City Council Work Session

Speaker 19I'm like a million dollar trooper Trying hard to look like Gary Cooper Super duper, come let's mix Where Rockefellers walk with sticks Or umbrellas in their mitts Putting on the ritz guitar solo Dressed up like a million dollar trooper Trying hard to look like Gary Cooper Super duper, come let's mix We're Rockefellers, Walt with sticks in their midst putting on the roots putting on the roots putting on the roots putting on the roots

Speaker 12Do you come on like shorty George and me? Just feel some jive, we'll dig you out, you see. Well, I'll read. Are you ready? Yes,

Speaker 15we're ready.

Speaker 12Jump in study. You look solid, Joe. All I want to know. Are you?

Catherine Readby voiceGood afternoon. I would like to call the special meeting of October 6, 2026 to order. directly to the consideration for a remote participation by Council Member Amos pursuant to Code of Virginia Section 2.2-3708.3. Is there a motion to approve the remote participation by Council Member Amos? Council Member Hardy-Chandler.

Stacey Hardy-ChandlerYes. In accordance with City Council's adopted policy and as permitted by Virginia Code Section 2.2-3708.3, I move to approve Council Member Amos' request, properly submitted in writing prior to tonight's meeting for remote participation, subject compliance with the requirements outlined in the City Council Adopted Policy and applicable law in all portions of the City Council Work Session, October 6, 2026. Second.

Catherine Readby voiceThe motion has been made and seconded a roll call vote. Roll call vote.

Ms. KadalovclerkSorry. Council Member Hall? Aye. Council Member Hardy-Chandler?

Catherine Readby voiceAye.

Ms. KadalovclerkCouncilmember Peterson?

Catherine Readby voiceAye.

Ms. KadalovclerkCouncilmember McQuillan?

Catherine Readby voiceAye.

Ms. KadalovclerkMotion passed.

Catherine Readby voiceI will now recess the special meeting to go into a work session. I will now recognize our City Manager Mr. Alexander for the first work session item being the future meeting topics.

Mr. AlexanderstaffThank You Mayor Council. I'll briefly walk through the agenda items currently scheduled through the end of the calendar year. Again our purpose primarily to make you aware of and give you visibility into what's up we have a little more opportunity to flag any items of scheduling or other concern and additional follow-up we have some staff here that have joined us to to perhaps answer any more significant questions that we have around the futures items so i'll beg your pardon for a little bit and spend some time going through this and happy to answer any questions as they come up october 13th fairly straightforward for proclamations on consent we have the 2027 fall supplemental appropriations vdot street maintenance resolution and the chain bridge

road sidewalk project property acquisition item chain bridge item will also have a public hearing associated with the certificate of tate authorization work session that evening is the proposed charitable real estate tax exemption for Nova Labs moving on to the 27th a little bit of a lighter agenda from the standpoint we have a public hearing on Mantua Hill Swimming Association special use permanent amendment dealing with tennis court and swimming pool operating hours we also have a tentative pre-application briefing for our city center-west on to November 5th and 7th of those two items days will be focused on budget. We'll have the engaged Fairfax event giving residents businesses and other

stakeholders an opportunity to provide input before we develop a budget and then on the 7th we have the budget work session which includes a number of the items that you see included there that are budget related that will be an important foundation meeting for our FY 2028 budget. November 10th is shaping up to be a pretty substantial meeting on the calendar since we do not have the number third work session on consent we currently anticipate potentially adopting Wilcoxon trail alignment financial policies and council budget guidelines the introduction of the tax relief ordinance introduction of the residential permit parking district ordinance and introduction of the NOAA lab charitable tax exemption.

Wilcoxon item remains tentative and could move to December 8th. We also have a significant public hearing agenda that evening includes the 2027 legislative program for public comment, a chain bridge road, shared use path, small area plan zoning amendments, public hearings on first and second street, Oak street and Dwight Avenue pedestrian projects. separate zoning amendment package addressing the senate bill 388 and the amendments associated there we also anticipate consideration of the queue transit development plan and so again a pretty robust agenda the 17th is a special meeting if needed specifically around the local general real real retail sales tax for public schools so that's a tentative meeting there

another significant work session, the proposed 2027 legislative program, um, draft CIP for 2028 to 2032. At that meeting, uh, we will be talking about the move Fairfax city pedestrian master plan and safety action plan and a discussion of potential future reviews and updates to the adopted small area plans. December 8th another very substantial meeting on consent the follow-up pedestrian master plan safety action plan legislative program and then temporary extensions of franchise agreements with Verizon and Cox public hearing agenda also includes real estate tax relief ordinance potentially the school capital sales tax ordinance potentially the gallery at city use application potentially the courthouse plaza land use application

final potential action on the residential permit parking district ordinance changes and potential final action on Nova Labs and their real estate tax exemption December 15th is still listed as and if needed last item I would raise is currently not on the list but it relates to an issue we've discussed with Council up to this point around support for third-party organizations and events. Earlier this year we mentioned to you that we'd work towards more formal agreements with organizations receiving city services or resources and so our idea is to come back to you in a work session hopefully before the end of the year and so I wanted to raise it as a potential future agenda item moving forward.

So this issue ranges from these major committee events to the smaller activities that we're typically involved with as a city, usually involves facilities, staff, equipment, and other support. The goal is very straightforward, ensure our resources are being used responsibly, legally, expectations are clear for all involved, and that the partnerships are managed efficiently, effectively and fairly one of the elements of this that's been most recent and there's been a lot of discussion around our candidate forms so we're in the season we've had various requests that have come through regarding that we certainly support the idea of getting the word out hearing directly from candidates community better being better informed overall the most recent

election site cycle the city's actually provided channel 12 video services for a traditional candidate night that has been traditionally sponsored by the central chamber in the league the women voters those both occurred in 2022 and 2024 it occurred this year on the 30th again with the chamber and league as primary sponsors this year video support was given by fairfax public access rather than the city subsequent to that we've had additional requests come in and this is where you know the challenge has been in terms of identifying what to do with that there is no formal process we've not established any criteria up to this point on who we're covering who we're not covering and so that that issue unfortunately has not been resolved in the short term we

certainly want to create that framework in the long term as we move forward deciding on again what we're going to do a city resources for these unique circumstances a lot of things can be handled by a permit some things need to be handled by agreement and so you know we really want to get to the point where we've we've nailed this down and we don't want to put staff in the position of who are providing services for and who are not however you know I think it's still a worthy discussion in that the city has been involved in the past There's one forum I believe that is still upcoming maybe tomorrow night. We would have capacity to provide probably recording since it's at our facility if that's the desire to do so in any way.

Interestingly, I think some quotes around that type of service are at the amount of maybe $6,000. We do it for a lot cheaper. That's probably why folks want to come to us too, which is understandable. but absent that framework but still understanding it's a it's a discussion wanted to bring it to council and say if you would like us to attempt to record and then allow someone to use that link or to broadcast that event further then we're we're happy to do that we certainly just want to make sure we're being consistent fair equitable and and getting your direction on that as we go so didn't mean to get that far into the weeds we will bring back again a framework for these in the future so we're not doing one-offs.

We really want to get out of the business of picking and choosing what events, what other things we support. We've talked before even relative to Willard Sherwood and the development of that site of saying we really need to capture what we're doing and as much revenue back to the city as we can. I wanted to raise that issue not only as a future agenda item but to get council's consensus if you'd like to that service tomorrow night for that forum if need be. So that's all I have on the future items. I covered a lot. I apologize that I went through a little bit and then added a piece at the end, but certainly happy to answer any questions and, again, get consensus on whether you'd like us to cover tomorrow night's event.

Catherine Readby voiceCouncil Member Hall.

Stacy HallThank you. I will go to your last question or your question and then I'll ask some of my questions. I do think that covering the mayoral debate tomorrow night is a fantastic opportunity for our residents. I was very hopeful that we would have been able to do the same last night for the candidate forum. I think it can be done in a completely nonpartisan way. I think it can be administered from strictly a recording, show on Channel 12, live stream opportunity. And I think it just allows it to reach so many other residents. And then they can watch it at a later date or you know watch it live. So I am all for that

Mr. AlexanderstaffThe only qualifier I think for tomorrow night be being with one staff member We may not be do the live stream part because you have to capture both Okay, but at least recording and then either rebroadcasting That's my

Stacy Hallopinion. That's almost good enough almost as good. Yeah, I did have one question to The charitable real estate tax exemption for the Nova labs Can you, prior to that work session, would you be able to bring us a list of all of the organizations that currently qualify for non-charitable tax status and what the dollar amount is that we are essentially giving up by doing this?

Mr. AlexanderstaffAbsolutely. Yeah, we can bring that analysis to you.

Stacy HallIf it's not too much trouble, could you project it out for the next five or ten years as well so we can just get an idea of what that would look like if we assume natural rate of inflation or something?

Speaker 25So with that caveat, yes, understanding that tax rate changes can impact that, but if we're holding out a constant, we could leave it at the current rate and then try to project out a very conservative, modest potential growth appreciation for the next four or five years. Thank

Stacy Hallyou. Yeah, just I guess similar to what you did for the Lamb Center when our beacon landing when they presented that. Thank you

Catherine Readby voiceCouncilmember Peterson

Thomas Petersontwo things first is something that I think has been was raised by a council member Amos at least partially a bit earlier And I don't know whether it will require council action or whether this actually can simply be administrative It's possible if the action is required it would be consent or quick, but it's the issue of enabling the Lamb Center to on Sundays provide hypothermia support to cover a gap that exists in terms of hypothermia protection. And again, I don't know whether this requires any action or not. I wanted to raise it just so that it didn't slip off in case any was needed.

Mr. AlexanderstaffNo, I appreciate that and appreciate the question. but I'm going to turn to an expert and ask Brooke to come up and address it. I think he probably has better knowledge than I do. I think under the special use permit, it would require us to adjust that with council action.

Brooke HardinstaffYes. Thank you, city manager. The current operation was enabled through a special use permit and special exceptions, and tied to those approvals are an operations plan, and they include hours of operation. at least Sundays are not included within the approved hours of operations, so that would need to be amended. So they would need to file an application to modify the special use permit, and that could certainly be processed by staff and brought forward to council for consideration.

Thomas PetersonOne part of that that has come up in discussion is for this to be set up so that it can cover hypothermia events, but other extreme weather events that may occur throughout the year. We have extreme heat. We may have some extreme precipitation and flooding events that affect unsheltered populations in the city, et cetera. So it's possible that providing some sort of shelter coverage on Sundays for these other forms of extreme weather might also be worth doing as we are contemplating this for hypothermia?

Brooke HardinstaffThe Lamb Center, the applicant, would make any modifications to its operations plan and would file that as part of that application. So that could account for hypothermia. It could account for other, you know, natural events or catastrophes or so forth. Those parameters were outlined by the Lamb Center initially as part of their application and were accepted by the council but certainly the Lamb Center could bring those back in a modified form.

Mr. AlexanderstaffI think we just want to be clear on two things. One is a consensus to do it and then secondly the timeline that's really required for us given what we're up against in October at this point so could you speak to that?

Brooke HardinstaffSure so they would need to file an application that accepted and reviewed by staff. It would have to be advertised and come to to public hearing with the council, notifications of adjacent property owners and signs posted at the location and so forth. It would likely be a more straightforward so to speak review given that there's not construction at this time. They're not proposing any physical changes just adjusting the hours and adjusting the hours. So we wouldn't anticipate that that would take a long duration or multiple rounds of staff review to complete. But typically for use related amendments or use related special use permits, we're in that three to six month time period. Staff would obviously work to try to

expedite that to the greatest extent possible, but we would have to go through all of the normal checks and balances and procedures for that.

Thomas PetersonSo theoretically this could spill over into next year, but that's okay because you would have gotten the procedure in gear in order to support next

Brian Lebkemanstaffyear's consideration. Is that fair? Yes,

Thomas Petersonthat is fair. Okay, right. I just wanted to be sure that we were aware of whatever sort of timely response we needed The other thing is we've got a couple items here that involve public hearings and action. And I just want to maybe reach back to comments made in earlier council meetings, and there's been some public discussion around this as well, which is the notion that we don't necessarily take votes the same evening as or the same afternoon as we have public hearings on actions. And I certainly support us not doing that, us being able to give ourselves some time and give the community some time after a public hearing before we take a vote. So just wanted to raise that. And I'm not sure what, if any, adjustments we can or should make on that.

But I know this has been an issue that's come up before.

Catherine Readby voiceAnd I think that's why there's always the option to defer the vote on each individual matter before the dais. And I think that has always been an option. We will hear from Attorney Brian Lebkeman. But a motion to defer if it's supported on the dais moves that forward. Mr. Lebkeman?

Brian LebkemanstaffYes, that's correct. I did want to weigh in on one item that's coming before you for public hearing that is a little time sensitive. We'd ask that that be done the same evening. The eminent domain related to the Chain Bridge Road sidewalk project, that is very time-sensitive, and the three property owners in question are fully aware of this, and we're continuing discussion and negotiation. But we will be requesting, because of the timing needs for the project, that Council take action the same evening as the public hearing. Chair Greg Musilkamp.

Thomas PetersonIs that the only time-sensitive one? Mr.

Brian LebkemanstaffI can't speak to the others. That was just the one that I had in my mind. Maybe others can speak about any others that are coming up.

Mr. AlexanderstaffI think time sensitive is often in the eye of the beholder. So I think that's the, for us, you know, we're, you know, we're scheduling these things when they come up. And so any of these items that come up otherwise, this is a great time to talk about it. So if there's individual ones that you want to discuss, then, you know, I think that's probably, this is the time to do that. Well,

Thomas Petersonjust my question about time-sensitiveness is really one, whether it's mandatory that we take same-night action, which I think on the eminent domain I understand the answer is yes, but it's not necessarily the case in other actions.

Brian LebkemanstaffYeah, and to be clear, on the eminent domain one, it's not mandatory. We're just strongly requesting it due to the project timing.

Thomas PetersonGot it. Okay.

Catherine Readby voiceAre there any other questions on future meeting topics? Did you want to speak, Council Member Peterson, to the taping of tomorrow night's mayoral debate?

Thomas PetersonWell, I think it's a great idea. And just as a general matter, I'm hoping that there will be an opportunity following this election at whatever point is possible to have a thoughtful reflection on the election process I do believe that voter education is a very important thing for the city to support and would look forward to, you know, discussing that really for the benefit of everybody in the city and all candidates. But there is one other agenda item that's not here, and I don't know whether it needs to be here, but it's possible that it might, and that is just my understanding is that that a fair amount of work is underway in terms of planning and assessment for commercial redevelopment in the city. And my question is whether we need to have any time to be

able to see how that's progressing and be advised as to whether there will be any budget implications for that as we get an early sneak peek at the budget. And if this is not a timely thing to bring into any of our discussions, that's okay. But in case that it is, I'd like to make sure it doesn't slip away on us.

Mr. AlexanderstaffYeah, I think that as we look ahead to November 7th and look at some of these broader economic indicators that we're going to dig into, I don't want to get too far off a pretty packed agenda, but it seems logical at that time that J.C., if he doesn't kick me under the table, that we might have an opportunity to start in on that. I believe that economic development is part of that discussion on the 7th, and so I'm happy to have Colleen step up and provide her feedback.

ColleenstaffThank you, Council Member. As you mentioned, we're well underway on several studies, and then we have others that need to come after that that are not yet budgeted. So as part of the budget discussion and the general transfer to EDO, that will certainly be part of the discussion. If we need to have any separate conversations, I think they would come up in that process. But right now we are moving forward on several of those already with the current budget.

Thomas PetersonOkay, so we will hear from you if we need to carve out any public discussion time about this. Otherwise, we will bless you with all of the work that you are undertaking now and kind of stay posted in terms of whether you need any more help and advisement from us. Is that sort of fair? Absolutely. Thank you.

Catherine Readby voiceI'm not seeing any objections whatsoever to the videotaping and broadcasting of tomorrow night's mayoral debate, so I think that the green light from the dais to move forward with

Mr. Alexanderstaffthat. Yeah, the only clarification, and I think I know what you meant, is we won't broadcast streaming tomorrow. It won't be live, but we'll have the ability then to broadcast it later.

Catherine Readby voiceFantastic. Live stream tomorrow? Not a live stream tomorrow.

Mr. AlexanderstaffJust recorded.

Catherine Readby voiceJust recording. Let's be. We're recording it tomorrow. It will be broadcast on Channel 12 afterward. Probably more than once, I think.

Speaker 21Yes.

Catherine Readby voiceSo that is good news for the voters of Fairfax City who will be able to tune in and listen to the debate if they're not able to be there in person tomorrow. Any other comments or questions on future topics? And I don't see anything from Council Member Amos, so I'm assuming he's satisfied. All right, then. Ms. Kadalov, what is our next work session item?

Ms. KadalovclerkOur next work session item is a discussion of in-progress transportation projects with a focus on projects coming up with or with upcoming milestones. I'll recognize Wendy Sanford, transportation director, for the staff presentation. Thank you.

Wendy SanfordstaffGood evening, Mayor, members of the City Council. This afternoon we are going to walk through the status update of a number of transportation projects. We have a lot of information to get through and you're going to hear from a number of us up here. And then what I'd like to do is get through the presentation and then we can have questions afterwards. Before I get started I'd like to introduce the team that is here with me this evening. You have the entire transportation team plus one of our consultants. We have Chloe Ritter, our multimodal transportation planner, Nick Soucy with Timmins, and he's our consultant on a number of the projects we'll be discussing, Sonny Sarna, our capital projects manager, Kurt McCullough, our traffic engineer, and David Summers, our public works director.

So you've got the whole team here this afternoon.

Ms. KadalovclerkSo let's get started, if I can. Okay,

Wendy Sanfordstaffso I'm going to start with the transportation project roadmap, which I know we've seen a number of times before, but I would like to take just a couple of minutes to review what the roadmap shows us, because we'll be seeing a number of projects tonight that are at various stages along the road. We currently have 27 projects that are in progress at some point on this road. And so what we start with that first top blue are the planning stage and we're going to talk through exactly what projects are where but this is the planning stage very generally. And then as we move around and we move into that orange that's when a project then becomes a concept. And so we're looking at whether or not the concept should then proceed.

So this is at this point we're still spending we're spending local money to develop concepts. If the concept is acceptable broad terms we move into funding. And then where it becomes sort of a standalone CIP project that has funding. If it's funded, that moves into that green phase, which is design. And that's where we're designing the projects. This is by far the longest phase. We have the most number of projects in this phase because it takes a number of years to move from preliminary design all the way to final design. And then finally, that last light blue area is where we are in construction. The icons at the top show where there's public engagement or council approval required. And so we follow this process for the majority of our projects.

And it helps keep everything transparent. We know where we are going, where we've been on every project. So typically when I put a project up, I say this is you are here, meaning this is the step, the stage we are at. This is where you can clearly see where we've been before and what we have coming up in the future. we are going to talk through some, not all, of the 27 projects. We're going to focus on the ones that have upcoming milestones. And the reason for that is that we like to brief the City Council ahead of any milestones, ahead of the public seeing it or ahead of you even seeing it for a public hearing. So we're going to focus on just those that have the milestones and we'll talk a little

bit about some of the other projects that are in the early phases. So this is taking that roadmap and now showing you where the 27 projects sit along the road. So what you can see is that we have a couple of projects in planning about five we have five projects in concept phase one funding one awaiting approved funds meaning it's gone through the funding and now we're just waiting for those funds to come online and as I mentioned the vast majority of our projects sit in the design phase and then we have four that are under construction and I added four that have three that have recently been completed just to show you that recently moved off the map. What we're going to focus on tonight are the seven that are

highlighted. So we have three projects in the concept phase that are out now for public input. And what that means is that this is where we've spent local money to develop these projects. And we're now seeking input as to whether these projects should proceed or not. So those are the three in the concept phase we're going to focus on. And then in the design we have four projects that are approved and funded that are now at their 60% design and those are on the schedule for a public hearing in early November and we are showing those projects to you ahead of that public public engagement process and public hearing phase. So first we're going to speak to you about some of the planning phase these aren't the seven but we wanted to just give you a

very brief overview on the status on the two projects that are in the planning RIDDER IS GOING TO GIVE YOU THAT UPDATE. THE ONE THING I JUST WANT TO MENTION BEFORE I PASS IT TO MS. RIDDER IS THAT BECAUSE THESE PROJECTS ARE VERY HEFTY AND THEY ARE IN PROGRESS AND THEY ARE GOING TO RESULT IN PLANS THAT GIVE US A LIST OF THINGS THAT WE WILL NEED TO DO, WE ARE DEFERRING THE KICKOFF OF THE NEXT TWO-YEAR PROGRAM. TYPICALLY WE WOULD BE ENGAGING STARTING OFF THAT TWO-YEAR PROGRAM RIGHT AROUND NOW, BUT BECAUSE WE ARE REALLY AT THE CUSP OF HAVING these two-year these other plans adopted we are holding off kicking off that two-year program and we'll do that once we have these plans approved so I just wanted to mention that and with that I'm going to have miss Ritter walk us

through the plans that are in the planning phase thank

Chloe Ritterstaffyou so the first big plan in the planning phase is the move Fairfax City initiative and I think you've all seen this before so we've been working on this project or this plan and we started on this plan last year where we have three components of this project three components of this plan there's a citywide pedestrian master plan a citywide safety action plan and then the Old Town circulation study and we combined those three projects together because there's a lot of overlap in the goals and in the data collection and the public public feedback feedback that we're getting on how do we make safety pedestrians and everybody else safer across the city and how we make it more walkable across the

city. So it was really intentional that we brought those forward together as one project. We're now at the point where we're diverging the projects or diverging the plans because the types of recommendations are different from the pedestrian and safety plans compared to the Old Town plan. And so right now we're more focused on finalizing the pedestrian safety master plan, pedestrian plan and the safety action plan because that's giving us a citywide view of what are our priorities across the city in terms of where we want to spend our future efforts and where we want to prioritize our future efforts to develop new concepts and to develop new projects as Ms. Sanford just said. The Old Town Circulation Study is a slightly different type of recommendation or a

very different type of recommendation where we're going to be coming forward with some recommendations to then move forward to funding and design and construction. So we want to spend a little more time on that because that's more complicated. We want to make sure we get the details right on that. So that's why at this point those first two projects and then the third project are sort of diverging. So right now we're working on finalizing the recommendations for the pedestrian master plan and the safety action plan. We have an advisory committee, the next advisory committee meeting scheduled for later this month. And then we, as mentioned earlier, we'll be coming back to you on December 1st for our work session to give an overview of what those recommendations

are. I believe the future agenda said that we'll be coming back on December 8th for adoption, are going to be revising that schedule because we do want to go back out to the public and make sure we get good public feedback on those draft recommendations before we bring it for adoption. So there is going to be another round of public feedback after the December 1st work session and we'll be coming back in December I'm sorry and coming back in 2027 for adoption of those projects or adoption of those plans and that will give us a lot of recommendations of what are our next priorities what are the next projects that should go on to the roadmap. And then again once that project those plans are adopted then we will be

finalizing coming back to the Old Town Circulation Study and finalizing that next year as well. Yes so the Pickett Road Safety Audit is a new study that we are going to be initiating soon. We actually initiated or had an open house a couple of weeks ago and I know several of you were there. So the Road Safety Audit is a more detailed look at safety in a more constrained area. So this is safety on Pickett Road from Fairfax Boulevard to Main Street. And very similar to the Main Street Road Safety Audit we did a couple of years ago, this is going to take a deeper dive into where the crash hotspots are, where there's really specific safety issues, and come up with some more specific concepts and plans

to address some of the highest priority safety hotspots that our consultant will identify. So we did the public engagement on September 16. And we have kept that open on Engage Fairfax. So we have a lot of good feedback This is a project that's being funded by COG and so they are in the process of procuring the consultant on our behalf and then once that kicks off with them in the next month or so, the process will probably take about six months to go from start to finish to look at all the existing conditions, come up with some of the priorities and then come up with some potential ideas. And so just similar to the Main Street Safety Audit, we do expect to have some near-term further develop as concepts and bring into design and funding.

I think the other thing I want to mention with the road safety audit is it does assume that all of the existing conditions will be there and that a lot of any of the approved development will be there. So it's working with what's there and then coming up with ideas for what we can do in the public right-of-way. So it's not going to be commenting on anything outside of the public right-of-way or making recommendations for that. Okay.

Wendy SanfordstaffOkay. So now we're going to discuss three projects in detail that are in the concept phase. And this is, as I mentioned at the beginning, these are three projects that have upcoming milestones. What that means is we take a look at this roadmap. We are at step four. And you can see there's little exclamation points next to it. It says, solicit public feedback on concept plan and whether project in this form or another should proceed to funding. So this is a critical juncture for these three projects that we have developed concept plans for, and we are seeking feedback from the public. The plans are available now on Engage Fairfax. There is a comment period that is open now through October 30th.

30th. In addition to leaving comments on engage, we're having an open house on October 20th in the atrium for the three projects that are shown in yellow. And so this is really an important time for the public and for the City Council to be looking at these projects because we're really at that point where we can pivot if these are projects that we don't want to proceed with. So with that, I'm going to have Nick Sousi take it from here and talk about the three projects that are shown in yellow

Nick Soucythank you miss sanford mayor council the first one we will talk about is the wilcox and trail extension formerly known as the george snyder trail extension so if a little bit of very quick background is is looking here as the george center trail extension project we made it through i guess the the green step through the funding application process on the roadmap funding approximately 9.5 million dollars was allocated or it has been made available through VDOT smart scale program and with the cancellation of the George Snyder trail earlier this year in May staff came to council and council authorized a feasibility study to look at alternatives for how can the goals of the original project still be met and still

provide the benefits to the community and utilize the funding that you have here. So the original route along Fairfax Boulevard is shown on the left and then the alternative route that we're considering and we'll be sharing more about is shown on the right there utilizing Draper Drive. So very quickly a few of the critical considerations as we look at these are an alternative configuration. Safety is first and foremost the most critical factor here. That's not only vehicular safety but pedestrian safety, bicycle safety, anyone that would be in or out of or entering or exiting the public right-of-way safety is going to be the priority for this project. We also want to existing right-of-way as much as we can thereby minimizing impacts on the businesses within the

corridor and also looking in depth at the parking along both draper and beach and preserving that where possible so this is the current again concept plan that we have prepared and will be available or is available for public review and comment we've kind of shifted the map here so that Draper Drive is going left to right on your screen. Fairfax Boulevard is top to bottom on the left of the screen there and then Beach Drive is on the right connecting into Draper Drive Park. So what you can see here in high-level summary is the Wilcoxon Trailhead at Fairfax Boulevard in the very bottom left corner there. We will connect to that and extend a 10-foot wide shared path along Fairfax Boulevard consistent with consistent with the original

funding application to provide those improvements to widen out what is already there today it's only a narrow sidewalk today so this will be an expanded facility to all bikes and pedestrians skateboard scooters whatever it may be again from the trailhead to the intersection at Fairfax Boulevard and Draper from there we will repurpose or rebuild the crosswalk across Fairfax Boulevard making the crossing using signalized crossing there Fairfax Boulevard to the north side and then continuing again as a ten foot wide shared use path north up Draper. About a quarter of the way up Draper we shift from your typical behind curb shared use path and transition to an on-road facility to again kind of hit some of those main goals

that we spoke about on the previous slide and we can talk a little bit more about that forward but then we continue to beach where we then make the turn left if you will down beach and to the existing trail that exists at Draper Drive Park. So connecting to existing facilities on either side as well as maintaining the existing sidewalk that is along the east side of Draper Drive. So a little bit more detail on Draper Drive we'll show another view of this shortly but we are We are again proposing an on-road 10-foot wide shared east path for the majority of the segment along Draper Drive. As I mentioned, the five-foot sidewalk will be maintained on the east side and that sidewalk exists today.

But to do this, we will require some adjustments to the on-street parking along Draper Drive. So when I say on-road, if you look at these two section views here, the top being existing and bottom being proposed, You can see that the amount of pavement does not change. The space between the two curbs does not change. But what does change is the four vehicular uses that you see in the top existing condition, being two travel lanes and two parking lanes. That is reduced down to two travel lanes and a single parking lane in the proposed section. And with that extra space, we develop the room we need to construct the on-road shared-use path the shared use path use from the travel lane use. Very similar section on beach. Same situation where the existing curbs do not move.

The existing pavement is not widened but within that section we reduced the four vehicular uses down to three. The one, I guess, unique part about beach drive is today there is one existing bike lane striped heading westbound into Draper Drive Park along the north side of the road but there's not that matching bike lane headed east on the opposite side of the road there's just a wide pavement area so again we're going to consolidate or we propose consolidating those uses to to bring all potential bikes pedestrians other users onto this combined shared facility along the north side of the road and then quickly the last thing on this slide is just the intersection at Beach and Draper if you've been through that

intersection it's quite wide and fairly wide open typically as you stand there vehicles are moving quite quick especially if you stand or you're peeking around the corner of vehicles that are parked near that intersection and so as a part of the recommended improvements we're looking at narrowing that intersection providing some curb bump outs as well as crosswalks to make produce slower vehicular speeds and tighter turning movements but also provides for safe pedestrian and bike crossings. So parking I mentioned was a pretty critical part of what we evaluated for this project to date. Since May we worked with our team to conduct a full parking assessment so that included on-road parking facilities as well as

an assessment of some of the existing private parking along the corridor for the businesses. You can see here Draper Drive approximately 44 on-street spaces are provided. On Draper there are no parking restrictions and we'll talk a little bit about what we saw in doing our assessment. As a result of that, of course, we see in the photos on that bottom left image there about 75% of the vehicle use is heavy vehicles, so trucks, buses, things of that sort, food trucks, or long-term vehicle use and parking. On beach drive, there are obviously a shorter stretch of road, but 20 spaces available. There are parking restrictions on beach, and so we see less long-term parking, less commercial parking, but still heavy usage on beach drive

So what did we learn in consulting with the various businesses but also just doing kind of counts if you will of the parking uses out there. Especially on Draper Drive, very limited turnover in the vehicles using those parking spaces. There's one instance of at least one vehicle that looking back over historic aerial imagery has been parked in the same spot for about four years. So very, very, I say limited turnover as in sometimes little to no turnover with many of these spaces. So they're overwhelmingly full. Also many of the vehicles are parking right up to if not encroaching into the business entrances along the corridor which has significant impacts to drivers ability to see around those

vehicles as they try to enter or exit from those businesses. and that's not only visually evident, but we heard that on several occasions from the business owners. And we also, in talking with the businesses, found that many of the vehicles are not necessarily associated with the businesses that, you know, are in the adjacent private property. Whether they're out of the area parked cars, folks from nearby apartment complexes, or other locations. So it's not that we are seeing the businesses necessarily occupying all those spaces in all cases. And then also some feedback that occasionally larger events at Draper Drive Park, because of the lack of available on-street parking in many cases, folks are looking for places to park.

So on a previous slide showing the impact along Draper Drive as we eliminate one of the parking lanes, we are proposing to eliminate the parking lane along the west side of Draper Drive and separating the shared east path which will be on the left side. So we have got our bicyclist pedestrian on the path on the west side or the left of your or top of your screen there. And then on the right side in those blue highlighted areas would be the on-street parking that would remain. So in this scenario, there is a reduction in on-street parking, losing approximately 29 of the spaces along Draper Drive and about 12 of those spaces along Beach. Again when you look at what's typically available on a given day based on the long-term parking,

there may not be that many spaces available today on a given day just based on the long-term occupation of those spaces. So where we are in this process again the public comment period is open and will remain open through the 30th open house with some more detailed exhibit boards and and other information available for the project on the 20th here at the atrium and then we would plan to return to City Council for discussion and I believe we're on for the November 10th adoption for that project. All right. So we are changing gears now and continuing ahead. Rust Westmore sidewalks. So this project was previously approved February 2025 in the two-year program. actually comes out of original requests from the neighborhood and property owners for looking

the city to look at adding sidewalks along this area and as you look at the map on the screen here the blue lines are the existing sidewalks that exist and then the red outlined area is what we're calling our study area where we're looking at potentially adding these sidewalks. I think you can probably pretty easily tell that there are sidewalks over on the east within the neighborhood and on the west along rust. However, you know, the in-between, if you will, to get from point A to point B, specifically along Westmore and along portions of rust are missing. And so we're looking at exactly that. So for this project we are proposing a five foot wide sidewalk. Varying conditions and we'll kind of look at a few typical conditions along the study area here. This is on Rust

Road. That image is looking south down Rust Road and left on that photo of the street view would be the proposed sidewalk in orange that you see in the graphic there. What is evident both in person, on site and looking at this photo is there's significant grade challenges with that left side and these front yards. However what you see highlighted in blue there is the existing right of way that exists along this corridor. So there's a significant public space available that is currently not utilized or is occupied, if you will, by the front yards of many of these homes. So to address that steep grade challenge but also utilize the public right away to provide the sidewalk and walking the site with staff,

we would propose constructing the sidewalk with a retaining wall in certain locations where the grades are the steepest or the slopes are the steepest we'd able to be able to construct this as you see in the section on the right there fully within the existing right-of-way but the retaining wall just allows us to limit the distance into the front yards of those properties right-of-way or or not the distance into those front yards that the project will have to impact to build this sidewalk. Where there's no retaining wall, the sidewalk would be a standard five-foot width. Now as we've turned the corner now and we're working our way down Westmore, not nearly as much of a grade challenge, but you can see here the available blue shaded area existing

right-of-way not quite as much in this area and and the same was was the case on on rust in that we are not proposing any permanent property impacts no permanent right-of-way acquisition required we can fit all of the proposed public sidewalk facilities within the existing right-of-way that said we do expect to need temporary construction easements for some of the construction activities. So as you look on on the image here now kind of looking in section view on the street the image on the left you can see the existing right-of-way line is a bit closer to the curb but again not as much of a steep grade in here and so we're able to fit the sidewalk in along the back of curb here and within the existing right-of-way for that stretch of Westmont. This is the

I think the highlight on this would be that on all three ends of the project, if you will, the north side terminus on Rust, the south, as well as the east at the end of Westmore, we are connecting to existing sidewalk facilities at each of those points. This really is a project to fill in the missing sidewalk gaps and provide the connections up to the Walmart Shopping Center and Fairfax Shopping Center along Rust. Okay. Burke Station Road is the next one. This one is similar to Russ Westmore and that was previously approved in the two-year transportation program to go into this concept development phase. Similar in that this project is looking to connect or fill in the existing sidewalk gaps

that exist on Burke Station Road. This project also builds upon the prior Burke Station Road sidewalk phase one which picks up on the north side of this image at the kind of top of our red box there and continues north and the project limit on the south side is the city county line that exists down on the south so we were going from Greff Drive on the southern end up to Staunton on the north end and so this is the similar exhibit for this project and what you can see again and we'll zoom in a little bit more but again Gref on the left of the screen now and Staunton on the right connecting the sidewalk on the north or right end of the project again that's the phase one sidewalk that was recently constructed and then connecting to existing sidewalk

on the southern end also providing two marked and and signed pedestrian both at Gref and Barbara Ann. We looked at the potential third crossing at Stoughton however the sight lines there do not support a safe pedestrian crossing or crosswalk there and so we are only proposing or recommending these crossings at the two locations you see here. And so as we look at property impacts similar in that we have some space available we do not anticipate impacts or permanent easement acquisition with this project, but again to construct the improvements we do anticipate temporary construction easements to be needed. So this would be a five foot sidewalk with a grass buffer strip between it and the curb.

We're able to construct this within the existing right-of-way. If you look at the image that on the left there, the existing southbound lane on the left side of the screen is significantly wider than what is needed for a single travel lane. It's about 15 feet today to the edge of the edge of the pavement whereas we really only need the 11 and so although the right-of-way as you see there in blue is is pretty close to if not right up against the back of the existing curb by shifting that curb over and and regaining some of that existing wasted pavement for lack of a better term we can purpose that fit the sidewalk in with a buffer strip and stay within the right of way I mentioned these crossings before but here's just another detail there are

sidewalks on the existing side of Burke Station Road that these crossings will connect to there are some raised crossings and crosswalks out there today however they have their own challenges in terms of accessibility and and we are basically proposing to reestablish crossings at safe locations and reconstructing the curb ramps on the east side as well to be fully ADA pro-ag compliant.

Wendy SanfordstaffThank you. So just to recap where we are, we have three projects. One of them is funded so it's a little different than the other. Wilcoxon Trail is funded but we're kind of going back and revisiting a design and so that's Coxon. Russ Westmore and Burke Station Road Sidewalks, these projects are not funded. We've developed concept plans using local money. We are at that step four where we've developed the plans and we're looking for public feedback on whether these projects should continue. So we are going to have that outreach. The comment period is open through October 30th, as I mentioned. We have an open house here on October 20th for all three projects. We have sent out mailings to residents in the project areas of all three of them.

We're putting out A-frame signs. These three projects are on the front page of the October city scene. So we're really getting the word out because this is a really important stage that we're at for all three of these projects for the council to be able to make a decision about what to do next. So with that, I'll just briefly mention that there are two other projects that are in concept phase. These are not at milestones. One is the main Lynnhurst intersection. was born out of the Main Street safety audit that was completed a couple of years ago. And so we are working on that concept plan now and we'll be at that stage where we're ready to go to the public in early 2027. So we'll be where we are now with these other projects for this one in a few more months.

Fairfax Circle Intersection is a big project. And we are just now putting out the RFP for design services. And so we'll be doing an alternatives evaluation, concept development. I'm anticipating this will take a year and a half at least. This is a massive project. And so we're just getting started on this. There will be much more to come on that going forward. So that now you've heard about the five projects that are in the concept phase. And so again, now we're going to move into steps six and seven, which is the funding phase. There is only one project that sits there. This is an approved project in the sense that the city council, we've done that concept planning. engagement and we we have sought funds we were not successful in receiving TA

funds for the Norman Avenue sidewalk that one project that sits there so it's going to stay in that funding phase meaning next time a funding opportunity comes around which is in spring of 2027 we will resubmit that project and so you can see this is where Norman Avenue sits in the funding application so that one still sort of in a holding pattern until we have another opportunity to apply for funding and then looking ahead at the purple box awaiting approved funds that project was in the funding stage but now we've received the funding so now it's kind of sitting in the no pun intended parking lot of projects and the funding will come online for that in a year and at that point North Facts East West Road

that one project will move into the design phase so that it's moving along through the through the road map so now we get to the design phase and again And this is where most of our projects sit. But what we're really focusing on tonight are the four that are highlighted. So just to reiterate, these projects are funded. They have been approved by the city council to proceed. And so now we have done the design. And we're now at a point where we have 60% design plans. And so we're ready to take these to public hearing. And as we just discussed earlier, all of these projects are scheduled for a public hearing on November 10th. And so that is when the public has an opportunity to come and make comment about that 60% design,

and that is what we do before we move into final design and then into right-of-way. So the public, the comment period is actually open now. It technically will stay open for 10 days beyond that public hearing. All of these projects and all of these plans are available now on Engage. Just like we mailed out letters to the residents for the concept phase projects, We've also mailed out letters for these design phase projects, inviting, inviting comment, inviting them to the public hearing on November 10th. And right before that public hearing in the atrium, we're also having an open house from 6 to 7 that evening. So residents can come. If they don't want to speak, they can come and just speak to us,

or they can wait and then make comment at the public hearing. And I'll mention it at the very end, but we're also scheduling property owner meetings with any property owners that are interested between now and then to meet with us. So what I'm going to do is go through each one of these projects briefly. And I'm not going to go into detail on the other projects that are in the design phase, but I just wanted to make you aware that there are all these other projects. Okay. So first, Oak Street sidewalk. So this is a project, and you can see on the map where the yellow line is right here along Oak Street, that were the project will build a new sidewalk and storm improvements on the west side of Oak

Street between Main Street and Willow Terrace it will connect to existing sidewalks north and south of the project it will be replacing that ditch that you can see in that lower picture that's exactly where the sidewalk will go and it will also tie into the planned improvements on first and second streets which I will talk about as the next project the project where it's been this is very brief overview it started back in 2021 in the two-year transportation program moved through funding application design and and here we are now this project shows what this will look like it is a five-foot sidewalk with a buffer strip and then again it really stretches just it's a missing link of sidewalk on that stretch of oak street on the west side this is a rendering that's been put

together that shows that ditch section on the left and in that same exact place what that sidewalk sidewalk and a buffer strip. The project is approximately 2.4 million dollars. We have received revenue sharing funds and we are matching that with a combination of C&I funding and stormwater. Because there are stormwater improvements proposed, we are also utilizing some of that funding as the match to the revenue sharing funding. This money has been received and is already programmed and has been much of it's been programmed already in the CIP and is in just little bits are being programmed now in this last year. We program our funding the same way that VDOT programs their money so that our funding aligns with their six-year program.

There are eight parcels that require either temporary or permanent easements. We have also, as I mentioned, we have reached out to all of those property owners and have offered them the opportunity to meet with us in the next couple of weeks. First and second street sidewalks. This project is in the same area. These are shown in the purple lines, and you can see those connect to the yellow line, Street sidewalk same project we're installing new sidewalks and stormwater improvements on 1st Street it is across two blocks from Oak Street from where the yellow line is all the way to Holman Street so it's two blocks on 1st Street and on 2nd Street it's one block between Oak Street and Walnut Street and

again just like with Oak Street we'll be replacing a ditch with curb and gutter ties into proposed improvements on Oak Street this project the timeline is up has moved through. We've had open house funding applications. Design started in 2025, and now here we are. I know I'm moving through quickly. If I'm too fast, please let me know to slow down, but I know we've talked about some of these before. So again, you can see here the plans showing again a five-foot sidewalk and a buffer strip. And a rendering. So this shows on First Street a location you can see there's no stormwater improvement so this is going to be a really big improvement for these streets adding curb gutter and sidewalk the residents on the street are extremely excited about this project and they keep asking us when

we're going to build it and so we're really we're really close we're getting there so i know everyone's real eager for this for this project to be done and then on second street here's another rendering of where this project is going to be located and you can see we're weaving around existing trees trying to preserve as much of the foliage as possible. This project and again this is three blocks of sidewalks so we're talking about all of Second Street and that one block of First Street where I might have gotten that reversed. It's about six million dollars we are contributing about half it's about half city half revenue sharing and again we're using C&I funds so I want to reiterate that on this project Oak Street and then the next one we're

talking about we're using all C&I and a little bit of stormwater there is no into any of these projects. On this project we need temporary and permanent easements from 25 parcels. The right-of-way acquisition process on all of these projects has not begun yet. That would begin after the public hearing and if there's any design changes that we make after that the design gets set and then that is when we then have a very then we have a footprint for the easements that we need to acquire for these projects.

Chloe RitterstaffThe third one

Wendy Sanfordstaffis Dwight Avenue pedestrian TO THE OTHER SIDE OF TOWN. MOVING AWAY FROM THE HALLMAN FIRST AND SECOND AND MOVING OVER NOW TO DWIGHT AVENUE. THE PROJECT AREA WE ARE TALKING ABOUT HERE IS SHOWN ON THE SCREEN. IT IS DWIGHT AVENUE BETWEEN ORCHARD STREET, WHICH IS CIRCLED AT THE TOP OF YOUR SCREEN, DIAGONALLY DOWN TO THE INTERSECTION WITH ROBERTS ROAD. SO THIS PROJECT IS CALLED DWIGHT AVENUE PEDESTRIAN IMPROVEMENTS BECAUSE IN ADDITION TO INSTALLING A SIDEWALK, IT IS ALSO MAKING IMPROVEMENTS at both of these intersections, which I will speak to. So first, in terms of the sidewalk, it is completing the sidewalk network on Dwight Avenue. So it is installing sidewalks on that north side of the street.

And then it is realigning two of these intersections that right now are very difficult in terms of visibility, safety, and operations. And this one is also being combined and coordinated with the stormwater improvement project that's taking place in the same vicinity. And so we are working with Satoshi Ito to we're actually going to put both projects out to bid together. The stormwater improvements need to be finished in order for us to come in, but we don't want to tear up the area twice. So we are going to combine these projects from a procurement standpoint and construction standpoint so that they go out together. Also, the timeline to date started in June 2021 with the two year transportation program adoption.

AND THEN SINCE THEN HAS MOVED THROUGH CONCEPT PLANNING, FUNDING APPLICATION, DESIGN, AND NOW HERE WE ARE AT 60% PLANS. THIS SHOWS THE SIDEWALK AND WHAT YOU'LL NOTICE ON THIS ONE IS THAT THIS IS A CURB ABUTTED SIDEWALK. THIS IS AN EXTREMELY TIGHT AREA. AND SO IN THIS LOCATION WE DON'T HAVE ROOM FOR A BUFFER. SO THIS CURB, THE SIDEWALK IN THIS LOCATION WILL BE RIGHT NEXT TO THE STREET. AND HERE YOU CAN SEE A RENDERING OF WHAT THAT WILL LOOK LIKE. You can see it's a very tight area. We're trying to preserve as many trees as possible. And so as a result, we are foregoing the buffer strip in this area and getting in the sidewalk curb and gutter. Now, to look at the Dwight and Roberts intersection.

This is a difficult intersection. It is skewed and visibility is difficult. So what we are doing is converting this intersection from the skewed offset intersection AND CREATING INSTEAD TWO T-INTERSECTIONS. SO RIGHT HERE IS WHERE DWIGHT COMES OUT TO ROBERTS. AND RIGHT NOW THE ALIGNMENT, IT'S MUCH MORE SKUED ON A DIAGONAL. AND WHAT WE'RE DOING, SON MY DRAWING IS NOT WORKING, IS BENDING IT AROUND SO THAT NOW IT WILL HIT ROBERTS ROAD AS CLOSE TO A 90-DEGREE ANGLE AS POSSIBLE. WHAT THIS WILL DO IS THIS WILL GREATLY IMPROVE VISIBILITY. AND WHAT WE'RE ALSO DOING ON ROBERTS IN THE OTHER DIRECTION right here. So now you're going to have stopping at Roberts Road right there and at Dwight. So everyone can see each other. So now we're creating really a nice T

intersection at this location.

Catherine Readby voiceWe have a question. She can wait.

Wendy SanfordstaffOkay. And then at Sager Avenue we're pulling this we're creating a stop sign here but now today what happens is people stop right here. That stop bar will be removed so traffic on roberts road will continue to flow all the way up to this stop sign and so at when people are on segar avenue they'll stop and then they'll merge in to roberts road as they can and so again what we're doing is really creating this intersection right here it will greatly improve visibility and we're also making this as a 90 degree angle at Sager Avenue at Roberts Road. And then at Orchard today traffic stops on Dwight Avenue here but it does not stop in this direction and it does not stop in this direction. And so what we

are doing is changing this so that the stop will be on Orchard Drive and traffic on Orchard and Dwight will not stop. This project is approximately 4.5 million dollars and we have revenue sharing funds and actually don't believe that that revenue sharing we've received additional revenue for sharing funds since then but it's about half and half we applied at two different funding cycles for the revenue sharing funding and the city is contributing a combination of C&I and STORM WATER FUNDING FOR THE DWIGHT AVENUE PROJECT. IN TERMS OF PROPERTY ACQUISITIONS, WE HAVE 15 PARCELS THAT WILL REQUIRE TEMPORARY AND PERMANENT EASEMANTS.

Chloe RitterstaffOKAY, WE'RE ALMOST THERE.

Wendy SanfordstaffTHIS IS THE LAST PROJECT I'M GOING TO TALK ABOUT IS THE CHAMBERS ROAD SHARED USE PATH. AND THIS IS THE LOCATION IS BETWEEN ASSEMBLY DRIVE AND NORTHBACK STREET WHERE WE ARE REPLACING THE FIVE-FOOT SIDEWALK THAT EXISTS THERE TODAY. there's a photo of what is there today and instead putting in a new eight foot wide concrete path so it'll connect to the existing path at north facts that's been that it's in place and the proposed path that's going in an assembly as part of the chamber age eaten project timeline to date you can see when we started this this is just about three years old in terms of program adoption and moving forward the reason this has moved faster is because the funding source for this is transportation alternatives this is one of

the few funding sources that actually comes online the year after you apply unlike revenue sharing and 70% and smart scale where you sit and wait for six years TA funding you apply you receive it the next year so this is a project that is moving a little bit faster because of the funding this shows the location what you're looking at right down here in sort of the lighter green color right here is the location of the show you're not seeing that is the and then you can see the darker green is the buffer between that shared use path and the roadway. Funding total for this is 2.6 million dollars with that same funding source that I mentioned it's really great it gives you 80 percent of the funding and so the city contribution is

much smaller compared to revenue sharing funding where it is 50 50. 11 parcels that need either permanent and or temporary construction easements and we have actually met with the prop we met with property owners on this a few months ago we mailed out letters and invited anyone to meet with us we met with a number of property owners I can't remember what month it was exactly but it was a few months ago

Ms. Kadalovclerkmay thank you

Wendy Sanfordstaffokay so those are our four projects and just to repeat these projects have been approved they have funding we've been through the 30% percent design and so we're at steps 10 and 11 in the road map step 10 you can see the little icon that has the the public engagement we present 60 percent plans at a public meeting there's no city council action required we utilize the city council meeting as a forum to hold that public hearing and then step 11 we provide responses to public comments and move forward to develop a hundred percent plans so that public comment period is technically from when 10th and 10 days later to November 20th that said we are taking comments now letters have been mailed out to these two property owners in the vicinity of

all of these projects we'll be having an open house ahead of the public meeting at 6 p.m. the same night as November 10th and then having that public hearing right afterwards at 7 p.m. that concludes my presentation I am just going to put up here the property owner meetings that were that we've that were offering to property owners and then that schedule is up and I'm going to end with this this is where we are we have 27 projects this team is very very busy and it's good that we have all these infrastructure projects happening again we're focused on those seven right now that have milestones happy to answer questions about those and we can do our best to answer questions about any other into detail on this evening.

Catherine Readby voiceThank you so much. Thank you. Very thorough. Council Member Hardy Chandler.

Stacey Hardy-ChandlerSo I have several comments before I ask any questions. First of all, I just want to thank you for your thoroughness, which is why I have very few questions. But there are a few things that I do want to highlight. First of all, I really appreciate you once again, showing the long road that a lot of these projects have to go through and the various decision points. I think that reminder is extremely helpful, and especially helping us understand where there are some critical decision points, particularly at the concept phase. So I just want to really reiterate my appreciation for you expressing that, Not only that, recognizing that as you were going through the various projects, there are many where we have had briefings ahead of time, where we've had prior information presented, and just the updates on the status.

I especially appreciate the plan for public engagement, reiterating and emphasizing multiple times outreach to the affected property owners just over and over again with very intentional steps that are a part of this. The other thing I really wanted to highlight was the repeated mention of safety as being a part of why these projects are happening in addition to them being requested by the residents themselves. So these are not arbitrary projects just to have something to do. This is something that the residents themselves in many cases have identified as needs as part of their living in those areas and walking and getting around in those areas. So really taking that into account is extremely important to me.

My one question has to do with the Wendy Wheel and the two-year plan. We know that that is a process that is at least regionally famous, if not internationally famous. But tell me again a little bit more about the deferment of the two-year cycle. Because again, the thought, intentionality that goes into that process is really important. So I think understanding the deferment is helpful.

Wendy SanfordstaffLet me pull up the road map and just show you here. So typically, every couple of years, we do a two-year program. And that's where we start really with step one, where we're proposing what projects do we want on the short list, so to speak, that we want to then move through and develop concept plans for. And we started the brainstorming for it and we kept coming back to, well, we have the pedestrian plan that's almost adopted and we have a safety action plan and we're about to do a picket road safety audit. And so what we thought was, let's hold off on putting together the two-year program for projects that are going to proceed into more concept development until we have those plans adopted.

That does not mean that we are not going to pursue funding for the Norman Avenue sidewalk, which is the one project that's fully developed and waiting. It also does not mean that if these projects that we're talking about in the concept phase, if those move forward and are acceptable, we will also, we still have the funding phase, which is really at six and seven. And so if Norman Avenue, and let me go actually right here. So if Norman Avenue is already approved, so when the funding cycles come up in the fall, in the spring, we will apply for Norman Avenue. And if the plans are acceptable for Russ Westmore and Burke Station, which are the two projects that do not have funding yet are approved,

those will move into funding application. And that's when then the wheel comes into play because then we say which funding sources does this. So the funding is still happening and we're going to still be submitting projects for it. So I'm anticipating in the spring applying for funding for Norman Avenue, Russ Westmore, hopefully, and Workstation Road, those three. Wilcoxon is already funded. So the only decision we need on that one is if the alignment's acceptable, past funding and go right to design because it's already funded. And so the wheel is still there and we will still be applying for funding for projects. What we're deferring is starting new projects at the start line just for a few months

while we wrap up these plans. Does that make sense?

Stacey Hardy-ChandlerYes it does. Okay. And I won't be asking a lot of detail but I did want to go back to the parking with the Wilcoxon Trail and Draper

Speaker 21and

Stacey Hardy-Chandlerfirst of all appreciate that being based on data because I think we can talk about what we think happens but hearing things like very little turnover and the kind of parking that's happening. Go back to the impacts on that and how will we be working with folks to find alternatives for that parking?

Nick SoucySo the the impacts just so that we can there we go there are 44 today and on Draper and and 20 on Beach and so as we look at that reduction there is a significant if you just purely look at count right of what could be available there is a significant reduction and so you know we we did not we need more on-street parking for many of the businesses. In fact, it was much more of a it'd be great if we occasionally had this parking available for customers as we needed it to kind of generalize the feedback from a variety of businesses. I'd say the number one thing that came up was really enforcement opportunities and and how could we take the spots that we would be left with in the proposed plan and actually make them available on a more frequent basis and

to that a little bit more as well.

Wendy SanfordstaffSo what we heard and we had a sub consultant Walker consultants who's a parking consultant they actually did our old town parking evaluation for us and so Walker consultants is the ones who did this and they were out there on the street talking to the business owners looking at the parking and seeing what was going on. It seems to it seems to us that the issue really is one of enforcement so the parking that is going to remain it does seem needs needs to have some kind of restrictions associated with it. I don't I'm hesitant to say two-hour parking because that becomes something that our parking enforcement officer, I don't know if that's enforceable. But maybe we can look at something like no overnight parking and then we have to enforce it.

Because right now the parking is effectively not available for the public because it's really just long-term parking. And it's also not being used by the customers of these businesses. It seems like the parking is unrelated. There is an exception with one of the Reston Limousine does seem to be storing their vehicles. there using both their on-site parking and then using some of the street parking as well. So I do think that there will be some minor impacts to the businesses there, but I mostly think that the long-term parkers are going to need to find somewhere else to park.

Nick SoucyAnd if I could add one more comment on that, I mentioned, and you can see barely there in the picture on the bottom left, a lot of the vehicles that are parking are parking very close to, if not into, some of these commercial entrances. And so you've

David Summersstaffgot,

Nick Soucyfor instance, a white bus there in the bottom left photo that if you're leaving that business, it is very difficult to see. And again, we heard that from several of the businesses. So project or no project, there are some parking adjustments that should be considered in that area. We would recommend be considered in that area to reestablish, if you will, the parking boundaries so that you actually have a better sight line. Again, trail or no trail for the vehicles coming in and out of those businesses. So that in and of itself, I think we looked at a reduction of about four spaces along that west side. By the time you look at those different intersections, again, just on the west side of Draper.

So of the reduction we're looking at, there's a certain amount of those that are needed simply to clean up what is overparked today.

Stacey Hardy-ChandlerYeah, it sounded mostly like just long-term storage. at another conversation because I'm not a fan of rabbit holes. Would love to hear if there are other places in the city where that's a concern. But certainly a better use of those street spaces. Thank you so much and thank you for all the work that you do. Really amazing.

Catherine Readby voiceCouncil Member Hall.

Stacy HallThank you. Huge presentation. Lots of really good information. I have several overlapping questions so I'll try to not ask those. on page 14 though I think another example of kind of not being within the confines of where you should be parking is for example the trailer at the bottom there seems to be kind of in the travel lane as well so I think we have oversized wider vehicles that tend to park there in the industrial area so just another example on page 15 it's just kind of a general question but since we'll be losing I think it was 12 spots Beach Drive

Speaker 21are

Stacy Hallthere any possible changes to the parking lot at Draper Drive Park itself that could help us maximize spots like angling the I don't know if that makes more sense or not but Angling the spots as opposed to pulling head in or is there another way there that could be reconfigured?

Wendy SanfordstaffWe did not look at the parking lot in Draper Drive but we did speak to the to Stacy Summerfield about this because we wanted to get her input on the changes proposed on Beach Drive and her main comment was that as long as the parking lot itself is regulated, they're okay. What they tend to find is that people are parking at the parking lot at Draper Drive Park who are not using the park. So what she said is they're actually, and I don't want to put words in her mouth, but we were all on her. So if there's something, if I'm misspeaking, please jump in. But what I recall her saying is that the parking there is actually adequate as long as it is enforced. And she said it's been really helpful that there's been more enforcement recently to

make sure that people who are not associated with the park are not parking there and otherwise the parking is okay. She said she would love to see the parking turnover more on Beach. And so that's something that we can, you know, it is signed right now for two or four-hour parking. I think the issue really comes down to enforcement.

Stacy HallAlways. Okay. And the other thing, I mean, we're kind of beyond our soccer days there, but sometimes this would add on to the length of the day, but a 10 or 15 minute buffer between games would really make a huge difference in that parking lot because you've got people that are trying to drop off kids 15 minutes before the game starts and the games are still finishing up and so there really is like a huge grid of gridlock in there with no parking and people wait and it turns into a mess, especially with a lot of kids running around and through. But that's another conversation. On page 26, Bergstation Road, the new crosswalks here be lighted. I don't know what the correct word there is.

Wendy SanfordstaffYou mean would the crosswalks themselves have lights in them or do you mean just lights nearby?

Stacy HallLights on the crosswalks.

Wendy SanfordstaffWe do not. The last time we had a light in the crosswalk was on Blenheim Boulevard. There were lights in the crosswalk. And those were very difficult from a maintenance perspective. And so that is not something that we were proposing. I don't know if you had any thoughts. Or, Kurt, I know that you had some dealings with the lighted crosswalks.

Stacy HallWell, I don't mean lighted per se, like when you're walking, but, like, will there be a light? So on the sides?

Wendy SanfordstaffYes.

Stacy HallTo let people know that, hey, there's someone here. You should stop. Or there's already someone walking. Like

Wendy Sanfordstaffrapid flash of beaking.

Stacy HallYes. That's what

Wendy Sanfordstaffyou're

Stacy Hallasking. All of our. Got it. Okay. I feel like all of our crosswalks need that.

Chloe RitterstaffI mean, that's not something we can look at. Yeah. Okay.

Nick SoucyThat is something we can look at. There are specific warrants for when to install different types of treatments, and it goes all the way to even marking the crosswalk and signing the crosswalk all the way up to full signalized intersections. We looked at that very preliminarily, but I would say that more can be done to look into doing the most that we can reasonably do at both of these locations.

Stacy HallOkay, and just to be clear, so certain crosswalks would warrant it, but certain are not allowed to have it? Is that kind of what the thing is, or is it overkill for any?

Wendy SanfordstaffThat's the idea, is that there's criteria for when you put in the RRFB and whether or not there is enough pedestrians crossing to warrant it. So you don't want them at every single one, because then people become numb to them. So there are criteria.

Speaker 21Correct.

Stacy HallI mean, I guess so. What I will say, though, is when you're driving on Chambridge Road and it's one lane in either direction, and when you've got bumper-to-bumper traffic and you don't necessarily know that someone's stopping at the crosswalk and you're kind of behind, if there was a yellow flashing, you would know, oh, hey, that person's stopping, or when you're going down Germantown Road right in front of Catherine Johnson, like that's a prime spot for it. So I just, I think, and I do want to thank you for getting the one on Blenheim right near Cornell fixed. A resident brought that to my attention when I was door knocking, so great to know that that was taken care of. Okay. Remind me why Norman Avenue was denied?

Wendy SanfordstaffWell, we had a postmortem with COG and they told us that there were just a number of applications and that this compared to the others wasn't as competitive, that the roadway wasn't as, quote, regional, and that it was an expensive project. So I think that, you know, we could almost resubmit it to TA. I think, you know, it's competing against this is different than there aren't like set criteria like for smart scale it's competing against the other projects that are submitted that year that said I'm thinking about what to do we might submit it again for TA revenue sharing is always a safe one because revenue sharing there aren't criteria like that they just go through the list kind of thing it is an expensive

project but it wouldn't hurt to apply to both TA and revenue sharing so it

Stacy Hallwas like eight million dollars is that seven million

Wendy SanfordstaffI think it was about ten ten okay an expensive project just And it's the stormwater and the whole thing. It's a wonderful project. And so we will continue to pursue funding for it

Stacy HallYeah, I guess I'm just wondering and I'm not saying we shouldn't do first or second Street But if you do like a linear foot comparison or block comparison, are they comparable? It just happens to be expensive because it's a bigger road at one time

Wendy SanfordstaffIt's it's just the length is very long and just the the work that's required for the stormwater improvements And also because we were looking how many years out it was so again later years Also, VDOT has us use this cost estimating tool. It's called the cost estimating workbook. And they put in automatic percentages for inflation for every year. So it takes what your base cost is and then it computes it. And so everybody is required to use this workbook. It does seem very expensive, but that's how we estimate the cost.

Stacy HallOkay. Thank you. Page 52. and this might be more obvious if we go to page 54, but I was just trying to understand, it mentions that there's an existing path at Norfax, sorry, existing path at Norfax, Northfax. Is there an existing path at Northfax now?

Wendy SanfordstaffYes. So right when you cross the light, it's an asphalt path along Chambridge Road, the new, the half light, right there on the right hand side. It is a, I'm not sure exactly how many feet wide, it's either eight or ten feet, it's an asphalt path that was put in by the developer.

Stacy HallOkay, so that's just the one that then goes up to the corner at Fairfax Boulevard? Correct,

Wendy Sanfordstaffthat is correct. So this would connect right to that.

Stacy HallOkay, I think it just the, I wasn't visualizing that being called a path.

Wendy SanfordstaffIt's different material.

Stacy HallYeah, okay. And on the, at that intersection, what is the plan for that, if I understand from a couple of work sessions ago, at 50 and 123 that the city owns that potentially is for utilities like that sliver on the corner yes

Wendy SanfordstaffI do believe we the city does own that but I don't know what the future plans are we're not our project ends at Northback Street so we're not going up to that corner no

Stacy HallI understand that I'm just saying in general like if that's just going to continue to be an ugly parking lot maybe we could consider a pocket park or something that looks a little nicer as welcome people into our city. I would also like to again stress to the zoning people in here that when you approve a renovation for a house or a tear down and a rebuild make them put in a sidewalk. I don't care if it's a sidewalk to nowhere. It's one less sidewalk the city has to put in later. I don't know what needs to get done for that but I would really really like to see that happen. And kind of my last questions here and again this was from door knocking but and this was on the heels of the Pickett Road incident, but there are a number of weird things that go on over there.

And I did send this by email, but I didn't receive a response yet. But there's some speed camera questions about Main Street near Woodson High School, the limits of the school zone and the camera enforcement zone. And a question here is, are there advanced signs on Main Street that clearly alert drivers to the school speed zone limit and camera enforcement? I assume the answer is yes. I know we have the Prefect High School, but I'm sure they're there where they're supposed to be, right?

Speaker 7Yes, there are state requirements for that and the necessary

Stacy Hallsigns

Speaker 7are posted.

Stacy HallOkay, that's what I thought. I guess the gentleman just didn't see them. He did bring up a good point, I think, though, which is that drivers entering Main Street from the neighborhood streets on the Comstock side, which may not have passed a school zone or speed camera sign, what signage or other notice is provided before they enter the enforced area? Like they could be potentially turning. I mean, one would think they live there, they know it's there, but is there any sort of requirement for an offshoot turning onto a main street there to give them advance notice?

Speaker 7There is no requirement for that. And unfortunately, it cannot be done for every commercial location. When they set up their enforcement, they have to set up their enforcement for locations where it's obvious that somebody has passed by the flashing lights.

Stacy HallOkay. Thank you. And this is just Pickett Road, Main Street, but no turn on red restriction considerations. And I know we'll get all of that. I think I'll let email handle the rest of those questions. So thank you very much for covering all of this. my notes really quick. Make sure I got everything. Yep, that's all of them. Thank you. Council Member

Catherine Readby voiceMcQuillen.

Rachel McQuillenThank you. For Draper, I did want to say that I support the entrance restrictions for safety that's been talked about tonight for the entrance to the parking. You mentioned spillover for Draper Drive. Do we know once we take care of this parking, is there any potential for or potential sources for emerging demands in the future for parking along there like on beach drive right yeah

Wendy Sanfordstaffso in terms of adding more parking

Rachel McQuillenno no since we're going to be probably taking away i'm just wondering since you're talking to businesses and understanding yes is there any potential for us to have an issue with parking moving forward after

Wendy SanfordstaffIn theory, businesses that move in, if there is turnover in the businesses, should be providing parking for their business off-street. The idea is that on-street parking is for visitors or for residents using the park or whomever. And so, in theory, if there is business turnover, they should be providing the parking that they need. So

Rachel McQuillenthe only one I heard was the limousine, the rest didn't.

Wendy SanfordstaffRight now, they are the one business that I believe from the study that was using this, that was using the on-street parking.

Nick SoucyI would add that that is, it's a little more obvious, right, because they're limousines with names on them in many cases, right? So it's not to say that there may not be other businesses, but we didn't necessarily get, or subconsultant Walker did not get widespread reports beyond that.

Rachel McQuillenOkay, thank you. Thank you. For the Rust Road on, I'm looking at slide 19. Why did, why was the left side chosen? for the sidewalk versus the right? And the reason I'm just asking about that is because I know I live in that neighborhood, and I know people are going to wonder why we didn't choose the side that neighbors the business there versus...

Speaker 7The right side, the west side of the road, is actually in Fairfax County.

Rachel McQuillenOkay, so

Wendy Sanfordstaffthat's the

Rachel McQuillenline right there.

Wendy SanfordstaffThank you. And so this is connecting also to the sidewalk that's right outside the exotic vet?

Rachel McQuillenYes.

Wendy SanfordstaffSo this would connect right to that sidewalk, to Westmore turn the corner on Westmore and then connect to the sidewalk at Fairfax Street.

Rachel McQuillenExcellent. Thank you for the workstation road Sidewalk project. How long will construction take on that one?

Wendy SanfordstaffSunny

Sonny SarnastaffHonestly that needs to be determined once we have engineer plans and we know the how the phasing would go and the amount of work that's to be done. If there's items that take longer, six months and nine months to be ordered, depending on the materials, depending on the underground detention or BMPs, whatever goes in, that will determine the amount of time we need to do the project. I would think this would probably take one more than a year, maybe less than two years. Okay.

Rachel McQuillenAnd then for the Norman Avenue project, that's the first time that that's never, that's been applied for funding. That's correct. And then I just also wanted to mention that I really appreciate all the stormwater improvements that we're pulling together with this. I know these areas very well and a lot of them need this. Also, but I was door knocking this past weekend and everyone is very, very excited. All of these neighborhoods are extremely excited to get these connections in place. I've heard nothing but overwhelming support for it. Thank you so much.

Catherine Readby voiceCouncil Member Peterson

Thomas PetersonOn Draper I'm sorry if I might have missed this What's the plan on lighting?

Nick SoucyOne of the many reasons we're proposing the path on the west side there are existing overhead lights along that side not city pedestal lights but overhead lights mounted on the power poles but within the project budget looking at the option for adding additional pedestrian scale lighting along that stretch of Draper.

Thomas PetersonGreat. And when you do that, do we do dark skies and amber or what do we do on that? Yes. Fantastic. On workstation Road, on Stoughton, that intersection there, just a minor point when you look at the slide, but the, gosh, the lower left side of that, that is actually a parcel that's undeveloped, fully forested, and the neighbors in that whole area are very fond of it. It's a bird habitat, roosting owls and all that kind of stuff. I think the questions that they are asking is how much disruption will happen to that piece of forest as a consequence of the sidewalk. And it looks like probably not much, but I'm just curious how much room has to be excavated when you come off the existing road.

Nick SoucyAnd is that the southwest corner of the Staunton intersection, the bottom left there?

Wendy SanfordstaffIs it where I put the green dot right there? The back corner?

Thomas PetersonSo if you're headed towards Main Street,

Wendy Sanfordstaffit's

Thomas Petersonon the left on this

Nick Soucyside of Stoughton.

Wendy SanfordstaffOkay. So it is that property.

Thomas PetersonYeah.

Nick SoucyOkay. So in that area, the curb line, I believe, that's an area where we are moving the curb line ever so slightly, but the sidewalk still fits within the right-of-way. There trees identified on our survey that smaller trees that are overgrown or into the right-of-way that would be removed, but we wouldn't be proposing much, if any, impact beyond the right-of-way line. Now, again, there may be some growth out into the right-of-way that would be removed, but nothing substantial into that property.

Thomas PetersonThank you very much for knowing that. People will appreciate that, I think, a lot in that area. It's one of those spots they're fond of. Is this also a spot we talked a little bit about intersections and crosswalks In crossing spots that might need lights is this a spot that does or does not need any sort of lighting?

Wendy SanfordstaffWe would have to evaluate the light the lighting out there We I don't believe we've done a full lighting so we're at the concept phase Yeah, and so if this project does proceed We would look at the lighting and evaluate also the lighting needs and also the tree impacts and we're pretty high level although we do show this on paper, we still have a lot of engineering to do. So we would, we'll be looking at the lighting.

Thomas PetersonAnd I am, I am not advocating it. And nobody I talk to is advocating it. They're just curious. It's a, you know, dark natural spot. Out of curiosity, workstation road has a number of speed bumps. There's sort of shallow ones. and I'm curious to know how much we think that that configuration helps improve the safety on that stretch and we're going to be putting people on sidewalks so there will be an added level of possible risk we'd want to be guarding against but are the speed bumps likely to help prevent risk to people on sidewalks because of a controlled speed there?

Chloe RitterstaffI mean, I think the speed bumps do manage the speeds a little bit. They're also the speed. These speed bumps have been there for a long time, so we haven't contemplated removing them at this point.

Thomas PetersonWell, I'm not hearing anybody suggesting they be removed. Kind of the opposite. If anything, they're pretty happy to see them there. But I'm just noting it because we don't have speed bumps in many other areas where we also are increasing more use by pedestrians and bicyclists. And I'm wondering if that's something that, if there's a reason for that or it's just a matter of timing?

Chloe RitterstaffSo historically, I think speed bumps were put in a little bit more with less criteria. In more recent years, we've tried to be a little bit more deliberate about where we put them in. I don't know if Burke Station Road would have warranted speed bumps if they wanted our current on our current program But again, this is one of the things where they've been there for a long time and people like them Or we hear from a lot of people that do like them and so we're not contemplating removing them But if there weren't speed bumps there today, I don't know that they would be Recommended just because Burke Station Road is a busier road and there's some issues with that So I don't know if our traffic engineer

Has more we do want to add to that

Speaker 7Yes, whereas speed bumps were traditionally thought to reduce speeds, in the last couple of decades there's been a realization that in some cases they don't. Some modern soft suspension vehicles actually go over speed humps more comfortably, I'd say 35 than 25. and the criteria for adding them on the street has changed in those couple of decades and further research has found that the vibrational effects from vehicles going over speed bumps can actually cause long-term damage to nearby structures. That's why some countries no longer allow them near bridges. It causes long-term damage to what? Structures. nearby buildings or bridges.

Thomas PetersonYeah. So this is a case, first off, these are really popular. Just from what I can tell, the folks are pretty quick to say really appreciate that because this is otherwise a speedway here and that doesn't work for us. And lots of spots where they don't have them saying, could you think about this? And it may be that these don't fit everywhere, but maybe perhaps they do fit some places and even with some of the considerations you just raised, I think it would be worth just kind of having that in mind and maybe some flexibility around that. In this particular case, there are no, the only structures nearby are homes and these are large lots and so there might be some buffering there that would guard against any

sort of vibrational damage. I'm just raising this because this is something that residents are calling out pretty regularly.

Nick SoucyIf I could, I would also add that one of the features, if you will, of this project is that we're actually doing some lane narrowing and bringing that curb line in. So on one of the slides we saw on Burke Station that we've got, you know, significant lane width, 15 feet plus in many areas, which that large open pavement area generally allows people driving to feel like they could go quicker. And so by bringing that lane in and bringing that curb in that's another one of kind of the traffic calming Measures that is being proposed along this corridor

Thomas PetersonOkay, well good to know I know Speed is a pretty controversial thing on these roads and people are really sensitive to it Just a quick question on the picket road Safety audit study, whatever it's called this is very early stage, but I am guessing that the scenarios that will be evaluated for risk exposure and response action include at least some possibility that the Walmart distribution center will be built and become active and there will be some additional new number of trucks that are using Pickett Road. There's quite a bit of conversation about that, not just in the Pickett Road area but actually in other areas, folks up and down Main Street. Can you say, maybe just confirm that that is something that is going to be examined as that safety audit

goes forward?

Chloe RitterstaffSo we'll give the information that we have as it's currently proposed to the consultant and they will be taking that into consideration. That proposal is not or that site plan is not yet approved, I don't believe, but that will be something that we'll be talking to them about. Assume making assumptions about what that will look like. We do have traffic information from the site plan that we'll give to the consultant to include in their assumptions about the safety of their.

Thomas PetersonWell good good to know. I think the key is that even if the site plan is not approved by the time the study is conducted it could be evaluated as a possibility. I mean there's some probability that this will happen and as in the scenarios. Again, the last number I saw was something like 172 additional trucks a day, and then I saw one of about 200. I don't know what the real number is, but a fair amount of interest in the effect of adding that many more large trucks on a daily basis to Pickett Road in the middle of everything else. So just I think wanted you to be aware that that's a key thing people are interested in. Thanks.

Catherine Readby voiceCouncil Member McQuillan.

Rachel McQuillenI just wanted to share that something that I hear as well is a lot of residents are very interested in the residential areas in the speed bumps. They ask me about those all the time. So I just wanted to echo that I'm also hearing that.

Catherine Readby voiceCouncil Member Hall.

Stacy HallThank you. Since we have our traffic engineer here, I will plead once again for a welcome to the city of Fairfax overarching sign. I understand that there are challenges with where it could go and lights in the way and all those things, but I feel like we have to be able to make this happen. I don't know why it's such a challenge, and if it can't be on Chambers Road, then maybe it can be closer to the fountain or something, but there's, why can't we do it? Why can't we find a spot? We need a will from council. We will make it happen. Thank you.

Catherine Readby voiceAny other questions? Well, I think George Mason University, oh, I did. He said he

Stacey Hardy-Chandlerdoes not have questions.

Catherine Readby voiceI think George Mason University is working on a pedestrian overpass that will say George Mason, as they enter the city on 123 coming this way. I think that would be a good marker to say George Mason's over there, which means you're entering the city. So I know that George Mason is actively working on that. Just don't know where it is, but So my question or observation or point

Chloe Ritterstaffof clarification

Catherine Readby voiceis that we've got 27 projects, but at any point any of these can be canceled. Is that correct? And I say this because, I say this because, this dais did cancel two projects, the Country Club Hills Connector, which was at concept design stage, and the George Snyder Trail, which was about to be awarded. So with a vote of four, four people can cancel any project, and with a vote of three, you can simply not appropriate the funds. And that actually happened. So I'm asking, with the rotating cast of characters that we have every other year, every two years, there are new people sitting here. Of the 27 projects, is it a possibility that people could be on this dais next year and decide that they want to cancel these?

Wendy SanfordstaffThe projects that are in the concept phase are not funded, nor are the ones in the funding application stage. So those are projects that have, we have spent local money, so there's nothing to cancel other than we don't move forward with seeking funding for them.

Catherine Readby voiceBut they do have sunk costs in that we've invested money in the concept

Wendy Sanfordstaffand

Catherine Readby voicethe design.

Wendy SanfordstaffThat is local money that we spend, knowing it's a risk that we take to develop them, And that's why we have the two-year program process, so that we're eyes open, putting them into the concept phase to spend money locally to develop concepts. The projects that are in the design phase, we have now expended project funds, bigger money. I mean, I guess the short answer to your question is yes, comma, with consequences.

Catherine Readby voiceCorrect. And that's what I think is kind of like we're not discussing the fact that we can or four people on this dais can simply vote to kill a project, three can vote to not appropriate, and that there are consequences where we have spent the money. But these are long, multi-year projects. Some of them have already been in the pipeline for a very long period of time. And I just think we need to be realistic based on the fact that I think we gave about $31 million of funding back between Country Club Hills and George Snyder Trail, including $3.5 million of taxpayer money. It's great to talk about these. I think they're great. I know staff and consultants and our funding partners have put a lot of time, energy, and effort into these projects.

But the reality is a new council could, in fact, kill any of them.

Wendy SanfordstaffYes, the City Council has the authority to change course on a project. One of the reasons, though, that we put together this roadmap is to show what goes into a project. And so because the City Council does change every two years and so that we can ensure continuity, and that's why we go through a thoughtful process for the two-year program and that planning phase and the concept phase. ways is that if we're going to go forward to obtain funding, that it is in good faith and that we'll continue a project. That said, of course, any city council has the authority to change course on a project. Okay.

Catherine Readby voiceWell, with that, I'm going to say thank you all very much. I appreciate the time, the effort. This is very detailed. I know that we appreciate it. And the next council, whoever they are, are going to appreciate getting up to speed on all of this as well. Ms. Kidolov or Mr. City Manager do we want to take a recess or do we want to push through?

Mr. AlexanderstaffGreat question.

Catherine Readby voiceDo you have a feeling about it? Because the discussion about the modification of the residential parking permit district, is that something we just want to I

Mr. Alexanderstaffthink we have transportation on the next two items.

Wendy SanfordstaffFor what it's worth the next two items are both fairly brief.

Catherine Readby voiceSo I'm looking at the Do we feel like pushing through? We feel like pushing through. We do. There we go. Wonderful. Ms. Kidolive, what are we talking about?

Ms. KadalovclerkNext up, we'll have a discussion on the modification of the residential permit parking district ordinance. I'll recognize Chloe Ritter, the multimodal transportation planner for the staff presentation.

Wendy SanfordstaffAnthony, Council Member Amos, can you see the screen?

Anthony AmosYes, I can.

Wendy SanfordstaffGreat. Okay. Okay. I'm going to switch with you. All right.

Chloe RitterstaffOkay. This next item is, like Ms. Sanford said, is a fairly brief item. We're going to talk about the residential permit parking district and propose a couple of changes to the process and to the map. So just for background the residential parking permit parking district or RPPD is an ordinance that regulates parking in residential neighborhoods allows residential neighborhoods to request permit restricted parking so that only residents can park there. The current ordinance has some requirements for creating a new district or expanding the district including the district size what the land use is requiring a petition from the households in the affected blocks and a study to look at the parking occupancy just to ensure that that parking restriction is needed on our public

streets once the parking district is installed or approved the signs go up and then parking permits are issued by the treasurer's office with annual registration with each registered vehicle getting a permit and each household getting two visitor permits and then the ordinance also allows for city manager to issue additional additional visitor permits or waive enforcement for special events and right now there are 11 permit parking districts throughout the city and so this map shows where those 11 districts are and generally speaking these have been created throughout over time close to uses land uses that have a lot of visitor parking and overflow parking So, for example, up here we have a lot of overflow parking from Fairfax High School.

One of the largest districts is down near George Mason University. And then a third area with a lot of residential parking is up in this area of the city, in the northwest area, because there used to be, you'll remember, Paul VI High School used to be in this location. And so there was concerns about overflow parking from that high school when that was operating. So there's two districts in that area. And today we're going to be talking about this district, District 11. We have received a request from a resident, residents there to remove this district because it's no longer needed because Paul VI High School is no longer there. Right now there are the properties highlighted in blue are the properties that are located within the district.

and this blue line is showing the curb area where residential permit parking is restricted, so only people with permits can park on those blue curbs. The red line is showing where there's no parking allowed for anybody, and that's due to being close to intersections or because of narrowing the street being too narrow or other restrictions like that. And then the orange line down here is signed as two-hour parking near the church and near the commercial area. So as I said, we've received a request to remove this residential parking district to allow for any resident to park there and not have it restricted anymore because, again, the land use that triggered this parking district in the first place has gone away.

So we've been discussing this with the city attorney and the city manager's office because right now the ordinance does not have a process in place to remove a parking district. is to create that process and then to have you just make an act take an action on this particular request. So there are a couple of options. One would be you could take an action the City Council can take an action simply to remove District 11 or you can take an action to modify the ordinance and set up a process so that if we get similar requests in the future then we can go through a consistent process to address the removal requests. Our recommendation it would be to do a resident petition so similar to how one parking district is created that requires a petition we would also

recommend a petition for removal and then we would evaluate the reason for the change such as the high school going away and before I go into next steps I will just mention for district 11 we received the request and staff then sent out letters to everybody in that district requesting feedback on whether they agreed with the recommendation to remove the district or not, we received one response that was in favor of it and then no other responses in favor or opposed. So that gives us some confidence that the residents are not feeling strongly about it. So the next steps on this, kind of depending on the feedback we hear from you tonight, we would continue working with the city attorney to develop the ordinance, bring that to you

for an introduction and then come to you on December 8th for a public hearing and adoption of the ordinance modification and then also a resolution as a separate action to remove District 11. So that concludes my presentation. I'm happy to take any questions.

Catherine Readby voiceThoughts, Council Member Hall?

Stacy HallThank you. What are the parking restrictions, if any, on Harvey that's right next to that?

Chloe RitterstaffSo Harvey.

Stacy HallWith the cardinal apartments there?

Chloe RitterstaffYeah. There's some parking restrictions just due to the narrowness of the road where you can see the red, but there are no parking restrictions further west on the road.

Stacy HallOkay, because I walk a dog that lives on that road and then I was in the apartments over the weekend and it it's it's pretty much kind of one one car gets through when there's parking on both sides of the road so I can't imagine it's a people love it but I don't know. Okay, so that's not for any consideration there then of changing any of that but in theory potentially some of the cars that are parked there could maybe go on to the new less restricted areas correct

Chloe Ritterstaffyeah

Stacy Hallokay I definitely think we need a process for sure I think you know one resident sending a petition and however many signatures it has is not enough to justify it but obviously the outreach that you did when you don't hear back you assume people are relatively not caring about a topic I'm sure they will change that when they find out what's happening it'll be an issue but I think you did what you needed to do so thank you

Catherine Readby voicecouncil member McQuillan

Rachel McQuillenthat that kind of leads me to my question I too would support a process but what evidence do we usually collect to make sure that that problem is no longer an issue before we make these moves.

Chloe RitterstaffSo I think that that's something we need to look at in how we develop the process. But generally speaking, these parking districts were put in place due to an external land use, in this case, Paul VI High School, that with having parking spillover and causing issues in the neighborhoods, because that land use has gone away, that parking demand has gone away. So we would want to look at what changes are, what were the issues that created the parking district in the first place and what changes have happened since then that maybe indicate that the parking district is no longer needed.

ColleenstaffOkay,

Rachel McQuillenperfect. And then what does the, you mentioned a petition process. What does that entail?

Chloe RitterstaffSo for creating a new parking district or expanding it, residents, we do have a petition form online and residents go around to their neighbors and fill out the petition. there's a certain I can't remember that off the top of my head I think it's 66% of residents on the street where parking would be restricted need to sign the petition at the point that we receive the petition then the city staff will go out and evaluate the parking occupancy so I would assume that it would be a similar process for removing that we would want to get a petition from the residents okay wonderful

Rachel McQuillenand then how quickly once something like that's adopted can it be put in place?

Chloe RitterstaffIt can be pretty pretty pretty quickly. Our sign and signal shop will go out and put in the signs or remove the signs and then we also coordinate with the parking enforcement to start enforcement.

David SummersstaffYeah usually there's a grace period right? Typically

Chloe Ritterstaffthere's a grace period if there's a new restriction that goes in place. The parking enforcement will usually give warnings for a couple of weeks taking away of course take removing the restriction of course then it just becomes open parking. Great.

ColleenstaffOkay.

Chloe RitterstaffGreat. Thank you.

Catherine Readby voiceAny other questions or comments? I will just say that it was my neighbor. It's a dog walking story. It's a dog walking story. And he's renovating his house on the corner. And he parked across the street and got a ticket. So while I was walking my dog, he's like, why do they still have this when the high school's not there anymore? I'm like, that is such a good question. Let me ask. So that was probably the one resident you heard from. that it was logical for him to ask that question and to question why we needed something when we no longer had high school parking overflowing in the neighborhood council member amos council member amos speak to us

Anthony Amosyes hello can everyone hear me all right yes

Speaker 21so

Anthony Amosit does not pertain to this parking district uh i only had a quick question when it comes to enforcement i live adjacent to a different parking district where some folks expressed frustration with enforcement and the number of vehicles. I understand based off of a prior email that the treasurer's office issues these permits, but technically by how it's structured, there is no limit or cap or maximum permits allowed. So we kind of lean more on zoning enforcement. Can we go a little bit more and why there's that inconsistency or incongruency there?

Chloe RitterstaffI mean, I'm not sure if I can speak to zoning enforcement. I think the question about enforcement of number of permits that are given out, I don't know if that's something that we'd have to speak to the city attorney about. Yeah,

Anthony Amosit could be a follow-up. That's perfectly fine. I just wanted to flag that. I know it was a frustration, particularly in the Ardmore community, but in terms of the actual removal requests and what we're talking about tonight I don't see an issue thank you

Catherine Readby voiceand and again I think we're we're all seem to support that there should be a process because you know there might be reasons that we place a restriction for parking and I think that came up on School Street there's a legitimate reason to say we're doing permitted parking and there's a reason to say that's no longer needed but it seems to well to invest in a process so that we're not doing these one-offs or one district at a time based on one complaint. So, I mean, I think we're saying that we would like a process. I'm looking at y'all. Yes. Yes. We're looking at establishing a process.

Stacey Hardy-ChandlerOkay.

Catherine Readby voiceAre we ready to move on, Ms. Gidolove?

Ms. KadalovclerkYes. Would you like to break early or would you like to to the next item potentially.

Catherine Readby voiceI'd say let's just push through.

Ms. KadalovclerkSo next we have the discussion on VDOT Urban Maintenance Payments and I will recognize Wendy Sanford, Transportation Director for the staff presentation.

Wendy SanfordstaffCouncil Member Amos, are you seeing this? Council Member Amos, can you see the presentation?

Anthony AmosYes, I can.

Wendy SanfordstaffThank you. All right. This one will also be very brief. Let me move this down, actually. Okay, so tonight we're going, this is a very brief presentation just to discuss some funding that we received from VDOT for our roads. The Code of Virginia provides that cities or towns, such as the City of Fairfax, that maintain their own streets receive maintenance payments from VDOT. These funds are allocated by the Commonwealth Transportation Board, and they're given to the city on a quarterly basis. In order for us to receive those payments, our roadways need to meet certain state and federal requirements. And those requirements are that we have at least 50 feet of right-of-way, at least 30 feet of hard surface.

And just something to note, because I know that we've converted some of our road lanes to bicycle lanes, they are still eligible. And so the way that the calculation is paid is that it's based on the number of lane miles that we have, and then there's a rate of payment, and that rate of payment changes every year. There's different payment categories depending on the classification of the road. So this just shows you, for instance, what the payment rate is for different, for principal arterials, minor arterials, collectors, locals, and what our payment is. So this just shows you that for FY26, our annual payment is this number down here. We received $3.7 million from VDOT for our roads that are in our inventory.

And here is just a history of the payment rate. So you can see that the rate changes every year. On the left, it shows principal minor arterials and then collectors and local streets. So it's a different rate depending on the classification of the roadway. And so we are eligible to adjust the inventory that we are paid on to reflect additions or deletions or conversions. And in order to request additions, we need a resolution from the governing body. And so what we'll be coming to you at the next council meeting is a resolution to request that we add to our inventory WE'VE ADDED GOVERNMENT CENTER PARKWAY FAR AVENUE AND UNIVERSITY DRIVE EXTENSION. SO THOSE ARE THREE ROADWAYS THAT WE THAT ARE NOT IN THE INVENTORY SO WE ARE NOT RECEIVING

THE PAYMENTS FOR THOSE. AND SO THAT IS COMING TO YOU ON OCTOBER 13TH FOR CITY COUNCIL ACTION. IT IS A REQUEST TO ADD THOSE THREE ROADWAYS TO OUR INVENTORY FOR THE PURPOSE OF RECEIVING MAINTENANCE PAYMENTS. AND SO THAT LAST BULLET DOES NOT LIST UNIVERSITY DRIVE EXTENSION. IT SHOULD. So there are three roadways and the total is about $15,000 additional per year that we would receive for those three roadways. That is it. Happy to take questions.

Catherine Readby voiceAny questions on

Wendy Sanfordstaffthis?

Catherine Readby voiceI sort of feel like we should ask for money to maintain the new

Wendy Sanfordstaffroads. Yes, correct. But this brief explanation of what the money is for and what the action is requesting.

Catherine Readby voiceWe appreciate that. Let me just say thank you to the transportation team for those three brand new roads. We are not building huge new roads in the city, but connecting our existing roads, making more of a grid, making it easier for not just people to get around, but for our emergency vehicles to get around in the city. It's a great investment, and I'm thrilled that we've been able to see these connections actually open.

David SummersstaffCan I

Catherine Readby voiceadd one thing? Yes, Mr. Summers.

David Summersstaffthey just don't hand over the money the guy from VDOT sits with my street superintendent and they drive around the whole city and they make sure our roads are in good condition so if there's a lot of if there were a lot of potholes or a lot of deterioration they would not approve this amount of money in addition we have to show them what we're investing so we put together our payments for all the money we spend on maintaining the infrastructure and we to VDOT so they could audit what we're putting in also. So we go through a lot in order to get this money.

Catherine Readby voiceAnd can I just say your decades of service Mr. Summers and making sure that your staff stays on top of it I mean we do have the best roads in the region number one and the fact that you are the guardian of our roadways and and I want to say we don't say it often enough or thank our staff often enough for the unseen work that make us a joy to work with for V dot and a lot of other people in the region who fund the work that we do here so thank you and thank your staff as well any other questions Wow I think we're good thank you very much thank

Wendy Sanfordstaffyou

Catherine Readby voiceI think we're running ahead of schedule I don't know I don't want to jinx anything I don't I don't want to jinx anything. Take a break? Okay. We will now, let me read the, we will now recess and return, return 645? No? Well, no, it's 615, so if we're taking 30 minutes. You want it? Okay. we'll return at 645 okay does that sound good everyone I'm looking around at people we are now going to recess we will be back in 30 minutes

Speaker 14easy music in the trees see the flowers dancing in the breeze old man moon begins to glow he's joining in the late late show that should be dreaming starting chirping a song while fire flyers are gleaming we kiss, kiss all night long then we amble back to your front door

Anthony Amosby the way I don't know if it's intentional but I can hear everything y'all are saying

Speaker 14I like you so it's starting on the late late show

Speaker 21¶¶

Speaker 14Birds that should be dreaming, starting chirping a song, while fireflies are gleaming. We kiss, kiss all night long, then we amble back to your front door, say goodnight and then we kiss some more. Guess you know I like you so It started on the late, late show

Speaker 21¶¶ ¶¶ ¶¶ ¶¶ ¶¶

Speaker 17www.thema.gov Choo-choo to Broadway, foo Cincinnati Don't get icky with a one, two, three Life is just so fine On the solid side of the line Rip, hold tight, hold tight Hold tight, hold tight Brrack, sack, you want some seafood, mama Shrimps and rice, they're very nice Hold tight, hold tight Hold tight, hold tight Brrack, sack, you want some seafood, mama Shrimps and rice, they're very nice. I like oysters, lobsters too. I like my tasty butterfish food. When I come home late at night, I get my favorite dish. Fish, hold tight, hold tight, hold tight, hold tight. Because I can't want some seafood, mama. Shrimps and rice, they're very nice. Furryakasaki want some seafood, mama Shrimps and rice, they're always very nice

Furryakasaki want some seafood, mama Won't you give it to me, cause I am happy as can be When the seafood comes to me Da-da-da, da-da-da, da-da-da I like oysters, lobsters too Da-da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da When I get home late at night, I get my favorite fish. Fish, hold tight. Hold tight. Hold tight. Hold tight. Brr-r-rack-a-sack. You want some seafood, mama. Shrimps and rice are very nice. Hold tight. Hold tight. Hold tight. Brr-r-rack-a-sack. You want some seafood, mama. Shrimps and rice are very nice. I like oysters, lobsters, too. I like my tasty butterfish gel. When I come home late at night, drip, drip, dripping on the window, paint washes. Hold tight, do-da-da-day. Hold tight, she wants seafood, mama.

Shrimpers and rice, the very night. I like oysters, lobsters too I like my tasty butterfish food When I come home late at night I get my favorite dish, fish Hold tight, hold tight Hold tight, hold tight Want some seafood, oh mama Shrimpers and rice, oh mama The End ¶¶

Speaker 21¶¶ ¶¶ The End ¶¶ The End Dream, that's the thing to do

Speaker 20Just watch the smoke rings Rise in the air You'll find your share of memories there So dream when

Speaker 21the day is through Dream and they might come true Things

Speaker 20never are as bad as they seem So dream,

Speaker 21dream, dream Things never are as bad as they seem So dream, dream all your cares aware. Thank you. ¶¶

Speaker 16I never cared much for moonlit skies I never winked back at fireflies But now that the stars are in your eyes, I'm beginning to see the light. I never went in for afterglow or candlelight on the mistletoe. But now when you turn the lamp down low, I'm beginning to see the light. Used to ramble through the park Shadow boxing in the dark Then you came and caused a spark That's a four-long fire now I never made love by lantern shine I never saw rainbows in my wine But now that your lips are burning more And I'm beginning to see the light

Speaker 15They have a new expression Along old hollow way That tells you when a party Ten times more than gay. To say that things are jumping leaves not a single doubt. That everything is in full swing when you hear someone shout. It is. The George is jumping. It's really jumping. Come in, cats, and check your hats. I mean, this George is jumping. The piano's thumping.

Speaker 14The

Speaker 15dancers are bumping. This is spot is more than hot. In fact, the George is jumping. at the door, be sure to pay your quarter. Burn your leather on the floor, grab anybody's daughter. The roof is rocking, the neighbor's knocking. We're all bums when the wagon comes, I mean the joint is jumping. Let it beat! Yeah! Sing this joint, boy! Yeah! Oh my! Yeah! Don't you hit that chick, that's my broad! Where'd you get that stuff at?

Speaker 14Why, I'll knock you to your knees. What? Put this cat

Speaker 15out of here.

Speaker 14What?

Speaker 15Get rid of that pistol. Get rid of that pistol. Yeah. Get rid of it. Yeah. That's what I'm talking about. Ha, ha. Oh, man, it's really ready. No, baby, not now. I can't come over there right now. Yeah, Mr. Good. Uh-huh. I need to get to it. Yes,

Speaker 21Mr. Walker. And leave it to work. Ah. Yes, Mr. Good. As you can. I need him. As you can. As you can. As you can. As you can. As you can. As you can. As you can. As you can. As you can. As you can. As you can. As you can. As you can. As you can. As you can. As you can.

Speaker 15I want my daddy.

Speaker 21Yeah.

Speaker 15This joint is jumping. It's really jumping. If he Moses on his toes, I mean this joint is jumping. Uh-oh. No time for talking. This place is walking, yeah. Get the jug and cut the rug. I think the joint is jumping. Listen, get your pig feet bare and gin. There's plenty in the kitchen. Who is that that just came in? Look at the way he's switching off, baby. Don't mind the hour. I'm in power. I got men if we go to jail. I bet the Lord is coming. Don't give your right name. No, no, no.

Speaker 21Thank you. I'm sorry. ¶¶ The End ¶¶ ¶¶ The End ¶¶ ¶¶

Speaker 18Thanks for the memory of candlelight and wine, castles on the Rhine, the Parthenon and moments on the Hudson River line. It was Thanks for the memory Of rainy afternoons Swingy Harlem tunes And motor trips And burning lifts And burning toast and prunes How lovely it was Many's the time That we feasted And many's the time That we fasted Oh, well, it was swell while it lasted We did have fun and no harm done And thanks for the memory of sunburns at the shore Nights in Singapore You might have been a headache, but you never were a bore So thank you so much ¶¶

Speaker 21www.thema.gov guitar solo ¶¶ Thank you. Thank you.

Speaker 19Blue skies smiling at me, nothing but blue skies do I see. Bluebirds singing a song Nothing but bluebirds all day long Never saw the sun shining so bright Never saw things going so right Noticing the days hurrying by When you're in love, my, how they fly Blue days, all of them gone Nothing but blue skies from now on ¶¶ It's okay. I never saw the

Speaker 21sun shining so bright

Speaker 19Never saw things going on so right Noticing the days hurrying

Speaker 21by

Speaker 19When you're in love behind me My

Speaker 21blue will stay on them dark not but blue skies from the earth

Speaker 19bitty-ya-da-da-da-da-da

Speaker 21Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Speaker 19¶¶ Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Catherine Readby voiceThank you. Thank you. And we're back to our work session. Ms. Kadalov, what do we have next on our discussion agenda?

Ms. KadalovclerkOur next item is a discussion and update on potential amendments to the zoning ordinance related to adopted small area plans. I'll recognize Paul Nabte, division chief of planning for this staff presentation.

Paul NabtestaffWe just did. Okay.

Speaker 25Is

Mr. Alexanderstaffit working now?

Paul NabtestaffOkay. Council Member Amos, can you see the presentation?

Speaker 12Yes, I can. Thank you.

Paul NabtestaffOkay, thank you, everyone. This is a work session to present an update on the proposed zoning text amendments related to adopted small area plans. Last time we discussed this topic was in July when we reviewed the second draft of these amendments. and at the same time we had a similar work session with the planning commission we also held subsequent community open house in september and we received online engagement over the past couple of months and so because of the changes that we're proposing as a result of the feedback received from all of those groups we wanted to have this additional work session so that we aren't introducing those changes to you for the first time at the public hearing this work session

was not initially scheduled but we felt that these changes were significant enough that We wanted to brief you on them. Before we get into the discussion on the small air plan zoning amendments, I wanted to touch quickly on the proposed upcoming small air plan reviews. We know there's been a lot of questions about how these two projects will relate to each other. And now that we're at a point where we have a better understanding with the specifics of how the text will work with the proposed zoning amendments, we can have a better understanding of how the potential changes coming to the small air plans will impact the proposed zoning amendments if they are adopted. So I'll touch on that really quick,

and then I'll get into the proposed changes to the zoning amendments. All right, I'm having all kinds of technical problems. There we go. Okay, this is similar to a slide that we showed you a couple of months ago when we first introduced the idea of the Small Anger Plan zoning amendments. We are still proposing to begin this process early next year. We introduced this to you in June and said we'd be back to you in the fall to confirm the scope, and we are planning to come back to you in December with more information on that. But also with that, we shared the types of analysis that we thought that we'd be conducting with these small year plan reviews. Much of that remains the same. We will confirm that in December.

We wanted to bring this schedule to you again just to remind you of what we're looking at doing with that effort. but the big question here is how this will relate to the smaller plan zoning amendments that are currently under consideration so as a quick reminder on what we're proposing with the smaller plan zoning amendments these are the components that we're looking at introducing as part of a new zoning district first the zoning structure this is where we have limitations on where this district would apply it could only be requested in areas that are defined activity centers that will be included in the zoning ordinance and applicants still have to go to the planning commission and city council for approval in addition to that we

have dimensional standards which are primarily related to height and density uh recreation and open space which establishes standards for defined types of open space that can qualify towards open space requirements circulation and parking which set standards for uh how new streets should be designed uh as well as our parking standards which allow uh certain reductions for incentives. And then frontages are standards for ground floor uses and designs for how buildings should relate to adjacent streets and open spaces. And lastly, community benefits, which is a system to allow developers to earn additional height and density in exchange for providing public goods, such as public open spaces in new streets. And so when looking at all of these topics

that are in the proposed zoning ordinance amendments, we want to think ahead ABOUT WHAT COULD POSSIBLY CHANGE WITH THE SMALLER PLANS WHEN WE REVIEW THEM. AND AS A REMINDER, THE SMALLER PLANS CAME OUT OF THE COMPREHENSIVE PLAN WHICH HAS IDENTIFIED ACTIVITY CENTERS AND BEFORE THAT IT WAS MIXED USE DISTRICTS. THEY HAVE BEEN IN THE COMPREHENSIVE PLAN GOING BACK TO THE EARLY 2000s. AND SO WE DON'T THINK THE OVERALL CONCEPT OF HAVING MIXED USE DISTRICTS AND PEDESTRIAN friendly areas with better open spaces and better connected street networks the whole idea is not intended to change what is likely to change will be specifics of it is where we expect to have certain building heights or where we want to have our open spaces and

what our priorities are for development and so the the proposed changes with these zoning amendments while they are based on the specific small area plans they are generally written to align to the general recommendations the comprehensive plan for activity centers so these topics we have identified here how we think they could be impacted by changes to the small area plans. So starting with the organizational structure again where we would allow this to apply we think there'll be minimal or no impact. We will continue to not allow them to apply outside of activity centers. Dimensional standards related to height in the proposed amendments we now know that we are communicating height through height maps

and so if there are changes to specific sites if we want to have a taller building height locations, then we could amend those maps. And that's just a fairly simple single-page revision. The same would apply for access for circulation. We have a map showing where new streets should be and for frontages showing where we want ground floor, commercial space, and certain design elements. We don't think the desire for new streets will change, but potentially the locations of where they are could change. So those, again, would be changes coming back to our maps in the zoning ordinance, something we think we could do fairly easily. going back up to dimensional standards for density this one is a bit more difficult to predict because the smaller plans don't have density standards

the smaller plans are really more descriptive into how we want buildings to be situated and where we want certain elements such as open spaces to be and the resulting density is just a product of that with these zoning ordinance amendments we are introducing measurements for density And so we don't know if we will be introducing density into the small area plans when we review them. If they continue as they are, then there wouldn't need to be too much of a change to the zoning ordinance amendments. If we do introduce it in some way or if something is included in the small area plans that would reflect how we convey density in the zoning ordinance, then we would have to come back and look at this.

This would be a more significant change, but still not something that would be any more complicated than the whole effort we're going through now. For recreation and open space, this is another one we think there would be minimal to no impact because in the zoning ordinance, we are not proposing to identify where open spaces should occur. We're only identifying what types of open spaces should be applied and which ones have the most value to the city. We think those will continue to be the same. There might be some minor changes in that area. We could introduce additional open spaces or revise descriptions for some, but for the most part, we don't think that would have to have any kind of significant effort to

Speaker 25review that section.

Paul NabtestaffAnd then the last piece, the community benefits program, this also ties to density. We have some community benefits that are identified, as we mentioned to you before. The primary community benefits are new open space contributions to the transportation network, and we'll be introducing a new one tonight about commercial space. Those may change, and we would expect to come back and have to go through a process of reviewing that. Similar to density, this would be a little bit more of an effort to deal with, but not any more challenging than introducing this whole new section as we're doing now. On top of that, I think we're going to be always looking at these community benefits and potentially always changing them.

We have some other things that have been suggested to this process that we haven't been able to include, and we said we'll come back and review that in a couple of years and that type of thing. So regardless of whether we do the small year plan reviews, this section is going to have to be reviewed every once in a while to make sure it's achieving what we want.

Mr. AlexanderstaffAnd

Paul Nabtestaffthen the last item here in the green box that says, BENCHMARKS IN THE SMALLER PLANS WOULD HAVE MINIMAL IMPACT ON THE ZONING ORDINANCE AMENDMENT. WE WANTED TO POINT THIS OUT BECAUSE PARTICULARLY AT THE COMMUNITY OPEN HOUSE THAT WE HAD IN EARLY SEPTEMBER WE HEARD A LOT OF QUESTIONS ABOUT THE TOTAL AMOUNT OF DEVELOPMENT THAT IS ANTICIPATED IN THE SMALLER PLANS AND SO WE JUST WANTED TO CLARIFY THAT WITH THE ZONING ORDINANCE AMENDMENTS THESE ARE IDENTIFYING HOW EACH PROJECT IS REVIEWED on an individual basis. So if those benchmarks change, that shouldn't have any impact on these zoning ordinance amendments because, again, that's looking at the total and the zoning ordinance is looking at project by project.

So we wanted to kind of share that with you. Once again, we went through this before, but we have a little more information now, a little more detail about how we think this could be impacted. We still feel very comfortable that we could come back and make changes as needed. And we still recommend we proceed with these amendments because as we go through the Smallinger Plan review, we will continue to get development applications and we think those would be better applications for the city if we have these amendments in place so with that I'll go through the changes that the primary changes that we're looking at making since our last review of this I do want to point out we don't have the final draft yet

we are really just wanting to make sure everyone is on board with the changes that we're proposing and once we have that we'll finalize that looking at our schedule 2024. I won't go into the details of the whole process because we've been through this before, but we began looking at the drafts of these amendments in the spring of this year. We had our second draft review in the summer, and so with this final draft this would be the third review. In each of those times we had work sessions with the planning commission and council and public meetings and online engagement. So looking at the schedule for the final draft review, we discussed these topics at the community open house in September. We had a work session with

on September 14. And as we go through these, I'll try to highlight some of the planning commission's thoughts on these topics. We're having our work session tonight, October 6. Our tentative schedule going forward is that we would have the final draft ready and released for public review on October 21st, planning commission public hearing October 26th, and city council public hearing on November 10. So the topics that we will be looking at are all listed here. things that we're looking at changing since the second draft. And so I'll go through each of these individually. The first is looking at the relationship of this proposed new district to our overlay districts. This primarily affects Old Town where we have our historic overlay district and transition

overlay district which surrounds the Old Town area. As we discussed in July, our recommendation was that the historic overlay district supersede the new district. So essentially most of the elements of this new district would not be able to apply but that the new district could supersede the transition overlay district which surrounds it. We still are making that recommendation. Also in July we had asked if there was support for looking at revisions to the historic overlay district to better match the National Register Historic District boundary. And the intent of this was to make sure those properties that are governed by these different sections would fit in with the character that actually applies there.

making the recommendation to do that but we are asking if we can come back at a later date to look at these boundaries um when in doing that we'd have to look at impacts to existing properties with most of these amendments that we're looking at as i mentioned we are not proactively rezoning any properties in the city anywhere and so people will have to rezone into this so we don't really have to look at impacts to existing conditions but with this change if we were to change the boundary of the historic overlay district we would and there could be non-conformities there could be concerns from property owners and so we'd like to do that as a separate effort so we can really concentrate on those individually so again we still think this

is the right thing to do but we would ask to come back and do that after we get through the process for these other amendments the planning commission had no thoughts or concerns about this recommendation THE SECOND ITEM IS ADDITIONAL HEIGHT. YOU MAY RECALL THAT THE WAY THE HEIGHT WOULD WORK WITH THIS NEW DISTRICT IS THERE IS A BASE MAXIMUM HEIGHT OF FIVE STORIES OR LESS IF IDENTIFIED IN THE SMALL AREA PLANS. BUT ADDITIONAL HEIGHT COULD BE EARNED UP TO THE RECOMMENDED HEIGHT TO THE SMALL AREA PLANS THROUGH THE COMMUNITY BENEFITS PROGRAM. IN MOST PLACES THAT'S SEVEN STORIES AND A COUPLE PLACES THAT'S NINE STORIES. WE ALSO ASKED A QUESTION IN JULY IF THERE WAS INTEREST IN supporting height beyond the recommendations of the small area plans.

And we ask this because we have had projects that have been approved and other projects that are under review that are seeking to have height beyond the recommendations of the small area plans. At the time, we had some general standards that were shown here about how we would measure that. These aren't really things that are measurable. And what we heard from both the Planning Commission and the City Council was that there was openness to considering this. but we wanted to have something that was specifically a measurable benefit to the community in order to consider additional height. So our recommendation is now to still support up to two stories beyond the recommendations of the small area plan,

provided the following two conditioners are met. At least 20% of the site is dedicated as open space. The base requirement is 10%, and at least 200 square feet of commercial space is provided per residential unit. We heard a lot of feedback during this last round about the desire to have true mixed use development, to have bigger commercial components, to not have developments that are almost entirely residential, just with some token retail to call themselves mixed use. And so this would establish a standard for that. And this was something that was seen as a benefit to the community. So I'll explain in just a minute what those numbers will mean in comparison to some recent projects we've had.

that if we do not include this provision for additional height beyond the recommendation of the small area plans we could still accommodate it through two potential ways one is through special exceptions our current process for many of the developments that we receive in activity centers is that they use either commercial urban district or one of our commercial districts that allows residential development through a special use permit and then they request a series of special exceptions to things like height and density and other things because the special exception process is There are some general standards that they have to meet, but there are no specific standards such as these saying you have to provide a certain percentage of something to qualify.

And the requests that can, there's no limit on the requests that people can make. They are infinite. And so one process we could have as opposed to including this additional two-story provision where we do have these limitations is to simply allow special exceptions to height in this new district. and we have a whole section later where we'll talk about special exceptions, but we'll explain why we're not recommending that. Another is that even if we do nothing, there are the existing planned development districts, and one of which allows mixed-use development. They have a base requirement of 20% open space, which is what we're seeking here, and then they have some other kind of general standards,

but essentially in the planned districts, applicants can propose any kind of development that they want, and they establish their own standards, And if council approves a project, they're approving the standards for that site. So there are no limitations there. Somebody could propose any height that they want. Again, this is a path and a process that's available now. It will continue to be available in the activity centers. We will encourage use of the new activity center district as opposed to planned districts. And we plan to revise the standards for our commercial districts that people are currently using so that they would not be allowed. and so I just want to point out that those two other options are there one of which the planned

development option is something that will be there regardless we don't need to change anything to make that as an option so just going back again to what we're proposing allowing up to two stories two additional stories beyond the recommendation of the smaller plans with these two provisions and for comparison there are no development projects that have been proposed or approved IN THE PAST TEN YEARS THAT HAVE MET BOTH OF THESE CONDITIONS. I THINK THERE ARE SOME THAT COULD IF THEY MADE SOME REVISIONS TO THEIR PLANS. BUT JUST TO POINT OUT THE ONLY ONE THAT HAS MET THIS OPEN SPACE REQUIREMENT FOLLOWING OUR DEFINITIONS IN THIS NEW DISTRICT IS THE NORTHFACS WEST DEVELOPMENT. THE PRIMARY REASON THEY'RE ABLE TO DO THAT IS BECAUSE THEY HAVE A SIGNIFICANT

AMOUNT OF PUBLICLY ACCESSIBLE OPEN SPACE THAT WAS A PART OF THEIR SITE. AND SO THAT BROUGHT them over what we would consider to be the 20 percent benchmark for for this provision. The other is the commercial component. So when we presented this to the planning commission we had recommended a requirement of 400 square feet of commercial space per residential unit as opposed to 200. The commission pointed out that that seemed high and actually gave some examples of some situations that could happen and so we're now proposing a standard of 200 square feet per unit and just to show how this would relate to projects that have been approved in activity center for the past 10 years or so those would have a green

number in this column would have met that standard that shows how many square feet of commercial space were provided per residential unit for each of these those in red would not have met that standard the next proposed change is related to density and we're proposing changing the The first is the base density. We heard a lot from City Council and Planning Commission and members of the community about the overall densities in this district and particularly the base density, which we call our starting point. As we mentioned, density can go up through the community benefits program. But the base density, we heard particularly the community meeting concerns about that. So what we were initially recommending

is 48 dwelling units per acre to start. and the reason for that is that the comprehensive plan recommends up to 48 dwelling units per acre in our mixed-use districts and the activity centers that do not have a smaller plan, which is essentially only the Pickett and Main activity center. But based on the feedback we had, we're recommending bringing this down to 40 dwelling units per acre. The reason we're suggesting that number is because if the affordable dwelling unit ordinance bonus is applied to this, which would apply to most of these developments, plus any development with over 30 units, then they would receive up to a 20% bonus, which would bring them to 48 dwelling units. So with the previous version, they were starting at 48.

With that bonus, their essential starting point was around 57. So this is 40 to 48. I think some at the community meeting would have liked to have seen this go further, but we really didn't want to push it too much further down from what the base recommendations are in the comprehensive plan. The next item was removing a 2.0 weighting factor for open spaces. So as you may recall, the way this system would work is that different types of open spaces would receive different credit for how they contribute toward the 10% requirement. And if once they exceed that requirement, they can then start to earn bonus units. for some open spaces particularly those that were publicly accessible and specifically identified in the smaller plan we had previously recommended a

weighting factor of two so basically they are receiving twice the credit for the amount of open space they're providing we're recommending removing that and bringing that down to 1.5 which we had in our first draft there is some support for the adding the new the factor in for identifying the most important open spaces but it really brought the calculations we thought out of proportion that we kind of tested this on. The next is to remove or reduce the land assembly incentive. Again, this was an incentive to encourage property owners to consolidate with larger parcels than they're able to provide a better overall community and can usually provide more space for open space and other types of public improvements.

And so we started with our first draft with an additional bonus of anywhere from 20 to 30 percent density bonus for meeting following this program. With the second draft we reduced this to 10 to 20 percent. When we went to the planning commission we asked if there was any interest in removing the program. Part of that is because some of the larger properties that would benefit this we don't think actually need the density to be economically successful. It's the smaller properties that really struggle and need to be able to work. But the Planning Commission felt that this was still an important measure. And so rather than remove it, we've reduced it by another 5%. So the range is now 5% to 15%,

depending on the total consolidation size. And the last is a new incentive that we are adding. As I mentioned earlier on, are the incentives that were in the original or the previous draft were for open space and for contributions to the transportation network. Based on a lot of feedback we received we talked to there's interest in encouraging more commercial space to be included in these developments. So we are proposing another incentive that would allow one additional residential unit to be earned for each 1000 square feet of commercial space that is provided in the development. And just to show you examples of previous projects, how much commercial space they provided and what the resulting density would be

for that. We're, We're looking at perhaps having a tapered way of measuring this if once a site reaches somewhere around 50,000 square feet that we would only allow one unit for every 2,000 square feet or something like that because one way this could be used is to preserve existing office buildings which is something we want but then include residential development on the same site and that's where the commercial numbers will get to be really high and it guess it'd be unreasonable with the amount of development or additional residential development that could be earned. And so we're running some calculations on that. But a lot of these calculations would be similar to what they are here. And just to summarize the total

of these changes to the density compared to where we were with our last draft, which each each of these five already approved projects starting with the left scout on the circle there's essentially not much change between this draft and the last draft but both of these are higher than what was approved i also want to point out that these are maximum densities that could be earned it doesn't necessarily mean that these would have to be what is proposed or approved this is kind of the upper limit as a reminder in the current situation with our special exception process. There's no upper limit. Next project, the point over in Camp Washington with these proposed amendments is slightly less could be supported than what was in the previous

draft, but still more than what was ultimately approved. The botanists currently under construction in North Facts, the proposed amendments would result in less density, maximum density than the previous draft, which is also less than what was approved. For City Center West, this is the previous version that was approved a couple of years ago. This would be the only one that would have more density potentially earned than the previous draft. This is because that project has a significant commercial component, and that is the one added density incentive that we have. And then the Davies property, this would result in less density than what was approved and less density from the previous draft.

Mr. AlexanderstaffSo

Paul Nabtestaffyou may recall this chart, again, looking more holistically from our previous version, our review back in July. This is showing us how these proposed developments, what their maximum total density of residential development they could earn compared to what is either proposed or has been approved for projects going all the way back to 2014. Some are still under review. blue circles are showing what was proposed or approved. The orange circles are showing what could potentially be earned with these amendments. The chart on the left shows where we were with our draft in July. The chart on the right shows where we are with these proposed changes. And so it's kind of hard to see the differences between, but I will say there

is a slight decrease for the most part in the overall amount for both the larger sites and the smaller sites. But there are some anomalies. I will point out this one here. This is an example where a smaller site was able to achieve additional density by having a significant commercial component. With the other two community benefits, it's very difficult for the smaller sites to earn additional density because they are both based on land area that has to be dedicated to those specific uses, whereas with the commercial component, it's integrated into a building. And so there's more opportunity. So we hope this will allow some of those sites, smaller sites that are dependent on more density to find ways to still make themselves economically

successful. And for the larger sites, there's a slight decrease in density. This is where we had concern before because this is our previous version. These are the sites we don't think need additional density, but just because of the nature of the consolidation program and the fact that the other community benefits are based on space and they have more space, they could earn more. So with these changes, this comes down a little bit. Still some of are higher than what they would actually need to be successful. So that concludes density. Another change we are proposing is a reduction for the, this would be a citywide reduction for parking for general office uses. As you may recall, we had looked at specific parking requirements for this new district.

We ultimately decided that for most uses we would maintain the existing requirements, 20% reduction for certain incentives and that's staying the same. But we asked in July, based on the analysis we did as part of that part of the effort, we noticed that there was a pretty significant discrepancy in our requirements for office and what's actually needed based on peer reviews and utilization. So we asked that there was a desire to change the citywide rate for general office parking and there seemed to be support for that. So we now are proposing to change that rate from one space for 300 square feet to one space per 400 square feet. And the chart on the right shows how that compares to standards in the county,

recommendations from the Institute for Transportation Engineers, and what was observed with our Old Town parking study.

Mr. AlexanderstaffAnd you can see that

Paul Nabtestaffthe ranges without a 20% reduction generally fall in the county requirements. for areas that are outside the revitalization areas. The proposed standard with a maximum 20% reduction also falls right in the middle of what the county requirements are in the revitalization areas. And as a reminder, the revitalization areas are all the commercial areas that are not metro accessible where the county is supporting mixed-use redevelopment. With our discussion with the planning commission, they supported this change asked us to consider going even further to allow up to one space per 500 square feet instead of 400 and those numbers are shown here. We had some reluctance to this because as you can see with a maximum 20% reduction this gets down to about 1.6 spaces per 1,000

square feet which is pretty close to what was observed for actual utilization on an old town parking study. So it's still higher than that but once it gets pretty close there They are aware of this but still suggested that we take this into consideration. So we're asking for your feedback on this as well tonight. If we don't hear any feedback, then we'll assume we just move forward with the 1 per 400

Mr. Alexanderstafffor our initial recommendation.

Paul NabtestaffAnd then the last item to talk about is special exceptions. This is something we have not talked about before. It's not specific to this new district. Special exceptions apply to various sections of the zoning ordinance. that allows applicants to propose elements of their plan that may conflict with various sections of our zoning ordinance the intent of special exceptions is to allow flexibility so we don't get hung up with a development not being able to proceed because they differ from specific sections of our ordinance council has to prove the special exceptions and so the applicant has to justify their reasons special exceptions do not have limitations and so people can request whatever they want but it really it still comes down to the

Council's decision.

Mr. AlexanderstaffAnd so

Paul Nabtestaffwe had not discussed how special exceptions would apply to this new district. And so now that we are finalizing the amendments and integrating it into the structure of our existing ordinance, we have recommendations for how they should apply. Essentially our recommendation is that special exceptions not be applicable to the core large-scale recommendations of this new district being height, density, and We feel that we are providing tools to allow applicants to meet these standards. And if we allow special exceptions, then that will allow requests to deviate from things that will allow us to get the community benefits that are envisioned in the smaller plans. We are recommending special exceptions be considered for the more fine-grained nitty-gritty type recommendations, including development frontages and access.

This is the kind of thing where, for example, a development frontage standard is shown in the graphic here. if there are requirements for sidewalk widths and the space between the building and the sidewalk, if there are run into issues with topography and utilities and those types of things, if a special exception is not allowed, we would not even be able to accept the application and bring it to council for consideration. So we wouldn't want to kill a project just because of the location of utility or something like that. So we are requesting that they be available for those.

Mr. AlexanderstaffAnd then the last three are

Paul Nabtestaffin a different article of the zoning ordinance, standards which applies to parking, landscaping, signage, and those types of things. In the current ordinance, special exceptions are permitted for all components of this section. And so rather than kind of disturb the structure of the zoning ordinance, we're recommending they be permitted for these as well. So that summarizes the changes that we're proposing. As I mentioned, the first draft or the final draft is not quite available yet. We will send it to you as soon as it's available in preparation for the planning commission public hearing but we are happy to answer questions and appreciate your feedback on these

Catherine Readby voiceall right then do we have questions does council member amos have questions

Anthony Amosuh yes so can everyone hear me all right yes all right i had three questions and a comment so I know we had, for example, Mosby Towers presented, and that's not in the activity center per se. But if you had an office building being converted to residential or with residential components to it, how does the commercial calculation work? Does it only apply to a new office space, or how do we calculate that?

Paul NabtestaffThe way we have it written is it would apply to any commercial space that exists after the product is complete. If a development is being converted from commercial to residential, then the commercial component would not apply. If a portion of the commercial were to remain, that portion could contribute toward the calculations here.

Anthony AmosUnderstood. Thank you. And when we say commercial, that's also incorporating retail as well, or is it strictly office?

Paul NabtestaffThis is all commercial, and we're actually proposing using the word non-residential, so we could use some of our institutional uses as well.

Anthony AmosExcellent. Okay. Okay. This is a question slash comment on the land assembly piece. So while I understand the reasoning for the reduction, I'm still unsure about it because I thought one of the priorities was to try to get as many parcels together so we can stop having all these scatter site lots. is there a way to do an adjustment depending on the scale of the assemblage so i know that uh or is that possible or not really i mean i know you're for example you're looking at the total consolidated site but with these reductions i guess i'm trying to get clarity on really the reasoning for why we want to reduce significantly since real a lot of these sites aren't going to be able to meet those thresholds, if that makes sense.

Paul NabtestaffYes. So we did a quick review of some of the recent development projects where we think land assembly, what we know through discussions with the Planning Commission and Council at the time they're going to review, that land assembly was encouraged. And there are really two reasons why there's a desire to include this piece. One is to have generally larger sites, which, as you mentioned, generally makes for better development. The other is to avoid what we call orphaned properties, where an assemblage comes together, but then one small site is kind of left where it is not big enough to have any kind of meaningful redevelopment in the future. We've had a lot of cases of those. And what we found through our review of this

is that we've only had one or two cases where this incentive would have had any bearing on acquiring those orphaned properties. where we saw the bigger concern. The idea of having larger sites we think is still being accomplished here. It's really, it gets hard to measure where we have the difference between, I guess, the starting point and what the ultimate site configuration is, which is why we're only kind of basing it on the overall consolidated site size. I'm not sure if that answers your

Anthony AmosNo, I mean, that makes sense. And, you know, it can be reevaluated in the future. I would definitely be more in favor of a reduction versus removal. I still think it's a worthy goal to try to acquire more land or have more of these parcels consolidated so we can have, to your point, better projects moving forward. And I know one of the concerns about height is really because of how small a lot of these lots are. So having consolidation as a priority can also help alleviate height to a degree. But, yes, thank you for answering that. My only other comment is I'm really happy to see that this would be defining what community benefits actually are. I think we tend to mix up requirements versus community benefits.

and I want to make sure that there's a clear distinction there between the difference between the two. So really appreciate it. Thank you for your hard work on this and looking forward to seeing what the hearings, the public hearings lead to. Thank you.

Catherine Readby voiceCouncil Member Hardy-Chandler.

Stacey Hardy-ChandlerWhat a journey from the first draft to the second draft and on our way to the final draft. You also in the materials included word for word and it seems to me like a common theme, no big surprise was about height. Did you have a sense that the community had, some of it just seemed like a lot of feedback in the absence of the community benefit element. So did you get a sense that when you engaged in community engagement activities was received by the community or understood in terms of, you know, open space and the other element, the 20% open space and the minimum 200 square foot commercial space. Did that seem like a balance against the height?

Paul NabtestaffOn that particular aspect, and this is all kind of subjective because we had the summary comments in there, but we had various staff there, and we were all talking to different people, so it's hard to read whatever went on aside from what's documented. I think the component related to the additional height, which has 200 square feet of office space and 20% open space, in many cases, I don't think that was enough to offset the concern about additional height. When talking about the base standards, because some of the concern we heard the smaller plans now. And I had I feel like I had mixed reactions to that. I think some people saw that in some cases there was some some benefit with better development and kind

of came around. Others were still concerned about that. And the message that we had to kind of convey was that we're not looking at changing this now but there'll be the smaller year plan review. So I'm not sure if that answers your question. I say it was kind of mixed. Certainly with the additional height I think there was more reluctance.

Stacey Hardy-ChandlerSo is there the final version there would be further definition of community benefit or just the recognition that that's going to continue to be mixed?

Paul NabtestaffI think that's going to continue to be mixed. I think the way we're defining community benefit is as far as we'd be willing to push it because we want to keep it broad enough that people can provide what we're looking for and there's variety and design and those types of things. I think ultimately any changes we make will be the resulting benefit to the developer that they receive in return for providing those benefits to the city.

Catherine Readby voiceThank you. Other questions, comments? Council Member Hall.

Stacy HallThank you. Just to refresh my memory, when you talked about community benefits, in a previous presentation, I think that was also to include community art, or murals and things like that?

Paul NabtestaffWe, at our earlier discussions, we had a list of seven or eight types of community benefits, and public art was one of those. And through various means, we ended up kind of whittling it down to just these two and now three. With some of those, there was concern about legality under Virginia Code. With some, there didn't seem to be a lot of interest from community or council or planning commission. with some like the green building policy I think there was a concern that we don't have enough information to know how we want to apply that now that could be added later so yeah there was a list with a lot more but now we're down to just these three and

Stacy HallI'm sorry what are the three community benefits

Paul Nabtestaffthe open space open space contributions to the transportation network and commercial space.

Stacy HallOkay. My questions are a little jumbled here, but there's no actual requirement that we can enforce for mandating that they actually get and keep tenants. Is that correct? I understand it's a tough commercial market some days, but I also worry that people are just agreeing to do what they're going to do, and then they or just leave it vacant because they wanted the housing on top and that was more important to them.

Paul NabtestaffThat's correct. We cannot mandate that they remain occupied or, you know, have certain rents or anything like that. I don't think in most cases it's a big investment for developers, particularly of mixed-use projects, to include commercial spaces, not just because it's space within the building, but commercial space has a higher parking requirement on a per-square-foot basis than residential. So they're also investing in that. When it's in structures, it gets really expensive. So it would be a lot for a developer to provide space just to earn the residential units and assume that they're just going to have vacant space. We don't think it's worth the investment for them.

Stacy HallOkay. On slide 10, it talks about if the standard were expanded to include all non-residential, approximately 100,000 square feet of assisted living facility would apply.

Paul NabtestaffYeah, so this is something that, as I mentioned, related to Councilmember Amos's question that we are proposing applying this to non-residential uses, not just commercial. And the reason we're doing that is aside from assisted living, there's a section in the zoning ordinance that lists residential uses, commercial uses, industrial uses, and then there's something called public and institutional uses. We thought it would be good to broaden this beyond just commercial uses because particularly institutional uses includes things like theaters, like institutions for universities, hospitals, and those kind of things which are all benefits to the city. It also would include things like assisted living. So if that were to apply here, then that project

would be able to meet this standard.

Stacy HallSo I can understand the theater, the university portion, and the hospitals. I'm just not completely understanding how assisted living is not residential.

Paul NabtestaffIt is. It's just the way it's defined in our zoning ordinance because it's a service.

Stacy HallHour meaning the city or hour meaning Virginia? The city. How do other localities, and not necessarily Fairfax County, but how do other places across the country do it? I

Paul Nabtestaffdon't know how it's typically included. I would assume it's probably mixed because, yes, people live there, but it also has a service component to it. I can't say for sure.

Stacy HallOkay. I have mixed feelings on that one. And then the rest of slide 10, this talks about, for example, at the botanist,

Wendy Sanfordstaffif

Stacy Hallthis, well, currently what they have for 250 units is 5,000 square feet of commercial, which is 19 square feet per unit, correct? Yes. Okay. And then what is being proposed to be a new minimum is what?

Paul NabtestaffWe don't have a new minimum. It's a bonus earned for each 1,000 square feet of space. So in this case, they would earn five units, whereas some of the other projects that have more commercial space would earn more units program.

Stacy HallOkay, but if there's no, so let's break this one down a little bit further then. So the botanist, they only have 5,000. That's what they proposed.

Speaker 19Correct.

Stacy HallThen if they came to us and said, well, wait, I want to do 6,000, we would then give them another unit.

Paul NabtestaffCorrect.

Stacy HallSo what precludes them from coming in at a super low artificially deflated number and then working their way up in order to satisfy what we think is reasonable commercial in order to get bonus units.

Paul NabtestaffThey could do that, but this still gives us a tool to incentivize them. I think with this project and many of our projects, they come in with a low number and we ask them to provide more and they say they can't for whatever reason. So this way we could say if you provide more, you get more units. And so that's kind of what we want to happen.

Stacy HallYes and no. I mean, I just think it's crazy. And you look at Scout on the Circle with 392 units and 88,000 square feet. I understand it's a different footprint. It just doesn't seem like it's enough. But then on the flip side, you have across the street where Amazon closed and then other things are closing. Okay, I just think it's a curious thought. I have concerns about bonus units for commercial. I almost feel like we need to sort of establish the footprint of a development or a redevelopment and know that if the footprint is this or it's this many acres, that we need to almost have a minimum as opposed to bare bones that we're trying to get them to work their way up to. I'm not as concerned about bonus units as others, I guess, up here might be.

Paul NabtestaffThe reason we didn't want to have a base requirement is that the smaller plans acknowledge there are some areas particularly on the peripheries of the smaller plans we are transitioning to residential neighborhoods that are kind of not on major roads including commercial could be more of a challenge in those locations and so if we had a base requirement that was equally applicable to all sites there are some I think we had to recognize where commercial just cannot be successful at all and so we allow them to have 100 residential project they just wouldn't get any benefit for that

Stacy Hallyeah this is why I don't have your job I understand that and then on page on slide 15 where you did the summarized density comparisons do these include the bonus units or this is but what it just came out as proposed final under normal circumstances?

Paul NabtestaffThese include the proposed the bonus unit. So when it says proposed final, that means our proposed final version of the zoning text amendments, not the final project. And so yeah, this would be the after running all those tallies where the numbers of landing in the end, the maximum they could receive.

Wendy SanfordstaffOkay.

Stacy HallI feel like I could be talked into additional units, but I think when you talk about additional stories or floors, that's where you really start to lose me because I don't I just don't think that we need that level of density I do have concerns about the parking that the Planning Commission was willing to consider alternate to I'm not sure that that is sufficient I would suggest that we stay with alternate one of the 400 square feet and

Mr. AlexanderstaffI think I had yeah

Stacy Halland is is there any sort of time limit on For example, I know that the Leighton Hall apartments were approved for something, and then it's been 10-ish years. And I've heard, and I don't know how true it is, but that there are other projects that were recently approved that might be stalled in some way, either due to funding or some other things. do we have any ability to kind of put a stopgap on their ability to not proceed with something? Because we end up with, it takes a really long time to get to this point. We think we're doing something, and then we sit there and just stare at it again to be left for years to come. I mean, at least Leighton Hall is still an active community that houses people.

But there's others. I mean like Davies for example, it's just a vacant house that's there with nothing going on

Paul NabtestaffThere are some provisions that have a time limit on them So for in the case of Davies, they never even submitted their administrative site plan review So there is an expiration date. I don't know what it is for that, but eventually that approval will be revoked Once an applicant receives their site plan approval my understanding is there's no timeline and I can ask Mr Harden to confirm that

Brooke Hardinstaffand when it's a rezoning rezonings legally in virginia those run with the land and so there is no time that expires on a rezoning it can be pursued under any amount of time by the current owner or by future owner things like special use permits those do have a time limit and if those aren't pursued actively if the property owner doesn't proceed with a building permit and with with construction those do expire and so that does happen from time to time the example of of Layton Hall apartments was a rezoning and so that that approval still stands today and there's not a tool necessarily for the locality to come back and revoke that previous entitlement. But special use permits, certificates of appropriateness for design, those all will expire.

Stacy HallOkay. I'm a little out of my league here, but I'm going to ask a question and hope that you didn't already answer it or I just misunderstood it. So, for example, the Safeway Redevelopment consideration. they potentially are having leases that are not renewing and people that are leaving and then are taking their sales tax and their B poll taxes and the other things that are generated in there. And now they have a vacant space that is in flux of are we doing this, are we not? So now the city is losing out on additional tax revenue. three years to move forward, we don't get anything back for that lost revenue, but we're sitting there waiting for them to proceed. And this is not a Safeway specifically. Let me be clear on that.

I'm not saying they're doing anything wrong. It seems like we end up kind of being on the hook for something that is not really our fault, but we tried to work with and to move something forward, and then there's no timeline, and there's no other ways to pursue that under Virginia code at all, ways? I know you said the special exceptions, but how would that work then if Safeway wanted special exceptions that we agreed to?

Brooke HardinstaffThere was a lot

Stacy Hallin

Brooke Hardinstaffthere. In theory. So yes, that does occur. As you note, where an approval is made and then a development project sits for whatever reason. Typically not pursued through zoning, the Code of Virginia does have or a vacant building registry, they're known as, that allows localities to assess fees on property owners that have vacant spaces. It's a program that needs to be adopted locally. The challenge for local governments over the years of that, because it's been on the books for many years, is the incentive is very low. $150 a year previously the General Assembly may have up to like $500 or so but most localities haven't pursued it because it's just not it's not going to be incentive to get a property owner to to fill those spaces if they're truly

kind of entrenched and not filling those spaces so the tools aren't great and kind of to your to your earlier question in terms of a land use approval the the city can't dictate for example local government can't dictate for example you know what tenant is is going to be in there or those you know the land uses a land use and on Safeway whether it's a Safeway or a Giant or a Publix or whatever you know that's kind of beyond the scope of what from a zoning land use approval we can do I think in our experience typically when those spaces remain vacant in anticipation of redevelopment that is actually being pursued property owners try to minimize that to the greatest extent possible sometimes they miscalculate and unfortunately to your point we as the

community are left with that unfortunate circumstance but it's not necessarily something that we can require as part of the zoning action I know that was a long long-winded answer well

Stacy Hallit just brings up I guess for me the Fudd records property I can't remember the last time Fudd records was actually open you know I mean it's probably more than a decade but who owns that what's happening with it. It looks terrible. Like why are we not doing anything to or maybe we are and I don't know but why are we not able to do something that makes that get better faster?

Brooke HardinstaffSo the city has enforced from a property maintenance inspection property maintenance inspection approach on properties that have exhibiting signs of deterioration but again limited in terms of what we can do from state code if the building is secure and keeping rain and vermin and things like that out there's not as much the locality can do. If it's you know falling down if it's public safety hazard if it is deteriorating due to weather those are things that the city can enforce but but we don't have maybe as many tools as some other states do until you really get to a very deteriorated state and there are spot blight programs that the state allows. And the city has done spot blight in cases

where either we will compel the property owner to make improvements or ultimately the locality can acquire the property in certain cases. are really typically kind of extreme deterioration that's occurred okay

Stacy Hallso another 10 more years for FedRuckers let's

Brooke Hardinstaffhope

Stacy Hallnot let's hope not

Catherine Readby voicethank you so before I call on councilmember Bates I think what we're dancing around here and not saying is that Virginia is always been a property rights state we are a property rights state when people own a piece of property they own it and incentivize developers through small area plans, through our comprehensive plan to invite them to bring what we would like for them to build. But the Bank of America building is sitting there. There's other buildings around the city. The property owner owns them. And until they sell it to somebody else, they don't have to do anything on it. And in Virginia, that is just so fundamental to our government to be a property rights state. And so whatever we understand what we want. Ultimately, we can't tell property

owners they have to do anything with their property. I just think, foundationally, we all need to understand that is a huge limit on what is happening here in our city and things that we look at, like Fuddruckers, and we're like, why is it like this? It's because the property owners own it, and they don't have to do anything with it until they want to. Council Member Bates.

Billy BatesSo first off, just a quick question that occurred to me earlier. Let's say that we have a building with a garage attached to it. Let's say that they're the same height but the building itself is seven stories like in compliance with North Facts. I'm thinking of like the botanist there. and then the garage is, say, around eight or nine stories, but they're the same roof height or whatever you want to call it. Would, in terms of this ordinance, would you go by the height of the building itself or the height of the garage?

Paul NabtestaffWe would measure them two different ways. the There is a section in this proposed ordinance that has alternative compliance for height Which is different from the additional two stories I mentioned earlier alternative compliance accounts for things like Uses that have unique floor heights. It could be something like retail that has more higher flower floor height Or something like a parking garage has a lower floor to floor height than typical uses And it allows up to one additional story or 15 feet to accommodate that so if the case was a parking garage measurably has more floors than what we support but when you measure the actual height it's no taller than the building that meets the standard that would be a

venue for us to be able to accept something like that.

Billy BatesWhat about in a case where you might have you know the and you know rather than just a building in an attached garage you have where the building itself has you know garage levels kind of mixed in with the regular habitable floors. So like, you know, let's say you have a ground floor retail level and then a couple garage levels above that and then, you know, residential levels above that or something like that. Something similar or is that a bit tricky?

Paul NabtestaffThat gets more tricky. I will mention that we're proposing in the final draft, which was not shown in the previous draft. In the previous draft, we were only showing in terms of floors for the smaller plans. In the final draft, we're proposing dimensions to go along with that. And so I believe in that kind of case, as long as the total building height falls below the maximum dimension, I think we would have a path to be able to support something like that, even if another floor was squeezed in because the parking levels are split and kind of divided in a weird way.

Billy Batesyeah otherwise I think I'd agree with the planning commission on reducing but not removing the incentives for consolidation and with regard to the office space parking requirements is maybe you know one for every 450 square feet something that we look at

Paul Nabtestaffwe hadn't looked at that because we wanted to keep keep this more simple we could look at it and see how the numbers pan out um and perhaps if we can get some members of development community to to participate to ask how how this would affect them in terms of complexity of the calculations but um that's a potential option yeah

Billy Batesi um honestly would like to err on the side of making it easier for developers to build commercial because I think that's something that, you know, we want to try to have as much as they're able to provide us with. But given that one for every 500 is a bit close to the, you know, observations in Old Town, I'd probably go with that over the 400 personally, but maybe 450 would be kind of a nice middle ground there. Okay. We'll look at that.

Catherine Readby voiceCouncil Member McQuillan.

Rachel McQuillenThank you. Going over the height, currently it's zoned at five stories, right? 65 feet for Activity Center? So that would be if they get that additional that would be seven stories and you said that we're working on dimensions?

Paul NabtestaffYes, so the dimensions we're proposing are essentially 12 feet per floor and unless that changes for any reason that's we're proposing now so it was 65 in the previous draft, but assume 12 feet per floor.

Rachel McQuillenOkay, thank you. And then the original, the 48 units to 40, how does that compare to other local municipalities?

Paul NabtestaffIn terms of density, it depends because there isn't a set comparison. Every municipality kind of does zoning in different ways. different things I can say we did a quick look at developments that have been approved in the Fairfax County revitalization areas again these are the non-metro accessible older commercial areas which we think have the most similar characteristics to our activity centers so this doesn't show what their zoning requirements are but it shows densities that have been approved for these projects and the ranges are here and you can see that compares to the average density based on what our current proposal is with these revisions in them. So that ends up at 63.7 based on the developments that we've looked at.

And then the range for the ones in the county go anywhere from 30 to 90 units per acre.

Rachel McQuillenOkay. So this is pretty conservative.

Paul NabtestaffYeah. We think it's somewhere in the middle, maybe a little on the conservative side.

Rachel McQuillenOkay. And then I also, let me see, I agree with Council Member Amos. of confused about that, the reduction of the Land Assembly incentive, but I also agree with reducing and not removing. As far as the office parking, has economic development had a chance to provide any insight as to if that would affect vacancy, tenant vacancy, things like that?

Colleenstaffwe have not studied it or done any surveying but based on the conversations that we have and what's happening in the market a lot of communities are looking at these parking reductions because of work from home and so many companies moving to flexible schedules so smaller footprints with employees rotating so as of right now without having the data I don't believe this would impact vacancy

Rachel McQuillenOkay, so neither the 400 or the 500 square foot, the one per five?

ColleenstaffThe 500 we'd probably want to look at closer because we do have indications in the market that return to office is still happening for companies, but it's happening more in rotations than large groups of people coming back. So we're not seeing a lot of large leases happening really anywhere in the region. So I don't believe the one for 400 square feet would impact vacancy. I'd want to spend more time at the one for 500.

Rachel McQuillenThank you. So with that information, I would prefer to, I'm comfortable with going to the 400 and not the 500. For, let me see. Do we have any idea of long-term fiscal impact of these zoning changes? Do we have any idea of what to expect?

Paul NabtestaffWe haven't analyzed that. down to I think this is something we can look at when we do the smaller plane reviews because that will depend on what is displaced in terms of conditions that are out there almost all of these developments will be redevelopments of existing things so it depends on what's there and what it gets replaced with so again this is since this is looking not holistically this is looking at standards for individual projects I think the better approach for identifying potential physical impacts is more holistic so okay

Rachel McQuillenyeah I would be kind of get an idea of what impact it would have on, you know, things like the infrastructure and city services, you know, other, the value of the commercial space, things like that. And then how are we going, so let's say we go ahead and we approve these amendments, we put them in place. What's the plan for ensuring that it is producing the results that this is intended to produce?

Paul NabtestaffSo we are always reviewing our zoning ordinance based on issues that we're facing as development applications come through, as we hear from the Planning Commission City Council about things that concern them. And so we would essentially review the discussions that happen with City Council and Planning Commission when these go to public hearings to see if there are certain things that come up repeatedly that are not aligning with what we would like to approve. That's part of the reason we wanted to set this up in such a way so that it's not by rights so it still comes before you. That gives us a safeguard. So if something in here is someone is applying to the letter of the law in this but we still

don't like it for whatever reason, you have the ability to disapprove it. And when we start to recognize patterns in that, then we go back and revisit it and try to deal with those issues.

Rachel McQuillenSo would you review this on like an annual basis, just kind of keep tabs on this is doing what we're expecting it to do as far as incentivizing in the right ways or?

Paul NabtestaffI think it would be more on an ongoing basis. As we go forward, we could discuss, you know, if there's once a year we check in on how things are going or something like that. That's up for future discussion.

Rachel McQuillenYeah, I was just curious to make sure that we're following through. I mean, this is great to go through all of this work, but we want to make sure that it's actually achieving what we're trying to achieve. So thank

Catherine Readby voiceyou. Appreciate that. While you've still got the slide up, and I'll turn it over to Council Member Peterson, about parking. All parking is not the same. We have acres of asphalt parking lots, acres of it. Structured parking also takes up a footprint, even though it is vertical. Underground parking does not take up footprint. And so when we heard from the pre-application hearing about underground parking being $58,000 per space, we have to weigh the benefits of someone who might be proposing underground parking, not using valuable land for parking, versus somebody who's like, I'm going to put an asphalt parking lot with these spaces on the surface, which does take up valuable land, as opposed to the structured parking.

So my only thing, and I'm fine with the Planning Commission's recommendation for 400 square feet, but it's not all the same. And if we want to be a city that has underground parking, because underground parking can give us more spaces and not take up valuable land that could be developed for something that's not parking, then we need to understand that there's a significant difference in what those parking spaces cost. And should we evaluate those projects individually? Just sticking a pin in that for us to think about parking not all costing the same or having the same impact, depending on what it is. Okay.

Thomas PetersonWith that, Council Member Peterson. On page four, the statement on the bottom changes to the total development benchmarks that have mental impact on the amendments. So the total development benchmarks as they stand now, as I understand it, are 4,700 additional high-density housing units in the small area plans?

Paul NabtestaffCombined, they anticipate about 4,000 units, yes.

Thomas PetersonRight. So just theoretically, let's say we slice that in half. would that mean there would be less pressure on tall buildings and high density in order to create that many housing the benchmark number of housing units in the same amount of land

Paul Nabtestaffit could the resulting development could still have the same type of characteristics that would If we were to make that change, if we were to receive development applications under this orders before that change and after them, it wouldn't necessarily regulate the type of development that occurs in that pattern. There would be less demand for space holistically, and so the city could choose to alter our standards to have more restrictions if we wanted to at that point, because we would have the same amount of land available for less residential development. However, that doesn't take into account the market realities of development, which we would also have to take into consideration.

Thomas PetersonMR. But physically, we're squeezing more units in the same amount of space at 4,700 than half that.

Paul NabtestaffCorrect.

Thomas PetersonAnd the consequence is that, when we squeeze it, it goes tall and dense.

Paul NabtestaffI my point I think is that this is still going back to the idea that these zoning ordinance amendments apply on a site-by-site basis. So yes if we went to half that there are 2,000 units would take up less space in the same amount of space that we have than 4,000 but the individual applications wouldn't necessarily have to follow that. And that would mean that there's more land available for other things, such as commercial development or just not redeveloping. MR.

Thomas PetersonSo I think if I'm hearing you correctly, 4,700, and I think this has come up in prior discussions, it's got a funny name called benchmark, but that's not the equivalent of a goal or a target. So developers are free to come in and we're in free and we are free to invite them to come in with individual projects that cumulatively would total less than that 4,700.

Speaker 21Chair Greg Musil. Correct.

Thomas PetersonMr. So I think this is a significant point. I've personally been told by some of them that they have felt that these were quote-unquote marks that they had to meet and that they brought in applications that were different than they would have at a different benchmark, a different mark, if you will. So the benchmarks may be inducing height and density, and as a consequence of that, have a material difference here, and the standards might change if we are looking at benchmarks at a different scale. And that gets to the overall question mark of the public preference for the amount of additional units in these areas. And if it's less than 4,700, it seems to me that that would imply that we could, in fact,

be looking at a different approach to height and density because there would be less pressure on the land.

Paul NabtestaffYeah, I mean, assuming all that's true, we could do that. but as I mentioned earlier if these are approved and we go back and we go through the small area plan review process and that's where those benchmarks could change if as a result of that we felt we could lower the height standards in the small area plans that could easily be applied back into this ordinance it's a fairly simple change because it's all just conveyed in a map

Thomas PetersonOkay. Well, I think, again, the observation, and it's a direct experience, is that the benchmark is inducing a specific approach to height and density, and a different benchmark would induce a different response to that. That seems to have been a bit unclear and confusing. I think, again, benchmarks are not goals and targets but have been interpreted be that and that's induced the market to respond in ways that is kind of showing up now in the way we're approaching these things. So it seems to me that is something that would be worth clearing up. And the review process for the small area plans would be the place to do that. And it raises two questions. One is a sequential question, an obvious one,

which is as we go through the review process, logically you want to do that before you would lock in anything related to the outcome of that through amendments. So how do we maintain the flexibility to avoid locking things in that are not going to be the ultimate outcome of the small area plan review, which is an open review as I understand it?

Paul NabtestaffMy point with this slide is that if these amendments are approved, we are not locked in. The smaller plan review process will identify changes, and we anticipate there will be changes. And so this slide is summarizing how those changes could be accommodated back into the zoning ordinance. This is providing the structure. I don't think the structure will change as a result of the smaller plans, But what is likely to change are specific recommendations for specific sites on where we want certain heights, where we want certain open spaces, and those types of things. And this is set up in such a way that those types of changes can be applied fairly easily without having to change the structure.

Thomas PetersonWell, maybe yes and no is kind of my reaction because while the structure, and I want to to ask more about that in a moment, may not change the standards within the structure will, quite likely. Again, let's just say in case of the overall cumulative number of units that are involved here, that very well could change standards on height and density. So it would logically seem to make sense to want to avoid proceeding with a scenario within a structure that results in standards that could be inconsistent with the outcome of the review process. I want to be a little bit careful about that, I would think.

Paul NabtestaffTo an extent, but as I think we've mentioned before, the smaller plan review process is going to take time. We think it's going to be a year and a half to two years. And so over the course of that time, the city will continue to receive development applications. And so these standards, no matter what the result of the smaller plan review is, these much closer to the result of that than our current standards, which rely on special exceptions that have no limitations and no guidelines for how the community receives benefits. So our recommendation would be to move forward with these and make changes once the smaller plan reviews occur as needed, because as I said, the types of things that will change

if the height and the density change, and that's where we think the biggest changes Again, the height standards in the zoning ordinance is just a map. It's a one-page revision. It would be a very simple review. Density will take some calculations and review, but it's still a much more simple process than the overall structure change that we're going through now. And so if we do not adopt these now and we choose to go forward and try to review them again after the small airplane review occurs, we will have this as a starting point, but we will not have gone any further, the opportunity to take advantage of this to the benefit of the city over the course of the time is taking us to complete the small airplane reviews.

Thomas PetersonSo the total development benchmarks, would it not be possible to approach this on a scenario basis when we're evaluating what sort of standards would take place within the structure so that we are looking not just at the total maximum benchmark of 4,700, but lower benchmarks, which may be preferred by the public. We're hearing a lot of concern about that. So why would we not have, just for sake of conversation, high, medium, and low benchmarks, and then let this process proceed in the way that allows us corporately here in the city, citizens, everybody, say, okay, here's how this looks and feels at these different levels. So we have a little bit more choice here in terms of what we're doing?

Paul NabtestaffI don't think looking at different scenarios for the benchmarks would affect the recommendations we have here in any way. We didn't factor those in. When we were looking at the benefits and the resulting densities that would come out of these amendments, we were relying on information we had from development applications we have, looking at development that has been happening in our surrounding area, such as the numbers I just showed from developments in Fairfax County, trying to understand what the market is demanding in order for development to occur, and then using the tools of community benefits through open space and the other things we're trying to achieve to get to a number that roughly falls within that area.

But the total benchmarks were not used as a reference at all when developing these amendments, because, again, this applies on a site-by-site basis.

Thomas PetersonWell, just to note again, this is a policy-sensitive market, so policy actually induces standards. I have personally certainly heard from applicants that the approach that they provided, specifically in height and density, was reflective of the maximum benchmark that we have here and the need to put in a structure at a scale and size that would be consistent with that, something different had there been a different mark. And so, again, it seems to me it is not harmful. In fact, it would be quite beneficial to look at different scenarios here. And again, I'm being rough with high, medium, and low because it may well be that under those conditions, the market that, you know, we keep talking about the market is responding will respond

differently because it's a policy sensitive market. It seems to me that would be, and And this is a relatively straightforward assessment process. You look at different scenarios and you can do some sensitivity around them and let people look at the different scenarios and see the differences and then start to choose out of that. It maybe it gets to the question under slide two also of the analysis where we have a schedule here, and we have in-house and consultant analysis, but I guess the first question is, are the analyses that are being referred to in a market traffic, et cetera, are these cumulative impact analysis where we're looking at 4,700 units and doing a cumulative impact analysis

of the addition of 4,700 high-density units to the city?

Paul NabtestaffSome of these are. Some of these I think we would have to go through the process of identifying or whatever we call them when we go through the process. And I do hope to define them better when we do the small area plan review. So some of them will have to be reflective on that. And we can look at multiple scenarios at that time, the small area plan review. Some of these are more site-specific, like identifying, you know, tree locations and things like that. But things like traffic analysis and utility analysis, we will be looking at the overall numbers. And those will help impact how those might change when we do the small area plan reviews.

Thomas PetersonSo that is the point. which you could and I would advocate that we should look at different levels, different scenario levels. So 4,700 might be a ceiling, but there could be lower levels, a whole, you know, series of them. And, you know, this is basic straight-up analysis where you look at different scenarios at different levels and do the cumulative impacts. And that would inform then this question mark of where we want standards to go. Okay. So then, and that's a straight up, it's kind of a logical approach to analysis. I'm also interested in the scope here because these look like these are cumulative impacts. We've got a couple things here. We've got market, we've got traffic, utility, et cetera.

It'd be good to know a little bit more about what's really implied there to just pick up traffic. Is that congestion?

Paul NabtestaffWe will be back before you in December with a work session to talk about this project specifically. And one of the things we'll be trying to do is to figure out exactly what we want to analyze with each of these things. But we have not identified those kind of specifics yet.

Thomas PetersonOkay, because I think it's really critical to get that scope right in terms of covering key community impacts. And they're not just community impacts, they're community goals. But with transportation impacts, the two biggies here are congestion and safety. But one of the things that's notably missing here, for instance, is public safety. So we're looking at adding a lot of people in small areas here, and there could be additional safety risk associated with that. So I would think we would want to be comprehensive in terms of the set of cumulative impacts that we would be looking at here so that they would reflect concerns the community have. people ask the obvious questions, gee, if we're going to add 4,700 new identity units,

what is the impact on traffic, on safety, on crime, you know, right on down the list. So if I understand correctly what you're saying, these are just perhaps illustrative points of analysis, really more a placeholder basis for further discussion when we talk about this in December. Is that fair?

Paul NabtestaffMr. Correct. Yes.

Thomas PetersonChair Greg Musil. Okay. And I would advocate, I believe the city manager had provided a list of community impacts previously that was a pretty good set that we might return to to be sure we're covering that base. I think there are other standard renditions of that for this kind of analysis we would want to carry forward. I say all this because I think that getting homework done is really quite crucial here because if we're going driven, evidence-based, et cetera. We need to be measuring the right things in order to manage, and that's how we develop policy. And that ultimately goes to what we're doing with standards here, height and density, the key things. There's some other things as well, but those are really big things. And where we come out on preferred levels of cumulative

additions of homes and cumulative impact analysis, which affects that, affects standards, right? So I'm hearing that you want to move forward with a standard-setting process that has flexibility to go backwards if we need to, but that's a little dicey. And in an ideal situation, you wouldn't want to have these things out of sync. and I think we'll need to be real careful not to inadvertently lock in standards that cause us to treat the evaluation of benchmarks as if it's locked in already at a certain level. My clear understanding is that that has not happened, that the 4700 was only an illustrative maximum ceiling but not a goal or a target. So I think we don't want to kind we've set standards around it, so therefore it has become a standard. It has become a

goal. It has become a target. In other words, I think we need the open, if I'm reading this correctly, the review, small area plan review would be an open review to investigate these and give people a chance to see how this works out.

Paul NabtestaffYes, it would. It would be a similar process to when we develop the small area plans. It's definitely done through community engagement. But I still struggle to see the relationship between the bigger picture benchmark numbers and these standards. I know you've heard from some of the development community that they have influenced their plans or those types of things, but I feel like that impact is probably pretty meaningful. Most likely, their plans are primarily guided by the market and what they need to be able to achieve to have a project be successful. The Somalia plans might have been a reference for them. Those benchmarks might have been a reference. but it's I have a difficult time anticipating that those bigger picture

numbers influence development proposals to the extent that they are shifting what we're doing here with these zoning ordinance amendments particularly because they're also as I showed looking at development in the county and other places to help inform how much development we should be anticipating with each proposal as opposed to holistically.

Thomas PetersonWell, what comes out of this, hopefully, is a tailored strategy for development for the city of Fairfax. And so it would be maybe a little bit dicey to be looking at Reston and Tysons and Roslyn and places like that and saying, well, that's how it looks there. So we should assume that's what the development community is looking for here. That's a challengeable question. Maybe they're looking for us to put together a tailored strategy here. that they can respond to and then we could see what that looks like i'm not sure we've exactly gone through that process and

Brooke Hardinstaffcouncil member that that's certainly what the small area plans were originally intended to do was to provide a tailored recommendation a very clear depiction of the city's policy for redevelopment in the activity centers not city-wide just in the activity centers So if you know the council's desire is to revisit those absolutely That's why the Commonwealth Virginia says every five years We got to come back and we got to revisit our plans and we will certainly adjust accordingly I will certainly concur with mr. Napdi's point. I think the benchmarks and The regs are are two separate issues and I think it's useful in terms of of working on regulations that will be effective to keep those things separate.

And as was said, when, you know, if and when the policy changes to those small area plans, the regulations will be adjusted. As was noted, we've been doing it for 10 years since the rewrite of the overall city zoning ordinance. In 2016, come back every year or more frequently sometimes with amendments, to do that but we are certainly operating an environment where there's going to be property owners that want to create new investment in the city. There is no moratorium on development in the Commonwealth of Virginia and so we're going to have to respond to that and so what we've tried to do is to put the city in the best position possible to be able to respond to that with a what we think is a better tool. That tool is not going to be perfect. There will be things we discover,

you know, probably right away that we want to change. That's just the way it is when you write a bunch of code. It's not perfect. And there will be things over time as well. And so I think it's good to go into with the expectation that this is going to change, and it will. And we certainly realize that but we certainly recommend that this is something that would be useful for the city to put on the books and there are things in terms of the studies yes we'll be back in December with more detail on those and there may be things that we need to get back to with with the council you know the city did a residential housing needs assessment a few years ago it was a prior city council that instructed staff to undertake that work. We may need to

bring that back. That may be something this council isn't as familiar with, but the results of that were demand are roughly around 4,000 units in terms of the city over over the course of a you know 15 year time frame and looking at the full range of household types and ages that are in the city and that that's kind of way that that study was oriented and not to go too deep into it but it you know the most growth we were going to need in terms of housing was with our 55 plus community and so we can certainly revisit some of that data if that's helpful as well again not necessarily related to the benchmark estimate not targets we'll continue to say that repeatedly but we certainly be prepared

MR.

Thomas PetersonWell, much appreciated. And I think, you know, the key thing is, as you say, to go into this openly. But to be clear, as I've sat here as a council member, on more than one occasion I've heard an applicant say, we have been called upon to reach 1,250 units. We have been called upon to, you know, X, Y, and Z, to hit these benchmarks. Therefore, we are bringing you a project that is consistent with that scale. And had they been called something different, they may have brought us a different application. And I think that's the fundamental thing we have to investigate as we go forward here. What if that changes based on public interest? What effect would that have on the applications that appear

before us, the site-specific applications? Because, again, more than once the applicants have said, we've been called upon to do this, and our response is this. So that, I think, is the cause and effect relationship between the benchmarks and the total volume and the individual applications that we get. So I think we need to be careful as we go forward with that.

Catherine Readby voiceCouncil Member Bates?

Billy BatesWe can certainly talk all night about benchmarks and the need for housing in the city, the positive well-established positive impacts of new market rate housing on housing affordability But one thing that I want to Point to to bring us back to the matter at hand here When we talk about what's been called high density housing when we think about the densities that we're looking at here with this proposed zoning warrants amendment would you say that so my recollection is that the apartment developments that we see come across the dais are majority studio and one bedroom projects with significant amount of two bedroom and then next to no you know three or more bedrooms is that about right I'll say that's

usually

Paul Nabtestaffthe case yes

Billy Batesyeah yeah um so thinking about you know mostly with these new developments apartment developments mostly just one bed or one bedroom anyway per unit um and then you know the portion of two bedrooms um and then you know next to no three or more bedrooms compared to um the single family homes in the city where they're you know probably two three four bedroom single-family homes. Just to kind of put this in perspective in terms of thinking about the actual impact on population in the city. And also, of course, that we are talking about not this year, not five years, but I believe around a 10-15 year horizon. Anyway, thank you. Thank you.

Catherine Readby voiceAny other comments, questions? Did you get feedback that was helpful, Mr. Napty?

Paul NabtestaffYes, I think we got what we need to proceed, and we look forward to sharing the final draft with you.

Catherine Readby voiceThank you so much. Ms. Kidalov, what do we have next?

Ms. KadalovclerkOur last work session item is discussion of FY 2027 fall supplemental appropriations, and I'll recognize Gwen Riddle, the budget director

Gwen RiddlestaffGood evening, Mayor and Council. Would you like me to bring up the staff report or are you good? Just talking. Okay. Just want to make sure. So I'm here to talk about the fall supplemental appropriations. There's two items on our appropriations. The first is the allocation of the housing trust fund that was approved on September 22nd. So it's $542,000, $524,000 of previously received proffers that will be used to fund this trust fund. So that will be moved over on the general fund. The second piece is to create a school's fund separate from the general fund. What this will allow us to do is put our financial data in line between our reporting, our ACFER, our annual financial report, and our budget document.

Right now, they do not align. The ACFER has certain requirements, so we're matching the ACFER. It's a net zero dollars to the city. So there's no new funding. There's no new money we're asking for as part of this. It is moving about 8% of general fund dollars that are currently general fund dollars, but are reported as schools, to a separate fund. It's in line with other jurisdictions and other areas of the way they look at their school funds. We've made some other significant changes on the general fund to kind of just give you an idea of how we've been changing the budget and making things more aligned is moving the operating out of CIP into the general fund. We've also created a debt service fund to consolidate.

the general fund still pays their share, but we're consolidating to show fully what the city is paying for debt service, not just by enterprise or by area. So just kind of a few options. So again, this is a zero effect. It's administrative just to get it on the books. But any questions? Happy to take them.

Stacy HallCouncil Member Hall. No questions. Just love this. Happy to see it. Definitely the right move, and I'd love to see you continue to make these changes in the budget so that it is much more transparent and clear to people that want to read it. Thank you for all your hard work. Thank you.

Catherine Readby voiceAnd I echo that. I think making the budget easier to read, making it clear what we're doing so that anybody can look at our budget and figure out where the money's going is a fantastic improvement. So other questions or comments? Council Member McQuillan. I

Rachel McQuillenjust have a question about this is a if question. If that the 1% sales tax bond referendum is passed, could this fund be used and or a subaccount under this be used to put the funds there?

Gwen RiddlestaffFor the school fund? No. Because it's dedicated to school construction. Okay. We've spoken with our others regarding this. they're like leave it we're putting it in the debt service fund okay so that it would be sitting and available for those debt payments relating specifically to school to school construction or transportation so whatever councils decide to do with it

Catherine Readby voiceokay thank you you're welcome any other questions or comments anything from you councilmember Amos you good I

Anthony Amosthink it's good I

Catherine Readby voicewas for the good of the body. All right then. Well, I think this is a wrap and we are now adjourning at 8.29 p.m. on Tuesday.