City Council Meeting

Catherine ReadThank you. If you are able and so choose, I would like for us to have one moment of silence to acknowledge Officer Terry Carroll, who passed away this weekend after retiring as our animal control officer two months ago. We hold his family in our thoughts and our prayers, and also the victims of the Texas flood, those who are still missing, those who survived, their family, their community. I would like for us all to just take a moment and think about the families that need our support and our thoughts and our prayers as they navigate through this very, very difficult time. If you are able and so choose, please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance.

Melissa Shinaberryclerkby voiceI pledge allegiance to

Susan Kylerpublic commentthe flag

Catherine Readof the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with

Susan Kylerpublic commentliberty

Catherine Readand justice

Stacey Hardy-Chandlerfor

Catherine Readall. So you may notice that our ranks are a little thin up here on the dais. So at this time, we are going to consider remote participation by Council Member McQuillan, pursuant to the Code of Virginia, Section 2.2-3708.2. Is there a motion to approve the remote participation by Council Member McQuillan? Council Member Hardy-Chandler? I

Stacey Hardy-Chandlermove to approve Council Member McQuillan's request, properly submitted in writing prior to tonight's meeting, for remote participation subject to compliance with the requirements outlined in the City Council adopted policy an applicable law in all or portions of the City Council regular meeting of July 8, 2025.

Catherine ReadIs there a second? Second. A motion has been made and seconded. A roll call vote.

Melissa Shinaberryclerkby voiceCouncil Member Hall? Yes. Council Member Hardy-Chandler?

Billy BatesAye.

Melissa Shinaberryclerkby voiceCouncil Member Peterson?

Billy BatesAye.

Melissa Shinaberryclerkby voiceCouncil Member Bates?

Billy BatesAye.

Melissa Shinaberryclerkby voiceMotion passed unanimously. We can move to adoption of the agenda.

Catherine ReadIs there a motion to approve the agenda, Council Member Hardy-Chandler?

Stacey Hardy-Chandlerto adopt the agenda as presented is there a

Catherine Readsecond

Melissa Shinaberryclerkby voicesecond the

Catherine Readmotion has been made and seconded a roll call vote

Melissa Shinaberryclerkby voicecouncilmember Hall

Stacy Hallaye

Melissa Shinaberryclerkby voicecouncilmember Hardy Chandler aye councilmember Peterson councilmember Bates aye councilmember McQuillan aye motion passed unanimously we will go on to initial general public comment I only had one speaker sign up by 5 o'clock p.m. today so I I will call up Philip LaTassa to come up.

Philip LaTassapublic commentI speak tonight representing the Friends of Accutane Creek. The long debate over the George Schneider Trail may be receding from this chamber, but for Accutane Creek, the demands to degrade and reduce its wooded buffers never recede. Later tonight, the council will engage in a work session regarding the Pickett Connector Trail. Plan to run through the forested floodplain of Hatmark Branch, one of the smaller tributaries of Accutane Creek. as the George Schneider Trail or as dramatic in its engineering, the Pickett Connector Trail would be outstanding in its redundancy. The connection it is supposed to provide between Thays Park and Route 50 is already in place within a literal stone's throw of the proposed new route. Abundant

signage along the existing route already guides bicyclists and pedestrians to make the connection using the seven-foot-wide sidewalk on Pickett Road itself. Even today, the county is about to complete the last link of its Route 50 bike path, providing a second connection just to the east of Thais Park. Any advantages offered by building a third connection so near the other two are insufficient to justify the sacrifice of even one tree, the paving of even one square yard of streamside resource protection area, or the imposition of a new perpetual maintenance burden on the taxpayers of this city. In the work session tonight, the Council will hear that the Pickett Connector Trail will have a low forest impact

will eventually clear the route anyway for a future water main. That is not low impact. That is a double whammy. That is an example of the endless demands on our few remaining woodlands that I mentioned. That endless demand should motivate us to preserve rather than to pave even more. Our dwindling supply of forests and streams cannot provide a parallel transport system. We ask the city to make our streets safe for people instead of making our forests safe for pavement. We ask the city to forego the picket connector trail. Thank you.

Melissa Shinaberryclerkby voiceWe can move to the consent agenda.

Catherine ReadIs there a motion to approve the consent agenda? Council Member Hardy-Chandler.

Stacey Hardy-ChandlerI move adoption of a consent agenda for agenda item number 6A, consideration of the May 27, 2025 special meeting minutes. Agenda Item 6B, consideration of the May 27, 2025, regular meeting minutes. Agenda Item 6C, consideration of the June 3, 2025, special meeting minutes. Agenda Item 6D, consideration of the June 10, 2025, special meeting minutes. Agenda Item 6E, consideration of the June 10, 2025, regular meeting minutes. Agenda Item 6F, consideration of the June 17, 2025, special meeting minutes. Agenda Item 6G, consideration of the June 23rd, 2025, special meeting minutes. Agenda Item 6H, consideration of appointments to boards and commissions. Agenda Item 6I, introduction of an ordinance amending Chapter 54,

Offenses and Miscellaneous Provisions, Article 1, General Section 5-4 of the City of Fairfax, Virginia, pertaining to the prohibition on the possession, carrying, or transportation of firearms, ammunition, or components or combination thereof in city buildings or facilities on public property or at permitted public events. I move to approve the consent agenda items 6A through I and the motion accompanying the consent agenda item as presented.

Catherine ReadIs there a second?

Billy BatesSecond. A

Catherine Readmotion has been made by Council Member Hardy-Chandler and seconded by Council Member Bates. Are there any items Council would like pulled for additional discussion? Council Member Peterson? Items H and I. Items 6H and 6I will be removed for discussion. Roll call vote on the consent agenda minus agenda items 6H and 6I.

Melissa Shinaberryclerkby voiceCouncil Member McQuillan? Aye. Council Member Bates?

Billy BatesAye.

Melissa Shinaberryclerkby voiceCouncil Member Peterson?

Billy BatesAye.

Melissa Shinaberryclerkby voiceCouncilmember Hardy-Chandler? Aye. Councilmember Hall? Aye. Motion passed unanimously. We'll go to 6-H. 6-H is just consideration of appointments to boards and commissions.

Thomas PetersonCouncilmember Peterson? I would just ask that we read the appointments that have been made. Are you proposing to read the appointments? I'm happy to do that unless somebody else would like to do the honors. Let me just pull the motion up here.

Melissa Shinaberryclerkby voiceYeah. So as long as council member Peterson reads the motion, someone seconds it and then we can take the vote.

Catherine ReadOkay. Yeah.

Thomas PetersonAs I understand it, we are moving to appoint the following applicants. First, the Board of Zoning Appeals, and we are moving to reappoint Russell James for a five-year term extending through May 25, 2030. On the Commission for Women, we are moving to appoint Amini Bonani for a remainder of a three-year term extending July 1, 2026. For the Commission on the Arts, we are reappointing Yolanda Ortiz for a three-year term extending 11-2028. And for the Environmental Sustainability Committee, we are moving to reappoint Gregory Farley for a three-year term extending through July 28, 2028. Is there a second on the motion?

Catherine ReadSecond. A roll call vote?

Melissa Shinaberryclerkby voiceCouncil Member Hall? Aye. Council Member Hardy-Chandler?

Catherine ReadAye.

Melissa Shinaberryclerkby voiceCouncil Member Peterson? Aye. Council Member Bates?

Stacey Hardy-ChandlerAye.

Melissa Shinaberryclerkby voiceCouncil Member McQuillan? Aye. Motion passed unanimously. We'll go on to 6-A.

Brian LubkmanstaffI'll take that one. Evening, Mayor and Council. This item is a follow-on to the June 24th work session that we just had on the topic of the firearms prohibitions within the city. As a reminder, the city has had regulations on the possession, carrying, or transportation of firearms in certain specified locations since 2021. The changes proposed in the attached ordinance would be to essentially align the city's regulations with those in Fairfax County by adding to the list of prohibited locations the areas of and surrounding city permitted events and adjacent sidewalks, roads, and other rights away, clarifying certain provisions pertaining to parks prohibitions, and increasing the penalty for violations from a Class 4 misdemeanor to a Class 1 misdemeanor.

At the work session, there were some early discussions on possible exemptions, such as for concealed carry and perhaps some other revisions that council might like. This item this evening, for the benefit of the public as well, would be to simply introduce the ordinance and, as drafted, set the public hearing for July the 22nd. And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions.

Catherine ReadCouncilmember Bates.

Billy Batesjust to clarify the introduction of this ordinance does not lock us into a all or nothing decision we can further amend the ordinance uh at the public hearing date is that correct

Brian Lubkmanstaffcorrect you can as long as the subject matter are the firearms prohibitions uh so you can add exemptions you can clarify languages language you can even repeal the ordinance if that's the desire of the council but But this would allow for flexibility. This is not locked in stone.

Billy BatesYeah, thank you.

Catherine ReadOther discussion? Councilmember Peterson?

Thomas PetersonIf you could remind us again the timing and the schedule for the further consideration of this.

Brian LubkmanstaffSo as drafted and as we discussed in the work session, right now the public hearing is set for July 22nd. That's the motion that accompanies this item. Council can certainly set a different public hearing or it can when July 22nd rolls around it could continue the public hearing if desired I know there was at least one council member that had mentioned the possibility of doing this in September But we took the consensus as just simply putting it on the agenda and setting it for July 22nd But that is not locked in stone Depending what you all do this evening and what you do the night of the public hearing

Thomas PetersonAnd at what point this evening would we make any decisions regarding the schedule and any updates to it?

Brian LubkmanstaffI'm not being glib, in about a minute when somebody reads a motion or doesn't read a motion. The motion contains, so the purpose, the way we do ordinances, some of you knew, is we do a set of the first meeting you introduce and you set the public hearing. And then the second meeting would be the public hearing and or council action. There's no requirement for action the night of the public hearing. There's also no requirement, there also is the ability to change the date of the public hearing the night that it's scheduled if that's the will of the council.

Thomas PetersonThank you.

Catherine ReadSo is there further discussion? Councilmember Hall.

Stacy HallThank you. I think it's important, regardless of when the date is of the public hearing, that we have the chief of police present. would it potentially be possible to have a Virginia State police officer there to kind of discuss the concealed carry conversation about how that works I mean I don't know what we have so

Brian LubkmanstaffI take the question that you're asking I think the police chief and I can certainly answer that question I think we're familiar with concealed carry in Virginia since there's clear desire to have some conversation on that we'll make sure that there's appropriate staff whether it's individuals present to answer those questions but I think the chief and I are able to answer those questions Okay,

Stacy Hallthank you. This is a whole new world of conversations about things And so I'm just trying to educate myself as much as I can as obviously those around as well So I appreciate the information

Mary Landispublic commentIf

Stacy HallI still have the floor, thank you. I do have to say I I don't love doing this on July 22nd because so many people are out of town and actually councilman sorry councilmember McCullen and I actually spoke earlier about whether or not it would be possible maybe to have July be the recess month and August be the back to business month since kids are in school and all of that stuff and but that's a later conversation but I do just want to suggest that maybe we consider a September meeting to discuss this when most more of our residents will be back in town and have the ability to be aware of it I can make a motion if I need to

Brian Lubkmanstaffyes and mayor I would just I think some of you are aware I will not be here the first meeting in September so I would suggest if there's a desire to the motion to reflect a September public hearing date that it be the second meeting which is the 20 30th oh there's a holiday in there so it'll be September the 30th would be the date if that's the will of whoever's making the motion

Stacy Hallokay

Catherine Readokay so did you want to make a motion

Stacy Hallyes I'd like to make a motion to delay the public hearing

Brian Lubkmanstaffcouncil member the last page of the staff report since this was pulled off consent you have a longer read

Stacy Hallthank you I move that the city council introduced the attached ordinance amending offenses, and miscellaneous provisions, Article I, General, Chapter 54-4 of the Code of the City of Fairfax, Virginia, pertaining to a prohibition on the possession, carrying, or transportation of firearms, ammunition, or components or combination thereof in city buildings or facilities, on public property, or at certain public events. I move to waive the first reading of the ordinance and to set the public hearing for consideration of the ordinance for September 30th, 2025.

Catherine ReadSecond.

Susan Kylerpublic commentSecond.

Catherine ReadA motion's been made by Council Member Hall and seconded by Council Member Peterson. A roll call vote.

Melissa Shinaberryclerkby voiceCouncil Member Hall?

Catherine ReadAye.

Melissa Shinaberryclerkby voiceCouncil Member Hardy-Chandler?

Catherine ReadAye.

Melissa Shinaberryclerkby voiceCouncil Member Peterson?

Catherine ReadAye.

Melissa Shinaberryclerkby voiceCouncil Member Bates?

Billy BatesAye.

Melissa Shinaberryclerkby voiceCouncil Member McQuillan? Aye. Motion passed unanimously. We will move on to the second general public comment.

Thomas PetersonWell, excuse me. Council Member Peterson? MR. We I don't think had discussion around that motion and then prior to it, but I just want to note that Council Member Hall suggested that we have representation by Chief of Police, State Police, and other qualified staff to be able to answer questions about concealed carry. And I would just like to say that I think there also are additional questions that will important to raise that have to do with statistics around response rates and response times and things like that that are material to this issue. So I think we'd like to be sure that we have adequate representation to engage in Q&A around a series of those issues and would be happy to add a list or thoughts of what those issues

might be in advance if it would be helpful. Here. MS. Yes. Mr.

Brian LubkmanstaffLueckman. Mr. Lueckman. So if I may suggest, we have ample time before September the 30th. If council members have questions, if they can just funnel them through me, and I will make sure we have answers available that evening as well as staff available to answer any questions that might come up.

Thomas PetersonMr. Thank you.

Catherine ReadMs. Councilmember Bates.

Billy BatesMr. A question. I know that according to the staff report, it was suggested that we incorporated a late 1st, 2026, would you say that staff are still comfortable with that date with the new public hearing date in mind?

Brian LubkmanstaffSo July 1st, 2026 is just a placeholder for discussion. We'll also be prepared to discuss, because we'll have more time between now and September 30th to look at some of the implications further of expanding the prohibition and whether we need all that time, whether we need less, whether we need more. So again, we'll include that as question number two after the concealed carry already that's been submitted.

Billy BatesOkay, thank you.

Catherine ReadAnything else before we move on? Okay.

Melissa Shinaberryclerkby voiceNow we'll go to second general public comment. I had two speakers sign up during the meeting. After I call those two speakers, if there's anybody else in the room that I'd like to speak, they can come forward. So I'll call the first speaker, which is Mary Landis.

Mary Landispublic commentGood evening. Thank you for allowing me to speak this evening. I'm here to speak about the proposed amendment or possible amendment to the noise ordinance. Honestly, I do not understand the reasoning behind having time restrictions written into the Norris ordinance. I find it to be completely arbitrary and quite frankly not equitable. I don't know if it's based on an antiquated idea of a sleep schedule for a typical 9 to 5 work day. In today's society, very few people actually work those hours. I myself, for my job, get up at about 5 a.m. So I like to be in bed by 10. That's just me. others work at night, others work on weekends, some have small children with specific sleep needs and this does not even address those that are sick or have

special needs. There's no one-size-fits-all so the equitable answer is to remove the time restriction completely. Everyone should have the right to enjoy their home whether to be to sleep, relax, simply to have a peaceful dinner or whatever no matter the time of day without excessive noise. Therefore I'm asking you to please remove the time constraints on the noise ordinance and that is audible from inside the house with doors and windows closed at any hour is prohibited.

Melissa Shinaberryclerkby voiceThank you. Our next speaker is Ross Landis.

Ross Landispublic commentMy wife and I did not write these together, but we're surprisingly similar. So the idea that you're only entitled to peace and quiet inside your own house at certain hours is pretty ridiculous to me, honestly. The noise ordinance needs to be corrected. I could go on and on with stories, anecdotes, times when there's been obvious noise. There's nothing the police will do. There's nothing they can do. About three weeks ago, my neighbor was playing loud, thumping music. started in the afternoon went on to the evening my wife and I finally got in the car and drove to a parking lot because we were getting headaches and we wanted some peace and quiet I have spoken to the police numerous times they could not

be more helpful they could not be more courteous they could not be more patient but they have told me over and over again that there is nothing they can do with current ordinance as the staff report states and I'm going to state it again you need to remove the time restrictions and you need to prohibit any such sound that is plainly audible in another person's residence with the doors and windows closed i probably couldn't have written it better myself thank you

Melissa Shinaberryclerkby voiceis there anybody else in the room that would like to speak under general public comment they can step forward

Susan Kylerpublic commentHi, my name is Susan Kyler. I'm at 9742 Cardinal Road, Fairfax. I just have two brief, hopefully brief, comments tonight. The first is a point of clarification about the 2014 advisory referendum mentioned in the June 24th work session. The referendum was a ballot question on the November 4, 2014 ballot and not on the May election ballot. And the question was, do you support changing the length of the terms of office for city council members, the mayor, and members of the school board from the current two years to four years? 6,849 voters answered the question, which is comparable to what was going on in our 2024 November election. 4,604 voted no and 2,244 voted yes. In other words, 67.2% were no and 32.8% were yes.

I pulled this from the Virginia elections database. The number of voters who answered the question is comparable to the number of voters who voted in the local election for November, this will pass November 2024. So that's my first comment. The second is about the picket connector. It appears from the staff presentation that nothing has changed since the council voted to pause the project. Is the council, so I have a few questions. Is the council going to direct staff to explore alternatives and provide the council with information on which to base a decision? Also, if the project costs more than anticipated, does the city pay the difference? If so, that figure may be higher than the current $700,000 you already spent, and it

may be cheaper to cancel the project. The presentation talks about rescoring if the design changes with the smart scale funding. Doesn't the project need to be rescored anyway because the county has already built a connector, a stone's throw away? Anyway, these are the kinds of questions I wish you'd look at in terms of funding and timing. Thank you.

Melissa Shinaberryclerkby voiceIs there anybody else in the room that would like to speak? You can come forward, sir.

Speaker 18Madam

Brian LubkmanstaffMayor, members of the council.

Speaker 18I speak in opposition to this proposed ordinance about further firearms restrictions. It's a bad idea. It was a bad idea before. We didn't have problems back when we had statewide preemption. Unfortunately, we lost that. did, you want to follow suit. Not a good idea. Here's why. One, it won't stop the bad guys. It simply won't. They're going to violate such an ordinance in the first place. That's what criminals do. They break the law. Second, it will disarm the good guys and girls. My wife's thinking of getting a concealed handgun permit. She's a little thing. She's a lot smaller than I am. she would like to be able to protect herself against an assailant say my size she can't do that with her bare hands but she could with a gun

she should be able to carry that anywhere I should be able to carry anywhere too we face especially those of us that are say in certain particular minority categories like myself I might face a Charlottesville style racist I might face a bunch of them carrying knives like my father did offend myself just like my wife needs to be able to offend herself. So there was this notion of exempting concealed handgun permit holders. They're among the most law-abiding people in Virginia, really in the nation. That's why they get the permits. That's why they do that. They want to follow the law. So if you're really hell-bent on doing this, please, for the love of heaven, exempt CHP holders. But I would urge you to just repeal the darn thing in the first place.

It doesn't do any good. Not really. It may sound good. Michael Bloomberg may like it. Note that Michael Bloomberg has an armed phalanx of bodyguards to protect him. Gee, hmm, think about that. So please, repeal this or exempt the good guys with permit holders.

Melissa Shinaberryclerkby voiceIs there anybody else in the room that would like to speak? They can come forward.

Catherine ReadI will now recess the regular meeting to go into a work session. We will stay in the council chambers for the work session.

Melissa Shinaberryclerkby voiceOur first item is an update on the Pickett Trail project. I'll recognize Wendy Sanford, Transportation Director, to provide the staff presentation.

Wendy SanfordstaffI need to share it with Rachel. Do you share a right like that? Thank you. That. Share content. I'm assuming it's that. Okay. Councilmember McQuillan, can you see the presentation?

Rachel McQuillenYes. Thank you.

Wendy SanfordstaffAre you seeing it in presentation mode?

Rachel McQuillenYes.

Wendy SanfordstaffOkay. Okay. Good evening, Mayor, members of City Council. The work session this evening is to discuss the Pickett Trail and I'd just like to introduce the team that's here with me this evening. We have David Summers, Director of Public Works, and Sunny Sarda, our Capital Projects manager within the transportation division. I'm going to go through a series of slides, and I just want to note that this project in general is a collaborative effort between transportation, parks, and parks and recreation. This project initially started out as a PRAB-identified project. it was identified both as a safety issue and as an opportunity to improve both the connectivity between the city and the county to complete an off-road missing link of trail on the next slide

i will show how this segment of trail fits into the larger network the concern and the reason for this project was that the sidewalk that exists on on picket was very narrow but furthermore that there was one missing link in an off-road network that already existed. And so what's shown on this slide right now is the network of off-road trails and where the Pickett Trail exists within that network. So what you see here are all the yellow lines, the George Snyder Trail, the I-66 Trail, the Connector Trail, and then the Cross County Trail. and there was a missing link between the cross county trail and the connector trail so in this area where you see this red line and so that is the genesis of

this project this was identified by again the Parks and Recreation Department and then this was put into reality using transportation funding and so in terms of the timeline it was like as I mentioned identified by PRAB it was then included in the 2017 multimodal plan and then from there it went through the process of being included in the two-year program back in fy 18 19. i'm not including here the full timeline of the project i'm including some of just the the main um the main touch points here um there was a funding application that was endorsed in 2018 and at that time that is when the city also started conversations with fairfax water and i will touch on that more in a couple of minutes

for this project was held in january 2022 as i mentioned the city applied for funding back in 2018 and was successful receiving smart scale funding the project is currently in the right-of-way acquisition stage and there's very little right-of-way at this point it's an easement between the city and the county again i'll speak to that in a minute i'm sorry fairfax water not the county the project includes construction of 1300 linear feet of paved asphalt trail and there are two a moment to explain where that where the bridges and um exist the total project costs of approximately five million dollars and we have smart scale funding in the amount of 6.4 million dollars again this was received back in fy 18 and approximately 650 000 has been spent to date

and that has all been spent on preliminary engineering so now in terms of an overview i'm going to walk you through the design of the trail um it's on two slides so what you're seeing first is the piece from theis park which is on the left side of your screen and picket road is is just going to

Melissa Shinaberryclerkby voiceminimize so that way is

Speaker 10that showing up

Melissa Shinaberryclerkby voiceyeah okay

Speaker 10there

Melissa Shinaberryclerkby voicewe go

Speaker 10perfect

Wendy Sanfordstaffso theis park is on the left side but you can see that's actually the the south so we're moving here south to north. And so what you see here is the trail starts right at the connection with the cross county trail there. So you see at Feist Park and then it moves and it's mostly parallel to Pickett Road. You can see Pickett Road is labeled at the top of the slide. There is the first bridge. It crosses it's 125 feet right in this location. the trail continues north and then again crosses the stream again with a shorter bridge of 50 feet it continues north and then I'm going to move to the next slide and it picks up on the left hand side of your screen where that last one left off it continues running north again parallel to Pickett Road it runs right along the side of

Fairfax Water Pump Station, which is noted there in the blue. And then it moves up and it connects to Fairfax Boulevard right here at the end. I'm going to spend a couple of minutes talking about the Fairfax Water Project because this is very important to understand the context and the discussion about the alignment. Fairfax Water is planning to install a new north-south water main, and this is shown in their out your CIP so the project is slated for approximately 10 years from now we contacted them when we were first applying for this funding and looking at this project back in 2018 to let them know that this was an alignment we were looking at and at that time they said that they were planning to do a water line improvement in this area and so we

discussed our plans with them and at that time they then decided to look at the alignment for their for their water main and so what you're seeing here is Fairfax Water's plans for the water main overlaid on top of the city's plans for the trail. So what you see in green is the Fairfax Water main alignment. And then what you see in red is the trail alignment. So you can see they overlap. And again, for this slide, the entire trail is shown on one screen. So you see Fairfax Boulevard to the north is shown on the right side of the screen, and then Thice Park all the way to the left just to orient you. and so you see that for the most part they overlap they start to diverge right in this area right here

is where they start to separate and then they they overlap a little bit more and then they separate again and so where you're where you're seeing them separate is where the bridges are Fairfax Water's intention is to overlap only where there is asphalt trail so that when they're doing this project they would be disturbing the parts where it's asphalt not where there are bridges in the Fairfax and City and Fairfax Water have been coordinating since since 2018 and the plan has been to convey the easements needed for both projects now and what Fairfax Water said was that at that time that there that they were planning to utilize this area there had not been an exact alignment but when they saw our alignment they said this is what we will use as well

and when they realized that they could use our alignment it would serve as a dual purpose and trying to minimize the impact to this area and so the tree removal that i'll discuss in a moment will really have a dual purpose in the sense that it'll serve two projects and so now in terms of the forest impact and these slides were put together by the arborist on our consultant team and have been reviewed by the city's urban forester anna that of the rpa acres there's 0.8 acres of RPA disturbed there are a total of 91 trees that are would be removed by this project that is coming in first what would be removed from the Fairfax water project what overlaps is 68 trees and so that means there's a net of 28 of 23 trees that are being impacted from our project alone

from the city's project something to point out and I've had a number of Anna Safford about the project is that there are a high number of invasives in this area. And so one of the benefits of this project is the opportunity to remove the invasive species in this area. And Anna put this slide together, and she considers the impact of this project to be low due to the known future disturbance of this area, also due to the fact that there are a significant level of invasive species along Pickett Road and in this area, and that the project provides an opportunity to fund what otherwise would not be funded for invasive management. Also, Anna walked the site with our consultant, and they shifted the alignment away from some high-quality trees.

So Anna has looked at this and has opined that the project gives an opportunity to do the invasive removal and that the trees that are being removed are generally a low impact. In terms of the replanting, we don't have the opportunity to replant as hardly as we would normally because of the water line going in. Due to the utilities, the water line going in and the steep slopes were somewhat limited terms of where we can replant the water line needs a 15 foot clear area not only for when they come and construct but also for their future maintenance but there are tree plantings that can occur in other locations and anna has also reviewed that as well in terms of next steps um as you know the project has been paused um so there would be there needs to be council action to either continue the

project cancel the project or modify the project and the options that we see are listed up here on screen number one to continue with the project as is this would require council action to unpause the project and continue work number two would be to modify the alignment i'll discuss this in more detail on the next slide but this would require a vdot rescoring per smart scale guidelines and the city would pay for the redesign or three cancel the project and repay the it's actually 650 spent to date not 700

Speaker 10i apologize in

Wendy Sanfordstaffterms of the smart scale background the that is the the flavor of funding that this project has on it as i mentioned this was submitted in fy 18. it was one of 13 projects submitted in the northern virginia district um i'm sorry it was 13 selected out of 39 in the northern virginia district smart scale is a statewide funding program it provides 100 funding for our project it is competitive funding and so projects are submitted as you see 39 were submitted and and the list that's on the screen um list the 13 projects that were selected and what is shown on the right hand side is the score card um and this is just a little bit of smart scale 101 but what it shows are the the criteria that are used to evaluate

smart scale projects um and so this is the score card for the picket trail connector and so this This is, again, competitive funding. And so when there is a rescoring, what that means is if there are any changes to an approved project's scope of work or cost, the project needs to be rescored. So what they do is they go back and they reevaluate the project and they are rescoring it against those projects that were submitted back in 2018. So they're going back to the original list that was considered, so this list, and they're saying with this project as redesigned or recost, does it have the same benefits on this scorecard that would enable it to still be one of the 13? That's what they're looking for.

They have the 39. They draw the line. Everything above the line is funded. And so what they're saying is with this project, and they look at the criteria. The criteria since then have changed, but they go back and they use the criteria that were on the books then, and they say, would this project still qualify? If the answer is yes, then you go forward. It still requires CTB action. We have been through a rescoring for a smart scale project. It was for the University Drive extension, and I believe I've spoken about that project with you all before in terms of how a smart scale rescoring works. We had submitted that project as a direct connection between Fairfax Boulevard and Eaton Place. and when that project when the funding came online and we had started design

for that project there was concern from residents south of Fairfax Boulevard about a direct channel of traffic coming from this from this connection so the project was modified to include the design that is now in place with that dog leg so the idea of putting in the roundabout so it's the same scope of work in the sense that we were still connecting Fairfax Boulevard to eat in place but because of the change in design and the change in cost the project needed to be rescored and in that case the city was successful and we went on to construct that project so just an example of how the rescoring works that process took approximately a year and in terms of rescoring the and this is straight from the smart scale technical guide which is available online the

applicant is responsible for the additional cost attributable to the increase in scope and one of the alignment the realignments that has been mentioned by council member bates in particular is a west side realignment and i have some slides to look at that it would include a higher right-of-way cost that would not that we believe would exceed the available funding questions but i do have some slides that i just want to go through real quick just to show some context overhead of what we're talking about this is looking down on picket road this is um on the west side this is the trail the that goes under the bridge and it comes out over here and right here um where i have put a dot this is where the picket trail would begin

and it would come up like this and then go this direction okay just for to get everyone oriented this is just another view this is flipped the other way this just shows an aerial of picket road and then i just wanted to show where it would connect this is looking at the west side but what i really wanted to show was where this project will connect and what you see right here in the top what's circled and then what's shown more zoomed in is that the connector trail which is on the east side and this is where the picket trail would connect that concludes my presentation i'd be happy to answer any questions and again Mr. Summers and Mr. Sarna are both here as well.

Speaker 10Thank

Catherine Readyou. Questions for staff? Council Member Hardy Chandler.

Stacey Hardy-ChandlerSo you described that this would go in first and then the water project would follow. How long after the completion of the Pickett Trail Connect?

Wendy SanfordstaffThey have told us it's approximately 10 years out

Mary Landispublic commentthat they would be doing this.

Wendy SanfordstaffIt is included in their CIP, this and they will do this um and so even though yes it's 10 years out they said this is a project that is on their on their priority list and it's a project that will put in a new water main that will actually serve the city of fairfax how

Stacey Hardy-Chandlermany years after the completion of the of this trail if it were completed

Wendy Sanfordstaffso if this trail were completed it would probably be completed within the next i would say two to three years and fairfax water is saying they would start their project in about 10 years. Again, that's what they've told me. Things change with their priorities, so I don't want to commit them to saying this, but that's what they have told me is approximately 10 years.

Stacey Hardy-ChandlerIs there concern for how much would be invested in building the trail that would be then disrupted?

Wendy SanfordstaffI'm sorry.

Stacey Hardy-ChandlerYeah. No, you know where I'm going.

Wendy SanfordstaffJust in terms of having to, I asked them, I had another conversation with them just the other day about this, and I said, so you would be disrupting? And they said, yes, we would be disrupting where the asphalt portions are. That's why the alignment is shown in particular not impacting the bridges, but the asphalt work is much easier to replace. And so what my contact at Fairfax Water said was probably in about 10 years is exactly when this trail would need a repaving. And so we would come in, we would do our water line, and we would put the trail back and repave it.

Stacey Hardy-ChandlerSo that cost would fall on them?

Wendy SanfordstaffOn them,

Stacey Hardy-Chandlernot

Wendy Sanfordstaffon the city.

Stacey Hardy-ChandlerOkay.

Wendy SanfordstaffCorrect.

Stacey Hardy-ChandlerIf I may follow up. Did you hear the questions asked earlier during the hearing period? I did, but if you

Wendy Sanfordstaffcould repeat them.

Stacey Hardy-ChandlerOkay. I'm not going to repeat them exactly. Okay. One was related to, I think, the need to potentially rescore anyway. Is that accurate or

Wendy Sanfordstaffnot? The project has been approved and is underway. way, there is, if it continues, there is no need for rescoring at this time.

Speaker 10There's no trigger

Wendy Sanfordstafffor rescoring.

Stefanie Kupkastaffby voiceOkay.

Stacey Hardy-ChandlerI feel like there was another question, but I wanted to give you an opportunity to address those as posed by the public.

Wendy SanfordstaffThe rescoring would occur only if the city decided to change the alignment that would impact the cost or any kind of significant deviation in the alignment.

Stacey Hardy-ChandlerCould you speak to the approximate amount of a rescoring? Because that is added cost. Do we know approximately how much that might cost? Ballpark.

Wendy SanfordstaffIt's a difficult question for me to answer. I'm thinking about University Drive Extension, and there wasn't a cost per se to the city. It was that we continued to redesign and we had different options, and so we did incur those costs on the engineering side to look at the redesign. but we were generally an area that we had already surveyed and that we were already looking at and so in this case if we're looking at something that's a different location it might be a different situation because we don't have the survey we don't have the the engineering information that we did have for university drive so we would be incurring those costs to do that to do any kind of engineering survey associated with a realignment that is that moves it from

its current location thank

Stacey Hardy-Chandleryou that's helpful thank you

Catherine Readcouncilmember hall thank you

Stacy Hallum so just right across the street from where this is proposed um is the property yard which i know is a bit of a flood zone there with the creek and everything else are there concerns about the flood away the asphalt or ongoing maintenance costs in order to maintain it in that way

Wendy Sanfordstaffno that has not been discussed now not

Stacy Hallbeen

Wendy Sanfordstaffdiscussed or is not a concern not a concern but I'll let David answer yeah

David Summersstaffone of the reasons why the asphalt is proposed is because the water will wash off now if we do have a flood there there will be some cleanup of branches and leaves and debris like we have all over the city if we if we have flood situation but for this particular There's really no concern, any additional concern than any other infrastructure we have in the city.

Stacy HallOkay. And then do we have any concerns about the impervious surface as far as impacting flooding? In addition, changing the water flow, adding more concerns back to the property yard or how that all fits in?

David SummersstaffNo, the relative change with the impervious surface is minimal.

Stacy HallOkay. Okay. And then it would be on the city to maintain that moving forward, then the ongoing costs, correct? Correct.

David SummersstaffYeah, typically the Parks Department maintains the city's trail system.

Stacy HallOkay, and do we know what roughly that would add to the annual operating budget in order to add on maintenance of this trail? I

David Summersstaffwould say for the first few years, while the infrastructure is new, first five to ten years, it would be minimal cleanup of the park's crew after heavy rains or cleanup such as that. Probably after ten years, you would see maybe an additional $5,000 a year for repairs to maybe some of the bridge planks or some of the infrastructure elements.

Stacy HallOkay. And would the bridges be wood or would they be metal?

David Summersstaffvisualize what we like to do today is use either a composite like a fiberglass bridge because then we don't have to repaint it and it's a lot less maintenance okay

Stacy Halland so I know that many areas of our wooded places tend to be spots for the homeless to live or set up encampments I understand that we would probably need to clear this out initially in order to do the work I also understand based upon the George Center trail conversations that we don't typically plan to do any sort of ongoing policing or traversing of the trails specifically so do we have any concerns that this would be a quietly used trail that might not always be accessible for residents or do we think that it would widely and we don't need to worry about people moving back in

Wendy Sanfordstaffthat's a difficult question for me to answer um but when this conversation came up about a year ago and we looked at the trails um we had looked at we also had had a map of the encampment locations um and there are there were at that time and i believe still are encampments that are in fairfax county just so this project is in this on the city's property and on fairfax water directly to the east is where there were homeless encampments previously um in on county property not on the city's property i can't speak to what the usage would be but i will say that again this makes it this does connect to other off street trails that are used um pretty heavily the cross county trail i don't have the

usage numbers in front of me but the cross county trail is heavily used and then this would connect up then towards Metro. And so this does create a connection that does not exist today. So I do anticipate it would be used. I just don't know. I don't have usage numbers or forecasts.

Stacy HallOkay. And people that wanted to currently do this same route, they would be using the sidewalk that's on the eastern side of Pickett Road, correct?

Wendy SanfordstaffSo what they have to do, and if I can pull the presentation back up, it's one of the reasons I put these aerials in because I wanted to show sort of what the route is. if you're in the parking lot okay so can you see this let me put it into the that's very odd okay so if you are on the cross county trail are you are you oriented this is vice park okay so if you are here on the cross county trail and you want to get up to this sidewalk the only way to get there well there's two ways to get there you can go through the tunnel under the bridge and you can come out here and you can come through the parking lot and then you can loop around to the sidewalk here or you can come through the parking lot and loop around to the sidewalk but it's through it's

it's your those are the two ways but if you want to be on the east side of the road to connect to the other trail you would use the this sidewalk on the east side and the way to get there is through the parking lot right here that's how people get there today to that side of the street um sort of the safest thing to do would be to go under the tour underneath here through the through the tunnel around and then up to the sidewalk here go all the way up to fairfax boulevard and then cross at the signal that would be the safest thing to do so that you're not interacting with vehicles

Stacy Hallokay and so then to put the trail potentially on the western side along the existing sidewalks if that was the preferred method you said would be more costly would have more right-of-way yeah

Wendy Sanfordstaffso the so the issue is there are a couple of things um is that so now i'm now i flipped it to look at the other side so the other side is now on the top of your screen so right here is the property yard and this is where it comes under um there still needs to be a way to cross this stream okay so either a bridge or some other way, there needs to be a way to get across this. Currently, the sidewalk on Pickett Road is very narrow. The sidewalk there is four or five feet. It is not a sidewalk on top of that bridge. And so it's either building a pedestrian bridge that connects on this side. So there's still the complication of a bridge. But the bigger issue, in my opinion, is in looking at this is the right-of-way that is required alongside Farcroft, Foxcroft in this area.

So and I have a picture right here. So this is showing this is Gateway Park right here where I'm pointing is Gateway Park. And so what we're looking at here is the west side. And you can see that there's a sidewalk and then there's a significant slope. And this area is prone to significant flooding. There are flood issues here. And so in order to build some kind of wider sidewalk, which can be done, there would be a right-of-way acquisition. And currently, our right-of-way costs for this project are zero. We're working with Fairfax Water and essentially just obtaining an easement from them. And we are also simultaneously giving them an easement for the water. But so there are right-of-way costs here. And as I mentioned, there's a complication

of the of the bridge um on the other side and this is again showing you the the narrow situation here um and this is getting closer this is very close to the the signal at fairfax boulevard so this is the sidewalk and then there's this grassy berm um and then the foxcroft parking lot and so to do something that would be able to be a shared use path to accommodate both bikes and walkers would amount of right-of-way in that location I

David Summersstaffjust want to add one more complication is on that side of Pickett Road underneath that grass is a Columbia pipeline so if we had to cut back that berm that could be an issue with the location of the color of the gas line that Columbia pipeline oh so there there is some utility complications in addition to what Wendy said

Stacy Hallokay thank you and this is clearly outside of the scope of this work but i and correct me if i'm wrong i think the plan is to redo that gateway that nova gateway facility at some point will there be any sort of bridge option that would be considered on that side inclusive of that project

Wendy Sanfordstaffit's a good question i'm not as familiar with the plans i do know i do know that they the nova parks has come to the city with some plans i'm just not as familiar with the plans for that location i can certainly find out

Stacy Hallokay yeah i'm just wanting to make sure if we're not doing something that's if it would be redundant if there's a reason to have that redundancy.

Wendy SanfordstaffRight. Yeah.

Stacy HallOkay. I, sorry, one other question. You mentioned that the $650,000 repayment, do we have any sort of written confirmation that that would need to be repaid? If the project is canceled? Yes.

Wendy SanfordstaffYes. So that is in the project agreement. So this is in the project agreement with VDOT. And this is standard When you cancel a project, and this is more chartered territory here because this is federal funding. And so this is more similar to the CMAQ funding that we had talked about before. So this is federal funding. Again, it was competitively sought. So there were, you know, 26 projects that did not receive this funding when we did. So this, if we were to cancel this project, this funding would need to be repaid to the Commonwealth.

Stacy HallOkay. and one final question then maybe I can if I think of another one um the sorry my mind is blank for just a second give me one second I forgot my question was so I will share the floor thank you we

Catherine Readcan circle back around councilmember

Thomas PetersonPeterson thanks question about the in the bridge that goes across Acton Creek I think the schematic shows that's 125 foot bridge is that right

David Summersstaffyes that is a three span pre-stressed concrete post tensioned concrete slab being bridge built in early 1980s

Thomas Petersonthe the bridge to be built

David Summersstaffknow that the bridge on Pickett Road

Thomas Petersonokay but the bridge to be built did Did I read the?

Wendy SanfordstaffYes, you did. 125 feet. I'm getting to the 125 feet long.

Thomas PetersonAnd what is the method of construction for that?

Wendy SanfordstaffI would defer to Mr. Sarna.

Sunny SardastaffIt should be, there are different options that we have. One would be to use a Tay's parking lot and a crane. to lift that over and set it. It could come in pieces and be assembled. Like it could be one piece. If it's 125 feet long, it could be in two sections or three sections and set there. So there are some options. They have not all been pinned down right now. We're still in design.

Thomas PetersonAnd thank you. I think I was actually, I should probably have said I was interested more in the design of it. Is this going to be a bridge that has one or more of the large concrete footings on either side of the bridge? Is it anchored with concrete?

Sunny SardastaffI believe that there will be abutments on either side.

Thomas PetersonAnd the width of the bridge?

Sunny Sardastaff14 feet internal span.

Thomas PetersonAnd the surface of the bridge itself?

Sunny SardastaffI'm not 100% sure, but I think it's intended to be the decking is supposed to be concrete.

Thomas PetersonOkay, so it will have decking. And I'm just wondering, there is a bridge on Route 50, or at least parallel to Route 50, just past Barkley on the right, that is not 125 feet long, I don't think, but it sounds like it's similar construction. Is that the model here that we would be using for the bridge?

Sunny SardastaffI have seen that bridge. I would think it would be very similar because it serves a similar purpose. It's not intended for vehicles. for pedestrians and maybe maintenance vehicles, small vehicles, and intended as part of a trail, and probably the same manufacturer. So I would think they'd be very close to, and a similar look.

Thomas PetersonOkay. The Acton Creek at this particular location is a bit wider, I think, than the creek that is off of Route 50. In fact, it tends to split a bit in here. So I guess that would explain why this needs to be 125-foot span because we literally have a longer period of creek and floodplain to cross. I believe you're

Sunny Sardastaffcorrect.

Thomas PetersonOkay. When this was done, I think I understand that this was either originated and or reviewed by PRAB. What about public outreach? was there any specific outreach and involvement with neighbors in this area over the alignment of the trail

Wendy Sanfordstaffwhen this project was initiated it was managed from the Parks Department and our former Parks Director Kathy Salgado led the outreach for this project so she's no longer with the city and so I do have some of her files but I cannot speak specifically to what what specific outreach he did I know that there was a public hearing held there was not a committee like for the George Snyder trail for this project and there are not as many adjacent neighbors so I don't know if the outreach was as extensive but again I was not managing the project at that time so I cannot speak directly to that

Thomas Petersonokay the so the Western Street sidewalk already there already used, not going away. I guess a basic question is whether that was examined as an option and whether it was examined with public input around it. And I ask partly because if there is concern about safety for that, the question is what is the plan to improve that safety? Because it sounds like that is going to remain in place and the safety issues with it are going to remain in place and still need attention. Is that fair?

Wendy SanfordstaffThe issues are that the sidewalk is narrow. And so this is just a photo of what that sidewalk looks like. It's curb abutting right over that bridge. I wouldn't say that there are safety issues. I would say that it is not a comfortable situation. And if we're looking at a shared use path, which is what this is intended as a trail, that this current sidewalk does not meet those guidelines. And again, the reason for the trail, the genesis of this, was that it was a missing link in an off-street network that accommodates both pedestrians and bicyclists. So if we're looking at it through that lens, we look at the sidewalk on the bridge and look at it as not being sufficient for that purpose. I wouldn't say that it is not a safe

sidewalk. It is certainly a sidewalk and it exists and people use it. But when we're talking about putting both bikes and pedestrians in that location and filling the gap in that multimodal why the alignment that is shown was selected. And this was discussed with city council. It was put, there were work sessions held, and then it was put into the city's two-year program and then brought before the city council for an endorsement of funding. So there were opportunities to re-examine the alignment. But at that time, the choice was made to proceed with this project due to the reasons I just described.

Thomas PetersonAnd if we just hypothetically took away the lens of putting in place an off-street trail then that would leave either the east or west side as an option and let me just ask again was there any significant attention given to an on-street option to see whether

Wendy Sanfordstaffthere was not in my understanding and looking at this from the beginning is that the intention for the project was for it to be an off-street connection to both the cross county trail and then to connect to the connector trail so there we did not do the engineering evaluation to look at widening the sidewalk on the bridge

Catherine Readokay thank you council member hart chandler and council member hall

Stacey Hardy-Chandlerso the project is about 5.1 million and the funding is about 6.4 million correct So there is funding to account for increases in expenses or because I'm thinking as things you wait five minutes and things are more expensive. Right. So is there the sense that the six point four would cover whatever inflation or resources that are needed to complete it within the three to four year time period that you're looking at?

Wendy SanfordstaffThat is correct. The estimate that we have for the project at this time was just updated, and it is lower than when we had originally looked at this project, which is why we have some additional funding. So I do feel comfortable that this project would come in within the budget that we have.

Stacey Hardy-ChandlerThank you.

Catherine ReadCouncil Member Hull?

Stacy HallThank you. Actually, two questions. if Fairfax Water were to pull out is this something that you think that we would regret doing taking out the extra trees that would not have been done I mean is this we're not dependent on them and they're not dependent on us to do this but if they didn't then we would have to essentially in 10 years as you said consider repaving anyway

Wendy Sanfordstaffso it's a good question and in fact I asked our contact at Fairfax Water I said are you all definitely doing this project and he said we need to do this project And he said, it's shown in our out-year CIP. He said that this main that does not exist today, this would be connecting to a water main on Fairfax Boulevard. He said it is necessary to improve the water service in the city of Fairfax. And he said he could not foresee not doing it. Now, you and I both know that things change. But what he did say is that this is a project that Fairfax Water intends to do. And I've been speaking to him now for almost 10 years about this project. And when we first talked about it, so their plans have never, he's never wavered in that they plan to do this water main installation.

And what he is saying is that using the same alignment is mutually beneficial. And so they're looking at us and saying, you're using this alignment? It's within our benefit to do the same thing so that we don't have to take down additional trees.

David SummersstaffSo I've been dealing with Fairfax Water for a long time. And when they have a project in their CIP, they do it. It's not unusual for them to defer it because what happens is if there's a bad winter and there's a lot of water breaks, they reshuffle their priorities. But Mr. Cotton, who is the head of the design for Fairfax Water, this is a very important piece of infrastructure. And they are going to do this, whether we know if they're going to do it in 10 years they'll do it in eight years depending on if it deteriorates or maybe they'll do it in 12 years but they'll do it okay

Stacy Hallthank you and my last question and forgive me if I'm asking questions that are not in your realm but I know we couldn't do turf fields at face because it was considered of the RPA there and they didn't want the runoff and all of that so I guess I'm just slightly confused that we could do work like this in an rpa and and add in new structures and take out all the trees in what i think would otherwise be a protected area

Wendy Sanfordstafftrails are permitted in the rpa because i know the same question came up for the um george schneider trail right

Stacy Hallwith the recreation superseding the environmental i'm paraphrasing very loosely but

Wendy Sanfordstaffit's sunny do you have something I

Sunny Sardastaffwas going to say the same thing that floodplain and environmentally areas that are preserved have a recreational benefit and trails and activities of this sort are encouraged in these areas, preferred in these areas. Taste Park may be a different situation with a synthetic turf field.

Mary Landispublic commentI can speak to that. Oh, hi. Sorry, I was not going to tell you.

Speaker 10yes so but one of the biggest reasons we did not do turf at face was that we couldn't ensure it so when the if the if the field were to become flooded and damaged it would be very it would be on the city to make those repairs so that was the biggest reason that we did not do turf we also held the field to a certain size so that we wouldn't have to extend too far into the RPA with an athletic field but the turf reasoning is really about ensuring the field

Stacy Hallokay thank you for that clarification and one other question there's no opportunity to leave picket Road to get onto the trail that would be added from picket you'd have to go through the parking lot and loop around or there be an onset

Wendy Sanfordstaffthere's a good that's a good question and I should I should have mentioned that but in the in the sorry councilmember McCullin am I still Can you see? I'm not. Let me show the

Mary Landispublic commentscreen.

Wendy SanfordstaffCan you show me? I'm sorry. No, you're fine. There we go. Thanks. Yeah. I can just go right here. Thanks. Okay. There we go. Okay. At Old Pickett Road, where the signal is, there will be a connection to the trail. okay on the earlier

Melissa Shinaberryclerkby voiceslide okay

Wendy Sanfordstaffso right here on Pickett Road it's hard to see here but there is a connection to the crosswalk and the signal at Old Pickett so if you are on Old Pickett on the sidewalk or crossing at that signal let's say coming from Gateway Park there are it's both a ramp that's following where my cursor is and then there are also stairs that will connect directly to the trail so there is a connection there is a proposed connection from the trail to to picket Road

Susan Kylerpublic commentother

Catherine Readquestions councilmember Peterson the

Thomas Petersonwater main If the trail was not being constructed, would they put asphalt on that?

David SummersstaffTypically what they'll do is they'll restore to what was there. Right. So if there's no trail, then other than they might put some access, a little access road for them to get to it, they would restore what was there when they put in their water main.

Thomas PetersonSo if I understand the current condition of that area where the water main, the existing water main is and where the replacement would be?

Wendy SanfordstaffThere is not a water main there today. There's

Thomas Petersonno water main

Wendy Sanfordstaffthere. There is no water main. This is a new water main that would connect to Fairfax Boulevard.

Thomas PetersonOkay. Well, helpful to know. But that area is in natural vegetation. Correct. Oh. Right. So they would restore to the degree possible of natural vegetation.

Wendy SanfordstaffCorrect. They likely would not replant trees because they would need to be able to access them. That's what they've said to us as well, to keep a 15-foot clear so that when they come in, because the water main would be under the trail.

Sunny SardastaffNo, I just figured instead of getting up and coming up here, I'll just stand here. And that's correct. They would need access for maintenance, and so they would make sure it would be an area that would put it on the mow cycle, and they would constantly mow it and keep it grassed.

Catherine ReadThank you. Councilmember Hardy Chandler

Stacey Hardy-Chandlerso as I understand it there is going to be a disturbance there and we can in 10 years and we need to think long term that disturbance could include a trail off-road trail in addition to payment for invasive species mitigation correct that's included in this whole proposal which is high in that area.

Wendy SanfordstaffCorrect. And so, correct.

Stacey Hardy-ChandlerOkay, so looking at it sort of holistically in terms of what we are getting from this partnership, there are other benefits as well that only fall under this funding or that would fall under this funding.

Wendy SanfordstaffCorrect. So what would be possible is some replanting and invasive species removal, which is also a benefit to help the existing trees remain healthy.

Stacey Hardy-ChandlerWould the installation of the water main by Fairfax County, if there were not a trail, include that mitigation or not?

Wendy SanfordstaffNo. So if Fairfax County were doing this project, or Fairfax Water were doing this project on their own, and the trail were not here, they might utilize a different alignment. But what they've told me is that it would impact trees. And so because of that, they are willing, they are happy to use the city's alignment so that they don't, that there isn't a double impact. impact um but your question was would there be an and would they would not go in and do invasive species management no they would they would take the trees down or do the impact they need they would restore the green area and keep themselves an easement but they would not do um invasive management invasive species management no

Stacey Hardy-Chandlerright and their maintenance trail would not be open to the public it would be a maintenance it would be just amazing

Wendy Sanfordstaffit would just be a grassed area it

Stacey Hardy-Chandlerwouldn't be

Wendy Sanfordstaffpaved

Stacey Hardy-Chandlerno no not paid but it would not be accessible either way what no thank you

Catherine Readother questions councilmember peterson

Thomas Petersonthe um so i gather one of the uh justifications for this is uh bike use and accommodating some anticipated demand for bike use that's why we're or have been developing a shared use path. Is that right?

Wendy SanfordstaffIt's to connect to other multi-use trails.

Thomas PetersonDo we have any study information on the estimated ridership demand? I don't. How many bikes are we talking about here?

Wendy SanfordstaffI don't. I can check to see if the cross-county trail, if Fairfax County has user numbers for that. has but i don't know what the what the daily ridership is on that trail i will tell you that we are are planning to install counters on george snyder trail on this trail and any trails that we install going forward we are planning to put in counters i can certainly inquire as to if there are existing ridership numbers for this

Thomas Petersoni think it would be helpful i'm familiar with the area and certainly the Akatank Trail headed from Blenheim Boulevard down to Thyssen and beyond is very heavily used. My own experience is that there's very little bike use that occurs between Route 50 Fairfax Boulevard and the Akatank Trail. Now, maybe that would change by induced demand with putting this trail in place, assumptions and expectations are around use because it could be a situation where this is anticipating significant new use that does not currently exist and otherwise may not exist in this area. Again, given the situation that exists right now, which it doesn't look, I may be missing it, but it doesn't look like it's used much for biking at all.

It is used very heavily by people who are on foot. In my experience, again, I'm there pretty regularly, and that is inclusive of the trail on the north side of Fairfax Boulevard that then goes to Fairfax Boulevard, crosses over, and then takes it from there. You either go to, you know, scout on the circle or you come across and go down, et cetera. But it's heavily used for foot traffic. The western sidewalk, which has bus stops on it, is also very heavily used by people on foot. So I think it would be helpful to get a sense of what those numbers, the estimated numbers, look like, what the current situation looks like, the baseline and what the expected new numbers are and what's really driving that.

MS.

Catherine ReadOther questions? Council Member O'Quillen, you good? MS.

Rachel McQuillenI'm good. Thank you very much. MS.

Catherine ReadCouncil Member Bates.

Billy BatesThank you. I, so first off, in your opinion, based on the presentation, it looks like there's it would likely not be feasible to implement the western side alignment within the confines of the funding that's been granted?

Wendy SanfordstaffIn my opinion, the engineering has not been done. So I think that there are two significant hurdles. One is the cost, and I think that leads to the second hurdle, which would be the rescoring. Um, so my, my suspicion is that what is required to put something on the West side, um, would exceed the budget that we have mostly due to the engineering required to, to redo a plan and the right of way, which would be, I think, which it would be more than what it is now. And so that it's not accounted for in our budget. Um, and then because of the change in alignment and that increased cost, it would require a rescoring. just don't know if it would rescore. If it exceeds the cost, so part of the scoring is about cost

benefit. And so when you have a higher cost, and I don't know how the benefit would shake out because it's not as direct of a connection. But again, I can't answer these questions. It's difficult to know. But again, the scorecard is there. We can look at it. But again, it would be scored against the projects that were submitted at that time. So if the cost were to go up, I think that that makes a rescoring difficult, but I cannot give you a definitive answer.

Billy BatesSo in terms of the, so let's say that we wanted to try to put forward an alternative for rescoring, and then if that is not accepted, then go back to the original design. Would there be a cost associated with that process of coming up with something and rescoring it within itself that we would have to foot the bill for?

Wendy SanfordstaffIt would be coming up with an alternative concept that has consensus amongst the city council to present to VDOT for consideration of a rescoring. But it would have to be of sufficient detail so that we could come up with a cost estimate. Because when SmartScale reviews a plan, it's about a 15% engineered plan. It has to have enough information so that you can come up with a detailed cost estimate. So it's more than just a sketch. There has to be the same level of work done when we do an application. And so a funding application. Because that's essentially what we're doing. We're redoing a funding application for them to consider. So we would incur the cost of redesigning or resurveying, looking at all of the factors that we look at when we put together a plan,

public input, a vote by the city council, and then bringing it to VDOT for the rescoring. Like I said, with University Drive Extension, it was a year-long process, and I would anticipate that this would be at least that long. again the the design for engine for university drive extension that was an area we had already surveyed we had already looked at everything we were simply changing the way the road was designed within an area that we already had baseline information for if we're talking about a west side alignment this is all new location that we do not have any information about so we would be starting essentially from scratch so on our side alone we're probably looking at a six to nine

nine-month process when we were talking with vdot it took them a year to process thursory scoring it was an incredibly long process so to be conservative i would say we're looking at probably a minimum of 18 months to have an answer from vdot on something that would be rescored and if the answer is no we're back here where we are um and at this point we are very close to construction and again that means higher cost so i just want you to have understand all of the the risks um that may exist if we go forward with a rescoring

David Summersstaffand I just like to add you know looking at the west

Fosterstaffside

David Summersstaffjust

Fosterstafflooking

David Summersstaffat it because of the gray drop you're going to have retaining walls so we'll have to give an estimate of how much the retaining walls would cost we'd have to talk to Columbia pipeline about relocating the gas line if necessary in order to make room for the trail so all those things we would have to get surveyed and come up with a preliminary cost estimate and looking just looking at it visually it looks to me that the construction on the west side would exceed the construction on the east side cost wise

Billy Batesyeah so it would not be feasible to go through that whole process the the surveying the whatever design work is needed just for the rescoring within this funding source is that right we would have to fit the foot the bill for that?

Wendy SanfordstaffCorrect. So we would, we would foot the bill to essentially start from scratch and it would probably be in the realm of a hundred thousand dollars. I'm, I am making that up. So do not quote me on this, but in that realm, um, to do some preliminary engineering work, to understand the feasibility of, of where the under survey to understand where is the, the gas, the gas line, what are we looking at in terms of, um, bridges? What are our options? Um, What would be right of way? And so to come up with a plan that would be sufficient to submit to VDOT, we're looking at likely 100, 150. That's typically what I spend when we're putting together applications for projects. And so that's what I would estimate that this would cost to get to a level of information that you would be able to make a decision.

So about and that would be on the city to do that.

Billy Batesand you also mentioned the potential for increased costs after that delay so is there a danger of potentially you know let's say that we go through that whole rescoring process and it's not accepted and then we go back to the original design that the costs have at that point potentially increased dramatically you know to the point of still again not being feasible within the budget?

Wendy SanfordstaffSo you would be back where we are. I can't speak to that. I don't know what the market's going to do. We do have some wiggle room in our budget, as we were just discussing, that the budget for this project is less than our funding amount, which is good. And so that's a good position to be in. But I can't speak to what would happen to prices. I mean, if they follow the same trend that they have been following, yes, they will increase. I don't know how much, though.

Billy BatesYeah, yeah.

Catherine ReadAll

Billy Batesright. you

Wendy Sanfordstaffsure

Catherine Readso let me just follow up on that too even if it were to be rescored and accepted for the Western side we still have to acquire right-of-way through Foxcroft correct that

Wendy Sanfordstaffis correct so

Catherine Readand we are making assumptions that Foxcroft is not going to have a problem with a shared use path on their wooded berm berms are very controversial in the city as I recall so even if it were to be accepted you have to spend money on the right-of-way you have to now do community outreach to Foxcrop to say well we had a trail that we're building over a water main that's not near a residential area but now we've changed our mind and we're going to put it right next to your homes so we have to start thinking in terms of why this was originally done this way and even if this were to be rescored and accepted after 18 months we don't necessarily have buy-in by putting it on the western side which is why I think the eastern

this location was chosen back when it was chosen. So these projects are very complicated. They really are. There's nothing simple about any of this. You know, I think this design was put here for a reason. I love that everyone has the opportunity to ask questions, and we have all the engineers and everyone to answer the questions. But to wholesale up and try to change this to something else not only has unintended consequences that we're not prepared to deal with, monetary or otherwise but I will point out that by the time this happens people on this council may be replaced by other people on this council who have different ideas and I'm going to keep bringing that home to everyone too is that there's not a lot that you can do in two years and so going through this

whole exercise the additional expense the unknowns the community outreach the problem with berms and right-of-way acquisition and then somebody comes and and there's there's people on this dice who are like yeah we don't want that we have to be practical these are long-term projects it takes a long time to design get funding for and build these things and I would really ask all of us to think about the practicality and the feasibility of the investments this that have been made so far and what we're looking for as far as timelines and actually getting these things constructed for the benefit of the community I will also add having sat with the Fairfax County trails and streams committee because they ask us every year to come and present to them

about what we're doing in the city that there's a lot of support for this picket road connector because of the cross-county trail this is something the county is like it makes sense they they don't understand why we are having a discussion because for them it makes sense to have this really short connector connect these major trails that are well used and so they're perplexed by by what our discussions are so keep in mind yeah we're an independent city and we're 6.2 square miles but we're right in the middle of a county and they have also built things for the enjoyment of our residents and their residents and connectivity is really key to making this work for the whole region so I just want to like have my two cents worth before we go on are other questions on

this side councilmember Hardy Chandler

Stacey Hardy-Chandlerif we come under budget can that budget can the over it to be used for maintenance or for other you can only be used for the initial construction correct okay

Catherine Readuh council member based and council member peterson

Billy Batesyeah and actually kind of a follow-up to that um the mayor's comments as far as the uh long-term tree impact it was mentioned that the uh you know when they do the uh water water line work they would not be replanting all the trees because they need access to that project is that do they not replant anything when they do that or is it like a maybe just a certain percentage of what they take out or is that known

David Summersstaffthat they won't plant anything in their easements they'll just put grass seed and straw and let the grass grow and of course they'll need access to the water main so the the only scenario that I could see Fairfax water planting a tree is if they needed to do some work on private property and had an agreement with the property owner that they would plant something but typically when they do work in their easement one they don't want tree roots impacting the joints of the water line and they want access so they'll typically just seed and straw.

Billy BatesYeah, and it looks like the vast majority of the trees slated for removal here would overlap with that project. So that's something I wasn't aware of or had neglected to consider. So very good to know.

Thomas PetersonCouncilmember Peterson. Going back to the examination of an alternative. So I hear that the development and submission of something for actual rescoring is a protracted process. But I also wonder if there is some sort of preliminary and much lower cost, much more rapid determination of what that might look like. And I ask because it sounds as if there really hasn't been any examination beyond discussions like this. And there was it's not clear there was public outreach. It may be also that the outreach occurred. I don't know the exact lineup of timing here during covid. So that could have been a complicating factor. But it seems like sort of an obvious omission to that occurred to at least have some kind of a look at this to get a little bit better sense than have we have right now.

The other reason that that might be beneficial is if this western sidewalk continues to be used heavily and maybe used even more heavily and if it is, as you say, uncomfortable. There may be support in the community for doing something about that to make it more comfortable and now would be an opportune time to ask the question of whether that might be a sensible thing to do combined with some examination of what the ridership estimates much biking is anticipated. So it just sounds like there are some questions that haven't quite gotten answered yet. And without going the full distance to an 18-month resubmission effort, I just wonder whether there's some additional information here that might give us a better sense of

whether or not we want to try to explore any of these before we lock into what is going to be, I gather, a very long-term decision here.

Wendy SanfordstaffMS. There certainly can be a discussion with VDOT if there is a consensus from the City Council as to what we are discussing with VDOT. If I went to them and said, are we rescoring, it is clearly laid out in the VDOT Smart Scale Manual, what is involved with a rescoring. That's the information that I took for this presentation. They would need a drawing. So, correct, in terms of what type of modification are we considering. So, there could certainly be a preliminary conversation to say, this is an alternative that we're considering. And then they would opine on that, but most likely the question they're going to say is, how much is it going to cost, and is it meeting the scope that you intended it to meet?

And then they would go through that rescoring. And so, but in order for that conversation to happen, I would need to have an understanding as to what is the will of this body in terms of an alternative.

Thomas PetersonAnd in terms of what would be needed by VDOT, if I understand it correctly, basically at some very preliminary level they need a map that indicates utilities and right-of-way for an alignment

Wendy Sanfordstaffso I would say step one would be just understanding the alignment okay so because I'm not I'm not actually clear even from this conversation are we talking about a widening of the sidewalk on the east side of the bridge are we talking about an entirely new pedestrian bridge on the west so I'm not sure exactly what the will of this group is if there is to go in terms of if we're taking an alternative what that alternative even would be and so we would then we could do some very high level look at what that would be before we would have a conversation with VDOT but ultimately for them to do a rescoring they would need the same type of materials that we've submitted for an application I

David Summersstaffthink a couple questions they'll have if we gave him a preliminary sketches they're going to look at the topography and they're going to ask about retaining walls they're look at the utilities and ask about utility location and they're going to look at the floodplain and ask about impact on Foxcroft and they're going to look at the right-of-way needed for that that'll be needed from Foxcroft so those are the type of questions they're gonna they're gonna be asking when we give them a preliminary sketch

Catherine ReadMr. Foster.

FosterstaffJust from a process, excuse me, from a process perspective, if council doesn't have any more questions, I'm certainly not, this is a work session, so we're not necessarily looking for council to take any action this evening. I would just remind you that the current official council action is to not continue with working any more work on the trail as currently proposed so until council takes some type of affirmative action to direct us to do something whether it's to restart and continue on or to do something different we are going to still be in this paused mode and at some point VDOT will be looking to us to ask us what are we doing it's been two and a half months roughly since you took the pause action

And so if there are other things, information that you're wanting that we can provide, we'll certainly do so. To Mr. Peterson's point, I think certainly the high-level look, you've gotten the answers from that perspective. And, you know, Mr. Summers is, you know, a PE. He's been doing, you know, bridge and road work for his whole career. and so certainly has the knowledge of what it takes knowing what the right-of-way utilities etc on that western side so without any actual drawings we know that it's going to likely be more just because we can see what the impacts would be with that alternative alignment but we can certainly look at it to get something further but all i just wanted to reiterate is council

So as a body, we'll need to take some type of affirmative action for us to stop the pause that we're currently in. So, again, not necessarily expecting you to do that this evening because you're discussing this in a work session. But at some point in the future, we will need official council action.

Catherine ReadI agree. And I think we're all cognizant of the fact that we're down one council member. So Council Member Amos is not here. And so I think that we would be reluctant actually necessarily to direct staff at this time. Council Member Hall. I

Stacy Halljust have, excuse me, one more question. The bridge itself that is on Pickett, that's roughly 50 years old or thereabouts. Will that need to be replaced at some point in the future, and would that provide an opportunity to add additional pedestrian safe zones?

David Summersstaffthe bridge we look at the bridge every year we do have proposed in our CIP some improvements to the surface because there's been somewhere to the surface but the bridge overall is in sound condition it's a pre-stressed box beam bridge as far as widening the bridge for pedestrian that could be evaluated there would need to be a feasibility to study to see if the impact on the grading you Because of the wing walls and the foundations to widen the bridge, it could actually be more disruptive to widen the highway bridge. And also, anytime you widen the bridge and you tie in to an old bridge, there's a risk of causing some distress to the original section of the bridge. So I think you would need a pretty good feasibility and

structural evaluation study just to see if it would be a good idea to widen the bridge.

Stacy Halltrying to visualize it a little bit too if if if that were to make sense and we would need to i assume take down some sort of trees on the eastern side that would presumably run along picket there in order to be able to widen the bridge regardless yes

David Summersstaffthere would need to be a you know hydraulic study for the floodplain and you would be doing some excavation in the creek because you know the bridge crosses the creek and you'd basically be widening or extending the opening of the bridge

Wendy Sanfordstaffand also if I remember correctly when we were looking at this alignment there is a high-pressure gas line I believe that runs parallel to picket on the east side on the on the on the east side of the road very close to that sidewalk so there's a sidewalk and then there's a guardrail and then right on the other side if I remember correctly there were some there's a high-pressure gas line in that area

Sunny Sardastaffokay

Wendy Sanfordstaffso there are some constraints there it wouldn't so even if we could widen the bridge we are constrained and how and what we can do adjacent to that sidewalk that is currently on Pickett. We did look at this because we walked out there, and because of the utilities there, we were constrained with widening the existing sidewalk on Pickett.

Sunny SardastaffThere is a Washington gas transmission main, and so there are a lot of restrictions of what you can and cannot do while working over a transmission main.

Stacy HallOkay. Thank you. And this is why I'm an accountant that just asks some questions sometimes. yeah

Wendy Sanfordstaffbut I do remember that we did look at that because we and this was a number of years ago and so I apologize that I'd forgotten we were walking and looking at the option of taking the project closer to picket and because of that that gas line we could not get closer to the roadway there and so we would have the same issue if we were widening the sidewalk and that we would not be able to widen further and there's also a significant drop right after the sidewalk that goes down

Catherine Readokay any other questions at this time we are aware per our city manager that we do need to direct staff councilmember Amos is not here councilmember McQuillan is remote so I think we need to look at coming together at a future meeting in deciding at the body deciding how they want to direct staff does that sound agreeable to everyone on the dais councilmember Peterson are all right with you all right so we've got all the information we will regroup and we have all of the members here together and we will get back without too much delay in direct staff on unpausing or doing something different with the picket road trail thank you very much thank

Wendy Sanfordstaffyou

Melissa Shinaberryclerkby voiceour next item is a presentation update on bag tax and fy26 priorities i'm going to recognize melissa mcdonald our environmental sustainability coordinator to provide the staff presentation

Melissa McDonaldstaffAll right, can everyone see the screen okay? I'll minimize. Okay. Good evening. So for tonight's work session, I'll be providing a presentation and overview of the disposable plastic bag tax program to date, as well as solicit feedback and comments for fiscal year 26 spending priorities. The staff here with me tonight is Director of Public Works, David Sommer, and our Sustainability Stephanie Kupka here with me tonight as well. Oh, is it a click? Maybe not. Okay. So to provide you with some background, the City of Fairfax enacted the disposable plastic bag tax January 1 of 2023. This enacts a five-cent tax on disposable plastic bags used at point of sale for convenience stores, grocery stores, and drug stores.

In the City of Fairfax, we have 36 businesses that are under those categories, though not every business enacts a disposable plastic bag tax, such as Lidl and Trader Joe's, which do not provide disposable plastic bag tax at point of sale. So programmed to date, we've received $252,251 for total revenue, and we have spent $144,316 to date. We've averaged about 9,300 that we have seen a decline from when we first enacted the disposable plastic bag tax in fiscal year 24 to now. Our previous average in fiscal year 24 was 9.3, sorry, 9,300 per month and we are now seeing about 9,100 per month. We are seeing a decline in the disposable plastic bags purchased or the tax that's imposed on them but we have been seeing a pretty steady average around many 300 per month

with some spikes in the holiday season for all the back-to-school shopping as well as the holidays and all of that shopping so with the disposable plastic bag tax we are required under the ordinance to spend it in very specific ways the four categories we are only allowed to use the revenue for our environmental cleanups providing educational programs designed to reduce environmental waste litigating mitigating pollution and litter as well bags. So some of the programs we've enacted to date under the state guidelines include distributing reusable bags, our bi-annual community cleanup programs, supplementing the city jobs program, as well as two public art pieces the Draper Drive mural as well as the recycled sculpture that's currently at

the in the lobby here at City Hall. So to provide you some more details on these programs, program to date we've distributed more than 20,000 reusable reusable bags to residents and with our community partners. Many nonprofits in the area, including the Lamb Center, Facet, Rebuild Together, and some of our faith-based organizations have requested reusable bags for their programs, which we have graciously provided for them. And everyone loves these reusable bags. They've been very popular. I've seen them all around the city and at grocery stores. So it's wonderful to see that these bags are truly getting into the hands of residents and residents who are most impacted by this five-cent tax on the disposable plastic bags.

Similarly, our community cleanup events are very popular community sewer tips events. We've held six cleanups programmed to date and have accumulated more than 5,000 volunteer hours in the city, which has resulted in more than 14,000 pounds of litter being removed from our parks, our streams, and our trails. Residents who participate in this may be able to earn stormwater utility credits for their work in helping to keep our city clean, as well as students can earn volunteer hours for their work and dedication. This past year we've also supported the City Jobs Program with $60,000 to supplement the cost of their program. This resulted in 45 four-hour workdays which were funded through the disposable plastic

bag tax. And the work of the City Jobs Program, we've also seen about 1,500 bags of litter being removed from our parks and streams and we've helped numerous individuals with a job in the city. so with that our current financial summary program to date as i mentioned previously we've received 252 251 revenue to date we've spent about 144 000 of it which leaves us with a remaining 107 934 000 of unallocated funding we are restricted with how we use this funding per the state guidelines so this money has kind of just been floating waiting to be allocated staff are proposing to this council to use a hundred thousand dollars to offset the cost of the trash and recycling cart cip project which is rolling out later this fall so to give you a quick update on

the trash and recycling cart project in september 64 64 gallon trash recycling carts are being distributed to all households who receive curbside collection services these carts are 64 gallons They are wheeled, so they're easy to access to and from your driveway. They are littered to prevent windblown litter, as well as prevent contamination from rain and snow events. And these carts will drastically increase worker safety and efficiency. So this project, the overall cost is $1.3 million. We have received a grant from the Recycling Partnership of $102,000, and with the proposed allocation of $100,000 of the plastic bag tax revenue, the total cost or the remaining cost of the project would be a little less than 1.1 million

and with the carts being distributed there's a couple myriad of opportunities and refinements that we can look into once the carts are enacted such efficiencies that could be looked at and observed would be different collection methodologies limitations on what is collected at the curb and how container policies alternative forms of collection just to name a few so there's lots of opportunities that could be that the carts could provide if the city wanted to look in that direction and staff will always continue to evaluate how we can make operational efficiencies improvements in our collection services so looking ahead a little bit to fiscal year 26 and where we're at now so we've seen an average monthly revenue of nine thousand three hundred dollars we are

projecting in fiscal year 26 to have a little over a hundred and ten thousand dollars in revenue in fiscal year 26 our approved operating budget is fifty leaves us with the remaining unallocated projected revenue of $61,600. With this unallocated revenue that we are anticipating to receive, we'll come back and do a work session around this time next year to get your feedback and priorities for how to spend this looking ahead to fiscal year 27. So with our operating budget of $50,000, which was approved this year, staff are gonna continue to do the programs we have been doing, which include the distribution of reusable bags, funding our community cleanup Funding the city jobs program specifically for invasive removal events with the sprout grant being funding being pulled back

The $20,000 will work specifically to do invasive removal work days Using the city jobs program as well as ongoing education and outreach And with that, I know we throw a lot at you. I will take your questions comments feedback

Catherine ReadOkay questions comments councilmember Peterson

Thomas PetersonThe last time we were together, we addressed you as Melissa Panette. Correct. I believe we are now addressing you as Melissa McDonald. Correct. Are congratulations in order? Yes. Congratulations. Thank you. Wonderful. Just a couple quick questions. One of the overriding goals here is not just cleanup, it's prevention. Do you have any sense of how much a dent you're making through this program and beyond that at reducing the amount of deposition of this kind of plastic, but beyond that deposition of other kinds of plastics?

Melissa McDonaldstaffThat data is really hard to get. So we have seen a reduction in the revenue from when we first enacted the disposable plastic bag tax in 2023 to now. It's been fairly consistent with some spikes and dips here and there. And it has decreased slightly. But in terms of, are you asking about how much litter is still in the environment? Yeah, how

Thomas Petersonmuch less trash are people throwing out that finds its way into the system?

Melissa McDonaldstaffThat is information I don't have. We don't do any sort of litter counts or floatable counts. The best we can pull from is the nonprofit Clean Fairfax does count floatables in certain areas of Fairfax County. We can use their data as an estimate of how much litter we are seeing in the city.

Thomas PetersonBut it sounds like we're expecting that because we're reducing the number of bags that are used because people are paying a tax on them, that that's that many fewer bags that will end up as litter. Correct. So that's the base assumption here. Correct. Okay. And I guess the only other dimension of that is plastics at large are a big issue here, and this is a plastic bags tax. Is this program, or are you otherwise, trying to build awareness and incentives for people to reduce the amount of plastic they use that will find its way into the litter system?

Melissa McDonaldstaffYes. Through various mechanisms, we're constantly pushing out content for how to reduce and reuse waste, whether it be recycling, whether it be reducing the amount of single-use plastics. you use. Reusable bags are one option. Reusable water bottles and tumblers are another. So we do constantly push out contents for how to reduce your waste as a household via newsletters, social media, sharing content. I hope that answered your question.

Catherine ReadCouncil Member Hardy Chandler.

Stacey Hardy-ChandlerSo kudos to you for this, not only the wedding personally, but the program. I think that what you're instituting is really helpful for our community in terms of the education and I'm particular to the jobs program and all of that. The combination of the cost and the cute bags have discouraged me from using plastic bags, so at least there's reduction at my house, I can say that. Your question though tonight is about the allocation of those funds to offset the carts, correct? And so I'm curious to know, and I think I've heard some questions about, if you already have 64-gallon recycling and garbage carts, what would happen under those circumstances? Do those need to be replaced? Tell us a little bit more about that program,

which appears to be the target of the feedback you're requesting tonight.

Melissa McDonaldstaffSure. resident can do with their existing trash and recycling containers of course they can keep it we currently provide 18 gallon recycling tubs i personally have one upstairs that i use for glass that i am saving to take to the glass purple container so residents can keep those by all means and use it for glass recycling for electronic recycling for a box of donations to eventually take when it gets full as a storage container so the 18 gallon bins you know i'm sure residents will find a use for them the existing trash receptacles whether they be 64 gallon or other we are offering a take-back recycling program. So if residents want to dispose of their existing trash or recycling containers,

we are offering a take-back program for those. They will be recycled at our recycling facility, waste management out in Starling, Virginia, to be recycled and repurposed.

Stacey Hardy-ChandlerAnd can you talk a little bit more about the recommendation to offset the costs for those as opposed to investing in your other excellent programs?

Melissa McDonaldstaffWe are constrained by what the state allows us to do. other areas that fit under those four requirements that we could allocate this funding to and we're always open to hear feedback from council if you would rather go in a different direction stormwater projects will will qualify because they are reducing litter and pollution whether it be erosion and sediment control or actual litter some stormwater projects may apply i would just need to hear the feedback from you guys if you wanted to allocate the around a hundred thousand dollars to a different program and just make sure it aligns with the state requirements so it is an option to look at different projects

Stacey Hardy-Chandlerokay thank you

Catherine Readcouncilmember Hall

Mary Landispublic commentthank you congrats to you thank you

Stacy Hallso if I did the math right it's five cents per plastic bag correct correct so we're talking about residents or people who shop in the city using 186,000 plastic bags per month

Melissa McDonaldstaffso there's a little bit of a caveat with the state ordinance so it's five cents per plastic bag one cent goes back to the retailer who is imposing the tax whether it be the grocery store drugstore convenience store the four cents would go back to the city minus a state administration percentage and we do not know what that percentage is so we are assuming it might be three and a half cents maybe that come back to us um but that information is unknown exactly how much the state takes out for their administrative percentage

Stacy Hallokay so that would make then the total number of bags more less less less less okay well that's good so we're using less than 186 000 bags yeah so much for the accountant conversation before um so i am open to using the 100 000 here i think my my one question that i don't know that we've still fully resolved and little bit outside of this is I know that there's been some concerns from HOAs and other neighborhoods that don't have the capacity to store something like this are we still working through those situations and second question none of our trucks are currently mounted in which it would the drivers are still going to need to lift the cans and toss them into the garbage truck itself even with the new things right now right incorrect so

Melissa McDonaldstaffthe our current trucks we have uh eight ton rear loaders so the rear loaders in the back they currently kind of just get heaped toe into the back of the trucks for trash recycling but the carts are equipped with the metal lift bar and the trucks do have a lift gate so the trucks will manually or hydraulically lift the trash recycling carts into the back of the truck

Stacy Hallokay so in theory we will be helping our workers backs hopefully by not having to lift as many containers on a daily basis the

David Summersstaffworker will have to wheel the can to the truck and then the truck will lift it

Stacy Hallokay is this gonna save them time add time or is it time neutral it's

David Summersstaffdefinitely gonna save some back injuries and sick time

Stacy Hallyeah

David Summersstaffand people get hurt so but

Stacy Halli mean as far as like collection and

David Summersstaffi think well i think once uh this gets rolling i some overtime.

Melissa McDonaldstaffI like that. Yeah, it'd be more efficient collection services for our workers. It could reduce staff time. I would anticipate the first month or two of the rollout for our workers just to get accustomed to it and then, you know, give them a couple weeks. These guys are fantastic individuals and they can do anything in all sorts of weather events. It would be more operationally efficient for using the liftgate of the trash recycling carts.

Stacy HallOkay. Well, just saving their backs and their arms and all of that is a great opportunity as well. so back to the hoas and things is

Melissa McDonaldstaffthat so i've talked with numerous hoas i've gone to visit a few of them at their meetings and i have scheduled to go to a few more um right now the way the project is is all single family households that receive trash recycling services will be getting the 64 gallon trash recycling carts

Catherine Readokay thank you um council member mcquillen

Rachel McQuillenHi, thank you, Mayor Reed. So my question is pretty similar. Can you explain how these cans will increase worker safety and efficiency? I understand you just kind of explained it, but I've been waiting for a while to ask my question. So I'd like a little bit more clarification and then also what residents can do if they don't want one of these cans or what alternatives or options they'll have at that point?

Melissa McDonaldstaffSure. So to touch upon the first part of that question of operational efficiencies and how we will do our collection services better. So as Mr. Summers has mentioned, current operations are the trash and recycling, all of our crew members on the back of the trucks. There's one driver, two in the back of the truck. So the two laborers in the back of the truck will go to each side of the household, walk over to the recycling bin, pick it up, walk it to the truck, and dump it in. put the 18-gallon bin or other can back. Similar for trash, if there's a trash bag inside of it, they'll sometimes lift the trash bag or not. They have to walk the trash can over and lift it, heave-ho it into the back of the truck and put it back.

And they do this down every residential street, Monday through Friday. This is strenuous work in all sorts of weather conditions. And as we know, our trash and recycling guys are complete superheroes in what they do. With the carts, they can be easily rolled from the curb to the back of the truck. attached to the lift gate and the truck will do the work for them so there's less manual lifting they're not keep hauling anything into the back of the truck straining their backs picking anything heavy up the truck will be doing the most of the work as well as the the wheels on the trash and recycling carts will also be doing the bulk of the work um so i hope that touches up as touches upon the efficiency part of your question

Rachel McQuillenyes so we're going from three employees who currently lift the cans up themselves in and dump them into the truck from three it's going to go to no employees having to lift the cans because they can roll them and it's going to be less employees per truck correct well

David Summersstaffright now if somebody puts something out at the curb that's not in one of these containers we still pick it up so there will still be some lifting but the majority you know So these containers won't need to be lifted. They can be attached to the truck. And just so you understand, it's not unusual for one of my refuse workers, when they reach their mid-40s, to basically have to retire because of back disc deterioration from working for 20 years on the back of a trash truck lifting trash cans. So this will be much better for our workers. I believe it'll help with the risk management, injuries, and health insurance costs. And like I mentioned before, I think once this program gets rolling, we may see some reductions in overtime needed because they really are in the groove with this.

Melissa McDonaldstaffExcellent. Thank you. And then to touch upon the second part of your question about opting out, the way the project was written, there is no opt-out option for the trash and recycling carts. every household that receives curbside collection services will be given a 64 gallon trash and recycling container if an opt-out option is something the council is interested in i would need that directive to implement that program there would be some financial costs we would have to give back some of the grant funding from the recycling partnership if we did an opt-out option based on their tiered grant funding but the way the project was written there is not currently an opt-out option for the trash and recycling containers that are coming this fall

David SummersstaffMelissa, you have talked to other jurisdictions that have offered. Can you talk about that?

Melissa McDonaldstaffSure. So across the country, 64-gallon trash and recycling carts is pretty standard practice. In more rural locations, it's up to 96 gallons for trash and recycling, just based on frequency of collection. The City of Fairfax provides curbside collection services once a week for all single-family households. The 64 gallon containers were selected to increase recovery and incentivize recycling. We have seen in our recycling an increase in cardboard and a decrease in every other material. It's lots of boxes, lots of Amazon packages, lots of those things you get delivered to your door. So we have seen an increase in mainly boxes that are taking up the bulk of recycling. So 64 gallon containers for recycling were specifically chosen to increase recycling

behavior and the the lid especially for recycling will drastically help with any sort of weather events and wind we see recyclables float all over the place they are getting into storm drains they are getting into people's yards and our crew members will actually pick them up off the curb and pick up pieces of individual recycling from the streets on wind days and heavy weather events so that's what the 64 gallons comes from across the country every jurisdiction does their recycling and trash collection a little bit differently for those who have implemented carts, there's many ways to do it, but the big one is, you know, everyone gets a trash and recycling cart and you're standardizing collection via

the two provided containers. Or there's an opt out option where the jurisdiction or locality will say, you know, try it out for two, three months. And if you still don't want it after this date, we'll come and take it back. But residents do have to try it out. And if an opt out option is something this council is interested in, I would recommend giving them all to residents, let them have it for two, three months. We'll pick a date. And if they still don't want it, then we'll do a form and come take it back.

Rachel McQuillenExcellent. That's great to know that that's an option. Thank you. I do have one more question, but this is in pertaining to the bag tax. Okay. So in the staff analysis from July, 2022, it showed that there would be a potential of disproportionately impacting low-income residents and large families it was estimated 18 to 75 dollars per year would be an added cost has the city assessed whether reusable bag distribution and the outreach efforts that we've we've already put in have adequately targeted these groups is

Melissa McDonaldstaffthere a set analysis on it or data no but we have worked with countless community partners and faith-based organizations to get reusable bags into their programs, whether this be a food bank, a clothing drive, feminine hygiene products drive, the Toys for Tot initiatives, the Giving Tree at Sherwood. We have made a dedicated effort to get these reusable bags in the hands of families and residents who are most impacted by the five-cent tax on disposable plastic bags.

Rachel McQuillenWonderful. Thank you. I appreciate you going over the have done and who you've i'd actually like a little bit more detail about that um you don't have to provide it right now but maybe in a follow-up that would be great thank you so much i appreciate your time thank you

Catherine Readcouncilmember hall

Stacy Hallto your housekeeping point about the amazon boxes my husband and i we live on a narrow street where there's no sidewalks um where is the most appropriate place to put your trash and recycling is it on your lawn if you don't have a sidewalk or a curb is it in the street and also where do you suggest people put their leaves on their yard or in the street

Melissa McDonaldstaffthat is two good questions so for curbside collection services our crew members are fantastic you could leave it in the middle of your driveway and they're still going to come and collect it anywhere near the curb out of the way of mailboxes especially for mail delivery and UPS deliveries outside of away from fire hydrants and then he they do fall over and get into the storm drains obviously not blocking parked cars or street parking so really anywhere against the curb or slightly in your driveway is fine on your lawn is also fine it wouldn't make a big difference to our crew members when they pick it up

David Summersstaffyeah i would say we would prefer if you put it in the right-of-way because in my 23 years i have incidences where if something's on private property like an old lawn share we don't know if it's just there if it's trash so i would say try and keep it to the you know the edge of the pavement the curb between the sidewalk and the curb where the degress utility strip is because we know that's right of way and we know that once that trash is in the right of way we can get it and we don't have to be concerned

Stacy Hallokay so just to clarify the right of way for people putting trash out means it can still be on your own property that you think is your property but is technically next And then when it comes to leaves, if people put leaves in their own yard at the right-of-way at the end, not in the road, those will still be collected. They do not need to be in the road where cars drive. Is that a

David Summersstaffcorrect statement? We would prefer people not to cover the sidewalk with leaves. Typically, the right-of-way line is behind the back of the sidewalk. So you have the sidewalk. If you have sidewalk, the back of the sidewalk, usually there's another foot. That's the right-of-way. if you don't have sidewalk a resident could estimate about five six feet from the edge of the pavement of the road is city right-of-way

Stacy Hallokay but the big picture there is we don't really need these things in the road we don't want them in the road

David Summersstaffwe definitely don't want them near where a vehicle could hit them perfect

Stacy Hallthank you very much we will remind you all when it comes to leave season

Catherine Readother questions or comments council member Bates

Billy BatesUh, so regardless of the potential for an opt out option, you know, cross, cross that bridge and we come to it. Um, would it be possible for someone to, you know, regardless of whether or not they opt out? Um, you mentioned that they could keep their, you know, the current currently used receptacles and that, uh, you all have to collect whatever is out there. would they have the option of putting that out instead if they find that the uh yeah the newly issued ones are a bit difficult to use

Melissa McDonaldstaffsure so currently we do not have any sort of container policy that says you can't put out more than a bunch of things on the curb we have seen countless things put on the curb mountains of stuff multiple trash containers um so currently residents can put out most things on the curb and it will get collected so if a resident throws a giant party and they have a bunch of trash they could put out a single trash can and multiple bags of trash they can put out 10 trash cans you know they could put out realistically if it's on the curb it will get collected that's how our current operations run which is not very efficient and it's very costly for our workers and just for the general disposal fees of trash and recycling

David SummersstaffRight. The debris needs to be created by the occupants of the house. We don't pick up contractor debris. Somebody hires somebody to take a tree down, they have to have that contractor take the tree debris away. Somebody hires a contractor to improve their kitchen or remodel their house, they have to pay that contractor to take the debris away. Typically, the way we enforce the ordinance, because the ordinance is somewhat loose, people who live in a house have to create that debris and that is what we'll pick up there like Melissa said there really isn't a quantity limit which is something we may need to look at into the future just because the cost of disposal of trash is very high so it's something we'll look in the future but

as far as enforcing and trying to limit people looking for loopholes with debris the occupant of the home needs to create that waste for us to pick it up

Stefanie Kupkastaffby voiceright I also wanted to note that the the residents existing trash and recycling containers if they have a larger cart those could be put a sticker on it or put a marking on it and turn it into a yard waste container as you know you can't put yard waste in a plastic bag so they could use those existing containers that they have and turn them into yard waste containers so that's another use of their current trash and recycling containers

Melissa McDonaldstaffyeah and with the the carts rolling out in september each resident will get the two carts and then each one will have a information packet which contains an updated service guide of our curbside collection services an updated recycling magnet as well as two yard waste only stickers to incentivize residents to transition their existing trash and recycling receptacles into a yard waste receptacle.

Stefanie Kupkastaffby voiceAnd just to note, that packet we look to finalize at the end of this month. So if the council is interested in providing an opting out option, that we'd like to have a little flyer in there that gives information on that. So if it's possible to get some guidance on that tonight, or by the end of the month, that would be great.

Catherine Readokay other questions again I think councilmember Amos is not here but he's gonna catch up on all of this I mean I've heard that people are interested in possibly an opt-out but I think we also agree with your suggestion that people need to try it before they opt out of not having it because these were designed to be with the property correct I mean that this is not that we're giving the homeowner these carts we're providing carts that stay with the house no matter who moves in or who moves out and when it gets sold the carts stay with the property and so that's something for our residents to keep in mind is that this is for the it's for the efficient collection of solid waste but it's also something that's intended to be an amenity to your property provided by the

Mr. Foster.

FosterstaffThank you, Mayor. Just a couple of quick things. First, just to hopefully get some clarity. I think the ask or I think the way we presented it, we showed you the suggested spend of 100 towards the carts. If there are no objections, that's what we will do. It doesn't necessarily require a vote. Just want to, I'm seeing head nods. I just want to make sure that nobody's objecting to the use of those bag tax funds in that manner, expense. Is that a fair... That's what I'm taking from this discussion. I want to make sure that it's in fact correct. Council Member McQuillen, do you agree with that?

Rachel McQuillenYes, I do agree.

Philip LaTassapublic commentOkay,

Fosterstaffthank you. It seems that we have consensus on that. So that's one thing we need to get answered. The other thing I would just say, just in regards to, and I know we sort of, the presentations on the bag tax, we sort of diverged into talking about just sort of general trash collection and all the things that surround Keep in mind, while we want to certainly be flexible and responsive to our citizens, one of the main reasons for doing this, you know, sort of uniformity, but we're talking about, you know, worker safety, efficiency, et cetera. If you have an opt-out, you are working against the efficiency and the safety and all of the things that this program is trying to do. So I'm not saying we couldn't do it or shouldn't do it,

that that's one of the reasons we're doing this the other thing I would just point out is that if you recall from the bunch all of the budget discussions in our budget open house etc two cents of every tax dollar not real estate tax every combined aggregate tax dollars that we raise is what funds our curbside trash recycling program so it is a robust program but there is a cost involved and so one of the things that we can look at and we've started some preliminary investigation is with these containers might provide the option of doing some automated collection automated collection only requires one employee and that's the person who drives the truck because there's a mechanical arm that picks up the can and empties it as an example we don't know I

mean that's very preliminary but that's something we can look at and see that be savings in that regard certainly worker safety etc but if we if folks don't have these style carts and we're allowing them to put out bags or other random cans etc a program like that would not work so there are other things at play and one of the reasons we are moving towards the sort of uniformity of cans and to I think councilmember Hall asked a question about HOAs and we're certainly aware of that we actually I think have a meeting either next week or in the next couple of weeks to deal with a specific HOA that has reached out to us try and see what we can you know to talk about that and you know see if we come up with some solutions so

I think that doesn't mean that we are so rigid there will be no exceptions and we can't have any any you know other than what is planned but before we sort of start talking about all kinds opt-outs and alternatives I just wanted to remind council that in doing so that then impacts sort of the improvements that this program is intended to bring to not only the staff but to the citizens so just I just wanted to mention that to you thank you

Catherine Readwise counsel and can you just take a moment to talk about the sprout grant you know I think our city does a great job at applying for we get so much grant funding, and a lot of times residents assume that every single thing we do comes out of general fund tax dollars because we don't exactly run a flag up saying this is paid for by grant money. But having some of that money taken back has kind of impeded some of your efforts going forward.

Melissa McDonaldstaffTo what extent? So I think what you're getting at is the, and correct me if I'm wrong, The Sprout Grant, which you are aware of, was funded to help urban forestry basically start their program, write their urban forest master plan, as well as supplement the city jobs program to do invasive removal events. I don't know all the specific details of the Sprout Grant, but it was a big loss for the city when that funding got rolled back. So using the disposable plastic bag tax funds to helping to kind of reinvigorate those programs that were cut. specifically $20,000 are being proposed in the fiscal year 26 operating funds to basically allocate that to the city jobs program specifically for invasive removal work days which would just

kind of help bridge that gap of the sprout funding that was lost and using the revenue that we currently have and it meets the state guidelines of what we can spend it for

Catherine Readwell kudos to the staff for figuring out ways to make it all work and reallocate the funds we have That's an excellent example of bootstrapping our way through our current fiscal environment.

Stacey Hardy-ChandlerAny other questions before we say thank you and good night?

Catherine ReadAll right, thank you and good night.

Melissa Shinaberryclerkby voiceOur last work session items is a discussion on the city's noise regulations. I'll recognize Brian Lubkman, city attorney, to provide the staff presentation.

Brian LubkmanstaffGood evening, Mayor and Council. This is a follow-on to a discussion that we had with your predecessors. We've made some progress in the area of noise regulation since that time. Wanted to come back to you to have an opportunity for the new Council to weigh in and react to any of the proposed changes that we're planning on bringing forward this fall. and so I will go through a series of slides here I won't spend a lot of time on it the staff report is pretty detailed the the starting point for the discussion is we do not have a huge noise problem in the city most jurisdictions do not have huge noise problems what we do have are situations that are recurring. We do have particular situations that occur

that are very disturbing for the residents who have them. And I was having some conversations outside the room with a couple of the residents who are here in the room. And I want to make it clear that we take these issues seriously. We try to resolve them as much as possible. Noise is a very difficult topic. A topic it's also very difficult to enforce. We live in a suburban, urban area. But there are particular situations that noise regulations try to address and I will say that I have yet to find a jurisdiction In my experience that can address every situation. It's a balance. So the first slide that we'll go through the purpose of the noise regulations and some of this is there we go Again as I noted the reality of certain types and levels of noise in daily life. We don't live in the middle of a forest

types of noises have evolved over the years. As I noted here and as everyone can imagine, historically many of these noise issues were industrial-based and they were just fact of life, fact of progress. There's always been a desire to regulate certain noises. I actually did a little bit of research and I found noise regulations going back to Roman days, which is kind of interesting. I won't bore you with any of the details, but there were some specific noises that were attempted to be regulated. And so there's been an attempt to do that. As I noted already, noise regulations are an attempt to provide reasonable restrictions and prohibitions on certain noise-generating activities and sources.

They vary widely among jurisdictions. Even here in Northern Virginia, where you would think there's a lot of consistency, there's general consistency, but there's pretty good variations sort of on the obvious things, like hours of prohibitions. And I know we had a speaker come up and say, you know maybe we should get away from looking at hours there there there are differences during different hours of the day as to what most people would consider to be acceptable levels of noise it doesn't mean we ignore situations where noise becomes burdensome or onerous but we again we're trying to strike that balance between not criminalizing ordinary activities to the point where individuals don't have the ability to enjoy their properties or to

lives, at the same time dealing with the most egregious situations. And again, as noted in the last point, there are differences in expectations as to what is acceptable both in volume and types of noises. It's easy to say, and I put it in the slide, so it is easy to say. Some of this is due to some of the changes in work-life situations that have happened over time. Technology has made it more likely that people can work productively at home as opposed to going into a central work district, you know, we've had some back and forth. Obviously, COVID changed some things. We have some things turning back the other way. A situation with the federal government. You see people that have been working at home are now going to the office.

But there's some constancy in the types of situations that arise and the types of noises that jurisdictions want to try to regulate. So we'll go to the next slide. So, refresher. And this may be new for some of you. Obviously, I think everyone knows that there are noise regulations, but our situation has always been a little different than some of our surrounding jurisdictions, and I'll explain why here. So our noise regulations, and the reason I don't call it a noise ordinance is we do not have a noise ordinance. We have a series of noise regulations that are located in two discrete sections of the city code. 3811 is the prohibition section. Noises are prohibited depending on the noise, certain times and certain days.

There was a fairly major amendment most jurisdictions in Virginia amended back in January of 2010 or shortly thereafter to reduce or eliminate subjectivity. There were a response to a case involving Virginia Beach noise ordinance. It was struck down by the Virginia Supreme Court. We had and most jurisdictions had almost identical noise ordinances. There were references to noise that and you can see the quote there, annoyed, disturbed, injured or endangered the comfort repose helps peace or safety of others very hard to quantify and enforce I think actually the the you know the case was was correct I think there was very little in force enforcement of noise violations or there were selective enforcement which and as you know in

most things especially related to zoning matters selective enforcement is a is a problem you need to be consistent you need to try to apply regulations across the board. So in 3811, which is where most of this resides, the current prohibitions generally address prohibitive acts of noise and specific time limitations in certain categories. The major ones here use of vehicle horns and we'll talk about that in a second. Amplified music is the big one. Noise music, loudspeakers, animal noise. It's not only dogs, although dogs tend to be the ones that generate the most complaints. There have been some creative attempts in other jurisdictions to try to deal with this. But as I always say, animals will be animals, especially if we're going to have domestic animals in our house.

So you have to put up with a certain level of noise. Loading or unloading of vehicles is a big one. I would say that's a fairly common one, especially recently in the city. Some of that is educational in the sense that new businesses locate. They may not be aware of the rules, or they hire contractors who are just trying to get the job done. Sometimes they may not be supposed to, they may not know. So we'll talk about that also in a little bit here. Construction noise, not a huge problem in the city, interestingly enough. We do not get a ton of complaints about construction noise. I think part of that is because our existing regulations, time prohibitions on construction noise are fairly robust compared to many of our sister jurisdictions.

And then trash collection. We get some companies who come and this is again, we don't get complaints about the city trash pickups because we all abide by the rules in the city. But obviously there are private companies that come pick up trash for commercial and for multifamily. They don't always observe the hours. The other thing that is not necessarily covered in our ordinance, although I would argue it is, but we'll clarify that and we'll talk about that, are trash dumpsters, receptacles, the noises that are made when they're slammed on the ground, et cetera, et cetera. The other area of noise regulation city are in the city zoning ordinance. And those are essentially operational performance standards.

So these are the things, certain levels of noise that are considered to be acceptable based on measurements, decibel levels, and the like. They're applicable to all uses, buildings, and structures within the city at any time. Maximum permissible noise levels. This is what you'll commonly hear is a decibel meter, folks tend to pull out and measure noise and you know again it's it's it's been around for years I don't think the technology is advanced very much but it is what it is and and we have that standards and requirements for measurement and and then most noise regulations including the cities have exemptions as you will imagine for emergency generators emergency vehicles utility repairs there are types of noise that municipalities do not have the

control, they're governed by federal regulation. An example would be trains going by. I mean many of us we probably hear them here. I know where I live just outside the city we hear the freight trains going by and three o'clock in the morning. Well you can't regulate that so those are the type of things you can't deal with. And then a waiver process because you are going to have situations peculiar businesses, peculiar situations where it might be appropriate for a municipality to grant a waiver this might be hey we're gonna have a project that's gonna take three weeks we'll be generating a lot of noise here are the parameters under which what happened there's an application process we don't

get a lot of those but but there is a waiver process for that sort of the one off situations for lack of a better term we'll go next slide so some specifics and I'm gonna focus on the ones that tend to come up the most so this is the existing noise regulations and I'll start with the 3811 ones I won't read the code But sounding of vehicular or other horns or other audible signaling devices, it is prohibited in the city, there's no time restrictions on this, to trigger horns or other audible signaling devices except as a danger warning, emergency warning signal, or for reasons of public safety. This has come up in the context, and this is another modern innovation. We all have these key fobs on our cars to control our keys and to find our cars, or they just generate the noise anyway.

had situations in the city with car dealerships and repair shops using the key fobs to make it easier to locate a vehicle on a lot. The vast majority of our dealerships and repair shops, I think, do it sparingly or they use the little signaling device as opposed to triggering the emergency thing that sends the horn blaring. We have a recurring issue with that. We're attempting to work with the dealerships. We'll continue to work with the dealerships to both inform them, again, that we do have a law in the books relating to that, but also to try to educate and minimize those situations. It's almost impossible to eliminate, but we try to limit those. The largest complaint, as you can imagine, for noise within the city, and we call it the amplified sounds, music, speakers, and et cetera.

the music that's blaring people playing their their music loudspeakers music from parties as you can see it's currently prohibited between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m. and we'll talk a little bit about what we're suggesting to change that when plainly audible inside a dwelling unit house or apartment of another person at 50 feet or more from the device except by permitted except as permitted by the city or otherwise accepted. So that is probably the number one complaint. And another reason it's the number one complaint is it tends to occur most often outside of normal business hours of the city. And I'll explain why that's an issue in a few minutes here. The next one is yelling, shouting. I've tried to figure out what hooting is.

Whistling on public streets, prohibitive between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m. we talked about, we don't need to address that. Right now, I'll just mention this. It's noise that's plainly audible at least once a minute for ten consecutive minutes with no time restrictions. We've all heard of, and I'll keep using the dog example, I'm a dog lover, I have a dog at home, that's great, that's great to have that regulation. The problem doesn't normally arise because a dog is barking at least once a minute for ten consecutive minutes. It's normally a shorter period of time. It's at certain times of the day where you really don't want to be hearing it, especially in the middle of the night. Vehicle exhaust and mufflers, and I think Council Member Bates had asked some questions about that with the previous council,

about noise suppression devices, folks modifying. We do have restrictions on that currently. We're also looking at modifying that to some extent. People intentionally disabling noise suppression devices is not so much of a problem as it might have been years ago, It still occurs. And then people revving their engines, racing, those type of issues as well. Every jurisdiction has that. So I'll just point that out for illustration.

Speaker 18Next slide.

Brian LubkmanstaffLoading or unloading of vehicles. Currently there's a prohibition on plainly audible noise in residential areas between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. The standard is difficult to enforce and we're suggesting, we're going to be suggesting some changes to that. Erecting, demolishing, that's the construction prohibition. This is what I was talking about earlier. So currently before 7 a.m. and after 6 p.m. on weekdays, you're not allowed to do any construction, erecting, demolishing, altering, or repairing any building. As I noted, we have remarkably few complaints about that. The hours change slightly on Saturdays, holidays, and of course, not of course, but our regulations provide any time on Sundays. And there's exceptions for emergency situations and the like.

But again, we have very few complaints, at least my experience has been, we have very few complaints on the construction noise side of it. And when we do get those type of complaints, they tend to get resolved quickly. Most of the time it's folks who don't know what the regulations are. Collecting trash or refuse. That used to be more of a problem, as I noted in years past, that tends to have settled down a little bit. Other than the dumpster emptying or the dumpster. It's not so much the emptying of the dumpster, it's the noises made associated with that. It's banging it on the ground to loosen up additional trash and then lifting up again. But again, before 7 a.m. or after 7 p.m., it is against the rules to collect trash or refuse within the city.

Lawn mowing, use of garden equipment, it's limited to use between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. daily. We are more restrictive than a number of our surrounding jurisdictions. We'll talk about gas-powered blowers in a few minutes, But we are more restrictive than most of our sister jurisdictions on this. We get the typical complaints, but it's again striking a balance between folks needs to take care of their own yards, have companies do it, and making sure that it's not just a constant volume of noise.

Speaker 18Next slide.

Brian LubkmanstaffWe have some exemptions currently, as I mentioned earlier. We have emergency generators, noises. I'll say some of these exemptions are fairly general. One of the things we're going to be proposing is putting some limitations on some of these. So I'll just go down the list first. It's emergency generators, noises from emergency vehicles. Obviously we don't want an ambulance sound or fire truck sound or police sound to be considered a violation of our noise ordinance. Noises associated with restoration of public services, so water, gas, sewer, electric, streets need to be cut up, construction needs to be done, needs to happen, can happen in the middle of the night. power back and I think they're less concerned about noise than they are about getting their

power back. We talked about preemption, nothing much to say there. As with every jurisdiction, regulation of non-commercial public speaking, public assembly in any public space, you know, that's protected speech and we do not limit that, assuming, again, it's in a public space. Outdoor gathering shows, entertainment events between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m. in accordance with the permit or school sponsorship. We do occasionally get some complaints about school events. We actually get complaints about the city fireworks. I can't sleep, the fireworks are going off. But again, that's an example of maybe we don't want to overregulate things that most people enjoy. And then noises that are allowed through special use permits.

And this historically has tended to be more the industrial type of uses. Someone gets a special use permit, the asphalt plant as an example. Obviously, there's a reality as to the types of noises that those uses generate. Waiver process, I'll just briefly go over this again. Currently you can apply a city manager for exemption or partial exemption. You see the criteria on the screen, you know, basically the detriment is outweighed by the benefit to the public interest. And the exemption has to be posted conspicuously. I did some checking. I don't think we've had very many of these in the city. We may only have one current one that's out there to my knowledge. So now to the number of complaints and types of issues.

The complaint types and volume have been relatively constant over the years. I mean, there's some spikes at certain times of the years. You get more of the loud music party complaints when our wonderful university neighbor is in session because you do have a number of students that actually reside in homes within the city boundaries. Dogs barking, again, those are sporadic. We tend to get some repeat violators and eventually those get resolved. Loud vehicles, deliveries and unloading is another common one as I noted. Trash removal, it's less than it used to be. And then the miscellaneous ones, and I'll highlight pickleball. Pickleball has become a very hot topic in terms of noise, especially for converted tennis

courts and otherwise because as I've been told many times, I do not play pickleball, But what I have been told many times and I've seen it, the noise of pickleball can be very grating to some people. I'll just leave it at that. And we're not proposing to regulate pickleball in case anybody's wondering. We don't need a room full of pickleball players here at the public hearing. The police non-emergency number handles the majority of the complaints and we got some statistics. So there are 864 complaints. I do not know whether those are discrete situations or repeats. We'll have that information as we move forward between January 2023 and January 2025. The 12 citations is misleading. Those are ones that actually led to criminal citations.

But as you can see, the vast majority get resolved or they're addressed through other manners. We'll move to the next one. Enforcement. So here are some bullet points. It's in the staff report, but I'll go over it quickly here. As always, and as with many things enforcement-related in the city, the initial approach where possible is always informal and educational. It's much easier to try to diffuse something. Often it's lack of information. Doesn't mean there's no enforcement, but it does mean that the attempt at first is to try to resolve things amicably and to try to make sure the situation doesn't persist. An important point is that second one, and this is not unique to the city. staff to enforce and multiple departments.

So we have one zoning inspector for the city. The zoning inspector works, Brooke will tell me, normal work hours. Occasionally, on a case-by-case basis, we can have zoning inspector work outside of hours if we know there's a situation that might arise. The police obviously handles everything off hours for the most part, again, unless we have that situation. And then code administration does certain types of enforcement as well. The third bullet point is equally important. The intermittent nature of many noise activities makes enforcement difficult. As you can imagine, by the time somebody calls the police or by the time somebody calls zoning, many of the complained about noise activities have abated or disappeared temporarily or

otherwise have not become a problem. That makes enforcement difficult. Again not unique to the city but it's something that we take very seriously in that regard. Many noise issues occur outside of regular business hours. You see that there. We have issues with, as you can imagine, commercial next to residential. We don't have much industrial, but commercial next to residential is probably the biggest one. We have certain areas where the residential dwellings are more densely located on top of each other, et cetera. It makes it very difficult for one-size-fits-all unintended consequences, but it's a reality of our suburban situation. Ambient noise, and so we have conversations. I don't claim to be an expert on decibel measurements, but as you know, you step outside, unless

you're really, really lucky, you step outside and you're always going to hear a certain amount of background noise. We live in an area that, you know, many times in the day is a lot noisier than probably more rural areas around the country. And so that makes it challenging because when you're measuring, there's an assumption for background noise. So even though you might think it's loud, it's not that far above ambient noise. You just have to deal with that. So tweaks to the measurement standards is another thing that jurisdictions look at and we're looking at as well. Violations on the performance standards, the last one. So remember I noted at the beginning we have sort of the absolute prohibitions on noise,

and then we have the performance standards that are measured by decibel levers. So the ones that are currently located in the zoning ordinance, it's a zoning process to enforce. You should notice it's a violation. You issue tickets. If the person disputes it, you have a court date. You go to court. I'll say this unless any judges are watching. Judges don't like seeing zoning cases. They just don't. It's been a general rule since I started practicing law 30 years ago. I don't, I've never understood it. I think folks, for people who have noise situations that are troublesome, this is quality of life stuff. residents here and we've gotten emails and we've had communications from some residents within the city as well if if you haven't had a recurring noise problem

where you live consider yourself lucky because some of the ones that we've heard about most of us would not want to live in those situations and again we're trying to strike that delicate balance it doesn't mean we're not trying to find ways to help enforce but I understand there are situations that go on for months and months and months and it's very very disturbing nobody wants to to move because of a noise situation. That's not a reason we want people to leave the city. It's not a reason why any jurisdiction wants their residents to leave. We'll

Speaker 18go to the next one then.

Brian LubkmanstaffSo gas-powered leaf blowers. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this. I know there's been some communication from interested parties, and I know there may be some individuals up here on the dais who have an interest in this. So you're probably aware, I shouldn't jump over the first one, which is city staff is this time for various reasons and I'll go into that a little bit but the city of Alexandria recently enacted an ordinance to prohibit gas-powered leaf blowers there is a delayed effective date the other issues with city of Alexandria they spent significant period of time studying this they got a lot of input from stakeholders they got a lot of input from the industry they have a delayed effective date as I noted and they also had I would argue that they

particular situation that made it easier for them to enact an ordinance. They did get an attorney general, Virginia attorney general opinion. Attorney general opinions in Virginia are not, they are essentially the opinion of another attorney. They're persuasive, they're not dispositive. So just a fact to keep in mind. The other thing that sort of lends to the fact that other jurisdictions haven't done this yet is there was, and our state senator actually Assembly bill that would have specifically authorized localities to ban gas-powered leaf flowers and it did not actually didn't advance so there's going to be additional attempts to do it the fact that there were attempts to do this I think is more indication of the

fact that it's not clear under Virginia law I think it is questionable under Virginia law I think it's questionable that the city has the ability to do it I'm not going to characterize what Alexandria has done I think they believe they have the authority to do it and I think their situation is somewhat different having said that the city is looking at this issue I noted the last bullet and mr. Summers has left but there is in public works a transition plan to electric equipment and pilot project that was approved the city is looking at the possibility of doing that I think there's some funds to explore transitioning to electric equipment among city equipment and the like what I have heard from Public Works staff is the technology just isn't quite there yet

number one number two it's expensive and so I mentioned Alexandria they had a robust discussion during their budget process and they included money in their budget to help with this transition so I think on this point we'll put a pin in this for the moment I'll come back to the recommendations at the end but I and sort of what our position is currently before we get to the recommendation later on in this presentation so next steps so as I noted we absolutely are updating simplifying modernizing and consolidating noise regulations ideally we are going to put all of this in one section and it's going to be out of the zoning ordinance which will make mr. Hardin very happy it'll it'll it'll be more in the in the regular section of the city

code clarifying and expanding definitions to avoid ambiguity you would audible mean the same thing to everybody? They absolutely don't. In fact, I would imagine if I asked all of you sitting up there and Council Member McQuillan to define plainly audible, we might get six, seven different definitions. So we're going to clarify that. We're also looking to have a graduated system of enforcement. One of the complaints that we get and jurisdictions get generally is complaints come in, they're resolved. Or someone gets a warning two months later, they get another warning because it's a new a new noise situation. You know, two months later it happens again. We're looking at having a graduated system of enforcement where, you know, every time

if the situation occurs again and again and again, then we're going to, the penalties are start, they're going to go up. We're also recognizing the continued limitations of staffing, hours and noise violations often occur. Clarification of enforcement responsibilities. Again, there are very few people currently that have the ability under law to enforce noise violations. We're looking at perhaps expanding that somewhat if we can, understanding that a lot of it occurs after hours. I'll talk in a second as well about the possibility of residents being involved in enforcing these violations. It's a little bit of a slippery slope, but it's something we're going to bring forward. And then the last thing, and we talked about this with the previous counsel, but we think

it's critical. And the jurisdictions that have enacted changes to their noise regulations in recent years have done this, and I think it's very good. If any of you have ever looked at, for example, Fairfax County or Arlington's noise ordinances, there are matrices out there where residents can see it's up on their websites and it says, if this happens, you call this number, this is a violation, call this number. Having clarity, having a central point of people going to reach out on noise issues is critical. So, again, how and when to make a noise complaint and a matrix for noise issues is what we will be bringing forward as well. So now, the specific recommended changes. So none of this is cast in stone, which is a reason we're having this discussion,

but what we're planning on bringing forward is the amplified sounds and music provision prohibition. The common complaint that we get, one of the common complaints that we get, is that the prohibition starts too late. Jurisdictions are all over the place on this so we're suggesting 9 p.m. or 10 p.m. on weekdays and 10 p.m. or 11 p.m. on weekends of holidays for that aspect of this. We don't have a preference either way. It basically ends up what what what you all want to do as a city council when we bring this forward. We'll be able to make changes. I think what we're going to propose is actually 9 p.m. on the weekdays and 10 p.m. on the weekends and holidays running to 8 a.m. the next day. is to remove time restrictions altogether, and you had one speaker come up and say that

this evening. So remove time restrictions altogether and prohibit any such sound that is plainly audible in any other person's residence with the doors and windows closed. Now that's a bright line standard. That's good, and that is certainly a clear restriction. We also get comments from people saying, well, I like to enjoy my backyard, and I don't want to hear the noise. I don't like to have my windows closed, noise. So the other aspect of this would be maintaining some level of a decibel meter reading for situations or having the standard be audible over a property line. There's issues with that because again properties are not the same throughout the city as you can imagine. We have houses that are separated and we have houses that are right on top of each other.

But we're going to try some language to see if we can help resolve, you know, 90% of the situations. Change the provisions on yelling and shouting on public streets to commence at 10 p.m. that's just for some consistency since we'd be suggesting a reduction an earlier start to the prohibition on general music noise. Animal noise, what we're going to be suggesting is very similar to what Fairfax County does. So different standards between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. and between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m. So 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. essentially it would be if it's audible within your house with the doors and windows closed it's prohibited. We're not going to require that you wait until a dog barks for, you know, once a minute for

minutes at 3 in the morning before it's a violation it's it's you know hopefully your neighbors would would be able to control their animals but if it's a recurring problem we want a bright line rule for for for people to

Speaker 18be able to follow on that

Brian Lubkmanstaffnext loading or unloading of commercial vehicles so I gave you what the standard was before so we would propose changing that to if it's plainly audible by persons in any residence with the doors and windows closed across property boundaries now this one's a little more of a bright again most of the loading and loading is occurring on a commercial remember I mentioned earlier about the commercial on top of residential so most of it's occurring from a commercial property across a line at a distance of a hundred feet or more from the source of the nose noise and changing the hourly restriction to commence at 9 p.m. daily instead of 10 so trying to help and this is coupled with what we have been doing which is trying to reach out to the

businesses where this happens and seeing if it's just because they have a new delivery person, et cetera, trying to reduce those. Trash provisions, again, as I noted, to include specific references to dumpsters and other trash enclosures, and maintain the current 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. limitation on allowable hours. Believe it or not, our restrictions are more restrictive than most of the jurisdictions around us. And although we do get some complaints, we have relatively few complaints when it comes to trash. We do have the dumpster issue, which I've talked about already. And then this is interesting. So typically we have not had anything that dealt with noise for generally about improper operating equipment.

So we've all or many of us have had the situation where a neighbor has an air condition that's malfunctioning. But it's working, so their house is getting cool, but it's making a racket outside. So we'd be adding provisions against operating any mechanical equipment, so air conditioners, heat pumps, fans, swimming pool equipment on residential property that is not operating in accordance with specs and in such a matter to create a noise disturbance measured by decibel levels across a property boundary. We don't have a lot of these. I think we need the ability to be able to regulate that. So we're going to clarify and include provisions on that as well. Additional recommendations, and this will be the last page of that.

enforcement provisions, so we're going to try to have a single or close to a single point of contact and responsibility for administering the noise regulations. Process for enforcement and creating a presumption of responsible parties. So I'll give an example again of situations with the car dealers or car repair shops and the key fobs. In order to cite, you have to have a responsible party. You know, you usually can't find the person who's doing it. You can cite the general manager if you have to, but it's a little questionable as to what the city's ability is to enforce on that. So we'll have a presumption. We're going to include a presumption that in the case of residential violations that if you can't tell who's exactly doing it,

well, then, you know, the owner of the property is going to be responsible. If you have a tenant on the property and, you know, we can't get the tenant to deal with this, we're going to try to cite the owner of the property. We're going to try to find the tenant or wherever the occupant is of the property at that time. So trying to increase the ability to hold people responsible. Civil and criminal penalties, again, clarifying that. I mean, certain types of offenses merit criminal, especially repeat violations. And again, increasing the penalties for repeat violations. The ability for, I talked about this briefly, the ability for a warrant to be sworn out by the public. And I have the word limitations out there.

So a couple of jurisdictions have tried this. But one of the complaints, as I noted, that we constantly get are the after hours complaints or the noise has disappeared but then it happens again. Because like it or not, there are individuals who know exactly what the regulations are. They know when, you know, the police are coming, they turn it down. Five minutes later, they turn it up. I know that residents don't necessarily want to be in a position where they go and swear out a warrant for a violation. but it should be a tool in the toolbox for egregious situations and where the city is unable to enforce for whatever reason I've told people this before there are nuisance laws in Virginia separate from the noise regulations you

have the general right to quiet enjoyment of your property and if a if a nuisance is being created or your neighbor is doing something you know we don't recommend that but it's it's always available but this would clarify in the noise such a situation that you might have that option exceptions and and updating the exceptions to reflect sort of the modern state of what those would be updating the waiver process clarifying what it would require to get a waiver from the noise ordinance and then lastly as I mentioned and very importantly the public education component that I detailed a few minutes ago so with that I know I have room there for questions and comments the the our current thinking is we'll be bringing this back this fall they're

Getting some of the language out of the zoning ordinance will require planning commission and a zoning text amendment. But the plan would be to get this before you again this fall for consideration so that we can have it in place before too long. And making these changes, these are the first ones since 2010, at least with respect to the prohibitions. I think our plan going forward is to revisit these on a much more frequent basis. We're not going to wait another 15 years to do noise ordinance. And then we constantly examine best practices from other jurisdictions and we'll continue to move forward with whatever council would like us to do. But with that, I'm happy to answer any questions, take any comments.

To the extent that I cannot answer questions or if you have additional questions that we should consider or be able to respond to before we bring this forward again, we will certainly do that. And as with the previous matter on firearms, if you all have specific questions that you public meeting if you'll direct those to me we'll be sure to answer those so with that happen to answer any questions

Catherine Readcouncilmember McQuilla thank

Rachel McQuillenyou do we have a plan to track the complaints and the results over time so that we can measure if these regulations are working

Brian Lubkmanstaffso we I know zoning tracks complaints that come in through them I know the police department keep fairly detailed statistics uh i don't know if those are published but we can certainly get that information and share that with the council we we do track all uh reports of violations that come in on a number of areas including noise so we can certainly get that information and share that with the council

Rachel McQuillenthank you i also just wanted to make a comment and say that i i am in support of the transition plan and the graduated system of enforcement i think that's key in the education component as Like so thank you

Catherine ReadOther questions councilmember Peterson Can you

Thomas Petersonstay say again? What the plan is if anything on leaf blowers

Brian LubkmanstaffSo the current plan on leaf blowers is we're gonna do the pilot program to see about transitioning on City equipment and see where that goes We're going to monitor and see how the Alexandria thing shakes out. I have some thoughts on that. And have an additional discussion with you all on that once we have a little more information. It's only been a few months since we heard that Alexandria was actually going to be doing this. And as I noted, they spent significant time looking at this and had stakeholders. So I would suspect we're going to have a broader discussion on gas-powered leaf blowers. I think many of our sister jurisdictions are as well. Right now the only jurisdiction that's proceeding is Alexandria.

Thomas PetersonDo you know if the findings from their stakeholder exercise and analysis are easily available?

Brian LubkmanstaffSo I do know, not just in preparation for this meeting, I do know that on the city's website if you pull up the ordinance and I can get the date, but if you just search for the noise ordinance revisions, they have a very detailed staff report. They had several meetings on this, but they have a very detailed staff report and they have information on the website. CERTAINLY SHARE IT, BUT SAY TO THE PUBLIC, ANYBODY WHO IS INTERESTED IN THIS ISSUE, CHECK OUT WHAT ALEXANDRIA HAS DONE AND THE ARGUMENTS PRO AND CON ON THIS ISSUE.

Thomas PetersonAND HELPFUL TO HEAR AND KNOW, BUT I THINK PART OF WHAT YOU PROVIDED IN YOUR PRESENTATION was some recognition that there is a perspective by staff that the electronic equipment quote unquote isn't quite there yet. I think this is an area that's both technology and market sensitive because it's changing in some cases pretty quickly. So what may not have worked very recently might work in the not too distant future here. So it would be good to just know specifically what the holdback is in terms of assumptions around that.

Brian LubkmanstaffYes. I mean, I will share some of the comments that we received, especially on the commercial side, the batteries are heavy. They don't last very long. This is not like the electric blowers you have in your house, at least in the commercial setting. And they are expensive. Absolutely agree. Technology is changing. Everything is modernizing. The other comment that I know I've heard, not from city staff but in other jurisdictions, is regulating gas-powered leaf blowers through noise ordinances may not be the best way. There may be other alternatives. There are environmental laws that can be pursued for dealing with these as well. We are curious to see what the General Assembly is going to continue to pursue on this.

As you can imagine, this is more of a northern Virginia, Richmond, tidewater issue than it is in a lot of the rural areas of the Commonwealth, because in a lot of the rural areas of the Commonwealth, the idea of regulating gas-powered blowers is anathema. It likely won't happen unless they're ordered to do so. So with that, I don't want to say staff is opposed to this. We are looking at this question. I think there are some issues legally with doing it. That doesn't mean we can't do it. WE NEED TO LOOK AT THIS MORE. AND ALEXANDRIA HAD THE ADVANTAGE OF MONTHS AND MONTHS OF LOOKING AT THIS ISSUE. WE DON'T WANT TO JUMP INTO SOMETHING WHERE WE'RE NOT CLEARED THAT WE CAN DO IT. IT DOESN'T MEAN WE'RE PUTTING IT ON THE BACK BURNER.

WE UNDERSTAND IT'S IMPORTANT.

Thomas PetersonGREAT. AND JUST TO NOTE, I MEAN, THERE ARE COMMERCIAL AS WELL AS CONSUMER-BASED MARKET SEGMENTS AND EQUIPMENT FOR EACH THAT'S DIFFERENT. SO NOT ALL LEAF BLOWERS ARE CREATED EQUAL. CORRECT.

Brian LubkmanstaffAND THERE ARE ELECTRIC LEAF BLOWERS THAT ARE ALMOST AS LOUD AS GAS POWER LEAF BLOWERS, BELIEVE IT OR NOT.

Thomas PetersonANOTHER QUESTION OR TWO. ON THE TIME-NEUTRAL APPROACH TO NOISE REGULATION, DO I UNDERSTAND CORRECTLY THAT YOU WILL BE COMING BACK WITH SOMETHING THAT OFFERS AN OPTION FOR THAT, which I gather would include the provision that you can't hear it when you're inside the house with your doors closed but also some sort of a decibel based provision for people who are outside is that something that we will see in some developed form and consider be able to consider later

Brian Lubkmanstaffabsolutely so this is all coming back to you we cannot implement any of this without amendments to the city code and to the city zoning ordinance earlier in the when I mentioned about the possibilities, you know, the time restrictions on, and again, we're talking primarily about the music and those type of violations because there's other types of noises that it doesn't make sense to absolutely prohibit because they don't occur in that context. But the way I currently am pushing this forward is not eliminating a decibel component because that also can always be a tool. The goal of these changes is to allow for multiple avenues for dealing with issues as as opposed to saying we have a bright line rule, but if somebody falls outside it, we

don't have any enforcement ability. So that's what we'll be bringing forward this fall. One last question. And we're certainly, I'm sorry, we're certainly happy to bring this again with a developed ordinance and a work session, but I would suggest we can also do it by introducing what we're going to introduce and then if need be pivot to a work session, but that way we won't take another six months or longer to implement the changes.

Thomas PetersonThank you. The last question is cars. Yes. from, however you described it, it sounds like the muffler has been messed with, right? Is that covered under this or is this separately regulated?

Brian LubkmanstaffSo we currently have fairly good prohibitions on vehicle noise muffler. You're smiling as I'm saying that. So I'm guessing there may be a particular situation you have or have seen.

Thomas PetersonWell, you know, Fairfax Boulevard is known to sound like a racetrack, sort of a drag racing strip, even from long distances. what we do and don't allow and what we do and don't enforce. I'm just curious. And that's

Brian Lubkmanstafffair. You know, again, it's another one of those problems, right? A lot of times by the time someone comes to try to enforce that noise, the vehicle in question is 30 miles away just because of the way it is. And we also have the canyon effect on parts of Fairfax Boulevard. But, yes, I understand. But there is a requirement that folks keep their vehicles in good working order in terms of noise suppression systems. And absolutely I know that there are tons of vehicles out there that violate that every day. because we see the modified vehicles all the time on the roads.

FosterstaffAnd there was a, excuse me, just to also add, there was the issue where the state hamstrung the police because you could not pull someone over strictly for a noise violation. It had to be another issue. And so that was hamstringing efforts. And so the state has sort of reversed. And so now I think we do have more of an ability to do that. We're in the recent past. That's, that's been an issue. Correct.

Catherine ReadCouncil member Hardy Chandler, then council member Hall. So the

Stacey Hardy-Chandlerword that I heard over and over again in your presentation is clarity. So I think that is always a good thing. I'm looking forward to the modifications that you bring. with regard to the leaf blowers with the pilot of city equipment is there a timeline that the city is looking at for a possible for that pilot period leading up to it and an estimated completion or a look at their findings so

Brian Lubkmanstaffi was looking around the room see if mr summers was still here or miss Kuka or I'm sorry what's her last name now Melissa McDonald I'm sorry it's gonna take me a while to get used to that and unfortunately they're not here I do not have that information I know that it's an approved pilot I will get that information to make sure it's circulated but it'll be included in what we come back with related to gas gas power leaf blowers thank you

Catherine Readcouncilmember Hall thank

Stacy Hallyou lots of same questions here so thank you for asking those I too am very excited to hear about the pilot program and the potential hopeful transition to electric equipment and how that might work cost-wise and everything else. Do you know when the city of Alexandria, when that's delayed to the effective date offhand?

Brian LubkmanstaffI believe it's over a year, but I don't have the exact date in front of me. Okay. Yeah.

Stacy HallSo I'm also, the car alarms I think are really a problem. I think we have a lot of commercial that's built into residential areas, and I understand that that presents challenges with pain deliveries at 3 a.m. or with car alarms on a Sunday afternoon. As the gentleman said when he spoke up before, we were on the phone for about 20 minutes, and in the first eight minutes of that phone call, there were three different car alarms that went off, which, again, hearing them through the phone was pretty excessive. hearing that. So I am not that I want to find people or cite or cite them, but if we go after the home or if we go after the owner of the property, that trickle down is going to be pretty quick, I think. You know, if you can actually find someone that you are holding

responsible for that rather than like, oh, well, we didn't see the guy who did it. And again, education and that practice of not, you know, seeing, oh, is the car on this lot or is it across the street? You know, they're going to have to go up with a better system for that. So I'm looking forward to hearing that. I am a family that tends to go to bed a little bit later. So a 9 p.m. end time. Sometimes my kids are not actually home from school at that point in time when it comes to sports and things. So not that I expect them to run and yell or hoot down the street. But I do think that, you know, we're also not the family that likes to get up at 7 or 8 a.m. So there's both sides of that. And I think that time restrictions are important.

think that if we can do them in conjunction with other preventative measures to try to make sure that people are as happy as they can be in their homes is good. I also do recognize that, you know, what I might hear in my house with somewhat newer windows, they're not brand new anymore, would also vary with someone else that has original wood windows in their house that, you know, there's varying levels of things here. So I think we do need to be mindful of them, but also recognize what a reasonable person would understand, right? You know, if your neighbor is having the loudspeaker out and they're holding a church service in their front side yard that is your front yard, that's not going to make you real happy, especially, you know, one time would be okay.

If that continues, that's obviously going to be an issue. You know, you have one graduation party, that's fine. But if you live on a block with a bunch of Mason students, and I was a college kid, so I get it, that are having parties, that's a very different life and a quality of life issue for you versus what someone else in the neighborhood or the city is dealing with so i think if we can try to keep those things in mind as you've said that that's a really important thing it's not going to be a one size fits all and i hate to be the location that finds everybody but when you hit people in their wallets and their pocketbooks to borrow anthony's 80s phrase i think that does really start to make

people change their behavior.

Brian LubkmanstaffThat is correct. The one thing I will note is one of the areas, unfortunately, that while we can do civil penalties, the state puts limitations on how much we can fine people, which is why we want to keep the criminal side of it as well.

Stacy HallGood old Dylan and his rules. Yes. So I think that that's pretty much covered all this stuff that I had. I will say cars can be a nuisance, but like you said, I mean, we kind of live on the 66 side of things so we hear them going through there and by the time you think about it you register it it's over it's not happening all night long um so i i don't i think if there's a recurring vehicle that's doing those things it's it's a little bit easier to address but if you're just hearing it pass through um what i will say is sound machines work really well we put them out at our house because i know we have a neighbor who likes to low to mow his lawn pretty early um so nobody wants to live in a white noise box but they can go a long way i think towards helping

both inside and outside your house but thank you for taking a look at this i think it's really important again quality of life for some people is really really critical especially when they're dealing with not so nice neighbors so

Catherine Readthank you other questions councilmember bates

Billy Batesthank you so I'm definitely as of now in support of everything that you're suggesting here and also I do still believe that we need to move away from gas power leaflow or citywide and so I hope that we will continue to explore that with regard to the alternative you know the two different alternatives for loud music etc you so the choice would be between moving the time at which that provision becomes effective to an earlier time and then just banning everything audible within someone else's you know house or on their property or what have you whatever we come up with Are there concerns with doing that, with doing away with the time restrictions versus just moving the times earlier?

Brian LubkmanstaffWell, again, and I've mentioned it several times, you're trying to strike a balance, right? So I think the worst possible situation would be for all of a sudden a larger, let's say a large, proportion of the population all of a sudden being in violation of something that they've been doing all the time in the middle of the day because, you know, they live close to their neighbor. I mean, we all want our neighbors to be considerate, but we also understand that people have different expectations as to what quiet means and what they should be able to enjoy on their properties. And there are egregious situations, but what we don't want to create is a situation where we're getting a multitude of phone calls for violations that have all of a sudden been

created. So, we don't want to dial too far in the other direction, but there are essentially two alternatives. we would probably suggest making the hours start a little earlier and see how that works we also understand that that's not going to stop certain individuals who are violating so we're not talking even if we do that we're not talking about getting rid of the possibility of a decibel meter I also mentioned we're also not talking about the possibility of if it's done after hours having residents be able to swear out a warrant and go swear out a warrant and and in for and deal with these situations the staffing situation due I mean, I don't see most jurisdictions. In fact, I haven't found a jurisdiction that actively staffs after business hours for things like noise violations, other than through their police departments and maybe on calls occasionally.

And for the number of violations that occur, it's probably not cost effective. So what we're trying to do is reduce the repeat situations. We are trying to handle the most egregious circumstances that arise. But the two options that I gave you, that ends up being just a preference of the council as to how you want to proceed. As I noted, none of this is going to be set in stone. Some of this may be we try these changes and we come back after a year, we see how it goes and we tweak them.

Billy Batesright so uh in terms of uh are there right now any restrictions on loud music etc during the day outside of those times when that restriction kicks in

Brian Lubkmanstaffwell we we have performance standards so again there's decibel levels um but but yeah i mean it's it's difficult it's difficult So having, again, this goes to what I said, having more plain standards makes sense. Tweaking the provisions makes sense. How far we go in that is a discussion point, but we'll have some recommendations that we'll bring forward.

Billy BatesOkay, yeah. So is, I mean, something else that kind of occurs to me as sort of maybe a middle ground is looking at moving the times earlier for that current restriction scheme and then maybe having somewhat more stringent standards during the day outside of when that restriction kicks in for loud music. But at any rate, yeah, you know, look forward to seeing what you all come back to us with.

Catherine ReadCouncilmember Hardy Chandler

Stacey Hardy-Chandlergoing very quickly and briefly back to the leaf floors I hope that since it's before the pilot and I know you can't answer this question but I want to convey consideration that one of the metrics in terms of the success of the pilot be the health of the workers who are using the leaf floors not only in terms of the weight but also in terms of gases or you So the health factor in addition to some of the concrete things like cost. The second thing is I'm on the fence or, you know, kind of split with regard to specific times. I think our lifestyle has changed with more at-home work at different times a day. As I have mentioned repeatedly, I come from Las Vegas, which is 24 hours anyway. is really no sense in making you know kind of time restrictions but i also think again just generally

as a result of how things have evolved with remote working and accepting the hall family's sleep habits just things in terms of lifestyle have changed so i wonder if respecting the the the comments that were made and during the public comment period how arbitrary those hours are in these current times versus our past lifestyle of, you know, you get up and you go to work during so-called business hours. So just consideration of those lifestyle changes and just the evolution of where we are. And then finally, just emphasizing a little bit of, you know, instructing that balance, common sense versus enforcement. very very real things what you're setting out to do is challenging because of that i wonder

leaning more toward the educational side if separate from the regulations that the city just considers sort of a noise pollution kind of campaign that's not necessarily the technical wording i understand that and that's not necessarily defined by decibels but when we talk about being just neighborly with one another, I think maybe just thinking of that along with the other pollutants that we're, you know, trying to work against, that we think about that in terms of our quality of life. I recognize that is not a regulation test that you're undertaking, but just putting that out there as something to complement the regulations because ultimately we have to live with one another. So

Fosterstaffthank you.

Catherine Readother questions comments well I would just say I think this has been thoroughly considered I also agree about escalating in some manner the problem folks as you pointed out this is not a pervasive issue for the whole city but it's a terrible issue for a small group of people who can't seem to figure out how solve this problem in their own homes and so something needs to be done as you said you know it's impacting people's quality of life we don't want people to feel like they have to move out of the city because there is not there's not a suite of tools in order to try to solve a problem with a person and you always run into a problem when you're trying to create general laws to solve a problem

of a few people and that's in any organization anybody who's ever worked anywhere where you create policies because you have a few problem people and now the policy is the burden on everyone and i don't think we necessarily want to do that we want to figure out what tools we can use to solve these intransigent problems that can't seem to be resolved in any other way but i do agree with uh council member hardy chandler that we need to remind people that you know we all have to live together and some sort of campaign to let people know that it shouldn't require a noise ordinance it should it should be us letting people know when we've got a graduation party or when we're doing a major renovation on a saturday morning where there's going to be a

tractor in you know the yard over the fence it doesn't take that much simply to be neighborly and to tell people I've got something that's going to make noise, and I want you to know ahead of time, because that goes a long way to people being more tolerant if you've taken the extra step to say, this is the situation and the circumstances, and I hope you'll understand, because then you're offering to be understanding in return. It's just being neighborly. But I agree that this is a great start, and that I look forward in the fall coming back and seeing this just a bit more refined. and with that we will now move on and I believe this means I will now reconvene the regular meeting I think we we punt this over to our city manager

thank

Fosterstaffyou mayor so next item is is our new process that we are starting in terms of agenda future agenda items so you'll see the the item 13 future meeting topics so we have always done a future account future topics list that's on the website and so forth but you've been provided a copy uh it was in the materials i think there's a printed copy at your seat so specifically for the next regular council meeting on july 22nd you will see on the on the currently proposed for that meeting one item on consent which would be the old town hall contract award then we have what was originally listed four public hearings not to skip to number four that was the public hearing that you instead of for july 22nd you have a major motion to move to

september 30th so that was net will now so that will get changed the futures list will get updated So there'll be three public hearings. All of them are community development. The first two are land use cases that have been working through the process. And so these are time bound that we require. This is the time for us to hold them. The first is on this is what I think is called the referred to as the Davies property. We've had presentations on that before. The second one is the combined courthouse, which is where the Safeway is on Blenheim. Those two are up for public hearing and potential action. And then the third public hearing is for the zoning text amendments that we've also you've also had a work session on as well.

So those are public hearings that are scheduled. And then the other piece items not required a public hearing that were also have been discussed in work session is your updated resolution on rules and procedures. uh at your retreat and we'll have those changes as well as the policies and procedures uh regarding filling the vacancies uh and actions for appointed boards and commissions which was also discussed at your last work session so those are the items um for july 22nd Are there questions or comments about any of those?

Catherine ReadCouncil Member Peterson? Council Member Hall? Council Member Peterson?

Thomas PetersonWell, thank you. And I think it is helpful and look forward to this being repeated. A couple things. First, the agenda items for the next meeting are well-developed, but thereafter they're pretty thin, and in fact they slope off. So one thing that I would observe here is that any opportunity that the council has to suggest a set of longer-term priorities that could be mapped into agenda items might be helpful. It gets to maybe a discussion we haven't quite completed yet, which is what are some of those issues that we'd like to see raised and be sure they're on the agenda in the future. So I suppose, given that we have this framework, we could suggest those at any point when we raise this future list.

That would be my question.

FosterstaffSo, yes. So I was going to get to the other ones. I wanted to focus on the immediate meeting first, but your question is fine. So that would, after we, my plan was, and I didn't really say that up front because we're doing this new, But the plan would be, or my process would be, we would talk about specifically the next meeting because that's the next agenda that would be, you know, going out for consideration. And then after we discuss that, then it would be just a brief review of the next few meetings. And then, of course, if there were other specific items that you wanted to be considered, presumably most of those would more than likely start with a work session, but not necessarily. But I mean, again, so we would but we would program that accordingly.

And and as I mentioned, this is this list is is very always fluid. So again, you know, that's why we intentionally put a date and a time at the top, because when this was printed, so you would know. And then because of things that were come up like we if we had a presentation we were planning to do and say the we had a consultant, the consultant was ill and couldn't come, we had to pull it and move it or whatever. There will always be things like that that we will move around as needed.

Thomas PetersonWell, thank you. And so for the July 22 agenda items, you mentioned things being fluid. I think the experience has been that the agenda gets firmed up on a Wednesday for the following week. Tuesday now, this would tomorrow go into a meeting and be firmed up. It sounds like it's possible things would be added to the agenda in that meeting and that we would get a chance to see an update for that after.

FosterstaffYes. So what we will do is, so what the plan is, is that in most, I will say, in most cases There could be exceptions, but the general rule that we're putting in place is that on Monday, a week prior to your meeting, so this meeting on July 22nd, Monday a week prior is July 14th. That's this coming Monday. We would send you what the draft agenda, which should mirror this futures list fairly closely, but it may or may not be. going to see we're not going to put like approval of minutes and things like that that's just stuff that's going to be on there and as we discussed at your retreat we will tell you what's going to be included a staff report a presentation etc those will not be distributed with the draft agenda

because those will not be ready but you will ask to see what you could expect to be with it that would also be on that document and then what the agreement was or what we said how we sort of council would have 24 hours so basically on Tuesday we'd want to hear back from you any comments or concerns and then we could address those but then once that's done and we post the agenda when which we try and post on Wednesdays but sometimes it's on Thursday again depending on the supporting documentation that needs to be pulled together then if you wanted to amend the agenda then the process to do that would be at the meeting on the agenda item that says a approval of the agenda that's when you would make a motion to amend the agenda to add or delete something

at that time if that's was your desire

Thomas Petersonso if a majority of council by the in the 24-hour period of reviewing the agenda wants to make a modification is that something that we can

FosterstaffThat's what that period is for, yes.

Thomas PetersonAnd then yet that evening we will also be looking at the futures list to discuss the agenda. Is that right? Because on Monday you generate something, you send it out, you want to hear back from us Tuesday. But then Tuesday evening, as we're doing tonight, we will talk about

Fosterstaffit. Remember, that's a week prior, not the day before. Okay. It's a week prior. All right. Thank you. All right. So the review of the futures list will always be at the meeting, which is what we're doing right now. and so if you need if we want to add things or either topics you want to discuss we can we can pencil them in part of this for example you may say hey can we do this at the next meeting and we might say sure that we can do that or it might be you know what that's going to take a fair amount of staff work we need extra time so you need to push it two meetings down or three meetings down not that we won't do it but just depends on what it is that you're asking and

Thomas Petersonmy final quick because I know others have questions is on July 22 items not required requiring a public hearing I presume we will receive copies of the resolutions for review in advance in case there are any catches we might make

Brian Lubkmanstaffyou They're always in your packet when you get those on right Wednesday

FosterstaffYou will as I I'll restate that. When you get what I'm calling the draft agenda to review a week prior, you're just going to have the list of items. When the agenda is posted, all the supporting documentation will be there.

Thomas PetersonRight. Thank you. In this particular case, and it could be repetitive, if we have comments on those, it could be anything that goes up but in this case two resolutions are we going to be able to provide those comments prior to the time we get together

Brian Lubkmanstaffso I'll let me add a comment to that we always want it it is always staffs press preference to know in advance where possible if you have questions, comments, requests for information related to agenda items before the meeting so that we can be prepared at the meeting to have a robust discussion. So if that answers your question, it is much better for those to come in advance than to we always try to we do not want to sit here and say we can't answer that question, we'll have to get back to you, especially if it's something that we could have answered by doing a little bit of work before the meeting. So we do encourage questions. do encourage comments the one caveat I'd like to give the city managers on

removing items from agendas if once you get the look there are certain items that are going to be on there because they've been advertised or they have to be there so if we push back that's the reason we're pushing back on those type of the mandatory

Thomas Petersonitems yeah

Catherine Readthank you councilmember Hall thank

Stacy Hallyou just a general question I guess and I spoke about this with a councilman Peterson might there be an opportunity in some meeting every maybe the first of the month or something just to kind of highlight some of the open um boards and commissions that we have i know we talked before about like maybe putting that on a screen if we were transitioning from room to room but maybe we could just read some of the openings just as a reminder people that are watching that might not go to the website or something like along those lines yeah

Melissa Shinaberryclerkby voicewe could do that um either could do that the work session or the first regular meeting of the month okay wherever people

Stacy Hallmight think it might be most beneficial i just it's another opportunity to remind people that we're looking for new faces

Catherine Readthank you other questions or comments councilmember hardy chandler

Stacey Hardy-Chandlerjust a quick comment thank you so much for trying to do what we asked you to do in terms of this process I think we have multiple exposures in this process to upcoming information and to Council Members Hall example, an opportunity to suggest for upcoming things has always been available to us. and this is another way to offer opportunities to get things on future work sessions or agendas. So we have exposure to the futures list, which we can contribute to, and we will have ahead of time, way ahead of time exposure to the main points that are going to be on upcoming agendas with opportunity for feedback, which has always been the case. So I appreciate your attempt to reinforce those multiple opportunities to contribute.

And it's on us then to give you the information.

Catherine ReadOther questions or comments on this?

FosterstaffOkay. So on the 22nd, I've gone for next. So then council is on recess. And then you see we've got a few things lined up for September. So that's certainly in advance and, you know, fairly far in advance. Again, so like, for example, the September 2nd work session, that's what we expect to talk about. If there's other things you want to potentially add, you just need to let us know. On the 9th, there's a public hearing, so that's one of the ones that's time-bound with the process because that is a land use application. so just letting you know that and then yes there are a lot of blanks in the dates after that because we haven't we haven't projected that far out but if you have certain things I know we will be

for example we'll be doing financial reviews that the CFO will be doing each quarter so those will get added so there'll be some things will there be more things to be added than what I would just of our regular uh process that we do there's they don't show up here on here yet but they will show up as we get closer to those times so the only other thing i would mention going back to the 22nd is it is not i just want to it's not listed here we will likely need to have a closed meeting and we'd like to do before the meeting on the 22nd at 6 o'clock for a personnel matter. It has to do with the concurrence issue, but I don't know for certain that we'll be ready. But the expectations will be ready, and if there's no objection, we will,

if everything comes together, we will have that on the agenda for 6 o'clock.

Catherine ReadCouncil Member Peterson.

Thomas PetersonFrom my standpoint would be helpful if we do that to have background information in advance

FosterstaffSir certainly but it's it's it will it will be yes be contingent and it'll be last say last minute It's whether we can get all the things squared away before that meeting got it So

Thomas Petersonso general comment and then something specific the general comment is I don't know if there is a procedure touching base with boards and commissions to see whether they believe there are action items that we should be considering but to give you an example of one for instance that comes from the environmental sustainability committee at some point and i think this fall is the operative time there's an interest in council doing a work session and then possibly some consideration of a green revolving fund and that would be an example of something that would come out of a as a priority for our consideration. So I'd like to raise that specifically. I don't know their thoughts on timing around that,

but the general thing is just if the boards and commissions are doing their job in terms of building a bridge between the public and the city council, they should be able to offer us thoughts on things and we should just have a process by which we touch base with them.

FosterstaffI think all of the boards and commissions have staff liaisons, We'll task the staff folks to make sure that if there's something that's coming up, then that we're aware and can put it on there for your consideration.

Catherine ReadCouncil Member McQuillan.

Rachel McQuillenI just wanted to point out that before we make any decisions regarding the July 22nd and the ability to meet prior to our meeting, that we are still missing council member amos so let's make sure that we first consider if he's able to attend before we definitely lock in something on that time

Catherine Readthank you excellent point about council member amos um other questions or comments at this time okay we're we're all good with this excellent so we will now go to manager report out so

Fosterstaffjust one item and the mayor mentioned this earlier at the beginning of the meeting as you know our recently retired animal control officer terry carroll passed away and to say that he was beloved by certainly the community and his staff I certainly can't speak to it personally because I didn't know Terry, you know, just with my short tenure here. But I did have a really great conversation with him at his retirement. Several of you were there. And then just hearing the stories that people shared, it just was very apparent of the impact that he had during his tenure here. So I know that our folks and police are and not just police, certainly police, because that's who we work close with, but also just others in the community, certainly mourning his passing.

But I wanted to just let folks know the details of his services. The visitation will be this coming Monday, July the 14th from 6 to 8 p.m. And then the funeral will be Tuesday, July 15th at 10 a.m. Both of those are at the Pierce Funeral Home in Manassas, which is on Center Street. And so if you know Manassas, it's right in the central part of town across the street from the All Saints Catholic Church. So if you know where All Saints is, Pierce is right across the street. And so that's on Monday and Tuesday. He's actually going to be buried here in the city cemetery. and there'll be reception afterwards, all that on Tuesday at fire station number three. So just ask that you keep our folks that certainly work with Terry, you know, in your thoughts and prayers as well as his family and friends.

Because this was, you know, we just had such a nice celebration and then that was just literally such a short time ago. So I know it's hitting folks fairly hard. And so, again, I didn't have the pleasure of getting to know him very well, but just my short interaction with him and the comments and stuff at his reception certainly gave a great indication of the impact that he had and the people's lives that he affected. So I'm just wishing everyone well as they're dealing with their grief. And I did want to make sure that I shared those details with council.

Catherine ReadThank you. We'll start with council comments. Council Member Hall.

Stacy HallThank you. I just want to extend my condolences to Terry, Terry's family, friends, acquaintances, all of the people that came across him. Unfortunately, I was not able to be at his retirement ceremony, and I won't be able to be there next week. But I have very fond memories of him directing traffic and helping out with the kids' crossings at elementary school. My kids are now going to be in 9th and 11th grade, so he's been around a long time here, and he's helped me find many a dog or rescue a dog or take a dog home. So it's a huge loss for our community as well as his family, and so I'm very, very sorry about that. I do want to extend a huge thank you to our parks and rec department our police our fire our public

works and every other employee and contractor and volunteer in the city for an unbelievable July 4th celebration it was amazing from the very minute it began to the minute that it ended it was completely top-notch the fireworks were spectacular being back at the high school was great. The parade was spectacular. Everything was just it was perfect even to the weather so you know thank you Mr. Foster for bringing that one in for us. It was it was just unbelievable and I'm sure I'm missing a ton of people but thank you to everybody that was any small or large part of this it was really really unbelievable. I do also want to wish a happy birthday to our assistant superintendent Dan Phillips one of my absolute favorite people in

the entire world. I wish you all the best on your day and I hope you're not at I will make sure you know it. One thing I forgot to ask before when Mr. Summers was here was about a bridge or water sensors and high ground notifications as we're inspecting our bridges and things like that. I did see Montgomery County has a pilot program. I think they're running on some of their bridges with the intention of obviously not having a disaster like Texas had, but some sort of notification system that tracks where the water level is rather than our workers having to go out and look at each bridge and see the flood levels and things, if there's any opportunity to consider water sensors. I don't know why I'm looking at you specifically,

but we could kind of look into that and see if there's an opportunity there. So I think that was all of my notes, and thank you.

Catherine ReadCouncilmember Hardy-Chandler.

Stacey Hardy-ChandlerWell, I definitely want to build on the gratitude for the 4th of July experience. It was well run. I want to add to Councilmember Hall's list to acknowledge the Chamber of Commerce that hosted the opening reception. Certainly the Independence Day Committee that did a lot of work and hosted the lunch, as well as, as mentioned, Parks and Rec, fire, police, volunteers, even the parade participants, the entrance. I also want to give a shout out to Downrange. They are such a wonderful band. They were there for the fireworks. But everyone contributed to the kind of community experience and spirit that I think really makes us special as a city. the second thing I want to highlight is just to give a little moment of thanks to

certainly all of our wonderful staff but specifically to Leslie who is going to be she's our human resources direct human services director and she is going to be speaking in my absence to the human services policy committee about the village in the city program and all of the wonderful work that I repeatedly say that they're doing but sharing that with others across the region so thank you Leslie for stepping in and for sharing that really vital information with that particular committee now I also want to give a nod to councilmember Amos who isn't here but has spearheaded some opportunities for us to simply get to know each other as people I think that is truly important I think that enriches what we do as

council members just to understand each other a little bit better as human beings and I hope that that continues and I hope we continue to grow closer together not only as a council but as a group that's here to truly serve together so

Catherine Readthank you councilmember Peterson well

Thomas PetersonI think we owe a little bit of thanks on the fourth of July also to mother nature for

Ross Landispublic commentgiving us such an

Thomas Petersonand it really was the weather was just as good as it could have been i i think unfortunately she came back at us tonight and uh knocked out a little bit of power with the storm and i wanted to thank john o'neill for a note he sent just a little while ago over in my neighborhood a tree came down took wires down the whole neighborhood is out of power and i know folks in that area and many of them are without power, are not able to watch as normal. But if any of their friends are watching, you can pass on the news from Fire Chief O'Neill that the power is expected to be back on at about 1 o'clock tonight. So we'll cross our fingers and hope that's the case. And obviously this is part of the new normal we live in now with all these extreme events that take place.

A couple of other quick things. A quick report back from a note that I raised earlier about the bus rapid transit issue and an action plan that has been under development, one of the action plans under development by the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority and the policy committee that I'm a part of took a vote on that. It approved the action plan but amended it to put the conclusions and recommendations in draft because of concerns that virtually all of the members of the committee had about a combination of technical issues and other public policy and perspective issues that deserve further consideration. So more to come on that. But again, the action plan as a framework was approved, but the conclusions and recommendations were put into a draft format

for further development and consideration. I also wanted to pass on that while this is not a city of Fairfax issue per se, it does affect residents. The transportation planning board has been involved in the I-495 Southside Express Lane proposal and has been soliciting public comments and holding a series of public hearings. So for residents who use the Beltway and are concerned about that, there have been a number of hearings to invite public comment and many of them have come to me. So I just wanted to let folks kind of know what that is looking and feeling like. The official comments that have come in on that proposal to put express lanes in, according to TPB, have run about, I think the official count was 35 in favor and 7 against, but the

personal emails sent to me and other members on the committee have been different. I got about 80 in opposition. I guess the point to take away from this is your personal contacts with all of the members of these committees are really very important because we relay them back to the parent organizations that also do things collectively, and the combination of that tells a different story than just one piece of that information alone. So please continue to reach out and know that all of us who do this will be making sure that information is relayed back to others Also wanted to follow up on councilmember Hall's suggestion about us Letting folks know where we have board and Commission and committee

openings and I understand we have two openings now with the environmental sustainability committee and I'm guessing those will be POSTED IF THEY HAVE NOT ALREADY BEEN POSTED. IS THAT RIGHT?

Melissa Shinaberryclerkby voiceSO THE VACANCY SHOWS ON THE CITY WEBSITE FOR SERVING UNDER BOARDS AND COMMISSIONS. AND IN THE AUGUST CITY SCENE, THEY'LL BE ADVERTISED IN THERE AS WELL.

Thomas PetersonOKAY. AND FOR FOLKS WHO HAVEN'T YET GONE TO THAT WEBSITE, I'M GUESSING IT'S EASY TO FIND. BUT DO YOU HAVE ANY QUICK GUIDANCE ON HOW TO GET THERE?

Melissa Shinaberryclerkby voiceWELL, I KNOW WE'RE IN TRANSITION OF A NEW WEBSITE. I DON'T KNOW THE EXACT DATE. I KNOW SOMETIME THIS MONTH. but I know if you go under the government tab under city clerk, I'm going to try to do this visually in my head. If you go into the city clerk side, there is a subsection for city like boards and commissions. If you click on there, I'll take you to the city website page that shows all the different boards and their information roster, and it'll show different vacancies as well. And there's a red button that says apply that you'll have to hit to do an application.

Thomas PetersonThank you. And then my final note is just, Appreciate everybody here providing additional time for us to consider the gun issue that will come up later and to just acknowledge, and for all who are watching, that I received, as I think everybody did, quite a few emails. I think my last count was about 200, and I wanted to acknowledge that, you know, those are important. I have received them, and I recognize this is a complex issue, and it's going to take some study. And so I certainly will be looking forward to using the available time to gather and share and discuss meaningful information to help us make the best decisions we can here in the city. Thank you. Council Member Bates.

Billy BatesI just want to echo Council Member Hall's comments about the 4th of July festivities. Thank you to all our staff for all their hard work. and also want to express my deepest condolences for the loss of Terry Carroll to the department and his family and community. I'd only ever met him once at his retirement party, but I have family and close friend of the family who have interacted with him and even worked with him as a volunteer. and i know that he was a um a very very compassionate and dedicated uh public servant and uh i know that he'll be missed dearly and was really a a big part of the the department in the community uh thank you

Catherine Readcouncil member mcquillen

Rachel McQuillenhi yes thank you um i would like to take a moment to thank all the residents who have reached out regarding the Pickett Road Connector Trail and the gun ordinance. As Council Member Peterson has mentioned, we did receive a lot of email and outreach from the public, so we appreciate you taking the time to speak up. I would also like to express my appreciation to the city staff, Parks and Recreation, Old Town Business Association, Fairfax Central Chamber of Commerce, all the volunteers and everyone who helped make our Independence Day celebration a success. It's just a phenomenal event. I look forward to it every year. It's a strong reflection of the pride and the unity we have here in our community. I also want to acknowledge and recognize the recent passing of Officer Carroll.

in addition to being a dedicated animal control officer he also served as a crossing guard and was my family's favorite crossing guard my children I always looked forward to his big smile and every morning he was very friendly and we will miss him a lot so thank you

Catherine Readall right thank all of you I would just like to address the information that was given to us this evening on a referendum that took place in 2014 on four-year terms. And it's interesting because it was brought forward by a resident who spent two and a half years telling us that we shouldn't pay any attention to the votes and the input over the last 10 years on the George Snyder Trail. While it's interesting that we did in fact have a vote on four-year terms over a decade ago, the fact of the matter is the 15,000 voters who live in Fairfax City in 2025 this is not necessarily impactful i will again point out that a super majority of cities in the commonwealth of virginia that's 35 out of 38 have staggered four-year terms so do many towns

whether this city does or does not want that if it is not the will of this body to address that then it's not the will of the body to address that but i will continue to say that there is a reason Many jurisdictions in the Commonwealth of Virginia have opted for this, and I do believe that the citizens of this city should have a say in it. And if not a say in it, then it should be addressed by this council. But that is for the majority of this council to decide. I also want to thank Parks and Recreation for the wonderful Fourth of July celebration. it is so sad about Officer Carroll I was at his retirement but I would also just like to close this meeting by saying every single day we run into people and we do not

know their struggles that's our neighbors, that's people we work with who have family members that are struggling with terminal illnesses we don't know the burdens that other people carry until we hear of someone passing but every day we run into people whose family members are struggling. And I hope that we all are very kind and we have open and kind ears to hear when people want to share with us the struggles that they're having. And so with that, I'm going to adjourn this meeting and take us into a closed meeting at this time.