City Council Regular Meeting

Good evening. I'd like to call the regular meeting of July 23rd, 2024 to order. I would like to welcome everyone here in the chamber and the people who are watching from home. We have a very full agenda tonight and it is always great to see people who show up to be engaged in our local government. So I would like to ask that if you are able, and so choose, to please rise for a moment of silence followed by the Pledge of Allegiance. 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. So you may notice that we are short one council member. That would be Councilmember Tom Ross.

So I'd like to ask if we have a motion for remote participation. Councilmember Staley. Thank you, Mayor Reed. In accordance with City Council adopted policy and as permitted by Virginia Code section 2.2-3708.2, I move to approve Councilmember Ross's request, properly submitted in writing prior to tonight's meeting, for remote participation, subject to compliance with the requirements outlined in the City Council adopted policy and applicable law in all or portions of the City Council meeting of July 23rd, 2024. Second. A motion has been made and seconded. A roll call vote. Councilmember Greenfield. Aye. Councilmember Lim. Aye. Councilmember Staley. Aye. Councilmember Doyle Feingold. Aye. Councilmember Bates.

Aye. Motion passed unanimously. Okay, Councilmember Ross, your colleagues stepped forward on your behalf. Thank you for joining us tonight from New England. And I'll try to remember that you're there so that when it's time for questions that I make sure I call on you. He's on mute. Okay. I would now like to ask Chief John O'Neill to come forward and talk to us about a recent award that the Fire Department received. I want to make a point as we go forward to talk about the many awards and achievements that our staff make on a regular basis. The level of excellence that our staff engages in every day is part of their job, but even more than that, to be truly outstanding and to deliver the best possible services to our community is so important.

And when Chief O'Neill shared this with myself and the City Council about this, I wanted to make sure that the rest of our community understood what this achievement is all about. Chief O'Neill. Thank you, Mayor. And thank you, City Council, for inviting us to stand up here and talk for a few minutes and recognizing the fine work our department does. I wanted to let you know that every 40 seconds, somewhere in the United States, someone has a heart attack or a stroke. Heart disease and strokes are the number one and number five causes of death in our country. Studies have shown that lives can be saved and patients can recover a shorter amount of time when EMS and hospital providers consistently follow research-based treatment guidelines and protocols.

The American Heart Association's Mission Lifeline Program recognizes EMS systems and hospitals for following research-based and industry-based best medical practices. The gold status that we received is the highest level of recognition provided by American Heart Association. This marks our fifth year of receiving this prestigious award. I cannot speak highly enough of our EMS providers of being some of the best in the business and some of the best in the country. I continue to be just so very proud of our department. And lastly, I would like to thank the mayor and city council, our residents, and the city leadership team for your continued support. We can't do this alone. And your support helps us accomplish our mission.

So thank you. On behalf of a grateful community, thank you. You are out there making sure that if any of us have an emergency, that we will have the best care possible. That is not a small thing. Thank you. Thank you. We are now going to do a proclamation for Disability Pride Month, and I would like to ask anyone and everyone who is interested in joining me down here on the dais as we read that proclamation recognizing people with disabilities in our community. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Pour a minute. Pour a minute. Pour a minute. Pour a minute. Pour a minute. among them as well. I want to share a very quick story that is also funny that is in the spirit of this proclamation. I went to the University of Virginia undergrad and they

have the famous Jefferson wand in front of the rotunda, very beautiful. And for many years it was a big steep plunge down the wand that was not accessible to wheelchairs. And I was very fortunate that during my time there they actually adapted the wand and installed ramps so that I could proceed through the walking of the wand, a very prestigious honor at UVA, and they did a big story on this and they wanted to interview me and see what I thought about this adaptation on the wand. And so they came to me and all these wrapped ears were listening and they said, you know, so what's next, you know, for the university? How can we continue to improve it for people with disabilities? And I'm sure that they were

thinking I was going to think of, you know, grand buildings, academic halls, places of prominence. And I thought about it for a minute and I just said, you know, my life would be a lot more improved if I could get into the frat houses. Would you consider putting ramps into the frat houses? And so, you know, this really represents to me anyway that the main pains in my life, the main challenges in my life are not medical. They're not physical. They're social. They're societal. They're wanting to have a place among the mainstream society. And I believe that mainstreaming saves lives. So if you would continue to think creatively about how to create spaces to mainstream people with disabilities, one last moment of your

time, I'm working with Congressman Jerry Connolly on a bill right now that will be presented to Congress that envisions people with physical disabilities serving active duty in their armed forces, a very big change, historic change. But in roles that they can fulfill, we're talking cyber, we're talking drones, we're talking aircraft. Recruitment is down. It's what the military needs and it's what we need. And so please continue in your careers and the concerned citizens here to think about places that we can be involved in. And once again, from the bottom of my heart, thank you so much. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Shay. I'm Lucy Biednell from the Arc of Northern Virginia. We just wanted to give a huge thank you to the Fairfax City Council and Mayor Reed in particular for this.

We are sharing a little something that we made for you that has the message, Mayor Reed, inclusion matters and Fairfax includes. Thank you very, very much. As Shay so wisely said, that is the number one thing anyone can do, not only to make a difference in the lives of people with disabilities, but in the rest of our community. If we want inclusive teachers and firefighters and social workers and special educators, we need people who grow around, live around, work around and see the talents of people with disabilities before they see anything else. We are very grateful. Thank you for recognizing the disability community. Inclusion matters. Douglas, would you like to join us for a photo? He's probably going to be stood up.

All of people standing up. Would you like to watch your... Come stand next to me, Douglas. Come a second. Come stand next to me. Get down. That's all right. That's all right. Yeah, you can get down. You're going to look over that way. Yeah, I'm going over that way. All right. All right. All right. Look right up here. That would be awesome. I'm going to take a picture in three, two, one. Awesome. And one last picture in three, two, one. Very nice. Thank you guys. Now you're welcome. yeah nice job all right this is another fun proclamation it is for shop local week so all my economic development peeps and my otfba peeps and all the peeps that are involved in the shop local week yes the chamber represented by jennifer rose come on all my people all my people all

my people sharon buttram lucy loves come on down look at y'all all right all right all right everybody come on down come on down get in the picture okay okay i'm going to proclaim now whereas fairfax city centrally located in northern virginia serves as a vibrant cultural and social hub for the region and whereas our community is home to a diverse array of small and locally owned businesses that form the backbone of our local economy and contribute to the unique character and charm of our city and whereas fairfax city offers an exceptional shopping experience within its six square miles where residents and visitors alike can find everything to satisfy their shopping needs and whereas the city of fairfax takes great pride in its entrepreneurial spirit celebrating the

innovative and dedicated business owners who make our city a wonderful place to shop play and gather and whereas supporting local businesses not only strengthens our local economy but also fosters a sense of community enhances local employment opportunities and helps preserve the distinctive identity of fairfax city and whereas fairfax city shop local week is a time to encourage residents and visitors to discover and support the unique offerings of our local businesses to appreciate their contributions and to enjoy the vibrant atmosphere of our city and whereas fairfax city economic development the central fairfax chamber of commerce and the old town fairfax business association remain committed to cultivating the strongest business

community possible here in the city and have developed programming to support the community of retailers and merchants now therefore i katherine s reed mayor of the city of fairfax do hereby proclaim july 25th to july 31st 2024 as fairfax city shop local week and call upon all residents and visitors to join in this celebration by shopping locally supporting our small businesses and recognizing their vital role in making fairfax city a thriving and dynamic community done this 23rd day of july all right team are you saying a few words say a few words say some words about shopping locally locally yeah well you know my name is tara borway and i am programs manager for fairfax city economic development i am so thrilled to be here tonight with all of our amazing retailers who have proudly stood up and taken part of this inaugural program we are again so lucky to be collaborating with the central fairfax chamber of commerce and the old town fairfax business association on this program and

bringing it to our retailers and merchants in the spirit of our other successful programs that you've seen uh come out of the city and i mean just tonight we're talking about a list of businesses that we were able to generate from doing these programs recommendations of places to go things to see people to meet and uh you know the same can be said for our awesome boutiques and fitness and wellness businesses in the city and we are excited to shine a light on these businesses so celebrate them this entire week coming up um where you'll see several themed shopping days starting with community cares thursday so our retailers are generously donating a portion of their proceeds to charities of their choice and you can um visit them to find out more details uh at each individual retailer we have things from um we'll see sidewalk sales happen throughout the weekend including at a

pop-up shop-ups at the funky flea which we know is a community favorite we will also see treat yourself tuesday and wellness wednesday included um and there are there's room for everyone there is a way to celebrate every single one of these retailers i have been so lucky to work with them not only celebrating the opening of their businesses shopping there as well bringing my friends and family and i look forward to seeing you all this week and the recognition that you deserve for making Fairfax City an amazing place to visit shop dine stay play and again just one more thank you to our partners in programming Central Fairfax Chamber of Commerce and the OTF VA thank you thank you and now I'm gonna turn this over to Jennifer Rose because there's something

happening on 430 on Friday and I'm gonna be there so tell us where I'm gonna be well it's no coincidence this is independent retailers week so there's no no small coincidence that shop local week is coinciding but on Friday our women mean business committee is doing a little retail therapy session it's kind of a crawl like think of a pub crawl but we're gonna crawl Friday afternoon from 430 to 630 to many of the fantastic retail businesses in Old Town Fairfax and we'll wrap it up just in time for rock the block thank you all we're gonna squeeze in for a photo come on get in there Chris awesome guys somehow two one and do one more and three two one yes indeed is there a motion to approve the agenda councilmember Staley thank you

may I read I move to approve the agenda as presented the motion has been made and seconded a roll call vote councilmember Ross all right councilmember Greenfield all right councilmember Lim I councilmember Staley I councilmember Doyle Feingold I councilmember Bates I motion passed unanimously we'll go to the initial general public comment I only had two speakers sign up by 5 o'clock p.m. today our first speaker is Mariana Fournier good evening members of the City Council madam mayor I'm Mariana Fournier I live at 10134 Spring Lake Terrace on numerous occasions I have spoken out on the many reasons I'm firmly against the county the country Club Hills connector at this time I speak to you with great urgency I've been watching the crime reports for

Fairfax Boulevard from January 1st to the last day of June yes there is a rising crime rate much of it is your usual crime such as auto theft drunken disorderly conduct and trespassing etc there were 63 reported cases of larceny of greater concern to me is the eight assaults that were reported now on June 10th the patch reported that a CBS employee was punched multiple times by a man concealing items of merchandise this CVS is located at 10090 Fairfax Boulevard right across from where the council wants to put the CCH connector it could have been a much bigger problem for the police if that man ran across a trail into our neighborhood and speaking to a friend about the trail he predicted it would

become the designated getaway so what are we to do let's finally lay this issue to rest we don't need the connector we don't want the connector and an election year it will be a major political liability if this council does not do right by our community so now let's work with our police force to lower the crime rate this will help our beleaguered merchants the city must stand by our business community how long can they stay in business if they keep losing money let's give back a sense of security to citizens who live on or near Fairfax Boulevard we need to feel safe again we can't just shrug this off by saying well there's a crime problem everywhere okay in conclusion I would like to publicly thank a member of your staff in this room who so kindly recognizing that I'm hearing impaired

and I had forgotten to put in my hearing aids offered me a hearing device this young woman exemplifies in my humble opinion the best public service has to offer thank you so much Melissa good night our next speaker is Tom Sebelia good evening mayor Reed and members of council I'm Tom Sebelia I live at one of two three one to come Saline here in Fairfax I'm also the city treasurer and in about two or three weeks we're going to be mailing personal property tax bills and because I and my entire department hate having to assess late fees I'm going to I'm here to beg and implore members of council and any or yeah members of council and a mayor members of the audience both virtual and in person to please sign up for city alerts it's a great service there are a bunch of different options to it you don't have to be alerted every time there's a thunderstorm you can select what you want to be alerted about in fact you can even select what taxes you want to be alerted about

In our office 95% of the calls that we get asking for forgiveness of late fees which by the way I'm unable to do we follow state law are for two reasons I forgot and I didn't get a bill City alerts will prevent you from forgetting we'll send a text and we'll send an email and we'll send several It will keep you from forgetting and it'll also prompt you to call us if you didn't get a bill It will also very importantly prompt everybody to make sure that we've received your payment which is a less common but it happens Our collection rates our delinquency rates on the day of these things work on the day of for real estate have been down from 20 to 20 to 20 to 20 to 20 to 20 to 20. 30% so this stuff works people it really does work 26% on personal property so please sign up for city alerts if you haven't already it really works thank you

Item number 8D, consideration of a resolution establishing the Housing and Healthy Communities Advisory Board. Agenda item number 8E, consideration of a resolution approving the city's participation in the proposed settlement of opioid-related claims against Kroger and its related entities and authorized in directing the execution of any documentation necessary to effectuate the city's participation in the settlements. Agenda item number 8F, introduction of an ordinance amending Chapter 2, parentheses, administration, in parentheses, Article 3, Division 3, Section 2-96 of the Code of the City of Fairfax, Virginia, pertaining to the position of acting city manager. I move to approve the consent and agenda items number 8A through F and the motion accompanying the consent agenda item as printed.

Second. A motion has been made by Council Member Staley and seconded by Council Member Lim. Are there any items Council would like pulled for additional discussion? Seeing none, a roll call vote. Council Member Bates? Aye. Council Member Doyle Feingold? Aye, except for the items related to July 9th. Council Member Staley? Aye. Council Member Lim? Aye. Council Member Greenfield? Aye. Council Member Ross? Aye. Motion passed unanimously with abstention for 8B and 8C. We will go to the public hearing. Our public hearing tonight is a public hearing and council action on adoption of the Fairfax Circle Small Area Plan. I'll recognize Paul Napty for the staff report. Thank you, Mayor Reed and members of council.

The Fairfax Circle Small Area Plan has been in development since April of 2023 with support from City Council, Planning Commission, other boards and commissions, members of the public, commercial property owners, businesses, and other stakeholders. The last time we met with the City Council about this was in April. Around that same time frame, we had meetings with the Planning Commission, other boards and commissions, and a public open house. We've also been continuing to receive comments to our Engage page. So as a result of that, there have been a number of changes that have occurred to the plan since then. We've also prepared our draft report that's been posted since mid-June. So the presentation tonight will be led by Cunningham Quill Architects, our consultant.

It will focus on the changes that have been made since April, but it will also go over the general concept of the plan. So you might hear some repeated elements that you heard before. But we'll be going through everything to make sure anybody who's hearing it tonight for the first time will be up to speed. I did want to point out one thing for tonight. You received a revised motion on a blue sheet. The reason for this is that there were errors on three of the charts in the document. These are relatively minor changes. They were all charts that showed existing conditions, so they did not change the recommendations or the outcome of the plan. One of them does show the near-term uses, but that one only had some rounding errors.

So the reason for the change in the sample motion is to allow these changes to be made post-adoption if it is adopted tonight. While they are minor, they are considered content changes. And so if you have any questions about that, feel free to let me know. But otherwise, I'll turn it over to Lee Quill from Cunningham Quill to give the presentation. Thank you. Good evening, Madam Mayor, Members of Council. It's good to be back before you again this evening on the Fairfax Circle Small Area Plan. We've gone through this drill many times, so I'll go quickly. It's like for those who are new to the area or don't know the location, and this is the location of the Fairfax Circle Small Area Plan and Activity Center,

one of the five activity centers identified in the comprehensive plan. That's the area of our plan. For those who are not sure of the boundaries, if you'll notice in the next plan, this is the red line. It's an area of our boundary that we studied. Next. We're at the end of the process now. It's been about a year and four months moving through with many, many meetings, hearings, etc. So we believe we've had a wonderful experience with the community, and as you see from the next slide, we've had pretty extensive community engagement, both digitally through the websites and sharing mechanisms for the city, as well as our stakeholder interviews, our large community meetings, being town hall meetings, charrettes, community workshops,

our many staff and county meetings that we've held biweekly, and many, many stakeholder meetings, including the public work sessions we've had with you and Planning Commission. Next. We had a very good meeting with Planning Commission on the 8th of July. There are a number of things that came out, which Paul has gone over with you, but consideration of preservation of access to properties around the circle was an issue that came up. I'm sure there are probably a couple of property owners who will be here to speak tonight. We can talk about that more and how this was a conceptual idea of how to approach the circle. It is not the final plan, so it definitely has capacity to further incorporate access in a different way around the edges.

It is implementation of the traffic study to analyze access to future intersection modifications. And the analysis and possibility of increasing the walkways, we had a number of comments that came in about are there ways to increase the width of the shared use path, you know, from 8 to 10 or whatever. And there are a number of ways we can look at this in the future, and I think Paul has probably addressed that in his staff report. Finally, there are a couple elements in the language that asked us to strengthen a few things, such as, you know, can you, say, prioritize instead of encourage the focus and prioritizing infrastructure improvements in the area, and then clarifying this buffer that is between our shared use path and a number of areas,

and then how that works with the main roadway. Those were minor elements that can be definitely picked up and were picked up. As you remember from the goal, when we started this thing, in this effort with the community and with you all, I have to say that I've been doing small area plans for a long time, and I grew up in Fairfax County, and Fairfax was part of my life, both before college and then after, when I came and lived in Reston for a few years. And Fairfax Circle, while it was an identifiable place, when you talk about the small area plan as an identity other than the circle, it did not bubble up immediately about what should Fairfax Circle be, what is the soul of this area telling us.

By working with you all, with Planning Commission, with staff, many of the boards, and particularly with the community, those who live and interact and participate in the shopping and the walking and biking, et cetera, through Fairfax Circles in the area, we were able to come up, we felt, with some very, very strong elements or key goals that started to speak to the identity of this area and the opportunities that could come forward. Number one was with the creek, the Accutane Creek, there's a real opportunity for a sustainable neighborhood, not like North Fax exactly, very different in the sense that the creek, instead of being off to the side of North Fax, the creek is embedded in this area.

So how do we link ourselves to the creek and actually make that one of the defining features? Also, the circle itself. There's a lot of discussion still going on. We have ideas. There needs to be more studies that will happen, actual physical transportation studies, but there is a lot of concern about safety and how traffic gets through this area and pedestrians and bikes, especially on their way to metro and from metro. So how do we bring about a safer condition at the intersection but also not lose the memory of our circle? There was an opportunity for creating actually a village and Main Street Center. The Southwest Quadrant, the developers and owners of that property, have been very interested in trying to reposition that property.

And there were some real opportunities in that area of creating that kind of center where we could have a gathering space, a Main Street, the beginning of a Main Street, a shopping street. Right now when we get together in the city, we greet each other over the trunk of the car or with a shopping cart instead of along a Main Street or a restaurant many times. And we see a real opportunity there, and that came up increasingly in our discussions. And finally, the mobility and access through this area of the multiple pathways of trails, the bikeways, the opportunities of reinforcing those, really making this much more pedestrian area. Right now it has a lot of cars going through it, but we want to turn this into an area

that has much more of a feel of a pedestrian precinct. When you come into the small area plan of Fairfax Circle, you're coming into a pedestrian area, just like downtown, just like Camp Washington. You're going to need to slow down, respect the pedestrians and the bicyclists, and then you can get back on your way on Fairfax Boulevard to Northfax. But those are the opportunities. When we came to the development plan, the key revisions that Paul kind of talked to a little bit was we really reinforced the connections and the clarifications of connecting to the creek. There was a lot of discussion in that. In our graphics, we didn't really represent that as strongly as we were talking about it in our plan

when we met with you back in April, so we have reinforced that to make it very clear in the plan going forward, both in how buildings front it as well as we engage it. Clarifying building footprints and frontages throughout, better activation of the creek, as I talked about, we'll get into that more. Clarification of Spring Street, again, is this opportunity for a retail main street. And then adjusting the kind of service roads and connections. Right now, there's a lot of dead-end streets, a lot of lack of interconnection, dead-ends, cut-off streets. So we've tried to provide a potential network of streets that could fill in over time as well as a network of paths. And finally, just upgrading the graphics so that they clearly represent the plan.

So goal one was a sustainable neighborhood linked to the Akatink Creek. So when you go to this first diagram, and we've showed this to you before, we talked about the one on the left of the impervious area. That pink and light tan, and depending on how your graphic shows up on your screen, that is asphalt. That is not a very green condition. There are some areas where there's some white areas that had a little bit of green. But you can see how much asphalt we had covering this area, which is not untypical of suburban areas that are shopping center focused. We also on the diagram to the right show that this area, more than many of the areas in the city, is highly impacted by potential for flood.

This is an area that catches a lot of the drainage from the rest of the city, higher up in the area of Old Town, as well as from the west. And you can see from the light blue, the area that is the floodplain that is impacting large swaths of the area. So this became a major focus for our plan and how to work with water in the area, as well as coming into the area. So one of the opportunities we saw was to really engage the creek and work with the creek in a number of ways of how to recollect water in this system as it comes into the area during floods, as well as other times. But also, how do we extend this infrastructure back into this area of impervious surfaces to soften and bring back and actually bring forth the idea that there is a creek?

It's kind of like if you've been along a waterfront and there's a row of buildings and there's a waterfront or a river on the other side. But unless you're opening that up for people to see, they don't know it's there. A number of people know it's here, but we want to bring the creek back in and the idea of extending these ideas of sustainable green fingers of low impact development infrastructure that collects and filters water throughout the area. And also then really kind of making some recommendations on improvements to the Gateway Park and a new water collection and gathering spot in the southwestern quadrant is another area that we're approaching to try to capture some of the floodwaters when they come in.

When you go to the next slide, you'll see that we did focus our graphics on how to clearly show how we want to activate the trail system and the Akatink Creek. So we've shown how there's a proposed trail along the north side of this area, but also the building frontages. There'll be some areas that don't have continuous frontage, but we see a real opportunity for not only engaging the new Main Street, which is Spring Street Extended, but also the creek of having outdoor seating areas of engaging the park from eating opportunities to just a new park on the east and a new plaza on the west. Also, the idea of wayfinding lighting systems, improving what kind of plants go in here, non-invasive species, etc.

How do we work with trail-oriented development, and then improving the trail system and the interconnection for cycling are high priorities in this area and an amazing opportunity along this creek. We have a section that shows sort of how an opportunity could develop in the southwestern quadrant of how buildings, when they're facing both the north and the south, can actually interact with the creek, redefine creek, as we've discussed in the plan, and actually having buildings interconnect, not only at the ground plane, but also with balconies, etc. This is a beautiful resource. We ought to take advantage of it, and it becomes a real asset and value added to any development if we treat it correctly along the creek frontage.

The activation along the creek at the ground plane really opens up the opportunities for, as I said, for seating and engagement of sitting along a natural corridor that can have activity of a bike path and walking path, so you're engaging kind of like a boardwalk approach, but also the creek itself. It's a beautiful resource that, right now, a lot of the businesses are just turning their back on, or people don't even know, or are fronted by large parking lots, which you really don't really stroll along. So these are some of our major thoughts in this area, and I'd like to turn it over to Amy right now to talk about some of the more additional features, including our new plaza. Mayor Reed and members of the council.

So as Lee was saying, the Akatine Creek is a great resource, and we really want to be able to celebrate it, and a key way of doing that is through these nodes that we've established throughout the plan, one of those being at Akatine Creek Plaza. Again, as Lee had said, this is in the southwest quadrant of the site. You'll notice since the last time we spoke, there's been a lot more design thought that has gone into this. You'll see on the rendering on the left, we have a pavilion space here. We see gathering coming from the retail spaces where that's really flooding down towards the creek. Again, as Lee has mentioned, balconies with people being able to always be connected to that green space.

You might remember from the last time our Tanner Springs reference. It's a wonderful project done in Portland, Oregon. This is a precedent where, again, in an urban environment, stormwater capture was celebrated and used as a public gathering space. In our office, we've been talking about this as being sort of the civic heart of the study area, so a place for all members of the community to come and gather and, again, use this Akatine Creek resource as a placemaking asset. At the other end of our site, so this, again, is down at the southeast quadrant of the site, we have gateway expansion. So Akatine Creek Plaza being our civic heart, this is what we sort of reference as our green heart. Obviously, we have recognized the wonderful work being done by Nova Parks with Gateway Park as is,

so we really just want this to be an expansion of that wonderful work that is being done. So you'll notice here we have a pavilion space being called out. You know, maybe, you know, the Akatine Creek Plaza one is, you know, a place for public performance, whereas this one here is maybe just a place for bike, as a bike shelter or a place to get shade. You'll also see we have some more eco-friendly parking situations where you have sort of a more permeable condition where, again, you're handling that stormwater issue but, again, creating a great space for residents to go to. Continuing on, breast practices throughout the study area. This goes in line with the green fingers that Lee was talking about as well as at these nodes.

We want to make sure that all of the planters throughout the study area accommodate for the proper soil volume. So, again, as your trees are getting bigger, you want to make sure that the planters are adequately sized. Additionally, too, we want to make sure that we're incorporating native plantings throughout, and, again, pollinator species, but really trying to weave that green into the fabric of the study area. So, even though we've turned our focus to the creek, we haven't turned on the circle. So, goal two, reinventing Fairfax Circle. The main idea here is we really want to keep the integrity of Fairfax Circle, but we really want to make a more safe and efficient sort of means of transportation.

So, you'll see here existing conditions and concerns. We've had a lot of comments come from community members. Just to call out a couple, we have some isolated and unusable green spaces, confusing intersection design overall, multi-stage pedestrian crossings. You'll look at the diagram to the right here and see that, you know, again, that's, we're looking at five crossings to get to one end of the intersection to the other. And if you look at the total time to do so, five out of those six minutes essentially is just waiting. So, we really would like to make sure that this is a more efficient means of travel for pedestrians and cyclists alike. Again, going back to that left diagram, there's no crosswalks on the southern and northern leg,

which again is very isolating. There's many driveways located close to the intersection, which can be dangerous, but also very confusing as well. So, again, our resolution, it's a redesigned Fairfax Circle. You'll see here it's a more traditional intersection, you might recall from our last meeting. But again, we're still keeping the integrity of that circle. You'll see we have some suggestions of, you know, stormwater pools that, again, are reminiscent of that circular shape from before or maybe seating. But again, it's still an improved pedestrian and cycling crossing for, again, easier transit across. The other thought, too, is that, you know, this isn't just limited to the circle. Maybe these circular elements are something that is incorporated throughout the landscape, you know,

through fun, playful seating or through shade elements or through fountains, but a way to really keep the identity of the circle that, you know, everybody knows and loves. So I'm now going to pass it over to Adam to talk about the economics. Thank you. So goal number three is to provide an economically vibrant, mixed-use village to live, work, and play. Anyway, this is not disconnected from the other two goals we just talked about. Providing adequate green space and amazing, you know, destination-worthy green spaces, as well as making a more vibrant Fairfax circle itself is key to this economic mixed-use village network. When we looked back at the existing conditions, you know, one of the keys to resiliency and to economic success is having a mixed-use district.

The amazing thing about Fairfax Circle is it already has an amazing array of multifamily housing. It has industrial uses. It has office uses. And the main goal and identified opportunity we found was to strengthen that, let that retail become strengthened, and let those office uses become strengthened through better streets, better retail, and specifically honing in on Spring Street as one of the key new retail main streets that will be this economic mixed-use hub of the community. So as you can see in these precedent images, we're imagining and proposing a walkable retail corridor anchored by mixed-use residential above that connects directly, you know, runs parallel, but also has moments of connection directly to this amazing trail system along Akatik Creek.

So in a sense, this Spring Street is also part of that trail-oriented development that Lee spoke of. You can see since the last presentation, we've included this rendering. If you look at the image from the right to the left, you have the stormwater capture and more wild storm capture system along Akatik Creek with a trail running alongside of it. Then you have paths and the main hub of Akatik Civic Plaza and Park. And then Spring Street itself starts to connect and stitch this moment throughout the study area as a main retail tree-lined spine that, you know, brings people to this amazing moment. We also added this section, which provides another sort of detail of how this street will work. You have a mixed-use ground floor with retail, adequate seating, balconies, and different ways to engage to that new public space.

And we're also just illustratively showing some of those ideas that Amy was talking about, such as circle chairs and circular elements such as signage, to start to really connect to that identity of Fairfax Circle. We also, since we last presented with you, started to clarify what these building frontages throughout the study area start to look like. As a reminder, we sort of divided this up between active frontages, which is that retail Main Street, something you might imagine you have now in Old Town, where the pedestrian walkability is prioritized and you're imagining people walking from destination to destination. Then we also talk about flexible commercial frontages. And this is areas that still have major arterial roads perhaps running alongside them,

but they also accommodate and balance pedestrian uses as well. And then we've added green frontages. We felt like to really emphasize this trail-oriented development, emphasize the connection to the green space, we needed to articulate where those frontages are going to be and where the best views and connection points could be. We provided sections as well as precedent images of what this sort of experientially might be. Indoor-outdoor spaces at the ground floor, balconies, or different sort of indoor-outdoor experiences if you have residential or office uses above. And then encouraging private development as it's starting to articulate these spaces to really bring in the green and bring in that connection to the trail system

in details that are small and big. We also, as a part of adding to this discussion, we were looking at how transitional retail and adaptive reuse of spaces might work throughout the study area. Early on, we noted that there is a number of gas stations in the study area. Those don't change very often. They're often difficult to adaptively reuse because of items like underground tanks. And we felt like it was really important to provide precedent images as well as different concepts of how these spaces might change. Maybe some of the private ownership may want to retain them as gas stations, but they may also become things like community hubs. They may become retail uses, nurseries, urban agriculture, and more.

And so we provided more details in the report explaining that. We also, because of the strong identity of the study area and at the encouragement of the council, we wanted to reiterate the importance of urban agriculture and urban green spaces in these adaptive reuse spaces, but also throughout the project and provided images and descriptions detailing that. Goal number four, easy access by car, bike, bus, or on foot. In our core here changes, you'll see we started out with an existing condition and concern where you have this main very busy intersection in the center of the study area with very few connecting streets. This limited network makes it highly trafficked. It's difficult for people to walk on foot.

And there's more informal side streets where people are cutting through to kind of make their way across parking lots. As a part of the long-term vision plan, we looked to stitch this together into a grid of streets. This largely looks, in the next slide, this largely looks similar to what you may have seen before, but we've tweaked some of the green connections to the Akatee Creek, clarified connections like at Hume Street, and started to better articulate how that new grid of streets might work, including proposing some sort of potential connection at some point on the northern part of the study area. So we also provided additional guidelines on what these street sections might look like. This is also in some ways similar to what you've seen before,

but giving much more clarity to what the shared use path might be, what the street widths realistically can work, and trying to fine-tune things like the medians on the main roads. We also added a few more details to the urban design elements. These are the general kind of building blocks that make up this plan. We added a map and diagram called street character, and in this, the main change really is showing those trail connections. Once again, we wanted to give as much clarity and detail as possible on how those networks might work. These are sidewalks. These are actual trails, but just the sort of pedestrian-oriented experience of how you could navigate the study area. We also, in the last report,

this actually hasn't changed much, but is more here for a reference. We, you know, focused on having taller building heights around the center of the circle and then tapering as we were adjacent to retail uses. And in large part, this, on the next slide, started to, between the street character, between the building heights, and between all of these different goals, started to really articulate four character areas. So this map is a new one from what you've maybe seen before. We, in red, we've identified the creek and spring street. That's that main hub of buildings that can immediately touch or have a kind of experiential moment around spring street or the Akatik Creek. We largely recognize that Foxcroft colony

will continue to be a vibrant multifamily use that really signifies and gives character to a lot of the study area. That is shown in purple, and we're imagining that as having better connections and with minimal development around it, but better connections to nearby uses. To the north, the scout will continue to be a dominant feature, and we imagine a new mixed-use building bisecting the county line to expand upon that. And finally, you know, we recognize that there is a large number of production and repair uses just to the north of the small area, and we are understanding that this, just north of Fairfax Boulevard, is that face and the gateway to that moment. It may have a mix of uses. It has residential going in now,

but it's going to be that special moment where the production uses sort of meet the rest of the study area. I'm going to turn this over to Lee, and he's going to talk through phasing the plan. Last two slides. So when we got to development, how do we think Fairfax Circle might start to evolve? There's been a lot of discussion about this. We are very excited about the opportunity. Once we've gotten into this and continue to talk with the landowners and the community, we're actually very bullish on this area and very excited about this area and really think there's an opportunity here to create a new neighborhood, a mixed-use neighborhood and center, a center for the city, which is what was intended with the activity center,

but also a new center that can be walkable, vibrant, and connected, and have a natural influence through the creek. In these first 10 years, there will be a lot of studies, a lot of focus on infrastructure. The one thing that's a little bit different on this plan is there are a lot of infrastructure needs that will come toward you, such as what do we do with the circle? Ultimately, we've seen a lot of recommendations. Wendy and staff have had a recommendation. We've gone through this with the community. Generally, not universally, as you'll probably hear even tonight, or you've seen some center letters, not everybody is 100% behind a traditional intersection, but the cost and weight and looking at everything else,

plus the great changes, et cetera, have led to this being a very viable situation to take care of the issues that are out there and to help in connectivity and through traffic, but also making it so pedestrians can get through. Also with the creek and the flooding, we've made a number of recommendations in the plan, which you've been through, which again, we haven't shown everything here tonight, but the idea of how we opened up potentially areas underneath the bridges, which act as dams a little bit right now and force water along Pickett or along Blenheim back into the areas to the west of that. Those all need to be studied further, and Satoshi can talk to more of that and has in the past.

So these will be some studies and some infrastructure focuses that will need to be looked at to help us move the plan forward, but we do believe that there will be areas such as the southwest corner where there have been a number of developers that have been interested and are actively looking at potential redevelopment of that area and working with them and trying to help guide opportunities for Spring Street and along Blenheim and improvements to the creek and the water system along there and the path system, and they're also allowing for these green fingers to start to come into the area from there. Also, they're bringing the idea of a mixed-use infill to some of the area now where we have mixed-use

on a ground plane but not vertically, and that can start to happen and mix in, and then building in some of the new street and walkway network that you see. Also, there will be some improvements in the production and repair areas by the owners that have those properties up there as well as the Lamb Center and the new housing that's going in for the transitional uses. So some pretty exciting opportunities are coming. in the eastern areas and a little bit further north, those will probably be coming in a little bit later. So when we go to the next development window, which is the longer term, then you start to see potential improvements of actually implementing the circle. Recommendations coming in,

extending the fingers and more mixed-use development potentially happening in areas such as around Home Depot. What we're finding, we're not recommending getting rid of Home Depot. It's a great resource for the region. But what we're finding, as a lot of those can move to a little bit more of an urban model where they present a facade to the street that's actually more walkable and still has pickup in the front or on the side, if you go to Lakeland, Colorado, I visited there a number of years ago, they brought in a new target where the parking was underneath and then they raised the store up. And it was right on an urban park system. It was fantastic. It really got me pretty excited because most of our targets

are just on the ground. So there are a lot of models that we can be looking at. And this will be evaluated through discussions with the city, but also as we start to really create an urban neighborhood in this area. So it's not going to happen overnight, but it definitely can be happening in the next 10 to 20 years as we go out there. We'll be looking at infrastructure, how we protect the Foxcroft and the residential areas. And then some probably expansion of the Gateway Park. We have some industrial uses down there and we had great discussions with those users down there. They want to stay and contribute as viable businesses, but they also know that they want to be sensitive to the environment

and be good neighbors. They participated really well, but they're not interested in just being pushed out right away. So we think that's going to become an incremental transition in that particular area. There may be some areas that the park can expand west a little bit. And eventually, you know, we'll see where things go. But we have a plan that can show what can happen in that area in a very long potential window. So as you go through the plan, we've gone into more detail. This is just the abbreviated version, but we do feel that working with you and the community and the boards and planning commission that we have a very, very viable and workable plan that's not, again, we don't like to do plans

that sit up on a shelf that say, oh, you remember that plan back in 24? This needs to be an implementable plan. And each plan we've worked with you guys on in the city here has been that as a model. This is our fourth plan with you, and it has been a true pleasure to work with you and the city. As I mentioned once before, the city is amazing. The city, when we've gone into plans, normally you'll have a fair amount of people that are like, I don't want anything. Just leave it alone. You know, change is a scare. The city is amazing because even if they're concerned, they would come out. Citizens would come out. The business would come out. Even the businesses that were like, you know, don't take my business away,

they would come, they would talk, they would be civil. It was great. I mean, it's like, what a model this city is for talking about where we can go together in the future, together, talking about incremental change, but in a very positive way because we know that change is going to come. And the idea is always to get out ahead of it so you're shaping change rather than letting that change shape you. And this city has embraced that. And we thank you again for our fourth opportunity. We now turn it over to you all for question and answer. Thank you. All right. Are there any questions for the consultants or staff from the dais? Council Member Doyle-Fan Gold. Thank you, Mayor. So I guess looking at the plan

as a whole with the areas of nine stories, seven stories, four stories, what is the overall estimate of additional housing units that would be built if all of this were to come to fruition? Do we have numbers? Yeah. We mostly did our analysis focused on the near term because that's where it was possible to understand. So we're anticipating approximately 950 units within the next 10 years. And that's study area wide. So what about total? You know, so if, so sometimes that happens with plans, right? We say we want this to happen in 10 years but developers here, let's do it right now. So the full plan, the, you know, the blue section with nine stories and the seven stories and everything, what's the total?

So those were in our plans anticipated as any sort of use. It could be office, it could be residential and it's unlikely that it would go the full height that is allowed because many of those lots are smaller or undevelopable probably in the near term without consolidation. So that was also part of our thinking with the near term plan. So we didn't, we didn't do as detailed analysis because, you know, 10 years out, it will be a different sort of scenario for that. Also, you know, other uses, senior housing uses, there's a different model for that for predictive, you know, number of units. And in terms of the, sorry, Mr. Napty, did you? Yeah, I just want to make a quick statement about that. The system we set up

with all of our smaller area plans based on the concern that trying to project housing demand or any kind of demand beyond 10 years gets to be really fuzzy is that each of these smaller plans has projected development capacity of includes housing units, commercial, retail. And each of them has a statement that says when we reach that point, particularly for housing because that's where we're seeing the most demand, that we'll open the plans and revisit them and see if we need to put a pause, see if we need to restructure them and that type of thing. So the 950 that Adam gave you is it's not just what we're anticipating. It's a benchmark for us to use and say, let's see if we're going in the right direction

before we accept any more. Okay. So how does development in other areas, when are we close to that point in other small area plans or the scout, how does that factor in because that's pretty recent? Is that bringing us to the 950 or is this 950 excluding the scout or how does that work? These numbers are only new units. So anything that's existing is not included. In our other activity centers, we're not close to any yet. only in North Facts have we had any development approved since the smaller plan was adopted and that was a project that was just recent so that was only a fraction of how far we are. So we'll see where we are in a couple of years. Okay. Thanks. My other question is about the green spaces

which I think are a great and important part of the plan. We saw recently with Willowood there was a park area that we wanted to see happen but it didn't happen because somebody else owned the land. so looking at this plan I think it would be helpful if we could see who owns what land and how realistic it is and what are the financial costs. So who is on the hook for creating those parks because they cost money and when people come to the table they may not necessarily want to create the park. You know we have businesses. What businesses that exist now will no longer exist with this plan because I think that's important. We have great businesses that are contributing to the community and then I guess also

I'd like to see more fiscal analysis I think and I'd also like to see this presented in combination with the work we have going forward with our flood risk analysis our environmental risk in this area and the city more broadly what are the costs associated with taking the steps we need to take to make sure that this area isn't inundated with floods and what are the costs both privately that we're saying hey we want to see developers assume this cost what are those real costs and what are the costs that the city is going to have to undertake because I think this is a very well this is the first small area plan that I've been a part of but I think that this is a unique area in the city that it's facing

a lot of different issues and so I'd like to see some of that the fiscal analysis and the environmental analysis brought into this I think it's also a transportation analysis would be helpful how many housing units can this area support can the city support you know we're looking at redoing Blenheim because Blenheim turns into a parking lot pretty regularly and how will this impact you know when we we often say we want to see mixed use development but then what developers want to create are housing units because I think those are easier to make money and so we end up shrinking the percentage that we said we wanted to see for commercial increasing the number of residential and that has an impact

to schools police fire and so I guess I'd like to see more of that information also sort of realistically we'd like to see this much commercial but what do we actually think people are going to come forward with because it's always or has been in the recent times different but thanks those are all the questions I have now the only thing I would say about traffic as this always comes up is that do you want the city to benefit itself or do you want to accommodate everybody coming through and part of it is that there's always going to be traffic that's coming through this area that will continue the key is are we going to grab the opportunity within our city to create a better place for our people

and a better economic situation this is an activity center so as we look at it if people there will be more traffic there will be slower traffic coming on route 50 through this area that will be both intentional because we want to slow it down but also because of increased development further west from here that you have no control over whatsoever so the key is how do we shape this area so that you can manage that traffic as it comes through but also create an environment that is livable and walkable et cetera so it's not that you don't look at these things that's not what I'm saying but I would I would say that this comes up in pretty much every small area plan we do because people say well what about

the traffic and I say well traffic if you're an urban area or in an intersuburb like we are here there will be continued traffic growth over the years because they're going to continue building further out as well as here but the key is does that mean that we don't build so that we can make it easier and a little less traffic or do we just make it so that when people come through they may want to take a different route and I talked about this at planning commission it's like we know that 66 is a difficult route but it would be a little bit faster than coming through Fairfax Circle in the future because we're going to slow them down so it's always a balance and I just want to say that we're all working

hard to try to get the commercial in two respects retail as well as office back or stable we worked on the DC downtown plan also the public realm plan and you know trying to get businesses back down there after COVID we've got a real challenge but Fairfax has a unique position in the sense of some of these typologies that we're seeing can have smaller office not the big footprints but smaller footprints where the more would have been home businesses or smaller business can set up or have incubator businesses on the second and third floors of above retail in a lower scale you know as opposed to a WeWork or co-working situation or that could be part of it also but you can capture more of the office

that way so we're looking at a wide range of that and the idea of creating place a destination where people want to come and just hang out and be together which is typical of Fairfax anyway but giving them more that then gives the synergy of these businesses for retail and then you know obviously that reaps the business taxes so we think that can happen here we're not we're not asking for Tyson's Corner you know office buildings and things here we're asking for something that's appropriate and scaled to Fairfax and Fairfax Circle so that's why we're a little more bullish on it yeah I think also there's a there's a middle ground between build and not build anything I think nine stories and seven stories

is closer to Tyson's you know what you're talking about where you live above retail and it's two stories is something different I guess than what I see here so I think I do think there is a middle ground between don't build anything which you know I don't is not what's going to happen right that's not reality but there is some somewhere in the middle that isn't nine stories and can we sustain that level of development is what I'm talking about I just to last comment on nine stories we know there are some developers that have been looking at that or a developer that's been looking at nine stories most of the typologies of building that will come into this will be in the five four five six story

because it will be a concrete podium retail below and woods I just say nine because that's what's in the plan there's been some people looking at it but once you get into that you get into it build a different construction type and typology and cost so I don't think our analysis is showing that that's not going to be the prevalent use or height that's going to come in we wanted to have some flexibility so you don't have just an aircraft carrier but yes there could be a nine or a seven but a majority are probably going to be lower than that just if that helps you give any comfort level just based on typologies that are being built in the region thank you I just wanted to speak a little bit to your thoughts

about green spaces a big crux of the plan that you know Lee talked about this in the near term development goals and long term goals is infrastructure improvements and these improvements such as stormwater improvements along Akatee Creek are to preserve the existing businesses that are there that are at risk of flooding existing residences such as Foxcroft and the goal of this plan is more to leverage the investment that will already likely have to happen to keep what you have now into something that could expand economically some of this you know will be city investment Akatee Creek is not part of many of the local property owners and some of it would have to happen from private development

but plans such as in the near term Akatee Plaza were done with you know talking to private developers talking to what they were envisioning in their spaces and saying hey if you're going to be putting an open space for your retail let's have it connect to what is stormwater and infrastructure improvements that will be happening nearby similarly Fairfax Circle when it is reconfigured you know it's likely to happen at some point in the near future will open up an opportunity for right of way on all four sides to be another kind of green capture performative space that could start to deal with some of the stormwater issues but it could also be a beautification element that then could allow those businesses

nearby such as you know the different parcels that many of them are smaller to start to activate and to link into that to start to become more vibrant and as Lee mentioned not all these are going to be tall buildings some of this some of the building heights are also in reaction to the context Scout is nearby which is a taller building within the study area I believe seven stories zoned right now at least and just across the county line circle towers is 15 stories and you know to the north towards Vienna it's taller than what is even proposed in the small area plan in many places so it's it's not trying to be Tyson's it's trying to be you know contextual to what's to what is is nearby but like Lee

said a lot of these are smaller parcels a lot of construction methods it's unlikely for a number of different reasons that every parcel would be tall many of them may stay you know just a couple of stories and just be adaptively reused or reinvented over time so okay other questions for the dais before we open the public hearing burning questions before we do that oh Tom councilmember Ross councilmember Ross yes thank you I'm still here I'm not on the dais I'm actively been following this and first of all I want to compliment our city staff but also our consultant for the work that's been done here I think again it's a terrific opportunity for us to reimagine parts of our community I think the

mixed use model is incredibly valid here this in many ways is similar to what we I think encountered with Fairfax with Camp Washington and the area plan a very auto dominated region with a lot of lack of interconnections and I think this will go a long way toward addressing what we see as real deficiencies in this area as well as other areas in the city and I also want to really say how pleased I was to see the bringing into focus two environmentally big issues one is the issue of flood and flooding that has occurred in this area has been in some cases pretty bad in other cases we've been able to make some steps to mitigate it but this really focuses a lot on that and also secondarily through the

work of opening up the access to the Akatay Creek I think it's really an excellent example of how you've talked about both businesses residential in that area and also the green fingers that would allow access and opportunities to open up additional areas to the Akatay Creek so I very favorably thought think of this plan and its recommendations there are a couple things I'd like to address one is the issue of the heights I think it's really important that we emphasize we're not talking about this area being inundated with seven nine story buildings as they pointed out there are places where it may be appropriate it doesn't mean every site on this area is going to be developed and redeveloped

it means there's an opportunity here to integrate a more urbanized kind of environment with in an activity center which I think is really right on with this area one question I had was in fact maybe I'll just run through my questions and then maybe the consultants or the staff could address these one is I'm curious about we didn't talk any about coordination with the county this area borders as we know on Fairfax county and I'm curious as to what kind of coordination has taken place or will be taking place with this and how it is whether it's compatible with what we're hearing from our county partners both to the north and certainly to the east because what we are proposing here would dramatically

impact our surrounding jurisdiction and our borders to the east and to the north secondly is the issue of Fairfax circle and I think we're facing a dilemma somewhat of a little bit of a dilemma on this because for many of us and we heard some written comments today which were excellent including a person from my own neighborhood who talked about the historical significance of the circle and the identity that exists I recognize the importance of not recreating a circle because of the cost and the impacts that could create in terms of traffic flow and movement I'm open to hearing the alternatives that have been proposed but I think as you've indicated it's important that we maintain and create

that sense of place that the circle has been through the way it's built and through perhaps some identity in the area that reflects on the fact that this is Fairfax circle I think that's very important in the place making part of this the other question I had was and I think it's important we keep this very much in mind as we proceed forward with places like Gateway Park and the trails and pedestrian access that will be a key part of this implementation is the vision that John Mason our late mayor had for this area his vision for Gateway Park which has never been realized is that it would be a central point for information for where the trails come together and where people can get information

where they can connect with other trail users where they can have an opportunity to get information on connections to other trails in the area and the regional significance of this location so I think it's really important that we maintain that as we move forward with the implementation of this plan and looking at that as an important part of the early vision that John created for this area and then finally I think it's important that we remember that and I'd like Paul to address this a little bit is in each of our area plans once they've been approved I believe we have an interdepartmental implementation team that comes forward and looks at once the plan is approved how do we go about with some

of the short-term and longer-term goals what will that require what will necessitate and I think part of that process is an ongoing dialogue back to council and to the community on once a plan is approved what are the next steps that we take how do we do that and then coming back periodically reporting to the community and to the council on how progress is moving ahead and I think it would be helpful for briefly for Paul or some of the staff to talk about that but those are my questions and thoughts thank you mayor all right mr. napty thank you thank you for the questions council member Ross let's see going back the first question about coordination with the county we had county staff members

participate in our regular check-ins on this project route which is our bi-weekly calls it primarily consisted of staff from their planning departments and transportation departments so that's where the majority of our coordination was they did do some outreach to parks for some of the questions that came up and so that did have some impact on this plan one thing to note that they identified to us is that immediately outside the city boundary here is not any of their special planning districts we have the Vienna metro station area which is close by but not directly adjacent so a lot of their feedback really focused on transportation and really what that was about was their comprehensive plan

intentions for Route 50 and Route 29 as they go east in the city how those might be changing now looking at widening those but they may go back to keeping them as they are and also about their trails and pedestrian plans and making sure that what we show lines up with what they're doing so for example this plan shows the trail going up the west side of Blanton Boulevard as it goes outside of the city and that's where the county plans on doing the same thing to continue to provide more direct access to the metro so that's the kind of coordination that we had throughout we also did some outreach to various districts but that was on a more incremental level let me let me ask one question on that

regional coordination Paul that came to mind as you were talking some years ago there was discussion of the county park authority creating a large park and I think actually it was between regional park authority and maybe Nova on the land directly east of Fairfax circle on the south side where the old water pump or water station is located has there been any further discussion of that or any further thought given to how that property could be used that did not come up as part of this project so I'm familiar with that okay I would just encourage as we go forward that we keep the dialogue open with the county on what will happen with that area okay we'll do the next question was about the Fairfax

circle intersection and one thing I wanted to bring up was the Fairfax circle intersection study that was conducted as a precursor to this plan we had a separate consultant come in this was managed by our transportation division that looked at several different options I think there were nine or ten of them it included looking at a traditional circle as well as a standard intersection also included many options that included establishing a new street grid which was heavily impactful to surrounding property owners but the result was three recommendations for three different options to look at as we develop the smaller plan and as part of that process we willed that down to the option that's shown

in this plan those three options were the traditional intersection that is shown a second option was a version of a traditional intersection that was dependent on additional connecting streets to adjacent properties to allow some of the turning lanes to be removed and that would reduce the footprint of the intersection we found that to be too impactful to private property owners and there was too much uncertainty about how much that could actually relieve the main intersection and then the third was a traditional circle with an underpass and there were too many uncertainties with that in terms of cost in terms of utilities that might be there and that type of thing so the traditional intersection

is where we are is that through our conversations with the transportation director we're still not at a point where we're completely comfortable saying that the traditional four-way intersection is where we're going to go we are recommending that we allocate funds to do a complete traffic analysis of the Fairfax Circle intersection that will help look at not just circulation for vehicles but look at safety for pedestrians that can help confirm whether we move forward with this option or do something else which may be just sticking with the design that's there the traditional intersection while it is slightly better what is there particularly from a pedestrian safety perspective it might not be

that much better and so we really need more information before we can settle on that on gateway park as getting to your last point about implementation as we talk about implementation for that we can certainly include discussions about bringing back the idea that being a trail information center and so we'll just continue to have those conversations and then the last piece about the implementation guide as part of all of our small area plans after they are adopted we go through the plan and we develop a list of implementation items that are the responsibility of the city not of private property owners or other entities we put that in a matrix that's reviewed with our entire comprehensive plan

implementation guide and we review our progress on each of the smaller plans along with the comprehensive plan implementation guide twice a year the planning commission and once a year that's submitted city council we also have standing implementation meetings once a year for each small year plan and once a year for the comprehensive plan as a whole so if this plan is adopted once we have the implementation guide we'll set up a time at some point in the year for every year we'll get together we'll talk about just Fairfax Circle and what the city is doing there so I hope council member does that explain the implementation section yes it does I thought it was very important for our current council

members and our public to understand that this is not a static process once an area plan is approved it means it's set in concrete or whatever we're talking about but that it's a living breathing kind of thing and I would add to it I was encouraged to hear the words you talked about with regard to the circle plan or the intersection I'm comfortable with moving ahead with the recommended wording you have right now understanding that there's going to be a need to be a lot more analysis and thinking on this who knows what we're going to be facing one two three four five ten years down the road and I think it's important that this really be given a lot of serious consideration again understanding

there's both an important need as this is a historic entryway into the city but it's also a very critical intersection for transportation of all kinds there so thank you thank you Paul for that and Quinn and Cunningham and Quill I'm really grateful for the work you've done on this and thank you Mayor for giving me that opportunity to express that thank you okay first our city manager and then councilmember Lim sure just wanted to add some additional stuff that staff would be working on so with EDO with the future housing program manager with the planning staff we're going to take some more tactical analyses in terms of economic data for what can be supported here from a retail perspective so we

have a more clear understanding of that what can be supported from a housing perspective a transportation perspective parking we want to start looking at some of that tactical side this is a great kind of overview now we want to take the next steps to do a little bit more deep dives into those analytical frameworks and then once we understand that a little bit better we want to start doing some B2B marketing so business marketing right for who are some good developers who can come in here and help implement some of the visions that we have as part of this plan kind of marketing to them through the EDO and bringing back prospective people to implement this vision councilmember Lim thank you mayor

I just wanted to ask a question about the Lotte Plaza that the application has been submitted I think second time so their proposal was 10 stories right I think like 300 homes units whatnot but from what I remember the rendering doesn't look anything like this so can you talk about that application how that will work with this small area plan yes it's generally understood that the types of building footprints and those types of things that are shown in these plans are conceptual so that won't look exactly like this there will always be some discrepancies and so when considering things like a building height if we think it's worth it for a certain project to not meet some of the expectations of

this plan or exceed it by a story or two it's really up to the planning commission and the city council and the staff who are reviewing it to determine if it's worth the negotiation process of saying we get so many benefits from this we're willing to accept this and so it might look a little bit different there are some other aspects of that plan that are different from this for example this plan wants to see retail along the south side I know there's some complications with that because it faces an internal property that isn't theirs and so that's something that once this plan is adopted we'll work with our land use staff and try to work with the applicant to see if there's a way we can resolve

that their second submission was in July just recently so I'm just wondering is any of this kind of already been talked about with the applicant so the applicant is aware that we're doing a small area plan and we have some of the wish list and if they're willing to meet our wish list yes from the time that application came in or even before that when they had their pre application phase we knew the smaller plan is adopted it becomes our new policy and that's what our reviewing principles are we let them know that there's some risk that things could change throughout the process and they're aware of that they also have been involved in the process to some extent they have been at some of our meetings

and communicating with us they haven't raised any major concerns yet so hopefully that means that they're willing to work with us to some extent and then for the road extensions Spring and Campbell I guess so can you explain to us as well as the residents that are watching so how does that work we're going through a private property right through shopping center parking lots so can you kind of walk us through it yes one thing that this plan that none of the smaller plans clarify is when there are new streets whether or not they will be developed by the city using public funds or they will be provided by developers the idea here is that we're looking at things like giving private property owners

new opportunities with things like additional height additional uses and those types of things and in return they should be providing something to the city or to the community that might be open space that might be a portion of a street network it could be some other kind of amenity so the expectation in most places is that new streets would be provided by property owners as they redevelop in some cases the city might have to step in and invest to make connections when for example if there is two properties that develop that are where there's a property in between and that can actually just can't be made then the city might have to step in and go through our own process but for the most part

the hope is that most of these items are the issues the business owners are dealing with as far as crime and homeless population basically his words were unless we clean it up don't do anything right so you guys are professionals and you've done designs for different cities around the country so can you kind of talk about address his question yeah so crime is a big issue it's not just design it's all sorts of social workers policing but in the realm of design one of the big core principles is having eyes on the street it's having view corridors such as streets where people feel like there's lighting it feels good to walk down and a cornerstone of this plan and you saw it in the sections and the

renderings is balconies big windows lighted streets also instead of it being a drive aisle it being a formal street where people feel like it's being people are using it right you know it's the dark corners in a study area or in a neighborhood where people feel sometimes unsafe so that was a driving design decision for this entire plan was to create this design aesthetic as well as opportunities in the architecture itself as well as in the streetscape to start to give a sense of safety to the study area all right thank you thank you mayor other questions before we open the public hearing councilmember greenfield thank you mayor I'll be quick I want to go back to the street piece and perhaps even broader

than that I concur we need a lot more financial analysis here Mr. Napdee we've got a number of businesses in the Fairfax Circle area that contribute several pennies on the tax rate and so if we're going to put them out of business or tell them they need to redevelop their property and put something else there like a nine story building that's proposed here on one of those lots I think this body needs to understand the analysis of what that's going to be because some of those are so significant that apartments would never begin to make up the revenue that we would lose secondly are the streets that you're envisioning whether built by the city well the city would be different but built by a developer

as part of a process is that going to be built to VDOT standards or that would be a private street it depends on the street if a private property owner builds it and does not dedicate it to the city only provides public access easements it does not have to be developed to VDOT standards it does not have to be developed to VDOT standards if it remains under private ownership but what does the city want in many cases we prefer not to have it developed to VDOT standards particularly because sometimes those standards conflict with the type of pedestrian environment that we're looking for and so we've seen that in some existing developments around the city such as the Moxley that couldn't dedicate

streets because of some of the issues they had with the design there but some of the actual street sections that are shown in this plan could not be accepted by VDOT as a public road okay thank you and then the flood resiliency plan have you been coordinating with public works Mr. Napty on the portion south of Fairfax Boulevard that are either in the RPA or in the flood plain and what we're going to do to take those properties out of the flood plain and then if we are doing that are we taking literally taking those properties from property owners or how is all of that going to work that plan is not underway yet but Mr. Ito was heavily involved with this project so he's very familiar with what

the plan is proposing once that plan does get underway and we see what the impacts are to surrounding properties it could be that it reduces the flood plan in some cases in which case we could that some properties have to be purchased by the city we don't know where that's going yet but as that proceeds we will participate in that and we are willing to open up this plan again when that's done and see what needs to change okay and last question multifamily cyclical so there's a period of time where you can get financing to do apartments and there's a period of time where you can't accommodate those shifts in the market because what we're seeing in different parts of the city is what the plan envisions

in 20 years developers are trying to do in two and so I'm concerned here that we have the ability for this to adapt it's a plan it's not set in stone it's no different than the comp plan right it's advisory some ideas some concepts it's not saying that's what we're telling you that has to happen but I think that that messaging has got to be very important out there in the community especially with this plan that I appreciate some property owners have participated but there are some that have not or went and just kind of shook their head so I'm curious your thoughts thank you okay so the first part of your question was about the difference between multifamily rentals and multifamily ownership

and how that can be accommodated in the plan is that correct yeah right when the market shifts right I mean there again there are times that we see developers come forward where they want to do multifamily rental but then they can't get financing for that so then you see a different segment of the development community shift and talk about doing condos and we've had that happen here in the city of Fairfax so how does this plan envision and how will it accommodate the shifts in the market okay I'll start off and see if you have anything to add but essentially as you said the plan is built and multifamily owner could be the same thing a lot of times they have different priorities in how they design

so the buildings end up looking different and so these plans are all built to be flexible enough to accommodate either condos can be a little more difficult when it comes to being mixed use and that type of thing so one of the goals of our plans is not to require ground floor commercial everywhere really focus on certain areas so ideally this would be able to adapt to that and in support of that the recently completed housing assessment suggests that we've had really more multifamily rental development than our long-term demand is moving toward that quicker than it is for multifamily homeownership and so on a number of levels we would like to see more homeownership development happen so we want to

make sure that these plans can accommodate that and it's really going to be through some implementation steps about how we go about marketing that and I'll see if you guys want anything Paul addressed predominantly everything I would say except that what we would not like to see and the city should take a hard look at is single use buildings throughout the mixed use concept for this area is critical and if that is not followed as mixed use you will have some issues because then it single use and one aspect goes down like downtown Washington is predominantly office with a little bit of retail and it's suffering right now and now we're talking about trying to convert office buildings which there are

only a few that can really be converted into residential so whether it's home ownership or retail Paul has addressed it is a little bit more difficult to do retail in home ownership condos but not impossible there are other ways you can activate your ground floor too so if you think about as a ground floor activation and enough retail and what the use above can vary if all of a sudden the world turned upside down which it seems to be doing every week anyway but not in uses and land uses if we all of a sudden had the office market come back and that was predominant this plan could accommodate and would embrace the idea of a lot more office above retail in this particular area but we have to as Paul

said be flexible the key is activating your ground floor so you don't have uses that are dead blank spaces or things that are not contributing back to the street or providing that street life or the opportunity throughout the whole area especially on Spring Street we've activated and said that's an area that should be focused on trying to bring retail and activity on the ground floor other places are a little bit less but there's a lot of flexibility just keep a watch on the balance and I know that Paul and Brooke and staff will be doing that and advising you on that as you go forward I was going to go get the big fishnet can I just make one comment too on your earlier question about fiscal impact

so there's kind of two lenses to look at this don't didn't you jump up and grab it council member Ross you might want to mute got it okay we can do that too so there's land use considerations that have more to do kind of with place making right and that's kind of where planning and zoning largely live and then there's economic development and fiscal impact and that's where kind of we're working together as partnership in terms of cross departmental analysis for transportation for land use but what I can assure you is when we talk about these things from an economic development perspective the economic development department city manager's office other departments and even coordinating with planning and zoning

and commissioner revenue treasurer we want to make sure that we're maximizing the economic benefits of every development and that's why we want to do more of the engagement going forward with developers to ensure that whatever's coming back actually is a profit for the city and not a negative fiscal impact but that's not necessarily a consideration of land use but that is an economic development perspective that we want to make sure that we're emphasizing as staff and I appreciate that I think while it's not land use it is part of what should be in the plan right this is a plan we're going out and saying this is what we're envisioning I can guarantee you there are people watching tonight that are going to

their takeaway is going to be the city just said we can do 10 stories down at Fairfax Circle that's what's going to happen because that's what happened at Northfax that's we had a building where we well some on this dais approved a building on Eaton that called for a linear park the linear park is on another piece of property that they don't own so the linear park isn't going to happen where the apartment building was built right and by the way that plan for that area said six to eight stories but you could get up to eight stories if you knocked it out of the ballpark and you did all these things that's not what we did the proposal for a building down at Fairfax Boulevard and 123 same thing everybody is looking

and saying here's what they said the maximum is eight that's what we're going for and that's a mistake because then we lose I still believe size and scale matters we can have redevelopment but we can still maintain our sense of place without saying well we have a 15 story building just outside the city so therefore we can do nine at Fairfax Circle I don't agree with that and I was going to save I'll save the rest of my comments until we get to the public hearing I do appreciate where you're headed and I do think that's the right direction it's just which comes first we get this done or we get a plan done and then we go do more detail yeah so I guess three things to say again we're not you all are going

to ultimately have to decide kind of what your preferences are in terms of the plan itself and heights and all those things this is kind of more of a recommendation for land use considerations this is supposed to be kind of a guide this doesn't necessarily translate into reality because these aren't one consolidated parcel with one developer that's an actual master plan right it's separate parcels so this is kind of more of a guide for developers for what to follow and thirdly this is a mixed use plan that talks about retail but one of the limitations we have right now is we don't have the data when a developer comes in and says hey I'm only building this amount of retail because I can't build more

we don't have the data to call them out on that and say no actually the capacity is X you can do more that's what we want to get to as a city to arm you all with that information when we have these future land use considerations I concur okay so before we go to the public hearing the observation I will make about the small area plans they've been very helpful to the city I think it has provided developers some guidance to understand what the city is looking for it is not something that is literally engraved in stone but for scale and experience I think if we look at Fairfax Corner and we look at the mosaic and we look at what was done in both of those places over a number of years starting with

development and setting aside spaces for future development and the fact that the marketplace tends to dictate what is going to go there because people build things to make money so we can project and we can theorize about what will go in these spaces but the fact of the matter is we have watched the mosaic develop and Fairfax Corner develop and these are projects if I'm reading this correctly about a similar size to what we're talking about in Fairfax Circle and so as projects are built that meet the requirements of the small area plan it is going to impact and affect what a developer brings next and over a long period of time the marketplace tends to dictate what is going to make money for the person

who brings the project but it needs to be in line with what we're saying the city wants to see and so I think this is a very good robust discussion I think a lot of work has gone into this plan and I think we would like to be able to say that we can read the future ten years down the line but we can't and so I'm now going to well I'm going to ask I will open the public hearing Ms. Shinneberry has this public hearing been advertised yes it has no one has signed up prior to the start of the meeting to speak if there's anybody in the room that would like to speak tonight on this item please come forward okay well well all right I will now close the public hearing is there a motion council members

Daley thank you mayor Reed I move that the city council adopt the attached resolution approving and adopting the Fairfax Circle small area plan in the draft dated July 11th 2024 together with any changes made to the report and planned through the meeting this evening second a motion has been made by council member Staley and seconded by council member Lim is there any discussion on the motion seeing none a roll call vote council member Ross aye council member Greenfield no council member Lim aye council member Staley aye council member Doyle Feingold no council member Bates aye motion passed 4-2 second public comment do we have anybody for our second general public comment I had nobody sign up

prior to the meeting if anybody would like to come forward may do so all right we go to items not requiring a public hearing we have only one item is the consideration of a resolution approving an agreement of purchase of sale for the purchase by the city of certain real property together with improvements thereon owned by GMUF Commerce Buildings LLC located at 4085-4087 University Drive in Parenz identified as tax map parcel numbers 57-4-02-40-085 A,B,C, and D and authorizing the consummation of the transaction contemplated therein I will recognize Brian Lubcomen city attorney to provide the staff report thank you mayor and council a very brief staff report we didn't put this item on consent

since it is a large transaction and also a very important one for the city as you all are aware the city has determined that the existing fire station number three needs to be replaced city staff in consultation with professionals outside the city analyzed a number of properties and determined that this particular property which is located immediately south of the existing fire station the current location of the GMU Commerce Center was the ideal location the city issued a letter of intent to the foundation we went back and forth just a little bit but they were very cooperative and they signed a letter of intent we've now drafted an agreement of purchase and sale it's been approved preliminarily

by the foundation and their council however the sequence that they require is for the city to approve and then they will consider approving it within the next week to 10 days the staff report details the material terms the purchase price would be 5.77 million there'd be a short 90 day feasibility period the city would conduct a phase one environmental study as well as get a survey done of the property closing would occur approximately 30 days after and the city would then lease the property back to George Mason University it'll take a little bit of time for the university to vacate and move the programming back to campus or to other locations and as noted in the staff report and the CFO can detail

if you need any more information sufficient funds for the acquisition of this property have already been approved through the budget process and appropriated through the fire station 3 CIP account we don't anticipate any other city council action with respect to this transaction however the planning construction of replacement fire station will of course require a bunch of discussion consultation and opportunities for council and others to weigh in so with that we're happy to answer any questions but we would commend this to you for your consideration and approval thank you are there any questions for staff on this all right I seeing none is there a motion council members Staley thank you mayor

Reed I move the city council adopt the presented resolution as attached to the staff report and considered at this meeting approving an agreement of purchase and sale for the purchase by the city of certain real property together with improvements thereon located at 4085-4087 University Drive parentheses identified as tax map numbers 57-4-02-40-085 A, B, and C and 57-4-02-40-087 A, B, C, and D end parentheses and authorizing and directing the execution of the agreement of purchase and sale by the consummation of the transactions completed thereby second a motion has been made by council member Staley and seconded by council member Lim is there any discussion on the motion council member Staley

thank you Mary just a quick commending to everyone in this process creating parity on our two fire stations has been an effort of not only this council but previous councils and this transaction night paves the way for it it is an awesome group that we have we honor them earlier today and the fact that we've got a location now energizes me that we'll quickly get parity for both 3 and 33 so very excited thank you mayor any other comments seeing none a roll call vote council member Bates aye council member Doyle Feingold aye council member Staley aye council member Lim aye council member Greenfield aye council member Ross aye motion passed unanimously all righty then I will now recess the regular meeting

to go into a work session and we will stay in this room for the work session our first item is a discussion on the development of the city's green building policy staff presentation presented by Stephanie Kupka the environmental sustainability coordinator together Good evening Mayor City Council members it's a pleasure to be here with you tonight The purpose of tonight's work session is to discuss the development of a green building policy I'm here tonight with Vicki Kieschel who's with the Cadmus group we've hired the Cadmus group to help support the development of the green building policy I'm also joined here with David Summers and other staff members who have been part of our internal stakeholder team that we've been working with

since we've started working on this project For tonight's presentation we will be covering background information regarding the benefits of green buildings green building policies and provide examples of policies and within the region I will provide a project overview highlighting the work we've completed so far we will review green building policy concepts for both the public sector and private sector and then we'll wrap up with a discussion to get your input and guidance on the policy and then finally discuss next steps The development of the green building policy began in July 2023 and with the goals for adoption at the end of this calendar year The policy will establish green building standards for both public and private sectors

The public sector policy will include new construction and major renovations and also existing buildings For the private sector the policy will include new construction and major renovations Some of the key drivers for developing green policy is to help us reach our commitments A few of our commitments that this will help reach is reducing our greenhouse gas emissions 80% by 2050 from 2005 baseline levels and also achieving 100% renewable electricity for city government operations by 2035 and community-wide by 2050 I'll now hand it off to Vicki Thanks Stephanie and thank you Mayor Reed and council members it's wonderful to be here I will go lightly over what is green building because I sense from the small area plan discussion

which was fascinating that you already have a pretty good grounding in that but just to summarize of there there are many definitions of green building but certainly the reduction in impact of the built environment is a central one and that will help align with your plans for ghg emissions reductions We know that there have been many studies including one by the american institute of architects 2030 commitment uh... that shows that uh... 42% of our greenhouse gas emissions are due to buildings and infrastructure and that's certainly true here in northern virginia and the region in general So um... you know all of this uh... planned um effort uh... in the green building policy that we're presenting tonight should should help you meet this goal

Stephanie do you want to go ahead with the next slide thank you um You see here the triple bottom line which was is now a 30 year old concept at least in response to uh... the bottom line the idea that it's not just about economic benefits but also environmental benefits and social and health benefits uh... certainly um and i i won't read these but um certainly in our region um we have a number of jurisdictions that have green building incentive policies uh... here in northern virginia of course among them are arlington arlington county and also the city of alexandria um uh... but certainly uh jurisdictions across the potomac river montgomery county um does district of columbia so this is a competitive advantage situation as well and we're hoping that uh that also will distinguish the city of fairfax uh perhaps

within uh its spot in fairfax county um just one other thing to point out here um when we're talking about social health uh we've all been through the last the heat of the last uh two weeks i mean there's an important message there i think in terms of what we see in uh uh effects on human health uh of the built environment in heat um so pointing that out um forward please stephanie um priorities uh certainly to improve building performance that's the gift that keeps on giving this is in the private sector uh really focused on new construction but we do have a performance aspect to this which you'll see later um and you know that will add certainly value in many ways economic social and environmental to buildings um it will help you meet your

local vulnerability uh in terms of reducing those um with stormwater management um and certainly and um resilience and waste reduction etc as you see here and then of course encourage investments in energy efficiency and clean energy technologies onward green building rating systems there are many from which to choose you all are probably most familiar if you've lived here in the dc region for a while with lead um which is the predominant one here but you see this other list green globes which evolved around the same time that lead began uh varinian earthcraft um which is a multi-family and also like construction living building challenge a very stringent system uh enterprise green communities focusing on affordable housing

and then well which has to do uh primarily with certainly health energy star also very prominent in our region which is a performance-based standard around energy use and passive house another stringent rating system and these are standards these are the standards from which we drew for uh for um this green building policy um next please thank you stephanie uh just a quick overview of green building policies uh in the region fairfax county certainly um arlington county with its green building incentive policy and and alexandria um note that uh city of alexandria requires projects uh that uh have to go through a special use permit to participate in their green building policy and that as you'll see is similar

to what we're talking about here for the city of fairfax next please so uh timeline if you could advance one more here we are july 2024 um and this is the proposed this is where we've been where we're going um hoping to have policy adoption by the end of the year um with with public comment um there's been um we've convened stakeholders um had stakeholder feedback um and then you'll see some of the fruits of that in the slides to come so next please stephanie um from earlier research uh the literature review um um certainly um you know i i again i will not read uh this in the interest of time but uh certainly the the relevant communities to the city of fairfax um private sector policies incentivize they make use of

incentives particularly as you probably know better than most people in the region virginia is a dylan rule state it's not a home rule state so incentives really are the way to go for the private sector we also found in our lit review certainly that building density added density which is sometimes catnip to developers um is a common incentive uh easier permitting processes or more of rapid permitting processes tax incentives also tax abatements um and then the relevant policies and i i want to draw your attention to house bill virginia house bill uh 2001 that was passed under previous governor northam um in 2021 and it is now um in as of 2023 all jurisdictions in virginia are subject to uh public

building compliance with the bill which we'll see in a minute and the act allows uh local governments to exceed the requirements set forth um let's go on please uh here's a bit of the process of stakeholder input uh the internal stakeholder team and the external advisory committee uh and you see the multi-disciplinary nature of both um and that's a good thing of course um and then what uh happened in the the working meetings in the internal stakeholder team uh to identify barriers and and bring in uh policy alignment with other city initiatives and equity considerations etc and then with the external advisory uh committee um we met with them last on friday the very interesting conversation there many

endorsements and also questions i think about you know how this would would play out uh let's go on to the next if you would stephanie thank you so much the key takeaways here should be flexible enough so it wouldn't disincentivize but it would meet or help to meet greenhouse gas emissions goals and sustainability goals i mentioned the dylan rule earlier and incentives and their place uh in this uh note that incentives if you're a tenant paying uh your um uh owner they as because they pay a portion of the property's taxes that the the tax incentives could have an added benefit there um um a lot of mobilization around the idea of tax incentives as a as a a simple and powerful tool uh and we'll see what that means uh in a few slides um and then the standard operating procedures uh this is important because this is what needs to be implemented uh by um the staff uh within the city of fairfax

uh so that there's understanding and smooth and efficient operations uh the idea of having one cross-cutting multi-disciplinary staff member overseeing the entire uh policy and being able to kind of direct questions to other staff as needed uh became uh quite a prominent point of discussion and one that i think is is uh is uh nicely uh clear uh next please stephanie um and let's go on to the ideas themselves we'll we'll see first the public sector plan and then we'll look at the private sector plan um so the policy in the public sector these uh three sub bullets that you see here i just spoke about hb 2001 this actually comes from the language of that bill that requires virginia jurisdictions uh to have their green building policies apply to existing buildings that are

1 000 square feet or greater public new construction that's 5 000 square feet or greater and major renovations renovations um now we're defining major renovations as doing two of the following three actions and you'll see that it's either renovations to 50 or more of a gross floor area of a development or replacement of 50 of the major building systems or replacement of at least 50 of the envelope of the building the container of the building the walls roof floors etc so two of those three would qualify as a major renovation um shall we go on next next slide please existing uh public sector policy that that we propose for existing buildings these are again buildings on greater than 1 000 square feet so uh the aspects of the policy we're proposing would be to

implement energy benchmarking and conduct energy assessments to have a look at how the building is using energy information being key to action and then uh identifying a plan to upgrade the existing building to achieve lead building operations and maintenance or o m silver certification lead has four levels of certification there's basic level silver gold and platinum so silver is you know not nothing as it were it's 50 points out of a possible 110 and then also for existing buildings to track and publicly disclose their energy use on an annual basis beginning next year um so that's the existing buildings part of public sector policy uh for new construction in the public sector uh we would uh propose that buildings again use lead um that they achieve in for new construction lead gold

and the difference between silver and gold is really in new construction you can basically build in more easily these these aspects of green building for new construction to have sufficient zero emission vehicle charging and fueling infrastructure this is a requirement of hb 2001 as well and then as you see include these features that measure energy consumption and carbon and then uh resilience and distributed energy features these are all part of this bill so um um that for new construction in the public sector to meet zero emission standards electrification ready standards demonstrate a 50 reduction in modeled energy use um that's not actual energy use that is where you model it in design and then we would ask uh that uh buildings earn the four lead credits one is a rainwater management credit this will address

some of the local vulnerabilities of flooding um sustainable sites credits for site development protect or restore habitat and open space that demands that sites actually um achieve 30 coverage uh with natural areas native landscaping tree canopy um and then outdoor water use reduction minimizing potable water use for irrigation which is actually the primary way that buildings use and waste water and then site uh another sustainable sites credit is light pollution reduction uh which in our area is actually quite a problem uh this is you know a migratory bird route and um there are lots of habitat issues with light pollution as well as it's just not wonderful to live around light pollution if you're a human being let alone another species

so for major interior renovations we'd ask that uh uh public sector buildings achieve lead interior design and construction gold again because those major renovations can more easily do that um than if it's just an existing space onward please stephanie uh let's look at now the private sector green building concepts that are proposed aligning with uh the public sector uh we are proposing that the policy would apply to private developments that are 5000 square feet or greater same idea for major renovations as in the public sector and that moreover this policy would apply to projects that are subject to special exception or variance rezoning or special use review processes so not by right developments those have a pass but if

they're going for any of these special exceptions they would be subject to this and that is likely to be the majority of new construction in the the city so even if you're by right um you could elect to participate voluntarily and we'll see in a minute what those the tax abatement incentive would hopefully entice you um uh into thinking that you should do so next please um so for um the the the private sector buildings that then must do this because they're going through the special exception process we would ask them to achieve silver level not gold silver level certification or it's equivalent in these other rating systems so we expand the bookshelf of rating systems here people can go for lead and indeed we'd anticipate based on what we're seeing in the region that most

developers would choose to do lead they could do green globes two globes is equivalent to silver they could do veriniate earthcraft which is that rating system that has a track for multi-family and also for like commercial or they could do enterprise green communities that's an affordable housing one and then they would also incorporate measures designed to address local vulnerabilities that we talk i just talked about in the public sector they would not have to achieve lead to do this it would be that they would provide documentation showing that they had done what the requirement in lead asked them to do and then for major interior renovations we'd ask for new construction that must you know

go through this because they're in special exception land that they would do id plus c gold onward the tax abatement program so this is where private sector developments might think well you know i've got to do this i'm under a special exception or maybe they're a buy right development and they're thinking tax abatement sounds good uh if they would do um lead um some additional measures uh in any of these rating systems beyond silver level certification either gold or platinum um they would achieve or be eligible for a reduced tax rate um so um the qualification again is that the the the they must be commercial that includes commercial multi-family um uh multi-family being uh uh classified as a commercial building type uh and then it this the building

should be either new construction or a major renovation uh and that the gross floor area of the building should be a thousand square feet or greater for this onward please stephanie so this is um the finer print here but the incentive pathway um that would be offered with the achievement of a gold level or its equivalent in whatever rating system you're working in would be a 50 tax abatement for one year it would be based on the property's assessed value in the first year after certification so um you're also seeing that there would be an energy use reduction requirement for modeled energy use a 30 percent reduction this is modeled predicted energy use not actual energy use we'll see this in

incentive pathway too in a minute um that we're also going to try to incentivize that uh and then also part of this incentive pathway for the 50 tax abatement would be to reduce the site's impervious surface by 10 to 20 percent and i i found the mapping in the small area plan of the parking lots very interesting in this regard uh incorporating biophilia biophilic design uh bird friendly materials and strategies etc so those would be the additional requirements do all of that and um the proposal here is to achieve a 50 tax abatement for one year now in addition if you are new construction and you go through the ins this incentive pathway number one you would be eligible for essentially what is a

performance pathway which is incentive pathway two you could achieve the same tax abatement for an additional two years if your energy performance is verified we would use for that energy star which is a no cost program uh funded by our our federal tax dollars um and it requires that you have um an on-site walkthrough uh and verification from an energy star licensed professional and that you demonstrate through your documented uh energy uh and and uh carbon scores in portfolio manager which is energy stars uh tool that you have achieved either a 30 percent reduction in actual annual energy performance over a median building of the same use type meaning that if you're thinking about the energy star score you know anything about it it's one

to a hundred or zero to zero to a hundred fifty is median in any use type a 30 reduction would be a score of 80 or above um so you know that uh is the idea that you could achieve this for up to two additional years uh if you if you can demonstrate your superior performance um onward so we looked into what the cost implications of this would be uh so to do that we uh took recently built commercial properties and we used them as our straw men so uh we found these through public records we applied the city's commercial tax rate to each um we thought about time frames uh we thought about how many developments would be in this permit pipeline and might be eligible for tax abatement and so we assembled

the spreadsheet budget summaries and here they are um here you you see um the buildings that we use these are buildings of all different space use types and sizes and assessed values so we said well what would happen if in fact you know each of these did it and then what would happen if all of them did it um in thinking about this we would not expect especially in the early days of a program like this that anything like 10 projects would actually do this first of all it wouldn't happen immediately construction takes time and certification takes time so we're talking about even if this were approved and goes and becomes um you know policy in 2025 uh the first buildings that would be eligible for a tax abatement probably

that would not occur till 2028. um but here's the sampling um you see you know you can go uh well you mentioned earlier the moxley um you know this would have um but if it were uh coming online now if it chose to go for you know gold and and fulfill these other requirements it would achieve a one-year tax abatement of as you see over eight hundred thousand dollars uh if it were to be a top energy performer and document its performance that would be an additional two times that 860k figure as you see um we would expect based on what we know of other jurisdictions for example arlington county has had a green building incentive program for about 25 years now very early um program in the region uh first years uh sort of one to

three projects i think um at its height and you know they they do incentives with uh added uh density not with tax abatement at its height i think they had um right before the pandemic uh it was as many as perhaps eight or 10 in one year but that now has uh reduced to about four or five um so you're seeing if you look at the grand totals here if indeed all of these buildings are straw men with their assessed value as we've calculated were to go through this and they all did tax abatement for one year three million dollars this is avoided tax revenue you don't pay it out you just don't collect it right and then you see you know over nine million if all were to go through but again this is either the best or the worst case scenario depending on your

point of view here um so onward please um the tax abatement program again i've mentioned this before um very attractive to developers um the idea that it might encourage developers and building owners to go above and beyond the basic requirements of the green building policy i i would bet that they would i think it would be quite enticing uh upfront costs are in staff time uh it's not you know the avoided tax revenue comes later and then the idea of it also is that if it really does encourage uh future development future green development this is a not only a competitive advantage for the city of fairfax but it would have the power or the potential to increase overall city tax revenue word please so um these are next steps and um i don't know

stephanie if you would prefer to you know sort of take on next steps or if you want me to you know do it i i mean you know uh sure i'm happy to uh lead this slide uh so over the next month uh we'll be developing the standard operating procedures for implementing the green building policy uh in coordination with uh multiple departments within the city uh and that will continue through august we will then draft the green building policy report which then we bring back to the city council in september uh with additional analysis on the resources needed to implement the policy and in september october october we'll hold a hold a community event and meet with various boards and commissions to present the draft green policy report

to them and get additional feedback um on the the policy and in november we'll incorporate the feedback that we got from the community engagement efforts and in december we'd be back to the city council uh to present the final uh green building policy report for city council for considering for adoption um thank you and next slide just uh let's open the discussion up we have you know draft questions here happy to clarify anything but would very much welcome your feedback your recommendations your thoughts on challenges whether you're you're thinking you know this is a good thing or not um please thank you and I invite your comments and questions. Thank you. Questions for the Dias. Council Member Doyle Feingold.

Thank you, Mayor. Thanks for the presentation information. I have a couple questions. One is I'd like this to, so in looking at the timeline, the policy report, does that mean we receive the policy as you'd propose it to be enacted? Correct. Plus all the research that we conducted, the meeting minutes from all of our internal external stakeholder meetings, the standard operating procedure. So it would be a big package of all the research and materials we put together for the report plus the proposed policy language. Okay. And so you mentioned that Arlington, they incentivize by added density, not the tax incentive. So I guess as part of that report, I'd like to understand what other, you know, Arlington was an early innovator in this.

I'd like to understand their policy and why they went that route. You know, looking at the cost, I understand we, not everyone may decide to go this route, but we have to, when we implement, be prepared for everyone going this route. So I guess my question is, in looking at the possible $9 million tax income decrease, how do we ensure that the community is getting $9 million of environmental benefit? So, for example, you can have the most amazing green building, but it's built in the middle of the rainforest and it tears down acres of the rainforest and thousands of cars drive in and out every day. So the community benefit is not there. And so I want to make sure as part of this that we're looking more broadly,

not just a building is green and that's great, but broadly it could actually be a net negative for the community and we can't have a net environmental negative plus tax incentives. So just looking at that, in the list of partners and who's reviewing, I would like a review of this from our Environmental Sustainability Committee, you know, then all looking at this and giving their feedback, we pick them because they have experience in this. And so I'd like to hear that. I think it's important. And I guess I'm a detail person, so some of the language, to get the tax incentive, you strive to reduce impervious surface. What does that mean? You know, what, so I, you know, and I understand we're not here yet for those details,

but those details are important, I think. And the sufficient zero emission charging, what does that mean? And I think maybe it would be helpful for the community also. We talked about using an example, the Moxley. The Moxley has the opportunity to get $3 million in tax incentives. What would they have to do? So if we can just walk that through for the community, what would they, is it windows? Is it solar panels? Is it three charging stations for vehicles? Are they free? Are they not? You know, things like that. What does it actually mean so that we can sort of conceptualize the benefit and the impact for the community? What it would look like, in other words. Right. In the real, right. So those are my initial thoughts.

But thank you, and I appreciate the information. Thank you. I think these are great points, and we will have taken them in, and we'll take them in and act on them. Thank you. Other questions? Council Member Bates. Thank you. Yeah, I also have concerns about making sure that we're getting something back for that loss in revenue. I mean, we've seen projects come forth that have, you know, proposed increased tree canopy versus what was there before development or reduced impervious surface or were going for green globes or LEED certifications on their own. And, you know, in cases like that, I wouldn't want to give them a tax abatement when they would have, you know, pursued that on their own anyway.

So another consideration that I, and I'm not sure how feasible or realistic this would be or even legal this would be, but if there would be some way to sort of do it on more of a case-by-case basis and establish a baseline for, say, an individual project, and then, you know, whatever that baseline might be that, you know, we might assume they might otherwise pursue on their own. And if there's some way to then incentivize something beyond that sort of, you know, tailor-made baseline for that project. I don't know, you know, there's maybe modeling methods out there that might be able to be used. I don't know. But I think that would be really the ideal, you know, version of this. Oh, additionally, the solar feasibility study, how does that relate to this?

Yeah, so we have funding this year to do a solar feasibility study of all of our existing buildings. So we will be assessing for our properties rooftop solar, ground-mounted, and solar parking canopies. So assuming we install solar on buildings, that will help get us points to meet the LEED certifications that we'd be striving for. So that would help us get certifications down the line if we were to install solar on those buildings, on city buildings. Right, and that includes all city buildings, including schools. Is that correct? It does not include schools because Fairfax County manages solar installations for their schools, not the city. Hmm. All right. Well, yeah, I mean, certainly whatever can be done on that front.

And, yeah, again, as a former high school liaison to the ESC, I agree. You know, I'd like to see them involved in this process as well. And, you know, as I said before, any other decisions with implications for the environment. But, yeah, I think that's about it for now. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Other questions? Councilmember Ross? Oh, no. Okay. So I guess my question is, it sounds like you want to make it mandatory that city-owned buildings become certified at some level. Is that correct? Correct. Do we have sort of an idea of how many buildings, how many square feet, and exactly what kinds of things? Because that seems to be a very big price tag when you say it's going to be mandatory.

And is that within a certain period of time that we would make those upgrades and changes? So we have not designated the timeline for this. However, we do have an inventory of all of our facilities. And in the past, we have conducted audits on our buildings. This was a while ago. So this would trigger, you know, going back for, you know, proposing budget items for auditing our facilities to do a new audit to see where, you know, what improvements we need to take. And then how much money those would cost. And then we bring that back to council to present, you know, a strategy for how we would get our existing buildings up to those standards. However, we don't have a timeline prepared. However, another initiative we're working on this year is to develop a climate and energy action plan.

So that will create a long-term strategy, a 20-year strategy, for how we're going to reach our climate and energy goals. So we can incorporate a strategy, we can build a strategy into that plan for how we then reach the target, you know, this target set in the green building policy. But we don't have that plan in place, but that's something we'd work on in the future and then bring back to council for your consideration and approval. In the main, this is great. I mean, I just had eight windows, sliding glass doors replaced today on my house with solar panels. So I'm all in, but I also know that there's a significant cost to doing these things. So I think we all need to just be cognizant that we want to do these things.

There's a benefit to the environment and to energy consumption, and there are many, many benefits. But with those benefits, there is a significant investment. I know this. So I say I'm all in favor of moving forward with this and exploring exactly what it's going to look like, exactly what it's going to cost, exactly what would the timelines be, and how, if we are going to say something like mandatory, what that means for the city's properties, I think would be significant for us to consider. On that point, I think what Council Member Doyle Feingold said earlier that, you know, what would it look like in the case of the MOXIE, maybe what would LEED for existing buildings look like in the case of a city building.

Absolutely. And then, you know, that would be, and it just, I know this isn't much comfort. There will be costs, yes. But the EB, O&M, EB, O&M rating system in LEED is significantly different than new construction. It involves a lot more maintenance activities that you undertake, maybe new paradigms of maintenance and cleaning, and, you know, it's incentivizing or somehow getting your employees to use public transport rather than, you know, driving. It's that kind of thing. It's really geared towards existing buildings. So it tries to lessen the cost impact while making it impactful for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. And obviously setting the standard for new construction is the easiest way to go, right?

Like, because people bake it in, build it in. It's part of their cost. They know these things. But, you know, my house was built in 1953, as were many houses in this city. So for, and we have an inventory, obviously, of public buildings that run the gamut, including the one we're sitting in, run the gamut of when they were built and what those challenges might be. Absolutely. But I, this is a worthwhile investment. This is time, resources, well spent to set a standard to say that we are prioritizing this and that we want to move forward in seeing what we can do, when we can do it, and what it would cost to do it. Yes. So, Public Works this year is going to be working on developing a facilities condition assessment that will roll into a full asset management plan.

So whatever we come up with here needs to kind of talk with that plan. And that involves developing a capital predictor model where it gives you all different options about investments and timelines in the buildings and what the cost is going to be. So that will, I think, better inform us about what price tags are, how quickly we want to go for this, and also other general capital maintenance and replacement as well. Asset management. I get that. I understand that. Excellent. Excellent. All right. Anything else before we move on? Thank you very much for this presentation. Greatly appreciate it. Thank you very much. All right. Thank you, Becky. Our next item is a discussion on the composting program assessment scope of work.

And that will be by Stephanie Kupka, Environmental Sustainability Coordinator. All right. For this next work session item, we are checking back in after the June 11th City Council meeting where the council directed staff to look into the feasibility of implementing a curbside composting program. So the purpose of this work session is to provide the council with an update on staff's planned efforts to conduct an assessment of our solid waste and recycling services, including and making improvements to our composting program. So our current composting operations includes the city's composting center, which is located here at City Hall. This is a very popular program, which allows residents to drop off their food scraps at

the composting center, which are then collected by a third-party contractor, compost crew, and taken to a commercial composting facility to be composted. Because of the popularity of this program, we've had to expand capacity multiple times to keep up with demand. And we've had multiple education and outreach efforts. One outreach effort that we do every year is to encourage people to drop off their pumpkins. And this is a great way to get people aware of the composting center and to utilize it. And then hopefully they keep coming back with dropping off their food scraps after that. To date, we've composted 525 tons of food waste from the composting center. The city also encourages backyard and in-home composting.

At the 2024 History Day, we distributed 90 backyard composters to residents. And in 2023, we held a worm composting class to build your own worm composter, which people could use in their households. And with these events, we also provided education materials so people know how to use the composters effectively to create compost from the food scraps they collected in their households. Approximately 25% of our municipal solid waste is organic material that could be composted and diverted from our waste stream. This is a significant amount of our waste. Composting, it takes organic material and creates a nutrient-rich compost that can be used by local farmers and gardeners and creates a closed-loop system.

And really helps reduce waste and brings back that material back to our natural environment. There's also economic benefits to composting. The tipping fees for dropping off food scraps at a commercial composting facility are 25 to 30% less than the tipping fees to dispose of it as trash. So seeing these significant environmental and economic benefits to composting, we plan to assess our composting program and look for options for ways we can improve things. So as I mentioned, we have funding to hire a consultant to do an assessment of our solid waste and recycling services, which includes looking at our composting program. So we've drafted a scope of work. So these are the options that we're proposing to include in the scope of work that we include in RFP looking for consultants that could do this assessment for us.

So the options that we propose to evaluate as part of this assessment are here. So I'll go over these. First option is to conduct curbside composting with our existing refuse and recycling services. So how this would work is residents would include their food scraps with their yard waste, and we would collect the food scraps along with our existing yard waste collection resources. So we'd use our yard waste trucks and collect that and then bring that to the commercial composting facility. So it would be a merged yard waste and food scrap collection service. Option two is to bring in a third-party contractor who would collect just food scraps from our community, and this could be an opt-in service instead of providing it to all residents.

So there's options there. We could scale it. Option three is to look at how we could help with multifamily complexes with their composting. So look into options for contracting it out with a third-party vendor, potentially adding new composting centers, or maybe having some kind of centrally located pickup at multifamily units. And option four is to expand existing composting drop-off programs where they could help identify where there would be the most demand to have another composting center or more within the city. And for each of these options, we will ask the consultant to evaluate feasibility. So looking at our existing resources, such as our trucks, staff, equipment, what we could use that we already have, and what equipment would we need.

Would we need additional trucks, staff, containers, et cetera? Each of these options will evaluate what is the waste diversion impacts for these options. We'd also look at sustainability. You know, what are the greenhouse gas emissions of transporting the material? Also equity, you know, looking at how this would impact our residents if we're able to provide it to multifamily versus just single-family households. And we do cost analysis. So what are the fiscal impacts for each of these options so we know the costs associated with them? And then we look into implementation planning. So what kind of challenges we have? What steps would we need to implement this? And what kind of education and outreach would be necessary to implement these types of programs?

So now I'd like to open it up for any questions from you guys. If you have any thoughts on the proposed scope of work, if this kind of captured what you guys were thinking at the June meeting, does this capture what you guys had intended? Is there anything else you'd like us to include in the scope of work that the consultant could look at as part of this assessment? Questions? Council Member Staley. Thank you, Mayor Reed. I appreciate the chance to be thought-thinkable out there. I think the more we go to composting over time makes a lot of sense. I'm very resident to move into multifamily. We do not currently process trash for multifamily. I think that is a bridge too far in the next phase of this looking.

Gathering some information about what that might look like in the future is interesting, but I don't think is the right next phase to sort of move into there. I would be much more interested in how we might do it at our schools and at all city buildings than multifamily complexes as a stepping stone to figuring out what that next sort of evolution might look like. I just think that trying to head into that direction is a large leap. Having been president of condo associations, having worked with trash organizations and seeing where it is, I just think that's a door that maybe is not the right time to open in this particular analysis. I think our schools are a great one to look in there. You'll get a flavor for what that might look like in a large organizational setting,

in a building that really can impact the future with our children in there. I think about office complexes, et cetera, multi-use online. I think that's just a bridge too far for this next phase in there. And then the other part I sort of think about as you go through all of this, you mentioned a little bit about the greenhouse gas emissions and transport. I think this is a really good opportunity in particular for our legislative packet to take a look at where do we compost today. And if I understand correctly being involved in many of this, our current compost goes where currently? Prince George's. And that is in what state? Yeah, Maryland. In Maryland. So it doesn't even stay in Virginia. So there's some pieces of this that I think we as policymakers should be advocating for,

in particular in our area, to figure out. Because sending more waste to Maryland to be composted and then coming back in there seems to miss a little bit of the holistic closed-loop system we're looking in. And so I think highlighting that and advocating it again over time would make some sense. Thank you, Mayor. Okay. Thank you. Councilmember Doyle-Fongel. Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, I think similar to what Councilmember Staley was saying, looking at the big picture, like the green building, you know, it's great to compost, but what's actually the impact on the environment? We have an over 100-gallon compost container in our backyard, and we can never fill it. And we, you know, put all the scraps in that we can, and it never gets filled.

I guess one of my questions is, have we measured impact from the programs we've done? The picture on the worm composting is me with my nephews. It was great. Our worms died. Everybody else I know their worms died, too. But it was a great learning experience. I'm glad we did it. But I think it might be good to try and track. The composters we gave out at the city event, how are people in the city using it? How successful is it? Sometimes there is a big difference between the commercial pickup composting. I have friends in Arlington who pay a third party, and they put in, they can put in fabric, meat, everything. And so is that what the city is looking at? I think also there is going to be a subset of the population that is just not going to do this.

And, you know, we have possums and raccoons, and, you know, so putting meat, saving meat for a week for the once-a-week pickup may not be feasible. And then also factoring in the fact that it's then getting driven to Maryland. Would we all be better off if we had a robust backyard composting? And so I guess also have we seen any impact in our tipping fees for regular waste based on the composting steps we've already taken? You know, I don't know if we can measure that or if we have measured it. But those are my questions. I guess, you know, in looking at the options, option one and two, is it possible to look at a limited scope? I think if we're paying for compost pickup at every resident and then only 10% of residents want to participate,

you know, some of that might be important for the consultant to look at. But those are just my thoughts. But thank you. Oh, thank you very much. And just to clarify, there is actually a new commercial composting facility in Prince William County, the Balls Ford Road complex that recently opened. So that will be one of the facilities we will be looking at for a drop-off, which is a lot closer than Prince George's, which is great. And we don't have data on the backyard composting, but we can make some assumptions to create some figures there or figure out a way we could reach out to see if people can report back if they have been successful. Or even, you know, use the consultant to try and assess how many people are, you know,

we bought our composter in the backyard. There are probably other people who are composting without city involvement. And what impact does that have? And I guess resident interest and involvement before going forward with the project, I think, makes sense. Okay. Thank you. How many tons did we pick up, did you say, the composting? 525 tons. So we pay $80 a ton in tipping fees. So saved $42,000 with the compost. Mayor. Council member for Greenfield. Thank you, Mayor. I'd love for the consultant to look at the school perspective. I think there's a tremendous amount of plate waste that goes into a trash can. Unfortunately, some of that food, you know, once it's been served, right, you can't take it and do something with it.

So it goes in the trash can. We have to work through we own the buildings, right? We don't control the curriculum, so how would that work for our schools if we collected it? If we had the devices that allowed us to collect it, can the city, you know, be able to come in with our trucks and pick it up? So that's number one. Number two, I'd love, again, another piece is part of this assessment is going out to the community and maybe we can get some additional feedback. So to Ms. Doyle Feingold's point, maybe we would be able to expand our backyard recycling if we had more of those, you know, canisters that we did, the 90 of them that we gave out earlier, the backyard composters. So, you know, what can we do to encourage more that way?

Right. So that's what we really want, right? Correct. For some places where some people where they don't have the ability, they come to City Hall and maybe there's a location down at the property yard. I don't know, right? Where's it convenient for folks to be able to go? But for our residents that have single-family homes, is there something they could be doing right there which keeps vehicles off the road and, you know, lessens the tipping fees? So I'd love them to explore a number of those things and come back to us versus just figuring out how we can do. Curbside may work, but I'd love to hear from our community what they would really support, right? Because if they don't support curbside, then that's not something we ought to be providing

if there's only a small percentage that would participate. Makes sense. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Ross. Yes. Thank you, Mayor, and thanks. This has been a very interesting and good discussion, I think. And I want to echo some of my colleagues' comments. It seems to me that long range, and I don't know what long range is, but it seems to me long range, when you look at what we need to be doing, we probably will need at some point curbside pickup. But that's way off, and I think there are a lot of questions we need to resolve before we get to that point. A couple thoughts. One is, I think my colleagues, Council Member Staley, hit it on the head with talking about school involvement.

If we could energize and excite our schools about this being a kind of a project that they would undertake, both in terms of helping our students understand the importance of this, and secondarily looking at this as an opportunity for sort of a contained environment in which we could try it out, our young people are our future. And this kind of thing certainly looks toward the future in terms of what kind of ways you want to change behavior, encourage the right kind of behavior. And that seems to be where it could start. It strikes me this could be, and I think one of the things to look for in a consultant might be, and my council colleague Greenfield touched on this a bit, but I think I'd like to take it one step further.

Maybe there are some pilot programs we could try with several neighborhoods or several areas in the city, schools certainly being one, but maybe there are a couple of neighborhoods that would, with some incentivizing or some outreach, could be excited about trying this. And maybe it involves a neighborhood location where people could drop off their compost materials and see what kind of response we get and really test whether or not we are at a point in our sort of community involvement where people would respond positively to this before we move to the next steps of looking at citywide composting pickup. But let's try it in a couple locations and see what kind of reaction there is and whether there is a real opportunity here for people to get involved.

So that's only my thoughts, but I think that's worthwhile exploring, and I'd be very supportive of looking at a couple of neighborhoods in our community where we can try this, see if it works, and what kind of response we get. So my thoughts. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Doyle Feingold. Thanks, Mayor. Just one last comment. So Daniel's Run in their cafeteria does have compost buckets on each table, but they're very limited. So it's more like what you could put in your backyard compost. They don't allow citrus and oranges and things like that. So maybe as part of this we look at if they could expand it to the type of compost you can put in a commercial-type facility and the benefit that could be there could be helpful.

Thanks. Yeah. I think there is a great deal of interest in our community, as evidenced by the Purple Can Project, too. I don't know about anybody else, but that thing is always full, always full. And so if people can go out of their way to return their glass because they don't want to put it in their trash, I think we need to experiment with what are the places and situations that people go, I can do that, because the Purple Can thing has been astonishingly effective. And I do think it's just finding the right solutions in the right places, however that goes, and then measuring it. I mean, to Council Member Ross's point, we can try something as a pilot, and then if it's spectacularly successful, then we can justify rolling it out.

But there seems to be a tremendous interest in our community about environmental issues, about doing the right thing, you know, about centering best practices where composting and recycling and everything is concerned. So I'm going to give our community the benefit of the doubt and say that we do need to continue exploring what can we do and how can we measure the effectiveness before we make even larger investments in this particular composting initiative, which I think is wonderful. Thank you. Can I just ask one clarifying question? Sure. So there's a lot of good ideas thrown around here. Even if we don't end up going some of these routes, is it still okay for us to have the consultant look at these things so we understand the data behind it, the costs behind it,

so we have that information in case we're asked, well, what would it cost for us to do curbside collection or whatever it is? We would at least have those numbers. Is that – Absolutely. I mean, absolutely. We need to make an informed decision. But, again, knowing what the costs are and knowing exactly how effective an initiative might be, regardless of the cost, are kind of two different things. So, yes, I think we need to understand what all of this would cost. But I also think if we can do something small to see if it's effective, then we know what it's going to cost if we decide to do it on a much broader scale. Both things are important. Yes. Thank you. Thank you very much. Our last work session item is a discussion on zoning for accessory dwelling units.

Staff presentation presented by Eric Foreman, City Planner. Well, thank you very much. And we are talking tonight about a topic. This is a topic that's come up quite a bit recently. It's come up in various contexts. And the topic is accessory dwelling units. But specifically, we're talking about how accessory dwelling units fit in to our zoning ordinance and about potential options for expanding property owners' ability to construct accessory dwelling units or ADUs on their properties. What we're doing tonight is really a high-level discussion, both to get the City Council's general impressions about this topic and also to see to what extent the Council may be interested in having staff investigate some potential alternatives, but at a deeper level.

So tonight's discussion could be a part one of a broader discussion. Now, the broader issue wouldn't necessarily be a quick thing. There are some aspects to this that could be done quickly, but others would be rather complex, and those complex topics would really require a good amount of public input. Now, before we start, it would probably be a good idea to explain just what is an accessory dwelling unit. There is an actual definition in the zoning ordinance. So to summarize that definition in everyday terms, the definition says that an accessory dwelling unit is a full dwelling unit, meaning that it has a kitchen and a bathroom, so an apartment, basically. It is defined as being part of another residential dwelling, and it is subordinate or it is accessory to the main dwelling.

So those points are important because this term of accessory dwelling units is frequently confused with other things. So it's important to know what an accessory dwelling unit is and also what an accessory dwelling unit is not. So just a few quick things that are not considered accessory dwelling units, and sometimes there is overlap, so it's not necessarily clear cut. Renting a portion of a house to roommates or to housemates, for instance, that is not necessarily an accessory dwelling unit. The ADU focuses on the physical characteristics of that unit, not just the fact that it's rented to an individual or to a group of individuals. Another thing that is not quite accessory dwelling units is the topic of eliminating single-family zoning.

And I say that not just because that's a more intensive idea than permitting accessory dwelling units, but because the types of units that that process seeks to create are fully separate units, so not subordinate to another house. And that is an important distinction, and especially when talking about zoning permissions and definitions. And another item that is separate from accessory dwelling units is short-term rentals. Short-term rentals frequently are ADUs, but from a policy perspective, these are completely different. A jurisdiction can permit accessory dwelling units and not permit short-term rentals, short-term rentals being Airbnbs and so on, and vice versa, that short-term rentals can be permitted even if ADUs are not.

So I know that's a long introduction, but hopefully that's a bit helpful for the larger discussion. And you all may be aware a few recent city studies or ongoing studies have mentioned accessory dwelling units, so both in the comprehensive plan process and in the city's recent housing assessment. In both of those, there have been some kind of mention of ADUs. In the comprehensive plan, there is a housing goal, so it's housing goal number one, which calls for the city to support a wide range of housing types. And one of the actions to support that goal is, like it says down here at the bottom, for the city to research changes to the zoning regulations, to expand opportunities for accessory dwelling units,

while ensuring that they do not negatively impact the surrounding neighborhood. ADUs are mentioned elsewhere in the plan as well. So, for example, there's a section on providing housing options for seniors and for people with disabilities. Generally speaking, the comprehensive plan takes a favorable view towards expanding opportunities for homeowners to construct ADUs. So, likewise, in the housing assessment, one of the recurring recommendations in the assessment is to expand permissions for accessory dwelling units. From the perspectives both of overall housing mix and also from the perspective of senior and accessible housing, expanding ADU options was recommended in the housing assessment.

The housing assessment noted that ADUs can increase available rental supply, for instance, and specifically it mentioned student-focused housing or single-person households. The assessment also noted that due to the fact that they're typically small in size, ADUs generally maintain their affordability, their relative affordability over time. If you recall, a community-wide survey was part of the housing assessment. If you read the full housing assessment, you'll see that it mentions that residents had really mixed opinions when asked about whether they support increased opportunities for ADUs. About half of the survey respondents said that they do support additional ADU opportunities in the city,

the rest either opposing additional ADUs or being neutral on the topic. But that's part of the reason that we mentioned that ADU regulations really require a good deal of public input. So it's a topic that just necessitates careful scrutiny and careful planning if it's to be pursued. Now, I also mentioned earlier that we're discussing tonight potential options for expanding property owners' ability to construct ADUs. And the reason that we said expanding is because ADUs are currently allowed under certain conditions. So before Mr. Hardin takes us through some of the potential zoning changes, it's helpful, I think, to look at what the current standards actually are. We won't go into all of these details tonight, but just to summarize,

accessory dwelling units are permitted in single-family zoning districts as long as certain conditions are met. Now, prior to 2016, this was a special use. So this required that ADUs come for a hearing before City Council. Since the 2016 zoning ordinance rewrite, this has been permitted administratively, and that is a significant difference. But as of now, accessory dwelling units need to be within the home itself. So in the parlance of accessory dwelling units, that means attached units rather than detached units. There are size standards for accessory dwelling units, and this ensures that the units are accessory or are subordinate to the main dwelling. So, for example, an ADU has to stay under 35 percent of the size of the total house, has to have a maximum of two bedrooms.

The property owner must currently live in either the house or the accessory dwelling unit, and at least one of those units, either the house or the ADU, has to be occupied by someone who's either age 55 or over, or a person with a disability. So those are the main physical and main operational standards of ADUs. If you look through the zoning ordinance, and this is all in Section 355, you'll notice that it's seemingly long. There's about two pages of standards. Not completely surprising because it is a complex topic, but there are some additional standards besides those main physical and operational regulations. Some of them are listed here, and you can see from this summary that a lot of these additional regulations are really details of the primary standards.

And, again, this can get very complex. So ironing out details like what would happen to an ADU if the property transfers or stating that building and subdivision rules still apply or how inspections can take place, that kind of stuff is necessary from a policy perspective, even though it's not terribly exciting to read or to look at in the ordinance. So we're glad to answer any questions about the current standards, but really the main reason that we're here tonight is to look at some potential zoning options for expanding opportunities for accessory dwelling units. So to that end, Mr. Hardin will go over some of these potential alternatives. This is not an exhaustive list. There's lots of potential variations.

But hopefully this will provide a good introduction to some of the major concepts of ADU standards and hopefully can facilitate a good discussion. Thank you, Mr. Foreman. Appreciate it. And as shown on the slide here are some items compiled for the council to consider, but as Mr. Foreman noted, certainly not an exhaustive list looking for feedback and direction this evening. And staff held a similar conversation with the Planning Commission at its meeting last night and received some feedback as well. You'll also see, as I step through this, some areas of overlap in between these potential options to expand the provisions, recognizing that impacts associated with expanding in any of the provisions may have similar resulting impacts

on the neighborhood or the ability to deliver the unit. So first on the list is expanding accessory dwelling units to other residential or commercial zoning districts. As noted on the previous slide, currently accessory dwelling units are permitted in the RL, RM, and RH. Those are the single-family zoning districts. Some jurisdictions go as far as including accessory dwelling units in single-family attached or in townhouse units and looking at the pros of potentially expanding into other types of units could increase housing variety. Obviously, in looking at more dense housing types, often that's located closer to amenities, shopping, job opportunities, health care, services, transit, those sorts of things are potential pros.

Looking at the pros, looking at the cons, and this really applies with any expansion of accessory dwelling units, evaluating strain on utilities, water, sewer, those sorts of things, and that will need to be a part of the evaluation that the staff does as part of this discussion going forward. Council Member Staley has a question. Just a quick visual question, so I'm tracking here just because it's a little bit late and my brain was hiccuping a second. It would be allowable right now if you had a townhome, you would not be allowed to do anything with an accessory dwelling unit because you would not be in the RH, RL, or RM district. That's correct. And so a potential that you're talking about here of expansion, again, just so I got my word in there,

if I'm thinking about the assembly and I wanted to put an addition on the back of my house in the assembly, there is a chance it could meet some of the existing requirements if we expanded it. We have to go into that whole thought process of how big, how wide, all those pieces there, external entry versus internal entry, condo rules, all that stuff. But right now it's not allowed in those areas, so none of the existing application applies, and this is the first of a what if you expanded where you could allow it to be. Correct. Thank you very much. My brain is caught up with you now. I appreciate it as always, Mr. Herc. Okay, thank you for the clarity. Moving on to the next item, expanding or eliminating the age or disability requirement.

As was noted, one of the occupants of one of the units needs to be 55 years of age or greater or disabled. Those are underlying provisions as currently constructed in the ordinance. Looking at potentially removing one or both of those requirements would obviously increase housing options for a greater variety of people. Folks that don't meet those qualifications may diversify neighborhoods. Would certainly expand the marketability of those that are homeowners or the landlords for the ADUs to market those units to additional folks and potentially create additional income for that person, as well as different types of multi-generational living. Providing options for seniors is certainly a goal of the city, but looking at those provisions may expand to others as well.

On the con side, really, you know, does the program become too successful, so to speak, at that point? Is there increased density? Is there proliferation by removing those provisions that are in place now that may create concern in neighborhoods about changing character and increasing the density? The potential for overcrowding and trafficking and congestion, you'll see that repeated throughout here. That's certainly something that we would want to be mindful of as we evaluate this going forward and would seek council's guidance. Overcrowding can be a situation with ADUs. It can be a situation with non-ADUs. It's a challenge that we've had over the years in various contexts. Next item is regarding the family requirement, and this is similar.

As Mr. Foreman noted, the combined occupancy of both units is required currently to resemble a family, and that can include some unrelated folks, but it is more limiting than perhaps you see in other places. Again, those by revisiting that may be more options for folks that may not qualify for an ADU at this point, may change the income stream for the homeowner, as well as may eliminate some of the administrative complexities that staff often encounters and trying to sort through, as council can imagine, what constitutes a family, because that can be a little bit unclear in some situations. On the con side, less oversight potentially by not having that provision. may be an opportunity for illegal short-term rentals.

Mr. Foreman noted short-term rentals, which are currently not permitted in the city under any case, but certainly there are some that pop up from time to time, and city staff is enforcing on those regularly. Again, impacts on neighborhoods and utility services as well. Next item is increasing of the allowable square footage. Currently, the provisions are capped at 35% of the total gross area of the principal dwelling. As Mr. Foreman noted, creating a subordinate nature of the accessory dwelling unit compared to the principal. There's certain practicality at 35%, but it's certainly not a standard everywhere. As you think about potentially a three-level home, a basement level, one entire level could potentially be converted to an ADU,

remain under that threshold. Allowing additional square footage may create more income opportunities for the homeowner. Larger spaces may be more livable for tenants, may allow for better accommodations of ADA facilities within those accessory dwelling units. On the con side, again, impacts on infrastructure, potentially more impervious surfaces, whether that's a detached unit or whether it's an attached unit that causes an expansion of the principal building and neighborhood impacts. And one item not listed here, but certainly in thinking through affordability that was mentioned earlier, larger units may also cost more and be more expensive to rent. So those would impact potentially affordability for those tenants.

Next on the list is implementing performance and design standards. And so some jurisdictions can regulate things such as materials that are used, architecture or other types of features. One of the things we heard from the Planning Commission last night was thinking about what impacts may be in terms of noise and lighting and lighting and lighting and lighting and those sorts of things associated with potentially having an addition or a building somewhere that it might not otherwise be. Having performance standards or design standards can help to integrate the units within the neighborhood, can help the neighbors feel more comfortable that these are supportive of neighborhood character. On the con side, the standards can become very complex.

You know, going through the permitting and building process can be a complex endeavor. Otherwise, adding additional standards can increase that and perhaps inhibit the construction that we're seeking to potentially increase. Standards may increase construction costs as well as create a lengthier review process for staff in terms of reviewing, assessing, and monitoring compliance with those standards. The next item is potential incentives for construction. And incentives could range from financial to streamline permitting to creating, you know, pre-approved design plans and templates that would, you know, ease the ability of a homeowner to be able to go through that permitting process. That could increase construction, you know, in a more timely manner, increase the number of units that are out there,

may reduce burden on homeowners and the landlords. On the con side, it would be obviously a reduction and potentially reduction in fee revenue to the city. Any type of incentive is going to divert resources from one thing to another. And again, looking at what the proliferation may be, perhaps incentivize too well and overwhelm neighborhoods. And then last on the list, certainly not least, and this is one that we get, probably have the most inquiries about, is detached accessory dwelling units because, again, that's currently not permitted by the ordinance. But one in terms of new construction or even, you know, retrofitting existing structures is something that we get questions about. On the pro side, sometimes standalone units can be easier to construct, which may be a little bit contrary to what one may think.

But the building code standards do vary. And so building code for attached or internal ADU units treats that as a two-family dwelling. And there are building requirements related to having a two-family dwelling. If the unit is separate, then they're both single dwellings under building code. And primarily it relates to fire-related provisions in the fire code and measures that you have to take for a two-family building versus a one-family building. Also, obviously, a detached building would be more private. That may be preferable to tenants. It may be preferable to the property owner. Also, in terms of metering and some of those more practical aspects, sometimes having a separate unit can be preferable.

On the con side, obviously, it creates a new building, a new footprint on the lot. Can appear denser. Can be perceived as leading more change to the neighborhood. Can be more expensive to build. Again, kind of depending on the individual situation. And it is a bit more complex in terms of staff and administration, plan review, looking at impervious coverages and stormwater and those sorts of aspects. So that certainly is a complexity that often you don't run into with attached. So, again, high-level list of items. There are others, as noted. So just interested in Council's direction and feedback this evening. Do we have questions? Council Member Bates. Thank you. Just a few things. I think that all of the potential modifications that you have on here are worth at least exploring and worth staff coming back to us with recommendations on.

A couple items I'd like to add to that. First off is whether or not to keep the owner-occupancy requirement. And then also I saw something in there about allowing no more than two cars to be utilized by the ADU residents. Now, this is something I brought up with a member of the previous council. I'm not sure if it was ever looked into or not. But what I think would be ideal is looking at a way to limit the number of cars utilized by, you know, resident of any single-family lot. Like how we have a limit on the number of unrelated people who can be, you know, in a single-family home. That includes the ADU with the current policy. And then just have something like that for a number of cars that are allowed to be used by the residents as well that applies to, you know, the entire house and ADU if there is one sort of in that same way.

And I think that that could really address really more broadly the parking concerns that are out there even beyond ADUs being in the mix. Thank you. Just for clarity, if I may ask, council member, an overall limit on vehicles for dwellings that include an ADU or are we talking for dwellings in general? For dwellings in general, whether or not they include an ADU. Okay. Thank you. Thanks. Council member Staley. Thank you, Mayor Reed. I appreciate bringing this forward because I think the more we talk about it, the more we'll kind of move in a direction. I'm taking the approach very similar to the composting conversation. You have limited time and resources. So for me, if I'm looking at slide five, which is the current regulations,

I think I'm interested in looking at the two bullet points under owner occupied as if we were to remove the age requirement and handicap requirement, what might that do to this space going forward as a potential step? I don't think I'm interested in looking at accessory dwelling units that are built out, not attached to units at this point in time. I don't think I'm interested in trying to get my head around how you might do it in a townhome at this point. I think those are things that we can work over time with various councils. But with limited time and energy, I think looking at that question of family-related age and disability, if those were to evolve and you were to keep everything else static, I think that would be a very useful place to have a continued conversation on,

knowing you could go further over time. But I think getting clear on that and saying, is that something that the community would be interested in opening the door of? If we're not interested in opening the door in there, I'm not sure we're ever going to get to unattached. And so I think that's a good bellwether to sort of think about the next steps. Thank you, Mayor. Mayor? Yes, Council Member Ross. Yes, thank you. And again, thank you to our staff for a really thoughtful, well-laid-out discussion of these things. I agree with my council colleague Staley on this. I think if we try to go too far, we're going to open up Pandora's box. Not that that's necessarily bad, but I think we've got to look at small steps we can take initially to help look at ways we could move into this area in a positive way.

And I think that if we try to go too far, we're going to run into community resentment and opposition. And I think it's better to try on a small step to see what are the things we can do that would be reasonable and appropriate. And I think what John has suggested are right in line with that. The other thing that I think that would be helpful, and I'm not sure it was addressed tonight, but I think it would be helpful to look at, how are some of the other communities that are in Northern Virginia dealing with this? Are they running into problems? Have they modified their existing requirements? And what are those leading to in terms of either success or concerns or whatever? So I think a small step is appropriate.

I don't think we need to go in right now and radically change everything we've had on the books, but I think it would be helpful to look at a couple of small areas we could take and then evaluate how that's working. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Lim. Thank you, Mayor. So currently, about how many ADUs do we have in the city? I don't have that number offhand. It is a small, it is a fraction of our housing stock. So currently, for anyone to have an ADU, is it by right, or do they have to submit an application? It is. They file for a permit, but it is administratively approved. Okay. But staff goes through and looks at the criteria associated with, and so things like the age, the family, staff looks at all that.

The owner signs an affidavit that thou shalt comply with those regulations going forward, but it is administrative. Okay. I'm glad that we're talking about this. So if we are going to create some sort of a new policy about ADUs, we could broaden the possible owners or the residents, I think. They don't have to be family. It doesn't have to be disability-related. But I also think that when you want to build an ADU currently, they have to attach to their current unit. So sometimes, you know, because of the way the house is built, lack of land or whatever, they couldn't possibly add another ADU to their existing homes. So I think we should definitely take a consideration about having ADUs away from their current units.

And you know how we have guidelines for people that want to raise chickens in their homes? We have, like, quarter acres. I forget exactly the guidelines. You know, the home has to be a quarter acre or so many acres before they can have chickens. So I think that, you know, we could consider having ADUs for homes that have bigger lots. I don't know what that would be. And then have, you know, limitations as to how far the ADUs can be. You know, they have tiny homes these days. Tiny homes come really nice. They're really pretty. And I think that this will really give housing choice for our young adults here in the city that can't possibly afford a new home or whatever, but they want to move out of their parents' home.

But they really can't. But, you know, they can have an ADU in their parents' backyard. I think the options are kind of open. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Dolfine Gold. Thank you, Mayor. I agree with what Council Member Lim was saying. I think that we need to look at the lot size. I think that, obviously, townhouses are not good options for a detached ADU. I think a lot of those neighborhoods anyway have HOAs that would preclude it. But, you know, the city has very robust ordinances on sheds and how big your shed can be and where it can be located. And it depends on lot size and yard and everything. So looking at that, the type of neighborhood, the space, I think it's very important that one of the units is owner-occupied.

And I think in the southeastern portion of the city, there are a lot of issues with homes that are rented to more people than are legally allowed. They're rented by bedroom. And we don't want to create a situation where those homes that are owned by LLCs are finding a way to have more tenants there and no owner lives there. Because there are already overcrowding issues that the city can't police. And so I think we want to make sure that we avoid that and concerns from residents that that doesn't happen. But I think, like Council Member Lim was saying, it's an opportunity for a housing option for parents, grandparents, or young adult children with the right guardrails in place that I think it's worth exploring.

Thanks. Thank you. Council Member Greenfield. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Mayor. Over the weekend, when I was looking at this, I pulled the current residential districts. We have six. For the current ADUs, we allow an attached ADU in three of those six. So all single family. But you could theoretically have one in Farcroft, for example, if there was an outside entrance that somebody could come into and be able to have an ADU. It was interesting because the couple that was the driving force back late 90s, early 2000s in Mosby Woods wanted to switch. They wanted to take the house that they raised their family in, add an ADU next to it, and then move the daughter back in. They took over the main house, and the couple took over the ADU.

They've both since passed. Call it divine intervention. On Sunday, I ran into the daughter just grabbing something at Starbucks. I'm like, I can't believe you're standing here. I was just thinking about your mom and dad yesterday. But we've come a long way in talking about what we can do. We've learned a lot with ADUs. I think you could take that same example and say the older couple still lived in the main house, but if we switch the age requirement or the disability requirement, the caregiver could actually be in the ADU. It could be somebody that the family requires full-time care, and you could allow that, correct? I think when we talk about detached, I think we're really only talking about two districts, residential low and residential medium.

Low is minimum lot size of 20,000 square feet, and the minimum lot size for medium is 7,500 square feet. So to Ms. Lim's point, you could size and scale that appropriately, and not a whole lot different than saying I could put a shed back there, but it's a little bit bigger. I saw something on Amazon that, interestingly enough, has come back in stock, but it's a kit that's a tiny house that has everything you need and could be in somebody's backyard. So as we look more at multi-generational housing where you've got a lot of the family all living in one house, you see people building bigger houses. Well, what if we allowed a detached house where the mom and dad still want to be able to have their independence?

They want to come and go as they want, but they want to be right there on the property with their family. We could actually see smaller main single-family homes, but then allowing a detached ADU out back. So I think there are a lot of different ways that you can get at that that protects the integrity of the community, that doesn't make them too large. We've got a number of examples around the city where people have built a garage, for example, and they've done an apartment over top, but they can't use it for their parents because it's not allowed. And we've heard that over the years. I know even when I went off council, I still heard people venting on social media about, hey, I have this. I'm not bothering anybody, but I can't do it.

So I think we should look at it. I think, again, we can put all the right controls in and limit hopefully some of the burden on staff if we do this right. I don't – I'm not looking to go crazy here. I think those are two pieces where we can see, again, how does it work, right? So those are my thoughts for tonight, ma'am. Thank you. Thank you. All right. I guess it's just me. Nope. Council Member Bates. Yeah, I'd just like to add that I agree with what Council Member Lim mentioned. And I also – I stand by what I said earlier, but I would add that the modifications that Council Member Staley mentioned are definitely worth prioritizing before looking at any of the other modifications. Thank you.

Okay. Okay. So I think right up front, eliminating requirements about family, age, or disability, I don't see why they are in place. The idea of formed families have been around since the dawn of time. Who you decide is your family should not require some legal framework to say, this person that I have decided is a member of my family can only be that if I can show evidence of it. Formed families, especially in an urban environment, are very common. You know, we talk about the unhoused people in our city who don't have support networks. There are LGBTQ kids who get kicked out of their houses. Kids who age out of foster care have no one. There are plenty of people who are people no one wants.

And they need houses, too. And if you decide that you want to have that person in your house, you should be able to have that person in your house. That's just me. We can't talk about how we deal with the fact that we don't have housing for people if we're talking about the fact we are going to police who you decide to have in your home in an accessory dwelling unit. So I think right off the top, we need to stop policing who people decide are members of their family or who live in their home. That's just me. Because there are people that need to be taken care of in a family situation. Detached dwelling units make sense. They've been doing it in California for many, many decades. My aunt built one in the 1990s for her 90-year-old in-laws.

And it was a big deal in San Jose. They didn't want to do it. No one had done it in the 90s. But she built this detached dwelling unit, and her father-in-law passed away before it was done. Her mother-in-law lived there. But over the years, lots of people ended up in there. A lot of family friends going through divorces, oddly enough. Because when you're going through a divorce, guess what? Sometimes you need a place to stay. And so she ended up being, you know, host to many people who are in a transitional point in their lives. And in Culver City, California, one of my close high school friends built a guest house in his backyard. And in both cases, by the way, you could not see these detached dwelling units from the street because of privacy fences.

So you rolled up to Aunt Mary Jane's 1961 Rambler that they bought in 1961, and there's just a privacy fence. No one saw what was in the backyard. In Culver City, Wayne and Mie built this lovely guest house in their backyard that was actually, according to Wayne, nicer than their 1920s bungalow that they bought. And mainly they have lots of Japanese foreign exchange students who come and stay there because Mie is Japanese. But the point is, is that, you know, Virginia is a property rights state, which kind of blows my mind, too. You know, we are very focused on your property and what you can do with your property, and your property is your property. And you should be able to decide what you're going to do with your property.

I mean, that's one of the fundamental foundational things when we were a colony. And so it's kind of interesting, the idea that, you know, people shouldn't be able to build a dwelling unit on their property. I think there needs to be restrictions around it. Just as Council Member Doyle Feingold said, there's restrictions around the kind of shed you can build, how far away it has to be from, you know, your property line and all kinds of things. I think that's one of the ways you decide how you place limitations on what people can do, the size of it, the kind of inspections and the kind of permits. I would also bring up that if you're building an accessory dwelling unit in your yard, this is taxable property.

I can tell you, when Aunt Mary Jane's estate was sold, it was a couple of million dollars that included that accessory dwelling unit and her 1961 Rambler. So if people are building quality detached units or guest houses or whatever they want to call it in their yard, it seems to me that is taxable real property. And there has to be some assessment of the improvements you made in your yard, regardless of whether you rent it out or you just let people stay there. You're improving your property. You're building a dwelling. It's a tax base. And from the way I see it, there has to be some assessment for it because it adds value. In many cases, when you go to sell your property, you've got this tiny house on your property.

It's going to sell for a lot more. So these are all things to think about. And I think we do need to think about them. Back in the 90s, when Mary Jane and her husband decided to do this, Silicon Valley wasn't nearly in the crunch that it ended up being for housing. So what was a battle for them ended up being something they were incentivizing people to do in San Jose because there wasn't enough housing. And this is true in our city. We have small houses on very big lots. And we don't have homeowners associations in these old neighborhoods. There is no HOA to tell you what color to make your shutters. We have small houses, three and a half Cape Cod, little ramblers on big pieces of property, and many of them do have privacy fences or would put up a privacy fence if they had a detached accessory dwelling unit in their yard.

So to me, they're doing it successfully and by necessity in other places in the country. I don't know about other places in Virginia. But I think there's many reasons for us to really consider the many benefits of tackling this issue. But from an immediate standpoint, taking away the restrictions and policing who you decide to have live in your house is something that I think just is outdated. I think especially in circumstances where we talk about the lack of housing and people who can't find housing, people who live in tents and have a job because their pay does not cover a place for them to live. You know, we can't solve these problems unless we're willing to be more expansive in our thinking.

And again, this is a piece of property somebody owns. So I would encourage us to explore this. And I'm not going crazy, Council Member Ross. It's not going crazy. But I do think we just have to be more expansive in our thinking because there are real problems and people need housing. And our community in many ways is set up for homeowners who decide they want to do this. We should set parameters, reasonable parameters for them to do it. And there should be requirements for them to do it. And it's an improvement to their property. And I think it should be taxed. So anything else from anyone else? Go forward and do good things. Thank you for the feedback. Appreciate it. I will now reconvene the regular meeting.

And we will start with our city manager for his report out. All right. Good evening, Mayor and members of Council. I just want to go over a few events coming up here in July and August since we have the August recess. This Friday is Rock the Block at 630. Friday, August 9th at 8 p.m. is Movies Under the Moon at Van Dyke Park. They're showing The Incredibles Part 2. Friday, August 23rd, 630, Rock the Block again. Monday is at 1030, except Monday, August 5th. We'll have the Fun Day Monday kids activity at Old Town Hall. And then Saturdays through August 17th at 1030 a.m., Kids Corner at Old Town Square. So those are the upcoming events. And then just a couple sad notes. We have two key retirements coming up that I just want to recognize these employees for their great service.

The first one is Sarah Greer. Our HR director is retiring. She started with the city on June 5th of 2000. She'll be retiring on August 1st of 2024 after 24 years of great service to the city. She started off as a personnel analyst and worked her way up to HR director by February 9th of 2009. She's really dedicated the last 24 years of her life to public service and to the employees of the city of Fairfax. She's been a positive partner for every department and has dedicated her time to supporting city services and the well-being of our employees. She's been integral in managing several pay studies, helping develop our city's current strategic plan, and championing employee health and wellness initiatives,

and also managing educational assistance and professional development initiatives for our employees. So she'll be missed by the city team, and we wish her the best in her next chapter in life, and we'll be recognizing her this week. Another sad note, Major Dan Grimm, the deputy chief of police, will be retiring as well in September. Major Dan Grimm started with the city in 1998 as a patrol officer. His dedication to our city led him to excel in various roles, including detective on the Northern Virginia Regional Gang Task Force, patrol sergeant, and community services sergeant, and moving up the department as lieutenant, captain, and eventually deputy chief. He managed multiple components of the department at the highest levels,

including the professional standards division and field operations division. He played a pivotal role in crafting the agency's three-year strategic plan, ensuring a roadmap for future success, and managed the agency's budget, ensuring fiscal responsibility and transparency. His accomplishments extend far beyond just the department. He graduated from the prestigious FBI National Academy, and his membership in the Virginia Chiefs Association and International Association of Chiefs of Police positioned him to be a respected leader within the broader law enforcement community, and that is a fact because I've heard great things about him even in Manassas Park. So Major Grimm deserves our deepest gratitude for 26 years of unwavering service,

leadership, dedication, and commitment to our community. We wish him all the best as well, just like Sarah, for the next chapter in their lives. We hope they find happiness, and we will miss both of them, but I want to make sure we recognize both of them for their great service to the city. Thank you. For council comments, I'm going to start with Council Member Ross. Thank you, Mayor, and I just want to echo what our city manager just expressed. Dan and Sarah are both dedicated employees, and more importantly, they are incredible human beings, and I think it's important that we recognize that as they move toward their retirement. They have served us incredibly well, as well as many of our employees in the city.

I would say most of our employees in the city. And I'm very grateful for their service. And other than that, everybody, wish everybody well as we move into our August recess. Enjoy the break, because I know September will be a very busy month, and as we look forward to the next few months. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Greenfield. Thank you, Mayor. And one additional data point on Deputy Chief Grimm. He grew up in Greenacres, so a longtime city resident before he became a police officer, after he came back from college. So always great to see, you know, a number of us that went to Fairfax High School that joined either the fire department, the police department, or other parts of the city.

So we're very fortunate to have great folks who are very committed to the city of Fairfax. On a sad note, Chief Joe Mellander passed away earlier this week. I'm sure my colleagues will join me in wishing the family our sympathies. Chief Mellander's son retired from the police department, another long family history of being involved in public safety. Chief Mellander joined the Fairfax Volunteer Fire Department in 1952 when he was at Fairfax High School. While leaving the Navy, joined the city of Alexandria as a firefighter. But when the city of Fairfax created and decided to have their own fire department, he interviewed and was hired on as the battalion chief, retiring for medical reasons in 1993.

Chief Mellander continued to attend membership meetings of the volunteer fire department right up until the day he died. He was president of the Fairfax Volunteer Fire Department from 2007 to 2015. So he will be missed. He was in our 4th of July parade. And even though he was living in an assisted care facility, was still active and wanted to come in with one of his family members, driving him into the city of Fairfax as often as he could. So he will be a face that we will certainly miss around town. The last item I would like to ask staff to explore during recess, while we've got hopefully a break, is bringing back the use of reverse 911. I know that we have alerts. We have other, you know, capabilities.

We do social media posting. But occasionally, and there's been an occasion or two where we've used reverse 911 to let folks know either about something significant going on, some significant storm going on in the city, a jailbreak, a prisoner escape from the adult detention center. And what happened earlier this week, I think, with the tactical teams and the helicopters looking for a murder suspect would have been one of those times that we could have done a targeted reverse 911 call into Cambridge Station and Mosby Woods to let folks know what was going on. So I would ask without objection that we – it's a technology that's still out there that we look at bringing that back and having some criteria around when it would be used

just to ensure that folks who aren't on social media, you know, don't have a data plan on their cell phone are contacted and they know what's going on. So with that, I want to thank staff for their hard work in getting us up to the summer break. Enjoy the month off. I'm sure the fall will be a busy time. So thank you all very much and enjoy summer. Thank you. Councilmember Lim. No comments, Mayor. Thank you. Councilmember Staley. Thank you, Mayor. Just a quick shout-out to my better half. It's been a pleasure getting to be married to you for 19 years today. I'll be home soon. Thank you. Councilmember Doyle Feingold. Thank you, Mayor. I just want to say thanks to Sarah and Major Grimm for their service to the city.

They'll definitely be missed. Councilmember Bates. Thank you. I just want to add my condolences for the individual that Councilmember Greenfield mentioned has passed. And, you know, I don't know the individual personally, but death is certainly something to always be mourned. And also my thanks and well wishes for Sarah Greer and Deputy Chief Grimm and their retirements. And, you know, Chief Grimm for having put his life on the line for the city over many, many years. And also to add an additional event to the list for August, we have a Cops and Cones event, the Back to School Ice Cream Social, to meet the school resource officers on Friday, August 16th from 430 to 630 at Woody's Ice Cream. So I hope to see some of you there.

Thank you. That's a great reminder, Councilmember Bates, that National Night Out is August the 6th from 6 to 9 all over the city. Yes, yes. We want to get out and meet our law enforcement officers and our first responders. And I wish Sarah Grimm and Dan Grimm all the best in their retirement. They have served the city well. And we should always, you can never say thank you enough for what people have done for this city. I'm going to wish everybody a great break. We're going to be back on September 3rd for a work session. But there will be lots going on in this city in the month of August, even if we're not having meetings. So I hope you at home understand that we are working here every day, even through the summer.

And I expect that it's going to be a tremendous fall. We have a lot to do between now and the end of December with this council. And I hope everybody's pumped up and ready to come back with their best energy and their best ideas in September. So with that, I'm going to adjourn the meeting at 11 p.m. We'll see you next time.