City Council Meeting

Art Hammerschlagpublic commentGood evening, Mayor and members of the City Council. I'm Art Hammerschlag, City Resident at 3843 Far Oak Circle. I'm speaking tonight on behalf of Fairfax City Citizens for Smarter Growth and to voice our strong support for the Wheelard Sherwood Center. Our support is based on a number of factors. One, Green Acres is totally inadequate as a senior center, and while the city has made a valiant effort to repurpose the old elementary school, in reality it is somewhere between a joke and a disgrace. Fairfax City residents deserve better. Two, the new facility is a first-class addition to the recreation facilities in the city. It will serve city residents for years to come and this is the kind of facility that will make Fairfax City a desirable place to live well into the future.

Kelly O'Brienpublic commentas you should have all received by email. There are real limitations to continuing to rely on Green Acres site as the city's primary community and senior center. It is valued, but it has access, parking, and structural constraints that would require significant reinvestment to serve as a long-term solution. At the same time, I fully agree that Council must continue to scrutinize operating costs, long-term maintenance, and affordability for residents. Transparency and fiscal discipline are essential. But we should also be honest about the alternatives. Restoring or delaying this project would not eliminate cost. It would shift cost, increase uncertainty, and postpone needed services. This project represents essential community infrastructure.

Speaker 11And as you look at the schedule at the bottom that we are here, kind of the takeaway is we're ready. So this summer we're ready. If the projects approved, we're ready to go to construction. The design's complete. We're nearly done with permitting. Um, so we're ready to move into the next phase. Next slide. In terms of the programs that will be at the site, basically for the community center aspect, we're moving everything that's currently at Green Acres over. We're moving it over into a modern purpose-built building to house those facilities. So the senior center, the preschool youth programs, gymnasium, fitness center, fitness classroom, multi-use classrooms, and one of the big feedbacks from the community as we went through it

Stacey SummerfieldstaffSo we do reach a break-even point on rental revenue. and we also did not include a senior fee which is something that staff are recommending just to bring us in line with what county senior centers are charging to help offset the cost of running the center the last thing that's important to note is that our current model is a bit turned from this which is that we book in as much community space as possible at the free rate and then we fill we backfill with private rental space so if we were to maintain that lose up to 1.2 million annually but we want to find a good space in the middle where we are still prioritizing that community use but also setting a goal for private rentals to cost recover our operating costs.

Yeah, the council is of course able to do whatever they'd like right now We do have reciprocity with the county which means that if you want to join a county community center, do swim lessons or anything like that. City residents pay the same amount as county residents. This is something that our seniors take advantage of. They join the county senior centers as well, mainly for bus trips because everybody wants to maximize their bus trips. And so right now our city seniors are able to join the senior center at the $75 rate. The non-resident county rate, if they were a senior joining, would be $150 per year. pretty substantial difference. So they are able to utilize that resident rate that county

residents get. So in the spirit of reciprocity, we also offer that same savings to county residents so they get the same fee as city residents. And we could of course break with reciprocity. There is always the possibility that the county would break with reciprocity as well and our city residents would then have to pay those higher prices for things like swim lessons or to belong to the senior center.