City Council Meeting

of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. It is now time to proclaim. So I would like to ask Suzanne Levy and Eric Carzon and anybody else from our city library to come down for the Library Week Proclamation. This is for National Library Week. Whereas, libraries spark creativity, fuel imagination, and inspire lifelong learning, offering a space where individuals of all ages can explore new ideas and be drawn to new possibilities. And whereas, libraries serve as vibrant community hubs, connecting people with knowledge, technology, and resources while fostering civic engagement, critical thinking, and lifelong learning.

And whereas, libraries provide free and equitable access to books, digital tools, and innovative programming, ensuring that all individuals, regardless of background, have the support they need to learn, connect, and thrive. And whereas, libraries partner with schools, businesses, and organizations, connecting the dots to maximize resources, increasing efficiency, and expanding access to essential services, strengthening the entire community. And whereas, libraries empower job seekers, entrepreneurs, and lifelong learners by providing access to resources, training, and opportunities that support career growth and economic success. And whereas, libraries nurture young minds through storytimes, STEAM programs, and literacy initiatives,

fostering curiosity and a love of learning that lasts a lifetime. And whereas, libraries protect the right to read, think, and explore without censorship, standing as champions of intellectual freedom and free expression. And whereas, libraries, librarians, and library workers across the country are joining together to celebrate National Library Week under the theme, Drawn to the Library. Now, therefore, I, Catherine S. Reed, Mayor of the City of Fairfax, do hereby proclaim April 6th through 12th, 2025, is National Library Week in the City of Fairfax, and encourage the community during this week to visit their library, explore its resources, and celebrate all the ways that the library draws us together as a community.

So, without further ado, remarks? I'm Suzanne Levy, and I have the honor to represent the City on the Fairfax County Library Board of Trustees. And I first want to introduce you to our branch manager, who's fairly new to Fairfax, Elena Quarles. When you come into the library, say hello. And our new director, Eric Carzon, who joins us from Montgomery County. He's been with us since, I think, the 4th of November, and he's still learning his way around the county. But we are delighted to have them both here tonight. I also wanted to mention that this month we are collecting food at the library. We have two bins inside the library, so if you're bringing books back and have some extra food to put into our food drive,

we'd greatly appreciate it. And it is National Library this week, so stop in and say hello. Okay. Remarks? Should I make more? No? Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good about you. Good about you. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Library is important. You know how you know libraries are important when you grow up in a small town that doesn't have one, and your only library as a child is your elementary school library? Then you start to really appreciate the value of being able to walk into a public library

and check out any book you want. I'm going to call up the board for Fairfax Spotlight on the Arts. It's that time. Spotlight on the Arts is celebrating its 40th anniversary here in the city of Fairfax. It is very important to our city. All right. I shall proclaim to you. Whereas, established in 1985, Fairfax Spotlight on the Arts was the vision of founding board members, John Mason and Jane Woods, to put a spotlight on all the wonderful artistic opportunities that exist in Fairfax City and the surrounding area. Today, Spotlight has continued to be committed to supporting and encouraging awareness of cultural opportunities in the greater Fairfax community. And whereas, Fairfax Spotlight on the Arts began as a small weekend initiative for some dedicated arts enthusiasts,

and has grown to be considered one of Virginia's foremost arts festivals, with major collaborative efforts between the city of Fairfax, George Mason University, and Northern Virginia Community College. And whereas, Spotlight also raises funds for scholarships that enable students from George Mason University and Fairfax High School to realize their dreams in the arts. As of 2025, Spotlight has awarded over 150 scholarships to deserving students. And whereas, the success of Fairfax Spotlight on the Arts and the passion of its members has allowed them to create opportunities for new arts groups, such as the Fairfax Art League and the Old Town Performance Series, and provides support for existing arts organizations.

And whereas, to celebrate 40 years of supporting the arts, the 2025 Spotlight on the Arts Festival will be held at Sherwood Center, to capture the vibe and energy of the Stage Door Canteen, which serves servicemen during World War II. In addition to the great lineup at Sherwood, patrons can visit Old Town Square to hear DC Spotlight Orchestra, Starlight Orchestra, play the big band hits of the 1940s. And whereas, patrons of the arts can spend an evening under the stars with the City of Fairfax Theatre Company at Veterans Amphitheater, check out the finalists of the Spotlight on the Arts contest, sponsored by Capital One Hall, displayed at the opening reception. Now therefore, I, Kathryn S. Reed, Mayor of the City of Fairfax, do hereby recognize and honor Fairfax Spotlight on the Arts on their 40th anniversary,

and encourage the community to come out over the weekends of April 25 to 27 and May 2 to 4 to see some wonderful concerts and shows. So, let's give it up for Fairfax Spotlight on the Arts and this wonderful board who would like to make remarks. There you go. Thank you, Mayor Reed. This is a very unfamiliar setting for me, so. On behalf of the Spotlight on the Arts Board of Directors, I want to thank Mayor Reed and the City Council, not only for this proclamation, but for the Council's steadfast support of the arts over the years. As the Mayor said, we are celebrating our 40th anniversary of Spotlight. It was founded by former Mayor John Mason and former State Senator Jane Woods. And throughout the 40 years of its existence, it has been true to its mission, to enhance awareness of the arts, to support local and emerging artists, and to provide arts-related scholarships.

This year, as the Mayor mentioned, we are talking of the same talking points. We have awarded over 150 scholarships to some amazing students around the region who have continued their education in music and art. I also want to encourage the Mayor and the Council to come out to the opening Spotlight reception to help us kick off this year's festival. We are going to be on Friday, April 25th, at 7 p.m. at the Sherwood Center. We will be celebrating the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II and the amazing music from that era. And I just want to announce, I am delighted to say that, she is here, there she is. Jennifer Passi is a City Resident, former member of the City Council, and the Senior Director of Communications for the USL, is this year's honorary chairperson.

So, thank you, and Jennifer, I really appreciate that. Thank you, Mayor Reed. I want to, one last time, encourage the Council to come out for the opening reception, and all residents where you'll be able to vote and determine the winners of the second annual art contest, hear some live performances, including from some of our amazing scholarship recipients. So, thank you very much. Thank you very much. Anyone else? Okay, then we're going to have a photo. All right. . . Okay, everyone smile. Perfect, thank you. . Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. . . . . . . . . . . . . CONFIGURATION. I FURTHER MOVE THAT THE CITY STAFF BE DIRECTED TO WORK WITH THE CITY COUNCIL ON EXPLORING POSSIBLE MODIFICATIONS TO THE GEORGE SNYDER TRAIL PROJECT. WE UNDERSTAND THAT VDOT,

THE VIRGINIA DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION, HAS GIVEN THE CITY A DEADLINE OF DECEMBER 31, 2025 TO ADVERTISE FOR CONSTRUCTION. DO I HAVE A SECOND? SECOND. OKAY. A MOTION HAS BEEN MADE BY COUNCILMEMBER PETERSON AND SECONDED BY COUNCILMEMBER HALL, A ROLL CALL VOTE. COUNCILMEMBER AMOS. AYE. COUNCILMEMBER HALL. AYE. COUNCILMEMBER HARDY CHANDLER. AYE. COUNCILMEMBER PETERSON. AYE. COUNCILMEMBER BATES. AYE. COUNCILMEMBER MCQUILLAN. AYE. MOTION PASSED UNANIMOUSLY. MAYOR REED, I'M SORRY, WE DID SKIP ONE STEP IF THEY COULD VOTE ON ACTUALLY ADOPTING THE AGENDA AS WELL FOR THE RECORD. ALL RIGHT THEN. I HAVE ANOTHER. SO SUGGEST YOU ADOPT THE AGENDA AND THEN IF SOMEONE WANTS TO MAKE ANOTHER MOTION. OKAY. SO WE HAVE HAD THE MOTION HAS BEEN MADE AND SECONDED. CAN WE HAVE A ROLL CALL VOTE ON

ADOPTING THE AGENDA? COUNCILMEMBER AMOS. AYE. COUNCILMEMBER HALL. AYE. COUNCILMEMBER HARDY CHANDLER. AYE. COUNCILMEMBER PETERSON. AYE. COUNCILMEMBER BATES. AYE. COUNCILMEMBER MCQUILLEN. AYE. AYE. COUNCILMEMBER HALL. SO I MOVE THAT THE CITY CANCEL THE COUNTRY CLUB HILLS CONNECTOR TRAIL. IS THERE A SECOND? SECOND. OKAY. A MOTION HAS BEEN MADE BY COUNCILMEMBER HALL AND SECONDED BY COUNCILMEMBER PETERSON. IS THERE ANY DISCUSSION ON THIS MOTION? COUNCILMEMBER BATES. THANK YOU. I THOUGHT WE WERE GOING TO WAIT UNTIL WE HAD A WORK SESSION TO DISCUSS THIS. COUNCILMEMBER HALL. IF I MAY, IT SEEMED THERE WAS SUPPORT BASED UPON REVIS CONVERSATIONS AND I THINK ACTUALLY YOU WERE THE ONE WHO BROUGHT THIS UP BEFORE WE EVEN WERE ELECTED THAT IT WAS AN OPTION.

AND SO I THINK THAT WE SHOULD MOVE FORWARD WITH CANCELATION OF THIS. COUNCILMEMBER BATES. COUNCILMEMBER HARDY CHANDLER. OKAY. COUNCILMEMBER HARDY CHANDLER. I WOULD BE IN FAVOR OF A WORK SESSION ON THIS AND OTHER IN TERMS OF HOW IT FITS INTO THE BROADER LANDSCAPE. COUNCILMEMBER BATES, ANYTHING TO ADD? YEAH. I MEAN, I SUPPORT CANCELING THE TRAIL, BUT I THINK THAT GIVEN ALL OF THE VERY EXTENSIVE INFORMATION THAT HAS BEEN PROVIDED TO COUNCILMEMBERS ON THINGS LIKE THE BUDGET, THAT IT WOULD ONLY BE FAIR TO ALLOW FOR COUNCILMEMBERS SUCH AS COUNCILMEMBER HARDY CHANDLER WHO HAVEN'T HAD THE BENEFIT OF A WORK SESSION SUCH AS I HAVE TO HAVE THAT DISCUSSION WITH STAFF AND WITH OUR COLLEAGUES BEFORE MAKING FINAL DECISION ON THIS. SO LET'S, CAN WE CONFER WITH STAFF ON WHEN THAT MIGHT BE ABLE TO HAPPEN?

WE WERE THINKING MAYBE THE 22ND AND THEN WE CAN KIND OF SWAP THAT OUT WITH THE OLD TOWN HALL DISCUSSION. WELL, I THINK WE NEED TO LEAVE OLD TOWN HALL WHERE IT IS FOR THEIR OWN DEADLINE REASONS. WE CAN CERTAINLY SCHEDULE THIS ITEM AS AN ADDITIONAL OR IN ADDITION TO THAT, YEAH. IF THE COUNCIL DESIRES THAT. BUT I DO THINK THAT IT MERITS FURTHER DISCUSSION BECAUSE WE ALSO NEED TO BE CLEAR ON IF ANY OF THESE GRANTS, AND I THINK ONE IS AN 8 MILLION DOLLAR GRANT AND MAYBE, WELL THAT ONE I THINK IS AN 8 MILLION DOLLAR GRANT. I DON'T BELIEVE ANY MONEY HAS BEEN SPENT, BUT WE CERTAINLY NEED TO BE CLEAR ON THE FINANCIAL OBLIGATIONS IF ANY FOR RETURNING THIS MONEY IF WE CANCEL THE COUNTRY CLUB HILLS CONNECTOR TRAIL. SO I DO THINK THAT IT MERITS SOME DISCUSSION AND I THINK THE PUBLIC NEEDS TO BE AWARE TOO THAT WE ARE BASICALLY

GIVING BACK GRANT MONEY TO THE NVTA AND GIVING BACK 8 MILLION DOLLARS IS NOT SOMETHING WE SHOULD DO LIGHTLY, NOT JUST BECAUSE WE SUBMITTED THAT PROJECT, WERE AWARDED THE PROJECT AND GIVEN MONEY TO COMPLETE THE PROJECT, BUT THE FUTURE AWARD OF CONTRACTS TO AN UNRELIABLE PARTNER MIGHT BE SOMETHING WE WANT TO CONSIDER AS WELL. AND SO I DO THINK A DISCUSSION WOULD BE A GOOD THING FOR THE DIOS TO HAVE AND ALSO A GOOD THING FOR THE PUBLIC TO HEAR. YES, COUNCILMEMBER HALL. I WOULD STILL LIKE TO CANCEL. I RECOGNIZE THAT A WORK SESSION HAS BEEN REQUESTED. THAT BEING SAID, A WORK SESSION WAS NOT REQUESTED UNTIL I PROPOSED CANCELING THIS TONIGHT. AND SO I THINK WE'VE HAD SUFFICIENT TIME IN OUR CONVERSATIONS

AROUND THE BUDGET OVER THE PAST SIX OR EIGHT WEEKS TO BE ABLE TO REQUEST INFORMATION ON THINGS THAT WE THOUGHT MIGHT BE IMPORTANT AT THE TIME. SO MY MOTION STILL STANDS THAT I WOULD LIKE TO PROPOSE TO CANCEL THE TRAIL. IS THERE ANY FURTHER DISCUSSION? COUNCILMEMBER BATES. WE HAD REQUESTED A WORK SESSION SESSION SOME NUMBER OF WEEKS AGO ON THIS. AND MY UNDERSTANDING WAS THAT WE WANTED TO KIND OF GET THE GEORGE SNYDER TRAIL TAKEN CARE OF FIRST AND THAT STAFF WOULD LOOK AT DOING THAT AFTER THE FACT. WE ALSO HAVE HAD A LOT OF BUDGET DISCUSSIONS AND HAVE HAD TO PRIORITIZE THAT. SO THIS IS NOT THE FIRST THAT WE'VE PROPOSED A WORK SESSION ON THIS. AND WE HAD A WORK SESSION ON THIS LAST YEAR WITH THE PREVIOUS COUNCIL.

BUT WE HAVEN'T HAD ONE WITH THE CURRENT COUNCIL AND THERE ARE FIVE NEW COUNCIL MEMBERS AND THERE'S BEEN A STATED DESIRE FROM ONE OF THEM TO HAVE A WORK SESSION ON THIS BEFORE MAKING A DECISION. SO I DO NOT THINK IT WOULD BE AT ALL PRUDENT TO VOTE ON THIS BEFORE HAVING THAT WORK SESSION. THANK YOU. COUNCIL MEMBER AMOS. SO THIS WILL MAKE MY DECISION FOR ME. WHEN IS AS SOON AS WE CAN HAVE A WORK SESSION ON THIS? WOULD BE APRIL 22ND. THERE'S MULTIPLE ITEMS ON THE AGENDA FOR THAT NIGHT AS WELL. BUT IF COUNCIL WISHES TO HAVE IT, WE'LL CERTAINLY ADD IT. AND THEN WHEN WOULD BE THE NEXT OPPORTUNITY FOR US TO MAKE A DECISION? PRESUMABLY AT THE NEXT MEETING, HOWEVER, I WILL LOOK TO THE ATTORNEY, I ASSUME AFTER YOU HAVE YOUR WORK SESSION,

YOU NORMALLY GO BACK INTO REGULAR SESSION, AT WHICH TIME YOU COULD MAKE A MOTION AFTER YOUR WORK SESSION DISCUSSION. THAT'S CORRECT. YOU HAVE A LOT OF OPTIONS ON WHEN YOU COULD DO THAT. I'LL GO AHEAD AND PREFACE BY SAYING I ALSO SUPPORT CANCELLING THIS, BUT I ALSO RECOGNIZE THAT THERE HAVE BEEN, ESPECIALLY AMONGST US, WE HAVE FELT KIND OF RUSHED INTO MANY OF OUR DECISIONS WITHOUT THE OPPORTUNITY TO ACTUALLY LOOK CLOSER AT IT. AND I THINK THAT WE SHOULD HAVE A WORK SESSION TOGETHER. SO THAT'S WHERE I STAND ON THAT. OKAY. FOR COUNCILMEMBER PETERSON. ONE CONCERN THAT I HAVE ABOUT A DELAY IS THE POTENTIAL FOR THE CITY TO BE EXPENDING ANY FURTHER RESOURCES ON THE DEVELOPMENT OR IMPLEMENTATION OF THIS TRAIL.

AND IT WOULD SEEM TO ME THAT IT WOULD BE PRUDENT TO FREEZE ANY ACTIVITY ON THIS UNLESS UNTIL IT'S FULLY RESOLVED. BUT IN THE MEANTIME, THERE SHOULD BE NO FURTHER ACTIVITY ENGAGED IN ON THIS TRAIL. AND I THINK THERE'S ANOTHER TRAIL PROJECT THAT MAY FIT INTO THE SAME CATEGORY AS WELL. BUT ONE OF THE CONCERNS THAT I HAVE, I THINK IT MAY BE SHARED BY THEIR COUNCILMEMBERS, IS THAT BECAUSE WE HAVE DELAYED TAKING ACTION AND CONSIDERING THESE TRAIL PROJECTS, THE MEETER HAS BEEN RUNNING. I DO AGREE. WE ASKED A VERY LONG TIME AGO FOR ALL OF THE TRAILS TO BE PART OF A WORK SESSION SO THAT WE COULD DO EXACTLY THIS. AND THAT HAS BEEN DELAYED MORE THAN ONCE. AND SO I AM VERY CONCERNED ABOUT THE RISK THAT WE'RE GOING TO BE EXPENDING RESOURCES ON NECESSARILY AS THIS CONTINUES.

COUNCILMEMBER HARDY CHANDLER. SO LET ME ASK WHAT IS THE RISK BETWEEN NOW AND EQUAL 22ND IN TERMS OF ACTIVITY? I'M LOOKING FOR... I'LL ASK WENDY TO COME FORWARD, PLEASE. GOOD EVENING. FIRST, I'LL ADDRESS THE COUNTRY CLUB COMMONS. WE HAVE NOT EXPENDED ANY FUNDS ON THAT PROJECT AND WE'RE NOT PLANNING TO IN THE NEXT FEW WEEKS. SO I DON'T THINK THERE'S ANY CONCERN ABOUT THAT. THE OTHER TRAIL I BELIEVE THAT YOU'RE REFERRING TO IS PICKET TRAIL. THAT PROJECT IS IN THE RIGHT-OF-WAY PHASE AND THE CITY HAS EXPENDED FUNDS TO ADVANCE THAT PROJECT. THAT PROJECT IS AN ACTIVE PROJECT AND IT'S VERY CLOSE TO ADVERTISEMENT AND AUTHORIZATION. COUNCILMEMBER PETERSON. IF I MIGHT, A FOLLOW UP ON THAT. I KNOW THERE HAS BEEN A LONG-STANDING INTEREST BY A NUMBER OF PEOPLE, I BELIEVE, INCLUDING COUNCILMEMBER BATES,

ON LOOKING AT A PROJECT MODIFICATION FOR THE PICKET ROAD TRAIL, I THINK LITERALLY GOING FROM THE EAST TO THE WEST SIDE OF ROUTE PICKET ROAD, RATHER. THAT, AGAIN, SOUNDS LIKE AN ISSUE WE WANT TO EXPLORE FURTHER AND UNDERSTAND MORE CLEARLY WITHOUT EXPENDING ADDITIONAL RESOURCES ALONG THE WAY IN CASE A DECISION IS MADE TO MAKE A CHANGE THERE. MY UNDERSTANDING IS THERE'S A BIT MORE LEARNING WE NEED TO DO AROUND THAT, BUT I AM CONCERNED, JUST AS I MENTIONED EARLIER, THAT WE MIGHT CONTINUE WITH THE EXPENDITURE OF RESOURCES FOR THAT PROJECT WHEN IT MAY END UP BEING A STRANDED COST. SO I WONDER WHETHER THAT'S ONE WE SHOULD FREEZE SO THAT WE CAN HAVE APPROPRIATE CONSIDERATION OF THIS. WE CAN PUT THIS ON AS EARLY AS THE NEXT MEETING, WHICH IS THE 22ND.

AND AS FAR AS THE LONG DELAYS, I THINK WE'VE BEEN ON THIS DIAS TOGETHER FOR 98 DAYS, SO I DON'T KNOW WHAT ANYBODY CONSIDERS LONG. WE CAN DO A WORK SESSION. EVERYTHING WAS MOVED OFF THE WORK SESSIONS FOR BUDGET, AND THAT WAS ALSO A REQUEST FROM THE DIAS, THAT EVERYTHING EXCEPT BUDGET BE REMOVED. BUT WE WILL NOW ADD THIS TRAILS, IF THE DIAS SO DESIRES, TO THE 22ND. AND WE CAN GET AN UPDATE ON WHERE THE PICKET ROAD IS. WE HAVE BEEN ASSURED THAT NO MONEY HAS BEEN SPENT ON THE COUNTRY CLUB HILLS CONNECTOR. SO, COUNCIL MEMBER AMOS. JUST BECAUSE THE MOTION STILL CURRENTLY STANDS, IF IT'S OKAY WITH MY COLLEAGUE, I'D JUST LIKE TO ADD A FRIENDLY AMENDMENT SAYING UNTIL WE HAVE THE WORK SESSION, JUST FREEZE ANY ACTIVITY AT ALL SO WE DON'T HAVE TO THINK ABOUT IT.

I GUESS. I'LL SUPPORT THAT. OKAY. OKAY. FRIENDLY AMENDMENT. DO WE NEED A SECOND ON THE FRIENDLY AMENDMENT? SO, WHO SECONDED? COUNCIL MEMBER HALL SECONDED. NO. SHE WAS IN MOTION. NO. COUNCIL MEMBER PETERSON SECONDED. NO. WHOEVER SECONDED NEEDS TO AGREE. DO YOU AGREE TO THE FRIENDLY AMENDMENT? WITH CLARIFICATION. AND PERHAPS, IF NECESSARY, STAFF CLARIFICATION, BUT WHEN YOU'RE SAYING WE FREEZE EVERYTHING, THAT WOULD INCLUDE THE CCH CONNECTOR TRAIL AS WELL AS THE PICKET ROAD TRAIL. BOTH OF THEM WOULD BE FROZEN UNTIL WE TALK ABOUT THEM, DATE CERTAIN? YES, THAT WAS MY INTENTION. OKAY. IN THAT EVENT, I WILL SECOND. OKAY. SO WE HAVE A... SO, JUST SO WE ALL UNDERSTAND THE MOTION THAT'S ON THE FLOOR, IT'S BEEN MODIFIED TO ESSENTIALLY FREEZE ANY CITY STAFF ACTION WITH RESPECT TO COUNTRY CLUB, HILLS TRAIL, PICKET TRAIL?

ANYTHING ELSE? ARE THERE ANY OTHER TRAILS WE NEED TO CONSIDER THAT WE MIGHT NOT BE AWARE OF THINKING OF RIGHT AT THE MOMENT THAT ARE IN THE CIP FOR FISCAL YEAR 2026? I THINK WE'RE SAFE. JUST WITH THE DIRECTIVE THAT NOTHING IS TO BE DONE ON TRAILS IN THE CITY WOULD BE MY UNDERSTANDING UNTIL THE MEETING, UNTIL THE WORK SESSION ON THE 22ND. COUNCIL, YES, MR. FOSTER. JUST FOR CLEAR, ALTHOUGH THE MR. AMOS MADE AN MENDMENT, I THINK THE ORIGINAL MOTION, WHICH IS STILL ON THE FLOOR, IS TO CANCEL THE COUNTRY CLUB, HILLS PROJECT. SO, IF YOU VOTE FOR THE MOTION, I THINK YOU WOULD BE CANCELING THE PROJECT UNLESS YOU MODIFY THE MOTION. I TOOK THE MENDMENT, AND IT'S ENTIRELY UP TO THE MAKER AND THE SECONDER TO ACTUALLY MODIFY THE MOTION TO SIMPLY PAUSE EXPENDITURE OF FUNDS.

BUT IF THE MAKER WOULD LIKE TO CLARIFY IF SHE IS OKAY WITH THAT CHANGE OR IF SHE WANTS TO CONTINUE WITH THE MOTION TO CANCEL. THE MAKER IS NOT HAPPY, BUT THE MAKER WILL AMEND TO BE FRIENDLY. SO, THE MOTION ON THE FLOOR NOW IS TO PAUSE THE EXPENDITURE OF ANY FURTHER FUNDS WITH RESPECT TO THOSE TWO NAME PROJECTS, COUNTRY CLUB, HILLS TRAIL AND PICKET TRAIL. AND COUNCILMEMBER PETERSON. ANDERSON. TO BE SAFE, BECAUSE WE DIDN'T EXACTLY GET A RESPONSE TO THE QUESTION OF WHETHER THERE ARE ANY OTHER TRAILS IN THE SYSTEM. I WOULD LIKE ADDITIONAL LANGUAGE ADDED JUST TO INDICATE THOSE TWO TRAILS AND ANY OTHER THAT ARE IN DEVELOPMENT SO THAT WE HAVE A CARP BLANCH FREEZE ON TRAIL DEVELOPMENT. I THINK WE ALL UNDERSTAND THAT.

SURE. OK, COUNCILMEMBER BATES. WOULD THE INTENTION BE TO ALSO INCLUDE ROADWAY PROJECTS THAT INCLUDE SHARED USE PATH, SUCH AS THE NORTHFACS EAST-WEST ROADWAY? I'M GUESSING NO. SIR, ARE WE ONLY TALKING ABOUT DEDICATED SHARED USE PATH PROJECTS THAT DON'T INCLUDE OTHER ELEMENTS? MAYOR REED, IF I COULD MAKE A SUGGESTION. JUST FOR CLEANLINESS' SAKE, PERHAPS THE COUNCIL SHOULD VOTE ON THE MOTION THAT'S ON THE FLOOR AND IF THERE ARE ANY ADDITIONAL MOTIONS, SOMEONE CAN MAKE THEM AT AN APPROPRIATE TIME. OKAY. SO THE MOTION, AS I UNDERSTAND IT, IS THAT WE ARE CURRENTLY VOTING TO ELIMINATE ANY ACTIVITY RELATED TO ANY TRAILS, INDEPENDENT OF ROADWAY PROJECTS, CURRENTLY IN PROCESS. WOULD THAT BE ACCURATE, COUNCILMEMBER HALL?

YES. OKAY. AND DO YOU AGREE WITH THAT, COUNCILMEMBER PETERSON? YES. EXCELLENT. SO WE WILL TAKE A ROLL CALL VOTE ON THAT MOTION. COUNCILMEMBER AMOS. AMOS UBSTANE. COUNCILMEMBER HALL? YES. COUNCILMEMBER HALL? YES. COUNCILMEMBER HARDY CHANDLER? NO. COUNCILMEMBER PETERSON? YES. COUNCILMEMBER BATES? YES. COUNCILMEMBER BATES? YES. COUNCILMEMBER MCQUELLEN? NO. OKAY. MOTION PASSED THREE TO TWO WITH ONE ABSTENTION. WELL, ALL RIGHT, THEN. NOW, MAYOR, ONE OTHER HOUSEKEEPING ITEM. SINCE I WAS AWARE OF COUNCILMEMBER PETERSON'S INITIAL MOTION, I WAS NOT AWARE OF THE ADDITIONAL MOTIONS THAT WERE GOING TO BE MADE. SO IT WOULD BE APPROPRIATE FOR SOMEONE TO MAKE A MOTION TO FURTHER AMEND THE AGENDA TO HAVE INCLUDED THAT SECOND MOTION.

SO IF SOMEONE COULD JUST MAKE AND SECOND THAT MOTION, WE'LL CLEAN UP THE RECORD TO AMEND THE AGENDA TO INCLUDE THE MOTION ON COUNTRY CLUB HILLS TRAIL AND PICKET TRAIL AND OTHER TRAILS THAT ARE NOT CONNECTED TO ROADWAYS OR WHATEVER THE MOTION READ. COUNCILMEMBER AMOS, WOULD YOU LIKE TO DO THAT? SURE. I MOVE TO... IT'S JUST... I SO MOVE. I SO MOVE THAT. DO WE HAVE A SECOND? YEAH. DO WE HAVE A SECOND? CAN I GET SOME CLARIFICATION AS TO WHAT WE'RE DOING? I'M CONFUSED. THIS IS JUST AMENDING THE AGENDA TO ACTUALLY ADD THE ITEM THAT YOU ALL JUST CONSIDERED SO THAT THE AGENDA WILL READ APPROPRIATELY ONCE WE DO THE MINUTES. SO SO COUNCILMEMBER AMOS MOVED THAT. WOULD SOMEBODY LIKE TO SECOND THAT? SECOND.

OKAY. SO WE HAVE A MOTION BY COUNCILMEMBER AMOS AND A SECOND BY COUNCILMEMBER HARDY CHANDLER. A ROLL CALL VOTE. COUNCILMEMBER AMOS. AYE. COUNCILMEMBER HALL. AYE. COUNCILMEMBER HARDY CHANDLER. AYE. COUNCILMEMBER PETERSEN. AYE. COUNCILMEMBER BATES. AYE. COUNCILMEMBER MCQUILLAN. AYE. COUNCILMEMBER MCQUILLAN. NO. MOTION PASSED FIVE TO ONE. OKAY. WE CAN MOVE ON TO PUBLIC HEARINGS. OUR FIRST PUBLIC HEARING IS A PUBLIC HEARING AND COUNCIL ACTION ON A REQUEST OF THE CITY OF FAIRFAC APPLICANT BY DAN PHILLIPS AGENT FOR A SPECIAL USE PERMIT PURSUANT TO CITY CODE SECTION 110-3.3.1 TO ALLOW CONTINUED USE OF TEMPORARY MODULAR CLASSROOMS AT PROVIDENCE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL AND THE RM RESIDENTIAL MEDIUM ZONING DISTRICT

AND ARCHITECTURAL CONTROL OVERLAY DISTRICT. SORRY. ON THE PREMISES KNOWN AS 3616 GERMANTOWN ROAD AND MORE PARTICULARLY DESCRIBED AS TAX MAP PARCEL 47-3-01-040, CLARA SCHWEIGER WILL PROVIDE THE STAFF PRESENTATION. GOOD EVENING MAYOR EATING COUNCIL. TONIGHT WE'RE DISCUSSING A SPECIAL USE PERMIT REQUEST FOR PROVIDENCE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL. WE'RE CURRENTLY IN THE PUBLIC HEARING PHASE OF THE DEVELOPMENT REVIEW PROCESS. WE DID NOT CONDUCT A BRIEFING OR A WORK SESSION ON THIS PROPOSAL SINCE IT'S AN EXTENSION OF AN EXISTING SPECIAL USE PERMIT. SO THE APPLICANT IS REQUESTING A SPECIAL USE PERMIT TO ALLOW THE EXTENSION OF A PREVIOUSLY APPROVED SPECIAL USE PERMIT FOR AN EXPANSION OF SCHOOLS, ELEMENTARY, MIDDLE, AND HIGH TO ALLOW CONTINUED USE OF MODULAR TEMPORARY CLASSROOMS AT PROVIDENCE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL.

THIS IS THE LOCATION OF THE SUBJECT PROPERTY. PROVIDENCE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL IS LOCATED ALONG GERMENTOWN ROAD. TO THE NORTH OF THE SUBJECT PROPERTY IS THE CITY COUNTY LINE IN I-66, AND ACROSS GERMENTOWN ROAD IS THE FAIRFACS COUNTY PROPERTY YARD. THE ZONING OF THE SUBJECT PROPERTY IS RESIDENTIAL MEDIUM IN THE ARCHITECTURAL CONTROL OVERLAY DISTRICT. THE COMPREHENSIVE PLANS FUTURE LAND USE DESIGNATION FOR THIS SITE IS GREEN SOCIAL CIVIC NETWORK. THIS PLACE TYPE INCLUDES PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SCHOOLS, PUBLIC SPACES SUCH AS ACTIVE AND PASSIVE PARKS, AND PLAYING FIELDS AND OTHER PUBLIC FACILITIES. HERE ARE SOME PHOTOS OF THE TEMPORARY CLASSROOMS. THEY'RE LOCATED IN THE REAR OF THE SCHOOL, NEAR THE BALL FIELDS.

SO FOR SOME BACKGROUND, IN 2008 THE ZONING ADMINISTRATOR APPROVED AN INSTALLATION OF TWO TEMPORARY CLASSROOMS NOT TO EXCEED ONE YEAR. AND IN 2009 CITY COUNCIL APPROVED A REQUEST TO ALLOW EXPANSION OF THE GOVERNMENTAL USE FOR FIVE YEARS. AND THEN IN 2019 CITY COUNCIL APPROVED AN EXPANSION OF SCHOOLS ELEMENTARY, MIDDLE, AND HIGH FOR FIVE YEARS. AND THE EXPANSION THAT I'M REFERRING TO HERE IS JUST TO ALLOW THE TEMPORARY CLASSROOMS THAT WERE APPROVED IN 2008 TO CONTINUE TO BE USED. SO NOW THE APPLICANT IS COMING BACK TO REQUEST AN EXTENSION OF THE SPECIAL USE PERMIT APPROVED IN 2019. IN 2019 THE PROJECTED STUDENT ENROLLMENT FOR PROVIDENCE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL WAS 897 STUDENTS. ENROLLMENT FOR THE 2024-2025 SCHOOL YEAR WAS 918 STUDENTS.

AND THE APPLICANT HAS INDICATED THAT THE ADDITIONAL CLASSROOM SPACE IS REQUESTED TO CONTINUE TO ACCOMMODATE GENERAL EDUCATION STUDENTS AS WELL AS MULTIPLE PROGRAMS INCLUDING ENGLISH FOR SPEAKERS OF OTHER LANGUAGES, SPECIAL EDUCATION, ADVANCED ACADEMICS, AND TITLE I. AND AFTER I GIVE MY PRESENTATION, I BELIEVE REPRESENTATIVE OF THE SCHOOL BOARD IS HERE TO SPEAK TO GIVE MORE CONTEXT ON WHY THE RENEWAL IS BEING REQUESTED. SO STAFF RECOMMENDS APPROVAL OF THE SPECIAL USE PERMIT WITH THE CONDITION THAT THE SPECIAL USE PERMIT SHALL BE VALID FOR APPROVED IN THE STAFF. THE WAY WE GOT TO THE EIGHT YEAR EXTENSION WAS THROUGH CONVERSATIONS WITH THE SUPERINTENDENT AND WITH THE BOND REFERENDUM THAT WAS PASSED WITH THE LAST ELECTION.

EIGHT YEARS SHOULD GIVE THE SCHOOL BOARD TIME TO MAKE THE IMPROVEMENTS TO THE SCHOOLS SO THAT A RENEWAL WILL NOT BE NECESSARY IN THE FUTURE ONCE WE'VE REACHED THE EIGHT YEAR TIME LIMIT. SO THAT CONCLUDES MY PRESENTATION. I'LL INVITE MR. PLATENBERG AND MR. PHILLIPS UP TO PROVIDE MORE CONTACT. THANK YOU, CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS. THANK YOU SO MUCH, CLARE, FOR ALL YOUR SUPPORT AND YOUR STAFF AND THE WORK IN THIS ENDEAVER. YOU KNOW, CERTAINLY EDUCATIONAL COTTAGES OR TRAILERS AS IT'S REFERRED TO ARE NOT DESIRED ON ANY SITE, ESPECIALLY SCHOOL SITES. IT'S OUR PREFERENCE TO ERADICATE AND REMOVE THOSE. IN FACT, THAT WAS PART OF THE FACILITY CONDITION ASSESSMENT THAT WAS PERFORMED, THAT WAS PROVIDED THAT IDENTIFIED THE REPLACEMENT, REMEDIATION AND REMOVAL OF THOSE TO BE IN CONFORMANCE WITH THE REQUIREMENTS BY THE CITY.

WE WERE FORTUNATE ENOUGH THAT THE VOTERS AND OVERWHELMING MAJORITY OF THE VOTERS IN THE CITY OF FAIRFAX VOTED IN FAVOR OF THE RENOVATION OF THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL TO ADDRESS THAT. IN THAT FCA AND IN THE RENOVATION, WE INCLUDED TWO CLASSROOMS TO ELIMINATE THE USE OF THOSE TRAILERS AND TWO ADDITIONAL CLASSROOMS TO ACCOMMODATE GROWTH IN THE HOPES THAT WE WOULD MEET BACK HERE BEFORE YOU ASKING FOR ANY OTHER ADDITIONAL DISTURBANCES THAT ARE SIMILAR. WITH THAT, I'M READY TO ANSWER ANY QUESTIONS. I WOULD LIKE TO ADD THAT OUR ENROLLMENT IS UP TO 966 AT PROVIDENCE, SO IT'S WELL ABOVE THE 918 THAT WAS ON THE ORIGINAL APPLICATION, AND THAT'S A SIGNIFICANT AMOUNT OF, YOU KNOW, BUSINESS IS GOOD FOR EDUCATION IN THE CITY.

SO WITH THAT, I'M READY TO ANSWER ANY ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS YOU MAY HAVE. OKAY, I WILL OPEN THE PUBLIC HEARING. MS. SHINABURY, HAS THIS PUBLIC HEARING BEEN PROPERLY ADVERTISED? MS. YES, IT HAS. DOES THE APPLICATION, DO YOU HAVE ANYTHING YOU WANT TO SHARE PRIOR TO THAT? OKAY. THEN I WILL ASK THE CLERK TO CALL THE SPEAKERS FORWARD, SO EVERYONE ON THE DIAS WILL HAVE AN OPPORTUNITY TO ASK QUESTIONS AFTER THE PUBLIC HAS HAD AN OPPORTUNITY TO GET PUBLIC HEARING. I HAD NOBODY SIGN UP PRIOR, SO IF THERE'S ANYBODY THAT WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK ON THIS ITEM, THEY CAN COME FORWARD. OKAY, THEN I WILL CLOSE THE PUBLIC HEARING. COUNCIL, ARE THERE ANY QUESTIONS OF STAFF? COUNCILMEMBER HALL. COUNCILMEMBER HALL. COUNCILMEMBER HALL.

I AM IN SUPPORT OF THIS. I KNOW WE'VE DISCUSSED IT. I RECOGNIZE THAT THEY ARE NECESSARY. I DID JUST WANT TO POINT OUT A COUPLE THINGS. THE FIRST ONE IS THAT AT THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS, I RECOGNIZE THAT THERE'S AN EIGHT YEAR LIMIT ON IT. SHOULD THE RENOVATION HOPEFULLY BE DONE SOONER THAN THAT, I THINK MAYBE IT WOULD BE REASONABLE TO HAVE THEM GONE WITHIN SIX MONTHS OR A YEAR OR IMMEDIATELY, SINCE WE ARE ADDING FOUR CLASSROOMS ON AT EACH ELEMENTARY SCHOOL AND HOPEFULLY THEY WON'T BE NEEDED. THAT'S A STATEMENT QUESTION ON THE HIGH SCHOOL ONES. WE'RE NOT ANYWHERE CLOSER TO GETTING RID OF THEM. AND I DO JUST WANT TO POINT OUT, I KNOW WE'VE DISCUSSED THIS BEFORE, WHEN I WAS ON THE SCHOOL BOARD, BUT I DO HAVE CONCERNS ABOUT THE OPENING AND CLOSING OF THE DOORS THAT LEAD TO THE LEARNING COTTAGES THAT ARE OFF OF THE GYM.

AND I RECOGNIZE WE DON'T HAVE ENOUGH STAFF TO BE OUT THERE 24-7, WELL, DURING THE SCHOOL DAY, BUT I DO JUST WANT TO POINT OUT THAT I DO HAVE CONCERNS ABOUT THAT SAFETY RISK. THANK YOU. ANY OTHER QUESTIONS? COUNCILMEMBER PETERSON. THIS MAY BE MY LIMITATION IN GETTING THROUGH THE BACKGROUND DOCUMENT HERE BY STAFF, BUT I DO SEE A NOTATION THAT THE STAFF RECOMMENDS APPROVAL WITH CONDITIONS. IF SOMEBODY MIGHT JUST CLARIFY VERY BRIEFLY FOR ME WHAT THOSE CONDITIONS ARE OR DIRECT ME TO THEM, IT WOULD BE HELPFUL. FOR THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, THE ONLY CONDITION IS THAT IT SHALL BE VALID FOR A PERIOD OF EIGHT YEARS. THAT'S IT? THAT'S IT FOR THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL. SO IT'S CONDITION, NOT CONDITIONS. RIGHT.

THANK YOU. COUNCILMEMBER HARDY CHANDLER? COULD YOU TALK A LITTLE BIT MORE ABOUT THE TIMING? THE EIGHT YEAR YOU MENTIONED WAS TO ALIGN WITH THE POSSIBLE TIMING WITH THE BOND REFERENDUM AND THAT KIND OF THING. IS THERE ANY QUESTION OR HESITATION AROUND THAT? AND PART B IS MY QUESTION ABOUT THE CONDITION AND MAINTENANCE FOR THAT LONG PERIOD OF TIME. ANY THOUGHTS ABOUT THAT? RECOGNIZING THAT IT'S LESS THAN OPTIMAL BUT NEEDED. YES. THANK YOU VERY MUCH, COUNCILMEMBER HANDLEY CHANDLER. I APPRECIATE THE QUESTIONS. SPECIFICALLY THE MAINTENANCE IS THE ONGOING MAINTENANCE THAT WILL CONTINUE. BECAUSE THEY ARE IN MY OPINION LESS THAN DESIRABLE. WE HAVE A REALLY GOOD MAINTENANCE PROGRAM IN TERMS OF MOWING AROUND THEM AND THE SKIRTING OF THE TRAILERS.

ANY TYPE OF HVAC ISSUES ARE ADDRESSED WITHIN SHORT ORDER. IN TERMS OF THE TIMING, THE TIMING THAT IS SET IS SET IN ACCORDANCE WITH WHAT THE FACILITY CONDITION ASSESSMENT CASH FLOW AND PROJECT SCHEDULE THAT WERE INCLUDED IN THAT CONDITION ASSESSMENT. WE ARE ALSO A PART OF OUR BOND ACTION PLAN. WE ARE CURRENTLY IN THE PROCESS OF WE HAVE RECEIVED, WE HAVE ADVERTISED, PUT TOGETHER THE RFP, ADVERTISED FOR THE ARCHITECTURAL SERVICES, AND HAVE RECEIVED THOSE. EVER SINCE THE BOND REFERENDUM WE'VE RECEIVED THEM ON APRIL 3. WE HAVE A TEAM THAT IS SIGNED THE NON-DISCLOSURE AND CONFIDENTIALITY AGREEMENTS, WORKING WITH THE CITY BEHALF THROUGH THE CITY PROCUREMENT OFFICE, AND WE'LL BE EVALUATING THAT, HOPEFULLY BRINGING IT BEFORE THE SCHOOL BOARD, BEFORE THE BREAK FOR SUMMER.

THAT PLAN IS TO CONTINUE TO GET THE COMMUNITY OUTREACH ON THE INITIAL DESIGN, THE DESIGN CHARATES, ET CETERA, TO BEGIN IN THE FALL OF THE SCHOOL YEAR. NOW, THIS IS PREDICATED ON THE BUDGET PROCESS, SO THERE ARE SOME FACTORS THAT ARE AT OUR CONTROL THAT MAY END UP IMPACTING THAT, BUT THE TIMELINE IS SET FORTH TO ACCOMPLISH NOT ONLY THE DESIGN, BUT ALSO THE CONSTRUCTION IN THAT TIME FRAME. COUNCILMEMBER AMOS. ARE THERE ANY CONCERNS WITH THIS, IF WE WERE TO ONE OF THE OPTIONS ON THE TABLE IS TO DEFER THE SCHOOL BOND FOR A YEAR? ANY ISSUES WITH THAT, THAT YOU COULD SAY? FROM MY PERSPECTIVE, I'M ALWAYS CONCERNED ABOUT ANY DELAYED DEFERRAL, BUT I DO UNDERSTAND THE CONDITION, THE DIFFICULT AND CHALLENGING CONDITIONS WE'RE IN.

WE HAVE A COMMITMENT TO GET THINGS DONE. THAT IS, I'M THE TYPE OF PERSON THAT LIKES TO PLANT THE GRASS SEED THAT MORNING AND MOW THAT NIGHT. SO, I DON'T REALLY HAVE A GOOD ANSWER FOR YOU ON THAT, OTHER THAN I'M GOING TO TRY AND GET IT DONE AS SOON AS I POSSIBLY CAN. AND COUNCILMEMBER MCQUILLEN. I'M LOOKING AT THE PROJECTED ENROLLMENT NUMBERS AND THE ACTUAL. IS TWO CLASSROOMS GOING TO BE ENOUGH? WE BELIEVE SO CURRENTLY AT THIS POINT, BUT IT DEPENDS. OH, IT'S FOUR? IT'S FOUR TOTAL. IT'S TWO TO ADDRESS THE... THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR THAT. IT'S TWO TO ELIMINATE THE TRAILERS THAT EXIST AND TWO FOR ADDITIONAL GROWTH. WE HAVE HAD A LOT OF DEVELOPMENT IN THE CITY, AND WE HAVE BEEN RECEIVING POSITIVE STUDENT YIELDS THAT ARE SIGNIFICANTLY HIGHER THAN WHAT WAS FORECAST IN MY OPINION, FROM WHAT WE'VE SEEN.

WE'VE BEEN WORKING WITH MR. FORMAN ON REVISING THOSE FORECAST IN THE YIELDS. HE DOES AN EXCELLENT JOB ON HALF OF THE CITY FORECASTING FROM A LOT OF THE NEW DEVELOPMENT. BUT WE DO BELIEVE THAT THAT WILL ACCOMMODATE THE GROWTH. THAT WAS THE INTENTION. THAT'S THE PLAN. HOWEVER, IF BUSINESS CONTINUES TO STAY GOOD, AND WHAT I MEAN BY THAT IS FABRICS COUNTY PUBLIC SCHOOLS HAS BEEN STAGNANT, IF NOT DECREASING THEIR ENROLLMENT, AND WE HAVE HAD INCREDIBLE GROWTH IN OUR ENROLLMENT. AND YOU MIGHT HEAR A LITTLE BIT MORE ABOUT THAT IN THE PUBLIC HEARING COMMENT. BUT WE BELIEVE AT THIS TIME THAT SHOULD BE ABLE TO ADDRESS. THROUGH THE EIGHT YEARS? IF I WAS ABLE TO FORECAST THAT, I PROBABLY WOULDN'T BE HERE THIS EVENING.

THANK YOU. BUT, YES, WE ANTICIPATE IT THROUGH THE EIGHT YEARS. THANK YOU. BUT THINGS CAN HAPPEN. THAT'S WHY FOR MEMBERS OF THE AUDIENCE, THAT'S WHY WE HAVE A CAPITAL PROVEMENT PROGRAM THAT'S REVIEWED ANNUALLY, AND THAT IS FORECAST FIVE YEARS OUT. SO ANY OTHER DISCUSSION ON THE MOTION? motion okay do I have do I have a motion councilmember Hardy Chandler I move that the city council approve the request of the city of Fairfax school board applicant for the special use permit pursuant to city code section one one zero dash three dot three dot one schools elementary middle high use to allow temporary expansion of Providence Elementary School using modular temporary classrooms in the RM residential mediums zone on the

premises known as 3616 Germantown Road and more particularly described as tax map parcel 47 dash 3 dash oh one dash zero four zero subject to the following condition the special use permit SCP shall be valid for a period of eight years is there a second motion's been made by councilmember Hardy Chandler and seconded by councilmember Peterson is there any discussion on the motion seeing none a roll call vote councilmember McQuillan aye councilmember Bates aye councilmember Peterson councilmember Hardy Chandler aye councilmember Hall aye councilmember Amos aye motion passed unanimously we'll go to the next public hearing which is a public hearing and council action on a request of the city of Fairfax school board applicant by Dan Phillips agent for a special use permit

pursuant to city code section 110 dash 3 dot 3 dot 1 to allow continued use of temporary modular classrooms at Fairfax high school in the RM residential medium zoning district and architectural control overlay district on the premises known as 3501 lion run and more particularly described as tax map parcel 58 dash 1 dash 0 2 dash 3 0 0 3 Claire Schweiger will provide the staff presentation all right so similar to the last item on the agenda we're discussing a special use permit request for Fairfax high school we're currently in the public hearing phase of the development review process the applicant is requesting a special use permit to allow the extension of a previously approved special use permit for an expansion of schools elementary middle and high to allow continued use of modular temporary classrooms at Fairfax high school

this is where the high school is located it's located to the north of Blenheim Boulevard and to the south of Fairfax Boulevard zoning of the subject property is residential medium and the architectural control overlay district the comprehensive plans future land use designation is green social and civic network and this place type includes public and private schools public spaces such as active and passive parks and playing fields and other public facilities here's some photos of the temporary classrooms they're located on the east side of the high school and within the parking lot so for some background in 2012 City Council approved an expansion of a governmental use for two years and then in 2014 City Council approved continued use of the expansion of a governmental use to allow temporary modular classrooms for five years and in 2019 City Council approved an expansion of schools elementary middle and high for five years

so now the applicant is coming back to request an extension of the special use permit approved in 2019 and 2019 the projected student enrollment enrollment for Fairfax high school was 2,243 students enrollment for the 24-25 school year was 200 or 2,401 students and the applicant indicates that this that this is 99% program capacity the applicant has indicated that the additional classroom space is requested to continue to accommodate advanced placement classes and the in school suspension program and a study hall so staff recommends approval of the special use permit with the conditions that the special use permit shall be valid for a period of eight years and that the sheds in the parking lot in proximity to the temporary classrooms shall be removed out of any required parking spaces so similar to the elementary school conditional approval staff expects that after eight years

the quads would be phased out the quads would be phased out the second condition is referring to two sheds that are located within required parking spaces in the parking lot as far as we know the high school did not obtain permits to construct these two structures and since they're located in required parking spaces that are intended to be utilized as parking they should be removed and so with that staff recommends approval of the special use permit with the two conditions that are intended to be utilized as parking they should be removed and so with that staff recommends approval of the special use permit with the two conditions and that concludes my presentation and I'll again invite Mr. Plattenberg up to speak

Thank you again Claire appreciate it and thank you council members and Madam Mayor with this situation it's similar to the one that I discussed before however we do not have a renovation those are the simple facts In discussion with staff we were trying to get an extension beyond the time we came to negotiation of the amount of time that we have before we would have to come back The only thing I can say is when we did the facility condition assessment is we did include the addressing these issues as well as a part of the high school renovation due to the costs associated with the secondary schools both Katherine Johnson middle school and Fairfax High School The team determined that moving forward with the elementary school renovation similar to the precedent of what had been done historically in the city in the past would be our best foot forward that being said the intention and plan is at some point to address and remove these what we call quads there are two quads out there which are a combination of nicer trailers not that that really means anything than what is at the elementary school they are an integral part of the

of the school of the high school of the high school of the advanced placement courses out there as was mentioned it's not just in school suspension but it's also used for study and remediation as well and they are a necessary part as we continue to have the positive enrollment that was shown here this evening in addition the academy has approximately 1,400 students that arrive on our campus each and every day it's a busy place it's an active place but it's a very positive environment for students to be aware of the university students that arrive on our campus each and every day. It's a busy place, it's an active place, but it's a very positive environment for the teaching and learning that we have in the city. I'm ready to answer any questions you might

have about this time, Madam Mayor. All right, I will open the public hearing. Ms. Shinneberry, has this public hearing been properly advertised? Yes, it has. Do you have any other remarks you want to make, Mr. Plattenberg, before we call up the 1st? No, ma'am. Okay, is there anybody in the room that would like to speak on this item that did not sign up prior? Okay, all right, I will close the public hearing. Council, are there any questions of staff or applicant? Okay, Councilmember Hall and then Councilmember Hardy Chandler. Can you comment as to what the storage sheds are being used for? Well, the storage sheds currently are temporary located there. We have a plan to remove them within two weeks. We've been looking

at placement on the school site and we believe we found an appropriate location. Storage is, with the increasing in the number of sports and activities that we have, with the expansion of the number of programs and the club activities, there is a direct need for storage and we believe that where we're going to place it is down towards where other storage is down in the lower part of the site in the back entrance towards the football field. Okay, so you're prepared to move them, it wasn't a problem? Yes, ma'am, absolutely. Was that our temporary press box, the one? It was. By the way, that was the other thing, Councilmember Hall, thank you for bringing that up. It was the temporary press box and when we did invest in purchasing that temporary press box, because

the prior press box was in such disarray it had to be condemned, we have a brand new press box there now and it's been well received by the community and by the coaches and the students. That temporary press box, we wanted to make sure that that dollar investment was not in vain and we planned on using that for the storage that's needed once we did get the permanent press box in place. Thank you. I don't have a problem with this. I do have a kid who's out there twice a day, so again, I said my security risk is the wrong time, but I would like them to be safer. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Hardy Chandler. So my question has to do with clarifying the information that enrollment is at 90% of capacity, 99% of capacity, so this does not expand capacity over the next eight years, right?

So how is additional projected numbers, how is that going to be compensated by the remaining structures? Yeah, that's an excellent question. In fact, we're looking at expansion of some electrical programs. Dr. Abe in this very room last night was presenting her state of the schools and her vision and her continued leadership at Fairfax High School. As far as the expansion, we really, she says that she can accommodate any children and any child that will have a need to be educated in the city in her building. She'll find whatever nook or cranny or space, but we are at a point where it is that percentage of capacity. We have had a little bit of a dip. I believe the number that you had up there originally was 24-1. We're at 2390 right now.

And I'm going to double check that too, but I have the number. Let me correct that. But anyway, we're down a little bit. But the thing is, it does fluctuate. We're at 2390. That's the number I have. But 2360, 2390, you know, still it's business is good, but we're down from that. Usually there's a lot of in migration and out migration during the school year. Hopefully we'll be able to maintain at this level. But again, we look at our forecast and when you look at the out years, it says, you know, 2330, 2342. We don't believe that those are accurate. When you look at the current school year at 2296 when we have 2390, it's almost 100 students more. So long story to say, Council Member Hardy Chandler, that we're looking at this closely. We will be monitoring it.

We don't really have any other plans because there is no space. We're bumped up against all the parking capacity that we possibly could have. That's why we have to move this temporary structure because it is taking up parking spaces now. But we will be monitoring it and speaking about it each and every year, as I mentioned about the whole CIP program. Council Member McQuillan. Council Member McQuillan. This is more of a question for staff. It says that one of the recommendations is the sheds in the parking lot be moved. May I ask why that was recommended? Yeah, the two sheds that are there now are within required parking spaces. So those parking spaces are intended for cars to be parked. Okay.

And so they're taking up spaces. And those structures were not approved to be constructed by staff. So that's why we added that condition. They should be removed. And if I might add to that, it clearly is taking up parking space where it's currently located. And we did temporarily put it there because we had to move it out of the way when we put the actual press box in place on the hill that we put in place. So it was intended all along to be a temporary location while we found the best suitable place for it on the site. I just know that it's quite a hike for the athletes that train on that area to have to go all the way down, especially in the dark at night late, you know, if they have to put equipment away.

So, I mean, losing, how many spots is it that it was taking up? Like three? Six. Six? Three. One, two, three, four. Four? Maybe seven if I'm counting right. Okay. If they were to leave the sheds there, they would need to revise the site plan for the whole high school. Site, yeah. That would be challenging. Okay. I also want to echo Councilmember Hall's statement about the security. I, too, am concerned about that having been locked out during back to school night back there. In the dark, it's kind of scary. And I know that we're not in the winter right now. And so that's not an issue. But I do wonder why we have such focus on making sure we have somebody at the front and that we have security vestibules, one entrance into the building, if somebody's able to drive around the back and access our children and teachers that way.

So I just wanted to make that statement as well, public. Thank you. Other questions or comments? Councilmember Peterson. Just out of curiosity, the modular classrooms also are in a parking lot and displaced a certain number of vehicles. What adjustment was made for that capacity? Was there somewhere else on site that that was picked up? How is that being addressed? The actual location, sir? Well, there was park, they're in parking lots. Yes, sir. Right. I don't know what the displacement was in terms of the number of parking spots, but there was a significant number. How is that adjustment addressed at all? Or when, when we originally spotted and located the, and that was part of my time, but when it was originally spotted and located in that place, it was to still meet the accommodation.

So a total site plan revision wouldn't have to be gone through from what I understand and that they didn't have to do it. And that's why we were so concerned about the number of parking spaces that we displace. Um, because I think with the improvements and enhancements to the press box, we also had to make some modifications to the parking there and just barely met it in under, um, the amount that was required by zoning. And I believe that's the answer to it. Well, I guess. I think it's still not desirable to your point, sir. Yeah. Well, the big picture question is, is this a significant loss of capacity or is this really not given the scale of parking that's already in place? And if it is a significant loss in capacity, it's something you've already adjusted to, but you're going to have to continue to adjust to now for some period in the future.

Just curious to know where it kind of fits into that. Yeah, we absolutely need the space. Yes, sir. Um, those, those quads, those buildings out there absolutely necessary. Um, as far as the storage shed, um, we, I believe we need the parking spaces back there. I've had park back there many a time. Um, and, and it does displace it and it really, it really doesn't belong in its current location. So just so I understand that with the mods and the modular classrooms themselves. Have you successfully adjusted to the loss of parking spaces that were once there? Oh, yes, sir. I'm sorry, Council Member Fitzgerald. Yes, absolutely. Those adjustments have been made. I don't know the original date that those quads were actually put in place there.

Perhaps staff might have that information. More than 15 years? Yeah, more than 15 years is what I'm hearing. Okay. 2012? Well, that's not 15, but still. So apparently that whatever set of adjustments, those are behind us and there's no sort of continuing difficulty associated with the loss of those is what my guess would be. Oh, yes, sir. Everybody has had to adjust. Yes, sir. Okay. Any other questions or comments? Okay. Is there a motion, Council Member Hardy-Chandler? I move that the City Council approve the request of the City of Fairfax School Board, applicant, for special use permit pursuant to City Code Section 110-3.3.1, Schools Elementary, Middle, High, used to allow temporary expansion of Fairfax High School using modular temporary

classrooms in the RM residential medium zoning on the premises known as 3501 Lion Run and more particularly described as Tax Map Parcel 58-1-02-003, subject to the following conditions. This special use permit, SUP, shall be valid for a period of eight years. Two, the sheds in the parking lot in proximity to the temporary classroom shall be removed out of any required parking spaces. Is there a second? Second. A motion's been made by Council Member Hardy-Chandler and seconded by Council Member Peterson. Is there any discussion on the motion? Seeing none, a roll call vote. Council Member McQuillan? Aye. Council Member Bates? Aye. Council Member Peterson? Aye. Council Member Hardy-Chandler? Aye.

Council Member Hall? Aye. Council Member Amos? Aye. Motion passed unanimously. We'll go to our last public hearing item, which is the public hearing on the proposed FY26 budget. This is the third and final public hearing on the proposed FY26 budget. The city manager presented on February 25th, 2025. I will open the public hearing. Ms. Shinaberry, has this public hearing been advertised? Yes, it has. And I've had people sign up prior to the meeting of start of 7 o'clock. And after I go through the list, if there's anybody else that wants to speak, they can come forward and we'll start a line up against the windows. So our first speaker is Jennifer DeSano. Okay. Next speaker is Brian Sullivan.

Okay. Next speaker is Brian Sullivan. Good evening. Mayor, city council members, and Fairfax city residents. I'm here tonight as a Fairfax city resident and as the president of our Fairfax volunteer fire department. If I'm honest, I struggled a little bit with whether to wear my fire uniform or in my civilian clothes, but I realized that my concerns are rooted in both. I am here, however, tonight primarily as a resident to express my concerns regarding the initiative to cut the 10% from the budget from our public safety services. I am fortunate to have a behind-the-scenes understanding of the resources needed to protect our community. I know I am obviously very biased, but I believe our public safety is fundamental to the quality

of life in our community and plays a significant role to what makes our city special. Our combined fire department operates efficiently, with 88% of our budget allocated directly to salaries and benefits for the career personnel who risk their lives daily. The remaining 12% covers essential operational expenses such as equipment, supplies, and crucial training, all vital for effective and timely emergency response. Our volunteers, although unpaid, dedicate countless hours to staffing apparatus, supporting operations, and contributing significant financial resources. Just recently, this included the transferring ownership of Station 3 to the city without any monetary compensation, a clear demonstration of our commitment to public safety and fiscal responsibility.

Additionally, our volunteers consistently invest fundraising dollars to support essential operational needs, including sustaining frontline apparatus. Reducing our department's budget by nearly $2 million as proposed in this exercise would have severe consequences, including the loss of 12 dedicated fire and emergency positions. But these are not just positions. These are firefighters, medics, emergency personnel who directly save lives. Our volunteers cannot replace these roles to maintain levels of public safety, no matter how much I wish they could. The proposed cuts would decrease emergency response effectiveness, increase response times, jeopardizing public safety. They would undermine our ability to maintain recommended minimum staffing levels,

putting personnel and residents at greater risk during emergencies. They would compromise emergency preparedness precisely when the demand for emergency services in Fairfax City has steadily increased over the past four years. These consequences are supported by evidence from FEMA and experiences with surrounding municipalities. I recognize the challenging budgetary environment, but compromising public safety to address fiscal shortfalls undermines one of our city's primary responsibilities, protecting its citizens. I aim to bring light rather than heat to this issue and urge this council to reconsider the proposed cuts to public safety, seeking alternate solutions to address these genuine financial challenges.

The safety of our community must remain a non-negotiable priority. The residents of Fairfax City deserve our steadfast commitment to their protection. Thank you. Our next speaker is Janet Jaworski. Janet Jaworski. Good evening, Mayor Reed, members of the city council. I'm Janet Jaworski. I'm at 3621 Heritage Lane here in the city. I do wear a number of hats here in the city. As you know, I'm here as a taxpayer this evening. I do have prepared remarks. However, I think I'm actually going to pivot and make a few remarks in light of Mr. Sullivan's comments. He's referring to some sort of cut to public safety, which is quite concerning to me, and I hope that that's not on the table. Having had to call 911 previously for a family member,

I would hate to have our fire medics and paramedic staff be cut at all. I hope that you're looking to cut things rather than people. I don't think that people are on the table to be cut, but I'm a little concerned after hearing his comments that that might be on the table. So I would urge you to not make any personnel cuts to our public safety departments, police, or fire, unless they're absolutely necessary. I think that there are a number of things that you can do prior to that. One of the first things I did after Mr. Foster unveiled the budget on February 25th is I took a very hard look at the CIP. Having served on the Planning Commission, I was familiar with that exercise. I went through it with the highlighter pen, Post-it notes.

I highlighted things. I came up with a lot of ideas that I was going to come and share with you. When I signed up to speak tonight, it was the end of March. Now, that was before I came to the work session last week and the open house. And luckily, you did start to dive into the CIP a little bit at the work session, and I was happy to see that. Because my analysis as a citizen, but having served on the Planning Commission, would be I would look at the CIP first and see what could be deferred, what could be cut. Nobody likes to defer capital projects to the out years, and you don't want to keep kicking the can down the road. However, if the choice is between that and cutting firefighters or police officers,

then, of course, we need to defer some things to the out years. So I was heartened to see that you guys started to get into it. And Mr. Summers came up and suggested things that could be cut from his budget. Chair Pitches came up and talked about the softball field could be deferred. Those were all things that I had highlighted to discuss with you. So my comments are sort of moot at this point. I liked Mr. Martinez's five scenarios. I'm running out of time, I see. So I'll wrap this up. I prefer scenario four of those scenarios. Keeps the public safety step increases in place. I don't think those should go away. So I don't envy the decisions that you need to make, but I have confidence that you're going to get there.

And I hope that you're not cutting any city employees. Thank you. Our next speaker is Peter Bonner. Hi, good evening. I'm Peter Bonner. I live at 4334 Delegate Court. Quality of life in the city is great. Can you do something about the pollen? That's why my voice is as it is this evening. So my understanding is you started the budget preparation last fall. Last fall, inflation was coming down. Economic development was up. We are in a very different world right now. With what's going on with the federal cutbacks, with what's going on as you look at your 401ks, I did a little back-of-the-envelope calculation. And if the proportion of federal workers in Fairfax County to all the workers in Fairfax County is the same in the city,

at the rate the cutbacks are going, we're going to lose about 6% of our workforce in the city when you look at the federal workers and the contractors associated with their work. Raising taxes in a situation like this and raising the tax rate, the real estate tax rate, when we're facing these types of dire economic times is just not the best approach. And I encourage you to go back and take another look at that. I was not aware of the cutbacks in the fire department. And I, because I looked at as many of the budget documents as I could. A boss of mine said, if you're going to bring a problem, bring solutions. I don't know if these are solutions to look at or not. One of the things I saw in the presentation was non-negotiables

and opening up, I encourage you to open up the non-negotiables. I know that includes public safety. I know that includes education. I'm the husband of a retired teacher at Fairfax High School. These are tough decisions to make, but any place that you can look at those and opening up those non-negotiables, I think, is going to be useful. Second thing I saw, the biggest increase appears to be the flow-through from Fairfax County in education. I'm, based on the budget documents and based on trying to look at the Fairfax County budget documents that, frankly, are not as good as yours, as ours, in terms of the transparency. Pushing back hard against that, I think, is one of the only ways to get the budget down that I can see.

And the last thing I saw that I didn't quite understand was the debt service consolidation that went from $2 million to $13 million. I didn't see an offsetting decrease in some of those individual budgets and when that debt service consolidation increased that much. So those are just a couple of thoughts about this. Behavioral economists talk about loss aversion. You spent a lot of time on this already. I encourage you to combat that loss aversion as you look forward in the budget. Thank you for your time. Our next speaker is Carolyn Pitches. Good evening. My name is Carolyn Pitches. I live at 10840 1st Street. I am here as chair of the City of Fairfax School Board. I apologize. Some of this is going to be repetitive

from last time I was here. I'm here to speak again about the tuition bill to provide clarity for the community. The school's tuition bill comes down to basic math. When operating costs go up and student enrollment increases, tuition costs rise, whether we contract with FCPS or we operate independently. Our tuition bill is increasing more than in past years for two main reasons. First, the cost of operating schools is up. But keep in mind, operational costs are up in every school division. This is not just an FCPS issue. It's a regional reality. Second, our student population is growing rapidly. In fact, while FCPS's overall enrollment is stagnant, our city's population is growing, which means we now make up a larger percentage

of the total FCPS enrollment. And therefore, we pay a larger share of the overall costs than we have in the past. We pay a reasonable per-pupil tuition rate. As I've previously stated, it's slightly higher than Manassas Park, Prince William, and Loudoun, but it's lower than Alexandria City, Falls Church City, and Arlington. And we're able to offer more programming and extracurricular options because of the scale of FCPS. In terms of student growth, the school board has cautioned about the impact of approving too many high-density residential developments because of student yields. Across FY25 and FY26, we are projected to add 161 new students. That alone accounts for $3.2 million in increased tuition.

More students equals higher tuition. It's that simple. For example, we were told that Scout on the Circle would yield very few students. We have 53. The point, we were told, less than three students, we have 37. That's the equivalent of three and a half classrooms. A bus. An entire school bus. Boulevard 7, I'm sorry, Boulevard 6 has already yielded 12 students. And there will be more students coming from the newer developments like North Facts, Overlook, Pocket Place, and Park Road once they are complete. We must recognize that the role of residential development has played in driving enrollment growth and therefore tuition costs. The old assumptions no longer hold true. Apartments, condos, and townhomes

do yield students and the data is undeniable. This increase in our tuition bill is not due to the mismanagement by the school board nor any erroneous charges by FCPS. It's the result of rising operational costs in all school systems and of increased enrollment. I urge us to refine our approach to residential development and prioritize diversifying our tax base. If the long-term vision is to mirror jurisdictions like Falls Church and operate our own schools is on the table, then we must build the commercial base to fund that vision. Our next speaker is Riley Brixes. Hello. My name is Riley Brixes and I live at 3915 Maryland Avenue, Fairfax, Virginia. Thank you for letting me speak today. I'm here on behalf of the city of Fairfax

Theatre Company, or CFTC, to talk about why it's important to keep funding this program. I've been a part of the CFTC program for more than two years. CFTC is more than just a theater group. It's a place where kids like me can learn, grow, and have fun. Being part of CFTC has helped me become more confident. Now I can stand in front of you and speak, which is a big deal for me. Theater teaches us teamwork. We learn how to work together to put on a show. Everyone has a role and we all depend on each other. This helps us make friends and learn how to communicate better. These skills are important, not just on stage, but in school and life too. CFTC also brings our community together. Our shows give families and friends

a chance to come together and enjoy a nice night out. It's a great way to meet new people and support local talent. Plus, it makes our own town a more exciting place to live in. Funding CFTC means more kids can join and experience these benefits. It helps us get costumes, props, and everything we need to put on a great show. Without your support, some kids might not get the chance to be part of something so special. Thank you for listening to me today. I hope you see how important CFTC is to me and our community. Please continue to support and fully fund our program. It means the world to us. And with this extra time that I have, I would like to say that I agree with not putting the 10% or whatever it was off of the fire department

because I think that that's a very important thing to have in our community. Thank you. Our next speaker, Steve Latourette. Hi. Mayors and council members, mayor and council members, my name is Steve Latourette. I live at 3716 Richard Avenue. I've been living there since 2003. I'm a former member of the Commission on the Arts. And I'm here to advocate for performing arts and specifically for the bands. I entered the Commission on the Arts in 2018. And before I went to my first meeting, I had a heart attack. And then I went to the meetings and they were so supportive. And one of the people is here, Jeff Seffins, the soon-to-be former director of the Main Street Band. And, you know, it's a little too dramatic for me to say

it saved my life. But it really made a difference to my life. And there's going to be a lot of things that he's probably going to say and others might say about the value of performing arts from an economic standpoint and all those things. But the emotional side that I have is that this is a wonderful city. And one of the reasons it's a wonderful city is that it supports the arts. It would not have that kind of frisson of, I don't know, fun, of depth, of whatever it is. And so I clearly didn't have any prepared remarks, so it's a little rough. But I just urge you to continue funding the performing arts to not think of it as something frivolous. It's a rather small portion of the budget. And it's not frivolous

to make this a good place to live. And that's all I have to say. Thank you so much. Our next speaker is Lori Hubberman-Hayes. Good evening. My name is Lori Hubberman-Hayes, and I live on 10405 Stratford Avenue. So thank you for the opportunity to be here today to talk about something that's incredibly important to me and to so many others in our community, the arts. In a world where it's easy to focus on technology and industry, the arts often get pushed to the background. But I am here to tell you that the arts are not just a luxury. They are a vital and irreplaceable part of what makes our city and our lives so vibrant and meaningful. The arts are about so much more than just entertainment.

They provide a platform for self-expression, foster creativity, and help shape the future of our children. They teach discipline, empathy, and teamwork, and they allow us to see the world through different perspectives. The arts are a cornerstone of the community where relationships are built and where we can come together, celebrate, and share experiences. For over a decade now, the City of Fairfax Theatre Company has been doing just that, enriching our city through the power of the arts. Since its founding in 2009, the Theatre Company has not only provided outstanding performances, but it has also become a crucial part of our arts education landscape. Through its programs, it has given countless individuals

the opportunity to engage with theatre, develop new skills, and become active participants in the creative process. Moreover, one of the most impactful ways the Theatre Company has contributed to our community is through its commitment to arts education. Every year, we offer scholarships to children who might otherwise not have the financial means to attend camp. These scholarships ensure that kids, regardless of their background, have the chance to experience the transformative power of the arts, and I can personally attest to the difference it makes. My children have been deeply involved in arts education through the Theatre Company, and I've watched them grow not only as performers, but also as young people

with strong character, resilience, and compassion. The opportunities they've had to perform and learn alongside others have shaped them into who they are today, talented individuals with a strong sense of purpose and lifelong friendships. These experiences have also made a profound impact on how they see the world and how they engage with others. Beyond individual growth, the arts have a powerful way of bringing people together. The City of Fairfax Theatre Company has fostered a thriving arts community in our city where relationships are built through shared experiences and where the entire city can come together to celebrate creativity and talent. When we support the arts, we are building more than just an audience

for performances. We are building a stronger, more connected city. By funding the arts, we are investing in the heart of our community. The arts improve quality of life, they create lasting friendships, and they contribute to the vibrancy of our neighborhoods. So, thank you for your time today and let's continue to support the arts in our city. Thank you. Our next speaker is Anne Lauer. Good evening. I'm Anne Lauer. I'm an instructor at George Mason University, a former student there, and a member of the board for the Fall for the Books, which has been a partner with Fairfax City for almost 30 years. As you may know, the city of Fairfax has been a one-third owner since 1998, and this collaboration

has involved a $25,000 grant each year, 15% of our budget. It's a lifeline. It's not just funding for us. As so many other people have talked about it here, it's part of the art community that the council has been so good to support. It's just, this is at a different level. There are huge economic benefits to hosting this particular Fall for the Books for the city writ large. We figure, based on economic studies, that the 10,000 attendees who come every year generate between five and seven times a return on the $25,000 that Fairfax City provides us. These benefits are seen in business for restaurants, hotels, shops, and the like. In addition, the cut that is being considered here would zero out

the $25,000 amid rising city costs and with potential national endowment for the arts cuts looming. This could end the festival and the year-round events like the author talks and youth literacy programs that we also support through Fall for the Books. I'd also like to mention that it would be 100% cuts in parks and rec while general revenue like street paving and things like that could absorb a cut like this with a lot less impact. It's just, it's not a nice to have for us. It's an essential ingredient for us to continue this festival. But I think one of the things that's hard to capture and we can't put economic data to is the cultural importance. This festival has hosted authors like Stephen King,

Amy Tan, Bonnie Garmas, who wrote Lessons in Chemistry. Some of the top writers in the country have come to this event. And if you'd been in the room last fall when we had Bonnie Garmas and 1,100 people listening to her every word, you would feel the joy that this created among all of us. And I think the main thing I want to say is that at a time of huge uncertainties in this world, there's nothing more important than the arts. Reading books has no downside risk. It's addictive in a positive sort of way. And this festival promotes it in a wonderful, joyful way. So I hope as a new council, you will take a harder look at this potential cut and reconsider it because we would greatly request it if you could restore

that $25,000. It's so important to this program. Thank you. Our next speaker is Jeffrey Seffins. Hi. Good evening. My name's Jeffrey Seffins. I live at 1009 Cornwall Road. That's 1-0-0-0-9 Cornwall Road in Country Club Hills in Fairfax. And first of all, I want to commend all of the previous speakers. They were amazing and had quality, quantitative things to say. And that little girl was amazing. I would hire her in a heartbeat. So I would like to just say a few words this evening and support of both the arts in general and the City of Fairfax Band Association. From 2008 until 2021, I had the honor and pleasure of serving on the City of Fairfax Commission on the Arts. I was a band person, but during my time

on the commission, I came to understand and appreciate how important the arts are, all of the arts, and creating and sustaining a vibrant, welcoming, and diverse community in which we live and to making the City of Fairfax a destination for visitors to enjoy cultural activities, such as the upcoming spotlight event. Pretty cool. The objectives for the Cultural Arts Division of the Department of Recreation in the 2026 proposed budget reflects that same feeling when it says, working in partnership with city businesses, local schools, performing groups, artists, to cultivate a creative community that will benefit the many, advantages, and economic benefits that the arts can bring to all groups and levels

of our community. That's one of the things when I was on the commission, it was often referred to as bringing with arts performances, you have people coming in for dinner before the performance or after. You have this additional thing going on. It really is a supporting of local businesses and what has been said recently about the other benefits in terms of the spirit and what we learn from being with other people in the post recently they had a diagram of the world and the scale of happiness and the U.S. is 24th behind the U.K. and the arts do an awful lot to improve the quality of life, whether it's reading, playing an instrument, singing, whatever. I do want to mention the City of Fairfax

Band Association is one of those arts organizations which has brought attention to the City of Fairfax and has helped to make the City a destination both for the performing and visual arts as well as fine dining. Starting as one band in 1968, the association now includes two adult bands, a swing band, a German band, four ensembles, one of which was playing in the lobby before we had started the meeting, a youth outreach program, and we also have an honor flight band which performs both the Dulles and Reagan welcoming World War II, Korean War, and Vietnam veterans to the nation's capital as part of the Honor Flight Program. This is a national organization that transports American veterans to Washington, D.C.

to honor, and celebrate them for their service and sacrifice and selfishness, selfishness, selflessness, boy, that came out wrong, and enable them to see their memorial. The city of band organization has a lot of things that they do for the city, and there's a wonderful relationship. We value our relationship with city council. Thank you for all that you've done. I know you've got tough decisions. We hope you'll keep this in mind, though, as you begin to make those. Thank you very much. I'm sorry I'm late. Thank you. Our next speaker is Amanda Snellings. Good evening, Mayorita, members of the city council. My name is Amanda Snellings. I am not a resident of the city, but I feel like I might as well be

working at George Mason University and here tonight in my role as artistic director of the city of Fairfax Theater Company. Thank you so much for the opportunity to speak tonight and for all of your past support. In 2024, your investment helped us accomplish incredible things. We produced five full-scale productions and one cabaret, including two premieres by local playwrights. 135 creative team members and 102 cast members came together to make this magic happen and brought in 3,631 audience members, helping to drive foot traffic and business to local restaurants, shops, and services. Even when we're not performing for an audience, we are active throughout the year with in-person gatherings

for rehearsals, meetings, tech days, and education programs, such as our camps, which ran over eight weeks, serving 237 young people, including a new adaptive camp, serving kids with different needs, and producing two junior musicals with all things done by the kids. Importantly, we awarded $7,500 in camp scholarships to ensure every child, regardless of financial background, could participate, learn, and grow through theater. Our work stretched across three performance venues and five rehearsal spaces in the city, further activating those spaces and reinforcing how integrated the arts are in the fabric of Fairfax. We donated 845 tickets to veterans, service members, and their families, and committed funds

to providing American Sign Language interpretation, audio description, and a sensory-friendly show for at least one performance of every single production, keeping live performance accessible to all. We were honored with 20 Washington Area Theater Community Honors Award nominations and seven wins, recognizing excellence on stage and off, and putting Fairfax in the spotlight among similar organizations across the entire D.C., Maryland, Virginia region. CFTC is more than a theater company. It's a driver of quality of life, youth development, and economic vitality, but we are an all-volunteer organization. We do not have a development director or any sort of full-time arts manager to go out and secure

those big-time donations. We could not do the work that we do without the support of the city and especially the wonderful Parks and Recreation staff. We are deeply thankful for the city's commitment to the arts, and we urge you to continue supporting not only our work, but also the city band Fall for the Book, Spotlight and the Arts, and all those cultural programs that make this city so vibrant. Thank you for believing in the power of the arts and for believing in the people who make them possible. We're proud to be part of what makes Fairfax such a special place to live, work, create, and visit. Thank you. Our next speaker is Nicholas Persini. Good evening, Mayor and Council. My name is Nicholas Persini.

My pronouns are they, them, and I live at 10627 Ashby Place. I'm a member of the Commission on the Arts of Fairfax City, and I serve as the chair of the Performance Committee. The commission was notified in our last meeting that the parks and recs included cutting our budget as part of their proposed cuts. Given that, I just wanted to provide my perspective as a commissioner. The City of Fairfax Commissioning on the Arts receives an annual grant of $40,000, or .02% of the city budget. This $40,000 allows the commission to not only support programming directly to our city residents, but also supports local artists to further their programming to city residents. Half of our grant goes toward the Commission

on the Arts Grant Program, where we give grants to organizations providing arts events and services to city residents. Some of our past recipients include Fairfax Art League, Fairfax Ballet, Fairfax Symphony Orchestra, FX Players, Jazz for Justice, and many more. The other half of the grant we receive goes toward programming the Bonita Lastina Old Town Hall Performance Series, Funday Monday, Arts Screen, Arts Walk, and so, so much more. Our programming also brings revenue to local businesses. Attendings at cultural arts events in the city spent an average of $22.61 as part of their arts outing. That puts money directly into the city of Fairfax economy. That is a really huge return on investment

for .02% of the city's budget. On a more personal note, the arts have always been my safe haven as a disabled, transgender, non-binary person. And as a 16-year veteran of music education classroom, I can personally attest that a thriving arts scene is a way to give space to everyone and celebrate all the unique identities that we hold. My service on the commission helps me provide that space to others. And our commission is a very dynamic, intergenerational group of passionate people that work hard to provide high-quality arts programming for our city. Mayor Reed and Council, I thank you for your support, your past and continued support of the arts and the positive impact that they have on our life in the city.

Thank you. Our next speaker is Alice Magelson-Green. Hello. My name is Alice Magelson-Green. I am not a resident of the city, but I am here on behalf of Fall for the Book, whom which I work with. For those of you who don't know, Fall for the Book is a local nonprofit serving the community of the city of Fairfax, among others. We've been around since 1997. It really was a partnership born from the city of Fairfax, George Mason University, and the Fairfax County Public Library. Happy Library Week. Thank you so much for that. And it was founded so that we could help readers connect to the writers that they love. Our goal every year is to find a book for every reader, and a lot of the work that we end up doing

is bringing our community together. We've brought some really big-name writers who our residents have been able to go and see right here at the Sherwood Center, fighting out for, you know, fighting out for parking spaces in that parking lot, along with people playing games in Van Dyke Park. They've gone to Mason's Campus to see Stephen King, and they've done this for free. Generally, book festivals and local book festivals are supported, oftentimes, their entire budget by local cities. We're very lucky in that through this partnership that has built this independent nonprofit that the city of Fairfax gets this and gets year-round literary programming for $25,000 a year and the generous use of your spaces.

And again, the big-name writers like Diana Gabaldon, Rainbow Rowell, Angelina Johnson, these get a lot of attention, but these events, they bring people together to talk about everything from soccer to addiction recovery to bringing a local elementary strings teacher who wrote a best-selling mystery novel about the theft of a violin and you had former students of his in the audience cheering him on. So that's what Fall for the Book brings to you. Again, the $25,000 is a huge amount for us. We're a very small organization. It's less than 0.1% of the city's budget. I think probably one of the recurring themes you're hearing from all of my fellow colleagues in the arts is that we're doing a lot

for very little. We really thank you for your support. None of this would be possible without the support of the city. And again, I think times are going to be quite challenging in the next couple of years. Having the arts as a free opportunity or a low-cost opportunity for your residents is really incredibly valuable and at the same time they are a driver of the economy. Thank you so much for your support and I hope that we will see some of you at some of our upcoming book events. Our next speaker is Jennifer Rose. Good evening, Mayor and members of City Council. Jennifer Rose representing the Central Fairfax Chamber of Commerce located at 103.04 Eaton Place. I'm here tonight to share the perspective

of our Chamber members and the broader business community who are vital to Fairfax City's economic and cultural fabric. You received a more detailed statement earlier today but I wanted to take this opportunity to reiterate our position. Raising the real estate tax rate alongside rising property assessments increases costs for both property owners and tenants. Some property owners have reported real estate tax assessments that have increased by as much as 150% which directly impacts businesses of all sizes. Many businesses operate on paper-thin margins. These increases limit their ability to reinvest, hire employees, or even remain in the Fairfax City long-term. Because many of them are not residents

and have no vote, they could easily vote with their feet by leaving the city or not coming to the city at all. The proposed 50% meals tax increase disproportionately burdens local restaurants and food service businesses still recovering from pandemic-related challenges and our current economic challenges. This tax affects not just dining out but also prepared foods purchased by busy families making it a significant financial burden compared to neighboring areas that do not impose such a tax yet. The 6% increase for wastewater treatment and stormwater utility fees continue an unsustainable trend Adding more financial strain on property owners and businesses alike. In fact, the stormwater utility

will have increased 19% since its 2022 introduction if the proposed rate is approved. As for the impact on economic development, these tax and fee increases send a negative message to potential businesses and undermine efforts to retain existing ones. They conflict with the city's stated priority of fostering economic development and improving its reputation as a business-friendly community. It isn't all doom and gloom from the chamber. We are supportive of several items that were included in the proposed budget including funds allocated for transportation improvements, merit increases for police and fire personnel, and dedicating part of the real estate tax to affordable housing. Because chambers

are problem solvers, we wanted to make the following recommendation for balancing priorities. Provide targeted relief programs for businesses to ease their financial burden to include expanding economic development initiatives such as the LIFT and FIG programs as well as other marketing and capacity building programs to support business retention and growth. Continue the funding and support for events and programs such as Rock the Block, the Independence Day Evening Show, Spotlight on the Arts, Festival of the Book, Chocolate Lovers Festival, Asian Festival on Main Street, and the Fall Festival. These events and activities draw thousands of visitors to Fairfax City, benefiting local businesses

through increased foot traffic, hotel stays, and local spending. In closing, Fairfax City's small businesses are resilient and deeply committed to this community but need your support to thrive amid rising costs. While we understand the need for responsible budgeting, we urge you to consider adjustments that balance fiscal responsibility with policies that foster long-term economic growth and preserve as well as improve our reputation as a business-friendly city. Thank you for your time and consideration of these perspectives tonight. Our next speaker is Imran Salik. Good evening, Mayor, Council Members, and City Staff. My name is Imran Salik and I am proud to stand before you as the President of the City of Fairfax

Professional Firefighters and Paramedics, IFF Local 2702. I appreciate the opportunity to speak tonight on behalf of the men and women who serve this community every single day. We understand that budgeting is never easy. Balancing the needs of a growing city with financial realities requires tough choices. But I'm here to remind you that public safety is not a luxury. It's a fundamental responsibility to its residents. And it depends heavily on two key things, proper staffing and strong infrastructure. Proper staffing is not just about efficiency. It's about safety. It ensures our firefighters can operate under safe conditions with the right number of personnel to handle emergencies effectively.

When we're understaffed, we face greater risks on the fire ground and during medical calls. That compromises not only firefighter safety, but also the level of care and protection we can provide to our citizens. reduced staffing leads to reduced service. And that means longer response times, fewer available units, and ultimately a community that isn't as well protected as it should be. Just as critical are our capital improvement projects. Our current ladder truck is outdated, becoming increasingly unreliable, thus more and more expensive to maintain. A new truck is vital to protecting our growing city, especially with the vertical development we're seeing. And our fire station. While it has served us well

over the years, it is no longer suited to meet the demands of our modern fire service. It lacks the space, design, and infrastructure necessary to support current operations and ensure the health and safety of our personnel. Delaying these capital improvement projects only increases costs and compounds the risks. The longer we wait, the more expensive these investments become, whether through rising construction costs, increased maintenance of our aging equipment, or the operational strain placed on our firefighters. Every year we postpone these upgrades, we lose valuable time that could be spent improving service delivery and safety for both our crews and our citizens. Investing in a new, properly equipped station

is not just about upgrading a building. It's about creating a safe, efficient, and sustainable environment to serve the community for decades to come. The fire department's proposals are not just numbers on paper. There are carefully considered plans based on operational needs, current challenges, and the future of our department. So with that, we're not just asking for support. We're asking for a commitment to the safety and well-being of every resident, every business, and every visitor in the city of Fairfax. And we urge you to not only consider what's in the best interest of the citizens, but also what's in the best interest of the dedicated employees who serve them every day. Thank you for your time,

your attention, and your ongoing commitment to our great city. All right. Is there anybody else in the room that would like to speak on the proposed budget? Yep. You can come forward. And then if there's a line, start by the window and bring you one by one. And we just ask that you state your name and street address and your comment. I don't remember it. Val Morgan, 3617 Cornell Road. I was going to speak on trees, but you could save a lot of money to put for our band. I'm in one of the bands. I'm not a very good one. Richard is, and our director, Jeff, is great. I have talked to many people who see how we really needed to repave this street. I think we could save money by not paving the street

so often. We could save money by this project out here that I think we spent $650,000 on. Could have been not done at all because we don't have anybody to maintain it. And I know there were way too many plants in it, but nobody studied that but me. I also know that Board of Architectural Review, besides approving that, approved those stupid brick pillars over behind the police station and decided one needed to be in the park. Those weren't necessary for anything. They just thought they'd be cute decorative items. So we're putting money into stupid stuff. And like one more thing, we're killing our trees. We're supposed to be a tree city. If you ever look out in the woods and see a tree, doing this and getting mulch

up to its armpits, you don't. Do you ever see a tree hiring somebody to get some kind of trimming device to go cut through its roots? No, you don't see it, but we do it here. It's like, why are we trying to kill our trees? And then they decided to lift the limbs up on seven trees over by the police station. I don't think they needed all their limbs lifted up. We need somebody to pay attention when we are deciding to do a project. I don't know who decided this project out here. The Board of Architectural Review had no idea about the plants that were there. And I did. And I said, this is way too many. And you're stuffing them all together. Nobody has a clue. Nobody will be able to maintain it because they don't know

how to maintain anything now. I've watched it for years. We could save a lot of money if we just got a few people with common sense to look at some of this stuff. We could save a lot of money. And I know we don't need to pave these streets every time we turn around because, like, where's the boo-boo? Just a lot more thoughtful stuff. And please put that George Snyder Trail thing in the trash can. And the picket trail, there's a sidewalk right there for God's sakes. Find some common sense somewhere. I know it's a flower that doesn't grow in everybody's garden, but it's got to grow in somebody's garden. Thanks. Next speaker can come forward. Madam Mayor, distinguished council members and wonderful staff.

My name is Rory Burgess. I live in the city at 9803 Sherring Court. I'm here representing in cases too small to read the City Fairfax Band Association. As you've heard, the City Fairfax Band started back in late 60s. And in my 34 years in the band playing French horn, I've been honored to serve as president and vice president and treasurer at various times. Also served seven years on the City Fairfax Commission on the Arms as treasurer. So it's been through your support and governance and, you know, just the and the exciting program that we've been able to put on years and years that we've become one of the most admired bands in the country. One of my jobs when I was working on the search committee

for our new director within the last two years was to find another band organization that operated, had the breadth and depth of your City Fairfax band. And there was zero out of close to 700 members of the organization in Association of Concert Bands. No one does it better. And that comes largely because of all the support we get from you and other wonderful folks. Nationally, we're known with, as part of the organization for the honor flights. That's been about 13 years. I've been doing that. Dulles Airport, Reagan National Airport, people come out and volunteer. We take Fairfax, the City of Fairfax and its musicianship and culture to a number of ACB, Association of Concert Bands, conventions

and spread that word around. We, also, some of you may or may not remember that we went to Normandy for the June D-Day celebrations back in 2017. So we took Fairfax and the nation over to Europe. Now, because of your generosity, the City's generosity, we were able to offer people, students, 25 and under, free, into our concerts. We were able to take our groups to form with local schools, side by sides, so on. We have 165 volunteers volunteers on a regular basis in the City Fairfax Band Association and they give back to the community and to the city. And I just want to say that the council needs to know that our group loves the city. We want to continue supporting the city with wholesome, family-friendly entertainment

of which the residents can be proud. Thanks for your support and music for life. Next speaker can come forward. Good evening. I'm Leslie Hatch. I live at 3812 Hemlock Way and I just wanted to say thank you for all that you're doing particularly on this issue. I realize that it's very difficult. And while I was surprised when I got the letter that said what my taxes might be, I just wanted you to know that my second thought was I get my money's worth. I really appreciate all of the services that are in the city. It's a wonderful place to live. I have access to so many different things, more things than the people here have talked about tonight. And it just, it, I just wanted to express how appreciative I am

of all of that. And that the, when I talk to city employees, I always get excellent service. It's never been anything less than that. So I realize it's a very hard job you have in front of you and I appreciate everything you're doing. Next speaker can come forward. Yes, hello. I'm David Geller at 10305 Darby Street. And it was just incredible to hear everybody today. I mean, we're talking about the arts. We're talking about books. We're talking about the fire department. And I understand there's some very difficult decisions that have to be made. Very difficult. I mean, I'm an artist. I mean, a musician. I've been to a lot of the concerts. I love Fall for the Book. I mean, luckily, I haven't really needed

the fire department, but I'm really glad they're there. But what I'm really asking, and it's probably common sense and I'm sure you're all doing it now, is to look at the budget really carefully. And I'm sure you are, so I'm really just saying what I feel. It's probably not going to help. But line by line to see what is necessary, what might be necessary, what is nice to have, and what might really be a luxury. Because we're just not in normal times. I think everybody would realize that. The financial situation of everybody is really up in the air. I mean, who knows what's going to, you know, when you read the paper tomorrow morning, what's going to be on the agenda. So that's what I'm asking.

Carefully look at every line item to see where and what you can cut. And I know it's going to be hard, and I don't envy your job. Okay? I really don't. I know how difficult it's going to be. But, you know, the tax increases on top of everything else are just not anything anybody's really going to want. So I appreciate you're listening. Thank you. Next speaker can come forward. Hi, council members and mayor. Thank you for letting me speak. I'm Roxanne Morgan-Rowley. I'm at 10118 Cavalry Drive here in Fairfax City. I've been a resident of Fairfax City for 20 years. I married and bought my first home here. I'm raising two kids here. And I've grown my career and my artwork. I am a dancer and a choreographer.

And I have a very small dance company here in Fairfax City. I felt very welcomed by Fairfax City Parks and Rec and Megan Dubois and Christine Vincent of the Cultural Arts Development Division here. I have served also as a member of the Commission for Women for Fairfax City. And I love watching the programs there grow. So I'm also very, I have love for the social standings in the city. Watching the village grow and the Women of Influence Award. I was sort of on the base of that, which was fun. That aside, so I was fortunate to find a home here to nurture my dance company and even connect through other artists. Megan Dubois has been wonderful at helping me connect where to rehearse, where to have my home,

where to make work, where to have performances. Even through COVID, the Commission on the Arts funded programming for me to do performances outside for the city residents, which was wonderful. I'm just advocating, of course, for the arts like everyone else seems to be here, which is wonderful. But we're such a small part. And the grants that the commission gives out are very small. And that's part of the, maybe part of the siphoning off that might happen. And I don't want that to happen because that's like my livelihood here. So anyway, please give that some thought. I am not used to talking in front of people. I am used to dancing in front of people. So I apologize. I'm so nervous. Anyway, please consider that.

Thank you so much. Is there anybody else in the room that would like to speak on the proposed budget? I guess we'll move on to general public comment. I need you to close the public hearing first. All right. I will now close the public hearing process on the proposed FY26 budget. The budget adoption will be on May 6, 2025, beginning at 7 p.m. Now we can go to general public comment. Okay. I'm going to call the speakers who signed up by 7 o'clock p.m. tonight, and then whoever else in the room can come up after. So we'll start with Philip LaTassa. Mayor and Council, I speak tonight representing the Friends of Akatink Creek. What an exhausting hike we have all been taking together, debating the George Snyder Trail

as we decide whether and how its vision can lead to a better future for this city. The Friends of Akatink Creek say we can find that better future on the many miles of existing pavement we already maintain. Our forest cannot be improved by pavement, but our pavement can be greatly improved by enhanced pedestrian and bicycle safety and by finding room for a bit more greenery alongside. Our finite forests cannot fulfill the infinite demands we might make of them. The same reasoning also applies to plans for the Pickett Road Connector Trail, now made even more redundant by the new Route 50 shared use path in the county. Thank you. All right. Our next speaker, Shelly Vance. Hi, I'm Shelly Vance.

I live at 3220 Cambridge Court in Cambridge Station. I am speaking this evening to again ask the city council to vote to stop the George Snyder Trail in its current design. If the city and VDOT must move forward with a connector bike trail, please create an alternative that preserves the woodlands between Eaton Place and the Mosby Woods neighborhood and overall preserve our wetlands and wildlife habitat. These would be admirable goals even if they were the only benefits from a different trail footprint. But a different footprint located on Eaton Place itself would enable cyclists to access businesses at Point 50 where Andy's Pizza and Amazon Fresh are and to access University Drive and from that,

Old Town Fairfax. Placed on Fairfax Boulevard, the trail would provide access to Fairfax Marketplace and other businesses as it moves east to Draper Drive. Two birds with one stone, preserving our natural wealth and providing access to our business offerings, neither of which is a feature of the current design. It's a win-win outcome. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Tom Blackburn. Thank you. I'm a resident of McLean, Virginia, not of Fairfax City. I am speaking tonight on behalf of the 5,000-member Northern Virginia Bird Alliance, which is a chapter of the National Audubon Society. We do more than watch birds. We have a very active environmental practice. This is the fourth time I've spoken to this council

about the George Snyder Trail, and I'd like to ask again tonight that the council make the decision to move the western portion of that trail out of the forest and onto the roads and cancel the eastern portion. I'm not a NIMBY. Now, I said I don't live in the county. I didn't even, in the city, I didn't even know there was a forest in Fairfax City until I heard about this trail. But I'm here because this trail, as proposed now, will do irreparable damage to the environment. More than 900 feet of that trail will be on boardwalks or on bridges. A significant portion of that construction, as well as other on-ground construction, especially in the western portion of the trail, will be within resource protection areas.

The fact that a significant portion of the trail is on a resource protection area should have been enough to stop the planning at the very earliest stages of this trail. There's a March 10 memorandum for the Fairfax County Department of Public Works and Environmental Services to the county's Department of Transportation that makes this very clear. They've been looking at RPA issues and trail issues for 30 years. That memorandum states that hard surface trails should be constructed through RPAs only as a last resort. That means you don't construct the trail through an RPA if there's any other alternative. The memo points out that the trails through RPAs degrade the environment with significant impact

to the wetland communities for a vector for invasive species. They exacerbate erosion, alter the floodplain. Its function which is to protect the water quality, reduce stormwater runoff, and reduce erosion. There's 4,120 feet of the trail will be either above ground or below ground. You've heard me speak or read what I've written about the impact of that with slopes as high as 10 feet above grade, excavation 7 feet below grade. We can do better than this. There is an obvious alternative to the trail through the woods and that is to move it off the woods and onto the road on the western side and cancel the eastern portion of the trail and that is the role that I think makes by far the best sense.

Thank you. Our next speaker is Mariana Fornier. I kind of had to rush to get over here. I'm Mariana Fornier, Spring Lake Terrace, Fairfax, Virginia. You know me. Okay. I was very excited about Tom's suggested way of dealing with VDOT. What I would suggest is all of you write your suggestions as to how it should be done right. Forward it to Tom and you work with VDOT on their suggestions. Okay. Excuse me. I am getting old. I was really shocked that you didn't kill the connector trail. I thought you all realized what a mess that is. It is a matter of justice denied. It came about during COVID and it was just sort of slid across without the necessary public meeting. It was poorly advertised a minimum

of engagement with the citizens. questions. Now I will look up my records and I will send you all my speech to the council where I list all the things going against it. But the fact if you haven't figured it out by now I love procedure I like rules and I love going by the book and this one was sloppy. No wonder many of us are incensed. I hate to tell you this but for too long former councils thought they knew best and they treated Fairfax City as their own little fiefdom. I'm very happy to look and see smiling faces as opposed to looking at what was like the judges of the Salem Witch Trial. Now if there's anything I can do to help you know I'm always here but no the Country Club Hills Connector

mm-mm mm-mm-mm I really expect you to think we don't need all these projects let's get rid of one that people really hate. thank you have a good evening. Our next speaker is Val Morgan 3617 Cornell Road of course I'm here because a lot of us love trees because we breathe and there are a lot of birds there and there are insects we can't even see that live there and we haven't figured out yet most of us or a lot of us that we're part of nature and when we kill it off bit by bit we're killing ourselves off bit by bit and at some point it's going to be too late and we're all done and I have grandkids and I really don't want to see us do all this stupid stuff when there's a street right over there

you don't put a street through the woods you put use the street that's why it's there it seems obvious and we ought to have the trees in the city look have somebody run out and see what the trees in the woods look like the trees in the city should not have mulch it's terrible for the trees and having the guys take a trimmer like they use along the sidewalk of grass with a metal blade this deep cut through roots this big like the oak trees right in front of the police station why are we killing our trees they're going to try very hard it's hard to really kill them quickly unless you just cut them down but we're we're spending a lot of money to try and kill trees so we're going to have to be instead

of tree city we're going to have to add tree killers USA because we're doing dumb stuff we don't need the guys I mean if that's what their job is then we don't need them so there's somebody we can get rid of it's the guys that are going around that outside of the mulch taking out tree roots I mean that's dumb and piling mulch up to kill the trees is also dumb if you've ever watched the news and there's some news person standing at the white house and you see the trees in the background there's no volcano mulch you go to Fredericksburg no volcano mulch I hear Charlottesville is the same and most of the rest of the country doesn't do this ditch these trails and save money and I'm sure we could

save money by not paving all the streets every time you turn around and yay for saving our bands they're really important I mean I'm in the main street band they let me play the bass drum so I'm not very good but our director who spoke Jeff and Richard who also spoke are great musicians and the gentlemen that were out playing the brass group out there they're super it does a lot for your spirit and your soul to attend these things so we need to keep these things up and we save a lot of money by not buying all that mulch to kill the trees and take away those toys that are killing trees is there anybody else in the room that would like to speak other general public comment we'll ask that you line

up by the windows hi good evening my name is Judy Fraser 3514 Spring Lake Terrace good evening mayor and council members I don't know who suggested cutting all these wonderful programs but it's been wonderful to meet all these lovely people in our community who do so much to make this a very special place so I know you won't cut their programs I feel very certain of that but I do appreciate hearing about the wonderful work that they are doing your efforts as well to find a better path forward for the GST has been noted and appreciated the woods themselves have received reprieve if only temporary tonight this is because you all VDOT staff our staff and the community work together we have started

that process we need to keep going I would like especially to make a call out to VDOT because they are an organization that often finds themselves in the center of controversy in the middle of opposing forces and angry voices more roads versus protecting open space for example one of the more surprising revelations of this experience has been that in fact they were coming up with compromises that they would have liked us to consider years ago but we didn't hear about them and this is a reminder that our government employees generally know their job is to serve the community in fact if VDOT had been listened to those years ago your 98 days here probably would not have had anything no time spent

on the George Snyder Trail what a timeline that would have been well you might have gone to a ribbon cutting but we know there is work to do and certainly some unknowns and many of us have committed to helping engage the community going forward to find that better path so thank you for your unanimity tonight I think that was a great show of working together and I am sure that staff will provide you the support that you requested to find that path thank you our next speaker can come forward my name is Susan Kyler I live in Cambridge station I want to echo a lot of Judy's and others remarks I want to thank you for meeting with VDOT about the George Snyder Trail and for DDOT's willingness to consider

alternatives for the western portion of the trail as Judy noted they suggested this a couple years ago that the city built the western portion until the city could figure out how to address public concerns about the eastern portion a few citizens have already developed a concept alternative for the western portion of the GST that goes from Chainbridge Road along Eaton Place and Fairfax Boulevard to Fairwoods Parkway the alternative moves the GST from the wetlands behind the Willowwood office buildings to the sidewalks on Eaton Place in Fairfax Boulevard one of our Mary Van Judy actually was so encouraged by the opportunity that VDOP had granted us that she highlighted a city map to show where

the GST grant money could be used to fill in the gaps between other existing approved and proposed bikeway segments which do not use GST funds to form a continuous bikeway from I-66 to Fairwoods Parkway some of the alternative benefits are it makes Fairfax Boulevard Eaton Place and key intersections safer for pedestrians and cyclists something the city plans to do anyway and in some places is already doing it too it brings people from neighborhoods such as Cobdale the assembly and North Vax safely across Route 123 to the businesses on Fairfax Boulevard it provides access to Old Town on University Drive it preserves the Woodland buffer that protects the neighborhood and last but not least it preserves

our wetlands and wildlife habitats I urge you to pass the resolution to pause the George Diner Trail bid advertisement to allow the transportation division the council and concerned citizens to develop a concept alternative for the western portion of the George Diner Trail this resolution will enable the city to take advantage of the opportunity VDOT has afforded us to direct the transportation division to work with council especially councilmember Peterson whom VDOT specifically mentioned in a meeting two weeks ago to develop a concept alternative and public outreach program for the western portion of the GST as another little thought there are also alternatives for connecting to the Wilcoxon

trails as funds permit such as extending the bikeway along Fairfax Boulevard the western portion or by using Cardinal Road through Draper Drive Park to Fairfax Boulevard not by tearing people up people's front yards and sidewalks as some have asserted but by painting bicycle icons on the roads and making the Draper Fairfax Boulevard intersection safer I thank you so much for the resolution you have before you tonight and I know that many of us want to work together to develop a good public outreach program for this thank you next speaker can come forward hi I'm Katie Johnson I'm at 101 32 Spring Lake Terrace I want to say much like the arts I am touched by what you guys were talking about but

I want to offer spending time in nature offers numerous benefits for both physical and mental health stress reduction improved mood enhanced cognitive function increased creativity lower blood pressure immune improved immune function reduced risk of chronic disease increased physical activity I'd like to say that the connection with nature nature for nature's sake not nature for our benefit but nature for nature's sake I'd also like to read my daughter had much very timely one of her questions on her homework tonight I flipped it open it's a practice test it says every year more than 300,000 acres of wetlands are drained for building purposes three quarters of all North American waterfowl breed

in wetlands Imagine that at a local town meeting there is a proposal to permit developers to use a substantial amount of wetland around your area as an informed citizen you need to take a stand on this issue my daughter is 12 and they're asking her to make these decisions I'm asking tonight I'm stating our forest and wetlands cannot handle an additional 600 mature trees lost our wetlands and our forest cannot handle an additional 7 to 8 acres of disturbance please take advantage of the opportunity provided by VDOT to realign the George Snyder Trail to preserve our remaining woodlands wetlands and all the life they support including ours is there anybody else in the room that would like to speak

on their general public comment okay we can move to consent agenda is there a motion to approve the consent agenda council member Hardy Chandler I move adoption of a consent agenda for item agenda item number 7a consideration of the March 18 2025 special meeting minutes agenda item number 7b consideration of appointments to boards and commissions agenda item number 7c introduction of an ordinance amending the re-adopted of the re-adopting amending and re-adopting chapter 90 article 2 division 1 section 90-33 of the code of the city of Fairfax Virginia pertaining to classification and taxation of certain real property in the city of Fairfax used for zoned for commercial and industrial purposes

and to establish a separate tax rate on such real property effective as of January 1 2025 revenue from which would be used exclusively for the transportation purposes that benefit the city of Fairfax agenda item number 7d introduction of an ordinance amending chapter 102 article 2 section 102 dash 31 of the city of the code of the city of Fairfax Virginia to increase the wastewater utility rate by 6% for FY26 agenda item number 7e introduction of an ordinance amending chapter 102 article 5 section 102 dash 203 of the code of the city of Fairfax Virginia to set the rate for stormwater utility service furnished by the city at 6% billing unit BU agenda item number 7f introduction of an ordinance

amending chapter 90 taxation article 6 tax on meals section 90 dash 262 of the code of the city of Fairfax pertaining to the levy and amount of tax on meals I move to approve the consent agenda items number 7a through F and the motion accompanying the consent agenda item as printed motion has been made by council member hardy chandler is there a second mayor reed council member hall I'd like to pull out items 7d 7e and 7f and vote on them independently we generally do that when we have a second so my apologies would you like to second the motion sure I'll second it ok so a motion has been made by council member hardy chandler and seconded by council member 7d 7e and 7f independently any other

items from any other members of the dais ok so items 7d 7e and 7f will be removed for discussion roll call vote on the consent agenda minus agenda items 7d 7e and 7f council member Mcquillan aye council member Bates aye council member Peterson aye council member hardy chandler aye council member hall aye council member amos aye motion passed unanimously for 7a through c so 7d is the introduction of an ordinance amending chapter 102 article 2 section 102 dash 31 of the code of the city of Fairfax Virginia to increase the wastewater utility rate by 6% per FY26 I'll recognize JC Martinez Chief mayor council in conjunction with the city's financial advisors and consulting engineers a wastewater utility

multi-year financial and capital planning analysis had been developed the primary goal of the analysis was to create a comprehensive cash flow planning model to take into account existing and projected operating and capital needs while minimizing ! rate increases for existing customers based on the analysis staff recommends a user rate increase of 6% in the city's wastewater utility the city raised rates of 10% in 2014 through FY2020 8% in FY2021 and 6% from FY2022 to the FY2025 increased residential and commercial wastewater user rates are required to fund the city's increasing costs associated with the aging infrastructure within the city and to cover its share of expenditures associated with the

operation of and the capital improvements at the Nomen coal M wastewater treatment plant also known as the plant the city contracted for 6.27% capacity in the plant which is owned and operated by Fairfax County major plant upgrades are necessitated by stringent federal regulations designed to improve wastewater treatment and quality the critical plant construction and renovation projects needed to replace and improve aging infrastructure the proposed 6% rate increase would impact user fees as follows one residential consumers for the first 5,000 gallons or less per quarter increase up to $68.35 per 1,000 gallons for all water in excess of 5,000 gallons it would be $13.07 commercial consumers

for the first 5,000 gallons or less it would be $80.42 per 1,000 gallons of water in excess of 5,000 gallons it would be $13.07 apartment buildings would be billed at a minimum wastewater rate of $53.31 per dwelling per month happy to answer any questions that you may have council member do you have questions no questions just want to vote on them separately okay council member McQuillan could you go into a little more detail on what the analysis composed of you said it was based on an analysis I'm just curious what factors were included aside from the county's increase of and federal regulations sure so the the largest part of the analysis has to do with capital improvements to the plant we did have

a discussion with them some years back them being Fairfax water specifically at the plants and some capital upgrades that were required I think we are in year 3 of year 5 of that plan significant capital contributions I think this year we're at either 8 or 9 million dollars trying to trail that down for the next 2 years about 7 or 8 million dollars for the next 2 years as well and then after that we should have a my words breather before other capital improvements will probably have to happen within that plant as well but that is the main driver of the cost is the capital infrastructure within that specific site council member Peterson thank you those investments for improvements were they planned

and expected yes they are planned and expected as I mentioned I think we are in year 3 of 5 we did have a discussion with Fairfax water specifically on the plant capital improvements right before I showed up and that was the plan going forward that these were the capital improvements that were required they had discussions with us and we sort of agreed to that plan of capital improvements within that area and are these attributable the need for this is this attributable solely to aging or is it use related in other words is this driven by the number of users and is that causing the need for investment are we seeing an impact because of increased use and that's what's driving this so it's my understanding

in discussions with Fairfax water that this is just aged infrastructure and this infrastructure has been in there for 20 or 30 years if not longer it just is routine maintenance our capacity has slowly been increasing as a city yet we still have some capacity there again it is mostly based on my understanding and discussions with them on just replacing aging infrastructure thank you any councilmember Hardy Chandler and just for clarification those rates that you gave for X number of gallons that was by quarter correct or correct councilmember Bates just to clarify this being we're just voting on the introduction right and we can amend the ordinances when we vote on them to say amend the tax rate

or what have you that's correct correct okay thanks this is just a procedural introduction yeah okay councilmember Amos I guess to just briefly build on that just for logistical understanding so we're voting to advertise the public hearing and then we would make a decision on it if we were not to approve it tonight what would that mean just nothing happens I'm not sure I understand your question I mean obviously the ordinance won't be introduced or advertised or any public hearing conducted if you don't vote to introduce the ordinance anything else from the dais before we take a vote okay seeing none a roll call vote councilmember Amos I'm sorry we need a motion to someone needs to me to read the

motion on item D because they were pulled out okay is there a motion for item D councilmember Hardy Chandler I move for adoption of consent agenda item 7D introduction of an ordinance amending chapter 102 article to section 102 31 of the code of the city of Fairfax Virginia to increase the wastewater utility rate by 6% for FY26 I'm sorry there's a motion attached to the actual agenda item and it's a little different than what you read I'm sorry if you could pull that up and actually the CFO may be handing you the motion I move to introduce an ordinance amending chapter 102 article to section 102 dash 31 B of the code of the city of Fairfax Virginia to increase the rates for wastewater service

by 6% I further move to waive the first reading and set the public hearing for April 22nd 2025 is there a second second okay a motion has been made by councilmember Hardy-Chandler and seconded by councilmember Amos is there any additional discussion on this motion seeing none a roll call vote councilmember Amos aye councilmember Hall no councilmember Hardy-Chandler aye councilmember Peterson aye councilmember Bates aye councilmember McQuillan no motion passed 4-2 okay we'll go to 7E which is the introduction of an ordinance amending chapter 102 article 5 section 102 dash 203 B of the code of the city of Fairfax Virginia set the rate for the stormwater utility service furnished by the city at

$34.30 per BU billing unit at 6% increase I'll recognize JC Martinez chief financial officer good evening again mayor council the city stormwater utility funds initial rate was at $28.80 per billable unit also known as BU and it was set at a time when the stormwater utility was created on December 14 2021 this action is to set the rate at $34.30 per BU or a 6% increase for calendar year beginning January 1 2025 user fees are expected to generate the stormwater utility revenue of approximately $3.2 million an increase of about $184,000 happy to answer any questions do we have questions from the dais okay do I have a motion for 7E council member hardy chandler I move to introduce an ordinance amending

chapter 102 article 5 section 102 dash 203 b of the code of the city of fairfax virginia increasing the rate for billing unit used in calculating the stormwater utility fee for the calendar year beginning January 1 2025 to $34.30 I further move to waive the first reading and set the public hearing for April 22nd 2025 is there a second second okay item 7E has been moved by councilmember hardy chandler and seconded by councilmember peterson is there any discussion on this item councilmember peterson the rationale for the increase can you repeat that is this simply because it's expanding revenue generation or is there more to it than that sure so the rationale is a couple of fold so the majority

of the increase would go to offset increase investment within the stormwater utility requirements within the city majority of these requirements are also federal requirements whether it's TDML and or other it's not VDOT but the DEQ requirements regarding stormwater runoff there has been many years of deferment with investment within our infrastructure in the stormwater fund or utility that we are now trying to catch up as well that is listed in the CIP and we're trying to maintain and catch up on that programming and investment back within our community for the stormwater aspect thank you any other discussion questions okay seeing none a roll call vote councilmember Amos aye councilmember Hall

no councilmember Hardy Chandler aye councilmember Peterson no councilmember Bates aye councilmember McQuillan no the mayor votes aye okay four to three okay our last item it's the introduction of an ordinance amending chapter 90 taxation in parentheses article 6 in parens taxed on meals section 90 dash 262 of the code of the city of Fairfax Virginia pertaining to the levy and amount of tax on meals I recognize JC Martinez chief financial officer again thank you mayor council as stated section 90 dash 262 of the city code currently provides for a 4% meals tax the proposed ordinance would increase the amount of the meals tax to 6% as set forth in the city manager's recommended FY 2026 budget the effective

date of this change would be July 1 2025 the previous meals tax was changed from 2% to 4% in 2004 or 21 years ago an increase to the meals tax reduces the financial burden on residents as the meals tax can offset the need for higher real estate taxes due to visitors and non-residents paying this tax tax in the handout in the staff report there are deletions to the current language as shown through strike throughs and then additions would be double underlined tax the 2% proposed increase would generate approximately an additional $4.4 million in meals tax revenue each 1% generates about 2.2 million the change would result in a tax increase of approximately $1 on a $50 meal happy to answer questions

questions council council member Hardy Chandler so again this is an introduction but it doesn't necessarily lock us into that 2% specifically is that correct that's correct this establishes the maximum amount of an increase other questions council member Bates just want to reemphasize a point from the staff report that all else all equal other rates held equal and all other given a certain set of expenditures for the budget if we do not raise the meals tax that means that given the same amount of expenditures that amount of money has to be made up by another tax rate such as further increase in the real estate tax rate other comments or questions or okay do I have a motion for 7f council member

Hardy Chandler I move to introduce an ordinance amending chapter 90 article 6 section 90-262 of the code of the city of Fairfax Virginia pertaining to the levy and amount of the meals tax I further move to waive the first reading and to set the public hearing for April 22nd 2025 is there a second second motion has been made by councilmember Hardy Chandler and seconded by councilmember Peterson is there any discussion on the motion councilmember Amos would it be possible since we all kind of hate the meals tax to a degree and I think we're all recognizing that 2% is probably a little too high within context can we reduce it to 1% for the advertisement for the public hearing for the max to be considered

you can certainly do that it again it's the maximum rate you could adopt and I think the other reason for staff recommendation in addition to it's incorporated in the proposed budget is it does allow you the flexibility if anything changes between now and when you adopt the budget that said you can certainly amend it upward or downward on the introduction sorry I'm just thinking about the sprout grant right now the potential for loss grant over time is what bugs me but I also don't want to support this so just being honest well we're just this is advertising it so that it can be just this is not locking us in it's kind of like I believe Mr. Martinez's analogy of having a mortgage that's more than

what you actually spend we're setting of this highest possible rate it doesn't mean that we're locked into this it just means that this is the upper limit of what we're saying of what we're stating that's my understanding is that correct Mr. Martinez that's correct council member Hardy Chandler in addition the public hearing allows for the public voice correct council member Amos and I don't disagree with that but I also note that it does fall on us to reduce the incoming debt that's coming I would feel more comfortable if we capped ourselves at one if folks are amenable to that then I'd be willing to support this council member Peterson clarification so our maximum right now the maximum allowable rate

is four which is equal to the actual rate that is set is that correct we set I'm just looking historically we set the current rate at four is that right that's correct and absent any action to change it as part of this budget cycle it remains at four and when we did that just if anybody happens to know did we advertise it at four and then move up to that from a lower level like two that I don't know I'd have to go back and look the only thing that I was able to find was specifically the date in the year that it was last changed but I'm assuming we would have gotten compliance and would have had to advertise it but I don't remember at what percentage it was advertised actually I'm sorry the staff report

does note again that the previous meal tax change was from two percent to four percent in 2004 and my question is so the procedure that was used at that point sounds like it would have been to advertise it for and then following public hearing etc go ahead and move to that level that is typically the process for most taxes that are advertised is there's a maximum advertised and then it's in the hands of the council as to how it wishes to handle that and the council wished to handle that by moving it up to the maximum rate that was advertised is that correct in terms of what happened again we'd have to go back and look at that staff report we don't have that institutional memory offhand okay council member Amos

this is more of a question for my colleagues because it would help me mathematically each percent that we take off we have to find 2.2 million what is our target real estate tax rate we're thinking about we were presented with some scenarios but we're coming up for a vote here and I'm wondering where are we going to find 2.2 or 4.4 million well I think there's a strength just a little bit and trying to this needs to be a vote on this ordinance and this tax rate we're not locked in to this tax rate being what we adopt if we if we pass this advertise it open a public hearing and let the community come in and tell us then decisions will be made by the dais and the more robust conversation that you're looking to have I

think we will have in the work session which is like how do we make the math work out I think at this juncture the very narrow question we are asking is at what rate do we advertise this and open a public hearing it does not lock us in to setting the rate at 6 there is every possibility that you could do this and keep the rate at 4 all it's doing is setting the upper limit councilman mr. Martinez I appreciate that I would say this is very similar to what the body did a couple of weeks back regarding the real estate tax rate where the manager proposed a certain rate council went ahead and actually increase that advertised rate again does not lock in council at at all to maintain a potential dollar 15

tax rate I think it seems like very understandable that I will not be anywhere near that so again this just gives that option to council to potentially go there but if need be can go significantly less or at its current rate council member council member Hardy Chandler so I think that council member Amos is making a good point maybe for a different time but hold on to that because I think looking at the landscape is exactly the approach we want to take so I hear what you're saying in terms of the landscape and I think that that's part of the broader scenario discussion council member Amos council member Amos since its advertisement I'm willing to let it go although I likely won't support the full 2% when it comes out but I just also want to reiterate I've been pretty clear for about a month and a half now that I want to know what we're trying to get to get to and I'm glad that we have the scenarios on board now but I haven't heard anything about what the ideal real estate tax rate is and right now that's kind of operating in tandem with this meals tax until

I find out how we can reduce it so I just wanted to reiterate that that 50 50 50 50 minutes if we get through this motion and I think we're going to be where you want to be so we have a motion on the floor at least I think we do have a much do we have that was somebody keeping track okay we have a motion on the floor it was made and seconded we had discussion is there any more discussion before we take a roll call vote apparently we are red so I think the dilemma here is part of it is chicken and egg where we're sequentially not considering this at a point in which we necessarily have the context that would let us be comfortable with the level granted this is just authorizing hearing to take place but this one is particularly difficult because I'm not hearing in my own case any support for this from constituents

and it does raise concerns that the presumption as we're going to move upward to a maximum rate and if that's not in the cards I'm not sure we want to be advertising at that and at this stage it doesn't sound like that's in the cards in terms of folks I'm hearing from which is pretty broad scale in terms of inputs on this so I am a little bit concerned about setting the stage for something that is not really supported and may not be something we end up wanting to pursue well council member Bates well I think it's safe to say that nobody supports raising taxes within itself but I think that residents do support the services that they get from the city and I I think that's a good question for later on during the work session I'd like to propose a compromise that involves a 3.5 cent increase the real estate tax rate and then a 2% increase the meals tax rate

sort of a somewhat modified version of scenario for but I'd like to have a chance to discuss that and see if my colleagues are amenable to that Council member McQuillan I am NOT amenable to that because I don't believe in the meals tax I don't want to increase the meals tax I've been pretty clear and honest with you guys about that so just so that there's no confusion where I stand on that I will not be voting for a meals tax to increase the meals tax okay so this this really is sort of a process question this is just a process that we go through so that we can have a robust discussion about what the options actually are in order to be able to consider all the tools we have in the toolbox we have to put the tools in the toolbox which to me that's what this is we are setting the stage to say we've got options we've got tools we've got we've got resources and we need to figure out in what combination those resources will or will not come together to get us to the tax rate that this

this body is willing to vote on right so this is a process to say if you don't support it you don't have to vote for it but this is a process to say these are the tools in our toolbox to get us to a budget and a tax rate to support the budget and it's just a process that we're going through so councilmember Hardy Chandler and I am in support of hearing from the public and so if this is the door that opens and sets the public hearings so that we can hear from the public that's what I'm in support of okay so are we ready for a roll call vote okay I think we're ready okay councilmember Amos aye councilmember Hall no councilmember Hardy Chandler aye councilmember Peterson no councilmember Bates aye councilmember McQuillan no

may read the mayor votes yes okay motion passed four to three well all right then so we are now going to go into our work session and take a five minute break in between you you you you you you you you you you you you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Thank you. And the difference between the two, as I'm a rookie, process. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. This was one of the one,

of the way of the way of the way of the way of the way of the way of the way of the but not yet conducted, or an FY26, and again, not yet conducted. And I had a difficult time sort of figuring where they were and what it means for something to have been listed in FY25 but not conducted. And so off the top of my head, climate resilience plan for $220,000. I think there's a climate mitigation plan, clean energy and climate mitigation for like another $220,000. There's a flood management mitigation plan for $350,000. My math is right. We're at $790,000 on that. And then we've got, at the same time, part of the reason I'm asking this is, unfortunately, I think that we may have lost a key staff person

who served as a climate and energy manager who would have been with us for a stretch, which is completely unrelated but unfortunate. But it reduces project management capacity in these areas. These are three complex sequential projects that have acquired a lot of technical and facilitative assistance and a very significant project management burden that actually probably would not have been handled by one person, probably is going to require a couple of people to handle. I mean, I don't know where all that stands, but when you cobble that all together, it's basically a million dollars' worth of consulting projects happening, the three big projects concurrently. So part of my question is, where do these things stand?

And second, are we still able to actually conduct this work, given now the changes we've seen in staffing that affect these? And I just really couldn't tell when I looked into the documents. Yeah, most of these programs you're talking about, I believe, are somewhat grant funded. I know the stormwater resiliency, I believe, is 50% funded in our stormwater utility. So that one, I believe, as far as we know, the grant is still viable. But these projects, if they were funded in 2025, they have started. As far as the grant being lost for the climate resiliency, yeah, that's something that we'll probably have to figure out what we're going to do. I'm not sure if you're looking for cutting these programs.

I'm not sure how much money we have spent yet, and I could follow up on that. I am not saying that I do want to cut these programs. I'm really saying right now I just would like to understand more clearly where things stand. My understanding is that the resilience plan has not started, and neither has the mitigation plan. And those, as I understood it, were both about 220 a pop. And then the flood mitigation plan is separate. I don't know its status, but it reads as if that also has not yet started. But it would be good to clarify the timing of these things. And then when you look at the realistic implementation schedule for them, some of these things, you know, various things delay these. I'd like to just get a better sense for what the timing and trajectory really looks like

and whether some of this stuff is going to slip and go into next year anyway. And if that's the case, is there a way for us to reflect that in our understanding of the FY26 budget that makes it a little bit more current and accurate? I just don't know. I'm just observing that these things, you know, are at risk of delay, and that could have an implication here. Yeah, we could certainly get you that information. I will request that from Mr. Ito for the flood resiliency and the other projects were managed by Ms. Kupka. Right. So I will get you the status, where we're at, and what's the schedule for those. Fantastic. And, again, I'm not signaling a lack of support of these. So I'm really just wanting to understand more clearly the realities of the timing that are involved

and then the capacity for implementation. Understanding the nature of these things, those are pretty significant variables for us to sort of get a better sense of. Other questions? Council Member Hall. Recognizing that the fire station is a very large budget item, I don't believe we're going to have any sort of work session between now and when we need to vote on the budget. Is that correct? The Station 3 project update is currently scheduled for the 22nd. Oh, okay. My apologies for missing that then. Thank you. Other questions? Other questions? Council Member Peterson. I can't lay my hands on it at the moment. So I may be mistaken, but I thought I saw somewhere, and this is not in the grand scheme of things huge,

but there's a reason behind this. I think I saw the acquisition of a $62,000 vehicle for the urban forestry program. Again, I am not suggesting that's not an important, yeah. That was in the original proposed that was submitted in November. After changes and looking at what we could afford on stormwater utility, that was removed in the proposed budget, full budget. No wonder I can't lay my hands on it back in November. But I guess the broader issue, and I'm really sorry that we live in this situation. We had a cancellation of a major grant, the Sprout grant. We're having some difficulties here because of federal funding impacts that are affecting grant programs. They're affecting staffing. They're affecting families that have a trigger effect in terms of staff retention here in the city.

So these are difficult things we're going through. But with the loss of the Sprout grant, it would just be helpful to know whether there are ongoing expenses associated with that that will be terminated that were not a part of the grant, things that were sort of standing outside of it, that should be incorporated into the budget. And I don't know the answer except it may be that this is a grant that wasn't being funded entirely within the four corners of the grant. There could have been some additional staff support, X, Y, and Z. Do you have any sense of it? Because it's a big program, right? And I know there were a lot of sort of tentacles of this, if you will, that were reaching out into other areas.

Just like I mentioned with Mr. Ito and Mr. Kupka, we'll reach out to our urban forester and get the information status on that. Yeah, that would be a big help. And again, I'm so sorry this has happened. It's just kind of created a big gap that was very important to the city, but it does have financial implications. It would be good to understand. Okay. Anything else? Because I think Council Member Hall is on to something here. Council Member Hardy Chandler? No? No? No, I was just saying, I think she's got the right idea about us giving people the leave to go home, basically. So that's what I'm asking you. So Council Member McQuillan, ask what you have to ask. This might not be specific for you, but in general, since he was asking about grants,

do we have any operating expenses that are paid for by grant? We'll need to double check, but I believe the answer is no. Okay. I mean, other than grant, the funded positions, but if you're talking about, like, cost recovery from grants that... I'm talking about all of it, just because then the next question would be, what's our plan should those grants get cut? Same thing as applied for any CIP projects that we are relying on grant money for. Sure. So, I mean, obviously, if grants are canceled or reduced, we would have to reevaluate whether we continue with... whether it's a capital project, whether it's operational. So, I mean, the Sprout grant was pretty much all operational, and that was, you know, funding specifically, amongst other things, funding a position.

And so, that's a conversation. So, we have that covered through the end of this current fiscal year, so it's through June 30 of 20... that specific... But that's one... So, that just happened on Friday, so as far as getting notice of the grant cancellation. So, we'll need to... So, we are already in the process of evaluating in terms of what the grant was paying for. So, are there programs that we want to continue that the grant was paying for? And then, how would we pay for those? So, we're evaluating that right now. And the same thing goes for the position, is what do we want to do? And so, we just haven't had the time to really analyze and sort of figure that out yet. But we will be... That is one of the things that our staff is working on now.

But in terms of... I'll have to look... As far as the staff that's here, we... I don't know if any of them have specific grants programs, but again, we would have to do the same thing. So, certainly, most of our transportation projects are... I mean, I guess you could say they're a grant, but there's various pots of money, both federal and state, that fund a large portion of those. So, right now, I don't believe any of those are at risk. Certainly, the ones that are state-funded or through NVTA. But again, if something were to happen, then yes, we'll need to reevaluate those. But most of those funds are for capital projects, not for... Not a general operational something. So, we can... You have to look at those should that happen.

But again, we don't... At least for the transportation side of things, we're not aware of anything that might happen as far as any of those projects yet. So, aside from transportation, what... Do we have any other large CIP projects that are grant-funded or heavily grant-funded? I'm going to look to the finance team to help me with that. Sure. So, just as the manager stated, we actually have a very small amount of grants that we receive outside of other funding sources, specifically tied to either an enterprise fund, ARPA, which we've already obligated and have encumbered. There are other state and federal grants that we receive, either I-66, SmartScale, NVTC, the CNI, NVTA 30 and 70. The private grants, specifically, very similar to Sprout,

is a very small amount. It's about $300,000 per year or so that we receive. I am only aware of two individuals right now that are associated to the grant, to any grant, specifically. I will say that those two positions, when the offered letter is given to them, they are completely notified and aware that it is a restricted position, exclusively tied to the grant funding. So, they're aware of that. And in the case that we just had this past week, we notify the individuals and try to work with them if need be to extend any grant funds that we have. But our exposure to grants is very small, other than the transportation, like the manager was saying, specifically tied to other funding sources, NVTA 30, 70, the CNI tax,

revenue sharing, DRPT, NVTC, I-66, and SmartScale. Sure. Okay. Did you have something, Council Member Hardy-Chandler? Yes. I did. Okay. Okay. I don't know if this is going to get everyone home early, but I certainly hope so. Bear with me. Over the weekend, we had an opportunity to talk through our priorities, right? And I hope that those discussions about our priorities actually frame where we're headed budget-wise and answers Council Member Amos' question. My priorities are certainly quality of life, and to me, that means honoring safety and our first responders, their needs, their spaces, and their equipment. The other thing, of course, is what we heard earlier and all of the very high return on investment,

small-dollar things that really add to our culture and quality of life in Fairfax. So when I think about those priorities, at least for me, as Council Member Hall talked about earlier, those things are just so important. They're preventative. So when I think about those things, it puts me between scenario, some mutated or altered is a better word, I guess, version of scenario three, four. That's where I'm sort of landing. So my question is, is there a variation on scenarios three and four that when you consider the revised CIP and remove the elements that impact people, meaning positions, I am not in favor of any vacancies being frozen. I think that that adds work to the remaining people. And the nonprofit grant program, those kinds of things.

But I do think that the real estate fund is on the table, the cash transfer, the deferral of the schools for as little time as possible from four and the Renaissance housing program. So my question is, could other things from the revised CIP make up some variation of those two possibilities? And that might involve input from other people in the room efficiently to potentially get there. And I hope that answers the question for you in terms of where I sit on this. But again, I go back to my priorities. And that's what guides the opportunity here to look at some variation of three slash four. Is that a clear question? I think it is. And I think staff, and I'm speaking for the manager, but I think staff are always willing to make modifications

and or do a subset of the five general scenarios that were presented last week. I think Council Member Hall has already requested some modifications to the scenario. We can always modify other scenarios to try to figure out where there is commonality if need be. I will say very quickly on the CIP. So there is a summary tab that was emailed out. I will try to expand this. So the changes, not including what Mr. Hall just presented tonight, the changes there that incorporate everything makes the reduction of about $4.5 million. So the top graph or top table is what was proposed as of the end of February when the manager proposed the FY26 budget. The revise incorporates those changes that were discussed by all the different departments last week,

which was police, parks and recreation, schools, and public works as well. Again, does not incorporate what was presented this evening by Mr. Hall. There is a reduction there in FY26, slight increase in 27, and then minor reductions in 28, 29, and 30, overall reduction of about $4.6 million over the span of the five years. We can go through that. I will note that as a potential, and I would have to figure this out, but as a potential, schools did identify $1.2 million that was appropriated in FY25 that was not being utilized and could potentially be given up. So these are my notes on the side here of 1.2. We could reallocate that, and I did as an example. These are just examples. Ultimately, it would be council's will

to sort of direct us how to do it. But we could apply a portion of that to the $3 million that would be needed to do the initial funding for schools. So either that frees up of that $3 million, I'm going to use that word very loosely, frees up that $3 million to where if we were projecting a six- or seven-month potential deferral, now we would actually be on target because we have almost half of that back potentially, or utilize that somewhere else if need be. But it was my suggestion to just apply it to the $3 million there. So that would be now an alternate scenario in that respect if need be. And that other $4 million doesn't really prevent or impact staff. Correct. So you're talking about this $4 million right here.

It does not impact, I think the manager's been very clear that the CIP, the only way to really impact the CIP is by reducing the transfer from the general fund cash to the CIP. That is a part of one of the scenarios. That varies based on overall net expenditures. As that goes down, so does the required 5% minimum on that transfer. Consistent about that. Okay. That's helpful and that makes me more optimistic about the plausibility of these scenarios. Thank you. Okay. Council Member Hall and then Council Member Peterson. Thank you. Do you know what the minimum transfer now would be or is it too early to tell with the other information that's still needed? So this would be the CIP. That doesn't really impact

the net expenditures on the general fund. That's what the policy is off of. So I would need to know the net expenditures on the general fund side before I can figure out that aspect of it. Okay. That's what I thought. Just wanted to make sure. Trying to take notes here. Good mathematician. Council Member Peterson. I want to go back to your comment on CIP and it's actually a question that I'm thinking Director Summers would be best at answering initially but it's a broader question mark and that is I think the real question here is what is the full costing of CIP? It is my understanding that the development of CIP itself not to mention the ultimate implementation of CIP projects which include

maintenance and operations and what have you is done by staff quite significantly. yes we retain contractors we do extramural assistance for that but there's a very significant staff loading and it'll vary depending but I've heard anecdotally that a lot of staff time goes into getting these CIP projects one and then started up and then implemented. With transportation in particular but this could be any of these things how much of that is cost recoverable through the funding source is it cost recoverable and do you track it so that you can do cost recovery so the grant actually pays for that or are you only doing cost recovery for your extramural resources for the contracting et cetera that you do

to be able to get these started? For transportation projects the cost recovery is typically during construction construction so the folks that I use whether they're contractors or staff doing the construction management and the inspection are billed to that capital project is that what you're you're asking? During construction the staff are billed during construction to the project during design typically the consultant is is billed is doing the right is doing it as far as my staff time and Wendy's staff time and Sonny's staff time we do not bill to the project and I think it's important because technically the cost of the CIP includes that staff time that is funded out of the general fund right

is that correct and as a consequence that's actually tax financed it's not grant financed you're talking about the public works staff time so for example like the project manager Sonny Cernar yes yes so they he is funded through the general fund but I think to a director Summers point if allowed they would be able to bill back to the CIP well and so allowable cost recovery is part of the issue the other part of the issue is having a measurement system that enables you to do that but it's my impression that a lot of staff time and it varies but there's a really significant loading it's not an insignificant that's associated with being able to generate CIP and then actually implement it and that that's not always

cost recoverable that is something that's built into that's an expense that's associated with the CIP and so when we talk about the benefits of reducing CIP volume one of the benefits of that is reducing the staff expenses that are paid for by the general fund that are associated with that how big that is I wouldn't know until somebody was able to provide some measurements around it but it's possible that that's a really significant number in some areas but I just want to note unless I'm mistaken that that is a general fund expense and it's a significant one that is CIP driven is that not the case? it is a general fund expense I would hesitate to say how significant it is until analysis was done

I would say it's probably larger in transportation than the other divisions you know because of the effort involved in getting the the grant money you know the buckets of money available and in administering a design project for a very big project so yeah but for the other divisions of public works there really isn't that those large capital projects where you need that much oversight and a lot of it is required by VDOT because they have a dashboard and they manage how we're doing so in order to get this funding and retain this funding and be in their good graces the effort needs to be there especially for you know transportation well again it's just very helpful because I think it's important

not to leave the impression that all of the CIP related expenses by the city are paid for by grants there's the up front which is not typically unless you're in a particular cost recovery and then there's later stage right but there's another side of that coin because and I mentioned this earlier when I construct a large transportation capital project that takes away all these elements of the infrastructure that normally I would have to maintain with operating funds like paving concrete pipe replacement all that stuff gets done as part of the CIP which reduces some of my maintenance expenses which is a good question that comes up about you know I believe that there are things in the CIP that maybe

aren't CIP projects like paving and some of my maintenance pipelining and all years ago they were decided to be put into the CIP but to me they're non-discretionary maintenance but there will be CIP things that result in new infrastructure being built that's a different story right okay I think it's just really important to keep that in mind when we look at the full costing of the CIP loading we have and I would like to just say real quickly that I would be careful about the wastewater enterprise fund because I know we're asking for 6% but of the 15 million that's spent in wastewater 11 million is Nomen coal plant contribution which is non-discretionary they treat all our wastewater so that leaves me

around 4 or 5 million to maintain all of the wastewater lines pump stations manholes in the city and if you look at the CIP it's it's pipelining and repair and what happens if I don't line these pipes then I can't line them and I got to replace them and the cost goes up six seven fold so to take away my maintenance money for storm or wastewater is going to cost a lot more down the road because I can't line it when they reach a certain deterioration so and the amount of compliance requirements that are required for both storm and wastewater and maintenance there really isn't a lot of wiggle room so I just wanted to put that out there just my final I'm guessing knowing you as I do I think I do

that when you identified whatever the 1 1.5 million or whatever you certainly did that in a way that was careful not to create false economy series and do that right yes sir got it thank you councilmember Amos just a just a quick clarifying question so for the 1.2 million back from schools and if we were to receive that and allocate it towards the school bond but we also consider the option of deferring the school bond by seven months to a year how exactly does that look can we redistribute it elsewhere or what would the plan for that be we could redistribute it elsewhere if need be it's currently in the CIP so the way I look at this and bear with me is so you have the minimum cash distribution

of the 5% from the general fund to the CIP so that's your were to fund the initial $3 million for schools that will also come out of the general fund to the CIP fund that's your right hand so you got two parallel tracks two transfers going into the CIP from the general fund because 1.2 already resides in the CIP from a previous year appropriation I could reduce the right hand transfer that $3 million if need be there so again in some of the different scenarios one scenario is we funded completely if that was the manager proposed scenario if that was the case then now that sort of frees up $1.2 million that I would not have to transfer from the general fund to the CIP in a different scenario we

start potentially pushing that out either by 1.5 million or reduce the transfer by 1.5 knowing that I have 1.2 so almost the 1.5 there so it actually can start on time but not have to transfer the full amount as well and I can walk through some of these scenarios now that we started having more guidance or clearance on where the CIP might be coming in at if that's council's will again so I just put it there as a placeholder if we get directed to move it somewhere else then we could do that as well councilmember Hall if it's okay with everyone could we maybe get back to the departments and then do the tax scenarios after I want to be respectful of their time do we feel like we can bid a good night

to Mr. Summers and Mr. Hall yes we yes a fond adieu councilmember Hall EDA maybe hopefully quickly okay I just can I start yeah sure I just want to thank you for giving back the five million and in such a quick turnaround and conversation I think that was very helpful I'm sorry that it came to that and I do hope that those funds or other funds like it will be available in the future to have another conversation with councilmember Peterson 10% exercise you approach you approached it and what you found we recognize as I think we stated at the outset of this 10% exercise that not all agencies are created equal right so that said but if you would share what you did and found and thought we are a

little different than most of the other agencies we don't have a capital improvement program so the 10% exercise that we undertook looks at the services that we provide directly to businesses and the people that provide those services we did go through the exercise I believe you received a briefing document I'm happy to go through some of the specifics of it but from a high level what we did we broke things that we have been running that have a direct capacity building component to businesses and then larger programs that serve as investment or marketing or provide marketing services for the city and for the business investment programs that we do run as I mentioned before the economic development

office is sort of broken into a number of portfolios one portfolio is business investment we have programs I'm actually joined tonight by our assistant director of programs management we have finance and operations which sort of runs the background scene to keep the entire operation moving and then we have a public relations and marketing portfolio we also have a subset of programs is tourism and then sort of on top of that we have this sort of amorphous real estate reuse and reinvestment portfolio that works with us and across the portfolios and then we have the economic development authority management portfolio that is shared across all of the divisions so we sort of triaged when we were going

through the 10% exercise to determine what we could continue providing a basic level of services without and that's where this document that you have hopefully in front of you where it was in the memo that I believe finance had sent last week came from what we've done is we've looked at the least painful reductions so we've removed about $39,000 from our program's portfolio which includes honestly elimination of some programs that people like but they are programs that we can suspend or pause for a year and then look to reinstate with cost savings in future years some of those programs include the Culinary Careers Collaborative which is a partnership with the Town of Vienna the Women's Empowerment

Luncheon and a number of our ribbon cutting programs and reserve funding for promoting new business events of that nature somewhere else that we reduced additional funding was in our public relations and marketing programs most of these were funds that were dedicated to support George Mason University programs and collaborations it's only a reduction of $34,000 so that's it's a substantial piece of that program but it is something the actual service without marketing the specific program the business investment program we proposed a reduction of $45,000 and that's mostly in conference travel and some of our strategic partnerships I will be honest that is probably a pain point for these reductions

because a lot of what business investment is is promoting the city beyond the city to potential investors for businesses and frankly it's where we've seen a lot of success over years filling some of our office spaces but it is what we proposed as a reduction hoping that it would be more of a temporary reduction for the coming year or two we also removed or reduced some of our executive director budget which I actually saying that out loud really dislike the name but that's where we have funds reserved for legal counsel for the economic development authority if they're involved in any kind of transaction that requires independent legal counsel so those are sort of the first bucket of funds that

we've reduced from the ongoing programs the second bucket which is I think the bulk and probably the one you're most interested in is $206,000 from the economic opportunity fund so this fund is actually similar to the real estate opportunity fund which we discussed last week this is a fund that which has enabled the economic development authority commissioners to make decisions to develop programs that serve as incentives for new businesses or property owners to reinvest in their properties or new businesses so for example the reduction here would unfortunately or fortunately include the reduction of the facade and interior improvement grant program which is what we call FIG and the lease incentives

for Fairfax tenants program I do believe that that would be another pain point but it would not mean that we could not provide basic services through the economic development office is that an adequate answer for the first part council member hall would cutting that in half allow you to still do the lift and the FIG programs or not not meaningfully unfortunately the lift program alone is $300,000 I believe and I think the facade and improvement interior investment program is $400,000 it is worth mentioning that after speaking with a couple of other departments that analyze this information a $400,000 investment actually resulted in approximately $2.8 million of private investment on those projects

for 33 projects so they are good programs that generate revenue similarly the lift program if I can find it quickly thank you Tara we invested $300,000 and it resulted in approximately $1 million of generated revenue and through the 18 tenants that we've issued lift grants to it was approximately 25,000 square feet a little bit more than that actually in leased space that participated in this program over the past nine months so it hasn't even been a full year it's been a very popular program we've had a lot of requests to continue the programs both of them from the broker community and the property owner community to answer your question not really councilmember Amos just to touch on that a bit

more because I know that while Jennifer was here earlier with the chamber I do wonder if the meals tax were to be increased can a percentage or portion of it be dedicated specifically to those programs I think that would that's more of a finance question that might be a finance legal question but I believe we should have the authority to dedicate it I'm yeah councilmember ramens if you wish to carve out a specific you know funding source you do have the ability to do that yes mr. martinez if I could add as well with the meals tax so there is and I think Vienna does it as well so you can actually in addition to a carve out also do a sunset as well that's something that can be potentially utilized

as a signal to businesses that it's not a permanent tax you can identify a time frame associated with that if need be can you also set a sunset for and this is odd but let's say you wanted to sunset the meals tax once the 1% sales tax for school construction was received could you do that as well that way we're not just double taxing restaurants and businesses if we were to go down this path I don't in essence yes I don't think you would just choose to reduce or eliminate because you wouldn't typically with a sunset you're specifying the sunset date in advance and with the 1% you wouldn't know that if this 1% school funding were to come about but in essence what you're asking is yes if you want to

do that you certainly could offset if that's something you're wanting to do although we definitely need to check to make sure there's no provisions about supplanting existing revenue in the legislation but since the legislation hasn't been adopted we'll cross that bridge down the road councilman Peterson big picture question that I hate to ask and I hope it's nothing that we ever experienced but what impact does recession have on you and you know in budget land what does it do to you because this is a bit of a new ball game since you got started on FY26 yes so I think well let me back up and say the Northern Virginia Economic Development Alliance which we are a member of is actually about to

start studying what impact both recession and then the question around government contractors is having on the Northern Virginia region specifically certainly there's a spectrum of impacts that we would anticipate from people going to restaurants but also to things I suspect there would be an impact and it would mean we'd have to adjust and be somewhat flexible hard too soon to tell what that would do to any of your line items yes other questions other questions well are we ready to let them go home okay we bid you this is like the sound of music so long farewell we hate to okay goodbye it's all those theater people who showed up tonight I feel like singing show tunes now okay councilmember hall

who else I probably fire will be faster than park sorry okay fire is fast chief O'Neill I've been waiting for you to sing to me all night well there you go I've got more tunes I've got a lot of show tunes first thing we show tunes okay councilmember peterson we truly did miss you last time we were together and are glad to have you back we started a line of questioning with everybody that we wanted to pick up again when you were able to join us here which is the general question of how things went in terms of the 10% both with capital improvements and other areas of expense general fund and where you saw the opportunities for how did that land for you in the memo that I provided the city manager

I stated that 88% of our cost is salary and benefits that leaves 12% for general operations when you look at our operating cost over the last two to three years they have remained almost flat so our purchasing power is even less today particularly with a lot of contractual obligations it wasn't clear to me to look at or possibly recommend deferring any capital projects since that time I've certainly heard your line of questioning at the other meetings and I've looked at it I know that Mr. Hall had looked at something a while ago and I think 275 of that 500,000 he was offering up came from fire and certainly we're supportive of that and his rationale to it looking at FY26 if I had to defer something

it would be that 1.6 for the foam equipment and hope that we don't an incident at our largest target hazard in the city and hope that we don't have an incident with the 400 gasoline tankers up and down our city streets that's what we looked at thank you other questions for the chief yes councilmember Amos just wanted to say we appreciate you and our condolences to you and your family so more power to you during this time thank you appreciate that I know several of y'all have reached out and it really did mean a lot it's been tough losing both mom and dad within a four-month period so you're you've got a firetruck on order I think Mr. Hall basically said we ordered early the savings was I actually

have three currently on right and the money was set aside for that I just want to bring that back to everybody's attention that we had to set aside the money at the time we ordered it so that's not really on the table because they've been ordered and we had to have a purchase order and all kinds of things but in the long run it has saved us money because it just gets more expensive cost escalations have been ridiculous in that industry I would think so too and so with your foam equipment what is the likelihood that deferring it is going to dramatically increase what it costs if we put it back next year by deferring it there would be a cost increase what that estimate would be I'm not exactly

sure some of it is like with all vehicles and the potential of tariffs have that impact on it but it's not the same as a custom fire apparatus I would say not as great I would guess you're considering that the foam equipment is essential and critical and you mentioned gas specifically so why is this such a critical tool to have in what cases would this be the most effective way of responding to an incident typically you can't put out fuel particularly liquid fuel driven fires with water you need something to suppress the vapors of the foam the foam suppresses the vapors of the gasoline or diesel or even avgas or jet fuel so in addition to tanker trucks colliding which could happen anywhere but

we do have the tank farm here in the city correct which makes us a little different maybe from other jurisdictions that don't have a tank farm it's our most maximum risk in the city right right so I just kind of want to put that out there too is to the fact that we're in a different situation because of that tank farm and if this is in the budget there's a reason it's in the budget and even though it might be it could be deferred I mean and it has been deferred it's been deferred in the past for a couple of years based on Mr. Hall's recommendation because much like the command post that was discussed before with the police department because it is a low mileage vehicle if you will so for several

years it was deferred because of that and then last year we actually opted as the department to defer it while we were looking at what green foam that we were going to transition to and the platform associated with that to get away from PFAS driven foam and are those in our greener materials available yes they are so that's what we would be looking to do oh yes okay yeah that's the plan and with the foam engine that's on order that's the plan and recently the military had approved several mil spec foams which kind of drives what airport fire departments and DOD fire departments use so there are several on the market now that seem to be of high quality and better than the first version of green

foams that came out as suppressing those vapors so if we don't have this in the city what would be the nearest fire station maybe in the county let's just say to the tank farm as far as being able to respond to a fuel driven incident ! One of them is over by their fuel farm in the Newington section and the other one is off the interstate that seems pretty far away to me if something is burning and it is fuel based I just want to dig a little deeper that this is some of the things we're looking at we have to consider we don't need it every day but the one time you need it and you don't have it because it's a new intent or it's a road and like I said both before because it was a low use low mileage

vehicle Mr. Hall had recommended deferred several years ago last year we had recommended it for another year so we could decide what platform we're going to go to Mr. Hall's assessment when we talked to him about it this year was that the general mechanical condition particularly of the truck itself was in fair condition okay okay well just all this is very important for us to consider especially with with fire and first responders any other council member Hall I'm half joking and bringing this up but someone did message it to me there's been a request maybe to bring back bingo at the fire station which would also be a fundraiser opportunity so I'm glad you mentioned that I love a good dapper

so you know the Fairfax volunteer fire department while as our partner is a private independent corporation that was their decision and a lot of it had to do of course with COVID at the time but even before COVID they were struggling with staffing that now the Fairfax volunteer fire department does do significant fundraising and helps offset support to some smaller vehicles when they can and support equipment when they can and the proposal that we have to rehab the existing ladder truck so we have a mechanical reserve something that we're lacking now and something that we can't always borrow with the climate of particularly replacing apparatus not only for us but regionally and across the nation

at their board meeting they have discussed in supporting us of paying half of that half a million dollars so $250 K to go towards the rehab of that ladder truck to be partners with us but their membership has not taken action yet so it's not in writing so I haven't sent it to the city leadership yet so but I hear that all the time particularly on the 4th of July you would be surprised at the number of times that people tell me or recommend to bring back bingo if we could find people that were willing to be your MC for the evening is it something that could be considered and as an aside growing pancake breakfast a couple times a year which was a huge fundraiser and was just a lot of fun especially

for young kids the volunteer department does continue to do the Christmas pancake breakfast I forget what it yielded this past year they had a good year $3,800 you know if I remember correctly it was huge though it was huge if I remember correctly you know when they were doing bingo that would net I think around between $80,000 and $100,000 a year so I think you have your first volunteer here for being an MC and I think we could certainly find others to do it if it's something that you were all open to we have one of the volunteer board members here and I'm sure he'll more than gladly take it to the board and certainly I can bring it up as a talking point when I first started volunteering in

1977 it was started as volunteering with bingo and at that point in time there was still smoking in the firehouse I think that's where a lot of our occupational cancers probably came from back in those days but yes honestly I think the fundraising is a side benefit of it but I do think it's a really good wholesome fun activity that's kind of lacking I know when they do the elementary school every year it's a huge event so I would certainly be on board councilman bramis I don't know the answer to this question so I would appreciate someone's input from a zoning perspective I've seen with the county that once certain developments go in they can also proffer a condition for them to issue some kind

of infrastructure money to oh I know but they can Mr. Harden is coming to answer that question proffers can be applied to capital improvements they can't be applied to operational costs so that would also apply to for example vehicles if that were to be something that we'd like to consider at some point the only time that that that I've been aware that's been discussed was regarding QBUS and I don't believe QBUS qualified within the state code parameters that's the one that comes to mind but you know physical fixed infrastructure is certainly can be I know that the legislation changed several years ago that made it more restrictive so who wants to sponsor a poll yeah the fire poll right well

something to think about I guess okay all right any other questions for chief O'Neill before we sing him off the stage okay so long farewell we hate to say goodbye thank you very much okay thank you go Rachel all right councilmember hall parks and rec plus I think probably zoning to discuss collectively Willard sure would please but if there's other parks and rec questions for us please feel free may I ask are we planning on talking with our police department or no I am not I thought we did the five percent but you certainly can well it's always great to hear from them I guess I'm wondering whether we need to retain them for the evening I feel safer when you're here but I don't want to keep you

from your loved ones I'll leave it to the dais they answered okay well okay so long farewell we hate to say goodbye okay goodbye all right then um council member peterson do you have things you'd like to start with yes so again thank you for your follow-up on the parks and recreation issues a couple of clarifying questions start if you could just again explain the 500 and where that sits and what impact that has on budget is that money that's already built into a budget and it's been adopted so your description of that program was merely describing a cash flow that doesn't have any potential for reduction or was there something more to it than that there's two nova parks cips and they have the same

picture so i know in the past it has been confusing it's both they're both gateway park and so there is already allocated funding for the eventual the eventual rehabilitation and improvement of that park into a wetlands educational area that's the current nova parks plan i have reached out to the executive director of nova parks to find out kind of a timeline on where they are on that that renovation project i have not heard back yet i will say the other thing to just note is that paul gilbert who is the executive director has announced his retirement as of the end of the year so his job has just been posted he sent out a message to all of us kind of letting us know and so i think there might

be a delay in some of the projects they have in the pipeline but yet unseen and then the second nova park cip is our annual contribution and that is for that comes out of both cip and operating and when gwen and i were going through our cip it came to both of us that the operating had been counted twice so the operating was included in the cip and was also included in our operating budget so we were able to reduce the amount of ask by $53,000 because it appeared in both places well thank you and then one more the 1.6 yes so if i understand it correctly you were able to identify this as something that could be redeployed i guess my question is whether the only option is to redeploy or whether there

is an option here where those funds can in any way contribute to an FY26 savings of some kind yes so just to explain for anybody at home yeah i'm sorry to speak in code language here no no that's okay i just i don't think because it's just been sent to council there was 1.6 million dollars held in an FY22 cip which was the remaining balance when stafford park was built and when stafford park was built it was budgeted as a two turf field lighted park it was reduced in scope to a one turf field and then it remained unlit due to neighborhood input and that there was not an interest in having that field be lit those funds have remained in the cip just kind of hanging out there because they are there was

kind of this thought that at some point we might put in the field lighting and the conduit was run but the field lighting was never installed and at this point it doesn't seem like something that's immediately on the horizon and so we had looked at potentially reallocating that we had had a lot of community push to increase some security measures at the park including security cameras blue light emergency buttons and safety lighting and so that could cover some of that project it could also cover the remainder of our cip requests for the upcoming year we don't have a lot of them but it could cover all those with funds remaining I guess the bottom line question is how much could that 1.6 million dollars

contribute to the achievement of a budget scenario here by identifying some funds that are either going to be categorized as a reduction or an alternative for funding something that's in the scenario I mean are we going to be able to capitalize on this in some way that helps us achieve some of these reduced tax rate scenarios I think the answer to that question could be zero to 1.6 million dollars it's very similar to the schools 1.2 I can put it somewhere to sort of show as listed on the screen and displayed there what Stacy was mentioning that I reallocated and basically did way with any FY26 parks and recreation expenditures other than Willard Sherwood or I could change that and apply it to

something else very similar to the transfer that would be required from the general fund to the CIP or to schools or some other CIP project as well that that is ultimately what council would direct us to do what do you need from us to make that decision I think a little more clarity of what the intent would be I think very similar to what council member Amos has been sort of hinting at those are my words of what council sort of wants us to be at as a direction if we want a close to zero tax rate if we want a one penny two penny something that provides direction that I can sort of mold and modify scenarios to bring back to council to show what that would look like that's helpful very very helpful

and something I anticipate we should follow up on but as we do that I guess my question would be from your standpoint the trade offs associated with not redeploying those funds you mentioned there's some security issues et cetera if there's something that involves risk exposure we'd certainly want to know about that as we make this determination I do think there is quite a community push for more security at the parks especially where we have a lot of kids out on I think the first two identified were Draper and Stafford Park given some incidents that had occurred there and the number of youth that are on site every day but it is ultimately the will of the council as to what you want to do with the

funds council I would strongly support I think security at both Stafford and Draper I have a couple questions first is I believe that funds were allocated in the previous year for the turf fields at the middle school where does that stand where are those funds they are still being held we have four million dollars the estimate for the upgrade regardless of synthetic or natural turf sits in the range of ten million dollars simply because the site has some difficulties with stormwater and that is comprised mostly of fill that is made up of the previous middle school so they when they redid KJ they took a lot of the old school and buried it underneath that field and so included in the plan that's been

proposed because we had been working with the middle school was two fields two multi-purpose fields fenced a perimeter gravel trail that could be utilized by the middle school cross country program because that was a desire of the school they can't leave the school grounds to run cross country and then to improve the track facility so that it is a standard distance the current one is not a standard distance so they have to run I think like two and eight around and so it's an odd amount and then to include a small paved section in the center to be utilized by the gym classes the individual facilities are not the big expenditures the site work is the big expenditure bless you okay and what year

was that allocated do you recall was it wasn't last year it would have been it was I believe it was FY23 it was originally ARPA dollars which we then shifted around to utilize those ARPA funds at Theis Park so that we wouldn't lose them okay yeah that's curious I know that's a pretty controversial conversation regardless of well not regardless but depending upon which type of field be where to go with it's also a large amount of money to be sitting for years to not have a purpose thank you for clarifying that that's a good thing to consider on I think okay does anyone have other specific parks and rec questions I don't want to take over from anyone but I have a bigger question after this well just

to follow up on this point so what is the translation then of that 4.000 million and a potential opportunity to give us some help with the FY26 budget is this something that's a candidate for a push forward I mean where does that leave us so it's really unlikely that it would be expended in the next year so we could push it forward and then I will leave it to Mr. Martinez to tell us what that would do to the budget I don't know if that project has been officially canceled in any way if council in my opinion were to sort of say that this project is not viable to sort of return those funds back then we would go ahead and do that but until we have that direction I think the intent would be either

to continue to try to find additional funding and complete the project and hold those in reserve until that time is identified or until we get a different direction I think in the other two previous projects that were mentioned tonight one for schools that was clearly told and demonstrated to us that was not going to happen and that we're being told at that point by the school board chair to go ahead and not do that and then the staff for drive one where that doesn't seem viable as well given community feedback and no movement on that project I would just like to add that with the KJM turf fields that is a safety issue there are safety concerns with the current field so we would like to maintain

those funds and try to add to additional dollars to be added in the future especially to be able to make those improvements with the additional fact that the middle school is adding sports programs more questions just a comment I personally I would think keeping those funds for right now and not recalling them would be the best choice I do have concerns about where we're going to be headed with middle school sports with the county at this point in time but I'm hopeful that that is a bit of a short term burden that will eventually be worked out but I don't want to completely take away the option by recalling the $4 million and again not potentially solving some of the other issues that are going

on as opposed to just pulling money from here and there just to make a budget for the one year so can I move to Willard Sherwood questions anything else just straight parks okay I think we're ready to move okay can we discuss Willard Sherwood a little bit please I mean I can ask questions or I can you can give us some information first whatever you're prepared to do maybe maybe maybe questions I will though state staff would appreciate the opportunity to come in and have a work session on Willard Sherwood ideally that would happen before you consider the budget so if there is time for that to occur would like to do that because it's it's a project with a lot of complexities and a long history

and would like to be able to share that and step you through the bigger picture and some of the details that we may not be able to do in conjunction with this type of discussion so I will say that but yes please I am completely on board with the work session especially for something as big as this right before budget when it's nine million dollars yes so that's a great segue if you would allow me to one of the questions I was going to ask so we have the next meeting on the 22nd of April and there are several things that are on the work session in addition to budget including Old Town Hall and that was moved and so one of the questions wanted to ask is would council be amenable to starting the

work session basically coming in early before 7 I would we will start as early as you're willing to start but whatever time that is 5 o'clock 5 30 6 o'clock 1 30 we don't care but whatever time what the suggestion would be we would have a work session all of these things that have been pushed we could add Willard Sherwood we can talk about Old Town Hall all of those kinds of things and we would just get in as much as we can get in prior to 7 o'clock then you would then have your normal meeting you have multiple public hearings and and then we would then have the work then we go back and whatever work sessions we did not finish ahead of time we would then the way our schedule is set what we would

really like to have happen is that by the end of the meeting on the 22nd is that we basically have the framework of the budget that you want with the tax rates that you want to adopt so then that gives us time to prepare all of the necessary resolutions and ordinances et cetera for adoption on May 6th and then so that is the preferred mechanics if you will process because what we don't what we would like to avoid is coming up with all these scenarios on May the 6th when we're trying to adopt a budget and trying to make and making sure that all the numbers balance so I don't know how much more discussion we'll have this evening and maybe we'll start getting there but if you're willing to start

a work session early on the 22nd we can certainly add this as well Councilmember Amos yes but I will also reiterate that that's something we should reevaluate in general moving forward especially for work sessions or actions that don't require decision just starting earlier and I know I proposed that earlier on in January context is different now and we've had a couple meetings under our belt but yes so we stand ready and we have time to show that we would be in essence the work session I guess would be maybe considered a special meeting from 5 or 4 or 3 or 6 30 whenever we start okay yeah so that would be the suggestion we'd start a work session at whatever time you all can get there and whatever

time you set so think about and you don't have to necessarily tell us right this second but we can poll you but we really if you can give us as much as I would even say 2 to 3 hours we'll feed you so you don't have to worry about dinner and we can get through some of these things if you would like I'll make cookies how about that I was about to say do we have a budget for dinner but anyway council member Hardy Chandler absolutely and especially for cookies no I would definitely want to do that on the 22nd and as early as people can accommodate council member Hall I'm also on board with that so maybe I feel like some of my questions are important to have now in preparation for the 22nd so I can

at least do some digging on my own so some of my primary concerns with Willard Sherwood is that people that will be coming into the Willard portion of this may have infectious diseases measles mumps rubella COVID right I mean that would have been a big thing a while ago so I have a lot of concerns about the fact that there's no direct access from the parking garage to my understanding correct me if I'm wrong we don't really have the ability to separate people we're going to have senior citizens there we're going to have multiple child care centers there and we may have a population of people that don't speak English or are too sick to recognize signs around them to recognize where they need to be

going and I think that yes we're going to have apparently a ton of staff to the tune of 2.1 million dollars annually and only going up but I there's a lot of problems with the current design of this building for me and I am also concerned that if and again correct me if I'm wrong because I'm only going upon previous things that I've read and heard but if we have another COVID or another outbreak of some sort does the county have the ability to shut down this building because it's a health center and not let us access our spaces that being said I don't know that we would want to access our spaces for senior citizens or for child care if we are in the middle of another pandemic of some sort my other

questions are how much square footage are we actually occupying there total building square footage is 103 500 square feet the breakdown as you've probably seen is 58% county 42% city so that works out to roughly 43 500 square feet city 60 thousand square feet county does that include the gym yes and what is our square footage at green acres it's about 40 thousand square feet there now the entire building is about 40 it's not it's not all used for for community center purposes necessarily but yes well no but I mean the one side is used for child care the other side is largely used for green acres and then there's like the cafeteria the gym and all that stuff in the fields right yes we use most of

the building except for what's below there's a stairway about halfway through the building kind of just dropping down about four stairs which does limit our ability to use that section of the building due to ADA so we have we utilize just the room down there for the preschool and then rental space what's rental space just some various like HOA groups will use it but it's definitely less desirable and less used because it's down those stairs and there is no ramp and there's no way to put a ramp in no the only way to get in would be to go around the outside and come in the side of the building there yes which is at ground level if you need to use the restroom you have to go back outside go around

and come back in the primary door that's convenient yes okay so ramp okay and does that include our parking at all that square footage does not include the parking okay and roughly how much parking is there and is it dedicated 4258 as well or do we have x number of spots it is not there would be 235 spaces in the garage there will be additional spaces surfaced parked on the on the overall site but 235 in the garage parking would be shared among all of the uses but the way that the parking was allocated per the agreement it would be the number of spaces that are required to support the use as opposed to the 52 42 52 58 it it worked out to 64% county 36% city so if you wanted to assign those spaces

it would be 150 in the garage county 85 city but again they wouldn't be marked or dedicated these are all going to be shared the 64 36% was just a way to apply cost share to that portion of the building okay and our employees that would be working in the building each and every day would be included in those 85 or 150 spots shared as well they would they would and you know patrons visitors to the building as well okay and how big is the gym that's being planned do you know offhand I know you said it's included in the 43,500 it's a it's a full-size gym large enough for us to accommodate four pickleball courts volleyball and it is I gotta look up the dimensions the full-size basketball where it can

split into two halves and play a small game sideways so okay so it's like the equivalent of like one half of the size roughly of like Catherine Johnson like when they put the divider down yes because you have a full yeah I think it would be yes because you've got a full court I'm not going to hold you to the exact but I just tried to understand okay it's a full court and it does have a divider plan so that we can drop it down and potentially you could have open gym with basketball on one side and then still play two pickleball games on the other okay thank you and then JC I think you and I had discussed a little bit last time was that it was 2.1 in annual operating to start in fiscal year 2020

not 2028 I believe right and then the operations I think based on the presentation I read was looking like the non-personnel cost would start in 2029 that's correct okay and those were expected to be non-personnel in 2029 1.2 I thought I read 2.9 somewhere or 2.7 I think collectively it's 2.7 yeah 2.7 total yep 2.7 total operating costs annual maintenance starting in FY29 capital repairs is set aside starting in FY34 security 75,000 starting in FY29 custodial 105,000 starting in FY29 utilities 84,000 starting in FY29 29 that amount equaled 2.7 and then you also had a one-time cost of building FFME of about 1.3 in FY27 and then to your point council member hall staff about 2.1 starting in FY28

29 again I think it was previously communicated two new full-time and about 35 to 42 part-time some benefited some not okay so rough math we're looking at about 4.8 million operating costs every year starting whenever they start which would be roughly about 5 ish 0.5 or 6 cents on the tax rate is that am I doing that number right 825 822 825 4.8 or so and about 5.7 cents is what I would calculate okay at the current penny value of 835 thousand okay okay and roughly what are we anticipating generating in revenue so the building does have less potential for revenue because a lot of it will be programmed with city programming space I think the two biggest potential revenue spaces are the upstairs

patio which can be rented out in the evening for different events and is can see the fire capacity is right around 300 so that's a big venue for the city it is outdoors there's the two upstairs classrooms as potential rental revenue given the demand currently in the city for indoor gym space it is unlikely to be a large revenue driver rental wise simply because currently and this could change our arrangement with FPYC is free space so we do not charge for space with our partner organizations of FPYC or little league and so that does greatly diminish our revenue possibility in that space and so we're looking at a lot of senior programming in the gymnasium during the day with I mean right now she's got a

request to buy bollards because the amount of pickleball players at Green Acres is becoming so great that we are becoming a fire hazard in the hall so I mean that could slow down anything could change in the next few years but the demand for gym space for programming is quite high and now we do generate some revenue with programming but it is not the same rate as rental revenue okay so do we have a rough dollar amount for annual revenue generation or not really we do not at this point but I can start to work up very loose numbers just based on we haven't set pricing for anything there's of course no rates and levies we can look at some comparable spaces but for instance the two classroom upstairs

so currently the footprint of the upstairs senior center is pretty comparable to the senior center at Green Acres and that space overflows into a number of classrooms in the building and so we would utilize those two classrooms through most of the day with senior programming and then have them open in the evening for rental and the 300 people patio space sounds great until it rains right yes yeah it is very weather dependent okay so committing someone to rent that could be a little bit difficult yes okay and roughly I might not have this prepared but what is what are our rough operating costs at Green Acres right now as far as staffing goes just as a comparison it is I can pull them for you it's fairly low

we do have a single entrance so we just have one desk and we typically have one to two people at that desk during the day and then we have staffing within the senior center which would be the same so some of those employees would move over and I can identify those but there are more desks to staff and more facilities to manage yeah okay and for example right now the fitness center at Green Acres is really just available to our seniors in the community so if you're a senior you can pay a price we do offer a community rate which is actually quite a deal but and so you can come over after five o'clock and work out but it is an older space it does not have great air conditioning so we don't have

a ton of people we would have a new fitness center would require someone to be in there managing that space so there is some membership revenue potential so those are numbers that we can work out as well so the biggest probably the biggest revenue potential that we're looking at is memberships okay and actually I'm glad you brought that up I think I sent this to you in my questions but I actually was on board initially for a opportunity to consider charging our seniors as we talked about before but I want to withdraw my support for charging our seniors for the senior center I think they get a lot of benefit and I think that they've done a lot for our city they continue to pay real estate taxes

in most cases and I do not support a cost recovery model for seniors specifically so I think that's all my questions unless there's something else you think we should know about this for me council member Amos I don't know if this was the last CIP portion I just wanted to bring back up that I know council member Bates had mentioned earlier about a proposal that he wanted to discuss regarding the tax tax rate so just wanted to remind us so I know it's getting a little late so bringing that out okay are we are we done with the okay the one one thing I wanted since we're talking about charging the seniors membership fee can we just go over one more time about the reciprocity with the county and what the

county charges their seniors and how that works right now yes so if you join the county senior center right now I believe the current rate is oh it's been a long day 65 and they're going up to 78 this upcoming year so if you are a city resident and you join one of the county senior centers that is the same price as a county resident so we offer the same reciprocity at green acres currently we do charge just a one time ten dollar fee to join the senior center and participate in as many of the activities drink free coffee get free food and enjoy the perks of the senior center and so we do have we're probably last time I checked and I can look at our numbers again it is hard because we don't charge a

resident non resident right we're usually around 45% county residents 55% city residents no just to look at how many people are in our current makeup of the senior center sorry I'm saying could we just charge county residents since we have to pay to go there or do they honor our zero I'm sorry I should have said so it's similar reciprocity so if I if you as a county if you're a county resident you go to the senior center it's $65 if you're a city resident you go to the senior center it's $65 and because we don't charge a membership fee if you're a county resident you come to our senior center it's $10 one time fee if you're a city resident you come to our senior center it's a $10 one time fee

so it's reciprocal yes sorry questions council so yeah council member yeah that's what I'm bringing it up so I think the question correct me if I'm wrong council member hall is can we charge a different fee for non-residents that's aligned with the county fee but not impacting our residents keep our residents at the $10 but the county people would have to pay $70 if they went to a county facility anyway right could they be the ones paying the $70 coming to a city facility so Brian Lubkerman is investigating whether or not this is a formal arrangement or it's just always been an informal reciprocity arrangement the only possibility would be that our city residents maybe then charge the non-resident

rate for senior centers in the county some of which have pools and services they access and that non-resident rate would go up to I believe around $150 okay yeah yeah we need to figure this out we need to figure this out but I understand that we want to provide this benefit to our residents and all of that but there is this reciprocity where they can use the county facilities and we have 45% of the people from the county using ours so we need to figure that out to make it somewhat I don't know if equitable is even the right word it just needs to make sense it just needs to make sense yes just one more piece in there is that if you are a city resident you go to a county senior center you're not

eligible for financial assistance and that would be the same we don't offer the same you know same as summer camp for example if you we take county residents at summer camp but we don't offer financial assistance for county residents only city residents because it is supported by the city so if you were to implement the senior center membership fee we would offer financial assistance to our city residents so that so that just needs probably a little more consideration anyway regardless of it's probably not a huge financial impact it's just at some point you need to institute systems that make sense or things that make sense we just haven't up to this point done that I think there's also some

ways that it could be rolled out too I adjust to that rate change and quite frankly the Willard Sherwood senior center is going to be an upgrade yes facility itself yes I think a big draw for the city center is we offer great services we have great staff they're always there we're very responsive our downside is definitely that green acres is a very we have very limited parking we're often out of parking it's a very challenging building ADA wise we share bathroom facilities with the preschool so there's a number of downsides to the current facility council member Hardy Chandler so when you do the contextual presentation some of those scenarios would be presented as well and I guess I think I just want

to emphasize that I would want to see some proportional benefit for our city seniors who are using city facilities even though there's an exchange of of course we're part of a larger region but if that's a possible scenario to present that would be great and what we do currently with because we don't charge a resident non-resident rate for any of our programming youth or senior is we offer a lot of early registration to our senior member to our city residents for programs that will sell out quickly summer camp senior bus trips senior parties all of those are available to city residents to register earlier than non-residents so we try to make up some you know offer some additional incentives for our

city residents councilmember Hall you may not know this but do you know how many parking spots are roughly at green acres I think I think it's I will find out I don't want to say the number and be wildly off the challenge being that of course we share with main street child care program they do a lot of drop I mean I understand they have employees mostly drop off and what not and those same people would be coming and going from Willard Sherwood as well correct yes okay I think the one group we'll lose is the GMU students trying to avoid paying for GMU parking so thankfully parking enforcement is very good to us and come over and ticket a lot of students for us I understand the desire to sneak

through the woods onto campus and pay no parking fee yeah I totally support parking enforcement yes and just to touch on parking if I may I shared there was 235 in the parking garage 347 spaces overall I don't know if I mentioned the overall figure so if you if you bring in the existing spaces at the Sherwood Center and some spaces that would be created on site that's the overall number but there will sorry there will still be programming and things like that going on at Sherwood in those same places in which they exist now though right correct okay so those parking spaces if they're all being fully utilized now will still likely need to be utilized even after this they would and and the properties

are ready the city has an agreement with the county already to utilize the Willard Center and in fact you can't fully operate the Sherwood Center without the Willard property currently the way that that Sherwood was was constructed and approved and so that that happens now you know because the size of the spaces will change a little bit you know what that mix is will change a little bit but the properties are tied together now I'm sorry you mean they're tied together as far as parking goes correct oh okay not physically not physically but for parking thank you so we're really so are we done here we're done with these two are we done okay are we done are we done are we done okay so long farewell

we hate to say goodbye we bid you a fond adieu all right and so is all right are we ready to just talk right okay councilmember mcquilla i do have a question this is more for you um have we ever done efficiency audits for any departments does anybody know for our departments do you know i think the answer is no melanie probably has the longest history with the city here and she's shaking her head saying no okay i would be interested in learning more about how that works um for city governments you know for since we are new here and it sounds like there's been a lot of time going through the budget line by line and it seems like a lot of work for staff so i'm curious as to how that would work

having um if it would be a contract or having an independent audit done on the different departments to kind of give us recommendations and things not necessarily for this year just something to consider um in the future since this has never been done and it does seem like there's some opportunities to make some areas more efficient especially since coming under scrutiny and going through the line items it does appear that different departments have been able to provide different options and scenarios we've been given some scenarios so i'd like to learn more about how that would work or how that would be introduced or discussed at all thank you okay anything else before we start talking tax rate

council member bates well this is kind of tax rate related so uh well for um knowing that there is not sufficient support on the diets it sounds like to increase the meals tax at all that kind of simplifies my tweaks to scenario four um but my you know again there are a lot of things on here that um I would have grave concerns about but um my idea would be to take scenario four and uh just take that 1.2 million um from the school's projects and uh use that uh in place of um as uh Mr. Martinez suggested in place of the um uh school bond project but but just do the 1.2 million instead of the 3 million um and then just zero out the meals tax increase um and then take whatever that delta is there

between that 1.2 million and then the 0.5 percent meals tax revenue plus the um further reduction to the CIP transfer um that would be possible and put that toward you know while still keeping the uh in compliance with the 5% policy and then put that toward the non-profit grant program and then maybe raise either the real estate tax rate or the property tax rate um whatever additional little amount is needed to bring us back up to 300,000 for the non-profit grant program because again I strongly do not believe this is the time to cut that um I I still have grave concerns about zeroing out the EDA real estate resource fund and the uh the renaissance housing fund um and deferring the school bond

project but that's my idea for kind of a compromise uh thoughts council member amos do you have thoughts on this give me some time to think about it uh if we could get this maybe jotted down or emailed out that'd be helpful okay I don't hate it though okay well we'll call this scenario the council member Bates scenario um because now it'll help us understand where it came from um since it's so uh council member Hardy Chandler you had said you were kind of a little bit between scenario three and four is council member Bates edging closer to your your yeah I think that's a good um starting point I am not leaving off the mills tax at this point um for me uh at least some component of it the the

the point five for scenario four is attractive and the the three only goes up to one percent which is within the range that was previously discussed so I am still in some um combination combination of the three four range considering those factors but I think that gives us maybe a starting point and maybe a place of common ground and compromise um again I just go back to our priorities discussion which was not an exercise I think it is a frame for discussing um what we are comfortable with leaving off or putting on and for me again it goes uh the the minimal impact on staff or positions because positions are people is is a higher priority for me but I think that's in that area and it sounds like we're

inching toward common ground which makes me optimistic uh council member Amos I was just going to say that uh regarding the meals tax in comparison with like the wastewater and stormwater tax it goes directly for example from stormwater to stormwater related projects and I know a lot of our meals tax money is used by EDA but if if we do consider any increase in the meals tax I would be more supportive of being willing to do that if it goes directly into at least a portion of it goes to the lift uh to the lift and fig programs um that way there's direct tangible benefits directly to the to the businesses do you want to speak to that council member Hardy Chandler and it could be sunsetted and it can which could

be which so I know I brought up the sun setting thing earlier and it was probably because I was comparing it to Vienna but so I guess the question is if we were to try to sunset it would this be during the duration of the school bond or or and again if we get the one percent sales tax I don't want to double tax people either because I was brought up tonight and that's a very good point. Council member Hall and then council member Peterson. Sorry mine's just a direct response to you uh to Anthony sorry council member uh Amos I know um yeah I'm just a little confused by your conception of putting the sunset on the meals tax then to go when the school one percent comes in one you're suggesting goes to the EDA and then

when that ends then you're suggesting that one percent that would be used for the school so you're not suggesting the meals tax goes to the schools until the one percent kicks in you're saying whatever portion of meals tax goes to EDA uh when I say that it's more focused on the debt service aspect less directly to the school bond but more for the for example with the three million this year next year it's a little bit higher that's all I was referencing okay thank you okay council member Peterson I need to see these numbers settle down a little bit to understand more clearly where we are and I'm not able to commit right now to a tax rate um a lot of uh updates have occurred this evening and prior to it we need to see

this um and it may well fall you know below this level so uh just want to be clear on that and look forward to being able to see things a little bit more clearly after we do a lot of these updates that are these the updates that have occurred and then understand where they're um emerged from this options that are decision points for us in terms of where we may make some financial moves that make certain things possible uh one thing to call out the the real estate um acquisition fund whatever it's called an EDA just a note that is um one approach that can be used for this catalyst function for EDA where you literally have a fund there are other approaches there are other ways to go about that sort of

catalyst function that don't require uh capitalization with a with a fund at least not at that size so I certainly uh we didn't have time with uh director bruno tonight certainly would want us to have a longer uh and thoughtful conversation about the concept of options uh that could happen at EDA before uh assuming uh that we should be trying to replenish that fund through a budget move that we make here and I'd be you know I think that's probably a post my own view is that's a post budget discussion we should have but it's an important one that we would want to do as we look to the future for EDA okay other comments oh mr. martinez if I could just ask for clarity and I know it's late but for

council member peterson let me get out of this um so on on making an assumption and if the assumption is not right then I need guidance from the body the assumption here would be we save 1.2 million dollars on making the assumption to assign it here so I would reduce the three million dollars or the or yeah the three million dollar transfer from the general fund to the CIP to start the initial process for the school renovation I'm also making an assumption the 1.6 that Stacy would reappropriate from Stafford Park I cleared out six or seven projects if that assumption is not correct and I thought I heard and what I need clarity is don't do that apply it to the tax rate those are my words but I

need clarity of how to build these scenarios council member Bates gave me very clear guidance of how to build the scenario if someone else wants a different scenario and say add this subtract this multiply this the sun and the moon on the fourth of July match then I will make that happen I just need clarity if not I'm going to make an assumption based on what I think would satisfy everyone's needs but I don't know if those are truly your needs if you could help me if the body can help me in the manager have clarity well I think I said at the very beginning we didn't we I think don't have time to go through an examination of this but all these updates I'd really like to see where that leaves us with scenario five and again sir you

say updates I don't know half a million dollars a million dollars is not going to significantly reduce things okay but there were a series of things was a half a million dollars that from DPW there's a million dollars floating around also for DPW for a couple of consulting projects and this and the loading associated with them right then there's the 1.6 and whether there is some portion of that that's possible and available I mean those are the kinds of things that would be nice to sort of clear up so the the those projects you're talking about the the only way to impact it is to not do them if you don't want to spend the money so I think to JC's point the the two biggest that you know is and I'm not we're

not asking you to to commit to a tax rate but I think for in order to really be able to show you what I think are additional options is what goes back somewhat to what Councilmember Amos is asking is is there a a ceiling how is there a ceiling of tax rate that you are unwilling to go beyond is that you want us to get to zero tax rate impact that I mean because so like for example the two the two things that JC just mentioned the the 1.2 from from schools the 1.6 from parks that's 2.8 you can support you could if you wanted to you could supplant the cash transfer we keep talking about the cash transfer to CIP you want to impact the tax rate then just take that 2.8 or some portion of it and and offset the cash transfer then you would you would gain so many pennies of

of reduction in real estate tax but to what JC's saying but then what you're but then you were all of those projects that he said we wouldn't have to fund you still have to fund or not do them so you can't count it twice so when we can we can we can I understand what you're asking is how these things shake out we will we give you that information but then we're no closer to trying to come up with whatever scenarios that you want so if you can rather than us trying to come up with a multitude of scenarios if there is if if there are if you can if you say my ceiling is this whatever this is then we that gives us the opportunity to give you just like we did here various options and to incorporate all the things that

you heard this evening but absent that all work where we can give you the answers to how these shake out if you want to see what that but then it doesn't get us any closer to getting you the options that you might ultimately wish to consider Mary yes I think it's all the things that were discussed tonight also in conjunction with all of the things that came out of public works in the last meeting plus the school I mean there was a seven million dollars I think roughly if I had to ballpark between 1.55 1.2 1.6 560 thousand I mean if you add all these numbers up I might be overestimating but all those things were not included in these five scenarios because they weren't known at the time so I think what councilmember Peterson is trying to say or what I'm trying to ask

is I sent you the hall scenario which started at five scenario number five added in a couple things gave some priorities that were important to me but now there's additional things CIP related that need to be added in there so I'm not saying I want to bare bones fund the cash transfer to the CIP but I kind of feel like we need to look at let's say scenario four scenario five maybe even scenario three because that's Councilmember Hardy Chandler wanted that one but see those with these new changes before I feel like we can have a more educated conversation that being said I like scenario five for me this covers a lot of the things there might be some things I'm willing to add or subtract and I think I gave

those in my email but that's for me one thing I will say I am NOT willing to move on is delaying the schools especially because the schools just gave us back 1.2 million dollars and that is almost a third ish of what we need that was a 70% supported bond and I'm not willing to negotiate on that one from my perspective if mr. Martinez so it shows here all the collections which were previously incorporated everything except for what mr. Hall presented tonight is 4.5 million dollars reduction from FY 26 now a part of that almost 2.8 million of that is a reappropriation from a previous year 1.2 from schools 1.6 from parks I can and this is where I need clarity I can move all that money and apply to the CIP cash transfer that frees it up I can put it all to the

school bond and then that frees up the different scenario adding another $500,000 of what Paul mr. Hall said today is not going to really do anything because it's just a reduction of a existing project or replacement so it's not it's not cash it doesn't have as much impact so I guess that's what I'm asking the clarity is how do you want me to apply the 1.2 in the 1.6 personally I think the way you did it is is good with me I'm a little on the 1.6 but to me it's a starting point of a conversation but I a hundred percent think that the 1.2 needs to reduce the 3 million for the schools okay okay councilmember Bates on that note I wasn't where the 1.6 could be used in that way as well I'd like to propose further modifying mine to put

that 1.6 toward the schools as well so that would bring us up to almost 3 million I think Councilmember Hardy Chandler so as a starting point because that's where we're trying to get is just to identify some common ground can we use the Bates scenario in the Hall scenario which I think kind of echoes some of the sentiments expressed earlier just as starting points for our subsequent conversation so that brings five different scenarios down to at least two that we're not locked into but become starting points for conversation can we maybe is that is that helpful definitely okay I just wanted to say thank you sorry I just want to say thank you because that's exactly where I'm at I'm between the two I'm leaning more towards scenario five but I really like the

options that councilmember Bates has presented here so I think that's a great starting point okay and it full I'm sorry just to follow up it and it folds in what we've learned as as things have evolved and modified and that's I think the next evolution from the excellent scenarios that were initially presented I feel like that feels like progress so in the scenarios that you say you like is it the fact is it the tax rate implication that you like or is it all the cuts that you like because because because I heard like in mr. Bates's example there's a couple of cuts that he didn't like and he was suggesting alternatives which makes me believe that it's really the tax rate is what you're after and not necessarily the cuts but we can certainly work with

we can we can absolutely incorporate these additional items and on scenarios four and five and and and show you what those could look like and and and sort of like you know a 4a 4b 5a 5b kind of scenario we can certainly do that council member Mcquillan to answer your question for me it's both I like the options that councilmember Bates presented for cuts and actually after going to the open house and really exploring more stuff and understanding a little bit more background as to what would what the cuts entail as well but yes the real estate rate is very attractive as is no meals tax increase as I've stated previously so for me it was a combination of both okay thank you councilmember Hardy Chandler

I agree this is an or this is a complex situation and there may be things that eat you know some of us you know some of us prefer more or like as you put it in you know any of these scenarios ultimately why can vary so long as we come up with some common ground where we can entertain some compromise and present something that we can all stand behind so I don't think it's an or I think it's an and and and that's really good for something as complex as this okay councilmember Peterson it's quarter after 12 and we in my own view is that I'm happy to start specifying assumptions or changes in assumptions to scenarios certainly five maybe four maybe four something in that territory but I don't think now's the time to do that

I two things one I think I would like to see some of these updates made and have a chance to stare at them the other is that I am reluctant to make these kinds of decisions at this hour of the day under these circumstances and would like to reserve the right to do this in the light of day when we've had a chance to collect information and look at it more carefully okay councilmember Hardy channel yeah none of us want to do that I think we're trying to provide Mr. Martinez some clarity for him to devise these new scenarios in the meantime we have an opportunity to go and reread documents reread our emails put together our information so we can go give some coherent feedback the idea is not to make a decision tonight the idea is to provide clarity so that they can come back with some narrower options for us

okay so that do you feel like you have some clarity Mr. Martinez I do okay this is so good okay councilmember Hall I just do reserve the right to ask for another scenario next week I also I just real quick can we do council comments oh we're gonna do that okay we're just yeah I have to oh yeah okay I'm good thank you you have to reconvene the regular meeting if we're are we regular councilmember Bates we never really came in agreement on a start time for the 22nd if I were to wear my suit to quantum mechanics and assume that I we're gonna have a working dinner then I think I could be here at around 430 if we want to aim for that okay can everybody I think I think we can all do that I don't think I have it

yeah yeah we'll set it up we'll set it up so no well I'm if you if you can tell me right now we're we're good cool 430 yeah I think 430 okay I'll be a few minutes late I have a meeting that wraps up at 430 okay so just if I if I may there are we have seven items currently for the work session and I just want to make sure because if there's something you want to push off you certainly can do that but I'd rather ask you very quickly so we have the fire station 3 update which I think you wanted sort of separate but in conjunction with that is the PPEA RFI that we did on that project we have the old town hall update or I say update go over that I think Andrew will be able to share what the bids are I know there's concerns about the paint scheme and scope and so forth so we'll have all of that available

we have Willard Sherwood which was just at this evening that's the first four the fifth thing that we wanted to have is we have done our procurement for the community survey and we wanted to have the vendor come in and talk with you on the front end so you could get a feel for what what their how the process works what they're going to be doing allow you to ask the ask them some questions we were proposing that on the 22nd just because I know you're wanting to get that done this is not to determine what the questions are or anything like that you all we will you will all get to weigh in on that as well this is really just the high level this is who we are this is what we're going to do for you etc so you all can be comfortable with what they're going to do is that acceptable for them to is that part of the work session

yeah okay sounds good yes councilmember Amos only thing I might add is that and I'm not sure how we want to go about this just trying our best to hit everything in those two and a half hours before I guess seven o'clock no well we're we'll be lucky to get through those five yeah I figured but then we were we were we would reserve the budget and the quarterly financial review for it if we get through all of that it can rock and roll to that we will absolutely do that but what I would suggest is we do the sort of what I'm going to call sort of non budget or budget adjacent on the front end as much as we can and then the budget and then finance will do their core third quarter financial update that would be in the regular part they kind of go hand in hand and then we would be having our hopefully final budget discussions where we can hopefully develop a framework and so remember there is no meeting next week so you this we our next meeting will be on the 22nd

but we will get you these revised scenarios well in advance of that so you have time to look at them prior to the 22nd prior to the 22nd right okay so so it sounds like that we all agree so 430 seven items front load the non budget things at the beginning which I think makes sense close yeah we can have a closed session for closed session is required we'll put it on the budget I mean on the budget on the agenda on the it will put it on the agenda okay now are we ready for me to reconvene the regular meeting one one more thing yes are we still going to have the trails work session on 22nd right right of the 8. Yeah. Trails. Sorry. You're right. That just got added this evening. So, yes. Okay.

Okay. All right. Anything else? Thank you. All right. Anything else? Okay. I'm now really reconvening the regular meeting. I'm reconvening the regular meeting. Managers report out. Do we have anything to add? Was just to schedule the work session, which we've already done. Okay. Okay. Council Member McQuillan. I just want to congratulate our winner of the Women of Influence Award, Anita Light. Council Member Stacy Hall and I were sworn in yesterday to the Women's Club of Fairfax. We look forward to serving this incredible group. Their signature project this year is Domestic and Sexual Violence Awareness and Prevention, which I think is really a huge topic to bring awareness to. I'd like to take a moment to highlight that this week is both National and DMV Food Waste Prevention Week.

It began yesterday or Monday. There's a great lineup of educational and fun events happening virtually and in person, and I encourage everyone to check out the details at foodwastepreventionweek.com and dmvfoodrecoveryweek.org. It's a wonderful opportunity to learn more and get involved in the efforts to reduce food waste in our community. I'm looking forward to this Friday, April 11th, Commission on the Arts. The John Mason Arts Awards will be at Stacey Sherwood Center at 8 p.m., and I'm wishing everyone a safe spring break, Passover, and Easter holiday. Thank you. Council Member Bates. Big congratulations to Anita Light, and thank you to her for all her work for the city. Council Member Peterson.

Thank you. It'll still work. I wanted to thank the Virginia Department of Transportation for being so willing to work with us and the city and all of our community on the George Snyder Trail, but it's clear from the meetings we've had that they are a sincere partner to the city, and I think that they've demonstrated their desire to be not only a resource but really an enabler for us to kind of bring people together and achieve good outcomes here. So I think it's been great to be able to work directly with them on this particular issue and also to know that they are there so we can continue to work with them when necessary at high levels on other issues, and I'm sure those times will come. The only other thing I would say is just the sympathy and concern that I have,

and I know others do, for people here in the city of Fairfax who are suffering right now because of changes we're having in federal actions and the broader changes that we're seeing in our economy that are unstable. And we're at the stage now where this is translating into people we know losing their jobs, people we know losing their ability to have monthly rental and mortgage payments on their homes, people who are having to make very difficult decisions, and looking down the pike and seeing that that could continue for a long period of time. So this is real, and I'd certainly like everybody to know that I am aware of this and trying to do everything I can to be helpful around it, but I really would love folks to do their best to hang in there

and let us know where we can be helpful to you. Thank you. Council Member Hardy Chandler. I'd like to thank everyone who came out to the budget open house, all of the wonderful staff who expertly put that on on such short notice, but all of the residents who came and asked questions, all of the feedback that I got anecdotally was that it was something that people wanted to do again. I hope we get an opportunity to do it outside of budget season. The second major event I want to highlight is our Home for Life event hosted by Village in the city. And again, all of the staff and volunteers who put that together, the sponsors, all of the sponsors I spoke to said that it was a very worthy use of their time.

They wished other cities did that, really focusing on an array of resources to allow people to live in their homes as long as they possibly can. It's those kinds of things that make our city so welcoming and inclusive to everyone. I do also just want to acknowledge all of the people who came to the hearing tonight, particularly a young lady who talked about her experience in the theater and how it contributed to her ability to speak in front of city council. That really touched me, recognizing that some of the things that people may think are extra, are icing on the cake, are actually core to the cake, so to speak. And I know that that is something that really enriches the resident experience here in Fairfax.

But really excited about all of the things that we're doing while working on budget season and certainly recognizing the experiences of our residents. We're residents, too, and living this while we're trying to serve. So thank you, everybody. Thank you. Council Member Hall. I won't belabor what everybody else has already said except to say how excited I am to now be a part of the Women's Club of Fairfax. That was very exciting last night, so looking forward to that. And, yes, Riley Brixis was amazing tonight. She, yes, great job. I was able to attend the school board meeting last night, and I just wanted to give you some stats from that last night. We had Principal Dr. Georgina A. presented kind of her state of the schools, and she's always so entertaining and fun.

If you ever want a high school principal, it is her. So just to give you some ideas, for some of the AP classes, between the school year 2023 to 2024, we had 1,912 kids in AP classes. For 25 to 26, we have 3,047 students in AP classes. Dual enrollment, same time frame, 417 students previously, now 752. In honors classes, we had 2,317 students. We now have 3,456 students. I point this out simply because I know schools are a hot topic, and I know we're talking about elementary school as far as bond goes, but these are some of the great things that these elementary school students become when they get to high school. And the fact that we have all these great opportunities for them here with the academy, with the other opportunities, it's priceless.

Regards to total AP students, in 2020, we had 793. In 2024, we now have 891. The number of students that took exams, the number of exams that were taken, sorry, 1,865 in 2020, now we're at 2,132. And our AP students with scores of 3+, which is what you're looking for for college, went from 618 to 690. Our percent of total AP students with scores of 3+, stayed right around the same. It was 77.93, and now it's 77.44. Some exciting things that are hopefully coming soon is called Electrical Pathway, which is going to be talking about the electrical program that they're going to be bringing, so another sort of trade that is able to be offered at our great academy. Funds that are covered by the school board also pay for the Learning Lounge and Saturday support.

The Learning Lounge allows time, excuse me, and space for students to remain after school each Wednesday and Thursday, so they can have tutoring services, study hall model, reteaching, and intervention opportunities. They also focus clubs and activities during that time to allow for kids to be able to stay late for one thing and also stay for another but then still have a ride home. And total support of the students, 620 students, so about 30-ish percent, I think, of the kids that are at the school. I would highly recommend that you check out the presentation that was on the school board meeting agenda from last night, but just a huge shout-out to our kids at Fairfax High School and the administration there for all that they're doing,

and I look forward to continuing to support you and all of our students. Thank you. Council Member Amos. No. Well, I'm going to keep it brief, too. We do not have a meeting next Tuesday. It's our bye week on April 15th, but it is tax day. And for all those who owe taxes, I just want you to know that I feel your pain because of all the times to have to dip into any stock-based accounts to pay your taxes, you're just really in a bad, bad situation. And following along to what Council Member Peterson said, we understand that the pain is real, that things are going on every day, that we can hardly imagine what people are going through. It is a wonderful city. We do our best. This whole budget exercise has been about doing the best we can to deliver the great services

that people moved here for, stay here for, and trying to minimize the economic burden. It is hard times right now. But as a community, we are going to get through this, and we are working very diligently up here, and we understand that there's a lot going on out there that we don't see. But we know that there's a lot of pain and suffering going on right now. So stay strong, and we will see you on the 22nd. I now adjourn this meeting at 12.31 a.m. on Wednesday.