City Council Work Session

music Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. ETC Institute on the community survey. I'm going to recognize Matthew Kaiser our communications director for the discussion Well good evening mayor council members We're excited to be back here before you if you remember we were here this spring to kick off the city's very first Statistically valid community survey which we conducted over the summer I'm joined by the vice president and director of community research from the ETC Institute That's the firm who conducted the survey on behalf of the city and he is going to walk through ETC's findings report which includes some identified priorities and Recommendations for you to consider as we roll into budget season. So with that this is Jason Murado. Thank you

Thanks Matthew, I'm good evening mayor and council. My name is Jason Murado I'm the director of community research at ETC Institute. It's great to be back here I was here in April to give an overview of the process we'll go through to conduct these statistically valid survey and Now we've done it. So today I'm here to walk through the key findings from the survey The full report is very detailed and comprehensive. So today I'll walk through the key findings at a fairly high level I Have just a little background about ETC Institute We're a national leader in providing market research for local governments We've been doing this type of work for over 40 years and in the last 10 years alone We've conducted surveys in more than a thousand communities across the country and that includes a lot of work in Virginia

Some of our longtime clients include the city of Manassas Virginia Beach Norfolk Winchester We recently conducted a parks recreation survey for Fairfax County So this is the type of work that we specialize in This is just an overview of what I'll go through today I'll go over the purpose and methodology of the survey I'll walk through the key findings summarize our main conclusions from the survey and then I'll be happy to answer any questions as well So there are several reasons to conduct a survey like this one is to get an objective assessment of how satisfied residents are with major city services And to determine what residents feel are the top priorities for the community Hopefully this survey will also serve as a baseline for future surveys a lot of communities that we work with conduct these surveys on a regular basis

The most frequent timeframe is every other year and the idea is that you ask a lot of the same questions That way you can measure trends over time and then also know what the current priorities are for your residents And then we're also able to compare your results with other communities across the country So this survey was a fairly lengthy survey it was seven pages in length the printed and mailed version of it on average takes took residents about 15 to 20 minutes to complete the survey The survey was administered by a combination of mail and online to randomly selected households throughout the city and that's our standard methodology for these statistically about community surveys is a random sample by mail and online our goal is to receive at least 400 completed surveys which is a good sample size for a city the size of Fairfax

We had a good response to the survey and we ended up with 425 completed surveys the results of the 400 completed surveys The results of the 425 surveys at the 95 percent level of confidence has a margin of error plus or minus 4.7 percent Essentially that means that if we conducted this survey the same way a hundred times 95 times the results would be plus or minus 4.7 percent from what we're reporting So the results are never perfect even for a statistically valid survey, but the margin of error is small So here we have a map of the city the red dots are households that completed a survey We had a good distribution throughout the city You can see we didn't have many surveys from the eastern side of the city for the most part. That's non-residential area

Although there are a few residential areas kind of in the northern eastern part now We did send some surveys there, but didn't receive any responses But overall we had a good response throughout the city and as you were administering the survey We made sure that the demographics of survey respondents reflects the actual population of the city Especially when it comes to key demographic areas such as age race ethnicity gender and household income So here's what we learned from the survey we found that residents have a very positive perception of the city of fairfax Over 90 percent of respondents rate the city of fairfax as an excellent or a good place to live and to raise and educate children

You'll see in a little bit when we compare your results to other communities that that number is much much higher than our the regional and national average We also found that satisfaction with city services Is much higher in fairfax than in other communities? We'll look at this in more detail in a little bit as well But I wanted to mention that fairfax rate above the u.s average and 46 of the 47 areas that we compared And in most cases your ratings are significantly higher and there were two areas that especially stood out one is that Satisfaction with the overall quality of city services rated 37 percentage points above the u.s average And that's one of the most important questions on the survey because here we're asking residents to take into account all the services that you're providing

And really give an overall satisfaction rating for how well you're doing delivering services And then the area on the survey where you rated the farthest above the u.s average is customer service provided by city employees which rated 47 percentage points above the u.s average and And the top overall priorities are traffic flow and ease of gain around the city and economic development So first we'll look at some overall perceptions that residents have of the city of fairfax Here we ask residents to rate their perceptions of the city in a number of different ways You can see the dark blue arrays of excellent the light blue is good The gray is neutral and we interpret neutral as average or meeting expectations

It's a rating of a three on a five point scale So it's not a bad rating and then the pink are those who give a rating of below average or poor So overall you can see that the positive ratings far away the negative if you look at the top of this chart Over 90 percent of respondents rate the city of fairfax as an excellent or a good place to live and to raise and educate children Other areas that are rated very high were the overall quality of life in the city and the overall image of the city This is another question about more perceptions of the city so here You can see the dark blue are those who are very satisfied light blue is satisfied Gray is neutral which again is at three on the five point scale so average

And then pink are those who are dissatisfied or very dissatisfied satisfied So overall again the positive ratings far away the negative The item in here that stands out to most the most to me is that top row the overall quality of city services Which again that's one of the most important questions on the survey and you can see that nearly 90 percent of residents are either very satisfied or satisfied And only four percent are dissatisfied or very dissatisfied Typically when the ratings are high for the overall quality of city services It obviously means that residents are satisfied with a lot of the more specific services that we asked about in the survey The other most highly rated areas were the overall image of the city the acceptance of diversity and the overall appearance of the city

The only area that had more dissatisfied and satisfied responses was the availability of affordable quality housing We'll get into that in more detail in a little bit But that's a trend we've seen all over the country especially over the past couple of years. So not really a surprise On this question we asked residents how satisfied they are with major categories of city services So here we're asking residents to rate these areas at the big picture departmental level And then later on in the survey we asked about some more specific areas within some of these categories So once again the blue are the positive ratings the gray is average and the pink are the the negative ratings And once again the positive ratings far outweigh the negative

If you look at the top of this chart the highest rated areas are fire and rescue services trash recycling and yard waste The overall quality of voter registration Library services police services customer service from city employees and then parks and recreation programs and facilities The lowest rated area you can see is the overall flow of traffic and ease of getting around the city But even for that you had more positive than negative responses In a lot of cities when we ask this question There'll be at least two or three areas that have more dissatisfied and satisfied responses, but here you can see that's not the case We had a question on the survey that asked respondents if they've contacted the city within the past 12 months

59 percent of respondents have contacted the city in the past four months So for that that group we then had a follow-up question that asked Respondents to rate often city employees display these various behaviors And you can see these results are very very positive The vast majority of those who have contacted the city in the past year felt that see employees were courteous and professional Feel that it was easy to find someone to address their request High ratings to respondents being satisfied with their overall experience with that. They felt the response time was reasonable Most respondents felt they were able to get their question or concern resolved And then most awful feel that city of fairfax employees went the extra mile

And these are people who contacted the city which means they probably had a concern or something They were some issue which is why they contacted the city in the first place Which makes these results especially impressive So we also found that satisfaction with city services is high in all parts of the city So here again, we have a map of the city and we broke the results out by census block group and the dark black Line show the boundaries of the census block group We created a map like this for every question on the survey asked on a five-point scale So there's over a hundred maps in the report This map is for the overall quality of city services and you can see the entire map is blue So this tells us that residents in all parts of the city are satisfied with the overall quality of city services

There's in areas in dark blue were the highest possible rating, but the light blue are positive as well So what sometimes what happens is even if the results are very positive overall Once you break the results into these smaller geographic areas Sometimes you'll see some pockets where residents aren't dissatisfied or feel like they're not getting as good of service as people in other parts Of the city, but you can see here. That's not the case at all This map is for how residents feel about the city of fairfax as a place to live You can see not only is the entire map blue, but most of it is dark blue, which is the highest possible rating so this shows that residents all throughout the city get very high ratings to fairfax is a place to live and

This shows how respondents feel about fairfax as a place to raise and educate children Again, the entire map is blue with almost all of it being dark blue showing that residents throughout the city Feel that fairfax is an excellent place to raise and educate children So I mentioned earlier that satisfaction with city services is much higher in fairfax than other communities The city of fairfax rates above the u.s. Average and 46 of the 47 areas that compared the only area that's not above the u.s. Average is traffic flow But that's actually right at the u.s. Average. So it's not even below And then the city of fairfax rates significantly above the u.s. Average and 44 out of these 47 areas So in other words five percent or more above the u.s. Average

And then you also rate above the regional average in 42 of 47 areas and significantly higher in 38 of those areas So as we go through these next few charts The dark blue line are a city of fairfax residents were either very satisfied or satisfied The light blue are the satisfaction ratings for those in the atlantic region that includes virginia as well as surrounding states And then the gray bar are the satisfaction ratings for residents from all across the country And this is based on a national survey that etc institute conducts every one to two years With about 10,000 randomly select residents all across the country So this first charges for some perceptions of the city And as we go through these I put blue arrows by the places where fairfax rates significantly above both the regional and national average

Red arrows would be for places where you're significantly below the regional or national average But there are there's nothing like that so you'll see there aren't any red arrows in this Um so you can see fairfax rates much higher than other communities as a place to live as a place to raise children as a place to work As a place to live is one of the areas on the survey where you rate it the farthest above the u.s. Average You can see you have a 94 percent satisfaction rating and the national average is just under 50 percent Your ratings are also higher than other communities as a place to visit and as a place to retire But not as much higher so they don't have the blue area arrow they're higher but not significantly higher than other communities

Here are more perceptions of the city You can see in all four of these areas Fairfax rates significantly higher than other communities One of the areas that really stands out is the top row which is that overall quality of city services Which I mentioned is one of the most important questions on the survey You have an 86 percent satisfaction rating you can see the regional and national average are right around 50 percent If you look at that bottom row overall value received for city taxes and fees You have a 58 percent satisfaction rating which is lower than some of the score here received in some of the other areas But you can see that's the case in other communities as well Because the regional and national average are barely above 30 percent

So you're almost double the regional national average when it comes to the value residents feel they're receiving for city taxes and fees This is that question about major categories of city services so here again We're asking residents to rate these areas at the big picture departmental level and you can see in every area Except traffic flow your ratings are significantly above the regional and national average This includes solid waste library services If you look at the third row down customer service provided by city employees That's the area on the survey that rated the farthest above the u.s average you had an 86 percent satisfaction rating The regional and national average are just under 40 percent

You're also much higher than other communities when it comes to parks and recreation The maintenance of public buildings and facilities Sanitary sewer utilities maintenance of streets and sidewalks public education communication And enforcing codes and ordinances Traffic flow is the only area that's not significantly higher than other communities But you can see the ratings aren't bad They're just a little bit below the regional average right at the national average Here comparisons specifically for public safety In most areas your ratings are much higher than other communities What especially stands out here are the higher ratings for For the overall quality of ems services the overall quality of fire and rescue services

And the overall quality of police services When it comes to visibility of police and neighborhoods visibility of police and retail and enforcing local traffic laws The ratings aren't bad in those areas But they're more on par with other communities as opposed to being significantly higher like you are in these other categories This shows how safe residents feel in various situations You can see compared to other communities residents in fairfax feel much safer And this is all situations including how safe residents feel in their neighborhood during their day In their neighborhood at night in retail areas in community parks And then if you look at that second row down just the overall feeling of safety in the community

94 percent of respondents is overall feel safe in fairfax you can see the regional average is 71 percent national average 66 percent And then when it comes to community appearance you can see your ratings are much higher than other communities when it comes to trash and garbage collection yard waste leaf and brush pickup curbside recycling the cleanliness of streets and public areas the condition of sidewalks and enforcing sign regulations for the other three areas the ratings aren't bad But they're more on par with other communities And you can see that includes enforcing the cleanup of trash and debris on private property enforcing the exterior maintenance of residential property enforcing mowing and cutting of weeds on private property

So now we'll look at top priorities We showed earlier how satisfied residents are with major categories of city services As a follow-up question we asked which of these services should receive the most emphasis from city leaders over the next two years And respondents could pick up to four items from this list You can see by a pretty wide margin the top two priorities are traffic flow and ease of getting around the city and then the overall quality of economic development Then you have several areas rated closely together with the next highest priorities being the overall quality of public education maintenance of street sidewalks and infrastructure and enforcing codes and ordinances So this is something we call the important satisfaction analysis

And this rating is this analysis is based on two different types of data both of which we've seen already First we ask residents how satisfied the hour services Then we ask which services are the most important for the city to emphasize So we factor in those two things satisfaction and importance And then we have a mathematical formula that determines which items should be the top priorities Based on that combination of satisfaction and importance So this is for major categories of city services The top overall priorities in pink are traffic flow and ease of gain around the city and economic development The next highest priority is enforcing codes and ordinances We create these types of analysis for more specific areas as well

This is focused on transportation and mobility You can see the top priority is how well traffic signals provide efficient traffic flow Second is the ease of getting around within the city And then third is the availability of sidewalks it's in that green area the medium priority But it just barely missed being in that yellow section This focuses on planning and economic development We saw earlier that economic development was a high priority overall This gets into more detail on that The top overall priority is efforts to improve existing commercial corridors by redeveloping blighted or vacant businesses and shopping centers next highest priorities are efforts to manage and plan for growth and development

And the ability to attract and promote retail businesses and restaurants This focuses on public safety There's nothing in pink in this area which is the very high priority because the overall satisfaction was so high for public safety But there are several areas in yellow so the highest priorities are efforts just overall efforts to prevent crime And the satisfaction ratings were very high when it comes to efforts to prevent crime But it's still an area that residents feel is important which is why it rates this high The other top priorities are visibility of police in retail areas visibility of police in neighborhoods And efforts to enforce local traffic laws such as speeding And then when it comes to community appearance you can see the top priority is enforcing the removal of blighted and abandoned buildings

Next highest priorities are enforcing the cleanup of litter and debris on private property And enforcing mowing and cutting of weeds and grass on private property When it comes to culture and recreation You can see there's nothing in pink or yellow because the satisfaction ratings were very very high for parks and recreation And cultural items But the highest priority among the list are the availability of walking and biking trails And the quality and amount of public art in the city And then when it comes to health and human services You can see the top priority Is efforts to preserve and increase the availability of affordable housing And that's been a high priority really nationwide especially over the past couple years

Next highest priorities are the availability of services supporting persons with mental physical cognitive disabilities and or substance Use disorders in the availability of services to people on a low or fixed income And then here we asked we asked respondents About keeping the current two-year term or going to a four-year term You can see 55 percent of respondents say to keep the current system which is the two-year terms 34 percent said switch to four-year staggered terms And then the other 11 percent said switch to four-year terms where everyone's elected at the same time So that's everything that I had just a quick recap we saw that residents have a very positive perception of the city There are a lot of examples of that throughout the reports, but one of the areas that especially stood out

Was the high ratings for the city as a place to live and as a place to raise and educate children We saw that satisfaction with city services is much higher in the city of fairfax and other communities A lot of examples of that as well, but a couple of areas that especially stood out where the overall quality of city services and customer service provided by city employees and the top overall priorities for traffic flow and ease of gain around the city and overall economic development So obviously very for your first survey very very positive range overall in many many different ways And with that with anyone has any questions. I'll be happy to answer them Thank you so much for the presentation

So are these done generally like every other year what since this is our baseline starting out on on what kind of recurring basis? Who would we expect to do this? The most frequent time frame is every other year Some conduct the survey every year some not as often maybe every three to four to five years But every other year is the most common time frame I think that's a good time frame because it gives you enough time to make changes and see how it impacts the results But then also if you wait too long to do the survey you don't really know why the results change if you only do it every five years say That makes sense comments Councilmember Amos Thank you very much for the presentation and for this information

I wanted to highlight and then follow up with some questions one of the things that stood out to me was Question 30 where it says where do you plan to be living in the next two to five years and 93 percent of people said city of Fairfax? And I think that's a testament to our staff and the incredible team that we have here So I just wanted to thank everyone for your hard work that you do every day My follow-up questions would be So question 22 mentions and I don't know if you have comparative data available here for tonight It says for example how many city council meetings do you attend or watch each year? 50 percent said zero and I can't say I'm too shocked by that, but I wonder how does that compare with other jurisdictions?

That's not a question we asked super often So that's why we didn't have that benchmarking data, but we've asked it before so I can check and see how that compares It's typically low like that those results didn't surprise me a whole lot, but I could Look for some other examples to get some more more detail And another benchmarking question question 40 in what decade where you were born I noticed that it said between 1991 and 2000 it was only four percent is that Traditionally low is that consistent with northern virginia, but inconsistent outside of this region? Do you have comparative data for that? Well for that type of question we're really trying to compare your results to the u.s. Census

So that's typical the questions related to age race gender household income for those we did compare The representation on the survey versus the actual u.s. Census and we had a good good representation for those areas so So so that's yeah, that's that that number matches up with what we would have expected So how many surveys were actually sent out? We mailed the survey to 3,000 households and the reason for that number is the typical response rate for a survey of this length is 12 to 15 percent So we mail survey usually to about seven to eight times the number of households as completed surveys that we need And our goal was 400 completed surveys. So in that case we typically mail to 3,000 Right, so so going back to councilmember Amos's question about why maybe so few people between

In that age group a lot of people don't self select to fill out paper surveys They just don't I mean we we I people self select certain things and if you look at the demographics, you tend to just skew older homeowners white English speaking Which is I mean that makes up that is makes up a lot of our city, but they're also people who tend to fill out paper surveys So I do think it's representative look at the demographics and you look I it is But people just self-select how you approach them if you did if you did it on tick-tock or instagram or something It might have skewed the other way, right? So so just understanding that how people self-select what they participate in Right had a large impact. I think on who who participated questions comments councilmember peterson just to build on that

how much Do you know about the difference between respondents and non-respondents? um As far as how they would answer the questions or Well, these are a combination of both the demographics and how they answer questions. I mean is so I mean there's a large Non-respondent group obviously right and the question is how different are they than the respondent group? Um, they shouldn't be very different at all We consider these results statistically valid and there's two things that have to happen in order for results to be considered statistically valid One is households are selected at random to participate in the survey And the other is that the demographics of survey respondents need to reflect the actual population of the city

So if you do those things these results should reflect the entire city within that margin of error I mentioned early on so it's not perfect, but Definitely a smaller margin of error. So these results really should represent the entire city even though it is just the 425 completed surveys and that's both in terms of demographics and responses um demographics and As how as far as how they answer the questions to you, yes, that what you mean should the responses reflect the actual population of the city Is that yeah, right? Yes, yeah, absolutely. Yep And I'm not sure whether this is something you've Taken a look at as you've done these in other areas whether you've gone back into the non-respondent pool and then comparative analysis

But is this a pretty typical result where you find that based on this kind of a survey you have Um effectively represented both demographics and response Uh, yes, absolutely. Yeah, yep. Yep. We pay super close attention to the demographic of survey respondents That really is one of the keys in order for these results to be considered statistically valid So for every survey we do No matter what city or county or part of the country it is We're making sure that the demographics of survey respondents reflect the actual population of that area based on the u.s census So we're tracking age race ethnicity gender household income as we're administering the surveys And I just have one more question right now, though. Maybe we'll circle back after others have a chance here

the is this available For public review have we posted this To the website or do we have a plan to do that? I appreciate that we're doing this through an open session this evening But is this going to be available otherwise? Yes, it's it'll be posted tomorrow Um, the and you may not remember I thought I shared last week you all got an advanced copy so you could Prepare for this, but we didn't want to Send it out early without context, which is why we wanted to wait until the presentation You could ask questions, etc The full report all the maps copy of this presentation all will be on the website tomorrow Thank you Councilmember Hardy Chandler and then councilmember Mcquillen Thank you, um, I think the findings are very validating in terms of the quality of service that

um our city staff provide and certainly the Safety services and all of that I think issues around the traffic is again validating a concern that we're I'm very much aware of I'm curious about the Qualitative data so there's a the all of the comments Are included and I'm just wondering if there was a qualitative analysis to identify some of the themes from the from those comments and If those Would be synthesized In in in a digestible way, right? We haven't done any analysis like that, but we could do something like that Just looking through the comments They generally reflect what we saw from the quantitative data But the open-ended comments do always tend to skew a little more negative Anytime any community where we where we ask that so that's typical

But we could do some type of Yeah more analysis to kind of break out some summaries But just looking through it it really just kind of gave it a little more in-depth detail on what we saw with the with the quantitative results Thank you. I also noticed that there were several areas where people were both very satisfied and identified those same areas as in need of attention What is the typical interpretation of that? Is it is it that the need of attention is to maintain that level of satisfaction or Because it certainly can be both right things can for example services to seniors was identified as something that people were generally satisfied with but also Wanted to be a continuing area of attention

How do you interpret that when it shows up in both categories? Yeah, well, I would interpret that as as residents in that case are very satisfied with whatever service we're talking about But they still want to make sure that level of service is maintained Another good example of that would be Efforts to prevent crime We saw that residents were very very satisfied with that residents clearly feel safe in the city in all situations But that was still rated as one of the most important areas of public safety because they want to make sure that that remains That remains as a top priority So okay, and I think my last comment is not so much to you, but to my Council members is just thinking about the high priority or the very high priority areas and how we might look forward to

aligning these with strategic goals and bringing them back to a broader sort of governance view because I feel like this information is extremely helpful and to the extent that we can not just Review it as part of a report, but actually integrate it into strategic planning I think that would be a great way to use some of those priorities and Again, just wanting to say how wonderful it was to see those areas that were significantly higher than our region and the nation and to thank the staff for all they do to Provide that level of service to our city Mayor may I just interject one thing so councilmember hardy chandler? You asked about the the Open-ended comments or the written comments I've already had the discussion with staff. They they have not yet seen them again because we haven't distributed the report

But i've already prompted them that they'll be need to review all of those um for Things that may affect their area or comments relative to their area so we can If there are things that maybe need attention or things that we need to respond to we'll be able to do that So that I just want to let you know that is going to be taking place, but it has not yet And I definitely appreciate that just a heads up of course as with any information some of it says I love this I hate this right so you know while some of that is contradictory. I do think that there are probably some themes That can surface from that that may be helpful for discussion At least to flesh out the quality the quantitative data

Councilmember McCuilla and then we'll go to councilmember hall I had to agree with those sentiments that we need to take this information use this data to update our strategic goals That's um vital. I I agree with that completely Were any non-english speakers sampled? The survey was available in multiple languages. I I think all the surveys will fill out or filled out in english, but I can go back and double check And that's pretty typical usually Most households have someone in the house that speaks english so usually that person will fill it out on behalf of the household But the survey was available in multiple languages But I i'll double check but I appreciate they're all filled out in english wonderful. I just was curious. Thank you

councilmember hall Yes, thank you I think this there's a lot of really really great data in here and I think You know, we can go through and individually dissect each one of these pages and kind of identify areas where You know, we might need more attention. Let's say in lawn maintenance or code enforcement or things like that Which I think is really really critical information for our staff um and Certain areas where I think you know, maybe we don't have efficient trash flow. I'm not trash flow. I'm sorry traffic flow um And obviously areas where sidewalk improvements might be needed so I think While we might be able to identify some of these on our own and with our transportation staff I think these are some really key areas to be able to help zone

And hone in on where we need to do things and where we could maybe in for enforce speeding and other traffic laws A lot of my questions have been asked already, but I was curious So the 425 total respondents And you said that if correct me if I'm wrong you would sent 3 000 surveys out and then Of the and and I know I personally did not receive a survey, but I went online and I completed it anyway As did other people that I shared it with so i'm curious of the 3 000 households that were Targeted for lack of a better word how many of those Actually responded to the survey So the the 425 completed surveys are from that sample of 3 000 households that we randomly selected to participate Now we did receive

37 completed surveys from those who are not part of the random sample So they didn't receive a survey in the mail, but they took the survey online either They saw through social media or you know just saw the link wherever they saw it Those results are not statistically valid so we didn't include them in this report But we can provide those results separately just as kind of basic tabulated data Then you can always compare those results to these sometimes the demographics for the non-random sample are Not necessarily representative of the city so the results could be skewed But sometimes they are a good representation. So that's kind of a separate set of data That's not a part of this, but we'll send those results separately

Okay, so just just to make sure I heard that correctly The people that responded that were not invited to the survey are not part of any of this information. This is just the statistically valid survey respondents Right, that's exactly right. Yep. Okay. Thank you. That's really helpful to know Yeah, I would definitely be curious to see that information Because as we all know some people take surveys for a reason because they want to share their opinion or be heard So I think that's really helpful information I did have one other question and I am certainly not a statistics person by any means But I did notice that on the map It appeared that like you had said on the I'm going to call it the right portion of the map. I don't know if it's north or west when we're looking at it

I guess that's technically the eastern side of the city It seemed like there were very few respondents from over there But you know of the handful of people that responded there. It seems like their responses Essentially colored the whole section of those neighborhoods So everything kind of over along picket road And it just makes me wonder how Accurate for lack of a better word that representation Actually is of those number of households over there And I don't know if that's information that you can provide of you know, let's say there are 1700 houses over there and we got responses back from eight of them is that a statistically valid sample for that section of the city or is that on its own then not considered

Something that is statistically valid Right For those maps we broke the results out by census block group So those are fairly small groups as far as population goes now the one areas to east is much wider because it's a much less densely populated area Whereas areas that are more densely populated the census block group is smaller It's interesting to look at the results broken out by census block group, but but each group by itself I would not consider Statistically valid because the sample is probably too small to look at it that way But it does just give you a good feel for how the responses vary across the city is the way I would look at those maps Yeah, okay, well i'm happy that 425 was Was what was received back out of the 3000 obviously?

I hope it I wish it was going to be more But um, I think it's valid and and very helpful information overall. So thank you councilmember amos And just a quick comment because I know uh, the number one issue overall cited was traffic flow we are doing the old town circulation study Uh, so that steering committee is going forward shout out to chloe in the back hanging out But wanted to make sure that there are a number of items here that were flagged as concerns that we are already in the progress of examining and Potentially having solutions here shortly. So just wanted to bring that up as well All right in the quip mr. Foster I just wanted to say and I appreciate the comments from council members

About the work of the staff um, I think for me um, I think the two things that jason highlighted Which were the overall quality the high ratings for overall quality of services and then the actual customer service provided so far above the national average and the and the actual I believe you said the customer service the the difference between what our folks are rated the national average was the highest a difference of all the things on the on the survey I think that is a Testament to the staff the work that's done you would not have high quality services without the staff and the fact that those community recognizes their hard work and recognizes the quality of customer service that they provide

um is I think one of the biggest takeaways and so I appreciate The comments that the council members shared this evening, but I just I wanted to to make a point of saying that this evening And then the other thing I would say is as you know, we have um, our Our budget open house coming up there will be survey Results information that will be a part of that and then at your upcoming a budget retreat We will also use this information to inform The work that we'll be doing there so Your comments as far as updating the strategic Goals and objectives are from our perspective on staff is right on point as far as how we should be using this data And we're already we will already be making steps to Include that in the work that we're doing to help you with your decision making

So I just wanted to point that out as well Thank you very much for those comments any other comments councilmember peterson Going back to the open-ended responses Would it be possible? For those to be cross walked to demographic They could be yeah, they could be cross they could cross references with the demographics Yeah, that might be helpful. There's a lot of them, right I don't know how many pages all right. Yeah, there's about 20 pages of open-ended comments So there there is a lot be nice to know how that kind of summarizes and what the pattern is and how it cross walks back and then I Think I already have Half of the answer to this next question, but I'm curious what the experience has been post survey and I know this is beyond what you do as a matter of scope, but for any of these

They potentially Are a starting place for exploring further Why the response came out the way it did and what that really means we have Very highly summarized information here so on page nine the one Observation that came out the lowest of that entire group was a city is that is moving in the right direction So in addition to kind of taking that back for further discussion Council level I'm just curious if you've had any Experience on the methods and mechanisms that have been used by the recipients of this work in other places to dig deeper in these areas All right Yeah, that's I mean one thing we can always do is run cross tabs Which we've talked about already where we break the results out

By demographic groups to see if there are differences based on Newer residents versus long time residents or based on the age of respondent you know those types of things I Think a lot of cities Staff reviews kind of like you've heard already reviews the kind of reviews the results of the department level and then kind of uses that to decide Which areas they should make improvements in But as far as drilling deeper just into this data Some of the cross tabs I think are a way to do that to see if there are differences based on the type of people who responded to the survey well, then and then a follow-up which may be for city manager is Whether you are able to scope to do that kind of follow-up and if so

Whether the council might flag some set of these things i'm not suggesting everything but some set where we Think possibly it would be helpful to get a little bit more on any particular item Well, we've already talked about the cross tabs Which he's was jason's mentioned and he is going to provide that we just haven't Discussed the ways in which we want the data parsed there's only certain ways. It's not like it's not unlimited There's only certain ways we can parse it as basic basically based on demographics and so they're prepared to do that So to your question about digging deeper So that we could certainly do that I think I think I agree with jason. I think that the Cross tabs will get us some of that but then but you know in a survey of this type, you know

To get to probably the level of detail perhaps that you want for certain things or what you might be interested in It probably it would require more focused survey Questions or follow-up survey on specific topics specific questions so Certainly, I think that We could get etc to do some follow-up things if that's once we have a chance to digest get get additional feedback feedback so like councilmember hall said we'll get the feedback from those who Completed the survey but aren't considered to be statistically valid because they self-selected and see how that compares and just like if we get feedback Whether it's at a public public hearing at the budget town hall We do something online on survey monkey. It's data points that we can collect may or may not be statistically valid

But it's still information that we can use But if you're if you're wanting to get something more more valid from in that perspective Then I think probably the way to do it is to Do some additional focused Survey so get to get etc to do some follow-up but this is something we could certainly do and We should I I'll have to double check with our cfo, but I'm sure that we've um, what we allotted to do the survey I I suspect there's some additional funds left that we could do some follow-up if that's the desire And that's helpful and it sounds like the next step would be there's just kind of a first level of looking a little bit further that is already kind of in um process, but Yes, my my last question

Which is maybe a hard one for you is big picture uh for this survey any survey like this Do you have any guidance? for us or members of the public who read this in terms of caution about reading too much into anything or not reading enough in what's your guidance in terms of how people should interpret this kind of information Well, I would keep in mind these results they're statistically valid which means they do represent the entire city and they are they are residents perceptions you know residents just perceptions of these various services so just keep that in mind Those those important satisfaction tables show the areas that we determine that residents feel the top priorities to focus on

Um And then I just would also mention how high the these how positive the results are overall They're extremely positive really across the board in all different areas Especially a lot of the areas we talked about I relate the customer service and the overall quality of city services So those are just some of the main things I would take away from the survey Any other questions or council member hall? Thank you. Just one other question that popped in my head Based upon where the 3000 surveys were sent to Of the 425 that were received are there any areas that were not That didn't complete them that would have helped with additional data? I mean, I I recognize on the map where things are but are there certain areas that you feel were

underrepresented or uh, you know didn't respond that might have made this more useful from a overall perspective or it's statistically valid and that's sufficient I don't think there are any areas that were significantly underrepresented um You know, we had fewer surveys from the east side, but that's also a far less populated area So I think that was to be expected So I don't think there's any areas that were vastly underrepresented either geographically or or demographically And that really is the key for these results being statistically valid is that the the demographics of those who fill out the survey reflects the actual population of the city Okay, thank you for clarifying Any other council member bates

Thank you a couple things first off uh your comment about perception um kind of makes me think of as You know the many others here probably recall reading about surveys where they would um that ask people about their perceptions of Obamacare versus and then ask them about their perceptions of the affordable care act and the results ended up being wildly different Even though they're the same thing so that um, you know something kind of keep in mind and you know that we've kind of seen that before But overall, I think that it's very clear that residents are very satisfied with the job their employees do public works first responders parks and recreation You know across the board it seems like they're

uh Very you know it comes across that our staff are very dedicated And care about the city so I want to thank our staff for that. Thank you All right any other questions or comments all right Well, thank you very much for the survey and for the presentation And I think all of us feel pretty good up here for being validated by the 425 households who think The city's doing a pretty darn good job. So thank you very much Ms. Shinneberry. Yep. Thank you. Thank you Okay, our next item is discussion of possible charter amendments. I'm going to recognize brian foster the city manager for the discussion All right. Thank you. Um, I hope to keep this uh, very brief um I've raised this issue. We've this is a been a topic before just conceptually about amending the charter or not

What is driving the discussion this evening is that? Um, there is as we as you we learned and as we discussed during the budget process last year There is a charter restriction on the ability to increase the transit occupancy tax Which is the tax you pay when you stay in a hotel or motel in the city Um, and so that's so if we want to have the option to raise that uh As as potential for revenue in the coming budget for next fiscal year Um, then now is the time we need to go through the process of amending the charter. So um, if melissa will go to the next slide So there's there were uh, so there are three things Um, that we heard in prior prior discussions transient occupancy tax, which is capped at four percent

We would remove language and that's uh, that says provided that such tax shall not exceed four percent on the amount Charge for the occupancy of any room occupied. That's what the charter says. We would just suggest that that language be stricken There was also in previous conversations There was seemed to be a fairly unit unanimity among council About removing the compensation limit for boards and commission members That's capped at fifty dollars per meeting if that's desired We would strike the language in an amount not to exceed fifty dollars per meeting And then the third item is which we referenced is if we're going to go and do a charter amendment We would suggest cleaning up the language

And which is in sections 3.1 and 5.5 that still reference that we have local elections in may and new council members take office in july Um, there's you know, it's you as you know november elections are effect But it's one it's just a it's a would be a cleanup provision um the only so staff has um I say no opinion this is all obviously would be council driven if you want to do it From a process standpoint If you wish to pursue this any of these or any others That aren't on this list We would we after we have discussion and there's there's consensus then we would Put a resolution on the consent agenda at your next meeting to introduce No action is just you introduce it you would set a public hearing for your october 28th meeting

At that meeting you would take public comment on the proposal And then you would take a vote to approve or or not as the case may be But assuming you approve that you want to move forward then that gives us time to then present that to our Legislators and they'll have time to introduce in the upcoming general assembly that starts in january And then if assuming that it passes would become effective july 1 of 2026 which means we would know that uh At the end of the session whether it's been approved and the governor signs it So from a budgetary's perspective specifically related to the transit occupancy tax We would know well in advance of adopting our budget whether that's an option for us or not

So we are not suggesting any other changes Um, and really the only one we are focused on and the reason we're bringing this up is strictly about the transit occupancy tax which Based on prior discussions That seemed to be everybody would like to have that option doesn't it doesn't obligate you to raise it It just gives you the option to do it by removing the cap Happy to answer any questions council member amos Thank you for bringing this forward and and I am in favor of all of these I guess my question would be just clarification of process for the boards and commissions when it comes to compensation So if we remove that language What would go in its place? What is the compensation would that be if would that be something we discuss next budget?

Yeah, you would counsel would then have the option to set that for at whatever level that you feel is appropriate And you would do that by either res I don't know if that's a resolution or ordinance But you would do that you would take action at a future date to do that All of this all of this would do Just like transient occupancy tax. There is an absolute cap So if you wanted to pay say for example planning commissioner $75 a meeting you can't do that because the charter has a cap of $50 So all this would do is remove the cap and then you could Once it's approved and becomes law in july of 2026 you would then have the option To then take action at that point to set a different compensation level should you so choose. Okay. Thank you. That's all I wanted to know

council member peterson uh Two questions first to build on the last one presumably At that future point We would take up the question of which boards and can actually are eligible. That's right. Yep because as everybody knows it's very right now Yeah On the first question just to clarification Uh, and perhaps this is a question for the future and that is the treatment of um short-term uh Rentals airbnb, etc Were they to be allowed would this cover them or would it require something different in order to cover them? How are they treated? They the Well, currently as you know, they're not I believe they're not allowed right in the city, but should they be allowed then yes This would apply or you can have this apply to them as well

So that could be a future income source If that's a if that's an option the council wants to do, but it would apply it would apply to them as well and I think along the lines of the first question we talked about with boards and commissions presumably the way in which that would be implemented would be up to the council through resolution motion whatever means so we could decide to have differential rates, but absolutely you can you can have there's no obligation for due to do compensation if you wish to do Compensation you're currently limited to fifty dollars So you remove the limitation you can do whatever you see fit and you do not have to do the same for each board of commission Well, but for transit occupancy, let's say at some point in the future. We do

allow Airbnb type things It would be up to us to decide whether they are treated the same as hotels or differently I would want to consult with the city attorney, but I believe it is a Because it's a transient occupancy tax. It would it applies equally to all who you who when you levy the tax So it's like I don't think it makes a distinction um in that regard so like hotel versus motel versus um Airbnb the the the transient occupancy tax the rate would have to be the same for all But that's something we would double check in any event at the appropriate point sure we would need to double check that yes But again, you wouldn't be you wouldn't be making any decisions on that for several months

First you have to decide whether you want to ask to for the cap to be removed and then You then have to have a public hearing and a vote And then general assembly has so there's there's multiple steps to get to that point And so this would not be a decision point for you Until next spring before you adopt the budget if you want to change the rate That's the earliest you could make a change assuming that a charter amendment is adopted And I don't want to get too far in the weeds and we may have covered this earlier, but what is the duration That defines transient in terms of less than 30 days great councilmember hardy chandler and Thank you for the reminder that it isn't a commitment right in terms of the amendment

but a question was raised also in terms of perhaps comparison of the transient occupancy tax versus travel and tourism can you speak to that is there any any relationship or Implications of these one versus the other in in mean in can you clarify that make sure I understand tax right? Are you talking about the email you received? They're one in the same so what she's referring to Is so you received a correspondence from one of your eda commissioners who happens to be the general manager of one of our lodging facilities supportive of this supportive of this change what she was asking is Or suggesting is that you could dedicate a portion of an increase Whatever that portion council so would like to designate you don't have to but if you were you could designate a portion

Specifically towards tourism related activities, so it would give it a sort of an essence a guaranteed funding source If council wishes to do that not obligated to not obligated, but you could do that should you desire Options options and you could quite honestly you could if you wanted to do that today A portion of what you currently Levy you could do that right now just Is all of the revenues generate it just goes to the general fund as a general fund revenue To help pay for all of the services that the city provides excellent. Thank you councilmember hall Thank you, um, can you please remind us what roughly a change from four percent to let's say ten percent of this tax would be revenue wise

and then Let's say we consider this proposal of two percent what what that number would equate to Sure, so councilmember hall currently, uh, we are capped at four percent That four percent is equating to about four hundred and fifty thousand dollars So on average one percent equates to about a hundred and ten hundred and twelve thousand So if you go all the way up to ten percent It'd be a little bit over a million dollars in potential revenues associated with the transit occupancy tax yep into in total so a delta of like six hundred yeah Okay, and then roughly two percent of that would be about two hundred and twenty thousand dollars or there about 250 or so Okay Sorry, I might have misheard you. So okay. Thank you

Of course I would point out that Changing the tax rate is one thing if a hotel closes that impacts it if we open new hotels that Impacts it so setting the rate and having projections is based on nothing changing from what it is today But should a hotel close that would mean less than if we add hotels that would mean more So it's just good thing to remember Councilmember amos Just for a quick point of clarity on to follow up on councilmember hall's question Does the state have a cap? Because I know we kind of have a self-inflicted cap on our end because of the charter does the state have a cap for I would need I Would need to double check, but I do know that there are Localities that are in the 10 to 12 percent range. So okay if there is a cap

I would assume it's at least or it's no less than that, but I would need to Follow up and double check for you. Thank you One of the things that we talked about previously that is not on this list It related to boards and commissions we had had a discussion earlier this year About the requirement to be a registered voter in order to apply for board and commission And when we were talking about the diversity pool of our applicants You know I made the observation that our Our residents are often long time green card holders So they are not eligible to register to vote, but many of them own homes and have lived here for a very long time But that one requirement of being a registered voter does not allow them to

Apply for a board or commission And we had kind of a discussion. It's not on this list So I'm just checking in to see if this is something you want to add to this list or just kick it to the future councilmember Bates Definitely something I'd like to add to the list Councilmember Amos Me as well. I won't bring up the year thing. I'll let it go, but yes Yeah, but I'm on board for that councilmember Hardy Chandler Councilmember Peterson just clarification. What does it mean to add it to the list? Of charter changes we'd have to change it, right? So there yes, so what the mayor is referencing is I believe that's in section three There's a provision for both elected office and appointments to board and commissions a requirement

That you must have been a resident for a year and a registered voter In order to be a point so you technically by charter you cannot appoint Anybody to a boarding commission that is either lived here less than a year or is not a registered voter and so If that's the desire We would just ask that that language Be removed as well, and so we would show that so There were three things on the chart If you're if council is an agreement of all three We would have that and then this would be a fourth thing that we would put in the resolution And what I would suggest to council if there's you know if there's anything else That or anything else now's the time to do it Because you're you're you'll in essence be time barred if you don't if you don't go through the process now

You will have to wait an entire year before you'd have the option again to potentially amend the charter for any other item so if qualification for appointees is a desire It's easy enough to add to the list and what what we would do is we'd include in the resolution It would be part of the public hearing you would get public comment and then you would vote on the resolution to to forward that for inclusion in a charter amendment And the specific proposal is simply to remove Remove the requirement to be a registered voter and just a reminder what is or are the requirements to be a registered voter You have to be 18 you have to be a us citizen and I think and can't not be a convicted felon I think that's the the off the top of my head. Those are the three major things

So in this case, we're waiving the requirement to be a us citizen effectively. Is that what we're proposing? I'm not proposing I'm But that's my discussion I mean, so yeah Yeah, essentially so I'm not sure if you think about the demographics you think about um of this community um between probably george mason faculty spouses of faculty things like that there are likely a large number of residents and I think that's what the mayor alluded to Who cannot vote because they are not us citizens they are green card holders. They are you know they they For they for and they pay taxes they own property etc. But legally you could not appoint them um to a border commission Just by virtue of the fact that they are

Are not registered to vote so in that case and it's a legal issue for them Not just because they haven't chosen to register to vote. They are not eligible to vote Presumably, uh if this went on the list we'd have an opportunity for further discussion So sure it's all it would be so when so What we're what i'm asking what we're asking for this evening is basically consensus That you want these to be in the resolution to get public comment And we would have a public hearing you still have to vote you would vote on october the 28th And much like the others it does not obligate you to appoint people who aren't registered voters It just gives you the option Because you are barred right now from doing that so that's all any of these changes are doing is basically

removing a limitation and giving you more flexibility But it's not obligating you to do anything it's whether council then at a future time chooses to avail itself of that option uh I mean i'd honestly love to hear what the other council members Have to say on this who haven't had a chance yet to speak up council member mcquillen I Think I would like to know more about the history as to why that was a requirement for our boards and commissions in the first place and so I can Actually, I understand the appeal to be able to Make use of some great talent here So i'm not completely adverse to it But I think I would like to know more information about the history of why this wasn't done previously

I'm not sure we can provide any history I would have to go back and look my I believe it's been In the charter since it was enacted in 1976 And so it's the same reason why I couldn't tell you why we have a limitation on transit occupancy tax and other communities don't it goes back to To um in part because virginia Um Is a dylan rule state so you can only do what state allows you no two charters are the same and um So why some places can get to do something and others don't I I can't answer that it's just Generally, it's what was asked or not asked of the general assembly if I had to guess Um a lot of places it's like when it's time to our we we base it on somebody else So if I had my experience tells me that a likely answer i'm not saying it is the answer

But a likely answer is that we copied this from somebody else that some of these charter provisions And that's what they had and nobody really questioned it at the time so it's been in the charter since this charter was adopted in 1976 Councilmember amos Before I go, I don't know if councilmember hall did you I can't tell if you have your hand raised I wanted to check with you before I talk okay councilmember hall Thank you. Yeah, I didn't have my hand raised. I just I thought I would be next so thank you um I I don't think i'm opposed to it But I just would like I think a little bit more time to think it through and and process it just to understand exactly what the Downsides would potentially be I I can understand the upsides of it, but I just want to make sure there's not something i'm

Missing by just agreeing to put it out there and then not being able to Take that back without having additional thought behind it Thank you councilmember amos just for Additional context on why I support it as many as all of you know my wife She only became a citizen a couple years ago, but she had already had her masters in international relations Her brother came over here, and he's a director her mom transitioned over here, and she was a lawyer So we have this talent pool that now we're not able to tap into for our bacs With extremely qualified people I mean Moreno was essentially working for the county and then trying to see if I got the timeline wrong or not was she a citizen already? That's my bad, but

so we're we're missing out on the Like a county employee someone with a masters in international relations and all these qualifications Because of one requirement and she wouldn't be able to serve on for example Our health board or any of our vacancies that we're still trying to fill so that it's just a bit of a personal note for me I completely understand where councilmember hall is coming from as well I don't know if the process for that would be can we add it to Add it with these and then if we feel uncomfortable that day we can remove it on october 28th I'm assuming that's what the process would be like because I know this is a bit of a timeline issue That that's correct councilmember you you don't have to so again

This is not obligating you to do anything You this is a process. This is a this is a process. This is a timing issue If you want to have the again all At least to what you're discussing so far Not that you might throw come up with other ideas, but what you're discussing so far all of these are limitations That you would like to be removed your limitation on the ability to levy a higher tax a limitation on being able to compensate board and commission members a limitation on who you can appoint to boards and commissions Should you desire does not obligate you to do any of those things you don't have to raise the tax you don't have to raise the pay for for Boards and commissions you don't have to appoint people who aren't registered voters you still have that option

even if you were to Have this change to the charter so if if And I understand you haven't maybe discussed this one as much as the others and you may want more time to think about it That's perfectly acceptable My suggestion would be if you want the opportunity Then I would suggest that you put it in the resolution That's introduced have your public comment. You can hear what residents say whether they are for or against it or They choose not to weigh in and then when it comes time to vote you can then choose to either approve it or not approve it So you're not again. It's not obligating you to do anything. It's just giving you the option Melony reminded me that you also I think have some you have

I say internal but of council approved Processes or things that you want requirements for board and commissions when people apply and so forth So if you want to put that limitation on your yourself You can certainly do that, but it's not a charter restriction so again What I would say just in general about the charter is anytime you can Anytime you can remove a limitation It just gives you the option to do things that you don't have the option to do today Does not obligate you to but if you want flexibility to do other things then removing These types of limitations gives you that ability Thank you council member hall If we were to do that is that something that then would need four votes like all individual items of these would need four votes in order to pass

Or is it a three three that gets a split tie? How do charter changes work? Can you please remind me? um If it's a resolution So I believe I will want to verify with the city attorney and um And we can have that for you next week or actually I can send it to you before next week But for resolutions, I believe a resolution only requires a majority of those present in voting So in this case if there were a tie the mayor would be eligible to break a tie Um, if that's uh, if that's how the votes landed Okay, thank you. Yeah, i'd like a little bit more time to think about this before we add it and then have to vote or not vote for it Well, you don't have to unfortunately council member hall You do not have time to think about whether or not to put it in the resolution

Because we need to introduce get that introduced next week to meet our timeline As i've said before doesn't obligate you not requiring you It still gives you that time to think about it, but if it's not in the introduced resolution Then it's not possible to even consider it it needs to be in the introduced resolution That's advertised for public hearing. So that's Really all we're asking about tonight Councilmember hardy chandler Yes, and I would support getting it into the hearing so we can have the public hearing and have Um, what we talked about a lot and that is the community input So I I definitely support that My question is about when you say Present and voting on the 28th. Does that include virtual presence?

It does okay Councilmember peterson Do we know if and if so how many other jurisdictions in virginia have done this? I don't have that information. I mean we it would take a review of every charter Uh to see if there's restrictions such as that in other charters So I can't speak to that. I mean it's something we could attempt to find out, but it's not a I would say it's not readily available But it's information we could ascertain I mean my Reaction is really if there was a way would be helpful to have a little bit more time to Learn more about this and understand what to do with this. This is the first time. I've certainly heard anything about this this evening And it's a sufficiently um A big issue that um

I think it needs some homework behind it Again None of these are staff driven other than The transit occupies tax is not necessarily staff driven. We are just making sure that you are aware This is you've talked about this and this is a requirement if you want that option If you want the options for these other things, it's it's the same rules apply in terms of the process for amending your charter If you care to amend the charter Whether you include one all or none If and if it and of course the answer is none, then we we won't that we would not put anything out There would be no public hearing so we we just need direction To know to help you have these options available to you Council member hardy channel

So for the original three, um, can I ask my colleagues if there is consensus around those three? Just to start Right there's consensus there. So what we're really talking about is potentially adding this fourth element as a a Limitation removal so we have that on the three it's the fourth Council member peterson again. This is on the possible fourth one. We're I think challenged by The limit on the amount of time we've had here to look into this. I just did a quick search for what it's worth Virginia law states that to serve on a commission a person must be a qualified voter I think And that may be just for a state commission, but there's actually language here about local commissions as well

Just be nice to understand a little bit more clearly another city attorney is not here where things stand in terms of State law and then there's local practice but state law on this and I don't know the answer, but I wonder Well, it sounds like that's not the will of the council to move forward so in a three three situation It fails anyway, so I think we just won't worry about it Councilmember Hardy-Chandler just to offer a possible option. Could we put it in the resolution with the caveat that pending legal review or You know, but you know brian takes a look at and says okay. This is not possible. Could we do that? I Think again, it has to be the will of the council and they would appear that there are three three

So I don't see that anyone's going to do that Councilmember McQuillen Um, it's it's a shame it wasn't included on this staff report because if it had been then I would have had a little bit more time time to do some research on that topic and I would have felt a little bit more comfortable moving forward on Pushing through to the resolution even though we don't have to adopt it. It was just clarified That it wouldn't take it would take a three foot three three vote broken by the mayor who we know wants this so um It we know what will happen if it gets there so at this point I'm comfortable not moving forward with that but with the three that we have already Known we're going to be discussed this evening. Thank you

councilmember peterson. I just have a quick Clarification if I might not that it changes my support for the transit occupancy thing, but the other thing just to clarify Transit occupancy versus tourism and again, I'm disadvantaged by doing iPhone research here, but For fairfax county just to clarify the total transient occupancy tax for business In fairfax county is calculate rate rate of seven percent two percent for general transient occupancy tax plus two percent for tourism plus three percent for regional transportation That can you help maybe me understand whether any of that has any bearing on what we do here because there are three different Taxes that seem to be related to transient occupancy in the county of fairfax

That's the nuances between cities and counties as far as so what because cities have authority that counties do not And this is one of those As far as how it's because they're getting their Their their authority through state code whereas we get ours through our through our charter That's the so again. It's another question um, we can double check for you um, uh, but As far as I I don't I do not believe there's any legal obligation Um, for us to to direct Any portion of our transit occupancy tax to any specific purpose unless council wishes to do that The the question is whether or not you want the ability to have a rate higher than four percent Which is what this was is what this amendment or this proposed charter change would do

I support that um, but I also support doing whatever extra homework we need to do so that when we sort it out We do that in an informed manner um so Okay, so Mayor if I may oh, sorry Councilmember amos Sorry, I was just saying that I was just clarifying that it was a three moving forward. I think you were about to ask that anyway I'm just It's this I'm just looking for head nodding. So this is what this is what i'm hearing and what we are planning to do the city attorney will be preparing resolutions to do the three things we had on the chart, which is to remove the limitation on transit transit occupancy tax to remove the limitation on boards and commission and then the cleanup language that still is referencing may elections in june assumption or july assumption of office

That's what we will we will prepare Uh, and those will be on so you've already seen your preview of the agenda for the 14th This was not on there because you hadn't had this discussion But that will be on your consent You are not taking action on the resolution the consent agenda item is strictly to introduce it as it's our normal process Once it's introduced As part of that motion, you will be setting a public hearing for october the 28th That's where you will be getting public comment on those three items And then you will take action after the public hearing on those three items whether or not you wish to move forward As part of this and what we will have for you um, and we will send out is these the questions about the

limitations if there's any limitations or requirements on the transit occupancy tax in terms of If you were to raise it or do we have to obligate it or anything like that? That's what I that's what I believe I've heard this evening according to my notes And i'm seeing head nodding so that's how we're going to proceed unless anybody says anything else uh councilmember councilmember bates thanks just um one more thing to think about here in the charter 2.8 we have the year in which the Board of architectural reviews powers kick in with regard to certain buildings That um that they can basically protect it's set at 1900 but that was set in 1976 so that's something that I think it might benefit us to look at

either updating the year in which that kicks in or possibly just doing away with that and instead having an age in years um maybe as a placeholder you know 75 years since that's about how old those buildings that they um would have been that this applies to when they first would have put that in there in 1976 um but uh curious to hear others thoughts so just to restate it you're basically saying they pinned it to a year back in the 1970s they pinned it to a year which was 1900 but now it's 2025. so you're looking to protect buildings that are at least 75 years old by unpinning it from the year 1900 i mean we can certainly uh change that as you know when it comes up um but as a placeholder i think that since that's

what they were originally looking at buildings that were 75 years old or you know 76 years old perhaps in 1976 um as a placeholder until we kind of make a final decision on that but uh something i'd like to hopefully see considered councilmember amos yeah that's that's interesting i would be curious on what the bar stance is on it i know one of the things ironically that was brought up during our discussion on the community survey was a concern with blighted or abandoned properties which tend to be older so that could be something worth considering i don't know if for this round but i think that should be explored more i'd be interested in what bar thinks on that uh councilmember peterson interesting idea philosophically not

opposed at all but i think it does fall in the category of needing maybe a little bit more homework just one of the reasons why in my neighborhood country club hills in a couple of years the entire neighborhood will meet the 75 year threshold so we'll all be historic and maybe that's a good thing i just want to say in one fell swoop a pretty large chunk of our city is going to become historic what i'm i had to pull it up so what it actually says and is is is it talks about um old and historic districts uh uh as buildings in such district that was erected prior to or during the year 1900. so it's not 70 it's so if it's older than 19 1900 or older is what that applies to so so if you were to change if you're asking for the change you basically would be uh you you know you i guess you would be

saying that you want to consider other buildings to be a part of that you would in essence be adding uh that would be in essence i think rather than removing a limitation you would be creating a limitation by making it harder for um to do things that apply for um houses maybe that you would necessarily consider historic they just happen to be 75 years old so councilmember bates uh just you know a further for context uh some of you may be aware the lake ann village center in reston is now a historic district and that's something that is is kind of a local icon um but it's much much newer than 1900 and so you know if if that were in fairfax city then it would not you know not even remotely uh this section would not even remotely apply to it um so but again i mean you know my understanding was

that this was when we bring up things that we want to be considered we don't necessarily have to put all this in the charter and decide on that tonight um and i did also recall discussing previously taking the voter registration requirement out um and i thought that was with this council but perhaps i was mistaken um at any rate you know i'd certainly be glad to uh to get those three things done that we've uh you know kind of decided on at least having in there for consideration um but uh but yeah i look forward to further discussion on these all right it looks like the consensus is we're moving forward with three these three thank you all right ms shinneberry our next item our next item is an update on the q

transit development plan and parents tdp i'm going to recognize wendy sanford transportation director for the discussion yes absolutely we're ready welcome welcome all right thank you good yes absolutely welcome welcome all right thank you good Yes, absolutely. We're ready. Welcome. Welcome. All right. Thank you. Good evening, Mayor, members of the City Council. The item before you this evening is an update on the Q Transit Development Plan. Before we get started, I would just like to introduce the team that is here with me this evening. I'll start down there. We have Chloe Ritter, our multimodal transportation planner. David Summers, public works director. Charles Coons, Jr., our general manager of Q.

And we have Lucas Muller here in person with Kim Lee Horn. And then we also have online James Gaines, who is working on the Kim Lee Horn team, and he is out of the state. You will see him at the next work session when we discuss Q fairs, but for tonight he is joining us remotely. And I'd also just like to mention that Amy Lynn Denny from the planning department has also been working with us on the Q TDP effort. The purpose of the discussion this evening is to review the TDP. We had a work session when we were first kicking off the project. And where we are tonight is that we have some draft recommendations that we would like to share with you. And we are sharing these recommendations with you this evening and pushing them out to the public for comment tomorrow.

And so tonight is really when we're releasing those recommendations. I just want to point out that we are not discussing the fair policy tonight. That is on the agenda for early November. Tonight we are discussing the route recommendations that are contained in the transit development plan. With that, I am going to pass it on to Lucas Muller, who, as again, is with Kim Lee Horn and who is leading this effort for us. Thank you, Wendy. And good evening. Thank you for having us. My name, as Wendy mentioned, is Lucas Muller with Kim Lee Horn. I have been working with other entities around northern Virginia on transit improvement projects, many of the local systems here, as well as WMATA helping them with the bus network redesign.

And excited to be a part of you, be a part of this with you all and talk to you about it today. And so, as Wendy mentioned, we'll be going through the recommendations and how we got there. But before that, I just want to give a brief refresher on Q and the overall process of a transit development plan. So Q, the bus system for the city of Fairfax, has been around for about 45 years. And since that point, there have not been major changes to the service nor a holistic look at reframing the service to align with latest plan development and travel patterns. And so some of you may be a little bit more familiar than others, but just to give an overview and reminder, four routes today, two loops throughout the city that operate in both directions seven days a week.

The frequencies and the time frames are listed here on the slide. I wanted to point out that, you know, even at peak times, the most frequent bus we're seeing is scheduled to come every 30, about every 33 minutes and can sometimes be a little bit later than that, depending on congestion. And then during the evenings and the weekends, the frequency is less often as well. Q is operated under the city government, headed by General Manager Charles Kuntz here. And all of the drivers and the supervisors are city employees. It's shared from a facility perspective with the overall fleet yard in the city. So as we, whoops, whoops, I had the wrong button. Sorry. Just hit on the, you're not searching. Will that work?

No. There you go. Just call it presentation. There you go. Okay. Just minimize that. Got it. Okay. So a transit development plan is really an opportunity to talk about Q's future. It's a good, it's a great time to be doing this effort, an opportunity to define what Q's purpose is and create the plan for the system that will create a 10-year horizon that meets the needs of the community of the city of Fairfax. Mentioned Metro Bus just redesigned its service throughout the whole region. Those just went into place at the end of June. So again, it's a good opportunity to see how the Q system can fit into that, to those changes, as well as the development and the ongoing planning that's happening within the city.

It's an effort that involves a lot of technical analysis, combined with feedback from the public, from riders, from stakeholders, and ultimately develop that blueprint. It was interesting to hear earlier just that top priority of people getting around the city timely to follow on with this presentation. In terms of the TDP itself, just a little bit of a process, administrative components. Ultimately, it is a state government requirement to receive federal, to receive state funding for transit operations. So the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation governs that and has developed a set of guidelines for what is included. The last TDP was done in 2017. I think we can all agree a lot has changed since then with COVID and changes in the city specifically.

That's a 10-year planning horizon. But understanding that things change, so there is flexibility to update as we go. But the plan guidelines do call for a 10-year horizon of cost-constrained recommendations. We want to focus in on that, that we are looking at what can be reasonably achieved with those cost constraints using our existing resources. So something really important to consider throughout. Ultimately, the plan must be adopted by the governing body. That's you all. So after we present our draft recommendations, get feedback, we would plan to come back to you in the early, likely early in the next year to seek adoption for the plan. And then that gets revisited every five years. When we talk about recommendations, so that can mean primarily changes to the bus service.

So the routes, how often they run, when they run, where they go, stops, things like that, can also include studies or other elements, as well as the infrastructure that needs to go along with it. So, for example, new buses that might need to be purchased to either keep up with maintenance or for new buses, as well as potential studies that might want to be done in the future to look at things in more detail. There's a lot that goes into developing these recommendations. The really high frequency and coverage of all areas in the city would be great, but there has to be tradeoffs because of what we're talking about, about being cost constrained. The items in blue here are the technical data. So looking at the market, what's there, where it can support transit.

This is more the forward-looking piece. And then the retrospective of looking back at the existing service, we look at a lot of different performance measures. How is the existing service doing? How can it be adjusted? Just take those two technical components and combine it with feedback that we have received thus far from public and stakeholders. And another piece of really important feedback from the queue operators and supervisors themselves, understanding how that service looks on a day-to-day basis. And we've really done a lot of iterating with the project team, with other staff departments to understand people's perspectives, and really gotten to a proposed concept that we think will benefit the community.

So as we look back, one of the most important things that we look at from an existing service perspective is the ridership hotspots. So this is a heat map showing where there's the most boarding activity, so the most people getting on the bus. Obviously, it's a little bit generalized here with the kind of the heat map shapes. But you can see areas, GMU, the Vienna Metro Rail, and some other areas generally aligning with some of the city's small area plans as the hot, as the more popular boarding locations. I also want to flag a couple locations that aren't necessarily showing up as red here. Along Chambridge Road, some along Central Fairfax Boulevard in the north. So keeping those in mind as we continue.

Right here, this is just showing the queue boardings. So not factoring in WMATA connector and the shuttle as well. Another really important chart from our existing conditions analysis is this one. So the blue here, the blue flat line, is showing revenue hours. Basically a fancy way of saying how much service is out there today, how much bus service is provided. The green is the operating cost. And that, so what we're seeing really here is the amount of service has remained flat, but it's costing more to operate that same amount of service. And so that's a factor of general inflation, wage increases, and some other factors. Similar, other agencies are seeing similar challenges, but it makes it even that much more challenging to try to come up with recommendations that are cost neutral.

So needing to get into those tradeoffs and look for opportunities for how to be more efficient. So when we talk about the challenges, our team did a comprehensive evaluation of the existing conditions. Some of the challenges facing the system really boil down to those headways, the frequency, how often that bus is operating. And having some difficulty meeting those schedules due to congestion and other factors around the city. There's limited service on weekends, despite indications for demand. A lot of the buses, although there's less service on the weekends, a lot of those buses are, we're seeing those as more full on the weekends. And the fact that many of the ridership hotspots are spread around the city, as you saw in that heat map.

Transit works most effective on a street grid. And so some of the areas of the city we have that, some we don't, which is another challenge in terms of routing. But there's a lot of opportunities in terms of how to improve the system. And so, you know, at one of our discussions with the larger staff in different departments, we talked about reframing the paradigm to thinking about bus service in the city holistically. There's a lot of service already there. And a lot of people, frankly, aren't too concerned about which bus they're getting on, as long as it takes them where they want to go. And so how can we leverage those other bus providers and use Q service in a more effective way to focus on what's most important for the community?

We heard from riders and discussions with the bus operators that sometimes those loops, the two-way loops, can be a little bit confusing in terms of which direction to go on, where they're going first. Sometimes they just get on the opposite way just so that they can be on the bus rather than waiting outside. And so looking at opportunities to get more direct service and direct connections to major points. So in that first phase of outreach that happened right before our last discussion with you all, we had a series of six in-person outreach events held across the city during February, really focused on reaching current riders. So we had five what we call ride-alongs. So this is multilingual brand ambassadors riding the buses to talk to actual riders.

And we were actually able to engage over about 400 total riders, a quarter of which of those interactions were fully in Spanish, as well as having a presence at the pop-up event, the Chocolate Lovers Festival, which we were able to get another 240 interactions. We got a lot of really good input and spreading awareness about that. Then I mentioned the discussions of getting feedback from the queue operators. This helps us understand, you know, okay, hey, I tried to make that left turn onto this street, but there's no way you can do that. Or, hey, I always get questions about this one particular stop. Those are the things that you can't see from a data perspective. But it's really helpful to understand from those who work on the front line every day.

And so during that phase of outreach, we heard a lot of different priorities. This looks a little bit similar to the survey you were just talking about, right? But those two top priorities are very common with other agencies that we're seeing around the region and around the country. More frequency on existing routes and adding service areas to not serve by queue. Those are overwhelmingly the things that we hear. And somewhat unfortunately, they can be at odds, and especially being at odds with remaining cost neutral. And so that's really where those important tradeoffs come in and seeing how we can leverage. So, again, going back to those components of the recommendations. We have the rider feedback.

We have the technical analysis. We have goals for the TDP itself. And so how do we make sense of that? We try to develop a set of very simple recommendation development priorities. So when we're thinking about our recommendations, what do we really want to accomplish? And how can we help make some difficult decisions about tradeoffs? And really it came down to these four things. Expanding access to more frequent service. That was overwhelmingly the top thing we heard from the community. More direct connections. Not trying to have to figure out complicated routes, but knowing that a route will take me from point A to point B with not too many deviations or circuitous routes. Seeking efficiencies, we have to remain cost neutral.

We also really want to be very sensitive about areas that would be losing potential service. And seeing how those areas might be able to be served by other providers. Or maybe there are areas that just may not need to be served going forward. So keep those four things in mind. We're going to talk. I'm going to kind of build up to the recommendations, the draft recommendations. And then talk about how those help achieve those things. So just going back one second to the existing queue service. So these are the two routes, the green and gold routes. You see coverage largely most of the city. There are, there is some kind of indirect routes that can result in some long travel time. We have some infrequent service, especially in the nights and weekends.

We also do see that all trips do serve Vienna Metro and GMU, which were the two hot, the two top ridership components. But there's a fair amount of deviation in between those. So we mentioned those other providers. I want to take a minute to talk about the other service that is out there. Because this is other existing bus service that's already happening in the city. Mostly provided by WMATA Metro bus. But there is also some Fairfax Connector service that's operated by the county. As well as the GMU shuttles that are operated by the university and is only open to students. You might have heard the Better Bus Network redesign mention that. Some areas of the city, similar to what was previously present, we have some 40-minute all-day service generally along Fairfax Boulevard and Main Street.

But I want to highlight that middle route, the F50 on Blenheim Boulevard. That's a new service. It does not have late night or weekend service. But during the day, it does provide service that was not there previously. So that was one thing we talked a lot about during our discussions. One important caveat. I know we're going to talk about FAIR at the next session. But important when we think about these different providers that currently Metro bus is not FAIR-free. Whereas Q is FAIR-free. So when we layer those two on top of each other, we have the existing. So this is showing existing Fairfax Q service as well as the Metro bus and the connector. We see some areas that are numbered, one, two, three, where those are only served by Q.

And then there are other areas, more areas, that are overlapping between Q and Metro bus. So this can be a good thing. This can overlaps can provide additional frequency. And if you have three buses that are both, that are all operating at 40-minute frequency, you can combine that to have more buses that are coming more frequently. But we also want to be cognizant of not duplicating, especially if there's not that demand for those service. So kind of for those areas of Q-only service, is there value in keeping this? And for the overlaps, are there opportunities to maybe put Q resources elsewhere? So our team went through, again, a lot of thinking and iterations of concepts with the project team.

And ultimately, our recommending is our draft proposing to go from two to three routes that provide bi-directional direct service. So these provide one-seat rides between Metro, GMU, and Old Town, and offer an increased frequency on the Western route to every 20 minutes during the afternoon peak. And then also looking at stop locations, ways to improve transfers, especially at Old Town and GMU where those routes intersect, as well as looking at where we might be able to consolidate some stops that may be to make service more quicker and reliable. And so first we're going to just talk a little bit about the Q service specifically. And then we'll talk about how the other networks come on. I think one of the most interesting outcomes here, and one of those network development priorities that we identify,

was to increase access to frequent service. So which we're defining as 20-minute service or better. And so with this new network and that West Route operating at that 20-minute frequent service, we're able to provide frequent service to about 20,400 people and about 16,300 jobs that right now only have service in that 35-ish minute frequency. So a significant increase in the amount of buses that would be coming. I should note that the numbers here are not limited to the city boundaries. This does go into the county. And this is just showing Q service. There's a lot of numbers here. You may also be appropriately wondering, you know, seeing that some of that overall access is going down. We're going to talk about that in a little bit more detail.

But, again, one of these kind of tradeoffs that we look at in terms of the benefits of providing more frequent service to certain areas. I mentioned the stop consolidation a bit. So on the left you see the existing stops. And on the right are the proposed stop locations. And so stop consolidation is always a difficult topic. Frankly, it's one of the most controversial elements of looking at bus network. People have a lot of personal connections to their bus stop. And that's certainly understandable. People have been using it for a long time. And even just walking a slightly longer distance can be a challenge for someone or frustrating. But consolidating stops can also have a lot of benefits.

Speeding up routes, making service more reliable so there are fewer stops. And so in order to determine which stops were proposed to be removed, we looked at a few different factors. One, if you look at how closely spaced some of those stop pairs are on the left side, general practice, you know, looking at, you know, a quarter, around a quarter of a mile is kind of that max spacing that you want. There were a lot that are just within, like, within 600 feet or less of the next stop. We also looked at ones that were quite low boardings. So tried to identify with fewer or five daily boardings. And then we also looked at the potential pedestrian access. So if there wasn't a crosswalk that was close to the stop, that was another area that we looked at.

So of about 40 of the stop pairs that are proposed for removal, about 15 of those would be because they're not along a queue route anymore. And then 25 are due to more of those kind of the safety, the spacing, or the low ridership components. So in terms of the third and fourth priority that we talked about, about trying to remain cost neutral while limiting the loss of service and leveraging other providers, other providers, we really aim to focus Q resources on serving those main activity centers and increasing frequency and direct connections between these here. We do want to be upfront about the areas that we are saying that would lose Q service. Three out of those four areas that are, that are numbered here are, have service that would be provided by other bus service providers.

So Metro bus. The only one that doesn't is that area of Cambridge Road north of Old Town that about has five total boardings combined in that section. But the other areas up by, up by the, close to the Metro, really wanted to provide some new service on, on Baden, on Baden Drive there, looking at the new development that has happened there, as well as making a direct connection to Metro. And then the other, the other areas here, the third is around the courthouse. That one is served by Fairfax Connector. And then the area number four, up in Eaton Place, while there's a short deviation there, still within a quarter mile of the, of a proposed service. And so ultimately, what we're looking at here, we're able to provide some more frequent service, more direct routes,

and still be able to maintain about 96% of the existing queue boardings within an existing stop. So the, the bubbles, the dots that you see on the map here, that's the concentration of existing boardings. So you can see we're still focusing in on those higher, those, those larger circles. And in many cases, increasing service to there. While the areas that are removed service are either covered by others or, or, or small, or small amounts of, of overall boardings. So, again, to recap those four priorities, expanding access to the frequent service, focusing on direct, shorter connections that are easier to understand, remaining cost neutral in our fiscally constrained environment here, and looking at opportunities to leverage the other, of the other bus providers.

So these are our draft recommendations. We, again, as Wendy mentioned, we're going to be taking this out to the public. We have another phase of outreach that is kicking off tomorrow. Really, what we want to do is educate and seek feedback regarding these proposed changes. It's really the most important audience is those current riders to understand how this could impact their, their trips. And so we're going to be doing additional ride alongs. So members of the team will be out talking to people, giving them tailored information to what route they're on about how that, how those could change and seeking feedback. And so there will be opportunities to provide feedback that way. There's also an online, online comment map where people can view the map, the routes and provide their feedback as well.

So we want to hear from riders, but we also want to hear from city, you know, city residents, workers, students, anyone that, you know, either does or could potentially interact with the system in the future. So primarily, this will focus on the bus ride alongs. Also, we'll have some bus stop chats. So talking to people at high boarding locations like the Metro Rail and GMU to, to, to, to talk to people. And then also directing folks to the comment map. I believe we're going to have stickers on the, on the, on the buses and on the bus seats. So everyone will be aware that this survey is available and certainly would appreciate any support that you all can, can offer in terms of spreading the word and, and seeking feedback from constituents.

So that will take place the majority of October concluding in, in early November. And then the next kind of stop, the next kind of steps there. We're going to, we're going to do that. We're also going to be doing, we're looking at what, what comments and tweaks we might need to make. Uh, and then Charles and his team are going to be going out actually in the field with the buses and doing that operational testing of the routes to making sure that those, um, are feasible to do. So we'll spend that time, uh, later this year. Uh, and then depending on the amount of, of changes we need to make, but hoping that we will be able to come back, uh, in January to seek, uh, council of an adoption, council adoption of the plan where we can talk about.

So here's the final networks. Here's what we heard. Here's what we changed, uh, and, and seek your adoption of that. Um, so appreciate the, uh, appreciate your attention today and, uh, certainly happy to take any questions, um, comments that you have. Um, again, we're going to be taking feedback that we get from you all from the public and really combining that and then going through it, uh, in detail to understand what might, what changes we might need, want to make for the final network. But, uh, I just want to, I just want to emphasize, and I think it comes through in the presentation. This has been a tremendous undertaking and in looking at what our current routes are and how we could really optimize the money that we're spending on Q today to make it less confusing, more frequent.

And so really tighten up the service. And so, um, it's been a tremendous amount of work and I feel very good about where we are right now. I do think that we will get some, some great comments as the public goes out. I do want to mention, so on every seat, every other seat, we have a big QR code that says Q routes are, are changing. Uh, please take a look at, at the, at what's proposed and one seats in English, the next one's in Spanish. And so these are going to be on every single bus in addition to the ride alongs. We're also going to be at the fall festival right next to the bus over the weekend. So the hope is really to get a lot of input and make sure we really talk to, to the riders. Well, thank you so much.

I appreciate that. And I would just like to make a comment on one of the pie charts in our survey that I believed asked about people who had written or who ride the Q bus. And I think the vast majority have never ridden the Q bus, if I recall that pie chart correctly. So, so this is something to just keep uppermost in our minds is that you're going out to speak to people who actually take the bus. Correct. Correct. But there's a lot of people in the city, a lot of people in the city who've never ridden the Q bus. And so it's important for us to figure out how to meet the needs of the people who use the service, how to talk about this as an asset to people who are like, I never ride the bus and don't intend to.

And how this fits overall with our plans for the future of the city, which is, as we do high density development, encourage people to take transit because it's available. So, to me, every time we have a development that's multifamily, people are like, but it's just more cars, more cars, more cars. The fact of the matter is having a bus route and having done it so strategically that even if it's not the Q, it's the connector or the metro bus means that we are meeting the overall goals of being a more walkable city, having better traffic flow, which was also mentioned in our survey, is the top priority for trying to figure out how to get around the city. Less cars, more bus riders. All of this is of a piece. All of this is of a piece.

And we just happen to have both the survey top of mind right now and then looking at how we're trying to make the bus service better, not just Q, but how to help riders use transit who are residents or employees in the city. And with that, I'm going to ask Council Member Hall for her question or comment. Thank you. This is really interesting information. And I feel like I need a little bit more time to absorb it, but I think it looks like something that really could be functional and could really serve residents maybe in a different way and hopefully alleviate some of that feeling like where you get on the bus and you kind of stay on the bus forever until you get to your destination. And this could be, you know, kind of bisecting some areas of the city.

We learned a little bit about the WinReady program in Winchester with regard to how they kind of implemented more of an Uber style as opposed to a bus model. And I was curious if that had been considered at all for the city. It sounds like, you know, some of the perks of that are that, you know, maybe someone is less inclined to get on a bus and then go to the grocery store if they have a bunch of things to take home with them. But by using, in this case, the WinReady system, they would then be able to arrive home with still frozen ice cream. So I'm not saying that this shouldn't be considered with regard to the bus option, but I'm just curious if we've thought outside the box with some other alternatives.

Yeah. So the WinReady is an interesting implementation of service in the city of Winchester. Essentially, they've launched an on-demand microtransit system. And so, you know, microtransit can be an option that some cities and areas are looking to implement. One of the benefits, as you mentioned, that it can provide a little bit more of a personalized trip and have some dynamic routing. One of the lesser or one of the potential downsides is that it tends to be more costly on a per rider basis. The, the, getting philosophical for a minute, but the idea of providing, you know, providing public transportation, especially on an individual or one or two people shared around is a very costly exercise.

And so, you know, what we're seeing on this, on the city, on the queue is, is ridership that is quite, quite impressive compared to other systems. And meet, and exceeding the thresholds of where normally we would see that type of microtransit be, be effective from a cost perspective. And so, you know, it, it is something that, that areas are looking at, but it's really important to understand how it, how it can relate to, to what we call fixed route transit. And if you can operate fixed route transit in a way that, where frequencies are accessible enough, it tends to be a more cost effective solution. Okay. Yeah. I, I, I feel like I would be interested in learning a little bit more if that is the will of counsel to explore this as well.

But I will obviously wait for others to weigh in on that. Are there any additional buses that would be required for this? And have there been any considerations for a fair, for charging a fair at any point? I know we've had the, the no fair for a number of years now, but I wasn't sure where, where this stood with other considerations, especially losing. Um, I think there's some additional funding sources that we're losing in the coming year that will, were previously applied to the Q bus. Councilmember Hall, I will, I will speak here. Um, the idea is that the service hours actually will remain constant with this alternative. Um, meaning that we don't need additional buses or drivers to run the three routes, the three linear routes instead of the two circular routes.

Um, so one of the directions that we did give to the consultants was let's try to stay cost neutral. So how can we utilize the existing resources to, to, to be more efficient? And so that is what we're proposing here. So there are no, so the short answer is no, new buses are required to run what is proposed. Um, in terms of the fair discussion, that is a separate discussion and we will be discussing that at the work session in, um, November. So a month from now is it is on the agenda to have the discussion about the fair free policy. Okay. Thank you. Councilmember Amos. 一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些一些

this a little bit about that specific area but you know generally again with this stop when we looked at the stop consolidation trying to focus on areas that were within a short walk to other stops and trying to remove stops that were generally did not have safe or or available crossing facilities but James maybe you can add a little bit context that specific area yes I can just add again James comes with Kim Lee Horn one other attribute that we looked at in addition to the potential ridership impacts were also the operational safety just the overall pedestrian access to the bus stops so that was something else that was considered within those areas and things that we take into account and just to that are just the access to some of the key destinations in and around

those stops so that was factored in for the proposed placement to the bus stops that vicinity thank you I appreciate that in addition we have the Old Town circulation study going on I'm assuming that these recommendations were examined in comparison to that or what are we concerned about any of the recommendations coming from that committee potentially causing hurdles for this new design I can jump in and just say so we have not started the we're just right now starting the evaluation for move Fairfax and the old in the in the circulation our consultants for that are aware of of this project so if there are going to be any updates that need to be made to this once that evaluation is done we will do that but

but but this project is a little bit further along it sounds like I heard you say that there's a move Fairfax meeting tomorrow at the library from 6 to 8 p.m. is that correct you did hear me say that I thought you said that oh that's good to know and just a quick comment I would highly recommend which I'm sure you've you've done already but sharing this with apartment complexes for example Layton Hall primarily Spanish speaking the flats a lot of international students there as well just to get their feedback as the the I know the the bus stop in front of Layton is one of the hot spots in the city as well yes again we'll be doing bus ride-alongs just like what we did with the initial engagement we reached 400 people in our initial engagement by riding along the buses that we literally getting on the bus getting off the bus stating at stops so I we will be at those stops as well and we will be chatting with people and as Wendy mentioned we are putting stickers on all the buses this is the first time we've done that so I think anybody who sits on the bus is going to see it

unless all of the seats are full of course but you can't miss it they're eight by eight stickers oh that's every single seat on the bus as a as a former Q bus rider over at George Mason when I was going to school there the only reason why I don't use him more consistently is because I don't have time to wait 40 minutes for a bus so I think this is greatly appreciated yes excellent council member McQuillan thank you for all that wonderful information first just some comments I love the holistic approach I really appreciate you taking in account all the other systems that we have going on 640 total participants with over 27 percent in Spanish is phenomenal thank you for all of your efforts because I know that's a lot of work to gather all of that information you had mentioned that the majority of the stops being removed were five or less riders do we have an estimate of how many riders potentially could be negatively impacted by these new routes so about about 96 percent of the existing boardings are within a quarter mile of

of the proposed stops and I believe it's about like a bit of I believe it's about less than half of a percent would end up with no service James maybe you can help me with those numbers but basically it would just be those the stops along the the chain bridge chain bridge road so I believe it's about 0.1 percent of the entire system that would no longer have any bus service okay thank you and then were there any considerations with our ADA riders as far as in the movement of those stops since they traveling can be more challenging for them just in a pedestrian level it's a great it's a great question I would say at this level the way that we approach that was again looking at crosswalks and curb ramps I certainly think that that would be feedback on and I think you know before this becomes the final final we would want to look at those stops and make make sure that you know that we are not negatively impacting especially people with physical disabilities thank you I appreciate that

questions comments council member Peterson thanks because it looks like you guys have been busy yes we have for a while lots of iterations yeah absolutely and so I want to thank you for that because I know it's a lot of work I want to build also on the question that council member Hall asked and and maybe ask it by just asking as you identified solutions if you will here I know you did a a ton of analysis of the city's particular situation and what to do about it as a part of that I'm guessing that you because the your professionals in this area but otherwise as a matter of practice you did consult with best practices and options that exist elsewhere it kind of gets to the win ready question and you

know I can imagine lots and lots and lots of things potentially could be under consideration but I'm assuming that what you did as a process to kind of combed through those and determined what really looked like it fit best here is that a fair characterization of what you did yeah there's certainly an element of a peer peer review to look at both from a performance perspective of you know one of the some of the most relevant performance measures you know a cost you know cost provider cost per hour of service that is being provided so compare those against Northern Virginia entities in general again Q is quite outperforming other other systems in the region I will say Q is quite a unique unique unique system in that just being you know surrounded by a county and then also having

WMATA Metro bus on top of it so certainly it's a unique unique space but did look at other you know other peers as well for how people are approaching it and I'll just add one other thing so one of the points that Lucas made a few minutes ago is that when you're able to have a fixed route system that functions effectively and has high ridership it's much more cost effective to have a fixed route system than an on-demand system like what's in Winchester and so we are as Lucas mentioned and we can talk about this more also when we talk about the fair when we have our fair discussion but our ridership is is very high and has increased more than any other transit any other bus provider in Northern Virginia this is one of the things that

NBTC has been waving the flag about recently that our ridership has increased 50% since 2019 which is more than any other bus agency in Northern Virginia so we're our buses are full we're doing well and so fixed fixed transit service for us works and again on-demand service it does work and it's an appropriate solution for some jurisdictions but right now and it but it's very expensive and so right now where we are our fixed route transit service is really what is recommended for us yeah and if if I could just give one kind of local example too so omni Prince William County they have a bus service called Omni ride they run they operate commuter bus service into the city they also have local service you know in there in the in the county and they they they

and they they introduced micro transit but they approached micro transit looking at the lowest performing most rural areas as a opportunity to expand coverage to areas that did not have service so that's that's another kind of use case where micro transit can be effective that we don't really see in the city given the coverage of the other networks it's generally I think it's you know in the like in the like their their existing routes that they chose to replace with that were you know kind of in that order of three or four boardings per hour whereas um queues much queues much higher than that and would generally be associated with fixed route and they've actually worked in their policy guidance to say

if that micro transit even starts doing so well that those smaller vans are being filled then they're actually look back converting it back to fixed route transit all all good and all appreciated just so I understand that also and so that people who may be watching understand in terms of the outreach process that you're doing if I understand it correctly you'll be sharing with people what this proposal is to be able to get reaction from them I'm guessing at the same time you will be welcoming any additional ideas that people may have or tweaks or whatever so that you can that you can have the benefit of that in case there are any other designs out there you want to incorporate yeah absolutely so that will be asked you know we want to we want to a explain what changes we're proposing and then bc comments about that but then there's also

you know open-ended feedback that people can provide if they have other ideas or suggestions thank thank I think that's very very important and I suspect people will want to share experience and out of that their thoughts my last question is the fair conversation and this conversation do they connect and if they do how do they connect are they completely separate or do the dots connect in some way here I would say they are they are related but but separate as part of the the TDP itself we're really focusing on trying to adopt the the service and the study and the technical recommendations and then you know there there are there are certain assumptions that will be made in the final plan as opposed you know in terms of how how those revenue sources will come in but that can be that can be flexible and from a city process perspective it will be a

handled you know handled separately but you know as part of the TDP document we can document different scenarios that looked at either charging a fair or not charging a fair and just to build on that in terms of those scenarios so and I don't know because I'm not really I'm not in the same position you are to sort of look at the analysis here but would a shift in the policy on fairs potentially enable a more strong design here for instance I mean there's some cost considerations and assumptions here and I don't know whether fairs impact them and as a consequence whether you've got a different set of assumptions and circumstances you can play with or whether these are really separate and walled off

we'll be diving that we'll be diving into that a lot more in the in the November discussion I will say that it can have just two two quick things is one is that in the overall scheme of the the potential portion of revenue that fair can make up it's it's it's quite small in comparison to the overall operating expenses it also can have we've also seen a lot of ridership growth since the going for fair free and so there there's a lot of factors that could push things up or down that I think we'll want to dive into more in a in the next discussion and we'll have some more analysis and peer comparisons to share as part of that discussion one last question on the it's a mode shift question do you have any idea whether the system now and

these improvements that you are proposing will result in people not having people who are existing drivers who get around by car not having to do that as much and you know whether it will actually help people avoid the need to have to purchase a car any idea at all on that I mean from a from a quality we have not done a quantitative analysis of that but from a qualitative perspective I think it's what what we see in in more urban areas is when frequencies get get so that you don't have to look at a schedule and say okay I'm going to catch the 820 bus you can go and on average you're waiting a few minutes that's that's what can really cause the behavior shift especially you know if you think about I'm sure there's I know there's a lot of

people in the city that for example might be driving their own car to the Vienna Metro and parking there and driving in if we can get frequency to it to a point where people are comfortable hopping on the bus and maybe it takes them for you know four or five minutes longer than driving but they don't have to pay for parking and they can you know be on their phone or doing whatever they want to on the bus you know that that has the potential to shift to shift behavior um and so I think there's that and then the other piece which I would say is outside of the scope of the of the TDP but a really interesting thing you know for the city is we had a really good discussion meeting with the staff department about how do we how do we communicate these changes to your point

mayor read of like how do we get people that are not aware of this service to to use it there's a lot of good there I'm sure there's a lot of people if you asked hey do you know how to do you know how to get on the queue bus to somewhere else in the city I would say a good percentage of people don't and so one of the the forgotten or lesser lesser stressed elements of these network changes is the communication so I would really I'd really encourage you all to think about you know how you put both staff time and and and money resources towards communicating about these changes because that can make a huge impact on the awareness of that I think we you know we Metro saw that as part of the bus network redesign and they put a lot of a lot of effort and focus into that they were able to get to a

74 percent awareness they did a statistically valid survey and 74 percent of the people in the region knew about the bus network redesign which is quite impressive considering how many people know who their you know state senator is or something like that I wasn't going to call you specific councilmember Hardy Chandler my first question is I too love looking at all of the systems together and how they can complement one another from your information and I know there was a focus on one seat rides right but is there information on people who are transitioning from other bus systems to Q or from Q to other bus systems do we have a sense of that and part B of my question is does that lend itself to some sort of additional coordination

with those other systems beyond Q. yeah so the in terms of the first question about transfers from from different systems there there's when people do use smart trip you're able to get you're able to get that it's somewhat less available when when there when it is is fair free I mean largely we see the transfers at the hubs where the lines intersect whether that be Vienna Metro rail there's a lot of connections there GMU Germantown area we've talked about a lot of routes going west you know there's some Fairfax connector routes that go out to West Docks area and so you know that's certainly factored in from the more operational perspective of how do you kind of we often get that question I think there was actually someone had asked it via email but how do you coordinate schedules and making sure that if you actually do have those services they are they are coordinated and so there are efforts and and the Northern Virginia transit operators are a very very coordinated

and and meet very often to coordinate these types of things there are some constraints from a logistical scheduling perspective when you think about Metro bus routes that go from here to Boston or you know it's hard to focus just on a portion of the corridor but there are certainly efforts that are made to streamline those schedules and coordinate them. I appreciate that and my second question is about one of the things that makes the Q bus very convenient is the app so my question is does the plan also upgrade the app for accuracy or make any other kind of informational improvement so that people can track where buses are and have that you know better fit their planning and their schedules I think that just is a very handy tool that

could be instrumental in both you know the bus schedules but also maybe information I don't know if that's factored into the planning as well. In terms of like specific technology requirements that would be a little bit outside the scope of this TDP but we can certainly make either recommendations you know to have a more focused technology study or include high level recommendations on how technology can be used to implement. I think also your question gets to that our apps would be updated with the new routes we would provide updated files and that would be loaded into the software so that it would be seamless. Seamless yeah. Thank you. And now you know with the apps especially there's a lot of different apps out there especially that are integrated and more focusing on that you know going from A to B

it will tell you the best option regardless of who's providing that that service. Absolutely and I'm just wondering if that might be helpful to communicate out in terms of convenience because we find it very convenient to know. Matter of fact timing leaving outside of the house based on what the app is saying so. Thank you. So I will just add I think I'm going to go out on a limb and make the assumption I'm the only person who's ridden the bus in 1981 and to 2025 and the intervening years. So they're at the beginning they're now and I think there's a great trade-off to have more direct routes. I think even people who are like the bus stop doesn't come here or the trade-off is is for the people who take the bus all the time the more direct routes and shorter and shorter trip times.

So you know when when I take the bus to something it's very stressful if you have to be there right at noon in DC in your seat at the start of a meeting. Coming back the other way not as stressful. And this and I noticed that the Q bus still goes through my neighborhood on Warwick Drive so I still get dropped off like like a block away from my house. When I was coming back from the convention center for the GFOA conference I took the metro back and the bus and from leaving the convention center to my front door was exactly one hour which was great. But I mean so I posted about that. So when you talk about how do we help people understand how you might use the Q bus system the other thing is taking it to National Airport which I did in 2007 frequently is to get on the bus in my neighborhood to get to National Airport to get a plane to Georgia every month for a long time.

So people don't you know to me helping people understand not just getting on the bus or how you use the bus. But why would you use the bus? Why would you use the bus instead of driving and parking? Why would you use the bus to get to the airport? Why would you so to me part of this and that's incumbent on all of us who live in the city is to help people understand that this solves a problem or gives you an option or it's just something you may not have ever done before. But there's there's a reason to give it a try. And so I do try to post about my trips on Metro so that people know you're not trying to say hello to the bus drivers to like usually when I'm getting off like hi I'm your mayor.

So it's important. I mean it's important to walk the walk and talk the talk and eat your own dog food. So if I'm not willing to ride the bus why should anybody else ride the bus? So I ride the bus but I do think that what you're doing the collect you know the the the coordination with other bus lines shortening the time so that they can be more frequent. These are good trade-offs even if you're reducing the number of bus stops and to me this is how we need to be talking about it. So if there are any other questions anybody. Okay Councilmember Bates. Yeah just one more thing. Well first off I'm very excited about the changes and thank you all for for all your work on this. I think that the proposed changes to my mind at least would be an improvement over how things are right now.

I will say that I actually mainly use the new F-50 line to get to the Metro station because of just you know the lack of frequency right now with the queue lines. But with that additional I forget what is called on the map but you know the Glen Boulevard route that would make things even easier. So the one I wouldn't really call a concern but just a thought is that there may not be a whole lot of demand for bus service to and from North Facts right now. But we are seeing a lot of new housing projects there and I would just be curious to see if you know there has been or will be in discussion of how to make sure that that's not too much of a loss. Not having a direct route between North Facts and Old Town anymore.

I know that we will have of course Q West going kind of the long you know roundabout way and hopefully that won't be so long and roundabout with more consolidated bus stops along there. But so I would be curious to explore that a bit further. Yeah thanks. That was certainly one of the areas that you know that we looked at a lot and balanced the trade-off of you know continuing to serve that area. Or going direct and you know certainly this is a 10 year a 10 year horizon. And certainly you know as development continues to go to come online you know there's opportunities to update that plan and determined to serve that in the future should that development come online. But we'll certainly hear see what we hear as well from the constituents.

Yeah it's good to hear it. Thank you. All right. Any other questions or comments? All right. Thank you so much. This has really been a wonderful presentation. Very excited about this. Great. Thank you all. All right. Our last item is an update on Germantown Road Improvement Project. I'm going to recognize Wendy Sanford, Transportation Director, for the discussion. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I can move over there. We're trying not to be hidden by the computer, so we're trying something new. Okay. It looks like the band's all here. Yes. Back together again. Yes. New team. Different team. Okay. The next item is an update on the Germantown Road Multimodal Improvements Project. And so, and before I begin, let me introduce the team that's here with me.

We have our capital projects manager, Sandy Sarna, our traffic engineer, Kurt McCullough, our public works director, David Summers. And then we have our two consultants here with AMT. We have Datno, and we have Jordan Howard. And you will be hearing from, mostly from me and Jordan during the presentation, but the whole team will be available for questions afterwards. So, I'm going to get started on the presentation. And the purpose of this is to really update you on this project. This has been going on for a few years at this point, and we are really approaching now sort of our midway point on this project. And we want to bring you in and talk about the project background, the goals, why we're doing this project in the first place, what the outreach has been,

how that has informed the design to date, and really talk about our next steps, our status and next steps. So, first, in terms of background, just to acquaint everyone with the corridor, we are looking at Germantown Road between Route 50 and then the city line right by I-66. It's about 0.8 miles. Right now, what you see on the screen here is an image of Germantown Road. It is a two- to three-lane roadway. It is one lane in each direction. And in locations, there's a two-way center turn lane. There are two schools. There are a number of multifamily residential properties. And one of the things we're going to talk about more is all of those red dots. All of those dots represent access points. So, there are a number of driveways on Germantown Road,

and we'll be talking about that more in a few minutes. In terms of the goals, one of the goals are listed here to improve roadway operations, to improve congestion, to reduce congestion, to plan for the future, maintain the connection to the county. And this is something that's very important, and I'll speak to this more on the next slide, which is that this connects right into the county. You go over the bridge, and that was recently just upgraded as part of the I-66 outside the beltway project using concessionaire funding to upgrade that bridge. And so, we want to maintain that connection. This was discussed and has been discussed over the years as being sort of a roadway around the city. You can go Blake Lane to Germantown Road and to come around and into the city that way.

We want to maintain and improve transit operations and also improve pedestrian bicycle connectivity and make this more of a multimodal corridor. As I just mentioned, one of the goals is that regional connectivity. And so, what's shown here is just some of the letters that were shown us coordinating with the county. Back in 2016, when the concessionaire funding was coming, and one of the things that the city council had asked for was to work with the county to improve that bridge and have a nice wide path going over that bridge, having a wider section. And so, now that that is complete, it connects to the I-66 trail. And so, one of the things that we are looking at in doing this Germantown project

is connecting to the county and utilizing that connection with the bridge. So, in terms of the project timeline, there have been some other projects that have improved other parts of Germantown Road. So, in 2008 and 2015, there were earlier projects to improve Germantown Road south of Orchard Street, so a small portion of our project area. And then there was more recently a project along Route 50 between Bevan Drive and Germantown Road to widen that area and improve that intersection. And then, moving into 2017, this project area, the Germantown corridor between Route 50 and the city line, was included as a priority in our multimodal transportation plan. That was then adopted into the comprehensive plan.

So, then moving from there, it was adopted into the two-year transportation program as a priority to analyze and look forward for funding. So, starting in 2018 is when we started putting together our concept plan, having some initial public outreach, and then subsequently, next slide please, moving into applying and receiving funding. And so, back this, so now in 2023, we had funding that came online for this project that we had received from the NVTA. We received $21 million. So, at that point, we then really kicked off the project again. So, again, it's the work on the concept plan, apply for money, and then sort of wait for that money to become live. The money becomes live, and we re-kicked off the project.

And we had a public meeting at Catherine Johnson Middle School. We had a walking tour. And we have been up and down the corridor meeting with individual property owners. And that's what's really been happening over the last, I'd say, two years. And that is when we brought AMT on board to really help us with all of this work. And as I said, we've had some well-attended meetings at the middle school, and we've really received a lot of input from the community. Some of the themes that we heard, and this is now going back to 2023, but I want to bring you up to speed sort of what we've heard along the way. We heard about some bicycle pedestrian issues. We heard about those access issues. Remember the red dots?

That it's difficult to turn right onto or left out of onto Germantown Road. We heard the desire for improvements at the Carroll Street intersection. And we heard about some of the congestion issues and some of the lane configuration issues. And in terms of some highlighted areas, in terms of high comment locations, was at that H-Mart, Kuttner Park, Germantown Road intersection. And we're going to talk about all of these, but this is what we heard. So we already knew that some of these from the data really were some of these difficult locations, but we also heard this from the public as well. At the Catherine Johnson Middle School entrance, at Carroll Street, and at Orchard Street. So that really is a brief, but sort of overview in history of where we've been.

And so that walked us through the road, and it really puts us to where we are now, which is step 10, where the arrow says we are here. But I want to back up a little bit to step 8, because that's really when the 2023 process kicked off that I mentioned when we had the walking tour and that public meeting at Catherine Johnson. The money had come online, and this is when we really reengaged and started this project in earnest. And so now here we are. We are at intermediate plans. And so what we are here tonight to do is to talk about what we are proposing for Germantown Road and walk through some of those difficult areas and what we're proposing. And this is an anticipation of a public hearing.

This project is not funded by VDOT, and that public hearing is something that we do that is part of the VDOT process. That said, we still follow that process for all of our projects just to have consistency and transparency in the process. So we are building up towards that public hearing step, which we are proposing to have in the December timeframe. So with that, I am going to pass it on to Jordan to really get into more of the technical analysis of the corridor. Sure. I'm going to lead you guys through some of the corridor challenges that we've seen and what we're proposing currently as improvements. So as far as challenges, Wendy mentioned the access points already, but there's sort of four key things that we see in the corridor.

One is that there's a history of rear end and angle crashes. The second is that we know and have heard from the public and can see from the traffic data that there's some congestion and traffic operation issues. 14,000 vehicles a day is not like I-66 level, but it's also a fairly high volume for a more local arterial road. We know there's some peak hour congestion. We know Route 50 especially is sort of a congestion point. We use the term access management to talk about all of those access points and the number of driveways that are out there, how closely they're spaced. That creates some issues with safety and operations in the corridor. And then from a multimodal standpoint, the bus transit folks just spoke, but there's bus stops in the corridor.

We want to have a safe corridor for pedestrians, for bicyclists. Today there's limited bicycle accommodations. There's no bike lanes. There's a small section that has a shared use path, but it's not consistent. There's no connection to the I-66 trail yet. So those are things that we are looking at as challenges in the existing condition. And I'm going to walk through sort of each of those individually along with some of the things that we're going to do to make improvements. So the first slide that I have here is about the crash history. Looking from 2020 to 2025, when we study crash history, we typically look at a five-year period. There's 38 crashes in the corridor. None of them are fatal, so that is a good thing.

But that rate is not necessarily higher than the statewide average, but we also know that with Vision Zero and some of the other initiatives around travel safety, we want to get that number down to zero. So angle crashes make up 45% of the crashes. That's typically the most severe crash, and those crashes occur most often when people are turning. So you see those at unsignalized intersections and driveways a lot. One vehicle might be going straight and hits a car that's turning. The second most typical type of crash is a rear-end crash. That one's a little more simple. You hit the person in front of you, right? We see those often when the lead vehicle slows or stops. So that's often when there's congestion in a corridor or, again, when there's many access points and you might be slowing because the person in front of you is turning.

So ways that we look to address those two types of crashes are to improve traffic operations, meaning there's not as much start and stop occurring, and managing access, so really looking at all of those driveways and unsignalized intersections in the corridor. So from a traffic operations standpoint, just giving you a little bit of background. I'm not sure how familiar everybody is with this, but we look at something called level of service, and level of service evaluates a street based on seconds of delay per vehicle. It's graded A through F. There's sort of a visualization up here. A means traffic is pretty free-flowing. F is like you're stuck in stop and go, and you wish you weren't. We also look at queue length, and that is looking at how long a queue is if you're stopped at a signal, like how long is the backup in feet?

The issues that we're finding on Germantown Road and that we want to try to address are that the queue at many of the signalized intersections is longer than the turn lane. So ideally your queue would be contained in a turn lane, so people trying to turn left are not blocking people who are trying to go through. We also see that when we look at the future, so we look at level of service today, but we also look 20 years out. So we want to make improvements today that are going to be, you know, effective for the future. We don't want to do a project today and have it not be effective tomorrow. So LOSF in the future, if we don't do any improvements to the corridor 20 years from now, there will be LOSF at many of the intersections.

And then school kiss and ride, so the Katherine Johnson and Providence Elementary are in this corridor. That just complicates traffic a little bit, right? And I'll talk about that more in a minute. So some of the proposed improvements that we're looking at. We want to add dedicated right and left turn lanes in the corridor. Wendy mentioned in the existing condition you have a two-way center left turn lane through much of the area. When we add dedicated right and left turn lanes, it removes vehicles waiting to turn, and it decreases the number of conflict points. So with the two-way center turn lane, people from both directions are using that same lane. When we can separate them, it reduces the conflict points.

So as we're looking at all of these improvements, I'm going to talk about something that's called a crash reduction factor. It's down there in the little green box. That's a way for us to represent how we expect safety to be improved when we implement something. So adding dedicated right and left turn lanes has a crash reduction factor associated with it. That's 30% of rear-end crashes are expected to be reduced. So we're looking at turn lanes at Orchard Street, at Providence Elementary School's North driveway, and at Carroll Street. In addition, I mentioned the two-way turn lane. We want where we're able to to replace that with a median and dedicated right and left turn lanes. That has a CRF associated with it of 35% of angle crashes being reduced.

So Cavalier Corps and Katherine Johnson Middle School are both candidate locations for that improvement. In addition, from a traffic capacity and operation standpoint, we know that Route 50 intersection is a challenge. But that's, first, it's a little bit outside of our project limits. And second, it's a V-dot road. So we don't have complete control over what happens there. But looking at Germantown itself, one of the things that we can do is extend the northbound merge lane. So when you turn from Route 50 and head north on Germantown Road, today that lane ends at Kuttner Park driveway. And we're looking to extend it just a little bit further to allow people longer distance to merge and maneuver so that you're not doing that right in the first block when you make your turn.

We're also looking at optimizing signal timing throughout the corridor. That's sort of the second graphic there. All of those intersections highlighted and numbered. So they're not all signalized intersections, but we look at traffic operations at all of them and where we can optimize the signal timing. That allows us to get a future condition LOSA at all of the signalized intersections in 20 years from now, so in the 2040 time frame. You'll notice the second bullet there. The Route 50 intersection operates at LOS E and F today. And it still is going to operate at LOS E or F in the future condition. That's the one intersection that's not fully improved by what we're doing. And then I mentioned the school peak hour operations.

So we're extending turn lanes on Germantown Road into the school driveways. And we're also looking at better defining those turn lanes with signing and pavement markings. That should help alleviate some of the traffic congestion. But we don't design roadways for the 15-minute school drop-off and pickup point. Wendy always uses the example of that's like mall parking lot for Christmas shopping versus like the rest of the year, right? So we're trying to balance making operations better but not over-designing for just this very short period of the day. And then for the schools, the peak period traffic control would happen with the crossing and traffic guards that are there today as is standard at most schools.

So the next thing I want to just touch on is the access management. So I mentioned before access management is spacing between intersections. It's not just signalized intersections. It includes unsignalized intersections, so kind of side streets. It includes driveways. You can see in this graphic here, this is from VDOT's road design manual, but it really represents the fact that we want a certain spacing between signalized intersections, a certain spacing between access points where you can make right and left turns, and then what we call partial access can be closer together. And those are driveways or entrances where you only maybe could make a right in or a right out. So the thing to know about the corridor right now is that it really doesn't meet any of the state or city access spacing requirements because there are 30 access points in less than a mile.

So partial access is something that we look at, and you'll see in the third bullet there, that that allows for more safe operations in between those signalized intersections. So, again, we're looking at the closely spaced entrances on Germantown and the fact that one of the results of that is that there's very short turn lanes. So that leads back to what I mentioned before about the queues exceeding the turn lanes that are available. As far as the proposed improvements go, so one of the things that we want to look at is converting full access driveways to right in, right out configuration. You can see that has a CRF associated as well. 45% of all crash types are reduced with that, typically.

Comfort Inn, the H Mart Northern entrance, and Gainsborough Court Southern entrance are three locations where we're looking at that, and I'm going to walk through each of those locations separately in a minute. We're also looking at the Gainsborough Court area that's right near Orchard Street at shifting an entrance to create a four-legged signalized intersection. And I just wanted to touch here where it says conflict points at driveways. The top image is a full access entrance, and you can see if you count the yellow dots there, those are conflict points where two vehicles turning could potentially hit each other. There's, I think, seven or eight of them shown on that top drawing. If you look at the bottom one, which is a right in, right out entrance, there's only two points where people can kind of be in conflict with each other.

So you can see we're right there. That's much less opportunity for a crash to occur. Another thing that we look at from an access management standpoint is what we call the functional area of an intersection. So in the lighter gray image here is the physical area of an intersection. That's what most of us think about. That's sort of in between the stop bars, what you would consider to be like the middle of the intersection. But from a traffic operation standpoint, we also look at the area that drivers need to make their decision in. So that extends throughout the limits of kind of all the turn lanes approaching the intersection and is a bit of a larger area. Ideally, there's no driveways in that.

There's no other intersections in that. You want to be focused on looking at the signal and making your decision about what lane you need to be in. You don't want to be focused on the fact that somebody next to you is making a right turn into your space. And so, again, we see in the existing corridor that we don't have the functional area that we would want at all of the intersections. So I'm going to walk through the existing conditions at a couple of the locations that were highlighted by the public and that we know to be sort of the biggest issues in the corridor. Today at H-Mart, Kuttner Park, and 3900 Germantown, there's an offset intersection. The traffic signal only serves H-Mart's northern driveways, which means that 3900 and Kuttner Park are just outside of that signalized intersection.

We also see that there's a crosswalk just south of the H-Mart entrance, which is a little bit of a conflict between delivery trucks leaving the H-Mart loading dock and headed towards Route 50 and pedestrians trying to cross Germantown Road. So, again, we've got sort of three or four driveways and side streets in the functional area of this signalized intersection. So our proposed improvements are to shift the signal just a little bit to the north to create a four-legged intersection with Kuttner Park, 3900 Germantown Road, and Germantown Road itself, and to put a median along Germantown Road, which would therefore make the H-Mart northern entrance and Comfort Inn have a right-in, right-out configuration.

In doing that, both of those parking lots do also have other access points. So although we're making it right-in, right-out from Germantown, they would still be able to access Route 50 from other points within their parking lot. And we would also relocate the crosswalk to the north side of the intersection to provide that sort of safer crossing location for pedestrians. So that, in the green, I'm not going to go through each bullet here, but in the green on each slide is going to kind of highlight what this benefit of this is. At Gainesboro Court and Orchard Street, this is further north in the corridor. So at this location, it's another situation where the traffic signal serves Orchard Street, but within very close proximity, we have the intersections of Gainesboro Court North and South.

In addition, Providence Elementary School is just north of this, and so there's a shared turn lane right now where vehicles in the northbound direction who want to turn left into either Gainesboro Court North or the elementary school are sharing the same lane. That makes it a little bit difficult for other drivers to know where they're turning. And then south of that, near Cavalier Court, we have the shared two-way center left turn lane, and there's also sort of a short turn lane from southbound Germantown onto Orchard. In our proposed design, we're looking at relocating the north entrance to Gainesboro Court to provide that four-legged intersection that I mentioned before. The existing northern entrance would be converted to a right-in only, but if vehicles wanting to leave that community making a left would use the signal now.

We're also providing dedicated right and left turn lanes on Germantown Road in the northbound direction, adding a median and converting the southern entrance at Gainesboro Court to a right-in, right-out. So that addresses many of those same things. It's still a signalized intersection. We would be enhancing pavement markings for pedestrians in this area as well. Looking at multimodal access, again, that's addressing pedestrians, bicyclists, transit users. We know that dedicated space improves safety and access for these users. We know that the city wants to encourage biking and walking. We want to provide safe crossing locations, especially in this corridor where we have the park and two schools.

It's important that we're providing what we call an all-ages and all-abilities facility. We want to reduce conflict points in general. So I've highlighted some of these issues already, but there's uncontrolled pedestrian crossings. That means locations where pedestrians are crossing not at a signal. We have some areas where there's a gap in sidewalk. There's limited bicycle accommodations. And previously there was no connection to the kind of county side of things. So our proposed design is to close the network gap. So between the existing sidewalks, the I-66 project that's already essentially existing condition now, but was not when we started this project in 2023, and our project, we want to make sure that we have sidewalk on one side of the street that's proposed along the west side,

and then we would have a shared-use path for the full length of the project limits along the northbound direction. The shared-use path is 10 feet wide in asphalt. The sidewalk is more or more standard, five foot wide in concrete. Each of them would have pedestrians, which serve pedestrians, and the shared-use path would also serve bicyclists in both directions. So this is what we call a typical section. It just sort of shows, you see the roadway, and right here we're showing a northbound turn lane, and then a grass buffer area, and then the 10-foot shared-use path. So, again, really just trying to provide space for all ages and abilities. Another proposed design element is to enhance the crossings in the corridor.

So we can do that in a number of ways, but what we're proposing is to have high-visibility markings. So you can see in these two examples, the markings in the top photo are a lot more visible than the ones in the bottom marking. There's a crosswalk in both, but the top one is more visible. So we would use that type of pavement marking. We can add rapid flashing beacons, which are shown in the top photo. I believe you all have those at several other locations in the city, so people are familiar with them. We want to put those in at the schools and at Carroll Street. We're also looking at a pedestrian island, as shown in the second photo, at Carroll Street, and we want to provide lighting throughout the corridor so that multimodal users are visible to drivers.

I want to address Carroll Street for a minute. So residents have requested a signal here, and so we performed a signal warrant analysis. That is a kind of standard analysis that's prescribed in the MUTCD, which is the Manual for Uniform Traffic Control Devices. It's a national standard. There's eight things that you look at. They're called warrants. They address all different things, vehicular volume, pedestrian volume. You look at things from a peak hour standpoint. You look at things from an all times of day standpoint. At this location, it does not meet the criteria for our signal, either in the study year, which was done with 2021 traffic, or the future year of 2041. There is the potential that it could meet warrant four, which is pedestrian volumes, once the path is constructed, but it would require a fairly high volume of pedestrians.

So you can see in the green box there, you would need 125 pedestrians per hour to cross at Carroll Street in order for warrant four to be met. So I'm not going to say that's impossible, but it's probably not very likely. So because we don't meet the warrants, we're looking at other safety improvements that can be implemented there. That includes dedicated turn lanes, the pedestrian refuge island, and the rapid flashing beacons. And this is an image of the proposed design at Carroll Street. So we would be adding a southbound left turn lane today. That's an area that's sort of painted and patched out. That will help pedestrians crossing here be able to identify who's turning and who's going through.

We're going to add a northbound right turn lane. Again, that helps vehicles move out of the through lane, but also helps pedestrians to know what movement a driver is going to make. We're going to add a refuge island so that people crossing only need to look in one direction. So you would look to the left, make sure nobody's coming, cross to the pedestrian island, then look to the right and make the second part of the crossing. We're also proposing the RRFB that I had previously mentioned, so that will help bring attention to people who are crossing. I know that the previous group talked a lot about existing conditions of transit, so I'm not going to spend a whole bunch of time on this other than to say that we are looking at stop placement and ridership in the corridor.

There are a couple locations, WMATA and Q run in this corridor, and so there's a couple locations where there are duplicative stops, like where WMATA has a stop on the south side of an intersection and Q has a stop on the north side, so we could combine those stops. I think that's something the other group is probably looking at as well. We want to be consistent with whatever that document is going to propose. Some of the things that we want to be trying to provide as far as amenities go that kind of enhance the comfort for people who are riding is trash receptacles, provide benches at most of the stops. Where ridership is a little bit higher, we're looking at providing shelters and potentially bike racks, and there's additional changes that could be recommended by the TDP.

There's a couple of maps in here that show what we were currently proposing. Again, I think potential changes based on the TDP, but essentially at stops would be located at the Kuttner Park H Mart area, then at Catherine Johnson Middle School, moving to the north, then in the vicinity of Orchard Street and at Carroll Street. I mentioned lighting earlier as a safety enhancement. That enhancement is for both vehicles and pedestrians, but we want to provide lighting throughout the corridor. We have a combination approach, so there is some existing decorative lighting in the corridor. You can see an example of that in the photo with the black, we call it a post-mounted pole. And then we're also proposing some shoebox fixtures and arms, which is a higher level vehicular lighting.

Spacing for those lights is approximately 75 feet on center, and that would be throughout the corridor. And we do look at protecting residents' homes when we're doing that, so there's a shield that goes on the back of those, so nobody's house is going to be impacted. We're also looking at landscape in the corridor. So with the current design, 53 trees are impacted. Most of them are on private property, but we would be proposing mitigation plantings. There's sort of a list here. A number of shrubs and ground cover, about 95 ornamental trees and nine larger shade trees. Anywhere areas that are disturbed by the construction would get grass placed back if they don't have another kind of planting.

And that's just a rendering there of what some of the improvements could look like. The proposed design does include some retaining walls, so we're widening, and any time that you do that, you have to tie to the existing grade at the outside of the roadway. The largest wall that we're proposing is at Catherine Johnson Middle School. If you can picture that, it sits up quite a bit higher than Germantown Road. So a wall is necessary there when we widen. It's approximately 500 feet long and 10 feet high. The other two locations are shorter walls, both in height and in length, less than 100 feet and three to four feet high. Those are at Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witness near Orchard Street, and then 3623, which is just north of Orchard Street.

That's a residential home that has a retaining wall today, so we're impacting that. We would essentially be putting it back. And there's an image there just of the proposed wall aesthetic, which is a dry stack. So the wall is concrete, but it's made to look as though it's stone. I'm going to turn it back to Wendy for project funding and next steps. Thank you. So in terms of where we are, we are at our 60% design, and now you can see what is proposed. And our next step, what is shown up there, is December 9th to have a public hearing. So the idea is between now and then to get the word out that we are at this point in our process, make plans available to the public, and then have a formal opportunity for a comment as part of the City Council meeting on December 9th.

Next slide. And in terms of right-of-way and utilities, that would happen after the 60%. I'm just telling you sort of what comes next. As we near into the 90% plans, we look at right-of-way acquisition. There are 18 properties that would be impacted with, that would require drainage easements or temporary construction easements. And we would also begin working on any kind of utility relocation that would need to occur. But this would all be occurring after the public hearing, after we really get into the more finalized plans. And in terms of the cost and the funding. So right now, we're looking at a cost of about $18 million, which I think is unbelievable, given that it's less than the funding that we have.

That's very unusual that we are actually under budget. So as of right now, we have $18 million proposed, and we have $21 million available to us through NVTA funding. That concludes our presentation. We'd be happy to take any questions. And again, the whole team is here if you have any questions. All right. Council Member Amos. I just got to say, when I saw that it was 42 slides, I was like, oh, man. But you always impress me with how efficient you are in your presentations. Thank you very much. I only have one question, and it may have nothing to do with this, but since it's in the proximity, I figured I'd ask about Fair Oaks Business Park. Have there been communications with the county since Pender Drive in that area is not too far off?

Is that the property that backs up to Germantown Road? Yes. And they're redeveloping in the county? Correct. Yeah, I just didn't know the name of it. We have been working with the county because there have been discussions about potentially making a connection through there. So we were showing them our plans and talking about where a potential connection would be. Yeah. Do we have an idea of what that, how those conversations have been going? That might not be, this might not be the appropriate venue. Yeah, I'm not, I'm not, I don't know. Kurt may have actually more information. Just preliminary, just preliminary conversation so far, letting them know about our plans with this project. But their current plans are sort of evolving as to which parcels it will include.

And they will be doing traffic impact studies as part of their project. Okay. Part of the reason I ask is just because someone sent an email today and it reminded me that that project does have public hearings coming up this month and next month for their comp plan. So I was just curious, but otherwise great work sounds like it's a major community need and that they've been waiting for this for a while. So great work as always. Council Member McQuillan. Thank you so much for that presentation. As someone who has driven that route almost every single day, all school year for 10 years, this is very much needed. I can attest to that. I have a question regarding the crosswalk at Carroll. You mentioned that it doesn't warrant the light.

Will that crosswalk be raised by chance? Just because I know having crossed that bridge, especially depending on the timing, because of the way the sun comes in, it can be really hard to see pedestrians after you cross that bridge. I recognize that you're going to add signs and lights and all of that. But have you considered maybe raising or is there any kind of talk to make the children that are going to be crossing that to go to Providence? They're all going to be elementary school children. So they're going to be really short. So that's my thought process. Have you considered that? It is something that we look at as a kind of standard thing at most of the intersections that we're looking at.

Germantown Road is classified as an arterial road, which is usually not a candidate. It means that there's enough of a high volume of traffic that raised crossings are typically not ideal. But that doesn't mean that we can't study it a little bit further and see what the options are. It's not shown in our plans currently, but we can look at it further. Especially since there's going to be a development that's going to be built on the other side of that bridge that's going to increase the amount of traffic, I believe, coming through. So I would like to just know a little more information on what could be done to ensure that those children are highly visible when they cross. I also wanted to make a comment about the 53 trees that are going to be impacted on the private property.

I just wanted to, instead of a comment, I wanted to ask what the plan for outreach. I know that Wendy, I'm sorry, Ms. Sandberg, you had mentioned it previously a little bit, but could you go into a little more detail on that as to what we can expect as far as the communication to the public? Sure. So the properties that we've had individual communication with thus far have been the properties where we're looking at access modification. So it's been with Gainsborough Court. We've met with the Comfort Inn. We've met with the H-Mart representatives. So those are mostly who we've met with. As we proceed into the right-of-way phase, what we typically do when we just did this with Cambridge and Eaton, we will set up property owner meetings and meet with them ahead of them just getting a letter that says, hey, we're coming to your property to do a survey.

And so we will meet with them and show them the plans and indicate what the impacts to their properties would be, be it if we need an easement or if there are landscaping impacts. Thank you. I remember that process from previous projects, but I just wanted to hear it out loud. Thank you. I appreciate it. And I appreciate all the time and detail that you've put into this presentation. Thank you. Council Member Hall. Thank you. Wendy, I specifically want to thank you for all the outreach and meetings that you have done, both with our community, with our neighborhoods, the meetings that you've done at Kuttner Park, the walkthroughs that you've done. I know this has been an extraordinary amount of outreach, and I just think it's very much appreciated, and it has really brought a lot of information to light for the communities that are going to be really directly impacted.

I do have a lot of questions, and I'll try to go slide by slide maybe just to keep them contained. So if you can go to slide 17 for me. Is that possible? Yes. Sorry. I'm trying to do this on my laptop, and I'm just – I just don't have mine printed, and I didn't download it before, so I was just kind of following along as you were going. We're just making sure we can share the presentation and have you also up on the screen. Thank you. Okay. Thank you very much. If you can't see me, that's totally fine. Can you see the presentation? I can. Okay. There we go. Great. Thank you. Okay, so one thing I just wanted to point out on this slide is that at the very bottom there, it says peak period traffic control by traffic guards.

So that is no longer the case unless something has changed since the beginning of the year for the schools. We previously had traffic guards that were at the schools, but now they're – well, I guess it's not totally true. They were directing traffic before. Now they're really just managing the crosswalk at these schools. So I don't know if that is new information or different information that was considered when this presentation was previously put together or the information was drafted, but I just want to make sure we're still on the same page as far as what is actually being provided to assist the kids with crossing. Because it is different than it's been in all of the years that my kids were at those schools.

So when we previously walked the corridor and were out there at school pickup and drop-off times, the guards were directing traffic as well as pedestrians. So if that's different this school year, that's different than what we saw when we were out there, and we can kind of have a discussion about that, I guess. Let me just follow up. When we were out there, we had a long conversation with the crossing guard who told us that she controls traffic, also works with the pedestrians that are crossing, and she really does more of the former, it seemed, which was the vehicular traffic control. So if that is different, that is something that we would need to understand. But that was not our understanding when we chatted with her last year.

Yeah, and that has totally changed effective this school year, effective August 14th. And it was a very confusing first couple of weeks of school, so I just want to make sure we're still using the most accurate information when making these decisions. We will follow up on that. Thank you. And then slide 19, please. I was just trying to understand this here, so I'm looking at the right in, right out. So can traffic not turn left into Gainsborough Court here because they would have to be going up to that new shared light? Was that how that was going to work? That entrance is moving. So if you're coming southbound, you can turn right into the entrance, or you can go up to the signal, which is going to be two-way.

So we're right in that front lawn area, we're adding a sort of a new access driveway to them. Is that what your question was? Okay. Yeah, I think so. I think the median here, it's clear now that the median is there. I think it wasn't as clear in the previous photo or the previous slide when I was just taking my notes. And so for the south entrance, that used to be a full access. So now if you want to leave, though, and make a left, what you do is that south entrance connects around the back of the community and will come out at the north entrance. So if you're trying to make a left out, you'll go around to utilize the signal. Okay. Does that make sense? Yeah, no, it makes sense. Yes, it makes sense here in conjunction with the other information.

Thank you. Sure. On slides 29 and 30. And for your consultants, I live here, so this is kind of where I go frequently. My kids have gone to both these schools here, walkers, bikers, bus, all that. So I think when it comes to Carroll Street, residents have requested a signal, not because it's hard to cross there as a pedestrian, although that is a challenge and I'll get there in a minute. We've requested a signal because it's very hard to make a left-hand turn currently with just one lane of traffic in either direction. So when you go on to slide 30 and now it's looking like we're going to have to cross left turn, essentially cross three or four lanes of traffic there, that's a big challenge.

It's already difficult there with the way that they did that new bridge, which I'm not a fan of, but it's very difficult to turn left on a Germantown here with current conditions. So I really think that needs more vision on that. And when it comes to the crosswalk there, most parents, me included, don't allow our kids to cross there because there is no crossing guard. So we have always told our kids to stay on Germantown, to go up in front of the school where there was a crossing guard, and that they would cross there. So you're not seeing 150 people cross here four hours out of the day. Because it's too dangerous. Because nobody sees you coming over that bridge and nobody slows down and stops.

And that might change with the RRFB, that's the beacon lights, right? Yes. That might change there, but we don't ever use that one on purpose. Understood. Understood. I do think so. The combination of the RRFB and the pedestrian refuge island is supposed to make it more safe for pedestrians to cross here. I do understand that letting your elementary school student cross here by themselves maybe is not the right location. And there is a crossing guard at Providence Elementary. So staying on the northbound side of the road and then crossing at the school is definitely safer for students. But there are other people who might want to cross here. And essentially the shared use path, if you would like to connect to the I-66 trail, this would be the location where you would cross to be able to do that.

On the north side of the bridge, the I-66 trail connects at Phoenix Drive. I don't know if you want to add something to that, Wendy. Well, you can cross here or go over the bridge and cross at Phoenix. Yes. Yes. So, but this crossing obviously is in the city and Phoenix is in the county. So we wanted to provide a location for people to cross and do what we could to enhance it. To your point about the number of lanes of traffic, there is still only one through lane in each direction. And part of the goal of adding the turn lanes is to make it so that people who are on Carroll better understand what traffic is doing by giving them a designated lane. I do hear what you're saying about it being difficult to make a turn.

I have driven through that intersection as well as part of our, you know, site visits. The one other thing that this does that's not entirely clear from this is that we're doing a little bit of widening in this area. So when you come off of the bridge today, there's a little bit of a, well, there's a curve and your traffic is kind of coming off the bridge and it feels like you're turning a little bit there to go straight. That still is going to be the case, but it's going to be less abrupt, I guess I'll say. And so that should help with some of the visibility issues that exist right now as well. I'm certainly no intersection or traffic expert, but I can tell you I've lived here since 2011 and this intersection has always been a very concerning one.

And now I have a 16-year-old driver who will probably never be allowed to turn left there for the foreseeable future. So I'm letting you know that I'm not questioning your judgment or your expertise, but I, as someone who lives there, still continue to have very, very strong concerns about that, not having an opportunity for a light. So I would like that to be noted and to be highly paid attention to with the ability to maybe do some changes shortly after it's implemented if it's not going to work. So thank you. And then on slide 37, it talks about a 10-foot wall across there at KJMS. And I understand from the picture what it's going to look like as far as it's intended to look like a stacked stone.

Is that supposed to essentially cover all of that existing hill? Like, is that going to take away what you see visually with the hill and the sidewalk that's there? And you're just going to see big stone and then the school above it? Is that what that is going to look like? Dad, do you want to add to that? You'll still be able to see the green space up. The wall only cuts in to allow the space for the shared use path and the buffer. So I think it's only, I think, 15 feet total. But the green space on top of the, leading up to the, I guess, the access road on the school is still going to be visible there. And there will be a railing on the wall. So from a safety standpoint, there'll be green space outside of Catherine Johnson sort of at the top of the wall.

There'll be a fence and railing so that nobody could, you know, jump down to the shared use path. But then the shared use path would be at street level. And we can provide maybe a better visual for that if that would be helpful. Yeah, I'd like to better understand what's going to be there. That would be appreciated. And my final question, I think, at least for now, is the fact that the shared use path is intended to be on the west side, which is like the Providence side, and then the sidewalk is intended to be on the east side, which is the Catherine Johnson side. It's opposite of that. I'm sorry? It's the opposite of that. So the shared use path will be on the Catherine Johnson side, and then the sidewalk will be on the Providence side.

Okay. Okay, so then I guess in theory, then kids that are biking from the neighborhoods that would come onto Carroll Street would be able to continue on that same side of the route on the shared use path and then cross over to Providence at some point. Okay. Yes. The other thing I will, back to Providence for a second, is I don't have kids at elementary school anymore there, but I don't know if based upon the changes with the crossing guards, I don't know if there's still a crossing guard in front of the school or if they're now forcing the kids to go up to Orchard Street and cross with that crossing guard and then double back. So that might be something to inquire about as well, just to make sure we're still comparing apples and apples with what was discussed previously.

Okay. We can definitely, I think we'll definitely just follow up on crossing guards in general to make sure we have a better understanding of what their new operations are. Okay. Perfect. Thank you very much for the information. That's all for me at this time. Okay. Other questions, comments? Council Member Peterson. Thanks for everything. I'm really happy to see the shared use of bike path. I've ridden that and that'll be a really big improvement. I'm curious on that. It ends at Carroll Street. Is that basically where it, how much farther, where does it end? Essentially, at Carroll Street, you would cross. So instead of, you would cross the street and then you can connect at that point to Phoenix Drive and the I-66 trail.

And then from there, I believe in the county, there's shared use path on that side, the opposite side of the road. I guess the southbound direction at that point. So it connects on the north end of the project to the I-66 trail at Phoenix and then to whatever shared use path facility exists in the county. Correct. Okay. The sidewalk of going over the bridge is 10 feet wide on both sides. So if you can, you can cross and stay on the bridge or you can stay on the east side and then cross at Phoenix. Got it. Good, good to hear. Does the project begin at the intersection of Germantown and 50 or does it begin closer in where? So then the Bank of America spot, that's not in. Okay. Well, even though it isn't in, it may still be related because I think the way that is set up is to get out of Bank of America.

You can make a right turn onto 50, right? Or you can make a right turn onto Germantown. But if you want to get back to Camp Washington, you've got to go down Germantown and then do a U-turn and come back. How will that, will that work in a different way in the future after this? Or are people still going to have to find a U-turn? That U-turn and the closest you can do that is H-Mart. But that's a bit of a zoo to do that. So just to note that that is an issue. Okay. The project limit is just a little bit south of H-Mart's, I don't, I guess northern, I'm going to call it like middle entrance, but their first entrance from Germantown. So it really is kind of north of 7-11 and north of the Bank of America.

So just to refresh my memory, when you start heading down Germantown from 50, when is the first point at which you hit a light? The H-Mart. Okay. So that would be where you could. Right. And that signal is moving up, is moving up from the H-Mart driveway up to Kuttner Park entrance. Okay. Great. Thanks. Other questions or comments on the Germantown road improvements? Well, it all looks wonderful. Thank you. Thank you. Mayor Reed. Yes. Before you go back into the regular meeting and have your motion for closed session, a couple of things, preferably discussed beforehand, but I guess you could discuss it afterwards. I guess we had sought feedback on work session items for the 14th, did not hear back from everyone as to whether you want us to leave them on or push them, given the public hearings and anticipated attendance.

So it would just, it would be helpful for us to know so we can advise staff and change the posted agenda if you want to push. I would say that none of them are necessarily time sensitive as far as needing to happen on the 14th. That's just when they are scheduled. Council member hall. Yeah, I was looking at that earlier, but I didn't get to you by noon today, so I didn't send anything. I think it's a lot on that agenda, and I'm worried that it's going to be too much. So I wanted to pull up the agenda again. I think there was one work session that I was proposing that we keep, and I think the other two I was going to suggest that we move. But again, I figured I had missed the window, and you had already heard from others, so I was leaving that alone.

I think it was the affordable, or the ADUs, I think we could, was maybe a push, and I think the other ones, I was suggesting keeping. I'm just not remembering what they are at the moment. The three are ADUs, video testimony, and council's rules and procedures. Those were the three that are currently being scheduled. So again, all of those require staff that would not have to be here otherwise. And so, again, don't know how many people may come. We're making it, but educated guests would say, there'll be a lot. And it's going to drag your meeting out to an hour, say, such as this, or later, before you would even have started the work session. So would we roll them to the 28th, because I don't remember what's on there, or would we roll them to the work session in November?

These items. Our plan would be to discuss on the 14th during the future time. I wasn't necessarily going to decide now. That would be part of the discussion that you normally, on future agendas, when you might want to have them. But the question for us is just whether or not you want to keep them or move them, but we don't have to decide when we're going to move them tonight. You don't need to decide when you're going to move them tonight. It's just whether or not you want to go ahead and push them so we can change the agenda accordingly and advise people. Okay. Let's start with Council Member Hall. Council Member Quillen? Yeah. I defer to anything that the City Manager has recommended in this case, because I don't feel it's necessary to have staff waiting that late.

I'm comfortable with pushing everything to the next. Council Member Bates? Yeah. I'd already reached out, but yeah, I'm okay with moving them. Okay. Council Member Peterson? Agreed. Council Member Hart-Chandler? I guess I'm the outlier. I was in favor of keeping it. My question is, can we keep it and opt to move those out that night? But you've got staff here waiting for us to do that. That's the issue. We'll have to have staff here until you decide that you're going to push them. Okay. And so that's why we're asking. In their interest, I'm fine with moving it out. Council Member Amos? I concur. Okay. Thank you. We will make that change. The other thing, there have been two requests for a couple of different public communications

from the council, and we are waiting to hear back from council as to how to proceed. We provided those to you. Several council members have commented on one or the other, but not everybody has commented on both. And so we just can discuss it tonight, not discuss it tonight, but they're in limbo until we get further direction on what council wants to do. Comments? Council Member Peterson? One of them has to do with the federal situation, which sounds to me, based on what I saw, looks like we have an agreement, really, on what folks would like to see in that communication. And if that's the case, I'm certainly in favor of that being shared. And the other communication? On the George Snyder trail.

I commented on that, and I'm in support of the draft as it was written. And my only question was about dissemination. Yeah, I think I also commented on both. I'm good. Council Member McQuillan? So I'd like further discussion on that in a setting that I can freely discuss that with you all. Just I'd like to some of it and some of it I thought could there's some opportunity to convey information a little bit differently with a different tone. So. Council Member Bates? I've already commented and supported both as well. Council Member Hall? Council Member Bates? Council Member Bates? I think it is coming across as very combative and argumentative. And I think it sounds like we're trying to full on put up a fight and defend something.

And to me, that was not what the original intention of this was. I also, you know, I went back and I read the op ed again, and I'm not sure that we're totally answering or responding to what is actually being asked in there and what is actually being questioned. So I think we're just saying, yet again, nope, this is what we said, this is it. But I don't know that we're fully responding to it in a way that is sufficient. Well, I think what we're saying here is that we're not unified in this. So we're not unified in this. Yes, Council Member Hardy Chandler. My understanding was also that we were given the opportunity to edit it. Correct. So I was fine with it, but I did not see any other iterations that I might have also

been fine with. So I don't know what our process is for offering those possible edits. I'm open to that, but I also know that we talked about getting a response out quickly. So, you know, what is, what's been offered as an alternative wording, I'm willing to look at that and consider it so long as the essence of the message communicates what we talked about in our last discussion. Council Member Amos. I'm good at this time, but I thought, well, one, are we good? I thought that was a closed item discussion. But the second thing I'll point out is that I don't think we hit a deadline. I know we said sooner than later, but I know part of the conversation was, do we want to set a deadline for ourselves for edits?

I didn't see any edits either, but if we want to give ourselves a deadline just to submit edits by, I'm fine with that. If we want to do like Friday. Council Member McQuillan. So being the person who brought this up and had requested a closed session on this topic, since we're bringing it public, I'll just flat out say that my purpose. Wait, we're public right now? Yeah, we're public right now. This was brought out publicly. This is why I specifically didn't make that comment. We're still in work session. My mistake, I thought we had entered into a closed session. Well, it's already out there, so I'll just go ahead. My purpose was to bring transparency. It was to create more trust. It was to, there's a way in which we could approach that communication.

But what I received was not deescalating. It read to me as very accusatory. And as it was stated, and I agreed with Council Member Hall in our closed session, I agreed with what she just mentioned on the record. That it wasn't meant to be a tit for tat thing. That we didn't want to publicly go off and blame certain individuals. That wasn't the purpose of that. So it completely did not align with a lot of what I thought the purpose of what, and the intent of what we were doing to put that out there. So no, we are not on the same page when it comes to that. Because I'm not going to get into a back and forth. It was to provide transparency regarding the process, regarding the fact checking. It was to receive all of the information and make sure that we were all standing, you know, to provide that.

And yeah, that's not what's happening here. And so, no, I'm not in agreement with that statement. Thank you. So if we set a deadline of Friday, if people want to make edits, you know, and again, if we can't come to an agreement, I guess that people can make their own statements. If we cannot come to an agreement, but we can set a date of Friday if people want to make edits. Council Member McQuillen? I have very little trust in this process right now because initially I was told that as a council, we don't bring things out out of nowhere like this. And so for this to be handled in this manner is completely unacceptable. And it goes against everything as a council that we in the very beginning established and said that we would work this way together.

So I am already very frustrated that this discussion has occurred this way because it has completely eliminated the ability for us to speak in a trustworthy, confidential way. And that's what closed sessions are about. So I don't even know why we're talking about it right now. But I think it's completely inappropriate. And I'm very, very frustrated that I'm in this position. And that Council Member Hall was actually put in a position as well to be stating where she thought she was in a closed session or it wasn't public and now it's everywhere out there. So I don't agree with that. I think there's a way in which you communicate to the public when there's something controversial that comes up.

And it should be done in a way that shows respect for the community, for different opinions. But that also then explains the information and the processes and conveys the manner in which we handled things. And that's not what the statement that we were provided said. It felt like it was just an attack and a huge defensive. It went off on a completely different thing. And I wasn't given the opportunity to discuss that with you guys personally in a closed session. And I'm not happy about that. So I'm just going to say that and put it right out there. Okay. So why don't we get if people want to continue pursuing this, we can set it up for Friday. And if it just doesn't gel, then we will just not go there, I guess.

So. Well, yeah. So I am also a little bit surprised at the way this has been handled. And I think the issue bears more consideration. And I'm not so sure that the consideration that it bears happens by Friday. I also think the public deserves a better way for us to be able to expand our understanding of what's going on here. I had a hard look at everything. I'm not an attorney. But the harder I looked, the more questions I had. And I think many people in the community are in the same situation. And I don't think we've concluded the examination of this issue. So as a consequence of that, I'm also just very uncomfortable with where things stand at this stage. Okay. Council Member Bates. Well, it was very clear to me that when the city manager said that we wanted, you know, before we go into closed session,

and also that this was simply a reminder that, you know, they're waiting to hear back. I didn't hear any requests specifically for us to have a full-blown discussion on this tonight. I mean, that could have been by email if people didn't want to discuss this tonight. I didn't see the statement that way. But, you know, certainly, again, as Council Member Hardy Chandler mentioned, open to edits. And I look forward to seeing that by Friday. Okay. Council Member McQuillen. With all due respect, Council Member Bates, our mayor, the leader of our meeting tonight, took that and brought it out publicly to all of us. So that's how that got discussed. Thank you. Council Member Hall. Yeah, I would just like to add I'm virtual.

And so I'm picking up most words, but did not recognize that. And I also saw from the OWL that most people had cleared out there. I did notice that JC was still there, which I thought was slightly interesting because he wasn't in the closed session. But, you know, we don't always seem to get a conversation on who's supposed to be present or not. So had I known, I certainly would not have said what I said. And I don't appreciate being put on the spot like that to ask what I thought about something. So at this point, I feel like the residents are owed some sort of conversation. And so I think the bigger topic here, trying not to hit on any closed session stuff, is that we are trying to draft a response to the op-ed.

And there's some disagreement on what that should look like and who it should be called out and how aggressive it should be and what our supportive staff should look like. So cat's out of the bag on that one. So thanks. Okay. Well, if that's all we're going to discuss on this, and I think it probably should be, we will now go into a closed session. I'm happy that the City Council convene a closed meeting under Section 2.2-3711.A1 of the Code of Virginia to discuss personnel matters. All council members in favor of the motion, please signify by voting aye. Aye. Those opposed to the motion, please vote nay. The vote is unanimous in favor of the motion. The City Council retired into a closed session at 10.44 p.m.

The City Council of the House of ihnen Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.