City Council - Regular Meeting

Alrighty, good evening everybody. Welcome to the Monday, August 31st meeting of the City Council. Wanted to call us to order. Let's start with roll call, please.

Mr. Agin?

Here.

Ms. Conley is absent this evening. Ms. Downs? Here. Ms. Flynn? Here. Here. Mr. Snyder? Here. Ms. Underhill? Here. And Mayor Hardy?

Here.

Thank you.

Can we do the remote participation motion for Ms. Flynn, please?

Yes, Madam Mayor. I'd like to move that Councilmember Flynn attend by remote participation. Councilmember Flynn, could you please identify your remote location and reason for participation by electronic means?

I'm in Rockland County, New York, visiting family in advance of a work meeting in New York City tomorrow morning.

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.

Second. Thank you.

Call roll, please. Mr. Agin?

Yes.

Ms. Downs? Yes. Mr. Snyder?

Yes.

Ms. Underhill? Yes. And Mayor Hardy? Yes. Motion carries 5-0. Thank you.

Thank you for joining us, Ms. Flynn. Okay, let's start with the Pledge of Allegiance. If everyone could rise, please. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you all. Is there a motion to adopt tonight's meeting agenda?

I move to adopt tonight's meeting agenda.

Is there a second?

Second. Excuse me, before we- Madam Mayor, I think the city attorney has an addition if you entertain it.

Okay, let's pause on that then. Thank you. We would like to propose the city manager and I a closed session this evening to discuss the Virginia Village project. If we could add that to the agenda.

Okay, so the motion to approve, adopt tonight's meeting agenda as amended for the city attorney.

I withdraw my motion and make motion to adopt the agenda as amended by the city attorney. Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Aye. Thank you. Any conflicts of interest declaration tonight?

Okay. Actually, hold on. Virginia, we're doing CIP, so I better do... You want to save it for CIP? Yeah.

You want to pull it up then?

Yeah.

Okay, we'll remind you then. Thank you, Mr. Aiken. So while we have nothing as an official proclamation or special presentation tonight, Mr. Shields, we are going to embarrass you a little more. So, Mr. Shields, tonight is your last meeting as our city manager after 23 years. And as we shared with you last Thursday, it's certainly a bittersweet moment, and I'm not sure any of us are quite ready. And so while we had lots of surprises for you last Thursday, and it was great to see community members and employees and friends across the region come together, we have a few more things for you tonight, if you will indulge us. So a few comments from some of us, and then a few gifts, and I'm sure members of the public are here to feed you as well. So for the past 20 years, you really have poured your heart into this city and you've helped really Falls Church grow up. And so on a personal note, many of you know that I sent my firstborn off to college about a week and a half ago. So besides having two occasions in one week where I've gotten emotional and why you've made me cry, I actually thought about it. There's actually a lot of parallels between launching a kid and seeing a successful city manager retire, right? Because the whole point of 18 years of parenting, for all the parents in the audience know, is to teach them how to be separate from you and how to teach them to be successful, independent, and grow up. And that is exactly how you're leaving Falls Church, successful and grown up. So thank you for that. You have been a remarkable partner to council and an extraordinary steward to the little city. And we are so grateful for that. So tonight we have two more final tokens of our appreciation. First up is we have... the key to the little city. Because after all these years, you've really earned the keys. And so it's got the city seal and a little key actually made by Browns Hardware when they were still around. So we hope you will enjoy this. And then final thing is a watercolor of Falls Church to really remind you of all the places that you helped shape and that this community will always be grateful to you. So if everyone could join me in thanking Mr. Shields for 23 years and his final council meeting. I'm sure other members of council want to say something and then we'll give you these gifts.

I would love to jump in. You'll notice the key is little because we are the little city. But in all seriousness, in November, I will have served two years on the city council, and truly one of the highlights has been working with you, Mr. Shields. When I served as chair of the school board, I also found you to be an incredible partner, working with our school system as we grew, and especially your partnership as we built that new Meridian $120 million gold-lead certified high school. I don't think we could have done that if you had not been city manager. Now as a city council member, I have personally witnessed your leadership, your warmth, your calm approach, and your extraordinary leadership of your staff, and your ability to answer to seven bosses up here as well as the community and keep an open mind and have a open heart and be empathetic has really helped you support this growth of the city. But also while you've been keeping community feedback in mind and maintaining that small town feel that we all love. So I just wanna say you're gonna be incredibly missed. I hope as you bike throughout the city that you, Text your observations to the mayor, as she has done for the past, how long have you been on the council now? 12 years? 10 years. So you can include me too, but definitely her. But we do hope you'll stay engaged, and I just want to congratulate you on a job well done. You'll be very missed. Thank you.

Other comments?

I can go next. I want to reminisce for a moment and think about 23 years ago. In 2003, I got married, and my daughter, who's in college, was still years away. American Idol was in its second season. That was a good season, though. The Motorola Razr, this little thing, this was the hot new phone. No iPhone, this thing. Arnold Schwarzenegger was first elected to be governor. The fifth Harry Potter book was published. There were only two movies out. The third was in filming. Finding Nemo was released. And Wyatt Shields joined the Falls Church staff. Which one's most important? I'll let you all decide. By the way, kudos to the library for having these two things. I'll be returning them. I'm not gonna wax poetic about how long I've worked with Wyatt because like most of the city residents, my direct interactions with him were minimal until I was elected to council. But I've discovered over the last 10 months how his influence has been felt throughout the city. It's throughout the quality of the local government and the results the local government delivers. Like many residents, I didn't fully understand his impact, but have come to appreciate how he has made Falls Church the wonderful place it is today. Wyatt, it has been a pleasure working with you these last 10 months and with your staff for the years before that. Your leadership shows throughout the organization. I wish the best in whatever you do next and hope you enjoy having your Monday evenings free. And no, you cannot have the Razor phone.

Others?

It was funny to think back to 2003. I did watch some of the, I think the earliest city council meetings that are online are 2008. And so I actually went back and watched those. So you can see Hal up here on the dais and Wyatt down there talking to council. Anyway, it was just, it's a treat to watch if you guys go back into the archive. So I would highly recommend that. Some things have changed. Some things have not. I've only been on council for three years. So I realized that I'm coming in at the very tail end of your tenure. And as I was thinking about what to say today, there was a story that just kept coming back to my mind, and it was actually a story that you told me, so I wasn't there for it. Years ago, the city wanted to acquire a piece of land that would help connect what is now the Howard E. Herman Stream Valley Trail. And the owner was a bit skeptical, to say the least, about selling the land to the city. He could potentially get a better deal if he sold it on the private market. And there wasn't necessarily a great deal of trust with the city. So Wyatt did something that to me captures something so essential about the way he's approached this job. He sat down with the owner and he had tea. And he got to know him and listen to him and over time they built a relationship and Wyatt earned his trust and eventually they were able to reach an agreement. And now all these years later that relationship has left an indelible mark on Falls Church. We have a beautiful piece of nature running right through it in the middle of our city. And I think about how many other pieces of Falls Church exist because of conversations like that. Negotiations that Wyatt conducted, relationships he built, problems he quietly worked through over more than two decades of service to the city. I love that story because there are a lot of ways to get things done in government. You can push, you can negotiate, you can exercise whatever authority you have, but I really appreciate how you built trust. You have a remarkable ability to understand people, to listen, to read a situation, to know when to push and when not to, and to communicate with an enormous range of all the people that come through the doors of City Hall. And I've seen how you communicate with council. You know the values that we've set out for yourselves and you're not afraid to remind us of them. When we start wandering off course, you know how to steer us back. But what's also remarkable is how you've also watched these priorities change over time. Another thing that I remember is when we were pushing for more bike infrastructure and better pedestrian infrastructure and all these things, you reminded me that 15, 20 years ago, residents were pushing for how do we make traffic go faster? And so just to see that enormous shift in the city to prioritize pedestrians and cyclists and how do we make our streets safer for those biking and walking? You've had to navigate all of those different errors in Falls Church to understand what the community is asking for now and remember how we got here. And that's why I think you've not just been a steward of the city, but a steward of our stories. And that's one of the things that I'm saddest to lose. Because there are so many stories like the Howard E Herman trail story, things that may never have made it into a staff report or into a set of council minutes. Conversations and personalities that compromise the behind the scenes decisions that have shaped this place. And you know why we've done something. You remember what people were worried about. Remember what they were asking for and what didn't work. And then all the little twists and turns that got Falls Church from here to there. And there's a reason that you know this community so well. It's because the community also knows you well, too. One of my favorite things that came to mind as I was thinking about this was as we were going down the Memorial Day Parade, people were cheering for Wyatt. Yeah, when do you go down a street and people cheer for the city manager? That doesn't happen in any city. So you become beloved after decades of public service, not simply because you're doing a good job at budgets and capital projects and running meetings, which you are also good at. But because the people know you and they trust you, because they know that you deeply care about this place. Well, I'm sad that I've come in at the tail end of your tenure. I'm incredibly grateful that my first three years on council were years that I got to learn from you. You've taught me an enormous amount about leadership, about how to actually get things done, about the wonderful little city and all the strange stories that made it what it is. Falls Church is a better place because you have been its steward. And I'm so lucky that I got to learn from you for a little while, and we're really going to miss you, Wyatt. Thank you.

Mr. Snyder?

So thank you. I'm not going to try to recall 2003. But I will say this. I think the fundamental role of local government is to provide the services infrastructure so that our citizens can live the kind of lives they want to live and change the policies of the country and indeed the world in ways which move us in a more positive direction. So our role is fundamentally to support our citizens so that they can live the kind of lives that they want to. In the city manager form of government, the city manager plays an absolutely central role in doing that. And over all these years, city councils, Wired in particular, city staff, and our citizens have worked together to provide that fundamental infrastructure That is the reason why we create local government in the first place. So Wyatt, thank you for your contributions over these years, and I wish you a great next set of chapters.

Ms. Flynn, I see your hand up.

Thanks Mayor Hardy. I'll also just keep it short and sweet and thank Mr. Shields for the privilege of working with him these last few years on council. It's really been a privilege to observe your steady leadership and your willingness to engage sort of over complicated and complex issues in your commitment to betterment of the city both as a place and as an organization. And so I think that there's a reason that so many people turned out last week from the region and from staff and from former staff and former council members. And it's just the deep respect that all of us have for how you approach the job and the work that you've done for over two decades. And it's really remarkable because the city manager position is such a difficult job and in many ways is two jobs because of the city manager role and the responsibility for the organization, but then also your responsiveness to council and like others said, seven bosses and making sure the priorities of the city are carried out and carried forward. So just want to Thank you again for all of your work and to say that I will not hold it against you if you share that tip with Seth that became apparent to me over time of holding your council emails to the end of the day to get through your other work and draft them and then send them as a batch to move them off your plate at once. So I think it was a good approach, a smart approach, one that I respect that respected and very much wish you all the best in all that is to come. And feel fortunate that we'll all continue to see you here in the little city. So thanks again, Wyatt.

Thank you. I have three speaker slips from members of the public who would like to also recognize Wyatt. Invite you all to join us now or you wanna do it during public comment? Do it now? Okay. Looks like you're first, Mr. Lipman.

Thank you. I'm Hal Lipman. Well, let me break protocol. Wyatt, members of the council, I'm Hal Lipman. I'm president of Citizens for a Better City. And with me today are members of our executive committee, most of whom you all know and who all have served in some capacity, like this one. Sally Eckfeldt, Lindy Hockenberry, Cara Bew, Brian O'Connor, yes, Brian O'Connor, and Tom Clinton. It's more than humbling to be here after all that has already been said. But we really wanted to add our own two cents, if only at the beginning because three of us were on the City Council when you were hired. David Snyder, myself, and Lindy Hockenberry. That's known but not well known. And as an aside, what I remember a lot of Wyatt was a deer in a headlights kind of beginning. And here we are two decades later and that is sort of laughable to think about that as the beginning and this bookend at this point. So we have a shout out award that we've been giving for the past four or five years to celebrate individual accomplishments in the city that are special. Bob Young got one, Debbie Hiscott got one, and two of the wonderful leaders of the Falls Church Education Foundation, Suzanne Hladky and Adina Williams got another one because of what they did for the Better Together T-shirt that is seen all over the city that they originated. So, our Shout Out Award reads as follows, and again, the eloquence and moving nature of things that have already been said are, you know, sort of beyond an ability to go above, but it's our special two cents. It says, for 23 years, City Manager Wyatt Shields has been Falls Church City's most faithful and diligent steward. With a quiet confidence and a steady hand, he has guided the city through You ready? Colon. Eight large-scale mixed-use developments, critical public works projects, fundamental renovations of City Hall, the library, and the community center, the revitalization of city parks, improvements to pedestrian safety, the extensive overhaul of the city-wide bike path, and the integration and development of 10 acres of new land at the city's west end. With an equally steady hand, Wyatt has steered the city through the financial crash of 2007, the once-in-a-lifetime storms, Snowcrete, Snowmageddon of 2010 and 2016, and the Direcco. My neighbor lost a tree in front and Cara was there for that one. The water wars with Fairfax County and COVID-19. to say nothing of his patient receipt of the never ending public comment that comes with being an effective city manager. This special shout out award celebrates and honors Wyatt Shields with our admiration, our respect, our affection, and above all, our deeply felt gratitude for your remarkable service to our little city. Thank you, Wyatt.

Hal, would you like to invite the rest of the CBC exec committee to get a photo with Wyatt while you all are here?

Okay.

Which is easiest?

Okay.

Hey how are you? Good to see you.

All right, I'm going to need this row to all scoot down.

Scoot, scoot, scoot, scoot. So Wyatt can be right in the middle. So Wyatt in the middle. We don't want to talk about you, but we do want to see you in the middle. You are the star of the show today. We are proud of your work. Excellent.

I have your feedback. I'm going to have you guys just sneak in a little bit more. We're all friends here. Excellent. Of course.

Thank you. Three, two, one. Three, two, one. All right. Let's play that focus. I'm going to try again. All right, three, two, one, peace. All righty, thank you guys.

Quiet, buckle up, we've got more. Mr. Duncan, since you're standing already, looks like you would like to say something about Mr. Shields.

Mayor, vice mayor, members of council, I'm Phil Duncan, 214 Southwest Street. Sorry I was not able to attend the program last Thursday here in chambers honoring our retiring city manager, Wyatt Shields. I would like to take a couple of minutes to express my personal thanks for all that Wyatt has done for our city. It's been said and Ms. Downs just repeated that the most challenging thing about being city manager is that you have seven bosses. And each of those seven counselors has ideas for what the city government should do. Lots of ideas. Wyatt also showed a special skill for sensing which ideas were worthy of consideration Ideas were never bad, but some, he would say, are not on the critical path. A deft and gentle way of saying it's dead on arrival because it's a bad idea. Other times, an idea would elicit my Wyatt promise to take that back to staff and let us work on it. That was high Wyatt praise. During my 11 years on council, I served with Wyatt in the manager's chair. I'll not say how many of my ideas were graded not on the critical path. But I want to thank Wyatt for embracing the idea that smart and sustained economic development would enable Falls Church to build schools, a city hall, a public library, and all manner of other community infrastructure while lowering the property tax rate. Thank you Wyatt for all you did to make that dream of mine come true.

Thank you, Mr. Duncan. Mayor Tarter, do you mind being next?

Actually, I'm here to complain about something. I'm not even sure what it is yet, but I wanted to give Wyatt a taste of what he's gonna be missing in a few hours. No, I put pen to paper and just on the occasion of Wyatt's retirement, I wanted to say a few things to him and the community. It's a pleasure to be here to honor you tonight, Wyatt, at your last city council meeting. And maybe more importantly, to celebrate the fact you're finally escaping government, as someone who spent a lot of time with Wyatt, maybe more than you would have liked, I have a particular appreciation for all that you've done. And as we've heard, I think your job is one of the toughest in government. You answer to seven elected counselors with different opinions. Every community issue is your issue. From a fallen tree branch to a broken street light to an injured raccoon, no matter what time or day, you get called and you answer it. But Wyatt has a unique blend of diplomacy, empathy, and the ability to listen carefully. When someone explains for the fifth time why their particular issue should be his top priority, I know I was one of those people. But through it all, Wyatt has brought something that's not always abundant in government, common sense, patience, and a good sense of humor. Wyatt knew that politicians come and go, but the city must keep going. Council may set direction, but Wyatt's job was to get it done, and he did. Wyatt has played a key part in nearly every school, park, library, and new building in the city. His fingerprints are all over modern Falls Church. He will have a lasting legacy on this community. Wyatt set the tone for the city and its staff and embodied what people love about this place. And through all the years, through all the long meetings, all the debates, and all the challenges, Wyatt was always remarkably calm and collected. I don't think I've ever seen him lose his temper. I've never heard him raise his voice. And despite my goading, I've never heard him say a bad word about anyone. Although I understand later this evening Wyatt's finally gonna let loose and unload. I'm looking forward to that. Then I saw Wyatt at his retirement party dancing with Patty. He looked more relaxed than I've ever seen him. And I thought maybe this retirement thing is really gonna suit him. Well, I hope it does, because you've earned it. You've given this city your energy, your judgment, dedication, patience, and a considerable portion of your life. On behalf of those who have the privilege of working with you, and on behalf of the community you serve, thank you. Thank you for your wise counsel. Thank you for your professionalism. Thank you for your unwavering leadership. And most of all, thank you for understanding that public service is ultimately about people. You have served this city well, and you leave behind a legacy that will last long after the final city council meeting you have to sit through. So here's to Wyatt and all that lies ahead. Thank you, Wyatt.

We've got a whole lineup of mayors tonight. Mayor Baruch, if you'd like to join us.

Good evening, council. What can I say? I think what people sometimes forget, is that Wyatt, through his leadership, actually saw us through one of the most difficult times that I can recall in the city or any other city. When I was first elected to council, there was a question of whether the city would actually continue to exist after the downturn in the economy. followed by the water wars where the question again came up whether the city could be sustainable and continue to exist. And if it wasn't for Wyatt's steady hand and listening to some often time crazy ideas that this council had, including David Snyder who's still on the council and some other council members who have either moved or unfortunately passed away, Wyatt listened, heard all seven of us out, and we were able to make some very, very difficult decisions in very stressful, challenging economic times that were truly, I think, unprecedented. And I commend Wyatt for listening, providing his feedback, and then executing. But I think it needs to be reminded, because it does seem so long ago what the economic downturn in the city meant. It meant massive tax increases. It meant explaining that to our citizens. It meant explaining why we needed to do what we needed to do. And I think Wyatt was a partner in that. And I thank Wyatt for that. And on a personal note, it wasn't always about business. It was about friendship. It was about raising our youngish families at the time and experiencing that together. And Wyatt, your friendship, your mentorship, I can't tell you how meaningful and important that has been both for me professionally and personally. So I thank you for your friendship, for your time, and your wisdom that you shared. Thank you.

Dr. Tate.

Good evening, it is an absolute honor to be here tonight to celebrate someone who has given an extraordinary part of his life to this community, our city manager and true friend to FCCPS, Wyatt Shields. Wyatt, after 23 years of service to the city of Falls Church and 19 years as our city manager, it's safe to say that you've earned your retirement. Although knowing you, I suspect you'll have a little bit of a hard time figuring out what to do with all that free time. When I think about Wyatt's legacy, one thing stands out to me. You can literally see it. You can see it in our schools. During Wyatt's tenure, all five FCCPS schools were either built or renovated. That is an incredible accomplishment, and one that will serve generations of Falls Church students. These are simply not school buildings. They are places where our children discover who they are, where teachers inspire, where friendships are formed, where families come together, and where our community invests in its future. And Wyatt understood that. He understood that great cities support great schools and great schools support great cities. That connection has been at the heart of what has made our little city so special. Perhaps what made Wyatt's commitment to our schools even more meaningful is that it was never simply professional for him. It was personal. Both of Wyatt's children graduated from FCCPS, providing him a wonderful opportunity to serve our community as both a city manager and a parent of FCCPS alumni. He knows what it means to watch his children walk through the halls of our schools, to cheer from the sidelines, to attend concerts and performances, to celebrate graduations, and ultimately to send them out into the world. And I suspect that even after tonight, he won't be able to leave FCCPS behind. I know we will always consider you to be a part of the FCCPS family. I'd like to end my time with what I admire most about Wyatt. Wyatt, I have tremendous admiration for your humility, your integrity, and your selfless service. You have held one of the most consequential positions in our community for nearly two decades, yet you've never seemed particularly interested in being the most important person in the room. Nor did you ever give yourself the well-deserved pat on the back that you so very well deserved. Instead, you've consistently focused on doing the right thing, serving the community's best interests, and making Falls Church a better place. That kind of leadership is extremely rare and it matters. Because leadership isn't ultimately about titles, it's about stewardship. It's about taking care of something that belongs to all of us and leaving it better than you found it. Wyatt, you've been an extraordinary steward to the city of Falls Church. And on behalf of the students, families, teachers, staff, and our school board, we wanna thank you. Thank you for believing in our schools. Thank you for investing in our children. Thank you for being a true partner to FCCPS. And most of all, thank you for serving this community with such humility, integrity, and heart. So tonight we celebrate your remarkable legacy. We celebrate your 23 years of service to FCCPS graduates, five schools transformed, and a community changed for the better. Thank you, Wyatt. Congratulations on your retirement. And most importantly, enjoy the heck out of your next chapter. Thank you.

Anyone else in the audience? We appreciate everyone's patience who are here for public comment. We feel like only once every 23 years do we retire city managers, so we thought we would thank you for indulging us in this. Wyatt, I think that's it for comments, unless there are any final ones. We'd love for you to come up and get these gifts from council and a final photo, and then we'll get into business on the agenda.

Can I just say a quick word? Oh, sure. Maybe before we do that. So yeah, we do have work to do. And Thursday was officially, all this is supposed to be over. So I was not anticipating any comments tonight. But I do want to just say what I feel, which is incredible gratitude for city staff. City staff have seen me at my worst. And together, we've seen each other at our best. as we've met challenges for the community. And thank you for everything that you all do day in and day out. I've learned so much from every member of city staff and city council. I've worked now for elected officials for 33 years, a United States Senator, the Town Council of Scottsville, and 20 years with the city council. And every city council member has taught me new things about life, about government, about community, and I do admire what you do so much to step forward to serve your community the way that you do is just tremendous. And our whole experiment in self-government as a country depends on you doing that, and you do it so well. So thank you. And to this community, this awesome community of the City of Falls Church, one of the, I think the key things, you know, this whole kind of over-the-top celebration over the last couple, the last week is, I think, really a celebration of Falls Church. It's a celebration of the community. It's a celebration of a self-confident community that believes in its future. And that's a great thing to see. That's been a great thing to be a part of. And so thank you for your trust and for giving me this opportunity. I'll be forever grateful. Thank you.

Come on up. And actually we'd also invite staff to join us as well.

is um

All right, I'm going to need you to come on the end and squeeze in. Beautiful, beautiful. Art, can I have you take a half step this way? And then... And then, can you take a half step closer to Dave? Thank you. Can I have you stand on the other side? So many city celebs. All right, I'm going to use you guys. I think Terry might have you stay on the other side. Thank you guys so much. We love symmetry. Excellent. All right. Three, two, one. Three, two, one. All right, I'm going to check if it's in focus. Thank you so much, guys. All right, I'm going to take another one. Thank you guys for your patience. Three, two, one. Three, two, one. Thank you guys so much.

Thank you, Laura. Thank you, Wyatt. Thank you, Mayor.

Final thing. Oh, I know. So I guess for those of you who saw us walk in or some of us walk in with embarrassingly mismatched socks, we did that in honor of Wyatt tonight. So if you didn't know that, that was actually been a theme for the past week is recognizing Wyatt and his mismatched socks, one of the quirks that we've grown to love. And so I think some of us have mismatched socks. We'd love to...

You were the only one who was visible walking in.

We'll calm down, I guess. How do we do it? Rachel, what do you think?

Show off your socks.

Let's do it. That's why I'm here. Come on, guys.

Show us that.

With Wyatt's socks. With Wyatt's socks.

All right, three, two, one. Alright, well now it's just the feet.

All righty, thank you all. Hopefully that bit of humor and Humbleness carries us through the rest of the evening as well. So let's move on to receipt of public comment. Madam Clerk, if you're ready to summarize written comments.

Yes, and these are the written comments received since your last action meeting. On biking, Bike Walk Roll Falls Church wrote to support implementing options three and four with some modifications from the Falls Church East Broad Street Multimodal Improvement Alternatives report. The following wrote to request prioritization of the east-west bicycle and pedestrian route to the secondary campus. David Bloomgarden, Darren Chen, Ann Marie Havid, Eric Pelton, Lucy Tolu, Nicholas Waller, and Elizabeth Robertson. Regarding Virginia Village, the following asks that conceptual drawings submitted with RFP proposals be provided to the public and express concerns about the RFP process. Carl Anderson, Robert Barnett, Naderin Bernadette Baruch, Barbara Conaty, Joseph Conaty, Ben Fred, Shalynn Gibb, Rebecca Johnson, Kathy Kleiman, Mary Lou Pickle, Heather Pressler, and Beverly Warnock. The Social Justice Committee of the Falls Church and Vicinity wrote in support of the City Council's approach to the Virginia Village project and the construction of as many affordable units as practical. In other comments, Ansh Bari requested that a neighborhood park with a dog park be constructed in the West Falls neighborhood. The Citizens Advisory Committee on Transportation requested an increase in safety measures at the W&OD Trail and Grove Avenue crossing. Peter Corbino wrote in support of banning gas-powered leaf blowers, and Sean Dakin wrote with concern about a vehicle parked at the city hall EV chargers that disrupted a farmer's market participants space.

Thank you. Let's move on to receive a public comment, either live in person or virtually.

Yes, first we have Dan Putziger followed by Sholei Lee. We do have a three minute timer for comments.

So for Virginia Village, the city seems to want control without enough investment. Here's what I've seen so far. Step one, let's build a large building on the city-owned properties. Step two, let's force a 12% rent control requirement on the private owners who want to rebuild. Nah, here's step three, we want 50%. No, no, not good enough, step four, let's add replacement units so if I build only four units, they all have to be rent controlled. Step five, this is the kicker, let's burden the private owners with an SE to add more uncertainty. And then let's not define affordable yet. Is it 80% AMI? Is it 30%? Is it negotiable? What? If the city wants total control, it should own the properties. Raise taxpayer funds and buy them. Compensate the private owners. And it will be very interesting if you accept a proposal that puts market rate townhouses on some of the plats, and I've seen that in what was proposed, when we can't do it. So now affordable housing. My parents have provided affordable housing in Falls Church for over 53 years. They've received no assistance from the city and they've paid taxes. They still do so. They spent weekends and evenings working on the buildings for decades until they got too old to do so. I learned to scrape paint and wallpaper back in 1974 and I still do it. As a thank you for all the hard work and investment, now we're getting diminished property values, inconvenience to an expense to tenants, an unfunded mandate and rent control, and an SE requirement with a capricious approval process and possible deviation from zoning. So in final summary, buy the properties. To make the project work, the city needs all the properties. The city has not made an offer for our properties. Falls Church should buy the properties and compensate the owners. And if the taxpayers do not wish to raise the funds, then they don't support the project. We're rich. Go get them.

Next we have Sholay Lee, followed by Nader Barouk.

Good evening. By way of introduction, I am a Falls Church, obviously city resident, and a homeowner. I'm also a registered professional engineer in Virginia, and I have a lot of experience in professional construction project management. So my comments tonight are about the Meridian school project. How is it that the Falls Church community funded a massive school project without enough parking for students? This has resulted in a ridiculous situation whereby seniors have to compete in a lottery for parking and only 100 students get a spot. There are 200 seniors and who knows how many driving juniors. We were told that students can pay $14 a day at a neighboring private garage that is part of the development planned with the school project. That amounts to $2,500 a year. Last year, the garage offered a student rate for upper levels of the garage and decided we're just not going to do that this year. That is something the city should have required of the developer, provide parking at specified student rates. But in researching this letter, I was shocked to find that at the beginning of the school project that that same garage had been promised to be shared between the developer and the school. The City Council must prioritize parking spaces in the neighboring garage in accordance with the original agreement. These spaces should be enough to provide parking for all the students and the teachers, and there must be a long-term agreement which is not subject to the whims of the developer. It is a travesty that this gorgeous new school was built with $120 million of community money, and there was no planning and foresight to provide adequate parking. At the time of the project's groundbreaking, it was noted that, quote, Stantec designed a seven-story solution that unifies the site, integrates the campus with the nearby community, offers robust safety and security measures, and resolves significant traffic and parking issues. Rather than resolve, it has made the situation worse for both traffic and parking. So where are we now in 2026? The new school has less parking than it used to have. Everyone knows that Virginia Tech parking is now gone. The advertised shared parking garage promise has evaporated. The city council applauds the project, the developers are certainly happy, and the density makes the area parking impossible for students without a dedicated school garage. In short, the community is not getting what it paid for. And I just wanna kind of zoom out to say, as parents and families, it really affects when students become more independent, yet they can't use that independence to go on this transition to adulthood. And I think we can all remember back to when we were students, and at least I can. It was a time when we were getting more independent, we had time to leave the school. Sorry, as seniors, can I? You may finish quickly. So anyway, just looking back, that was a critical part of transition to college when the families could rely on the students, families could rely on the students to be more independent. And now we have students that can't do those sort of things. So I'm advocating that the city look at this, build a school parking garage, and designate low-cost parking for students.

Thank you. Next we have Nader Barouk, followed by John Ward.

Good evening, Council. My name is Nader Baruch, and I'm here to speak about Virginia Village. The current council made the current Virginia Village proposals a project by right. Residents were told that was acceptable because the RFP proposals itself would have some level of transparency, that the public would see diagrams showing how each proposal treated the site before the city sign an interim agreement. The RFP did the same thing. Section 1C made the executive summaries a required section and it required the overall approach to be captured in narrative and illustrative or conceptual diagrams. Not one of the three proposals contains a drawing. RFP says trade secret protections do not apply to the executive summaries precisely because that section was the one that was supposed to be shared publicly so it could intelligently comment. The interim agreement is scheduled for late September. Second reading on the zoning changes is scheduled for October 26. The city will have signed with the developer before this council votes on the standards governing what gets built. You may be told that the interim agreement doesn't lock in height or density, so the diagrams can wait. Well, they can't. It misses the point twice. The RFP required those diagrams now at the proposal stage, not whenever the city decides it matters. Well, they matter now. Once you sign with the developer, the choice amongst the three as far as how the public can comment is over. And what's provided now doesn't responsibly allow for any type of meaningful public comment. The public never gets to compare what it was never shown. What remains of the process is the following. Trust us. We were elected. I have sat where you are sitting. That is not how trust works. Trust is built by keeping the commitments you put into your own RFP documents and what you said from the dais. Commitments that the diagrams would be made public in the executive summaries. That promise was not kept. Our attorney unfortunately had to send a letter to the city and asked for two things, and I asked the same. First, find that all three proposals are incomplete, send them back for the diagrams the RFP clearly required. Those were not optional. Until that happens, no recommendation to this council, no selection of a developer, and no interim agreement. Second, at minimum, do what you said you were going to do. Sign nothing until the public has seen those diagrams. Thank you.

Thank you. Next we have John Ward followed by Kathy Kleiman.

Good evening, John Ward, 335 Riley Street. I'm actually here on behalf of the Environmental Sustainability Council and its Energy Transition Subcommittee. I believe there was something in your work package or materials for possibly this week or for a couple weeks ago. Before I get started, I had a chance to thank White Shields earlier in private, one-on-one, for his years of service. If you haven't seen Stephen Wright's joke about mismatched socks, Google it, 10 seconds, YouTube, Maxwell. Earlier this year, the ESC submitted its annual report to city council and discussion came to a question of, there are a lot of projects related to the community energy action plan that are laid out, efforts that are there, and ways to achieve the 50% greenhouse gas reductions that the city has established as its targets. And the question came up, there's a lot of big projects that are hard to implement, they're expensive, they're hard to launch. Are there a lot of possibly smaller projects that could be taken on to kind of take up some of the slack? And it's been three years since the plans were adopted. Has there been anything new on the landscape that the city and staff should be aware of? We took that, we promised an answer to that. We took it back to the ESC and the subcommittees and took a look at that. That's the answers to that, result of that analysis is in the memos, the memo that was submitted within the past week or two. The short answer is no, and it's for a couple of reasons. There's really not a way to get a bunch of small projects. We came up with two different approaches that hadn't really been part of the CEAP, the community plan, a couple years ago. One was rooftop, sorry, balcony or plug-in or portable solar as a supplement to the rooftop solar for commercial residential properties. We estimated that maybe you could get, optimistically, maybe a half a percent of your 50% reduction that was targeted through portable solar. It's useful, but it's not going to eliminate very much in the other requirements. The other one was trees, the expanded tree canopy was not really part of the community energy action plan, at least not a major component of it. Looked at that and again, it's fractions of a percent that could be achieved if you had a substantial increase in the tree canopy. So keeping in mind, so these couple of fractions of a percent, they're useful, they're helpful, but the plan itself only addressed 30% of the target 50%. So even anything else we couldn't do that's additional, plug in solar, trees, other projects would only really chip away at the remaining 20% that was left undefined in the plan. So I want to keep that in mind as staff is coming forward with projects and funding requests in the coming years that these are really are required to try and meet the city's goals. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Next we have Kathy Kleiman followed by Joe Connerty.

Great, thank you, Mayor, Vice Mayor, City Council. I'll add one more to Wyatt Shields' accolades. You facilitated and held many conversations between neighbors and developers. That made development make sense within our communities. The success stories are everywhere, I'll just give you two. One is before my time, the HOA across the street from me on Jennifer Lane was apparently designed originally as a closed enclave. But neighbors urged it to be opened up, and now three townhouses face onto Grove Avenue across the street from me. And they're some of my closest friends and some of my best neighbors. Founders Row, ditto for Founders Row. We spent some great conversations on that and like it or not, and lots of people don't, the neighborhood likes it and we see our fingerprints all over it. Whether it's the area, the corner that Laura Gogol helped the designers create or the opening that my husband and I helped create, the whole area is much more active and activated and fits in the neighborhood in a very special way and it has our fingerprints all over it and the neighborhood feels that and then welcomed the development. So what we need here for Virginia Village is of course diagrams. I was here when you promised them. We need the diagrams and materials to evaluate what's happening and to understand we can't compare anything or provide any input. as citizens across the city or as the neighborhood. And just the reminder that we don't shove buildings into other people's neighborhoods. We wouldn't do it next to your houses and we shouldn't be doing it in Virginia Village. We promise the neighborhood the opportunity for real and constructive dialogue. So I'm asking both for diagrams and that opportunity as soon as possible for the neighbors to talk with the developers Maybe, and it should be all three of them, really. So that's the request, because we know it works. And we know that that's the way we've been doing it in the city of Falls Church, at least for the quarter century that I've been here. Thank you.

Thank you. Next, we have Joe Conaty, followed by Hal Lipman.

Thank you. As a former public servant for 35, 40 years, and also having lived in Falls Church for 35 or 40 years, I'd like to also congratulate the city mayor. It's been quite a ride over the last 35, 40 years. Some of it you rode, some of it you didn't. I'm here for a very simple reason. Over the past few months, at both walkthroughs and neighborhoods, and at council meetings that went well into the night, taking a break, I recall one time after midnight, to come back and continue the conversation, the mayor and the council committed to as transparent a process as possible around the Virginia Villages Project. A key ingredient of that transparency was to be the executive summaries of the proposals. A key ingredient of the executive summaries was to be the visual representations of what these projects would look like. We had ballpoint diagrams, we had cones sitting out in the backyards, we had people looking at rooftops. But the key ingredient to transparency is missing from these executive summaries. I don't think it was optional, I think it was required. I think to live up to your commitments that you made to the public and to the community, particularly to the residents of Winter Hill, you should not make any decisions prior to making those visual representations public and to have the time for the community to react, to continue the public conversation that was started so many months ago. All of a sudden, the doors closed to the public It's happening behind closed doors. As many have said earlier, that isn't the way you build trust. The way you build trust is to live up to your commitments and, to my understanding, also the letters of what was required in the RFP process. I say this respectfully. I have not been very involved in city politics or city community meetings, but this is a very important issue to a lot more people than the few that fill this room. Thank you all.

Thank you. Next, we have Hal Lipman, followed by Rebecca Johnson.

Greetings again, Mayor Hardy and members of the council. I'm still Hal Lipman, president of CBC. I'm going to summarize a position paper that has been made a part of the public record a few weeks ago and sent to each individual council member by myself. I am joined by a few members of the public that I've run into in various ways, and I just would like them to be acknowledged, to stand and So you can be seen for people who came out of interest and support for the position paper that Citizens for a Better City has developed. Thank you. And I will mention, and not meaning to steal a little thunder, this is a collaborative effort now with the Tenerife Hill Social Justice Committee. For decades, Falls Church has tried with limited success to meet the needs of affordable housing. In 2021, CBC and the League of Women Voters jointly focused attention on this issue by focusing three public forums on such efforts. And that took place amidst the aftermath of the death of George Floyd. The forum's key conclusion was there needed to be a major expansion in the amount of affordable housing, along with the objective of bringing about increased economic and racial diversity. Five years later, the situation outlined in the forms remains largely unchanged. Since 2021, 43 affordable housing units have become available, and over the past 20 years, the city has brought a little more than 200 units into its inventory. While these accomplishments were hard won, the vast majority of the added units targeted wage earners with incomes at the 60% level of the Washington, D.C. area median income, AMI. What this meant then and for the last 20 years is the city has focused for the most part on middle income or workforce wage earners such as teachers and public safety personnel. Largely ignored were lower income wage earners at the 30% AMR level, such as retail and hotel workers, maids, janitors, kitchen staff, fast food workers, and servers and wait staff. Lastly, the commitment to diversity in addressing its legacy of segregation have been among the driving forces behind the city's efforts focused on them, which include affordable housing. At least partly attributable to such efforts, the city has become more diverse over the last 20 years. Hispanics, for example, are now the largest non-white minority. During the same period, however, the African American population has been at four to five percent, with Falls Church commonly being viewed as the region's least racially diverse community. Recommendations, and I'll try to run through this. Can I have an extra 30 seconds or so? Please go ahead. They're short. We're asking the city council to act intentionally about who the residents will be. The focus should be primarily on lower income wage earners. Significantly expand the number of affordable units. At least 50% should be targeted on wage earners at the 30% AMI level. Seek extensions for existing affordable housing. Expanded affordable housing in Virginia Village should not be offset by the loss of existing units. Prepare for the possibility that added taxpayer support could be needed to finance the Virginia Village units. If this need arose, CBC will be there to actively engage to ensure such funding is available. Lastly, work to ensure that racial diversity is increased as a result of the city's affordable housing efforts. Thank you for your attention. Thank you.

Thank you. Next we have Rebecca Johnson followed by Phil Christensen.

Good evening Mayor and Council. Daring to care. I just want to say a few words about the Virginia Village and why I preserving its history matters. I decided to get involved and pursue a historic designation for the Virginia Village. History based on what earlier generations have started within this little historic city. Along with the investment of the private owners who have cared for and supported their units in their community over the years. I sent a timeline in regarding the efforts I made with the historic designation to the clerk. On September 8th, the state will officially consider a state designation. This will open up state tax credits to all owners. This includes the false church owners as well as the private owners. It will also open up the opportunity in pursuing a national historic registry. While this may be symbolic, it also opens up federal tax credits to all owners. This would take about 50% of the owners to apply and there is a state grant in February which would forego any expenses to apply to the National Historic Registry. So I hope the city would dare to care, since they don't own all the homes, to actually consider being one of those owners. I know of one other owner that also wants to pursue the federal historic tax credits. So you just need two more to pursue that for those owners. The persons who can use the opportunities are those who keep contributing homes. If the development plans that are being considered through the RP do disrupt the Virginia Village or change its architecture, then at the very least, these state and federal historic tax credits can be used as a consolation for the private owners whose properties investments will be affected. Lastly, I would like to talk about the city's development concepts that they're receiving and reviewing. As you've already heard this evening, the diagrams have not been released. I'm a little bit hopeful that efforts have been made towards Moving in a historic fashion and not disrupting the architecture, which is why the diagrams haven't been released. But it does create a lack of trust. So I would ask the city to dare to care to release those diagrams, one or two more sentences. So how can the residents, property owners, or this council understand the potential impact on Virginia Village without seeing what's being proposed? Let the community see what's being considered. Moving forward shouldn't mean leaving our history behind. Thank you.

Thank you. Next we have Phil Christensen followed by Mary Lou Pickle.

As chair of the Social Justice Committee of Falls Church and Vicinity, I rise to highlight some key points in our statement of August 28th about affordable housing in Virginia Village. As is too often true in America across many areas, with housing, blacks and other racial minorities have disproportionately suffered. from government policies at all levels, as well as from private prejudice. Falls Church City is no exception. Shortly after the Civil War, Charles and Mary Tenner purchased several acres of land in Southern Falls Church in the area now known as Tenner Hill. Soon after the town was incorporated in 1875, black residents became a political force. In 1880, Frederick Foote Jr., a black businessman and landowner, was elected to town council. The response of white residents was devastating. In 1887, to diminish black political influence, the town council returned roughly one-third of the town's land, including much of Tenner Hill, to Fairfax County, thereby reducing the black vote from roughly 37 to 15%. In 1915, Falls Church adopted an ordinance, which was never enforced because of organized black opposition, that would have forced black residents into a small, colored city zone. Not until the early 1960s were our city's schools desegregated after years of resistance and in the face of intense community hostility. And not until the late 60s did the city turn back from racially restrictive neighborhood covenants, private agreements barring blacks and Jews among others from living there. When considering affordable housing, this history matters. Now it is the cost of living here rather than discriminatory policies that prevents many valuable community workers, teachers, restaurant staff, public works employees from contributing their own diverse experiences to our city. Virginia Village's redevelopment offers an innovative next step towards approving this situation. The Social Justice Committee fully supports Council's approach here and the construction of as many units as practical. Beyond this, we also support the CBC's statement, including their call for half of all new affordable housing units to be available to people at 30% of the area median income, the population most excluded from living here. Thank you.

Thank you. Next, we have Mary Lou Pickle.

Good evening, Council, Mayor. I sent you this letter, but I think I'm going to read it as well, just in case it fell through the cracks. I just ask you to please follow the rules laid out in the RFP and share with the public the required conceptual diagrams of the proposed buildings to be built at Virginia Village. I went to the trouble of doing a community charrette where we were talking exactly about design and now it just seems crazy not to share the designs. This is important for community trust and transparency of city business. The taxpayer should be allowed to see what are supposed to be public documents. Those responding to the RFP were given a choice about what kind of diagram to provide, not whether or not to provide one. Anything in the executive summary is public, so I ask you to make those, I ask you to support transparency and compliance in conducting city business and release to the public the images that illustrate the building envelope or any illustration of what would be built at Virginia Village long before any interim agreement is executed with the developer. I think this is an oversight, and I hope that you will fix it in the name of transparency, community engagement, and yeah, I think it's pretty obvious that's what needs to happen. So thank you so much for your attention to this. I recede the remainder of my time.

Thank you. Mayor, that's our final speaker for this evening. Great. Thank you all for your public comments.

I know we have a lengthy report of the city manager to council tonight, and I think we have a addition to include a presentation on the next steps in the roadmap for Virginia Village. Is that right, Mr. Shields?

That's right, we do have an extensive city manager's report tonight, and the order is a little different than shown on the agenda. I would recommend that we start with the Virginia Village roadmap. We've provided this in the past, but hopefully we can sort of provide a little bit more detail on the next steps in that process. Matt Matusik will walk us through that.

Well, Mr. Matusik's coming up. Out of all the 10 public comments we got, I think the majority were about Virginia Village, so hopefully the presentation from staff will help address some of your concerns. The other ones I captured... parking at Meridian High School. Unfortunately, it looks like Dr. Dade is not here. But I guess a couple things I would just offer while we're getting set up for Virginia Villages. So I think between me, Mr. Schneider, Ms. Connell, who's not here tonight, and then Ms. Downs, I think we are part of the process. My understanding is actually they're the same number of parking spaces that were built pre and post construction. So there actually was a deliberate effort to actually have the same number of parking spaces on the campus. Now that said, I think we understand that some people parked at the Virginia Tech site, which is not city property. And so that obviously has redeveloped and changed. And I think actually a misconception is that school enrollment has changed. I went actually back to our 2019 numbers, so pre-COVID. We're about 2,700 students back then. And I recall that at the beginning of the last school year, we're at 2,712. And so school enrollment also has not changed in the past six years since the school has opened. And so it's actually largely stayed flat. And so I'm not sure. I understand there's challenges. I have high schoolers myself. And so they personally don't drive. But I understand the challenge. I think we can commit to following up with the schools to understand where the parking challenges are. But I want to at least get the facts out there that my understanding is that the parking spaces pre and post construction are actually the same on the Meridian campus. And school enrollment also hasn't changed. maybe more kids are driving. Although I think our hope is that as we make the city more multimodal, more kids are choosing to walk and bike, especially since that intersection has certainly greatly improved in the past five or six years. So Mr. Manager, I don't know if you have other things to add, but we have the benefit of the public comment are still in the audience.

Yeah, just briefly, it was discussed and thought about a lot. There's a huge amount of transportation analysis that was done with the Meridian High School, and there was a conscious decision not to increase the number of parking spaces for the reasons that the mayor cited. There is an agreement for shared parking with the development. What that agreement was from the beginning was for special events, not for day-to-day parking in the commercial development. And so we have been executing that for big football games or back to school nights and things like that where the public can access the garage at no cost for a limited number of nights over the course of the year. Thank you for that.

Okay, thank Virginia Village Roadmap. Mr. Matusak, you're up.

All right, thank you and good evening everyone. What we wanted to do is return after a couple weeks absence and kind of share some status updates, where we are in terms of schedule, set some expectations for the next couple of weeks and months, and also use the opportunity to revisit some of the terminology that was used I think in the last couple of briefings that speak to the difference between an interim agreement zoning changes, site plans, and a comprehensive agreement. Those are going to keep surfacing as we kind of highlight what the schedule looks like. And I think having a clear definition and distinction between all those things really helps highlight why they are showing up in the way they are and why some require much more time to develop and review compared to others. So I just wanted to walk through that and provide a healthy update on where we are. As a reminder, just looking at the site itself, the zoning changes themselves apply to the entirety of Virginia Village. So the property with the red boundary, as you can see on the slide, and the distinction there is that the geography for the RFP, the city-owned lots, which include 300 Shirley Street, would be subject to the RFP, the request for proposals. So while we are changing the zoning for the entirety of Virginia Village, the RFP conversation is just limited to the sites that have the green polygon on the screen. Just a healthy reminder there. Now, one of the things that occurred in late July, an evaluation committee was structured, a seven-person group of stakeholder representatives supported by our real estate consultants, Jones Lang LaSalle. They've been actively reviewing the information that was submitted by our August 6th deadline. They have a few more meetings ahead of them. with the aim to conclude that work in early September before reporting to you all of what their recommendation might be. One thing I wanted to highlight is that in the spring, we've had a lot of meetings here in the Dogwood Conference Room with the work sessions to give really prescriptive guidance to this group, really emphasize what is their scope of work, what are their instructions for doing the job, and really agreeing on a scoring criteria. That way we all know how they're going to be using this information and we agree with the approach they're taking to evaluate everything in front of them. So that was a very mindful approach to make sure everybody understood how that information was going to be used. And we also mindfully tried to get a lot of different experts into the room and the support of our real estate consultants working with them. Now, as that work concludes, we still have a lot of additional analysis in front of us. So we may be getting closer to a point of identifying a preferred development partner based on their creativity and approach to solving all the different moving pieces on Virginia Village, design-wise and financially-wise. But there's still a lot of work ahead of that team and ahead of the city to really make that project a reality. So to make sure that we can all, after the RFP process, proceed with clear expectations, an interim agreement would need to be established that really provides a certain level of exclusivity and that the city is beginning to work more closely with that development team, both as we continue due diligence, they refine their financial feasibility models, due site diligence, engineering, and additional information that allows them to file a site plan application. And all that work is going to bleed into a more comprehensive agreement that kind of lasts several years until that project is delivered and even further on as it's maintained and operated. So this is why we need an interim agreement because that comprehensive one takes a lot of time. It's going to be really detailed and we need to make sure we have the space to do that work and engage and kind of negotiate with that development team over the next several months and into next year. So looking at... what might be in this interim agreement and why only a certain amount of time may be needed to establish it. It might also be as healthy to highlight what's not in the agreement. So this slide kind of gives you a sense of what we expect to have in there, but also what items we are actually going to negotiate later as part of the comprehensive agreement. So this distinction I think was critical based on the last few conversations that we had in kind of defining that the interim agreement is not going to be as detailed. It's simply establishing a framework for how do we continue to work together and go through those additional details. Another way of looking at that is just kind of highlight typically what we might see in an interim agreement. What are some of the typical elements that we want to highlight to give us that space both for the city and the development team? And additionally, when it comes to the comprehensive agreement, why will we need as much time to review, develop, and make sure we are in agreement? based on all the different details that have to be considered there, which do go beyond just construction of the project, but even as far as building maintenance, and also having a lot of clauses in case things don't go as planned. So what are some of the what-if scenarios that we need to build in, because a lot of times these things don't go exactly as expected. So having those scenarios, just like any memorandum of agreement perhaps, typically has a lot of time to build that in, and that's what the rest of the year is going to look like. And so finally, some of the terminology that we continue to use are best summarized here and kind of organized in a short-term to medium-term or long-term perspective. The interim agreement, like I mentioned, is lighter in terms of the lift that it involves and level of detail. The zoning changes and site plan review continue to happen in parallel with that. And then ultimately the comprehensive agreement has a lot more details and needs much more time to be developed and established. The reason we wanted to highlight the summary of terminology is the next two slides kind of give you a sense of the updated schedule that we're developing. And you're going to see them show up at various milestones. So distinguishing between them is really critical as we kind of go through the next several weeks and months. So I'll spend a minute here describing this, but the evaluation committee is slated to provide their recommendation to you all on September 14th in a closed session. That process will yield some additional tweaks to the zoning changes. So we wanted to make sure we build enough time for another first reading. We can get those changes in front of you in a work session. That would be slated on September 22nd. And then we would come back for an action meeting to finalize those changes. And as that work happens on September 22nd and 28th, we would use that opportunity to also discuss the interim agreement. So kind of the theme for those meetings, I'm sure among other items on the agenda will be Virginia Village. And by that point, we will be getting to a point where more information can be released from the RFP process to the public. Again, one of the things that is placed upon the evaluation committee is they do have to follow purchasing rules. Those involve confidentiality, and we do have to be mindful of some of the rules that apply with any other solicitation like this one. Beyond September, you can see here that the Planning Commission would also have its public hearing on the zoning changes as we get into early October. And that would set the stage for late October council meeting to finish the review of the zoning changes through a second reading. And again, another opportunity, as you see in the yellow highlights, for public feedback and input. So we wanted to kind of keep highlighting with the green and the blue distinction between milestones related to the RFP and the various agreements, but also trickled between those the zoning and planning changes that are happening at the same time. So as we get into... Sometime in the winter timeframe, we've had the zoning changes behind us. We have an interim agreement in place. We are now completing the due diligence. The development team is getting ready to file a site plan. We have engagements with the planning commission. And as that work continues, the building blocks and initial drafts of that comprehensive agreement start to come together. We have more information, some back and forth, additional clarity, more financial details, conceptual designs from the site plan, and all those things inform what we want to enter into the comprehensive agreement and how we want to talk about them, particularly with respect to the various scenarios that have to be envisioned there. So all that work is going to continue throughout the winter until we get into a site plan approval shortly before the March deadline for the low-income housing tax credits, by which point the development team would need to have all those different things signed and approved so they can file and being in competition for the housing tax credits. So this gives you a snapshot of how we get from August through March based on the different moving pieces that we have in various milestones that we're tracking. Beyond FY27, we also wanted to highlight what would happen if all those things were able to actually complete successfully. FY28, So looking beyond just a year ahead of us, we would have additional time to prepare the construction drawings. The development partner would need to submit. We would then get into issuance of building permits. And construction would not really be able to begin until the earliest of FY29. And that's usually a two and a half to three year cycle. So 2031 is when any kind of development activity could conclude on this site. And we would get into building management and operation. So that's the last slide we have. Happy to take any questions, but just wanted to kind of give you that update on the status and maybe better distinguishing between the different terminologies.

Thank you for that. I'm sure we have questions or comments.

Thank you very much, Mr. Matusak. Just a quick question on, so as I read it, the interim agreement can set guidance for design, is that correct?

There will be opportunities, I think, established preferences. The beauty and advantage, I think, of the zoning changes kind of coming in parallel to that is that they themselves will speak to a lot of those details. So I think part of what we're setting in place is that the comprehensive agreement can only be utilized and become effective once we have an approved site plan, which does have to follow the zoning changes. Beyond that, I think there will be opportunities to set expectations. But again, we won't have the benefit of a site plan at hand. So until that work completes, there'll be, I think, natural limitations of what we can express given the additional steps ahead for the development team.

Okay. And then one other question. So if I'm looking at the draft interim agreement, and this might be a question for Ms. Gillette. So at that point, if it was something like the two sides couldn't you know there's a sticking point or something and you know hopefully this doesn't happen but can both sides walk away with is there no at that point there's no legal obligation and when does that that yeah could you just explain that a little bit

Sure, my understanding is that the interim agreement will not be, there will be no penalty really for either side to walk away the way it's being crafted as an idea right now. That it's really an agreement to agree to work together. and that the city would work exclusively with that one proposer until agreement could not be reached or some milestone was not reached or something like that. So that's a very broad, wide-open agreement where either party could probably have room to walk away, and then the comprehensive agreement would be binding and enforceable as a contract.

Thank you. That's very helpful because I think, you know, in terms of, and I really liked the graphic with the yellow highlights where public can have input, but there's still a great deal of opportunity for public input during this interim process. So that's good to know. Thank you.

Others? Mr. Schneider.

Thank you very much, and I do appreciate the chart that does make clear what opportunities for public hearing there will be later in the process. I really want to focus on where we are today, though, until we get to September 22. So instead of September 8, now we're saying that there'll be a closed session. with the city council and what happens during that closed session. So the citizens know what decisions are made or what's gonna happen during that closed session.

So I believe the initial date of September 8th was also envisioned to be a closed session. This is where the committee has a chance to sit down with council, share, again, in confidentiality what their process looked like, reactions to proposals, the debate and deliberations that took place, feedback from interviews of all three respondents that came in, and really have a conversation with you all about why they landed a specific recommendation. And the goal of that conversation in closed session is so that you all can come back and more formally in this setting make a final recommendation as to who the development team is that we're going to be working with and engaging to develop an interim agreement.

So when is the final recommendation for the proposer for the interim agreement? Is that made on the night of September 14 or is that made on the night of September 22? Pardon?

It will be on the 14th.

What will the public know before we make that decision?

So the way this procurement process is set up is that the council receives the proposals and then ultimately makes the decision on the top ranked. And then after that decision is made, it's a public process. And so what we envision is that if the council takes action to say, yeah, this is our top-ranked respondent, then at your next work session, the proposal will be out in the public. You know, everything that can be shared about it so the public knows what the top-ranked respondent is, what they're proposing, and what the council will be talking about. Also on that 22nd, you'll have your, we'll be talking about the interim agreement. If it is still a negotiation, the council may choose to discuss that interim agreement in closed session to protect your negotiating position. But as the city attorney noted, We envision the interim agreement really to do two things. One, say, okay, you're the top ranked, and two, here are the milestones and the processes we envision going forward. Those would probably be the main elements of the interim agreement. There may be more, but that's what we're envisioning at this point.

So there's no opportunity for the citizens to interact with us before we make this decision about which of the top three.

In that ranking process, that is a procurement process, and so that is not. So the answer is no. That's correct. All right.

Could we go to the timeline just so the public can see on the slide? I think it was slide eight is the timeline.

So where I'm really focused is on the beginning of this process. So there's no real opportunity for public input at that point. And all the public has right now are three so-called summaries, which frankly I've read them all, and most of them contain very little useful information. And no visuals, no... no sort of diagrams. So I honestly feel that the comments made by a number of our citizens relating to this part of the process carry merit. I don't think this is responsive to the comments that have been made about what the RFP provides for, because I did vote for it. And so I would agree with those comments that I felt that it was fundamental that the citizens be able to see not only narratives which were meaningful, and frankly the narratives really aren't, and then further the other elements of what would make it possible for our citizens to have some input. So I'll be saying a lot more about it, but as good as this chart is, I don't think it's responsive to those comments at all. Thank you.

Other comments? Mr. Reagan?

So I'm going to reserve my comments. I'm going to hold back because I think we're going to have a significant discussion tonight in closed session about the diagrams. But on this schedule, there's three things that really jump out at me. One is... It sounds like on September 14th we'll have selected it and there's really no need to wait a week after that. So I would ask is there any reason that the public can't see the proposal the next day?

There might be a little bit of administration just to kind of get to that point. The point is that, you know, for the packet and as the setup for that meeting on the 22nd, the information will be public. Okay.

I'd encourage you to be ready to get it out there quick. Next question is, if we do the interim agreement, and we're having struggles on the comprehensive agreement, they want more, the financials, they want some sort of zoning, there's something that we're hesitant about. What's happening with the other two proposals? Because those seem to me to be, if we can't get agreement with our preferred zoning, Our preferred developer, because it really sounds like at that point that is our preferred developer, that's who we want to work with, that's who we're working with at that moment. What's happening with the other two if our preferred developer falls through?

Yeah, with a ranking. Well, go ahead, if you're about to speak.

There are provisions that I think get to specific milestones that have to be reached, and I think we're expecting to add provisions that speak to that very scenario. And that's dissimilar from any other solicitation where somebody gets selected, and depending on the service that they're providing, there may have to be a step taken backwards to go back to the second or third respondent. So our purchasing staff is going to be helping us with that.

Yeah, I understand we won't be really having active discussions with them, but I want to be sure that we have a fallback. We have that ability to say, hey, no, we made a decision and this is not working out. We're going to go to plan B. The last question on this chart that jumped out at me is September 28th, you have a new first reading for the zoning. and we've now gone through two first readings. I'm wondering why that one is on there, because my understanding is we did the first reading, but then there were some issues, or we wanted a process to deal with things, And then we did another first reading. And I have not seen the materials. I have not seen the proprietary. Is there a specific reason you believe we're going to need another first reading?

At this point it's more of a precaution. There's minor editorial tweaks that I think we continue to look at. Things that typically happen between a first and second reading. So those are already kind of in the works. In the event that the RFP process concludes one way or another, it may trigger additional changes that we would rather do another first reading for because they may be considered more substantive in nature that should not just go directly to a second reading. That may not be necessary, but I think right now we want to schedule that just in case and not have to be surprised by that later on. And at that point, we're scrambling to get on the agenda. So at this point, we're penciling that in. Once the RFP process concludes, we'll have a better sense of whether or not it's still needed.

So it's more like a placeholder if needed.

Correct.

All right.

Okay, Vice Mayor, go ahead.

Yeah, I just wanted to follow up Mr. Egan's point about if everything fell apart and we needed to go. A lot of it's going to be, we do have a selection committee that's composed of several staff and several community members. And so really, as he said, none of us have seen it. So it's really up to that group. That group may say, it's just, this is the best one. And Not so excited about that. You know, it's hard to tell, like, if we will have a second place, you know, and we'll have to, that's why we're entrusting this committee to let us know that. And so it's hard to say, right, at this point, you know, how those are all going to line up. And we're not privy to that information until we hear from our selection committee. But I just want to, you know, remind the public that there are citizens on this group, there are staff members, and they're looking at it and they're going to let us know if it's a strong second or...

Not so strong second, so. And I'll use the opportunity to plug our consultants as well. Jones Lang and Sal have been doing an excellent job guiding this group. They've been at almost every meeting, providing a lot of support, analysis, available for question and answer. And we're really utilizing them pretty heavily throughout the process.

One question on the timeline. So as others have said, none of us up here other than Ms. Connelly have been privy to the three responses. Ms. Connelly is the chair of the evaluation committee, that's why she gets to see it. Is the plan still about a week before September 14th that we up here would sign NDAs and then get access to the proposal so that we would see everything the evaluation committee would see?

That is my understanding is that as the committee concludes its work, that additional distribution would occur.

And I just wanted to flag that Mr. Weiss has issued the NDAs and the conflict of interest forms to you all, so you can be completing them now and turning them back into him so that they're on file and verified as we get to the next step and can move timely. We have received partial, but thank you for letting me do the reminder. Okay.

Okay.

Other questions or comments? I guess as we said at the beginning of the meeting, oh, Ms. Flynn, go ahead.

Hi, yeah, so I had just a few questions. Maybe I'll start with the comment, is that I guess I hadn't voted for the RFP, not because I don't want the project to happen or to actually get long-term affordable housing at Virginia Village or an increase in affordable housing at Virginia Village, but because I was... about the public process and the ability to maintain public trust and was concerned about the commitments that staff made about the RFP process and whether we would then use the RFP process as a shield to allow public transparency into that process that we had committed to, but seem to not have actually followed through on. And so I remain open to this process, but remain concerned and do wanna see that to the extent that we're doing something at Virginia Village, that we are bringing the community with us instead of leaving the community behind. On the draft interim agreement as to the top ranked proposal being made public in the interim agreement being finalized, at the point that RFP respondent is chosen, what point thereafter is the RFP considered done to the extent that the proposals or is it just a single proposal would be made public? So is it at the point that the respondent is selected or is it at the point that the draft interim agreement is hammered out or is it at the point that the interim agreement is finalized? And I guess I ask these questions because I don't want us to be in a position of making commitments again tonight and then standing behind whatever it is with the RFP process to say that the public again won't have access to materials. So I guess my first question is one, has the city attorney reviewed the highlighting to make sure that We're all in agreement as to what's allowed at different points in time. And then two, are we committing to only the respondent's proposal being made public or the proposals generally made public at the point of the interim agreement?

So I can start the 14th conversation between the committee and the council leading to council making a recommendation and voting on the preferred development team would conclude the committee's work. Per purchasing rules, however, once that team is identified, It's their proposal that we've made public. So when you look at our schedule, that's what we are highlighting in the lead up to the September 22nd meeting. Like other solicitations, those that were not chosen are not made public as part of those records. It's only the team that has been selected. So again, we're taking guidance from our purchasing team and making those records available.

Okay, and that may be purchasing rules, but I guess there might be different FOIA obligations if the public were to FOIA proposals, for example, as to non-proprietary information. As to the top-ranked proposal that's made public, this has a draft interim agreement, but you say the draft interim agreement is not going to contain design elements per the other slide. where it says what is or what isn't in an interim agreement. The one with the chart, like the little box, that one. Yet in the next slide that says distinctions between agreements, the second bullet talks about sets expectations and guidance for design. So what is happening in terms of design at the point of the interim agreement? Is anything happening in terms of design? Or is it all open in terms of design?

Part of that question is difficult to answer because we don't have the winning proposal in front of us. And depending on the level of detail in that proposal, which is all we're going to have at the time of the interim agreement development and negotiation, that may dictate just how much we can weigh in on. So one, I think, informs the other. But again, I think we spoke to previously A lot of the work that the zoning analysis is completing in terms of massing, height, transitions, setbacks. I would imagine those topics will probably resurface even for the sake of redundancy. Kind of the neighborhood transitions, the relationship to the park. So those things are probably gonna be a healthy piece of that conversation and continue to emphasize the importance of that moving forward. However, we're not going to have facade drawings and elevations that allow us to speak to building materials or certain type of design considerations because we're just not going to have that in front of us. But again, I would imagine the conversation will probably cover that, but we do need to have some back and forth of what actually makes sense to incorporate into the interim agreement versus the comprehensive agreement.

And so if the interim agreement point we don't necessarily have an agreement as to massing design number of units, for example. What is informing the potential zoning changes and the public input in September?

So we're looking at everything in terms of the narratives that speak to both process, the way we are describing the purpose of the district, looking at the various exhibits that were included. But again, until we reach the September 14 milestone, it's really unclear if anything else structurally has to be changed at a level that requires another first reading. So I guess that milestone is still ahead of us. I can't stand here and with confidentiality confirm whether or not it's gonna be needed again. But part of that, I think, does inform, transitioning back to your first point on the interim agreement, we will have, as the executive summaries outlined, certain levels of affordability, certain unit counts. We can have conversations about that in terms of what we would like to see moving forward, what's important to us, things to consider for the development team as they're finalized, their site plan. So I would imagine a lot of that guidance could be embedded in the interim agreement.

The Planning Commission, right, hasn't yet seen the current first reading of the zoning changes. Is that right? Or has it gone to the Planning Commission in terms of any sort of feedback of where we were at the end of the new first reading on whatever that was, the 20-something?

That version did not make its way to the Planning Commission yet. We do owe them a public hearing returning with any kind of final adjustments. The schedule that we have on slide 8 does actually call for a joint work session on September 22nd where they would be invited. And at that point, we would look at all updates since July before any additional steps were to take place. And that really, I think, allows us to have more robust conversations, which we did have successfully in the past when both groups had a chance to kind of debate the merits and updates on the zoning changes.

Yeah, I guess I have a concern because... I asked for this last week and I would ask again that it's actually put on the Virginia Village website. So it seems like we still don't have a publicly available copy of the current zoning, right? And sometimes we talk about, oh, well, we had these parameters and we had these guardrails and we should be confident in what the committee is doing. And yet, for a member of the public trying to understand where we all landed, they would not be able to easily get that. And then there hasn't been a planning commission meeting on it, although I think that it would make sense to have a standalone planning commission meeting prior to September 22nd, which would then also give the public an opportunity to understand where we landed. Because my concern is that we're gonna then come in on the 22nd, potentially with new zoning changes, even though we've never actually publicly surfaced where we landed after the last first reading. about those zoning changes for the first time in a work session where we don't take public comment and the public is seeing the proposal for the first time and then only six days later have a new potential first reading and say this is the public's input opportunity on something we would take action on that night. So I think the schedule between now and the end of September actually needs to do more than it's doing in terms of educating the public about where the zoning is and any, I guess, determine how we're gonna reach the public effectively between when a proposal is public, any zoning changes that we discuss at work session, and then actually having first reading six days later.

So I think we've been mindful of highlighting all the various opportunities for awareness and public input. The schedule that we're looking at now presumes that a first reading may be needed. And as a result, it does suggest a joint work session on September 22nd. If we get to a point where the RFP process concludes and we no longer need a first reading, another first reading, there are additional planning commission dates in mid-September that could allow us for a more continued conversation still leading to the October timelines that we have that establish the second reading. So we have contingencies that we're just waiting for the RFP process to conclude. Some of that is made somewhat difficult based on the nature by which the last round of changes in July took place. The Planning Commission simply didn't have a chance to view those. It also took a few weeks to certify that as well. And we are making our way to posting that on the project website, as we have with all the RFP materials and the submissions that have come in, the executive summaries. So all that material is making its way online.

So is there a Planning Commission meeting before September 22nd?

There is one scheduled for the 16th.

So can you add the current first reading to that planning session docket?

Again, not knowing how many other changes we have, I think we'd rather have a more consolidated conversation because we'd rather just package one set of changes to them and have a more robust conversation. So until we figure out what that means, I think that might help identify what the right date is. But it also kind of goes back and forth to Does council want to see those changes first? Does the planning commission see them? And I think we're trying to be consistent with our processes where if another first reading is needed, we want to make sure the council is able to have that conversation first. And making sure the planning commission can be a part of that is accomplished through the joint work session.

Okay, well I guess... And then I'll wrap up. My take on this is that you're trying to have meaningful public input, but there isn't really an opportunity for meaningful public input until September 22nd. the planning commission you're hoping is going to come to a work session ready to discuss changes on September 22nd without the benefit of discussing the changes that we made at first reading. So they're kind of like a step behind as to where we landed, why we made certain changes in response to public comment we were hearing and what further changes we might want to make in response to a process that the evaluation committee is currently engaged in. And I think that there would be a benefit, in both having the Planning Commission engage in a public conversation about the current guardrails before we're again potentially changing guardrails for all the people who have given public comment and been showing up to public meetings. And I think we're gonna have a more robust discussion on the 22nd if we actually do that. And I think that it will also ensure that we're posting documents that should be on the website already for anyone trying to come up to speed as to what exactly the current guardrails are in this process. So my ask would be that by the end of the week, you have posted or the city's posted on the Virginia Village page, a summary of what the actual first reading is. that you bring that material to the Planning Commission to benefit from a conversation of a public body as to their views on those changes before we're just accelerating into potentially more changes on September 22nd. So that's my recommendation for getting somewhat back on course. Thanks.

Can we pull up the timeline again? Zoomed out a little bit so I could see the bigger picture, please. Thank you. So when do we, I know that potentially the third first reading, September 28th, when do we know whether we'll need a third first reading?

By the time the committee concludes its work at their final meeting on September 8th.

I mean, so I see Ms. Flynn's point about, you know, we did adopt a new second first reading back at the end of July before recess. And so it would be helpful to post that. But at the same time, if we think there's more, it'd be confusing to have a third one and have multiple drafts going around. So maybe it's worth a check in that after the committee has done their work and we know whether there's gonna be another one or not, we can kind of report back out to council and that would give us a sense of like where we are in the process.

I will say the Planning Commission did not meet during August, but I I was under the impression they were meeting this Wednesday, but I've just checked and there's no agenda posted and I think it has been cancelled. That is very disappointing that we had an opportunity for the first reading to go to the Planning Commission. I think the August was a recess and it didn't happen. I found that disappointing. They could have been reviewing it this Wednesday. But I think we've now passed the point where the agenda has to be posted for that meeting.

So a couple of just other- tried very much to pay attention to all the comments in the process. And so I will share just some observations for the benefit of the public. So I think a lot of the angst you see with the process is a couple things. One, we are used to a linear process. You have someone files an application, you get to go through a public hearing process, people deliberate. We very deliberately actually decided last fall that we were gonna do this parallel process, We said we're gonna do zoning changes and have a public procurement process. And sometimes the procurement process is not gonna be as transparent as people like because that is Virginia procurement law. We decided that this parallel process was necessary because we said we wanted to shoot for this March LIHTC deadline because affordable housing is a crisis for the community. So we embarked on this together knowing that this parallel process would cause some angst. That is what the public is observing. I think the second point of angst is that this is a council and traditionally a city that likes to have control on every decision. And that is traditionally what a special exception process is. We debated that endlessly and I do not want to open that Pandora's box. But I think the result of a more by right form based code process, which is essentially what we've laid out by saying, hey, here's zoning, that the community has lots of opportunity to weigh on. So much so that we've actually done two first readings and potentially maybe a third first reading. doing that kind of guardrails up front and then ensuring the proposals meet those guardrails is a different process for Falls Church. We are used to be able to negotiate every single detail. And so that is the second point of angst that you think you see as we are adjusting to this new way of doing things. And I think third is that frankly, the six of us have not seen the proposals ourselves. So it's really hard to know how this is gonna unfold. And so I just wanna offer that to the public. This is why you see some of the consternation. And I think it is totally appropriate given kind of what this community and this council has been used to. But I will say though that we have very much heard from the community about massing, heights, setbacks, neighborhood transitions, and those are reflected in the first reading of the zoning changes. And should we need to revisit that again, we'll have ample opportunity to talk about those guardrails. That is what we've heard from the community through the engagement since I think when we started doing those community discussions. And that is what we will carry into the closed session discussions when we hear from our evaluation committee that is made up of both community members, staff members, and a council member. I think the final thing I'll wrap up with that helps me kind of feel more comfortable with this process is the analogy I've used in my head is that the inner agreement is that we're gonna get engaged. And this is the how we're going to work together, the details we're going to work out before we get married. And there's a lot of time as laid out by staff before we get married. And I think that will come through the site plan process and the comprehensive agreement is the wedding. And so I get that there's a lot of anxiety to make sure that you've picked the right person, but it's not final at the interim agreement stage. And so hopefully that is a useful analogy for other people. That is how I've tried to keep it straight in my head as I navigate a very different way of doing things as well.

Mr. Shields, you look like you have something to say. And the intentionality behind that is so that the public can weigh in on what this building looks like and how it functions on the site in a public way. Like if those details are buttoned up in the IA, then the public hasn't had a chance to weigh in on them yet, and the council will benefit from the public engagement on those details before making those final decisions.

So again, intentional that the IA doesn't set those details and that we have more time in the process between the IA and the CA. I guess the final point, I'll just wrap up, because I know we have many other things in the manager's report to get to, is remind council that we do have a closed session at the end of the night to receive legal advice on some of the other things related to Virginia Village tonight, too. So we'll make sure we have ample discussion in closed session. And so with that, we can transition to other topics in the manager's report.

So our next topic, thank you Matt, is our police department organizational assessment. And so I'd like to invite Chief Fard and our consultants with the Matrix team. We do have a few slides. The goal tonight was to share with the council the draft report. And this organizational assessment did include public engagement to get the public's feedback on the city's police operations and public safety in the city. And Chief Ford, I think, has been thinking very deeply with the command staff and with the police department over the course of his tenure in the city. Based on the evidence, based on the community needs, what are the best ways to organize our city police department to meet those needs? And the report, I believe, helps the department in its thinking in these areas. Kind of one of the things that the chief has been wrestling with is we have a two-shift structure. and the report addresses a way to migrate towards a three-shift structure, which would be a big change to the department, and we believe would provide more consistent service to the community over the course of the 24-hour period. So that's just one highlight from the report. There are many others, and I'll turn it over to Chief Fard, but I want to thank the Chief for his leadership in this effort. I just want to share the observation With a document like this, it's so important to bring the police department staff along every step of the way. It's still a draft report, but I think every officer, the entire department has been briefed on it so that they are aware of this conversation that's happening and have an opportunity to weigh in on it. So, Chief, thank you for this effort and for your leadership on it.

Thank you, Mr. Shields. And I would be remiss to also recognize this is your last week. So thank you for your leadership and your support of law enforcement. I speak for all of our police officers for your steadfast support. So thank you. We're going to miss you. Good evening, counsel. So two years ago during a budget work session when I first arrived in Falls Church right about when I got here, we had a lot of conversations about personnel resource requirements for the police department. We had great discussions around a variety of factors which drive personnel needs of a modern police department. It's important to note that each and every town, city, county in our nation has its own unique policing needs, and it's no different here in Falls Church. While there are no universal standardized staffing models for police organization, the International City County Management Association, ICMA, and the International Association of Chiefs of Police, IACP, and other professional organizations suggest that best practice is using workload and community-based demand data as an effective approach to making staffing decisions. To that end, I discussed with council about having an independent and expert analysis of Falls Church Police Department done, so we could assess not only the department staffing requirements, but how we're allocating and deploying those resources, determining the capacity of current resources, and projecting the department's needs into the future. So to my knowledge, such study in the city of this police department has never previously been done. To conduct a study of this police department, we followed the city's purchasing requirements and worked with the city's purchasing agent on a RFP process to solicit proposals. And at the end of that process, the Matrix Consulting Group was selected to conduct this assessment, and we kicked off the project this January of this year. Since then, we've been engaged in providing the consultants with a grueling amount of data required to complete the study and have held many, many meetings with our team members, as the city manager alluded to, to ensure that the data we were using for the analysis was accurate and complete. So in a minute I'll turn it over to our consultant to give you an overview, but I want to talk about real quick next steps from here. So the timing of this study's final report aligns with the arrival of the new city manager and we'll want to engage with him on it to seek his feedback and guidance. Since the reports released last week, we've been holding internal meetings with teams and individuals to seek feedback on development of an implementation plan. I think we need to develop an implementation plan to leverage the momentum coming out of this study. The plan will require us to evaluate each one of the 27 recommendations that are in the study. I imagine that there are recommendations that we're going to be able to get behind. While there may be recommendations that we can implement in different ways than those provided by the consultants. And there may be recommendations that we disagree on or for a variety of reasons can't implement. Regardless, the police department will need to publicly respond to each one of these recommendations. That's essential in upholding our values of transparency and accountability. I think that while some of the recommendations will require new funding, Many can be approached primarily through current vacancies, attrition, reassignment, reorganization with no new, net new cost to the city. My goal is to have an implementation plan completed and presented to the community by end of this calendar year. So without further ado, I want to introduce you to Mr. Philip Berry over here to my right of Matrix and Talting Group, and he'll provide you with an overview of their company, their research methodology, and their findings. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Chief. Mayor and City Council, it's a pleasure to be here tonight. I also want to echo the sentiments of Mr. Shields. Congratulations on your retirement. It's been great to work with you over the past couple of months. I also wanted to take a moment to thank Chief Flard and his staff. It has been instrumental, this cooperation and his staff members, and it has been Frankly, very refreshing to have a client as involved as the Falls Church Police Department. So briefly, just for an introduction, in the Matrix Consulting Group, we've been around for 24 years. We have worked now in 45 states, including two provinces in Canada. And our law enforcement and public safety consulting team has done over 400 policing studies. We advertise that we have an approximate 85% implementation rate. as a result of conducting our analyses through workload-based and direct staffing recommendations as indicated by Chief Farg. Our approach is very much so fact-based and it values stakeholder input as we did here in Falls Church as well. Our experience across the country is also echoed in the metropolitan area of DC, most recently throughout the Commonwealth with the Virginia Beach Police Department. the Metropolitan Washington Airport Authority, and Prince George's County in Maryland. So just to overview the scope of work in the task plan, there was five major points throughout the task plan. First off, with regards to the foundation, extensive staff interviews, data collection, as indicated by the chief, we had approximately a 35-item data collection list that him and his team responded to. in terms of workload, staffing, organization information, as well as projected developments throughout the city. Stakeholder input obviously was something that was very important to the chief and his staff. We were here on site for ride-alongs. We had two community meetings for stakeholder engagement, as well as one-on-one interviews with all command staff. And then we also supplemented that with an employee survey for all officers and employees throughout the department to respond to. The third step is essentially the crux of the study in terms of a current state analysis. This answers the question, what are the recommendations of an independent third party and objective analysis for what the Falls Church Police Department should look like in 2026 moving into 2027? What are the needs that they have now? The service level projections then work with Mr. Matusik and his team with regards to the development that is occurring in the city and has occurred within the recent year or two and what Falls Church is going to look like in five and 10 year increments into the future to be able to provide more of a staffing roadmap and a strategic roadmap to the chief and his staff to hopefully provide a little bit more of an indication and a plan moving forward in those five and 10 year increments. high level conclusions that we have come to after this six, seven month process is that we do have a very well resourced patrol force. We have substantial proactive capacity, but it is not exactly deployed as strategically as it possibly could be. Staffing and other functions, for example, records and the emergency communication center has not necessarily kept up with the growth of the city and not kept up with best practices, which we will get into into the future. When it comes to concerns on behalf of stakeholders and employees, there is a supervisory load, communication and infrastructure that are recurring organizational constraints. When we come to our findings, the first topic area that we want to cover is with regards to field operations. So in essence, the patrol force that you see in patrol vehicles on a regular basis in the community. Community generated workload accounts for approximately 13 events per day. It is very important to note. that these are 13 events in which patrol officers, sworn officers, have responded to that were generated by community-generated calls for service. This does not indicate what they are doing in terms of self-initiated activity, and this does not indicate what is going on with any sort of professional staff responders, traffic units, school resource officers, canine units, and the like. Most calls for service are commercial alarms and suspicious circumstances. It is also very important to indicate that these top 10 calls for service types that are shown in this list here account for over half of all the community generated workloads. This indicates that the Falls Church Police Department, they respond to a relatively narrow list of types of calls for service. but they are happening recurringly and within a very strategic pattern. What you see in this chart on the right hand side, the blue and purple highlight shows throughout a 24 hour cycle when these calls for service are being generated. You'll see that the commercial alarms are occurring overnight when these commercial facilities are closed and alarms are set. And then with regards to eight of the other 10 calls for service types, they're happening during the day time hours. The time that it takes to handle calls on average falls within the expected time. So the third column, it has incident type for this to the left number of calls for service, which is a total number of calls for service that occurred in 2025 and the HT refers to handling time. So that is the time in which it took the patrol officer him or her to respond to the call for service, handle the call for service and be clear of the call for service. Response times. We do have a unique service environment in Falls Church of only 2.2 square miles. So we want to see a very expedient response time with regards to calls for service. And that is something that the Falls Church Police Department excels at. This refers to the priority levels of calls for service. And for example, priority level one is a very serious call for service and lessening severity as we go down this chart. The number of calls for service, the percentage of those calls for service and the median response time, we utilize median so that we can control for outliers because there are instances in which an officer might just be next door and a response time could be five seconds. And there is going to be times in which there might be a queue for calls for service and it is going to be slightly higher. Response times in Falls Church are excellent. We like to see the priority one response times be between six and ten minutes. You guys are right in the middle. But more importantly, when it comes to the 50% and 31% of calls for service that are ranked at priority two and priority three calls for service, we still also have those within about eight to eight and a half minutes, which is excellent service environment within Falls Church. These priority levels account for almost all calls for service, about 99%. This is something that we see very frequently in smaller communities. There is a need to have a fourth and fifth priority level response time. However, the utilization of those priority levels are lessened when it comes to a smaller service environment geographically. So the importance of proactivity. So proactive time is what Matrix Consulting Group utilizes to gauge the staffing in which we have field operation resources to respond to these calls for service. It is important to note that we use a deductive approach when it comes to proactive capabilities on behalf of patrol officers. So we start with a base staffing number, which is simply the number of shifts that are worked and the number of hours of those shifts. 40 hours a week times 52 weeks in a year is 2,080 hours, just as a large example. We have requested the data in terms of leave time, on-duty court time, training time, anything that is taking these patrol officers away from being in their patrol vehicles or responding to calls for service, we account for that. we get down to a number that usually ranges about 1500 hours. And that is what we are able to mirror proactive time versus the time that they have available to respond to calls for service. So adequate patrol time still takes more engagement within the community. And within an overall level, the proactive time in the case of Falls Church to be about 50%. So that means that once we have covered all of the workload generation needed, the handling time and the number of calls for service, that total amount of hours in any calendar year, they needed additional half of that time to be able to be proactive, conduct traffic stops, conduct traffic safety, provide support at the schools. liaise with school resource officers, get out of their vehicles and walk to businesses and talk with community members and do other proactive engagement opportunities that you are requesting from your police department. What this chart shows you is that the Falls Church Police Department, they exceed that target of 50%, and they have about an 84% proactive capacity, which is great. That means that we have a well-staffed patrol resources throughout 24 hours of the day. This chart breaks this proactive capacity down by four-hour time blocks on the left-hand side, and by all seven days of the week, you'll see that I believe that 65% is the lowest number Yeah, I appreciate that. Thank you very much. I think that Tuesday between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. at 65% might be our lowest proactive capacity on behalf of Falls Church Patrol. What this shows is that we have proactive capabilities that do not diminish throughout any certain times of day or days a week. And we can look at this in terms of a strategic advantage that the patrol force has when it comes to providing the high level of service that the community members have expressed that they desired on behalf of Falls Church Police Department. and that the officers want to be able to provide to the city of Falls Church. So the question begs, what are officers doing with their proactive time? And what you're going to first want to notice is that the total number of SI, which is self-initiated incidents, is about three times as much as the calls for service that they responded to in calendar year 2025. That means that your officers are not doing nothing when they don't have calls for service to respond to. They are being proactive. They are engaging in the community. They are doing business checks, traffic stops, walking beats. The AC is an area check, and we have those organized between the three different geographic areas of the city. We have traffic enforcement, follow-up investigations, community policing, parking enforcement. This is exactly what the community members expressed to me in person with the two community meetings that we had. And this is exactly what the Falls Church police officers, when I did ride along, said that they want to be doing or providing that high level of service to the community members. So one of the things that Mr. Shields mentioned is an important caveat of the recommendations for patrol. While we do not recommend that there is any increase in patrol staffing with regards to field level and line level officers, there is a recommendation to alternate the deployment of these officers. Rather than having a two-team shift in terms of a day and night shift, we recommend adding a third team to provide an overlap and And what we are able to do is we are able to reduce the shift length from 12 and a half hours to 11 and a half hours to control for forced overtime on behalf of your patrol officers. And this will allow us to have staggered times throughout the morning and evening overlap in which your day to afternoon shift are both on duty. And then in the evening time, approximately 5 and 6 o'clock when we're dealing with traffic issues, higher levels of calls for service, we have the evening shift to the overnight shift deploying at the same time. This is going to be in a two platoon deployment model with two lieutenants overseeing each of these two platoons as watch commanders. They will be able to be deployed consistently with their platoons the day, evening, and overnight shift. We made recommendations in terms of their times of deployment so that they are on duty for at least a segment of all three of these shifts. When they're not present, that's when your sergeants step in as the first-line supervisors and serve overnight as the watch commander, which is a very common practice in the experience of our project staff, especially when it comes to the size of agency of the Falls Church Police Department. The staggered shift, as I mentioned, it starts with periods of fixed overlap hours between the afternoon and evening pink, and it matches coverage to the calls for service demand that we've found in Falls Church. So other field operations recommendations. In the report, we include a more structured and proactive enforcement capacity and proactive policing program that consolidates the existing proactivity capacities of the police department's patrol force. and to be able to have a unified strategy with defined goals and performance metrics to be able to find out what is working, what isn't working, and what is the best way to deploy those proactive resources that is already present within the patrol force. We also have recommended the creation of a part-time, which is a .5 FTE crime and traffic analyst, to be able to support these data-driven deployment practices that we've recommended now and into the future. Transitioning from the field operations section into the criminal investigation section, our project team collaborated with the police department and their administration and command staff to develop a case, a task, and workload-based approach to investigative workload as well. This includes looking at a case type by case starting with your high-level crimes of homicides, robberies, burglaries, all the way down to property crimes. We discuss all of the actionable steps that are included in investigating those case types, what are the average amounts of time in which that occurs, and not only what are the average amount of time in which that takes on a case-by-case basis, but also the percentage of time that each of those steps occurs within the Falls Church Police Department to be able to provide a targeted response number of workload hours for each one of those investigations. What that ended up resulting in is that current investigative staffing is insufficient to meet the current investigative needs within the police department. As a result, we have recommended the increase in detective staffing by two FTE for a total of five of them assigned. We've also recommended the deployment of a four shift 10 hour shift approach to be able to expand the times throughout Monday through Friday in which investigators are available to both patrol resource staffing as well as community members. When we transitioned to the community support section, we recommended the creation of a sergeant position to oversee the community support section, to oversign first-line supervisor responsibilities. This is one of the gaps that we found both in interviews, the employee survey, as well as through our best practices assessment in which the supervisory capacities and supervisory loads can be spread and the utilization of a sergeant position in terms of a first-line supervisor can be advantageous to the overall workflow of the department. We have reduced, recommended the reduction of the .75 FTE employees in the photo enforcement program. One of them essentially is not needed based on a workload-based staffing assessment. But what we have recommended is the utilization of that .75 FTE position to be recommended. translated into the creation of a police department social media content, establishing a dedicated online and social media presence. Again, something that is common now in agencies, the sides of Falls Church Police Department, as well as something that was requested and echoed throughout the community meetings and the survey and interviews that we conducted at the beginning and the fact finding stage of the study. Most significantly, we're recommending an increase in staffing of the emergency communications center by eight technicians for a total of two emergency communications supervisors and 14 emergency communications technicians. This is a result not only of the workload of the emergency communications center, but also with regards to the minimum staffing levels and best practices of an emergency communications center and not having one FTE on duty at any given time. So this is a 24-7 function that must be conducted in-house because we have a primary PSAP, a primary answering point for our police department. And that is something that with regards to best practices as well as the Erlang C model that we utilize. The Erlang C model is a model that essentially gauges what are the percentage chances that a second call for service will come in if only one FTE is there to answer the phone. essentially meaning that your community member is going to be waiting for their call to be answered. So once we utilize that as well as utilize a minimum staffing manifold to be able to make a recommendation to make sure that there is always going to be more than one FTE available, that's the recommendation that had to be made in order to adequately and more appropriately run the emergency communications center. Within the Administrative Services Division, again, we wanted to establish a full-time public information officer position to manage the Department of Communications, Media Relations, and Community Outreach. Again, this is something that was insinuated through all of the interviews that we had with community members, members of the public, and members of the police department. This is also something that aligns with best practices again and is exponentially important with regards to the city of Falls Church and the desires of the community members throughout Falls Church. We have recommended an increased staffing and records management again. by one specialist, so that will make it a total of one manager and two record specialists. And then one of the new positions within the Falls Church Police Department, which is very important, is with regards to the police and accreditation specialist. Once the initial CALEA accreditation has been received, we recommend that we come back and look at the workload of that position and how best to utilize that position throughout the department as well. So the recommendations thus far have been for current staffing levels. So the current staffing assessment of the police department, essentially answering the question, how many staff are we recommending for optimal service levels in 2026 going into 2027? Once we have that buy-in in the police department and we have come to an agreement in terms of the analytical methodologies that we utilize to come up with those recommendations. We then met with planning director, Mr. Matusik, and the planning team to be able to answer the question, what is the Falls Church Police Department? What do they need to look like in five and ten years when it comes to staffing to be able to be optimized for that growth? One of the three things for projections for a five and ten year span, there's three large data points with regards to land use and development data. The police operational data is the calls for service investigative case logs and the like that we utilize in the current state assessment. And then population context and stakeholder input. We utilize census data. We utilize all the other great pieces of literature and information that has been put together by the Falls Church Commission. city government, the committees that you have throughout the organization as well, to be able to create these more specified and specific recommendations for five and ten years into the future. This map provides a current and past projects, current and some past and eminently completed. You'll see in the report we included three, I believe, projects that were just completed in 2025. One of the ways that we go about transitioning from the completion of a project to the full population projection is we utilize a 50-25-25 in terms of percentage for the first three years after completion of the project. So if the completion of a project is January 1 of 2025, We assume that throughout 2025, 50% of those units are going to be populated. In the second year, the 51st to 75th percent of those units are going to be populated. And the third year, the last 25% are going to be populated for full population after the third year after completion. Again, obviously, I don't think that this is much surprise to you. We have a lot of developments along the corridors of Highway 7 and US-29. Our projections, just solely looking at the expected values of the projections and the land use and the developments that we included in the analysis, we're looking at a population that approaches about 18 and a half thousand over the next 10 years. And based upon this growth, we make recommendations in several different manners. Most importantly is a workload-based projection. So when it comes to your investigators and your patrol staffing, for example, there is a correlation between the percentage of growth and the percentage of staffing that is made available. There's other recommendations to include supervisors based upon a span of control ratio. So if we recommend a span of control ratio of one to eight, for example, when it comes to a sergeant to a patrol officer. So no one sergeant should oversee more than eight patrol officers. If we see that that ratio, when the growth of officers is increased to exceed that ratio, we then will make a recommendation to for an additional sergeant and the like. There's other ratios based upon ratio-based staffing for training officers. For example, you need one training officer per 100 sworn. Falls Church Police Department is not necessarily at that point yet. We have fixed base staffing ratios. We also have some non-scalable staffing ratios. For example, you always need at least one chief of police, right? When it comes to the sum of population and service need projections, we see that 8% population projection. The reason in which the 8% is mirrored across calls for service and the NIBRs, which is how we gauge our investigations essentially, our detective staffing, is because we did not feel the need to separate the geographic area of Falls Church into any sort of specific quadrants. While Chief Farr deploys his staff slightly across the city to make sure that there is an adequate service level throughout all four corners of the city with 2.2 square miles. It isn't necessarily a need to be able to deploy or work in the recommendations to have an increase based upon Northeast, Southwest, et cetera. So we'd see the 8% increase over the next 10 years again in the 2031 and 2036 so that we have those structured staffing recommendations into the future. And that translates into these charts, which if you don't mind blowing that up just a little bit, I just realized how small that might be. This separates these recommendations into sworn and professional staffing. So you'll see that from the authorized staffing to the recommended staffing, there is an increase in 2.25 positions currently. And then over the next 10 years, we're recommending the addition of four sworn personnel. And when it comes to 2031 and 2036, again, if you scroll down just a little bit slightly, if you don't mind separating that into professional staffing, we see the increase in 10 and a half positions from authorized current to recommendation. Obviously a majority of that comes from the emergency communication center and the need for effective staffing there. And then we see an additional five FTE needed from the recommendations that you see in the current staffing recommendations in the report for 2026 and then the 2027 and then into 2036 into the future. Any questions?

Thank you for that. I'm sure, I mean, this feels like more work session discussion, but I'm sure we all have questions and comments. Mr. Reagan.

I've been making a little list here. I might as well start with this last chart where several times during the discussion you said you're not recommending new increase in staffing. But looking at this last chart, it looks like you're recommending an increase of about 12 people over the current authorized, most of which are in the call center.

Greg, yes, sir. I guess that the comment that I made in terms of there wasn't an increase in staffing was just with regards to the patrol staffing currently. There isn't a need to increase the allocation of patrol officers in the field, but there was a recommendation to reallocate patrol officers across those three shifts that were identified to more adequately deploy those resources.

Yeah, I mean, 12 is significant. We would have to find money to pay for 12 people, so... It definitely is a significant increase from when we're looking at it from a budget perspective. It is, that's a lot of money.

Aside from communication, the aid position and communication, throughout the report, you'll see a lot of recommendations for reorganizing, reallocating positions. Like, for example, there's four lieutenants right now in patrol. And there's recommendations to only have two lieutenants in patrol and move two of them out in other places. Mr. Berry talked about the photo enforcement officer position and take an opportunity to reclassify one of those positions for a PIO position. So yes, there is recommendations for increase in some of those numbers, but there's also opportunities to move positions around. And currently I have at least two command position vacancies that we will look at leveraging to fill some of these positions.

Yeah, I noticed in the recommendations there was also, there seemed to be some painful recommendations as far as grade levels and things like that. I did notice that. Overall, this was very informative and very comprehensive. The time of day was very interesting. But a couple other questions of, I'm not clear, does this include the public safety aids? And did you look at, I mean... The sheriff is not part of the police department, but obviously they are law enforcement as well. I wasn't sure how the sheriff fits in, but I think the public safety aides, were they included in this evaluation?

Yes, they were. This PowerPoint presentation more so committed to the larger areas of the organization as well as the significant recommendations.

Okay, because I saw there was parking enforcement. The numbers seemed a bit low for the sworn officers. But then again, we have the public safety aides who that's a major part of what they do.

Yes, I caution you to look at the charts, especially within the field operations division. You have to look that through the lens in order to gauge the workload that your patrol officers are doing. The way that we look at that is we get the CAD information, the computer automated dispatch, and we look at the unit code. So the chief and his staff provided us the unit code. So for all of his sworn patrol officers, the 14 of them, There's a unit code that identifies them within that CAD database. So that's the workload that we isolated away to create those charts. So it does not include the traffic officer that you have. If the SRO conducted a traffic investigation or a traffic stop, if the public safety aid did parking enforcement, et cetera. So there is supplemental workload that was conducted on behalf of Falls Church police employees as a whole that was not included in those main charts. If you look at the beginning of the field operations section in the report, it shows a summary of five to six bullet points that outlines how we came up with the workload generation.

No, that makes sense. And I just wanted to be clear because park enforcement seemed really low, but if it does include the public safety, it's that would be much higher.

Same thing with traffic enforcement as well. That was one of the first things that chief Bard said in the first review of the document was, I guarantee you there was more traffic enforcement in Falls Church. I said, yes, sir. A hundred percent. There was, that was not included.

Yeah. I know the sheriff does some of it as well. The other one I was wondering about is when you were figuring out the growth, um, It looked like you were focused on just the limits of the city. How does the adjacent development, and in particular, I'm thinking about West Falls and all the stuff going on in the Virginia Tech building, and in the WMATA, and of course, one of the benefits of that is they're all going to come into the city to shop and eat at our restaurants and drink. which I'm sure has an impact on the police. How are we anticipating, are we capturing the adjacent development that's happening that could actually impact our workload?

I do agree with you that there is a potential for that development to increase the workload of the police department. We look at the developments that are proposed, projected, and currently completed within the limits of Falls Church because those are constituents in which the Falls Church Police Department is responsible for. However, with the caveat that there is not any sort of border or gates entering and going away from Falls Church. The assumption being that the same amount of activity that is outside of Falls Church currently in West Falls as an example that comes in, they're going to be coming in at equivalently the same rate in which they were coming in currently. So that when we look at the percentage projections moving forward, that the development will see the increase in staffing needs into the future.

I'm not sure. Especially with West Falls just having a huge amount of people. But we wouldn't be responding to a lot of the calls in those buildings and so forth. Let's see. I was surprised about the photo workload because I thought some of our limits on photo work, the photo enforcement was that the review of the photos by a sworn officer. So I thought that was a constraint. And so that surprised me a little bit. Apparently I'm not seeing it. And those were my big questions. I'm sure others have tons.

Others? Vice Mayor?

Thank you very much for the presentation. And, you know, Chief Bard, you know that we support you and your department. In fact, we, just this last budget season, gave your sworn officers quite a large pay increase. So, you know, we do support you. Like Mr. Agin, I was a little bit... taken aback, I guess, by the staffing recommendations. But I was wondering, I'm a little confused. So I look through slides 11 through 13, and I've got a 0.5 traffic analyst, two detectives, one sergeant for community support, eight staff for emergency communication techs, one public information officer, and one records management. So that adds up to 13.5. But then when you go down to slide 19, so I'm just trying to figure out what was the, then how does this work out, this slide on 19 where you have less?

There are other recommendations, as Chief Bard mentioned, to transition. Okay, so that's where that's coming in. That is where that is captured.

So that would be, if we had all the money in the world, you would say 13.5 FTE. But what you're trying to say is, okay, this slide 19 is what's essential, and then you're going to try to make up by some shifting and sharing responsibilities and that sort of thing. Okay. Okay. I know we're early on into this and we've got a lot of discussions, but I think, and who knows what the budget will look like, we definitely support you, Chief Fard, and your staff. So I think if we can, as these conversations continue, maybe these are the things that are that I, you know, sort of prioritizing so that we can, you know, if we have to hit some kind of compromise, we know what's really indispensable. I mean, I know what all is and we'd love to do it, but, you know, it's so early in the process.

Vice Mayor Downs, I've shared with council before that we have looked at the total percentage of the city's budget that goes to public safety. It's very similar to our neighbors. And the police department needs to look at a hard look at a lot of staffing that we do have and how we're using that staffing. Okay. looking at our span of control, looking at how many supervisors we have and how we can leverage those, looking at our shifts and how we can leverage those differently to provide better service over our peak periods. So I'll assure you that we will do our best to use our current resources to meet as many of these recommendations as possible and only come to council only for those that we cannot.

I trust you'll do that. Thank you very much. Thank you for the presentation. Others?

Mr. Snyder.

Thanks a lot. So let me ask you some questions that I know we'll get. It doesn't imply disagreement on my part, but here are some questions. What's the total staffing now with the police department, including the communication center?

58 and a half. 50? 58.5. 58.5.

And you're proposing an increase of like 20% here in the report?

Well, like we said, some of those positions, we have to go through the implementation plan of evaluating some of the vacancies and attritions that we have and some of the reassignments and reorganizations that we can do to see where we come out. Right now, I think it might be too premature to say exactly what the net figure would be once we finish looking at the implementation plan.

Mm-hmm. But still the numbers are significant. The second question I have is regarding the communication center. Can that function be outsourced? Could it be, for example, 911? Those calls, I think, go to what, Arlington County?

Thank you, Councilman Snyder. We have to look at all workload that's captured in this study, not just communications. For example, in patrol, Mr. Berry highlighted that our top community-generated workload is commercial alarms. We're already working on that. In fall, we're gonna be coming to council with an ordinance to, proposal to update our alarm ordinance and implementing policies to try to lessen that workload. Same thing goes in our dispatch center and communications center. Looking at each one of those workload points, and seeing what we can do to offload some of that workload. Same thing throughout the rest of the organization. So the answer is not always to add more staffing to keep up with the workload. It's about maybe using technology and other means to reduce the workload to make up for the staffing needs.

Let me go back to the question about the communications function. Can that be outsourced or could we contract with surrounding county?

So we already do contract at our primary 911 services through Arlington County Emergency Communications Center. So all 911 calls in the city are routed primarily to Arlington County. Because of our fire and EMS contract with Arlington County, They retain those calls and route all of the law enforcement calls to us. As a primary law enforcement organization in the city of Falls Church, we get all those calls in addition to calls from our community directly to our center. And we have to handle those calls ourselves.

is an option to outsource. In other words, the major finding of the report, the major number of personnel is eight personnel. That's a significant recommendation. Yes, sir. Eight personnel for the communication center. What I'm trying to figure out is I'm going to be asked, is that the only way to have an effective police communications or could it be outsourced or... either with a private firm or with another governmental entity.

I completely agree that the eight number is a significant number. I would ask council to allow me to work on an implementation plan. The shift structures that is being recommended is something that we've already looked at. When I arrived in Falls Church, I asked for additional position in communication to help the issue that Mr. Berry talked about having one dispatcher at any given time. Council did increase staffing at that point in FY 26, I believe it was, by two positions. That's allowed us to create a power shift from 2 p.m. to 2 a.m. and currently that's been hugely successful in addressing some of this peak workload. So before we think about outsourcing the workload, I think we can look at the current staffing models we have and how we can leverage that as we have been and also looking at the workload to determine whether or not all that workload belongs in the center. But I 100% agree with you that number is significant. We need to look at all other options prior to going straight to we need to ask for eight positions of council.

Okay, I appreciate that. And again, I think we'll get questions, and I want to, to the extent that I can, raise these as early as possible. So I do appreciate the both responsive and responsible answers. And again, commend you and the police department for the great job that you do. Thank you. Thank you for your support.

Sandra Hill. Thank you for this report. Just so that I'm clear in terms of, now that we have this report, in terms of next steps, it sounds like there's still a lot of work that you need to do with this, Chief Fard. And so there's a reorganization part, and then there's maybe... discussion about tech and additional hire or other things like that. And so the first step would be looking at how to do the reorganization and that would be something you would implement over the next year or how do you see this report translating into action?

Yeah, so as Mr. Shields alluded to, probably about two weeks before the report came out when we had one of the final drafts, I held a lot of group meetings and individual meetings with members who could be affected by the outcome of this report. Those engagements are ongoing. So I sent out the report to my team this past Thursday. And since then, I've been having group meetings with throughout the organization that's continuing tomorrow to get feedback from our team members. That reorganization needs to have complete buy-in. So that's what I'm working on really in the immediate future. The next step is the new city manager giving him an opportunity to absorb the information in this report and for him to provide me some guidance and some direction on how he wants to work with me on that. And then what I've shared with my team is, because I don't want them to have a lot of anxiety about potential organization, is to, by end of the year, to have some sort of an implementation plan, some sort of a response to each one of those 27 recommendations in the report about what our thoughts are and what opportunities there are for us to implement those. So that's kind of where my timeline is, is just by end of the year to come up with an implementation plan. Some of these recommendations might be a multi-year plan. Some of them perhaps in calendar year 27 or FY28. But right now I'm just focused on really on community and staff engagement to get really good feedback as I'm getting tonight and then work on an implementation plan.

Great, okay, thank you. For one of the slides, could we go back to the proactivity slide? Let me see. Keep going. Yeah, actually one more. Yeah, that one. I was just curious, what level of proactivity would you normally consider appropriate for the police department? And how does our 84% compare with that?

So it's a very fluid recommendation depending on the multitude of factors, one of which is simply the size of the jurisdiction and the size of the police agency. We've worked with some of the largest police agencies in the country, and that proactivity recommendation can be approximately 35 to 40%. That's simply because there is an exponential rate of proactive capacity as you have more officers the quote unquote boots on the ground to be able to provide that level of service to respond to a call for service and another officer to be able to provide the proactive engagement. When you have a smaller patrol force like we do in Falls Church, you have to have a slightly increased proactive capacity so that there is a legitimate amount of time between calls for service For an officer, for example, to clear the call for service, probably clear a report or two in just the typical work of contemporary American police force, and then be able to essentially deploy themselves. If you think about what they're going to do in a proactive engagement, it is probably finding a street corner in which we've had complaints of people running traffic, stop signs, traffic lights, school zones, etc. They have to then get there. They have to deploy themselves. and they have to go and conduct that proactive capacity. When you have fewer numbers, even though we're only dealing with a 2.2 square mile area, you have to have that increased proactive capacity, and that's why the threshold recommendation for us would be 50%. If we saw a proactive calculation that was 40%, for example, that is when you would see our staff make a recommendation to increase the number of FTE on the patrol force so that you had that increased proactive percentage.

And I guess when you've looked at other small jurisdictions, that's comparable to our size, but you say 84% is...

It is not infrequent that we find increased levels of proactive capacity in an agency and a geographic area the size of Falls Church. Yes, and that is across the entire country. Several come to mind in the states of Florida, Texas, California, and Arizona immediately, so...

As we, you know, this is a big report. I was looking through a lot of the pages. I guess as we have questions about it, you know, I'm gonna need more time to digest some of this.

We are open. Okay, so we can submit questions. Okay, great.

And then I guess my final question is to follow up on Art's mention of photo enforcement. I know that we had reduced some of our photo enforcement, even cameras, because of the new contracts and other things like that. But I know that we were looking into renegotiating contracts in the future. And so I was just wondering what the status was of some of our photo enforcement and why we would want to reduce the... It seems like the photo enforcement is a fairly efficient way of, I guess, enforcing traffic safety. And so I was just wondering why we're decreasing there rather than maintaining.

So the study focused on workload, right? So when these two positions were created some years ago, a lot of the programs that are up and running right now were just being uploaded and started in the city. For example, the speed cameras on West Broad Street. So I don't think at that point we had a really good idea of what that workload was going to be in terms of number of tickets. And certainly the first year they were very, very high, but now they've kind of plateaued We've gotten compliance and people have slowed down. So other than the speed camera on Broad Street, some addition of school buses to the school fleet, the program really hasn't changed much over the years. So the consultants have looked at the workload and I met with our photo enforcement officers before the report came out. made sure the data, that workload data to report is accurate as they see it and that was confirmed. So that's just what the data is telling us. In terms of how that workload may grow in the future because we add more programs, we add more buses, that's something we'll have to... But right now there seems to be a lot of available capacity in just one of those positions.

Okay. And then in terms of, I guess, we did, I remember like we were renegotiating, there was some contract that had come up and it was incredibly expensive. And so we decided to, this was for photo enforcement. I remember having a work session on it, but if this is not ringing a bell for others, and then I can...

We can move on from that. It's not ringing a bell.

No, it's not ringing a bell, okay. Yeah, I remember that we had a whole discussion about how expensive it was to maintain the contract, and that the tickets weren't covering the cost of it. But whether or not tickets were covering the cost of it,

I wonder if that was the red light camera program.

Oh, that was a red light camera.

Moving the red light to different intersections. We are in the process of moving those.

Okay. Great. Thank you.

When will those be active?

So they're supposed to be activating them tomorrow morning. But we'll have to do a 30-day grace period before we can start issuing citations. Okay.

So PSA, it's Broad and Washington and Broad and Roosevelt.

Yes, thank you.

Don't run lights there.

Don't run lights anywhere for that matter.

Does that count as a public announcement?

I think so. Ms. Flynn.

Thanks all. I'll be quick. Most of my questions were covered. I just wanted to, I guess, see if... The way I sort of understood this report is that the chief may have been kind of anticipating some of these constraints already thinking maybe about some of these organizational like issues and that this report might confirm certain actions that make sense to take, though I don't want to like like put my words on you, right? But that's sort of how I've been thinking about this. And I guess I'm wondering, kind of hearing the chief's response to Ms. Underhill and the implementation plan, kind of which makes sense to me in the various conversations that have to take place. In looking at this report, were there kind of gaps that you didn't anticipate that were highlighted or things that kind of surprised you in this report?

Probably in some of our non-sworn positions, the workload and records is really hard to get your head around unless you get a consultant to come in and really go through that workload. To Mr. Snyder's point and others, the eight FTEs recommendation dispatch was a complete surprise for all of us within the police department. But again, that's what the data says. So we'll have to just bury down on it and figure out how we deal with what's before us.

And that makes sense to me, too, was one of the areas with the emergency communications and looking at that number, you know, where you say, oh, gosh, is this the flashing red sort of takeaway? Are we critically understaffed in emergency communications? Or, like, what is going on? Or, yeah, how... It doesn't necessarily mean that we have to add all of those positions. And so I guess I'm asking both you and the consultant, are you comfortable with where we are now in terms of meeting needs or are there critical gaps that are really impeding our public service, public safety function in a way that works? it means we're not like meeting those obligations. Or are these, given the type of constraints and like the overall summary, generally things that like with the data and kind of working through the information, these are kind of workable constraints that we can address through the recommendations that like are here. And potentially actions as you like also digest this.

Yeah, I think I would direct council's attention back to our work session from April 20th, where we talked about a unmet needs memorandum that I submitted for record. And those are the kind of things that are on top of our list right now. Outside of, there was some staffing highlights there. For example, the public information position, which the study really doesn't, include the FOIA workload there, but for me those two positions or those two functions in a single position would solve a lot of problems for us. As we recently saw in Seattle and other cities where there is a crisis and how the police department responds to crisis communication is how we're going to be judged immediately after that situation and that's a huge risk for us right now. So that was in the memo from April 20th. So those are really the things I'm gonna be working with our new city manager in our upcoming months to figure out how we can use our current staffing to leverage. And then if we still have an ask of council, we'll certainly come back.

Great. That makes sense to me. Thank you both.

Thank you.

Great. So just to wrap up, I guess I'll preface by saying that in general, I love thinking kind of out of the box and creatively, right? So just because it's always been done this way, we've always had to shift structure, doesn't mean that's all we should be. And so we appreciate the premise behind this, which is really evaluating, thinking critically about how we should be organized and how we should do our work. And so appreciate that from you, Chief Fard. I do share my colleague's concern that you probably expected this. When you put a study like this in front of us that has glaring big headcount numbers, you're going to get a reaction like this that I think I agree with all my colleagues that this probably needs a lot more discussion, a lot more prioritization, a lot more kind of implementation thinking of how can we make this work with current budget numbers. And so I would encourage you that as you work on the implementation plan to kind of check back in with us on what your top needs are. If it's records, FOIA, if it's the call center, let us know kind of how we can best support. But I think as it stands, it probably is something that I don't know whether we'll be able to implement in obviously one year, which is why I think there's a multi-year plan on there. I would like a better understanding, I guess, of how we currently do things. So why is the two-shift structure so bad? Why is a three-shift one better? That seems like a basic fundamental that I should know, but I don't. And so this probably just needs more work session discussion at some other point. But in general, kind of more evaluation of why is the old way bad and why is the recommendation to change it? And then along the lines of the questions about proactivity, I think it's great that we've got, essentially if I understand the metric, that we're in the 80s. That means 80 some percent of the time, Our officers have time to proactively policing in the community and responding to things that they know our community needs versus handling calls for service. And not that we wanna dip to the 30 or 40s or even the 50%. But I guess one of the questions I would ask, maybe this is the elephant in the room, is wouldn't we drop down potentially like 75% and shift those resources into these more critical areas? Or is that just not possible? And you don't have to answer it here, but that's an example of kind of how I think I just need a better understanding of how we're organized today and why we wouldn't make those sorts of trade-offs. Because I think those are the types of questions, as Mr. Snyder said, that the public's gonna expect us to have answers to before we make commitments and resources. So again, overall, we appreciate the discussion and being engaged early. A lot more discussion to come.

Thank you. Thanks for your questions. Great.

And thank you for joining us late. I know it's, we haven't even gotten to the second item on the manager's report tonight, so.

Can we take a five-minute break?

Yeah. Vice Mayor proposed a five-minute break. People want to do that before we get to CIP and priorities, or we want to just... Or I can just run to the restroom. I know you've been waiting a long time, but what do people at the council think?

We're still going to be here a while.

Okay, we'll take the break. We'll come back at 10.42.

So are we ready to resume?

The camera's up.

I probably won't participate, so I'll just watch online. I can text somebody if there's something egregious.

Yeah, that's fine. I'll watch remote. Our camera's back up. Okay. Thank you all for your patience. I know it's late and we haven't even gotten to you all on the final items in the manager's report. Thank you for everyone's patience. We are back. This is my favorite topic every quarter, I have to say.

All I can say is why it's last meeting in the longest city manager report ever. City manager's filibuster.

But we have our public works director, Amanda Brain, and Caitlin Soaps here, CIP coordinator. We're very pleased to give you an update on progress on CIP projects.

Before you start, I have a declaration.

Yes, your conflict of interest.

Yes. It's only half an hour long. Okay. The City Council is discussing tonight capital projects, including one known as the Greening of Lincoln, which would implement storm drainage and sidewalk improvements along Lincoln Avenue. As a resident of Lincoln Avenue, my property will be affected by the project, causing me to have a personal interest because I am only one resident among many who may realize a reasonably foreseeable direct or indirect benefit from the project. I am allowed to participate as a council member in this matter under the Conflict of Interest Act. After careful thought, I have decided to recuse myself from any discussion of Greening of Lincoln Phase A, Part 3, but will participate in the rest of the CIP review because I am confident in my ability to participate fairly, objectively, and in the public interest.

Thank you.

Okay, good evening. Okay, so now it's almost September and our construction program really is in full swing. I wanted to give you a couple of brief updates and then we'll get into the items in the staff report. So on the South Maple Avenue and West Annandale Road roundabout project, as you may or may not know, as of today, a new traffic pattern is in effect and the roundabout is effectively Today the traffic signals were turned off and removed, the new roundabout and yield signs were installed, and there's orange traffic barrels that are currently marking the shape of the new roundabout while the work continues. So today, social media and alerts went out from our communications office. Tomorrow, DPW is going to be continuing to work with the contractor about doing some additional temporary markings and signage, eradicating some markings to do some things to improve safety in the immediate term while this is still under construction. And then over the next two months, September and October, the contractor will be building the concrete, the center median, installing light poles, paving new crosswalks, and really completing that project by the end of October. Also today we started construction on one of the three missing links sidewalk gap projects on Madison Lane. So we're excited to see a number of things moving forward. I'll turn it over to Caitlin now to provide an overview of the program and some of the items in the staff report and then we're happy to take any questions.

Thanks. Good evening, Council. I'm Caitlin Sobsey, Capital Improvements Program Coordinator, and I will provide a brief overview of the report tonight. There are 39 active projects this quarter. Of those active projects, 59% are green or on target, 18% are yellow or at risk, and 23% are red or behind target. Included in those 39 projects there are four completed projects or substantially completed since we were here the last quarterly report in May. Those include LED streetlight replacement, Greenway Downs neighborhood traffic calming, the Washington Street paving project, and West Falls Church multimodal project. I think there's a ribbon cutting being scheduled in October for West Falls Church. Those completed projects will be removed from the future quarterly CIP update. Also, we have projects in development, six projects in development, which means they're either pending grant agreement or they're developing project scope and scheduling still or on hold. In addition to the projects that are listed in the table, and this is mentioned in the staff report, there are also three projects that have not been able to begin project development due to funding shortfalls and or changing priorities. These three projects are all intersection improvement projects or grants that the city applied for prior to the 2023 master arm inspection that is now shaping our intersection improvement strategy. So those include Roosevelt and Hillwood. We're working with HUD on a technical correction to that grant to allow us to use that $500,000 for a revised scope at Roosevelt and Hillwood. And then they include two VDOT grants for Hillwood and Annandale, which is included in the Annandale Road Multimodal Scope, which I'll come back to. And then Broad and Spring, staff will be recommending a formal cancellation of those two projects and will return to council in September with additional information and a resolution for council to endorse that cancellation for VDOT. Also included in the report are awarded pending or upcoming grant applications. We have several recently awarded grants since we were last here, including the $30 million grant for Annandale Road Multimodal from MBTA 70%. So we're excited to start executing a grant agreement with MVTA and look forward to that. All of those grants are reflected in the adopted FY27 CIP. Since the last update, two grant applications were not awarded. Those include the other MVTA application we submitted, which was for Haycock Road Shared Use Path. and then also the fiscal year 27 state of good repair paving grant funds. So both of those projects will be added to the 10 year pipeline or the six year CIP in the next budget development. I include a couple updates too with some CIP adjacent activities and projects, but I think I'll just stop there for the overview. It's been a busy quarter and I'm excited to take questions and comments. And I just want to say, since I'm here, thank you very much, Wyatt. It feels like an important moment to be here for your last meeting. The only city manager that I've ever had and just want to express my gratitude. That's all.

Thanks. Thank you for that. Questions and comments? I'm sure we have some. Vice Mayor?

You want to go or? No, go ahead. Okay. Thank you. This is very fitting to end Wyatt's tenure with a CIP progress report, because we always love to talk about these. Okay, I have a quick list. I'll try to go through it quickly. And some of these may be also Amanda, Wyatt questions. Fire hydrants, was that hold up the water mains and all that? Was that that water pressure issue? It's all solved now, right? So we're just going to go ahead with those hydrants, we think.

The hydrants were held up for other reasons than pressure. I think it related to Fairfax. I don't actually recall why there was that pause.

So I think we had challenges getting the first batch done, and so we held off on kind of moving the next group. So I kind of exchanged messages with Sharam today, and I think we'll be bringing the next batch of six to council for authorization this fall. Okay.

Thank you. I was just curious because I knew we had talked about water pressure a while back. And then also along those same lines of things being a little bit delayed, why is it taking so long for the EV hybrid vehicles? We ordered them like a year ago?

We have, I think, five or six vehicles were delivered a while ago. There are two that are still on order. Oh, maybe that's what I was looking at. Yeah, but we paid for them.

It's just a long lead time to get those. The two vehicles, yeah.

The chargers, we are issuing the contract and ordering those now. The current quarterly report in front of you says September slash October 2026. We just got word today it'll be November 2026, also due to production issues with the chargers. Okay.

And then I can take off my city council hat and put on my football mom hat and give an update on the concession stand. It is, it is closed at Meridian and they're doing like concessions just under a tent now. So they are supposed to be, have it closed throughout the fall and hopefully they're hoping it'll be ready for spring sports. But I, I can confirm that it is closed and they're starting to work on that. The Firefly Forest, I know that's, you know, when I read that it occurred to me when I was campaigning the first time, which was fall of 2024, almost two years ago, a fellows court resident had reached out to me about that. And so here we are like two years later and we're still, so I didn't know if we could just reach out to the, if I don't know if there's like a listserv or something, just letting them know we haven't, it is in progress. Sure, reaching out to some of the community members. Yeah, like Mark, I don't know, Kowar. Kowar. Kowar, I know he was kind of the, you know, he reached out to me like two years ago about that. And so just to assure them that, you know, it's still, it is going to happen. We're just a little bit delayed. That's right. Um, great job on Cavalier Park, uh, playground. I was in, I'm the, uh, rec and parks rep. And I was just, I was in that meeting where they, um, chose the playground equipment just mere months ago. So that's awesome.

That's a great quick turnaround.

Um, for, uh, great, uh, streets, um, right away, there was a note that we're talking to property owners. How many, is that like a handful of people or? No, I mean, that's the park at Great Streets. In total, I think it's about 24.

Okay, so it's a considerable number. It's a considerable number, and we've been really working through those, a combination of our city attorney's office and our staff and consultants and various... Okay, I was just curious. Thank you.

I'm going to interject. That was Ms. Underhill's question before she left. Is that the reason why Great Streets is so delayed, is just getting right-of-way?

I mean, right now, yeah, we have 100% design, which has gone through staff review and is continuing to be kind of reviewed, but we're really actively trying to get that right-of-way phase complete by the end of this year. And then we'll have a clearer estimate on the rest of the project.

I think Park Avenue is on schedule right now. I mean, the current schedule that we have, so... Were there delays with design?

She just asked me to ask you all before she left that she was like, why is Great Street so delayed?

Okay. I'm not aware of any delays on Park Avenue. It's a tight schedule, and I think, yeah, we're still on schedule.

I think that Park Avenue was always, one of the big complaints about it from the very beginning was it was so, it had such a long schedule.

So far away. Right.

It was incredibly long.

And so I think once we can, if we can get the right-of-way phase completed by the end of this year, then I think we'll be able to better estimate the remainder of the phase, the project.

All right, I only have two more things. Maple and Annandale, I did see the new sidewalks. They look terrific. So good job to all of us on that. With the concrete and the brick border, I think it looks terrific. In this report, there was a note that we might have to close some streets. Do you foresee that happening?

Sorry, that's at the roundabout?

When we were talking about the roundabout? I guess just if there's anything significant to notify the school system, if there's anything, you know, with bus routes and stuff.

Yeah, I believe our OCOM, I think we were talking about notifying the schools about the current update today about the realigned intersection. Great. It's not going to be fully closed.

Okay, great, thanks. And then my last piece was... When I had office hours at Clarendon's last month, we had a community member who's actually the mother of... Someone in, one of our clerks came to me and said, talked about her concerns about the intersection of Annandale and Hillwood. And I was noticing that the grant, that's the grant for fiscal year 2030. Yeah. So that would answer that. So that's still quite a ways out. But that's the idea, that would improve that intersection.

That's the current schedule for the grant allocation. Okay. Yeah, we haven't finalized this yet.

Thank you, as always, great work. Thank you so much from SASB.

Mr. Reagan, do you have?

I have a few things. First off, we received quite a bit of public comment about the east-west path to schools, and can you give us an update on where that stands?

Sure. So that's the east-west, yeah. Ped-Bike Connection. So we have 30% design plans that we've received from the consultant. Our staff are in the process of reviewing those. And in that context, we're gonna be reaching out directly as a next step to some of the specific property owners that we need to have some conversations with, and then we'll have a larger public engagement.

Okay. My next one, well, and so really our biggest holdup there is still negotiating with the condos?

We have an alignment, kind of a draft 30% alignment, and there's a couple specific property owners that we need to talk with.

All right. This one's kind of adjacent. Park Avenue, Great Streets, I mean, obviously it's been long, long, and then one of the pieces is getting some of the short-term pieces in place that are related to it. In particular, I'm thinking about the curb extensions at Maple and Park with FlexiPost. And also we have the traffic light at Little Falls and Park. The plans call for that to be a four-way stop sign. I think Little Falls, Great Falls has shown it works great as a stop sign. Great kudos. I think it's working really well. I've only ever seen one person just blow through and I have a feeling that was just an obnoxious driver. But do we have, this isn't capital specific, but what are our plans about maybe picking up some of those things?

Yeah, the quick build at Park and Maple, we actually talked about that earlier today in one of our Safe Streets meetings. We are looking to do that this fall, which is adding flex posts and markings to tighten up that intersection a bit and improve the safety for pedestrians, shorten crossing distances at Park and Maple. Little Falls and Park. I don't know that we're planning to remove the signal in advance. That is part of the capital project. I'm not sure that we're planning on doing that in advance. I can talk more with our team about that.

Okay. I'd look into that because the other one has worked very well. I think that would I think it would work really well as a four-way stop. And maybe we can do it ahead. Plus, it's the ones on the wires that we want to get rid of anyway. And then the last thing I wanted to just bring up, I don't know... how much information you're going to have or anything like that. It's a 10-year pipeline, just having visibility into that in these reports. It looks like it's not covered on this report, but I'd like to keep that on our radar, keep that... I'd like to at least see it in the quarterly reports. So that's something to think about. That's all I've got.

Yeah, I don't know if it makes sense to add them here, but I know Caitlin and team have been giving a lot of thought to how we think about the 10-year pipeline and the next year's six-year and interfacing with the Planning Commission and just kind of thinking about project development.

Yeah, I think I'm going to go to Planning Commission next month or this month, September, in a couple weeks.

That's still next month.

Yes, to give them the quarterly update that you all receive, and then to also talk about the 10-year pipeline a little bit. I think with the facility condition assessment that we're doing with the schools, and then we have the stormwater resilience plan, stormwater master planning, sewer comprehensive plan, and master planning, I think there's a lot of work that we need to do that we are doing right now that will inform the 10-year pipeline. So I have a lot of ideas about future engagement, and I think... public meetings and community input on the 10-year pipeline, but I think we need to get those sort of requirements first.

Yeah, just try to figure out how we incorporate it into the quarterly updates.

Yeah.

It is, we go do the deep dive during budget season, right? Yeah. Okay.

I think, I am thinking about other opportunities throughout the year that we could talk about, that sort of longer-term 10-year outlook. But yeah, I think we're still waiting on a lot of input from those studies and planning efforts that are gonna really shape what the 10-year pipeline looks like.

So, yeah.

Mr. Steiner.

Sure, thanks. First, a couple particular projects. Columbia and Washington Street, that light project continues to kind of drag on. Do you have a firm date when that'll be completed?

Yeah, that project, and it was a long backstory, long time coming, then we were making good progress. We had a real Dominion setback for a little while there earlier this summer, but that work was completed. The Dominion work in mid-August, now we're working with our smart city team on reprogramming some of the signal information, and then the contractor can come back in and really finish those stamped asphalt crosswalks and finish the project. We're looking at mid-October.

now to complete that project. Mid-October, that's good news. Thanks for that. Secondly, Grove Street and the W&OD, that came up against tonight. CACT I think had a comment. Can you tell us what work is planned and ongoing there?

Yeah, so again, we talked about that earlier. Staff today at our kind of Safe Streets project, looking at the project that we discussed with CACT and with council as well to add the red stamped asphalt crossings at Grove and the WOD Trail and at West Street and the W&OD Trail. We're still working on those. So our current status is our staff is drafting kind of a maintenance of traffic plan and working with Nova parks to make sure how we can close the trail and actually do the project. And so it's a lot of, you know, coordination, um, with the contractor and with Nova parks. Uh, and then we should be able to then schedule those pieces, um, for installation. And we think that that will really, um, add the consistency of the red crossings, um, and, and improve safety for, for drivers and their visibility as well as for, um, the cyclists and pedestrians on the trail. So that's our next step that we're actively working on.

So Nova Parks and their metrics allow four-way stops at some intersections with roads and not at others. What's the logic of that? Isn't that confusing to drivers as a matter of psychology? Wouldn't it be better if you just did four-way stops everywhere along where there's an intersection of the highway and the W&OD?

Yeah, I'm not sure I can get into all the details on that right now. We did have a study, I think about two years ago, that a consultant did that was looking at the different types of stop signs at all of those different trail crossings based on a variety of metrics, including... you know, traffic backups and site distances and all the different characteristics. And then the stop signs on the trail, I think, are a conversation with Nova Parks. So I think that that is all still something we're kind of actively still thinking about, the different stop sign solutions there. So I can't really speak to all of the nuance on that right now.

Yeah, the four-way stop at, what is it, Little Falls, has really been a positive development. I can't figure out... why you wouldn't do the same thing on Great Falls Street, for example. And I know there may be traffic backups, but if it's a safety issue, frankly, the traffic can back up if in so doing we dramatically improve safety. Then more generally, let me just put in a pitch to make sure that We have planners that are available and working on traffic projects so that we use the pipeline at NVTA and NVTC to the maximum extent that we can for appropriate projects. So do we have somebody who's kind of working on those kinds of projects at this point, getting them ready for application?

I'll say it's a mix of working with both planning and DPW staff, kind of engineers, as well as Caitlin and Allie and their team that are kind of looking at future grants and funding opportunities. Cindy as well is obviously very plugged into those organizations as well as thinking about future grant opportunities broadly, whether it's NVTA or other VDOT or other grant opportunities. And so part of that is looking at... Again, the 10-year pipeline, we're having regular project development meetings that are kind of interdisciplinary staff meetings to be thinking about what we're kind of teeing up next. And so that is on our radar.

I just want to emphasize the importance of that because as we saw, $30 million for one project, that's real money regardless of what your context is. I just want to make sure that as we continue to look at capital projects, we make sure that that function is adequately staffed because there are very significant amounts of money at play or at stake, rather, that we want to make sure we make appropriate use of. So I appreciate it. Thanks for... Thanks for putting this together, a lot going on. A lot of it's good and it's our job to constantly push for more, but thanks. Thank you. Ms. Flynn, go ahead.

Thanks, I just had a few quick things. On the South Maple and Annandale roundabout, I pulled the pictures that the city posted. I don't know if it took us by surprise or not in terms of all those barrels, but just looking at the pictures, it looks very confusing right now with the number of orange barrels everywhere, including... like radiating out into Annandale and South Maple and would be a little worried too about kind of how quickly some of those cars may come up on those barrels without notice of like this coming down today. So I'm just wondering. like how quickly we can work to improve what's there or potentially if they're not already out, get like the speed trailers with the new traffic pattern signs up so that cars going into the intersection don't just find themselves suddenly in the midst of like 20 plus reflective barrels.

Yeah, we do have the VMS signs out there that say new traffic pattern coming August 31st. And yes, I take your point. Our staff are going to go out tomorrow and meet with the contractor to talk about some additional temporary markings and signage and some tweaks that we can make in the immediate term to improve safety with those barrels while we're working on the final condition. Okay, great.

And then I was walking through there, it was probably last week, but the netting on the sidewalks, and I agree with Ms. Downs in terms of those, you know, getting done and coming together well, but like the netting was, you'd be on the sidewalk and then you're kind of like trapped in the sidewalk and you can't cross where you would have... normally crossed and so you kind of get like pushed into you know like the second car of traffic at least as of last week if you're trying to like cross and you'd have to kind of cross into the bowling alley parking lot as opposed to straight across the street and so I'm just wondering it's hard to tell from the pictures whether those kind of like netting issues are like where the orange barriers are on the sidewalk, if that's been resolved so that pedestrians can actually cross or if they're still getting stranded behind the orange plastic and not like you're crossing on like a diagonal and in between cars was my experience as of last week. So maybe when you're there tomorrow, if you can just look at that and walk it.

All the pedestrian access and everything.

I guess while we're talking about that, I would say, sorry to interrupt, Ms. Flynn, I would say let's check the same thing at Columbia and Washington. I know that I previously noted that the ped access was just not there. And there was no warning signs if you're coming from the state theater direction, because we should tell people to use the last signalized crossing. And so essentially once you pass Park Place, there's no other safe place to cross on North Washington. And then you end up at Washington and Columbia and then you're stranded unless you go through the Columbia Baptist parking lot or the Christ Crossman parking lot, I mean. So if we could check pet access at both of those intersections, that would be helpful. Thank you. Sorry, please go ahead.

No, no, that makes sense to me because I had North Washington and Columbia next on the list in terms of continuing to hear from residents. I guess it wasn't apparent as to the Dominion work actually happening because I had a number of inquiries about whether it had happened. And so seemingly not apparent or whatever what was done, like as Leti said, did not improve the actual ability to cross or sort of. the issues that people are having there. So to the extent that the delay was the Dominion delay, I understand kind of. FINISHING THE PROJECT IN SEPTEMBER AND OCTOBER, BUT THE SOONER THAT WE CAN DO THAT AND OUR ABILITY TO PRIORITIZE GETTING THAT FINISHED, I THINK IS GOING TO GO A LONG WAY FOR PEDESTRIAN SAFETY THERE, GIVEN NOT ONLY THE CROSSING ISSUES LETTY JUST MENTIONED, BUT ALL THE LIPS THAT ARE IN THAT INTERSECTION FOR ANYONE ACTUALLY TRYING TO EVEN CROSS THERE. who didn't cross before. Like everything's just uneven in terms of the different surfaces and the sidewalk and the street and the like fall off gradient on East, no West Columbia in particular, when you make the turn off of South Washington onto West Columbia, like that, it's totally uneven. So I don't know if there's a way to try to get it done in September as opposed to October.

Okay, yeah, we'll take a look at all of the pedestrian access. Thank you.

And then my final thing, just on Mr. Agin's comment about Little Falls and Park, and to the extent we're doing something there, and I agree that the... Little Falls-Great Falls intersection has improved with the four-way stops, but that Little Falls and Park intersection is consistently pretty dark and hard to see pedestrians, and there are now... Increased numbers of pedestrians there because a lot of the people who are going to Stratford Garden are parking on park because the parking lot is consistently full, which is great. And it's great that people are using street parking, but there seemingly have been a number of... near misses there and so if we are looking at doing something or we are looking at a four-way stop i would um encourage us to look at the lighting or just even look at the lighting independently given the number of people on the corners now they're especially at nighttime um that aren't really visible at all when you're driving down park or little falls but those are my um three things I had listed here. Thanks. Okay, thank you. We'll take that back.

Okay, so to wrap up. So clearly this is a council, as I said before, really likes the CIP updates because they're ones that we get a lot of input on. They're visible in the community and they really show kind of progress in all the things that we care about. So thank you for your patience and all the work. We know that CIP projects take a lot of effort and also to the community of a lot of patients as we undergo construction. So I'm gonna note kind of a couple things. I think some of my colleagues covered a lot of them. But I guess I'm going to start with kind of positive things I'm seeing. So one, we won grants. And so where Mr. Snyder ended is that there's a lot of money out there. I know that there's always a tension between going after the free things and making sure the free money and then being able to execute on all the projects in the portfolio we have and finding that balance. And so we recognize the balance. We also want to make sure that we don't forget to go after some grant money because they do accomplish good things in our community. So striking that's important. So kudos to the team for winning the $30 million for the Annandale-Hillwood and the Annandale-Washington intersections. Cuz I do run through those and they are probably really in severely need of pedestrian improvements to make it feel more like the rest of Falls Church. Second thing that seems like a positive is the trend of more on-target projects. I think I noted that we're close to 60% on target. That seems like a marked increase from where we last had the quarter update. So hopefully that trend continues. Along the same lines, I had a question whether the same themes for delays are consistent with what we heard before. So I think last quarter it was Dominion delays, right-of-way acquisition, and then in some cases just we decided to use the money and move it elsewhere and hence cancellations. Are those still the three big reasons why we are seeing delays or issues in our capital projects? Or are there others that would be helpful for council to know so we can help remove some of those roadblocks where we can?

I think right-of-way remains a big one for sure. Just really complex projects with really complex right-of-way acquisition. Another one that I think that we're seeing more and more with just like more diverse project types. Like for example, we talked about the EV fleet and chargers earlier, like procurement issues that have to do with sort of the nature of the project and the equipment that is needed. And I think, you know, as this is like with the energy project as well, like I think we'll continue to see some challenges there and we're trying to figure out how to work through that.

Yeah, and obviously right-of-way acquisition is complicated. We can't compel private property owners to let us do work, and so that just takes patience. Maybe we just need to recalibrate our expectations on how long those projects take. So if it requires a lot of acquisitions, we just need to be more realistic rather than be so ambitious. So just an idea. I'm going to get into some more specifics now. We didn't really cover much on the GOEP and CEEP, and I know Andy in mid-August had sent us an update on both that were really helpful, although the reports were, I will frankly admit, too long for me to review. That said, I do think that there is positive things happening. So, for example, I think the new COG data showed that our greenhouse gas emissions had dropped by a decent percent, like 15%, 20% in our per capita emissions. I think it dropped... 40% despite our growing population. So those are notable. I do think it'd be helpful for us to have, I mean, it is one of our top five priorities among council priorities is around the environment. And I think there's an opportunity to think about getting an update on how we're doing in the GO-EEP and the CEAP paired with the FCA. So as we think about investing in a bunch of facility things, how are environmental investments paired together with some of that? And so we can think about where to schedule that this fall, but maybe in advance of the the December FCA where presumably the consultant will tell us, you need to make a bunch of investments in these buildings in these ways. We can pair that with, well, what are we committing to on the environmental side and can those things be invested in together? So an idea I'll leave with staff to think about because we haven't really Had a deep dive on environmental things and Ms. Connolly being our ESC rep is not here tonight, but I'm just going to make that plug for them. Second thing, LED streetlights. I know that's a completed project. I noted that we still have some things that are dark. Is that just a separate issue from the Dominion changeover into LED bulbs? Is that more of a wiring issue we have on our own?

All of the lights included in the LED street light scope are up. So none of those are dark that I know of, so I think that's a separate issue.

Yeah, we have a number of this. So there's the Dominion-maintained ones, and then there's kind of the city-maintained ones, where we do have a number of these outages. It's something we're working on with our operations staff and a variety of our staff to make sure we're understanding the nature of all of those outages. Some of them are a simpler fix and some of them are more complicated. And so that's something we're trying to get our arms around right now.

And that's part of that balance I started with, right? Like trying to fix this infrastructure that we've got, unsexy things like master arms and streetlights, make sure they work versus build a bunch of new things. I get that tension. So just hold us to that. Because I think as it gets dark, we're going to hear more complaints about streetlights. Yeah. Roosevelt and Hillwood, that was one of the projects that didn't get all the money we wanted, is that correct? Yeah. I think I had mentioned this to Mr. Shields at some point, but with the Fairfax County project happening up the road. The Aiken project, I wonder if that's something that needs to be upgraded as part of that project with a big development. And so something that we can maybe throw over to the county to ask them to consider helping with upgrading the intersection since they have a big development application going in there. For Hillwood and Annandale and Broad and Spring that I think staff is recommending canceling, Doesn't Hillwood and Andale get covered by the new NVTA grant we just got?

Yes.

Okay.

So we're canceling the previous VDOT grant that we had applied for 2021 maybe or 2022. Yeah. Got it. And so if Broad and Spring were canceled, is there any future project that would cover that? Broad and Spring is on the list of priority master arm replacements that staff has been working on. And when we come back in... September for, we're also, I think, going to talk more about that master arm replacement strategy.

Is that correct or did I? Yeah, so on page five, number two, it says VDOT rev share. Yeah, so we are, we will be coming back to council September 22nd and 28th specifically to talk about the cancellation of those two VDOT rev share projects. Like there's an official formal thing. And as part of that, we can talk a little more broadly about our master arm strategy.

Was it just a master arm project that was planned there at Broad and Spring that was going to use the VDOT money?

It was an intersection improvement project. So it did include like streetscape upgrades and crosswalks. Some of the crosswalk and sidewalk work I think is already being covered by Broad Street Multimodal. So then we were looking at just a master arm replacement. Since the 2023 master arm inspection report that engineering did, It shifted the strategy a little bit. We're trying to address the priority traffic signals first. Broad and Spring is not one of the... It is on Spanwire, yeah, but it's not one of the top five. So right now we're trying to get through those first few really high priority ones.

Okay. I guess we can discuss more in September when you come back. While we're on signals, I think the Gresham neighborhood is really excited to hear about their light. I think that's in like 80 or 90% design, if I remember reading correctly. When is that going to get installed?

Yeah, so it's around 90, close to 100% design, and then we're still, I don't have a specific timeline after that, because we're working with the VTTI Smart City folks on the procurement and the construction schedule, as well as with Arlington. So it's all working, we're working well with the Arlington team, but I don't have a construction date on that yet.

I just feel like I remember Mr. Shields delivering to the HOA bad news that we were never going to fix this because Arlington had taken it away and now we're fixing it. So it would be nice to go back and say, hey, and it's going to be a new light for you on this date. So that would be perceived well.

Seth is going to come in and say, see what I did that Wyatt couldn't?

Continuing on lights, I continue to get complaints about signal timing at Broad and Washington and Park Place. I know we've asked multiple times, I feel like I've asked for six or nine months now, but I still observe it and I know it's at those peak times of days when it backs up at Park Place. A new idea that came up, so if we really have exhausted all the timing issues, is because the Whole Foods entrance is off Park Place, and there is another entrance into Broad and Washington on East Broad. Whether we should consider working with the owner of the building to actually have two entrances in the Whole Foods so that it diverts some of the traffic and it doesn't only use Park Place as the entrance. There is a second garage entrance on East Broad. And so I don't know whether the developer would want people using that entrance because it's primarily a residential entrance and you have to go up another floor or two. But that could help alleviate some of the flow onto Park Place if people use the East Broad garage entrance instead.

Mayor, I actually think... Yes, I never travel in the right... Because I live over in that direction, so I'm always going west. And I never go in the right-hand lane anymore because of that intersection. But I actually think it's more people exiting out at Park Place. Hmm. and trying to go left onto Washington Street. So anyway, I don't know.

Likewise, people can exit onto East Broad. And that would help. Again, using the second garage entrance would maybe alleviate some of the park place volume, whether it's going in or going out. So it's not our call because it's obviously the developers or the owner now. But that, because I continue to receive complaints about the timing issue there. So moving off signals, we talked about quick build projects at Maple and Parks. That's exciting. That'll happen this fall. Ann and Dylan Gundry, are we still planning to put in the mini roundabout? Yes. This fall as well?

Yes, and we're also working with a contractor on doing that. And that is also going to be kind of a quick build, doing some paint in there this fall as well.

Great. At Greening of Lincoln, which I know is messy right now, there was a, I forget the phase, but we're supposed to be doing the pet improvements in between like the stormwater improvements. Is that still planned? The quick build type of project.

The quick build, yeah. Yeah, we were hoping to do that this fall after this Lincoln Park current phase happens that might end up getting pushed till the spring, the quick build piece. But that is still on our radar to do. Okay.

So the final thing, because I'm done with all my little tactical questions, is right now, obviously, the community is experiencing the new roundabout, the Columbia North Washington, Greening of Lincoln. So those are big projects that hopefully will wrap up soon. What should the community expect as the next big things that would be disruptive? Is it Broad Street Multimodal? Is it something else after that? I feel like we should at least set people's expectations that we're going to wrap these up kind of by the end of the year. We'll celebrate. Hopefully we will celebrate that those things are done. And then what will be the next big thing people should expect?

Yeah, that's a good question. One thing for sure is Broad Street Multimodal. Also on that September 22nd council meeting, we're planning to come to council with the contract authorization at the 22nd and the 28th council meeting. So we can talk a little bit more specifically about Broad Street Multimodal, but that is, you know, it's been advertised. We're in the final stages of the kind of procurement kind of conversation, and then we'll come to council to get that contract authorization. And then, yeah, that will be a big one coming up throughout basically starting construction early 2027 and throughout next year. Park Avenue will be a big one, but that's a little farther off, although we are going to work on getting a tighter construction timeline on that, the next phase of greening of Lincoln. I think that's a good question for us to really be thinking about both internally and how we're communicating to the public to really to manage expectations and both the celebrating and the kind of managing expectations that these are big projects. I mean, the current phase of Greening of Lincoln as we know is there's all... When I drive through that intersection, there's a backhoe right in the middle of it at 8.30 in the morning, as you all who live right near there know. And there will be more disruption in the future phases. And so making sure that we're, as staff, managing that and communicating it.

I think the Phase 1A, which is the big one for Greening of Lincoln, I think when we reopen Lincoln Park, Start planning now for a ribbon cutting. Something. Because after all of that, we'll be reopening the park.

Yeah. While we have obviously lots of things planned and we know that there's probably some fatigue with all the different construction projects out there. Now that we're not having new buildings come out of the ground, we're just... certainly digging up roads and changing intersections all the time. I think the community might feel a little fatigued. So I do think it's important to make sure we celebrate and remind the community why we've done those improvements and what that work is. So celebrate when they're done that, hey, we put a bunch of underground things under Lincoln Park that's gonna help stormwater. Hey, we've done this Greenway Downs NTC project. That's the biggest NTC project that we've seen in the city where we hit multiple streets at once. That's trying to calm that and avoid the whack-a-mole situation with people going from one street to another. Celebrate Washington and Columbia when that's done. Celebrate the roundabout. And then at least people at least understand, okay, this is why, one, where my public dollars went. Two, why we're doing it. And hopefully better prepares them before we do the next round of... big projects that will be messy and test our patience a bit. So I bring that up just for that reason to make sure we pause, celebrate when we can, but also prepare and do a good job communicating to the public and managing their expectations of what's to come as well. So, but thank you. Overall, again, you could tell based on the volume of questions we have is it's something we really care about, the community cares about, so we really appreciate the large portfolio of projects that you all are carrying. Thank you.

Okay, great. Thank you. And thank you, Wyatt, again, for all of your support of staff and our projects and our work. So, thank you.

You know it's late in the night because Dave Snyder's also hitting the cheese. It's... Thank you. Okay, I think we're moving on to council priorities and then we're finally done with the longest manager's report ever.

We are and so Andy and Jenny are going to take the lead on council priorities and we're very pleased to give this report and it will make it pretty quick I think is Jenny's plan.

So good evening Mayor and members of council. The short version is a majority of the items that are in the staff report will be coming to you in the next few months. You've heard from a few of them tonight. And so we're happy to elaborate on or give some highlights for certain things. I think at this point we will open it for questions. Okay.

There is a new one pager format that we noted on the council priorities. So we appreciate it.

Yeah, I liked it. I, I, except I had to keep magnifying it because it was, but I liked that. I liked that chart a lot. Very quickly, and Ms. Carroll knows this, but the boards and commissions, GovOps has not forgotten about that. We have just had some other things pop up, such as our city manager announcing his retirement and things like that. So we are going to try to get back to the boards and commissions and looking to streamline that ASAP or this fall. And then also, I just want to say I appreciated when you're talking about core infrastructure that you use that term maintenance of effort, because I know that we've been talking with using that term with the school board during our budget and finance meeting. So I think that's great too, so that we're using like terminology with the school system. So thank you very much for this, looks great.

Other questions, Ms. Reagan?

The one comment I had is I keep harping on is parking and I see that it's after the beginning of the year. I'm looking forward to that. I think we've got a bunch of stuff there, and it's going to be painful, and it's going to be ugly, but I think it's something we have to deal with. Every time we have a project, every time we have something going on, parking is a discussion, and it feeds into it, even tonight. There were comments about the intersection at Park and Little Falls. And because people, because Stratford doesn't have enough parking, it's like parking just shows up everywhere. We've got to attack that one. I would love to see it sooner. But after the turn of the year, I think there's enough on a plate to get us to January. So I'm just going to harp on it.

Thanks for that. Others? Ms. Lin.

Just very quickly, does this micro mobility deploy in fall 2026 mean that we have vendors for scooters?

Yes, we received two proposals. I don't know if that's the exact right term, but we received two proposals which we reviewed with the staff last week. So we'll be advancing those conversations. Should have something to announce pretty soon. The exact deployment timeline, TBD, but we believe we'll get there this fall.

Thank you. I have something else, but I can't remember what it is. That's fine. Thanks. You can always email us.

Mr. Snyder.

Just one quick one. I'm not sure it was on here, but the bus rapid transit route seven, bus rapid transit project is moving into the next stage where I think we're seriously looking at what funding might be available. I know Cindy's been deeply involved in that, and is that on this list?

It is not on this list.

I would say it's not listed on the strategic priorities, but it is part of the projects that we're working on with NVTC and the transportation. And working with NVTC, there'll be an upcoming meeting to do some briefing to council on September 25th that got confirmed today. And council has a work session October 5th, I believe, for the NVTC project, not the regional planning.

Okay, great, because there'll be some decisions.

And then the implementation and the funding and so forth would be led through NVTC versus a city-hosted project, per se, in our capital plan.

Okay, thank you.

So glad to hear that we got responses. I think one thing that maybe GovOps might be interested in is the new request tracker. I know that we frequently direct people to use the current request tracker, which is a little laborious, frankly, to use. And so if there's a new one rolling out sometime next year, probably would be helpful for GovOps or someone else to engage in the customer service angle, because I know that is how we serve our constituents.

We can do that. We'll look to add that in early 27. Sounds good. Ms. Flynn, do you have another one?

No, but just the mention of GovOps made me remember. I guess my request on the board and commission work would just be that as that comes up or different boards or commissions are on the agenda, I think it would make sense if GovOps could just send a message to the liaison, like the council liaisons to those boards and commissions when those discussions are happening as kind of a heads up in case liaisons want to join for that. So that was all. Thanks.

That's a good idea. Any final questions on council priorities? Thank you all. Thank you. Council requests. Do we need final requests of Mr. Shields?

There's a lot of restraint here, Wyatt. I guess this is more maybe for Ms. Gillette. We recently had a dog biting incident in my neighborhood where a dog had bitten a police officer. I'm sorry, not a police officer, a mailman. He's a very beloved mailman in our community. We had lots of listserv emails going back and forth. But anyway, someone did reach out to me and said that our current policy on dog biting is not consistent with state code. So it might be a parking lot issue, but I would like if we could maybe take a look at this dog. This is the second incident that this dog had bitten someone. Um, and it's still walking around the neighborhood, you know, on a leash, but it's still in the, I was speaking with the postman the other day and postman said, I still see this. I just saw the dog today walking, you know, it's kind of traumatic. So he was bit, the post postman's bit in the face. So it was pretty traumatic. Um, anyway, so if you wouldn't mind, like maybe at some point to seeing, um, if there is, uh, you know, if we do have an issue with what our, um, code is and is it consistent with state code?

Of course.

Thank you.

Other council requests? So not a request, but I don't think we're gonna get to this. We're not gonna get to the schedule at the end of the night, but I think in light of the Virginia Village discussion where we're not gonna have a closed session on September 8th, I think the staff recommendation is that we actually cancel the work session on September 8th. And I know the clerk had sent out a message to confirm whether people were okay, but I thought I'd just use the time now to confirm we are okay canceling the September 8th work session altogether.

And per our policy, we canceled the agenda scheduling meeting as well.

That was going to be Wyatt's last meeting with us.

We're okay.

You're going to have to ask the council. We do have to ask the council anyway, so. We'll be around in City Hall, so you don't get to avoid us Wednesday morning.

Yeah, but he's not in that meeting.

Okay, so we are going to cancel September 8th because we don't have that closed session and the other items can get punted to later on in the schedule. And then, therefore, we'll cancel the mayor's meeting on Wednesday as well.

Okay.

I think that's it. So let's actually get on to business on the agenda now at 11.38 at night. Let's call the first item, please.

We have TRTO 26-20, Ordinance to Provide for Disclosure of Financial Interests by City Employees and Officials. And we have Deputy City Clerk Veronica Prince to present the staff report.

Good evening, Council. Let's see, this is a proposed ordinance to update and clarify requirements of certain positions to file financial filings at the discretion of Council, and it was reviewed at the work session on August 24th. The only update to the report since then is Mr. Egan had A request at the work session to review whether to require members of the retirement board to file a disclosure. And as noted in the report, we consulted with the pension administrator who did not recommend requiring the filing of noted safeguards in place for ethics and financial responsibility for the members. And so other than that, I'll just say this is before you for first reading and scheduling the public hearing. And I'm here for any questions.

Since I'm the one who asked the question about the retirement board, I'd like to state that I'm fine with the response. It was very comprehensive and the ethics and conflict of interest policy that currently is listed here I think is fine and they do not need to be covered. So I'm good.

Great. Any other questions for the deputy clerk? If not, I'll entertain a motion.

Madam Mayor, I move to grant first reading to TO 26-20, schedule public hearing and second reading for September 14th, 2026 and advertise the same according to law.

Is there a second?

Second.

It was Egan on the second. You can call roll, please.

Mr. Egan?

Yes.

Ms. Downs? Yes. Ms. Flynn? Yes. Mr. Snyder? Yes. And Mayor Hardy? Yes. Motion carries 5-0. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Call the next item, please.

Yes, we have TO 26-19 ordinance to amend the code of the city of Falls Church, Virginia. Chapter 36, streets, sidewalks, and other public places. Section 36-17, snow or ice removal to reflect authority granted to the city by the Commonwealth of Virginia.

All right, good evening, council. Here to present for your consideration this evening is step one in a three-step process that will bring the city's ordinance into compliance with state code and provide an enforcement mechanism for city staff to use for clearing sidewalks in the city. Step one for you this evening involves two modifications to section 36-17. So it modifies section A to reflect a uniform sidewalk clearing timeframe of 12 hours. And second, it removes Section B regarding fines which do not currently comply with state code. Step two involves requesting the General Assembly to modify State Code 15.2-2025 to provide authority in that section of state code to the City of Falls Church. Proposed changes will be included in the legislative agenda materials presented to council in October. And then step three would involve returning to council in the summer of 2027 to incorporate that authority into the city code. So pending a successful first reading tonight, our schedule is to return to council for public hearing and second reading September 14th. And with that, I'll take any questions you have.

Thank you. Any questions for Mr. Young? Mr. Snyder.

So in our work session, I think it was noted that by acting on this, if it's passed on, no, this is a resolution, or it's ordinance, okay, that if we pass it on second reading, we're in essence eliminating enforcement for this coming winter, which seems an odd outcome considering the public wants more enforcement.

So I think the challenge is the enforcement in our current city code doesn't comply with state code, so we're not able to use it. And so I think we went through a series of kind of options at the July 20th work session and proposed to take this kind of multi-step process to establish a new authority that the city can use and it is enforceable. So unfortunately, it's a couple steps for us to get there.

Yeah, I guess I'm not entirely comfortable with the outcome here. So I'll probably not vote for it. Thank you.

I think what you're hearing from Mr. Snyder is we all would love more enforcement ability. But based on the city attorney's assessment of what's actually in the books or available to us, we actually don't actually have the ability to find people. And so we need to go to the General Assembly for that. Other questions or comments?

Just one. Last week I commented about W&OD and the colors on the map, and this is a tweak, and not going to hold me up tonight, but I would like to see it clear where the sidewalks cross the W&OD that those are not, that there is no property there to cover those. But that can wait until second reading. That's not... It doesn't have to be in there tonight.

So to make sure I understand your request, do you'd like us to update the map on page three?

Yeah. So like where it comes up, where, if you look at where it crosses, um, the sidewalks cross, uh, the W and O D at Grove, uh, There's no house there. There's no, somebody has to be doing it. We don't have the resources, but we're also not going to be expecting the residents or the businesses to clear something that's not in front of their property.

Okay.

So I think those end up, I think it was green or whatever it is. We can talk about it, but it can wait until second reading.

Madam Mayor, one other thing. While I focused on enforcement a minute ago, there are other components which I think would make a more comprehensive approach to winter storms. Looking at our plowing on the streets, do we necessarily have to do curb to curb when the reality is that we keep piling snow back on walks, which owners have made every effort to comply with the law. better organizing volunteers or at least figuring out what organization is there, better sort of recommending to businesses, strongly recommending that they need to be clearing the sidewalks when they clear the parking lots. So where are the rest of the parts of this overall approach?

So I think this staff report was intended to focus on the code changes that we were presenting to you this evening. It wasn't necessarily intended to kind of be a comprehensive look at the city's overall kind of snow management activities for this fall. So that's why it's not in there.

Right. Pieces of it will come up in the discussion, but I haven't seen anything written down saying this is what we're going to do. And one other thing was cleaning the intersections that you'd shovel right up to the intersection with a three-foot wall. So these are the kinds of things that... I don't know if it's a follow-up report, but... These have been talked about, but I haven't seen any commitments.

I think we did outline a number of those activities in the July 20th work session. That was a more kind of comprehensive kind of look at some of this, and we talked about a number of the things that staff are proposing to do a little differently this upcoming winter. So we can kind of re-highlight those things for you. Thank you.

I think a key part of that was the proactive communication. Being a small city, we know who all the commercial property owners are and be able to proactively reach out and say, hey, here's our expectation. It's 12 hours after snowfall, you got to clear it and you better go get those contracts updated to include sidewalks. I think we'll go a long ways. And so if staff can proactively reach out in advance as well as proactively monitor during the storms rather than just wait for complaints while we don't have a fine as the enforcement mechanism. Hopefully we will get one after the General Assembly session that could help with this coming winter.

I think the point was we had a lot of discussion at that meeting, especially around what's good enough, what's not good enough. what the operational pieces are. That's not related. It doesn't belong in the ordinance because this is ordinance. Um, but it's, I think there was a lot of discussion and you were taking it back, but we never really said, okay, now what's, what's changed based on the feedback. And I think that might be helpful just to get an update.

One thing, I just, you know, recalling that conversation that Andy is referring to, I do recall, and I've seen our Director of Operations, Herb Holmes, speak with staff about these issues, about And I think staff has had training on kind of where to put the snow to try to avoid blocking the ADA ramps. And when sometimes on some streets like East Broad, There probably is no place to put the snow other than on the sidewalk, but on other streets, the majority of the streets, there is probably room in the pavement area for the snow to be stored there instead of the sidewalks. And I think our observation is that staff work hard to try to avoid that. So I think it's certainly on staff's mind. I know that sometimes in practice, in the rush to get it done, there are instances where it doesn't happen, but I know that there's an effort to not block the walkways.

Yeah, I think this is an example where we often say, like, if we are going to live by the policy of, like, prioritizing pedestrians and not just cars, this is one where it's really good to be pervasive and not just adding sidewalks and making sidewalks clear, but also during snow events. And so I trust that through the manager's office that is getting translated down to DPW ops and appreciate all the hard work those crews put in during those hours. Any final questions or I'll take a motion.

Madam Mayor, I move to grant first reading to TO 26-19, scheduled public hearing and second reading for September 14, 2026, and advertise the same according to law.

Is there a second? Second.

Is Egan on the second?

Can you call roll, please?

Mr. Egan?

Yes.

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

Abstain.

Mayor Hardy. Yes. Motion carries four to zero with one abstention.

Thank you. Okay, I think we are on to consent. This was reviewed in work session last week. This is the rate change for the CSA agreement with Fairbanks County. Does anyone like to remove anything from consent? Otherwise, I'll take a motion to move the consent items. Item.

I move to approve the consent agenda.

Is there a second? Second.

Call roll. Mr. Aiken?

Yes.

Ms. Downs? Yes. Ms. Flynn? Yes. Mr. Snyder? Yes. Mayor Hardy? Yes. Motion carries five to zero. Thank you.

We are not going to do the schedule tonight. Let's move on to minutes before we go into closed session. Anybody have comments or edits to the three sets of minutes? Anybody review the three sets of minutes?

You can do them all together if you want to as well.

Anyone have edits or changes?

I skimmed them very quickly. I'm happy to move for the approval of the May 11th, 2026, July 24th, 2026, and May 27th, 2025 minutes. Is there a second?

Second. Downs on the second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed or abstentions? Minutes. Three sets of minutes are approved. Thank you, Ms. Flynn and Ms. Downs. If there's no other committee reports, if we can just go into... People ready to go into closed session? Okay, I'm going to read the motion. Upon a motion made by? Bounds. And seconded by?

Hagan.

And passed by a vote of the City Council. Council went into closed session pursuant to Virginia Code 2.2-3711A8, 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 discuss the Virginia Village Affordable Housing RFP. Mr. Agin.

Yes.

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

Yes.

Underhill's not here. Hardy, yes. We are going in at 11.52 p.m. I'll see you on the other side. Aaron, have the link. Aaron, have the link. Okay. I'm going to read the motion. Upon a motion made by... Downs. And seconded by... Agin. And passed by a vote of the City Council, Council reconvene in open session. Mr. Agin.

Yes.

Downs. Yes. Flynn. Yes. Snyder.

Yes.

Underhill's not here, Hardy's here. We are coming out of closed session at 12.36 a.m. now. This is the certification. Upon a motion made by... Downs. And seconded by? Snyder. And passed upon affirmative roll call vote in open session, it was certified that one, only public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements, and two, only such public business matters as were identified in the motion by which the closed meeting was convened, heard, discussed, or considered in the closed session or meeting by the city council. Agin.

Yes.

Downs. Yes. Flynn. Yes. Snyder? Yes. Is there any final business on the agenda? If not, we are adjourned for Mr. Shields' final meeting. Aww.

Well, his mouth is full of something.

How fitting. Good night, everyone. Happy September.