Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Great. Thank you. Mr. Kmer is not joining us tonight. Um he is out of town. Uh we do have two planning commissioners that were not here last meeting when we met our new planning director, Matt Matusk. So I think you all have introduced yourself, but just want to give you another warm welcome, Matt. Looking forward to working with you. Hope you've been settling in over these last few weeks. Great. Okay. Um, so I think the next item on our agenda is adoption of the agenda. There are no changes. Can I have a move to adopt? Madam Chair, I move that we adopt the agenda. Okay. All in favor?

I. All right. No speaker series tonight. Um, Mr. Trainer, do we have any um petitions? Uh, yes, Madam Chair. did have uh one petition from Jean Gresco of 120 North Fairfax Street who wrote uh to the commission with some concerns about the affordable living policy and that's it. Okay. Was that forwarded to us? I don't think I received it. Yeah. Did Mr. Gresco write today? Yeah. So these these comments came in I believe uh yesterday late yesterday. Okay.

Um they were uh regarding some uh previously submitted comments that um unfortunately didn't Yeah. make it to the to publication. Um so he was following up on those. Okay. I see. Yeah. I haven't looked at this since late yesterday. Our agenda or the attachments online since late yesterday. So we'll take a look at that. Um thank you. Any other No inerson petitions I take at tonight. That's correct. Okay. So, that can bring us to our action items. Um, did everybody have a chance to take a look at the minutes from our July 16th meeting? Any changes, Mr. Duncan?

So, Jack and I had a exchange. There's something at the top of the second page that is a little garbled, but he's gonna explain what it really needs to say. Or maybe he's already put it in there. Was there a change that y'all discussed? The motion regarding subdivision plan, but the language underneath it is the affordable living policy motion itself. So, oh, I see. Yeah. I don't know. Something in the first paragraph needs to change to say what the rest of it reflects,

right? You you flagged this uh Mr. Duncan to me. Uh haven't made the change yet because I was waiting for the meeting to capture that. But yeah, there was a a typo uh in the um action language here on line 37 to 38 uh where Mr. Duncan made a motion to uh approve and recommend council um approve the affordable living policy. Um but uh the the language of the minutes was uh regarding the preliminary subdivision plat. So we can make that change. Okay, I see. And then Mr. Stevens made the motion to approve the This is not related to the second item, the Broaden Washington item. I was wondering if they got mixed up. It's just that uh the language describing the motion is wrong.

That's Yeah, that's correct. Yeah, the the motion itself um should be correct. Okay. Um it was just the um the language describing the motion ahead of time and the the the vote was five to zero. Right. Correct. Election. Okay. All right. Thank you. So with that revision meeting minutes. Okay. Is there a second? All in favor? Hi. Hi.

Not a change to the minutes, but uh there one of the comments I asked to look into was the tear down uh rebuilt statistic that was used. Did did you ever come to closure on that statistic? I'm sorry, Mr. Crim. I'll I'll follow up with the um staff on that. I I haven't heard back uh personally on that, but I can check with the um Okay. our housing folks. No, no, no issue. Just wanted to know how it came out. Thanks. Uh Jack, I just need to abstain from that vote. Thank you. Noted. Thank you.

Okay. All right. So, I think that brings us to our work session tonight, which is a look at the cottage housing ordinance. Um Mr. Did you want to introduce this?

Yeah. Uh, so this is in response to last month's meeting where I think there was interest from the commission to provide another update by staff on kind of where things stand. Um, we've had a chance to meet with other staff that were involved in that last update, which I believe was in spring of this year. Um, where I think we were presenting some information on kind of the last several years worth of that effort. Um, uh, with Jack's help, we've been able to pull some minor additional information that may not have been included in that, uh, last assessment, which I think helps frame the totality of staff's review, uh, and recommendations, uh, on the topic. Uh but beyond that, as you'll see um in Jack's presentation, um we're kind of just open to have a conversation and really waiting for the city council to dictate and express any kind of prioritization of where that item might fit within the broader work plan for next year. So, um with that, I'll hand it over to Jack.

Great.

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Matusk. So, um yes, as Mr. Matusk said we u the the planning staff kind of brushed up some of the materials um that was presented to the planning commission during its annual advance uh earlier this spring. Uh one of those um was uh this presentation might look familiar. Um so this is going to be you know my my presentation is is just going to be running through um these slides again. Um we'll talk about the um just kind of quickly what the cottage housing ordinance was uh what got adopted and what the um last staff recommendations were for an update I think as a starting point for discussion. Um, we also dug up um some of the um some not new data but maybe uh newer to the commission data that wasn't um presented previously on the number of um eligible parcels under u both the current ordinance and the um proposed update that staff um had gathered in in 2020. So um again there's no new information there's no new uh recommendation this is purely for conversation um at the request of the planning commission. So um without further ado um again tonight's discussion is on um the cottage housing ordinance. um planning commission reviewed this at its advance on March 26th. Um and the annual report with the planning

commission's recommendations to city council for its 2025 calendar year uh were presented to council in April. Um perhaps the chair uh after the presentation could if there was any discussion if if you recall on the cottage ordinance that might be something to um share too um as as you know we get going with the discussion. Um so the cottage uh housing ordinance was adopted by council in February 2017. Um the current eligibility is only uh for R1A parcels through the um SE or or special exception procedure. And the cottage housing uh ordinance allows for the grouping of small single dwelling units clustered around a common area um developed with a coherent plan for the entire site. So, it's it's kind of a smaller master plan site. And the zoning regulations that were included uh in the approved ordinance included uh a minimum lot size of 45,000 square feet. Um I think that's equivalent to about uh so it's several R1A parcels. Um

four

four. Yeah, thank you. I was trying to I'm trying to do that math really quick in my three or four. Uh so yes so the equivalent of four R1A parcels together um the form could be detached or semi- detached um a maximum uh gross floor area of 1,000 square ft on the first floor maximum height of one and a half stories or 25 ft. And uh the buildings uh would have to be oriented towards that common area uh or the or the other units. So sort of inward facing. Um and then uh sort of a unique element to it uh was the shared community building. So like a a sort of clubhouse or um common gathering area. And um on the right here is um a source from um or a floor plan of of one of the railroad cottages uh that actually got built in in town. Was a two bed, 2 and a half bath of just under 1500 square f feet. And um so an important part of the cottage ordinance that was approved was um a provision uh requiring a kind of follow-up analysis by the city 3 years after that 2017 approval. Um so in 2020 um staff had done a lot of work to um do an analysis on the railroad cottages and um make some recommendations for a kind of follow-up action which we'll get into next. Um I think the planning commission actually had a work session on it.

We did. Um thank you. And then um the city council either was going to have a work session or um or the pandemic happened right before maybe Mr. but then they didn't February 2020. Yeah. They did they just had a work session so they didn't get to an actual vote or okay any formal action.

So there were two work sessions. Yeah. And and um that's where the uh the trail goes cold. So we we picked up uh you know the materials and the staff reports that uh were put together for those meetings um and those were included as attachments to this presentation and and our staff report. So essentially that that three-year follow-up analysis never happened. Um but the planning commission did uh include that returning to that idea in its um annual report and recommendation to city council to do. Um, so some other um, okay, so the some of those staff recommendations at the time uh, again in 2020 included removing the 55 year age restriction that was included um, and is still on the books for the for the cottage ordinance. Um, staff also recommended amending um, the provision that the development has to be located within 500 ft of a revitalization area um, of which there are two in the city. um and to require that the location be within a quarter of a mile or up to 1,320 ft. Um on the next slide you'll see a map of of these boundaries. So so expanding that that buffer area outside of the revitalization zones. Um staff also recommended uh considering um its use in the R1B district and amending the minimum lot size from 45,000 ft to 33,750 ft, which I believe is the equivalent of three R1A parcels down from four.

I think that's a typo. Um because the railroad cottages were probably about 20 years off. Yeah, I think the railroad cottages were approved in in 2017, probably shortly after the the ordinance was adopted. I'm not sure where

the 97 came from. Uh but yeah, so the railroad cottages that got built included 10 units um and uh you know, we're each approximately 1500 square feet in size, included that common uh area. um that's right off the WOD trail over on Railroad Avenue and um again has that age restriction of um the residents uh have to be at least 55 years or older. Um I guess another point of note is that two other cottage developments uh were discussed at some point with the city um but for one reason or another couldn't make it work. Um, so I it I I I think help in helped inform um staff's recommendations in 2020 um including expanding that buffer area um from 500 ft from a revitalization area to um a quarter mile. So um next couple slides uh collect the potential properties um affected or or the eligible sing individual properties. So I think the original ordinance anticipated that there would be um consolidation of of several parcels required there. there isn't a lot of individual properties in the city then and now that met the the adopting criteria. Um so absent consolidation um this this chart kind of summarizes several scenarios showing how many individual parcels uh would become eligible. So um this contemplates both what was adopted and what staff was recommending at the time. in terms of um

adjusting that minimum lot area and the distance from a revitalization area. Um it's a little uh this chart looks really straightforward, but we we took it from a previous staff report and tried to make it uh a little more digestible. We kind of had a a hard time looking at it and just kind of making sense of it. But um so um of the parcels um today that are 45,000 square ft or larger um only two are within 500 ft of a revitalization area and they're both privately owned parcels. Um and then Yep.

I believe they're they have different owners. We can we can confirm that because we have the we didn't include the the addresses here. U we just consult like consolidated the information. Um but I believe we can double check but I'm I'm pretty sure um each parcel um has different ownership except for the public parks obviously which are all owned by the city. Oh I see like a trust or something. Um

we can we can double check. Yeah. Um and then um so of uh parcels that are at least 45,000 square feet and um basically between um that 500 foot buffer and the quarter mile. Um there's seven additional parcels. So not seven in. So that'd be nine total. We actually got these flipped around. Um so seven additional parcels would become eligible um again that are at least 45,000 square ft and um between 500 ft and a/4 mile from a revitalization area. Um but of those seven additional parcels, three are historic properties and four are private. Um, again, the these were the kind of um break points that staff included at the time. I I don't think there was anything uh prohibiting, you know, historic properties from participating in the cottage ordinance, but there are certainly additional hurdles uh to get there. Yeah.

So, so really the the privatelyowned individual properties would be the most uh redevelopment ready I I suppose. Um so that's the first row. Uh the bottom row um shows that um minimum lot size adjustment. Um so starting at 33,750 square ft um and but less than the current minimum lot size of so just under 45,000 square feet. So today, um, if you didn't change the, uh, required distance from a revitalization area, but you did adjust the minimum lot size, that would introduce three new properties, uh, one being historic and two being public parks. Um and if um both adjustments were made, if um you know the lot size the minimum lot size came down and um the um distance uh opened up then that would that would um draw seven additional sites. Just to clarify, you're going under the current within 500 and uh lot size of 45,000. You go to go to 13 and 33,000

it would be 2 plus 7. So these are additional additional parcels that would become eligible. So those two changes sites to 14. Um I I believe so these are different um yeah so you would have seven additional properties added that are at least 45,000 square ft and then below 45,000 square ft um but at least 33 750 that would be an additional seven and they're not the same properties

that's correct we can we can double check this breakdown um the three historic and four private but yeah Um I I do remember looking at the um individual uh address chart and so it'd be 14 additional properties from the the current two.

I think the map that follows I think almost more clearly identifies that total number and then also gives you a sense of where they are how many are you know adjacent to each other. Right. And um so yeah, I think the light I think the light purple um is the private non-historic. Dark purple is historic privately owned historic properties and greens are are parks. The red boundary are the revitalization areas. Um so and again we've got two one spanning Broad Street up um into the west end. Um and then another um kind of absorbing the South Washington and uh well the entire north the entire Washington Street kind of corridor. Um so those are the two boundaries. The eight um sorry the 500 square ft distance from a revitalization area is the black boundary. So you can see there's very few properties within the black, but then um the blue is the uh quarter mile distance from from the uh revitalization area and that's where the majority um of the properties identified are. Um and then the this the yellow shaded properties are all R1A districts. Um so that that covers the the overview. Um as as a reminder, you know, council sets their their work plan every year.

Generally that happens in you know the first couple months of the year. Um so city council will be discussing and having their retreat to discuss their their work plan for calendar year 2026 in January. Uh so we just included that there uh to keep in mind. Um and uh so that you know that I think concludes my my presentation and um you know Mr. Matusk and I are here to answer any questions. There's not much again new information um but uh we're here to um answer any questions that that we can. So great. Thank you.

Thank you. Thanks for doing the extra work to kind of unearth all these this past information and find some new information. So how do we want to begin? Do you want to start Mr. Stevens? Do we want to talk about those sort of happy to just general thoughts?

Make some share some comments. Uh so thanks for your research and uh presentation. Um yeah, my interest in this was prompted about a year ago when I was talking with Jim Snyder and we were just kind of kicking around what are things that the planning commission could be doing and without missing a beat, he came back and said, "Well, you ought to complete the work on cottage housing." I said, "Okay, I get it." So, uh you know, that's that's the interest. And I think we've kind of proven over the last five years since you know this was uh implemented that uh you can do a cottage housing project and a lot of the things that you know some folks might have feared kind of didn't happen and in fact we had a lot of positive things that maybe weren't anticipated over and above. You I'm just thinking u going through COVID which was a real problem as far as people socializing and so forth. The people that I talked to over at the railroad cottages were just thrilled that they had uh the layout that they did during COVID and they said it really made a big difference in terms of them kind of relying on each other. Um so uh so you know again that wasn't really anticipated in the uh when the ordinance was first uh passed. seems like, you know, regardless of whatever individual views we might have on some of the the different topics, you know, like the distance from the from the commercial areas and so forth, that the first step seems to be that we've got to get some kind of an agreement from council uh to uh kind of set this on on their agenda and then kind of staff it out to all the boards and commissions and so forth. So, I'm just wondering if you had any thoughts on what that is. You know, what what is that process? I mean, do we send them maybe a resolution saying we think it's a good idea to take

the next steps to try to um to update the uh ordinance pending your approval and um indication. you know, uh just wondering if you had any thoughts on on what we could do to kind of help move the process along.

So, I think maybe a healthy timing for that would be later this year and prior to kind of that January time frame where the council generally discusses the priorities for next year, the work plan. So presuming conversations would likely happen prior to that meeting signaling if there are some lowhanging fruit that perhaps may not be as intensive as a comp plan update or something else. Um I think that might be healthy for consideration. uh several things may still occur between now and then but given the length of staff analysis that has already happened. Um we really consider the next step as kind of being the public engagement side of the equation right

hearing from other stakeholders and then maybe evolving staff's analysis further before we can really draft more current recommendations. But clearly as you can see in the presentation a lot of work already went into it. you know, we're dealing with a fairly reasonable number of sites if you exclude the historic or even park sites. So, it's not a I think a significant impact uh given the scale of the changes. Uh and it's an update to an existing policy as you mentioned as a proof of concept that everybody has kind of experienced now. So, we're hopefully more comfortable with it, right? Um but where does that stand against and compare against other priorities?

That's an open question. um particularly since staff is already kind of queuing up and getting ready to look at the land use component. Um that's going to be a pretty big lift and we're going to be pretty busy this fall with the facilities chapter um and some other adjustments to the zoning ordinance. So So you're kind of raising a resource issue

depending how other people consider priorities for next year. Um and given that a lot of what we do you know takes several months if not you know a year to complete. Would there still be any value even acknowledging that you know as far as where this might fall in the queue may not be that high just for all the reasons that you mentioned that nonetheless that it would be helpful for the planning commission to express its interest in this to council so that they have that input as they consider what they want you know their their new list of priorities to particularly since I think the last time they've heard from you was beginning of the year or in the first quarter

them since uh the count the salary letter right we've sent really so because of that delay I guess and where their upcoming conversations will be I think a letter might be healthy just to express that and maybe in the letter if there are other priorities you've been discussing or have noticed that could be a good opportunity to highlight those I'm happy to I'm happy to drop something or Sure.

Happy to work with you on it, but yeah, I think uh I was kind of hoping that tonight from discussion from the group that we would find enough of a consensus, you know, to to kind of move forward with that step. I don't if you want to hear from other folks on other thoughts or Yeah, I mean I I you know, I think the letter could you know just we we'd like to take another look at this for all the reasons that you stated. We've already done a lot of staff work. It's would be sort of an iterative process. But as far as like how few people people feel about the specific recommendations, you know, I don't know that we need to like say

X Y or Z on those. At this point in the process, I think there's a bigger discussion. We could have some of that discussion tonight. Yeah. If we want to. Um what what does everybody else feel like? What other questions do people have? How are you feeling about this sort of resurfacing the cottage housing um topic for council?

Any other thoughts? You were not involved. Do you have your your mic?

I don't have any antipathy towards creating a letter uh or having a conversation. And I think the I think the thing I don't understand is if there is a and I'm context for you. I'm relatively new to the planning commission. So uh so I know works out very nicely. We can we can ask all the new guy questions together.

Um the change like this seems the real opportunity is the change in the distance. Um change in the distance to the um revitalization zones being the opportunity in which we can create the Does that have to go? You said making like lowhanging fruit or the concept of changing something related to um the comp plan or like something very like is changing I guess my question is if writing a letter or indicating our desire to revisit this mean opening up a giant conversation or is the concept of changing the boundaries or the distance relatively is is that the lowhanging fruit? I don't think I quite understand that. I think I think like we would be signaling to council that there's support from the planning commission and sort of like taking another look at cottage housing and we're asking council to sort of direct staff to then put the time in to like facilitate a bigger discussion that like PC and council staff can't really do any like substantive work on these things until they're directed by city council.

This conversation is more of a prioritization conversation. This is not like directly related to any changes that would be necessary in order to That would be the cart before the horse. I think that makes sense. Okay.

But I think on in the context of the term lowhanging fruit, it's really we are not at the stage where we are simply questioning whether or not we should be revisiting the policy or if there are certain directions we should consider to ensure more sites are eligible as a way of us encouraging this form of development to occur in other areas of the city. that part I think and some of those initial considerations have been identified and I think we're in general agreement the specifics of is it a quarter of a mile is it a half is it you know that now seeing how many sites would be eligible with at least one scenario in front of us so I think there's a lot of leg work that has already happened which means me which means that we're really at the stage of kind of inviting others to participate weigh in give us feedback and I think adopting something at this stage is a little bit easier of a lift than starting from scratch where none of this work has actually happened. So, um, and I think also building up on the briefings that have happened to date with this group with city council, I don't think I wasn't there, but I don't think I've seen any record where there was a clear police stoppable work on this. We we are not supportive of any further changes. So I think there was generally a sign of encouragement that some change might be worth considering the degree to which that has to happen and then what the timing of it particularly when there are no active applications waiting for the change. That's kind of the gray area we're trying to explore.

Okay. Because I think the like what I hear you saying is that there's a difference between saying city council we think that we should rep prioritize staff looking at this which really is the staff work to communicate to possible stakeholders or people who would be either developers or residents affected by a change to a particular policy which has been fairly mapped out like we have some options we have some things we're looking at as opposed to starting from scratch if we said and please nobody who's listening listening to this like I'm not saying this thing but like return all R1As to be eligible for duplexes or something like that right like that's a much starting at the beginning type of conversation even though that might necessarily result in more of what we're trying to get to um so I think that answers like the question I had which is we're not really tell it would not be a city council we think staff should look at this more it's we should carry out the move seeing if uh what the feedback would be about moving this forward with the work that's already with the staff work that's already been done. Is that is that am I understanding that the way you guys are thinking about?

I guess I kind of look at you know the previous staff work and where things were back at the beginning of 2020 as a starting point and I I guess in my own mind I we see how the letter materializes that we talked about earlier but it you know it would be good to say

hey there may be other things too but that this is a this is a good wellressearched starting point. we've got, you know, some the experience of the railroad cottages. Um, and so, you know, it's it's less of a kind of trying to plow new ground and really just kind of picking up on something that we had previously started. So, if you're looking for ways to make um progress in the housing front, and we just passed, you know, the city just passed the affordable living policy, here's one that's already had a lot of work on it, and and has already produced a really lovely example. Yeah. The thing I like about it is just like it's a really interesting different housing typology that we don't have a lot of in the city. So

we have one. I I guess my question would be like given a magic wand like what kind of stuff would we think that the the staff would be able to do if we operated this as a starting point as opposed to I guess I'm confused by the concept of starting point as opposed to like is there more work done to the plan or taking the next steps from taking the plan to being communicated to well I mean it's a good question in the sense of process you know that's kind where I was going a little bit earlier it's not real clear you know council had a process I suppose uh with T-zone and kind of what happened there. Um you know not everybody liked it.

Um so you know that's that's something that I guess they would have to contemplate as to given that we have what we have as far as previous staff work on cottage housing. Uh do we just start there and put that out for comment or would would council want to open this up more? You know I I I'm not sure. I think that's really their call. I think my concern with that is like in terms of the prioritization, I know you said I should go first. Sorry, I just keep I just keep talking. Uh it's a work session, right? Yeah.

Um so I think the the thing is like in terms of prioritization like if there are no current developers who are who are at least that's what I thought I heard you say. There's no developers who are looking like if we open this up, we have somebody ready to go or interested, right? Like not necessarily ready to go. Is this the best use of the prior like if we have limited capacity from staff, limited capacity from city council, it's tough to stay in a vacuum, right? Like I'm trying to think of like all the all the other stuff we're doing. Um I live next to the railroad apartments. We go scootering and biking past them all the time. Like it is a very convenient like no problems conceptually. I think it's a good idea. I think it's a thing we should do. Um but in a fixed resource environment which is likely only to get worse over the next year or two

what's the opportunity cost that's what I'm thinking and I don't know the I think this is easier than anything else that we would try to do that's my inter and we may have a bigger and this is what my question is like if we are going to be tackling the land use chapter next year like how does this fit into that because it's very related as opposed to let's say missing middle after changing I already told I'll have to get not to worry about that yet. Um, yeah. Sorry. Go ahead.

Well, that leads into the comment that I was going to make, which is this is a I really like this initiative. I think we have to be and I don't want to sound like a broken record, but we have to be a little bit holistic about land use. And I know that the staff has committed to doing a scoping study of the different options for land use and one of them I'm sure will be the introduction of you know cottage housing or exploring cottage housing but there's a lot of other potential housing related land use related um initiatives that we could be taking right

and I don't have any problem you So, two years ago, we pulled out T-zones and we spent a year on that. A year ago, we pulled out accessory dwellings and we spent a year on that. And we potentially could spend another year on cottage housing. and and that's great, but at some point in time we need to look a little bit more holistically at land use in the city and saying there's a whole range of options that you know I know you guys have committed to doing a scoping study as part of your land use chapter and I think that's great but we have to have that broader conversation at some point in time to say what do we want our neighborhoods to look like? Do we want tax abatements to preserve older housings? Do we want duplexes and triplexes? Do we want uh more flexibility with the permitting process? You know, do we want all that to allow uh triplexes and duplexes by right? Those are all, you know, we have to sort of look more holistically of of saying what do we want our neighborhoods to look like? And uh at some point we need to get to that. We can pull this out and and and and say this is lowhanging fruit and we don't need to sort of have a grand vision, but at some point in time we do need to have a grand vision of what we we as a community are willing to accept in as in our neighborhoods, you know. So, I'm fully supportive of this, but this is just one more drum beat that's not looking holistically at what our neighborhoods should look like.

You know, may not achieve that, but given that we have what's in the stable already on cottage housing, I'm wondering if it could be looked at as a higher probability of success and making some progress.

Yeah. And and I think that's great and I think that's what we need to do. We need to we we we there's nothing wrong with we can't stop all progress until we have some holistic vision of what our neighborhood should look like. So we move forward but at some point in time you know and I think it's great that the planning division has sort of committed to this scoping study of what our neighbor you know of of our housing options should look like our land use options should look like. But I'm anxious to see what the broader look at our neighborhoods what we what our vision for those neighborhoods should be. And just to kind of contextualize and maybe adjust expectations, part of what you'll see whenever we get to it on the comp plan update, I think we'll contextualize where the comp plan lives and relates to all the earlier work that I think gets to part of what you were just mentioning about the vision for each neighborhood as it's expressed in these small area plans because there is a level of detail that I think changes depending on the plan that you're looking at and I think from our perspective as early as we are in the scoping uh and just thinking about what that process will look like the biggest priority is to ensure that that older land use chapter speaks to and is consistent with the small area plans uh and making sure that if we are considering any updates if there's newer thinking newer you know uh envisioning that it doesn't conflict with all the work that went into and all the community engagement that's reflected in the small area plans So I think they speak to a much more granual vision for different parts of the city. How does the comp plan element and its land use chapter capture all of that cohesively? But then also speak to some of these new housing forms. And and the last thing I

wanted to mention is as you look at kind of the hierarchy of the comp plan element, the small area plans, what this is getting to is actually an even deeper level where we're impacting zoning ordinance. And part of the challenge, as we've seen with some other ex applications that have almost made it to you this year, uh, is that things may say something in the comp plan, but if they don't say something in the zoning ordinance or the zoning district, we have a big problem, uh, or at least the applicants there. Um, so I think looking at opportunities where we have inconsistencies, conflicting messaging, uh, deviations from vision, that's I think going to be a huge lift for that land use chapter as we look at all the work we have done in the last decade or so. And then how do we have that plan reflect all that?

Yeah. And I I I do think um obviously that comp plan or land use needs to be somehow synchronized with zoning ordinances and I I I get that, you know, but I'm not sure how you would do land use without sort of making sure it's fully aligned with any updates to zoning ordinances. you know, if if if and I hate to use the Arlington example, if we decide to use tri to to to, you know, allow triplexes, you know, on single lots, um, you know, there's a zoning implication, right? Uh, it's it's both a land use and a zoning implication.

Yeah. And my philosophy, and I I don't think I'm alone in this, is you want to start with the vision. you want to have it reflected in kind of outcomebased uh expectations for the community for different stakeholders. Um zoning is more of an implementation mechanism of how you get there. So to me zoning can sometimes happen concurrently with that vision process or it can happen as a separate follow-up process to that as you implement the vision. sometimes either can take months if not years to finish um and sometimes you're can be more efficient with your time and doing them at the same time. Um but that is a very close relationship we look at.

Well, so I didn't want to derail that discussion but I because I do think this is maybe not lowhanging fruit but lowerhanging fruit than some of the other ideas that are out there and we should just move forward with it but at some point we just need to also look at the big picture. Yeah, I hope we will do that as part of the the land use chapter and given that we don't have site plans anymore and we'll have more time to help out. Got nothing else to do. Any thoughts?

Sure. Thank you. Um I I am in full support of the the railroad cottage ordinance itself. I think it's been proven to be very successful. I think the intent originally was very clearly defined on what the intention was. It was really for kind of oddshaped lots that really didn't they were more of a challenge to kind of plan for a more typical kind of development and it also was for a certain age group to make life easy to stay in the city without having all the extra financial and physical burden. Right. So those original intentions are very clear and clean in in the railroad cottage. And I think that that is a shining example of what it can and should be. And it was also meant to be like kind of a a nicer quality of construction, too.

It's beautiful. I think um I think in looking at the ordinance I'm fine with bringing it up to city council and let them make the determination over like resources versus reward. That's really something that that they should be able to take a look at and decide like maybe not this time around but maybe next year, right? Um but I also think that there could be in some of those revisions, we need to be very clear about what the intention is and and I think it goes back to what um our director was saying was we really need that public input component like what you know and then it comes back to the land use chapter and that overarching vision. So, I don't know if it's really a lowhanging fruit if we don't have a very clearly defined intention if we're thinking about modifying or revising that ordinance. um only because I feel like some of the things that are being proposed um could have some unintended consequences like consolidation of a lot of lots and changing and the c the the cottage housing the way that it's oriented it's oriented towards a central common place so it's really turning its back on the rest of the neighborhood. So in locations where you have these odd-shaped parcels, that makes sense. But when you start to get more into the urban fabric of a lot of those neighborhoods, that could be an unintended consequence. So I do think the special exception review process still needs to be intact.

Yeah. Completely. So that so that we can work through those issues on a case by case. Right. Um, and I also think that um, if you brought in the R1Bs, I would want to limit those into a tighter into that um, 500 foot because as soon as you go out further, you're impacting a lot more urban fabric neighborhood potentially. Um, so that's that's I and I tend to look at how a developer is going to see something and and want to really maximize, right? And so if if I had the opportunity to take 10 parcels, why not, you know, and I want to do the best possible thing that I want to do, right? I don't know if introducing it into further away from those core the core revitalization area is really what we want but again we have to look at the overarching vision of the land use chapter so that's kind of where I'm coming in the letter's fine if that's the simple answer

it's helpful thanks um oh wait one more thing sure no I thought oh I can let you go I just wanted to kind of speak a little bit to the affordability aspect. Yeah. That I think what that intention has to wrap in some level of affordability because right now the railroad cottages are not in that affordable living policy kind of threshold. No.

Right. Um they're they're well outside of that. And so if we start introducing more, I would rather incentivize some kind of way to get some affordability into those. Maybe a if you had a byite approach that included affordable housing, you know, you have to meet very tight requirements.

I don't know what it would be. I don't know if by right's the answer. I think, you know, there's tax incentives. I think that there's also incentivizations on, you know, lot usage, um maybe addition, you know, different size units. like I don't know what what it is at this point because again the intentions are not clear what we want to be doing with this revision. I always think though like there's capital A affordable as in like you know subsidized affordable but then there's also like affordable as in like cheaper than the $2.5 million house right so like if your option is I we need we need every we need more housing in all of those different price points so yeah we need more affordable like actual affordable housing but we also need more like seven 8001 million housing because there are people that want to buy at those price points too and that is can be harder to find especially especially like new construction, right? Like this. I mean, that's that's the need that I see that the um the T-zones um developments have met. You know, they're a million, they're 1.1 million, but it's brand new construction. You're getting um you know, a new build for 1,800 square feet. Like, that's hard. That just doesn't exist in the city otherwise. So, I don't know. I think about affordability kind of broadly, I guess. Yeah, and I agree with that, Mr.

So, thank you. Um, so the staff recommendations that were presented in 2020 are excellent, I think, and had CO not happened, I'm pretty sure that the council then sitting would have moved forward with them in hopes of replicating the success that we saw at Railroad Cottages. But none of those things happened. Uh, COVID happened. uh there was no replication of railroad cottages. There were, as you said, a couple other inquiries, but we quickly learned that uh you know, what we had adopted was suited for the unique railroad cottages place, but had a hard time applying itself to other locations. And I think the council then in place would have grappled with that and would have come up approving something that very much was like what the staff recommended. Fast forward to where we are today and just listening to you all right now, I'm not sure that if I were whipping the vote, I would believe that I had uh a solid majority of the planning commission willing to support the the staff recommendations. So, what does your letter say? Does your, and this is a question, not a opinion, does it say, "We think the staff, you know, recommendations from 2020 are great, and this should be lowhanging fruit, and off we go. Let's get her done." Or do we say, you know, we've been through some wars in the last five years over things that we all know about and the difference uh the different climate into which this comes is striking to me that you know

the opposition railroad cottages was very localized. There there were very passionate people on Ellison Street backing up that development who were who literally sold their house and moved away when we approved it. And yet most of the town didn't even know there was a railroad avenue because who would go over there anyway except you and me riding bikes with our kids. And so we didn't have to grapple with the sort of um forces that have arrayed in opposition to T-zones and ADUs. And in my opinion, this is my opinion, not a question. Right now, if we introduced the staff recommendations, we would bring a hail stom of, oh, you guys are just trying to abolish single family zoning. I mean, Jean's letter in today's packet says that essentially and he's not alone in his opinions, I don't think. So, I'm not quite sure if I were writing the letter, thank goodness I don't have to. What I would ask the council to do, but if I were on council, I would hope that hope that, you know, my planning commission would come to me with, well, you know, we've talked about this, applied our best efforts to it, and this is what we think you ought to do. you can do it or not. It's up to you. But here's what we think. You've hired us to look at this and we've looked at it and here's what we want you to do rather than gee, this is an interesting idea and really it fits into some bigger things and we'd like to chew on it for another year or two or three.

Yeah.

Um I mean you can go that route there. There's nothing wrong with that. It produces a outcome eventually and maybe a good outcome, but it's not going to be quick. And um that's the tricky part about writing the letter. I think I mean to some degree I'd like to force the issue in the middle of the campaign season is a great time to talk about things like this because it gets people on the record and hearing making them think about it and not like take a stand necessarily but get them to you know offer their opinions so voters can decide well I'm more comfortable with this approach here or that approach there. So, you know, steering away from it because it's politically controversial, I'm I'm not necessarily in favor of that. But I do think that if we even begin to talk about it in any way. You know, there will very quickly be an article in a couple of local outlets that will warn that this is just look at the lines like Sharon said. You know, we've have moved from a very minimal uh cannabis that we were giving developers a chance to work on to something that's, you know, reaches beyond my house on West Street. So, if I can get together with three under staff recommendation, three other me and two other owners, I can tear our three houses down and we can have ourselves a little railroad cottage right there on West Street.

Right. And there are some people think that would be an excellent idea. It's exactly realistically think that that would happen. I I I could. Yeah. I mean, Yeah. But you've got to buy those three properties at market rates. And so would you have enough money to build cottage housing? It's a legit question. That's not the debate. If you're putting it into the policy, you have to assume it's going to happen. You have to want it to happen. I mean, otherwise, why go through the problem of doing doing all the work? coming up. Yeah, I wouldn't I wouldn't if

I if your if your question is, you know, would I rather have that or would I rather my 756 year old house brick Cape Cod be torn down and replaced by a $3 million mansion? Absolutely. I am completely in favor of railroad cottages on Southwest Street. Five or six homes on a three, you know, previously single family home parcels with access to major corer to get the traffic in and out. I I would absolutely be for that because, you know, if there's one thing we've built enough of here, it's $2 million houses and we don't need to encourage the market to do that. Now, you know, I don't know what the railroad cottages style language would bring us. Now, I I'd love to I mean, if Bob Young were still here, I'd just ask him, you know, what would you do if they gave you the chance to to do this? Um, but, you know, the minute that we start, the one thing we've really learned in railroad causes is the minute you start trying to talk to developers about, well, what would be a good way to do this if we wanted to do it, you oh my gosh, you just get hail storms of criticism. you're trying to cut a backroom deal, secret bargaining with, you know, you can't even talk about it with your neighbor. So, just kind of a minefield, I guess. And I I'd love to have us all seven devote a meeting and pretend like, you know, at the end of this meeting, we're going to vote on this and at least do a straw vote and see what what we come down with.

Yeah. on the initial staff recommendations and then write a letter saying, you know, we have revived this. The staff has revived this excellent work that they did. We've reviewed it thoroughly uh you know, from a higher altitude level, but we've reviewed it and here's our opinion. You know, we are in favor of a quarter mile. We're in favor of, you know, whatever we are in favor of or we're not in favor of it. And we're going to forward this to you now and council. It's up to you to make a decision on it.

Okay, that's helpful. I guess my worry is like the anal initial analysis is five years maybe five and a half, six years old and I just worry that there would be new recommendations that staff might have were they to actually I think we have to be able to like kind of devote the we have to give them the opportunity to have those. I mean there there is some fat gathering that would you well you know like when we built them we wanted them to cost about $700,000 maybe high600s by the time they actually opened they were selling for I think 900 yeah 8 900 now I don't know what the value of them is but just sold yeah it's got to be close to million dollars which I completely agree with you

what your house is absolutely and it's a whole lot better than my house because you know my house is ancient it's new and this is new construction. If you can buy me, if you can build me a milliondoll new construction home with two bedrooms and two and a half baths, I'll take that deal any day.

I think this is a good example of what that next step would look like where the minute we enter into a more public conversation, some additional ideas, considerations come up. kind of what I'm hearing is has staff studied unintended consequences knowing that there's maybe two or three realistic sites or areas of the city where these could become more prominent. That's something we would need to take back, reassess, come back with more findings, maybe fine-tune the recommendations. But that's kind of the cyclical back and forth of what would still be ahead of us based on this and other feedback we'd have to collect. So, um I think maybe the further consideration for you all is does it proceed and get prioritized independently or as part of the land use update? Uh is there some synergy there that maybe we should kind of be more holistic and strategic about bringing both forward? Yeah, I I worry a little bit that it's like a little cart before the horse sort of talking about this as like a smaller piece without talking about the broader

uh land use chapter. But I also, you know, agree with Mr. Stevens that a lot of really great work was done and if we're, you know, 60% of the way there already, like let's get it over the finish line. Um, but you know, that's probably easier said than done. Um, so it may be that it is a bunch, but I think it's a discussion that's worthy of us devoting some time and energy towards. Um, so I don't know like your your recommendation is no letter unless we are all in agreement that we feel gung-ho about it.

We don't all have to agree. That mean you know the came to no resolution thereon as an option or came to a 52 straw vote on these key elements that you know are underlying this the core of the staff recommendation. I mean I'm not not trying to game the outcome but I I do think probably aren't a whole lot of things where it'd be 70 right?

Yeah. I mean, I do think that the community benefits from seeing its planning commission wrestle with this on its own rather than as part of, you know, the comprehensive plan or whatever. And that's that's not a view that everybody shares. I understand that, you know, but I'm in favor of incremental change rather than I've got the genius plan that should cover all of Falls Church for all of time. That's not my idea of what a planning commissioner, you know, could or should or needs to do. And I just wanted to clarify my comment. I'm not proposing that we stop this until we have a broader plan. I think you can move out incrementally on one initiative or another initiative. You just at some point in time it all needs to fold into some totally vision.

And it it will and it should. I mean you know the voters should look at it as wow interesting things have happened here in false search in the last five years. We did this cottage ordinance and we built this cool community and we won awards for it and then we did uh T-zone development and then we did accessory dwelling units and now they're doing wow there's real change going on. I mean for my money that's that's good change. I mean it's a little bit peacemeal not perfect therefore in each of its individual pieces but as a whole it you know tackles a difficult issue that we need to tackle and is in a broader context just necessarily because now when we do anything on housing national voices come in and speak through our local citizens but and that was not the case when we did railroad colleges the the market for the idea was just not mature enough then to involve the voices that you get now when you try to do anything in land use.

Uh yeah. Well, I mean I'm like at first blush like I like those four the ideas of those four staff recommendations. So, you know, if we were to take a straw pull away, I would say they sound good. But I appreciate a lot of the exchanges that we have here when we're kind of talking through the details and the exchanges that we have with staff about, you know, what are those unintended consequences that we should be thinking about. And so my opinion, my like knee-jerk opinion on these four recommendations could change based on those discussions. So I just don't feel like I'm at a point where I can say the planning commission is gung-ho. We're definitely going to vote for this if you all send it back to us. I don't know how other people feel, but I would feel a little like, you know, but I do think it's a worthy conversation to have and I think like it is a meaty one. It's just how does it get prioritized and how does staff time get prioritized, you know, in terms of land use. So, I think the letter would be more just sort of flagging for council, hey, we did a lot of work on this five years ago. There's interest in the planning commission and like thinking about how we can move this forward. Can you can we think about how this could be prioritized for for staff time and and commission time. So, I know that's a little squishy

and it's kind of leaving it up to council, but um you know, they're the ones that were elected to to make those kinds of decisions about how the city resources should be deployed. So, um I don't know. How are you feeling about Yeah, I think that makes sense to me.

Yeah, please. Um I appreciate the um wanting to kind of take the of what the last five years has done that could change that intention of those four staff recommendations because I think those recommendations there was no clear intention stated what they were trying to get to with those. And so I think we really I think it's important to kind of take the temperature now and see how those recommendations might change based on what we know now has happened through the pandemic and how we we're coming out of the pandemic.

Yeah. My recollection was the point of those four uh proposals was to make it a little bit easier for cottage housing developments to occur. You know, we pretty much established that the current rules are probably not going to result in any additional projects. And so what steps can you take that aren't dramatic that would nonetheless make it easier for some additional projects to come forward for what it's worth. One thing that is embedded in particularly the accessory dwellings unit process are newer, more aggressive standards for setbacks and heights and so forth. What we did on railroad cottages sort of foreshadowed that. And if you look at the hoops that you have to jump through in order to build a railroad cottages type development, it's like, wow, it's a miracle that anything ever gets built.

I mean, it is a special exception on steroids. And rightly so, because why are we why? Because we're putting new development right in the middle of single family neighborhoods. And that is a major big deal. And so it should be something that is scrutinized scrutinized probably with more I don't say anything should be expedited or under scrutinized but you know it's more delicate to do a cottage type development in a single family neighborhood than to put up a you know building along broader Washington in my opinion

it's it is always going to be a delicate conversation and um I think yeah anxiety will be increased the minute we get further away from the concentration of density along Broad and you know some other streets but um that was the your experience in Arlington certainly as long as we did development along the corridors things are okay and as soon as we started opening the door up to development in you know mild neighborhood and far northwest it was like whoa that's problem and and simply because that type of feedback presents itself doesn't necessarily mean that those arguments are correct or sure um justify historical decisions that led to the existing conditions.

Um, however, we do have at our disposal, I think, creative solutions when I think certain sentiments once shared on a specific proposal could lead to further restrictions beyond the many that are already in in those standards. uh such as limiting the number of applications that can come in per year allowing us to perhaps have a kind of a trial period where you know some incentives disappear after the first year or we are giving ourselves an a chance to return after one year in case there's any unintended consequences none of our analysis anticipated so there's a lot of precautionary kind of protocols that

I think may put some people at ease not everybody there's some people that will never come on board and that's fine. Um but I think if there are maybe broader goals that we can achieve such as more affordable housing at least that should warrant a careful conver careful cons consideration of trade-offs you know is this worth it given the other objectives.

So that's that's an interesting thought. So in in that vein, you know, would this would the staff with the updated staff report be able without, you know, going through months of work to, you know, present some of those lessons learned in recent years and and basically say just what you said. uh so as to give some level of uh assurance to the public that you know we've thought about this and we've put in more guard rails and you know we've we understand the concerns. Uh

well, without revealing too much, the one immediate thought that comes to mind is the way these regulations are written or approaching kind of a form-based approach because so much of it is spelled out capturing the earlier intent of this has to be exactly what we had in mind, right?

Very prescriptive. Um while generally difficult particularly for the applicant community, what it allows us to do is with the benefit of that mapping exercise of knowing where the additional sites might be, we can use that prescriptive language to have a much better sense of well if those sites came in and let's say one additional site consolidated with them because maybe logically from a real estate perspective it makes sense. let's apply that and do a kind of a quick rough sketch of what that would look like given the setbacks, the density limitations, everything else. And I think that level of preview, if you will, might maybe inform some people of oh yeah, that's exactly what I was worried about or yeah, okay, I can live with that

and just kind of see where the community might be on that.

I'd be in favor of that, but I'm not writing the letter commanding the staff. Uh, Matt, do you know if there are other examples of this sort of like cottage housing or even like courtyard housing in other jurisdictions locally? Are we the only ones that are doing this? I I think it's a two-part question in that some jurisdictions try to prescribe the senior living or affordable senior living incentives or requirements um and are less focused on the housing typology that associates with it. Um, and I think some others might be more form driven in terms of kind of the physical expectations you can have given the site context. Um, I think the original language here kind of takes a little bit of both of those.

Um, so we'd probably have to do a deeper dive into local neighbors and see if anybody else has come up with that type of combination. when I attended the uh meeting was it three or four weeks ago for the chairs of the other planning commissions, you know, we all kind of we all kind of went through, oh yeah, we're doing ADUs, we're doing this, but as soon as I said cottage housing, they also tell us more. Yeah. So, it sounds like it's still kind of a unique thing here in this area at least. What's a good example?

Making making shameless use of Mr. AI. The term Vienna Cottage District most likely refers to a recent housing development in Vienna, Virginia approved on Courthouse Road. It involves 12 unit cottage housing development consisting of duplexes with each unit having a twocar garage in the basement. Wow. Holy cow. Well, there's another one called Blueberry Hill that's out on Route 7. That's in homes are designed for downsizing with about 1,200 square feet on the main level and 600 on the second. That's similar to the um the our cottage houses. Mhm. Yeah. Well, we ours don't have basements and ours. No. Nor garages. Yeah. No.

I think that was as I call Letty sending that to me. It was I mean that that's a that's a a kind of housing stock that would sell like hotcakes here if you had it. Yep. Definitely demand. It might just be a nomenclature thing in the what we're calling it. But when I typed in cottage housing, I Googled it. just the first two things that entries that popped up were false church cottage housing. Yeah, I had I had to be in it purposely. I I they may be called something else somewhere else. I don't know. But I think we're unique in calling it cottage housing.

Yeah, I think you're right. I do the staff recommendation to drop the age limit. I I would support that. If anything, I'd like to find a way to provide, you know, housing options for people at the other end of the spectrum. You know, people under the age of 40 who are trying to become first-time home buyers because that's a market that is just, you know, extremely thin here. There's just no opportunities really to speak of except a handful of of the condos in Winter Hill. Maybe maybe it's a tiny a tiny house development, not just cottage. Even one of the one of the ones one of those sold last week for $650,000. Which one? Two bedroom where

two bath on on Virginia Avenue in Winter Hill. It's nicely done. It been completely redone, but it was like really wow. Yeah. 650,000 that size and that price point, right? Um, okay. I think it sounds like maybe you and I are gonna take a stab at at writing a letter. Maybe we'll see where it goes. We'll see where it goes. We'll bring it all we'll bring it back to you all next month and we can vote on uh whether whether whether to whether to go ahead with it. Yeah. Okay.

All right. Any other thoughts or questions on this topic? Yeah, thank you all. Thank you staff for for putting that together.

Uh so that takes us to our information items. Any commissioner reports? I will formally say what I said before we came to meeting which was it was a thrill to go to the uh Virginia chapter of the American Planning Association meeting a couple of weeks ago down in Portsmouth and join the staff of which was well represented in receiving the red clay award for the West Falls development and uh to see the presentation that uh three of our staff gave after the award ceremony about our project And in the context of other winners of some of the more minor awards who made their presentations, um it was obviously a just an unspeakably huge amount of effort that is amazing when you look back on it. I just came across in my file of photos, you know, the the empty lot which I think was I don't know, hadn't been that long ago, 2018, 2019, something like that. And to see what that picture showed and to see what's there today is really amazing. And kudos to staff for putting in the application because that took some time. And kudos to Jack for taking a picture of all of us even though he should have been in the picture, too. That's Yes. He's not cut out to go to the bars. He was actually he was taking the pictures.

Anyway, it was a Yeah. And more broadly and briefly speaking, uh, uh, diversity, equity, and inclusion were, you know, very high on the minds of the leadership of the Virginia chapter and the presentations, all the public engagement discussions emphasized, you know, reaching out to communities that are hard to get to, making them aware of whatever it is they were doing, communities that were doing comp plan work mostly, And uh it struck me that we're doing Thank you.

Oh my goodness. Thank you. Thank you. struck me that we do a lot um uh of that stuff already, but it it would be useful, I think, for other commissioners to go I'd not been to one before to go to that meeting. I think next year's in Danville and just, you know, filter out to the sessions and listen to people and share what we've done. It's a it's broadening and uplifting at the same time. Sounds great. I hope to go next year.

Yes. And housing was, you know, obviously of all the issues the most and a little bit a good bit. Henry's hang our staffer brought up the question about you know the side plan situation what we call it and they really didn't have they were having a meeting Friday I don't know how that turned out to discuss among the leadership of the of the chapter you know but it it seemed that most everybody had been taken by some degree of surprise on that wasn't top of mind necessarily no not at all not at all Henry had to bring it up and the answer was like I don't know, but we're going to meet about it on Friday. So, it really it really is, you know, something that uh it's

not a burning issue. I I think it's perceived now as an important issue, but there's different perspectives. You know, just driving up the old road coming back, you know, we think housing is a good thing. There a lot of people down in Virginia don't think housing is a good thing. You know, more crops, less houses. That's what the billboard said on one of the back roads. Interesting. They deeply deeply oppose the sort of development that is pushing its way out from Fredericksburg, Charlottesville County, Stafford County. It helps you understand the environment in the legislature that led to sort of wow, we're going to push this through because there is

there is a lot of resistance in a lot of places to new housing and there's just a lot of Virginia that doesn't have much in it, you know. I mean, just driving the back roads that have been forgotten since the interstate got put in. Just amazing how you can be 45 minutes away from Metro DC and go for literally 50 miles and there is not even a corner grocery. It's just hard. It's hard to perceive. Dr. Hospital. Oh, forget that. You've got to go to Kingdom Come. Anyway, it was a good meeting. Thank you for attending and representing the planning commission accepting the award too.

Yeah. Well, I realized that I guess I was the only person who was on the economic development committee and the planning commission now and was on council as it went through the process. You were a big part of the whole thing. Yeah. I don't know. I hope you celebrated too.

Yeah. Whoopee. Any other N? Okay. That brings us to the director's report. All right. So, I'm actually going to go in reverse order so we can prioritize the uh CIP discussion. So, the second item that's on the handout is the Park Avenue great streets. This is simply a minor update that we've reached 90% design. Uh if you're really curious, you can kind of assess those uh drawings that have been posted. Uh I'm sure we'll have additional updates uh once we get further, but it's really clear clear sign that we're moving towards implementation and construction. So, uh, 90% is always a great milestone, uh, that we're so close. Um, but the larger update, uh, is really the CIP quarterly, um, report, which kind of continues to track a number of projects. I think we're at or above 50, I think, in total. um and really just kind of provide a series of updates in terms of where they are, active, planned, future projects, um and help us track with a lot of careful analysis of where they are. Uh are we running into delays which often happen uh due to a number of factors uh but also what to expect and given the pure range of projects and how many we are kind of multitasking at the moment. Um, you know, the city is looking at additional opportunities to kind of highlight to the community, uh, what's happening, what to expect, where to reach out for questions, uh, and just to kind of share these more broadly, uh, uh, not just to make it more visible, but also allow the community to kind of help, uh, stay informed and know where to go to, uh, get some questions answered. So, um, with that, I'm going to hand it over to, uh, Caitlyn Sabsi, who's here with us and, um, can answer most of your questions, uh, given that you all requested this update at the July meeting. So,

uh, thank you for joining us, Miss Sabsi. I thought you weren't going to be able to make it tonight. So, I'm really happy to see you in person.

Thank you. I appreciate it. I'm happy to be here, too. It's been a while. I And I've never been I've never met with you all in this room, so it's nice. It's kind of casual. Um, so yeah, good to be back. The last time I saw you all was probably in March when we had fiscal year 26 uh CIP budget development. Um we've provided quarterly updates in February and May to the council. One the February update was provided to the planning commission um with the planning director's report. I did not uh I did not provide you all a May update. So uh I apologize, but I'm here now for the August 2025 update. Um that's just summarized here on the screen. And then you all um in your hopefully in your packet materials you have the little snapshot. Um and uh as usual we use the traffic light method of um reporting progress. Green is on target, yellow is at risk and red is behind target. Um and those are for both schedule and budget. We don't have any projects right now that are experiencing a funding shortfall, a confirmed funding shortfall. Most of the reds on this report uh this quarterly report are for schedule delays. Um some of the uh ongoing reasons that we experience uh schedule delays for CIP project delivery are right-of-way acquisition and negotiations. Some of those negotiations are um dragging on a considerable length of time um which impacts the uh schedules of course. Um, and utility coordination. That's another one when we have to coordinate with our um, utility providers and we rely on their availability and scheduling um, to complete construction projects. Um, couple other things that I listed and end and funding shortfalls throughout the life of the project. Um, that contribute to some of our sort of what I call legacy projects that are just really old and at this point are kind of

permanently read because they're so far behind uh our targeted schedule. A lot of those, the good news is are um uh being completed now. Um the last couple of years that I've come uh to before the planning commission for CIP development, we've talked a lot about unclogging the CIP. We had really ambitious CIP goals um and a lot of projects and we kind of had um you know a bottleneck for in the sort of project delivery area. A lot of those legacy projects and those older projects are now um being delivered. So there's six complete projects as of this month. Uh the May update had four projects in uh all of fiscal year 2025. I reported a total of 14 projects um which is a a good number of projects being completed now compared to some previous years um uh a few years ago where we were doing you know six like the whole year. Um so I'm I'm excited to report that we've um got some good uh progress and and um and movement now in CIP project delivery. Um, some notable completed projects are the Burman Park playground and also the Burman Park uh trail crossings project was completed a few months prior. Uh, Burman Park playground was substantially completed earlier this month just and those will be having a joint ribbon cutting on August uh 11th on Monday from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m. That should be fun. They're going to have music and ice cream and stuff.

Beautiful. It looks really good. Yeah. Um, and I'll also, uh, this same update, I did not prepare any remarks for tonight, so I'm just I'm just going I'm just talking.

Um, feel free to interrupt me. Uh, but, uh, next Monday, uh, the council meeting on the 11th, this will go to the council for the quarterly update. It'll be accompanied by a staff report that will summarize the snapshot as well. um and talk about, you know, basically everything I'm summarizing tonight, the completed project, some of the ongoing recurring uh project delays that we're having, um and sort of what's coming up. Another thing we've been focusing on is um sort of uh public more public engagement in the CIP. Um we did a couple press releases recently for new con we have a lot of stuff going into construction or already under construction this summer. It's been a very construction heavy summer. So, we've been trying to um communicate and inform the public as much as possible about those construction activities, possible um disruptions and um and uh you know, closures, anything that could um be disruptive. Uh we just want to make sure that we get the word out early and often to the community about that. Um but also celebrating all of the things that we do have um ongoing and and in construction right now or recently completed. So, we have a a special edition newsletter, I think that's coming out. Um, the focus uh on Falls Church newsletter. I think it's a weekly newsletter. There will be a special edition of that in August as well to uh report on

completed CIP projects. Um, and just trying to like showcase some of these projects more. I mean, this is there's a lot of um obviously, as you all know, a lot of long-term long range planning and strategy um and and public input and public hearings and and and thought that goes into these projects. There's also a lot of money and a lot of taxpayer dollars, including um you know, grant funds as well. So, a lot goes into the development of the CAP. Um and so we're excited to report and share with the community the success um of delivering these projects. Now um I will be back in the next quarterly update will be in November. I will also be coming here in November. I think we talked about November 19th uh the planning commission meeting on November 19th. I'll be here for um I should have the next quarterly update to provide. Then we'll also talk about kicking off fiscal year 27 CIP development. Um hard to believe that that's happening already, but um yeah, we'll have the kickoff session in November. And um just as a reminder, that's a an opportunity for the planning commission to provide staff with feedback and uh input on priorities and what you would like to see in the fiscical year 27 development. um any feedback on fiscal year 26, what worked or didn't work or you know what was a smashing success? Um uh and and talk about yeah what we what staff has established as priorities um for fiscal year 27 through 32. It's a long time out but yeah right fiscal year 27 to 32 yeah will be this year's six year CIP.

Do we post this online somewhere? Post this? Yeah. Yes. It will be posted on the um not on our I guess no not on our website. Um it'll be posted in the uh council packet. It's on our agenda, right? Yeah. And it's in your Yeah. So it'll be an agenda meeting materials, but no, it is not posted on like a on a public web page. You'd have to know where to go look for. It was more of a question of like we're talking about communicating to I was curious like what web- based things we're doing or digital things we're doing for Yeah. So

updates on these things. the communications department, Okcom, um is currently working on uh website updates. I don't know, I don't have a lot of details about that. So, I don't want to misspeak and say what they're, but we're working on kind of an overhaul of the whole website in in the near future. Um some of that has started already. Um so, as we're doing that, we're meeting with them regularly about the projects page. So, there is a home there is sort of a landing page right now for It's not great. And so, we've been talking a lot. Exactly. Um, it's hard to find project pages. It's hard. Yeah. So, that's one of the things we've talked about is providing these updates. Um, and just cleaning up the overall like organization and structure of the projects page on our website.

Like, has there been any any consideration of the concept of like a here's a map of false church and click this thing because there's here's the thing here, there's a thing here, click interactive kind of map.

We have an interactive CIP map. it. Well, we used to have an interactive CIP map um using our GIS database and um it has not been updated in some time. That's also one of the things that we're looking at with the website update is that we may be looking into a different type of tool for the interactive um CIP map. But yes, that is something that we've had in the past and we're talking about um revitalizing them. Um, the other question I had is like, and this is going to sound big brother and I don't mean it to be that way, but is there a way to communicate to citizens when like Burman Park is done? Hey, everybody who lives near Burman Park, here's a really I didn't know it was I didn't even know it was under construction. Yeah.

And I'm here. So, like I should I probably should have known the answer to that. That communication's definitely happening. As far as when projects are going into construction, like there are there are um postcards and letters and and like all kinds of information and communication that goes out to the immediately affected uh you know neighborhood. Um but I think that's to your like that's what we're trying to work on with the newsletter and trying out the different press releases and using social media to share those press releases and information um to spread that to share that information to even a a broader audience. like one of those like can we buy a very targeted Tik Tok ad or a Instagram ad that says like a very cheap thing for this like these seven streets or something.

I'll take that back to to the communications team. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I'm not a big communications or social media person, but those are all the things that we've been meeting and discussing regularly about how to improve. Um we've talked about uh looking at last year we were really focused on um making some internal you know process improvements and changes to project delivery. Um like I said we had that sort of backlog of CIP projects and we really had to focus on delivering those projects. Now that we've made a lot of improvements and and and you know got some ground on that where we're looking at more like project development. One of the things that I would like to to look at with improvements to our project development process and again these are this is getting into sort of more like internal staff you know work policy and procedure sort of um uh things that we're working on developments. Um but one of those things is a public engagement guideline for capital projects. Um,

yeah, it seems like there's I mean, yeah, you may not want to post greeting of Lincoln is this percentage because everybody's it's going to cause a lot of people without the full context. There's going to be a lot of conversation, but there's a lot of wins on here. It feels like it people should be like you you've paid taxes and you can complain the taxes are high, but look what you're getting for them. Precisely. Yeah. I feel like a way to communicate this.

That's what we're focused on. And I think that the the public engagement with CIP projects has been hard and it's been kind of like all over the not all over the place, it's been different for different projects previously because we have projects like Greening of Lincoln which is a huge multi-million dollar project that covers a lot of of you know different programs storm water transportation pedestrian improvements and then also a large area project scope-wise. Um, and then you have like small smaller project Cherry Hill Farmhouse renovation, you know, like it's a so it's hard to we've tried a lot of different things and maybe hasn't always been the most consistent or cohesive in the past, but I think working on that having a consistent plan um for that public engagement.

What does CN mean? Construction. Oh, so in construction just CN means Yeah, that's a phase. That's a a abbreviation that we use for phase. Um it's the construction phase. Yeah. Got it. Okay. Yeah. Thanks. I had a quick a few quick questions, but you all should Yeah, go ahead. Um

well, mine had to do with the Aurora House, the solar on the Aurora House. I just had a question on that. First of all, I think there's probably going to be a lot of anxiety on these solar projects because of the federal tax legislation and club active funding and so forth. So, you know, obviously keeping an eye on the schedule on that so that we meet whatever the requirements are. I think if you get started by before the end of the year, um, you know, we should meet the requirements. But, you know, that's going to be important since I think we're still waiting on a study for uh the suitability of the the roof or any structural requirements uh for the roof.

Yeah. So, there's a um suggestion that the roof might need to be reinforced to support the solar. Um so, that that is they're still determining that exact requirement right now. Um but as you have to keep a real close eye on the on the schedule. Exactly. And then I thought it was really interesting that uh we've received some kind of a proposal from Dominion on uh solar. So was there an RFP for that? Uh I don't know. I would have to look into that and get you an answer. That would be good to uh to know. I mean I think it's a good thing, but I was just curious what uh what it is or if there's any description of of what it is that they proposed. I think that would be of interest uh as well.

Okay. Okay. That's all I have. Any other questions? Go around. Um, just a quick question. Last time you were here, Caitlyn, we talked about, uh, you mentioned it, the sort of the situation with the federal grants and potentially state grants that were dependent on federal funding to as a pass through. Um, and I think your answer was it was all pretty fluid back then. Um, do you have any more fidelity about any projects that may or may not be in jeopardy as a result of

I don't I mean really only the only information I have right now is what Mr. Stevens just mentioned about the the tax credit on some of the environmental and um energy projects. So like the EV fleet project. I know that we have like sort of a pretty tight turnaround and timeline to purchase those vehicles if we want to get the the tax credits. Um same thing for the solar. Um other than that, no funding programs or grant programs have been impacted so far. So the EV fleet is funded by HUD um a federal uh grant program called um the community project funding through through HUD. And that was one of the ones that I was concerned about like in January or February.

And that's still there.

Still there. Um yeah, it's so and that and it's been moving along. I mean slowly. There's been a lot of staff turnover at HUD and um that's been interesting to work through and um interesting to work through their their online portal for submitting documentation. But like so far I I've been told by HUD staff that that um those funds are protected. um and that they're not at risk right now. I was also a little bit worried about some um federal funding that comes through the state through VOTE. Uh the regional surface transportation program, we call it RSTP funds. Those are federal funds. Um they're outside of um they don't come from a typical like sort of block grant um like a lot of our federal funds come from. um they're uh they come through the state and then they're they're determined how much goes to each locality by sort of a formula based um uh situation. Um and I was a little bit worried that those were not So I've been the only thing I can really say and I wasn't totally prepared to talk about this tonight. So, but the only thing I can say is I've been working with VOTE programming and funding staff um to see, you know, if any of our cuz almost all of our federal transportation funding and most of our federal funding period comes through VOTE through the state um and other than like that HUD and there's a couple other outliers. So, I've been working really closely with VOTE and following up with them and their programming and their central office staff for the whole state um to figure out if any of those uh federal funds are at risk. A lot of them are protected once they go to once they are obligated to the state per state code they are um they're considered once they're obligated to the state they're considered exp they're committed they're expended not they might as well be expended even if they're not even if they're in a balance fund in the state's

program. So, um the only one that is excluded from that is the RSTP. So far, I have not heard any um anything about RSTP changes for um for any of the future fiscal years that we have programmed in the six-year CIP right now. So, wow. Well, that's better news than I expected. Great. Yeah, it's been a very strange like no news, like very like vague news. I you know it's hard to report like specifics on but that I think that pretty much captures. Yeah. Wonderful. Thanks Danny.

It feels uh really rude to like hit you with random questions from a list of 50 possible topics. Um but do you know anything about the baseball field and like is that really on track and do we have any idea what the final cost of that is going to be? I don't know. School projects are like usually I'm the least knowledgeable about school projects so I'm okay with the other 50 topics but um uh I did get an update. I I report a October 2025 completion date like I I feel like that's like a maybe. Um it is underway right now. Um everything you know the contacts that I did talk to at the school like it's fully funded. they added additional funding for the the fence or the netting or whatever in

wasn't wasn't tall enough right in a budget amendment um uh when was that the school board added additional funding that's at the end of their budget at the end of their budget and their la their final budget amendment so it is fully funded and as far as I know it is the design is going on right now and um what people don't seem to be aware of is that baseball season starts in February and February is as your work goes right around the corner, right? So, you know, that's correct. If October is going to slide, you know, yeah, we're going to go through a second year without baseball, which is

simply unacceptable. I mean, it's something that council should have been riding a closer on, something the school board should have paid more attention to. Everybody, there's plenty of blame to go around for everybody, but you know, we really need to be up to date on that, you know, like on a meeting by meeting basis. Do we have any idea what the total cost is? Do we know what like with the I can maybe find I can talk I can get more details on that and provide you with that information. I will say although October, it may not be October. I I did not get the sense at all that it was not going to be done before February and that was going to impact another season of baseball. So, and I believe the contractor said it was going to be done last year, no problem. So, I don't

but I didn't talk to the contractor. I talk to school staff. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I can I can find out. That would be great to know. Thanks. Any other questions? I have some other stuff, but I don't want to go for and ahead of anybody else. No, I have a few like bigger picture things, but Okay. Well, let's hear about the bigger picture. Well,

I'm way down in the weeds. They're they're not that big picture, but um I guess I just you mentioned earlier Nabsi about how like the greeting of Lincoln project is huge and then you have like the Cherry Hole farmhouse. Um I'm just curious like how do you you mentioned before that that like we did six projects the year before last, 14 projects this year. So I guess like not all projects are created equal, right? They're all sort of like different. How are we what is the kind of like actual like throughput that is reasonable for our staff to be able to manage on like a annual basis because I just we're in charge of like I think like yes no like this should be in the CIP or should not it should be in for these years like we think this is reasonable and so like I think it's helpful for us to have a sense of how much work the staff can do in a year. I don't know that might be a hard question to ask. I think that it's a good question. I'm probably not the right person to answer it for sure, but um I I mean I will I do want to add like part of that when we were completing six projects a year and now we're talking about 14. A lot of those smaller projects like Cherry Ho Farmhouse like we weren't reporting on those like we were doing those even though they truly were funded through the CIP, we were not like reporting we were only reporting on those big mega projects. Okay. So that six and 14 are all sort of the big mega variety.

Yes. Yeah. So now I think that's a huge improvement then. Yeah. And in the on Thank you. getting there. Yeah. I think there are it it there's a lot of wins. I I agree with that and I appreciate that sentiment. Um, I think we're in the last few years we've made a lot of changes to sort of like the oversight of the CIP in general, not just the budget development, but also like project delivery and project development and tracking project updates. And um, those changes have been like including like new positions that like we did not have on staff previously to really oversee the

delivery of the CIP um, the implementation of it. Um, and so I think that's like it's a hard question to answer because I think like so much has changed and I think I we anticipate it continuing to change and that's where we're trying to um that's the number I think we're trying to figure out as well is like what's

aiming for 20 mega projects a year. That would be great. just pulling. Um, and then my other question was sort of like I can't I I find this report really helpful like all the context and um I was curious how this distribution stoplight distribution compares to like other recent years. So like the number of reds, yellows, greens, I don't know just as a share of the total list like are we more behind than we typically are? Are we about as on track as we typically are? Are we further ahead than we typically are? And if you don't have an answer to that, it's okay. I just if you have like off the top of your head like oh yeah like this is a year where we really ran into a lot of challenges with these different projects

beyond the last year or so. It's hard to say because like when we used to do we used to call it the CIP snapshot before this iteration of this report. We called it the CIP snapshot. It wasn't entirely quarterly. It was kind of that was like a um triquarterly. It was a very fluid reporting schedule. Um and uh and it used the same sort of stoplight method, but we had we had a fourth color. We had blue on there for complete. Right. For complete. That's correct. And that and so that was like we're talking about three four years ago now. Um

and we did not, like I said, we didn't report on all the full scope of the CIP. I feel like we were kind of looking at like what we thought was going to be of interest. And so the number of projects that we were reporting on was a lot lower. I see. Okay. So the demand

Yeah. So it's a hard it's hard to make a comparison since we started doing this one. I think we started doing this in July of 2024. Maybe even a little bit um earlier than that in 2024. I feel like it's been a year and a half, not just a year. But um uh overall I think for fiscal year 25 uh our ontarget average was I want to say like 68% and this one is what did I tell you all? This one is on target 54%. So we are a little further behind than we normally are.

Yeah. I don't remember what the others were. I don't remember the at risk and behind target averages for that for fiscal year 25. Um, it will be, like I said, I I there will be a staff report that's going to council on Monday night that will sort of detail more of those like we look at like a trend, a quarterly trend analysis where we compare previous quarters and so that will that's always included in the staff report. Great. I just didn't get a staff report to you all. I Okay. No, no worries. We'll take a look at Monday. So, thank you. Yeah, I think Mr. Duncan, you had some more specific

Thank you for the preview of the preview brought to brought brought brought up by me. I think I'm mostly blamed for putting you through the extra work. I I just, you know, uh remember how challenging it was on council to get, you know, the big the big document in November and and I never felt like we had enough time to go through it carefully. And so the planning commission, particularly as site plan work changes, however that changes, it seems to me like it's particularly important for us to do a good job on helping you all monitor and publicize and you know get the word out because this more than anything we do answers the question is where my taxpayer dollars going? We literally can show you where it's going if we're aware. So with that spirit in mind, thanks for coming. Um, just in terms of how the chart is presented, I remember the blue box which denoted complete and I actually like that and wondered if I mean the difference between the text of something being completed and the color uh it's sort of mushed in with all the other green things there. There should be more blues and somewhat fewer greens on on this chart if we still use the blue box or the checkered flag or whatever you want to say. But visually visually, yeah, we cross the finish line on this. I mean, that's that's my two cents worth on formatting it. Uh Meridian baseball field raises a a broader question about CIP projects for the schools generally. Another area if there were, you know, not as much council time to keep track of general government side stuff, there was even less time to keep track of school side stuff. And concession stand

is also part of that baseball pro field. and uh the enrollment data which should be coming in by the end of September for the new year will I presume inform you know the school board's attitudes about any other projects that the schools might have in mind. I believe they promised that we had enough space for all reasonable needs and so I wouldn't expect anything but you know I would ask if you keep a close eye on what the enrollment numbers are showing in September and certainly by the time December

well yeah we get here in November December you know that we should we should have a very firm number you know the headline usually says

explosive growth which is not really the case I mean over the years we've finally gotten back to where we were precoid but you know growth has been pretty much as we expected which has implications for the CIP that are good because it means that we spent the money that we needed to and it's going to hold us for a while. Um, some of the other things that I jotted down, I won't go through all of them, but the sewer flow equalization basin uh item is that is that where the Hillwood I'm sorry, the on South Maple, the new building, is that where that lives? Yes.

Okay. help me out. Yeah, Quinn. The Quinn building. Thank you. An antique myself. Can't remember it. So, that's where that lives. And what is the status of that is on hold? I actually just don't know. I know there's a lot of discussion about whether growth is, you know, causing us to have to spend money on infrastructure that we otherwise wouldn't have had to spend if we hadn't had any growth. I'm not really quite sure where that line of thinking leads us, but so what's the what's the status of that? Right.

I can't speak to the growth conversation. I do know that the status of that is currently on hold. I'm not sure how much of that is public. I know that we are discussing with Fairfax County a different solution. Yeah. To the that would not require the construction of the flow equalization basin. Well, that's where that that's what that that would increase our capacity without the basin. So that chart in the box reflects Yeah, I do remember hearing and there's going to be an update in October to council, I believe, about the status of So there's something going on there that will answer all our questions just like the Godfather. Uh LED street lights. Have we really done 240 LED street lights? I haven't been out so much. We've done more than that. We've done 600.

Are people noticing that we're It's the 200 yet to go. That's Yeah. Have we noticed anybody where is it? People know they're not complaining that they're they're not complaining. You do not know. There's a map. There's a map and I think you're right. I think they're not on Hillwood. I don't have the map right now of where all of those lights are. It's dark on Hillwood. Armad, you guys are still in the dark over there. [Music] Good. That's good. That's good.

Yeah. Well, I asked that question because I remember I remember Karen Oliver always whatever route she took to walk home from the office when she was on council all four years was always in the dark and she was always complaining about the street lights. So, I'm sensitive to uh how the street light uh distribution is coming out. That should be its own own subbox, you know, with with a map that shows where the where the lights are. You all are the purple in design phase. Broadway hawk signals are broad street hawk signals are complete but it's noted as red. What right am I to see?

So yeah. So I was going to make a comment to your point about the the fourth about the blue and about um marking those completed projects differently. So, one some of the feedback that we've consistently gotten from council the last year has been about this report um being transparent, right? Like in not being afraid to report red. Um so as of this quarterly report new um and and it talks about this in the staff report for next week, but as of this report, completed projects, we used to automatically change completed projects to green. Yeah.

Uh as of this report, we will no longer be doing that. If the project over if the life of the project it was delivered six months a year after it was initially the target schedule was was proposed then it's it's read it's reported it's complete which is yay woo we celebrate that but overall as far as our sort of our the accuracy of the data that we're looking at this trend analysis like it doesn't feel like we're really capturing accurate data if we're if a project is read for two years and then it's complete and we mark it green that you know on that trend analysis um that I mentioned um that sort of throws off like that data it doesn't really tell us

well those of you who are spreadsheet experts will have to prevail on that that that runs counter to so that's what I also wanted to mention about like sort of the ongoing uh record of of you know behind target and red statistically you like that might go up a little bit now that we are reporting the the reds differently if it's like I said I feel comfortable saying if it's over a year behind schedule or even six months behind schedule at the completion of the project like that's that's a red project. Well see I'm always looking at the glasses half full. So when the project's completed I want to do the ribbon cutting and move on. I don't want to haggle about ah you know we should have been here two years ago. Yeah.

I think if that's the expectation that we set then you know and we and that and we make that sort of behavior change of looking at it that way. I would keep track of that. I don't run this railroad, but I would keep track of that by, you know, as you go along saying, "Yeah, that one's still in the red. We're still not." But then the day it finishes, like hooray, you drop the balloons. It finally got finished.

Anyway, which goes to another formatting approach that you use. Mostly you've got months here. Sometimes though, you have a season like spring, summer, whatever. I don't think there's a fall. I'm just curious as to what what earns a month projected completion and what falls into spring. I want to know when when spring is that I can ask you. Are you done? Is spring like March 21st or is spring, you know, June 19th? That's a good question. Okay. Well, mull over that and see if you can That's information that I think that's based on maybe the project manager gave me that information.

Exactly. See if you could I understand. I've done that myself. I'll get to that this spring. Yeah, that's deliberate. But yeah,

I think some I mean on the on the glass half full side of that uh are you know is I think sometimes we're like well it could be May but we're really anticipating that it might be two months earlier than that. So we don't want to say you know one or the other. Okay. And the other stuff I'm going to hold to listen to your report on Monday night to council except one other thing that I did want to bring up that you mentioned. Some of these are identified as things we would do if we had the money. If we get the money, if we get the money that we didn't get because we applied for some grant. So this is a budget preparation question. You know, what is the role of the planning commission and saying, "Hey, city council, you know what? We've been talking for years about Project X and we're telling we're getting told that, you know, it can't be afforded. Well, is that really true? I mean, you've got surpluses, you've got resources. If the planning commission thinks this is something that deserves attention and we don't want to wait until FY3032 to get federal funds for it or whatever, you know, we should be able to go to the council and say, you know, prioritize this in your budget more than you have so that we can get it done. Is that a fairly frequent occurrence relatively speaking that you know there are things not getting done because we haven't allocated the resources or could you at least call out those in particular and you know here's our top six things that we would do if we had x million schools do this unashamedly they they will say you know what we ought to pay our teachers the best in the whole world and we ought to have the finest buildings and I'm all for all that but you know on the city side we have needs too and we need to prioritize between school and general government

sometimes. And yet we often come to that party without the kind of information that you know, hey, you know, you might have lost track, but it's been years since we said we were going to do this and we haven't gotten around to it yet. So, I would like for the planning commission to be able to use this as a tool to help us in that discussion.

For sure. I I think that's what we'll talk about more in November when we do the fiscal year 27 kickoff. I think the planning commission historically has done that in your in your annual budget, you know, recommendation um uh that we that we do by city charter. Like that's the planning commission has to recommend the the proposed capital improvements program budget. Um and there have been priorities that the planning commission has outlined in that recommendation. Um it might have taken a couple years, but I feel like solar, rooftop solar was one of those for the last two years. this year after it was unfunded in the proposed CIP that came to you all in February or March and in the adopted budget it was funded um for both the Aurora House and the community center in fiscal year 28. So I think yeah that's exactly um I I think that's up to you you all what those priorities are um what you determine. Um I think if you're looking for some priorities maybe um one place I would direct you to is in the in the fiscal year 26 uh adopted the binders from this year in section 22-7. There's something called the 10-year outlook which is a new thing that we did this year. It looks like this. It's really boring looking. We're going to make it nicer this year. Um, and that was sort of all the projects that sort of were um, hanging out in the 10-year window in in previous adopted CIPs that were not um, you know, didn't have like, you know, detailed project schedules, scopes, and budgets being developed, and they just like stayed in that 10-year window. Um, we put all of those into this one list this year. Um, and we did staff mark some of those as priority. Um, some of those are based on and and sort of supported by adopted city plans from the small area plans or master plans or whatever. Um, and so that's like maybe one place that the planning

commission could look and see if there are any priorities there or if there are priorities that should be added there that are long-term um, you know, things that we don't have any funds for or or or plan to fund right now that need to be looked at that need staff time to develop those those project scopes. Um, that's what that's what that document should be for. That's the idea behind it. This document, the quarterly update, is really focused primarily on active ongoing projects. At the end of it, there is the section for project development.

That's mostly for uh fiscal year 26 projects, new new projects in fiscal year 26. It's been fiscal year 26 for um you know 37 days or whatever. So like that's why those are in project development right now. They're not they're active. they're funded in the in the capital budget, but they're um we're still developing detailed schedules uh for some of them. Um and then a and then after that is the there's active projects, project development, and then the pending or upcoming grant application. So sometimes um we have grant opportunities that come up in in a really weird awkward point of our budget schedule and budget development process and it's like we have an opportunity to apply for a grant. it may not have been in a previously adopted CIP um but or maybe it was and we didn't plan on applying for grants and that's usually where where we capture those um or we have pending grant applications that we did plan on submitting um

that would be like where the Anadale Road multimodal improvements correct project lives. Yep. The two MBTA 70% applications that we just submitted the Anandale Road and then the Hok Road shared use path. Um, we had a technical assistance grant for Oak Street uh missing links, Oak Street Elementary like walk zone missing links. Um, we Yeah. So, those are that that's sort of like what's what's coming up next for for grants.

Okay. Well, we'll let council take a bite at your report, but I would encourage us on the planning commission each to adopt a handful of projects that are your favorites and you know, every other meeting or so, let's see if we can get an update on how things are going. Maybe they're going great and it's a very short conversation. Or maybe like the baseball field that turned out to be a huge train wreck and maybe we could, you know, have gotten ourselves behind the wheel and helped make that happen more smoothly. Uh, one last one, the Bike East West Select Design Consultant, late summer. That is a classic late summer 2025. So late summer is like what? September 19th or this fall began. But there will be a lot of interest in my neighborhood on that bike trail east west in a lot of neighborhoods. So when that person is hired, that's something that people should be made aware of just so that they know we are we have a process and we have somebody who's going to be working on it.

So you know, if that's going to happen in November as opposed to late summer or early fall or whatever, that would be a good example of a date that would be helpful. All right. Thank you. I've gone on enough. Go ahead. Sorry. I have one more follow-up question which you may or may not know the answer to. Again, I have a whole list of 50 things to surprise you with, but the Dominion work for the power uh for the West Falls Church or the West what is it called? What's the official name of the new development down at West Falls Church? West Falls. West. West. Is that it? West.

All right. Uh at West Falls, um at the place my kids make me walk to get ice cream. Now, um the when Dominion is September the targeted timeline to turn on the new traffic lights and decommission the old traffic lights, do we have like or is that just we need Dominion to have power and then there will be a communication to people about change in stoplights and now that there are four stop lights instead of one? That's a good question. I'll have to get back to you. It says permanent power installation. So, I'm just

That makes me wonder if it's a temporary power solution out there right now and they're targeting September for permanent. It's a that's a lot to get done before September. That Yeah, but I I can get back to you and let you know. I think my uh concern there is the way we communicate the change that's going to happen because there are now three or four new stop lightss. Um, and I still don't understand how the stop lights going to work on broad on Route 7 as you go into Fairfax, but Okay,

I would love I would love to know more about that. Yes, thank you. Um, so, uh, thank you. I had a couple of quick questions just to kind of follow up. Um, I'm I'm really grateful, uh, for the storm water improvements on Hillwood. I cannot say that enough because literally I was I was walking um a a neighbor child from across home because he was it was raining so hard he was terrified and the the streets the streets as soon as we got off of Hillwood towards the neighborhood in Fairfax the streets had like six inches of water and I was like it's like it's not even raining tonight. So because it's it was usually pretty bad. Um, so I'm glad that that started, but what's interesting is now we've got the sidewalk improvements, which is another great project because it's it's putting in some of those missing links. Unfortunately, it wasn't timed with the first storm water, so they had to rip up a bunch of stuff in the same yard um to put the the sidewalks in. But I'm also wondering too the timing of the Hillwood number two and where that's happening because they're still extending the sidewalks and you can see they're they're taking out one block and not doing it. And I thought it was just sort of the grade change that it was a little bit more complicated, but I'm wondering if maybe they're actually um overlapping those projects a little bit more cleanly so that we're not spending money twice

like ripping stuff up and replacing it. I don't know exactly what the sequencing of that is. I did we did know that that was going to happen with the sidewalks and Hillwood one storm water project. Um and some of that had to do with different funding sources and and the schedules. Um so but I don't know about the sequencing of Hillwood too and whether or not that it would I haven't heard of any impacts like similar to what is happening with the sidewalks where they're having to dig up that section that one section again. But it be good for like other projects to just look at that sequencing when you're looking at funding and say, "Well, does it make sense? Maybe we can see a little bit of savings if we don't have to spend if we can overlap some of those scopes." Yeah.

Yeah. Um just a thought. Yeah. No, I think Yeah, I think that was something that we anticipated and tried to avoid and unfortunately could not. Um, Hillwood 2 is funded through is another storm water project and it's funded through a completely different source. Both the Hillwood AB sidewalks and Hillwood one were um funded by mostly ARPA funds which had like super strict timelines

and they were different types of ARPA funding, different like um phases of ARPA funding. So like Hillwood one storm water was like had to be completely obligated and expended by an earlier date and Yeah. Yeah. But Hillwood AB sidewalks is in construction right now. It says October 2025. It's supposed to be um we anticipate completing it earlier than October hopefully. Um and Hillwood 2 is uh I think at 90% design this month. Okay. I want to say 90% design in August and then July 2026 is the final completion for that.

Yeah. Surprise to see those sidewalks. I saw the fencing up and I was like, "Oh, I didn't even know that was literally across the street." So, we weren't Nobody was notified along. Yeah, it was just the property owners that had those fencing go up. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you. Good. I will tell Tony about the storm water improvements. He'll be very happy to hear that. So, great news. All right. Any other questions for Missy? Thank you so much for coming out tonight. It's always Thank you guys. Really enjoy having you. Yeah, I'll be back soon. Just around the corner. in the fall.

In the fall, in the late fall, late fall, early winter. All right. I remember we used to do quarterly updates, but it was like only three quarters. We never were abstracters. All right. Thank you very much. Bye. Uh Jack, I'm assuming we don't have any correspondence. Is that correct? This item correct?

All right. Okay, then we are ajourned. I did. Yeah. Thank you. Uh so the 17th of September will be our next uh meeting meeting it looks like. So

the SB974 So that the utilities chapter work session. Yeah. And part of what we're considering uh throughout the month of August is really um on the first two items just how much of a lengthy conversation we believe we're going to need uh particularly given the scope of text changes that are required particularly for item number one. Uh and then considering uh the third item which is the ULI tap uh if that's something we believe we can still squeeze on that first on that September 17 date or

given that there isn't anything pressing on that topic uh can that shift to perhaps October. Um isn't council hearing from you all about you because Lety said she wanted to invite it is on a work session. Yeah, I mean we're supposed to go to the council work session when we are invited. Yeah. Right. So maybe that preludes us from having to you all having had to do it twice. And given the nature of that briefing, it's really more of a kind of a courtesy update rather than uh anything formally being recommended in terms of action attending the council meeting that Monday night, keeping you all from having toys.

So I think just keeping the agendas reasonably uh manageable, I think we'll kind of reassess and confirm probably another week or so uh what September looks like. like plenty to tackle. Yeah. So before we meet again, if we don't meet until the 17th, there is, help me out here, the program at Mosaic. Yes. The film which is called something about housing which is lines. Fault lines. Thank you. Is that the one that we saw? No. Yeah. You have you and Oh, you guys went. Okay. I have not. Is that the date? Sep Sunday, September 7th or 8th. What? What? The 7th.

Okay. It's from Yeah. 3 to 6 o'clock or something like that at Mosaic at Angelica I guess. Interesting documentary. Anyway, it's an open invitation I gather, but we are helping put it together. Sounds like y we as a city panel discussion and let is part of it. Great. All right. So, we'll see you all September 17th then. Sounds like unless something pops up for the third, but no. No. No. No. It's fine. No, it's a totally separate thing. Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, sorry. I thought you were talking about this. We'll see you again in late summer. Yeah, late summer. All right. We are y'all.