City Council - Regular Meeting

That would be a good place to reach out because I'd also like to point out the the career switch, the layoffs, even if you're not making a career switch, you, you gotta keep your skills valid. You gotta keep them going. Um, even when you're working, your skills get stale. Um, I'm proud to say that I've taken courses at Nova when I, for the first time I got laid off at a company and just kept things moving. And, um, The resources, the skills, the people there, it's all wonderful. And yes, I think we should be getting the word out in all sorts of different ways. Because I think there is a mindse

I just have a comment about that area because back at the end of August, I actually witnessed a traffic accident at the corner of Haycock and Broad. I was at Lazy Mike's enjoying some ice cream. And so I had called 911 to report it. After 10, 12 minutes, we left, but the police had not arrived. And in that case, the call went to Fairfax County. So that area... Maybe we can take a look at how calls are routed. Lazy Mike's obviously that is Fairfax County. It did get routed correctly. It's just that I felt when I was watching, I'm sitting there 12 minutes and I'm like, Falls Church could have ea

And it's going to get even more confusing shortly when the new buildings come on that are not Falls Church, right next door.

So, okay, so November 23rd is the public hearing, and that's when we would be voting on the MOU? Yes, sir.

So I will say the Planning Commission had some questions about dates, but since everything has moved out, I think that's resolved. They wanted to make sure they were ahead of things. But the first reading on the zoning had a lot of questions. We had wording, we had a bunch of things that staff was gonna take back and take a look at. I think there's still questions about parking. We've talked about having a second work session prior to the second reading, but I don't see that.

It was also some of the stuff we had asked, you know, staff, you take a look at the wording and take another crack at it. Come back. Cause especially around, um, uh the garages and how they were facing the wording just needed we were all in agreement on intent it was just the wording really didn't follow that staff has edits to the yeah first reading based on the feedback i didn't think it merited a full work session given that i think we all were on the same page and we were just looking to staff to get the language right

I'd like to see us at least make sure we have some time and have that on the schedule. Whatever we're doing.

The first time it already went in front of them.

So the planning commission, I agree. There weren't too much that was, it was more discussion similar to the discussions we've already had. What was interesting is it was a reminder that they really hadn't seen the first two first readings. So there was some comments and looks at things that we've basically put to bed. I think the big piece that's going to be controversial that we do want to discuss is the parking. I think that's the one that's kind of out there that we weren't fully in agreement on. But other than that, I agree. The Planning Commission's comments, they had plenty of comments.

My biggest thing is I don't think we don't want to be getting to December 14th and discussing parking. We want to be have those discussions well before so anything any additional research that has to be done we don't want to be dealing with it on the 14th of December.

The trouble I'm having is the site plan. There's a lot of deep detail to get approval, which, you know, exactly where, you know, the gas pipe runs. It's part of the site plan, but really we don't need to, the public doesn't really care where the, where the gas line is running. But it's maybe we have something with a 70% site plan or something that kind of gets us there before we do any sort of comprehensive agreement. We can always write into the comprehensive agreement that the transfer only happens after a fully approved site plan. But where I'm struggling is because the site plan work, the

It needs to be in there, but the public doesn't really care.

So one of them I may just hold to the end because it's a readout from the VDOT meeting I attended last week. But previously I had asked about non-city license plate reader technologies in the city. I just wanted to follow up and the feedback was the previous information from the police chief. My question was more about the beyond the city readers, whether there are any and also whether we have any policies. I want to know whether we have licensing or permitting for license plate readers beyond our own cities. I know that the article I was quoting in Florida that they got rid of them in flock a

Yeah, I attended the VDOT SYP open house this past Wednesday. And it was very well attended. The one hour meeting ended up going for over two and a half hours due to public comment. But there were some interesting things that Nick Donahue mentioned, the Secretary of Transportation. First off, the... Most of his presentation was focused on major projects, but I will say most of the public comment was about pedestrian safety, local streets, the parts that I think we can all agree VDOT kind of talks the talk but doesn't walk the walk.

I did not ask him that, but I did bring up, my comments were focused on why they don't support, that they should be supporting pedestrian friendly design, especially around reduced lane widths. So that was the one I was going for. He also had a slide that there is a cost of road repair index out there, and I'm trying to get the slides, that showed over the last four years, prior to that it was kind of tracking with inflation, over the last four years it has been accelerating inflation And cost of road repair has been two or three times the rate of inflation, which has resulted in a large defic

I'm glad you have the deck because it's really good. I was looking at the state site. I couldn't find it there. So I'll go look at the ledge agenda. But that's a good overview. The big takeaway to me was these issues that we keep hearing from Amanda about how we put something out to bid, it comes in higher, and we're shortfalling on maintenance. It's not just us. It's part of a much bigger... bigger environment that we're all going to have to deal with.

I just think, I'm just administratively, I'm thinking open session, closed session, open, closed. It gets a little, that night might get a little crazy on that.

Hopefully we're... History has shown half an hour for two closed sessions might be optimistic.

But the question I have is these two initiating resolutions, I suspect we're gonna have a lot of people at the meeting. Well, they're not, it's a work session, so they're not gonna be able to comment. Do we want to put the initiating resolutions after Virginia Village or, I don't know.