I need to be willing to a very short close meeting before I start it so I need to read a motion for us to get out of that close meeting. And at 7 o 3 p.m. the City Council included its close meeting for consultation with legal council for legal advice. I move that each of us certify the best of each council members. Knowledge only public business matters, lawfully exempted from the open meeting requirements and the Virginia Freedom of Information Act, and only public business matters identified in the motion, convening the closing meeting we're heard discussed or considered. All council members in favor of the motion, please signify by voting aye. Opposed? And it passed you down. Would you please stand for the invocation which will be presented by Council Member Wooder. Let us pray. Lord, we give you praise as we come before you this evening. We give you thanks for the many blessings you have bestowed on us. Thank you for the restored of rain and the beautiful spring. Thank you for our parents who have helped us become who we are today. Thank you for our children who you have entrusted to our care. Bless those who protect us. We humbly ask for your guidance and wisdom as we store the gift of the city this evening. We pray this in your holy name. Amen. If I can now ask for representatives, we have two Boy Scout troops that are here tonight. I heard you. under God, individual, with liberty and justice are all. If you all please be seated. Let me just thank you all for coming out tonight. We're always thrilled when members of the next generation come up and assist us in our city council meetings. And if you would just real quickly quickly maybe just tell us your name. I'm Matthew and I'm from a troop 1131. I'm Travis Luterno and I'm from troop 1131 also. Tell us your last name. I'm Matthew Luterno. Last name? Travis Luterno. Bobby Quinn from a troop 1865. I'm Eric Quinn and I'm from troop 1865. Let's get around to a clock. We have a couple of very quick presentations that I want to do. And the first is, you know, for those of you who have been around the city for any period of time, you know what a wonderful community we have. And every now and then, we stumble into a story that just quite frankly is worth sharing in a very special way that, in my viewpoint, sort of signifies everything that's special about this wonderful sense of community that we have here in the City of Fairfax. I'm going to share with you the story first, and then I'm going to ask all the representatives to come forward. But Mrs. Perez, who is a citizen in the City of Fairfax, had the misfortune of consecutively contracting with two unethical contractors for an addition to her home here in the City of Fairfax. A considerable sum of money, and it was a very considerable sum of money was paid out to these contractors. However, the addition was never completed and what was done was poorly constructed and did not meet the building code regulations. The contractors are currently under investigation with a police department for construction fraud and unlicensing contractors but nevertheless a citizen who's left holding the bag. When Ron Weinberg, a neighbor with extensive building experience, heard of her troubles. He took it upon himself to inspect the addition and found that much of it needed to be rebuilt. Mrs. Perez has also been living in the home for two years without heat and air conditioning because one of the contractors had disconnected it. Working with friends and neighbors, Mr. Weinberg organized a group of licensed contractors who each devoted their time, efforts and expertise to rebuild the addition for free. And that's what this city is all about. What I'd like to do at this time if I could ask for everybody who's been involved in this with Mrs. Pres. Come forward, Ron Weinberg, Joshua Collins, Timothy Jenkins, Mr. Nunez, Mr. Richardson, Mr. Thompson, and Mr. and Mrs. Varner. A few all would come forward. Many of these are contractors. Many of these are neighbors who just stepped forward. Does Mrs. Pres here actually tonight? No? OK. Well, these are the real heroes of our community. And the fact that you all did that, the fact you took your time to do that, I'm going to ask that each of you, I know some of you all have a business and your contractors. And these are the kind of people we want our community know a little bit about your business. But let me just say on behalf of the entire community how very, very wonderful your gift was and your effort and we have just a, I'm probably going to mess it out of the order, he's not here, okay. I understand you're actually the one who started organizing the effort, and certainly appreciate that. Yes sir. The man who has the suit. Richard Smith. Now I'm sorry. From me. And I see the horses here. I think you too. And let's, I'm going to have them all introduce themselves. But let's just have a round of applause for working together. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Why don't you you were kind of the organizer understand why don't you tell us a little bit more about the story and he's got some pictures here of anybody would like to say them please. Thank you very much. This started out one morning as you can tell a little bit older so I qualify as a grandpa and my wife was out on the street with my granddaughters getting ready to get on the bus and Maria Perez was there with her grandson and she walked up to my wife and they knew each other casually and she said, do you know anybody that can help me? And she started to cry. And so she explained a few things that had been going on. And she said, yes, I think if you get some of your papers together, about 6'37 o'clock, when I should come up to the house and talk to my husband, Ron. So that's how it started a little over a year ago. And I didn't realize what I was getting into. The gentleman, and I used the term loosely, who described himself as a builder, turned out to be an unlicensed, not bonded and not insured. He was introduced to this lady through her nephew who said, Amaria, this is a good guy, the country that we're from, I've known him since high school and he'll do you a good job. Well, since then, the nephew has kind of disappeared and won't come around anymore. This lady wrote out a total amount of, little over $72,000 and $72,000 in checks, which maybe he may have $30,000 in the house. I seriously doubt it. He also used one of the building inspectors form to get another draw of $30,000, which he was not entitled to to the contract that he wrote. And by the way, the nice people in the building $1,000, which he was not entitled to to the contract that he wrote. And by the way, the nice people in the building and inspection office code enforcement gave me quite an education along the way, and I'm very grateful to the very fine staff you have. There's a... Come to find out if you're not licensed or bonded or insured and you don't have a class A, B or C license, you don't have a class A, B or C license, you can't write a contract. He turned around and had the gall to sue her for breaking his contract. Well, we got our pictures together and our information and we went to the courthouse in Conor Suit. And the judge was just kind enough said, hey, I remember you from back when when I was just a young fella Starting out as a commonwealth's attorney and Which was very nice and We had our conversation and he said y'all don't have a lawyer. Do you know I said no sir? He said You're prepared to go aren't you and I said yes, sir? He said I think I can make this go away. And he did. And since then being in contact with a detective Ed Vaughn of the Fairfax City Police Department, what a fine officer and gentleman this man is. It's been a pleasure to make his acquaintance. And it has developed into a very nice friendship. He made the charges and you ought to see this man's jaw drop when he put the strong arm on the law on him and said he was under arrest and down the hole they went to the jail. And that started the process where this man could no longer intimidate this lady in our community in broad daylight. I eventually had to defend, identify myself as a retired police officer in order to take him from the yard and put him on the street. He has not come back and will not. All in all, a very nice article was in the newspaper about this. I'm grateful. But I think the moral of the story is that it's buyer beware. If you're going to hire an unlicensed contractor, you've got yourself a first class problem. First of all, it's insurance because if somebody gets hurt on the job, guess who pays the bill? You did. And that's part of the thing of the licensing of these people, not only in the county and the city and the state, it's to protect the home owner. So I congratulate these very fine people for the jobs that they have done. Some of them are my neighbors and we've developed a bond friendship even closer than ever before. And maybe eventually here we'll get this lady's house finished and get her back in her home. Thank you very much. Thank you. And let me real quickly because I know many of you all spend a lot of time in energy. Why don't you tell us your name and if you have a company in this field, feel free to share because this will be a wonderful opportunity to share with the community what you do. First, I want to thank everybody for coming out tonight. I see the Fairfax City Fire Department police here. I want to give a special thanks to you because you've helped my family and things in the past. Sorry, I'm a little nervous. My name is Joshua Collins. A licensed plumber. I've been living in the R-more community for about eight years. And two years ago, I was driving through the neighborhood. And I've seen this lady's house. And I've seen what looked like forms on the ground. And I was like, that does not look right. The foundation does not look set right. And that foundation set that way for about one year. And I seem wrong outside the house one day. And I pulled up and I said, what's going on with this job? What's what's happening? He's like, it's a very bad deal. I don't know how we're going to go about it. We're just going to have to I don't know how we're going to go about it. We're just going to have to thank and put our heads together and get through it. And I thought to myself, well, I'm here in the community. If you ever need my help, here's my name, here's my number. I'll be more in glad to help. And I live here in the community. I'm not going to run away on you. So I really don't have too much more to say. I just know that when I first seen the job, it wasn't very well intact. And I knew that there was issues. And we ought to thank God for people like Ron that put themselves before profit or before demand or before I'm looking for a word here. He put himself before the entire issue and I mean he put Miss Perez before the entire issue and he's gonna see it through and he's one heck of a good guy and we owe it all to him. My name is Michael Thompson and I'm with innovative HVACR solution and and I'm with Innovative HVACR solution and I just want to thank all of you for having me this evening here. Thank you. Larry Vaughner with Innovative HVACR solution. I'll have it be here this afternoon and kind of touch to actually accept a gift of gratitude. Michael, they came to me and told me we're partners and he told me he said, you know, this lady down the street is really hurting. This was after the time when they disconnected every air condition, whatever else. And, you know, most of it was his work, okay? Every time he said, you know, Larry, I need to get some of my say, well, go ahead. You know, it's for the betterment of, help this lady and actually she's, she's about the same age as his mother and live right down the street. So anything we can help to help a neighbor is, you know, it, you you know things like that more you give the more you seem to receive thank you Karatino everyone living in Manes, Arsene, Yonune, I live for 25 years around the city. And Mr. Bre, he got the program for a few years. And many other times, I tried to help him. But I know I have it by myself to do help. And something maybe, Angel, I missed the rank. He put it my way, one day, me and him. He got a meeting to talk and he started when I found a whole situation but that lady in a communication meeting hanged. He started to do some work for her and all the neighborhood. They got some another day also to help already. I guess the license is a class B. And now working as Fairfax County, Packer, for 15 to 20 years. And now I got a sign spray by Carpenter. And thank you very much for everyone over here tonight. And thank you for everything. Hello, my name is Charles Richardson. I'm from MMM Custom Construction and Handman Service. First of all, it's a pleasure to be here tonight. I want to give praise to this man here, Ron, because he had bought this to my attention as well. And we figured we had to do something about it. Unfortunately, the guy who, well, one of the unlicensed contractors, lived directly across the street from me, which is not good for doing business like at your neighborhood. I like to say, at least I'd be hired anyway. I'm not read the best of speeches so yeah. Yeah I've been here actually in the city of Fairfax since 1963 and I've seen a lot of development of this going on around here. And I believe in treating people right because that's just what we're out here to do. That's what this business is primarily for to help out other people. I know a fairbite do how to do contract and work, I'm sure we have contractors everywhere, doing it every day. So thank you again, I really appreciate it. Thank you. You all made this very proud. Thank you all very much for what you did on behalf of Mrs. Perez. And let's show one more round of applause for that future. Thank you all for your text life. I'm going from a quickly one good news story to another good news story, although a kind of a bittersweet story. But we have two members of the fire department who actually were tired in the city of Fairfax. And if I could ask for George Brown and Don Bartlett, please come forward. And if I could read the following proclamation, whereas in 1978 the City of Fairfax established its own operator fire and rescue department, whereas George F. Brown and Donald R. Bartlett were one of the original employees hired by the city staff to the newly formed City of Fairfax Department of Fire and Rescue Services, whereas during their tenure, George and Don served the citizens of the City of Fairfax with distinction, displayed exceptional leadership from the City, the Northern Virginia region, and the Commonwealth of Virginia, and they influenced the wide variety of fire department, City, Regional and State policies and programs, and whereas during George Brown's 30-year career with the City of Fairfax Fire Department, George rose through the ranks to attain the position of Captain on April 1, 2008 became one of the first career members of the Department to retire with 30 years of service. And whereas during Don Bartlech's 30-year career with the City of Fairfax Fire Department Don rose through the ranks to attain the position of battalion fire chief, and on March 1, 2008 became the first career member of the department to retire with 30 years of service. Whereas the level of excellence that George Brown and Don Bartlett have displayed, and there are many accomplishments during their query will leave a legacy of service to the City of Fairfax and others who should strive to emulate and through their service, they have earned the heartfelt thanks of our community. Now therefore, I, Robert F. Letter and concert with the City Council. Do hereby commend George F. Brown and Donald R. Bartlett for their outstanding service to the City of Fairfax and further express the Council's gratitude for bringing distinction and notability to the city as a result of their dedication to public service. It certainly goes without saying to both of you all on behalf of the Council and the entire community and it looks like your entire department here tonight, we thank you very much from the bottom of our heart and everything you've done to keep us safe and service to this community. Thank you very much. Thank you all very much. Thank you. Don made me go first. I guess ranks. You still have, I've written. Not for a long. I do have to say that it has been a total pleasure working for the City of Fairfax. I've enjoyed every day that I've worked. People say we have the finest department and you have to believe it because we do. Our public service, there's so many stories out there that you pull aside any of these ladies and gentlemen here that will be happy to tell you what they feel and how deeply they feel for the people in our community. And it's from the bottom of my heart. I thank you. It's been very difficult to leave, but I'm going to enjoy retirement as well. Thank you very much. Thank you. To echo a few comments from George too, I had the fortune to come out here from California in 1977 and was looking for a job. And I was very, very fortunate I found a career that I fell in love with. And the people that I've gotten to know, live with, work with, to know live with work with essentially we live with them just a greater bunch of people you'll never find and about two weeks after I started here I got a letter from Fairfax County saying come to work for us it took me all about five minutes to make that decision and I'm so happy I did it's been a wonderful ride and I thank the city service delivery here in the city is phenomenal. To mayor and members of council do whatever you can to get these folks within me. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Quick. Thank you very much. We have one more retiree, long term retiree from the City of Fairfax and will William Bill Wilcoe please come forward? I have to tell you for those of us who lived in the City of Fairfax our entire lives, these are all very familiar faces that are coming before us tonight. But whereas William Bill Wilcoe moved with his family to the City of Fairfax in 1967 and graduated Fairfax High School in 1973. He was a senior and I was a sophomore at Fairfax High School. Immediately took a job with the City of Fairfax where he set the record as the longest tenured employee serving 34 years and one half. And during his tenure with the City of Fairfax Bill held various positions from a laborer, truck driver, signal technician, cue bus driver, Q road supervisor to his final position as Q driver supervisor. And whereas Bill received numerous accommodations over the years, including one of his work during President Carter's visit to the city in 1978 and as the Public Works Department employee of the year in 2001. And whereas Bill has always had a well-deserved reputation for dedication, reliability, and acquired, but exacting attention to detail and has been known by all his work with him for his extreme generosity, his professional manner, and his a consummate practical jokester. Careful now. And whereas the level of excellence that Bill Wilcoe is displayed in as many accomplishments will leave a legacy of service to the City of Fairfax that others should strive to emulate. Now therefore I, Robert Fletcher, and Concert with the City Council do hereby commend William Wilcoe for his long standing service to the City of Fairfax and further express the Council's gratitude and the appreciation of our community for his dedication to public service. Bill, thank you very much. Thank you. I just want to thank everybody and I'm not much of a speaker so thank you again. Okay. We actually have one more presentation that's going to be coming up in a minute, but because of time restraints in the agenda, and that went a little longer than I thought it would want to go right to the agenda, which now brings us down to agenda item number four, which are presentations by the public and any item related to the City Council agenda for April 22, 2008, not calling for public hearings. So if you're here to talk to us about items number 7a, that opportunity actually will come up a little bit later in the evening, but anybody who wants to address any other items that are on tonight's agenda again that does not call for public hearing. This would be the appropriate time. We have a agenda item that is of great interest to both the Moesie Woods and Cambridge station. The Cambridge station, our homeowners association actually has their annual meeting tonight. And so I promise I would let those folks who are here to go first so they can get to their meeting. Is there anybody here from the Cambridge Station area that wants to speak? Mrs. Gay. Good evening, Mayor Litter, members of Council, staff and many friends of long time service to the city. I came at a very last minute decision after calls all afternoon because my heart is in this presentation. I ask you tonight that you take your vote even though we would like to be present. So we know what your stand is on this, but I'd like to address some issues before you make that decision. So we request respectfully that you move this to an agenda item later. And these are the issues I'd like to address, and I'd like to have it entered into the record if you will so indulge me. We had a concern about Draper Drive, and in cleaning out some of my old files, I actually came across a document that had to do with a special use permit and we just wanted things clarified. I turned it over to our president, our attorney and this is not an intent to embarrass anyone. We just wanted resolve. Originally, when draper was developed, there was an agreement that there would never be lights there Of course long as the city owned it and to our knowledge that wasn't addressed when we went through the public hearing So we respectfully ask that that be taken care of Before development occurs and the other item I've decided to enter into the record so I can clarify for all time our interest and staffer and our reference to a wetland issue that we looked at as informed citizens and got the original delineation. So I want to enter that into the record tonight so that you have this for reference because and I would like to have the original back. I didn't have time to make copies, but I want to submit this in a map that shows that when this was delineated in 2000, there were two isolated wetlands on the surface, one in the southeast pole and one in the northwest corner. The second data point on the report refers to the report in Ferris, a forest, a swale there. And so this is what has driven our curiosity and interest. And if it needs to be permitted or, you know, just to cover everything, please consider this before you develop it. And as I've said to many of you, we're working with the city not against the city. We want you to make the right decision here and it's possible that there was a mistake made in 2000 and so now you have this as a reference point. And then the last request I have, if you will so indulge me, lies probably going to start blinking in a minute. One of our really esteemed members of our board, who's a lead certified architect, wrote this document about six weeks ago, and we came to read this in, and then we were advised to wait, you know, go through the budget hearings. But I would just, for all the work Ed put into this, I would like to read it. He addressed this to you on the 10th of March. And he said, I'm a resident homeowner of 9734 Ranger Road and Vice President of the Board of Directors of Cambridge Station Association. And I've previously written to you and Council members and spoke at public hearings regarding my objections to the proposed playing field development on the Stafford West property. I would like to take this communication to be placed in the official record. I'd like to do that tonight. I know that you received this by mail. And then he wanted to read address issues. And this is based around our invitation to explore this with working with Westmore. So you may, this may be old to you, but this is what we have been considered and invited to do. In appropriate use of the site, I object to the proposed active recreation development of the track known as Stafford West, because the proposed soccer field development is an inappropriate use of this property. The proposed development, while scaled back from the initial concept, is still overdeveloping this sensitive site and still carries a number of negative issues, traffic safety, poor distribution of athletic facilities to resident population in your face lighting and noise, destruction of a natural gym, loss of property value, and cost inefficiencies to develop this particular site. Let's look at these issues in more detail. Traffic safety, the placement of this facility in your air fax boulevard at the end of the city, will force many residents into their cars to do that battle at peak afternoon and evening traffic on Perfax Boulevard at this time. I now see four to five cars waiting for the light to change and to make left or you turns from Perfax Boulevard eastbound on Stafford Drive. How many more cars will be turning into Stafford Drive at game time and How many more cars will be turning into Stafford Drive at game time and bagging up into the traffic lanes at peak times the long-top light timing favors the perfect spill of art traffic flow. So the feeling is that many left turning cars would potentially stack up into the left travel lane waiting to turn. Given the revised location of the playground west of the soccer field, I can envision parents with small children parking behind outback and left turning into the KFC driveway rather than parking at the proposed parking area and having to walk all the way around the soccer field with small children in tow. I don't think that's going to be possible now because I think the field now is going to be huge fence there, but when we looked at it some time ago it looked like it was so far away from the restroom in the parking lot that probably a lot of parents would be tempted to park in the outback parking lot. The soccer fields should be located so that kids can walk or get there on a bicycle. It's certainly not a good idea to force them to cross-fair facts boulevard. Well-cl clan communities can often are often designated so kids are able to get around without even crossing streets, much less major say highways. Poor distribution of playing fields. Our most be woods and Cambridge station communities are now served by two fields at Draper Park, soon to be improved and developed or re-improved. The greater population of children resides on the Southside of Fairfax Boulevard, which is where we felt any new soccer field should be located. And he went on to say it was less concern with the adult users of the field about playing during peak traffic times than about the parents bringing children. And then he just went on to say pardoning arrangements with other entities could be explored before fully, more fully before we destroy one of our last remaining natural sites that could serve as a unique natural laboratory in educational tool. So he urged you, please, his first principal planning put the fields where the need and the kids are. And he went on to address in your face future lights because the people in our community think the lights will follow. Future and we all know they will come lights on high poles will be seen in the windows and most be woods condominium and by all residents in the community. Note the field would substantially be a higher level elevation than most be woods windows. Once destruction of the trees along the northern line of the field takes places the futures have any foot high light poles that would tower over everything in the neighborhood. The lights will be seen clearly by residents, even with the best shielding. This is his professional opinion. Bright lights across the field will shine objectively and everyone's window placing, facing the field. Light beams at the angle required to illuminate the feel from the south side poles, we continue across the field and right to the apartment windows beyond. And let me just try to wrap this up because this is detailed. He felt that noise, close proximity and destroyed trees would allow the constant thump of soccer balls and crowd noise and cheering to be clearly heard by many residents every night the feel would be used until the field shuts down. And he went on to say this wouldn't be an occasional or a weekend use. There's no escape for nearby residents. And he said I wish this anticipated environmental news from the lights and noise on anyone living close by. And then Ed goes on to address a natural gym that the Stafford West property represents opportunities for a nature center, extension of the City Trail Network, an outdoor laboratory, an environmental education tool that can be actively used for our K-12 school children in George Mason University. At the same time, such low impact development could be a demonstration project and a real environmental enhancement to the Acquity Creek and Chesapeake Bay Watersheds. And it would benefit a much broader section of our population than just members of the soccer community. It can only squeeze in one field in an adequate parking lot, a poorly placed playground. And he felt went on to say to build this expensive monument to one use, trees on a large amount of the hillside must be disturbed to remove from the field. And then he went on to talk about concern about the sidewalk relocation in the west to the west side of the Safrid Field. I'm really not trying to take too much of your time. There's an issue about loss of property value. There's a list of issue about cost efficiencies to develop this site. And then he goes on to talk about Westmore, a compelling alternative about zoning. He feels that zoning needs to be, we all feel this, we need to introduce open space zoning or some definition so there is no longer the misunderstanding or misperception of what open space and parkland development versus active recreation is. That's really kind of the heart of this. And then finally he closed with, we needed to go through a vigorous review process and to realize that your decision has far reaching consequences. And so we would just ask you to take a step back and reconsider and do the right thing for all involved. And I know that's what you're attempting to do. Thank you for your consideration. I'd like to enter this if I may. Into the record. Please. And Mrs. Gail, let me just say also on two issues regarding the Board of Zoning Appeal Action in 1983. I think I speak on behalf of all of my colleagues and the staff as well. The system didn't serve as very well. The fact that that just came up after all of these extensive meetings and hearings. I know. I was amazed when I found the old document. Now, the technical aspect of it and reality is that because the roles and responsibilities between the BZA and the Council have changed over the years and it's the feeling through that process that the City Council has the most opportunity to reach most of the community in terms of public hearings that the Council action was appropriate. has the most opportunity to reach most of the community in terms of public hearings that the Council Action was appropriate. We certainly right up front will say that it's just a shame that it didn't come up during the process and all the way long through it. Regarding the wetlands, as you're aware of the core of engineers, is taking a look at the wetland issue? Again. And we hope to hear back in the near future in case there is any change. And certainly the question on the difference between 2000 and 2008 is under review. And so certainly they'll be sharing that with the community and the city is the process unfolds as well. So thank you for your feedback. I appreciate this and I just like to enter this so that you can see. I don't know if you have the 2000 reports, you can see what caused the question to arrive. Okay. Now, if I could, if there's anybody else from the Cambridge Station specifically, will let everybody have an opportunity to address any item on the agenda tonight that they would like Jackie Fairborn, President of the Cambridge Station Association. First, I would like to thank all of you for allowing me to have the opportunity to speak tonight and I will call on to issues. First, I would just like to say that I do agree that the JAPRDRIP fields are in bad shape and do you need to be prepared and now I will continuing on the next part. Our last year in Citrix was at Lonear. We did a budgeting project. In this project we were given a set amount of money and we first had to buy all the essentials like housing, cars, stuff like that. And after that we were free to spend any remaining money on frivolous items. Unfortunately for me I wanted the lower-paying jobs. I could barely afford to keep my car. But the point of the product was to just that you should not spend money, you don't have, those will come back to you in the end. It seems that the proposed construction of the ball field that suffered less is ill advice at this time. I understand that both deals have been playing for a long time, but a better time would be to deal with those surplus money or when there's deficit. Because when I was listening to the budget discussions, it seemed that you stretched even talk about putting hundreds of thousands of dollars in a fancy field with a restaurant, playground, etc. Even if the money is borrowed, the people of Fairfax will stop to pay for it and not just for a few years. They'll have to pay for a very long time. After I'm through the college, I would like to move back here. And that loan will be paid off while I live here after college. I and most other taxpayers will not be playing soccer. So therefore it will benefit neither me nor most of the other girls in the city and away in this hypothetical situation. I know that my grandmother is not by this way. I'm not going to buy this way, but this way, and you should not buy this just way. Thank you. Thank you very much. And we'll be sure to tell you grandmother what an admirable replacement you were for tonight. Thanks for coming out. Okay, if there's not anybody else from Cambridge station, let me just one last check. If not, we'll actually go first to the sign up list list and first the sign-up was Tony and I believe it's free tag from South Bend, Indiana. 7A, okay, that'll be coming in just a second. We'll make sure we come back to you. Anybody else who wants to address the City Council on any item that's not calling for public hearing? Yes, please. My name is Dale Keys and I live at 10321 Cleveland Street and before you get your before, you get your annual, sorry, you're bi-monthly sermon from the Revenueville. I thought I should take this time to tell you that there are some bus shelters that were used during the construction of the metro. I'm sorry. That's okay, take your time. Some of these there are two bus shelters over on what was Marshall Road extended across Nettley Street and that's sure what it's called now But these two bus shelters are currently not being used and there are some places In the city to that I can think of. Imagine that. One of them is across from the Safeway, across Oli Highway. That because I am now regimented to public facilities, I cannot drive a car. I have to ride a bus or ride on this thing here. I would mind seeing those two shelters being used. I realized I have been told that they may not be owned by the city. They may be owned by Metro, but they're just these two places that I frequently travel to. So I will leave you now for your bi- buying monthly sermon. It's okay. As always, thanks for coming out and sharing. And Mr. Siss and I assume you're taking those notes and staff will check into it. Thank you. Anybody else like to Mr. Perman, please? Good evening. Gary Perryman, 11008 Westmore Drive here in Fairfax. I don't know if it's fortunate or unfortunate, but about three months ago I was the one that started this whole process between the Westmore and the Stafford Property Project. And I realize that that's probably not going to happen, and that's cool too, because I can lose every now and I just wanted to make a few things clear before we go, because I came out of this looking like an ogre, and I wanted to let everybody know that when this project started, one of my first statements was that it was for the betterment of FPYC. I wanted to see him get more fields, not less. I also said, I don't know if it was publicly or privately, to most people in here, that if it was going to delay the start-up of the field, then I wouldn't push for this, because I do not want to stop the project from going. I've just thought it would have been a better idea. And a couple of comments that came up about that were thrown at us about this being the perfect site for a ball field. Well, anybody that looks at the prints will realize that this is far from a perfect site. On a perfect site, you don't have to put in this much drainage. And the perfect site wouldn't cost considerably more than it would at other sites. And so I guess I'm getting down day just just re saying what we said before that the idea of having it at that staffer I don't know if it's a wetland. I know that there's reports in both sides. I think that issue should be looked at and and like you said, it will be decided this week. If it is a wet land, then I think we definitely have to rethink. And there was a couple of questions, and I talked to Mike today, and he cleared most of those up. I still am not completely in favor of this. I don't think that's the best site for the field. Whether you put it at Westmore or Green Acres or one of the other places, I think it would have been a better site. At this late date, I'm not so sure that's going to happen. I just would ask that you reconsider it. Take a closer look at it, and if we're in that big of a hurry, then by all means go ahead and do it. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Param Parameter and for all of us who know you we've never accused you of being an ogre. So, you see why you do this. Okay, anybody else like to address the City Council? Yes sir, please. Mr. Palatano. Mr. Palatano, to the comment on the court session. Sure, please. My name is John Boytono, chairman of the Fairfax Boulevard Partnership. And on behalf of the partnership, as it pertains to the work session item, letter C, the Fairfax Boulevard Master Plan. First of all, I'd like to thank Mayor and Council for all efforts that have put forth in the redevelopment of the corridor. And we wish to convey our consensus for the agenda item today as it pertains to the brochure. We think it's a good idea and that it should be done. And we'd like to convey our desire to see the city hire an engineering firm as soon as possible to start drafting the engineering road improvements that incorporate changes recommended in the transportation component of the master plan. And we would also like to see the city hire a consulting firm highly experienced in redrafting zoning ordinance that would precipitate redevelopment along the corridor. And if possible that a high priority of these items be conveyed to the city staff. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. Anybody else like to address the council again on any item that is on tonight's agenda, but does not call for a public area Yes, ma'am, please I'm reading this for a Christina Gaines who is out of town at the present time. And so I'm just going to read this because I'm used to dealing with preschoolers instead of adults. The following is my statement and I wanted added to the minutes of the meeting not as a summary. Please give a copy to the no-taker. Here it is. I apologize that I cannot be present, but I am with my family on our spring break. Planned long before I decided to run for mayor. I want my statements added to the official record. I object to this contract being watered. Also for the record, I was originally fur-fielded, Stafford, but that was before I was aware of the extreme price tag on the one field and before I had the opportunity to go to the site and look at it. I am still committed to increasing the number of bull fields for our kids to play in. However, I am against strapping our citizens and kids with the price tag. This particular field will cost and the price that it will cost the environment, the environment that they will one day inherit. I have a master's degree in environmental engineering which included an in-depth course in wetlands delineation. I worked at US EPA and DC for almost 14 years in the municipal permitting section writing regulations and training permit writers. I even understand why the average citizen doesn't understand the benefits they get from wetlands. To simplify it, let me say that they are not waste lands. They filter and retain water that keeps basements from flooding and purifying water and streams much like a tree purifies the year we breed. They are home to more species of animals than any habitat in these United States. As sure as I know anything, I know that this tract of land has at least one very large wetland. I only looked at the wetland on the plantation parkway side of the upland area, not the one which has been disturbed that is located just off-stabbed right near K See, I spent six hours in the pots and wreck off is pouring over the plants for this field. I have never seen such a large amount of drainage pipes on a bill, ball field, ever. That doesn't tell you that this is a wet land, then why are there so many perforated drainage pipes and a retention pond? Name why the other other field in the city or county that needs a drainage retention pond. A big concern is that the current drainage plan will not be enough to keep this field playable. The salty wetland soils will consistently fill out the perforated drainage pipe and no water will be able to drain out. The silty soils will need to be constantly removed from the collection basins. It will be a constant source of financial drain from the taxpayers pockets until finally someone says enough. But even if that happens, that wetland will be lost forever or at least for the next several hundred years until the wetland soil layer is rebuilt by nature. This is truly an economic issue, just building the elaborate system of drainage that the current plans call for is quite an expense for just getting one wall field. It is not like there are not alternative sites through the city owns that could easily become more than one wall field, Westmore and Greedy Anchors. There is no guarantee that the current price tag will be the only price tag that the city will see on this site. There is a constant removal of the silty soils to maintain any water drainage. I suspect that even the initial construction will not go smoothly because of the current constant flooding of the area. Then of course, there is the potential flooding of the first floor living areas in the Mozby Woods condos. The water that is currently stored in the wetlands soils will have nowhere to go, but directly into the creek, raising the water level of the stream and the water table under their homes and likely caused massive flooding damage to all the homes along the stream. There is also the issue of the effect of this project on the Chesapeake Bay. Not only do wetlands soils retain water to ease retained flooding waters, they also act as a filter to remove materials from the war that eventually pollutes the Chesapeake Bay. I'm going to summarize. Please I am begging you to get WSSI to go back and look at that ignored area. That is the lynch pin of the whole issue in a nutshell. I firmly believe that once the area is delineated, the report will tell you there is still a jurisdictional wetland that it still will need a section 401 permit to dredge and fill out. There is, this delay will take some time. I think that it will be time well spent. In the long run, it will mean the difference between dumping millions of dollars on a wet site that even with extensive drainage will never be dry enough for long enough to justify the expense of this plan, especially during this economic downturn in the economy as our citizens are also dealing with astronomical energy and fuel costs. It would be wise to stop now before we get into the month too deep, cost. It would be wise to stop now before we get into the month too deep, pot intended to pull ourselves out. Once destroyed wetlands take hundreds of years to redevelop, we will not live long enough to see the rebirth of this web land once we start construction and destroy it. Thanks for listening and reconsidering before you go ahead and commit the citizens to this money draining project, especially, respectively submitted Christina Gaines, candidate for mayor. Thank you very much. Anybody else like to address the city council again on tonight's agenda, but does not call for public hearing? Mr. O'Dell. I would like to give you a 30 item 6A, the speaker who's first addressed you on this mentioned loss of property values. I'm sure your ears perked up at that. The, it might make a difference in your decision because you've seen it be very given by considerations of money. I'll need to document all of the instances that support that generalization. Item 6B, why is this called a draft? It's not a work item. It's for acceptance right now as is. Why couldn't it be worked out in final language? I want to call your attention to page one of six, the middle of the page. The definition of hotel is changed. It won't include extended day hotels. Now, if you've already been on a record discussing, the mayor at the sweets, extended the state of sweets, whatever the exact name might be a nice facility to have near the intersection of Chain Bridge and Fairfax Boulevard, North East thereof. But I really don't appreciate your changing definitions just to accommodate somebody that you want to show special favoritism to. I mean, when people came here to talk about Stafford, a lot of them were alarmed in the ballpark. A alarm to see you don't have any standards. Heck, I could have told them that back in 1994. It give variances and special use permits and special exceptions, waivers of this and waivers of that for anything. Except maybe one God ministry. Anyway, so you're showing if you go with us that you don't have any standards, because you're changing the definition. The, in this change will enable that facility to evade the hotel tax room that is due, not for the first 30 days, but thereafter. So you see there are financial implications and favoritism that could be considered cronism. The, the, now on page three of six, line six, item number 10. Who's going to enforce this requirement that no more than 50% of the guests in the hotel are staying beyond 30 days? That's a lot of bookkeeping. Are you prepared to enforce that? If you're not, why the heck are you having such a requirement? The, and then line 24, you struck out the words motels. Thereby showing, in a phrase, commercial hotels and motels, you strike out motels. Showing again your hostility for hotels. I mean, Mr. Rasmussen admitted publicly, more than once, to having honeymoon, honeymoon in one of these hotels that you now show such disfavorites to. Come on, guys. Just because somebody is poor or some business is not wealthy is not a reason to show discrimination. And now, on item 8, let's talk about that. This outfit, you know, all these builders here, I'm talking about page one, the top paragraph. These folks, does the name Bobby Montaine, Ringnebel, he stands for all four of those companies, let's sit there. Here, you give you a good deal on old talent village. Why do you want to have any further business with them to do with him on the selling of the old library site. On page 2, the top paragraph, what consideration has been exchanged? Question arises, if there's no new consideration, then you don't have a new contract. So, is it legal to modify this for previous one? The, and then on at the very end of page three, neither party is in default. Is that a true statement? Is somebody getting a waiver of a default? The developer said he doesn't want to build something there, because the market doesn't make that a profitable thing to do now. So, you know, what I'd like to know what the original date that he was supposed to close is, and I would like to know what the assessed value of this property is. And when he tenses you to me in $700,000, is that can include in addition to the $250,000 deposit? What's the full price? Are you giving them this property at the low fair market value and another show of favoritism. Thank you. Anybody else like to address the council under this item? Yes sir, please. Tom Sibelia, one or two three one to come to Lane, living the Moser Woods development. And I would like to refute one thing that I heard here tonight that Gary Perryman is not an ogre. I've known him too for a move forward and approve this contract. This is a couple of things that I wanted to just clarify tonight that I've heard several people say. Folks, this Stafford West property is going to be a park. It's not a soccer field, it's a park. It has just a couple of little things in here. It includes passive recreation plans such as walking, jogging trails, picnic areas, and handicap accessible playground. This is a beautiful nature area and a beautiful park that happens to include a rectangular field. That field of which is another thing that I heard say here tonight, that field can be used by just about anybody when it's not in use by FPUIC or Fairfax High School. So that field will be used by quite a few other people. Just a couple of other things. Poor distribution of field comment earlier tonight that the fellow that wrote that letter said that he felt like kids ought to be able to get to a place without crossing major highway. He forgot about the most bewildered children. They are the ones that are going to be able to go to that site without having to cross a highway or leave a sidewalk. The in-your-face lights issue I've heard mentioned several here tonight. Anybody that's seen modern lighting knows that that's just not the case anymore. If you stand six feet behind the light, you're in the pitch black when it's dark out. Let's see. Oh, the tree desecration I've heard mentioned several times is I recall that on the compromised plan there's not many trees being taken down on the side of the hill. In fact, there's six trees with trunks greater than six inches that are going to be taken down, four of which are in declining health and likely to die anyway. So this isn't the ecological problem that some have portrayed it to be. In terms of the drainage that was read in the previous letter, these engineering issues have been gone over and gone over by a bunch of the different engineers. And I do have one prepared comment for that if I could just organize. The drainage will, there seems to be a lot of misunderstanding about the runoff and storm water management associated with field unlike previous generations of turf fields. The new turf fields are permeable and built to hold and store the water underground and slowly release the water into the storm water management system. This is a case with the proposed project at Stafford. The field turf field at the Stafford property we contain in store the water that hits the field during a storm up to the amount of water associated with a 100-year storm. None of the water hitting the field surface in a 100-year storm would make it to the RPA and the banks of the Acatee can order to cause erosion. The water would be held underground and then slowly released into the city storm system. In the case of a 100 year storm, the creek would likely flood as we part to the development. None of the water would be coming from the ball field surface. In fact, the field surface would still be playable assuming there's not lightning. One last thing, talking about a vigorous review, this process, I heard someone say, please give this a vigorous review. I don't know of a medical exam that has been more thorough than the review on this field. And it's been going on for several years now. I think that you all have looked in every nook and cranny, that medical thing, anyway. But I think you've looked everywhere you can look. And I think you've done your due diligence quite well. And you've already voted on this thing. Lord knows how many times, and it it was my understanding this was just to approve the contract which apparently came in under budget. This is going to be a wonderful facility for a lot of different people to use, not just the FPUI Sears. Frankly, I look forward to it. Thanks for your time. Thank you. Anybody else like to address the council? Yes. Oh, Mr. Keyes, real quick. Can understand you had one thing you wanted to mention? Go caps. More importantly, what's the store the game started in an hour ago? One, one. Okay. Go caps. Yes, sir. Even Mark Machen 3571 Sharpsman Elaine, Council members and mayor just a couple quick comments about the construction, proposed construction contract for the improvements at Providence, Draper and Stafford. Obviously, there have been a lot of recent voices heard that may be against the proposal, mainly because the council has already voted in favor of this project, and those in favor of the project assume, as I do, that the council will continue to move forward on the project. So the voices may not always be heard right now. The opponents may think that they have yet another opportunity to come in and voice their opposition again. So I'd like to voice my opinion in favor of this proposal and in favor of the moving forward on this project and getting things started. Many of the issues that have been raised tonight have been raised before and you've reviewed and addressed these in all your previous discussions, long-drawn out discussions, public hearings, community outreach, everything else. I think you've done a very good job on listening to the public and you've already voted and going forward on this. In regards to the Stafford West property, only five of the 14 acres are going to be developed into a park. And that does include a rectangular field, yes, but it also includes a lot of other items as well that are going to benefit everybody in the city. All the city residents from young children to young adults to older adults. The project will benefit many of those, all of these city residents. And yes, it will draw attention, which will cause traffic as does any project or any any site where people gather. Some will not like this project and that's what the tension draws to it, but every project taken on by the city has its oppositions. You wouldn't have discussions if you didn't have oppositions. So you have both Pro and Con and any project you're doing. This proposal will enhance and improve several areas of the city, all to the overall benefit to the city. And yes, FPYC will benefit because of another field is going to be developed in the city. And that's going to be a great benefit just to not to them, but also to all the other residents that are going to get to use it as well. This FPYC does not have a monopoly on those fields. Yes, they use them more often and that's the noise that you hear. There's kids running screaming and yelling, but that also happens to the pools in the back yards of these communities too. I don't hear that being called noise pollution, but that's just as annoying if you want to call it annoying. I personally have three kids and I like the fact when they're outside yelling and screaming rather than sitting in front of Nintendo or something like that. But it's going to benefit the FPYC. It's also going to benefit the city residents. Those city residents that are also in FPYC and those city residents that are not in FPYC. I would move you to proceed with this project and move forward on it and improve this contract so that things can get started. And get the good things going to Fairfax it again. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else like to address the city council? If not, I actually need to come down. I have one more presentation. Thank you. I have to apologize to Mr. Wilson, who, Chief Wilson, who has been sitting here longer than he anticipated, but trying to get as many of the public in in the tight timeline, we wanted to just sort of push this back so that we didn't shortchange it, but this is actually building safety week. And so I'd like to read the following proclamation. Whereas through our continued attention to building safety, we enjoy the comfort and peace of mind of structures that are safe and sound. Whereas building safety and fire prevention officials are at work, year round to guide the safe construction of buildings, and whereas dedicated professionals including building safety and fire prevention officials, architects, engineers, builders and others in the construction industry developing and enforce codes to safeguard Americans and building where they live, work, play and learn, and building safety week sponsored by the International Code Council Foundation is an excellent opportunity to educate the public and to increase awareness of the role of building safety and fire prevention officials, local and state building departments and federal agencies play in protecting lives and property. And whereas this year's theme, building safety where you live, work, and play encourages all Americans to raise, our awareness of building safety and green and sustainable technology, and to take appropriate steps to ensure that the places where we live work play and learn are safe. And whereas this year, as we observe, building safety week, we ask all Americans to consider projects to improve building safety at home and in the community and to recognize the local building safety and fire prevention officials and their important role in public safety. Now therefore, I, Robert Affleddard, do hereby proclaim May 3, 5, through May 11, 2008 is building safety week in the City of Fairfax. Accordingly, our citizens are encouraged to join their fellow Americans of participating in building safety week activities and assisting efforts to improve building safety. And let me just say these folks have a really tough job in the city of Fairfax. And anybody who's either built a building or has worked on your home know the job that these folks do. And let me just thank you on behalf of my colleagues in the community for everything you do to keep us safe. Let me present this to you and see if you'd like to say a few words. Thanks. I'll be really brief because I know we're kind of behind. I have with me building inspector Rand Gabor, property maintenance inspector, Jean Lynch. I'd like to point out that during the Perez presentation, I got a very nice letter for Mrs. Perez, Jean Lynch, and another building inspector who's not here, Steve Higaboff, and we're mentioned in that letter as being very helpful to getting that issue resolved. And on that note, what I would like to say in regards to building safety week is if you're going to have a project done on your house and you're going to hire a contractor, please make sure they're licensed. There's very little we can do to help you if you end up in a contractor with an unlicensed contractor. If you have a licensed contractor through the state, then there's a state fund. If the contractor does not do the work and knows you money, you can collect the money. If the contractor is not licensed, you, in order to get the permit from us, you will have signed a waiver saying that you are doing the work yourself and you are taking the responsibility for it. It's a very serious thing. Many, many people come in, they sign that waiver and we make very clear that what steps that involves. Please, please deal with licensed contractors. Finally, we'll be out at Home Depot, Fairfax Circle and we'll also have some people at the Home Depot at Price Club Plaza on May 3rd and 4th. We have a lot of experience in our office. You can tell by my gray hair and these two fine guys here. Please come out and see us, ask questions, find out about the permitting process. We all have a lot of experience in the construction industry. We have a lot of advice to offer. Thank you. All right. That now brings us down to the adoption of the agenda. Through by Mr. Soarthorn, seconded by Mr. Greenfield, any discussion? All in favor of the motion is signified by voting aye. Opposed? And it's passionandously looking at the gen items number 6a and b, I would recommend that we not handle these items under a consent agenda. If there's not any objection to that, it will go right to the items themselves. First up is 6a, consideration of a ward of a construction contract for staff or property and draper drive. Part to include general construction, contracts and the turfthetic, Turf, Contract, and Playground Contract. Does this been properly advertised? No, this is not an end, never mind. Staff report. Don't answer that question. Just kidding. Mr. Mayor, I remember as a Council, staff is seeking authorization for the City Manager to award contracts for the construction services of the Staff for Property, Draper drive park projects, and the Providence Elementary School baseball field grading. There are three contracts as part of this. We bid out the general construction contract for the site work at all three of those sites. It was competitively bid. We had six bids that were entered in. ANW contracting corporation was the lowest bidder and has met all the requirements of the bid. That contract is for $1,953,565. The synthetic turf contract for all three synthetic turf fields was done through the association for educational purchase agencies, the AEPA state contract, which allows the city of Fairfax to participate. And that contract is for $1,725,315. Following the third contract is through the U.S. community's contract, again, a competitively bid program that allows the city of Fairfax to participate. And that contract is for the first barrier free playground that the city will have. And that's for 216,639 dollars. Let me say if there's any questions as staff. Mr. Estmus. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Does this include the curb gutter and sidewalk work on staffer? Yes, it does. Thank you. Mr. Greenfield. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Can you talk a little bit about the stormwater implementation plan on the site, the prevention plan. Okay, at Stafford? Yes. The city engineers have required us when we're doing the designing to actually retain the 100-year storm and a lot of the drainage issues were taken into consideration because we had to drain everything away from the acting creek creek down towards the fairfax flow of our area. So the field itself is actually retaining the 100-year storm which will actually be within the field. It's a permeable field. It'll retain the water, actually slowly release that into the stormwater management system. We've also addressed some of the water quality issues by installing the plan of rain garden. Actually, I'm probably not the most technical person to answer that, but if you want more details, I also have the architect available for that as well. And when the water is released, that is released toward Fairfax Boulevard or that is released toward, that's the natural flow. It's released into the stormwater management system down if you're a flexible. All right. And that ends up down. The next place that ends up back in the creek system is down at the bottom of the hill below the. The veterinarians location, correct? Is that correct? That is why I make sure. I just want to make sure because we're here. There's a lot of I think misinformation out there in the community about water that's going to end up in the creek and it's going to end up in people's homes or their condos and the natural flow goes toward Kerr-Pax Boulevard and then that water is going down and back back into the creek. This is better by that. I think it would be helpful. I'm Brian Sabrina with William H. Gordon Associates with a Civil Engineering Architect. Currently half the site drains directly into the Accotene Creek now. What the city had us do was actually take a majority of the site and retain it within the field. And it's the field itself, you know, it's permeable. So during a light rain event, nothing goes into the storm water system. During our heavier storm event, the field fills up to a certain level and it slowly releases into the storm water system. And towards Perifax Boulevard, that later gets released down towards I think it's the the Rack-of-all club or whatever down towards there maybe public work skin. It's further. It's further down. It's not near the the Mosby Wood condos that has previously instated. In the development on the site while you're maintaining a majority of it, there's still a portion that is going toward the creek. Anything that's been not developed and we, it was just left in its natural state. Anything that was part of the door. On the north side of the hill was going down toward the creek. Yes. Correct. Everything on the south side of that hill is collected into the stormwater system either goes into the rain garden and is detained there for a bit and then anything that's during a heavier storm gets towards the Fairfax. You probably don't have a map with you that you could identify again for the community where this rain garden is. This is something that's also new for the city. We have a few rain gardens throughout the city and we have one over the Providence Park. The rain garden is to the south of the parking area so as it drains it will drain into the rain garden and it will hold the water in the rain garden as it goes south on the property. Thank you. Other questions or stat statements, Cross? I just, there was mention earlier by one of those speaking, the public hearing, about the sole teenager of the soil there and the fact that there was concern on their part that this would clog the drainage pipes and eventually the drainage would not be effective and the secondary part of that was the silk that would eventually collect in the pond that would be a constant expense for the city to dredge. Can you comment on that? Yeah, let me first talk about the synthetic field. The synthetic field, every synthetic field that's built has geotextile fabric in it. So it keeps the silt from coming into the field and clogging the system. And then the field itself has an eight year warranty. So the assumption is if you're going to replace the turf at some point after that eight years, you would replace the drainage system with it. Outside of the field, we have some just drop inlets, so those are easily cleanable, just like any in the city for the parking lot or what have you. So there's really no chance for clogging in the field ever as far as we're in. Thanks. So I wanted to have that for the record. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Other questions or staff, Mrs. Winter? Thank you, Ms. Mayor. In the news this week, there was an article on artificial turf and it giving off carcinogens. And I would like you also sent us an email, Mr. McCarty, that said that this was the fields that we are looking at are different ingredients. Yes, Your Honor. The article that you're referencing if I'm correct is the one that was out of New Jersey, the New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services had closed two fields up in New Jersey. Those two fields that they closed, they were determined that they were high lead contents in the nylon fibers of the blades of grass, or to speak, in those fields. Those fields were the old-style synthetic, or to the artificial turf that we probably all played on. The field, for instance, that we have at Fairfax High School, is the same material that we would be putting it on these three fields It's the polyethylene fibers and those are open those are redeemed to be safe Any other questions are staff Very none. Thank you very much. I'll now entertain a motion Miss is line I move draw authorize the Managed to award and execute contracts for construction and related services for the Stafford property and draper drive park projects and a total amount of not to exceed $1,953, $565, I'm sorry, Atlantis Track Inc. in the amount not to exceed $1,725,315, $45, and Cunningham Associates Incorporating the amount not to exceed $216,639.39 each case in a form subject to file review and approval by the City Attorney and City Manager. I further move that this authorization as it relates to the staffer property being made subject to this to the US Army corpse of engineers confirming its stated position that the project as contemplated can proceed is scheduled. Second. Moved by Mrs. Lyon, seconded by Mr. Silverthorn, discussion. Mrs. Lyon. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. You know, I've had many phone calls about this issue over the last couple of weeks. And this is one of those issues that we have agreed upon and talked about and I believe this is the right thing to do. And the thing I really would like to address is that we have not, we have invited the community for many, many times to come up. We've negotiated this issue to one field. it used to be two fields. There's been many, many, many things that we've negotiated on this project. And you know what we're doing here, and I have to commend the council again on this, is that even if there is a wetland issue, we're ready to come back and look at it again. So we are not listening to everyone. We've listened to everyone, and I'm proud to award this contract and God's speed for our children to be able to play in this park. Thank you. Mr. Sovthorn. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just briefly, I think this is lying and said it well, but I will also add that, you know, as someone who initially pushed Open Space very aggressively here in the city back in the year 2000 and the voter supported it. And we've been through this debate now, a time and time again as to how we define open space and perhaps we as the policy making body didn't do quite as thorough of a job as we probably should have. And helping the community fully understand, I think what our vision was in terms of open space. But we do, at least from where I said, I believe that open space encompasses recreational space, passive recreation, active recreation, unfettered, unobstructed tree save, et cetera. There's all over the map, and I guess that there's some disagreement in the community as to whether or not we're meeting our goals, but I'll just tell you that when you look at all the property we bought, this is a very small impact on the overall land that we bought throughout the city. And I'm very proud that we're able to accommodate all types of recreational uses through this process. And I think this is a good deal for the citizens overall, and I'm very proud to support the extension of our ball field program. Thank you. Other comments? Mr. Restman. Restman. Thank you, Mr. Grant. Although I voted for the compromise that led to the development of these projects, I am opposing the award of the contracts for two reasons. One is, and they're very different for the two fields. One is the light issue. Clearly, there was a ban on night play and lights on the Draper Dry Parks that was not made aware to anybody. Council or neighbors at the time the City Council took its action to approve lights there. Now, clearly, as the mayor has said and as the City Attorney has said, it was legal. But just because it's legal, it doesn't make it right. We went through a process that we would not have allowed another applicant to do, which was not to disclose all of the restrictions on the land as it currently existed before the council made those changes. So I'm troubled by the fact that we have approved something without full disclosure of the information. And secondly, the total cost. We're talking $4 million for these projects. Back when this was approved, the budget situation in the city was much different. We have found now that we've got significant fiscal issues to phrase. If anybody read the Washington Post this morning and saw that Fairfax County is predicting next year's going to be worse than this year, we ought to maybe stop and think about spending money. The school board said a good precedent a couple of weeks ago and returning money to the city and helping balance this year's budget. Maybe we ought to do the same thing with this money even though it's available even though we board it. It doesn't mean we have to spend it. Maybe we ought to put it aside for a year and see what develops in terms of the fiscal situation of the city next year. Thank you. Mr. Gr you. Mr. Greenfield. Mr. Leopcimmon, would you just clarify one thing? Because I don't want to leave the impression in the community that we will fully defrauded anyone or we will fully left information out. The issue is I understand it at the time that we talked about draper drive back then. Draper drive actually, Draper drive, Park wasn't actually named that. And so when we, when staff did the research on bringing this to us a few months ago that allowed for the addition of the lights, the issue was we didn't know that there was a previous VZA condition. Now, should it have been caught somehow probably, but you're talking about things being automated now when they weren't back then, apart being named something different, completely back then, and if you're doing a search, much like a title search, it's very easy that you could miss it. So could you just explain for me and maybe even more so the listening public, you know, if we made a mistake, I'll be first to, you know, man up and say we made a mistake, but to imply that we willfully did something, I troubles me a little bit. Excuse me, Mr. Mayor. Point of order. Point of order. I don't recall willfully saying that. I said there was mistake made. Well, I thought you- I'm not trying to- I'm not trying to, I was trying to make sure that we're not leaving an impression. I thought Mr. Resmoson, you said that we willfully left out information. Did leave out information and say willfully it was an accident? Okay. Well, let's not get into that debate. Mr. Alakman, would you go ahead and comment on it? Yeah, and I can't really speak to why the information was disclosed. Again, the information, the best information available by staff was presented to the mayor and council for consideration. Perhaps Mr. Hudson can say something about the information. Thank you. That's okay. That's fine. It just had to confirm with Mr. Greenfield said it was different, different park name, different address in a 25 year old file that I need to say more. Okay, statement. Okay. Mr. Sofine, you know, and I'm assuming Mr. Greenfield is yielded the floor. But let me, if I may, I certainly understand at least the first point that Mr. Rasmussen has mentioned, which I feel like, you know, if there is another way around it, and maybe perhaps there is through an amendment process here on the motion, that the discussion of the lighting should come back for a more thorough vetting, although I would hope that the Council would still stand by its vision on that. But I mean, there's a way that if people had not had a chance to come forward and actually talk through these issues because they weren't aware of it, including us up here, by the way, that's probably a healthy thing. I don't think anybody would complain about that on either side of the issue, but I think philosophically the majority of this body now feels like that's still the right thing to do. Having said that on the money piece, I guess I have a question. I mean, I certainly understand, and I read the Washington Post article this morning, and I certainly just lived through our own budget deliberations over the last several months, and it was not easy. But the money that we have already borrowed as Mr. Rasmussen has just talked spoken to, I want to make sure I understand, you know, when we say we're going to leave it in a holding pattern as he suggested potentially. What can that, I mean, we can't take that money and then spend it on transportation projects or something else. I mean, if it's been basically borrowed with the understanding it's going to be spent in a certain fashion, how much flexibility exists? And if there's a correct, you know, correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that we had certain parameters based on our borrowing in which we can spend it on. That is correct. So, the financing of this project is simply for this project. We cannot use it for other purposes. sitting in a side a secondary fund it doesn't do any pretty good and we would be able to we're already paying on it as well that is correct and we could actually in the year 2010 pay down principle with it if money is not spent but we would not be able to do that until the year 2010. Well I just think that's it's and I'm this is going to stir a little bit of anger I know in my colleague but I think it's, and I'm, this is going to stir a little bit of anger, I know in my colleague, but I think it's a little misleading to throw out these things at the 11th hour when there are limitations on what even this body can do in terms of resolving some of the questions that he has raised this evening as being stumbling blocks. So those are not indeed stumbling blocks from my perspective and we want to move forward. If you want to play politics with it and just take a political vote and say no, that's certainly the prerogative, anybody on this council. I've done it from time to time myself, but in this case, yeah, imagine that. But I think I think it's time we move forward and call the question, Mr. Mayor. Well, I certainly hope before we do that, we're all going to get a chance. Because I say why, too, that Mrs. Winter, please. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Two points. I am going to vote for this motion. What Mr. Machen reminded us again of tonight was that there are 14 acres involved here, and only five are being developed and I would invite that the remaining acres could be used for the projects that have been brought up by citizens, the idea of nature center areas or research that they're, that all needs can be fulfilled. On the lights, what also has come up is that technology has changed quite a bit in the last 25 years. So if you're looking at lights and spillage of 1983, they're going to be a lot different than lights and spillage of 2008. And so I think at this point, it's a this is a moot point and that we should move forward with these with the lights. Thank you. Any other comments? Ms. Cross? Just very briefly, this has been one of the most contentious issues that has come before Council since I've been serving. And we've certainly examined it up and down in sideways. It's been a very thorough process. I really am very regretful that at the very last moment we've learned that 25 years ago, there was a ruling on this property that we were not aware of. And I think it would be the fair thing to do at our next meeting to take an action which rescinds that 20-period five-year prohibition just so that we have all the T's crossed and I's dotted so that we're fine and ready to go forward with this with all of the with no underlying issues. But I think it will be a great project for the city. I think it will be a very needed project I think in 10 years when it's built and it's a beautiful facility that even hopefully the residents of most bewards and Cambridge Station will take great pride in having this facility so close to their homes. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Koss. Any other comments? If not, I had not really planned to say anything tonight on this particular item, but in light of a very interesting dialogue that took place at a candidate's night a week ago, and in light of the testimony that we heard that my viewpoint was more political statement than a technical statement. I am going to say words, and I've never used this bias for political statements and I certainly don't intend to do that now. It is so easy to stand behind that podium and say virtually anything you want to say. And certainly in this community, wrapping in the words, environment and trees is something that this community takes very seriously. I take those topics and those words very seriously. But the reality is we are held accountable for what we say. And if we're not accurate, you're the first to bring it to our purpose. And we're held accountable in elections for that process. And so I just want to go through the sequence here and I'll do it very, very quickly of how we, in my viewpoint, how we got to where we are and where we are tonight is this vote. So I just want to go through the sequence here and I'll do it very, very quickly of how we, in my viewpoint, how we got to where we are and where we are tonight is this vote goes forward. Wasn't that many years ago, at least it doesn't feel like that many years ago, that I was then on the council and we really struggled with the purchase and this was our first major acquisition of open space that we really struggle with. There was a major, major undertaking on behalf of this Council, despite the fact that the city and the citizens went to the voter booth and gave overwhelming support and a voter referendum to purchase open space, it still was a tough decision to implement it for a small town. And I'm very proud to stand up and have been counted as one of those individuals that while there were others on this dius, at the very time we were debating purchasing $6 million of open space, not just 14 acres in this location, but I believe it's a total of 27 acres, I may be off a little bit, but I think it was a total of 27 acres in that. And I can remember that dialogue very well. And I'm very proud that tonight we can even sit here and have this discussion. And while we were going through that debate seven years ago, there were those, as I said, on this diast that were an act of negotiations with the developer at the time to build condos and townhouses on this very property that we're talking about. But this council exerted leadership, had the guts to step forward and purchased $6 million of open space that certainly directly benefits and benefits to this day, both the Cambridge Station and the Moesie Woods. But I would argue with you you benefits the entire community. And it's something I'm very proud of. And when I look back at that vote, it was not easy. And quite frankly, if we're being fair on all these sides, the only reason that vote was successful to purchase that open spaces is that both the Cambridge Civic Homeowners Association and the Moesie Wood Civic Association in writing came forward. Instead, if you all make the decision to purchase this as open space, we will support the use of fields on the properties that we're talking about now. And at the time, the discussion was up to two fields on that particular property. And if it hadn't been for that bold move back then, I believe we would not be sitting here talking about soccer fields and what to do with the other mini-acres of property that we're not even talking about tonight in the 27 years, or 27 acres, that we purchased. And I hope that doesn't get lost. regardless of where anybody sits on this issue. We're here tonight because former members of the City Council and I'm proud to put myself in the front of that list made the ball move to spend $6 million of your money to purchase this as open space. The second issue is is this process unfolds several years later. I cannot tell you how many outreach meetings, work sessions, discussions I personally was not satisfied with the level of communications in the community I personally hosted two outreach meetings, the City of Fairfax hosted tours. And it's so easy now. Right now as we sit here in the end of April, a week before an election sit here and say, yeah, you know what, I changed my mind. I never walked the property. I never looked at it. But now I'm declaring within a couple of days that there's an environmental issue on that site. That's just not factual. And that's not fair in my viewpoint to this process. And we compromised a lot. In fact, as this unfolded, both community associations again came forward during the process and said, you know what, we wish you wouldn't build it, but if you do use it for fields as intended when we originally purchased it, here's the things we want you to consider. We don't want you to build one field, two fields we want you to build one field. We don't want you to put lights there. We don't want a concession stand there. We don't want major changes to Stafford Avenue and a whole variety of things that I'm probably forgetting and every single one of those things entered up being part of the compromise that this council crafted as we went forward to make sure that we truly did partner. We want trails. We want it more than just a soccer complex and all of those things are included certainly in this process. I also think as we look at the properties, it's very important to keep in mind. We're talking about wetlands today. This property is not in its natural state today. The property that I grew up with as a kid doesn't exist anymore. Because in the late 80s, early 90s, this property was clear cut. Right down, in fact, they lowered the level of it by some 30 feet as a borrowing pit to take dirt out of it. I'm told to help Bill I-66. I don't know if that's factual, but what I do know is factuals. This property is not natural-stated wetlands. This property was clear cut 25 years ago, and that's why it's in the shape that it is today that we take a look at it. And as all the consultants have told us, there are not wetlands on this property. Most of the standing water, and I walked it again for hours last week, with staff with a consultants, as I know many of my colleagues did. Most of the standing water is a result of when they burrowed out the dirt, as I know many of my colleagues did. Most of the standing water is a result of when they burrowed out the dirt, they left depressions in the dirt. And because there's rocks in that property, the water stands longer than it would traditionally do. And this counsel has said from day one, if there truly are wetlands on that property, and we can all stand up here as citizens and say there are, they aren't. I can sit here and say there are the aren't. But we went and hired the best consultant in the business in the state of Virginia to make sure we weren't getting into a wetlands issue. It's the same consultant that 2000 we heard the testimony. And right now as we speak, the Corps of Engineers is going back and looking at it once again. And in this motion, there's a direction to the staff that if we go forward with a contract, and the Corps of Engineers later this week, or whenever they do, it comes back and says, no, there is a wetland issue there. We've drafted them to come back to the Council and bring that to our attention before we go forward. I don't know what else we can do. We can sit there and say there's wetlands. It's great to stand behind that podium or wrap ourselves in the environment or to shred the reality is the professionals, the people we paid, have told us repeatedly there are no wetlands on that particular piece of property. As we go forward and we talk about the stormwater drainage, this application and the reason we're sitting here months and months later than we ever thought we'd be sitting here dealing with this issue, is because our city staff decided we're not going to just let the current stormwater problem exist. We're going to hold the city accountable to a standard that most of the properties don't have to be accountable to, and we're going to have to meet the 100-year storm program. 100 years. I was told it's about 10 years right now. So the implication that somehow we're environmentally damaging the property, or environmentally damaging the creek, is just not factual. In fact, a good percentage of the money that we're spending on this project is to ensure that we have the stormwater drainage to protect the communities that surround it and to protect the creek that we've all spent so much time and energy and money and making sure as a community that we protect. And that's part certainly of this program. The last thing I, I just two things I want to say is in terms of the money. I want to make sure we all put this in perspective because, you know, this project started out at $2.8 million. I found it interesting as the dialogue. It then was 2.6 and then it was 2.4 last week when we got the news from the staff that it came substantially under budget. It was at 2.2 and tonight we're sitting here and now it's at 1.8. Is that a lot of money? You bet it is a lot of money for a small community. But we've made the decision to invest in our community, and I can't remember another project that's come in $6 or $700,000 under budget before and certainly under these circumstances. The last thing I want to make is on the board of zoning appeals. And I got the same communication a week ago. I hope everybody didn't just listen to the emails and read them, but actually read through the minutes of the BZA. And what that BZA did is that it was property that was given to the City of Fairfax. And at that time, the BZA heard special use permits like this type of application. And if you read the minutes, they carefully said, you know what, the use may change on this property. But today, we don't need lights and we don't want lights, but it all may change someday. So I just want to make sure, as we're going forward and we're debating the BZA, nobody's going to defend the fact that we're sitting here and just finding out that there was even an action 25 years ago on this property. Nobody didn't want full disclosure, including ourselves, that will be held accountable that there was some action back in then. But I just want to make sure, as you read those the minutes, it's very clear that they didn't have a request for lights. There was no reason to put lights in. In fact, the minutes say in several occasions this use may change, and in fact this use 25 years later has changed. And now it is appropriate for the City Council, and I want to be clear on that regard, too. The reason it is so appropriate today for the City Council to hear this is this is the body that's on Channel 12 Television. This is the body that goes out into the community and host outreach meetings and talks to literally dozens and hundreds of people, not the board of zoning appeals, and this is no reflection on them, but they're not televised. They don't really host series of outreach meetings. It's not their role or their function. It's more of a technical body. And so I'm very comfortable with this body making the decision. Again, whether you agree with it or not, I think it is an appropriate action as you go forward. So I'm sorry to go off on such a tangent, but it is so easy to sit here 10 months ago and say, boy, I support fields. And then today to say, you know what? I never walked the property. I never looked at it, but I did last week, and now I'm the expert that says there's wetlands, and we ought to stop. That's just not fair to this process. It's not fair to my colleagues. And most importantly, it's not fair to the literally dozens and dozens and dozens of people who've come before us and testified in giving their time and their energy as we've gone through that process. So, I apologize for the length, but I became passionate in the last ten minutes and making a statement where I wasn't before. And so now we will call the question and we'll do it by roll call all in favor of the motion. Please signify by voting yes. Mrs. Cross. Yes. Mr. Greenfield. Aye. please signify by voting yes. Mrs. Cross? Yes. Mr. Greenfield. Aye. Mr. Rasmussen. No. Mr. Sovethan? Aye. Mrs. Lign. Aye. Mrs. Winner. Aye. And it passed by a vote of 5 to 1 with Councilman Rasmussen opposed. Okay. Moving right along. And that now brings us to item number 6b, which is consideration of a resolution to initiate and refer to the Planning Commission's zoning tax amendment to the City Code, Chapter 110, to rise the definition of a hotel, out of definition of motels and extended state facilities, practice and modify the district location requirements of hotels, motels, extended state facilities, and simmering uses and established performance standards for an extended state facility. Staff for for please. Briefly, this is an action by the City Council that's requested to initiate and refer to the Planning Commission for discussion, consideration, and recommendation of a zoning text amendment to provide for what is essentially a new use that's occurred over the last couple of decades, which are extended stay hotels. Accended stay hotels have different features generally than hotels and motels. And what the council would be by passing this motion, doing is sending to the Planning Commission an opportunity to create the appropriate parameters for extended state hotels so that the council can consider them on a case by case basis as we move forward with this kind of land use. Questions by of staff. Mr. Mayor. Mr. Lime. I do have just a couple questions because we have so many motels that are long, root 50 that are folks can stay there for a long period of time. Would this allow the planning commission to come up with verbiage to allow us to look at each motel or hotel along root 50 and any of the new hotels and hotels coming into the city, is that so they would have a longer stay for, for instance, the one that's being looked at on 123, a possibility for that site there. That's what this is in relation to, is that? All right. This would provide a vehicle by which the city council could entertain the establishment of an extended stay hotel in the zoning districts and the commercial zoning districts in the city. That could either be the establishment of a new extended stay hotel, such as the one you're referring to, or the establishment of such a use in an older building if that building were able to meet the appropriate parameters and came before the City Council. It does not automatically provide that use as a by-right use in any zoning district in the city. All right. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Other questions are set. Mr. Greenfield. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. A number of years ago now, I think we took a crack at this issue with some of the motels along the Fairfax Boulevard in the way around it even though we've cried our best to respond to the citizens and attack this and I don't think this changes that is you can be in one motel for 30 days check out go across the street saying another motel for one night and come back to where you were your stuff is still in that room and start the clock all over again is that that correct? And this does not change that. That is a zoning enforcement issue and this does not change that. No, it does not. Just want to make sure people are aware. But it does not legitimize the extended stay use in those hotels either. Right. Other comments, questions to staff. If not, and like, thank you very much. I'd like to entertain a motion. Sumer. Mrs. Winter. I move that the City Council adopted a resolution to initiate and refer to the Planning Commission, a zoning text amendment to City Code Chapter 110 to revise the definition of hotel. Add a definition for motels and extended stay facilities. Correct and modify the district location requirements for hotels, motels and extended state facilities, correct and modify the district location requirements for hotels, motels, extended state facilities and similar uses, and establish performance standards for extended state facilities. Moving by Ms. Winter, was that a second Ms. Cross? Seconded by Mrs. Cross, discussion. A discussion. All in favor of the motion, signify by voting aye. Aye. Opposed? And a passionate, and I'm going to see. We're now down to item number 7a, which is a public hearing and counsel action on request by Wacovia Bank for a special exception to permit while mounted sign. Where no building entrance exists along the front of the Fairfax Boulevard on the property known as Fairfax Marketplace addressed at 10944 Fairfax Boulevard. Has this been property advertised? Staff report, please. Excuse me. Good evening, I'm Roman Kounsen. The request before you for a Columbia bank is for a 41-square-foot building mountain sign without being located over an entrance. The City Code does not permit and shopping centers to build signs Where entrances do not exist. They must be over an entrance the property that is in the discussion tonight is located Fairfax Marketplace and To the north is a fair chest of To the north is a fair chest of Homeowners Association residential area and there is commercial to to the west and to the eastern property and as well as To the south The property in question is the Wacovia bank here these two arrows the one 2d on the north side of property represents the main entrance of the building Where the sign is permitted and that will also be 41 square feet the south elevation shown here is the proposed and what the request is for. Again, another 41 square foot sign, but not over a main entrance. There's two types of elevation criteria for this. One 10366 with deals with the comprehensive plan and one 1085 specifically with signage. The deals with unusual building design and circumstance. In terms of one 10366 and the comprehensive plan, the plan does support signs on Fairfax Boulevard. But the intent there is not there have clutter and too many signs essentially located along Boulevard. The application itself and I will show you a picture in a moment. Within the conflant, the building science must be an integral part of the building and reflect its colors and design and so forth, which in this application it is. And just to note, the size of the sign is one foot in height and lettering and 15 feet across, but the total sign with the logo is two feet height and 19 across for a approximate of 41 square feet. Going to the unusual building design circumstance, when this property was designed last year and approved, there is a drive-through associated with the bank that needed to be located to the rear of the bank, to minimize his visualness, and maintain non-conflict where the main entrance onto the site. Other properties on the site, the main building towards the back, which is the main specialty retail area and the coffee shop, the Starbucks to the east, do have a signage that will present onto the streets. This is unique to the site and motorists going west will be able to identify the bank but going east would not. So this does fit under that as well. Just to show you also the east elevation which is internal to the parking lot, the main entrance to what it's what Kobe assign is identical to the one asked for on the south elevation on Fairfax Boulevard and also one final statement. The square footage permitted is 112 and working with the applicant, we've broken into the two and reduced it from the total square footage of what one sign could have been internal to the property. And thank you for your time. Thank you. Questions to staff? Mr. Mayor. It's cross. Thank you. Mr. Colonna, I really don't have an objection to this but I am having trouble visualizing what this is going to, how this is going to appear. The sign over the main entrance seems very appropriate and seems very, in symmetrically good with the size of the building. When you take the scene size sign as I understand it, and you put it on the end of the building, which where the building is much narrower. And I just have to wonder if it's going to overwhelm it. Are these illustrations you're showing us to scale? Yes. They are. So. And this is the elevation that were in question tonight of facing fair effects of all of our. Right. And the one here is the East elevation internal to the site. The width and the illustrations approximate the same. The difference is one has a door and actual entrance. The width and the administration is approximately the same. The difference is one has a door and actual entrance. The other one is in the window. This Senate over windows. No. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Other questions this time? Okay, thank you very much. This is a public hearing and I'd like to invite somebody here representing the applicant. Please. And if you'd start out with your name and address, business address for the record. Thank you for having us. I'm Tony Friedtag, site enhancement services 6-001 NIMS Parkway, South Bend, Indiana. And this is my associate, Carly Royce, same address. Here today obviously representing Wacovia. Like I think, Mr. Kona, Mr. Blubbins for their assistance, the guidance, but really I've been a joy to work with and made the process very easy for us. As far as questions you might have or comments, so feel free to raise them with us and hopefully we can address anything that needs to be addressed. Okay, thank you. Any questions of the applicant this evening? Okay, well, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. You're gonna, you'll be afforded an opportunity to come back. Okay. Anybody else has a particular comment or question? Thank you. This is a public hearing and I don't know where the mayor's messy desk here. He's hidden the anybody who's previously signed up. So let me just open up the public hearing and ask if anyone would like to address the city council in this time. Mr. O'Dell. With that, I yield the floor. Jerry O'Dell. Given that years ago there was a major banking scandal, largely real estate scandal if I recall correctly. This was decades ago involving B.B. and C. British Banking and Commerce, an organization steered in large part by Clark Clifford, former Secretary of State under President Ivan Howard, and given that first American bank here in the United States had ties with B.B. and C. that were so embarrassing that first American, that first American changed its name, its logo, and its logo color from Blue to Green. And given that years later still, first American was still embarrassed over its reputation that it bought out wakovia and now mass grades as a new bank when in fact it's really first American that runs it. I would ask you even spite of the fact that the latest figures I've seen show that wakovia has good ratings for customers satisfaction. Mr. Adel, would you stick to the agenda? Yeah, I would ask you in light of that to refuse to do business with macovia, I mean to say first American, and the basis for refusing could be found in the usual list. Section 110-366 is only map amendments, especially use permits. Items F, other factors which may affect this serenity of the neighborhood, H, the safety welfare residents living in the area, and K-A-E, safety welfare persons working in neighborhood. You shouldn't do business with crooks, thank you. Anybody else like to address the City Council on this item? If not, we'll close the public area and I'll place in the hands of the Council. I'm so forth from. If not, we'll close the public area and I'll place in the hands of the council. So, for now. I move the City Council adopt the task resolution to approve Special Exception 080-10017, request by Carlene Rousse, I hope I pronounce that right, sorry. Agent for Wacovia Bank, Special Exception Chapter 110-182A2, of the code of the City of Fairfax, to permit a building-mounted sign that is not located over an entrance on the premises known as 10944. Fairfax Boulevard and more particularly described as tax map parcel 57-1-020448. Subject to the following conditions. Number one, the additional signage shall be accompanied with the 41 square foot sign internally illuminated and constructed with individual lettering that matches the proposed signage at the main entrance. And number two, the design of the sign is still being submitted to the Board of Architecture Review for Final approval prior to the installation and during its review, the B.A.R. shall determine the appropriateness of modifying the sign. Second. Moved by Mr. Silverland, seconded by Mrs. Werner. Any discussions, Mayor? So very briefly, I am not a huge fan of signs, but I will tell you that this looks very tastefully done. And I believe that that shopping center overall of the signage has been very tastefully done, and I'm very pleased to support it. I will also say that when it comes to financial institutions, your respective of what Mr. Odell was just espousing, I think it's important to note that as we look at overall tax revenues in the city, we do receive the bank franchise tax here in Commonwealth of Virginia by locality based on deposits. And it's, I think, a tax base that only benefits us overall. It's the right kind. I know we talk about having too many banks, but it's the right kind of development that often can be low impact development here in the community. And I think it's a very positive thing. Ms. Werner. Thank you, Ms. Werner. I am in favor of the two signs, because the one sign over the door will only be able to be seen from the parking lot. And we want our new businesses in the city to succeed. And by placing another tastefully done, I think appropriate sign on the street side of it, it will encourage and a success for this bank. And thank you for coming to the city. this bank. And thank you for coming to the city. Any other comments? If not, all in favor of the motion is signify for voting aye. Opposed? In a pass unanimously. We're now down to item number eight, where items not requiring a public hearing consideration of the approval of second amendment to purchase agreement relating to the sale of the former City of Fairfax Regional Library property, staff report? Mr. Mayor. We talked about this one extensively during the budget process. The idea behind this is to lend some certainty to the timing under which the city will either receive the $2.7 million purchase price for the old library site or will gain total control over the property again in order to be able to market and sell it before the end of the fiscal year? Be happy to answer any questions? Questions or staff? Ms. Cross. I do have one question on the last page of the number, excuse me, each two of our copy of the agreement. There are comments and parentheses that I would like to understand better in the paragraph under number two. The excerpt here is except in the event, this deposit shall be fully earned by seller and refundable to purchaser, is, uh, PRIN, except in the event of a material seller default year under. What does that mean? And sorry for the legalese, but, um, basically, what that means is the only way that the city does not get to keep that $250,000 is for some reason the city decides to sell the property out from under the developer after taking their deposit. Other than that, the money is fully earned and the city gets to keep it no matter what. And in the paragraph with number three, it's a very long sentence, but it says, except if such failure is due to a non-promoted failure by seller to proceed to closing, what is that? I'm trying to follow where you are here on the... It's pretty much right in the middle of the paragraph and it's enclosed with imprensities. So four sentences. A C, one. Oh, it's the same comment to previously. I see. Oh, it's the same comment to previously. Again, there are no remedies to the developer not to proceed to closing here. So essentially, if the city were to decide not to sell the property to the developer, that's the only situation in which that would come up. But I thought this agreement obligated the city within the time frame and the price determination to sell to this developer. But we would be in violation of this agreement. Should we decide to sell it after munder them? That's correct. What this is is essentially a default provision. If we decide not to sell the property to them, and remember the current agreement, as it stands, is we are absolutely obligated to sell the property to the developer. If we decide not to sell the property to the developer, they then have the right to go to court and to force the city to sell the property to them as a remedy. And all that this does is clarifying and restate those provisions. So this has nothing to do with the developers' use of the property and any condition that we would have to approve that use before their purchase. All of those provisions are covered separately. All that this does is relate to the timing of the purchase of the property. As the agreement currently stands, that time period is kind of open-ended. What we're trying to do is ensure that there's going to be some sort of decision made during the fiscal year, the upcoming fiscal year, in time for the city either to get the money or get control of the property in sufficient time to market and sell the property before the end of the fiscal year. And where is it covered that we that the intended use by the developer must have approval by the council. It's covered in a number of places. Recall that there are a number of development documents governing this whole process, the Old Town Village, the Old Library side, the general development agreement being one, the purchase agreement and their provisions that are not being modified by this amendment contains others. And then obviously the underlying zoning of the property requires approvals that would either come before the City Council or other city bodies depending on the case. So in any way, shape or form, are we committing approval of their use as a condition to sale? No, the currently approved use of the property is for four sale residential units, upscale four sale residential units. None of that has changed by anything in this document. Okay, thank you. Any other questions or staff? Harry, now I'll entertain a motion. Mr. Mayor. Mr. Lyme. Mr. Mayor. Mr. Lyme. I moved to approve the draft's second amendment to purchase agreement between the city and to mid-Atlantic development, Inc. Walnut Street Development Company, J. Donigan Company, and Old Town Fairfax Village, LLC in the form attached to the staff report. I further moved to authorize the city manager to execute that second amendment in substantially the same form as that attached to the staff report subject to reasonable modifications made and approved by the city attorney. Moved by Mrs. Lyon, seconded by Mr. Silverthorn, any discussion? I would just like to comment that this is really a formality. So we do show good faith for our budget, passing our budget a couple of weeks ago. And I am sure that we'll come to some good agreement over this property and have wisdom and good guidance to do what we need to do with this property. So thank you, Mr. Rare. Ms. Coss. I have to admit that I have really strong reservations about this agreement. I feel to see that it's a really good deal for the city and I feel that the city is by agreeing to this document, we are agreeing to hold this property for nearly a year without the guarantee of a sale at the end of that year. There's no guarantee that come January. These folks are going to come forward and say, yeah, we want to buy that. And there is every likelihood that that might not happen. And it also troubles me that we are not getting what I would consider earnest money from the developer to hold this property for them for that period of time, for nearly a year. I am very concerned that this is putting the city that all the advantage that the city has as a seller of the property is being being subjugated by this document. Ms. Luggen, you can reassure me on that if you like, but I think I sent an email to everyone after this first came to us and I said it was very just really too bad that there wasn't any representation from council in the deliberations that resulted in this document. And for all we are the ones that are making a decision on this property and I was absolutely no one in the room from the council. So maybe you could enlighten me and reassure me that my concerns are unfounded but I'm reluctant to vote for this for the reasons I've said. Again, the only thing I can say is the agreement as a- the agreements as they currently exist, the general development agreement, the purchase agreement for Logan's IPAN, which includes this property, require the city to sell the property to the developer, but they do not impose enough certainty in that time process to ensure that this would occur during this coming fiscal year. So in other words, all that this does, all the development requirements, all the uses of the property, all of that remains the same. The only thing that this does is it ensures that the city will either get the money before the end of the fiscal year, or it will get control of the property arguably soon enough to allow for marketing and an opportunity to sell the property before the end of the fiscal year. As agreements currently exist, there is no such certainty. The developer has the right to wait until a time that it thinks it's appropriate to build the currently proposed condos on the property, which as everyone knows is not currently a great use. Condos are not very popular right now. But I would say to you that without resolution of this buy or not buy arrangement, we're not resolving that until the first of April. We won't, am I wrong? Yes, actually that's incorrect. We will know by January the 9th whether developers purchasing the property or not purchasing the property. All right, then move it back to January, but I contend that still does not give us very much time to market this and sell it within the fiscal year. And for that reason, I would be much more comfortable if we had at least the quarter million dollar deposit on it much earlier in the process, say by July, six months out, so that if it doesn't work for them, we have ample time to put it on the market and sell it and be and and realize the proceeds of itself for the end of this school year. If I could to just try to jump in a little bit, you know, as we went through this process, it was always my understanding that the agreement, the general purchase agreement that we signed basically said that the developer had to take possession of the property within 90 days of when we basically could give them the old library site free and clear. And I know that was the dialogue and discussion of this council. There was another provision somewhere else in the contract that basically said, or until you approve a site plan. So as we sit here right now minus this agreement, they could sit on the property for as long as they want. They don't pay us any deposit money, and we wait for the market to spin until they determine in a reasonable period of time, and we all know how long it takes to get a site plan approved, that process. Quite frankly, the developers had no obligation to do this. This is too hard vantage. Quite frankly, I'm hard-pressed to see it to do this. This is too hard vantage. Quite frankly, I'm hard pressed to see it to their advantage. Other than quite frankly, I and others went to him and said, look, we need this money to balance a budget. We need to be able to count on it. And right now the agreement is null and void of any of that. So if we don't do this agreement, then they could sit on it for years with no deposits, no assurance, no anything, and either build it one day or default on it one day. This agreement is the only tool that we have to ensure that there is a date certain where they have to buy it or not buy it. It has nothing to do with apartments, it has nothing to do with condos, it has nothing to do with any use that was all done by a totally separate action. So I just respectively disagree. This is almost solely to our advantage so that we do have a date certain which the current agreement is minus silent on. So I kind of view this as to an extreme interest of the City of Fairfax versus certainly the development team which had no obligation to do this. Yeah, respond. Please. I'm not saying that an agreement is not needed. What I'm saying is we need to have an agreement with them for a sale certain before January. And I would be my contention that we go back and negotiate some of these dates with the the developers to bring that certainty forward by as much as six months. That's my question. And that certainly is fair. I would just say Mr. Luckerman, you were sort of the conductor of the orchestra as we went through the details on this. They wanted nothing until April 1st. I think it was your idea actually to require it all the way back to January 1st by the deposit, which in essence is going to be the decision point because no one's going to pay $250,000 and then four months later not secure it. So it doesn't mean something couldn't be negotiated differently, but they had no obligation to negotiate anything. They started with April. It ended up in January with a deposit and through the negotiation process. Are there any other comments or thoughts on this? If not, we'll call the question of motion, and I would be in favor. We'll do it by roll call. All in favor of the motion, signify by voting aye. Mrs. Winner? Aye. Mrs. Line. Aye. Mr. Sowerthorn? Aye. Mr. Russ Mussen. Aye. Mr. Greenfield. Aye. Mrs. Cross. No. Let the record show that it passed by a vote of five to one with Mrs. Cross in opposition. That now brings us down to item number nine, which are presentations by the public and any item that is not on tonight's agenda that is of interest to our community. I don't have a sheet, so I don't believe anybody has previously signed up when anybody like to address the city council. Please, Mr. Perry. Very good. 11009. Now that we got our main things, not out of the way, the elected staffers and the election should be over soon. I'd like us to, voice from above, I'd like to see it go back to some issues that we had spoken on a long time that seemed to have gone into hold. One of them being the McMansion issue. I know that supposedly is in planning and has been for some time. Luckily we're in a very slow building time, so we won't see a whole lot of that right now, but I would love to see this done before the building boom comes back into the bar background here. The second item is the scooter, the non-registered non-tag scooter issue. I know the state is supposedly looking at it. I talk to somebody in the state and there has been several incidences where people have been hurt. Property damage done by the scooters. You can't sue a 16-year-old because they have nothing to get, you can't sue the family because you can't prove gross negligence when it's not illegal. So those two issues I'd like to see something done on at least in the not too distant future. And I talked to Mr. Hudson earlier tonight. There appears to be a problem or at least what I see is a problem with allowing fences and some of the properties. There is no regulation on the fence height in the front yard of properties. And we know of a couple of cases where somebody is putting up a six-foot stockade style fence completely around their property, including the front and side. If you haven't seen one, they're not very attractive. And I know you guys have tussled with this item before, but the only one that has a regulation on it as far as I know is corner properties and that's for sight-line viewing as far as traffic's concern. I think this is an issue that needs to be looked at before we start seeing stockade fences up in every yard and it is very unattract, and it's something that needs to be dealt with. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Luckerman, you may recall this. We actually had a similar situation where our six foot fence went in the front yard, and I thought and recalled we didn't have an ordinance protected at the time, but then we changed our ordinance to dress that. And maybe I'm, I see Mr. Hudson's not here I might be missed for calling that but it's something we should check into Anybody else like to address the city next floor. I'm going to go to the next floor. I'm going to go to the next floor. I'm going to go to the next floor. I'm going to go to the next floor. 326. I'd like to ask you a question. I'm going to ask you a question. I'm going to ask you a question. I'm going to ask you a question. I'm going to ask you a question. I'm going to ask in the precinct 6 at 105-03 Oak Place near the entrance to the Assembly Homeowner Association. It will not be televised. None of the candidate forms will have been televised. Perhaps the State Council is too ashamed of its dismal record. There was money to televised Let's Talk City, 16 episodes, each one half hour long, occurring nearly every month from about October 2003 to February 2006, some gaps there. Evidently, time to facilitate the incumbents re-election first in 2004 and then in 2006, with great effect it appears. I think you're all here still. The Mariat residency in is the name of the extended stay hotel that I misnamed earlier tonight. It's the one for which you changed the zoning rules of definition. If Mr. Well, I've already said that. When I said earlier tonight that the developers who built Old Town Village between Chained Bridge and University and between North Street and White Street didn't give us a good deal. I neglected to remind you that it was you yourselves who on April 24, 2006, I hope you're listening Mr. Mayor, you said to us at Old Town Hall, at the candidate night form, that it was developer pressure that led the council to cave into the demand for two-way traffic where the citizens of about 75% to 80% wanted to retain one-way traffic, which is shown to be more efficient for a vehicular flow for pedestrian and vehicular safety and pollution. And you're neglected to tell us. I didn't find out when I wrote my 2006 literature in paint. I found out very recently that it was the city that paid the nine million dollars for that dismal experiment. You didn't tell us that. That's why I say the price of this property, Whiting Street, the old library, should be jacked up by, guess how much? $9 million. Oh, well, we're at it. Why don't you tell us either tonight during candidate comments right after mine or tomorrow's candidate form? Council comments tonight. Why don't you tell us? Why you were so bent on spending $2.6 million for property assessed at $1.5 million at 2924 Tellstar Court and Maryfield notice with time time I've given you the right address. Why would you do that? Just to get rid of the homeless. I mean, publicly you were saying all you sympathized with them, but your emails revealed otherwise. I remember Joan Cross had egg on her face. I can't remember who else did, but I have time to write my fliers. I am offering you in front of a God and yourselves and me and the guardian angels that we all have. I'm asking you, which one of you will pay the most for their file of emails that I purchased? I need money for my campaign and I expect a big profit if you don't want these things published. But who knows? Anybody else like to address the City Council tonight? Hearing none, we'll close the public hearing item A. We're now moved to approval the minutes of April the 8th. So moved. Moved by Mr. Greenfield, seconded by Mrs. Line, any discussion? Mr. Sovr, just one small correction about the invocation that was Mrs. Winters' eloquent invocation that evening, just want to make sure that's corrected. Thank you. Any other comments? All in favor, the motion signify by voting aye. I proposed and it passed unanimously. We're now going to recess our regular meeting and go into a work session. We're just going to stay right in this room. We're going down to item number 12, A, which is a discussion and update on the Army Navy country club application. I'll invite the applicants to the front. Mr. Assistant, I assume they're going to start out comments. Is that our staff going to? Mr. Schiss and I assume they're going to start out comments is that our staff gonna That will make introductory comments. Okay Good evening, Mr. Mayor and City Council Forget started. I just let you know the presentation tonight is based on the plans that you have before you for the recent submission. You know, the golf course is working and has been working on further refinements of some tree preservation on the site in the last couple of weeks since the plans have been submitted. I'd like to go over some of the key changes that they've made since you last saw the presentation. The previous submission from February. the previous submission from February had a true removal rate of 546 trees the application the updates to the application that we got in plan review a couple weeks ago brought that number down to 387 trees. The 24-inch caliper and larger trees to be removed came from 87 to 74. Tree removal in the RPA has been taken down from 21 to 10 trees, and I'll show you a location map here in a second. It's isolated to one area. It was scattered through three different areas of the golf course. It's isolated in one area now. The tree removal within 100 feet of the residential properties that are but Cornell and St. Andrews has went down by 4 trees from 34 to 30. And interestingly, the tree removal within 100 feet of the border of the tank farm where the tank farm has a pond has went from 100 to 34 trees. As part of the resubmission, the replanting plan stayed the same at 760 trees, and the no-mosom increased from 1 over 23 to 25 acres. I'd like to hone in on this Cornell St. Andrews area. And the recent submission shows that there's no change around the Cornell residential properties coming down whole R2 for this plan. It's the same 14 trees. What you see here is the same planting plant as previously. The green squares indicate the hardwood trees, the shade trees have be planted, the kind of piece symbol, symbols there are the understory trees. Little further south, whole white tree has been refined that trees here above white too, which is a part three, have been retained and the number has been cut back around four against scene Andrew. And if you note, the RPA, their dead center, there are no trees proposed coming out of the RPA. The replanting plan unchanged from last time. But again, I highlighted the hardwood shade trees to go back in along this area here in green and the other ones are the understory trees. And it will illustrate the red circle shows the one area where the tree removal proposed for the RPA is kind of south of St. Andrews. And the 10 trees that you see here are the only 10 proposed to be taken out of the RPA at this point. New to this submission, the pond has been reconfigured and the trees in the kind of green circle there are being retained on the site. There's some mature oak trees and the applicant working with the care of trees says deemed that those trees can be saved with a revision to the design of the expansion of the pond. The removal that was proposed along the tank farm had previously as you can see in these shaded areas here. Exactly 100 trees, kind of north of the Taint Farms pond, and that has been significantly reduced down to around 30 trees. And with welcome, any questions or yield to the applicant, I know who has made some updates to the plans since the submission. And what I would suggest we hold off on questions until we hold the field presentation. I'd like to invite the applicants to address the City Council. Mayor Letter remembers the Council. It's a pleasure to be here. My name is Art Walsh. I'm here on behalf of the Army Navy Country Club. And must say I missed that slow elevator right up to the third floor when I got here. But this is a big improvement from your old quarters. We're talking about the Fairfax Golf Course of Army Navy, renovation, restoration, improvements, the staff report, references, and expansion. I don't think that's exactly accurate because we're really not expanding the golf course. It's really a modernization. First our team and I'll just skip over that fairly quickly but the most significant new member of our team is Chris Cowles with care of trees who we retain since the last time we were here. Chris has gone out and counted all the trees and given us some suggestions as far as how to preserve some of the trees and so he's been a great assistance to us and I think you'll see as staff suggested a dramatic change in what we've done since the last time we were here. Again, the purpose is to modernize a 27-hole golf course, improve the drainage, improve the course architecture, improve the irrigation systems. It's a $6 million investment to remain competitive with other area courses. Without the renovations, we're concerned that golfers will go elsewhere. Laws of members of course means a loss of city tax revenue and community assets. And most of the competing clubs in the area have either done substantial improvements that we're suggesting or in the process of planning for those improvements. So this is really something that we're committing to to try to maintain the long term viability of the country club. Again, I'm sure you all know this, but Army Navy Country Club is the only golf course in the city of Fairfax. The city's total land area is 4,019 acres. cities total land areas 4,019 acres, the public open space in the city is 488 acres. Army Navy Country Club contains 232 acres. It's nearly 6% of the city's land area and it's also roughly equivalent to 48% of the city's public open space. So it is very substantial. I'd say it's the Crown Jewel of Open Space in the city of Fairfax. There's a plan that shows the Army Navy Country Club in yellow, and you can see what a large incremental area it is compared to the remainder of the City of Fairfax. Army Navy is not typical of most country clubs. The purpose early is to provide affordable recreational facility for those who serve the national offense. Majority of members are either military veterans purpose early is to provide affordable recreational facility for those who serve the national offense. Majority of members are either military veterans or active duty military. Majority are souried employees. There's a number of civilian members. This is not a deep pocket country club by any means. Armin Avey was looking forward and moving forward with a target start date of December 2006. We were hoping to run the golf course renovation concurrently with Phase 1 construction, which was our Daniel's run restoration. Unfortunately, the Daniel's run restoration has been completed at a cost of about $1 million. I think it represents a dramatic improvement to the storm for the stream that runs through our many of the country club. And we're hopeful with the City Council's assistance we can get started immediately after our approvals are granted. Getting to the specifics of the trees, care of trees estimates we have 8,000 trees on the property. The initial design was to remove 696 trees. We redesigned that to remove 364 trees. And then this is a further reduction since our last submission. Care of trees estimated that 57 of the trees that we're going to remove are in poor condition and would have to be removed in any event. So the net tree removal, healthy tree removal is 307 trees, which again is significantly less than the 696, although that's not a fair comparison because some of those were not healthy as well, but it's a substantial reduction in the amount of trees. Trees over 24-inch or more caliper, we're removing 58 healthy trees and 20, which are in poor condition. Trees in the RPA, 10 healthy trees and one dead tree, and then trees within 100 feet of neighboring properties. We're removing 36 as compared to 185 the last time we were here. One of the things that we're trying to do is replace the habitat. We're going to replant 260 canopy trees and 500 understory trees for a total of 760, which is a net gain of 453 trees, 25 acres of native grass, which will be no mo areas, and that will be moed approximately once a year, 37.9 acres of natural woodland habitat, and the existing tree canopy is similar to or greater than those of other area golf courses that we've compared it to. Just to show you what the no mo zone zone looks like and I've seen a lot of these around this area and other areas and it creates a real natural area in the golf course that adds I think to the texture and the vibrancy of the golf course. Again, this would be mode once per year. I understand from the golf professional this is a fairly early growth area so it will get a little bit thicker in vegetation as it goes along. And just responses to other concerns. One of the things I guess that surprised the country club was that the home owners complained about the fact that with trees gone, they could see lights from the tank farm during the winter. And so, Arminevi went over and looked at that area. And they had planned a very substantial cut down of trees on the right side of the seventh hole in the blue course, which borders the tank farm. But in response to community concerns, they redesigned blue seven to save approximately 76 trees, which will provide screening along the tank farm area. And we've also agreed to plan additional trees to block the tank farm lights from the community. Water runoff affecting St Andrew's residents, we redesigned the hole on white three, the third hole in the white course to reduce water runoff and standing wetness behind those homes. There were some city of Fairfax water concerns, and we've responded to that by precision watering, which is a capability to reduce water needs and also increase the pond size to reduce the need for city supply. There are also concerns about views and privacy, and we're gonna plant trees along the holes that affect the residents and also provide line areas with line areas in that area with dogwoods as well. I guess there was also a complaint about the asphalt plant and the Country Club's agreed to plant additional trees to help obscure the plant as well. There's an exhibit here, the next exhibit. This shows this is the whole that I always see when I drive down Oldie Highway in which I was playing golf. And it's a dog leg right, which means the hole goes around to the green on the right. And you can see that one tree overhangs right in the middle of the fairway in the target area. And that's a good example of the golf course really not being playable. And I think there's two changes. The first, obviously, the trees are going, but the second is there's a, you know, fairly big technology change as far as golf courses are concerned. And young people with good swings are hitting the ball a lot farther. I can't say that for myself, but the technology has improved the swings of better players. So this is an example where that tree will be taken down in order to improve the line of flight of the ball along that hole. And again, that's a dog leg right that runs right down the fence line. I guess it's perpendicular to Oldie Highway. And it also shows the larger team areas and teen decks to accommodate different levels of players, separating the teas out and making the off course more playable for all players. The next issue was drainage infrastructure replacement, piping is 30 years old and failing in multiple locations. It's undersized to meet the volume demands and lack of proper drainage really promotes turf grass disease and can increase chemical control usage. There's examples of that here. And the next slide that shows flooding from the drainage problems. And there's a second slide that was taken by the green to keeper that shows the conditions. I'm not saying this will be totally eliminated, but certainly it will be helped with the new system. eliminated, but certainly it will be helped with the new system. There's another slide. This shows a close up of the tree that I was talking about before. And also there's a pipe there that's broken and it leads to kind of sheet flowing down in the community. And that's the kind of a situation that we're going to remedy with our proposed improvements. I just say that I think this is a commitment to excellence on the part of Army Navy to try to continue the viability of Army Navy Country Club. We think it creates a win-win for the city because what's good for Army Navy is also good for the city. And we have done design changes and compromises that reflect our response to the comments that we heard from the city the last time we were here. With that, I'd be happy to answer any questions. We've got a whole team of experts here that can answer any difficult questions. Thank you. Thank you. Really, I guess more intended is an update both to the council and the community. It is a schedule designer standard. You all requested a firm toll. I believe it's maybe 27. 27, maybe 27. So let me see if there's questions from council. Mr. Restman. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Is Chris Coles and the Caratries Incorporated the same? Yes. Well, he worked for Caratries Incorporated. You're going to have to come up to the microphone for television purposes. Yes, Chris is here and he's our representative with Caratries Incorporated. And he prepared this three summary. So the condition rating is done by Mr. Coles. Yes. Okay. That was one question. I had the other one is, could we, well, there's a huge difference between the staff report and something you said, Mr. Walsh. You said that the trees within 100 feet of Cornell and St. Andrews went from 185 to 36. The city staff says 34 to 30. I don't have to answer that tonight, but maybe just explain that difference to it. I think if we can go back to that slide, can you get the slide? Yeah, I think I can explain the difference. The staff report broke it down. I'm Mace Carpenter, 358 Sherman House Drive. The staff report broke it down between the tank Mace Carpenter, 358 Sherman Hust drive. The staff report broke it down between the tank farm and the other residences. Our number combined the two within 100 feet. Right. We include the tank farm in that number. And then could you go back, one of your very first slides showed the tree removal at the RPA level, at the RPA area and talk about that a little bit. Why that's necessary so close to the RPA area. Yeah, I'm going to have to have either RJ or Chris talk about that. This is RJ Keller Civil Engineer. Right. Our Jay Keller with RC Fields and Associates. We have, I believe it's white four. That's correct. Detail four, white number four. We've got ten trees there. I believe in Chris, you can confirm this too. We've got ten healthy trees, one dead tree in that area that is scheduled to be removed. And basically the reason for the removal of those trees is for course design issues to make that, open that hole up a little more so that it's playable. It's a dog leg that plays around to the right, kind of follows the curvature of Daniel's run and those trees restrict most of the average players from having a reasonable shot at the green. So the removal of those trees are primarily for playability issues. The area underneath of those trees is primarily maintained rough. It's a grassed area. It's not high quality, vegetated buffers that we would normally associate with RPA, but that's kind of the reason that those areas being handled in that fact. That's when I'll want to look particularly at before you come formally, because that area of Daniel's run has not had any stream restoration work done to it. And the RPA is very sensitive. Thank you. Thank you. Other questions of the applicant or staff? Miss Lyon? This is for some information purposes. I just some things that I didn't ask last time when you were bringing stuff forward. How many residents are there in the city of Fairfax that belong to the Armin Avery Country Club? I understand there's 119. 119. Okay. I understand there's a hundred and nineteen. And then I was pretty lucky to be able to drive around in a golf cart with Mr. Scott here when I was looking at all this. And I'm pretty impressed with you. We had to say and really come back to us with adding more trees. That was one of the things that I was surprised that when we first had met that there were, you know, so many trees that you were gonna get rid of and now I realize you're gonna add 760 trees. So that I think is I'm very pleased to see that. But I guess when we're talking about doing this modification and remodeling of this golf course. And I am not a golfer, but after I run that golf course, I'm thinking I may want to take it up. Is that how long will the whole golf course be closed down? And how will you be managing, I guess, the construction traffic for that timeframe. Greg Scott on the Director of Garmin A.B. Country Club. The project is scheduled to take three years. There are 27 holes at the club. The intent would be that we would complete construction on nine holes each year over a three year period of time. The actual construction time when you have serious disturbance of ground between the time they start and the time it is grasped and begins grow in is probably the neighborhood of 120 days about four months past that. It's just getting the grass to grow into a point that you can reopen the holes that have been disturbed during the previous phase before we take the next nine holes out of place so that we always have 18 holes available for a member play. Okay, thank you for that clarification. And then when we were talking about the water and this is really a beautiful site with the pond. One of the questions that I always asked because we were in a drought this year, and just for the public's information, since this is a work session, you had a very detailed conversation with me about how you water the golf course. And if you do the new pipes, whatever that will help conserve water, but can you explain that? And then I guess how that pond is part of how that all works together? I'll do the best I can. Our superintendent, Carmen Gianini, might be a better source of information. But basically right now we have kind of an all or nothing irrigation system. A sprinkler head comes on. It waters an area as big as it waters. It's part of the area as big as it waters. Part of the area might need water, another part of an area might be get around a green or a T complex. There are times that we'd like to water just the green, don't need to water what's outside the green or vice versa. The system that we currently have doesn't give us the opportunity or the capability of watering specific areas. The new system that will be install will allow us to target water very accurately, just to the areas of the golf course that we're trying to irrigate. It will tighten up our total watering window, the amount of time that it takes to put water on the golf course, so that we won't have to water, hopefully at all during the daytime. All of our water irrigation will be able to be done at night, which accomplishes a number of things, not the least to which is better for the goffers. The irrigation lake is primarily our storage source. We want to be able to store as much water as we possibly can. It's our protection against drought and against problems. We do pump water from Agatink Creek to fill the lake. And from time to time, do have to allow on city water source to irrigate the golf course. This year, when we were underwater, I guess, I don't know that water restriction is the proper term. But we voluntarily reduced our cut back on our irrigation to essential areas. I mean, for us, our greens and teas are our biggest investment. They're the things that we're going to protect the most. There were a lot of areas in the golf course that we did not water. But for us, the irrigation pond, the more water we can store in the pond, which is protection for us. So those critical areas, if we do get into a drought, a drought, pardon me, are the need to restrict water usage from city or other sources we want to have as much water stored on site as we possibly can so that we can protect the assets of the club. Okay. Thank you. And I think those are all the questions I have, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. Any other questions? If not, thank you all very much for coming out and we look forward to the dialogue as it unfolds. That now brings us to a discussion of the location alternatives for the community center. You know, over the last several weeks we've all had a chance in the community to talk a lot about the community center. It seemed to me that a consensus was sort of evolved over the dialogue and the discussions at the various candidates night, not just with this group, but certainly with the future folks as well. And so I think the intent was tonight to kind of get some feedback and have some dialogue and discussion and get an update on the architect and try to give staff some direction so we don't end up chasing a lot of directions and alternatives that are not where we're intended to go. So with that, Mr. Sisson. May I you essentially given our report here, this was just an opportunity to place this item before you and see if we could get any commentary. We're now interviewing firms for architectural engineering services for the community center. Certainly we don't have to have much dialogue this evening, but perhaps even to maybe comment on some process that we could put together for in the coming weeks so that at least concurrent with our decision to hire the architect, we can have some sites for that individual to focus on. Well, and let me see if I can't just kind of get a consensus of where everybody feels like we are. First discussion is site location. It seemed to me if I read everybody's comments right over the last couple of weeks that there seemed to be a clear consensus that we did not want to intrude on the Van Dyke Park in the open space immediately in front of the park that we far preferred alternatives that would be in the area of the John C. Wood Peace Department area. Or if that didn't work out through various options, other locations throughout the community, if the family would it, whatever time we felt like the options didn't work out and I certainly think they should be able to work out. We go from there. So let me see if I kind of heard that feedback and that consensus correctly. And actually, Mr. Rasmussen had, but I think to be a good idea in that regard. And that was for us as a team to go walk the site as soon as the architect has been identified and on board and kind of all try to get on that same page. But is Mrs. Winter? I'm going to just one comment a couple years ago when Prab looked at we were Prab was looking at at a community center on possibly that site. If you were to follow back on the present driveway, back towards the tennis courts, there is a dip in the land and the idea of maybe looking at that area where from the street it would look like one story but because of the dip in the land you could put a second story. I think there's a small soccer field type area there and that would be a way off of the road it would mean to keep the playground playground word is now. But I don't know if that in our emails the last couple weeks, I don't remember seeing that. And I would just like to bring that forward. My recollection and I have didn't follow the prior discussion. The last time the council in 2004 did outreach on this, and it was shortly after we voted to take down the old John C. Woodside and build the police department there. I can remember us with our little, we had little boxes that the staff had developed and we all went out too and I think our outreach meeting was at the old John C. Woodside before it actually got torn down and we were talking about it being cited in front of the police department and over to the side. But which would certainly be my preferences if it fit is opposed to taking up any of the bandike park which seems loud and clear through the community feedback is a precious asset that the community wasn't, was concerned about. But what's the will of the, let me, if I could, Mr. Asmusson? I think maybe at this point, we need that little, not a whole lot of information from an architect, but a little bit to kind of say what's doable where and give us some ideas of what's the best way to cite a building and the parking needed without intruding on those parts of the of the area that we want to preserve. And maybe we just have to wait until we get the expert on board to help us think that through. Yeah. The thing that strikes me is if we, for some reason, run out of options at Van Dyke for whatever reason, we're going to lose a lot of time if we don't forget that out sooner rather than later. But Mr. Greenfield? I'll just throw this out there. You know, when we started this process, and certainly we'd go back to 2004, and we had the little box, you know, put the boxes here and there and we talked about at the end of the existing driveway as Mrs. Winter has alluded to in the area where the pine trees were. And maybe, you know, continuing to look at some of those alternatives, I think it's a good idea, but if we can rule out some possible sites tonight, I think that that also is reasonable and can help with the direction moving as forward. You know if we look at the existing police at the brand new police station where it is right now we look at the size of that building and we talk about if we want to take a less area of Van Dyke Park that we would want to do with two story building and if we wanted to phase that in it would be certain size. I can't support doing it at the entrance to the police station right there where the whether we move the ski park or not. That's just the wrong location and the wrong size and scale for a community center. Whether we could do it on the John the Johnson Woodside or we can do it back behind the police station and tuck it into the hillback there, I'm not an expert to figure out where we can do it in those different areas. But I think I agree we have to be careful to protect the existing park. And I also think we want to be careful in what kind of an entrance we have one along roadway highway, but two into this area and putting a building right there would be a mistake. So I would hope that maybe tonight we can at least all agree that we, you know, and maybe we already have. I don't think we've had a formal discussion with me. I'm not. We're all agreed that that would be the wrong location, but I'll throw that out there and maybe we can get some consensus that at least that location is not going to work for our community center. It seems to me like at least in the dialogue we've had so far that we would get that we could get that consensus. Yes, Ms. Cross, did you? I would agree with Ms. Winner and Mr. Assumson and certainly Mr. Silverthorn or Mr. Greenfield. Excuse me. I make that mistake. I don't know. That's okay. I know. That's true. I really think that putting the Community Center in the same general area as the police of a new police building would be tracked from both buildings. I think they both are certainly the police station is a beautiful building and it would seem to me to be too bad to crowd its presence in the spot where it is. I think the small soccer field, which is just before the tennis courts would be a location that might show some promise. I too think that the building could be and should be designed to be as unobtrusive to the scenery at the park as possible. The idea of building it into a hill I think is good so that you have the perception that it's one story building but with a walk out basement so to speak you you'd have two. So as Mr. Respisson says I think we need guidance from an architect to see exactly what's possible and I look forward to that but I would not subscribe to putting it up against the police station I think that would be ashamed to crowd that building. Thank you. Mr. Mayor, if I may. I'm fine. You know, I may have been out of the loop for the last couple days because I was out of town. But are we looking at any other location besides Van Dyke Park? Or are we waiting for the architect to maybe do that with us? I guess I misunderstood that. I thought that staff at one point was gonna be looking around to other places, to a besides Van Dyke Park. We've certainly, at least to my knowledge, never given them that direction. I think the direction that I've heard is, if it can be worked out in the behind the police department aside from the police department, a way in that general location which was outlined in the agreement without intruding on the open space event, I part, that certainly is the quickest way to the end game here. However, I think we is what we're saying is we got to get to that pretty quickly. And I agree with Mr. Rasmussen. I don't think we need to wait for a big elaborate design. We need to give staff some direction and sort of the size that we're talking about and then get somebody quickly to say it fits here, it doesn't fit there, because if in fact we have to go out and look at other alternatives. We're nowhere on that and we're going to have to first and foremost start that dialogue certainly with the family. But I just wondered if we needed to have some kind of dialogue with the family saying that we're looking hard at the end of the park, but we may have to move it out and you know be doing both of those things simultaneously so we're not losing any time on that since time is of the essence. I really would like to respect the Sherwood family on the timing for this because I think that that's I think very important to them. So I'm hoping maybe we could be looking at both of those things. Ms. Wuner. If memory serves, before we even knew who the donor was, we went out and looked at locations, and staff looked at locations, and those locations were maybe not exhausted, but that has been done. It wasn't, it was done before this gift was made public, but it's been done. I'll just jump in here so we don't get too far straight here. I certainly think it was done. I mean, look, here's one of the limitations. I think where we're gonna get to on size of the the building if I'm not mistaken or misread the community or the dialogue, at least at Canada's nights, is that we're talking about building a $5 million dollar, the best $5 million community center that we can money can buy and possibly designing it in future phases, but focusing on that. That what strikes me is, unless we have surplus land somewhere, just buying the land, if it wasn't in property that we already own, would chew up a good portion. I mean, quite frankly, the only alternative that hasn't been talked about, at least publicly, is whether or not there would be any partnership that we could talk to our friends at George Mason University to see whether or not there would be any options there. And that would be the only other thing I could think of in the short term. You know, I know Wes Moore was looked at, I know Greenacre's looked at, I believe, Frifax, the old Frifax Elementary School, if I'm not mistaken, Mr. System was one of the options that was vetted early on. And if those have all been excluded, then we're running out of options. And I might just suggest that I think we have the opportunity to do that Mr. Greenfield and myself and staff as directed by council have been in discussions with the Levin Oaks property and that may lead to some more conversation that we could have simultaneously to see whether or not there's anything that may unfold there. I'm not suggesting there is, but it certainly would be worth, I think, a dialogue if there aren't any objections on whether or not there might be a partnership out there that the university would be interested in because that would be the only thing I could think of that would get us to the in-game without blowing all our money on buying land. I just wanted to bring that back up, Mr. Mayor, because I was, you know, a little out of the loop on that, so thanks. Well, and let me see if we can get a consensus, and I don't want to put words in anybody's mouth, but if I follow the dialogue, at least over the last couple weeks, it, and obviously, it bared out in our budget discussions as well, that is there still a consensus that we would like to keep options of future phases, but what this Council is going to focus on with a $5 million gift is a $5 million phase one. If I can, and I know I don't mean it, that's simplistic. But in essence, a $5 million phase one project. Is that where we all are with a design of a larger one? If it down the line, some future councilor, the community decides to go in that direction. Mr. Restmessen? Well, I think clearly that's the only thing we can build now, but what's key is to find the site that will take the larger facility if we ever got to the point where we could afford the larger facility. Right. So that's what's important. You know, and I quite frankly think that's the discussion at this point in time. We're probably going to be able to exhaust tonight, Mr. Siss. And I think what we're with the sites that are identified within the park without encroaching or taking away from the open space in Van Dyke Park, a discussion that we can have informally to even see if there's any dialogue with the university that we can continue to have. And I think we have the opportunity in the process to do that. And the direction is design it for the whatever. I think it was 32,000 square feet if I remember right. But that what we're going to be focused on as a body is phase one, which will be within the realm of the $5 million gift given to us by the families. Is that, and then obviously, either within architect, can you share with us what the timing of getting an architect on board will be? Mr. McCarty's in the room. I give us a day, and we hope to have a recommendation. Hopefully by the end of May at the second meeting at the end of May, we are currently interviewing design and engineering firms right now. Why does it take so long? Can we not accelerate that process? Well, we had 17 firms that submitted their RFPs and we narrowed that down to five firms. What we'd like to do before we come back with the recommendation of council would be to go to visit a couple of community center sites that the firm that we recommend he designed as well as parks that they've designed. Well, I personally, and I think it's out there to be much argument here, we need to accelerate that and collapse it as quickly as we possibly can so that we get that valued member of our team on board and if there's a way to accelerate that go out and see them sooner we need to do that. I would hope it would be more than 30 days from now and and whatever that means if you all could accelerate that I think it's only to our advantage. Okay well then what we can't accelerate. Okay I think that's probably going to exhaust the direction we can do tonight, unless there's any other comments. What I'd like to do is just jump down to 12D, which I think we can get through fairly quickly as well. It's sort of like in the spirit of the dialogue we just have with the community center, and then we'll go back to see only because I think there are probably people in the room that may want to hear it. And I have to share with you an interesting and somewhat embarrassing story in that. Over the last couple of weeks, I mean, actually, if full disclosure, Mrs. Cross has really been doing an excellent job of kind of poking us every now and then and say, what's about the master plan? And I never quite focused on why that comment was being made, and I was involved in a community discussion, I don't know, a week or two ago. And I got an debate on, well, this council already developed a vision and developed a game plan and put it in writing and mailed it to the community, and the people I was talking to looked at me like, I didn't know what I was talking about and unfortunately they were correct. I didn't know what I was talking about. I went back home that night and went on the website to find the executive summary that we all spent a lot of time in energy six months ago and signing off both with the bid folks and this body and staff and I sat in a couple meetings even with our consultant at the time. And the reality is it hasn't been sent out and it has not gone anywhere and staff's recommendation on the paper they had that they recommended that they put it on the city website distributed to boards and commissions and committees and make it widely available to the public. Unless there's any objections, we spent a lot of time on this and a lot of drafts and it was circulated to the council many times and to our partners on the bid and the EDA. Unless I miss something, it was a consensus document from that process. Let me see if there's any comments or any objections to following the staff's recommendation on getting it widely distributed so that the spirit of our dialogue last summer where we spent two days, Ms. Winner, you're saying yes, Ms. Lyon, Ms. Syvethon, Mr. Resmuson. Can I interject one comment? I know I raised a couple of times the issue, and I've done it over 20 years now, the area from Draper Drive to the Circle, which is called Light Industrial, and this calls for it to remain. And I think that's really a questionable thing to say about a blighted area, even though we say it should be improved. That that's an area that the City ought to concentrate on for redevelopment over the next ten or so years, and to say it remains as light industrial, I think, sends the wrong signal to everybody. And so I would just throw that out again for your consideration. Well, could we just simply say something like with the arrow that this area should be improved? And I want to simplify it too much, but isn't that in essence what we're what you're saying? Well, I think we ought to get rid of the light industrial over the long haul in terms of zoning for that. That ought to be retail, residential, mixed use, something or other besides auto shops in rundown buildings. Shats. I could maybe a good interim step at least for this public information piece would say that number one, I think there's consensus that it ought to be redeveloped. The only argument would be whether or not it's what the land use would be. So I would suggest maybe we change that language that says there should be the land you should be evaluated in the upcoming conference of plan rewrite, but in any event, it should be consolidated and redeveloped with the principles that are consistent with the remainder of this document. And that might be a way around it for the time. If we drop the reference to light industrial and just talk generically like that, I think that would be much better. And obviously you needed to put several sentences that you just outlined into one, but I think we're all consistent with the spirit of what Mr. Hudson just outlined in the stress lesson. Okay. Okay. That standing, and I will apologize to the public and I just, well, whatever, we need to get this document out. So with that standing, can we give staff direction to, they say, place it on the city's website, distribute the board's commissions and committees, make widely available to the public. Is there a consensus on that? Okay. With that, the second action item I recall that came out of that meeting was to direct staff to start to try to identify an engineer. I'm going back now six months ago to hire an engineer to start to design the road system. I think we even talked about one of the members of the partnership was in that business with the direct staff to identify that process and start to try to bring on an engineer in the partnership. If I'm recalling that correctly and I think that was a consensus, can you share with us where we are in that process? We are getting an RFP out for the commencement of the design of the plus two portion of this. An issue that we're going to have is without an additional funding source, that's a very expensive design. And so we, the initial part of this contract will be how much is it? You know, for the actual design work and that is that RFP development is underway. I suspect by the end of next month we will have that out and possibly have some responses to that. And as you're aware, the whole funding mechanism that we were initially going to use for the design of the plus two system for the preliminary engineering is kind of up in the air right now, it's my understanding. So we'll have to be looking for longer term or alternative funding sources for that. And that was the commercial, whatever we call a tax rate, which yeah, and quite frankly, that's the unfortunate part of this. And you know, I remember the dialogue during that discussion was, well, we don't have an immediate project today. And so let's wait until next year. And unfortunately, and I put myself in the front of that boat, we forgot because we haven't talked about it in so long that we were trying to get an engineer. We all agreed that the road system couldn't even start the public road system until we brought on a consultant and an engineer and figured out what the expense was and the design and the 5.2 or whatever terminology we were calling it. So as we sit here right now in all fairness, there is no funding source. If I remember the dialogue way back when it was about a million dollars to find an engineer designed it, is that still my way off base on that? That's the best estimate we have right now. The plan itself recommends funding sources that we look into include tax increment financing, which could fund the engineering for this road. But that's a longer term. It's not something's going to happen over the next couple of months. It's something that requires a lot of discussion and work before we can get that before you. A stress must. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Well, but do we really need an engine and design engineering of the plus two yet? It seems to me what we need. I mean, because the funding, we don't even have the funding for Northfax yet. And we've got that, I think, pretty well understood as to what that's going to look like. But to design the whole plus two for the whole corridor seems to be premature. What we need, it seems to me, is less the engineering drawings or the engineering, than just some preliminary design concepts of what the road structure should look like and kind of the costing of that to get to the point where you would do the engineering. I mean, I think we ought to try to break this into two phases because we don't need a detailed design because we're quite a ways along from having a whole lot of money to spend on construction. Well, can I mean, quite frankly, this is a little bit of a mess if you ask me. I mean, the plan that we keep talking about it, Norfax on the road system, was an old six-lane configuration that we threw out the window in exchange for the five two. But that boat is continuing to sell down the river here in terms of, we keep talking about the short funding. If we're going to, in fact, go with the five two, including in the area that we originally designed as a six-lane area, which is from Eaton to 123, is there any way we could take some of the existing money that's already been identified and I don't know what the pool is but I know we were $7 million short but that's a $20 million project is there any way we could transfer some of the existing money that's been airmarked for that section and use that for design for design. What we're trying to do right now with the Northback project is to try to split the project into two between the storm drainage project and the design of the roadway. And this way we will have flexibility in after we build the drainage which needs to get done anyway whether or not we want the six lanes or the five two configuration as far as using some of the funds to design the entire corridor. I will have to check whether or not the funds that have been dedicated is dedicated only for this section of Lee Highway or if it can be extended until Washington. Well, but couldn't we just to start with, which we said in this work session, was our north fax was one of our priorities, couldn't we use the money just to design the five two just for that immediate area? I mean, we would have to go back. Here's what's going on. Yes. You all are proceeding down with a six-lane configuration unless I missed the vote. And that's what we're almost done. Well, that's almost done, but six months ago we stopped that project, at least unless I missed it and we said we want to go with a five-two configuration. And as part of that discussion, we then said let's go out and get an engineer because that's part of the public responsibility. And yes, we were talking about using the commercial, and at that time we thought the regional taxes to fund that, which clearly is up in the air right now. But we're not communicating on the same page. In my sense is we're moving forward on the six lane, but we've given clear direction that we want to do the five two lane, and somehow we have to put these two things together. It's just going to be a very unfortunate expense of another delayed process. That the six lane conf- let me make sure I remember our discussion. In fact, I think it's in this document. We gave the direction in July that we wanted to go into the five two configuration from North Fax all the way up to Camp Washington. The current funding is committed for the drainage and six-leaning of North Fax from and for us to proceed with the direction that the Council wants us to go to on the five two, we don't think we have a choice except to decouple the project. We went to the way the Virginia Transportation Authority several months ago. The funding for that is different. And as for the funding of 50 to implement a five-two configuration, not the six-lane. And the funding for that, the funding source for that is completely different and separate from the current funding that we have for this function. Here's what I'm suggesting, Mr. Prasocin. This council, as a body, set a policy. We don't want the six-lane configuration. So we now, if assuming unless this body wants to change that feedback, which we spend two days in lands down working through, if that's the direction in the policy, then we need to get Mr. Sisson on the same page, and we need to figure out how to work the six line and the money into a five line in the design. We have to do that. And the approach that I'm suggesting is to decouple the design of the road from the drainage project. So they must be in that. But we don't want to slow down the road project either. That decoupling, to me, says, we're going to make a priority in the stormwater. We've now lost seven months in this process, and we're going to decouple it so that we can screw around with it for another lifetime. Mr. Sisson. Mr. Mayor, I'm recalling nothing that the Council directed us to not to change the existing design on the North Facts project. This project is unchanged over the last couple of years. We are almost to the point where the design is finished, but for funding, we would be ready for property acquisition and construction. And now maybe you're talking, maybe we're talking about West from 123 West. That was never the discussion. It has to be as clear as day in the take. In fact, it says right here, Boulevard style, slow lanes in parking, a Boulevard style, slow lane with on-street parking creates a pedestrian, friendly, and business-friendly environment, a long, fair-fax boulevard while accommodating vehicles. We have recognized that there is a conflict there, but other staff members may chime in, but I don't recall any direction to make that change. Mr. Rasmussen. Mr. Hudson. Just that, I mean, I'm actually remembering a little bit of both things to tell you the truth. I mean, we had proceeded with the design of the six lanes to up to a certain point in his mind understanding that we're going to 5 plus 2 at this location. And as Mr. Persosa said, we separated at that point, we separated the continued design of the six lanelane configuration from the drainage project because we knew we could proceed with the drainage project. So I don't think that's... And actually we were faced with basically a change in the transportation policy for that intersection and that seemed to be the best course of action to take. However, the key right now, if we want to proceed with the five two configuration at this location is where are we going to get the funding to design on a five two. And in response to Mr. Rasmussen's inquiry, I think, what we do is we develop it as a geometry of the North Facts downpack with the consulting money that we have. And we should be able to do that with an advance of the preliminary engineering. So we'll proceed along that line. We've got some consulting money. We can put it as we'll get the 5 plus 2 as it relates to North Facts. We'll get the Internal Street Network figured out as it relates to North Facts and we'll proceed from there in an absent direction to the contrary. Well, at this stage, I certainly think that's... Well, if we're re-eating. If I could, Mr. Mayor, just to chime in on this project, because we have been pushing forward with the North Facts, and we did believe that that was the direction, not to slow down on this project because we have been pushing forward with the North facts and we did believe that that was the direction not to slow down on that project. As obviously taken several years and we have been trying to get funding for that for several years also. So this is something that we have not tried to slow down or change because of the potential changes to the Fairfax of our relating to that. And I certainly appreciate that comment, but I can tell you and remember distinctly the dialogue that the direction and the consensus was totally different than that. And I'll do respect and I'm reading I've read it in five, four different places now. That's what this says. And the reality is it doesn't matter. We are where we are. Clearly, I think we all thought that the commercial tax and or the regional taxes was going to be the source of revenue that we've got. We sort of, and blue is not the right word. We did not take advantage of that opportunity in this budget cycle. So I'm assuming at this point we cannot enact the commercial tax other than waiting a year from now, correct? The next budget. So again, what I would ask is if the direction is to go to 5-2 and describe the six lanes from North Street to 123 and do it the entire length of the boulevard, which I believe was the discussion, you're going to have to help us figure it out. I will explain the only thing I can commit is I will explore with BDOT what alternatives we had with the current funding, whether or not we have flexibility in spending more of these funds for a completely different road configuration at this location. I don't disagree. Otherwise. So I just think it's disappointing. We've lost somebody needs to tell me where to get the funds to redesign this configuration. Well, I think the first step would be to have the dialogue with V.Dott. Yes, sir. To have the dialogue with the bodies. We're going to find out hopefully in another couple of weeks what happens with the regional taxes, which we've already identified as the five two is a major priority in our funding and which North NVTA agreed to allow us to change the direction of the six-line configuration, which I remember distinctly participating in that dialogue. And then we're going to have to get back together, but I think at this stage, we can't lose any more time. And I concur with Mrs. Cross's urging, and I thought we'd already launched this vote. We clearly haven't. Now we need to retrenchrench and I would suggest that we focus on that direction. We get this document widely distributed as talked about. We get as many people in the public to actually allow the general assembly during the special session to actually restore all the funding that was lost because of the Supreme Court ruling. If that happens, then we are back in business. Okay. Mr. Westminster. I was coming to ask the question, what about the bid money? The bid has a half a million dollars that they have not committed to anything that I'm aware of. But we spent a good portion of it in our budget.. I thought it was only 100,000 we spent. Right. I agree. No, we spent 100,000 on contract services. We left 100,000 on the table, and 300,000 give or take was for projects up and down in the highway quarter that was in the budget. Is that Mr. Hunchkins? That is correct. So we really have $200,000 plus this body approved of 1% which is going to generate $130,000, $20,000. I don't remember the exact number. About $125,000. So we would have, if we used all of those sources which we would have $300,000. A $200,000 was the contract money I was referring to. Well, 100,000 of it, but then 100,000 case we needed it. But the reality is, we did what we did on the commercial tax, and now we're gonna have to decide if this truly is a priority, what to do about it. But I think we need to all get focused on that was the direction of the Council. And now we need to roll up our sleeves and give us options and dialogue and discussion and an MVTA and we'll watch and see what happens on the state level and we'll talk to our NBTA colleagues. But I think that's a clear consensus. Miss Cross. I would just ask staff to really accelerate the process of bringing a consultant on or that's correct. Consultant to whose responsibilities are strictly the coordination of the Boulevard projects. I think that's becoming more and more important as we try and stretch our resources that we already have in terms of staff. We need someone whose total focus is the Boulevard and can work within, you know, with our staff and help us facilitate this. I think that's becoming more and more urgent. Okay. Let's, we still have many other, I, Mr. Greenfield, yes. Related to this is that not also appropriate to refer this to the planning commission the master plan let them start working through it. I don't know what to work through other than incorporate as part of the review of the comprehensive plan you mean. Right, and right and he's zoning time. I mean there's a lot of work to still be done here. I mean we've kind of slowed the train down a little bit not and I don't think intentionally but I'd like to try to get a little bit of momentum back to you know. but not in, I don't think intentionally, but I'd like to try to get a little bit of momentum back to the first time we brought the residential and business communities together to work on this. And it seems like we ought to try to work the point where I think we can refer this to the Planning Commission and ask them to incorporate this into the Comprehensive Plan and bring back any zoning text amendments that would need to be made to allow this to continue to move forward, correct? That would keep us moving forward on the vision, yes, it would. Okay. We agreed to do that. Absolutely. Mr. Winner. Thank you, Mr. Winner. Would this be the proper venue to bring up the form-based code again to? Well, that is the- No, I'll talk about- No, I'll talk about it next. That's what I mean. As I understand it, that was the main focus on the $100,000 was to bring in an expert to help us get that going. Because, you know, if we go back to where we were, whenever it was to lie, we said there were two major responsibilities of the city, and that was the road network and the ordinances. and I think that's the intent of the 100,000 plus is to get that expert on board so we can condense that process and make it happen. Right, okay. Thank you. This is the to the planning commission. Mr. Long. I just have one comment about the bulletin that we're going to pass out. I find the map a little complicated to read. You know, I mean, if I'm in that there, I can't to linear it. It's not large enough. I can't eliminate the slow loans. I'm slow lanes in it. I wish that we could make it a little clearer, like get University Boulevard printed on there so people can see how they're trying to flow it through. I just think it needs to have a little bit more detail to it if we could do that. I find this really not that informational. Mr. Hudson, on the website, could we not have an expanded map of that? And I mean, I know some of it is just pure size into the document itself, but A, could you take that into consideration and B, maybe could we blow up these three areas and, you know, that are circled, blow them up a little bit? This doesn't really give me the idea of what the slow lanes are, the five lanes, and the six lanes are the two lanes. I mean, I really, if I were, I understand the project, but if I were just looking at it, you know, for a sweep, I wouldn't understand what this was really doing. We have a pretty good graphic on that that we can probably replace one of these pictures. Good, thanks. Okay, but let's not, don't send it back to us. Let's just do it and get it going. Okay, that brings us to the last item, which is discussion of the WaterSewer Enterprise Funds, Capital Funding Strategies. Hopefully we can, I would say that's the lay it, but I know we have friends and visitors from out of town. So, yes, hopefully we can. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. This is the follow-up meeting to the meeting that we had with Davenport, who's representative is here this evening, and others back in October, in which we told you that there were strategic alternatives that were going to have to be embraced by the Water and Sewer System. Following that meeting, we basically discussed with you some of the elements, some of the chant major changes that we were facing in the water system such as loss of a wholesale water customer and so forth. Following that, we told you that we would be back in front of you in a few months to talk about packaging some of the capital needs for the system. And in order to do that, we've invited Dan McCourt, Mr. David Rose at the podium, and he'll go through a presentation with you this evening. Thank you, Mr. Manager, members of the council, Mr. Mayor. But my colleague Kyle Locke, and I would like to do is walk you through about a dozen or so slides that hopefully we'll put all this in perspective and I think when it's done we'll give you all some comfort that the utility system is continuing to move along positively and again very efficiently on behalf of the citizens of the City of Fairfax. If you just turn to page two, we also have some handouts if anybody would like in the audience just so you're aware outside as well as some extra booklets if you'd like. But having said that, an overview here of the City, as you well know, the city of Fairfax enjoys what are considered excellent general fund credit ratings. Basically your one half step from being AAA rated, which is not a small accomplishment considering the relative population, most AAAs find the population to be marched larger than yours. So we're just on the precipice of being there. One of the reasons for that is that the enterprise fund have been historically self-supporting. By that we're talking about the water ensuer enterprise funds. And what we'll be talking about this evening is continuing to be in that mode so it's not reliant on the general fund from support and as a result both of those things seem to help one another the general fund is able to stand on its own as is the enterprise funds for water and sewer at the same time the water and sewer doesn't need to to in any way tax the general fund. So with that being said, we wanted to give you a little perspective on what has been happening over the years. The water and sewer capital projects have been funded the last several years entirely with equity. So one of the things you're going to see in a couple of minutes is that you are in an excellent position cash flow wise to take on some new indebtedness as we see, continue improvements and enhancements in EPA related mandates and what have you that are required of your system for, again, continued operations that satisfy all of the various environmental standards. At the same time, I alluded to this a few moments ago, the city is actually going to be paying off all of its water and sewer enterprise debt in the next fiscal year, 2009, the one we're coming on to. And that again puts us in an excellent position to have some flexibility as it relates to how we want to take care of these new capital needs that we have to do. So one of the things we're going to talk about tonight is where we stand, how you look compared to your neighbors up here in Northern Virginia, and then again some strategies for how to move forward over the next several years. If you just turn to the next page, the background, we wanted you to see, as I mentioned a moment ago, that we have continued to pay down the indebtedness of the water and sewer enterprise fund. And as a result, after the next fiscal year, we're going to free up about a quarter of a million dollars in funds that right now are being earmarked towards the debt service. And again, that quarter of a million dollars is being earmarked towards the very last payment payments, if you would, that end here in the fiscal year 2009. So we're looking very, very strong as we go forward. On page four, we wanted to give you a sense of that indebtedness and how you compared to your neighbors. And what you can see is that when we put this on a debt per capita basis, the City of Fairfax actually enjoys the lowest in debtedness on a debt per capita basis. The NN and Herndon may seem like they're close, but as you know, neither of them have any treatment infrastructure. You actually have not only distribution system infrastructure, but also treatment. So in reality, again, Fairfax is very favorable position. Your indebtedness is well under $250 per capita. And actually, when we talk about doing this first phase of funding, which is roughly about four and a half to five million dollars, we will actually remain at the lowest indebtedness per capita. So I think that's an important point we'd like to stress. So we will continue to be in an excellent position. If you then turn to the next page, we wanted to then also show you how you looked in terms of payments. In terms of your water ensuer user rights, again in an absolute basis, what you can see, we went back over the last 20 years back to roughly 1989 and we have averaged over those 20 years a little over 5.5% on the water side annually and we've averaged a little under 2.5% on the sewer side. As all of you know you've already incorporated in your upcoming budget a 7% water and sewer rate increase in the 2009 budget. That's based upon the consulting engineers telling you and ourselves what will be necessary to again keep us in good stead going forward. So again, we're looking at something somewhat akin to where we've been a little bit higher and you're going to see why in a few minutes and basically that's because the capital requirements that we have are going to be a little bit greater than they have been in the past. If you turn to page 6 however, once again the city is very well positioned. You are running neck and neck with the Fairfax County and the Water Authority there. When I say Fairfax County by that we mean the sewer part of the county because there are two separate systems, but we combine them. What you find is that the City of Fairfax is again at the very bottom of water and sewer bills for its residents. The question may be posed, what will be the increase that 7% what is that translate into for the average customer that's about 75 cents a week increase in terms of what they're looking at at 7%. So again, while none of us want to see any of our rates and charges go up, we're really looking at an increase that I think you would all agree relative to the mandates that we have is very modest. And again, those rate increases are already factored into this graphic that you see here which continues to keep us again amongst the very bottom in terms of water and sewer bills. We go to the next page, historical capital expenditures. I mentioned a few moments ago that we have spent several millions of dollars over the last several years. And what you can see there is we spent about $12 million in the last half dozen or so years, seven to be exact. For water it's been a little over nine million, the sewer has been a little over three million. So again, you can see where the monies have been spent. We've been able to do almost all of that with equity, with cash flow, if you would, prior to that we did it with borrowing indebtedness. So again, as the indebtedness comes down, we're now in a mode where we can put additional ourselves to do some of the new capital expenditures. If you turn to the next page on a going forward basis over the next five or six years, six to be exact, we have roughly $16 million of projects that have been estimated. Once again, the larger size is for the water. It's roughly three to four times what the sewer needs are. It's about 12.9 million. The sewer is a little under $3 million. And if you put those two together, we're looking at again about $16 million in terms of taking care of through the year 2014. Then further out over the course of the next roughly dozen or so years, we're having upwards of $60 million of necessary investment again to keep the water and sewer systems at the levels that are required by the federal and state authorities. So page 9, what is our plan with all of these things being said? But what we're recommending is that the city consider taking advantage of the equity and debt markets, in this case the debt markets, on a buy annual basis. And if you could see on the bottom there, we're looking at every two years borrowing, the first borrowing would be this spring, would be a little over four and a half million dollars, we'll round it off to about five million dollars. We're looking at then two years later in 2011, being in a mode where we borrow again about $4.5 million. And then rounding off that six-year program, borrowing a little over $6.5 million in 2013. By doing this, we're in a mode where we're able to continue to allow ourselves to be at the very bottom or stay at the very bottom of Water and sewer requirements. Yes You just have one question Go through that when I'm looking at the chart here that you just had up on the I guess I saw the 4.6 million. Yes, okay I can you go over those amounts again? Because I'm not following them on the chart. OK. If you go to the very bottom, what we've done? And then I'm on page 9, right? Yes, ma'am. OK. Yes. What we've done is we've aggregated fiscal year, 09 and 10. So it's the 1.8 million and the 2.7 is going to be coming together to be roughly about 4.5 million. We've got a series of projects. And then that's how we're doing it. Okay. So again, and these are approximate amounts that have been provided to us. So again, there's a little bit of of of of monies that will move around, but we're looking at around. Yes sir. Based on current rates, what would that 15 million cost us per year? What we do now is that right now that 7% if we do roughly 7% over the next several years, that's what we're looking at in terms of the actual increases. And when you ask, what would that cost you? I'm not sure I follow other than in terms of equivalent. I was trying to get what's the annual dollar carrying. Okay, good question. The audience. I can, all right. What I do know, and what we did do very quickly, and we can get that for you, Mr. Rasmussen, is this, on the first tranche of debt, if you would, that is going to actually translate to about $325,000 for the first tranche of debt. And as I mentioned earlier, we're actually dropping off about $250,000 in debt. So we will see a net increase in total debt service only about $75,000 for each of the next two fiscal years. What that translates into, as I mentioned quickly, is roughly about $3 a month increase for the average user, which is why I said it's about $0.75 a week for the average user. Customer is going to see a $0.75 increase in their bill. The average bill per month right now is about $129. And that $129 on page 6 already incorporates that 7% increase. Okay? Hopefully that's helpful. But then when you go to 2011, that whole 4.5 million has to be paid for with new dollars. That's correct. And what's going to happen then working with the consultants is that if we continue along the lines of that roughly 6, 7 percent increase per year for the foreseeable future, that will take care of those next series of debts that you've got. So that's what we're looking at, okay? Thank you. And again, as you can imagine, some of the things like we've just had five or six inches of rain, that impacts the cash flows, as just as a drought, impacts, cash flows, any new connections, impacts, cash flows, interest rates will impact it. So a series of factors will be there, but we're talking about approximately six or seven percent increase. And again, hopefully you can see what that basically is translating into. there but we're talking about approximately six or seven percent increase and again hopefully you can see what that basically is translating into it's about nine or ten dollars per quarter so about three to four dollars a month is what we'd be looking at in those subsequent years for the customers. Just a couple more. I'm sorry. Sorry. Maybe you're going to get to this later on. But do these numbers at 7% increase over the next several years and that's starting now through 2014? Yes, sir. Does that include the loss of Loudoun County as they hold still? That's everything factored in. Yes, sir. Everything facts. Yes, sir. It is. County as they also that's everything factored in yes sir everything yes sir it is on page nine and again I'm a page 10 one of the things that we're here to ask you is to allow us to move forward and speaking of loud and one of the reasons that we are here in a position to move forward is because we have resolution on that now we have clear guidance so when the consultants were able to recognize that we know just where we're going or in a position to say fine, these are our needs. This is the magnitude and the timing of our needs now that we know exactly what the system is going to look like over the next several years. So with that, one of the things that we're coupled with on page 10, and I think the graphic does it best is you can see that in the early 80s through the 90s, interest rates have just continued to come down. We are here with regard to the tax exempt world because that's how we as the locality and locality's borrow. We are bouncing along if you would roughly 35 to 40-year lows in interest rates. So we're in a very highly favorable interest rate environment and so one of the things that we would like to recommend is that we take advantage of that very favorable interest rate environment coupled with the fact as I said earlier that almost all of our indebtedness is being paid off in the next few months. So you put those two things together plus the fact that again we know where we're going as a city with regard to our capital needs and our timing and what we like to recommend is that we utilize the private placement market going to on a competitive basis those local and regional banks here in northern Virginia that have served us very well over the last several years and basically using that same vehicle that we did for the open space and the additional school project work that we did and again competitively go out and try to solicit interest rates and firm bids from those folks with regard to that roughly four and a half to five million dollars that we need. So page 11 really just is a Mr. President? Mr. President, hold on one second. I'm sorry. If we did private placement, what kind of collateral would be required? Good question, Mr. Rasmussen. What we see is one of or a piece of the facilities we are talking about using as collateral, maybe a pump station, something of that nature that in reality a bank knows that there's something tangible there. Practically speaking, I don't think a bank really wants to own your bump station, but again, from a regulatory, federal regulatory perspective, they can check off a box and say, there is a deed of trust there on something hard if hard and fast that the city has. And that's really what they want to do. But for all intents and purposes, this is really your promise that you're going to, through the rates and charges that you have, continue to have enough cash flow to make your payments and that's really what they're getting. That's really what they're getting is a rate covenant that you continue to do what you've been doing for years. So from that perspective. And we think that because of the timing as well as the overall structure, we see ourselves being in a position to borrow and we call a bank qualified basis. You may recall that is because in this calendar year, we'll be able to borrow as a city less than $10 million, that gives us very favorable funding. So we are interestingly enough, we use an interest rate that was going to be about 5% on a fixed rate basis. We really believe that the end of the day, if rates hold, will be considerably under that when it comes to competitively bidding out for the interest rates. So with that, just page 11 is just going to summary of our rationale for moving forward. If we continue to do what we're doing, we see ourselves continuing to allow the general fund to be self-sufficient. Again, we continue to allow the enterprise fund to be healthy and also self-sufficient. We see ourselves being in a mode where we're allowed to continue to have the kinds of cash flow that we need to take care of the debt. And at the same time, we continue to allow interest rates and rates that the taxpayers be paying very favorable on both sides of the equation. And the last page, Mr. President, yes, I'm sorry. The last point on page 11, fun balance levels have restored the desired level. That to me says that they're not now at desired levels. Is that what you're saying? I think what we're saying is just that. We have been in a mode where we've made a conscious decision as a city to take care of and do as much as we can with cash that's been there while they're still dead outstanding. But now that we've gotten all of the debt effectively paid off. Now we're moving in a cycle where we're going to go more towards borrowing some funds, let that fund balance come back up in a few years, we'll then start drawing down on the fund balance. So really it's just a going back and forth between in one particular series of years borrowing money, another series of years as that debt starts to get paid off using the equity that we're building up in the system. So that's really where we are. From our perspective, we've always had fun balances, but we want to see those come a little bit higher, but at the same time, we've also, as I said earlier, have the lowest amount of indebtedness of anybody in the region. So again, we're looking to continue to keep operating this way and just continue to do what we're doing really. And then just last page, and I'm happy to go back, but again, I know you had a full agenda. What we're hoping for is with this council to allow the staff and ourselves to move forward over the course literally the next 45 to 60 days and solicit the competitive proposals from the local and regional banks coming, come back, bring them back to your May 20th meeting and we'll actually have at that time firm bids in hand particular structures you would ask one of you would ask me what would be the actual security and we can talk about exactly what the security is going to be provided and if that's acceptable to the council we will make a joint recommendation with staff if we recommend that these bids or A-Bid looks favorable to move forward. If not, we'll talk about some other strategies as well. But the goal would be then sometime in the early June timeframe to be able to close on this loan and to continue to move forward. So with that, I moved very quickly because it was a little bit late. I'm sorry if I rushed, but perhaps I can come back and answer some of the questions. Miss Cross. Well, at the risk of being considered a real heritage, I think this isn't, this is a very appropriate time for the city to look at whether we still want to remain in the water business. We have debt satisfied, we have a facility, we have lost a major customer in L Maiden County. I would be very interested to see a comparison of what it would cost the city to contract with the County of Fairfax for the next, say, 20 years or whatever, whatever the period of time is covering and then make a make a choice as to whether this is the direction that we ought to go before we put ourselves in debt again for the next 20 years. Ms. Cross that that was the subject of our October discussion. Well. And the- Excuse me, where was that? The consensus of the council was that we're going forward alone and staying in the water business, basically. I'll review that. It's my mind. Thank you. Thank you. On that note- So my mind, thank you. Thank you. On that note. We can reintroduce those documents and come back and have another session on that. Well, if others are clear on it, I don't want to be the only one. Maybe I was gone, I don't know. But I do think this is the appropriate time to look at it to be sure that we're headed down the right road. It was just to help jog memories here. This was the comparisons that showed over the next 20 or 30 years that we were going to be with the loss of Loudoun County's Hoseel water relationship with the city. We were going to be in a, I don't know, maybe I think it was about a 50% higher water rate cumulative over a number of years, not a great difference, frankly, but it may help you all remember that those comparisons, if rather, than if we kept loud as a wholesale customer. If I might have your present copy of your presentation just to refresh my mind on that, I'd appreciate it. Mr. President, thank you, Mr. Mayor. I have always been a staunch supporter of maintaining our own water system, but I have to say I'm having some second thoughts about that myself, and would like to have the opportunity myself to revisit that. But I'm also wanting to throw out on the table is to whether that a discussion of that and then a discussion of this, of these funding issues, shouldn't be held over to the next council. I mean, these are huge issues that we're looking at. And, you know, obviously any council can deal with it in any way they want to. But I'm just wondering whether it wouldn't be wise to let a new council who's going to have to go through a couple of years of implementing whatever happens. Have a crack at that. Mr. Suther. I have expressed my unease, I guess, with the situation of the water system now for a number of months and even had some email exchanges with some citizens who felt like I should have known this was coming. And I did know it was coming, but I think that until it's always painted a very stark picture for all of us, I think we often forget. And I'll just say that I, first of all, the thing I worry about, and we look at where we are overall in conjunction with other jurisdictions in the area, we're still in a very favorable position. And I think that's the good news. And we'll remain in a favorable position. Overall, compared to other jurisdictions, even with some of the additional burdens that we're going to have to take on over time. Having said that, I do look at Fairfax County's numbers across the board on a lot of issues, and I think, boy, they're even more favorable. But I also recall some of the debates that we've seen in recent years with the City of Falls Church and Fairfax County, feeling about about water and our own history lessons here. And especially those who, I don't think any of us were around during the water system transition, I didn't think the letter was born yet. I certainly, certainly, it's been a long time ago. It was. It feels that way. But, but having said that, you know, that they were, they were focused on some of the same, you know, rock, I don't know what I'm going to call them rivalries, but the same tense negotiations and challenges you have between then the town and the county in terms of service levels and providing services. And I do worry about being held hostage to another jurisdiction for anything if necessary. I mean, even with our schools, if we chose, believe me, that battle has been fought several times over to go independent schools, we could. We can do whatever we want now as an independent city. So I do worry about being held hostage by the county. Now, having said all of that, I do concur that this is something that a future council should decide. This is one of the great challenges with having a two-year term. As someone just said, it may be a couple of years to work through this. And I think that it's going to be one of the big challenges facing the next city councilor. For that matter, the next several city councils. So I'm happy to defer action on this because- Well, sorry, go ahead. I'm sorry if I could. We've had discussions with Loudon and Mayor was with me. He'll recall just a few weeks ago. We had a presentation by Loudon that they are basically making a decision to go forward without the city of Fairfax. And so that further means that we are in a go-it-alone mode here. We won't potentially have the opportunity to market those assets to another jurisdiction out there and go and purchase water from Fairfax water. That's the direction we're heading in now. That confused me, Mr. Mayor, maybe as a spectator, I'll listen in three or four months. But my point is, if we still have all the the interconnectivity which we've talked about a lot over the last six months due to you know droughts and and some of the water quality issues and so forth wouldn't that interconnectivity still provide options if we chose to service or contract with Fairfax County for water on a proactive basis Maybe I was missing the point here. I'm sorry. We're not, I don't believe we're, if we're talking about contracting with Fairfax County, we're going to have to buy. Right. No, I'm asking. I'm asking. In their system. That's exactly, that's what I'm asking. I'm asking. As Mrs. Cross laid out, I'm just saying if that was an option for a future counsel to discuss. That's what we'd have to do. Right. But the cost of that is so expensive that we would probably be faced with selling assets in loud to be able to pay for that, or we would have to borrow the money. And I'm seeing nods in the audience from the head of our water system, and I guess what confuses me about that is that when you look at county rates, so what you're saying is it's not necessarily those same rates don't necessarily apply if we decided to be a wholesale customer, for instance, of Fairfax County. No, not necessarily. Okay, got it. Well, that makes a lot more sense, and it also precludes us perhaps, or future counsel, from really entertaining. And I still go back to my first comment though which is that I do worry about ever about having you know as it is now I think we have too many things to add to Fairfax County just based on our old history of being the town of Fairfax in the county seat before we went independent or as well. Well Conway likes to say before we succeeded from Fairfax County but the fact of the matter is is that you, you know, the more detached we are, in many ways, I think the better. That's my opinion. Well, again, my recollection from that meeting back in October, and we can certainly pull the minutes and so forth, but that was the... I felt that was the consensus of the Council. No, it was. It was. I'm just saying. And that touched off a gradual shift, but a significant shift in the relationships among various water providers. I think you're just hearing the Council, Mr. Mayor, if I may continue. I think you're just hearing the Council because it's you know there's a lot of a lot of out of us right exactly but I do think it should be deferred to the future council Mr. Merr. Mrs. Lyne. Oh well you know Mr. Sobethone I'm not sure I actually agree with that respectfully since we've been looking at this for I guess since October and by the way I did miss that meeting and did review that the plans on it. I am really one that does want to go it alone. I guess I might be different than the rest, and I know I only have four or five meetings left. But, you know, for a council that came in six years ago and has managed a lot of debt from future councils and then has managed this difficult budget time. Yes, this does give me pause, but I'm seeing, I guess I have one question for the advisor here, but I'm seeing that there's money that will be coming in, that will be taking care of this overall, a long period of time. I don't feel like this is going to joke us. I'm not sure I'm seeing the doom and gloom of some of my colleagues. And I truly believe we need to be in a position that we all have our own water. And it doesn't preclude us from other people wanting to buy it from us at a future time. I don't ever see that that would be a problem. And the question I have right now is when you're talking about us borrowing the money right now, right now you're saying the interest rates I guess are low. Is there a concern that the interest rates in the next six months, eight months will go up? That's a very good question. I really have no sense of that because again it's, we don't know if we're nearing the bottom of a difficult cycle or if we have a continuous, some continued time there. But what I would say is this typically, typically, the tax exempt markets have performed better, meaning interest rates tend to be lower when there tends to be a slowdown in economic activity. At the same time, you've seen those rates come down over the course of the 90s and there certainly wasn't a slowdown. But again, that's a lot of times which traditionally has been in the marketplace. I don't want to put you in a position and either of your council members were saying if we don't move today, we threaten ourselves to not have good interest rates two or three or four or five months. No, it's not really what I'm saying at all. What I'm just simply saying is that we have an orderly recognition that there's going to be several millions of dollars that need to be invested in the system like there have been for the last umpteen years. And that's why we showed on various pages that you spent 12 plus million dollars in the last six or seven years. You've got 16 million dollars to be spent over the next six years. Again, that's what I mean, it's just an orderly no pun intended flow of. In other words, the cost of doing. It's the cost of doing good business. That's right. And so with that said, if we know that we have this confluence of factors, one is debt is almost paid off. Number two, we know that again, you've already instituted that that rate increase in the O9 budget. So that's already factored in. Number three, we know that interest rates are highly favorable. Number four, we know that within this calendar year, we can take advantage of especially low rates. Because again, we can be what we call bank qualified. We could not do that, for example, in previous years when we borrowed for the school projects, because they were way above 10 million in a given calendar year. So we've got those confluence of things things and our recommendation then is there's no time like the present to do those things. That's really what we're saying. Well, let me ask you another question then when we're talking about it, since we're always, sometimes our whole budget, when you go out for credit rating, you do look, they look at our enterprise fund as well as our general fund and they look at everything when we're thinking about if we go in as you know double rate A or triple whatever the triple A funding so this would not hinder us with what our rating would be no to the contrary this would not only not hinder you this is what I was and I didn't say it clear enough. We see this as continuing to take pressure off of your general fund rating because your rating is as we showed earlier is it the Literally one step below triple A. It's very very high. You are amongst the top two or three highest rated cities for your size in all of the Commonwealth.. Okay, so you're very well positioned. By doing these things that you've already been doing, such as recognizing that you want to keep the enterprise funds self-supporting, and by doing that, having that 7% increase and listening to the consultants, and that's not us, that's the, you know, the black and beach folks. By doing those things, what you're doing is taking the pressure or keeping, I should say, you're keeping the pressure off the general fund. Right. And as a result, you're maximizing the chances that you're already excellent credit rating will stay that way. That's not only the only factors, but it's another factor, as you say, when we continue to talk to Wall Street. Right. Well, that's why I factors but it's another factor as you say when we continue to talk to Wall Street. Right. Well that's why I guess I would move to say we should handle this as this council. So we take, you know, we just do a good job of managing this, Mr. Mayor. That's that would be how I would like to proceed with this. I mean, we need to maintain or to re-energize a momentum in our utility system so that we don't lose a lot of time. We've got some projects that need to get underway and the $4 or $5 million is a very small amount to get started with. And I would hope that we could go ahead and get this under our belt and the new council comes in. Certainly, they're going to have to take a good long period of time to get acclimated, get understanding, and so forth. And maybe that's appropriate, that's certainly a decision you all make. But let's see if I can just for the benefit of tonight's meeting. What the staff has suggested is that we at least allow the, if I understood the recommendations toward the end of this correctly, to go out and get to develop an RFP and to receive proposals for the Council for us to relook at it and re-diescuss it on May the 20th. I would guess once you do that, we're going to have a lot better feel on rates and the advantages of and maybe between now and then talk to as many people as we can in terms of anticipating what may happen if there's a delay. We'll also know, you know, is there a little turnover in the Council and mayors? There are a lot of turnover in the Council and mayors and by that, there's at least two. By that time. So can I see if we could just at least so we can move the dialogue tonight, see if we can't get a consensus to allow them to at least solicit the RFP and then they, you know, will have a chance to the dialogue and see what we've got on that, whatever it is, the 20th of May. You're saying yes, Miss winner? Yes, yes. Mr. Rasmussen? Upstanding. OK, Mr. Greenfield. OK, Miss Cross. I'll excuse you. Can I come in? Sure. I'm getting a little concerned about debt equity financing. The charts you included on page four shows the water and sewer debt for capital. I'd like to see that chart for all of our debt and how we compare. And I got to tell you, we've taken on a tremendous amount of debt in the last 10 years. And I'm just, I'm not liking the idea of mortgaging city assets to get more money to run things or to buy things. I just get uneasy about that. And that's why I suggested that a new council ought to wrestle with this. So I just want to put that on the table. Okay, it looks like there's at least enough support to do the RFP and gather the information and we'll get it on them, whatever it is, may 20th of the agenda for further discussion. Thank you. Members of council, Mr. Mayor, appreciate it. Okay, that now will reconvene our regular meeting. We have a closed meeting. I move the City Council convene a closed meeting, intersection 2.2, 37, 11, 8, 7. I have a code of Virginia for consultation with legal council and legal advice. I'll council members in favor of the motion. Please signify by voting aye. Aye. Opposed? And it passed, not very enthusiastically, but unanimously, and the City Council retired in the closed meeting at whatever it is 11, 15 p.m. The move each of us certify that each best of each council members knowledge only public business matters lawfully exempted from the open meeting requirements in the Virginia freedom of information act can only public business matters identified in the motion. Convenient close meeting or heard discussed or considered all council members in favor of the motion. Signify by avoiding aye. Opposed? And a pass in annulce. Council members, I'm paid with emotion. Signify vote voting aye. Aye. Opposed? And a pass unanimously. Now we're at comments by City Council. Mrs. Winner. Okay, couple things. This weekend, our Friday is our birthday, and so this weekend is cleanup and beautification around the city and different neighborhoods. Our joining in. On May 3rd is the rededication of Lanier Middle School. Sunday May 4th is the last night of spotlight and it will not be in the city. It will be at the Kenne Shrine Temple on Arlington Boulevard just outside the city. And then Tuesday, May 6th is the lecture day. Hope you all come out. Thank you. I know a comment. Mr. Mayor, just a thundermy this evening when Mr. Resmus suggested that we defer action on an item for a future City Council, that, you know, I typically have set up here, assuming I would be a future member of City Council, and I know now for a fact that I will not be. So, and I typically have supported over the past whenever a policy matter that was a longer term implication was being considered, that we do defer action to a future city council. We actually only have four more, I believe it's four more regular meetings between now and the new city council term. So I find it, and I know that my colleague Mrs. Lyon disagrees with me on this, but I just don't believe on policy, major policy issues that will have implications beyond something like a simple sign approval and that sort of thing. I think that the longer term ones should be deferred. So I support that and I always have, by the way, in the past, even as a sitting, sitting council member that would be hopefully returning. So I just think that as we move forward, we probably ought to keep some of those loftier items off the docket, just my suggestion, to ensure that a future body, unless it's something that's obviously time sensitive, that a future council can consider, because we're in the home stretch here. But who's counting? Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Mr. Mayor. Nothing to see. Just briefly, Mr. Mayor. I'm sorry. Nothing to see. Mr. Mayor. Just briefly, Mr. Mayor. This past weekend, the Fairfax Volunteer Fire Department celebrated their 80th anniversary. I don't know too many corporations in the city that have been around that long, although that takes them back to 1928. But they are certainly alive and well. And on behalf of the Mayor and Council, I accepted a plaque in support. And it says presented to Mayor and City Council, City Fairfax, for your sustained support of the Fairfax volunteer fire department April 2008. And I will turn it over to the City Manager to be able to proudly display in whichever building it is that all of these things are now housed. The other thing just as we approach the next two weeks will be the next City Council election. I wish those of us that are up here running for reelection all the best. And for those that are not, this is the first time in six years that all of us are not seeking reelection and while there will be more opportunities to shed a tear, I certainly And for those that are not, this is the first time in six years that all of us are not seeking re-election and while there will be more opportunities to shed a tear, I certainly will miss not seeing Miss Lion and Mr. Silverthorn at the polls on Election Day. So all the best for not being so good. Oh God! God! And the reporters to sleep while you're over here giving me a hug. Anyway, with that I just don't have anything else I think I want to try to tackle tonight. So thank you. It's been a highlight. You're really he has. John, if you want one too, I'll be. Are you doing it? That's right. Do it at the board, right? That's right. All right. Are you ready? Yes. All the core of mouth of window. Two little things. One is that I don't, I really do love trees. And there is a tree, a copper beach that's right outside the Christian school. And there's a plaque on it that says it's under the care of trees and it's a very, very old and historic tree and did you see that some major branches have fallen? Well, yeah, I mean major so it needs to be looked at and they need to be notified to come and take care of it if they. And this is a very minor thing, but I still understand why we can't use both sides of paper. I would, it misstipized me as to why there's resistance to that, but I would like to see us give it a shot. So, Thank you. There's no motion. So we're going to move. Moved by Mr. Sereuth and seconded by Mrs. Winner. Any discussion? All in favor of the motion to signify by voting aye. Aye. Opposed to pass unanimously. Thank you.