Music Yeah, I saved it. I say the call. I say the call. Is there a television feed on that? It is. Okay, we'll go ahead and call the March 25th work session order. Let me welcome everybody to the night's meeting. This is really a single topic discussion with between the city and George Mason University. I'd like to ask Tom Calhoun if you'd please come to the podium where we're going to be talking first and foremost about the faculty staff housing project. That's adjacent to Aspen Grove subdivision and then you'll segue into it's my understanding to a discussion on the conference center on campus. So please, thank you for coming tonight. Well, thanks for the opportunity. I've given this both these presentations a couple of times in community presentations, community forums, and I appreciate the opportunity to do the same thing. And as next slide says, as the mayor said, we're gonna talk about two things, faculty, staff, housing, project, offer, Roberts Road and the conference center in hotel. Speaking first about the housing project, there's a list of the things that we'll cover. Really, why we're gonna do it, describe the project, look at the architecture, and look at what we've been doing in terms of community outreach, and then finally going into the schedule. Excellent. Why faculty staff housing? Well, it really boils down to one thing, and that's the ability to recruit and retain high-quality faculty and staff members for the university. While we're in the hiring mode, we are able to compete on salary in many cases, but we're often stymied by the high cost of entry into the housing market. So almost in an academic setting, what we're talking about is workforce housing for the university at the highest levels, the ability to recruit first class faculty and senior staff and those. So that's what we're talking about. We have done some market surveys to show what the demand is, and it's a big number. What we're looking at doing is providing rental housing as a transitional housing opportunity as part of the recruiting tool, where you'll go out and it's part of the hiring offer. You say, I've got a house that you can live in for up to three years on a rental basis as you become a custom to the university, you go through the tenure process, find out where you want to for up to three years on a rental basis as you become accustomed to the university you go through the tenure process, find out where you wanna live, where you wanna put your kids in school, those kinds of things. And so it's a slightly below market model that we're attempting to use while at the same time providing a place for those junior faculty members and those staff to land as they become part of the university and the community. Next slide. This particular project off Roberts Road is about 155 units of housing, and I'll describe it both in sight and in architecture in a few minutes. But there you can see the types of units that they are. It's a mixture of one, two, and three bedroom townhomes spread across the site. It's in what we call the northeast sector of the campus, bordered by Green Acres, Roberts Road, and the Aspen Grove neighborhood. They'll be access to the site from two places from within the University off of our Patriot Circle and also off for Roberts Road and I'll show you that in a moment. The project is unique for us in that the university has entered into a ground lease with a single purpose entity, nonprofit organization, Mason Housing Incorporated, and we have ground lease the land to them. They have secured financing to build the development for the housing, the site work and all those kinds of things. And there you can see the team, Mason Housing Inc. has the ground lease with the university, and then Mason Housing Inc. holds all the subcontracts, whether with the project management firm, whether it's with the architects, so on and so forth. Tonight we'll have Murphy Antoine from the architecture firm of 40 Gallows speak a little bit on the architecture quickly, but you can see that's how we're going to go about doing that Clark Realty at this point is anticipated to be the construction agent as we move forward. To try to put the site in perspective, there's an area of the campus. About a pointer here, it's tough to show, but you can see Braddock road along the south and Route 123, Oxford on the left. Up in the far upper corner, right hand corner is the site that we're talking about, labeled the Northeast sector. You can see green acres that the school that jumps in there, the water tower up, just kind of put it in perspective. That's the area that we're talking about. So if you go up Roberts Road from Channandoah where the where the Catholic Chapel is, most of that green area off to your left going north is the area that we're talking about. Next slide. Again, a fairly small site plan here. We've gone through several iterations of this site plan, presented at numerous times in community groups. It has evolved over time time responding to comments from whichever group we have spoken to. This is the original plan and let me point out a couple of things about the site in this this original plan. It's about a 27 acre site but it is constrained quite a bit by what is in this area, the gray areas in the middle. And those are resource protection areas, underfoot setbacks from the stream beds, which go through that you can see. So you can see the buildable area in the site is constrained to the areas outside of those RPA. So they're on the left side and then again in the middle up along the top. At the time we started this process we were looking to have access to the site from the south, really extending across from where Glenmere is. You can also see where the site boarded up close to both Aspen Grove and Green Acres. So in response to some of that we move forward next plan, we came back with, and if you were to compare the two plans what you saw a minute go to this when you see that is this plan has backed off considerably from the green acres neighborhood up on the upper left hand corner of that site you can see no no housing in that general area the earlier plan had a connection not a not a permanent connection but the air ability for fire access up between green acres and this development, that is backed off of that. We also had had difficulty looking at the entrance down at the south where Glenmere crosses there is where those two stream beds come together from an environmental standpoint. We were unable to really look at an intersection there. So we move the intersection farther north along Roberts Road and you can see it there. Response though from these comments pointed out that some difficulties along the Aspen Grove neighborhood. If you could see this really closely, the general idea of this development is that these housing units are fed from the back. There's service from the backs of the units. Grigas are back there, service entrance, so there's an alley behind the units. And back behind Aspen Grove, that just was too close to the Aspen Grove neighborhood. So we came to the third plan, which is really where we are today, and essentially keeps the same plan. And that is development along the green acres, I mean, along the green acres, school side, and along Aspen Grove. But what we have done is along Aspen Grove, we have removed the garages along the backs of the units. So those, whatever it is, six or seven units, they're back there, do not have garages back there. So there is no alleyway that borders between university development, this housing development, and the Aspen Grove neighborhood. I'd like to point out this is really a walking neighborhood. We've taken advantage of the resource protection area, instead of looking at as a challenge, we've opened the fronts of these units onto the resource area, so that it would take advantage of the natural beauty of it, and had the neighborhood to kind of feed into the center. You see, we've kept the entrance halfway between Glenmeer and Aspen Willow, and we've kept a new entrance to the university at the southwest corner of the site. Next slide. I'm going to take a couple of cuts through, I need to give you a sense for how far we are from the neighborhoods. This particular one is from the Aspen Grove side. And what you can see there is the Aspen Grove town homes on the extreme right side so that ones that are higher up and then the first set of units in the center it would be the first unit that I talked about a minute ago those without the garages and then you go on the other side of that and you see there'll be a street in the middle and then more housing. So you can see the distance back from the property line. The property line is the first line to the left. You have the line at the unit for Aspen Grove. That's the face of that building. Then the next line to the left is the property line. And then you can see the setbacks from there. So we've increased the distance back from the property line and we'll be adding some trees in there to keep this separation there. You also see the site sits down below the Aspen Grove elevation. The site tends to fall off to the south so we've been able to try to soften that buffer if you will. Next line. If you look at it though from Green Acres the distance is even farther. So again working from Green Acres on your right over toward the first units within the university or on the left, significant distance just to begin with between green acres and the property line and then again from the property line to the first university units. And there's mature growth of trees in them. That's part of the resource protection area. So really the distance from the first units to Green Acres units is extensive with significant tree growth in between. I think it'd be very difficult most of the time to even see between the two. Next slide. When I show here is as part of the development, we're looking to do a couple of things with both pedestrian access and vehicular access. And I recognize the tar to show on here, but what we're proposing to do is to have a sidewalk in trail that comes along Roberts Road and really makes the connection between the sidewalk that stops up just south of Aspen Grove and eventually we'll tie all the way back down to Shannon Doa where the university is and ultimately through a county project we'll connect from Braddock Road all the way up into the city so we'll put in as far as this project a trail that goes alongside Robert Trude on this on the University side of the property and connects through and ultimately connects all the way down again through a county project. Also there's sidewalks and you know it's a walking neighborhood take advantage of the resource protection area so we see this as again as a natural amenity to this section of the region both and the cities as it connects. Just to kind of point out, you know, the rest of the universities and really in the southwest side of that dry diagram that you see, the physical plant and the maintenance areas down in the bottom left, which is the area really in that white section of the map. I guess next slide. We've started doing traffic studies and are looking at the impacts of those. Initial take on that is that really development is modest in terms of impact on the existing roads. The on 155 units, we looked at traffic counts. And the impact that there is is really to the south, from the new entrance south toward Braddock Road. And there's discussions with VDOB that doesn't appear to be any need for a signal at the entrance to the development. But there is a need for turn lanes, both coming from the north, I'm sorry, coming from the south, and then a deseleration lane coming from the north. But as you move your way south to Shannon Doa, which is an existing intersection, it's an intersection that's already at a level of service that needs work. So the initial discussions with FIDOT have suggested the need for intersection improvements at Channon-Dowa and Roberts. So you see the addition of turn lanes at Channon-Dowa in both directions plus a traffic signal. I think the actual traffic, worn analysis may suggest you don't need it. We're approaching it along the lines of thinking that we do need to put something in there to break up the traffic. Again, not completely driven, if not even solely driven by the development, but because of existing development within the university. So you can see the addition of turn lanes at both Shannon Doa and then turn a turn lane from south at the new entrance. Next slide. At this point I'd like to ask Murphy Antoine from Thorntagallis to kind of walk you through the architecture as we see it today. Again, we'll do it relatively quickly and stop at any point and ask a question if you have them. Thank you, Tom. Good evening, Mr. Mayor, members of council. Again, my name is Murphy Antoine and I'm a principal with Tority Gales and partners. We're providing the architectural and master planning services for this project and we're really excited about it. We do a lot of workforce housing all over the country and are excited about bringing this. This is a new kind of project in terms of faculty and staff housing or faculty housing for George Mason. Tom's done a great job of explaining a lot of the physical description of the project and I'll do just a little bit more on that end from the site plan and the architecture if we could have the next slide. So again, we've seen this site plan which is the latest iteration of several iterations in response to concerns about access and entry points. It is 155 faculty housing modules. We tried to arrange this in a real townhouse kind of neighborhood, even though it ranges from one bedroom to three bedrooms. You don't see a lot of one bedroom townhouses, but we've configured the architecture in a way that is compatible with the townhouse neighborhood when Tom speaks to it being fed from the rear. We're talking about rear-loaded townhouses. So the parking, the garages are all fed from lanes in the back, either to an integral garage, or to a parking pad, or a detached garage in the back. And we have five different unit types in this arrangement. So then in the upper right of this slide, you can see a diagram that talks about the distribution of those. And it's really roughly about 20% of each of the types, about 20% one bedrooms, about 20% two bedrooms that are configured in a stacking arrangement, about 20% to bedroom townhouses that have integral barrages fed from the back, and then two different kinds of three bedroom townhouses. And so we get some variety of types and that will play through that you'll see a little bit in the architecture. And we've tried to distribute them across the site in this arrangement. You can see the RPA areas, these unbuildable stream valleys. We've tried to connect the two pieces of the site that are a little bit disconnected by the RPA to the west and really make a village of these 155 townhomes for faculty for George Mason University. If you could have the next slide. And I'll go pretty quickly through the architecture, but again, to touch on the variety of the types. This is the one bedroom, which you can see the plan. You can see the elevations to the right. Hopefully this looks like a townhouse. It's actually two stacked one bedroom apartments, one on top of each other. But again, we're trying to give this a character of a townhouse neighborhood and so they're configured this way. If you look a little closer at those elevations, you can see two doors, one on the left that would go to a stairway to the upper unit and one that enters at grade to the one bedroom. And again, those would park in pads behind. To the next slide. This is our two bedroom townhouse, and we call this a triplex. This is configured with the ground floor, is one of the two bedroom units. This could also be a handicapped accessible unit on the ground floor, because it's always on the flat. And then two side by side, two story, two bedroom townhouses above. So there are three units in this. What appears to be a large townhouse, one on the ground floor, and two on the two stories above, again, that sit side by side. Those two doors in the middle go up to stairs that get you to those units above. And then there's a door on the side that gets you to the ground floor unit. And here we have an example of the two bedroom interval garage. Again, this would have a garage that's part of the unit fed from a lane in the back and is a pretty straightforward two-story two-bedroom town house living level below, two bedrooms one front, one back on the second level. And then again, some examples of different elevations of these unit types. So again, we have five different unit types within the 155 units. We also have a variety of elevations within each of those unit types. So trying to use a production module, but give it enough variety that you don't have a cookie cutter approach to street escapes and block making and the composition of the whole plan. And here you can start to get a feel for that in how these units come together and in their different elevations to make different strings and make different streetscapes. And we can mix and match that again to try and get variety throughout all the streetscapes. You won't see any garages from the front because that's all in the back, either in a detached garage again or integral to the unit or on a pad in the back. So you have front yards, small front yards, but still front yards and continuous streetscapes of sidewalks and streetscapes or street trees, excuse me. And a variety of the different unit types, different elevation types composed to make strings. And here are a couple of examples of those. You have the next one. You can also see trying to use the larger units on the corner to anchor the corner in the different sections of the village. And if you could have the last slide under the architecture and longer and shorter strings with different characters, some clad, some with brick and but again all going together to try to make an individual unit but a composition of the buildings as a whole that makes the village come together through the blocks in the streetscape. I'm going to turn it back over to Tom to talk about some of the community outreach. Thank you, Murphy. I've already mentioned that we have taken this out in a couple of different sessions to various groups. We've worked both in physical but also through electronic updates and phone updates with the Aspen Grove community. We've had some community forms that involve the Green Acres neighborhood and also the county. You can see those from there. We've already scheduled another meeting with the Southeast Fairfax Community Association for the middle of next month. And there's a meeting with the chairman of the office with the county presenting much the same thing in early next month, April 9th. We've also touched base with the city. Staffs on both transportation but also fire and police in terms of access to services. And so I think we've done a pretty good job of keeping the dialogue open and being able to respond to input that we've gotten in the past. Quickly on the schedule where we're going, you can see where we are. We're really trying to get to construction starting late summer of this year and then constructing it through the next year and then begin turning over the units by late summer of next year. Our goal is to be able to have up to 50 units available for the provost to include in the next year's hiring cycle so that when the fall semester comes there is that first group of 50 professors. Whoever in housing by the time the semester begins. And then because it's a rental property, we're looking to be able to turn that over at a frequency every year. So we have some number of units available to the provost as part of the hiring process. So from summer to fall and in the winter next year we'll be the completion of the units and delivery of those. And that's the conclusion discussion of faculty and staff housing. I don't have to entertain any questions before we talk about the conference center. And before I open it up, let me just say to start out again how much we appreciate you coming here tonight and the extensive outreach that you've done in this process. We had an outreach meeting here with the Green Acres community not that long ago and an individual stood up in the middle of the audience and said, you know, I'm not what sure why we're here, you're not going to pay attention to us anyway. And I would just say, and I'm the first to say this because certainly I have shared at times over a many year period that same concern. This has been an example of exactly how I think the process to work and I want to share with you our appreciation for that. When you look at the design and the plan that you showed in the original plan which was shared with the community in this room to where you are now with some 200 foot buffers between the community and the back doors of this new development, certainly in the green acres area. And all of the things that you've done to address the concerns that I know have come up in the community, I think is a great example of a partnership that we look forward to building on and we really do appreciate your individual attention to that and your involvement in that and we know that you've been the driver and an awful lot of that outreach and community. The reality of it is these folks don't even need to be here tonight. It's a state-owned property, it's not subjective to city ordinances or county ordinances and setbacks. And the fact that you're here I think really speaks volumes for the relationship and where we're going in the future and I just want to say publicly Tom we certainly appreciate everything you've done to make that possible. With that let me open it up and see if there's any questions or comments from the council. Slime? Thank you. Thank you so much. I just have one little question that's about Roberts Road. You know, we've been, I guess, trying to work with Vida and I may have missed it in one of the outreach meetings. I missed one of the outreach meetings. What are we doing with, you know, that turn from Aspen Grove or the Aspen Grove is on Roberts Road. Is there any team up going with George Mason and Edad and the county and us to get that part of the road straight out while you're doing this this particular project? No not as part of this project because it's really but almost I wonder if there's a way we could could work as a team to work that particular problem out because it seems like this would be a pretty, you know, a very good time to do that since we have, there'll be so much construction going on right around Roberts Road. I'm wondering how we would go about doing that. If anyone has any suggestions, that would be Mr. Sisson. Do you have any way we could talk about that road and Roberts Road with the turn? Because there's been some major concerns about that road and Robert's road with the turn. Because there's been some major concerns about that part of the. This line we've had multiple meetings of all of the parties there to include state delegates and so forth. And we still I would characterize it as really steamy. We don't really have much progress there at this point. We will continue to work on it. Well, I'd like to get a little fire rendered. Since we have a nice timeline here, I'm wondering if we could try and get something like that together, Mr. Mayor. I don't know how we can start that, but that would be a nice thing to do. So thank you. I have two other questions about the rentals So you're gonna do them a little bit below market which and then George Mason will be the one picking up the rest of the Rent for those are just because you guys will be renting right there's no actual cash Pick up the we it's just all boil into the cost. Okay, and then well the same residents gets to stay in that particular duplex or townhouse or apartment for a three-year period or they change every year or the intent is that will offer releases up to three years if for whatever reason they choose to they find a home they want to buy and those those kinds of things they can obviously Move out earlier than that but up to three years. We don't want them to stay much beyond that because the goal is to have turnover so it's always available for new hires. Okay, good, thank you. That's all I have for now, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. Any other questions, comments? Ms. Swinner? Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just curiosity. Is there a percentage of faculty versus staff or does the faculty get primary? There is a priority system which we are setting up that has faculty at the top of the list. The number one goal or reason for doing this project is to attract faculty. Okay. So if there is always faculty on the list, they'll be the only ones in the housing. If they're not available, we'll move down the list. Okay, thank you. Okay, Ms. Cross. Yes, I just can't, has any determination been made as to the school attendance areas that children of these families will attend? We've had discussions with Dean Tisdat from Fairfax County Public Schools and really just initial discussions trying to talk about how many students would they project coming from this and in which school district they see them coming. Their initial take at that that it would be in the Woodson pyramid because it's in the county property. And in fact I think the line It shows that as Woodson so that's their that's their first take Okay, and the other thing that I wondered The university will be this sole responsible party for the maintenance of the area the upkeep of these Through through the Mason housing, we have leased out the land to Mason housing incorporated. Mason housing incorporated will be responsible for that maintenance. But in the sense that we own still on the property, then the answer is yes, but through Mason housing incorporated. Okay, and I would like to second Mrs. Lions' concern about Robert Fitzgerald. We have been over the past several years and very concerned about that road and the amount of traffic it carries. And the ingress and egress from those neighborhoods that border it. So if there is any opportunity to work together in a way that would improve that road, I think we'd all be interested in exploring that with you. Thank you. Sure. Okay. What I think we're going to do now, because we've only got about 15 minutes. We need to buy back about 15 minutes before start time for another topic, because if you could maybe share with us plans for the conference center on the property. And I will say right up front that this presentation was given in an open meeting to both the community of the city of Fairfax and Fairfax County two weeks ago or so. But this will be another opportunity to get it out on certainly the television and in front of the community. And so let me go through this quickly first slide. Really the same discussions that we'll talk about, why are we doing this and what are we gonna do and so on and so forth quickly go through that. Why are we doing a conference center hotel? Several reasons in this particular case, it really provides us an opportunity with the conference center and the joint hotel to hold scholarly conferences that we really can't do today. Sometimes we hold those kinds of things and they're elsewhere. Sometimes we just don't do them all because the the opportunity doesn't exist. It also provides some other things in terms of a living room to the to the campus and ability to have people come visit and those kinds of things. So there are a whole lot of things that are going on there. It's done a lot throughout the country. There are about 60 to 70 universities have conference center hotels on their campuses. Really no different from what we're trying to do. Talk about typical user. There will be many times when this thing is 100% used by the university, whether that's for conferences, executive education, those kinds of things, homecomings, all those. The other times when there's Slack period, it's open to the community for use in both the hotel and the conference center itself. So, next slide. You can see what we're trying to do here, and that's a 150 room hotel, 20,000 square foot conference center. You can read the things that are in there, a restaurant, a small cafe or a lounge and a business and fitness center. We're also including space in there for executive education. There's an academic unit that will be within the complex. We'll use the meeting rooms within the conference center for class functions, but the offices will be within there. Next slide we'll talk about where it is. Again, looking at that same slide, go ahead and click again. That's the general error we're talking about. It's on 123, really halfway between Gratic Road and University. Or at least the third of the way up. Next slide. Zooming in a little bit, you can see Bratic Road down on the bottom left-hand corner, and 123 going up to the north. There's a couple things that are going on with this project, and you just click on, go go backwards just so you don't miss that. Click it again. One more time. We're also adding a new entrance to the university at this point, coming off of 123. So you can see the hotel that has popped up there on the left. You also see the new road and it ties in all the way to the Patriot Circle. And we're going to do this road over really the next year with the roundabout piece at Patriot Circle being done this summer and the rest of the road being done next summer. So it will be the construction access for the project so that we're not taking traffic elsewhere through the university, but it will eventually open up by next fall as a new entrance to the university. And from a regional perspective, we're pretty excited about that because we see it lessening traffic on on Braddock at the entrance to the to the University of Abra'atk which they're you know which therefore will not back up further along Braddock So traffic we see entering the University from the south and the west will come in at this entrance rather than trying to come down Braddock to Ronoak and to Sijburn so next slide Zooming in again, 123 is on the far left and the new rows on the top. There's the conference center hotel. The hotel is on the left portion of the site and the conference center is on the right. Go ahead and click to the next slide. In general, the conference center opens up toward the campus, both to the east and to the north, and the gateways from the north and the south. Ultimately, that section of the campus gets student housing in there, in the master plan, and that would be coming to the south and to the east. So you would have an entrance right off of 123 in there, but also from the campus along the east side. Next line. Just in general looking at the site in terms of nature, the building pad and the structure is in the bottom right, the quadru know that circle and the entrance area is to the yellow to the top right and that's kind of a formal landscaping. The bottom left is we're going to leave that alone and that's the same tree buffer that's there today. A fairly significant mature growth that's there. The top left end area will be another, will be also leave the big trees but will thin it out some so you tend to get a sense of arrival into the, into the, both the campus itself and into the hotel and conference center. Because this will become a new signature entrance to the university. You know, through this entrance down to the roundabout, you'll see the center of the arts in the back. It will become a fairly stately entry. Next slide. Obviously, you can't see any of the detail on this. Conference Center is on the right side, is in the square that kind of sticks out to the right and the hotel is on the left side. The two blue areas at the top are the lounge and the restaurant and then obviously the kitchen and all the stuff at the back of house things are in the bottom left hand side. That's fine. There are pre-function areas and outside meeting areas as integral to the the conference center that will be available. There's parking, partially underground and partially at grade of about 200 cars that come with this. Approximately 80 of them will be under the structure and the other 120 will be at grade surface south of the structure. Next slide. Next slide. Next slide. A couple of elevations. Let's see the north elevation. Looking from the north is the top one looking from the east is the bottom. So look at the bottom photo and you see the conference center on your left with the hotel behind it is what you're seeing so The glass area at the bottom is the entrance way into the into the complex and then the conference center with this Pre-function area is an open-out two-plaza is on the left side next slide Just really just looking from the other direction the West obviously is looking from 123 and South looking from within the campus. When we had the community forum meeting a couple weeks ago one of the concerns was from the residents in the Kelly Drive area of what do I see from my deck and what do I see from my yard. And the structure itself will be below the tree level from those from those houses. You know that they sit down far enough that the view up will really be blocked by the trees. The concern when it, when discussed, the concern though is, what does that look like during the winter when all the leaves are gone? So trees will obviously block most of that. We're gonna look at, are there things that we can do with evergreen-type trees that might block that more in the winter, but the trees themselves will hide the structure to the Kelly Drive neighborhood. Next slide. Just a couple of views. This one happens to be from the corner, as the new corner as you would enter in. You can see the hotel in the back. The conference end would be back behind that. Again, this is where we will have thinned out the trees, but leave many of them next. This is the view as you've made the turn into the campus. You're on the new entrance road. Again, you're looking at the hotel itself. You can see the conference center back behind it on the left. And in the timeline for this, we're also looking to start construction on this late summer. We're in the review phases of the design. And this one will take until the spring of 2010 to finish. Again, we're trying to open up the road for campus traffic, for everybody's traffic, by August of next year. By the time we will be within the structure and not needing that road as a construction access as much, so we'll be able to use it for the entire campus. Questions? Questions? I think many of us have seen this presentation a couple of times, so that may be the owner reason it's void of questions. But if they're not any, let me just again thank you very much. This is more for the benefit of the community than for us tonight. We appreciate your time that you've invested over the last several months in discussing this with us and outweaching within our community. And thank you very much for coming out. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. What we're going to do is we actually have one more topic just to talk about and Mr. Sissin, it's a it's a prelude to some of the budget discussions and it was added maybe just by way just of a little background at least from my perspective is my colleagues know and certainly for the benefit of the community. I don't know how many months ago but many months ago probably but many months ago, probably a year ago, through the wisdom of our legislators at the state, they gave us a series of what I call a new toolbox to try to start to grapple with the transportation problems in Northern Virginia. It was a makeup of a series of regional taxes that were going to be imposed by the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority. And two local taxes that were going to be at the discretion of the local communities in the form of a commercial surcharge if I can use that phrase to allow us to kind of control some of our own destiny within the various jurisdictions. As we went through that process and this is not by any surprise at this point in time, we're all aware that the Supreme Court of the State of Virginia struck down the regional tax approach and has removed that portion of the toolbox from the region in terms of dealing with those issues. What has been left in the toolbox of I can continue to use that sort of description was the local taxes imposed by local jurisdictions, specifically in this case the commercial tax rate, which is my understanding was a plan and an approach that was brought to the attention of the legislators by the various chambers of commerce and northern Virginia who understood the transportation crisis and the state. And so tonight it's my understanding Mr. Sisson that we need to very consistent with what we have to do with the tax rate. If we're going to leave that option open as we go through our budget deliberations, obviously we've airmarked around 50 and at least in previous discussions in terms of spending those monies in some of the related projects that were important as part of the master plan, we have to night, I understand, take three basic actions. First is to set the tax rate. And it's my understanding that it's been recommended in looking at the other jurisdictions in the region that that we said at 12 cents when I say set at. All we're doing tonight is saying maximum. I can't exceed 12 cents. It may be zero at the end of the dialogue. And then we actually have to take two actions on the existing special tax rates both in the downtown and on the Fairfax Boulevard. If we want to also consider at the same time to either eliminating or reducing those to offset and to balance the commercial tax rate. I know Mr. Sissin in front of us in the memo that was given to us to this afternoon, many of my colleagues may not have seen it by email, is a motion to address the 12th cent portion of the commercial search arch if we want to keep that option on the table as we go through the budget. I'm not in your blue handout. Oh, in the blue. And does that include in the two other actions in the blue handouts? I didn't actually see that. The implementation of the 12 cent commercial taxes in your agenda packet and in the blue supplemental is the actions for the two existing. Which one? That's 6D and 6E. Is that correct? So does everybody understand? Again, this is just to keep the issue on the table. The first action is to set a maximum tax rate not to exceed. It's being recommended. It's my understanding for a Vax County. Is it 12 and a half cents? Staff has recommended 12 cents. And then the second action would be to keep and play the existing service tax districts that we have both in downtown and the bid, Fairfax Boulevard, which would then give us the option to eliminate those or reduce those as part of it if that's the position we got. Mr. O'Brien. I just need to- I'm sorry, Mr. Mayor to be so thick here, but I need a little more clarification on why we would, I missed what you were saying in terms of why we would want to keep those in place in terms and then alter them later versus. No, we wouldn't, but this action is just to keep those two actions viable as we go through the budget deliberations. Mr. Diorall. So basically, I'm sorry, Miss Merrick. So basically as we go through the budget liberation and actually vote, we could at that point determine whether it makes sense to do one versus the other. How we would want to proceed. On the evening of April 8th, you have to set this in stone. Right. So at that point, you have the opportunity to think. So we have both live options to us on April 8th, what you're saying. Anywhere from the maximum rates all the way down to zero. Okay. Or the other option is to eliminate one set if we wanted to go with another set, am I right? That's correct, right? Okay. But we have to take these three actions tonight to keep all that in play. All that you're doing tonight would be introducing the ordinance. Right. Are there any questions just because this is new we wanted to just take a second as part of the work session to make sure We'll be dealing with it as an action later on in the agenda, but one more question. I'm sorry. Do we Where is all the money that we've currently collected at this point sitting in escrow? We haven't collected anyone we have Talking about the new tax I'm talking about the existing tackles the regional tax no Existing taxes that were, sorry. The downtown district has been applied to, as Council indicated, it would be two improvements. Right. Now, what about the others on that? The other has been under the stewardship of the bid. They have made certain expenses related to the master plan and getting their organization up and running and there is existing a balance of unexpended funds. Can we get a full accounting of that before we're late? Yes, thank you. And it's approximately $500,000 to overtake. So can we have is tax rate. Okay. Any other questions? Again, we'll be dealing with this later on in the evening, but Miss Cross? Well, before Mr. Silver-Think, it's overly excited about this money. I believe that the thought was that the position that part planning and development has proposed to be to coordinate the master plan would be have funded by the bid. So, yeah. Well, but just keep in mind that has nothing to do with the actual. No, I understand. But I thought maybe. Well, fully understand that. The only thing we can debate on April 8th, my only concern is, is that, and I said this, that a previous council meeting is the issue of fairness and equity and distribution of tax burden evenly. As we've learned with the restaurants and in the last presentation, we've been overly burdening some in some cases. Therefore, there's some evidence that it hasn't been working quite to the expectations of staff and city council. Oh, quite a great. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, with that wheel adjourned the work session, we'll be starting the regular meeting in about it looks like 15 minutes.