City Council - Regular Meeting

I'll do that. That one.

Okay. All right. public.

Yeah. First day. Here you go. Library. Thank you. Okay. Set on the

Good evening everybody. Welcome to the Monday, April 13th meeting of the city council. Wanted to call the meeting to order. Let's start with roll call, please. Madam clerk. Yes. Mr. Aen, here. Miss Connley here. Miss DS here, Miss Flynn here, Mr. Snyder here, Miss Underh Hill here, and Mayor Hardy here. Thank you, council. If everyone could rise and join us in the pledge of allegiance,

United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, liberty and justice for all. May I have a motion to adopt tonight's meeting agenda, please? I move to adopt the meeting agenda. Is there a second? Second. All in favor? Any nos? Meeting agenda is adopted. Uh it is the beginning of proclamation and so we have four tonight. Uh first up is Arbor Day in the city and Miss Flynn will do the honors.

Thank you. Whereas the city of false church is known for the elegance and beauty of its many native trees and plantings. And whereas in 1892 the first observance of Arbor Day in the Commonwealth of Virginia took place in Falls Church at the Old Jefferson School organized by the Village Improvement Society. And whereas each April since 1974, Falls Church has held a citywide celebration of Arbor Day, encouraging all community members to plant and care for native trees. And whereas the city of Falls Church has been designated a tree city USA by the National Arbor Day Foundation for 48 consecutive years, the longest in Virginia. And whereas trees release oxygen into the atmosphere, absorb carbon dioxide, provide habitats for wildlife, prevent soil erosion from wind and water, filter pollutants before they enter waterways, and help lower heating and cooling costs by regulating temperatures. And whereas the quirkus genus, also known as the oak tree, has been selected as the 2026 tree of the year by the false church urban forestry commission for its representation of the national tree of the United States since 2004 and its dominance in ecosystems throughout much of North America from Pacific coast evergreen forests to eastern temperate deciduous forests and southwestern oak pinion juniper woodlands. And whereas Falls Church continues to manage its urban forest for the current and future environmental, social, and economic benefits it provides, will plant 250 oak saplings in our parks, and Vipus will give away 250 oak saplings for the Virginia 250 celebration. Now, therefore, I, Letty Hardy, mayor of the city of Falls Church, Virginia, do hereby recognize the value that trees provide our community and hereby proclaim April 25th, 2026 as Arbor Day. in the city of Falls Church and urged the community to join in the celebration of that day and plant and care for and enjoy your trees to celebrate.

Thank you all. Welcome, Mr. Prince, our arborist.

Good afternoon, council. Thank you so much for having me here tonight and thank you for proclaiming Arbor Day. Um, we like to invite everybody uh council and the community uh to Arper Day 2026 in Cherry Hill Park at 11:30 a.m. Um, we'll we'll start by giving trees away at the farmers market and then move back into the park a little bit later that evening or that that morning. And in um in light of the oak tree being our tree of the year, I'll share a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Um, the creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn. And so with that, I'd also like to share the new uh Tree City USA flag that we already have flying out front.

This one's this one's a little bit more appropriately sized for our flag pole out there, so I thought I would share that with the council this evening, too. Thank you. Great.

We have a proclamation. Do you would you like to come up to receive the proclamation? And we can do a proper photo up here maybe with the flag. So, if you all didn't catch that, we we need to plant 250 trees on Arbor Day. So, this is a call for volunteers to come out. Hopefully, it'll be a beautiful weekend like it was this past weekend. Our second proclamation is declaring April 19th to 20 uh to 25th as library week in the city of false church. And we're going to have uh Miss Downs do the honors as the lays on to library. Thank you, Mary Hardy. Whereas libraries spark creativity, fuel imagination, and inspire lifelong learning, offering a space where individuals of all ages can explore new ideas and find their joy. And whereas libraries serve as vibrant community hubs, connecting people with knowledge, technology, and resources while fostering civic engagement and critical thinking. And whereas libraries provide free and equitable access to books, digital tools, and innovative programming, ensuring that all individuals have the support they need to thrive. And whereas libraries partner with schools, businesses, and organizations to maximize resources and expand access to essential services,

strengthening the entire community. And whereas libraries empower job seekers and entrepreneurs by providing access to training and opportunities that support career growth and economic success. And whereas libraries nurture young minds through literacy initiatives and programs, fostering a lifelong love of discovery. And whereas libraries protect the right to read and explore without censorship, standing as champions of intellectual freedom. And whereas dedicated librarians and library workers provide welcoming spaces that inspire discovery and collaboration for all. And whereas libraries across the country are joining together to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the American Library Association and National Library Week under the theme find your joy. Now therefore, I, Letty Hardy, mayor of the city of Falls Church, Virginia, do hereby proclaim the week of April 19th to 25th, 2026 as Library Week in the city of Falls Church and encourage residents to visit their library, the Mary Riley Styles Public Library to find what brings them joy and celebrate the library's role in supporting community, inspiring discovery, and promoting literacy. Looks like we have Miss Dotsler and other members of the library staff and board. Welcome. Thank you so much, city council, and thank you for your continued support of libraries. Um, it's also National Poetry Month. I'm not gonna Hello. I'll try one more time. Thank you so much for your continued support of libraries. I really appreciate you. It's also National Poetry Month and I'm not going to force you to do a proclamation about that. Uh, but I would like to read you just a very short poem that I read over the loudspeaker on April 1st and dedicated to library staff. This poem is called My First Memory of Libraries by Nikki Giovani. This is my first memory. A big room with heavy wooden tables that sat

on creaky wood floor. A line of green shades, banker's lights down the center, heavy oak chairs that were too low. Or maybe I was simply too short for me to sit in and read. So my first book was always big. In the foyer up four steps, a semicircle desk. To the left, the card catalog. On the right, newspapers draped over what looked like a quilt rack. Magazine's face out from the wall. The welcoming smile of my librarian. The anticipation in my heart. All those books. Another world just waiting at my fingertips. Thank you. Thank you all. Would you like to come up and receive the proclamation? Okay, our third one tonight is a proclamation declaring April 22nd, 2026 as Earth Day in the city of Falls Church. And Miss Connelly will do the honors. Earth Day was first celebrated on April 22nd, 1970 to inspire Americans to take action against the deterioration of the environment. And Earth Day has become a global movement marked by more than a billion people every year as a day of action to change human behavior and create global, national, and local policy changes. The latest synthesis report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change details how coordinated efforts to scale up renewable energy sources, overhaul transportation systems,

restructure cities, improve agriculture, and pull carbon from the air could put the planet on a more sustainable path while improving living standards around the globe. The theme for Earth Day 2026 is our power, our planet. Reminding people that progress in protecting the environment is real, resilient, and ongoing despite recent uncertainty. The city council has adopted a community energy action plan and a government operations energy action plan, reaffirming the council's commitment to take action to participate in the regional effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to continue to advocate for regional, state, and federal support to promote and protect the environment. And achieving these goals will require continued commitment to finding opportunities for renewable energy adoption, efficiency investments, decarbonization, and environmental stewardship. Now, therefore, I, Letty Hardy, mayor of the city of Falls Church, Virginia, do hereby proclaim April 22nd, 2026 as Earth Day in the city of Falls Church and encourage staff, residents, businesses, and organizations to commit to take actions on Earth Day 2026 and in the future to invest a more sustainable and resilient future. Welcome, Mr. Lawrence.

All right. Uh hello, council. Thank you for taking the time tonight uh to acknowledge Earth Day in the city of Falls Church. Uh so as we continue to promote environmental sustainability in the city uh including the implementation of the community energy action plan and government energy action plan, sorry, government operations energy action plan. Uh we appreciate the strong support from city council. Um, so during Earth Day and during Earth Week, on the surrounding days, we'll be highlighting some of the city's green initiatives on social media and sharing ways for everyone to get involved. So, please be on the lookout for that. And thanks, and I'm looking forward to celebrating Earth Day with everyone. Great. Thank you. Would you like to come up? I'd love to.

And I see we have a member of FCAN, Mr. Ward, would you like to join us? No. Okay. Last but not least is a proclamation declaring the week of April 12th to April 18th as public safety telecommunicators week in the city of Falls Church. And Mr. Snder will read that.

Thank you very much, Madame Mayor. As a longtime first responder, this means a lot to me. Um, and there's so much truth in this um that I'm very pleased to read it. Whereas public safety telecommunicators are the vital link between the public and emergency services during times of crisis. And whereas these dedicated professionals answer emergency and non-emergency calls and provide calm, compassionate, and life-saving assistance to those in need. And whereas they demonstrate exceptional skill, professionalism, and commitment while managing high stress situations that directly impact the safety of the first responders in the community. And whereas their work requires extensive training, sound judgment, technical expertise, and the ability to remain composed under pressure 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. And whereas the city of Falls Church recognizes the dedication and sacrifice of its public safety telecommunicators and the essential role they play in safeguarding lives and property.

Now therefore, I, Letty Hardy, mayor of the city of Falls Church, Virginia, do hereby proclaim the week of April 12th to April 18th as public safety telecommunicators week in the city of Falls Church. We encourage all residents to join in honoring and expressing appreciation for the public safety telecommunicators of the city of Falls Church Police Department. Welcome, Chief.

Thank you. Good evening, council. Uh thank you very much for the proclamation. We have a few of our uh dispatchers here. They're one of our few uh staff in the city that work 24/7. They're always here 365 days a year. And uh they not only answer our phone calls, they dispatch our officers and they're the lifeline for our police officers that are out there, they also answer our front door and keep council safe in here by watching the videos and making sure everything is going well. So we just appreciate them and I appreciate your recognition of them. So I'll call them up and uh we can do the honors. Great.

Thank you. Thank you all. Okay, I think that is it for proclamation. tonight. Um, I had skipped the conflicts of interest declaration so we can get all of these guests going. But if we want to move back to that item in the agenda because I know we do have budget tonight and we probably have two conflicts of interest declarations or one

one. Okay, Mary Beth, are you ready? The city council is discussing tonight the city's proposed FY2027 budget. I am an employee of the Falls Church City School Board which will be affected by the proposed budget budget. Because I am only one employee among many who may realize a reasonably foreseeable direct or indirect benefit from the proposed ordinance, I'm allowed to participate as a council member in this matter under the conflict of interest act. After consideration, I am electing to participate because I am confident in my ability to participate fairly, objectively, and in the public interest. Thank you. Uh do we have any members in the audience to take an oath of office?

We don't. Okay. Let's move on to public comment then. Can you start with a summary of written comments, please?

Yes. And these are um written comments received uh since your last action meeting on the budget NCIP. The Environmental Sustainability Council provided funding recommendations for the proposed uh capital improvements program on the Mary Ellen Henderson Middle School roof replacement and community center rooftop solar. Um Aaron Good asks that council increase funding for repaving the bike master plan for bike master plan imple implementation and uh for sidewalk construction using a CNI tax. Um, I also ask that uh the budget prioritize road safety improvements at problem sites and asks that the city sign anou with Nova Parks on clearing snow from the W and OD trail. Uh, William Thompson gave feedback on assessment and tax rates for single family homes in relation to the proposed budget. The Railroad Cottages Condominium Board of Directors gave feedback on the proposed CIP program, including the West End Park playground replacement, Shrieve Road shared shared use path, Hok shared use path, and the Gordon Road Triangle redevelopment. On transportation, Jared Anderson wrote with continued concerns about near misses at Anandale and Gundry and requested interventions such as temporary rubber speed bumps or plastic flexi post to narrow the intersection. Casey Dantis, Rohini Winters, James Hamilton, and Steven Mostow submitted comments requesting prompt action on Grove Avenue's trafficcoming request given a recent cyclist and motorist accident at Grove and West. Paul Roststein wrote about pedestrian visibility at crosswalks between Mary Ellen Henderson Middle School and Trader Joe's. Um, in other comments, Sarah Mallalerie asked that council consider

rank choice voting for the city and false church forward wrote in support of comprehensive parking reform and eliminating parking minimums. Thank you. Thank you. And how about now receive a public comment either live or virtually? Yes, we have two folks in um the pews who are um signed up to speak and we do have a three minute um period time period for public comments and I'll put the timer up. Um our first person is going to be Allison Ashlin. Um and second is John Ward. Thank you.

Uh thank you for having me. I wasn't really thinking I would speak tonight, so I scribbled this out and I'll do my best hopefully to fix any of my typos in here. Um, I came because I was um thinking that it would be a good idea to share a little bit about uh an experience that I've been having as a fired federal employee, laid off illegally is another way of saying that. Um, I'm a bit non-traditional. I'm a single mother. My daughter's here with me. Uh, I just wanted to come and share a little bit about what's been going on and expectation that there are probably other feds in similar situations. I think a lot of us have been holding on hoping that we'll find a new job and really stretched through 2025 to stay afloat and now we're hitting 26 and it's getting tougher. Um, today I found out uh just a couple of hours ago that I've been denied for a spot in the affordable dwelling unit program. Uh for four months I've been waiting, biting my nails, hoping that an acceptance would come for that. I while trying to save as much money as possible, there's a cuto off limit of $40,000. And that's a very generous amount as far as I would ever guess. I would have not thought many people would have to worry about that. But after I got a lump sum payout for my years in service and trying to balance keeping that money, I was denied from the program based on some stuff that was going on in January because I had it then. I don't have it now and I'm not going to have it in the future. But there's a three-year sorry, a three-month look back at our finances. So, it's a technicality and it's something that, you know, I absolutely agree is a correct decision to make based on the current rules and policies that exist, but it's something that I want to highlight as potentially a disqualifier for most feds um who have spent our life savings trying to keep afloat and and save up for what was our career path. um as I thought maybe it would come back by now and hasn't. I'm not real sure what the future holds for me and my child. So, I I just thought

that maybe a review of something like that could be useful for the county. I I city I don't I really don't know how these policies get put in place. Um but I do think it's a really important topic. I'm I'm guessing I'm kind of in the lower rungs of some of the feds who are still trying to hold on to living in this city. I'm on the special committee, the special education committee. Um, I don't want to leave the city because my child benefits from special education. I really don't want to have to relocate for that. But that's a tough decision I'll probably be facing this summer. Um, I think I had one little note here. Um, when I came to the last housing committee meeting, I uh I was lucky enough to see the one where Arlington County and Fairfax County actually came and they did like a joint discussion of how they could be learning from each other. And it was there that I learned that actually Fairfax and Arlington have double the number of units per capita that our town does. Um and so that's I think probably exacerbating a couple of issues. I did all of my voting um back in November based on fair housing issues, too. Um with this the city's history around redlinining and prices skyrocketing with land prices, I I really hope you can pay close attention to this as an issue going forward. Thank you.

Thank you. Next we have John Ward.

Good evening. John Ward, uh 335 Riley Street, just speaking on my own behalf tonight. Um I would like to say I'd always encourage every first reading of a budget to coincide with a reading of the Earth Day proclamation. I think that would be great. Um, I'm asking city council tonight to find a way to fund the rooftop solar on the community center this coming year and not put it off another uh another year simply because there's a lot of financial risks that come into play putting it off until May or July of 2027. First, if the project is not completed by the end of 2027, the federal tax credit is lost. And that's a $40,000 hit right there. Uh secondly, if you remember noticed when the residential tax credits expired about four months ago as they were ending the end of 2025, there was a huge rush of demand. Installers stopped taking orders in like August and September. And even then, a lot of them still some of them didn't make the deadline to get the projects installed. So, it makes sense that in August of 2027, we should expect a similar rush of residences trying to get lease projects installed on their homes, uh, commercial and places like municipal buildings getting installations done, rushed and ordered. And it may be very tough to try to put this off until May of 2027 with funding available in July 1st of 2027 to try to then try and sneak all that in in the last few months of that calendar year. So, just for that reason alone, uh, I want to advocate that you try and see if you can get it, move it forward. Uh, I'm also asking you to look beyond the the annual year-by-year accounting process. A couple years ago, Dominion Energy Solutions looked at all the roofs in the city uh, schools and the government buildings, and they projected that the community center project would pay for itself. The solar panels, they would pay for themselves in about 16 years. I think that's a little optimistic, especially given you want to have we

have the staff time on top of the actual capital cost, but definitely within the 25 year life frame lifetime of the panels, they should recoup their investment and pay for themselves and we basically be getting it for little or no cost. A small part of the government operations interaction plan would be implemented. Um, got a little bit of time left. I do want to say I think a few years ago you all adopted the as you mentioned the community energy plan the government op energy plan not because you thought it was going to make money or you had to I think this council at the time sensed a moral imperative we do a we inflict a lot of damage around the world based on our day-to-day lives and how we burning fossil fuels around and and it's tens of thousands of dollars easily just for the schools operation more of yet in the government hundreds of thousands millions actually at the community level tens millions at the community level every year. Things like the ADU program, things like uh other u you know other HHS programs, things like this. There's a moral imperative for the community to step up and do and do the right thing. And I asked you to do that as soon as possible this year. Thank you.

Thank you. Just two. Yes. Thank you. Great. Uh I know that we also have scheduled our architecture advisory board annual report. So, I think I see Miss Schmidt in the audience. Welcome.

Hi, everybody. You can hear me. Fabulous. Um, I am Heather Schmidt, the chairwoman of the architectural advisory board uh here for Frost Church City. Um, staff is actually here with me as well because they are more uh attuned to claiming the wonderful things that happened in 2025 than I am. We've only recently actually had a quorum to be able to do anything. So, I am really looking forward to 2026. I think I can probably speak more to that than 2025. So, if you guys have any questions, that would be good.

Do we have questions for the AB? No, I was just going to comment that I am the liaison to the AAB and I it's a interesting uh board definitely and interesting stuff comes in there and I think they're doing a great job and I'm excited to see what else they come up with and what else they uh make happen. But I've I've asked her all my questions so I just want to put that out there. Well, if you guys don't have questions, I have propositions. So, you guys go first. Miss Andrea looks like she's got some.

I'll just I'll just uh also briefly make a comment. Maybe a question will come out of it. Um but uh I was the leazison for 2025, so last year. Um and so yeah, thank you for all your work, especially while we had trouble with quorum and other things like that. Um I'm very excited for the urban uh design guidelines that are coming out. So, I think that there's going to be a lot more for you all to to work on in the coming year. Um, but maybe this is what you were going to address. I I would be curious to hear what your top priorities are going forward into 2026. Brilliant. Um, so, uh, I know everyone probably has had my background spiel on enforcable design guidelines. I think it's really, really important. I know we have a lot of technical suggestions in our master plans, our small area plans, all that good stuff. Uh, I feel like there needs to be kind of an umbrella, I don't want to say authority, but um something that the city can really speak to when it comes to the forward movement of what we look like. Um, if that's not enforcable, we really don't have much of a purpose here. Um, nobody likes to get advice, but people will respond being told what to do. So um it's kind of vital that false church city remains the sustainable you know movement for the future of architecture. We can only go up from here literally physically speaking. Um so the master plan that is coming up for review it's very important that we focus on more than just the streetscape but also the street upscape and um how that will actually impact our sustainability efforts our the the next I don't know how we how long we do our comprehensive plans for but the last one I worked on was 25 years so the next comprehensive plan that we have for the city I would like it to be anchored in you know an aesthetic that is not just envirment mental but also

architecturally pleasing. So great. Thank you. Sure. Um so I I am curious um because I know so you work in Leburg, correct? Um when you talk about enforcable um from other places you've worked, what what does enforceable look like? Is that something that could be implemented here? And I did want to just add a quick note um that there's tons of research and studies that people are more supportive of housing

um when it's aesthetically pleasing. And so even though it can add cost to buildings and design and building design and whatever else, uh it can actually make it much more sustainable in the long run in terms of building community support. So um from my perspective where I deeply care about housing, um I think how things look is just an incredible aspect of that. So anyway, with that said, and then another another positive is people coming in to build housing

like to have clear standards because rather than going back and forth a million times and tweaking every little detail, having a clear set of standards actually helps move the process along faster. So two two reasons to do it. Um, and I'm curious as to like how you can get to something that's enforceable. Very good points and very good questions. Um, so, uh, again, I work for the town of Leburg and I actually do historic preservation and, uh, new architectural, um, enforcement. So, the way our, uh, town works, we actually have, uh, there was years ago, uh, a zoning amendment that created both the historic district and the, um, we call it the gateway district. And both are architectural control districts. We haven't adopted a set of guidelines that actually ensure that, you know, one, your historic home is being treated properly and renovated properly and not definitely not being bulldoed, but also not being altered to the point of, you know, was that built in 1820 or 1990. Um, but yes, more questions and answers. I would love to have what another minute I think. Is that the three minute mark? Okay.

Oh, shoot. Sorry. No, it's okay. Okay, we ask question for the report, but then you get a time period. So, I just didn't turn it off.

Okay, thanks. We actually don't time folks at Leburg, so this is kind of refreshing. It's um because we have people that can just come up and keep on going. So, it's kind of nice. It's not as stressful as I thought it would be either. Um back to that. Sorry. Uh so, we ensure that you know your your Best Buy that comes in doesn't look like a Best Buy. It looks like a Best Buy that's that you want to look at, for lack of a better phrase. Um, and same thing for, you know, our our high-rise mixed use. It comes into Leburg, downtown Leburg, the historic district, looking like it is not inappropriately 1820, but it's also not horrifically 2020. It's a very good blend of design style, and it meshes with zoning code, it meshes with building code. It we somehow just make it all work. And what that ensures is that we as the town or you as the city would have the ability to go, "No, Mr. Developer, dude. It has to look this way." Like, I'm sorry, you can't have, you know, wallto-wall aluminum framed windows. You actually have to have some depth. You have to have some definition. You have to have something that people want to look at so they actually go inside the buildings.

And so that's actually written into the code itself. our zoning ordinance. Yes, it enforces the regulatory design guidelines of our districts. Okay. Very interesting. Thank you. Great. Anything else for you guys? We look forward to the work coming from the AB this year. Okay. Yep. Any else? Thank you guys very much. One more seat open. You still have one more seat open, correct? Uh yes, that is correct. Uh we have recently filled our um one of two remaining seats. She's wonderful and fabulous. I don't think she's here this evening, but she's a great new member. Uh we do have a seat opening up in May this year and an alternate.

Yes. So, so about urban design guidelines, you can join the AB. Yes, exactly. Any any design guidelines knowledge, it'd be great to have you. Thank you. She mentioned the new person. Do we have that on the consent for today? I didn't It's usually at the end of the month at last meeting. Oh, last meeting. Okay. Sorry, Arthur. We good or Okay, great. Thank you guys very much. Thank you. Okay, let's move on to the report of the city manager, Mr. Shields.

Thank you, council. I have three things to report on. Uh first, we'll just start for the public's uh information. The city has updated uh the city website, and so we invite everybody to come and take a look if you haven't already. Our intention uh is to really give the city a worldclass digital front door for uh that's welcoming uh for people to come in and learn uh what they need to know about the city government, city programs, uh things uh ways that you can get involved in the city with speed, clarity, and ease of use whether you're on your desktop or on your phone. And I want to thank the gov ops committee, the uh the city council's gov ops committee, I think got a briefing from Mary Katherine Chase, our OKCOM's director about a year ago in which we laid out a plan for updating the web page and also articulated the need for a dedicated staff member to be the city's website manager. the council responded to that and supported that request and uh Joshua Suprnat was hired for that purpose and I think has just done a great job and and working with all city staff uh so that uh the information is meeting that standard. Um econ um Americans with Disabilities Act um compliance is also a big priority with this upgrade. datadriven architecture. So the things that the data tells us that people are looking for, we pull that forward so people can access it. And we uh have refined search engine optimization to make it easier rather than navigating through things. You can put in the search and and go directly to what what you're looking for. And we're soliciting feedback. So if you do have thoughts on the website, uh there is a a a click you can make and share that feedback with the team. and we're constantly uh iterating on it to uh to make improvements there. So, I wanted to note that first in in my report. Uh and then second, we're continuing to have uh

public meetings on Virginia Village, imagining um what the future of Virginia Village could be. And I want to thank all those who came on Saturday. Um and our uh we'll have a session on Tuesday, tomorrow at 700 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. at Columbia Baptist Church. and our planning team and our housing team are uh we have we had one round of public input of what people would like to see at Virginia Village. We've captured that. We've written it out and now we'd like to kind of reconfirm with sort of the broad ideas that were articulated that they um are what people uh thought they said that we're reflecting back what what they said. So, we're sharing that and then the next step will be to come to council with some draft with a report from these sessions and draft language that the council can start to to consider for updates to our small area plans and ultimately code uh zoning code language for the Virginia village area. So, encourage people to participate in the session tomorrow night from 7 to 9 at Columbia Baptist Church. And the third thing uh to report on is uh in the council packet is my letter of resignation and my recommendation to the council is that the council accept that uh letter of resignation. Um I noted to the mayor earlier before this meeting. Tonight is not a night for big speeches. There'll be time for that maybe uh in the future. Uh but I did want to just reiterate my thank you to the city council for the honor of serving as your city manager for the past 20 years. and also thank you for uh and and others in the community for the kind words that have been sent uh to me uh since I announced my resignation. So, thank you.

Great. Uh well, we do per the city attorney, we do have to accept his retirement request even if we don't want to. Um so I I will entertain a motion, I guess, from council. On that note, I'll move to accept Mr. Shields's retirement as city manager. Is there a second? I'll second in letting you off the hook. Okay, I guess we should do it by roll call. So, you call roll, please. Mr. Aan, yes. Miss Connley, yes. Miss DS, yes. Miss Flynn, yes. Mr. Snider, is that a yes?

Miss Underh Hill, yes. Mayor Hardy, yes. With reluctance as well. Motion carries seven to zero. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Shields. I think like you said, we'll have more time to properly feed you, but I think we all uh without saying it that we really are grateful and this community is grateful for kind of your steady hand at guiding the city for 20 years. I was thinking about adjectives to best describe and I think steady was definitely one that has come to mind from so many people. Um I think the way you thoughtfully lead and your deep sense of responsibility for the city and the community is very evident in the way you've led the city. So, we're grateful for that. uh not so grateful for the five months of work we have ahead to find your replacement, but uh we'll get on to that soon. Uh I think we also were planning to give a brief update um about the search process. I know that um since your announcement, we've been actively advancing the process and I think we'll get a more formal recommendation from HR with the executive search firm to follow when that's ready, but right now we're still in the due diligence space. But I don't know whether staff has any um additional comments to add on that point. I know we've had a number of meetings about it among council already. No, I appreciate the council's uh hard work on this and and we I what I think I've heard from the city council is that you're very committed to being very transparent about this uh this process and give the public and staff frequent updates and uh and that's much appreciated.

Some more to come. Hopefully, we will have the search term announced soon and then the process uh to follow as well. So, thank you for everyone's patience and work to come. Uh we also next have probably council requests. It's back to the regular scheduled agenda. Who's got council requests? Mr. Snider. Madame Mayor, we had uh requests from citizens in two um major intersections. Uh Grove um the Grove Street um area and um and uh Annadel and Gundry.

Yeah. Uh and Anadale and Gundry. And I'm wondering how um we can best respond to those requests and ask staff to make any comments about it. Um so first just on the uh you know for uh the community's awareness there was an a there was a crash at uh the WOD and Grove um uh with a cyclist uh that was injured and transported to hospital uh because of the uh crash with an accident of that nature. There is there uh the police department commissioned a full accident reconstruction and so we'll get that report from the Virginia State Police and assess it and um um in the meantime u you know all sympathies to uh those injured in that crash. I know that that's um you know a very difficult thing to to go through and so we we extend our sympathies to all involved. Um, from a public policy perspective, uh, we'll we'll, uh, continue the discussion with, uh, city police, engineering staff, and the parks authority, um, to respond to, uh, questions and suggestions or comments that have come from the community about that intersection.

One of the questions I received um, is when we put stop signs at the other intersections with the WOD, that one was not included. Do you remember the context why Grove and WD was included? the uh I think the close proximity to West Street um was a concern at that specific location uh to have a stop sign about you know I think probably 50 ft from that other intersection. Um but we'll take a look at that. That's one of the questions that we've been asked and uh and it certainly merits a look and a response. Yeah. Likewise, I think the Great Falls intersection doesn't have one. And so I think for consistency sometimes you wonder like gosh, if you have one at pretty much every intersection but two,

does that actually cause more confusion for cyclist? Right. I do remember from my time on the CACT that the the crossings were originally part of the dual trails and they got split out onto a later timeline. and and my understanding is that that may have been part of it because the Grove crossing is not part of the the dual trails. So, I think it's it never kind of got added in Mhm.

to that. And I think um I speaking about that one, which was another request I was going to have, is um I would like to understand how that work on that could be added to um DBW safe streets list that they talked about. Um, I know there's some questions from uh the neighborhood traffic coming, but the safe streets I think might be a faster way for us to get some response there. Yeah, I I was uh walking on that trail this weekend and it occurred to me that um you know if you're not paying attention also some of the oncoming traffic, you know, obviously has stop signs and stops, but then like I think the one at Great Falls doesn't and there's a sign that says look both ways, but it'll probably be good to have a sign that says traffic does not is not stopping, you know. So I I just I think it's confusing

when some of these um you know even myself just walking and biking is much more dangerous I feel and and um you know I was like okay wait this one they're not stopping okay and the next one they are stopping. So um I think we should do all or not you know just be consistent but again definitely that one at Great Falls because that's such a busy street. I think at the least we should have some sort of signage that says oncom oncoming traffic is not stopping. Um because the the stop before that they are and so I think people are under this false sense of security that the cars might be stopping. Thanks. Now I know that Grove actually had had an active NTC case. Is that related to this intersection?

I believe that was farther from just up farther up. Um, one of the things that's going on with Grove is that with the opening of Founders Row, I think there was an expectation that traffic might increase on West coming into Founders Row. And it seems to be that people from MLAN and that direction are coming in on on Grove. And so, it's seen a significant uptick in in traffic since the opening of Founders Row.

Yeah. And I when I was doornocking this fall and talking to some folks on Grove, I think I I agree with you, Mr. Aan. I think it's people that are coming into the city from Haycock. Um, and then one of the gentlemen I spoke with said, I think there already is there already are speed humps on that. Um, but this gentleman suggested like maybe even we just had signage like welcome to the little city or this you're entering a neighborhood, slow down, something like that because they're flying off a Haycock and then they get into a residential but they're not slowing down. So they have speed bumps already. They do have speed bumps. Yes, they do. And they're happy with the speed bones for sure.

From my understanding, right, they were putting up their own highlighter people, you know, on the block, right? The little signs, but that it wasn't it wasn't just out of city residents, but there there was also a concern, especially during the construction and the broad street slowdowns of traffic coming from the schools and the high school campus that was coming down Grove to bypass the backups on Broad. Um and I know that I think at some points in time they had reached out to the schools as well to remind you know during dismissal times and morning and evening issues with kind of using neighborhood streets as cutthroughs. But I remember in those conversations it extended down to concerns about the crossing because of you know the kids using it as pathways to school. So last fall on one of my last meetings with the CACT, the um neighborhood group came to the CIC and in a tag team of public comment made a very nice a very comprehensive presentation about Grove and some of the things they would like to see in the situation. So I would encourage people to go look at that one. It was also interesting the way they got themselves a whole bunch of time by tag teaming each person for three minutes. It did. Good job.

Okay. And I think the other one that Mr. Snider raised is Anadil and Gundry, which I know we've received public comment about before, but um Mr. Shields, the way I've responded to that one is that I think the commitment I had heard from staff is given that we've done several rounds of traffic calming already. The next step was measuring how those uh efforts have improved or didn't improve. And I think that was planned for May. Is that still the plan? And I had heard it was actually even happening sooner than May, but I'm not sure what the status is. Annie Del Gundry. So, I don't have any information tonight, but I will follow up and uh and get back with the council and with uh Mr. Anderson on that. Great. Thank you.

Uh can I just jump in one one thing? You know, so I think a lot of us up here um are hoping that once the roundabout is in that that will slow down traffic or maybe dissuade people from using that as a cut through, but that might not be for a while that that project's finished. So I I believe Mr. Anderson talked about maybe flexi post. I know there's a concern about the speed humps on that because it's a emergency route. Um but maybe flexi posts which are um more of a light solution to further narrow that street might might be something. I I think that's one of the things he had suggested in his letter. The the other thing that's come up a couple times and I know um staff has tried this several years ago is the signs in the middle of the crosswalks um right in the middle and

the paddles that say yeah I think there was it didn't work out so well a few years ago but I think it warrants maybe this intersection especially trying that again something right in the middle of the road I think would really help

just just A quick few notes. Um, so we've been discussing in CACT, um, I guess the revamp of the NTC program and also like how we're going to do traffic calming and other things like that. Um, I guess the problem is we we agreed to take a pause, but then the problem is we're getting, you know, we're having injuries and crashes and uh, complaints and so trying to balance how we handle that. Hopefully we'll have the data from in Gundry soon so that can like feed and and so what we've been talking about is how do we do this as a data driven thing um and then also have data driven solutions um I like the idea I mean you know I can say like I like this I like that but making sure that the things that we implement actually work um so I like Mr. Hagen's idea of, you know, putting things in the middle of the road that catch his attention. But, um, I guess generally, uh, you know, at least for Gundry and other things like that, more signs often times don't lead to like behavioral solutions. Like, you actually have to have some sort of physical change to to actually make any change in how drivers or even cyclists or or pedestrians behave. Um and so yeah, but that's where hopefully we can have datadriven solutions as well as data that goes into which streets we address first. Um but it's I'm feeling it's like every time I hear a complaint, I'm like I I want to address it right now. Um so I'm I'm even feeling conflicted because I know we promised

that we take a pause on on a lot of these things. I was going to call us out on this because I remember when we got together in our retreat um we had a discussion where we said hey we have to resist the urge to jump on everything with an idea or a request or what about this what about that because if we want staff to focus on the areas with the most serious issues this is a big distraction now that said I totally empathize with the residents who live in Anandel Gundry I run through those intersections I observe it firsthand and so I get why that those residents feel concerned but I think I think the challenge that we're asking staff to take on is like bring us the data sooner so we can say yes this is a high-risisk intersection. It does need more attention or it doesn't compared to here are the other ones that are actually higher priority because at least then we can kind of say no not yet with some data rather than us saying you know arbitrarily and being you know

callous to their I'm not I'm not sure if the rapid response team stuff is on hold or like where where other thing other because this was specifically uh NTC so I don't know if other projects are still going and how these can get integrated into that. So, um, well, I was just going to ask about Broad Street because I think you had brought us data at the end of the year that we actually saw higher crashes, like again using data on Broad Street. And so, again, not that we only rely on crash data because we want to rely on near misses and the self-reports of where there's concern before there are accidents and crashes, but if Broad Street is actually where we saw increased number of crashes with injuries, I kind of wanted to go to staff me like what are we doing on Broad Street on those places that actually have actual injuries.

So, I and I agree. I know we all talked about at the um at our retreat and we committed I know that was one of the things you talked about Mr. Shields that that's tough on you and the staff when we you know we get feedback and then we react and I I understand that. Um but I I know I've said this before but I do think in addition to data I do feel like when thing the the thing I think that gets me about Gundry and Anendale is that's a huge bus stop right there. And so that that's to me that's just like what I don't know I feel like data is definitely part of it but you know having having a huge group of little kids there to me also should sort of bump it up to the priority list

and that's that's where at least um from my view working with CCT um you know it would hope that there would be a clear list of categories which is there's a bus stop here and you know um I don't know a thousand people living within like you know this many uh square I would say square miles but that's the entire city that's many square blocks um and so you know population density how many kids are there how many bus stops you know how many near misses how many actually crashes happen and so having all of that that we can combine to say like this is the number one place that we need to address but yeah that's where it's like we might not get that information until much later and so it feels like we need should be doing something now especially like going back to the um grove like there was somebody that was hit. That's a problem. Um and it kind of feels bad to me to wait on it. So anyway, um I'm all that to say I'm feeling really conflicted. Hopefully we'll have u data on Ann and Dale and Gundry soon, but um it also I guess I don't know if you have any thoughts on this, Wyatt, that you'd be willing to share. Well, um I I do think it's good for public policy to be backed up with data and and u and not sort of too driven by individual incidents. But let's look at the data on uh the questions for tonight and get back to

SL. I had two I had two council requests. One is also a transportation related request and it's that we did um also receive that email from Mr. Rothstein and you know there is a benefit to having his eyes and ears over at the West Falls campus and letting us know of potential pedestrian issues. Um, and so having sent the photograph of that ramp area or exit or exit area, um, I did want to follow up on kind of whose responsibility it is to be over there and make sure that there aren't, you know, blind spots on the pedestrian crossings based on any kind of overgrowth that's happening given that it was originally a similar issue at Grove and West coming down from the bridge as to the different sight lines and there was, you know, um, care that was taken to the landscaping. there, but whether something similar needs to be done um over where those photographs were if that's you know the city's responsibility to maintain that property that would otherwise kind of go regularly unnoticed. Um and I have one other but is okay and then my other one is following up from Miss Alen's comment. I think that when we took up, you know, emergency rent relief, we had looked at the policies and the caps recognizing that there were going to potentially be sort of different populations of individuals in need of sort of human um social safety nets. And so I guess I would make a request whether it's through housing commission or health and human services that it likely does make sense to just look at the ADU policy and revisit that and see if it is working given you know current needs that we are seeing and that residents are experiencing similarly to when we took up the cap as to the emergency rental um assistance in light of current events. So, just a kind of request for a look at that um in light of tonight's comment.

Yeah, I'll second that. I had request to kind of look at the contingency contingency fund because I think that's exactly the situation we'd want to take care of. I'll not for this public speaker but others who might be in a similar situation. Oh, yeah. But I think this one was the ADU policy as to like the look back and sort of what what goes into the look back or there reasons to kind of have departures from it and within which what sort of parameters. But yeah, analogous to how we had treated um kind of looks for different ways. So as a as a global kind of reason to look at the policy when it's coming up for its normal revisiting regardless. Right. Mr. Snder.

Thank you very much, Madame Mayor. Uh to follow up on that, um the Council of Governments uh maintains a um sort of a web uh based job placement for former federal employees. And I would ask that the appropriate um agency here in the city um gather some information on that and make sure our citizens know that that's available. That's an important u tool that's been used already quite a lot successfully and may offer uh an additional tool that our um laid off uh federal employees might find useful.

Okay. Anything else? Mr. Reagan,

this is a slower transportation one. Um kind of relates back to something we discussed a few months ago. Uh recently, a few weeks ago, I saw a couple of the G coup scooters abandoned on the edge of the city. Um and today, walking into the meeting, there were two on the W side of the WOD. I mean, they're politely parked and stuff, but I'm wondering what the situation is with GU. I I don't know if that's how you pronounce it. Um, I think the report we got on scooters that they were only operating in Alexandria, so they must have moved into Arlington. I've just been seeing more frequent um of that particular brand right at the border. So I I don't know what's going on and but it seems to be a bunch

and I don't either. We'll try to find out. Yeah. The only scooters I've seen so far in the city are privately owned ones. Mhm. has it been a long we do we see the sort of odd uh lime and you know they they do show up and we have to call the company but it's pretty rare because uh you know they're geofenced out currently and then that will change uh if our pilot program we just probably just want to check with Ju and see what make sure they're good.

Senator Held, do you have another request? Um, I was just curious to follow up on um John Ward's comments um and the uh solar on the community center rooftop. Do you know like where where we stand with that? Um is it like is it just that we don't have the money in this budget? Um and I guess given like his concerns about fiscal year 2027. uh I guess what's the recommendation in terms of being able to I guess implement something like that?

So uh we do not have money in the budget for that. Um and our reasoning is uh one uh the roof is not at end of life yet. Um and the schools are doing an a facility assessment and so with that facility assessment we'll have kind of the whole basket of what the school's needs are. Then I think we'll have a clear picture about when that roof needs to be replaced and kind of where it rates with all the other things that they're probably going to identify in that assessment. Uh and when that happens, that would be the opportunity to put solar on Mary and Henderson. I think that was the school's intent always. Uh but to do so when the roof is replaced.

Um okay. So then that might mean though that we're not necessarily able to get certain credits or grants and other things like that for it. Uh that's possible. And so um uh but it's sort of driven by that big cost to you know the main cost is replace the roof and it's not at its end of life yet. And so I think that's kind of the most important financial consideration of why we've not recommended it at this. Okay. So actually like even with so once we find out what the what the roof replacement schedule is that could be five years in the future or something like that. So it wouldn't even necessarily be fiscal year 2027 is what I'm understanding. Plus we're talking about the community center roof though and not the ME roof,

right? Yeah. Yeah. He mentioned the community I was referring entirely to Marielle and community center. Community center. Yeah. And so community center um we don't have that in the CIP either. I don't know it's so that one is a a funding issue and it is part of the reductions that we made with the reduction of the capital reserves because of phase 2 westfalls.

Right. Okay. So um but we were looking to put solar on the community center roof. Is the community center roof in good enough shape for solar? Yeah, that is okay. So, that would be something that we could take advantage of if we had the money to do it. Okay. And then, do you happen to remember about how much money that would be that we need? Um, I'm going to look to Mr. Young. He might uh Mr. Why don't we get back with the council like Mr. Stone? Oh, okay. I have I have it right here. It's 182,000 in our sixyear CIP for FY28. 182,000. Yes. But it's unfunded. So, Okay. Oh. Oh, for FY28.

For FY28. Okay. Yeah, gotcha. Which would be the next year. I think his concern was though that we would start the RFP late and then you might run into supply chain issues and then you'd miss the credits and so he recommended starting it earlier if I heard his public comment correctly. Okay. So, yes, but it's unfunded. But it's still unfunded either way.

Yeah, I guess the Well, I mean, I understand that an individual is different than the government. Uh but what I did with my solar panels is that you know they were they are debt financed and so but they are paying for themselves in terms of reduced electricity costs. So basically my electricity costs are zero but I'm paying the monthly payment for the solar panels and which is less than what the electricity costs were. Um and so I'm curious like is there a way to um finance some of these solar panels through debt and have them pay pay for themselves over a 20-year period? So generally for debt we want to take out larger amounts. Usually for smaller amounts such as this debt generally would not be a good option. Okay.

So my recommendation is uh we would have to find other ways to fund this project. Um but of course we could pursue debt but I think in the long run it'll cost the city more uh if we pursue the debt option. Gotcha. Um but also if we don't get the credits then that also costs the city more too. Correct. Yeah. So you'd have to calculate that. But I mean when whenever you go out to issue debt there's fees associated with that. So you know if you want to do the math it could almost even out but again I'd have to take a closer look at how much we get in terms of credits versus how much we'd have to pay to issue debt. Okay. Yes.

Gotcha. I mean, that's where I'm already concerned about our road paving and all sorts of other things. I have no idea where we get $182,000 from. Um, but yeah, I mean, this this is sort of another thing that I believe is a really important investment for our future. Um, so I don't know if anybody else has thoughts on that. No, I I I agree. But, you know, there to me the it was um it was a little jarring that conversation we had about the masked arms last week, you know, and and so I think there are some things that to me are safety issues that we need to as a city make sure that that's taken care of. But I agree with you, you know, it's just and I know you agree too. It's just it's just hard. There's only so much money, right? Yeah, I think in the 2 by two squares of important and urgent, we always get to the urgent and important and then there's a bunch of things that are important but doesn't feel as urgent and it's you know very easy you know when times are tough to not fund those and so I think that's always the struggle that we have is there you know of course there many things that are important and but they don't feel as urgent so

it's just a shame because you know if we lose the tax credits that's unfortunate I don't I mean who knows maybe there'll be more tax credits in a few years maybe but uh it it feels a little bit unfortunate to miss this round of tax credits. Agreed. Any other council requests? Okay. Uh I think we're ready to move on to business on the agenda then. Madam clerk, can you call the first item?

Yes. Um the items we're calling are all on first reading this evening. We have no scheduled public hearings. Uh the first item is TO26-03 ordinance fixing and determining the budget of expenditures and revenues and appropriating funds for expenditure for fiscal year 2027 across the following funds. General fund, sewer fund, storm water fund, cable access fund, affordable housing fund, school operating fund, school community service fund, school food service fund, community development authority, and capital improvement program funds, and adopting the FY 2027 to FY2032 capital improvements program. And um mayor and council, we do plan to speak to all six budget related items together. And um so I don't know if we need to read them all now. They all will have an individual vote of course, but uh I can read them all if you'd like me to read them. And yes, they will need a vote on each of the items when we get to the first reading. So um secondly we have TO26-04 ordinance setting the rate of tax levy on real estate for tax year 2027 and on personal property machinery and tools and all other property segregated by law for local taxation in the city of Falls Church Virginia for tax year 2026. Uh, we have TO26-05, ordinance setting the storm water utility billing unit rate in accordance with chapter 42, article 7 of the code of the city of Falls Church, Virginia, as of July 1, 2026. We have TO26-06, ordinance to amend the code of the city of Falls Church, chapter 42, utilities,

article 3, sewers, section 42-172, availability charge to increase sewer service and availability charges. Uh we have TO26-07 ordinance setting the solid waste collection fee in accordance with chapter 34 solid waste section 34-3 residential solid waste collection of the code of the city of Falls Church Virginia to be effective July 1, 2026. And finally, we have TO26-12 ordinance to amend chapter 15 fees, article one in general, article two, Department of Development Services, and article three, Department of Public Works of the Code of the City of Falls Church to adjust adjust development related fees to remove reference to copy fees and adjust the fee for return checks. Thank you.

And so, um, our finance director, David So, is going to give a a very short, I think, five or six slide, uh, summary of of what's before the city council and uh, some follow-ups to the work session discussion last week. I'll turn it over to Mr. So,

thank you, Mr. Shields. Uh, good evening, Mayor Hardy, and members of council. Uh so tonight uh we have six uh summary of ordinances ordinances for first reading. Uh and just to recap uh what's in these ordinances uh starting with uh TO26-03 um city is requesting uh approval for general fund budget of 134.3 million uh as well as a six-year CIP total of 162.5 million. Uh in TO026-04 uh we are requesting approval for real estate tax of $18 and 12 cent uh which is keeping it flat to uh prior year for the business personal property and machinery and tools tax rates at the rate of $5 per $100 of assessed values. That again will be flat compared to prior years. uh for the vehicles at the rate of $5 per $100 of assessed value. Uh that will be advertised at a rate 20 cents higher uh than in prior year. Um moving on to TO026-05 the storm water uh the billing rate of 2336 per 200 ft is requested. Um, in TO026-06, uh, the sewer commodity rate of $11.71 is requested. In TO26-07, uh we are requesting to set the solid waste fee of uh $246 per year for the 35gallon and the $348 for the large 6465gallon refuse cart. And finally, the uh

TO26-08. Uh those rates will vary uh but it's an estimated total increase of 30%. So all details are uh outlined in the staff reports. Uh moving on to the next slide. Uh so there was a request from city council on the tax revenue levers that are available. And so here the staff has outlined four which can be moved uh both up or down. And so we've outlined uh in the first row the rate. So uh what rate changes uh can be made uh incrementally and the next uh row is how much revenue whether up or down uh the rate changes we'll have. So starting with the real estate tax for every half penny uh will generate or reduce revenue by $340,000. Uh for the personal property tax, it's about $17,000 per penny. Uh for the commercial and industrial tax, also known as CNI, it's about $116,000 uh per penny. And there are um some restrictions with the CNI tax revenue. Uh and finally, for every uh tenth of a percent on the meals tax, it's about $159,000. Uh and so, uh I figured the next question that council members would ask is what is the maximum revenue that we could generate? And so in the third row, I've outlined, uh kind of the caps that um are restricted to some of these. Some of these may be more arbitrary caps. Um but starting with real estate, uh there is no maximum. Um and then going moving

on to personal property tax, it's up to 20 cents. Um but uh and that would generate about a total of $340,000 of tax revenue. Uh the next one is the CNI tax. You can go up to 12.5 cents and that would generate uh a little over 1.4 million of revenues. And finally, with the meals tax, if you were to increase it by uh one percentage point, you would get about close to 1.6 million of revenues. Uh and finally, um what I thought would be helpful uh is to kind of showcase the ratio of the impact of the tax revenue uh from a resident to commercial. And so you can see outlined below in the real estate tax, we're about 2/3 uh residential, one-third commercial. Uh and for personal property tax, since this is only on vehicles, it's closer to uh 90% uh in residential and a little under 10% for commercials. Uh the CNI tax would be strictly a commercial impact. Uh and finally for the meals tax, um that one will vary because we have a lot of non-residents who do dine at our restaurants and so there's no data available to determine the split. Um but it I would just like to mention that um in my opinion this would have the least amount of impact to the community of Falls Church. But again I have no data available to to showcase what that split would be. So uh that's the levers that are available for consideration for this year's budget. Um finally on the last slide uh uh there was a calculation that was determined uh to estimate what the

impact to a false church resident's tax bill would be. And so applying all these rate changes, uh assessed value changes, uh the staff has put together an estimate of how much of an increase uh an annual tax bill tax bill will be for residents. So starting with the real estate tax um it would be about a $611 uh increase. Um and again some of the assumptions we use, solid waste, we we use the 65gallon bin, so that would be a $12 increase. Sanitary sewer would be about $27 increase. Storm water would be $23 increase. And the last piece uh is with property tax, vehicles depreciate. And so I think that's one item that um during this whole assessment we were putting together that we we recognize that with all the conversation with this personal property tax uh depreciation will have an impact to uh in the long term the the amount of revenue that is generated um from these vehicles. So that will have a negative impact or a savings to the residents of $94. And that was determined based upon uh an average depreciation of vehicles uh to be about roughly 10%. And so since we know that the average vehicle tax is about $470 um and some of the data that we've got uh we we found that uh a significant number of residents here have two vehicles uh or more. And so we we used two as kind of the average uh to determine the savings that a resident will have. So in total the tax bill will increase uh by $579.

Mr. So um yes does a depreciation already taking effect the 20 cent uh increase we're considering on the car tax? No. So this does not include the 20 increase the $94 assumes all the rates stay flat. Correct. That's assuming a flat tax rate for personal property. Do we know if it goes up to five whether essentially the depreciation and the increase in rate cancel out or do we have a sense of Yeah. Uh we can go back and determine that. Um yeah I'd have to go back and see the value of the vehicles based upon those numbers.

Okay. Thank you. And I would be interested in knowing what the replacement rate is on vehicles, you know, the turnover because even in tough times there are people buying new cars and so that shoots way up for that individual, but that's an option that's their choice to do.

I would just second sort of what Mr. Agan said, which is that property tax number assumes that someone's getting the same car that's depreciating. So the replacement rate is one way to do it. But there are also plenty of people that are buying new cars that are jumping up. And again, that's their choice to do. Make a apples to apples comparison on that one. And so in terms of the personal property tax rate, um the budget assumes no change to the to the car tax part of the personal property uh tax rate. At the work session a week ago, the city council discussed street maintenance among other things. And one of the uh key requests of the council was some options for increasing the city's level of spending on street maintenance. And so the reason uh we're presenting it at $5 as opposed to $480 is on the theory of giving the council some additional flexibility between now and final adoption on May 11th. Um typically car tax is subject to the revenue sharing principles with the schools. So 340,000 um traditionally would be split 50/50 with the schools. I have shared with the superintendent about some of the city council's thinking about the need for street maintenance and I put on the table that it's possible the city council would like to kind of uh have that 100% dedicated to street uh maintenance. Um, and I I relayed that just to reflecting the conversation last week, but I also said we've got a lot of ground to travel between now and May 11th and the council may ultimately working together, we might find some other options and right now this is just a point of discussion. So, I wanted to share uh share that.

Thank you, Miss Lyn.

Um, yeah, I guess I'll just put out for I'll preview what my thoughts are on the budget. Um it is it's before we're voting on it and you know further discussion. Um as you said I think we still have a way to go in this budget process. As I think about first reading I'm really thinking about them um and the different rates as ceilings but not necessarily where we're going to result. And that's based on you know what we've seen of the budget so far the deep dives that we've been able to do with different departments. um important conversations that we still need to have around affordable housing and how that's reflected in the budget um the public safety budget that many of us are interested in hearing about on the 27th. And so I sort of think about tonight um again as ceilings and we'll end up supporting some increased rates but don't necessarily feel that that reflects my ultimate view of where it is that we're going to fall. But I want that flexibility in hearing from the different departments and thinking about what the different needs are and thinking about how the different rates relate to one another and if there are increases where there could be potential decreases but not wanting to take those steps yet until I understand the full budget and where pressures are on departments or you know things that we don't even yet have visibility into in terms of concerns that you know may exist that aren't funded. Um, and so for purposes of tonight, I would support keeping the real estate tax flat for going up to the five on the personal property tax. But really, um, with an eye to doing that for a policy reason of having a dedicated funding budget in the street paving, like street maintenance budget in the operating budget. um that

that 20 cents would be dedicated to that purpose if we're imposing it. And also, you know, would reflect policy choices about cars and how many cars people are driving in the city. As you know, we increase walkability or the nature of the investments that people are making in cars or the heaviness of cars depending on the size of vehicles people need for the amount of driving that they're doing and um different household needs that they have. Um for commercial and industrial tax, I still am interested in commercial and industrial tax. Uh I am not looking to increase it by 12 1.5 cents, but think that it would help our budget at the margins. Um so even I think the staff reports reflected something like being able to use up to $300,000 for transportation purposes. um and seeing things like the missing links program for sidewalks, the unfunded bike infrastructure, um you know, that go to both walkability and improvements in the city, and then also links to kind of business district areas and kind of creating different corridors that are multimodal. um would actually think about imposing something like a 2.5 cent um CNI tax which would bring in revenues I think of about $282,500 so short of the $300,000 that could be put for other transportation purposes. Um, and also would want to do that as a way to start recalibrating what has been the steep residential increase in residential assessed values versus the less steep and in some places declining um, commercial assessed values on various properties. And so, um, as I think about this, thinking about where are there ways that we could potentially

reduce the real estate tax rate by half a penny, but get that back in, you know, the personal property taxes, a dedicated paving budget, and then maybe, you know, start addressing areas that are unfunded like bike and sidewalk infrastructure through, you know, commercial assessments, especially given the decreased penny that we had on the solid waste that kind of we didn't recoup from those properties as well as any sort of adjustments that we make on real estate tax. Um, so that's where I stand tonight in terms of my thinking and it will still change um in response to further public comment and further thinking I do about it as well as um the further information we get from staff as to various aspects of the budget.

Thank you. People have other thoughts, Miss DS.

Uh thank you, Madame Mayor. Uh I have to echo uh Miss Flynn. Um I am thinking along those same lines. Uh I um you know I would like to better understand um you know and I have to this is on me. I have to do a little bit more research on exactly the CNI how that money you know can be used. Um but I I do support raising that the personal property to to five. And um you know in terms of I am very supportive of the revenue share. I will say that if we were to get, you know, an extra couple hundred thousand, um, you know, in partnership with the schools, you know, our school buses tear up the streets, you know, so I'm I'm hoping that maybe if if we use that money towards paving, this would be a partnership of sort of like something that we can all benefit from. Um, and so I would just throw that out there. But I I definitely do support our our revenue share. But in this sense again um the paving is something that our whole you know community including including our school community would would benefit from. So um but you know there's more to talk more to talk about that I know. Um but generally miss I would echo Miss Flynn's comments that was sort of I was thinking along those same lines. Thank you.

Miss Andre Hill just had a quick question. And I noticed that in our Q&A document there was a question that wasn't answered um that I was very curious about which was um can the tax on vehicles go towards the weight of the vehicle rather than just the vehicle value? Um specifically because uh the wear on our roads is not linear. It's actually um significantly more the heavier the vehicle is. I think I probably do owe you an answer on that and I did start to look at that and believe the answer is no. We can't classify vehicles based on weight. Oh, interesting. Uh but I will finalize that answer and get it to everyone on council.

Okay. Thank you. I just curious if there's any information on that. Other thoughts, Mr. Aen? So um I had asked a question uh about whether CNI tax could be used for infrastructure replacement. I know we can't use it for infrastructure maintenance such as paving, but if hardware is being fully replaced, in particular, I'm thinking about the signal arms, um, where you take the whole thing down, you put up a new one, can CNI be used for that purpose, and obviously we have a strong need there.

So, I think the the main watch word to keep in mind is expansion. Uh the whole point of the state authority was to ease congestion and so they want expanded transportation facilities. Now there's details in that but that's the big picture to always keep in mind.

Could could CNI be applied towards the what we pay to fund Metro? So for a portion of CAP uh WA capital uh which is for the expansion of the system or for new bus lines there uh potentially are however it's as we noted before the so you know we've explored it we've kind of poked and prodded at it the main problem is WA does not want to accept dollars from localities that have strings attached and this money has strings attached and that's So I think that's an obstacle. Okay. So it would be very difficult to use CNI to pay for mada

um I guess budget. Okay.

Yeah. So I would like to follow up with that. to say, let's put a pin in that to say this may be something we want to be pushing for in Richmond next legislative to see if CNI can be expanded to include infrastructure maintenance or replacement or just give us a little bit more because that that would that's something Richmond can do. Um, and I think uh other municipalities will probably get behind that cuz they're probably running to something similar, but it doesn't help us for this year's budget. Um, the um uh I also wanted to state that I'm very supportive of the revenue share with the schools. Uh I appreciate some of the information in the Q&A while I'm trying to understand it. uh one thing I noticed was that it has been managed of an incremental way. So it's like last year's plus whatever chain the delta and that's the new one. Um usually my when when managing something that way uh you have to go back and reconcile reconcile it periodically and so I'd be would be interested in knowing where the the rev share stands with a reconciliation cuz the incremental approach things get weird. That's true with everything where you when you take a delta approach. Um, so I would be interested in understanding that a little better. And I really don't want to um raise the meals tax, but I I still feel like we want to keep the option open even if we don't do it this year be partially because it it's right now everything in the city. We're providing a lot of services. We're providing our our streets. We're providing a lot entirely paid for by our

residents. Um, and the only lever we have, so I'm not sure that I really want to do it, but if we don't advertise it to some degree, we might we wouldn't have that option moving forward, and we may not do it. But I wanted to bring that up again. Okay. Other thoughts, Mr. Cider? Thank you, Madam Mayor. I I think the basic foundation of the budget is pretty sound. Um I don't agree with increasing the city council uh salary. So, I'm sure we can discuss that more later. Um um but other than that, fundamentally sound. uh always cases where things funded you not funded that you wish you could. But we we don't live in um in an environment where where um we can keep pressing people. Um and I would like to agree with council member Aen. Um the meals tax is something I'd like to look at uh because it um is imposed on people who live outside the city as well as those who live inside. And the fact of the matter is that um um that has some for that reason is something that I think we ought to consider at this point. Um the increase in personal property tax of course hits only our citizens. So, um, I'd like to see some consideration of the meals tax perhaps as part of or in place of some of the

other taxes that are purely on our citizens. I do recognize that that we're mending um some issues with our restaurants, but um this is a pass through tax. it's listed as that and our restaurants are given some money for collecting this tax. So, um I really feel that that ought to be in the mix as opposed to more taxes on our residents. So, that a couple of the suggestions that I have at this point. Thanks. I think everyone's gone except Miss Connie. Do you have thoughts or um I'm not really that interested in the CNI tax. It seems like the description in our budget Q&A there really isn't anything we can use it for and CNIE seems to do that take care of that one. Um, I would be willing to go higher on first reading on the meals tax and the personal property tax with some further discussion um, in the next couple weeks to figure out exactly where we want that all to be.

Um, I didn't fully share my thoughts. I just was asking questions. So, I'd like to uh just share where where my head is at right now. Um, I'm fine with going higher and then obviously bringing things down as we go along. I think it just gives us more options. Uh, so that's my my main stance. Um, I'm uh deeply concerned about road paving uh mass arms. I mean, you just go down the list of things that are going to be problems in in the long run. Um, and so I really would like to find more revenue somewhere for that. um whether that be from the the car tax um I do know that we had an increased revenue forecast and so figuring out something that I would be I'd like to explore over the next month or so as we have discussions with the schools what are the needs like urgent needs of the schools that they're not funding right now um and then be able to weight that with how does that compare to the what I see as the 20% debt that are taking on by not funding the roads or not by not um uh repaving the roads. Um and so that might be a reason to better fund our road paving budget um and not necessarily share car tax or um or maybe even the increased revenue forecast with the schools. And so figuring out what that balance is what the absolute what I consider urgent needs of the city are um versus like nice to haves. Um, and so I think there's ways to work with the schools to figure out um what the right balance is. I I just texted my budget buddy to find out what the what the urgent needs of the schools are. So that would be that would be helpful for me to me to better understand. Um, in terms of the meals tax, you know, obviously like I I'm not considering, you know, how much meals tax I'm paying when I go out to a restaurant. That's not something top of mind. But if we increase the meals tax to 100%, I guarantee you that's something that so there is a

balance in terms of what the uh meals tax is and and how that affects people um eating at our restaurants. Um and I know that there's already tension with um uh a restaurant community and and how they feel that they're being supported by the city. So that's something that I'm very um uh very aware of. Uh, and so one thing that I've been thinking about is if we were to increase the meals tax, are there ways to, it doesn't have, it wouldn't be one for one because we're trying to raise revenue, but uh, decrease uh, be pole or decrease the personal property for restaurants because they have to tally up every single chair and table and every every little thing in their restaurant every year. And that's like a huge um expense and and project that they have to take on. And so are there ways to I guess give a little bit back to the restaurant community or and I say restaurants, but it's retail. It's all it's all businesses. Um and so especially our smaller businesses. Um while also uh raising the mail tax if if we did decide to go that route, there might be other le levers that we could pull. Um that's all I have to say. Thank you.

Can I can I jump in real quick? Um, Miss Under Hill, it's funny. I feel like you might have been spying on my cell phone today because I actually sent that exact text to a school board member and said it would be helpful for us to know like again I think I'm coming from the perspective of LA last week was pretty sobering for I think all of us and you know we're not just paving but we're also again I had like sort of like visions of oh my gosh our mass has ary now what have one fell you know so um and so I actually texted a school board member today and I said it would be helpful if we knew what are some of like your unfunded things that are really a priority and then maybe we could work to together to to kind of hammer this out, you know, and so that's what I was but but it's interesting that you said that cuz I I that I sent that same exact test just a better and and you know I was on the school board. I understand that you know city council can't really this is how you should spend money. I get that but just in partnership together like let's talk about some of these urgent needs on both sides and try to figure it out. And I guess to your point, um, everybody in the city uses the roads, including the school buses and and parents driving their kids and everything like that. So making sure that our roads are in good condition and that our mast arms aren't falling over, I think is is something that benefits absolutely every single person in the city. Aaron, I

just have a response on I'll continue to make my plug for CNI tax and as I understand the process and moving forward, it may be something that we could potentially add to a work session next week to have further conversation about it if CNI tax would have to be its own ordinance. Regardless, to me, you know, when we're talking about urgent needs, these are not like simply unfunded one-time needs, but we're talking about urgent recurring needs that we need to somehow fund in our operating budget as a recurring expense. And that's why I think looking at CNI tax as a funding stream does make sense and it wouldn't be at the expense of sort of CNIE or how we've been doing that like they're not mutually exclusive as I understood the budget Q&As's and the responses this would kind of be a supplement like the CNIE is out of sort how we're using a bucket of what is the current local revenues and we're just kind of dedicating the dollars to those expenses. But CNI supplement creates a new funding stream that I'm not saying to do 12.5 cents, but even adding, you know, 2.5 cents, you get the equivalent of about $300,000 and you can have that as a recurring funding stream for expanding sidewalks and expanding bike infrastructure, which is currently unfunded, and those things that are continuing to not show up year overyear. Um, and so I do think there's a benefit to continuing to have a conversation about it and for a policy reason helps to close like that gap in what we see is the gradients on the lines of change of assess assessed values over time. Um, where I stand now, I'm not as interested in um,

raising meal tax at this point in time. I do think I understand the the point of it being spread across both city residents and people who come to the city to dine, but I do think that like there's a hefty sir charge as it is above what your cost of a meal is in the city. And when people are going out and we're hoping that they're going out and walking to places in the city and not driving to our neighbors that both in recognition of sort of what a total bill comes to that in my view it isn't like the most appropriate time to raise that um and have like the restaurants bearing only that cost as opposed to cost spreading the commercial overall commercial businesses in light of what those lines look like and in light of some of the adjustments ments we made on solid waste last year.

Just um so I noticed that in the budget Q&A it says like what we can use CNI for. Um but you sort of general things, new road construction, new public transit, whatever else. Um and maybe I missed this if it is somewhere. Is there a list of like specific things that we could use it on in the city? So, like this is like very general, but it's like are there things that we're already funding in our um CIP or other things like that that we could be using it on?

So, we have brainstormed that through the years as this topic has come up, you know, multiple times in the past. And so, for instance, the sidewalk program, the missing links sidewalks, that's an expansion of the transportation system. So, that's an eligible use. Capital bike share uh was an expansion of the system. So maintenance of that those facilities is another thing that came up in our brainstorming of it. And uh so those are some examples and um and I think for CNI, you know, it does take a fair amount of time and thought to put together even a reasonable staff report for the council to even think clearly about it. Oh,

and so I think it would be useful to know if there's a sort of a consensus from the council that you would like that on a work session agenda. And if so, we'd be happy to do the work. But if it's if if there isn't in interest in it, there are other things that we could spend our time on between now and and May 11th. I think that would be useful to get that guidance from council tonight. Yes. Can I chime in? I've been waiting with the meals. Yeah. Sorry. Okay. waiting for while I'm going to No, but I thought we didn't we have a work disc I know you want to talk but didn't we have a work discussion on this? I thought we did last year. We have. Yes, we have. I mean, we have a presentation that So, can we maybe just maybe should we just dig that up and then re-review that or

Yeah, we would uh dust that off. That would be a starting point, but you know, we'd have to just kind of look at it denovo to make sure that we're we're thinking I brought it with me. I remember that. Yeah, I mean I remember the presentation and I was okay putting it aside, but looking at the things that are unfunded and and I think the presentation sort of set them up as mutually exclusive and that you'd have to sort of give up CNIE or how we were going about WADA or not being able to fund WADA through CNI that the tradeoffs that sort of were presented in those that conversation is not necessarily how it like could practically play out with a smaller supplement. mental sort of increase and especially as we continue to see the ways the assessed values change over time. There's the reason that I'm asking for it and I think it's like worthwhile to keep it as part of our conversation and gives us flexibility of places to find other budget dollars. Like you could move $167,000 into a CNI funded thing which then frees up the potential for $167,000 for another thing that you would otherwise be trying to fund.

I think everyone's talked maybe three times now. Yes. Mary Beth,

this is my this just my second time. The other thing that none of us have brought up that is worth bringing up at least and I'm sure it's the third rail, but that's increasing the property tax rate. Can we move it up a half a cent? Can we move it up a cent? That brings us a nice big chunk of money that we're not trying to find 138 here and 25 there that it's actually I mean people pay taxes to get the services that they need. And if we need the property tax money to pay for the services that we want to provide, is that something even worth discussing? I don't know that it is. I think that definitely seems to be like a third rail, but I really think we should. It has to be part of the conversation if we're trying to pay for big things that the people that live here benefit from. All right,

I know one one just one last comment to build on what uh Justine had said about reducing some impacts on the restaurants if it's a possibility. Um I actually had that thought. I hadn't brought it up, but I I one thing from the Q&A that really jumped out at me is we talk about being the small businessfriendly um location and yet we have one of the highest rates for business personal property. Um, so even a little bit there offset just something to think about. Okay, so we'll put a pin on CNI, I guess. So, could we bring up uh Q&A 35, please? Shows the comparison of what our revenue numbers look like in Falls Church compared to the region. I think I mentioned this in work session, but our real estate is double what our region is facing minus Fair City. our local taxes, i.e. our local economy, personal property sales, meals, bull 7%. That is also way above everyone else's expectations. Our overall revenue growth is actually really quite good at 7%. And so I think the challenge I would have for my colleagues is I don't think we actually have a revenue issue this year. We have an acute expenditure issue. And I am not opposed to the idea of entertaining other revenue levers. But I would encourage us to think more long term when we actually need revenue levers like next year uh when we actually may and again you can forward to another Q&A I had asked when we don't have new construction growth our revenue growth is going to be like one and a half to 3%. That's the year that you actually may need to consider more serious revenue levers. I would challenge us whether we actually really need to do it this year and actually would look more critically at what their costs are. So, I guess at first reading, um, like some of my colleagues, I'm open to the idea of a ceiling discussion on a 20 cent increase on the car tax only. And for

me, I think I would personally would love to see it counteracted with a real estate decrease of half a penny. But I'm I'm fine advertising real estate flat knowing that over the next month, could we look at decreasing the real estate tax going from 480 to 5 on personal property? Um, I do think though that as we look holistically across the needs of the city, I do think the needs are pretty asymmetrical. Um, it's not my job to kind of probe into the school budget. Our best proxy of that though is school enrollment and it's flat. Uh, and if you look at surpluses in the school budget at the end of the year, which is I think one of the last things that were inserted in the budget Q&A, the schools end with very sizable and healthy fund balances every year and that's their money to keep and I would encourage them to use that on their capital needs. I think the 174 that was up for discussion um that was from additional commercial revenue that we kind of shared with schools through their capital reinvestment. Um, I would like to use that for city operating because things like mass arms and paving are more acute to in my opinion. So, if we do consider, let's say, increasing personal property and not decreasing real estate, that should go towards road maintenance. I think the 174 should come back and go towards those acute operating needs. And I would challenge us not to consider real estate meals or CNI right now because those are levers you might want to need next year and look more critically expenses. I cannot in good faith look at revenue numbers like this, especially with what the overall tax impact and the tax burden on taxpayers. I think it was about $600 on that previous slide, and say we can't figure out how to make do with 7% revenue growth this year. I'm going to increase your rates more across the board. That is an unconscionable and irresponsible conversation to have, I think, with our taxpayers. So I would challenge us to not look just this year but also what future year's revenues might look like and keep our powder dry then and I agree with that and we've had this conversation like I think in the 20

cents going up my hope was that it's the half cent coming down but it is a question on is there a basis and a need and some place to look for in a marginal CNI tax increase and so I would still ask my colleagues to um put it on for work session so we can think about it or at least think about it in a way different coming out of this budget cycle for next year than we went into the budget cycle thinking about it given a revenue stream that we're going to need and um may make sense to start actually pulling on sooner rather than later given some of the transportation infrastructure issues we face and and the money that we're using in the operating revenues to pay for Justine,

I'm I'm I mean, so Wyatt asked for a signal on on CNI. Um, but I guess it depends on I don't know. Would it be taking away from a different discussion that we're having or would this be something that we'd be have able to insert because we do have um open space on our schedule to take this on or would this be taking staff time away from other important things if we were to have a CNA discussion? Um it's just an in it's it's kind of a it's a it's a heavy lift. It's a it's a whole new program. It's a whole new tax. Um it uh is community impactful. Um and you know so that usually you do need some runway for that. That's a council decision about that. Um, but I guess what I'm saying is, uh, I think it would be good to get a signal that there's at least um, you know, a good number of council members, I don't know what the exact number is, that would want to take this on before we take the time for it.

Well, I guess are there four votes, I guess, to say it more simply.

So, I I'll just speak for myself. I'm interested in learning more. Um but again it would I would be interested in it with an offset in some other way. So it it would be we'd also maybe need to open up B pole or the the personal property uh for businesses. Um so finding a way to to balance it a little bit. I I would I mean I realize I'm talking a lot here, but in my view like the way I'm thinking about it is it's the offset for a reduction in half penny of the real estate tax rate because you are now a penny and a half down relative to sort of adjustments we've made with residential like owners relative to business owners. If we reduce the tax rate and we add and we offset it by the personal property tax, the commercial assessments are a penny and a half less than where the real the residential taxpayers are. When you think about the residential adding back on the solid waste fees that we added back on and adding to them the personal property fees that we're going to be adding for increased car taxes. So like I think it think of it as that recouping that way and not an additional thing but recouping part of what you're reducing by reducing the real estate tax rate is so the CNI um so my understanding is that like a lot of these businesses are triple net which means that these like the CNI tax would get passed often times directly

through to your ground floor businesses to the ground floor businesses. Does that also like if we reduce the property tax rate, does that also get passed along to the ground floor businesses too? Like I I don't know. Okay. I mean, they're taxed. It should it should. I mean, I don't know if that then gets passed along through the triple net. Anyway, there's more things that I'd like to understand. So, I'd like to have a conversation about it. I mean, it would be something I'm interested in. I think this is why we talked about in the fall because it just seems like it needs more discussion. That's not a three weeks left to go and

Right. So, that's where it's like and like I guess if we were to do this, I'd probably want to give more heads up to like businesses and stuff like that. Like it would seem a little bit sudden to to do, but it's it's funny because it's like if we don't have the conversation now, then like we push it off for like another year and then um we don't ever have it. And so, um November 14th and we kind of put it to bed back then. I guess if there is interest and we think there's a need next year, we could say, "Hey, in September, we should talk about it and give ourselves more time then." have the more thorough discussion about offsets too.

I would actually suggest that we talk about it sooner than September just because the more I think about it, the more lobbying to expand the uses of it is something that might need to start sooner and I think it would be beneficial to maybe get it changed a little bit so that it does fit the needs um of smaller communities. I I don't think we're the only ones who struggle with the ability to use it because of its limitations. Um, but I think there's too many questions about it right now and it's very limited that maybe it's not the right one for this year. Um, and this is my first time through. So, but I'm kind of looking at what do we need to be doing tonight? We're still 3 weeks away from saying, "Okay, this is what the the taxes are going to be." We're three weeks away from that, but tonight is to me is about saying, "What are the things that are options we might might possibly consider?" Um, and I've heard a lot of different pieces to that. Um, I personally am not interested in raising the the the proper the real estate tax. Um, I would support advertising the the car tax at $5 and then decide I'd be um obviously my position on the meals tax is known and some of the others the offsets ideas we don't need to advertise that we might go down. We can just say advertise it at staying the same and we can always go down in the next 3 weeks. So, I'm kind of in my mind is what do we want to what options do we want to keep open tonight?

So, back to CNI, I guess, because that's one that does not have an ordinance in front of us. Are there four votes to ask staff to work on it in the next 3 weeks? Or is this a like if not September, maybe it's a August conversation that we can start? I I would say I mean I I do agree with Miss Flynn that I think it you know I was looking the mayor had this of course for me she she always but you know looking what you all presented us um back a couple months ago you know um talks about other localities of UCI for uh BIS bus service expansion transit station improvement signals which I wonder like could you use mass arms like I just think it's it's very weedy and you know is that how we want our staff to be spending their next three weeks weeks. Um, and you know, if as you've um talked about publicly with different with the local news uh sources, Mr. Shields, you know, that you foresee like future budget years are probably could be worse. So, is this something that we table for now, we learn more about it after we approve this budget and it's something then we have for next year's budget, you know, if things look bleeer. So, I guess that would be my my thing is maybe we hold off and but with the with the idea that we really, you know, once we get through this budget year, we really do some deep dives and really be ready for next budget year.

Yeah. So, maybe this is something we could bring up over the summer um or start the discussion on over the summer and just I have a whole bunch more questions I guess than than I did uh last year. So, um I would be okay pushing this off to a few months from now. I I would like to also point out that we're going to have we we probably want to have some discussion over the summer about the split rate that's been authorized and that's even though it's effective July, it's too there's too much analysis that needs to be done. We're not going to touch it this year, but we should be discussing it over the summer some point. Give staff time to really dig in on that. Mr. Snider.

Um maybe um it's appropriate now that we've had a general discussion. Why don't we just go through each one of these and just take Yeah, I wanted to at least put to bed CNI cuz we don't even have an ordinance for that one. So I don't hear for for CNI this year with an agreement that late summer we can pick it back up for a more thorough discussion when we can give staff more time to discuss it. Right. Is there nod head nods? Okay. Plus that impacts our businesses in in a very significant way. So um yeah it needs more socialization in the community as well besides us

to say the least. Um so let me start through real estate tax rate keep as is. How many votes for that? Oh I think that's everybody. Yep. Okay. uh personal property tax. Um the proposal is for 20 cents. Uh that would yield up to $340,000 which may fund additional work or may be used to reduce the real estate tax rate. I think I heard seven for that. Is that right? Yeah.

Okay. um meals tax um which may replace the property property tax and I would propose at 4.2% which gets you nearly what the five the 20 cents on the um car tax would yield and again the option would be to lower other taxes or use that to fund additional. How many hands do we have on keeping the meals tax in for now? Raising it. So, what are we raising our hands for? 4.2. 4.2%.

I would do that. I would actually propose 4.25 just to keep it kind of an even calculation for people. That's all. But it's all automated anyway. I prefer that again because it's got a broader tax base than simply our own citizens. Do do we know I mean I guess this is something we can discuss over the next 3 weeks but that that would probably be something we'd also need to discuss with the restaurants community and I discussing it already. Mhm. Okay. Without us. But again we could we could set that tonight 4.2 and then come down come down. Uh do we know their feelings on it? Yes. Okay. We do. Okay.

I can imagine.

Yeah. Are there any hands for any increase above 4%. Whether it's 4.2 or 4.25. There's one, two. Last call. I think we're keeping it flat at four. And then the last one. Um I think we did all the categories. I don't think there was interest in touching other ones for now. Okay. Any further discussion on tax rates or budget before we get to the actual motions? I guess I want to be u based on our conversations with budget buddies. Um because we are three weeks away from adoption. I think we have a budget and finance meeting on Friday and we've also invited the school board to join us. Um, I want to be more clear on kind of where I think this needs are in general government. And while I know that everyone supports the spirit of revenue share, I think it's at least pretty apparent to council so far based on the initial deep dive work session we have that the needs are pretty acute right now. And so while it's not our intention to break it forever, um I do want to be clear that the reason why we're talking about bringing back the 174 as well as other revenue levers is because the needs in general government seem like they're pretty severe compared to the ones that we are hearing about in the schools. So I didn't want to feel like we were like masking that um discussion. Would welcome other comments from council if people have them. Okay. Okay. Well, let's bring up uh first ordinance. This is TO02603. It's for the budget. Is there a motion for that? And then we'll get to all the tax rates. I move to grant first reading to TO2603. Schedule public hearings for April 27th

and May 11th, 2026. Scheduled second reading for May 11, 2026 and advertise the same according to law. Is there a second? Second. Second. Miss DS on the second. And call roll, please. Mr. Aen, yes. Miss Connley, yes. Miss DS, yes. Miss Flynn, yes. Mr. Snyder, yes. Miss Underh Hill, yes. Mayor Hardy, yes. Motion carries seven to zero. Thank you.

Call the next one. Uh the next one is to26-04 and that's the tax le levy on real estate and personal property. I move to grant first reading to TO26-04 schedule public hearings for April 27th 2026 and May 11th 2026 scheduled second reading for May 11th 2026 and advertise the same according to law. I'll second the second call roll please. Mr. Aan, yes. Miss Connley, yes. Miss DS, yes. Miss Flynn, yes. Mr. Snder, yeah. Miss Underh Hill, yes. And May Hardy, yes.

Motion carries seven to zero. Thank you. The next is TO026-05. That's the ordinance setting the storm water utility billing rate. I move to grant first reading to TO26-05. Scheduled public hearings for April 27th, 2026 and May 11th, 2026. Schedule second reading for May 11th, 2026 and advertised the same according to law. I'll second under Hill in the second. Call roll. Mr. Aen, yes. Miss Connley, yes. Miss DS, yes. Miss Flynn, yes. Mr. Snyder, no. Miss Underh Hill, yes. Mayor Hardy,

yes. Motion carries 7 to zero. And next we have TO026-06 and that is to amend the city code to increase sewer service and availability charges. I move to grant first reading to TO26-06 schedule public hearings for April 27th, 2026 and May 11th, 2026. Schedule second reading for May 11th, 2026 and advertise the same according to law. Is there a second? I'll second. Sander Hill. Second again. Call roll. Mr. Aen, yes. Miss Connley, yes. Miss DS, yes. Miss Flynn, yes. Mr. Snider, no. Miss Underh Hill, yes. And Mayor Hardy?

Yes. Motion carries 7 to zero. Any like to help Mary Beth? And so the next one is TO26-07. This is setting the solid waste collection fee. I move to grant first reading to CO26-07. Schedule public hearings for April 27th, 2026 and May 11th, 2026. Schedule second reading for May 11th, 2026 and advertise the same according to law. Second. I beat beat you, Justine DS on the second. Mr. Aan, yes. Miss Connley, yes. Miss DS, yes. Miss Flynn, yes. Mr. M. Under Mayor Hardy, yes.

Motion carries seven to zero. And finally, TO026-12. And this is the uh ordinance to amend development related fees. I move to grant first reading to TO26-12. Schedule public hearings for April 27th, 2026 and May 11th, 2026. Schedule second reading for May 11th, 2026. And advertise the same according to law.

I'll second the second. I will note on this one, this is one that I raised in work session that I would prefer more discussion on this on how we advance some policy objectives like supporting small businesses that may be relocating people doing green infrastructure upgrades. I heard from staff that we didn't have time to get to it and so I don't love that we're just increasing fees across the board even though we're trying to just keep up with inflation. I do feel like this would actually be a great per the earlier conversation about supporting our businesses, this would be the place to do it. Yeah. I also I mean I I guess we'll maybe discuss this over the next few weeks, but I also have questions as to like if people are going through the permits process now, would they be notified and how would they be notified? Um go in effect after July 1st. I I assume that they've submitted before July 1st.

I but I don't know if that's the case. If they submitted before budget Q&A for next week on the fee changes if someone submitted before July 1, are they in that the old fee schedule so that that's not a switcheroo on them? Yeah. And how if if there is a change, like how would they be notified? I assume they would know when they're submitting the request that here's the new fee schedule, but if you already submitted, then you wouldn't be your fee wouldn't surprise you and be jacked up.

But um Andy, I noted that this is the area that I would have preferred some support for small businesses. If they're relocating within the city, we would actually have decrease in fees or people doing green infrastructure upgrades. they'd actually get a decrease um to encourage more public policy objectives we had, but I know that we don't have time with for that right now in budget season. So, I just wanted to note that before we cast our votes. I don't think I had a motion on this one yet. Or was there? We do have a motion and a second. Second. So, uh let's call Rald since there's a motion and proper second. Mr. Aen, yes. Miss Connley, yes. Miss DS, yes. Miss Flynn, yes. Mr. Snider, yes. Miss Underh Hill, yes. and Mayor Hardy.

Yes. Motion carries seven to zero. Thank you. I think that's it on first reading, right? Correct. Great. I think we're ready to transition to work session unless people need a break. Any takers on break? Are we ready to power through because it's 9:35? Sounds like we're going to continue.

Okay. All right. So, we're going to transition to work session now. And um so, um Jenny Carol is going to walk us through a couple of slides and we want to talk um funding for affordable housing and um also give uh council information on investment in technology and making it easier to do business in the city. So, those are some of the key things we want to cover tonight. Um, we did have the sort of the theme of the work session last week was sort of sobering discussion about needs for level of effort on street maintenance. I think we have some fairly sobering uh challenges on funding affordable housing in the city. And we're also we feel really good about where we're going on technology. Uh we think we've built a really good strong foundation for taking some really meaningful moves in the coming uh years to make it easier to get business done with the city using technology. Uh the website I think is is sort of wind in our sales and some investments we've made. Um but we also have some big estimated uh costs that'll probably be coming on board as we modernize our IT systems. And that's not a specific budget request this year, but it's sort of a high it's forecasting some cost increases in future years. So Jenny will give us the details on that. So with that introduction, uh Jenny, I'm going to turn it over to you. Thank you.

Good evening. Uh thank you, uh Mr. Shields. Good evening, uh Mayor Hardy and members of council. Uh as Wyatt said, we're going to focus on affordable housing, Virginia Village. And I realized I have the power to control the slides. Um, Virginia Village and uh, responsive governance through technology. We're going to start first with affordable housing in Virginia Village, Dana Jones, director of housing and human services. We'll start us off and she is joined virtually by housing and human services staff Brennan Woodley and Kaen Mark. So, I'll turn it over to Dana. Good evening, council members. Uh, as as um Jenny said, um, we are I'm uh Kaen, Mark, and Brendan uh Woodley are also here if you have any questions afterwards. So, we'll go ahead and get started. So, this is uh related to the affordable housing fund. And just to kind of give you all an idea of what we spend money on for affordable housing for the city. So, uh, just as background for as far as what we pay for, we have interjurisdictional contracts. And so, um, we have two interjurisdictional contracts that have to do with housing. One is with Fairfax C uh, Fairfax County and one is with Fair Housing Management Consultants. So, if you look at the chart, um the Department of Family Services is where we get our services for shelter and supportive housing. So, they're the folks that um kind of support the shelter that's in the city. If there are any homeless in the city that need to go to any of the other shelters in Fairfax County, this is how we pay for that. Um any of their workers that come out that meet with our homeless, we pay for those services. So,

that's all tied up in that budget. Um you can see um for FY25 um it was 189348 um FY26 we got charged a bit more because they changed to a new provider and they had been undercharging us. So we are um having a catch up with that and um so going forward we'll be paying about 343,000 um this year in FY27 we'll be paying 356633 um for fair housing we do testing every two years so this is the charge that we pay the $4,550 every two years with fair housing management consultants and they test properties in the city to make sure that they're adhering to fair housing laws. Go to the next slide. So, as far as our affordable housing fund, that's where all of our funds are kept um that have to do with affordable housing. This is the spin plan. So, if you look at this um we have two programs where the current funds that reside in the um in the affordable housing fund that we use the funds for. One is for the city committed affordable um the the CCAU program, city committed affordable units. Um and that is one that council has designated funding for to support this program. Rents are subsidized. Um we serve people at between 30 and 50% of AMI. So that's basically a household, a twoerson household at 40% of AMI would be $49,000. So we're serving really low income. Um, so we, so in FY27, council put aside $150,000. Um, and then you can see that that goes forward for three years and we have

increased it a bit just to show that rents increase over time. With the affordable home ownership program, uh, this program, we purchase units. We work with a nonprofit partner. We purchase units and sell them at a decreased amount. Um so far 10 households have purchased units in the city. Um and um we are averaging about two to three uh homes per year with the program. Um we pay for about $20,000 worth of um rehab or something in the home to make the home better. And so you can see

Dana, can I jump in with a quick question? Yes. Do you remember how much we have left in the acquisition fund?

We're getting ready. That's the next slide. at Regimema. Um, and so for FY27, we have $600,000 in the affordable home ownership program. And you can see over time that's going to decrease because we'll be p purchasing less units over time. So, you can go to the next slide and you can let me know if you have any questions. And so, now we're going to our biggest project is the Virginia Village redevelopment um obviously. And so, um, with that particular program, we're going to talk about the potential funding sources. Um, and just as background with with regards to cost and timing, we're looking at when we did our research this year and talked to other nonprofits and other localities that do this type of work. Uh what we came back with was that we are probably going to have a a cost of about $80,000 to $100,000 per unit that the city would have to contribute. So that comes to about a 15 to 20 million gap that we would have of a funding gap. Um and so looking at what we have in the affordable housing fund and what we spend and how we get money will kind of give you an idea of how we plan to meet that gap. Um and so as far as funding sources, we have local dollars, we have grants, and we have cash in loo from development programs that um are coming online and that have come online. So you can go to the next slide. So this is the one uh lady that you were talking about. This slide kind of talks about two separate things. the first. So, as far as Virginia Village acquisition and redevelopment, we have two potential sources. Um, the first one is the acquisition strike fund. And so, with this fund, this is for property

purchases only. Um, we received these fund through funds through grants in the past. Um, and so the available funds in hand from prior years that we have right now is $2,725. Um, so that's what we have right now. um as of FY26. My question was for the home ownership program. Oh, I'm sorry. We were talking about the home ownership, how we were buying two to three every year and I don't I think we've been at 10 for the past year and a half. Like we've kind of leveled off and we've had trouble unloading that single family home and a couple other ones. Uh we actually I can't get into the details here. Um but

things have turned around with several of our units. Um and so we're moving ahead. We're actually um going to be purchasing some more units because we had some units in the inventory that it looks like we may not have um in the next month. Okay. Okay. So, looking at the um acquisition and redevelopment slide. So, like I said, we have the 2,725 in hand. We have pending grants. We applied for four grants uh with the buyer Warner um you know the grant programs that they have through HUD. Um and so we are hoping to get those. It's pending. We may or may not get it, but if we do get it, that would and that would be coming in FY27 and be available for use. That would be uh $1,100,000 that we could use. And so you could see how that would spread out um for the next six years because the affordable housing fund is a six-year funding plan. So you can see the funds that we would have going through um f uh going through FY 2032. Um and then moving down for the redevelopment fund. So as I mentioned, the first part is for property purchase only. That's how we've been able to purchase um the units that we do own at Virginia Village. Um the redevelopment fund is okay after we purchase those units um and we decide that we're moving to the redevelopment stage which we are actively you know moving through that process. Now these are the funds that we have that would help us to meet that gap that would go towards the project. Um and so if you look at the first line, the affordable housing fund transfer, um that is going to be the funds that would be coming from

uh that we that would be the funds that we already have um in hand. And then the FY27 going um through FY2032, that would be the 50,000 that council would be putting towards the project. Um, and then we also have rental income. Right now we have $350,000 in our account for rental income for the Virginia Village properties that we do own. Um, we're averaging about $50,000 um a year that we um are getting every year because we, you know, have to use money for maintenance cost and, you know, different things that are going on with the project. So, we're netting about $50,000 average per year. Um, you know, without taking out all the other costs that are involved. Then we have um the community development block grant and home. These are our HUD federal grants that we have. So, these would be $71,000. Uh, currently in FY266, we're funding a nonprofit, but we plan to take those funds and put them towards this project. So, we can't actually um spend the these funds would be um we would use them towards the maintenance cost for the project and then we would not have to use rental income for that. Currently, we use rental income to cover all of the maintenance, repairs, all of those kind of things, health and safety that have to happen at the properties, but we plan to use these CDBG funds instead of the rental property. and then we could put that money back into not have to touch the rental property and allow that to accumulate. Um now we do have some cash and loo

funds that are planned to um you know come in the future. So we uh if the Quinn building if everything goes the way that we hope that it does um then we in FY2029 we would get $1,900,000 for cash and loo that we could use towards this project. And then the next cash and loo uh project would be the West Falls Church senior building which is planned to come online in FY27. That would be an annual contribution. So you can see would be 228 uh 412 and two 2027. And then you can see that's drawn out. These are the amounts that we would get every year up to FY 2032. So you can see that the total um in FY2032 would be $429,72 if we took it out that far. Um but you can look and see what our running balances are at the end of the chart. Um so that was a lot of information. So do you have any questions regarding that? And basically, as I mentioned, all of this is the potential funds that we could use towards this project right now um spread out.

So, this is helpful to know because when you mention kind of $80,000 a unit, obviously that's important. And there's obviously other concessions that developers often ask for like property tax abatements and reductions in parking can also help go a long way. Obviously, we're contributing we we may be contributing the land. Um, yes, for the two cash and loo options, given that those are coming from senior buildings, I think this is a policy question that we haven't talked about, but if we're using money from two senior buildings where the the intent was to use for future senior affordable, um, would we include in kind of RFP that we'd want some of the units to be set aside for senior affordable?

I would say, you know, with our with our program, seniors are priority one anyway. You know what I mean? The priority one is seniors and disabled persons who live or work in the city. So, they would have top priority over all three priorities regardless um of how you know how many units we have, they're going to be first. They would be served first anyway. Um but I but I also hear what you're saying. I would just be prepared for that question because if we're using money from two senior projects where the original policy goal was we should provide for senior affordable housing. Yes. Yes. Then as long as the way we would allocate the future units at a future Virginia village project is giving seniors priority. Yes.

I think that would maintain the policy intent then of why we have a set aside why we got contributions from those projects. Right. Yeah. So I mean it would be all of the residents that are currently there and then whatever addition when we start talking about those additional units once we start filling those additional units seniors would be priority one. And we do have seniors that currently live over in Virginia Village. I don't know what the estimates are, but I know that, you know, anecdotally that we do have seniors living there.

But I guess to follow up on Lett's question, does the priority one that you're speaking about that exists under the city policy carry over to whoever you know may end up being the partner for redevelopment? So for the RF for purposes of the RFP like needing to set forth that expectation because they may not actually have to follow any sort of policy even if it's our policy if it's their units even if they have an affordability covenant on them. Does that make sense?

I mean I think we think of most ADUs in the city they have to follow city policy. So, we would unless the council changed it, any new building built at Virginia Village would need to conform with the city's ADU policy and and its priorities. I I understand the intent of, you know, these this came from the Quinn project or another senior living living project, but at least when I was voting for the Keshan from the Quinn project, um I I I strongly feel that um like while seniors are incredibly an important part of our system, I I I think they should be open. I I wouldn't want to put that in an RFP specifically stating that this has to be tied for seniors or whatever else just because I think that there are plenty of needs from working people from younger people. Um and I I would disagree with specifically tying it to seniors beyond what we have in our city policy.

Hopefully you have enough units for all the above. Hopefully we will. Okay. Um thank you.

So I'm Well, I'm not quite done. And I have a few more slides, but um you can let me know if you have any other questions on this. We can go to the next slide. Okay. So, I just wanted to end with Pearson Square because I know that that has come up. Um we have 15 ADUs over at Pearson Square. Uh they're all at 60% AMI. We have uh one-bedroom dens and two bedroom and den units, some of the largest um in the city. Um, so right now we have some uh CCAUS. Oh, at Pearson Square um and ADUs. So just so you know, we have Pearson Square um could charge the if you look at the third slot, they could this is the rent that they could be charging uh a 60% rent for units. the total cost in place. Like if we were to um when the covenant expires, if we were to place the residents from Pearson Square, um this would be the cost um like the what would be the difference that it would be 272,64. This would be the max rent that they would be allowed to charge. Currently, Pearson Square is charging a lower rent. Um they're one of the properties in the city. um that don't go as high as they could have. That was their choice. So, we appreciate it and our residents the residents appreciate it. So, this is what they are actually um paying. The cost would actually be right now 233,796, but you're going to have to pay more because we would have to, you know, if we were to place people, the rents more than likely going to be higher. I hope that made sense. Um, so I just put

Mary Beth has a question right here on this one. Yes. So I if we were to say we want to keep these people in Pearson Square, we would be paying 272604 would have to come out of the city's budget. If we wanted to subsidize as we've done other places, it would be the rent that they're currently paying. So that would be the 233796. Uh, Right. Right. But once they expire, then that rent's going to go up. So we would be paying the difference if we did it as we did similar to that's true in place that would be yes the rent would go up that okay and this when we look at charts that said this expires in 2027

the December 31st dece that's my question was when in 2027 December 31st 2027

and I just put this here because I know that you guys have had a couple of questions about I'll ask a qu make a point on this slide I guess if it's the appropriate time to do so and um I think looking at these numbers is and looking at the an the response in the budget and question Q&A over what would an expansion of the CCAU program look like whether it was at Pearson Square or if it was somewhere else in the city recognizing that there are limitations on the unit size right Pearson Square versus what may be available to assemble in other places in the city. Um, and I think that the answer in the budget Q&A was that generally a CCAU program, you know, is running in the 150,000 or 150 kind of plus versus what would be 233 or 272 at Pearson Square. And so I would still be interested in having staff look at the possibility of expanding the CCAU program recognizing the costs at Pearson Square. Um, and do think that that needs to be cost that we're thinking about in this budget, even though the covenants don't expire until December 2027 based on when those leases in 2027 would come up versus when they would be, you know, renewed for a 12-month period versus when, you know, a unit might be available in the city, right? Like the timing isn't going to align properly. So, you're going to have to look for some potential expansion to the CCAU if we were taking that on before December 2027. Um, so I do think that we're not giving this issue the seriousness that we need to give it in the current budget by not funding anything more than what the current funding levels are for the CCAU

program. Um, and so it's a cause of concern for me, not only for fiscal year 28 and going forward and what it means for, you know, people in sunsetting ADUs, but for the 2027 budget on a potential issue that we have that we're not properly budgeting for. Noted. I hear you. Any other questions? So, that is the the housing presentation. Um, if you have any other questions, if not, I will have Jenny come up and do the second part of the presentation. Um, also, like I said, I have Kaen and Brendan here if you have any questions for them. Thank you. Did you have anything else? Why? Okay. Thank you Dana. So now we are at responsive governance through technology. We have heard from you council, the community and staff on the importance of making it easier to do business with the city. Our vision is having city business processes where you get your stuff done. So, pay your taxes with ease and why not pay your dog license, too, while you're at it on the customer portal. Check on the process of your permit uh your porch permit through the permit website. And if you see a pothole, put in a request on the website and receive a notice of when it's fixed. These are a few examples of what could be possible. moving into the future. To deliver on

the vision is a big effort that will require investment of time, money, and people over the next several years. In the subsequent slides, I will lay out what we have done and what it will take to have an easily understood, streamlined, automated process with transparent accessibility where you and staff can readily pull up your data and all city interactions are supported by cyber security best practice and staff have the tools they need to meet the community's requests. And I will note that the making it easier to do business in the city uh and uh where you get your stuff done went through several different workshops and you might have seen some slides with some other words on it. So um so what will it take to achieve this vision? There are three inputs in a project of this magnitude. Time, money, and people. I'll speak to each of these in the next couple of slides. We have already been working to strengthen our technology foundation. We replaced an aging computing environment with a modern, scalable, energyefficient solution that will allow for growth and easy implementation of complex applications. And we have also upgraded the city network infrastructure with a seamless failover architecture. Currently, we are addressing cyber security through best practices of separating operations from security by contracting out the chief information security officer service also known as the SISO. And we are also standing up the governance structure to guide selection, integration, and implementation of new technology. All of this sets up the city for the next steps with technology to improve the customer and staff experience with business processes. The proposed plan encompasses 3 to five years and starts with reinforcing and

updating our foundation which is this uh city financial system. Um that is the basis for all city business processes like permits and payments. Next uh achieving quick wins by utilizing temporary staff for internal and external process improvements. And finally, we will use budget opportunities to ask council to invest in one-time costs for implementation, integration, and training and also augment our reoccurring annual costs. The next slide shows a detailed timeline for the next 3 to 5 years. And I will make a change uh for concurrent work. So this is the next 3 to 5 years uh for concurrent work on addressing cyber security, the work order system, external and internal process improvements, and the internal city financial system. I'd like to highlight more detailed information about each. We are in the process of completing the procurement uh process and implementation for the SISO function and expect that to be completed in year one. The work order system is also currently being assessed and the staff I'm sorry I'm going to need to put my glasses on. And the staff with the the staff team with the vendor will reconfigure the internal system and provide support to staff so that later when we implement the community request system there will be seamless integration. We will also start to build our change management muscle by selecting two internal processes. For example, the travel and training form that all city staff use and two external processes to revamp like changing the approach to dog licenses. The base of our work, the city financial system is indicated along the bottom of

each of those um rectangles. And the updating process will start with the procurement through an uh request for proposal process. Contracted staff will guide the process, engage stakeholders, and assist in determining the best solution for the city. Concurrently, in-house staff will continue to build documentation of the system and support the current system. In year two and three, a new or upgraded system will be selected and implemented to include a customer portal and cloud hosting. Additionally, the permit system implementation and integration will be a priority for the city and is slated in the timeline in year two and three for that reason. Finally, the payment system will be implemented and continued upgrades will will occur as required and needed. As I alluded to earlier in the presentation, this is a big effort including funding. The last slide will focus on potential costs for achieving that vision. Costs include reoccurring operational and one-time project focus costs involved in the modernization of the city financial system. I will note that for FY26 and prior years, we have concentrated on funding within our budgets, including reallocating FTEES to fund contracted support for their request for proposal process. And in FY27, we built into the budget $150,000 under recurring costs, plus the reallocated FTDs for contracted support under project costs. Through future fiscal year budgets, we ask council to prioritize technology funding. The request for proposal process will further refine both recurring and one-time costs. We believe that to address the process um the business processes improvements and

technology improvements requested by council, the community and staff, there needs to be an investment to achieve the vision. While we are not requesting any funds at this time, we wanted to make council aware of the current status. I welcome any questions at this time. Okay. Thank you. And we have questions for Jenny.

Art, having come out of the technology world, um I I'm actually kind of concerned on this timeline. um moving at the speed of government is to me I look at this and see a three-year plan and uh how what would it take to accelerate this and get this in a three-year time frame versus a 5year time frame. Um, I also think this is a fantastic opportunity to take advantage of the um, people we have in our community and find um, community members who would be interested in donating their time and expertise to help us. Um, we have a there's a huge technology business world just down the street. We have a lot of those people here. Um, so I would I I applaud what we're trying to do. I think it's needed. Um, but I I would like to see how can we do it faster. And the second thing I'd like to see on the costs, what we don't see is the cost savings. So, we're replacing systems, we're replacing servers, we're replacing vendors as part of this. We're what are we spending on those? What's the cost-saving the the other side of it? Um, to me, this is something that's going to that should decrease our costs, especially if it's replacing manual processes, things like that. Um, so I I would be interested in seeing the the cost savings piece of it as well. Um I I think that's an important piece of this cuz it could be that 5 10 years down the road it's a net

positive as far as financials could easily be um th those are really the the two things I have. Thank you. Appreciate those questions. Others Dave.

Sure. Thanks a lot. Um, can we separate out process improvements that could be done today without the technological changes versus the technological changes? In other words, uh, the permitting process is unnecessarily um, I don't know if the right word is complex, but um, seems to be um, problematic. Um so to what extent can we fix the process without the technological um expenditures and then looking at the technological expenditures to what extent do we think AI can reduce costs and improve efficiency so I'd separate it between process which we could achieve today with human beings without new technology then the techn technology piece, how much and then to what extent are we assuming or not assuming that we can get efficiency gains as a result of adopting AI as part of the technological uh evolution to you don't need answers today necessarily to either of those but the that's my thinking about uh process and technology ology and then um

separate the two and then put them together. I think I can answer the first of those two questions which is um that's what we have done when it comes to the permits process. So Andy's been uh point person on that whole entire project when it comes to the permits process. Um I'm just speaking to the technology piece tonight. So, I think he's outlined in prior either regular sessions or action sessions and work sessions uh what they're working on uh at this time and they've already started that work.

Okay. And yeah, and that's I think a really a big part of the staff work is first to clean up processes so that we're not just having technology conform to processes that themselves should be reformed first

and um and in government processes those do sometimes require some time to work through those things. there's a legal context to it, there's a policy context to it, and um so it takes us a little bit of time to to do those process cleanups. And then the other piece of it is making sure our data is clean as we're as we're going to be converting data into new systems, not uh you know, garbage in, garbage out. Uh that also is is work that that uh staff has to be engaged in. And I think going through that request for proposal process will give us more information when it comes to the cost of making changes and upgrading our system and also any cost savings as well.

And I might mention one other is getting our governance in in order. uh we had a fairly what I would call maybe a lace fair uh relationship with many of our vendors where we would request enhancements u there wasn't sort of a central decision-m process for enhancements for technology and so our vendors would build lots of complexity into our software uh because of those special requests and so those are now going through a governance process so that various different subjects matter experts in the city can assess the validity of that enhancement request and ask first can we change our processes to conform with the systems before we put spend the money to have the systems conform with our processes particularly as we're looking ahead to the future where we may u be choosing a new vendor altogether for our core ERP systems so that governance structure I think it's been a really important uh reform that we've made uh just over the past year and that um I think is also relevant to the whole process.

So uh if I could follow up Madame Mayor um tell me about uh how we're approaching cyber security and the how how does um improved cyber security fit into the technological uh and process uh reforms. So currently what we're doing is is according to best practice we're going to separate the operations function from the security function. Right now that's housed in one person and what we're looking to do is contract those services out. Uh this is I believe what some other jurisdictions who are smaller uh do and so I think it's also cost-effective uh to do this as well. Um and then uh also in the past couple of years in addition to the items uh that I mentioned earlier about both the equipment and the upgrades to the network infrastru infrastructure uh there have also been improvements to the technology that they're using for cyber security.

Mhm. And I think my department director would be loathed for me to go into detail and maybe add one additional thing of the staff training that we've done which um you know to one of the great vulnerabilities is u is staff clicking on links that come in through the email. and we've really tried to grow our organizational literacy around that and um and have security start with every staff member.

Okay. So, two suggestions uh going forward. I like council member Aan's suggestion that we think about an advisory group within the community of experts. I think that's a great idea. Other one would be to check with your um insurer uh for best practices. um insurers are deep into this sort of issue and may be another valuable sort of free if you will uh source of information that you're already in essence paying forth through your premiums. That that's uh that's absolutely right.

I would like to say something on the cyber security. I'm glad you're separating that out because the speed at which things are changing and moving, there's no way we can as keep it internal. I mean, we're talking about AI bots that you can't even contain within a sandbox. It breaks out in an it's just it's crazy how fast it moves. and we need to we need to hire somebody to protect us. So, I'm glad that's happening. You had your hand raised. Thank you.

Yeah. Um I share and and join in the various remarks. Um and also, you know, our need to do this sooner rather than later. Um, you know, we just came through the CIP where there were unfunded items, you know, and they got put into the 10-year look ahead, um, because there weren't funding sources. And so, you know, we can't put this and out years. And yet, we're looking at unfunded, you know, balances of 2.65 million just within the next couple of years or next year. an unfunded item of a million dollars which is carrying the work, right? And so when you say like we're looking and to hope that council um recognizes the importance and supports the investment, are there thoughts about how this is potentially getting funded? I think we have taken a look at that. I think with once again with the RFP process that uh that will give us more more information to work with in terms of um costs. So um this was my initial estimate based on uh information that I had at hand. Um so I think it's possible that it could be spread out a little bit more. um or with an RFP process it could be less or more than in terms of funding sources. Um I think there's probably um looking at the outlying budget years and I would ask um our finance department to assist with that.

Okay. Any other thoughts? One question. Does this uh assume we're going to stay with EERP or is this in addition to in in lie of? So ERP is our current system. Yes. In going through the request for proposal process, it's entirely possible that we would remain with EERP. It's also possible that we would look at a new system. Okay. So that's that's what the RFP is for. Yes. The actual system. Okay. Thanks. And are the schools involved in that part at all? Because I know Absolutely. Okay. Thank you.

They are a part of the the internal team that's been working on that.

I guess one thing I'll flag, I don't know whether this is specific to it, but I do feel like the AI conversation is happening faster than we can keep track of it. Um, and so I feel like so NVRC has talked about taking it on as a region. um like how might government use it for both customerf facing processes as well as internal and maybe there's some best practices and again with art that like some of the IT upgrades and AI included should make things more efficient which then frees up resources people and dollars to do other things. Um, so I would just ask that we kind of reserve bandwidth to figure that out because I think if it's as fast as it, you know, people are predicting it's like a two to three year kind of change. And so I think, you know, rather than hold out for these long-term like big, you know, IT infrastructure things, there may be ways to do it faster and cheaper. Um, and AI may be a nice layer to actually give you a more customer-friendly kind of interface um, that can build a lot of these things for us. um I've just dabbled in in it and I've been really both impressed as well as scared by the job displacement that I think it's going to present. So I guess I would ask the overall takeaways. One, let's keep an eye on it. Two, let's plug into the NVRC effort and figure out um how we might use it um and where it could help. And I think that just requires, you know, staff to kind of pay attention to what those best practices may be and maybe even without NVRC if we're connecting with other localities. Um, I know permits for example is one where uh I think it's Fairfax County might be using AI just to scan for like missing information. Like rather than use a human like AI can scan and that's your first check, right, of like did you submit everything you needed to before I reject you instead of having a person go through 300 pages of submissions, AI can do that for you and that's a threeminut process instead of a 5-hour review. So I would encourage us to look at maybe some lowhanging fruit options on AI. Thank you.

Cool. Thank you. Okay. Is that it for the work session? That is. So, given it we're at 10:20, do people want to get to schedule or save that for Wednesday morning? Can I Sorry. Can I ask a question on the you know there is an item on the agenda about the real estate advisory services for Virginia Village. So did you want to speak at all as to what happened to the agenda item?

So um we're still in the procurement process and so I I don't have a whole lot to share our our purchasing officers like you know while we're in procurement we there's not that much we can share publicly. What I what is public is that um we have a scope of work to general I just describe it generally to advise the city as we consider um the uh future partners for the Virginia uh village uh uh uh properties and um we are looking at uh vendors that uh have contracts for services with the Fairfax County Housing Authority. we can ride those contracts and so that's been sort of the universe of people that we've been talking with. Um and you know ultimately as we sort of gave a snapshot there we do anticipate that there will need to be a potentially a financial commitment from the city to help make um the expansion of affordable housing possible at Virginia Village. So having some outside expertise to advise us on that, what is necessary, what's not necessary, what are all the different options, we think is money that will be well spent. Um and so that's uh the the basic u update is that we would like to uh have a briefing um later and then ask for the council's uh authority to proceed with a contract for commercial real estate advisory services at your meeting on the 27th.

So we'll have much more detail between now and then. Okay. So this is coming back to us in some way or the other. I mean, I saw the EDA discussion on it and then was just wondering what that meant or when you were talking about, you know, looking to procure services or real estate advisory services, what numbers were you potentially looking at, was there a takeaway or was it like the city proceeding in some sort of fashion? And so I guess you're in continued information gathering and then we'll be coming back to us, but we'll have visibility into whatever the ultimate number is for the scope of work over the number of months at the price point that Okay, got it.

That that's right. And we are so what we're doing right now also is is um having discussions on scope of work to try to get that refined so that our cost estimates for this work are um as as reliable as as we as we can be at the at the beginning. And um the source of funding for this work would be the rent reserve that is under the control of the EDA. But the memorandum of understanding gives the city council gives the city the direction on how that rent reserve is used. It currently has a balance that's sufficient to cover the scope of services that we envision. Thank you.

Okay. Anything else on the actual agenda or do we want to get to schedule or save for Wednesday morning? I don't want to push our luck after last week because we did go late. Do you schedule or not do schedule? I I think since we don't have any other, you know, city u office hours or anything, we should just do it tonight so we don't have to come in just for a half hour meeting. Would that be okay with people? I'm fine with that bit.

All right. If uh folks have it up, there it is on the screen. And so um for the um so I'll start on the um 17th where we'll have at 8:30 in the morning the budget and finance committee meeting. So we'll be talking about uh Q3 financial report. We'll be talking about revenue levers and uh there was a third thing um and I'm forgetting what that is but we've been talking about the agenda for that but those are those are the kind of the big ones. And um I think a state budget update

in a state budget update. Thank you. Um April 20th, we'll have a budget work session um schools, public safety um and uh we'll also have some I think more information on the contract that we just discussed um a moment ago for Virginia Village. The um and then a close session at the end of that meeting. um gov ops committee uh that's on uh what what's the contract amendment PD uplift vehicles

you know I am not sure about that I think they got some additional funding and they're purchasing more vehicles and it's over the it now it needs to be approved by council I'm if I remember Right. I'm I'm just that word uplift. I don't know what that is.

Um there has been discussion about using some money in the P uh police council. Recall there have been vacancies in the police department this this year. We have needs and fleet and so we're proposing to use some of that underpending and and vacancy savings to refresh the city fleet. Uh so that is coming to the council. I think that's what this item is. I don't I don't understand the uplift though. Um the uh the 27th employee of the year uh we'll have the reception at 6:30 and the recognition here in council chambers um operation earthwatch ESC annual report uh public service recognition week Asian-American Pacific Islander Heritage Month and Jewish American Heritage Month. We have the advertised public hearings for all of the budget items that were acted on on first reading tonight. Um the um and then a series of contract uh uh amendments or approvals. Um we will end the meeting with a work session and at the um really kind of between now and then if there are we're sort of picking up on key themes the council will want some more information on and um and that's really what that 27th is going to be is just to fill in any gaps that have come from the discussion so far. Uh we have our um second budget town hall meeting on Thursday, April 30th. And then on May 4th, final budget markup um initiating resolution uh for chess bay items and um consent preview for contract approvals. Um yes. So on the going back to the 27th, that's where that contract authorization is for the real estate consulting

services that we were talking about just a moment ago. Uh then looking ahead to May 11th, um uh proclamations for police week and public works week and then final action on the budget items. um the Chesapeake Bay initiating resolution and the consent contracts, contract approvals. So then post uh budget uh we have some code uh cleanup items and then we have a touch base with council on Virginia Village. And so that's coming back to council with the sort of the outcome from the town hall meetings that we've been hosting, the four town hall meetings. Um and uh we'll discuss uh language on uh code amendments as well as small area plan. The um then uh the other Virginia village discussion is having a scope of work on the big RFP. This is not the RFP for real estate advisory services. This is the RFP for uh choosing a housing partner. And so this is sort of an initial discussion about what that RFP will look like. Sort of the broad outlines of it. And then uh looking ahead to June 1st, um one of the issues that we'll be taking up is the u uh parking and landscape modifications. And so, uh, one of the kind of the the heavy parts of that is changing those regulations in our zoning ordinance so that waiverss that have been approved by the planning commission

become rare because the code is more in sort of reflecting what u the the built environment is in the city. And so that um um and then having when waiverss are required have them go through the BCA process as opposed to the planning commission process. Um then we have the Chesapeake Bay regulation compliance um updates to that code. Those are technical in nature and uh we don't think that will take a lot of bandwidth from the city council. Um June 8th we'll have a report on the general uh assembly uh budget. Uh we'll uh have action on the we're requesting action on to initiate the work on the BCA approval for parking and landscape modifications and the updates for the chest bake regulations. So then June 15th is um a work session on language for the small area plans, small area plan amendments and code updates for the council to review that language as I set up for referral to the planning commission at the meeting on June 22nd. I think those are kind of the sort of the main things that uh we're looking forward to. Um July 13th uh potentially public hearing and second reading on the code amendments and small area plan uh amendments for Virginia Village.

Um can I raise a scheduling issue for the June 19th budget and finance? It's on Junth. So, because of the federal holiday, um I would ask staff and the budget and finance committee, my budget and finance committee colleagues, um to consider moving that meeting to the 26th, which is the following Friday, um and then potentially using it for sort of a budget cycle debrief. Um we can do that. I we can uh get word out to everybody on that. Make sure that day will work. But we definitely do want to avoid Junth. Thank you for catching that. Are our city offices closed on Junth?

They are. Yeah. Federal holiday. Now I thought there's a um the urban design chapter that's not on here at all. I know that's Yeah.

discussion. Um we are so what would the first thing we would want to do is a scope of work for that urban design discussion and um I think the best time so really an initiating resolution for it. I think the best time to do that would be at that May 18th work session and add that in. So the planning staff will already be there for the Virginia village briefing and we could then have the urban design uh initiating scope of work discussion with council then as well after I told somebody with everything going on wouldn't be able to make it until you wouldn't be able to do the initiating until June.

Let you know we've been I support it. I think it is worth having a fairly thoughtful discussion about the scope of work on that on this. And so I think this is one we don't want to rush into. We'd like to really kind of think through uh what we're taking on with this. Also, I guess

go ahead. Um, given our earlier conversation, and I know we had talked about this already once, where should we expect to start having our conversations about neighborhood traffic calming and the pro NTC program and expectations going forward on, you know, datadriven processes that still are informed by neighborhood input or neighborhood, you know, input that we're getting and that's somehow being factored into prioritization based on information we're receiving even if it's not captured in the data.

I had that one too. Um I have two other kind of postbudget life things that we've talked around. So I think last year we talked about staff re-evaluating snow emergency routes and I don't know where we stand on that. Um, and then as it relates to trafficcoming devices on snow emergency routes, given that we've allowed speed tables now on Southwest, I think word's going to get out because Hillwood's asked me about it now and Anendale probably would like something too and so we should have a discussion about staff's take. And then second, um, it's come up as it relates to the restaurants request for closing streets for parade. It's come up when we've had community discussions about farmers market expansion onto Park Avenue, but kind of a policy discussion on, you know, what's our take on closing streets? I think we had previously allowed street closures as part of neighborhood block parties and then that pilot play streets program, but are you you know, is there room for council to kind of weigh in on like when do we allow people close streets? It and who pays for them for the closures? Is it a do we just absorb it in the general government budget? Do we expect that the requesters pay for some of the labor involved? Do we think it's enough of a community building activity that we should, you know, take care of it in the city budget? But, you know, that's just the budget side of things, but I think that's merits a discussion rather than tackling these things one-off because I imagine that broad street closure will come up again and be nice to have a more thorough discussion and not be reactive the next time it comes up.

Have an actual policy of on this is what we can this is what we'll close. This is what we won't. So, if we could pencil that in for a post-budget discussion on because I think we've all talked about wanting streets to be for people and wanting more lively activity and encouraging our vibrancy but also need to balance the operational concerns of it and then so which streets are appropriate for closure, which ones are not, etc. So, I want to throw that out there for a scheduling discussion. Just on a more general question, um earlier versions had uh unscheduled or future items on it. There was a whole bunch at the bottom that I found really useful cuz we're we're not getting that far. But then you know the CNI the you know split rate the all these other things we've talked about for during you know July and August we don't need to schedule that far out but be good to have that listed

it's there it exists I just set the print area just hiding it from us so we don't have to talk about he's hiding it is it password protected Wyatt somewhere no I think it's all the things he doesn't want to deal with before his retirement Is it all going to say after September 5th and it's safe though? Yeah. With a whole extra sheet. Oh no. Yeah. Okay. The the other thing I probably want just cuz we're looking at June now. I'm still figuring it out, but I guess we have to figure out are we going to have enough people on some of these June meetings?

Well, Celeste has our uh vacation schedules that I think you provided. Yeah, we've started added adding them into the schedule. So, you'll be able to see how that shakes out. Oh, it's not on the one for uh that was attached to the agenda. It's I think it is. Yeah. Yeah, cuz yours has a question. Okay. Anything else on schedule?

Okay. Uh there are any standing or regional council committee lays on reports? Council member comments. Can I mention one since you're talking of the Northern Virginia Regional Commission um in a budget request had a request for a contribution to a strategic reserve of about $300,000. I I don't even remember what the city's share of that was. We did not add that into the budget. Um many of the other jurisdictions did not as well. The NVRC is probably going to be discussing what to do about that cuz about half funded it and half did not and some of the largest jurisdictions did not. We can add this to the budget markup for May 4th. I think it's a something that we ought to be able to cover, but I just wanted um you to be aware of that. That's a small thing. Um but at the next NVRC meeting, it might come up.

I think our share was small. It was. So, it's it's manageable.

I not remember it raising eyebrows where I'm like, "Oh my god, what are we going to do?" So, I hope that that's still the request. I think the intent of this strategic planning is since I'm the lison on NVRC is um this is the body that has all of Northern Virginia coming together and trying to find like regional solutions on problems that we all share like AI housing there probably other places like we already have bodies for transportation um and so it doesn't make sense for NVRC to focus on that but there's enough like shared regional issues that we think we should collaborate on and so they've been doing a series of like deep dives on topics and how to solve it so that's the intent of that work so it's traditionally for the two years or three years I've been going to NVRC, it's mostly a dinner and update meeting and there's not a lot of action and so this is with the new executive director to try to focus on actually problem solving some shared regional problems. Okay. Uh we have minutes. Does anyone want to move approval of minutes from March 23rd, 2026?

I move we approve the minutes of March 23, 2026. Second. All in favor? I I that's approved. Anything else for tonight? Okay, let's adjourn. Good night, council. Thank you all. Thank you, staff. We can cancel Wednesday morning.