Planning Commission Regular Meeting/Work Session

James FeatherGood evening. Welcome to the regularly scheduled meeting of the City of Fairfax Planning Commission for Monday, December 8th, 2025. Our first order of business is the Pledge of Allegiance. Please join me. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank

Paul Cunninghamyou.

James FeatherNext order of business is discussion and adoption of the agenda. The agenda was issued middle of last week. adjustments to the agenda proposed.

Paul CunninghamMr. Chairman, I move the agenda be adopted as presented.

James FeatherIs there a second? Second. It's been moved and seconded to adopt the agenda as presented. All those in favor say aye. Aye.

Paul CunninghamOpposed? Abstain. Passes unanimously.

James FeatherNext order of business is presentations by the public. On any matter not calling for a public hearing, we have no public hearings this evening, so if there's anybody present who would like to address the commission Seeing none, we will move on. Next order of business is consideration of the November 24, 2025 meeting minutes. Those also were issued ahead of time. Comments, corrections on those?

Kirsten LockhartMr. Chair, I move that we adopt the meeting minutes from the November 24, 2025 regular meeting as issued.

Tassos McCarthyIs there a second? I second the motion. We

James Feathermove and second it to adopt the minutes as presented. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? Passes unanimously. Next order of business is items not requiring a public hearing. We have one item this evening which is the appointment of a Planning Commission representative to the Facade and Interiors Improvement Grant Committee. Mr. Napany, do you have a staff report or comment? Yes, thank you,

Matthew RiceChair and Feather

Paul Nabtistaffand members of the Planning Commission. As the Planning Commission is aware, this is one of the several positions where the Planning someone to represent them on another board or commission. The facade and interiors improvement grant is a program run by our economic development office that offers grants to businesses to make upgrades to their facilities and there is a committee that reviews those applications. Generally it is a fairly light commitment. It requires participation only when applications come in. or virtual. We've had a vacancy in this position for quite some time and we have been requested from the Economic Development Office to appoint someone as soon as possible because they have a number of applications that are in that

need to be reviewed. This position is not identified in the Planning Commission bylaws or the city code so we don't have to do any kind of formal process. Though just for the sake of consistency I would recommend that we do a nomination in a second and then take a roll call vote to appoint somebody. So I will turn it over to the commission to see if there is anybody who is willing to fulfill this position. Thank you.

James FeatherThank you. I do believe we have someone interested. Is there a nomination?

Matthew RiceYeah, I'd like to nominate Kristen Lockhart to be the representative to the Facade and Interior Improvements Committee.

James FeatherThank you for being willing to do that. Is there a second? I'll second. Thank you. Can we take, you said roll call vote? Do we need to take a roll call vote? We will take a roll call vote. Mr. McCarthy. Aye.

Paul CunninghamSpriggs. Aye. Mr. Running up. Aye.

James FeatherAll

Kirsten Lockhartright. Aye.

James FeatherAye. That's right. And I vote aye as well. Passes unanimously. Thank you very much. I believe they have something coming up soon, so we'll put you right to work. Thank you very much for doing that. We'll move on through the agenda. We have no public hearings this evening, so we'll recess our regular meeting and go into our work session. There are two items this evening, first of which is presentation and discussion on the draft urban forest master plan. We welcome our urban forester Anna Safford.

Anna SaffordstaffOkay, good evening, Planning Commission. Tonight I'm here to provide you an update on the draft Urban Forest Master Plan. Our consultant unfortunately had a last minute conflict that came up so it's just me. But our project team is Davie Resource Group as the lead consultant, Marcel Day leading stakeholder outreach and engagement, and WSSI providing technical assistance and local expertise. So tonight I will provide a brief project status update and then provide highlights of the draft urban forest master plan then summarize next steps and open up for questions and discussion so starting with project status we are currently at the end of phase two or wrapping up towards the end of phase two while phase one focused on information gathering phase two has involved the

development of the actual urban forest master plan community engagement and outreach activities have been ongoing through both phases. During phase two we tabled at History Day and Fall Fest. We had two public meetings and a spring photo contest. The winners of the photo contest have been incorporated throughout the plan as well as you'll see them highlighted in the presentation today. Over the last few months we've been reviewing several drafts of the Urban Forest Master Plan from the internal project team, a wide array of city staff, review phase which I know some of you participated in. In November we went through public and staff comments to update the draft to present to you all tonight as well as we presented to City Council last week and then we are hoping

to get your all's feedback tonight on the plan and incorporate it alongside Council's comments that we received to have a final draft and presentation project wrap-up in early 2026. Taking kind of a step back, looking at and recapping the full project. As a reminder, the project kicked off in May of 2024. Again, phase one focused on information gathering, a lot of stakeholder interviews, public meetings, and introducing the project to the public, trying to orient everyone. We also reviewed current city policy, program levels, and urban forest data to kind of get an overall view of the state of the urban forest. And then as we moved into phase two, that kicked off in winter of 2025 of this year.

Again, that focused on planned development. We came to you all last in July to provide an update reviewing phase one findings, as well as we presented the draft goals, objectives, and strategies of the implementation plan that you'll see tonight. And we focused on actions relating to city planning and regulations. And again, in the upcoming slides, I'll start to cover more of the details of the draft. But as you can... Oh, dear. As you can see though on the timeline again we're aiming for adoption or present proposed adoption to Council in January. All right so jumping into the highlights of the draft Urban Forest Master Plan there is a lot of content so again we'll open up for questions and discussion later on.

But the overview of the plan, it's broken into four main phases using the adaptive management process. Each chapter is color-coded, one color for each of the four questions, as you see in this graphic on the screen. The first question, what do we have, focuses on the gathering of current information about our urban forest, creating the baseline for the actual planning process. Second question, what do we want? Creates a vision and guiding principles. This was highly informed by stakeholders, the project steering committee, and the public at large. And then question number three, how do we get there? This is also known as the implementation plan. It's the objectives, strategies, and actions needing to actually put the plan into action.

And then finally, the last question, how are we doing? includes the metrics and assessments for and timelines to evaluate progress and to see how we're tracking towards success. So again over the next few slides I'll go over some of the key pieces of each of these main four chapters. So the first chapter what do we have readers find information here about the urban forest condition and benefits non native invasive species. operation review that was conducted in phase one. In tonight's presentation I'll highlight and want to highlight on this slide the benefits of the urban forest as well as then some benchmarking compared to similar cities. The benefits you see on this slide were calculated using land cover data

from the city's most recent tree canopy assessment that was conducted in 2021 and it was put into the US Forest Services ITRE calculator to generate these tree benefits. And so in terms of benefits, Fairfax's urban forest removes 31 tons of air pollutants, sequesters 66,000 tons of carbon, and prevents 20 million gallons of stormwater from entering our stormwater system each year. That's the measurable value of these collective benefits is approximately approximately 1.2 million dollars then in addition over the forest life lifetime Fairfax's urban forest is estimated to store 28 million dollars worth of carbon we did here of course throughout the project which I am sure you all have heard as

well that Fairfax's community values the urban forest quite highly. It sees it as a contributing factor towards and defining factor for the community's overall character. So kind of collectively amongst all of these benefits and data points it really underscores the importance of proactively caring for our urban forest. Moving on, wanting to highlight some key benchmarking comparisons to similar cities. The benchmark study we used was from a report, the 2016 Municipal Tree Care and Management in the United States. This is a national assessment that's done periodically to study municipal tree management around the United States. It's been conducted since 1974 in partnership between the U.S. Forest Service, the International Society of Arboriculture, and various universities around the country.

There is an update that's currently underway using 2020 census data, but it will likely be available later in 2026. So again, this benchmarking is from 2016. We used, when benchmarking the city of Fairfax, our peer cities were from population groups between 25,000 and 49,999. During public meeting number four, we did receive a lot of comments and questions as to why we use population size for comparison versus trying to look at similar urban forest compositions or cities with similar urban forest composition to us. This is the most reputable study to use when doing benchmark studies for urban forestry. That study doesn't provide that information about composition. It did, though, include some key statistics about miles of roadway, total land area of those cities, total acres of public green space they manage, number of public trees, street and park trees, to help provide that context and baseline as to what is composed within those peer cities.

And I will note, Fairfax did fall within this peer group of the 25,000 to approximately 50,000 people. And so it did seem like a fair comparison in that regards. So jumping onto the table here, notably Fairfax employs three certified arborists and is proactively developing its first urban forest master plan. those are definitely accomplishments to celebrate. However, Fairfax operates with 58% lower staff capacity compared to these peer cities, as well as 76% lower budget compared to these cities. Given these findings, staff capacity and budget, as you can imagine, were a large factor going into the development of the plan throughout the way that I'll touch on in the upcoming slides and more information on

benchmarking can be found in again the chapter what do we have as well as a few of the appendices moving on next to what do we want this chapter again focuses on the vision of the urban forest and was highly informed by the community over the project we engaged with over directly with over 150 stakeholders during public meetings and interviews and surveys. Many more participated and stayed informed through the engage page as well as spoke with us at tabling events. The community shaped the plan throughout the way but we wanted to touch on a few points of how they directly shaped the drafts that you're seeing tonight. Number three, the public reviewed the objectives and voted on their top priorities.

Tonight you'll see, or in the plan, you'll see that those priorities were noted as community priorities throughout. We also heard public comments indicating that there are a lot of overlapping objectives and strategies and some language that seemed overlapping. And so we tried to simplify that. six original objectives down to five and we provided key words for each of those objectives. And then throughout the way we've heard a lot of strong interest in learning more and how to get involved and so we reformatted the plan to incorporate call out boxes to provide examples as well as educational content to help increase that educational experience. And then we also added species identification captions to photos of plants so that when you're skimming through the plan you can hopefully learn a plant or two.

So moving to the actual vision and guiding principles, these represent the overall themes of the Urban Forest Master Plan. And we're informed again by those conversations we had with the public. The vision reads, through thoughtful planning and shared care, Fairfax will grow a resilient urban forest now and into the future. The guiding principles highlight three broad ways the urban forest contributes to the city's livability and underscores the importance of proactive care. The guiding principles include that urban forests are healthy communities, climate solutions, and cost savings. And we worked to reinforce these benefits throughout the plan. The third step and third question of the adaptive management process is how do we get there?

Again, otherwise known as the implementation plan. This includes the objectives, strategies, and actions. The objectives represent key outcomes to achieve while the strategies are the approaches. We'll share more on these in the upcoming slides. Action items are then the specific steps to implement the strategies and they're broken into short, medium, and long-term planning timeframes. each of the objectives and actions are presented with key findings from phase one metrics for success identifying existing partners as well as then necessary resources for effective implementation and again those call-out boxes were integrated throughout especially with the context that this is the city's first urban forest master plan and so we wanted to keep in mind kind

of where the existing conditions were as well as where we could learn more. Recognizing the implementation plan is a lot of information. It's quite a hefty piece of the the plan itself so we provided a summary table as Appendix F at the very back of the plan. So the timeline for forming the urban forest division which was one of the recommendations was kept in mind when creating these timelines for each action. The implementation time frames aim to try to balance existing capacity constraints as well as the opportunity to increase capacity over time and implementation activities as that happens. It does take time though, of course, to develop and establish a new division. And so in that summary table in Appendix F, we did identify existing lead and supporting roles for existing staff and departments that are already involved in the management of the urban forest.

We anticipate and the plan recommends the creation of an urban forestry division within that one to five year time frame. And again, once that division would be created, implementation actions would become a bit more feasible. So jumping into the objectives, again it has five objectives. Each objective has a number of strategies and actions. The five objectives shown on the screen include protect, regulate, grow, manage, and engage. PROTECT focuses on conserving the urban forest through planning and management practices. It includes actions such as pest disease and emergency response plans, as well as dedicated assessments and action plan specifically for our forested natural areas. Regulate examines how policy content and enforcement and process can be enhanced.

For example, it includes embedding trees as essential green infrastructure within city policy and projects, as well as improving tree-related decision-making during capital improvement projects. Grow aims to expand urban forests through planting as well as care. This isn't just short-term actions, but it also incorporates some long-term considerations like diversifying the urban forest species composition for a stronger resilience. The key component to manage again is the establishment of an urban forest division as well as trying to seek and establish sustainable funding to support the division. It recommends clarification of existing roles and within city departments and staff. And then finally we have engage.

Again like I said the community is highly already engaged and cares deeply about the urban forest. This seeks to strengthen the community's involvement and how to get involved through stewardship, private tree care, involvement of boards and commissions and improved transparency. The five objectives try to capture the needs and desires of the urban forest that we heard from the public along the way. So touching on that capacity and budget, that being quite a limiting factor, the goal is that the urban forest master plan creates an opportunity to maximize efficiencies by looking at urban forest operations and needs as a whole across all the departments even before any additional staff or budget are brought on board. This

table here shows the existing positions that already have a role within urban forest management and as we clarify and identify their roles a bit more specifically we can broaden that to be a more effective. This means work can start be more can start happening sooner and without immediate changes again to staffing and budgets in the short term. We don't anticipate all actions can happen at once or even potentially on schedule due to staffing or budget constraints but we're using again that adaptive management approach to allow for flexibility with updates every five years to help realign the plan to changing to those five-year updates and assessments in a few slides. The plan does make recommendation for several new positions,

as you can see here on the screen. But again, it's important to note not all of these are needed at once and largely the addition of these can make the plan more efficient and feasible to implement, but that we can use efficiencies prior to bringing these on board. Then the fourth and final step of the adaptive management process is to ask how are we doing? This step focuses on assessing progress, measuring success using key performance indicators or KPIs, which we'll include on the next slide. The plan has 12 KPIs that are tied and mapped to the plan's three overarching goals. Goal 1, to champion and sustain a resilient and equitable urban forest. Goal 2, increase Fairfax's capacity to care for trees.

And Goal 3, strengthen community support and involvement. So on the screen here shows all 12 KPIs and how they are mapped to those three goals. In the plan itself, there is an even larger table that includes information about existing baseline targets, metric targets, as well as the current status of each of these KPIs. So, for example, with goal one, a KPI includes increasing citywide tree canopy cover as well as increasing canopy coverage in low canopy neighborhoods. An example for goal two includes percent of newly planted trees receiving establishment care. An example of goal, a KPI for goal three is number of volunteer hours served annually. In the plan, in the implementation plan, there were metrics towards all of the strategies

to ensure success is being evaluated at that scale. Some examples or an example of a strategy metric includes acres of natural forested area actively managed. The KPIs though try to address the broader plan goals and again the strategy metrics are trying to measure and monitor success of those minor actions. Public comment frequently indicated is a desire for more transparent and frequent communications relating to the urban forest. So we kept that in mind and it was a major component of both the implementation plan as well as this section for the evaluation process. This chapter recommends routine assessments and evaluations to evaluate progress both on a one year and five year schedule. For annual one year assessments, the city would prepare a state of the urban forest

report to provide residents updates on accomplishments from that past year as well as upcoming next steps. And then the five years would perform a more formal review looking at the full plans goals, objectives and strategies and making adjustments from

Paul Nabtistaffthere

Anna Saffordstaffafter the five-year review we would make an update trying to realign the plan to those changing conditions and again these would be public to try to improve that communication and transparency the annual and five-year reports would focus on reporting on those KPIs. The strategy metrics are more to be used for internal work plans and day-to-day tasks, and they may get reported informally, but they're not intended to necessarily be tracked as closely. So, again, this plan is a 20-year planning horizon broken up into five-year planning intervals with routine assessments along the way. Using that adaptive management approach, recognizing the urban forest continues to change. We're also, this is our first plan, and so trying to provide flexibility as we learn

Kirsten Lockhartmore.

Anna SaffordstaffSo again, I know that was a fair amount of information, and there's even more information for those that have cracked into the plan itself. opening up for discussion in a moment but figured giving give you guys a view of next steps again looking for feedback and comments this evening to incorporate for a final plan in mid to late december that we then hope to present and propose for city council action we are tentatively scheduled for their public hearing on january 27th and so with that I appreciate you all letting me present the update and I welcome any questions and comments you may have

James Featherthank you miss Hafford

Anna Saffordstaffquestions

James Feathercomments from the commission

Tassos McCarthyyes thank you that was a good report I was looking through the draft and it forgive me I It said that 15% of the city was suitable for planting, and of that 15%, 70% of it was on residential property, and 40% of that 70%, getting in the weeds here, was currently unsuitable, void of substantial modifications. You talked a little bit about increasing the staff. is that are you additionally what what's how do we get those trees planted on the private property is that something that the city would be taking care of and we're budgeting for or as you mentioned you know when projects come along you might i shouldn't say demand but create some avenue where they have to do it is there going to be an avenue where we're you know in effect paying for

trees on private property?

Anna SaffordstaffSo when it comes to urban forestry staff in a division, it's easy to think of that for city property and city tree maintenance. But actually, a lot of the staff recommendations would be to work the different mechanisms of how we can expand tree canopy on private property. So for example, the first urban forestry position the city hired was for my role, my role is largely focused on land development review, tree removal permits that are impacting private property, as well as education and outreach through a grant. And then otherwise, we added a stewardship coordinator position that focuses on education, outreach, volunteer programming. And so trying to design a program that we can get residents involved, both through the

But then through other hands-on experiences, we do offer through our Stormwater Utility Fund, we do a tree giveaway through the Arbor Day Foundation that goes to private residents. And so it's looking to target mechanisms that way to get people involved. And again, I know a key component when it comes to the creation of an urban forestry division is making sure my role has kind of expanded and evolved as I've been here, but making sure that land development review and that component for the community isn't lost. Because, again, it's easy to get focused on, like, managing city public trees, and then you kind of lose sight as to where the impact could be. So the hope is to continue those.

Tassos McCarthyYeah, and I think that's all good. just you know the city's largely developed and like the what you're going to be looking at is like infill apartment complexes mostly right townhouses stuff like that and I would guess that a lot of that property is single-family homes that's like right for the trees so that would just be something that I would consider that if it's going to be successful yeah goodwill education that's great and I love that but I think if there was some means where you could you know help the trees be planted on private property and allocate for that you'd probably go somewhere. Just a thought.

James FeatherI think besides the tree giveaway you mentioned through stormwater, we still offer a stormwater utility credit for tree planting on private property. So there's this incentivizing program as well which has been on the radar for a while now. Still exists? Yes,

Anna Saffordstaffthat still exists.

James FeatherOkay. Yep. Others?

Matthew RiceMr. Rice? I think that city's very fortunate to have you on the staff we've talked a lot outside meetings and I've even had my students come and visit you and pick your brain about canopy Preservation and remote sensing and some imagery issues um on the county side discussions that I've had with Professionals that do kind of canopy modeling and so forth is there's a great deal of frustration over the lack of appropriate data to be able to diagnose changes that are happening quickly. Can you speak to the best approaches for monitoring canopy coverage and whether it's possible to do that year by year or if there is some other time period that we should have in our mind as a kind of significant update cycle for how we're doing in terms of canopy coverage.

It is one of the KPIs in goal one. So can you speak to that?

Anna SaffordstaffSo when it comes to tracking canopy coverage and the different mechanisms, I mean, historically, localities have relied on imagery from the federal government to do analysis and assessments on. Of course, there's concerns as to what the future of that looks like. There's opportunities to do regional partnerships to get imagery. It's very expensive to do at a scale for a city of our size. So the hope would be to do it at least at a regional, if not a state level. but then I think you know a lot of it also comes down to the the boots on the ground condition of the urban forest and I think needing that component not to help inform the changes that we're seeing at our regional urban forest level I think people can get really fixated on like the

the canopy coverage numbers but that only says so much you don't know what the condition is or what the threats or impacts might be of it and so the the first action or strategy recommended is to do a natural areas assessment for ourselves whether it be sample plot sampling to get an idea of you know age species composition soil conditions and i know fairfax county is doing similar strategies to help even if we don't have the data to continue tracking the overall change, we can at least be tracking the threats that might be occurring from different pests, disease, storms, things like that.

Matthew RiceGood. I'm looking at the National Agricultural Imagery Program website right now as they're speaking, and they have 2023 imagery for the state that's 60 centimeter, which that's good. It's not great. The LIDAR coverage for the area, unfortunately, was a December collection, so it's leaf off, a little harder to use. I know that you've looked at Planet Geo. There's some other private providers. What I'd like to encourage, if we at all possible can, is to strategize with the county. When the county collects or contracts imagery, they're collecting the city. we need to sort of figure out whether we can provide some budget allocations to piggyback on imagery that they're collecting for their own purposes our jurisdictions embedded in theirs

I think regionally as well there's some great interest in bypassing the USGS 3D elevation program and they're two and a half year processing for lidar so we're just processing lidar collected in december 2022 that's the best that we have it's extremely detailed but it's three years old so i think the county's interested in buying up in some of these programs to get better data and as you mentioned it's not all about data certainly that's just one of it but it's always a frustration on the data that we do have that's federal that may disappear and the data that we have this private that's expensive doesn't always necessarily help us a great deal and if you have any uh requests that we could make in combination with the county or

perhaps through nvrc for the entire region i'd like to know about that so we can advocate for it I think that that would be a tremendously good use of money. And those resources help us make decisions based on facts, which are always helpful. Over the last six months, I've been cleaning and processing data from a summer heat campaign that Mr. Rusty Russell helped me organize. and it's a fairly dramatic view as you leave some of the heat islands in the city and you head into an area with intact canopy the temperature drops 15 degrees or more and it's um it's always shocking to see in data it's something that i know because i have walked the daniels run troll with my kids But if you do head from a concrete area all the way into the forest, that change is fairly dramatic.

And I certainly hope, even with the outreach and educational efforts that Sophia and other folks may be helping with, that we can somehow capture that experience of being in the canopy and realizing, you know, how valuable it is in helping our city maintain healthy conditions for all the residents. Finally, I have a student that's very interested in invasives and has gotten great help from the city and from ESC chair Rusty Russell and then from some of your staff in putting together some ideas about citizen science, identification of invasives, and coupled with drone and satellite remote sensing. And there may be some value that George Mason could add just in the process of us educating our students to provide deliverables that you need.

any ever if there's overlap that you and mr. Russell can identify between what we do at Mason and our students do and the competencies they have and things that you need done there's always vehicles for student projects for thesis projects for dissertation projects that involve urban canopy assessment and we'd like to help so um any comments or ideas from that

Anna Saffordstaffi know that the the whole community has or not whole community but a lot of folks have been uh very interested to get involved i'm excited to to have this plan wrapped up so that i can start working on some of the projects and i know um kicking off some of those with whether it be partners at george mason or or otherwise certainly interested

Matthew Ricejust as a final comment a direction technologically that we're moving is adding kind of a 3d aspect to most of the gis that we do it's looking at the vertical element whether it's buildings and heat generated from the facade of a building that's in direct sun or looking at the biomass in the canopy that we can derive through lidar and again if there's thing happening in the county because the county does have some pretty sophisticated work going on if there's something that we can do to buy in or to help purchase imagery or services that may be able to give us more information I'd like to be able to advocate for that and you could let us know when I'd be very happy to attend public meetings and and make a pitch for that

Thank you. Others?

James FeatherMr. Cunningham?

Paul CunninghamI know the city has a penchant for comparisons, and as you've laid out two in here, and Mr. Rice has just been talking, one is our comparison with our surrounding jurisdictions, the county, the cities, Alexandria, Falls Church, other things like that. is there comparison with how we are doing and where our program stands in relation to our local neighbors?

Anna SaffordstaffAnecdotally, yes. So I've certainly been in discussion with a lot of their urban forest managers through this project. And so probably the most applicable is the town of Vienna. There are four square miles or thereabouts or six square miles. they they recently provided or updated their ordinance to have a standalone tree conservation ordinance they have not yet embarked on a urban forest master plan in comparison though their staff they have five full-time staff compared to us having approximately three one of which is kind of a composition between a lot of different staff so they're they're more well staffed and the city of Falls Church I know they they lack a lot of tree regulations that we have for in our

zoning ordinance and so that's where their focus is right now is on policy they do a lot more hands-on planting and things like that they have four full-time staff. City of Falls Church is two or so square miles and so they're they're also smaller in size in terms of land area being managed and so those two are probably the most applicable compared to like Fairfax County Arlington is a bit laughable in terms of their staffing and focuses very great resource and partner to be had but certainly not a good comparison to where we need to be going.

Paul CunninghamOkay. Then a question you indicated, there are a significant number of cities comparable size 25,000 to 49,999. Do we have a sense of the range of those cities and how the comparability is aside from population? because Fairfax City with its 6.2 square miles, the bulk of which is private, the bulk of which is already developed to some level or not and has little room for continued expansion and development, mostly management as I would see it, I guess. But when you get to cities of that size geographically, how similar are they in a number of other respects because you can get to small cities of that size that have significant land area and significant potential for programs to be modified and make a difference.

Where in this city, the question becomes what difference can it make, I think, in the long run to quality of life or the other issues that we're dealing with. and part of that runs up against a cost constrained environment as well because everybody has good programs that are competing for a small pool if you will so from that standpoint it would be I think useful to know what all of those other cities are that have comparable programs in terms of the rest of the comparability to the city area besides population, area open space, percent developed, those kinds of things?

Anna SaffordstaffSo in the report, they had information about acres of public green space. We exceeded the average of acres of green space in that group. Same with the miles of public roadway. we were around the average in terms of the number of roadways we managed compared to those peer groups. In terms of land area, we were smaller in total land area compared to those groups. The number of public trees estimated we were about the same. So, I mean, in terms of the assets that we are managing compared to those cities of a similar size, we were pretty comparable. they just didn't provide and they're they think um i would have to go back to i had the report but i have to go back to look exactly i think there were about 400 localities of this

size surveyed and about 200 responded and again we'll have updated information later in 2026 that we'd be able to, at our next five-year assessment, be able to use as a better comparison.

Paul CunninghamOkay. I think it may be useful in that, as you say, with that number of cities, I don't know whether they're all East Coast in urban areas or whether they're scattered throughout the United States, and some of them are small communities adjacent to urban areas that have lots of space around to deal with. those kinds of things in terms of the potential for impact where some some may have greater potential for impact with programs uh due to geography or topography or uh geology or any of the other things that that impacted uh and focusing back into what what impact it can have here

Anna SaffordstaffAnd in the plan we did, there was a bar graph included in the what do we have chapter. And we did do pure cities, but then we also did the southeast region, which is where we landed within how they scoped the report. So we included the benchmark comparison to southeast as well as the national nationwide. And so it was broken down geographically as well. all of them by significant margins.

Paul CunninghamOkay. Thank you.

Kirsten LockhartSure. Most of the more substantive points have been raised by my fellow commissioners, but I just wanted to say, having read through the draft plan from a messaging perspective, obviously we know we're in a tight financial situation. So where feasible, and if it's in here and I just didn't see it, I apologize. on your actions tables or even in your prioritized set of like you know next steps in the first five years flagging those things that are low or no cost that can be achieved by sort of efficiencies within the existing departments I think would be a really important message that you have I know you mentioned like shared responsibilities across existing staff so that's part of it and I also

know nothing ever comes fully for free but you know if there are procedural changes process changes hey we're going to add a tree condition survey into our routine parks maintenance every fall something like that you know those sorts of wins help kind of i guess appease some of the concerns about you know creating projects out of whole cloth in an austere environment but this is a fantastic resource i think it's just a really great document and the the way it walks the reader through the background and the comparisons and the actions is really excellent so thank you for all your hard work on this.

James FeatherOthers? Thank you. I attended the public meeting in late October, I think it was. Yeah, it was just after a return from our travels. I appreciate your trying to address a couple of concerns that I had and I think I may have raised that meeting. One is what the benchmark basis was. Ideally, it would be good to compare based on trees, but that was hard to do. I appreciate the work you did, and you still put together a convincing, compelling story for where we stand relative to peers on what appear to be some other reasonable basis. So thank you for doing that. I think I also expressed concerns, as I often do with large strategic plan-like things with a number of objectives that are out there. There are so many.

There's still a lot. You've tried to consolidate some, and that's a good thing. I did notice that it appears to be very heavily loaded in the one-to-five-year, the short-term horizon. And there's urgency because of where we stand. I'm sure you will find a way to prioritize those even further for even shorter-term things. But I think the study has made a compelling case for the importance and urgency to do a bunch of things and get started quickly, too. I think that's good, too. Ms. Lockhart mentioned budget concerns and constraints. I've seen a few things mentioned in the report pertaining to our own staff and our own equipment. I trust that when you look at the way to implement some of these things, you'll also look at contracted resources,

which may be more of a cost-effective way to get some of the things done without building up our own staff and equipment liabilities and the long-term equipment costs that come with those, too. I expect that's part of the study, but it's something that I noted. You mentioned a 20-year time horizon, and that's probably a good thing when I think of the experience in the subdivision where I lived in, where I currently live, where a large historic tree had to be taken down and a large number of smaller trees were planted. It took some time for those trees to have, I think, the desired effect. So thinking about this in terms of 20 years, impacts, you know, maybe in the five years or so. So the kind of time frame you're talking about

feels right to me. You're the expert in the trees. But when I just kind of benchmark my own experience, that seems quite reasonable. Revisiting like we do with our comprehensive plan, the broader plan on a five-year interval is quite sensible. And like we do look at our own objectives and our progress against our objectives, an annual review and update makes a lot of sense in the way assess our progress. So from a planning standpoint, it makes a huge amount of sense. It is a very significant, comprehensive document as it needs to be, I think, to get it started and to raise awareness. So congratulate you on the hard work and wish you well with the City Council. We have no formal action at the Planning Commission

to take on this. At some point, we may see some zoning text amendments come through, which we look forward to. We frequently get concerns raised about the amount of tree coverage that we require and questions asked whether it's enough. In some respects it's not. In some other respects we still have to be sensitive to the impacts on a developer's bottom line and find the right balance between our economic development needs, our housing development needs, and this very important need to protect and expand our tree canopy. So it's going to be an exciting ride. Thank you. Others? Mr. Rice.

Matthew RiceI appreciate the scrutiny and, frankly, the pressure that's put on developers as they visit us on a regular basis and show us their plans. And I think having some formal feedback from you on their plans has been extremely useful over the five years that I've been doing this. having you be present and part of that and later part of those years has been really really useful so I want to thank you for that and and again emphasize how valuable you've been to the city and to us and helping us make decisions

Anna SaffordstaffThank you. Thank

James Featheryou. Okay. A little change of scenery here. We'll move on to our second work session item, which is our continued discussion on the fiscal year 2027-2031 capital improvement program. And Mr. Napty will take over. Thank you.

Paul NabtistaffThank you again Chair Feather and members of the Planning Commission. This is a continuation of our conversation on the potential recommendations of the Planning Commission on the FY27-2031 Capital Improvement Program. We last met about this at our last meeting on November 24, where the Planning Commission had the first discussion since receiving the presentation from the acting city manager on the CIP. That was the first discussion also you were able to have since you were able to see the draft CIP. There are a couple of directions that were provided at that time, so we'll go over those. but this will largely be a conversation of the Planning Commission to give us more direction to go forward as we prepare information for the January 12th

work session it was with your last work session before we have the public hearing on January 26 and then planning Commission makes a presentation of the recommendations to City Council on February 3rd there are two things I wanted to talk about quickly before we turn it over to the Planning Commission for your own discussion. One is a discussion on public facilities review because a conversation about the Fire Station 3 project came up at the last meeting about whether we should conduct such a review at this time or wait until a future year. And then we have just some general information on projects in the CIP that relate to the requests that were made of the commissioners on how to prepare for this meeting so first just a quick reminder of what the commission's role is

in reviewing the cip is defined in the state code the planning commission must determine conformance of each of the projects within the proposed cip with the comprehensive plan we've already talked about the tools you have to do that as via city council on priorities among proposed projects This is something that we have begun to do within our jurisdiction because of the frequent challenges we have in competing needs with limited resources within the CIP. Anticipate future considerations and making sure that the critical projects in the comprehensive plan and related plans are being anticipated in the CIP when they should be. And then lastly, to conduct the public facilities reviews as needed.

This is, per the state code, a separate process from the CIP, but we try to relate them because the CIP is a good way to identify those projects that need to go through the public facilities review process. So, again, the first thing I want to go through is discussion of the Fire Station 3 project and whether or not that is suitable for public facilities review at this time. If the Planning Commission determines that it is, then we will have some additional material at your work session on January 12. and we will schedule a separate public hearing for the public facilities review on this project on January 26th. Quick reminder on what the public facilities review is per state code. This is the exact language from the state code

and it highlighted the key terms that we need to think about as we're looking at projects and how we consider them for review. First, it lists several different types of projects. which includes, as highlighted here, public buildings or public structures, which the fire station as an example is such a facility, a proposed new public building. And it states that before any such facilities are constructed, established, or authorized, they should be reviewed by the Planning Commission. And the things that the Planning Commission should be considered are the general location, the character, and the extent of such facilities. And the Planning Commission must determine facilities are substantially in accord with the adopted comprehensive plan so

breaking those items down the the list of items on the left the types of facilities that we consider again the public building or public structure is is what the fire station is so that is certainly something that will be required to go to have such a review because it's not particularly specifically identified in the comprehensive plan and then determining looking at the general location, the character, and the extent of such facilities. This is important because for the proposed new fire station, we do have a location, and so the Planning Commission can certainly weigh on that. But staff still has concerns about the amount of information we have at this time to determine the character and the extent because the facility has not been designed

or fully programmed yet. What we do know about the fire station building proposal, to be replaced with a facility on a site immediately to the south I will show you where that is in a moment the site adjacent to the existing fire station has already been acquired by the city design for the new project is underway thirty million dollars has been allocated for the project over the past couple of years through the CIP an estimated 21 million remains to be allocated to the CIP in FY 27 through FY 29 so the two maps on the right show the existing land use of the existing facility in the proposed facility as well as the future land use from the comprehensive plan future land use map the site in blue on

the existing land use map is the existing fire station it's defend defined as institutional on the existing land use map and the site to the south highlighted in red where it says commercial office this is the site that has been acquired for the proposed facility they could be developed with both sites combined but the thought is at this point that the new facility would be developed on the adjacent site so that the existing fire station could remain in operation while that is developed and then we would later to term determine a a

Matthew Riceseparate use for the existing site

Paul Nabtistaffand then the map on the bottom right shows that the future identifies both of these sites as being within the activity center. They're within the Old Town activity center, and uses are generally flexible in activity centers and support institutional uses, and so this use

Matthew Ricewould be supported.

Paul NabtistaffA little more information about the proposed facility is estimated to be approximately 40,000 square feet. This information is provided in the draft CIP. As I mentioned, the idea is to keep the current station open while the new facility is constructed on the south adjacent, and then we could later determine a different use for the current site. However, the city is open to public-private partnership opportunities and has put out advertisements as such. This is not something that the city is committed to yet, but the thought is that that would likely focus on the existing site. So once the fire station relocates, we could have a public-private partnership for some other type of use, whether it be housing or commercial or

on the adjacent site that being said there's always a possibility that we receive a proposal that uses both sites that makes sense for the city then we could go with that as well and for the project itself depending on specifics of design as I mentioned the use is supported in the future land use map and the fire station use is also supported supported use in the commercial corridor zoning district which is what the other site is zoned as and so it may not be required to go through a land use review of course this is dependent on specifics of design there are special exception requests and those types of things it would likely go to city council but probably not to the planning commission so the public facilities review is likely your primary opportunity to provide commentary on

this project and so we hope to get guidance from the planning commission on whether to proceed with this time or to wait for a future year as I said that if we do move forward now then we will have a work session on this on January 12th and a public hearing on January 26th our recommendation on this at this point is to hold off until we have more information about the design and we know more about the potential public-private partnership because I think those would be important considerations to determine the the extent and character of the project as as required for the public facilities review. And so I will stop here and leave it open for discussion on this specifically, and then we will go back and talk about the CIP more broadly.

James FeatherCommissioners, Ms. Lockhart.

Kirsten LockhartWhen you say design is underway, what exactly does that mean? Because my understanding was that there are some kind of cross-functional considerations with the property yard functions that might be considered as part of the fire station design, but I don't think we're in a position to talk about the property yard yet either.

Paul NabtistaffThat is correct. My understanding is that design at this point is still preliminary design, and so there's still opportunities to move around programmatic elements and those types of things.

James FeatherOthers? Mr. Cunningham.

Paul CunninghamIn the past, and I don't know where it may sit currently, there was discussion that if you look at Alexandria, they're putting affordable housing above a fire station. And so that being a major issue was tossed around here. That may be one of the reasons to delay discussing until it's clear what they're actually going to do budget-wise with putting the fire station in both time-wise and then what other functions may or may not be included with that type of public building in order to make it functional. Our decision on reviewing it in light of the comp plan would mean that we have enough of that kind of information to make a reasonable recommendation. So I would think delaying it would, from my perspective, meet with your recommendation to delay it until next year at least.

James FeatherOthers on fire station three?

Kirsten LockhartI agree with delay. However, my concern is I felt like I picked up a subtext in your comments of there's a speak now or you might not have an opportunity to raise questions later. Are there, I mean, other than attending, you know, as a private citizen to any sort of public hearings, are there other opportunities for us to kind of give this constructive feedback on an integrated use case for the site? to those that are making these decisions?

Paul NabtistaffWell, the public facilities review will be an opportunity to. I think what you're picking up on is the comments that we shouldn't expect that we would go through the public facilities review now, that usually we would do as kind of a higher level recommendation, and then the land use case will come before you later, and that's when you get to the weeds. What I'm saying here is that it's not likely that a land use case will come before you on this one. So the public facilities review is your view. So I would recommend that we do it at the right time so that you can provide in-depth recommendations.

Kirsten LockhartSure. I just don't want it to be the situation where when we finally do get something, it doesn't align with what we thought was the highest and best use for the site or the combination of sites. Maybe that goes back to our SIPP recommendations, you know, across these major projects.

Paul NabtistaffYes. And I would also say that, you know, we align these public facilities reviews with the CIP because the CIP is our tool to identify these projects and make sure we don't miss any. But we've already identified this project as one we need to do review for. We could choose to do it any time throughout the year. It doesn't have to wait for next year. So if we don't want to wait for design to get too far along and we miss opportunities to kind of shape it the way we should, then we could have kind of an interim review as well.

James FeatherWhat's going on?

Paul CunninghamIn the past when we've discussed review of these kind of facilities, the other or the flip side of this argument has been we can put it on right now, have our discussion on that, decide that it's appropriate, and then find out it's delayed for four or five or six years and really change its character, say so from that standpoint I think timing is important to know essentially what the project is and what we're what we're speaking to as well as getting the rest of it right and so from that standpoint do we lose anything by waiting a year and making a decision next year whether to do it or delay it another year or do we do it now and then as things morph it won't be coming back either as land use or to us in any shape or form. That's where I would think if

if there's no impetus now to do it because we need you to keep it on track then taking an action before its time doesn't add particular benefit.

James FeatherIt still seems to be some further definition is required. We know there are other opinions about the need and timing for this facility anyway. Over time, the character that could change if there is a push for a delay for various reasons whether it's budgetary or not. so I'm more supportive of some delay rather than rushing in to do something the first part of next year but I think we need to keep our ears to the ground on the pace of things and the other messaging we may be hearing from the outside and then if we do have the opportunity to hear from the fire chief early in the year that would certainly be very helpful in forming a decision but I also don't believe there's a reason for rushing into a work session.

First thing, on this specific topic, I think the discussion with the fire station is probably a little bit broader over the fire chief and that there's time to avoid rushing into a public hearing by the end of January. So is there general agreement on that? Okay. Thank you for

Matthew Riceleading

James Featherus through that.

Paul NabtistaffSo moving forward from the last meeting, the tasks that were requested of the commission in preparation for this meeting were to identify three higher priority tasks from the CIP and three lower priority projects, perhaps those that could stand to be deferred while we focus on accomplishing the higher priority projects. Also to identify critical upcoming projects from the comprehensive plan and adopted small be listed in the CIP at this point. So again, this is a conversation for the Planning Commission. However, we did want to go back to some of the information that we presented earlier, particularly related to upcoming projects. And we had previously shown projects that are in the comprehensive plan that are either underway

or funded in some way. But we didn't focus on those projects that are not identified in the CIP at this point. Since that was a request of the Planning Commission, I thought I would go back through these and focus more on those. Looking at general efforts in the comprehensive plan, this first group is all projects that are really plans and studies for the future. Some are funded or underway already. The three that are not are smaller plan, parking management plans, the green infrastructure plan, and infrastructure resilience study. However, these are all likely to be moved to the operating budget following a new format, And some of these other projects that were previously in the CIP, if they were to come along now,

would most likely be falling under the operating budget. Under completed studies that would relate to future projects, we previously had the school's facility condition assessment that resulted in the proposal for the improvements to the four schools and the bond funding that is now going to be funding two of those projects that are in the CIP. This is the performing arts feasibility study that was completed before our comprehensive plan was adopted or updated in 2024. And the results of that study are to invest in new facilities for performing arts, whether it be anything such as new agreements with additional properties or facilities to have additional spaces for performing arts, anything up to a dedicated performing arts facility,

which would require much more investment a range of options provided in that study there's nothing the CIP at this time about next steps with that with that study from a transportation perspective the bike Fairfax City project which was integrated into the comprehensive plan with our update in 2024 had three types of improvements that are not identified in the CIP at this time the long-term improvements are efforts to install more large-scale bike improvements along our major corridors such as Main Street and Fairfax Boulevard those sections were not included in the bike Fairfax City master plan because there's too many unknowns about whether it should be a trail or a bike lane or those types of

things that project also identifies specific intersections throughout the city where spot improvements are recommended for safety particularly for from a bicyclist perspective and also implementation of the neighborways program what looks which looks at more minor improvements to neighborhood streets to make them more bikeable so those streets can contribute toward the larger bike network Fairwoods Parkway was used as a pilot project last year however the cost for that were higher than was expected with the overall neighbor ways planning concept and so we have not moved forward with anything since then and there's nothing identified in the CIP aside from general signage for bicycle wayfinding and then lastly from the transportation projects chart

this is the list of projects that is required by the state for us to include in our comprehensive plan all of the projects on this chart have been either begun or are in our two-year program to have a request for funding except for two one being the Main Street bicycle facility feasibility study this is a follow-up to the Main Street safety audit that recommends that we further pursue bicycle improvements along Main Street this this section is particularly for Main Street east of the Old Town area, but ultimately it should extend across the entire length of Main Street. And the second is to extend the Blenheim Boulevard multi-molder improvements into Old Town and through Fairfax Circle. The Blenheim Boulevard project that is about to begin construction only goes from Layton

Hall Drive north of Old Town to the Great Oaks area just south of Fairfax Circle, but it doesn't go into the middle of either of those activity centers, so there's a proposed effort to look at continuing that in both directions this is also something that is not identified in the CIP yet I did want to point out that this is something that will likely be further considered through the move Fairfax study that's currently underway so we might get some more concrete

Matthew Ricerecommendations on that

Paul Nabtistaffso again I just want to share those since we didn't we didn't take that perspective when we looked at those items the last time we met again this is a planning commission discussion so we'd open up to you for any thoughts or comments we're happy to hear any information that will help you with your recommendations that we can prepare for the January 12 meeting also as I said in the email we hope to have the director of Parks and Recreation as well as the fire chief at that meeting to help answer questions as well and That's all we have for the staff presentation.

James FeatherOkay. There are a couple of other questions and items that came up at our last meeting. Mr. Napty sent a separate email out to the commission addressing some of the questions. Do you want to comment further on any of those? Mr. Cunningham had a question about the observation about the way the program has changed and grown, for example.

Paul NabtistaffYes. So the question we had from Commissioner Cunningham at the last meeting was an observation that the overall amount of the CIP has increased significantly from 2016, which is the earliest document that is available online at this point, up until now. So over the course of 10 years, we've seen significant increases. and the question was not just about why there was such a change, but how we are able to pay for such a change. And so we inquired with the finance department on that, and we received a response from the CFO that we shared from the Planning Commission that essentially said that at that time in 2016, we had almost no capital projects underway. At that time, we were planning for a lot of projects.

but also the needs for several improvements have come up since that time and many have come up at the same time unfortunately it's something that was not planned for and so the result is that we have these facilities that need to be improved they all claim to be in dire need and so our role is to figure out where to prioritize those as it comes to find how they're funded the majority that is through financing, and the financing program is provided in the draft CIP, and the CFO provided some more information about our ability to potentially use a 1% sales tax, particularly for the schools portion, that if that moves forward, then that would cover a lot of that and take some of that load off, since the schools projects are the biggest projects in the CIP at

this time. So I believe that covered most of it. Let me know if I missed anything.

Paul CunninghamI have some additional comments on it.

James FeatherWould you like to start with that?

Paul CunninghamIf you would like to start with those. I will thank you for that response and thank you for providing the links to various of the documents that went into providing some of this. one of the documents was the agenda for, as it was shown here early, the city council's budget planning day. And looking at that document and reading through it, I found it highly instructive in that, one, there is a tremendous amount of what I will call good news that was presented to the city council. We have low vacancy rates. We have low unemployment rates. We are very strong financially. Things seem to be going well. And then there are things that are troubling, which says that we have so many projects in here as our bond rating agencies and other financial advisors talk to us,

that in a couple of years we end up exceeding the ratios that mean we're financially strong, and we do that for a decade and more at various times. And that leads back then to some of the discussion on how do you phase many of these items as well as just they all have a high need and they all need to be done right now spend yourself rich so from that standpoint looking at that document I think was extremely useful from a perspective standpoint that being said when we get back toward the comp plan and looking at this requirement to pick three higher priority projects pick three lower priority projects one of the things I noted is that the document that consists of the potential comp plan right now right now is 196 pages long it has a lot of good projects in it it has

a lot of projects in it all of the projects that are in it from the way we wrote the comp plan and put it in made a roadmap so that if you want to put a project in you just go to the comp plan find where it goes and tailor that project to meeting a need outlined in the comp plan we did an excellent job of covering the waterfront on what the city's needs are to approach all of this information from that standpoint I do have a number of projects that I would comment on but I'm going to make a different observation I guess since we seem to have plenty of many things I'm standing under a shelter roof it's raining outside it's really coming down there are a lot of big drops there are a lot of little drops it's a deluge but I've got a bucket in my hand I can see

all the individual drops as I'm standing there under my shelter roof so I walk outside and hold my bucket out. And after I've been out there a little while and it just kept raining, all of a sudden my bucket's full. So I walked back under the shelter roof. It's still coming down, lots of big drops, lots of little drops. I looked in my bucket. Now I've got a bucket that's full. But, you know, I can't see in my bucket a single drop that came down and define it as more important than any other drop that's in that bucket. That's my analogy. All of these are drops in that in this program, one is more important than another, but every one of them is important to somebody who took the time to write up a project

and determine it. The city council is the final arbiter on what gets funded and what does not. We can make recommendations, but I don't think we're that much different than anybody who recommended one of those projects to end up in this bucket. So from that standpoint, this exercise of identify three higher, three lower, is just one more recommendation to city council from a large number of sources on everybody who sees a need to do things to advance the city. And we can't afford it all, and that's where the tough part comes in, and that's where city council being elected ends up on that end. comments I've got on a few of the pages if you wanna run through those. One, I looked at page 35, it talks about garbage cans.

It's page 35 or it is slide 39 on the attachment we have. And when we talk about funding garbage cans for the city, I noted in the city council's budget review and process that one of their discussion items is monetizing the garbage collection program. How does that impact our discussion on a comp plan item, which is providing garbage cans? That's not something we have talked about, but it is a program that impacts garbage collection in the city, and you've got an entire section in there that talks about how to do that. alternatives that are being discussed by city council that we may or may not be aware of if we're not digging into what else is going up on page 42 or slide 46 we have a picture of clock downtown it says it's a short-term project that

It needs to be funded, it's going to cost $42,000. My memory of the clock downtown is that it was a gift to the city from the Rotary Club. Have we talked to the Rotary Club about their gift to the city and the continued maintenance of it? Was it just a gift of a city? did it come with the requirement that we pick up the maintenance of it and maintain it forever if instead of spending 40 000 if the clock is worn out and the rotary club doesn't have an interest if the clock were just removed if it no longer works is that something that's as feasible an alternative as repairing it i think there are other elements that come into some of these projects that on the surface of the page aren't always obvious and that's part of a

question I would keep up with on page hundred and nine or slide 113 you've got bike map and it talks about signage and wayfinding for bicycles and that in the city and I'm wondering how the definition of bicycle is changing so that we mark this so that we can get around and this is all current it's only a couple of days ago as I was traveling on a major city road that didn't have a lot of other room that I'm following a two-wheel vehicle. Now if a bicycle is a two-wheel vehicle with a seat, this is a two-wheel vehicle without a seat that's electric. And the scooter and driver is right in the middle of the travel lane weaving his way down a road. Should this be a street that has Is it a bicycle markings on it?

Should it have other kinds of marking on it? Is it a legally licensed vehicle to be traveling in the travel lanes with cars? Is that where it belongs or does it belong up on a sidewalk? In the regulation of these alternate vehicles that we're starting to get, part of these projects are signage. part of it is how do you monitor the the interaction and transportation of people in and around our city and when it comes to advocating for trails so that we could we could provide alternatives for people to cut through areas of the city without having to take a car these are the kinds of vehicles that would use those kinds of activities. So some of this is interrelated when we talk about these individual projects to do something.

Do they comprehensively do what we're asking them to do or are we just making work for a project that seems defined and is a perfectly good comp, I mean CIP item but needs to be thought of in other ways? when we get down to page 157 or 161 slide 161 you talk about long-term

Paul NabtistaffThis one?

Paul CunninghamGo slide 161.

James FeatherI think it's up just a

Paul Cunninghamhigher. We're at 185 now, so we need to go back up to 161. As I'm reading that number I'm talking about that one. That's a project that says long term It doesn't haven't happened to have the stamp of adopted last year or move to operating budget on it But It's funded right now and it's out of the general fund I I can support that kind of project, but when we get into short term, long term, and those parts of the comp plan, we were normally going to deal with just the capital improvements program that was funded by the city and these other sections, we weren't going to be in as much except this is an outlier that's one that apparently is there for us to comment on. and I could support that but I'm trying to figure out what's long-term about it

as opposed to the rest and then slide 166 says ongoing and in the text it says it's 3.193 million and it's part of a fleet replacement program and when I go down and see it's going to be funded out of the stormwater utility fund so it's not coming out of the general fund the total costs for the program across the line are 1.37 million if you add the current year costs this apparently is a longer-term project but none of it comes response to the 3.193, so in putting stuff in here, we're not talking on a focused program, we're talking about a long-term program. And it's one since it's being put out of the Stormwater Utility Fund, should be in the CIP, but it's not one that we necessarily need to be concerned about.

So making a recommendation, this is my top three, this is my get rid of it three, it's not in the realm of the ballpark that we should be showing great concern for because it's been adequately taken care of. And then page 181 is the last one I'll comment on. so I don't

Tassos McCarthyokay

Paul Cunninghamvehicle replacement projects and ongoing continuing things when we go down a little bit so we can see the funding that's coming out of the general fund and part of my question on that is that stuff that we can play out of cash flow or is this the kind of funding that we put a little bit down in cash and then we're going to finance the bulk of it as it's ongoing since this is and and many vehicles across a long period of time that is ongoing. And this is where we get into figuring out affordability on what kind of projects do we need to pay cash for going forward in the CIP, what do we need to finance, and how do we balance this with the majors, the high school, the elementary schools, the property yard, the fire station, Van Dyke Park,

the community center that are driving us budget wise out of the comfort zone of being financially prudent. So those are my observations. I don't have three for you to keep and three for you to get rid of, but I will say that of the ones that are in there, looking at how many are adopted from last year, to the operating budget and they're all still in here to consider it makes it a challenging process to to figure out what a prudent recommendation to council would be aside from some of the past where we've talked about public safety is always number one and moving on from that those are my comments mr chair i presume you're concerned that you started with me

James FeatherThank you. Others? Care to comment? Buff act to follow, I know.

Paul NabtistaffMr. Chair, if I may. Yes. Just a reminder, and I think you're just trying to give some examples there, Commissioner Cunningham. But I just want to make sure all the other commissioners are aware that things like vehicle replacements are really outside the purview of the planning commission. We should be focusing on actual capital projects. And I understand you were just trying to relate everything to each other. are not the kind of things we should be diving too deeply into.

James FeatherMr. McCarthy.

Tassos McCarthyAll right. Let's see if I can follow that up. I understand your point on the vehicles, but I do think that it does tie in in the sense that you know we're all residents and you know ourselves the city council the mayor the staff everybody has a fiduciary responsibility to the city right like it's viability and I hate to see when I when I ran through that the negative year-over-year variance in the budget it was negative seven million six and a half eight something like that year over year and I really tried hard to do the three and three exercise and a couple things resonated with me from the last last couple meetings and we pointed to one earlier Commissioner Cunningham mentioning the you know exponential growth in the CIP and then Commissioner

Rice mentioning the dichotomy between the tax rates in our home versus Fairfax County. And when you think of a situation where you're spending more, your revenue is not as high as your neighbors that you're trying to compete with. And then we have situations, you know, Courthouse Square, where potential avenues to grow revenue are struck down, that would lead me as someone who feels a fiduciary responsibility to try and rein in the spending and how that ties back into what I think our role in the Planning Commission is having a viable community that 2035 people want to continue to come and call home and move here. So I tried to look at, with that, I tried to look at everything through a neutral technical lens.

And what I kept coming back to was putting financials first and then with that regulatory and life safety items at the top of my list. And I contrast that with what I would consider nice to have but large discretionary enhancements. and that's not to say that all of them don't need to happen but could some of them be resequenced deferred or do we have enough information to really make a decision on them the ones to me that are that are obvious are stormwater wastewater anything related to that I feel strongly of the acting city manager mentioned orange bird pipe I would say we need to be taking care of that and growth in the city are we looking at do they need to be wholesale upgraded is lining the pipes sufficient because again I'm not afraid to spend money if

money needs to be spent it just needs to be spent well additionally the fire station that we've talked about quite a bit there may or may not be a need for that and I don't think we have the information to determine that but in any event that we don't have top-notch you know emergency response okay oh my kids don't go to school I don't want to pay for that oh I'm not a senior I don't want to pay for that you have a heart attack everybody wants them to show up as quick as possible right so if in any event that is needed I would I would strongly promote doing that and then lastly anything that you know this is a cop-out but is externally funded the South South Street extension you know it's 100% externally funded and then like delaying delaying might risk you

know scheduling misalignment with the county and what's going on with the buildings there and then it's like a runner-up maybe any and in line with what I'm talking about any of like the hazard safety security type things we want this to be a place where everyone can feel safe and secure the City Council talked a lot about firearms at public venues and you know that's it's great to hope that people won't show up with a gun but what if they do so anything related to that I'm a strong proponent of on the other end of the spectrum and again I don't have enough information but I would ask that you get more information and this is over the course of several years but 2.5 million for a softball field conversion to turf conversion if it's in terrible condition

maybe it needs to happen as we see now we're facing having to redo the football so does that make the most sense for us maybe maybe maybe not but it's something that I would certainly look into more closely ten million dollars for the complex I would have a hard time justifying that facing yeah and I watched all the meetings and I heard that comment and that's that's fine and dandy but you know is now the time to do so and can we put in some topsoil and some grass and delay that and I think that would be an awesome amenity but again you know that's I'd like to replace my master bathroom but I'm not gonna do it if it's gonna put me in debt the the roof project I may be way off base forty two million dollars forty one million dollars I don't know when that roof was

installed it's a polyurethane roof they're talking about going to a burr I'm in real estate construction business. That seems astronomically odd to me. Maybe there's something that I'm missing there. It said it was recommended. How old is the roof? What condition is it in? You could get up there with some sealer and probably kick that can a little bit further. Again, I don't want mold. I don't want safety. As a construction guy, you lose the roof. You lose the building. If it needs to be done, it needs to be done. but facing a budget deficit are people asking those hard questions I won't go on much longer but in that same line there were a lot of other ones the football field turf replacement it mentioned the G max safety testing if

it's anywhere near not safe for the kids I'm a proponent of addressing that whether that's with new turf or going back to grass I don't know but like how high did it test? Is it well into where we could get more useful life out of it? The restroom enhancements for the field, Van Dyke master plan, wow, would I love that. But I can tell you, I've got a five-year-old, a three-year-old, and a one-year-old, and they all love it just the way it is. So just any of those kind of projects that maybe could be delayed in the in the name of fiduciary responsibility I would probably vote for thank you yep

James Featherso

Kirsten Lockhartif I can respond to some of that I don't disagree but the problem we're seeing here is that we have delayed a lot of these things for a long time and now they're all coming to you and they're critical at the same time so you're right like you could if the field is testing fine by next fall they get another season out of it great but if they test it in the fall and it's not, then what, right? Then you know, you're knowingly putting kids at risk. So you have to balance the, like, also nothing gets cheaper over time. So if you don't do it now, it's not going to cost $5 million in another five years. It's going to cost double that. So my recommendations kind of, rather than like line strike, I'm big on messaging. And I think our messaging here has to be

where amongst these projects can we find alternate revenue streams? And if we don't know yet, or if it's something that we're exploring, then that might be a reason So a lot of the park stuff, we don't know yet what the implications of Blenheim Boulevard improvements and Willard-Shord are going to be on Van Dyke. So I don't see a reason to spend money on Van Dyke right now. Plus we also have the new parks board, or not board, parks foundation. What is their role going to be? I know they want to focus on Van Dyke as the flagship park. So we potentially have a whole other revenue stream coming. So if I am going to line item veto one thing, I'm going to say we need to take Van Dyke off the table for now

even start planning for it until these other things that are in motion need to get done. But similarly, we've had the property yard on the SIP for three consecutive years, four consecutive years, and it's gone from $60 to $150 million in that time frame because no decisions have been made. So if it takes spending $5 million right now to really dive into the future needs, the most critical things to address real time, what the property requirements are and the space requirements are for those functions, spend that money now, make a decision, because you've seen 150% growth in three years of the out-year estimate of just maintaining one property. That's clearly not sustainable, right? So those are the sort of, like, think planning. Again, we're the

planning commission versus, you know, think down into the weeds of the specific dollar amount. Some of the school things, I would challenge the school board to go back and say, what are your alternate funding sources? Can we get a name sponsor for the Fairfax High School football field? is it eagle bank field now and they pay for a new turf every five years like let's think outside the box in some of these commitments knowing that the city resources are going to be a little bit more constrained um you know most other fairfax county high schools have pretty extensive booster groups that take care of a lot of those nice to haves so you know where are we are we falling heart too hard back on the city ownership of all these properties um you know this is the sip this is

project planning, but the other side of the balance sheet is what can be done with city-owned properties. So I'd like to see that asterisk added to certain things that, you know, if you do this, consider your stock and trade for the equivalent property elsewhere. That helps with messaging, again, but also helps with spend some money to really make a solid plan up front.

Paul NabtistaffI'm sorry, real quick. Could you say that last statement again about city-owned properties? Sure.

Kirsten LockhartThe places where city-owned assets are basically corollary to the investment being made, right? So we're going to spend money on Willard Sherwood. We're going to divest of green acres in some way, shape, or form, most likely. Let's talk about that, how that looks on the balance.

Matthew RiceAlways good discussions and, I think, good thinking from everybody. I appreciate our voice of history, and it's way more valuable than you realize to have you give that, and it's fine to start with that. Willard Sherwood, if it's to continue, has already been largely planned. And I think in some defense of Van Dyke, pushing Van Dyke, which wouldn't really, the implementation phase wouldn't really happen until 2028. That's the right timing, frankly, from the perspective of Willard Sherwood happening before that. I do recognize that we probably did have a phase eight, nine years ago where things were not being funded. We went through the divestiture of a water system in the city, and there was a period of time where there was kind of great panic about the finances of the city and how we were doing.

and we approved some development projects that may not have been the best projects that they could have been because of a worry that we needed just to do those. So I think that, you know, unfortunately we are in a position where things are happening at once. I do very much, Mr. Nabte, appreciate the message from our CFO and kind of explaining the context, helpful I do recall from discussions last year exactly a year ago that the folks providing us a bond rating said these large capital projects are not our concern our concern is the operating budget of the city it's the staff it's the sort of permanent features of spending money in the city that is of And so I'm not articulating that very well.

We'll have a restatement of that idea, I think, in January, probably, in some of our meetings. But all of these things are happening at once. And from my perspective, it's really important for us to recognize that we have a significantly lower tax rate. The county's rate is much higher, and it doesn't include trash. and there's a whole bunch of things that we do and services we provide leaf pickup trash and recycling that is not provided by our neighboring jurisdiction that has higher rate so the city manager proposed a higher rate to be still lower but somewhat consistent with our neighboring jurisdictions and that was not supported by several city council members and we're in a circumstance that we're in partly because of that.

We're needing to make decisions about trimming things based on the fact that we have a budget that's not balanced. And that is frustrating. But we're not elected. We're not empowered to make decisions like that. Those decisions are made by the city council. So I do, though, clearly recognize that we need to avoid at all costs from a financial perspective we need to avoid cutting things that add value to the city and i think mr mccarthy said it well it's that you know in 2035 we still want to be a place where people want to move in that absolutely directly goes to our largest revenue source it's the housing market and the attractiveness of living here which that's half of our city's revenue and if we

mistakes frankly if we u-turn on willard sherwood if we don't make a plan for fire station three even if we do delay some consideration if we don't replace the property or that's my number one we need to fund and figure out as quickly as we can how to deal with that when i started on the Planning Commission we had FEMA flood maps from 2016 the 2023 revision of those flood maps are pretty dramatic that property art is not a place that we should depend on or can depend on at all for deploying a third of our city staff and equipment it just um that's a crisis and we need to sort that out but I think that you know along with the property yard you know fire station number three it this is a station that is completely out

of date with regard to update cycles and because of logistics we do sort of have an opportunity with the neighboring property now in our possession to build a new station and then have a parcel on the north side the old fire station that would be available so i mean there are great opportunities and obviously it's not a we're not in a position where we can fund everything but i think at least keeping in mind uh when we do trim this what it will do to that resident moving in 2035 that you know if we don't have willard sherwood or if our school roofs are leaking you know where if uh our emergency services aren't as well maintained as our neighboring jurisdictions the decision will be you know let's let's go to false church let's

go to chantilly let's go to vienna uh we don't want to be in that position and i think we're you know our tax rates and our budgets are kind of sending us where there's a divergence happening and I'm real concerned about that and I think it's not even useful to mention that because we can't do anything about that officially but I do have some clear ideas about the priorities that I would have in funding this I just recognize that our budget won't support those completely but again the folks that provide us with a triple-a bond reading are less concerned about those big capital improvement projects than they are recurring costs that, you know, happen that are permanent. So anyway, I'm not sure any of that was helpful, but I do enjoy and appreciate the conversation

of all my colleagues here, and we'll come up with some good recommendations. Maybe not at the end of the meeting tonight, but I think pretty soon.

Tassos McCarthyAny others?

James FeatherA few things from my perspective. Mr. McCarthy, the first time you've been through this. I appreciate your digging into what you did. We generally don't spend a lot of time talking about transportation projects. Those are externally funded. But I did want to mention one that you may have noticed was not showing up on the list, so I asked staff about it. The George Snyder Trail. When you look at the projects that were listed as prior years, it wasn't on there. It's actually buried in the George Snyder Trail extension, will at least the budget director's indicator will make some changes to make make it clear that it is still on the list as you know there's a lot of conversation about that trail and it is externally funded we need to get some

external funding to make it happen so we'll hope that that comes through when the council supports it but that project is still on the list it's a project we've talked about, and the importance of trails and, you know, our multimodal transportation options and things. I did want to mention that. The Van Dyke Park one that came up, you may recall, we brought this up last year, and the CFO came back and with some discussion. It was moved out two years. Originally, it was in for FY2026. It's now not starting until FY2028. And for the very reason, I think it was a question of timing, question of scope, question of magnitude. question of what all was needed when. So that is still on the list, but nothing is proposed for FY 2027.

And I suspect that we'll still be part of the study, and hopefully we'll learn more when we have the Parks and Rec Director here in January. We've, in the past, emphasized, as has been mentioned a couple of times tonight, we're invested in already not making foolish decisions like backing out on you know Willard Sherwood Center or whatever it is and that seems to me it should be a priority the needs were established they've been well studied multiple councils have opportunity to weigh in on them and I think we've weighed in on the number of them ourselves so those kinds of projects should remain as priorities.

Matthew RiceOne project that jumped

James Featherout at me in the context of the property yard is the budget, the line item for the West Drive property yard. We don't have it yet. The money needs to be set aside for that. That will be kind of like I consider Willard Sherwood. Acquiring that property from the county is a key investment in the future of the city. We may not know exactly what it will be needed for, but I think it's a piece of property we need. It may end up being part of a future property yard. It may be a future school. It may be a park. It may be a combination. That's the kind of thing that, to me, it's an investment worth considering and not delaying. I'm not sure anybody has considered delaying that, but if I were going to emphasize something that's out there that is an investment that we're going to

it may be a one-time opportunity we should take advantage of it projects that have concerned me there are several in the proposed CIP that have to me what I read poor justification Mr. McCarthy mentioned some of them this turf field is 10 years old old so let's replace it. That's not the way, at least in my professional career, we made decisions on when and how to replace things. There are options for better risk assessment, better ways to study the current, the existing condition and make a sounder case. The study may be there but to say somebody's done an inspection and to pass this last inspection and if it doesn't pass this next one, you know, children could get hurt. What's the real risk of that what's the likelihood I have a similar analogy at at our home in

Maine where the house is what 12 years old now and in the summer we had a boy an inspection done on our boiler that provides the heat the hot water past the past muster it quit working for a brief spell in December we noticed it because we monitor it. Another technician went in and said, oh, man, this is 12 years old. You need to replace the boiler. I'm sorry. I'm not going to replace the boiler on that basis. I went back and did the research, found out what the issue was, how it fared in this last inspection. It's operating efficiently, needed some cleaning. Fine, we're not going to plan a boiler replacement because somebody comes in and says, oh, man, it's old. It's time to replace it. There are a couple other things like that

that I saw on this list. A couple of the field projects, for example, they're getting old. We better replace them. I think there's probably a better way to assess them and maybe make a more informed decision about the way to deal with these. I was surprised to see a fairly large investment proposed, one and three quarter million dollars, for fuel island maintenance at the property yard. It seems to me that kind of decision needs to be made in the context of the broader property yard state. study. Having spent my career in the petroleum industry, I understand the risks associated with underground storage tanks. There are lots of technology out there to preserve the life, extend the life, do some rehabilitation at a somewhat better cost basis than wholesale

replacing something that may not be there in five years. That's the kind of project to me that needs some real scrutiny as to how do we get through this on a maintenance until we understand the full scope of what we're going to do with the property yard. We've already talked about fire station three. We have a functioning fire station. There's some facilities that we're lacking. This is the context and the discussions that have been going on at city council. They had a tour of the stations, so that's already on their radar. We understand that some more study is required, and I think we should support the nature of the study, but to suspect that they're not going to be able to respond to ambulance calls or fire calls,

because they don't have a new fire station in three years. Probably not a realistic base case or design case. There may be other reasons to do it, but let's proceed cautiously on that one, as I think a number of council members are suggesting as well. So those are the kind of things that have hit my list, anyway, and the basis for some of those. Again, I don't think we're making any decisions or recommendations tonight. We'll have the holidays to consider it. or not but any other thoughts from what you've heard so far tonight I really appreciate the thought we've put into this has

Paul Cunninghammr. napty got some of what he hoped to get from tonight

Paul Nabtistaffyes I think this was this was this was great we got some good conversation starters we were will type these up and include these with report for your next meeting to continue on. I'm not sure exactly what format we will take, but we'll try to give you a little more guidance to kind of take you to the next step. But certainly you've given us some good information to get prepared for that. So thank you.

James FeatherYou all satisfied at this point?

Tassos McCarthyOkay.

Paul CunninghamThank you.

James FeatherWe can reconvene our regular meeting and go to the staff report. Mr. Napty.

Paul NabtistaffThank you again, Chair Feather and members of the Planning Commission. A quick look back at the December 2nd City Council meeting. This was last week. They received a presentation from the Housing and Healthy Communities Advisory Board, or HCAB. this organization was established about a year ago as a result of the of the housing strategic plan and the it was suggested that they present their progress to City Council once per year so this is their first update to them in general they they did identify some strategies and supported recommendations from our comprehensive plan in their presentation and they're also working on some things that might influence future updates to the comprehensive plan so we look forward to hearing more from them

in the future city council also received a presentation on the urban forest master plan as you did tonight tomorrow december 9th there is a lot of things on the agenda but one thing that we talked about before is the board and commissioner's handbook this is being considered It is still intended for new members. Chair Feather made recommendations that it be applied more broadly, but certainly we can use it that way even after it's adopted. It's good information for everybody, so we will certainly share it with you. One other upcoming item of note, the Comprehensive Plan Implementation Group will be meeting next Thursday, February 18th at 9 a.m. This meeting will focus on the Camp Washington Small Area Plan.

As a reminder, this group meets four times per year, each time focusing on a different small airplane activity center. The meeting will be at 3900 Germantown Road. This is the office building that's behind H-Mart in the third floor conference room. We'll have signs from the lobby to direct people there or people there to direct people up. That's next

James Featherweek, you said?

Paul NabtistaffThursday, next week, February 18th. December

James Feather18th.

Paul NabtistaffSorry, December 18th. 12th, okay. from 9 a.m. to 10 30 a.m. We will be sending out an email, yes. Yes. A couple administrative items. We will be canceling our next meeting, December 22nd, due to lack of agenda items, and we typically cancel this meeting anyway. A reminder that at the following meeting on January 12th, We will be having elections and appointing representatives for boards and commissions. So be thinking about if you're interested in any of those roles. Again, the elections are for the chair and vice chair, and the board and commission representatives are the Board of Architecture Review, Parks and Recreation Advisory Board, and the facade and interiors improvement grant committee, which Commissioner Lockhart is representing us for now.

So thank you for that. That's all I have for the staff report tonight.

James FeatherAny questions for Mr. Napty? Okay. Comments from the commissioners? Mr. McCarthy?

Tassos McCarthyNo comments.

James FeatherMr. Briggs? Mr. Cunningham?

Paul CunninghamI would like to wish everybody a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I hope that we can settle this one and get into a new one, which will restore hope and a better vision for the future as we move forward. So thank you very much. Ms. Lockhart.

Kirsten LockhartNo comments. Happy holidays, everyone.

Matthew RiceMr. Rice. So we had a good GIS Day celebration I spoke about last time we met. Chair Feather and Rusty Russell were there to help us. We had seven staff and leaders from the city of Fairfax there. So it was a really well-received session. There was actually frustration afterwards. We just didn't get enough depth in some of the presentations that were, you know, by necessity short. So there's a great interest from the students in hearing more about how people actually use GIS in the real world. So as part of that, we've created an opportunity for students to submit a design for a map that we'll do in the fact book. And so that's a kind of exciting opportunity for students. They'll be submitting some materials in late December to myself, another faculty member, and to CDP staff that will be involved.

and then we'll choose a student winner from these submissions, and that student will then have the job of coordinating with Ms. Denny and Mr. Foreman on the design of a graphic that will eventually show up in our fact book. So we'll talk more about that in the future. Thanks.

James Featherand I have offered to have that student present their little study or project the winter to the planning commission when that's done so I think that'll

Matthew Ricebe quite fun from my perspective the board of architecture

James Featherreview has not met their first meeting in December was cancelled so I have nothing to report from the bar I was also going to say about our next meeting where we have elections and appointments and we will be conducting a biennial review of the bylaws, correct? So it's a requirement that we also review our bylaws. Otherwise, I have nothing more to add, just best wishes for the holidays for all of you, and thank you for your participation. We are adjourned. Thank you. Thank you.