If I could have everybody's attention, let me welcome you to our meeting of October the 7th, 2008. Thank you all for coming out. This is kind of a different schedule for us. In terms of the format, we normally have our regular meetings on the second and fourth Tuesdays of each month. And this particular meeting is using a work session item. We had some scheduling conflicts for next week so we actually canceled the regular meeting in the city council on the 14th and combined what was going to be at that meeting on to this meeting which was really intended for a work session. But more importantly as the community center has moved through the process and continues to move through the process, we wanted to make sure we provided a lot of opportunity along the way for public input. It's been some time as we've worked through some of the dialogue and discussions over two council period. And so we wanted to provide that tonight. So the first part of this meeting is not really a formal meeting. It's what we called an open microphone, and we appreciate you all coming out with really the sole purpose of talking about the exciting plans of a community center for the City of Fairfax. I'm going to ask staff to give background on where we are, at least in terms of the design, the direction of the Council over two councils actually. We started this process in December of 2007 by an action of the council several months after we learned that we were going to get a $5 million contribution from a private family here in the City of Fairfax. Obviously, we were all very excited about that to be quite honestly. For those of us who have been up here, the Community Center, while always talked about was not on the immediate radar screen. Obviously, with the $5 million contribution, it moved it up on that radar screen. As the process unfolded, the direction by consensus of this Council, and actually the former Council was, to design a community center that would meet within the $5 million gift. That would meet the minimum requirements of spacing in the agreement which were really two-fold. One was a minimum of 1,000 square foot rehearsal room and a minimum of a 4,000 square foot performance slash ballroom part of the community center. As we went through a series of outreach meetings, the last and the biggest of which was probably, gosh, almost a year ago at Fairfax High School. We got a lot of feedback from the community. As that dialogue unfolded, the direction then was to the staff to design it in a way that would not encroach on the Van Dyke property, to design it over alongside of the police department, and to design it in size and scale that was consistent with the $5 million gift. And so that has been the direction that we gave the staff, the staff then hired an architect and went to the drawing board with that direction. They presented to the council about a week or so ago we saw the status of that, the design of that to accomplish that policy at the level of certainly the staff providing to the city council. Last weekend we had a series of already scheduled in formal what we called friends and neighbors meeting which was a tradition we started six years ago when a new council was elected to go out into the community. We decided to make sure that we brought the new designs that were literally hot off the press and we had not really had a chance to even talk about them at the council level and make those designs available. I know those are on the website of the City of Fairfax. I know several of us are also through our various email list of distributed as widely as possible, which now leads us to this informal kind of open microphone. What I'd like to do is ask Mike McCarty, our director of Parks and Recreation to give a quick thumbnail sketch of the designs that are out in the lobby also for folks reviewing them. We'll use that as the basis of discussion, please. Sure. Thank you very much. On the screen, we have the overall park layout of where the commu center has been situated in this preliminary design. Is it actually on the screen back there? There we go. There we go. Okay. Tori and the people, let's see if I can use the arrow. This is all the highway. Mr. McCarty, I also see that the architect is made it through traffic. So if you need any help or assistance, he's here as well. So, but please go ahead. Excellent. Yes, these are the renderings of the Hughes group, which is our design engineering firm. It's working on the project. We also have the police station that's located over here. And then where the new community center would be situated would be along the Property line of the Van Dyke Park and the former John C. Wood property Actually down here with a Bell Willard commutor Fairfax County property is Yes. Okay. I can release that. Okay. Roughly, this design uses the existing parking from the police station and some of the former parking of the Johnson Wood Building that was situated on the, just in front of the police station. The next rendering gives a more artistic view of what the police, the community center would look like with the police station in the background. We would have similar features to what the police station has, design features of the columns, the roof, the cupola. Again, this is just an artistic rendering of how we would look. The interior, roughly about 12,000 square feet to keep within the $5 million donation guidelines for site work, furniture, fixtures, and equipment that would go into the community center, and all design and engineering and construction cost. We have roughly a 4,000 square foot performance space in the vent hall that would be multipurpose with a divider down the center. It could be used for performances, dances, bankwits, events of all kinds. Attiquate storage for the staging, the chairs tables, and would be in here along with a warming kitchen for catering. Hallway space for a gallery, and the art league could use some of the gallery space along in the hallway, so much of what they do over at Old Town Hall. We also have the rehearsal space, which is part of the agreement with the showwords. And that's roughly a thousand square feet to the right of the diagram here. And just above it a multipurpose space with a divider roughly around 830 square feet for art ceramics, pottery, I would have a sink and cabinets. But generally the facility is designed for as much multi-purpose use as possible. There are a couple of meeting rooms that are around 300 to 340 square feet in the bottom and then some small areas for storage and small areas for staffing. Yeah. Okay. Since the Council actually has seen this, I'm not going to open it up for questions at this point in time. We can certainly have that dialogue at the end of the public input. But let us invite the community now to share their viewpoints and comments with us. A number of folks have signed up in advance, but we'll make sure that everybody is here tonight. If you didn't sign up, still has an opportunity. If you'd like to address the City Council, first to sign up is Gerry O'Donnell. Gerry O'Donnell, 3920, Brave Water Street. The drawings in the lobby, which I saw just before, the meeting started, certainly cannot be described as anything but beautiful. And I've attended, I guess it was work sessions, some of them in this building and the past where the design just now quickly covered was discussed in detail and I wrote these thoughts on paper while waiting to speak. They're not very polished. My view is that while the council has been acting with reasonable speed there under a time limit if they don't want to afford $5 million. It has not in my view provided for adequate input. Experts seemed to have largely displaced citizens. I do confess I didn't attend that outreach meeting that the mayor just said was held about a year ago at I think he said for a fixed high school. But my comments are the community center should ideally include athletic equipment to promote cardio training as well as muscular strengthening, that is, say weightlifting. Things that accommodate persons as individuals rather than team activities, to improve their health and promote their longevity. Cultural activities while highly desirable are, in my view, secondary importance and can be readily accommodated at our existing school auditoriums, not to mention Old Town Hall. The physical strengthing machines should have a computerized system such as the one that's called Fitlinx FITLA and XX, I think, is a spelling that you'll find on the weightlifting equipment in all of the county facilities. The equipment at Goals Gym, when I last looked at it a few years ago, it's frankly a very boring atmosphere and time life. He has four or five lines of such weightlifting equipment, but none of them are computerized. And the prices are high, perhaps because they're open 24 hours, much like prices for groceries at 7-eleven's are obviously higher than you're going to find in a big chain grocery store. Now why is this computerized equipment so important? Well, it's very motivating as a county, how much time do I have left? Thank you. Thank you. As a county's own, of Parks and Recreation Department, own literature for Vex County claims that having computerized equipment is very motivating. It keeps track of everything you ever did. Every piece of equipment, every day you went to the gym, every piece of equipment you used day you went to the gym every piece of equipment they used how many repetitions with how much weight how many sets of repetitions that's written and and you get points work and it's kind of like points for duplicate bridge that I'm an avid bridge player. They're worthless, but people are motivated by recognition, by pride, by being able to count and measure their progress. I'm about to become with another thousand fiddlest points. A silver, I think is going to be silver belt for my lifting several hundred multiples of elephants. That's how they phrase it sometimes to keep you humor. Anyway, I know that we have agreements with the county to use their equipment. I know we have George Mason, but who uses George Mason equipment? The, and we could, we could achieve greater independence from the county, which I think we need to do on a lot of counts by saying, well, it's fine, we'll keep those agreements, but let's make it possible for citizens to travel a shorter distance to come to a facility that will keep them healthy. I know I'll be shouted down by others, but I think at this point of view needs to be considered. Thank you. Sage. My name is Gene A.G. and I live at 10912 Warwick Avenue. I'm chairman of the City of Fairfax Commission on the Arts, whose mission is to provide support, promotion, opportunity, and I might add enthusiasm for the arts groups and individuals who reside in our city. Our membership consists of representatives from most of the city arts organizations, plus several people who are not active artists, but who just like art and understand how important it is to the community. I want to thank you for offering this opportunity for us to speak. And to that, thank Mrs. Sherwood for her money to build this. We continue, are continually grateful to her for this gift. I want to affirm our support for both the location and the floor plan for the community center as presented by the Hughes Group at the outreach meetings held on Saturday, September 27th. It will be not only a functional facility serving our various artists, both visual and musical, but also would be a beautiful building that will enhance the police station, as well as Van Dyke Park, and a source of pride for our city. It will bring us spaces that are designed to accommodate the needs of graphic arts, music, and dance, as well as facilities for rehearsal and performance space, all of which are not adequately served in the city at the present time. The gallery space in the entry and along the halls will add beauty to the building and provide a place for the art league to display works of their members. It is important to note that these rooms will be built with the idea of flexibility so they can be able to be used for a variety of other community purposes. All of us are looking forward to having the arts groups of our community brought together in one building. We must keep in mind that this is only phase one of this building of a community center, and we must ensure that what we build now will be compatible with whatever our future needs might be. It's our hope that phase two can be built soon, giving us something that we have needed for so many years, a completed community center. And I also want to agree that we should form a 501C3 nonprofit corporation to receive funds for this community center. Some years ago, the commission on the arts formed a city of Fairfax Foundation for the arts. It is made it possible for us to receive grants from corporations and foundations and gifts from individuals which have allowed us to present programs and initiatives that otherwise we could never have afforded. I believe that such a nonprofit or corporation will encourage people to make tax-free contributions to this community center in various ways that are possible. I thank you very much. Thank you. Carol Caputo. Carol Caputo, 108-18 Maple Street here in the city. I speak as a member of the City of Fairfax Commission on the Arts as a member in gallery chairman of the Fairfax Art League and as a citizen of the City of Fairfax Commission on the Arts as a member and gallery chairman of the Fairfax Art League and as a citizen of the City of Fairfax. The City of Fairfax's affiliation with the Fairfax Art League goes back to 1986. It was then that the City allowed our new league to display artwork at John C. Wood. That affiliation continues today with the leagues exhibiting an old town hall, excuse me, and through Joanna Armyshire at Old Town Village Fairfax we are now able to exhibit. The willingness of the city to support the arts is very much appreciated by artists and concerned citizens, art lovers in our community. I thank you all for your past support. I'm here tonight to thank you for seeing that space for the visual arts is included in the plans for our new community building. It is very important that room for the visual arts is concluded in that new center. I ask you to continue your support for the visual arts as you work on that new center. Displaying art in the atrium or entry way is a beautiful way to welcome visitors to our new facility. Art displayed in hallways and meeting rooms also beautify and they add a depth to those areas. It tells people that the arts are important and appreciative and alive in the city of Fairfax. It also lets those community members who are seeking an art group know that we are available for them. Also very important is space in which art classes, art demonstrations can be conducted. An art room also provides space for artists to create in. It allows the public the privilege of viewing artists at work right there as they create that work. It is through this space that outreach to the community is accomplished. It brings art to all in the community, both children and adults. It allows the city of Fairfax to be a community where art is a part of one's life. And to me, I feel that is very, very important. Art adds another dimension to our whole life. And here in the city, we must not leave it out. We must not leave it behind. We must never be the ones who toss art out first. When a child is exposed to and comes to love art, their lives are always enriched by art. I bid you to please plan well for the arts in our city. As you plan this building, be sure to include areas for displaying artwork. As you plan this building, be sure that there is an art room, a room which allows for art classes, art demonstrations, artist at work, and art receptions. Please continue your support of the arts as in the past. Thank you all very much for this opportunity to speak. Thank you very much. Ellen Brower, please. Good evening mayor letter and members of council. I'm Ellen Brower, I live at 10506 Cedar Avenue. My relationship with the arts organizations of the area comes from 20 plus years working as a volunteer with spotlight on the arts and also my activity as PTA president at three city schools. This is a very unique gift from the Sherwood family and I think it's a wonderful way to recognize Stacy Sherwood and his contributions to the city. It also recognizes that space for the arts is both hard to come by and valuable to the city. It also recognizes that space for the arts is both hard to come by and valuable to the community. The activity that's occurred in downtown Fairfax over the last several weeks, musicians, theater performance, and this new Fairfax Art League art gallery, which I understood over the weekend had 500 visitors, demonstrates the value of arts and activities to our economic community. I think it's important not to assume that the activity that now takes place downtown is all going to move to the new center. Events like the Old Town Hall performance series or the Monday Morning Children series are events that we may want to keep in, I think we would want to keep in downtown to keep that economic activity working. I do have a few comments about the Sherwood Center. And I think of any possible locations on the John C. Wood Van Dyke site, this west location is least likely to impact the activities of the park. Keeps the most amount of open space possible and allows for all the activity that takes place at the park to continue. I do think it might have been initially helpful to have some sort of a shuret process with the arts organizations to get to the point where we are now. We need a clear understanding of who we use this space and how often and exactly what their needs are. And I think it's only really the arts organizations themselves that can speak to that. I have a few questions, but I'm not a member of any of the arts organizations. I've just been a volunteer. And so my questions may not be the questions that are most pertinent, but I do have some after looking at the plans. I wonder if there's really enough storage space for a stage, the chairs that we want to have, and tables. It's hard to see looking at the design that that's really possible, and I think it's unrealistic to think that we're going to store any of these off-site and truck them in. That's just too expensive in itself. I'm also interested in whether or not there's adequate performance lighting and a built in sound system. I think both of these are important if we really are going to have performances. The ceiling height is of interest to me and I couldn't tell it from the plans. I want to be sure that it's adequate for performance acoustical needs. And finally, since we are interested in the city in building green, I think the lead certification is important. I think it's something that we want to do with this building and also any buildings that we are involved in for the future. The space that's going to be used by the Fairfax Art League has cabinetry, lighting, sinks, and making it a working art space much more user-friendly than the space that they have now at Green Acres. It makes it feasible for the art league to maintain the gallery space at the Sherwood Center, which I think will be a significant contribution to that center. And also the proximity to the performance space makes opportunities for collaboration available as they did this spring in the events at George Mason where the art league interacted with the theater performance who's been provided some artwork that was incorporated into their theater performance. I'd like to express appreciation to everyone who's participated in this process. Mayor and council, Gene A.G. in the commission on the arts, and Brian Napp in Pramb, who had a lot of input, and even though their input can't be incorporated in this amount of space, I look forward to that happening in the future. Thank you. Thank you. Who else would like to address the city council on the side? I'm sorry. Actually, I didn't end in the list. Mr. Litten. Sorry. I did jump over you. I apologize. Good evening. My name is Randolph Litten. I live at 1-0-1-1-9 Calvary Drive. And I want to thank you all for the work you've all done, you and the architects. I think the floor plan is really meets the spirit of what the Sherwood Giff was all about. I do have some practical thoughts and suggestions about actually finishing this off. One I'm hoping that there can be a second floor. I know we probably can build out in this amount of space, but we have 12,000 square feet here and it would be good that the building is strong enough to support a second floor so that we can build up at some time. That would require elevators and stairways, at least potentially. And depending on what's done, that can actually be integrated later through maybe one of the rooms could be converted into stairway or elevators. So we need room for a second story. Secondly, one suggestion I have, and maybe if I could, can I speak from there? This is a small thing, but what I'd like to suggest is that in the spirit of having a good area for art, that possibly we could have this area right in here be added to the art that which is now I think multipurpose room one and have an exit emergency exit door here. Deliveries could come in this way and of course you can have deliveries come in this way as well. But this would expand from about 3, 830 square feet and give this multipurpose room A with its sinks and cabinets a little bit more space for the art league. And then possibly these two meeting rooms down below could be configured so that at some point they could be a single meeting room with some sort of a temporary wall here for dividing into two. But all in all, I think you guys have done a great job. It looks good. If we can have a second story, if we can have a little bit more space for the art league. I think it's a good plan and thank you for all the work you've done on this. Thank you. Yes, please. My name is Gary Baudorn, F'm at 9912 Great Oaksway. I wanted to congratulate the new members of Council. I haven't had a chance to do that and thank you Mayor for this opportunity. One of the things that stands out in my mind about the former Council and the leadership the mayor has presented over these many years is when you do something you do it right. We have many examples of that, the library, the police station, many things including this very building that we've done right, so we don't have to go back and redo it. So I'd like to address the expandability of what you're proposing here. When I look at it, I quite frankly am concerned that it's going to be very difficult to expand it. We're putting ourselves kind of in a locked position to go up instead of out. That presents all kind of handicap issues. And I don't think it really would vote well for the police department to put a two-storey or three-storey building next to it. So I'm asking to really think long and hard about the alternate site on the, I believe it's the east, even though the infrastructure costs a bit more, I think about $300,000. I think to invest in this and give us the expandability that I think the community is going to demand and short order will be smart in a long term. I don't know whether you've ever lived in a community, it had a community center, but I can tell you that it brings the community together like you've never experienced. And I'm all for this. I think the Community Center, short of all of the elements, all of the constituencies, including the seniors, the children, and not only the art league, but all the other different clubs here, is really not what we're after and probably not what Mrs. Assure would expect from us. So if there's a way to incorporate and go ahead and expand this to what you think is the ultimate of what we'd like about double I guess the size of about 32,000 square feet or 24,000 whatever it was. I think it's very smart, both on the short term and the long term to do that financially. And I think for the citizens, we will be better for it. Now, how do we pay for it? I know everybody here is concerned about money and the sky is falling. I just heard the news today. Just to give you a little glimmer of hope and little information you may not have heard. Last night at the Army Navy Country Club, we voted, I think it was $47 million to build a new clubhouse at Arlington. These are the most conservative people in the world and they're very upbeat that they're going to the skies and I get a fall and we're going to have America for years to come. I hope you take the same attitude. Let me just make a couple out of the box suggestions on how to pay for this. I love the idea about a 501c3 as you know, some of you may know, I raise money and I know it's possible to get donations in a million dollar category, five million dollars, so forth. So we should go out in a community immediately and start asking for donations. There's other people that would like their name on something. There's a technique that we use in the military that I found very intriguing over the years. I don't know why the cities don't use it. When you come in the military as an officer, you put 50 cents a paycheck and a pot that goes to the old soldier's home. And when you get destitute, you always have a place at the old soldier's home in DC. Everybody, hopefully in the community, will use this community center if it's truly a community center. And we could actually create what I think as a tax district just for the community center. And everybody contribute just the bucket month or something and pay for it. The other alternatives are many. We could charge user fees. We could look at revenues. If we really did a nice kitchen, a commercial kitchen, and we had an opportunity, actually have catered weddings and receptions and so forth. I call Wakefield today just to give you an idea. Wakefield's got a, I think, a 70,000 square foot facility including a swimming pool and so forth. They netted a million dollars last year in their facilities. So we can't forget revenues. I know that's something that you normally talk about, but there is a revenue potential here. I think I know this is a touchy subject, but I want to raise it. I think I know this is a touchy subject, but I want to raise it green acres is Currently, I think a drain on the Finances of the city. I know the George Mason has offered 10 million dollars for the property I know the sensitivity about the community, but I think working with the city and or the city working with George Mason, we can in fact build out something that's compatible for both the citizens here and maybe usable by the citizens and the students and Maybe brief some money from that operation There's many other ideas about revenue generation that I could talk to you about But I heard the buzzer some him out of town at the time. But I encourage you to do it right the first time so we don't have to go back and certainly put it where we can expand it. Thank you very much. Who else would like to invest in? Yes, please. I'm very excited about the progress that this project has taken both its size, its location, and meeting the budget. I think it's great. I also think that there's a great potential for it having a lot less impact on the traffic on old Lee Highway given the size that it is currently. Probably my number one concern is environmental impact. I think you really should with the municipal building this day and age, it needs to be environmentally sensitive. And that means environmental practices and the building of it and operation of it. It doesn't need to be leads. Leads is a very good promotion. You can get that certification. And I understand that that's somewhat expensive because of the follow-up. I think it's less expensive with municipal building because we are the tenants. So it makes it easier to track how much heating is being used, that kind of thing, and also to balance it. So I do think that leads is an option, maybe not as expensive as we think, but that your architects have a great deal of expertise in environmental practices. And we need to tap into that and make it work for us here. The second issue which is related is size. I know although it sounds smart and theory to go up, you really need more property to do it and it's not because of the building, it's because of the parking. The parking, a building of 32,000 square feet generates a lot of parking. And I don't think you can add that here without severely impacting Bandai Park. And that is one of the great things about this whole plan, is that it is going to enhance the park the way it set up. So unless you are able to somewhere down the line, get that property next door door which I know you would let to have I don't see that the expansion potential really is here. Also programmatically I don't really see that you would put the senior center upstairs. I don't know that the program really justifies a second story in this building. The, also, someone else mentioned the height of the performance hall is really important. You can't just take this whole building, go up the second floor, unless you really diminished the height of that performance hall, probably lower than you would really want it to be for that size of a room. So I think you would need to really be more careful about how it goes up if you did go up. And also, I mean, there's $100,000 right now budgeted to make this potential expansion possible. And that doesn't include designing it really. I mean, that's putting the infrastructure in to make to allow it to go up. But that's not including, I don't believe any of the elevators at the stairways. Let's just, let's make it heavy duty enough to allow that second floor. So that's $100,000 that I think could be better spent elsewhere. Because I think if you do want to expand, it needs to go over at the Bell Willow property. And there, then you'd have parking. You could do two store building if you wanted to at that point there. But I think it's wishful thinking that this site could handle that much more. And lastly, I guess I'd like to say, what I see here is a potential for a really a jewel of a building and surrounded by green that could really enhance the part that would be a beautiful place for arts. And I think that with that focus, with that priority, I think should really be the focus for Mr. Sherwood's gift because I think that is the intent of the gift more than answering all our wishes and desires for community centers. So please, resist the urge for more square footage in this particular building. Make it a jewel, make it quality, make it the kind of place that is a beautiful performance space for somewhat intimate feeling, community events, lectures and arts. I think it will be great. Thank you. Thank you. Who else would like to address the City Council? Yes, sir. Thank you, Mayor and Council. I appreciate the chance to talk. My name is Matt Rice. My address is 4232 Mason Oaks Court. I'm a relatively new member of the community and a new member of the George Mason faculty. I first want to commend the city on the means of broadcasting the meetings over the internet via video feed. And before I relocated to Fairfax, I watched city council meetings and was able to retrieve agendas, identify items of interest associated with home purchases in the area and city activities and it was a really valuable resource and very unusual to find such a good system for broadcasting and public meetings. I was excited to see the plans for the Community Center and Van Dyke Park and would like to see and Vendike Park and would like to see, would like to follow those in the future. My principal concern is traffic on the oldly highway and would like to encourage the council and the city to explore ways of promoting pedestrian traffic through the area, specifically increasing the width of sidewalks and being able to facilitate foot traffic rather than vehicle traffic into the area that's already highly congested. I would, as a side note, like to also mention my opposition to the agenda, Item, agenda item six, discussing the payment for the construction of temporary bus parking on the 11th site. If I could, this public hearing is just a single topic. You'll get an opportunity a minute to expand beyond the community center. Great, well let me just finish by suggesting that pedestrian improvements and facilitating foot traffic in and out would be a way to make a larger building feasible and additionally prevent some of the major problems that are faced with people like me commuting through the downtown area that face long delays of traffic lights and so forth. Anyway, to get people in and out of the community center on foot would really go a great distance towards making it a much more usable place. Thank you very much. Thank you. Anybody else like to address the city council on the community center? Yes, please. My name is Bonita Lestina and I live at 1-0-025 Blue Coat Drive City of Fairfax. My presentation to you this evening is based on the experience I have gained from the following. Five years as Governor Warner's appointed commissioner on the Virginia Commission for the Arts, 14 years involvement in the City of Fairfax Commission on the Arts, public school art teacher and supervisor and a teacher of public school music, private voice teacher, voice lesson teacher, for the past plus years, 30 plus years in the city of Fairfax, master's degree in vocal music and a master's degree in oil painting. My life has been devoted to the arts and I'd say this center has a chance of being that good to other citizens within this community. One of the big things that I found as I was working with the State Commission was what the arts are running to with the SOL, standards of learning. The arts are being cut out, especially for the elementary schools at comparison where it can be and has been and hopefully it will go again. There are so many ways that we as a center here, community center could bring the arts to those who are wanting and needing them. Remember that the arts don't are not just an expression of sale for whatever, but they have found in many studies that students are doing better on their standardized tests, at better at reading, and many other areas of life by their work in the arts. But specifically on what I'm here to talk about, and that's it. I would like to express appreciation to Mrs. Sherwood for her $5 million generous grant to the city of Fairfax Community Center. One of the major building blocks for community is to thrive, is to have a functional community center as they do in Vienna and false church. Fairfax should do no less. I'm very appreciative of her foresight and generous gift. I only wish that the City of Fairfax was in a financial condition to match her generous offer so that we could have a top notch community center from the get go. Unfortunately, that's not the case. So under these circumstances, I have five recommendations. One, and many of these, I think, have probably gone before me. The large room needs to be revamped. There are real problems with how that room is designed as far as being able to be used for theater and other large cultural events. The multiple purpose room, which is presumably for arts and art crafts, as a art teacher, I know that one sink is not feasible for what you have room size. There are a number of people you'll have there. You need to have two sinks and spread them out so that people can get around them to do what they need to do. And that the venting system has to be a very good venting system because of the poisons that are being used by the artists, kids, everybody. If you're in a closed room, you've got problems. I understand that the future expandability will include the addition of the second floor when the city is financially able to do so and that is good. I'm assuming that that is on your docket and going to happen. It's very important, number four, to provide sufficient convenient parking. The parking is never going to get better than it is now, so we have learned from the past. And the fifth point is the standards of learning, as I mentioned, before how important they can be in using this facility, in getting the arts back into the community at the child level. Symphonies are having problems and having an audience of children because they're not getting the background. There's just not enough going on there. So I thank you for your attention. Good luck to you. Thank you. Anybody else like to address the City Council on this? Yes, please. Good evening, my name is Brian Nett. I'm 3465, various just keep circle. Mr. Mayor, members of council, I'm here this evening on behalf of Prab. This is my first time to address you in your all-new capacity. So congratulations in Prab and myself. We look forward to working with you. Look, every time I've spoken on the community side of the past couple of years I've always started as Jean and others have said to thank the Sherwood family. Mrs. Sherwood in particular her family and lawyers and all that that have made this possible. You know we wouldn't be here this evening having this discussion if it weren't for her generosity. I also like to thank Council, Command Council, for dedicating so much time since summer, so much interest in this long desire dream of building this community center. And your ability now, so far, since the summer to raise awareness and seek outreach and all, I think, is very commendable, you can feel the momentum, which we haven't felt for many years. I've been on Pratt now nine years. Community Center has always been the item we talk about every year. But finally, this is you can see it, you can feel it, and I'm really excited. We're all looking forward to working with you on this endeavor. I have four points. The first one is to, as has been said by gene AG, on behalf of Pratt, we really would like to recommend that if it's possible this evening or at a future meeting that you do create a 501C3 foundation. Look, we know that there are lots of foundations and we know this is a hard time to go out there and seek donors either from individuals or corporations or civic groups and all, but I don't see the downside of creating it. If there are folks out there who want to give, we ought to take their money, we ought to use it to build this community center, and if not to build this community center, to accomplish phase two, which is also something we really want to strive for in the future. Point two, whatever we can do to make this a lead facility, I think would just be awesome. We don't have that here in the city and under this building, this new building, the police station, so why not make this the star that we can all be proud of in the city. Third point is look, it's a reality. We've come to grips with the fact that we're not able to build the community center of our dreams. So we know already green acres is not going to go away. We know that many of the functions that currently exist at green acres also don't go away. Our seniors are going to stay there, our teens are going to stay there, our programs for our toddlers and our youth and all. And so let's just come to terms with that, recognize that, do what we can to deal with that old facility and all. Having said that though, we ought to take the time now to see what we can do to really make sure that this is a community center. I don't think we wanna call this the Sure Wood Cultural Arts Center. That's not what the gift was intended for. So there are four things we really hope that we can integrate into this building and two of them are required by the agreement. The first one is obviously the performance space, but there's no reason that the performance base can't be a multipurpose, can't be both for city use, but then also other public use and rental space and all. And we can do it right and serve all those needs. Second element of this building is obviously the performance base. But if we do this right, this performance space, or excuse me, rehearsal space, can serve many, many needs and be truly multip-purpose also, whether before song or dance or it could be an exercise class designed with wood and mirrors and all that, you can really do a lot in that room. Two other rooms in this new building are really important, identified by Prague. The third one is an arts and crafts room. Again, it can be dedicated to focus on that, but when it's not being used in that way, it can be multi-purpose. And then finally, don't underestimate please the lobby and it's important and the integral role will play in this new building. It will be the gathering spot for functions during the day or in the evening. So we have to make sure we do it right and as other speakers have identified a perfect place to be able to accomplish our objective with regard to visual arts. And then finally, my last point is just to say, I hope that we can continue to support the idea of a phase two. And we're not going to be able to afford to maintain two footprints in the city, green acres and the Sherwood Community Center. So let's do what we can now. Take the time to edify the vision we have for 32,000 square feet. There's no reason that we can't design for 32,000 square feet now and do what we can on the infrastructure site, side with footings or whatever. So that when we finally get to that point, when all of you have changed, all of the prob is changed, we've all gone in different directions, but that plan is there. We take it off the shelf. We've spent time raising money for it, found new donors, and then we can put it at that location and really finally get to that long side objective of having everything under one roof, as is the case in other communities in the northern Virginia. So thank you again. Thank you, Mr. Sherwood. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of Council. It's really extraordinary that we're even having this discussion this evening and look forward to breaking ground sometime soon. Thanks. Thank you very much. Anybody else like to address the City Council on the community center? I know the Council would like to have some opportunity to discuss the issue. I'm going to recommend that we defer that until comments by council only because we do have a series of public hearings and agenda items that are part of this tonight's meeting that we need to get to. But let me thank you all for coming out. I know we've all taken a lot of notes here. I think the exciting thing is, is that I've watched this issue over the years. I feel for the first time we're all on the same page and we're meeting and working toward the same goal and objective, which is a beautiful state of the process. This is the continuation of the process. I know this council is going to spend even more dialogue and discussion in terms of how we get out in the community and make sure everybody gets their feedback and the input that they want. And that's a very important part of the process and the council won't drop that ball. I think the most exciting thing is going through some of our outreach meetings this weekend and the input that we got tonight is what was a very controversial issue filled of a lot of very sensitive issues like the park and Van Dyke and all those things has really turned out to be a very positive issue. And everybody that I've talked to regardless of what side of that issue they were on really, I get the feeling is coming together in a common vision as we move this process forward. And that's everything special about a small town and certainly the city of Fairfax in this community. With that again, let me thank you very much. We're gonna go ahead and start our regular city council meeting. You're all invited to stay if you like, but we certainly understand some of you will use this as an opportunity to go home and drive safe and again thank you for coming out. With that, I would now like to officially call the Tuesday, October 7, 2008 meeting to order. If you would please stand for the invocation presented by Councilman Rasmussen and remain standing for the Pledge of Allegiance. Lord, grant us wisdom as we make decisions. Give us discernment as we debate issues. Give us integrity as we work with one another. Give us honesty as we deal with the public. Lesson guide our citizens. Lesson guide us as we serve our citizens. And watch over and protect all of those who are protecting us both around the world and here at home. Amen. Amen. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God, individual, with liberty and justice for all. individual with liberty and justice for all. Okay, going right down the list in terms of items. The very first one is a presentation by the public on any item related related to the City Council of agenda 4 tonight, but does not call for a public hearing. If you're here to talk to us about item number 7a, b, and c, those opportunities will come in a few minutes. If you'd like to talk to us about any items that are on the agenda that are not 7a and b, this would be your opportunity to address the City Council. If you want to address the City Council an item that is not on tonight's agenda, that opportunity will come up later on in the evening. Nobody has previously signed up under this item. Would anybody like to address the city council? Yes, please. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Honorable Mayor and council, once again, my name is Matt Rice. I'm a resident of a Fairfax City, 4232 Mason Oaks Court. I'm relatively new to the area. Once again, the broadcast of the meetings was extremely helpful for my wife and I, my family, in making a decision about living in the city of Fairfax. Nice to see a city on the ball. And I've enjoyed the chances that I've had to talk to the informally to various city council members in the mayor. To begin, let me just state that the issues on the 11 Oak site that have been on council agendas for a long time have caught my interest in my wife's interest. And we are particularly concerned about the relocation of buses on the 11 Oaks site from the southeastern corner and southern edge to the northeastern corner, which is directly across our fence. Starting at 4.45 in the morning, we have almost 50 vehicles, idling, testing lights, testing horns, testing pneumatic brakes, idling generating, exhaust, and, frankly, keeping us awake from the early morning hours all the way through to 8 a.m. It's been an extremely difficult situation for the past month. And I can't overstate what a serious issue this is for us and for our neighbors on Trollbridge and on Masonoaks Court. The relocation of the buses has had the effect of taking a problem which was very serious to begin with and making it nearly unmanageable. Once again, I can't overstate what a serious problem this is to us as residents. The buses sit now because of the relocation by the city. The bus has set less than five meters off my back property line. Once again, buses which go out to the furthest extensive the county, bringing in special needs kids have to leave at approximately 5 a.m. to bring the kids in to get services in the city. The bus is start idling for 10 minutes prior to their departure and they're required to go through safety checks which involve pumping air through the brake lines to ensure that there are no problems and then testing the beacons and the strobe lights and all manner of systems on the bus generating tremendous amounts of noise and exhaust which drifts over our property. If this situation were a private business operating a fleet of vehicles doing the same thing, we would immediately have satisfaction using the police. I've discussed the matter with the police and they're puzzled on what to do. Clearly, it's an extremely bad situation, but when they're dealing with the city of Fairfax, their employer, they're puzzled about what to do. It's an extremely difficult situation. What I would like to do is I'd like to see money not be spent on capital improvements to the site. I would like to see all money and all effort be used to try to find an alternate location for the buses at any cost. It seems that there were some potentially feasible proposals put forward and I know that the mayor and city council have explored some of those options. For my benefit and for the six or seven residences which are extremely adversely impacted by the buses being moved to the northeast corner I would like to see some progress made on getting the buses off site and getting the site sold. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Anybody else like to address the City Council? Yes sir, please. Carl Jenison, I live at 10503, Trobert's Court, G'dayne-Dude Mayor, City Council Members. I want to thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight. I wipe tests and I live directly across the street from the 11 Oaks property. And I'm here to talk about the city's appropriation resolution in the amount of $115,000 for the parking lot preparations at 11 Oaks school site. First, neither my wife or I were informed by the city of the relocation of school buses from the far side of the 11 Oaks property to the school street side. I spoke with my neighbors and they also told me that they were not informed. This is place the new temporary parking lot directly across the street from my home and my neighbors' homes and directly behind the homes that are residents of the Mason Oaks Court. Our community was promised by the council that we'd be kept informed of any developments concerning George Mason Boulevard in the surrounding area. Why were we not informed in a timely fashion to speak out against this relocation? Relocation of the buses with the noise and pollution has had an adverse impact on our quality of life. We've lost the quiet enjoyment of our property. We've been told the city is trying to find a permanent location for the buses, and we understand the city council's encountering problems. We do not understand as wide a city has a resolution to pay $115,000 on a preparation of a temporary parking lot. Does this mean the city is preparing to pay the temporary parking lot? Rather, I believe the money should be used to relocate the buses permanently away from the 11-Oaks property, so we may have the quiet enjoyment of our house. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else like to address the city council? Mr. O'Donnell? I resoundingly agree with the prior speaker, the media prior speaker, or comments about noise. That's obviously very unreasonable to have buses doing that in location that disturbs people trying to sleep at reasonable, especially at reasonable hours of the day between four and five o'clock is obviously too early. When the noise ordinance, probably if it's any noise of that sort in my mind before 7 a.m. Okay, the main thing I want to talk about during this item is item 8A, which is not something to public hearing. So this is the only time to talk about it. I'm very pleased to see that our city is taking very seriously the severe downturn in the economy and in response has formed a budget committee. And I was pleased to see that when I commented about the secrecy of those meetings at the last meeting at this podium, the mayor then out of embarrassment in my view, acknowledge the accuracy of what I was saying by identifying the officials participating. Few of them were present tonight. I didn't know there was another such meeting tonight, but I stumbled on to one again. And I must say that I'm generally very impressed with the attitude and the comments and the thoughtfulness of the participants, even of those of Bill Foster, who did, however, make one comment I found puzzling. I don't think he was being facetious. I wish that he were. He spoke of doing something like, you correct me if I had to figure out, spending some $600,000 tax equity, I forget they phrase, tax stabilization fund. He reasoned that if you spend it down, then you'll make this situation more desperate, then you'll wrestle more seriously with the problem. Now, that seems, and I wish you were here to rebut what I'm saying. That seems to me as a night. But let me just comment on a few of the line items in the document. The Senior Tax Relief Program, there's a negative $400,000 there. I guess that means she's just $400,000. You could have made in taxes if you didn't make a change. You go ahead and explain what it is. But I want to say that even though I'm a senior citizen who benefits from this program. I thought at the time that you raised it from 54 to $72,000 income that one can have to qualify just because the legislature of Virginia did was dubious. And now with the economic downturn, I think that that word that I overuse, asinine is again appropriate. Even if you don't have many assets accumulated, I find it hard to figure out how the family of two, that's usually what senior citizens are, family of one or two, empty-nice. How could such an individual not survive? Comfortably. On 72,000, I will tell you that that's many multiples of my annual income and I survive. The second item is the plenum, as I commented once before, because building materials went out by the time you actually finalized the contract, you decided you would try to make it by without building in a contingency fee of 3% and as a result you got nailed with a cost overrun that exceeded it. And I told you at the time I stood here last time that it was, that I'd done the numbers and I think it was something like 3.3%. I think the difference between a 3% cost, the contingency and the actual cost overrun, whatever that is, should come out of the pockets of the people, including City Councilman, who went ahead with such a contract, exposing us all to cost overrun exceeding the 3%. That doesn't seem like an unreasonable request. please turn your pockets inside out, empty your pockets and put the money in the treasury. Right now if you would please. Now on this old town events entertainment, perhaps our employee, I don't remember her name, my bad at names, the one who's been promoting the city. Maybe she can come to the podium and explain why it's helpful to spend $50,000 to make noise in the city on Friday evenings or weekends. I guess with a view of attracting people to populate the downtown streets and spend money. Maybe somebody could do a analysis and show why that's really going to be a cost effective thing to do. How many minutes left do I have if any? None. You're in the line now. Oh, okay. I'm out right. Thank you. We're going to move on now unless there's anybody else who wanted to address the city council. Yes, sir, under this item. Please. Please. Propose temporary parking. Please. Mike Schofel, I need to live at 10471 Courtney Drive in Cressmont, the president of the Himalomas Association. And I agree with the statements made by Carl and the gentleman before him with regard to the relocation of the buses. And it's difficult to ascertain whether this is to pay for the temporary part lot that's already been constructed or is this a new lot that's being constructed. And if it is to pay for the lot that's already been constructed, then why wasn't this before the council before so that the public would have a chance to comment on it before the money was spent for the temporary relocation of the buses. And again, like as Carl stated, we were not notified and we were promised to keep in form of what was going on in regard to George Mason Boulevard, the relocation of the buses and the construction, et cetera. And we've had, we have been in contact with the city, two of our residents, properties are impacted, the fences impacted. So we've had much dialogue, so there was no reason for us not to have the dialogue on the temporary lot that was built. And it looks like this is the money now to pay for that lot that's already been. So the money's already been spent, and this is just to cover those costs. I think that's, we need to do a little bit better job of communicating with the community. Thank you. If there's not anybody else who'd like to address the City Council, let me just depart from our traditional process here if my colleagues will allow me to. We typically don't comment during this portion of it because out of fairness to the community comes to this and other public hearing items that will come up. We wait until comments are canceled at the end of the night but I kind of have a feeling that you all are gonna leave very unfulfilled of at least we don't say something. So let me just simply say I know on behalf of my colleagues we understand your concerns, we understand your frustrations over the process. I'm not sure any of us expected the impact of what has taken place and how the buses came out as far as they came out during the process. And I think in the spirit of that, this council set a 30-day timeline to sort of resolve a lot of the pending issues on the property that started about two weeks ago if I remember right so that we we are working very diligently. There's a lot of meetings a lot of discussions. These are Fairfax County buses that are not controlled by the city of Fairfax 70% of that property is Fairfax County property not the city property. And probably in hindsight, we would have done it entirely different out of respect for the community and we certainly understand those concerns. The other reason I wanted to make comments and you're correct, this allocation is the formal approval of money that's already spent. It's not to ask for the lot, it's not to make it permanent. There's nothing intended to be impermanent out of the temporary situation that was caused by the fact that once the road construction started and they had to clear out a much wider path to build the road that was designed, the buses had to be relocated. I don't think any of us understood, including staff, that it was going to go all the way out to the road and the buses were going to encroach the way they did. That's not an answer for you tonight. Hopefully it's at least a way of some background, but I want to assure you that we're working on it very diligently. There will continue to be outreach and community meetings over the next week and several weeks. The council, as I said, has set a 30-day time frame to try to resolve the issue, the pending issue on the property. I know for those of you who are losing sleep 30 days, sounds like a lifetime and we certainly understand that, but we are working through that process. With that, we will close the public hearing under agenda item number five and we'll go to agenda item number six, which is the approval of consent agenda. And I also want to just say this is simply the introduction. The actual formal approval with a public hearing on this will be at our next City Council meeting, which is two weeks from now. So this is just simply, and the reason it's being handled under consent agenda is just the introduction, which is the advertising, but the actual public hearing on these funds will be two weeks from now. Mr. Greenfield. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Move adoption of a consent agenda for agenda item number 6A, introduction of an appropriation resolution in the amount of $115,000 for the parking lot preparation and 11 oaks school site and for agenda item number 6A. I moved away the first reading and set the public hearing for October 28, 2008. Move by Mr. Greenfield, seconded by Mr. Stombridge. Does anyone wish to object or abstain from the handling of the sign-up on the consent agenda? If not, I'll in favor of the motion signify by voting aye. Opposed? And a passed unanimously. We're now down to our public hearings for tonight, item number seven. Seven a is a public hearing and council action and a request of Walgreens company for a special use permit to allow a pharmacy with a drive-through for a special use permit to allow a commercial use or development that will generate an estimate average daily traffic volume and access to 700 trips in the highway, corridor, overlay district for a special exception to allow a driving lane to be located immediately adjacent to a structure without separation for a special exception to allow a driving lane to be located immediately adjacent to a structure without separation for a special exception to allow less than the minimum required 25 percent landscape to open space and for a special exception to modify the parking lot perimeter landscaping and for a special exception to modify the interior parking lot landscaping requirements of the property known as 109804fxbullivard. And more particularly described as tax map parcel 57102041. Is this been properly advertised? Yes. Staff report, please. Thank you. Walgreens company would like to tear down an existing building along Fairfax Boulevard in the Camp Washington area and rebuild a somewhat smaller building in generally the same location on the lot. This is to accommodate a new pharmacy building with a drive-through facility as advertised and just described the facility as designed would require special use permits and special exceptions approved by City Council. Council. The aerial photograph shows it outlined in red two parcels side by side or actually one large parcel with an outline with dashes between the two. The dash represents a lease line separating the existing building known as Bill's carpet facility, Bill's carpet warehouse. From the existing used car lot known as Panam Motors, the larger being the carpet facility and the smaller being the Pan Am motor site. The Walgreens company would like to remove the carpet store and replace it with a new building in approximately the same location. The existing building shown from the frontage road adjacent to Fairfax Boulevard, the photograph being taken directly in front of the Pan Am motor site just east of the Bill's Carpet Building. City policy, the more important issues to this application, have to do with design quality, landscaping, and the use of materials as interpreted over time, and discussed in a lot of other projects all up and down Fairfax Boulevard recently. At the work session in July, on this case, we presented the plan as it was shown at that time. And then the proposed plan today, some changes have been made as suggested by City Council changes which include moving the building further back to allow for the frontage road to continue in a new configuration ultimately and to move the building back to have a continuous landscape strip between the frontage road and the parking lot. Otherwise, the general idea is pretty much the same. The building has been moved to the east a few feet to take it out of a stormwater management easement. There is a six foot wide pipe underground in an easement of the City of Fairfax and previously planned, the building would have set overtop that easement. The move to the east gets it out of the easement, so if it ever, the pipe ever has to be maintained, the city will have full use of the easement in order to do that rather than a narrower strip of land to reconstruct pipe. While I'm on that subject, there's something that I would like to bring the attention to City Council that we just recently discovered over the past couple of weeks, the six foot pipe existing on the rear and east of the site does have some existing problems. It will need to be maintained and the structure at the rear of the property is currently caving in, the sides are caving in. We didn't know that Mr. Summers' staff has done some inspection and has a lot better idea of what is involved than I do. So I believe he's prepared to answer any questions about that but what we're looking at it at the moment the applicant the work that the applicant proposes to do there involves some reconstruction of that structure anyway and the city is looking at the need possible need to reinforce or replace sections of the pipe that wraps around the building. So you'll find in the staff recommendation a condition that relates to coordinating the timing of construction to allow the city to get in there and do anything that might be necessary between the time that builds carpet vacates the building and wall greenes then demolishes the building and becomes ready to construct a new facility. At the work session, a set of architectural drawings was presented. There was discussion and expectation set by City Council to come up with something a little better than what most of their buildings that we had found on the Internet that did recently build were proposing and they submitted a new set of plans. The front, the top drawing is the front elevation facing Fairfax Boulevard, the bottom would be facing west or facing the Camp Washington intersection. The top on the next slide is the east facing which would be sort of the right side of the building as you look at it from Fairfax Boulevard and the one on the bottom, the North elevation, which then faces the residential neighborhood to the north. The staff recommends approval with a set of conditions. The first is the conformance to the plans that were submitted as maybe revised to accommodate the rest of the conditions. Number two is at the building foundation where it's next to the storm drain easement needs to extend all the way down to the depth of the bottom of the storm drain pipe so that if at any point in the future the city needs to dig up that pipe the building will stand destructurally sound. sound. The next there are canopies overhanging that easement and a condition would be that the applicant actually record an agreement that said is anytime in the future upon demand by the city that would remove those canopies so that we could do work in the easement and they could replace the canopies later. Then we're concerned that if at some point in the future that pipe should fail, then all the water from that's currently being carried by that six foot diameter pipe would be coming overland across the parking lot from rear to front of the building. And so we are recommending condition that at the time of site plan approval, they give computations that show that in fact the parking lot on the east side can carry that flow without flooding the building. And the next condition is, as I mentioned before, that they coordinate with the city to allow time to make any necessary improvements to the storm drain system between the time that Bill's carpet vacates and the time that they begin constructing. Lastly, there are two connections between the frontage road and Fairfax Boulevard that are planned both in the improvement plans for that intersection and in the Fairfax Boulevard Master Plan to close off those two connections and to access this property from just East. Let me go up and show you on the plans to access the property from just east of the Pan Am motor site where City Council recently approved plans for AutoZone and enter the frontage road and then access from two points along the frontage road. That would be the idea that the applicant would post a bond so that in the future, at the time the city is ready to begin construction of the intersection improvements that they would do work in this area to remove those entrances and to rebuild the sidewalk back in their landscape strip along the front of the property. That concludes the staff recommendation here for any questions. Questions, staff? Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I've got three or four questions. One is, one of the special exceptions is reducing the drive-by-all separation from four feet to zero feet. Can you explain that and the implication of that? Yes, I can. This happens very often when we have a drive-through facility. Normally, we require a four-foot separation between a building and a driveway that goes past the building to keep the vehicle from running into the building. At this point, where we have the drive-through facility, the vehicle needs to be fairly close and to keep from to allow that vehicle to get close enough to the drive-through window, we have often allowed that four foot separation to be reduced to as little as zero. All other areas have what is required. Other places that we have four feet and where you have parking spaces at 90 degrees to the building, like in the front and the side, it would be six feet. And that's a requirement and that's what you proposed. Okay. Other question is we have at our desk tonight a letter from Fairfax Crossroads Company talking about access to the rear of their building being affected by this project. Can you tell us what that means? Yes, I can. Fairfax Crossroads, you can see on the overhead is the property adjacent to the west. And I can also show you on the on the aerial that their buildings sets about the same setback but fills up almost all the width of their property. It comes pretty much to the property line that separates the Walgreens property from it. And it has its separation on the opposite side only wide enough for a driveway getting back to its loading space. The loading space actually comes to the property line and stops anyone from getting to the rear. Once again, if I can show you the rear yard of that property is large enough for parking spaces and dumpsters and loading. And so that letter was asking the that at that time that Walgreens work with them to try to get them access because they have a dumpster that sits near the front. It sits in their driveway of the loading space. It doesn't have to, but that's where it's always said. And I say always, at least for the 12 years that I've been with the city. It could be moved further back and still have room for the loading space there. And I think that's where they're headed with it after discussions with us today. I heard second hand that they were not going to pursue that. And I guess you'll find out if they're here this evening to talk from it. What you're saying is that the wall green proposal really does not block access to that rear part of their parcel. They're building their own building blocks access to it. They were hoping to be able to use wall greens to give them access, but it does not block them. Okay. Thank you. Other questions of staff? Mr. Drummond? I just point of clarification. All the proposed plan that you have here, you can put that back up. It's a last slide, y'all. Yeah. No, it was the very last one. Oh, the architecture. No, it was a very last one. Oh, the architecture? No. The very, very last one. Not for inclusion. Sorry, I go back to the sketch. I don't think so. I don't know if you could put it there. There you go. I just have clarity here. The bottom where they were adding these new trees that's going to be Happening right after construction. Yes. Okay, so it's nothing that's further down the road This is actually gonna take place. This is part of their plan now correct. What would possibly be further down the road would be driveway connections Sorry way connections. Whoops. Sorry. From the frontage road itself to Fairfax Boulevard, and then that landscape strip may be modified. I think it looks like they actually have the sidewalk in it. Right. The condition said, Grannis and Easeman at that point in time. If by my Mr. Mayor, that the other question I had actually relates to the sidewalk, it does require the five foot sidewalk for city plans, but the draft that we had, it was very hard to tell which is the existing sidewalk from what's new saw. I can't remember if you could expand on that. Yes. Existing sidewalk is separating Fairfax Boulevard from the frontage road, as I show in the yellow at the bottom of the screen. Of course, it's broken in places where there are access drives into the frontage road. The future sidewalk, which would actually be built as private sidewalk initially, but probably modified in the future and an easement place there and then probably a connection on the end. then maybe Alex, you can answer that. There are plans in place of putting crosswalks around that area there. And I'm just waiting to make sure that we have some sort of continuation of sidewalks, we try to make it more pedestrian friendly. That area of very beautiful of our main street. Is that correct? We have crosswalks that are there. You put there, right, right adjacent to where the ball rings that we put. Yeah, if you look right here. Right now trying to cross that you're taking your life. I'm just trying to cross the gate from there. Yeah, okay. I just want to make sure we have some continuity and through the design and for this file. I just want to make sure we have some continuity and throw the design and the style of the line. Okay. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Congress. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just there was some concern from some residents and fair Chester that the impact this would have on the service road or the frontage road, that will remain open. Yes, it will. Thank you. Any other questions, Tabas? Mr. Meyer? Could you go back to the same slide that Mr. Drummond had? If you can enlarge it just a little bit more. If you look at the parking spaces facing where it says, proposed sidewalk, you've got two handicap parking spaces on the left. And then on the far right, on the drawing that I have, you have two, three, you have four spots to the right of the triangle. Yes, opposed. Would it be possible to take the two parking spots on the far right and convert those or dedicate those to a bike rack? Would you the far right, meaning all the way down to the end of the building next to the tree? Crack escape island. Correct. Would you the for right me all the way down to the building next to the tree landscape island correct? Yes, that would require simply that the Let's see it wouldn't mess up your ratios Well, they are right at the number of spaces that they need so they would have to request and City Council would have to grant a parking reduction. With another special exception, we would need to have an application from them and advertise that. The Council couldn't on its own. Do that tonight? No. Notice my mic. Well, on that point, for future projects such as this, I mean, I'd like to have as a principle that we dedicate at least two spots in commercial areas to make these places more bike friendly. And if it keeps running up against a ratio problem with our current, maybe we ought to revisit that or see if there could be some forgiveness of that requirement if they come forward or if we require them to come forward and I think two spaces with one rack Or it might be possible to keep that and Put put the rack somewhere else where they wouldn't be Impeding the entrance and exit for pedestrians into the building itself There are certainly places on the site where that could go There are certainly places on the site where that could go as to where that might be. They may need to be in the rear of the site, but it looks like there is the possibility of putting them in the front area in that landscape strip. Well, I would discourage you from putting them in the back. That's making bicyclists second class citizens second class customers. And I would encourage you for this project, if you can find a space in the front of the building to do that and then for future projects incorporated into the front so that we affirm that that's something that we uphold as a lot of objective. Any other questions of staff? If not, thank you, staff for the presentation. We'll now open up the public hearing and I'll invite the applicant to address the city council. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'm David Houston with Pillsbury Winter of Chop, We can address City Council. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'm David Houston with Pillsbury Winter of Chopitman Law firm representing the applicant Walgreens. The bike rack, we actually have one proposed. It's on the west side of the building. It's near, I wouldn't say it's the back of the property, but it's the back end of the building on the west side. So there is a bike rack proposed. It's not shown on the drawing, but we can do it. If you can move it a little closer to the right there. Right, yeah, right. Where Mr. Beleaven's pointed. I'd appreciate it. Thank you. I thought because of the hour and what you have on your agenda, I would sort of be brief and I just wanted to tell you what we've done since we were last before you in July. We reviewed briefly the architectural design. We've added features like the standing seam metal roof, sort of a tower feature in the front. We've added stone at the base of the building, added cornices on top of the building. We've replaced a lot of the previous block with brick. We've added brick banding and soldier coursing. We've added cedar fences in the rear, tidying the trash compactor areas. We've added sconce lights on the exterior walls. And we think we've really upgraded the architectural design of the property, and of course, we look forward to working in the future with your BAR for the final design of the building. In addition to the architectural design, we've increased the buffers with additional trees and shrubs. All of the trees are now proposed to be 3s pointed out to you all. We've straightened the crosswalk. We're going to replace the fence in the rear of the property with six foot board on board fence with brick piers. And there is a detail of the fencing in the drawing. There's an existing board on board fence there now, but this will be much improved fence. We're replacing, we're taking down the pylon sign, replacing it with a monument sign and landscaping around the sign. We've added eight corn lights in the front as was requested. And as what's mentioned earlier we've moved the building to keep it away from your six foot storm drain. I could go back and talk about law green or what the application is. I think most of your questions Mr. Blevins answered correctly but I thought I would be brief and and most importantly we would accept the six development conditions that were Reviewed with you all so we're we're in agreement with the staff recommendation Thank you are there questions of the other questions of the app Mr. Drummell. Thanks First I wanted to thank you for making these improvements. It's probably the best looking, you know, pharmacy I've seen in a long time. So I really do appreciate it. It really is first class. Second thing is, a lot of the current market conditions that the United States is facing are economy. And I hope you can't answer this, and if not, you can provide the counsel with an answer at some point. Are you going to be able to finance this project through the end and see to its construction? Because I will say that I have a personal concern reading the page of the Wall Street Journal and seeing that it was on CNBC, that financing is not going to be able to come through. that financing is not going to be able to come through. I'm going to ask Mr. Matt Harris, who's senior real estate manager with Walgreens headquarters to come up and answer that. I would only be guessing at the answer. State your name. Matt Harris, I live at 4721 North Hermitage in Chicago. Go Cups. There's a question. We are on a ground lease with this particular location, so we will be paying ground rent to the landlord. Number one, number two is the building improvements that are shown here tonight will be paid for by cash directly from the company. So we will not be financing the building and construction of the site improvements. That's reassuring. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Any other questions? I would have been my guest too. Sorry. Are there any other questions of the applicant? I didn't know if I should have called or are you a co-op or a white ex-op? First of all, it's Wal-Grins and I don't know why it's up to them. Those are planknoards. If you want to quit while you're ahead. Go raise your backs. That's okay. You don't need to answer that last question. Are there any other serious questions that the applicant has? He's a national fan. There you go. Good answer. Okay. If not, thank you very much. We just as a public hearing, nobody has previously signed up what anybody would like to address the City Council. Very none, we'll close the public hearing, and I'll place it in the hands of the City Council. We'll need a motion for discussion. Anybody want to step up? I can't read a motion or I'd be happy to do it. Mr. Greenfield. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I think. I move that the City Council approve the request of David Houston, attorney for Walgreens Company for a special use permit pursuant to City Code section 110-782-A7 to allow a pharmacy within the drive-through and for a special use permit to City Code section 110-874-782A7 to allow a pharmacy within the drive-through and for special use permit the city code section 110-874B2 to allow a commercial use or development that will generate an estimated average daily traffic volume and excess of 700 trips in the highway quarter overlay district. At the premises known as TaxMap Parts of 57-1-2-041 and also known as 109-80, perfect full of art with the following conditions. And Mr. Lumpkin, and I'm sure you're going to make me read all six of these. Thank you. Number one, all improvements shall be in substantial conformance with the Conceptual Development Plan revised through September 5, 2008 and as revised to accommodate commissions two through six. The building foundations in proximity to the existing storm easement shall be extended to the bottom elevation of the adjacent 72-inch storm drain. Pipe and bless you for full exposure on the easement side. Number three, the applicant shall record an agreement that the applicant shall remove the canopy overhangs in the easement at the applicant's expense upon demand for maintenance of the pipe. Number four, as part of the site plan, submittal to the applicant shall include an analysis of overwanned flow demonstrating the capacity of the site to carry the waters of the 100-year storm. In the event that the underground pipe is clogged. Number five, the applicant shall coordinate with the city prior to construction to provide a mutually beneficial time for the city to make any necessary repairs to the existing storm drainage system. And number six, at the time of site plan approval, the applicant shall post a bond to assure the following. The two connections between Careflex Boulevard and the frontage road along the frontage of the entire tax map partial shall be removed and landscaping street trees and acorn style lights shall be installed across the frontage of the entire lot between Fairfax Boulevard and the service drive. Such time as commencement of construction to the intersection and Fairfax Boulevard take place. The sidewalk shall be relocated to the northern side of the service drive and an easement granted to the city of Fairfax for public use and she'll stretch across the width of the entire lot. Second. Move by Mr. Greenfield, seconded by Mr. Rasmussen, discussion. If none, all in favor of the motion, signify by voting aye. Opposed? And at past unanimous. Now motion for the special exception. Can I get away with reading? I'm feeling generous to see. You could just incorporate the conditions from the first motion. I appreciate that. Thank you very much. Mr. Mayor, I move that the City Council adopt the attached resolution to approve the request of David Houston, attorney for Walgreens company, for a special exception, for similar to City Code Section 110-15158 to allow a driving lane to be located immediately adjacent to a structure without separation for a special exception pursuant to City Code Section 110-783 to allow 21% open space for 25% is required for a special exception pursuant to code Section 110-263 to modify the parking lot perimeter landscaping from 25 feet to 19 feet at the rear and from a minimum of seven feet to two feet along the side For special exception pursuant to city code section 110-263 to modify the seven parking lot islands that meet code standards were 10 are required on the premises known as tax map parcel 57-1-02-041 and also known as 10980 Fairfax Boulevard, with the conditions previously read with the motion to approve the special use permit. Second. Move by Mr. Greenfield, seconded by Mr. Rasmussen, any discussion? Mr. Greenfield. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just a quick note. When you came to us a few months ago, we looked at a building that was much the same as you've always done and just really didn't fit into what we were trying to accomplish on the Fairfax Boulevard and taking into account the principles of the master plan for the Fairfax Boulevard. I just want to thank you for your willingness to work with city staff, the concerned residents that live adjacent to this project in the city council for your willingness to come up with a building that I think will be definitely an improvement over what's there now and will be an addition to that corner of Camp Washington. So we look forward to you've been a good neighbor at Refects Marketplace and you're a good corporate citizen. And so I certainly welcome another location in the city. Thank you very much. Thank you. All in favor of the motion, second five, by voting aye. I'm going to hold on one second, Mr. Mayor, did you want to? I was just going to concur. Mr. Greenfield's comments and appreciate your corporate responsibility being responsive to us. Thank you. Okay, any other comments? All in favor of the motion signify by voting aye. Aye. Opposed? And a passed unanimously. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. The next item is item number 7b, which is a public hearing and council action on a supplemental appropriation resolution, and the amount of $78,720 to the completion of the Blinum Interpretive Center and related site work, including amenities. Is this been properly advertised? Staff report, please. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. About 15 months ago, the city embarked on a contract to construct the Blinum Improvements of Blinum Interpretive Center. And for those of you who haven't been by the site recently, the work is proceeding very quickly. In this last week, there is literally been a transformation of the appearance of the site which long overdue. As part of this $2.3 million contract, we had extra expenses related that arose out of a number of the components of the project. The staff was able to internally reduce other expenses on about half of it, and it left about $78,720 remaining. directed the staff to add it to the budget document that is before you a little bit later on the Council docket for tonight. The action specifically before you is to take the administrative staff of allowing this money to be spent. Questions and staff. Harry Nunn will open up a public hearing. Nobody is signed up. I do not believe to address the City Council. Would anybody like to address the City Council on this item? Harry Nunn will close the public hearing and place it in the hands of the Council, Mr. Meier. Mr. Meyer. I move to approve an appropriation resolution in the amount of $78,720 for the Blinum Capital Project. Second. Moved by Mr. Meyer, seconded by Mr. Stombery's discussion. Mr. Drummond? First off, I want to thank HFCI for all their hard work. I still see some numbers of HFCR and the audience tonight, and all those who are watching it on the internet, and are at home. This is a project that's a long time in the making. I actually want to run by, but on the other day, I would concur with Mr. Systems' comments that there has been a massive transformation. I'm going to vote for this, but I will say I'm doing a remarkable job. And I have nothing to do with the project itself. As we discussed during the work session, this project, in my view, was fun that could have been handled better. And I think we should take some lessons from it. Now, the city has a great history of managing public projects. And I just hope that we can lessons from it. The city has a great history of managing public projects. And I just hope that we can learn from this and ensure that future projects have also the same quality. Because I do think that the Blondon project is one that it's going to add to the character of the city, both historic charm, but also hopefully economic development standpoint. So with that, I will certainly be supporting this, and I look forward to the opening on uncover to leave. Other comments? If not, all in favor of the motion is taken five by voting aye. Opposed and in passion, and we see we're now down to item number seven C, which is a public hearing and council action on the appropriation resolution in the amount of $50,000 to hold Friday night events and all town fair facts has this been properly advertised staff report, please. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I guess I would begin this item by recalling history that for decades the city has desired a more vibrant, pedestrian-friendly, culturally appealing, more attractive infrastructure for the downtown area. And some number of years ago the I'll very serious about those discussions over a number of years, the city directed plans to be prepared, prepared a financing plan, oversaw the transformation of the downtown, new traffic roadways, new infrastructure, new buildings. And we have delightful new environment downtown, I think, everyone would agree. It is in its infancy, at least the new components of the downtown area are, and it will grow and strengthen depth as a downtown area, but that will take a number of years for all of that to come about. The council in discussing perhaps something it could do in the short term to bring about an opportunity for more people to visit the downtown area in the next few months, decided to set aside a sum of money that could be used for entertainment in the downtown area on Friday evenings over the next several months. The amount that has been set aside, $50,000 is no small sum. However, I would comment that the city is spending just several hundred dollars every week to hire musicians and entertainers at three or four locations in old town on Friday nights. And this money actually can go very long ways. Would also add that at any time the council decides that this program has been in effect long enough it can decide to save the remainder of the money. So this was a decision that was made very recently by the City Council and we have, because of we wanted to take advantage of the still pleasant fall weather, we started this program, we chump started it, now we're coming back and asking the council to Take the administrative action necessary to set these funds in place at it as it previously approved Thank you mr. Sisson. I just want to pick up on two items that you mentioned and the first one It was sort of the large amount set aside, but probably which was sort of the large amount set aside, but probably will go a very long way. And it's my understanding in reading the publicity and some of the memos that have gone back and forth that the intent is to continue this through early December and then obviously because of weather and other things that wouldn't be continued through the winter months, which I assume would give the council an opportunity to sort of evaluate how the first phase went and then determine whether or not it's something worth continuing or want to continue and that certainly would include the expenditures which I assume will be very small to do that if I heard the comment of it. I will tell you this week and I got involved in a number of discussions, one at the Chamber's 50th anniversary event and another on Saturday morning and there was a great deal of concern that expressed that the spirit of this money was to spread it around in the downtown area and it was brought to my attention and I have to admit I did not have a chance to enjoy it. The first two Friday nights, but that this last Friday night that it was centered only in one location, that one location was actually in the middle of the courtyard, which technically is on private property. And it was such an intense conversation. I actually got in my car and drove downtown at about 815 and unless I missed it, that's all that was out. And in fact, that's not the intent or the spirit of what we're doing. If we can't, my viewpoint would be if it can't be something that spread throughout the downtown area, then we shouldn't be doing it on Friday nights on those nights that we can't get enough. Because in fact, what it almost ends up doing is competing against many of the older existing businesses and even the newer ones that are across the street when it's all solely focused internally within a courtyard that you can't even see from the public street. So that would just be my comments. Last Friday may have been an exception, but if we're gonna continue it, it was more the spirit of an old town, Alexandria sort of feel where on every street corner you could enjoy entertainment as you walked and spread people throughout the downtown area as opposed to a center courtyard area where everybody collected in one location. And certainly I took those comments and feedback with the spirit it was in tenets. I hope that will be the intent as we move forward or we need to reevaluate it. Yeah. You're correct. The first night, which was three weeks ago, I was there on that first evening. And in fact, is what happened? We had people spread throughout the area. And, matter of fact, we made a point of avoiding private property because that is the spirit under which the council did set this money aside and if that if we got all track a bit last Friday It'll be corrected. Great. Thank you Any other questions of staff before we open up the public hearing If not well open up the public hearing nobody is previously signed up with anybody like to address the city council on this item Here he not will close the public hearing and I'll entertain a motion. Mr. Drummond? A move to approve an appropriation resolution in the amount of $50,000 to hold Friday night events in Old Town Fairfax. Moved by Mr. Drummond seconded by Mr. Meyer any discussion Well in favor the motion signify by voting aye I opposed and a past unanimously that now brings us down to item number eight Which is the consideration of the proposed budget cuts for the fiscal year 2009 enough fun is just starting I assume in the spirit of the committee that's been doing such great work, Mr. Greenfield, I'll turn this over to you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. As we, I will turn this over to staff after a few introductory remarks to walk us through everything. As you all are aware, we started a task with trying to balance a $3.6 million deficit as we quickly entered into our fiscal year 2009 budget over a number of weeks. The Budget Committee worked diligently with staff to identify a number of areas that we felt we would be able to recommend to the council as a whole for their consideration. Included in that list were a number of items that we felt and we considered essential and or problematic. And the committee did not take any action on those items. It did not offer any recommendations to the council on those central slash problematic areas and let those items to the council for their consideration. As I have to debate with the council, we ended up being able to eat away at that $3.5 million, $0.5 million deficit, and we are still over where we need to be a little bit by about $847,000, but the council thought that that was manageable for us to be able to work through here, as we still have some additional revenue items that are outstanding. We will continue to get refinements on as we move forward. But the committee and the council felt very strong way that we needed to afford one more opportunity for the public to weigh in on a number of those items. On all of the items that we have listed here and that were without any available for people to comment on. So, Mr. Mayor, we can have staff walk through this line by line if you would like, or we can simply open up for public comment and then go back and debate some of the issues that may still be outstanding. The one issue that I will bring to everyone's attention, and again, it will be the council to decide, but it's the issue of the Q Fair increase. Initially, we had presented to you a recommendation to increase the fair this year to $1.50. After that time, we got some further refinement in the numbers from what other jurisdictions were going to do and that's the surrounding Fairfax County was likely to go or was planning to go to at least $1.35. I presented that to the committee this evening and the committee as a whole. Without any objections, made the decision that they wanted to stand firm behind their recommendation to increase the Q-Fair to $1.50 and so that we would not change, we were not recommending a change as a result of the additional information that we received that most jurisdictions. That if we went over $1.35, we would be above what most jurisdictions were charging for the public transportation. That is the one item that council will have to grapple with as to whether you wanna go down to $1.35 or you wanna leave it at the recommended increase of $1.50 and actually you've already debated this once, but in the interest of the full disclosure I want to make sure you have both numbers and the council can decide which number they want to go forward with. If I could and I don't know what I did with my document here but I'm wondering if we couldn't have staff sort of hit the high points or Mr. Greenfield whoever would be appropriate to do that in terms of the items in here that we think would be of interest to the community. I know a lot of those and certainly appreciate the leadership of the committee and the staff have to do with internal budget cuts that we were able to identify that you all put on the tables. We went through that, but certainly things like the Q bus fare. There may be others as well. If could we get, is it possible to go through the list and sort of share it? I'm seeing yes, so whoever would be willing to do that if we could start with that, Mr. Hodgekins? Is that Mr. Greenfield? Please. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of the council. As Mr. Greenfield stated, the budget committee had come up with recommendations for budget cuts in this fiscal year to help balance the 08-09 budget. These items were discussed with the council on September 12th, and we had refined a based on feedback from the council. We had refined the numbers, and that's what we brought back before you today. If you go to the second page, which is label page one, that will give you a summary detail of the actual cuts that are being recommended. The first category are operating budget cuts, which total $1,688,214. The next category are capital budget cuts, totaling $804,000. And the next two categories are revenue enhancements and other approved adjustments will actually be brought back to the council at a later date. And if I could stop at revenue enhancements just for a minute, I'd like to explain that the adjustments to the rates and levies, including adjustments to the Q bus fare, will be brought back for the council, and I'm sorry, including the recreation camps and program fees, will be brought back to the council at a later date for their consideration. And also, the adjustments are being, those are items consideration. And also other improvements are being, those are items that are being approved by the city council or the city school board and will not be part of this consideration for tonight. So the two areas that we're focusing on are again the operating budget at 1.6 million and the capital budget at $804,000. And the document that you have for you summarizes those cuts by department. The page is following actually give you a detail of what makes up those individual numbers. If I could start with the first item because there were some items that were considered maybe problematic by the council and also by the staff members, we have the police department with cuts for the current fiscal year of 113,000, which we felt or the police department felt was manageable, but they did have $18,000 in cuts, proposed cuts, that are considered essential or problematic cuts. $13,000 of the $18,000 represents the K9 program. Next item, the fire department had recommended $215,000 in cuts that they did not feel would be problematic in this year's budget. Public works also had a large amount, $643,000, $764, which they felt they could continue with the core services. Without cutting the services, the perhaps the services would not be delivered as quickly as they have been in the past. Parks and Rec also had cuts of about $253,000 in $15,450 that for the most part they considered manageable in the current fiscal year. Information technology also had cuts in the amount of $219,000 that they could manage in the current fiscal year. And going down without hitting each single item, there's many departments that did not have very much to cut. A lot of those cuts came in, the former supplies or travel and entertainment and things like that. We did cut any non-essential travel which represents an aggregate, a large dollar amount. It's something that we probably will not be able to sustain year after year, but something that could be managed this year. The schools also have cuts of just under $100,000 that are considered manageable. That is the summary of the proposed cuts to the operating account. The next category are capital budget cuts. Many of these items are deferrals, so they're not necessarily cuts. These are either vehicles or maintenance items that can be deferred into the future. Not items that we can absolutely cut out of the budget, but we felt that we can push these off at least for one more year. And those items total about $804,000. Between those two categories, we're looking for guidance from the council to either approve or adjust our recommended cuts of $2,492,000. I'm sorry, $2,492,214. And with that, I'll leave it open for discussion or questions. Thank you, Mr. Hodgkins. Mr. Stombrose. Thank you. Mr. Greenfield, just a couple of reactions to the presentation. I think there are three areas that I think we need to consider here. The first one is the Q bus fare. I don't think we want to do something that is going to put our bus system in a disadvantage in comparative rates with other jurisdictions. So I think we should continue the discussion about keeping the Q bus fare at 135 consistent with other jurisdictions. Those in our community who use and relax the cue bus are probably those who can least forward an increase like this. Two, after hearing from the community, the K9 unit is something that I think there's a general consensus that is something that we would not like to see cut. And perhaps we can continue to defer that discussion until we have more information on potential revenues coming into the city from other sources so that if it all possible, we can retain that capability within the police force. And I am under the impression that the senior tax debate, tax relief program, is off the table in this discussion. That's correct. We have not adjusted or proposed an adjustment today. Thank you. Mr. Dreman. Mr. Dreman. Mr. Dreman. It's not often that I'm, it's summed up my comments with one phrase, but I think I can't with concerns, non-brage, and that's ditto, because I do believe that is a great statement. Thank you. I do believe we need to be in line with the hubas. I think having a buck bet the instrument of a shock to the system. Same thing with the can on your as well as the discussion about the next way I'm going to think it's critical that we keep that as it is. The only common on the cue bus and it's just a matter of practical purposes could we put it to a buck 25? Part of it, I'm just trying to think of somebody trying to get a dime out of their pocket. It's just a little bit more cumbersome, but it's not, you know, make a break thing, but from a revenue standpoint, it's 10 cents is going to really matter that much. When, you know, it's probably more difficult for someone to get a dime out of their pocket. That's beyond it, but nevertheless, the principal is there and I can grow them like colleague. Okay, let's, we're going to take each one of these one at a time and looking for some guidance here from my, Distine. Let me just see if we can get consensus on at least one item that is the K9. I think there's been enough dialogue and discussion offline going back and forth that we were going to leave that particular item out as being problematic and not deal with it certainly this year or not that it won't come up again dialogue depending on where our budget takes us for the coming year, but is there a consensus that that's the direction the council wants to go? Okay, so the K9 will be eliminated from the list of cuts. That now brings us down to at least the only two items I heard raised, there may be others on the Q bus fare. It looks like we're getting a handout in that if we raise the fare from its current fare to the 135, which is I understand it is the fare that, for Vex County, and some of the surrounding jurisdictions are raising their fare to and to be consistent with that would generate. That's the square box Mr. Greenfield. That's the half a year 120 in the full year 240. That's correct. The 150 which was originally and I guess still is the recommendation of the budget committee is the 150 300 so we're talking 30 thousand dollars for the half year and 60 thousand dollar difference. Let's see if we can work through that issue. Is there anybody who supports raising it to the 150? See if we can start eliminating these. No. Okay. So we're not going to follow that particular recommendation. I think now it's the recommendation and if I'm hearing it right that all the other jurisdictions to be competitive, the 135 would put us out. Am I understanding that credit? That's correct. 135 would keep us in line with what other jurisdictions are doing, and quite frankly, would eliminate our need to potentially go back during the next budget cycle and go from $1.25 to $1.35 because staff is saying, you know, we probably should be at that rate. Okay. Well, let's see if we can get a consensus that the dollar 35 then would be the compromise coming down from the recommended 150. Mr. Mayor, I do, I think any increase is regrettable, but given the situation, I mean the cost of fuel is gone up so know, it's unavoidable in this case, and I think to be fair, I think 135 is a reasonable increase. Mr. Greenfield, I assume you would accept that. Yes. It's a compromise. Mr. Rasmussen? Yeah. Okay. Mr. Drummond? Yeah, I concur. I guess the question I had for Mr. Prasadza is, in terms of the usage, do people use, are more people using the smart trip cards to ride the bus, or will they be using tickets, or are they using cash and coin for the use? Every day the use of smart trip cards are increasing, and the plan for the region, more particularly by Vomada, which runs Metro. By January of 2009, they are going to be eliminating all paper transfers, which is going to force a lot of passengers if they want the discount and if they want to be able to transfer from one system to another at a discount or for free, they have to have a smart trip card, which we feel that come January, the usage of smart trip cards is going to increase. Okay. The reason I ask that is, is obviously when we are increasing the payers from 75 cents to $1.35. It's going to be a little bit of a shock system for some people, for some of it may not buy, especially for the payers, and the cap costs the gas as Councilman Steinbray said. So I'm wondering as part of this increase, we try to, without any additional costs within the revenue you have, we try to promote the use of smart trip and how you should use smart trip because to a large extent if people are using that it's going to make it easier for them to get on and off the bus in fact that I'll lose you later. Now I use the bus the other night and it would very easy with a smart trip card. You could make a lot easier for people to absorb the increase from a standpoint of convenient. I do hope we can promote the use of smart trip and try to get people away from the use of coin because you know, saying five cents to a buck 35 is a jolt having said that the grand scheme of things it's you know it's something that we have to do. So I just would encourage you guys to do that as party of promotion of the bus, thank you bus. And Mr. Assistant, how does this process work? Is assuming there's a consensus tonight on that particular item, do we didn't have to go through a public hearing process so that this really, we're looking for guidance and it would not require public, but it will have to come back to the council for actual formal action. Okay, so this is really the first bite of the apple, I guess, as opposed to the last bite, just so we're all on the same page. But it clearly, Mr. Mayer. Please. With respect to the bus fares, I agree with Councilman Stonebeer. It is regrettable that we have to increase these costs and obviously with the cost of fuel that going up that we've experienced this is a necessity. I want I think it's important for all of our people watching at home and those here tonight to understand that this rate increase will not cover the cost of operating our bus system. Our bus system is heavily subsidized as our riders now and this rate increase while it will reduce that subsidy somewhat. A full cost accounting of the management of our bus system is such that we're still probably only even at $1.35 or only covering about half the cost per rider to our system. We have a very fine system with responsible drivers, safe drivers with clean, presentable buses and an on-time record that is commendable. And it is regrettable that we have to do this rate increase but I did want to emphasize the fact that even with the rate increase that the city is substantially subsidizing the cost of the service. Okay I believe there's a consensus then the 135 is the rate that will go to council action in regards to will eliminate the elimination of the K9 program for our police department. Are there any other items in what has been outlined and recommended by the budget committee that anybody would like to bring up or identify? Oh yeah and I do and I agree Mr. Greenfield has made a very good point. I think it is worth just one other item that I do believe will be of interest to the community good or bad, but one of the recommendations that is outlined in here is everybody is well aware of that we have a tremendous trash pickup service, I think at rivals any other community by far. It's one of the things that when people move or leave, that's the first thing they talk about and the last thing they talk about when they leave our wonderful community. And clearly there's no interest in at least this to my knowledge, this body as we go through this, there were sort of two things that I think we're put on the table very early on as not that we were not going to eliminate. And that was our trash and leaf pickup service that we have and that we all are joined. However, is that dialogue in our committee rolled up their sleeves. It was brought to our attention that we might go just a little bit too far in the fact that we actually pick up trash on holidays, which calls for time and a half and a lot of energy and expense related to it. And simply by loading up on the day after the holiday or the day before the holiday, we could say, I think it was about $60,000 if I remember the amount. And so that is in this consensus document and was supported by the City Council. I will just say it's my certainly feeling that that is a minimum thing for us to do in terms of addressing which is a very big and growing financial challenge not just to the city but to the entire region. And I want to make sure that everybody understands we are not eliminating trash service. We are simply not going to be picking it up on holiday. So if there's a holiday on a Monday, and you normally got your trash picked up on Monday, your trash would now be picked up on Tuesday, the day back at work. And so it's a minimum. And I want to make sure, did I, Mr. Sisson, you did, but just to augment that just a bit. Next Monday is the first holiday. Okay, so we're going to start soon. And so we will, if your trash day is on Monday, it will be collected on Tuesday of next week, as well as the normal Tuesday folks. So we're not quite sure when the time, how the timing is going to change, but if everybody will just be patient, we'll get it all. We are going to be sending out a reverse 911 message to all of the people on those affected areas of the city to notify them of this change. Thank you. And again, I'll just say as we went through this dialogue and discussion quite frankly, there's some of us that were even surprised we were doing that even now, even though we've all enjoyed the wonderful service. And it just simply didn't make sense by changing pickup by 24 hours we could save. In this case, I think $60,000 for the remainder of the fiscal year certainly seemed a smart investment. The last little comment if we're done with the items that I just want to say publicly to Mr. Greenfield and to his committee and to Mr. Siss and you and Mr. Hodgkins and certainly the staff, you know, to us, the sky falls when we have to balance a $3 million deficit because we have such a financially strong community. And I've been on council and I know my colleagues, many of my colleagues have for a long time. And three million dollars in the spectrum of thing doesn't sound like a lot, but it's a lot to a community in the budget that we have. I want to make sure everybody puts that in perspective while we're struggling and really worrying about a three million dollar shortfall. There's communities just not very far from here that I could hit with're struggling and really worrying about a $3 million short fall. There's communities just not very far from here that I could hit with a stone that are talking about $4.00 and $500 million short falls. So certainly it's a challenge to us. We are blessed by a strong economy in the city of Fairfax that always seems to last longer and come back sooner than any other jurisdiction in the area. As soon as we anticipate this would be the case, but it is not going to be without some challenges as we come together with a community. It was the consensus of this Council to form a budget committee to start this process much sooner than we did before, and to really focus the attention like a laser on this issue, not just for this particular year, but for the coming budget which will start. And Mr. Greenfield, I know you and the committee have been working around the clock and staff. To get these numbers to us, I applaud your leadership and certainly the leadership of the entire committee and certainly Mr. Assistant and Mr. Hutchkins and the staff that has supported it. And I know I speak on behalf of all of my colleagues, and I'm saying Mr. Greenfield, but Mr. Myers also, the other member of the City Council that serves in the spotty in the committee and job well done, and we certainly appreciate everything you've done. Thank you. Any other comments Mr. Greenfield? I also want to thank Jilla Hate, who was the staff member on the committee. He has crunching numbers for me on a daily basis, some of which we are preparing for round two. This was round two. Round two is going to be much more difficult as we try to address next year's budget crisis. This solved the shortfall as we entered fiscal year 2009. Fiscal year 2010 will be even more challenging. But we are willing to tackle this and work in conjunction with the Council and staff and members of the Budget Committee. And it has been a good process so far, certainly a learning experience. I've been dealing with the city's budget for 14 years now and I'd like to say I learned a few more new things as we tackled the $3.6 million. So I asked for my colleagues, patients as we continue to move forward and look at a number of the things that the mayor outlined and just again, a thanks to the staff for round one and to my colleagues for your support and what the committee would forth in recommendations to. Thank you. Okay, so I believe we have a consensus document, Mr. Siss and I assume we'll rely on you to move it forward and whatever we have to do formally in approvals at future meetings. You'll get that to us. But with the exception of the items that we identified here tonight, that the document that was recommended will be the consensus document from this body. There is a motion. Oh, there is a motion. Okay, great. So, Mr. Greenfield, if you'd like to read the motion, and then allow Mr. Meyer to second it if you so choose, and if I could, because the council did make an adjustment to the K9, took out $13,000 for the K9 unit. For those dollar amounts, we'll change slightly. The $1,688,214 would go down to 1,675,214. If you can hold that, thawed Mr. Hatchkins, we're... Okay. Multiple work. Okay. Okay. Okay, so we need a motion and then if you could, Mr. Hatchkins, repeat what you just suggested we men by. The operating amount that will be cut is $1,675,214 as opposed to $1,688 to $14. And that's to put the K9 unit back in. I guess you're green, Phil. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I moved to approve the proposed budget cuts to the FY2008 2009 general operating fund in the amount of $1,675,214 in the capital improvement program in the amount of $804,000. Second. It's been moved by Mr. Greenfield, seconded by Mr. Meyer, any discussion? All in favor of the motion is signified by voting aye. Aye. Opposed? In a past unanimous, they thank you very much. We now go down to agenda item number nine, which are presentations by a public and any item that is not on tonight's agenda. We still have a fairly lengthy meeting in front of us with work session items and some boards and commissions that we need to do. But is there anybody in the audience who would like to address the City Council again on any item that is not on tonight's agenda? Here we none. We'll move past item number nine into item number 10, which is the approval of the regular meeting of September 23rd, 2008. Second. of the regular meeting of September 23rd, 2008. So moved. So moved. Excuse me. Second. It's second. It's second. It's moved and seconded. So seconded. It's moved by Mr. Greenfield, seconded by Mr. Resmus, and any discussion. All in favor of the motion, signify by voting aye. Opposed and impass unanimously. We'll now recess our regular meeting. We'll move immediately into our work session. Our first work session item is a discussion of the request of HANA supermarket located at Lottie Plaza for a special use permit to allow the use in the highway quarter overlay district that would generate more than 700 vehicle trips per day for a grocery store. Staff report, please. Thank you. I prepared a staff report last week only a couple days after having received the revised plans from the applicant. I don't intend to make a presentation myself. The attorney for the applicant is here this evening to make a presentation and after that I'm available for questions. Okay, short and sweet. Why don't we go ahead and move to the applicant's presentation and then we will go from there. Mr. Members, the council, my name is Art Walsh with a law firm Walsh Kaluci and we represent Latte Plaza. Just a brief overview, as you all know, this is a very successful supermarket business that generates substantial taxes for the city. In response to the concerns that we have been expressed over the last years. So on my clients, hired Davis Carter Scott, which is a very, very well known architectural firm, and also a Vica civil engineers to look at the site to figure out if there's a way that we could solve this parking problem. The parking problem basically exists because we rely on our neighbor for offsite parking and should the neighbor decide that we cannot have that parking. We are in a serious deficit as far as the parking is concerned. Right now we have an agreement to park on Mr. Lothar's property and it's existing and it has continued. But the concern is that apparently he has some plans to redevelop his property when that happens we would lose or require parking. There's no inexpensive solution to this particular problem. Originally we attempted to solve the parking shortage with offsite spaces on the Applebee site. We even considered building a parking garage on the Applebee site. We designed the parking garage coordinated with the owner of the property and could not quite come to an agreement with him. So the proposal that Davis Carter Scott came up with was to place a parking garage atop the existing building. And that seems to us to be the best solution. And that's the proposal that we're coming forward with this evening in this work session. The special use permit and special exception requests we're requesting is to allow a use in the highway corridor overlay district that generates more than 700 daily trips. We're requesting a 10% reduction required parking from 161 to 145 parking spaces. We're seeking a special exception for reduction of landscape open space from 25 to 8 percent. A special exception for increased maximum FAR from 0.7 to 1.76. The current FAR is a 0.54, the additional FAR solely for the parking structure. There's no increase in the store area and as a matter of fact, I think this is the only jurisdiction that I work in that counts parking as FAR. We're also seeking a special exception for reduction in tree canopy requirement from 10 to 2%, which all of those things exist, reflect the existing condition. There are some benefits in this application, other than cleaning the site up. I think we're trying with our architectural treatment to dramatically improve the effects of the site, which as you know, as a converted furniture store, that's pretty much what it looks like at this point. So we think we can improve the aesthetics on this critical, near this critical intersection. We also will reduce the amount of impervious area by 6,000 square feet. We'll come into compliance with storm under regulations with an underground facility that will result in 40% phosphorus reduction via our BMPs. There are no BMPs now And this gives us an opportunity also to reduce the downstream impact on on our outfall I'd like to call on John Shrieber with Davis cars got to briefly go over the floor plans and then we and we have to answer any questions you might have. Thank you. I want to go ahead. Mr. Mayor, City Council, we have come up with this game where we're actually providing for the on-site parking with the structured parking garage that I don't know if you put the image on which one they have to go. Okay, yeah it's going to be a little difficult for me to I guess get you through it. Yeah. Is there anyone going to come? This one here or or just this version. You're actually coming in this room? You're going to have to sit in the scene talking of a microphone. Is the microphone on? Sorry, I'm just trying. That's OK. You're going to have to pull the microphone over so we can carry it. We're actually coming into the site off of Old Picket Road. Let me see, approximately here. And we are entering the parking ramp in this direction. It's a speed ramp that will take you up to the next level at a elevation of 18 feet and which you would circulate around or you would continue up to the next level which is top deck of elevation 28 feet. Getting back to the first surface parking. Sorry. If you could just so I understand how what we're talking about. Oli highway is up at the top where it says four plans left. Yes, and the entrance that you're talking about Sorry, only only highway Lee highway is up the top of the plan only highway is Holy highway. Yes, 50 is to the north. Yes, okay, and route 50 would then be to what I would consider the Wester to the to our left. Where's Route 50? Just highlighted on the, you got a yellow pin there. There we go. Route 50 is in this direction. Okay. Route 50 is in that direction. So only highways where it goes down along, down along there. And the entrance that you're talking about is that the shared entrance with 7-11? Yes it is. Okay. Okay. Shared entrance would be approximately there. Excuse me, can I? Mr. S. Moussen. The currently there is a separate entrance not shared with Lottie Plaza. I'm not shared with 7-11. That is correct. Now you're saying there would be a shared entrance now? Mr. Respondz, and one of the things that we've been trying to accomplish is come up with a shared entrance with 7-11, and we've met some resistance with 7-11 over the years. We think we may have an opportunity now to accomplish that shared entrance, which would combine the two entrances and make a much better, much better interest. So we're working on that with 7-11. We provide them with our plans. We hope that they might even be here tonight to discuss this, but we're trying to, we're trying to keep in touch with them and see if we can pull that off. So this plan sort of shows a revised improved access that will provide shared access between Austin 7-11. If we can get the 711 cooperation. Thank you. But if I could, I was here when the Council approved this special use permit whenever it was six, seven, eight years ago that barely passed and the only reason it passed by a vote of four to three was because that was going to be a solution that was going to be delivered in a period of time. I don't think the intent was seven or eight years later, but is the assumption in this discussion that this plan will have a shared interest? Mr. Letter, as you can appreciate, we have no control of where the 7-11 is going to cooperate with us or not. And we didn't have any control when we were here before. We met with 7-11, we thought we were making progress, and then the speaker was sort of turned off. We have now gotten sort of renewed cooperation from them, and we're hoping that that's something that we can deliver. And we'll know that, I think, by the time we come before the City Council and the public hearing. Sir, are you going to share with us tonight what it looks like with a shared entrance and what it looks like without a shared entrance. Do we have a trough? The actual plan that's in front of you is with the proposed shared entrance. Okay. Go ahead. Now, with that shared entrance, I'm sorry, I just will lay with this point, but that shared entrance would be where the traffic signal gives a green light for people exiting the 7-11. And it would then close out the current apron entrance just at the south of that. Right. This would combine the entrances, close, I think they're apron entrants in Provide. Right. A combined entrance at the signal. I have some personal scar tissue on this because I lived just on the other side of the bridge up the hill and I travel that road several times a day. And if you're in the right hand lane and people are turning into the into the supermarket, you have to come to a stop and within the last six months, I was rear-ended by another patron who failed to see the traffic coming to a stop. So clearly, there needs to be a resolution of that of that situation. Sir. Mr. Mayor. If this on the shared entrance, I mean we have a name I sort of jumped in front of the presentation here, but if it's on the shared entrance, let's bring it up if it's not let's finish the presentation and then I'm sorry. Yeah. I think the board's probably better. Thank you. Sorry. I think this is probably a little easier for me just to explain it this way. The shared entrance is actually coming. Let me just make sure we can get that on television if we go that route. Hold on, I think helps on the way. All right. There you go. The shared entrance is actually in along this location. 7-11 would be up in this portion of the site. And Mr. Letter, I think you make a good point. We should have an exhibit that shows what that entrance will be in the event that we don't have the shared entrance and we'll get that prepared and submit the staff. Thank you. Do you want to just go through the elevation? John. This image is the perspective of what the architectural intent is. This being the existing Latte Plaza and we are attempting the cladet. This being the new parking garage itself. And that's a facade. I think that, again, this work in progress and we'll continue to try to refine, but you can see it's a great improvement over the existing condition. So that addition that you just highlighted is on top of the existing surface parking. As you come in, your entrance now,'s a if I remember right there's a parking there and this entire expansion takes up that parking is that correct? Actually it's farther west I think than that parking so it goes farther to the west than the existing little parking entrance that currently exists. Right it takes up the existing and then goes farther west beyond the existing. Right. Okay. Right. Okay. Right. Okay. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right Thank you. That's a presentation. Yes. Okay. Let me see if there's any questions the applicant and then we'll bring it back in with our staff. Mr. Edgerman. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Three specific things. The first question I have is when you showed where Route 50 was before with a drawing, you put the yellow pin. Just so the audience understands, there is no entrance off route 50 correct? That is correct. So the only entrance for this location is off of only highways. That correct? Yes. Okay. The second thing is this is three floors according to the drawing. How tall is that? It is the top deck is 28 feet with a carpet wall is 32 feet. 28 feet. So if I'm standing there, where it is now, how much farther am I going to be looking up? In other words, when you're looking at this building, as you see, this drawing, I mean, it looks like the scale here, but it engulfs a bus. I mean, so it looks like it seems like a parking lot meant for a baseball stadium quite frankly. We just seem very large. So I just want to try to understand the scale and the commuter understand the scale we're talking here. The scale actually is in comparison with the one portion of the existing latte is approximately four feet tall. Four feet tall. OK. I guess in terms of the drawing that you have here, if I understand it, this front part right here with the I guess the shadows for the trees. That is Oli highway? No, that's C. Jason parking. So where's highway? That's Oli highway. Yes. Okay, and then this part here, the adjacent part, that is, is that going toward Route 50? Route 50 would be up in this direction. Is there any of these up there? I'm sorry, I'm gonna run. Okay, sorry, I'm gonna run. And faces piece of wrong. Thank you. Okay. And so the entrance over here, if I'm, thank you, that helps. Thank you. If I'm looking here going traveling in I've got to go through this assuming they're to share an entrance I've got to travel down Oli highway and I've got to take a right in there and then I've got to keep take that off for one second yes and I've got to swerve in there is that the only entrance into the parking lot? Actually, no, there is a secondary entrance here that's across adjacent Understood, but what I'm saying is if you're coming down here, you kind of got to make almost the ui You go into that entrance correct correct. Yes, okay. Thank you Wish rest muscle. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Will the parking deck provide the same number of parking spaces that you had under the old permit or fewer or more? How many new parking spaces? I think it's more, did you? Yeah, the top deck of the parking we are proposing 67 spaces. Is that what you're questioning? No. I want to know that comparison of the total number of parking spaces under this application compared to the total number that was approved under the last application. Including the offsite parking. The total number that we have is 162, which is including 9 tandem spaces. We're at least showing 11 surface parking. 18 first floor parking, 54 second floor, and 67 third floor, which equals a total of 162. If we subtract the tandem parking, and actually on the third floor, there's an increase in the deck, which we are looking for. Hopefully in the win we come to a number of hundred and 45th. Okay, now, and what is the 1455 the number you had approved prior to this? I think the number approved prior to this Mr. Rasmussen is the same number that we have today. The 162. I think it was maybe even less than that, 152, but it was very close. What we tried to do is equal the number of parking spaces that were approved previously. Okay. That's what I'm trying to get to. Is it the same as or lesser or greater? I'm pretty sure it's exactly the same, but I'll check on that and get back to you. If that's not the case. Okay. And that includes the offsite as well. Yes, it does. Yeah. The offsite are 69 parking spaces. Mr I don't know that we've ever proposed that. I think part of our hope is that we could work something out with Mr. Rosenthal, who's been very cooperative and helpful and has worked with us. But it seems to me that's what we have to do. I think that's the most important thing to do. I think that's the most important thing to do. I think that's the most important thing to do. I think that's the most important thing to do. I think that's the hope is that we could work something out with Mr. Rosenthal, who's been very cooperative and helpful and has worked with us, but it seems to me, if that's what we have to do to park at Home Depot, we would certainly do that and figure out some way to conveniently try to get people conveniently across. So I was hoping you would get Rosenthal agreement. I have never proposed parking at Home Depot, so I miss the pick that someplace. But you're not the first person to say that, so there's a conception out there that's the case. But we are working with Mr. Rosenthal a number of issues and we're scheduling a meeting with him the next week or so to go over some of his concerns. Okay. One last question. meeting with him the next week or so to go over some of his concerns. One last question. When will we have a better rendering of the architecture of this so that we can see a good representation of what it's going to look like? We are working on that. We'll have that to staff hopefully in the near future next week or two. Okay. Thank you. The, so I understand that you have 67 offside parking spaces now that's in, I believe it's 69. How many? 69. 69. And those are up on the front side along Route 50. That's the old Applebee's in that. And they're between the Applebee's and the Latte Plaza as well. Right. Here's my point. My concern is if I'm looking at this diagram right, you're going to consolidate all those parking into the structure. Now, many of those cars can conveniently, when they walk back to the car, get out on Route 50, through the Applebee's entrance, which has one, then there's a bank entrance, and then there's multiple entrances. On this, it seems to me we're going to be taking almost 50 percent of the parking and dropping that in addition to what's already on the Oli highway entrances by the two entrances of I'm reading this right. The only thing that I would say is it is possible and we'll explore this with Mr. Rosenfall, because some of the parking comes out on his property, which is to the south, we might be able to get some type of a permission for him to go through his parking lot out in the 50s, well, to go westbound. Well, or eastbound for that matter. And this probably isn't the right time to sort of debate the merits all this, but it just strikes me the shoppers are going to go to the most convenient entrance in Exit. And weaving them all the way back through a parking lot to get them back out in 50 when the two entrances are set up for only highway. I don't think it's feasible in BM. I'm not sure that's even a good solution to try to get people to weave through that parking lot, which I do frequently, and it's not easy to do now. But I'll just say as we're framing issues and concerns, it just strikes me that this configuration takes an already overload of problem in Oli Highway and puts almost all of it, at least the most convenient accident entrance onto Oli highway and puts almost all of it at least the most convenient accident entrance on to Oli highway and Offer route 50 which now almost 50% of the parking spaces Actually, it's more convenient to get out on 50 than Oli highway So I'll just frame that as an issue as we go forward. We look at that and is the building? Frame the template of the, the template of the building, the envelope of the building, will that come any closer than the existing envelope, I know it's going up to stories, but will that envelope of that building come any closer than it is right now to Oli Highway? No, it should not. So it's the existing footprint. Footprint just goes off. Yes. And the dimensions of the store and the size of the store mean exactly the same. There's no increase. Just like to direct this question to staff, is there any other example of surface parking in a retail setting on the roof and the desire zoning ordinances? I know at one point in time we had a lot of discussion on a former council specifically up at the Camp Washington area whether or not we wanted to change our parking ordinances to allow for rooftop parking. And at the time I may not be recalling this, we decided not to do that. This obviously, if I'm reading it right, has rooftop parking? Is there any other examples of that and what our current zoning allow for rooftop parking? I'm not aware of any other examples here in the city of rooftop parking, but I also don't believe that our zoning code prohibits it. And I know the examples you're talking about. There were actually, I believe there are two examples. One was the furniture store that Stuart Schooler brought to us on, and I was in the impression he couldn't do it without a zoning fact he even provided the council with verbiage to change our codes to allow it. Is that something different there than it would be here? No, it's a similar situation. He had access problems. It was a, had to do with the geometry of the site and special exceptions. I believe I could be wrong. And I'll check. If you would check that out. I remember a very extensive discussion. I don't think it had to, the structure entrance in Exit was a different issue, but I remember very distinctly a dialogue where at least then it was the feeling that our current zoning ordinance would not allow for rooftop parking and then he actually even provided us with language to enable that and I don't believe the council elected to approve it. But again, I might be wrong in that, but if we could, I was referring to those inches, check into that. Are there any other questions, comments, thoughts, at this stage as this moves forward? I would just simply say, and certainly I don't think this will come as any surprise, and I go back in my memory bank on when this application first came up and it was a very interesting dialogue and discussion in the community and it was a very highly contested issue, certainly within the council, that it had up being a tie vote, passed by a vote of four to three. And I think it was the consensus, even by the folks that approved it as we were on the borderline of too much on too little of a space and the impact that it had on the 7-11 is I, or excuse me, an only highway, as I recall the dialogue, the comfort level that put it over the hump was the fact that there was a dialogue going to take place between 7-11 and a lot of applause. I thought it was part of the special use permit. Maybe that's one of the reasons we thought it was part of the special use permit. Maybe that's one of the reasons we determined it was not in compliance some months ago. But it strikes me if it was almost too much on too little then, this just absolutely blows that away. And my big concern, as I said earlier, we're going to be taking an already very dangerous, very complicated intersection, whether we get the shared entrance or not, and taking all of the parking, half the parking that's now conveniently using Route 50 and moving at all to the only highway entrance. And I don't think a common entrance is going to solve that dilemma, even if that becomes a reality, which obviously as we sit here tonight, we don't know. But I'll just express for the benefit of this dialogue and discussion. I certainly express concerns then. I express concerns. I think it's a great business. It's a fantastic revenue base for the city of Fairfax, quite frankly. And it has nothing to do with that, but consistent with my concern, however many years ago, it is just flat out too much on too little and puts too much of a burden on only high, which very quickly turns into almost virtually a residential street just at the top of the hill there. And I certainly would have serious concerns about the negative impact it would have to the entire area. But any other comments thoughts? Okay, if not, thank you very much that's Move on the Next item is the discussion of the Q bus design option Alex for so sir has a brief presentation on the proposed Q bus design option. Alex Versosa has a brief presentation on the proposed Q bus designs. in In maybe less than a year, it's time hopefully we are going to be receiving six new hybrid diesel buses that will replace six of our old Q buses. And in this slide, we needed to come up with a new paint design for the new buses. And in looking at alternative designs, we had several items that you looked at first and foremost, where our design goals. And for the new look, we wanted to highlight some improvements that we have on the Q bus. The new Q buses which are going to be low floor, new handicap lifts, there'll be ramps rather than lifts, which will be more efficient, less likely to break down and strand a lot of-cap passengers. We have had technical, technological advancements in our Q buses. We will retain in our new buses the GPS, both for automated stop announcements and real-time prediction of VAS arrival. We also wanted one of our goals to reflect a partnership, this new design, should reflect a partnership between the city and George Mason University and provide some sense of ownership among the writers and among the non-riders sense of community pride whenever they see this new bus that can identify the, it's part of the community. Our target audiences are, of course, the City of Fairfax residents, George Mason University, and employees working in the city. And for a brand personality, we want the Q to convey a high-quality, environmentally-convenient and safe service that makes travel around the city, easy, comfortable comfortable and relaxing. Some of the key messages that Q is a fun way to get around, including having bike racks for people that have bikes. We will have bike racks for these new buses. It is part of the city affairsax community and George Mason University. It's environmentally friendly and technologically advanced. And some of the mandatory, some of the things that we feel that the new design should have, since this is a hybrid diesel bus, it should have the word hybrid summer into design. It should have the Q logo in the city seal, Q phone number or city phone number and a city website. And for ease of maintenance, staff felt that the design should be predominantly white. And in keeping with the city and George Mason University, we have the GMU and city colors. In this light, we came up with three alternative designs. And the first design is what is being recommended by staff. It has two arrows to denote mobility of the bus. It has the hybrid. It is predominantly white. It has the GMU and city colors. And we felt that the message that says on the side of the bus, take your cue so that writers and people that look at the bus can identify some ownership of the bus. We have two other alternatives that we looked at. And this is the second one. And the third one is our lighting bolt going through the middle of the bus. Again, staff recommends the first alternative which has two arrows, a predominantly white design. Do you have any questions? I guess I miss this getting added as a work session. Do we really mean is the intent for us to go through and say which color and which design we like tonight? If you just give us an expression of interest in one, two, or three, we'll take it from there. Mr. Ombry. Mr. Mayor, thank you. I conducted an informal unscientific survey of residents of the city. Basically asked my wife, which one she liked better. We had a little bit of the Shazam Lightning Bolt was the clear loser in that unscientific study. I may be dating myself. How about youthful? What did you remember? No, no. How about youthful? What did you remember? No, I'm not making it. What did youthful? What did your kids say? Right. I originally liked the first one, but to be honest, with you, my wife and other members of the survey, my children liked the second one better. So I think it looks a little bit more environmentally friendly. It just conveys that, so, but I don't know if I have strong opinions on it. For what it's worth, I like number either number one, or choose them. Number two. Oh. I do one. I personally would do one. I don't know if I like to take your, but I mean, the two things that strike me in all these designs as one is, what does it say, city of Fairfax? I mean, this is a city-owned, city-operated function, and I see city university, I see Fairfax VA.com, but I see a little of you being a logo down there, but I personally would work into this that it's a city of Fairfax. Service. The second one is, and I'll just say this, is we have a contractional arrangement with George Mason University. That contractional arrangement could disappear at any point in time depending on if they decide to internalize it or expand their on-campus service or go through budget cuts. And here we are. We've painted all our buses, which I assume is a long-term paint job. And that would concern me. I don't I prefer one but I don't understand the logic of painting George Mason colors on it when it's a city bus that just happens to be a contracted service with GMU and we could bring another partners at some point in time if that ever went south but actually the view is an acronym for city universe I understand trust me we will probably have to change the name of the bus as well if and when that happens. Okay. Well, that is wonderful and strong guidance on behalf of all of us. Are we done with this topic? We're done. No. We're fine. I think one was that. And we eliminated the third option. Yeah, right. The same question. What the call to this one is? Actually, I preferred to only because Mrs. Stonebreast preferred to, but certainly the consensus here is that one is better, so I'll go with that. Okay. Then now brings us to an update on the Norfax project. Mr. Mayor from the sublime to the ridiculous. There is no project that I would at least like to bring to you for an update. Especially at 10.5. Then this one, I'll try to make it painless if you promise to do the same. I'm sorry. We wanted to bring this item to you tonight because you won't be meeting again until the end of the month. I think it's October 28th. We have a three month wait until we meet the next time and this project can't stand any more delays. We want to be in a position to bring you a contract amendment at your next meeting if you are supported, following our discussion tonight. As all of you know and to kind of go over it just quickly, briefly for the new members of council. The city has for a number of years been engaged in engineering design for a culvert improvement under Route 123, just north of the intersection with Route 50, or Fairfax Boulevard, and concurrent with that improvement, there would be an improvement to six lanes of traffic in each direction from Eaton to 123 on Route 50. The project has taken much too long, all agree. The engineer certainly agrees as well as does the city. The status is that it's approximately 80% complete. The engineer has requested additional sums to complete the task. We have a partner with Pat and Harris Rust and Associates in the audience tonight. Mr. Andetti, I appreciate him being here tonight and he will be available to answer any questions from that end of this project that you may have a little bit later. Aton Harris, the engineer has committed that all of the additional engineering services will be provided and should allow completion of the project in about four to five months. The additional sums include about $585,000 for the completion of the project per se and $300,000 in engineering firms to engineering sums to complete a traffic management plan design, which is a new V.regulation that has just come on board in the last year. Apparently, their traffic management design plans are very extensive as you can see from the estimated cost of just the engineering fee. That's not the cost of the contractor in the field. That's just the cost of preparing engineering plans to comply with this fee. Requirement. We have estimated that $585,000 cost high, so as to prevent having to come back to the council for the additional sums. These monies are reimbursable to the city from the urban funds that are being accumulated at V.On behalf of the city, those funds right now stand at about $10 million. We have had some discussions with the council about the possibility of not doing or delaying the traffic component of this job and just doing the culvert work. So as to in the benefit of obviously of doing the culvert work. So as to in the benefit of obviously of doing the culvert work is to create the available land in the northwest quadrant of that intersection. The Fairfax Boulevard master plan has components relating to the roadway that may or may not have the support of the council, and that will have to be worked through at a future period of time. Nonetheless, V.Dot has recommended strongly to the city that this project proceed until completion as it has started, i.e. doing both the culvert work and the road engineering project together finish that work and then V.Dot will discuss with the city breaking those components apart at a later date. We're going to be talking with V.Dot later this week. I believe it's this Thursday about that piece. They have told us to break the project up at this point, well, would necessitate creating a whole new project, which would entail starting all over in a review process with V.Dot. So if they're recommending against it, we can underscore that very strongly for you as a recommendation. for that very strongly for you as a recommendation. A question it's a lot of money. The staff has discussed many options amongst itself and with the engineer changing the engineer if we thought that we would be able to get this project completed cheaper or in a faster period of time. We feel like a recommendation to change the engineer at this point would add avoidable delay project. The additional fee is if you look at what the estimated cost of the project is, right now, the total sums that the engineer will have been paid if counsel supports this additional sum is within reasonable engineering fees for the size of the project. Again, the total sums that would be paid if you support additional fees are within those reasonable percentage of the ultimate anticipated construction costs. So with that, I'll turn it quickly to Mr. Summers who can fill in the gaps if I have left any. And if Council would like to ask Mr. Bendetti to come to the podium, it certainly has that option to invite him. Is there new information you want to share? That was pretty thorough. We might, yeah, let me just see for this dialogue and boy, I hate to go down this path and I'm going to ask just a couple of clarifying questions. If we put aside the road expansion portion of this, and we just focus for this dialogue tonight on the stormwater portion of it, and I know we're designing the whole project, and I think you very accurately describe the stormwater drainage project as a means to get more developer land on the Northwest Quadrant, which is I think a very factual reason why we're doing. The city's been doing for I came back in 98 and I don't know how long before then but let's let's say 12, 14, 15 years, is there enough money already identified and already committed to ensure that if we continue the design of this project, the overall project, and we start with a stormwater drainage portion of it in the building and the buying of the land and all the things that we have to do to do it, that we have enough money to cover that portion of the project, which is the design of the overall project which includes the stormwater and the roads and build and finish the stormwater drainage project and what's already been committed can't be taken away from us and budget cuts and all the other things that we're reading about at the state level. Is there enough money that we are not that we're not on the hook for it and if there isn't what is the dollar shortfall? As we sit here today and we know the cost are going to get more and more the longer this takes. The funds availability that I have attached to this staff report actually assumes money that's going to be allocated to the city out of urban funds up to the year 2013, but there is no guarantee that next year and following years after that, like what the state has just done this year was to cut the allocations, they are not going to come back and cut the allocations again. If we're not going to have enough money. No, I appreciate that. If we take what has already been allocated and banked and protected. We don't have enough money to. Okay. What is that shortfall? At least $5 million, maybe more. At least $5 million, maybe more. Yes. Mr. Mayor, just if it's helpful, we have had some, we have a suggestion on where that money would come from if you want to have that discussion tonight or maybe later. Okay. Here's the only point. I'm just trying to frame this. We are going, we are getting ready to crash and burn and we're reinventing and looking at every phase of government. I came back in 1998 on this project and was told in my briefing before I actually was sworn in that within the year, the bulldozers would be showing up and the project could be starting. That was 10 years ago. I don't know how many years prior to that, this project had been in the works, but probably two, okay. Maybe two, maybe more. But let's say 12 years. There's got to be a cost if we're being responsible as we go forward, where we're already talking about potential changes to the road improvement, which is the most tangible, identifiable improvement to the region and the traffic and certainly the community, which may not happen depending on what we do development-wise down the road. And so as a businessman, I would then say, okay, what's the value at it to the stormwater drainage project and what tax revenues and everything else will we get to cover the potential shortfall that we're going to be on the hook for when we approve this extension of the contract. And we actually start buying land and we start building roads. If it's $5 million, I don't know what that number is and I'd love to hear how we think we're going to get it paid for. Then we have to put a $5 million price tag on getting more developer land, which is privately owned to the Northwest Quadrant. That's a huge price tag. And I'm not suggesting we tear this apart and I'm very supportive of the project, and I want to see it all be a reality. But at some point in time, we can't just keep saying, well, gee, it was started 15 years ago, 12 years ago, 10 years ago, the former council, this now the buck stops here with this group. And I'm just becoming more and more uncomfortable that we may or may not continue with the road improvement portion of it, depending on what happens with the Norfax redevelopment, which is a short-term project, not a long-term project. And then what's the shortfall and the cost that we're about to commit to, which the only benefit is to get more developer land in the Northwest quadrant of the 1, 2, 350 years you rightly. That's what I'm trying to get a feel for. If it's $5 million, then let's put that on the table and let's understand that so that when we make these decisions we know what we're biting into. Five million dollars right now over the next several years seemed a staggering sum of money for us to absorb. If I thought and always have thought and it was always part of the dialogue that the state was going to deliver, I just got a briefing on transportation projects from folks that are very, you know, in the know on the NVTA and what's going to happen and I haven't heard a good thing yet. And I think a lot of the money that we've been counting on in the future because this project has lasted so blasted long is going to dry up. And when the music stops, where are we going to be sitting in terms of commitment of expenses and dollars? And so if it's 5 million, which is what I heard in plays, if you share with us how you think that short, I'm not talking about the transportation program, which will be a staggering amount on top of the 5 million if we ever went down that path. But just on the five million or whatever it is, where we had it. Mayor, just briefly, there have been some planning and financing studies that David Hudson and Jeff Durham have participated in over the last couple of years in which we looked at that whole area. And I guess in an expanded version it was the area to the west and to the east of 123 but specifically to the area that we're calling north facts which is the northwest quadrant. The west portion right? Right. Right. The notion is to create, and it doesn't create additional sums, but the notion would be to create a tax increment district where you would literally draw a circle around all of the properties that would benefit from this culvert taking completed, that land then within a very short time is increased in value, many fold literally within a very short period of time. The city has the ability then to begin taxing that property, not this floodplain, but as very desirable urban property. And the increment, that's why it's called tax increment financing, the increment of what was the difference between what was previously generated from those parcels and what is now going to be generated for many, many years to come, can be used as a financing source, whatever the amount of money that that would enable the city to borrow on an annual basis. It would be much in excess of $5 million. But that is the tax increment financing. Now, again, it's based on what density? Well, based on the master plan, based on the current comprehensive plan, based on what? Because that will have a huge swing on the value of that property and that's revenue that it would generate. Provide any background on that. And just so, but as you do that, we had this very same discussion on using that approach to pay for the internal road system just a month ago, not even including this amount. So the $5 million shortfall or whatever becomes, which I bet it's more than $5 million. It's going through $6 million. We include the $885 that we're going to. Three minutes it went a million dollars up. What happens in six months? But anyway, so now it's six. Then you have to include on that the entire internal road system that we just talked about a month ago. Because that was one of the solutions we talked about, the fund, that, which is not even part of this. So I just want to make sure we're on the same page. I'm glad you brought that up. And if we had been more thorough this evening, we would have brought you some representative figures of what we think the increments are going to be and we will do that we can probably do that within a week's time and get them to you to help buttress this discussion. Now David do you have? I just answer the question I believe those numbers were generated at current zoning permitted zoning level so 0.5 FAR, C2 zoning. Okay, but you're going to share those numbers with us at some point in time, not just internally. And then the way, let me make sure I understand how that works. You're saying we can do that at what point in time. And the reason I'm asking that question, if I follow your logic, we could do it now. We could do it in the budget process. We could do it a year from now. That means, and it's going to take three, four, five years to finish the actual improvements. And then three or four years for a developer to get a plan approved and site plan and start building. So the current landholder, if we implement at the whatever the terminology is the tax increment plan or whatever, would be starting to pay now on undeveloped land for multiple years before he actually would ever either sell or a developer would come in and start deriving revenue off of it by either selling it or developing it or improving it. tax payment plan doesn't happen until this stormwater drainage program is totally done in fact. You don't begin to get revenues into this until the storm drainage is completed and the value of the land is increased as a result of the public improvement. So it doesn't start until then. Right. So we would still be seeding. Right. We would. Money. And we would have to adopt legislation to create a tip district basically. Hasn't ordered us. I just want to make sure I understand this right and I'll yield the floor here and I'm sorry to have dominated so much time but as I understand it if we move forward with this project and we start the project and the money doesn't materialize at the state level, the five million or whatever it is, short of a tax increment district which wouldn't start until after the project is totally finished and done, the sole banker on that project would be the City of Fairfax and all likelihood. Well, if the state stops funding and that's correct, if the state just says the cities will never again, the cities who are responsible for highway maintenance within their boundaries if they would take that unusual step. No, that's a different fun. Highway maintenance is different than new capital expenditures on transportation projects. And it's my understanding, at least now, that's not a maybe that's already part of what the governor and the process is already communicated that those funds are going to dry up now. Am I right? For capital improvements, yes. And this is a capital improvement. That's right. Okay. All right. Let me yield the floor. Mr. Drummond and Mr. Rasmussen. Mr. Mayor, I think your question just spot on. Next to the direction I was going with, which is if we have the $6 million now that we're going to have to be on the hookboard to pay for these improvements, where is the money going to come from, especially in light of the fact that we just cut $2.2 million out of our current budget or facing $10 to $12 million by your shortfall for next year. Where is the funding going to come from? It's going to be through a bond. It's going to be through the Atlantic. Credit. How are we going to finance? Because that's one of my concerns that I have is especially, and it's trying to want more question to this, which is especially given the market deterioration we're facing. I mean, where are we going to get the financing, or something like this? I mean, where are we going to get the financing for something like this? It's an excellent question and I think we have to work through it. The immediate step though that I think we have to take is to reach consensus that we have to finish this project and get a plan finished and approved by V.Dot. And as after we reach that consensus and we are proceeding over the month, the next few months to finish the plan, we can flesh out the next step, which is how we're going to pay for it. But we have to first take steps to finish the plan. I guess my concern is that if I understand correctly, we have to expend money to complete the plan, correct? It's a pretty big chunk of money. And if we don't follow through on that plan, we just cut a couple of million dollars out of the budget. We've got another to budget shortfall. Financing for municipalities in this current credit crisis right now is dry up. I mean, New York City, New York City, which has stellar credit. People always like to, you know, by their debt, could barely get through on the market just last week. In fact, they are only in Trent on the municipal markets. Now, if the city of New York is having a hard time getting finance for projects, I can only imagine the city of Fairfax is getting a hard time getting for projects, funding for projects. I guess that's my concern is that I rather have a plan flushed out on the financing side to some extent. I mean, I have no financial wizard that's your Mr. Hodgkin's job, but it just seems to me from reading the page of the Wall Street Journal that we do have, we are, this is mainstream right now. And if we start to build a road, start going down this path with these improvements, I don't want to be in a situation where I don't hit my college, say, we, the community, basically, started to build the road and eventually we've got to figure out where the money is going to come from and we don't have a plan at the beginning of that. So because that's what I'm hearing is that we can create this tax, district, or this tax incentive structure, but it has to be after the fact. So somebody's got to sort of front the money, if you will. Is that correct? That's correct. So we've got to front the money assuming we're going to get paid back. But the question is, what's the vehicle to pay next? And that's what I'm interested in. What is the vehicle to pay for this money? And I appreciate those comments. They're very apt. And I think we need to flesh that out immediately for you. But I also think the immediate priority in addition to that is finishing this plan. Otherwise, we have wasted the money. And how it becomes our money up until now and I'll do respect. It's been state money, federal money, and I certainly don't take that lightly because we ultimately pay for it, but this is now shifting that burden from the state to the city. And we become the banker just so we have it all in the right context. Mr. Esmer said. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. If we approve the 585,000 tonight, will that produce documents that can be put out to bid? Could we, could I defer to the engineer and the skin to come to the podium or whoever? Mr. Vendetti with Patten Harris Rust. Mr. Mayor and members of the council. I want to thank you very much for seeing us tonight and considering this proposed adenom. I've listened very attentively to all the items that you have taken before you tonight. And I can tell you that I know way, I'm envious of your position at this point in time. The last several weeks of the financial turmoil in this country have touched this all. And any of us that thought we were going to retire anytime soon are looking at working many, many more years. And that includes, I think, a number of us here tonight. But I have to agree with Mr. Sissam to put this plan back on the shelf and not completed at this point would severely undermine the effort that has and the and the money that this council, this city has expanded thus far in the last. But the question that was asked is if we spend this money, do we get a plan and when do we get that plan and we can go out to bed? That's the question. The council get, the council get my schedule that would stand out this afternoon. Okay, and the schedule that we put forth, the $585,000 is for Pat and Harrison Rust fees to get to the point where we can advertise. What it does include is the traffic management plan that we probably cannot do in-house. There's too many new components to it that are just beyond our capacity at the moment to deliver. We think that's gonna be in the range of another 300 to 350 thousand dollars. It's in the proposal that we provided, but apparently, are we not asking for that at this time because we don't have the sub-contractor proposal? I see you're only asking for $585,000. No, I'm sorry. The both figures are in the staff report. Okay. Well, it's close to $885,000. Now, we do feel that that's a little bit of excess in it in the event that that's needed. And we certainly would not bid you for anything more than we expend. But at the answer question, it's our best estimate at this time, given all that we know that we can accomplish the objective with that money. The plan is to proceed forward to what we've made significant progress in the last year on this project. We have reached a consensus on the geometrics of the plan that has held up a number of things, including the traffic-related components of the plan, but we're in good shape moving forward on that. We have reached the consensus on the approach to the hydraulics and the drainage so that we are now in sync with FEMA and VidaOT, and we move forward on that very, very nicely. There are some structural engineering that has to be done, that's in the proposal. And we can accommodate that if you approve this proposal. And the plan basically is to get back to V.Dot as quickly as possible so that we can gain right away approval, move forward to start acquiring right away. And as soon as we have enough of that moving to the utility relocations, which could take a year or more, at which time we will then, during that period of time, you will be obtaining right away, once we have enough right away, we'll submit the final drawings to the state. We cannot submit final drawings to the state until the right away is obtained. So it's not just our fees, it's not just the fees to get the utility relocated, it's also the cost of acquiring the right of way. And we have an estimated that, but I believe that someone in the city estimated that to be somewhere in the $7 million. So before we can finish the project and bring it to advertising, the right of way will have to be acquired. We will only be spending in the short term about $200,000. If you, if you, we can walk through that. That's okay. We don't need to do that. But in any event, I think you've given a stance through that. That's okay. We don't need to do that. But in any event, I think you've given a stance for that. But it's my best guess and my commitment to you. And I'll be seeing following this project through its completion, myself, along with my staff. This is our best estimate of where we think you need to be in order to bring this project out to big. Mr. Esmer, Cindy, do you want to, any other? No more questions, ever comment? Okay, go ahead, please. Well, just, you know, it seems to me, if you need an answer tonight, do we, do we, you don't need an answer for the 28th? No, you don't have to, I can, we can put it on the agenda with a recommendation to you for the 28th, but we don't require a commitment and answer tonight. Oh, okay. I thought you were looking for an answer tonight as to whether to put it on the agenda for the 28th. Well, I would appreciate the flexibility of adding it to the agenda in case you would want to take it up and discuss it on the 28th. Okay. I guess that's where I was glad, Mr. Mayor, was to say that I'm prepared tonight to say, move forward, but I need a lot of time to think about this as to whether I'm willing to put more money into it at this point. Mr. Meyer. Yes, I turn you. Sorry. When did the V.DOT requirement for tracking management plan become effective? I could answer that, Mr. Marrake, became effective December of 2007. And all of those requirements were part of our last set of comments from Vida. I've learned just today that within the last couple of weeks they have modified those requirements. So, I mean, if you look at continues to change, I don't know what the significance of that, but the sub-consultant who's providing us a fee for that work, and I hope they have that fee by the end of this week advised us that there was a recent change that memorandum. But the answer to your question is they adopted it December of last year. So if we had had our ducks in a row and started down this part in the pond in the road, a year or two ago we wouldn't be having to meet this new requirement. Correct? Well, it's a bit of a rhetorical question. I've been, this project has existed for a long time. I've only been involved with the project personally in any way since 2005. And we've moved the project forward as quickly as we could. And I think we've made significant progress in that time. VDOT has continually made changes to their requirements and they're constantly upgrading. I'd to answer your question, yes, if we hadn't the project approved, that would have meant that we'd have to have been doing our utility relocation about three years ago to be approved by last year. And I just, that's just very unrealistic to think I don't know how we could pull that off. But, well, is it your opinion that the traffic management plan, what is your opinion as to what value added that brings to the overall project, anything? Well, it's all about traffic safety for the individual that is driving the road. It's about, I mean, for example, one of the items that's impacted by this project is your own Q bus system. And part of the traffic management plan is to analyze the current state of affairs on Route 50 between 123 and even place. Model that. And then for each of the eight phases of construction that have to occur in order to keep the road open in two directions and keep the businesses accessed that are front along that road for the entire time of construction. We have to model the road that exists today and model each phase of construction and come up with an operational plan for that, that the entire stage of the entire project, as well as all the temporary traffic controls, so that we can tell the operators of the Q bus system, what will happen to their bus routes and their on-time execution during these eight stages of construction. You have to tell the Fairfax County or Fairfax City public school system what's going to happen to their buses that travel that road. And all the businesses have to understand what the impact is going to be on the businesses. So the only way to do that is with the software. Right now we don't have the option not to do that. Is that correct? So I just wanted to know. I'm being asked to, now it's another $300,000. I wanted to know what we were getting, well, you would have done that anyway. I'm just saying here we are having to turn around formally spending. Well, in the past, the requirement was to prepare a sequence of construction plan and leave it up to the contractor to submit all of these work zone management strategies and temporary traffic controls and all that stuff. And then the contract would have done that, submitting in effect shop drawings to us or Vida saying this is how I plan to manage my project in the temporary with all these temporary stages. Instead, Vida saying we don't want to do that anymore. We want that all designed ahead of time by the engineer that's responsible for the plan and that's a big change. And so instead of it being the counteractive that's doing it has to be done in advance on it. All right. Well, I didn't mean to get into all that, that by tail, but it all goes to the safety of the people's driving and public health safety and welfare basically. Well, I just didn't want V.Doc to be in this situation where it's bringing us another rock. Bring us another rock. So that's all. Thank you, Fred. Go ahead, Mr. Mayor. One other question, Mr. Sisson, we have right now funds available. The report says $15 million. That correct? And am I reading this correctly? Well, I think that assumes capturing future funds, which we assume will be there. How much money is actually in the escrow right now? 10 million. This is a bit of an arcane question, but Vida is holding those funds on our behalf. Is that correct? Yes sir. Are we earning any interest on this money? No sir. These we earning any interest on this money? No, sir. You said feathered funds, actually, and state funds. We never since this project, since V.Dott signed off on this project and they didn't execute the agreement until 1998 after the council had approved it in 1996. But we have never had accumulated funds sufficient to build the project. But the gap has been widening. And so that's another reason why we have to finish this project and then concurrent with completion of the engineering as the mayor has suggested figure out the financing and make a decision on that. Couldn't the silver lining in this and this saga be that some of the acquisition the properties to be acquired are going to be less value than they might have been three years ago. No. I hope you're correct. All right, I have a thank you, Mr. Mayor. So just to follow up that line of thinking, if we approve the $885,000 that's needed to get from point A to point B. We're assured under any circumstances that that money, regardless of what happens in the future, would be returned to the City of Fairfax, or could we be on the hook for a portion of that money depending on? And if you can't give me the right answer or definite answer tonight, think about it until our follow-up discussion. But my question is, is there any scenario that the City of Fairfax could be on the hook with no reimbursement for the $885,000 we need to do now just to get the final plans designed? I would have a more definitive answer after our meeting on Thursday. We'd be that. Okay. Well, here's what I would suggest we do. And without, unless there's some objection, we can't just put this on the agenda even for approval. We're going to have to do a work session. Now we can do it all in the same night. But I don't feel like we're, and I would just say this, and I apologize, I am incredibly supportive of this project, have been from day one, not trying to find a way to get cold feet in the 11th hour. But to be honest with you, I guess I've been doing this too long. We're going by an old game plan, and I'm done doing that. And we're just stumbling through this thing, and it's 500,000 that's another 300,000 that's going to be done in February of 11, which I heard back in 1998. And I've lost total confidence in this project. And at some point in time, a responsible counsel is going to have to ask the question and make the decision on how much are we willing to risk and commit of resources and funding because I've been here, I feel like I've been here before and I don't want to wake up one day and say, you know what, it all dried up, but you've already put another million dollars in it. So let's go out and flow to bond for $20 million or $10 million or whatever it is, just to finish the stormwater drainage. And that's going to be solely on the city. At some point in time, we have to get a wake-up call here. We need to rethink this thing. We need to relook at it through a different set of eyes. We need to figure out, in real dollars, what this tax increment plan could bring about in current zoning look. And just we, that's what we're going to have to do. And for that, to me, has to be done before we put another million bucks in this project. And if we can do that at the next work session meeting great, I think that certainly should be a high priority. I'm not suggesting we pull the project on this, but I want to just make sure if we go for you know, we crash and burn and have dialogue over debt and funding and use of one time money to balance budgets and we are about to blow through this thing like it doesn't even blink of an eye and that would be the absolute wrong thing for this council as we move into 2000 to at least in my opinion to do. So if we can get there within two weeks, great. But we're going to have to do that, I think, unless there's an objection here and before we can continue the dialogue. I guess there's no objection, so that's where we're heading. Thank you very much. I know it's late. We still have a few items that I think we can get through fairly quickly. But quickly, the next is certainly we'll reconvene the regular meeting. Item number 14 is the closed meeting for appointments of boards and commissions. I move the City Council convene a closed meeting on section 2.2, 3711A1 to discuss appointments to boards and commissions. All council members in favor of the motion please signify by voting aye. Aye.45 p.m. In 55 p.m. the City Council concluded its closed meeting, discussed appointments to boards and commissions. I move that each of us certify that the best of each council members knowledge on public business matters lawfully exempted from the open meeting requirements in the Virginia Freedom of Information Act and on public business matters identified the motion, convening the close meeting where Herd Discussor considered all council members in favor of the motion, please signify by voting aye. Aye. House and a passions. We're now to appointments, two boards and commissions that brings us to the commission of the arts, Mr. Restmusson. Mr. Mayor, move the appointment of Jeff Suffins for a three-year term extending through July 23, 2011. They're second. Second. We will be by Mr. Restmusson, second by Mr. Drummond. All in favor of the motion, signify by voting aye. Opposed? An appassion there, unanimously. Fairfax Community Criminal Justice Board, Mr. Stombries. Mr. Mayor. Mr. Mayor, I move the appointment of Mr. Daniel Conway for an indefinite term due to the resignation of Mr. Dennis Rankin. Second. Move by Mr. Stombries, seconded by Mr. Rasmussen. All in favor of the motion, signify by voting aye. Opposed and a passing and amc. The Fairfax Area Disability Services Board, Mr. Steinbergs. Mr. Mayor, I move the appointment of Joy Kepin for a three year term extending through November 24, 2010. Sorry. Move by Mr. Steinbergs, seconded by Mr. Greenfield, all in favor of the motion, signify by voting aye. Opposed? In a past unanimously. Appointments to the Planning Commission, Mr. Drummond. I'd like to move William G. Foster, Prairie Foyer term, standing through December 31, 2012. And I'd like to move the appointment of Ross Landis for your term extending through December 31st 2012 We've been Mr. Drummond second by Mr. Greenfield all my favorite motion signify by voting aye proposed and a past unanimously and now brings us to Commits by the city council Mr. Drummond comments by the City Council, Mr. Drummond. My apologies. Late, I will keep my comments short, but I first did want to... Thank one of our cue bus drivers. I was actually brought the bus there, and I had to have some work done on my car and took the bus home after taking the metro and I wanted to thank Preston Mullins. He's one of the cue bus drivers, looks like Santa Claus and one of the nicest guys that I've met really brightens up your day and sometimes our bus drivers and other public workers don't get the right person they need for doing some tasks that quite frankly probably deserve more things to get. Thanks to him. I also want to thank the Chamber of Commerce and congratulate them on their 50th anniversary and the Gala. Some of us here attended on Friday evening at the Center for the Archive-Journey-Journey-Couple at Michigan University. It really was a wonderful experience and thoroughly enjoyed it and I made it a very nice job presenting two resolutions, one from the city, one from Congressman Tom Davis. And then also on October 28th, I will be absent due to a conflict that evening. One thing I would ask the staff you you could look at it as I was walking down in Old Town last couple of weekends and I noticed that the pedestrian traffic signals seemed to be pretty short. Especially down Oli Highway and the crossing over to North Street by the time I walked and I walked fairly fast, that the beep had gone and it been down to one second. I can only imagine it must be difficult for some of our elderly residents or some of our children who are walking to Megan across. As we try to make our city more pedestrian friendly, I would strongly encourage us to extend the signals as long as possible so we can allow for people to walk across there in a safe fashion. That's it. Thank you. Mr. Meyer. I want to commend the citizens who participated in our open mic program tonight regarding the community center. If there was ever an example of broad-based quality citizen involvement in an issue, this is it. And I found several of the comments of citizens to be very helpful. And I wanted to call attention to a couple of them. First, I think, Gary about our challenge to us that if we're going to do this, we have to do it right. Is a good philosophy, whether or not the resources exist right now to do the community center as we would like to see it. I think Ellen Browers comments regarding the ceiling height is something that I've been pondering myself. I think that that is something that the staff should continue to work with the architect on to ensure the appropriate acoustics. I think that Mr. Rice's comments regarding making the approach to the site pedestrian friendly is important. By widening sidewalks, I would add appropriate lighting and that we ought to make the site bike friendly as well. And incorporate best practices for that. And lastly, and this is my own comment, that as we move forward with this project, that we ought to incorporate into the construction, the ability to avail ourselves of the latest technology to make the site not only inviting to people who are there but also accessible to those who might not be there in a virtual sense. So I commend the citizens comments on that project. Lastly, I want to remind everyone watching that this weekend is in fact, the effects high school's homecoming. The parade begins on Friday at 4 o'clock on only highway followed by a football game on Friday evening. So I welcome all alumni back to the high school and which the leadership team at the high school, the very best in that planning of this event. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Estima. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'd like to have for myself at least, I don't know if any of the colleagues are like it, but I'd like to get the minutes for the two meetings where we considered Ladi Plaza. And they were years and years ago, so I don't know when it was, but I'd like to look at those please. Thank you. Mr. Cremefield. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just one quick item. The staff could explore without objection from council and get back to us on what the potential cost may be. Short of a dog park which has been something some of us have been interested in for a long time. It's been difficult to find a small piece of property that we could do that with. I'm wondering if we couldn't along some of our city trails and some of our parks and even in some areas as the trails connect through far-croft down to the downtown. If we couldn't look at installing some of the poles that have a trash can with bags above it for the dogs, little doggy bags. So you're kind of cleaning up as you're walking along the trail. And you know that you see these a lot all over except in the city of AirBags. And it's one of those things that you know you take care of it. If you've got the bag, if you forget about it, you hope nobody's watching and you move on. And I think it would just be a nice thing for us to add along our trails. So we do have some. Where? Between Ranger Road Park and the New Draper Drive fields, there's one. At least one. That's right. By the cross. Well, I haven't seen them in Bandai Park. I've been there several times. I haven't seen him in some of our other parks. You just not go into the right parks, Mr. Greenfield. I guess, you know, it'd be my dog, you know, wants to be carried after it. He walks about. Well, walk. So maybe that's part of it. I don't know. Well, Mr. Greenfield, if there are no bags, that would be a step in the wrong direction. If we can at least look at enhancing what we may have and if it's not a significant cost item, perhaps we can do. Thank you Mr. Mayor. Mr. Stoffries. Thank you Mr. Mayor. Next time. I just want to thank Councilman Greenfield for his concern for those of us who are dog owners in the City of Fairfax. And it was pointed out to us earlier tonight with this made become the most bike friendly City Council in the history of the city that there was not a bike rack in this at City Hall. Is that the case? And if not, can we address that? We have one ready. We just cleaned and painted it. We're waiting for a approved location. Okay. All right, thank you, Mr. Mayor. Is that a long-term decision process, or is that when we can walk out in the hallway and pick for you? You're kind of going to be done. I mean, honestly, is that if it's ready, who has to make, is that you, Mr. Sissin, that I'll make it. Okay. I'll make the decision. So you'll work through that floor. I'll work in that. Council meeting. Okay. I usually try to not have comments by Council, but I do actually have a couple and I apologize. I'm not sure they're easy issues, but they're issues that we have to deal with and we're here so we might as well bang them out. But just on the follow-up of the community center, I agree. I do think it was great comments and we certainly continue the dialogue. I'm a little less clear in terms of the timing of some of the decisions and it strikes me one of the decisions we've been beaten around sort of the issue and we certainly heard it again tonight And that's the decision or whether or not we have this building designed with footings and support To allow for the second story option or not. It was my understanding the council Had sort of given a consensus that that would be included in the process. I think it was $150,000 item. The architect was going to get back to us, but I know he said it the offsite several times, the last Saturday it was $150,000 ticket, which is obviously over the $5 million amount. But I think we, and if we don't have to make the decision tonight great, but it seems to me that we probably are going to have to make the decision tonight, great, but it seems to me that we probably are going to have to make that decision pretty quickly because we have a timeline that we Mr. Rasmussen. I thought we had made that decision. We were going to do it. Had we? It wasn't clear and I'm not sure that you're saying yes we have. Yes, and it's I think in that staff report and the scheduled costs there on one of the pages in there and so we just need to make sure that that's added to the. Okay is that the consensus council is to add it to the work plan? Yes. Okay. Please. I'm a spy. I think the staff was was also you know I made the comment about the underground stormwater maintenance and the mayor has said well it's going to be a lot more expensive than you might believe. The staff is still looking at that issue as well and they may come back with a modified proposal that might meet some of the objectives in terms of the aesthetic view and keep the cost down to. Okay. So I guess my question is, I'm assuming we're still on schedule, I don't want the Council not understanding that we're a delay factor here because I know we have commitments and the architect and the staff on several occasions said that we are on schedule. My concern is if the items were bringing up and incorporate changes, then I could see us fall off schedule pretty quickly. So, Mr. Sisson, you guys are going to have to lead us. I heard an issue on the CUPLA, I heard an issue on the drainage, whatever, the stormwater drainage issue. We just had a consensus on the footing so that the option of going up, I have, no, I've been, let me finish and then I'll be happy to. Right. The other issue that identified and quite frankly probably stimulated some of the intensity of the dialogue from our friends from the art community was during the outreach meetings that we had last weekend We happened to be and I have felt this way for a long time But we happened to be sitting in the linear cafeteria and I wish all of my colleagues had been there so we could they could have participated in the dialogue but That room happens to be a 6,000 square foot room in the dialogue, but that room happens to be a 6,000 square foot room. As part of that dialogue, we then said, okay, if that's 6,000, what we're building is a room that's approximately a third smaller than the cafeteria. I will tell you, as somebody who's in the meeting planning business and deals with hotels and ballrooms, my concern is that a 4,000 square foot room will not generate the revenue. We think it's going to generate it, will not be of the size and scale to support the needs of the community. It will not be of the size and scale to support performances that I believe folks have in mind. When you look at it on the diagram, it looks really big. And for those who weren't there, I would urge you go find a 6,000 square foot ballroom or a 4,000 square foot room and make sure we understand what we're about to build because once it's built, we can't change it. I know during some of the dialogue and discussion and I don't have it in front of me, it seemed like there was a way to at least pick up some square footage by simply moving the wall of the ballroom to the wall of the four year without encroaching on the four year and trying to find a creative way to deal with some of that storage that was there. You know, 4,000 square feet and you put a stage or you put rear screen projection or you put a dance floor or you do whatever you're going to do is a very very small room and I just don't think we're focusing on it. I know we can't change the footprint of the building. I don't know if that was the comments that Mrs. Lestina was talking about when she said we had to reconfigure the big space. I'm not sure, but I would just urge us and I don't know at what point in time we have to have this dialogue. What format we have this dialogue, but I think we are seriously going to regret building a 4,000 square foot room. And if there is the ability without changing the footprint and without taking away from the spirit of the gift to do that, I think we need to do it. I don't think it's a major redo, but it certainly is somewhat of a redo in terms of some of that space. So, Mr. Sisson, you're going to have to direct us in terms of timing and when we have to have that dialogue and discussion, but it's my viewpoint that we need to get as close to a 6,000 square foot space as we can. I don't believe we'll be able to do that with this footprint, but we certainly can move in that direction if it's the well of the council. We'll be ready to discuss it on October 28th. That's our next opportunity. Okay. Yes, Mr. Greenfield? For comparison purposes, the room we were in at the National Conference Center was 2500 square feet. was 2500 square feet. 2500 square feet. So I had another 15. So a room and you added the room next to it where we had the meal. That was 5000 square feet. Anyway, Mr. Omen. Yeah, I apologize I didn't meet it interrupt earlier. We're talking about some of the additions to one of the things that have been discussed by the community and I think by the canals as well as the issue of lead certification or some sort of either sort of occasion process or making an environment less sustainable building with the cost of $90,000 for that. The question is, is that something we also want to think of? That's one thing number two. I was with the mayor and we walked that place and I would agree, 4,000 square feet, does seem pretty small and it also keeps my mind to the ceiling is gonna be with 3 feet higher. It's gonna be like 12 feet high, I think. That was 16? 9 or 12 feet high. I don't know. So that's something to consider as well. And maybe even should be even moving around so right now it's a protocol maybe making that's where we're in a horizontal space as well as we're looking at it. So those are the two things. One was the Nishuo. Whether or not we wanted to have the architects and the planners and the engineers looking to this as a lead certified facility or if some other designation and then also the issue of the square footage? Well my only comment on leads and I'll be the first to say I don't even pretend to understand it is that we were at 5 million, we just added 150,000 to it for footings. I don't know about the stormwater drainage issue leads as $300,000 or $400,000, whatever that becomes. Now suddenly we're not talking about a 5.1 million dollar building. We're talking about a 5.5 plus million dollar building. So, certainly not opposed to getting those costs and bringing that to the table when we sit and go through all these options, I would just say and I know we had the same discussion on City Hall and Police Department that it's a great goal and objective, but it's not free. And we're just going to have to weigh that benefit as we have the dialogue. But Mr. Assistant, what I would suggest is if we have to do on the 28th grade, but whenever we have to do it to keep on our schedule, we have couplers, we have stormwater maintenance, we have a redesign of the borrowing space, we have leads. We could find some time to meet before three weeks from now, but that's a killer for a schedule. Right. And then we have the other thing that didn't come up is the traffic study, but I believe that's already funded, and that's part of the dialogue. Is that correct? At least that's what we were saying on Saturday. The only other thing in this is a smaller issue, and I don't believe we have time for surets in some of the really good recommendations we got, but just the process, there seem to be, you know, if somebody said we needed two sinks instead of one and we needed a look in ventilation system. The question was asked do we have a sound system? Do we have lighting? Is it all built into it? I don't know those answers, but I assume we'll look at the tapes and the answers. The questions that came up since we don't have time tonight will get answers to you so we can go through all of that at one time. All right. Mr. Mayor, maybe one of you is going to bring up about the blinum grand opening. It's going to occur before you all are back at the dius. October 25th. And cannot happen on October 25th. I've said it. I think the date has been changed. Shelby sent me a date. It was sometime in November. I will be out of town on the 25th. Are you talking about the staffer grand opening? No, I'm talking about the Blendham Grand. Well, that's the first I've heard of that. This date has been selected and announced. It's never been coordinated with anybody on council. Last time I checked, we funded it. So I'll just tell you, I got a lot of time in energy in that. I would like to be at that. I'm out of town. That's my annual convention. Same date every year. Doesn't change. We've moved dates and times for everybody else's schedule. October the 25th doesn't work for me. Okay. We'll be glad to reschedule it. It's just another example of a lack of coordination. At my viewpoint on these kind of things. It's anyway. All right. Well, if I could just continue here because these aren't getting any easier, but two last issues is one of the things that this Council discussed in dialogue and had some, as probably a month, two months ago, was the discussion of first night, whether or not we were going to have a first night and a return. That project, the council gave the green light for the dialogue to continue. Mr. Stommeries, Mr. Drummond, I asked to sort of help guide that discussion. We had a number of discussions and calls they asked me to go to the business community as I was involved and engaged in the downtown merchants, both as a downtown merchant, but more specifically the new merchants that were organizing, which I did. I missed this cross at the opportunity to participate in the last meeting that we had. And the way that this issue was laid on the table was we have no money for it. We understand the importance of a high-profile activities. As a business community, are you willing to step up to the plate and help fund this and provide the entertainment and decide the size and scale of it based on the spirit of it not costing the city of Fairfax major dollars, which I think the last time we did it was, I don't remember, $150,000. The concept that came out of a number of different meetings over probably a month period was A, that all the entertainment would be provided by downtown merchants. I'm summarizing a lot, and I'm sorry, but I wanna just get through it, and we can either say yay or nay, and then deal with it later, but that the merchants would basically have entertainment in all their shops and restaurants and facilities. There would be a public square that the merchants would donate entertainment for at least an hour in the evening, so that there would be entertainment in a public square as well. Our friends from Pacer, Shoes have volunteered to do a fun run that would be in the late afternoon on that day they felt like they could get, I don't know, a thousand to two thousand participants in a fun run. The dialogue would be that we would close the streets in downtown. The city would provide a bond fire because obviously that has to be done by the fire department. That there would be a fee that would be charged. I don't remember what the other Oregon State, other cities do, but I think it was $10 a person or $15 a family. I might have the wrong number. That money would be used to pay for the cost of the police department, which obviously would be an expense, that it would be run and manage voluntarily, the bank, if that is in downtown agreed to be the banker in terms of coordinating the collection of fees. The long and the short of it is, I think the spirit of the dialogue and discussion is A, the downtown merchants very much supported the project and felt very strongly that it would be something that would be important to the downtown areas we try to bring exposure. We're willing to step up to the plate and provide the leadership. My suggestion is and I don't want to paint a picture that can't be delivered. I could see a potential of the funds for the police department not being available in this process. The good part about the entertainment is if the businesses don't provide it, you don't offer it so that the entertainment is on a closed process. I would suggest that out of the $50,000 that we've allocated for downtown entertainment that we take an amount equal to whatever the cost of the police department, put it aside. So in the case that the door receipts don't cover the cost of the police department, at least we're not dealing with unbudgeted monies and I had that figure and I don't know what it is, but I think it was $ 15,000 or somewhere in that area at least last year. A lot of details to be worked out were running out of time. The merchants are anxious to get the green light or the red light on this project and see if we can't move it forward with. So that's the best I can do in terms of reliving Mr. Drummond or Mr. Steinreys, did you want to jump in or add anything to that? Real quick, I was just going to say I've been having conversations with some of our corporate partners that we've had in the past. I still have a good number of calls outstanding, a number of calls we're playing phone tag or emails or being returned. The situation is that the request is out from our friends. Some have already, unfortunately, declined due to the economic situation they're in. Some others are just looking at seeing what they can do. This is sponsorships. I'm sorry. Sponsorship. Yeah, sorry. Sorry, yes. This is sponsorships for the actual event, sort of the infrastructure of the actual event, not the specific entertainment. And where we are right now is that it's really a matter of us trying to define a law, what that budget's going to be. I will say this though, I mean, the mayor just does a lot of business meetings and events. And my business is PR and public affairs. And the value we get and what our merchants get who quite can't really are hurting right now from us having an event like this is substantial. And we've invested millions of dollars into this downtown. And it'll be a shame if it doesn't realize itself like it should. So anyway, I obviously am supportive of the mayor's suggestion, but I will point out that I you know, I myself and I know my colleague as well are working diligently to find private funds, but I will tell you that every day the stock market trumps, you know, another 500 points doesn't make me feel that woman fuzzy either, that finance will come through, just in complete anger. But having said that, take of the consequences of what happens to our downtown. And we're really working hard, I think as a state to make those investments, and I think we should continue to do it. Other comments thoughts? Just on, Bruce. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just on first night, you know, we spend a significant amount of time trying to figure out how we're going to bring people downtown. We have something in the past while it was an expensive city, brought thousands of people downtown. It is worth, you know, all our effort to try to continue to do that and I support I support the effort. I know we don't have the city funds available to do it, if we can do it on private expense. I think it's a great thing for the city and folks with families in the city and I hope we can pull it off. Well, I think do we need a motion or how do we need a motion to allocate some portion? Well, we've already got the $50,000 set aside for downtown, so I assume we need what? It consensus that the concept. Okay. Okay. Mr. Greenfield. Mr. Greenfield. Sure. Is it the expectation that this is a one-time event or that this is an event that we're going to do a year after year from this point forward? I've learned to live in the present so I can't be. I can't answer. I mean, we're not approving it year after year in this month. I know, but I'm just trying to get a sense of where we're at as I'm dealing with budget numbers on one side and we're dealing with this on another side. I'm trying to figure out, is this something that if we do it this year, we do it next year, we do it next year. It's likely we'd have to, could we end up having to pay more next year because the business community may not support it next year. I mean, there's any number of, is there, do you have the last time you came to us, you were going to get us estimates to a few charge day in entrance fee. How much we could potentially realize from that, taking an average of the attendance from previous years to give us a ballpark. Have you done that? Well, I mean, if you take the lowest attendance, which I think in the city's numbers was 2,000 or 2,300 or whatever it was, the high side was 6,000. If you take 2,300 and you know, you charge 10 bucks, whatever that is, this $20,000 I guess. I don't know what the number is, but it's around 20,000, 23,000. I think and I had that information, I don't have it with me tonight, that the cost of the police over time shares the parliament George Mason University I think was about 15,000 but I might be I might be off on that it was I'm trying to be on the high side but it was somewhere in that ballpark so I think the expectation is even on the low side of the numbers that we'd be able to at least cover that extract expense to the to the city. Do we have an idea of what the budget? I mean, there's no question that this has been a great family event that when we did it, you had a lot of people downtown, a lot of people doing karaoke and all the different things that were going on. But and I know that we're trying to pull this together really quickly, but I feel like I still don't have enough information in terms of hard concrete numbers. And I guess I thought Mr. Drummond, we were getting a commitment to get some numbers. When we started this, I don't know, August? I guess the question, if you don't mind, I was going to ask, which assistant is, how much could this go into that question that this would be in Phil's asking is how much are we basically spending per event for Friday night for Friday night events? I mean on average. Well, I think it would probably average maybe $200 per act and there's been three or four acts. So with the advertising, you got a couple thousand dollars a pop. Well, I've seen some advertising that she said. What I've tried, the advertising that came out, because I can speak to that because we just have this discussion in the budget committee, or is concerned by budget committee members about what's going on. The advertising that just came out that hit people's mailboxes is not paid for by city dollars. It's Kimco has done that with the coupons and all that. Okay, that's done by them. That's what staff is spending on the ax downtown is less than $1,000 an evening. So you're $800, $900 at the most. So we're looking at the reason I was asking is because I was trying to figure out how much, I think we talked about through December, we're going to put these acts on. How much we were actually appropriating dollar-wise at at $50,000? And I guess that's what? Probably $10,000. Yeah. It'll be $12,50 at the high end. So, two year question. The mayor and I, and Mr. Tombray, in the numbers that we've combined are within the range that the mayor had discussed before. But I guess the reason I was asking this, the question Mr. Sistant was, it seems that we have a fairly significant pool of money left over for the, from that $50,000 appropriation. So I just wanted to point that out that we're looking at making the investment. This is not good, go up saying, but I think that, again, the entertainment's been provided for by the merchants. Baser has an event, you know, I and others have been working on trying to get private funding, but, you know, there are some economic realities and on the flip side there's some economic realities of the merchants downtown and I think it's just it's a jumpstart. The other thing too is regarding next year of the year after and so forth. I concur with you. I think it's a case by case basis but I think given the current economic situation that our local merchants face downtown it's something that you know know, we should be doing. But I certainly see your point there. Well, it's just so we can move this dialogue forward. My suggestion is out of the $50,000. We anticipate putting aside 15 of the 50 and the case that door receipts don't cover the cost, the direct cost of the city's staff, which would be their overhead. All the other direct costs, entertainment, things like that would be at the expense of sponsors, businesses, and or that would be the determining factor of the number of venues in the amount of entertainment that's available in the downtown area that night. So I think that's all capped. I think if we put aside the 15,000, which we hopefully won't have to spend, but I'm trying to be honest and worst case scenario that if the door receipts, if we don't get 2,000 people and we get 500 people, we're not going to cover the cost of the police. I don't think there's any scenario. And out of the three years, the lowest attendance we had, if I remember the numbers right, was 2000 plus. I don't remember the numbers. The high side was 6,000. That money should more than cover the cost of the city's direct expense. How much money has the downtown merchants committed? Is there a dollar amount? Or is it just they'll pay for the entertainment no matter what the cost is? They'll pay for the entertainment. They've also agreed to use their marketing fund, which is what paid for the postcard that you saw to help promote the event as well. I don't know that dollar amount. I mean, I assume they would, I don't know the dollar amount. I mean, I'm assuming I don't know that dollar amount. Mr. Mayor, one question, is it the intent that all the direct costs would be covered? Like, I mean, the Parks and Rec staff, I'm sure will be on over time that day to help put the vents on, build the bond fire, whatever. That certainly would be the intent. That's the cost I don't know, but so I said $15,000. I think that's on the high end. I think on the low end from gate receipts, you're probably talking $20,000. So there's some cushion. But I'll just say it. We're not talking about new money. We're talking about $50,000 to promote downtown. It's my viewpoint. This one event can bring more attention to downtown than probably every Friday night combined and so that money was already approved tonight. I say Airmark 15 of it or whatever the shortfall might be which hopefully won't be 15 and in worst case scenario we're not coming back to the council and asking for new allocation. We're just talking about That's how we were going to spend to promote downtown at least on that particular event. Quite frankly, there's not any more new information here so we probably either need to say we have a comfort level to move it forward or we don't and we can tell the folks you know that it's not going to take place. We just need to figure it out here. Other comments thoughts? I've got two yeas and three silence. What's the will of the group? The one folks referring to motion. Okay. Mr. Drummond, would you introduce a motion for the city to endorse a first night with an allocation of up to $15,000 of the existing $50,000 approval to go toward it. I'd like to make a motion that the $15,000 from the existing $50,000 for which we've previously appropriated to downtown activities in the promotion of our downtown merchants for possible shortfall related to First Night Fairfax or the event that on New Year's Eve. Thank you. It's moved by Mr. Drummond's second and by Mr. Stormry's discussion. It's moved by Mr. Drummond's second and by Mr. Stormry's discussion. All in favor, the motion signify by voting aye. Aye. Opposed? No. Passed by vote of three to two with Mr. Rasmussen and Mr. Meyer voting in opposition. Okay, there's one last event and there's no way around it. I'm sorry for the lateness of the evening. We have to make a decision in terms of the invoicing process for the McCain-Paylon event. We cannot defer this event, at least to my judgment, any longer because we need to get the invoice out. I have two documents that I would like to pass out. The first is the document of expenses that was submitted to us by staff, and I'm sorry, don't, in September. I need two more copies back on the side if I couldn't, then there's plenty for staff. I'm just going to put in the first staff. Yeah, let me grab these so we can pass that this way. I thought they would be good. No, no, no, no, if you just have to pass. Is there only one doctor? Here's. The document I passed out is the document that staff gave us in their review of the event, trying to identify all of the expenses related to it and all the staffing that they could identify that was allocated either directly or indirectly to the event. That amount totaled $67,000 in expenses plus another, sorry, I don't know my glasses. Another $8,600 in direct. Outside the organization expenses, things that were rented. No, no, no, no, no, no, I'm sorry, Mr. Mayor. The 8600 was other agencies. That's not something for which the city would bill or have any involvement with. It's just the total was 67.9. Okay. This is for Fairfax County and George Mason. Right. These are bills that are being separately to the organization or to the campaign. And look, I'll say right up front, here's the reality of it. The city was not prepared for this event, not by policy, not by precedent, not by procedure. I still will say and say this forever. I have the opportunity. I think it was the most exciting event that ever happened in the city. I would say that if it was either side of the political process, I think it was the most exciting event that ever happened in the city. I would say that if it was either side of the political process, I think it was an amazing evolution of where we've come as a community that in this middle of the historic campaign, the city would be selected for it. Now we have to and what makes it difficult for all of us is we're going to have to go back and sort of reinvent the wheel and create policy where policy wasn't determined the fair and best way to do that. So that's the starting point. The document that I am about to pass out is my attempt to look at that document. I certainly concur that the city should not be out of pocket for any of its direct expenses that were created as a result of this event. I'm personally not comfortable with sending a bill of $70,000 to the campaign for the City of Fairfax. Just for discussion purposes, I will pass out a document. Let's see, 3, 4, and I'll explain it, and then it will be up to the counsel to decide where we go from here. This document basically does twofold. One, it includes in all the expenses, it includes all the expenses related to police and fire. That includes overtime in anybody he was brought in, but it also includes all of the direct expenses to the police and fire that were just assigned in the course of the day. We're already on duty, but got assigned to the campaign. Could you repeat that, please? Sure. What this does is it's multi-level, but I will, I'm going to start with police and fire. What it did is, what it does for every single staff position, whatever department they are in, that was brought in specifically for this event, that was not there in the normal course of their business day. Every expense is included in that. Whether it's park and recreation, whether it's any department, sign in signal, right away's, ballfought, parks and ballfills. As I understand what this document does, I hope I'm going through this. This is the, in addition to, it includes a hundred percent of all the police and fire during the course of their business day. In other words, if they were on duty already on that and whatever day of the week, it was Wednesday and in addition to it, those expenses are included. Is that I'm making myself clear? I'm, I'll continue the rest of it, but at least with police and fire. So in police and fire, 100% of their salaries are included whether they were calling it over time or whether they were already on the job that was their normal shift and they happen to be working that day in the city of Fairfax. But assigned to the campaign. Fairfax, but assigned to the campaign. It then eliminates, I hope I passed out the right event. And then Mr. Hodgkins, you can help me too if I get sideways here. But it does not include in what it eliminates, the biggest difference between the $67,000 and the $46,000 key. Park and recreation, city manager, system city manager, sign and signal, if they were already on their job during the course of the day, and just simply went to that event and supported that event versus going over to the park or going downtown or doing whatever they may do and going to a Van Dyke Park and mowing the lawn and Van Dyke was a bad Providence Park or whatever, that was excluded from these expenses. In other words, they were salaries, they were already going to be paid in the course of the day, whether they were at the Van Dyke Park or they were at Providence. That's the major difference. The other difference is, and this is a, and I think that's the major differences in the two documents. I might be missing a few things. Oh, and in the other major differences was, fringe benefits was included in the staff's original document, which at least by my way thinking does not change an expense to the city regardless of whether they were at the Pail and a Venn or not the Pail and a Venn. And I don't think it changes if they were paid overtime. It's a fixed. Okay. The only fringe that's included in this is the fight that's paid with overtime. Fight the paid with overtime. The additional expense that would be for it. The other issue that was in the original one was a $75 rental fee for Van Dyke Part. Excuse me. $75, $500 rental fee. It's my understanding that that was basically, the staff identified that we did not have an existing policy on what we charge for Van Dyke Park. It was my understanding is the discussions took place leading up to the event that the only existing policy we had for Van Dyke Park was the $300 for the Pavilion. There was not a normal policy charge for the use of the park. Staff looked at what they were going to pay if they used Fairfax High Schools. I understand at the multipurpose or the gym. I believe that fee was $7,500 and that's basically how the number. No, it was, it was about $10,000 for the field house. And it was going to be almost $18,000 for the field, football stadium. Okay. What is put in here and it was just a number is $2,500. That number, I don't know, somebody suggested it. I put it in there. But I would just want to say, whatever fee we charge for the park will be our new policy from this day forward. We can't go back retroactively to, in this case, the McCain campaign and say, our only policy was $300, but we're going to charge you X. And if whatever we charge X, then that will be the policy for non-city sponsored events from this day four, whether it's zero, whether it's 300 bucks for the Pavilion, whether it's $7,500. And this item that came to 46,846,894, I believe has a $2,500 for facility charges. I can't justify the number, that's just a number. It's somewhere north of 300, which is what I believe was discussed with the campaign, at least it was what existing policy was. It's a number, well, it's just a number. So we have two documents that could be a third, there could be a fourth, we can go wherever we want. It seems to me that I can only speak for myself that we need to be fair, we need to get charged, we need to recover our direct costs as we all agree to a front. I think $46,000 is a lot more than I think the campaign probably anticipated, but I tried to work through a compromise in looking at both documents and talking to many of you. Starting point, we're going to have to provide direction. Okay. Mr. Mayor, Drownman. Three things. The first is I just want to remind our colleagues that whatever we do here, we're going to be setting a precedent in relation to not just political events, but any event that we want on large crowd here in the city. So I urge us to proceed with caution here. This should not be a money making exercise in order to study a fair of facts. Number two, I concur with the mayor that this is created and born out of the fact that we don't have a policy that pertains to these sort of events. And I think we certainly would like to have more of them. Political, non-political would have you. So I do suggest that maybe we want to set up another point in time, creating a policy fairly soon about this. Number three, which leads to that, I would actually recommend we zero out the rental Van Dyke Park or put it to 300 because I think that's an arbitrary number and I am very concerned that we'll have other festivals or activities that we might want to invite in the city and we're going to be setting a precedent by charging our park. And I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't. I'm just saying that we shouldn't just be arbitrary with our numbers. And I guess the fourth thing is that relating to that is we need to look at what kind of activities are held there and this kind of goes back to the policy issue. So I guess the recap, one is I do think the mayor for working hard on this to try and define a fair and equitable solution. Number two, I think, you need to create a policy. Number three, I think we see the zero out or bring the $300 previously agreed policy charge. And number four, we just need to, as a body, decide what type of events we want to have here in the city as it relates to policy. Thank you. Mr. Meyer. I think it's important that the citizens understand how this came about. And it's unfortunate that we're having this conversation at close to midnight when most people are going to not often turn off the television. But the McCain campaign signed a contract with the city before the event and they made a commitment that they would cover the cost incurred and those costs were spelled out some specificity in the document. And I agreed that this was a was a historic event and I'm pleased that it occurred in the city. was a historic event and I'm pleased that it occurred in the city. However, I disagree with Mr. Drummond that this is not a precedent for other events in the city. This was a unique event because it was a purely 100% political event and the cost incurred by the city to houses event may have had some spin-off effects for people leaving the event and spending money in the city and we welcome all that. But this was fundamentally different from bringing in an arts group or performing group or any other kind of group. This was a political event and the entity that came in here signed a contract to agree to cover those costs. Now there is some question as to what is a reasonable cost to rent the bowl in Van Dyke Park. And I would agree with that. And if you're using the benchmark of a facility at the high school, where there's wear and tear on the facility, there's utilities and et cetera, et cetera, I would acknowledge that perhaps the benchmark of $10,000 for the field house or $18,000 for the stadium probably doesn't translate to the same dollar amount at Van Dyke Park. And a $2,500 fee might be reasonable. And I would concur with the mayor in their regard. Where I disagree is having to do with the cost to eliminate the salaries of the parks and recreation staff and the city staff. Because those persons are paid, their salaries are paid by the citizens of the City of Fairfax, and they are here to do the citizens work. And the Parks and Recreation Staff could have been doing other things that directly benefited the citizens of the city, as well as the City staff, the City Manager, the Assistant City Manager. Yes, they were at that event, but if the event didn't occur, they would have been doing something else on behalf of the citizens. And it was the mere presence of the event, which in fact, incurred the cost. So from my perspective, I would suggest that the costs for the parks and recreation staff and the other city staff that were eliminated in the second proposal be reinstituted. I don't have an issue with the fringe benefit being deleted I think I would concur with a mayor in that. And whatever those Mr. Hodgkin's what would the cost if the park and recreation and the other city staff salaries were placed back into this bill what would this amount to? Actually if we had if we did include all out-of-pocket costs all salaries, and we eliminated the French benefits, and did not have for the park. And the reason I'm giving you this scenario is because this is one I actually prepared at one point. It's just over $44,000. So if you added $2,500 to the park, you would be a little under $47,000. And that would include all salaries just as not include the fringe other than the FICA on overtime. Well that's really not too different from what the dollar amount here is. Correct. Well I could support that. Well if I could just make sure I understand it because I want to make sure we do have the right number. The document and option B that I handed out is $46,000, which included 100% of police, 100% of fire, including those that were already on duty that day. Took out the fringe benefits, took out the regular staff that were not over time, but were there already in the course of their day. And it came to 46,000. How could you come to a lesser amount? No, I have to apologize. I'm back at that. I'm actually looking at a scenario where I did take out a lot of the salaries, including outside of public safety. I'm sorry, let me go. Let me back up on that. It's mean it did seem a little low. Yeah, that's yeah, and there's a good reason for that. All in close to the range. Well, basically it's 67,000 minus 7,500 minus the fringe benefits. We have, if we did go all in clues of, you know, less the fringe and the park rental fee, I'm sorry. It was just over, it was 51,436. So that does not include the 2,500 fee for the bull? So that would, that's correct. It does not include the 2,500 dollar fee for the bull, the bull? So that's correct. It does not include the $2,500 fee for the bull, the bull, and it does not include fringe benefits, but it does include all salaries. So if you- So the total, I'm sorry, and if you put another $2,500 on to that, you would be at about $54,000. No, but if you took out the $2,500, I just want to make sure we're comparing apples to apples. Then if you included all the staff time whether they were already on the job or not. Right. You took out the fringe benefits. Your amount would be $50. $51.436. $51.436. Without any park rental fee. Okay. If I could then let's use that as option A. Use mine as option B and then there's probably others that want to have discussion too, but so we're narrowing this down. I know Mr. Stombridge, you wanted to respond. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. You know, Mr. Myers said that this was spelled out with specificity in the contract, and I would just argue that the specificity of the contract and I would just argue that the specificity specificity of the contract was subject to some degree of interpretation hence three options here. So it's not like they signed a contract that said X amount of dollars and that just did not happen. Well, I understand that. So it is subject to some interpretation hence we're here doing it. I am absolutely opposed to paying $2,500 for the use of the pavilion. This is a new number that we just came up with and I did not want to discourage any group, political or otherwise from using the wonderful facilities of the city. the wonderful facilities of the city. Whether it's people hearing in the city from the people who may lead this country, or other political organizations or charitable organizations or the Boy Scouts or trails, they would have you. We want to encourage people to come here and use these facilities. So I think that at a minimum we should spend, pay no more than $300 for the use of, use of selling out a yield to Mr. Drummer. Well, could I, if we, maybe we're getting close here? Ask a question. Sure, but I'll just suggest that we're debating $4,000. I think we're actually just, we're debating, and we're debating $20, $4,000. I think we're actually just debating, and we're debating $20,200, because there's $2,500 included in that number. Maybe I'll reclaim my time because I hadn't finished. Okay, so I'm, yeah. Well, go ahead, you had to finish it. Yeah, I mean, Mr. Greenfield would be next, and then we'll work our way back. All right, so, so that's where I am as far as the salary, I'm for option, I'm going to call it option V, which is the 46,000, even though I think that number is excessive. But I understand that the desire and the need to recoup the city's expenses. And we can have all over whether the full time salaries of people employed by the city, they would have been doing something else. At the end of the day, the city decided to have, this event occurred in the city. It was a benefit to the city and our dedicated staff did their job by making this come off and be a successful event. So I'm for $300 and no more for Van Dyke Park and for Option B, which is 46894. Okay, Mr. Greenfomer. Minus. The thank you, Mr. Mayor. The fee for rental of Van Dyke Park, Mr. Stombrer, as I said, that's a fee or it would be a future precedent sitting fee for renting the Pavilion. I'm assuming he mis-spoken and for renting the entire park, because that is what they did. They rented the entire park, not the Pavilion. And I think the intent here is to try to come up with something comparable for a like facility, whether it's the football field at Perfectes High School that I think rents at $1,600 an hour. Anyway, and I don't know what the right answer is. I don't profess to know that I'm just trying to get an understanding, or the $2,500 would be for the park. Well, yes, I feel like the park was essentially fully occupied by the event and not essentially, it was. And it was not available to the citizens of the city that day except for those intended to go to the event. Is it, realize someone will argue this sets a precedent for everything in the future, but we certainly or the staff certainly has the ability to decide whether a fee is charged at that rate or not, depending on who the organization is. If it's a nonprofit like the Boy Scouts and they want to, they want to rent it for a camp where you're something, I don't think it's never been done in the past because they can't shoot arrows in the city, but anyway. That fee would, would be charged to them or not. But we'd have to sit the policy. You know, let's just get a motion on the floor. I've got staff over here looking at this. I personally could go with the compromise, but Mr. Grasmuson. And then, well, I personally don't see anything wrong with a $7,500 rental fee. If you can believe the newspapers, and I'm sure oftentimes you can, the McKay, pardon me? You said $7,500, you said $7,500. The $7,500 that was in the original bill. If you can believe the newspaper, the McCain campaign was willing to rent the field house or the high school, or the other, somewhere between $10 and $18,000. And so when they ended up at Van Dyke Park, which was a venue they were satisfied with, it seems to me the 7,500 is not unreasonable. And the other point I would make is I don't think it sets a present because if we ever have a thing like this again, we'll have a contract and contracts can be handled on an individual basis, which leads to my third part. I somewhat feel put upon and at a disadvantage to have to decide this when I haven't seen the contract. So I don't know how specific it was. But I do think that the $7,500 rental is not unreasonable and does not set a precedent. I have another man speak. Mr. Meyer and the Mr. Smith. This is a technical question of the staff I do not see any fuel costs for the police or the Q buses on either document. There were no Q buses used as I understand for the event and the fuel was minuscule of the police cruise units. I think we did make an hourly charge for some of those, but we did not add a fuel charge because it was so slight. Okay, so to try and put this into some kind of form that we can decide on, we have Mr. Stommeries, what I would call, well, did you characterize this option B? Well, this one here which is 46,894 is what I was calling option B, which was the second handout. Okay. Well, I would like to go back to the first handout, which is what the staff initially came up with and propose an option B. Well, it would be that, no, I retract that. I agree with Mr. Rasmussen. It's very difficult to try and look at this from a, you know, just getting these documents with that image, you can't really study this more carefully, but I'm willing to concede to the mayor's option B, but not without the Parks and Rec and City staff salaries included. We don't pay city staff to work on behalf of political candidates and political events. I think so so we get that option clarified that if I could, please, I would be the staff's number minus fringe benefits. Let's put the fee rental fee aside just for a second. Okay. The staff numbers, if we have minus fringe benefits and that becomes 51, 436. Okay. 51, 436. Right. And that is, that we'll get to the rental fee in a second, but let's say if we can deal with, so we have two options. One is 46, 894, which is in essence. A hundred, we're all in, both options are in agreement with police and fire. The only difference is city managers time, parking recreation time, sign in signal time, that we're not over time, but we're already on the payroll. That's really the only difference we're talking about here. And personally, I could get comfortable with Mr. Myers. We're just not talking about enough dollars here. Mr. Mayor. Mr. Greenfield. I move to call a question in the motion for 51. What was the number? 436. 436. 460. The Council authorize the city manager to invoice the campaign for an amount of $51,436. Can I get a second? Second. I need to debate this and go home. Seconded, Mr. Green. Move by, if I could, I'm still the mayor. The motion was made by Mr. Greenfield. It was seconded by Mr. Drum. And that motion is basically the city's staff's numbers minus fringe benefits, which comes to 51,436. That's the motion on the floor. I'm sorry. And it's also with the out-of-park rental fee. Right. We're going to get to that in a minute. So 51,436 staff numbers minus fringe benefits. That's the motion that's on the floor. Now we'll have discussion. That number I'm told does not include a park rental fee? No, we haven't gotten there yet. We're going to deal with that in a second. Okay. Mr. Oman. To be honest with you, I'm actually more comfortable with a number of 44,394, which takes away the rental park fee, but I can live with 51,000. But I'll be honest with you. That's not included in there, just so we're 51, 436 is just staff expenses if I can use that phrase. It has nothing to do with the rental. We're going to get to that in a minute. I understand it. All I'm saying is that, you know, I would vote for the 51,000 with no rental fee. But I personally would have preferred with it. We send them the invoice of, again, my math is probably off here, but it's basically the number 46,894 minus the $2,500 rental fee, which is $44,394. Personally, I prefer that number. I mean, I think that we are setting the precedent. We are creating a situation that we're going to find ourselves regretting if we start adding all this this time then. That's just my personal belief and I think with all due respect here I've got a lot of ground to stand on that and then saying this. Could you personally think we need to be fair and equitable in terms of what we are going to be feeling them? I don't care who it is. I don't care for the McCain campaign, the Obama campaign or the Bob Bark campaign. Well, you might want to talk to the folks and scowky about what they experienced. Okay, if we could just for the latest, let's stick to the issue. All right, I may ask. Okay, so we have a motion, we have a second, we're in discussion. Mr. Meyer, did you want to go on? Okay. All right, let's see if we can vote on the motion on the floor, which is staff numbers minus fringe benefits, $51,436. All in favor of the motion, we'll do a roll call, vote by signifying by voting aye. Mr. Drummond. Aye. Mr. Meyer. Aye. Mr. Restmusson. Aye. Mr. Greenfield. Aye. Mr. Stombries. No. Okay. The vote was five to one with Mr. Stombries in opposition. Now, if I could, we're going to go to the rental fee for the park. And the rental fee for the park, I believe the existing policy and which was in place for that event was $300 for the Praveian and nothing for the open space. That's certainly, let's make that option A. Let's just throw out my option of $2,500. I just pulled a number trying to come up with something and the staff number is $7,500, which will be option B. And if somebody wants to throw an option C, option C, $300. Well, that is option A. Oh, I'm sorry, I think that was one last question. Okay, let's see if we can get a motion and then we can debate. Is that a motion, Mr. President? Yes, I like to make a motion that we charge a rental fee of $300. It's been moved by Mr. Drummond, seconded by Mr. Stonebeard's discussion. All in favor of the motion, we'll go by roll call. All in favor of the motion, vote by signifying aye. Mr. Drummond. Aye. Mr. Meyer. No. Mr. Rasmussen. No. Mr. Greenfield. Mr. Stommery's. Yes. Okay. That was defeated by a vote of three to two with Mr. Drummond and Mr. Stommery's voting in opposition. Is there a motion on the floor? Was somebody introduce a motion? Mr. Rasmussen? I move $7,500. Is there a second? Die for a lack of second. Is there a motion? Second. Okay, there there a motion? Second. Okay, there's a motion. It was recommended by Mr. Greenfield of $7,500. Excuse me. $2,500. It was seconded by Mr. Meyer discussion. All in favor, if there's no discussion, all in favor, the motion will signify by voting aye. Mr. Drummond. Yes. Mr. Meyer. Yes. Mr. Rasm by voting aye. Mr. Drummond. Yes. Mr. Meyer. Yes. Mr. S. Moussen. No. Mr. Greenfield. Yes. Mr. Tombriz. No. Okay, we're back to existing policy, I guess, if we don't get a motion, which is 300 bucks for the pavilion, but is there another motion? Mr. Meyer. No, do. Meyer. No, Mr. Greenfield. Mr. Anybody? I like to make a motion. Mr. Drummond, that we charge no rental fee. Is there a second? But is that what you're going to, I mean, all I want to do is whatever's fair and equitable, and I don't know what that dollar amount is. Is that fair and equitable if some other organization comes in and they say they want to rent the whole park? Are we going to say, oh, sure, have it for free? No, this is part of my point here. I don't know for discussion mode. I mean, I know this is what sauce is. We're in comments by Council. You can say whatever you want. Here's my point. You're talking about it. I mean, you're exactly right. My concern is this, is that if we start going over that $300 limit, which is sent by policy, and I'm presuming in a very thoughtful manner with discussions about what we're going to do in terms of policy regarding the Parkland Recreation System, I just, I'm a little bit loath to go over that because I believe strongly we're going to be setting a precedent for all of our parks and recreation. It's not just a man-dike park here. And so, hits, that's why I'm fine saying. And if we don't want to go for 300, could we defeat it at that? And, fine, we'll just do zero. I mean, I don't want to get into a position where we are charging people $1,500,500, $3,000, $4,000, $5,000, $7,000 for use of our parking. We have no policy whatsoever. Mr. Mayor. Mr. Mayor. I think Mr. Councilman Rasmussen's comments are cogent in the sense that the campaign initially wanted to use the high school, either the field house or possibly the stadium, and we're willing to pay those rates by ironically by moving to the park, which could accommodate twice the estimated attendance previously. They were able to get much larger crowd, the weather was in their favor, and it was much more successful. Now I was willing to vote for 2500 simply to resolve the issue. Is it, did I believe that it was actually a fair and equitable charge? Well, possibly, but possibly not. I think I do make a distinction that this is the political event. Now, for some of us, we come from different experience bases. And having spent my entire career and the executive branch of the federal government, I understand the need for nonpartisan behavior, I understand the need for not only conflict of interest, but the appearance of conflict of interest. And I don't believe in any way does this discourage the ability of the city to have another event like this political in the future. Are we going to be able to arrive at a figure that we all agree on? I don't know let's We'll have to wait and see Just to I'm sorry to belabor this but The consideration should not be what any particular customer who wants to use the public park is willing to pay It ought to be what we rightly should charge people who want to use the public park is willing to pay, it ought to be what we rightly should charge people who want to use the public park. And in the past, we've not potentially not rented out the entire park, but we have established a $300 fee. It's not what people are willing to pay, it's what we ought to charge and what we ought to charge in the future. I agree 100%. I agree with you. The $300 was for the pavilion only. No, let's go ahead. If I could. That's our fee is for the pavilion. Let me just jump in here and I certainly don't want to be this dog to death. We just agreed to a $50,000 line item and now we're debating over something certainly smaller. But I would just say from my perspective, there's a big difference between the field house and the park. Probably $25,000 difference, just in security alone. If we're being totally fair and you're going to try to compare the andike decision to the field house decision, in the field house where you got walls and you got doors, you've got entirely different because I sat and listened to the dialogue and discussion, secret service, SWAT teams, there were people in trees, there were people in bushes, they used buses for a line of sight, it was a stunningly different expense item. Here's my issue on it. Whether it was right or wrong, and I'll allow anybody to correct me because I don't remember who was there and all the staff. When the question was asked, what is the existing fee in the charge for Van Dyke? I believe our director of park and recreation said the only existing policies that are in place for this park is a $300 rental fee for the provision, and there is no existing policy for a fee for the park. That was said that night, I believe, that was the policy that was in place for the event. If we want to change it, I was trying to throw out a compromise number to get to that point, but if we really want to talk about, in my viewpoint, right and wrong, I don't know how we change our policy after the fact. And I would just respectfully disagree. We have already dramatically changed policy by this vote tonight. In the future, in my viewpoint, if somebody wants to use the park, now if we want to change this policy in the future, that's fine. And Park and Recreation Staff has to help out. The police department has to stop traffic on an only highway to let people come in and come out. The trash truck people have to come in and pick up the trash afterwards, and it's a special event. I clearly understand that if it's a city-sponsored event, we could wave it. We have now said a policy that if Bob Sisson is the city manager shows up to talk to them about the event and the coordination of the event, we're going to send him a bill. I think that's not right, but that's where we are. Getting out of this issue to me is more important than where we are, to be honest with you. And that's the precedent we just said. We're now talking about a fee and all do respect. I don't buy the rationale that suddenly we're going to say a political event after the fact we're going to charge a fee that's going to be consistent with Fairfax High School's fee, which costs the City taxpayer's $140 million to bill and to renovate. And that's the same fee we're going to charge for our open space in the City of Fairfax. I don't think it's right. I think we're reinventing policy now. And while I certainly was in the spirit of trying to find a dollar amount that we could get past this, whatever that is, we have said he precedent. And I will insist with the same ethics and the same emotion and the same morals that have been expressed here that we're going to charge the McCain campaign. Every single group that uses this part from this day forward is going to get the same series of bills at the same level of usage. Whether it's a police officer that walks to the park, because somebody feels like they need a police presence or not. And that's the reality. If we want to get into this, the McCain campaign didn't sit there and say, I want the parking recreation staff to show up to this meeting and I want the city manager to be at this meeting. We did it because we were there to protect our assets. That we didn't they didn't sign a contract to give us an open checkbook. They just didn't. Now we're're going to legislate that from this body and we just did. And I'm okay with that. But we've got to figure this, we're down to the part facilitation fee. We've got zero, I think if we don't take action, then the existing policy is whatever the existing policy is, it's been explained to me as 300 bucks for the pavilion, zero for the open space. If we want to change that, quite frankly, we can just adjourn the meeting and I think that would be what it would have to be billed because that's our existing policy. Or we can sit here and debate it and come up with some compromise, Mr. Drummer. Mr. Mayor, I would actually like to make another motion. I would actually like to make a motion that we build the campaign and light of your comments about the policy setting that we have done in charging city manager's fees. I like to have a motion on the table that we build a McCain-Paylon campaign, a total of $44,094. Mr. Drummond, we've already got that motion. I understand that, but I believe I have. Let me see if there's a second to that motion. Died for a lack of second, Mr. Greenfield. In view of the fact that we can't get a majority for 300, we can't get a majority for 7,500, we can't get a majority vote for 2,500 or zero, or maybe even zero for that matter. I would ask that the staff come back to us at some point in the future, that looks at a policy that we put in place in the event that any kind of an event comes forward, that wants to rent an entire facility like Van Dyck Park, and they come back with us to us. If they feel that 300 is not reasonable, that they come back to us with recommendations, and at this point, Mr. Mayor, I move to a turn. I assume that's not a debatable motion. That's real like I'm in. It does require a second. Okay, we have a motion to adjourn all in favor of the motion. Signify by voting aye. Aye. No. Mr. Mayor. Mr. Rasmussen. What's the Mr. Courtasmussen. Mr. Rasmussen. Mr. Rasmussen. I'm sorry. Did I interrupt something? No, Mr. Rasmussen. Was the $300 fee listed in the contract? No, no it was not. And just for clarification, I'm not trying to make this complicated. We have a $300 fee for rental of the pavilion. My recollection on our special events form, which is what we use for the parks, it simply speaks to a fee to be determined. That's the policy. That's all it says. After the fact, it just says fee to be determined and then agreed upon between the parties. I think it says something like that. We don't have a copy of the party. Us being the parties and the King camp in the city. That's the issue. Unfortunately, we don't have the document with us this evening, but. Okay. I would suggest that that is, it was agreed to. If the director of public and parks and recreation is a, as a senior member of this staff, I believe that was quoted that night was 300 bucks and zero for the open space, but I really am willing to try to come up with anything that's reasonable to get us out of this dialogue. And I certainly would be willing to make the motion with the exception of the Obama campaign. We never bring in another political event in the City of Fairfax and the history of mankind if I have anything to do with it, because this is just totally ridiculous. Mr. Rasmussen, let me further that, let me push that a little further. You know, I think that we've talked here tonight about setting precedence and in the future when some group comes to us, we're going to charge them this or that. Most of the groups that come to the City of Ayrfax bring two or three hundred people. No one has ever brought 23,000 people to the City of Airfax. And so I think that puts this in a whole different light, which is, I think, the reason why that some rental of the park of a substantial amount of money, whether that's 2,500 or 7,500, is a reasonable thing to charge a political campaign. Political campaigns pay lots of money for lots of different things, and they get stuff free, that's true. But I don't think they get much free from municipalities. And I would hate to see us leave here tonight saying we can't charge a reasonable fee for allowing 23,000 people to congregate in the city park. Does that mean Mr. Rasmussen that you're willing to make a motion for a fee of $2,500 and we'll try it in? No, I'm not willing to make it, but are you willing to support it? What's it going to take to get us to be able to go home? It's 12. Well, somebody make a motion. Mr. Moe, just at three. I mean, I want to do four. May we pour the current with Mr. Rasmussen in terms of? Is your button on? Yeah, I'm sorry. I just need to speak to the microphone. I would concur with Mr. Restmuskin in terms of need to charge for appropriate fee. However, in light of the fact of these two basic facts, one is that we don't have a policy that is scaled, if you will, to meet this kind of circumstance. And the fact that the council, and did not see the contract, did not appropriate any funds, it was through the parties, the agents of the city. I just don't think we should sort of grandfather a fee in here in terms of providing and coming up with a number. I think that we need to go back and have staff come up with market rates, with all our parks, and maybe scale it per size. So if you have 300 people, if you have 400 people, if you have 500 people, if you have 700 people, you have 20,000 people. I think that there is a precedent here because it's regardless of whether it's a political campaign or not a political campaign. Is that I don't want people or groups in the city or groups in the community or in the region or in the country quite frankly. To come to the city and say, well, you're going to charge as X, Y, or Z. I know there's some members of this council who are looking to toward 2011 as a very big year. I believe it's a hundred fifth anniversary, the start of the Civil War. There are going to be groups that wanna come here. Are we gonna have to tell them that they're gonna have to pay $7,500 or $2,500 for a park when they wanna have a reenactment? That's gonna attract, I mean, a few thousand people. Do we really wanna set that precedent? It's irrelevant who the campaign was or what the campaign was or what the campaign was if there was a McCain campaign or a reenactment of the campaignable run. The reality of it is we need to be diligent and be thoughtful about this and at 12.25 AM, I think what we need to do is rely on the policy that we had that the council approved and the council agreed to it is the city policy for the date in which this action took place Which is the wreck which was the motion that I have made for 300 hours is the amount to allow maybe I don't know But the reality of it is is that's what the policy was at the time and I believe that we need to have a thoughtful Deliberate processing coming up with policy for this city because, like I said, there's going to be a big event here in 2011. We all want civil war reenactments and the festivals that come here, we're going to reenessence fair, we're going to charge for that. Those are going to bring thousands of people. So we don't, I, it's a few years down the line here folks, not just, you know, in the moment of the emotion that we have. I'm going to play a little bit more. Oh Thank you.