City Council Meeting

деде Good evening. I would like to call the regular meeting of September 30th, 2025 to order. Please note the public hearing for the firearms ordinance will be held as a work session item tonight. The public hearing will be rescheduled to a date certain. Also, the Willard Sherwood Land Use Application Public Hearing is scheduled for Tuesday, October the 14th, 2025. For anyone who may have come expecting a different agenda, sometimes we do move things around in a way that makes sense for the work that we're trying to do here on the dais. If you are able and so choose, please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance. Thank you. I pledge allegiance. To the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one

nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. And I'll ask the Fiesta Committee to join me down in the well for a proclamation. Mayor, I think you have a request for remote participation. We're going to after proclamation. After proclamation? Okay, my bad. Okay. Is my Fiesta Fairfax Committee still out in the lobby? Hello. Hello. Here they come. No problem. No problem. Please come join me, Fiesta Fairfax Committee. I want to proclaim to you. All right. And this, by the way, is our third annual. Third annual Fiesta Fairfax. Very proud. Proud of all the people who helped organize it. Yes, indeed. Yes, yes, yes. Whereas, each year, Americans observe National Hispanic Heritage Month from September 15 to

October 15 by celebrating the histories, cultures, and contributions of American citizens whose ancestors come from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central and South America. And whereas the observation started in 1968 is Hispanic Heritage Week under President Lyndon Johnson and was expanded by President Ronald Reagan in 1988 to cover a 30-day period starting on September 15 and ending on October 15. It was an accidental law on August 17, 1988, on the approval of Public Law 100-402. And whereas the day of September 15 is significant because it is the anniversary of independence for Latin American countries Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. In addition, Mexico and Chile celebrate their independence days on September 16 and September 18, respectively.

And whereas, as our nation approaches its 250th anniversary, we take this opportunity to highlight the critically important contributions the U.S. Latino community has made to our nation's founding, its infrastructure, economy, and global competitiveness for over 500 years. And whereas, during National Hispanic Heritage Month, we reaffirm that diversity is one of our country's greatest strengths, we also acknowledge the Hispanic leaders who have stayed in the struggle for equal justice to ensure that everyone in this nation can contribute their talents and have the opportunity to thrive. And whereas, the City of Fairfax celebrates Fiesta Fairfax, an event on Saturday, October 4, with cultural performances, music, food, and educational exhibits highlighting the contributions and experiences of the Hispanic, Latino, and Latinx community.

Now, therefore, I, Catherine S. Reed, Mayor of the City of Fairfax, Virginia, do hereby proclaim September 15 to October 15, 2025, its National Hispanic Heritage Month in the City of Fairfax, and encourage the community to continue celebrating the month and recognize their contribution to the city. So, a few words from Mr. Estuardo. Thank you so much. This is so great to be with you. And of course, we can't do this without the incredible support of Mayor Catherine Reed, and of course, of the City Council. So, thank you all very much for continuing to believe in the importance of highlighting the contributions of the broader Latino community across the city, across the region, and really across the country.

It has been my pleasure to highlight with my wife Elizabeth the important pieces of our history that are missing. Across our National Mall, we have historic and iconic museums that tell America's story. And for almost 250 years, this nation has enjoyed great success, thanks to the diversity that has come together, not just within those 250 years, but dating 250 years before, with, as the proclamation states, the Spanish, the Mexican, the indigenous communities that have come together to build the first city in our nation, which is St. Augustine, Florida, the first capital in our nation, Santa Fe, New Mexico. And to take 30 days out of the year, which, you know, I think we should just do this all year round,

but to take 30 days out of the year to put some emphasis on that strength that comes from the broader Latino community, not just in the day-to-day work in the service industry, construction, but innovation in science, medicine, sports. And of course, the broader, I interviewed someone last year who created the robotic arm for the Mars rover some time back. So these are touch points across all level areas of our society, and we're just pleased to be able to take a moment in Fairfax City to highlight how important these contributions are. So thank you again, Madam Mayor, and we look forward to having all of you join us this weekend in Old Town Hall, to Old Town Square, to celebrate. Thank you again.

Thank you. I'm sorry. Laura, can you come up, please? Because you've been working really hard on this. You've come in late. Come on, Mom. I was looking for you. Come on. Come on down. Always late. It's okay. Your face is always going to red. Thanks for catching you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. You can have a seat on the back today. Yes. Thank you very much. So I'm going to ask the City's Commission for Women to join me here, and Sophia Nicholas from Inova to join us. Okay. The gang's all here. Come on down. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, ladies, very much. Whereas, breast cancer is one of the most commonly diagnosed cancers among women in the United States, and the second leading cause of cancer deaths, with significant impact also on men.

And whereas it is estimated that in 2025, hundreds of thousands of people will be diagnosed with breast cancer, reminding us that this disease continues to pose a serious threat to individuals and families across our communities. And whereas advances in early detection and improved treatments have led to a continued decrease in mortality rates, increasing the five-year survival rate to nearly 90% for those diagnosed with breast cancer. And whereas individuals whose family history or other risk factors put them at increased risk for breast cancer should discuss proper prevention and early diagnosis strategies with a qualified health care professional. And whereas National Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October provides an opportunity to raise awareness of this disease,

honor the survivors and those living with metastatic breast cancer, and remember those who have been lost. And whereas a supportive network of survivors, caregivers, advocates, and health care providers gives hope to those battling breast cancer and helps increase public knowledge about the importance of early detection through self-exams, regular screenings, and mammograms. And whereas we must continue to advocate for equitable access to affordable breast cancer screenings and quality health care for all members of our community, now therefore I, Catherine S. Reed, Mayor of the City of Fairfax, do hereby proclaim the month of October 2025 as Breast Cancer Awareness Month in the City of Fairfax

and encourage the community to join in activities that will increase awareness of what we can do, what we can all do to help prevent and control breast cancer. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Janelle for some remarks. All right. On behalf of the Fairfax City Commission for Women, I want to thank you, Mayor Reed, for issuing the proclamation and shining a light on such an important issue, the importance of early detection, regular screenings, and advocating for equitable access. To care for all, this October, we invite you, the City Council, all the residents and the businesses of Fairfax City to think pink, focusing on action, awareness, accessibility, and acknowledgement. We are proud to partner with Inova, Seville Cancer Screening and Prevention Center,

in this effort, and we encourage the entire community to join us in turning the city pink. Place a yard sign at your home, add a sticker to your business window, or wear a pink ribbon on your shirt. And so tonight, we're honored to gift you, Mayor Reed, and the City Council, all pink yard signs in hopes that you will join us in our effort in acknowledging Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else want a yard sign? We're happy to share. Thank you. All right. I'm going to ask Chloe Ritter to join me here for a new presentation. I'm going to ask Chloe Ritter to join me here for another very important proclamation,

having to do with pedestrian safety, which is very important in a city that aspires to be more walkable with each passing year. Whereas, walking is a healthy and sustainable option for connecting to public transit, parks, and neighborhoods, local businesses, schools, and other locations in the community. And whereas, safe streets and sidewalks help create a welcoming environment for people of all ages and abilities, and helps make the city more accessible for everyone, including the most vulnerable residents and visitors, and also our canine residents on leashes. Yes, Reggie. And whereas, pedestrian safety is a critical concern, as the city and the region have seen increases in pedestrian fatalities

and injuries in recent years. And whereas, the city of Fairfax is committed to supporting pedestrian safety with the ongoing development of pedestrian and safety plans and investments in multiple projects to improve pedestrian facilities. And whereas, ensuring pedestrian safety is a shared responsibility for the entire community, requiring drivers, cyclists, scooter riders, and walkers to remain alert, to be visible and predictable, and treat each other with mutual respect on our roadways. Now, therefore, I, Kathryn S. Reed, Mayor of the City of Fairfax, do hereby proclaim October as Pedestrian Safety Month in the City of Fairfax, and encourage everyone to enjoy the benefits of walking, and to work together to promote safe roads and sidewalks in our community.

Would you like to say any words? Thank you, Mayor Reed, and thank you to all the city council members for supporting pedestrian safety in all of our projects, and for taking this opportunity to highlight the importance of pedestrian safety. Everyone is pedestrian sometimes, and we all want to get where we're going safely, and so it's really important that we all share this responsibility. The city does have goals set to improve pedestrian safety to help make it easier to walk between neighborhoods and schools and activity centers, and we're working really hard to try to make the streets and the sidewalks safer with several sidewalk projects, crosswalk improvement projects, whether they're funded or looking for funding or in design.

So we're working really hard to improve the infrastructure. We are also currently working on a plan to prioritize future improvements. We're creating a safety and pedestrian plan called Move Fairfax, and we have a survey going out this week, and an open house next Wednesday at the library, and we really hope to hear from everybody about what their concerns are, what their priorities are, so that we can develop those plans to make our pedestrians safer in the future as well. And we also hope that people will take this month as a reminder to practice pedestrian safety and practice traffic safety as they're driving and walking, to put away your phones, slow down, make sure you're visible, especially as the days are getting shorter, you want to be visible at night,

and just generally, as I said in the proclamation, to make sure that everybody's taking care of each other and respecting each other on the roads, and making sure we're all safe. So thank you again. Thank you. All right. Leave your toes. Thank you. Thank you. One, two, three. Go ahead. All right. All right. We can move to the consideration for remote participation by Councilmember Hardy-Chandler. Is there a motion to approve the remote participation by Councilmember Hardy-Chandler? Councilmember Hall. I move to consider remote participation by Councilmember Hardy-Chandler, pursuant to Code of Virginia Section 2.2-3708.2. Is there a second? Second. The motion has been made and seconded. A roll call vote.

Councilmember Amos. Aye. Councilmember Hall. Aye. Councilmember Peterson. Aye. Councilmember Bates. Aye. Councilmember McQuillan. Aye. Motion passed unanimously. We will now go to the agenda adoption. I move to adopt the agenda as presented. Is there a second? Second. The motion has been made and seconded. A roll call vote. Councilmember Amos. Aye. Councilmember Hall. Aye. Councilmember Peterson. Aye. Councilmember Bates. Aye. Councilmember McQuillan. Aye. Councilmember Hardy-Chandler. Aye. Motion passed unanimously. We will go on to initial general public comment. I had eight speakers sign up by 5 o'clock p.m. today. I'm going to call the first speaker up. It's Anita Light. Good evening, Mayor Reed and members of City Council.

I'm honored again to represent Fairfax Village in the city and the advisory board. A couple of our advisory board members are here tonight with me along with Jason Skadron, who's our village coordinator who continues to do a fabulous job. I'm pleased to be able to present our annual report. I believe each one of you were given a copy of this and I hope you've had a chance to review it in a little more detail than what I'll be sharing tonight. There's a lot of great information in there. Just to hit some of the highlights, we achieved our goal of 50% increase in membership and also the number of volunteers that we have serving our members. We significantly increased our service requests and we increased volunteer hours that resulted in a value of over $50,000 to the city.

We continue to receive accolades from our members about the help that they receive from our volunteers and we continue to build on the programs that we believe will bring valuable information to all of our members. Our Home for Life Expo and Friday morning speaker series has been well attended and it gives the city recognition and lets our members know that the city residents know that their well-being is important to you as leaders of our community. And our program is going to continue throughout the year. Yesterday and today, several members of our advisory board were able to attend the National Village to Village Network Virtual Summit as a result of a very generous anonymous donation who paid our registration fee.

We were able to learn quite a lot at this summit on such topics as solo aging, AI for villages, data gathering for impact, dementia, connecting villages to healthcare. And there was a session, and there was a session, one of the last ones today was on ageism, which I hope that we can bring that program here to Fairfax City through one of our programming events. And we'll invite you all and hopefully you'll be able to learn about that as we learn. And our village leadership also recognizes the importance of working on social isolation as highlighted in the Surgeon General's 2023 report on loneliness and social isolation. And we'll be submitting a grant proposal for funding from the Virginia Department of Aging and Rehabilitative Services that will support the training of our volunteers and how to observe and communicate and engage our members in ways that will help reduce social isolation.

And once our volunteers have been more, have received that training, they'll be participating in our friendly visiting program. Anyway, to thank you all again for your support. We are one of almost 350 villages nationwide that is supported by a local government. We're unique and we're continuously asked to talk about that. And without your support, we wouldn't be able to do that. So we really appreciate it and appreciate your support. Thank you. Our next speaker is Philip LaTassa. I speak tonight representing the Friends of Akedene Creek. In the October edition of the Fairfax Independent, we read the dismaying story of how assumptions and misunderstandings regarding the contractual repayment obligations

led the City Council in June to vote to proceed with the George Snyder Trail. To the contrary, the project agreement has very clear cancellation clause, as the article explains in detail. We have been pleading with the City since 2019 to spare Akedene Creek, its forest, and its wetlands from this project. We have pleaded for the alternative of making nearby streets safe and inviting for people. We repeat that plea now. Together, we must atone for the sins of North Hacks West, voiding the streamside resource protection area, voiding the floodplain protections, burying a living perennial stream filled with fish, the north fork of Akedene Creek, in the eternal darkness of a concrete tunnel. Together, we must forego our desires in order to spare this creek yet another unbearable burden.

The assertions made by George Snyder Trail advocates of planting more trees in the forest than would be cut are fallacious. There is no denying that two acres of asphalt, plus attendant structures, would be thrust into this forest. Nothing, nothing would ever grow in that asphalt forever. We have plenty of asphalt. Let Tree City USA protect the few forest habitats this city has left. The example of Richmond's Mayo Island Park is an inspiration. Adding conservation easements, removing acres of impervious surface, restoring nature, reducing runoff, and giving up lanes of car traffic for buffered bike lanes and sidewalks. It is being done in Richmond, and it can be done here. Please cancel the George Snyder Trail, the Pickett Connector Trail, and all similar redundant trees to asphalt conversion plants.

Thank you. Our next speaker is Judy Frazier. Oh, sorry. Judy Fisher. My name is Judy Fisher. I have lived in the city of Fairfax for a very long time. I became an advocate for common sense gun safety legislation when my student, Mary Reed, was killed at Virginia Tech in 2007. I was horrified to learn that more than 60 people died every day by gun in 2007. Do you know what that figure is today? Guns are the number one killer of children in the United States. Over 120 people die by gun every day. I was listening to J.D. Vance last week. Referring to the killing of Charlie Kirk, he said, We must do everything we can to lessen the possibility that our young people die from gun violence. His words, lessen the possibility.

You on the city council have the opportunity to do that here in the city of Fairfax. You can amend the ordinance banning weapons at street events so that there are fewer opportunities to be killed by gun in our city. Lessen the opportunity. Take this action to make our city safer for the many attendees at our public events. You do not want to be on the evening news being interviewed after a tragedy. Thank you. Our next speaker is Ellen Pence. I'm Ellen Pence, 3211 Adams Court. Gun violence costs America $229 billion annually. More than $700 per person every year will pay the tab for first responders, legal proceedings, medical treatment, lost wages, and long-term care for victims. That's six times what the U.S. spends annually on foreign aid.

Only it's probably more than that now. You can look up the statistics on that. In the 1930s and 1940s, my father-in-law was a fur trader in the Dakotas. He shot beaver and raccoons and birds. He raised mink. He shot foxes from an open cockpit airplane. And the state paid him a bounty of $5 per fox during the Depression. And he got to keep the pelts. He had a cold storage locker in Chicago. He shot pheasant and was a hunting guide for pheasant hunters. Back then, there were hunting accidents, but there were no mass murders. That day is gone. We don't live in Dakota territory here. Fairfax City needs to get at least into line with our surrounding jurisdictions with strong gun control measures.

In fact, we should be leading the way instead of following them. Please do what is right. Let's keep our city safe from gun violence. Now, on another subject, the carts. I have told you and the city staff members over and over again that I cannot store or use a rolling cart of any size. I live in a townhouse with no garage, no driveway that goes to no street or road. Adams Court is a parking lot, a very tightly parked parking lot crammed with vehicles. No room for carts of any size. Furthermore, steep stairs go down to my back patio. My trash and recycle is kept in my kitchen, which is on my main floor. So all of my trash and recycle has to go out my front door. I take compost items to City Hall to be composted.

We aren't allowed to keep trash on our patios because of rodents. It's obvious that the city intends to very soon put a complete stop to our trash service in Cambridge Station by limiting pickup to Cardinal Road, which is two whole blocks from my house. So I would have to drag carts upstairs and two blocks away from my house. And I think you need to talk to your staff members about what their plans are. Thank you. Now our next speaker is Judy Frazier. We do get confused a lot. One reason I am actually glad that you did not choose to vote to cancel the trail, George Snyder Trail in June, was because of the motion that was in your packet that evening that theoretically you would have read in order to cancel the trail, which says you would do it with the understanding

that full repayment of project expenditures will be required. That is irresponsible. There is no requirement to repay fully those funds. Even that night before knowing what I know now, I thought that was egregious. So fortunately you did not vote to cancel and commit the city to paying $3.7 million that it doesn't need to. That is the very worst case scenario. No matter what, these types of funds are negotiated. But this is a very unique fund. It's a concession fund. It's private money that came from a developer to the Commonwealth. So this is not like other VDOT funds, even though our city website now calls them VDOT funds. They are not VDOT funds. They are private money that was given to the Commonwealth for a very specific purpose.

And this is a serious mistake that almost cost our taxpayers, us, a lot of money. And it's hard to imagine how that happened. And I think you should have answers. But be that as it may, what VDOT said was, I have it here, that we would, that if the city cannot complete the project in accordance with the executed agreement by VDOT and the city, project expenditures are subject to payback. Not required to be fully paid back or anything. But the critical thing here is that the executed agreement, as Mr. LaTassa mentioned, has a straightforward clause for cancellation. So canceling would be in accord with the executed agreement. You had that option all the time. It was sitting there in the agreement that was signed for this project.

So I think before you go forward with any contract on this project, you should have answers and you should be able to retake that vote out from under the cloud of this purported penalty for not going forward with a very costly and environmentally damaging project. I think you, four of you know that that is the case. And that we do not need that project. We do not need the costs of that project. We do not need to damage more of our environment than we already have. We can take a new path forward. And that starts with you all. Thank you. Our next speaker is Shelly Vance. I'm Shelly Vance from Cambridge Station. I come to revisit the issue of the George Snyder Trail and the 4-2 vote taken by Council on

June 10 of this year to go forward with the trail with its environmentally destructive design. The yes vote of two of the four affirmative votes were based on misinformation about the requirement of the city to repay some $3.7 million. Both council members indicated that they were against the damaging design of the trail but that the payback overrode those concerns. Apparently, according to the 2018 project agreement signed by the then city manager and the VDOT chief of policy, the city is not required to pay back the concessionaire fund money it has already spent on the design if it cancels the project. The only required payback is $395,000, which is the much smaller federal grant that the city

also used for project design costs. Thus, the required payback is about one-tenth what the council was led to believe. To the two city council members who voted for the trail because of the repayment issue, I say, if your June vote would have been different if you knew then what you know now, you owe it to the community to reconsider before the project moves forward. It is time to retake the vote of June 10 and find in favor of a better trail. My second issue is the coming trash carts. Recently, residents in each single family house and each townhouse learned that they will be required to take two rolling trash carts. This may please many of these households, but where was the outreach to townhouse communities

that were built on small courts that are essentially parking lots and that have no garages, driveways, or clear curb areas. Just as with the lack of public engagement on the George Snyder Trail, there has been no public engagement of these stakeholders on this trash cart program. As far as I can tell, no HOAs were contacted, surveyed, or involved in feedback. For townhouse communities without garages and driveways, there is no place to conveniently store these behemoths. Rolling them from enclosed back patios along rear walkways of slate pavers, levers and gravel to the end of the row of houses. Then up inclines, stairs, steps, and down curbs to parking lots will be impossible. Even then they will be placed where sanitation workers must hoist them overhead to get them

between parked cars without scratching the cars. The city has now decided to offer a 32-gallon size, which does nothing to facilitate using rolling carts in such townhouses and communities. The city must rethink this program and allow city residents to opt out of receiving these carts. Thank you. Our next speaker, Susan Kyler. Hello. My name is Susan Kyler. I initially was going to speak on two topics, but Ellen Pence and Judy Fisher did such a good job that I'd just like to second the motion, I might say. Other than that, at the July 22nd Council meeting I expressed concern that you did not have complete or accurate information when you voted on June 10th to approve building the George Steiner

Trail. I want to ask again for the Council if they were informed before the vote of June 10 of Section 9, Project Cancellation in the 2018 GST Agreement between the city and VDOT that was signed by the city manager and the VDOT chief of policy. Section 9, as Shelley noted, allows the city or VDOT to cancel the project with 30-day notice and does not require the city to repay already expended funds if the city turns over project plan specifications and right of way to VDOT. That's simple. Another state and federally funded projects supplement the VDOT standard agreement with another signed agreement or Council resolution that states explicitly that the city must repay funds if the city cancels the project.

This is not the case with the GST. There is not another agreement or resolution that supersedes the 2018 agreement. Therefore what is the basis for city staff and VDOT to ignore Section 9 of the signed 2018 VDOT standard agreement? Has VDOT provided the city with documents that affirm that the concessionary funds are state funds and not private funds? Fairfax County has stated they are private funds and treats them as such in the budget. VDOT should clarify why the county is wrong. If VDOT insists that concessionary funds must be repaid then what is the basis for that assertion? Why does the agreement have Section 9 if VDOT is going to ignore it? And finally if the lack of a requirement for a supplementary appendix or locality approved

resolution was an oversight on VDOT's part then why should the city pay for VDOT's oversight? That is why should the city penalize itself financially for not abiding by the agreement? One more point to consider. If the council is concerned that not repaying 3.3 million and that's what it would be in concessionary funds will hurt our reputation and adversely impact our ability to get grant money for other projects consider this. VDOT does not want to be called out in the media for retributive actions. Thank you. Our last speaker is Katie Johnson. When campaigns allow lies to be peddled about upstanding citizens, citizens that happen to be our neighbors, their kids are our kids' classmates, teammates, and opponents on their other teams.

You kill a little bit of what makes this city so special. It should be no surprise that we have ended up where we are today. What does surprise me is that so many of the good people of our city stay quiet. Behaviors in campaigns carry over to how the city is run. FOIA requests for work records trying to catch a candidate in wrongdoings. Lies tweeted by campaign managers pushed out by supporters that then target and disparage the candidate for calling out the lies. A 26-year council veteran smeared by a total misrepresentation of council vote he made many years ago. A city manager fired just before Christmas, fired behind closed doors in secrecy. The city manager that wanted citizen engagement and projects to be properly vetted using data

and analytics. And citizens disrespected because we choose to believe all voices should be involved in making our city a better place. The threat of the $3.7 million payback for the George Snyder Trail was either gross negligence, or lies and woeful manipulation taking advantage of a young council. I present you tonight the comments of our change.org petition that has 3,288 signatures on it. You can clearly see by these comments, it's a good representation, that these are your neighbors, these are your friends, and these are your constituents. As I was preparing this for tonight, an article was sent to me. Virginia, it stated, Virginia has lost nearly 50,000 acres of tree canopy in just seven years.

I ask you tonight, do not commit our city to building this bike road through our remaining and irreplaceable woodlands and wetlands. Thank you. We can move to the consent agenda. I move adoption of a consent agenda for agenda item number 6A, consideration of the August 29th, the 2020 25 special meeting minutes. Agenda item 6B, consideration of the September 2nd, the 2020 25 special meeting minutes. Agenda item number 6C, consideration of the September 9th, the 2020 regular meeting minutes. Agenda item 6D, consideration of the September 12th, the 2020 25 special meeting minutes. Agenda item number 6E, consideration of the September 16th, the 2020 25 special meeting minutes. Agenda Item 6F, consideration of the September 22, 2025 Special Meeting Minutes.

Agenda Item 6G, consideration of a resolution for the reappropriation of general-slash-operating capital and enterprise funds carryover to fiscal year 2026 that were appropriated in fiscal year 2025 and have not yet been spent as of June 30, 2025. Agenda Item 6H, introduction of an ordinance amending Chapter 66, personnel, Article 2, retirement plan for general employees, Division 7, benefits on termination of employment, Section 66-167, and Article 3, retirement plan for public safety employees, Division 7, benefits on termination of employment, Section 407, regarding the treatment of accumulated contributions for non-vested participants. Is there a second? Second. A motion has been made by Council Member Hall and seconded by Council Member Peterson.

Are there any items Council would like pulled for additional discussion? Few. We're good. Okay, seeing none, seeing none. Roll call vote. Council Member McQuillan? Aye. Council Member Bates? Aye. Council Member Peterson? Aye. Council Member Hall? Aye. Council Member Amos? Aye. Council Member Hardy-Chandler? Aye. Motion passed unanimously. We will now go on to appointments to boards, commissions, and advisory committees. The first item is the consideration of appointments of one Fairfax City Parks Foundation Incorporation initial director. I'm going to recognize Stacey Summerfield, Parks and Recreation Director, to provide the staff report. Good evening. Good evening. I join you tonight because we have our fifth and final Foundation Director for Council nomination.

So as you might remember from the bylaws, the directors are a minimum of five, a maximum of ten. When we reach the fifth, the foundation, which will work to leverage private funds to promote recreation in the city, will become an independent organization. And then at that point on, that group of five directors will vote on the addition of new directors. So the individual that we have for council consideration tonight is Emilio Alonso. He is out in the audience with us this evening. He is also joined by Selma Witt, Sully Washington, who is also interviewed with PRAB. She would be person number six. So our plan tonight is to submit Emilio for council consideration and appointment. And then Sully would go before the now independent five-member foundation board with also the unanimous support of PRAB.

So both of them were unanimously supported by PRAB after an interview process at last month's meeting. Are there any questions regarding this? All right. Then is there a motion, councilmember Hall? Yes. I move to endorse the appointment of Emilio Alonso as a director for the Fairfax City Parks Foundation for a three-year term as outlined in the attached bylaws. Is there a second? Second. A motion has been made by councilmember Hall and seconded by councilmember Peterson. Is there any discussion on the motion? Seeing none, a roll call vote. Councilmember McClellan? Aye. Councilmember Bates? Aye. Councilmember Peterson? Aye. Councilmember Hall? Aye. Councilmember Amos? Aye. Councilmember Hardy-Chandler?

Aye. Motion passed unanimously. We will go on to the second item, which is consideration of appointments to the city's boards, commissions, and advisory committees. I can give a staff report, just that basically the city council held a closed session on September 16, 2025 for boards and commission and advisory committee of vacancies, and there was discussion held for appointments and reappointments. Okay. Are there any questions on this, the appointments for boards and commissions? Okay. Is there a motion, councilmember Hall? I move to appoint the following applicants. Reappoint Robert Beatty to the Board of Architectural Review for a three-year term ending through September 30, 2028. Appoint Michael Breslin to the Board of Zoning Appeals for a five-year term extending through September 30, 2030.

Appoint Michelle Nguyen to the Economic Development Authority for a four-year term extending through September 30, 2029. Appoint Derek Fuzzle to the Northern Virginia Community College Board for a four-year term extending through September 30, 2029. Appoint Tassos McCarthy to the Planning Commission for a remainder of a four-year term extending through December 31, 2026. Reappoint Jamil Ahmed to the Retirement Plan Administrative Committee for a three-year term extending through June 12, 2028. And appoint Nelson Stewart as the Public Safety Employee Representative for a remainder of a three-year term extending through February 28, 2028. Is there a second? Second. A motion has been made by councilmember Hall and seconded by councilmember Peterson.

Is there any discussion on the motion? Seeing none, a roll call vote. Councilmember Amos? Aye. Councilmember Hall? Aye. Councilmember Peterson? Aye. Councilmember Bates? Aye. Councilmember McClellan? Aye. Councilmember Hardy Chandler? Aye. Motion passed unanimously. We will go on to second general public comment. Is there anybody in the room that would like to speak on any item tonight? Come on up, Ms. Miller. Thank you, Melissa. Good evening. It's nice, it's always nice to visit Chambers. I'm here tonight to offer several remarks about your upcoming work session dealing with the weapons ordinance. I was really pleased to support our initial work on the weapons ordinance. But I believe then, as I do now, that we should have included the provision relating to city-sponsored events and surrounding areas.

At that time, in 2021, there wasn't the will to do that. And I certainly hope that this council will take that into consideration and will include that in the ordinance. The one thing that I'm concerned about that I'm hearing is that there is some interest in adding concealed carry to the provision. The purpose of the ordinance is to say to people, yes, I respect your right to own a firearm, but please leave it at home. Do not carry it at home. Do not carry it into our public buildings, our parks, and our events. So I would hope that you would discard that possibility. The other item that I would like to bring up is that when we passed the ordinance in 2021, it was for parks and public buildings.

I'd like to bring to your attention that the city hall property houses a building. The building clearly states that you cannot carry weapons in the building. However, because city hall property and parking lot is not a park, people can carry weapons on this property. So going forward in the future, I would hope that you would work with staff to perhaps declare the city hall property a park and thereby would be covered by the ordinance. So in closing, I would like to say thank you for considering making adjustments to this ordinance, and I wish you well in your work session tonight. Thank you. Is there anybody else in the room that would like to speak? Okay. All right, then. All right, then. I will now recess the regular meeting to go into a work session.

And we'll take a five-minute recess to go into the work session room located next door. Bye. shows shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the shows you the Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. One of the people. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. There's a lot of people. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. the trial court state court upheld the law the ordinance and they put a lot of emphasis in that case as to the importance of signage and they emphasize that there needs to be clear signage directing folks that there are no guns allowed at any reasonable place that people would be making entry into that

festival parades event whatever it is the signage is critical if you're going to enforce it and the other thing is there's a very big difference between signage and then screening right and so that's another big consideration there was questions asked of us as far as what would be the impact on police resources if it's just signage there's really no difference we're going to approach an event the same whether it's no guns allowed or if it's the existing language the police department plans and prepares as if we are going to make sure we do everything we can and and can prepare for to keep people safe and make sure it's a safe event for everybody and so really the the issue as far as staffing and

resources is more on the level to which the city says hey we want to you know fence an area we want to keep people out we want to screen people like we do when they come into the city courthouse that that's a difference in what would be the police department's response to something like that next slide thank you sir viewpoints so prohibiting firearms at city permanent events can increase public safety by you know you reduce the risk of gun violence where a person who is lawfully armed responds impulsively to a situation right if somebody's got a gun and they're involved in some type of emotional situation or they're confronted with somebody there exists that possibility they can draw the gun we see

this this happens right people that would probably not have pulled that gun out if they just had it at home or in their car but because they had it on them the situation presents they respond emotionally and some type of rage and they use the gun and then now this person who otherwise would not have gone out to commit a crime and probably didn't leave their house looking to commit a crime finds themselves facing the rest of their their life or worse in prison another increase of public safety would be the reducing unintended consequences this is where a situation where otherwise law-abiding citizen presents their firearm because they're lawfully carrying it and they feel that they are doing the

right thing but whether it's a lack of training or a lack of preparation or just a lack of clear understanding of what's happening in front of them they use that gun and and and the wrong person becomes the victim of that that situation and that happens also right so these are things that to think about that that can also be a way if you're going to be a the guns at an event less guns means less likelihood of something like that happening the other thing is confusion for police you see sometimes situations present where there's bad guys with guns and then there's good guys with guns and they're all in the same place if you look at Broward County they had that shooting shooting at the airport in the baggage claim area and there were officers responding in plain

clothes with with guns obviously to respond to this active shooter situation but to the people that were watching what was happening it was just mass confusion they didn't know in this case it was police but people were calling in about guns here guns there officers didn't know who was who officers didn't recognize the officers who had the guns and that's trained police fortunately right so they're thinking through these things and nobody was hurt but the same thing happens when you see incidents where members of the public are drawing their guns they're running through a shopping mall where there's been an active shooter and they have a gun in their hand we do not know when we're responding who's good and who's bad so we've got to deal with everything that we're getting the

information about who's got a gun where is that gun when we're confronting people it's very quick decisions to to basically determine whether or not this person is is the threat or not and so obviously that can create confusion for the officers and i think the last point to consider is reducing fear and anxiety that could be felt by citizens especially in the case of open carrying you're at a city permitted event you're at whatever parade whatever the issue is and people can lawfully carry guns out in the open and that obviously we can infer that would create some type of worry on the part of people that are there to enjoy the event the other side to this allowing lawfully permitted gun carriers to have their guns with them we're not everywhere all the time so there is that

possibility and it does happen where a citizen that is properly permitted can intervene in a situation of violence before an officer can get there to do it so that does happen it doesn't happen that frequently but it does happen and they've made a difference right so that is something to consider on the other side of it that's what we have for you today from the police department i hope we've answered most of your questions and if you have any questions we're happy to give it a shot and see what we can tell you okay thank you so much for the presentation do we have uh questions from the council council member bates thank you uh a few to start off with um first off uh with regard to including the city hall grounds and the ordinance

my guess is that that is not something that we would address with this ordinance but rather with in terms of the city designating the grounds as a park would that be accurate so as i noted at the beginning um the enabling authority only gives so many avenues for uh establishing prohibitions so the only way uh would uh would be to designate the city hall grounds as a park yeah yeah there's no other uh circumstance that i can envision under existing enabling authority where um you would be able to do it but that's not something that we would address as part of this ordinance revision no because there's also going to be considerations on what it means to establish a park and what that what ramifications that might have so um secondly you mentioned and i actually hadn't this hadn't

occurred to me but the um uh eda office in willwood plaza i wasn't aware that that could be affected by this so i know we don't own that that's least as you mentioned is there and feel free to you know i know you may not have looked into this yet um but uh is there a possibility that the ordinance could potentially also include the hallways and staircases that are used by city employees to access that office or is that so i suspect those are common areas of the building so the answer is probably no what i don't know and and i used it as an example without knowing so i apologize i do not know if the owner of that building prohibits firearms generally yeah that would solve that problem but that's certainly in the

discretion of the of the building owner but otherwise it it extends to the door of the edo the door of the eda meeting room when it's being used because remember it's not it's it's when it's being used for a governmental purpose right so um there's a without getting too much into the weeds but i'll get into it a little bit the conference room that's used for eda meetings is not always used for eda meetings it's used for other purposes as well when it's not being used for governmental purpose there's no prohibition so you see the difficulties with sort of dancing on the head of a pin with what the enabling authority allows municipalities to do yeah i guess it's probably somewhat of a moot point anyway since if someone

is on their way to or from the office then they you know couldn't have it in the office right if that was included right and i think the chief's point was well taken i think most people determined to do harm aren't going to notice the difference between the areas they're passing through it just becomes a question of what the signage generally puts them on alert for and whether that makes a difference again that's the chief's purview yeah and uh just out of curiosity do you have the median response time by any chance for uh uh gun violations or just the average just the average we have a median time yeah we just have we could work on getting the median time for you but we don't have it available tonight

okay it's i'd just be you know curious but um that's all i have for now thanks other questions council member peters well thank you that was educational and we appreciate all your hard work um one clarification from somebody that i i think i understand but let me double check is just i saw language originally this gets to the coverage of areas for the new um expanded ordinance um i saw language which was about public property and i'm just wondering if you could pin that down a little bit more in terms of what public property means in the city of fairfax because in the extreme it could include all kinds of things but i suspect the language here is actually referring much more narrowly to uh something else can you so with that yes so it's um

um obviously the easy one is public property in the context of a governmental building a public building the prohibition extends to that currently under the existing ordinance uh public property in the context of um recreation or community centers is clear um those are specifically delineated uh parks it's the park boundaries is delineated in this case by the city and uh you may or may not be aware much of the i don't want to say much well it's probably much of the open space of the city is not within the limited park boundaries and that's another discussion i think that we've talked about over the years is we we do have a lot of open space that's not within the boundaries of parks so currently

under the ordinance uh there's no prohibition on that um the new language if enacted to include public events etc would provide additional protection in certain areas but not a blanket prohibition because again it needs to be a city permitted event or an event that requires a permit from the city or a city-sponsored event and it's only while that event is occurring uh and then in the immediately surrounding streets and public rights away so again the the message that i keep reinforcing is these prohibitions are limited um they're uh in some cases geographically difficult not difficult to determine but difficult for the average person to understand where the prohibitions are hence the signage and notice requirements but there is no ability to have a blanket prohibition on public spaces

generally or even certain public spaces unless they fall within these limited categories that are permitted by the general assembly so open space let's take the george snyder trail and that whole area back there is it the case that unless there were an event occurring occurring in that area that that would not be covered as so and again i may show a little bit of my ignorance my assumption is that portions of the george snyder trail would meander in and out of park areas in certain areas it may i may be incorrect about that but they may go through some some parks they may not when it's in a park it could be prohibited if there's signage so you'd have to sign the areas of the george snyder trail but i do not

believe the george snyder trail and other areas some many other areas of the city are within park boundaries so there would currently be no prohibition even though that may be city property it's not correct there's a difference between correct there's as i said there's a difference between in in many cases between city open space and city parks so a number of jurisdictions around the commonwealth and elsewhere i think they have ordinances or they otherwise provide that open space by definition if it's not otherwise allocated is with is considered to be parkland the city does not have that so we have open space that's not within a specific park boundary if that makes sense sure well thanks and

it's almost sounds like a map could be handy here try to get a i'm sorry could you a map uh yes it would be an interesting map but yes but we have a map of the park so for example you would see where the where the where the parks are right but it might help citizens who are trying to figure out you know when they're going from point a to point b what does that involve in terms of crossing areas that may or may oh yes but remember the the big corollary to all of this and this is where it gets a little i don't want to say silly but difficult is if you're going in and out of park boundaries you have to sign the areas where you're going in and out right so you know that's not not to be clipped it's not like saying

you know now leaving you know the park or now entering the park you need to post firearms prohibitions for it to be effective on response time did you have a well we're just going to add in and not necessarily not necessarily to that specific point but somewhat related is it also includes the language to the adjacent areas right so some of the sidewalks and different areas alleys but the other thing too is we talk a lot about our response and preparation for special uh for city permanent events but i think it also is important to note that we do not staff every city permanent event like was mentioned at the beginning there's hundreds and hundreds of city permanent events throughout the year we staff the major events obviously and the ones that we expect are going to be uh attended or

that or that we learn of anything of concern but we do not staff every city permanent event and if my add one i think the other consideration remember is even in the public buildings we do not so for example the city hall building uh there are magnetometers when court court days and court court is in session regular visitors to city hall are not run through any screening there's no magnetometers etc um so if there was a will of council to explore those type of security issues that would obviously delve into a budget budgetary concern a follow-up on response time the five minute average is that from the beginning of an incident to the arrival on scene and that's the entire span or is that just

from dispatch that's from the moment that our this uh call taker picks up the telephone yeah and that's the location of that emergency to when the first officer arrives right and do you know what the period of time is on average or otherwise from the beginning of an incident to the receipt of that call from 9-1-1 no we don't have that information that's dependent on when the person makes the phone call it also our 9-1-1 calls are if it's a 9-1-1 call it gets routed through fairfax county to us and we don't have a way of accounting for that time so all we can measure is the moment that call that phone rings in our center and we pick up that call so the moment we answer that call that's when the clock starts so when

the officer arrives well and the reason i ask i mean time is life and i did come across one or more studies that had looked at the combination of those two periods of time from the initiation of the incident to the receipt by 9-1-1 and then from dispatch to or from receipt of the call to actually officers on the scene and i don't have the study in front of me but as i recollect the first period of time was longer and typically significant longer than the second period of time so we're talking about a significant window and i think it gets back to the question mark that maybe would be great to hear more about at some point which is what has been done and what could be done to shrink uh the total response time down to

the absolute minimum because my understanding is that is one of the biggest issues in terms of once things start stopping them is the amount of time that is involved in putting whatever sort of responses and positions so i'd kind of love to know uh what the possibilities are here of getting maybe a slightly better handle on how much time we're dealing with on the front end of it and whether there are interventions that could be undertaken to address that and then overall what we could do to kind of squeeze the response times down i say that also recognizing i think not all response times are created equal because something that takes place in a more distant location without staff present for

instance could entail a longer response time than something that's an event in the city so i think it just would be a little bit helpful to get a better idea for what's going on with all that we can talk a little bit about it uh we looked into it uh based on the question and and i apologize for not including in the presentation but the one thing that we do is so the moment that that call is picked up first of all if it's a 911 call that's the priority so that phone call is going to be picked up and as soon as that call taker starts to identify that there's an issue or an emergency a problem that we need officers there in the immediate that call is already routed so even it's in the first few seconds

of that call conversation happening with that operator and that person calling for help officers are already getting the information and then as that operator is entering and updating the information in that cad report that computer aided dispatch report those officers are seeing those updates they're hearing them audibly but if that call taker is not in a position because of maybe we're getting multiple calls to update audibly everything that they're typing in as they're getting the information is being routed to those officers by way of their mobile computer devices and so they're seeing that information too and they're making their way to the to that priority and so there's no back back back years back the practice was get all the information then start the officers and that's

not how we operate anymore and that's not how we do business here that call is routed and as soon as we identify and address and we can start officers in that direction and so that really limits that that you know any any possible delay once we get that call okay and it sounds like based on what you said earlier there's been some advancements in technology and management both uh in terms of early detection for various types even before uh an event occurs and then during with remote sensing and all that yeah so there's other things that we do too if we have a history at our location we can enter what's called a premise alert and that's an alert for that operator and for those officers that are responding that

there's a history at this call uh location that maybe there's a situation where someone's been armed before there's been violence at that location before the other thing right now we're piloting our uh real-time crime center it's a very small pilot but what we do there is we have detectives that when they hear a particular call going out where there's a benefit to knowing more information about that location they're researching and querying that information and they're audibly advising officers and entering that information into that cat report so officers are getting more information that can help them be more informed and be prepared mentally to know what potentially they're going to be facing

who's the bad guy versus the good guy if it's a situation where there's been problems between two people so that real-time crime center pilot also is giving our officers more information so they can act more timely i have only one other question right now but i would possibly like to circle back and that is the question mark about how much we were able to learn about the experience in fairfax county before and after and what that looks like and how that possibly relates to a future circumstance here where we would do something different yeah i mean i could speak to that too we we spoke to to all the different agencies around us and um the one thing that that i learned in my takeaway and also from my

experience in alexandria which was also a question that was asked is that you know these events and policing these events and restricting farms at these events it's very specific to to that location and these are not locations where typically we experience gun crime right alexander obviously had the incidents where they arrested people but those were cases at city parks and in some of those cases when you read through them it's almost like those people probably didn't even know they were in a city park whether it was after hours whether they were dealing with other things and other issues and problems they weren't looking at that sign they weren't worried about what the ordinance was these were just

people that were intent on committing crime and so a signage wasn't going to fix that that's the bottom line in those situations so when you look at crime overall pre and post ordinances going into effect there's not necessarily a correlation there's not data or studies by any of the agencies that can say hey when we enacted this ordinance we saw a reduction in crime or there's been an increase in crime for whatever reason gun crime uh in alexander specifically it peaked in the summer of 2023 and since then it's been on a steady decline double digit percentages uh since then and the decline which was one of the questions was a result of different uh approach in strategy in operational planning in um how we uh

investigations were done emphasis on investigations and following up so you're arresting those criminals so they in how we have investigations were done, emphasis on investigations and following up. So you're arresting those criminals so they know that this police department is going after you. They're going to find you. They're going to arrest you. You make, you disrupt that environment. You make it uncomfortable for criminals to continue to operate and behave that way. So that was the approach that was taken there. And that, and that, and so you saw crime going up while that ordinance was already in place and now you've seen gun crime going down. And that ordinance hasn't changed, right? So it doesn't, one really has nothing to do with the other

in that particular case. And in speaking with our surrounding neighbor of Fairfax County, it's a similar explanation as to the relationship. There's not one that's been identified. And it's really helpful. Just so I and we understand, if I hear you correctly, you say there's, there is no or it's difficult to make an association with an abort, before and after trends, et cetera. If I hear you correctly, it's not because we don't have data that we can look at. It's that the data is not telling us a clear answer on why things are shifting one way or the other. And I ask because part of the question here is how good is our information base in terms of tracking things and being able to analyze them

and stay on top of them. And if you could just respond to that so that we have that context. If I'm understanding your question correctly, the incidents, you know, the data starts with you only know what you know, right? So if you look at situations, we don't know how many people, for example, have carried concealed firearms at any prior events that we've hosted in the city. We don't know people that have been intent on committing a crime but chose not to maybe because they didn't have their gun at the time. We can't account for any of that. What we do know is we know when we looked at the last 10 years, we looked at the locations that are where we prohibit the firearms now, which is our government buildings and our city parks.

We also looked at events that were city permitted. And all we had in our city was those three incidents. And one of those three, we questioned if it even happened, which was the one where someone says they were approached by a group of males at the park and was then not cooperative. So when you look at the last 10 years, that's the data, right? That's what's been reported to us and that we've responded to and investigated. And so there's been other gun crime. There's other things, gun crimes that are reported or people feel like they hear shots fired. And so but those aren't happening at the locations that you're looking at with respect to the ordinance. Thank you. That was a critical last point because that really separates out a whole

nother arena of locations that otherwise would be relevant. Thank you. Okay. Other questions? Council member Amos. Yeah. I just had a quick question regarding how temporary signage would work. And I don't know. Maybe director Harden. I don't know if I direct that towards you. Well, planning director Harden, not economic development director Harden. Okay. So regarding temporary signage, what do other jurisdictions typically do for trying to regulate that with events that aren't hosted by the city, but our city permitted events? I mean, do we, is that something that's built into the permitting process? Is that something that we're required to provide? I would just like some clarification on that.

Temporary signage or permanent signage that is erected by a city official for the purpose of official city business would be exempt from the permitting process. So there's flexibility there. Anything to add? I was just going to, there's obviously there's the, so for events, there's the cost of the signs and then having to put them out, remove them, put them out, remove them, unless you, you know, I wasn't, for temporary, for temporary events that we would not envision them to be permanent signage because depending on what the event boundaries are and so forth, if in fact that's what council wants to do. It's no different than us putting up signs for street closures, for parades or anything like that, you know, there is, would be, there would be some amount of, that we, we couldn't

quantify that for you this evening, but there would be costs for signage and then the cost to put out and remove for specific events. Thank you. I appreciate that. And, you know, if we do move forward and have council do it, I think that it's our fault. Let's have us do it. I think that'd be some fun, some fun posts right there. So, Mayor, if I could add to. Yeah. The other issue, and the chief noted this is, so taking an event like Fall Festival, you would need to post signage at all entrances to the festival. And we all know that there's multiple places to enter the festival. So, I think what some other jurisdictions have done, and we've seen this in other jurisdictions, is all of a sudden you start seeing barriers go up around events.

So that, and you sort of funnel everybody into one or two or three or four entrances. I'm not saying that's where we would end up here, but there would be logistical and legal issues with where the signage would need to be if basically there are multiple points of entry to an event, exit to an event. I'm not saying that to discourage anybody from doing this. It's just one of the example of the practical considerations that you have to consider when you're talking about doing this. Thank you. Councilmember Hall. I want to thank you for all the time that went into this. For those that are not aware, between council members that submitted questions, there were 56 of them. So, this was not an easy discussion, decision, or any of those things at this point.

And I think, you know, we're trying to get as much information to be able to share as much. So, thank you for taking the time, all of you, to answer this, to do your research, to look at these studies and all the other information. It's very much appreciated. I do have a number of questions. And it's kind of to piggyback on some of the signage things. So, it was mentioned that, you know, if you're entering or exiting the George Schneider Trail, let's say, or you're entering or exiting a park somewhere, are there guidelines that the state puts forth that says every 50 feet, every 100 feet, you know, because there's not really an entrance into the woods, right? Like, how are those things handled?

So, oh, I'll start. So, the point of the signage is to put a reasonable person on notice that they will be in violation of something if they enter a space. So, I wouldn't say that there are guidelines. I think it's sort of a little bit of common sense. And I think different localities do different things. So, that's a short answer to your question. I think we would always attempt to ensure that individuals are put on proper notice that they could be in violation of the law. So, again, we have not scoped any properties at this point. We haven't scoped, you know, I keep talking about Fall Festival. That's an easy one to look at. There are other events, depending on where they are, the logistics could be different.

But I'm cautioning, again, that there could be other things that need to be done in addition to the signage to make the notice effective, if that makes sense. And I talked about the barriers, et cetera. It may not be a big deal, but it's something that we'd have to consider, which is another reason that we're not strongly suggesting, but if there's a desire to move forward, that we perhaps have a little bit of a delayed effective date to allow us to scope and examine what needs to happen. Okay. And we don't have, because we don't know where or how many signs we're going to need. I mean, I know we print signs internally, but we don't have any idea of what the cost of that signage might look like.

No. As an upfront cost. No, and I'll note, I mean, you know, you have the city permitted events and then you have the events that might require a permit from the city, all the private events. And as I noted, I would assume the vast majority of those events take place within the boundaries of city parks or in rec centers, et cetera. There's already a prohibition on those. There's already signage on those. There's already a prohibition on those. So we're talking about the special events. We're talking about the sidewalks. You know, that's another issue, the sidewalks and roads adjacent. It's not just the boundaries of events. If you want sort of a little bit of a barrier between the event and where people come in, those are the things we would have to look and examine at.

Okay. And like, for example, like with that EDA example that you gave, would there then need to be a sign outside the EDA office that says that? Or is it an assumption that because government business is done in that location, like if they have a temporary meeting in the conference room, would they need to put a sign out? Or is that known as a government location during that time? Well, so the example I'll give is city hall. You know, it's easy. It's a public building is prohibited. You still have to have signage outside the building. Right. That building, most people would assume it's a privately owned building. There's other tenants, et cetera. And actually, I do not know if the EDO has a sign outside their entrance that says firearms not permitted here.

And I go back to what I said also. We also don't know if the private owner of that building doesn't already prohibit fire. Many private building owners already prohibit firearms within their buildings. That may take care of the issue right there. So best answer I can give you. Okay. But the other answer then is if, let's say, that building is not, we would need to have a sign outside the EDA or EDO office that says firearms not allowed. Correct. There's not an assumption just because it's a, you know, because you could be renting an office in a building. If there's no signage, no one would be on notice. Okay. The prohibition might exist. I would assume that the, in fact, I would argue that any citation given under that would probably be dismissed.

Okay. And then if a meeting were to occur in that meeting space, then a sign would need to be put out temporarily while that is being used. That is correct. Again, unless the building itself prohibits firearms. Okay. And I know schools are handed a little bit differently. Completely different. Completely different. There's a whole section of the state code. The firearms prohibitions in schools are well taken care of separately. This has nothing to do with schools. Okay. And is that a class one misdemeanor there? Oh, I knew you were going to ask me that. Sorry. Or is it worse? I just wasn't sure. Yes. So, Kevin Tolan is letting me know it is a warrantless arrest. So, we have the ability to make that arrest if you have a weapon on school property.

That means that we don't have to witness it. That we, if we learn of it and we identify it, we can make that arrest. Okay. Thank you. And I am just curious, kind of unrelated, but just curious since you're here. What were the response times roughly in Alexandria and Coral Gables where you worked previously? I mean, is five minutes? I know we're 6.2 square miles. You know, Alexandria is bigger and all that. But I'm just curious how that compares. Well, I can tell you five minutes for an average response time. And again, the one thing that would give us more clarity is response times if it's like a priority one emergency call. Like, let's say we have somebody that's shot, for example, is different than somebody reports

hearing shots fired. And so, we don't have that differentiation for you at this moment. We can find that. But five minutes on average is very good. It is, if you look at national response times, you're going to be a leader in that front. That's great. I think we probably take that for granted then when we hear five minutes, which I'm sure can feel like an eternity when you're in the middle of a situation. But to know that that's great. And it's five minutes response. It's from the picking up the phone to the officer getting there. A lot of times people focus, I think, Councilman Peterson, you were talking about, which is what we call travel time, which is from the officer getting dispatched to when they get there.

But for that person, it starts when they make that phone call. That's the moment that they're waiting and expecting us to be there. And so, as a response time, it's five minutes is exceptional. That's great. Thank you. That doesn't mean we don't strive for better. I will say that. Of course. We've talked about it since I've been here. The response time is something that we talk about and we look at ways to be properly staffed and out on the road. And so we're going to always be looking at improving that time. But it's a good place to start from at the moment, for sure. Okay. And I will say, it's not something I've ever heard anyone in my entire, however, I've lived here 14-plus years. I've never heard anyone say the police are so slow.

You know, that has never come out. I mean, everyone raves about the response time and the quickness and all of those things that happen. So I think it's great. And I just want to point out, because I don't want to miss this point, that is, that's specific to gun incidents, right? Okay. So I don't have the exact time for all calls and we can get that information for you. But we looked into the specific gun incident response time. Okay. And then I think just one thing that really surprised me, because I tried to find this information earlier and I guess I just wasn't able to, but 3,000 guns, concealed carry permit in the city of 25,000 people, which includes a whole lot of children, to me is extraordinary.

I mean, that works out to about 12% of our residents are concealed carry. Do you know how that compares, did I do that math right? Well, the math may be right. I think it's important to note up until, I don't know, a year or two years ago, I wouldn't say exceedingly easy. It was much easier to get a concealed carry permit in Virginia. You could do an online course, get certified fairly easily. And I don't want to argue that you didn't have to demonstrate competence with a firearm, but it was an online course you could do. Okay. The standards now, I think, and I may be wrong about what it was before, but I think the standards now are more stringent and it's more difficult to get a concealed carry in Virginia.

Yeah. My understanding, and I learned about this in preparation for this when we discussed it at the police department is that the standards have changed. But I think an important point along these lines, and I failed to mention it in the presentation, is I may have mentioned it but didn't talk about it in detail, is the state of Virginia grants reciprocity. So that means that any other state that issues a permit to one of their residents can, with that permit, carry concealed in the state of Virginia. And so that's an important point because not every state has the same standards. So even if Virginia has increased its standards, I imagine there are states that don't have that same requirement or involvement in the process for the person.

Okay. And so my understanding, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that for reciprocity, there's an option to get a non-Virginia carry for people that are here, but it's not a requirement, right? It's just a secondary recording. So you need to get a Virginia concealed handgun permit, you have to be a resident. There are some exceptions that you can file as a non-resident, for example, if you're in the military and you're based here temporarily. Like, so there are exceptions, but for the most part you must be at least 21 years old and a resident, a resident of Virginia to begin that process. But reciprocity basically accepts anybody that has a concealed handgun permit from any of the participating states, which I believe there's 48 states.

So meaning that we don't know what they had to go through to be able to be granted that permit. We don't know what their background is. We don't know if their background was checked. We don't know that. Okay. But we would have to honor it if they presented that permit and they were carrying concealed, we would not be able to enforce or make an arrest in that case. Okay. So this might be semantics, but I'm just curious since we're due here. So if someone moves from Nebraska, let's say, they have a concealed carry out there. It's much less restrictive to get it. If they move here, do we automatically honor that reciprocity or they have to go through the Virginia guidelines at that time to get it?

They have to go through the Virginia guidelines. Okay. But they don't have to get it at that time. That permit is good for a certain amount of time. Okay. So it would be a requirement for them within a certain time to my knowledge to have to transition that. But once they go to reapply, they would have to go through the Virginia process. So even if they give up their home state of Nebraska and register their cars here and get a license here for driving, they still get to use that same concealed carry permit until it expires? I didn't in my research. I don't know if anybody else knows anything different. I didn't see any language that required it. Are you familiar with anything? No, I was going to that's something we can certainly verify in my I'm thinking that

it's once you change your address lawfully, then you're a resident of Virginia and you have to update it through Virginia. But that's something we can. The language at least in the in the in the code, it doesn't I didn't see it in the code. Okay. And this wasn't one of my other questions before but as we're just talking about it and thinking it through. Okay. One thing I will say about the 3000 known carries is that I think knock on wood, we've been very lucky so far, but it's also an opportunity for a lot of situations to potentially arise that might not arise otherwise. So that number was just shocking to me, I have to say. I think the other thing to point out when you look at addresses and obviously we're not

looking at all 3000 plus permits, but you know, there's a lot of business in the city. And so, you know, whether people are using home address versus business address that we can't we can't speak to that, but that may be some of that as far as people maybe don't live here, but they work here. Okay. And it's at the time that they apply for the permit. The permit's good for five years. So they may not may they may no longer be in the city, right? They may have moved to somewhere else. So, okay. And then would that also though include, let's say, um, a lot of the people who are not using, um, secret service or other law officers that have their own personal weapon? So that's that you're not required as a law enforcement officer to have a concealed carry permit.

Some do, but we don't have that number. So that's a whole other set of numbers like people that carry lawfully because of their job, whether they're licensed as a security officer to be armed or whether they have, uh, in law enforcement. And there's no requirement for any type of a permit to have a gun in your own home or in your car. Right. So, so that's a whole other, uh, data point that we don't have a account for. Plus, we also don't know the guns that were not purchased legally or registered properly and all those things. Correct. So, okay. I'm going to pass the baton at this point. Thank you very much. Uh, uh, it's Council Member Hardy Chandler. Do you have a question? I do. Can you hear me?

Yeah. Speak up. You're a little bit faint. Okay. Uh, I just want to thank you for all of the information. Can you hear me now? you're you're you're louder. you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're ! not any changes to the ordinance have affected or modified the event permitting process. Have we seen any changes in other jurisdictions in terms of the permitting process and how

that is impacted? Yeah, in my conversations with other jurisdictions, I imagine I'm talking to my counterpart at the police department, right? So I can't speak to the permitting process. I don't believe that's nothing that's nothing that we looked into. The only thing I know we had discussions on it a couple years ago with the alcohol permitted events, the requirement to have law enforcement there. So I would wonder if there's a consideration in any of the other permitting processes to mandate if it's a private event that's permitted, having that private vendor mandate law enforcement presence or off duty participation in that. So that would be the only thing I think might be a consideration for the events that are

privately permitted. Okay, and then my second question kind of speaks to slide number nine. And you spoke to that that there are incidents where someone can respond faster because they have access to a weapon during an event. Is it the position of our police department that that offsets or how does that balance against the reductions that are above that point? In other words, I'm sure those incidents happen, but is it to the extent that it offsets sort of the benefits outlined in the first part of slide nine? So I'll just I'll repeat the question just so in case anyone didn't hear it. So the council member is asking if the language in the in slide nine that talks about by allowing lawfully carried firearms by citizens at city

permanent events, you can increase public safety by providing a faster response to active violence where a lawfully armed person is in closer proximity than police and intervenes to stop the violence. How does that way right compared to the other points where you reduce the risk of violence associated with guns by the other listed? There's no way to say one outweighs the other. At the end of the day, our position here is we're just relaying information. When you look at the studies, when you look at what happens at events where someone utilizes a gun, these are the things, these are the takeaways, right? This is what we've seen play out in real world situations. And so when, when, you know, there's something that you learn as a police officer, right?

There's always a gun involved in anything that we do. And when you first hear that in the police academy, it's, it doesn't make sense because they're basically saying even if someone's not armed, there's a gun, that's a, that's a, there's a gun involved in that situation. And then they point out the obvious. You are introducing the gun because you're a police officer and you're armed. And so it really starts to frame for each of us in law enforcement. We always have to be cognizant of that. There's a gun in every situation and every citizen interaction. And so I would say the same thing here. When we point out the potential reduction in violence by prohibiting versus the allowance and maybe somebody being able to intervene more quickly at the end of the day, this, this is what we have found. And

and we're, we're not taking a position as to one is better than the other. Thank you. And the other thing that stood out in terms of your earlier comments, certainly one that I think is a focus of city council is deterrence. Um, is it in your opinion, um, anything, uh, uh, that could be modified in the revisions that would in any way based on the research that you reviewed, knowing that it's been inconclusive, um, but anything that you, from your, um, research background that would enhance deterrence, because of course, anything that prevents deterrence is much better than having to respond, right? So, um, is there anything that would be added to the ordinance that would, in your opinion, somehow enhance deterrence?

So the question is, if there's anything that, that, um, as far as language that could be introduced that would, uh, help to deter, uh, criminal behavior, right? Associated with guns or people carrying guns that we are prohibiting. I would say, you know, one of the items you're, you're talking about is the penalty. Obviously the greater the penalty, that's just, it's, it's not necessarily going to deter someone, someone, someone that is intent on, on, on being armed or committing a crime, uh, they're, they're, they're going to do it. They're going to do it. I mean, that's, I can tell you that from my experience. If someone is intent to do harm, this, this really is a law that is aimed at, uh, otherwise lawfully, uh, abiding citizens, right?

That, that we're, uh, the, the, the, the, the focus is creating a safer environment by having less guns. I imagine that's the focus because, um, the, to deter, uh, people that are, that have bad intentions, that want to come armed to, to whatever the situation is, uh, an, an ordinance and signage isn't necessarily going to deter them. What does deter, which is what we do, right? When we're working particular events, how we staff the events, we make ourselves visible, we make, uh, the bad guys feel uncomfortable, right? You, you don't want to do crime here. You don't want to do something here. That's not lawful because we're going to catch you and we're going to stop you and we're going to, we're going to, we're going to lock you up. So that's what we do to deter as far as the ordinance

itself. Um, the penalty can serve as a deterrent to have people comply with, with the ordinance that, that, that, that I would say is probably the best thing that, that, that you could do in terms of deterrence through the language in the law. Thank you. That's all I have. Thank you. Uh, council member McQuillan. Um, thank you for all of this information. We appreciate your time. Um, I do have a question about the public education component that you had, uh, mentioned previously regarding, um, educating the public and all gun owners on the, where firearms are and are not permitted. And if this was to take place, if we were to adopt this ordinance, um, what actions would you see the city doing in that regard?

That, that, that's an important piece to it, right? Is if we're going to create this, this law or make the change, uh, and really even the existing law, anything that we can do to message from, whether it's the police department or the city's communication team, I think it's important to, to get that information out there and leading up to events. You know, I think about now when, when, uh, you go to, uh, whether it's a football game or somewhere, you're, you, you go online, right? You want to learn, what can I bring to the game? What can I, what's allowed, what's not allowed? Because they have a, a hard lockdown and they're screening. And if you don't have the right, uh, bag or size bag or whatever

you bring in, you got to go back to the car, right? So people go out of their way to, to, to learn. And so we would need to do our part to make sure that we're, uh, informing the public in every way possible so that, uh, they're aware. Because people that are, people that are gun, uh, permit holders, concealed carry permit holders, they don't want to, they don't want to risk their license, right? They have that permit. They value that permit. And if they were to violate our ordinance and we were to charge them, they could potentially, they're at risk of losing that permit. So that's why I might, you know, I, I, I reiterate people that are, you know, lawfully minded and want to comply with the law, if they know

about it, they're going to tend to follow it. What current challenges would you say arise for officers when rules vary between jurisdictions, particularly with permit holders that might not be aware of the restrictions at public events? For the officer, it doesn't necessarily present a challenge because we, we just enforce the law that that's in place for our jurisdiction. The issue is, um, and, and, and, and also, I think it's an important point. We apply discretion. So officers are, no matter what the situation is that they're faced with, unless it's a felony crime where, where there's, uh, little to no discretion that's allowed. If it's a misdemeanor crime, you absolutely have the discretion. So you're going to, through your

investigation, understand what happened. What was the violation? Uh, the example is we just had to rock the block, right? The person was cooperative. We did issue the summons, but, um, you know, that, that was a conversation. It's not like we're just automatically locking people up. So there'll be a process where we're, uh, hopefully identifying any mitigating circumstances that should be considered depending on the situation that we're faced with. But it doesn't affect the police. It's more the effect on the people that are trying to follow the law, but the law is different from one place to another. And so it's difficult for them. That's where that communication piece is important, that we're, that we're

over communicating whatever the ordinance language is for us. Thank you. I appreciate that. Councilmember Hall? Thank you. Uh, just one other thing I wanted to add is, uh, part of the education piece, it's something we talked about before when we brought this up initially. Um, if we do end up moving forward with this, I would like to, when we're talking about, um, costs to do signage and things like that, I would also like to consider, um, opportunities to provide lock boxes or other sort of trigger, um, items that we could be able to distribute to the public. Um, I, I think that, you know, if we can try to help them be safer with what they already have, I think it's a great opportunity. So just that, just to clarify on that one, uh,

trigger guards are one thing when you're talking about lock boxes, are you talking, when I hear lock boxes, I think about things when you walk into buildings where you leave your weapon and it's locked. Are you talking about the city getting involved in gun safes in people's homes? No, I'm kind of referring to like, you know, I mean, we have kids over all the time, so I actually have medication lights locked up that I don't want the kids or their friends to be able to get into. Um, I trust my kids, but you don't know everybody else's kids, right? So something like that where it could just be a safe place that, you know, yes, maybe it's already on a shelf in a closet, but it's not in a locked box. So just, you know, I, they were giving them out at, um, Providence Elementary

School at one time when they were doing, um, all these different, like, community events. And I know that, moms demand action, there's a link that you can do. There was another one that the county put out recently, um, and Fairfax County Public Schools also provided a link to their website where the county provides some opportunity for it, um, because they're, you know, they're trying to get people to be safe with their weapons. So something along those lines. And that's fair. I would imagine those programs are very limited and, uh, obviously there would be a significant cost associated if the city were to try to do something like that broadly. However, we'll look at if, if assuming it was like, the one I bought was like $15, $10. Oh, I understand. But you know, I assume again,

the school ones are fairly limited and you said you bought it at what they weren't, uh, distributing them. They were distributing by the time I got there. I don't have a gun, so I didn't need a trigger thing, but they were giving them out. They were also giving out medication lock things, which then may I was like, let me just, I can afford to buy a $15 one on Amazon. So that's what I went and did. So just curious if we could look into what that cost might be to try to distribute. Sure. Thank you. Any additional questions? Uh, council member Peterson. I wanted to, uh, build on an earlier question and point, um, I guess on slide nine, the last point that I think council member, uh, Hardy Chandler raised,

I want to build on that. Uh, basically the question is, when you say here, lawfully armed person, let me just shorthand that by saying concealed carry, because it, for the sake of conversation, if it's, if it becomes illegal to open carry, then that's all that would be left or, you know, potentially. I think it goes back to the study question and any incident related data we have here. And I know we're not dealing with, um, a complete compendium of studies or a complete analysis of that. So we're dealing with just a few studies right now. Um, maybe more to come in that department, but even at that, to your knowledge, in terms of the active shooting incidents, were the people who caused them in any of those cases,

concealed carry weapon holders or were they caused by others? I, I understand in some cases, if you anyway, the concealed carry holders were active as first responders, but the separate question is whether they caused trouble in the first place. And I didn't hear that they did. Go ahead. I think I can speak on it a little bit, but I don't know if there's data. I believe the FBI might have data on the, all the active shooter incidents of whether they were concealed carry permit holders or not. Is that, is that believe that's what you're asking, is if the people enacting the violence were potentially concealed carry permit holders? Right. I believe the FBI probably has that data somewhere. I don't think we have it tonight. Um, but I don't think it was in any of those studies,

but it's usually not initially reported whether they were or not. That's usually something later down the line when they do some more research and things on after action reports that we could probably look into. Okay. It might be helpful just to sort of put that in perspective. I think I recall some assessments that said, no, they haven't been, but, um, and also that there's a pretty big differential between, um, law violation rates related to guns between people with concealed carry permits and those who don't. But I think maybe also just to put numbers in perspective, um, something that just double checked to put it in context. I very much appreciated the stat that there are 3,000 concealed

carry permit holders in the city out of 700,000 statewide and, um, kind of shaking the data around a little bit, this and that and the other. Um, what I learned that, uh, maybe would be good to verify is there's a disproportionately high, uh, gun ownership, uh, rate here in the city of Fairfax compared to the state, which is counterintuitive. People would have suggested it would be the opposite, but the data is saying, no, we're actually higher than state average. The thinking was rural areas, et cetera, would be higher. Um, but what that also says is most of the gun ownership in the city is not concealed carry. So actually the number of guns by people in the city is, um, 1.5 times or so the concealed carry level. So

that's the bigger number here. Part of the reason I call that out is I appreciate that you took a look at some of the requirements for concealed carry, which include proficiency in education and background checks and what have you. Um, there is only one other mandated gun education program in the United States of America for people who own guns. And that is hunter education, where in order to obtain a first time hunting license, you have to go through federally mandated and standardized hunter education, which includes gun safety and ethics and a series of things. What I'm getting at is that of the, uh, people who don't have concealed carry and who may not have gone through hunter education,

and unfortunately I think it's a pretty large number, there is no mandated educational requirement for them at all in terms of how to safely, effectively, and responsibly operate the firearm. So to build on council member Hall's point, I do think if something goes forward here, I mean, I recognize there are limits to what the city can do, but if there's any way to encourage education by people who own guns, it can only help given that realistically that's the pool of the majority pool of people who own guns. I, I think if I understand what you're saying, regardless of all that, there's a, there's a particular set of people who it doesn't really matter. They're going to penetrate whatever, uh,

boundaries exist to commit crimes. But I still think the bigger issue that we have this really big educational gap is just kind of worth understanding and then contemplating, is there something we might do here? Part of the reason I raised this is my first master's thesis was looking at a national analysis of all these hunter education programs to see whether they made any difference in terms of accidents and then criminal behavior. And it turns out they, they really did. And it was one of the drivers for that program. And I had the privilege of actually managing one of these programs for a state conservation agency. A lot of what we did was in support of the wildlife officers so that their jobs

would be easier because as you say, you can't have an officer behind every tree. You can't be there all the time. You want people responsibly to be out there and doing their part to spot things and behave well while they're at it. So this whole world of education, I think shouldn't be, um, underestimated in terms of its public value. And I just wanted to offer that because again, the majority of people who own guns are people probably who haven't gone through any kind of educational process at all. Yes. Thank you. I appreciate that, that the comment and then we'll include that in our notes as far as follow-up, uh, regardless of the direction we go in, uh, as a city to make sure that we include that in our communication.

Uh, council member McCullen. I did just want to provide some information for council member Peterson that the Virginia shooting and 20, Virginia beach shooting in 2019 at a municipal building was carried out by a concealed carry permit holder. Any other comments or questions? I think, I think what we're, oh, council member Bates. Yeah, just one more thing. Um, I, uh, wanted to, uh, again, point to the, uh, Lancet study, which is mentioned. And, uh, um, and, uh, you know, as I've even pointed out to some people I brought it up to, um, you know, it does say, I believe it's the very last sentence, um, or not, you know, not the very last, but the last sentence of the conclusion, uh, given that this is the first study on this topic, more research

is needed to confirm these findings. Um, and, uh, I mean, in general, of course, you know, I'm just starting out as a graduate research assistant, but in general, of course, you do want, um, more than just one study to make a definitive claim of, uh, scientific or statistical fact. Um, but, and, uh, to that point earlier on, um, it does say that, uh, uh, uh, uh, here it is. Moreover, in a systemic, uh, systematic literature search, no studies showing the gun-free zones have either increased or decreasing firearm-related outcomes were found. Um, Hammering Home and I, you know, couldn't find anything either. And this was in 2024. Uh, so, you know, it hasn't been a whole lot of time since then. Um, on the other hand,

uh, in the findings, um, or in the conclusion, it also says that, um, that, um, you know, we found that gun-free places were less likely to have experience in active shooting than places that were not gun-free. Um, and we conclude that it is unlikely that gun-free zones attract active shooters. Rather, gun-free zones may be protected against active shootings. So, all this is to say that, um, you know, certainly, you know, as I've said, one study is not conclusive, um, but when it's one study versus nothing to the contrary, you know, a peer-reviewed study, um, that is something that we can't ignore, and we also emphatically cannot simply accept the current status quo as the null condition, if you will. Um, you know, at the end of the day, we have to make a decision

between all the options that we have before us here, and, and none is any more valid than the other, simply because that's the way we've done it. Um, so at any rate, and even before this study even came out, I was in favor of making these changes, and that's also because I simply don't think that, uh, you know, a park or fall festival or what have you is an appropriate place for someone, a civilian, you know, not law enforcement, not military, to be carrying a gun. Um, I know that many may disagree with me, um, and I respect that, um, I know there are people, I know people all across the political spectrum, really, who would disagree with that, um, but personally, that's how I feel, and I also, you know, long believed that this, uh,

was probably our best shot at, um, if anything, perhaps reducing the likelihood of mass shootings, um, and, you know, certainly, of course, if there were to be more studies in the future that would come out, uh, contradicting that, you know, let's say that, um, we find, you know, in the future that there are several different studies, vast majority actually saying that gun-free zones increase the likelihood of mass shootings, and I'd say, well, you know, uh, we were wrong and we need to go back and reevaluate this, but right now, given what we have in front of us, I believe that the best course of action is to, um, pass the, uh, amendments as have been drafted, uh, especially for consistency with the

surrounding county, and that's another aspect of this is that, um, you know, we have the county, and then the city, and then an exclave of the county surrounded by the city, and in the county, we have one ordinance, in the city, we have another ordinance, um, and that within itself can cause a lot of confusion, especially when we have events such as the fourth of july parade that caught that cross city county lines, um, so at the end of the day, and lastly, we have to consider when we have dignitaries attend our events as guests, um, you know, especially when they're coming from a neighboring jurisdiction where they have a more strict gun ordinance, how do they feel about, um, coming into the city where we don't have the ordinance that they do, so at the end of the day, um, you know,

that's how I feel, and, uh, if anything, I feel more strongly, um, but certainly welcome any further, uh, comments or discussions, uh, from the public on this. Thank you. All right. Council Member Hardy Chandler, any further questions or comments? Not at this time. Thank you. So, I, I think at this juncture, what we're looking for is, is, is there proposed changes to the initial changes to the ordinance? If, if, if, if anyone wants to speak to that, number one. Number two, our next agenda item is future, future meeting topics, and so this kind of is a segue into discussing, are we ready for a public hearing? I mean, I think that's where we are right now. We had a work session, questions were asked, questions were answered, we have a proposed ordinance change.

At this time, are there, is there anyone who wants to make proposed changes to that? And then, are we ready to schedule a public hearing? Council Member McQuillan. Yes, I'm ready to move forward on our next steps and public hearing. Yes. Okay. Uh, Council Member Amos? Agreed. Council Member Hall? Yes. Council Member Peterson? Uh, yes, but, I would like, uh, follow-ups to some questions that were raised here and some things you haven't exactly gotten a chance to button down yet on the first round and an opportunity for that to be shared publicly before people come into a public hearing to comment so they have a little bit more information here. So, I'd like everybody to have as much information as possible. I'd also like the opportunity,

uh, to, on reflection, uh, provide follow-up questions from this evening, uh, for things possibly. I don't have any at the moment, but I'd like to reserve the right to do that and for that information to be made public prior to the next time we get together to have a hearing on this, if that's acceptable to everybody here. And with, if I'm not hearing any objections. I'm sorry, can you repeat the actual, what it was that you want to do? I know you want, uh, information, the answers publicly made available. Does that, but we're moving forward the public hearing? Is that what you're talking about? I said yes, but I would like some follow-up and the opportunity to issue additional questions, um, in the interim. But again, to underscore, I think it's very important to have as much information

available to the public as possible as they come in, uh, to a public hearing environment and as the council is considering exactly what to do. With respect to any, uh, modifications to the ordinance, I'm not in a position right now, uh, to propose anything, but I would like to see some additional information so that I could be myself, um, as well informed as possible about what to do next. Thanks. Mr. Foster? Mr. Peterson, can you clear some of the, some, quite honestly, some of the questions and some of the discussion while they are, um, uh, germane and, and important when talking about education and public education and, and encouraging people to be more gun safe, et cetera, um, are, um, good and valid things

to be pursuing. They are not necessarily directly relevant to the questions that are before you. Mr. Lubcomen, can you put up the slide that shows what the, the changes are? Mr. I'll defer to the clerk. Mr. All right. Well, unfortunately we have, uh, council member Mr. So you, you have an ordinance in place that has restrictions on, on locations and, and areas. The proposed ordinance, uh, is, has very specific, do you want to include events, uh, et cetera. Some of the more generic, I mean, it, it's a lot of work to look at national studies and things that aren't necessarily specifically germane to whether or not you want to include these things. Mr. And so if there, it would be helpful for us, um, because it was a lot of work and I commend Chief

Pedroso and Captain Hinesley and Captain Tolan and the rest of the team for all the work they put into it. But what's before you, unless you change the, what you want to amend is what's on the screen. Mr. And quite honestly, some of the questions and some of the comments this evening are really not germane Mr. To whether or not you want to do those things. Mr. And so the, while they might be germane to a larger issue of gun control and whether or not, um, who should have permits and who should have an, or, or, or how easy it is or isn't to get a concealed carry permit. Mr. That doesn't, that's not really germane to these. And I would like to, um, narrow the focus so that our staff is not expending an exordinate, an inordinate amount of time tracking down information and things that, um,

aren't directly relevant to, um, the question that's before council. Mr. Happy to. Mr. Uh, if you go to the third bullet on, or excuse me, the, uh, fourth bullet on signage requirements, I think there were some clarifications on what might be involved in signage that might be helpful. There were a lot of questions around that. And I think Mr. Lubke, in particular, you said maybe you needed to take a second look at exactly how signage would be handled in some cases. And I think I heard that from, uh, the police department as well. So it'd be great to maybe get whatever clarity is necessary on signage. Mr. Yes. I think the, the short answer to that question is it would, uh, it would involve, depending on what is passed by the council, um, we would have to do a comprehensive look at

the city permitted events and the events otherwise requiring a city permit. The other signage requirements are already taken care of in the existing ordinance. So what we're talking about a very discreet group here. And I would argue, or I would just suggest that city permitted events is a fairly easy lift. The broader question would be, um, if you want to sort of restrict access points, et cetera. So that's all TBD. And that would depend on what, uh, what was enacted by the council. We'd have to look at all of the events and ensure that there's appropriate signage and notice, notice for each of those events. But if you're looking for us to construct what that signage would look like before you pass this, um, that would take a little bit of work by staff to do.

Mr. Okay. And the TBD, where it's dependent on what council does, is maybe what would be helpful to know if we do this, then it results in that. It would be just sort of helpful to know that that's Well, if you do this, it results in examining every city permitted event and coming up with a signage and notice package. I mean, that's the answer to the question. I'm not trying to keep it short, but we, we're not going to go down that path until and if the council decides it's going to enact this additional prohibition. Mr. And we have some reasonable understanding of what that path looks like? Mr. I can share with you from reading that the LaFave case versus Fairfax County, and there was a lot of,

a lot of language that pertained to the signage issue. And really, and the question was asked, like, what's the, how many feet, right? That's common in like no parking zones, no trespassing. It's there's, there's set feet that this, that doesn't exist for this ordinance. So it comes down usually to the reasonable, reasonable, reasonable, reasonable, reasonableness standard. I apologize. And so when you look at that case, which is really the only case that we can point to presently, they were able, the county was able to, they kept a record of where the signage was. They had the sample sign that they could bring to the court. And what they talked about is anywhere that it would be reasonable for someone to enter that venue, there was a sign that was clearly visible. And so that would

be what would be involved. And, and so it would, and that's an interpretation thing, right? For each of us, for, for whoever is representing parks and rec or, or managing that event is determining where, where are these signs going to go? Where are we going to put them? Where would people most likely be entering this, this event so that we have proper signage? It's going to be different for every event. Okay. So there's an implementation part of this that would occur. We don't know exactly what that looks like, but we have a general idea of what it looks like. That's correct. And, and again, the other reason, and again, it depends when and if anything's enacted. If, if there's an event immediately

occurring after an ordinance change is enacted, we might suggest for a delayed effective date, because others, we might be running around putting signs up and not having a, a path for doing it properly. But yes, there's a, there's a, a relatively straightforward procedure for putting signage up at these events if we have to do so. Great. Fantastic. So the other question that may have been answered, but I want to double check is kind of the geographic question about, you know, the map. Where, what is a public area and what is not? If somebody wanted to know, what is this patchwork going to look like? Is there a way for us to answer that? Well, so right now it's, it's, it's easy. You have public buildings, whether they're complete public buildings or portions of

buildings that are private, that are being used for public purposes. There's recreation centers, for example, and there's city parks. Those are easy to delineate. Adding city permitted events. We've already talked about events that are otherwise permitted by the city, because those tend to be in public parks. But adding city permitted events will be a discrete area. Everybody knows where the fall festival is, and that, that would be signed. There's no prohibition on broader public areas that are not otherwise within parks or at a time of a public event. So I guess the answer to your question is, it would be easy because there would be no signage required because there's no prohibition. So the George Snyder Trail example.

Again, and, and I may be showing my ignorance, except to the extent that any of that trail meanders in and out of the boundaries of a city park. But again, that would be discrete. We would put signage up and deal with it. And I think the manager may have a point. I think if I'm understanding the question, there are, there is, and we use city hall property. The city hall property is not considered a park. So therefore, the current prohibitions don't apply. And these new prohibit prohibitions that are being proposed would not apply. You would have to call this, you would, we would have to now refer to this property in which this building sits as a park. You would also, if you're wanting to have more areas like where some of our bike paths are to be

considered as a zone. You, we will have to declare all city open space as parks that will require that has, that is separate and different than what this is. That's something that you could do today. I'm not literally today, but you don't have to amend this ordinance because parks, it's already pro in the existing ordinance. It's already prohibited in parks, but parks are discreetly defined. Our city open space is not discreetly defined. If you want to discreetly define all the public, only publicly owned property that is open space and declare them to be parks, then the current ordinance would apply. Is that correct? Mr. That's correct, although I would caveat that by saying I don't think it's a, it'll be an easy

process to delineate open space within the city as a park. I think there's a lot of considerations associated with that, but it could be done. It could be done, but outside of this process. Can I ask a question for that? For the open spaces that you're talking about, is it the language in the county ordinance, I believe, that says open, it's either open spaces or public, public spaces or roadways adjacent to the permanent event? So are you asking, like, if we did fall festival, we would do a map of our ops plan like we typically do, but then the adjacent streets and public ways would be highlighted or somewhat communicated to be prohibited? So I think that would be very helpful. As I understand, there are

two different situations. One is exactly that, where we have an event event and then we have adjacency. And the adjacency is the sidewalks, but as I understand it, streets with people in cars going down streets will not be covered. And that is consistent with Attorney General Hearing's opinion from a few years back, right? So streets would not be caught up in this in terms of vehicles passing by. Is that correct? It would be if it's within the footprint and it's part of the footprint of the event. You could delineate it. You could apply it to the streets. Yeah. So it would be great to understand that more clearly. I mean, just for the sake of conversation during the fall festival, if somebody's trying to get out. What I would envision is that the

the way that this would proceed is you would have a schematic, a map that would be readily available, shown to everybody, that would show the boundaries of where the firearm prohibition would be. Easy to do. Okay, great. So it would be helpful to clarify that so that people would know if I want to get out of town and not get caught up in this, how do I get out of town without entering one of these adjacency zones in my car and getting caught up in a violation? Well, again, on, on, so if you're talking about the events, the prohibition only applies during the event. I understand that. So otherwise it, so I'm, I'm, I'm just Saturday afternoon during deer season and I want to get out of town. Right. How do I do that without getting in trouble? That's probably a consideration

into the ops planning too. If this were to be expanded, one of the things with the ops plan, the operations planning that might change is you would extend where the road closures are, things like that, that would be worked into the planning phase of this to where during the fall festival or July 4th, you don't drive down Chambridge road. So things like that would be considered in the planning around a new ordinance. Yeah. And often the roadways that would, I mean, the roadways would otherwise be closed that would be included within these events, right? Would typically be the way that those prohibitions would arise on roadways. I, it's all, I just think it would be great to be clear with folks about what this kind of looks

like to avoid confusion. So, and to give a, a really good example, so taking fall festival again, I, I, I would deem it highly unlikely that there'd be a prohibition on 123 when fall festival is occurring down north and everything, or just because it's adjacent to the event. I mean, there'd be some common sense associated with this. And then the other situation that I think parallels that is, the situation where it's not an event, but it is a park. And in that case, the, I don't think it's an adjacency issue. I think it's just a park designation issue as I understand it. Correct. Only within the boundaries of the park. There's no, so the, the, the adjacencies only come into play in the context of the events. Right.

Buildings, parks, rec centers. It's the buildings themselves. That's all that we have the authority to regulate. The land as well as the buildings? For, for what, which, which examples? For a park, it's the park boundaries as existing. Right. So the example, again, some of our parking, I believe, is not within the park boundary, but ordinarily, the parking would be within the park boundary. So, I mean, you know, there's, there's different situations around the city as there are in every jurisdiction. Okay. And then the final thing which came up, and while it's not a part of the proposed ordinance, has certainly been a part of the dialogue here, which is the question mark about whether as a part of this

or in parallel with it, there are some other measures that the city could commit to that would be helpful in terms of the coverage of things occurring under this ordinance, but things related to it and the, you know, educational things. Part of it is the question, for instance, with education, how are we advertising events in a way that's going to minimize the risk that these are going to become seen as attractive opportunities? I know that's a far-fished argument to some, but, you know, in these gun-free areas, but what are we going to say and do from an educational standpoint to make it clear that we're trying to prevent any increase in risk? So there's just some implementation things that would be good to know if we could and should do as a part of this

to make them as effective as possible. There's the whole response time thing. This is not a bad time to be raising the question mark. Is there something that council can and should be doing to help you right here and now with response times issues? Okay. So Council Member Bates, point of clarification in that same vein, there is a provision under the Section D in the Staff Report, or, sorry, Subsection D of the 54-4, that lists this section shall not apply to, and then there's a list and item number six is transportation of firearms, ammunition, components, or combinations thereof in a vehicle when such firearms are secured out of sight in the vehicle that is being driven on a public street road,

alley, city parking lot, or a public right-of-way that is open for usual transportation purposes. So would that apply to roadways that are adjacent to an event would otherwise be included or covered by the ordinance, but are still open to the public? MR. So I think the language is key. That is open for usual transportation purposes. MR. Exactly. Yeah. MR. The comment I made a couple of minutes ago is I find it very unlikely that we would have a prohibition on any city streets that were not closed as part of an event. MR. Yeah. MR. Because first of all, I think the policing of it would be virtually impossible. But then from a practical standpoint and a notice standpoint, I mean, having a sign

on an open street, people driving down, all of a sudden they see a sign as they're already driving down the street because the parts of the street that aren't immediately adjacent wouldn't have any signage. So the short answer is I think it would only practically apply to streets that are otherwise closed as part of the event. MR. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's good. Which I think that makes sense. You know, I think it would be probably highly impractical to apply it to adjacent roads that are not closed. So thank you. MR. If I can add also to this conversation, from a policing standpoint, if let's say there's a garage that somehow is within a footprint of this permanent event, if we're not, if we don't have proper signage at that garage, if there's a, if there's an area that we haven't properly

posted the signage, then we would not enforce, right? And that would be part of our, when we're identifying the elements of the crime, one of those elements is that there's proper signage. And we would know and identify we didn't have signage as people entered this garage, or we didn't have signage in this part of the festival. So we're not going to enforce. It's still, it's still against the law if it's part of the ordinance, but we are unable to enforce. So we could educate, we can advise the person, but the signage is the key before we do anything. MS. Councilmember Amos? MR. Well, all I was going to say is that we're also going to probably have a number of questions and comments from a public hearing. So we're still going to require additional discussion

following this anyway, but I think everyone is still in support of moving forward of the public hearing process, is what it sounds like. MS. Councilmember Hardy-Chandler, are you, are you? MS. I would like to move forward with a public hearing. MS. You would like to move forward. It sounds like we have a preponderance or a majority of people who would like to move forward with scheduling the public hearing. MS. Is that accurate? I think it is. Okay. Yes, Councilmember Hall. MS. I just want to point out, no one's trying to get one over on someone. No one's trying to be sneaky with this. I mean, that is not the intent of our police here. It is to enforce something where it is legally, potentially not allowed. There will be proper signage. And as you said, if there's not proper signage, then you will not be lawfully able to enforce at that time.

MS. So I do think there will be a learning experience and opportunity for residents if this is implemented, but it's not, we're not out to get anyone. I mean, that's not the goal of any ordinance as far as I'm concerned in the city. And I think that's key to understand. MS. And importantly, we strive to never just do the minimum when it comes to notice, education, et cetera. I think the city has a tradition on ordinances like this and other matters involving violations of law, et cetera, that we try to make sure that there's sufficient notice for the reasonable person and perhaps a little beyond. MS. I mean, I don't want to commit to anything specific, but we are very cognizant of the fact that it's fundamentally unfair to cite someone for a violation in most cases unless they have adequate notice, especially on something where in other areas it's perfectly legal.

MS. Thank you very much for the presentation. We are going to move on. I will now reconvene the regular meeting, and I'm going to call a five-minute recess. We will reconvene at 10 p.m. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo

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