City Council Meeting

good evening i would like to call this regular meeting of september 9 2025 to order this is our first meeting back from summer break if you are able and so choose please rise for the pledge of allegiance so we will start with our proclamations if i can ask the fairfax county chapter of the daughters of the american revolution to join me down in the well wow this thing is like really tall okay i'm going to proclaim now whereas the national society daughters of the american revolution initiated the observance of constitution week in 1955 with a resolution that was later adopted by the u.s congress creating public law 915 which was signed into law by president dwight d eisenhower in august 1956 and whereas the goal of this annual

observance during the week of september 17 to 23 is threefold to encourage the study of the historical events that led to the framing of the constitution in september 1787 to remind the public that the constitution is the basis of america's great heritage and to emphasize u.s citizens responsibility to protect defend and preserve the u.s constitution and whereas the u.s constitution is the oldest and longest standing written and codified national constitution in the world having been amended 27 times since 1789 beginning with the bill of rights and interpreted supplemented and implemented by a long body a large body of federal constitutional law and whereas september 17 2025 marks the 238th anniversary of the framing of the united states constitution by the constitutional convention

this week of observance offers opportunities for education celebration and community awareness of the importance of the importance of our country's governing document to our way of life and whereas the u.s constitution is singular in its history and importance to our country we must endeavor to teach its significance to each new generation and to keep its core tenets at the center of our american principles now therefore i catherine s reed mayor of the city of fairfax do hereby proclaim the week of september 17 through 23 as constitution week and ask our community to reaffirm the ideals ideals of the framers of the framers of the constitution the framers of the constitution had in 1787 by vigilantly protecting the freedoms guaranteed to us through this foundational document

forming the structure of our government in these united states and guaranteeing our individual rights and liberties and with that i will turn it over for your remarks thank you mayor reed council members and city clerk melissa shambury who was instrumental in making this proclamation happen tonight i'm katie jackson the dar constitution week committee chair and a 25 year resident of fairfax city thought i'd add that in as a representative of the fairfax county chapter national society daughters of the american revolution i'm honored to accept this proclamation in support of constitution week your comprehensive proclamation goes a long way towards helping our chapter meet dar's mission of promoting awareness and understanding of american history

and the constitution and most importantly reminding u.s citizens of their responsibility to protect defend and preserve the u.s constitution and our individual rights and liberty and i hope everyone voted today and exercised that right our chapter will once again be hosting an open house at the city of fairfax regional library on september 17th from 7 to 8 p.m it's to help the community learn more about the constitution and the events surrounding its establishment it's a family-friendly event there'll be educational displays and handouts and there will also be library books that uh about men and women who were instrumental in the framing of the constitution and our government uh they will be

available for people to look out look at and to check out if they wish so please tell your colleagues your neighbors and i hope to see all of you there too just stop in say hello take a look at the display it's be in the little conference room as you go into the library from the front entrance so on behalf of the dar fairfax county chapter once again thank you for your time your recognition and your support of our organization and its mission it's greatly appreciated well thank you we are going to get a photo now okay thank you thank you thank you very much i'm going to now ask chloe ritter our director of multimodal transportation to join me here so that we can proclaim about car free day chloe

the city of fairfax is committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions including emissions from transportation as part of the city's environmental sustainability goals and whereas the city strives to create a livable community with access to safe and convenient transportation options and is currently developing the move fairfax plans to improve transportation safety and whereas reduced reliance on driving alone supports the city's safety and sustainability and sustainability goals and provides other community benefits such as reduced congestion and reduce parking demand and whereas world car free day is celebrated annually on september 22nd to promote sustainable transportation choices and whereas the city of fairfax is encouraging residents to get there differently on car free day and throughout september by trying alternative

transportation such as the city's q bus metro rail bicycling and walking and carpools now therefore i catherine s reed mayor of the city of fairfax do hereby proclaim september 22nd as car free day in the city of fairfax and encourage members of the community to enjoy local trails public transit and other transportation options available in the city of fairfax and with that i will turn it over to chloe ritter well thank you mayor reed and thank you to all the city council for your continued support for an encouragement of transportation choices in the city car free day is a great chance to try different transportation options it's also a great chance this year especially to be thinking about the future of transportation because at the end of september and into october we're going to have opportunities for residents to give us feedback on the move fairfax plan which is for

pedestrians safety and then also mobility choices in oldtown to be thinking about the future of transportation because at the end of September and into October, we're gonna have opportunities for residents to give us feedback on the Move Fairfax plan, which is for pedestrians, safety, and then also mobility choices in Old Town. And we'll also have an opportunity to be talking about the future of Q bus with our Q transit plan in October as well. So I hope you'll all be thinking about how you want your choices to change in the future and be improved in the future, as well as thinking about the choices you have now and give it a try as you're going out and about on car-free day or throughout September.

Thank you. Okay, and now a photo. Thank you for everything you need to do. Thank you. All right. We can move to the adoption of the agenda. Here. Is there a motion to approve the agenda? I move that the agenda be adopted as presented. Is there a second? Second. The motion has been made and seconded. A roll call vote. Excuse me. I have a question before we go on. Just a clarifying question on item 11B. And I noticed in the staff report it said that this is an item that was requested by some council members. Would it be possible just to know who the council members were who requested this agenda item? Ms. Shinneberry? I don't have that answer. Mr. Nabte is coming up. Mr. Nabte is coming up. This is the result of the conversation that council had about the state

wood plan that proposed in February. It was an informal request. And we also heard the request from the planning commission who actually took a vote and had a majority suggest it. So that's why it's coming to you. Mr. Nabte is coming up. I'm sorry. An informal request from the council? Mr. Nabte is coming up. Yes. During a work session on the development proposal for Gatewood Plaza. Mr. Nabte is coming up. Again, do we know which council members requested this? Mr. Nabte is coming up. I don't have it on the top of my head. But the planning commission did have a majority. And so it went to the planning commission. As a result of that, it's coming to the city council. Mr. Nabte is coming up. Mr. Nabte is coming up.

I would just say it would be helpful. I mean, the staff report indicates that this was requested by some council members. It would be helpful to know specifically who is requesting these agenda items when they come forward. So we have a motion. We have a second. And we are doing a roll call vote. Council member Amos. Aye. Council member Hall. Aye. Council member Hardy Chandler. Aye. Council member Peterson. Aye. Council member Bates. Aye. Aye. Motion passed unanimously. We will go to initial general public comment. I had one speaker sign up by 5 o'clock PM today. So I will call up the one speaker, Ellen Pence. My name is Ellen Pence and I am at 3211 Adams Court. I am speaking about the carts.

We were given no choice in this matter. There were no surveys or polls or questionnaires or outreaches of any kind sent out by you until be a good choice. earlier this year when we got these door hangers announcing that the carts are coming. the carts. We were given no choice in this matter. There were no surveys or polls or questionnaires or outreaches of any kind sent out by you until earlier this year when we got these door hangers announcing that the carts are coming. Now if you live in a separate house with a garage or a carport and a driveway that goes to a street or a road or even a highway, the carts are no doubt a wonderful idea. Goody, goody, free carts, right? I totally get that. But it's tunnel vision. On Adams Court, I live in a townhouse that does not have a garage or a carport or a driveway that goes to a street or road or highway.

Adams Court is not a street or a road. It is a parking lot. It is a very tightly packed parking lot with vehicles not only in front of our houses but also parked around the little circle at the end of it. The circle has grass and shrubbery and a few trees and three benches in it just for our enjoyment. There are 34 houses facing on this parking lot. That would be 78 carts. There is absolutely no room for any sort of carts to come into this parking lot. It is rumored that the city intends to buy trucks with mechanized arms that would only come down Cardinal Road. That would be 78 carts out on Cardinal Road at the school bus stop, which is right at Adams Court. And some of us would have to drag the carts for two blocks in all kinds of weather.

Many of our residents are senior citizens who, like myself, are staying in their homes as long as they are able. We can't handle carts. We are able to carry our bags out of our bags of trash, which are provided by our HOA and not provided by the city. We carry them and our recycle bins through our front doors to the curb. We aren't able to drag carts up and down slate stairs outdoors. Our front halls are too small to accommodate carts of any size. Smaller carts won't work. No smaller carts in our neighborhood. They won't work. I don't want to keep carts of any size in my kitchen or living room or dining room. I can't drag them downstairs to the basement or the patio, both of which are a whole floor below.

I can't store carts in my patio or in my laundry room. So what is left? My front yard. You and your staff never considered that some of us live in connected houses. We don't have sides. We don't have backyards. We only have patios that want to accommodate this. Thank you. All right. We can move to the consent agenda. Is there a motion to approve the consent agenda? I move adoption of a consent agenda for agenda item number 6A, consideration of the July 22, 2025 special meeting minutes. Agenda item number 6B, consideration of the July 22, 2025 regular meeting minutes. Agenda item number 6C, consideration of the August 12, 2025 special meeting minutes. Agenda item number 6E, consideration of the August 26, 2025 special meeting minutes.

Agenda item number 6E, consideration of appointments of two Fairfax City Parks Foundation Incorporated initial directors. Agenda item number 6F, consideration of an appointment to the city's retirement plan administrative committee. Agenda item number 6G, consideration of an award of professional service contracts for architectural design, engineering, and construction management services to Architecture Incorporated Providence Elementary School and mostly incorporated Daniels Run Elementary School with combined expenses for both projects in fiscal year 2026 not exceeding $3 million. Agenda item number 6F, consideration of an award of construction contract in the estimated amount of $1,727,333.60 to Virginia Paving Company for Fairfax Boulevard reconstruction and paving.

Agenda item number 6F, consideration of an award of $3,827,333.60 to $3,827,333.60 to $3,827,333.60 to $3,827,333.60 to $3,827,333.60. In the proposed settlements of opioid-related claims against Albogen, Amnial, Aotex, Hicma, Indivior, Mylor, Sun, and Zytus and their related corporate entities and in each case directing the execution of any documentation necessary to effectuate the city's participation in the settlements. I move to approve the consent agenda items number 6A through J and the motion accompanying the consent agenda item as printed. Is there a second? Second. A motion has been made by Council Member Hardy-Channeler and seconded by Council Member Bates. Are there any items Council would like pulled for additional discussion?

Yes. Council Member Peterson. Items E and F are appointments. They're simple one-sentence motions. It's customary to read them so that they can be recognized, and I'd prefer that we do that. And on item I, I think it would be helpful just to reread. It's a very brief sample motion, but the list of the three transportation projects that are being approved here so that everybody can have an updated understanding of what those projects are. Thank you. Items 6E, 6F, and 6I will be removed for discussion. Roll call vote on the consent agenda minus the agenda items E, F, and I. Council Member McQuillan. Aye. Council Member Bates. Aye. Council Member Peterson. Aye. Council Member Hardy-Channeler. Aye.

Council Member Hall. Aye. Council Member Amos. Aye. Motion passed unanimously. Go to 6E. Yes. Yes. Item 6E. Consideration appointments to Fairfax City Parks Foundation, Inc. initial directors. Good evening. We have two individuals up for consideration and approval this evening. The first is James Hickman, and the second is Nicholas Prasini. In your pack, you'll find both of their letters of interest. James is here this evening in the audience, and Nicholas was hoping to attend but was unable. Any additional questions on these two appointments? Council Member Peterson. What's the term of the appointments? Three years. And just to put this in perspective again, this is a set of initial appointments that are being made.

If you could just remind us of that procedure, it would be helpful. Yes. So the Parks Foundation, the bylaws state the council will approve the first five directors, and then the organization becomes independent and will appoint an additional up to five more. So the board must be a minimum of five directors and a maximum of ten. Thank you. And these would be directors three and four. So we are waiting on the fifth, and PRAB has two more individuals to interview Thursday night. Any additional questions on this? No. Did you want to make a motion? Yeah. I move to endorse the appointment of James Hickman and Nicholas Persini as directors 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 and seconded. A roll call vote. Council Member Amos? Aye. Council Member Hall? Aye. Council Member Hardy Chandler? Aye. Council Member Peterson? Aye. Council Member Bates? Aye. Council Member McQuillan? Aye. Motion passed unanimously. We will go to 6F, the consideration appointments for the City Retirements Plan Administrative Committee. I'm going to recognize JC Martinez, Chief Financial Officer. Thank you. Mayor, Council, as the chair of the Retirement Committee, this is an appointment of a retirement representative for the City of Fairfax Retirement Administrative Committee. The previous retiree representative alternate resigned from the committee at the beginning of 2025.

Following their departure, a call for interest was issued to the retirement community, specifically the employees, and one retired member has expressed a willingness to serve. Suzanne, I'm going to get this wrong. Woloski? Willis that? Thank you. And it is respectfully requested that City Council appoint Ms. Suzanne as the retiree representative alternate to the City of Fairfax Retirement Administrative Committee for the term beginning March 1, 2025, and ending February 28, 2028. Happy to field any questions. Are there any additional questions on this appointment? Is there a motion? Council Member Peterson? I move to confirm the appointment of Susan Wicholowski as the retiree representative alternate position for a remainder of a three-year term extending through February 28, 2028.

Is there a second? Second. A motion has been made and seconded. A roll call vote. Council Member McQuillen? Aye. Council Member Bates? Aye. Council Member Peterson? Aye. Council Member Hardy-Chandler? Aye. Council Member Hall? Aye. Council Member Amos? Aye. Motion passed unanimously. We'll go to 6-I, which is a consideration of an updated resolution to endorse applications for revenue-sharing funding. I'll recognize David Summers, the Public Works Director. Thank you. This is an update from the May resolution to provide revenue-sharing for three projects. The update needed to be done to list the projects and update the amount. The first project is sidewalk construction on 1st and 2nd Street between Holman and Oak.

This has an estimated cost of approximately $5.2 million total. Half would be Virginia revenue-sharing and half would be CNI funds. The second project is safety and drainage and pedestrian improvements at the intersection of Dwight and Sager Avenue and Roberts Road. This project has an approximate construction cost of $3.6 million total cost, half by Virginia revenue-sharing and half matched by CNI funds. The third project is the Northfax East-West Roadway, which connects University Drive extended to Cambridge Road. This project is approximately a $21 million project. And half of it is paid by NVTA 70% money. And half of it is paid by revenue-sharing, BDOT revenue-sharing funds. And happy to take any questions.

Are there additional questions? My, just maybe two questions. The first is, it's been a while since we talked about these projects. As I recall, has there been anything in terms of new developments with respect to community feedback on any of these things? The last time these projects were discussed, I believe, was at the May resolution. And there was support for them from everybody we've heard from. And then just to double-check, I know at the council level we had quite a bit of discussion around all of these. And I'm assuming that there are no additional questions right now about any of these because I know there were a lot at the time. Is that fair? Everybody's clear in terms of all their questions on this?

Great. Thank you. Thank you. Is there a motion? Councilmember Peterson? I move to adopt an updated resolution to approve the city's submission of three projects, First and Second Street Sidewalks, Dwight Avenue Improvements, and Northax East-West Roadway to the Virginia Department of Transportation for revenue-sharing funding. Is there a second? Second. The motion has been made and seconded. A roll call vote? Councilmember Amos? Aye. Councilmember Hall? Aye. Councilmember Hardy-Chandler? Aye. Councilmember Peterson? Aye. Councilmember Bates? Aye. Councilmember McQuillan? Aye. Motion passed unanimously. We will now go on to public hearing. We just have one public hearing tonight, which is a public hearing and council action on a request

from Chick-fil-A for a special use permit for modifications to the existing drive-thru and building for the property identified as tax map parcel number 48-3-06-028A and otherwise known as 9509 Fairfax Boulevard, I'm going to recognize Savannah Newburn, the Senior Planner of Berkeley Group, to provide the staff presentation. Yeah, it's on. the next shows you the shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows shows

Good evening, Council. Thank you for your patience. Okay. Good evening. My name is Savannah Newburn, and I will be presenting on the request for a special use permit amendment, three special exceptions, and the certificate of appropriateness from the applicant for an existing restaurant located on Fairfax Boulevard. Here we detail the land use requests, including the special use permit, which will expand an existing restaurant to include a building addition for increased kitchen capacity, a dual drive-thru lane, and the widening of the drive-thru lane at the pickup window to the existing restaurant. Three special exceptions that we'll detail further on the next two slides and the certificate of appropriateness.

So here is an image of the existing site. It may be difficult to see, but you enter on Fairfax Boulevard and you circulate through the site at the location of the green arrow going south and back behind the restaurant, and then enter on the north side again. So here they're proposing to restripe the parking lot, widen, and double the drive-thru lanes. You can see here. Didn't know there was a feature to do this. Very nice. And additional expansion along the north side here where there will be a canopy, and this details the special exception request from the setbacks. So I try and spell out exactly where and to what degree they are requesting relief. Again, this is an existing restaurant. They are somewhat constrained by the position on the site,

and we find that their requests for relief from these setbacks are amenable and consistent with the intent of the zoning ordinance. Here we discuss the transitional yard and the bulk plain requirements. So they're requesting relief for the transitional yard three requirements along the east, south, and west property lines adjacent to a multifamily community, and a special exception for the bulk plain requirement along the east and south property lines. And just to help, if anyone isn't too familiar with the term bulk plain, here is the definition. Bulk plain refers to a theoretical plain beginning at a specific line, which shall be the lot line unless otherwise specified, and rising over a specific slope.

So the intent of this is to ensure that there is some step back from the property line, and you achieve human scale. However, this is an existing restaurant, and the intensity of the use here is intended to improve with the operational changes that are proposed according to the applicant. They may speak to this more during their turn. And so here is an aerial image of the site. It may be easier for you to understand the flow of the parking lot from this image. It is in the general commercial zoning district, and in the future land use map, it is an activity center. And with these factors in mind, staff does recommend approval of the special use permit, the three special exceptions, and the certificate of appropriateness.

I am happy to answer any questions you might have, but I think the applicant speaks next. Oh, thank you so much. I just want to add some historical context to this. Chick-fil-A was approved by a previous city council around 2007, constructed, opened around 2009. It has been a very popular regional destination, but that has resulted in various traffic challenges along the way with early on backups out onto Route 50, creating some significant concerns with safety. Over time, particularly since the COVID era, the property owner and operator have revised their operations. We aren't seeing quite that dramatic of an issue. They do have employees out there that are facilitating the orders and delivering orders.

But the site is an old standard. It's not quite as up to par as some of the newer ones in the region. So what they propose to us and what we've been evaluating this whole time is indeed a safety change. With the small kitchen addition and the equipment that they would house in that would expedite and cut down on the wait times to move people through the drive-through quicker, especially with larger orders. The drive-through lane adds enough space for approximately six vehicles, which is roughly 100 and 200 feet of space. Just for context, from the service drive, which is in the public right-of-way to their drive-through, is about 240 feet. That adds a significant amount of space that would allow cars to actually back out of the parking spaces and leave the site easier than it is today.

The addition of the door and the space for employees to then walk out and hand the orders to vehicles would also help expedite getting folks out of that queue. There's a backup that happens right at that window space. One aspect that staff focused on in discussing this with the applicant was, while it's good that you have employees to facilitate helping take the order and things, they don't have safe conditions standing out in a parking lot today. So the plan does design between three- and five-foot walkways for the staff to be able to walk down to safely access the vehicles. But I wanted to make sure you had that context before the applicant speaks. Thank you. I will open the public hearing.

Ms. Shinneberry, has this public hearing been properly advertised? Yes, it has. Yes. We can call up the applicant to speak. Good evening. Evan Pritchard from Wiregill here on behalf of the applicant. I'm struggling with what to add because staff stole all my thunder and laid it out very clearly. Ms. Newbern did an excellent job of summarizing the request. And then Mr. Seffen came in as the closer and sort of said a lot of what I was going to say about the impetus for coming here. I mean, I'll just quickly summarize by saying, as has been touched on, that it is a very small site by modern Chick-fil-A standards. And all of these changes we've spent the last year going through methodically with staff, as Mr. Seffen indicated, they're all aimed at not only making the whole experience safer for employees and for customers, but much more efficient to just get through there.

For any of you who have been to this Chick-fil-A or others in the area or elsewhere, you know, they've got the technology on lock. All these changes are going to facilitate much greater ability for employees with the tablets to go out, get the orders from people who haven't ordered ahead, get the food to the people who are waiting in the right car, and just make it much more of a seamless experience. So we're really excited. We have experienced what Mr. Seffen was talking about, about historical backups into the parking lot, causing conflicts between the drive-through patrons and the people who are trying to enter or exit a parking spot and spilling out all the way to the service road and sometimes to Fairfax Drive.

So I'm happy to answer any questions. We have the project engineer and architect here as well, if there's anything I can't answer. I think I will ask the clerk to call speakers forward to hear what the public has to say, and then we will open it up to the dais. Is there anyone to speak? I had nobody sign up prior, but if there's anybody in the room that's welcome, yep, come forward. Good evening. My name is Elisa DeLuda-Tath. I am a city resident, and I am a manager at this location. Yes, everything that has been provided for review has been meticulously gone through, has been revised multiple times. The safety of our staff and the efficiency of the operation that we have is a primary concern.

The opportunity to have the long canopy where our drive-through window is and the door allows my staff to be able to go out, regardless of the conditions, to be able to, even if there may be a delay with a guest who is currently at the window, we can deliver the next several orders after that. It facilitates the ability for us to be able to get the flow moving as quickly as possible. So the proposed changes does increase the kitchen size. Thank God. And it does allow for, again, an opportunity for us to facilitate the quicker movement of those cars that have historically backed up to get them through and our guests to enjoy the experience, as well as our city residences and those backups much more efficiently.

Thank you. Is there anybody else in the room that would like to speak on this agenda item? All right. So we will open it up for questions from the dais for either staff or the applicant. Council Member Amos and then Council Member Hardy-Chandler. Well, Mr. Pritchard stole my thunder. I was going to ask specifically about, I know there's been multiple cases of these expansions kind of happening, not just here, but I notice in the county and other areas. Is this just part of a national effort or is this on a case-by-case basis? It is part of a national effort. Chick-fil-A is always looking better, you know, for ways to improve their operations. And, yeah, as you've seen and we've talked about, they have to take kind of a bespoke approach because I'm sure, as you've seen, all these sites aren't created equal.

And they all have different entrances and exits and real estate area to work with. But, yes, it is part of a consistent program that Chick-fil-A has. Yes, are we taking those incremental steps to open on Sundays? We're going to get there? I can't make any representations on that whatsoever. I would just love a frozen lemonade on a Sunday, but whatever. I get it. Thank you. Thanks. Council Member Harder-Chandler. Well, I think many of us have seen the backup into the street. And so certainly, I mean, there's just evidence of the need to address that. And I really appreciate the attention to the staff safety. That's a really big issue. Certainly, it's difficult in 2009 to anticipate what the need might be in 2025.

I'm just wondering if these changes, do you see these as having longer-term solutions? And, again, it's hard to predict the future, but just wondering if this is a fix for 2025, or is this a fix that you see kind of managing those issues for the long term? No, it's a great question. And the Chick-fil-A, I can tell you, although they weren't directly part of this effort, but the folks that work at Chick-fil-A work very closely with local management. But they do have operations people who are really trying to look at the data, crunch the numbers. They keep amazing detail on number of orders, time to process those orders, and they factor all that in to come up with the design solutions that are going to be implemented here.

And they do try to project. You know, they look at trends. I think COVID was referenced. I'm sure we've all experienced, like, a lot more use of drive-throughs in the subsequent years. And that is a trend that they see continuing. And, you know, these solutions we're proposing, therefore, we think are going to be, you know, the best we can have for the next few years that we can predict. But certainly doesn't close the door to us coming back to you in 5, 10, 15 years and seeking even a better setup based on customer behavior and the technology in the kitchen, technology in our phones or whatever we have in 10 years. So, thank you. Councilmember Hall? I think these are going to be very welcome upgrades to the drive-through area.

Is there any loss of parking spots? I'm just trying to visualize where this will be going. Nine. Nine spots? Is that an issue? Is that a concern for staff? Does that still fall within our requirements? They still meet the required parking for the site. That's not one of the special exceptions that they're requesting relief for. Yeah. I figured since it was not mentioned, but I just wanted to confirm. Okay. Thank you. Other questions, comments from the Dias? Councilmember Peterson? On the back side where you've got the setbacks, has there been any communication with the residents in those areas to see one way or another whether they have any reaction to this? There was the public notice that went out.

I don't believe we've had any direct contact with folks, but that was something that was a long discussion with staff about exactly where any kind of equipment is going to be located. And we kind of had a good answer to that. It's unlike some of the other fast food providers. And, again, as many of you have probably experienced, if not all of you, when you come to Chick-fil-A, there's not really an order box where you're communicating your order with the machine, with the speaker on it. You're speaking with employees. I think outside of normal hours, there may be some of that. But we did provide specs for staff demonstrating that the equipment is going to be, if anything, quieter than what's been out there previously.

Anything to add in terms of the interface? These applications were properly noticed, which means that Jason property owners would have received notification of what was proposed. Was there any feedback at all? I received no emails, no phone calls regarding the project. I have received those in the past on other projects, which indicates to me that there was no concern from those notified. Any other comments or questions from the dais? Well, I will just say that this Chick-fil-A is a case study in the book Reset that was written by Dan Heath and published in January of this year. It talks about the engineering that Chick-fil-A has gone through. The subtitle of the book is How to Change What Isn't Working.

Dan Heath, I'm a fan, talks about Chick-fil-A and how the whole process, and it's used as a case study to talk about how you change things that aren't working. And I recommend the book to everybody, but he really does talk about the fact that increasing the capacity by double lanes means you have to increase the size of the kitchen staff. I mean, he goes through all the things, whether it's filling drinks. It is a very detailed representation of how engineering has gone into each one of these Chick-fil-A locations because they are all different. But head and shoulders, Chick-fil-A is ahead of every competitor in processing orders and filling them of any other chain in the country. And so I have great confidence, after having read this book, I have great confidence in the fact that a lot of engineering has gone into this, that all of this makes sense,

and that we as a community are going to find that the community embraces the fact that they are orders of process faster, there aren't backups out onto Route 50, and that this really is, in all aspects, an improvement. So, if there's no other comments, I am going to close the public hearing, and there are a series of motions for this application. Is there a motion for the special use permit? I move that the City Council approve the request of Chick-fil-A, Incorporated, for a special use permit to modify existing drive-through and building pursuant to the City Code Section 6.7, on the premises known as 9509 Fairfax Boulevard, and more particularly described as Tax Map Parcel 48-3-06-028-A, with the following conditions.

The proposed use shall be consistent with the application and statement of justification received with the application. Two, the special use permit shall be non-transferable. Three, the application shall obtain all necessary local, state, and or federal permits prior to any construction on site. Is there a second? Second. A motion has been made by Council Member Hardy Chandler and seconded by Council Member Peterson. Is there any discussion on the motion? Seeing none, a roll call vote. Council Member Amos? Aye. Council Member Hall? Aye. Council Member Hardy Chandler? Aye. Council Member Peterson? Aye. Council Member Bates? Aye. Council Member McQuillan? Aye. Motion passed unanimously. Is there a motion for the special exception?

Aye. Council Member Anthony. I move that the City Council approve the request of Chick-fil-A for special exceptions pursuant to City Code Section 110-6.16. from the following standards the transitional yard ty three requirements along the east south and west property line the front building yard along fairfax boulevard side building yard along the east property line and rear building yard along the south property line and the bulk plane requirement along the east and south property lines on the premises known as 9509 fairfax boulevard and more particularly described as tax map parcel 48-3-06-028-a with the following conditions one the proposed use shall be consistent with the application and statement of justification

received with the application and to the applicant shall obtain all necessary local state and or federal permits prior to any construction on site is there a second second a motion's been made by councilmember Hardy Chandler and seconded by councilmember Amos is there any discussion on this motion seeing none a roll call vote councilmember Amos aye councilmember Hall aye councilmember Hardy Chandler aye councilmember Peterson aye councilmember Bates aye councilmember McQuillan aye motion passed unanimously is there a motion for the certificate of appropriateness I move that the city council approve the request of chick-fil-a incorporated for a certificate of appropriateness in accordance with section 110-6.5 of the city code on the premises known as 9509 fairfax boulevard and more

particularly described as tax map parcel 48-3-06-028-a with the following conditions one the proposed modifications shall be in general conformance with the plans and renderings received by staff in June 2024 and recommended for approval by the board of architectural review as of July 17th 2024 to the applicant shall secure all required zoning approvals and permits prior to construction and three landscaping is subject to change per urban forester comments at site plan approval stage is there a second second I love chick-fil-a okay a motion's been made by councilmember Hardy Chandler and seconded by councilmember Hall is there any discussion on this motion seeing none a roll call vote councilmember Amos aye councilmember Hall aye councilmember

Hardy Chandler aye councilmember Peterson aye councilmember Bates aye councilmember McQuillan aye motion passed unanimously we will now go on to the second general public comment is there anybody in the room that would like to speak on general public comment that was not public hearing item tonight i don't think so okay then well i will now recess the regular meeting to go into a work session we will stay in council chambers our first item our first item is a pre-application briefing on fairfax square professional center imprints 9840 through 9946 main street i'm going to recognize albert frederick city planner to provide the staff presentation good evening everyone this is the pre-application briefing for concept plan for fairfax square

professional center at 94 or 9840 through 9946 main street staff met with the potential applicant to discuss the preliminary preliminary plans and have provided some initial feedback on a concept plan staff will provide a brief presentation the potential applicant is in the audience and is available to answer any questions on the potential concept plan the site is located on the north side of main street west and south of fairfax square apartments and east of main street center this site is in the commercial corridor place type with commercial retail zoning district the total acreage of the site is approximately 10.4 acres the conceptual plan is a phased mixed-use development that would retain the existing five-story office building

located at 9900 main street and the existing bank at 9910 main street while replacing the remaining 10 commercial buildings with four commercial buildings approximately 61 000 square feet along main street in addition the the applicant is proposing four residential buildings with approximately 297 total multi-plant multi-family units that would be located in the rear of the site one one building would house uh 44 affordable dwelling units which is approximately 15 percent of the units proposed the density is approximately 30 dwelling units per acre also the the three existing vehicle access points will remain as the applicant plans to add a new shared use path landscaping and bus shelter on main street the concept plan does not

include the fairfax square apartments the garden style apartments to the north and to the east of the site it's not including the proposal so to kind of walk you through the uh through the concept plan this is the existing conditions there are 12 buildings on site buildings um 9900 and 9910 the office building for van meter companies and the existing bank would remain the other buildings would be uh demoed um and um as the project is phased beginning from uh the west side of the property uh to the east and um the next couple slides will walk you through uh the demo plan and the phasing of this concept plan so on the on the west side of the property you'll see uh roughly five buildings that would be uh demoed in phase one

uh and in phase two those uh buildings would be removed and you would have a commercial building up front uh being replaced so that's building d that's approximately 30 000 square feet followed by two residential buildings to the rear uh on the west side those two units will come online and then as the applicant would continue with the program on the east side those uh units those um commercial spaces will be demoed and the first uh building that would be constructed on the east side of the property would be a commercial building up front uh with uh i believe that building's proposed with retail office and possibly some uh restaurant uses uh to the rear of the site you'll have uh two more uh residential buildings coming online building r1 is uh proposed as an affordable dwelling unit

building with approximately 44 units on site um that would trigger a uh modification to to the city's affordable dwelling unit um ordinance and then the final um phase for the concept plan would provide uh two additional commercial buildings up front so the applicant would uh remove um again like i said 10 10 buildings and replace back with a mixed use product that would have um roughly the same amount of commercial space um as the existing commercial spaces out there and would add roughly 293 uh residential units to the site so what's before you is the primary vehicular and secondary vehicular um improvement plan uh the concept plan shows you know the interest will again would remain the same uh secondary access points are provided on the site as well as

pedestrian improvements um interior and exterior to the site uh staff has provided preliminary comments uh for the potential applicant those comments are in your packet um and if you would like to discuss those comments would be more than welcome to discuss them with you uh again so just uh the comments again again again are in your packet and um uh staff has provided uh comments uh through drt with the applicant and the applicant is aware of these items and they will uh would bring those uh those comments proposed changes uh issues to be addressed uh within the um proposed uh lane use application uh moving forward so in terms of the applications that you would that you could potentially see uh coming before you uh the applicant would need a comprehensive plan

amendment from commercial corridor place type to mixed use place type uh this parcel has this property has been identified in the comp plan as a parcel specific consideration so and within that consideration it speaks to to providing a mixed of use and with residential and commercial on the site so the applicant would be required to to provide a comprehensive plan in order to to facilitate this type of development as well as the rezoning would would need to occur uh from commercial retail to uh planned development mixed use the applicant would need to provide a master development plan and provide modifications to the affordable dwelling unit to have uh a standalone building with affordable dwelling units in it and in terms of shared parking or parking the applicant is proposing to provide a uh a reduction in the uh parking

for the proposal so a shared parking study would be required along with the trip they were along with the tis and the applicant would be required a major certificate of appropriateness for architecture and landscaping uh so just graphically this is what the comp plan amendment would look like you'd have a commercial uh commercial um corridor place type uh going to a mixed use uh place type and then a rezoning from cr to pdm uh and uh and uh finally the uh planning commission met and uh had um positive feedback for the applicant back in july and overall the concept it's a good concept it matches the vision of the mixed use place type there had some um some concerns about tenant retention that the applicant um should be able to address if you have

any questions on the tenant retention plan and in terms of photometric plans and street lighting for internal and external streets uh the applicant would need to address those items uh during the land use phase so overall the uh planning commission had positive feedback for the uh potential applicant and in terms of next steps the potential um applicant would provide a uh land use application submission a development review uh meetings with staff uh work sessions and public hearings the applicant is here to address any questions that you may have and i'll be happy to stand by for any questions you might have as well thank you thank you very much are there questions from the dais regarding this pre-application

um council member hall thank you um so we're looking at 293 units um and 44 in a separate building what's the rationale for the separation of the 44 affordable units um i think the applicant can address that but i believe it's in terms of it's a financing um um um item that they would uh need to address in terms of uh just the way that the um um financing goes in terms of affordable dwelling units but i see the applicants walking up towards them i love that we now have the applicants here that can answer questions that staff can't this is wonderful thank you good evening my name is roy barnett i'm the group president for van meter companies responsible for acquisition planning development in our investment property group

so to answer your question on this it's a question we've had in multiple jurisdictions over time and the basic idea is that we have the buildings but we're able from a financing standpoint economic standpoint to provide more units to the municipality by be able to put them in a single building because it's a financing situation with virginia housing we use low income housing tax credits other means of financing and loan programs from virginia housing that allows us to offer more units than the minimum required by the zoning regulations it allows us to put them in a location it's the same design standards the buildings meet the same geometric requirements exterior architectures any other building

we try to place them within the core of the product community so they're not isolated they're in integrated within the community that's why we have building a's identified as the affordable dwelling unit building because it's right next to the clubhouse and the pool and the amenities and it's in the core when we look at the overall community of fairfax square with the existing apartments and the proposed new apartments okay thank you um what is the anticipated breakdown of one two three bedrooms studios etc we haven't got to specific details on the individual unit breakdowns but typically in an urban setting we look at 50 to 60 percent one bedrooms we'll see about 30 35 percent two bedrooms and just the minimal amount of three bedrooms because of what we see in the demand

especially in the fairfax square existing community that we have okay and is there an expectation then of the 44 affordable dwelling units to be one two or three bedroom they have we are required to provide a similar mix as what we provide in the market rate units similar mix okay um and the parking that will be provided is any of this in garages or is it all surface parking it is the that's why we have the transportation parking study being done we look at the commercial users utilizing the surface spaces in most cases and we're putting underground parking in all four buildings underground okay okay okay um we did shortly before this meeting receive an email from a concerned resident who lives in um perfect square

um so i just want to just do a quick review of some of their questions um i think their understanding was that over half of the units were going to be junior one bedrooms um aka inefficiency but you're saying that that's that is not the case because we haven't released any breakdown of floor plans or unit designs okay um and i think you know one of the concerns in general is just this is 300 apartments it's you know 600 cars potentially those kind of things um so i'm happy to hear that there is a plan hopefully for the underground parking situation um and then my last question is i think it said there will be about 61 000 square feet of commercial and that's consistent with what is there now that is actually in excess

of what's there today that we would be removing we have and we're speaking of taking down approximately 57 000 square feet of commercial buildings replacing it with something greater than 57 000 depending on the design and we're working around a couple trees right now so we're but it would always be and that was part of the the effort when we worked with the planning commission council on the comprehensive plan was that we would always exceed the amount of commercial space that we have there today okay um and staff mentioned maybe a restaurant or some other things that might be going in there is there any sort of um first right of refusal being given to current tenants that would like to stay on

that's why you see the phasing plan that was presented building d is 30 000 square feet that's over half of what we have in the total complex today so our goal is to do this in phase excuse me in phases so that we can provide relocation so that the first building is only really taking down three existing buildings those buildings we're doing leasing strategy right now so those buildings are more short-term leases they can move out so that our goal is to build that first building d and then be able to move as many people who want to move into the new building move over immediately so that we don't have a displacement okay i'm really happy to hear that um will the rents be comparable to what they're paying now

or do you anticipate that that would be affordable for those that are already paying depends you know the rents there are there's a very variety of rents that we have today in the commercial space uh-huh but we would be looking at where the market is at the time and we would honor any of the leases that we currently have okay thank you council member amos uh thank you and uh i i'm curious i'm going to be more curious about the light tech and the 44 units but we'll come back to that another time um i appreciate the phasing plan implementation i i also want to echo some of the concerns that were raised i think both by staff and the planning commission specifically surrounding stormwater i know in the

staff report and in the presentation they identified that store you do you have a plan for stormwater yet on site or has there not really been any progress on potential ideas for how you would address that we are working on a stormwater management strategy both for quantity and quality and that could be a mix of devices and utils systems strategies so that's being worked on and we've had feedback from the engineering department here at the city and our engineers have been working with them and and passing ideas back and forth and requirements making sure we're meeting all the requirements and the the fortunate unfortunate thing is that some of the questions i want to ask you won't come until later for example after

tis is done but i i would be curious on which was also brought up by the resident the email about that burke station road main street light that is of a concern and i'm wondering if any improvements are going to be necessary uh at least from a transportation infrastructure standpoint that probably isn't for right now maybe later or do you feel like one of the things that's the issue at the main street entrance light right now at front of sandy spring bank is what we call a short throat if you notice that that entrance if you've been in there you go in about 20 feet and there's a medium break to go left to right and then it's a very short distance back to your end to the parking lot if you notice on the new

plan we're extending that medium break all the way back to create a division of traffic so if you're going to sandy spring bank coming in that entrance in the middle you will go back to the back side of the building turn left and come around the building to park in front of the building so we're trying to reduce those inner intersections and influences or traffic confliction points right now and shift them so that we have looked at that traffic situation so we're well aware of that and we're trying to address it with this plan sounds good and my last i guess point to also echo what the planning commission brought up the connection to the shopping center to the west have there been discussions about that

what are some potential opportunities that we could see there in partnership with that to get more people going over i think you're probably well aware of the great differential that we have there between the different properties and especially the grade behind the shell station and so there's it's almost impossible to have a vehicular connection but i am meeting with the owner of that center next week to talk about a pedestrian connection that we could make there is a makeshift pedestrian connection today that's like a dirt trail through the woods that people have been using and we would like to more formalize that and i'm meeting with them to see what kind of resolution we can come up with

council member hardy chandler so uh my question is to zoom out a little bit i noticed or what stood out to me in the um statement of justification is uh the sort of perspective that this is more in alignment with the vision of the city so can you speak to that because i think um in addition to the project in particular there certainly should be consideration of how it fits into the sort of broader direction of your neighbors and that kind of thing so how do you see this fitting into the vision uh for the city well i think you know we all there's there's two points there we we constantly see a need for more housing and more quality housing and i think we have shown from the years since mr van meter senior

built the first building fairfax square in 1965 and has the buildings you see out there were built what is that 60 years ago and we still maintain today as if they this was a class a property because we treat it as a class a property we i built the clubhouse in 2002 2003 we come in and completely remodeled the clubhouse area set it in the core of the community put in an oversized pool more than any other community would be of this size so we're trying to to meet those quality standards that the city has we're trying to also meet the mix of housing needs that you see that are trying to be are sometimes overlooked and we're also looking at the affordability and i think by coming in up front without being

even requested to do this is an offering 15 of the property as affordable housing i think shows our commitment to that part of the business as a side i am i also head up our affordable housing group and this is not our first project this will be number five six i think for me at the point when we actually get to this i have four completed two under design hopefully going to tax credit funding next year or next spring and then this will be number seven i guess so number seven thank you for mentioning the other projects i i too wanted to follow up on the question about the separated affordable housing in the other projects do you are there any issues that have come up around that separation beyond the financing just

there has been none they're integrated communities integration not separation and i can show you some of the affordable housing buildings that we've built and most people would think that they were condominium buildings not even rental apartment buildings so it's been well accepted and we actually have i just finished a project where we built 20 units in in a community again using the light tech program and they're built right next door to our market rate units that are selling for 700 000 750 000 and you can't tell the difference when you drive down the street you can't tell the difference from the design personnel difference because remember we're serving that 60 percent of area median income so when you talk about

this when you talk about affordable housing it's really a lot of the public service personnel that you would have every day right thank you other questions council member mcquillan hi there thank you so i have a question regarding trash i understand that you guys do trash a little different in your complex can you explain how this increase of residential units will affect that service so yes in our garden apartment community i think we were one of the first introduced we have what's called valet trash so it's picked up every you know picked up by our personnel at your doorstep that's in the garden style buildings because those are walk-up buildings these new buildings are center's corridor buildings with elevators every one of the builders

will have trash chutes and central trash collection areas in the garage in the basement so the trash will be serviced and picked up from the basement from the basement okay yes of the residential buildings they're all central corridor residential buildings with trash chutes excellent thank you other questions councilmember peterson thanks i wanted to go back also to the letter that we got from a resident raising a couple issues here one question is what is the current height of the buildings that are on site uh i'm in 9900 i'm there that's a five-story building with one story of parking underneath and so the buildings we're proposing are the same five-story buildings with and the garages are underground three quarters of the way because of the way the hill slopes you will have

some exposed garage but most of us there so we should be consistent building nights with 9900 building uh and and your i'm sorry your comp plan states that stipulates that we should be five stories no more than five stories so all of the buildings that are there at present are five stories no just the center main street building okay but when we look across the board at all the buildings what does the height look like the residential buildings are five stories the one commercial building is three stories the other the the building to the far west of the site is the first building we're going to build building d which is the horizontal building on the left that is a three-story building three stories of commercial

the buildings on the right the far building on the right is a two-story but it's over under which means that if you're on the right side of that building it's one story and if you're on the left side of the building it's two-story because you're at the basement level much similar to like we have in the in the mall area of the retail buildings today where we have some some stages it looks like one story and if you go down into the center core it's a two-story consideration it so helpful to hear i i think it would also be helpful to have some visuals we will have some 3d modeling and renderings for you when we come back before you right because in the presentation the one visual we have just has yeah that one there

is the five story right that building right there is the one on the right is building a it's the two-story commercial building the building on the left is another two-story but you're on the uphill side so the building on the left is the top floor of that building that's on that street level and then the building to the back is the five-story residential both street level again thanks it's helpful and would be good to see some visuals that sort of give you a more complete view of all that what is the change in the open space that is available on the site from a before and after standpoint i think we're pretty much in a neutral position on open space i don't have the exact calculation in front of me but we are trying to position this with additional open space and parks by going vertical

also handling the courtyards and the multi-story the u-shaped buildings that's a green courtyard in the middle and we're creating some additional more usable courtyards than what we have today because today any courtyards we have are like buried between the buildings where we want to get them out on the street so they're usable by all of our guests and visitors okay helpful to know because that's a point interest that folks have i think i actually have a slightly bigger picture question maybe for staff on this and that would be if i understand correctly let me pull up the uh staff report here the current zoning is commercial retail current use is non-residential future land use designation is commercial corridor correct so i think the question is to what extent does commercial corridor involve residential

in commercial corridor it's residential is not permitted that that's why we would recommend that they would have a planned development district which would allow for the mixture of the mixture of uses so you would have multi-family could have the retail office the existing bank the office space so to provide a mix of use and then it gives them some flexibility in terms of height and density but commercial corridor i mean commercial retail does not permit multi-family operations so when you look up and down main street here is how much of that entire corridor is a commercial corridor um i mean is a commercial quarter kind of come and go segment by segment or is it envisioned or is there currently a contiguous commercial quarter stretch on main street

I So the commercial corridor is a designation on the comprehensive plan and future land use map And across Main Street, it is inconsistent unlike Fairfax Boulevard Which the majority of it is commercial corridor activity center Along Main Street, we tend to have a mix first quarter properties and various types of residential. It's a patchwork that yes. Yeah, and does this big picture impact that overall patchwork does it Set a precedent for conversion of the patches that are commercial to residential in the future or is this entirely independent? This is something we're going to touch on quite a bit in our next presentation, but this site was discussed Very heavily during the comprehensive plan review that wrapped up last year

And so it was designated as a site where we would want to accommodate mixed-use development There are no other sites along Main Street outside of activity centers where that decision was made in the conference plan review So by that logic this would not set a precedent. So this is unique. Correct. Yeah. Okay. Thank you very helpful Other questions or comments for staff council member hall Thank you just one confirmation question this would feed into Daniels one elementary school is that correct? Thank you Thank you Jason I think Jason's shaking his head. Yes Yes, head shake. Yes Any other questions of councilmember Bates? Just want to say that overall I think this project has a lot of potential

And I do agree with the cons the comment that was shared That we should see the parking More behind the the buildings rather than right along Main Street If to the extent possible to create more of a Attractive street frontage and more of a pedestrian centric street frontage and also I think that's an opportunity to perhaps create more of a buffer With the existing neighborhood If possible and overall, I'd also like to see around the periphery maybe a For the buildings to be a bit more consolidated without being interrupted by You know parking lots here and there And I do love that we're seeing a Potentially a net increase in commercial space and Also that the Affordable housing number of units is above

Or anticipated to be above what's required So long as we can do that without running afoul of the ordinance that we have in terms of placement and Lastly I would like to see ideally at least Equivalent amount of tree canopy Ten-year tree canopy compared to what's there now if not a net increase, but I know that's further down the line I Understand this is very preliminary, but Overall I think it has a lot of potential And certainly important to make sure that You know you're doing outreach of community and responding to community concerns To the extent that you can Thanks Questions or comments council member Peterson just two questions The first Again we have a rendering here and we'll have more but

To what degree is there flexibility over aesthetics? Of the actual building structure itself It's a particular style right now, but Presumably there's some flexibility around that Yes, we we understand we have to go through the architectural review for the city and get it and maintain a certificate of appropriateness so we understand this is just the first cotton its first blush and that there's always going to be Adjustments and tweaks to the architecture well Well and then it gets maybe to the second question which is Community Dialogue and feedback and interaction What is the plan and the process for? Visiting with people who are on site now or people who are around this area to get feedback in terms of their interests here?

We will have a full-fledged community community outreach program as we file the application and go start through the process We do that on every application that I'm involved in in northern virginia or anywhere else and can you just give a Quick we typically try to schedule community meetings We've already had some discussions with some of our our commercial tenants We would have community meetings with our residential and commercial tenants to go over the Final programs or the not the final but the program as submitted We would continue that dialogue and have can ongoing communications with the local community Great and helpful to hear I I would just say that no surprises policy would certainly be appreciated by everybody who's involved in the letter

We got indicated really an absence of awareness Around this until very very recently so I think we want to try to avoid that kind of a situation going forward and also be sure that We're engaged actively in dialogue so that people have a chance to you know look at things and then provide feedback and response Appreciate understand. Thank you Other questions or comments? Well, I'll just add my two cents worth I like this project looking at this particular rendering it actually reminds me of fairfax corner The different heights of the buildings It leads to that the fact that you have commercial buildings that are lower and residential buildings that are that maximize the use of the space I think this is kind of in keeping with other development that we're seeing around the region

Not just in the city, but around the region mosaic and fairfax corner um reducing the amount of of asphalt parking lot I didn't hear anybody ask How much we're reducing the amount of asphalt parking lot? But asphalt parking lot leads to stormwater problems and we've got a lot of it in the city so Seeing the best use of this parcel For multiple uses retail commercial and housing to me is the best and highest use of this particular parcel I appreciate the fact that you want to do it in phases so that you're not disrupting your current tenants as much as possible And that you are offering more Affordable housing units than what is required by our six percent set aside and as far as you know independent buildings

I know that this is something they're doing in the county And for the same reason it's financing It's the light tech credits And it's the fact that if you want to get more than six percent if you want to get twice that many housing units doing it this way gives Gives us more and it and it's 60 percent ami. It really is workforce housing more Than what people are thinking in their heads is affordable housing. It is workforce housing So, you know, I think there's a lot of promise here. I appreciate the pre-application hearing I think we've had great questions asked here on the dais and we look forward to seeing more about this project Thank you so much. Thank you all Our next items of discussion of a potential review of the city of fairfax 2035 comprehensive plan pertaining to mixed-use development outside activity centers

Paul napty division chief of planning will provide the staff presentation the staff shows the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the

Is it in the folder? Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor Reed and members of City Council. The purpose of this presentation tonight is to consider whether to revaluate the city's comprehensive plan guidance on mixed-use development to make it more amenable to mixed-use development outside of activity centers. This stemmed from feedback from both the Planning Commission and City Council work sessions on the Gatewood proposal at 102.01 Fairfax Boulevard. This was a proposal to replace an existing office building with mixed-use development, and that property sits outside of an activity center, and so the current comprehensive plan has no means of supporting that type of development. To answer the question from Councilmember Peterson earlier, at the City Council work session

on February 4th, staff heard informal feedback from Councilmembers Bates, Amos, and Mayor Reed that suggested that we relook at the guidance of the comprehensive plan to give us a venue to support this. Again, this was informal feedback. It was not a direct request. In addition to that, we received similar feedback from four of the six Planning Commission members who were present at the work session on this project on January 27th. This resulted in direction from the chair of the Planning Commission to staff to proceed with the presentation to explain what it would take to review this portion of the comprehensive plan which was just recently adopted. And so since the Planning Commission is the overseer of the comprehensive plan, we had this presentation

with them in March. And based on that presentation, they took a formal vote of five to one to make a recommendation to City Council to receive the presentation and not to proceed with changes to the comprehensive plan at this time. So if there's any questions on that, I can address them. Otherwise, I'll proceed with the presentation. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Peterson. Well, let me see if I understand correctly. Informally, two council members said they were interested in this being brought forward? Correct. Is that? Well, if I may read, Ms. Peterson. The discussion, the comments, there was not a specific request. So we're reacting to the comments that were made, which was exploring this concept further.

Because you had a, just like you had here with Van Meter, you had a pre-development on the Gateway, what's it, Gateway Plaza? Gateway Plaza. So it's, you know, to replace an office, a current office building with mixed use and residential. So that is what the staff, we are, we're reacting to the comments about thinking, you know, about that topic generally, not necessarily specifically on the Gateway Plaza project. And so that's sort of what we took from that discussion. And then, of course, it then went to the Planning Commission with the staff took it there, which is the logical step. Plus, I think they had Planning Commission members speak to that as well. So let me, if I might circle back to that in a moment, but with respect to the Planning Commission, do I

understand that by five to one, the recommendation was not to move forward with amendments? That's correct. That discussion happened later. So the feedback received from the Planning Commission during the Gatewood proposal was that we review the comprehensive plan, because as a reminder, staff could not support that proposal based on the language in the comprehensive plan. And so they requested that we review that. We went to them in March, which was a month and a half later, and explained various reasoning why we would not want to move forward with that. And then following that discussion, they made the recommendation five to one to not proceed. So they had changed their position. And so it was seemed to make sense that we would follow up with the City Council with the

same discussion. But this, but the Planning Commission was not interested in moving forward. Correct. But they recommended that we review with the City Council as well. The entire Planning Commission voted five to one against it, but then recommended it be moved to the Council? To see if Council agrees with their decision. They didn't want it to just be their decision to not move forward. They thought that Council should have their say as well on whether to move forward or not. Just to be very direct about this, Council Member Peterson, the discussion, the notion of residential and the commercial corridors is a pretty fundamental issue within the comprehensive plan. So I think that's one, probably not one that is appropriate to be debated in the course of considering an application or certainly at a public hearing considering an application.

So providing a different venue for that kind of discussion in a work session like was done with the Planning Commission when they voted five to one, should recommend not moving forward. And as we're doing here tonight, to be able to have that discussion kind of outside of the auspices of a specific application certainly seems to be a productive type of discussion. So this discussion is decoupled from the gateway at the gateway? Correct. Okay. So that's just was sort of a catalyst, if you will, for the broader conversation. Is that the best way to understand it? I think that's a fair characterization. Okay. And then also just so I understand historically what happened here, we had a discussion among the Council.

I don't remember as a body that the Council asked us to come back and revisit this. At the time, I think there were a lot of questions among them. I know I asked a question about fundamentally whether that application and specifically and in general whether we, what was the perspective on residential development in a commercial corridor and I think you responded that that was not something that the staff favored here. It was inconsistent with that. I'm just wondering, is the only thing that changed that, that the Planning Commission, despite its five to one vote, thought somehow or another we should come back and reconsider this again? Or is there some general need for us to be revisiting this that's above and beyond that?

It was just that discussion, Council Member. There hasn't been other, you know, other discussions about this topic, but seeing as, as there was differing viewpoints at both the Planning Commission and the Council on this issue, it certainly seemed reasonable to have follow-up discussion, particularly given that the, the comprehensive plan had been updated about four months before this discussion was held. So it was certainly something that seemed, seemed to be unresolved perhaps. And so we wanted to make sure we had an opportunity for the Council and the Planning Commission to be able to discuss this and consider changes if, if changes are desired for the comprehensive plan. If not, we continue to move forward as we have with adopted policy.

So, I think, what would be interesting? Interesting. Well, there's a lot to discuss here, I think, about the specifics of the issue and I'll look forward to that, but it, it, it is a little bit difficult to track exactly how it got here. Thank you. Understandable. We'll, we'll try to be as clear, clear as we can. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. So we will proceed. To start us off, I wanted to do a quick history of mixed-use development in the comprehensive plan in the city. Historically, mixed-use development has always been supported in Old Town as long as we have been a city, as long as we have prepared comprehensive plans. But beginning in 1997, the city began to look for other places to support such development, particularly to encourage revitalization of areas along what was then the highway, what is now Fairfax Boulevard.

And with the 1997 comprehensive plan, they established what is called the Urban Zone and identified the areas now known as Camp Washington, Northfax and Fairfax Circle as locations where we should support mixed-use development in order to revitalize those locations. This concept continued to evolve with subsequent comprehensive plans. And I won't go through all these changes, but I do want to note that in 2007, the city prepared the Fairfax Boulevard master plan. This was not a part of the comprehensive plan. It was a separate study. And this study identified what were known as centers and connectors. The centers were similar to what were previously called the nodes and what are now known as activity centers.

And the connectors were the areas in between. This plan suggested that primary redevelopment efforts be focused on those centers. And it went on to say that those were ideal locations for redevelopment, mixed-use development, and more intense development because of their locations at key intersections, which allowed for easier access. And because they had the land area that allowed for appropriate transitions to surrounding residential neighborhoods, which the areas in between did not. With the preparation of the 2019 comprehensive plan, these centers were then referred to as activity centers, which is more consistent with language used by Metropolitan Washington Council of Governance, as well as the Code of Virginia.

And it was recommended that smaller plans be developed for each of the five activity centers. Also, note at this time, the Pickett and Main activity center was added. Then with the 2024 comprehensive plan, this is the current comprehensive plan. This was developed as part of the five-year review of 2019 comprehensive plan. The five-year review was required by state code. And during this process, we'll get into more detail about how this occurred. The idea of a mixed-use place type was added. Before this, the only place where mixed-use development could occur was in the activity centers. And so this began to broaden that a little bit. However, it remains fairly restrictive. There were only two sites that were identified in the city, one of which is a Fairfax Square site that was talked about earlier.

The other is the Inova site on Chambridge Road. These are the only two sites in the city that were identified as potential locations for mixed-use development outside of the activity centers. So based on that, when the Planning Commission and City Council received the work session presentations on the proposal at Gatewood, which, as a reminder, is not in an activity center and is not one of the sites that's designated for future mixed-use development, staff was unable to support the proposal because it conflicted with the recommendations of the comprehensive plan. And so it was suggested that we review that guidance. So as we review this on and try to make decision on whether to move forward with potential changes to the comprehensive plan or not,

I'll give you a quick summary on the recent review of the comprehensive plan. This is a 2024 review that resulted in the establishment of the mixed-use place type. We'll talk about potential issues that could arise when we seek opportunities to expand mixed-use development. We'll take a quick look at the Gatewood proposal and how it aligns with the mixed-use place type. So if that was applicable there, what types of issues we might still run into. We recognize this is not meant to focus on that proposal, but wanted to use it as an example since it was a genesis of this conversation. And then lastly, we'll look at next steps and clarify the type of recommendation we're seeking from the City Council and the guidance that we will need to proceed.

So on the 2024 comprehensive plan review, when this process began, some of the information we had was the completion of the 2022 housing assessment, which included a survey where 57% of respondents responded to somewhat support or support replacing some commercial lots with residential development in the city. We also heard feedback during initial outreach sessions about exploring this and in follow-up conversations with the City Council Planning Commission and the Economic Development Authority. We heard some support for this idea with limitations. There's a general concern about expanding opportunities for mixed-use development outside activity centers too much. So during the review, the Planning Commission conducted several types of analysis on properties that are outside activity centers on where we might want to consider supporting these development.

We looked at things like building to land value ratios, property sizes, and proximity to activity centers. And ultimately, the Planning Commission landed on the two sites I mentioned earlier. And the mechanism that they suggested on how to manage this in the comprehensive plan was to rely on what are called parcel-specific considerations. These are properties that are located throughout the city where there might be more than one reasonable future land use type. And so the comprehensive plan provides some descriptive language for each of these properties on how we might want to consider alternative land uses. It doesn't actually change the land use that's on the future land use map. We only have one land use for each property.

But it provides a venue to make arguments for changes if we want to do them. Property owners would still have to go through the process of requesting the change to the future land use map. And in addition to that, in addition to defining where those properties would be, we wanted to give some guidance on design for mixed-use development outside of activity centers. And this is provided through the descriptions in the place type in the comprehensive plan, as well as the text with each of the parcel-specific considerations. So the design criteria for the mixed-use place type, this is just a summary. Each of the different place types in the comprehensive plan has similar types of criteria, whether it be residential or commercial or mixed-use.

So I won't go through each of these, but generally these were established during the comprehensive plan review process. And it doesn't just look at things like bulk and density. It looks at how buildings should be oriented and how we want to accommodate pedestrians and those types of things. Then we have the two partial-specific considerations. So those two sites that were identified earlier have language in the comprehensive plan that specifically suggests that the mixed-use place type, and that's highlighted in the purple here in each of the descriptions, that that place type might be an appropriate alternative place type to what is shown on the future land use map. There are no sites in the city that are shown as mixed-use place type as their primary land use on the future land use map.

I also want to note that the Inova emergency room property was previously recommended to have mixed-use development in the previous comprehensive plan. However, there was no future land use map type that could accommodate it. So this was the venue for that. Fairfax Square was then added. This is primarily based on the building-to-land value ratios and the overall property size that can accommodate a comprehensive mixed-use development. So when considering whether or not we want to review the current guidance of the comprehensive plan, some things have come to be considered. The first is the long-term economic conditions. There are concerns particularly from our economic development staff about repurposing significant amounts of commercial space and how this may make it more difficult to attract businesses

when we have fewer options and where to place businesses in the city. The fiscal impact of individual properties. Now, this will vary depending on the specifics of developments. It varies on the development that's there today as well as what the proposal would be. And there are various types of residential development that could be included which would have various types of impacts. So some of those might not necessarily be negative, but others would be. And so it raises some risk. There's concern about potentially displacing successfully performing commercial properties. There are a limited number of Class A office buildings in the city as well as other Class B properties that are higher quality

and then can accommodate a variety of tenants. And there's a concern that if we are too flexible with replacing commercial development of residential or mixed-use, then we can lose some of these properties. And then from a planning perspective, there are concerns about scattering new residential units. Since in the comprehensive plan before this, the only places that mixed-use development could be accomplished was in the activity centers. The idea is that those areas would receive the most development and would become essentially urban neighborhoods. And developments would feed off of each other to create that character. If we disperse it too much, it would make it more difficult to achieve that.

So in support of some of these arguments, we, in coordination with the Fairfax City Economic Development, we looked at things like office vacancy rates in the city compared to surrounding areas. We hear a lot about residential or office to residential conversions happening in places like Washington, D.C. and Arlington, where they tend to have higher office vacancy rates and have a higher need to replace those with other uses. But looking at this table, you can see the, this is a variety of jurisdictions, but the key lines to look at are the dark blue line, which is Northern Virginia as a whole, and the dark red line, which is Fairfax City. And you can see that as time goes on, the vacancy rates in Northern Virginia as a whole are, are steadily increasing,

where the vacancy rates in Fairfax City are decreasing and actually lower than they were even before the pandemic. So this says to us that there isn't as much of a dire need to try to replace existing office buildings as there are in other jurisdictions. That being said, we are, we recognize we are a small piece of the large pie. And so this will be volatile and we'll have to monitor this in the future because this could change very quickly. In addition, the planning commission requested that before we present this to city council, we look at how this breaks down in different types of office buildings. So by looking at office class with class A being generally higher quality offices and class B being generally more moderate quality,

you can see in the chart on the left, the blue lines are much higher in most other jurisdictions. So the class A offices tend to have higher vacancy rates in the city. That's not so much the case, but they could also be because we have a very limited supply of class A. So all it takes is one or two well-performing buildings to make us even out more with the class B. By looking at building size, you can see that smaller buildings tend to have much less vacancy, both within the city and throughout the region. Then the larger scale buildings. And this applies within the city as well, though it's not as much of a concern or as much of a discrepancy in the city as it is in other jurisdictions. And then the point about delusion of investment and activity centers.

So we wanted to look at the amount of residential development that could be expected based on the market analysis that was done as part of both the each of the four adopted smaller plans, as well as the housing assessment that was conducted in 2022. And as you can see by the numbers here, the citywide housing assessment projected a demand over approximately the next 10 years of just about 4,500, 4,600 residential units. Whereas when you combine the projected demand from each of the adopted smaller plans, it's also about 4,600 residential units. Keep in mind that these are only activity centers, not looking at other areas outside. And so by this logic, we believe that we can accommodate the majority of demand for residential development within our activity centers, recognizing that there may also be some additional development outside of activity centers.

So as I mentioned, we want to do a very high level review of the gate with proposal. You all received a work session post application work session on this back in February. And looking at the general language that is in the mixed use place type description in the comprehensive plan, as I mentioned, there are some some suggestions about bulk and density, but also a lot of language about building orientation and design. In general, that proposal was very successful in accomplishing a lot of the goals with regard to design and how the buildings are oriented and those types of things. However, the proposal exceeded the maximum height recommended for the mixed use place type by two stories and exceeded the maximum recommended residential density by almost double.

So the purpose of this is just to show that if we did make this change and simply added or allowed the mixed use place type to be applied to this property, there will still be some issues that we need to work out for that proposal. So based on that, the staff recommendation is not to proceed with a reevaluate reevaluation of the comprehensive plan at this time, because the changes are recent and based on a deep review of the issues that occurred with the 2024 comprehensive plan review. As shown in those previous graphs, the market does not indicate an urgency with trying to accommodate for a loss of commercial demand, as we see in other jurisdictions. But as I said that we will continue to monitor this because that remains a volatile market.

Our concern with diluting investment and activity centers, as we said, that those are the areas where we want to see our investments, where we want to see neighborhoods created. And if we distribute that too much, it could impact that. And one thing we didn't mention earlier is that in going back and reviewing the comprehensive plan, we just want to clarify that the plan that was created that was adopted in 2024 went through a very long and significant review process. It had a lot of community input, a lot of participation from other boards and commissions. And so we wanted to open this up. We don't think it would be as simple as modifying that language. We want to go through that process again.

And so it would be a fairly complex process. And then the last thing I want to mention here, this is information we didn't have for the planning commission back in March. But there are a couple of additional analyses that are coming up that can help inform this. And so even if we don't open up this discussion now, we can potentially open it up in the future. There's nothing saying that we can't. And one of those is a develop as a analysis on office to residential conversions that is being conducted by Fairfax City Economic Development. That will be expected to be presented to the Economic Development Authority in October or November. And then there is the affordable housing strategic plan, which may include recommendations about better ways to provide locations for affordable housing.

If that conflicts with this, then we're happy to open it up and review it again. And then lastly, we are looking at conducting reviews of each of the adopted smaller plans. And depending on the various outcomes that could come from that, that could give us some reasoning to want to explore residential residential development outside of those areas as well. The planning commission recommendation based on their conversation in March, as we mentioned earlier, they agreed with staff and recommended that we do not proceed with the reevaluation at this time. They had a lot of the same reasoning as a staff, provided some additional reasoning as well, which is summarized here, essentially that they felt that we should be continuing to rely on the guidance we have focused on the activity centers before we try to expand opportunities for mixed use development too much beyond that.

There was a dissenting vote that suggested that we do look at revising this sooner rather than later. And the reasoning was that first of all, they felt that we should have an on ramp to consider proposals. So as we mentioned, there was no way for city staff or the comprehensive plan to support the gateway proposal as an example. The mechanism that we have set up in the comprehensive plan can only support mixed use development in certain areas. And even if planning commission city council supports a project, there's no way for the comprehensive plan to support it. It's not to say you couldn't approve it. You would just be approving it against the recommendations of the comprehensive plan. And the planning commissioner felt that we should have a way to accommodate that if we wanted to.

And the other point they made was that single proposals won't impact the viability of small area plans. This was to based on the staff's point about the concern of diluting too much investment outside of the activity centers. And the thought here was that if we if we don't support mixed use development in one location, it doesn't necessarily mean that they will invest in activity center. And they would likely go elsewhere out in the county or something else, which which I believe is a valid point. So with that, the guidance we're seeking from city council tonight is whether or not we should reevaluate the current guidance of the comprehensive plan. If so, it would help to get feedback on what aspects should be reconsidered.

What we're asking here is what types of things should we look for when trying to consider where to support additional mixed use development? What type of reevaluation criteria should we have? If there's anything that you have in mind, as we mentioned, we looked at things like property size and property values with the previous review. And or if the city council would like to receive additional information before giving us any further guidance. And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions. Council member Hardy Chandler. So thank you for your report. What I really appreciate is that staff tried to sounds like to me come back and close the loop that we opened up back in February. So I we were one month on the job and I think there were multiple requests for additional information as we are kind of learning the parameters of the things to explore.

So I appreciate, first of all, colleagues that made that request, but I appreciate staff for so thoughtfully closing that loop for me. In addition to the staff recommendation and the vote by the planning commission, I would not support making amendments at this time. For me, the dilution of the activity centers is a compelling argument. But again, I just want to reiterate the responsiveness of staff to an early request and for closing that loop. I appreciate your time and effort. Thank you. Council member Amos. Council member Amos. No, I just wanted to thank staff. I appreciate the presentation. We've been through a lot since February, so I will admit this slipped my mind. I had just a few questions and then just some general comments.

But I guess first question, and this kind of relates to the activity centers, is one of the major concerns that it would also hinder our ability for consolidating parcels? Would that potentially affect this or is that not really related? It hasn't come up. It could be an issue. And I think that the study that Fairfax City Economic Development is working on about office conversions or the idea of conversion to residential, we'll get into more detail. I don't know if it'll touch on that subject, but if it were to come up, that would come up through that. If you have any thoughts on that, we'd love to hear them and consider them as we will likely review this in the future. So, I mean, in terms of one of the planning commissioners recommending potentials for on-ramp, I'm assuming that that would be targeted at low-performing office spaces, which if I recall correctly, Gatewood is not.

It was actually a high-performing office space. So that was unique in its own circumstance. Is there any type of evaluation for some kind of performance threshold currently, or there's no language for that at this time? There's not. And that's the challenge. That's the type of thing that where we would likely run into issues with state code if we tried to include valuation in the comprehensive plan. So that's the reason we tried to use that mechanism to identify properties specifically, but not leave open-ended language that would use that as an evaluation criteria. And I think something that's for, and it could be future discussion, whenever we reach that point, it would be better to strengthen the city's position in being able to acquire properties, which, going back to the consolidation discussion, this might make that more difficult.

So I understand that perspective. My general thoughts on it are I would concur with the Planning Commission. I do think we need to prioritize activity centers currently. We're about to publish an affordability and housing strategic plan. I would like to see what that recommends before we make this type of decision. Also, you know, more experience on the job helps. We do have a lower vacancy rate compared to our neighbors. So if it ain't broke, I don't want to fix it either. I want to make sure that we do support housing but not at the cost of commercial. And so I think that's an important factor moving forward. But I do appreciate the discussion. Thank you. Chair Greg Musil. Council Member Peterson.

First, a big thank you to the Planning Commission and the staff for doing some very helpful analysis here. I think the vacancy rate analysis is particularly helpful, but I think the other observations and, you know, kind of strategies and strategic insights here in terms of dilution and what have you are really very helpful. And I do very much agree that this is not something that merits additional work based on what we've seen here in front of us. There's nothing here suggesting that we ought to be revisiting this. But I have just maybe a reminder big picture question. Maybe it's for Mr. Hardin because now I understand you're wearing yet another hat that could be of interest here. And that is to put in perspective for us the city's goals in terms of the balance of revenues that we derive from commercial versus residential development.

It's my understanding that at some point in the past it was exactly the opposite of where we are now. It's kind of a 30-70 thing switched. Is it not the case that a primary goal that the city has in terms of economic and commercial development is restoring that balance for fiscal health reasons? I think the quick answer would be it certainly is. And this discussion and staff's recommendation on this issue certainly reflects our desire to be cognizant of that balance and supportive of the healthy commercial development that we have today. And am I correct in understanding that in your new position you're going to be making the vacancy rate issue even worse here? That's a call for us creating more opportunity to breathe life into in terms of attracting commercial business here.

We've certainly seen good interest and we will continue to pursue that. So that will remain a focus. But when you're competing against other jurisdictions that have a much bigger vacancy rate probably makes it a little bit tougher, right? It does. But because we have a smaller supply it's something that we need to monitor closely and be very thoughtful about where other jurisdictions could probably make a lot broader strokes, so to speak. And one of the observations here is they want about dilution being very careful not to starve out those commercial opportunities when we've got really significant demand opportunity there. Okay. Again, thanks for the analysis. It makes a difference. Very helpful.

Thank you. Any other comments? Councilmember Bates? Thank you. I want to thank staff for the presentation. It's important for staff to try to anticipate what information is beneficial for the City Council to have based on our conversations as well as what is beneficial for the community to see in terms of discussions that we have up here. Now, I may be kind of a lone voice on this, but personally, I would like to be a bit more open to residential development and commercial corridors, more in a targeted approach, but more on a case-by-case basis. You know, for example, I, and also more efficient land use. So, in general, I support increasing the housing supply and including the affordable housing supply.

Um, and also I would say that eliminating a separate above-ground parking garage behind a building in favor of underground parking that enables us to expand the building footprint, uh, it is more efficient use of land. And, uh, I also think it is important to at least, uh, replace a significant portion of the commercial being taken out. Um, but really I kind of look at it on a case-by-case basis. I'm a bit more open to residential in commercial corridors than perhaps a comprehensive plan is. Um, but, you know, again, I'm just one voice up here. So, um, you know, with regard to Gatewood, um, I would like to see residential incorporated into that property in some regard. Um, and so I'm not closing the door on that, but, uh, you know, again, um, we'll have to see, uh, what the future brings.

And I do, on the other hand, agree that we should prioritize mixed use development primarily in activity centers. Thanks. Any other comments? Councilmember Hall. Thank you. Um, thank you for the presentation and the information. Um, like most of my colleagues up here, I would support not moving forward with reconsidering this, reevaluating criteria, et cetera. Um, I do think that we, in comparison to other jurisdictions, have a lot less office vacancies. We also have a lot less office space to begin with. And I think that that is evidence by our commercial tax base decreasing. And we're doing some of these other development centers and activity centers. I think we are also talking about not replacing all of the commercial that is often being taken out.

Um, and I think that there are added costs that go along with that, that don't always come immediately, but that need to be considered in the long term. Um, and just as far as our 2026 adopted budget goes, I just want to point out. So the residential tax base is one component of it, 5.6 billion. Um, I'm sorry, that's the, uh, doesn't matter the numbers, but when you look at the breakdown of the residential versus the commercial, um, of the commercial tax base, 26% of that is actually apartments. So while I think we think of apartments as being residential, it makes up about 26% of our total commercial tax base. So that's in addition to what we're getting on the residential side, but it's in a commercial presentation.

So I say that only because it is a large chunk of what you might not think of as commercial already. And so to add that in further to me, just would put more of our burden on housing, housing, housing. And I think that we've seen that there can be housing crashes. There can be changes. People are moving up, moving out. If we continue to put in one or two bedroom units, and if they're all apartments, then we're going to lose the opportunity to potentially put in, um, opportunities for our residents to buy and to stay here long term and to invest in their future and our city's future. So I think that containing the, um, the increase in mixed use to comprehensive plan, personally, I think there's already too much of that in the comprehensive plan.

So I definitely don't want to see any more of it, um, discussed in global picture. I am open, obviously, to a, a one off, a, you know, something that needs to be done and under developing property that maybe is struggling for some reasons that we can't work through at that one location. But, um, to your point, um, Mr. Nabte about, you know, underdevelop or under, underperforming, I think it's at times easy to make a property look like it's under developing if the owner's intention is to switch from commercial to residential. So I think that that is a slippery slope of is it really underperforming or not. So I'm happy that that's not a criteria that is going to be used. Um, but I, I do appreciate the presentation.

I think this was very, very interesting and provided a lot of information. So thank you. Other questions or comments? Councilmember Peterson. Just a final clarifying question. On the presentation on slide 12, which is, um, essentially a sales analysis, is that sales of new? New buildings or does that include resale? Uh, this slide? Yeah. Um, this is a, uh, a market analysis. We had separate market analysis that were done for each of the smaller plans as well as a housing assessment. Um, so this isn't looking at sales. This is looking at anticipated demand for residential uses. Well, and is the, is the expression of demand sales? Um, it could be, it's a mix. Oh, where it says for sale for rent.

Is that what you mean? Well, okay. So the housing assessment says for sale for rent and we've got units here. Um, so we're counting the number of units that are up for sale, right? No, this is, um, what the, the market, market analysis, um, in the housing assessment, it broke it down for rental or apartments versus for sale units, um, which would be condos or townhouses or those types of things. So that was just anticipated market demand of those. The smaller plans didn't break it down between ownership and rental. Maybe let me ask this a different way. This is over a 10 year period. And do we have any sense for the combination of sales and rent? Um, the number of transactions that take place during a given year, during a decade, do we, you know, the total transactions for real estate in these categories?

We, we do, I don't have that information, but, uh, we have it through our real estate database. Okay. And then these would be a subset of that. This would represent an area where we would have transactions for a set of units. Um, this, this is all looking at anticipated new units. Okay. Right. That's what I was after. Right. So this is new and there would be, okay. Um, and over a 10 year period. Um, this would be the built and occupied. Um, that isn't clear. I think it's projecting built and occupied, uh, by that time, but also to clarify the 10 year period is very rough. Um, smaller plans were developed over a course of five years. Um, they were roughly targeting around 23, 2035 for their target years.

Um, but it kind of depends on when they're developed. Uh, and the housing assessment, uh, had a similar kind of projection. So it's, uh, I wouldn't say that this analysis is finite enough that you could say that by this day, this number of units will be built and occupied. But this generally anticipates, yes, these are not under construction, not approved. They're actually completed units. Do we have any, uh, sense of the turnover rate for either of these categories? Now, how long do people stay in place before they are replaced by somebody else? I think we can get that information for, um, owner occupied or for sale units. Uh, I'm not sure if we can get it for rentals or not. I'd have to check with our demographer.

I think it would, from my standpoint, be helpful background information just to have to sort of put this in perspective in terms of what this marketplace looks like and how our actions are affecting it. So, thanks for the, uh, the homework on all this. Other questions or comments from anyone? Okay. Well, it sounds like that there is general agreement on the dais that no more investment needs to be made in the comprehensive plan at this time. So, thank you so much. Thank you. This has been illuminating, very robust conversation up here and we appreciate it. Our next item is a presentation discussion on the CIP reconciliation and reformatting. I'm going to recognize Gwen Riddle, Budget Director, to provide the staff presentation.

Good evening. Give JC a moment to pull up the presentation. Okay. Mayor, members, council, the following presentation and discussion are intended to provide an update and overview on the CIP reconciliation project, including the reformatting of the capital expenses based on some defined parameters for the FY27 and future budgets. Go to the page. So, quickly we'll start by reviewing details of the CIP audit, go over what was approved for in the FY26 to 2030 CIP, provide budget, updated budget balances based on the defined general fund categories, and then discuss the changes for the FY27 and beyond CIP development. So, my team and I, which I have one analyst, Jess Imes, give her a lot of credit.

We reviewed approximately 200 base projects and performed comprehensive audits of approximately 100 of those projects. Some of the audits went back 10 years or more. We will continue to update the audited data to provide complete project information for the city's major projects. This task took us about eight months with Jess working about four months on just the audits. So, besides budget, she was just doing audits. In completing these audits, approximately 1.4 million of general government appropriated funds were determined to be no longer needed. Mainly projects have been completed or never started. There is an additional 700,000 of capital funds specifically related to completed school projects.

We have worked with the superintendent and his staff to determine which projects are complete and what is still needed for ongoing projects. One big note is that with the city's financial system conversion to Tyler, the data is only accurate in our current system starting from July of 2024. So, it's fiscal year 25. However, data from both systems, our old legacy system and our current system, was used to pull together the full project audits. And that's what the balance is you'll see going forward. So, the reason we're going to continue to maintain those audits is to have that full comprehensive project data, especially for those main, the larger projects. And any project that you want, we probably have or could get.

Next page. So, this is just a summary of what was adopted in the FY 26 to 30 CIP. As a reminder, approximately 48 million was appropriate for general fund projects, along with an additional 48.8 for CIP related projects with other funding sources. The remainder of this presentation will concentrate on the general funding, which is highlighted in the brackets. So, the first section down to the schools is what we're going to talk about. Next page. So, one thing's been missing on the CIP summary sheet is available budgets for these projects or funding that was already appropriated in prior years and what's been spent. Therefore, we adjusted the summary sheet that you saw on the previous slide. We're now showing a revised budget number, how much has been spent and encumbered, which is included in the ACT, ENC, REC column.

So, that includes all actuals, encumbrances, and any requisitions that are still in process. And then we'll have an available balance number. So, just to note, the data used in this presentation is as of August 20th. There are currently 122 active projects with available appropriated budget in our capital improvement program. The majority of the projects fall within three main areas, general government, recreation and community appearance projects, and infrastructure repair and maintenance projects. Also note, the $120 million in outstanding appropriations, two projects make up 65% of this available balance. The two projects are listed below, which are Fire Station 3 and the Willow Sherwood Community Center.

So, moving into FY27 budgeting, we've implemented a new policy to better define how CIP projects will make it into our capital improvement program. This policy has been reviewed by our external auditor and complies with all accounting and reporting standards. Some of the main highlights of the policy are reviewing of projects to ensure the CIP requirements are met, move recurring maintenance and repair projects to the associated operating budget, and ensure projects remaining in the CIP will either create or enhance a capital asset. With the implementation of this policy, the transfer from the general fund to the CIP will need to be reviewed to ensure funding remains in the general fund for necessary repair, maintenance and subscription needs.

We will incorporate the necessary financial policy changes needed in the FY27 financial policies and council budget guidelines that will be presented to you on October 28th with hopeful approval in November. Finally, we have what we are showing could be projected out on maintenance. Now, this is just an estimate. It's what I determined. We will be reviewing every CIP project as a budget action team, and our meetings actually start next week. So we're looking at approximately 8.3 million reduction in the CIP per year, which is about 35 projects. So this number will be better defined beginning next week when we start our CIP reviews. We're looking mainly at projects within infrastructure repair and maintenance, 24 projects, and technology and infrastructure, 8 projects.

So thank you for your time, and we are available for any questions. Thank you so much. Are there questions on this from anyone? Council Member Peterson? Well, thank you, both of you. This is a very important issue and step forward, I think, and I can only imagine how much work you've been putting into it because it's a big ball of wax here. Generally speaking, it sounds to me like one of the things you're doing just fundamentally here is structuring this to appropriately match sources and uses of funds, and you're putting some thresholds around what that means. For those thresholds, whether it's the 50,000, the five-year useful life, et cetera, are those based on standards, generally accepted standards?

And if so, could you maybe tell us a little bit about what those standards are that give us guidance for how we structure in that way? There's no minimum or max that you can define. Every locality can define their own. It's what we've seen in the industry. I've talked with my counterparts in other localities, especially going to the national conference this past June, and that's pretty much what the guidance of a lot of localities have, especially ones our size. Larger localities, a county, you may see higher limits, but with our size, about 50,000, it seems reasonable. And that's just a guide. It's not hard and fast. If there's a project that comes in that will create an asset, and that, for me, is the biggest thing, is that we're putting into the program items that will create an asset or enhance an asset, that we can still put that in the CIP, show it as a project, because that project, putting it in as a project allows us more detail into how those funds are being spent.

And if I could add, as Ms. Riddle stated, we did consult our auditor, who also audits other localities, counties, cities, and towns, and we also got concurrence from them. As Ms. Riddle also stated, we also conferred with other localities and tried to see where we would compare. But there is no standard. GASB nor GFOA does not actually institute or recommend any standard. It is very discretionary to the locality of what they think is appropriate, and that's sort of where we are right now. A financing question. There's one piece of this, which is it goes into long-term financing. Is that done by putting things into a pool, and the pool has one standard rate, the 25 and 5, I think, is what you've been working with?

Or do we structure long-term financing differently based on project like duration, et cetera? We're going to have some five years. We're going to have some 10 years that would be handled differently than putting them all on a 25-year 5% structure. How about you take that one? I'll answer that one. And so in discussions with our financial advisors, Davenport, we have a very standard timeframe of 25-year useful life with a projection of a five-year interest rate, which is a little conservative on that side. It's about 4% or slightly below that is what we've been getting in the last few years. And then that goes into a pool, to use your words. We actually have and created a new fund, a debt service payment fund, that now allocates all debt service payments into that pool as well.

So it's a standard 25-year timeframe with a projected 5% interest rate or what the actual interest rate is whenever we do issue debt. And we're still proposing that there's still some PAYGO coming in from the general fund to pay for those smaller projects that we probably would not want to fund with 25-year debt. That was my next question. What do you do with the things that are under the wire but still are capital intensive, not annual expense things? And so you just case-by-case them on a PAYGO if needed. Is that? So correct. So currently we're budgeting about $12 million in transfer from the general fund to the CIP. As Ms. Rittles stated, looking at this number right here, it's about $8.2, $8.3 million per year on just maintenance activities that we are proposing to transfer out of the CIP to the general fund.

So if you reduce that $12 million by about $8 million, that still leaves about $4 million that could be transferred from the general fund to the CIP to account for PAYGO and try to maintain a decent ratio of how much is being cash paid versus financed. Well, I know others have questions. So I'm going to yield my time for the moment. But really, again, appreciate what you're doing here. Other questions? Council Member Hall. I can't thank you enough for this. I do. You're welcome. I have been looking and begging and asking and pleading, and I can't believe it took you. I mean, I can't believe it took you eight months and one staff person, but thank you for dedicating the time, the resources, the energy to doing this.

Not only did we uncover $1.4 million and $700,000 for schools, but, and it's not found money, I understand. It's not that. But it's a new or different way of looking at where numbers have gone, where money has gone and hasn't been fully utilized, but maybe we thought it was. And now there's a potential savings in other areas. So I think this is really, really helpful. I know I like to say what it costs to keep the lights on around here. It's a, you know, a term that I'm sure you're all tired of hearing. But I think this really helps to break that out, and I am very excited. So thank you for the time and the energy that went into this. I think, you know, I think it's just looking at the infrastructure repair and maintenance.

I mean, over the course of the, what is it, four years, 2017, 2019, 30, you know, $21.6 million. It's an extraordinary amount of money that we're still going to be paying, we're still going to be doing. But it's just a much easier representation, I think, of what it costs to keep the lights on. So thank you. So just want to make note with that, especially the repair and maintenance. Some of those projects that we currently have in the CIP still have balances. We are not saying we're going to get rid of those balances. We're not, they can still finish utilizing what was already appropriated. Yeah, I think that's a really good point. No one's taking anything away. It's just shifting the view so that it is a little bit easier.

And I tend to go with, like, the five-year, you know, asset value. I know we have a $5,000 as opposed to $50,000 for the company I work for, but we obviously have very different needs. But I think it's really good to have a barometer by which you are, you know, comparing things and having a policy for that is really, really great. So I do want to thank you again. And I'm sure with the multiple systems, it was even much more fun for you guys to handle. So thank you for keeping all those records. Absolutely. Council Member McQuillen. I just wanted to echo Council Member Hall's sentiments and say thank you for all the work that you have done on this. Having done audits myself, I know how fun that is, especially working with two different systems.

But it's very much appreciated. And I think it's very helpful, as Council Member Hall stated, to have that information in this manner. Your work is very much appreciated. So thank you. Other questions? Council Member Amos. Just a quick comment from, I remember at the Budget Open House, JC, you were like the star of the show. You had this line almost going out the door. I imagine with this separated, it will happen again, and you'll have an even greater breakdown of it for when we do our second one. So just appreciate everything that you all have done. Other questions or comments? Council Member Peterson. So you have restructured and you have a snapshot right now of what that looks like, but it sounds like you also will be updating it, refining it.

So when will the next update be to scrub numbers? And then how frequently will you be doing that to provide updating as you monitor these projects that are in place to see if they're on schedule? And then adjustments of what comes in and goes out. How often does that happen? So the CIP process is yearly. We're in the midst of it right now. The departments will be submitting their projects for 27 to 31. At tomorrow they're due. And then the committee will meet and review to have the proposed CIP to the Council and Planning Commission the beginning of November. But we will be reviewing the current CIP regularly. I look at it daily, if not more than that. But we can actually, something we can probably add to our quarterly review, financial review, now that we have the data.

Before we didn't have any data. But now that we have it, it's easy for us to get it and update, to provide updates and to monitor. And we're always in communications with the departments on what their needs are. Good to know. Let me just state the obvious, which is cost to complete is a moving target. And so it means the sooner you can do those updates, the better, where you get cost to completes that could change significantly. And I would think it would be important for you and for the Council to know where you have changes in cost to complete of some significance that we could be made aware of. Because some of these are very big ticket items. And even a small change in cost to complete can have very major implications.

And I would support, I hope the rest of the Council would, having a more frequent look at those numbers to see where we are on them. I also am just curious to know what do you do within the debt pool when you get a shift in cost to complete. I know there's some flexibility in that. And at some point that may trigger a Council action if you've got to shift that structure around a little bit. How does that come back to us if we've got a project in there and then we get a shift in cost to complete that affects it? Go ahead. Sure. So to answer the first question, what Ms. Riddle and her team and the new actual financial platform Tyler is allowing us to do is she has instituted, a project for every single CIP.

So it very clearly delineates now in this new system by specific category, whether it's engineering, construction, A&E services, all that, where you can break out and actually have multiple budgets that roll up. So we could very clearly and easily see where we are, sort of like our own checking account balances for every specific CIP project. So when she talks about the 100 or 200 projects that are out there, her and her team of one have actually built project ledgers for every single CIP. So it's a lot easier for us now in this new Tyler system to glance and report back as need be and see when we're potentially starting to approach the upper barrier or budget of a specific project. To answer the second part, when and if that were to happen, we would come back to council and ask for potential supplemental appropriation

to account for additional funding for that one specific project, have the project manager provide reasoning or feedback of what is driving that potential overage, and then at that time ask council if they so choose to fund the appropriation or the supplemental appropriation. One of the things that I also want to note is a good practice, a good best practice, and something that I've been wanting to institute here and additionally that has been communicated by our financial advisors. Again, Davenport is very similar to our general fund where we have unassigned fund balance. We should have something similar built in to the CIP. We have it built into the stormwater fund and the wastewater fund, but we have yet to do that to the CIP fund.

We should try to create some type of reserve or fund balance within the CIP that in the event that we were $150,000 over on a project, we would have the ability to tap into that reserve or fund balance to account for that, understanding that we would put parameters or policies in place to do that without having to go to council, if that's what council chooses or if council wanted to know every single time we could. But there is no balance now. I know we found, as Council Member Hall stated, we found money that could be reappropriated and go into a contingency reserve right now. That would be a potential recommendation and or if council wanted to do something else. But it's one of the other better practices that we are going to be striving for as we continue to look at the CIP.

Well, it's great to hear. The shift to a project-based accounting system has enormous benefits. Great to hear. It would seem to me that when we get reports out on the list of CIP projects, it would be nice to have some sort of a report out on variances, how we're doing. And thank you so much for raising the mechanism by which you deal with variances that could be, you know, there's a class that happens within that mechanism and a class that requires you to come back to us. But I think for us to know what the variances look like of any significance would kind of be helpful. There's a parallel question, which is for projected, the projections of projects that have not yet gone into debt issuance but are being contemplated.

Again, we've got some really big ticket items here, and those are moving targets as well as terms of, I mean, in this day and age, cost figures are things you have to, you know, watch pretty carefully. How often are those cost figures for the projected cost figures for things that are proposed but not adopted or planned but not adopted, how often are those updated, and how often are we able to see what those updates look like? Yeah, right now it's on a yearly basis. Some of our larger projects, say for Fire Station 3, as they're getting updated numbers, they're providing those to us. So we're getting real-time updates on a lot of the big projects, but the smaller ones that may have, you know, a funding source of multiple years,

we update those on a yearly basis. Are you able to share those updates with us? It would be great to kind of know. It sounds like you're getting them. You will get them as a proposed. When we pull together the proposed, we're working on that right now. But more frequently than just once a year. Yeah. I think that's something we could strive for. We do have a good collaboration with the treasurer. So the treasurer actually manages the actual bank account and the cash balances. So we do have discussions with him and sort of have a forecast of our burn or spend down on some of these projects, along with some other operating commitments. So we have pretty regular communication, I would say at least quarterly,

with him on where our cash position is and how urgent it would be to potentially have to issue debt on some of these larger CIP projects. Well, again, I appreciate it. I think it would be very helpful, particularly for big ticket items, to as reasonably often as possible have updates on how that's looking. If we've seen any changes in forecasted costs, those are important for us. We have to make decisions that impact other things, and so sooner the better in terms of being able to get access to that information. Thank you. Council Member Amos. And just wanted to reiterate, considering we know you're a team of two for the most part, we appreciate all your time that you've put into this, including some of our requests, and we will take that into consideration as well.

All right. Other questions, comments? All right. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Can I ask? Also, Gwen, I think along the way, because you apparently had all kinds of spare time, you managed to get a new certificate? I did. Can you tell us about that? I have earned my certified public finance officer, CPFO. It's through the GFOA, National Recognized Credentials, that now I can put at the end of my name, so my husband's not the only one with letters. And it was, there's seven tests that you take and just kind of a lot of studying. So during budget, during all this, yeah. My kids are studying, so I figured I needed to, you know, do along with them. Thank you. And I just want to say the Fairfax Library is quite nice as a study spot.

I went there a lot. All right. Ms. Shinabiri? All right. Our last work session item is a discussion of a resolution for the reappropriation of general slash operating capital and enterprise funds carryover to FY2026 that were appropriated in FY2025 and have not yet been spent as of June 30th, 2025. I'll recognize JC Martinez, Chief Financial Officer, to provide a staff presentation. Mayor, Council, thank you again. Just really quickly, it's going to be a verbal report out, and you can look at the staff report for some of the information I'm going to be covering. As stated, so each year the finance team presents to City Council a list of general operating capital and enterprise funds with a recommendation as to whether or not those funds should be reappropriated.

The situation occurs when funds are either, one, appropriated, but at the end of the fiscal year have not been spent or obligated, or two, purchase orders were issued but not fully expended and the remaining encumbrance balance should be carried over to the new fiscal year 2026. It is recommended that the appropriation resolution is an administrative action, and it is presented to council at this time every year in order to take into consideration any year in adjustment and final audit work. As the adjustment for the general fund falls below the 1% threshold that is set by Virginia code, it does not require a public hearing. Formal adoption is scheduled for the September 30th council meeting as a part of the consent

agenda. If you flip through the staff report, there is a table that breaks out by the big buckets, specifically the general fund, the capital fund, or the CIP. The wastewater fund and the stormwater fund, those amounts are what we're requesting to basically carry over from FY25 to FY26. These are all exclusively associated and tied to a purchase order. So it's not like I'm asking or we're asking to carry over any additional funds that are not already encumbered, again, via a purchase order. We traditionally don't have to come to council for a capital wastewater or stormwater. Those are enterprise funds. The general fund is really where we want to be fully transparent with council and ask to carry these

over. Again, these were FY25 funds. Where there is a purchase order, we're still expecting that those expenditures happen. And just very, very quickly, for a comparison review, in the general fund, we're requesting about 1.3 or about 47 POs that are being requested to carry over from 25 to 26. In FY24, as a comparison, that amount was about 3 million. So it's about half less this year that we're requesting to carry over. In the capital fund, the amount, it's a little more this year. It's about 26.5 or about 170 POs. Those are all capital POs. Capital usually takes greater than a year to complete when you're talking about construction, engineering, and A&E services. For comparison purposes, FY24, when we came to council, that amount on the CIP equaled about 15.1 million.

On the wastewater fund, we're asking slightly over a million dollar or 32 POs to be carried over. In FY24, that amount was 1.4 million. And the storm water fund this year, we're asking about 3.7 million or 73 POs to be carried over. Last year in FY24, when we came to council, it was about $1.5 million for comparison. So happy to answer any questions. Again, this is a very straightforward administrative process. It is all the amounts listed here are exclusively tied to a PO. Questions for Mr. Martinez? Well, it was indeed very straightforward. And there you go. Brilliant, brilliant presentation. Thank you so much. Thank you, councilor. Okay. I will now reconvene the regular meeting. And we will go on to future meeting topics.

Mr. Foster? Thank you, mayor. So you should have the future meeting topic list at your seat. The clerk provided. So I want to focus at the moment to your next meeting for September 30th. There are, of course, several presentations. Then on the consent agenda is the introduction of an ordinance for a license agreement with Breckenridge homeowners regarding gaslighting. They want to keep their gaslighting. So they're going to, this is a license to let them to continue to do so. This is our normal, this is the first part of our normal process. It just gets introduced. There will be a public hearing at a future meeting. And then you'll take action at yet a different meeting. So that's how that typically works.

So this is just the formality of introducing the ordinance. The second item is what Mr. Martinez just went over. And then the third, we have a different appointment than the one that you did upcoming for the retirement plan committee. I think it's a public safety slot. So while, let me pause right there and just ask. I've noticed in the last several times, several meetings where there's been an appointment, that there's been a desire to take that off of consent. If that's the case, we just won't put it on consent. We'll just put it on the regular agenda. Is that the preference of council just to do it that way? We want to make this easy. And if it's something, if you don't want on consent, that's fine.

We'll be happy to put it on just the regular agenda. We just like to know. Council Member Peterson? I think it's a courteous and customary thing to do, but I think it can be very brief. Okay. So that's fine. So we will have appointments just in general. So we have this one, but any future appointments that need to happen from council, we will just have on the regular agenda and not on consent. Then there's currently scheduled two public hearings. The first is the land use application for Willard Sherwood. I know we had a request from Council Member Hall to perhaps push that off to October, which we can certainly do. So this is following sort of the normal schedule of any land use once all the pieces come together, and then we go ahead and schedule it.

So this was how it fell on the calendar. But I understand that you're wanting some additional information, which we won't be able to provide to you until the September 30 meeting. So if you wish to move it, we have the time to do it because we have not yet advertised. So we have time to cancel, not run the ads for that meeting, and would suggest putting it on October 14th. Is that acceptable, or would you rather be at a different meeting? Council Member Hardy-Chandler? My question is just, are there any general deadlines or anything that we should know in terms of timelines with the county in terms of changing that date? Are there consequences? Council Member Hardy- As far as just moving it to the next meeting, no, I don't think there's any real harm in that.

We're moving down parallel tracks, and so this is purely the land use piece. There's some special exceptions that are required. Council Member Hardy- I think the city attorney communicated with you some that one's not tied to the other, so we can do them independently. It doesn't obligate, one does not obligate you for the other, so you still have your full range of options. And contractually speaking, if you want to do that, unless Mr. Harden's going to come correct me if I misspoke. No, he's just there, I guess, if something comes up. Council Member Hardy- I just agree with everything, no corrections there, but just in terms of ensuring that we have the project team available for that, we would certainly want to confirm if we're moving from the 30th to another night in October, perhaps just having a little bit of latitude in case we don't have the right staffing available.

Again, that would not impact the schedule at this point. Council Member Hall. Thank you. Thank you for bringing up my request to delay this. There's a variety of reasons, and I think that moving it to October is better. Personally, I did ask for not to be on the 7th because I'll be virtual, and I was hoping to maybe bail out a little bit early, so if we could do the 14th, that would be preferred by me personally, but I recognize that there's more than just me involved in the presentation and the discussion and all of those things. Will you be virtual on the 28th, by nature? I will not. Okay. I will be here. Okay. So I think, so then, well, what I'm hearing from Brooke, again, if council, if it's, if you all would agree, then we will not have it, if that's what I'm hearing, we can push it to October.

What we won't be able to tell you right at this minute is whether it will be the 14th or the 28th. Let us confirm staffing availability, and then we can let you know specifically which one we want, and we'll put it on for that time, if that's acceptable. Councilmember Amos? And Mr. Lubcomin verified this via email, but irregardless whether it's the 14th or 28th, that will incur any additional costs. I just wanted to, like, just clarify that here as well. Correct. Okay. Right. So, so, so we will do, that's, I'm sorry. Just by way of preferences, I would prefer the 14th, as at all possible. Right. Because, yes. We'll shoot for the 14th. I think Councilmember Hardy Chandler's alluding to the fact that she's probably going to be out of town on the 28th.

So. And the 30th. And the 30th. So, yeah. All right. So, so we'll, that we'll shoot. Well, we will confirm. But it looks like I'm seeing nodding heads. I think that seems to be the preference. Okay. The other public hearing is the one that you had, we had talked about. This was before you went on and had your recess. This is on potentially amending the firearms ordinance. Is that, do you still wish to have that on that date? If you don't, we could potentially, we still haven't advertised yet. So. Councilmember Hall? I was just curious if it would be possible. I recognize and I appreciate that our new police chief will be here and can answer questions. I was wondering if it would be possible to have a representative from Fairfax County, either Sheriff Kincaid or another sort of higher up there that might be able to answer some questions about how it's been working or not working in the county.

If they're seeing additional time or costs or any of those things that they might be able to give us their two cents on it. We can certainly ask. And no offense to the sheriff. It would probably be better for the police department. Totally fine. I just wasn't sure who would be the best person. So I can have chief reach out and I'm sure we can have somebody come over and speak to that as well. Okay. I think that would be really helpful. I mean, we'll have to ask, but yes. Of course. We can certainly do that. Of course. Thank you so much. Councilmember Peterson? Well, I agree with the request and support it. I guess I have a timing question with respect to the public hearing. I think the public would be interested in hearing that same information and would benefit from it.

And that could be helpful to their comments and a public hearing. So the question is whether we would hear from the police departments prior to the public hearing so that the public has the benefit of this new information as it's expressing itself around this? Sure. I mean, I think you do. I mean, I would, I would, it would be analogous to when you have a land use, you have a presentation before and before the public makes their comments. So you just had that this evening. There's not actually a presentation. I don't know that there, we were prepared to do any type of presentation, but certainly you can ask, you would be able to have, hear their comments and ask your specific questions along those lines

so you can get that feedback prior to hearing from the public. And I think we raised this, or perhaps Mr. Lubcomen raised this when we last spoke, which is the possibility of submitting questions in advance. And those could be the basis of a presentation or the basis of a response from either our police chief or somebody from Fairfax County. But I guess the question is, is that something that we could do? Because there may be a question set here, and it might be an efficient way to get information flowing. Well, certainly if you, if council will provide us questions that you would like us to address in advance, that was always helpful. So, you know, it would end in time to be able to work up answers

if they need research or something. So certainly, you know, if you could get us your, get us questions within the next week or so, that would be very handy. Getting questions on Monday the day before isn't still helpful, but not as helpful in terms of having time to, you know, to get answers, you know, so depending on what they are. So certainly, if you will send me the questions, any questions that you have, and then we can, I can put them together and have Chief Pedroso, you know, review them and be able to have answers and also share those with his counterparts of the county as well. So that's, that's easily done, but that's easily done for us. But that's incumbent upon you all to send us the questions

so we know what it is that you're wanting us to talk about. Thank you. I guess in an ideal world, as much of that or any of that that could be formulated in something like a staff report that the public would see before the meeting would also be ideal. It's the common practice for us to have staff analysis on these issues prior to their consideration. This is a big issue, and it would seem to me that we ought to have something similar here. We can certainly help guide that, but, you know. We can, well, I would say it just depends on the questions. Okay. If you, I mean, if it's, if you ask us questions that are simply yes or no, then we could, we could answer those. I'm not sure that would be a staff report, but if it's something, or, you know, a presentation.

But if, you know, certainly any questions you have that require some analysis or whatever, we can, we can certainly put that into a staff report, and if it's appropriate in a presentation format, we could certainly try and do that as well. So just keeping, the only reason I'm, I don't mean to sound evasive or hedging, it's just more of this is, this is a council initiative that, why we're considering this, and so we're unclear as to what, you know, what the things are that you might want to know. So certainly you sharing them with us will allow us to focus comments and responses based on that. And is it, when are we planning to schedule a vote? That is up to council. Certainly you could, you could vote that evening, but you do not have to.

You can hit, you can, you certainly have a public hearing, you hear comments, you can close the public hearing, and then you can schedule any vote at a future meeting. And you also don't have to take any action. I mean, there's no, there's no required, I mean, this is a proposal that you put forth, but if you desire to leave things as they are, if ultimately at the end of the day, that's what you want to do, then there's no action required by council. It's only if you wish to make, adopt these changes, would you need to take action, which you could do at a future meeting. And the next future meeting where that would be possible would be October 14th. That is correct. So if you want to, if you want us to pencil in that as a, as a, as a item for the 14th

or, or any future meeting specific, just, we can do that. Um, what is that the preference of council? We can certainly put it something in if you'd like. Council member Amos. Uh, I think we can make that determination September 30th after we have discussion with, uh, both the county and our police chief. Council member Bates. Um, I would prefer not to put this off any further. Uh, but you know, we need to, uh, have agreement if we're, if we're going to get it done. So, um, you know, it could be amenable to the 14th. So it sounds like everyone's looking forward to asking questions on the 30th. Council member Amos has said we can decide on the 30th if there will be a vote to take place later on.

Council member Peterson. Well, just to note, again, big issue area. Um, we have not heard, uh, from our own police chief or police, uh, department or the counties or anybody else on this. And, uh, I don't think it is unreadable. It is unreasonable to expect that a lot of information will be provided and perhaps even more will be requested. So for planning purposes, uh, I think we ought to at least at a placeholder basis, um, have something that we could do on the 14th if needed. Because, uh, again, we're going to be hearing a lot of new information in terms of the, uh, the responses and the presentation from the police as well as the public on this. And it's just a huge body of information that we will receive for the very first time at that meeting.

And that worries me a little bit in terms of immediately moving into a boat. I would expect that you will have, um, a tremendous number of public comment, which is why you'll notice there's no work session scheduled that night. Um, because we expect that you have, will have a lot of public comment. Um, so, um, to your point, uh, I think that, um, from, from a public's perspective, um, I think they probably would like to know in advance that you will not be taking action that evening. Um, if that is, if that's, if that's how you believe you're going to, to feel, um, and then, and we can put a placeholder for the 14th, um, is certainly very, is certainly very reasonable. But I, I would be shocked if the room was not full.

I'm not full. I would be shocked if it was not full. We don't need to prolong it. Put a placeholder on the 14th. I'm good. That sounds, I mean, okay. Okay. Council Member Hall. Um, just to clarify, are we suggesting doing the information session with the police chief on the 30th, then having the public hearing end the vote on the 14th? Or we're saying public hearing 30th, then we close the public hearing decision on the 14th. Because public hearing would operate as the information session. Okay. So then if, but if people wanted, people could still come in on the 14th and speak up if they wanted to. Uh, during public comment. Right. Or they could speak up on the 30th if they wanted to. But that would give them a time to watch it later and be able to comment and learn from it.

They will come to both. Yeah. Just, I just wanted to make sure I understood. Right. Thank you. Council Member Hardy Chandler? Did you think? Okay. No. Council Member Peterson? Well, I, I wasn't there, so I don't know. Perhaps Council Member Amos does. Uh, but it's my understanding that by the time the vote did take place in Fairfax County, it was like two in the morning. And I would, uh, rather we not. So that'd be all the more reason to push it out of the 14th. Look, buddy, the earlier we get out of here, the better. I'm cool with that. 14th. All right. So city manager, city manager, you're. All right. We're on the 14th. I got it. I've got it. Okay. Okay. Um, that is, so, so that's what you'll have for the, for the 30th.

Um, uh, then, um, if you want to talk about, uh, some of the other future meetings, we certainly can. I would just note, um, on, on the 7th is when ETC will be present to give you, uh, give you the presentation and the results of the community survey. Um, I do know that they, um, are in the, in the process of tabulating. They did get the required number of responses to make it statistically valid. Um, so I have no other information to tell you that they're in the process of process, you know, giving us all of that. Um, and we will, they will be here, um, on the 7th for that presentation, um, and to answer all your questions and so forth. Um, and, and then, uh, the only other thing that's, the couple of things that are not on here, um, uh, is the, there's a need for board and commission interviews.

And I can let the clerk speak to that. Um, I believe we've got 11 applications for a variety of slots. The, the only one I would specifically mention that we do have an application for, um, is the board of zoning appeals, which is technically an, actually an appointment by the circuit court. The council makes a recommendation to the circuit court for that appointment. The only reason I bring that up is because you're short two people and a quorum is three. So when they, they don't always have business, but when they do, all three have to show up in order to be able to do that and do it timely. So, um, if, if just purely for, from that perspective, that would be one, an important one to try and get filled.

Um, and of course there's a bunch of others and I will, the clerk can certainly speak to that. Okay. I think right now we just need to figure out a date with the next couple of weeks that we could possibly hold interviews. Um, look at the calendar. I had jotted down Tuesday, uh, September 16th, or we could do Wednesday, September 17th or the following week. Um, since we don't have the meeting on Rosh Hashanah, we could still not have a meeting just in case there are people who observe that holiday, but we could meet on the September 24th, which is a Wednesday or September 25th or Thursday. If that works for any of those dates work for anybody. Did you say the 17th, 18th? 17th, just 16th and 17th for next week.

Yeah. I, you said 16th, 17th, 20th, 23rd, but we don't have to meet since that is the holiday that we're not meeting as a council anyway. So the 24th or 25th. So of those dates, only the 16th is, is when I'm available. Is that your good? Okay. Mm-hmm. I cannot do any of those other dates. Okay. I could do the 16th. I might be surprised. The 16th is a Tuesday, which is your normal meeting date when you, when you do meet. It's the third Tuesday of the month. Third Tuesday. Yeah. I can do the 16th. Interviews, reports, and conventions. The, yes. Mm-hmm. All right. I, I can do the 16th, the 24th. I can't. Okay. So, Mr. Bates, can you do the 16th? Yeah, yeah. And I can also only do the 16th. Okay.

So it looks like everybody can do the 16th. Start time, 7, or can, you want to go earlier? What's your preference? I'm not available until 7.30, but then I don't think I really need to be available. Okay. Question mark. All right. Yeah, it's when the council members can read the motion going in. As long as there's four of them. Yep. Okay. Okay. So I guess what is the. Seven o'clock. I'm sorry? I'm sorry. How many are we doing? There's 11 people I have lined up. So 15 minutes for each person. So that's four an hour. So three hours. To do 12. Yeah. Roughly. So normal. For how many slots? I know one is, no, actually two are reappoint, sorry, three are reappointment interviews. And others or other openings like the EDA, Planning Commission, BZA.

Okay. I could start at 6 if that's preferred by others. That would be difficult for me. Yeah. Okay. So 7. It looks like 7 then. We'll leave it at 7 o'clock. All right. So we will calendar that for the 16th next week from today for just a closed session for board and commission interviews. No other business for that evening. Thank you. Are there other questions? One other thing, piggybacking a little bit on the presentation that JC and Gwen just did. We have tentatively scheduled a fall budget open house. So in anticipation of the budget, which is one of the things to ask for, and that is scheduled for October 21st. October 21st. Your third Tuesday or third or is that or Wednesday? It's a Tuesday.

Yeah, all right. So your third Tuesday, we have lined that up. You will have the results of the citizen survey. And so know what people have said. We'll have financial information, which we're still working on. But, again, you wanted to hear some citizen input on the front end of the budget process. So we have scheduled that at the Sherwood Center for the 21st, probably 4 to 7. Well, probably 4 to 7 because we learned that we didn't have anybody come. We had, like, two people come between 7 and 8 last time. So we would suggest just the 4 to 7. That's when people seem to prefer. I will just say that is my 19th wedding anniversary, and I love the idea that I can do budgets for three hours and then get to go out with my husband.

So this is actually a really nice way to spend my anniversary. Consider it our gift to you. Glad to be of service. So if there aren't any other questions on the, or happy to entertain any other questions on the futures list. Just a clarifying question on the budget open house. Will we receive a budget briefing in advance? I don't know what's being presented at the open house. So it's going to be very similar to the one that was conducted earlier this year, I think, on April, in the month of April. Very similar structure, but as the manager stated, a couple of potential changes is we would have the results of the community survey, so we will probably be going over that with individuals who show up as well and see if there's any additional feedback that they would like to give.

Additionally, we had a meeting today internally with staff and communications regarding the PAPHR, which we did receive the award with our first submittal, and we're already preparing for our second submittal and trying to get feedback from residents on that. Potentially have other things. Actually, while we were at this meeting, I sent a meeting request for a planning committee to sort of start formulating what needs to be done and see if there are other areas or opportunities in discussion with the manager of areas that the residents may want to identify specifically as priorities for the FY25 budget development that we could get input, as the manager said, try to get that on the front end versus earlier this year.

We had already proposed, the manager had already proposed the budget, so it was at the back end or the tail end. So now we're doing it, I guess, in the more traditional sense of trying to get input prior to actually developing the FY27 budget. And it's really more, we're not going to have a lot of details in terms of, there's not going to be like a proposed budget for people to react to. It's really about what our, you know, finding out what their priorities are, what they want to see, and whatever financial. I mean, we can, we'll have, you know, year end, we'll have our, you know, you will have gotten, you will have gotten the first quarter, or we will have first quarter data and preliminary year end results for the year that we just ended on the 30th of this year for fiscal 25.

So, but it's really, it's really about priorities and desires to help us formulate the budget. It is not, there's not going to be a specific, we are proposing to spend X number of dollars and what's your opinion on that. We're, we're, we're, we're, we're not that far along. But we don't have any information about the expected circumstances of the upcoming budget. Well, we'll have the, we'll have what the current, you know, we'll have financial trends. We, we just received and just distributed to you the school tuition update. We've just had Davenport's financial presentation on the proposed, how to fund the, the school bonds and the update for that. So we'll have all of that information. Yes.

Um, for the, the, to share and to, and to have for folks, but it's really, um, about what folks, um, what, what are their priorities in terms of what do they want to see? You know, and, and for you to get that feedback, um, and hear some of that on the, on the front end. If, if I could add really quickly, um, so it's sort of like a step process. I think there will be more clarity and more information provided to council during the November 8th budget retreat. At that time, it will be very comprehensive from a micro, from macro, micro level. We would also have pretty accurate revenue projections for FY 27, along with expenditures as well. Uh, having come off of the budget open house, having come off of the community, uh, survey responses as well.

So incorporating all that feedback on the November 8th budget retreat for council, having department heads, budget, uh, EDO, Davenport and others present. And then basically at the end of that discussion of like, okay, provide us guidance going forward. And what are council's priorities for FY 27 CIP and operating budget? I think that is the meeting where it collectively sort of comes together. For October, would we have an updated CIP list or is that too soon? That's too soon. That's too soon. All right. Any further discussion on that? I don't have anything on that, but just a real quick question because I think maybe it's been a while. But the discussion on October 7 for possible video testimony for public comment,

how are we getting a presentation and then going to be in a position to potentially take action? Is that what we're looking forward to? Well, right now we're testing because we're trying to figure out how we can do a form on the website for people to sign up to speak or to submit a video. Cause I'm working with cable right now, even with like a possibility of getting YouTube links from residents that are anybody in the community that wants to submit. Um, I mean, we're trying to go through things, just see if we can do it smoothly on our end. We've gotten information from other jurisdictions, so we're just trying to figure it out. So we're hopeful to have, we'll have a presentation, but it'll be a consensus of the council if they want to move forward with adding that feature to the meetings.

That's it. Okay. Anything else? Okay. So we'll move on to the manager report out. Um, nothing else. I just wanted to say, um, thank you for your comments, uh, about the finance team, um, and the work and presentation that they've done, uh, uh, up to this point. This is something that we've been working on quite honestly. Um, since I've gotten here or started helping out back in January. Um, JC and Gwen and I both, we all have worked and been in other places. And so a lot of the things that we're doing, um, is certainly, um, I would say SOP for us and what we're, what we've been used to. Uh, but as the city has done, it may be in the past done things a little differently. So, um, we've been having these conversations, just want you to know, you know, we've been having these conversations and we're continuing to work on these things to try and, um, streamline, make it more efficient, make it more user friendly.

Um, getting you the information that you're wanting, um, in the format and what you're wanting to, to allow for better decision making from your perspective, but also from the staff side, you know, manage it better because some of those, because, you know, some of us were like, we're just kind of scratching our heads. Like this seems odd. Um, but, uh, and I don't mean to sound critical of how things were done in the past, it's just, but as things evolve, um, and, you know, new ways of doing things and so forth. So, um, I just wanted to, you know, that we, something we've been working on for some time, um, and these are the kinds of discussions that we have, uh, very frequently. Um, and I just want to say thank you for recognizing, um, the work that, that the team has been putting in, um, and, and we very much appreciate it.

Thank you. Thank you. So we'll start with, uh, Council Member Amos. I'm sure others are going to mention this, but very excited for Civic Connections, uh, starting up tomorrow. Yeah. There you go, Jennifer, right over there in, uh, city partnering up with the central Fairfax Chamber. And thank you to our comms director for, for really leading the charge on that. I know that's one of the first things that we discussed as a group. So it's kind of nice to see that, uh, everything's coming together finally. There we go. There we go. There we go. There we go. There we go. There we go. Council Member Hall. Thank you. Can I borrow that? Oh, yeah. Okay. So, um, Council Member McCullen and I are part of the women's, sorry, the women's club of Fairfax.

That one always throws me off. It should be women's. Um, and we are doing a free shred event and food drive on Saturday, September 27th from 10 AM to 1 PM at Fairfax High School. Um, we are asking that you bring non-perishable food items for the Fairfax High School food pantry. And you may bring up to five boxes of documents to shred. No cardboard, no binders, no magazines, no heavy plastic or trash. So paper is what we're looking to shred. So I don't know if you can zoom in on this or not, but you can find this. I will repost this again. I don't know that we zoom in. Um, and in addition to that activity with the women's club of Fairfax, um, we are also doing, um, we are collecting donated items for the forensic assessment and counseling team.

Um, we are collecting brand new sweatpants, sweatshirts, underwear, and stuffed animals, new stuffed animals, nothing used. Um, and these are for victims of domestic, um, abuse and sexual violence so that they have clothing and things like that to go home in when they arrive at the hospital. Their clothes usually get taken. So this is to give them a little bit of dignity on their way out and not send them home in hospital scrubs. So, um, these items, we will be delivering them on September 26th. So if you would like to donate, please reach out to me directly, um, or to Councilman McQuillan, um, as well. And we can coordinate getting those items from you. Um, so thank you for finding other ways to help support your community and those in need.

And, um, I'm sure I'm missing other things that are going on, but thank you to everyone. Councilmember Hardy Chandler. Lots of good things going on over the summer. But I do want to call out something that Mr. Martinez said very subtly. And I want to say it out loud and very specifically, uh, that, uh, our CFO and their team won the popular annual finance reporting award on their first submission from the government finance officers association. So there's a lot of work that staff do, uh, that we don't see behind the scenes. A lot of things that they are accomplishing on an ongoing basis. This, this is just the latest. And so congratulations to them and their hard work and their ongoing success, um, on everyone's behalf.

And let's give him and our finance team a hand. Well deserved. Um, in addition to that, I just want to acknowledge the ribbon cutting for the city hall or front door to the city. Um, the video that's associated with that. If you were not able to come to the ribbon cutting, but, um, just not only the landscaping and how it looks, but being a rain garden also, and hearing some of the stormwater components that are built in. Our city should be very proud of our city hall and our front door. So thank you. Council member Peterson. Well, thanks to everybody tonight. Great meeting and thanks again to all the staff. A number of them are not here right now, but hopefully, uh, our thanks will, uh, find its way to them.

Uh, one thing I want to thank all of you for is getting a headstart on the budget. Uh, my experience in the last month or two is that when I run into people in the community who want to talk about the council, it's the number one thing. They're asking about the number one thing they're thinking about. They have a lot of questions. I think they are feeling that there are a lot of big issues we're going to have to work through and there's a lot of uncertainty we're going to have to work through this year. So those, those questions and those comments are coming in early and I think it's great that we are sensing that and getting ahead of the curve on that. Uh, the other issue, uh, that's out there that, uh, I hope we could find a way to chat about and maybe take action about at some point is the energy issue.

I know we've seen a little bit of, uh, interest in, uh, um, a letter to Dominion. Um, the electricity forecast, uh, for us and for Virginia is, uh, pretty different, uh, than it's been in the past because we're now living in a world where we have data centers and AI and Virginia has a very acute case. But we also have a world where there is now less support federally for renewable energy and energy efficiency. And in a world where you need every electron you can get to deal with the increase in load, that's a big deal. So all local governments and state governments are caught up in this, but households are caught up in this because energy rates, um, have the, uh, potential for going up pretty significantly and that has a big ripple effect through a whole lot of different things.

So I think it's a key issue. I think it's something we should find a way to talk about and take action on in terms of expressing our interest as a city. I think really every city, every, uh, county, uh, needs to be doing that right now. So I'd be very open to figuring out how we go about doing that. But I just want to say, um, I think this is a big one and it's not going away. Thanks. Councilmember Bates. Thank you. No comments. Councilmember McCullough. Yes, just a second. Councilmember McCullough. Councilmember McCullough. Councilmember McCullough. Yes. Just some quick reminders of some events that are coming up. Tomorrow night, uh, at 5 PM is the Daniels Run Elementary School Back to School Night and Family Picnic.

And then this Friday, September 12th, is the Pier Midnight at Fairfax High School. Great opportunity for all of the students in our Fairfax High School feeder schools to come on out and get to know, uh, the staff and to see how exciting it is to be at Fairfax High School. Then, um, I believe it's the Saturday movies under the moon at Van Dyke Park is that eight o'clock. It's Raya the Last Dragon. So I hope to see people out and about and enjoying all those events. Thank you. So, um, first of all, reminding the public that we will not have a meeting on September 23rd. We're moving it to September 30th because Rosh Hashanah is the September 23rd and 24th. Uh, Jensen Chan is hosting what he believes will be the first inaugural AMA event at Highside on Monday the 22nd.

And it's AMA, ask the mayor, anything. And so it's a free public event at Highside. It's from five to ten. He hopes to invite other community leaders on a monthly basis to Highside for a community engagement. And I would just finally like to say congratulations to our Congressman-elect James Walkinshaw, who was elected with nearly 75% of the vote. And I am sure he will be sworn in tomorrow and will ably represent the 11th Congressional District. And have to believe that the late Congressman Jerry Connolly would be pleased. And with that, I will adjourn the meeting at 10, 17 p.m. the 8th Congressional District. you