Music I'm going to play the piano. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to do it. I'm going to go ahead and call the meeting door. Let me welcome everybody to the Tuesday, October 23rd meeting of the Fairfax City Council. If you would please rise for the invocation to remain standing for the Pledge of Allegiance. Let us pray. Lord, please be with us this night. We ask that your blessings and wisdom be upon us as we consider the present and future of our community. We humbly ask for rain to replenish the earth and replenish also our water system. We please bless those here in abroad who are protecting our safety and freedom. We ask this in your son's holy name, amen. Amen. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the public for which it stands one nation under God, individual, liberty, and justice for all. Seated? seated. We have one presentation for this evening. I'd like to bring up Jamie McDonald, who's the director of prevention services or the Fairfax Falls Church community services board. community services board. Jamie? Thanks. I'd like to read the following proclamation recognizing substance abuse awareness week, whereas the city of Fairfax, we believe in a healthy community that offers opportunities for all people by opening doors to positive life choices, and whereas prevention, early intervention, and treatment for substance used disorders are doors that open to a healthy, hopeful life, and whereas nearly three-quarters of all Americans say substance use disorders have impacted their lives. Therefore, it is critical that we educate our community that substance use disorders are treatable yet serious health care problem. And whereas alcohol and drug services of the Fairfax Falls Church Community Service Board, treated 5,525 people in FY07, and 22,580 people participated in the programs designed to prevent substances of use. And whereas in the City of Fairfax, we believe the best response to substance abuse is to build community connections, through awareness by bringing people together, uniting our efforts with a strong proactive and comprehensive plan of action which includes proven models of prevention, early intervention and treatment. Now therefore I, Robert F. Lettering, concert with the City Council, the City of Fairfax on behalf of all residents of the City of Fairfax, do hereby proclaim October the 22nd, 2007, and through October the 26th, 2007, a substance abuse awareness week in the City of Fairfax and urge all citizens to take advantage of this opportunity to gain awareness of the knowledge about substance abuse and use disorders and to join together an effort to create a healthy, happy, and hope-filled community. Let me thank you for your leadership and the board and everything you do on behalf of the region. Thank you very much. Thank you. Take a seat. Thank you. I appreciate it. I'd like to thank the mayor and members of the council for supporting our services with community services board and this our 26th annual substance abuse awareness week. And I would like to extend another invitation to the mayor and members of the board of the council, excuse me, for this Friday and the conference. It's gonna be a great event and we'd love to see you all. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Okay, that now brings us down to presentations by the public and any item related to the City Council agenda for tonight that does not call for public hearing. If you happen to be here and you'd like to address the council in item 7a through 7g, that opportunity actually will come later on. If you'd like to address any of the other items that are on tonight's agenda again that does not call for a public hearing. This would be your opportunity. Nobody has previously signed up with anybody like to address the city council. Mr. O'Dell. I'm just browsing 8A for the first time as a way for you to get underway and it seems like it's a pretty substantial tax revenue provider. And you say nobody signed up, I would think if you had disseminated, and maybe you'll defend that you did, this information widely that you would have a lot of owners of business property down here inquiring about it. Maybe not, thank you. Thank you, Mr. O'Dell. When anybody else likes to address the City Council. Harry, none will close. Jan 9 or number four, and move to item number five, which is the adoption approval of the adoption of the agenda. Second. Move by Mr. Silverthorn, seconded by Mrs. Winner, any discussion? All in favor of the motion signify by voting aye. Opposed and it passed unanimously. That now brings us down to the approval of the consent agenda. Excuse me, Mr. Greenfield. Thank you. Sorry. You sure about that? Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I move adoption of a consent agenda for agenda item number 6A, introduction of an ordinance, codifying supplement number 8 to the code of the City Fairfax Virginia. And for agenda items number 6A, move to the way of the first reading and set the public hearing for November 13th, 2007. And moved by Mr. Greenfield, seconded by Mrs. Cross, does anybody wish to object or abstain from the handling of any of these items on the consent agenda? Hearing none, all in favor of the motion is signified by voting aye. Opposed and a pass, you now will see. We now go to item number 7, which is our public hearings. Seven A is a public hearing and council action or request of PNC bank. Is this the application that actually has been postponed or withdrawn? Do I need to read it? I do need to motion. Okay. Public hearing and council action or request of PNC bank to rezone a policy 1.29 acres from R3 residential to R2 retail commercial with Proffers, a special use permit to redevelop in the floodplain and a special use permit to allow a financial institution with drive-through lanes, a special exception to allow construction and grading in the resource protection area, a special exception to modify the stacking space requirement, a special exception to modify the loading, space requirement and a variance to the requirement of the subdivision to permit a subdivision of land without providing the required right-of-way width on the premises known as 10631-10633, 10645-10649 Main Street and Curtin, classified as mixed use on the comprehensive plan future land use. Is this from properly advertised? It's my understanding. I'll now try to entertain a motion for deferral. Mr. Everything? Mr. Ramirez, City Council deferred the public hearing for and the consideration of the request of PNC Bank. National Association by M. Catherine Pascar, attorney in fact for special use permit, SU 155061, special exception 82861, rezoning request 8000-Z8061, embarrassed request V1165061 to date, certain January 8, 2008. Second. Move by Mr. Seventher and Seconder by Mrs. Winner. We don't need a public hearing then, if we're since we're deferring it, or do we go ahead with the public hearing? No, you're deferring the public hearing consideration. All in favor of the motion? The second slide by voting aye. Aye. Opposed and a passed unanimously. Was anybody in the audience that wanted to address this item tonight? Okay. Thank you. Okay, item number seven, B is a public hearing and council action or ordinance of meaning and re-adopting chapter 58, Article 2 pertaining to parks and recreation advisory board, and Article 3 pertaining to the park operating policies. This has been properly advertised. Staff report, please. Mr. Mayor, members of the council, thank you for this opportunity. And fortunately, Brian Napp was not able to be in attendance tonight. Brian Napp is our chairman of the parks and Recreation Advisory Board and is traveling on business. Do you like to thank you for bringing this item forward and recognizing all the hard work that Crab has done over the last year with relationship to updating the City Code. And we'd like to point out that one of the other members of James Oldle Tree of Crab is in the audience. The Parks and Recreation of Iresbury Board is updating the City Code Section 58 article 2 and article 3. It has not been updated since 1978. And these amendments are more reflective of what the conditions are with the Parks and Recreation Services and what Crab has been doing for a number of years. Some of the significant changes are increasing, the number of Proud members from 12 to 13. This includes a representative from the Community Parents Committee and adding an additional member from the Senior Center Advisory Council, which are seniors obviously are very important to us and have grown significantly in population. It includes eliminating the team represented, which has not been filled in over 10 years. However, Proud will work in other ways to seek out input and advice from the teams as the Proud moves forward. It requires Proud meeting one additional month, so increasing their work effort to extend it to July. And it includes language that is more representative of parts of recreation, our current services facilities such as special events, open space, trails and they do provide recommendations and advice to staff on capital planning. Prab will continue to work hard over the next year moving forward and try to bring forward a set of bylaws for the first time ever in Prav's history that will help in their operating. So thank you very much and that's a question of staff. Ms. Lyme. Okay. I'm going to go through these items a little bit one by one. Can you tell me why what the reason you would be to eliminate the teen spot, just in case sometimes there might be a child or a teen that would like to be on the board. Why would we eliminate that? We discuss that at length and we do have a strong relationship to the teens within our teen center within the Parks and Recreation Department and PREV. However, they've struggled over the years to have a team member that has been consistent. It changes year to year. They don't always, not always showed up and they've struggled over the 10 years to actually fill the position. I understand that you've struggled with that. Has there ever been a time that you've worked with like with the high school and had someone appointed? And it was difficult like they have for the school court, they have a representative and that person shows up all the time. So, can it be? They have looked at that. And I think they felt that best representative to find other ways to, at this point in time, and I think they might re-evaluate that. Obviously we have a very active crab. They're very diligent in trying to find ways to reach out. But at this time, they recommended that we eliminate that position at this time, bring on somewhere from community parents and seniors, and find ways to work within a teen center population in the school board, which they work very closely with on an annual basis to try to get the input of the teens. Have you, I'm just curious to have some of the history on this. Has there ever been a time where you've attached community service hours to doing being a pran a teen proud member something like that so they would they would that would be something they would have to do show up. Um it's like having a teen input is very important fact. Yes, and I think they'll solicit that team input through other ways of reaching out to the school, the school population working with the school board and working within the teen center, but having a designated member, they felt the best way to approach that would be to do it in alterating. But what I'm going to ask is, what harm would it be just to keep that in? Is there any harm? I don't see any harm in keeping that in. Okay, so you could leave it open. So if it did come to that some, a team would like to have a position and they came to council and ask for that or came to practice. I think we can. So I'd like to see that. I just would I hate to turn children away at any way, shape, or form here in the community. So I really would like to see that still in. Thank you. Thank you. That was my number one thing. I'm happy to see, though, that you're including things like the community appearance and the senior senator, advise your council on how will those people be picked or chosen to be on this particular board? I think we would have a similar selection process after the other members and Council approval on that. So that really means you're bringing, you're going from 12 to 13 and then that's adding the other two. So there's really going to be 15. 13 members total. Then that includes the community appearance and the senior advisory council person. Is that right? Okay. Now if I remember, it wasn't at last week or two weeks ago that you really had gone to 15. So, did this number change? No, that was the Councilor or Senator Commissioner on the Arts. Ah, that's right. Okay, I was getting this confused. Thanks. There's a wide list. Okay, I like the idea that you'll go into the July timeframe. That's a great thing to be doing, and those are all my questions that I have. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. Mr. Cross. Just a question if we retain the team member of the board then we're at 14 members, is that right? Correct. Thank you. Any other questions to staff? Very none. Thank you very much. This is a public hearing. I will open up the public hearing. Nobody has previously signed up. Would anybody like to address the City Council on this item? Hearing none, we'll close the public hearing on any attain a motion. This winner. I move to approve an ordinance amending chapter 58 article 2 and article 3 of the Code of City of Fairfax. Is that in you? Moved by Ms. Winter, seconded by Ms. Cross, any discussion? Ms. Remains. Ms. Lyon. Hold on, Ms. Winter is the much mover to you. I just want to commend Mr. Nap and Prab for the hard work that they've done in redoing this. The fact that the last time it was even revised at all was in 1978. A lot of things have changed since then. And I agree with as it stands, rather than having any modification, for the fact that the idea of if they have not been able to have a teen volunteer even to work with this group, you know, the idea of times changing it and children's students are so busy and so into academics and sports that this, historically, it's showing that this is not a priority. Should a teen step forward and want to come to every meeting, I'm sure the board, as it stands, will invite and embrace any suggestions that would be made by a teenager. So I would like to keep it as it is. Thank you. Any other discussion? Yes, Mr. Mayor. I would like to add an adent to the motion, obviously. I'm cordially disagreeing with my colleague next to me here. I would like to keep the teen position and I would like to add that to the motion and so we would be up to 14 on-prem. I just really hate to see us take that teen spot away and take a voice away if someone really gets passionate about it. So I would hate to see us take that teen spot away and take a voice away if someone really gets passionate about it. So I would hate to do that at this time. I think once we take it away, I think it would be difficult to get it back. So I'd like to change the motion to include that it would be 14 folks on PRAB and with one representative from a teen council. Is there a second, this move by Mrs. Lyne second it will now have a discussion on the amendment this line Mr. Mayor, you know, I think that any time we can keep something open for Our children and our teens is something I think that we need to do especially if someone does get a passion about our parks And you know, there's a lot of things that are going on now around our city where we're building soccer fields and possibly looking at new community centers and I think that teens have you know really good ideas and I would hate to see that they would not have a voting a possibility to be a member of Prague and have a voting spot and we just take it away. I think we'll take us a long time to get something like that back on the books. And I do believe Prav is an excellent job on coming up with everything else in this plan they have, but I would hate to see that we would not consider that position for the teens. Thank you. Mr. Silver, not God knows not to playber this discussion this evening, but you know, for as far as I'm concerned, if it's good enough for the school board to have a student rep, it's good enough for our parks and recreation board to have a teen rep. Thank you. Any other discussion? We'll vote on the amendment first. All in favor of the amendment signify by voting aye. Aye. I guess you better do a roll call. Miss Winter. I. I guess you better do a roll call. Miss Winter. No. Mrs. Lied. Mr. Silverthrow. I. Mr. Ressmusson. No. Mr. Greenfield. I. Mrs. Cross. I. And it passed by a vote of four to two with Miss Lied and Mr. Ressmusson voting no. No. Excuse me, Mrs. Winter. I'm sorry. And now we're back to the main motion that will not have that amendment as part of it any other discussion. Well, well, it will have that amendment. It will have that amendment. Yeah, right. Did I announce that it passed or did I say that it failed? He said it passed. Okay, good. Any other discussion? All in favor of the motion, signify by voting aye. Aye. Opposed? And a past unanimous. See that now brings us down to item number 7c, which is a public hearing and council action. On amendment, on an ordinance in Mending Chapter 10, Article 9 of the Code of City of Fairfax, Virginia, pertaining to swimming, waiting, and spray pools, spas, hot tubs, and Mending Chapter 46 of the Code of the City of Virginia by adding a new article for pertaining to water, recreation facilities. Is this been properly advertised? Staff report. Good evening. I'm Louise Armitage. Several years ago, the directors of the health departments throughout our region convened at the Northern Virginia Regional Commission to collectively draft a swimming pool ordinance that would comply with nationally recognized standards and that would be applicable, hopefully adopted by each of the jurisdictions so that the management, pool management companies that operate across jurisdictional boundaries would only have a single set of standards with which to comply. The city did not adopt these changes when the rest of the jurisdiction did so. And so I bring them to you this evening. The standards for the most part have been complied with because the swimming pool companies are simply applying inadvertently or agreeably with the more rigorous standards. And so we have not really had any issues. And the one change that will occur is there is now a fee for the annual health inspection. And that has not existed previously in the city. And that fee would be approximately $230 per year for the annual inspection and All of the existing construction standards would be grandfathered so there would not be any requirements to make any Changes from a construction standpoint at this point and this evening Mark Mordew from the Health Department is here, and he actually inspects all of the city pools each year. So he's very familiar with the standards. And he tells me that we have had excellent compliance with those higher level of standards that exist in Firfx County by the pool companies. These ordinance changes have been circulated to our co-administration office or zoning and planning offices. And I also shared them with our parks and recreation staff. They were drafted by the city attorney to be parallel to those regulations that are in existence in Fairfax County, which is consistent with other ordinances that the county inspects or applies on behalf of the city. Mr. Mordus, happy to answer any questions that you have. Is it better to sit in the night? Mr. Saurifern. Thank you. So we're currently inspecting all of our city public pools at this point. Yes, sir. Why then, aside from the compliance aspect, and with the right word is, the identical legislation that the county has on the books from an enforcement perspective, why is it necessary to have this ordinance on our books? I'm trying to understand that. Because if there's non-compliance, we can find, or we can enforce, correct? your current code was adopted in 1962. It's a long time ago. A long time ago. I wasn't born. And there's certainly some conflicts with state regulations. You know the state has adopted a few requirements. So for an inspector to go in, he needs to know what the city ordinance of 1962 entails along with whatever the state requirements are. Those have been combined into the new regulation that Fairfax County. But as I understand it, as I understand it, you're already inspecting. He's inspecting, but he is not applying the more rigorous standards. The more rigorous. He cannot. The city, he can only apply. Not only apply the 1962 standards. That's correct. What I meant to convey is that the swimming pool management companies have voluntarily complied with a lot of the more rigorous standards. But we cannot require them to do so without these ordinance changes. Okay, thank you. That's helpful and I have no problem whatsoever with applying more rigorous standards. What I do have a problem with since we're on the subject is the fee of $250 or $30, whatever the amount is exactly. Especially when our pools around the community have been suffering and are in financial straits. So that's something that you know, and I'm going to be candid. I look at that. I'm sure you're looking at its cost recovery. I look at it as another means of the county to make a little money. I have a problem with it. All of the revenues collected by the county are actually subtracted from the fee that we then pay the county. And so, you know, it's, it's, it's. So what you're saying is, so what we're saying is we get it back, the city tax payers overall get it back, but the swimming pool still end up paying. That's where I have the problem. That's right. And that is consistent, though, with the other inspections by the Health Department. These inspection fee changes were implemented. This is a new fee that we're going to let you know. This is a new fee for the swimming pool. Right. I hear you. That's not my objective. But this fee system was implemented a number of years ago in the county. In the city as well, wouldn't we change our beauty parlor? No, I'm sorry. I thought you were going to hear my point. You're missing my point. Our swimming pools have been the ones under financial straits for the last two decades, basically. And yeah, we're going to levy another fee. No, I understand your point. I'm just saying that this is consistent with the restaurant and other inspection fees to change it to a fee system. I understand that City Chooses not to adopt that part of it. The city would then be required to pay the inspection fee. Well, I have an objection, but thank you, and the spoils you. Any other questions of staff? Miss Lyne? Kind of to follow that lead there. In the city, my understanding is we have city pools, you know, in the ones like Country Club Hills, Mosby Woods and, what's say the Fairfax. 18, I'll give you that. But that's my question. So there are 18 of them. And the other ones, really, the bill are under homeowners. Is that right? No, these regulate homeowners' associations also. They're under homeowners' associations, that's right. So you would be charging that amount of money for the homeowners would be $230. Those associations and that usually comes out of their fee. Yes. Okay. But okay. That thank you so much. Now one fee was eliminated. You're required to have pool operators on duty at public swimming pools, which is a requirement of the current City of Fairfax code that is a $20 fee in the old code that's been eliminated. So really the fees now $210. You may have had three or four pool operators out of facility. So again, now that's- But according to the code really or what the pool inspectors are letting us know is if I'm just going to use country gloves hills because that's what I know. We've really only had to have one pool operator on duty at the time. Yeah, we've already have one that runs the pool all summer long. You do not have to hire for unless that's something you choose to do. That's that right. Okay. That is correct. All right. Are there any other? I'm going to ask this, are there any other hidden fees in this packet of information? No, we don't know. Only the two hundred and thirty dollars. No fines or anything like that. No. So, okay, thank you. I have a question of one more question to staff. If we, Mr. Hodgkins, if we chose to, could we take the community pools and not that many members have to join because those are the ones that are suffering the most, could we take that part out of this packet and take that out of our budget and then the Homeowners' associations because that's something that they that's a recurring fee for them anyway. And it's not a public, more of a public pool. Could we take the two, like $690 out of the budget for, to cover the cost for those three community pools we have? Could we do that? I mean, that would, that would, would we be able to do that? That would be your prerogative. There's, I think I see where you're going. There would be two, what you may call commercial facilities. I'm thinking three. I'm thinking comfort in. I'm main street and I'm thinking lifetime fitness. Got about the hood. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Those two are commercial, I believe. All the other ones are homeowner association condo or community. Well, I'm thinking about just the three pools that are like the most be woods, the the Fairfax pool and Country Cove Hills. Those really have, I guess, lifetime has membership too, but those have community membership within the city of Fairfax. Well I would assume this is a question directed to our staff. I guess the question is I'm only guessing they're all 501C3s or some nonprofit organization with their be a way to assuming that the will of the council is with their be a way to exempt a classification like a 501C3 or whatever they may fall under. My suggestion would be, if you went ahead down that road that we defer this item to the next meeting for adoption, maybe have the public hearing and that we can look at, you know, specific categories of polls that you want to exclude. I don't want, I think it's a little, we have to be a little bit careful about putting a blanket categorization in an ordinance because then you might have to come back and change it again later. Okay. I have one more question then. Well, like, if we passed it, could we not come back and put it, couldn't we not come back and put in a tonight? Could we not then come back and put an amendment on it to take the pools, the three community pools out of it like we have that? Absolutely. You can do it either way. Okay. Okay. It would be easier though, or we know to just have to. If we're going to make a major change and we can't figure it out tonight, then we ought to probably just defer. But are there any other questions of staff? Thank you very much. Appreciate you coming out tonight. Nobody has previously signed up on that open up the public hearing. Would anybody like to address the city council on this item? Hearing none, I'll close the public hearing. Entertain an emotion. Mr. Sobethone. Mr. Mayor. Bear with me. I would like to defer action on this item to the next regularly scheduled city council meeting and I'm going to need a date certain from the 13th of November. I'd like to move that please. Moved to defer this item to the 13th of December and there is a second Mrs. Lyon. It was moved by Mr. Silverthorn in any discussion? Mr. Silverthorn? Only that I think we need to do a little more homework. I like your suggestion, Mr. Mayor of 501C3s. I mean, these are the pools that basically operate. You know, they're not for profit. They are barely getting by as this City Council, certainly the older colleagues that I've been serving with for a number of years. My distinguished colleagues on the left, Mr. Rasmussen, Mr. Gradyfield will remember that we have taken a number of steps over the last 18 or 16 years to provide some assistance to these pools while we decide here tonight that we may want to sock it to them with another few hundred bucks here and there. I just think that these are unique circumstances, unique operating entities and deserves with special consideration, and I'd ask the staff to come back to us with some recommendations. Any other discussion? The speech? Well, I'll say Mr. Sivathur. This is a line. Okay. Once you're allowed to go. Any other, this is a motion to defer in December November 13th. No, November 13th. All in favor of the motion, signify by voting aye. Aye. Opposed? And it passed unanimously. That now brings us down to item number 7D, which is a public hearing council action on appropriation resolution in the amount of $35,000 to purchase the right-of-way across the front end to the property located at 10607 Judicial Drive. Do you allow for the construction of a sidewalk curbing gutter? Has this been properly advertised? Yes. Staff Report? The developer office complex. You may want to pull that microphone just a little bit closer to you. Thank you. The developer who's constructing the office complex at 10611 judicial drive has agreed to also construct the frontage improvements, curb gutter and sidewalk at the adjacent property, 10607 judicial drive, if the city would acquire the right away. And this would be, the 35,000 would be the purchase to right away. And this would be the last piece along the South Side of Judicial to complete the sidewalk from 123 to Main Street. Okay, any questions or staff? How much screen film? Thank you, Mr. Mayor. This is the property that has the beautiful oxwoods head row in front of it. Correct. Is that property owner willing to sell us this piece of property? Are we going to have to condemn this? The City Attorney and I met with the property owner and he has agreed to sell us. Right. What are we doing with his boxwoods? Are they going to be able to be preserved? I believe we would preserve the portion that he wants to save. Isn't that correct, Brian? Right. He's not in love with this box, but as much as other people might be. So we'll work with him. Too much work to maintain it. No, I'm not asking to buy it. I just want to make sure I have that he's comfortable with doing this. Absolutely. Thank you. I'm sure I've, that he's comfortable with doing this. Absolutely. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions to staff? Harry Nunn, I'll open up the public hearing. Would anybody like to address the City Council on this item? Harry Nunn, we'll close the public hearing. I'll entertain a motion. Mr. Rasmussen? The resolution in the amount of $35,000 for the purchase of right away across the front edge of the property located at 10607 judicial drive to allow for the construction of the sidewalk curve and gutter. Second. Moved by Mr. Rasmussen, seconded by Mrs. Winner, any discussion? All in favor of the motion signified by voting aye. Aye. Opposed and a pass unanimously that now takes us to item number 7e, which is a public hearing and council action ordinance authorized in the city managed to execute a license agreement with Fairfax Development Corporation to install and maintain landscaping improvements within a portion of the city's right away for a period of five years. Is this from property advertised? Yes. Staff report, please. This is the property at the southeast corner of Orchard Drive in Main Street. The developer is planning on planting some plantings within the city right away. And this five-year agreement would allow him to do so and he would maintain and make sure that these plantings meet city requirements as far as cyclist and such. Miss questions and staff. I have just one. Why are we thank you? I thought you acknowledged me. Sorry, Mr. Mayor. Mr. Mayor. Why are we only keeping it to five years? I mean, the last thing I think could we not have them just maintain that for as long as they have that development there? I guess why can't we put it underneath the development? I'd like to defer this to Brian. Right. Actually, we're limited by law. It's the same type of agreement we have with Chantry Park in Breckermann, Jolaine. We're limited to five years because we're licensing the public right away. So effectively these come up every five years for renewal, but that's the maximum term we can do on that. Okay, and so then we'll renew this again in five years, is that? If that's the will of the council, yes. Okay, thanks. Any other questions of staff? Hearing none, we will open up the public hearing when anybody likes to address the City Council on this item. Hearing none, we'll close the public hearing on our TANA motion. Here. Ms. Cross? I move to adopt an ordinance proving a license agreement for effects development corporation and its successor and interest parks corner homeowners association for use of the public right of way for installation and maintenance of various landscaping improvements within the city right-of-way. Second. Moved by Ms. Cross, seconded by Mr. Silverthorn in any discussion. All of fair with the motion signified by voting aye. Aye. Opposed and the past unanimously. That now brings us to item number six, or seven, F which is a public hearing and council action on appropriation resolution in the amount of $500,000 for the proposed row winding and addition of a left turn lane along northbound picket road. Is this been properly advertised? Yes. Staff report, please. The Virginia Department of Transportation has now actually removed the left turn into turn pipe shopping center that's northbound Picket Road intersection main street and combined properties has come up with a proposal to actually allow again a left turn lane from northbound ticket road into turn pipe shopping center and this drawing and map that's on the board right now shows the proposed widening of ticket road on the east side of ticket road to add another lane to allow the left turn into Turnfike Shopping Center. And this appropriation resolution, the amount of 500,000 is for the city's share for this proposed widening. This is a maximum amount of the city's share. Questions or staff? Thank you. This is a public hearing. Nobody's previously signed up when anybody likes to address the city council on this item. Hearing none. Close the public hearing. I'll entertain a motion. Mayor. Mr. Greenfield. I move to approve an appropriation resolution in the amount of $500,000 for the proposed road widening and addition of a left turn lying along northbound ticket road. Second. Moved by Mr. Greenfield, seconded by Ms. Cross, any discussion? All in favor of the motion signify by voting aye. Aye. Opposed? And a pass unanimously. That now brings us to item number 7G, which is a public hearing council action and ordinance granting various easements to Dominion Virginia power Cox communication north of Virginia and Verizon Virginia Inc. Uncertain real property owned by the city and having an address of 10435 North Street and authorizing the city manager to execute the same. Has this been properly advertised? Yes. Staff report? Brief staff report. You'll recall that we, the city recently purchased the Serca and TT Reynolds properties. The primary purpose of this purchase was to place certain large utility easements on the CERCA property. This item is to approve those easements laying them on the CERCA property. Any questions or staff? Hearing none, I will open up the public hearing. Would anybody like to address the city council on this item? Hearing none, I will open up the public hearing. Would anybody like to address the City Council on this item? Hearing none, close the public hearing. I entertain a motion. Mr. Moor. Mrs. Winner. I move to adopt an ordinance granting various easements to Dominion, Virginia Power, Cox Communications, Northern Virginia, and Verizon Virginia Inc. on certain real properties owned by the city and identified as tax, the city tax map number 57-4-02-106 and having an address of 10435 North Street and authorizing the city manager to execute on behalf of the city such easements. Second. Second. By Mrs. Winner, seconded by Mrs. Cross, any discussion? All in favor of the motion, signify it by voting aye. Aye. Opposed? If passed unanimously. We're now down to item number 8a, which is introduction of an ordinance, emitting Chapter 90 Article 2 Division 1 of the Code of the City of Fairfax, Virginia to add a new section 93, not a 33 pertaining to the classification and taxation of a certain commercial and the industrial real property and the city of Fairfax for transportation purposes. Is this been properly advertised? No. It's not a public hearing, probably not. Yeah. Staff report. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of Council. This item relates to the General Assembly Bill, the Transportation Funding Bill that was passed in the year 2007, which among other things grants local authority to impose a separate real set a tax rate during the next budget for the 2009 year, which would be effective on January 1st, 2008. Questions and staff. Mayor, Mr. Silver. Is that essentially, and I'm sorry I should have read with more intrigue, the article this morning in the post about Arlington County. They essentially took the same step. They did not actually, I mean, this is just basically setting the stage for later actions, I'm right. Yeah, they did. Yeah, they did. The article actually, I think, incorrectly capsulated what they did. They were doing the same thing. Essentially creating the separate classification, then they'll set the tax rate as part of their budget process. Got it. Thank you. In Fairfax County did this a couple of weeks ago. Did they? That's correct. Yeah. Any other questions of staff? Hearing no questions, I'll entertain a motion. So I'd like to Mr. Mayor. Mr. Westminster. Mr. Mayor. I move to introduce an ordinance amending chapter 90 article two division one of the code of the City of Fairfax Virginia to add a new section. 90-33 pertaining to classification and taxation of certain commercial industrial real property in the City of Fairfax for transportation purposes. I further moved away the first reading and set the public hearing from November 13th, 2007. Second. Moved by Mr. West. Muston seconded by Mrs. Lioney. Discussion. Mr. Mayor. Mr. Silverthorn. You know, we can certainly, well, plenty of opportunity to debate this, but I was interesting to hear a little bit of a pause before anybody jumped to make this motion. I intend to vote in favor of this to grant us the authority, but necessarily, not necessarily, you know, agreeing that this is the right thing to do at this stage. We spend a lot of money on transportation and I think this will help us greatly in our transportation funding needs in this community. But having said that this is a lot of money out of our sorry it's probably more money than of course we have any ability to go up to a certain mountain. I get all that but this is more money than we could possibly need. If we went in this direction, I think it would require a lot of discussion on the part of the council in terms of other taxes that we currently levy. And whether or not it makes sense for some relief, especially on commercial property, we have special tax rates, which I think should be abolished. I think the Meals Tax, which has been doubled this year, ought to be, we ought to revert back to our former meals tax rate of 2%, and so on. Perfusional property tax is another option. In other words, there could be trade-offs here. We're not saying we shouldn't look at gift-horse in the mouth because I think the General Assembly has taken us in the right direction here, but I do think that just for the sake of having more money, for the sake of more money, is not necessarily the thing to do. We ought to be carefully evaluating it. But with that, I intend to vote in favor of at least giving us the authority this evening. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Any other discussion? Mr. Restman, I would assume that's what we do when we look at the budget next year. Hopefully so. Exactly. What's up, so? Any other discussion? All in favor of the motion signify by voting aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? And it passed unanimously. That now brings us down to item number 9, which are presentations by the public and any item that is not on tonight's agenda. Would anybody like to address the city council? Please, Mr. Pyramid. Anybody like to address the city council? Please miss pyramid Even Gary Perryman 1 1 1 0 0 8 was more drive Avalon problem will what's going on tonight? We seem to have plenty of money for commercial properties as far as purchasing right away putting curb and gutter turn lanes I asked several months ago to help one of the utterly in our community by putting curb and gutter in, because her yard floods every time. Furnstreet's uncuttered, and so is part of part. And I was told to do certain things, which I did. And I found it. We went on the capital improvement program budget, which has been over 40 years for gutters and stuff and Westmore, yet we haven't seen them. I just kept the question, the ability to spend millions of dollars for other things and not spend stuff that belong to the citizens in our communities. The idea of the pool thing of granting them a buy on their taxes, if we do that does that mean you have to open those pools up to anybody that lives in a city because their tax dollars are being used for those pools. I have to go to the villa pool for mine because it's the closest one. They don't get a break on their cost. Also in recent meetings, we discussed ball fields. We approved, I believe, four. We've put the money aside for one. The other ones are on the back burner, as I understand it. And the question I have to that is, don't we think we need to spend money for the kids instead of roads? Some of the road programs were going in Curve and gutter, and sidewalks. And the third thing is, recently we found that evidently the police department is understaffed. And we're getting the conclusion that they're understaffed because there are no viable candidates coming through to be hired by the police department. If that's the case, then we need to do a little outreach and define some police people. We've had two incidents in the last month where the police were called in our community and they were told that they were all busy at the time and they would get there as soon as they could. One of the incidents concerning somebody driving a jeep that at Westmore School throughout the field doing donuts in the yard. By the time the police got there, of course, the people had left. We got tag number. They said, well, the tag number belongs to a dealer. There's nothing we can do. Those kinds of things are uninsceptible. The other incidence was that we're having a drunken party at one of the houses. The police were called to try to stop these people before they left. Of course, by time they got there they had all left and so we put probably 20 drunks on the road that didn't need to be there. These are things that are a little disturbing the people in the community so thank you. Thank you just for point of information. I do believe a number of years ago when we started giving provisions to pools water and allowing them to jump on our asphalt contract that we did require that they opened up their membership to anybody outside their communities. Is that correct? And the only other issue Mr. Pairman you mentioned was funding for one field and we put four on the backburner. It's my understanding the council action approved the package, the full package of some, and I don't remember the dollar amount, $5.3 million. I'm not aware of putting three fields on hold. If I miss something, or is there something? Thank you. Thank you. To green acres and expanding the Westmore field. We're doing three fields that We're bringing one new one online in artificial chirping two others, which is why we decided maybe we don't need to expand Westmore and then spend the money at Green Hakers at this time. Right, all of which were I believe supported by the youth programs and all of our dialogue and discussion. So we'll get you an update on that information as well. Anybody else like to address the City Council this time? Mr. O'Dell 3920 Pratt Water Street. The Virginia State Board of Elections website, which you can get to most easily perhaps by doing a Google search. It will help us all to resolve the charges flying back and forth in the mail regarding two candidates near and dear to the hearts of some of us local who are duking it out for State Senate from our turf, namely Gene Marie Devalite's also known as Gene Marie Devalite Davis, and Jay Chap Peterson. I leave it to you to the sword out, the mud. It's hard to see with so much mud covering your eyes. The, but it seems to me that whatever the merits or demerets of these two, the most basic criterion for holding public office is the ability to read. If you can't read the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution, for example, you are not qualified. Now, some of you who are sitting near the Dias, were sitting near the Dias in the other room before City Hall was remodeled. When I asked the council members that included two attorneys, one of whom was J. Chapterson, if they knew which amendment it was that prohibited the taking of life, liberty, or property without due process. Both of those gentlemen immediately shot up their hands, quite proud of themselves that they knew it was the fifth amendment. But if you look at the voting record of Mr. Jay Chap Peterson, I'm not so sure you can read. You see, it's very easy to find out where he stands on issues like the unamable right to life liberty and perceived of happiness also found in the Declaration of Independence. Something I brought to their attention and yours many times. Notwithstanding that, they continue to exhibit even on the council, I'm talking about Mr. Peterson, and he liberals up there, in this regard in terms of your healthcare coverage policies. Well, anyway, it's very easy to check on these people's voting records by just going to vshl.org, which stands for Virginia Human Life Society. You can do the Google search again if you get confused as to the exact name. And after a little thrashing around on their website, you will find their voting records. And I'm here to tell you that Mr. Chapman voted pro-life in three out of seven opportunities while representing us in Richmond. Jean Murray devilites has, I regret to say, a perfect record. I say I regret because I don't perturb personally like her at all. I used to don't anymore. Hope to again don't now. The she has a perfect record. I think it's 18 out of 18. That's enough opportunities to be schizophrenic if you want to. But she hasn't been in that regards. Mr. Potts who ran for a high office out in Prince William County recently, apparently set himself up to run more favorably as an independent by suddenly switching course and after a perfect record ruined it so that now he has a 21 out of 40 pro life folk. He had a perfect record at about the halfway market. So it's possibly to be schizo funny. Anyway, this is not just a single issue folks. This is the basis of everything we do and think if you can't read those documents, if you can't bring yourself to uphold those documents, to keep your oath of office, you don't belong in public office. And neither does Jay Chapman, Peterson, even if Jean Marie Devillite has been living with Mr. Davis, Tom Davis, even before she got her an element, confirmed personally by Mr. Davis, to me, one-on-one. Would anybody else like to address the City Council? Yes, please. If you'd give us your name and address for the record. My name is Wei-Shi-E. I live at 9531 Blake Lane, which is, I believe, outside the city of Boundary. But I used to live in the city for many years. Good evening everybody. I appreciate the opportunity to be here. I want to talk about the global human rights torch relay, which has to do with the upcoming Olympics that is going to be held in China. And when the International Olympic Committee award the 2008 Olympic Games to China, China pledges to abide by the Olympic Committee's rules and improve its human rights record. But since it got the right to hold the Olympics, its human rights record has worsened. And this global human rights torturile wants to bring to people's attention about the human rights abuse in China. In particular, the persecution of Falun Gong, the organ harvesting that was found out last year. The theme of the global human rights torturile is that the Olympics and crimes against humanity cannot coexist in China. Falun Gong, for people who haven't heard about it is a practice that is based on the characteristic of the cosmos, truthfulness, compassion, tolerance. And it involves the meditation and slow moving exercises. It has great health benefits, and it also improves the moral awareness of people who practice it. So it attracted over approximately a hundred million people in China in seven years before the persecution started in 1999. And the persecution is still going on. And the Communist Party and the regime tries to eradicate Falun Gong in China in three months. And they failed to do that, but they in the process. The persecution is going on ever since 80 years ago. And when they fail to use torture, rape, beatings, and starvation, and sleep deprivation, all kinds of torture, to force people to give up the faith in Falun Gong. They resort to killing of the physical person, which is done secretly. And the news was first brought out by a woman whose former husband was a surgeon who personally performed over 2000 cornea removals on live following practitioners. And then the live following practitioners was pushed to the following surgery room to have their organs, internal organs removed. and there are many, many hospitals in China that have websites that attract people from all over the world to go to China. And in the West, where organs for transplant is provided voluntarily, people have to wait for years to get organ. But in China, the average waiting time, according to many of the websites, is two weeks. And it was discovered that at that time, this woman's husband used to work for a hospital in Northeast China called Shenyang. It was a thrombosis hospital for blood diseases, but they have an underground facility where Falun Gong, they say at one time over 6,000 Falun Gong practitioners were incarcerated and kept for potential donors of organs. And other persons reviewed after that that there are at least 36 such concentration camps in China. I really appreciate the opportunity to let everybody know. And I have a few copies, seven copies of the organ harvesting investigation report which is performed by two Canadian gentlemen, David Maetus and David Kilgore. One is a human rights lawyer and the other one was a former member of parliament and they both of them are not practitioners of Falun Gong, but they're concerned about human rights. And I also brought some information about the human rights relay and other materials that expose the crimes. Thank you everybody in this room. Thank you. If you would just give it to the clerk, Ed. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. But anybody else like to address the City Council? Harry Ngu none will close that item. We'll move on to a gen item number 10, which is the approval of the October 9, 2007 regular media removed, moved by Mr. Greenfield, seconded by Mrs. Cross, any discussion? I'll have a favor to the motion signify by voting aye. Aye. Opposed? And a passed unanimous. One abstentions, my. Let the record show Mr. Soberthorn abstained. Thank you. That now brings us down to, we'll actually recess our regular meeting and go into our work session. Mrs. Issa, know we staying here? Are we going next door? Okay. We're going to recess and we'll actually move next door for our work session. If we at all go over as quickly as possible so that we can start simultaneously. Thank you. We're going to finish. Yeah, we're really going to do it. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey I'm going to do it. I'm gonna go home. I'm going go home. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna going to be able to do it. I'm I'm here we go we now have our television feed and we'll call the work session order. The first item is insurance billing for the EMS transportation. Turn it over to staff. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. About six months ago, the City Council approved an ordinance which would permit the establishment of an ambulance transport fee and since that time, the staff of the fire department and volunteers as well have been working on defining the details of how such a program would operate and Chief Owens and Chief Bowman others are here this evening to go through that process with you. Chief Olin. Thank you, Mr. Assistant. Mr. Mayor, members of Council, at the meeting that the ordinance was adopted, Council made it very clear that once the parameters of the program were outlined, that you were wanting staff to come back to move through this discussion before we move toward implementation. We are still on track at this point for implementation early 2008 after a lot of work over the summer to identify a lot of different policies. Those particularly associated with a lot of the federal regulations that we must now subscribe to associated with this. We now have this outline ready to go. I'd like to introduce our EMS Program Manager, Captain George Brown, who's gonna take you through a short PowerPoint presentation that really walks you through the process by diagram, and then we'll move into a couple of other areas. Thank you, my man. Members of council? Which? No, we are. Oh, thank you, chief.. Members of Council. We are. Thank you, Chief. Getting ahead of myself. What I'm going to do very quickly is run you through the process in a graphics order way when a 9-1-1 call is initiated. What exactly happens after that is that Fairfax County Dispatch is called, as you well know, and we have a contract with 911 Dispatch. The Dispatch Center will then contact the stations and the ambulance and the medic units to respond on the call. Once the responding to the call, the patient care is initiated. If the patient refuses transport, there is no fee. We don't charge for the service. We're only charging for the transportation. So once the patient has loaded in the medic unit, the fee schedule actually is that time is when that starts. That's when you start the mileage, we keep tracking of the mileage once the patient is loaded on the unit itself and transported to the emergency room. We have constant contacts with the emergency room at this time that little graphic down here, the EPCR, that represents our data collection, our patient report, if you will. That's what we're doing, our patient reports on. The next slide depicts the protected health information and how that information is shared. We have to be very careful with the type of information that we share electronically. We want to make sure that we are compliant with the federal rules and regulations as far as the HIPAA, as far as HIPAA is concerned. And in fact, in your handout, you'll see a draft of the rule and regulation for protected health information. And on the seventh page, there is a notice of privacy practices that the patients will be, that the patient will sign. Much as you do when you go to a doctor, this allows the patient to understand what we're doing. Now we don't initiate this to the patient during transport. This is after the transport, after the patient is in the hospital, that's when they get this notice of privacy practice. They will also get one of the handouts which explains the privacy practices of the City of Fairfax Fire Department. And also in the rear of the handout, the packet that you have, there's a standard policies for protected health information that we can post on the website as well. information that we can post on the website as well. Now the billing process goes on where we will talk to the, we'll upload our reports once we've uploaded them into our server. We upload the reports to the billing contractor. We only upload necessary information, however, they don't get the whole report there getting what's necessary and a program that strips out exactly what they need for billing. We can reconcile that with the hospital face sheets, and so that the information is accurate. And at that point, the billing contractor will bill the insurance, the proper insurance companies, via CMS, Medicare, Medicaid, or private insurers. The reason for this graph of the way is to show you that at no time does do any funds go through the billing contractor itself. The billing contractor will build the insurance, medical insurance will then pay into the city's lock box, the city's bank account directly. They may elicit more information, more insurance information from the patient. They will send an explanation of benefits to the patient and that's so the patient knows that the bill was sent. We will also, the insurance company will also notify the billing contractor who in turn will notify the city treasurer. And the, and the specific city and we can reconcile all those, all to make sure that the charges were accurate. And the city treasurer will make sure that there isn't any. the charges were accurate and the city treasurer will make sure that there isn't any, I'm sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself. At this point, there's a write-off for various reasons which the chief is allowed to do. And there is also a draft-building waiver policy and a waiver, a hardship waiver request in your packet as well. At that point in the billing process, that's where the waivers might be requested. And those waivers will be reconciled and once those waivers are reconciled through accounts payable, that's where the billing company would be paid of the net. We also would be able to process duplicate invoices, process overpayments. A lot of times especially elderly folks when they get the explanation of benefits at the bottom of that EOB will be a copay. And it'll say, you may or may not be responsible for this. A lot of times the citizens will pay that. We want to make sure that since we're not charging a copay, that that goes back to the citizens and we intend to be very resolute in that. the citizens and we intend to be very resolute in that. This graphic just talks about the copay policy. This comes right out of the off the CMS website. Right now we are working with Fairfax County in conjunction with Fairfax County and an attorney group in Pennsylvania who are ex-building experts to petition the OIG for an opinion. There already exists an OIG opinion that tax dollars will forgive the copay. We're concerned that there will be confusion with our elderly residents. When there since we have so many calls going across jurisdictions that sometimes they'll be charged a copay and sometimes they won't. Because we act so closely with our fire and rescue service, the citizen sees an ambulance. They don't see what is written on the side of the ambulance. So there's excellent care across the jurisdiction lines. We don't want to eliminate a lot of that confusion, so we want to clarify with the Office of Inspector General of CMS to see if we can forgive that copay cross jurisdictionally. So neither jurisdiction is charging each other a copay. The waivers are allowed on a case by case basis. You cannot do a blanket waiver as most of you know. You cannot blanket waiver certain groups of people, but you can take individual waivers. And a waiver would be initiated, perhaps if there was a large scale event that affected city citizens. And we didn't feel politically that it would be beneficial or it would not be proper to bill as individuals. An example would be the fireworks situation that happened in Vienna. None of those patients that were transported there were billed and that was a decision that goes through the chief. That you have to have a written policy with that. You don't want to be too detailed because you want to give some latitude at that point. And this is the recommended transport fee schedule that we're looking at. We based that fee on our, we looked at the cost of our, cost of our calls. that question was raised, I believe, by Ms. Cross during our last meeting. And we have there are three charges you see here, BLS, ALS1 and ALS2. BLS is a basic life support. We're not doing any advanced life support care. This would be oxygen transport. You have to have a state certified BLS practitioner EMT on board. An ALS-1 would be staffed with certified ALS staff and doing some medically necessary, more advanced life support assessments, if you will, hooking them up to EKG, that type of thing. And an ALS-2 would be where you're giving three or more medications, three or more IB medications, and or defibrillation, advanced airway techniques. That would be an ALS-2. Let me stop, Mr. Mayor, to see if there are any questions, just for either on the billing process or the coppay question waivers or the recommended fee schedule. Good timing, Mr. Greenfield. I will only ask one question that I've been given permission for, but I do have one other issue. Do you check your email regularly? Yes, sir. I just wonder because it seems like there's a new haircut policy in place and several of you must not have checked your email because only two of you seem to be in compliance, so I just wondered about that. Seriously, the mileage, the 850, is that something that's reimbursable? Yes. Okay, so all of the fees, everything will go through the insurance, all of the- Right. As potentially be reimbursed by the patient. That's correct. There is nothing in the way of the fee schedule that staff is recommending that would not be collectible through the insurance companies as a billable charge through the billing company. The only question is on the side of the copay, as I'm sure all of you aware, the majority of insurance coverage that available is a percentage of what your total charges are, and the balance due from that of the allowable charges are then up to the patient in this case. As we began this process and interacting with the mayor and council, it became very clear from our direction from you that that was not something you wanted to see the city pursue is trying to get money out of the pocket of an individual citizen that we should design this program within the legal boundaries of Medicare, Medicare, which are the structural guidelines that all of the insurance companies follow as to allowable charges. That we would do this in a way that we would not then turn and ask a citizen of the city for the balance due, if you will, beyond what the insurance company held. As you've seen in the previous slide, the Medicare regulation does make that permissible as long as they are taxpayers of the jurisdiction. So the program as designed would forgive the copay at that point in charge. So everything that we are proposing to counsel is purely collections from the insurance entitlement that all of our coverages have as a standard part of their policies. The 850 is that a similar amount to what the county is probably charging? Yes, in fact, what I wanted to talk about it and let me go back to that slide if I can. Captain Brown indicated that one of our concerns as we've gone through this process is a fear of confusion because of how robust our automatic mutual aid is between the city and the county. We became a little fearful that if we had policies that were drastically different and one month a citizen would receive service from a city EMS unit and the next month they receive service from a county unit under mutual aid, that there could be great confusion as to the procedures and the charges and copays and those kinds of things. So we have worked very closely with the county staff that manages their EMS billing program to make sure that our recommendations to you are in line with the county's policies. The fee schedule that you are looking at is the fee schedule that Fairfax County is moving toward. These are also the allowable within the allowable charges of Medicare Medicaid for their schedule that's coming to be effective in 2008. So these level of service charges for transport as well as the mileage charge would align with the county's charges to reduce that possibility of confusion. And as Captain Brown indicated, we are working aggressively to see if we can actually forgive the copay across jurisdiction aligned because of our mutually. Mr. Mayor. It's gross. May I clarify? Is the county's policy with respect to the copay? The same as your proposing that it's forgivable and and Yes will not be collected well that's the issue Miss Cross is they forgive the copay for Fairfax County residents but when they go outside of the county though they bill for the copay and so part of our fear is that if a county unit comes into the city, they would bill for the copay. And the county is working with us very closely to see if we can get a legal interpretation through the office of the inspector general that because of how robust our automatic aid is that under the Medicare Medicaid guidelines, they would essentially see us as one jurisdiction. Therefore, we could then forgive across jurisdictional line so that there would not be that confusion. So if a county unit transported a citizen from within the city, the county would then forgive their copay just as we would forgive the county citizen that we provide service to. So that question is still being researched in? Yes. Now the original guidelines, Captain Brown had mentioned the law firm. That is a group that Fairfax County has retained and they have allowed us to interact with them jointly to try to get this question to ask. The early guidance is they believe that this would be permissible because of how integral our relationship that we share 9-1-1 center, we share dispatch center, we have common dispatch protocols, we go to the same receiving hospitals, we are more alike than different. And the original word back from this attorney's group is they believe that under the Medicare Medicaid guidelines for giving across the jurisdictional line would be permissible. However, that opinion is not the opinion of the federal attorney office of the inspector general for Medicare Medicaid. And so jointly with the county we are asking for that opinion from Medicare Medicaid to be rendered. Basically the attorney has said he feels we're on solid ground to be able to do that. But in order to do this right, we need the office of the inspector general to give us an opinion. Thank you. Mr. Mayor. This time. Thank you. And when would that opinion, when will that rendered opinion appear? You have no idea? No idea. Because we're trying to get this, I understand, passed for this next budget for next year, is that right? Yeah. Well, actually, our intent is to begin current year. That shortly after January, once we have our provider status approved from CMS that we would actually begin the process of billing for services, again, the guidance from the attorney says they believe we can get this program underway and forgive the copay across jurisdictional lines. And worst case scenario is if the office of the inspector general's opinion comes back and says we can't do that, then we simply change our policy. There's no penalty if we started that one. And we wouldn't have to go back and charge to folks or rearrange what we did starting in January. There would be no. No, because we haven't given much money. We just opted not to collect. So, okay, thank you for that. Can we just go back to these, just these amounts when you end they're up there so it's fine. Yes. You said those are what the county is going towards. And this is these are our minimum, the Medicare and Medicaid I guess are higher rates. Is that right? You can go up higher. What would those be? You said that they were still less than what Medicare and Medicaid would require. Right. What we tried to do is look at what our real costs were. You know, we did not go into this with recommendation of a fee schedule that was so absorbent that we were essentially making a profit if you will also the NMS transport. Right. Our actual cost for an ALS level two response is about $100 more. $794 is our actual cost. And so you can see what we're recommending. It's also our fee schedule has to fit within the allowable charges under Medicare Medicaid. So what we tried to do, Ms. Lyon, is strike that balance. Try to have a fee that is fair to our citizens. It's representative of what we expend. Yet it also fits within the parameters of the federal guidelines. Okay, and let me ask two more questions here. How will these fees, okay, S fees go up every year. They do. Will we then under our budget, and I guess this is more for our staff. Will this come underneath our budget amount or would the fire department have to come back every year and ask for it to be increased? How would that work? If I could, Ms. Lyon, we structured the ordinance that it actually references that these fees would be visited as a part of the rates and levies schedule in the city's budget annually. Right. So it's kind of on that front page. Okay. Okay and one more just the detail that I need to understand because I've just been through this process of going to the hospital with you all which was very very experienced but would I have to just then just show you my my insurance card. How would that work? Can you go back I missed part of that and I'm sorry for that question. The way that would function, we wouldn't even mention that during the transport or at the house, unless we said, you know, make sure you bring our identification, bring insurance card for the hospital, whatever. But we would, where we would start initiating the financial part of the call, would be after the call is over on our part. Once the patient is in the hospital, we've been turned over to the nurse just like where their admission staff comes in. We'd be there at the same time. We'd be having them, we would have them sign the notice of privacy practice at that point, and we would give them this notice. The other time that they would get this notice is if they refused to transport. Now there would not be any fee involved if they refused transport, but they were not transported, but we're still obligated to let the patient know of the note how their information is used and how we keep the private. So they'll also get this. Okay, so really all that information change, because you know, I appreciate, you know, when you're in the ambulance and you're kind of nervous and all that's going down, I still had to have my identification and show those things. So I just wanted if you were going to ask for it at that time or if it really goes through admissions process. Right. Our intent is to actually use the existing system of the hospital that routinely collects that information and we would get our data through the hospital then. The last thing we want to do is burden our patient, you know, to dig around for an insurance card so that we capture the information and then 20 minutes later remember the hospitals have to go through it over again. Okay, one more thing. Okay, going back to the jurisdiction issue. If, for instance, though, we don't get it approved through the Attorney General, whoever it is, then we then just do work something out with the county where then we reimburse the county or the county reimburse us. It would probably be more of an accounting nightmare for us, but that's how we would really manage it. So we really don't have to worry about the jurisdiction thing really at all. If it's the last time that we have this little meeting, is that right? Yeah, I think our intent is lying is that to cross that bridge when we get to it, we're banking on the fact that everything we've learned from this law firm that specializes in EMS billing that we're going to be on solid ground. The worst case scenario is that we would have to come back and revisit that. And this cross jurisdictional reimbursement is something that then would be permissible and we could look at going to that kind of a system if necessary. Okay, so we're prepared for the worst case scenario. Yes. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Mr. Mayor. Thank you. Real quick. this is a curiosity for a year from now. When you're taking statistics, if you would kind of take note of the Medicare, Medicaid and private pay insurance so that we can look at statistics, like a year from now to see where the input is and where the output is. And okay, thank you. There's actually part of the audit process. One of the things that we've talked with the chief is the audit process. And there was some question about staffing and the chief will address that in a moment. That even though we have a billing contractor, we want to be sure that the billing contractor is acting above board, if you will, and is answerable to audits on a regular basis. We would part of an individual who would be in charge of handling the EMS billing component would be doing those audits and that would be part of the audit system breaking that statistics down. Thank you. Any other questions? Thoughts, comments? I assume? I don't think we're done. You still move forward here? Yes. That part was so complicated, Mr. Mayor. I wanted to give the Council an opportunity, but while things were still a little fresh. The balance of our brief to you tonight deals with a couple of other areas beginning with, as you know, the ordinance calls for this revenue to be gained by the city to help our volunteer fire department meet the capital cost. We are fortunate to have a volunteer department that still raises a great deal of revenue through their own sources to purchase all of our capital equipment in the fire department, our fire apparatus, our EMS units. And part of that is looking at the future health of that relationship and to see if this ambulance transport fee can't help meet some of those ongoing needs as well. This process unveiled itself through a conversation between the volunteer leadership, the city manager, the assistant city manager, and myself, in looking at what those costs might be realistically going forward. Our volunteer department provided a great deal of supporting detail of their financial health, what the apparatus replacement schedule is, and what some of those typical capital costs are going to be for about the next 10 to 12 year period. Mr. Hodgkins went through all that material as a good financial mine does was very comfortable with the data. And then that led to the discussion of what type of revenue sharing program we should take a look at. What is in your packet, in addition to this item, is the last sheet in your package should be a spreadsheet that gives you some of those capital cost figures that were provided by our volunteer department in terms of on a calendar year basis what that kind of revenue needed to look like. And it balanced out between the low and the high to about $250,000 a year. So the recommendation is coming to you in two parts. The first is that this program, from all the jurisdictions that we've talked to that have entered into Amulance Transport Billing, they've made it very clear that your collections build over a period of time. And so you're just not going to instantaneously begin to realize this lump sum of revenue it will build. And so the equity of allowing this system to begin as the revenue starts to come in is to currently the city provides $88,100 annually to the volunteer department. The recommendation is to maintain that annual contribution not only for this current fiscal year but for the next fiscal year and then provide 25% of the fee generated from EMS use a maximum annual payment of $250,000 per year and that would be looked at annually and adjusted for inflation or 25% of the total net revenue whichever is lower and that the city manager and the volunteer leadership would meet annually to review this formula to make sure that it's meeting the needs of the department. Mr. Cleanshal. Thank you. A few things. The $88,100 that you reference, not all of that goes to the volunteers for purchase of apparatus as some of that go for for life and I think it's about 18,000 of that. But it is all for purchase of apparatus. Mr. Greenfield the the fire programs fund and the EMS for for life fund which are state-generated revenue pass through. It can only be used for certain things and procurement of apparatus and equipment is one of those. And so the city provides $70,000 out of general fund monies. The 88 one then represents the addition of the share of fire programs and EMS-4 for life money on top of the 70,000 brings them to an 88,100-dollar total. And the city transfers that electronically to a financial institution that has an outstanding loan or line of credit on our fire or EMS vehicles. And the volunteer board of directors directs which line of credit or loan they want the city's payment applied to annually. So it's a direct transfer of those monies, but all of it goes toward paying down the principal portion of the equipment cost. But it's an $88,000 transfer from the general fund, 70,000 of which is city monies, 18,000 is state monies. That's correct. OK. How did you, I know we've done some joking back and forth and said, you know, the percentages, you know, it could be 70% for the volunteers, 30% for the career or for the city side. I know all those, you know, plenty of games, but I, how did you arrive at the 25% and if this question is better directed toward the city manager, I'm happy to do that. I really thought when the last time we talked about this and we had some preliminary numbers, I thought we were settling more in around the 30 to mid 30 range for consideration. That's one question I've got some others to follow on stab at that one. The higher figure initially was the request that came from the volunteers. That was not as a result of any analysis by the city staff. And so as Chief Owens mentioned earlier in his report, after looking at the demands going forward over the next 15 years or so for a replacement of equipment, the figure seemed to be at 250,000 and not the higher amount. Why would you in here, and I think this phrase can really be detrimental, and that is it says here which ever is lower. 25% or $250,000, whichever is lower. So if we're not collecting what you think we're going to collect, they don't get $250,000, they get less than that. Which affects, well, if I'm right, if that affects their ability. I mean, we're already by going to this and I think that's been the concern of the Council on the past. I realize we're comfortable moving forward, but in the past, we've had reluctance because this affects the ability of the volunteer fire department to fundraise either through your bingo nights or your annual fundraising rise where you're mailing out to the community. And anybody from the volunteer fire department can correct me if I'm wrong. If going to this, that certainly will impact that. If they don't have a fixed revenue amount that they can count on on an annual basis, they one can't budget for future vehicle equipment and replacement. And two, won't have the money then be able to pay back what those costs are to be able to buy that equipment, which essentially puts us in a situation where the city would then have to pick that up. And that can be extremely expensive. It's saved us at least a few cents on the tax rate on an annual basis when they are purchasing equipment that we don't have to take care of. Would you like to address? I mean, I'm going to propose that we drop that, but I certainly would like to give you an opportunity to hear why you feel that that should be there. If I could, Mr. Greenfield. The reason we did that is it was based on our analysis and we did not want to, we did want to max the number out because we don't know what that number would be. But what, and you make a very good point, what happens if that 25% ends up being much less than $250,000, which is approximately what the volunteers had projected would be the shortfall in future years and also city staff agreed with that. And that's one of the reasons we have kind of as an outlet that the volunteer fire department leadership and the city manager will get together each year to review that just to make sure that there is not a problem in that respect. So there is an opportunity to adjust it each year if it turns out that the numbers are substantially lower than what we project. an opportunity to adjust it each year if it turns out that the numbers are substantially lower than what we have project. I would just go and ask council support for that. One I would drop that but I would also encourage us to bring this back to the council as well. This is new for all of us. I think that while the volunteer fire department and the city staff need to take a look at this I think that the council needs to make sure we're comfortable with where we're headed with this at least for the first few years that would be my suggestion. Other comments thoughts? Soon we're at the end of the presentation and we're just trying to get one more slide. Okay. I don't want to leave without I don't know whether Chief Boam has a comment or wants to speak to this question. Was this thing on? Yeah, I guess. Good evening. First of all, I appreciate meeting with the city manager and the assistant city manager on this subject a couple of weeks ago. They're in the document prepared by the city manager. There is a couple of words in there that I didn't expect to see. And one of them is the greater and the lower amount. That's real important when you're trying to buy fire and rescue apparatus, particularly the EMS vehicles now are about 160, 180,000. The new fire truck that we just took delivery of was an excess of 600,000. The next latter truck will be approaching a million dollars. So there is some fact in Mr. Greenfield's comments that to be able to project out what vehicles we're going to purchase for the use of the City Fire Department in the future. I for sure would like to see that or lower amount come out of there. And as the chief mentioned, the volunteer fire department never sees this money to begin with. We have two audits annually meeting with the City manager and the city council annually on this I think is a good idea the contribution Increase if approved by you all will go directly towards our line of credit and that's the whole idea Is to try to get away from having to pay all the interest that we currently pay It seems like every time we get to a point of zeroing out our debt, it's time to buy another vehicle. And when you're buying a vehicle that costs $600 plus $1000 and then on top of that another medic unit, it's just an endless cycle of debt. Chief, this chief, Everly here's assistant chief and has done some extensive analysis as well and I would like for him to comment too. Good evening. The only thing I would add to chief poems comments were this that while we're looking at vehicles right now it's important to understand that we have an infrastructure continuity issue as well. We have a building that the career staff operates out of, and we have to maintain that just as you do, fire station 33. And my understanding is the ordinance would allow monies to be extended towards facility repairs as well. And that's a very expensive venture that we're in. The other piece that is not mentioned is the fact that we do have outstanding debt that we'd like to try to retire and additional monies would obviously help us in that regard so that we can get to a pay-go situation rather than continuing to increase our debt and the current percentage will not allow us to do that. It merely folds the line possibly against each apparatus cost increases. Thank you. Just one other comment in the city managers document under this discussion. I believe it's a little bit different than the slide that Chief Owens has on the board. But under initial funding, if you're asking my recommendation, on the third line, where it says, totalling a maximum annual payment, I would like the word maximum removed, and then under future funding. On the second line, it said the revenue sharing with the SVFD will shift to a instead of maximum minimum and then take the word lower out on the third line to greater and that will correct the differences that I have with the meeting that occurred a week or two ago with the city manager and the assistant city manager. I think the meeting went very well and I was very pleased when I left there. I still am pleased because our counterparts in the county aren't able right now to have this ability to have this revenue sharing and this will be on my lifetime, help the FVFD continue on in the future years. As I stated, we raise a lot of money there, but it goes out the door very quickly. And if there's any misconception about what happens to the money, I think we cleared that up with Mr. Hodgkins in providing him all of our audit documentation and that pretty much in his words that was a wash with what he had as far as his figures as well. That made us feel real good as an organization that we carry and have such good books. So I would ask for your consideration in making those minor changes which to our organization are major changes. Thank you. those minor changes which to our organization are major changes. Thank you. And Chief Bowman just saw I understand exactly where that is. That would be on page three under future funding. That's the wording where whichever is lower is the wording that you've highlighted. Yes sir. The first one would be under initial funding on the third line where it says received by the city from the ambulance transport fee, comma, totaling a maximum, I would like to remove the word maximum. And then on our future funding, as you stated mayor, on the second line, the revenue sharing with the FVFD will shift to a minimum versus maximum. And then on the third line, whichever is lower to whichever is greater. And I think I won't speak for the entire board of directors, but I'm here representing them. And I think that's going to help our organization not only pay for future vehicles, but to, like Chief Everley said, try to zero out this debt that just is ongoing and never ends. It hasn't ended in my 31 years there and would be nice to start paying that down. Okay, Mr. Cross. Well, I think our approach for this was based on the fact that we don't know I think our approach for this was based on the fact that we don't know what the ultimate collections are going to be on a yearly basis. And chief Owens is indicated that this million dollars that's going to be collected is a very conservative amount. And so we thought that it would be better to try to constrain what the dollars we were talking about early on until we actually have some experience under our belt. So we were concerned that a 25% figure of of two million dollars is five hundred thousand dollars a year and so we felt that the reasonable approach and a conservative approach what we could recommend to the council was 250,000 a year, which is a threefold increase over what the current payments are. And I don't know that the work session is where we necessarily have to resolve this tonight. We might go back with the volunteers and sit down again and Try to have additional discussion and bring this back to you Okay doors opening There wasn't something coming out of the roof Miss Cross Ms. Cross. It's a weird. It's a boil. What Mr. Sissin said was exactly what I wanted to get to. And that was surely in the process of going through this drill of initiating these charges. You've done a projection as to what we would be collecting now if this place were in place. And can you share any of that with us? I mean, when I looked at the projected million dollar figure for collections in transport fees, I thought, wow, that's a lot. Are they serious? And apparently, Mr. Assistance had the impression from you that will actually exceed that to some degree. Can you share some of your numbers? I can, when we first came to council, and the initial discussions that we had in work session Miss Cross were based on what information that we were getting from other jurisdictions relative to what their fee schedules were and their percentage of collections. Just because you bill doesn't mean you're going to collect. There's a fair percentage of this that you simply do not qualify for, where the claim is rejected by the insurance company for whatever reasons as not being allowable under their policies, where you don't get as high a percentage reimbursement from Medicare and Medicaid because they may take issue with the difference between an ALS-1 transport and an ALS-2. So if you understand that there's a lot of variables in here. The initial numbers of a net $1 million revenue was based on a 50% collection rate. That's what we were using. And a recommended fee schedule that was actually lower than what we are now recommending to counsel now that we've done our actual cost analysis and looked at what the 2008 allowable charges are for Medicare and Medicaid that will be forthcoming. If you look at we do about 3,800 patient transports a year and you just do some rough numbers, we could be looking at about 1.9 million gross that you then pay your overhead out of, which is a 6.5% fee for the ambulance billing company. If you begin to back that down now and say that if that represents 100% of your collections, that's where the variable comes in that becomes hard to then project to because we have no experience other than looking at our neighbors and Fairfax counties running what George 65? That's 65% is what the county's experience is. So we think we're at least comparable to that because of the high percentage of insured that we have in this particular region. All right. So if we go with the 1.9 million gross, the formula that's proposed here is on the net. What are you subtracting out to reach net? The cost of the billing, they take their fee directly out of the adjusted net from the collections or from the adjusted gross. And then that gives the city its net income through which then the revenue sharing with the volunteer department would be taken from. That's the only thing that you're backing out because I think you're also requesting a full time position that would be paid from these funds, am I correct? So would that not come out of your net? Yes. And that would be a clerical level position that would be civilian, certainly not a uniform position in the fire department is necessary for this kind of work. It's very much administrative clerical type of function. But it would seem to me that that would come out of your gross. Yes. Right. So this leads me to the structure that's going to be used by the billing company. Are they paid in percentage of what they're billing, percentage of what they're collecting? How does that work? That's a 6% correct? That you're talking about. 6.5% of the adjusted gross revenue collected. Adjusted gross revenue collected. 6.5% of adjusted gross collected did you say? Yes. Meaning, you know, they could, they could bill but not collect. So the adjustment is, in other words, you're not paying your fee based on their billable. Okay, that gets adjusted down to what they collected and then their percentage comes off of that. Mr. Cross, may I ask a question on that very point? Thank you for yielding. So in other words, that incentivizes the billing agents to make sure that they're collecting the money. Okay, that's what I was getting at. The more thorough they are, the more thorough they are. In terms of, I worry about coding and all the other issues you're talking about with Medicare and Medicaid and also with just insurance coding and how difficult it's to become for doctors. I think there's a game in ship almost going on with insurance companies to try to avoid having to pay. I'm sorry to say that, but I really believe that's what has come down to in allowing, they are incentivizing these companies to be able to go after them in that aggressive way, I think is a good thing. Absolutely. And that's the way the contract is being structured with them. And so, you know, they help themselves by making sure that they're doing thing right on it. But it gets back to the staff support that we're looking for. And that is really related to what Mr. Silverthorn mentioned is the better you are doing your quality control on the reporting end also helps further that collection rate and reducing the number of claims it might be denied. Thank you, Ms. Cross. I'm pleased to hear that their fee is on their collected amounts. However, I'm displeased to hear that they're being rewarded in to some degree for an aggressive approach to collections. I thought we were kind of going with a soft. Well, understand they're being aggressive with the insurance company. He's not our citizens. Well, but let's face it, if there's an issue, it always comes back to the consumer. And I don't want to see this become a real hassle for our residents from the collection company. I don't want them getting letters about their credit or their, you know, at what point does the collection company say, okay, this is where you folks have to make a call. There's a very good question because we want to make sure that our citizens understand. When the insurance company is billed, okay, we're dealing only with the insurance company, we're not dealing directly with the individual. The only time the individual will be dealt directly from the billing company is maybe for some additional clarification of information. They will not be called, we're still going to practice soft billing. Soft billing would really work with patients who were self-paying. If you had a self-pay patient, we would do a minimal number of bills of requests and after a while, depending on how we structure that contract, they wouldn't be badger, they wouldn't be going to other collections agencies that would infringe upon their credit rating and that type of thing. That's not what we want to do, even for self-pay patients. So your question has merit and I'm glad you asked it because we need to make sure that's clear. We're not going to be going after patients. We're still going to practice self billing. That's in the instruction that we're going to go with the billing company in our contract. But it's counter-indicated for them to bring you into the picture because then they're losing a collection. Well they they're working they're not you're really you losing a collection they're working with the insurance companies and as Mr. Silverthorn said it gets down to coding and and that type of thing. So they're really working with the insurance companies to get back what is entitled. And we're looking at the Medicare Medicaid guidelines there. So we want to make sure that the company is doing what they're supposed to be doing with the insurance company. That's not going to involve the citizen at all. I understand that. My concern is that we're going to find ourselves in a situation where the collection service is going to hesitate to bring in the chief or whoever has the decision-making ability to forgive a charge or to write it off. I would never say that that's not something that's possible ms. Cross. We do take some comfort though is the billing company that we are finishing or negotiating with towards signing a contract. Does a great deal of work in Virginia. We've done a lot of background work on those with other jurisdictions that they provide services to, and we're just not hearing that that's an issue from them. They are a very reputable company. The vast majority of jurisdictions in Virginia use this particular company, they're Virginia Beach based. We've just, as we've checked them out on our, and our due diligence in looking at a potential contractor for the city We've just not heard that being a concern that they are more compliant with the jurisdictions direction on how they want to do their billing and collection Or they run the risk of losing their entire contract So I think they're incentive to follow our guidelines is there's a bigger fish out here than you know Maybe being aggressive for a handful of additional collections. As long as that is well understood, because I, it's certainly a joy. A previous life have had an experience with collection companies. And when you send a billing to a collection company, you are, they're big time, they will collect one way or another. We're not looking at, are billing vendor, okay, the billing contractor is not going to be, is not going to be sending an unpaid bill to a collection company. That's not part of the salt billing. If that answers your question. All right. And let's do this, and I know Mr. Surnamesh, when they're hands up. Let's make sure what we do is just raise the issues and concerns. I wouldn't look at tonight as sort of negotiations back and forth and trying to resolve all the various issues, but more a night to sort of frame the concerns of the staff and then go back to the drawing board and dialogues and discussions before we get back together for final, but with the Silverthorn. Thank you. And in that spirit, I, you know, I share, and we've talked about this at previous work sessions, and certainly I think Mrs. Cross and I actually had a briefing by staff together when we raise these very concerns about the soft touch and soft approach. In particular about those who may not have insurance and those who may be less fortunate in the community and ensuring that we're not too aggressive in that space. But I guess as I interpret this and I want to make sure I'm saying this right and I don't speak from any particular expertise, but I want to make sure that, you know, with this clerical position in particular, that we're the ones who were negotiating with the insurance companies, we're almost taking the consumer completely out of the picture if I'm understanding that correctly. So therefore, they don't even know about the aggressivity in this whole discussion. And that's the point I'm sort of getting at. I feel like if there is a legitimate claim here on the insurance company, then we ought to be going after it. But I don't want our residents to feel in any way pinched by this or in any way disadvantaged by this. And that's I think the same sensitivity. I think I'm articulating that okay. And Mrs. Cross is also saying, and I just want to re-emphasize that. Secondly, in terms of the issue that Mr. Greenfield had raised, I and Mrs. Cross started out on this discussion as well. I, you know, these numbers are a little larger than I had anticipated too. And as we talked about earlier with transportation funding, it seems like suddenly the gravy train is rolling in and that, that, you know, as with any group, the more money that we take in, it's easy to spend it. And I guess my concern is, is that, you know, until we really have some clarity around it, I would almost argue, Mr. Assistance Point, if I'm in reverse, I could almost say, let's do what Mr. Bohm has suggested here this evening. And if the numbers come in larger than we anticipate, or if it looks like it's unreasonable, the staff is certainly going to come back to us with additional recommendations on how to tweak that. But I think for now, I could certainly support what Mr. Bohm has suggested. And I think that until we actually know where things lie, this is new money that we are realizing. I know the staff's looking at me because we budgeted a portion of this, I understand. But this is new income to the city. And I think that all parties that participate in our public safety network ought to be advantaged by that. So I certainly can support Mr. Belman's position. Thank you. OK, Mrs. Wooder. Real quick. Question regarding the insurance issues. Are you paperless when you're recording? Yes. OK, so to put some of Ms. Cross eddies, when it is paperless, they put the information in and it's coded a la CMS or the insurance. It's easier to read. There's a quickness and an efficiency in billing and less kickback if it's paperless. Thanks. If it's paperless. Thanks. Okay, if there aren't any questions, obviously we've raised a number of issues, not the least of which is the certainly initial and future funding categories, certainly the insurance issues, Mr. Sisson. I know to chief that in your public information outreach, you want to go out to the community and I guess Mr. Sisson, what's the time table? Where do we go from here and are we under? Is this something we're trying to make prior to next year's budget? Discussions I would assume, so it can be implemented. As soon as we get our provider status, we're hoping we're still on track for January for that to occur. It may slip to February, but we're still working hard to meet our initial January target. Well, the only thing I would certainly ask on behalf of the council is we need to resolve some of these issues before we go out into the community. So, Mr. Sussan, we'll rely on you in terms of scheduling the follow-up dialogue and discussion based on these comments so that we're all in the same page as we go forward. Mr. Mayor, one of the things that's also in the packet is sort of a glossy brochure. We intend to do a direct mail to all city residents with this information document. We were able to get our printer. This is actually still a draft document. So as you have it, we're still in a position to make changes, but they did a real nice glossy draft for us for your benefit. If you get a chance to look through that, if there's anything that you would like to comment on, you can drop me an email directly and we'll certainly take a look at that. But this is going to be a direct mail out and then followed by the opportunity to meet with neighborhood association senior groups and those kinds of things for our outreach. Okay. Well, let's just make sure, though, we don't get out in front of the Council making the feeling comfortable and signing off on the very decision. Absolutely. What that goes in the mail. Okay. Thank you. Appreciate your time. Okay. That now brings us to a discussion regarding expansion of Kitty Pozier Guard, Mr. Sisson. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Mr. Hudson will make his way to the presentation table and introduce design consultants that we have engaged several months ago. Thank you, Mr. Sussan. Actually actually Mr. Blavins has got an entity that consultants. If you would. Thank you. When the city purchased the Weight Watcher building and George Mason Square, you created a great opportunity to develop a large central open space downtown, a highly valuable new development adjacent to it, and some additional permanent parking all in the same block right in the center of downtown. To me, it's a very exciting opportunity for us. When City Council asks for plans and designs for expanding Poser Park, redeveloping George Mason Square, we recognize that we need to put together a very special team of consultants if we're going to get the quality product that you need. And the product we fail needs to include several alternatives for the park at showing different, I guess, levels of green as opposed to utility or hardscape, and several alternatives for redevelopment showing different levels of density, different heights, for creative and integrated designs appropriate to the scale and historic character of the surrounding South of downtown. We interviewed three architect urban design planner firms and three landscape architect urban design planner firms and three illustrators. We were lucky enough to find that our choice of each landscape architect, urban design, planner firms, and three illustrators. We were lucky enough to find that our choice of each were working close together, were able to work very close together, and come up with the alternatives that you'll see tonight. We chose the firm of Torchie Gallison Partners as that architect, urban designer the firm of land design as the sort of landscape architect urban design planner and as an illustrator Jeff McSwain their instructions were to give us several alternatives for expanding the park at redeveloping George Mason Square and several alternatives for adding parking on the block. We gave them a copy of a document that put out by Prab earlier this year on observations and recommendations for Kitty Pose or Garden expansion. We gave them a copy of a 1994 historic landscape study and master plan for Reclavaleson House and Old Town Hall. And then we put them in touch with our parks and rec staff who takes care of special events and our marketing staff to make sure that they are aware of all the ways that staff anticipated this space could be used in the future. Finally, we made them where the rotary clock and the need for other memorials down there and all the outdoor uses associated with Old Town Hall. I hope you'll see tonight will give you a lot to discuss about what's appropriate and what you'd like to see on this block. With that, I would turn it over to Eric Alestia with Tori Gales and Kevin Tankersley with land design. Before we do turn it over, I will say that early on our model that we had actually discussed with the council over a year ago. The kind of model for development was the Duke of Gloucester Street kind of merchant square area around colonial Williamsburg that because it provided a pedestrian experience, a pedestrian scaled urban style development. And so that was also the direction that that's sort of a starting point. And that feel is something that I think most folks feel comfortable with. The other thing is just that, again, they were asked to put together several concepts. And they have put together several concepts and they have put together several concepts. And what we would hope to get this evening is a pretty good discussion of the character of the council would like to pursue because there are many ways to skin a cat. So with that, I can turn it over. My name is Eric Alessio, a Jordi Galison partner. So I'm a partner with the firm. When we were contacted about this, we were pretty excited about it. These kinds of projects are not that frequent really, looking at a historic, in essence city, has a lot of historic elements, and it has the potential for something that's very civic in its nature. There was an elected official that once said it made a comment that I always remembered, and he said, one of the greatest or likely, the longest legacy that he would leave behind was actually the built environment. And in our work, we certainly see that. We're about the built environment. And so we see the projects that we do as being something that is a long-lasting legacy that impacts not just ourselves but our children and many people down the road. So we take these kinds of projects very, very seriously. Certainly we started looking at the region. When we do a lot of work in a lot of different states and also countries, we always take a look at the regional context. I actually grew up around this area, so, and I think Kevin has been here quite a while too. So we know the area pretty well. Certainly historic City of Fairfax is the heart of Fairfax. One of the things that we also did was take a look at the context. And what you see here is that this is the block that we're talking about today with the green asterisk in it. And you see the blocks around it, the purple blocks that are the mixed use, this is really just taken from the land use plan that the city has. And what you see is that this really is at the heart of the historic core. And it's a very important and key piece here. Certainly we always look at the five minute walk. The reason we do that is because that's what most people in the United States are willing to walk. If they have to walk more than five minutes, they typically jump in their car and they drive there. Certainly some people will walk ten minutes, especially for transit, but we typically look at the five in the ten minute walk. So you see that this whole area here is really within that five minute walk. And one of the things that we always do is we look for what we call the spirit of the place. In other words, what is the essence of the place? And we use this because this helps us to be able to tell what would be the right thing to do in a place. So for example, if we do work in Florida, we find that maybe the Mediterranean revival style is an appropriate style or a courtyard type of building is an appropriate type of building given the climate, given the history, given the culture. But there are many other places where that's not the appropriate thing. So we start by looking at that and certainly I'm sure you recognize all of these pictures here looking at the historic character of the architecture in the buildings, and also looking at the, what I would call the urban character, meaning these are buildings where the fronts face the street, the parking is located back behind the building, rather than in front, and it creates a really great pedestrian environment. Then when we looked at the analysis of the site itself, one of the things that we certainly noticed pretty quickly was the topography because there is a lot of topography on this site. And in essence, I can find this arrow. In essence, starting at this point about here, as you move down around the street this way, you drop 20 feet in an elevation. So that's a pretty big challenge. We also saw the existing homes or existing buildings that would stay Old Town Hall which is a neoclassical building and the Codding Office Building which in actuality is a parcel that sits right here which is not owned by the city. And one of the things that we looked at was the grain, what we call the grain of the buildings and the grain of the neighborhood. And when you look at the historic portion, there's what we call a fine grain, meaning that the building facades are about this long or this short, and there are a lot of multiple buildings there. Versus a lot of really big buildings. When you look to the north, you see the new library, which is a pretty big facade. You see that office building here. It's cut off here, but this has a pretty long facade. But it's a different scale. It's a different character than you find in the historic core. different scale. It's a different character than you find in the historic core. One of the interesting things that we have fun doing, which is really easy nowadays with Google Earth, but we like to actually take the site that we're looking at and overlay it on other places at the same scale. So what you see here is a red outline that represents the block that we're looking at, the shape of the block and the size of the block, overlaid on a different place. This happens to be in Alexandria, Virginia, I think, you know, which is the sort of semi-public place. And on the right is the Alexandria, it's that plaza. What's the name of that? Market Square. Market Square. So you can see that for example, the site is actually a little bit bigger than Market Square. But it gives you a sense of just the size and the scale of what that would be. And then below that we have some images of those spaces. On the left here we have a Square in Savannah and on the right we have Palmer Square in Princeton, New Jersey as well. And have a number of open space precedents. Again, up here this is Palmer Square in Princeton, New Jersey, the town commons in Dover Delaware, town square in Dover Delaware. And just a number of other types of spaces that help us to understand opportunities that there might be here. We also looked at architecture precedents. I'd mentioned Palmer Square earlier, and these top three images, and this image here, are all from Palmer Square. This one is Williamsburg, Virginia, which was mentioned a moment ago. They're all of a colonial architecture character. And one of the reasons that we looked at Palmer Square is that Palmer Square is made up of mixed-use buildings, meaning it's retail on the ground floor and it's office or residential above. It was built in 1937 by a developer. And what's really interesting about it is that historic cities, part of the reason people love them so much, is because they were built over time. In other words, one building was built, another building was built, it's a little different, it's a little quirky. And yet today, we find that often buildings sort of happen very quickly, and a big facade is built of one style. This was a case where a developer came in and he built a basically one project, but he designed it as if it had been built over time. And I think he did it very successfully. It has that character that you find in old colonial towns and villages and yet it was built and designed in that way intentionally. At the bottom we also have some contemporary examples of our architecture that has retail in the ground floor residential above or office above. Here's just to show a little more detail of that Palmer Square because we really did take a look at this as a precedent in terms of scale, the size of the space to help us better understand that scale. We really asked to look at two different areas. Although they're very much integrated and interrelated, one is the public space that has the old town hall, and one is, I'll say, the east side of the site that has development or opportunities or potential with buildings. So Kevin and I got, we got together, our firms got together, we worked very closely, we got together in a charat, we did some general direction and general schemes, and then we went back to our offices and we worked on individual pieces, but we continued to stay in contact on the phone, via the internet, via email, so that we could make sure that whatever ideas we were developing would mesh together. So Kevin's going to talk about those public spaces. And he is right. We did do one of the things that land design over. It's now almost 30-year history is really proud of its collaboration because we feel that the integration of everybody's ideas will yield to the strongest solution. And this was particularly successful. Of course, I have known Eric for much longer than, let's say, at Toree Gallup. But looking at all of this, and Jack and David mentioned a lot of different things, and in terms of looking at the public space, there was a huge list of things to incorporate from the willingness for art spaces, to festivals, to holiday decorations, to the quiet places of the garden, to gatherings, and a great number of things. And so we feel we've done fairly well in incorporating a bunch of those different things into the designs, some emphasize some more than others in different ways. And that's all the choices that can be made and why we present it alternatives here for you all to look at. I'm going too far. I'm going too far. So our first scheme for the outdoor, the public space, really titled it the lawn. That is really the central focus. This is saying, let's really make this into a great public gathering space for the town, for everyone to come to the town square here. Really, oriented to one of the things that we heard was the corner of North Street University Drive is a very important place. So this creates and puts a focal feature right there at that corner. We would envision that as being a fountain feature, water feature that has some verticality and scale to it to relate to the beginnings of the larger buildings that are across from that intersection and be a focal feature for the lawn and the space that comes down to it. We've created with that the area of the plaza at that fountain that is gives a hard surface and also could become a terrace that becomes the transition to the architecture beyond. This scheme shows a 12 space parking lot at the Old Town Hall, which could also then be used as a hard surface area with decorative paving for special events where cars could be, you know, excluded from it for those events. Really, this, you know, one of the things that we talked about is really the wrapping and the embracing of the space and creating that as a central space that becomes the focus of the whole public realm. The second scheme that we have, the axis, we decided to look at and really say, okay, we have the public space. We're going to have, on the east side, the developed space, let's really take a look at how can we tie those together and really make a statement with that. So this has a very strong east-west axis across it, which of course has to tear us up the grade from the lower side and then back over and up to the east side. This access organizes a main plaza area which could be really used for a number of events with a focal pavilion here in the lower terrace, some stairs that could become a little bit of informal seating for entertainment and then up to an upper terrace with more of a pop fountain, one of the more contemporary type fountains that could have the musical programming and the water that dances with the music, and then up the stairs into the access into the private, more private space. This also sets up a series of different gardens that could be developed. There's sort of the Lawn or Town Green, a more contemplative garden that could be developed. There's sort of the lawn or town green, a more contemplative garden that could be used for memorials and sculpture placements, softer garden under some of the existing trees, and I should have pointed out in previous one, but in this one we were anticipating retaining some of the major trees that are still there. And then really an aszelia or sculpture garden, a decorative garden that could be a very nice feature for the weddings and other events that happen there. So a place that has a central focus, but this also has a number of other smaller spaces to allow it to be of the pedestrian, you know, human scale that all of us are going to come to. Our third scheme is the terraces, and this really takes a look at working with the grade and aligning the spaces to the North South direction where we have on the west of much more hard surface to plaza that could be used for a variety of events having a focal feature in the center of focal fountain right here with plenty of space for gatherings or events or if I know we had a request for 40, potential for 40 spaces for a jewelry fair or a antique show, and then terminating up close to Old Town Hall with a pavilion that's slightly raised, that could be used for a stage for entertaining and creating a smaller terrace than against the old town hall. Again, they can be used generally for parking, created with special pavements that can make it also useful as a decorative place for special events. And then really taking the existing poster garden and really continuing to maintain that as a quiet space, developing it a little bit to give it some organization and tie it together with the three spaces. Really that becomes a contemplative areaersitting and placement for sculpture memorials and then to a colon aid, a decorative wall that steps you up to the architecture of the new building. And Eric's going to tell you more about those buildings in a little bit and I should sort of send. This actually gives you a perspective view of what this third scheme could look like. And so you can see here we have this the slower area with the plaza area which could be have the vendor spaces for special events or displays, the central focal feature fountain up to a pavilion for stage or other uses, and then the poser garden that's much more green and contemplative space, and then working up to the building and joining. So quite adaptable, a lot of different ways that this could be used for all the different things that we heard in events and so forth. Then we have a scheme, a fourth scheme. One of the things that we heard as well was that parking is a concern. And this really takes a look at maintaining or actually developing into a more permanent situation that the parking. It really sequesters the space into the center of the square, which is one thing that we as designers are a little uncomfortable with. One of the great things of the other schemes is it brings the spaces out to the street in the public view and connects. But this does allow for some parking, there's 37 spaces. We did shift it a little bit to allow for a much greener walk along university drive with some plantings and then created a really an enclosed garden space similar to the last scheme where the poser garden is now. Going back to this first scheme, one of the things that you find common to all of the schemes and I'm actually going to back up real quick. In different configurations and different sizes, but one of the things you do find common is that there's a terrace at this area here, because there is a topographic change leading from the east going to the west. We felt that creating that as a common element in all of the schemes would make for a very nice place, a place where you would want to sit. And in these schemes, certainly retail would be wonderful. We think it would be really wonderful to have sort of a white tablecloth restaurant there where you would have outdoor dining and seating and you could sit and look over the garden which would really help to activate the space and I think would be very pleasant. When we look at the architecture, actually in this scheme, we did a few different things here. This is the Codding Building. So in this scheme, what we did is we said, well let's leave the Codding Building where it is. We won't touch it. What could we develop if we did that? And it is, I think, a pretty wonderful scheme. The building itself, in this case, when you're driving around this corner here from an oldly highway coming over to East Street, this is a very prominent corner. So what we felt was that it was important to address that with the building so that there would be sort of an architectural element, sort of a semi-tower that greets you. It says you've arrived. You're here. You've reached the historic part of Old Town Fairfax. What you see here in the blue represents lobby and stair space. What you see in the red represents retail space. This would be a ground floor plan. This would be a mixed use building with retail on the ground floor and office above. The office would really be roughly the same floor plan. You get divisions within there depending on the tenant. But a couple of very important things here. Addressing this corner, addressing the street and the street here are important. So that's the way traditional neighborhoods and downtown's work. And the parking gets hidden. It goes in the back. But it's also important that this public space over here have a nice front as well. So what we tried to do here was say, well, if you created surface parking and you met these requirements of making a nice face to the park and a nice face to the street, what would you be left with? In the end, what we ended up was, let's see, three, six, eight spaces, not a whole lot of parking. In this scheme, you have, after what's real quick here, roughly about 16,000 square feet of retail and about 30,000 square feet of office. This is composed of both three and two and a half story buildings. This is an elevation looking from the park side, in other words standing to the west looking east. And so what you're seeing here is that lawn space and that one scheme. You see here old town hall, you see here the terrace which has an arcade under it and a set of stairs that lead up to this elevation. Here what we've done is looked at the neoclassical architecture of Old Town Hall and said, well, in this case, let's respond to that architecture. Let's create a neoclassical building here at the end, a neoclassical pavilion which sits here in the garden, and sort of try to unify it with the architecture and really create a wonderful space. In the second scheme, this is a scheme which looks at retail on the ground floor with office above. It emphasizes this connection, this cross-axis for pedestrians, that they move through from the public space, through the public plaza, through the garden, up to the terrace, then through this corridor here, which really is a kind of a place that would still be commercial in nature, but could be pretty festive. You know, you could imagine having the strung up lights that sort of hang over the walk as you walk through there. And in this case, you really have two buildings. This building here on the corner with the lobby, this building here with the lobby here as well, retail storefronts through here. In this scenario what we did is we said well what if what if the owners of the Codding building said well we wouldn't mind being a part of this deal, let's incorporate into the whole bigger picture. And what that also allows you to do is have a more regular building facade that faces this public space. In this scenario, there is a garage entry right here because what happens is you're dropping from about here to here 10 feet, which allows you to get into a basement level. So this entire area under this building is an underground garage. Yep. Okay. And in this case, the parking of the existing buildings here would be within the garage. What this does tell you is that with one level underground, it doesn't park the entire program. So you'd park some of the program under the building and some of it would have to park off site. This is the north street elevation showing that grade change where you drop from east street as you move down. You drop ten feet where you would have a garage entry that would come into the basement level. Here we're showing the lobby of the building, the restaurant here at this space, the terrace here that then overlooks the garden. And again, an architecture that rather than one sort of monolithic structure breaks it down and makes it look like smaller elements in multiple buildings. The third scheme that we looked at was one that moved the Codding building. It said literally what happens if you would have just picked it up and moved it over here and maybe just buy a little piece of the land here. What you're seeing here is actually the second floor. This is an essence of residential building that has retail on the ground floor. Here you would come in through a little opening into the courtyard, and the residential building would have its own lobby. A little more picturesque edge, a little more irregular, but still a terrace that looks out over the space. This is that elevation along East Street. This is the existing building on the corner. What is the name of that building? Draper. Draper. Draper is sitting here. That's what that building looks like. And what we have here then is a three-story building that in essence relates to the height of the new library that as it moves down this way steps down to two and a half stories to relate to the scale of this building here. Again, very importantly Fairfax has, it's very authentic, it was built over time. It has multiple facades. And so designing a building that would do that as well. And this is that same view. In essence, we're standing roughly about here. We're looking back this way towards the new library. So here you see the existing building on the left. Here you see the new library that So here you see the existing building on the left, here you see the new library that's under construction, and here you see the infill piece here. Again, the three-story piece that looks over and addresses that angle in the road as you arrive, a building here that looks like multiple buildings. Here's the opening, the archway that takes you into the courtyard, and here's a two 1 1 2 1 half story building that steps down and scale to relate to the building next to it. We would love to. We're not sure if we can yet. We would love to actually save this evergreen tree that sits there. It adds sort of a little quirkiness to the place. And it's a big existing element that would be there on day 1. But so I love this rendering because when you look at it it almost feels like oh it's always been there. It's been there for a long time. So designing the architecture in a way that relates to the history is very important. And that's the presentation. I'm sure there's going to be a lot of questions in Thomas and Bob and maybe what we're going to do is put more questions out first. I just have two questions just on the surface. To make sure we're all on the same page, at least to start out, you said that you'd conducted a charette. Fairly familiar with charette. It was just us. Okay. So you're all right. In-house charette. It was just us. Okay. So you're all very right. In House for that. And then you said you got a request for exhibits or booths for our jewelry show type environment. Where did that come from? That was one of the program, possible program elements from the folks in your parks. Okay. Okay. All right. Let's open it up and we'll get dialogue. I think Mr. Greenfield, you saw your hand go up first Did you want to sure think off? You made a comment on your slide referencing old the old Lee highway side and I'm trying to make sure you said it's it's roughly the same height as the library Is it are we on the same plane here? Is it taller? Is it a little shorter? I know that topography is such that it's, you know, it's difficult, but you know, we don't want to create this effect that everything is really tall and then you drop down into the bowl. Right. Yeah, if we look at this perspective, what we did is we created a 3D model, estimated the height of the library, which you see there on the right. And we are looking at a perspective, so I'll just skew it a little bit. The building that we're looking at, let's see if I can write here, this little piece that's sort of taller, is probably about the same height as the library. And so what happens is it creates a transition so that on both sides of the street, you have something that's sort of similar in size and scale, but yet that's broken up and steps down as you get further away from it. A couple of your options here, preserve the cutting building, and I guess it's option, let me see if I can find it here. option, let's see if I can find it here. The option 2 I guess incorporates it into the one building, the new building is that correct? And that's correct. Okay. And then the parking option 2 and option 3 has underground parking one level. That's correct. Is there an ability to good, I know it's expensive, but is there an ability to go down so that you don't require so many off-site spaces? Sure. Residential certainly requires fewer, but in all of these options there's a requirement for some to be offside. Yes. And I don't know that we have space in our downtown garage but I would have to look to staff. I don't think we do so you could do the necessary going under to accommodate that. You could. We just showed it as one level. Yeah, it would simply be twice the cost of one level. Yep. Okay. And then how? In looking at these, you know, they're all very interesting. And certainly I like your ability to along a totally way do a building that looks like it's always been there. I'm sure that some of the other new stuff in the downtown that it looks like it's always been there. But how can we work to make sure that it looks on the park side that we it looks as though it's always been there. You know, I don't want this strip of the existing Kitty Pose or Garden. And then you have a new plaza area and everything that, you know, just kind of looks like it's been dropped in. It really, I think, needs to tie in. So it looks like it all fits close, but I'm not sure you're there. Can you talk about that a little bit? Sure. We actually looked at it in two different close but I'm not sure you're there. Can you talk about that a little bit? Sure. We actually looked at it in two different ways. One of the perspectives we looked at it one way and this elevation we looked at it another way. In this particular one we looked at it and we said, well, why don't we take the existing architecture of Old Town Hall, neoclassical and keep that same language so in essence, it looks like it's unified, rather than three sort of different buildings, maybe a public place is the place where you would say it's a little more together and unified. And I think that that's a very valid way of approaching this, so that it doesn't look like it's too much of a mishmash. The other way we looked at it was in this perspective that has different architectural styles rather than being neoclassical it has sort of colonial references but they are definitely different buildings and I think that could work well also I'd have to say my personal preference is actually the neoclassical. I just think that it's such a wonderful building that exists there carrying that character around the space. I think would help to unify it. Okay. Do you want comments? Mary, just questions. Yeah, why don't we get all the questions. I don't know. Go ahead. Why don't you finish off in a moment? I guess I would be looking at these. I don't see how we could really move forward with scheme four because when we bought this property, we bought it with open space monies. And I don't think open space monies, parking lot counts as open space monies. So I would hope that as we do this, we bought it for a park. We make it a park. So I would hope that we would remove scheme four and we figure out the parking requirements that we need and how we park that. From my perspective, looking at these, I think scheme two or scheme three, I think the combination of retail and residential, I mean this could be a really a neat place to live having a huge park out your back window. I would like to see these two options to explore a little bit further. There's clearly a lot of thought that's gone in here. I also like the ability to have a little bit of surface parking here if we chose to move the cotton building forward in option three and be able to park that there on that corner much like it is today and not have to have this look as though it's all one big mass of a building that fits them this entire footprint. So that goes would be my comments for now Mr. Mayor. Thank you. Mr. Winner. Thank you Mr. Mayor. Of the four schemes, the scheme one is about 46,000 square feet if you combine where the others, the other three are all around 63, 626, 364. As far as being able to, you know, build out and make it a profitable or a successful endeavor, would you suggest going with 2, 3 or 4 just for the fact that there is such a difference in the square footage the possibilities? Yeah. I'm not a developer, but I play one on TV. Okay. We do work with a lot of developers. Certainly that's one of the things that struck me about this when we were looking at it was that we all we often try to not draw something unless we think it's real. Somebody would come in and actually build it. And in Scheme one, it's a little bit challenging for the reasons that you said you're looking to get a certain square footage to make it worth it to do it because it is actually a fairly complicated building when you do the mixed use and then you have the parking under the building. So, but one thing I would like to point out is that these aren't sort of mutually exclusive meaning to some extent you could have the garden scheme one but a building from scheme two or three or something similar to that as well. Yeah, this is just simply a little less efficient certainly because the cotton building is there is the reason that this one sort of scales back. Thank you. This is fine. I'm probably going to have quite a few questions here but when you're talking about Scheme 1, I don't understand why there would not be any underground parking on scheme one. I guess that's one of the things I question. There could be. OK. And when I'm just looking at all the schemes in general, I have trouble seeing any walking space. I mean, the sidewalks, there's really no sidewalks here. In terms of scheme one? Well, really as I look at all the schemes walking around the whole block I see trees kind of in a way of all the sidewalks. There is there is is sidewalk there the detail is not showing there but you can faintly see in each of these for instance in scheme one it shows a tree planting area and then so basically you have a Tree the tree is in a planter area adjacent to the curb and then then there is about an eight foot sidewalk behind that tree Planta area that you can walk walk around the block one It would be eight feet. I can't remember what our old towns the size of the sidewalks in old town And with what we've just redeveloped what with the size of the sidewalks in old town and we've just redeveloped what the size of those. Are there 14 to 20 feet? Right. Which is a little more pedestrian friendly so I'm wondering if there's a way we can make a little more time. Well the total width is in the range of 14, 16, 18 feet including the tree planters which are not continuous along there. Okay. You know I have just a general question when we're talking about the parking underneath where would the where would we come up could we come up from the underground parking into the park or how is that how is that how does that work where would I walk up the stairs to get out? The way it's shown right now, let me go to that slide. The way this is shown right now is this is a parking garage, and that's not the parking garage one. This one. This is a parking garage under the entire building. You have here a set of stairs here, a set of stairs here, stairs, stairs, and elevator. And in a sense that's where you would come up from the garage in one of those particular locations. It would be within the building. We had envisioned it as being a parking lot that was for the existing buildings and for this building as well, serving those buildings. Okay, but I guess I'm wondering when those office spaces and the retail is just for the retail over the weekend. How would I be able to park if I just wanted to go to the park? That was just one of my questions. But let's continue then. When we're talking about the underground parking and where the entrance you have the entrance, you know, that turn there, driving down and around that corner to try and then weasel my way into that underground parking. You know, I don't know how that would really happen. Now I'm really for the underground parking. And as I want to spend more money here, not really, two levels, actually, if we could do it. But I am concerned about how I'd even get into the underground parking and how it would be really a functioning thing to use. I guess I don't get that. The turn is pretty sharp. When you look at this elevation here, this is East Street right over here on this side. You would turn the corner and then you would drive down the hill. And then just about where the existing Kitty Poser Garden is. So right before that, that's where the building gets exposed 10 plus feet. So that's where the entry into the garage would be. Okay, it's still though, people whip or I don't care what we're already tight on that whole area. So that would really need to be engineered somehow. That would really have to be engineered or laying marked. I don't know how we would do that, but I would need to look at some experts to figure that out. My other comment is I guess I need to understand how much each of these would cost. There's no money attached to any of these and I'm a little surprised at that. And I know that the downtown, when I'm downtown, we do need a lot of parking. And I'm the first one to say that I love Kitty Posey Garden. And it was one of the first things that when I guess I came on council was that with the help of the rest of the people on council, we got a wonderful Christmas thing going on downtown. It wasn't just at Own Town Hall anymore. And it's been huge. And so I know it's a gathering place. But I also know that the business owners, and I was not at that meeting, also are very concerned about parking. And you know, you're coming about people wanting to park and be able to walk within a five minutes. I think that's very true. And it's a little shamed of that, but it's the truth. So I really want to be able to incorporate as much parking as we can. And I'd like as much below parking as we can get. However, I do believe there does need to be some surface parking. After many years of me fighting it tooth and nail, I do prefer a little parking on the top, just a hair now that because we would need to have it at Old Town, at Old Town. So number one has it on the top. I'm not as excited though because it doesn't bring that parking closer to the retail in the old town that we've just developed. And some of the older folks have a bite eatery and TT Reynolds and all of those. Those folks still aren't accommodated in this. So that's why I guess I'm looking for a way we can accommodate the underground parking more of it is what I guess I'm looking for here. I'm not excited about scheme 4. I'm concerned about when I look at this picture here how tall this corner building is compared to the library. Now I know I heard that earlier it was skewed but my concern about it is that the library, it looks like it's a lot taller and it's towering over the library. It may be the topography that this part of the corner is taller. I just really don't think I wanted to tower over one of our beautiful public facilities. So I have a concern about the size and scale of those buildings. So Mr. Mayor, I don't know if that helps, but I'm excited about seeing these coming up, but there's no prices attached. I really, it's hard to make a decision on any of these things when some of these details are left out. Well, and let me just suggest, I mean, sitting here and listening to the dialogue and the magnitude of the decisions and all the information we have, this probably should have been a standalone meeting in itself. So I would or just not to look at tonight as sort of a must have some sort of consensus, a conclusion that comes out of it, but we build toward that over the next couple of weeks or whatever the time frames gonna be as we go through that. Let me see if there's other comments and I'm gonna jump in, Mr. Rasmussen. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. First of all, a question. How many square feet approximately in the park space. It's a good question. It takes the existing poser garden plus the existing parking lot. So we have 37. So you've got it. It is a good area. I have close to an acre. OK. I've got a comment about that. In all of the options for the park area, it really seems to have chopped up that acre into a lot of different pieces that at just first blush, it seems to be really cut up. And I don't know if it loses some of the impact, I think, at least I would like to see as a public space in the downtown. That's just a comment. The other comment or question is follows along the other questions about the underground parking. I think this is a great possibility because of the topography of the site. But entering, as Mrs. Lyon pointed out, the underground facility from the Oli Highway North Street corner area strikes me as really problematic. And I don't know how else you do it, but I think that needs to go back to the drawing board. One of the things that happens here is that in order to enter that basement garage, you really do have to be like 10 feet down. The other option is to, of course, build a ramp that goes down 10 feet somewhere else. But that all, but unfortunately, that takes a long distance to accommodate that dropping down 10 feet. That's right. Thank you. Mrs. Cross, did you want to jump in and then I'll go back to? Thank you. First off, if I can ask a question about this view, this view. This view. What you call it. But anyway, I see a sea along here. I'm sorry, which view was it? The one that has Old Town Hall in the park. Parkside elevation. That one. Yeah. Parkside elevation. I see here the say under the outside dining and then on the other side as well. There are curved areas in the foundation there which I just assumed were walkways to the parking garage. Is that correct? Because of the way the grade change works, you really have this a lot of topography where it drops. So what we said was, well, let's take advantage of that and rather than making it a blank wall that's actually make it an arcade, meaning that the wall to the garage is not actually where you see the arches. It's actually back like you know eight, ten feet from there, meaning that you can you can walk through the arcade along the face of the park. So in other words you would be sitting you can have benches there as well. You'd be sitting in the shade under the arcade looking out over the park. And then if you're at the top of the terrace, you're then also looking out over the park from up above. But you could also have an access way there. True. It's just really a matter of how the garage is set up and security for the garage and that and all that and so forth. Okay. Yes, I thought that that was just what you decided to do. I frankly am just sort of blown away here with what you've given us. It's, they're all beautiful in their own way. And it's sort of the realization of a vision that many of us have had about the park downtown and now that we have choices, it's very hard to select one that would fulfill all of our wish list. Let me just start by assuring that whatever we do, it's possible to run irrigation, it's possible to run electrical lines, all of that through the subsurface so that we're able to maintain the area and also to plug in PA systems and all of that. And which of these is most accommodating of weddings, as you may know, the Oten Hall is a site for many or and receptions. And we have had weddings in the park even as it is today. But we also want to expand from weddings to small concerts to any number of activities down there. Which of these would be the most accommodating of that sort of thing? I think scheme one would accommodate larger groups, certainly in scheme two, the thinking in terms of the garden adjacent to Old Town Hall was a somewhat more intimate space, but it could be for smaller groups and weddings and for certainly functions associated with those. It really gets to us with what kind of and size group do you want to accommodate? Okay. One of the things that Parks, Parks Recreation had on their wish list was a kiosk which would provide community information and brochures that sort of thing. Is that provided in all of these that we're just not seeing? There's a lot of detail and a lot of the requests that they made and those can be accommodated in all of these. I know, for instance, in this scheme too, we have the rotary clock. There are places where a kiosk could be incorporated. And those things are really get down to a level of what we would call site furniture and would have to be developed in detail as you look more closely at the design. Probably restrooms are those provided? No, they are not provided. There is a reference here to memorial parks. I really see a great interest in this park in the community in terms of buying a bench or buying a tree or pavers that are done in memory of someone or just as a contributor to the park as well as public art all of that Which of these do you see or or can they all be adapted for those uses? They can all be adapted for those uses? They can all be adapted for those. And again, it gets to the level of, you could go down to the level of a paper that is stamped as a memorial. Certainly plaques for benches. I think in the scheme that mentions the memorials those that was specifically intended to be somewhat a bit more of a thing like a plaque for 9-11 or a plaque for some other more major event that was somewhat more community sponsored than an individual memorial. But that's possible. That is possible in all the schemes. Do you have any numbers to share with us in terms of costs? No, that's quite an undertaking for these. And sort of like to get at that after a round or two so that we know we're giving you a good number for things that we want, that we all want to see in the designs. The one thing I would say, which people are often surprised by and are interested in knowing is that for an underground garage you're probably looking at about 35,000 to 40,000 dollars per space. Okay. Actually it's probably more like 35 to 40. We're not particularly to say that. I'm sorry to say that. I'm sorry to say that. I'm sorry to say that. I'm sorry to say that. I'm sorry to say that. I'm sorry to say that. I'm sorry to say that. I'm sorry to say that. I'm sorry to say that. I'm sorry to say that. I'm sorry to say that. I'm sorry to say that. I would suggest to counsel that we pursue this aggressively in the next couple of weeks. Another mayor wants to, can't be say about all this too. But in order to do the engineering and have this project go by spring, which would seem to need to be the ideal time to implement at least the garden part of this, that we have to have the planning done way ahead through the winter months. So I would ask that we schedule a, another meeting that devotes itself to this discussion in blue forward. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Cross. Let me just jump in here if I can now. Just a couple of comments, and I don't really even know where to begin because everybody has said this gender is a whole bunch of thoughts and ideas and comments and questions and one of the things I'm really having trouble wrapping my head around is every scheme has a different two components and I look at this in two components. One is the open space. The second is the commercial component. But every scheme has a different commercial component. So there's it's tough to pull the best which I assume. I assume is this process on Fulzby would try to do that. The first big picture comment I would have is, yeah, it's very interesting to me on the recommendations you have. And I think I understand why I just don't know that I agree with it in that. I don't want to see the commercial component drive this outcome. I think the open space needs to drive it, the parking needs to drive it, and the commercial component of it needs to complement. And at least that's how I would certainly recommend that we look at it. Everywhere else in downtown, really the underlining part of the vision that we created was a two and a half story vision. And two and a half stories was on Chamber of Drow, two and a half stories was on Main Street. And the only reason we went to the three and a half is because it teared so far down the hill as it went from Chamber of Drove in Main Street down to University. This flips that. This is the total opposite of that. This says the high point is going to be three and a half stories, which is the highest we've got anywhere downtown in this vision, which is going to be the corner of North Street and East Street, or only highway, whatever terminology we're using it. And then it's going to tear down in some way as you go down the hill. I would strongly disagree with that. Just as we used the Ford House and the More House as sort of our anchor point of reading a vision on Chamber of Droid, I would assume we'd be using Old Town Hall in the Draper House as our vision on this particular block. Two and a half stories. And so I would hope a very easy thing early on would be our vision very similar to what we did in the rest of the downtown would be that two and all town hall, not three and a half stories, which would be the highest point of what we've created, not the lowest point on the most important, I think, part of sort of the icing on the cake. And I view that this block as that, and I think it's going to be critical to kind of fulfilling the vision that we created when we started this. So to me, the most important thing would be the 1 1 2 half story vision with the open space, park land, driving and parking, the issues and not the buildings. I would hope very early on we can just deal with and I see Fred Cotting here in the audience. We just need to deal with it. We've talked for five, six years now. And every time there's an option of a privately owned building that sort of drives this discussion. And we just need to resolve that. We need to figure that out very early on. And we need to build that vision around it. I personally think if we overbuild this corner, it is going to have a ripple effect throughout the entire downtown. So to me, less is better than more. If you build more because we're trying to make this the corner pin of the economic engine, it is going to push pressure on the entire parking situation in the downtown area. I like I think what I and I'm really messed up on which how to describe which sheet we have some you had differently than we have but this scheme won if I can forget the lawn portion of it but the commercial portion of it to me seems like it feels much more natural to the downtown area. If you could go, well, yeah, you can use that one, I guess. If you go back one more, I think, is the one with the roof lines and not the parking. Go back right there. I personally would stop it and not include the tee that then goes parallel to the park. I think capping off the corner in East Street, North Street makes all the sense in the world in having it transist in the back half for the tearing down and the terrorists, but then capping another fairly substantial building that then tees into the park to me as it's just a bit too much. And I think it's over building that particular lot. Those are the big issues. I mean, you know, there'll be some that will have more interest in the park component of it than the commercial component of it. And that's the way it should be. It sure seems it feels like scheme one makes more sense in terms of trying to maximize the community used in some of the other schemes in terms of the park only portion of it. But I'll say two other things. I mean, sure, we can talk about this vision and trying to get ready for the spring. But if we don't solve the parking, which is much bigger than just this block, that, to me, drives the timetable of everything else. So we find a solution to it. Great. I think the sooner the better. But I think consistent with the existing policy is we've got a lot of temporary parking that we're talking about coming offline, depending on which one of these PICUV either have eliminated all the parking, or have only built modest parking that doesn't even fulfill the density of the new buildings that will be added to this, all of which are negative, not a net positive. And so we've got to, we've got to connect those two dots. We can't do one without the other. Well, we're doing a huge disservice to the entire downtown quarter. And I think unraveling all the wonderful momentum that we've built. The one issue that's not here quite frankly, and I'll just remind my colleagues, it's a lot easier to buy land than it is to sell land. And so if we're going to create a vision to sell property, you need a supermajority. You don't need a simple majority. And so that's going to change the dynamics, and I hope in a positive way, tremendously as we try to find this right balance And so that's going to change the dynamics. And I hope in a positive way, tremendously, as we try to find this right balance and complementing it. But the one thing we haven't talked about is parking on the commercial side of it is opposed to the other side. You had one vision that I saw on parking, which was keep it in the wait watchers, and then leave Kitty, pose your guard, and basically the same size it is, but build the commercial component of it. And none of which is either put parking where the commercial component is now outlined in these options, the complement the park or move the park east and keep parking in some capacity on the corner. And, quite frankly, I don't personally care on which one of those options is long as there's adequate parking. I'll say it again, the biggest of service we can do to Old Town Hall. And the surest way to return us back to the early 80s where that property was in decline and wasn't being funded and wasn't being used is simply to provide no parking that's convenient and adequate where people start taking weddings and events and functions to other alternatives in the Northern Virginia region. So I would hope we could have our cake and eat it too. I personally believe that we can. I think the two-and-aft story vision should be the cornerstone. I think less is maybe better than more. I think we have to solve the parking, whether it's on-site or off-site or whether it substitutes some of the commercial or replaces it totally or moves the park around or whatever the solutions are or across the street at the second yard, which certainly has some merits, I think, as we discuss that. And then we're going to have to have costs because this is all great. We can all, ooh and oh, the nicest pictures in the world, but until the cost meets reality, I got to believe if you're talking about $40,000 now, where we, not too many years ago, and we started this, I think the number was 15, but if it is 40 now, we're talking big dollars. And whatever solution that we have for this, this vision. So I'm all for moving this forward as fast as we possibly can, but connecting the parking and then deciding on the right vision for size and scale as it goes forward. So those would be at least the comments that I would train. Mr. Mayor. Mr. Governor. I have agreed with, you know, size and scale for the, you know, to this point. What has been presented here, I think has been presented with what is marketable and sellable. And I think if we cut down too much on the size of the buildings that have been proposed, nobody will buy it because it will be too expensive. So we do have to look at the big picture of what we actually want to happen in this block. Parking yes is very important for downtown and Again, we have to look at that it was condemned for a park not for parking So we are at at acrossroads The pictures that have been presented that one on the end, is it's a terracing effect. And I think if you look, you're coming around the corner here, this is to size and scale with the library. As you go around the corner, you're terraced down. So the terracing leads you into the new sections that are being built at this time. Looking up the hill, again, it's a terrorist effect if we had buildings all along, if the entire block was going to be built out, no, it would be too much up at that upper end. But if you can appreciate the terracing, I think we'll be able to find people that will actually be willing to build it. We cut it down too much, but it's going to be too expensive to build, in my opinion. And you've done a wonderful job. All of everything that you brought was very well thought out and respectful of the park and and and it is short on parking but that's just the nature of the beast at this point of life. Thank you. Thank you. Certainly I'm not not surprised to hear your remarks about parking, but just as the issue in your opinion would do a huge to service to the downtown to not provide what you might consider adequate parking, I think we do a disservice to the whole community to not build this park in a timely manner and in a way that can be embraced by the whole community from the time that we began the downtown redevelopment. It was understood by the community that the taking of the Weight Watcher building was going to lead to the development of a public green, a public space, a park, and that was meant with great enthusiasm. I think it's tying our hands to a parking solution is really not a very good idea. I don't think I think we need to move forward. I think we need to finish our downtown. I think if we hold out and hold out for parking solutions, we may never build it. I think there are lots of options downtown for parking garages, underground, surface, you name it. We can make accommodations in other locations, but does not build this is like not putting the cherry on the top of the Sunday. It's just, it's not going to be finished until this is done. Thank you. I want to ask one question of the two of you. It seems to me we could potentially do a phase one on a phase two, a phase one being you do with a park. A phase two is you figure out what kind of a building you want to build on the, only highway north side because looking at all your renderings, your foot foot doesn't go any further in any of your options. The only thing in some ways it changes is whether the Cotting Building is on Main Street, the Cotting Building goes away, or the Cotting Building stays where it is. So is that a fair statement? So we could try this, we move forward for our next meeting, we try to figure out which version or that's what we focus on, which version of a park that we want to do on this corner. And that would easily fold into whatever you would want to do with a building, whether it's residential and retail or retail and office or whatever other options we've gotten. Or is that work? Yeah, I think that that's mostly true. The one thing you certainly want to do though is coordinate the two to make sure that they meet up, match up both just technically in terms of grades, whether or not there's parking underneath and just aesthetically as well, but yes, in general, they're sort of almost separate. Okay, Thank you. Okay. Nice job. The work session here in the near future and try to keep moving the process forward. I actually, because the lateness in discussing with Mr. System, we were going to eliminate items number C and D for tonight's agenda, which now brings us back to reconvening our regular meeting. It's my understanding we have one very short closed session topic, which now takes us to agenda item number 14. I move the City Council convene a close meeting of Section 2.23711A1 to discuss appointments, the boards and commissions. Section 2.23711A3 of the Code of Virginia to discuss acquisition and deposition. Certain role property for public purposes under Section 2.2. 3711A7 for consultation with legal counsel for legal vice. All Councillors and pay for the motion. Signify the voting aye. Aye. Opposed and favor the motion. Signify the voting aye. Aye. Opposed and a past unanimous. So we can, we just quickly go next. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah I'm going to play the piano. I'm going to play. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home. I'm I'm going to be be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to play the piano. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to go back to the school. I'm going to go back to the school. I'm going to go back to the school. I'm going to go back to the school. I'm going to go back to the school. I'm going to go back to the school. I'm going to go back to the school. I'm going to go back to the school. I'm going to go back to the school. I I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a good guy. I'm not going to be a good guy. I'm not going to be a good guy. I'm not going to be a good guy. I'm not going to be a good guy. I'm not going to be a good guy. I'm not going to be a good guy. I'm not going to be a good guy. I'm not going to be a good guy. I'm not going to be a good guy. I'm not going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. you and I'm going to go to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm I'm going to do it. Mr. Mayor, move the appointment of John Herald for a two-year term extending through December 31, 2009 to the Fairfax County Domestic and juvenile relations court citizens advisory council. Second. Moved by Mr. Restamussen, seconded by Mr. Silverthorn, any discussion? All in favor of the motion, signify by voting aye. Aye. Opposed to passing an item, so the appointment to Planning Commission, Mr. Lyon. Mr. Mayor, I appoint Paul Cunningham to the Planning Commission to fill a four-year term extending through December 31, 2011. Second. Moved by Ms. Lionel II. And by Ms. Silverthorn in any discussion. All in favor of the motion, signify by voting aye. Aye. Opposed? Passing out, I'm saying commission the arts, Ms. Cross. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I wish to nominate Sarah C. Hogan, Molly Grimsley, Harry Wilbur, and Roy Burgess to three-year terms extending through December 31, 2010, on the Commission on the Arts. Second. Moved by Miss Cross, seconded by Mr. Rasmussen. All in favor of the motion, signify by voting aye. Aye. Opposed? Passing out, see Fairfax Area Disability Services Board, Mr. Lyme. Mr. Mayor, I nominate L. Wood, H. Witt, Jr. to the Fairfax Area Disability Service Board for one vacancy, for a three year term extending through November 24th, 2010. Second. Moved by Mr. Lyme, seconded by Mr. Restmus, on all favor of the motion. Signify by voting aye. Aye. Lionel, seconded by Mr. Restmuss, and all fair with the motion. I seek if I have a voting aye. Aye. Opposed? Pass unanimously. The bill now brings us to comments by the City Council. Mrs. Wehrer. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I want to write an error that I made two meetings ago. It's this Saturday, October 27th, that the Fairfax County Health Department is having emergency preparedness at the Patriot Center from 9 to 1. And as I stated, it's bringing people together to learn how to be, what to do in case of a major emergency in our area. A tag along to a comment that Mr. Silverthorn made at two meetings ago was that in a major emergency, Fairfax High School and all of our city schools would be centers for the dissemination of medicines. This thing that is gonna be happening, I know for sure this Saturday at the university is to teach people how to react and what to do in the case of a major emergency. It's being directed by the Fairfax County Health Department, but it is for all jurisdictions in the area. Second thing I have is this past week, there was a terrible accident to one of our officers on the police force officer Tucker. And I'd like to put out our prayer for Officer Tucker and his family and for his complete recovery. What I would also like to note is that the city staff has been reaching out and voluntarily giving up their sick time to put into a bank of sorts that if he needs extra time away from work that it will be taken care of. And I thought that was the very, very outstanding of our staff to put those to meet his needs. And then two weeks from tonight's today is Election Day and I encourage everyone to get out and vote. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I have one comment and it's due to some calls I've gotten over the phone about the city possibly buying property on only highway. And I don't quite know the address, but this little White House on only highway. And to build condominiums or something. And I would like to dispel that quickly. That was news to me. And I would like to put it out that if there is, if the community civic associations have meetings, I would, especially Oli Hills, I would hope that we would get asked to come to me like that so we can dispel any rumors from now on. So I'd like to put that to rest of the city's not planned by any property and only highway to build condominiums or flip it to build condominiums. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. way to build condominiums or flip it to build condominiums. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Mr. Chair, everything. Mr. Mayor, thank you. And I'm just when I apologize I was not listening intently, which I normally do to every word you mutter. I just wanted to- I am so disappointed. But let me just reclareify in case I misspoke or maybe you misspoke, I'm not sure which. I just want to make sure that when we talk about the issues of any sort of catastrophe, which gosh knows we all hope doesn't occur that the urging that I have been making for some time in this community is that we use our schools as a place like much like they're using the center currently in San Diego and for evacuation and for you know, disbursement of it could be medicine, it could be food, it could be you know, facilities to shower, whatever it may be. My concern has always been that when we first were briefed by our chiefs, some time ago there was talk about in high school being the place of gathering and I thought, wait a minute, we have great facilities in our own community that we ought to be using. And I still feel like we still need to follow a report from our staff on that and I know it's coming. Secondly, and it raises sort of the same issue, but and I guess overall these sort of preparedness plans and what we do, I know that even some retail chains and some local governments have been doing I think a pretty good job of getting messaging after their communities about how we plan as individuals and as families for these types of emergency should they come up just sort of a checklist kind of thing. And I think that ought to be something we include either on magnets or in city scenes, et cetera, that, you know, and I even heard recently, I think it was Bethesda or Rockville, did sort of an emergency, it was on NPR, did an emergency sort of session, they pretended a dirty bomb or something went off in their community and fire and rescue responded and what they had to do and evacuations and everything else. Not to send anybody into any unnecessary panic, but again, just thinking that these things can occur. And we ought to be as prepared and do all the steps we can possibly take. So go on Saturday. Go on Saturday and learn how to do it. Now I'm listening to every word you say. I am so pleased. Thank you. And then finally, the one other thing I just want to mention is, and we haven't mentioned it tonight, interestingly, as we have our fire department here, is the incredible fires that are out in California right now. And I just heard on the news before I left this evening that over 20% of San Diego County has been evacuated almost a million people now. Remarkable, I asked the chief after our last discussion what we could do to help. He said that interestingly, I guess that wildfire training is unique versus urban firefighter training. However, they can backfill in urban centers while others are out fighting the fires. They can do command and control, et cetera. And those requests are coming in. Some jurisdictions have already responded. And I don't know if we need to take any official action, but I would hope that the council's consensus tonight, Mr. Mayor, would be that should a request come in that we would be willing to donate staff time and hours to such a request. It's just happening. I mean, even if things get contained in the next few days, there's going to be exhaustion. There's going to be people that are going to be unable to work for some time just because of the kind of level of requirement and commitment that's been made. And frankly, you know, we always talk about what a great country we are in terms of helping out other countries when catastrophe. This is an example of when our own country needs it and I would hope that we would be responsive in that regard. And with that, I yield. Nothing to see me. that in that regard. And with that I yield. Nothing to see me. It's a green film. Thank you, Miss Mary. I just want to mutter one. We all listen. I think I meant to say utter. I meant to say utter, not mutter. No, no, mutter is so much more fun. I'm tired. This evening in our dius, we have this shop and dying guide and I hope this is something we're going to be getting out to the city fairly extensively because it's a neat little guide here in terms of number restaurants, bars, so on and so forth and it ties in the Q bus schedule so that if somebody wants to take public transportation, they can do that. Two restaurants that aren't in here just because of when they opened it, when this went to print. One is Dezzi's, it's a Peruvian chicken place at the corner of Oak and Perfects Boulevard, I think it's on the opposite corner from the McDonald's, just down the street from Paul VI. Good food, very affordable, encouraged people to check that out. And then the other is in the downtown here, and that is Hard Times Cafe. Great place for chili that opened a few weeks ago. It's in the old Lupo's shophouse. The Lupos, whatever the latest name was, right across the street from the courthouse. So I just want to let people know that those places are open for business, and hopefully they will support them. That's it. Thank you. Miss Cross. Thanks, Mr. Silverhorn, for his concern about the residents of San Diego County. I have two granddaughters in my son and daughter-in-law out there with bags packed and ready to be evacuated. Unfortunately, my daughter-in-law has to deal with that all by herself because my son is an FBI agent and he's downtown trying to help in that regard. So it really is a worry in anything that we can do. I'm sure it would be very much appreciated. Ron and I are supposed to fly there on Friday. I don't know whether we'll be able to do that or not, but I do feel for those people. It's just a terrifying thing. I wanted to add to Mrs. Winder's comments that in addition to volunteering their vacation hours our staff many of them have donated blood for our police officer who has been in the hospital and I think that just has an awful lot about the people that work the city and the generosity. I would like to have staff look into the public right of way for possible acquisition. And I don't know the address, but it's the only stretch along University Drive on the west side that does not have public sidewalk from here to the downtown. I don't know whether we have been over that ground before, but I would, you know, it's a dangerous situation when people are using this little path. It's on very quite an oblique angle there and Catholic is close by and it's just asking for an SDS. So if we can look into that, I'd appreciate it. Thank you very much. In the Hanna motion for a German moved. Move my Ms. Silverthorn second by of the discussion, all in favor say aye. Opposed, passion, annals, meeting adjourned. I'm going to go to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. Thank you.