City Council - Regular Meeting

So those lights

that define our nation. Our badge represents those ideals and the proud tradition of public service carried forward by the men and women of this department. To mark this special occasion, we'd like to invite members of the city council to participate in penning these commemorative badges on our officers who are present here today as a symbol of partnership and trust that exists between our community, our elected leaders, and those who are sworn here to serve this community. So, Mayor Hardy, and I'd like to invite you and members of council to join us for a presentation and penning of the badge for a few of the officers that are here. Thank you. Thank you.

First four standing. There's four standing. Get going. You guys are somebody else. Can you stand up, please? Okay. Yeah, they can do it. Okay, you are going to do it. No, no, no. I'm just gonna stand because I feel like that's important to stand for. I don't want to. Okay. Okay. I'm terrible at

Yeah. and well-being. I also have a friend's There we Thank you.

Congratulations. American Thank you council. Oh my god.

Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for that. 2150 29 68.

That's right. Okay. So, we'll add a third one uh related to Pearson Square and litigation. I've um I've prepared a motion to go into the close session which I will email to the clerk uh the mayor and vice mayor and for use before we go. Thanks. Great. Okay. Well, before then we have a long night.

We do. We will start off with a review of information from our departments. I think very informative briefing. We'll talk about program, public works budget performancil. comfortable with the way they've been answer.

All right. Good evening, council. Happy to be here this evening. Uh, and I'm joined by DPW Deputy Director Tara Hoff, Deputy Director Herb Holmes, and CIP Coordinator Caitlyn Sabsi. Uh, next slide, please. And so the items in this um slide deck are the Department of Public Works operating budget. Uh then I'll be shifting to Caitlyn to present some slides specifically on the capital improvements program, the six-year CIP. And we'll be touching um in this presentation on the storm water program, the sanitary sewer program, and the solid waste program. Um and you'll discuss later the the specifics of those fees. Uh next slide. And then one after that, please. So, the Department of Public Works uh we have a a large portfolio as you know we have about 62 staff members across that portfolio who work in the general fund, the sanitary sewer fund, the storm water fund and the capital improvements program. The FY27 general fund budget is about 9.6 million which represents 7% of the general fund. uh though that is reduced from last year's FY26 uh budget and there's an org chart and then we'll talk again more specifically about the CIP later but uh the FY27 CIP is 19.3 million 162.7 million across that six-year program next uh so the city council has laid out so some clear priorities and DPW's um work interacts with many of those uh we'll be focusing tonight on transportation environmental sustainability and responsive government. Uh, I'll also note DPW's work on creating pedestrian-friendly, safe streets as well as our urban forestry program contribute directly to economic development. Uh, next, please. And now we're going to talk about transportation. Okay, so this table is found on page GF 107 in your budget books. This is the street maintenance operating budget. So, as you know, the FY26 budget saw a

historic increase in the street maintenance budget. The team laid out, you know, approximate divisions for annual paving, sidewalk maintenance, bridge repair, signals, and street lights and markings work. That large increase was funded through the increase in investment revenue. With the reduction in that investment revenue, the FY27 budget for street maintenance is proposed to be cut by $700,000. And we'll go into that in more detail in a minute. And then in addition, for the past couple of years, DPW was, you know, severely understaffed. Uh, and we had an influx of $200,000 in FY25, followed by another $200,000 in FY26, which enabled us to use dedicated consultant support to advance priority transportation projects. That's the project management support line. And in FY27, that budget is proposed to be cut by $200,000, which will cut those consultant resources. So on the next few slides, we'll go into to each of these things in more detail, but we're going to be talking about street maintenance on both operating and capital uh side convulterating. Next, so annual paving in the operating budget, this allows us to execute 2-in mill and overlay on roadways across the city. It is not sufficient to perform full depth reconstruction. However, in certain cases, we're able to do spot reconstruction to address some deficiencies. And some recent examples include portions of Roosevelt and North Maple where we've been able to go a bit deeper. In FY26, we've been able to accomplish several things. First, we completed the FY26 paving list earlier this last fall. And then this spring, which is will be on the next slide in a moment, we're scheduled to complete the FY27 paving list. And we've added ADA ramps were needed. Striped bike lanes if they're called for in the bike master plan on South Roosevelt and Anendale. We've also advanced a pavement management system. And so you may have heard of the the pavement condition index is the PCI. That's the numeric assessment of the pavement condition

based on the type and intensity of visible damage of the pavement surface. So we have this PCI data that's collected every 3 years which is best practice. We have data for PCI data from 2022 2025. We'll do it again in 2028. And so those PCI numbers, we were looking at them earlier, are very similar from 22 to 2025. And then the 2028 numbers, we'll hope to see some results from this work that we've been doing. And then the pavement management system means that we have a consultant who takes those PCI numbers and the available budget and provides us with some prioritized lists for paving and some specific recommendations. So right now, we're currently developing our plan for FY27 to spend $700,000 on annual paving. If we had additional funds, we would add more segments to that list of paving. And we're also developing a plan for FI27, 28, and 29 and and intend to post that on the on the website for that that plan. So we can come back to this later. Next slide, please. So this is the FY26. Uh so at the the top is a few of the items. I believe there's actually more that we have completed already in FY26. And then the the bottom portion is the spring paving which includes some segments that were identified by the this pavement management system as well as some additional segments to address damage from the winter storm. So that the picture at the bottom is the one on North Maple or kind of by the CVS that everyone's looked at. So there was probably a before picture when it was like pebbles. This is the interim picture that our our operations crew has gone out and done some initial patching and then we will be going back and doing uh more paving over that as part of the spring spring paving on that list. We've added a couple other segments to address some specific winter concerns. Uh next, and speaking of that, uh potholes. Um so we have uh we you know have we do have I would say sufficient budget in FY26 to address the potholes from the winter

storm. Our our crews are going zone by zone to address these issues um on their own. We have, you know, our own list that that we have. However, we're also responding to community concerns. So send us your potholes. Uh, Operation Smooth Streets uh has been advertised on social media and you can can submit requests and there is um room to be able to to do that that pothole filling uh by by our crews and there's some additional numbers of how much how much asphalt we've used last year. And then that's kind of early I believe before we've really gotten to filling them this spring. Uh next, uh we also do paving work through the the CIP. Um there's a state of good repair primary extensions grant which is through VOTE uh which does certain eligible segments of Broad Washington and Hillwood Avenue. Uh we were awarded uh a grant for this current year in FY26 and that paving on North Washington will be taking place this spring on a portion of North Washington Street and then we've applied for FY27 uh for a couple portions of Broad and Washington and that was kind of pending decision in June. And also note that we do repave projects as part of our CIP projects and that is part of the overall landscape of paving um across the city including for example the South Maple and Anandale roundabout uh right now. Okay. Next and now we're moving on to a different aspect of uh street maintenance which is signals and street lights. So in the operating budget uh is is one way that that we do that. the uh the mast arms and signal heads at Broad Street and West Street uh which have are really really deficient and rusted and causing a lot of lot of problems. We are going to be using $320,000 in FY26 operating funds um to address address that. We're also making some key investments in citym street lights. There's some really persistent issues on Broad Street over near Little Falls. um our our staff just went out with a contractor and is going to be able to address uh some of those um equipment and infrastructure needs with operating

dollars. And then the next slide is we are doing signals and street lights work of course through the CIP as well. Um in 2023 there was a mass arm condition assessment and structural analysis. Uh that's been really useful to us. It evaluated 10 intersections, 38 mast arms and we've used that to prioritize the replacement schedule. And this is something that our our staff has really been prioritizing. It'll it comes up in the CIP um in the outy years and um and I want to draw attention to it now because this is really investing in the state of good repair of these signals. And one interesting note is that uh you know we've talked a lot with the the police chief and others about putting no turn on red signs as part of safety. Some of these masked arms cannot support additional signage. they are so structurally deficient we can't even hang no turn on red signs on them or other directional signage. Uh so this is uh an overall really good safety improvement. Um and then in FY26 we are going to be funding through a couple different sources. North Washington and Colombia as part of a CIP project. Broaden Washington is some money from an insurance claim and Broad and West I just mentioned from operating. So and then we've we've scheduled out some additional um mass arms which we're uh excited about. Next please. Uh so sidewalks uh operating budget uh again so this is uh our goal uh all of our goals to improve walkability um across our neighborhoods and commercial areas. Also using the ADA transition plan to guide our work as to high priority areas. Um we've issued $100,000 um of work to a contractor to do some sidewalk grinding for us on 34 segments about five miles this spring. And we're also working on some sidewalk repair for some larger segments. And really again using the ADA transition plan also trying to replace brick with concrete where possible. Um and we're working on on those lists right now and have have a couple a couple locations already picked out. Uh next and we are doing sidewalks through the CIP and that is the missing

links program. Uh we shared some revised methodology with council in November. These are the three segments. This is about now $500,000 of work across them for a se section on Great Falls Street, Lyn Place and Madison Lane. And there's some other, you know, larger sidewalk projects through the CIP. Next, um, okay, safe streets projects. This is kind of a mix of operating in CIP, but this is some of the work we we've talked a bit about furthering our kind of vision zero goals. We have this safe streets, uh, interdep departmental working group that's looking at datadriven implementation, but the same staff who are doing those datadriven projects are also completing neighborhood traffic calming projects, projects from community requests. Um, we're looking at, you know, bike lanes, curb ramps. So, this list of uh kind of safe streets projects in the queue on the side is is a mix of things, some of which I've already talked about, and then some of them are some smaller kind of interim improvements, um, in advance of capital projects. Some are safety projects. Um, we're going to be installing some bike racks. And so, uh, all of those things take staff capacity, uh, on the planning and engineering, uh, and execution front, but are are things that we think are really important. Um, we're also looking at process improvements for complete streets and uh design and construction standards manual. And this whole portfolio on this slide is is really important to us, but it's also where that $200,000 cut to project management consultant support will will show will kind of slow the delivery of of of some work in this portfolio. Uh, next and then the smart city program. This of course is our partnership with BTTI. Uh we have smart cities technologies and updated controllers at 18 locations. 10 remain to be fully updated. We're working a lot on continuing to work on uh signal timing optimization. Um the smart cities folks are also helping us with some data analysis to support the the kind of vision zero street safety

work with the you know police data and the the smart cities data um to to help make some improvements uh on this. And so we're still actively working on the the signal uh portion of the smart cities program. And I'll move on to another uh topic a couple slides on environmental sustainability. Okay. The government energy action plan. Uh so on the facilities front uh we've been been been making some progress. For example, the community center HVAC project which finished I guess earlier this fiscal year has been realizing energy savings for the city. uh the Aurora House rooftop solar project. Uh that that's a CIP project. Uh the roof reinforcement is complete. Uh we believe the expect the solar panels to be installed later this summer. We're also we have a new staff member who's uh working on this portfolio is going to be doing um energy audits at the uh Mary Riley Styles Public Library and Meridian High School. And then the FY27 operating budget proposes to maintain those FY26 additions of money for energy audits and energy cap software to help us keep uh moving uh moving forward on this front. Uh and then another aspect of sustainability is our fleet purchases. Uh, so on the CIP side, we have a $600,000 HUD green fleet grant. And this fiscal year, we've been able to already purchase or or in the queue eight Ford Maverick hybrids, two Ford ED Transit vans. There's a picture of some of our um our facility staff are driving them around town um and you know, plugging them into the electric chargers uh and and we are also going to be um uh installing a new EV chargers particularly at the property yard. And then we have operating funds that we are also replacing a lot of old gas powered vehicles with newer primarily hybrid and EV uh vehicles where possible. We use gas vehicles if they're needed for um you know the operational need uh and some of our our larger trucks but we've

been uh doing a lot um on on EV and hybrid vehicles. Uh next and then on responsive government uh let's talk about briefly about the solid waste and recycling program. Uh the solid waste fee uh is proposed to have a 4% increase uh which equates to the $10 increase for the small uh container and the $12 increase for the large trash container. As you're all very familiar in FY26 we completed the roll out of the organics bins um that support curbside compost service. And then in FY27, we are proposing bringing the property recycling hauling inhouse, which basically means that we can have a more nimble response and operational efficiency by hauling those purchasing the dumpsters and hauling them ourselves rather than contracting them out. And so we've seen that that is, I believe, actually going to be a savings for us. And then I think last for my portion, I want to touch briefly on snow. Um the DPW operating budget, you know, funds the purchase of salt, but is really never going to be enough to handle these very large snow events. Um funding for any emergency event, including hurricanes, tornadoes, things like that are are unbudgeted and they're they we will coming back for a budget amendment process in the future. Um and then the last slide, I think of my portion here. Um, it's just a a yeah, a plug to to know that I'm, you know, very proud of our team uh that that that worked on the winter storm this past winter. Um, it was 100% city staff. We had no outside contractors. They're working 12-hour shifts um responsible for salting and plowing our streets, the sidewalks at general government facilities, and the parking lots at schools. Um, and compared to some of our neighboring jurisdictions that had a lot of, you know, contractor costs and very very large unbudgeted costs, um, I think we've, um, done done really well. And so we'll be continuing, I'm sure, to have more conversations about snow going forward. Uh, that is the end of my

portion. I'm going to turn it over to Caitlyn Sabzi to present the capital improvements program uh, section. And actually, I was gonna ask whether we want to pause for questions and answers on the DPW part before we get to CIP because I imagine we'll want to get we'll have we want to keep it fresh. So, would that be okay with Sure. And yet, if it is maybe a capital project related question, maybe then we can hold some of those till the end. Yeah, we'll limit it to the things that you talked about. But the thing Sure.

Okay. So, I'm sure people have questions answered. So, thank you for that really comprehensive update. I think this is an area that we all have a lot of interest in and clearly your portfolio is really big and so includes a lot of things that are council priorities. So, thank you for that update. Who wants to go first? Beth, um I'm glad you included the switch from a contractor to city staff with the the containers in the recycling center. Can you just talk a little bit more about that? We're going to purchase the

Okay. Uh so so our thought with the um with bringing the service in house is this is that we would control unlike we unlike we do not now we would control the amount of resources that we would have to use for pulling these containers. So right now regardless of whether we have a lot in the containers or a little in the containers we pay a flat fee to the contractor. By bringing it in house we can control when how much um how long it's going to take all of that. So it would give us sort of a a a good footprint um and not waste some of the resources and some of the finances we're actually wasted now.

That's good to know. But not the the purple bin as well. Would we call that

correct? Yes, we would also um pull that uh container as well. Um and that one is more frequently and we've had some situations now where we have a lot of uh bottles on the ground because they're waiting for the container to come back. Um, and that's simply because of the frequency in which we pull it. So, we can pull it more often where we wouldn't have that and we would pull it at a time that it would not affect the amount or when the high traffic comes, right? So, we know internally when we have hight traffic areas or hight traffic times for the glass recycling, our contractors do not. So, we will be able to control that more, which also would save us time from having to then put the glass back in the container. I think we had gotten the highest alcohol consumption community at one point. So maybe that explains our glass recycling.

Also the healthiest. Thank you. The two are not mutually exclusive. Mayor Beth, you have more. Okay, Justine.

Uh, thank you so much for this presentation. Um, I have a lot of questions. I might limit them and I can send some over email. It's just very rare that I have all these experts in a room together at the same time. So, I kind of want to take advantage with it and I really do want to understand uh the paving program a little bit better than I do right now. Um I do have a quick question for uh city managers. Uh I noticed in the budget document, I was comparing it to last year and the year before um priorities for for future funding looks like it's been removed. Is there a re like what's the rationale behind that?

So we did not ask staff to list all of their unmet needs. We have done that for the past uh number of years and um and we really tried to shift up a couple of things in our budget process year this year and um and really challenged staff to prioritize and meet their top priority needs

through making adjustments to their budgets were appropriate. this the recycling center uh is one idea that came out of that of reducing cost exposure on the contracting side. Um and that helped balance some of the needs elsewhere in the DPW uh budget to meet other rising contract costs. So we just did not produce that big unmet needs list this year. That's why it's not there.

Okay. I I guess it helped I mean I that was one of my favorite parts of the budget because it helped me I guess strategize like here's what's coming down the the road. Here's what maybe we're missing out on. Here's things that like I mean even like if we want to fund you know this thing for the libraries, what what are we missing out on on these other you know 10 categories of of really important things. So anyway, I was a little I was like oh no, where is it? Um that's good to hear. I hope it comes back in future years. Um, okay. So, for road paving, do we have a multi-year paving plan that's fiscally sound with the right levels? Like, do we have this is how much we'll need in 2028, this is how much we'll need in 2029. Um, and do we have that? and what does it look like and how much would we need per year going forward?

So, the good news is with the additional funds that we received in the last couple of years, been able to up the number of lane miles that we've been covering and we've been able to start to work on getting a pavement management program in place that will be able to answer a lot of those questions. Um to Amanda's point earlier, we do collect this data every three years. I feel like with a lot of the budgetary changes that happened from our first year of data collection was 2022, we've got data for 2025, 2028 data is going to be key in terms of us understanding what we have already done

and starting to establish a really good baseline for how we continue to improve in the future. Um it's it's a complicated question because it depends on how large your paving program is and what exactly you include in that program, but we are making really good headway. And um it is those are questions that we will continue to answer as the data rolls in, but we really want them to be data driven informed decisions working with our payment management consultant. So then I guess if we're cutting the consultant by $200,000, does it make that work much more difficult to um get or assess? Um, so I think where we will see the the the consultant money that we currently have coming in that 200k, that's really going to uh have a huge impact on our ability to deliver a lot of those quick build projects, the neighborhood traffic calming projects, the neighborhood traffic calming projects that have been a little bit more staff driven rather than um neighborhood driven. Uh and and I would love to at some point in time like have that rolled all into our paving program. Um but in as far as like covering lane miles, we utilize money for that consultant from our our paving budget. So it'll just be a small little dip in that paving budget. It's not particularly expensive and we'll continue to keep them on board. So it won't slow the the progress, but having fewer resources, we will have to decide what we prioritize. Um and so this would have to remain a top priority and some of those projects would have to slow down in order for us to continue to do the work in that area.

Gotcha. Um, so yeah, because I remember hearing when when we um had more funding how how what a help it was to have that consultant on board to sort of push a lot of these projects through a lot faster than would otherwise have happened. Um, so at least this coming year, we're going to have to I guess it'll be a little bit slower for some of those um deliverables. Um, looking at the 2022 uh I I didn't see the 2025, but I guess the 2022 and 2025 PCI data um uh scared me um just because uh looking at the state of our roadeds like and seeing so many poor um numbers um it was concerning. Um, do we I mean and maybe like I have I have some number here like we have about 74 to 84 miles of roads in our our city and if we wanted to be on a 20-year cycle what I calculated was that we needed to do about four miles a year and we're currently paving about like half of that at about two miles a year. So we still have a backlog that's building up. And I guess um what we were talking about before is if you just do the surface reconstruction that's great but that doesn't address some of the underlying issues especially for some of those roads that are in like really poor condition. And so if we have a backlog of of two actually I for the rest of city council I do have a chart that I I want to share with you guys. Uh this is basically like a shadow debt that we're taking on. So, for every dollar, if roads are in excellent condition, for every dollar that we delay on, this is time at the bottom, it costs us $6 later, and then it costs us uh up to $20 if we wait until the road conditions are very poor. So, it's basically like saying we're going to take on a loan, and we're going to make a future generation pay for it or people later on down the down the road pay for

it. Um, and so I I guess like if we are, you know, if we're not what I guess my main question is what cycle are we on right now? Are we on a 20-year cycle? Um, or is that a 50-y year or like do we know what that cycle is right now? And that's something that we can look at with our paving consultant to try to get an answer. It is complicated because it does have to be data driven and unfortunately the city doesn't have great records in terms of what we have done historically.

So if we had all of those records that'd be a very easy calculation. We're kind of almost like in this data collection time frame where we're establishing our existing pavement, how quickly they're degrading per the curve you just showed. Um and then once we have that information, we'll be able to really like provide that information at a much higher level. Yeah. But it is something that we can can look into and get some preliminary numbers and understand what our life cycle looks like right now. Okay. Um so that's something that we can work on and then I do think that 2028 data is is very key.

But you do bring up some excellent points. I mean it in order for this to be a fully robust program, we are going to have to get to a point where we look at reconstruction, right? And reconstruction is very expensive. We got a quote recently for Maple Avenue and it was $800,000 um to do the portion that we're going to repave instead. And so I think that it would be really great for for us to continue to work this program, get the program up and running, have it have all the data starting to come in, have that 2028 data, and then really from there start to launch into what our needs are

and make sure that they're resourced appropriately. Um, so and I we have so we did in 25 we did 2.2 lane miles and in 26 when we finish our final paving, we'll be at 3.88. So, but that was with the extra funding. That was with the extra funding funding. It'll go back down to about the 2.3 or so, but we did make a lot of improvement, I feel like, in that one year. So, we did do two years in one year, and that's a lot of additional lane miles that have been paved. Yeah, that's great. But maybe not enough to make up for like, you know, 20 years of not doing that, right?

But I just quickly interject to make sure I understand. So, um, based on what Justine said, I think Amanda, you also cited 2022 versus 2025 PCI, did things deteriorate in those years that we plused up the budget and actually have data on? So, from 2022 to 2025, things stayed about the same. I'd be really I really wish we had some data prior to that because I have a feeling that's a huge improvement, right? I have a feeling we were kind of on this trend that was going in a downward direction and then in 2022 we got data, we bumped up the funding and in 2025 we're sitting here at a steady state.

That's helpful to know to know that like to increase the amount of money that keeps things at least stable and not deteriorating and so it gives us a sense of what baseline funding would be just to keep things as is. Right. So that's helpful. Sorry, let me thank you for letting me interject. Yeah, that. So, I guess I mean I guess what I'm hearing is it sounds like uh we don't have enough data, but there's still like definitely most likely a problem that we're going to have to like catch up on. Um and so, but we have to wait. So, waiting until 2028 to get that data.

Um would that mean so that means like what we're 20 2028 like fiscal year or 2028 like actual year? We've been doing it historically in May. So we have our data, our 2022 data is May, our 2025 data is May, and we were planning on doing it in May of 2020 of 2028. Yeah.

So we or 2026. So we'd have to wait two more years to get the data at which point we maybe are still in like a funding crisis for our roads. Um, I guess like man I think for me one and I was talking uh to somebody about the budget earlier today, my my school budget buddy, they were saying like genuinely the thing that I'm most concerned about like out of everything in the budget is our our road payment program. Like I want to make sure that we as a city council are not passing debt to uh future city councils, to future generations, to whoever else. And so, um, yeah, I guess like I I know we need more money for this. Um, and it sounds like but we don't have the data right now. Um, and so yeah, I guess I'm just I what I would really like to see is like a plan, but I'd like to have a plan before 2028. Um, and so anyway, I I have I have more questions here. Um, but I'm going to yield my time to other council members and maybe if something else comes up, I'll I'll chime in, too. Um, but thank you guys.

Okay, Art.

So, even though Justine has stopped, I'm probably going to jump on to the paving as well because obviously it's something I'm very focused on as also and I keep coming back in my mind to um some presentations uh you made, Tara, you made to the CAC year and a half, two years ago. So, Manda before you. Um, and the need for the funding that last year, I didn't realize it was a one-time boost. I thought that was a general new baseline. Um, but that we that leveling off is basically leveling off at a very low level and that we need to to maintain and actually get out of this hole. And I'm worried that this cut is going to do the the reverse. One of my questions though is if we can somehow find some additional funding this year to put into paving. Do you have the staff resources and or are we going to run into another constraint where okay, we have it. But by the way, I'm thrilled that you were able to do so much that more than expected with the money that you were provided last year. So, if we're able to provide this additional funding, would you be able to do that again or or are you going now be staff resource constraint?

It's an excellent question. Um, so again, it kind of goes back to what we establish as our priorities, right? We have x number of resources to do x amount of work. There's way more work over here than there are resources. So, where are we going to focus our resources if paving is a priority? Um, then neighborhood traffic calming, quick build, changing out. So, like they can't all be priorities with our current level of of staff and resources, right? And so, that's kind of where we get ourselves into um, you know, some of the trouble that we have with developing this program is we've got really excellent people who are more than capable of doing the work. um they're still a group of two people, right? And so if they're involved in every quick build, every CIP project, every everything transportation that comes across their desk, all of their plan review, they've got a very limited amount of time to focus on the program development required for this paving program. So it has to become a priority um with current resource levels. That would mean in turn you wouldn't have as many quick build projects. You wouldn't have as much neighborhood traffic coming. they're they they can only do so much. So that is really, you know, a challenge. And I think just having clear direction and commitment in terms of what the resources should be working on and prioritizing is very helpful. Um because over the course of a year, we could develop a a great paving program, but that group can't do everything that's on their plate, if that makes sense. Um

could I ask a part B question? So I think in the past when we said hey we're going to have this onetime money and I think why you kind of said paving is an area because we externally like source it largely it's contracted that that is an area that we can see a lot more bang for our buck. Is that different now given what I'm hearing?

That is very true from the 2-in mill overlay right like I think one thing that we have shown today is that from 25 to 26 we significantly increase the level level of lane miles covered. That is something with current resource levels that we can continue to do. Um we can continue with whatever money is given to us. One of the beauties of this pavement management system is that it takes the condition of all the roadways. It takes the budget that you have and it creates a plan for you based on that budget. Right? So we can continue to increase how many lane miles we pave, which will continue to create a better condition pavement network for the city with additional funds and not having additional resources. If we really want to get into the weeds of this program where we're looking at selective reconstruction, total reconstruction, different types of treatment options, potentially doing testing, expanding it to include more neighborhood traffic calming. That's where staff resources will have to have dedicated time to really dig in and do that type of work. So the money if more money comes in, it's something that we definitely can utilize and make the network better. Um if we want that really comprehensive program, we've got to set set aside some time for the engineers to focus on developing that program.

But there it sounds like there is a point where we start running into other constraints. So that part of what I'm thinking about is this where we have heavy reconstruction. We're going to need a lot of staff. We're Maple is a good example where it's underneath. It's but we also have a lot of roads that if we can maintain them, we can keep them from falling off that cliff. And that to me is it sounds like that portion additional funding could kind of prevent us from digging the really bad deeper. Yes.

Um so I I think one of the questions we would want to know is what is that tipping point? What's that point where we're more is going to not really going to help? Um because there are other priorities and other needs. um in the uh in the city. Uh I have now I have some other now one other question on paving. Um, I just wanted to confirm that when we do paving, we're we're striping and finishing with the new streetscape standards with the smart smart um the complete streets designs and not necessarily just going back to what was there before, but taking what we looked at last year to say, "Okay, we're going to do it to the new striping and stuff, new standards. I guess I guess to that I would say that we're using new

I don't know I guess doesn't go here as often when when there are crosswalks or or things in place that is the the new streetscape standard. Um we're adding um ADA curb ramps at you as part of these projects. We're looking at the bike master plan and and striping for that. But otherwise we are not looking at like an overhaul like in general change of the cross-section and redesigning each street because then then it becomes a whole engine then it becomes a project to design and it's not the sort of nimleness of the the annual paving.

So we don't necess if it's currently let's say 11 foot wide lanes we're not getting the 10- foot lanes. I I would say not not necessarily. I think that I I can't say that across the board. I mean that and we're not and that's as we talk kind of a contextsensitive kind of design. Some streets might make sense to have 10 foot lanes but but not on not on other streets. Okay. Um that was it on paving. I have questions on some other parts, but if does anybody else want to jump on to paving or I would

I I mean I'll just add that I think I think that even when we frame the budget conversation or the budget cycle is I asked each department to identify their top priorities and meet their top priorities that if paving is a top priority I don't think the budget is being meeting the paving as a priority and so we should just acknowledge that and figure out like if there is stability funding, what is that stability funding that we potentially need in order to be able to get us to this 12-month cycle or looking like as Justine was saying even in the 10-year pipeline without getting too far into the CIP like I find it concerning that the roaded reconstruction page is talking about, you know, however many segments we're going to need in the next 6 to 10 years that we're talking 5 to10 million in a budget when we see so many other things unfunded. in the CIP as is and that you know we have funding that we still need to determine for that so that we're on the out years not even funding within the current five years what the paving needs are going to be and so I do think like for a as Art was saying this stability funding can we at least maintain things that we might need to do more in this area um and I guess thinking about as as you were talking in neighborhood traffic calming kind of quick build and paving and putting them in different buckets and we're still in the CIP it looks like funding right neighborhood traffic cominging with $200,000 a year and what does that mean is that the sort of top down rapid response city directed neighborhood trafficcoming is that the grassroots neighborhood informed like neighborhood informed versus neighborhood driven traffic cominging and so I still would like to figure out that conversation and have it sooner rather than later so that it can inform what the budget looks like and we can free up dollars to the extent

they should be prioritized differently based on how we're thinking about neighborhood traffic calming versus rapid response quick build versus paving. Um and then I guess you know the plan the the paving condition index kind of giving us a plan or the output based on the budget but then it is creating kind of vulnerabilities that we are not addressing because if we have kind of this PCI or whatever and the consultant is saying well here's your budget and here's what you can do with it and here's how you should prioritize it's still the like and here's the stuff that's degrading in the meantime that you're building costs for. Um, so I think maybe on our side, like council side, we need to figure out and dig in a little bit more on are there places that we could find funds or um how do we go about potentially increasing this this budget more than it is currently recognizing that we did the infusion for a reason and that we haven't fully, you know, met that to take it away. Yeah, I would just piggyback on that. Um, you know, I knew that we had that special one-time, you know, funding last year with because due to our investments coming back, but then I was surprised when I saw the FY25 paving was 870. Um, you know, so we're even down from that from from even before. So, I I I was um you know, obviously we're not going in the right direction. And so I didn't know Wyatt if you know um not to put you on the spot but was what was has traditionally and or maybe Hardy remembers I mean what what has it been has it been traditionally in the 800s or 700? I'm

just curious why you know yeah it was um it had grown to get to that 870 point and so it was you know 5 years prior to 2025 it was smaller I want to say it was like 300,000 because we're 250 okay so it had grown quite a bit and then we had the big Okay right

yeah no I agree I mean I agree with what everyone is saying if um you know if we and figure out what is um the absolute you know bare bones to you know maybe it is 700 but if if we can find some other funding um because it is um you know what's that saying pouring good money after bad or what have you know if if we can only do be doing this surface sort of um upkeep and then you know in the end in 20 years from now we have a a mess on our hands because we hadn't been able to keep up with it. So, but thank you. And then um uh yeah, I guess we have more paving more paving.

Any other paving comments? Dave,

just just one. Um I don't want to substitute my judgment for um the kind of expert judgment that we really need. If this is really a major capital challenge, then we should treat it like that. we should treat it like a significant capital challenge, put in the expert effort and figure out how we're going to fund it. Do we bond it? You know, are there other things that we can do to fund it? But um I don't want to say we need this, we need that. I need a better grounding in what the data shows. There also new kinds of pavement. there are more um as you may know I attended an a session in MIT and they talk about new sorts of pavement that's more sustainable and less and more environmentally friendly. So there's some significant amount of work that has to be done here before um before I I think we make a lot of of quick judgments end up uh I think I love the phrase putting uh good money after bad. So that's where I'd like to put my priority and if we have some additional money we can find somewhere great and improve it. But right now, if it is really a long-term infrastructure challenge, then let's deal with it as such, document it, and then find the long-term funding that we need to address that challenge. Thanks.

Okay. Um, c can we take out debt to fund roads? Is that something? I mean, can we bond or can we do a bonding measure or something like that to fund the roads? I mean, my biggest concern is that like, you know, us not paving roads is basically like taking out a 20% loan. And so, a 5% loan would be a lot better than a 20% loan. So, uh, the city council's adopted policies say that the thing that you're buying with your bond needs to last longer than the term of the bond. And so um we typically do 20-year debt and paving does not typically last 20 years. So it would need to be shorter term uh debt

and that means the annual debt service is more expensive. Okay, that's okay. So I guess to wrap up it would have to be 10 years. So yeah, so as we the takeaway from this conversation is is to for staff to come forward with some options to um to increase the level of resources going towards paving. Um what we are going to recommend is that because the real problem we want to address is to build it into our into our operating budget

so it's sustainable. And so that's a that's a challenge. And um and so we want to work with the council on some options for that. And um and I think this is kind of a good marker uh that you're putting down now. Um we can get you more facts and and data on it. And then ultimately at your May 4th markup sessions where you'll give us your final direction on of those options which way you want to go.

If I can sum up and maybe add two specific points. I think you're hearing from, you know, majority of us that we don't love that we are going backwards on the paving budget, right? So, not only clearly we can't maintain FY26 kind of plus up, but we don't love that we're even below FY25 numbers. Um, I think the second point that I heard is, you know, what amount of money would it take to put in so that we stabilize the condition of the roads so that we the progress that we made from 2022 to 2025, we'd hate to see that when we get to 2028 that things have worsened again because you essentially then eroded the money we put in previously, right? And so what amount of funding would that be? And I guess my third question is also when you look at sidewalk maintenance, we're also going backwards there. Um, and then just maintaining where we are with bridges and signals and street lights. I actually have questions about signals and street lights as well because I don't love that we can't even put no turn on red signs up on mast arms. Like that should be a big red flag because, you know, while bumpy roads and potholes are kind of inconvenient and sometimes hazardous to cars, if we have a real like safety hazards with mastarmms, like that seems like more of a public safety emergency that I would actually ask that we've put more money towards. And so I'll put a pin in that for now. But when I look at, for example, all four of those buckets if I if we found another $150,000, would staff put it towards paving? Would you put it towards signals? Would you put it towards sidewalks? I guess that's the question because you all are the experts like based on the conditions if we want to maintain and not deteriorate kind of progress that we've made. I know we've spent a lot of time on paving, but some of the other slides and intro information you introduced are also pretty concerning as well. So, I'm looking to kind of our public works experts on if we found x amount of dollars given the priorities heard from council, given our desire to kind of maintain quality, where would the money go? I don't want to be the judge of that because we we care a lot about paving, but those other things also are pretty important too. Uh, and so I guess that would be my final kind of question out there on this category. I don't know if you have thoughts now or whether that's more of a budget Q&A for

next time. Yeah, we need to think that more. You're you're exactly right that all of these items within street maintenance are all priorities and they could all use money. Um and so maybe we'll we'll keep thinking a little bit more more clearly about if we had to choose choose one um what makes the most sense. Okay. Could we talk about the mass arms one now? Um who if you go to that slide um the rusting is pretty worrisome. Like if that thing falls over like that's no good. And so again to me that seems slightly more urgent than potholes and street quality. Although that I hear Justine's concern about kind of long-term quality, is the schedule that you laid out sufficient to prevent any emergencies for mass arms falling over.

I will say that this is something that that our team has really. So on this slide, FY27 to 32, that's all part of the FY2 32 CIP that we've um laid out a schedule of one per year. Um although that's slightly budget dependent, some of our recent numbers have actually come in a little bit lower than we thought. Um and acknowledging this, we have been um really trying to look so that Broad and West intersection using operating dollars to to get that one done because that one is really urgent. Um and so I think this is a priority for staff to look at kind of creative ways and and ways to really prioritize um signal work both in our our budget and in our our staff time. Um as as well

there are another five uh traffic signal in the 10-year pipeline. Um there are another five traffic signals that uh could be advanced into a future six-year CIP and I think initially during budget development we were talking about doing two signals a year. I don't know if that's possible with st based on staff resources after the project management but um that but there wasn't we didn't have the funding for two a year. So, we started with these six here in the six-year plan and then hope to advance the the other five from the 10-year pipeline. What's the lifespan of signal arms, master arms? Do they last more than 20 years? I don't know off the top of my head.

It goes back to the question of like how do we finance it, right? Like if they're currently unfunded in the CIP, could we do 10 master as a CIP project and bond them? The and these are the the highest priority. So, these were scheduled on a priority basis. So, the ones that are in the 10-year pipeline are lower priority. I assume that means they have less structural deficiencies and and are less safety risks. Um, but yeah, which is the rusted one?

That that particular picture is from Broad and West, but we have I think alarming pictures for for several of them from that um condition assessment. I think I just want to

um so Broad and West is the first mass arm replacement project that we've done at least in my time here with operational money. Right. So I think that this will be a really good test case too for the future in terms of what we can do on an operations side with local funds versus going CIP which can be a little bit more expensive although I think a lot of those are local funds but um but it sounds like we were able to so for broaden west one of the really cool things about it is we've been able to utilize our on call contractor and they were able to go in and do the foundation design. We've ensured that the mass arms will be able to support future signage and it's going to be more of a replacement project for those mass arms for 380k or whatever whatever it ended up being in the very end. I think 320 we might be down to now. So um so if that works I mean now we'll have a very good test point for what it would cost for us to go in and replace mast arms in the city through operational budget and we do have a contract in place. So that um just is is a lot of progress in the short period of time that we've been able to now kind of shift that with the additional funds that we received in the infrastructure budget to actually do a mass arm replacement in the city with operational funds. So

so I'm glad we're able to find operating dollars to address that because that clearly that picture is concerning. Um but if there are other ones out there I guess I go back to my other question. If these things are supposed to last more than 20 years, could we do a big batch of them, debt finance them, free up operating dollars then to get to things like paving and sidewalks? Because if mass arms are supposed to be more of a capital good questions for Q&A, I think we can get some better data.

So, I think we can look at that. I mean, I So, the the pieces I would add is when you look at previous CIPs, we were, you know, the strategy the city had was to do a full uh intersection redo, right? crosswalks, you know, new sidewalks, new street furniture, you know, brick, all of these things. And I think what we found is they're really expensive and hard. They're three million bucks a piece or more. And so you don't so you don't see those in the CIP anymore. I think that staff what they've done with the the data from this study is say like these are more urgent. We've got to have a more focused project that just fixes replaces the aging infrastructure. And we've had to take some other things out of the CIP, which we might get into dis discussing a little later in order to prior prioritize these replacements with the resources we have available. And so, um, so I think it's a good question. Could we do even more quicker? I think we can take that back. I'd love to learn a few things about installing a couple of these this year. Um I think kind of echoing some of what Tara was saying, but um but we can definitely take that back and you know maybe maybe there's some economies of scale of doing a bunch at once as opposed to one at a time.

Like that's another thought we'll look at. Do I guess to prevent more from rusting out? Is there any like maintenance painting we should be doing? Because I know that it was probably 10 years ago that we painted street poles. That's when I was new on council and we painted them that gray. whether painting them better would help prevent kind of corroding and other rusting out in the interim while we figure out a bigger strategy.

So, not not really. I mean, once the rust starts and it starts to um be go fully through, it's it's really past that point of repair. Um and especially when you're getting to uh weight, there's nothing that's going to that would still make it hold weight. Now, it may you may delay it a little bit, but there's nothing really that's going to stop it when it's at past that point. Okay. And this is one that did not get replaced by Founders Row one or two as part of the project. I think the developer changed some of them, but not this final one, I guess. Is that why?

That's right. And we were in some conversations with them about about this one, and we ran into some contractual issues and realized it was kind of simpler for us to use to do it ourselves. Are we the ones that are still in good condition? Are we do we have enough money to do the maintenance on them so that they don't get like this? The I remember a comment from when the Oak Street Bridge needed to be replaced. They said if it just been painted underneath, it wouldn't be it would have had another 20 years life. And because it wasn't getting painted, it rusted through and had to be replaced. So, are we properly um funding the maintenance on the new ones that are not in bad condition?

No, not so we're not. However,

um this that's that's a good that's a good question that um we should we'll look at internally. Um, we have I know we had consultants we did Kimley Horn that that that did um I think we had a consultant look at some of the conditions of because there's so much to look at when it comes to the bolts when it comes to the pedestals when it comes to every part of the mast arm that you look at, not just the one pole and then the out pole. So, um, to answer your question, yeah, I think it's something that we need to look at internally to see if there if that's something that we can do sort of operationally or or if that is something that a consultant can do or um, guide us to do. Sorry, Erin, I know you had something too on

that was it. I just I guess I was asking because I still didn't hear an answer to I know we put them at one a year, but if they're at a point where we can't put us put a no turn on red sign, like realistically, can it wait until fiscal year 30? Yes. Yeah. I think that's the concern that we have and I guess the question I didn't ask but is partly the question is do we have debt capacity to take on I know that staff was not recommending that we take on new debt till FY30 and obviously this be a smaller issuance but um I think this has alarmed enough of us to think more creatively about what we can do.

Dave, did you have something? Yeah, in terms of looking at funding alternatives um beyond the operating budget, we mentioned one which is um bonding. I'm also interested if if staff could take a look at NVTC and NVTA type projects and determine whether this could be bundled together and make uh applications either NVTC or NVTA or both. and then also scour federal funds and state funds to see if these projects um are large enough that we could attract more than we would get singular. Finally, is this the kind of thing that would be covered by a um that um um the tax that we're not currently uh using imposing um that we've not voted on CNI. So all I'm doing is looking at if indeed this is a systemic type infrastructure issue, then let's deal with it accordingly. Find what we can with the operating budget this year. But I want a good fix on these different projects separately, but also together. What are the alternatives for funding? And let's get on with it at that point. But I need to know more about what the options might be. Um I don't remember if traffic signals were eligible for CNI tax. I can I can get you that answer. Um we did talk about that earlier this year. Um, historically we used revenue sharing grant funds through VOTE, which is a 5050 state program. And that's what I mean our approach was different then too where we were looking at sort of full intersections and we were doing a lot of streetscape and crosswalks and other improvements and that approach was not the right fit for this type of mass arm replacement, you know, that was required. Um, but those revshare grants, you know, any grant funds adds a a

significant amount of time to the project. Um, and so those projects like uh North Washington and Columbia and Maple and Anadale roundabout, those are rev share revenue sharing funded through VOTE. They're taking a long time to just deliver. Um, so I think a a quicker approach was funding this, you know, sort of more urgently in in in the six-year plan with local funds. I will continue to look into NVTA. It could be a possible that maybe we apply for a future corridor project uh that includes the traffic signals. We did include some signals in the Anenddale Road multimodal application that we have uh pending with MVTA for 70% funds right now replaces two uh signals on Anenddale Road. Two or yeah, two, I think.

Um so anywhere that we can leverage grant funds to address traffic signal or mass arm replacements, we will. Um and uh and we'll keep, you know, looking to see where else we can identify opportunities to do that. Good. Thanks. Yeah, same. Well, I'll get into it when I talk about CIP. I know Amanda also talked about sidewalks. So, before we move on to CIP, do people have comments or questions about sidewalks or smart cities? I think was also another one that Amanda covered.

Yeah, I mine's more of a comment um about the smart cities. Um I noticed that I saw that it it was um Washington uh street was going to be implemented I guess this fall or spring. Um I just want to put another plug in there that um you know when you're going west on um broad towards Tyson's and this is particularly in the morning and you're trying to make a right onto Washington and you know we're still have there's still an enormous backup from that light by Clarendons that's not timed right and it's it's sort of getting to be a little bit um tough in the morning like some aggressive driving kind of stuff because then you might also have someone stopped running into Whole Foods, whatever. But um if we can somehow prioritize that because that seems to be it's been going on for a long time. I don't ever go anymore because that's where my house is. I never ever travel in the right handling anymore because I get caught because it's always backed up. People trying to make a right onto Washington Street and it and that light by Clear Dons isn't on. So it's all and then people coming from the opposite direction trying to make a left under Washington. You know they're all blocking the box. It's just a total mess. So um anything that we can do to get that prioritized would be great.

And and I think the opening of wonder is probably going to make the situation even worse.

Yep. I have I kind of have a comment on smart cities and this might just be a like frustration with it I guess because I've heard about it for so long and I feel like we haven't always seen the benefits of it yet or we're still waiting for the benefits of it and then when you look at you know the CIP we're continuing to expend funds right into smart cities and so I sometimes just wonder like how much are we paying for things because we're committed to grants that we kind of followed and not the best way for maybe what we needed versus like are we still getting the benefits of the things that we're paying into or are we kind of paying into things that are not panning out the way that we hoped they would.

Yeah, I can start and then I'll turn to to Tara. I mean I think it's different things better word that these are these you know smart cities technologies that are being added to our cabinets and our signals and are focused on kind of optimizing things really a lot for for pedestrians. Um they're also really supporting us with some data analysis that we found to be really useful which is different than the the infrastructure needs. Um Tara, did you want to add any more on on smart cities?

Yeah, I'll I guess I'll just say that we're getting a central system for our traffic signals that we had no way to fund and had not identified any grants for. So uh that's a huge win for the city being able to update all our controllers. Um, I know it's taking a lot of time and things are slow, but at the end of the day, when everything is completely wrapped up and they turn on that central system for all of the traffic signals, it's going to make everything much easier in terms of maintaining our traffic signals. Even if that's something that we start to outsource, at that point in time, the experts can log directly into the system to make changes. Um, and prior to having the smart cities grant and having that centralized system, all changes had to be made at a physical cabinet with someone coding in those changes. So, it just opens up um so many more opportunities for us to have the right people coming in and doing maintenance rather than having to call somebody and get them out there and do programming at a cabinet who may or may not have the level of expertise that we need. A lot of times when you're working at the cabinet, you get a lot of like emergency control. Maybe somebody's calling like at 2 am or something and so somebody's coming out to fix it. Then you would have to get another engineer out there to retime it. Then you'd have to and this allows you to just log in and make those changes. So I think it's going to be a huge benefit. It is taking a little bit of time, but we'll get there.

Well, okay. Well, good good to hear the defense of the program. Actually, I'm going to come to your defense, too, which is even if we don't get the full smart benefit, we were at a stage where um Lincoln and Great Falls broke and was on flashing reds for months and months because our equipment was so broken so and old. So, even if all we got get out of it is upgraded boxes, the win. Yes. Yes. On smart cities.

Okay. So, on smart cities, I guess a final wrap-up comment. Um, so I want to plus one Laura's comment about the intersection abroad in Washington because that is a complaint that I've gotten pretty frequently and I've observed it myself. Um, so much so that we may want to consider like don't block the box because metro buses are often

culprits in trying to turn left and just hang out in the intersection because they know they're going to miss the light otherwise and it just messes up traffic in all the other directions too. So, I'm going to call out on that one. Um so would like to see the parkplace timing fixed. Um I think on the slide it noted that the Broad Street optimization was done in October. So separately I would love an update on how did it go like did we make like travel time better like what were the changes that we made in October 2025 I guess four months ago to now

um or more than that six months ago now. Um so that would be helpful to know. And then um I noted that on smart cities 60% of the budgets used but we've only gotten to 40% of the signals. Um right so 10 signals remaining but only four and a half million dollars left. And I think we also talked about using the smart cities grant to try to get to smart parking. So is that really realistic? Um we don't have to answer that now. You could just tell us no it's not and we'll need to figure it out elsewhere. But I just noted that figure there. Um, I think that's it for Okay. Smart Cities. Justine, do you have something else?

Yeah, I just wanted to follow up on um the recycling thing from earlier. Uh, one more question. Do we actually have the drivers to haul property recycling on top of their current job or how are we fitting that into the scheduling?

So, we'll supplement um we'll supplement some of the the staff that we have now to to do it. So, as it stands now with us being able to control how we're doing it, yes, we'll be able to um efficiently pull all the dumpsters, right? We have two trucks and if if there comes a time where for some reason I have to use two different drivers or two trucks just to get it done quickly just for the morning, let's just say, and then return back to our um current jobs. Yeah, we're we're good with that. So, it's not like it's not like this is going to be suddenly overwhelming for some of the workers that we have on hand.

No, it was something that that uh when we talked about this a while ago that it was it was one of the things that um we did sort of like a a copious thought about, right? Because what we didn't want to do was take away from other things, paving or uh potholes, concrete, things like that. Um, and then looking at what we do on, um, a daily basis, uh, I was able to put some numbers together, um, and some times together and it'll be sustainable. Okay. Anything else on this kind of section? I think there was also sidewalks and Well, I some questions about the recycling. Um,

the you talked about the 4% increase. Um, I think we're targeting I think there was a question of what the new fees would be and what the division between them was. I know last year it was okay $100. Well, now it's not $100, it's 4% equal. My question is, do we have some idea of the mix? Did we see a change in um distribution of small versus large trash containers because of the fee? Um I know people had the opportunity to submit that. Um but also while you're looking that up, I'll make quick comment that I actually submitted a request to change out my yellow bin this weekend and I've already gotten a response and it was great and and it'll be done this Wednesday. So I want to applaud that. Um, the reason I'm changing is because I didn't realize the height issue. That was a personal thing. But, um, I do want to understand what we've seen as far as changes to behavior. Um, is that is $98 difference the right place we should be? Should we be a larger difference? Should it smaller?

Yeah. Yeah, I guess I guess one thing I'll note in the there say there's a staff report about the solid waste collection fee and on line 32 33 we note that there was a net increase of 117 customers who now use the small bins between FY26 and 27. Um, so I think we have seen have seen starting to see some um behavior change and it's something we're continuing to to kind of monitor, but we really don't know whether we should be changing our strategy around the the difference in price.

No, I don't I don't think I don't think we know enough. You know, this is brand new, right? So I I would say I was I was surprised we only had 100 a net change of 117, right? So that tells me that the price signal at least based on one year isn't isn't significant enough to drive behavior change, you know, but I think this is year one and you know um and I think we can kind of continue it in the future, but um but not a significant change, right? big part of the part of the debate was to kind of hold off on setting the fee till we knew how many people we wanted wanted to change. I think based on the smaller number of people changing this year, we might be able to take a different approach next year that's a little more um definitive for folks. So that that's one one thought.

So next year it's a next year discussion. I mean I it's fine. We could have a discussion about a whole range of fee options. I think we're trying to keep it simple and so this is what we've proposed.

No, that's fine. And the only other question I had was I wanted to just confirm that the fees are covering the full cost of the um curbside pickup. I know looking in the book there's a a there is a net um budget impact for all solid waste. I assume some of that is from the recycling and the stuff that's not curbside. So, I just wanted to confirm that the curbside program, the costs of that are being covered by the at least covered fully by the trash by the solid waste fees.

So, the fees are set based on our tipping fees and hauling costs for curbside services and that's it. So, so the the fee covers those costs just like it did when we kind of met in the fall and and passed the new new fee in September. So, change in that. Okay. Anything else on this section before we wrap up? We get to CIP. I had two final things if you'll indulge me. On sidewalk repair and grinding, I know that's a very popular program. Um, similar to Operation Smooth Streets, would public works want to solicit input from the community when people note like tripping hazards or do people already do that?

So, yes and absolutely. Okay. to answer your question. Yeah, I I we uh we would definitely like for people to submit requests because anything that is a tripping hazard uh we want to mitigate immediately. Um we keep a list and so when we we have our our contractor we have by zones um and by fiscal year we have our list of what um we have identified. So we go with the contractor sort of street by street to um um get a list together. But any any other or additional help that we get would be okay. Very nice.

Maybe a request to OCOM to kind of issue kind of a similar like, hey, we're going to we want sidewalk repair grinding input as well and crowdsource it. Um I guess if I could give you two based on my run earlier today that were tripping hazards uh in front of Little Falls Cafe in Little Falls, the brick there is like there's one that's like four inches up and I tripped on it. I was say is this because you tripped on it?

Yes, because I literally tripped on it. And then also the 200 block abroad, uh the sidewalks there, so much that I think the restaurants have taped fluorescent tape on the bricks um to make them more visible. There's like a series of them in the 200 block abroad. I know that brick repairs are more expensive, but I feel like we shouldn't just rely on people's good intentions to to tape the tripping hazards for people. And also in some of those cases now with the new streetscape standards on some of these projects where we can we may be switching over from brick to concrete with brick banding. I mean if it's just I don't know I mean it depends on the the scope of the the individual project.

Correct. And we also we had a contractor out today the 200 block abroad to look at. Um so that has already been on our on our list. So we did have a contractor out today.

Thank you. Um and then I also noted that Whittier is getting some attention. So thank you for that. I feel like that request has come for that community for at least 10 years now. So, thank you for doing something with them. Uh, as well as Great Falls in Virginia, the curb extensions on both sides, I think, has come from that neighborhood for also seven years. So, thank you for being responsive to those. Uh, Park and Maple is one that I notice on that list of like quick projects. Uh, I know that that's one that I frequently observe not only near misses, but we hear from the community as well. Um, I know that based on reducing the PM support that that list um was kind of at risk, but if I could emphasize that that is kind of a busy commercial area, we have a challenge because it essentially functions like a fiveway stop because of that extra curb cut and the fact that it's kind of squished parallelogram and not a perfect T. So, if we have engineering plans um to the extent that we can prioritize that one, that one just seems like an accident waiting to happen all the time, if not accidents already.

Yeah. Yeah, and that last one, Park in Maple, that would be kind of an interim improvement in advance of Park Avenue Great Streets and we do have some some designs and I think we'll be bringing that to CACT um in the next month or two to talk about it more.

Thank you. Um I guess one overall thought before we move to CIP is that I know the schools talk about kind of what their maintenance of effort is, but I think what's very evident to me is this whole conversation around street maintenance. like these are our maintenance of effort and if we are not funding maintenance effort like I feel like that conversation really should be better elevated um to think about what is the state of good repair for all these kind of capital assets that we've built and be able to say Wyatt like we're not able to do maintenance of effort on the general government side we have master arms that are rusting out we have you know declining road conditions that's really going to erode kind of the investments we've made in previous years and so I'd encourage us to be bolder in how we talk about these maintenance needs um and not just kind say, "Well, we just don't have enough budget for them." Like, you know, force us to make some harder decisions. So, but thank you for bringing this to us. I think we're ready to move to the CIP part of the discussion.

All right. You can tell we're really into this. So,

I know. Um I love it. Um okay, I'm going to talk through the fiscal year 27 to 32 uh capital improvements program known as the CIP. I feel like we talked about a lot already. Um, so maybe this will go a little bit faster, but I'm just going to walk us through um the CIP when it comes to I mean, Amanda talked a lot about sort of the shortterm priorities and outcomes in fiscal year 27. Um, maybe a little fiscal year 28, too. I'm going to talk about the CIP uh six-year plan overall. Um, oh, I forgot I get the to use the clicker. There we go. All right. So, the CIP this year is $163 million total for the six years. Um, it's broken out into four. There are four funds in the CIP that are shown there on the left to be allocated over six years. Um despite all the uncertainty and a lot of fiscal constraints uh this budget year, we still have a a robust CIP and that's due largely to the 95 million in grants that we have. Um the city and their ability to uh our ability to punch above our weight in that arena um is a huge win. Um on the right there's a chart that breaks down that budget, that 163 million. It's hard to see right now, but it breaks it down by funding source. So, as we all know, we love orange money the best. That's grants. Um and you see in the transportation fund, uh that's where 90 million of those grants are. Um and then we have the other uh almost 5 million in the storm water utility fund. Um in uh yellow, light yellow, we have the uh local funds uh PIGO, NCIE. In gray, we have debt funding, um, which is a total of 27 million for the six-year uh, budget, um, which is significantly lower than last year's adopted budget, which had 57 million of debt, uh, due to moving the property yard, which is a $30 million debt funded project, out into the 10-year pip 10-year pipeline. Um,

and I'll come back to that in a little bit. Um, but no general fund debt issuance until fiscal year uh 31. Um for some other lo local sources we have light in light blue we have capital reserves. Um we have in the bright blue and the purple sewer and storm water availability fees or uh fund balances. And then in green the light green we have uh unfunded. That total is uh 6 million for the six-year uh total this year which is higher than we typically see or we like to see. And there are a couple reasons why. I have a slide where I'm going to talk about that. But it does reflect the constraints and some of the tough decisions that we had to make um in budget this year. It also reflects sort of what's on the horizon and um what we need to start thinking about and working towards solving in the future. Um this is another funding breakdown that shows the uh the six-year breakdown by program or functional area. There are seven programs in the four funds of the CIP. Um and those are listed here. It also breaks out the fiscal year 27 total. So that 19.3 million is what will be appropriated in fiscal year 27. Uh a note that we only appropriate uh one year one of the six-year CIP. That's because we um adopt the CIP on an annual basis. So years two through six are subject to change um from one budget year to another. Um during the development of the CIP every year we establish priorities um and those are based on internal staff recommendations, public input and the planning commission that uh kickoff that we do in the fall and then also uh council strategic priorities and budget guidance. Um and that was really helpful when we talk about those tough decisions and having to really prioritize projects in the CIP. The priorities are that we lay out at the uh at the outset are really helpful. we go back to those and make sure like are we aligning with these prior do our investments align with these um priorities. Our number one

priority this year was infrastructure reinvestment. Um so in the transportation infrastructure area uh Amanda talked through a lot of these projects but traffic signals is um maybe one of the number one priorities and the number one priority uh as well as bridges and paving. I'm going to focus uh more on sewer and storm water infrastructure right now and then we're also going to talk about facility reinvestment for the general government and for the schools. Um the sewer investment uh the sewer program this year totals $33 million. Um and listed here are the projects that are all included in that. In fiscal year 27 uh we're continuing ini and sewer rehab and rellining which is shown in the uh photos up there. Uh a big chunk of FY27 costs are really of the six-year costs are for uh more are more non-discretionary uh payments for wastewater treatment facilities and capital projects um that we share with Arlington and Fairfax. So the city conveys uh its wastewater to two sewer sheds in our neighboring jurisdictions, Arlington and Fairfax. The Fairfax facility is called Alex Renew. um and uh we pay pay a share of the annual treatment costs as well as the capital improvements for those in fiscal year 26. And this year we um finalized the um sewer agreement for additional conveyance and treatment capacity at the Alex Renew facility. So we anticipated those uh costs going up a little bit because now that we have a bigger share, our our cost is going to increase uh by a little bit. What we didn't anticipate is um that Alex renew costs are actually increasing much more dramatically than that to support a major infrastructure rehabilitation project that they're calling phase forward. Um this is a regional generational in reinvestment needed to upgrade and maintain the facility um and its infrastructure some of which dates back to the 1960s. Um so that's putting upward pressure on the

city's sewer rates as well as the region. Um and the proposed rate change uh for fiscal year 27 is 5% a 5% increase and that will um go towards funding the debt service for capital projects largely the Alex renew costs um which have almost doubled I I think they have doubled since last year. Um, so that will uh support the debt uh service for Alex Renew and and our other capital projects as well as support some minor um operating increases. In the storm water program, our total program is 8.6 million this year. That's much higher than last year's $3 million uh total storm water sixyear. And that's because um we uh have a new grant source that we're tapping into which is this um first bullet here. The community flood preparedness fund or CFPF is a um grant program um administered by the state through the Department of Conservation and Recreation. And in fiscal year 27, we already have awarded this 492 I' I've been calling it 500,000 or 493,000 um grant for uh developing a storm water resilience plan that will be um a citywide flood mitigation and strategic storm water plan. And once that plan is approved by the state, once we develop it, we got the grant money already, but once we develop it and submit it to DCR and they approve it, that opens up a new uh source of funding for us through the CFPF program that we can use for future uh construction of storm water capital projects. Their construction grants are 50/50 match. So, um that will really help us out a lot in in the future uh storm water capital program. Um so, we're focused on that this year. and um uh nutrient credit purchases um and some additional projects are shown here. Uh the larger storm water portfolio also

means larger funding needs. So there is also a proposed rate increase of 7% for the storm water program that is again used to fund um debt service for capital projects as well as minor operating increases. Um lastly supporting uh infrastructure reinvestment. uh we are looking at facility reinvestment priorities and instead of listing projects here we have a flowchart that sort of describes our approach and our strategy to facility reinvestment. Um starting at the top in navy blue taking care of what we already own. So we've started this already. Um we're doing the facilities condition assessment with the schools in fiscal year 206 that actually was advertised last week. um that RFP I guess and that uh facility condition assessment will inform it will primarily inform two things in the in the outy years in the dark blue arrows that's the school's facility reinvestment program from uh fiscal years 28 to 32 and also our general government facility reinvestment from um in fiscal years 28 through 32. So we have some like sort of placeholder money in those programs in the outy years right now. Um, and based on the outcome of the condition assessment, we'll um we'll refine those the projects that come out of that. In yellow, we're also focused on investing in current employees and facilities. So, we have a um a couple of uh projects there to support um uh employee workspaces and facilities um that are happening or proposed in fiscal year 27 and 28. And then in green, uh, focusing on informing and building the future, we have a public facilities planning initiative that we're starting in fiscal year 27. Um, and that's kind of like a a study or a plan that will in help inform two projects which are in the dark green there in the 10-year pipeline. We have the property yard, which we moved into um the 10-year pipeline. And then we

also have new this year uh a public safety headquarters that was introduced this year and proposes the design and construction of a new facility to house the city's police department and other uh public safety functions. Key objectives for both of those projects are security enhancements, modernizing our facilities, meeting all our operational needs, and accommodating future projected growth. Um both projects are in the 10-year pipeline right now as part of a debt reduction strategy. um but uh but also while we develop a feasibility plan based on the results of this um this public facility planning effort. Our second priority is progressive multimmodal transportation advancing multimodal projects that promote accessibility and safety for pedestrians and bicyclists is an ongoing key priority. Uh these are some major streetscape corridor improvements and intersection projects that align that I've listed here. And I've also included active projects because I think when we talk about transportation that's a program where we have a huge portfolio of active ongoing and very complex sometimes uh projects. And so it's I think it's good to to mention that here because that's what staff is actively managing. That's actually a lot of what the dayto-day work is that we're doing right now. Um, so some of these are and a lot of these actually have been funded in prior CIPs, so they don't they're not necessarily reflected in the budget books before you. Um, but they're good to talk about when we talk about sort of our priorities and our goals. Um, in the uh active projects, we have um our our active CIP portfolio right now totals 72 million and 53 million of that is transportation. So that's like money that we are are actively working and spending right now. Um 53 million in transportation projects that includes some of these projects like Park Avenue great streets and Broad Street multimodal south Washington bus stop

expansion. Um all of those you know active projects that we're that we're working right now. Um some proposed projects include North Washington multimodal improvements and the um Anaddale Road multimodal and Hok Road shared use path. Um those two are are p are pending grant applications with the MVTA right now. We also have um five pending or five future bike plan projects. We're actively working on the East West Connection uh bike plan project right now and the others we moved into the 10-year pipeline for now. So that will be fiscal year 33 or later. Um we propose moving those out there while we complete the east west uh connection and we get a little more more information on that project delivery process for those type of projects um and continue developing um a funding strategy for the bank projects. The third and final priority is strategic project development. Um we've been really focused on project delivery in the last few years in the CIP. Um, a couple of years ago, we sort of laid out a um, a plan. We sort of embarked on this strategic mission to unclog the CIP. You may remember me saying that. Um, but we wanted to clear the the backlog of older projects and deliver projects um, faster and better. Um, and the result is that we uh, delivered 27 projects in the last two years. Uh, which is great. We also have 27 active projects right now. And as I mentioned the 72 million in the active pipeline. Um as we were uh you know sort of on this journey we determined that and we made some improvements in project delivery like you know process. We had uh we added additional FTEEs I think three years ago. Um and so that's how we've been able to improve project delivery. Um and we've seen results in

during that process we um determined that effective project delivery starts with strategic project development. Um, so that's kind of uh phase two of our of our CIP effort right now is project development. That's what this priority is all about. Ensuring that the projects are realistic, well scoped, and deliverable from day one of the project. Um and uh we've laid out a couple of we're really focused on um providing uh improving forecasting by in the CIP overall by providing a more datadriven foundation to planning capital projects. Um and so there's a couple of different strategies that I we outlined under project development and this is all sort of included in and and and throughout um the six year CIP this year. One of them is master planning. So, we have a couple of master plans or comprehensive studies that we have um that we have uh proposed in the six-year plan and that we've budgeted for. One of them is in the public facility planning that I just mentioned. Um the storm water master planning and then a sewer comprehensive study and master plan. Um I'm going to talk about those a little bit more. But the the second strategy is grant opportunities uh for studies and planning. So we've uh we have you know can leverage and can take advantage of some transportation planning grants and technical assistance. Um and then also the storm water resilience plan is one of those um that we um have included in our strategy this year. The third is dedicated annual funding for project development. We have this in transportation and we have had it in transportation for several years. We're adding it this year in storm water and um this funding the project the annual project development funding it's usually a $100,000 a year for both programs. I think in storm water the first year is 50,000 um and that is um to support preliminary scoping cost estimating grant planning

and applications. So like where we might be able to go after new grant um grant programs or identify you know strategic funding plans or or you know use consultant support for prescoping and estimating or writing applications for us if we have if if the staff you know lift is too hard. Um that's where we're using that money. Um this is kind of a new approach. This funding project development in the capital budget is kind of a new approach. Um it's something that is eligible for capital funding. It's not eligible for debt funding. Um we can't use debt for uh things that are not actually going in the ground. So we can't use it for studies and plans. Um it is something that you know a lot of our neighboring localities are are um uh utilizing in their capital budgets as well. Um and I'm really excited that we're um sort of laying out a a long-term strategy for this. This also really informs the next thing I want to talk about and I think I'm almost done. I'm sorry. Um is the 10-year pipeline. So, we've always had a 10-year outlook. I've sort of rebranded it and we've made some changes to it this year and and it we're calling it the 10-year pipeline. Um, this has always been sort of a long range forecast for planning and and seeing like what's coming down the pipeline. Um, some changes that we made this year, we h added new, it has its own section in the budget this year, the 10-year pipeline. Um, and we added uh new modified project sheets for each project. So, there were 33 total projects. So there are 33 new project sheets this year and that provides more details on the what and the why of the project. So project descriptions for what the project actually is and then benefits of like why why do we want this project. There are several things that can inform um the 10-year pipeline. And basically those blue bubbles on top are like how projects get into the pipeline. And those include infrastructure needs um based on you know condition assessments um or or engineering you

know evaluation or reports uh council priorities and community uh priorities and then long range um planning um or you know comp plans. Uh there are no schedules or detailed estimates provided for the 10-year pipeline uh projects. Um but it represents more of a long a list of long-term needs for further development or prioritization. No schedules means we're not beholdened to any um time a specific timeline or prohibited from advancing those projects sooner. So the 10-year pipeline right now would be fiscal year 33 plus. um because there are no, you know, schedules or we we're not there's nothing that's stopping us from advancing those into fiscal year 28 next year if we do one or all of these three things in the middle. Um and those three things are additional scoping to make sure that we really understand the project um requirements and and define the scope. Uh the staff capacity to manage and deliver the project and a funding plan. And then if we have those three things addressed um then we could then we could you know in theory uh advance those things into the six-year budget sooner. Um the project sheets note which projects already have one or more of these things these three things and are more ready in the project readiness uh section of those sheets. This also ties back to the last slide on strategic planning and development. Um, for projects requiring additional scoping, that project development funding that I talked about, the 100,000 a year could be used um to help scope those projects on a priority basis. Um, an example uh that I was thinking of earlier with roadbed reconstruction. So, we do have a 10-year uh pipeline project sheet in there for roaded reconstruction right now as sort of a placeholder. But um it also says we're in the next 12 months we're focused on developing and using that pavement management program that Tara mentioned. I think that that will help us develop um more of a

strategic approach to to roaded reconstructions um so that we can advance those sooner than fiscal year 33. Um on the last slide is unfunded projects. Not to um end on a on a negative note um but as I mentioned earlier, we do have a higher number of unfunded projects in in this year's CIP and that's probably to be expected with a leaner budget year. Um but one of the key drivers is the reduction or delay of 10 million that $10 million contribution to the capital reserves um that we were expecting from Westfall's phase 2 as the city manager has discussed with council that resulted um in a net loss of 6 million to the CIP. That is 4.8 million in unfunded projects that were previously funded with capital reserves that we have now shifted to unfunded because we had to reduce capital reserves. And then also 1.2 2 million in new unfunded projects that we would have funded with capital reserves in fiscal year 32. And some of that is for ongoing stuff like the IT core infrastructure um and uh the school facilities reinvestment like those are ongoing every you know annual um like we always add this you know something in the outy years. Um so that's what how sort of we ended up with this six million in unfunded um projects. Uh capital reserve funding uh has obviously been I mean it capital reserves have been a crucial device that we have used to fund the CIP in the last five years or however long that it's been. Um and that 10 million while it may be recovered in the future, you know, by taking that property back out to market or whatever Wyatt said, um that uh the issue I I think the issue signals a deeper problem um that capital

reserves are maybe not the most sustainable and reliable way to keep funding our CIP. Um, and that uh, you know, the mayor invited me to be Boulder, so that's what I'm doing right now. Um, that, uh, you know, it's not the most reliable source of long-term funding. Uh, you know, we've also had some funding that has helped us out a lot in the last few years due to like major like federal kind of windfall once in a-lifetime opportunities that we got. We're not seeing that now under the current federal administration. Um actually a weird trend in grants is that we're seeing a lot more state and regional grant opportunities and less on the federal side. So even though we have that 95 or 90 million in grants um I think only 10 million of that is federal and 85 of it is state and regional. So um anyways uh back on the on the uh unfunded and funding um uh options I think if we want to maintain the same scale of um CIP scope um and projects that we've seen in recent history we have to start the conversation and start looking to um work towards alter alternative funding solutions in the future. Um, we've always been able to leverage grant funding and we're super focused on expanding that um, from outside of just the transportation program to other programs. Storm water is one area where we've had some success in the last year and we we're still focused on expanding that. Um, and that will help offset local costs for CIP projects even more. But grant sources currently make up almost 60% I think it's 58% of the total CIP. and our dedicated local funding sources. When when I say dedicated local funding sources, I'm talking about PIGO and CIE that makes up 13% of the CIP. So, there's a there's a you know a disproportionate um relationship there, which we want. I

think we want to leverage as as much in grant funding as we can. Um but again if I think the the scale of the CIPs that we've had in the last few years and what we've been um you know the am ambitiousness and and um what we've achieved I think if we want to keep up that pace um then we'll need to look at adding something to make up for um for that gap. I mean where really where you feel this the most this is almost all general I think this is all general fund and school fund projects. So we're able to leverage grants and also like sewer and storm water availability and fund balances and those programs. So transportation, sewer, and storm. The hardest hit is to the general fund where we don't have as many funding sources available like we don't have all of those grant options and we don't have some of those other local funds that we are that we have in transportation and these projects are not eligible for that transportation money. So the hardest hit was to the general fund. um we focus on funding what we could in fiscal year 27 through 29 and then a lot of you know almost everything FY30 and beyond is unfunded that's what is proposed right now so in my mind I'm like we have a couple of years to figure this out um the the biggest impact I think is to the parks program the um park master plan implementation which is uh predominantly like playground replacements um and and trail uh paving and and upgrades um has no funding right now. The only thing that's funded is the turf replacement uh the next turf replacement which is in fiscal year 29 in the parks program. So again, if parks is a priority and that's something that we want to sort of, you know, scale up in the CIP, then um that's that's the homework I think that we have is to figure out how to fund that. I think I'm done. I think I've talked enough. Um that was 20 minutes instead of 15. Sorry. But I'm going to turn it back over to Amanda real quick before we close out.

Great. Thank you, Caitlyn. Um I'm sure we also have questions about CIP. So, Vice Mayor, uh just quick questions. Um the the turf is that what turf is that? That's is it Oh, that's okay. That's okay. But is it park? Okay. Because I was gonna say if it's a parks turf, I think that's our only turf. Is it Graves, right? Okay. And then um No, there's more. There's fields. Yeah, there's We just did Meridian. No, don't. But I meant like So, I guess that's right. It's under parks on slide 35 under parks.

Right. Right. So, um and then my other question was um the school facilities reinvestment on this chart. Um FY28 and 29. What are those projects that say funded? Um I I don't think we identified those projects yet. I think those facility anticipating that there are going to be Got it. Okay. Okay. I understand. Okay, got it. Thank you.

Other CIP questions Beth. Um, this also relates to parks and as I look through the budget on page 3-14, we it talks about the master park implementation replacement at West End Park. And I'm remembering that last year when we looked at the budget, we had a squeeze on parks and we delayed Cavaliier Trail and Crossman Park to do those facilities. Are we skipping those or were we able to do something there? Yeah, we had we had um like fund balance from prior year. So Trail Park is in progress right now using that prior year.

Did you equiping Well, is the one I'm remembering that we crossman.

Yeah. The reason Crossman was kicked out was because Arlington has an enormous playground, five times the size a block away. So, I think that I was actually one of the people that thought that was a ridiculous. You know, we we should do something there, but I don't think it's a playground. I think we need to look at other things. Okay. But I just wasn't sure if that it's now been kicked out of line as I look at all these. I didn't see Crossman in here at all as there might be another one that we're prior year. I'll look into it. Okay. My not on.

Okay. And then um since I'm the new liazison to the ESC, one of the questions that they have asked continually is about solar on the Marielle and Henderson roof. And I know that roof is a few years out in the CIP. there's some funding that ends soon and if you get the solar sooner and I I've heard it brought up a few times and I've never heard a definitive answer on do the schools want to do that. Is this possible?

Yeah, I guess two thoughts on that. One, um the facilities conditions assessment that we we've mentioned now a couple times that we're doing that with the schools and that is partly to really help assess what those needs are. I think the schools acknowledge that they have a lot of facilities needs and that's partly why they wanted to hire a consultant to help help um prioritize and assess those. There's that and then on solar in particular, you know, this CIP really prioritizes spending capital reserves and spending money on the maintenance of core infrastructure. Um and so that is reflected in in the in the choices that are that are presented here. Um the Aurora House Solar is moving forward and we are going to move forward with the tax credit uh program. Um, but that's that's why other projects um are not presented.

So, basically, you're pretty sure that one's off the table or we're waiting for the facilities assessment to

The last time I heard about the MEH roof. So, the N it was originally $950,000 estimated. That was not for the for installing the solar. That was for replacing the roof so that we could install solar. It was not ready. It's it's not old enough to replace the full roof for a million dollars. So, I think the conversation was like, is that really a priority for us and the schools for from a facility standpoint? Um, in the fiscal year 20 and 29, that little blue box next to school facilities reinvestment that says funded, that is $500,000 a year. So, if the facility condition assessment came back and that was the number one priority was replacing the ME roof, in theory, we could use that money to replace the roof. I believe the um the uh funding sort of deadline that you were talking about of like we need to buy this now. I believe that's already passed for or maybe not for PB.

Yeah, it's not. We could coming up next year, I think, or the year after. That's for I think maybe the the the most direct answer is like we didn't see a way we could set aside a million dollars in the CIP to pay for it when the roof doesn't need to be replaced right now. Got it. So that's okay that's where we're at.

Thanks. Could I just jump in really quickly on that point? So while we're waiting for the facilities assessment report on what the school facility needs are, I would hope that we also prioritize across categories as well. So, for example, if the ME roof isn't in dire condition and we could save a million dollars, well, maybe that million dollars could actually be used for hydrants or, you know, something else that's unfunded and we don't just think about prioritizing in the row, but also across categories because I imagine that we've done a lot on the schools, although, you know, the Oak Street roof might be the thing that needs to be replaced, but how do we make sure we prioritize across categories and not just within each row as well? Other CIP questions? I think we've I think we've done that.

Okay. So, I'm more focused on the this 10-year pipeline, which the 10year throws me off. I just kind of view this as a unscheduled backlog. So, back to my product management skills. Um, and I think it's important to understand the prioritization on this. Uh, because from what you said, there's three category that need additional scoping is a big one. If we don't prioritize the backlog, we're never going to get that additional scoping to understand what it's going to take. So, how are we going to get that in there? How are we going to know which ones to identify funding plans for? staff capacity is a little more straightforward,

but it's if we get a little staff capacity to do the other two, how do we

what's going to be our what's our prioritization in the backlog? And the one that really jumped out at me that really upset me being in the backlog is in this pipeline is the bike master plan projects where basically we when we did the bike master plan it was a priority to say this has to be actionable. It has to be something that we can deliver on. And it was okay here's six projects that we can deliver on. Well, we can't deliver on all six. Okay, here we're going to break it into two sets of three and it'll be three years. Three years for the first three and then three years for the second three. And that was evolved from the CACT and that was already way this is taking way too long and now we're looking at how long ago did we adopt the bike master plan? A year and a half now. Year. Year and a half. and we might get one in the first three years and the other five are unscheduled and probably within that that six-year time frame we get one and that just jumped out at me. I I understand the difficulties and everything else. Um, do we need to rep prioritize or do we need to what can we look at here to say this the bike master plan can't just be something that sits on the table?

Yeah, I want to be Yeah. Oh, go ahead.

Okay. Let me just share a couple thoughts. Um, one like yet, yes, it it is a priority. These are all priorities and and within the transportation portfolio, one of the things we were we were looking at was again those those mast replacements that we talked about earlier and trying to put put money there and then that's why that's one reason I think why some of those projects moved out. Um they they are still important. Um another note you asked sort of like how we're going to tackle the 10-year pipeline and prioritize it. One thing that when when Caitlyn and I were talking with the planning commission, I guess back in kind of February, I think one of the things they thought they were sort of intrigued by this idea of like us coming back and like talking more with them. Like I I think that Caitlyn and and Ally here um did a really nice job in adding more detail to this 10-year pipeline. Last year, I think it was just a list and now it actually does have these sheets so we can say, "Oh, gee, that one. Oh, that's a really good one. Maybe this sheet." like being able to see them almost more as projects can help us start to think about them in conversations with planning commission and others um to to build them out.

I think that is helpful and that's part of the reason I kind of view this more as a a backlog of these are some basics we've haven't really flushed them out but they're on the list that we just don't know how we're going to pay for them and we don't know when they're going to happen but they're something we know we want to do. It's just I worry when you have a backlog things just kind of sit there forever sometime and sometimes

a little bit about using the term backlog because we have a a real backlog. It's not the 10-year pipeline. It's the 27 projects that we're still trying to we've cleared a lot of that in the last couple. You know what I mean? like those are active projects that we already have funding and and resources um allocated towards and like so that has to be our number one priority is like deliver the things that we said we were going to deliver first. These are I understand your point on the bike project probably that is something we said we were going to deliver and now it's in the 10-year pipeline and I and there's a couple of projects that ended up in the in the pipeline this year but really what this should represent is a long range sort of outlook of what our future priorities should be. There's a lot of competing future priorities. There's 33 of them. The reason that the bike projects moved to the 10-year pipeline this year was because we needed to fund the the mass arms. Like that had that critical infrastructure was like had to be our number one priority. It was 44 million that we could not spend on bike lanes when we have traffic signals that cannot support signs. So,

understood. Yeah. I do think though that having a tenure outlook is important because I feel like when I was new on council, we just had the six-year CIP and I'm like we even got to be especially with the grant cycles that we were under like we have to look beyond six years and so I'm glad that 10 years later we are looking at a 10-year pipeline because I remember raising that point when I was new. And I think like Amanda said it also raises some really good opportunities for like more public engagement so that we can start talking about these projects sooner than like them just appearing in the CIP next year and nobody knows what they are or has heard of them. like we can start getting more input and feedback on them earlier on.

Yeah. And and I think it's worth, you know, a discussion, I don't know, somewhere down the line, like when I look at this list, you know, it's hard to, you know, to your point, our bike master plan to to me looking at um Robert's park renovation compared to future sewer capacity purchase. Those are two very different things in my mind, you know, like we need to have sewer capacity and it's sort of like the the nice to haves and the need to haves, you know, and so I I don't know like to maybe as this list 33 total projects, maybe we need to will it whittle it down, you know, A, B, and C. I don't know. But there to me there are certain things that are definitely like the mass arms is a great example. what, god forbid, something one of those falls, you know, on a car or pedestrian or, you know, so I I I do feel like some of these like Robert's Park, no offense to Robert's Park or the neighbors or people use that, but like to me that would be probably column C, you know. So it it is it was very interesting. Um, and I'm glad that um, Caitlyn, you're doing such a good job keeping track of all this. So, thank you.

Thank you.

I have I have four questions, four categories, but I'll be quick if you'll be quick. um sewer. So, there's this $886,000 sewer plan. I just can you speak to a little bit more of that funding across two years and sort of how much of it is building on the work that you were doing in connection with kind of the interjurisdictional agreements and assessing the Arlington and Fairfax like capacity and updating those agreements because to me like $886,000 seemed very expensive for like two years of planning and so I just want to understand a little bit more as to the expense. Yeah, maybe Tara can help me a little bit with this one too. I will say it's a little bit more than than planning. It's a full comprehensive study and I think that what that means is that we need to better understand our entire system capacity. I think a we don't have a great similar to like the paving conversation like we don't have a great history of that data. We need it for the entire city sewer system. So I don't know if you want to say more on that. Yeah. Um I mean unfortunately our sanitary sewer experts are not in the room today so I can't really do a huge technical deep dive but what I can say is that um our sanary sewer system has not been modeled. we don't have a lot of information to inform many of the decisions that we need to make. And so the funding actually came from the team working very closely with a consultant to identify what we would need in order to have a master plan that actually informs future decisions. And it turns out we need quite quite a bit. So it includes modeling, it includes really getting a good feel for the capacity of certain pipes in localized areas. um just all sorts of unknowns that we currently have that would give us that information.

Got it. So when we had the conversation and the consultant was here talking about you know the system flows and whatever else whether it's that person that particular individual but like this this amount is informed by basically what I'm getting at is this amount is informed by those conversations recognizing how much work we actually needed to do to understand the sewer system and the issues that we needed to address.

Okay. Um on the and then on the sewer just to make sure I think I heard this correctly on the two times for Alex Renew when we earlier had the conversations about the sewer fund that was what I think we had we that the representation was normally we have overbudgeted what the contribution will be to the payin for the infrastructure but now just like our infrastructure kind under payments catch up with us because of phase forward and the like remodeling or massive updates to the system. We're now getting hit with the two-time level when we generally have been under budget in the CIP for what the contribution to the like regional partners are for the two sewer systems. So, I think still remains to be seen whether the bills will actually come in as projected, but um you know, talking with the Fairfax County guy folks, the the the plan the capital plan that Alex Renu gave Fairfax County in the fall of 2020 or in 2024 was for $74 million. In 2025, it was $215 million. And what they gave them this past fall was for $441 million. And so, um, so Fairfax County is digesting this this, uh, influx of investment that Alex Renee has planned just like we are. So, we're just getting a portion of it. So, so they're going to be talking to their board about, you know, substantial kind of fee increases and the like to pay for this. I think as Caitlyn was saying, what they've kind of conveyed to us is it's a once in a generation investment in the treatment plant. Um, replacing a lot of infrastructure that is, like Caitlyn said, has been there since the 1960s. I

think I think we're a little frustrated, Fairfax County is a little frustrated that that this kind of has has kind of bubbled up to the extent it has. Um, but that's the source of kind of of of of what we're talking about. and and Caitlyn mentioned the phase forward program. We have some slides we can share with you all to provide a little more information if you're interested. Fairfax County also said that you know they were budgeting conservatively for this. So I think still sort of like over budgeting you know for it may not come in at that. Um

okay that that's fine for now. Um on then a separate question fire hydrants. So on 35 you know we had the conversation about the fire hydrants a few years ago. We were in 2023 saying that we needed over five years to get to the 60 new hydrants just to meet code for this fire safety reason. But now we are pushing um you know it says due to current flow testing installation delays project schedule's been pushed out to resume in fiscal year 28. So in 23 we were supposed to have all 60 done by 28. Right. So believe that's right.

So in So how many of the 60 are done at this point?

Um I'm not sure I could get that information for you there. So the reason that we pushed it out one year was because we we do have a backlog of them right now. Like it's been kind of slow to to get up and running. Um and so I talked to the chief and and part of that is Fairfax is you know the coordination with um with Fairfax Water. And so initially the plan was we were going to, you know, sort of skip FY27 to catch up on that, you know, backlog of of hydrants. And I'll let I'll figure out what the exact number is and then resume in FY28 and be done in FY30 because of the capital reserve situation. We had to stagger that to every two years. That could change.

Yeah. And I guess just looking at it right, I'm concerned that the fire marshall identified this is an issue, that it's a state code issue, that we only have X out of 60 done and that it's taking through fiscal year 2032 to get fire hydrants that we need that we identified as a need in 2023. Right? So, it's like a 10-year thing. And so, and I think I think Mr. Snider has raised this before on, you know, if it's an issue with Fairfax or a coordination issue, like do we need to elevate it to make sure that if it's a public safety issue, it's being properly attended to in less than 10 years. So,

I think that's what we can can follow up on with a little more detail. I do know that some hydrants were that we were installing were not they were exceeding the the state sort of minimum or uh you know distance requirements. Um but I can find find that out. And then two quicker questions on the CIP numbers that are reflected. I think we had had at one point maybe during the budget amendment a discussion around whether the city attorney fees are reflected in the

CIP project costs and so as we see them now are they reflecting those costs as part of the overall cost the way that you know the staff report talks about like the CIP funds reflect the ex planning costs administrative costs yeah I think that's something we're still working on. Many of the project costs that you see in the six-year plan right now, those estimates were developed. I mean, because of the way that sort of the CIP is is timed and um uh and the the tempo of it, like some of those were developed years ago. So, no, we haven't updated all project cost estimates to include those city attorney fees. Um but that is something that the city attorney's office and I have talked about doing.

Yeah. Sally chime in. I will say that we're also um you know using these uh kind of templates that we've developed both DPW and the city attorney's office together to have try to improve and standardize some of our right of way process should should help um with the matter but have anything else?

No, that makes sense. I just want I just wanted to make sure that it wasn't lost in the conversation whereas we're talking about like where other potential costs come in that we are accounting for them as a piece of the work when we're doing the CIP planning. Um, and then my last my last piece, I don't even know if it fits in here versus our earlier conversation or the conversation we still have to come is just seeing all of this. I would like to understand when we talked about CNI tax, we talked about CNIE and CNI tax and they were sort of presented as mutually exclusive and then there was a sort of line in the whatever it was in the budget answers or in the staff reports talking about a CNI supplement. And so I would just like to understand what what we're talking about and if we you know for example lost lost a penny so to speak out of commercial values a year ago when you know it was like a windfall to commercial owners when we implemented the solid waste fee or if we were to do you know a real estate tax reduction and offset with personal property tax. the budget answers again were like well it sort of creates a commercial windfall in doing so and so I wanted to understand like what this C and I supplement would be and does that create an opportunity to recoup at a at a lesser level than like 12 cents what some of these tradeoffs could be that they may not actually be tradeoffs if we're talking about what contribution should be so just it's not an answer I need now, but it's something I'm thinking about and would like an answer to generally. Thanks.

Other CIP questions. Um, thank you so much for all of this. It's fun going through this gigantic document and I like how it's been laid out. Um, I guess so. So, I did have a question on page uh 417, the neighborhood traffic humming active queue. So, just so that I'm clear, um we are not funding the neighborhood trafficcoming program this coming year as or it looks like FY27 is blank.

Um so, we're not funding it this current year as we sort of revamp the program.

Yes and no. I think I think the reason for not funding in FY27 is that there's significant prior year balances in the program, right? Okay. Um and then separately and I I think this was a question earlier too, but like we are like collectively with with council with the CACT sort of rethinking neighborhood traffic calming. Um but nonetheless, these funds would still be used whether they're used for the bottom up resident resident uh le or this more top down data driven. these funds would still be used for that body of work um regardless. And so even these prior year funds, some of them are for the the queue of the the bottomup um work and then some of them are for some of these other interim improvements.

Okay. So we already have actually how much do we currently have in the program right now? 400 four 400 500 400 maybe 400,000. I can let you know. Okay, we can check though. And we have a plan to expend that in fiscal year 27. So yeah, I just wanted it didn't seem Yeah. needed to Okay, then that that's totally fair. Um and then the other thing um I guess is just following up on the 10-year plan. So my understanding is that having things in the CIP helps us get grant funding for those things. Correct.

Um does having things so so even if it's unfunded in the CIP, but let's say it's for fiscal year 2029, that can still help us get grant funding for that. If it's unfunded and in the 10-year, you know, uh pipeline, can we still get does that still help us get funding or does that basically mean we're not going to be looking at grants for that? I think we're going to find out. Okay. I mean, I Yeah, I mean, I think we did apply for something that was in our sort of long range outlook maybe a year or two ago. Um, I'm not remembering, but but that I'm intending to try.

Okay. So, if it's in the 10-year pipeline and we apply for funding, we can apply for funding for 2029 or something like that. Even if it's like we don't necessarily have it there. I think that would be a decision, an internal decision, maybe a council decision as well. Okay. Because I mean I guess at least something at least looking at this is like um I imagine that we might be able to get funding for some of the bike master plan things. And so even if it's unfunded, but we put it, you know, back in, it could still be useful to have there if we did want to apply for funding for it. Because if it's something that says like 2039 or something like that, then maybe grant reviewers are less likely to give it to us.

Yeah, that's always been the philosophy for including unfunded items in the adopted capital plan is that we could we can use it is if it's in our adopted, you know, long-term plan, then we can use it to apply for funds on the bike project. I I mean, I think this is this is like going back again to that sort of prioritization. Um, I think it's been said many times like federal grant funds are not ideal for bike plan projects and that was what we had initially planned for those four that that moved out was RSTP which is a federal grant that we get from VOTE. Um, it's you know I think we want to look for other funding sources. Local would be ideal. Yeah. Um but state or regional if not

right. And so but still having it unfunded would be helpful even for state funding. Yes.

Okay. So, I mean, I guess my preference would be to um put it back on even if it's something that's well, so that it's not just 10 years out, but something that's like at least six years out or something like that, so it's not completely move to the back burner. Um, I guess the other thing is regarding like, well, I guess it depends on like the cost of those bike projects and like how if we can do like smaller projects um that are not super capital intensive. Um, but one thing is like I think about neighborhood traffic calming and the goal of that is literally calming traffic and bike lanes can be a part of calming traffic. So there's things that we're like we're like maybe moving some of the PGO money from that to funding bike lane specifically might be like one option, but it depends on how much how much money the bike lane projects actually cost. Um and then I guess the other thing is you know another thing that bike lanes achieve is that they're easier on the road. So my well my deep concern about the road paving budget maybe that actually helps in a small way ease ease the amount of money that we have to keep rebuilding um all of our roads. I realize it's not not necessarily something that like um you know pays for itself overnight, but um I I think that there are other goals that we can achieve through the the bike projects. And so

anyway, I guess I would like to see if there's other things that we are funding through payo that could be um I guess incorporated with some of the bike projects that we have even if it's like a rapid response you know just flex project.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean I think this is all all things we can look at kind of to the earlier points like this all takes you know staff time and prioritization and all the things but also if if a project can be done a little more nimly rather than um you know once you start moving concrete and moving curbs and moving storm drains and acquiring temporary and permanent easements like then these projects get so much more complicated. So, as as we're trying and that's why we talked earlier about um doing more scoping and conceptual development and and really thinking about our our projects a little more clearly.

Okay. Yeah. That's where like even even for West Street, it's not not necessarily even changing the road, but using the lanes that are already there. Um and so maybe but but switching things up. Um and then I guess just my final bigger picture question. Um, you mentioned that like CIP is not like totally sustainable the way that we're doing or the way that we've done things for the past five years just because we don't have a lot of a huge influx of money. How how do we make it sustainable? Like what is it is it that like somehow we need to come up with a budget like more PGO funding or is it um that we're just going to need to start relying more on grants or like what what do you see as making it sustainable in the long run? It's definitely a goal to keep um to keep going after as many grants as we can, I think, to help with that. I I'm a little bit worried that in light of the last year, the grants are also maybe not the most reliable just because of every Yeah. Um but I think what I talked about earlier with like that dedicated local funding, so part of, let me back up a second. I think part of that is the job of staff and what we've talked about a lot tonight of having this like datadriven foundation where like we provide, you know, the the the data that says like this is our I forget what Lety called it, but this is what it takes to sustain a state of good repair in the city. This is our

maintenance of effort. Thank you. Maintenance of effort. The school's coined it, not me. So and and we provide that data. And then the second part is, you know, dedicating that funding to the capital plan in a in a strategic way. Um, I don't I don't know how you do that. Maybe Wyatt knows, but I guess all this stuff comes down to it would be nice to have more money. I mean, that's sort of so like and and having some sort of local um transfer yearly. I think CNI is one of the the options that has been discussed and maybe something to look at

other revenues. I'll just said it it is it is nice to have more money. There is also some some effort on you know managing the grants and everything. And at the beginning I forgot to acknowledge we was also joined by Ally Golden who is our CIP grants manager um on our team who does um a lot of the the leg work on on that. Oh wonderful. Thank you. I appreciate it. Other questions or comments on CIP? Okay. Well, I do have some. This is like my favorite topic. You know, Caitlyn knows this when she sees us quarterly. Um, could we go to the slide that shows kind of active projects in transportation?

I think it was just the one that showed like here's all the active ones and so it just gave me pause because I want to acknowledge that think so. Okay.

Yes, that one. Um, it's a lot and I think anyone who drives through the city or walks through the city or bikes through the city can see that we have a lot of projects underway and I know that transportation has been like a big priority for the council and I think I just want to acknowledge that one like we really appreciate the big heavy lift that getting these big projects done across the city is not easy. Um, and so thank you for at least the work there because we know it takes time. Like one of the complaints I frequently hear is like hey you said the city needs to be more walkable. It just takes a lot of effort and money and time and patience to kind of evolve a car oriented suburb that was built in 1940s to be more multimodal. So, thank you to the DPW team for that. Um, two tactical things on this slide. Um, one, Greenway Down's traffic calming seems to have stalled. Um, I just got a public comment about it. I think I checked the project website. So, it's great the project website's updated, but I think one intersection in particular is stalled until like April 20th.

Do we know why? Are we going to hit the May completion deadline at this point or we is that at risk?

Yes. So, the project is stalled because um the there was an error in the design and so when the contractor went out to build it as per the plan, unfortunately, there was a major conflict. We're in contact with the designer and it's being redesigned right now. It's really important that we redesign it because if we don't we will have localized flooding in the area and we can't have that. Um it's unfortunate we are going to write up the the contractor and try to ensure these things don't happen in the future but they are working on a solution. I did hear today that they think they have a solution that will work and our engineers are currently reviewing it. Um but really important that we do delay it so that we get that right so that that infrastructure goes in the ground and we don't have that flooding. It is unfortunate. Um other than that we do think that the schedule that the whole project will be we'll be able to wrap it up by the end of May. So

Okay. Well thank you. So it's just that Timber Jackson intersection that that is correct.

Okay. Um second I wanted to put a plug in for the Anendelle Road multimodal project. Um, I think I've said before that in general I wish our south of broad neighborhoods got as much love as the north of broad. And so actually I did run through that intersection again today. So Anandale and Hillwood, Anandale Washington just need a lot more pet improvements. Um, we've had like a business at that corner that's gone out of business every like 12 months because there's no like safe way to get across the street there. And so I know that that's kind of on the grants um docket. Hopefully we get support for that. But in general kind of the south Washington south abroad area I just think needs a lot more attention from the city. So, thank you for um adding that to the queue. Um, one I guess broad question and actually two broad kind of questions and comments um related to kind of Justine's point about the CIP not sustainable. So, a couple observations I guess now that I'm at this 10-year mark. Um, we love free money. Um, we have at the same time though wean ourselves off of free money. So, not only do we get a bunch of windfalls with ARPA and federal grants and our own capital reserves that are also, you know, getting depleted, but I think the other thing that comes with free money is we don't always have the operating budget to maintain the stuff that we built. And I think that's kind of evident by the first half of the conversation tonight. And so, it's this combination of like we've had this windfall of free money. We can't help it because we love sexy new things. building new parks and new things are always exciting, but are we also incorporating the maintenance budget to keep up with all the new stuff that we're building that requires local dollars. And so that's a really hard thing that this in general councils and governing bodies have to struggle with because we get rewarded for ribbon cutings and opening new stuff. We don't get rewarded for maintaining and painting, you know, mass arms and things like that. And so I wanted to call it that kind of first conflict is like I think the thing I'm hearing from staff is like now that we're coming off this era of free money and we have frankly a maintenance issue where we need more operating dollars that can't be grant funded. Like that's something that we need to solve for. I think I heard you

know the options are like could we go out for more grant dollars? That's an option but again if you keep building stuff with more grant dollars you have operating budget to maintain that new stuff. Second maybe we'll build up reserves again. Um, maybe we use more local revenue sources. I don't know whether it's CNI or something else. Maybe we take on debt. Uh, maybe we slow it down. But I feel like until we answer the are we maintaining the new stuff that we're building, I would caution us to not build all this new stuff immediately because I think we're going to run into the same issue. Um, and so in 2016, as I think back to kind of the council that I joined, we inherited an era where we had a whole bunch of big capital backlog, city hall, library, high school that have been talked about for like 10, 20 years that needed to be done. We caught up on all that. We took out debt for 20 years and 30 years. City Hall and library should last us another 15 years because that was 20-year debt. The high school should last us another 25 years because that's 30-year debt. So, we kind of like I guess my answer to the Justine's question is like how do we solve this? I actually think we need like a 15 to 20 year CIP look because essentially we can lay out when does a high school need to be touched again? Hopefully, it's 25 years. When does city hall need to be touched again? Hopefully, it's 15 years. We can lay out kind of all those big facility costs and lay it out and then start feathering in the smaller capital projects that are less money intensive but also need to be done. I worry that actually our 10-year planning window doesn't actually solve the long-term CIP issues and hopefully the facilities assessment kind of give us that look. But now that I have kind of 10 years under my belt, I think back to kind of what this council inherited back in 2016, how it was good that we got caught up in 2020, but because we did all those big things, we took on big, you know, sexy facilities projects. We neglected some basic breadandbut things. Um, I think here's the opportunity for us to kind of like be more thoughtful in a 15 to 20 year time frame. Think about when those big things need to come up again and then before we

get to that point, hopefully maintain all the stuff along the way and really try to like not be tempted to build a bunch of new stuff because I think you're going to run into the risk where we're not going to be able to maintain the new stuff again and just be in the same cycle that the council in 10 20 years will be inheriting another issue. So that's my speech on that. Um my other kind of big big kind of observation is I wanted to go back to two policies that this council adopted. I know bike master plan is a really important one that we said this is important let's not sit on a shelf but the other two were kind of vision zero and complete streets and so I guess I would ask the DPW and managers team of like how well are we doing against the vision zero and complete streets policy and the reason I bring that up is I think before the holidays um why it let us know that we'd seen an increasing number of accidents on Broad Street um so much so that it kind of like required more analysis and I think we have a team working on analyzing it are any of the projects we've seen in either the operating budget or capital budget actually going to help solve those real- time data traffic issues and safety concerns we saw I think I heard plenty on the complete streets front trying to be multimodal we have a bunch of CIP but are any of the projects being proposed going to address the safety issues like if we have data that says hey we saw a lot more accidents and crashes sorry crashes on these broad street corridors is anything proposed in the budget that's actually going to reduce those crashes and if not I would challenge us to think more critically about that because that's a real good like real-time example where we say, "Hey, we adopt a policy, we have data, we're going to go and try to make sure the projects and the money that goes towards those projects solves that issue." So, that's kind of the the second one I want to leave us with.

Yeah. No, that's a great point. Um, and I think it's it's something we're looking at in a couple ways. So we have these these kind of monthly safe streets meetings with DPW and planning and police and now the VTTI smart city folks. And so we're looking looking at data. We're still kind of getting into the mode of how we're going to use that crash. You know, we look at some of the monthly crash data and and talk about it and and and think about kind of what the what's potential solutions might be. And so we're kind of still figuring out what what that might lead to. Um, in terms of specific projects, I mean, we've, you know, we talked about some of the more tactical sort of quick build items. Uh, certainly I think the the mass arms projects that we spent a lot of time on and and smart city signal retimings. I mean, all of that contributes towards um, you know, safer streets um, and more predictable uh, you know, better infrastructure. um you know a lot of the act you know the current active projects are old you know had older you started earlier um and they're they're scoping and now as we're kind of building them up um you know we're going to be doing the uh where is it the where's broad street in here so broad street multi west broad street multimodal is going to be starting soon which is on on broad street and is going to be you know widening sidewalks making more pedestrian friendly so I think it's probably a lens that we're still um going to be taking uh and maybe we can make that I make that argument more explicit I think as we move forward both looking at you know the ADA transition plan as like a lens that we're using and also kind of vision zero as a lens that we're using and in some cases the government energy action plan um as another lens. So I think that's the way we're we're starting to have those conversations.

I like that idea that kind of like linking back to policy that we adopted and these are the projects that's going to move the needle based on the policy that we said and here are the budget dollars that go towards it. So thank you for that. So, the the only thing I would add in earlier in the in the in the deck, I think Amanda talked through kind of our safe streets kind of project queue and and the idea that that I think the team's been working on is to kind of sprinkle in throughout the year a couple projects based on the datadriven kind of analysis of of some of those intersections and and and crash data um information that we've looked at. I think from a resource standpoint, I think we have resources with the NTC um balances we have and everything. So, so I think moneywise from council, I I think we probably have what we need to do some of that work. It's it becomes a I think the challenge we've had in the spring is just the capacity to kind of think that through while we're trying to figure out everything else that that needs to be done, both the infrastructure work as well as um all the ongoing NTC work and everything else. And so, um so I think I think the team's on a good path to be able to kind of bring some of those projects forward and deliver on them. And um as we get towards the summer, I think we'll be able to come back with some updates and some uh some of those kind of first first wins of of through that new process that Amanda was talking about.

Thank you.

And and I'll jump in just to piggyback on those two great comments, but if you go back to that slide of all the active projects, can we say that we looked at the data and that drove those projects? No. But every single one of them is geared towards walkability improvements. And every one of them is going to increase lighting at intersections. Every one of them is going to increase or or slow down vehicle speeds, improve width of sidewalks and make safer um safer intersections. You know, that's where usually the accidents are is at intersections. and um and some so many of our big capital projects in transportation are at intersections.

Yeah. And acknowledging that all those active projects were like five plus years contemplated, right? Like they weren't like projects we came up this year and so knowing the grant cycles and implementation of these projects take a long time. Like here's our chance. So now that we are being more data driven to actually inform the next round of projects should be based on where we have crashes, where we need to improve safety, where we need to widen sidewalks, where we need to add no turn on red signs once we have the mass arms updated. Um so those are the things that I hope that we can be different about. So Dave,

Madame Mayor, just just two points. First of all, hopefully that when we're prioritizing based on safety, it's not just crashes, but near misses because often the difference between a crash and a near miss is absolute luck. So hopefully we're considering those as well. That's a small comment. The other I think collective challenge here and the mayor's comment about maintenance is right. The problem is that we're facing that most of these grant projects are for for to build something and we can't be in a position where we're not in grant funding cycles because we haven't provided enough maintenance money. So, I'm I'm agreeing, but I'm putting a little bit of a different focus on it. We really need to be out aggressively on every conceivable grant cycle, but we also have to rely on staff to say we need x amount more to be able to maintain what we're building. Thanks.

That's a Thank you for that point. And that's something I was thinking about when the mayor was talking about, you know, our our funding agencies also like sexy new things and they want us to build new things. Um, and that's been part of our approach in the past to part of our grant strategy is we build these new things in order to address infrastructure and maintenance because we in a lot of these projects we also get paving, we get, you know, new crosswalks or new signals or um, whatever. That approach I think we're finding now is not working for us and there's less grant opportunities for for strictly infrastructure reinvestment. So that's part of the, you know, the the hard thing that we're trying to figure out now. Great. Well, thank you. You could tell we're really into this topic. So, we appreciate all the time that you've spent with us tonight and all the good dialogue, too. So, thank you to the team.

Thank you. We appreciate it. Thank you. We are at 10 o'clock. Do we want to take a bio break before we get to tax rate? How about resume at 10:15? Is that enough time? Okay. Are there any cheeses left? Tell budget That goes for half.

We're good. Okay. All righty. Thank you all. I think we're now here for the next part of the conversation getting ready for first reading next week on the budget.

Right. Thank you, Mayor Hardy. And so, um, I'll just make a few notes about each of the documents that the council will be asked to take action on at first reading next week. As the council is generally familiar, uh particularly when you get to the taxes and the fees, um the the city council can um ultimately adopt on May 11th a lower fee or a lower tax, but cannot increase it without starting the process over with a new first reading. Um the budget ordinance itself, just to note, the way that this budget ordinance is structured is that it appropriates and sets the budget for all of the city funds. And so the funds are all listed in the budget ordinance itself. And then uh by charter, uh the city council then also appropriates the dollars by department. And so um the only the city council can make adjustments as we go through the fiscal year of any dollar amounts that switch between departments. Staff cannot do that. Um we do make adjustments to the budget within departments. So um that's at um at basically line 402 or page 11 of the budget ordinance document. The other thing I want to note on the budget ordinance itself, we talked uh earlier this year about adding in at in the budget process um some actions by the council to for the council to set by ordinance what the FTE count is in the city. That's uh in the city charter that says the council should do that. It's in the budget book and we've always honored what the city council has seen um in the budget book, but now we will have the council take a formal action to set those FTE counts. Um in addition, uh we're planning to

have the city council take action on the compensation increase that's proposed. We've always honored what was presented to the council. Now the council will take that action to formalize that. And then the third thing is to adopt the classification plan which lists all the um uh positions in the city and what class they are kind of what the salary the salary range those positions um are are eligible for. So those uh we would propose to bring to the council at a later date. Um and the council can act on those by resolution and to tie it together with the budget. We could have that we're going to work to have that prepared for the council. So you could take action on that May 11th. So you would see that then in the the May 4th work session. That is all I was planning to say on the budget ordinance itself. Um I will note that the budget questions and answers were posted. Uh we did um repost a revised version of that. There were any substantive changes to the revision. There were some issues about pageionation and some table headers. Um, so I just note that and we're happy to answer any questions you have about our responses to your questions and we're recording additional questions so they'll be um updated this f uh this this coming Thursday as well on the tax ordinance if we're ready to shift to that. Um the um what the ordinance provides for is is um no change to the real estate tax rate at $118.5 per $100 of assessed value. Um and then for business personal that's set at $5 uh of $100 of assessed value and then vehicles which is a separate category of personal property is per this ordinance set at 480. Uh we do note that

there's the option that because council has asked questions about this if we went back to the $ five dollar rate um and uh the staff report provides information about what revenue that would generate. And um if you go down to um line uh 49, it notes that if we went back to the $5 rate for vehicles, that would generate $340,000 of new revenue. And so that was a question that the council had relative to the earlier discussion we're having specifically about paving. So, if the council wanted to maintain that optionality, then we would recommend that you at first reading adopt it $5 and then the council as you get public comment could uh make the final decision on May 11th. Um the storm order uh billing, sewer rate billing, and solid waste fee, those were all covered in the PowerPoint. Um and the ordinance uh just notes those increases. Um and all of them are to cover actual costs in each of those utility funds. And uh we just discussed the sewer uh rate fee or um rate. What's driving that generally is their interjurisdictional uh um arrangements with Alex Renew and the four mile run treatment plant. Um so those are the um the uh that takes us all the way through to uh the discussion of fees uh building permit fees. And for that if there aren't questions about the other items um I'll turn it over to Andy. He does have um a brief presentation on what we are proposing in terms of process improvements in the permit area as well

as uh the proposed permit fee increases. I think we're before we turn it over to Andy, let me just pause for what I've just covered. Yeah, I think we're going to want think people might have some questions or comments now. Do people have some on there? There is one quick question on the permit fees that I wanted to clarify. Do you want to hold on that? Is that because is it related to permit? It No, it's actually related back to the tax rate. Okay.

Um the budget has permit fees in it for the building. Are those budget numbers, the revenue from those based on the new building fe permit fees or the current building fees? Because it's a considerable difference between this and what you were showing,

right? So the budget for the permit fees in the um well the permit fees included in the budget is um basically we had trimmed it down to um put less reliance on this big ticket large developments. It's never um we don't have a good um uh uh sorry um it's hard to determine what those permits fees are going to come in because the activity is always different from year to year. So, even as we increase the permit fees, we we didn't we chose not to increase the revenues in the budget um because we didn't want to over rely on those uh permit fees that may not come in at the same level each year.

Well, your presentation for this year and the document have it's a million dollar difference. I think it's because we have less development activity. Yes. But then it should be in they should match. I guess Art's question is are we using the new permit fee structure times the number of projects or the old permit fee structure times the number of projects to come up with Exactly. And if it's the old in the budget and the deck is the new and we adopt the new, it's a million dollars. That's affects our decision on tax rates significantly.

Well, it's not the general fund. to the or it's we don't well I'll let Wyatt talk about how we can use the permit fee reserve well uh so what uh forecasting revenues from building permit fee activities is very difficult to do and so we tend typically have kind of a proxy number of um and then the permit reserve is a shock absorber for the variances between big projects and years without big projects. That's basically how it functions. I don't know if you can say it more elegantly than I just said it.

No, I don't think so. But yes, we generally don't set a budget expect that anticipates what developments are going to happen in the next year. Um, we kind of set like a um a level of number that we can live with on a year-over-year basis. Um and if there are extra money that come in from new development, big developments, then those go into the permit reserves, which then helps us um kind of absorb um continuing costs um as those projects get developed.

So with without any big projects, we do have a revenue forecast for permits and it's it's just it's around 600 um do you remember? Correct. It's about $50,000 per month. $600,000 a year on a normal no big revenue um no big projects kind of year. So that's the bottom line is that's the revenue forecast that's in in the budget for permit fees.

All right. But if it's if the higher fees do come in, that money would go into the permit reserve. So we're not Okay. That's the most critical piece of it. All right. That's correct. And any other questions can wait. Okay. People have other questions and comments on ahead of first reading. First reading is next Monday.

I kind of feel like we haven't had a lot of time to look at the operating budget and all of a sudden we're into this first reading already. So that is making me a little uncomfortable like the there's all these questions in the Q&A document. I have a bunch about public safety that I was going to email. So that I just feel like we haven't dug into it a lot and we're already into making that decision. Um, but I do have a couple questions that just like the the FTEEs that are being reduced, were they selected just because they're empty or were they selected because they're the least needed positions or like what was the rationale? I appreciate that you're thinking that way, but what are the impacts going to be in all the departments of that many positions being reduced?

Um, so they there's no question we took the opportunity, the fact that they were open and uh and that was a really important part of the consideration. Um the Q&A does provide the full the list of other vacancies that we chose not to take and so there was some decision making on that. Um at the end of the day after reviewing it with the full team and with all the department heads we felt it was a fair distribution of the pain and uh you know the impacts were manageable. Conversely, if there had been like three in one department and then many other departments were unspared, it would have been a, you know, much more noticeable impact in that department. But the fact that it was evenly spread, I think gave a sense one of solidarity amongst the department heads like, okay, everybody's doing this, you know, we have to do our part and we think we can manage it. Um, and we could talk about each one in in de kind of in detail, but um, that's the general response. I don't necessarily want to talk about each one in detail. I don't know if anybody else does, but I it's just one of those that over time as we've added people, we've added population.

Yeah. And we're now taking staff away. And that just seems to go against the way we've been looking at this all these years. So I appreciate it as an effort for cost savings, but I worry about it for service delivery because sometimes I think we think about taxes as something that people pay like as a freewill donation, but actually they're paying to get the services that are being provided by the people that we've put in place. So

I I'll give just one a little bit of sort of color and this is maybe just kind of my point of view to take it for what it's worth. Um we have grown city staff levels. Uh we were sort of generally at about 200 FTE for 20 years and then we have grown up to 250 not including the utility funds. So that was a a really significant about fiveyear step up year after year of increasing staff levels and we were having really persistent problems with very high levels of vacancies. And I and part of that was as a small organization just sort of onboarding kind of getting ourselves set up to recruit and house and equip and train all that staff was a big lift for the organization. And um and so I I feel personally comfortable with reducing um our where we are right now to to make some reductions in our FTE count. I think our longer term trajectories will we'll probably need to revisit these decisions right now, but where we are right now um I think um I think it's a good decision for the organization

and the police department as well. I know we have public safety next week or week after we do and we'll so we'll talk about that school resource officer. We really um

enjoyed having two SRO's but that also was new for us. we've always had almost you know for 30 years had one and so um that uh sort of going to two was new and different for us um and we've had a a very difficult time recruiting SRO's and so we think one and uh is uh of of all the reductions that the police department had to confront that that was like this was the one that they recommended they did not recommend commend any other positions. And in past years, we've heard from the police department that they needed more police officers and with having two substations and other things. Is there will we hear from them that there's a need for more police officers patrolling, not just as a school resource officer? well

or detectives or

sort of aligned with what you heard from our engineering staff is trying to take a little bit more of a a datadriven and planful approach on some of these really important decisions. So, the police has initiated an organizational assessment and he's going to talk with you about that uh in two weeks so that you're aware of what he is studying or what the department is studying right now and what that might mean for staffing levels in the future that um is going to be based on real call data, real kind of what the department is facing with data. And so we don't have the results of that yet, but you're going to hear more about that in 3 months, 5 months, 6 months, and I think that will be something we'll be talking about in next year's budget.

Okay.

Can I ask a followup on that? So when you're say So I mean was that conversation a you're asking me for this but I really need data to support your request for the additional officers or was it a shared I'm not going to make the request until I feel I have the data to justify the additional officers because they're two different things like either the chief is making a request and you're saying let's kick it down the road a year because I want to have an organizational data driven an approach like I've asked X Y and Z other departments to do like I you know that's uh it's kind of like at what level do you trust sort of the experience and judgment and sort of professional judgment of an individual running a department to know where you have staffing issues or where you have coverage issues or where you have potential personnel like who may be leaving. Who knows? But just in terms of like data driven versus like how does the chief know of his department and know sort of like their ability to handle service capacity within the city given like the growth that we know is going to happen and that Westf falls is going to get built out more and whatever else it is. So you'll hear more about this directly from

Well, I mean, I guess I want to know in answer to Mary Beth's question because it is a question about like tax rates as well. And are we setting ourselves up to to cap? I mean, I don't want to increase tax rates, but are we capping without understanding the full picture? And you're you're potentially giving us a rosier view than what the police chief would tell us in all cander. Oh, I the police chief will tell you he he wants more people. Let me be totally candid about that. And the chief, I think, has a much more sophisticated look at staffing than I have had in the past and maybe us as a city has had in the past. He's asking questions about titles, about uh rank, about uh shift size, um about shift overlap. um he's thinking about questions that we have not asked as an organization and he wants to have data to back up kind of his thinking on those things and so that's what he's going to and I think the whole department is going to learn more about over the next three to six months that will then I think turn into more nuanced decisions about staffing in our police department than we've had in the fast and it will be more people I think. I don't want to sugarcoat that, but it's it's more than just that.

But it's a next year conversation given that he wants to build a case for that. I think he wants to think through what's best for the department and it's not snap judgments. And so that's that's the kind of assessment that he's doing right now. Okay. Mary Beth, do you have others?

Uh, just a couple others also public safety related. There was a lot in the sheriff's office description like evictions are rising and but what does that mean? Are we worried that people are being evicted? Um, that increasing criminal and civil docket volume, what does that mean? There wasn't a by X percent or is it like we had seven and now we have 14 or we had 14 and now we have 75. I don't there was there wasn't that kind of data. Would have been nice to have that but are we actually do we have more evictions?

So uh that's so the sheriff will speak to that. The sheriff also has a a kind of a a longer story about personnel trends and and kind of the direction that that department's going in

with less reliance on volunteers, right? Um that's sort of way the whole uh industry is moving and um uh but um the the position that is being defunded in the sheriff's office is a position that's been vacant for multiple years. And so I I did have a conversation with the sheriff. He did not want to give that position up. I don't want to sugarcoat that. But in light of the kind of the term of that vacancy and the need to find reductions to balance the budget, I asked uh for his support for that and and and here we are. I don't know that he supports it, but he is living with it.

Can you ask him though or I'll put it in my questions for next week just what like what does that mean? We have more evictions or more criminal civil. Yeah. Yeah. Although I think the governor just signed a bill to actually extend the eviction timelines. Okay. To actually reduce evictions across the Commonwealth. Okay. Well, that would be good. And I took you not to just be saying what does it mean for workload, but like what does evictions mean for like population, right? It was both

that that's just I hadn't seen something like that before. And then then if I can just pop back to a revenue question and like transit occupancy tax had a reduction from this year and I'm just wondering why the why based on the data we saw at the second quarter financial report. Correct. Yeah, we did see the um revenues um come down a little bit for um transient occupancy tax over the last few months. Um that's why we adjusted that region because people are traveling. It's regionally. Yeah, that's the case. Yes. Okay. Go ahead. And wasn't that something? I thought we saw some of that last year, too, didn't we?

Last year, we were a bit protected because we had that new hotel. Oh, okay. You know, so right. All right. And one more question. This is also a revenue question. On the graph on page GF-3, it's showing that the revenues were 41% residential real estate, 20% from commercial. Is that is that ratio finally changing? That seems like seems like it was always like 13 and something else. And I'm just wondering if there's a chart that can show that over time. Like what's our ratio of residential to commercial? because we've been working so hard to switch it and that just seemed like a change but maybe I was just being optimistic.

We we do have that data and we can add it to the next um Q&A. Um that's actually the 41 it's it's total 61% so 41% or no I've got that wrong. So um but yes we will see um show that we can show that data. Okay. Um the components of the revenues over the last 15 to 20 years maybe. Right. That would be good just to see because there has been a lot of work that's gone into that.

There has been a lot of work and what has kind of been a big cycle cyclical force that has been hard to overcome is that residential values have been on a curve like this and commercial market valuations have been on a slope like that. Not curve slope. Yes. And so there's been a lot of new construction in commercial, but that residential just going six to 8% yearover-year for multiple years in a row. Um, the commercial is actually a shrinking part of our tax bill. Okay.

I think it's important. So I think I asked for it in last year's budget Q&A, so we probably have that chart, but it has shifted in the 20 years or so. But I think that's the part point that we missed though is that we've been adding a lot of apartments in commercial but because of the AV growth in residential it makes it seem like commercial is decreasing right and that's the issue like I don't think people have really internalize it you're like hey it's unfair why is residential burden still increasing because the value of your homes and you can also argue the value of your homes is actually increasing because of all the commercial growth that we've added to make it a more attractive place to live. Right. So it's hard to make a chart that actually shows it doesn't just plot along like that. There's so many other variables in there. Yeah. very nuanced. I think that's all I have for right now. Thank you.

Let me just add a comment to that. One of the concerns I have is that smaller and smaller numbers of people are carrying more and more uh of the budget burden. We have a lot of in other words the same person living in a single family house is paying a lot more than that same person in an apartment. So increasingly one factor is a smaller percentage a small percentage of the population is carrying a disproportionate share of funding the government. Now one could say that that's sort of part of it but is this a trend that's gotten more extreme? Maybe it hasn't. I mean, I think people in multif family buildings pay taxes indirectly through their rent to their buildings and the buildings are paying taxes.

It's nowhere near what that same person would be paying on a single family home. They also cost us a lot less too. even though the overall public expenditures benefit both equally. Uh I would actually say that like for road paving and other things like that to reach like 13 single family homes is a lot more expensive than to reach like you know 100 people in an apartment you know if we're keeping holding population the same. And so in some ways like repaving Greenwich Street is actually a lot more costly than it would be for repaving like a section outside of Founders Row a per capita basis. Yeah. Mary Beth, do you have other comments?

No, that's all that little math problem though runs in my head like all the little variables there. But that's all I have for now. Thank you. I found it in the 2025 Q&A. We also compared ourselves against the regional jurisdictions which I think was interesting to see where the residential commercial shifts have happened. I think it's actually not just us seeing commercial AVs go down because other places that have added a lot of commercial like Arlington have also seen the shift diverge because of residential AV going up so much despite them clearly adding lots of commercial just like us. other questions or comments or

so obviously I'm new to this but um the tax um advertisement um I'm looking at this and the only things that are listed is the real estate tax the BOL and the the vehicles but in the Q&A there was a question about the different levers that we have to play with and so uh question 27 um thank you for providing that it's a good one in there, but it also includes meals tax, um, CNI, hotel tax. If we, and honestly, I'm I'm I'm eyeing that meals tax. Six months ago, Fairfax County had a 4% advantage over us in taxes. There was a differential. Arlington was a percentage higher. Fairfax was 4% lower. Now Fairfax is equal to us. Arlington is percentage higher. I'm eyeing that meals tax and wondering is that a revenue source? Um hotel tax, not a whole lot of money we would get there, but also although I don't think it's actually price sensitive, the occupancy, I think it's other factors, but the meals tax I'm really wondering about and it's a big hitter. It's, you know, if we went from four to 5%, we're talking about almost $800,000. It might be a little less. There might be a little drop off. We There's some options I I've been thinking about to to address that with the business community, but do we need to be putting that into the advertisement if we're if it's even a possibility? And I think it should be something we

should be considering. Rest of the council might be like, "No way." But I mean, like most things, if you have four votes,

Yeah. I mean, it's it it'll be a painful one, and we may get the uh restaurant community really yelling at us, but they've gone from a 4% deficit in, you know, to equal. So, being at a 1% deficit is not that big a deal or it is a big deal, but it's an adjustment. Do do we need to advertise that in the we so we would need to

so we don't have ordinances prepared for um the uh meals be pole hotel or CNI um we don't do those on an annual basis those are laid out in the city code and so they kind of roll forward yeartoear um by state code we are required to adopt the property tax on an annual basis and that's why That ordinance is always before the city council at budget time. So this would be the time for at work session if the council wants to have other options uh for staff to prepare for you to take action on. First reading really is just where we set the advertisements so that the public is aware of what's being discussed so that to set up your final decision making on May 11th. Erin,

I had a question about something similar and it gets to I think it's BO-21 in the budget book. So like this taxes and fees page and I know that I had raised it for a potential budget and finance meeting topic um in terms of some of these rates and whether we were at the state caps and kind of even if they were marginal impacts what that meant for you know if we're not at the I don't know right like taking an example if we're not at the cap of admission and amusement tax for bowling and we have a bowling alley and it's 5 cents versus 10 cents like what is the marginal impact of going from 5 cents to 10 cents based on what the tax revenue is from having a bowling alley and does that help support the cost of X Y or Z, right, of small costs in the city. And so I guess I would still be interested in knowing like for some of these pieces the additional column of like are we at the cap, are we not at the cap so we can make an informed decision about are there places that we should increase and what does that mean? Does it help fund you know bringing watch night back? And I know you have that in the budget, but like right like $10,000 here or there's matters and and you know I've said to my colleagues that I'll raise it like this isn't a tax rate ordinance discussion but even council right our salaries we're basically increasing our salaries by the amount of money that we need to cover something like watch night or our benefits are going up by 28 or $30,000. And so like is it a is it a is it a feasible cost in this environment for a budget increase to be as large as it is? And I will put on for you know another conversation kind of whether we should actually go ahead with the salary salary increases if we value sort of being able

to extend benefits to council as a you know benefit of the council service when you see the costs increase as substantially as they have in one year. But apart from that, I would like some of these smaller sort of items to understand what it kind of equates to if there were places that we increased some of those fees. And then I would support for purposes of first reading increasing vehicle personal property tax to $5 until we have more conversations about kind of an offset or does it make more sense to, you know, cost share the um cost of driving in the city. If we have, you know, a policy goal of decreasing drivership, so to speak, or, you know, having people reduce from three to two vehicles or from two to one vehicle, or you see the amount of vehicles that are driving as sort of heavy vehicles on city streets that we might, as a policy matter, want to have a higher personal property tax in light of behavior that we actually want to potentially change or have people reflect further on when they're making choices as to what vehicles they should be driving in the city. Um, so so I would support putting that to five for purposes of first reading. And then like I said, I do have this question about CNI tax. And even if we were recouping any piece of CNI tax, it's like one penny is $113,000. So can we do a, you know, two penny CNI tax? like it doesn't have to be a 12 cent TN CNI tax. So those sorts of questions I would open in terms of tax rate questions for the group. I'm not as interested in changing meals tax. I think you know the meals tax the the the

change in meal tax or the delta from year to year. It's hard enough to sometimes meet what our projections have been on meals tax and it's expensive. like it's expensive when you go out already to eat in the city and like I don't really want to pass on another meals tax to diners when you look at what your bill is just to like go to dinner for two or three people.

Well, yeah. And I I also think given everything that you know with with um watch night and all that, you know, right now the um and the meetings we've had for with the restaurant community, I think this is probably not the right time. But I I do think that our you know if it was something like if we were in the bud you know in future budgets that we would to maintain the maintenance of effort or whatever we had to raise the tech tax you know real estate tax rate then I would say okay let's look at meals tax you know I I think you know being able to say like if we can try to keep it flat then I think maybe we save that for another budget year hopefully we won't need it but um one thing I wanted to ask about looking at the budget um the Q&A there's a question about the Virginia village. Um it's question eight and talking about um you know funding like in terms of if we had to relocate the residents while we are doing that complex and the answer was there are some funds available in the affordable housing fund. Um, so for the relocation cost of Virginia Village restaurant res residents, but I just didn't know to me that it gave me a little pause because I'm like what? That was a pretty like general answer. And so and the other thing when we were talking about V Virginia Village, I had asked, you know, so we we relocate those residents, we move them back in, and now let's say their rent is higher. And I was told at one of the work sessions that we would make them whole. You know, we would make up that difference. So, someone

I think we have to be very careful about commitments like that, but someone said that um just briefly on relocation costs. Um that uh we don't have enough information really on that. I we're kind of viewing that as a project cost for Virginia Village. Okay. And when we put out the RFP, we're gonna you'd work it into we we would, you know, ultimately the partner would be sort of executing it and it will be something that's in their proforma and it'll be part of the gap that they will need gap financing for and I think that's the way that's going to be addressed. Okay. Okay. Well, that that that gives me that makes me feel better. Okay. Also probably three years away even on my most aggressive timeline.

Yeah. Right. It's not going to affect Right. this budget. Yeah. Okay, thank you. Other questions on this? Okay, I had some uh so first I thought the Q&A especially like question 10 on looking at AV impact and then question 14 and 15 on the car tax analysis was really well done. So thank you for all the work that went into the Q&A. Melissa, I'm guessing that was probably you or David. So thank you for that. Um one of the questions I asked I think was number 31. wasn't actually fully answered though because I asked for kind of maybe three, five, sevenyear look back at enrollment growth, population growth, budget growth, but I also wanted year-end fund balances for both schools and general government. And so I think that would be helpful to know um because I think a related question is, you know, it's very much the school board's policy to maintain their fund balance of what 2% or 3%. But I think my hunch is that they end the year above that percentage and then there's a bunch of budget amendments just like we do in general government that expend those dollars. And so my question is before we decide to allocate the 175,000 to the school's facilities reinvestment for the CIP. I'd like to know what the history record of our of the school's year-end fund balance is potentially that might be a source of actually funding the reinvestment facilities needs that we have. So that's kind of a qu multi multi question. So this question 31 needed a little more detail and then a question of based on that data um could that money be used for schools facilities reinvestment instead versus other projects that are getting funded. Um I guess for 14 and 15 which were the questions related to car tax. I think parts of the question is not going to get answered until next week. But this relates to the tax ordinance because I also would support the idea of going to $5 car tax, but I would want to see a variation where the tiers are different in case that helps us achieve our policy objectives. So expensive cars, you know,

like right now I think our tiers are between zero I'm looking at the commissioner revenue 0 to 15,000 pays nothing and then from 15,000 to maybe something else that pays a different whatever the tiers are. But I would like to look at whether there's and I think this is not set by ordinance, but whether we should decide to actually change those tiers so that we give more relief to lower value cars and hopefully less work for us and then charge the higher rate for the the higher value cars if that makes sense. So kind of a combination. So not only would it support going to $5, but I would like to explore different tiers in case that gives us more revenue beyond what we currently do as well. The tiering that we do right now is for the personal property tax relief act.

Um, and it's currently up to $1,500 of assessed or cars that have $1,500 of assessed value. Yes. And then from um um above that between $1,500 to $20,000 of the first value uh first assessed value of your vehicle, you get um I believe right now it's a 35% relief. Um and this relief is being funded by a fixed income from the state. It's about $2,21,000. And so what we really do is try to um distribute that amongst the qualified vehicles.

Got it. So it doesn't really give us more money. So it doesn't cost more money and it doesn't increase revenue either because we're supposed to kind of approximate that 2,21,000. Got it. Um so tier we can certainly tier it so that you could still like benefit um the lower value um vehicles. um uh but we have to provide relief up to $20,000 of the assessed value. And so the more um the more relief you provide to the lower value vehicles, the less relief you can provide to the rest of the um vehicles too.

Got it. The more relief you provide, the lower value vehicles, the less relief you can provide to upper, which may be okay again from a policy perspective, right? Um we also saw that in Arlington um they were also structuring it so that they were providing more relief to um hybrid or um efficient vehicles and also for uh uh vehicles that uh transport disabled people. Um so that's you know um as you were talking about policydriven um decisions that could be

I think we've mentioned that before. I I guess I'd be interested in looking at again rearing in case it helps operationally have us to process less tax relief, you know, paperwork, but also in case it helps accomplish policy objectives as well.

Letty, while we're on the car tax, just one thing when I was looking at these charts, like the charts are pretty rough in terms of it assumes the $15,700 value and average two vehicles per p per household and then it just applies it to the entirety of the chart. And so it's showing, you know, for $550,000 assessed value, the $63 is a increase on two vehicles and then $28 is the real estate decrease. So it's making the net impact 35. But in all likelihood, you might have a $550,000 real estate assessed value with only one car that could be assessed under $15,700. And so your net impact might be smaller, right? Like so the chart the chart was kind of

there's between the car and your house value probably, right? Or the one point, right? Like it's assuming two vehicles per household even though the average average was 1.75 like citywide or something like that. And so the the net impact unlike the solid waste fee like this doesn't seem quite as it seems more attenuated than the effect of that solid waste fee when you tie it to residential impact because of the way that the assumptions were done for the two charts.

Right? We didn't really have a good way, at least with the time that we had, to associate, you know, the values of vehicles and the number of vehicles for houses that were $550,000 versus a million dollars versus a million and a half. Um, so anything that we would do um would be um just numbers that we could present. Um so we did use the um the average vehicle and the average value as a basis. Um, okay. Um, I guess before we talk about other revenue levers, could we go to the slide that compares our revenue or AV growth and local revenue growth? I recall both are about 7% for us this year. 6.9% 6.9% each, right? Can we go to that one of those? It's either a slide or probably in budget Q&A or the point I'm trying to make is that that's actually quite remarkable and actually double what our neighbors are seeing. And so while we're looking at revenue levers, I would argue that we actually don't have a revenue issue. We have an expense issue. Uh and this year in particular, we have a police pay, J contracts, and those contractual things. I guess my question to Wyatt and team is do we expect similar kind of big costs next year? Because if we can at least maintain say 3 to 5% revenue growth, like we'll be able to pay for a lot more stuff without those big costs that surface. But I guess I am just hesitant to increase revenue levers when you're looking at revenue. actually of 7% of both your local economy as well as your real estate and then trying to solve for these kind of one-time hopefully one-year issue like cost issues.

As a general statement, I would think I think the council is going to want to have more levers next year than you do this year.

That was my second point is I don't know whether you want to use all those levers now because I think and this isn't the next point. If we can go to question number 29 where I asked this question two weeks ago which is what happens when you don't have new commercial revenue and I think David or Melissa put together kind of low medium high scenarios. If you haven't read budget Q&A it essentially says without new budget growth you're going to have either one and a half percent to 4%. And that's medium to best case scenario revenue. So the 7% revenue growth we're seeing is only going to be one and a half or 4% next year. And so if you're going to continue to expect five and a half or six percent pay for teachers and for general government, you're going to have other costs like you're going to need more revenue levers next year. And so I guess I would caution us to not immediately jump to all these revenue issues when I think this year is mostly a cost issue and not a revenue issue. Our revenues are actually quite healthy and double what our region's seeing. So I'll leave it at that.

Yeah. And I would say on that on that point, my my my thinking on this isn't just increasing revenue levers without my my thinking on this is recalibrating some of our taxes somewhat to account for the fact that the residential assessed values have been rising so much relative to the flatter commercial values. And a way of doing that is to think about frankly CNI tax and to understand a CNI tax supplement and to think about some of these other places where the residential tax base is potentially uh carrying costs it need not carry. If we were to update some of the places that have had maybe artificially low or lower tax structures than they should have relative to the amount of residential real estate tax increases we've seen.

Didn't we talk about in budget and finance that levying the CNI only impacts the ground floor, right? It doesn't actually get levied on the upper floor apartments. Yeah. Yeah. But it's still showing up as like $113,000 per penny. So, so I'm just saying it's it gets passed through the businesses, right? So, it's got a very similar effect as like impacting the businesses that you know we're hesitant to impact.

I know that. But at some point we're like impacting residents year over year and we're not impacting businesses at all if they haven't seen sort of their commercial assessed values rise at all. And so we've seen a thing that does this and it's increasing every year in terms of who's carrying the burden of increased growth. I think the big thing for me with CNI and budget and finance was the limitations on what we can use it on. It's and that's also in 17 here. It can't be used on WAN not just transportation. It's new roads. It you can't fix a road. You can't fix something. You can't it it's just incredibly limited. Um

and if we don't have the CI that we use for Wamada, how would we fund the WA bill? Cross our fingers for Richmond.

We use CNI equivalent. So you know what we've been exploring is could you have some of the expansion capital services it's a small number the analysis of it was really driven by what was the difficulty using those hurdles to make good keeping an eye on but I think this I remember when we when we had that conversation, I think was it at a budget and finance when you were explaining how that all worked and we some of us oh we didn't realize how restrictive it would it would be. So then you know lost some of its lure there.

That's the general assembly was very clear their intent was to build new things. roads.

Oh, sorry, Ta. I I do just want to clarify something that Wyatt said about using it for incremental um u additives in Wamada is that we did we did discuss this with Wamada some time ago and the difficulty is that they can't restrict they can't take money that is restricted from us because they might need to shift things around you know within their budget. So they can't promise that they're going to use, you know, a h 100,000 for expanded bus service because they might end up using that for maintaining bus service. Um so that is, you know, they they really want something that is unrestricted from us.

Even if we could allocate some of it to CNI, WA will not take that money from us.

They Yeah, they there's no way for them to really administer it so that it um it meets the requirement of the code. Um, we do put money towards the state WAMA capital fund. Um, and if we're able to use an equivalent amount of the CNI money, um, for regular transportation purposes, so basically it becomes unrestricted to these new um, things um, and and it's a a smaller amount um, of that. So basically you're saying that Arlington, Fairfax, and Fair City of Fairfax just have more of the page 11 budget answer. new road construction, new public trans construction, transportation projects, and operating costs and debt service on bonds related to this than we would ever have to justify it. And that it isn't worth looking at because of even in this last bucket of for bus service expansion, transit station improvement signals, bicycle infrastructure, and other multimotal streetscape improvements. It doesn't make sense for us to look at marginal CNI tax increases. I mean, we just I finished a conversation. We have we have no bicycle funding for like the next five years. Leaving the financial side apart, one of the things that we did when we this legislation was happening in 2013 is make sure the CNI had a very broad definition of transportation purposes, which is why we can use it on whatever we want locally, but the CNIE has that more restrictive use. So from a functionality standpoint and doing the CIE CIP the CIE to date has been more beneficial for the city

locally and it also doesn't but every penny in the CNIE is a penny that's whatever the chart the pie chart is is coming from 60% residential and 40% commercial as opposed to any pennies that are 100% commercial. Okay.

And and we could impose um incremental CNI tax. You don't have to assess the 12 a.5 cents. Um uh Fairfax, the city of Fairfax kind of ramped up their CNI tax over the last few years. Um um I haven't verified it, but I do think one of the things that they're able to use it on is um when they expand their bus service, then that's an operating cost that they can continually use their CNI money on. Um to Erin's question, could we follow up and understand how other jurisdictions are using their CNI tax so we have more concrete examples?

Here, we had gathered that earlier when we did the November workshop. So we'll have to go back to Car's notes and I think our challenge is that our system for bus is WA and it has to do the funding for DC, Maryland and Virginia where the local bus systems whether it's Q or connector they're all Virginia and they're all local. So they have that less of a accounting and man ministerial complexity.

Wyatt a question. So based on your opening statement about how council this year will also vote on FTE salary increases in the classification plan. Is that also things happening first reading? I think we'll do that by resolution. So

okay, but it's not like a first reading where we have to set like maximum number of FTEEs and we can only go down and not go up kind of thing. This gets into something attorney. We know tax rates can only go one way. But at any rate, we'll have it lined up. So everything

but by resolution. So we wouldn't need to like worry that we said 251 FTEES and then we made a change having an additional person to do it. The new process would be for I meant during budget season the first and second reading because we spent a lot of time worrying whether we have to redo first reading during budget cycle or not. And so that's as it relates to FTEES or salary percentages like do we have to worry about that as well or we're just doing it as a whole this tax rate and budget ordinance we're proposing to do compensation class resolution.

Okay. So we don't have to worry about the first second reading thing. That was that's my question. That's it. Okay. I I brought this up last week and I just want to clarify further. Last year, we set aside $500,000 in contingency, and that was either for expenses or human services needs. We haven't needed it for human services needs. We borrowed from it, right, to pay legal fees with the expectation that we would true it up at the end. Or no, I I think it's more simple than that. you okay you had $500,000 that you could use for whatever contingency came up. You have used

a portion of it and so that's done and now there's a remaining balance of what 300,000. Yeah. Okay. And that's in this fiscal year and it's baked into the tax rate. So it's right. Um, so for your awareness, we are deploying of that $500,000 contingency, we're deploying 200,000 of it to meet other needs in the in the government budget. And so the contingency's shrunk. Now it's uh only 267 267 for next year. That's right.

Correct. But my question is we set it aside for human services. That was the reason that was the reason I was willing to put that money into the tax rate. Well, that was one element of it. It was a revenue contingency and an expenditure. It Right. Right. Right. But it wasn't a pay unexpected fees contingency that it comes out of a different contingency. There is no other. There is no different. Okay. So it just it comes across to me as not quite exactly the reason why I was willing to approve it last year is what it was spent on. Okay. And when we approved it, my take on it was that we were going to true it up

with onetime money at the end of the year so that it was still held as money for emergency situations related to federal government situation. But we don't have to true it. That that's more like helping me understand it better in my, you know, the plus and minus in my brain. However, what we have left now, the 276 267,000

267 that's left, can that be held in a contingency so that we don't have to have it in the tax rate next year? Can we hold that in something and just say this is the contingency we set aside for FY2026. We didn't spend it all. So rather than toss it back into unspent funds, we can hold it for a contingency for next year like a car another Yeah. So that we don't have to have that in the tax rate that $276,000.

Um that's an option that's available to the council. Um, I would recommend keeping it in the operating budget, which is to say in the tax rate. And again, that is mainly looking forward, and maybe you hear this all the time, but I think FY28 is going to be a much more difficult budget than the FY27 budget is. And so having that additional 267,000 next year to solve what is going to be

um we have this remarkable assess value growth this year and it's impacting our taxpayers um but it is you know as indicated earlier we just have some very special costs that we're wrestling with but I think next year there's going to be a a bigger revenue problem. So contingency is I'm recommending give yourself some contingency partly to give yourself some room next year. And so what will we do with this year's $267,000 contingency if we get to the end of the year and we haven't needed it? That go into capital reserves? Does it go into

uh you can use it for paving? You can use it that you know you can use it for critical infrastructure. That's what I would recommend that you use it for and try, you know, but there will be, you know, um I think it's a very helpful thing for the city council to have that contingency as you go through a fiscal year, but up until this year, we've never had it. Right. It's true. Um and to me, the world is a much more uncertain place today than it was two years ago. Right. Right. might need it for fuel costs or you know like right unpredictable things that

Well, I mean the contingency to me I'm shocked that we haven't had it before because it takes it gives us flexibility. It gives us the agility that you can't lock everything in at the beginning of the year. But I do have a question about the uh contingency about big contingency versus small contingencies. Um when I look through here it seems like some of the departments there are small contingencies in there. Um there was a huge increase a big increase um for snow removal which I was wondering whether obviously this year we took a hit but that's not an a regular thing. This Jan the January snowstorm was not normal. It's but I looked in here and I I can't find it right now, but there was a significant increase in snow removal and I'm like, is that a reaction to to this to get more of a contingency when really that's something that should be in a more centralized contingency?

Yeah. I don't so 43% I don't think that's an accurate statement that there's a lot of contingencies in the budget and so I want to we can address that directly and maybe we can talk about snow because I think there's something probably 43% increase it's an internal bookkeeping uh thing happening about snow it's not a contingency

but what I what I will say is vacancy savings is our de facto contingency budget and that in the last two years where we've been clicking along at you know 11 to 15% vacancy rates in the organization that gave the organization some flexibility. you saw as you would appropriate are under spending it in September. Um we now are at 3% vacancy and um so that is another reason to have a contingency because you don't have that vacancy contingency

and like we had really high capital reserves right so I mean when you're thinking about contingencies it's like just now we're in this situation where our capital reserves are getting drawn down and we can't sort of so the same way now we need just be more we're being more explicit about our contingency instead of oh it was more of a off contingency. We're being more explicit about it and I think we need to be give us that flexibility.

This is inside baseball. But with with David So's approach to budgeting, which we've all kind of bought into, is he's um really pushed every department head to um not rely on vacancy savings, instead to budget, build your budget from the ground up. um everything you plan to do have a number associated with it and a plan to execute whereas you know I don't want to be you know it in the past that vacancy savings was always just sort of our escape route to solve problems as they came up through the year and we want to rely on that less. Can I just make a point when you were also talking about the next year being harder that it is it is pretty incredible like when you look at budget question and answer five talking about like we're in the situ we're in this situation that we're in having this conversation and we have had flat school enrollment growth right and we've had flat school enrollment growth because of some of you know the federal administration changes that are making it a challenge challging environment, but we're having like a very challenging conversation in the context of like flat or declining school enrollment. So, another like just another data point. If

you go to question 31, it'll show that the 3, five, and sevenyear trend is we're mostly flat.

Like we've kind of returned to pre-COVID numbers in terms of school enrollment, right? So the transfers and the general government budget growth have way exceeded population growth and seed enrollment growth. So what's not captured on here is obviously things have gotten more expensive, right? Salary compensation's gotten more expensive. That's partly the issue. But when your cost sometimes it should be driven based on the number of people you're serving, those numbers are hard to look at. I also um I think that population growth is lagging a bit. I think Welen Cooper is is uh

they're going to do some catching up with the city's population growth. Just one footnote to that. I was more talking about school growth.

May I just interject a couple of um items. Um so um uh regarding uh Mr. Agan's question on the snow removal. It is what um as Wyatt said, we were actually trueing up the true cost of the salary um towards um regular um just regular normal snow removal. As you can see in the budget, the actual for fiscal year 2025 was around $130,000. So we're kind of and we budgeted only 80,000 in FY26. Um so we're just kind of trueing that up. It's an allocation of the cost uh of the effort spent by our crew. It's not additional people that we're putting in there. It's just um an allocation of their effort.

Um and jumped out. And for uh Miss Conny's um regarding the remaining contingency, um I had misspoken. I thought you had meant like remaining contingency in the FY27 budget, but what's remaining in the FY26 contingency is $400,000. Yes.

Yeah, I do want to have a point of potential correction about, you know, whether we're adopting everything by resolution or ordinance. It we we might need to have a conversation about that. But I think the classification plan is anticipated by charter to be adopted by ordinance. Yeah. So it's hot. Okay. Thanks for that. Okay. Anything else on tax rate budget ordinance ahead of next week? Okay. I think we still have permits and then close session. Andy,

so this is going to be the speed speed part of the evening, right? Um, well, we already heard it once.

Yeah. So, so I wanted to take kind of as part of the budget conversation, take a few minutes tonight to talk, we'll hit on the permit fees again, but talk a little bit about organizationally one of the things we're proposing to change with code administration and then hit on economic development is another priority, you know, of council and kind of the things that we're working on within the the resources we've got in the budget that's being proposed to you all. So, um, we'll go ahead and skip forward. you know the permit process improvement plan on slide three. So touched on the this uh with you all last time we talked we'll talk about the organizational changes in a second technology strategy. We'll talk a little bit more at our budget work session next week. Um website improvements. So uh shout out to our OKCOM team as well as kind of them in particular but I think kind of staff from across the organization with the new website that's gone out. Um so so hopefully everybody's gotten a chance to see that. Um again permit specific improvements will follow later this year. Um so we'll move on from that. So so the next slide. So, uh, the key change that you'll see in the budget book, um, related to kind of, uh, the permits work is we're proposing to make a change to kind of our external operations structure next year where we would rather than have a department of community planning and economic development services, we would have a department of planning, a part which kind of intact with what we have today, a department of code administration, which would be combining our current zoning and building safety teams, our current economic development office, and then the Department of Public Works. Next slide. So, the key for this is we'll be creating a new director position to to lead the Department of Code Administration. And we want this person to be the kind of the change agent

leader for all of the improvements and and and various things that that we've talked about related to our permit processes. and understanding kind of our resource constraints within the city, we would internally compete this position. So it would be no net increase to to the FTEEs um kind of in this function. Um they'd be the lead for coordinating, you know, for coordination and process improvements on things like permits, as built drawings, certificates of occupancy, um and working with kind of other departments on those improvements um for project management and technology support. We would be looking at as part looking at that as part of our broader city process improvement strategy. and you know which we'll have another a couple different elements that we'll talk about next week. Um one of the things that that we're going to try is uh rotating temporary project assign assignments to start in the summer of 26. So provide development opportunities for staff from other parts of the city to come help in on special projects in the permit space. Working with the department of code administration would be one of the first ones we would try. Next slide please. So, permit fees. So, we talked about this last time. I I'm not really any new information here. Um, so I won't talk through the slides. If folks have questions on the the uh multitude of of uh fee changes in in the code text, we can we can touch on that. But next slide. Um while it's an increase to the majority of the fees, we have identified targeted fee reductions um where we you know to better align kind of our our um level of effort with a a more balanced and equitable set of fees for specific specific items. on the next slide. Um, one of the comments from our session last time was,

hey, we don't think we'll see a new uh, development, you know, being generating fees for the city in FY28. So, we've made an adjustment to this chart that's assumes that that that wouldn't happen until FY29. Um, so this is the permit fee schedule. I think since we last talked to to you all, um we did have a briefing with the uh Chamber of Commerce's legislative committee and I and I believe that they're they've talked about, you know, sending in a a letter with their feedback. So So we'll we'll all be on the lookout for that. Um let me see where I've got this here. So, so, uh, two of the things that we did I did talk about with them when I met with them a couple weeks ago was, um, they brought up how our business license process, not really on certificates of occupancy, but with smaller businesses, trying to do small projects in the city is difficult. And so, that's something that we'll we'll work on with our with our commissioner revenue peers and the permitting processes. And then the other point that they conveyed was, hey, like if we're going to increase these fees, we really want the city to consider making updates to the zoning code to eliminate some of these kind of uh board of zoning appeals um time and expenses that that businesses have to to uh incur to kind of navigate, you know, some what what at least in their view are out of date kind of elements of our zoning code. And so, um, some of those I think we've talked about before and and are areas of opportunity for us to work on going forward. So, that that was kind of it on kind of code administration and permit fees uh rushing through it. Any follow-up questions or should I keep going?

So, the economic development I'll talk about I just was before I plowed into that I was going to see if anybody had any questions on 11:30. Yeah.

I think as I recall people were generally supportive of updating the fee structure. I guess the one thing I would call out is I guess if we're going to rehaul all of our fees, I personally would love to make sure we are still attracting retaining small businesses. So if people are moving within the city, do they have to pay the same amount of fees as they were, you know, as they were a big business? I hopefully not. So I don't know what that specific fee looks like. And then the second one, we've also talked about encouraging green upgrades. And so people are putting in like a new green HVAC. Should they pay less? Can they pay less fees than if they were just updating a gas furnace? I don't know. Um if that is too nuanced for kind of where we are in the process, that's fine. But it just feels like a missed opportunity to not advance some policy objectives if we are rehauling all of our fee structures.

I think with kind of what we put in the staff report that there there's opportunities like that that for us to properly think them through. I think it becomes a next year conversation. I just had one quick question. The the new director position, you said internally compete, no net increase. So does that mean you're only looking at people within those two departments? That's not the intent. No. So if you hired somebody into that director position from another department, say DPW, would that mean DPW would leave an would lose an FTE or a head cap?

I think we would have to figure that out, right? Um, so I think you know as we've what we've talked about is the importance of kind of making the opportunity available to kind of everybody on the staff and can't really come to council and ask to fund a new director position kind of in the current environment. So um so this is the approach that that I think we want to take and you know um and depending on who's selected we would have to kind of work out kind of how to backfill responsibilities redistribute responsibilities um so that hopefully that makes sense. Okay I think we're good to move on.

Okay. All right. So economic development. So, um, so I think with the conversation we've had with the EDA and I think, you know, heard from council at the retreat, you know, kind of in January is, you know, supporting the existing local businesses in the city is important. And so, um, what I wanted to talk through with you all for a few minutes tonight is, you know, what we've tried to do from a staff standpoint is try and look at economic development as a whole city approach. Next slide. So um the economic development office is our kind of core function of that and um so I wanted to talk through kind of the what we've asked kind of what I've asked them to focus on here over the last six months. And so um we want to make sure we're connected and and know the businesses that we have here in the city. And so um so the office has kind of launched on a series of business visits. You can see the kind of postcard that they've created as a handout that gives kind of links to key city resources for businesses uh to reach out to. So the team has uh visited 60 businesses individually thus far in the city. So these are kind of sitdown kind of conversations um focusing on North and South Washington and Maple Avenue. Thus far, um we're we're in the process of translating the materials into Spanish and Vietnamese, and so we'll be visiting the Eden Center later this spring. Um and twothirds of those businesses we've signed up on our contact list for for future outreach uh and and kind of various communications. So, I think everybody's heard a good bit about the DORA. Um, so we're we're our application is into the ABC and we're targeting a pilot event in June. Um, we've got four EDA sponsored uh events

that were, you know, for for business promotion that we're doing this year. Restaurant week has already happened. We just started fitness month this month. So, um, hopefully everybody gets gets a chance to get their bingo card and and participate in that. Um, we're going to have a second restaurant week towards the end of the summer and then a fall and winter uh to be determined event. Each of those businesses are being funded out of uh funding from the EDA and are not coming out of uh the general general fund budget. We've also started monthly appearance walks with uh folks from the ED the economic development office, the zoning office, public works and planning. So, um, walking several blocks of the city and identifying various improvements, whether they need to be done by, uh, our staff or or or businesses. And so, we're we're working through that. Next slide. So, um, so beyond the EDO office, like we've got other folks involved. So, we're we're doing a a partnership with the Office of Communications on a multi-channel marketing plan to attract visitors to the city. So, um you know, this is a year-round visitor marketing approach. Um leveraging our Visit Falls Church website, social media, and other city channels. Um teams using a structured content calendar and campaigns to promote specials and events. Um, womenowned business month was last month and this month, uh, we're focusing on sustainability. So, trying to pick a different theme for for different businesses to plug into each month. So, planning. So, um, one of the things we've asked kind of the planning team, uh, to take on kind of later this year is to partner with the EDO, city manager's office, and other elements within city staff to help develop a high

level economic development vision and strategy for the city. So, um, thinking about kind of zoning considerations, allowable commercial uses, strategic tax changes, and so the intent is to kind of bring bring some suggestions along those lines back to the EDA later this year. Um, the planning department's always been a focal point for applicant inquiries and, uh, you know, they'll continue to play a leadership role for us on future development interests that the city receives. And finally on public works. So um looking to the public works team who's very busy as you all seemed heard earlier tonight to help project manage some of the signage and other improvements that we've been um striving to achieve. So the sign on the in the picture on the right is the new uh welcoming sign on Anenddale Road that we got installed in the last couple of weeks. Um we have a few others that that that we're working through. Uh the parklet signs, the long-awaited parklet signs that have been forever are going to be installed April 28th. Um and flower baskets are scheduled to be installed the second week of May. So um so chipping away at kind of that backlog. Next slide. And then finally looking to find ways to integrate bis the business community into ongoing city activities that we're already doing. So, um prioritizing city businesses for, you know, 2026 recreation and parks events. Um making some tweaks to our approach to the fall festival to make to to make it more uh conducive for for businesses to participate and um trying to promote the the uh the processes that the city has for supporting special events in the city, you know, and using those for businesses. So the special events permit application as well as renting Mr.

Brown's park. Next slide, last slide. So uh summing all the summarizing all the things we talked about tonight, you know, strategic priority for us is improving the city's permitting processes. The organizational change I think we've proposed will help bring the needed focus. um the permit fees we've talked about and then the whole city approach to economic development like with the EDO focusing on building relationships with businesses, you know, managing strategic partnerships with other departments and integrating businesses into our existing city activities. Great. Thank you. Questions or comments on economic development?

Dave, thanks. Um so to what extent is the economic development office out for example identifying uh regional restaurant chains that don't have a restaurant here or retail let's focus on retail what are we doing in terms of getting retail here

so I think at the moment we're not doing active steps to go recruit other you know businesses into the city like you've like you've uh posed the question. So, so the the focus for the last six to nine months has been like getting plugged in with our existing business community, the businesses that we've already have um and trying to understand kind of better ways that we can help them and integrate them into some of the activities that we're trying to do. Okay. I don't disagree with that, but I I do I I do wonder what we're actually doing in terms of trying to bring in a greater diversity particularly in the retail sector.

I think it I think it just it's a good suggestion. It becomes a a question of priorities and and bandwidth, right? Like which which tasks do we want everybody to focus on? And one other comment I think Laura sent it around. we've got a great article in Southern Living or some magazine like that and it would be very useful to pull out that article again. What is it that attracted that writer here and uh what what are we doing right and what are we doing wrong in terms of building on that? That's just a a small comment, but

I'm really interested in what we're doing to aggressively identify elements of the commercial um world that we don't have here. Understood. Other questions or input?

I think this is good. like as we've talked about needing to reimagine economic development while we kind of have a lull and no big real estate projects. Uh so building relationship with our ex existing small business is great. Um I think once we know how to walk I think I would like like Dave to kind of figure out how we build relationships at the regional and broader levels and what is our value proposition as a city like is it just come here because of restaurants come here be and live here for schools? Is it come here because we're 15inute city? Like what is our brand right? Because ultimately that is what attracts then business to come here is that you have a selling something that's really attractive. I've kind of proposed in the past we should be the best place for small business in the DMV. Like and if we think that we're going to attract more small businesses what is it that makes small businesses thrive here. Maybe it's great customer service, maybe it's low taxes, maybe it's a really great walkable environment, maybe it's all of those things. But I think that's part of that economic development strategy that you talked about developing with planning. But that seems to be the big missing thing, right? So that still to me seems like we need a more cohesive economic development strategy that includes be more attractive to certain commercial sectors. Do more marketing, brag more about ourselves, do placemaking, do events, like all the above. But for kind of year one of reimagining it, I think this is fine.

I think I think we agree with you, right? like um I think the you know what we've been trying to spend the spring on is getting the basics right you know and getting getting our rolodex of our existing businesses built up and um having a way to plug into them as we kind of develop that strategy to kind of make sure it all works.

One thing I would add to the list of um internal partnerships is so the egg hunt this year I kind of stumbled on. I have never seen Cherry Hill actually so packed. Um, between the good weather and I guess the programming that Reckon Parks had done beyond because it used to be that you like go to the egg hunt and it would be done in like five minutes, but people lingered for a good several hours because there were like activity stations. I think there were businesses that sponsored various tables. Now, I probably would have preferred a local business over Raising Kane's chicken that was there, but like that seems like another opportunity, right? Now that the egg hunt is a big regional destination that people are coming here for, maybe other small businesses want to participate in it that are, you know, people in the city.

And I think we we've done studies in the past and take a look at the small area plans and say, are there pieces in there that we want to activate? Especially the downtown area plan. We've got that quote entertainment district which we've never activated but bring the businesses in. There's we're the locations within the city that we want to see that economic development and academic academic economic activity. I think the small area plans actually have a have done a good job of saying hey we want this in this area. I mean, some of them are out have been a while, but we haven't necessarily activated them.

Thank you for the update. Thank you. Is there anything else before we get to close session? I presume we're not going to do council schedules tonight, so we can get to close session. Okay. Is this the new close session? Yes. Got it. Okay. So, if we're ready to go into close session, ignore this one. Um, I need a motion to go into close. Anybody want to move? I move we go into close session.

Upon a motion made by council member D, seconded by Flynn,

and passed by vote of city council. Council gosh, this is a long one. um went into close session pursuant to Virginia code 2.2-3711A1 for the discussion of the assignment appointment salaries or resignation of specific public officers appointees or employees of any public body specifically to discuss the city manager's resignation and two Virginia code 2.2-3711A6 2-3711A6 discussion or consideration of the investment of public funds where competition or bargaining is involved where if made publicly initially the financial interest of the governmental unit would be adversely affected specifically to consult with staff regarding retaining a recruitment firm for the city manager position. And three, Virginia code 2.2-3711A7 2-3711A7 for consultation with legal counsel and briefings by staff members or consultants pertaining to actual or probable litigation where such consultation or briefing an open meeting would adversely affect the negotiating or litigating posture of the public body specifically concerning the following two separate legal items. A, the collection of unpaid sewer availability fees from a commercial property owner and B, pending litigation concerning the development known as Pearson Square. Okay. Council member Aen,

yes. Connelly, yes. DS, yes. Flynn, yes. Snider, yeah. Under Hill is not here anymore. Hardy, yes. Um, I know that we were going to give Sharon a chance to just update us in open session and I realized that after I read the close session motion. Um, do we have to go into close session right now or So, you're you're suggesting that we take that one particular item off the close session agenda. Well, I just know whether she would have anything she wants to say publicly before we all break and go into Oh, I see. I see. Um, okay. I don't want have to read it all over again. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Or can we do it after the close session? That's a good idea.

Okay. Well, we're going into close at 11:45 p.m. then. Sorry, Sharon.

I'm just volunteering you. Uh, and seconded by Flynn. Flynn. And passed by a vote of city council. Council reconvene in open session. Aen, yes. Connelly, yes. DS, yes. Flynn, yes. Snider, yes. Under Hill's not here. Hardy, yes. We are coming out at 10:03 a.m. Uh, now this is the certification. And upon a motion made by Connley, seconded by Towns and passed upon affirmative roll call vote in open session. It was certified that one only public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements and two only such public business matters as were identified in the motion by which the closed meeting was convened, heard, discussed, or considered in the closed session or meeting by the body. Aen, yes. Connelly,

yes. DS, yes. Flynn, yes. Snider, yeah. Underh Hill's not here. Hardy, yes. Okay, I think we have one final motion to make before we adjourn. Does anyone have that emotion? I move that we authorize the city attorney to take all actions necessary for collection of availability fees. We have a second. Second. Connelly on the second. Call roll. Aen. Yes. Connelly. Yes. DS. Yes. Flynn. Yes. Snider. Yeah. Hardy. Yes. So 6. Let's adjourn. Good night all. Thank you. Thank you staff for staying so late.