FI26 budget, as Mary Catherine just said, we do have people participating virtually as well as in person. So I'm going to go through a bit of a few slides so that we have handouts that we've provided to folks who are in the room and that will take about 10 minutes or so to get information to you and to the public. And then after that, this will be a town hall meeting where you can provide your commentary, your suggestions, your advice as we move forward. When you do so, we're going to ask that you use a microphone so that the people who are participating virtually can hear your question. We're also taping this meeting for your awareness and by speaking to the microphone that also allows the tape to record your question as well. We do have members of our city council here. So these town hall meetings are very important for the city council to hear from you directly as they consider the budget options that are before them, the recommendations that staff have made, that the school board have made, the planning commission have made, and then they have to make the final decisions on the expenditures as well as the revenues and the tax rates that are associated with that. Mayor Hardy is here and let me invite her to come forward to make some introductory remarks and welcoming remarks. Great. Thank you, Wyatt. Good evening, everybody. My name is Ladi Hardy. I am the mayor. Let me recognize other folks that we have in the room. I think we have Vice Mayor Debbie Hiscott online, Mary Beth Connelly, Aaron Flynn, Laura Downs, and also School Board member, Laurie Silverman as well. Thank you for joining us. Have I missed any electives? Okay, well thank you all for coming. This is one of our most important responsibilities of the city council every year. Our role during the budget cycle is to care for the entire city to be responsive to the community's priorities. We have a great new community survey out to help reflect what those priorities are and ultimately be good stewards of our taxpayer dollars. And especially mindful right now with the regional economic picture, which obviously is in flux. I do want to talk a little bit more than I normally do in these welcoming rocks guys. I do think it's important to share a few points of context. Overall, as you hear why it talks about the budget, we still actually have really comparatively strong local revenues. Actually, at the beginning of the budget cycle, property values have risen so much in false church because we've been a desirable place to live between 8 to 15%. That's a lot and half of it has been due to commercial growth. City Council wanted to keep the overall tax bill increased more moderate to increase about $400 which is about CPI or so for the median Homer which is about a 3.5% increase over last year. To accomplish that Mr. Shields at the beginning of the budget cycle proposed a 2.5-cent tax rate decrease in general government and school budgets would still grow between 6.5 to 7% over last year's budgets to cover projected growth in student enrollment and other needs of a growing city. As context, there's just a point that I always share. A normal budget grows about 3%. So this is about two times what our normal budgets have been growing and actually way higher than what our neighbors are doing. So we're really good shape. Second point of context. We got new data from the end of the third quarter that had about two weeks ago that showed pretty worrisome signs of our meals and sales tax revenues. So much so that our CFOs actually revised down our revenue forecast. And sales and meals tax are the best indicators of early consumer sentiment. I don't have to be the one to tell you that obviously April 2025 is a very different environment than where we were in December 2024 when we kicked off budget and issued our guidance to our school board and our departments. When we started that first budget work session in December, we actually had a regional perspective of what the federal impact changes would be in our community. We know that in fall's church, about 16% of our workforce actually federal workers. And that does not include federal contractors and obviously fed adjacent jobs and the second order impacts of those job impacts, obviously are large. And some of you in the room, in fact, are likely impacted and we know how disruptive that can be as well. I was actually just at MEH this morning, and the social workers are really in our schools and now it's really compounded by the federal impacts on those families. I also don't have to tell you that any time that you're finding that risk, people generally cut back on discretionary spending like sales and meals tax they don't go out shopping they don't eat out as much and so we're very mindful of very mindful of that trend as city staff gets that data. We are looking at it very closely and trying to understand the impact of tariffs on capital budgets, what that means on households and overall the city budget. So with our first vote on the budget last week, we did vote to keep the tax rate flat as the ceiling to give ourselves room as we continue to listen and deliberate on what the priorities are. We are still very cognizant that even with that two-and-a-half original cut, the tax bill would go up $400. And we're very cognizant that may not be very easy for everybody. So we certainly valued our partnership with the schools. I think being able to create that once in a generation new high school has been a huge accomplishment for our community. And the revenue share agreement that says we split revenue 50-50 and in good times and in bad. And this may be one of the first years where we really have to test that relationship. I also want to acknowledge that nobody likes to revise down revenue forecasts. I think it's something that Mr. Shields and our CFO doesn't take lightly. and it's obviously, they're only doing it because that's what the data shows and that's what the regional trends are shows. I also want to point out that this may be the norm as the road ahead probably will be a little bumpy and we may need to react quickly as the data changes. I think our job on the city council is to balance all those priorities we're hearing from the community, whether that's traffic calming, paving sidewalks, environment, higher contracts like fire and EMS contracts, Marlington. And of course course our schools and competitive pay for all of our city employees. So I look forward to hearing all the input tonight on behalf of the rest of the city council. Thank you for the opportunity to kick things off. I think we look forward to hearing your thoughts and your questions. I think the budget process is really good indicator of our values of our community and it's a good time where it's really a community effort where we all come together to really balance those diverse perspectives and needs of across the entire community. So thank you for indulging me. Thank you, Mayor Hardy. I want to note also that as we've gotten underway, Council Member Dave Snyder has joined virtually, and so he's a way on travel at the moment. But Mayor Hardy, thank you for you and for all the city council members. Thank you for your leadership and community. So I have here the cover of this year's budget and the theme of this year's budget as we were trying to work through the very dynamic situation that we're all in was trying to sustain the progress that we've been making as a community in light of many of the challenges that the mayor just referenced. The National Capital Region is facing significant economic headwinds with federal layoffs, FETs, cuts to federal contracting tariffs, and the National Capital Region, I believe, and I believe the data is going to start to show it more is particularly impacted. So sustaining momentum in light of those conditions. And my screen seems to have frozen. There we go. So just in terms of orientation on process for people who are new to the process, the budget process is working towards a public hearing and final consideration on May 12th. The work that's gone into this budget started many months ago with the Planning Commission reviewing the Capital Improvements Program, the School Board reviewing the school budget, those all come together and the presentation on March 24th of a unified budget presentation to the City Council. I highlighted this April 11th date on this screen because that's when we did, we reviewed the data from our third quarter and that's where the data on sales tax receipts, business license receipts, and meals tax receipts indicated to us that we needed to revise down our revenue forecast for the coming fiscal year. And so we presented to the city council a $1.2 million revision to the revenue forecast for FY 26 and we're going to talk about that in a bit more detail. A couple of key dates going forward. On Monday night, the 28th, we're going to have a public hearing on the budget and the tax and fee ordinances. All are welcome to that. That's at 7.30 p.m. in this room. We'll have a work session on May 5th. That's traditionally the council's markup session. That is also traditionally not an opportunity for public comment although the public is is welcome to listen in. And then on May 12th public hearing and final consideration of the ordinances. Everything we're talking about is a budget that goes into effect on July 1st. That's when our fiscal year starts along with the Commonwealth of Virginia and all the local governments in Virginia. This is where you can find all the information about the budget just at falsechurchva.gov backslash budget and you can send in comments at budget at falsechurchva.gov as well. So a few slides will provide an overview of the budget. We'll discuss revenues, expenditures and I do want to also have have just a few slides on solid ways because that has emerged as an important policy question for the City Council in this budget cycle. Okay, so just for basic orientation on the City budget, this is where the money comes from. 57% of the city budget, including schools and general government, comes from real estate taxes. Of that real estate taxes, 38% comes from residential, 19% comes from commercial tax base. And then if you go around clockwise of this pie chart, you'll see a number of other really important business taxes, including the sales tax, the meals tax, and people, which is business license taxes, comprising another 25% of the city budget. Those are the ones that we're really seeing. They give us kind of real-time data on the state of the economy, and those are the ones that are lagging in the projections for the current fiscal year and by consequence, we revised down our forecast for FY 26. So a reduction of 1.2 million in revenue and the way you address a short fall is either through revenue increases or expenditure reductions. The City Council has asked for information on both options and we plan to provide City Council with our best thinking on how we could go about on options for both. With respect to the revenue sharing agreement, we have principles of revenue sharing where there are any growth in revenue from local taxes is split 50-50 between the schools and the general government. In terms of the baseline, the schools do get a larger share of local revenues than general government. So it's not exactly a 50-50 split in terms of the overall, but we apply the 50-50 sharing to new revenues that come in. When we went through the COVID pandemic, that was a real test for the revenue sharing agreement. And we did work with the school community with Dr. Nune in, and the schools participated in the reductions in the budget in that year 2020. And so in terms of considering options now and light of the revenue changes, the city council's ask for the school board to participate in this discussion about the different levers that we have to close this gap. As the mayor mentioned, we do have strong growth and assessed value in the city. Overall, 10 and a half percent growth in real estate assessed value. Half of that is coming from new construction. And we all see the new construction around the city, but that is a major element of our ability to do things in the city with this year's budget because of the new revenues that that new construction brings. That new construction also brings with it new costs. And it's really important that the schools and the general government are able to meet the challenges with those new costs as well. Commercial sector, a very strong growth with 12% growth due to new construction. And then in the residential sector, 6.9% growth in single-family homes, downhouses, and condos. And many of you, if you're looking at your tax assessment that came in the mail back in February you may have seen that show up in your assessments as well. 6.9 is on average across the board some are less some are more of course depending on the property. So we've the City Council is directed that we advertise a rate of a dollar 21 that's the current rate and so that would be no change to the current rate. The city council is also directed that we advertise the personal property tax rate at five dollars per hundred dollars of assessed value. That would get us back to the rate that the city had on the car tax before the pandemic. We did lower the rate during the pandemic, because of increased values of vehicles due to supply chain disruptions. Utility fees just for awareness. We have, generally as a practice to increase our storm water fee and our Senator's super fee by the rate of CPI to make sure we're staying up with just normal contract costs that we have in those utility funds. For the storm order fee, that would be about a $14 change to your average homeowner over the course of a year. So it's pretty modest. And on the sanitary sewer fee about a $10 change over the course of the year. So again, fairly modest changes to our utility fees. So the tax rate options, this chart just provides some of the ways that the staff and the city council I think will be thinking through the challenge of the $1.2 million gap. So going into, you know, about two weeks ago, before we looked at our third quarter financial data, we're feeling like there's a pretty stable budget picture. We had tax rate reduction, fully fund the school board request, meet some important needs on the general government side, and at the first town hall meeting, the main commentary was on the solid waste issue, not so much on the budget itself. With the gap of declining revenues, we have a different situation. We have some work we need to do. So if the city council were to stick with the original proposed tax rate of $1.18 and a half or 2.5% reduction, that would mean the median home tax bill would increase by about $400. And would need to make 1.2 million dollars in reductions between general government schools together If the city council were to Land on a rate of a dollar 19 and a half or a one and a half cent reduction The average the median home Tax bill would increase by $500 and we would be be working through $600,000 worth of budget reductions between the schools and general government together. And then if we were to reduce the tax rate by half penny and have a rate of $1.20 and a half, the median home increase would be about $600. And there'd be no reductions to the budget. So that's kind of a way to serve a lens of thinking about options on the revenue side. Just for comparison, this is in the handout and might be hard to see on the screen because the numbers are kind of small. But this is a chart that our finance department put together just to look at what is happening around us in terms of tax rates and the average residential tax change. And I won't walk through all of them. But you have sort of on the high end Fairfax City, which is dealing with some significant work on their budget of about a $1,100 increased to the median tax bill Fairfax County, just under $700 increased. And out in Loudoun County, where they've got a lot of new revenue coming in from data farms and that decrease for the average residential tax bill. So on the expenditure side, again, just for orientation, about 42% of the overall city budget goes to fund our schools. Debt service is 8% of the budget with the largest portion of that going to fund our school facilities. And then going around the horn, some of the other major elements of the city budget, including public safety, which is fire and police. That's 13% of the budget. Public works is 7% wrecking parks. And the library together is 5% of the budget. Health and human services programs is 3% of the budget and our building safety and our planning functions are 5% of the budget. In terms of the overall budget, again, it's a $133 million budget that is proposed for the coming FY26. Now the bottom line is that that's a decrease relative to the current year. And the reason for that decrease is largely because of reduction in our use of capital reserves through the CIP and a reduction in debt service for the city. And that reduction in debt services do the fact that Mary Ellen Henderson School debt is coming off of her books. That bond is fully paid off. And so that's one thing that has been helpful in this year's budget. The general government budget of $57.7 million represents a 6.5% increase over the current fiscal year and the school transfer amount of $55,600,000 a 5.6% increase to the budget. Overall the schools, both the schools and we talked about revenue sharing. We do share local taxes, but there are certain revenues like building permit fees and wrecking park fees that are outside of the revenue sharing agreement. And similarly, the schools get revenues from the state that also are outside of that revenue sharing agreement. In terms of the general government budget, some of the key things that are in the budget is compensation for a workforce. What is proposed in the budget is a 5% increase in compensation for public safety and for a civilian workforce. That is comparable to what is being considered for the schools in terms of generally across the board and is roughly comparable with what we're seeing in the local government marketplace where there is a fairly wide range of what's happening, whether it's public safety or civilian employees. Inter jurisdictional contracts, that's a big increase for this year's budget just under a million dollars of new spending in the budget and that's mandatory. We don't have a lot of control over that cost. One important new initiative in this budget is to increase our funding for street maintenance. So we propose a $700,000 increase in street maintenance in the budget for our total street maintenance budget of $2.2 million. Some investments in our IT and financial systems largely geared towards making it easier for the public to do business with the city, whether it's getting a building permit or paying your taxes to have more efficient systems to serve the public. And then in the budget, it wouldn't built into all the numbers we talked about is a $500,000 revenue contingency. So in terms of that $1.2 million gap that we've been discussing that does not touch this revenue contingency, the council may want to use some portion of this in terms of closing the gap. Staff is right now recommending to keep that revenue contingency whole as we enter the next fiscal year with anticipation that the revenue picture might get worse as we go through the coming year. So just a few slides on solid waste and then I'll stop and it'll be your turn to talk. But let me just mention kind of an overview of what staff is currently recommending to the city council. The issues relating to the Solid Waste financing are relatively complex. And so we're recommending that the council appoint a task force and have a very strict deadline for providing a report. And that would be in August of this year. So three months, study the issue and come back with some recommendations. Those recommendations may involve a reduction in the real estate tax rate and replacing that with a solid waste fee. And I'll just talk a little bit about kind of what that might look like. And if the council took those actions at that time, then that would show up in the November 2025 real estate tax bill. So the three months is to give some additional time to look at it, but it still would have no net impact in terms of what would happen in your November real estate tax bill. So just a few notes on it. What we're talking about is curbside service. So this is for people who have townhouses or single family homes, that's picking up the trash, recycling, and those who elect to join the compost program. There are just over 3,000 homes that participate in that program. Condo owners have raised concerns. This is all paid for out of general taxes. There's no fee for this service. And condo owners who also pay this tax but don't receive this service have raised concerns about the fairness of this financing structure. So there's at least three policy questions that the council will be wrestling with. One is in our Solid Waste Management Plan, the main goal is to drive down our waste and what goes the landfill. So one policy question is, should we expand our composting programmer, organics collection program, to help meet that public policy objective. Two, should we replace the tax support with a new fee? I'll talk a little bit about that in the next slide. Or three, and this is kind of, there's last two, sort of an either or, or should the city consider expanding Solid Waste Pickup service to include multi-family condo buildings. Just an overview. We spend just under a million dollars a year on contracted services for ADS, American disposal service to pick up the trash. Most of that cost goes for the trucks that are driving around to pick it up. About 28% of it is the actual trash itself going being at the tipping, where it's at the landfill. The compost program is a net increase of cost of $65,000. So that's kind of the financial dimension of the composting program, but we also need to talk with the community about kind of what that program would mean in terms of a third bin and how people would use that service. The cost of new carts for the composting program would be about $175,000. So if we were to move it to out of the tax rate and move it to a fee, it would be a reduction in the tax rate of one and a half cents based on those cost numbers. They're just a moment ago. And a flat fee of $332 per year for those who actually received the service. An alternative could be a variable rate where people could choose to say, I'd like to have a smaller bend and pay a lower fee. We'd have to work through the details of that over the three months, but this is an example here where that lower fee, that 35-gallon 35 gallon Ben fee might be $284 is supposed to $332. The alternative of serving condo associations this would be a new line of business for the city. We don't really know the dimensions of it but it would involve going out to the HOAs to talk with them and see what that service might look like. That would involve however a tax rate increase for everybody in the city to meet that new service. And so we'll study it but we think that that is a more possibly more difficult option for us to take on partly just from a management perspective. But we will study it. Yeah. Then the last thing just to get back what the bottom line is, I'm recommending that the city can. Partly just from a management perspective But we will study it Then the last thing just to get back what the bottom line is I'm recommending that the city council takes him additional time a Point a task force to look at these details and come back in August with some recommendations so that's a there's the slides that I have today and And again, everyone is welcome to the town hall, to the public hearing on April 28th. And then again, on May 12th, which is the night that the City Council would be making final consideration of the budget and tax ordinances that we've discussed tonight. And potentially forming that task force with the scope of work and appointing members to it to study the solid waste issues. Okay, so now it's your turn. Look forward to your questions, comments, suggestions. What I do ask that you do, if you could come up to a mic and this is more free form than it is at a council meeting, But I do ask that you would state your name, state your address, and we will ask you to observe, just respect everyone's, would like to speak, respect their time as well as your own. And so a three-minute cap we think is a reasonable time limit that we'll ask people to adhere to, and to any commentary or questions that you might have. Now, who would like to go first? And you can just line up at the podiums and we'll go and order. Yes, ma'am, welcome. I'm going to try to remember everything. Thank you so much for that introduction. Can you please turn on your mic? Oh, thank you. Thank you, Andy. Thank you for that introduction. My name is Cassandra Cloud. I'm at 297 Gantry Drive. And what what was the other piece of information you needed? You've got it. Three minute limit is what we're asking. OK, I will do my best. So I'm a homeowner on Gendry Drive. Before I was a homeowner, I was a person who had an apartment here. And the reason I bought in Falls Church City is because of the amazing schools. I think that's the reason a lot of people buy property in Falls Church and invest and why it is such an attractive place to live as the mayor mentioned and I'm concerned about the $600,000 reduction in the money that the school will get from the school transfer. This is going to really impact our wonderful teachers who have been given a cost of living adjustment that still isn't quite what they deserve, but it's something we've promised them and I feel that it's our duty to make good on those promises. And I don't think a two-cent reduction what we pay in taxes is going to be the difference between whether someone wants to live here or not, but our amazing teachers it are. It's also gonna impact what type of staff we have, including special services, which specifically affects my family, which really benefits from the special services that allows my child to not only do well in school, but to excel as someone in the gifted program. It impacts our security. It impacts our ability to fulfill the promise that a lot of us bought into when we bought property here. The schools are so important. They're the heart of full-sturch city. Our ability to take care of a child who's trying to learn how to read and give them the extra support that they need is worth $200 or two cent difference. It's worth the investment. And so I'm asking the council, if we need to reduce the tax rate, can we do it at that lower point five rate where our schools are not cut or can we find that money somewhere else? Our schools need it, that's why we're here. Thank you. Yes evening. My name is Kathy Ty. My address is 513 West Broad Street. The Byron condominium. I am a unit owner and president of the Condo Association. I'd like to speak briefly about the issue of the solid waste problem. Just to be clear for everybody here who isn't fully aware what the issue is, is that condo owners for since the time of the first condo in Falls Church are forced to separately contract for solid waste services while single-family dwellings get their trash picked up. And I think that is the issue that the condo owners and associations are trying to rectify. I wanted to speak and the Byron is very supportive of a change. I think it's somewhat disheartening to sort of think what we have to study on it more. I understand I've watched a couple of the work sessions online so I have a general understanding of the issues that that need to be tackled and ironed out. So I would urge if there has to be a study group for three months that there be action at the end of that study group and that we don't have to wait for another year or two to fix this issue. People have been waiting a long time. I wanted to speak particularly about the idea of the city stepping into it. Take care of our trash service at the Byron. We get trash service six days a week. We get recycling three days a week and we get a bulk pickup once a week. And that costs us about $26,000 and that costs is spread out among all the unit owners through our budget, our annual budget that we pass. I don't see it as feasible, that the city step in, we don't have true curbside, we don't have a dumpster, we don't have a place to put a dumpster on our property. It's very small. We have a trash room that they have to come in and take the trash cans out and dump them into the trucks. And that's how we are service. So I have concerns about the city stepping into that role. Anyway, I think a fee would be very straightforward. A fee that the single family dwelling owners would have to pay and a commensurate real estate tax reduction for us. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you for that additional context. City Manager, we have a question online. Would the online attendee with the hand raise unmute and share your question please. This is about the the waste management again. The 1.5% reduction in the taxes just seems to me to be a bit regressive since the absolute reduction for the higher value homes would be bigger than the lower value homes. But then there's a flat fee for the waste management services. So there's a bigger benefit to people with more expensive houses. I just wanted to make that comment and see if I understood that correctly. Mr. Salsberg, thank you for that comment. And the numbers do bear out what you're saying. Now, for people who would like to see the more detailed presentations we've had on this issue, you can go to that budget website and the PowerPoint that we've put together for that. It does provide some more numbers on that. And that's why we think it would be good to take some additional time and to see if there wouldn't be some alternatives that might avoid some of those unintended consequences, while still moving forward with a new way of financing the services. So we think that with some thought through some options, that some of those regressive impacts could be mitigated. Hi, I'm Gail Bodner. I am a second grade teacher at Mount Daniel School. I am not an official resident of Fall Church City, but I have been working for the schools. This is my 10th year. As a second grade teacher, I see every day how vital full funding is to our students' growth and success. classrooms are stretched thin as they are now and with a projected increase of 154 students next year, the idea of cutting our already lean budget is deeply concerning. We are not asking for luxuries, we are asking for the resources necessary to maintain the quality of education the children of false church deserve. That means keeping our class sizes manageable, supporting each learner individually, and retaining the highly qualified teachers who form the heart of our school community. Cuts would directly impact the classroom, fewer staff, larger classes, and less time for the kind of teaching that truly makes a difference in a child's life. This is also a matter of trust and fairness. The school board and Dr. Noonan built this budget based on the city council's own guidance, honoring both the expected enrollment increase and our collectively bargain contract, which includes a modest 2.5% cost of living adjustment. To now ask schools to absorb an additional $600,000 in cuts when the city can fully fund us is not only unfair, but it's deeply disheartening. We are not numbers in a spreadsheet. We are real people doing real work that shapes the future of this community. We need to stand together and as a community say clearly that our students, our schools, and our educators deserve full funding. Thank you. We have a comment from online. The dresslers from 119 South Springs Street echo earlier comments regarding school funding, citing the excellent schools is why they stay here and is the pride with the IB system, amazing teachers and college prep. and real estate tax for the privilege of such a school system makes sense in our opinion. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, my name is Sarah Shariko, and I live at 44 West Broad in the spectrum building. I would like to echo Kathy's sentiment in that I think the fee for service is the most simple way to go. In the spectrum we have a single stream collection meaning both our residents and our commercial properties put in the same compactor which is picked up every other week. And it would be virtually impossible to separate them so that would make for a very complicated solution, I think. I just wanted to add that. Thank you. Hi, Brian Pendleton. I'm a resident of Falls Plaza. I'm also the board president. I'm just speaking for myself. One thing I wanna say to the teachers, I absolutely agree that you should get the things that you need as a next professor. I understand education and I love the teachers. At the same time, I think that if you pull your numbers back up, the budget for the school is going up by 3.2, 3.0 something million. So, year to year, that seems like a large jump. So, one of the things that we need to think about is the school looking at managing their budget in a correct way. I know a lot of people have heard me say this. I don't necessarily agree with a flat agreement that the school gets a certain percentage. I think that we need to fund the school as much as we can. But there's also when we talk about community, there's 15,000 people in this community, not just a few kids and parents of those children. We've got a much bigger community. So when I see that we're only adding like $150,000 for tech increases, for a system here at City Hall that is horrible. Mewdis is an outdated system that we just stick with. We need to take a look at things that are going to be good for the whole city. One of those things that's good for the whole city is making things fair to everyone within the city. You happen to point out that if we started doing trash pickup for the condos, you very clearly said that would cause a tax increase, but when you mentioned that there would be a tax decrease if we went to the fund, you didn't say that as emphatically. So I think I know where you're leaning, one way or the other. It is only fair that people pay for the services that they receive. Condos do not receive a service that we've been paying for. More importantly, I think the City Council found out there is a city code that says fees were supposed to be put in place and city government did not put those in place. And I think we need to find out why that wasn't done. Once it's in code, it's up to city staff to make it happen. Thank you. I'm going to get you a new one. I'm going to get you a new one. I'm going to get you a new one. I'm going to get you a new one. I'm going to get you a new one. I'm going to get you a new one. I'm going to get you a new one. I'm going to get you a new one. I'm going to get you a new one. I'm going to get you. All right. Hello, and Mike. It's on right. Hi, my name is Pam Mahoney. I live at 2 0 4 Grove Avenue. I live here. I work here on a parent here, my resident here, and I've now been here long enough that this, I mean, looking at the signs that are coming, this will be the third recession I have worked through here in Falls Church City. So I've lived through a lot of these meetings at this point. As I know you have to, Mr. Shields. Just reiterating what was said earlier, the increase in the school budget right now is almost entirely based on growth. Growth that we've been able to predict, growth that we've been expecting. And I love that council member Snyder said a couple of weeks ago, a couple of months ago now, the growth is now here and we need to deal with it. So I think it's really important to point that out. So I don't want this to become yet another battle over like teacher salaries versus, you know, police salaries and stuff like that. Because that's not really what it's about. It's about dealing with this growth that we knew was coming and is now here. So 154 new children coming into the system next year has expected is the equivalent of an entire kindergarten class, right. I also want to point out that public education is already taking a hit nationally. We know that we have staff members right now who expected to be able to pay off their student loans, but now are probably not going to be able to through their public work options. We can assume there's going to be drama over special education funding, at least I'm assuming that coming from the federal government. And just a point of clarification, you mentioned a 5% salary increase that would match on the city side and school side. But at least on the school side, it's an average 5%. I know I myself with the plan right now would be getting about a 3% salary increase. And I'm not asking for a cookie because 3% is great in a horrible economic time, but it's not the 5% that everybody likes to throw out. So I think that's important to recognize. It's also important to point out that any staff members, we use the word teachers a lot, but I want to clarify that we're talking about all staff members. We have some staff members who even with a 5% increase, that's about a 30% per hour increase. So 5% when you're only making $18.20 an hour is not a whole lot to live on. So I'm gonna ask respectfully, city council, to please fund the schools and the city side as was projected at the 5.9%. I think is what the school side plan for. So, and thank you very much for your work. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Hello. I am T. Goal 228. Buckston. Despite my attire, I am the school board chair. And I appreciate that opportunity to talk tonight, Mr. Shields. Start. I, I, I, from a school board perspective, obviously, we don't have the same perspective and the same issues that our city council partners are dealing with, but we fully understand the strain that the economy is taking on our schools, on our city, on all of our resources. And we fully respect and empathize with our city council partners on what you're going through, so we do appreciate that. In all of our deliberations to Ms. Mahoney's points, the schools have always been tried to be partners with the city. We tried to enjoy the successes and try to help balance that when things are difficult. And we want to do that through this time as well. And I understand that part of the decision, schools I've heard, schools are one part of the decision, one part of the factor that the city counts us away. But I do want to emphasize the schools are a big part of the city. They are the heartbeat of the city. We are the largest employer in the city. When you look at at home prices and you see a 10-15% increase by one house on a street to the next, it's not because we have grocery stores and we have a lot of restaurants. It's because of our schools. That increase, we have great kids. Don't get me wrong, but it's because of our teachers. That's why our schools are so highly rated, number one in the state. That's why our home prices are higher because people wanna be here for our teachers, our staff, our school leaders. They want that experience from the Fall Church City Public Schools. From a financial standpoint, we started with a 9.5%. our staff, our school leaders. They want that experience from the Fall Church City Public Schools. From a financial standpoint, we started with a 9.5% budget request. We did have wants and needs. We realized through our discussions with City Council we had to bring that down. So we sharpened our pencils and we got down to 5.9%. We got to a needs-based budget. So we are being physically responsible with what we're asking for. What we're asking for though is not 5.9% every single year. We have a 6% growth of students this year. So we're asking for a 5.9% growth in our budget. Our facilities are fine. We've been working with City Council for years to get ready for the growth that's expected. And it's been a great partnership. but what we want and what we need to be successful to make sure our schools are successful is to match that with our teachers and our staff of that increase enrollment. This is not every single year. This is for this year that we really need to make sure we already have the growth. We already have the kids coming in. They want to come to our schools. That's why we're asking for a 5.9%. Our levers, Mr. Shields, to use your term. We have three levers. One is to increase the teacher's student ratio. So we could have more kids. Now we start looking like Fairfax, Arlington, some of our neighbors. We have a policy. We could change our policy. But that is not ideal. We could not fill vacancies. We could not feel special ed vacancies for our teachers. We could not feel some of the vacancies. That's another lever. That is not ideal. We could not fill vacancies. We could not feel special ed vacancies for our teachers. We could not feel some of the vacancies. That's another lever. That is not ideal. People move here because they get individual attention. And the final lever we could do is we could decrease our raises. And that is not something that we're interested in doing because again, we are trying to stay competitive with our neighbors and those raises are important and make sure that we have our best teachers and staff stay in Falls Church City. So I appreciate all the work you all are doing and I also just implore that we continue to make sure make sure that we're meeting our requested budget for 5. the next week. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Robin Rami and I live at 1134 South Washington. Before I give my comments, I did want to provide some background that I am a condo owner in the city. I also do not have any kids that attend our schools and don't have any plans to and I also didn't move to fall's church for the schools. That said, I understand that as a citizen of this city, I benefit from living in a very highly educated community and a community that has world class schools. And for that reason, I have no problem paying a higher tax rate in order to fully fund the budget as proposed by the school board. My second comment is about the solid waste fee. In contradiction to what I just said, I don't see it as beneficial to me to continue to pay out of general taxes for a service that isn't offered to my community. And for that reason, I think that, you know, considering the options that have been presented, I think it makes the most sense to replace the real estate tax with a solid waste fee or a variable rate fee, you know, whatever homeowners that are able to take advantage of that service perfor, but I don't think that it makes sense for folks who aren't able to actually benefit from that service to pay for it out of our general taxes. Thank you. I was watching from home and I was struck by how regressive and this isn't something that the City Council I realized can do but how regressive our funding of the city is. It's property taxes which is regressive and there's a little sliver of federal. But in Maryland, there's a piggyback tax. The counties and I realized we're a Dylan Rull State. But at least some brave council members could at least start talking about the regressive burden that forcing everything to be on property taxes is is and ask for, you know, in Philadelphia, there's a 1% school tax, you know, based on income. However, you know, much you make. It ought to be more progressive and we should start talking about at the state level that, you know, we need to be able to have a progressive income tax to fund their schools. Thank you. I live in Falls Church, 603 West Fallsway, which I wish wasn't the same name as West Falls, because we get a lot of erroneous traffic. Thank you. Can you all hear me? I'm Peter Markham and my wife and I live in Park Towers, Kondo. I've followed, we've all followed in Park Towers, the struggle struggle that the city manager and the council have had to square the circle to somehow give justice to the people who want services for what they're paying, you know, multiples family dwelling dwellers, and yet to have enough money to fund the schools and the other services in Falls Church and I've listened to a number of counselors strive for fairness and I appreciate all the efforts that the city manager and the counselors have made. This does not and I hope it isn't a struggle between the people who want services for what they pay and the people who have children and the people who work in the schools. I don't believe it needs to be a conflict. I hope it isn't. I think we know that one of the Councillors found in the city code a section that allows the city to charge a fee for solid waste collection. And the city attorney has verified this. People in Park Towers have been subsidizing other people's trash collection for the last 35 years. I do think it's time and I want the schools to have everything they need, but I think it's time to show some justice and fairness to the people who are now living in the multi-story buildings who now make up at least 50% of the population of this city. Once again, my hat is off to the city manager and the councillors I've heard meetings and I've spoken to them individually and the issues I hear being raised tonight are the very issues that these people have tried as hard as they possibly can to justify. Thank you very much. So I just want to thank everybody for your comments. We did advertise this to go from 7 o'clock to 8 o'clock. We're committed to say here if people have more comments and we don't want to cut anyone off but I'm Mr. Benton is standing up for you coming for comment or for picture-taking. So maybe we'll sort of yeah let's everyone smile. I'm not seeing anyone stand up to ask any questions or provide any suggestions or make any comments on the budget process. And so with that then, we will bring this town hall meeting to a close. I want to thank everyone for coming out tonight on a beautiful spring evening. Invite everyone to come to the upcoming meetings that have been posted here on the screen. This is participatory democracy. And I know the City Council is very committed to working through the best resolutions that we can work through over the coming weeks. So with that.