Planning Commission Regular Meeting/Work Session

James FeatherGood evening. Welcome to the regularly scheduled meeting of the City of Fairfax Planning Commission for Monday, November 25th, 2024. It's good to see everybody back. We've not had a couple of meetings due to holidays and scheduling issues, so I'm glad to see everyone here. First order of business is the Pledge of Allegiance. Please rise as you're able and join us. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. First order of business is discussion and adoption of the agenda, which was sent out ahead of the meeting earlier, early to last week. Any comments, questions, or a motion?

Paul CunninghamMr. Chairman, I move the agenda be adopted as presented.

James FeatherI move and seconded to adopt the agenda as presented. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Passes unanimously. Next order of business is presentations by the public on any matter not calling for a public hearing. We have no public hearings this evening so if anybody would like to address the Planning Commission now is the time to do it. Seeing none we will move forward. Next item on the agenda is consideration of the October 14, 2024 meeting minutes the last time we met. The minutes were issued with the agenda last week. comments on it if not

Speaker 2Mr. chair I move that we adopt the minutes from the October 14th 2024 meeting as posted

James Feathersecond moved and seconded to adopt the minutes as issued all those in favor say aye aye opposed passes unanimously and one abstention almost unanimously you abstain you also you can still approve them even if you weren't here if you like them but on the customary is for the city is to for extensions all right items not requiring a public hearing we have none this evening we have no public hearing so we will recess the regular meeting and go into a work session we have two items this evening first is an update and discussion of the city of Fairfax green building policy

Stefanie KupkastaffGood evening planning commissioners thank you for having us here tonight we're here to discuss an important step forward for the City of Fairfax the development of a green building policy that will improve the sustainability and resilience of our city during this presentation we'll give you some background information on the green building policy we'll provide an overview of this extensive research and collaboration that was that was conducted we'll review the key elements of the policy including the and private buildings operating procedures incentives designed to encourage broad participation and then we'll discuss next steps and at the end we'll open it up to a Q&A session the green building policy will establish

green building standards and incentives for both the public and private sectors helping the city to make measurable goal measurable progress towards its goals development of the policy began over a year ago in July 2023 we hired Cadmus group a strategic consulting firm to support the development of the policy the green building policy will play a crucial role in achieving our sustainability goals we've committed to adopt sorry committed to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent from 2005 levels by 2050 and also to achieve 100 renewable electricity for government operations by 2035 and community-wide by 2050 on the right you'll see a chart that shows our current reduction in greenhouse gas emissions so we're making progress but we

still have a ways to go you'll see from it's supposed to be orange but the orange is yellowish part of the bar graph are there are emissions associated with buildings as you can see 50% of our emissions are associated with buildings so it's really critical to adopt a policy to improve the energy efficiency and sustainability of our buildings so we can reach our greenhouse gas reduction goals this slide outlines the progress that we've made so far we've conducted extensive research internal and external stakeholders to develop the draft re-building policy which we have submitted to you all to you we look forward to hearing your feedback on the draft policy tonight we'll use that feedback to improve and

with our draft final report that will report back to the City Council in early 2025 at this point I'd like to turn over the presentation to Vicki Kieschel from the Cadmus group

Vicky Kiechelthanks Stephanie and good evening Commissioners good to here. I thought we'd begin with something that we discuss a lot of what is a green building and probably as planning commissioners you have discussed this but there's some divergence of thought amongst folks but most people light on these categories as being part of what green building means one you know sustainable materials energy efficiency and renewable energy commitments, water efficiency, indoor environmental quality, and reduced waste. These are also the foundations for most green building rating systems, as we'll see. And so they tend to be the common parts of the definition of green buildings. Onward Stephanie, please. There you have the detail.

And the benefits, next slide please, are along these lines. This is the triple bottom line, as it's called, of environment, equity, and economy, bringing ecological well-being, social well-being, human health, and the health of other species, and of course economic vitality. Next, please. We hope for the city that in creating a green building policy, we're emphasizing improving building performance through green building practices, certainly meeting your sustainability goals for carbon, climate mitigation and adaptation strategies are essential there, and then encouraging investment in the building sector in energy efficient buildings, renewable energy and other technologies that are part of what the green building definition

encompasses so with that brief introduction let's look at where we have gone with the research and who we have engaged so the key literature review we really looked at goals we looked at what neighboring communities like Arlington County, City of Alexandria, Montgomery County, Maryland, District of Columbia, what they're using in terms of incentives, what they're offering in terms of support to developers and others in their green building policies. And then, of course, we're very influenced by, as we'll see in a minute, the House Bill 2001, Virginia House Bill, which sets these minimum requirements for green building for for public buildings. And then we're following along with private sector buildings.

James FeatherNext slide,

Vicky Kiechelplease, Stephanie. Stakeholder engagement has been manifold, and here are some of the key parts of it. Over the last year, you are the planning commission in green. Most recently, we had a community members session in which we invited the public to give their feedback. And we've met with all these folks. Next, please, Stephanie. For incentive options, these were the ones considered for various reasons. So tax incentives at the top to receive a reduction in property taxes for your building if you participate in the voluntary part of the green building policy. We looked at bonus density as an incentive. This is a strategy employed by neighboring Arlington County where you can add extra square footage or extra height.

Permitting incentives, you know, fee reductions, waivers, priority plan review, things of that nature, and technical assistance in marketing to receive on the part of the city of Fairfax. What we found is that the ones that rose to the top were tax incentives and bonus density. Developers did not really have that much of an interest in technical assistance because, remarkably, they all have consultants that do that for them, that they hire on a regular basis or indeed some of them in-house teams of technical consultants. and permitting there's just not the opportunity within the city of Fairfax of staff there there are limits there as to what can be done so we really looked increasingly attacks incentives this this seemed to be the one that people

were quite drawn to bonus density is interesting and possibly for the future as you know we'll discuss but the focus for the private sector is going to be on tax incentives under this draft looking forward to your feedback so here we'll go into the public sector policy and then we'll follow that with the private sector policy so onward to House Bill 2001 this was passed under the previous governor and all Virginia localities need to abide by these requirements for new buildings that are over 5,000 square feet and where the cost of renovation exceeds 50% of the value of the building. Now the beginning date here is for smaller jurisdictions like City of Fairfax. There were earlier dates for larger Virginia jurisdictions.

So the requirement for public buildings, again, this is not private sector, is that they be designed, constructed, verified, operated to comply with a certification program, either LEED or Green Globes or equivalent. There was another state standard originally in it, VICE, but that has been taken out as of this year because it is not continually updated. it. Another requirement to have electric vehicle charging, zero emission vehicle charging. I'm assuming that's electric vehicles. If you had hydrogen vehicles, I suppose they would be eligible to. You should include features that measure energy consumption, metering, very important so you know how you're performing, and then incorporate appropriate resilience and distributed energy

features. So, for the public sector buildings, this will, in fact, be required under this new policy. And there are requirements for existing public sector buildings as well. So onward. Thanks, Stephanie. Public sector eligibility, as the House bill states, new construction, 5,000 square feet or more. Existing buildings, 1,000 square feet or greater. And then for major renovations, as long as they align with this definition, as you see it here, renovations to 50% or more of development's gross floor area or replacement of at least 50% of the building envelope, which is, you know, walls, roof, floors.

Kevin DentonNext slide.

Vicky KiechelSo, for public buildings that are newly constructed, that's 5,000 square feet or greater, beginning with the policy's effective date, whatever that is, early 2025, we hope, they will be required to align with this high performance buildings act to meet lead building design and construction at the gold level so lead is leadership in energy and environmental design it's the most widely used rating system for green buildings in the US some say in the world gold is the next to the top standard there's certified silver gold and then platinum so city of Fairfax is saying we're going to meet gold for our public buildings also zero emission standards particularly with things like EVs electrification ready standards not

you know gas-powered appliances for example demonstrating a 50% reduction in modeled energy use above current Virginia energy code requirements and And then to earn the following lead credits, and I just would ask you to make note of these four. The choice is because these are judged to be the biggest local vulnerabilities in the city of Fairfax. So one is flooding. So we have rainwater management, the lead credit for that. Certainly the lead sustainable sites credit to protect restore habitat and open space. That will help with a couple things. Urban heat island, which is also a local vulnerability, and also flooding because there will be more green space. Evapotranspiration, more nature-based solutions to handling stormwater.

Then lead outdoor water use reduction, minimizing irrigation, et cetera. You're all familiar that we passed through some mighty drought recently. Certainly not as mighty as it could have been, but that's the future possibly. And then light pollution reduction for a number of reasons, partly human-based reasons for reduction in glare, but also ecological reasons. We are on a bird migration route, and light pollution reduction will help with that aspect of our ecology. And then for major interior renovations to achieve also gold lead, but for interior design and construction. Onwards, Stephanie. Thank you. So for existing buildings, now this is a lower gross floor area threshold, 1,000 square feet.

The city will implement energy benchmarking for these existing public sector buildings. and identify a plan for upgrading them. Here, because they're existing buildings, it won't be LEED Gold, it'll be LEED Silver. And the rating system is their operations and maintenance rating system. It's a very different one from building design and construction. And the idea is that the city of Fairfax will disclose publicly the public sector building energy use on an annual basis next year. So with that, that's public sector. Now we go to private sector. The project eligibility for private sector, that 5,000 square foot threshold for new construction and certainly major renovations, but who will be required to do this? It's any development that is subject

or variance, or a rezoning process, or a planned development review, or special use review. So that's 90%, 95%, perhaps. Every project except the buy-write developments will be required to participate in this. So with that, let's look at what types of buildings won't be required. The private sector project exemptions are basically single family residential. Townhouse, duplex buildings, the smaller residential buildings. The commercial building types that are required do include multifamily construction, just above this kind of duplex idea, right? And there are questions about that. Certainly, you know, should we at a future point include single family? That's open for discussion. So for private sector new construction, they must achieve silver level certification.

Now, not only necessarily or not solely, I should say, in LEED, they could decide to pursue another green building rating system, either Green Globes, which is a LEED fairly equivalent, Viridian Earthcraft, which is a particular rating system that has evolved. and is used widely in Virginia for multifamily buildings especially or projects can choose to certify under enterprise green communities which is yet another rating system all these buildings regardless of rating system chosen will need to step up to show compliance with the vulnerabilities of the the city and their avoidance as expressed through these lead credits we will Make a kind of compliance sheet even if they're not following lead available to these projects so that they can demonstrate

that they're managing their rainwater and they're protecting restoring habitat etc and Then for private sector that are not subject to these these that are rather subject to special processes and and if it's a major interior renovation they too will do lead for interior design and construction they will do that at the gold level now where does tax abatement come in if you are required to do this at the silver level you you're not eligible for tax abatement unless you decide that you would like to go further and that you would agree to pursuit of lead or equivalent gold standard so with the tax abatement the idea is that buildings that building projects that perhaps already are pursuing lead silver would voluntarily

decide to do this with the understanding they would receive a tax abatement it would conclude or we would conclude the city would conclude this program after seven or ten years of implementation sometime in there the program eligibility actually extends another couple of years if you can as we'll discuss, demonstrate that you are performing at a high level of carbon and energy savings. So let's look at the next slide, which is the initial thinking. So pathway one for these public sector buildings is they say, okay, we already have to do lead silver. We're going to go further. We'll do lead gold. We'll try it. or Green Globes gold or, you know, Earthcraft gold. So they must demonstrate not only the certification

to receive the tax abatement, but a 30 percent reduction in modeled energy use. Not actual in this case, but modeled. What they have to do to receive certification in a newly constructed but not yet operating building is that they use an energy modeler and they determine what their, you know, in their best analysis would be their energy savings. They would have to prove up in modeled energies the 30% reduction. They would for that receive, and this is subject to discussion, either a 25% or a 50% tax abatement for one year. The common tax abatements in the Commonwealth of Virginia are 50% from one year. Montgomery County also has similar, but it could be decided that 25% is better. Pathway two, now this is where you get into a performance-based reward.

board. If you have pursued this pathway one, if you've gone and gotten your gold certification in one of these rating systems, and you are operating your building, and you can demonstrate that in operations you are achieving a 30 percent reduction in actual energy performance, performance, then you are eligible to receive up to two years of an additional tax abatement. So that is where the performance reward will kick in. Performance pathways are increasingly the name of the game for a lot of local jurisdictions in the United States. It's like you're walking the talk. It's not just modeled energy use. That would happen over the 7 to 10 years. You would have to show your annual energy use for a continuous 12 months to show that you had met that savings.

And you could do that twice. It's through ENERGY STAR for building certification and score. Next, please, Stephanie. We took the tack of taking a kind of straw man development. We used the Moxley. This was recently constructed. We took its characteristics, its square footage, its assessed building value, not building and land, just building. So assuming that the Moxley was constructed under this potential new green building policy, gold and the fairfax city specific requirements that we've been talking about this is the math if they had a 25 tax abatement for one year that would be an avoided uh you know tax intake revenue intake of 369 000 plus thousand dollars if it was 50 tax abatement for one year it's twice that

or upwards of $738,000. And then if they were to, if they achieved the gold certification for 50 percent tax abatement plus two years of demonstrated performance, that would be a substantial reward indeed, over $2 million, if you see. So questions here are, you know, what percentage should this abatement be? Should the level of certification be higher for program participation? Or somehow should these percentages be tiered depending on the level of achievement? Next slide, please. So benefits. Certainly GHD reductions, you know, the greenhouse gas emissions in terms of reductions of metric tons by certification level are here, as well as the vehicle emissions equivalent so that, You know, if you attain certified in this is LEED, equivalent of taking almost 1,000 vehicles off the road, silver, an additional 760 gold, and on top of those two, an additional 652, et cetera, et cetera.

So that's the greenhouse gas emissions savings. There are other benefits, too. And that's where the next slide comes in. There's prestige, competitiveness with other jurisdictions, higher tax values, and an abiding kind of tax revenue from buildings with higher asset value. Certainly the leadership element of establishing Fairfax City as a leader. And then certainly the idea that by doing this and incentivizing it that you would bring the greater ecological benefits and carbon reductions to the city. Administration is the next consideration. The performance monitoring procedures for this, the idea would be that city staff would review and update the policy periodically, we're suggesting every five years.

And metrics would be collected and reviewed, and those would include site and source energy use intensity. That's a commonly used metric for buildings. It's a ratio, it's a thousand British thermal units, KBTUs per square foot per year. Site energy is what you consume at your site. Source energy actually takes into account not only what you consume at the site, but the amount of energy that is lost basically in the production of energy and in the grid itself particularly for electricity this is a big deal because it takes energy to make electricity and so about 66 percent of the footprint of electricity is actually lost to generation and transmission so that's a big big hit anyway staff will look at site and source energy use intensity

also ghd emissions related to this and and other things too the average energy star score which is It's a 1 to 100 score where certification is attained in Energy Star for buildings for existing buildings at a level of 75. Certainly the number of private sector projects choosing to enroll in the policy and also the performance clearly of the ones that must do it. And that's square footage, especially for the voluntary ones, but for all of the buildings they are required to do so at silver level or whether they elect to do so at gold level. Onward, please. Studies to be conducted. Certainly a reduction in urban heat island effect over time. There are lots of good maps, imaging maps of our region which show UHI values.

stormwater reduction, increased available green space, and then the number of buildings that we have that are adhering to the dark sky requirements. So staffing and resources. The workload will be higher, but in conversation and kind of studies and going back and forth with stephanie and her team we think that about 25 hours a week would is a good estimate for tasks and responsibilities related to the management of this policy that's including training the city will need a utility data management software one example is energy cap and you know the license to use that certainly and then the funding to upgrade existing public sector buildings will be needed and that would include the involvement of external consultants

or architects and and or architects and engineers as needed so with that that is the overview We have some questions. I'd like to know your questions. I mean, we can go to these specific questions about, you know, what you think the policy, if enacted, how it would impact development in the city. but I would welcome hearing your questions and concerns including on this this this last question that we posed about your thoughts on exploring that an intersection of incentives for the future such as height and density bonuses with the small area plans in the city of Fairfax. So please ask questions, state thoughts, give feedback. Commissioner Coleman, should I call on your, Ms.

James FeatherBriggs? I'm sorry, I'm the chair. Oh, sorry, Commissioner Federer, yes, please. One question perhaps, Ms. Cooker, you could probably answer for us. What is the role in the Planning Commission in this exercise?

Stefanie Kupkastaffguys we would like your feedback on the green building policy so we can make improvements to make it sure that it meets the needs of our community and since the Planning Commission is involved with land use decisions and green buildings are a part of that we would like to make sure that your opinions are heard and that we can incorporate any improvements to the plan and policy and

James Featherjust to be clear we we have no role in making a recommendation to city council on this but i presume you might carry feedback from this discussion to them if you would yes

Stefanie Kupkastaffthank you

James Featherokay thank you commissioners mr coleman

Stefanie Kupkastaffthat's the question

Matthew Ricethat i have on

Anthony Colemanthe modeling stuff on there i'm not too familiar with it but knowing a lot of developers they're really good at sandbagging how do you prevent that from it's easy to sandbag, get 30%, okay, 50% reduction, and then when they go to the actual, they're like, we got five. Is there any way to kind of mitigate that?

Vicky KiechelIt's such an excellent question. And it is, I mean, it is a huge issue having to keep an eye on that. I think part of it is scrutiny of their model. They have to provide They're providing their energy model. They just don't show the, these are our results. They're actually showing the inputs. And whoever is reviewing them kind of looks at it with a fine tooth comb and questions it. You know, what do you, why are you putting this in? What about this? What about that? So that's what can be done at the modeling end. It's still an issue. Lots of, you know, even with the best intentions and finest modeling, there can be surprises. And that's, I mean, where we're hoping that this pathway to, you know, if you achieve that, you know, when you say, oh, I did get that tax abatement,

that maybe you are motivated to actually perform as you said you would and get a further tax abatement. But it is a great point. And it takes scrutiny, for sure.

Anthony ColemanYeah, I'd almost kind of piggybacking on that is between, like, the 25% and 50%. My recommendation would be, like, okay, if in their model they can show a 45% reduction, okay, maybe you can go ahead and get the 50% because then, in reality, maybe they'll get 30%. Maybe.

Vicky KiechelSo you'd raise –

Anthony ColemanI'd almost make it a tiered system.

Vicky KiechelBut you would raise the threshold.

Anthony Colemanin the

Vicky Kiechelmodel interesting idea that's great feedback yeah

Anthony Colemanno I'm done thank you

James FeatherDr. Rice I

Matthew Ricethink I asked the question when you were visiting PRAB and let me just say your presentation to PRAB was outstanding it's very informative and I I really like that. When Eric Foreman walks in the room, everybody gets excited. Just the sheer amount of information that you and other experts provide to us is very valuable. You've cited a couple of standards. Site 15 had several of those listed for public buildings. You cite LEAD a lot, and LEAD's something I've been aware of for 25, 26 years. But you cite a few others. And what that possibly does is it provides some difficulty for staff to maintain expertise in four different certification systems and compliance with standards that vary across the systems.

Is there a problem with suggesting one that might be an industry leader? Would that be negative? I worry about the burden that this may place on our staff just to scrutinize and check the different rating systems, even just for public buildings.

Vicky KiechelAnother excellent point. So among the rating systems, and this may give some comfort, EarthCraft is, so LEED does not require a third party that is engaged by the developer to measure and test, but EarthCraft does. So that would help staff because the EarthCraft advisor would do that. But also enterprise green communities is another, I think, that does engage as a third party. Green Globes, though, doesn't. And so that would be, it would be true that they would have to know that. I have personally not seen any project recently in northern Virginia follow Green Globes.

Matthew RiceSo we had a developer bring in a plan and cite Green Globes. Oh, really? Interesting. And I said, I have no idea what Green Globes is. Maybe you can use LEED when you come back. And they came back with LEED. But that may have been unfair of me to suggest them to use LEED just because it happens to be the one I'm familiar with. I'm just a planning commissioner. I worry about city staff having to develop this sort of portfolio of expertise. that may be unreasonable.

Vicky KiechelI do think it's a great point. I mean, I think, I mean, Stephanie, I don't know what you think about this, but I mean, it could be that that's, if somebody comes in with Green Globes, you say, well, maybe we hire an expert for 10 hours review work or five hours review work. That's money, of course. But yeah, LEED is certainly the most commonly used. And people increasingly in this Commonwealth, they know Earthcraft. I'm interested that someone came in and was interested in Green Globes.

Matthew RiceYeah, so I should go back and just review the meeting video and make sure I'm getting that right. It was a system I was unfamiliar with. This was prior to your visit to PRAB. It was probably about eight months ago. It just was one I wasn't familiar with, and when they came back for a subsequent visit to us, I'm slightly concerned about the requirements on the city staff. There is a need for staff to track energy usage required for disclosure, and it seems that that process is inherently complicated, and I have never seen the software, energy cap software, used to track that kind of thing, but I do know that even though it concerns me that the city needs and every jurisdiction needs to build these

capabilities amongst the staff and it's important enough certainly that if it's an important thing to do we need to have make sure somebody's trained to do it and but I think the going to mr. Coleman's comment the ability for us to double check as a city the things that are brought to us to earn a tax abatement to earn an incentive, that process is inherently complex. The developer has a great kind of motivation to hire and get the expertise to claim something that may not end up being observed. I think, and this is a ridiculous thing to bring in here, but I watch a lot of DIY shows in this old house, had a few episodes in Massachusetts, which has adopted something like this, but far more strict. And so the requirement during the rebuild of a residence

was to insert, you know, to achieve R59, you know, insulation on the entire enclosure. And it was pretty extraordinary. And so most of the episodes about this particular build focused on the energy rating systems and the kind of extreme kind of things that had to be done to isolate transmission through the floor and other things like that. So I think what we're asking is relatively modest in comparison with what some other jurisdictions may be doing. I do think we should try as much as we possibly can, even if it doesn't necessarily serve our interest directly, that we should try to stay in the same ballpark as our neighboring jurisdictions. We don't want to necessarily discourage development by adopting standards that are much different

or far more rigorous, but I think the entire region perhaps needs to move in consort to achieve this. So those weren't really questions for you. I think the question I want to ask you is that about the assertion that perhaps LEED certification might lead to an increased asset value for a private building. I know certainly from my experience it leads to kind of reputational kind of increase amongst the builder and the architect and the owner of the building. Have you observed locally buildings being able to ask for higher rents and receive higher property valuations based on the certifications? Is that a real thing or is it an idea?

Vicky KiechelIt is a real thing. And actually there's literature to back it up on the part of kind of commercial real estate development companies that show that there are higher rents that lead buildings achieve. of it has been focused on lead buildings rather than other certifications. But yeah, there's literature, certainly.

Matthew RiceOkay, and certainly that would help our CFO and our treasurer and other real estate folks to be able to figure out what the impact for this might be. It's not just a reduction in real estate taxes coming in. It's an increase in value as well that may offset that. and recognizing it's a pretty complex projection to do in advance. But the more information we can build about this dynamic and how it may emerge in our city, the better. We do, my just ballpark estimate, we do depend 50% of our kind of revenue comes from real estate taxes, and we obviously have to be very careful about that. And I think the idea of lots of abatements coming in would need in the same conversation to be balanced with possibly increased valuations for those buildings.

Vicky KiechelGreat point.

Matthew RiceGood.

Vicky KiechelThank you. Thank you.

Speaker 2My take on this is, again, an excellent presentation. I appreciate the detail, but I would be very reluctant to pursue or to put up as an option the height or density allotment increases. That's just such a fraught issue for every proposal that comes to us, especially when you're talking about large-scale projects, which this is largely focused on. And as well-intentioned as LEED and the other certifications are, they're still speculative. So if you've already given the density or the height, you can't take it back if you don't achieve anything. So I would be very disinclined to include that as part of the policy, unless it were captured to a very specific area where we have that flexibility and height and density,

perhaps some small area plans. But that gets a little difficult in terms of enforcement and fairness of evaluations, so my inclination would be to say that that is not necessarily something that I would want to see on the table for discussion. But I do like the performance-based evaluation over time. um i think that's important and then you know kind of hold people to the commitment that they're making at the outset of the of the project so i i appreciate that as the the lever

James Featherthank you mr thanks

Kevin Dentonfor the presentation um i would mirror the same concern if there's a height density i don't think the trade-off could just be a lead gold for instance i think that would maybe maybe unlock your ability to purchase density because what you deliver once your building is tall this kind of goes out the door and um the software the the burden on staff or or the hours dedicated to this, does that start when someone is seeking abatement and someone being the developer and is trying to achieve that? Or is that on an ongoing basis? What I'm trying to determine is, do we only need to dedicate the approximate 25 hours a week when someone is actively, the developer is actively trying to seek out those abatements

annually? or is it like monitoring of all new developments that are seeking lead certification? I know with Earthcraft, like you mentioned, there's a consultant involved, and at the end it's checked off if they met whatever requirements. So I'm trying to find out, is that 25 hours needed like almost immediately once everything's implemented or is it only needed when a developer is trying to seek out tax abatement?

Vicky KiechelThat's an interesting question. I think so the 25 hours is really as they're going through the process of applying. So it's to check things like their energy model. It's to check whether they are meeting the local vulnerabilities lead credits. It's to check their initial, they'll have an initial energy star score. Or it's something called Target Finder, which will show what they predict their score will be. It's checking that kind of raft of documentation. So that's really the 25 hours per week. Once they're operating, it's likely to be much less on an ongoing basis of just looking looking at energy performance, reviewing that on a monthly basis, it might be an hour or two per property. I don't know if that really answers your question.

I also wanted to add to that. Yeah, please.

Stefanie KupkastaffBecause this policy also includes public buildings. Yes. So the utility data management system we were talking about, they would be using that system on a monthly basis to assess the energy use of our buildings, but not only energy, but also water as well and as we do energy efficiency projects they to improve our public building sector to meet the green building policy to assess that to ensure we're meeting those standards so it's ongoing work especially with our public buildings to identify those projects implement them track our usage and also report it and the reporting is required by hb 2001 for all new buildings so we will be required to report that on an annual basis so the public side will be regular operating procedures that we would have to do to

make sure that our building stock is up to those standards plus whatever you know developments are happening on the private sector so it's a combination of both so I just want to make sure you're aware of it the public sector buildings and

Kevin Dentonthe the example you gave of the Moxley if they had three years at highest abatement, I think it was $2.3 million. Yeah,

Vicky Kiechelsomething like that.

Kevin DentonSomething like that. I'm just imagining that somewhere in the future there's seven similar-sized projects that are achieving that type of abatement. It would be hard to be able to set percentages that you know maybe can't be made up in the revenue later. You would definitely need flexibility in adjusting that as time goes.

Vicky KiechelAgreed.

Kevin DentonMR. And maybe even on, maybe it's set in stone as an individual project's approved, but maybe for future projects it has to be adjusted. I don't know if you can make an adjustment once you've made an agreement with the developer what their abatement could be at the time of approval versus the time of them actually achieving that abatement if they're able to do so. And then I think one thing I want to mention is a lot of times to say a building is lead gold or whatever does make people feel good. And it could make a building more appealing, but really where the value is, is in the reduced operating expenses do have to achieve it, the savings, an operating expense standpoint, before that lead gold

actually means anything. So, luckily, as developers sell buildings, as merchant builders, or as buildings change hands, or just in the natural operation of buildings, really that operating expense means a lot more than the fact that it was achieved lead gold when it was built, because if it doesn't translate into reduced operating expenses and never achieved anything other than, you know, making people feel good when they first talked about the project. Right, that's

Vicky Kiechelabsolutely the goal.

Kevin DentonThat was it. Thank you.

Vicky KiechelNo, thank you.

James FeatherMs. Briggs, anything?

Betsy BriggsJust to break it down really simply, the developer builds the building to these requirements in order to save taxes, but is the developer and the person who owns the building, once it's finished being built, the same person? It's a different company, right? The savings will be by the purchaser.

Vicky KiechelGreat question. the developer is usually the person that is the initial owner of the building and depending on their point of view, their status, they might turn around and sell it to an owner within a year or two and lots of our regional developers do that. A certain number do hold on for a few years or more and that's where they see those operational benefits that Commissioner Denton was talking about with okay so yeah that's a it just varies I think from project to project so

Betsy BriggsI'm curious I'm sure that a lot of research was put into what these tax abatements should be and what they would mean to the developer but I'm curious what the additional expenses are to the developer and if it's like a maybe a two to one ratio like if they're gonna save 2.2 million over three years did it cost them an extra 1.1 million to make the building this efficient is there

Vicky Kiechelwe've had a lot of discussion of this yeah there there is the premiums for building to lead gold could be there's data of sometimes it's 8%, sometimes it's 5%. So there is a premium. Now a lot of developers will, if they have in-house staffs that do this, the premium might be less. A lot of our regional developers are now very skilled in achieving lead at various levels. So presumably the premium is less, making the incentive even more desirable. But, yeah, it's a great point. Is there

Betsy Briggsa ratio, an estimated ratio of what the reward is compared to the expense?

Vicky KiechelI don't know of a general data point there.

Betsy BriggsBut it's definitely more than

Vicky Kiecheltheir

Betsy Briggsexpense. I mean, they're definitely going to get back more than they put in, it wouldn't be an incentive, right? Yes,

Vicky Kiechelwith the incentive, right. That's what we believe. And that's what we're basing the data on. Yeah. Okay. Is what they're telling us. What was that? In terms of whether, I think, aren't you really asking, you know, is the incentive powerful enough for them to check it up?

Betsy BriggsYes.

Vicky KiechelYeah, we think so. Okay. That's what they're telling us.

Betsy BriggsAnd then on the employee to oversee all this, I was just curious, is there just a company that can come in and check these things? Why does a person have to oversee it? Can it be a company that comes in and certifies them as whatever it is they need to be for that abatement, that tax abatement reward? Does it have to be an employee managing it?

Stefanie Kupkastaffas we looked into this this is going to be an ongoing expense for the city and going to an outside of the consultant is typically twice as expensive because you do need very specialized staff to do this so it would be cheaper long term to have someone on staff to do this this is something that will be ongoing for the long term for the city it makes sense to hire someone you know in-house then go consultant because that would typically be more expensive and then you need staff to manage that consultant and to check them so it would still have to have that extra staff time to then manage that account so we thought it would be you know a better decision to have an on staff employee we actually do have someone on staff now that's helping with the development of the policy that's

grant personally grant funded so we're hoping we're able to keep her on board she's very well qualified and would be great to keep her on staff.

James FeatherMr. Cunningham.

Paul CunninghamThank you. LEAD is an interesting program that's been around and been discussed here for a long time and it's one of a number of things competing in terms of cost and totality for making the city efficient and more run at our last meeting which I abstained from voting on because I wasn't here but I watched after I got back I saw an interesting discussion where it was commented on that the fall festival downtown had an exercise run by the city staff in which they allowed all the people coming by to vote on six priorities of what are the city's priorities and the far and away most vote-getter in the way the program came out was affordable housing so when we look at affordable housing you're looking at the city's

tax base which used to be more commercial less residential but as Dr. has shifted the other way. It is now less commercial, more residential. So this program targets the fact that we are dealing with the profitability of the private sector and the efficiency of the public sector in expensive programs for government to run and most of these programs are adding additional cost as I see receive social savings in the long run making the world a better place for us to live by reducing things over which we have no control the amount of carbon dioxide and other things released. So when we're balancing all of these things off one of the things I would look for is some efficiency here to keep the city in balance for meeting all of its priorities.

The more we drive up cost, the more we drive up the tax rate, the more that's going to impact the primary payers of the tax rate, which is now primarily residential. And to me, intuitively, that's going to make housing less affordable, not more affordable. So this program is going to have to fit with the other criteria and priorities that we have to deal with. So when I look at various things, and I think most of those points have been covered, tax abatement, you've got to be able to verify it. in my experience on the Planning Commission, and I've been here for a while, the city and its buildings, be it the library, the police station, Sherwood, which was a gift to the city, any of those has never chosen or had the gumption to take the step

to make them certified in any shape or form be more costly to the city and in terms of our past performance we have avoided that now we have a state mandate somebody's telling us we have to do this so I'm going to presume that the new fire station that we're talking about and the community center if they're going to meet these standards are going to increase in cost to bring this type of thing in so at that point Ronald Reagan's but verify comes back and the comments that I've heard from a number of my colleagues about how do we ensure after the fact that we're getting the benefit of this program becomes even more important from that standpoint because it is going to cost more when you talk about imposing something on somebody the

way our zoning ordinance is written virtually nothing in this city can be built by right everything has a special exception a variance something that had to be approved which means that virtually every project that's going to come forward in the city is going to be impacted by this and that not only is a cost for doing the project but as an impact on the staff's ability to do things in a reasonable and efficient manner because from what I hear from getting things approved in a timely manner can be a real challenge

James Featherand

Paul Cunninghamgetting projects approved and accomplished in a timely and efficient manner is part of what keeps the economy going so I would not like to see this become a cog that's going to slow things down even further and with that one observation on the Moxley when we talk about tax abatements and what it one the buildings we're not talking about the fact we added a 650 car parking deck in the middle of it because that's relatively energy efficient except that that 650 car savings we're going to get out of changing a lead level is being burned by the cars that are on site so our trade-offs have got to be clear and and real from that standpoint. If we put enough vehicle charging stations in there and we get our LEED certification,

are we burning more electricity? And where is that generated? It's not generated in the city. So are we actually, in saving things energy-wise, as we're starting to read in the press with data centers and other things, starting to have to produce so much more of the fuel that makes this work that our savings are maybe a little illusory and need to be really focused on to say that we're doing something and then I have a question on building longevity we have some beautiful buildings that are worth saving yes most of them were built a long time ago and interesting architectural design and things and that went into it. I don't know that we have the history on LEED yet but I would like to see more of it that says that the buildings we're building under LEED

are going to stay energy efficient as we move forward and not be ready for demolition in 20, 25, 30 years because the materials in them and the technology in them is good for that. I Know a lady who's using a washing machine that she got in 1986 when she moved back to town and she loves it She will not give it up. She will repair it And it's absolutely fabulous And I know some other people who've bought reasonably new washing machines in the last five seven years and they're replacing them already because and to me that energy star that they bought in is not to me really more efficient than something that was built with quality that's going to last. And is there something in LEED that says that these buildings are actually better

and going to last longer and become the things we're going to look back on and revere as, wow, that was something fabulous that was done in a point in time. and now we're proud of it and we're maintaining it,

James Feathersuch

Paul Cunninghamas Old Town Hall, which would fall under the fact that we've got to make it lead if we're going to do it because it's more than 1,000 square feet. At least that would be the way I would read this, depending on the timing of when things kick in. But as we go about it, Old Town Hall was never designed to be an energy-efficient building. way because it doesn't use that much right energy in the way it was constructed but it's 125 year old building that we are still proud of and we will maintain and continue to live with so i guess my rambling on this is can we get it down from being generalities to specifics because the moxley if you knew the development process of it, started in effect in 2004, 2005,

as what we'd call a back-of-the-napkin drawing or immediate drawing, and this is what it's going to be. And then it went dormant for 10 years. And then a developer came in and wanted to build a quality program. And that went through the approval process over a couple of years, in which it went through the Board of Architecture review, it went through the Planning Commission, it went through City Council, questions were asked, and we thought we had a really good project. And then it went dormant for a couple of years in the mid-aughts because the developer found he couldn't do it cost-effectively, so he didn't choose to proceed. And then it came back through the approval process. And what I'm going to be called was scaled down

To make it a viable project. So what you have is the essential project with 20-year bookends That is now up and running But was not intended to be lead by the last person who actually did it

Vicky KiechelAnd

Paul Cunninghamso the tax abatement program I don't think would have caused that developer to move forward

Laszlo PalkostaffHow

Paul Cunninghamdo we get to that point through our entire process? from attack approaching the planning staff through the Planning Commission through Public Works for all the approvals to actually getting a project on the ground and make it efficient for the city to go and that's where one of the challenges we've had save a couple of developers in the city who have done lead type projects means that we haven't had a lot of experience in bringing lead in to see that this is our future even though this is the future that's now being dictated to us so that's that's where some of my concern rests with this kind of with where we're going with this I would like something more meat

Speaker 2Mr. Cunningham jogged a really good point and actually I neglected to bring it up earlier but I appreciated that you called out specific standards and what you were hoping to achieve within within the LEED level because I think that has been a common criticism of LEED and other programs is that people opt into the cheapest fixes, right? They want to spend the least cost to achieve the highest rating. So if we actually go back and say as a city we would like you to achieve LEED Gold but what we really care about is LEED Gold certification at these four things, then maybe there's some flexibility to a builder who says I can't afford to hit LEED Gold for the whole facility but I can exceed LEED

Gold in your four key metrics because that's really at the end of the day what matters for the development. So maybe sticking to those metrics rather than overall certification would actually get us closer to our goal of specifically greenhouse gas emissions than just being able to put a shiny plate on a building because, you know, they're recycling water, which is great too, but again, doesn't meet the original plan of the policy. So getting more granular, to your point, in what we really want out of that certification.

Vicky KiechelRight. Focusing on particular actions or, you know, really, I mean, your point about historic buildings it's you know they're surprising in terms of their energy performance because they were designed before the advent of air conditioning they have natural ventilation they have passive design and that's what makes them lovable and also high performers so you know I'm eager to see what happens after you start tracking these these buildings but you're right also your point about surface parking and you know we have all these 600 parking spaces and are required to do a protect and restore habitat they probably can't have those surface parking spaces because they would not meet that action. But yeah, all of this is, these are beautiful points and well taken, you know.

So it's, what can you say about developers and development processes? Yeah.

James FeatherAnything else? Let me cover a few things. Ms. Kupka, the presentation talks about the city's commitment to certain goals, greenhouse gas emissions, renewable electricity, so forth. goals established for the city facilities because you're called commitments we can't commit for private developers

Stefanie Kupkastaffso the greenhouse gas reduction goal the 80% by 2050 is a goal for community-wide emissions and this was committed to as part of a regional compact that we signed with the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments so this was a compact that we made I forget the exact year 2010 i believe i'd have to look back the exact year but it was something the city committed to community-wide and what's great uh metropolitan washington council of governments they conduct the greenhouse gas emission inventories for our community and all the communities within the region so we're able to track that uh free of charge by partnering with with cog on that The 100% renewable electricity goal, we have two goals.

The 100% renewable electricity by 2035 is for city operations. So that's buildings and facilities, so like our streetlights and that kind of thing. So that would cover our electrical usage for city operations. And then the community-wide goal is 100% by 2050. Yep.

James FeatherThe reason I ask, I want to clarify particularly the greenhouse gas emissions, because this is one of the major benefits we're hoping to achieve through this policy. We're trying to equate this to getting cars off the road. I think if we could get the cars off the road, a lot of residents would be happier because they can see the benefit through the traffic and everything else we hear about development. But if this is a commitment that the city has made, then it means the city, and that's all the city, its residents, its business owners are part of that commitment and will have to pay for it. Whether they know that or not is another matter. So to me there's an issue of communication to the city.

For example, if we use the Moxley as an example, $2.3 million for three years is three cents on the tax rate for one development paid for by taxpayer dollars private developer that needs to be understood if we're really going to apply these that the community needs to understand it is that how they want their three cents to be spent I don't know but it's a commitment that we've made and we have to be very transparent as we communicate with the residents and the business owners of the city who are paying those taxes that that's what's happening I was I learned a lot tonight LEED does not require any kind of If we are spending taxpayer dollars to provide a benefit to a few private developers, we need to be very sure that we can demonstrate the benefits.

So I'm not sure that I trust the model. It doesn't require anybody with any particular expertise to use it. One of the things I learned a long time ago as an engineer is that all models are wrong and some are useful. We need something that's reliable and I think it has some integrity behind it. So if we're going to tell our residents that this is what they're paying for. Okay. A couple of other things. Some have already been discussed already that I won't repeat. In the private sector project eligibility, I heard the word required used. Is it true that right now we don't have the authority to require anything in this regard by the state, being a Dillon Rule state? we still need legislation for us to actually require it and at this point

it would just be incentivizing

Stefanie Kupkastaffcorrect so

James Featherwe don't have

Stefanie Kupkastaffenabling authority to require a building code above what the state right

James Featheryeah so we you know it's not really a requirement at this point it made me think about is the City Council is approaching a discussion decisions on its legislative agenda would we not want one of our legislative objectives in order to level the playing field across that the state provides that enabling authority. In fact, the state has actually dictated what governmental agencies need to do or organizations, towns, counties, and so forth. Would they not, if they're really committed to this whole issue, and I don't know, in the Commonwealth of Virginia, we're very politically diverse, if that would happen. But if it becomes a requirement for private development, need for any kind of tax incentives go away.

And in fact what I heard tonight was that the investment in gold certification should more than pay for itself. If that's the case, why should we be providing tax incentives? I thought I heard there was a payback of when you get to gold levels with the energy or whatever savings you can achieve, why would we have to incentivize somebody to do what is clearly a right business decision, if that's really true. So a developer's calculus needs to include construction and operating costs. I mean, having come from industry, I know all the kind of things we looked at. And so maybe it's, you know, I want to make sure that that was the case. So all right, talking about that one. This other one, I guess I got that one too.

Got that one. I talked about that one. I talked about that one. All right. Again, I think a lot of the items have been talked about. One thing that crossed my mind was if incorporating the design of a building, the features that require that enable them to achieve a certain certification enables the property value allows property value to be higher enable somebody to charge higher rents again this is one of the things that one of the commissioners mentioned making sure we have a reasonably level playing field across the whole area because we would not want to be at a disadvantage of having a building owner want to charge more rent that they that a potential tenant can get lower rates somewhere else because they don't have the LEED certification that gets a higher property

value. It may require somebody to charge higher rents. So leveling the player field, especially in the whole geographic area, would need to be I think an important consideration. We want a reasonably equitable business climate as well. A bragging right of having a lot of green buildings doesn't do us anything if people don't want to come to the city because

Matthew Ricethe

James Featherrents are lower somewhere else in our commercial roads I don't know whether that would happen but it may be part of a business is calculus so I attended the public meeting I'm just like our I think brought this up about the issue of a bonus density being fraught the issue I raised there I'll repeat it here for the benefit of the Commission is that in the context of affordable housing we already have a bonus density allowances to get more affordable housing in the city I'm thinking that that's really the priority for the city. We heard it at the fall festival poll by the public. Affordable housing is more important thing. I think we'd be far better off using our bonus density allowances for affordable housing rather than for an application

like this. So I'll just repeat that here. I think the comments that others have made have sort of brought that all together. So I think that's what I have. Again one additional question when

Paul CunninghamI looked at the charts talking about the future and how we're going to get there if you can pull that chart up

Stefanie KupkastaffAre you talking about the greenhouse gas

Paul Cunninghamthe greenhouse gas chart When I look at this slide, it may be optical, but I see a much greater reduction in building impact than I do in transportation impact or the others. Pretty much it's all there. get all of our savings just out of buildings in this time frame what kind of buildings are we going to get at what certification and what kind of density because if we're not getting it out of transportation while we're building that 650 car parking deck to go with the building I don't see that we have really a balanced program here to try to achieve a long-term goal so

Stefanie Kupkastafflet you know we're not just focusing on buildings we're actually going to be developing a climate action plan this year which we'll be looking at all these sectors to identify long-term strategies for how we're going to reduce emissions sector wide so in all these areas and transportation as you can see is about 50% of our emissions as well so in order to meet our our goal we're gonna have to make transformational changes in a variety of areas so this green building policy is our first step in taking actions towards reducing our emissions associated with buildings so this is this policy focused on buildings but other initiatives the city will be taking will be in the other sectors

Paul Cunninghamokay is this the kind of thing where this process is going to cross getting people onto trails to not use vehicles and things that that burn fossil fuels and how does that compete with not taking down trees and putting in trails as opposed to you know which will actually get people to do something else

Vicky Kiechelyeah

Paul Cunninghamso But we don't do the trail because we can't take down a tree, but now we're going to, the balance here is a challenge.

Stefanie KupkastaffAgreed. So it's definitely a delicate balance with multiple priorities to evaluate moving forward. So it's a very complex issue, and we'll be evaluating those decisions to the best of our ability so we can minimize impact and increase the benefits to our community. Okay,

Paul Cunninghamthank you.

James FeatherOthers? Dr.

Matthew RiceRoyce. So there was a tax abatement program a while ago. I don't know the precise details extended to homeowners that received some funding for renovations through a program the city ran. And it was available for a while and then it was discontinued because of financial circumstances. And that's maybe not an accurate description. the broadest brushstroke that Mr. Cunningham might be able to correct. But if we do something that involves an abatement and then we get in a circumstance where we can no longer afford to do that, I think it causes great difficulty. And I don't see a massive surge in green building projects just taking advantage of a modest abatement for two or three years. But I think whatever strategy we craft needs to be solid enough financially in terms of staff that we can

Continue it even through a lean time that may be in the future Mr. Cunningham you have any comments on that

Paul Cunninghamif you're talking about FRHC the program is continuing It may or may not be somewhat constrained at the moment but we are working within it to try to keep it a viable program because it has enabled us to renovate houses and in at least 300 instances avoid the McMansionization process, which has kept neighborhoods intact and a certain amount of character in the city. So from that standpoint, I would like to see that program continue.

Matthew RiceYeah,

Paul Cunninghamit's

Matthew Ricevery worthwhile. There was an abatement part of that program that was implemented perhaps more than a decade ago

Paul CunninghamThat disappeared. That disappeared. And so the program has been operating without that for some time.

Matthew RiceBut demand is still relatively high

Paul Cunninghamfor that. But there is still demand for the program as economic conditions change, and that has been a worthwhile program in the housing area to allow us to work with individual homeowners to improve their property, which enables them to stay in the city. and those are residents we know because those are our taxpayers currently and so the assistance they are getting through that program is beneficial and

Matthew Ricepart of the premise of that program was that the tax abatement would be paid for an increased real estate values and there were calculations done to support that all

Paul Cunninghamof those projects are brought through community development and planning and approval so that the tax implication of an improvement to your house is caught by the city on every one of those and the increased assessment that comes out of a completed program means you're capturing additional tax dollars on that particular residence as it moves forward and that has proved to be a profitable program for the city because the city is receiving more in revenue from the houses that have been renovated than it has cost the city to pay for those houses on an annual basis so it's not it's not a sinkhole and a pure gift going out it is a gift that is paying a dividend or a return to the city in the long run it takes each house some time to get back up to where it is

past the point that that subsidy was given. But that program is still alive and well and I think very beneficial to the people who have used it.

Matthew RiceIt would be great to be able in 10 years to look back and say this policy paid for itself and the statistics in research papers that our expert has perhaps reviewed or observations made directly about increased valuations from going through this some it would be nice to be able to point back at that and whatever policy we do adopt you know if we have the ability to track it and and if we do something that you know has a lifespan beyond just the short term that would be good goal. I also think just in summary we should try to stay consistent with our jurisdictions. I think relative kind of commonality amongst the at least the NVRC jurisdictions that are our neighbors that would be an ideal. It's

always strange when you know tax rates and policies are vastly different between jurisdictions for reasons other than you know the geographic ones. So So anyway, I have a little more reading to do myself, but I appreciate the information that you brought to us today and Ms. Kupka's ability to answer questions quickly. That leaves me feeling good about this.

James FeatherOther commissioners? One of your questions was about how we anticipate the policy being integrated into the comp plan. specifically mention of the bonus density. I think you've gotten sufficient feedback there. The policy itself would not be incorporated, as we have many other policies. The comp plan addresses the need for the policy, and that's what you're all about. But if there's any other feedback that comes out of this when we consider other changes to the policy in the future, that would be helpful for us. We set the general direction, but we don't incorporate all the policies of the city Comp plan, but mr. Cunningham

Paul Cunninghamone of the things that would be particularly useful is a feedback loop if you will When things come through the Planning Commission for recommendation and council adopts them such as affordable housing units in large construction The proffer is made and the commitment is made on all parts when it leaves us But then it goes to a couple of years process of building and being realized and actualized And the one thing we have a challenge getting is feedback on is it working? Is the developer, you know, does the city have, again, the staff expertise to collect the ad from the developer? You know, we're talking about adding more and more cost to the city to run down. Are the programs doing what we projected them to do?

You know, it's easy to promise on the front end. and if you're not going to be held accountable for the delivery on the back end what is what's the implication there so the feedback loop would be extremely useful in a project like this as well because we haven't had it on affordable housing when we've asked the question and I don't know if it's the staff or the county or where we're getting the answer from but those kinds of things are our challenge are we doing anything productive thank

James Featheryou I hope what you hope for and maybe more there's a robust discussion I'm appreciative of this was terrific so much commissioners always well thought out I'm proud of y'all so thanks for being part of it

Stefanie Kupkastaffthank you so much for your very in-depth comments the discussion I really do appreciate that we take these comments to heart and we'll be evaluating these and making improvements to our policy moving forward so really appreciate your time and dedication with this

James Featherthank you Thank you. All right. Next item on our work session is a presentation and discussion on the proposed fiscal year 2026-2030 capital improvement program. Mr. Napter, do you have any comments? Will we turn it right over to our esteemed city manager?

Mr. NaptystaffWe can turn it over to our esteemed city manager.

James FeatherAnd Mr. Martinez, our CFO.

Mr. NaptystaffAll up comments.

James FeatherWe've got an all-star cast here. We'll find something for you, Mr.

Laszlo PalkostaffOkay. Good evening, Chair and members of the Planning Commission. I'm the City Manager of Laws of Palco. I'm happy to be doing my first budget presentation for the City of Fairfax to you all. So thank you for that opportunity. Tonight I will go over the timeline of planning for the FY26 through 30 CIP, give you an overview of what the CIP is, kind of the structure, the review process, kind of more of a rehash. I think it's going to be very similar slides to what you saw last year. And then I'll go dive in directly into an overview on a macro level of what our CIP consists of and what the major drivers of cost are. What you'll see is the 2080 rule kind of applies here as well with a certain number of projects

really driving the cost of our capital investments. And these are going to be mainly in the facility realm from a general fund standpoint, but also some transportation projects that are transportation funded as well. And then we'll talk about some new projects that are being added from last year. And then we'll end with some highlight projects in specific policy areas. So this is the timeline of the CIP process. We actually started with a city council retreat on November 9th where we gave an even more macro level overview of the CIP and really focused on debt and our future debt position. And again, tonight this doesn't include the school bond data. We hope to incorporate that within the next couple months now that we know that the referendum has passed.

But we focus a little bit more on debt and larger financial positions related to that. Tonight we really kick off the FY26-30 CIP with this presentation to you all. And you all will have a couple months of deliberations. The actual full CIP is posted on the website now. Paul shared that with you all. Feel free to follow up with any questions you have through the CDMP office, and they can certainly relay that to the specific department with any answers to your questions. This all culminates, of course, on February 4th, where you all will present your CIP recommendations to the council and culminate with me also presenting on February 25th the overall city budget, which also incorporates the CIP as well.

So a refresher on our CIP format, really broken down into four areas. When you look at the first two there, capital projects, infrastructure, repair, and maintenance, these are kind of the major classifications known some places as 3RM or what I like to call RUM. So, repair, replace, renovate, upgrade, and maintain. So if you look at that first one, the capital projects, that's really the upgrading, the renovating, and the replacement of existing capital or adding new capital infrastructure that we don't have right now. And then you can see repair and maintenance. That's the other R and M of that acronym for repairing and maintaining our existing capital infrastructure. We also have the technology infrastructure section, which incorporates both of the maintenance of our existing technology assets,

the upgrading of those existing assets, the replacement of those existing assets, but then also adding additional technology assets to improve service delivery to our residents. is our fleet program which includes the replacement of our existing fleet but also any additional fleet as service levels increase with additional FTEs. This project example page, this is what's submitted to the finance department from all the departments as a way to provide their input and their request to the city. You can see it gives a project description, a justification, breaks down the funding the sources of revenue and then most importantly to you all you can see that yellow arrow. Can you see my cursor or not?

Give me one second. I want to create a little laser pointer here. Okay,

James Feathercan you all see

Laszlo Palkostaffthat? That's a little too small. You can see this yellow arrow here, really the reference back to the comprehensive plan. Is it in alignment with the comprehensive plan and how is it, right? What does the comprehensive plan say about this? And Mr. Navte will have some discussions here, I think, of a few slides at the end of this presentation about that specific process. So how we evaluate projects. First we look at urgency. Why is the project needed now? What are any mandates or requirements for why it's needed now in terms of the quality of the infrastructure or the capital project itself? Project readiness. Is it ready to go right now? Has it been vetted? Has the public been engaged? Is there buy-in for this project?

Project phasing. If there is all these things, a buy-in and the urgency, how are we breaking this project its project management components and is it feasible to fund that. And then planning questions, again, going back to alignment with the comprehensive plan, but also, again, the financial feasibility and then impacts on service levels as well. So the actual planning process, this is kind of what the capital program looks like from inception to closure. You can see it starts with project identification. identifying that need for the capital project, submission of those projects for the initial evaluation from staff, and we're currently under the review process of myself, you all, and then soon the City Council will be briefed on this on December 3rd as well as we review

the CIP and you all make your recommendation. We look at financial feasibility and move that to the final step of City Council approval in May. Assuming the project is approved. Added to the CIP, then you get into the project management phase, developing the project schedule, tracking the budget, tracking the project to completion, all the way out to project completion and financial closing of the project itself. So going to the actual five-year CIP, the numbers here, this is the FY26 through 30 CIP. you can see it's about $415.8 million total. $233 million of that is general fund. That compares to last year, $374 million total and $151 million in the general fund. You can see the table on the right breaks down the funding sources.

And what you'll notice is the general fund revenue sources has increased, while all the other sources have decreased, with the exception, one caveat, stormwater has increased by about $2 million. So this is a $41 million total increase, and that stems almost exclusively from that general fund increase that I discussed. And we'll talk about what's driving that. So the general fund increase is about $80 million, while the other sources have fallen by about $19.2 million. Also of note, this year we're not utilizing ARPA funds. Those funds have been obligated, so that's an additional $20 million reduction. So, again, that $80 million increase offset by a $40 million decrease. So, $80 million increase in the general fund offset by the $40 million decrease in the

other sources still results in that net increase of roughly $40 million compared to last year. And we're going to talk about kind of what's driving that. Okay. If you notice, there's also less projects this year than last year. So, last year the general fund had about 165 projects. This year it's about 151. But the projects that are being proposed this year are much more costly. This is an overarching summary view of the CIP. You can see in the top section it's the general fund portion of the CIP and then the bottom section are the other funding sources of the CIP projects broken down into specific programs. For example, you have the state, federal, commercial and industrial, MVTA, 30% MVTA,

70%. transportation projects. So I'm going to give you kind of a rundown, bear with me here, of a lot of numbers kind of breaking this up specifically. So if one note, we're currently around 62% debt funded as a city for our capital and 38% PAYGO, right? So using existing funding, that's likely going to shift here as we start incurring additional debt for our capital projects, for our facility projects, and for the school bonds as well. Last year, starting with the schools, you can see on top and kind of making our way down, it's about a $600,000 increase. General capital is about a $60 million increase. That is the majority of the increase. We'll talk about what that entails. Recreation is about a $12 million increase.

Transportation 1.3, maintenance 1.7, technology 3.2, and then fleet 3.6. That's for the general fund funded portion of those programs. For the other funded sources, wastewater is down $7 million, stormwater up $2 million, as I mentioned earlier. ARPA, the use of ARPA funds down $20.2 million because, again, that's obligated in FY25. State and federal is down $3 million. CNI, $1.5 million down. NVTA, 30% down $500,000, and NVTA, 70% down $1.5 million when compared to last year. Grants and other funds, private, other, including grants, is up about $2.1 million. So this overarching $415 million, what makes it up? The biggest sources include facilities, both new facilities to replace existing facilities

and maintenance of the existing facilities. That's about a third of the total cost of that $415 million, or about $133 million, a specific number. transportation, both new transportation investment and maintenance of all of our transportation infrastructure, including our roads, sidewalks, signs and signals. That's also an additional close to one-third as well, about $126 million, so 30% exactly. And then utilities is the next largest at 18% or $74.4 million. And when I say utilities, I mean both wastewater, our sewer system, and also our stormwater. So those three programs entail 80% of all of our expenditures. I'm going to give you kind of a deeper breakdown as well of what's driving these specific programs.

So for the general fund section up top, $233.4 million over this five-year period, 50% of that includes the property yard at $63 million, Fire Station 3 at $41 million, and Van Dyke Park at $16 million. So those three projects alone make up 50% of that total amount. So the property yard, as you'll see, is a new project being introduced this year. If you all have visited the property yard, we'll go into more detail about it, but it's one of the oldest buildings that is in desperate need of repair or replacement and renovations. Other major projects include Willard Sherwood, $9 million. dollars has already been a lot of contributions towards that project this would be the final contribution towards that project the police garage is at 8

million dollars we're hoping to receive five million dollars of congressionally directed spending to offset that so that it would not only be a three million dollar expenditure we hope to find out sometime this year or next year about that that application the actual maintenance of our infrastructure our road sidewalk signs signal maintenance about 27 million over five years roughly per year. The high school softball field is $1.75 million. Public safety fleet is $14 million over five years, so just under $3 million per year for that program. And then technology fees and contracts, right, the contracts that we make to our vendors, those payments are about $8 million over five years. So all these projects that I just listed, that's 80% of our expenditures.

That's really driving the expenditures, and those first three, again, Van Dyke Park, Fire Station, Property Yard, are about 50% of those expenditures. I think there may be some opportunity for some public-private partnership opportunities here to help reduce some of these expenditures. That's something I'm going to be discussing with the new council because this is a lot, right? There's a lot of expenditures for our city that we're going to have to figure out how to get financed, and we have to be creative in how we get this thing done. For utilities, again, $74.3 million total. About 40% is, for one project, $30.2 million for the Norman Coal plant upgrade. That's the sewage treatment plant from the county.

We don't really have discretion about what the county essentially determines what that cost is. That's 60% of wastewater spending and 40% of our total utility spending. Stream restoration and TMDL projects to meet our EPA-mandated goals of pollutant reductions for our water. is about $9.4 million over this five-year period, which is about 35% of total stormwater spending. Flood mitigation and drainage is 27% of stormwater spending at about $7.3 million. So these three projects that I just discussed are about 63% of our total utilities expenditures. So these three are really the key drivers of that utility expenditure. And then lastly, transportation, which is the other major category of expenditure here.

million portion, so the new transportation, not the transportation maintenance. But breaking that down, the new transportation projects, you have South Street Extension, which is about 24% of total transportation spending at $23.8 million. The Germantown Road projects, there's a couple of those projects, intersection and safety enhancements, that's about 16% at $15.4 million. There's two trail projects here, Country Club Commons and the George Snyder Trail Extension. That's about 14% combined of spending at $13.7 million. And then the Northfax East-West project is 13 percent at $12.9 million. So these items that I just listed collectively are just over two-thirds of the total transportation spending.

I will remind you that of all these projects in the transportation program, about 97 percent are funded by non-general fund dollars. That's reflected here with the NVTA, the CNI, other grants that we get as well. It's more a reflection of the success of our transportation division in securing a lot for these transportation investments. So new projects to add, there's about $42.6 million more in new projects added to the CIP when compared to last year. You can see the biggest driver of that. Again, you can see the laser pointer. It's going to be that $63.5 million for the property yard. Again, less projects this year. Last year there was about 36 projects on this list. This year there's about 23.

have the property yard listed on here last year and that's the biggest driver of the increase in expenditures again 40% of our employees work at the property yard I'll kind of share more detail about that but that's a critical project next after the property yard would be that police station garage that I mentioned earlier that eight million dollars down here but again we're hopeful to get about five million dollars in offsetting revenue to limit the financial impact to the city with that project. This is a slide just showing the small area plan and what capital projects are planning each. This was shown to you all last year. Not a lot of changes. It's still a majority transportation project, but I will highlight we do have one non-transportation

project here, and that is Fire Station 3 located in our old town. I think that one's a prime also for a public-private partnership because of the existing fire station. in a couple slides here. From major kind of program highlights for specific areas we just talked about, the Fire Station 3, I'm happy to report we did close on the adjacent George Mason property last Friday. That's where the new Fire Station 3 will be located so that will be constructed on that site and then we'll move over our existing fire personnel to that facility and then we'll have to discuss what happens to the existing fire station. development opportunity of city-owned land to help finance Fire Station 3 itself to reduce

the financial impact of that project on the city. But this project, you can see, originally built in 1965. You had some renovations in 1998, but clearly in the older than 60-year-old building, it's time for replacement. It wasn't built to kind of modern-day standards for equipment, so our fire department is really looking for that more modern facility, just like they have with Fire Station 33, to better serve our residents. So Van Dyke Park, this is another old park, 60-plus years old. That's how old the majority of the infrastructure is on that park. That is our main city park. This is a $16 million project to renovate the infrastructure on our flagship park, if you will. There was some planning associated with this.

The goal is, again, to take advantage of the new Willard Sherwood facility for outdoor programming, existing infrastructure, add additional infrastructure, things like trails, parking infrastructure. We know that's a challenge over there as well, and a lot of different components as well that our Parks and Rec Department is planning for this specific project. Then we mentioned this one, the property yard. This is the biggest driver right now of our capital expenditures, and I would argue one of, if not the most important projects. So many of our services are tied to this building. This building is broken down into multiple components. Most of it's 60 plus years old. Some of it's over 70 years old when it used to be a wastewater treatment facility.

So very old infrastructure, prone to flooding. Again, 40% of our workforce operates out of these substandard conditions in these facilities, and this project really needs to get addressed. There's a feasibility study that's being worked on to determine the feasibility of redevelopment on that site, renovation on that site, or potentially finding different locations to add the necessary infrastructure that supports our trash collection, our road maintenance, our utilities management, all of our facility maintenance crews, parks maintenance crews, fleet. That's a very robust project that they have there in the fleet section, but this building is in dire need of, or this facility, this whole area is in dire need of renovations,

significant levels of flooding when there's a significant rain event. If you all are interested in touring it, I think that would be valuable for you to see kind of what condition these facilities are in. Please reach out to us and let us know if you'd like to see it firsthand because this is a major project that's in dire need. And lastly, we talked about our fleet program. Really, public safety is the biggest driver of our fleet expenditures, but from a per unit standpoint, our buses are another driver as well. here we're going to highlight the Q as well six Q buses in FY27 there's about 70% of our fleet budget this is critical for keeping our bus service for our residents so again just want to end again thank you so much for

your time this evening this was again a very macro level please do look at that PDF that was shared by Paul earlier this evening it's on the website now that gives a project by project breakdown of what the CIP entails feel free to send us any specific project questions you have or ask them right now we can certainly discuss that but this again a reminder next couple months you'll have a few work sessions let us know what you need it from staff to make sure you can do the best evaluation you can for the city so thank you again.

James FeatherThank you Mr. Huff did you have anything you wanted to add at this point as to what our path forward is?

Mr. NaptystaffI do have a couple slides to go through but if you had any questions for the city manager we can get to those first and then I can walk you through what our next steps will be.

James FeatherMr. Cunningham.

Paul CunninghamIn looking at your overall funding slide, I think you had about 32 million which was approved for the current year and a little over 80 million for the proposed budget in the coming year. In the general fund area. How much of that do you think is feasible or is it feasible to more than double the of this year and what's the implication going to be for taxes if that happens?

Laszlo PalkostaffYeah, so this analysis has been presented to the council from Davenport. They've looked at this because I mentioned the fact that our current debt to pay-go ratio, this will largely be funded via debt issuances. So it's not necessarily a cash impact in fiscal year 26, more so a long-range debt impact. Right now we have a debt to budget ratio of about 9%. That's a very enviable position for sister-like jurisdiction. I came from a jurisdiction where that was 25% when I started, and I got it down to about 13% before I left because that was very troubling to manage such a large debt load. We have room to grow here in terms of debt, and that's what Davenport has kind of helped us space out in terms of how that debt can be managed and what some potentially some

updated ratios should be. So we have that assessment done for this current CIP in terms of those ratios and those costs and the feasibility of absorbing that. It's going to be challenging. Anytime you have any increased debt position or expenditures, there is going to be a burden on the city to pay for these capital investments. This doesn't, again, even reflect the schools. That bond referendum was just approved by about 70%. We let residents know that that would likely entail a tax rate increase to pay for that project. So that's going to be the likely mechanism for funding those renovations. We're hoping to get a sales tax option from the state so we can put that to the voters as a referendum.

That sales tax alone project would pay for the entire school's referendum would be a significant help to the city

Kevin Dentonposition. So as it's been explained

Laszlo Palkostaffto me from Davenport, the city has gone through some life cycles of significant capital investments where debt has kind of spiked for a bit and then kind of tailed off. That's what we're projecting here with this debt position. But with one caveat, this doesn't include yet the high school and middle school, which is going to be a later 2030s project. That won't include some additional debt, and we're not reflecting here any museum renovations or replacement options as well. facility that's absent from this this current CIP that's another long-term capital liability but we've addressed a lot of our capital liabilities over the last few years and and that's incorporated here but but yes there is

a significant increase in capital spending it's largely going to be debt finance so really you're you're gonna have a long-term debt implications involved with this

Paul Cunninghamso it's it's feasible that you would have the money through debt financing to fund the entire 83 million that's on here and when we get out to 2030 and we've got 13 million in projects is that likely to stay there or is I mean that would be a benefit where you have significant cost savings but is that likely to to change we don't have an even capital improvement program it It looks like we've got a pretty up and down road as we go across this five years.

Laszlo PalkostaffIt is, and that's something we'd like to change. We're currently trying to contract out a full asset management plan to establish life cycles for all of our facility assets so we can kind of smooth that over and better space out how we do these renovations and replacement. And as debt positions drop, don't just spend it on other things. Preserve that debt position. Tuck that away into your capital fund. amount of debt you have to take on in the future so you kind of equalize and maybe adjust for inflation your long-term capital. That's what we hope to get to, but unfortunately right now we're at a peak period. You're coming about 2030. Accurate, I think there's going to be ongoing inflation.

We try to do our best to adjust for that, but what I will say is that the key drivers, like I said, the 20-80 rule, are those facilities like the Property Yard, Fire Station 3, Van Dyke that are in the earlier part of the CIP. So those again unless we defer those to those years, we don't expect unless we decide to throw the museum on here or the high school and middle school, which I don't recommend. I think that can wait until the 2030s. But that could be the potentially other change in terms of facilities. But green acres again would be replaced by Willard Sherwood. That's already been accounted for. Fire Station 33 relatively new, right? Fire Station 3 is being replaced by this. all of our buildings are being largely addressed or have been addressed there's certainly going to

be renovations in the future for the police station and for other buildings as well but we want to establish that life cycle to understand what our annual maintenance expenditures are going to be and then our long term like I said the 3R UM program will be for for all of our buildings

Paul Cunninghamokay everybody on the dais up here with me save myself has lived in a pretty nice world For the period they have been on the Planning Commission and for the foreseeable period life is good If something were to happen and life were to turn out not to be so good as One of us up here on the diocese had to live through when the CIP got down to a million dollars for the entire year for everything Which was recognized as unsustainable in terms of low as Is our debt advisor saying that this is all sustainable and still conservative enough that if tough times were to happen, that it's reasonably adjustable and handleable?

Laszlo PalkostaffYeah, there's kind of three parts to that question. So from their analysis, it is conservative. So based off the 3% growth assumptions, we've been exceeding that over the last few years. So relatively conservative. Two, you want to definitely have a robust fund balance position so that if you get to that point, something like a 2008, you can address it that way. And then three, there are other measures you can take to reduce expenditures like you said in that example to adjust for that moment. But the goal, again, our priority is to build our fund balance level, those cash reserves, for exactly that, right, to deal with a major change in a major recession, national recession, so we don't have to do draconian cuts or tax rate increases to sustain our position.

We can tap into those reserve funds until the economy reboots. But it's something, again, we consistently want to budget conservatively going forward.

Paul CunninghamAll right. Thank you. the pages that we've gotten as of tonight and being better prepared to talk in further detail thank you.

Matthew RiceMr. Rice. Is there any news you could give us about our bond rating and any recent events related to that?

Laszlo PalkostaffYeah we're triple A rated with both S&P and Moody's our CFO JC Martinez and I and the city leadership team including the mayor and others we went up to New York last week and and they were both very confident in our long-term position. The one important note that S&P made was don't forget about your operations as you aggressively start funding your capital. They've seen other jurisdictions kind of reduce operating expenditures, salaries for employees, sacrificing that in exchange for capital. They don't want to see us do that. That was kind of the comment made. But overall, S&P and Moody's are very confident in our position. That's not something I'm used to from my prior jurisdiction, positive support from both of those rating agencies and barely any questions

about our financial position because of our underlying strength

Matthew Riceyeah good well congratulations to you and JC and the former you know CFO and city manager and others that put us in this good position that's certainly reassuring when we're thinking of a debt load into the future knowing that our costs of borrowing are going to be amongst the lowest that they could be

James Feathergood

Matthew Riceanybody else

James Featherthank you looking forward to digging into the details I want to think it stood out a little bit for me this time around when I compare fire station 3 with the property yard we've been talking about fire station 3 it's been on our radar for quite some time number of years that I've I haven't been on as many as mr. Cunningham by far but we've been talking about it for a while the property yard is an interesting one we went from fiscal year 2025 program of a $500,000 feasibility study to 26 talking about many multiples of that is that because the study was done now and the hand has been played or I

Laszlo Palkostaffthink we have to

James Featherhave so much upfront cost apparently and then carrying it I understand long-term cost of rehabilitation of the site really is what we're talking about yeah it's a bit of a surprise to come so quickly when we've been anticipating fire station 3 for several years at the kind of levels of expense we're talking the

Laszlo PalkostaffCFO can add anything if you wish but this is again just kind of the the best estimate based off current analysis done by public works as they work on that feasibility study for to give us a rough order magnitude because we want to we want to provide that data as soon as possible to reduce the you know any shock in the future so we want to start as best we can starting to put this stuff in front of the Planning Commission City Council yeah

James FeatherI take it at face value with the way this has developed the urgency of dealing with this site is really something we need to pay attention to we've heard a bit about its its vulnerabilities and your proximity to the stream this conveys a message I think it's important I mean it's maybe not good news for people but who will end up having to pay for it but I think it's important that it's presented this way and the urgency is very clear so I appreciate your bringing that forward too Mr. Rice

Matthew RiceI think that new FEMA flood maps that we've adopted certainly paint a picture for that particular site that's not great and underscores all the things Mr. Summers would otherwise tell us about how difficult it is. But someone else studied this deeply and has data on that entire section of the city that has flooding issues.

James FeatherAnd for better or worse, we're looking forward to what the schools will have to bring forward to. But we have a sense as to what the amount is perhaps, but over what time horizon will be interesting to see.

Laszlo Palkostaffschool bond itself oh yeah yeah the elementary

James Featherschools in the high school roof

Laszlo Palkostaffyeah the estimate was 220 million dollars but as the CFM I keep saying that was the estimate it doesn't have to be that high it's not in here yet it's not in here yet we'll have to throw that in as well yeah

James Feathergood all right well appreciate the introduction thank you all very much appreciate it Mr. Napty

Mr. NaptystaffThank you, Mr. Chair, members of the Planning Commission. I will be brief. I just wanted to give the Planning Commission a couple of things to think about over the next couple of weeks before we come back and continue the discussion internally on December 9. So just for your reference to remind you what we did in the past, this is the language from the resolution that the Planning Commission provided to City Council last year. I want to call out a couple of the things that were identified by the Planning Commission as being important in terms of its relationship to the comprehensive plan. As the city manager pointed out, every item in the capital improvement program has a link to the comprehensive plan, to the action it relates to.

However, some of those actions are more broad, and so they encompass several types of projects, often smaller projects. But then others are very specific, and those are ones that we will identify to when we come back on the 9th. But really it's up to the Planning Commission what you want to highlight, whether it be the more specific projects or even those that are loosely tied to the comprehensive plan that you feel are more important because they relate to the comprehensive plan or smaller year plans in some other way. So some examples here of projects that the Planning Commission supported last year. You identified relationships to both the comprehensive plan and smaller year plans for several transportation

projects, including the Fern Street Connector, which was new at that time in the Camp Washington smaller plan northfax east west road also new last year and as referenced in the northfax smaller plan and general support for the george snyder trail for parks developments the planning commission expressed support relating specifically to the parks recreation goal of developing high quality park infrastructure for the van dyke park master plan and the tice park redevelopment which are both continue to be in the CIP. And then you notice some newer environmental projects that the, as a reminder, it was only two years ago that the environmental projects started having their own section in the CIP. And so two years ago, you had a lot of recommendations around that. And this

continued with new projects last year, including the climate adaption and resiliency plan and continuing with the LED streetlights conversions. And then also last year, the planning commission specifically wanted to highlight the sprout program which is new last year obviously funded through the grant through outside sources so we didn't need to promote that from the general fund but still something the Planning Commission wanted to convey was important to City Council so this is just an example for things to be thinking about as I said we will identify some specific relationships to the comprehensive plan for you but be thinking about other things as you go through the book that was the link was

sent to you for things you want to bring up for that conversation. And we will continue that into January before you head to your public hearing. The other thing I wanted to mention is the public facilities review. Public facilities reviews are required by state code. However, they're not directly tied to the capital improvement program. This process that the city has identified for public facilities reviews relies on the CIP to identify projects as they are seeking funding to make sure we don't miss anything. with the CIP since we started doing this we've been identifying potential projects that may need a public facilities review based on state criteria. So the state criteria are whether it

be a street or connections to existing streets, park or other public areas, public buildings or public structures and obviously public structures is one of the main drivers that creates projects that we have been reviewing and public utility facilities. So this isn't utilities themselves such as stormwater pipes as facilities such as pump stations or things that support those. And what the Planning Commission is tasked with identifying in terms of the relationship of those projects to the comprehensive plan is the location, particularly as it relates to the future land use map, and the character and the general extent of the proposed facilities, whether they fit within the general character described in the comprehensive plan. So we'll have to keep that in mind.

The process that we have come up with, again, we identify these to the CIP every year. Once we identify which projects we're going to review, then staff will prepare a report related to the future land use map and other comprehensive plan references. We'll also identify other policies that might affect your recommendation on these as appropriate. Then once we have the public hearing for the CIP, the Planning Commission will hold a separate public hearing for each public facilities review. So you can choose to support one project or all projects that go along with it. And those public facilities reviews, again, occur alongside with your public hearing on the CIP. However, I will say this year in reviewing the CIP, we've had a number of these public facilities reviews over the past couple of years.

And there aren't any that really trigger a necessary public facilities review this year. But I wanted to bring this up. So as you look through the book, keep this in mind and be thinking about things that you want to bring up for discussion on December 9th. Because we do ask if there is anything we want to carry through the public facilities review process, we identify it by December 9th. Because that leaves us one more Planning Commission meeting in early January to have a work session on that before having our public hearing at the second meeting in January. And while we're not recommending conducting any public facilities review this year along with the CIP, we did want to point out that the property yard redevelopment that we've

already discussed quite a bit tonight as a new project is one that is not specifically identified in the comprehensive plan. However, as mentioned, it's still in the feasibility study phase, and so we don't know the character or extent or even location in this case because the feasibility study may be looking at other sites. So I don't think the Planning Commission has enough information that you would need to actually conduct this review and so we recommend that we wait until a future review to do that but take a look at that and see if you have any thoughts for that so that's all I had I want to add to the city manager's presentation to get us prepared for our next steps again we'll be continuing our discussion

on December 9th thank you

James Featherokay any questions for mr. Napty at this point since a couple of you may be new to the process? Mr.

Anthony ColemanCunningham.

Paul CunninghamWhen we're looking at something like the property yard and we're bringing it forward in concept as to major redevelopment of the need for the facilities in there, you've got a number of city facilities that operate out of that particular location as you go forward are you talking about redeveloping that single property with all those facilities there will we be given an idea that it may be useful to move the facilities out of that location because of flooding and locate those activities at one two or three additional places so they're not co-located anymore are there efficiencies in keeping them co-located as opposed to how we're moving forward with this is that going to be part of this or are we

just looking at one recommendation for where the property yard might go

Mr. Naptystaffthe feasibility study is looking at all of those options it's not confined just to this site we don't have enough information hasn't far enough along that we know conclusively whether it will involve other sites or not at this point

Paul CunninghamOkay. Thank you.

James FeatherOthers? Okay. Thank you. I hope the presentation can be made available to the Planning Commission. I think it would be helpful to prompt some thoughts and it's a nice synopsis of some of the key issues. So I would appreciate that. That can be set out. Thank you. All right. We will reconvene our regular meeting and move to Mr. Naphti's staff report.

Mr. NaptystaffThank you, Mr. Chair, members of the Planning Commission. Going back to the City Council meeting on November 12th, one of the items on the agenda was discussion of the legislative agenda that the Chair mentioned earlier. There are a number of items in there that might be of interest to the Planning Commission, so please take a look at that if you can. One item of particular interest is to approach the state about maintaining local authority to regulate accessory dwelling units. As the Planning Commission is aware, we are in the process of reviewing the zoning ordinance to make amendments to this section. And as you've heard from the City Council earlier, there are concerns about the state removing the authority of the local jurisdictions to regulate that.

Looking forward to December 3rd, City Council will receive the same presentation you received tonight to the Capital Improvement Program. Then looking forward to December 10th, several items of interest. This, of course, will be the last meeting of the current City Council. They will hold a public hearing on a special use permit for pathway homes at 401 O University Drive. This may also be known to you as the Joshua Coffer Gunnel Building at the corner of University Drive, Sager. It's a proposed reuse of the existing building that is all offices to have ground floor office above that are designated as affordable and have support services operated by pathway homes this only required a special use permit and so it did not

come to Planning Commission for review they will have a public hearing on a special use permit for Tommy's car wash at 9917 Fairfax Boulevard also known as the S but CSO site also only required a special use permit and they will also hold a public hearing on the proposal for Taco Bell at 101 to Fairfax Boulevard recommendation for approval on from the planning commission on September 9th that night they will also have their final consideration for the legislative legislative program including that discussion on accessory dwelling units that's all we have for the staff report tonight

James Featherokay any questions for mr. Napty we're good we'll go on to commission comments miss Briggs anything for the good of the body. Mr. Denton?

Laszlo PalkostaffThe only thing from the DAR most recently there were two

Kevin DentonI guess code issues facade materials and painting and changes to buildings that hadn't gone through the process. Other than that, nothing to report.

James FeatherThe Midas muffler. Mr. Cunningham.

Paul Cunninghamhappy Thanksgiving and safe travels if you're not going to be at home with family and I look forward to seeing people in December thank you

Speaker 2Nothing for the group see any of you at the turkey trot

James FeatherIs there a

Speaker 2turkey trot? There is in the City of Fairfax to benefit the fire station

Matthew RiceMr. Rice I want to thank at least three members of City Staff for members the city staff are attending GIS day mr. feather helped to host Patrick Remsen Maurice Ryu and our very own Amy Lindeni all of whom spoke to the students at Mason then we host a GIS day once a year it's our big event and the representation by city staff was just tremendous they're still talking the hallways about the amazing things the city's doing and mr. Feather has become a regular guest of our department and helped me host those members of staff the mayor attended and Chloe Ritter attended as well from multimodal transportation and all of those folks talked a little bit about what they do for the city as a liaison to PRAB a couple things that perhaps busy with one

concept of a parks foundation this is a separate body from parks and recreation that will be tasked with raising money to support programs accepting donations or bequests and these exist in many jurisdictions and doesn't exist here yet but there's some planning for that and communication with city staff and with the City Council on this particular issue Tice Park is funded and will the renovation of that park will begin very soon that will involve some displacement of parking that's used by the property yard that will be dispersed in some other parts of the city and I think a little bit of difficulty just for a short period of time with vehicles and fleet that formerly took advantage of the parking over there across the street

but we will end up with a very nice new park and that is construction beginning soon so we also talked quite a bit about Van Dyke and also the Willard Sherwood Center and lots of big plans for park facilities and park programs that would either be housed in the new building starting perhaps in about 2028 or new things that would be at the adjacent Van Dyke Park holiday craft show and a couple other things that were minor elements of discussion and prab will have another meeting on December 12th and that will be at the Willard Sherwood excuse me it'll just be at the Sherwood Center on the 12th and that's a joint meeting with the Commission on the Arts thanks this Coleman so

Anthony Colemanthe facade and interior improvement grant got a second round of funding which was nice to see so the applicants that got approval were East Wind ornery Senberry South Block layered coffee in romp and roll there were a bunch of applications and turn on it but it was nice to see some new businesses get the funding grants coming into the city other than that I hope everybody has a wonderful Thanksgiving and maybe turkey trot that's all I've got

James Featherokay from my perspective just a couple things dr. Rice did mention the GIS day at university but preceding that on at the City Council meeting on the 12th November the mayor read a proclamation recognizing the 20th as GIS day in the city of Fairfax and I had a fun part in helping put that together to kind of raise awareness about that it's well represented and as the mayor said we really geeked out when Dr. Rice talked a little bit about what it's about it's kind of a new a new thing for people I attended the green policy a green building policy public meeting that occurred in early November as well as the small area plan zoning meeting on the 14th and the accessory dwelling unit public meeting last week as

well. So it's interesting to see these things come together and we'll be seeing more of those here. I'm also a member of the University Drive at 123. I guess it's not Chambers Road there but ox road task force was assembled as part of the one university development as one of the city's representatives where there's a team put together to talk about some of the other issues that may remain as a result of that development including additional pedestrian safety issues cut through traffic through neighborhoods and so forth so the county is leading that effort their representatives from the university the city i think chloe ritter is part of that team too uh in the state as well so it's interesting to see what the county comes together but i think

it was very useful uh discussion and some things that hadn't previously been put on the table were brought up as well such as sidewalks and things to provide access to the bus stops along University Drive. Anyway, it's been a busy month despite not having our own meetings. Our first meeting in January is traditional for us and required to elect the new chair, vice chair, and representatives to our boards and commissions. I would ask you to thoughtfully consider which of those roles you might want to put your name in the hat for, including chair. I don't own this seat. just be thinking about that as we approach that time with next year and the only thing i would add is i wish you a thanks filled thanksgiving with family i hope and friends and safe travels

and with that we are adjourned Thank you.