City Council Meeting

Catherine ReadGood evening. I would like to call the regular meeting of February 24, 2026 to order. It's great to see everyone here tonight. I love a full house, or mostly a full house. There's nothing like government where everyone participates. If you are able and so choose, please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance.

Speaker 21I 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.

Catherine ReadI would like to ask Sophia Chapin, our Stewardship Coordinator, Urban Forestry Forest Rescues Program Manager, and Fairfax Prism to come down for our National Invasive Species Awareness Week proclamation.

Speaker 21There you are.

Judy Russellpublic commentAll right. Welcome, everyone.

Catherine ReadWhereas, the forests, streams, native plants, and wildlife of the city of Fairfax predate the establishment of our community and continue to be enjoyed for recreation, cultural heritage, human well-being, and economic values. And whereas non-native and harmful species, known as invasive species, were introduced to public and private lands and watersheds over the centuries, both by design and by accident, where they now alter the balance of healthy ecosystems by disrupting food webs, displacing and preying upon desirable indigenous species, reducing biodiversity, and changing nutrient and water cycles. and whereas invasive species are most often spread through the movement of people, vehicles, equipment, and goods

Catherine Readand are becoming increasingly more difficult to prevent and control as a result of global commercialization and human influence. The proliferation of the tree of heaven from China has created a habitat for another invasive species in this country, the spotted lanternfly, which threatens the health of native plants. And whereas the recently updated Urban Forest Master Plan addresses best practices for maintaining a healthy tree canopy in our city, it is incumbent upon all of us to be good stewards of plants wherever they are growing, including on commercial properties, public properties, and in conservation areas. Smartphones provide all of us with a powerful tool to identify, document, and pinpoint the locations of invasive plants

and to assist us in raising awareness to those in a position to address their remediation. And whereas the spread of invasive species can be prevented by becoming more informed about plant species, including asking more questions at plant nurseries and of landscapers about the plants they recommend, it's having the courage to initiate uncomfortable conversations with your neighbors about what you see in their yards that threatens the health of their trees and their plants. in removal efforts, conserving native plant populations and habitats, and choosing non-invasive plants when gardening and landscaping your own yard or commercial property. Now, therefore, I, Catherine S. Reed, Mayor of the City of Fairfax, do hereby proclaim the week of February 23 to 27,

2026 as Invasive Species Awareness Week in the City of Fairfax, and encourage all residents and visitors to become well-informed plant detectives and join in our community-wide endeavor to prevent, detect, and manage invasive species in our city. And with that, I will turn it over to Sophia.

Sophia ChapinstaffPerfect microphone height. Yeah, so this week is Invasive Species Awareness Week in the city, and if you follow us on social media, we'll be sharing a lot of educational information about different invasive plants and how you can get involved. This week kicks off the beginning of our invasive volunteer season, so we will be having volunteer events every couple of weeks throughout May for residents to get involved and learn how to remove invasive plants and help restore habitat in our parks. And on March 14th at the Sherwood Center, we will be having a training for those who want to get more involved or just learn how to manage invasives on their own property. All of those events can be found at fairfaxva.gov slash trees. Scroll down and the

events will be there. And then I would like to pass the microphone off to Katie Johnson of Fairfax Prism, which is a new organization helping to restore habitat and save trees from invasive plants in the city. Thank you.

Speaker 20Thank you, Mayor Reed. Thank you, Sophia. A prism is a community partnership that brings together agencies, nonprofits, and residents to tackle invasive species across our region. Fairfax Prism's mission is to facilitate a community-wide effort by residents and organizations to stem the epidemic of invasive plants and thereby protect promote the growth of the life supporting plants that are native to our ecosystem. Fairfax Prism offers site visits to walk property with community leaders and property owners to help identify invasive plants and formulate both short and long-term plans. Please consider becoming a community representative to help educate your community about identifying and removing invasive plants.

Community reps relay information about invasive plants to their neighborhood and to help coordinate local efforts while receiving training and planning from Fairfax Prism. There is no experience necessary. We are also pleased to have received a $30,000 matching grant from the Virginia Department of Forestry to help communities fund professional invasive removal services. The main goal of these grants is to help jumpstart a long-term invasive plant management plan. We have awarded 17 mini grants, two of which went to City of Fairfax Communities. Fairfax Prism's vision is a region with a tree canopy that is free from the threat of invasive finds, parks whose natural beauty is preserved for all to enjoy, and natural

areas that thrive as functioning ecosystems. We are excited to partner with the City of Fairfax in raising awareness of invasive species, saving our trees and other native plants, and getting invasives under control. You can learn more and to get involved at fairfaxprism.org. Thank you.

Catherine ReadOkay, good. It's a photo then.

Speaker 21Thank you very much.

Catherine ReadAll right. I'm looking for my Fairfax City Restaurant Week Committee. Yes,

Shinneberryclerkit's that time of

Catherine Readthe year. We do this twice a year. Restaurant. It's just continuous revolving. Just eat your way through the city every day. Why do we need a week for that? We should just do it every day. Okay, everybody in? Okay. Dining is an important part of our daily lives, an essential part of gatherings, celebrations, family time, and fellowship, creating special places in our community that become part of the fabric of our city, the establishments where memories get made, conversations are shared, and the staff often get to know us by name. And whereas restaurants are key destinations for visitors, showcasing the rich diversity of our community through the personal journeys of owners who share dishes from their home countries, family traditions,

multi-generational local favorites. And whereas Fairfax City, Virginia has solidified its place as a regional dining destination located at the very epicenter of northern Virginia with a global diversity of food and innovative and exciting approaches to the dining experience. And whereas a collaboration between the Fairfax City Economic Development, the Central Fairfax Chamber of Commerce, and the Old Town Fairfax Business Association has developed a robust program to promote Fairfax City Restaurant Week as a highly anticipated biannual event featuring new restaurants and many established dining destinations. And whereas the businesses participating in Fairfax City Restaurant Week play an essential role in supporting the city's financial health

by collecting and contributing to the city's meals tax revenue, which provides funding for critical public services all residents and visitors. And whereas the 2026 Winter Fairfax City Restaurant Week features 24 of the finest restaurants throughout the city, all offering set price lunches, dinners, two for $10 options, and more, along with programming to entice our residents, visitors, George Mason University and Northern Virginia Community College students, and the business community to try something new and to bring along family and friends. Now therefore I, Catherine S. Reed, Mayor of the City of Fairfax, do hereby proclaim February 27 through March 8, 2026 as Winter Fairfax City Restaurant Week and call upon everyone to visit fairfaxcityrestaurantweek.com

to learn about this exciting economic development initiative that supports our small and independent restaurant community and to visit our partner restaurants during Restaurant Week and beyond to show that support for our culinary community while finding a new favorite meal in Fairfax City along the way. And with that, I will turn it over to Ms. Tara Borway. Thank you.

Tara BorwaystaffHello, everybody. Joking on the way up here, I said we should just make it restaurant year. It does seem like we are doing these proclamations every few months. but I will say that no matter how often it feels that these come around people are super excited every time and that is you know in part mostly part I would say due to our amazing restaurants and the buzz that is generated by our residents and attracting visitors which is one of the goals of the restaurant week so we have our amazing partners here the Central Fair Chamber of Commerce and the Old Town Fairfax Business Association, which really help make this event possible. Coordinating with restaurants isn't the easiest. Because they're busy people and they're, you know,

they're cooking up amazing meals and not necessarily answering emails. But we are very honored to support them and celebrate them one more time. As Mayor Reed said, visit fairfaxcityrestaurantweek.com to see the now 25 businesses that are listed there. We have returning businesses as usual, but we have welcomed several new ones. So you can for sure find something that you have not had before. And I welcome you to share your experience. Tag us at Go Fairfax City and hashtag Fairfax City Eats.

Stacey Hardy-ChandlerOkay, ladies.

Tara BorwaystaffAnybody? I was

Speaker 25just going to say really quick, you know, we've had a lot of really bad weather this year and that does affect the people that come out to Old Town Fairfax and to the city so if you you know have businesses that you love and want to support now is the time to get out there and help support them because a lot of these are very small mom-and-pop places and they really could use your support so it's a good time to do that some really good deals are on there thank you

Jennifer Rosethere's not a microphone that I can't step in front of Jennifer Rose Central Fairfax Chamber and what I love the most about our restaurant scene in the city of Fairfax and Tina hit it nail on the head they're independently owned they're they're small mom-and-pop businesses they're not the big box restaurants that participate in our restaurant week and this horrible weather has not treated our restaurants kindly so get on out there and eat your way around the world you can do that in the city of Fairfax from Azerbaijani food yes I said Azerbaijani food to Vietnamese and everything in between. There is something for you to explore in the city of Fairfax. So please eat with us this year.

Catherine ReadOkay.

Jennifer RoseWe're going to do a picture.

Catherine ReadAnd I would just say that there are some things that are on the Restaurant Week menu that only appear on the Restaurant Week menu. I could say something about the lobster BLT, which I always have at least twice. Well done. Well done. All right. So at this time, I'm going to recognize Mr. Dan Alexander, our city manager, to present the proposed FY27 budget. Traditionally, this is an opportunity for all of us to be presented with the budget. And traditionally, we do not comment or have debate on the budget at this time because the budget adoption will happen on May 5th, and there will be plenty of work sessions and opportunities in the coming months for us here on the dais and for the public to address the budget that is presented here tonight.

Catherine ReadSo this really is your opportunity to hear the city manager present his budget so that we all have time to think about it before moving on to the work sessions that will follow. Mr. Alexander. Good evening, Mayor, members of council,

Daniel Alexanderstaffstaff, and community. I am pleased to present the city manager's proposed fiscal year 2027 budget for the city of Fairfax. This proposal reflects months of analysis, collaboration with staff, engagement with community, and alignment with council's strategic priorities. At its core, this budget is about long-term stability, responsible investment, and preserving Fairfax's financial strength while honoring the commitments we've made to our residents, our schools, and our employees. Before we dive into the details, I want to ground us in what this budget is and what it is not. This budget is a plan and policy tool, a fiscal year financial plan that estimates revenues and expenditures and guides how we allocate resources and deliver services.

It reflects community priorities. It is a strategic plan, not simply a spending mandate. We direct limited resources toward the programs and services residents value most. It is balanced and required by law. Under Virginia Code, the budget must be balanced, revenues must equal expenditures, and we take that responsibility seriously. This budget is guided by our strategic plan. The five goals that you see here, economic development, environmental sustainability, community, transportation, and governance serve as the framework for how we evaluate priorities and allocate resources. Not every line item ties neatly to a single goal, but the overall direction of this proposal reflects the strategic path for our organization.

This is the lens from which we built the FY27 budget. It's important to frame the community feedback we've received. It reinforces the importance of sustaining the excellent core services that we provide. Over 90% of respondents rate Fairfax as an excellent or good place to live and to raise and educate children. Fairfax rated above the U.S. average in 46 of 47 areas. overall city services rates 30% above the U.S. average. Satisfaction with customer service provided by city employees rates 47% above the U.S. average. Those outcomes reflect high performing staff and disciplined investment. This budget is designed to protect that performance. This slide captures the financial policies or the guardrails that shape every recommendation

in this budget. As we said before, we require balanced budgets, revenues meeting or exceeding expenditures. We plan multi-year for capital and utilities. Enterprise and utility funds are designed to be self-supporting over time. We maintain strong reserve, unassigned fund balance at or above 15%, and a budget stabilization fund up to 3%. We manage debt prudently, debt service at or below 14 percent and outstanding debt at or below four percent of assessed valuation. We prioritize diverse and strategic revenue attempting to minimize rate pressure, preserve principle, and support economic development. And we maintain transparency and accountability with independent audits, GFOA recognition, and preservation of our AAA credit rating. These

These policies protect taxpayers and protect service stability. These guidelines translate policy into operational discipline. In FY27 that means strategic revenue use including pursuing grants and strengthening cost recovery where appropriate, operational efficiency through evaluation of programming, staffing and technology for best service delivery, targeted staffing and compensation, emphasizing Predictiveness, parity with local governments, fully funding the ARC to pension plans, capital investment focus, maintaining CIP transfers, and protecting infrastructure, using pay as you go when practical. Flexible budgeting, maintaining reserves for economic uncertainty, and strong financial oversight, following a rating agency and advisors, and maintaining fiscal discipline, again,

consistent with our AAA rating. budget driven by discipline not expansion. This budget has been developed with engagement points and will continue through the council process. We held a budget open house in October of 2025 where we engage residents and business owners directly with staff. We held a budget retreat in November 2025 to review economic conditions, project revenues and expenditures, debt capacity, and initial focus items. Looking ahead, we have six work sessions and four public hearings. And we continue digital engagement through the budget webpage, and we are this year leveraging Engage Fairfax for increased community interaction. This is intended to be a transparent and deliberate process. This slide summarizes the primary drivers of the FY27 budget,

frames what is truly driving the gap. The major drivers are structural. $5 million for the school tuition contract increase between the FY26 adopted budget and this FY27 projection. $3.3 million for planned debt issuance for school renovations, the Willard Sherwood Health and community center, 1.3 million for workforce investment, salary increases and fringe, half a million for one-time expenses offset by 1.3 million net operating and maintenance reductions based on project balances. A key takeaway, if we made no changes in tax rate or revenue and did not reduce non-mandated expenses, those drivers alone would translate to the equivalent of approximately $8.8 million in cost increases and a $0.9.6 real estate tax rate increase.

I'm not recommending that tonight. But it's a central context for why you'll see these measured adjustments as we go through this presentation. Education is our single largest general fund obligation. The slide shows the tuition history and trend line. The key point is that tuition has grown steadily over time, driven by operating realities, compensation, benefits, instructional needs, and inflationary pressures. This is a structural obligation, not a discretionary initiative. Our responsibility is to fully fund the contract while maintaining overall fiscal balance

Jim Gillespiepublic commentfor our city.

Daniel AlexanderstaffThis slide speaks to the drivers behind the tuition request, including ADM trends and operating cost pressures. Average daily membership is moderated compared to previous growth years. However, operating costs continue to rise, largely because education operating budgets are personnel driven, which also include compensation staffing needs, benefits in health care, fixed and inflation sensitive instructional and support costs. Even when enrollment stabilizes, fixed and personnel related costs remain. The tuition request reflects those cost realities and we have built this budget to meet that obligation. Planned debt issuance in fiscal year 27 includes 22 million for school renovations, about 1.7 million in annual payments,

21.56 million for the willard sherwood project about 1.6 million in annual payments these are long-term investments that support education and health community infrastructure they are also commitments we need to plan for deliberately especially as we move into the multi-year school bond program fairfax city mainstay the hot maintains the highest ratings available triple a We have sustained excellence for more than a decade. What this means for taxpayers is straightforward, lower borrowing costs. Based on estimates shown here, maintaining the AAA credit quality can produce approximately $8 to $11 million in interest savings on the upcoming school bond issuance compared to the next rating tier.

That is the dividend of disciplined financial management. This slide shows the composition and growth of the real estate tax base. Our total valuation increased 5.9%. It also shows the mix of property types, both residential and commercial categories. The important point is that a built-out city, valuation growth is essential to sustaining service levels because real estate taxes are the single largest revenue source in the general fund. We also track composition closely because diversification matters stability over time. Total assessed value increased 5.9% for calendar year 26. Our tax base remains approximately 68% residential and 32% commercial. Existing residential values increased 4.6%

while existing commercial increased 0.5%. New construction declined year over year reflecting rather than structural shifts. The key takeaway is that this year's growth is driven primarily by appreciation and existing residential properties, which reinforces the importance of long-term diversification and redevelopment in a largely built-out city. This slide shows the allocation of each dollar across service areas. The key message is that the city's spending is concentrated on core services residents expect every day. Education support, public safety, infrastructure and mobility, and a central city operation. The FY2027 proposal does not shift priorities. It protects core service delivery. The FY27 general fund totals 207.5 million dollars.

This reflects an increase of about 4.5 percent over the FY26 adopted budget. It is important to emphasize, and I'll say it again throughout this presentation, no new FTE propositions are proposed, no reduction in current programs, no new initiatives or This is a stability budget focused on sustaining core operation and meeting commitments. This slide summarizes the service and workforce stability assumptions. Again, we maintain all existing services, no reductions, no new initiatives focused on core operations. Workforce investment includes a 3% general salary adjustment for general employees, for public safety personnel, a 1% COLA for all employees, maintaining current staffing levels. This approach supports retention and competitiveness while holding the line on head count.

The slide highlights the core commitments we plan to fund. We fully fund the school tuition contract at $76.4 million. We plan for debt issuance for the school renovations in Willard-Sherwood, and we incorporate a net operating and maintenance reduction of $1.3 million by using available project balances, an important internal offset that reduces pressure elsewhere in our budget. The theme is to meet commitments first, absorb as much as possible through internal management before asking for additional revenue. This slide is important in terms of being a reminder of the reality of today's labor market. Our workforce seeks a culture of collaboration, modern tools, a strong mission, and a sense

of purpose. The city's investment that we have discussed supports retention, competitiveness, and service continuity. The slide shows what changed from FY 26 to FY 27 on the expenditure side. The main increases that you see here are attributable to school tuition growth, planned debt service costs, and workforce stability investments. Importantly, these are structural obligations, not expansions. We are not growing headcount and we're not adding major new initiatives. service levels and

Jim Gillespiepublic commentmeeting commitments.

Daniel AlexanderstaffThis slide summarizes the tools used to close the earlier FY27 funding gap that I mentioned earlier. First, a 2.5% increase in the real estate tax rate moving from $1.55 to $1.08. Second, a 0.5% increase in the meals tax from 4% to 4.5%. For context, that equates to about 25 cents on a $50 meal. Third, a 6% increase in wastewater rates, which results in an average annual increase of approximately $44.65. Fourth, a 5% increase in the stormwater utility rate, which translates to about $10.19 annually for the average property. And finally, we're utilizing a $5 million in assigned fund balance as part of a balanced approach. Together, these measures close the structural gap created by tuition growth, debt service, and workforce stability while maintaining service levels and protecting our long-term financial position.

This slide shows the FY27 general fund revenue total at $207.5 million, matching expenditures as required by law. The composition underscores why diversification matters. Real estate remains the dominant revenue source. This is a consistent theme I mentioned earlier and a consistent theme for a built-out jurisdiction. Growth and diversification strategies remain essential to long-term stability. This slide highlights the main revenue changes from FY26 to FY27. Key items include $6.9 million in real estate tax revenue, including 4.7 million associated with appreciation. 2.1 million in meals tax revenue, including approximately 1.3 million associated with the proposed rate adjustment. 5 million in assigned fund balance utilization and 1.7 million in school aid.

And it includes two important reference points. One cent on the real estate rate equals approximately $883,929. Half percent on the meals tax equals about $1.25 million. The slide visually shows the revenue delta from FY26 to FY27. The core point is that a significant portion of growth comes from assessment appreciation new performance, not purely from rate changes. This is why tax base growth and economic development remains central to long-term fiscal stewardship. The slide shows the recommended tax rate changes. The current tax rate is $1.55. The proposed increase that by 2.5 cents brings the total to $1.08. Proposing to adjust the meals tax rate, as I mentioned earlier, to 4.5%. All other major tax rates remain the same as you see them listed here.

The equalization rates shown here are technical adjustments that help keep the tax burden balanced between residential and commercial properties when their values change at different rates. In simple terms, a modest real estate adjustment, a meals tax adjustment, and no other change to major tax categories. This slide translates the proposal into the impact for the average residential property. It shows the proportion attributable to natural assessment growth at $335, which is not a change in tax rate, and the portion attributable to the rate change, $182. Total annual increase is shown as 517, which is about $43 a month. This slide shows comparative real estate tax rate among local jurisdictions.

The point is to provide context. As you note at the left end of the chart, Fairfax City remains competitively positioned among Northern Virginia communities. We'll continue to monitor these comparables because we want a rate structure that supports competitiveness while sustaining core services and our capital commitments. The slide provides regional context for meals tax rates. The key policy rationale here is diversification. Meals tax is partly paid by non-residents, people who use city amenities and services while they dine here. Also the last meals tax adjustment in Fairfax occurred in 2004. This provides context for why meals tax is part of the overall balanced strategy. This section shifts from the general fund to other funds that have distinct revenue

and expenditure structures. Each is governed by its own financial model and utility funds in particular must remain self-supporting over time. The Old Town service district rate is maintained at $0.08 per $100 of assessed value. It generates approximately $400,000 annually. Those funds support Old Town investments, such as parking and area enhancements, streetlight conversion projects, and support to the Old Town Fairfax Business Association through our Office of Economic Development. This is a targeted, purpose-driven district that reinvests correctly in Old Town Vitality. The Wastewater Utility Fund supports wastewater collection, treatment, administration, and required capital investments.

Annual expenditures are approximately $19.9 million. This includes treatment of about 1.2 billion gallons of wastewater. water, the city's share of upgrades at the Norman coal wastewater treatment plant, and operational cost debt payments and other capital costs. The recommended rate adjustment is 6%, we're about $44.65 per year on average user as shown. The key driver here is regulatory requirements and long-term system reliability. Deferring these investments increase long-term risks and costs, so this proposal keeps us on a sustainable compliance and infrastructure path. This slide stresses the Transit Fund with a focus on the Zero Fare Program. CUE suspended fares during COVID in March 2020.

Council adopted a four-year zero fare pilot in January of 2022, supported by funding to offset lost fare revenue. Ridership has increased 53% since 2019, the largest increase of transit providers in our region. Zero fare benefits are included here on the slide. We will need to revisit long-term funding sustainability as the current grant support expires. The stormwater utility fund was adopted in December 2021 with fees beginning in July 1st, 2022. The recommended FY27 fee is shown by billing unit. The proposed adjustment is 5%, approximately $10.19 per year for an average property. This fund supports major requirements and projects which are included on this slide. Stormwater is driven by regulatory compliance and long-term climate and infrastructure resilience.

This adjustment supports those obligations. This slide provides the scale of the five-year capital improvement program. The five-year total is approximately $637.3 million. The FY27 appropriation is $83.1 million. There are 84 total projects over the five-year period. A significant portion, $208 million, is associated with school renovations. This is a major investment program aligned with our priorities and voter-approved commitments. This slide summarizes the general fund-supported portion of the CIP. The key message is that the city continues to invest in core infrastructure and asset preservation. streets, facilities, public spaces, and long-term maintenance. These investments reduce long-term costs and protect service reliability.

This slide shows the funding sources supporting the CIP. The core point is diversification. We use a blend of funding sources including bonds, pay-as-you-go transfers, state and federal funds, and utility or dedicated revenues depending on the project type. The slide shows CIP expenditures and includes an important note. In FY27, infrastructure repair and maintenance transition from the CIP into the operating budget. This is a classification and transparency improvement. It reduces the general fund transfer shown in CIP because those projects are now appropriately reflected as operating expenses rather than capital. This investment is still occurring, is reflected differently for accuracy and clarity.

This slide highlights transportation revenue sources and the strength of external participation. Transportation is an area where Fairfax City has been effective in leveraging federal, state and regional dollars. That leverage allows us to deliver projects that would otherwise be beyond local capacity. This slide provides highlights of FY27 capital priorities. It reinforces the alignment to your strategic goals, including educational related investments, transportation connectivity, facilities and community infrastructure, and utility system reliability. This slide summarizes the total recommended FY27 budget across all funds, $302.6 million. It also reiterates the proposed rate changes and utility adjustments that support fund

sustainability. This is the comprehensive municipal financial plan, not just the general fund. This slide outlines policy changes and emerging pressures that could affect the city's financial outlook. They include a potential 1% local sales tax for school construction, transient occupancy tax authority expansion, collective bargaining, national and regional economic conditions, and shifting environmental, social services, and transportation funding landscapes. The takeaway is that our reserve policies and discipline approach are important because the external environment can change quickly. This slide summarizes the overarching message for this fiscal plan. This proposal makes modest competitive adjustment.

It funds critical capital commitments, including schools in Willard-Shirwood. It supports long-term financial stability and reserve policies. It supports employee retention through sustainable workforce investment, and it adds no FTEs while maintaining service levels. This slide lays out the budget timeline. Tonight, of course, is our presentation. As I mentioned earlier, we have work sessions and public hearings through March and April, including a key decision point on March 10th regarding the maximum real estate tax rate to advertise. We move forward to adoption in May along with appropriation resolution and rates and levies. Again, this process is deliberate and provides multiple opportunities for engagement, council

direction and refinement. This is just the beginning. The slide previews the planned work session topics. notably on March 3rd we will hold the joint meeting with the school board will continue general fund discussions review historical real estate tax trends and discuss setting the maximum real estate tax rate to advertise on March 10th we will focus on meals tax proposal and continue our general fund questions on March 24th we will review the CIP and the stormwater utility fund and water fund on April 7th we reserve time for additional general fund discussion if needed on April 14th we'll discuss any council identified topics and on April 28th we'll hold the final work session present draft changes and deliberate prior to adoption the schedule provides multiple

opportunities for detailed review again refinement and council direction before you take final action Reminder that the proposed budget is available via open book. It is interactive and searchable, providing easy public access at any time through the city's website. It aligns with GFOA budget standards and again, we are leveraging Engage Fairfax for increased community interaction. This supports transparency and builds community trust. So I want to close by thanking our employees who deliver exceptional services every day, some of whom are in the room here with us tonight, and of course the team that produced this budget. Special thanks to our budget director, Gwen Riddle, budget management analyst, Jess Imes,

our Assistant City Manager and CFO, J.C. Martinez, and the Budget Action Team members listed on this slide here. Mayor and members of council, this budget maintains our commitment to sound financial management while sustaining service excellence and advancing critical capital investments. We look forward to working together with you through the upcoming engagement sessions and hearings.

Catherine ReadThank you very much. Thank you very much. And again, reiterating that there are work sessions, public hearings, and all of this information is available to the public on our website. And we look forward to having robust civic participation in this process. We will now go on to agenda adoption. Is there a motion to approve the agenda? I move to adopt the agenda as presented. Is there a second? Second. The motion has been made and seconded a roll call vote.

ShinneberryclerkCouncil Member Amos? Aye. Council Member Hall? Aye. Council Member Hardy Chandler? Aye. Council Member Peterson? Aye. Council Member Bates? Aye. Council Member McQuillan? Aye. Motion passed unanimously. We'll go to initial general public comment. I had seven people sign up by 5 o'clock p.m. today. If there's anybody in the room that would want to speak, we'll have another opportunity under agenda item number 9. So I will call the first speaker up, which is Barbara Smith.

Barbara Smithpublic commentGood evening, and thank you for allowing me to address you today. My name is Barbara Smith, and I live less than three miles from here, just across the border to Fairfax County. But I'm here tonight as the chair of the Fairfax City Young at Heart Senior Advisory Council, and I'd like to share our thoughts and reasonings with you on our support of the Willard Sherwood Health and Community Center project, specifically as it relates to the senior membership at the current Green Acres facility. I would be remiss if I didn't share how grateful most of us are with the Wayfair Fick City and the City of Parks and Recreation Department leadership for the continued support of our membership. We have an extremely diverse and vibrant community of senior adults, and we appreciate the programs offered by the city that offers us the opportunity to learn, grow, socialize, and play.

From physical activities to lunchtime learnings to a space to play cards and board games to take and organize senior trips, hundreds of city and county members of the 55-plus age community gather to enrich ourselves mentally, physically, spiritually, and culturally. There are many reasons, however, that drive our desire for a change, which I will address. We currently meet in a building that's older than most of us seniors. If Green Acres was a person, it would be eligible to receive Social Security this year and would be required to sign up for Medicare this summer. The gym that we currently play cornhole and pickleball in leaks when it rains, drips water when the roof snow melts, and randomly drops condensation from the HVA system in the summer.

As older adults, we're aware that we should limit our opportunities to break our increasingly fragile bones, so we have mops and paper towels by just to make sure that we don't fall. As Green Nature was originally in elementary school, our restroom facilities are designed for humans that are much smaller than us. An example is that there's only one adult-sized sink in each of the restrooms, and my understanding is that the urinal is about knee-high to most adults. Public transit is also an issue. Several times per month, Green Acres typically runs out of parking spaces, and this is primarily due to well-attended events, preschool and day school take care activities, and George Mason University students using the restricted areas.

Additionally, there are no bus lines that service the Green Acres facility, and people have to take the bus to George Mason from QBus and then traipse through the woods to come to Green Acres. At seniors age, some lose their private transportation options and rely more on public options. The proposed Willard Sherwood Community Center is located on a bus line and is also in walking distance from several neighborhoods. Fifty-five-year-plus old adults, including Fairfax County seniors, spend their hard-earned dollars in the local economy. If a senior center is more centrally located in a Fairfax city, we'd have much more time to frequent restaurants, shops, and grocery stores on our way to and from our activities at the senior center,

and that would contribute more money to the city economy. The option of delay and approval of the Willard-Sharewood project would definitely impact those of our members who would be aging out of attending senior activities in the next four to six years. Renovations and or demolishing and rebuilding of the Green Acres facility would cause long-term closures of facilities, denying seniors from participating in events that in some cases are highlights of their day, their week, their month, or their year. In conclusion, we urge the City Council to vote yes on going forward with the Willard-Sharewood Community Center, and we thank you for providing me an opportunity to profess our view. Thank you.

Our next

Shinneberryclerkspeaker is Mike Fabio.

Michael Fabiopublic commentThat's a tough act to follow, but Michael Fabio, Chain Bridge Road. I'm here to gain your support for the Willard Sherwood Center. Two weeks ago we heard an excellent, informative, and comprehensive presentation from the Willard Sherwood team. Council asked many questions and the team had the answers. Here are my takeaways. One, the county is getting is gifting us land, an expensive commodity rent free. This saves taxpayer dollars. Two, this allows us to keep the Green Acres property and continue to enjoy the ball fields and green space. Building a new structure there would cannibalize some of those areas. Three, it's shovel ready. Construction could start in a few months. Renovation or building a new structure on green acres site might not occur for years as we wait

for plans, public input, council approval and bidding. Four, there would be no downtime of the activities provided by green acres. Once the willowd Sherwood is complete, green acres moves in. Reconstructing green acres would take activities offline for many months. Five, the planning commission emphasized three city projects that are urgent. The property yard, firehouse, and Willard Sherwood. The first two are not ready to go. Willard Sherwood is. Delaying this construction would undoubtedly end up costing the city more as inflation raises the price. The city has already paid $4 million for the plans that would be lost. The price can't go up. It's guaranteed and might be negotiated downward.

forward, that process is occurring as we speak. The estimated burden to taxpayers could be relieved if the city is able to build up its commercial tax base. Having a welcoming community center will bring more people to the city to support city businesses. As existing and new businesses thrive, they will pay a greater share of our taxes. Conversely, if business fails, we will pay more taxes. 10. Finally, we found out that there will be no risk to the public from infected patients since those patients with acute infections have never been accepted. Now, most citizens do not follow city council and have no idea that there is a Willard Sherwood project. Of those who provide positive public input, I'm sure less than half are aware that this project is in danger of being voted down

by council. It might be a good idea if those of you on council that do not support this project could air your concerns from the dais so that they would have more time and allow for more public feedback. This project merits such a healthy discussion before it is shelved. Thank you.

ShinneberryclerkOur next speaker is Jim Gillespie.

Jim Gillespiepublic commentGood evening, Mayor Reed, members of council. I'm Jim Gillespie. I live at 3604 Colony Road here in the city of Fairfax. If you'll permit me a brief personal background on this to begin with, The Willard Center was built in 1954. I was built in 1957. I think we both could use some renovation. In 1979 I visited the Willard Center for the first time. I was a brand new Fairfax County employee and going for my pre-employment physical which had nothing to do with the job qualifications. it was to tell whether I was healthy enough to go on the county's health insurance. I'm sure glad times have changed. This project makes best use of a valuable piece of public property that sits in a central location in our city,

accessible by the Q bus and Metro bus and a soon-to-be revitalized Blenheim Boulevard. The Willard Sherwood Community Center offers something for everyone. Child care services for working families, Center for Seniors, Recreational Services for Everyone, and Health Services for Everyone. Up until 2007, our city police department was housed in a former elementary school, John C. Wood, built in 1964. Today, few would question the wisdom of having replaced that building with a state-of-the-art public safety facility. Green Acres was built in 1961, and after 39 years as a school, has served as a community and senior center since 2000. I won't say anything bad about Green Acres and the other buildings that have served our city since its founding and before,

but it is time to invest in the infrastructure that will serve our residents through the 21st century. Thank you.

ShinneberryclerkOur next speaker is Janice Miller.

Janice Millerpublic commentGood evening, Mayor Reed, members of council. My name is Janice Miller, and I am here to share why I support Willard Sherwood. First, thank you for scheduling the February 10th work session to review and update yourselves in the community about Willard Sherwood. The staff and your consultant provided a thoughtful, comprehensive report. We all needed to be reminded why this proposed joint project with Fairfax County should be approved. As we know, this project aligns a longstanding city goal for a comprehensive community center. This development has community support as well as support from multiple boards and commissions, including the city school board, the planning commission, parks and recreation advisory board.

The Comprehensive Plan and Capital Improvement Plan have included this project for years. Please consider the overall project as well as key reasons to support authorizing the bonds in April. Tonight I will focus on one of the many positives of the proposed center. Let's look at the environmental aspects included in the facility. Willard-Sherwood, once built, will be the city's first green building. And this is another goal advocated by community members. Included are the following environmental features. LEED gold certification, rooftop solar panels, indoor water reduction features, LED lighting, light pollution remediation, a high-performance building envelope to retain heating and cooling, exterior tree canopies to improve shade,

vertical sunshade fins to reduce heat gain and interior glare, all electrical building systems, electrical vehicles, charging stations, natural light throughout the building, stormwater control improvements for both quality and quantity, use of native plant materials in the landscaping plan. We all know green buildings are more expensive to construct, but green buildings also offer more efficiency energy usage, provide relief with annual cost. How to reduce operating costs is a legitimate concern and a green building will assist you in doing that. A planned community center is expensive and you can treat it as an unnecessary frill or you can look at this project as an investment in the future of our community. I applaud that you are looking at ways to lower annual

operating costs and investigating recovery revenues. That is part of your responsibilities as elected officials. Please continue this review and please vote to continue the partnership with Fairfax County and please authorize the bonds in April. Thank you for your time and service. Being the mayor and a council member is a tough job. It's always been a tough job. I speak from experience when I say the job is especially rewarding long-time goals and when a project is completed. There's nothing like having your name on a plaque. I appreciate your attention tonight and I wish you well in your deliberations. Our community is counting on you. Please vote for Willard Sherwood. Good night.

ShinneberryclerkOur next speaker is Judith Russell.

Judy Russellpublic commentGood evening. My name is Judy Russell. I live at Providence Square on Sager Avenue. I moved to Fairfax City last August, and I've been attending city council and other meetings to learn about local government, and in particular, initiatives that the city council is considering. At the last city council meeting, I listened with interest to the public comments and discussion among the council members about the Willard-Sherwood project, and I've taken time since then to learn even more about it. I'm impressed by the time and effort that's gone into the planning for this facility and the range of services that it will provide. The site seems well-suited for its intended uses and convenient for many of the people who will benefit from the services it will provide.

The partnership between Fairfax City and Fairfax County makes the land available, ensuring both a great location and a more affordable project. This project will provide an important community infrastructure that will benefit both current and future residents. Delaying the project will increase the costs and defer delivery of essential services that our residents need and want now. Having this project approved and moving forward will add additional incentives for people who are considering coming to live here. It's a wise investment even in this time of tight budgets. I hope the council will approve moving forward with the Willard Sherwood project to bring this facility and its services to our residents.

providing me with this opportunity to speak with you

Shinneberryclerkour next speaker is charles paisley

Charles Paisleypublic commentgood evening mayor and city council my name is charles paisley i live at 10916 woodhaven drive citizen of Fairfax City for approximately 25 years and I've been with the Green Acres for approximately eight years. Originally when I heard about this years ago I thought it was just another pie in the sky project. Since then I've been to a lot of presentations and had many discussions. I've learned a lot of things. I came back to halfway now. So what I did was I broke it down the old-fashioned way. The Benjamin Franklin clothes where you draw a line down the middle of a piece of paper and you put the pros on one side and the cons on the other. All the things against it were no parking at Green Acres.

There's limited access when you have cars parked on both sides. If you have an emergency and need a fire truck or an ambulance down there. and the shape of the actual infrastructure of the building itself, no hot water, outdated bathrooms, leaks in the ceiling where instead of getting it fixed, it's easier to put a piece of tape on the floor in the gymnasium. That's where it drips. On the con side, or the pro side, against it, everything seemed to run around money. It was going to cost too much, et cetera, and things like that. So I took the information from the presentation that this council had on the 10th, looked up the numbers. The city's share of building this new building is approximately $54.9 million.

The projected cost to tear down the green acres and rebuild it is $55.6 million, which is $7,000 more than the cost of the new building. And to repair it costs $58.5 million, which is almost, well, it's actually over $3.5 million more than building a brand new building. I hope that you all can just step back and be objective like I did, go back over the things and look at it. and come to a good decision. This city needs a building like that. The seniors definitely need a building like that. And it would be a great asset for the city. Thank you.

ShinneberryclerkOur last speaker for this item is Carolyn Pitches.

Carolyn Pitchespublic commentGood evening, Mayor Reed and members of council. My name is Carolyn Pitches and I am chair of the I'm here on behalf of our school board. We want to express our support of the Willard Sherwood Community Center project. For our schools, this center represents far more than just a building or a project. It represents direct, meaningful support for our students and their families. The services planned for the center, including child care, early childhood programming, dental and health services, speech and hearing services, and much more, learning. When students have access to preventive care and health services and educational programming and childcare close to home, they are more likely to attend school consistently,

Jennifer Rosestay focused and fully

Carolyn Pitchespublic commentengaged in their education. Equally important is the recreational programming the center will provide. Safe, structured recreational opportunities give students positive of outlets after school and during the summer. They promote physical and mental wellness and strengthen peer and family relationships. These programs support the whole child and complement the work happening inside our classrooms every day. Accessibility is also key. The center's location along the queue bus line and within walking distance of two of our four schools ensures that families without reliable transportation can still access these programs. When services are reachable, they are usable. And that makes a tangible difference for many of our families.

This project also reflects the longstanding partnership between the City of Fairfax and Fairfax County as well as our broader collaboration with Fairfax County public schools. These intergovernmental relationships are essential and canceling this project could have serious implications for our working relationship with Fairfax County. Stability, trust, and follow through on shared commitments are critical to maintaining strong regional partnerships and benefit students. After more than a decade of planning and significant financial investment from both jurisdictions, moving forward demonstrates consistency, reliability, and a shared commitment to our community's future. This is an investment in student well-being, family support, and community vitality.

Thank you for your time and your consideration.

ShinneberryclerkWe don't have anything for consent agenda tonight, so we can move forward to appointments to boards, commissions, and advisory committees.

Catherine ReadWonderful. Is there a motion to approve the appointments to boards, commissions, and advisory committees? Councilmember Hardy Chandler. I move

Stacey Hardy-Chandlerto appoint the following applicants. Appoint James Feather as the Planning Commission representative extending through December 31st, 2026 to the Board of Architecture Review. Planning Commission, appoint Nick Tricarchi for a remainder of a four-year term extending through February 11th, 2028.

Catherine ReadIs there a second? Second. The motion has been made and seconded a roll call vote.

ShinneberryclerkCouncil Member Amos? Aye. Council Member Hall? Aye. Council Member Hardy-Chandler? Aye. Council Member Peterson? Aye. Council Member Bates? Aye. Council Member McQuillan? Aye. Motion passed unanimously. We do not have any public hearing items, so we will go towards the second general public comment. Is there anybody in the room that would like to speak on any general public comment?

Catherine ReadNo. Well, that is just wonderful. So I will now recess the regular meeting to go into a work session. We will take a five-minute recess as we go into the work session room next door.

Speaker 21I'm sorry. Thank you. ¶¶ guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Catherine ReadThank you. And welcome to our work session. Ms. Shinneberry?

ShinneberryclerkOur first item is a presentation by Police and Human Services on a coordinated community response. I'm going to recognize Chief Pedroso to provide the staff presentation.

Raul PedrosostaffGood evening, Mayor, Council members, Mr. City Manager. Back in October, back in October, Council tasked us with a couple of items to look into Police Department working with Human Services. Today we come to you with our recommendations, the actions that we've had already underway put into action and those that we're looking to go forward with as we work together to address the items that we were asked to research and prepare. So I'd like to read the two objectives that were presented to us. One is to explore how the city's police department and city human services and housing divisions might partner to instill stronger preventative measures for citizens who may be particularly at risk of committing crimes and to to provide City Council a recommendation on

how to close capacity gaps within the department that's the city's police department for the collection analysis and reporting of crimes and safety risk information for the city to support ongoing monitoring and evaluation and this includes but is not limited to firearm issues at city events so before we get started with the presentation I'd like to formally introduce myself Raul Rosso, Chief of Police, Ms. Leslie Abashian, our Human Services Director, Ms. Jamie Ergas from our Housing and Development Unit, our Deputy Chief of Police, Ms. Natalie Hinesley, and our Police Captain in Charge of Community Services, Mr. Andrew Hawkins. Together the first thing that we did as a group, and this started back in October, is

who are the people that we feel are best in need of our collaborative and organized effort to help prevent the potential of them being involved in crime. We had a lot of conversation about this. We looked at our data. We talked about what our real-world experiences were with our respective agencies, and we identified three groups. One, the unhoused. Two, our youth. And three, repeat offenders and repeat victims, people that find themselves continually in contact with police for whatever reason, whether it's committing crime or being the victim of crime. And I'll hand it over to Ms. Sebastian to talk a little bit further about these groups.

Lesley AbashianstaffOkay, thank you. You see here this wheel, it's a risk factors. And what it shows you is that cause of crime is multifaceted, and so it needs a multi-agency approach, and there's no single factor that leads to criminal behavior. And this is like a public health approach to looking at crime. However, the more risk factors present in somebody's life, the greater the risk of becoming criminally involved because of an individual's increased vulnerability. And I want to point out that, you know, it's not uncommon for adults presenting with multiple risk factors childhood trauma that they carry with them. And protective factors developed in childhood like pro-social relationships, caregiver availability, engagement, basic needs met, etc. carry into

adulthood. So, you know, when we're talking about the youth, you know, we're hoping we help them get protective factors when they carry into adulthood. And the bottom line with this is about a prevention I think sometimes folks try to simplify criminal behavior, but it's not. It really is complex. And a lot of it goes back to some psychosocial issues or deficits and their basic needs or things that are impacting their ability to engage in the community. all right so y'all have heard this a couple times about the general services agreement but one of the things i wanted to to note about the general services agreement it gives um human gives residents access to human services supports and services focused on treating disrupting and

or minimizing risk factors that impact individual connectiveness connectiveness and positive interface with the community. So really what we're trying to do is make every person that lives in our community be able to be connected and feel like they're a part of the community. Services include behavioral health, public assistance, employment, child and adult protective services, and basic needs assistance along with the homelessness continuum. And just to note, you know sometimes an individual engaging in process engaging in services is a process because oftentimes people with multiple risk factors haven't always had the the greatest interaction with local government or treatment and so they're distrustful so one of the things that

you know that's important is building that relationship and again making them feel connected in the community so they're open to the service and support they need. But it is a process. I think sometimes folks get frustrated because they'll go, well, this person needs this. Why aren't they doing it right now? And, you know, people get to make personal choices to be involved in services. So it takes some time, you know, sometimes for us to pull them in. And this is, again, the reason why it's really important for us to engage in preventive activities. with youth as they're younger because the quicker you can engage and impact the risk factors the better their outcome is so

Jamie Ergasstaffby voiceas Leslie mentioned the range of social services that are provided in partnership with Fairfax County are essential to addressing many of the risk factors that were highlighted and we would of course be overlooking an important part of the picture if we didn't emphasize the critical support provided by our nonprofit partners and faith community. These organizations are often the first point of contact for residents that are facing hardship, providing immediate relief, building relationships to help stabilize individuals and families before challenges escalate deeper into crisis. Additionally, there are several affordable housing initiatives currently underway led by some of these same nonprofit providers and faith

communities within the city. Stable, permanent, and affordable housing is fundamental to everyone's term success. Some of the same providers working to address housing instability and developing housing affordable housing solutions are also helping to meet the day-to-day needs of the unhoused residents. I'll now turn it back over to the police department as we continue to highlight additional prevention strategies as well as examples of how we are partnering.

Raul PedrosostaffSo one of the biggest things that we have done as a result of this conversation is how do we better coordinate? Why do we want to coordinate? We want to align our actions. We want to align everything that we do and how we communicate about it to make sure that we're all working towards that common goal. Because ultimately, all of us here before you and all the people that we represent, we're looking to make a difference. we're looking to make an impact, a positive one. So this coordinator approach, what you see before you on this slide, and we're going to go into more detail now, talks about three different areas. One is youth outreach, how we connect with our young folks, community engagement, all

the people that we have an opportunity to make an impact, make a difference, and community response. what are we doing when we identify these issues or we identify people that would benefit from that interaction, some intervention and some guidance. How do we get it to them? And then how do we all communicate together and make sure that we're continuing to report, to monitor and to assess everything that we're doing to make sure that we are on track to make an impact and have a positive change? The first area is youth outreach. There's no better opportunity to make a difference than with our youth. The younger you can connect with somebody with a child and help shape that child as far as positivity, positive mentorship,

opportunities, programs, groups where we come together and we build trust and have those relationships, those are relationships that last a lifetime. For young people that get off on the wrong path, and I don't need to tell anybody here about this, Missing those milestones and being off trajectory has such a negative consequence for that person as they not only are a child and grow into adolescence and then become adults, and everyone that they come into contact with also potentially faces harm, faces some type of negative influence and falling into the criminal justice system. So when a police department and human services can provide that mentorship, our school resource officers, that connection, that building trust, providing that safety.

How do we do that? We do it through programming. Right now, we have our school resource officers. There's a limit to what that is, but we don't have to look far from where we are to find other police departments and other human services groups that are providing police explorer programs, that are providing leadership and mentorship, formalized, where you're working with the schools in partnership, identifying who would most benefit from these relationships, this outreach, and this connection. You build that relationship. You help shape their judgment as to identifying right from wrong. And then that just flourishes. And now that child is on a track and on a path to succeed and avoid those negative consequences and those poor decisions.

Speaker 19Good evening. Good evening. I'm going to talk briefly about the history of our community engagement going back about a year or two, and then I'm going to turn it over to Captain Hawkins to talk about a project and a pilot that we're doing currently. Really, our community engagement side of this and the coordination piece began probably really enhancing, I would say, in the 2022 to 23, especially in the 2024 timeframe. frame. In 2023, we started noticing a pretty significant uptick in citizen complaints, business complaints, things that were becoming kind of a community nuisance per se in our higher crime areas of the city like Fairfax Circle, some of the old town areas. And we started taking a look at how we can dedicate resources to those areas to be more preventative

and reduce the citizen complaints, you know, not just be responsive to these issues. One we did at the end of 2023 was a crime reduction project at Fairfax Circle where we dedicated pretty much all hands on deck, all resources, even detectives, motor officers, people walking the trails, pretty much for 90 days, you know, focused on the circle just to see what that sort of dedicated targeted approach could look like for one area. It was very successful Within the first 30 days, we saw about a 12% reduction in crime, and then leading into the 90 days, it was over 30%. And it was only in a specific area of what we were tracking. Like I said, those crimes like trespassing, disorderly, the repeat calls that we were getting from the business owners, people who were patrons in those areas.

So in realizing how successful it was but that it wasn't necessarily sustainable at a patrol level or having our detectives go out and do that, in May the following year of 2024 we brought on MPO Klein as our community engagement officer. He's dedicated to Fairfax Circle at this point and we've seen not only a crime reduction there in those types of calls for service but also just increased I would say satisfaction from the business owners, businesses at the circle like the Lamb Center. Really it's I'll let Captain Hawkins get into the positivity of what that has brought. But our engagement really, I would say, started then with finding out how we can focus and be more preventative than just responsive to

these issues. In addition to bringing on this program, we also coordinated very closely, not just with human services, but entities like our legal team, our city prosecutor. We updated the loitering ordinance to make it more clear, really not just for the police department to enforce but for business owners to understand for the public to understand so that that was very helpful we also worked with our city prosecutor to identify repeat offenders who had committed you know X amount of crimes in one month and whether they were getting in and out of jail frequently and and we really worked closely with her to try to reduce the impact of that and have her go to the arraignments things that we had not really been looking at as closely

in the past but something that we started coordinating much more closely in the Additionally, we worked with the business owners at the circle. Another example of really outside coordination, we worked with them to assess their properties, figure out how they can do things on their own to kind of reduce the impacts of some of the crimes that they were seeing, whether it's signage of no trespassing being more clear, just really things to make it easier on them to have these items and areas of complaints be more clear to the public for us to deal with when we have to. Before getting into the expansion of the pilot, we did look at, we piloted a private security initiative that was in the center of town. We really, we

didn't see, I would say, as many benefits to that as we saw to having the sworn police officers in one area. They were a reporting tool, really, but we did not continue that just based on the cost effectiveness and the results that we really didn't see as far as the positive results that we saw at the circle. So that was just in the center of town, but the expansion of the pilot is really going to go into moving those areas from outside of the circle to other areas of the city. Captain Hawkins will touch on those.

Andrew HawkinsstaffSo as Chief Honsley mentioned, we did do a pilot with a security company in the center of town a few years ago. When that ended, Officer Klein not only in the circle area, but he also went to the center of town in the downtown area. He was or has been very, very influential in both areas, but he's one person. So to expand our, well, let me back up for just a second. I had an opportunity to do a couple ride-alongs with Officer Klein. And one was the Lamb Center and his relationships with people down there that he's established over the period of time that he's been working there is really amazing. People come up to him all the time shaking his hand and he was even invited to a Christmas gala that was held for the Lamb Center

and people really acknowledged all the hard work that he had done, guests from the Lamb Center, and stuff. So I really got an opportunity to see the positive work that he had been doing in that area. So in speaking with Chief Pedroso and Chief Hinsley, we just recently started a pilot program to have two officers. Two officers doing this work, not only in the areas of Fairfax Circle and the downtown, but there's other areas of the city that could benefit from this work as well. So we're expanding our footprint, if you will, to get into neighborhoods and talking with neighborhoods and other businesses such as Fair City Mall. And we are going to run this pilot through June 1st, but the goal here is not only to create relationships with businesses, with people

who may be repeat victims or repeat offenders, but really understand, well, why do we keep coming into contact with you for whatever the issue is? And get at the root cause of that. These officers will talk with the community response team quite often, and they're a direct line to really connect people that repeat offenders, repeat victims, with services that may be identified rather than having to just go to jail or have the traditional police response where a patrol officer comes. And it's more reactionary than proactive approach. So these models with the co-responder team and the proactive approach is really, there's a lot of evidence and research that's done IACP, International Association of Chiefs of Police, and the Police Executive Research Forum have done studies where these approaches, these proactive approaches really work and are beneficial in communities.

Lesley AbashianstaffOkay, the community response team is truly a collaboration between fire, police, and human services. And we started it in 2023 in response, partly in response to the Marcus Alert legislation and also 988, which is a dedicated behavioral health crisis line. And what they were trying to do is they were trying to not only have a common language across the different departments that interface with people that are in crisis, they were also trying to push the public departments to create a better crisis continuum. and that crisis continuum continues to get built out but I think that one of the things you would say about 988 now instead of having a call everybody knows 9-1-1 right but 988 as it's grown and developed

I mean people can call there not just because they're in a payable health crisis but just because they're having a bad day and talk to a licensed person and get triaged, have a conversation. Sometimes 988 will call our community response or call the 911 if they feel like somebody needs to go out and see them. So it really has made a difference with behavioral health crisis. And one of the things that we do with the crisis team, we have a licensed clinical. I was going to say a licensed clinical social worker, that's me a licensed clinician we have a community paramedic and we have a CIT trained officer and they do real time intervention but they also do targeted outreach and when there's a crisis event, when you're having your

worst day and you're having a behavioral health crisis, to have a team come out that's trained to respond to you in that event It can be destable. I mean, it can help that person feel more in control, but it also allows our team to say, what do you need and what are your risk factors? So they can triage people to where are they needed in the service delivery system, or they can just help them have a safety plan or do some planning around how they're going to be safe in the community. The targeted outreach is really an opportunity to address risk factors. We kind of did a hybrid model in the city, put these two together, but the targeted outreach really looks at 911 high utilizers and other vulnerable community members,

and it gives us an opportunity to, when they're having decreased impairment in daily living or having basic needs, struggles, or things that could create their interface with either the criminal system or, you know, higher levels of care, it allows the team to build a relationship with them and figure out, you know, what's going on, but also hook them with services and supports they need before they end up having more formal needs like hospitalization, police intervention, you know, some of those things that we really want to prevent that. And it's not meant to, you know, and I've probably said this to you guys before, it's not meant to substitute what we already get from Fairfax County and the Community Service

board but it works in concert with that um with that system and you know one of the things that CERT can do that sometimes like a mobile crisis or something they have time to build a relationship so sometimes with these targeted outreach cases where you know they they get to know them over multiple visits you know because you know sometimes when you're in a you're struggling either psychosocially or behavior health way, you're not really feeling like wanting to connect with people, right? You're kind of stuck in the crisis piece or the pre-crisis piece. And I think that with the target outreach, they build a relationship and then they do the triage and they connect them to the services they need.

We've had some really good experiences with that, but it takes time because in the end, adults get to make decisions if they're going to be engaged or not. and it you know sometimes moving that barrier of mistrust makes all the difference in the world so you know i think that um one of the things i was hearing like all of us we're talking about relationships right we're talking about people being connected to the community feeling feel like they have relationships and community and that they're um valued they're you know able to be connected because I think in the end not anybody not if people don't go away can I be you know unhoused today or can I have a behavioral health crisis you know people those things happen over time and sometimes they're outside their

control and so when we can make people you know preventatively build relationships build connections get services earlier then it really does impact down the line when it comes to criminal behavior

Raul PedrosostaffSo what we've spoken about so far is how do the things that we do in the police department and the services and the things that are done by human services and housing as well as our outside partners, our nonprofits, how does that all come together and not just focus on addressing things once the problem has presented, but how do we identify things and invest in these different groups as early as possible using the data which we'll talk about shortly and the different information that we're getting from all the people that are out in the field actually in contact with different individuals different ages different life factors how does that all come together in advance of a situation presenting and then what do we do

afterwards so i'm going to turn it over to our city manager to talk about the community safety spectrum.

Daniel AlexanderstaffThanks, Chief. So when we talked a little bit about what we're doing in the city, it really fit well into the context of emerging models around community safety and a broader look at community safety. What you see here on the screen is a very linear spectrum approach to community safety that encompasses a lot of what we're doing and some things that we are doing, but we're probably not intentional about from framing it within the model, right? And so what what this is really predicated on is a couple of emerging issues that we've seen over the last decade or two One being active violence school shootings a pathway to violence which starts typically with some form of grievance and works its way up

There's a continuum that exists there. It's also predicated on systems like the Marine Corps left a bang concept And in that concept at some point they identified that they wanted to find ways not to walk into improvised explosive devices and ambushes And so what they started to do was they started to look at what's happening left of bang and Looking at what the factors were that got to where they are now from a trauma-informed perspective We don't necessarily want to keep reemphasizing left of bang, but it's certainly impactful in terms of thinking About what we're doing ahead of problems and those problems aren't just police problems They affect every aspect of of what a trauma event could mean as you look at the spectrum that that

in the middle would be your bang. It would be any negative thing that happens within your community. It could be a fire. It could be a crash. It could be a suicide. It could be an overdose. It could be a variety of things that aren't necessarily stuff that these folks go to, but we all are impacted by in some way. The left side of it speaks to what we're doing ahead, not handling the damage, but being proactive and trying to avoid the problems that are presenting in community. Resilience capacity and and what we're doing in terms of economic development economic development has a role in in this process right youth development emergency preparedness food security housing these are all things that build resilience in

community you don't get to risk if you build resilience and oftentimes what we're talking about here is risk we're at the risk point right and so risk is still important in terms of what we do around behavioral threat assessment looking at environmental risk reduction crime mapping predictive policing Those are all in the risk category. And then we get to having to respond. All right, and so once that trauma event occurs, we're in response. There's traditional response, and there's a lot of the really good things that we're doing here in community around co-response, but also involves hospital-based trauma intervention, the multidisciplinary co-response that we're talking about, and then we're looking at recovery pieces,

which at some point we hope get people back to resilience. I would argue that we're all somewhere on this continuum as it relates to our own personal experience and as a community as we think about community safety. Some of us are trying to eat better, do what we need to do to build resilience. Some of us might be at risk on a personal level. This is very much a public health approach to looking at community safety, a much broader look at community safety. Much of what we're doing right now and some other things that we can think about on scale, unreasonable scale for city that we could be doing to build resilience, avoid risk, respond effectively, and then reintegrate folks back in. People that are coming out of institutionalization, it's not just jail,

it's mental health, it's hospitals. We want to get them back to risk, right? And as much as this is very linear, this is also an ecosystem. So we wanted to frame that just so you all were thinking about it in broader terms. And as you go on to the next slide, There are really three key components of looking at You know an effective ecosystem you want it to be evidence-driven And you want it to be ecosystem coordinated those are two key pieces of what we do with the type of work That is much broader in scale And so what this lays out for you is how a system typically is coordinated between nonprofits education government public safety all the elements and people that are at the table. We've got good people at the table here.

There are a lot of people missing at the table here when it comes to being effective around community safety and doing this in a much broader way in terms of building each part of this. There are things developing like community opportunity index that looks at social determinants of health, that looks at census data, that looks at calls for service both on the police and fire side that start to give us a picture of the resilience and potential risks that exist within a particular area. And then there's the case management piece, which means that if Dan needs help, everyone's got a view on what Dan really needs beyond just maybe a criminal problem, a substance abuse problem, a mental health problem,

a food insecurity problem. And so it really takes a combined approach and systems that support data systems that support that ecosystem coordination. And so this is largely where this field is going, safety. We saw a lot of this develop out of violence prevention, but very much is shifting to all hazards, right? Not just, you know, showing up with a badge and a gun, but showing up with, you know, an ambulance. And the goal behind this largely is to keep people out of the back of police cars and out of the back of ambulances, and largely building resilience and dealing with the risk in community. So I think it was important to kind of frame this for you to see, you know how the fields emerging big credit to our team they're doing a lot of this

much of it is focused on the center of it in terms of dealing with risk and responding but certainly you know we need to make investments outside of that part of the spectrum in order to build a much more cohesive and stronger ecosystem so I'll turn it back over

Raul Pedrosostaffthank you so now we come to the data piece, all of this effort and all of this work can be really wasteful and not effective if we're looking in the wrong places, if we're basing our decisions on bad information. And so that's something that we put a lot of effort into over the last months, or the last few months, identifying how reliable is our data, where are the opportunities to ensure that the information, because we're really good at collecting information and But how good are we at extracting that data in a usable fashion, in a manner that we're going to put it in the hands of our officers, of our partners in the city, and others that are working with us so that we're in the right places at the right time, making the right

decisions based on correct and accurate information. So what are we doing at the police department? One, we're prioritizing the hiring and employment of a crime analyst. We have funding available to us that we use to staff positions that are needed and on a temporary basis or for a specific project and so we're prioritizing we need a crime analyst. We don't have someone full-time that does that and so that's one area that we're focused on. That person is going to have that expertise and have the skill set to be able to manage and work through that data and provide the reporting and be able to really think through when we talk about things like predictive policing that analyst is key in being able to sort through all this

information and put it together in a usable form that's going to benefit everybody that's involved in all of this. Two, it's our records management system. We need to upgrade it. And we're fortunate that the city decisions were made and there's money in our capital improvement program to be able to address that and make those upgrades. effectively working with the vendors to identify what are the upgrades that are needed, what's going to give us the best output and ability to put all this information to work. Refining our data collection. The information that we're putting in, we've got to make sure that we're putting it in a manner that's going to make it easy to get it out. And so part of that upgrade and part of training our folks, it's so important that training,

right, to develop our people that we're putting in these positions of high responsibility and then asking them to get it out for us, they need the training. And so we're finding them that training, and we're identifying what it is that they need so they can do their jobs in the most efficient and effective way, and then making sure that our policies align with what it is that we need our folks to do. And so that is all coming together. We've been at work at it now for the last several months, and we're continuing that effort to make sure that in the end we have it and we're doing it right. going to have a regular monthly crime traffic and quality of life review. This is where we're going to be pulling all of this data out. We're going to have all the stakeholders at the table. We're

going to have our police commanders and lieutenants that are in the field managing our resources. We're going to invite our partners such as human services, housing, fire department, other people in the city and in the community that can come in specifically at different times in the conversation to, again, what is it that we're seeing? What is it that we're doing? An example is the repeat We need to ask, why is it that we keep going to the same place? Why is this person continuing to find themselves committing crime? Why is this one person finding themselves the victim of crime? Is there something in their environment that we can, again, as partners, address or help support? Is there something in, is it a meal issue?

Is it a housing issue? What can we do to bring in the right resources to maybe get that person on the right path?

Anthony AmosThe sharing of information.

Raul PedrosostaffWe need to be transparent. We need to trust each other. We need to trust our partners. We need to trust the public. Share our information. What's happening? Where is it happening? And then the why. Why is it happening? What have we identified as the problem behind the issue? Get to the root of those problems. The more people that we involve and work together with,

Anthony Amosthe more successful we're going to be. So that sharing

Raul Pedrosostaffof information and being transparent is key for us. So all of this comes together as partnerships such as with with human services and housing and the police department in evaluating our effectiveness. We obviously are coming coming at this with the intended results and hopes right we think this is going to work this is what we're looking for this is what's going to be the measure of success for us well then we got to measure our outcomes and so once we have this in place and all of this is happening as we're talking we're working on this we've met about it today we basis all of these things are going to come into play our reviews going to start in March we're going to be in a position to see and measure what it is the actual

effect that we're having and what we're seeing practice accountability that's monitoring assessing improving and reengaging so what does that mean you know we have this plan we put it to work it's what we're talking about today all these different things that we're looking to do and how we're going to work together now we're going to measure it and we're going to assess it and if it's not working as we intended, then that's okay. We pivot. We change the plan. We try something different. We reengage. And we continue that model and continue that process until we achieve the success that we're looking for and we have maximum effectiveness. And then the communication piece. Everything that we're seeing and that we're doing, we're

communicating amongst each other. We're communicating with yourselves and with the public. And everybody is informed as to all the efforts. Because at the end of the day, we're all involved in this and we all will benefit from anything that we can do to prevent people, regardless of age and circumstances, from finding themselves caught up in crime or any type of problem that we as public servants can help hopefully have them avoid altogether. So closing it out, looking forward, we're going to be strengthening our cross-sector partnerships, again internally within the city and externally. Not only government services, but the business community, the nonprofit community. We're going to collaborate on prevention and diversion, anything that we can do to keep

people on the right path, like I've mentioned. We're developing a community engagement workgroup. This is going to be representation from command and human services, police and fire, coming together, meeting regularly to go over all of this data, all of the effort, making sure we're not duplicating effort, that we are following the plan, and that we are addressing and identifying any opportunities to make any type of changes to make sure that we're again being as successful as we can be. Expanding our youth outreach. We can do more than just have an officer in a school. There is, I've seen so much positivity when you have the right officers connecting with kids you can save lives I've witnessed it I can I can tell you that the impact

you can have on a young life in the right way we can't waste that we can't waste that because every day kids are just growing up getting older and potentially finding themselves getting into trouble so that's an effort that we're going to put more effort into conducting our reviews of data on a regular basis is going to be a daily effort and it's not going to be wasted we're going to be looking at our data we're going to be making sure that we're the right way so that we put that data to work to affect the positive change we're looking for. We're going to measure our outcomes and like I mentioned, we're improving our data collection analysis and our reporting. And that concludes our report to you. Any questions?

Catherine ReadI'm sure there are. That was very comprehensive. Before I open it to the dais, I just want to ask a question about being next door to a research university. Because George Mason has the only college of public health in the Commonwealth. They also have a criminal justice program. They have a lot of programs over there. And one of the things that Mason is looking for is experiential opportunities for their students to do real projects. So a research university is judged on its peer-reviewed research. and when you talk about coding and how you want to create the data input so you can get the data back in some fashion figuring out if there is a standard across the board for how our data could inform real research that's being done

on a much broader and especially when and I love this approach it's not just one thing it's not just reacting to a crime whenever whenever I hear something like at the courthouse because I do you guys remember that and all the sirens and it's like there was a juvenile and they and we found him in in the woods barefoot you know my question is why like how did this person get there and why aren't we asking that question and so in looking at crime and how we code it and how we categorize it or or the things we're trying to find out about it how do we work with other disciplines or other research professionals who are also trying to figure out upstream, what are the factors? And so my question would be

as you're approaching how you want to build a better data collection, better reporting, how it can be shared, not just with the public, but how can it be shared with people doing real research on the upstream determinants of social health. You talked about adverse childhood experiences, ACEs. Now they're doing a lot of research on resilience. Why are some young people who had terrible, you know, a high ACE experience more resilient? And there's relationships is the big one, a stable, steady relationship. They're starting to do research on that. So it seems to me if we're next door to a research university, one of the things we should not overlook is they help us be better here and how can we help this whole field be better in a larger way so

with that i will turn it over to council member amos

Anthony Amosthank you this was a great presentation i only had a couple comments and then two quick questions and maybe one that might take a little more detail but i just wanted to say thank you to re-emphasize the strong relationships going back to the lamb center gala officer klein was there and a few of us were there as well and I felt this sense of pride being able to see him on stage and discuss more about the relationship how he goes to Home Depot how he talks with folks and it really brings the humanizing side of the story that's often overlooked when it comes to homelessness so greatly appreciate the efforts they're happy to hear about the pilot program so I'm very curious on how that goes when it comes to youth outreach completely agree as a

Boys and Girls Club member when I was growing up. That was something that really impacted my life, so greatly appreciate the emphasis there. Just a couple questions. The first one related to the judicial complex. How do you see that expansion? Obviously, the timeline is a little wonky, so we'll see when it happens. But how do you see the judicial complex and the role that redevelopment may play in expanding our services or providing more support to the city? I know one thing in mind was potentially a reentry center which talks directly on one of the topics you were talking about.

Raul PedrosostaffWell, we actually have a meeting on the calendar for I believe it's March 10th, I believe. You guys have a meeting. I won't be at that one. Some of our other folks will be there. We have a meeting with the sheriff's office and I have a meeting with the commonwealth attorney, both of them that week of March 9th or 10th. And it's to discuss the partnership from the police department with those two entities, right, police and sheriffs, and then police and commonwealth. What is it that we can be doing? And we just recently worked with Jesse Beach, our city court clerk, with respect to diversion opportunities. And so basically we're looking to bring the defense, I'm sorry, the public defender, our city prosecutors, and our city clerk, the police department, all together so that when we identify our officers in the field, people in human services identify this is a person that would be an ideal candidate for some type of diversion.

And so we don't waste time with continuances and different things and people not on the same page. We all are on the same page and we've identified this person. This is not someone that needs to necessarily go to jail or this is someone that needs help and how do we get them that help. And so we're looking to do the same thing with the sheriff's office with respect to conversations about how do we improve the release situation and the effect that that could have in our community, in particular Old Town and downtown areas. Those conversations are being had, and I'm hopeful that we're going to find some successes and opportunities for, again, expanding this collaborative approach.

Anthony AmosCompletely

Raul Pedrosostaffagree.

Anthony AmosOne of my favorite programs with the Sheriff's Office is the Shop with a Sheriff campaign that they do. I've been able to engage with that a couple of times, and that's really cool. Second, and this is just a really quick question just for details on the crime analyst. because you said the funding may sometimes be temporary, so would this be a full-time recurring position or would it only be for a set limited amount of time and, like, say every five years you were to update your crime reports? What does that look like?

Raul PedrosostaffSo first, just touching on GMU, we actually brought on a GMU student in a master's program with respect to criminal justice, and she's an intern right now, and she's assigned to crime analysis. And Captain Hawkins, we've been working with her, and just in a short time, it's amazing what she's been able to put together with the systems that we do have. So we're very excited about that, and we're hoping that she may be interested in continuing with us. So with respect to funding it, at the police department, we have a certain amount of funds that are available for temporary employees, contract employees, and we utilize those funds, putting them to the best use, right, the things that we need to get done, the work that we need.

that maybe we don't have an FTE available for that, but it's absolutely important work and critical to the organization. And so we're basically reprioritizing and we're going to put the focus now on using that funding for our crime analyst, whether it's through contract in that relationship or as a temporary employee that we bring on. And then obviously we would then work through the coming years to formalize that, hopefully into an FTE, but that's down the road. In the immediate, we can use this funding this this this void

Anthony Amosand my last question which is probably the more a more detailed question is so post pandemic we've seen a lot more cases especially gun related cases shooting related cases and even recent news stories related to domestic violence I'm very curious on how this approach would be applicable in a situation like that from a human services and police perspective of how does this overlap?

Raul PedrosostaffWell, I'll start by speaking to this is exactly what we talk about, that repeat victim, repeat offender. Domestic violence is going to be at the top of that list because, you know, regrettably, like that is a group where we tend to find ourselves going more than one time. And so having a collaborative approach and bringing together not just the traditional, like the city manager mentioned, right, where it's just, you know, the response. do. And so hopefully we never have to go again, right? So when, you know, having a more, just a more robust program and process in place to bring those resources to the table, the moment we identify that person, or we even learn of somebody that could be at risk. And I'll turn it over to Ms. Sebastian for the human services.

Lesley AbashianstaffI would say, you know, we already have access to domestic services through the county. and you know one of the things we're really looking at because right now Malik and I are involved with a regional domestic violence group where they're really trying to figure out making sure the system's working you know and part of that is you know having hospitals for instance that could do sane exams you know some of those things but I think that you know with the domestic violence Malika is very interested in domestic violence because she worked previously, that was her job, working with domestic violence. And we're hoping to, you know, utilize that expertise in domestic violence cases. Because one of the things that happens when a domestic violence event happens, you know, at that time, you're in a crisis.

You just want to get away. You want to be safe. But then a lot of times the individuals will not show up for court or they get scared or they get in a pattern. And Fairfax County has a, their police department has a domestic, like a specialized unit that works and makes sure that person gets to the, you know, to court dates, has that support. and you know it's it's my you know my hope that we we can look at that because i think we sometimes are able to use that right use the fairfax counties but it's it just depends on if they have availability or whatever um but that means that you have to have somebody 24 7 because you know people don't choose to have a domestic violence situation at four o'clock in the afternoon

but you know I think that with all this work we're doing and being able to engage people like for instance if there is a domestic violence where there's a bunch of calls there that might be something that we talk about in our collaborative conversations you know how do we disrupt that because it only it didn't only impact the victim it impacts the kids it impacts you know families and you want to slow down that um you want to slow down the impact of domestic violence um so looking you know as we move forward really looking forward to doing some of that work

Catherine Readokay council member hardy chandler

Stacey Hardy-Chandlerthank you so many things to touch on first of all i want to show my appreciation for considering this as part of an ecosystem and recognizing the complexity and acknowledging that some things we may want to have simple, quick answers, but they require a lot of complex intervention, things that none of you all can do alone. And so I'm really pleased to see the partnership, the collaboration, the coordination. A couple of things. I just want to acknowledge this part about relationships. talking before about the relationship with the county and the services that are available but also the relationship with faith and non-profit community there's another relationship and that is with the rest of us like we all have a responsibility in terms of prevention early

identification of things that might you may not be experts but we might have see changes in our NEIGHBORS OR WE MAY SEE THINGS THAT CONTRIBUTE TO EARLY SUPPORT AND PREVENTIVE EFFORTS. SO I WANT TO ADD TO THAT LIST THE REST OF US WHO HAVE THOSE RESPONSIBILITIES. I REALLY APPRECIATE SPECIFIC, YOU HAVE TO HAVE A POINT OF ENTRY. SO I APPRECIATE IDENTIFYING CERTAIN KEY COMMUNITIES TO START WITH, YOUTH, UNHOUSED, THAT SORT OF THING. I RECOGNIZE ALSO THAT THEY ARE, THEY CAN BE THE RECIPIENTS OF SERVICES, BUT I ALSO WANT TO NOTE IN TERMS OF DATA, THEY CAN BE THE SOURCE OF INFORMATION AS WELL. I WANT TO ENCOURAGE YOUTH, NOT ONLY TO BE SEEN AS SERVICE RECIPIENTS, BUT AS SOURCES OF INFORMATION. Peers, not just the youth that are encountering law enforcement,

but other youth can also be instrumental in some of this coordinated effort. So just keep that piece in mind. A tiny question. You were talking about expanding from one officer, officer client, to a second officer. I'm curious what criteria you're using for that. is the selection for those officers who seem to be particularly skilled in relationship building, right? Do they have special CIT training, special community policing training? How are you thinking about supporting those officers in those particularly public-facing

Andrew Hawkinsstaffroles? So the first thing that we did, we sent information out to really see who was interested. information back from officers. And one of the officers that was selected is a senior officer. He's a master police officer as well. Knows Officer Klein very well. He is trained in, he's got extensive training in a number of areas. But we had a conversation about him coming in to help out and really be that second officer for this pilot. He just talked about how much he cared about people and wanted to help people and and that really resonated with me and i spoke with the chiefs about this and uh you know i was i i said this is this is the guy that we really need to uh to utilize to to expand this program and really show how effective that this um this pilot this

program could be so um we took uh conversations with him and knowing his background and then uh how we're approaching it is really just, like I mentioned, expanding what Officer Klein has done at, like, the Lamb Center, the Circle, and in the downtown, but to other areas of the city where people have reached out to us or maybe the volume of calls aren't as high, but they still need assistance in addressing problems in the area of Camp Washington or in neighborhoods and things like that. So in addition to that, his ability to interact with residents, with businesses in this city, it was an easy decision.

Stacey Hardy-ChandlerExcellent. And is that incentivized? Aside from the inherent desire to be in that role, is that incentivized in any way?

Andrew HawkinsstaffNo, it's not incentivized right now. Like I said, we're in a pilot program. know all of the work that officer klein has done we we we need he needed help one and we know that it's going to be effective we need to have information have data to show that it is how effective it is and it also um helped officer klein like i said with one person be able to to interact with more people but help make those connections to leslie's shop or the crt team where if they're noticing something or someone needed to be connected to some resources, there's just the workload is more manageable. So it's only been going for about a week and a half or so now, but I'm really excited about it. Officer Klein and the other gentleman is Officer Mills.

They're really excited. They're out all the time interacting with people. And, you know, the comments that we get back from people around the city who interact with them is awesome. I'll give you a short story. There was a larceny at the thrift store at Fairfax Circle several months ago. But the manager there, she either hadn't been to court or didn't know much about the court process. Officer Klein, he was able to help her navigate the court process, meet her here in the parking lot, show her where to go, who to talk to and stuff. And, you know, that's just another example of helping, you know, her as the manager of the business, but the victim as well in that situation. So that's just another example of how effective they are from both working with individual people, but also with the business community.

Lesley Abashianstaffup in regards to what you said about source of information being the general population. People don't want to be a category. They want to be individuals and want to be seen by as human beings and a very impactful situation that I had a couple years ago when we were going through the Homelessness Task Force. I went over and sat with six individuals that are guests there and heard their stories, heard what got them there and I think it's so easy sometimes when we're with these broader populations to forget that they're human beings and they're individuals and their stories are different, how they got there is different. We don't always know everything, but I think that I do agree that we need to have stakeholders

and different people involved because they'll tell us if we're doing it right or not. I definitely got some feedback that day in regards to what struggles they have, why they sometimes don't engage. It was a very impactful situation. I think that you get valuable information by talking to stakeholders in the community.

Stacey Hardy-ChandlerAbsolutely, which leads to my next question. One of my favorite words is pilot. You try something, and I think you mentioned a program that you tried. you pivot. The Homelessness Task Force which preceded HCAB, some of these discussions came up as part of that. I'm wondering if that was a source of information for some of this collaborative effort. Part B to my question is, is there some way that the other boards and commissions can be a functional source of information or support for some of this coordinated effort longer term. Not 2026, but longer term. I believe that we underutilize the boards and commissions in some ways, particularly some of the maybe less the ones that participate in council meetings a little

bit less, but I think they're wonderful sources of information. It's a former member of the Commission for Women. So do you you answered the two charges that we gave you and in the longer term how do you see this sort of evolving and would that include boards and commissions?

Lesley AbashianstaffI think the conversations involving you know like for the homeless task force we took a lot out of there and we said hey Jamie take this and do it with HCAB you know because some of these these situations are multifaceted and they're not overnight. Like, we're not going to all of a sudden have enough housing for everybody or enough food to put on everybody's table. And so I think that, you know, that evolves. And I also think that, you know, sometimes maybe we don't use our boards and commissions with all the things that we could do with them in regards to getting them engaged. I think when, for instance, when we were working on the housing strategic plan, You know, our consultant came to Human Services Committee.

They came to Commission for Women. They came to the advisory board and got feedback, because everybody has a little bit different feedback depending on where they are in life circumstances, but they also, there's common themes, so I do think that that's another place we can really be strategic about that. And do you want to say?

Jamie Ergasstaffby voiceSure. I can just add that the recommendations made by the Homelessness Task Force were reviewed by HCAB, had a conversation where we did focus on not just the prioritized recommendations, but the whole list of 38 recommendations, trying to figure out where's our opportunity, how can we work together? Some have already been accomplished, and what are ones that maybe no longer need to be prioritized? We need to shift different directions as times change. So still looking at all of that work that was done, including the research whenever there are conversations with the individuals that participate in the Lamb Center services or the hypothermia program services, I THINK THAT HEARING FROM DIRECTLY THE PEOPLE THAT ARE

RECEIVING THE SUPPORT TO SEE HOW WE CAN SHAPE AND IMPROVE WHAT IS BEING OFFERED IS CRITICAL.

Stacey Hardy-ChandlerTHANK YOU. I WILL JUST MAKE A FINAL COMMENT AND WRAP IT UP. I LOVE PRACTICUM STUDENTS. I USED TO WORK WITH STUDENTS. I HAVE A STUDENT NOW WHO WORKS WITH CAPITAL MITIGATION. SO SHE WORKS WITH REALLY HORRIBLE SITUATIONS. AND PEOPLE ASK HER HOW CAN SHE DO IT. And she'll tell you that she thinks about this person who committed this horrible crime, but she goes back in time and thinks about way, way back when this little baby was brought from the hospital wrapped in a blanket. And this person's story all the way through their lives. AND SO I REALLY AM TOUCHED BY THIS WORK AND THE EFFORT TO LOOK UPSTREAM AND TO START EARLY AND TO THINK ABOUT ALL OF US WHO TOUCH PEOPLE'S LIVES ALONG THEIR JOURNEY AND SEND THEM IN

VARIOUS TRAJECTORIES. SO THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR THIS WORK. THANK YOU.

Thomas PetersonCOUNCILMEMBER PETERSON? SO I HAVE A COMMENT AND A COUPLE QUESTIONS THAT I THINK I'D LIKE others to have a chance and perhaps I'll circle back after that to help manage the time a little bit but first thank you very much and I'll just say that I was very pleased to raise the motion that enabled this entire body to be support supportive of the resolutions that you're now implementing and part of my own thought process around that was the general issue that it's not always enough for us to pass policy sometimes we have to be a little bit intentional about implementing it. And maybe to put a little bit more plainly, it's not enough to talk the talk. You have to walk the walk. So this kind of progression to the next stage of things

I think is very, very important because policy doesn't self-implement all the time. We see this across the board, but in case of the gun prohibition at city events, which was the focus of this, it was certainly my view that we needed to make sure that we were doing everything we could and above all, maintain our focus because this is an important area that can't be left unattended and kind of slide. I have a slightly detailed question or two as just kind of in response to that. I would like to go to whichever number slide it is that has the spectrum on it here and really appreciate, Mr. Alexander, you sharing this because I think it is important to kind of see the big picture and then what it means here.

So when I look at this, two things stand out to me. One thing is we need to understand our exposure. What's our risk exposure? And the second thing is what do we do about it? And if I'm hearing correctly in terms of our improvements in capacity and coordination, part of what we're doing with the new staffing for analysis within the police department is being able to collect and process information that will help us assess risk. And to combine that information, if I'm hearing it correctly, with information that's on the human services side, so we have both sources of information together that will improve our ability to understand our potential exposure to risk. And then the next step is what do you do about it?

we have existing programs. That helps us target our existing programs, but it also helps us understand where we might have gaps and we might need to do more that comes out of that process. So I think my first general question is, am I paraphrasing that in a way that's reflective of your thoughts here?

Raul PedrosostaffYes, sir. That is an accurate representation of what we're looking to do and accomplish.

Thomas PetersonWell, again, thanks so much drill down on one particular piece of this that Mr. Alexander raised, behavioral threat assessment. So behavioral threat assessment management is certainly, how shall we describe it here, something that has been increasingly a matter of focus and implementation, not only in public safety, but things that are across the board related to risk and resilience. So I know we have a state police program on behavioral threat assessment and management. There's an FBI program, and the state police program is also designed, as I understand it, to be set up to be in cooperation with localities. So you mentioned, Chief, the meeting you're having with the sheriff, there's state police,

there's also at the federal level, FBI, for instance. is the behavioral threat assessment management program something that we are being intentional about linking to as a part of what we're doing here, or is that something that we haven't quite yet crossed the bridge into exploring? I raise this partially because when I talked a little bit with a state police representative about this, he said, well, we have a cooperative program here, and so this is very, very good timing. But I'm just wondering where we might be on that.

Raul PedrosostaffSo we, part of what we do when we identify an individual, and again it could be a youth offender or somebody that makes a threat at a school or on social media or obviously an adult. We have internally, we have detectives and investigators that are trained and have worked in behavioral threat assessment and also risk assessment. So they go to work on this and they tap into some of these outside resources, whether it's We work with the fusion center. So it's really a collaborative approach. Sometimes we can manage it ourselves, but a lot of times these are individuals that aren't necessarily alone or an issue for us alone. They present potentially a threat or have experience dealing with other agencies

that we want to work with and reach out to. So it is a collaborative effort that we put forth.

Daniel AlexanderstaffYeah, I would say also that to

Jim Gillespiepublic commentCouncilmember Hardy Chandler's point,

Daniel Alexanderstaffthe state has started a pretty robust program around training the community around behavioral threat assessment. It's not necessarily something that we're into now, but it's certainly something that is helpful to kind of broaden the number of folks who are paying attention to that. Again, there's an established program for that purpose.

Thomas PetersonReally great to hear. I was going to mention hear about that. When you started at the very beginning identifying population segments that would be the focus or the likely focus, I think it's youth, unhoused, and people with repetitive issues. When we first raised this, it was in the context of the risk of shootings at city events and trying to understand from a preventive standpoint, how could we get upstream ahead of the curve to identify those kinds of risks before they materialize. And so as I think we've heard, you can go all the way back in time in people's lives, and there's a much broader set of things we have to work with. But I also heard, I think from some of my conversations with officers here,

with others, that somewhere in the middle of that, in terms of the risk of shootings and these kinds of events, is somebody who I would describe as the unknown visitor, somebody we didn't count on, somebody who maybe even came from somewhere else. And in, unfortunately, a number of cases, apparently it's people who are resistant to all forms of intervention, essentially hardened criminals. AND I'M WONDERING, THIS SYSTEM HERE SEEMS TO BE SO IMPORTANT TO TRY TO SPOT RISK AND THEN RESPOND TO IT. BUT HOW WELL DOES THAT CAPTURE THIS UNKNOWN VISITOR, THIS ONE PARTICULAR AREA OF CONCERN THAT SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN RAISED IN ENFORCEMENT ABOUT PEOPLE WHO CAN SHOW UP AND BE INVOLVED IN THESE THINGS?

Raul PedrosostaffWhat I would say to that specific concern and real threat that exists in our world is it starts with what we've talked about, which is the relationships. So first of all, in developing the trust and earning the trust, whether it's kids in our schools, kids in our neighborhoods, or people that live in our city, our business community, through that trust, it's more likely that people are going to call on us and let us know that they've seen somebody or they've heard something that is of concern, something that maybe raises their hair on the back of their neck that they're like, this doesn't feel right, and they're more likely to reach out to us. of establishing that trust and developing those relationships.

Additionally, we as an agency, we're very focused on enhancing our visibility and our presence in the community. The more that we're seen, the more that we can make it uncomfortable for that person that maybe is looking to cause harm, the better. So we want, ultimately our goal is that when someone comes into our community, whether they're driving through or they're looking at maybe spending some time here, that if they look left or they look right, they see some type of representation of our police department and just our message of community safety and that they make a decision to just keep moving on. We want to work through our intelligence platforms, through our partnerships, through the Fusion

Center and other law enforcement agencies that we work with to be able to have the information and be in place to disrupt the crime, disrupt that criminal enterprise or that individual in and do something, create harm or just really hurt someone in our community. So that's how we go about it. It's through the partnerships, through the trust, the reliance in the community to give us information, but also for us to be in the right place at the right time to disrupt and deter that potential individual.

Thomas PetersonThank you.

Speaker 19Just to follow up on that, I think the other important part of this continuum is the response and the recovery. that does happen. Not all things are predictive or preventable. So a really important part of this, obviously we want to be on the 100% prevention side, but the other side of this is how we respond and recover if something completely out of our control happens, which is 50% of this continuum, and it's the response and the recovery is also stuff that we highly focus on. Training our officers, preparing for these large events through ops plans, through pre-event sweeps, staffing it robustly so Things like that. I just don't want to lose sight over the fact that there is a There's a little bit of an unrealistic we don't want to have an unrealistic expectation to this that nothing nothing is going to occur

We're not going to be you know at the 100% preventative Standpoint on this which is why the other half is also very important

Thomas Petersona really important point my last thought for the moment is back to the Analysis gap in the capacity Gap there that you are working to fill with somebody One thing that has come up in community conversations has been the concept and perhaps even the history of the police department providing risk analysis to the council when it's making decisions about development applications, a commercial facility going in a particular location, et cetera, to understand historically what the risk exposure has been for that location given all circumstances that are expected, what sort of exposure is expected there also so that we as a body might have that in addition to the other information that we have when we're sorting through some of these decisions

and trying to move in a direction of having a little bit more holistic approach to our assessment capability. Is that anything that's in the cards here or something that could be considered?

Andrew HawkinsstaffYes, sir. So we are forwarded a lot of the applications and plans for development. I'm one of the people that actually reviews those and gets that information back to development and planning. We look at a number of things for safety and security to recommend be considered for a number of reasons. But so we do that all the time. Those applications come in every month, and we give that information back to community development planning to include into the plans for you all. I

Speaker 19will say that's something we started probably a year, maybe a year and a half ago, so it is fairly newish. It's something that we've been working with Brook Harden with, and everything that comes through, we get an email now like transportation would, or I'm assuming maybe the fire department does as well, but I would say it's a newer process for us, but it's something that we are now regularly involved in, that we have a deadline to submit all of our feedback, and then how that's shared, I don't know the formal process of that, but we do now have a role in assessing and providing a recommendation on those.

Daniel AlexanderstaffI'm going to make a mistake of asking a question I don't know the answer to. Are we using a crime prevention through vulnerable design framework to do that? Okay,

Thomas Petersonperfect Just to follow up is that information that is finding its way forward to the council and the body here when we're making decisions I

Daniel Alexanderstaffthink that's an area to explore, you know based on on how that whole process is working It should inform the process, but I don't want to say that definitively without knowing you probably don't receive feedback at this point

Speaker 19I don't know the closing loop of that process. We're provided in the feedback element, so I have to gather more from CDMP on how that's closed.

Thomas PetersonThank you. As I said, I might have another question or two later, but I'll stop so others can have an opportunity now. Thank you. Council Member McQuillan.

Rachel McQuillenThank you. Thank you for that presentation. My question has to do with the metrics that you're going to be using to evaluate your progress. How is that going to work, especially since you're working together with so many different pieces here?

Raul PedrosostaffFrom the police department perspective, we are going to have access to the data as to the things that we're involved in, obviously. From a collaborative approach to this, it's going to be relying on the data that they have and I'll let each of them speak to their sources of information and where they store information and pull information from. But that's where that hub component, that coordinated approach where we're going to have regular communication and meetings with the representative from police command, human services, FHIR, that leadership coming together and being able to bring that information together, review that conversation, that's where we avoid that duplicative effort, potentially

wasting of time on something that maybe has already been taken care of and we don't realize it. So the data pieces and components are housed maybe in different places, but it's how we come together and review that data. And that's why we've talked about having people departments not only human services as we were talking about in this case but having people from other city departments sit in on our crime reviews. Because when someone comes in, we only know what we know. So when we invite someone, a partner, to come in and sit and watch our meetings, they might find, well, you know, I can add value in this way or this could be helpful for me in this way. And it's through those conversations that we can continue to modify and improve that

that data sharing and that collection and how what do we do with it

Lesley Abashianstaffone of the things with community response team we just track what we're doing right and one of our goals especially for behavioral health crisis is to decrease the need for involuntary hospitalizations or criminal you know interaction arrest and so we are we're watching to see how we're you know how impacting that. I think that, you know, one of the things, I'm glad we're going to have this collaborative, but one of the challenges on the behavioral health side, there's a lot of rules, like there's HIPAA, there's, you know, like a lot of rules that say what you can share and what you can't share. And so some of our information is not, like we can talk about events, people, but we can't really talk about details.

But I, you know, we keep evolving the CERT team because I think we've learned a lot since we started because, you know, we started from scratch and we're trying to figure out how do you show that you have an outcome? And I can tell you with targeted outreach, you know, we're also dealing with older population. My team laughs about that that's kind of a chunk of what they do with targeted outreach. But I can tell you story after story of individuals that they changed their, you know, they changed the objective of their life. They helped them be safely at home. They were able to get them to a better place than they were. And I, you know, I just need to do a better part of being able to tell those stories.

Because I think it's not just data, it's the stories. Like, how did you impact? So that's kind of what we're working on.

Jamie Ergasstaffby voiceAnd I would just add, as we think about the community engagement work group that we've talk through would continue to strengthen the work that we're doing. Once we get started, that might be something where we start to kind of identify what metrics we want to look at. And some of the data might be used to inform how we partner. So, for example, if somebody is identified as a high system utilizer or a repeat offender, we might be able to identify that and then connect to see, okay, do we know if this person is engaged in services? Does this person have benefits? What are the same pieces? so that the data might inform how we're starting to drill down to see if we can prevent the crime from occurring in the first place.

Like somebody that maybe is doing petty larceny, maybe they need a gift card to meet their basic needs. Yeah,

Rachel McQuillenthat was my question was, with so many moving parts, how do you possibly and how do you measure something that has so many different facets that it's not numbers? So thank you for explaining that. That leads me to my next question is timeline. You mentioned in March you'll have another you'll be bringing something to us for a review or something in March. Is that March down?

Raul PedrosostaffThe March was when we were kicking off our monthly review. That's right. Yeah, the review starts. That's an internal process that we'll be doing, but we'll be inviting some other city departments to sit in and join us for those meetings. But it'll be primarily a police function and a police-driven effort internally to assess everything that we're doing and what are the issues that we're responding to and that we can identify. And that's where we get into the problem-solving, the strategy, development, that community-oriented approach. All of that is really being driven through that process of coming together, reviewing and sharing information internally and putting it to work.

Rachel McQuillenOkay, and that starts off in March then. Yes. Excellent. And then at what point will that come back to council or the public for an update regarding where you're at, how you're moving along on those milestones?

Raul PedrosostaffWell, we haven't thought that through. But being that this is going to be something that's going to be part of our everyday business, we can obviously work with the city manager and from time to time let you know what we're seeing, share stories of success and share maybe updates as to how these different efforts and programs are going.

Daniel AlexanderstaffYeah, one of the elements of what we're going to bring back to you I think next week is what we're doing around performance management. So as we look at that framework, as we develop that enterprise-wide, this will be a critical part of that. And we'll see how that integrates in and certainly be part of an overall look at how we're being effective, efficient in the services we deliver. Wonderful.

Rachel McQuillenThank you. the mayor's comments regarding working with George Mason University and their resources. My child and I actually have taken part in some studies that they've conducted there on youth in their human services type of area. And so I know that they do wonderful work and their lab is located in the city. So we didn't have to go anywhere for that. So definitely a great resource to have in our backyard. Ms. Sebastian, you had mentioned something about off hours and if somebody, a specialist isn't there for a response. Did I hear that correctly?

Lesley AbashianstaffYeah, what I was talking about was domestic violence, but the CERT team right now is eight hours a day, five days a week. And if the CERT team's not there, there's regional mobile crisis that can be engaged by 988. And there's also mobile crisis to the community service board. We don't have 24-7 city-centric response right now, but we do have mechanisms to respond to that. But I guess my point was on the domestic violence. The one thing, the police department, that unit that really works with the victims, they have a full staff. so they can always have somebody on duty that can go out and meet that individual at the time of the intervention with the police officer and start building a connection because I think that you miss opportunities when you're not able to do that.

Absolutely.

Rachel McQuillenMy question about that was just in regards to since we have a supplemental service or the county, I don't know where that comes from, that support comes from, back information so as we're going through this process we're working together with our police will they be providing that information of any time they've done outreach to one of our city residents that you're talking about humans

Lesley Abashianstaffthe general services agreement okay every one of the departments does an annual report and it's for the broader county it's not just for the city but I do gather data from them you know a lot of it's about how many people people from the city got impacted or

Judy Russellpublic commentgot

Lesley Abashianstaffservices. And you know, I keep ‑‑ we keep working. And I can tell you the data I get now is a lot better than the data when I first got here. But we're still working because one of the things that I always say is that Santa Claus didn't bring me a zip code that was just ours. You know, so it makes it really hard sometimes for them to pull data out. But, you know, those different reports, those annual reports really show overall how, like, the Community Service Board or the Department of Family Services, how what they're doing is impacting residents. And I can, you know, we can share those as we get them.

Rachel McQuillenYeah, no, I was just curious as to how that information would trickle and work within that. So thank you for answering that. Let's see if I had any more questions. Mostly just the metrics. I also wanted to echo the comments of council members Hardy Chandler as well in regards to the prevention and education component and educating regular residents here just on how to identify things, how to empower us to relay the message that you're trying to get out there and the tools that you have for our youth and for anybody that we can assist with to spread the message as well. So I appreciated that, those comments. Thank you.

Catherine ReadCouncilmember Bates.

Billy BatesThank you. I just want to thank you all for a very informative presentation. And, you know, I'm very glad to hear that the work that Officer Klein has been doing for some time now, that we're looking at expanding that. Community policing in general is very well established to be very effective at crime reduction, and also the mentorship program is very important. And then the crime analysis program, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that we did have a crime analyst doing work a couple years ago, and then we didn't for a while, and now we have the intern, which I'm glad to hear. because that you know on the county side i believe that they have one analyst per district station plus analysts at headquarters who are more specialized like narcotics analysts you know that

kind of thing so it goes to show that obviously they're a much larger jurisdiction and so they have the um you know benefit of economies of scale but goes to show that they um prioritize that as well. So I'm glad to see that we're getting back into that. And also to follow on to the mayor's comments as well, I also want to shout out the George Mason Systems Engineering and Operations Research Department as well as the Virginia Tech Industrial and Systems Engineering Program. George Mason's SCOR department and a financial engineering focus, but at Virginia Tech, they have a presence in this area, and they actually have a professor in this area over at, or was, you know, their Falls Church campus.

They're moving things around now due to the redevelopments and all, but, and who has published papers on looking at drunk driving prevention from a system science perspective, including looking at the role of law enforcement as well as education campaigns, et cetera. So they're very much also invested in looking at how these things play together. So yeah, again, thank you all for being here and very excited about the work that you're doing LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING THESE THINGS CONTINUE AND EXPAND.

Catherine ReadCOUNCILMEMBER PETERSON?

Thomas PetersonJUST TO SAY THIS IS GREAT AND I DO LOOK FORWARD TO LEARNING MORE ABOUT HOW THIS PROCEEDS IN AN ORGANIZED MANNER SO THAT WE CAN STAY ENGAGED ON THIS. ALSO WANT TO JUST RECOGNIZE AND APPRECIATE SOME OF THE COMMENTS HERE ABOUT HOW THE ISSUE connects a larger set of dots. So this is an initiative that we've been discussing between health and safety. But there also are initiatives on risk and resilience and response in another world on energy, environment, and economy. And it turns out those two worlds are connected. And so what we do elsewhere in the city in those areas actually is impactful here. I think it's be a focal effort so that it can be managed and progressed as a real crisp focal thing.

But I also think it's appropriate for us to have eyes wide open. And as I know you are already contemplating, think about how we're kind of migrating into a whole of government approach in terms of how we think about resilience. But I will just say anecdotally, we've heard a little bit about Mason tonight. So I teach a course in continuing professional education at Mason, and a year ago, I went to the CPE program to suggest that we taught a community-based course on resilience. So I teach a course on public engagement and community problem solving to build community-level resilience. Anyway, long story short, it's for local government people and community partners. And as a part of the course, which focuses on exposure and response and all the things that very much look like our slide here on the spectrum approach, the participants were asked to identify the issues that they thought were the greatest priority in terms of things that were changing conditions were a concern.

And what they really keyed in on are things that they thought were destabilizing. The number one things that they thought were destabilizing their community and would lead to these kinds of problems and others. And it was very interesting because the issues that came out of that were the energy price issue. People are mortified about the impacts on their energy bills. Manufactured housing and the lack of environmental and energy standards and manufactured housing that is placing people also at energy and economic risk and safety risk and causing community problems that are pretty significant. And then malnutrition programs, the loss or the risk of loss of the food safety net. And these were the, I mean, interesting things that folks are laying their hands on,

saying we're really worried about the destabilizing effects of any of these things heading in the wrong direction and wanting to get ahead of the curve there. I know we've had broader council conversations on all of these issues, and I know they will continue, but I just wanted to raise this because I think they may find their way forward into health and human services, and they may find their way forward into safety, and so we may want to continue to try to do all we can in these other areas at the same time. Thank you.

Catherine ReadThank you all so much. I just want to say this about our police department. I could not be more proud of the people who serve this city. And when I say serve this city, I mean every single person in this city. You serve all the people. That's the visitors. That's the people who have houses or don't have houses. That's the business owners. You serve them all. And you serve them all with exactly the same commitment, care, and compassion. and that is what sets our department apart and I appreciate that and there's not a metric or a value you can put on it but I see it and it makes a world of difference thank you all Ms. Shinneberry

Shinneberryclerkbefore we go to our next item I know it's not exactly 10 o'clock it's 947 so if you want to do a time check

Thomas Petersonwhat is our forecast The remaining items in the agenda in terms of the time that will be required for us to move through them

ShinneberryclerkSee I Would say the last two items normally pre-application shouldn't be no longer than 30 minutes since it's just a short briefing from the staff. And then now we do allow the applicant to answer questions, but they are supposed to be purposely short since there's not an application in already. If Mr. Foreman can give me a heads up of what he thinks for his next item.

Speaker 21If you all have a target, you can meet that target.

Thomas PetersonI like your can-do attitude. the rules say something about 10 30 but i'll leave it to the folks around the table here to see whether that's something we want to try to do but it sounds like we want to be efficient

Shinneberryclerkyes okay well next i'll announce our next item which is an update and discussion of the city citywide level of service study which will assess impacts and cost implications of new development on city services and infrastructure. I'm going to recognize Eric Foreman, our city planner, to provide the staff presentation.

Eric ForemanstaffThank you very much. So this work session will discuss an ongoing project. That project, that analysis, what's called a citywide level of service study. City has contracted with the consulting firm of Tischler Buys to conduct this analysis. Bize has nationwide experience in economic and in fiscal analyses. The main goal of this project is for them to develop a dynamic capital impact model. So that's something that the city would be able to use to estimate capital needs resulting from redevelopments and this being at the time of rezonings. A lot of this has to do with the acceptance of cash proffers. A lot of Virginia jurisdictions accept cash proffers as part of major rezoning projects. In Fairfax City, we have done this in the past.

We don't have policy guidance on what kinds of proffers the city may need or how to calculate those proffers. So this project would establish a framework for doing just that and hopefully help the city recover some of the costs that are incurred by new developments. Tonight, we'd like to brief the council on the main goals of this effort, take a look at the consultant's methodology, also take a look at the framework of that capital impact model, which is the main output. So I'm joined here today by the project's consultants, by Julie Hurlins and by Jackson Barlow. I'll turn the presentation off to them, and at the conclusion, both staff and our consultants would be glad to answer any questions.

Jackson BarlowGood evening, mayor, members of council. It's good to be here with you this evening. And, yes, we can hit any target that you set for us to get us through. But, yeah, so I enjoyed the conversation thus far. This is really meant as a briefing. We've heard an introduction of myself, Jackson, Barlow, and our office here. We're based in Bethesda, Maryland. I live down the road in Fairfax County. I'm not a city Fairfax resident, but in the county, Fairfax County. So, and we do a ton of work in Virginia, as Eric mentioned, on helping communities identify capital impacts from growth, really specializing in cost of growth services. So we're going to talk a little bit about the study, the data, just a brief overview, show you a sample model, sort of what this will look like in practice, and talk a little bit about next steps.

As I mentioned, we are, we're based here in the region. We do have an office in Idaho. have been in business almost 50 years. I've been with the firm almost 25 years. And actually have been in this room before doing another project with Eric a long time ago. So I said, oh, I do remember this room. But we specialize in what we call cost of growth services and work again nationally, but a lot of work in Virginia as well. The dots on the map are our clients, so work across the country. But in other parts of the country, we do what we're called impact fees, to cash profits, but again, it's quantifying what is the cost to serve growth? What is the cost to serve development and making that connection between land use and finance and fiscal needs?

So why look at capital needs? So anticipated growth is going to put a strain on your infrastructure and your facilities. And generally, to maintain levels of service, you need to expand those those facilities, except for in situations where maybe you have excess capacity. So part of our analysis is to look what are the current situation, the current state of affairs for your facilities, for your capital facilities, and then what would be needed to serve growth. And as we saw the budget presentation earlier, you know, there's limited resources here in anywhere, in every community, every jurisdiction. So there's limited resources, and typically a general fund is going operations, capital then is sort of the next is potentially an extra, something else that

you need to find some additional resources to improve and to expand. Cash proffers are governed by Virginia law. I won't go through this in any detail, but we will work with the city attorney as we go through this. But there are some requirements and they really match what's required in other areas of the country that don't do cash proffers but do these impact fees that you need to meet certain requirements. They need to be reasonable. They need to be proportionate to who's demanding the facilities. They need to provide a benefit. Eventually, if you collect dollars, you're going to spend those dollars on improvements and additional capacity. And they need to represent the fair share of the cost that that development, that land use is demanding.

So again, there's some specifics. The code is identified here, the section of the Virginia statute, and there is a requirement that the funds need to be spent within a time frame, but they do allow for a 12-year spent, really, and allocated within that time frame. So one of the big rules around cash proffers is that localities cannot require an unreasonable proffer, What does that mean? What's an unreasonable proffer? And so part of this process is to get to the point of identifying what that means. What is that reasonable proffer? And really, again, meeting those needs. It's proportional. There's a benefit received. And they're paying, again, their fair share. So it's attributable to residential development.

That's in the statute. We will look at what the impact is from both residential and non-residential development because all types of development are demanding put pressure on capital facilities. But the statute does indicate residential development. It's collected for capacity improvements for an off-site facility. So we are talking about system level kinds of things, fire stations, fire apparatus, road improvements, those kinds of things. that there is a benefit that's received. I mentioned that. The payer pays the cash proffer that those dollars are then used to expand capacity in that facility and that there's a need in excess of the public facility capacity at the time of rezoning. This is unique to Virginia law with the cash proffer system,

that there is a test to identify whether there's a threshold to meet if there's capacity available. What have communities done in Virginia to meet this requirement, to identify where there might be a threshold met for capacity, is what we've done for these communities is develop capital impact models. So essentially, and part of our description, we're planners. We specialize in urban planning, municipal finance. We're not software engineers, but we build models to assist planners identify what those connections are. So this is an Excel model. It's based in Microsoft Excel, and it is meant to, again, identify what is a reasonable connection between the land use and the capital infrastructure that's being demanded.

These are some of the communities where we have developed these models, where we're working actively with them, and then other similar models in other municipalities, particularly they are all the cities, Alexandria, Chesapeake, and Falls Church, a more fuller model that's operating and capital expenditures

Stacy Hallas well.

Jackson BarlowSo part of the process is to identify current state of affairs in the city, where the city is heading in terms of growth. This is a snapshot of our base year information and projections of growth, working very closely with the planning department, identifying those metrics, those parameters, and the data sources around that. You're in a unique situation here in the city with your school system, with students that are city residents attending city schools. And so there's that accommodation or that analysis as part of the model, identifying capacities of schools that include other students, county students, apart from the city's students. This just reflects the city student enrollment. So again, Eric mentioned about the study itself.

to allow the city to test, to analyze rezoning cases, to identify what that capital impact is in a dollar amount. And then also a static report that identifies what is that cost per housing unit type, multifamily unit, single family unit, what have you, that reflects that unit's share of the capital costs. costs will be triggered by a rezoning, but that will be a piece of information, a data point that you all can have at your disposal to understand what that impact is from, again, new growth land use to capital facilities and the capacity needed to continue to provide that infrastructure to development.

Stacy HallAnd then finally, the third part

Jackson Barlowof this is to deploy the model, use the model in determining what those infrastructure needs are to support the small area plans which have already been gone through and been adopted. So that is a third piece of the project. So we are looking at the following infrastructure categories. And so when we talk about infrastructure, we're talking about schools, parks and rec, police facilities, fire and rescue facilities and apparatus and transportation, not just, you know, not beyond the utilities and transportation. So our infrastructure is all of the capital facilities that a city provides and then general government facilities as well. So just kind of high level, we're going to look at current city levels of service.

What does it cost to continue to provide that same level of service? and then, again, make that connection between the land use, residential unit, and the demand for that infrastructure. So an easy example is parks. How many park acres per thousand people do you have today? What does it cost to continue to improve an acre of park land? And then what does that translate then into a cost per person and then a cost per unit? So everything is formula-driven and quantitative. and we'll again come back to you all in that kind of format. So the next time we'll be back in front of you, there will be lots more numbers on these slides, and that's when it gets really fun. And so we will, we are using current facility inventories,

capital improvement plans, and master plans for these facilities. We'll look at specifically, again, all of these infrastructure categories, but schools as well, and look at individual levels of schools by level where those potential capacity needs may be and where they may not be, given that there is some excess capacity in the schools with county students in the city-serving schools. So just kind of, again, as a briefing for your edification, we'll come back with the city's model, a sample model where, again, it's in Excel, there will be a user input area, enter the project, and then an output that shows what is the capital impact in dollar amounts in dollars. And what this will also provide is, again, the universe of impacts and then what is,

could potentially be a reasonable cash proffer, which is going to be a smaller number than the total impact, the static impact, if you will. So this will be, we'll work with city staff on the format, what that would look like, what that will be useful in terms of a staff getting translated into staff memo that will then be potentially in a staff memo to then, again, provide that piece of information back to the council on some of these projects. So we're continuing with our analysis, model building, looking at the capital improvement plans, and, you know, there's a new potential, you know, kind of keeping up with what's being proposed currently and real time. We'll finalize the capital impact model and all the related documentation.

And again, that's static. It would be a static output in a report. Review with staff and then use the go forward with that third piece of identifying infrastructure needs and then come back and present additional findings to the council. So

Stacy HallI'll take questions and

Jackson Barlowhappy to have discussion on our capital model. Thank

Thomas Petersonyou. Questions? Council Member Peterson. Thank you. so much. So happy to hear a couple slightly technical questions. First, is this a downloadable model?

Jackson BarlowSo I should this is a proprietary model provided to the city under license agreement so staff will have access to it. It will not be publicly available. This is our Tichler Bice's proprietary property. It's our intellectual property.

Thomas PetersonIs it updatable and upgradable by staff?

Jackson BarlowYes.

Thomas PetersonOkay. Yes. All right. And in addition, I'm sure the answer is yes, but it can do scenario-based stuff as well to deal with sensitivity analysis and all that. Yes. In terms of capital, two questions. There's capital in operating CapEx and OpEx. Are you doing both of those?

Jackson BarlowThis is just capital.

Thomas PetersonOkay. Because there's an ongoing operations and maintenance expense here that's also fairly important to consider. So just to note that in terms of infrastructure, are we just focused on gray or also green? Or in other words, are we doing natural capital as well? So are we looking at impacts on watersheds, forests, etc., ecosystem services types of things in addition to your quote-unquote gray infrastructure, you know, sewer sidewalks and all that?

Jackson BarlowAs it stands now, this would be, they're not included, and this is focused on those types of facilities, infrastructure that are funded through general fund dollars so that if your stormwater system is an enterprise fund, the assumption is that it's covered through your rates and fees, and also there would be a city involvement. It's, you know, so treat, you know, in a case. But if there are other elements that fall into that category, those parameters, we can add them as well. But as it stands now, it's the general fund supported facilities.

Thomas PetersonHypothetically, you could add new impact accounts to this if you needed to. Yes. Okay.

Jackson BarlowAnd to your question, too, on the capital operating distinction, So some of those other jurisdictions that I showed with other similar models, those are complete models with operating and capital impacts as well. So we do fiscal models that cover the operating impact of a new fire station because that's going to be 15% of the full cost, 85% is going to be the ongoing operations and the shift that is associated with the apparatus. So that is part of our core services as well.

Thomas PetersonSo these other examples give us expansion pathways that we could consider if we wanted to here.

Jackson BarlowYes, sir.

Thomas PetersonWell, again, I think it's really helpful. Oh, the last question is the report that comes out of this. Is this akin to what we hear other jurisdictions referring to as a more holistic pro forma for the review of these zoning changes, et cetera? What does the report look and feel like to a decision-making body like this?

Jackson BarlowRight. So this would not necessarily be a review of a pro forma from the private side. So that's their development assumptions. And I'm going to say if there was a request for any kind of participation or, you know, city involvement, you know, this would not necessarily kind of, you know, fit within that rubric. But the report out would be, again, that the both we can show the infrastructure impact. are demanded by, demanded or that are generated the need for from this development and the costs associated with it. That's just an example, but sort of the laundry list of those facilities, you know, all the way down, like you said, in terms of the grid, I was characterized as green, but the green

and the gray infrastructure that is generated, you know, a need, again, to maintain levels of service in the city.

Thomas PetersonSo in terms of facilities and service, this is focused on infrastructure, but to some degree, and maybe you could clarify, it would help identify the cost of services as well?

Jackson BarlowAs it stands now, this model will not be set up to do that kind of analysis. However, if you had within your budgeting standard an operating impact of a X, then you could apply that to the infrastructure output of this model.

Thomas PetersonOkay. Super. Very, very much appreciated to all of you. Thank you very much. Council Member Hardy-Chandler.

Stacey Hardy-ChandlerMy question is quick. In the introduction, you talked about us not having policy guidance. So maybe you can just briefly talk about how this might inform policy guidance.

Eric ForemanstaffCertainly. In the past, when the city has accepted cash proffers, it's really been on a case-by-case basis. what this capital impact model seeks to do is to set up some kind of certainty, both from the city's perspective, from city leadership's perspective, and also development applicant's perspective, to have a guidance about what's expected. So take something just like parks and recreation, in instead of saying, you know, leave it open-ended about what any kind of cash contribution could be on a particular case for parks and recreation proper, this would actually set up something and say for this number of housing units, we forecast a need for a certain amount of this kind of parks and recreation space to be programmed.

Stacey Hardy-ChandlerSounds like that would be helpful. So I appreciate it. Thank you.

Stacy HallThank you for the presentation. We have a, for example, we have two pre-application meetings that are after this. We have a fire station that we're considering. We have a Willard Sherwood Center that we're considering. Are any of these things that we're talking about doing or programs or buildings that we're talking about, you know, building, are any of those that can we apply any of these retroactively because we just did blank or we just bought a brand new $4 million fire truck? Is anything that we've done to date that we're looking forward to, can we go back and say, well, I think you know what

Jackson BarlowI'm asking. Yeah, yeah. That's a great question. in Virginia, the wording of the cash proffer enabling law, the way that we have interpreted it and the way we have worked with attorneys around the state, around the Commonwealth, is that, no, you can't do that. Once you have done that improvement and there's capacity or that's then your level of service today, then you're starting from this point forward. And the analysis is done at the time of rezoning. And so, and I will caveat this by saying in places where impact fees are allowed, and we do impact these studies, there's a third, there's a methodology. So there's three methodologies that we deploy when we analyze the growth needs. One is called the cost recovery.

that. You bought this, you built this, you built excess capacity in a school. New growth is, you know, is consuming or consuming and utilizing those seats, and there's a cost associated with it, like, you're, like, you know, likely still paying debt service on that, and so you're sort of paying yourself, you know, paying back from their share of the cost, not the full cost, and it's not all attributable to new growth. It's just their share of that, of that cost. Again, the, the language under the cash proffer law statute is this very specific, you know, analysis of is there capacity at the time of rezoning? If there is, then it becomes an unreasonable proffer. And this is an area that, you know, we have, you know, provided some guidance on or some,

some commentary on because it's still a growth-related cost, even if it's already been spent. And so that would be my answer. And of course, we would continue to pursue or talk with the attorneys here to see if that's the interpretation within the city as well.

Stacy HallThank you. So that kind of puts things in perspective, I guess, with if we agree to do Willard Sherwood, we will be signing on to this in a couple months. If we agree to do a new fire station, so at the time of the rezoning is when it would need to be done. So there's a bit of a disincentive then, or I guess an incentive to delay hearing new projects we've secured potentially this opportunity that we don't want to miss out on. So what is the timetable like? I think it said in the staff report that we would, the project is estimated to be completed by mid-2026. Reasonably from a staff perspective, what are we looking for if all goes well, if this is something that it seems like it's beneficial and would help us, when would we be talking

implementation?

Eric ForemanstaffMid-2026 is the deliverable of the anticipated deliverable of the level of service project of the model. I think it would be operational from a staff perspective very shortly afterwards.

Stacy HallOkay. Kind of makes me wish we'd done this like three years ago.

Jackson BarlowBut those, I mean, and that said, those projects, those are, they are reasonable expenditures. analysis that we're working on now considers those expansions. So that is expanded capacity. That is providing additional square footage to serve growth and existing development. And so there's, again, an allocation of cost, the fair share to the users, you know, to the ultimate users. And so those dollars collected, that would be a – because they're in the CIP over a multi-year period, then, you know, that those would be reasonable uses of the funds collected.

Stacy HallOkay. Then just to ask one clarification question on that. So if when you look at our CIP, for example, the Willard Sherwood has been in the CIP, you were here for the conversation, the community center, right? So that's been in our CIP for the past five years. We are now in year five of it being in the CIP. It has not been funded. We have done nothing to borrow against it. We haven't incurred any of those costs with the exception of the pay go of $4 million. Is that something that we've completely missed the mark on then because it was in a previous CIP? Or is something like a Van Dyke Park that, again, has also been in the CIP for a couple of years, but, again, no funding, nothing like that consideration?

Jackson BarlowSo these

Stacy Hallare

Jackson Barlowexcellent questions, excellent points. These are the types of projects for which you could spend those dollars on if you were collected. But those projects need to be done. Those types of projects need to be done. Expansion of capacity in some way, shape, or form. It doesn't necessarily have to be those exact projects. But if you collect a cash proffer for recreational facility space, those dollars should be used to expand recreational center space. not taking those projects and saying this is the $60 million project and we're dividing by the, et cetera. It is what are you providing today? How do you continue to maintain that level of service? And if that's the decision of the council to build, to do that kind of

improvement to expand capacity, then those dollars can be used for that. If the decision of the council is then to use those dollars to do an addition or to add a win, you know, or some other capacity expansion project, that's okay too. So there's a methodological choice in the analysis as well, and we're getting a little bit ahead, but that's fine. It's this incremental expansion where we're saying, here's your current level of service today. You have X number of, let's just say parks, X number of five acres per thousand today. if next person in we don't have capacity for we're going to collect dollars and we're going to build when we get to a thousand people we're going to expand build we're going to improve

five acres of park land we're going to do a pickleball court we're going to do a basketball court we're going to do a playground some kind of improvement to either an existing park where you have land to improve or a net new park to but again that's ultimately comes out in the budget that there is a plan there is a capital improvement plan where those dollars would be spent

Stacy Hallokay I'm not sure if I'm not understanding or if I'm not asking my question correctly so no no I just want to it's getting a little late I'm a little tired but so we haven't done anything on the van dyke right the park we've just discussed it at 16 million dollars let's say to do a major refresh the park capacity that we has been under discussion. And so if we are not doing anything right now, but we know that it's something that we need to do, we'd like to do in three years, five years, 10 years, whatever. If this comes back to us in 2026 and it sounds reasonable and it gets implemented quickly, the people sitting behind you that are talking about pre-application meetings, would they potentially then be able or required to contribute

to these things that we have identified that we're going to do or that we want to do given funding, or are they not necessarily able to be contributed to in that regard because we've already been talking about them for a while but haven't actually done them yet? Is that maybe a better way of asking?

Jackson BarlowYeah, and it comes down to will you do those projects within the next 12 years? Assuming the answer is yes. then yes. And at what point in time does the rezoning occur? If the rezoning has already happened and been approved, then the ship has sailed. If the rezoning hasn't and there's a policy in place, then there's this information to be used to potentially negotiate. And they're not required. Cash proffers are voluntary in Commonwealth of Virginia.

Stacy HallVoluntary.

Eric ForemanstaffYes. And I should add one more thing just to build on what I had said earlier about the project being ready to go shortly after the presentation. A cash proffer policy isn't necessarily the existence of a model that that kind of policy usually has a governing body affirmation to it. So it would be a policy that city council would accept in some form or another. So, for example, Fairfax County Public Schools. Fairfax County has an education proffer. Fairfax County Public Schools makes a proffer memo available to the county board every few years or something. But that's an example of a governing body affirmation.

Stacy HallYes, and since I was on school board and now on council, I've been with Councilmember McQuill and advocating for proffers for our schools, especially given the fact that we are getting ready to undergo school renovations. And so, again, I just don't want to miss the mark or miss our opportunity on this. So I might be dragging my feet in other areas then, I guess. Thank you.

Catherine ReadOther questions? Council Member Bates.

Billy BatesSo this is looking at capital impacts of, you know, certain projects. And so it looks like it does differentiate between single family and multifamily. Is that correct? So in other words, it would arrive at a certain capital impact per single family unit, a certain capital impact per multifamily unit. Is that right? Yes. Okay, good. Yeah, because I mean, I think that's something that is important to consider. When we think about infrastructure and if you have, say, 50 single-family homes versus a 50-unit apartment building, you're going to need a lot more wastewater, stormwater, water main infrastructure for the single-family neighborhood versus the apartment building, roadways, et cetera. so I'm and that's something that I've been kind of talking about for some time now actually wanting to look at the difference there

and So I'm very excited to see that we may have a way of doing that at least some extent with this

Catherine ReadThank

Jackson Barlowyou

Catherine ReadOther questions All right. Thank you so much for the presentation mission a berry

ShinneberryclerkOur next item is a pre-application briefing for a potential multifamily residential development located at 10340 Democracy Lane. I'm going to recognize Claire Schweiger, our city planner, to provide the staff presentation.

Claire SchweigerstaffOkay, good evening, Mayor and Council Members. I'll try to move more quickly than I was originally planning this evening. So tonight, first up, we'll be discussing a potential redevelopment of 10430 Democracy Lane. We're currently in the pre-application phase of the development review process. So staff, we've had concept meetings with the applicant, but a formal application has not been submitted. The purpose of the briefing tonight is to gain your all's feedback on the concept. So the site is located in the Old Town Fairfax Activity Center. This is an aerial of the site. The site is currently zoned CR commercial retail and it's in the Old Town Fairfax Activity Center. The site is also located in the future transition overlay district, which means that when the site is rezoned, it will fall under the transition overlay district.

And the potential applicants would be requesting a rezoning to PDR plan development residential. Here are the existing conditions on the site. Here are some more photos. This is the concept plan. The potential applicant is proposing 260 to 280 residential multifamily units in a six story building, 458 parking spaces and structured parking and approximately 28,000 square feet of open space. The existing 60,000 square foot office building would be replaced with a 434,000 square foot multifamily development if this proposal were approved. So this is the layout of level one. This is levels two through five. And this is level six. So staff met with the applicant and we provided some preliminary feedback.

Staff recommends following the small area plan's recommendation for a six-story building. We recommend incorporating the connected open space envisioned in the small area plan, new active streets, street sections on all sides, on all streets surrounding the site. 26-foot travel lanes would be required on at least two sides. The sidewalk along Layton Hall would need to be improved and widened. A full tree inventory would be required. Parking garage access should be oriented away from corners, aligned with other driveways, or be offset further away from driveways on adjacent sites. And the applicant should have a plan to retain existing office tenants or have a plan to relocate current office tenants somewhere else in the city.

So the Planning Commission held a briefing with the applicant on February 9th and had some initial feedback. So the line of sight from Layton Hall could be improved. The planning commission had some concerns with the height. The planning commission wanted the applicant to prioritize green space and sidewalks, or they were happy that the applicant was doing that. There were general concerns that there may be too much residential development in Old Town. There were concerns with scale impact and proximity to Old Town. and then there was some discussion around the opportunity to consolidate the office condo property that's in between this site and then the courthouse plaza site. So the potential land use requests would be a rezoning from CR commercial retail to PDR plan development residential in the transition overlay district.

a master development plan, special exception, and a major certificate of appropriateness for architecture and landscaping. So the next steps are a formal application submittal, and then work sessions with planning commission, city council, and the board of architectural review, and then finally public hearings with the planning commission, city council, and the board of architectural review. And that concludes my presentation. I'm here to answer questions, and so is the applicant.

Catherine ReadAre there questions? Council Member Amos.

Anthony AmosThank you. It's nice to see something here, having lived across the street from it for a few years and just saw this massive parking lot that I'm like, wow, that'd be nice if I could not walk through those bushes and get cuts on my legs just because the thorns are hanging out there. I have two questions in particular. One, and this is going to be directed towards the applicant, what is the vacancy rate we're looking at for the commercial building and just kind of the context of that, Why do you feel like this is appropriate to transition into residential housing?

Chris LoveapplicantSure. Council Member Amos, Chris Love, partner with Capital City Real Estate. Appreciate everyone's time this evening. So the building is currently 50% occupied, and it's trending downward. The building was built in 1980, you know, just approaching functional obsolescence, which happens with buildings of that age.

Anthony AmosThank you for

Thomas Petersonbeing blunt and direct.

Anthony AmosAnd for the existing commercial tenants, I know one of the things, one of the notes that the Planning Commission had that I would echo is, are there preliminary discussions about relocation opportunities and what that might look like? Sure. So we've

Chris Loveapplicantbeen in touch with Mr. Easley at Economic Development, and they're aware. We've talked about it. We have had some discussions. However, tenants are making plans to vacate.

Anthony Amosokay thank you I really like the open space aspect I think green space there makes a lot of sense in having that connection so I think this trending in the right direction thank you thank you

Catherine Readother questions councilmember it's hard Chandler than councilmember Hall

Stacey Hardy-Chandlerso there's a couple of addresses here 104 If it's 10340, did the, did George Mason departments occupy that building? Are you aware of that?

Chris LoveapplicantI am not aware. We are not the owner of the building currently, so they may have it one time, but

Stacey Hardy-ChandlerI am not aware. I believe I worked in that building as part of the Department of Social Work when it was there and it moved then on campus when new buildings were built on campus. Okay. If it's the same building. I haven't been there for a minute, but I believe we occupied some of those floors. So it may be that, and I think there was a psychology center there, something to that effect. So it may be the nature of what kind of tenants are in there now in terms of any kind of transition plan. My question, though, is were other configurations considered other than this particular multifamily situation? What other options were considered?

Chris LoveapplicantSure. So I think when we conceptualized the plan for the site, we started with the small area plan. So it's obviously the neighborhood node of the Old Town small area plan, which calls for a six-story building, residential in character. We paid specific attention to the green space to the west of the building. We're also building the botanist project or N29 apartments off Eaton Place. We spent a lot of time there with the linear park concept. So we were attentive here, several meetings with staff and other city agencies to just make sure we got that component right. We also met with transportation to make sure the street layout around the building was acceptable and met the impact or intent to the small area plan.

So I think the answer is we started with the plan as a guideline, and that's how we got where we are. And, yeah, I guess that's the answer.

Stacey Hardy-ChandlerAnd I'm also interested, there was a little note about communicating with our next pre-applicant in the general vicinity, and I'm not sure how that has worked historically, but how does coordination between separate projects work, in such close proximity?

Chris LoveapplicantWhat I'll say is I guess the development community is pretty close-knit. So Aisha and I have known each other for some time, and Aisha with combined properties. So we also have similar consultants working on the same consultant team really working on the two projects. So we trade notes and, you know, communicate with each other. But what I'll say is their project, you know, they're, it's not contiguous to ours. and they have constraints they need to work with. We have constraints we need to work with. Hope that answers your question.

Catherine ReadCouncil Member Hall?

Stacy HallYes, thank you. So I actually have a doctor in this building, and I think I mentioned before, I know we spoke, but I think six stories is too tall here. I think it's too much. I think it's coming out very close to the road, and I think it's monopolizing and it's going to potentially loom over the Layton Hall apartments. And I'm wondering if maybe some sort of staggered height would be better in order to make that feel less large. I'm also, I understand the flats next door doesn't have any commercial. And quite honestly, I don't remember what was there many, many years ago. But I also don't like that you're not including any commercial or any sort of mixed use in the building. I think, and I believe the same is happening at N29, or is there commercial in the bottom there?

Chris LoveapplicantWe have 5,000 feet commercial.

Stacy Hall5,000, okay. And why did you elect not to do that here?

Chris LoveapplicantSo, again, I think we looked at the plan and really used that as our guideline, our benchmark. So it's pretty clear this is to be a residential building. We also know that the plan identifies Old Town, really that historic core to be the retail destination. as guidance um i think that that's that's generally it what we use as guidance was started with a small area plan

Speaker 32and and i would just tie your your question uh councilmember hall to councilmember hardy chandler's um question a moment ago about coordinating with the the application that may come to the south or that's been uh underway to the south of us as as chris mentioned the small area plan doesn't envision retail right here it was thoughtful in identifying where the retail should go and not having retail in places that are not likely to be successful and to chris's point about providing rooftops here residents here to support not not just the old town center retail but also the the retail and the courthouse development that's going to remain to the south of us. We don't want to cannibalize that. So that's another way that even without directly communicating,

the plan sort of serves as a bridge to sort of coordinate the two applications.

Chris LoveapplicantAnd then noted on the comment regarding Layton Hall across the street. So we did have a line of sight study completed, and that did not make the deck for this evening. But we are taking that into account, Planning Commission. We can say is there's a 155 foot separation from where the proposed project on our end would be and the building, the closest building at Layton Hall across the street. We'll also say their line of sight, those buildings look right into the green space. So we feel that will be a positive improvement over the 3.8 acres of parking they look into today. And also to be noted that project, that Layton Hall is approved for redevelopment actually the same height that we would be looking at here

so around 68 feet or so. Yeah

Stacy Hallthat's a very very long time if ever coming though it seems like.

Chris LoveapplicantNo understood but I just want to let you know we we took that feedback two weeks ago and are spending time on it and we'll continue to evaluate it as we flush out our project.

Stacy HallOkay Claire maybe you can answer this for me then. Is there a reason why we are in the small area plan heavily considering residential here versus the, I won't call it commercial, or it's not retail that's there, but the commercial that's there now with small offices, doctor's offices, you know, kind of things like that?

Claire SchweigerstaffYeah, so the small area plan, Evan's right, it does show specific areas for specifically retail nodes in the small area plan. However, this site, in the small area plan, And it is mentioned that this could be flexible, dependent on the needs of the activity center at the time. So there could be a potential for some office in this location, potentially. But retail really is not something that's envisioned here. But other commercial uses could be.

Stacy HallOkay. I just feel like we're doing a lot of squeezing out of these kind of small medical offices sort of you know niche things that we're not really at least I haven't seen yet designing an area for them to go for a similar rent that they're paying now which would probably then kick them out of any of our other areas that might be redeveloped and that would allow for some type of commercial or office space there so I think I'm not saying the building can't use a refresh don't get me wrong but I just some of this I just think is concerning if this is the trend that we continue to do here, that we're taking away the opportunities for these people to have small offices like they have now.

Catherine ReadThank you. Council Member McQuillan.

Rachel McQuillenThank you. And Council Member Hardy Chandler was correct that that was a George Mason University location because that's where I did my testing once again with my son from earlier in our presentation. I discussed that a little bit. I want to share Councilmember Hall's concerns and the Planning Commission's concerns regarding the height. Our small area plan does call up to six stories. It doesn't say you have to have six stories. It's up to. So I recognize that it's allowed, but we do hear a lot from residents, especially in this specific area of our city, in regards to height. So I did have a question regarding the green space. How large is that? Just curious because you mentioned, you know, looking out from Leighton Hall, they would

see the green space. So I was just curious.

Speaker 21Yeah, it's 28,000 square feet of open space, which would go around the whole site, but I assume you're speaking just of the kind of park area. I

Rachel McQuillenwas assuming that maybe I misunderstood that when you had mentioned that Layton Hall would be looking out into the green space area. I was assuming you were discussing the courtyard or referring to the courtyard on there, but I could be.

Chris LoveapplicantSo I'm referring to where it says park location. So the buildings across, I guess, to the north of Layton Hall Drive, the two closest buildings at Layton Hall, you know, would look right into that. Okay. That green space. And we're 70 feet wide. 70 feet. Yes.

Rachel McQuillenOkay. How deep is that? Do you know?

Chris LoveapplicantSo it's about 70 feet wide, and then I'm not sure if that's full depth, but I flew over 100 feet long. All right.

Rachel McQuillenThank you. I do want to acknowledge and share in the concerns or the comments of our Planning Commission as well in prioritizing the green space. That's really important. I also have concerns about losing the commercial, especially to so much residential. But listening to your explanation, I hear you. I'm listening. I'm absorbing. And you said about 50% is occupied right now in the

Stacy Hallcommercial? Okay.

Tara BorwaystaffOkay.

Rachel McQuillenThank you. I think that's all of my questions.

Catherine ReadCouncil Member Peterson.

Thomas PetersonThanks. So just to echo concerns about the direction of this being intensively residential to the exclusion of commercial, and certainly appreciate that you look at the small area plan, but as staff indicated, there's flexibility in that, and there are alternatives that potentially can either equally or even better fulfill some of the objectives of that, particularly in a city where we are behind on commercial development our vacancy rates citywide are a third of the surrounding jurisdictions and it raises the question of why not take a harder look at a redevelopment of this from a commercial standpoint. I certainly share the view that the buildings are in need of redevelopment but there certainly would appear to be a lot of

potential and good reason to take a hard look at a commercial option here. So I, again, appreciate that you all have looked at the small area plans, but I think that there's a lot of flexibility in them that can be aligned with broader objectives of the city as we go forward. Thanks. Other

Catherine Readquestions or comments? Council Member Bates.

Billy BatesLike Council Member Amos, I'm certainly excited to see something happening here on this site, although I don't live right across the street but am frequently in this area and I certainly agree with all of staff's comments and personally I'm also in line with what Councilmember Amos mentioned if I did live there I'd certainly rather look out at this than what's there right now no offense to the owner if you're out there but frankly it's mostly barren parking lot and then an ugly old office building it's not really much to look at right now whereas this i think has the opportunity to become really a very inviting addition to old town and you know certainly do acknowledge that it's in a somewhat isolated location not exactly an active commercial corridor along here

And, you know, but given that we are shooting for the maximum height that's recommended in the small area plan, I think that, you know, ideally I'd like to see the commercial space being taken out replaced. But if not, then perhaps at least half of it. And, I mean, it's a relatively small building. You know, I don't think that that would be a huge amount. But something to think about. I think that it's certainly heading in the right direction and can really infuse an additional significant residential presence into Old Town and help support the businesses there. And then, you know, additional point, you know, I just want to point out that the flats on University right next to it is about five stories right there along Leighton Hall above ground, and that is directly across from Leighton Hall,

whereas this is kind of more diagonally across. So five stories to six stories I don't think I see that as a significant obstacle given that again I think we're separated from Leighton Hall apartments than the flats is. So yeah, thank you. I'm very excited about this and look forward to seeing it move forward.

Anthony AmosCouncil Member Amos? things to add. One, and I guess this kind of is a question, so with the sidewalk widening, what I also appreciate is that you do have queue bus stops literally right there and those are frequently used in the city so greatly appreciate that. With the sidewalk widening will there also be pedestrian safety considerations because where that crosswalk is, where it connects to the park location, is on a hill and so it can be difficult in terms of being able to see vehicles from certain directions when you're crossing. Has that been as a part of this? We're in the early stages.

Chris LoveapplicantThere have been comments around that there being a crosswalk there. I will say it's something that's been flagged. Given where we are very early, it hasn't evolved at all.

Anthony AmosI do want to note that Layton Hall is a very large complex and where that crosswalk is located that I pointed out, if you go directly across from it is where one of the buildings is where the leasing office diagonal going backwards. So I do want to acknowledge that depending on where you are in the building, you may see less of the park location and more of the building. So I just want to make sure that that's accurate. Just because you see it from the left side of the building, you'll see park location, but you see it from the right side, you'll more than likely see more of the building itself. I still think with the green space, and I imagine screening that you'll add, it will be significantly

better than what's existing. But I do want to make sure that we acknowledge that. I don't want it to seem like the entire building is looking at park location because that's not true. Understood. Thank you.

Catherine ReadOther questions or comments? Well, I'm not sure how you feel about the feedback.

Chris LoveapplicantI really appreciate everyone's time this evening. It was helpful.

Catherine ReadThat's good. That's good. Thank you so much. Thank you for the presentation. Ms. Shinaberry.

ShinneberryclerkOur last work section item is a pre-application briefing for a potential redevelopment of the courthouse plaza shopping center at 10300 willard way i'll recognize claire schweiger city planner again to provide a staff presentation

Claire SchweigerstaffOkay, next up, we will be discussing a potential application for redevelopment of the Courthouse Plaza Shopping Center. So once again, we're currently in the pre-application phase of the development review process. staff has had concept meetings with the applicant, but a formal application has not yet been submitted. And once again, we're just looking to gain initial feedback from the city council tonight on the concept. So the site is located in the Old Town Fairfax Activity Center. This is an aerial of the site here on the left. The site is comprised of two properties located south of Leighton Hall and north of North Street. Parcel A is currently the location of the Courthouse Plaza Shopping Center,

and then Parcel B is the new layered restaurant and then the former Joe's Pizza Building. Approximately 92,000 square feet of retail exists on the site. Parcel A is zoned CR Commercial Retail, and Parcel B is split-zoned CR Commercial Retail and CG Commercial General in the Transition Overlay District. The site's future land use designation is Activity Center and is located in the Old Town Fairfax Activity Center, and the potential application is proposing to rezone the site to PDM, Plan Development Mixed Use. The applicant provided this demolition plan, so everything in pink is to be demolished, and then everything in green is to remain at the end of Phase 1. so as you all know this was subject to a land use application last year or should i say parcel a was

subject to a land use application last year the proposal was denied in october following staff's recommendation the main concerns that staff had with the previous proposal were consistency with the small area area plan specifically the road network pedestrian vehicular connections open the fact that this was a non-phased development. The plan would leave a majority of the site undeveloped and it would have stayed as it exists today. So now on this slide I'm showing the new proposal and you can see here that parcel B to the south is now included in this potential proposal. So phase one would include a six-story mixed-use building, 315 upper-story residential units, 12,500 square feet of ground floor retail, 743 parking spaces in structured and

service parking, and then facade improvements to the existing retail that is to remain. New vehicular and pedestrian connections, green space in between the new building and remaining grocery store and at the eastern edge of the remaining retail. A total of 79,000 square feet of retail would be provided at the site at the end of phase one and this would be a net loss of approximately 13,300 square feet of retail on the site. So this is just showing the pedestrian connectivity plan and most notably here is the pedestrian connection east to west through parcel B. And this is showing the potential vehicular connectivity plan showing vehicular connections east to west and north to south. So in the previous, the middle staff urged the applicants to pursue a rezoning with phase

development, and so now the applicant is pursuing a phase development. So phase two would include a mixed-use building, an additional 315 upper-story residential units, 50,000 square feet of ground floor retail, around 3,000 square feet of retail building one, 6,000 square feet of retail on pad building two, increased open space, expansion of a new street network, and approximately 74,000 square feet of retail would be provided on the site at full build out. This would be a net loss of approximately 18,300 square feet of retail on the site. So this would be the pedestrian connectivity plan at the end or for phase two. and then this is the vehicular connectivity plan and then the next few slides are just going to be

some renderings so this is showing the corner of proposed street 1 and university drive this is the corner of democracy lane and university drive this shows the reface and facade improvements to the shopping center and then this shows the facade upgrades to the former bank drive-thru So staff met with the potential applicant to discuss the proposal and had some preliminary comments. The sidewalk along Blenheim should continue in front of Parcel B. The feasibility and impact of the signal relocation and new curb cuts should be studied. So the potential proposal indicates that the signal at Blenheim and Willard Way would be relocated. And so staff has asked the applicant to study this relocation.

All new buildings need 26-foot fire access on two sides of the building. A sanitary sewer capacity study would be required, and staff request more information on the timing of the reface and development of Phase 1 compared with full build-out of the site. So the Planning Commission held a briefing with the potential applicant on February 9th and had some initial feedback. They noted that the open space in Phase 2 complements the Democracy Lane green space, which we just saw. connection between University Drive and Blenheim Boulevard is improved. They would have liked to see a reduction of the interior vehicular connections. There was discussion about how the site could be a transit hub for Old Town.

They were concerned about a loss of retail, about the timing of Phase 2, and And then, like I said, the two sites or developers working together to consolidate the office condo property between those two sites. Concerns with the number of vehicular connections and the locations of connections. And then just general concerns that the plan appears to be similar to the previous plan that was denied last year. So the potential land use request for this proposal would be a rezoning, master development plan, special exceptions, and then a major certificate of appropriateness for architecture and landscaping. So the next steps are formal application submittal, and then after that work sessions with the Planning Commission, City Council, and the Board of Architectural Review, and then public hearings with the Planning Commission, City Council, and the Board of Architectural Review.

And that concludes my presentation. I'm here for questions and so is the applicant.

Anthony AmosThank you. Council member Amos Thank you. Could you just go back to the slide with the pedestrian connection again? Mostly just so I can look at it because I don't have my computer on

Claire Schweigerstaffor the phase one or phase two

Anthony AmosPhase one Okay, thank you Just to ask the applicant, so what else is different versus what came before us last year? I know that was one of the things that came before Planning Commission.

Molly NovotnyapplicantThank you for the question. For the record, my name is Molly Novotny. I'm an urban planner with Curata Partners, and I'm joined by Aisha Hill with Combined Properties. Clara, could you move back to slide six, please? I think that's the best slide to answer your question. Councilman Amos. So the changes are actually quite significant. Previously, we were just doing a series of special exceptions. doing a full rezoning which is what staff had asked us to do initially so the entire both parcels the entirety of this property will be rezoned with this application so it will be rezoned to the PDM plan development meant mixed zoning district additionally we will have new vehicular and pedestrian connections

that were not shown on the concept plan last time we brought them to you all though at the meeting where you voted on the application but they were not incorporated into those plans they are now incorporated into the plans that's shown in the kind of the cyan blue color for the vehicular connection and then the orange line for the pedestrian connection we've also increased significant open space by including that pad parcel into the project that was not part of the original application and we are making improvements to the sidewalk along blenum with this application by the pad parcel previously it was only Blenheim to the main shopping center parcel okay

Anthony AmosI'm curious on how this progresses I think it's heading in the right direction but I would like to see I do concur with the Planning Commission on additional open space but I know that some folks want the vehicular connection so I understand that I could my it might be in the minority on that but I think it's heading in the direct right direction I'm excited to see where conversations with staff go I would like THE DETAIL ON PHASE TWO, JUST TO HAVE A BETTER SENSE OF WHAT THAT MIGHT LOOK LIKE. I THINK IT COULD USE SOME LOVE. THE ONLY OTHER THING I WILL COMMENT IS I'M GLAD THIS IS A REZONING SO PLANNING COMMISSION CAN GET AN OFFICIAL VOICE HERE. THANK YOU.

Catherine ReadCOUNCIL MEMBER HARDY CHANDLER.

Stacey Hardy-ChandlerSO MY RECOLLECTION IS A LITTLE IMPY, BUT IT SOUNDS LIKE THERE WAS THE INCLUSION OF ADDITIONAL vehicular connections that were requested and now concerns about the addition of those vehicular connections. Is that correct?

Molly NovotnyapplicantThe planning commission did raise concerns about the vehicular connections that your small area plan calls for and that we are implementing.

Stacey Hardy-ChandlerOkay. Okay. To the point about Phase 2, could you speak to, I think there are some, again, if I'm recalling correctly, regarding the tenant, some timelines regarding their leases being up anyway, and can you maybe speak to that transition and maybe support for Phase I, Phase II transitions with the current residents?

Molly NovotnyapplicantYeah, and the current tenants. And Claire, could you move back to the Phase I slide real quick, please? So this slide, I also, I was remiss to show facade improvements will occur with this first phase for the existing Safeway and those in-line tenants. So all those tenants that exist in those spaces today will see facade upgrades with phase one. And then if we move to phase two, you'll see that the area where those tenants, where that existing kind of single-story retail is, that would be replaced with a new mixed-use building and about 50,000 square feet of brand new retail with a grocery anchor. That future building, too, that area in gray is not all building. That's your streetscape. That's your pedestrian experience.

That's your building. There's additional open space around that area. Combined Properties has also had multiple conversations already with your economic development department to work on relocating and helping the tenants who are in the shopping center today who want to relocate within the city to help them find additional spaces in the city. Combined is uniquely positioned that they own four properties in your city. They're, if not the largest, one of the largest property owners. So they do have a lot of availability to be able to relocate tenants to their other properties.

Stacey Hardy-ChandlerI think that's helpful. Also, I do think the image doesn't show, it implies SO I'M GLAD YOU EXPLAINED THAT THAT'S THE WHOLE AREA, INCLUDING THE BUILDING, BUT OTHER SPACES AS WELL. I REALLY APPRECIATE THE RELATIONSHIP THAT YOUR COMPANY HAS WITH OUR CITY. I THINK IT'S REALLY IMPORTANT THAT YOU HAVE OTHER INVESTMENTS IN OUR CITY AND THAT YOU'RE COMING BACK WITH THIS. I SUPPORTED IT THE FIRST TIME AROUND. I THINK WITH ADDITIONAL RESPONSIVENESS TO THE FEEDBACK THAT YOU GOT. I APPRECIATE THAT THERE HAVE BEEN EFFORTS TO RESPOND TO THAT FEEDBACK. I KNOW IT CAN BE AT TIMES A LITTLE BIT CONTRADICTORY. I THINK THAT YOU ARE SHOWING THAT YOU'RE LISTENING AND YOU'RE RESPONDING TO NOT ONLY THE FEEDBACK THAT WE GIVE YOU BUT OUR PLANNING COMMISSION.

THANK YOU.

Catherine ReadOTHER QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS? COUNCIL MEMBER PETERSON AND COUNCIL MEMBER BATES. what Councilmember Hall okay Councilmember Peterson then Councilmember Bates

Thomas Petersonjust a maybe an observation if I go to slide I think it's 17 it notes and I think this is from the planning commission the plan appears to be generally the same as the previous plan I'd be curious to I know this is a plan that had really very substantial community opposition the first time around. I would be interested in knowing whether anything has happened here to shift that. I would note the planning commission's read on this, according to what we are seeing here, is that it is much the same as the first application. That certainly raises some concerns.

Molly NovotnyapplicantI will just note we added slide 6 to your presentation after the Planning Commission asked us that question to identify the changes because it wasn't as clear as it could have been the changes and the Planning Commission did not get to see this the first time around so we are looking forward to working with them closely on this review

Speaker 31and I'll also just add the other two changes that you won't see on the plan are the rezoning versus only going in with special exceptions and the retail strategy that we've spoken some about One part of it that we didn't mention was that we're also planning for some incubator space. So not only to help the tenants that are currently there relocate, but also to encourage new and small businesses to come in to the new building as well.

Thomas PetersonWell, again, reaching back to the earlier feedback that I think we all heard there in the comments on the last applicant, we have small area plans and comprehensive plans. There's flexibility within them, so there are alternatives, you know, that are reflective of that. When we make decisions to put in one type of development, it forecloses the opportunity to do other things. In this case, if we decide to put in a residential development here, it forecloses the opportunity for the kind of commercial development that I think many people were interested in when we last talked. My own thought would be it would be probably great to reconsider along those lines as we go forward. Council Member Bates?

Billy BatesThank you. Well, first off, I voted in favor of the previous iteration of this project, and my position on that project has not changed. And from what I see here, it looks like we're seeing further improvements beyond that even, which are certainly welcome. And I've also heard from several people who have lived here for many years and were very disappointed to see the previous project voted down and are very adamant about wanting to see something happen here. that is a lot more inviting and a lot more active and vibrant and a lot more appropriate as the centerpiece of Old Town North than what's there now. Again, maybe I'm just not a big fan of that era, that architectural style, but really does not strike me as, right now in its current form,

is something that, you know, is an exciting place to spend a Friday evening or a Saturday afternoon. And, you know, and I also certainly appreciate, as Council Member Hardy Chandler mentioned, the response to the feedback that has been shown throughout the process.

Catherine ReadThank you. Other comments, questions? so I also heard feedback that people were disappointed when this was not past the last time and shortly in that same realm you had another project called Rose Hill if I'm remembering correctly in the county which the redevelopment project was not approved and so you simply chose to put a new facade and call it a day this is your property, you own it, and you can make that choice to leave it the way it is for the next 50 years if you choose. So while we all might desire something different than what you have proposed, you have proposed something in line with the small area plan, and you are trying to give to the city what the city has said it wants in that location.

So to me, this is a reality check. This parcel is one of the key pieces of property in the city. It's been this way since the 1970s. It is not the best and highest use of this key piece of real estate in our city. You are the property owners. You've already done a major renovation at Scout on the Circle. you continue to invest in your properties which I appreciate that you have a deep long term relationship and investment in this city but it is also your choice to not do anything. So this has to be this has to be a partnership as it always has been for the last 60 years a partnership between the city and combined properties and I would like to see us get to a place something that pencils, I'm learning this term, it's called, it has to pencil.

So the retail space and the density and the height and the units, it has to work financially or there's no reason for you to do anything different. We are already a city of asphalt parking lots. Just asphalt parking lots everywhere. And this parcel is mostly asphalt parking lot. So I also supported the project the first time around. Not that you know But what I see with the second phase of this is that there's a placeholder there because, quite frankly, with further development in and around the city within the small area plan and the comprehensive plan, it's hard to say in 10 years after this. Because let's face it, this will be built and probably occupied, I'm going to guess, 2031. 2031 for phase one.

So by the time we get to 2031, whoever's sitting on this dais and whoever has moved into the city may have very specific ideas, along with economic development, about the best use for Phase II in partnership with the property owner, which is combined properties. So just giving my opinion and feedback on where I think we are with this, I think this city wants to see something happening to revitalize this property from the 1970s there in 2031 and so I hope that we will continue to move forward in this process and come up with the design that makes the Dias happy and the Planning Commission happy and the staff happy because I do think it's not just current residents it's future residents of this city who have certain expectations for

what a prime piece of real estate in the center of our city should look like and how it should function and what it should offer so hoping that that was back

Molly Novotnyapplicantand

Catherine Readthank you thank you so much mission a berry

Shinneberryclerkyou can reconvene the regular meeting

Catherine Readokay I'm gonna reconvene the regular meeting right this minute and we are going to go to future meeting topics

Daniel Alexanderstaffvery quickly very budget intensive schedule ahead of you so many of these items are budget related of note as I mentioned next week we'll be talking about the retreat and next steps so looking for action on that we have a on the 10th of note we have a public hearing and action on an SUP for rising sign church coming up there's a discussion on beacon landing along again with a number of budget related matters going out a little bit further into the 24th of note noise is coming back for public hearing and that is essentially it other than what we've already talked about with budget so if you have any any questions are

Catherine Readthere questions councilor Peterson green

Thomas Petersonbuildings did I miss it there's it somewhere coming back I'll get back with you. I don't see it in the immediate... Is it in there? Did I miss that?

Speaker 20No, but it should be coming.

Thomas PetersonOkay. And then floating around somewhere that may be tucked into your more of a combined follow-up on a series of things, I think there's a follow-up that the Environmental Sustainability Program had requested regarding looking at the listing of the projects they had and helping to sort that a bit. And just, I don't know that that, I don't know if that's something that is part of a broader presentation or will be dealt with in some way, but I just wanted to note that that was left as a little bit of a hanging issue.

Catherine ReadOkay. Council Member Amos.

Anthony AmosThank you. I only have two comments, both regarding March 10th, and I'd be curious on my colleagues' thoughts. Because of both public comment and the public hearing, potentially in the budget, I feel like it would make sense to have the child care go first before the FY27 budget public hearing. Since we'll have guests here, We don't know how long that'll last. We don't know how many people will come out. So that's the first item. And then similarly, for the work session, having beacon landing go first before the small area, because small area zoning, meals tax, and general fund questions, that's likely to easily be an hour, half, two hours. So those are my two requests.

Catherine ReadIf everybody's good with that, I think those are good changes. any other comments on future Councilmember Peterson

Thomas Petersonis the forestry plan coming back on a March and July schedule in some fashion for us

Daniel AlexanderstaffI'll have to look at what we had as a kind of a sequencing relative to that plan and I think the same may apply to the others we need to be on a regular rhythm on these plans so we'll take a look at that

Catherine ReadAnything else on future topics?

ShinneberryclerkYes.

Stacy HallYes, Councilmember Hall. Just a similar comment for the March 24th meeting, if we could do the noise ordinance before the public hearing for the budget again. Thank you.

Speaker 21Mayor Reed. Yes.

Shinneberryclerkwant to stick with march 17th for boring commission interviews it's the third tuesday of the month just want to make sure since we postponed it last time with the special meeting look

Anthony Amosall my tuesdays belong to you now so yeah i'm on board okay

Shinneberryclerkokay march 17.

Catherine Readokay

Stacy Hallcouncil member hall Did you need an answer from us officially? You don't

Shinneberryclerkhave to tonight, but if you can let me know. I haven't reached out to applicants yet, but I just want to make sure that we are moving forward. Oh, sorry.

Stacy HallDifferent topic. Okay. About the transportation. Yes. The tourism thing. Did you need an answer on that tonight?

ShinneberryclerkOh,

Stacy Hallyes. That was

Shinneberryclerksomething that Melanie had requested. Yes.

Stacy HallOkay. I spoke with my colleagues, and I would like to suggest that Council Member McQuillan take that on. I think her recent graduate, I'm sorry, her recent college graduation with a marketing degree would be very helpful in that arena.

Anthony AmosOkay. Let's go with me.

Rachel McQuillenSo that's fine. I think I had a few questions, though, regarding the dates and where and all of the logistics stuff. So if you could just get that information to me,

Shinneberryclerkthat'd be great. Later this afternoon, Stephanie Gerson mentioned that it will be all virtual meetings except for one in April. It will be in person, and the location will be dependent, and then it should be like an hour, depending on how the meetings you have. Okay, I can do that then. Thank you.

Catherine ReadCouncil Member Amos?

Anthony AmosJust to follow back up, so that was quick. Thank you all. For March 17th, Council Member McQuillan, if you're able to do virtual, I'm wondering, is everyone else able to do that date? I just wanted to confirm that.

Thomas PetersonOther than St. Patrick's Day activities, of course.

Anthony AmosJust wear green or I'm going to pinch you. So

Thomas PetersonI think we're

Anthony Amosgood.

Catherine ReadAll right. We'll move on to the manager report out and council comments.

Daniel AlexanderstaffVery quickly, just kudos to staff on our seemingly minor snow event. I think they did a job of clearing her some positive feedback regarding that. Thanks to staff for the work on on that event wasn't snowcrete, but Again, they did a great job. So thank you

Catherine ReadCouncilmember Amos

Anthony Amosnothing to report

Catherine ReadCouncilmember

Stacy HallHall Just want to say I'm looking forward to the basketball game tomorrow night with the Commission for women We're going to Mason and watching them take on st. Joe's I'm sure there are lots of other fun important things that I've missed to bring up adorable snowmen that were made with this snow. This was perfect for that. I think we all miss that with the snowcrete, not having any fun with the snow. And it is a traditional Fairfax snow where it snows and then like two days later or a day later you're like, where did it go? Except for these like weird random snowmen. But huge props to Public Works for all of the plowing that they did. People were like writing on Facebook like, they've already plowed my street. They've already plowed my street.

So great job all around. Thank you.

Catherine ReadCouncilmember

Stacey Hardy-ChandlerI know I bring them up all the time, but the village and the city is continuing to do fantastic work. I'm so honored to be the liaison for them. They are embarking on volunteer training using the grant that they received. They have continued their lecture series on various aging topics and I encourage people to attend those. They're up for their expo in April. I believe it's April 10th. So please mark your calendars. Lots of resources. If you are not an older adult, you know an older adult. And if you're lucky, you're going to be an older adult. So it's all relevant information. The other thing I want to highlight is upcoming restaurant week, any excuse to eat. And we do have some wonderful places. As I mentioned, I now encourage meetings at Fairfax City restaurants and various

sites. A wonderful place not just for the social stuff but also to take care of business. Thank you.

Catherine ReadCouncilmember Peterson?

Thomas PetersonJust a quick note. The transportation planning board released what is a periodic study of traffic and transportation issues in the region. I think it was last week, but it's well worth a read. I may try to circulate that around, but it identifies really the biggest and most important vulnerabilities we have for transportation safety here in the city and elsewhere and what we can do about it. It dovetails, I think, pretty well with the conversation that we had about trying to get some help on safety transportation safety in the picket road area because it read pretty much straight up like this was a poster child for addressing the kinds of issues they're seeing all over the place the general tenor of the report and the general tenor of the people on the

transportation planning board and again these are officials from all over the region is we've made progress but we're a long way from making things as safe as they need to be on the roads there's to be done so again appreciate everything that we're trying to do here to push that forward the staff here has been great about staying on top of these issues but they're a long way from being solved so we'll be i'm sure talking more about what we do with our transportation program to stay on top of that thanks council member bates

Billy Batesnothing for me thank you

Catherine Readcouncil member mcquillen

Rachel McQuillenYes, I just want to thank everyone who presented this evening and remind those that have children at Providence Elementary School that there is a PTA meeting tomorrow at 6.30 p.m. And this Friday is their bingo night. It's very well attended. I also wanted to give a big shout out and a happy birthday to my fellow council colleague, Councilmember Stacey Hall, who celebrated her birthday yesterday. it's not very often that you find your calling to serve your community also entails you creating a lifelong friendship. We met as people just servicing our PTA at Providence Elementary School, and then Stacy became the Providence Elementary School president at our urging that we really, really needed someone to step up.

she did. And then she continued that call to action by running for school board. And not only did she run and serve on the school board, but she encouraged me to as well. I would not be sitting here today in front of you all because I definitely didn't think that someone like me with my background had anything to offer our community. So thank you for being my inspiration and and encouraging me and other women like me to recognize that we do have a seat here and we belong here. So thank you, and happy birthday.

Catherine ReadAll right. Happy birthday to Stacey Hall. And I'm also looking forward to the basketball game tomorrow night between the Patriots and St. Joe's. It is the last regular game of the season before the AT-810 conference, and I am the honorary coach, so you know they're going to win because I'll be on the bench with the players, advising them on all, all the special plays. With that, we are now adjourning the meeting at 11, 18 p.m. on Tuesday. Thank you.