Planning Commission Regular Meeting/Work Session

Good evening. Welcome to the regularly scheduled meeting of the City of Fairfax, Virginia Planning Commission for Monday, November 24th, 2025. 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 you. Our next order of business is discussion and adoption of the agenda. The agenda was published ahead of the meeting as required. Are there any comments or additions or changes to the agenda? Mr. Chairman, I move the agenda be adopted as presented. Second. It's been moved and seconded to adopt the agenda as it was issued. All those in favor say aye.

Aye. Opposed? Abstentions. Passes unanimously. Next order of business is presentations by the public on any matter not calling for a public hearing. We have no public hearings this evening. We also have no members of the public present, so we shall move on. Next item is consideration of the November 10th, 2025 meeting minutes, which were also issued ahead of the meeting. Any comments, corrections, changes? Mr. Chair, I move that we adopt the meeting minutes from the November 10th, 2025 regular meeting as issued. Second? Second. It's been moved and seconded to adopt the minutes as presented. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstain. Abstain. Passes 4-0-1. Next item is the agenda is items not requiring a public hearing. We have none of those tonight, nor do we have any public hearings, so we will recess our regular meeting and go into our work session, which has one item to be approved.

Which has one item this evening, which is continuing the discussion on the proposed fiscal year 2027 to 31 capital improvement program. We'll have a report from a staff lead, Mr. Napty. Thank you. Thank you, Chair Feather and members of the Planning Commission. This is a continuation of our discussion of the capital improvement program. As the Planning Commission may recall, you had an introduction by the acting city manager and the chief financial officer at your last meeting on November 10. And that was a first introduction to the CIP. At that time, you did not have access to the draft CIP that came out later that week. So you've now had time to take a look at that. And this is the Planning Commission's first opportunity to have your own deliberations on how you want to proceed with developing recommendations to the City Council on the CIP.

Going forward after tonight's meeting, you will have the flexibility over the course of your next several meetings until January 12th to determine what your recommendations should be. And then you're scheduled to have your public hearing on your resolution related to the CIP on January 26th and then present your recommendations to City Council on February 3rd. A quick recap on the presentation from the acting city manager on November 10. This presentation was included as attachment one in your packet for this week because you didn't have it ahead of time for that meeting as well. But the basic elements that she went over were the CIP process which is fairly typical and it is follow what you've done in the past.

The document, general document structure and the page structure also a lot of similarities with a few new things this year particularly related to the items that are defined as capital projects and other items being removed from the general report. Or at least the intention is that they will be removed from the report. For now, some of them are being shown as to be removed. She went over general evaluation questions including a lot of elements to consider but in particular considering the compliance with the comprehensive plan is a typical main question for the Planning Commission. She went over CIP policy update. So this is where the finance office has defined what a capital project is this year that they have not done in the past and set thresholds about what should be included in the CIP and other elements should be moved to the general operating budget.

And that's the reason the CIP should be much smaller this year at least the projects that are subject to your review. She went over new projects that are introduced in this CIP. We'll go over those later in the presentation. Also went over projects that are specifically identified in the small year plans as a typical component of the CIP presentation. We'll also go over that again. And she stepped through a couple of the major projects that are listed in there including Fire Station 3, the Van Dyke Park Master Plan implementation, and the redevelopment of the property yard. So as you begin your deliberations tonight, a couple of things to consider about what the Planning Commission's role is.

Primarily the Planning Commission's review of the CIP is based on requirements of the Code of Virginia, which state that the Planning Commission should determine conformance of proposed projects with a comprehensive plan and advise City Council on priorities among proposed projects. The last bullet, anticipating future considerations, is something that we have added to this list over the years, recognizing that the Commission's role is not specifically to get into funding or financing, but sometimes we have to consider that when determining what priorities are, recognizing that in different years the Council's going to have different levels of needing to compare between projects and have different

levels of stress when it comes to funding availability. So for the presentation I'm going to give you tonight is really just to give you some food for thought as you begin your deliberations. It's really the Planning Commission's hands how you want to handle this and what you want to present to City Council. So we'll go over some items that will tend to help you with that, but again, it's really everything is up to you and this is just laying some groundwork. So a couple pieces of information we want to share with you to help you with your deliberations. We'll give a quick summary of what the Planning Commission's recommendations to City Council were last year to give you some frame of reference.

We will again go through those projects specifically identified in the Small Air Plans as well as those specifically identified in the Comprehensive Plan. We will look at the new CIP projects to see if any of them are applicable. We will talk about Comprehensive Plan priorities. So this is something that we introduced in our last review last year because we had just adopted a major revision to the Comprehensive Plan. And so there are some new elements in there that had not been the previous Comprehensive Plan. We wanted to see where they stood in the frame of the five-year CIP. So we'll give an update on that. And then lastly, we will talk about potential public facilities reviews. As we mentioned last time, public facilities reviews are a separate item from the CIP.

It's something that we have combined together through our process where the Planning Commission is required to determine if any new public facility is in conformance with the Comprehensive Plan, if that facility is not identified in the Comprehensive Plan. So the first item here is looking at the Planning Commission's resolution from last year to City Council. There are a couple of elements summarized with these bullet points. The first two items, the feasibility studies and protecting previous investments. So last year it was generally acknowledged that we were going to have some funding constraints and there probably had to be some difficult decisions about what we need to prioritize because we couldn't fund everything that we wanted to fund.

So the Planning Commission essentially with these first two recommendations was recommending that we continue to move forward with projects that we've already begun to invest in, whether it be through design or feasibility studies, that we see those through before investing too heavily in other projects. Third bullet, to utilize external funding. Again, recognizing that we are constrained with our funding availability to seek external sources. This is something that's fairly typical for transportation projects because there are so many state opportunities that are regularly available, but the intent here was that we continue to look beyond just transportation projects. To think about project schedule alignment and when looking at the CIP, Planning Commission recommended or recognized that there were some projects that were recommended to receive funding earlier than we thought that they would be ready to actually expend those funds.

So in order to balance ourselves over the next five years to look at that more closely. Again, this is recognizing that the Planning Commission shouldn't be getting into specifics of funding, but also recognizing that we knew that the Council was going to prioritize among projects and we want to make sure that this would give them the leverage to focus on those projects that are most important to the Planning Commission through the comprehensive plan. The next item, a more general recommendation to focus on projects that improve or expand existing public facilities. And then the next item was about the project schedule for the Van Dyke Master Plan implementation. So the Van Dyke Master Plan implementation essentially means going to the next phase of their project, which is design and construction.

The Van Dyke, this project is something that has been supported by the Planning Commission for quite some time. It's specifically identified in the comprehensive plan. However, recognizing our constraints and recognizing that there are other projects that are already starting to move forward where we've already invested more heavily in design. The thought was that we could support not pushing this project forward as quickly to allow those other projects to continue to move forward. But recognizing that the Planning Commission still does support this project, just allowing the timeframe to be a little more flexible. And then lastly, the Planning Commission added a statement to generally support projects to support the following being public safety, schools, parks, pedestrian and bicycle safety, and environmental projects.

So for the past several years, we have specifically been identifying projects that are identified in small area plans to show how these projects are supported by our long-term policies and planning. I won't go through each of these because they were reviewed at your presentation at your last meeting. I did want to point out, however, that you'll notice there are no projects identified in the Fairfax Circle Activity Center. However, there is the project to do the intersection analysis of Fairfax Circle, the actual intersection in the two-year transportation program. There are also studies that have been funded in previous CIPs to do a flood study, as well as erosion and sediment control studies of Akenden Creek along the southern border of this activity.

So we expect coming out of those, there will likely be some future projects in that activity center. Looking at the general comprehensive plan, a number of projects that are in the CIP are specifically identified throughout the comprehensive plan. The electric vehicle readiness plan is specifically identified in the sustainability section of the comprehensive plan. That project, however, through the reformatting of the CIP is now being moved to the operating section, so it's the longer part of the CIP. However, there are still funding requests for it. The West Drive property yard acquisition, the funds that are requested here are specifically for the acquisition of that property. As the Planning Commission may recall, we are already in an agreement with the county to move forward with the purchase of that property once they complete their alternate facility and are able to move off the property.

There are no plans, there are long-term plans on what to do with that property at this time. The Van Dyke master plan implementation we've already discussed. And the last three are three transportation projects. Again, most of the transportation projects are specifically identified in the comprehensive plan because that's required by state code. The new projects that were added to CIP, these were also briefly touched on during your presentation from the Acting City Manager at your last meeting. I did want to point out with these, however, among these several projects, you'll notice that none of them are proposing new capital facilities. And so for the most part, they're not the type of projects that we focus on in these discussions.

You'll notice that the proposal for the fields at Katherine Johnson Middle School is the most expensive project on here because the intention is to replace existing fields with turf fields. And so this is something for consideration, but again, it's the use wouldn't change. This isn't the type of thing that we typically focus on. So we don't see any new projects that should be reviewed in depth by the Planning Commission. So new comprehensive plan efforts. So the comprehensive plan update is not as new as it was last year, but we did want to point out some of the things that were added to this plan that were not in the previous comprehensive plan. So the items in bold are those that are underway in some form.

I did want to point out that with the new structure of the CIP with the non capital projects being moved to operating. A lot of these will no longer be considered through the CIP review, but this is just here for your awareness as well. So some of the projects that are already underway, the smaller plans, public improvement plans. This is being conducted currently in conjunction with a level of service study that our department is doing. The housing and homelessness strategic plan is something that just wrapped up, was presented to city council a couple of weeks ago. Watershed management plans are funded and ongoing. Electric vehicle readiness plan, as we mentioned, this is moving to operating budget and the Parks and Recreation strategic master plan is underway.

The other items listed here, a smaller plan, parking management plans, green infrastructure plan and infrastructure resilience study are all items that will likely come forward through the general budget, not in the CIP under the new format. And then some studies that were completed that are referenced in the comprehensive plan that will likely result or that recommend new capital facilities, the school's facility condition assessment was completed. And that identified some major, major upgrades to existing facilities. And as the planning commission is aware that a bond was approved to support at least some of these last year. And so those are now identified in the CIP. The performing arts feasibility study had a series of recommendations that included a potential new facility that has been put on the back burner for the most part.

As we juggle all of our other priorities and so that it's not listed in the CIP this time. And then for transportation projects, these are looked at again differently. There's a little bit more specificity on transportation in the comprehensive plan as required by state code. So the two top items, the main street safety audit projects and the Fairfax circle intersection analysis are both in the two year transportation program. So they're being proposed for funding and will likely turn up in the CIP. The following three items are all portions of the adopted by Fairfax City master plan and are not underway at this time. They're more all three of them are longer term studies. And then looking at all the transportation projects that are in the comprehensive plan.

This is actually the recommended capital transportation projects. This is what the code of Virginia requires us to include. The update that we adopted in 2024 was was quite a bit smaller than the initial comprehensive plan in 2019 as we had gone through some of those projects. We anticipate with the the move Fairfax study that's currently underway that we will see some new project recommendations come out of that. But in the meantime, these are mostly smaller projects that are that are listed in here, many of which are already funded. Some of the remaining ones recommended for for funding in the future. And then some of these actually won't require funding. So, for example, item number two is just advocating for the study of a Metro rail extension along I-66.

It's not something that we would do ourselves. It's just to support other efforts. But the two main ones on here that at some point will should have some kind of CIP or budget request if they require further study are the study of a Main Street bicycle visit Main Street bicycle facility and extending the Blenheim Boulevard multimodal improvements into Old Town and through Fairfax Circle. So, for example, that the project that has been approved that is about to become under construction only goes from Blenheim Hall Drive up to Ridge Avenue. It doesn't go all the way to the two ends. And so this recommendation is based partially on both the Old Town and the Fairfax Circle small area plans to extend those further.

And then the the bottom three items that don't have any update next to them, the roadbed improvements, the TDM program and maintaining pavement conditions are generally ongoing efforts. So that is just again some background information to help you with your CIP deliberations. Before we turn it over to you for discussion, I just want to mention the public facilities review process. As the Planning Commission might recall, State Code requires that the Planning Commission identify if any new public facility that is not specifically identified in the comprehensive plan must identify if it is in conformance to the comprehensive plan before it can move forward. And so we use the CIP process to identify those facilities and flag when we should be reviewing something.

So this year, as you noted, there's only the seven new projects. Other projects already in there would have been identified in previous years. And so we don't see the need to do any public facilities reviews this year. However, we did want to point out that there are a couple of big projects in there that will result in new facilities if they move forward. And so they should go through this review at some point. And namely, that is the the property yard feasibility study or the property yard redevelopment and the fire station three redevelopment for the property yard. We haven't identified where a new site would be yet and one of the criteria is the public facilities review is determining if the location is going to conformance with the comprehensive plan and we can't do that without knowing the location.

For fire station three, we also recommend waiting on this one while location has been selected. Another criteria is the extent and character of that without knowing more about the scale and design. We recommend waiting to do the public facilities review of this as well. The last major project that the planning commission reviewed through this process was the Wilshire Sherwood Community Center. And that was one that we I think we could have waited a little longer on because the planning commission really we knew the location, but we didn't have a whole lot of detail about the design at that point. And I think that your feedback could have been more beneficial if you had some more information.

So that's our recommendation is to wait on these other two. If you want to move forward, particularly with the fire station three at this time, we could do that. So that's all we have for our presentation. As I mentioned tonight's depilations are really in the hands of the planning commission. We're here to answer questions and support you. We can talk about additional meetings through December and January. If you want to include others, other board and commissions or other staff, let us know. We're happy to try to set those up. But otherwise, we'll turn it back over to the planning commission. Thank you, Mr. Napty. For those of you who had a chance to get at least partly into the CIP, you'll notice it does look very much different in terms of the number of items that are out there.

There are, of course, a large number of transportation projects, some of which we may want to emphasize. They don't have a direct impact on the general fund budget, but we're always sensitive to how we spend the resources that we have. But let me just at this point turn it over to see if any of you have any questions or comments at this point from Mr. Napty's report or what we heard at our last meeting or anything that you've gleaned so far going through the plan. Ms. Lockhart. Sure. I have sort of a hybrid question comment. So for things like what you just mentioned, the fire station and the property yard, as we heard at the last discussion, there's some numbers in here that represent, I don't want to say like worst case

scenario, but they're very large numbers that sort of encompass a lot of different planning scenarios. Is it appropriate for the planning commission to advocate for spending planning money, but not budgeting yet? Or like, how do we emphasize that our take is that there are a lot of alignment discussions that need to happen with both of those properties or facilities or whatever you want to call them that could very significantly change the out your costs of the project. And just kind of making that clear that we want to stress the upfront thinking, not the building. I would say that there's a lot of gray area and into exactly what the planning commission should be commenting on. But based on the comments that were provided last year where there were comments about moving forward with projects that had feasibility studies, there were comments about timing.

There were no comments about this is too much or this is too little or anything like that. And it sounds like what you're suggesting is more about the first example. So in my mind, I think that would be appropriate because, because again, it's more getting into how we align ourselves to prioritize what's most important. Yeah. So doubling down on that. Hey guys, make sure you're doing the legwork upfront. And then my second comment was going to be just based on some comments that were made during my recent reappointment hearing. Um, there is a group of council members that doesn't seem to see value in the small area plans, um, as a sort of guiding concept for development. So I would recommend that our recommendations speak to, you know, perhaps are organized by small area plan or flag those things that are crucial towards the future success of the small area plans.

You know, those infrastructure investments that the city needs to make for that planning to be successful. Good points. Thank you. Mr. Rice. I think I agree wholeheartedly with Ms. Lockhart on her statements. I think that the property yard and fire station three are in different categories in terms of, uh, what we know about their location and their nature. It seems that having input on the fire station would be useful. And I think that if we do make statements guided by the small area plan and guided by, um, planning for things which are coming, uh, that would be worthwhile. Um, I know it's not feasible for us to have the scope of our CIP review be like the previous ones. It was getting really large.

Are we undershooting what we're looking at and will we, uh, find ourselves have not having given feedback on things that do emerge at a later time to require a review? Uh, so are you talking about the public facilities review or the CIP itself? Both. Okay. Um, the, the, the public facilities review I think is, is up for, particularly at the fire station. It's, it's really up to the planning commission how you want to proceed. Um, I think, if, if you think now is the right time to make a statement about it through that review, then that's certainly fine. Um, the, your ability to comment on specifics I think will be more limited than if you did it later. Um, but that being said, that could be outweighed by the, a stronger need to make your statements now as opposed to a year or two from now.

Um, and then the second part of your question. So it's generally about the scope of the CIP this year. Um, and the reduced scope and whether there will be things that will impact. Uh, I think the reduced scope of the CIP is really in line with what the CIP CIP is supposed to be. Um, so the, the, the, the intentions or the, the actions of our finance department and reorganizing this way are, are certainly well intentioned. And I think we should support that. If there are items, um, and we'll recognize as, you know, what we went through, there are a lot of studies and things like that, that would no longer be identified in the CIP. Um, we'll have to think about ways that we can flag those and provide comments to other means.

Um, because I, I, I agree with you. I hear what you're saying. I think it's important that we continue to advocate for what we need to advocate for. Um, I think we've been relying on the CIP for some things that maybe should have been done through other processes. Um, so as we continue to want to advocate for those things, um, we should probably have some more internal discussions with the planning commission about the best way to continue to do that. The fire station three is interesting. Um, there was a, some tours, I think the city council took of fire stations recently and they sort of opened it up to others who wanted to participate. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to do that. So it's only kind of hearsay of some of the things that, um, I learned from comments about the need.

It would have been convenient if one, some, one or more of us were able to do that, see firsthand for ourselves. I'm guessing the need is there where we don't quite have the full story or a full report from this, but, uh, it's gotta stay on our radar screen from the sounds of it, from the nature of the facilities and, and how the firefighters interact and, you know, live in those places and so forth. So, so if they were willing to give us a tour so we could hear those things, I would welcome that. Yeah. Yeah. I know they went to the Alexandria station. It's at Potomac yard that has affordable housing above the station. Um, they've looked at a few other sort of joint use facilities. Yeah. I didn't realize I went that far.

I know they started at 33. They were looking at hours and some of the others. So, uh, others, Mr. Cunningham. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Uh, I noticed that the first item up upper left on the slide that we have ups, the city council budget retreat. Do we have any sense on where the city council thinks the budget will be going this year in terms of funding for CIP? CIP and things along that line. And will we get any feedback on that as we're going through our deliberations? I can see what information we can get from the discussions at the retreat. Um, I can certainly tell, and this is mainly through, um, our finance department, um, and other discussions that the council has had, uh, publicly that, uh, we expect we'll be facing challenges again this year.

Uh, and that, that we're looking for any kind of opportunities for discretionary funding that can be reduced, uh, to control our budget. And so, um, similar to the challenges that we faced last year where we had to advocate for what we thought was most important, I think we'll be in the same kind of position this year. Okay. Thank you. Uh, I noticed on the briefing you've just given we're on page 16 on the materials that we were provided for the meeting. There may be a second, uh, iteration of this that goes up to page 27 and talks about general CIP stuff. Is it possible to bring that page up? Yes. So the, all the items after here, this is, uh, material from the presentation you had, um, last time, which I very well as you weren't here.

Um, but, uh, I believe this is the slide you wanted. Thank you. That's the page I wanted and that page is perfect. Uh, it says that for FY 2026, the adopted general fund portion of the CIP, uh, appears to be $48,239,164. And the total capital improvement program budget for FY 26, which is the approved one we're operating one is $97,068,775. So I presume those are the actual numbers we are working off of. What I am going to reference in my comments here, uh, is let's just go back 10 years to 2016. And in 2016, the actual general fund number was $6,465,532. So from 2016 to 2026, that looks like about an eight times increase in what we're putting into the capital improvement program. If I look at the $97 million and go back to 2016, that number was $34,850,332 or about three times the amount that we were putting into the capital improvement 10 years ago.

When I go back and look at the real estate tax records on my house in 2016, it's a little under $8,000. And when I look at the current assessment area, it's a little over 10,000. So that 2000 Delta is a 25% increase in my property taxes. When I look at a 25% increase in my property taxes, but a six fold increase in the CIP for, uh, general funding and a three fold increase, a three X increase in the total capital improvement program. My question in a budgeting standpoint is where's this money coming from? I'm obviously not paying for it. So where, where, when we get this far out of, out of alignment, is the funding coming from when we talk about being in a tight budget position? And I know in the last 10 years, we started out with three years where things were pretty flat.

There was not a lot of inflation. There was not a lot of increase. A lot of people were refinancing houses at 3%. Uh, so the housing structure and housing was, was becoming embedded. When I look at the fact we had a major economic disruption called a pandemic that spread itself over about three years and realize how much was shut down in the economic sphere and how much the federal government or other organizations, other people's money got thrown in here to, to spend and keep the economy afloat. I realized there was a major disruption. And then I look at the last three years and say that we have been dealing with what inflation is. And inflation is back because everything is costing more. Uh, I, I'm starting to question, I guess, in my own mind, the things that are in the CIP and the costing of it.

And with that, the comment I'll make is that in the 2007, eight timeframe, when we planning commission was dealing with the CIP, I think we were at least a year ahead of the city council and looking at the fact that the city owned a water plant. And if anything went wrong, what was the risk? Because did we have the tax base to carry it? If we needed to do major, uh, work to advance that project. And it took several years, but the council eliminated that as a major risk to the city. And so the CIP is a vehicle for the planning commission to talk about what's going on in the city on things that aren't only general fund, small projects, but bigger projects. And that's something I have a responsibility, I think, to look at with my fellow planning commissioners, at least comment on city council can do as they choose.

And so can staff. When we look forward a number of years in tight budget conditions, uh, we hit a low in 2011 of the entire general fund portion of the CIP is $1,701,600. And so from where we were at the worst of economic times to now adjustments have to be made in the CIP and I can understand that. Now, when we look at things like the small area plans and say, how do they fit into the CIP and the projects we're looking at? I start to scratch my head a little bit because when I think of the 2019 comp plan that we spent three and a half years working hard to get, uh, to fruition, this, the small area plans dealt with the five major business areas in the city. And the fact that that's all commercial land, it's all business land, it's not residential land that we're talking about.

And yet those small area plans are designed to make those areas more efficient, more tax effective, uh, more beneficial to the future goals of the city, because that's the area we have for expansion. We don't have a lot of room left to build more subdivisions, uh, or housing of any kind, except dense housing that in essence goes up. So all of the development that occurs in the small area plan areas is going to impact the future of the citizens to pay for the, the ongoing function of the city. Or to let business that's profitable pay taxes and help cushion us a little bit so that we've got a tax base that's multifaceted enough to support things. So the more people we bring in and the more they bring in expenses that, that bring us to the CIP, so to speak up to a point where we have major expenses and can't control this seems to be losing sight of our goal as a city to remain functional.

So when I get down to looking at again, the capital improvement program, all of the projects in there, as you have noted are required to be supported in the comp plan. The way we have written the comp plan with specific goals, all of the projects that come forward come from one of those goals. So almost by definition, everything that comes forward in the CIP is something that we have said we want to do as a city. We want to do a whole lot more, I believe, than we physically can. So when we're back to the situation that I see us in now with the budget, with looking at small area plans, with looking at the CIP, I see major changes in the CIP. But I don't find necessarily the guidance when suddenly a million dollars shows up for Katherine Johnson middle school fields and those things that pop up to see how the flow through the CIP is being controlled and what our comments are.

So therefore what I'd like us to do as we're moving forward with the next couple of meetings is look at the CIP. See what's good. See if there are recommendations we need to make that would impact things that perhaps should be delayed further. Because we don't have the money as I see it in this budget climate to pay for everything that we want. And we have much larger wants in looking at some of our documentation and we have the ability to satisfy. And I know that is a major change for the city council and for the city staff in trying to determine what is the tax rate, how much revenue will be set aside. And that's where I think budget retreat results as I get back to where I started this come in to have a sense of where is the CIP going in relation to everything else.

And how if we're going to have all of this money and continue to get richer while funding all of our wants do we stay within an area where we're meeting our needs and doing it in a prudent way to keep us financially sound as we're moving forward. And I don't know if that makes any sense. But I will say it and I have said it so I will let it go with that. Mr. Chairman. Did you have any comments in response? No, I mean your comments were about process and talking about what we should be looking at going forward. So it's it's all fine with me. As I said with the budget retreat, I'll see if I'm not sure if there are any minutes moving in kind of summary on that to give you guys some guidance. If we can get that, then we'll get it to you. So.

Mr. Briggs. He did ask where all that extra money came from if we're not paying for it with our real estate dollars, real estate tax dollars. So I'm wondering what the answer was to that. That's a question for our finance department. So I mean, a number of transportation projects have external funding external to the general fund, for example. Right. That's the other calculus to add is that, you know, in your example, Mr. Cunningham, that for that same year, 2016 to now, the external sources of funding has doubled as well. So there's money flowing. I know, but it seems to be the external flow money seems to be slowing down. And yet our ability to consume is having trouble slowing down with it.

So for projects that are included here, I know most of these have been we've seen before, but for example, just take the school's projects. What's the vetting process by which that feedback comes from the school board to the SIP? Do they, is that a wish list or is it already vetted? So the school's one, as an example, each project has kind of come up in its own way. The school's one, there was a facility assessment that was conducted in all four schools that was completed about two years ago. And that recommended a series of upgrades. It actually included improvements to the middle school and high school as well. But as you may recall, the overall cost was even more substantial than we're looking at for two elementary schools.

So typically our process for these types of things is a new facility is identified in some kind of plan or through a feasibility study. And then upgrades to existing facilities are usually identified through condition assessments. Ideally, they would be identified at such a point that we can begin preparing for them if they're in essentially the fifth year of the five-year CIP rather than coming up sooner than that. But sometimes the urgency just comes up sooner. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I know we've talked about it, but the half million dollars for a scoreboard seems perhaps a bit too rich for our blood to Mr. Cunningham's point. You know, is this, we talked in the last meeting about telling the story where, where there might be additional revenue sources or alternative funding sources to accomplish some of these goals.

Can you go back to the high school and say, sorry, this is a boosters project, right? Like, you know, maybe not in that particular case, because I know I, I seem to remember we talked about this last year and the existing one is just going to crumble to the ground. There's no sustainment on it, but you know, some of these things can, can the submitting organization be asked to do some legwork on alternate ways of bringing these bills down? Yeah. I mean, it has been asked in, in certain cases. We have projects that come in with, with higher cost estimates than we would like and they're asked to go back and redesign and value engineer and that type of thing. I don't know exactly which of the projects that are in the current CIP went through that process.

Um, and a direction for that, it either has to come from the, um, the staff department that's managing the project before you even get to city council or it comes from city council once they receive the, the request. Yeah. I'm still hung up on what happens to the property yard being really a linchpin to a lot of these other conversations, because if there are functions like emergency management or parks and rec headquarters that are going to be by necessity, sort of by defecated out of the single space and they move into other facilities that could impact, you know, the police station renovations or modernization. It could impact the design of the fire station. It could impact the, um, you know, what ends up having to move to West drive and what still needs to find another location.

Like it's to me that that needs a plan. So front loading the planning for that and then pushing back some of these other renovations that could be impacted by the property or plan. So, if you're going to move to the city council, you're going to move to the city council. At the, uh, most recent city council meeting, which I attended for a couple of reasons, um, one of the members of the public was speaking and, and used some of the words similar to what Mr. Cunningham used talking about wants versus needs. Um, but what sometimes I struggle with is perspective, uh, what, what may be a want for some, maybe a need for others. There have been continuing discussions recently, um, on the Willard Sherwood center project.

Um, some view that as, as a want, a nice to have lovely new facility for a senior center and a community center. Um, some will see that as a want. It's an expensive project. We are in partnership with the county on it. But on the other hand, if you look at green acres and it's been limping along for a long time, you could argue that something is a need to replace that. Not a want. So there are some perspectives we'll also have to, to, to weigh. Um, what I have, what I do think about that project, that is one that I believe it's consistent with our guidance last year on continuing to move forward projects we've committed to. And this has been one of them. It's been committed to by previous councils.

Previous council members have gotten up and spoken publicly at recent meetings to the current council about the importance to try to provide some perspective on that. Um, but that's again, something else we may want to think about. Mr. Rice. Yeah, I think the last section of your comment just now really is what resonates with me. It's that a decision about willowsher what was made by a past council. It was supported widely. It was endorsed by a spectrum of community members. And we have a much smaller group that's attempting a U-turn on that project, not just with a fourth million dollar expenditure already outlaid for that project, but with the most strategic partner. And, you know, we have a lot of people in our region, the county around us who spent more than that.

And the idea of. You turning something that was carefully planned and sustained and voted and endorsed. Uh, just seems problematic. And I don't know how many U-turns we can make before, you know, we get pulled over and, you know, have to pay some serious fines. I think that the strategic partnership with the county is something we cannot burn. We just can't burn that down. And, um, it will ensure what is directly aligned with our vision. It's been a part of the discussion for years and I understand it's got a significant price tag. And, um, green acres would be impossible to bring up to ADA standards and to house continue housing a senior center and a daycare, both functions of which we need.

And we can't bring that facility into compliance. The cost of bringing green acres into compliance is equal to the cost of building the Sherwood Center. So we given the context of that, uh, which has been known for 10 years, the feasibility study for green acres determined that a long time ago and doing a U-turn on that particular project right now, just to me, it seems very, very, very concerning. Um, but, uh, I recognize we're going to need to make recommendations and I plan on voting to recommend that we continue with the Willard Sherwood Center. But I know it's, um, along with many of the other strategic items within our portfolio here, not everything is going to get built. Um, I'm endlessly impressed with city staff that come up with money through grants to help us improve our infrastructure.

Um, I wish there was a way for us to kind of recognize those staff more prominently than they are. It just, um, the most valuable thing that we have in the city is the staff, uh, the really good staff. And, um, I'm looking here at at least $30 million of funding that's related not to city, uh, uh, revenue that we're collecting directly, but it's state federal NVTA. It's funding from the outside that some staff member in the city has worked long and hard to channel and that's hard work. And it's, um, you know, it's a part of the context, uh, of which Mr. Cunningham and Ms. Lockhart talked about. And, uh, uh, anyway, that the issues are complex and the budgets difficult. I recognize all of those things, but I think that decisions that have been made and, uh, sustained in the past should also be respected to some degree.

And that we, uh, strategically, it's not a good idea to, uh, to U-turn projects that have been underway for 10 years. Mr. Cunningham. Mr. Cunningham. In a perhaps unpopular way of looking at some of this, I took advantage of having children in the school system, I guess, for eight years that we lived here in the city. Uh, which means that even though the school budget was significantly smaller at that point and my taxes were a lot less, somebody was subsidizing my children to go to school here in the city. And I think that's true for all of the people who have children in the city school system now. But beyond that, I'm going to say that I spent 37 years paying for other people's children to go to public schools in the city, because that is a major priority for the city and a way we keep moving toward the future.

But of that 37 years, I am hoping as Dr. Rice said that having a senior center that I could enjoy for my half of the population, the 70% of the population or more that does not have children in the school system that would appreciate a senior center and a community center and things like that to do other things should probably be an equal priority. Because when we look at the budget dollar as it's in the budget and 37 cents of every dollar goes to the education program and the remainder goes to the rest of all of the city's programs, then it's got to be a balance where we meet everybody's needs. And I think we've done that well. And we continue to when we advocate for new fire stations, when we advocate for new libraries, new police stations, additions to city hall, moving the property yard and those kinds of things.

But a senior center is one of those institutions that I would put in with the rest of those that is owed to the people in the city who pay the freight that keeps us going and who the council is going to have to put a greater burden on if they're going to balance a budget. So from that standpoint, yes, I support the senior center and will continue to. And it's a both, not an either or from this kind of discussion as we're moving forward. One observation on your slide seven, called small area plan CIP projects. These are projects in the activity centers, some of which I'm not sure. Multilumber transportation externally funded except for fire station three. Is that work highlighted in the small area plan or in the comp plan?

Transportation ones generally come up in the context of the small area plans. So we want to create networks and community. We want to make sure we understand what are projects that are in the activity centers versus what are called out in the CIP. And the reason I bring that up is because of your experience and your interview about some trepidation about some of what's in the small area plans. How much of the small area plans are really calling for general fund spending and capital versus what something happens to be in the activity center? Yeah. That is a good point. Some of these do just happen to be in the activity center. Okay. And the fire station three is a perfect example. Okay. It is specifically identified in the small area plan, but it was already identified that that was going to be a project at the time the small area plan was developed.

Yeah. So the context of the fire station, other things were planned around it and that type of thing. Some of the transportation projects, and yes, most of them are transportation projects because, as we've said, those tend to be the more expensive projects that we can get external funding for. And so we're able to move forward with those. There are other improvements in the activity centers that are recommended, particularly related to open space. It's not as easy to get funding for that. So hopefully we'll see ways to move those forward at some point in the future. But some of these projects, for example, the Germantown Road corridor improvements were identified before we even developed the Camp Washington small area plan.

Others were identified in the small area plan for the first time, such as the First Street connector and the North Facts East West Road. Right. Right. Yeah, exactly. One of the examples I think of in Camp Washington, not on the radar right now, but was where that water tower is and maybe acquiring that, turning it into a park. That's something that the small area plan for Camp Washington identified, but we don't have that in here yet as a... I mean, full-time hall. Sorry? Full-time hall restoration. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, just to make sure we're using the right language when we're talking about some of these things that whether they're small area plan initiated or just happen to be in the activity centers, but...

Are there any more? They can be, for sure. But like the water... Turn the water tower into park, you know, that would be something that we could call that, but it's not on the radar right now, and I'm not sure we're in a position to want to put it on either. I mean, we should be thinking about things that may be highlighted in either the comp plan or the small area plans that are not in the capital improvement CIP. We may want to suggest it go in there, but with a very far out year. If it's beyond 2031, we don't have to worry about it because this is only five years. This is only five years, but... So, Mr. Cunningham's suggestion about spending some time going through the comp plan and probably small area plans is a worthy exercise for a couple of our meetings as we prepare to put together some sort of recommendation.

I think the scope of what we have to comment on this year is probably smaller by the nature of the shrinking that has occurred, and we're aware from the discussion last year things have gotten pushed out, like the Van Dyke Park. That was a key part of one of our discussions last year. It is now closest FY28. So, anyway. It's going to go. If we can go back to that last slide that was a summary of all the budget stuff. If the proposal... If I go over that blue column for the proposed for 27 ends up being 13,500,000 roughly. The proposal for 28 is 32,600,000. The proposal for 29 is 43,800,000. The proposal for 30 is 82,000,000. That's not a very smooth line when we're talking about a capital improvement program.

That's a discussion for chaos in the general fund as to what gets funded and what doesn't. We've got more projects that are valid projects than we can handle in any year, and the ones we don't get to don't become invalid projects. So, this is a challenging process to deal with the CIP and fund the most important projects to the city. And I think that's part of where our role as the Planning Commission comes in, in trying to at least make a suggestion on what we think is the highest priority in any given year. And recognize that in the subsequent years, this process doesn't get any easier. And I'm not even going to comment on the other funds that come down below that come from other sources. I'm just talking about the general fund taxes when we're moving across there.

So, I congratulate my fellow Planning Commissioners for digging into this and bringing a reasoned voice to the recommendation we make. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. And again, when you look at where those where that growth occurs, it's just a few specific projects. The property yard is the elephant in the room. Fire station is not far behind. But there's a want or a need. Right. Okay. Ms. Lockhart. There's not really a way to represent it. But to Mr. Cunningham's point about the cost of schools, if the Virginia State Legislature moves forward with the additional sales tax option earmarked for schools, that wipes out the bond dollar amount. And that's a massive change in the positive for the out years.

So, I would say if it's appropriate, we could encourage council as they look at alternate revenue sources to be firmly supportive of that. And one of the topics of their last meeting was their legislative agenda. And that was very high on the list as a priority for them to advocate for. Ms. Rice. And part of the context behind the budgetary problems we have right now is a yawning gap between the city manager's recommendation for our property tax rate and what the city council begrudgingly accepted. We're so far below our neighboring jurisdictions. I haven't done the calculations recently, but we've always been low tax, business friendly, and we could still remain there even with this city manager's proposal, which was a much higher tax rate.

But if we were to support the statewide kind of sales tax, at least a sales tax that we could use to generate revenue, that would be a very big deal and would help us a lot. I'm not sure when council will have their discussion on anticipated advertised tax rate, but it's not for a little while yet. I don't have the budget calendar in front of me, but that's usually, I want to say March. Yep. All right. But I think some of our input may influence where they want to and are willing to go as well. So, yep. So, one of the things I wanted to just point out in case you hadn't noticed, and this table is good enough. You see the way this is presented this year, there's a FY26 adopted column. There's a revised budget column, which is new.

In fact, the next three columns are new, the way they presented it. The revised budget number includes prior year appropriations. I had a discussion with the budget director today because I was trying to understand what some of these changes were. The next column is, you know, the actual expenditures so far, and then the available budget is the difference between revised budget and actual. So, there are prior year appropriations that flow into some of these projects, which is why you see a column that shows an adopted number of, say, 48 million in the general fund, but 163 is revised budget because there have been prior year appropriations. In case you were wondering what that meant. I was puzzled, so I had contacted the finance office today.

But I think, Mr. Cunningham, you're right. You know, the column we should be looking at are the blue ones. Each individual year's appropriation is what we're talking about, to the extent that we want to weigh what the dollars are, Mr. Rice. How much of the 163 million is ARPA funds that we're hurrying to spend? Down the bottom in the revenue side. Yeah. Got it. Yeah. And that all has to be spent by the end of next year. Next year. Yep. And it will be. Yep. Yep. Yep. But then you can also see the impact of the additional dollars, Mr. Rice, that you talked about, that we're able to procure for things like transportation projects. Huge, huge numbers that benefit the city that don't so much impact the tax rate.

So, how do we want to carry forward for our next discussion? We will continue this at our next meeting. I do have a couple of questions. We might have a discussion about what a review might look like of a discussion about CIP or the comp plan. It's a big document, obviously. Go ahead, Mr. And maybe you can have your conversation first. I am wondering, I heard some questions tonight, particularly about the fire station, about the property yard. Of course, those are two of our bigger projects. And of course, there's a questions about that we'll need to direct to our finance department. So, we'll try to get those and get them back to you. If there are any specific questions that I should direct to city staff, whether it be finance or representatives of these other larger projects or smaller projects, if that's what you're interested in, then please let me know.

I'm happy to do that. And if needed, we can invite some of them to come to your future meetings over the next either December or January. Right. And I was talking to the budget director today. I raised the prospects. We may want to have a conversation on that side as we did last year. If that would be advisable, we can plan for that too if you think that's necessary or helpful at some point. It may not be our next meeting in December, but perhaps in January. I don't know. I'm not sure where you think it might go. It would be useful, I think, also to have an understanding or a better understanding when we're talking about the capital improvement program as to what is actually being carried in cash flow from the city's coffers on an annual basis and what is being carried in debt service or budgeting because you get a force multiplier

If I can buy something that costs $10 but I only have to pay a dollar a year for 10 years to get it. And so we have tended to use financing, I think, more and more in recent years to get more of the things that we wanted. And a more thorough discussion on that I think might be illuminating. Illuminating, yes. More the purview of the council. It's not how they want to spend the money, but I think it could influence how we think as well. And in that context, it could be helpful. I think from that and that when we look at recommending things, how they're going to be paid for does impact what you say we can do as needs or wants. And then if we are at the point, as I heard discussion recently, that we're going to take money out of the reserve funds and drop our reserve capability close to the financial markets limit that could impact our bond rating, that becomes something to, I think, be aware of.

Also a subject that came up briefly at the last city council meeting. They're very attuned to that. They made some changes to some financing with that in mind and move forward anyway. So it's on their radar and something that I'm sure we can be confident that they're going to do everything in their power to preserve that financial position. So I don't think that's something we'll have to worry too much about. There was one other thing that struck me as I read the introductory part of the CIP that referenced city council vision and goals. I went to the city's website to look up what the city council's vision and goals were. What's up there is 2023-2024 council vision and goals. Do we not have current vision and goals from this council?

They have not been updated with the new city council. And I don't know if that is something that is on the schedule to do. I think there's just been a focus on so many other things. I can find out if there's any interest in that. I haven't seen it on the future council agendas though. I looked at their agendas up through mid-year. There were two retreats at which this was discussed. They're now halfway through, pretty much halfway through their term and haven't established vision and goals. It's just puzzling. Despite all the other priorities, I'm not sure what's driving. The thing I did notice, of course, with the vision statement that was up on the website currently is not consistent with the new comp plan vision statement.

I would hope that they would be consistent. You know, we made a switch between the vibrance of the economy and the, you know, the 21st century vibrant city versus the financial underpinnings. We thought we had the cart before the horse in the original vision statement and we changed it. But anyway, I just wasn't clear whether there were any changes. I assume that they just sort of dropped the discussions as I saw no other reference past mid-year to a discussion. But it's just puzzling. Okay. So we will continue to live with whatever that says. And those are summarized in a very high level. If you want the details, you can go to the website to read what's behind those different categories. Those different categories of environmental sustainability and so on and so forth.

Okay. So what would you like the discussion, if Mr. Cunningham's suggestion is agreeable to you, a discussion or review of comp plan items or small area plan items to look like? You brought it up. Do you have a thought? A thought? I would never second guess my current leadership. Do they have thoughts on where they would like to lead us? It's the will of this body how you would like to move forward to. So would you find that kind of discussion review helpful in some sense or what it should look like? I don't think we're going to spend too long reading through hundreds of pages of whatever. We have objectives laid out or implementation guides. Some of those and maybe that's a place to start for looking for insights.

I think going through that is good. I will also commend staff at this point because over the number of years I've been working with comp plans in that. I think the way staff has organized our materials for this meeting telling us what we're going to do and how we're going to walk through it is an excellent organization. And roadmap to follow in looking at priorities, looking at individual projects, looking for projects that may be far enough out that they should be well down in the funding and pop up year over year. With some understanding that they may be a very long time getting funded, but that's not the high priorities. When I went back and talked about two hundred thousand sixteen numbers, road paving was in that in the CIP as well.

And this year we have moved a number of those kind of items that are maintenance items or the purchase of vehicle items out of the general fund funding. So that our focus, I think, can be tailored more to what's in the general fund funding, which is where the bulk of our priorities are. And then we look at the other funding sources and things along that line to see that they align with our overall priorities. And if there's something that sticks out in there that warrants special mention, then those kind of projects we should probably discuss as to why they need special mention and whether we agree that those things should be brought to the attention of council and their deliberations. So that's since we have moved out of talking about trucks and road paving and sewer systems, looking at the projects we have and how they fit with the funding that's proposed for them, I think is one of the ways to go through to see if there are things that stand out.

Either that we should by name mentioned as being important for more consideration or if there are things that we feel perhaps should be identified as being lowered on the priority list. So that kind of stacking, if we're going to look at it, might be useful since we've got a little smaller document this year to work with. I think one of the things we've done in the past, and I believe it's a good idea to continue, is if we each come to our next meeting with, say, three higher priority items from the CIP to put on the table and a few we see on there that could be moved down. Ms. Briggs. It seems like most of these items are our needs and some maybe our wants, but even if they're a want, it's for a reason because it's going to attract the right people to our area or it's a business, right?

So how do we know the condition of all these items? How would we choose if we don't know how, if we can't grade their condition and know, you know, how long have these been on the list? How long have they been a want or a need? How severe is the condition? Where do we get that information? Some interesting reading, if you get into the details, is one of the programs. When you look at the examples we brought up of the field replacement that's kind of new to the list, when you read what the condition is, there's a lot of, it's perhaps something could happen. If, you know, it's reaching end of life, it's a risk management. I mean, I spent a large part of my career in risk management kind of discussions, and you still have to make decisions based on what you understand.

Doing something on a planned basis is usually much cheaper than doing it on an urgent basis or an emergent basis. But if it's not done, is it still somewhat functional? What risks for a field do you bring to the people, the families, the kids that may be playing on it? Those are kind of hard discussions that we would have to get additional information ourselves. And so your question is really pertinent. How do we know where the need, where the want becomes a need? Similar to the Sherwood Center, right? I mean, I've been to Green Acres. I've taken classes there. I mean, yeah, it's an old elementary school, but is it unsafe? It's full of asbestos. Asbestos. Asbestos and the roof leaks. Okay. Not ADA compliant.

I mean, I do see the need for the senior center. And we have a lot of seniors in the city. And that, you know, we want to keep them here. We don't want them to move away. Lord, we want to drive them away by having a tax is so high that they can't afford to live here. It's an interesting balancing act. It really, really is. There have been some interesting discussions in the past about some of this. You have to mow grass fields that you're going to play on. You have to realize that weather impacts the condition of the field during certain games. You have to look at how could we improve things. And so when we talk about synthetic turf fields, suddenly we realize that it's ten times the cost of planting grass, mowing grass, putting in enough drainage so that you can play on it after the rain, and doing those things every year.

And it's an ongoing thing that requires a certain amount of staff labor. But if we spend ten times as much and put in a turf field, hopefully we cut down on some of the injuries. We make it more playable after inclement weather. We don't have to spend the staff time and the budget mowing and otherwise receding and taking care of those fields. And then ten years later, it pops up that it's going to be ten times more expensive because the field has been worn out. That's the design life of it. And so every ten years, we spend X amount or we spend Y amount times ten year after year. So some of these debates come into this nature of what is it you want and what is a real improvement. And I think that's part of what went on with Fairfax High School when it was converted from a sod field to a synthetic turf field.

And that's what's going on at Catherine Johnson Middle School when you're talking about a large amount of fields. So the debate sometimes is a little different in that if you're looking at the big picture over ten years, but if you're looking at the big picture over ten years and you have children in the school system where they're going through four of those years, you weren't impacted by six of those years, but your kids were on the condition that they had. So there are a great many complicating factors that come into some of these decisions so that from various aspects, they're not as clear cut as they might seem to be because we're dealing with a large number of people who are going to debate,

come to a consensus and then move forward with implementing a decision that was made. But there will be a number of people who will not be happy with that decision. And so it's going to remain an open debating point. Just spoiling the update from PRAB that I'd be giving at the end of the meeting. Part of the issue with the Catherine Johnson field is a really substantial predicted need to excavate a tremendous amount of construction fill and debris that's under the surface. So it's always had drainage problems. That may be part of the issue. So the cost of that is multiples more than it would have needed to be because of a practice from the past that we're having to resolve in the present. But again, like Green Acres, it's a tremendous liability for us to have a playing field for our middle schoolers with concerning kind of conditions

and non-ADA compliance at the bottom of the stairways in the field and need to do substantial additional prep work just to prepare a surface that could accept a synthetic surface. So it's not a typical project in that level of detail, I guess, that, you know, in some of these projects, we need to get down into the weeds to really understand the reason why this is not a $2 million project. It's a $10 million project, and there's a reason for that. We occasionally would have department heads coming in to give us that level of detail. And at some point, maybe that would be useful. But in this case, it's a big expense because of something that happened in the past that we're going to resolve when we end up putting turf on the field.

Mr. McClendon? I just want to say if there are specific projects that you would like to get that kind of information from, let me know. And if that information is available, then we can share it with you. I'm happy to do that. And if there's anything that we want to have more discussion on, we can see if we can have other staff come and discuss those as well. Other thoughts from folks about how you might want to proceed? Ms. Lockhart? We can discuss offline. I'm in agreement with what's been proposed. I do think we are delivering largely the same message, you know, sort of my takeaway from today's conversation. Perhaps it needs to be made more explicit than it was last year. You know, walking a fine line, obviously, between being directive and prescriptive.

But, yeah, as long as we've done our homework, I think our messaging is not too different. All right. That's right. I agree with the proposed path that you articulated, and we'll come back and list some of our priorities. It would be quite useful, perhaps, because two of the projects would, Sherwood and the KJ field, it would be useful to have Stacey Summerfield at some point give us a little briefing. And, again, if there are projects like that, the need for fire station three, it might be useful to have Chief O'Neill come in as well. So we used to do a little bit of that, or that might have been mixed with sort of a joint city council planning commission meeting over CIP. But at some point that the level of detail underneath might be helpful in determining what we recommend.

And I'm not sure it will change the recommendations I have because I feel pretty well informed about those projects. So I'm okay coming back and giving a bottom line recommendation of my own next time. So last year when we had our joint session, work session with the city council, obviously they were quite new, only one returning council member. But it was clear, at least to me from that meeting, that they were not familiar with the CIP at all or the budget process. Obviously they've been through it once now, so hopefully that's better. But are they diving into the CIP yet like we are? Or are we going to be sort of their first exposure to it? They received an introductory presentation at their last meeting similar to what you received.

They will not have any additional discussion on it until after they hear from you, though. Meanwhile, I'll be starting the rest of the budget process. So our advice is meaningful, valuable. Can't be too prescriptive, as you say. We're walking a fine line between being advisory and directive. Let's go to him. I would ask staff, are there any of the other projects that have been moved out, including the projects that have funding coming from other places that we should look more closely at? And do you have any input from other funding sources as to how that is going to go this year and what impact some of those other projects may or may not have in terms of completion dates or slippage or need to relook at funding for the other projects that are down and the other funding source supported projects?

I know we just had a discussion at a council work session on George Snyder Trail and the fact that we have a cost overrun because it had been delayed for two years. And I guess that's part of what I'm looking at from the rest of this. Are our costs on the rest of the CIP good? Or are we looking at slippage and additional adjustment to the rest of the CIP program? Because federal funds, state funds, other targeted funds are in the process of changing due to the changing economic climate. Anything that's shown in here is anticipated that that is what is still available to us from the external funding. The majorities are through the state. And so we should have minimal impact from federal government.

But in the case of the George Snyder Trail was more about a cost overrun with the estimates and the bids that came in. And that's something that we wouldn't necessarily see in this context. It wasn't about the amount that we were getting from external funding changing. That remained the same, except we had to request more. But as far as we know, at this point, anything that's shown in here that we have been awarded a grant for, the amount that is shown, we anticipate we are still receiving that. Are there any impacts from the strings that are attached to other people's money that we should be aware of? Because in the back of my mind, and I'll bring up George Snyder Trail again, when I travel down Arlington Boulevard, and I see that there are three or four major bridges that are pedestrian bridges

that have been put up along the side of the highway. And I recognize the George Snyder Trail is a connector between those and going out the city in the other direction and the way that the county and other people build infrastructure. And then I look at the bridges in the city and say, we're not constructing to that same engineering quality. Bridges alone could be behind that kind of cost overrun, besides minor increases in either labor or rock for lining a creek or something along that line. So are there things along that line that are different in the standards that we're used to in the city and the standards that other people are bringing in that have major funding impacts? Those are usually design elements.

So the example you gave is the bike and pedestrian bridges. Those are usually funded through VDOT or are channeled down through VDOT in some way, and they have their own design standards. But the costs, the estimated costs of developing to that standard, it is what is programmed into our grant request. And so, yes, the costs are higher, but our grant request is also higher. Any difference between what we receive from the external funding source and the actual cost usually comes from something else. There are issues with how it's estimated. There are changes in costs over time. But the design elements should be to the standard of the grant request that we are receiving the source from. I understand what you're saying.

And then we're relatively small in the scale in which we work. And then I listen to what's going on with the Francis Scott Key Bridge up near Baltimore, and those funding estimates and engineering changes and other requirements seem to be ballooning way beyond what we are. And yet they're in the same kind of ballpark that we are with how are things getting out of hand in funding and costing? Is it materials? Is it design standard changes? Is it what is it that's making a great many projects in this area disconnect from what they're conceived and initially presented as to when they're actually implemented? We've heard from the staff that are directly involved with these projects. And it's not just the George Snyder Trail.

It's other projects that have gone through this. And like you said, it's a trend. From what we heard, the majority of it relates to changes in construction costs. And that's something that certainly it's a concern, but it's something that I don't think we can be prepared to anticipate when we're talking about our CIP recommendations. If it's a factor that the Planning Commission wants to include and just assume that any future projects are going to cost more than we think they are, so we need to prepare for that, then that's fine to make a statement to City Council. But I don't think we can get any detailed information on how much cost overruns are going to be, because if we knew how to prepare for them, then we would prepare for them.

No, and I think that's a city budget priority anyway, because we are merely recommending projects that are good for the city. It happens that we're recommending them in the financial playing field of the current time. And when it comes time to implement those, they're frequently seven years down the road. And so the costs that we thought we were dealing with at the time may be significantly different, as we're seeing on any number of these projects. But that comes into funding things like the major projects, such as schools, such as property yards, such as fire stations, those kinds of things where we can look at them and support them. But I know the city council and staff has got a lot of work to do in the implementation process,

especially if they can't control the cost estimation process. Thank you. Okay. We'll have a further discussion when we next chat, and probably some more with you offline to plan the path forward. But we'll plan December 4th, 4th? 8th. 8th. Yeah. Oh, yeah. 4th is something else. Something else on my calendar is the 4th. Okay. Any last thoughts? Okay. Would you like to move on to the staff report, Mr. Napdy? Certainly. Thank you again, Chair Feather, members of the Planning Commission. Not a whole lot on the staff reports this week. I just wanted to point out that city council has been having discussions on their legislative agenda. A couple of items that might be of interest to the Planning Commission that look like they're going forward are items related to school funding,

the potential opportunity for the potential opportunity for 1% sales tax, as was mentioned tonight. Additional funding opportunities for affordable housing. Anti-rent gouging legislation. This relates to apartment owners collaborating on increasing rent, which has been a major concern, particularly members of the city council. And there's been increasing discussion about legislation related to the impact of data centers before they are built. Not something that we see here in the city, but it is something that a lot of our regional partners are interested in and city council is interested in supporting that. The city council will be having their final consideration on the legislative agenda on December 9.

Other than that, at the last meeting on November 18, city council also had a discussion with a couple of topics related to boards and commissions. But one is that the city clerk's office has developed a board commission handbook that will provide some useful information to new members of the Planning Commission and other boards and commissions. We'll be happy to share that with you once it's finalized chair further was there that has no comments about it. I'm sure it'll be happy to discuss that more as well. And then looking forward to the December 2nd city council meeting, they'll be receiving a presentation from the housing and healthy communities advisory board, as well as an update on the urban forest master plan for your next meeting.

As you're aware, we'll be continuing our discussion on the CIP, and you will also be receiving a update on the urban forest master plan. Um, this, this presentation will focus on the current draft of the plan. Uh, the goal is to bring that back, uh, for you for final consideration or final recommendation to city council in late January. Uh, lastly, just wanted to remind you all that we are still looking for representative to serve on the, uh, facade and interiors improvement grants, uh, to, uh, support, uh, the economic development office in, uh, providing those grants to businesses for improvements to their buildings. Um, let me know if you're interested and we'll make sure to put that item on the agenda, um, to be appointed.

As we mentioned before, it's a fairly light, uh, effort compared to the other, um, dual roles that we ask of you guys. So that's all I have of the staff report today. Thanks. Any questions for staff? I mean, I could put my hand up again for the facade thing. I just did the bar, but I know how light that load is because I've already, probably already done that too, but I really would like someone else on the commission to step up. It's not, not a heavy lift. So I'd be happy to do it, uh, on an interim basis, um, until we convince one of our colleagues to, uh, to do it full time. Pressure Mr. McCarthy gets back. We can convince he's, he's traveling on business this evening. So another virtual meeting amongst, uh, you know, 10 to 15 per week that I have.

Um, so please, I will do it if, uh, I will do it in an interim basis until we get a permanent person appointed. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that. I'll actually check with the economic development staff because we would put this on the agenda for the eighth. You'd be appointed then. Um, but then we would have our new elections in January. I will try to find out if they think there's going to be applications coming in in that timeframe. Uh, there might be, it seems like they were, they were kind of pushing us on this. So even if you're only interim for a month, um, I think there's some things that need to do. So I appreciate that. And, uh, we'll confirm it. Okay. Others. Uh, I'm just the messenger, the, uh, Fairfax city residents for smart growth, smarter growth is having their, uh, annual holiday party on December 17th at no host social at old Shabeen.

I believe it's six 30 and the planning commission is invited. So I believe planning staff is invited as well. Okay. Anything else? Anything else from you? Um, Mr. Rice, you did mention the PRAB. Um, I did. So the, um, Parks and Rec advisory board, uh, reviews ongoing projects and it really, there's a lot going on for the Parks and Rec staff. Um, there's just a lot of things to keep track of. Tice park is, um, two fields are ready to go. Of course, they won't be used likely until the spring. Uh, one field is still in the process of being sodded or prepared for sodding early in 2026. Uh, unexpected things come up as well. So the Pat rodeo park, uh, playground equipment was delivered early. And so they've kind of accelerated some aspects of that particular project.

Uh, there, there is no fence yet around the park. And so they had to deploy, as we know, because there's a protected area that runs through Pat rodeo park that we were, that were part of our considerations. They've had to move the playground a little bit to make that work. Um, there are several other projects ongoing, but those are the highlights. Um, there are several projects. And, um, we spent the majority of our recent meeting talking about the Willard Sherwood center and the ongoing plans. Um, so I suppose until that project is definitively shut down or postponed indefinitely, um, the county and city and the parks and work advisory board are still moving forward on that and getting updates and, uh, plan refinements along.

It's a very impressive project. Uh, I was particularly intrigued at the, um, amount of solar energy that they're going to be generating and using on site. So it's not generation on the rooftop. That's going to be pushed straight to the grid and Dominion paying us a meager, you know, less than wholesale rate for that energy we're putting back. It's used on site. It's a very sophisticated way of, um, making that project green and self sustaining. Um, there will be more about that later, but that's all I have for prob. Okay. Ms. Braggs, anything? Nothing from me. Mr. Cunningham. I'd like to wish everybody a happy Thanksgiving. We have a lot to be thankful for, and I look forward to, uh, seeing you next time.

Okay. And for me, one of the things we have to be thankful for is that Ms. Lockhart has been reappointed. She didn't pass her interview. Thank you. We're happy to have you. Um, and I was appointed by the council to fill the bar position. I attended my first meeting the next night. It was a very short agenda. It was just a reaffirmation of the recommendation for major certificate of appropriateness for the park row townhouses. Uh, that, uh, that, uh, that recommendation expired, uh, due to various delays and some, some of the projects, but that was reaffirmed. Um, I want to congratulate Dr. Professor Rice for his GIS day at, and his role in that at George Mason. I was happy again to be part of that as well as a number of city staff were also there.

Patrick, um, Amy Lynn, Jason Sutphin was there and they announced a challenge. You want to talk about the challenge? Yeah. So let me just, uh, talk about that briefly. This is not maybe the venue to get, uh, participants to the challenge, but, um, so let me also add Chloe Ritter and a very impressive intern that she has been working with, who's been working also with Patrick Ramson to put together some transportation dashboards. A cool one coming out on Cuba. Unbelievable. Yeah. It just mind boggling the quality of the work that we're getting, not just from our staff who are outstanding, but students who come from campus to just contribute and they're working for less than, than everybody else in the building is getting paid, but they're often doing extremely

high value work. And so in this case, uh, uh, uh, intern named a Tharva presented his, uh, dashboards. Um, it's impressive work. I'm just surprised every time I see things like this, how good it is. Uh, so the generosity of the CDP kind of leadership and, uh, we've discussed, uh, a possibility of having, um, contributions to the fact book in 2026 and one case out of the 121 maps, graphs, figures that are in that resource. One of those may be student generated this year and the student, uh, will be responsible for kind of working with CDP staff to adopt their design guidelines and to edit appropriately to get information into the right form. But the, um, eligibility is for all, uh, current and recent graduates and undergraduates at George

Mason university. And the topic is education and specifically education forecasts and ways of representing the education forecasts that are done at the county level and also for the city schools. And so as we know, um, Eric Foreman does a fantastic job generating, um, information about how many students are to be generated by the development projects that we see. And then information is used by the school board. And so the student's goal will be to gather information and present through a map or through a graphic, um, the, forecasts for enrollment changes in the two city elementary schools and in the context of all of Fairfax County. So there's some surprising things happening and, um, I won't spoil the outcome of this and the message,

but, um, at some point, if, uh, this turns out to be a good, uh, project and a successful outcome, maybe we can recognize, uh, the student and the staff members working with a student, uh, to, uh, publish in our fact book that we get to see every spring and that's it. Thanks for that update. Um, as Mr. Nappi mentioned, I did, and I mentioned, I attended the last city council meeting. I did, uh, speak to them about, they had a work session, so I spoke to them in a public comment section about their, uh, boards and commissions, their handbook. Um, so it's a, it's a very good document. Um, I offered a couple of suggestions and hope they take me up on the opportunity for some dialogue about, um, providing the information.

And originally they talked about providing it to a candidate once they've been appointed. But I pointed out that I think it'd be much better for, uh, candidates before they're appointed to understand what they're signing up for. And I also described what we're doing now in the planning commission of initiating conversation with, excuse me, with interested people to give them some specific information about the planning commission as well. Um, and that may be a practice they would like to encourage other boards to do. So I would hopefully, hopefully they'll consider that as part of their process. Um, Um, tomorrow, Mr. Napty and I are having a brief conversation with, uh, I guess the chair of the EDA.

They're interested in having a, a further discussion with the planning commission as a whole. Um, and we're going to have a conversation about, you know, what that might look like. So there's a few topics, uh, that we'll, we'll put on the table and see how that develops. And finally, I would also like to wish you all a happy Thanksgiving and we'll see you in December. We are adjourned. Thank you. Thank you.