City Council - Regular Meeting

All righty, good evening. Let's get the show on the road. Welcome everyone to the Tuesday, May 26th meeting of the City Council. I wanted to call us to order. Welcome to the giant crowd we have tonight. Clerk, could you start with roll call please?

Yes, Mr. Egan?

Here.

Ms. Conley? Here. Ms. Downs? Here. Ms. Flynn? Here. Mr. Snyder?

Here, virtually.

Ms. Underhill? Here, virtually. And Mayor Hardy?

Here. Given that we have three members participating electronically, I think we have motions for those.

Councilmember Snider, can you identify your remote location and reason for participation by electronic means?

Out-of-country travel, personal reasons, Austria.

Okay. I move that City Council approve electronic participation by Councilmember Snider in this meeting for personal reasons pursuant to the Council's adopted policy. Is there a second? It was Egan on the second.

You can call roll, please. Mr. Egan?

Yes.

Ms. Conley? Yes. Ms. Downs? Yes. Mayor Hardy? Yes. Motion carries. Thank you, Council.

Thank you.

Yes. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Councilmember Flynn, could you please identify your remote location and reason for participation by electronic means?

Hi. Yep. I'm in Milwaukee, Wisconsin for personal work travel.

Thank you. I move that the City Council approve electronic participation by Council Member Flynn in this meeting for personal reasons pursuant to the City Council's adopted policy.

Is there a second?

Second.

It's Agin on the second. Call roll, please. Mr. Agin?

Yes.

Ms. Conley? Yes. Ms. Downs? Yes. And Mayor Hardy? Yes. Thank you, Council. Motion carries.

And I have one more. Council Member Underhill, could you please identify your remote location and reason for participation by electronic means? Sure. I am in Falls Church, Virginia, and I am remote for medical reasons. I move that the City Council approve electronic participation by Council Member Underhill in this meeting for medical reasons pursuant to the City Council's adopted policy.

Is there a second? Second. Is Connelly in the second?

Call roll, please.

Mr. Agin?

Yes.

Ms. Conley? Yes. Ms. Downs? Yes. Mayor Hardy? Yes.

Motion carries. Thank you, Council.

If I could ask everyone to rise and join us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

To the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic which stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, liberty and justice for all.

Thank you, everybody. Is there a motion to adopt tonight's meeting agenda? I move to adopt the meeting agenda. Is there a second? Second. All in favor? Aye. Agenda's adopted. Well, welcome everyone. Mr. Snyder, Ms. Underhill, Ms. Flynn, thank you for joining remotely. If you can only see the lovely faces we have in the crowd, we have a full house tonight, standing room only. So we have a bunch of special proclamations. First up is recognition of the Citizens for a Better City appointed youth representatives to the city boards and commissions. And I believe we have representatives from the CBC here in the audience. Welcome. Can you turn on your mic? I think you might push the button maybe.

Hello? Hello? That's a little much for me. Anyway, I'm Nancy Brandon, chairman of the CBC Youth Representative Initiative. I just wanted to comment that this program started 12 years ago with 15 reps that were sworn in. And tonight we're going to swear in 48. So the program has really grown over the last... 12 years. Originally, the CBC decided that we wanted to provide some place for young people to understand and be involved in how the city works and how civic organizations help support the community. I'd like to, because we're gonna have so many youth reps this year, so many more, we graduated 18 and we're bringing in 48. I WANT TO THANK THE CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARDS, COMMISSIONS, AND CIVIC ORGANIZATIONS FOR SUPPORTING THE PROGRAM BY HELPING US FIND A FEW MORE VACANCIES THAN WE HAD AT THE END OF LAST YEAR, AT THE END OF THIS YEAR. AND I'D ALSO LIKE TO THANK OUR CBC BOARD, I MEAN, OUR CBC YOUTH INITIATIVE BOARD, LINDY HOCKENBERRY, WHO IS HERE. Cara Boo, which is here, I don't think she's here. Amanda Springman, Josh Singer, and of course, our admin Sally Eckfeld, who keeps us coordinated here. And I think that Hal Lipman, our CBC president, wants to say something.

And it's not four score, it's seven years ago. In all my years of public service and role as CBC president, this swearing-in ceremony has always been among the most enjoyable, satisfying, and energizingly filled with good vibes. This is especially so in these immensely challenging times, as the faces of the CBC youth reps before us light the way. Thank you.

So if our youth reps would like to come through here and gather in front of the dais. I don't think there's a motion for it.

I don't think there's a motion for it.

let's grab a photo for some photos first the paparazzi come on up everybody if you want to look at the photos out of the way All right. Phil Duncan is requesting you look this way.

One, two, three. Thank you.

The next thing we are going to do is administer an oath of office, which is what I do for every member that is appointed to a city board by the city council. And so we also do this for our youth reps, and it just is an expression of your commitment to this volunteer work for the city. So if you wanna raise your right hand, Do solemnly swear that you will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon you as a youth representative to the best of your ability, so help you God. All right, so you are sworn in, thank you. And you'll be getting information in your emails if you're on a city board or commission, you'll be getting something in your emails from the board staff liaison.

So as a youth rep shuffle out, just a quick note in terms of your responsibility on our boards and commissions. So we really value our local boards and commissions. So whether it's housing, economic development, environment, and so we really look to all of you youth reps to be kind of the next generation and to be the voices for the future. So we look forward to your service on these boards and commissions and giving us great advice and counsel on all these important issues. Thank you, CBC, and thank you, youth reps.

Thank you. And my advice is to always speak up when you're on these boards and commissions. Just make sure you always let your voice be heard, because it's so important.

So is this the largest group of youth reps we've had? I think so. Great. Thank you all. Thanks for stepping up and thank you CBC for continuing to advance the program. So while we wait for everyone to shuffle out and get to the next proclamation, just a quick note as well. So congrats to all the Meridian graduates today and also for FCCPS for launching the biggest class ever, class of 2026.

And Mayor, can we congratulate you and your son Oliver on his graduation today? It's a great achievement.

Thank you. It's been a busy day, and I am aiming to be... as well as school board member Sherwood back there, I think, and other members of school board also had graduating kids. So it is a little city when we all come together for big celebrations like that. So I personally am aiming to get out of here by 10 o'clock tonight, cause I'm wrangling animals at the all night grad party. And so we're gonna run a tight ship tonight. So thank you all for bearing with us as we try to be efficient. So second in our special presentation tonight is we have declaring June 6th as Vietnamese Heritage Day in the city of Falls Church. And Ms. Connolly will do the honors.

Oh, okay. Whereas the City of Falls Church is a vibrant and diverse community enriched by the traditions, culture, and contributions of residents from all cultural backgrounds. And the Vietnamese American community has played a vital role in the civic, economic, and cultural life of Northern Virginia and the City of Falls Church for over five decades, establishing thriving businesses, community organizations, and cultural landmarks. And the nearby Eden Center has long served as a historic and premier cultural hub for the Vietnamese diaspora. preserving heritage, fostering community spirit, and drawing visitors from across the nation to celebrate Vietnamese cuisine and traditions. And Vietnamese Americans have made significant contributions to our community as entrepreneurs, educators, public servants, healthcare professionals, and artists, greatly enhancing the quality of life and economic vitality of our city. And whereas designating a specific day to recognize the Vietnamese Literary and Arts Club and honor Vietnamese heritage provides an opportunity for all residents of Falls Church to learn about, appreciate, and celebrate the rich history, resilient spirit, and enduring traditions of the Vietnamese people.

Now, therefore, I, Letty Hardy, Mayor of the City of Falls Church, Virginia, on behalf of the City Council and our residents, do hereby proclaim June 6th, 2026 as Vietnamese Heritage Day in the City of Falls Church, and urge all residents to join in celebrating the culture, history, and invaluable contributions of our Vietnamese American neighbors, friends, and fellow citizens.

Thank you all for joining us. And Mayor, Ms. Nguyen from the VLAC would like to say a few words.

Great. That's okay. Welcome. And as she's coming up, I just want to note that the VLAC won one of the parade entries yesterday. So I think it was the first time you were entered in the parade, and it was a great entry. So congratulations.

Good evening, Mayor Hardy, members of the City Council, and distinguished guests. My name is Do Nguyen, and it is an incredible honor for me to stand here in front of you tonight on behalf of the Vietnamese Literary and Artistic Club, VLAC, and the Vietnamese American community to express our gratitude for this official proclamation declaring June 6th, 2026 as Vietnamese Heritage Day in the city of Falls Church. This recognition means more to our community than words itself can fully express. To have our history, culture, and our journey formally acknowledged by the city we call home is a deeply moving moment for all of us. Falls Church has long been a place of opportunity, culture, and deep community roots. For decades, the local Vietnamese community has strived to contribute to the vibrant cultural tapestry and economic vitality of this beautiful city. From small businesses, at Eden Center to all the families living in these neighborhoods. At VLAC, our mission has always been to preserve, celebrate, and share our Vietnamese heritage via the art, literature, and history with our younger generation as well as with all of the American friends. This proclamation is a powerful validation of that work. It is not just a recognition of the past, but it is also a bridge to the future. It ensures that our children and grandchildren can look at the city and know that their heritage is seen, valued, and celebrated as an essential part of the broader Falls Church community. We are profoundly grateful for your ongoing support of our community. Thank you for honoring our heritage and thank you for making Falls Church a welcoming home for everyone. Thank you Mayor Hardy and City Council members.

May I invite all of my friends? Yes, please come up. We'd love for you to come up and receive the proclamation.

Thank you.

Thank you. Can you guys shift this way a little bit so the council is centered behind us?

Perfect. All right, if you're called, don't block Mary's side. There you go. All right, you all smiling. We've got three, four cameras, but keep smiling. Yes. Keep smiling. Here we go. One, two, three. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

yesterday at the Memorial Day Parade and speaking of Memorial Day Parade thank you Mr. Shields for all the work that went into it especially with the rainy forecast and moving the ceremony indoors we know that that is sort of an event that is not easy to pull off and pivot and so as always Park Avenue looks spotless even after a full day of festivities so kudos to Rec and Parks, Public Works, Public Safety and everyone who made yesterday a great success in Falls Church. Our third proclamation tonight is declaring June 2026 as Pride Month in the City of Falls Church, and Mr. Agin will do the honors.

Whereas June is recognized as Pride Month nationwide as a celebration of sexual and gender diversity and to increase awareness of the efforts to establish and preserve equal rights for LGBTQIA plus people. And Pride Month has its origins in the riots, protests, and anti-discrimination campaigns of the 1960s organized by LGBTQIA plus community members to fight for equal rights at every level of government. the commemoration of which underscores our determination to support, preserve, and advance the civil rights of all human beings. And it is appropriate to celebrate progress made in the decades since the first Pride, and to recognize the challenges the community continues to face. And according to the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Deaf and Defamation alert desk. In 2025, over 1,000 reported anti-LGBTQIA plus incidents occurred across the U.S. with 532 incidents directly targeting trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming community. And the city council affirms its year-round support for the civil rights of people of all backgrounds and identities, including transgender, intersex, and gender non-conforming people. People of varying sexual orientations and those engaged in diverse relationship structures. And city-run programs, events, and activities are open to all to participate in a manner consistent with their gender identity, sexuality, and relationship structure. And the Falls Church community is a proud home to LGBTQIA plus community members and joins them in celebrating diversity and unity in their many forms.

Now, therefore, I, Leti Hardy, Mayor of the City of Falls Church, Virginia, do hereby proclaim the month of June 2026 as Pride Month in the City of Falls Church and urge all to respect and honor our diverse community, celebrate and build a culture of inclusiveness and acceptance, and participate in the city's June Joy pop-up event, Pride in Cherry Hill Park. And as a note, I think next Wednesday, June 3rd at 10 o'clock, I think we're inviting the community to join us in raising the pride flag as we do every June, right outside City Hall. So June 3rd, Wednesday, 10 a.m. Is there anyone here to help receive the proclamation tonight? We'll save it for next Wednesday. Great, thank you. Besides the big oath of office we did earlier, is there anything else that we need to do for oath of office tonight, Madam Clerk? I don't have anybody here this evening. Thank you. Well, let's move on to receipt of public comment. Can you start with a summary of written comments, please, Madam Clerk?

Certainly. Let's go. These are the summary of the written comments received since your last regular meeting. Mostly about Virginia Village. The following requested that if the city proceeds with redevelopment of Virginia Village that they protect neighborhood and park setbacks and transitions, add stricter height limits, and require shadow or visual impact studies before choosing any developer. David Ali and Amanda Maisel, Sarah Chart, Tom DePalma, Ben Fred, Layla Hassoon, Jane Hoge, William McAllister, Mark and Jennifer Resta, Lori Vines, William Walter, and Matt Mattson. The following ask that the Virginia Village RFP require compatibility with adjacent neighborhoods by preserving the 40 foot setback with step backs and landscaping, capping heights at two stories next to Winter Hill and Big Chimneys, allowing developers flexibility on the number of affordable units and restoring shadow study requirements so impacts on nearby homes and the park are fully understood. They also asked for more time to receive the public's feedback and we had similar comments from both Mary Lou Pickle and Shane Swift. Sorry, I have an extra paragraph in here. Carl W. Anderson wrote to support affordable housing, but wants it well designed with greenery, appropriate setbacks, and no negative impact on nearby property values. He also expressed concern about waiving height setback rules and perceived disregard of citizen concerns in favor of developers. Rob Barnett expressed concern that the Virginia Village project seemed rushed and that information on the scope of the proposed project was not clear to the public. He also expressed concern about displacement of current tenants and about expending tax dollars to purchase properties. Bernadette Baruch with concern about a proposed to decrease required setbacks, the transparency of the RFP process, and the inclusion of minimum number of units required in the RFP. And also that the project was moving too quickly. Nader and Bernadette Baruch wrote to ask that current setbacks and transitions next to Winter Hill and Big Chimneys Park be preserved. They asked for clearer height limits near existing homes and park land. They asked that mandatory shadow studies and visual impact analysis be required before any redevelopment proposal is selected. They asked for open space park and neighboring compatibility be used as evaluation criteria and that the process is slowed down to allow for more public review. And that was before your work session. And then Nader and Bernadette Baruch also wrote before this meeting asking that the bulk plane be correctly redrawn originating at the property line of 243 Gundry Drive and any conclusions reached in the staff analysis be corrected based on the corrected and accurate drawing. They also stated that they support Virginia Village redevelopment but asked Council to add six protections to any code changes. Firm height limits of two to three stories at Winter Hill, mandatory shadow study before setting heights, preservation of the 40-foot setback, a 60-foot buffer from Winter Hill for parking and garages, meaningful open space requirements, and explicit retention of Council's discretionary review to ensure neighborhood impacts are fully addressed. Raul M. Segovia Bonilla asks that the project be limited to two stories next to Winter Hill and Big Chimneys. Include 40 to 60 foot setbacks and step backs with landscape open space and provide lower scale transitions where new development meets existing two-story homes and parkland. Stephanie Calabrese asks that any development of Virginia Village include a large open space buffer and landscaping between units and the park. limit buildings to two stories, and require deep step backs to preserve privacy, views park character, and avoid shadowing effects. Phil Christensen wrote to support increasing the number of affordable housing units in Virginia Village. He said he believed the project would bring benefit to all and encourage the city to weigh the true value and costs of providing more housing opportunities. Cassandra Cloud asked that any project include at least 40 foot setbacks from the park and neighboring properties and step down in the height to two stories when adjacent to existing homes. Barbara Cannady wrote to support the project to meet the city's goal of providing affordable housing and advocated for a plan that did not include a high rise and asked that the project preserve the current scale and balance of the neighborhood. Grant Dressler supports affordable housing and increased urban density at Virginia Village while acknowledging neighbors' concerns about setbacks in zoning and reserving final judgment until specific development details are available. Claire Dunn wrote to support preserving and expanding affordable housing. Louis Jerome Gallacher wrote to support the largest possible housing development to occupy the Virginia Village site. Ed Gray said the West Broad Harris Teeter project would have been much more intrusive on his home if there had not been deliberate back and forth dialogue with the community. He said light impacts and wall effects are not as severe for his home and traffic flows are well thought out because of such dialogue and urged the same for the Virginia Village project. He urged the city to scale the project appropriately with mini-field height limits, 40 to 60 foot buffers, setbacks and step backs, traffic and parking planning, and pre-post construction monitoring of nearby homes. Mark Gross asked that the Virginia Village project be slowed down to allow thorough public input. He opposed one-off zoning changes and said that any project near existing homes in Big Chimneys Park should protect current residents' investments and interests as much as it advances affordable housing. Toni Harrelson wrote in support of the project as a renter who is priced out of home ownership. She asked council to adopt an expansive definition of neighbor, actively engage those most affected by the housing crisis, and use the project to preserve and add affordable units so lower and single income residents can continue to live in Falls Church. Housing Commission Chair Jordan Hicks and Vice Chair Sarah Ferreira asked council to treat Virginia Village as a rare opportunity to preserve and expand affordable housing toward the city's 2025 affordable living policy goals. They pointed out the looming loss of existing committed units, the needs of lower income and under representative residents. They recognize the concerns of neighboring residents, but thought that public engagement has been a substantial enough to justify moving forward to seek redevelopment proposals while continuing to engage with the community. Housing Commission Chair Sara Ferreira wrote separately to ask council to move forward with issuing an RFP for the Virginia Village project stating that substantial public input has already occurred and more engagement would follow once concrete proposals are available. Former state delegate Bob Hall offered an alternative to redeveloping the Virginia Village site for affordable housing and detailed the plan to redevelop an area in the Gordon Road Triangle for the same purpose. Dr. H. Rebecca Johnson requested slowing the Virginia Village redevelopment to assess historic and preservation impacts, including buffers to the Tinner Hill Historic and Cultural District, protecting 1941 quadplexes through a potential historic overlay district, and rehab funds of voting large-scale buildings. She said she favors low-rise townhomes with meaningful setbacks and shares similar concerns about the Quinn project. Kathy Kleiman, Mark Massey, and Dave Mercer asked that the proposed Virginia Village project be slowed down to allow for more public discourse, noting the impact thorough public dialogue had on the Founders Row project near their neighborhood. Serena Kumar supports updating the current Virginia Village properties as opposed to redeveloping the area. Amaya Lambert asked that the new Virginia Village community be smoke-free. Susanna Locke wrote to support expanding affordable housing at Virginia Village. Nadia Martinez wrote to support the release of the RFP for redevelopment for Virginia Village. Mark McFadden asked that the Virginia Village project not proceed because of density and the pace of change and impact of growth in the city. Robert O'Brien asked that the city council pause and carefully weigh the proposed redevelopments impacts on nearby homes and the park. He said he believed that buildings over three to four stories would worsen density and traffic and urged reasonable setbacks with buffering. John Offman wrote in opposition to the proposed project because of the scale impact on the neighborhood and concerns about traffic. Ryan Osteen wrote in support of the project as a meaningful opportunity to expand housing options. He urged the city to carefully consider the interests of current Virginia Village residents and residents of the adjacent neighborhoods and the impact of zoning changes on the other parts of the city. Craig Pike wrote to support the project. Stephanie D. Powell asked that any redevelopment be, make sure that ADA accessible entrance and parking for Big Chimneys Park is relocated from private property to city-owned land. That it includes substantial setbacks from Winter Hill and the park and includes clear setback requirements and building designs that avoid a wall effect. Robin Ramey wrote to support making affordable housing a central goal of the project because Falls Church faces a severe shortfall in affordable units as existing ADUs expire. She asked council to use the redevelopment opportunity to significantly expand committed affordable housing and remember that those most affected by the housing crisis are often least able to participate in the public process. Fred Thompson provided detailed recommendations for the Virginia Village RFP and supports leveraging the project to add affordable homes, but asked council to refine the RFP before issuing it. VPAS wrote to support affordable housing, but urged in regard to this project a solid financial backup plan if tax credits fail, clarity on how it fits into the broader affordable housing strategy, serious consideration of renovating existing apartments, preservation of green space and 40-foot setbacks with required shadow studies, and they expressed concern that requiring a high minimum unit count in an overlay zoning district would drive excessive height and density. The Winter Hill Community Association Board asked council to prioritize buffering setbacks, scale transitions, green space, and neighborhood compatibility, and offered to be a constructive partner in the Virginia Village redevelopment process. And then City Council received a petition with 69 signatures supporting thoughtful development of Virginia Village and asked that any that any project preserve current setbacks and transitions set clear height and compatibility limits near homes and parkland, restore mandatory shadow visual impact studies before choosing a developer, and adopt zoning changes that strengthen neighborhood protections. In other Letters, emails, Alyssa Kay expressed disappointment that the Memorial Day Parade included more multicultural themes than themes of American military sacrifice and asked the city to refocus future events. Kate Nesson asked how the city's AI policy aligned with the city council's focus on green initiatives.

Thank you all. It's good we have some other public comment in there. It'd be a shame to miss the other ones. So now we have receipt of public comment in person or virtually. And I know that the clerk had been collecting some speaker slips. I'll remind everyone to limit your comments to three minutes or shorter, please.

Can I? Sure.

First, we have Jim Coyle followed by Ed Henderson.

I said Ed should go first, he's the gentleman. Thank you. I just wanted to report back to you as the 250 committee that we had a wonderful turnout yesterday for the Virginia State Mobile Museum and I was told today that of all the places they've gone so far, Falls Church had the largest turnout in any of the cities they visited. So our citizens really got excited and took advantage of it, so that's really good news. Secondly, I just wanted to point out, since we're celebrating Vietnamese Historical Month, our next video coming out this week is going to be about the Vietnamese contributions to the community in Falls Church. So be looking for that this week. And I wanted to say to Arthur, yes, we're going to have the mechanical bull at the Civic Jam. So should we reserve the first ride for you? Maybe not the first ride, but I will be there. Okay, good. So, thank you.

Thank you. Well, kudos, Mr. Coyle, because I think the reason why we get such great turnout is because of the work of the 250 Committee, and thank you for your leadership on that so far.

Yes, Mr. Coyle, you've done an amazing job. The energy you've brought. The energy you brought has just been phenomenal, Mr. Quillen, and the excitement is just, you know, very infectious. And I'm glad that you finally answered the mechanic, because Councilmember Aging cannot stop talking about this mechanical bull. So I'm glad that you finally answered that question. Thank you very much. I'm going to talk about it more now.

I remember trying to run a time meeting tonight, so I'm going to cut that off then. Welcome, Mr. Henderson.

Thank you.

And next up, we'll have Mark Resta after Mr. Henderson.

Well, first, I need to take care of some housekeeping. My wife has sent me with notices of Juneteenth, which she's working very strenuously on, which is going to be on the date of Juneteenth, the 19th. And we have one of the foremost Frederick Douglass-ran actors to be present and do a reenactment on Juneteenth on Tenor Hill, at the Tenor Hill Historic Site on June 19th. I want to speak to an issue that's been in the news a lot lately, and that is the issue of voting rights and gerrymandering. 1964 was a defining year in my life when I went with my mother to the Macon County Courthouse in Tuskegee, Alabama. And there she was asked to take a test. Now she was a professor at the university and surely was capable of passing that test, but yet she didn't pass. And the way that things worked back in those days was that it was at the discretion of the registrar whether you were to take the test or not. While we were there, those young men, white men, came in overalls, no shirt, boots. And he wasn't required to take the test. They just signed him up. Well, my mother was denied the right to vote. And as far as gerrymandering goes, Falls Church has a history of gerrymandering as well. And I want to remind this city that it is part of your history. In 1887, because of Frederick Foote, whose picture's on the wall in the back there, the town council voted to gerrymanned almost one third of the town of Falls Church out of Falls Church. And immediately after it was petitioned to the state legislature to retrocede that part of Falls Church back to Fairfax County. Let's not let what happened in the Supreme Court stand. We need to fight that with all intentions. They're gutting the Voting Rights Act, and we need to stand up and make sure that they understand our displeasure in what they're doing. Thank you very much.

Thank you for that comment. Thank you. Next, we have Mark Aresta, followed by Alex Jass.

Hello everyone, my name is Mark Resta and I've lived in Falls Church for about 22 years and I want to speak to the schedule. The draft ordinance won't be public until early June and the council has a set for adoption in July and that's a very narrow window for regulation that'll shape the area for decades. Some may point to the small area plan as evidence the community's had plenty of time, but as well as will be brought up tonight, the small area plan process was not transparent about the zoning changes which are now being proposed. And so a process that withheld this critical information shouldn't be counted as meaningful community engagement. This is kind of key. The current timeline is being driven by a March 2027 tax credit application deadline. And that's the developer's timeline, not the community or the town's. So I ask the council to give residents real time with the actual draft before this moves forward. Thank you.

Thank you. Next we have Alex Jass followed by Eric Boson.

Hello. Thank you, Council, for hearing your comments. I live on Gundry Drive, quite near Virginia Village, and I'm not normally one to comment at these meetings, but I just felt compelled by some of the rhetoric I've seen around the redevelopment of Virginia Village. It was summarized at the top of this meeting. And I think, first of all, the idea of huge setbacks and a two-story limit is just ludicrous. It's not a meaningful redevelopment. Personally, I support building as much affordable housing as possible. But I think also we've seen these other newer builds go up in the same neighborhood. that are taller than two stories and they're not too tall. There's that one already adjacent to the park that's not casting any significant shadow. They contribute to the character, I would say, the village. It's nice to have the extra retail space too. You know, it's just a community asset. And I think also, for me more importantly, having more affordable housing that members of our community can live in, live locally, like teachers and civil servants and the like. It's ludicrous that they should have to commute an hour and a half each way to be such a valuable part of the community. And people are saying that They're worried about preserving local character, but I think overall like serving more members of our community, a greater breadth of people, more diverse group of people is an asset to local character. You know, we shouldn't serve as just DC commuters. So I'm very much in support of redevelopment and particularly doing as much affordable housing as we can.

Thank you. Next we have Eric Boson followed by Jennifer Rusta.

Hello, the council. Thanks for the opportunity to speak today. I graduated from the four FCCPS schools. I wanted to congratulate Mayor Hardy on your son's graduation today. To your sister as well. Indeed, yes. You know, since my graduation I've noticed that effectively none of my classmates have been able to establish continually living in the city other than living with their parents. And I think the Falls Church has suffered from a historic attitude which is regrettably common across this country where anyone in a life stage or situation who can't afford an entire detached single-family home with setbacks on an arbitrarily sized plot of land is systematically excluded from the city. This has led to a really dire shortage of more structurally affordable housing formats, like what we hope to see at Virginia Village, which has strangled the many at the expense of the few. I want to say I support building as many apartments in the city at as deep a level of affordability as possible, as fast as possible. I think it is totally absurd to sit here watching the nationwide crisis of human beings being squeezed out of their homes onto the streets by a manufactured shortage and then complain that people can't be allowed to have homes because they may create a shadow or use the land they're on too efficiently or not have some arbitrary amount of grass around them to make the buildings be further apart and consequently less walkable or that they create shadows which I find are usually mentioned in the context of, oh, wonderful, a shadow to protect me on this hot day. I never hear shadows mentioned in any other context frankly. You know all these points could be cited to argue against the existence of homes that all of us directly benefit from being able to live in now and I think we really shouldn't say that we're the last ones that should have these concerns and we should be able to prevent anybody else from having a home that would that would that would you know physically exist and and take up space like a home needs to. I just think that, you know, allowing other humans to exist in our community is always going to result in small lifestyle adjustments and that isn't a reason to say that we should exclude people from having a home here. I really want to see as many people able to find a home that they can afford, that they can grow, and that they can raise their family in or pursue whatever their life goals are in a in an affordable and a structurally flexible way. So I want to see as many homes built here as fast as possible. Thank you.

Thank you. Next we have Jennifer Resta followed by Nader Barouk.

Good evening. My name is Jennifer Resta. I have been a resident of Winter Hill for over 20 years. The families who live in Virginia Village are our neighbors, and we all want this to be a project Falls Church can be proud of. Most of the residents of Winter Hill and Virginia Village don't want to live in a neighborhood of dense high rises and shadow. We want to maintain the welcoming neighborhood aesthetic of low rise buildings with lots of green space. The community said clearly this spring that low density abutting Winter Hill means no more than three stories, specifically to preserve sunlight and prevent overshadowing of Winter Hill and the remaining Virginia Village units. That language is in the city's own community feedback summary. I am asking the council to honor it. I would also note that the engagement process did not fully inform participants about proposed changes of setback requirements to only 25 feet. Had neighbors understood that setbacks were also on the table, the feedback may have looked quite different. Thank you.

Thank you. Next we have Nader Barouk, followed by Matt Adams.

Good evening, Council. I just wanted to set the record straight. This debate has unfortunately become somewhat divisive, to say the least. Myself and others in our community have been called names, have been called racist, have become even called segregationists. I wanna be clear, when my wife and I moved to the city of Falls Church, we bought a home in the midst of affordable housing. We have affordable housing with apartments that take Section 8 vouchers, and we live next door to market rate affordable housing, and we welcome it. Those are our neighbors, those are our friends, those are our community members. And folks who challenge us that we're somehow being NIMBYs, would love to have a cup of coffee with you, because that's simply not true. Now can we have affordable housing in the area that also meets the community objective and get to a win-win? Absolutely. And there doesn't need to be these divisive lines that are being drawn. What I want to point out, and I've already submitted comments, is that we can do this right in a way that's a win-win for everybody. However, it has to be done right. And this ordinance has to make sense while you still have the leverage to get it done. Once you pass it, you lose that leverage. Six things must be in the ordinance. One, heights. Two to three stories at the Winter Hill interface. For the rest of the site, let shadow studies and massing drive what can be done in addition to the economics. Which brings me to the second point. Shadow studies and massing studies are needed before any site and height limits are set for the entire area. Virginia Village is directly south of Winter Hill and Big Chimneys Park. That's a geometric certainty. It's not a speculative concern. A multi-story building south will eliminate direct sunlight from both the park and adjacent properties for much of the day in the winter. Third, setbacks. Keeping the existing 40-foot setbacks from Winter Hill property line and do not reduce them while increasing the heights. Fourth, ancillary uses. No parking lots or garages within 60 feet of Winter Hill. Fifth, meaningful open space. Set real minimums. Green space is not... just decoration, it's infrastructure. Six, retain your discretion. Don't legislate yourselves out of the room. And finally, one thing I want to say about the schedule, looking at what the city manager is going to propose is that the ordinance and the RFP follow simultaneously. However, by first reading the ordinance or rather the RFP is going to go out at the same time. So exactly what is the meaningful opportunity the citizens are going to have between first and second reading?

Mr. Burke, if you could wrap up, that would be great. Thank you.

Thank you.

Next, we have Matt Adams, followed by Hal Lipman.

Hi. Good evening, Mayor Hardy, council members, city staff. I have a brief prepared remark, but I wanted to preface it with some remarks that came to me as I was sitting here. My wife and I and our two school-age kids live in Park Towers condominiums, and that is on the very low end of the housing scale in this community. We have two incomes and we have effectively been priced out of the housing market here. We had friends who bought houses 10 years ago for $600,000, $650,000 and now those houses are over a million dollars. So this too is the face of Virginia Village. I support the renewal and meaningful expansion of Virginia Village. The city has a long-standing affordable housing policy for all of the sound reasons set out in that policy. Affordable housing is a fundamental need that is not being met, a problem the private sector alone cannot solve. Yet as affordable housing has grown into a generational crisis, the city's already limited affordable housing stock continues to shrink. And the housing crunch further squeezes our vital lower income neighbors, at least those who remain. The city has properly made a commitment to help and Virginia Village is the best opportunity to make good on that commitment. as has happened with similar projects elsewhere that face initial concern and vocal opposition. And as I strongly suspect will happen here, once the project is complete, many of the concerns will likely prove overstated. The project will come to be seen as a success, even by many of the doubters. Falls Church will be a more inclusive, more vibrant place to call home. A thoughtfully planned Virginia Village offers so many upsides. These projects take years to complete. I urge council to act with consideration but also determination. Thanks.

Thank you. Next we have Hal Lipman followed by Joseph Chirizzi.

Hi everybody. I'm Hal Lipman, president of CBC, but this time I'll be talking about the affordable housing effort being considered tonight. In doing so, I want to be clear that my remarks are being made in my personal capacity, not my role as CBC's president. I will add, however, that affordable housing remains a matter of active interest among CBC executive committee members. and it is very likely you will be hearing more from us about this issue as you continue your work on it. Shifting gears, I'm here tonight after attending the council work session last week and having been struck by the absence in the hours long discussion of any mention of some key concepts and ideas about the fundamental purpose of affordable housing in Falls Church. I offer these remarks Harking back to the landmark 2021 joint League of Women Voters CBC forums on the past, present, and future of affordable housing in our city. It's worth noting that Mayor Hardy and Planning Commissioner Alan Brangman participated in these forums. The overarching theme in the forums was that Falls Church had been trying to do something about the issue of affordable housing for more than 40 years with little success. However, concerted efforts by the council in 2020 did bring about a significant increase in the number of affordable housing units with the added benefit of there being permanently affordable rather than time limited. These small scale efforts have continued and additional units have been added. But I believe the overall fundamental purpose of addressing the legacy of our city's early history of segregation and bringing about a more racially and economically diverse community has been lost. Let me add that one of the main reasons for that is our efforts have persistently failed to focus on providing affordable units targeted on households with lower annual incomes, such as those with 40 to 60 percent of area median income. That's between $65,000 and $98,000. And the AMI for a four-person household in the DC metro area is just under $164,000. To sum up, my point is to this very day as the Council is once again deliberating on affordable housing, I believe we have never focused adequately on the essential issue of bringing about a more racially and economically diverse community. Our wonderful little city remains the least racially diverse community in the region and the economic gated community for lower people for lower income people of color and others in similar circumstances. Thanks so much for hearing me out. I look forward to your continued efforts to make meaningful progress in an area of public policy that's proven to be so intractable for so long. Thank you.

Next we have Joseph Chirizzi followed by Cassandra Cloud.

Okay, good evening, Council. Thank you for the chance to address you tonight. My name's Joseph Shirizi. I live on Gundry Drive, right around the corner from Virginia Village. I just want to point out first that the average age of a first-time home buyer in America is now 40 years old, and this is tearing apart the fabric of our society. I'd like to talk about Virginia Village, specifically what's there right now. Those units right now have no AC. and none of them are ADA compliant. So while we do have these great affordable housing options in this public housing, I don't think that it meets our level of dignity that people deserve to be provided by the city and just in general by our community. So we need more affordable housing, but we also need affordable housing that gives people dignity. And I don't think that's what we have right now. So this property is super unique. There isn't another property like it in Falls Church. There's not going to be another chance to do something as big as we can do here because of the size of the land, because that it's publicly owned and there's really, I mean it's only two square mile city, you know, how much public land is there? So I think that we have to maximize both the amount of affordable housing and the amount of dignity that we give people that live there. The way to do that, I think personally, is to make this a mixed-use, much larger project. We could have different income levels, 10%, 50% AMI, and also maybe some market rate units too to help pay for this and lower the tax burden on everybody. I would love to see Falls Church issue a bond to build even more affordable housing units here or whatever we have to do to build as many as possible. Requiring setbacks next to a bowling alley parking lot is a ridiculous idea. Please don't do that. And I also want to point out that the Winter Hill development itself where I live, which are townhouses next to the park, don't have any setbacks from the distance from where those buildings are to where the park starts. So that seems pretty silly to require it for other developments. I hope we'll build as much as we possibly can here and get creative and I think that's what this RFP process is for, requesting proposals and seeing what people can come up with, what great ideas we can do. So I hope that you'll move forward with that, with the urgency that the housing crisis requires. Thank you, please be a leader.

Next we have Cassandra Cloud followed by Robin Rainey.

Hi, I'm Cassandra Cloud. I live in Winterheld. There are only two feet of community space that separates the back of my backyard from the property line of 210. I'll try again. Hi, I'm Cassandra Cloud. I live in Winter Hill. There are only two feet of community space that separate my backyard from the property line of 310 and 312 Shirley Street, currently owned by the city. I'd like the city to commit to preserving the setbacks that currently exist of 40 feet and step down to two stories abutting Winter Hill as well as the park. Stepping down does not mean that you cannot build farther away from the park or from Winter Hill. In fact, I also once lived in Virginia Village, as we now call it, because it offered one of the few affordable housing options in the city. What in your own writing is called the only naturally occurring affordable housing in the city, not owned by the city, where individual people are selling at market rates. And I did not live in a city-owned building. I lived in a market rate building. And then I bought the only affordable housing that I could get that was standalone in Winter Hill. So this is really people who are both in affordable housing that are neighbors and we should be working together here. My house is only two stories tall. Considering stories four stories, that is so much higher than the height of my home, even the very large trees behind my home. And it very much would limit the privacy for my very young children. In midday spring or fall, that would cast roughly 40 to 65 feet shadows. And I know that someone here said that shadows don't mean anything except that you're cool in the summer, but it actually means it kills the squash and flowers that my children grow in the backyard every year. It exacerbates water drainage issues that Winter Hill has continuously suffered since I moved there, which is like over a decade. And that we've spent thousands of dollars to remediate, as well as the city itself has spent thousands of dollars to remediate within the park due to the lack of light and drainage. It also impacts the rooftop solar owned by me and my neighbors. I bought rooftop solar to fight climate change. My neighbors bought it to confront rising electric costs in Virginia. We have very valid reasons to care a lot about light. Setbacks of 40 feet to something like 15 feet scare me. When we built Pearson Square just down the street from our house, it destroyed my neighbor's foundation due to poor shoring. I don't want to see something similar happen because the desire to , which is great, I love that, is ignored at the expense of the neighbors that are already there. I don't want to destroy the limited trees and privacy that remain, and I want that green space to exist for both me and my neighbors on the other side. So by preserving the setback and stepping down, not necessarily staying out, but stepping down to a lower height, We're able to preserve the privacy of young children, of which there are many in my neighborhood, preserve the character of the neighborhood, and ensure well-lit and well-drained spaces for a place to play. Please require a shadow study to help ensure this for our city.

Got cut a little short there. Thank you. Next, we have Robin Ramey, followed by Dan Putziger.

Good evening, Mayor Hardy and members of council. My name is Robin Ramey and I live at 1134 South Washington. I'm here tonight to urge the council to move forward with the Virginia Village RFP. I think that what staff has put together is very thoughtful and balanced. While I personally would have liked to see the city pursue affordable housing more aggressively, I do think that this RFP appropriately gives applicants the flexibility to explore a full range of options without predetermining anything. And which clearly reflects the community feedback that staff has received. I know many of tonight's comments will probably focus on concerns about the highest density redevelopment option in the RFP. But tonight I actually want to speak about the consequences of the opposite outcome. So what will happen if we go with a plan that results in just renovating the existing housing or adding very few new units? As probably a lot of you know, affordable housing is pretty personal to me. I found the home that I currently live in through one of the city's affordable housing programs, and I would not be able to live in the city of Falls Church without it. But I also know many people who are still waiting for that same opportunity. I have friends who are currently on the city's affordable housing wait list, people who work here every single day within the city. They take your order, they make your food, they teach your children, and they wanna live in the community that they contribute to. At the same time, Falls Church is already facing a growing affordable housing gap like a lot of people have talked about today. So more than 100 existing affordable units are expected to expire from the program that keeps them affordable in just the coming years. And meanwhile, demand continues to grow for affordable housing. I think at last week's work session, someone correct me if I heard this wrong, but I think staff reported that roughly 700 people are currently on the ADU wait list with only two units available. So if we may be losing more than 100 affordable units while literally hundreds of people are already waiting for housing, then the question becomes, if not Virginia Village, then where? Where do we plan to close that gap and uphold our commitment to affordable housing if not here? Opportunities like Virginia Village are incredibly rare, like a lot of people have talked about tonight. We have a small built out community. It's 2.2 square miles. This could be a once in a generation opportunity. And I think it's really important to point out that when we talk about added units, what that means is families. Families who have been excluded from the market and families that we could welcome to our city. And people finally getting off that ADU wait list and having a home here. Decades from now, I really hope that we look back on this project as a moment when we chose to expand who had a place to live in our community and not as a moment when we decided that the status quo was good enough.

Thank you. Thank you. Next we have Dan Putziger followed by Bernadette Baruch.

My name is Dan Putziger. I represent an owner of two of the buildings and of the tenants within that set of buildings. And a bunch of us have met already, so my apologies ahead of time. I have two issues. I've been watching the process go along and two things, you hear things and they make you fearful, trying to figure out what they mean. And so I wanted to ask and talk about zoning and the advisory committee that picks the solution that the city goes with. Said at a meeting was owners who, the current private owners, may wish to convert their properties to green space. So the concern there, and I don't know if it's true, is that the city will spot zone their own properties and then they'll make a decision on how our properties will be treated. And I can tell you it's not turning my mother's property into a green space. So I would think that whatever the city comes up with that they define for their units and their buildings and their properties should be available to the owners of the private properties in the same area. If that's possible that that's what should be done. The second thing is about the advisory committee at the last meeting you had. There's a big concern that you didn't want to have people from Winter Hill, and there wasn't even much of a mention of even having somebody from Virginia Village itself on the advising committee. There was a discussion made or something said that says some people simply don't want change. Well, it's not necessarily true. We accept change, but we don't want to bear the brunt of it. So, I suggest that either a tenant in the buildings or an owner of one of the private properties within that area are either on the committee or able to attend the meetings that the acceptance committee or RFP committee holds and watching for the most important things for the people who live there now. Will the parking be maintained? Will the quality of the neighborhood be adversely affected for the current residents. Can they get to where they live? Can they park in front of their places? Or if you're going to put a hundred new people in there, where are people going to park? Also, we would probably not like a building next to ours that is within a couple feet of the property line. So if you're going to zone and go sideways towards our buildings, you know, A, someday we should be able to do the same, and B, you know, you got to respect that distance there. Pretty much that's the thing. I've been following this all the way through. Not particularly upset, but you hear things that are frightening if not explained in detail.

Finally we have Bernadette Baruch.

Hi, I'm Bernadette Baruch. I live at 243 Gundry Drive. Mayor and members of council, I am here tonight to speak regarding Virginia Village and the city's handling of this redevelopment process. Council has asked the community to provide constructive feedback. But constructive dialogue requires honesty, transparency, and meaningful public engagement from the city. Unfortunately, that has not happened here. I attended and participated in the public meetings regarding Virginia Village, along with many of my neighbors. We provided input in good faith based on the existing zoning and conditions of the site. At no point during those meetings was there any discussion that the city was considering reducing the current 40 foot rear setback to 25 feet along the Winter Hill property line. The community only discovered these proposed zoning changes later in a draft RFP that now appears to be moving quickly toward approval. That is not transparency, that is not meaningful public engagement, and it is not good public policy. I feel deceived by the city and its staff. What made this more concerning were comments made by the city's planning director during the May 18th work session suggesting that residents just don't want change. That characterization is inaccurate and dismissive. This community is not opposed to change. We are opposed to a process where major zoning changes are not openly discussed with the public before decisions move forward. Likewise, comments made by the mayor dismissing Winter Hill residents who stated that they did not know what was happening missed the central issue. We did not know the city was pursuing zoning changes because those changes were never openly discussed during the public meetings, nor was there proper notification to affected residents. The city spent more than a year discussing T zones on Park Avenue with extensive public engagement. Why is the same level of transparency not being provided here? Especially when these changes will directly impact the duplexes and Winter Hill neighborhood. Before considering zoning changes, the public and council should first be shown what can already be accomplished under the current zoning and on the existing city-owned lots. This project should not become an example of development first and public process second. Virginia Village is an important opportunity for Falls Church, but the process must be transparent, collaborative, and respectful of the surrounding community. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, and that was our final speaker, madam mayor.

Great, thank you. Well, let's move on to report of the city manager. And for those of you who are paying attention to Virginia Village, I think one of the updates will be about Virginia Village from the manager.

Thank you, Mayor Hardy. So I do have three things I was going to cover during the manager's report. One is the CIP update. Second is council strategic priorities update. And then third is I was asked by the council to provide kind of a road map of the Virginia Village process. And given the fact that we've gotten a number of comments about Virginia Village, I might reverse the order that's listed on the agenda and we could do the road map for Virginia Village as our first item.

That's a good idea, thank you.

So in the room I've passed out an outline that is kind of a different way of looking at the schedule as it's shown in other staff reports and on the city website. And the goal is to sort of lay the RFP process alongside with the land use evaluation process that will be going on and how those two relate to each other. I will just state as we go through this schedule, my intention tonight is really not to talk about the substance of the zoning or the RFP process, but really to focus just on key dates and decision points for the community's interest. And this is presented in an outline form. Staff will be having other outreach to community alongside these official meeting dates. So in one column on the left hand side is the land use policy sets of decisions and key dates and on the right hand column is the request for proposals process. Maybe stepping out sort of the roadmap that we laid out last fall was one where both processes would inform each other. So that as community is engaging with city staff and ultimately with the city council on land use policy, there also would be an opportunity for developers to participate, listen to that process, and also to provide their input into it. And that's aligned with the affordable living policy and the goals of the City Councils to ultimately that what is agreed to at the end in terms of zoning is feasible and is something that can be built and achieved in the city, whether it's to preserve the existing affordable housing or to expand affordable housing at the Virginia Village site. So tonight is May 26. We'll have the initiating resolution for the zoning text amendments. Mr. Treanor, our lead planner on this case, will be giving a staff report on that later tonight and tonight's meeting for that initiating resolution. The council had already adopted an initiating resolution for the comprehensive plan and the small area plan. So that work has been ongoing. On June 1st, the city council, looking overhead on the right-hand column, the council will consider what we'll call version three of the draft request for proposals to discuss the scope of work as it's written up. Then that same week on June 3rd the Planning Commission will have a work session on the Comprehensive Plan and Small Area Plan and on the Zoning Tax Amendment. Then on June 15th the City Council will consider both the Land Use Account Plan and Zoning Tax Amendments and the RFP Scope of Work at the June 15th work session. On June 22nd the council would grant first reading for changes to the comprehensive plan and small area plans, as well as first reading on a zoning text amendment. And also at that meeting on June 22nd, council staff will ask council to grant authorization to issue the RFP. From that point then, The Planning Commission will focus on the Comprehensive Plan and Small Area Plan and ultimately bring its recommendations back to the City Council for second reading and public hearing at the end of July on July 27th. Meanwhile, the RFP process will go through its steps and there's some of the details of that that are listed throughout the month of July. The proposals will be due at the end of July on July 31st. The evaluation committee would meet through the month of August to evaluate the proposals and then on September 8th come to the city council to brief the council on its analysis and recommendations. We've laid out a schedule that we would hope we would be able to keep whereby the council selects the preferred respondent and approves an interim agreement with that selected entity. In October, the city council would revisit the zoning text amendment that was approved at first reading. And if that is in good shape, we would target October 26 for public hearing and second reading on the zoning text amendment. So that's the sort of the skeleton of the process and how those two would interact with each other over the summer and into the fall months. I also just, on this piece of paper, also lay out some roles that will be helping with this process on the RFP side. And there's a description of what the Jones Lang LaSalle consultants team would be doing both prior to issuance of the RFP and then during the RFP process and then I think kind of very importantly as we go through the evaluation process helping support the work of the evaluation committee and then ultimately being there at the table with a recommendation to the city council and assisting in putting together the interim agreement with the top ranked respondent. The evaluation committee, just as a brief description, is proposed to be members of official city boards and commissions. A procurement process is a technical process and there's official things that we have to do to maintain kind of the integrity of a procurement process under Virginia law. And for those reasons, it's not an open process under Virginia law. But then ultimately when a recommendation is made to the City Council, the City Council's decision is an open decision and there's an opportunity for the public to see what is before the City Council with that decision. And then as we go into considering the final zoning, the actual concept plans from the selected entity will be very much part of the community discussion in the context of the ultimate zoning decisions for the property. So what we're proposing is representation by the City Council, the Planning Commission, the Housing Commission, the Economic Development Authority, and city staff on the Evaluation Committee. And we want to just highlight that the Evaluation Committee is simply an analysis group and a recommending body, and the City Council is the ultimate decision maker on the selection process. I'd be happy to answer any questions on this.

Thank you, Wyatt. If I could just quickly summarize, because there's a lot of dates on here, but I want to make sure I understand the takeaways, and that might also be useful for my colleagues and for the audience. So in response to our discussion last week, one, I think there are a lot of meetings. We're going to continue working and rolling up our sleeves in Virginia Village. That should be the one big takeaway for the audience based on the number of meetings we have. Second, based on the discussion last week, it looks like we are, staff is proposing that we move out the issuance of the RFP by one month. So instead of issuing it tonight, it is proposed to be issued June 24th with two more opportunities for us to roll up our sleeves in work session on June 1st and June 15th. Third takeaway I'm seeing is that the zoning changes, should we proceed with them, will not be final until October 26th at second reading. And that will be after we, hopefully have proposals to react to and get a sense of what the market response is so that the zoning changes aren't locked in.

That's correct.

Okay, I just want to try kind of captured what those major takeaways are because it's again a lot of dates for us to react to.

And if I could just jump in as well. So if the, so the RF, we'll have work sessions on the scope of work for the RFP on June 1st and June 15th. So there's an action meeting between those two where we could have public comment.

That's right.

So we would have the first, the June 1st, then we can have public comment on June 8th, and then we go back to the work session. So there will be an opportunity for public to make public comment.

That was getting my question is I think in the mayor's meeting last week, we actually talked about when there was that Winter Hill engagement opportunity. And I think staff had identified it was sometime during those two weeks that there was kind of a community meeting in Winter Hill already scheduled or being scheduled.

Yes, Mr. Treanor, do you have details on that or we?

I don't. Okay.

Okay. So we'll be communicating that out. That's kind of directly with the Homeowners Association there.

I guess my request would be, just because this is a nice, succinct way of showing the schedule, if there's a third column that shows, here are public comment opportunities. You can come to the June 8th council meeting. There may be a community meeting in Winter Hill. There may be a follow-up meeting with Virginia Village residents. It would be helpful to kind of show, again, those dates so that there's a nice one-pager for people.

I do believe, I don't have the date in front of me, but I remember writing it down. I do think that session that Mr. Matusik talked about was the week of June 8th, I'm pretty sure. So, but I don't have it in front of me.

Okay, other questions or comments for Mr. Shields? Ms. Connolly?

Mr. Shields, and this is just, last week the city council looked at all the information that we had and decided, as Ms. Hardy just pointed out, that we would delay the issuance of the RFP.

That's right.

If we get to a month from now or three weeks from now and we still feel like we just quite aren't ready, the opportunity to delay the RFP still exists. The consequences on the other side are that any LIHTC grants are more difficult, or LIHTC tax credits are more difficult to obtain, but it would not kill the project, correct?

That's right. I think maybe one way to think of it is if one goal would be to have the opportunity to seek financing this spring, the more time that's taken now could mean less time on site plan and other important public parts of this whole process down the road. You know, there'd be more pressure under the process then. So those are the things to balance.

So I just want to make sure that everyone's aware of that balance, that we're going quickly, we know we're going quickly, and we're also providing many, many opportunities for people to be involved and for this RFP and zoning to be shaped the way the community, the council, the staff would like it to be shaped to benefit our community for years to come. benefit all of our community for years to come. So I think there's a lot. We've done projects before where we're going really fast and we have to make decisions and sometimes that's hard and sometimes it just flows really nicely. And I know the staff is working really hard to make sure we're getting all those things correctly. I also just want to note that at the ESC meeting last week, the ESC had a really good conversation about green building standards and they will be sending a letter that should come in The meeting was Thursday, so they weren't going to be able to get it in by now, but it should come in this week regarding enterprise green communities and requesting that that is part of the RFP as well.

Mr. Reagan.

So thank you for this. I'm glad we... The way this is laid out is actually very good. I drew the line down the middle with the things putting out. One thing I think that I've heard through the comments that gets confused and we just need to be crystal clear about is when we talk about the comp plan and zoning text amendment, we are talking about either all of Virginia Village or even RM itself and it applies to Whatever ownership, that is everybody. When we're talking about the RFP, that applies only to the properties owned by the city. And I think it gets blurry a little bit, especially as some of the zoning changes appeared first in the RFP, and that's why I was concerned last week that we were getting ahead of ourselves. We have, the zoning has caught people by surprise, it caught me a little by surprise. And I look at this, I'm wondering if there's some interim informational sessions that could happen in work sessions, especially during the time between the first reading in June and the second reading in October. You know, I'm glad we have that long period so that we can talk about this and talk through it. I think maybe we want to just have some interim updates on where we are and changes that are being thought about and so forth. Just so we know what's going on with the zoning. The other thing I want to bring up is Councilmember Connolly mentioned the LIHTC date. And when I look at an RFP thing, there are requirements that are required, desired, and optional. And LIHTC to me is not a required requirement. It is a desired requirement. So if we need to, I'd like to, I really would like to get that money. I'd like to get the application in. But again, it's not like, if we don't get it, the project's dead. Or we don't miss those dates. That would be required. It is desired. And I think that is very important to keep in mind. Okay.

Any final comments? So building off Mr. Egan's point, I think I mentioned this in work session last week. So besides kind of showing and outlining where the community input happens, whether it's a Winter Hill targeted meeting, I would love to know where we can get JLL at the table, whether it's knowing that their feedback went into the draft or actually having them in our work session. So we hired real estate consultants who help inform this. And I think it's important for them to actually leverage their expertise rather than us guessing what should go in RFP, guessing whether LIHTC is really important. My understanding is actually LIHTC finances the majority of affordable housing deals in the US. And so if we miss the deadline, we essentially have to wait for another year. And so it may not kill the project, but it certainly does delay it a whole year. But I would love JL for them to inform us about that rather than us presupposing or guessing. I feel like given that we wrestled with spending that amount of money, I want to make sure that we are leveraging their expertise fully in this process, knowing that it is new for us and it feels like a different process. And I think it would be to our benefit to have them at the table at one of these sessions as well.

And speaking of JLL, last week I looked at it and I said to myself, how long has JLL actually been on site doing the work? And it probably was only a week or two. With this delay, we're tripling the amount of time that they have to influence the RFP before it's issued. So I think that's huge. I think that's very critical.

I see. It looks like Mr. Schneider.

Thanks very much. As we all have reviewed each of the written comments and are paying very close attention to what all of our citizens are saying, I'm going to be optimistic here. I think it is within reach to certainly preserve affordable housing and, if possible, add to it in Virginia Village if we do it right. And I do think the schedule offers more opportunities for the council to get it right and for citizens to help us get it right. So I think this is movement in the right direction. There was a misquote attributed to me in the false church news press. I've asked, does that be corrected? So I hope that it will be. But again, ending on a positive note, I believe a win-win here is possible if we only will all commit to that. as a community and I do not want the zoning approach to find the end result through the RFP and the RFP the zoning so I think we're bringing these two processes together but I think it's critically important that We proceed with an idea that we can do something here that carries out our policies on affordable housing, but also preserves the vital interests of the neighborhood and the vital interests of the people who live in perhaps our most affordable housing, which is Virginia Village. Thanks.

Great. Let's move on to other things in the manager's report.

Thank you. I'd like to invite Caitlin Sobsey up and Amanda Brain, who are going to give us an update on the CIP. Thank you, Amanda and Caitlin.

Hi, good evening. Good evening, Council. I'm Caitlin Sabzi, joined by Amanda Brain, Director of Public Works, and we're here to give a quarterly update on the Capital Improvements Program. This report that's in the package tonight reports on the status of 27 active CIP projects. It also includes six projects that are in development and eight pending or recently awarded grants. Of the 27 active projects in our snapshot, we have using the traffic light methodology, we have 12 projects that are on target or green. We have six projects at risk or yellow and nine projects behind target or red. As of this quarter, no new projects completed, but nine projects in construction right now. So another busy summer of construction. the City of Falls Church and several of those projects we anticipate reaching complete status this summer by the next quarterly update. Just want to highlight really quick of the awarded pending or upcoming grant applications still waiting on the award status of the two NVTA 70% applications that are included here for Annandale Road, Multimodal and Haycock Road. Also waiting on two VDOT applications that are pending. All of those award statuses should be known in the next month in June. VDOT and NVTA budgets, fiscal year 27 budgets will be released. But two recently awarded grants through the community project funds through congressionally directed spending. for FY26 include a HUD grant for the affordable housing acquisition strike fund for 925,000. We're awarding agreement package from HUD on that one. And then another 1,092,000 through EPA for the flow equalization tank at Cavalier Park, which will be seeking a technical correction with EPA to use that for a different sewer and stormwater project in partnership with Fairfax County. I'm going to keep it really quick and I'll turn it over to Amanda for any other project updates.

Sure. Just a quick note. We're making visible progress on a number of fronts. I'll just highlight on the green vehicle fleet and charging stations. We've seen in yesterday's Memorial Day Parade, DPW was highlighting some of the EV and hybrid vehicles we've recently purchased with that grant. I will be installing the EV charging stations this summer. The public facility security upgrades are underway. And on the transportation front, the South Maple Annandale roundabout is under construction and continuing along. The North Washington Columbia intersection, those new mast arms are there. The new crosswalks will be installed soon. Greenway Downs, they're going to be starting speed humps tomorrow. Washington Street paving is under construction. So some good progress and we're continuing to stay on top of a number of different projects. So happy to take any questions.

Great. Thank you. Questions on the CIP update?

Quick question. For Firefly Forest, what was the original completion date? Were we always looking at the fall of 2027 or has that been pushed a little bit?

I'm not quite sure with members specifically. It has been pushed out a few times. Okay. Okay. Not the original date to answer your question. Okay.

Um, so if we, um, do we have contact information for that community? Um, like on fellows court and all that, I just know that it might be a nice, um, communication to let those neighbors know that we're still, this has been a long project. Um, you know, and so I'm very excited for it to get going, but I think I've heard from, a couple people on that, on Fellows Court in particular, a little frustrated. So maybe if we could just let them know we're moving forward, this is the targeted time, that would be great. Sure. Thank you.

Ms. Connolly. Two Greenway Downs questions. I will say I did not believe when someone told me, it's going to be done in May. I was like, well, I don't think that's going to happen. But indeed, it is almost done. So good job. I just want to make sure that all of the speed humps have been worked out with the neighborhood. There were so many concerns about that.

I believe so. I know that the planning and DPW staff were out there today marking the speed humps. And so they're going to start that those tomorrow. I believe they've squared all those away. Okay.

That's amazing. Thank you. And then my second question is the stop signs. Because now there are all these bump outs, is part of the plan to readjust the stop signs? Because there are several spots, especially at... the top of the hill at Oak Street and Seton, where you can't stop at the stop sign and actually see what else is going on at the intersection. And that's at like three or four of those intersections with bump outs. So we talked about this and I seem to think that those stop signs were going to be moved, but it doesn't look like they are.

I'm not sure of hands. I know they're doing the speed humps with the signage, and then there's some additional milling and repaving and sidewalk work over the next two weeks. But I don't know about the stop signs specifically.

Could someone go out and look at those just to be sure? We can take that feedback. Yeah.

Thanks. Ms. Reagan. Just two quick things just on structure here. I know we've gone back and forth. This discussion keeps coming up around red versus green. And I'm actually a proponent of keeping it if the original dates, not losing track of the original dates. Maybe there's something that could be added to show where we are on a revised schedule. So we were horribly behind. We reset everything. We're still horribly behind the schedule. original dates, but the reset we're on track on. Maybe it's another column. The other thing I wanted to ask maybe for the next review is during the budget process we looked ahead, you know, we're looking five, seven years down the road with the CIP and we had a lot of unfunded items and I'd like to keep that in the loop and understand where we are on dealing with that. Some of them, have we found grants that we can go after? Have we made progress on some of those items? Just if in the next report we could have something about those items and how we're doing. I know there's some grant information in here, but the stuff that maybe we didn't know we were going after a grant, but there was some new grant. And that can wait until the next one.

Yeah, staff is working internally on sort of the project development and project pipeline CIP work. We also talked about going back to the planning commission in the summer, maybe in August, to talk about the 10-year pipeline so we can provide updates on that.

Okay. We're not gonna hit the 9-15 deadline that I had to get into closed session, and it's partly gonna be my fault because I have a couple things on CIP, because it is one of my favorite topics. On the Greenway Downs traffic calming, so thank you for advancing that. I think at Timber and Jackson it was kind of stalled for a while. I know they've been back at it, so hopefully that'll get to completion. In general, I think, again, the breadth of our CIP is just really impressive. Not only do you like stare at the spreadsheet, but also just see the work happening across the city between the Columbia and North Washington intersection, the roundabout at Maple and Annandale. Like we know there's a ton of work going on and then a bunch of work in the pipeline. So thank you for continuing to push that. My second question had to do with Greening of Lincoln. I heard from some parents that they were surprised that Lincoln Park was also disturbed as part of Greening of Lincoln. I think when you click through the detailed maps online, you do see that essentially we are putting in some stormwater facilities underneath the basketball court, and then we will redo the basketball courts. And probably the immediate neighborhood is aware, but I'm not sure the broader community is aware that that park is not usable. So maybe worth some public messaging about that. or what the timeline might be when we might restore those basketball courts. And then my last one is about Westfall. So today I had the opportunity to experience all the sidewalk accessibility from the Metro to Meridian. So we no longer have a nice cut through between the Metro parking lot and the stadium field, but to walk all the way around because there's no sidewalk in front of it, most people, and I don't know whether it's just today's festivities and people trying to get to get to graduation on time. Most people do not bother crossing to the eastern sidewalk of Haycock and actually just walk in the street where there is no sidewalk in front of the HIT project. I don't know whether that's gonna be a condition for the next however many months And I know it's also in Fairfax County and not officially in the city. But given that we do have a number of people who are trying to get from Metro to Falls Church to the city limits, I just want to flag that as a pretty big pedestrian concern. Because we don't really have safe passage right now on Haycock coming out of Metro. And I think the second is we had gotten a comment over email about the walk on Route 7 from MEH westbound towards Trader Joe's outside the county. And so while I was out there, I actually walked myself. So at the minimum, if we could do some tree trimming or bush trimming, that would help with some visibility issues that were flagged. But in general, I think the entire West Falls neighborhood could use more pedestrian improvements. I know it's really rough during a lot of construction and that entire neighborhood has seen a lot over the past five years and they're very patient. but to the extent that we can coordinate with Pitt, WMATA, Fairfax County to really improve the pedestrian conditions there, especially during the summer, here's a good opportunity as kids are out to work on improving it so that come August when the school year is starting again, things are in much better shape for everybody.

Great.

Thank you very much. Thank you.

Thank you, Caitlin and Amanda. On the council strategic priorities, maybe I think just in the interest of time, I will note that we have produced a grid that sort of lays this work out. We would like council feedback on that grid, and maybe we could schedule that for the June 1st work session where we might have a little bit more time. But I also wanted the council to be aware we have a meeting with all the staff liaisons on Thursday this week. We'll be going over the council's strategic priorities with them again. They were briefed on it back in March. but with the new presentation of it by our Office of Communications. We have kind of a new communication tool that we want to use with our boards and commissions, and we'll be doing that this week.

Great. Head to the, yep, Vice Mayor.

Real quick, Mr. Shields, when you go over, the only, I thought it looked great. I liked the grid, everything. The only part that I wanted to just throw out there is there's the one pager on the strategic priorities. And under the good governance, I'd love to add a line about communication, because I thought that was something we talked a lot about at the retreat, both receiving communication, but even more importantly, communicating out to the public. So if we could just maybe, Merrick, Catherine and I could work with her on just one line about just that's part of good governance is receiving feedback but also informing the community about business before the council. Because I know that was something we talked about at the retreat and I didn't think that one pager really captured that under good governance.

Any other feedback about council priorities?

Well, I mean, there's lots of them, but I'm just going to harp on parking again because looking at the grid, it's immediate, and then it's just a tiny little sliver. But when we were talking about parking, we were talking about parking, the big parking, the one that nobody really wants to touch, and that's the priority. So that might be good, but that's far from the scope. So I just wanted to throw that out there. I'm going to keep harping on it.

I don't see any comments from our colleagues online. Okay, I think we're ready to move on to the next items.

So the first item up is the budget amendment.

Oh, okay. Council requests were, that was part of that. Okay. I didn't hear any other council requests. Okay, great.

So we have on first reading TO 26-14 ordinance to amend ordinances 2090, 2103 and 2107 regarding the budget of expenditures and revenues and appropriating funds for the fiscal year 2026 general fund and capital improvement program.

So Mr. So is away tonight and so I'll just note that this proposed ordinance was discussed with the city council at work session and the only change since the work session is there was a request from the sheriff's office for some additional funding for their ability to purchase some equipment and so that is noted in the staff report and highlighted in gray at line one at line 180 of $14,000 of additional equipment in the Sheriff's Department. I will be happy to answer any questions about this budget amendment. This is the last budget amendment for the current fiscal year FY2026 and I'd be happy to answer any questions about it.

Thank you Mr. Shields. Any questions or comments? Actually, Ms. Conley, you need to read your disclosure, right? Sorry. Before we have a motion.

The city council is discussing tonight an amendment to the city's FY2026 budget. I am an employee of the Falls Church City School Board, which will be affected by the proposed budget amendment because I'm 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'm electing to participate in this transaction because I am confident in my ability to participate fairly, objectively, and in the public interest.

Thank you. And lastly, I would just note this is before council for first reading. And if it is approved on first reading, it would come back for second reading on June 8th in a public hearing.

Ms. Lin. I don't really have a question as much as a comment. And it's just on the page that we were just on in terms of the the place that a lot of this funding is coming from is from the remainder of the contingency funds that we had put aside last year, as well as almost a half a million dollars in public safety vacancy savings and other cost savings. And so just, you know, want us to be aware of kind of where this money is coming from and that it's not sort of funds that are going to be readily available you know, moving forward. And so while I support the budget amendment, just want us to be cognizant of kind of the places that we're seeing these transfers come from.

And noted that in FY27, there should be a lot less vacancy savings to rely on.

That's right. Okay. Is there a motion then?

Madam Mayor, I move to grant first reading to TO 26-14, scheduled public hearing and second reading for June 8th, 2026 and advertise the same according to law.

Thank you.

Is there a second?

Second.

Is Connolly in the second? Call roll please. Mr. Egan?

Yes.

Ms. Connolly? Yes. Ms. Downs? Yes. Ms. Flynn? Yes. Mr. Snyder? Yes. Ms. Underhill? Yes. And Mayor Hardy? Yes. Motion carries seven to zero. Thank you, council. You call the next item, please.

Yes, next we have TR 26-17 resolution initiating an amendment to the two chapter 48 zoning of the code of the City of Falls Church to update the zoning tools governing redevelopment within Virginia Village.

And Mr. Treanor, we'll provide the staff report for that. And thank you for your work on this. Yep.

Good evening council. My name is Jack Traynor, senior planner with the city. I've got just a quick presentation on the ask for tonight, which is action on an initiating resolution that would initiate the consideration process for zoning amendments related to the Virginia village area. This is following a community process, revisiting the guidance in the small area plans related to the vision OF VIRGINIA VILLAGE. AND THIS SLIDE KIND OF SHOWS WHERE WE ARE IN RELATION TO COLLECTING THAT GUIDANCE. SO THIS KIND OF CASCADING FLOW OF VISION STARTS WITH A COMPREHENSIVE PLAN AND INFORMS IN LARGE PART THE GOALS IN THE SMALL AREA PLAN. with community input on just how to achieve those goals with some more specificity. And then it's the zoning ordinance's job then to have the most, provide the tools to then implement the vision of the small area plans. And so following that community engagement process in the spring, where we were revisiting the guidance process, The guidance we received we realized was in large part in conflict with the zoning tools that exist on the site today. And so the proposal is to revisit those zoning tools and come up with something that better achieves the updated vision in the small area plans. If we go to the next slide. And while there's no framework for the zoning yet, that's what's to come. That's what this initiating resolution will start. The Excuse me, I'm getting ahead of myself. That's the next slide. But the zoning context again has the majority of the site of Virginia Village is the RM multifamily district with four B2 commercial lots on the east side. And then the whole area is covered in the mixed use redevelopment one overlay. And again, some of the critical issues with the zoning tools is that just for example, it's not the only issues, but minimum lot areas, prescriptive use parking and density ratios, and then also clear setback in height guidance. And so again, these are just some of the things that'll be addressed in zoning tools that come back to you for consideration in accordance with all of the community feedback we heard for any potential redevelopment or expansion of the existing units on this site. And again, the SAP kind of guidance that we heard are kind of falls within these four areas, building scale, housing and affordability, open space and connectivity and complimentary uses. And so in your previous work session, we walked through what the kind of proposed small area plan updates would be. And so the zoning tools job then is to then kind of bring those ideas to the site with some, again, that specificity that the zoning ordinance is meant to work with. JUST REVIEWING THE PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT SCHEDULED TO DATE AND GOING FORWARD. AGAIN, THIS BEGAN ACTUALLY IN MARCH. WE STARTED HAVING COMMUNITY CONVERSATIONS WITH FOLKS THAT LIVE IN VIRGINIA VILLAGE AND THE SURROUNDING COMMUNITY AND FOLKS ACROSS THE CITY, DIFFERENT STAKEHOLDERS THROUGHOUT THE SPRING, IN MARCH AND APRIL. THAT BRINGS US TO the kind of third leg there happening May through July, which is consideration and ultimately adoption of the small area plan amendments. And then eventually later in the year in quarter three, as Mr. Shields mentioned earlier, final consideration for any zoning amendments would come back to you. So that's what's contemplated for the schedule going forward. But most immediately, we have a Planning Commission work session next week, June 3rd, where the Planning Commission will have a first work session on zoning amendments and the small area plan adjustments with a first reading for, Code happening with a work session June 15th and action scheduled for June 22nd. But again, final consideration for any zoning amendments wouldn't happen until the third quarter of this year. And that's it, I'll end my presentation there. We've included the same slides from the work session that talk about the small area plan adjustments, but there's no new information there. So happy to take any questions. Council, thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Schreiner. Questions or comments for the initiating resolution tonight?

Okay, Ms. Connolly? Just two quick questions. And one is, some of the concerns that we heard people talking about today, the bulk plane, the setbacks, the stepbacks, are they included in the zoning? Are they included in the RFP or both?

THEY WILL BE INCLUDED IN BOTH. THE SMALL AREA PLANS CAN TALK ABOUT THESE MORE KIND OF CONCEPTUAL IDEAS LIKE ALLOWING FOR TRANSITIONS AND CAN GET AS SPECIFIC AS STEP-BACKS WHEN WE'RE TALKING ABOUT BUILDING FORM. BUT THAT LEVEL OF SPECIFICITY, AGAIN, What is the specific setback numerically? What is the, again, the kind of developmental box that we're talking about? That's all that lives in the zoning ordinance. And so those are the type of things that we'll be coming back to council and boards and commissions with.

And as you start this process, you've gotten all the feedback from community neighbors. So when we see first reading, it will take into consideration all of the the things that we've talked about and heard. Okay.

Thank you.

Correct. Yeah, we've been keeping a running tally of all the public comments, written comments we've received, obviously, in addition to everything we've heard in person in our public meetings.

That's great. Thank you for including all of those comments. There's a lot of them, and it's really important to get them up.

Yeah, we'll start including those as attachments going forward to the running tally.

Great. Thank you. Ms. Flynn.

Thank you. I just had two quick comments. The first is that for the initiating resolution itself, I had sent a question to staff about the language in the initiating resolution. I believe Mr. Shields shared it with the rest of council today. I would be more comfortable with the initiating resolution on line 364. We said that we were taking this action to help meet the housing goals that we had set forth in reference to. I believe it's the, yeah, so at 364, whereas to fulfill these housing goals, I think it should actually read to help meet these housing goals as Mr. Matusik himself EMPHASIZED AT THE VIRGINIA VILLAGE MEETING THAT WE HAVE, YOU KNOW, LARGE AFFORDABLE HOUSING NEEDS AND THAT VIRGINIA VILLAGE BY ITSELF IS NOT GOING TO FULFILL THOSE NEEDS, BUT IT IS A STEP IN PRESERVATION AND POSSIBLE EXPANSION TO HELP MAKE SURE THAT WE COMMIT TO AND CONTINUE TO MEET AFFORDABLE HOUSING GOALS FOR THE CITY. SO WOULD LIKE TO AGAIN PUT FORTH, I GUESS, amendment to line 364 to be included when this goes out so that it's clear and, you know, isn't misconstrued as to what the initiating resolution was or meant. And then I view the initiating resolution, you know, as an important step to beginning this community conversation and look forward to the work of the planning commission and also looking closely at this and that also being an area of public comment and public feedback for the planning commissioners to take into account, you know, striking an appropriate balance in the zoning ordinance. So thank you all for those. Oh, and then I did have some questions for staff that I shared that council also saw in the message that Mr. Shields shared. And so we'll look forward to seeing some of those specifics as staff digs in further on the zoning. conversation. Thanks.

So Ms. Flynn, you had a specific amendment to the resolution that I think we all have in our email. Should we just talk about that now so we can get the language straight?

Yeah, it's just on line 364, instead of saying, whereas to fulfill these housing goals, it should say, whereas to help meet these housing goals.

Are people okay with it?

I'm fine with it.

Okay. So I have four nods in the room. I suspect, I see a nod from Mr. Snyder, so I suspect that we can make that amendment. Great. Mr. Snyder.

Thank you. Just to reiterate, I think we're working hard to bring together both our goals and what will work for the surrounding neighborhood. And I view this action tonight as the beginning If at any time I believe we're not achieving a win, I'll obviously reserve the right to be able to reverse direction or make any changes or propose any changes that are essential to get to there. We are friends and neighbors and must continue to act in that way. Thank you.

Mr. Hagan.

I'm good with the initiating resolution. There's just one thing that we just need to be careful of and this is going to be a tricky landmine for planning to ease their way through, which is as we remove the restrictions to enable the parcels within Virginia Village and really maybe all of RM, To deliver on affordable housing, we also need to make sure we don't go too far and enable unaffordable housing because it could be multi-use, multi-family, could be $1.4 million townhouses, and our goal is affordable housing. And I think it's a balancing act. It's something you guys are going to have to deal with.

Okay, any final comments? Well, thank you. Is there a motion for tonight?

I move to adopt TR 26-17. Is there a second? What? Second.

Downs on the second. Can you call roll, please?

And we don't need to mention the amendment? Or do we need to, we're assuming that's the amendment? As amended.

Okay. And Madam Mayor, just a quick question. In voting for this, do we assume that there's general assent to the city manager's schedule as laid out?

I think, yes, I think based on the schedule that we talked about earlier, this process to initiate changes to zoning would follow that left-hand column of that schedule that Mr. Shields shared with us.

along with the public input opportunities.

Yep, a new third column is what I propose to show where those opportunities are.

I just want folks to understand that in voting for this particular action, we're also adopting a more deliberative longer-term process for achieving the objectives here as laid out by the city manager. Is that generally understood? I think it is.

That is my understanding, yes.

Yeah, I mean, that's my understanding too. I will say like the initiating resolution is the initiating resolution and we're voting on the initiating resolution, which stands separate from Mr. Shields' like schedule, right? Like we're not voting on the schedule, we're voting on the initiating resolution, understanding that there are milestones that we're trying to meet that depend on things actually falling into place, so.

The way I think about it is we're initiating, kind of asking staff to take on work that is going to follow the schedule that the city manager proposed to us that we all kind of nodded our heads around.

I think there was a motion and a proper second, so let's...

I move to adopt TR 2617 as amended. Second. Okay. Call roll, please.

Mr. Aiken?

Yes.

Ms. Conley? Yes. Ms. Downs? Yes. Ms. Flynn? Yes. Mr. Snyder?

Yeah.

Ms. Underhill? Yes. And Mayor Hardy? Yes. Motion carries 7-0. Thank you, Council.

Thank you, Mr. Schreiner. We'll see you again soon. Okay, we have consent up next.

So on consent, there are a series of appointments, and then there are two items that were reviewed by city council at work session. This is the Versa contract for insurance for the city, and then the contract with ESI for procurement support for our ERP system.

I move to approve the consent agenda. Your second.

Second.

Agin on the second. Call roll, please.

Call roll, please. Mr. Agin?

Yes.

Ms. Conley? Yes. Ms. Downs? Yes. Ms. Flynn? Yes. Mr. Snyder? Yes. Ms. Underhill? Yes. Mayor Hardy? Yes. Motion carries 7-0. Thank you.

Before we go into closed session, do we have any business not on the agenda or standing regional committee liaison reports?

Okay.

Councilmember comments? No minutes for tonight. Okay. Okay. Well, I have the closed session motion. We actually have two topics we're going into closed session with, and so we're going to read both of them together. That's okay with the city attorney?

Okay.

Upon a motion made by Council Member Connolly and seconded by And passed by a vote of city council, council wanted to close session for one pursuant to Virginia Code 2.2-3711.88 for consultation with legal counsel employed or retained by a public body regarding specific legal matters requiring the provision of legal advice by such counsel, specifically to consult with the city attorney regarding Pearson Square. And two, pursuant to Virginia Code 2.2-3711A1, for the discussion, consideration, or interviews of prospective candidates for employment, assignment, appointment, promotion, performance, demotion, salaries, disciplining, or resignation of specific public officers, appointees, or employees of any public body, specifically regarding the performance of an employee of the public body. Councilmember Egan.

Yes.

Connelly. Yes. Downs. Yes. Flynn. Yes. Snyder?

Yes.

Underhill? Yes. Hardy, yes. It is 9.34, so we're going in now. We'll see you on the other side.

And those on remote should have another link to join for the closed session.

back on. We're good? Okay, we're back in open session. So we're gonna do the motion for open session. Upon a motion made by? Connelly. And seconded by?

Agin.

And passed by a vote of city council, council reconvene in open session. Agin.

Yes.

Connelly. Yes. Downs. Yes. Flynn, are you here? Flynn is not with us right now. Snyder? Yes. And Underhill, I know, had to drop. And Hardy, yes. Coming out time is 10.32 p.m. We'll do the certification. Upon a motion made by... Connolly. And seconded by... Downs. And passed by affirmative roll call vote in open session, it was certified that one, only public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements, and two, only such public business matters as were identified in the motion by which the closed meeting was convened, heard, discussed, or considered in the closed session or meeting by the body. Egan?

Yes.

Connelly? Yes. Downs? Yes. Flynn? Still not here. Snyder? Yeah. Underhill? Not here. Hardy? Yes. Okay, if there's any other business, Erin says she's having trouble getting back onto the original room. Can you just tell her it's fine? Celeste? Celeste? I don't know whether she's texting you as well. But is it okay now because we've already... We had enough in the room to certify, so we had a quorum.

I think you're fine with that. If she wants to get in, though, we should... Let me ask her. Wait for her. She's in.

She's in. Hey, so we just finished the coming back into open session, and we just finished certification. We're fine with our in-person quorum in the room, but can you hear us okay? Yes. Okay. We're about to finish up unless there's anything else. Any final business? Not on the agenda. Okay, let's adjourn. Good night, all. Thank you.

Good night. Thank you.