one, but I'll give you a range. You know, each device, and depending upon the design for the crossing, there could be two, one on each side of the road, or three, one on each side of the road in the median. Yeah. So the cost ranges for each of those devices from about $12,000 to $20,000.

So if you were to have three at the high end, it would be about 60,000 for. OK, yeah, that's helpful.

I would say, well, 60 to 75. But yes, that's the kind of ballpark range.

Great, thank you. And so that would be, thinking about the Fairfax Drive study in particular, I think that is one place where I've heard from a lot of pedestrians that that would be a welcome thing to look at. So is that something that we would consider during that type of a transit study?

The study for Fairfax Drive 10th Street will look at all multimodal components from Glebe in the west to Barton in the east and could include recommendations such as adding in the RFBs, hawk signals, widening sidewalks, bike lanes, everything, exactly. Great. Thank you.

And can I clarify one thing? Because they are typically funded through SSI, but there are capital projects that do fund those as well.

Okay. Board Member Cunningham.

Great. So thank you for a very large amount of information in a short period of time. Really appreciate that and can always expect it from DES. Thank you. First question is about the larger corridor studies that you mentioned. So Columbia Pike and Langston Boulevard where the study amount is here and there's not much implementation vision just yet or dollars yet. You mentioned that we're likely to do those with regional dollars and that the difference between a local project and a regional project is roughly six years versus ten years. Can you say a little bit about the timing? I think there's understandably some major anxieties given that we've had lots of issues on both of those corridors.

Sure. Generally, to start with where you began, we will match the funding source with what the project concept is. If it's a better match for the eligibility criteria in Smart Scale, which is managed by VDOT or the Commonwealth, we would go for that. If it is a better match for MBTA or MBTC, we would go for that. It's just a matter of what does the concept tell us in terms what is the goal it is planning to achieve, and how does that match with the scoring criteria of those agencies, just to be blunt. In terms of timing, we're moving forward as we had expected in the last CIP. The Langston Boulevard area plan wrapped up in 2023. We programmed study funds into the last CIP, And we're on track with realizing the studies. As I mentioned, we're almost complete with the area two and three studies, and we will be kicking off the area five study this coming fiscal year. That will allow us to incorporate the policy recommendations that are coming out of the multimodal transportation plan as well as the recommendations from Plan Langston Boulevard. It's trying to mesh both of those and do the traffic analysis that will be required by VDOT in order to ensure, you know, as I think the plan recommends in that area, removing one of the travel lanes. We will need to justify that based on the traffic analysis. So when that gives us a concept, we'll be better positioned to be able to apply for funds. If we were to be able to fund that locally, we could move into design at that point. At this point, we would be applying for funding for design for whatever the project might be.

And what would it take to be able to fund some of that locally? What do we need to be thinking about in the CIP balance?

It would likely, to fund locally, a large-scale cancellation of a number of projects and programs. We did not run that analysis.

Okay, and then are there any smaller scale programs aside from the studies, but are there intersection improvements or other things that might be funded locally where it's all waiting until the regional funding?

In terms of Langston Boulevard?

For Langston.

Yeah. Any of the recommendations from either of those studies would be regional or state funded.

Go ahead. Well, I can answer part of that as well. So, you know, given the timing of the larger study, the multimodal studies, what we've done for Langston Boulevard specifically is we moved up the safety audit. So the safety audit we're going to conduct this September. And that safety audit will look at, you know, what is the low-hanging fruit? What are the opportunities in the short to intermediate term? Again, you know, the things that come out of that are a lot of pavement marking and signage changes, as well as the RFBs that we discussed, as well as some curb modifications. And those have been occurring over time on Langston, but that's the most immediate opportunity that could come out of the Langston Boulevard safety audit.

Okay, and so that you said it's pavement markings, signage, curbs, and one other thing?

Oh, the rectangular rapid flashing beacons. Okay. You know, and the curbs basically, when I say that, it's really to, yeah, to shorten the crossing distances, kind of force motorists to drive slower through intersections, things of that nature.

Great. And then is the answer the same for Carlin Springs? Are there capital dollars for those improvements or is it identical in terms of the, I know there's pedestrian improvements that are already in here, but for anything beyond the pedestrian improvements, which are the sidewalks, which is fabulous, is anything else funded?

No, we don't have funding to implement recommendations from that study.

But similarly with South Carlin Springs, we are going to, we've kind of shifted the safety audit so that would occur this summer, July timeframe. And again, that will look at what are the short-term to intermediate things that can be done. And the results of the safety audit will of course look at whatever data is available. We'll look at crashes, crash patterns, crash trends. and look to address those through the safety audit.

And a natural question is, especially for Carlin Springs, given the location of three schools along there, is July, can you just help for the public understand why this safety audit in July, will it carry on into the school year? How do you make sure you get the behavior of young children and medium young children in that mix?

Yeah, I mean, we obviously look at different and varying conditions. And so we're going to try to cover as many different conditions as possible that are out there. There's already data that's been collected out there. So, again, we're going to try to be as comprehensive as possible, given the timeframe. And whatever we do in either of these safety audits will feed into the larger studies that Ms. Crawford was talking about. Thanks.

Great. I have more, but I'll pass it on.

Yeah. So, I only have countable, but this is on those two.

Yeah. And I think Mr. Kurantonis had a question. And then. If you want to yield to the chair.

If Chair DeFerranti has a question that is riding. It's right on these two. So it's better.

Yeah, sorry. And I will keep my questions to five total. So the question is on, and they'll be short. funding for additional easement acquisitions and Keeping in mind capacity of staff is probably the driving reason for the transportation study Implementation of one per year and so eager on the letter that I believe miss Cunningham was referring to We have a tiny bond premium. I am interested at least I'll put on the table right now that I'm interested in whether some of that bond premium could be used to in some of the small additional studies on either the audits or do you have enough resources for the audits and you have enough resources for the two studies and the sole biggest issue is staff capacity along with consultant capacity wherein you use those? That's the question I guess for you guys.

In terms of the studies, it's really staff capacity and engagement capacity as we cycle those processes. Mr. Nabors can speak to the audits.

Yeah, and that's true. In terms of the improvements, you know, we don't know what is the outcome yet. Yeah. But yes, given that, you know, we have a limited amount of resources for the SSI, over the course of each year. It's potential that there might be something that comes out of it that falls outside of that, you know, typical funding.

Sure. For me at least, that is an open and continuing question. I imagine there's lots of other reasons to, for that tiny bond premium, but it's 300 plus thousand, and I wonder if it could be useful there. So I want to make sure we're not under-resourcing those two particular studies and the easements in particular. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Karantonis.

Thank you, Mr. Spain. First of all, let me tell you, I've been going through the slides for now almost 48 hours, and I have to tell you, If I had to, you know, a business school where you go and present something that, you know, to me, it's excellence in risk management. This is quite an important document. So to all involved, an entire team, Ms. Crawford, Ms. Neighbors, Ms. Hoffman, and everybody else at the ES, this is amazing work. I mean, if you just put on the one side the imponderables and on the other side the deliverables and the timeline of that, This is amazingly managing complexity here. I have two things to say. One is I miss Glebe Road in my north-south CIP thinking when we think about networks and holistically about networks. I am concerned about that. I want to discuss that at some other point of life. The second thing is I also miss less so Route 50, which is a different discussion as well. The third thing is another north-south connection that is prevalent here or prominent here is the work on South George Mason Drive. And this is divided in two pieces from Route 50 to Columbia Pike and from Columbia Pike to Four Mile Run. We talk a lot about South Garland Springs. We talk a lot about Langston, which is east-west. I want to understand one thing on the second phase, the 2034 phase of South George Mason Drive. $55 million, but there is a red indicator on the funding of that.

Right.

So what is missing there? The reason why I'm asking why I'm so concerned about that is this has a major equity component, serves a ton of people. It's a difficult series of intersections and, you know, restoring good connectivity there and comfortable bikeability and walkability is a huge is something that I consider very important. So tell me a little bit about where the problem is with the funding here.

The problem is the constraints in funding, unfortunately, and this was a suite of projects that we had to shift to external funding only. We have two requests into the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority, both for improvements along South George Mason Drive, but also for that connection across South George Mason Drive at Four Mile Run, because We did a number of different studies looking at at-grade connectivity, and the safest connection by far is grade separated. And so we have a funding request in for a bridge across South George Mason Drive of the W&OD Trail, and then the improvements along South George Mason Drive. We don't have local funding to implement those, which is why funding is a risk.

Okay.

Thank you. I don't, I yield, Mr. Spang. Thank you, Mr. Karantonis. And we are a little bit over time. And I guess, you know, my takeaway, and as we get through this conversation, you're going to hear a lot of emphasis. about Langston and what's going on in South Carolina Springs. I think with Complete Streets all in all, my overarching question would be given everything on the table with CIP and what you're presenting to us, what would you say at this moment that these projects are expected to provide the greatest safety benefits when it comes to this community? And if so, why? I wanted to just, you know, for the public, what would you say from these Complete Street projects?

I have two responses to that. I think on the small scale, as Mr. Nabors was just outlining in response to another question, the work that Vision Zero does in terms of the safety audits and the tactical striping and bollards makes a really big difference. It's quick and it's implemented. It's not fully protected in terms of what we can do with on the complete streets capital portfolio, but that's really good stuff. When we look at other areas, the projects in the larger portfolio that focus on those high crash, high injury crash networks, that's Four Mile Run and South George Mason Drive, Langston Boulevard and Lynn Street. I'm not coming up with others on the top of my head, but we have projects at multiple high crash locations, Glebe and Henderson, where improvements at those locations can be transformative, not only for the right of way, but for the people who use them and can just get a greater sense of comfort as they move through space.

Yeah. Another project that is, you're familiar with Sequoia and Washington Boulevard, that intersection, which may have some ties to a lot of VDOT. I would love to get an update on that. I saw the plans a while back. I know we're kind of a couple years out, but there's probably a crash there every day.

That is actually one of our higher crash locations. Thank you for bringing that up. VDOT is actually taking that on. We have funding for that project. They are moving to group that into the their project that they're advancing on Arlington Boulevard from Glebe to Fillmore. And that's just the natural next extension on Arlington Boulevard. So they're hoping to sequence those two.

Thank you. Team, we're going to move to the next segment, which is covering Arlington Transit. If there are any questions, I think I'm going to go to Ms. Cunningham. Her light's not on, but she does have a question teed up in our... Sure.

I can start us off on transit. I think ART 77 is shown, there's a page that has a number of changes in headways, which is exciting. Art 77 popped off the page a little bit for me because we talked a great deal with the community about congestion in the Green Valley area, especially around the Hotel Pentagon site that's called something else, but I'm not going to go there yet. So can you say a little bit about the analysis you've done, whether dropping from 30 to 20 minutes Really changes the number of users and or the congestion that's expected or is there a possibility? We should wait longer or go faster in the drop and that can be offline as well Okay, I was gonna come here I was too Good it's almost it's even better than a back here. Oh

Good afternoon. So for the ART 77, there's actually a dozen transfers through the Hotel Pentagon location. The 77 actually travels down South Walter Reed to get to Sherlington.

Gotcha. So it's actually offloading that area to some extent. It's not going through? Yes, ma'am. Okay. Got it. Great. And then the last question is, what additional capital funding might we need to plan for if we want to expand art service when the magical wand with operating dollars arrives in fiscal year 29?

So the answer to that is complex. We did program funds in the CIP about $28 million over the 10 years in anticipation of potential additional routes. It's a snapshot in time though. We worked closely with the transit team to figure out loosely what does that look like. But as we go through the network redesign and as we understand year over year where the demand is, Guess it's it's an art. It's not a science and so for the capital dollars They're anticipated in the CIP but for every year through the operating budget it may be a greater request just given the nature of service and the availability of dollars

Great. So we have a placeholder. It's probably wrong. We'll be looking at it every two years is what I see. But there should be room in there if we get there on the operating side. Great. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Cunningham. We're going to go to our vice chair and then to Mr. Karantonis. Thank you. No, no. Mr. Karantonis. Yes. Our vice chair first. Our vice chair first. Yes. Thanks. And then you.

If we could pull up slide 24 again, I have, yeah, I thought someone might wanna talk about that. The battery electric buses, I'm really excited that we've gotten ourselves to the one-to-one ratio. My understanding is that that is a one-to-one ratio on how they function and perform on route, not necessarily in terms of their cost ratio. And so I'm wondering, I think slide 24 is really helpful to see and compare from what we were thinking on the electric buses last time to this time. Is it possible to also get similar information for what it would have looked like if we were contemplating continuing with compressed natural gas and what the Really, I'm looking for what the cost difference is to make these investments and upgrades. Particularly, I think also wondering how much our federal priority changes have impacted the cost and supply chain around the electric buses, just because I know the batteries, the production, there was a lot of federal grant dollars going into helping to support development of those supply chains that I don't think is continuing anymore.

So the numbers that you see on slide 24, the $68 million, that is the incremental cost of battery electric buses, correct? So we set aside the base cost of the CNGs, and what you see here captured is the higher cost of the buses. So the battery electric buses are expected to cost $1.4 million. The CNGs are well under $1 million. And then we also have included What you see for construction, the $25.4 million is to build out the charging infrastructure. And then we also have the midlife battery replacement cost in there. We don't have the land cost. And your previous question that someone asked about expanding service, with the assumptions that we have here, we get to a fleet size of 85. And between our operating and maintenance facility and our light maintenance facility, we have space for 86 buses. So that's why we were able to push the land purchase out of the 10 year period.

Hmm. I see. Okay. OK, I would be interested, as we continue our many conversations on battery electric buses, in addition to having the performance ratios in here, I would also love to see the cost ratios in here so that we can understand, even though we can have our buses perform at one-to-one, when it comes to expansion and replacement costs, we are still not at a one-to-one replacement. And so we're spending more for particular reasons, and I think that's fine, but I think we need to be able to understand and communicate how much more we are spending and what the cost is in terms of also how many other additional buses could we invest in if we were investing in a lower-cost bus.

Absolutely, and I should also mention, as Ms. Crawford indicated, on Site 25, those costs, which are operating costs, the incremental costs of operating, those are not reflected. in our CIP. And also what is not reflected is we are anticipating that to maintain the one-to-one ratio, we will need to invest in a charge management system that at current dollars and current prices would cost about $3 million. And that's not currently in the CIP.

OK, that's good to know. I also know that NBC has had some preliminary discussions on on route charging and whether we could put on route charging at some of the places where multiple bus lines converge together. So if you have Metro bus art and dash perhaps all stopping in Pentagon City. and you could do en route charging there, is that a shared capital cost we could all invest in? So I'll flag that. And then I think my other transit related question, Boston West, I think huge projects. design-build contract is out, is this going to be a 90% design? Or is it getting 100%? And when will we have kind of firm cost numbers on what that will actually look like?

It'll be a full design build, yeah. Great, great. And so when will we have the firm numbers? I'm not entirely sure. Is that?

After the vendor is selected as part of the design build process, we should know where things stand. So that's currently still ongoing. So until that's completed, we really don't know.

Great. Okay. No, that's super helpful. I think we've been happy to be successful at NVTC and NVTA on getting regional funds, but also our regional partners like to know when we're going to know the exact dollars.

So we're in active contract negotiations, just so you know, and we anticipate an award coming on the board's agenda either in July or maybe September. So just so you know, we're under active negotiations. Wonderful. Great. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Vice Chair. Mr. Karantonis. Thank you. And the clock is ticking.

Yes. Good luck with this clock. So first of all, I would request that staff provides us with maybe in a two by two format with the presentation that you gave on the BEB performance at the TAC, at the Transit Advisory Committee in May. Because this explains with fair detail how this performance is, how well it went, over this year, and what are the parameters of the replacement program? I mean, why a one-to-one? What is the additional, you know, capital cost and capital necessities for charging? What can be done in the interim? There was also, you know, you even talk about personnel that needs to move the buses in the night so that you can actually charge them with not enough charges, et cetera. This is very, very good stuff and there is even more because we need to see, for example, what is the reliability of these buses. I assume that this is higher than the reliability of the CNG traditional combustion engine buses, et cetera. This has cost implications as well. The second thing that I wanted to ask now is, it was a follow up to Ms. Cunningham's question on the 75 and 77. I don't understand, and help me on this. So the 75 goes from 30 to 15 minutes, so from two services an hour to four services an hour. And the 77 goes from two services an hour to three services an hour. Yet the cost to implement that on the 77 is higher than the cost to implement that on the 75. So in one I go from two to four, I double the service, and I have to cost, the cost to TCF only is 200,000, while the other is 540,000. Something is missing there, and I'm asking you to... to explain that to them.

Yeah, I'm happy to do that, and I should have been more clear when I was presenting this slide. The cost that you see on the screen is only the local cost. For the 75 and the 55, we will be receiving a grant from MBTC for operations, but because it's the I-66 commuter choice program, it's only in peak periods. So the cost you see on the screen is to cover the non-peak direction.

Okay, so that's the, and that's for, I mean this is for certain years, this is not ongoing.

As long as the route performs, we can keep applying back to MBTC.

And we are confident, okay. And 77 is not eligible, it is not 66 eligible?

We've been told it's not eligible, correct.

It used to be once upon a time. Yeah, we had one flow on this that was eligible at some point, right?

I'm not sure we actually ever applied, but in conversations with staff, we were told that that route would not be eligible.

I may misremember that.

Okay.

Okay.

Mr. Chair. One quick question on slide 30, transit signal prioritization. You might not even need to go there. You said, you know, Four and a half, five years ago, we had a detailed conversation about signal prioritization, and you mentioned that you need dedicated lane. Do you also need upgraded signals? We talked about the increased signal cost, but I'm thinking about Columbia Pike, and we seem to indicate from five years ago, my memory is that we were really focused on signal prioritization, and we really didn't quite know how it would work. though many board members or we as board members back then dawn of time didn't know how it work but we were working on it and I don't quite feel as though from that slide that we have delivered and are there and or the answer may have changed to you need a bus route where are we on Columbia Pike amongst others for signal prioritization and do we need upgraded signals in order to do this at scale

So most of our newer signals, we don't need to upgrade. So we are right now conducting a pilot with the 55 along Langston and then the western part of Columbia Pike. So we have the signal infrastructure. So largely, We probably don't need to change the signals. It's more of a web based cloud based application for that communication. So we're probably good for a majority of our signals. You know, we are looking at expanding the pilot along Columbia Pike as, you know, more of the construction has been completed, moving that eastward a little bit. So those are things that we're in discussion right now doing that. We are getting some preliminary results from the pilot that is, you know, realistically complicated a little bit by construction. I know that on the 55, some of the construction in Roslyn is holding things up. So we're looking at how do we manage TSP a little bit better to see some of that performance. But we do see some improvements preliminarily. And, you know, we'll just kind of tweak that over the next few months to figure out how do we get the most out of TSP.

Refresh, do you know when the pilot ends by chance? Or is it depends?

So we are currently piloting on Langston Boulevard, but we also want to include the Pike. But we are in the situation where WMATA is also issuing their next generation RFP for transit signal priority. Ideally, we will have a complete year of results by this August so that we can then analyze if we're gonna continue to go forward with our current model, which is a cloud-based system on Langston Boulevard, or do we want to also check out WMATA's new system if it's available by that time? The pilot was supposed to go for an entire year, but due to construction on the pike, we only have been able to analyze a few of the western portions of the intersections. I think, you know, over time we can get more data as we expand it for a little longer than a year.

Thank you, Mr. Spain. I'll follow up. I think it's worth just a little conversation so that at least I can understand where you are with the Metro piece, not to be dangerous, just to try to be helpful. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And in the 10 minutes we have, I'm going to try to roll all this up. We're going to go over maintenance, questions on maintenance. funding sources and then any other. I'll start off with a question and then lights can come on for my colleagues who may wanna ask a question. But as we think about, and you mentioned earlier, some of this external funding that's perhaps at risk or we're no longer gonna, it's not gonna materialize, right? Can you just talk to us a little bit about any contingency plan we may have for projects that are currently assumed to rely heavily on just competitive grants? Any thoughts on that?

So I would say that the risk is more for projects in the future and in design. For projects that are in construction, we can't issue a construction contract unless we have the funding like solidified. If I'm thinking about our core of Roslyn projects, we have the roughly $12 million of developer contributions on the Fort Myer Drive multimodal project. as we progress that project, we will have to consider how we would close that gap locally. And I can easily say right now that is a conversation for the next CIP. And I think if I'm recalling off the top of my head, all of the projects that face that situation where they would have to go to another level of contract, whether it's design or construction, We're not looking at that in that timeframe. That's something that we will have to reconsider as we're building the next CIP. Do we put more local funding on that project to get it to the next step, whether that's design or construction? Or is this going to continue to be a risk that we will just have to pause in some instances?

Okay. Thanks. Okay. We're looking for Mr. Karantonis. Do you have any questions related to maintenance or funding sources?

No, I yield. Thank you.

Ms. Cunningham? Back to the right page. We'll skip and we'll go to our chair because his light is on. Perfect. And then to our vice chair.

Ms. Huffman, can someone provide a story, a short story, a little context on why We're bonding transportation capital and why I think you described costs have gone out way up on the operational side That may be the whole story but it also You know is new to me in the six seven years that that funding source has dried up. Is there a is it that hit it has decreased or is that our operational costs have just overwhelmed the money that it used to provide and

I think it's a combination of factors, actually. So as Ms. Crawford mentioned, we lost over $100 million of TCF and TIP revenues relative to our adopted CIP. And our adopted CIP was $1.5 billion. So in the face of it, you might think, well, $100 million off of $1.5 billion, that's less than 10%. But really, when you start peeling back the onion and you look at how we allocate our funding and how we have a certain amount of funding that goes towards operations, a certain amount that goes towards program administration, a certain amount that goes towards maintaining certain signals, upgrades, and all of that, when you get down to the amount of funding that is actually left for projects, we ended up losing, I estimated, about 35% which is huge. And so in face of that kind of loss of revenues, combined with how we have more and more of our revenues going towards operations and program administration, we were really getting squeezed from two directions. And then later on, on top of that even, the inflationary impacts that our projects and programs have experienced. So it was almost as if it was all of these factors sort of working together that made us realize that we've always had the option of bonding TCF, and we've discussed it in prior CFPs, but we never felt the need to actually go in that direction. But in this CIP, we felt if we didn't go there, then we would really be having to face the consequences of just cutting a lot of projects. And then I really should also add that at the end of the day, when you bond, you have to pay that back. There is debt service to be incurred. And of course, unlike the US government, we can't be printing money on the side. But when I look at the CIP, and I look to see how in the next When I look at the next five to six years, we have large needs. We have big projects that we're trying to, we have to finish, you know, wrap up Crystal City East entrance, which should be completed in about a year, but there's another $40 million that's programmed for that. We have Boston West entrance. We have Crystal City to DCA. We have all of these, we have huge needs. And then once we finish some of these projects, our CIP naturally steps down. If I was looking at a CIP where, there was just relentless increases in our needs, I would be nervous because we have to repay what we are borrowing. But because of the profile of the spend, it makes me feel like this is a prudent course of action. It's not reckless.

Sure. There are four lights on. I'm going to shut it up. But I am going to say that I'm interested in why the $100 million and whether there are any legislative or just I might ask for like a five to seven minute conversation that's not when all colleagues want to talk. Thanks.

Madam Vice Chair.

Thank you. Yeah. I mean, I think it's a super interesting concept and I'm happy for the creativity that you all have shown in trying to continue to meet our needs because I don't foresee this problem getting better anytime soon. So anywhere we can find to try some new things, I think... I'm supportive of. I noted that the Lin Street study and we're applying for smart scale on behalf of VDOT. I think that seems new to me and also a little strange given that smart scale is

VDOT's not allowed to apply for its own construction funding. They rely on the localities to apply for projects for them. This is how we're funding that two Arlington Boulevard projects, the ones we spoke about earlier. And we found it to be a good partnership because we can get funding for VDOT to make improvements on its right-of-way versus us trying to come in and do a project on VDOT right-of-way. That may be the model we take for Langston Boulevard. It may not just be given what the scope of those projects might be.

That's super helpful. I think that shares more than even what I was thinking. I was just kind of like, how does that even work? So thanks. That'll be all for me.

Ms. Cunningham.

I think you said early on that we were not in as quite a difficult position with the loss of federal funding because state and regional funding was making up the difference. A, did I hear that correctly? And B, why is that so? Did I just mishear it?

No, in this CIP, we have assumed overall the combination of federal, state, and regional external funding is higher than the last CIP. But just based on where we believe we might be successful in terms of our grant applications, we determined that it made more sense to step up regional and state and step down federal.

In that it was that step down on the pie chart, I think it was the pie chart slide, where we have less federal funding in the CIP. I think a lot of that is due to the fact that we have applied to U.S. DOT programs repeatedly with no success. And while we've had moderate success with state and regional funds, the applications are generally more straightforward. much stronger relationships because we sit on, you all sit on the commissions and committees. We sit on the staff-oriented committees. We can work through a little bit more effectively those sources of funds versus the uncertainty of federal.

Excuse me, I just wanted to add one thing. It wasn't really noticed all that much, but my former friends at the Office of Management and Budget are starting a federal rulemaking process, which could threaten a huge amount of federal funding for jurisdictions like Arlington. And everybody's on alert that it's very different. than the process that the president took early on trying to do things through executive orders. It presents a much more significant risk. I don't say it's a 50% risk, but it's more significant. So we have our eyes on that. Got it.

And that could be to us and to the state funding that flows through, I assume. Okay. And while the manager is focused with us, not that he's not always, but I had a question for you about the TIF funding. So we've heard a lot in recent adaptive reuse projects and some of the site plan projects in the NOMA area that there's an appetite amongst the community and perhaps amongst the manager to shift from TIF funding going almost exclusively to transportation projects to more civic projects like library schools and rec centers and parks. Can you say a little bit about how that lands in this CIP and how it might be visible in coming years?

So we've covered this recently, but let's go all the way back to 2010 The Crystal City Sector Plan was adopted and there was a TIF put in place. And Vijay is going to know this better than I. I think it was originally set at 33% in the Crystal City, now National Landing Area. Over time, it has come down to 25%. And the reason for that is that every time we've approached a budgeting cycle, you realize this TIF money comes off the top. So it had reduced the flexibility when we were doing general fund discussions. So one way to approach this would be to then ratchet the percentage back up. I'm not sure that this year or next year is going to be the year to do that given the pressures we're facing. And then the other part of that is what portion of the TIF revenues should go to transportation and parks and open space and those kinds of things. And I think that's certainly something we can talk about, especially if we are able to go ahead and do some of the leveraging and bonding that does free up the ability to make some more of those choices. So that's sort of what And I think Vijay was very clear about this. We don't want to have to do bonding, but one thing that might push us in that direction is if the board decided to try to free up a little bit more breathing room for some other public projects in Crystal City.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Cunningham. Board Member Carantones, you have any follow-up or you're good?

We're good. Good, thanks. It's a very inflationary problem. The problem is that the purchase power of that money is diminishing faster than the purchase power of our budget itself. And that's the crunch. That's where you have it. I mean, 150% more for signals in eight years is just amazingly high.

Okay, thank you. There being no further questions, I believe the main concern, maybe overarching concern you heard from my colleagues here was that we want to ensure that our CIP is matching, in this case, our transportation priorities right across the board. Especially you heard a lot about safety, you heard a lot about transit. complete streets and what is the right level of funding and and all those things and make sure it's done in a very timely manner if there's additional questions I'm sure my colleagues will reach out I want to thank you all for coming up and that concludes this segment next we're gonna have think it's Metro I'm gonna change out here Jason you can come all the way over here if you want And Jason, when you're ready, you can just go ahead and kick off once we get the slides ready, Mr. Clerk, and you can begin. We have the first segment. It's your segment, about 15 minutes allocated, and then around 10 minutes of questions, okay? It may not take that long. It may take longer.

I don't think it'll take that long, no. All right. We'll try to be quick.

Let's get started.

Okay. So if we can pull up the slides. So we'll talk first about Metro and then briefly the Metro capital program. Then we'll go into debt service, which debt service will be even quicker. So if we go to the next slide. I think you all know we participate in Metro's both funding of their capital and operating programs on the capital or on the operating side. We fund about six to seven percent on average each year. Capital, we're a little bit higher, about eight to nine percent. This year, fiscal 27, we're about 8.4 percent. That's because our capital program is a little bit heavier on the rail side, and that's where we share in more of the funding at Metro. So what I'm showing here is just, you know, I think you all know that there are different formulas that we participate in, bus, rail, and paratransit. Capital follows that same mix. And then looking at the types of investments, these are the main categories in their CIP, reliability, state of good repair, rail car rehab, station improvements, rail power systems, et cetera. So if we go to the next slide. What we show here is, WMATA, you know, they do a six year CIP, we have a 10 year CIP, so we have some estimates in our last four years, but WMATA CIP over the first six years, fiscal 27 through 32, is $13.5 billion of capital investment. Now you see here, we have, or if you look at our CIP, we have about $220 million, just over $220 million programmed over 10 years. You see over, you know, 13 billion over five. It's not it's a drop in the bucket versus what they fund. They get a decent amount. They get about I think it's a $4.1 million of federal funding over six years. They get we have Priya and other dedicated funding that goes toward their towards their capital program. And then at the end, there's about There was about $3 billion, just over $3 billion of jurisdictional subsidies that are funded. And so within that $3 billion was the $173 million over six years and $220 million over 10 years is how much we fund in total. So if we go to the next slide, what I wanted to show is, this is just kind of a historical graph so you all can see where we were in the past in terms of total capital subsidy, and then where we are seeing over the 10 years in this current CIP. So orange here is what we use for, the green line, I'll start there, is our total subsidy for Metro. The orange is what we have funded with bonds, and then the blue is what we've used from state transit aid balances to fund our contributions. So you see, you know, in the past fiscal 17, 2018, we had a large spike. Part of that was with rail cars they had delivered and some funding needs that they had. And then afterwards, you see it sort of smooths out. And this is where, you know, the previous general manager there, you know, implemented a 3% cap on subsidies. And on the capital, while the operating side hasn't really adhered to that, on the capital side, for the most part, it has. And part of the reason is I think the dedicated funding that the region came up with for capital helped mitigate some of those increases that they could, where they had large increases year to year, they can go to that funding source to cover that versus coming to the jurisdictions. So you see through their six-year CIP, we show the funding escalating at 3% total per year. But then the out-year is a little bit higher. And this is, you know, we don't know what will happen there. We know there's an additional ask at Metro. From a bonding perspective, we know we're very tight and limited. So you see the orange bars. We continue funding geobonds at a 3% escalation per year. And then the blue is... that we assume that there's either the state aid or another funding source that will hopefully come in to cover an increase to WMATA-CIP or that we'll have to discuss, can we afford it? Will we have to continue at the current levels into those next four years? So that's this chart. The next slide. This just shows the breakdown of how we contribute to Metro. So over our 10 year CIP, we're looking at, like I said, just over 250 billion, 251 of geo bonds, and then $192 million of state transit aid over 10 years. And then we go to the next slide. This is just looking at from a referenda perspective. In the last CIP, you see it was 44 million in the first cycle, increasing to 52 and a half million over the last cycle. In this cycle, we're still following, it's year to year, it's the same as what we had in the last CIP, but then that last year, the 2034 referendum is a little bit higher. And that's just that 3% escalation that we're assuming on the geo bonds for a total of $251 million. And then the last slide, looking ahead, we're hopeful that these subsidies will continue at 3% increases per year per the dedicated funding. And then there is a potential on the operating side. What has happened in the past is if operating is under pressure, there has been a shift of preventative maintenance into the capital program, which has put more pressure on maintaining these 3% subsidies while still maintaining a state of good repair. So that could be a risk in the future. And then again, also there's no new funding source, whether it be from, you know, increased state transit aid or from, you know, new actual dedicated taxes. There could be, you know, there is still demand at Metro for, you know, I think you've all seen, there's a lot of capital investment they'd like to make, but the funding needs to be there to do it. So that's a pressure that as we move forward, to the extent nothing happens, we may see more pressure on us to come up with more jurisdictional subsidies. So I'll stop there, and we'll talk about Metro first before we go to debt service.

Thank you for halting us. Open it up for our colleagues in the first part here at Metro. Slide three. Mr. Chair? Mr. Karantonis. Mr. Karantonis, go ahead, sir. Okay, we're playing press the button today. Ms. Cunningham.

I will just jump in. a little staggering, the degree of cost for WMATA, though it is also the secret sauce of Arlington's financial success over many decades. Can you help clarify on page two, I know the formulas are complex and sometimes miscalculated, The operating budget subsidy and the capital budget subsidy, what drives them and why are they different numbers for Arlington? And then I know there was a windfall. It was a bank error in our favor in last year's calculation. Can you say a little bit about how we make sure that these are the right numbers?

Sure. So the way the subsidy works is there's three primary modes, metro, rail, metro bus, and metro access. Within each one of those modes, there is a formula calculation. So for instance, on rail, it's the density weighted population of each jurisdiction. It's the There is a rail service, a rail ridership. There's a survey they do every few years. There's a number of stations in your jurisdiction. And so there's a couple different ways of factors. And that, every jurisdiction has their portion of the subsidy, and then that gets allocated out. And then there's rail costs. So they factor out the rail costs. Bus has a similar one. It's the bus, the miles and the hours that are in each jurisdiction. There's regional and non-regional bus routes. And so those factor out to what your share is of bus. And then metro access has a similar formula. That's really your share of the metro access costs. So on the operating side, we have a larger bus than rail. On bus, we're a smaller percentage. So when you factor all three, metro bus, metro access, and metro rail, it comes out a little bit lower on the operating subsidy. capital there's much more capital investment on the rail side than there is on the bus side and even less so on the metro access side so when you run that subsidy we creep up higher into the eight eight to nine percent percentage range whereas you know we're in the six to seven on the operating side so that's in short how and why we end up having more of a contribution and with the error that happened that you know was primarily getting some operating savings it impacted our 27 that should flow through also to how they calculate the CIP so that will lead into now I don't know going backwards you know will it also say we you know I know in operating we have a question in you know how do we address this current fiscal year we're in where we've, you know, had too much of a percentage operating. We've had that question of capital. There could be, you know, we might have funded a little bit more. That's also a question that we need to get answered, that there could be a little bit of savings.

And a related question, we've done quite a number of entrances and have more to do. And those, if I understand correctly, are always at our expense with, you know, the support and design requirements of Metro. Do we get credit for those anywhere? in an era like we have been of really our large part of our CIP has been going towards those projects. Do we get any reduction in the ongoing subsidy or is that just the way the cookie crumbles?

You know, it's, they, you know, they have each jurisdiction funds it fully. And I know in some cases they'll even try to get the jurisdiction to cover, you know, the increased operating costs of some of this, you know, like at Ballston when I think there was some bus space. So I think in terms of benefits, no. If you added an entirely new station, you would actually pay more too because of the way the formula works. So entirely funded locally and there's no benefit. Obviously it's appreciative because it's helping their service, but that's a decision we make.

Right. Okay. Thank you.

Mr. Karantonis.

Thank you, Mr. Spain. As always, welcoming the presentation of Metro funding. One thing that I want to ask you is the following. So let's, we, the entire region and our chair was part of that effort of DMV moves, et cetera. We really want to get to a reliable, dedicated funding source for Metro. which has different impacts on operational costs and capital costs. We don't know that, so therefore our GO, our subsidy will have to be projected as you projected in slide number four. But what would be the effect of getting to an agreement on future budget conversations about that? Would this diminish the pressure to fund it through our, to provide the subsidy as we as I do it today, or would it just not let it increase, or what would be the effect?

In terms of the pressure on our bonding with Metro on the capital side? I would... Probably expect that Metro's position would be that they'd want to continue our jurisdictional subsidies and probably at this 3% escalation It would then hopefully remove most if not all of the pressure that it would ever be above that increase But I wouldn't think that it would say supplant that it would supplant our funding that our funding would be able to go away You know that we'd be able to reduce our Metro subsidy but the hope would be that it would just be that would be a net increase of how much Metro would have to fund the program and but then our bonding would stay within our CIP and would stay hopefully at those 3% levels each year. That's at least my, that's my assumption of what would happen.

Okay, this is good to know. One of the things that I find very interesting and intriguing in the capital program of Metro right now, especially on rail, the improvement, the changing of the signal system, the automation of, it begins outside Arlington and the red line, However, this actually, on the medium term, I expect this per passenger mile to reduce the capital expense because it is a huge improvement on the technology that runs the system. More reliable, so accommodating more people, et cetera. So... I hear what you say, but I also want to put on the table that Metro is planning for a completely different capital. It's not just a state of good repair. We are almost at a state of good repair today, and that shows because the ridership is going up and up and up, and especially the ridership from North Virginia. and on rail. The interesting part for me is that we get something out of that that is also increasing. The metro is monitoring the economic impact. There's almost $9 billion of additional economic output along the metro line, so I would love to see, to know how much is the compartmentalized for Northern Virginia. I hope to find that data. Thank you.

Thanks, Mr. Karantonis. I think our vice chair?

No, I'm good.

You're good?

Yeah, I think just looking at slide four with the timeline, so to speak. Back. Yeah, one of... One thing, this only is our capital subsidy, right? It does not incorporate what may or may not happen on our operating subsidy side. Great. And so as much as I know we have an urgent need for the state to figure out what they're doing, Would it be wrong to read this as our urgent need on the capital side is still a couple of years away? How much urgency do we need from the General Assembly on the capital side? I know operating is pretty much immediate, but this seems like the real cost escalations for us on the capital side are still several years out and may have more time for a solution.

Well, I think WMATA has structured their capital program based on funding that they know they have. I think they would say the need is now because they'd like to start on these. So I think they would amend their capital plan appropriately if they could get this funding and probably start as soon as they could get it. So, you know, while they're six years showing only what their needs are, I think at some point they're going to probably start, if this fails the request, that they'll probably seek other methods in terms of trying to get the additional funding. Maybe it's asking the jurisdictions directly or maybe asking for another tax source in the future. It's not the first time that it's been put on the table to try to find a dedicated funding source. But I would expect that it would be now and they would be amending their CIP to have this project start sooner.

Okay, yeah, I think that's really helpful just as we look at what is happening or not happening at the state level on their budget and funding. And I do think that, you know, being a, Being a realist, it seems unlikely to me that we're going to get operating and capital funding in the budget that will, I have been told, be passed by June 30th down in Richmond. But I think just trying to understand what are our risks on, you know, if the General Assembly is focused on getting the operating done this time, whether there are consequences to our budget capital plan or to WMATA's capital plan in the immediate future?

I think immediately based on what they've laid out, it's not going to impact us financially, but it'll limit, you know, what they can plan projects they would like to do.

Got it. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Vice Chair. No further lights. I'm going to have one question. Can we pull up slide two? And I think this is for me kind of taps into what board member Karen Tonis talked about. So we just talked a little bit about WMATA's CIP investment. I guess for me, and where the rubber meets the road, I want to try to understand the, you know, how does, you know, WMATA at the end of the day and their CIP investment in all these categories, investment categories, what does that translate into when we talk about the measurable benefits for Arlingtonians, right? Like there's a lot here to pull, choose from. Can you just tell me, like, what does that mean for Arlingtonians? There's a broad conversation to have. There's a nuanced conversation. But for the average taxpayer, what does this mean?

I think in terms of what you see with the investment is one is I think you've seen the pay programs where, you know, you can pay, you can tap and pay with your phone now to access the system. There's more options in how you access the system. You have the, you know, I know it's sometimes inconvenient, but a lot of the station shutdowns for the rail maintenance on the weekends. But that's hopefully delivering, you know, less offloading, less broken down trains. Right now they're purchasing the 8000 series rail cars. And, you know, we have the seven thousands that are implemented. You know, they fail much less frequently. So the figure how many millions of miles between failure. But, you know, that means hopefully a better trip for you that you're not experiencing any difficulties. So There's investments there the station improvements, you know, some of them are outside of this or what we're doing With our stations, but those are you know, when they're upgrading the system that the stations hopefully, you know delivering a better experience there Same with power systems is you know, not having any you know, you've seen sometimes there's the arcing of some of that, you know in some of the and some of the tunnels, hopefully addressing some of those issues, any power issues along the lines. I know they've been trying to get to full ACAR trains on the entire system. It's, you know, being able to do that. I think that's probably part of the metro, you know, the regional funding. That would be the need because it's a substantial cost there. But it's a lot of things like those. It's on the bus side. It's, you know, having the buses replaced. So you're not in a 15-year-old bus. You're in a, you know, maybe a five-year or newer bus that is reliable, hopefully maybe has better, you know, for anybody who's handicapped is, you know, more accessible. There's a lot of things there that when you make the capital investment, it's replacing all of those assets that you see and you touch every day.

Yeah. I don't know if Mr. DeFerranti wants to chime in, but I would just add from how we think about it, It really boils down to safety and performance, these capital investments. If you remember the days of single tracking where every train was running like on a 12 minute headway and we had to do it because we were so behind on the infrastructure and it was creating safety concerns and the rails were not stable. in good shape but that really hurt how people in our community were able to use and rely upon the metro because if you are waiting around that long one trains were super crowded because you still have the same number of people trying to get where they're going but two it's just not the same reliability and so over the last decade i think wmata has done such a good job to rebuild build that trust with our with our riders and say you know we have to keep that up because the further behind we get on capital the more it impacts that true safety, whether it's derailments or fires or other problems. But then it also bleeds over into performance because when we have to take cars out, when we have to take rails offline in order to invest in that capital, it means we can't be running the trains or running the buses, which is, at the end of the day, the primary goal of WMATA.

Yeah, I think, Mr. Chair, you want to add on something?

I just, your question and both Jason and Maureen's comments was about the specific measurable benefits to the system. Yesterday we were down in Crystal City I would guess that Arlington Economic Development could do an analysis. There are two buildings we transitioned last month. Do those two buildings transition if there's not the next metro station? The economic benefits of location adjacent are huge. That's one thought I wanted to mention which is close to your question but a little off and still right for Jason to have answered the piece. The second is, as much as we're frustrated, I think it's important on DMV Moves and all of us to say, We wished and wanted it to happen this year on capital. Realistically, that was a tall ask. We have to invest pretty deep in making it happen next year on capital. I'm confident that they'll get the operating this year. But it is not inevitable we'll get capital next year. And as a board, I think we have to do some strategic thinking about how we invest our time and energy into making sure it happens next year. Thanks.

Yeah. Great. And Jason, thank you for sharing it. And I know our chair and vice chair were out. I just, anytime I'm asking these questions and with staff and I'm putting myself in the seat of the average taxpayer, right, who may ride, in this case get on a bus and see their money, we're talking big numbers, right? even when you look at this slide, you were talking about the growing financial commitment that we've made and operating budget and capital, right? Like, from a proportional service, you know, how does it, you know, appeal to the average Arlingtonian? with reliability and improvement. You've heard some of that, and I think that's just a message that we need to continually talk about in the community broadly, right, so folks kind of understand how the sausage is made and where the money is going, right? We have a lot of data here, a lot of numbers, and I'm just trying to carve that down a little bit for people to understand. Other than that, is there anything else we can move to the next slide? I don't see any lights. We look like we're going to end on time here today. Go ahead. Jason? Sure.

So we'll end on debt service. And the reality is, you know, Mark did an amazing job at the proposal of the CIP to cover all of the debt slides that we typically discuss and go over them with you. But we wanted to circle back and bring up this one slide to talk about our debt service again. So, I mean, you all have seen, I think so far, we haven't finished all the work sessions, but you've seen a lot of the projects that are going to be funded with various funding sources, including the bonds. But the way we've structured how much we can afford with issuing bonds over this 10-year period is looking at how much we can afford in terms of debt service and knowing that the operating budget, which is where the debt service resides, is going to be under pressure, at least in the near term, maybe for the foreseeable future. And so constraining how much we see debt service growth, not just on our side, but with the schools as well, because it's a combined process. funding that we issue bonds that we wanted to constrain that to a amount that we felt was, you know, that we could afford, affordable within the operating budget, but also that we still meet the needs within our 10-year CIP. And so you see here, we show again, the annual increase in the county side and the school side. And that 10-year growth, we have about 4% combined, a little higher on the county side, 4.2% and 2.8 on schools. And we're trying to constrain that to one of our policies is that it's consistent with our historical revenue growth. And that over the 10 years is 5.4%. So it is below that. So that's what we're showing here. I think we've already mentioned that, you know, the other policies, we're within those as well, partly because of this constraint brings us down to the low nines, low to mid nines in terms of the 10% rule that we have. And then that also brings down the other policies. So we're within all of those limits. The one thing I want to, since we're talking about the debt, one thing I did want to bring up here that's not on here is, you know, within the financial policies, which, you know, cover this, you talked earlier about the transportation fund. There is one change that you might have seen in the CIP, which is a strikethrough, that we are eliminating the, there's the last in their policy. So they have policies when we issued the TCF bonds, they have the coverage ratio. I think we've talked to you about that. But within the TCF, we also have, it's not from the debt perspective, but there is a, we had a self-imposed rule of, you know, how much of their, the TCF funding would go towards their program administration, every cost. We're striking that is because of, you know, we've, We've been shifting new operating costs and other services to that fund, which is in excess of the 5% to 10% that we have in that policy. So given where we are, it's just a change that we're taking out, but it's just a minor technical thing that's being changed within the policies. So that's all I want to talk about the debt service. I'd rather just open up to questions that you all may have as we've gone through this TIP that you may have in terms of bonding, debt service, anything else at this point.

Open up for questions, colleagues? Mr. Karantonis, yes.

I think, Chair, different. Okay. We, since the beginning of the CIP and actually during the entire budget season, we had this conversation about I mean, we understand that we have, how we fund capital projects, et cetera, we issue bonds, et cetera. One of the conditions is that the projected growth of debt service doesn't exceed the historic average of the projected growth of revenues. The problem, though, is that in the last at least three budget years, we are increasingly concerned about the growth of revenues. and about the future growth of revenues. So how do we reconcile the two things? We know what we want to spend money on. I understand that we have some fiscal latitude in spacing and pacing our CIP, but how do we want to establish a strategy to reconcile the two?

So one of your colleagues who's sitting right next to you asked that question of me last week, and I'll give the same answer. I don't know if it's going to convince you, but the increase in the debt service being around 4% and the historical revenue growth being 5%, Yeah, that's great. But as you know, we've we've had somewhat anemic revenue growth of around two to three percent. So this is based on this is based a little bit on a premise that given the importance of these projects, that it will be I've said it will be a hit to the operating budget right off the top. And I've acknowledged that so that when we come to you with the operating budget, it is going to put pressure on other parts of the operating budget less than it has in the past. And if we were being very true to a new kind of metric, which we don't have, which is only include debt service growth consistent with the last two or three years of revenue, the number would be probably half of that. But we have found that given that these are generational investments, it's appropriate to cue to more of a ten year trend. And that may not be seen by the board as affordable. I consider it to be prudent. I'm not sure that given the current financial situation we're in, it will be seen on a year-over-year basis as necessarily the smartest thing to do, but it's given the investments we have, I think it's appropriate. So I don't know if that, I mean, that's, I've been weaving through that answer very carefully.

Which is reasonable and welcome. I also recognize that we have a lot of steering elements here in the CIP more than in the actual operational budget and that we use them. We have been using them over the last two years and we will continue to use them.

As you know, when you were chair last year, we had a long conversation about putting a hold on a lot of capital projects. That's the first place we'll go. when we get stressed. So I know that we've talked this year about very consistently about putting in implementation adjustments. It is a lever that we use when we come to stress points like that, so.

Thank you. Thank you, Madam Vice Chair.

Thank you. Thinking about the timing of referendums, bond sales and how the market is these days, I'm just wondering how that ultimately gets factored into our debt service planning. So, for example, I know even though we have bonds that were authorized in prior referendums, we didn't go to market until now, which I think helped us ultimately on debt service is my understanding. And those are things that are feel very minute and have to be done kind of as the opportunity arises. And so I think for me, conceptually, just trying to understand as we plan these out, is it with the assumption that the referendum is authorized and we go to bond sale in the same year? Or do we make other assumptions within that? I hope that made sense.

I think it does. Okay. So when we put together a CIP, you know, there's a couple different things. Like you mentioned, there's referenda we've had in the past. And embedded kind of behind the scenes is the assumption that we'll issue that over time. So it's in what we factor in terms of debt service. When we put together new referenda and new planned issuance, what we're doing is when we lay out the CIP, when you look in there, by each fiscal year, that's when we plan to issue. And so what we generally do, this isn't a hard and fast, you know, guidance, but the first two years of the CIP, every two years is going to be each referenda since we do it every even number year we go in November. What we assume is what you see in the CIP each fiscal year is what we believe will be issued each year. Now it doesn't always happen because a project may take more time than what's laid out, but that's what we show. So if there is a project with funding in fiscal 2027 and 2028, that would be on the calendar 2026, which is fiscal 27 referenda this November. And we would assume a portion may issue this fiscal year, but we issue at the end of the year. So after November, if it's approved, next May or June, we may be issuing the first tranche of those bonds. The following year, some more. If it's delayed, it might take a little bit more time. That's why right now in the back end of our CIP, a lot of the old referenda is stuff that either we knew was going to take more than two years or it's just been delayed or we've been able to say cash flow the project and kind of push out the funding need of the bonds versus other sources they may have. So it's spending through those balances as well. But generally, when we do a referenda, it's covering, you know, we're immediately issuing, not the day. So if we approve it in November, it's not like those bonds are now in the bank. That's just... the authority to issue a bond. We'll generally come back the next year, the next calendar year, but a few months later, ask for some of it. And then some more the next year, maybe a little bit more the next year. And then that might get lumped in with another referent ask in the future. And then just as you add all them up and what's left, you're spending those down.

Okay, great. And with the kind of existing market risk that we see in the world right now, are we kind of assuming that generally it is better for our debt service the longer that we can wait? Or I don't know, is there any strategy around that?

I think it's always better to keep as lean as possible the amount of debt you have outstanding versus what's needed. So to the extent that we can push out a bond sale, it doesn't generate ongoing savings because you're going to have to issue that debt eventually. So unless you cancel that project, the bonds will be issued at some point. But it does allow you to have one-time savings. And if we didn't need the debt service in that first year that we've already budgeted, then you can actually take that as one-time savings And then, you know, you'll need it the next year if we issued the full amount, but it at least gives you some, you know, short-term benefit. So we always try to be lean. You don't want to be so lean that you end up going negative. You don't have the, you know, you're still spending the project. You don't have the bonds yet because then you're impacting your actual fund balance, you know, the day-to-day operations of the treasurer's office. So there is a balance between the two. Now, when we do have bonds, you know, that are unspent yet, they do earn investment. You know, they do earn some interest. And so we recognize that. So the true cost is that delta between what you're paying out for the debt service to the bondholders versus what you're generating in the bond SNAP accounts, the investment accounts. And that delta is what your true cost is of the bond.

Great. Thank you. That was really helpful.

Thank you, Madam Vice Chair. Ms. Cunningham.

I have two questions, I think, and it may fall to the director of the department because we've let everyone go already. But we, I think if I read correctly early on, we are bonding the BEB purchases, is that correct? And is that?

I think, was that one of the ones you all put for the TCF?

I think it was just Boston West, right? Yeah, I think it was just the Boston West entrance.

That would have been in the Transportation Capital Fund. Within the GO bonds, no, that's not one of the projects from transportation.

Okay, so we were talking like the $68 million premium for the BEBs doesn't get capitalized?

It's capitalized.

Your time is so hard to stay away, but...

Well, let me pull back the slide because I may not be remembering correctly.

And half of the cost of replacement buses, though not expansion buses, come from state transportation funds.

Right, right. It's page 24, I think.

Elastic. Elastic.

Ms. Cunningham, you say you had a second question? We can give her time to look that up and...

Yes, it'd be great if I could remember what it was. And some of this could be offline as well. I think I heard in the presentations that paving in particular had sort of a direct correlation to oil prices. And I'm wondering if there are other things that are likely to have very direct correlation Correlation, I think, well, overall inflation, I can't speak to ever, you know, kind of completely reversing. I do think the oil prices will come back down at some point. And so I'd be interested offline of, you know, a look at what are the specific oil driven things and might we try stalling on some of those for a year or two.

We've had these conversations. It's probably a little bit more appropriate to some of our facilities conversations. But I'm going to let Greg make up an answer now.

I think you hit the primary one is the paving. And I think really the things are really just a matter of how long it persists and then flows through other products.

Right, so it's impacting every consumer price to some extent.

Right, your guess is as good as mine on how it flows through. Because it forms that component of transferring the goods to us, then they mark up the cost of the delivery, and then that gets passed on to the customer. So it's that indirect thing. It's not as obvious as the asphalt.

Yeah, so it's in the construction materials.

Yeah, the only other thing I have heard, and I think it'll be a while until we're able to to tease this out is that some of the plastics that are made that are important for some precision kinds of mechanical systems will end up showing those effects, but it might be a year or two down the road. That's what I've been reading in my latest construction journals.

Excellent. Excellent. Thank you. Are you ready?

Yeah. There's no bond funding.

There's no bond funding. So that's all regional funding to the extent.

Yeah, it's. State funding TCF. and TIF funding. There's some bond funding in 2030, a small amount, but it's very small.

Thank you. And just as a wrap-up on that, I would love to have a breakout of the items that are in the transportation capital budget. What percent is local funding for each one? Because, like, Bike Arlington jumps off the page, but then you look at it, and it's only 5% locally funded. So as we're looking at places to potentially accelerate some projects, that would be a helpful... Okay.

So what I'm going to do is I'm going to, this question is probably for Mr. Manager. We can talk offline. not so much related to CIP, but it is something that, you know, when we think about funding sources and monies in general, you know, there's $50 million, there's a report that's come out about this, you know, ferry evasion that's going on in Metro and WMATA at a tune of about $50 million that they're losing. One of the stops in particular is Pentagon City. where they, you know, they have lost a lot of money, right, on the table. And I think that's something worthy of conversation later on and how that affects the overall scheme of things, not even just so much CIP. Perhaps not for our answer here, but what I'm going to do is while you prepare to answer, I'm going to turn it over to our chair because I know he has a question and that's going to conclude my segment of this CIP today. Mr. Chair, thank you for the opportunity and colleagues.

Thank you, Mr. Spain. My question, I'll be interested on that one, because I think fare evasion on the rail has really come down, even at Pentagon City, and then there's, but separately. On the last slide that you had up, Jason, I think that Mr. Manager is trying to be, it's like slide 11, and it's the debt service, and trying to see if I understand because the last line that has point one four point four four point five four point seven etc I think our debt service percentage and our debt service amounts of our operating budget were less and significantly less over the last ten years than they will be over the next ten years under this plan is that accurate or not

The amounts of deaths that are listed here versus in the past? Correct.

So if that is correct, the world is not getting worse from those numbers. It is only getting worse because the rest of the world clearly is worse, right? The underlying thesis of this CIP is no new projects, more or less. And it is that way because And I agree with that, not because we're in fiscal trouble, because we're not. It's because this administration is idiotic and the world is so uncertain that it does not make sense for us to plan massive capital investments at this moment. And other than my words being a little caffeinated, do I have the the story accurate? Because I'm fine to agree with colleagues that that's the story.

Well, you know, part of the thing is, and if we have the chance to philosophize a little bit more, I'm not saying that's what you were doing if I had the chance. and I think I've said this to some of you, things go in cycles. And right now we're in a point where I think it's appropriate for us to be investing in our maintenance. There'll come a time, two or three, four CIP cycles down the road where this is going to be a very different story, I'm hoping, where we actually will have more money to be thinking about doing that. But, yeah, you're right, these macroeconomic conditions we see in the world, they have, this is where they have an impact.

Great. just so I understand the concept of maintenance that you just articulated, maintenance and could be capital. So not only will we in future CIPs, assuming that there is more certainty in the world in two or four years, we would have new projects that we might invest more in. We also might invest more in maintenance even than we are now.

And this came up when I think we had a question during the DTS conversation about the network infrastructure they had. 10 years ago, network infrastructure meant this little itty-bitty thing, now it's so much more. And when we talk about the facilities presentation in two weeks, you'll hear about that. And the reason why I wanted to make sure Dan talked to you a little bit about the signal example, I mean, that's sort of really, I would say blew my mind to think about what I think was a 91% increase in the cost of doing a signal. Yeah. And so that's something that if you asked us two or four years ago to anticipate that, there's just no, we had no concept of that. Great. And I did want to address Mr. Spain's question at least briefly because I did have the opportunity to meet with the Metro General Manager about two weeks ago. We were talking about this joint project we're working on with Alexandria and WMATA for our backup emergency communications. We did talk about specifically about Pentagon City and I thanked the general manager because Metro and their police have been working with ours on fare evasion in Pentagon City has been a significant issue. It's also led to some of the challenges. We've worked pretty well, I think, at the mall and trying to address some of the instances there. And I know that Mr. DeFerranti and other members of the board also have had conversations about there's been an increased effort on bus fare evasion. And I think that that is I know that sometimes people get concerned about who the people who might be the evaders and sort of targeting them. But at the same time, fare evasion is a significant drain on those honest people who want to pay their fares. It's someone who has to make up for the cost. So it's a real sore point, I think, with the general manager. And we'll be happy to follow up with more information on that.

Thank you, Mr. Schwartz and Mr. Spain and colleagues. You have one vote for when we have lots of time, putting a clock right there on both sides, because I thought that worked. You know, it made me nervous to be succinct, but we are 12 minutes early and staff credit to you for doing that. So we will now adjourn or recess or end our work session. I don't think that there's necessarily any particular action that is needed, but I will take a, we will come back after closed session, which is what is before us now. I move that the County Board convene a closed meeting as authorized by Virginia Code Section 2.237.11.884, consultation with and legal advice from the County Attorney regarding the Board's legal and financial considerations in land use planning and historic preservation decisions regarding issues related to a pending local historic designation request and historic preservation consideration in guidelines for funding availability for county loans. Second. There is a second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. We are enclosed. Thanks.

Thank you.

We are back from closed session. I move, and we'll do a roll call vote after this, I move that the members of the County Board certify that at the just concluded closed session, only public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements under Chapter 37, Title 2.2 of the Code of Virginia were discussed, and two, only such public business matters as were identified in the motion by which the closed meeting was convened were heard, discussed, or considered by the Board. Is there a second? Second. Thank you. Seconded by Mr. Spain. Clerk will call the roll. Mr. DeFerranti? Yes. Ms. Coffey?

Yes.

Ms. Cunningham?

Yes.

Mr. Spain, Sr.? Yes. Mr. Karantonis? Yes. With that, colleagues, we are adjourned.