Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

All right. We'll call the Wednesday, February 18th, 2026 meeting of the Foster City Planning Commission to order. Uh, Mr. Trainer, can you call the role, please? Mr. Pollinsky, here. Mr. Duncan, here. Mr. Kresner, here. Chair Com, I'm here. Mr. Stevens here. Miss Freellander here. And Mr. Kinsky here. Thank you. We have Corm.

Okay, great. And we have a a pretty long agenda tonight, but hopefully we can move through it quickly. Uh, is there a motion to adopt the agenda? I move to adopt the meeting agenda, Madam Chair. Second. All in favor? I

I Okay. No speaker series tonight. Uh, do we have any petitions this evening? Yes, the uh village preservation improvement society wrote the commission in support of a uh proposed uh zoning text amendment regarding uh tree canopy. Uh that'll come before the planning commission for a public hearing at your uh next meeting, March 3rd or 4th. Uh whichever whichever date that is, the 1st of uh March. Great. Thank you. Uh I did see that. And no inerson petitions tonight. Correct. So yeah, no petitions.

Okay. Okay. So I think that takes us to our action items. The first one is the um fellow's property park naming public hearing. Uh and who's giving the staff report on that? Great. Thank you. Okay. Good evening. Welcome, Miss Young.

Thank you. Uh good evening. Thank you again for your time back here tonight to discuss the naming of the parkland at South Oak Street. The reminder of the criteria so we can name it after the ecological, historical or geographical features of the park uh or to commemorate an individual service or to help identify um the facility's purpose or use. Uh so that's the criteria that we're working with. In your staff report, you'll see what has changed since the last one. Um, we noted the comments from your last commiss your work session as long as well as the answer to the question about the specimen trees and we've also included the uh names that were turned in up until the point that the staff report was submitted. We have about 19 that were turned in since then. Uh we've also visited with the recreation and parks advisory board since then. I have their recommendations as well if you'd like me to share those. Um but yeah, happy to have any discussion or listen to any feedback you have and hope to um get some name suggestions from you all.

Okay, great. Uh and this is a public hearing. So should I go ahead and open the hearing now before our discussion? Okay, so I'll open the public hearing on this item. Is there anyone here to speak on this item? Seeing none, we'll close the public hearing. Uh any discussion on the names that were provided in the report or would we like to hear the names from the wreck and parks board? Hear their name? Yep. So the um there was both name recommendations and kind of recommended guidelines. So their recommended guidelines was to not name it after a person or a family.

Uh to not name it after Oak Street Elementary, so not using the word Oak just to not have confusion with the school and the park location. Uh and the last uh recommendation was to name it after the natural or ecological features of the park. That was their recommendation on uh how it moves forward. And then they had three actual names that they wanted to put forward. It's Firefly Grove, Firefly Forest Park, and Hidden Harvest Park. Great. I think Hidden Harvest.

Hidden Harvest. I think their um recommendations on guidelines align with some of our discussion from our last meeting particularly the first and third um and I agree with them on the avoiding the word oak personally. Uh any other thoughts or discussion on this? I think will we need a motion and further recommendation? Yeah, so the we've traditionally captured the planning commission's recommendation in the motion. So, we've uh Amy and I worked on this motion just to kind of capture what the last discussion was at the the work session since there were no kind of specific names being uh thrown out there, but you know, I had two.

That's right. Education Park or Knowledge Park knowledge park. Sure. Yeah, that's right. Um so, you know, we can definitely amend the motion or um that that's what I would recommend. Uh otherwise the uh anything else will be captured in in the minutes but but the motion would probably be the most kind of formal recommendation the planning commission can make. Okay. Thank you. Uh any other thoughts Mr. Duncan? Thank you. Have a question and then a comment. What are the hours of operation for the park going to be? It would be the same as all the other most of the other parks which is just the sun up to sun down.

Sun up to sun down. So uh do we have any uh sense of when the fireflies come out at said park? I don't.

That leads me to uh my comment. I I think I probably uh should have said something at the last meeting. I thought I I did, but I don't I don't suppose I did strongly enough if I said anything. I'm I'm coming down on the something to do with Barb Cra name park uh which was in the staff report. There were several uh suggestions. I liked the greenscape park named after the gardening and outdoors uh store that Barb ran here for many years. But for those of us uh in a certain age bracket, uh Barb Cra was, you know, a very significant factor in so many things that made the city what it is today. I think it would be appropriate to name this park after her or something that evokes her. Most of us who remember Barb remember Greenscape, her business, which was where the Whole Foods is right now. uh and took our kids there at Christmas time when she had, you know, Christmas displays up. It was it was one of those, you know, when you're in Falls Church, do these things. Uh she was on that do things list. And, you know, anybody who's planted a tree or flowers in Freddy Park, uh probably was down on their hands and knees grubbing around with Barb. And I just want uh to use what what little platform I may have here to suggest that uh something uh in honor of her memory would be appropriate. Uh Firefly is cute. I mean that's a cute name, but um if it uh is going to be a park that closes at dark, at least in Tennessee where I come from, the fireflies don't come out until dark basically. And I don't think we want to encourage necessarily a lot of people to be

hanging around in and around the park after dark. So I would um I would I would go against that if I had uh my choice. But thanks for all the effort. It was a great and appreciate the staff report uh again adding the crucial uh factoid that we paid $4.7 million to preserve this land, whatever we're going to call it. uh which is uh you know a very significant investment in open space and trees and plants and all the good things that are in the space uh that is to come. Thanks. Thank you. Any other thoughts? Yeah.

Did Did you want to go? No, I don't have anything.

Okay. Thank you. Um, I uh I wanted to say that I was part of the discussion with the parks and wreck or the Rex and Park board and um I I fully support their recommendation moving forward that it's not I appreciate um Barbara Graham. I did not know her personally. I do know that she gave a lot to the city, but in the interest of maintaining no names um moving forward for the city and the natural features of the park, I think um really kind of speak to what that park is is for. So, thank you. All right. Go ahead, Brent.

Since we're being asked for our two cents, I mean, I appreciate uh Mr. Duncan's concern about sort of, you know, saying it's a place to go see fireflies, but technically it's closed. There's some validity to that concern. You know, I don't know how serious, you know, a problem that would ever turn out to be. But, I mean, the name is cute, the Firefly name. Um, yeah, I don't know. I always like geographical names. I guess those didn't those weren't as popular. I feel like, you know, identifying kind of where it is in the city, you know, can be helpful and or some other geographical feature that, you know, kind of orients you to where it is. I guess they didn't like I guess there was too much already named Oak. I don't think people would confuse the park with the school. I mean, they're right across the street from each other. I don't think you'd get lost if you if you were trying to find it on your GPS or something. I think that's kind of silly, but um so something like that, you know, that kind of identifies that it's next to the school. I don't know. There's some logic there to that. So, I don't know if that should be completely discounted. Um, you know, but but yeah, I don't know. I mean, it's, you know, at the end of the day, I think whatever we pick, any of these names, I think are totally fine and people will hopefully get a little bit of enjoyment. It's a small space, you know, but hopefully people will get enjoyment of it regardless of the name. I mean, you know, identifing it after a person that was important to the city, I mean, that's also valid. Um, it's hard, you know, it's hard to build a consensus to find a name. I'm sure if you really pulled the whole city, you'd get even, you know, every every resident would have an opinion, you know, um, about what it should be, but I mean, the names that have been generally suggested, I think, are probably fine. But, um, there's a council that makes the final call.

That's correct. Yeah. Yeah. With recommendations from That's why they get paid the big bucks. They'll Yeah. They'll have to sort they'll have to sort through the uh sort sort sort through this list and come to come to a conclusion based on our input. But I think we've raised valid points either way. So I'll just add my voice to the course that generally all the names are fine. Um but I'd vote for a geographical name just so people can know where it is without having to look it up. All right. Any other thoughts? Um you don't have to, but

I I don't have a strong opinion. I I do um uh the the comment about fireflies uh not coming out till after dusk when the park is closed I think is a pretty interesting point I hadn't thought about but we should probably take that into we don't want to encourage people to go looking for firefights after the park is closed. Uh um I do like the hidden harvest. I I I I also suspect my I don't have a strong opinion, but again uh not naming it after individuals I think is a is a good practice. Uh so uh either the where it's located quite frankly I thought Fellows Park uh which is what it's been known as what we've been calling it all along is probably a good starting point uh if we're not going to call it Oak Street Park.

So all right thank you. Any other thoughts Mr. Pinsky?

I'm gonna yell because I don't think this is working. So, um, is there any indication of which direction the council is leaning? Have they looked at it yet? Anybody have thought? Uh, the only thing that the council has really talked about is leaning away from naming it for an individual because of you never know what's in the history there. So, um, other than that, there really hasn't been, I think, a strong opinion voiced any direction and we really are interested in hearing from everybody. Although, personally, I like parking with Parkface. That was on the list a couple times. Yeah. Somebody have fun. All right.

I don't get it either. Uh, any other thoughts from you? Okay. Okay. So, I think we do have a motion that's been drafted by staff. Um, I'm hearing a general support for this theme, local geography, natural features. So, is there anybody who would like to make the motion or does somebody want to make an amended motion?

Could you roll the motion up where Oh, here we are. Okay. Does it include placebased names that are specific to the marks local geography natural features? I don't think we need to choose a specific name tonight. I think we can make a motion that we our recommendation is that the name include placebased names that are specific to the park's local geography or natural features. So the suggestion of oak something which seemed to be a contender does that

do you want to include some examples that hold up in this motion? I mean I can't imagine a name that's more specific to the park's lo locality than Oak Street Park or Red Oak Park. I think that was the specimen tree that was identified, right? Oh, yeah. And is a is a specimen tree judged by age or the staff notes said that one there's one specimen tree there and it's the only one of the age. The others are specimen trees that have been planted since we bought the land. But that's

so they were identified after the we purchased the land. So the one that was originally there was there before we purchased it and the other ones were identified after. And that but as to how which trees are picked as specimen trees. I senior specimen tree according to your notes is is an oak tree. Is that is that correct? This was copied and pasted from what um the staff gave me that knew better. Um I won't hold you but that was whatever is in the staff report is accurate. Um red oak. Yeah, it was oak of some sort was this the oldest. I think there are multiple specimen trees on that site, but I think the largest oldest was the red.

We have a long agenda tonight. I'm not going to chew it on. I I suppose there's nothing in this motion that would preclude council from choosing Oak Street something. Oak Park, Red Oak Park. No. Yeah. No, I think that that would be one of the names that would be recommended by still in the running. If it's still in the running to call it Oak Street something, then I agree with Mr. Kraner and Mr. Palinsky. Okay. Did you want to make the motion or did somebody else want to make the motion or an one? I'll I'll make it. I'll make Okay,

I'll make the motion. Yeah, since I kind of rambled, but generally I I mean what I didn't really say at the end was I agree with the motion. Placebased name and local geography. That's kind of what I was getting at. Um so I'll I'll move as as prepared. Um, so in in as far as the uh parkland naming project um for the property of the of what's known as the fellows tract, I would move that we recommend to the city council that the chosen name for the fellows park property include placebased names that are specific to the park's local geography within the city or natural features. Great. Thank you. Is there a second? Second.

Okay. Any discussion on the motion? Would anybody like to make any amendments? Okay. And I think uh Mr. Sher, we can do a roll call vote. Mr. Pollinsky, yes. Mr. Duncan, yes. Mr. Kresner, yes. Mr. Stevens, yes. Miss Freedellander, yes. Mr. Kinsky, yes. And Chair Kle, yes. Thank you. Motion passes. Okay. Thank you. Thank you all for your time. Thank you. Great. Thank you so much. Um, that brings us to our next action item, which is the Fellows Park subdivision plot public hearing.

All right, welcome. Hello all. Um, the item before you is a request for the plan commission to take final action on the preliminary and final plat of subdivision to consolidate seven lots into one single lot to construct public park on the subject property. Um, the preliminary plat was approved in June 2025 and the work session was held in December 2025. Um, in this motion, it's capturing again the approval for the preliminary and final plat. Um, staff recommends approval and if approved tonight, construction would begin April 1st.

All right, great. Thank you. Um, so this is a public hearing, so I will go ahead and open um this item to the public. Is there anybody here to speak on this item tonight? Okay. See, seeing none, I'll close the public hearing. Uh, any discussion on this? Just a question. Maybe I missed it in the reading. Where did we land on the handicapped access uh discussion that we had last time we talked about this?

Sure. Yeah. Th this one is for the plat but for the recommendations taken from planning commission last meeting about the site plan. Um staff met internally with DPW and reckoning parks and discuss a lot of the items that plane commission brought up. Um the crosswalk at Fellows Court and Oak Street. Uh there's internal work group that's looking along looking at safety along South Oak Street in particular. Um, and that item was given to that group to look at, uh, cuz it wasn't on their radar. Um, and I don't have updates on what's happening with that, um, yet so far. I know it's it's a combined effort between plane staff and C and C uh, DPW. Um and also in the meeting uh reckon parks I believe said they would observe patterns of visitors to the park and determined on you know if there is a desire line to go from the corner of the park inward where there no where there is no path if that becomes a typical thing they see they would be happy to mulch um that trail which was another recommendation as well.

Okay. So both items under some kind of fairly active study. Correct. Okay. Thank you. All right. Any discussion or questions?

Just another Yeah, just to drill down a little little bit more fine grain on that. So they're thinking about I mean the crosswalk is one thing. I get it. Crosswalks sound simple. You know, I get it. They're not always simple. I mean you think it's just paint but it's the curb ramps and so I get that and the expensive off of that. I think the you know so you know that is a common sense thing but I know I know it's more complicated to just add it if the budget is tight I get that but the other side um we were talking about the access um you know and the fact that we wanted to maintain you know what was like a again a deteriorated hazardous you know broken up asphalt you know decades old driveway as like a parking pad for park maintenance vehicles and you know not improve that. I mean, I think that was a safety concern. It was a hazard. I mean, I think we were pretty at least I know I was pretty adamant about that part of it. So, you know, was there at least some consensus from staff that that was like lowhanging fruit that that could easily be done?

I believe I don't know if Al's on the call, but I believe that Al has his hand raised actually. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. There people online. Go on. Yeah. Go ahead, Al. Okay. Yes, that was uh the issue was discussed uh uh with staff and it was decided that we would not have a parking uh area at that location because any invitation of uh of an entrance to the park has to be ADA accessible. So, we're just going to pick up the asphalt. The old asphalt, the decrepit asphalt is going to get picked up all the way from Oak Street up to the top of the park and then seated most then seated. Ah,

sounds good. Yeah, there's a current pad at the very top of the site that would now be the new place for city vehicles. Correct. Yeah, just to Yeah, there's a m there's a maintenance entrance off of Fellow's Court for the maintenance vehicles. And and just to clarify, is that a decision made already to mulch that path or I think there was a suggestion that it was going to be observed and then a decision would be

correct. The latter it's a it hasn't been decided that's going to happen. It is something that has been brought up and if it's observed that that's a desired line that people would like to take, they would mulch the path. But as of now, that's not the plan immediately.

So I I would I would suggest that probably chicken and an egg thing where if it's not improved, you're not going to see the traffic. If it is improved, you will see the traffic. Um so it probably to observe it, you're you just won't see the traffic because you haven't improved it. Uh well I I hate to b in again but uh that is the issue. If you improve it you have to make it ADA accessible. Any entrance to the park that is um an entrance to the park has to be ADA accessible. That would preclude that makes it very hard for us to do so because of the slope of that area. And so consequently, we do not want to invite people through that area as a official entrance. So we do not want to improve it at this point. If it becomes a a a walk-in path, it'll happen uh in a natural way from people going in.

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Atoga. Was there something you wanted to add, Mr. Z? Uh yes, thank you. Uh this is the subdivision plat. I think the site plan they need to to address all the issues. So, it's not uh accepted yet. That means we're waiting for another submission to decide on the site plan, but tonight is only for the the subdivision. Subdivision plan. Thank you for the reminder. Thank you. Yeah, I appreciate that. So, are there any questions from the planning commission on the subdivision? No. Okay. Any questions over here? I mean, no. I mean, I think we I I know right now is kind of in limbo as far as our role in the site plan. So, I don't know if we're even going to see the site plan again,

and I understand our I understand the point of the the action tonight, but since it is the only thing we have, sometimes you use the leverage that you have. So, so, you know, procedurally you need the subdivision to occur. So, the point is, you know, we're asking the questions about the site plan because that's the action that we have before us and they're related. And I'm not saying we're not going to approve the subdivision or in this case kind of, you know, the the consolidation, but it's what we have. So that's why we're asking because some of the things were of concern, at least to me, um because they just seem like common sense stuff that we were sort of in the name of value engineering, um you know, either not paying attention to or kind of putting off into the future to the detriment, you know, of of the city. So So that was our concern. Um, so if as long as staff I think acknowledges that, um, and maybe provides us with an update, you know, a courtesy update of the site plan, I think that would be great. Um, and I know I'd feel a lot better voting for this subdivision if we, you know, were given an update of the site plan process as a courtesy. We don't have a formal role in the site plan, but um, later on when the resubmission comes in, I'd love to see how it progresses.

Yes, understood. I think uh the first submission basically got denied uh because they they couldn't address all the comments within the 40 days. So we are waiting for another one will be started like 30 days review period. If the if it's the you know the planning commission's perview want to to see it again we can definitely try to bring it in front of you again. I think there's definitely interest from the commission. Yeah, that but remember that will be like a 30-day review instead of 40 days. So, we'd have to have the timing would need to work out. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Sing. Okay.

Okay. Would anybody like to make um the staff has prepared a motion? I think it's Yes. Thank you. I'm happy to do that. Okay. Mr. Stevens,

whereas the planning commission finds that the proposed subdivision application meets all applicable requirements of the city's subdivision regulations, which is chapter 38, and zoning ordinance, chapter 48, as they are currently applied. And the proposed subdivision is consistent with the comprehensive plan. And whereas the proposed subdivision application is to consolidate the existing seven lots into one lot to construct a public park located at 500 South Oak Street. And now therefore, I move that the planning commission grant approval of prelim preliminary and final plats of subdivision to consol consolidate lots one through seven into one lot.

Thank you. Is there a second? Uh Mr. Ginsky with a second. Uh could we have a roll call vote, please? Mr. Trainer. Mr. Pollinsky. Yes. Mr. Duncan? Yes. Mr. Kraner? Yes. Mr. Stevens? Yes. Miss Freedellander? Yes. Mr. Kinsky? Yes. And Cher Kant? Yes. Thank you. Motion passes. Great. Thank you, Mr. Gar. Okay, I think that brings us to the comp plan chapter 8 update public hearing. Welcome, Miss Larie.

Hi. Thank you. Uh, Jack, is it actually okay if I share my screen? I made some last minute edits to the PowerPoint. Oh my gosh. See the motion? Mhm. Yeah, I think it is. Yes. Reviewing that.

All right. Hello. Thank you for having me. Uh I am here for the update to chapter 8 of the comprehensive plan. titled community building blocks uh community facilities, infrastructure, utilities and public services. Uh today we are um requesting the planning commission hold a public hearing and make a recommendation to city council on the updated draft of chapter 8. We previously were here for a work session on January 7th of this year with um a very similar version of the draft. As an update, the updates that were made to the draft since you have last seen it um are that the vision statement was revised based on the planning commission's guidance adding references to public utilities and increased readability. Uh there was additional context added to how the schools serve as community spaces to both sections 2.3 on community centers and section 2.6 on schools. We also added additional photos of school buildings and um updated a few other photos throughout the chapter. Uh we added references to the national joint utilities notification systems system which is the system used by telecommunication companies and Dominion to communicate about uh completing projects um and therefore removing cables and removing the double poles. Uh in addition to adding references to that system, we also added strategies uh for the city to advocate for better use of that system.

Uh and that was added to both sections 5.1 on telecommunications and 5.2 on electricity. We also added some additional language expanding on how the chapter will be used particularly in a budgetary context. That's early on in the chapter on chap page four. uh anything that has been added since your previous session is highlighted in gray in the chapter. All right. Uh and quickly to go through the proposed vision statement, uh the changes are in red. So, civic infrastructure and services serve as building blocks for a healthy thriving community. To build for the future, the city of Falls Church must maintain and evolve its built facilities, public utilities, and government services to support a high quality of life and prepare for growth, demographic shifts, and a changing climate. Facility design and service delivery should prioritize accessibility, efficiency, and innovation, and reflect a commitment to continuous improvements. Together, these investments should honor the city's unique identity and heritage and stand as an enduring source of community pride. All right. So, to quickly summarize the process to date, uh as I know you've seen at several points, uh we started this looking at this chapter in March of 2024 reviewing best practices and um the previous chapter. We followed that with kickoffs with planning commission, public utilities and city council and then began doing our uh partner interviews and preparing the first draft. After that we moved into uh 3 months of public engagement where we presented the draft to city council, planning commission, public utilities and various other boards and commissions as well as community engagement events.

Based on the feedback we heard from that community engagement period, we revised the chapter and produced a second draft, which is what we presented to you on uh January 7th at the uh previous work session we attended. We then took that same draft uh as well as the matrix uh with the planning commission's comments and our responses to city council on February 2nd. And that brings us to today, uh, February 18th, where we are, um, requesting a public hearing and, uh, recommendation to council, which, uh, if that goes well, will be going to a public hearing with city council on March 9th. Um, to keep this moving, I will, uh, leave it there. Thank you.

Great. Thank you, Miss Larie. Uh, so this is a public hearing, so I will go ahead and open this item to the public. We'll open the hearing. Is there anyone here to speak on this item? Okay, seeing none, we'll close the public hearing. Uh, any questions or discussion from planning commissioners? Mr. Duncan, did you want to Oh, I I thought you were rolling up your sleeves to make your comments. Thank you. Excuse me just for a second. Uh could you flip to the first page that has the picture of city hall and then later in the document there's another picture of city hall

uh in the are you talking about in the chapter document or in the uh slideshow. Okay. Sorry. Oh, no worries. When you don't have when you don't have paper, it's all the same. Um, the city hall. Oh, it's on page 16, Jack. That picture, Mr. Duncan.

I like the first picture better. I mean, you know, it's nice in some way to know what city hall looked like in the 1980s, but this is the document that carries us forward for the next lumpy years. And so, I would vote personally to put a new picture from a distance of the new city hall. So, just to match up with the new picture that you have of the library and the new pictures that you have of the other municipal buildings. Just a cosmetic thing, I know. But um in the chapter on school facilities, I'm sorry I don't didn't have the page number, but yes. Um this good uh good information here. The chart is the chart on the next page that shows capacity of the buildings. And yes, there you go. Just to call the public's attention to the fact that uh each of the school facilities that we have are below capacity, in some cases well below capacity, which is good news. shows that somebody around here has been keeping up with things and building accordingly to accommodate a growing city. Uh there was a sentence perhaps it was on the next page or right before that that I didn't quite um no I think it was right after that evaluation of needs. Yes, that sentence. Long-term school facilities will require

existing capacity. Long-term school facilities will require existing capacity. I didn't really understand what that meant. I seem to be a little lost in it, too. I think that you think there might be a word missing or a a phrase that I'm not quite sure what long-term school facilities will require. Yeah. I don't know where I don't know how to finish that sentence. And so maybe you could go back in your notes and see what the original additional capacity. I don't know. I think additional got cut. Additional instead of existing is that so sub out existing and put in addition. The only thing that fits. Yeah.

Okay. Well, thank you, Mr. Stevens. I wasn't clever enough to figure out what what might have been there, but I don't know if it's true or not, but Yeah. I don't know if I I'm not sure I agree with it, but at least I understand it. Okay. go back and figure.

That's good. Thank you very much. Uh the other one was under um the Washington gas uh chapter or section public utilities and it was just a uh I think just a missing a missing word gas which had us appealing to or doing something with or for Washington but I think it meant to say Washington ass. Is it popping up or not? Is there another page after that? City's next steps maybe. Sorry, I was trying to read this on my telephone screen, so I didn't write down the line numbers. Well, if you can't find it right off the hand, I'll I'll see if I can dig back and find it. Um,

I think it's in the first sentence of the second paragraph. I first sentence of the I see where you uh today annual meetings are not held with Washington. Yes, that's it. Thank you very much. Yes, that's exactly right. Corrected.

And finally, uh, Mr. Kensky has has several times brought up the uh matter of uh undergrounding utilities and there's a nice picture that you have here of really a god-awful example of how too many wires on you know an existing pole is really an eyes an eyes sore. There you go. That's that's a that's a damning picture, isn't it? Here we are worried about every little thing in false church and we just sort of take for granted that these spiderw webs are hanging over our heads all the time. Uh this is not so much a comment on the content of uh of the document, which I think is good, but it's just a reminder that, you know, maybe we need a new strategy for dealing with this problem. Maybe we have the five worst cases in the city of ugly utility wires and see if we can shame the utilities and cable companies into doing something about those. And so over a period of some number of decades we might it the document says that we have an expectation of undergrounding in some circumstances. And I I would just urge us all staff and planning commission and council too to try to spend a little time thinking about this every year so that we might move the ball down the field uh by calling attention to situations like this which is well illustrated in the document. Anyway, thanks. Of all the important things that we do, uh, we staff, we city, uh, it's it's, uh, strikes me that, uh, you know, we've done our very best to try to keep up with growth and modern standards and so forth and have done, you know, an okay job with city hall. It's got its uh, weak spots as we all know. That's

not maybe what we might hoped it would have been. Uh same with the library, although I think the library probably scores a solid B, maybe a B+ on the scale. City Hall, gentleman C, maybe C plus. Um it's uh a reminder that uh you know, we need the same sort of sustained attention on the facilities that that the public uh uses and that the staff uses. as uh the attention that we shower upon the school facilities which are as noted earlier in terms of capacity uh keeping up with modern times very well uh since I was involved in some of the work that got all that done. I'm partly guilty. Lety always would remind me that we needed to do more for city hall. And my point was, well, we need to do something in our lifetimes about city hall because just dithering over it endlessly uh is not a good idea. But this chapter does a good job of calling attention to the fact that uh you know, we have some work left to do, especially as it concerns. And finally, uh, the property yard, the situation up there, the photos that you've got in here of, you know, box cars and temporary buildings. I mean, it really, it's not up to our standards. And I think the language that you have there uh, opens the door sufficiently to consider the Gordon Road area for a combined property, yard, and public safety use. At least I hope that's how I read it. That's how I want it to to to be memorialized in this document because I think we ought to have some serious discussions about whether making more room in city hall for current staff by moving public safety up to a combined metro complex

that would include the property yard at the Gordon Road area is something that we should spend some time on. Anyway, thanks very much for all your hard work. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Duncan. Uh, any other comments or questions? No. Mr. Ginsky,

I I'll just follow up on Mr. Duncan's uh comments about the uh telecommunications. Um I I'm assuming that the city right now or municipalities in general in Virginia have very little leverage in terms of undergrounding requirements and that's the reason it's a it's not it's not very forceful to say you know we are encouraging concurrent undergrounding uh with the uh power lines and I understand that the where I do think we have a little leverage And um you added a good paragraph here about the um national joint utilities notification system. Um but it is somewhat in my mind uh passive just to acknowledge that there needs to be communication. Um, if the lawyers uh allow, I think we need to be a little bit more forceful to say tying um the uh removal of the double poles and the cables to rem renewal of the franchise agreements. Um, and I don't know if that's uh feasible or not, but there just just to say that Dominion has to communicate with the telecommunications companies. There's there's no there there to say they have to communicate and the telecommunications companies have a legal requirement to move the cables and Dominion has a legal requirement to pull down the pole. the double polls. I think that would be a little bit more forceful statement if we could if we could add that if if that's

a legally sound thing to say. But right now it's simply saying Dominion has to tell the telecommunications companies and then it sounds like the telecommunications companies can say thank you very much um and not do anything the way it's written. But my guess is that we have a little bit more legal standing with our franchise agreements to require them to actually within one year or 6 months or 3 months to actually move the cables and Dominion within a year or 6 months to actually pull the poles down. So, I would encourage a little bit more proactive language there in that paragraph if that's possible. That's it. Thank you. we can uh look into uh seeing if we can give it a little bit more teeth and and talking to Cindy Master about um the franchise agreements and what language we can use to to try to um yeah again get

and you might not have the answer to this but do we know the franchise agreements were on the agenda probably 6 months ago and then they were pulled off the agenda and we haven't seen anything come back. Do you know when we'll see those franchise agreements again? Uh I do not. Um I haven't gotten an update, but I can uh ask and and see if if we have a timeline on I actually think that's where we have our our leverage. So it would be good to know when that's going to happen. Thanks.

Great. Thanks, Mr. Kinsky. Any other thoughts, questions, comments? No. Well, I just I just want to compliment you and Emily and everyone else who worked on this over a very long period of time. I think it's been about a year and a half roughly from the scoping. So, this is this document is the result of a ton of research and um interviewing I think people across staff and it's a lot of community engagement, very proactive community engagement. And I remember seeing you all tableabling um before one of our meetings uh at various locations. Um and I I think you've been really responsive to all of the feedback um that we've given you throughout this process. I am always impressed by how um quickly you were able to kind of incorporate the suggestions that we make here into the final document. So I just want to say thank you for all of that hard work. Um and I hope that this document, as Mr. Duncan said is one that will take us into the future um across a lot of different realms of really important public services. Um so any other final comments or questions? No. If not, would somebody like to make the motion? The motion is quite long. I believe the motions on our comprehensive plan chapters have gotten a bit longer recently. Um, which you know get your take a deep breath every everyone.

I want to give my all for the staff by trying to get through it, but I'm not sure. So, proposed motion is TR24-28. That's correct. All right. That's Do it, Mr. Duncan? Yeah, I will.

All right. Thank you. if you'll allow me. If I can't make it across the finish line, pick me up and carry me like at the Olympics. Resolution to amend the city of false church comprehensive plan to update chapter 8 community building blocks, community facilities, public utilities, and government services. Whereas, Virginia Code section 15.2223 22223 requires that the city have a comprehensive plan for the city that considers among other things estimations of the annual prospective operating costs for such facilities and any revenues including tax revenues that may be generated by such facilities. And whereas chapter 8 of the city's comprehensive plan, community building blocks, community facilities, infrastructure, utilities, and public services, provides the city council and city staff with updated valuable information regarding the facilities and utilities of the city on which to base planning decisions. And whereas section 17.06 06 of the city charter gives the city council the authority to grant final approval to comprehensive plan changes previously approved by the planning commission. And whereas section 15.2 2228 of the state code also gives the city council the authority to grant final approval to comprehensive plan changes previously approved by the planning commission. And whereas following a properly advertised public hearing held on February 18th, 2026, the planning commission adopted amendments to chapter 8, community building blocks, community facilities, infrastructure, utilities, and public services, and recommended final approval by council. And whereas the amendments to chapter 8, community building blocks, community facilities, infrastructure, utilities, and public services were developed with substantial public engagement. It included an up-to-date project web page, tableabling events at the false church farmers market, the library book sale,

and before a planning commission meeting, a presentation at a city employee town hall, and review by the city's advisory boards and commissions. And whereas the amendments to chapter 8, community building blocks, community facilities, infrastructure, utilities, and public services, identifies future needs for the city's government facilities and services, public safety, city utilities, and third party utilities based on current conditions and demographic projections. Now therefore, be it resolved by the planning commission of the city of false church, Virginia one, chapter 8, community building blocks, community facilities, infrastructure, utilities, and public services attached here to is hereby adopted by the planning commission as an updated as an update to the city's comprehensive plan replacing the version of chapter 8 that was adopted in 2005. and two that the planning commission recommends that the city council grant final approval of the updated chapter 8 community building blocks, community facilities, infrastructure, utilities, and public services.

Thank you, Mr. Dun. Should be a quote um the open quote mark after chapter 8 before community that last community building blocks. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Dun. And I I said update to the city's comp plan rather than updated. I think that's I think it's just update. All right, that's all I got. Okay. Thank you. Is there a second? I'll second. All right. Thank you. Any discussion on the motion? Okay. Uh I think we can have a roll call vote, please. Mr. Trainer. Mr. Pinsky. Yes. Mr. Duncan. Yes. Mr. Kraner. Yes. Mr. Stevens. Yes, Miss Freedellander. Yes, Mr. Kinsky. Yes, Chair Cole.

Yes. Thank you. The motion passes. Thank you so much, Miss Lurivan. Congrats on almost getting there. Thank you. And we'll work and to you too, Miss Basmore. I see you online. Thank you. We'll work on short the uh motions if possible for the next one. Yeah. All right. It's a long one. Yeah. Yeah. I've asked uh in the past about that because the city council meetings they they don't involve such lengthy motions. So a lot of times they just get by referring to the TR, you know. So yeah, that's good. Good point.

I do like documenting the reasoning or the rationale and affirming our support for the reasoning, but take point taken, Mr. Stevens. Okay. Uh that brings us to our minutes. I I noticed one error that I think Mr. um trainer already corrected. He did. Yeah. Wasn't the copy. Oh, there was just uh the the there was a a copy paste error. Yeah. Yes. I didn't see anything else. Can we can do we have to do these individually or can we if if there's any Did anybody catch any other issues with the with the minutes? Nope. Can we move them all together?

Okay. Madam Chair, I move to adopt the draft the minutes as drafted for the meetings of January 7th, January 14th, and February 4th, 2026. Thank you. I'll second that. Joe, unless you have question. I would I would normally abstain. I'll have to break it since I wasn't here, but Oh, that's right. You Okay. You weren't here on the fourth. That's a good point. Supporting them all. You want to do the Well, I mean, just for the record, I don't think there's anything like illegal about voting to approve minutes where you weren't in the meeting. No, it's a custom.

So, just Yeah. Right. It's if you don't feel comfortable, that's totally up to you. But just just in case anyone's afraid that No, no. That's just just not for anybody if they're wondering. It's not there's nothing illegal doing that. Um if you you can watch the film you could have watched it or even if you didn't if you feel comfortable that you're you know the minutes appear accurate nothing in there seemed unusual to you can adopt the minutes. Okay. All right. Thank you. Is there a second then? I think did you second? Yeah. I'll second. Mr. Pollinsky second. Okay. Uh all in favor? I I All right. I'm being quieter but yeah I

Okay. Thank you all. Uh and thank you Mr. Trainer. Those were very detailed. Yeah, really really helpful record of the discussion. So thank you for the public and for us. All right, that brings us to our work session. We're running a little ahead of schedule. Um it's hard to believe.

That is hard to believe. Uh so the first item is the CIP fiscal year 27 to 32 work session. Welcome. Thank you. How are you, Miss Obsy? Nice to see you. Thank you. Hang on. I'm trying to get set up here. And good. All right. Slides. All right. We're just starting right in, right? Yeah, I think we're ready for you.

Okay. Um, thank you. Good evening, planning commissioners. Um, I'm Caitlyn Sabzi. pleased to be here tonight presenting to you all the proposed fiscal year 2027 to 2032 capital improvements program. You can hear me right? Um as you know the CIP is the primary way that we invest in public infrastructure and each year serves as a roadmap to realizing the city's vision. Um, tonight represents a critical first step in our annual CIP and budget process as the planning commission's role to consider and recommend the six-year plan is provided for in city code and charter and is required before the city manager's um budget presentation to council later in March, March 23rd. Um, the next slide I have an agenda. Don't really need to get into this. I'm going to start with sort of an overview of the proposed six-year CIP. some recent accomplishments and uh completed projects. Um I do want to note that attached to your uh your meeting materials tonight was the CIP quarterly update that I presented presented to council um February 9th. Um that's for active and ongoing CIP projects. Um we may review some of those ongoing or active projects tonight, but I am going to try and focus on the six-year plan and sort of future CIP planning for the work session tonight. I think that'll keep it shorter, too. Um, but some of those active updates might be sprinkled in there as well. Um, and then we'll go through the 10-year pipeline, um, some funding sources, unfunded projects, and capital reserve updates, close out with some other updates and schedule and Q&A and comments at the end. Um, the sort of big picture, I think it's easier if we start with the big picture before we sort of zoom in. The uh total proposed CIP for the six-year plan is 162

million. That is higher than last year's total of 148 million primarily due to some new grant sources. Um fiscal year 27 total only is more modest at 19 million. Um as a reminder, that's what is appropriated in the final budget ordinance for the CIP is just fiscal year 27. But we are going to talk about sort of the total six-year plan a lot tonight. Um also the CIP is made up out of of of these four funds. The general and school fund um which houses IT, public safety, public facilities and schools and parks programs totals 20 million. The transportation fund totals 100 million and then the sewer and storm water enterprise utility funds which total 33 and 9 million for the total uh sixth year of 162 million. Our theme this year is sustaining a state of good repair, which reflects um our priority of infrastructure reinvestment and renewal and the city's commitment to maintaining our existing facilities, taking care of what we already have and keeping those reliable. Um and the full CIP document and budget is available at the to the public now at the link shown here. Um and of course, hard copies were provided to the commission before tonight as well. Um on the next slide I have some completed projects recent CIP accomplishments. As we reported in the 2025 year in review we had 18 um capital projects completed in 2025 which I think was um a record. Uh some highlights include the community center HVAC project, um pictured here, the uh synthetic turf replacement at Meridian High School, the Burman Park playground replacement, as well as the Burman Park Trail crossings uh project, and uh five neighborhood traffic calming cases, including um the one on Anendelle Road, which is shown here. Um

getting into the next slide, we're going to talk about priorities. So in November at our kickoff meeting with the planning commission, we shared our preliminary staff priorities which are shown here. Our first priority is infrastructure reinvestment which aligns well with our theme of sustaining a state of good repair. Um progressive multimmodal transportation is our second priority really focused on advancing safety and accessibility and also advancing vision zero and complete streets uh goals um is still a key priority. Our third uh priority is strategic project development. This is sort of continuing the progress that we've made in project delivery in the CIP, which is what we've focused on in our priorities the last couple of years. We're um also focused on improving project development, which is sort of where projects originate from and really start from. On the next slide, on that note, our first priority and infrastructure reinvestment. some projects that aligned with this priority that are in the um proposed six-year plan that are new or proposed projects. In the transportation program, we have the traffic signal infrastructure projects. There are uh five proposed intersections um in the transportation program. This year, these are traffic signals and masts that have been evaluated by our staff and prioritized um because they're determined to be in need of replacement. And we're we've prioritized the highest uh deficiencies or shortest lifespans remaining first. So that first one broad in Pennsylvania is um our highest priority. This is a little bit of a different approach than past um intersection projects. We're really the project scopes are really focused on critical infrastructure safety and accessibility. So replacing mass arms and uh ADA upgrades um are the key project scope uh focus. Um, we've recommended these for local funding in the six years so that we can get one

signal done every one to two years. Keep the uh costs low and keep the schedules a little bit faster pace than what we've seen with some of the previous like grant funded big intersection multimodal streetscape um projects. Um so we have five of those that are in the six-year plan. We have another five traffic signals that are sort of the next five priorities that are included in the 10-year pipeline. Um as well another project in transportation is the pedestrian bridge at Cavalier Trail Park. This is a structurally deficient foot bridge on the north end of Cavalier Trail Park um that is uh recommended for funding in fiscal year 27. Um with uh RSTP funds with those are um sort of prior year RSTP funds that the city already has. Um and then another one is uh uh paving along Washington and Broad. This is part of our primary extensions. This is a grant um that we have pending for applica pending grant application that we have right now for paving along um the eligible sections of our primary extensions um broad and Washington. Um another critical infrastructure system that we have and maintain is our sewer system. Some updates in that area um to the Alex Renew treatment costs and the upsizing project. So, the city conveys wastewater to two uh sewer sheds in our neighboring Arlington and Fairfax. Um, and for which we pay an annual share of the the cost of the treatment um as well as the capital improvements to those facilities. The Fairfax facility is called Alex Renew just to make it extra confusing for us. Alexandria Renew um but we call it Alex Renew for short. Um, in fiscal year 26, just actually in uh January, the city finalized a purchase agreement for additional conveyance and capacity from Fairfax for the Alex Renew facility. So, we've been anticipating some increased costs for treatment co the annual treatment cost related to that

additional capacity that we now have. What's new is that starting in fiscal year 27, Alex renew costs are increasing dramatically to support um a more comprehensive rehabilitation of its infrastructure of the facility. They're calling this the phase forward program and this is a regional generational investment uh needed to upgrade and maintain the facil's aging infrastructure, some of which dates back to the 1960s. So that acceleration of capital investments will put upward pressure on the sewers. um on the city's sewer rates for the city as well as neighboring uh Fairfax County. Um also related to our infrastructure reinvestment, we have some big priorities in facility reinvestment sort of where I'm going to kind of talk through this flowchart and and hit a lot of projects. These are all in sort of the facility public facility and some public safety um programs in the general fund. um following the same overall sort of theme that we've laid out. Uh first we have a Navy taking care of what we already own. So in fiscal year 26 um actually in a in the last budget amendment there's a facilities condition and this is not CIP but it's informing the CIP so I have it shown in a different color there but there's a facilities condition assessment um that the general government and schools are collaborating on together um and conducting uh in fiscal year 26 that will inform um our future uh projects that we have in fiscal year 28 8 through 32 for the school facil and this is CIP. Now that will inform future CIP projects in the school facility reinvestment program and in the parentheses there I have the um page numbers for those in the in the budget book and also our general government facility reinvestment. So out of that FCI or facility condition assessment we'll have

um some future CIP projects in those program areas. in yellow um in to in order to invest in current employee workspaces and facilities. We have a couple of projects um shown here in fiscal year 27 and 28 for uh city hall facilities and property yard reinvestment in fiscal year 28 which is different than the um proposed new property yard. I'm going to get to that in a second. Um in green on the bottom there we also have it to inform and build the future and inform and build future projects. In 27 we have a public facilities planning initiative um that will uh that we're going to conduct starting in fiscal year 27 that will help um inform two projects. One the property yard which uh is down there on the bottom right hand corner. We have moved the property yard project, which was $30 million, from the six-year plan, and it was previously recommended for debt financing starting in fiscal year 28. We've moved that out of the six-year and into the 10-year outlook or pipeline while we do this um uh this public facilities plan and study to sort of analyze the needs, the space needs of both the property yard and a new public safety headquarters. So public safety uh headquarters is a new proposal uh this year for to design and construct a new facility to house the city's police station and other public safety functions. Um so both of these projects are now in the 10-year pipeline as part of a debt reduction strategy, but also while we conduct this public facilities planning to sort of strategize and develop a feasibility plan for both of those um which are major investments. So short-term we're doing public facility planning um and the facility conditions assessment and a couple of these projects um at city hall and property yard reinvestment. The property yard

reinvestment I guess I'll note here um that is funding requested in fiscal year 28. It is currently unfund shown as unfunded. Um but that is requested to do some short-term investments which include improving the school bus parking lot um which is behind the property yard and also upgrading the facilities to support smart cities um traffic signal operations at the property yard. I think we can move on. That's a lot. Um our next priority is progressive multimmodal transportation. A couple of updates um in that area. I have two slides on this and again this is advancing multimodal transportation investments um that promote accessibility and safety for pedestrians and cyclists and this is an ongoing key priority. Um major projects that align are listed here. Um and the goal is to al but the overall goal is to align all transportation improvements CIP or otherwise with you know this priority which is the city council strategic priority and also to incorporate complete streets and vision zero um goals. Uh we've uh oh I guess I'll also mention here um we've added this year in the project sheets to the uh sustainability the equity and sustainability lens that's on each one of the project sheets. We also added safety goals. I might have mentioned this at the kickoff in November. Um, but that incorporates uh vision zero and complete streets goals as one of the little check checklist items and al as well as um ADA accessibility. Um, two active projects that we have going on right now that align with this priority are the South Washington bus stop expansion uh project which is the picture shown here is the intersection at Marshall and Washington which is part of that project. You can see how it shortens the crosswalks from 81 ft to 64 ft, which is great. It adds some pedestrian refuge um in the islands as

well and adds um some other sidewalk and um and crosswalk ramp upgrades um as well as a couple other intersections along South Washington that we're making some upgrades. We also have the Shreve road shared use path. So both of those two active projects are in design now proposed in in the proposed six-year plan. We also have North Washington Street multimotal improvements which is starting in fiscal year 28. Then we have two new projects in the proposed six-year plan for Hok Road shared use path. This is extending the shared use path from Shreve that is currently in design now across that intersection and up towards West Falls along Hok. We have a pending

can ask a question about that. The path is the design since the Shreve road path is in design right now and the Hok road path would be funded by some future grant. Are those two different designs or is it is it all part of the same concept?

So Fairfax So Fairfax County has been helping us with the project management for Shreve Road. They are also working on some preliminary design for Haycock. So I think that I my answer is no. Those are not two separate designs. I think there's going to be a cohesive continuation of that design. It's unclear to me how far along they are in the design for HCO. We have the pending application which may also include design costs. So I but yes I the answer I think is yes that that will be a so we're not starting from scratch once we get a second or once we get any funding from correct whatever we're getting grant money or whatever. Right. Okay. We just applied for the money to continue that project um and to construct it on the other side of of that intersection.

Last fall, Fairfax County had a um public open thing and they covered and in that meeting they covered both projects together. So that website as well, their initial design definitely is cohesive. We just don't know whether they've taken our feedback,

right? Um, yes, they have both on Fairfax County's website. They have a page and these two projects, Shrieve Road and Hancock Road, are like kind of lumped together as one project on that on that uh public web page. Um, the second uh project that we have, did that answer your question, Mr. Colinsky? Okay. The second project that we have also pending grant application same same program with MVTA 70% um is the Anenddale road multimmoal improvements project which is uh along sort of the corridor of Anandale Road from the Maple and Anenddale the roundabout intersection to the city limits like along along um Anaddale. Um I think I'm ready for the next slide. um continuing progressive uh multimmodal priorities. We have some additional projects that are aligned with this. Active projects going on right now include um under bikem plan are the east west connection. Um this is a project that is ongoing right now. We also have neighborhood traffic calming. In the area of neighborhood traffic calming, we have the greenway downs project which is in construction right now and should be um finishing construction this spring. But there are also nine I think nine ongoing NTC cases um in that program. We also have in the next year uh the missing in the missing links program three projects that are slated to be constructed. Um Great Falls, Madison and Lane and Lynn Place which are two of those are uh pictured on the slide here. The top one is Great Falls between North Washington and Maple I believe. And the second image is Lynn Place sort of leading down into Roberts Park. Um in the proposed CIP, we also have uh West Street Bike Master Plan project which was previously recommended in the uh for funding in the six-year plan. We've moved that out to the pipeline while we

finish the first uh bike master plan, East West Connection. Um and then we have four additional bike plan projects or segments. Um, so five total bike master plan projects in the in the 10-year pip uh 10-year pipeline. And then in the missing links program, we have um in addition to sort of our ongoing missing links projects, we have in starting in fiscal year 29 South Lee Street um which is uh a larger sidewalk project along South Lee that we the city studied last year as part of the Oak Street Elementary sort of safe routes to school um technical assistance grant that we received from VOTE. So, we have preliminary concepts and estimates for that and we have scheduled that in the six-year CIP. I think that's it. Okay, next slide. Um, I'm going to talk about our last priority, strategic project development. Um, and some of the strategies that we've used. This is sort of detailed more in the overview section of the budget book. So, on section one, page four or five maybe. um the proposal to fund project development and sort of master planning and studies those activities uh is sort of a new approach in this year's CIP but um effectively uh sort of what I've my tagline for this has been good project delivery starts with strategic project development so that's what we're focusing on um to to continue furthering those project delivery goals that I mentioned we're we're focusing on this um strategic project development really strengthens our long range forecasting and ensures projects are realistic, well scoped, and deliverable from the start. Um, some strategies that we're deployed are listed here. I talked a little bit about public facility planning in the storm water program. I think this is a great example of this um approach and I want to highlight this. Um, the first one is the storm water resilience plan. This is

a um the city uh applied for a grant and was awarded the grant last month or December maybe January. um for this uh citywide storm water resilience plan um and it's through the state the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation has a program called CFPF. It's community flood preparedness fund. I'm going to call it CFPF. Um, and we applied for this $500,000 grant to develop a citywide resiliency plan um that will like help us develop strategies for flood mitigation and just and inform future CIP storm water projects and help us sort of strategize and and optimize that long range planning. Um, also requested I in fiscal year 27 for funding in the storm water program is the storm water master planning which is local funds that we um have added for some additional water quality strategies. Um so the CFPF is flood mitigation. So that's water quantity. So we have added this storm water master planning to focus on water quality to um finish up the remaining 20% of the city's watershed that is unmodeled. So, in that little image there on the top that shows um we've modeled 80% of the city's storm water infrastructure. We need to model the remaining 20% and incorporate that um into the resilience plan. And then um we'll also use that funding for some um facility management and like maintenance strategy and planning. Um all of which were not eligible for the CFPF grant. So these two things, investing in these two plans together will help provide us a datadriven foundation for prioritizing future storm water capital investments. That's and that's sort of where we're trying to get across the board in the CIP. And what this priority is about um is is getting to that. Um these two planning initiatives are funded with

grants uh or andor local funds or storm water fund balance. It is worth noting that the we have added some other projects in the storm water program that will be funded with debt starting in fiscal year 29 I think. So and and as we add future projects like if bigger future storm water projects come out of these um and we add those until the six-year plan that will also um put some pressure on the storm water rate. And so if this is something that we continue investing more and more in, um the rates will increase to support those investments. In the sewer program, we also have another uh comprehensive study and master plan starting in fiscal year 27 for $880,000 I believe. Um again, this is to evaluate our overall sewer system and guide our long range planning and infrastructure investments. Uh and both of these will inform future CIP projects as I mentioned and just help us take a more proactive strategic approach um to capital investments in those programs. Uh another strategy that we've deployed is the is taking advantage of these technical assistance and planning grants. We've done this a lot in transportation. I mentioned the um VOTE grant that we used for the safe routes to school to develop that South Lee Street and uh project in Missing Links program. And then the third strategy is this last bullet here, project development annual funds. Um, in transportation, we've been doing this for a while now. We have $100,000 of annual local funds that go into transportation project development. We have added this year that same thing in storm water. Um, these are funds that support grant applications and grant, you know, writing and preparation for staff. They support pre-scoping um consultant support if we need it for the applications or for preliminary engineering. Um anything that's like pre-grant awards so that we can start you know scoping these projects before

we apply for grants. Um I think that's all the next um thing I'm going to talk about is the 10-year pipeline or 10-year outlook. I'm trying to rebrand this as the pipeline. So, I want to get away from the 10-year outlook. Um, this has always sort of signified our uh long range forecast and for planning and prioritization. Um, this year we got um we made some improvements, I think, to the presentation of it. It got its own section in in the budget now. Um, section seven, I think. Um, and we added these new uh modified project sheets for each one of the projects. There's 3 33 total projects in the 10-year pipeline and each one of those this year has a modified project sheet that provides more details like a project description and benefits so you know what the project is. Last year we got some feedback that like tenure outlook was a great list but it didn't have a lot of information about what the projects were. Um so we have added that as well as on those project sheets sharing some information about um current level of project readiness. So, how much development um like we just talked about with the strategic project development, how much development has been done by staff so far or needs to be done um to be considered. Um and the on the graphic um on the screen there, I sort of have in the blue bubble some things that um inform what goes into the 10-year pipeline. So, these could be infrastructure needs um from engineering inspections or reports. It could be long range planning from or comp plan um projects. It could be council priorities or community priorities. Once things are in the 10-year pipeline in our funnel here in order to be funneled or filtered through the 10-year pipeline and into a future six-year CIP, there are some things that need to happen. Those include additional scoping, um staff

capacity, making sure that we have the the staff resources to implement and deliver the project, and a funding plan. some of these projects, when you look at those those project sheets, some of them have checked off or or indicated on there that we do have potential future funding sources or grants, grant opportunities that we could apply for. Um, so I think that's a good thing to look at as far in, you know, uh, in coordination with the project readiness is like, are there future grant opportunities that we could also apply for? Um, as I mentioned, there's 33 total projects in the pipeline right now. Um, but some highlights are some things that I've already mentioned tonight. the property yard, the public safety headquarters projects, Robert's park renovation. This is part of our park master plan implementation, but this is a full park renovation. So, similar to like what we're doing at Fellows right now, it is not a playground replacement. It is the full park and it includes um potentially adding an additional entrance to Robert's Park. um the future sewer capacity purchase. This is something that also used to be in the six-year CIP that we would uh purchase more capacity in I think fiscal year 30 um for Alex Renew. We've moved that into the pipeline because we really um are not counting on that. We have to wait and it it depends on future growth and development whether or not we need to do that capacity purchase. So that's a a reduction in some in debt that we had in the sewer program. um the West Street bike connection that I mentioned um Lincoln A multimodal this is what we're now calling greening of Lincoln phases C and D which are primarily transportation uh scope um that are currently unfunded which has been reported on previously we've moved that into the 10-year pipeline and called it green or Lincoln Avenue multimodal and then the additional five traffic signals that I mentioned earlier also another five storm water projects and those two on the bottom I think have a higher readiness so again looking at those modified project sheets and and

reviewing sort of what's more ready um and and could be advanced. I think I think our vision for the 10-year pipeline is um this is it's not a definitive list of projects. There's no schedules associated with it, right? It's not like a commitment. Um, but I do think it could be a really good opportunity for the planning commission and the public to give input to staff on what what we prioritize to continue developing. Um, we may be able to use some of that project development money that I talked about in transportation and storm water to advance some of those projects. Um, but it's really a I think a really good way to to communicate to staff what we need to focus on. um doing that additional scoping, staffing, and funding for um next slide. I think we're almost done. I feel like I've been talking a long time. Um some funding sources. This is a summary of all of the different funding sources for the six-year CIP or the colors of money. Um and in the different we broke it out by the separate funds. So in the transportation fund which is the largest at 100 million um you can see in dark yellow or orange that um that is primarily funded with grants. I think that's $90 million in transportation grants. The rest of it is funded with pay po pay or the light yellow is always like local. So PIGO or um CNIE funds in in transportation in the sewer utility fund. We have a significant amount of debt that is debt that is in the sewer fund separate from the general fund. Um we have local funds in yellow and then purple and blue we have the sewer uh fund balance or sewer availability fees. Same thing in storm water. We have some sewer fund balance as well in purple shown. We also have the the orange grant funds in storm water. um excited about that because I think that's $4 or5 million of grants in storm water that we have over the six

years that we that's a lot more than we had a couple of years ago in storm water. So that's um a good um development in the general fund. Um we also have the yellow for local funds, PIGO. We have light blue for capital reserve um which has been decreased from 10 million to 5 million this year. We have gray for debt. The only general fund debt um in the six-year plan is 5 million for the fire station roof um which was previously um introduced. Uh and then we have in light green we have unfunded there. That's uh for a total of 6 million in unfunded projects which is a significant increase from past years and usually higher um than we see. Which is going to lead me into my next slide which is on the unfunded projects. Um so as a part of our CIP development this year, we're reducing the use of capital reserves um relative to last year based on the assumption that there will be a delay to a $10 million contribution that we had previously anticipated. So like last year our six-year plan was sort of predicated on this 10 million. We have 13 million in capital reserves without that payment. So we don't have to reduce the CIP by 10 million. Um but what we have done um to be prudent is reduced it by 4.8 million in projects that were previously funded with capital reserves like in last year's plan. Um and we have shifted those to unfunded plus an additional 1.2 million um in fiscal year 32 projects or new projects that we would have recommended for capital reserve uh funding. So the impact of that is $6 million in unfunded projects. Um and uh as a result we have some some pro some program areas. This is largely well actually this is exclusively impacting the general fund. We don't really use capital reserves in transportation sewer or storm water. So

this is all in general fund and across different programs. So I'm going to sort of I included this table here to show you how staff has tried to um prioritize the cap the limited capital reserves funding that we do still have in the CIP. And there are some projects and this is all detailed on table 2-2 in the in the um CIP budget. Um but we do have some things that are funded uh with capital reserves. But these projects that I've highlighted here show what we have prioritized for funding in the near term. So in the like two to three next two to three years but are unfunded um after that. Um so for example the first one there IT core infrastructure that is funded with capital reserves in fiscal year 27 and 28 starting in fiscal year 29 through 32 for a total of $500,000 that is unfunded. Same thing with public safety the fire hydrants that is funded in fiscal year 28. Um but in FY30 and 32 we have 372 you know uh allocations of 375,000 that are unfunded and staff has recommended these you has sort of recommended this funding um as sort of uh part of our aligning with our priority of infrastructure um critical you know uh state of good repair or things that are um sort of not discretionary like the uh like in public safety, the fire station 6. We're under agreement with Arlington County to pay for those capital improvements. Those are funded. Um, so this is what we have. This is the staff recommendation of what we have unfunded right now. I think the biggest hit is probably to the parks program where everything is unfunded except for in fiscal year 29. And this table doesn't do a great job of showing this. In fiscal year 29, we have the next synthetic turf replacement funded. That is the only thing that is funded right now. Um everything else is

currently recommended for unfunding including um a couple three different uh playground replacements starting with West End playground replacement for in fiscal year 27. That's what that 350,000 is. Um some of the other things are in fiscal year 31 there's two additional playground replacements at Madison and Freddy and another um synthetic turf replacement. So things that long-term we need to figure out how to um fund. Um but these are our recommendations that align with um with our uh priorities this year. The bottom line I think is that the CIP is a financially constrained plan. It always has been. Um and so in order to these are the constraints that we're working in right now in order to um fund different projects um particularly in fiscal year 27 there is something else in the general fund that we would have to um make unfunded or deprioritize in order to fund this with capital reserves at least. Um okay so I'm going to close on a more exciting positive note. Some exciting updates that I have um include uh our CIP story map revitalization. Thanks to our new um GIS manager Tim Dolan, we now have a revived uh CIP story map on the website. Um I have linked it here, but the CIP story map is an interactive map of all active, ongoing, and completed CIP projects as well as some of our general um infrastructure or maintenance projects. We plan to continue making improvements to this um maybe possibly adding some like future proposed projects in there as well um for the public to be able to see those. Um so this is sort of a soft launch, but I am excited that the the map's usefulness to the public is is restored. um some other improvements uh

made um to the CIP website like our our CIP page where the um this budget document is available on um our uh also relatively new um web manager Joshua Supernot made some really great um improvements to that. I'm just giving all the shout outs now. Um and in also in partnership with communications um the the communications team um will be doing another special edition uh uh CIP focus newsletter um later this month but like by before the end of February um we'll do another one of those newsletters um that will just be focused on CIP that'll probably share more information about the CIP quarterly update um earlier this month and some other project developments and um you know information about public meetings, park naming, um whatever we have going on, all things CIP. Um and I think that's it. I think the next uh slide is maybe our schedule. So tonight we're here for the um work session, CIP work session. I'll be back March 4th for the public hearing and recommendation um at the planning commission. And then March 23rd is when uh city manager and school superintendent present their uh fiscal year 27 uh operating and CIP budgets to council. Um in April, we'll probably have a CIP work session with council. Um and then May 11th is what we're anticipating for final adoption of both the operating and CIP budgets. And then July 1, fiscal year 2027 begins. Um with that, I think I don't think is there another slide? That's it. Thank you. Um I we're going to uh open up for comments and questions. I have Amanda Brain, our DPW um director here tonight for questions and comments as well as Ally Golden, our CIP grants manager and knower of all things transportation. So we are ready for your questions and comments if you

have them. And thank you. Excellent. Thank you so much, Miss Tobsy. That was a really great presentation. Super thorough, but a really nice like high level, too. So I always appreciate how organized you are when you come to us. So thank you for that. Okay. Uh this is a work session. So uh bring all of your questions and comments. Who would like to begin? Danny. Yeah. Go ahead.

I would start. First off, thank you for all of that. That was a ton of stuff. And I appreciated the I don't know if we've had this conversation before. Really appreciate the like printout. It was easy much easier to go through and like have conversations about. Um I had a question about the you had said back on the unfunded items and the items that are pre sorry not the unfunded item but the things that are precip the 30 something that are in process the the pipeline. Thank you. That was the magic word I was looking for. Um you had said something about having the planning commission influence or bring thoughts, bring conversation. What is the best way for the planning commission? Because like in this conversation it's printed. It looks good. Like it's fairly locked in. Yeah.

For things in the pipeline, what is the best way for the planning commission to influence the 28 to 33 CIP or future ones that we're working on?

I think that's something that we're developing. Like I think that's something that's kind of evolving and that's, you know, I just shared with you tonight just now that like that's sort of the vision for this going forward. I think it's a good opportunity for you all to provide input on that. Um, I can see next year maybe looking at looking more specifically at the pipeline at our November kickoff um before we really start and get into CIP development. Like I think that would be a good place. I mean I also think it's not too late now to to provide that um input for fiscal year 27. Um you know if if there are certain priorities um that you know that you would like to see more attention. Yeah.

Right. Because I think Miss Kan and other members of the planning commission like we have a lot of blanks on the upcoming schedule. That might be a good opportunity if it's in a slower period for us to use some of that time to think about post 33 or post 32 uh timelines and things that we want to get in the pipeline. Um maybe that's something yeah we can brainstorm that what that looks like in the future. But yeah, that would be great.

I do think getting started earlier before like kickoff or even earlier than that is that makes sense. Um the so going back to the unfunded slide. Um I knew I wanted to get there eventually. Um it looks like a lot of the stuff for the parks came out. Is that because it from a priority standpoint? How do we look at parks in terms of infrastructure that is aging or needs to be replaced? or is it is it more we wanted to replace it but it can last for a while longer like West End Park or Roberts Park or some of the other things that we're looking at? My sense is that so the parks that has an advisory board and I my sense is that those things are sort of developed based on community input and the the parks and recreation

rec recreation and parks I always say it backwards um advisory board their input on those things and the existing condition of the facilities right for playground replacements. Um, so I think there's a couple of different ways that we what we tried to prioritize and why why that it it was prioritized this way is we were trying to focus on like critical like safety infrastructure, right? Like daily things like um you know security, uh fire station, the fire hydrants, like things that are really sort of life safety critical stuff is what we focused on first. Um Okay.

Yeah. Because I I think my question is like and I may be framing it badly which is entirely possible. I apologize if I am but like looking at some of the like stoplight repairs and some of the things on Broad Street in terms of things that are funded. Are those funded differently? Are these optional I guess is my question. Are those funded differently and that's why that's not an optional. So there's different sources of local funding that goes into the transportation fund that are different from general fund. So like we have a certain amount of local money and transportation a certain amount in in general fund. So we can't make there's no flexibility in terms of like funable. They're not funible at all. Funable. Could we say like you know

if they're transportation somebody could bike through a park that's transportation but yeah those those items right. So I'm looking at one of the traffic signal master pages. That's the the NBTA 30% funds which are local funds but those are for for transportation. are restricted to transportation projects. It would be hard to make the case to the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority that a playground would be an extension of a transportation. And they're also at the end of their useful life, right? Those those mass arms.

Correct. Right. And so I guess the result then get lumped in with not lumped in with with the general fund. Yeah. Um in terms of uh funding sources and of course parks are important. Oh, no. It's mostly just and that's part of the discussion that I think like we're we're sort of highlighting and that needs to be had is how do we fund if that's something that we want to continue investing in is parks like how do we fund that outside of capital reserves? You know, for the last several years, we've been using capital reserves to fund that. Prior to that, we were sometimes using debt, which is maybe not a good practice either, but like what is the the sort of local funding source that we use to invest in parks? Okay. Um, those are the big questions I had right now. I'm happy to pass them off and then come back later.

Okay. Thank you. Who'd like to go next, Mr. Stevens?

Uh, whenever it's appropriate. Um, so overall, I think the I'm comfortable with the uh distribution of um issues that are in the CIP and the way that they're handled. Uh, I thought storm water was handled better this year than what I've seen in the past. um where it's light uh in my view is is this pretty much repeats what I said at the kickoff in November is the uh implementation of the energy plans. Um, and there's some additional urgency for that in my view because we've now gotten the results of the council of government's uh greenhouse gas inventory for the city that they do every 3 years and the 2023 results which are the most recent actually went up uh total emissions went up for the city versus 2020. Uh so given these uh deep uh declines that we have to to get to to achieve our city goals that obviously you know an increase in in emissions is not the the right way to be going. So I'm I'm still kind of a view that the CIP is is a good place to uh help implement those energy plans and uh right now it just seems like it's it's kind of weak. Uh if I take a look at the chart that we have up here, the community solar, the 182,000. Um well, first of all, the background on the community solar, apparently a study was done according to the notes that are in your page, and it shows that this is ready. Uh it could be implemented uh right now. So, you know, it seems like, you know, that would not take uh the sort of staff time that I know we've had to invest in the Aurora House. Um, secondly, the biggest problem is that 182,000 makes it look like it's an expenditure. The reality is, of course, we're going to save money over time and basically that money is going to come back. It's just going to come back in another budget. Whoever pays the

electric bill, you know, for the community center is going to have a decrease because when they have the solar panels up, it's going to offset uh, you know, a certain amount of the electricity. So, that's not showing as as netting against that. So this looks like an expenditure that in fact I really don't think it is if we had the appropriate accounting. So anyway, the community solar is one that uh you know I think would would be an easy lift as far as uh uh getting uh you know some some forward progress on our energy plans. Plus, if we were able to do it uh before the end of next year, we would get the benefit of the 30% investment tax credit that's still going to be available for this type of a project through the end of next year. So, that's $50,000 less than that 182,000 if we could find a way to accelerate that. Uh, a couple of other uh items in in the plan that kind of jumped out in this same kind of arena. uh it seems like you've kind of developed some buckets this year for capturing related uh tasks. You know, for example, that core infrastructure reinvestment. It's kind of a bucket, you know, that uh there's a number of tasks that can be done that can be assigned back to to that project. And you know, that that's fine. I think that uh that's that's uh a good way to approach this. Um, I think we could consider doing something similar for the energy plan implementation, having some kind of an overall kind of a what I'm going to refer to as a bucket. And I think that would might make it easier to uh get some regular funding. Right now, it seems like any funding that we might get for a um energy plan issue comes out of whatever surplus is available at the end of the year. And of course, that's very uncertain from from year to year, much like metro funding is very uncertain with the way that we currently do it. So, I think having a bucket, uh, you know, it's just something to think about as as a way to make it easier for city council should they be so inclined

to to make some regular funding uh, for energy plan implementation. Uh, next one is the fleet replacement reinvestment. That was 3-6. Uh, and I was wondering if that would be the right place for consideration of purchase of additional electric school buses. Don't know if you know that. I'm sorry if that would be a good place for the purchase of additional Yeah. Is that where consideration of any uh additional purchases or is that strictly just left to the school board and you know we give them the annual allocation and if they want to buy an electric school bus that has to come out of you know a teacher's salary or something like that.

That's a good question. I'm I'm not sure that I want to respond because I don't want to give you the wrong answer. I assume it may be, but I I can get back to you and let you know if that's something that we Yeah, that's that's good. Previously, we bought an electric school bus with a grant that the school administered, so it's not what we've done previously, but I can let you know if it is something we could.

And that would also be good because it might tell us whether they currently have plans to to buy a diesel bus. You know, the part of the problem that we had previously was these decisions were made and there was no discussion on it. And uh you know, it's a it's a broad community issue. Yes. school board has the authority, no question about that. Uh but uh it it does affect the community as a whole and they are kind of a very visible piece of the uh energy action plans. Uh and I was also wondering in that same regard uh whether we have a schedule under the fleet um replacement of you know what what vehicles are being considered right now you know which are you know just traditional energy uh you know or which ones are actually electric vehicles if if if we have the ability to know that at this stage. Yeah, I I can address that that last part. Um, we've been working with our our our DPW, you know, fleet manager and deputy director of operations um kind of chairing, but also working with various other departments, including public safety, who all have fleet vehicles to really prioritize which vehicles are at the end of their useful life and whether that's dump trucks or sedans that are, you know, used in the motorpool or um, you know, public safety vehicles. And there is in all of that, so we have a kind of a prioritized list. Um and in all of that we are very much focusing on electric and hybrid um where it meets meets.

And that's good because this used to be scattered all throughout the city. Each department made its own decision and now it's at least together. This I feel like I'm not quite ready to to comment on but the the general government side is certainly um coordinated. Uh and we can follow up on the school bus question uh separately. Yeah.

Might be a challenge. Um 313 uh talks about Mary Ellen Henderson and I was just wondering uh that's been brought up several times the possibility of accelerating their look at roof uh refurbishment and possibly solar which was in last year's but I didn't see it in this year's. Anyway, this again kind of falls in that category. if we could if we could somehow figure out a way to do this before the end of next year, we get the 30% tax credit. And you know, that was well over a million dollars for the roof refurbishment. So, you know, it's $300,000 uh that the city could save if it uh found a way to accelerate that project. Uh the next one was 4-6. That's the traffic signals. And a number of these, the 46, 47, 48, 49, 410, 411, all had the uh CAP checked on it, but I couldn't quite figure out how putting up a new signal pool implemented the energy plan. But, you know, if there is something there, it would be good to know

ADA access to non-car. Okay. including ADA upgrades, but that would not be in the for the community energy action plans. Oh, carfree alternatives in the community energy action plan. Maybe that's Yeah. So, we can look at the we we have the um detailed checklist that shows us exactly which goal it does check off in the community energy action plan, but we think that because of the um ADA upgrades associated with those intersection projects, that would be promoting car-free alternatives in the city. So, walking instead of driving, I guess that's we

bit of a stretch, but okay. Uh let's see. The next one was 413. And that was the bus stop expansion. And this is just kind of a somewhat casual comment, but it was $6.4 million for six bus stops. And I was reminded that Arlington County a few years ago was proposing a bus stop for a million dollars, and it generated all kinds of feedback, not positive. Uh so I don't know, maybe there's a lot more involved here than you could explain. and you know the simple uh yeah there's several intersection improvements.

Maybe that one's misnamed or we can work on some of the branding because right it requires a lot of there's a lot of intersection geometry and signals and crosswalks and other work. Um but lots of the way it's phrased it it looks kind of like six bus shelters for $6 million. The full name I will say and it's a long one so I don't always call it by I say South Washington bus stop expansion. The full name is South Washington bus stop expansion and access to transit. Okay. So, it is very pedestrianheavy. In addition to the bus stops. Yeah, I know you did have the diagram that showed the crosswalks and stuff like that.

Yeah, that Marshall and South Washington intersection. There's going to be I I think some significant safety improvements for pedestrians. There's also going to be two other uh intersections or crosswalks um that will help sort of just accessing, you know, across South Washington, which right now is a kind of a scary and dangerous thing to do. So, I just didn't want us to have the same experience that Arlington did. So, uh the next one was 418 North Washington Multimmodal. And I was just wondering if there's a schedule out on that as far as when public input will uh will occur. Um so far it's been just kind of a concept and and listing that we have a grant, but uh not much much beyond that.

Yeah. that the the grant funding comes in FY28 which um I think that maintains what it was last year. Um and we have been talking internally about the need to do some more planning and scoping including public engagement um around this project. Yeah, it's that public engagement

year 27 before 2728. Yeah. But before we kind of start on design, there's some some really scoping and engagement and planning work that needs to happen. The other thing I was a little concerned on that one is that we've done some work recently on uh at Jefferson Street in Washington as well as Colombia and Washington with putting in new ADA ramps and uh some other kind of curb. So, and I was just wondering I was hoping that it would not affect any uh potential complete street designs that we might have for North Washington, you know, because those Yeah, I think that would all be part of that kind of planning conceptual design phase. Yeah. how how these recent investments as you said Washington and Columbia is under construction right now would fit into the streetscape

right especially if we're planning you know and hopefully we are a bike path along there protected bike path of some kind so I don't know having those ADA ramps just put in it would be a shame to uh have to modify those in some some regard

um so the last item I had was uh where you mentioned a few moments ago about the 10-year pipeline. I think that is a good opportunity. I could see, for example, a project like uh solar canopies uh which were originally proposed for Meridian High School as part of their plan to get to net zero. That was the original plan for for Meridian. We we're kind of a long way from that now, but uh putting in a parking canopy. Again, one of these things that there's a large upfront investment, but it does offset other costs that can be used in effect to to uh net out uh the the initial cost. So anyway, my point is just I like the idea of the pipeline and I would hope that we can use that as a place to put in some of the energy plan um implementation activity. And uh I think that's all I had. Thank you.

Great. Thank you, Mr. Stevens. Uh, anyone else questions, thoughts? Oh,

I don't have too much, so maybe I'll I'm sure others have more than me, but I'll I'll jump in maybe. Um, actually, since we have our public works director, and I I see that item 36 relates to, you know, replacing equipment. Um, you know, I'm curious. I did see a lot of shiny new trucks during taking care of snow during the most recent storm. And I'm wondering just, you know, well, one, I mean, maybe not TIP related. I mean, but do you find that, you know, the new equipment improves our ability to handle that? I mean, I still found I mean, this storm maybe was in some ways a little bit unique, but, you know, I still feel like the city struggled a little bit and then the after the storm cleanup. Um, sidewalks are always a challenge. I mean, I don't know if we have a specialized equipment for that. Um, but you know, again, I I did see some heavy duty stuff that I'm hopeful did had an easier job like moving, you know, this particularly heavy type of snow. I'm just curious your thoughts on that since you're here. Um, and that was a big hot button issue the last few weeks.

Uh, sure. Yeah, I mean, I think as as you said that this uh this storm, the snow was a very unique, as we all know from from shoveling our own own homes kind of consistency and and challenge. Um I think we're all really proud um of the work that our our public works team did as well as uh Recken Park and and others who were involved in um in the snow snow cleanup. Um yeah, we have a lot of and I think the kind of strategy that was used um which was kind of evolving over time with our staff um in terms of at some points having the the front loader like breaking through the ice and then you know with the the more experienced driver and then two plows following behind. They were kind of in these convoys and they were looking at the different zones and you know ordering things and you know looking at how to how to best strategically attack the um the snow and so obviously there are you know we're going to be doing some some afteraction conversations as many places are. Um, and we, yeah, used a lot of the the in terms of the equipment, the equipment that we had, um, I believe we rented some equipment, some of those skid steers to help with, uh, you know, breaking up the ice at the Broad Washington intersection and things. Um, and so, yeah, I will say, you know, overall, I think our our team did a great job and we're continuing to, uh, do some other effort.

So, the item three, so item 36, which is the, you know, replacement of the fleet, I guess it's it's kind of combined with the schools. Um I mean how how does I mean is is that is that like for school buses or like all school vehicles? I mean what is or is how is that broken out? Vehicles are purchased through the operating budget. Well, so like this is the this is um for public works, law enforcement, building safety. It's everybody, right? All vehicles. Yeah.

But maintenance and repair and some purchasing of vehicles. But then some of our vehicles are also sort of it's kind of scattered across, right? So like this is not and this is $360,000 a year to maintain all of those existing vehicles and purchase additional vehicles with whatever we have. Okay. So I don't know how I I do think that there are some vehicles for public works that are right. I mean just overall I mean I used to see we had some very old vehicles. I saw most of the ones I saw today were pretty shiny and new. So we think we've been thinking,

right? So hopefully that helped with less breakdowns and things of that nature, but I did notice that. So um I also that the public safety um vehicles that that has been a challenge. I think a number of those are kind of at the end of their life or you know making sure that we're we're keeping up the um police uh vehicles is has been

kind of a challenge as well. Okay, the other topic I think I'll touch on, I touch on this every time because it's something that just is important to me, you know, is the stormwater piece. Um, you know, and making sure that we continue to emphasize that. You know, I still feel that there are sort of like, you know, I keep on saying there's there's certain areas of the city that, you know, are the problem areas and they're not all reflected. You know, I know we had the the task force that came up with a list of projects and we've worked through some of those, you know, and that was after 2019, so we're kind of getting pretty long after that. And like I said, I always say this every time, but you know, we've been fortunate that we haven't had significant damaging flooding since 2019, but it's just a matter of time before that happens again. Um, and I keep, you know, I'd love to see, you know, some, again, I don't know if it's appropriate in the C this CIP, but some better like future planning for where we know we have substandard infrastructure. I mean, just the example because I know it because it's in my neighborhood, but the pipe that goes underneath West Street south of Lincoln between the trail in Lincoln, which is like a known

city-owned, you know, a substandard piece of infrastructure um that's not never it didn't make it on to the, you know, the that targeted list out of coming out of the task force because I think it's a more involved project, but it's not identified anywhere on there. And there are other projects like that and um you know other areas where we know we have substandard infrastructure. Um and so you know again I feel like that's a priority that I' I'd like to see emphasized even more. Um you know I'm not sure the best way to do that but you know we have like that initial list and I don't know if this the stormwater task force I think was a moment in time and they met do they still exist? Do we know if they still exist? That was a

I don't Yeah, I think it was like made short term and they made some recommendations for the big six and then right and so you know I don't know I feel like there are many other things that need to be looked at and we have a lot of old infrastructure um that again sometimes people don't think about it until we have a problem but there are these other sites that are just again long-standing issues that need to be addressed. I mean,

I want to say about storm water. I think storm water as a program is one of the areas that we actually have some of the best data and planning. It's not in here currently and it hasn't been because I mean Tony has a ton of data on on those deficiencies of our system. Um, I will point you to the the five storm water projects that are in the 10-year pipeline. Those are some projects that I think have a high degree of readiness and and project data to support those. Um there in addition to those five, there were 15 other projects that he had data on. We just haven't been able to really bring those into the CIP yet because of funding. That's where this Oh, I forgot to mention this earlier. I'm so glad I'm I'm remembering this now. That resilience plan that I mentioned earlier, the 500,000, we're going to develop that resilience plan in the next year to 18 months. Once that goes to DCR and they approve it and and the city has a, you know, approved certified resiliency plan, that opens up a whole new uh a grant uh channel of of funding opportunities for us in the future um to apply for that enables us to apply for future CFPF grants for construction, which are 50/50 grants, 50% state funds and 50% local funds. That's an entirely new source of funding in storm water that like we haven't had before. So getting this resiliency plan approved um opens up that for us. We also have some of those future projects we have identified for SLAF funding. That's a storm water local assistance fund which is a separate program at another state agency at DQ. Um so like we're I'm we've been working towards you know getting the planning and and so that we can have the funding opportunities also getting maybe some more local funds going into storm water so that we have a a strategy to fund those projects. Like if we just dumped 20 storm water projects in this six-year plan right now, the storm water rates

would go up by like 900%. Right? Like to support that type of So I think we're working towards I get I feel like it doesn't translate well to the CIP. Like we have a lot of that we're like ready for that but yeah no I get it right. Some of the projects are more involved. They're expensive. It requires right, you know, some sometimes getting, you know, working within small easements and other things. I I get it. It's complicated. And I think we want to also prioritize the the big six, those original storm water projects that we committed to, like get those done first before we start adding a lot of other projects. Yeah.

Yeah. No, I I get that. I appreciate that. And and I think Yeah. I mean, it is. And you have responded. I mean, I've brought this up other years and so I've been I have seen an improvement in the way, you know, it's presented here. So it's I'm not saying that it's it's you know completely overlooks that but um yeah it just continues to be something that I think is important. I mean we have we have many priorities here but I always you know again sometimes that when it's been when we haven't had an issue people aren't screaming about it. All it takes is one storm next June or July and that's all you'll hear about is storm water and and it will it will happen. We're overdue I think. Not trying to jinx it but we're overdue um for problems. So, um, in any event, but yeah, and overall, I mean, like I said, I think, you know, notwithstanding what we just heard from, you know, the city manager just was it yesterday? Um, today about, you know, the sort of the hit, you know, in the near term, I think that overall, yeah, again, the CIP is, uh, um, it's always impressive to me when we see what we were able to accomplish, you know, largely through grant funding. I mean, yes, the tax base, but um the amount of money we leverage in grants, you know, like I always say, we punch above our weight as far as what a small jurisdiction's able to accomplish. I mean, um you know, I mean, I'm always impressed myself when I think I have a pretty good, you know, my fingers on the pulse of stuff, but I I constantly come across like a little kind of micro project at an intersection or a new curb ramp and I'm like, how did we do that? When did we I didn't even know about that. So, um that's great. I mean, and so I'm always impressed by how much we we we have going on at the same time with a relatively small staff and small budget. It's it's impressive. And we do have to make tough choices like every jurisdiction does. And watch the local tax rate. The council wants to keep tax rate flat, I think, or close to it. And you know, that that's, you know, I mean, we all we all saw a big tax increase this year with um increase in assessments. And so, you know, we're balancing that as well. I mean, people want want things, but you know, we have to pay for them. So, it's a balancing act. I get it. It's never easy, but this is a pretty robust CIP despite some of the challenges and headwinds we have in the region, too. I mean, you know, to

sort of like our our our overall budget picture, I think this is a pretty reasonable, you know, CIP you given the climate we're living in right now in 2026. It was a fun year. Right. Right. Exactly. Before before even the thing with West Falls, it was a it's a difficult climate we're in budgetarily. So, appreciate that. Great. Thank you, Mr. Krosner, Mr. Duncan. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm not as an adept a chart reader as I wish I were. Could you just in this one instance crosswalk the chart you have up on the screen right now, school facilities reinvestment

with the pages dedicated to school facilities reinvestment in the notebook page uh section three page 13. So do these two things how do these two things talk to each other? what what is funded in FY27 if anything in school facilities reinvestment and what what is funded apparently well let me just stop there and stop talking you know are they going to be able to do the bathrooms at the Oak Street or or whatever other facilities they're not very specific to facilities reinvestments

yes so for school facilities reinvestment that line item right there where we have it funded in 28 and 29. That's a new approach that we're taking this year. So last year we had the Oak Street 1.4 million I think or or 1 million and then we had Marie Ellen Henderson I'm glad that we're talking about this. We had the Marie Ellen Henderson roof replacement for 950,000 like in the out years that was unfunded.

We took the capital reserves that we had for those two projects. We sort of combined them into this facility uh this school facilities reinvestment bucket. I'll use that word, right? Like you said, we have a couple of those buckets. We created the school facilities reinvestment bucket that will be informed. The actual projects that will go into this program are unclear right now because they're going to be informed by the facility condition assessment that's happening this year. The between the schools and general government. Same thing for general government facility reinvestment. Um those those projects will be informed by that that FCA the facility condition assessment. So, in 28 and 29, we didn't have any funding in 27 for school facilities. In 28 and 29, I think we have $500,000 a year funded. Let me

Yes. Right. That's what I'm saying. So, basically, when we put that all together into one sort of program or bucket for school facilities, we said we're going to do $500,000 a year that we're just going to set aside. We're anticipating that out of the facility condition assessment, there's going to be some some needs that come out of that for the school facilities. So, we started putting $500,000 a year that was funded with capital reserves until very recently when we had to sort of swap out some of those future capital reserve funds and make Okay. So, we're going ahead with the full in spite of what we learned recently, we're going ahead with the full facility condition assessment work in the next, you know, 12 to so months. Yes.

How much is that going to cost? that was funded through the operating budget in the budget amendment or maybe it was funded with surplus funds. 75,000 of it is for general government. The schools is significantly higher. I want to say 300 or I don't know the school number, but yeah, we've been talking with our with our colleagues at the schools and they were really thinking that they wanted to get a real assessment of the facilities condition assessment like what is the you know condition of all the the stuff that they have to then better inform how they make these investments. And then the general government's going in on the same plan. The RFP is being developed right now. $75,000 was from that budget meant for the general government side. So he will go out.

That's helpful. Okay. Uh going back to what I was talking about earlier, uh I hope that we could sit down with our friends at the schools and uh make sure everyone appreciates the fact that the municipal facilities reinvestment needs are at least as great or greater than the school facilities reinvestment needs because of what we've done for the schools in the last 10 to 15 years and the capacity uh that the current buildings hold. I know it's not all about capacity, but you know, um, the school facilities and the municipal facilities need to observe the unwritten rule that, you know, you get half, I get the other half, not you get uh 2/3 and I get one/3. There's been too much of that for too long here. And that's why uh as the years go by uh we find ourselves needing more facilities attention on the municipal side because we've already devoted substantial attention to the school side.

Okay, that's helpful. Um the other question I had different different track al together back to your funnel chart. Uh the um is it a funnel or is it a filter? Really? This one? Yeah. Yeah, that one. I mean, look at like the West Street Bike Connection. You made some reference to that. That's in the 10-year pipeline. Yes.

Uh, you know, is that going to is is it going to funnel through and be less connecting or is it just going to filter out and not be connected for a little while longer or what's the status? If my neighbor asks me, "What are they doing about that West Street bike connection?" What do I say? And when do I say it?

Yeah, I let I'm trying to figure out which page that is because the other um nice thing that that the team did was for each project in the 10-year pipeline has its own modified little project sheet here. Um which is not quite as in-depth as the the regular project sheets, but G gives some hint at kind of project readiness and general ballpark cost and that sort of thing, which I think will be helpful as we kind of filter these things through. Um yes that was the second I think priority that came out of the bike master plan was the west street portion and so there's been you know some initial discussion in the context of the bike master plan it was primarily about about money um as well as about staff capacity to to push that out.

Um and so at the moment that's where that one sits is in the 10-year pipeline. Okay. And the 10-year pipeline timetable is varies depending on the project and some are more ready to go through than others in the next 10 years. And I think this is that's probably an example of one that we'll kind of all continue discussing about whether some of these are ready to bring forward, you know, student.

All right. Well, it's that's this is prochial, I admit. Live on West Street. Neighbors ask me, need to have an answer. Uh that's what I'm asking. I mean, you know, are there interim things that we've already done some interim things, striping, painting, crosswalks, and so forth. The stop ahead, uh, pavement markings that used to be on the street are not there. Could we reinsert those? You know, if we're not going to do a major bike connection, shindig for another six or eight years, you know, that's a lot of people running the stop sign and speeding for six or eight years. That might be cut down if we made a short-term investment. Okay, you get my point. You see where you see where I'm going? Uh, last question. Um, and in and you know, 300 words or less. What do you what do you do when you hear the words growth pays for growth? Growth needs to pay for growth. This is a recurring theme in our civic dialogue. And I hear you say for storm water and so forth, we're uh you know, we're just going to raise the rates and growth's going to pay for itself. Is that does that carry across other uh expenditures or are there situations where you know we're behind and it's going to take us 10 years to catch up because of the nature of the city and when it was settled and how it was how the infrastructure was laid in or uh you know is it are we going to get ahead? Are we going to try to over build so that we can take more growth in? What's what's your approach to that philosophy or that question?

I think if I so in in sewer at least um and the projects that we have so the sewer program overall is $33 million which is not significantly different than it was last year. The growing costs that we see in this year's CIP are related to those capital improvements that I mentioned earlier at Alex Renew, which is like this essentially this like generational investment project that just has to be done. It is a to rehabilitate the facilities and the systems that are there that are sometimes 60 plus years old,

not related to growth and development in the city of Falls Church. That's like a regional reinvestment that needs to happen. um some of the other projects that we have in there that are more substantial, again, not related to development. We actually that additional capacity purchase that we had in there last year for the Alex Renew sewer capacity that we said, well, we probably are going to have to do this in fiscal year 30. This year, we've moved that out into the 10-year pipeline because we actually may not need to do that. Um, so I think really what we're what we're seeing the increases that we're seeing and possible rate increases that we're seeing in sewer and storm water to me are much more related and that's evident through the projects that they're funding related to aging infrastructure and reinvesting in that infrastructure and those systems that we have needed to do and and been you know

that's and that regionally our neighbors are also have been needing to do and it's just a there is no more deferred maintenance for this. Now we are we are reinvesting in these systems and that's not a cause of new people moving into the city or new businesses starting up that's everybody in fact the more well I won't say that but don't go that far more payers right like the that's my line so you don't have to take that up okay okay thank you I think that's an important thing to introduce into the dialogue so people you know who are maybe new to the city don't realize that the what you just said things that were done 60 or 70 years ago when the city was settled have to be done you know sometimes for the first time.

Same thing for storm water with the deficient storm water systems and connections that we have like those that's that is what's going to increase the storm water rate is is adding those projects in to address deficiencies that are causing flooding to people's homes. Yeah. Okay. Thank you very much. Amanda, you're off the hook on that question for this time. I'd like to point out that we have a graphic example of what happens with deferred maintenance going on right now in DC. You know, 40 t 40 million sewage of the PTOIC of concentrated sewage going into the PTOIC was because of the old infrastructure. It was not growth. It was infrastructure. None of the sewer the city's sewer sheds connect to the PTOIC intercept

in case that was brought and our drinking water is upstream of that. That's very important to know. Uh Mr. Kinsky,

thanks. Uh so first of all, uh kudos on the report and kudos on this presentation. I'm not quite sure how you keep all of that information organized um in a coherent way, but uh great job. Um just a couple of uh simple questions. Uh we've asked the question a couple of times over the past year about grant funding with the assumption that in the current environment it was going to decrease. I thought you mentioned early on in your presentation that you're seeing an increase in grant funding. Um did did that there was more grant funding coming in uh over the did you say that

I can't remember oh in this year's CIP that there you mean tonight's presentation that there we have seen an increase in I mentioned that our $162 million total this this year is higher than what we had last year with 148 million that's almost exclusively because of those two grant applications that are pending with MBTA right now in transportation the Hok Road and Anenddale Road multimotal those total like 45 million. So like that's the whole reason why we're higher this year. We would have been lower than last year's Right. Cuz like I think some I think we were sort of anticipating to have like a more conservative, more modest CIP this year in light of some of the environment.

Yes. Yeah. So I that's what I was trying to point out is that like there are two specific grants that really contributed to that increase in our in our total this year. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Um, and then on the unfunded chart uh that that you had up here, uh

just can uh can you confirm uh that all of those projects years are like severable. Uh so um the one that jumps out at me uh is the IT core infrastructure. If we start down the road of 27 and 28 funding, can you if it's unfunded in 29, can you just turn it off without or is it is are these p is the 29 funding level tied to some continuation of the 28 funding level?

Yeah. I think the best way to answer that is that in these in these uh projects where you have funding in every single year that's sort of a a continuing or ongoing program or bucket as we called it earlier where we invest into that every single year for ongoing improvements in that area. So no, we cannot turn off IT core infrastructure. Um but uh by by uh financial policy the way that these CIP projects work is that they are um able to uh accumulate funds over like it's not like at the end of the year if they have $200,000 from last year that stays in that project account. It does not automatically go back to the general fund like like some other budget stuff. So they I don't know exactly what is tied to that $125,000 in fiscal year 29. maybe in the project sheet. Probably not because for it core infrastructure, we don't really provide a lot of details because that's like some security and like

stuff that we don't really want to advertise what we're doing and investing in. Um but but some for some of those projects that is provided for I I just know that when you're dealing with public funding if you start a project in one year and don't have sufficient funds to complete it to in the uh second year or third year or fourth year that can be very problematic. Yeah. Uh but and that may be something that starts happening in the in these outy years. I don't have specific examples of that or like data on that tonight, but yes, it's a good it's a a good point. Yeah.

All right. And that that's all I had. Thanks. Okay. Thank you. Uh go ahead. Thank you. This is um as always very comprehensive and I

it's great what what you guys are able to pull together and present and how clear each one of the project sheets is and there's just tons of information with you know across the fiscal years as well as you know all of the other um planning and sustainability features and things like that. So thank you. Um I can recognize how much work goes into that on a on a daily and yearly basis. So thank you. Um uh I I was happy to see that um the strategic uh project development for the master planning and utilizing that grant funding to kind of bring that planning forward to start as early as um fiscal year 27. um just for the very nature of the storm water to kind of help percolate some of those projects to kind of not only storm water but also for the sanitary and the sewer, right? And maybe it's as we're discovering what needs to happen. Um that becomes leverage for voluntary concessions and things like that. Um especially with regard to capacity and development and all of that. So, um I think that's a really good use of th those um gr that grant money. Um I did want to um also just uh ask a quick question about um there's uh the Cavalier Park playground equipment. I was in the um Rex Park recent meeting and that doesn't show up here. Is that because it's in fiscal year 26?

It was previously funded. Yes. So, that's an active ongoing project they have funds for. They actually just received uh uh proposals or from from for different playground designs that I think that they're going to be sharing in the next couple of months. So, yeah, that's active and ongoing funded. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. No, that's that's great. Thank you. Um, and I think I mean everybody's pretty much touched on on my my little list of things that I wanted to to discuss. So, thank you. This is a great presentation and we can keep talking and doing questions, you know, next week or in between now and March 4th as well. So, great followup. Um, well, I have a few. Anybody else?

Okay. Uh, I'll just echo Miss Freellander's comments about how detailed and comprehensive this is every year and how clear, which I think is so important for the public. These are big, complicated projects and it's a lot of money and I think it's really important for the public to clearly understand where that money is going um because it's their money at the end of the day. So, thank you um for all bringing all that clarity to it and for the proactive planning. Um, I really appreciated the priorities that you identified for the CIP this year. The infrastructure reinvestment, progressive multimodal transportation, strategic project development, those I think are the right ones. Like we've heard those priorities from the community. Um, so I'm really happy to see it reflected in the CIP. Um, also like as Miss Freellander said, a really big fan of the um strategic planning for the master planning for the sewer and sanitary um sanitary sewer and storm water. Uh, we I wanted those kinds of plans for a long time. So, I'm really glad that we've been able to find the funds to um go out and get them done. Uh, I know that will be a process that we'll all be going through soon. But um regarding the uh 10-year pipeline, there were a few things moved in there and maybe they've been in there or maybe they they've been in there went into there recently that I think like bicycle advocates might be concerned about. I think uh all of those bike projects getting pushed out to 2032 or beyond was not really the vision that we had as a community when we passed the bicycle master plan. So those would be things that I would want to try to elevate into the CIP. I know there are a lot of other very worthy projects. Um so one one way that you know we might think about it is like what are what are the must do things? I mean there are some things in the non-negotiable. They have to we have to pay for them

like if we need to buy additional sewer capacity in the future, right? Like we just have to do that as a community.

Um and then I think I'd prioritize things that are really public safety um issues like the fire hydrants. Um to your point on project readiness, things that are really pretty ready to go or that present like really great funding opportunities. Um so projects that that we could we could get through the process quickly and that we could also get funds to complete. Um as Mr. Stevens said, I'd also prioritize things. This is like talking about the these these unfunded projects and things in that in that 10-year pipeline um that present some climate benefits to the community. I would put those bicycle master plan routes in that bucket of things that present climate benefits.

Um, and then things that I think, you know, the community has stated that they really want or or need or desire. Um, but that would be the kind of way that I would think through what should be elevated from that 10-year pipeline. Um, because otherwise you're going to have a lot of advocates for one individual project. And I think we really need to think about it holistically as a community. what do we absolutely have to do and what's really best for the community. Um I liked your idea of maybe having that discussion again in November um before we sort of kick off. Maybe we could take a look at the pipeline and and talk through some of those projects and we'll have more information. Pipeline update.

Yeah. Yeah. So, in general, kind of like I know I know we talk about the CIP just like a couple times a year and we get the updates on the projects as they're going, but as as the next CIP is percolating, if we can be helpful to you, um I'm always happy to have you come and and speak with us, though I don't I don't know I don't want you to have super late nights all the time. I will say I just want to say on the on the bike plan the specifically West Street moving out to the pipeline um that the bike we have consistently come back to this with the bike route projects is it's a funding situation. So we have limited local funding available for all of our transportation projects which include you know infrastructure reinvestment some priorities of things that sort of are musto that also includes wamada that we have to pay every single right must do like non-discretionary so then that leaves like a bucket of money at the end of the day of local money that we can use for other transportation projects right now that is I think we have 1.5 million going or what is the to total cost for east west connection um in and over

and of those routes that would be the right the priority.

So that's the first one and we've funded that with local funds for the west street bike route we had previously recommended that for funding with federal grant funds not an ideal candidate for federal grant funds federal grant funds to administer the grant funds and to administer a project with federal funds is like it's a big lift. It adds a lot of project time to the schedule. It's like it's just a lot more work in in general. So, it's like not ideal for a project like a bike lane, even a separated bike lane that's a along a very long corridor that's a safety improvement, right? So, that is a a big part of the reason and we've consistently come back to that with bike routes of like they really ideally should be funded locally. We have limited local funds for them.

Yeah. Okay. That's what I just wanted to say that of like as far as like project readiness, do you know what I mean? Like I want to say that about bike projects is like yeah that it is a funding thing. Yeah.

Um one other thing on bikes and I I think maybe to follow on Mr. Crosner's question about about um plowing for you Miss Miss Brain but um we are installing more bike lanes. Do we have the ability to plow them or the WOD trail? I understand that we need some sort of anou with Nova Parks to be able to plow the trail, but I think that was that was I mean I I commute to the the East Church Metro um and on my bike and but I got a ride with my husband for the last three weeks because I couldn't really ride safely on the trail and the streets were too narrow. So yeah, I mean

plowing the trails is also an unfunded need in the recreation and parks operating budget. Okay. So yeah. Yeah, maybe. Yeah. But do we have I guess with Nova with Nova Park and it's anou. Yes. Yeah. And then but do we also have the the like equipment that we need to be able to plow the bike trail or to plow um bike lanes like protected bike lanes as we are installing them to keep those facilities clear. Yeah. Um I'm not sure of what what our facilities I know some places um in in DC there's like kind of a Bobcat like a narrower um uh item for uh vehicle for the the separated bike lanes. Um I think that's probably something we'll have to to think about as we start to develop more of the protected one.

So that might be another thing to keep on the list for future CIP investments. Um and then I just wanted to ask about our repaving efforts. So I saw I think it was like a million 1.2 2 million in federal funds for repaving in the CIP. It's for um Broad Street from Falls to the City line and then Washington. So really just those two main highways. Do we have other P repaving funds available and they're not in the CIP that are in operating funds? Right. So they're in the operating. How much is that?

This is a very specific um state grant program. So this is a VOTE grant that every year we can apply for our eligible segments of our primary extensions of the US national highway system which for us in the city of Falls Church those are Broad Street, Washington and Hillwood. We've done some Hillwood segments. Sometimes those segments are like ba it's based on uh the pavement condition index or whatever that V dot assesses. So like we don't really get to have a say in like well we really want to pave this part like they do an annual inspection or assessment or whatever and they provide us the eligible segments that we can apply for the grant funds for. We will also do paving additional annual paving through our operating budget and I think there's an ongoing list of those paving sections

and is that money captured in the CIP that sort of like ongoing it's all it's all operating any paving project that we do in CIP is like in addition to our annual paving program. So we try to take advantage of what we can um usually typically also like a full roaded uh reconstruction or full depth reclamation like that would be CIP that would usually be like a CIP grant project that we would and I have that in the 10-year pipeline that we might have some future uh roaded reconstructions that we apply for. But yeah. Yeah. I know I know the CI the CCT sent a really great memo a couple years back on paving and they had estimated that we needed like 2.5 million a year to actually

stay keep up with the paving needs that the city has currently. So I just I'm curious how close we are to the re that recommendation. Yeah, I think I saw that. I know that our our pave our annual paving operating dollars have been increasing last year and this year and so we're working on spending those. We have a new prioritized um plan for how to how to kind of move some of that money. And then the FY27 conversation will be coming up soon as we talk about the FY27, you know, operating budget. But acknowledge that um annual paving is certainly has been mentioned many times as a priority both for the paving itself but also because sometimes that is a way to get in some additional bike lanes or um crosswalks or other other measures.

Yeah, lots of lots of good benefits and avoiding potentially having to reconstruct your roaded, right? Um that whole state of good repair that we're aiming for. Uh okay. Um I think Oh, there was one other question I had. I really appreciated the the structure of the project sheets. I it was amazing how dense densely you were able to pack that information in there. Um and I liked the I think we this was a request that we had that operational impact box that's new in the bottom right corner. Yes, we added that this year. Yeah.

Yeah. I thought I thought that was really helpful. um curious I don't it may not be possible to know this but um you know when we when we say like we expect this project to increase or decrease operating costs if we have some sense of the scale of that increase or decrease at all or even sort of a guess uh of what I mean I'm thinking of the like single double triple dollar sign variety um we actually took your double I saw that on the pipeline um I did see that in the 10ear pipeline I I thought it was it's a nice little key menu.

I I just thought of that in this context too because sometimes when you say well I think in the public would want to know well you're saying this is going to increase operating cost like well how much and that was your original suggestion not ready to do that for operational impacts yet. Okay, that will be my answer to it. But yeah, thank you for all of the great work. Really appreciate it.

Thank you. Can I ask a quick followup based on your question on the repaving for for uh Broad Street uh next to where we had the um construction around Madera 2. There's the still the crosswalk across the Broad Street where I have seen people walk by walk with the intention that they're expecting people to stop and nobody's stopping. Like it's an it's not really a crosswalk. It's just like the old Oh, the one next to local thrift. Yes. Yeah. Is that is is that part of the CIP solution? People see it and they walk on it and they thinking. Is there any is that part is that a CIP based thing or is that just part of we need to fix that? That was a temporary crosswalk that went there as part of the development.

Yeah. As part of Madera too. Yeah. Okay. I don't know. I think we'd have to check with our our transportation team and whether it's like still warranted moving forward. Um Yeah. I I assume it's not really a crosswalk, but I didn't know if there was something we could do to either make it more clear. Either formalize it or remove it or or remove it or paint over it or something. I I know there was a request to have it, but I know what you mean. I I would I would say that the developer has done an insufficient job of removing it and the developer needs to step up and finish their work on that. That is a whole separate thing. So, I say that's not a CIP project, but thank you for bringing it up. We can look at asking if it would be

I don't know if it's like part of the if it's waiting for the CIP or it could be handled separately. I don't know that it's Yeah, we're doing it kind I don't think we're doing it does not appear that we're doing it. Uh I agree. It does not appear anything is happening. So that was my the only time I heard it discussed of putting it in was as part of the uli um activity for Gordon Road Triangle when they looked at the whole thing. That was actually a discussion item for that. But now you're talking beyond the 10-year pipeline. So, okay. Well, thank you so much. I appreciate you both and all of your hard work. Thank you very much. And I'm sorry that

we're it's a long agenda. Okay. So, next work session on the fiscal year 27 to 32 affordable housing fund. Welcome, Brandon. Nice to see you. Mic check.

Thank you, Planning Commission. Always good to see you guys today. Um, today we're going to talk a little bit about the affordable housing fund. Um, so the thought here is we'll just zoom out a little bit. I'll kind of give you guys a little bit of a history lesson. I'm sure you guys might remember from last year, but, uh, then we'll kind of just go over what's changed and then I'll just kind of go through the spreadsheets with you guys. Super simple. Uh, it's always tough following Caitlyn because she does such a great job and then I have just kind of like couple little spreadsheets to show you guys. It's not quite as impressive, but

um, here we are. So, uh, you know, historically, the affordable housing fund was designed to be kind of like a a source of funding for affordable housing goals in the city. Uh the idea would be we would have uh the staff would receive applications. It would go to the housing commission. Um those applications would be reviewed uh and approved by the housing commission, go to city council and approved that way and then affordable housing goals would uh be commenced in that case. Um in the um in the last few years that's changed. in the last year it's changed um and that we've kind of expanded it uh to be more of a six-year plan similar to what we do with the CIP. Um this was partly because of the planning commission, one of the reasons we're here today. Um because you guys wanted to have a a more robust understanding of what was going on with affordable housing, which I think is a reasonable request. Um so, um where does the uh affordable housing fund come from? Typically, it's a mix of several different funding sources. It's basically a series of bank accounts. Um, one of those uh funding sources is local funding from the city. We just go to those bullet points. Um, uh, we also have uh developer cash and loot contributions. Instead of, you know, affordable housing being their concession uh actual units, we get sometimes some cash that goes into the affordable housing fund. uh we get some state and federal grant funds and then of course we get some um potential future funding uh to support uh housing programs and services. We can get into that in a little bit. Um just to let you guys know uh last year's affordable housing fund had a plan for uh local contribution of $500,000 on a yearly basis moving

forward. Um, so how did we get where we are today? Um, so we started out, we went to the housing commission. We said, "Hey, look, here's what we did last year. Do you guys have any comments?" Uh, the housing commission came back and said, "Well, it's a little bit hard to follow." Um, because we were kind of using the SIP as a template, and it didn't really match up very well. So, request for some simplicity and request for a little bit more um future-looking uh consideration for our our city committed affordable unit program or CCAU program, which is essentially the city's version of a voucher program, which you'd see in other other jurisdictions. So, we took that information, we spoke to city management, and city management gave us two bits of feedback. First of all, we're no longer getting $500,000 on a yearly basis moving forward. We had some kind of uh hard decisions to make here in the city and one of the things that took a hit was our future planning for affordable housing in this case because we made some assumptions about our investments that are not currently realistic at this point. So instead of 500, we're now going to be looking at $200,000 moving forward. Second bit of information is um over the last several months we've been looking at the Virginia Village project which uh you guys uh happy to give you guys a little bit of an update on that. We went to council back in November. Um council uh received an update uh following our purchase of three additional properties. So we previously had six properties in Virginia Village. Um uh those three properties make it nine. Uh and the idea was we wanted to consider what our development options would be for those properties once we reached a critical mass. Well, now that we have nine properties, uh nine out of 20 properties in the neighborhood, we think that might be good time for an inflection point for that. And one of the things that we decided was we wanted

to go speak with our development partners uh abroad and get a sense of what we can do with what we currently have. And a lot of the feedback we got was affordable housing is feasible in this in this site. Uh uh redevelopment, larger redevelopment, more units, but it's going to require substantive a substantial um local uh affordable housing fund contribution. So we're going to need a lot more money to the tune of about 80 to $120,000 per unit. So if we're looking at 100 units, that's $10 million. $10 million that we don't have currently. So the direction from city management was we need to start squirreling away money, pulling all that money and coming up with a war chest in order to address that gap that we see for the Virginia Village project. So um with that we can go to the spreadsheets. Uh we'll go we'll start with the um the spend plan. So here there's only it's easy it's three three items. It is our CCAU program again our voucher program. We have 15 units. We have a set aside of about $150,000 per year. One of the comments from the housing commission was to be a little bit more forward-looking and start escalating that fund in advance of any rents that would be going up. Again, it's really just um an agreement between the city uh the the the the uh the resident and the the property manager where the city would help contribute to the cost of the rent. So any any additional increases the city would be making up uh in that case. Um it's a great program. It really goes it most of our ADUs, our regular affordable housing goes down to 60% AMI. the CCAU program can actually go down to as low as 30% AMI. So, it actually really helps

out people who are really at the lowest rungs of of what can be considered affordable in the city. Um, we have about 15 units in that program. Uh, but housing commission wanted to have a look ahead and be be more proactive in in having a good sense of uh making sure we can afford what we've set aside. So, um, they requested a 3% escalator every year. We took a look at what we currently have been spending and what we expect that spending to go up for over the next several years and we said, "Well, for the next two years, we're not really going to need to go up and if if there are any additional increases, we'll go up by 1% every year and we'll have a conversation about it every time with the housing commission because that's just part of the process." So, that was the idea with that. Um, and that's how we are moving forward with the CCAU program. Uh the other point here is the affordable home ownership program. Uh kind of similar. It's an affordable housing program um that uh housing human services runs. We have a development partner um and they basically the partner goes out purchases property with city uh grant funds uh and then sells them at a reduced price. Um we are moving about two to three units per year. So, we're expecting about 2 to three units worth of costs over the next several years until we've exhausted our funds and we're we're planning planning that out through 2030 as you can see here. And then finally, we have the Virginia Village Acquisition Strike Fund. So, I don't want to just to let you guys know, we are kind of bifurcating the idea of acquisition and actually squirreing away the money for the redevelopment. Acquisition is to acquire any other new units that we may need. Um the good news with that is we just got some some excellent news actually. Um that uh we had about $2 million in our reserve or for the strike fund. We got another $850,000 of grant funds uh from the Fed uh recently appropriated about a week or

two ago. So that's really cool and uh really need that to kind of look at other properties in the neighborhood and see if there's any opportunities for acquisition that would help support that development. Um, so those are our major items for our spend plan. So these are items that we currently have allocated funds for. We know what we're going to do with them. Everything else is going to be dedicated to our Virginia village fund, which is um our what we call our reserve fund because we're just going to be scrolling away. We're not actually going to be spending it until we actually have a dedicated plan uh for usage of those funds for Virginia Village. We can go on to the next spreadsheet. So, this one is structured just a little bit differently because it is not what we're going to be spending it on. It's just where the sources are coming from. So, for example, in blue you see our local fund contribution. We already have about $2 million uh 1.9 uh from what we have in the affordable housing fund right now that's going to Virginia Village. Uh the balance of the CCAU program. So, we CCAU program is about 150 per year. We get 200 on a yearly basis from the city. So the 50 the remaining 50 goes to the uh Virginia Village Reserve Fund pretty much on a yearly basis moving forward. Um we get uh a federal grants from community development block grant and home. These are pretty typical funds. Other localities get a lot more but based on our population we only get about 70,000. That money is going to be going that money is going to be going towards the affordable housing, sorry, going to be going towards Virginia Village. And then we have two uh cash and loo contributions. One from the Quinn building. Looks like we're targeting about fiscal year 29 for 1.9 million. And then we have the Westfall Senior Building. Um we're expecting to start getting that in the next fiscal year. And again, that has a

I believe that is a 3% escalator um going into that. Uh all that is going to be reserved for the Virginia Village project. Um so on the spreadsheet we have there at the top um a running balance. So by 2030 we'll have about $6 million. That doesn't quite get us to 10 million. By 2032, sorry, 2032. But the idea is in the meantime we'll be looking at other potential opportunities and sources of funds and ways to kind of close that gap for Virginia Village to make that project a reality. Um that pretty much covers it. I would like to just open it up and get comments or questions, get some thoughts.

Great. Thank you. Uh questions comments. Go ahead, Mr. Kinsky. I'll start. Uh first of all, thank you for spending the evening here. Um for while while we talked about a lot of other agenda items, um I'm a little confused about the Virginia Village. So we own there the city owns nine of 20 of the 20 structures.

Yes. Some of them are contiguous and can be developed now. Is that correct? Um, and could you walk me through why we would have to put additional funding into who who would we'd have to pay a developer? Mhm. Excellent question. Yeah. to act. If we own the pro, if we own the land, um wouldn't we be able to develop that land without additional costs? Get a developer to develop to to build on that land without additional costs. And maybe I'm missing something.

Sure. Sure. And I probably could have done a better job of explaining that whole situation. So, we're actually kind of pursuing several strategies at once. Um, as it is right now, the current zoning doesn't really permit much density in that location. Um, so we're working with the planning commission or the planning team uh to help work on the work on update the zoning for that for that area. Um, that's something that can't happen right now and currently right now we can't really develop it unless we make that decision. The other thing that we want to do is get a developer back on board. So, we're going to be going through the process of preparing an RFP. We're going to be going out the community and we're going to say, "Hey, look, what can we develop here?" Because right now, the city doesn't really have a redevelopment authority. We don't really have the manpower, expertise in order to develop it on our own. We will need a development partner in a situation like this. We'll need their expertise, their knowledge on how to how to seek these additional sources of funding. Um, affordable housing in general is expensive because we are covering the gap compared to like market units. And a lot of the funding that is out there requires special hurdles to be jumped through. We have to meet certain requirements. We have to make sure that we're meeting certain deadlines out there in the community. And it doesn't always cover the total cost of the project. Um you can go to most affordable housing developments, especially in this area, and you'll see that typically what they call it as a lasagna is that there's multiple funding sources. And a lot of times a big part of that funding source is the local contribution. So even though we have the properties, the actual value of the properties is kind of already baked into what we consider the valuation of what the total cost of the project is going to be. And that any and that even with all the other sources baked in, we will still need to cover a gap of about like I said 80 to 120 per unit. And there's a couple ways there. We're the city's currently evaluating ways to do it.

We're probably going to be looking into getting a consultant to help us kind of brainstorm ways to make sure that there that we are um leaving no stone unturned in terms of making sure that we can we can uh maximize our dollar value for that. And and I guess in the meantime, we're going to be pulling all our resources to make sure we can actually contribute any money that we might need in order to make that uh a reality. Uh but I will actually also mention that um housing human services my team is going to be going to the council on Monday uh and talking about some of the other methods of um securing affordable housing such as preservation. Um I think that's going to be a a pretty interesting conversation cuz it's like there's one way to contribute to affordable housing is is Virginia Village is is the redevelopment aspect and then there's also um preservation, right? we have this this opportunity for several several um ADUs that uh their covenants are expiring over the next decade or so. Is it is it worth extending those covenants versus pursuing uh Virginia Village as an opportunity for for for creating new affordable housing? These are just kind of ways to figure out what's the best um return on investment for the city in terms of how to allocate resources. Um, and I think there's also going to be a follow-up conversation on Virginia Village uh at the March 2nd council session as well. So, I I encourage everyone here to to check those out if you want to get more information on those two topics.

And who in Virginia Village once it's developed, who owns the build who who will own the buildings? Will it be the developer or the city? Who will get the net proceeds from the rents? I'm going to say it's going to be probably the developer. It it really depends on how the RFP is structured, but in my experience with these things, typically we are donating these land um for for the concession of we expect some affordable land and money, right? Land and land and local contribution with the expection of maximizing affordable housing that's going to be on this site. So, right now we have what we call preserved market rate affordable there. Um they're all onebedrooms. All these properties are are quadruplexes. So there's four onebedrooms in each property. So if we have, you know, nine units, that's what 36 units, right? We want to triple or quadruple the amount of affordable housing in this location. Um and so we would, you know, donate this land and hopefully get get that much in affordable housing back and especially with much longer covenants than we would get in like other properties. And is there a is there thinking about um developing the land so to offset the additional cost to the city that some of that land could be developed as market rate land?

That is absolutely one of the considerations we want to evaluate, right? We're going to talk to a consultant. We're going to talk to development partners. I you know I think that's part of the expertise that we're going to be trying to leverage here is trying to find out what are some of the options in order to in order to um you know first of all close that gap right that's a lot of money to spend on a on a project from the city's perspective right we're not we're not DC we're not Arlington we don't have a war chest of hundreds of millions of dollars we're we were just talking about the CIP here so um you know it's important to remember that uh we don't have all the answers, but what we're doing is kind of taking the steps in order to get those answers over the next five to six months.

Got it. Thank you. Great. Any other Mr. Duncan? Thank you for coming to us, keeping us up to date on what's happening. So, your next stops are Did you say council on Monday? Uh, not specifically for the affordable housing fund, but yes, our our team will be uh at council on on Monday. and then planning team I think will be up briefing council the following Monday. The following yeah

Monday. Okay. So for those of you who are interested in this issue, tune in and hear what they have to say. That that would be a good opportunity to catch up. The nine that we own are uh somewhat more contiguous than obviously they they were when we only owned four, right? But we still haven't quite reached the point where, you know, we own everything east of here and we're going to redevelop that and see what happens in phase two. Uh, as I understand it, um, where does the U current buy downsu and the existing buildings that expire over the next 10 years, what sort of what sort of dollar figure does that cost us in any given year right now? I mean, what's the value? Not cost us because presumably the developer signed on and doesn't cost us anything, but what would the cost be?

Right. So, that's actually what the specific topic is. On Monday, I actually spent like the last week preparing a spreadsheet for all that information. I don't have it off the top of my head. Okay. I'm I'm I'm I I will tell you that what I uncovered was that it seems even if we are spending dollar for dollar the value of the difference between the ADU rents, you know, tracked over time based on a discount rate. It's you're still going to get much better value going with Virginia Village right now. Mhm.

Because we have the land that we've already owned mostly purchased with I mean we've purchased it with some city funds, but a lot of it was was with was was with grant funds. You're going to you're going to be spending less money for those units and you're going to have much longer uh covenant periods on those units, right? like you maybe in 10 years you can buy them down for less than what we spend on Virginia Village but if you're going for 20 years no 30 years absolutely hands down it's Virginia Village

so that's been a question that's been circulating so presumably you'll help answer uh that question basically be more economical for the city to own more of the Virginia village land and develop a building that had more units than go havsies on Virginia Village and put some extra money into buying down the existing uh soon to expire uh affordable situations in the in the existing mixeduse buildings,

right? Um, you know, I I think what I'm saying is like today, including all the money we spend on the properties today where if if we're at a fork in the road and we say, is it buy down existing affordable units that are expiring over the next 10 years or go straight for Virginia Village? Virginia Village all day. Now, if we were to start from scratch, I think probably extending the covenants would make more sense, but it that's not really, right? We're already um in Virginia Village with the nine units, almost half of the development. Yeah. Well, we've already that's where we are

committed to a certain degree. We should go forward. Uh you haven't mentioned the fields yet. That's a separate LITC situation, but can you give us just a little update on what might be going on there with the federal tax credits being soon to expire and what we're what we're doing to deal with that? So, um I'm not exactly sure what I can and can't share publicly, but I will say that we have had discussions with the developer and we don't anticip we we we are optimistic that we will be able to extend the affordability units there in that property without the city contributing local dollars to that. Okay.

So, that's that's where we are with that. Uh but, you know, I I don't want to make any promises without anything We won't hold you to it. Okay. Thank you. Well, I I think a number of us on complaining commission are and certainly many in the community are very interested in what you're doing and we'll be following it closely and looking forward to opportunities to get the public up to speed on however much information can be shared. Uh so we look forward to hearing more from you soon. Sure. I do too. Thank you.

Great. Any other questions, thoughts? We're closing in on 10:30. Um, do we want to do a quick uh motion to extend the meeting time? Move to extend the meeting till 10:45. 10:15 10:45 Do I hear 10:45? Gone. 10:45. The chair knows how much is left. I don't 10:15 is come and gone, Mr. Duncan. Yeah. 1040. 10 1050. 1050. Oh, 50. I misheard you. Yeah. No, I'm not that out of out of tune. Is there a second for 1050? All in favor? I Okay, thank you. In our rules of procedure.

Um, thank you so much for coming out tonight and for sticking with us so late. Really appreciate it. Happy to be here. Uh so just so I understand the different programs we have and what is sort of going to be an ongoing the affordable home ownership program. Did you say that you expect that is going to wind down or is that something that's going to be ongoing for the foreseeable future? It's going to wind down. We we it's it came through the um the Amazon Reach grant funds. We got about $4 million for it. Um uh we got a a small increase of uh I think $150,000 to help larger households, but we don't have any sustainable funding for that program. Okay. Okay.

And I I would say um just costwise it's it's not a very cost effective. You know, you're probably looking closer to about $200,000 per unit for that program versus like some of these other programs which are closer to $100,000 per unit. So, yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. I know it's helped a lot of people. So, it has. It has. Yeah. Um it's understandable. We really need to if we find more grant funding, happy to happy to extend it, you know. Yeah. Right. Uh so the CCIU program will continue. Yes, we have we have fairly long-term plans for that program. Okay. And then the and then Virginia Village is sort of its own special beast.

Right. Right. Again, and and that on the spend plan, if that's what you're looking at, uh that is specifically for acquisition. So the hope is possibly three more properties in the development and ones that help us move forward with uh with a more robust uh development plan. Yeah. Go ahead. Actually, I did have a question on Virginia Village. There was some talk at the last EDA meeting about forming a steering committee. Is that something that's still underway? Uh

yeah, I think there's there's a again there's there's kind of several modes going on with that development. Um we have the planning side, we have um we have the RFP side. I think like uh specifically the planning is going to be very public over the next several months in order to make sure that that everyone's clued in on what's going on with the future of that development. Uh in terms of like a steering committee, I I haven't had any specific conversations about when that would start or who's going to be a part of that. Okay. I thought that was in the um White Shields had a u kind of a game plan so to speak. I forget he had a better term than than game plan, but that's essentially what it was. But

yeah, And part of that plan was to have a steering committee members from various sources. And it just struck me that having possibly a member from the planning commission might be a good idea since there may be a reasonzoning of that property that's uh in the cards in the future. That would be pretty good to have somebody from the planning commission. Uh I I don't disagree. I think that would be an excellent idea and I think you guys are going to be pretty pivotal especially on the zoning piece um over the next several months. Yeah, that's a hint. Is that Mr. Dun? Madam

Chair, are we invited to a joint meeting of the council and others on this topic sometime? Seems like I remember seeing that on the council. It's not familiar. So, Jack, does that ring any bells? Can't remember when they talked about I think there was a a previous item uh that got taken off the agenda that the planning commission and EDA were going to be invited to a joint work session for that same evening. Um, I I don't think that's on the agenda anymore. It wasn't for Virginia Village. Okay. All right. Maybe I was looking at the old one. Could I ask one more question? I forgot. How does Winterhill and the current affordable units population there plug into all this um

and the foster housing corporation which I think manages those still, right? So, so right now the only kind of connection at least fiscally between the city and false church housing corp has been our recent approval of CDBG funds.

Typically we have those rounds of CDBG funds essentially as uh we we offer to the community. They some folks apply to it and and false church housing court has been pretty uh regular about applying uh for those funds. We recently just awarded them three grant years, which is almost, I think, uh, $200,000. So, significant sum uh, over the last few years. Uh, we're in the process of of dispersing those funds to them. It takes a while. We're it's a contract between the city and um, Fairfax County. Um, but we don't have a like a future roadmap for how to kind of be in partnership with them. Uh, and I think that's probably one of the things we'll consider, especially since we are dedicating all of our funds from especially CDBG and and home to Virginia Village. We don't have a plan for how we're going to support some of our other partners that have been with us for a long time. That's why with home and false church housing corp with uh CDBG.

Well, presumably that will force them to the table to have some discussions about if they're relying on that. I mean, that's a a population that's been served for quite some many years successfully. And so, right, I I do think the city supports them in other ways as well. I think they do some some um gratus um trash pickup and stuff like that. Maybe some some um leaf pickup and stuff like that. I'm not all privy to the specifics of uh what goes on over there, but I do know we offer some some services to them. Okay. Well, it's always been a little puzzle puzzling to me why there isn't a closer relationship. Again, if you've been around for a while, yeah,

you know, that that was that was the affordable housing debate of the 1980s, you know, and it was finally arranged arranged arrived at and arranged and it's been very successful at serving the population that it helps. Most people don't know anything about it. They just think that it happened, but it it took a lot of political will and resources to make it happen. Be nice to get everybody on the same team and make use of the resources we have as efficiently as we can. Okay. Thanks.

I I will say that um we do work with not necessarily false church Housing Court, but their parent company NHP on the home ownership program. So we do have some projects with them and you know we for example met with them about Virginia Village to get some some of their kind of expertise on affordable housing and get some resources from them. So they're certainly part of the team I would say. Great. Well, thank you. Making the most of the resources we have is always the challenge. So I appreciate all of the hard work that you do um to keep track of all of these many programs and uh the city's planning. So thank you. Sure. My pleasure. Thank you guys.

Great. Okay. All right. I think that takes us uh to our information items tonight. Any commissioner reports? Nope. I have one real quick. Go ahead. Just real quick. Um the uh parks and wreck board is um going to hold a public meeting on the play equipment for Cavalier Trail Park next month. So bring the kids um and let them discuss what they like about all the different scenarios that they have. So it'll be fun.

Good. Thank you. My kids are probably too big, but they're too old. Yeah. Anyone else? Okay. Uh director's report. Uh Mr. Matusk is not with us tonight, so I think this is you, Mr. Trainer. Yeah.

Thank you. I'll take this one. Um there's only one item on the director's report and uh it's a notice about a uh resolution that council um uh is poised to pass at their next meeting. I believe they had a work session recently on a uh update to the shared mobility devices uh policy pilot program uh which is sort of a refresh from the um pilot program that council initiated in 2019 I believe that sought uh vendors um uh that uh oversee uh I want to get the acronym right or I guess shared mobility devices which are your kind of scooters and um bike bikes like line bikes, bird bikes.

It's March 9th, not the next meeting. Mobility. Excuse me. It's March 9th, not the next meeting.

March 9th. Thanks. Uh so March 9th is when that'll be uh uh coming back to council next. Uh my colleague Kurt Lawrence, uh environmental planner for the city is uh heading this up. So he's provided all the kind of background material on this um including his staff report which has all the history and kind of details of of the pilot. Uh so again this will be a a one-year pilot where um my understanding is during that time the city will be getting feedback on how it's going. Uh so any planning commission you know involvement or feedback would would be happening during that time. Do do we know if there is a set of metrics or thresholds that would indicate the pilot was successful or is it going to be mostly anecdotal feedback?

Uh well that's probably in the staff report but I would imagine at least getting some some vendors to apply would would be a starting point. Sure. That's a good start. It's a good start. There was uh I know that a lot of conversations were had with vendors about what

what went wrong with the first uh attempt at this perhaps one being right before co um but there you know so there's a lot of uh there's outreach done in research by staff to kind of uh give this a um a refresh and it's kind of best chance at um introducing these programs in a um responsible manner in the city. So, but in terms of metrics, um I imagine that's in the staff report. I'm not totally familiar uh with it, but um that's something we can report back on next meeting. I'll check that up. Thank you.

Great. Thank you. Um any other questions for that? Nope. Okay. What do we make? Uh oh. Yeah. Do we have the look ahead? Yeah. It's so hard to see that screen over there. Look at 12. No, it's on the agenda. It's page two. Just one item. Well, yeah. Oh, yeah. But yes.

Uh so we only have items scheduled for your next meeting, which is March 4th. um tenatively we've got the Lee Park uh two subdivision plats coming at you. We're still waiting for those to be uh submitted. It's my understanding. So um but staff was anticipating this date. Uh so whether that holds or not kind of depends on obviously whether the applicant submits. Um but we've got the tree canopy zoning amendments uh coming back for its public hearing. Uh and then the CIP public hearing as well. And then uh that March 9th date, we've got a couple um planning related items going to council for their final considerations. And uh so that's that's kind of all we have right now for the look ahead. We don't have anything else scheduled ahead. So if there's any um ideas or requests,

may I make one request? Yeah. When we get finished down in Richmond, can you guys give us a official update on where the powers of the planning commission lie according to what did or did not pass in the general assembly. Mhm. I don't know when the best time to do that would be, but Okay. I think I think Speaking of that, you just reminded me something. I think that already died. Um Yeah, I know. I think I don't think you'll have to wait too long to give the official pronouncement, but it just seems like there ought to be something on the record since we,

you know, have been required to talk about it several times and vote on it once or twice. Yeah. One of one of many sort of interesting bills that's floating around down there. I think we might be exempt from it because we don't have a metro station within our borders as a jurisdiction, but I encourage everyone to read about Senate Bill 717. It's quite interesting. You know, it would look to kind of preempt local zoning within like a quarter mile, but also up to a mile from metro stations. It's a little bit halfbaked in my opinion, but it it's, you know, would certainly be like kind of sort of kind of an earthquake level of change in the way things are done near metro stations. Um, I don't know, you know, it has it's had some legs down there. I think even though we are within those those radius radi of metro stations it's not the way the language of the bill is written it seems to only apply to jurisdictions where the stations are located in

it we are heavily covered but it is applicable to us um because it also incorporates large scale by bus l bus routes well bus rap yeah I wasn't sure about that BRT so when it was three miles basically covered the entire city. It's now, you know, impacts within a mile. So, it it does impact us. And I do know the legislative committee and uh the legislative group is heavily focused on it,

right? Because because once you get from the way it's written from one quarter I within a quarter it talks about very high density like allowing a minimum of like six stories and 10 units per acre but even from from one quarter all all the way out to a mile it would allow you know like two units on every lot and on interior lots and like four units on corner lots. It's kind of odd. I don't know who how the state legislators come up with this stuff. I don't think any of them are planners. But um in any event, it's interesting. It's controversial. Um, so yeah, those bills, Senate Bill 717. 717.

Yeah. Yeah. And um, so yeah, and we of course, you know, we're we're the part of the cycle where you guys probably already know this, but they had the crossover. So things that were started in one body and passed get go to the other and then the other and it's up to the House of Delegates or the Senate to either you know you know approve that or change it or you know so we're kind of halfway through but there are some very interesting things floating around down there and given that we have you know you know all the houses are controlled and the governor's office is in the same party some of the stuff could make it through so especially stuff that affects local you know and then of course there are lots of all the jurisdictions are lobbying and in addition to Veo and you know some of the other groups that represent cities and towns and counties at the state level but encourage everyone to stay a breast of it.

Thank you. All right. I think that there's a great article in the post recently about the situation. Anybody read it in Persville? Yes. If you think you're if you think you're having a bad day here, boy, be glad that you're not out in Pville. Yeah, they are. They're having a hard time. You got to tell it's worth taking a few minutes to look it up and read it. It's quite something. Yeah, Bill, if you want, I can yell at you. Yeah, exactly. The designated yeller. All right, I think we're done with an extra seven minutes to spare.

Thank you all. No, not there.