Planning Commission Regular Meeting/Work Session

James FeatherGood evening. Welcome to the regularly scheduled meeting of the City of Fairfax Planning Commission for Monday, July 28, 2025. First order of business on our agenda is Pledge of Allegiance. Please join me as you are able. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Ms. DennystaffThank you.

James FeatherWe're a little late on attendance again this evening, but we do have a quorum, so we can continue our meeting. First item on the agenda is discussion and adoption of the agenda, which was issued prior to the meeting as required. Mr. Gunnian.

Paul CunninghamMr. Chairman, I move the agenda be adopted as presented.

James FeatherSecond. I move and second to adopt the agenda as presented. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions?

Paul CunninghamPasses unanimously.

James FeatherNext item on the agenda is presentations by the public on any matter not calling for a public hearing. public hearings this evening, so this will be an opportunity for anyone who wishes to address the Planning Commission to do so. Has anybody signed up prior to the meeting?

Paul CunninghamNo. No.

James FeatherIs there anybody in the room who would like to address the Planning Commission? Please come forward. You're welcome. Please state your name and address for the record, and you'll have about three

Emily Bressonpublic commentEmily brass on 4123 Orchard Drive for 32 years that's pretty crazy I'm just learning how this works I don't know if what I have to say pertains to you all so you can tell me no stop what you're doing and go sit down I'm concerned with the courthouse plaza development but I think it might be too late for the Planning Commission I'm not sure but you know they deferred it for reasons but I have put out a couple of posts on next door and we've kind of come up with some alternate plans to their building idea which is really blocky and square and so I didn't know if that's something I can give to you all or not or is it is it am I to talk to the City Council you know where do I really go from here

James Featheryou can or we can leave it with staff the Planning Commission does not have a voice in that redevelopment

Emily Bressonpublic commentbecause

James Featherit does not involve a rezoning or a change to our comprehensive plan land use map. Now we've had conversations in the past about whether that should change, but as we're currently structured, we don't have a role in that. As far as the physical design of it, the Board of Architectural Review would be a good resource. But at this point, they're past the Board of Architectural Review, and it's now in the hands of the City Council.

Emily Bressonpublic commentthat but then somebody told me just go to the planning board and see what they say so now i know what you're saying i'm

James Featherglad

Emily Bressonpublic commentit's

James Featherjust it happens

Emily Bressonpublic commentto

James Featherbe one that we don't we don't have a finger in

Emily Bressonpublic commentthat's okay thank you so much i appreciate your

James Featherthank you for your interest in the development of the city yeah and if you'd like to pass that to staff uh they can get it to the right people you're welcome to do that yeah

Dr Garrett Wolfyes yeah our our clerk

James Featherthanks for coming to see us we get so few visitors

Kirsten Lockhartespecially

James Feathertonight mr rice for

Matthew Ricecoming to our meeting she and her husband are a fixture of the community and in particular in the summertime the pool on Roberts Road and so I think your input is quite valuable even though we don't have a vote on that particular proposal to recommend or not as a community member it's wonderful to see people especially that have been in place for 30 years as a foundational part of a large community it's good to hear from you. So please come back and attend even if it's not something we're voting on. It's still useful here. Thank you.

James FeatherOkay. Next order of business is consideration of the minutes from the July 14, 2025 meeting of the commission. Is there a motion to adopt, amend, or correct?

Kirsten LockhartMr. Chair, I move that we adopt the meeting minutes from the July 14, 2025, regular meeting of the Planning Commission as issued.

James FeatherSecond. Been moved and seconded to adopt them as issued. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? None. Passes unanimously.

Paul CunninghamNext item of the agenda

James Featheris items not requiring a public hearing. We have none of those this evening, nor do we have any public hearings. So we will recess our regular meeting and go into our work session. We have two items this evening. First is an update on the Urban Forest Master Plan project. Welcome to Stafford. Excuse me, am I allowed to stay for this? You may stay for sure. Open meeting. Open meeting, correct.

Anna StaffordstaffGood evening, Planning Commission. So today we're presenting an update on our Urban Forest Master Plan project. I'm going to hand it over to dr. Garrett wolf our consultant for the stakeholder engagement portion of this project

James FeatherWelcome back mr. Wolf

Dr Garrett WolfThank you Anna as Anna mentioned dr. Garrett wolf on the engagement lead for the master plan supporting the Davie resource group Who is the prime developing a master plan for the city of Fairfax? I'm gonna go to the agenda slide So before we get into the meat of the presentation, I'm gonna give a quick overview for tonight's meeting We'll start off with a brief overview of the project, where we're at in the process. It's been a busy few months, and we have a lot of updates, as well as some key takeaways to highlight. Anna will then present on findings from the State of the Urban Forest Review from Phase 1 of this project. Then we'll share preliminary goals and recommendations, which have come out of Phase 1 and being in Phase 2.

and while these are preliminary we want to demonstrate how the involvement of the community and various stakeholders has informed this initial content afterwards of course we'll have time for questions and discussion

Emily Bressonpublic commentexcellent

Dr Garrett Wolfas you're likely well aware this effort will create the first ever urban forest master plan for the city of fairfax phase one of this project kicked off in the early summer of 2024 during the approximately nine months of that phase the team was highly involved in engaging community conducting analyses and understanding the state of Fairfax's urban forest. We're now working through phase two during which we'll continue community engagement and develop the urban forest master plan in full. Phase two is targeted to wrap up by the end of this year when the final master plan is complete. Various outreach activities and assessments have all aimed at creating an actionable and well-informed plan for the management of Fairfax's urban forest over the next 20

years the master plans success in part depends on its ability to address the needs of stakeholders and for this reason the plan includes many outreach and engagement opportunities through both phases the team continues to synthesize the input comments and questions received to ensure that the master plan is well thought out and responsive to the conditions in Fairfax

Kirsten Lockhartnext slide

Dr Garrett Wolfphase one placed an emphasis on this information gathering and outreach which forms the basis for the master plans goals and objectives over the roughly nine months of phase one we held a variety of events these include meeting with over a hundred individuals and stakeholders and the project project engage page had approximately 2,000 unique individual visits the first public meeting occurred in July and function last July and functioned as a public kickoff for the project and informed attendees about the project and its purpose the second public meeting which took place in October of last year was a visioning session where attendees discussed challenges opportunities and community involvement related to the urban forest the project team also

tabled at several public events such as fall fest back to school nights and community connection night to help spread the word about the project and gain initial feedback additional feedback the public survey was used to gauge community values preferences and perceived challenges we received 83 responses and respondents were well distributed across the city stakeholder interviews were also held with internal city departments boards and commissions such as the environmental sustainability committee planning commission and city Council as well as with groups of external stakeholders such as HOA members and volunteer organizations. City staff also did targeted outreach with surrounding urban forestry programs and partners such as the City of

Alexandria, Fairfax County, as well as George Mason University and MWCOG's Regional Tree Canopy Committee. The project steering committee is made up of city staff and members of organizations such as the aforementioned ESC. It meets to review work products, dive into deeper conversations about planning content, discuss next steps, and then provide that information back to their respective organizations and commissions. To better understand existing conditions of the urban forest, the team also reviewed the city's tree maintenance operations, analyzed tree canopy data, and conducted an invasive species assessment. Phase 1 wrapped in early 2025, and we're now currently moving through Phase 2. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Anna to discuss the state of the urban forest review.

Anna StaffordstaffThank you. Yes, so I will review the state of the urban forest review that took place in phase one. It looked at city operations, current policies, and urban forest data. So first looking at the city's structure and functions regarding urban forest management. It's shared across three departments in the city. Public Works within the right-of-way division. our street trees, facility landscape maintenance, as well as tree risk inspections. Our parks and recreation department within the parks maintenance division do our park and trail trees. They support volunteers and they're the lead for our city jobs program, which is our workforce development program doing litter cleanup and landscape maintenance. Between those two divisions, they spend about

five to ten percent of their time on trees all the other part of their positions focus on leaf collection mowing city event support and other tasks unrelated to trees so approximately one fte of that time they spend or that time is equivalent to about about one fte then we have community development planning within the planning division which includes my position as well as our stewardship About half my time is spent on land development review and city project support, as well as tree removal permits. The other half is long-range planning and policy, such as the Urban Forest Master Plan. We've initiated non-native invasive management on city property. We're the lead on the Sprout Initiative.

We conduct program development and coordination across those three departments, and we work to improve and increase public communication, education, and outreach related to trees. So between those three departments, there's approximately the equivalent of three FTEs. Urban Forest Program Drivers. Regulations, policies, and standards relating to urban forestry. Most of our tree regulations are within our zoning ordinance, specifically the Chesapeake Bay Act, tree removal permits, and the landscaping section, all of which have been updated in 2024. environment relates to public tree risk and our public facilities manual has standards related to our tree preservation and landscaping guide relating to the zoning ordinance which I'll touch on in a moment as I'm sure

you all are very familiar with our comprehensive plan has numerous goals and actions related to tree canopy and urban forestry mostly in our chapter 4 environmental and sustainability but then also in our Chesapeake Bay Act staff follow best management practices within the International Society of Arboriculture. We have three ISA certified arborists on staff, one in each department, and we've been, the city has been a Tree City USA for 39 years, and then hopefully coming soon would be the Urban Forest Master Plan, which would be a large program driver for urban forestry. Diving a little bit more into the tree preservation and landscaping guide, like I said, this was a new addition to our public facilities manual. Previously, we didn't have separate standards

relating to tree preservation and landscaping. I wanted to overview the tree preservation page, which is broken into three phases, planning, design, and construction. This helps set expectations as well as priorities for tree preservation, specifically for land development projects. During planning, the expectation is that's when you are to identify trees for preservation through construction. It outlines the priorities that the city has for tree preservation. When you take a zoomed out look, those priorities come from our zoning ordinance, specifically our Chesapeake Bay Act, as well as other documents such as our comprehensive plan. Then it moves into design, where you take the trees that were identified as priorities for preservation,

and you put details to that, trying to minimize impact through engineering as well as minor design changes. And then most importantly, during construction. It's very easy to preserve trees on paper and through plan approval. The hardest part is actually through the construction process. And so the urban forester has a large role through that process, including working with project arborists to implement those best practices, as well as inspections. Typically, your last inspection during the warranty bond phase is an urban forester's inspection. And so tree preservation really starts both at the very beginning of the planning process, before any money is spent on a project, all the way through the very last action at construction.

Other components of this tree preservation and landscaping guide have added standards for soil volume, diversity as well as resource protection area planting densities this guide again is a very technical document and it's available on the city's website next the urban forest master plan looked at our tree canopy studies and so I thought I would overview those briefly on this chart here you have four studies three of which are highlighted in blue those three studies use the same data as well as analysis and so those three studies can be looked at to when you're looking at change over time the fourth study that's highlighted in gray was done by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation in partnership with COG through that

regional tree action committee mentioned previously they're creating a tree action plan with goals and priorities for the region and so through that project they within COG. And so when you're wanting to compare the city's tree canopy coverage to, say, Vienna or Falls Church, then I recommend looking at that study because it used the same analysis and data source. But when we're looking at our just internally as we track canopy, we're looking at those blue studies. And in 2023, the most recent imagery that we have showed our land cover had 37.86% tree canopy coverage. Diving a little bit further into the data trends we saw over the 10-year change, most of the expansion was seen through existing tree growth

as well as new tree plantings in developments. Specifically, the largest canopy change in that 10-year period was within our planned development districts, zoning district. Most of that is because we saw a large amount of development in the early 2000s, and it takes about 10 years or so for canopy to show up on aerial imagery, and so we saw a lot of change then in the most recent studies. Loss was from land development. Tree canopy is not evenly distributed citywide, and areas with the lowest canopy change also had the least canopy growth, or lowest canopy coverage had the least canopy growth. we should prioritize initiatives in those areas. Some unknowns when looking at the canopy data and discussed in this region is about invasives. We don't know if invasives is increasing our

canopy data by falsely showing as canopy. We also of course know that invasives are killing trees and hurting regeneration. And then of course there are invasive pests that have killed trees such as emerald ash borer that's harder to track with aerial imagery and requires ground truth data. So kind of a key takeaway is that urban forests change. When you look at canopy change assessments, you have to look at the time period at which they were done. So what I was just talking about was a 10-year time period. If you zoomed out further, you might see longer time periods. you might see different trends over 100 years or plus 100 years. And so how do you use tree canopy data? You use it to set a baseline.

It helps map the distribution of trees and plantable areas in your city. It helps then set data-driven goals and actions. I'll provide examples in a moment. It helps you track trends towards desired benefits. A lot of times cities will adopt a canopy goal, that percent but you have to take it a little bit further to understand why you're setting that canopy goal are you tracking it for public health benefits to reduce flooding and then use the canopy data to track to see if you're actually meeting those benefits that you wish it helps identify areas being most impacted you can identify tree canopy shareholders if you overlay census data you can see who owns the urban forest and what that population looks like and

and it helps inform policy and management needs, as well as gaps. Some examples of data-informed actions that we've taken since doing that recent study in 2021. 76% of citywide tree canopy is privately owned. That's why Sprout is a community-based initiative. 61% of plantable area is on residential single detached properties. Sprout has a free residential tree giveaway. that city staff can't just be planting trees on city property. We also need to be planting on residential property. 1% of tree canopy coverage, our mixed-use residential commercial area has 1% tree canopy coverage. And in 2024, we added a canopy requirement for our commercial urban district, as well as the soil volume requirements that I touched on.

We recognize we can't just be planting trees. We also need to be providing the space for them to grow. These are just examples of how you can use canopy data to inform policy and operation actions. Our Urban Forest Master Plan is continuing to use this to guide the recommendations. With that, I'll pass it back to Garrett.

Dr Garrett WolfThank you. Now we're going to get into Phase 2, the timeline and preliminary recommendations. Next slide. As mentioned, Phase 2 is currently in progress. preliminary objectives for the plan and a phase two the preliminary objectives and strategies are being refined and adjusted based on feedback from the steering committee as well and served as the basis for public meeting number three held in May and its voting activity an outline of the master plan was developed in February continues to be refined to best capture the needs and desires affair for Fairfax's urban forest the outline serves as the basis for several several which will then undergo review by the project team and the steering committee.

The master plan's implementation plan is also currently undergoing edits in close coordination with Anna. Similar to Phase 1, public outreach continues throughout Phase 2. This includes tabling at public events, two public meetings, and continued steering committee meetings. The team tabled at History Day and is exploring additional dates throughout the fall. Public meeting number 3 was held June 11th at the Sherwood Center, meeting will be on the upcoming slides and public meeting number four the last public meeting will serve as the presentation of the master plan report to the public with an opportunity for question and answers at the end it's anticipated that this event will take place in the late fall next

James Featherslide

Dr Garrett Wolfso over the last 13 months the team has gained valuable insights from Fairfax into Fairfax's urban forest and the community's wants and needs while we can't recount every single important finding that we've gathered so far we would like to highlight a few of the recurring themes that influence the plans, goals, and objectives. First, the urban forest is part of Fairfax's unique character. Longtime residents express concerns about the recent changes that they've observed in the tree canopy, some of which Anna talked about when she presented. On a related note, Fairfax's residents show a high level of support for the urban forest. The public clearly values the urban forest and the benefits that it provides,

and the community would benefit from clearer ways to be involved in urban forest stewardship. While there are many threats to the urban forest, a few recurring concerns arose during our assessments, namely development, planting and management practices, and invasive species. Addressing these concerns will require a variety of strategies, including policy considerations, organizational changes, volunteer involvement, and others. Currently, urban forestry functions are shared across several cities' divisions, again, as Anna mentioned, Efficiency and more targeted tree care can be realized by centralizing the forest management responsibilities. Together with other findings from Phase 1, these takeaways inform the master plan's preliminary goals, objectives, and strategies.

Paul CunninghamNext slide.

Dr Garrett WolfOur outreach and analysis efforts so far have guided the team to develop the goals, objectives, and strategies for Fairfax's urban forest master plan. Right now, this includes three preliminary goals and six preliminary objectives. Each objective is supported by a number of strategies and additional supporting actions that will assist in the implementation. As mentioned, these were used as the basis for public meeting number three, which requested public feedback and voting to rank strategies by priority. During this meeting, we'll review the goals and objectives, which have been updated from public meeting number three's feedback, and we'll dive into the strategies and objectives that we thought most applicable to the planning commission,

And then we'll wrap up with a summary of that feedback heard from meeting number three We'd like to emphasize that this information continues to be updated including Including adding restructuring or other changes as we receive feedback from stakeholders next slide So the three goals represent the vision and overarching themes for a for the more detailed objectives each goal is Is as I mentioned supported by several objectives? The first goal strives to build and maintain a resilient and equitable urban forest in Fairfax This includes physical conditions such as ensuring evenly distributed tree canopy cover across Fairfax's neighborhoods as well as policy and management actions to protect protect trees and ensure diversity in species that are planted

The second goal seeks to increase the city of Fairfax's capacity to care for public trees This goal helps to ensure that the city's investment in its urban forest is maximized through adequate and appropriate tree care. It also focuses on shifting from reactive management to proactive maintenance. The third goal aims to strengthen the community's support and involvement in the urban forest. Fairfax residents are passionate about the urban forest, but we've heard from the public often that they don't know where to find information or how to get involved. The urban forest master plan also aims to identify ways to improve the public's perception and the city's communication with residents to strengthen the

Relationship between the city and the community regarding trees excellent So the first objective seeks to protect trees and forested areas against future threats and impacts This objective responds to the fact that existing trees and forested areas and Fairfax face several threats such as development invasive species and lack of sufficient protection while there are tree protections for private property undergoing development mature and significant trees are often removed and replaced with smaller stature trees additionally forested areas cannot be effectively managed because areas have not been comprehensively studied and the strategies for this objective explore the necessary analyses management plans and decision-making tools necessary to

adequately protect the urban forest. The second objective seeks to strengthen the city's tree protection policies. It's also the objective that we're going to focus a little bit more on on subsequent slides. This objective seeks to ensure Fairfax's trees are adequately protected requiring a combination of planning management and policy and while the first objective identifies management and planning efforts to protect trees the second objective focuses specifically on policy and the process of currently the city does not have a public tree protection ordinance and inconsistent enforcement of current policies limits the effectiveness of tree protection goals this objective includes strengthening existing policy

and enforcement developing a new policy when necessary and creating incentives and collaboration to support tree preservation these actions will focus on both public and privately owned trees the third objective aims to ensure that healthy abundant trees are planted across all of Fairfax's neighborhoods. This objective is shaped by trends and public tree removals, low canopy neighborhoods, and a need for increased urban forest species diversity and the desire for equitable urban forest distribution. A long-term tree planting and establishment plan allows for more strategic selection of species care and maintenance planning and adjustment to local and regional forces such as climate change. This includes planting and maintaining plant maintaining

planning efforts excuse me maintenance planning efforts cross departmental coordination and increasing interconnected green space and public education efforts. Next slide. The fourth objective suggests establishing an urban forestry division this objective responds to the current structure of the urban forest responsibilities which are shared across multiple city departments the current structure and staff capacity limits the potential for focusing on and maintenance and reduces efficiency for tree care operations in some cases. The urban forest would benefit from centralized urban forestry division, which can address the many facets of the urban forest stewardship, including code review tasks, tree maintenance and care,

addressing hazardous trees, and long-term urban forest planning. This objective identifies functions, training, reporting, and planning efforts that would support the establishment of a new urban forest division. This was consistently heard by the public as a need to maintain better trees, maintain trees better, and to better understand who is responsible for trees in various parts of the city. The fifth objective aims to deepen the community's engagement in tree stewardship. Throughout the outreach process, the team heard from residents who want to be more involved but do not know how to get involved. Residents are consistently passionate about the urban forest as well as concerned. meaningful engagement with residents is vital to ensuring the community feels connected to

the urban forest and heard by the city. This objective aims to improve access to resources for homeowners, increase education regarding the urban forest, and methods for submitting public requests online and expand volunteer opportunities, not just asking Anna at the grocery store. the object the sixth objective encourages the use of accurate data to inform decision-making guide planning and tracking progress Fairfax maintains a tree canopy data for street and park trees but natural areas have not been comprehensively assessed the city also has not yet established a tree canopy goal by systematically updating data planning and management teams can effectively assess the status of the urban forest and account for it account

This objective considers defining metrics to assess progress establishing protocol for data collection and updates and integrating tree data across other planning efforts So together these six objectives aim to address the wide-ranging opportunities and concerns identified by the community community and city stakeholders

Mr. Napteestaffnext slide

Dr Garrett WolfEach of these strategies will have corresponding actions in the master plans implementation plan that further detail how to implement them in short medium and long term planning horizons we have some additional detail on objective number two regulate because we would especially like feedback from you all on that particular objective so you can see the four strategies up there I'll briefly cover them so strategy 2.1 focuses on the policy content and urban forestry staffs mechanism to review and enforce tree removal in the city it recommends adopting allowable state code to increase public tree protections and and identify best practices practice processes for reviewing tree removal and tree risk

and recommends establishment of clear standards for tree preservation during development. Strategy 2.2 focuses on the promotion of both tree preservation and planting through existing city policies, such as the Chesapeake Bay Act, or in new policies that provide new mechanisms to embed trees in protections, such as green streets or complete streets policies. 2.3 focuses on improving processes for implementing tree policies and regulations. It emphasizes cross departmental responsibility and the need to establish metrics and data tracking and developing tools to better guide decision making when trees may be impacted. 2.4 focuses on building community awareness and avenues for input on tree policy.

As mentioned, 76% of the city's tree canopy is privately owned and so there is a need to increase public awareness and engagement on tree regulations provide guidance on how to be a steward of those trees and to include the public's preference when policies are developed or changed during public meeting number three we had we had attendees vote to prioritize the strategies for implementation we had approximately 100 voters and for this and for this objective strategies 2.2 and 2.3 were the top priorities next

James Featherslide

Dr Garrett WolfAs I mentioned public meeting number three focused on on voting for what strategies would be the highest priority For the city of Fairfax when implementing the urban forest master plan Project team offered an in-person meeting as well as online voting Opened one week prior and one week after one week after the in-person meeting As I mentioned approximately 100 people voted and a summary of those results as well as the objective strategies presented at the meeting are available on the engage page but key takeaways included emphasis on improving urban forest related management planning and decision-making support for protection and expansion of the urban forests and native species and a need for clearer and more easily

distinguished strategies the project team is actively refining the objectives and strategies based on this feedback including how to improve the plans format and readability to address feedback heard at that meeting next slide so for next steps we of course appreciate the opportunity to share this update with you all as mentioned the preliminary goals objectives and strategies will continue to be refined the first draft is currently under review by city staff project team the project team will meet with the with the steering committee key stakeholders including staff boards and commissions at public tabling events as drafts are refined to continue to get further feedback both on those drafts and on the urban forest in general then one more

public meeting will be included in this phase as we near the final draft and before presenting it to council for proposed city adoption before the end of the year we anticipate coming back to the Planning Commission in November or early December with a final draft for your endorsement as we prepare to present it to City Council next slide and on this slide is just a timeline of basically the process for phase two of this year as I mentioned we're currently revising drafts of the master plan in particular with the steering committee and hope to come back to you all in November or December so thank you again for this opportunity this evening we have time for questions and discussion I know that was a lot of material, but thank you for your patience.

James FeatherThank you. Commissioners. Ms. Lockhart. Mr. Moore.

Kirsten LockhartYou already hit your mic. Go ahead.

Matthew RiceOkay. I was first in the buzz in. I think for context, one of the best things that's happened in the city for several years has been the addition of Ms. Stafford to the staff. it's um representative of changing views and priorities in the city to have you as a central part of what we do um uh consultants come and go uh you'll be here for a long time i appreciate everything that the consultants do of course but um i think having you inserted into the review of Plans is obviously an important aspect of development proposals that we consider. Unfortunately, before my era and before you were on board, Boulevard 6 was approved, and I've looked at land cover data as much as is publicly available. and the overwhelming kind of gap right now in tree coverage that was kind of an unusual

bad event in terms of our canopy was the build out of Boulevard 6. They adopted a process of essentially removing every single bit of the canopy and then building it up. To what extent does the drop that we currently see in canopy relate to causes like Boulevard 6 or perhaps when we look in two years the stream renewal process so is there a way for us to partition unique causes that we can identify and say this is responsible for this much canopy loss the rest of the city's operations and citizenry is responsible for this much. Is there any way to partition those and attribute causes to specific things like that?

Anna StaffordstaffSo the two things that come to mind, one, we're a small enough city and we know the area where we could do, we would see the percent change over, you know, let's say a three-year time period and attribute it to that that area of land of Boulevard 6 you can also look at it and we could analysis analyze it through zoning districts to of zoning district change or the rezoning change but I think beyond that I mean I think it would just be waiting until we have the imagery that has the updated change to see that

Matthew Riceso when I show the imagery specifically we're using the Fairfax County two-foot horizontal resolution land cover data developed from NAEP imagery that parcel just it's always the first comment like what in the world what is this you know what's happened you know seven or eight acres of bare earth right in the middle of another wise canopied city and so it's things like that to avoid obviously we're going to be able to avoid some of that in the future with your expertise and with public opinion but um it would be great while analysis is being done to try to attribute some of the canopy loss to specific things like this that are in that case a negative in the case of the stream channel project which also has a lot of public

comments that's probably a positive that's going to help us in the future in a lot of ways um So that would be a goal of mine would be to try to, within this process that we're going to be developing, try to build in some context of some events that are shaping what we see. And we can be specific about some of those. We're 6.3 square miles. We don't need to have, you know, ambiguous general statements about canopy loss. We can actually say it's here, here, here. we do know what it is it's not some mysterious malevolence by the Planning Commission or others it's it's there specific reasons and we can find those out um I do like the building this on nape imagery it's the best for this purpose that I'm aware of and I understand that future nape imagery will

will let us be able to see see that vegetation identified a little better and do NDVI measurements and things like that I think the ability to buy up the resolution in combination with our larger surrounding County because they typically buy up things like that if we made a contribution we were 150 at the population we had to certainly be able to fund 150th the buy-up that they do anyways and and also in recognition of the fact that we we've been piggybacking on their data portal for years and they've been generous enough to provide their land cover data set to us to use it's 2021 so it's not really helping us a bunch with really current stuff but it's still as good as it gets now inside that data set they have a category i'd really like for us to be able to track and that is

canopy over impervious and so they take their impervious layers which we have in high resolution i think our stormwater folks are building the world's best uh impervious data layer um with help from an engineering firm. And if we were able to look at our own canopy over impervious and actually track the change in that, that would be quite valuable. What are your comments about that?

Anna StaffordstaffYeah, we did actually, when we got our 2023 imagery from our consultant, that did include the impervious surface analysis of tree canopy over impervious. And so I could look that up to send to you if you are interested in what that percentage is.

Matthew RiceYeah, I think as a priority, Amongst all the other things that would be interesting, that's the class that seems to have the biggest influence on urban heat problems in the city. And having that shrink would be a very bad thing. Having other, you know, a little void in the middle of Daniels Run Woods is never good. But we can deal with that. having a void over the top of an impervious surface is an order of magnitude worse in terms of the impact on heat. My academic department is looking for some places in the city to do our drone surveying. And so if we have an alignment of student interests and teaching interests and city staff and places that we can go and survey using both LIDAR and multispectral sensors on our drones to build data sets that would be of interest to the city, we could do that.

we're part 107 licensed and we'll have some waivers that will allow us to do some flying in the FRZ so there may be an opportunity for us in the fall when we teach our drone remote sensing class to have the city host one of the class events at one of the local parks and we could survey the park with the drone and then generate data that the city might be able to use I'd like just to comment on slide 17 and I don't want you to back up necessarily because it won't be helpful to anyone but my fellow Commissioner Lockhart myself there's an unhealthy tree that's in that image that we both were joking a little bit about it's the bus stop tree the kids sit underneath that hit that's the one and and it's a massive, I think it's a pin oak or willow oak,

and it's been dropping really large limbs. These could be life-ending sort of events. The tree itself is not healthy. It's close to the right of way, but it's on private property. We had a very difficult kind of year-long discussion with some residents. What should we do? Who should we call? you know i pipe up oh we have a good new urban forester staff member um so um one of the neighbors decided to make a report and very quickly some action was taken but um miss could you describe if there is a tree like this that's not in good health that is large and impactful what residents could do to either get assistance or get expertise and whether the tree needs to be taken out or not. I'm reluctant to advise any of my neighbors in this

case to go call a tree service because they'll possibly see this as a way of, you know, keeping workers busy and making some money. But is there a resource residents could use to determine whether or not a tree is dangerous or needs to be taken down?

Anna StaffordstaffYeah, so trees that are potentially large, whether it be a street, sidewalk, trail, anything like that, even if it's not a city tree, you can report it into, well, either 311 City Resolve, but specifically code enforcement is the one that enforces what are considered public health and safety menaces. Trees are included in that. That's chapter 38 of city code. And so city staff will go out to inspect the tree to see if pruning or removal has to occur. We will also send the notice to the tree owner as to what actions we recommend to mitigate that risk. After a certain number of notices or if the situation seems imminent, the city will send out contractors to perform the work and then we charge the property owner

through the real estate office. If a tree is on private property and is just a private dispute, so potentially threatening your home or threatening your considerations of like your safety in your backyard, the city does not get involved in those instances. And I do recommend consulting an ISA certified arborist. I usually recommend having a few people come out potentially, depending on what the recommendation is. but it is an example I would say this example is something in terms of city policies needing to be more refined in terms of defining what the city's role is as well as who who that role is because again right now it's through code enforcement but then they send out either a public works staff

member or myself and then we report back to code enforcement and so it's a lot of pinging back and forth between departments in order to to get action taken on a tree like this

Matthew Riceyeah I used to call Mr. Crabtree who is in public works

Anna StaffordstaffI

Matthew Riceassume that's the public works person that goes out and correct

Anna Staffordstaffyeah

Matthew Ricehe's been incredibly helpful very enthusiastic an example of amazing staff that we have in the city but you and he may not be quite enough in this case the branches were over the public right away and it you know city attorney probably had could have a hard time figuring out whose responsibility this would be so policy and rules that kind of are built to disambiguate circumstances like this would be quite helpful let me just end by offering again if we can do anything by we my academic department and our interest in remote sensing gis and the way it interleaves with stormwater and with urban forestry. If there's something that we can do to contribute to the effort, we will do it. Specifically, our drone remote sensing program right now has the ability to collect and make

biomass estimations from LIDAR and a number of things that would be quite helpful that may not be doable with NAEP and with the programs that are in place. So I'll leave it there.

Kirsten LockhartAppreciate it. if i may my question actually dovetails pretty nicely with commissioner rice's question about sort of the ownership and status of trees uh i was going to ask in the context of the regulation goal which seems very important how are trees currently classified specifically the city's trees in terms of sort of asset protection i drove by several times today a street tree that has obviously been the victim of a single car accident right like taken out is there any way for the city to have some sort of recourse, you know, to reclaim assets that were damaged as part of, you know, I assume what would normally be a traffic citation, for example, or if, you know, Dominion comes through and there's a frequent complaint of over pruning the trees along the,

you know, utility lines, can the city gain any recourse from the utility provider if there's damage to a city owned tree?

Anna StaffordstaffSo currently, not really. I mean, if the damage is to other city we can, or at least that's my understanding, but for the tree itself, no. And I would say there are, if we were to pursue a public tree ordinance, there are different fines and fees that you could associate. Of course, everything is set by state code in terms of what we can do, and mostly minimums and maximums. Most jurisdictions in the area do a per tree in lieu price of a two-inch caliper tree replacement, and that's usually how you then would calculate it out. But then there's usually, again, a maximum set by state code as to what you can still charge. But beyond that, other options, I don't know if...

Dr Garrett WolfI mean, for that particular example, there aren't a lot of other clear options, lot of other regulatory and policy potential changes that can not just address that particular issue, but look sort of holistically at what are opportunities to prevent loss of trees in certain circumstances or regain, preserve, all these types of things. And I think looking at that holistically is really what the master plan tries to do. But yeah, I mean, in terms of that particular example, I mean, I think the fines and with the max, mins and maxes set by the state are the best, the most, certainly the most common and probably the best, the most straightforward for any particular incident to recoup.

Kirsten LockhartSure. So if it's the definition of trees as infrastructure, trees as assets of the city, then there might be some ability to, not that I would consider it necessarily a deterrent, right? People are not going to be like, I'm not going to drive into this tree because then I'll be fine. But if you could, you know, reclaim some funds to replace the tree, certainly it helps with overall maintenance of the population of city-owned.

Dr Garrett WolfIt does make me wonder, though, I don't know that I've seen an example like this, but we obviously talk about the role of trees in stormwater. And so I wonder if there's an opportunity to kind of calculate the loss of infrastructure effectiveness in some creative way to additionally. For example, if it's in a water retention tree box, there's obviously additional infrastructure associated, not just the tree itself, So there might be opportunities there as well.

Anna StaffordstaffYeah, and I know other jurisdictions that have, like in D.C., they're able to charge a lot more and calculate it based off their own kind of formulas because they can create policy how they want to without oversight from a state. and to your to a certain extent to your question about utilities unfortunately the city does not have any regulation over dominions pruning to over trees we have an agreement with them where they have basically eminent domain to protect their lines city staff as well as our contractors can't prune or get within a certain distance of power lines and so only dominions contractors can prune certain trees but those are I know the Dominion tree pruning is a hot topic that comes up often and so I definitely think that's a component that

needs to be addressed again in city whether it be policy or education and outreach within the plan and other documents thank

Kirsten Lockhartyou this is excellent work I'm really pleased to take the presentation

Paul Cunninghamthank you I don't know whether my view is older or how it differs from my colleagues, but I guess I look at this in two aspects. One is macro, one is micro. Macro says we've been a tree city for 39 years. What does that mean? That means we've had a certain amount of forestry canopy coverage, and it doesn't say where it is. It didn't break down all the specific details, it 25 public or any of that it's just that there we've got a lot of trees and a lot of canopy and people gravitate toward that and then we get down to the micro as we've just discussed there's one tree it's old that's on a given corner we get down to the micro we've got one tree it's in a small area on what was an urban farm that's going to be redeveloped and as such we save an old

farmhouse because that was a state record tulip poplar tree and we build the subdivision around it after some machinations and adjustments and things like that and within five years the state record tulip pop tree tree is gone it doesn't survive it but the farmhouse is still there and it would not have been saved except for the tree so there are a lot of macro and micro aspects to urban forestry management as I guess I would see it. And when I look back at some of the relationships that we're talking about, I play golf at Army-Navy Country Club and have for a long time. I'm an old guy. But I also know that if we go back some period of time, there was a very adversarial relationship between the city and Army-Navy Country Club

because that is one big tree farm. And golfers sometimes feel the trees get in the way And the city wants to regulate, can you take down a tree? And if you're going to take down X number of trees, are you going to replant X number of trees? So we've had in the past a lot of interaction between private interest and public interest on how to go about this. And that's a fairly large-scale project. And then we get down to smaller projects. When we get down to PVI, it was called, and we talk about what happens in approval processes, and execution processes there were two private residences on the southeast corner of that property that had a number of significant trees on and then we had an entire street lined with trees

along mcclain avenue once the project was approved and began construction 100 of those trees disappeared even though it was stated that we're going to keep some of the significant trees in So in the execution or the enforcement action, if we've got rules and things like that, is this a study that says this is a great way to do it? Or does it have the teeth and the ability to enforce it and make it a worthwhile program to do? Because without enforcement, it's just a great program. And everybody looks at it from their own perspective and says, this works for me. It doesn't work for you. I don't care. So we go along and do this. When we move down to the George Snyder Trail, it's fairly evident in this community that there are a significant number of people

that don't want to see a tree cut down on public land under any circumstance. And they are very vocal about it. But there's also an essence then that says if we're going to do community improvement, How do we do that? And if I get to the macro, I think of a hurricane taking down a good bit of southwest North Carolina. I think of huge fires taking down a great deal of California. I think of huge fires putting smoke over the Midwest that are coming out of Canada. And then I think of 6.2 square miles, and we're going to have an urban forest program that's going to save the world, even though the rest of it is burning and falling down and you know and by volume what are we accomplishing is it focused and appropriate in scale to the size of our city for how we go about

this to get the desired outcome uh when i look at additional programs that talk about taking down trees that get virtually zero notoriety i note that along blenham boulevard at fairfax high school we've taken down an entire row of trees outside the high school and it appears we've put up a second set of power lines that are going to go along that area instead of undergrounding utilities we've taken all of the mature trees down and i know there's going to be a widening of the road and there's a major project coming up with that and some of that may well be coordinated but there was no public hue and cry about that much as there was about george schneider trail i know that when i was announcing the parade this last fourth of july

i was sitting in the sun because in front of city hall we've taken down all of the street trees which were relatively mature now i don't know if they were sufficiently diseased or if there was any or anything along that line. I know we've just had significant discussion about a tree that's up on the screen in front of us and a single tree that might have limbs that could become a public danger. And so we should look out for trees that aren't healthy. And then I think of the Sisson building, which is right next to this building. And all of us city employees walk past it every day. And then a tree falls down in the weather. how do we manage an urban forest when trees have a life cycle and and keep that forest healthy

by taking the actions needed to deal with old and diseased trees younger trees and keep it going so that's that's part of the challenge i see with going it and then there's the half acre rule my lot's less than half an acre i can cut down any tree i want to anytime i want to my lot's just over a half an acre my neighbor two houses down who complains to me i've been trying to get city hall to answer my request to cut down some trees for about two and a half months i'm just going to go do it so how do we effectively implement the rules that we have force we have because everything we do in this city and it's in essence done with opm other people's money that's what taxes are it's it's collecting money and then allocating it to areas

that we believe have the highest priority and i think as we watched during the budget discussions this past year that's a challenge at the moment so how do we cost this out and do it effectively as well as doing it, as Matt Rice said, with other people's resources, OPR, when we can borrow somebody else's database, when we can do things like that to magnify it. So I think we've got a good program. I think a lot of good work has been done. I think the future as we're moving toward it, as I would see it and have a question, is how do we do it to balance the macro and the micro so that we've got an effective program that meets the most needs going forward and does it as cost-efficiently as possible

while getting a desired result. And that's part of what's in here with strategies and all of the rest when we get down with enough detail. We're about to have a briefing. that when we got our staff report is 100 pages long with all of the updates and everybody who's been busy and here's what we've done to advance our comprehensive plan and program. And that means that everybody is tied up in doing a lot of things. So how do we do them effectively and keep the OPM part as we're going to focus on minimizing taxes within balance to make it effective? And those balancing of priorities, I guess, is my real concern out of report along this line. And how does that all fit?

Dr Garrett WolfYeah, I mean, excellent comments and great questions. I'm not sure I can hit on all of them right now. But in terms of balancing the micro and the macro, I mean, frankly, that is really what the goal of any master plan is, even a comprehensive plan. And kind of touching on something Mr. Rice said, as well as you, Mr. Cunningham, how does this master plan end up being implemented or have teeth? And ultimately, that is its coordination and adoption kind of into the comprehensive plan over a period of time, which I'm sure someday you'll be reading the updates about. But in terms of efficiency, we've talked about data quite a lot. It's obviously good data and good methodology to help make better decisions faster, move things through pipelines faster,

and also potentially centralizing the activities of urban forest management. There's a lot of efficiencies to be gained there so that the use of other people's money and resources can really be maximized. And I want to commend Anna on doing a lot of this work with grant money. So not y'all other people's money, but somebody else's other people's money. And so, I mean, I think that as well goes quite a long way. You're welcome, obviously, to additional comments.

Anna StaffordstaffAnd one thing that I've, since I've started, have talked to staff about, have thought about, is the regulations and policies we have, are they themselves effective? there's a component of our how can we do it effectively but do we what do we have and is that effective in terms of urban forest management and it largely comes down to what are the urban forest goals and i think this provides us at least a framework as to what we're trying to accomplish when it comes to again like public health invasive management those sort of components and then do we have or should we have in order to effectively meet those goals. And it's not necessarily taking at face value that, you know, we need to preserve all the

trees or replace all the trees that get removed. It's a matter of making sure that when we're doing these actions that they're still going towards those goals. And then the other component being that we have options, right? Again, the urban forest, it's living infrastructure. can't all be managed in the same way. Each tree is different. Each area of the city is different. And so when it comes to tree removal and replacement, needing many options for depending on the property owner, depending on the tree, and making sure that they're not just standardized, but that they're equitable across the city. And so a lot of it is making sure that we're pursuing different policy options depending on again what the goals are of our urban

forest

Matthew Riceanything else mr. it's kind of a boutique request but having a list of specimen trees I think Washington DC's urban forestry office has another name for these heritage trees um 100 inch circumference at four and a half feet or some definition like that if if we had a um a database that was publicly shareable uh dc has a really good urban tree map that's in the social media space right now because of a lightning strike and a very large tree that got taken down there and lots of alarm over that if we had a similar database that we could build that would have interesting specimen trees from around the city that would have incredible public engagement value you know school classes going on tours of all the wonderful trees that were here a hundred

years ago these may not all be hundred year old trees but at least unique unique one-of-a-kind specimens that don't exist commonly or trees that are very large these are this would be a magnet in a positive way for people to be exposed to what we're doing here thank you

James Feathera couple things from my perspective questions mr. Cunningham particularly touched on a couple of things have been on my mind how we use plan, policy document to balance tree protection, preservation, and so forth with development. We anticipate it. We call for it in some of our planning documents. So it's going to be important for the Urban Forest Master Plan to help guide us in that realm, help guide the Planning Commission, as well as the Board of Architectural Review, who reviews landscaping, and City Council's ultimate decision makers. One of the things I was wondering about as well as we're facing and looking at changes to zoning ordinance to better align our small area plans with the zoning ordinance because they haven't kept up.

We call for certain open space and there are nice images of tree coverage and so forth in some of our anticipated or hopeful redevelopment in our activity centers. is the zoning ordinance with the zoning districts that we currently have sufficient? Are they actually driving us to what we envision for the green spaces and the greenways and the trees and all that? I don't know if what we envision in our pictures can be obtained through the minimum tree coverage that's in the zoning ordinance for the zoning districts. I don't know. that's a question that I hope we can get answered and if we need to include something like that in our zoning ordinance update. One of the preliminary goals, the first preliminary goal, I'm trying to understand it, talks about

championing and sustaining a resilient and equitable urban forest. What is an equitable urban forest? What does that mean to you?

Dr Garrett WolfSure, so I mean a big part of an equitable urban forest is an urban forest that serves all members of the distributed as equitably as possible so there are parts of the community that have more or less trees than others and this can be for a number of reasons lots were taken down for a particular reason lots of implanted for a particular reason those are the two primary elements of it and if you want to add anything to that

Anna Staffordstaffyeah when I think about tree equity it's you know it's not having equal tree canopy coverage evenly distributed across the city necessarily it's looking that those that might need canopy coverage have the canopy coverage that they need and so it's trying to overlay again what those tree benefits that are needed on a community level and making sure that we're serving those needs and not necessarily just serving either the the people that call in about their tree concerns or as well as the trees that or the most known forested areas is making sure we're addressing the urban forest as the needs are come up or as identified.

James FeatherI think it's important to clarify that because people, the word equitable carries a lot of different meanings and connotations to people. It can mean equality to some people. It could mean equal outcomes, complete balance. So I think it's very important to be clear in what we really intend. we're probably looking for. I just don't know if that word, just at least in this one sort of context, satisfies the question.

Dr Garrett WolfI just want to jump in that we have spent quite a bit of time on defining these terms within the plan itself because of issues like this or because terms might be used in different professional arenas slightly differently. And so we've spent a lot of time discussing that internally and clearly defining some of these types of terms for that very reason. But thank you very much.

Anna StaffordstaffAnd for also like larger scale context, above these goals and objectives are guiding principles and a vision as well as like a slogan statement. So there's other components to try to provide preliminary context as we get more into the details of the plan. Tonight we jumped in at the point of goals and objectives, but there is some additional context that we'll build upon in the plan.

James FeatherCorrect. Dr. Wolf, I appreciate your mentioning the Urban Forest Master Plan in the context of the Comprehensive Plan as well, because one of my questions is, and I'm sure you're going to address this, where some changes to the Comprehensive Plan are appropriate, the drive at a different level of policy. These are both kind of policy documents, but at the Comprehensive Plan level, which addresses land use in many respects, as well as other things in the city, including, you know, public facilities and parks and so forth. So I think it will be important to get something more from that that will help us. Sorry? Yeah, but I don't know what's coming out of this. We're calling for the plan, and now let's see what the plan does and how it feeds back.

But, yeah, exactly. Yeah, it has been pointed out. The other thing that Planning Commission has some oversight and recommendation authority for the city is the capital improvement program. I don't know if you see things coming out of this policy that would drive, and the city uses the term capital improvement, capital funds in different respects or things that are maintenance related that are included in the CIP, just to make sure that if there's something that comes out of this master plan that should be captured in the CIP, that we look for opportunities to do that as well. And one other thing, since we talk about regulation, being a Dillon Rule state, are there things that you see that we would like to be able to do that we can't because the state doesn't say so?

or things that we have to do that we don't want to do because the state says so. And if there are opportunities to identify things like that, that we should include in feedback to the city council for a legislative agenda item that maybe should be addressed in the realm of forest management could be useful. I don't know if you've come across anything like that yet.

Anna StaffordstaffSo, I mean, I think the biggest constraint is the canopy percents by zoning district. is set by lot densities in state code. And so our zoning districts have those lot densities, and that's how we can then assign, depending on what those are, we can assign the percent canopy requirement. And so that is a limiting factor that I know there has been bills to go forward to make some improvements on, including increasing the warranty period to monitor how those are progressing post-construction, and so allowing localities to monitor if they're effective. And so those are the two that come top to mind, but certainly we'll keep that in mind as we go forward.

James FeatherGreat. Great work. Thank you. Mr. Cunningham. Thank

Paul Cunninghamyou. One observation I had, especially from the slides that you put in here, When you look at the five small areas that we have developed plans for, you see a dearth of trees. The bulk of the trees are in residential areas or public areas along streams and things along that line. There's discussion as we're approving larger projects going into these areas that include a significant amount of residential grading about putting trees in smaller places and others trees in pots trees and things how does that fit into this master plan and what size trees are we hoping to get out of it or is this something that's just decorative to put something green there and is it really improving our urban forest or is

Is this merely a decorative piece to give eye appeal to a small area with a piece of natural living material?

Dr Garrett WolfThat's a great question. I'll just touch on a piece of that. So, I mean, honestly, anywhere you can put a tree is probably going to be beneficial. The in pots, probably not as much. But if you think about like trees on green roofs, things like that, there's a lot of opportunity for that to go from, you know, fully impervious surface to somewhere that's really capturing a lot of rainwater and providing a lot of benefits. So there can be really huge benefits in that especially if taken even if in a small area in a holistic design in terms of like where's what where water is being sent and how it's being managed effectively as well as heat island obviously is a huge part of that. you know you're not going to get huge trees out of potted plants but if you go

to like you know Blomfant Plaza for example in DC they have some incredibly large trees in pots there so it's something that can certainly have an impact but I think you know being in the ground is always gonna be beneficial partly because you know the soil requirements under that are actually doing a lot of that water managed stormwater management so it's a big part of that and

Anna StaffordstaffI would say on the technical side for city policy usually the trees and like pots and those sort of containerized aren't getting counted towards zoning requirements because they aren't providing the full amount of benefit that we're looking for but I agree they provide potentially other benefits that we are looking for out of our small area plans in terms of you know activating the streetscape and the obviously like urban heat island and so i think there is a balance i think trying to communicate what's being counted towards our actual canopy requirements in a code perspective versus benefits on a larger scale again going to that macro versus micro is potentially needing to be improved as to what we're looking for yeah

Dr Garrett Wolfi think that's actually a if you know because if trees and pots are getting large enough that potentially at some point they'd be captured by the imagery that we're using I'm not sure anyone actually get large enough to be counted but it's possible and it would be important to essentially exclude those because they are for all intents and purposes temporary they're in a pot their life expectancy will not be as long and whoever owns the private property can get rid of them or move them at any time essentially with no you know they're not nothing the city would that. So that's actually a good example of something that Mr. Rice brought up earlier about, you know, how we're being a little more specific with our data, not

just about what's lost, but making sure that things that are showing what's gained are also accurate.

Paul CunninghamOkay. Trees in medians on right-of-ways, the same thing with life expectancy. I don't expect any of the trees that I see in most of the medians in the city to make a really mature area. If you have a tree that's not going to grow a lot over a long period of time, they fit and they're more easily taken care of. But is that our desire for tree canopy along the boulevard or what is the life expectancy and how do they fit in the planning for this?

Anna StaffordstaffSo typically a street tree life expectancy is around 40 years, 30 to 40 years. and so you know there's no canopy requirements for capital improvement projects in the right-of-way and so trying to to green the streets the trees typically reduce the or increase the lifespan of asphalt by about seven to ten years when you have canopy coverage and so there there's various benefits even if the tree is not going to live as long but still provide the the benefits you want urban heat, similar to what you're saying, adding to the corridor of the urban forest where you're providing wildlife corridors to connect into our forested areas through our street trees. And so there's considerations of adding street trees, even if they're not going to maximize

benefits.

Dr Garrett WolfI would just also say species selection is a huge part of that, both for median and street trees, as well as potentially what you're putting in a pot. does a very good job selecting those species and you know occasionally I'm the one selecting them for private projects I have a lot of confidence in myself I don't always have a lot of confidence in the decisions being made by other folks who are doing that so it doesn't always work out

James Featherthank you okay thank you very much thank

Dr Garrett Wolfyou

James Featherlooking forward to the final product the next order of business on our agenda is the work session which is the presentation and of updates of the implementation guides related to our comprehensive plan and the small area plans welcome miss Denny

Ms. DennystaffGood evening, Chair Feather and members of the Commission. This presentation will cover the implementation guides for the comprehensive plan as well as the four adopted small area plans, Old Town, Northfax, Camp Washington, and Fairfax Circle. So, 129 of the 339 total actions were updated since the last round of review in January. 32 of the 70 total land use actions were updated. This includes several projects related to the small area plans that are underway including a project to develop public improvement plans and level of service standards, reviewing the design guidelines for discrepancies and the ongoing zoning ordinance update. The affordable housing and homelessness strategic plan is underway and expected to be complete

by the end of the year. City Council adopted a CPACE ordinance on June 10th. CPACE is a program that enables private commercial property owners to access long-term fixed-rate financing for clean energy Improvements in both new and existing buildings and the historic resources study is complete This study assessed five properties for in the city for potential eligibility for the National Register of Historic Places Four properties were determined to be potentially eligible for the National Register at the Far House the Davies property Germantown Cemetery and the Fairfax Elementary School the citizen house was evaluated but was determined likely not to be eligible for multimodal transportation 33 of the 98 actions were updated as mentioned the utility

relocation for the blend and Boulevard multimodal improvements is underway and construction is expected to begin next year the city was awarded funds from the highway safety improvement program these funds will be used for intersection University Drive and four intersections along Main Street west of Old Town as well as lighting improvements along Main Street east of Old Town. The two-year transportation program was adopted on February 25th and the projects included are an evaluation of Fairfax Circle, bike route wayfinding, improvements at the intersection of Main Street and Lindhurst Drive, improvements on the north side of the Vienna Metro Station and a sidewalk feasibility study at Rust Road and Westmore Drive.

Construction of the government center Parkway connection is underway and expected to be complete by early next year And the safety action plan move Fairfax City is underway The project kickoff work session with City Council was held on July 1st and the plan is expected to be complete by mid-2026 Moving on to environment sustainability Through discussions with staff with this round of updates a handful of actions lead departments were updated These are actions primarily in the natural environment guiding principle sustainability had been identified as the lead department. For some of these actions, urban forestry was added as a co-lead with sustainability, where in others it has replaced sustainability as the only lead, and all those changes are shown in red

underline and or strikethrough in the implementation guides. So 30 of the 64 total actions were updated, including the Forest Rescuers Program, which began this spring. In the six months since its launch, the program has logged over 415 volunteer hours certified 11 forest rescuers. And as you just heard, the urban forest master plan is underway with adoption expected by the end of the year. The solid waste management plan update is also underway. The plan was last updated in 2021 and per state code must be updated every five years. The city was selected as a recipient for an energy efficiency community grant, which will provide free energy audits to homeowners and several updates to the city's noise ordinance are under

review in economic vitality 10 of the 21 total actions were updated the economic strategic economic development strategic plan was updated this spring to add a tourism pillar and additional strategies to focus on tourism the Old Town Fairfax Business Association has completed a rebranding effort with support from economic development and the new mural on the Sunbury building was unveiled in June in community services 24 of the 86 total actions were updated parks and recreation strategic master plan update and the commission on the arts strategic master plan are underway and are both expected to be complete by spring 2026 a mural was added at draper dive park using revenue from the plastic bags tax as previously mentioned a project to

develop level of service standards in the activity centers is underway and lastly the emergency operations plan update is complete and was adopted by city council in june so moving to our small area plans in Old Town 14 of the 41 action items were updated as I mentioned earlier several projects and analyses regarding the small area plans are underway the Old Town parking study is complete now this did not identify a future need for an additional parking structure in Old Town but rather future demand should be accommodated through shared parking construction of the University Drive bike lanes north of Old Town is expected to begin this year and the Old Town circulation study which is part of the move Fairfax City plan is

in northbacks nine of nine of 45 action items were updated this includes the aforementioned small area plan analyses and the warwick avenue and far avenue intersection improvements for which the construction contract has been awarded in camp washington nine of 43 action items were updated again we have the small area plan analyses and the fern street connection project is in deny in design with construction expected to begin next year and lastly in perfect circle 10 action items Once again, this Maria plan analysis resulted in several status updates. And as I mentioned earlier, the Fairfax Circle intersection study is included in the Adopted to Your Transportation program. The city was awarded a Community Flood Preparedness Fund grant to conduct a flood study of Acton Creek from Fairfax Boulevard to the eastern city boundary.

Kickoff for this study is planned for the fall. and also to address a commission comment from our last meeting regarding previous stream restoration projects and how that was considered in the 2024 study. Previous projects were considered as part of the 2024 study's evaluation criteria and determining priorities, and previous projects actually leave behind infrastructure that can be reused, which makes those projects more economical. However, the seven identified project areas discussed during the factbook presentation were still deemed higher priority due to other factors. And finally, the Pickett Road Trail Connector Project was put on hold by a City Council vote on April 22nd. City Council had a work session on the project on July 8th, but the project is still officially on hold.

And that concludes our presentation. I'm happy to take any questions.

James FeatherQuestions? Ms. Lockhart.

Kirsten LockhartIt's not really a question. I'll email you separately, but there are a couple of the updates in the actual plan document itself that look like they were cut and pasted in a couple places, so I'll send you the numbers. Okay. for the summary that's super helpful

Paul Cunninghamscreen thank you for a very concise update a very long-winded subject that takes a lot of staff time to make happen between the six-month briefings so thank you that was very helpful and I appreciate the nod to the extra work that I caused by asking you to look at all projects that are being completed and how are they being put back in so I I appreciate that.

James FeatherMr. Brace, everything? Thank you very much. I'm going to have an offline check-in with you because some of my counts are a little different from yours, but that's okay. Not by much. One of the things that I did, I appreciate your indulging me in sending the actual spreadsheets so I can do some cutting and sorting and so forth on my own. one of the things I look at are short term items 2026 completion items that are called for 2026 completion and there's a small handful of those that don't have any status on them and you probably know what they are because you can do the same sort as I do but a few of them are listed as community development planning leads in the comp plan But I don't know that we actually haven't started something.

One is looking at commercial and industrial districts, and one is industrial and commercial districts. I know we've had conversations about some of that, so I'm not sure that they really don't have a status. One is reduced parking requirements is an objective to look at that, and maybe that hasn't started, and maybe that's an easy thing to accomplish or whether we need to rethink the completion date. There are three in the comp plan in the environment sustainability area. Again, I don't know what the real status is. One calls for, it talks about the climate and energy action plan. One is the resilient, climate resiliency plan. And then those are two natural environment items. One is under sustainability, zoning to enhance solid waste management infrastructure, which

Paul Cunninghamalso calls for 2026 completion.

James FeatherI know it's not 2026 yet, but just making note of those that don't seem to have a status. Maybe they've been started and you didn't get an update. So, and one of the things you didn't do that I did just, and I'll just report this because I want to blow CD&P's horn, is by my count, CD&P on their own have 157 action items. 94% of them have statuses. I think that's a great accomplishment, and some that don't, or long-term anyway. CDP involved with others. There are 24 I counted. All of them have status already reported. so overall anything that CDP is involved in 95% success rate I call it with heaven status so I just want to commend you in that department for keeping track you need to be the pace setters

as owners of the comp plan along with us demonstrating that it's important to move along so I just wanted to report on that back to you so thank you for all you're doing

Ms. Dennystaffyeah yeah I will say for so I looked at the blank ones as well and for some of those they used to have statuses and I took it out if they were I'm trying to keep this very like what is actually happening so some of the the climate and energy action plan the resiliency plan are in talks to begin but budget considerations and council discussion so that's why those are blank and that in

James FeatherI I would honestly report that. Okay.

Ms. DennystaffOkay. No doubt.

James FeatherSeriously. I mean, we need to know. I think that sends a message that needs to be sent. Okay. It's important or it's not. If it's less important, then we should move the completion date, I think, my view. I wouldn't be afraid to say why something's not getting done if it's related to those kind of decisions. I'm not sure whether you'll have a similar report to Council, but I'd honestly say that.

Anna Staffordstaffokay

Ms. Dennystaffand I'll just add that for this update I did take away the highlighting which actions were new or significantly changed with the comp plan update but going through and kind of using the last update as a comparison only nine of the blank actions are previously existing all the rest that have no status are new or significantly changed actions from

James FeatherOctober good I think we're making we're taking this seriously I think that's really important.

Mr. NapteestaffMr. We do plan on sharing this with council. In the past we had only done it in the winter but now that the city manager has a weekly update it's a good venue for us to kind of just put this in there and allow them to review it. So hearing the feedback that you just said about putting some more clarity on some of them that we were unsure about if it's the will of planning commission we will make those changes before we share this with them include things like this particular topic is uncertain because of the budget and that type of thing.

James FeatherWhat's the Planning Commission think? Do you all agree or do you think we should say that? Yeah.

Mr. NapteestaffGood. Okay.

James FeatherUnanimous consent. Good. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Good job. Okay. we will reconvene our regular meeting and go to the staff report mr. Naptee

Mr. Napteestaffthank you chair Feather members of the Planning Commission going back to just last week was the last city council meeting because we're on on alternating weeks this month July 22nd the city City Council approved the proposal for the Davies property by a vote of 4-3. Planning Commission recommended denial for this proposal by a vote of 4-2 at your meeting on June 25th. City Council also deferred a decision on the Courthouse Plaza proposal until October 28th and they approved unanimously the proposed changes to the zoning ordinance. Those changes were also recommended for approval unanimously by the Planning Commission on

Matthew RiceJuly 14

Mr. NapteestaffSome upcoming Discussions with the City Council there is some feedback from them at the end of the meeting About having some kind of an introduction to the planning process Looking at things like how they should be reviewing the small area plans getting some additional thoughts on discrepancies between the smaller your plans and public opinion and those types of things and so we'll be preparing a presentation for them on that we we don't know exactly when that will be but depending on what comes out of it we may have a similar presentation to the planning commission just so you see what they what is presented to them and see if you have any additional feedback on it in addition we'll be having a discussion with them is currently scheduled for september 9th

about the potential for opening up commercial corridors to residential development planning commission had a discussion on this back in March and we just haven't been able to get on the agenda with city council until now so that's currently scheduled for September 9 we are going to be coordinating with the economic development department because they have a similar study that is underway and depending on what comes out of that we may come back to the planning commission Do you have additional discussion on it or if that's in line with what we were discussing we'll just go straight to City Council so we'll keep you posted on

Matthew Ricethat

Mr. Napteestafffor upcoming items for the Planning Commission there are no specific items on the agenda yet that we do have a couple of land use cases that are outstanding that will be coming up soon also there are a couple of projects that are underway some of which were mentioned in the implementation guide updates the smaller your plan zoning ordinance amendments you already have had some work sessions on the consultant on that project is preparing draft amendments and so we expect to have those in front of the Planning Commission in some form in September or October it may not be a final draft but we just want to get the the general idea of what's happening in front of you and then we have some other projects that are ongoing the invitation guides

mentioned the citywide level service standards and public approval plans related to small area plans. We have a consultant on board for that and that will be digging into impacts to development and potentially setting up some more organized proffer systems for us. So that's all we have for the staff report tonight. As a reminder we are on recess in August and so your next meeting isn't until September so I hope everybody has a good recess.

James FeatherThank you. any questions for staff okay Commission comments mr. rice okay

Matthew Riceprab is interviewed a candidate for the Parks Foundation board and so the Parks Foundation is many of you may be aware is going to be an external group populated with largely city residents with interests in helping raise money and provide support for city parks and recreation. So we're moving to help populate that board with enough members that they can be self-operating. There's a mind-blowing array of projects happening in the city splash pad which I announced last time would be imminently open in July they're having a few a few troubleshooting steps but it will open soon and it has been repaired largely Tice Park is on budget on time and several of the other projects are in process. So I have been involved with some urban heat

studies, some that we conducted last summer. We look at the 30-day forecast and find the hottest days so that we can go out and do some data collection using some sensors that our students have built it looks like tomorrow and wednesday are the days so when we see that and when i'm instructed to try to organize three times a day collection campaign for all of the city and campus we may do that on wednesday so anyone who's interested in doing a little driving with a sensor on their window or doing some bicycling or walking at 7 a.m 1 p.m and 7 p.m please let me we need volunteers to do this and luckily we do have some people waiting in the wings that will be helping us a little bit so that will help feed data into the urban forestry program and will

be able to help us identify hot spots and cool spots in the city and that's all i have thanks

Kirsten LockhartNothing specific. I've been fielding a lot of questions from members of the community about what's going on at the ANOVA site since it's in my backyard. And so a thank you to the staff for maintaining the major projects development site because it's very easy to point people to that lovely website and they get all the information that they need. So thank you for that. Thank you.

James FeatherMr. Cunningham.

Paul CunninghamThe city apparently has done some major revision on the city's website, making it a bit more of a challenge to find past meetings if you want to review data that you didn't see at a meeting in that. But I guess if you're old and not technically particularly astute, if you dig far enough, it's potentially still there. Aside from that, I wish everybody a happy August recess and look forward to seeing you in September.

James FeatherThank you. is when I went to the city meetings, I found our meeting. Great. Nice page for it. Clicked on agendas. It took you to the other city meetings page, which is like we used to go to find the agendas. So I would have thought it might actually take us to the agenda for the meeting that was on that page. But it's like maybe it'll get there. But I have nothing further except wishing you a good August recess.

Paul CunninghamSo with that, we are adjourned.

James FeatherThank you.