Planning Commission Regular Meeting/Work Session

James FeatherGood evening. Welcome to the regularly scheduled meeting of the City of Fairfax Planning Commission for Monday, November 10th, 2025. Our first order of business is 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. Next order of business is discussion and adoption of the agenda. The agenda was issued ahead of the meeting as required. Any comments or additions or changes to the agenda? I'll entertain a motion to adopt the agenda.

Matthew RiceMr. Chair, I move that we adopt the agenda as presented.

James FeatherSecond. We move and second to adopt the agenda as presented. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Passes unanimously. Next order of business is presentations by the public on any matter not calling for public hearing. We have no public hearings this evening. We also have nobody who is

Matthew Ricein

James Featherthe room. Absolutely no. We will move on. Fourth item is consideration of the October 25, 2025 meeting minutes. Any comments or discussion on those? Motion for the minutes.

Kirsten LockhartI wasn't here. I'm sure that we have three minutes. It's

James Featherbeen moved and seconded to adopt the minutes of the October 27, 2025 meeting as presented. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstain. 3-0-1. We have no items on the agenda not requiring a public hearing, nor have we any public hearings, so we will recess the regular meeting and go into our work session. item on the work session this evening, which is a presentation on the draft, fiscal year 2027 to fiscal year 2031 capital improvement program. We welcome our staff here to present, Acting City Manager, Melanie Zipp, and our CFO, JC Martinez. Welcome.

Melanie ZippstaffGood evening. Good evening, Chair Feather and Commissioners. I know you're expecting the CFO to be presenting this evening, and I would just say that while I'm probably the same height as the CFO, my finance brain pales in comparison to JC's, so I'll be looking to him for the tough number of questions. I don't know all of you. My name is Melanie Zipp. I'm acting city manager. I've been with the city for 21 years, was previously the chief of staff and city clerk, before accepting the role as assistant city manager. I'm pleased to be here with you this evening to present the FY27-31 Capital Improvement Program. As you're aware, all CIP projects must support the city's adopted vision, goals, and comprehensive

plan.

Betsy BriggsNext slide.

Melanie ZippstaffThis is a calendar of the CIP touchpoints. A couple dates of note. November 8th, we held a council budget retreat, which is something JC implemented last year and will continue into the future. This was an opportunity for the council to see the economic atmosphere for the next 12 months, revenue and expenditure forecasting, employee recruitment retention, living wage, and fringe forecasting, and then talk about their specific priorities for the upcoming budget. November 18, next Tuesday, we will be presenting the same CIP presentation to the City Council. January 26 is when you'll be asked to approve the CIP and forward it with your recommendations to the City Council. and then February 3rd will be your joint meeting with the City Council to present your recommendations to them.

Betsy BriggsNext slide.

Melanie ZippstaffOkay. Sorry,

Betsy Briggsmy numbers were in the wrong space.

Melanie ZippstaffWhat you see before you is the layout you have seen for the past four to five years. Finance has made some changes. You'll see in the FY2731 CIP. all programming that was not a true capital project such as the red section which is infrastructure repair and maintenance and we've moved those projects back to the general fund

Betsy Briggsnext slide this

Melanie Zippstaffis a better explanation of why we did it the key points of the projects that are supposed to be and will be in the CIP our projects led the project leads to a capital asset creation or significant improvement in current assets the project has a useful life of five years or more the project costs exceed fifty thousand dollars it is a one-time expenditure it's a major infrastructure or capital development and the project requires long-term financing for these reasons the red repair. You'll see a red section in the book this year because there's still some existing projects that need to be completed. However, we're not adding any new projects to this section. They're being captured in the general fund. The green technology section has been significantly

reduced to only those projects that produce an asset. So all software maintenance and updates have been removed from the CIP and will show up in the general fund. And then the orange section, the vehicle and equipment replacement, will remain in the CIP because it's the most visible and best place to track these expenses. Finance works very closely with our fleet manager, Lee Hall, who does all of the scheduling out of replacements to fit in the CIP scheduling process. these these assets also do fit within the key indicators that I listed earlier on this slide

Betsy Briggsjust another reason to keep them in the CIP this

Melanie Zippstaffpage is an example of a project page each project must reference the comp plan timeline all funding sources available and corresponding dollar estimates the line, corresponding council goals, and the responsible department or departments that are working on the project. Under the funding sources, I'd like to point out that the ARPA, the ARPA funding is still listed because we have projects that are still using ARPA funds. We are not receiving any additional funding, and all funding needs to be spent by December 31, 2027, and we are on track to meet that deadline.

Betsy BriggsNext slide

Melanie ZippstaffThe project evaluation questions are examples of the types of questions that are asked when the budget team meets with our departments to go over their CIP requests we ask about project urgency readiness phasing and The physical planning such as are we responding to state and federal mandates is the project compatible with the implementation of Can the project be phased out, like in out years? And what will the impact to the operating budget be, and when will that take effect? Who will benefit from this project based on location, number of people, demographics? And can projects be co-located or combined?

Betsy BriggsNext slide.

Melanie Zippstaffwhen departments set out to create a CIP project they go through this gauntlet of

Betsy Briggsof

Melanie Zippstaffproject workflow when they're developing the project page they request the project page and request based on the number of projects they decide which are priorities and then submit their projects during the preliminary evaluation stage department heads meet with the budget team to justify their requests then between november or today and early february the city manager and the budget team you the planning commission and city council review the existing request set priorities and get acquainted with the projects. This year, on May 5th, the City Council will adopt its budget to include the CIP. Then on January 1, 2026, the projects that are projected to start in FY27 can begin. Next slide. So why do we project five years out?

JC and his team work hard to level out the total dollars needed through the five years within each project and across all projects to ensure we're not top heavy one year over another. And if we are, we have an explanation as to why. This is why it's so important to ask those questions about phasing projects and where additional funding can come from and when it will arrive in the evaluation portion of building the CIP. The total CIP request is $636.7 million, and almost $449 million of that comes out of the general fund. The reason for the increase over the FY2630 adopted CIP are the two projects related to the school bond referendum, which are the elementary school renovations and the new roof for the high school.

Because of this, you'll notice in the FY26 CIP, there were 136 projects funded, and in FY27, there are only 63 projects funded.

Juan Carlos MartinezstaffNext slide.

Melanie ZippstaffHere's where you can see the differences in the numbers. You will notice the infrastructure repair and maintenance has been zeroed out for future funding as it moved back to the general fund. The technology infrastructure fund has significantly reduced because we removed the software maintenance and are only keeping true technology assets in the CIP going forward. Some of the assets listed for these upcoming dollars are replacement of our physical data centers, our servers, for our permanent, and our backup servers. If you look at the Vehicle and Equipment Replacement Fund, you'll see a drop in FY27 and then a slower increase in out years. This is because Mr. Hall is reevaluating each piece of rolling stock.

If its useful life is up based on industry standards, but the mileage is low, he will stretch the use out a year or two of that asset. the jump in FY 28 on this same in the same line is due to the purchase of six Q buses which you'll see later in another slide and some fire apparatus that need to be ordered right now we're seeing an 18 month lag on buses we order them and then we receive them 18 months later and a three to five year wait on fire apparatus.

Betsy BriggsNext slide.

Melanie ZippstaffLet's look at the new projects for FY27. There are only seven new projects. The reason is because staff is aware of the financial situation we're in with the school bond. Other large ticket CIP projects we'll get to shortly and the rising cost of school tuition. So they really have focused on projects of necessity only.

Betsy BriggsNext slide.

Melanie ZippstaffThese are the projects that live within the small area planning district. There are currently none in the pipeline for the Fairfax Circle planning district. And if I just go quickly around the horn, starting with Fern Street, that is funded by federal and C&I funds. and the hope was for construction to begin in FY26. Germantown Road and Route 29 improvements, this is funded by CNI NVTA 70% funding and revenue sharing, and construction is to hopefully begin in FY26. Germantown Road corridor improvements are NVTA 70% funding start date of FY 26. Northfax East West Road at the very top is NVTA 70% funding and it has a projected start date for construction of 2030 with a completion in 2032. The funding is starting in FY 28 and 29.

South Street extension is smart scale funding and the funding is starting in FY 26 through 29 with construction to hopefully start in 2028 and then fire station 3 is a general fund project funding is in place the goal was completion in the fall of 27 but the council is still evaluating that project and we will talk

Betsy Briggsmore about that on the next slide

Melanie Zippstaffthe next three projects are highlighted because of the amount of discussion and the large price tag that these projects have but they're the same ones that you saw last year so the first one is fire station 33 a couple of highlights about Half of the funding has been appropriated, and the next half will come over the next three years. The building is actually older than Fire Station 33 was when we replaced that. However, we didn't own this building until last year when the volunteers signed it over to the city. The city acquired the property next door that was owned by George Mason University Foundation. We purchased that last year, and the building will be vacated after December 15th of this year.

City Council is still exploring the potential for a PPEA at the fire station or for the construction of the new fire station. They're actually meeting tomorrow at Station 33 at 1 o'clock to tour it and then moving over to Station 3 to tour that one as well. if you'd like to attend please show up at 1 o'clock at fire station 33 that's the station that's across the street from Fairwoods Parkway

Betsy Briggsnext slide

Melanie Zippstafffor Van Dyke master plan community outreach began on the Van Dyke master plan in 2018 and it was put in the CIP in FY 21 was delayed and pushed for several years the Parks and Recreation director would like to redo the community engagement and really coordinate this project with the Blenheim Boulevard project and the Willard Sherwood project to ensure we don't have three large construction projects happening at the same time in the same location and then really making sure that the Van Dyke master plan complements the new Willard Sherwood facility and the expansion so you'll see that last year this was shown to be to begin funding in FY 27 however for all of the reasons that I stated the funding allocation will be pushed out to FY 28 next

Betsy Briggsslide

Melanie Zippstaffthe property yard has also been on the books as needing improvements for the 20 years. There's frequent flooding on that site and property damage is not uncommon. A third of our city workforce works either at or out of the property yard and the majority of the site is within the floodplain. When weather's expected, employees have to build in time to move assets from the property yard to other locations with higher ground. You'll notice that previous estimates were 65 million however those were very rough numbers and with the project managers refining the project the price tag has more than doubled to a hundred and fifty five million dollars this is due to the two different scenarios that could occur both of which hold the high price tag if the property

yard stays in its current location the city would have to pull it out of the meaning we'd have to acquire property from our neighbors because essentially we'd be putting them into the floodplain. So we would have to make sure that everybody is right, and we would have to construct a large flood wall. If the property yard would be split between two locations, there would be site prep and other logistics and possible duplication of things such as fuel station that would need to occur. There's no funding requests for FY 27. We've pushed this one to FY 28 for feasibility design and engineering

Betsy BriggsNext slide

Melanie ZippstaffLast day I'd like to touch on the vehicle and equipment replacement The city is due to purchase six Q buses in FY 27 Q buses are deemed obsolete by the FTA after 12 years which would be FY27 as they were purchased in FY25. If you remember I stated earlier the wait time for buses is now 18 months approximately, unlike the fire apparatus. However, DRPT doesn't allow the city to pre-order buses. We must wait until we reach the useful life, which means that we are then band-aiding and conducting additional maintenance on our existing fleet for 12 to 18 months while we wait for new ones to arrive. This is not ideal as we have 12 buses currently and run eight per day, which leaves four spare buses in route, four spare buses to rotate at any time a bus needs to come out of

service. It's not ideal, but is what we're working with. So the requested funding appears in FY26 to be ordered and received, hopefully in early FY29.

Betsy BriggsAnd next slide.

Melanie ZippstaffThis is just a reiteration of the calendar for the upcoming year for the CIP, and I would thank you, and we are here to answer all of your questions. The hard ones go to the CFO. Thank you.

James FeatherThank you, Ms. Zippman. Ms. Locker.

Kirsten LockhartI'll start with a relative softball. Obviously, the expenses are the expenses, and we have to talk through them and present them. But the kind of parallel story, are there any cost reclamation stories that are going to be told along with this SIP? Like, is there a transfer of land possible with a fire station, for example? Or, you know, I know the city received a transfer via an inheritance, right, of a property along Main Street. Are there ways that some of these major expenses might be offloaded or softened a bit by some other things that are going on?

Melanie ZippstaffIt'll really depend, as far as the fire station goes, how the council decides to move forward with it. The idea was to, I believe, take down the Mason building, build our fire station there so that the existing one can still operate, because otherwise we would have to create some kind of temporary space for that station to operate out of if the fire station goes through a PPE a or doesn't it may take up both parcels it really depends on how the council decides to move forward on that project the Barker property you're talking about on was deeded to the city to remain parkland. I would have to check with the city attorney if we have the ability to sell that property or if we have to hold on to it. So I don't know the answer to

that.

Kirsten LockhartOr even if not saleable, you know, is there something that can be located there, right? Like can parks and recreation facilities go there if they are moved off the property yard? Like just sort of those trade-offs that I think get lost when people see the big numbers.

Melanie ZippstaffYeah. One of the things that we have talked about is doing a parks assessment of the property of the building what kind of shape is it in could we move offices there what what can we do with that property that analysis hasn't happened yet but it is something that we've been talking about and know we need to do

Kirsten Lockhartand then the big one too is the market value of green acres once the sure what Center is completed

Melanie Zippstaffyes it is

Kirsten Lockhartand that

Melanie Zippstaffwill have to be a conversation I believe with the school board to see what what their thoughts are as well thank you

James Featherothers mr. rice

Matthew Riceyeah miss luck arts comments were essentially in the same area. I think finding some stories about money saved and things that we could do in the next 10 years to recoup money would definitely be worthwhile. I think at the same time, but in the opposite direction, would be strategic discussions with owners of other parcels, perhaps owned by the county or owned by other entities that plan to vacate those to arrive perhaps in the longer term longer than the cip at a place the property or it could go and i think you know we see five years but i think the the interest in a lot of these things stretches beyond five years you know fire station three's gonna have a long life we're looking at money and budgeting for five years but I think a perspective that's

10 or 15 years might be appropriate especially if there are strategic things we could do through planning for acquiring other places to put a property art or for other things like that I know that the schools does this kind of long much longer range planning and the green acres has always been a part of that there's a great deal of apprehension amongst the folks that live close to green acres there have been some public comments about making an egress point from campus through through green acres on the sideburn and that's um and no deal there would be a mass uprising if that were to happen other than a perhaps a pedestrian corridor and so um mason goes through phases of being a great neighbor and a huge resource and

also um being a vacant landlord that's um that we deal with and we've i've been here in the city 17 years now and i've seen it vacillate in both directions and i think right now we do have a fairly good relationship and certainly Mason has a very dynamic and strong president I think Mason already shows Green Acres as their asset which certainly it's impolite it's a biblical sin to covet things of your neighbors and to actually so that's right so Mason's long-term planning includes Green Acres and obviously strategic discussions between the school board that holds the deed and Mason and the city would be great. We want to be in a position where we know what's going to happen and that the political will to do whatever it is we're going to do,

whether it's to subdivide, give two-thirds to Mason and a buffer on the north side of the city. That sort of planning is well beyond the scope of the CIP, I realize, and I'm not going to ask either one of you to prognosticate on those things, but it would be useful to hear that five-year to 15-year discussion at some point, even if it's informal. And that's all I have. Thanks.

Melanie ZippstaffI would address the West Drive property is a Fairfax County property. We are due for payment in 27? Early 27. Early 27 to take over that property. So that is part of the discussion for the property yard. Excellent. There's pros and cons to everything, so I'm still working through that.

Matthew RiceThere are a few other facilities that the county maintains as well in the city, and obviously Willard Sherwood is the one with the attention right now, and we were in a very cooperative stance with them at least a year ago. Through my other role on the Parks and Rec Advisory Board, we had frequent discussions about that, But there are other places, significant parcels within the city that are still maintained by the county that would be useful to have discussions about. And others. Dominion owns a fairly large parcel as well, and all of those would be useful to have within some non-CIP longer-range discussion.

Juan Carlos MartinezstaffThanks. Thank

Melanie Zippstaffyou.

Betsy BriggsI have a question about the Q buses. They were all purchased in 15? Six of them. Six of them. When were the other six purchased? I don't know. Do you know? Before or after?

Juan Carlos MartinezstaffSo they try to purchase them six at a time. We have a fleet of 12, so they do six every 12 years. two years ago so they're still relatively new and we'll wait for those to sort of mileage out or time out before we replace those those aren't general fund funds those are actually I think the RPT funds that we receive to replace those I

Betsy Briggswas just gonna suggest that a rotation so yeah they're already doing that

Kirsten Lockhartthis George Mason contributed all to the purchase of the buses

Melanie ZippstaffGeorge Mason contributes to the transit fund. So,

James Featheryes. Others? A couple questions. Last year, we spent a fair bit of time because of the way the program was presented last year. There was a huge, huge growth. It was extraordinary growth. backtracking and scaling back. Are we in a better position this year to avoid those sort of wheel spinning exercises? The reason I ask is we're hearing a lot from city council about spending, and I want to be sure that before we spend a lot of time on that, that we have some confidence that some of that triage, early triage, has been done so that we don't have to do it. Commission talking about that and where and how we might try to advise priorities if it came to that. So are we in a better position this year?

Melanie ZippstaffI would say yes. We've only presented seven new projects but I will look to JC.

Juan Carlos MartinezstaffChair Feather, excellent question and as the manager stated there were only seven new projects that were identified this year for FY 27 and going forward as well and only really one of those are large in the sense of financial when it comes to the KJ fields everything else that's sort of listed on the screen right now is relatively small compared to that ten million dollars that sort of displayed there beyond that we the manager and I have looked at the draft CIP and in discussions with other department heads that were proposed we of those items so the current total FY 27 proposed budget specifically associated with the general fund is as lean as can be for that specific purpose because we understand that there's a lot of financial pressure right

now on the city so we are being very very cognizant of that in our planning as well could

James Featheryou go back to the slide that shows the current year and then the out Look, I just want to have a look. We'll have a chance to digest this when the CIP is issued. When will the CIP be released, the draft? It will

Juan Carlos Martinezstaffbe.

Melanie ZippstaffOkay. I'm sorry. Go ahead.

Juan Carlos MartinezstaffThe draft will be published either tonight or first thing tomorrow morning on the website.

Melanie ZippstaffYeah, scheduled to be published tonight at 9 o'clock. Okay.

James FeatherBe prepared. It's a lot to digest.

Kirsten LockhartI think Chair Feather and I were getting at the same point. because when people see big numbers, they tend to go a certain direction, right? So the property yard is one that was, you know, an ed issue last year. It's certainly going to be an issue again with a larger increase. Is there a way to tag onto this, the explanation of why that increase has doubled and what the sort of different courses of action might be that, you know, either spread that cost out or possibly mitigate it somewhat? I'm going to look to you. I mean, is that a council decision on which way they want to go

Juan Carlos Martinezstaffwith it? Ultimately, it would be a council decision with a little bit of guidance from the Planning Commission, whether it aligns to the comprehensive plan. Granted, it is an internal facility. The hard part there is it currently sits in a floodplain and trying to balance that. Should we invest whatever that number is back in a floodplain or should we move it out of there? And there's associated costs with that. and then additionally currently the property yard sits on about maybe 10 acres so trying to find that amount of land within the city is very hard so we may have to split it up when you split it up then you have additional costs there as well unless you go vertical as in potentially putting

in a parking garage to try to house some of these city assets so all that adds extra money the plan currently is and you won't go into the summer here but if you once it's posted online you can actually see it there's nothing for 27 there's a little some for design and studying in 28 and then it escalates up all the way through 31 so the bulk of the property art expenses really happen in 30 and 31 with construction of about 60 million dollars each so that's the main reason for those

James Featheryears the challenging question for all of us ourselves and making recommendation staff and putting together a proposal City Council and making an ultimate decision is what are the priorities and how do we prioritize how do we weigh off a property yard versus the school rehabilitation it's easier to say everything's important and everything is important, but we can't afford everything at the same time. So a couple of things. One is the council, of course, has to make a decision about the appetite of the citizens to be able to pay for what we need to at the pace we need to pay for it, to find alternate funding sources where those are available. But at some point, we have to make some priority decisions.

In the past, the Planning Commission has certainly made recommendations of things that we feel of importance. Sometimes we do that with some internal discussion. At times, we've had meetings with other boards and commissions where they do exist, areas that cross, like Parks and Rec, for example. Others we've met just with staff to try to gain additional information as well. If you were to advise us how we might at least weigh priorities from our perspective, what suggestions might you have for us? We will have our own discussion about how we might feel we want to approach it this year. We've taken different approaches probably the last at least three years.

Melanie ZippstaffGreat question. If we're looking at the seven new projects, the turf replacement for Stolnecker Field, the high school football field, the $750,000, that field is no longer under warranty and needs to be replaced. two-way radio replacement would be a yes it's not all general fund the Sherwood update does that support

James Featherour public safety it

Melanie Zippstaffis not it's actually for our property yard employees it's the radios that they have in their trucks the Sherwood update is flooring and each

Juan Carlos Martinezstaffback

Melanie Zippstaffwhat was that

Juan Carlos MartinezstaffHVAC

Melanie ZippstaffHVAC yes the flooring in the performance base HVAC and replacement of exterior ball it bollards again that is something that the HVAC needs to be done. The flooring maybe doesn't need to be done immediately, but it all needs to be replaced. The KJ field is a request. It's a need from the schools. if the city were to move the property yard off of its current location into two other locations one area is a discussion of one of our parks which would take away some fields which would make this then a bigger priority when you look at this slide you see the hundred thousand for FY27 and then 10 million in FY28 the reason why this particular field or it's actually three fields and a track is so high is because when they built KJ they

buried the construction debris in that area so things float to the top so So excavating that's going to be fun. I know I'm not giving you any list of priorities, just helping you understand. The other three, I'm sorry, the next two are not general fund. So the funding is available. Sanitary sewer lining is vitally important. We have the, what's it called, Orangeburg pipes in the city, so lining them before we need to replace them, highly important. Bicycle wayfinding signage is funded with CNI funds. It's not coming out of the general fund. And then the data centers for the permanent and the backup servers. It's also very important. It's how we do our day-to-day work. Everything's on computer right now.

That doesn't give you a list of priorities, but kind of gives you a better understanding of what they are and why they're in FY27. JC or Paul thoughts yeah just

Juan Carlos Martinezstaffone quick comment and I'll go back to this sheet so there is a little bit of a light at the end of the tunnel right now hopefully maybe not so much for 27 but maybe for 28 so specifically associated with schools if you recall last week actually today so So a week ago, there was an election that was held, and it seems like the incoming administration may be favorable to what has previously been requested two or three times regarding the 1% sales tax directly associated to school CIP, where if locality so choose through a bond referendum, they could impose an additional 1% sales tax. Again, that is exclusively tied to just capital within schools. currently our 1% sales tax generates about 14 million dollars we would assume

that another 1% would generate about that amount maybe a little bit less and that can really offset these amounts that are listed here almost completely if not entirely so that would potentially wipe out that entire row that's listed there from that 1% freeing up general fund dollars for other CIP Again, one checkbox potentially has been checked, as in a potential favorable administration. The General Assembly would still need to pass that if it's brought forward. I think Ms. Sip and others via the legislative program are going to be asking for that to go forward again. So the second checkbox will be the General Assembly passing that in the April-May timeframe. If that does get passed, then it would become law July 1 of 2026.

now have to then have a bond referendum to allow and ask the residents whether they're wanting to do that if that were to happen the timeline there would be November of 26 making it effective July 1 27 or the beginning of FY 28 so this amount is still questionable for FY 27 we would have to fund that or potentially pull debt I know prior language in the potential 1% allowed for a look back we're hoping that that language stays in if it does get passed by the General Assembly and then we would be able to basically refund the general fund anything that had been issued to make up for that so that is a potential it's something that we're hoping happens in the next six to twelve months and then we would you know adjust accordingly

Kirsten Lockharti believe the county boundary survey wraps up in 2027 as well right won't that be when it's finalized for and i i know that that only impacts the city marginally but still the fairfax high school capacity and usage and whether the academy stays etc those questions are all sort of in play as part of the future use case for our schools so maybe that's not that i like you know pushing things further than they need to be but maybe that's a reason for 2027 to remain a planning year before the capital expenditures begin

Melanie Zippstaffyeah yeah i think we would not disagree with you

Matthew Riceyeah i think um in terms of narrative one thing that's been quite positive in my book is the success of certain members of city staff in finding money to do projects and i think every time we're faced with large numbers like this it's very helpful to point out people like miss stanford that

James Featherreally

Matthew Ricehas a magical touch at bringing in large amounts of money to support projects and so i think that we do have really really good staff what i dislike seeing is any time where city council sort of diverges from the suggestions that the good city staff have made and we don't get involved in questions about revenue and tax rates but it seems to be a very difficult task to see most of our neighboring jurisdictions raising rates significantly. Ours have always been at the very bottom. And now there's an even wider gap between our rates and what our neighboring jurisdictions charge their residents. So although everybody's struggling a bit, I think a divergence in eight or nine cents, you know, in a real estate rate from staff suggestion, city manager suggestion,

to what was adopted makes your task extremely difficult. And so I empathize with you and hope over the next four or five months that we see something good happen. But I think it's also fair to acknowledge how difficult the job is in making this kind of planning work with revenue that's significantly below what we might have thought a few years ago. So we don't get involved in the politics of real estate tax. We don't make recommendations about things like that. But I think it's fair to point out that we are in a very difficult position financially based partly on things out of our control and partly based on a decision that we've made about taxation. And I think that's all I should probably say.

James FeatherAnything

Juan Carlos Martinezstaffelse, Ms. Briggs?

James FeatherYou mentioned ARPA and the funds are appropriate. We have a certain amount of time to spend. Is there any risk of clawback of any of that with the current federal administration?

Betsy BriggsNot that I'm aware of.

Juan Carlos MartinezstaffNot that I'm aware of. And as Ms. Sip stated, we were awarded a little bit over $29 million in two tranches in 21 and 22. We actually provided an update to council via budget retreat on Saturday. spent 84% of that. The remaining balance or so, about $4 million, $5 million, is almost exclusively tied to Thies Park, which is still under construction, more than halfway done with an expected completion date of early of 26. So once those invoices come in, we should be almost at a zero balance.

James FeatherThank you. Anything else at this time? Thank you. We look forward to the big book. I know it will be electronic, but...

Melanie ZippstaffAll right. Thank you very much.

James FeatherThank you. Mr. Napty, do you want to have any follow-up discussion? Any thoughts, guidance for the commission?

NaptystaffAt this point, no. Just wanted to let you know that we will send you a link to the CIP in the next couple of days It will be posted as I said, but just help you find it And then we will look forward to Discussing our process with you at our next meeting on November 24th Please at least skim the book before we get to that point and start to identify some of the highlights that we should be looking at But we'll try to apply some structure to that to help you And at that meeting it would be good if we can start to identify if we do want to invite other boards and commissions to meet with us because we have a limited amount of time to to go to this process before we have to be ready to present to City Council in February I

James Featherguess that is a question maybe for for you is how firm is that date for a presentation that the joint work session with City Council it's been relatively early in February since we haven't decided what process might we might want to pursue this year is that hard and fast so I need to have a discussion with the mayor

Melanie Zippstaffthe man who controls the money says it's firm the CFO says it's firm you can see council doesn't approve the

James Featherbudget until May right

Melanie Zippstaffcorrect however the CIP is part of the managers proposed budget your joint discussion with the council is February 3rd I know your recommendation is January 26 but then you you have a discussion with the council on the 3rd and then we present on February 24 and the CIP is part of that budget, yeah, it would be difficult to move things around.

James FeatherBecause we have found in the past when we felt it was important to talk to other boards and commissions and staff getting on schedules. So

Juan Carlos Martinezstaffwe'll stay in touch. Understood. Okay, thank you.

James FeatherIf there's nothing else on that, we will reconvene our regular meeting and go to our staff report.

NaptystaffThank you, Chair Feather, members of the Planning Commission. Looking back to the City Council meeting on October 28th, City Council voted to deny the request of Courthouse Plaza for their proposal to develop part of the site with 315 residential thousand square feet of retail the vote was four to two as a reminder this proposal did not go before the planning commission because it only requested special use permits and special exceptions did not include a rezoning request on november 4th city council had a couple of work sessions of interest one was a presentation on the affordable housing strategic plan which is wrapping up we We will send a link to the planning commission for this document as well.

But for the most part it covers a lot of the same material from the housing assessment that was completed a couple of years ago but gets into more detail with specific actions on two topics related to the comprehensive plan. One is to help encourage development of new affordable housing. And the second is to help protect existing what we call naturally occurring affordable housing. these are existing apartment complexes that are older and tend to have lower rents and as you might recall there is a comprehensive plan action related to this but no specific strategies or actions

Matthew Riceabout how to accomplish it

Naptystaffanother work session item went over the legislative program that was mentioned during the discussion tonight one piece that did not come up in that was or that was presented during the work session last week to city council was support for new programs the availability of affordable housing. Then on November 18th, the next city council meetings would be next week. They'll be having a public hearing on the legislative program and they will receive this presentation on the draft capital improvement program. As we mentioned last time, there will be a public meeting on the solid waste management plan on November 20th. This will be 7 to 8 p.m. at the Catherine Johnson Middle School Library. And lastly, just wanted to remind the Planning Commission that we have a vacancy on the

facade and interiors improvement grant committee position since Commissioner Coleman stepped down. So if anyone is interested in filling that position, please let us know. We'll have an item on the agenda to appoint them. and just as a reminder this this group reviews applications for the grant meetings I believe are held virtually and only as needed as applications come in not a terribly heavily heavy load but if you have questions please let us know as well we get more information from the economic development office who manages that program that's all we have for the staff report tonight

James FeatherI served in that roll for a period of time, and it really is a relatively light lift. So please consider stepping up to that and let Mr. Napty know, and we'll get it on the agenda. Okay. Comments from the commissioners. Ms. Briggs. Ms. Briggs.

Betsy BriggsI enjoyed that meeting and learning about the capital improvement program and looking forward to the release of the draft tonight.

James FeatherGreat. Thank you.

Betsy BriggsNothing for the group. Thank you.

James FeatherMr. Rice. Nothing. I have a question for Mr. Rice. GIS day next?

Matthew RiceYes. GIS day. November 20th on Thursday at George Mason University and we'll have a few members of community development planning there to present and we'll have our GIS manager for the city and our stormwater manager who uses gis balls present we will be enjoying ourselves in the exploratory hall between 1 p.m and 4 p.m and the part that involves the city will be primarily at the end so it'll be about three o'clock to four o'clock that day and the public's invited to come and so if anyone desires to be there if you could look for chair feather and myself or a few other city staff will direct you to the right place thanks thank you

James Featheruh from my perspective i had a lunch the other day with the chair of the county planning commission which i've done a couple times it was always interesting to talk and compare notes we talked a little bit about accessory dwelling units the county's had a program for a number of years and he had some some thoughts that we might want to consider which I'll talk to staff about in how we approach and ultimately how we implement and then assess progress it was interesting discussion there we cover a variety of topics so anyway it's always good to connect up with with him as a result of the community engagement workshop that was hosted by the central Fairfax Chamber of Commerce a couple weeks ago I

received an invitation to speak to the Fairfax Rotary in February and I agreed to do that assuming I'm still chair but we can talk about that but just provide an update on what we do and how we approach planning in the city and I and putting together something. I think I know what I can say. I'm pretty good on my feed. It's only 20 minutes plus 10 for questions. I can do that probably in my sleep, but I want to put together a cohesive package that we're in agreement on. But it was nice to make that connection. That meeting also, a couple of people seemed interested in our work, and since we have a vacancy, it will be interesting to see if that stirs any other interest in filling the vacancy.

Anything else? Sorry?

Matthew RiceMs. Lockhart is up

James Featherfor reappointment to the Planning Commission. We wish it well. All right. If there's nothing else, we will adjourn. Thank you. Thank you.