City Council Work Session

Chloe RitterstaffYeah, so this is just a very brief refresher. This project came to you for a public hearing about a year and a half ago, and next week, September 8th, we are bringing a consent agenda item to award the construction contract. So just as a brief background, this project really started back in 2020. It was included as one of the key ideas in the Old Town Fairfax and Northfax small area plans to develop University Drive as a multimodal spine. That at the same time, or sorry, a year later, this project was included in the two-year transportation program. And it was also included in the Bicycle Master Plan, which was adopted at the same time in 2021. And then from there, we proceeded with working on this project.

AlexanderstaffAll right, and that's it for the 7th. Any other questions on that? We'll move to the 10th. Uh, 10th will be a fairly busy meeting. Um, given that, uh, we do not have a meeting on the third. And so, uh, on that, uh, on consent, you'll have resolution to adopt the Wilcoxon trail update, uh, which we have, um, I think presented to you before with an alternate date for the 8th of December, uh, consideration of updates to our financial policies and budget guidelines, uh, introduction of a number of different parts of the code specifically related to taxation and program exemptions for the 10th and then a list of public hearings on a variety of different items the legislative program shared use path small area plans

Thomas PetersonJust one last thing. On November 10, just to clarify item 3, public hearing and council action and potential amendments to the zoning ordinance related to adopted small area plans. I think that was described as essentially some kind of a clean up or some such. Can you just maybe clear that up a little bit further? is this inconsequential in terms of any potential impact that has on the expansion, acceleration, et cetera, of small area plants? Or is this something that does, in fact, have an impact and it's more than just a custodial issue?

Brooke HardenstaffI think the item that had been described as more housekeeping or custodial in nature was related to SB 388, the housing mandate that was adopted by the Virginia General Assembly, removing the noise standards from the zoning ordinance, carports, and other items. There is a separate proposed zoning text amendment related to the small area plans. That's a subject, actually, of a public meeting tomorrow night. I encourage all of our residents to attend if they are able. that would be a separate item.

so the proposed zoning tax amendment related to small area plans, that would put a new zoning district on the books in the city's zoning ordinance. It wouldn't rezone any properties proactively. It would still require a property owner or a developer to go through the request process for a rezoning, but it would put a new zoning district on the books, so to speak.

Thomas Petersonwhat we're willing to in terms of traffic, do we not make the course correction right now to ensure consistency with that? And so I think I raise this as a concern because doing a traffic impact study right now doesn't answer that question. And we could end up just kind of one step at a time getting over our heads here, right? So I'm not sure what the procedure is that perhaps it is revisiting some of the assumptions in these small area plans. This is not the fault of the applicant, but I'm just raising this because the cumulative impact side of this does come back to how we counsel applicants on where the level of tolerance is here for these things. I