City Council Meeting
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Before the first agenda item
Catherine ReadAnd whereas Fairfax Village in the city is committed to supporting caregivers throughout our community who improve the quality of life for those who need additional support through the generous gift of their time. Now, therefore, I, Catherine S. Reed, Mayor of the City of Fairfax, do hereby recognize the month of November 2025 as National Family Caregivers Month in the city of Fairfax. And I urge the community to take some time to recognize those among us who provide so much care to those in need and to say thank you, offer our help to lighten their own burdens and to raise up the often invisible labor upon which so many residents in our city depend on a daily basis. And with that, the microphone is yours.
Carolyn SutterfieldThank you. Thank you, Mayor Reed. I'm Carolyn Sutterfield. I'm the At-Logger member for Fairfax Village in the City Advisory Board. And I just wanted to say a couple things. I'll bet we have some family caregivers out there. If so, you're wonderful people. Congratulations on this proclamation. Definitely the devotion of caregivers is the foundation of long-term care at home in America. but we live in an era where families don't always live close together anymore and where professional in-home services are getting harder to find. And in that situation, volunteer-driven community programs like Fairfax Village in the City and the others in the National Village to Village Network are playing an important supporting role,
not only providing services but also helping to combat social isolation among our older neighbors. For many who live alone, villages are their family. So that role is being recognized here in Virginia, and that's what I wanted to tell you. With encouragement from the new Virginia Villages Collective, of which our village is a member, the 2026 budget passed by the General Assembly includes $400,000 for, quote, the creation of pilot programs to reduce the public health risk of social isolation among older Virginians by expanding the availability of villages statewide. The funding will help both to start new villages and to support existing ones. Fairfax Village in the city has applied for a grant to enhance our volunteer training program.