City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everybody. Welcome to our second town hall on the FY27 proposed budget. And want to welcome everybody to this session, and we have members participating online as well. So, we have two members participating online um as well as people in the room. Um my name is Wyatt Shields, and I'm the city manager for the city of Falls Church, and I'm joined by city staff, including our finance director, David So, uh head of community relations and legislative affairs, Cindy Mester, and our communications team of Maggie Raddon and Joshua Seperant. So, I thank you all for being here. Um we've got a few slides uh that we're going to go through, and then we look forward to questions, suggestions, uh comments on the budget both in the room and uh those participating virtually. Um let me ask if, uh, the mayor or another member of council would like to make any other welcoming remarks. Thank you, Mayor Hardie. Thank you for being here. Hello. Good evening, everybody. Uh, welcome to our final town hall of the budget process. Um, as I usually like to kick off, I think the annual budget process is one of the most important decisions we make in the city. It's a really good opportunity to make sure that our dollars are reflective of our values and our priorities. And so, we've heard lots of public comment on a number of subjects. Most recently, uh, community center solar, the teen center, high residential assessments, paving, and of course, school funding. And so, we want to continue hearing from you. Uh, we're nearly to the finish line. Uh, we are getting to budget markup on May 4th and then budget option on May 11th. So, hopefully, um, all the input is coming together and we will get to a good budget. Um, I will note though, there's still a fair amount of uncertainty. So, I actually just got off the road from coming back from Williamsburg with a meeting with a bunch of local governments and I think we're all a little on edge because at this point, there is no state budget and we

anticipate not having a state budget likely until end of May or early June. And so, while we don't rely on a ton of state funding from Richmond, I think that does, uh, put a lot of uncertainty on what that might mean for other things that we want to fund, uh, from Richmond. So. Right. Well, thank you, Mayor Hardie. And we're also joined by the chair and vice chair of the school board, Kathleen Tyson and, uh, Anne Sherwood. Uh, would you all like to make any welcoming remarks? Okay. Okay. Well, thank you for being here. So, this meeting is being recorded so that people can watch it, uh, through streaming or or online, uh, at a later time. So, we're going to go through a few slides and look forward to discussion afterwards. As the mayor noted, we're, uh, nearing the end of the budget process. We're at April 30th, the budget town hall, the second, uh, budget town hall. We'll have a work session on Monday, uh, May 4th and that'll be what we call the final markup for the budget and that's where the city council works through and attempts to resolve the major issues in the budget and gives direction to staff for the preparation of the final budget and tax documents for second reading, public hearing, and final adoption on May 11th. The budget that we're talking about will go into effect on July 1st of this of this year. So, here's a a slide that, uh, provides a big picture summary of the numbers in the budget. So, the city budget as a whole, uh, will be just over $134 million dollars um, in next fiscal year and that's about a point eight percent increase over the current year. The general government operating budget, uh, is, uh, slated to grow by 3.4%. The school transfer to grow by 4.1%. Um, and, uh, and and a couple of the other key items are listed down the

list. Uh, we do have a a reduced reliance on capital reserves and, uh, and that is because of some adjustments we've made to our capital improvements program because the phase two payment for West Falls has been delayed and therefore, we made changes to the CIP, uh, to reduce our reliance on capital reserves accordingly. Um, next slide, please. So, this is where the money comes from, uh, to fund the city's budget. Just over 60% comes from real estate taxes and just over 40% of, uh, of the entire city budget comes from homeowners with their real estate taxes. Um, real estate tax on the commercial sector plus sales tax, meals tax, and business licenses together comprises about 40% of the city budget. So, homeowners, uh, pay for about 40% of the budget, the business community about 40% of the budget, and the remaining 20% is things like fees for service, state grants, and, um, that sort of thing. Next slide. And this is where the money goes. And so, uh, the major the the largest, uh, function of the city government is to fund public education in the city. That's 43% of the budget. Uh, debt service is about 8% of the budget. And then going around the horn, uh, police and fire is the next largest, uh, part of the budget at 13%. Public works at 7% and so forth. And so, that's a kind of a high level view of of where the city, uh, allocates its money. Next slide. So, on the general government side, uh, the uh, city, uh, budget is is relatively simple and, um, we had some significant challenges, uh, this year to um, make

sure that we're maintaining adequate compensation for our workforce. And so, that's the main new expenditure in the budget um, alongside increase in contracted costs of which we have very little control. And so, the largest portion of that $2.5 million increase in contracted services, $1.5 million of that is from Fairfax County and Arlington County through our inter-jurisdictional contracts for, uh, fire services and court services and, uh, housing and human services through Fairfax County. Um, to balance the budget, we did need to, uh, make some reductions. So, we found efficiencies and reductions of about 700,000 throughout many of our departments. Uh, we've reduced, uh, staffing in the city, uh, by seven vacant, uh, full-time positions. And we also, to make up for the loss of investment revenue which was being used to fund affordable housing and paving or street maintenance, we made reductions in those two areas of just about a million dollars. So, those are some of the big drivers in the budget, uh, that we've presented to the city council. Next slide. Now, I won't go through all the details, but the city council has laid out real clear strategic priorities in the areas of environmental sustainability, transportation, uh, making the city safe for all users of our roadways, uh, cyclists, pedestrians, uh, transit as well as, uh, vehicular traffic, uh, growing our economic, uh, the the economic pie of the city with economic development, addressing our housing, uh, needs in the community, and making improvements for a responsive, uh, city government. And so, uh, many of the new things that were things we're trying to work through in the budget were to to keep those

priorities in mind. Next slide. Now, the big news in the budget is that we recently had our third quarter financial report and, uh, the city, uh, economy is, uh, still delivering strong growth in our local business taxes. And this really, I think, reflects the ingenuity and the hard work of our business community, our restaurant owners, our retailers, our office, uh, sector. And as a result of their good work, the city is generating, um, higher meals taxes, sales taxes, and car taxes. We also have a lot of growth happening in the city. So, we have new space coming online and customers are going to those new spaces and and spending money. Um, so, uh, in response to the third quarter financial results, uh, we are revising upward our forecast for FY27 in the amount of $700,000. So, I'll talk, uh, about some of the ideas that the council is still debating. This is very much a live issue. It has not been resolved, but we'll talk about some of the things that the council is discussing. Next slide. So, some of the options include, uh, a reduction of the real estate tax rate. So, the budget was proposed with no change to the real estate tax rate or $1.18 and a half. Uh, so, the council is considering a a half cent reduction. Um, and then, uh, the remaining dollars would be split 50/50 between, uh, general government and schools. That's one proposal and there are other, uh, items under discussion. If this were the split on the general government side, the 180,000 is, uh, being largely discussed about, uh, increasing the funding for roadway maintenance and street maintenance.

Um, May 4th, the city council will continue the discussion. There are other options of not reducing the tax, uh, rate and, uh, funding, um, other needs including street maintenance, uh, fleet needs for the police department and other critical needs. So, this is very much a live discussion and the council, I think, will, um, come to resolution on these items at their work session on May 4th. Next slide. So, this is, uh, sort of a a trend of median home owner home owner real estate tax bills. Um, home owners' assessed values have been growing over the past five years and there's been an upward trend in terms of what the tax bill has been even as the city has made significant reductions to the rate. Over the past seven years, the city has reduced the real estate tax rate by 17 cents. If the, uh, tax rate were reduced by a half cent as has been discussed, that would be about a $57, uh, reduction for your median home owner in the city uh, relative to the numbers that are shown in this chart. Next slide. So, street maintenance is a is something that we are as a city are working very hard to address. This spring, the city is going to see a lot of street paving as we're addressing some of the backlog of streets that need to be paved. And we're doing that with 2.2 million dollars in total for street maintenance in the current fiscal year. 700,000 of that was funded with investment revenue, which because of declining interest rates and smaller fund balances that the city has, including the fact that we've spent all of our federal ARPA money and so no longer get a return on that. We have a $700,000 reduction to our street maintenance relative to the current fiscal year. So,

that's one of the main things that the city council is working to address to keep that level of effort high for street maintenance. We do have some good news on the grant side where we have some state grants that will help us pave our primary quarters Route 7 and Route 29. Next slide. A few other items of interest in the budget. This budget proposes to combine our zoning function and our building safety function into a new Department of Code Administration. This has no increase in FTE count, but it would unite those two teams under unified leadership with the goal of advancing some of the changes that we we have identified and want to make progress on through the building recent building permit process assessment. In addition, we have some changes in our IT structures where we're outsourcing some of our IT services, including project management support so we can accelerate some of the things that we want to do as an organization, make it easier to get business done in the city, whether it's paying taxes, getting building permits, having technology work for staff and work for our community members. A smaller item in the budget, but a big one for for the community is Watch Night was not funded last year. It is funded in the proposed proposed budget and we're working with the restaurant community and the retail community to have a really exciting Watch Night New Year's Eve celebration for the coming next year. Next slide. Just a few more slides, but I'll want to address the capital improvements program because this is where much of the action is in the budget. Transportation is the largest part of our capital improvements program with 9.4 million dollars in projects planned for FY27 and just over a hundred

million dollars planned over the six-year period. Most of that is funded with state and federal grants. Investments in our public facilities and our parks, our utilities and our information technology is just making investments in our core technology to make it easier to get get work done here in the city. Next slide. So, how our CIP is funded as I mentioned, we have 94.8 million dollars in grant funds designated for the city. So, if it's in the CIP with a grant, it's because we've actually already had notification from the granting authorities that these dollars are coming to the city. So, that's just tremendous, I think, for the taxpayers of the city. But, they also require a lot of staff work to administer these grants and and many of them are quite complicated in the terms of the processes they require. 4.9 million use of capital reserves over the six-year period and that's less than last year as I mentioned earlier. And the city has not had issued any debt since we issued debt for Meridian High School. So, we've basically taken a break from debt issuance since 2020 and 2031 is is the next year in which we're planning to have regular tax supported debt in the capital program. Next slide. And I'll end sort of on one last note. Community members have come to the city council to encourage us to advance funding for community solar. So, we'll discuss that and this would be a solar array at the community center right next door to this building. The projected cost for that is just over $180,000, although we're refining those cost

estimates for that solar array. We're looking at some of the federal law laws relating to tax credits, but right now we're not confident that the timing should be driven by the federal tax credits. We're not very confident that this project will qualify for those federal programs. And so, what we'll discuss with the council on Monday night is recommendation to designate this as a priority for FY26 year-end dollars either from underspending of other capital projects, in which we think there will be some or designation of the the surplus revenues that we're currently forecasting in FY26. In the meantime, we'll continue to advance the planning on this, revise our cost estimates and and ask for a council appropriation for that in October. So, that's what the staff recommendation will be. The city council has been listening to community members seeking to advance that project and so the council, there are other options and we'll discuss those on Monday night as well. Next slide. I just want to note some of the fee increases and so, in stormwater, we have a stormwater fee that all property owners pay in the city. We're proposing a 7% increase and that's really to begin some of the larger capital projects in the CIP in the stormwater realm because we're moving past some of the really good grants that we're able to get to fund all the improvements we've been able to enact so far. And then the sanitary sewer and solid waste are really just cost increases from normal inflation and fairly minor impacts on homeowners. And then the last thing I'll note is building permit fees. We haven't touched those since 2016 and to catch up with our cost structure, which has increased over the past

decade, we're proposing about a 30% increase in those fees that will cover our costs, but also help us implement the new process improvements that we've worked with the community to develop to improve our building permit processes. Next slide. So, I'll end with with the schedule again, an important work session on Monday, May 4th and a final public hearing and final action on the proposed budgets on May 11th. There are good ways for people to contact us and the next slide just through um finding all the information about the budget can be found on the city's website at these links and and comments we've been receiving lots of comments and questions about the budget and um and we attempt to read we definitely read all those and attempt to respond to them as well. So, I'll stop there and uh look forward to as we said at the beginning, questions, comments, suggestions as we as we work towards the finish line of the FY27 budget. And Maggie, if you could help us coordinate if anyone raises their hand on our online participants and Joshua, thank you. Yep, we ask if anybody has any questions that they just come up to the podium and limit their comments or questions to 3 minutes each and if you're online, put your questions in the chat and we will read them out loud. Tina, I understand that you were online. I can't believe that Tina left?

Tina Herman, no, yeah. My understanding is karaoke night at Clare and Don's as well. So, that's pretty tough competition. Yeah? No, we we all passed the mic. Heard enough from me. David, do you have any other words of wisdom? This is David's first budget with the city of Falls Church and it's been a great pleasure working with you on it and uh and and this is my last town hall for the budget. It does look like Katherine Lockwood is is typing in the chat. So, hold hold on. One thing I'd like to say that was important is that Monday night you want us to have it all hammered out Monday night. So, so that's one of the things that that you told us and I thought that's good for the public to know that you'd like to try to have it finalized as much as possible on Monday night. That's right. So, the filing Monday, we're not trying to change things on the day of. Yeah. I have a quick question, Wyatt. Well, let me uh So, Vice Mayor Laura Downs just noted that the council really will be working to uh resolve all the outstanding issues on the budget on Monday, May 4th. And that's really important because you we don't want to be making changes to the budget documents from the dais where numbers

might not add up correctly and there'll be errors in the budget. And so, for the public's information, it's it's good to know that the May 4th is really important date for for wrapping up uh the budget decisions. It's not truly over until May 11th, but the council works real hard to have uh things nailed down by May 4th. Would you care to comment on That's okay. No, this is for the folks at home. Oh, okay. You care to comment on our proposed budget this year compared to the ones that have already been advanced in Arlington and Fairfax, our neighbors? So, [snorts] um David, you've been doing David had a great meeting recently with our neighbors. David, why don't you provide some commentary of what you've been hearing? All right, thank you, Wyatt. Yeah, so I would say we're positioned much in a much more stronger position than our um neighbors. I think we've had strong revenue growth to kind of help bolster some of the some of the pains that our neighbors are going through. So, you know, we are all feeling the same pain on the expense side, but I think we are more fortunate that we were able to uh mitigate some of those blows. You know, a lot of the uh the pain that they were feeling, they've also billed back to us, right? And so, I think that's part of the challenges, but I would say, you know, this also being my first budget and kind of seeing what our neighbors are going through, I'm happy to be here than uh in Arlington or or any of the other ones that are going through more pain. Are there any cuts in Fairfax and Arlington or tax rate increases you think have been the most painful for them to have to endure? Yeah, I think Arlington uh even though they advertised 2 cents uh from what I was reading and hearing, they were more targeting the 1 and 1/2 cents. So, I was more surprised when they

uh adopted the 2 cent. I was like, "Wow, that's So, the fact that yeah, they're you know, having to do some more um I think painful for residents, higher tax rate increases, you know, I think that's been part of the challenge. Um I think maybe some of the others may have found other alternatives. I think Fairfax County was one, I think, but they also implemented a meals tax, you know, going from 0 to 4%. Um again, we're seeing some strength in in our restaurants. They're probably seeing something similar. So, I would say that, you know, it's kind of varying across the jurisdictions. Um and then we have other jurisdictions that have all the data center center money. So, you know, for them, it's good times now, but few years down the road, you know, they may be in a a difficult position.

have comparable uh uh situations with regard to the police force, our 14% increase here, probably the biggest and the most outstanding item. Uh did they have to do that as well? Yeah, only Arlington and Alexandria uh are the two that I'm aware of that had to do the big I mean, Arlington went above and beyond. Um there's just no way that we could from a compensation standpoint compete. Fairfax County um their uh union uh is going to come up their next CBA is going to come up next year. So, I'd be interested to see how Fairfax kind of handles, you know, they I'm sure the CBA will see Arlington and and point there and they may point to like us and Alexandria to kind of find a a a middle ground. But yeah, that's that's kind of it's kind of been the the trend and I know also during my time at Willmar, you know, the the police force there, they're they've also had big increases in in their compensation. So, I think it's just kind of in this area, there's just been a a a higher compensation uh for the the public safety employees. What about the schools in Fairfax County, Arlington, Alexandria compared to Falls Church? How much were they hurt with the budget cuts this year? Right. So, I think the consistent theme across the board um in the jurisdictions is I think none of them were able to meet the the requests of the school boards. And so, but again, we had more of the financial We were kind of the other side where we had a lot of this revenue to be able to support all of that. So, yeah, that's probably the one difference that I would say Falls Church is compared to our our neighbors. Yeah. So, we do have a comment and question that came in

uh from Catherine Lockwood online. She says, "Hi all, thank you for your time this evening. It seems that a macro factor impacting the budget beyond the state delayed budget is that some development plans have delayed in the area, which are also impacting the 60% of budget contributions. Question, for the 40% of the budget that is related to homeowners, it seems that the year-over-year contribution is significantly increasing. Given the average homeowner increase has been around 6%, can the community advise what is driving some Falls Church assessments around 17 to 20% increases year-over-year?" Yeah, and so, I would the way I would answer that is, you know, it's it's primarily driven by sales data. And so, um we've I've also posted on our website uh a very high-level overview of kind of how our real estate team does their assessments. And so, there's a really good infographic um available there to kind of showcase what our real estate team does in terms of assessing home values. But sales data is is really the primary driver and I think um in one of the budget Q&A documents, we took one neighborhood as as an example. Um sometimes there's lag in um some of the sales data when we incorporate it into this year's assessments. And so, uh it it varies uh from from neighborhood to neighborhood. We're always looking to improve things. Um and with uh also having a new real estate assessor on board, you know, we're clearly going to always uh look at things to see how we can um do things better. But in in terms of the data, the numbers, uh that's that's what we always ground our assessments in. So, and there's uh also uh an appeals process. So, if if someone

does feel that that their assessed values are too high, we do have options for people to consider um to to kind of uh look into that. So. We dropped that infographic in the chat. Oh, thank you so much, Joshua. Awesome. Thank you very much. This is actually Excuse [clears throat] me. A question from my spouse. There's been some attention during your meetings about the structural deficiencies in one of the mast arms, I think, at Broad and West. Uh the question is, does the budget for the coming year contemplate dealing with that? Is that on a fast track or is it, you know, going to be feasible to get the work done in uh a pretty rapid fashion? Thank you for the question. And so, the question relates to um concerns about a structural issue with a mast arm at the intersection of West and Broad Street. That is being fast-tracked. Uh staff are working to get that replaced immediately. And what the impact of that is is not that the mast arm is going to be replaced, but, you know, you spend a lot of money on that, then there's less money for road maintenance. And so, uh you know, one of the things the council is working on is to see if that we can identify additional funds to put in to street maintenance so that when big things like that come up, they can be absorbed and not have a negative impact to the regular street paving budget. Looks like Catherine has a follow-up that she's typing.

We have a follow-up question here? This is just a quick look at the meeting the other night. You heard from the sheriff and his needs in the budget. I had not heard much discussion of that up until this most recent meeting. There was an ask for, you know, information from him to buttress his hopes for the budget. Could you talk about what kind of information you guys are looking for and what the prospects are for funding the sheriff's department along the lines of what he indicated is needed. Thank you for the question. So, that will be another item that will be discussed at the Council's work session on May 4th. I'll share some of kind of what what I plan to recommend to the city council um is to allow some additional time to consider the position request over the coming fiscal year. Um and sort of just in the context I will note that almost every department has come forward with requests for additional funding for positions. And in fact this budget has fewer positions this year than it did in the current year. And so we're reducing positions not funding new positions given that you know kind of the forecast over the multi-years for kind of where where we're going fiscally as a city or as a region. So, that's that will be my recommendation. The city council will continue the dialogue with the Sheriff and ultimately make a the decision on that. With respect to the second part of the Sheriff's request which is a a market adjustment for our Sheriff deputies we are gathering the data on that. The police department's compensation changes

were based on an analysis on what's happening in the region and trying to hit sort of a a median of the basket of of peer jurisdictions in Northern Virginia. So, we're attempting to do the same thing on the Sheriff's side and have that decision be driven by the data. And then if the data supports that working with the Sheriff and the finance department to see if we can find some funds to meet that market adjustment. But that will be a a much smaller fiscal impact than than the position that was requested as well. Yep. You mentioned it but I'd like a little more clarity on the how the city handled the delay in phase two of the West End project. A $10 million payment was due to come to the city and expectations based on that. And has that had a major impact on this budget or is it something that was absorbed through the use of contingencies and so forth? So, it has had a major impact on the capital improvements program. That's where that $10 million payment was anticipated to be used and we had not allocated the full $10 million. We had only allocated a portion of it through the CIP. So, you know when I mentioned on the first slide the reduction on the use of capital reserves that's that's related to that delayed payment. Um now I do believe that payment ultimately will come to the city. Um and but it's prudent right now to assume it's going to be delayed possibly a number of years and therefore to reduce the reliance on the capital reserves. Now the CIP I don't mean to minimize it. You know those cuts to the CIP are you

know they're impactful. And [clears throat] so it was a uh you know it was not not a good development for us. Yeah. We have another question from Catherine Lockwood. Does Falls Church have a long-term budget and master plan to adjust for growing inflation, housing affordable crisis, and intergenerational trends impacting the Northern Virginia area? Curious how the city prepares for growth or declines given financial headwinds for families and adjustments to population and growth rates. So, that's a great question. Um so we do a couple things. We do six-year planning for our capital and investments. So, that's our main effort on multi-year budgeting. With respect to the impacts of development we do have fairly sophisticated models that allow the city to have some visibility about the impact of development in the city both on the cost side and on the revenue side. And so the city's had that tool for about 20 years now and and and we have refined it over time to base kind of how we model things based on what our actual results have been in the city of Falls Church. Um and so those are kind of two of our of our kind of main efforts that we do in multi-year fiscal modeling. The in terms of some of the other things noted in the call I think a lot of those are sort of big challenges affordability as as as an example that the city is trying to address through its affordable living program and through

the affordable housing fund where the city has built up some grants and other revenues to help bolster our our affordable housing fund and we have some specific projects that we're going to be working on I think in a very public way and and have been over the past several months. One of which is the Virginia Village project which is is something that will as as we sort of flesh out kind of what the potential is there for meeting some of the housing needs in the community. Um that will become I think an important budget issue for the city as we go forward in years to come in terms of how the city can support affordable housing there and in other parts of the city. Um so that those are a couple thoughts I have. Let me ask David if he has any thing he'd like to add on in response to that question. Yeah, I think part of the the multi-year outlook again kind of referring back to my time at WMATA I was uh during my tail end there they were starting to incorporate on the operating side a multi-year outlook and so I I absolutely see value in that. I think that's definitely an opportunity that on the finance side we can consider adding. And so that's that's definitely one other area that um you know considering all of these factors, headwinds, and so on and so forth allow council members to also have more data points to to see okay how are how are things looking two three years from now and providing that data I think would be very helpful. So, but definitely to come I would say. She's typing again. Hold on.

She also allowed to just speak into the mic her mic? I think. Uh that would be better. Sorry guys. Thanks for answering all my questions but my husband and I moved here in the pandemic and this is my first meeting so appreciate you guys taking time. Um Are there any ways that citizens can help Falls Church with your priorities? Do you have programs that where citizens can get more involved in the community? Just curious how you guys do that. Well, we have awesome ways for community members to get involved in decision-making and participation in in the government in the city. Let me ask if a city council member would like to speak to that and we could talk about our boards and commissions and other ways to sort of in a in a real substantive way to get involved. I'm going to turn it over to Council member Arthur Aikin. So, I was going to take this one because I think the boards and commissions is a fantastic way for you to be to get involved. We have I'm not even sure of the number 15 20 boards and commissions you can be involved in. I took this question because I was on one of our boards and commissions one of our active ones on transportation for five years before joining the council and it is a wonderful way to get involved, learn more about what's going on in the city, and provide input and provide your expertise and we encourage it. And so we can follow up with you after this meeting with with some of those opportunities. Also as Mayor Hardesty noted we do have regular communications and you can sign up to receive the city's weekly newsletter the e-focus and and so that's another way to to stay plugged in. Is that helpful?

Very helpful. Didn't know about any of that. Thanks for the shout-outs guys and appreciate everything you guys do for the community. All right Catherine. Catherine will put up the newsletter sign-up in the chat as well for you. I just wanted to share one other obvious way. We're available by email, phone, carrier pigeon, smoke signals, however you want to communicate with us. It's not infrequent that we hear from constituents at the grocery store or we hear from constituents when we're out and around. And one of the real wonderful things about this community is that's still possible. Yes, there are formal methods as Art mentioned, there are boards and commissions, but also we feel we're drawn from the community, we're part of the community, we're all anxious to serve the community. And please don't hesitate to reach out to any of us individually as well as through the more formal channels. Thank you, Council Member Snyder. Are there any other questions or suggestions, comments? All right. Well, everyone, thank you. We have one more from Nick Benton, editor-in-chief of the Falls Church News-Press. Well, [clears throat] what

[snorts] you've been here over 20 years. Oh, boy. What's what do you want to reflect upon as how the city has come along over those 20 years? Hey. Huh? [clears throat]

Quoting every word. Well, that's a great and a big question. I you know, it's funny. I I don't have I'm not ready for speeches like that. That may be in maybe the August time frame. But I will say this. I do think that the governing body of the city of Falls Church just to to make an observation, I think um you know, it all does start with the the governance of the city and and the people who run for office, the people the sort of the civic infrastructure of the city, I think really supports good governance. And the city council reflects that. Um and it's not just the council members. I think it's the whole ecosystem. I think that the city council members and how government is done in the city of Falls Church it it constantly evolves, but I believe it has been evolving in in very positive directions over over the 20 years that I've had the privilege to participate here. And um the the governance is demanding, persistent, listens really hard, interacts with each other at a very civil level. Um and and so that combination of being I think very intense and very intentional and also very civil and and listens very very closely to what the community is saying. I think those are all very strong attributes. And and so that's one observation over the 20-year period. Yeah. All right. On that note, thanks everybody for coming out on a beautiful April evening to participate in town hall, our second town hall, and look forward to continuing the discussion on Monday, May 4th. Good night, everybody.