Good evening. Welcome to the Monday, March 24th meeting of the City Council. I wanted to call this meeting to order. Madam Clerk, can you start with roll please? Yes, and I'll note that Mr. Snyder is joining us electronically. So we will do that motion after roll call. Ms. Conley? Here. Ms. Downs? Here. Ms. Flynn? Here. Ms. Shantziz God. Here. Mr. Snyder. Here. Ms. Underhill. Here. And Mayor Hardy. Here. Thank you, Council. Mr. Snyder, can you identify your remote location and reason for participation by electronic means? Indianapolis, Indiana. Animal meeting of the National Meeting of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. I move that the City Council approve of Electronic Participation by Council Members. Neither in this meeting for personal reasons pursuant to the City Council's adopted policy. To be the second. Second, it's my underhill in the second. Madam Clerk. Ms. Conley? Yes. Ms. Downes? Yes. Ms. Flynn? Yes. Ms. Sean Ciscott? Yes. Ms. Underhill? Yes. Mayor Hardy? Yes. Motion carries 6-0. Thank you, Council. Okay. Thank you very much. Thanks. Let's start with the pledge of allegiance. To the flag of United States of America, and to the Republic, which we can ask for All you have to do is call to the committee to help us grow up. May I have a motion to adopt tonight's meeting agenda, please. I'll be right back. I'll be right back. I'll be right back. I'll be right back. I'll be right back. May I have a motion to adopt tonight's meeting agenda, please? Move to adopt tonight's meeting agenda. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Okay. First up we have several items that will have conflicts of interests and I think at the recommendation of the city attorney we recommend we do them now is that correct. Yeah, that would that is my recommendation. But it also if it's the desire of council the disclosures can wait till just before the discussion occurs on any individual item. Well, why don't we do the budget one and then we can do the accessory dwelling on and work session later? Thank you. Okay. The City Council is discussing the FY26 budget for the City of Falls Church. I am an employee of the Falls Church City School Board, which may be affected by the proposed fiscal policies As a result, I am in a group of three or more people who may realize a reasonably foreseeable direct or indirect benefit from the proposed ordinance. After consideration, I am electing to participate in this transaction because I am confident in my ability to participate fairly objectively and in the public interest. Thank you Ms. Connelly any other ones? Okay well let's move on to item six proclamations and special presentations. First up we have a proclamation declaring March 25th as equal payday and the City of Falls Church and vice mayor Shantziska will do the honors. Thank you. Whereas equal payday 2025 falls on March 25th and and marks the current state of the gender pay gap for women. Whereas the goal of Equal Pay Day is to raise awareness about the ongoing gender pay gap and how the pay gap varies significantly among different communities. And whereas each year, the symbolic day is used to raise awareness around and combat the impact of pay inequities and draw attention to gender-based pay disparities by highlighting how far into a new year, a woman must work on average to earn what amanded in the previous year. And whereas in 2025, April 7th is Asian-American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander, women's equal payday, May 6th is mom's equal payday. June 17th is LGBTQIA plus equal pay awareness day. July 10th is Black Women's Equal Pay Day. August 28th is Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Women's Equal Pay Day. October 8th is Latina Equal Pay Day. October 23rd is Disabled Women's Equal Pay Day. And November 18 18 is Native Women's Equal Payday. And where is the gender pay gap reflects discrimination as well as barriers that women face in accessing good paying jobs and meeting care giving responsibilities, including a lack of affordable child and elder care, and paid family and medical leave, which often prevent women from joining and staying in the workforce. And whereas over a career, women's total estimating earnings lost due to gender pay gap is nearly $400,000. And black and Latina women experience even greater earning losses, around $885,000. And $1.2 million respectively, impacting social security benefits and pensions. And whereas addressing the barriers that hold women back from full participation in fair treatment in the workforce, strengthens the security of families today and eases future retirement costs while enhancing the overall economy. And whereas Tuesday, March 25th, 2025, symbolizes this time of year in which the wages paid to American women catch up to the wages paid to men from the previous year. Now therefore I, Ledy Hardy, mayor of the City of Falls Church, Virginia, do hereby proclaim March 25th, 2025 as equal payday in the City of Falls Church and urge the community to recognize the full value of women's skills and their significant contributions to the labor force, acknowledge the injustice of wage inequality and joint efforts to achieve equal pay. Thank you all. Would fellow women like to come up and help receive the proclamation with us? Maybe I'll make it a request. Can I invite fellow women to come join us. I'm going to go to the next one. I'm going to go to the next one. I'm going to go to the next one. I'm going to go to the next one. I'm going to go to the next one. I'm going to go to the next one. I'm going to go to the next one. I'm going to go to the next one. I'm going to go to the next one. I'm going to go to the next one. 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 station. I'm going to the next station. I'm going to the next station. I'm going to the next station. I'm going to the next station. I'm going to the next station. I'm going to the next station. I'm going to the next station. I'm going to the next station. I'm going to the next station. I'm going to the next station. I'm going to the next station. I'm going to get you a little bit more. I'm going to get you a little bit more. I'm going to get you a little bit more. I'm going to get you a little bit more. I'm going to get you a little bit more. I'm going to get you a little bit more. I'm going to get you a little bit more. I'm going to get you a little bit more. I'm going to get have a surprise proclamation and Ms. Connelly will do the honors. All right. I am reading a proclamation recognizing the false church news press. The false church news press is celebrating the 34th anniversary of weekly publication of Fall Search's independent locally owned newspaper. And the Fall Search News Press was first published on March 28, 1991 to benefit the residents of the City of Fall's Church and its environs with an independent newspaper of record providing news, announcements, comments, letters to the editor, advertising, and items of human interest. And the longevity of the paper is due to the tireless dedication of the news press staff, especially founder and editor Nicholas Benton, who report on local events and issues important to all false church residents. And freedom of the press and an informed citizenry has been a cornerstone of democracy in this nation. And the 1776 Virginia Declaration of Rights led the way for the first amendment press protections enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. And local newspapers bring communities together. And the false church news press has played a significant role in connecting the residents of false church with government, schools, and with one another. And celebrating the Smiles and Anniversary with the false church news press is an opportunity to remind residents of the necessity of a free press and emphasize the importance of newspapers in fostering accountability, transparency, improved public policy, community participation, and government responsiveness to the everyday lives of people. Now therefore I, Ledy Hardy, mayor of the City of Falls Church, Virginia, do hereby proclaim March 28th, 2025 as Falls Church News Press Day in the City of Falls Church and urge the community to recognize the 34th anniversary of the Fall's Church's news press. And actually, I have a surprise. This is yellow. Yeah. This is actually volume one, edition one, courtesy of the original Hardee's attic from March 28, 1991. So that is quite special. And actually the headline is, Rancor is public hearing on school cuts and tax increase. So I hope we have a better night ahead. If you would like to come up Mr. Benton and others to celebrate're welcome to as well. Come on, friends of the news press. Wow, very wonderful and I'm surprised. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Whitman, come on both sides. Don't fill up the sides too. Why isn't that lunchbox tables working? There you go. Come on. Oh, we have the day right now. It still looks so good. Yeah. No glasses. You should get jealous. Yay. It's good now. Yeah. It turns out like one, two, three. Another one. No, this is good. I was tired somewhere back then. You didn't even know who joined? You? Yeah, you could have joined the women's. Thank you. She goes by Dan Gordon. I know. I mean, I just did a phone call. Thank you. Any comments before we move on? I lost Mr. Benton, lost his safe? Yeah. Mr. Bentonton would you like to say anything? No. Mr. Lipman signed up to speak about the proclamation. Did you want to do that? Let's move on to public comment. Would you like to say it for comment or you want to do it now? Okay, welcome Mr. Elliman Push okay Okay, the steam council and Madam Mayor I Don't really have a speechification idea, but simply on behalf of CBC and its executive committee who talked about this a few weeks ago and here we are today with this, to save to Nick, take a note. Thank you for all you've done and well done. Thank you. Okay, let's move on to any oaths of office tonight. We have none tonight. Thank you. Okay, let's move on to receipt a public comment. Start with the summary written comments please. Yes, thank you. These are the written comments received before noon today. And start with the summary of written comments please. Yes, thank you. These are the written comments received before noon today. And since the last regular meeting, the BZA provided their annual report to City Council. Regarding the accessory dwelling unit ordinance, the following provided comments regarding suggested improvements to the ordinance. Henry Barr F and Andrew Olson. Mary Chavez provided comments about how public service regarding the accessory dwelling unit ordinance were presented. Sean Daken for Ten Salt Maple Avenue supports adoption of the ordinance. The following wrote in support of the changes to the minimum setbacks, Valerie Kelly, 602 Greenwich Street, Rodney and Patricia Langford, 1015 Madison Lane, John Mayor, 526 Greenwich Street, Camilla Ryan, 306A Pine Street, Kelly Port and Brian Sparry, 305 Walnut Street. Regarding the budget, the following wrote in support of the schools proposed FY26 budget, Jess Heganbart and Bethany and Chris Scully of 2723 Welcome Drive. In other written comments, Joseph Sherrizy provided a list of items in the Community Energy Action Plan that do not require significant cost to achieve. Dick and Patty Doyle of 304 Great Falls Street wrote with concerns about speeding on Great Falls Street and Miss Alina Bonanno wrote to say that the sidewalk ends on Crane Street because part of the street is in Fairfax County. Thank you. Right. Thank you. How about any virtual or live comments tonight? No, I don't have anybody signed up virtually. Thank you. Okay. And I do have a morning for Lisa. Welcome. Thank you and you pronounce that perfectly. Thank you. Good. So thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight. In March of last year we tragically lost Christina Goodwin. She was not only a cherished mother, daughter, sister, friend, teammate and coworker but she was also a very active and engaged community member. She served on multiple civic boards, including as chair of the Aurora House Citizens Advisory Committee, which is how I had the honor of knowing her. Christina valued education, civic engagement, and making opportunities accessible for others. And that's how she spent her time. So how she cared, it showed. And in honor of that, and also to honor her contributions, her family has been hard at work, creating the Christina Goudouin Reflection Garden at the new Cavalier Trail Plaza. And next month, Christina's family, friends, and community members are coming together to celebrate Christina's life. So I'm here for two reasons. First, I want to say thank you to everybody who has supported the reflection garden, as well as preparations for next month's event, letty hearty, Wyatt Shields, Cindy Master, Charles Prince, Erin Flynn, and I could probably be here all night long to name everybody, but just know that we're all thankful because there's absolutely no way that this could have happened either the reflection garden or the event next month without the city's support. So thank you. And secondly, I'm here to extend an invitation. We are going to be celebrating Christina's life on Saturday, April 26th at 11am. We're going to gather to dedicate the reflection garden. And we're going to follow with a reception at Ireland's four provinces. So we really welcome everybody to join to share memories, to honor Christina's legacy, as well as to view the beautiful new installation in the City of Falls Church. And I actually have some flyers here with the QR code to the invitation, as well as the opportunity to RSVP if you would like to attend. So I just want to say again, thank you so much to everybody. And I know we be a part of this and I'm going to be a part of this and I'm going to be a part of this and I'm going to be a part of this and I'm going to be a part of this and I'm going to be a part of this and I'm going to be a part of this and I'm going to be a part of this and I'm going to be a part of this and I'm going to say thank you to you as well. I think it was lovely to see the planting party that was out there this past weekend and all the hands at work honoring Christina's memory. We do have two signups for the accessory dwellings and that is a work session tonight so if you folks are ready to speak now. First we have Kelly Port followed by Brian Sparry. Okay. Welcome, a sport. Hello. My name is Kelly Pore. I'm at 30 go to the park. Welcome, a sport. Hello. My name is Kelly Port. I'm at 305 Walnut Street. I'd like to begin by thanking the council for hearing our concerns in the last meeting regarding the placement of accessory dwellings on corner lots. We appreciate all the work that Jack and the staff have done since that meeting to address these concerns. We read the recent staff report and revised draft ordinance has done an excellent job of incorporating the 10-foot setback for corner-lot ADs, but in front and inside yards of perpendicular adjacent lots like ours, with wording that is succinct and effective. We would like to reiterate our support for this ordinance change and encourage the City Council members to approve the change and include this wording in the final version. The Council raised a couple of questions during their discussion last time that we would like to briefly address. The first question was whether our house is actually located adjacent to a corner lot. Despite how our property might appear in the real estate assessment database, we would like to assure you that our house is indeed next to a corner lot. Though zoning administrators' office is familiar with the properties involved and can provide you with more information if desired. The second question had to do with whether or not the position of our lot was a special case. According to a zoning conformity analysis of the city's neighborhoods performed in 2012 and provided to us by Jack, there are 329 corner lots in the city. While all corner lots do not have the same configuration, an examination of city zoning maps indicates that our situation and interior lot, perpendicular to a corner lot, is definitely common. A 10-foot setback for corner lot ADs about in front or side yards of adjacent lots will address privacy concerns for both the adjacent lots home and the AD. Provide space for screening plantings, enable more light to reach both dwellings, create a more visually appealing separation between the dwellings as viewed from the street, and reduce the potential for water drainage issues. Our house is required to have a 10 foot setback from the side yard lot line, allowing an AD to have a 5 foot setback right next to our house on the other side of that same lot line would in effect give preferential treatment to the AD. ADs are intended to be some ordinent to primary dwellings per the zoning draft ordinance. Please hold an AD at least to the same roles as a house like ours when it is next to or in front of the house and do not allow it to be closer to the lot line than a 10-foot setback. We wonder if we reiterate we are not against ADs. We think they will make a good addition to the city of Falls Church. And we think that corner lots will likely become some of the first adopters to build ADs, given the easy accessibility to an AD from the street. We simply ask that you treat corner-lar ADs on equal footing as adjacent primary dwellings like ours and require that the setback be 10 feet. Thank you. Thank you. Next we have Brian Sparry. Welcome. Hello. I'm Brian Sparry. I live at 305 Walnut Street also. And I wanted to bring up just another smaller concern that we had. It's a special case regarding ADs. But in section 48-122370, state's detached accessory dwellings shall not be located in a front yard, nor are closer to any street than the principal dwelling. We are definitely in agreement with that. However, we're concerned that this language leaves the door open for a non-conforming AD to be built by right. Our concern is that in situations where the primary dwelling is non-conforming and encroaches into the front yard setback, an AD could be built so that it too is non-conforming but yet satisfies the ordinance draft wording that it remains not in the front yard of the principal dwelling near closer to the street. The wording does not prevent the AD from encroaching into the front yard setback when the primary dwelling does as well. We initially assumed that somewhere in the code, there must be a statement saying that ADs must meet the front yard setback while also meeting the conditions stated in 7D. But so far we have not found where it states that. Given that the intent is for AD construction to be a by-right event that requires only a permit, our recommendation is to include in 48-1223-70 or some other place if that makes more sense to the staff. A clause explicitly stated that ADs must meet the same front yard setback requirement as primary dwellings, even if that dwelling is non-conforming at the time the AD is constructed. Thank you. Thank you. And I have nobody else signed up. Okay. Thank you. Well, we do have a public hearing, I think, as we get into the actual agenda. So should we have? So the decision. No, for decommissioning weapons. So should we have any comments then? We will welcome them. So let's move on to report the City Manager and it is budget presentation night. Welcome to our school friends and Mr. Shields. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That's super. No, I can do. Please put me on three minutes. I'll be right there. All right, thanks sir. We'll see how we do. Okay. I'll be right there. Alright, thanks sir. We'll see how we do it. Okay. I want to right back. All right, thanks, sir. We'll see how we do. OK. I want to thank everybody for inviting us tonight. We're looking forward to having this conversation with you all. I'm T. Gould. I'm Chair of the Falls Church City School Board. And I am joined by my school board colleagues in the back, Kathleen Tyson, Jared Anderson, Anshur Wood, Amy Murphy, andany Henderson, and Lori Silverman are possibly on their way. So we, but we appreciate everybody having us here. I wanna thank Mr. Shields for having us, not just tonight, but also in all the conversations leading up to this budget, and we look forward to having this conversation with you all. And finally, I'd like to thank the staff. We had hundreds of teachers and staff and principals that have helped us create this budget. This process started for us back in August and we have spent a significant amount of time creating this needs-based budget we're looking forward to presenting to you all tonight. The next slide is about our strong partnership and our benefits of shared community. I don't need to read this but I think what I really want to encapsulate on this slide is the work that went into this is specifically the person behind me, Dr. Noonan. This is his last budget as he is entering retirement and we are excited to not be in Mr. Benton's headlines for our Ranker's School Board budget presentation. We were thinking about that though. We're thinking about doubling our ask tonight to try to get you some sales and advertising. But Dr. Newton has spent significant amount of time presenting this budget, but also laying the groundwork for a good relationship, a collaborative relationship with the city all these years. And we cannot thank Dr. Newton enough for not only leading that collaboration and facilitating that good relationship, but setting the bar for all the years to come to make sure we do not get back into Mr. Ben's headlines. And obviously, Dr. Newn has done that with his staff, Kristen Michael, who was not here, who was transferred to another district, but she has clearly been her fingerprints or all over this budget and her counterpart, Michelle Copic, has been instrumental in creating the budget that you're going to see tonight, but also significantly helping us understand the budget and by us it's not just the school board, but it's the teachers, it's the staff, it's the principals, and most importantly it's a community, which is this is where their budget the doctor, the patients going. So we have a couple of infographic slides here and all these slides you've seen before, but they highlight our rankings, they highlight our international baccalaureate, highlights, they highlight our different participation from our students. And what we want you to take away from all of this is this is not just the schools the schools accomplishments. It's not just our students. This is schools. It's the city. All of this groundwork, all of this this is all from everyone in this room the community the engagement. So this is all of us that we can celebrate how great our schools are that serve our students every single day. There, we also have a few slides about our strategic plan. Again, you all were part of this process. Dr. Noonan, this is another one of his legacies is going to leave behind, which was a very year-long process to create a strategic plan that guides all of our decisions and make sure that we are staying focused both than our budget conversations and our staffing conversations and our curriculum conversations. But this has been a pivotal part of how we make our decisions. And there's more of the strategic plan, I think Councilmember Connolly has many different versions of this, placemats and brochures, napkins. I can't remember all the different versions you have, but there are many. So as we start to talk about the budget, well, we want to start to focus on first as the enrollment. And this is what, as you all know, this is what drives our focus and how our needs are. We always say that a favorite line that Dr. Newton says is we can do this in false search city. we can do by students by name and by need. And in order to make sure we adhere to that, we have. a favorite line that Dr. Newton says is we can do this in Fallsturch City, we can do by students by name and by need. And in order to make sure we adhere to that, we have to focus on understanding our enrollment. So we're gonna look first at our historic enrollment. And you can look at our, like to call this, our Pixie Stick paragraph here, for those children of the 80s. And you can see here the different grades, we tried to a breakdown and everyone has this slide deck. And the public will also have this as well. But you can look at the different changes in grades over time. And you can look at our overall enrollment. And as you can see, we are now at the highest enrollment that we've had in a long time. And Ms. Connelly is that correct? I think in December, we were not there yet, but now we are there in terms of enrollment. And there's really not, I think a question we are often asked is, can you read into any grades? Are there certain grades that are higher than others in any reason why and there are not? We've had demographers look at this. It's pretty much a, it just depends on who comes in. We don't have people come in. In kindergarten, we have people come in in kindergarten, first grade, third grade, 12th grade, 11th grade. So there really is no trends that you can see by grade. What you should really focus on in this is really just the overall our enrollment is increasing. And we feel like that's because of the interest in our schools, the success of our teachers, our staff, our principals, people want to come here for our schools. And that's a testament to our entire community. We would say the other is we do have, this is not on there, but 32, we are 32 higher than our projected enrollment as of March 22nd. We are doing our count in April, sorry, Dr. Nguyen. So we'll do another formal count. We do one in September and another in April and we'll have those numbers for you all. But we are already past our projected for this year. And we'll talk about that because we wanna make sure that every student that comes here is served by our great schools and our teachers and staff. You can see a breakdown of our students' services. What we tried to provide here is where is the enrollment, where are we serving the enrollment, what are the changes? And you can see from this chart, we have a change from prior year, that's the second to last column on the right. And you can see the economic disadvantage. You can see our students with 504 plan. You can see English for speakers of other languages. Those are where our growth areas are for students with additional needs. And those are typically those type of student populations come with other different services that we have to make sure we address whether that's additional transportation, whether it's additional resource teachers, different services. So those are the growth areas and you can also see some of the areas where we have declines but given the the raw numbers you can see there's probably not we couldn't read into that in terms of any kind of trends when you have one or two students that are changing. But regardless we want to serve all students and that's our goal. I was going to talk about this, but I think you all have firm understanding of your new housing since you all approve this. But we are making sure that we have, as all these new developments come online that we're ready to serve, and as conversations and questions have happened, making sure that our projections for all these different housing areas, we understand where the students are coming from. So we should have that later this year. Our enrollment forecast combined. So this chart is where we are with our enrollment. And as you can see, we have three lines, and we're probably going to retire the top one soon. But the gray line is our projections that we used to have pre-COVID. Then under that, we have our yellow line, and that's our actual enrollment. So it actually follows the projected enrollment that we had pre-COVID. But it's just a touch shorter. And then we have our blue line, which is our Weldon Cooper, which is the state's projections that were provided every year. And as you can see, our enrollment, actual enrollment is significantly higher than our projected enrollment. So we're obviously, as with the city council, we have a joint demographer that we hire to understand where the trends are and to get into the nuances. And we appreciate that partnership with you all. I know from a school's perspective, as well as a city's perspective. This enrollment by grade is the Pixie Stick version a little bit broken out. And you can see it's this is more for curiosity of where the different grades are increased by. You can see if you try to look at that last column, changes from FY 2025 actual, there really isn't any trend. You don't see more numbers in the high school versus the Mount Daniel versus JTP. You know, that changes each year depending on how people coming in out and how people move into the district.. But overall you can see that we are consistently increasing our number of students that we're serving and our principals do an impressive job of serving these students understanding where the resources should be for each of these for each of these grades and the students that we serve and we cannot thank our principals enough for the ability for flexibility and ensuring that we have that attention for our students wherever they enroll. All right now we'll go ahead and get to our advertised budget. This is our slide to remind us all about our City Council guidance which we are ensuring that we follow. And as we came in with our local funding. the guidance that we were provided back in December was 5.9%. And as Dr. Nune has done in the last seven years, has provided a guidance, a budget that comes in at guidance. So we're excited to be able to do that for his final budget. And our needs based budget that we're presenting tonight is also at 5.9%. We're going to go through our different revenue sources and then we'll go through how we're going to spend the funds in terms of how we propose to spend our funds. So we've got state revenue. If we presented on these numbers and in terms of where the state budget was, this slide would probably change each day. I think there was an update today. Maybe Dr. Noon can provide more details. But overall, we can happily present that there is more optimism in the state budget than the last 150 years on education spending. For other revenue, our federal revenue is not as high in terms of percent, it's around 6% or just under 6% and we have and we have our different revenues that we provided here for a breakdown. For our advertised budget revenue and this is clearly from where our sources come in, our local transfer is the largest percent of our budget. Last year, I think it was just over 80 percent. This year, it's under just under 80 percent, and that's mainly because the state revenue has ticked up a bit, which helps with our funding and our needs. You can see the other sources, our federal revenue is not as great, and that's typical for our district, and that's typical for many districts that have property taxes that make up our additional revenue. And you can look into the chart, we probably get a question on this, the IDEA, you'll see a drop in federal revenue. And that's nothing to do with the changes and the changes that's going on right now with a lot of the federal education politics. That's just mostly because of the formula changes that they have. So we're not concerned by the drop. They do fund based on the numbers that we send the year prior. So that will be made up for in the following year. We basically send our kids count to IDEA to get our funding provided to us. So it's a formula-based funding. All right. Now we'll go through our contractual obligations for where we're going to be making sure we meet the needs. There are out of the 3.3 million that you can see here, you can see a significant amount goes to both our step increase. And for those, that is the idea that we want to provide all of our teachers and staff with a promotion based on their salary step schedule. And then we also have a cost-illiving adjustment for 2.5%. And that's per CBA, which stands for our Collective Bargaining Agreement. This is our initial Collective Bargaining Agreement that we have with our False Church Education Association. The other areas of our contractual obligations, you can see our retirement match. We have different homebound, private day programs. Our health insurance rate increases. It was not as high as we thought it would be, so that was good to know, but we do have that included on there. So overall, this is our contractual obligations. I would say, as you can see, a significant amount is for our step increase and our cost of living adjustment. We are most of our funds are for staffing costs for schools and that's typical of most school districts. We do want to make sure that we are committed to ensuring that our races and how we treat our staff and our teachers are aligned with how the city treats its staff. staff. We are a big team. I know my comments in the past have probably divided a little bit. And I apologize about that. I'll be more clear about ensuring that all of our city staff, all of our teachers. staff. We are a big team. I know my comments in the past have probably divided a little bit. And I apologize about that. I'll be more clear about ensuring that all of our city staff, all of our teacher staff, our school staff are important. And we want to make sure that we work together. So Dr. Noonan and Mr. Shields have done a great job of trying to align that in December. And we'll continue that commitment to make sure we're working on that going for it. Our enrollment growth. So clearly we've been talking about enrollment. So we want to talk about how we're working on that going forward. Our enrollment growth. So clearly we've been talking about enrollment. So we want to talk about how we're going to address this enrollment. Most of our enrollment growth we're going to be hiring classroom teachers. If you think of our classroom teacher ratio, we want to keep that low. Otherwise we start to align our teacher student ratio with our neighboring districts. And that's we think. That's one of the main reasons why not just families want to move here, but our teachers and staff want to work here as well. So we've dedicated a significant amount of our funds to hiring classroom teachers to adjust for that enrollment growth. With that, though, that's just not classroom teachers. We have special education teachers, paris, counselors. We have a number of other teachers and resource teachers and staff that support that enrollment growth. We try to color code it based on instructional staff in the classroom, student support, transportation, student supplies. That's the blue. You can see that we've got the going around the circle there, we've got an assistant athletic director, that's assistant athletic and activities director. As you can imagine, we have more students that want to participate and we want to make sure we support them in both sports and activities abound. And we have transportation, more students, more needs for transportation. So all of these focus on our enrollment growth. It's not just as simple, it's just hiring more classroom teachers. Finally, we've got our current obligations. These obligations, we are trying to convert, as we have done in the past, there's been a significant uptick in federal funding for school districts around the country and sometimes that has gone to one time funding for staff, which is obviously, as you all know, is not a healthy way to maintain staff. And so we are converting some of our highest needs for these one time staff funding to permanent positions. So we've got, you know, like our special education paris. We've got our English for speakers of other languages. As you see some of those around that chart align with our enrollment, our highest enrollment growth for our students with different needs. We also have textbooks, computer needs, lease purchases, as you can imagine, more students, more needs for those students. And then finally, we obviously have increases, but we also have reductions. And we wanna talk about three areas of reduction and clear up a couple of questions that we might be getting or that we have gotten as That Dr. Noon has gotten his staff in the school board The three areas are Salary laps and this is a number of 544,000 that we have And I don't know what the right term is here, but we are over under projected This means if a teacher let's say as an experienced teacher has retired and we hire a teacher that doesn't have as much experience we're not paying as much for that that position. So there would be part of that 544,000. That happens with teachers that retire or leave. If there's a teacher that retires we do not try to hire a new teacher teacher to try to save funds. We hire the best teacher. We hire, and that has never been a practice that we've had here. So the goal is to just hire the best staff that we can have in front of our students. But it does have, you know, as sometimes we have, we have more retirements and teachers leave in years. And so that's our number for savings there. Our summer school redesign is also a part of our reduction. We have Dr. Nunez team under the leadership of Dr. Bates and others. They looked at our summer school, and they want to make sure our summer school model is efficient, and it is effective. And those are the two tasks that they have with that summer school. They looked at that summer school program and they realized it could be more targeted. We have not, I know there's been some questions about what that means in terms of are we getting rid of summer school? No, we are not getting rid of summer school. Are we moving everyone to online? No, we are not moving everyone to online. What they have done is they have made sure that the number of students that are served are getting targeted services. They have done an entire read model. They presented it at school board, multiple meetings. There was a significant date. I can't remember the date of it. Dr. Nino, but it was over an hour and a half of Dr. Bates and his team presenting and the school board asking questions. If you want more details, I would encourage you to see that school board meeting. We as a school board feel very comfortable and confident that this is a good model for summer school. The high school, the online summer school that has a significant enrollment is not changing. It's really just the focus on the students with needs at the elementary school level that we're really focusing on. So again, I encourage you to attend our school board meeting over YouTube and you can see all the details. If you have any questions, we'll be glad to answer them. I think Dr. Bates is here as well. So he would love to come up here and answer questions. And finally, we have our transitional retirement program. There's just some savings, $20,000 from fewer participants. So if you look at that, we look at our contractual obligations, our enrollment growth, our current obligations, minus our reductions, that leads to about $4.6 million from changes from our FY 2025 approved budget, which was the last year's operating budget. And again, a lot of that funding goes to our salaries and our benefits for our teachers, our principals, our school leaders, our central office staff. That's just how schools operate. We do have our breakdown of where the funding is going to be going for our different transportation needs, our capital replacements, transfer and reserves. You can see that breakdown there, but we want to provide a visual for how that operates, how that all comes together. So in closing, this is our needs-based budget. We fully understand the stress, the lack of prediction in terms of where we're going, not just as a city, but as a state and as a country in terms of our budget. We had that on the forefront of our minds for all of our budget deliberations. And we understand that there's a significant amount of deliberation that will go on by this body over the next two months. We feel like that we respected that, and we are providing needs-based budget based on the enrollment growth. We have eliminated positions, we have asked tough questions for Dr. Nunez's team. We've done our job to make sure that we feel very comfortable and confident that we're not trying to provide added stress to you all given what you all are up with. But we are, we might guidance for the seventh year in a row row and we're excited about that in terms of presenting this for you. We've got a budget calendar. I think you all probably have this memorized. But if you have any other information, Ms. Copic has a significant amount of budget information that she provides on our website. We really appreciate of all the work that she has done and making sure that not just the school board, city council, but especially the community understands what we're trying to do from a budget perspective. So I appreciate it. I'm going to have Dr. Noonan come up as well to help field questions, but thank you very much for the time. Great. Thank you, Dr. Gold. And thank you for you on the board and Dr. Newton congrats on your final budget. Appreciate all the hard work getting us close to coming in at guidance. So, do we want to do questions now or wait? Thank you for you in the board and Dr. Newton congrats on your final budget appreciate all the hard work getting us close to coming in at guidance so Do we want to do questions now or wait close to we are at guidance at guidance Do we want to ask questions hour wait for mr. Shields presentation do it together? What's council want? Wait Okay, maybe have a seat and hang on a little longer. Thank you, Council. So it's a pleasure to be here with you tonight to present our proposed FY 2026 budget. I would like to start my comments tonight where Chair Gold left off and it makes some comments just about what we're experiencing in the region today and and then I'll go through presentations about 20 to 21 slides and then if at the end if I could make some comments of thanks and acknowledgement to all the people who work together to produce these these budget recommendations for the city council The theme of our budget this year is sustaining momentum together and that theme comes out of the context that we're in today We're in an era where our region is experiencing new challenges that are impacting our economy and impacting our households in ways that we've never experienced before. At the same time, we're a growing city. And so here in the City of Falls Church, we are experiencing growth and with that growth comes new revenues, new opportunities, and new costs that we need to address in the budget. And that's a big part of what we're trying to do with this budget. And we're doing so in a context where we know that the City of Falls Church has one of the highest ratios of our working population of our residents, over 16% are federal employees. So our neighbors, our community members, our leaders in this community, many of them are experiencing unemployment or the prospect of unemployment and that's going to bring about new needs that we've never faced before as a community. And so in many respects, we haven't even been able to quantify what that might mean for us. And so it's an uncertain environment, even as we're growing and have a lot of very positive things happening in this community. And so that's what we mean by seeking to sustain momentum together, because we have so many good things that are moving forward and this budget tries to carry forward those initiatives in a reasonable way. So what we have in terms of sort of an agenda, we'll cover revenues first. We'll talk about strategic priorities and on the expenditure side, we'll do a quick overview of the capital improvements program. We're going to spend much more time on that later. We'll wrap up with a discussion of fund balances and reserves, a quick touch on utility funds, and then discuss the budget schedule. So in terms of our general fund revenues, this is really for the public's benefit. The City Council knows this chart very well, but we are 57% of our revenues come from real estate. We have a growing commercial sector of that. Multi-family apartments is included in the commercial basis of our tax base, but we also have new hotels, new office buildings, new grocery stores that are coming onto our tax rolls. Over 50% of the city's revenues come directly from the commercial sector. A big, so 57% of our revenues come from real estate, so we'll talk about that in a bit more detail. We have very strong growth in our assessed values. If you take the overall picture, a 10 and a half percent growth the overall cost of the overall cost of the overall cost of the overall cost of the overall cost of the overall cost of the overall cost of the overall cost of the overall cost of the overall cost of the overall cost of the overall cost of the overall cost of the overall cost of the overall cost of the overall cost of the overall cost of the overall cost of the overall cost of the overall cost of the overall cost of the overall cost of the overall with a growth of 6.9% of market appreciation that along with all these numbers is higher than what the City Council looked at in our initial projections back in December. But both the schools and the general government have built budgets based on the impact to homeowners in the city that was envisioned with the lower assessed values that were projected back in December. So the way that we would do that is we in this budget we propose a reduction in the real estate tax rate of two and a half cents and I'll talk in just a moment about what kind of what that means for the median tax bill in the city but we propose a budget that's built around a rate of a dollar 18 and a half per hundred dollars of assessed value. There are no other changes proposed to tax rates in this budget. We do have some utility tax rate changes that we'll talk about at the end of this presentation. So over the past six years, five out of the past six years we've had a reduction in reduction in real estate tax rates as both market appreciation has risen and remarkable levels as we've rebounded from COVID and as new construction has given the city budget space to be able to reduce tax rates and light of those rising market valuations. So with the reduced rate, the average, the median tax bill would increase by 3.4% or $400. And that's slightly below what was discussed in December. In terms of other revenues in the city, the CAR tax, which is personal property, I just note that we do have healthy growth in that revenue source because again new residents, new households moving into the city and bringing their vehicles with them and those will be added to the tax rolls. Sales tax, about a 5% increase. Meals and B poll, we proposed to hold flat, partly because we had very strong projections in the current fiscal year and based on our quarterly financial reports we think it's wise as to hold those revenue streams flat in the coming fiscal year in terms of our projections and then hotels continue to rebound from the pandemic and so we have very strong growth in the hotel tax revenue source. And that also is because we have new hotels opening up in the city. Now we'll shift to the expenditure side. And this also is a pie chart that the city council is very familiar with. Education, our commitment to education is a very strong part of the general fund budget. Debt service is 8% of the budget and that's been decreasing in recent years. And we'll talk about debt service in a bit more detail, but Mary Ellen Henderson is coming off of the debt rolls. And so that's one important reduction in debt service in the coming fiscal year. Then going kind of around clockwise, public safety is 13% of the budget. That includes fire and police, public works, 7% recreation, parks, and our library is 5% of the budget. Housing, human services, 3% and community development and building safety and economic development is 5% of the budget. So this is a short chart that ties everything together. So in terms of the growth of the operating budgets, on the general government side, we'd have a $3.5 million increase in the general government budget a 6.5% increase the school transfer 5.6% or 2.9 million and before I moved to the other lines just a note on those similar to the school budget the the general government budget has revenue streams that are outside of the principles of revenue sharing that we've been following for the past seven years. So those include building permits, investment returns, fines, and that type of thing. So those revenues, investment returns being the largest of them is the reason, is what's sort of the growth above that 2.9 million for general government. In the budget, we are proposing a revenue contingency, and that is to provide the city with some flexibility over the coming fiscal year. As I noted at the beginning, we have not really been able to quantify what the economic impacts of the changes at the federal government, what they will mean for our region, but we provide a revenue contingency for that. On debt service, stepping down $1.8 million, and that's due to normal amortization of our debt, as well as the reduction from Mary Ellen Henderson. And then investments in Pays You Go Capital and our capital reserves, we did a sort of a big heavy lift on using capital reserves and Pays You Go last year's budget or the current year's budget. And we take a moderation of that, a much less drawdown on capital reserves in the coming year's budget. And so that's a significant change. And then tax relief and incentives, that is a $729,000 increase to the budget and we'll talk about that at a later work session. But all in, then taking all that together is overall a 2.8% decrease this fiscal year relative to last year. Again, the main reasons it's a decrease is because of debt service and use of capital reserves. So some of the key strategic priorities, I wanna thank the council. The council has been very consistent and strong in the vision that you've laid out for the city for improvements in environmental sustainability and transportation, making our streets safer for all users and growing a healthy economy and with business services with the city that serve our residents well and our business community well, meeting our housing needs and a series of initiatives under good governance. I'm sustaining momentum together. We kind of synthesize that down as staff is working through this budget into three big areas, investing in our people, putting people first. That's residents, community members, and our workforce, advancing safety in the coming year and improving our core infrastructure. So let's talk about some of that in more detail. Kinda here's sort of the full picture of what's new in the budget. The largest line item is for compensation to maintain competitiveness for our workforce and also to acknowledge that in this time of change and with all the growth and dynamism that has been happening in the city, our workforce has really had to step up with resilience, with adaptability, with ingenuity, and with a lot of hard work to make that be successful for the city. And if you look around the region, all of our surrounding jurisdictions, even if they have very difficult budgets, they are all investing in their workforce, and this budget does the same for our workforce here in the city. We do have a lot of pressure and the costs of our inter-gearstictional contracts with Arlington County and Fairfax County. $903,000 in total increases in our contractual costs for the coming year. Relying principally now on investment returns and some of the other revenue streams outside of local taxes were able to put additional money for street maintenance. So I'll talk a little bit more about that in just a moment to make some investments in our IT and our financial system so that people can do business with the city more efficiently and the revenue contingency that I mentioned just a moment ago. So putting people first, talking about our workforce investment, also investments in IT and affordable housing, all those ultimately are investments in people. So our workforce investments, that's new funding in the the budget that will fund a 5% merit increase for all city employees for a uniform police officers. They would experience a cola and a step increase which comes to together a 5% increase in compensation as well. The budget also fully funds the ARPA positions. The city had three positions that were funded with ARPA funds. Last year we moved 50% to have them paid with local taxes. This year there are 100% funded and sustained with local taxes. Investment in our financial systems, the goal here is to make it easier for our workforce to get their job done and and also for the public to be able to get business done with the city. We want to have those routine transactions more frictionless and easier for everyone to execute so that the harder problems staff is freed up to be able to address those. With affordable housing, we're sustaining the $500,000 investment and affordable housing with 150,000 of that going to sustaining the program to fried rental assistance for households at 40% AMI and then the remaining 350,000 is a contribution to the housing fund for future affordable housing investments in the city. In the area of advancing safety, one of the large items in our budget is changes to the Arlington County fire contract. They have adopted a new model of staffing their stations county wide and station six is part of that county wide change and there's a step up of $500,000 in this year's budget relative to last year's budget to meet those needs. The city moved to body-worn cameras several years ago. We need to refresh that technology and so we have $133,000 investment to do so. We're sustaining the $200,000 a year for neighborhood traffic calming and we're sustaining the money and the CIP for new fire hydrants. And we have a position to help the city with its accreditation process, professional standards manager. This was discussed quite a bit last year and last year's budget, it was not funded. As we went through this fiscal year, we made some adjustments in our budget, and we did find funding for that accreditation manager, and that position is now sustained in the budget. We're very pleased to be able to move forward and keep that going. That's a very high priority for a police department. Improving core infrastructure. So we have $2.2 million for roadway maintenance. And that's continuing a pattern of stepping up our investment in our roadways. This year it's a $700,000 increase over FY 25. And it has a breakout here of where those dollars will go for paving. Every time we repay, we put in bike facilities, we refresher pedestrian crossings and the other things that are listed here. I will note the last bullet. We have 200,000 for contracted project management, which is really important for us to be able to deliver the public improvements that are promised with this amount of money for our roadways. In the CIP, just a quick overview. Over the six-year CIP, we have 148 million in investments broken out through the areas listed here. I'm going to focus on FY26 and we'll have our next work session the budget. We'll be a deep dive in the Capital Improvements Program with our CIP coordinator, Caitlin Sobsi. Nine million for transportation. One million for public facilities. 14 million for sanitary sewer. And we've been discussing those investments and work sessions recently. Point nine million for public safety. Point5 for parks, .6 for stormwater, and 200,000 or .2 million for information technology, a total of 26.3 million in the coming year in the CIP. In terms of sources of funding for our CIP, just over 57 million of it is debt financed. However, I do want to note, there's no general fund supported debt planned for until FY28 with $30 million for the property yard, which would begin the design phase in fiscal year 2028 in construction in 2029. We have 5 million for fire station six for roof replacement and FY31 and then 22.6 million in the sanitary sewer fund over the six-year planning period for the CIP. The CIP relies on state and federal grants, 12 million in federal grants and 33 million and state grants. We're watching those very carefully and the current environment, but we believe we're strong in those funding sources. The CIP uses 9.9 million in capital reserves. This is a look at our fund balances and I'll start sort of with the blue section of the bar. We have just over 20 million and unassigned fund balance and that's our real shock absorber if there are any major disruptions to the economy or emergencies in the city and so that is not planned to be spent in any way. The purple bar above Unassigned Fund Balance is their capital reserves. And we use our CIP to spend all of that money in a planned way. I'll note that capital reserves do have a bump up in 2029 as phase two of West Falls. There's a $10 million payment for phase two and so that's shown into our capital reserves as well. And then the top section of the chart is our building permit fee and we always plan to have that carry us at least for three years. So even if major development stopped we have a three-year runway of building permit fees to maintain our building safety functions here in the city. on the utility funds, we do propose a rate changes just to address normal inflation. So the storm order fee at 2.7% increase, it's about a $7 increase for your average household in the city and the sanitary sewer fund similar, which is about a $14 increase for the average household. We are looking at sewer availability fees and we'll discuss those with the City Council. At a minimum we'd recommend a CPI adjustment to our availability fees to make sure that the developers when they hook up to the City are making the investments that we need to expand the system. I'll close with just a few notes on schedule. We have on Thursday at noon. the investments that we need to expand the system. I'll close with just a few notes on schedule. We have on Thursday at noon. This is not this Thursday, but the following Thursday, April 3rd, we'll have our first budget town hall. And people can participate in this room, either in person or virtually. On April 7th, we'll have a budget work session, and our focus will be on the Capital Improvements program and multi-year planning for affordable housing. On April 11th we'll be meeting with the budget finance committee and we'll be talking about our revenue forecast and we'll have our Q3 revenue numbers so we'll have new visibility in terms of our revenue forecast. We're asking for first reading of the budget tax and fee ordinances on April 14th than the series of budget work sessions all the way through May 12th with public hearing and final consideration of the budget ordinances. So tonight is just an overview and I look forward to answering any questions the council might have tonight. I do want to now make some acknowledgments and some thanks and I wanna start with the city council for your steadiness in terms of your consistency and vision and aspirations for the city that does I think help the whole staff and us trying to make sure that our resources are going where they need to be. To our budget team, I'm looking at Ed Kirin, Andy and Jenny. They're going to be spending a lot of time with you in the coming weeks at budget work sessions where we go through all the details of the budget. All of our department directors, just a big thank you for all of their thoughtfulness and creativity as we try to meet the challenges of the future. And then I'll end with a big thank you to our superintendent, Peter Ninnon. We are in the seventh year of working together in a planful way to try to be able to be predictable in terms of what we're going to be doing with each other's budgets and sharing information, sharing revenues in a transparent way. And I think that's been good for the city and he's been good for the city as a whole. And I want to thank Peter for his leadership and for his partnership over his great career here with the city. I'll stop there and look forward to answering any questions. And I'm sure that all the questions are going to be for the schools, so I'll sit down. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation, Mr. Schultz. There is a lot of good locally, but I think as you mentioned, I think being cautious and apprehensive is important to, given to quote unquote, read the room of both the regional and national climate and what that might mean for our economy. There's a lot of unknowns. So thank you for that. Let's start with questions, comments. Peace. But read the room of both the regional and national climate and what that might mean for our economy. There's a lot of unknowns. So thank you for that. Let's start with questions, comments for either the schools or general government. Or we can start with schools and then they can go home. Except the best way to start with school. Okay. Just a couple comments slash questions. So I was noticing on the one, in first of all, thank you for the presentation, Chair Gold, very informative, and thanks to your school board colleagues for being here this evening as well as the staff. I was just looking at the enrollment. And from what I just, I thought it was interesting looking at March 21st enrollment versus November. So that's almost 40 students just in the past four months. Right? So I think that's important to note that we're just, I know we often say that the enrollment continues to increase every month. Correct. Yes. And we've asked Dr. Nune and his team to provide a week-to-week enrollment for every school board meeting. So we are tracking on a week-to-week basis. So yeah. Yes. And we've asked Dr. Nune and his team to provide a week to week enrollment for every school board meeting. So we are tracking on a week to week basis. So yeah. That's good. So I'll also note. Yes. We are currently 31 students beyond what our enrollment projection was from last year. So we already have exceeded what we thought we were going to have. So that's a whole class of kids that at this point we're not staffed for. Right. Right. And then we're looking at, I guess, an additional 100 and what for next year then? What was the prediction on that? 159. 159. 159. The fear that we're worried about right now is that we may exceed that. Right. just based on these past couple months looking at that trend. I know that the school board has a policy for student to teach or ratios. And I believe if I'm remembering that it was 22 students per class at Mount Daniel, I think it bumps up to 25 at Oak Street, 24. And so are you those positions that you're looking to add with those be more at the elementary school level or do you I guess you may not know yet where you are going to put those? We actually have a pretty good sense of where we're seeing some of the enrollment spikes based on the per grade progressions from year to year. So we are looking at one or two at the elementary and then the rest of the secondary campus. That's where we're seeing the majority of the growth. Okay. I read somewhere in the presentation funding set aside for future enrollment growth. Is that just what you were talking about with the Just anticipating the growth. Yes, because of the enrollment is changing significantly and it's changing, we want to make sure that we are not committing our resources right now for about a one position to make sure we're tailoring that one position for projections in the next month or two, after we get past our April official count. Okay, just a couple more and then I'll turn this over to everyone's connects. I thought it was interesting that the current budget that you're presenting this evening 79.8% is coming from local government because when I was on the school board it was 82%. So we're slowly chipping away at that little by little. It's a really interesting, there are two points in the presentation that I think we're interesting for historians, at least on the council. The first is in the time that I've been here, it's never been less than 80%. So we are representing less than, you all are representing less than 80% in our school budget for the first time since I've started eight years ago. And the other is that as Henderson comes off the books, as city manager Shields talked about, and the debt service for the high school remains, we're less than 50% of the overall city budget for the first time in the nine, eight years that I've been here as well. That's terrific. I wanted to ask about the staff pay increases. So looking at the collective bargaining agreement and the coal, so the coal is 2.5% and then the one step. So I know that that's not a perfect sense, but on average, what would that mean for a staff salary increase on average percentage wise? It's up on average about a 5% increase overall. It's close to what the city manager has for the general government as well. Okay, so about 5% average. I just to throw it out there. I'm very supportive of the athletics. I have to throw that out there. You know you all have done a great job of really trying to show where you're going to need to be adding staff to handle this enrollment increase. And so I think athletics is a great example of something that not only we have more and more kids participating athletics but also many of you may know their activities through VHSL. So it's not just athletics it's also debate and there's a theater and there's other things. We've also added mock trial. Yes, all those. So we've also added more sports as well. Yes, that's right. That's right. We're at a boys volleyball. You're right. So thank you. So that's just I know that we're not supposed to comment on specifically how you're all gonna spend your money, but I just wanted to say I think that's a great, great addition. I think that's it for me. Thank you very much for your presentation. Thank you. Other questions? Production in or Dr. Gold? Go ahead, although that's my question. I just had a quick question about that this year, Spikening and Roman Growth, that caused any of our classes to be out of the ratio that we, or ratio goals of 22 and 24 students. Like if we had a club so that very closely. It's an average more than it is per class. So one of the things that we have to be really cognizant of as we're staffing for example is we have some students that might be aging out and aging out is not the the right word, but ending their career in French, for example, and they're taking IB French or French for. And those classes when students are finishing might be in a class of 14 or 15, because there's some attrition over time, which sometimes means that another class might be larger than that 24. It's a rare occasion, but we do pay very close attention to that. So the more direct answer to your question is we monitor it on a very close basis. So when students come in, one of the first things our school counselors will do is look at where there is space and then move students into those classrooms where there's space as opposed to just plugging them in anywhere randomly. So we haven't had any. We've been able to do that thus far. We've been thus far we've been able to do a pretty good job of getting students in where there's whether they haven't met the cap in that classroom. And do we have any sense of the impact of USAID? I know we had been told, had been shared to our community that there would be an influx of students returning to our region. Have we, do we have any? Well, I think last year and I talked about we didn't have any specific data on that, but have you seen a? But yeah, no, it's a good question. We still don't have specific data on it. We do have some anecdotal data and we are seeing a couple of families, but that's the extent of it. So it hasn't been a surge per se. It's just growth from all different parts. And in the projections for next year's growth, do we have any, I guess we haven't seen a factor of that this year, you probably aren't necessarily factoring in return from State Department or other international locations. As part of our growth, it's more organic growth or is that a part of what has been considered by Stephen Fuller? Yeah, that's another great question. We did not factor in sort of the political landscape that's happening right now across the globe, really. And we would anticipate, based on current, current political, geopolitical climate, that there would be some additional students that will likely come from other places around the globe. So we do not have that fact in it, but one of the things that the school board did in the last meeting before they adopted their advertised budget was to set aside that small one position staffing reserve in case there is a need. Okay, and that's it for me for the moment. Thanks. Is that real? Thank you so much for explaining all of this. I have two quick questions, and I'm sure there will be much more time to answer more questions later. I thought it was really interesting looking at the chart of student services, economically disadvantaged, increased significantly by 44 students. Also English for speakers of other languages increased by 45. I imagine that for English for speakers of other languages that is additional services that you might need. For the economically disadvantaged are there additional services that the school provides for those students, or is that not necessarily an additional cost? That's another good question. It's not an academic service that students receive if they're economically disadvantaged. It means that they get free or reduced lunch. So lunch and breakfast. So what happens then is because we do participate with the USDA program, we are able to build back for a portion of that. Just for context to make sure that the council is also aware, one of the reasons that this number may have gone up is that for the last several years we've been able to provide free lunch and free breakfast to our students. but that benefit went away post-COVID. And so we're seeing more and more of our parents who are in poverty applying for free and reduced lunch because they didn't have to previously. So that's been a two-year cycle. Interesting. Okay, so the numbers post-COVID might have been underrepresented in terms of who might need free and reduced lunch. Traditionally, you have to require the parents to apply for that and sometimes I can vary based on school district based on comfort of who applies to be labeled disadvantaged. Great. Okay. And then my other question, so there's the cola and the step which is about 5%. Does that apply to all employees, including custodial staff, or are there different tranches or categories of staff? Thank you for the question. We have not in the last eight years differentiated between tranches of staff. So whether you're a custodian, a school administrator, a teacher, a bus driver, we do the same step and the same call for everyone. And part of that is to remain really competitive in the region as well. And what we're finding is, you know, it's not just teachers that are competitive. It's bus drivers. Bus driver pay is competitive. Food service pay is competitive as well. So trying to stay in those lanes to be at that 95% of market. Great. Okay. Well, thank you so much. Of course. Molly. Um, I have a zipper question. So this is for Keenan and why it as well. And that is the Maryl and Henderson debt comes off the books this year, right? That's a big deal. That was a huge part of our planning for the high school and our long range planning was to take that debt off the book. So I just wanted to know when that day is so that we can have a party. We can note it somehow. What's the last time we're paying on that? Yeah, do we have like a last coupon that we pay on those? 20 years ago, finally. The spring. The last because spring. This spring. This spring. Yes. Yeah, let's do something. I was saying that to my son and he said, oh, I remember drawing on the gym floor. You were there, Lindy. Drawing on the gym floor before it went in and that was 21 years ago must have been. So we had to do it again when it flooded though. We got to do it again. We re-tid it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, all the signatures. But again, that was that's a big deal. That was a huge step for this community 22 or 23 years ago when the decision was made to build that school. We hadn't opened a school in a long time. So I do feel like as a community, that is a notable moment that we can finish that. And we need to do more than just mention in the budget. We need to have a little ribbon around it and have a party. That's my question. Oh, that was questions. I have more for why. I have more for. OK, Ms. Flynn. I just wanted to thank the school leadership team and the school board for all your work over the last few months. I know that when we were together in December, you were looking at a budget that was greater than this budget and in recognition of all the challenges that we're facing. We're coming in at what I guess would be more like a flat budget even though we've taken the two and a half cents off the tax rate because of the increased assessed values overall that this is what we set out at the zero tax increase even though we're seeing the few hundred dollar increase on a median and household sort of calculation. So again, thank you for all of your work and that recognition and really coming in. Meeting needs while also recognizing what we're all facing and the challenges that Council will have in particular over the next you know, a couple months as we see things continue to unfold. I had one quick question which was just on federal revenues and I know that this is just a small part of your budget and my hope would be that given federal revenues are attached both to IDEA funds and then title 1 through 4 funding that they wouldn't be as readily disturbed, so to speak. But to the extent that they would be thinking about kind of greater federal exposure on the city council side and less so on the school side, do you sort of foresee kind of having contingency funds or maybe some of the funding, you know, that was in your chart or places that you could pull from that that might exist just in terms of our planning were you to see that, unfortunately, in some way. All indications that we have in terms of the colleagues that we've been talking with and obviously regional and national leaders. There doesn't seem to be any interest from this administration to reduce the funding for the main federal pots for our students. So we feel like that and all the cuts that we've seen through the executive order and other efforts there hasn't been any cuts even to some degree to some of the staff that support those programs. We understand there will be changes to the programs and we're all trying to project and predict what those are going to be. But from a funding standpoint we feel pretty confident based on actual language from the administration there's going to be support for the title programs that we're relying on for those. So we're not in terms of could we absorb that if If that happened, I think if there's any changes in that language or that at the federal level, then we could start to plan for that. But right now we just haven't had to make that effort because we don't feel like those changes are going to happen. And that's based on conversations we have with people within the department, both public comments that have been made. So yeah. Mr. Steiner. Thank you. First of all, I second, Mary Beth Connelly's suggestion for a celebration for the Mary Owen Henderson debt retirement. One of the things I was very pleased to be engaged with was the Joint Council and School Board effort to bring that to design that and bring that home. So that would be great. Definitely support that. And also Councilmember Flynn raised the same question I did which is there is federal funding for certain of the programs 504 I think disability programs and others and considering the growth there I think we need to keep a very sharp eye on that and it sounds like you have and you're not looking at at least your best projection at this point or not serious cuts in the federal funding in those areas so glad to hear that. I would like some data on where the students are coming from single family versus multi family. And do your projections include the West End development and both the apartments and condominiums they're considering that they're right next to, as you said, the best senior high school and junior middle school in the state of Virginia. So the sort of the incentive will be even greater there than another part of the city to bring in students. So I'm just trying to get a handle on number one, percentages of students and new students, the growth element, multi-family versus single family, and then how have you figured in the West End development issues. And let me conclude with a big thank you to the work that you've done. It's substantial. I think whatever happens to the region that our school system is the strongest element of a stable and productive future for the City of Falls Church. So let me just ask you a couple of those questions going forward and thanks again. Thank you for the comments and thank you for the questions. First is the answer to your question about where the students are coming from. We will, we haven't revised it or updated it yet because we typically do it once a year. Sort of that one document of where students are coming from, whether they're coming from multi-family homes, whether they're coming from multi-family dwelling single-family homes, apartments, garden apartments, et cetera. And we will continue to monitor that and update that again in the fall once we begin to continue to see changes in enrollment, but we can rescind what we shared. I think it was in the December meeting. So you can see where those students are coming from. To your second question though, have we baked in the West End development? And the answer to that question is yes. We baked in not only West End, founders Row one, founders Row two, and Broad and Washington. And that was through the support of the Stephen Fuller Institute's data. And so we have been using their generation ratios as part of our evaluative process to determine how many students we can expect next year. And so that's how we landed on the 100, I think it's 154, additional. And it includes single family homes, correct? And that includes single family homes as well, which as a percentage still remains our highest percentage of students come from single family homes, but we are seeing more and more students come from a variety of different places. Any more questions before I go? Oh, God, Mrs. Scott. I just had a quick question, some minor detail. But when I was looking at the last numbers of enrollment, there was a surge at JTP. It was like 10 or 12 students, but those are students that were not educating in JTP. They're of that age and they are receiving services elsewhere. So that, I wonder how we reflect that in the budget. Like it's, it may be good for the student teacher ratios in that, you know, we have future fewer students being educated by our teachers, but where did the cost elements? Can you remind me where it flows back into the budget? Like, so when we're looking at the overall enrollment growth, there's a big surge there. I'm gonna make sure I understand. Yeah, so there's an increased expense because we're sending them elsewhere, but it's a lower, it doesn't impact our student teacher ratios. So we're not sending kids elsewhere. What we are doing next year is we have a half a position that that that person will actually go out and provide services to three and four year olds, which is kind of what we do already, but as it sort of catches catch can. But this this time next year we'll be providing those services where the kids are. Literally in home, you mean? Not in home, but in qualified daycare centers and other places. So for example, if a student is at the Baptist Church, we do have speech therapists that go down or occupational therapists that go down and work with those kids because they have an IEP, but the parents may have said, we don't wanna place them at the bakery right now. We want them to be here because of schedules or whatever the case may be. But we're still required by law to send a speech language pathologist or an OT or PT, whatever the case may be to serve that student. So next year, we will have the same number of kids at JTP as we always do. But we have done sort of a remix of kids or planning to do kind of a remix of kids where we'll keep the PTR, the pupil teacher ratio to good level, but we'll be able to free up someone half time to be able to go out to the community in a more structured approach than we have in the past. And the beauty of that, frankly, is that those kids are coming to us anyway. One, we're required to serve them, but two, they're coming to us anyway, and it's sort great to be able to see those kids when they come to us at Mount Daniel as kindergartners. We're one we're required to serve them but two they're coming to us anyway and it's sort of great to be able to see those kids When they come to us at Mount Daniel is kindergarteners and they've had the benefit of working with some of our staff Okay, so like my youngest child for instance brought we brought her to Mount Daniel for speech and language services and now we are sending staff out to the preschools or other locations where those students are. That's what that that it's hard to answer that question in broad strokes, but the bad. That's right. This is minutia. I just was curious because I was just thinking about it in terms of expense and in terms of student teacher ratios and. We've been able to sort through both and we have a really good plan. And I'd like to thank Alison Klingk for that. Who's our new director at JTP has done a really great job. But for the most part, we should be able to see almost all of our kids that are privately placed before they actually come to Mount Daniel. Okay, thank you. Okay, my turn. Well, again, thank you from where we were, I think in December, where I think your original forecasted budget was going to be much higher. So thank you for all the work the past several months to get its two guidance. I actually had the same question as Mr. Siner about potentially refreshing the where students live. It happens to be one of my favorite charts because not only one is important to know kind of where students are coming from because it drives so much of our costs, but two we actually use that data in the general government to then update our fiscal modeling and it actually confirms that for every new building it comes online, our Our projections are really good. Like, we can predict down to the building type and unit how many students we expect, and obviously that's... And it actually confirms that for every new building that comes online, our projections are really good. Like we can predict down to the building type and unit how many students we expect. And obviously that's really important information to share back with the school. So even if we can't do a full refresh, I think I noted that you said there were 31 new students had come in since September 30th. If we could at least maybe look at the 31 and figure out if they're coming from the new buildings, coming from the new buildings, then we can again refresh our models and make sure that things are coming in line with our expectations. My recollection from that November report or December was that our buildings were coming in as expected and that growth is all projected and planned for. So it would be nice to have that validation again even for the additional 31 that are coming in. So that's kind of a request that's possible. I know you guys are down resources. So yeah I appreciate the opportunity to do that. We will go back and we'll look at those 31 that came in since the actually since that process began. The last process went through and see what we can do just just for the good of the council too in case you may not remember or haven't done this before. We do have a process if you have questions to submit those and we'll take your question tonight and write it up and we'll give you a written answer and response to that. Thank you and my second one in terms of budget Q&A which I make this request every year is I think it's requests for both the general government and schools, but it'd be great to see over time what our population increases, our student enrollment increase, and then proportionally, I guess, our head count increases for both teams, and then the budget increase over time. I think that's a really good indicator of where things are growing, because usually we are in the function of people, and as people increases or costs increase, I think that's a really good objective way of mapping that. I think in the past that's been a budget Q&A chart we've included, so I would ask it for both general government and schools to offer that to us. Yeah, we can look at that. The one thing I would just remind the council and also our board and the community is that when we see growth in population of students with special needs our growth in population of students with English as a second language, the PTR are the pupil teacher ratios remarkably different than 22 or 24 to one for those students. In some cases, we're staffing those classes at eight to one. So that means that for every 22 special ed kids, you might have three teachers. every 22 general ed students You have one teacher so it might look like for 48 kids you've got four teachers and that may raise some Questions but I just want to make sure that you have you all and the community had the awareness if you're looking at Headcount versus pupil people's it, there's a lot of noise and distortion in that. Yeah, of course. Not every student's the same and obviously needs it for us. I'm just not sure how useful that data is, I guess. Well, let me finish up on that point. I do think it's actually great if I did my math correctly. Your plus 159 projected for next year is a 5.8% increase in student growth. And that's actually the same as your requested transfer from the general government. So it does map pretty well, which I think finding efficiencies and obviously in the budget that you've done to even account for those higher needs, for those special populations means that you guys have done a good job. So we appreciate that. Yes, Ms. Flynn. Yeah, I just had one question, because I had a similar thought to Leti, and it was to the mayor back in December and it was just the mayor back in December and it was just You know my own curiosity of what sort of the 2017 2018 budget when enrollment was around 2698 looked like in comparison to the 2024 budget when we're back at sort of a peak in terms of enrollment numbers But then I didn't ask you to go through the exercise because I also recognize like the population changes, the student population changes, the like the competitiveness of the market changes, the costs and all sorts of dimensions change. But in general, it might be interesting to take the two points and say, you know, at these peaks, this is what it looked like and it's changed for these reasons, including sort of student population needs and just cost drivers overall. Now, we'll take back. The questions will probably review the tape also to make sure that we get it right and see if we can't put something together. Great. Any final questions for Dr. Gold or Dr. Nannon? Yes, I just wanted to make a comment to thank both you and Mr. Shields, Dr. Nannon and Mr. Shields. It's been real pleasure to watch you all work together with this revenue sharing agreement and you know my when I was elementary PT president was Dr. Nannon's first year and that was a very contentious year and then in terms of the budget and then the which I know Mary Beth Connelly had a large role in this as well helping with this revenue sharing agreement and I think it's you know a big reason why you've been able to come in at guidance for seven years in a row. So just to echo everyone's you know thanks for bringing that I I know this was different numbers than we were talking about in December. So thank you for working doing that, you're due diligence and bringing it down to guidance. And again, thank you, Mr. Shields and Dr. New Newton for your great working relationship. I think it really helps us as a city work together and do it, do it's right by our residents. So thank you. Thank you. We've always said we want a budget where there's nothing to see here. No reason to fight. So thank you very much. OK. Mr. Shields. I'm going to get you. I guess before you start I will say that seeing these numbers, I mean with the regional context that many of our neighbors have much tougher budgets with layoffs, cuts and services and I mean the fact that we've got revenue growth that's two to three times our neighbors, I feel very fortunate that we are looking at the budget that we can, where we can cut the tax rate, fund all the key priorities. So I think appreciate the work of staff and kind of years of progress to get us to this point. So comments, questions? Question number one. Nice, Mayor. Hi, also, I would be remiss if I didn't add my thanks to everybody through this budget process and having been the Elementary PTA President before there was this agreement and the parade of 100 teachers that would come and and say City Council doesn't support public schools and of course You know that I'm glad the times have changed and I hope they would continue along this trend and And like Ledy, he had an opportunity to sit in a lot of the regional conversations about what's happening in budgets and our neighbors on all sides. And it is not anywhere close to this positive. So thanks to all the work that the schools have done to keep the schools great and general government has done to keep economic development humming and keeping our coffers going in the right direction. So thanks to all of you. My first question, the only question for right now, why is I know that we've talked several times about trash fees and decoupling trash fees from the tax rate and ensuring that we're only charging the single-family homes for services received for a trash removal. And I know, this Lori, Nusseln, a Lori Suleiman in particular gave us some comments a few meetings back about the importance of that. And I was thinking, and we might see that in this iteration of the budget and I'm just like others to talk about whether this is something I would like to see moving forward and that's decoupling the trash solid waste I guess is a bright term from the tax rate and just charging the home set we are actually providing that service for. So that's my comment slash question. I don't know where anybody else thinks we've gotten a lot of public comments today and over the past several months actually for the past couple decades from Parktowers residents. But I'd like to see that. Thank you for bringing that up. I think on that one, Ms. Connolly during our work session had asked about kind of the breakdown of the what you would call, I guess, the below median homes that might absorb, right, or proportionally, would have to absorb if we removed the solid waste fee. We removed it from the tax rate, and we made it a solid waste fee because it makes it look more like a regressive tax policy. And so I still would be interested to the extent we're able to have that information to understand where kind of some of that impact of removing the service from the general budget, like what it would mean based on sort of breakdown across households. If there's a way to get that information. So we discussed that information at the work session and we laid out a number of scenarios and sort of showed what that would mean for an owner of a $700,000 house versus someone known to $2 million house and in kind of what the disparities would be for people in different situations. And so, we've been hearing councils sort of make comments from the day S that they'd like to look at that again. It's not in the budget proposal because from the work session discussion, there was what we thought was a consensus not to proceed in that direction and then there's been sort of individual comments since then. Yeah, I think that, oh sorry. I think the data I'm talking about that Ms. Connelly had requested was of the, like let's say the impact on $700,000 households. How many within that set Were the households that were paying let's say the double fee of paying but not getting the service and so we were trying to capture you know Did it overrepse the impact on the households that were at like the $700,000 mark, for example, because more of those households were the condo buildings that were paying into the general tax rate and then also paying the HOA trash fee. And so I just didn't know if there was any answer to that question, because in my mind that helps me also in terms of the options thinking about kind of the policy more broadly and where those costs fall or how you know everyone in the community pays into this because there's also a community wide benefit of having a like structured trash pickup program for that number of households in the community that's run through the city. So I think I understand the question. So, you know, and I'm going to be making some numbers up. But, you know, in general, the single family detached the median value is between 1.2 and 1.3. if you throw in condos into that, it drives that median down to the home ownership median values about a million. And so kind of in that bell curve, what are the condo values in the single family detached or townhouses that currently get solid waste service? What's that bell curve look like? I think is what you all are asking. So you can understand the size of the population in terms of where people fall on that spectrum. Right. But the second part of it that I completely forgot I asked about, so you explain it further, is the people that are at the lowest home values would also be benefitting if they are condo owners would be benefiting from not paying the double trash fee. So the effect wouldn't fall as much on those people. So when we do an analysis, we just have to have that subtraction from those people of the fees that they're paying now that they are duplicative. So that would be simply, you know, if there is a reduction in the tax rate and a substitution in for a fee, then that's what the condo owners would experience. Yes. Right. Well, how about just before we get into the weeds of solving this? Yeah. Like, it sounds like Vice Mayor suggested that we tackled this during the budget season. What is the rest of Council thing? I would be supportive, especially as we have more mixed use development coming in. Frankly, it just very simply doesn't seem fair to me to have people be paying for a city service they're not receiving. Can I just, I mean, can I just make the point though on the mixed use development and we don't need to get into like the full debate about this here but in my mind the mixed use development it's an entitlement process and as part of those negotiations you think about you know impact fees and so developers do absorb certain costs that will be otherwise born out by the city city. And so I know we sort of like lumped different buildings together at times, but I think we should also be careful about how we talk about different projects and commercial and residential and sort of purely residential versus mixed use because we didn't negotiate for certain benefits that the city would otherwise have to observe his costs by entitling some of those projects. I would I would be in favor of moving forward with separating the trash fee from the general tax. I guess in some cases and I hear what Erin is saying. you know, in this case, it's not like we're taking on a specific duty like doing the trash or there's no extra expense. What we are doing is reducing the tax rate and so that has an impact across the mixed use buildings as well. So they're possibly paying a lower tax rate than they would have otherwise. But I do think that this is the most fair and equitable way to do this, so I would be in favor of moving forward with it. And potentially, I mean, this might be out of scope, but adding a third compost bin as well. Yeah, plus one on that. Because I think, figure out whether you pay for solid waste in the general fund or fee is budget neutral. It's $1.1 million, whether you bake it in the tax rate or you split it across the 3000 households that get the fee. So I think from a budget perspective, it's neutral. And if I remember from the work session, adding in the third bin would be a really good time to kind of wrap it all as one set of changes. I think it was maybe $18 per household if I remember from the work session to add kind of a organic spin that would take care of Composting as well as yard waste so no more you know separate bins and bags with stickers and all that So I certainly would like to explore Combining that change together as part of the budget process Madam mayor Yes, since since on this topic I I respectfully disagree. I think taking services away from single family homeowners who are already paying, and even with a slight reduction, are already paying far more than their costs, even if, especially if they don't have children in the schools to take away services from them, is a really bad idea. I think equity ought to be achieved in other ways. So don't put me down as one not favoring this proposal to remove yet another service from our taxpayers. I want to make sure that clearing yeah I'm not suggesting we remove the service of trash removal by any stretch We'd still providing the same services to single family homes in the same month, one day, et cetera. But we're not asking owners who aren't receiving those services to pay for those services. And I understand your point about schools and fire services. And I don't think anybody's suggesting that you then take every service that's provided to a taxpayer and split it out. It's already split out between, you know, multi-family condo. Like, there are already different trash removal cycles. And that's why I'm not saying we should remove anything from providing the services in any just reallocating the expense to those who are actually using it not already paying for it otherwise yeah so let me just counter that the fact of the matter is that what you're doing is you're removing services from people are already paying far more than their costs to the city, which I think is a really bad idea. In fact, I think as opposed to uniting the community, you'll be further dividing it. So just my recommendation in the past, when this kind of thing has occurred, it's produced a split in the community, which is not to say that those who believe that they've been paying for the service and not getting them, they should get that service. So that's my view. Just let me down as opposing what's being proposed here. Yeah, to be clear, I don't think any services are getting removed, but it sounds like there's a majority would like to further discuss in the work session, Mr. Shields. And if our costs are not covering the services we're providing, that that's what you're saying, that we're not charging enough for it already, then that's a separate issue. You're suggesting that we're not charging enough for we're not covering our costs as it is. That's what you just, is what I heard you say. And like, so I want to see all the finance to your point. Like if you removed it and you know you lower the tax rate, what is the overall net fiscal impact? I mean that's part of, we're not saying voting, there's nothing to vote on right now, but I want to know what that all means and I want to make sure that we charge those who receive the services. So, just a couple of thoughts scheduling wise. Because the signal, we've been picking up on this signal, there's interest in talking about that. But it was after basically all the budget decisions have been made, you know, in terms of our internal process. And so we will plan on a work session. We were thinking April 14th, we would have a work session on this and take the time between now and then to get as much information in this clear form as possible for the City Council. As we have a town hall coming up on Thursday the third, I think I would start to build this discussion into the public presentation just so the public is aware that this conversation is going to happen. And I would lay it maybe just a very high level, some of what the concept is, so that the public could start to be informed. Would there, you know, there's some risk in doing that for the councils viewed that, but is there any objection from the council if on the Thursday, the third, I start to sort of feather this discussion into the PowerPoint and the presentation on this. Yeah, I think that makes sense if you can give us a preview before the town hall, that would be great. We'll endeavor to do that. And I think that first town hall, I try to keep it just at a very high level and then we'll go from there. Yeah, I think, you know, it is interesting because it actually came up when I was running for this position at the VP's League of Women voters debate or forum. It actually came up when I was running for this position at the VPIS League of Women voters debate or forum. It actually came up from the audience. And so at the time as a candidate, I had no idea, but the question was, do you think it's fair that someone in a condo has to pay through the DVA, the tax rate for this service in order to say so? I mean, but I do think it's rather confusing. So, you know, and I think it's good to start working it in and trying to educate the public and having these conversations because it's going to, you know, no matter either way that we go, it is a little bit confusing for people who haven't been following it, but thank you. I think we agree that I think communication we really important it explaining it because it's complicated because reality is we spent a million dollars in solid waste. It's split across 7,000 households. Only 3,000 actually get service. The other half of them never have access to it. And it's not like an all a cart kind of budgeting process like it's not like, oh, I don't have kids in school. They don't want to pay for. You could have kids in school, you just don't currently have it. I think trash is one where if you live in a multi-family building or a condo building, you never have access to city trash. And so it just seems unfair, especially as we add more multi-family to the city. Now it seems like a really good time to address it, especially when we've been receiving public comments for at least eight years that I've been on council probably longer than that from Park Towers. It sounds like so. I think having that conversation starting at the town hall and then a deeper dive in our work session would make sense. Turn Ms. Connelly. We just say there are two ways to achieve fairness. One way is to create more unfairness for the other way is to deal with the original unfairness. So just again, put me down as very skeptical about this. Thank you. Ms. Connolly, just another, I feel like we're way down the rabbit hole, I'm especially, like there's many high level questions to ask here. But I would also like to say that there is my thought on this one is we should get the assessor involved as well because it is possible that people who live in condos assessments are lower because they have to pay that additional trash fee. So it may be already taking care of itself, but because we're looking at it as a, you know, here's a fee and then there's a fee on top. But suppose as the assessor looks at it, those assessments are lower. I don't know if that isn't, but that's just another thing to take. I think pervaging law. I think consideration can't be part of the fact. It has to be based on fair market value as of January 1st, though. But maybe the fair market values lower because they have to pay those other fees. I don't know. But I think that's worth it to at least feather in there. But that's a lot to give to you as we're looking at a budget that people already put a lot of time into. So can we switch to a different topic? We're down with this one. I think we had consensus to talk about it again. So, okay. Yes. On page three of your slide number three, you've got the pie chart that shows the residential and commercial, how much real estate tax comes from residential and how much comes from commercial. So it may already be addressed in the book, but I'd really be interested in knowing how that has changed in the last 20 years, that percentage, because right now it's 19% and 38%. So we can show how that has changed over the time. The real estate, the commercial component of real estate taxes is about 40% of total real estate revenues. But it used to be like commercial was 13%, or 12%, and now it's moved to 19%. It can recall when one thing you have to keep in mind is you have commercial, which is just like pure commercial and then you have multifamily and we can show kind of what both of those have been over time. Multifamily is the part that's grown the most. It was the most dramatically in that metric. Okay, but that's just one of those ratios that is always interesting to look at. Did you include that pension investment in here, why? I want to make a comment right now that in this budget is $640,000, which is the return on investment from the water proceeds that were invested in the pension fund. And that is an ongoing and sustained benefit for the taxpayers from the councils making that investment. Thank you. And then I guess my last question is just if we have, when we have budget questions, what Karen do is she didn't have passed and published those questions, answer those questions and published them with numbers. And so we should be sent an email to Karen if we have questions. Yes and there is a budget email that's at the end of this slide. Okay. And also we will be having specific sessions, work sessions, talking about specific topics. So we'd like to field most of your questions with relevant staff here and of course we will whatever is not answered in person will be addressed as part of the Q&A. Okay so how much do you time will you need for our first work session will be April 7th? Correct my intention is that I'd like to address the Q&A's as part of the packet that prints on Thursday. Okay so for it to print on Thursday so you need to by next Monday, so people can answer the questions from them. And it'll be an ongoing work in progress, so whatever we have, we'll start providing with every printing of the packet, work session and the council. And since I have the mic, I'll answer your earlier question. The Maryl and Henderson was paid off on August 1, 2024. There was no second payment interest payment for this year. So we're done. We're done. And I was getting a kick out of it because I was that you noted. Cheyfard came to one of our human services advisory council meetings and was talking about the community. I importance of that. So just saying that, you know, I think that's really important. One question I had about the traffic calming, I know that we're not, we're keeping that the same as the year before. Do you know, do you have a sense, is that enough? Like I just feel like we get so many complaints and we had a public comment tonight from the Doyle's on Great Falls. Do you feel like that is sufficient for all of the traffic calming requests that we get? So I would also just put it in context of a $2.2 million roadway maintenance budget where we are able to do I think important safety improvements oftentimes sort of the lower impact safety improvements with paint and and ballards and things like that with that budget. And then also tout over the six year program, 54 million in transportation improvements. And that is really the main body of work of making our street more walkable and bikeable. Okay, so you feel, I think it was like 200,000 or something specifically for traffic calming, I guess it was, but you feel like, I thought that was a number. That is the number. It's never enough. Right. If the council were to find money and direct that be increased, that we would work with the community on good projects for that. But it was not possible. No, I understand. I'm working through what we are recommending. Right. And I understand your point that some of that pedestrian safety comes from other pots of money I understand that. Is down can I jump because that was my question as well. I think to assess the is it enough it would be helpful for us to understand like what's the average wait time when someone submits kind of a traffic calming request is it a year two years six months that would help us gauge like whether we're getting enough throughput through the process. I know greenway downs is the big one that's supposed to come soon. And that's been in process for a long time. That's like $600,000 worth of traffic comming. But I think to assess this 200,000 enough, it'd be nice to know how much is in the queue, what's been the wait time. I think three years ago, we had a big effort to clear the queue. We threw a bunch of money at it to kind of get people out of that blockage that we had. And I don't have a great sense of whether we have that situation again where we have people stuck because we don't have it on resources on it. So we do plan to have a good discussion with the council about transportation funding generally. It's one of council's key strategic priorities. And so that will be our April 14th work session focus as well. Okay, great. And I was, it was great to hear that our, the schools salary increases in the city side are generally around 5% each. So I was glad to see that. Some of those similarities there. One question I had, Mr. Shields, and this is just, and you may have had this on the slide, and I missed it. But, ballpark, what is, I know the schools, their budget is 85% is for salary and benefits. What is the cities? Is it, it's nothing like that, right? I shouldn't know that number, and we were looking at a chart of it recently. I'm not trying to put anyone on the spot. I was just curious. I don't have the exact, but I want to say it's more than 50%. Okay. So we're between 55. Okay. I'm not trying to put anyone on the spot. I was just curious. I don't have the exact, but I want to say it's more than 50%. Okay. So we're between 55. Okay. Yeah, it just was lower than schools. No, all of course, of course. Right. And so it's in that, always between 50 and 60%. Okay. So it's always sort of remain constant over the years. I would say it has grown as a share of the budget in the last three years. Okay, that's good. That shows that we're investing in our people. That's terrific. And then the last thing, I'm not sure if this is something that you covered tonight or if this was in the larger deck slide that we received. But there was a mention of a project manager to sort of help. Where when we've had some vacancies and make sure projects are delivered on time. And I just wanted to say, I think that's terrific to, if we need to do that sort of thing, I know we've had some vacancies and make sure projects are delivered on time. And I just wanted to say I think that's terrific to, you know, if we need to do that sort of thing. I know we've had some vacancies and if we need to hire some extra hands to get things done, I think that's great. Yeah, that would be contracted services. Right. So it is more expensive to do it that way. But when the project is done, then it's done. That's right. That's right. Thank you so much, Mr. Shields. Ms. Flynn. I look forward to digging in in all the different work sessions and meetings that we're going to have on this. I did have one quick question and it was just on the fun balance. Our graphs on slide 18, page nine. And it may have been my misremembering what this looked like the last time we saw it, but I thought that the drawdown sort of looked a little bit different so that fiscal year 2030 or 2031, we were somewhere in between that like 17 and 20%. And so I was just wondering if the difference in terms of the delta that I could be misremembering, but the difference in what the chart might look like now versus what it looked like the last time we saw it, even at the fiscal policy conversation that we had in budget and finance. I'm just wondering if it's the combination of, for example, the capital reserves from the budget surplus or investment income coming in higher or a change in the drawdown we anticipate just because of different sort of transportation projects we may or may not have on calendar in the same way, given the funding and what the local match would be. Because the chart to me just looked looked different and like I said, I could be misremembering it but I think it looks healthier then. The drawdown looked before or what that bump in 2020, nine may be represented differently. I think that was the main difference from what we previously saw. The face two made reserves look better? It did. We did not include the phase two payment I think in the last time we've looked at it so that changes it. We've also in terms of our capital improvements program we have worked really hard to get that get the CIP deliverable to have it right-sized with the staff levels that have been approved and not growing our staff level to be able to deliver on our capital improvements program. And so there is some less use of capital reserves than there was presented last year. Okay. No, that's all helpful. I think it also goes in my mind to the $500,000 contingency that importance of including that contingency, but some concern I still have about whether that contingency is enough, gonna be enough. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, other questions or comments? Sundril. I'll keep it quick because I know we'll get into transportation later. So we are, we're increasing our transportation the paving program by $700,000 for this next fiscal year. That's still $1.1 million short, of what we ultimately need to invest per year. Is that correct? Yes. So this is a step in the right direction, but it is not the solution. And it doesn't get us where we ultimately need to be, based on what our public work staff have recommended in the past. and the 700,000 along with 800,000 that this is on top of. The 800,000 is out of capital reserves. So that's not sustainable. And this new 700,000 is drawing out of investment returns. And investment returns are good when you have them, but when interest rates drop, we can go from a budget year where we have lots of investment returns to a budget year we have zero. It can happen in one fiscal year. So this has a big caution flag on it that we have not solved the roadway maintenance in a structural way. And we still need to stay focused on that. We're going to eventually need to find a way to incorporate it into it. Into the tax rate. That's where it needs to be. If so it looks like the total based on what we're spending now, and what we need to spend it would be about $2.5 million per year. I actually, I might be doing those numbers wrong. We can get into those later on. If we allocated the additional $1.1 million for paving would we even have the staff to be able to handle that? So no, but we can talk about that when we're at work session we can sort of talk about what that looks like in more detail. But the short answer is we can deliver this roadway maintenance with the staff that we have plus the additional contract and services. Gotcha. One thing that I would like to look into this budget season is I know we have not brought the car tax back up to pre-COVID levels. And so I do think that if we are looking for a way to sustain our roadways and we need the money and we have this whole bringing the car tax, I mean, it's not going to solve our problems, but at least bringing the car tax back up to pre-COVID levels would be a reasonable way to do it. I know that other jurisdictions have brought their car tax back up and given that our car valuations have come down a sense the spike that we had during COVID, I think that would be useful for us to consider as we move forward with this budget. Thank you. Other questions? Okay, I have some specific ones and then some general ones. On page 13, which were the three ARPRA positions that we're now funding and sustaining with operating dollars? There's problem. Do you say which one specific? The three positions. It was the public meetings assistant and radio person. So there is a purchasing specialist and there was a marketing specialist. And then public meetings, this was a free. And public meetings, yes, three. So we did 50, 15, like all three are not in this year. Half were done last time. So, okay, thank you. On slide 18, so going back to the reserve picture, I think I had the same commonism as flan about the jump in reserve, I guess that's the phase two payment. Is that assuming that Hoffman's not proceeding with the phase two and we get a payment instead? Now that assumes they do proceed with phase two and we get the payment. I thought that was, if they don't do phase two, then they pay us. I think that's what the... If they proceed with phase two, so phase two has... There's some sort of out clause, right? Portion where the mural is and then there's an office component in the parking lot. The value is really driven by the condo piece. And so if I'm recalling the agreement it says that if they proceed with phase two without the office, they still pay the 10 million. But that... There were some assumption that if they don't proceed, there's some payment that's different, I recall. But... The only change would be, you know, it's 10 million or a praised value whichever is higher that's kind of the only inflection point now if they choose not to proceed with phase two we will know soon they they what's also assumed in our budget is that they will make if they don't write the full they can begin to they could exercise that option in the coming fiscal year and I would be a $10 million check right off the bat or they can purchase a one-year extension for $800,000 That's what I remember right so we have budgeted the $800,000 not the 10 million in FY 26 so we we are assuming that they are going to buy the extension. That revenue is in the budget, yes. Okay. So that's news. For these various lines, obviously 17% is the unassigned fund balance line that we always maintain. I think I ask this every year, but now that the MEH debt has come off and now we're below the threshold of 12% for debt to expenditures. Which line are we adhering to? Is it the 15 or the 20 for the total reserves? We're still doing the 15 to 20 because we're not met the payout ratio yet. And what year is that FY28? 28. Yeah. Okay. And so once we get to FY28, the only red line goes away, we stick with the orange line, the center one. Okay. Thank you. I think the request I also make every year is, could we benchmark our tax rates, our neighboring, with our neighboring jurisdictions, because I often think that they have all those various add-ons, such as solid waste fees, Arlington, Alexandria, and Fairfax, I think charge solid waste as add-on fees rather than bake into the general fund. And then, and then Metro fees in some places and special districts, taxing districts. But I think that's always a chart we ask for in the budget Q&A, that would be good to have this year. My part beat of that though is besides just benchmarking tax rates and all the add-ons across jurisdictions. gas for in the budget Q&A, that would be good to have this year. My part B to that though is besides just benchmarking tax rates and all the add-ons across jurisdictions, but also what the median tax bill looks like. Because I think at the end of the day, a lot of times our residents only understand the bottom line impact to them. So even though we say, hey, we're going to cut your tax rate to pennies or to have pennies, they still feel the impact of the overall tax bill going up because of increased assessments. And so to the extent possible would be great to have compared the tax bills across jurisdictions and what the median impact might look like. So we will do that. We were planning to do that in time for the April 11th budget and finance committee meeting would provide some of those regional comparisons. And I wanted to plus one Ms. Connelly's request on looking at the commercial versus residential breakdown over time. That was actually last year's budget Q&A is question 28 that I asked. So great to refresh it for this year. So that's it for now. Any final questions from Mr. Shields on the General Government budget? We're just starting our part of the process. Okay. Madam Mayor, yeah, I do have a question. So what I would like the city managers to tell us, what would be the cost of providing current trash services to the condominium buildings that have raised the issue and other condominiums in the city will be the cost of providing them the same trash service that they're getting today fundamentally. Number one, number two, and let me make the point more clearly than I made perhaps before. You can achieve a quality by taking services away or making people pay for them in addition to their tax rate. You can do that for everyone or you can include the service in the taxes and recognize that those who have made the point to us that they've been paying for them and not getting them, giving them the services that they need. So therein is the debate. Thank you. Okay. Any other final questions on the general government budgets? If I could just make a plug then as I go back to my seat, the budget is on the city, as is the capital improvements program. I really just invite people to take a look at it. It is an incredibly informative document, and staff work really hard on it. And I think for the community, if you're looking up for kind of any fact about any department, usually you can find it in the budget book. It's a great resource. But at budget time, but also throughout the calendar year. So really encourage people to take a look at that. I also want to just note, our finance team does have a new member. We have Melissa Rhyman, who is always sort of the genius behind all of the budget assemblage. And she is joined with a budget analyst that the council has funded in years past. And so, Rasul, Alamari is their newest member of the team and it's been great working with her in this first budget. And, but big thanks to Melissa and to Rasul. Great. Thank you to the team. And why did if you can... Why did if you can stop sharing so I can take back over? Since we're at 10 o'clock. Do people want to take a break before we get into the business of the agenda, which we haven't actually gotten to the city manager's report and request yet? Take a quick five, ten minute break and let people regroup. Okay, so it's 947. Let's resume at 955. Okay, eight minutes. Mr. Shields. Let's move on to the rest of your managers report, please. The one thing I'd like to just note for council, you received the Affordable Housing Annual Report. I believe in your packet. And it is rich with a lot of very useful information about the city's housing status. It has the numbers on our ADUs that we're processing. We're right now, we have 155 ADUs from mixed use development and there's 40 more in the pipeline, along with a lot of other, really important information in that report. We wanted to just give that to you. We're going to be back for you with the Affordable Living Policy. And I think this data helps inform the policy decisions that the council will have. But I want to commend the staff for an excellent report this year. And happy to answer any questions on that. Thank you for that. People have questions on the Affordable Housing Report. So we're going to talk about you said more in-depth win in conjunction in conjunction in tandem with ALP. That's right. We don't have housing staff at this meeting tonight, but they will be before you many times this spring. And I think, if you have questions about this report, we can make sure we have, if you want to send them in advance, we'll have those and be prepared to answer those. Miss one. Oh, you got one. just had one quick one and you may or may not know this, but in terms of the occupancy of the affordable dwelling units in the new building, I know last year we had talked about right how staff would have to put that much more kind of energy or that so many of their resources would be going toward trying to fill those units. So do you have any sense of sort of just what the occupancy levels are within the 34 ADUs at Broadon, Washington, or other projects at this point? I don't have the numbers on that. I do know that as a general theme and council is familiar with this, that are two-bed units go a lot faster than our studios or one beds at 80% AMI. Those can be very challenging to fill. And ultimately we typically don't have people on our list. And so we open it up to people throughout the region who could occupy those units. But I don't have the latest numbers. Yeah, I think from the housing commission, everything was filled except the studio units. And because they're so in demand, they usually only go through party one, party two, party one being senior and disabled, live in the city or work in the city, and then party two being live in work in the city already. Priority three is everybody in the region. And rarely do we actually get to priority three. And so I think before those studios, staff decides to get to priority three to maximize the opportunity of filling them up, but they went quickly from what I understand. Two things I was going to mention from the report. It was discussed in the housing commission, so I'm glad it made it in there, but we had asked how many of the ADUs are actually occupied by general government and school staff. And the report noted it's actually a quarter of our units, which I think is really important to call out because we've also talked about it as being something that could help attract or retain employees. So thank you to HHS staff for doing that outreach and getting people who work in the city in the housing that they need to. And I think we've often several of us all talked about the importance of preserving the fields at Pearson Squares come up as well. That's got a similar expiration date. So we'll get into this with ALP and then the funding sources, but needing to think about what that cost might look like. Similar perhaps that we did with the read building by buying an extension perhaps. And just to piggyback on the fields, I thought it was interesting because tonight when Dr. Newton presented of that special population, the biggest growth was with our English language learning community. And that is predominantly that community in the school system, they live in the fields, predominantly. If you ask social workers, they'll tell you that most of that population lives in the field. So it is, and just seeing that growth in those numbers that Dr. Newton presented tonight it just sort of hit home to me that this is even more, you know, vital that we get this worked out. But I agree with you, Mayor Harding, in terms of having staff, and you know, I love the idea of having, you know, police officers be able to live, you know, in the same place where they work and be able to establish relationships and things with their neighbors because they live here. So I think the more that we can, as much as we can have city staff living here, I think it's just going to benefit the services we provide to our taxpayers. Thanks. And then the third point is I think in there, the need for besides larger units, but lower AMIs, I think I read that it was 300 households are on the wait list that are below 50% AMI. And to date, we've only been able to add 15 of those CCAUs that serve that lower AMI population. So as we think about again, like whether it's a future redevelopment at Virginia Village or what we might do with more CCAU funding, but serving that kind of lower income band is really important because I don't think the market naturally will serve your at lower band. Like our inclusionary zoning ADU really serve kind of the 60 to 80 percent. So we have to be really thoughtful and creative about serving that lower band. Okay, more to come on that one. Anything else in your manager's report? Mr. Shields? Not at this time, thank you. Okay, let's move to council requests. We have requests for the city manager. Vice mayor? Just a friendly reminder that we should schedule our community development authority development authority meeting before I think it's May 14th. If we could get that on the calendar that would be great. It's gone Lee. Mr. Shields, this is an asphalt question. Fairvax water has done some patching and it intersects with some of our thermoplastic and freshly painted crosswalks. Is it Fairfax water's responsibility to finish that or does public work stuff do that? I'm going to say Fairfax water needs to do that and I will confirm that but that makes sense. The one I I'm thinking particularly is right in front of Oak Street there crossing Oak Street that the thermoplastic is covered also the freshly painted blue and orange footprints that are also handprints or stripes have also been yeah Audrey Lothman's crosswalk too. Right right right. right, right, right. It's Audrey Luthmann's crosswalk. That's exactly right. Anyway, that one is notable to me. There have been others over time that get patched and fixed again, but that one seems like a little more on the edge inside. So I'll share that with Fairfax Warden. Brenda Creole worked. She's there at liaison for it with Fairfax Warden. with Perfect's Warden. She worked with Audrey Bluffman, so I think she will respond very quickly to that. Very good. Thanks. It's a good thing we have more orange and blue painting. is on for with perfect warden. She worked with Audrey Bluffman so she will I think she will respond very quickly to that. Very good. Thanks. It's a good thing we have more orange and blue paint I guess. Other council requests? This one? I just had one that it's now come up a couple of times or kind of crossed my email or so to speak about parking permit programs in relation to implementing VCs for development projects. So both I guess with respect to maybe parking permit plans for the Jason Neighborhood to Founders Road 2, but I think there was public comment at the Planning Commission this past week on the Quinn site plan approval in terms of what the Virginia Village parking plan, parking permit plan might look like. And so I was just interested in sort of how those are being effectuated and sort of if they're in the full spirit of kind of council and those negotiations and sort of, I think, you know, in the Virginia Village conversation from what I could tell of the site plan conversation before planning commission, you know, it was sort of, well, it will go through the normal process and maybe the, you know, two hour time period sort of expire as of like the 5 p.m. end of workday time, but whether that fully, having been part of those conversations, when we did that at council, and very clearly remembering those conversations, whether that kind of fully encapsulates sort of the spirit of ensuring that parking would be available, especially for communities that might be more heavily affected and don't have, you know, private parking that others might have. And so I guess I was just kind of interested in maybe an update on how kind of that was going or when those conversations happen if there could be some sort of relay to council that they're actually occurring. Yes, I can get a note out to council just with the details on that, but let me just briefly respond. So in the environs of Madera Falls Church, founders wrote to staff have initiated reaching out to adjacent residential streets to ask, this something that you'd be interested in. The developers voluntary concession is to pay for the program that's kind of the extent of their involvement. We follow our normal process which is we only do it if the residents want us to. The other kind of key policy thing is that under city code what it states is for areas near commercial areas that we maintain to our parking on the street so that the street sort of retains that public use. What we're trying to regulate against is new residents in the apartment buildings storing cars on the street. That's the purpose of the regulation. Now that oftentimes is not perfectly lined with what the neighborhood wants and sometimes they want a pure permit only, don't allow the two-hour parking. And that is some of the feedback we've gotten from some of the adjacent streets to Moderna. However, staff does intend to follow what the city code calls for, which is, you know, under that regulatory regime, we would allow the two-hour parking. The city ever do anything, and I can't remember exactly how grove is organized, but, you know, in DC, for instance, you'll often be in neighborhoods and one side is the permit only parking and then the other side has the two hour more turnover and so it's actually accommodating, you know, on the street, both concerns that there is some ability for public parking but that there's also kind of a recognition of, you know, what the needs may be on that block. So there has been some individuation and we tried to avoid it, but on Park Avenue, just as an example, when Founders Row 1 was built, the neighbors had long standing concerns about church parking. And so we worked with both the St. James community and the neighbors. And so on the resident side of the street, it is resident only resident only parking and then on the church side there's two-hour parking. That's not typical usually we would go on both sides of the street to allow the two-hour. There's some other you know there's always a wrinkle there's some other examples but that's the standard. Okay. As a follow-up to that, it seemed like the resident was asking for 24-hour permit. I didn't follow what the 24-hour permitting was. I'm not sure if you're aware of only resident parking all the time. Oh, 24-hour only. Okay. That's how we've interpreted that. Oh, thank you all the time. So refresh my memory, because I got several emails about this too. Did we commit to a specific regime as part of founders to? No. OK. So what staff is proposing is just consistent with our policy that if you're adjacent to commercial, it's two-hour parking and then just no overnight parking. Is that what? What we did it when are Hill? Yes. Okay. And I think what would be helpful for the neighborhoods understand is that whether we've seen overflow, I think sometimes we preemptively have implemented apartment parking, but I think when are Hill being the first place that we did it because of anticipation of West Broad and the Harris-Tedar building, we actually did not see any overflow. And so maybe that would be reassuring for various neighborhoods that, you know, this hasn't actually been a problem where people park their cars overnight in the neighborhood not necessary not necessitating that 24 hour restriction. That's right. Okay, other requests may one last comment on it. We've also found that the two hour Oftentimes can be well received by residents as well because when friends visit or in-laws visit or whatever the case may be, cleaning help that that to our regulation can be helpful to the residents. They don't have to sort of worry about stickers and things like that. Okay. I had some related Southwest questions besides the parking restrictions that we're hearing from the neighborhood. Is there a repaving schedule plan for Southwest and Broad now that most of the work has moved interior? So I believe it's just being held up by weather and so it is warm now and so we expect that work to be scheduled by milk creek. Okay. And I think there's that median cut that is on broad. And that seems to be half done. Is that also just waiting for confinal touches? Yeah, that's waiting for the final pavement. And then that will be properly marked. Okay. Further down southwest, I think we had various community conversations with that neighborhood about traffic calming and so I wanted to appreciate staff for being open-minded even though it was a snow emergency route, I think staff recommendations actually put in some speed bumps, which I think the neighborhood is welcoming because of the high speeds that they've experienced. So I appreciate staff's work on critically thinking about that and looking at options. Now that said, does that establish precedent for other snow emergency routes? Because I imagine that once word gets out that we're adding them to Southwest, other snow emergency routes, such as Great Falls, we'll then be asking. There's Cromby, has them already, right? Yeah. We could get back with Council on that. It's a little bit of a complicated conversation. Maybe we should wait until we've... And that's why I wanted to put on your radar because I feel like because people are excited about the ones on Southwest to come to address that issue and knowing that's a unique circumstance. Other streets will then ask and so I want it staffed to be... My request is for staff to prepare it of what is the policy is it going to be still none on snow emergency threats unless speeds exceed some threshold and less or special circumstances but we should just be prepared for that. So. And then the BZA in their annual report requested that we actually pick up the sign ordinance given the number of variances that they've approved. As I don't know how that would fit on either a council or plan or administrative work plan. But one thing that we've talked about at this point, probably three years ago, is actually how public art, actually how we could actually encourage more public art by letting building owners or businesses actually decorate their building. But I think sometimes it conflicts with our sign rules. So I don't know whether those are the types of things that they're seeing or if there's other variances or other variances are requesting, but I wanted to note that we did get a request from our BZA to revisit the sign ordinance and so something for staff to think about. And then finally not a request, I thank you that we are finally getting to the sidewalk issue on the 400 block of Broad Street. So thank you for that. Yeah, that's another party. Yeah. I drove by it today. It's like, whoa. Great. Okay. Ms. Underhill. Just two quick things. I've been following up with the resident who was concerned about the closure of the library on Easter. She was wondering, but specifically, she wanted more information as to why the library is closed before the Sunday before Memorial Day or the Sunday before Labor Day. And so if we could, I had been in touch about this, but she would like clear answers as to why multiple days are to take it off, especially given that Memorial Day and Labor Day are off. Why is it also the day before given that that's not an official city holiday. Then the other thing, the other request was that, I don't know if there's an answer to this, but why our mulch program is only open during the week and whether or not there could be other hours beyond like on a weekend or in the evening such that people who work during the day could come and pick up mulch. It's a great question and let me get back with council on that one. We have been closing the gate on weekends because people were dumping things at the recycling center and it was just a huge amount of work every Monday to clean up after it. But with the mulch season, it is really handy for people to be able to access that mulch on the weekends. So let me follow up with staff and we'll get back with the community and with the council on that. Right. We're called DPW always has like some Saturday events. We're also in the low mulch madness and things like that are coming up. So I think that will prop the change in hours, and I just don't, I should know, but I think I don't know right off the top of my head. Okay, I think we're ready to get to business on the agenda. Madam Clerk, can you call the first item please? Certainly for public hearing and second reading, we have TO25-06, ordinance to amend chapter 28, miscellaneous offenses, Article 7 weapons of the city code of the city of false church to require the false church police department and the false church sheriff's office to destroy unclaimed and decommissioned firearms. So the title really speaks for itself and the City Council has had work session on this and first reading and Chief Fard is not available tonight and so I'll be happy to answer any questions but this ordinance is now for second reading and final consideration. And I note on the staff report there's no changes since first reading. That is correct. Okay. I moved to adopt TO25 to actually I have to open the public hearing. Sorry. In any public comments? Seeing none, we're going to close the public hearing. I was being presumptuous that I said C. Kelly and nobody online so I apologize. Okay. We've filled the public hearing so you can proceed with your motion. I move to adopt TO25-06. Second. Ms. Flynn on the second. Madam Clerk. Ms. Conley? Yes. Ms. Downs? Yes. Ms. Flynn? Yes. Ms. Shons-Hizz-Cod? Yes. Mr. Snyder? Yes. Ms. Underhill? Yes, Mayor Flynn. Yes. Ms. Sean Siscod. Yes. Mr. Snyder. Yes. Ms. Underhill. Yes. Mayor Hardy. Yes. Motion carries 7 to 0. Thank you, Council. Let's call the next item. Yes, our next item is TR25-08. Resolution and support of protecting the natural environment along the W andOT-08 resolution in support of protecting the natural environment along the WNOT trail. Good evening, Council. This item was raised during your March 17th work session regarding the concerns of Dominions tree trimming and elimination of some trees during the 33 miles of the WNOT-G trail trail of which does transfer through the City of Falls Church. Council requested a resolution be brought forward for your consideration. So that is in your staff report this evening. It is built on the regional dialogue that had been occurring with some tailoring of it to reflect the city of Falls Churches being a founding member, how big the 16 acres of the trail is, to the city and some specific asks around continuing to collaborate with the city as Dominion works with Nova Parks on what would be the maybe tree pruning versus elimination retaining the trees that have been recently planted in the city section reconsidering a 20 foot height versus 10 and then of course working on any replanting. So I tried to capture the comments that I had heard during the work session and some dialogue with council members. I did reflect in the staff report the communication we received from Nova Park's executive director, Mr. Gilbert, and also at line 38, you can see the insert of a written correspondence I received from Dominion on March. With that council be glad to entertain any questions. Refinements to the resolution and recommend adoption and upon adoption we will forward it to Dominion and Nova Parks. Okay. Thank you for having the conversations with Dominion and Nova Parks. Any questions or comments? And this is the same version that our neighbors have adopted across the region. It's kind of a united front. Very consistent. I did tailor some of the now-there-force to reflect like the trees had been planted and requesting a 20-foot stud at 10. Miss Andril? I don't have the document in front of me, but they did mention that there was some regulation. Yeah, there it is. Any RC. Yeah. Any RC requirements. I wasn't clear if those were new. And so they were basically saying they had to follow the letter of law or face a fine. And so are those any RC requirements new or what changed? I do not have a date from Dominion when they implemented that and if it's changed or been upgraded, so certainly can follow up with Dominion on that. certainly and I did add that to the resolution whereas certainly I know the council supports safety and reliability of electricity just in balance to the natural environment. But I can check on the effect of date and what's been updated when. Yeah. Yeah, I just be curious to find out what what changed or what happened okay any other questions or comments otherwise is there a motion move to adapt to your 25-08. Wait a second. A second. Connolly on the second. The battle clerk. to your 25-08. Wait a second. Second. Is Connolly on the second? Madam Clerk. Ms Connolly? Yes. Ms. Downs? Yes. Ms. Flynn? Yes. Ms. Shonsiscot? Yes. Mr. Snyder? Yes. Ms. Underhill? Yes. Mayor Hardy? Yes. Motion carry 7-0. Thank you, Council. Okay. I think we're onto the consent items. We have appointments. The new library rooftop unit. And it looks like... Emotion to reschedule second reading for the date error for the pedestrian chapter update. That's it. Anything people want to remove from consent? Nope. Okay, is there a motion? I move to... Go ahead, go ahead. I moved to approve the consent agenda. Consent items. Second. It's Connolly in the second. I don't quite can call roll please. Ms Connolly? Yes. Ms. Downes. Yes. Ms. Flynn? Yes. Ms. Shonshizka? Yes. Mr. Snyder? Yes. Ms. Andre Hill? Yes. And Mayor Hardy? Yes. Okay, I think we're ready to move on to our brief work session. We do need to read the conflicts disclosure now. Shall we go Left to right or I'm sorry. I can't pop my hair in. Come there. No, that's your woman. Oh, there it is. Thank you. Okay, ready? The city council is discussing tonight the proposed accessory dual and unit ordinance. I like many others in the city and an owner of residential property that would be eligible for an accessory dual and unit if the proposed ordinance were to pass. And as a result, my property may be realized as reasonably foreseeable direct or indirect benefit from the ordinance. After careful consideration, I have determined that I am able to participate in this transaction fairly objectively and in the public interest. The City Council is discussing tonight the proposed accessory dwelling unit ordinance I like many others in the city and an owner of residential property that would be eligible for an accessory dwelling unit if the proposed ordinance were to pass and as a result my property may realize that reasonably foreseeable direct or indirect benefit from the ordinance. After careful consideration I have determined that I am able to participate in this transaction fairly objectively and in the public interest. The City Council is discussing tonight the proposed accessory dwelling unit ordinance. I like many others in the city and in the owner of residential property that would be eligible for an accessory dwelling unit if the proposed ordinance were to pass and as a result my property may realize a reasonably foreseeable direct or indirect benefit from the ordinance. After careful consideration, I've determined that I'm able to participate in this transaction fairly, objectively, and in the public interest. The City Council is discussing tonight the proposed accessory dwelling unit ordinance. I like many others in the city. I'm an owner of residential property that may realize a reasonable director and direct benefit from the ordinance. After careful consideration, I have determined that I'm able to participate in this transaction fairly. Objectively, and in in the city. I'm an owner of residential property that would be eligible for an accessory dwelling unit if the proposed ordinance were to pass. And as a result, my property may realize that reasonably for Cable Direct or indirect benefit from the ordinance. After careful consideration, I've determined that I am able to participate in this transaction fairly objectively and in the public interest. Mr. Snyder. Thank you. The city council is discussing tonight the proposed accessory dwelling unit ordinance. I like many others in the city and owner of residential property that would be eligible for an accessory dwelling unit if the proposed ordinance were to pass and as a result my property may realize a reasonably foreseeable direct or indirect benefit from the ordinance after careful consideration I'm determined that I am able to participate in this transaction fairly objectively and in the public interest. Great. Welcome back, Mr. Schrainer. Thank you, good evening, Mayor already, members of Council. Tonight's item before you is your final scheduled work session on accessory dwellings in zoning ordinance pertaining there to Council's's requested to hold that work session and focus primarily on four identified topics. These are include on the first page of the staff report under the request section that's set back in height requirements, cornered a lot requirements, accessory dwelling size, maximum for of the process of the process of the process of the process of the process of the process of the process of the process of the process of the process of the process of the process of the process of the process of the process. And some additional items that came out of that previous work session. So I'll go to line 76. This is where the updates to the code since first reading are summarized and those shaded and gray are updates that have happened since that March 10th work session. Beginning with Cornellot regulations, so an additional recommendation for setbacks for Cornellot's has been included in the draft code in section 48, 1223, 7E. Specifically that four Cornellot's is attached accessory dwelling, shall was set back in height regulations. There's no actual update to the recommendation here but section 4812 2337 B of the drafts. The next item was set back in height regulations. There's no actual update to the recommendation here but section 4812 2337 B of the drafts. The next item was set back in height regulations. There's no actual update to the recommendation here, but section 4812, 237 B of the draft code has been clarified to require set back of at least 10 feet from the property line to permit the one and a half stories in height. Regarding accessory dwelling size allowance for smaller principal dwellings, the draft code has been amended to reflect a new staff recommendation for again one of the discussion topics tonight for accessory larger size accessory dwelling for smaller principal dwellings. Staff's recommendation again which is reflected in the draft code tonight is to permit accessory dwelling to be up to 60% of the gross floor area of the principal dwelling when the principal dwelling is 1,200 square feet or smaller. 1,200 square feet represents the smallest 3% of homes, single family homes in R1A and R1B districts. So moving on into projections, into required setback areas. the draft code has been amended following Council's discussion at its last work session to to disallow projections from accessory dwellings into required yard setbacks except for cornices in eaves which would be permitted to extend up to two feet and six inches. The reason or justification for this is that these represent more architecture. the area of the area of the area of the area of the area of the area of the area of the area of the area of the area of the area of the area of the area of the area of the area of the area of the area of the area of the area of the area of the area of the area of the area of the area of the area of the area of the area of the area of the area of the area of the area of the area of the required rear yard area by all accessory buildings. There was several numbers. I think discussed at the last work session from 40 to 50 or higher. As a reminder, the Planning Commission's recommendation was to exempt accessory dwellings entirely from this requirement. So again, staff will be recommends additional discussion in direction on this topic ahead of the final code drafting for the public hearing. Regarding the occupancy maximum, the staff code has been amended to reflect a maximum of no more than four inhabitants within inaccessory dwelling related to the next item, which is a family definition. So in the draft code, the family definition for one family has been amended in section 482. That's the definition section of the zoning ordinance to clarify that no more than eight unrelated people would be permitted to live on a single property instead of within a single house. So previously, without this stipulation, you could have up to eight unrelated people in an accessory dwelling or the principal. So if you have four unrelated people living together in accessory dwelling under this regulation, could have no more than four unrelated people living in the community. We have a community that is a community that is a community that is a community that is a community that is a community that is a community that is a community that is a community that is a community that is a community that is a community that is a community that is a community that is a community that is a community that is a community that is a community that is a community that ising requirements for single-family homes, which is that that requirement would continue to stand for single-family homes that add an accessory dwelling that zoning requirement of at least one off-sure parking space for the principal dwelling would continue to apply for any principal dwelling that the and the and the and the and the and the and the and the and the and the and the and the and the and the and the and the and the. And then lastly before I go on, I wanna address a public comment that was made around corner, corner lots. We have been working with folks in the community and corner on owners on concerns around those, those considerations. And I just wanna flag that in existing code section, that section 48 dash, 1, 1, 0, 2, C includes existing regulations that no new buildings may be constructed in front yard, in the front yard setback in our districts. And it defines that as being, you know, the required front yard setback for a principal structure relative to the underlying zoning. So that's 30 feet in R1A, 25 feet in R1B. And in addition to the front yard setback language that the Planning Commission included, which is that no, under no instance, could the accessory dwelling be built closer to any street coupled with this section that ensures that no accessory dwelling may be constructed in a front yard or closer to any front yard relative to any conforming neighbor so I just want to point that out and I can share that with the folks that raise that concern as well. So moving on to line 88. These are follow up, follow up answers and discussion on conversation points that happened at that March 10th work session. The first one regarding Harb review. This is actually no new information here. I believe this is the same, which is that we've included the relevant sections that pertain to harbs review for historic properties. clarify that the HEC does cover the entire city, but that those regulations only apply to residences during or before 1910 and other structures and sites of historical cultural or architectural significance. Regarding enforcement of existing short-term occupancy operators, there's a question about how the city would regulate existing short-term rental. And the short answer is that this enforcement would follow the same as any other zoning enforcement, which would be primarily by a complaint basis. So if and when staff would receive a complaint about a short-term rental operating out of a suspected accessory dwelling, the zoning division would go and do an inspection. And if it was determined that the structure is, you know, it does meet the accessory dwelling definition, that structure would be required to be permitted and come under compliance with existing standards, which of course would not permit the short-term rental use to continue. We are in discussion with the zoning division about what a potential kind of regular monitoring schedule could look like if we are a small city and each time we've provided a sort of window into or a snapshot of what existing short-term rounds are operating in the city, they've been modest. I think we've seen 11 to maybe 20. And so it represents a semi-manageable workload that could potentially be monitored with a regular schedule. So we are in talks with the zoning division about what a potential schedule could look like and what enforcement could come out of that. And then lastly, there was a request for a draft intake form. We've provided that as an attachment as a address certificate of occupancy, that's a zoning kind of checklist that would capture both the accessory dwelling use and the residential use. And so these would be required anytime and accessory dwelling is added, whether that's new construction or is added to an existing single-family home that there's no new construction specifically addressing. So those details would be captured in different options in the aggregate. So a single-family home that has a certificate of occupancy as a single-family home would be required to update that CO if they added an accessory dwelling. So that record is codified for the city. And so those are the updates I have for Council. I will flag that on the corner lot regulation analysis begins online 342. We've included a couple of models kind of diagramming what the concern is and how the proposed code remedies that. And I can run through those briefly on online 353 model 1 kind of shows how when you have a corner lot, that has a different orientation, specifically a perpendicular orientation with a neighboring lot, a side yard for a corner lot could rub up against a front yard or side yard of a principal dwelling, potentially resulting in accessory dwelling being built closer to a single family home then would occur between two interior lots. And so again the the proposed remedy to that is modeled in line 380, model 2, showing what those required setbacks would be relative to neighboring side in front yards, the more sensitive areas on the lot, which could push the accessory dwelling further into the interior of the subject lot or more into position. That's less sensitive for neighbors. And then let's see going to line 484. We've also included some numbers and options for council to look at when thinking about maximum rear yard coverage. We've included kind of what, how this would affect standard R1A and R1B lots. So in that first, or excuse me, in the second column from the left, we've got the standard lot required rear yard area. So this is the square footage that makes up that required rear yard area again for standard lots in R1A and R1B. That's 3,000 square feet in R1A and it's 1,800 square feet in R1B. The current regulation is 30% for all accessory buildings. That's the next column over that represents a maximum of 900 square feet in R1A and 540 square feet in R1B, which sounds like a lot of space. But consider that when you when there is an existing accessory building in there, We measured that the average footprint of an existing accessory buildings 248 square feet. So that's already about half the size of the allowable rear yard coverage in R1B and so that can just lead to some flexibility challenges particularly for the smaller lots in the city. And so we've included what the, basically what the allowable access coverage and square feet would be when you, if that's coverage maximum were expanded to 40, 50, 60%. And again, the staff recommendation is 50%, which would allow 1,500 square feet in R1A and 900 square feet in R1B. And then lastly, I'll wrap up with the table on line 540. This is a table that was included in that March 10th. work sessions showing the percentage of homes in R1A and R1B combined that are under a different size threshold. So when thinking about larger size allowances of the accessory dwelling for smaller single-family homes, that 1,200 square feet would capture the small 3% of single family homes in R1A and R1B which equates to 67 homes. But again we've included what the corresponding percentages are for higher size thresholds for Council's consideration. I think that's all I have for you tonight, Council. As a reminder, your next meeting on accessory dwellings is April 14th. That's the scheduled public hearing. I will be here and I will turn back to you, Madam Mayor. Thank you. Great. Before I open it up for discussion, Jack, I just wanted to thank you for your diligence on this. I think I was reflected just in the staff report. Like you were doing an incredible job of hearing our comments, hearing our concerns, hearing the community's ones, and reflecting back to us and offering, I think very well thought out compromises. And I was reflecting actually even since first reading. You kind of heard the community on short-term rentals. We've eliminated that. I think originally we started off by having a 25-foot two-story option. That is now... and I was reflecting actually even since first reading, you kind of heard the community on short-term rentals, we've eliminated that. I think originally we started off by having a 25-foot-two-story option. That is now gone. I think originally we had five-foot setbacks with 20 feet or 1 1 1 half-stories in height that is now vised down to five-foot setbacks for 15-foot and 9-to-1-story option, and then 10 feet for 20 feet night. So that was kind of a good move, I think on staff's part, to kind of hear based on the feedback of the community. And then tonight talking about the corn. and story option and then 10 feet for 20 feet night. So that was kind of a good move, I think on staff's part to kind of hear based on the feedback of the community. And then tonight talking about the corner lot, no projections and this rear lot one, we just, I just continue to first thing appreciate how you've guided us to kind of reach these compromises based on the feedback you've been hearing from us in the community. So thank you for that. Thank you. So with that, let's open up to questions on the items that Jack has heard us from last work session and are up for discussion tonight. Thank you for that. Thank you. So with that, let's open up to questions on the items that Jack has heard us from last work session and are up for discussion tonight. Once ago, otherwise we're going to adopt this version on April 14th. Madam Mayor, I do have some questions. Okay, go ahead, Mr. Snyder. Thanks. So Jack, again, thanks for your for your work. So what is the minimum setback that is permitted on this proposed ordinance? Five feet setback for heights of no taller than 15 feet or one story, whichever is less. That's five feet. And what's the percentage of lot coverage for the rear yard now permitted? That was, is that 50 percent permitted today's 30 percent stash recommending going to 50 percent coverage of the required rear yard. Okay, so we were 30% you're permitting more coverage with this is not right? That's correct. Okay. In the owner occupancy issue, we know that our occupancy is required by surrounding jurisdictions, but our city attorney has a different view. And then the square footage of, so we were permitting up to a 1200 square foot but accessory dwelling in R1A. So the... So the, the maximum size would remain at 1000 square feet, um, total. Um, so if you're, um, we would be talking about, um, that was so that 1000 square foot size cap would remain, but for smaller homes you'd be able to build a larger accessory dwelling up to 60% of smaller of the gross floor area versus four homes that are larger than 1,200 square feet. the size maximum would be 1,000 square feet or no larger than 50% of the floor area of the principal. So what's the maximum size that an accessory dwelling unit can be? The maximum size would be 1,000 square feet. You have a big enough. Okay, not. Right. Not 1200. Correct. 1000 square foot cap. Hey, um, and then, um, these are all by right. Right. So if you could summarize, let's say, if anyone wants to put one of these in what's the process and you comply with the ordinance, what's the process then? Sure. So you would basically apply for your zoning CO where you would say what you're aiming to do and you would submit the same sort of building plans that a normal single family home would go through. So that would go through all the zoning checks about lot coverage and, you know, setbacks and height. It would go through all the same kind of again checks that are in place for a single family home in order to ensure compliance. Okay and let's say you're a neighbor what and what to assume that the request is it consistent with the ordinance and and your neighbor, what are your rights at that point? So if it's by right, you're able to do that once you get all permitted and checked for safety and compliance and all that. If the grading plan requirements triggered, meeting more than 2,500 square feet of land area is disturbed, that requires a grading plan. So that's an additional level of review and check. In addition to the storm water, you have the tree canopy coverage check. And those go those grading plan reviews are public meetings where neighbors are notified that a grading plan has been submitted and so those folks you know will receive notification and you know we'll be able to show up to the meetings and participate in those. And then tree canopy. So my understanding is we're maintaining the current tree canopy minimums. Is that right? That's correct. That's the most we can legally require under state code. It's 20%. Okay. And what's the role of the planning commission? Let's assume we proposal was submitted that complies with the ordinance. Sure. So the planning commission would only review an accessory dwelling application if it requires special use permits. So you write that a lot of the discussion has been about the buy-write regulations because that's what's going to get built most. But for conversion of existing structures like you may have a large garage that set back three feet from the property line that you could legally build a garage under, but if you wanted to convert that into accessory dwelling, well, it's not set back far enough to meet those standards if you were going to build it new today. So there is an allowance to convert that, but that would require special use permit, and that would go before the planning commission for a recommendation before going to the BZA, who ultimately issued a special use permit. And so in that instance, there could be, there's a set, a broad standard set of criteria. I say broad, but it's also fairly lengthy that the BZA applies to all special use permit considerations. That includes impacts to neighbors. So conditions can be placed on a special use permit if the BZA feels that's appropriate. Okay. So, however, the scenario that you gave with the two foot setback garage, they'd need to set it back three more feet, depending on the circumstances for the five foot, right? If they were building,. If they're building new. Right. All right. And if they're not building new. If they wanted to convert that existing structure and keep it exactly where it is, then that would require especially use permit. OK. And then going back to the tree canopy, I mean, it is true that there's a 20% limit as a matter of ordinance. But the fact of the matter is that many of our single family, for many of the R1A and R1B residents actually have far more than 20%. And so one could expect that is the excess redwelling unit is bill. That's a potential to reduce the existing tree canopy all those staying within the minimum. Is that possible? Yes, that's possible. That's been, and with that in mind, I think there's always been an eye for property on reflectability and setback and positioning on the lot to accommodate as much of the existing conditions as possible. But you're right. When adding a structure, it is always possible that someone might have to cut down trees. And so when that if and when that grading plan gets triggered, that's when the tree can't be requirement gets enforced. Right, and that would be the 20%. The 20% tree can't be minimum, yes. Right, the minimum. Okay. I think these are Those questions I had again. Thank you Jack for your work. Thank you Other questions Miss Hardier I'm wondering if we can go through when we did it at the March 10th meeting. Going through piece by piece was really helpful to me. I don't know if the ones that we just the ones that we've been changed again. I don't think we need to go through everything again. Right. And it's hard to just jump around because everything is so connected. That piece by piece I was really helpful. So if we could do that. Sure. At 10.52, that would be good. I can't review that, but we can do that again. I guess. Does it ask questions in each section? Tested. Walk through each. Yeah. I mean, I guess I wasn't quite sure when we went into it on some of the. Yeah, some of them. We have three or four that were open still. And so staff came back with some suggests, like the like the rear yard coverage, just to see where we all are on that one before we'd want the next thing. So do you want to start online? Yeah, would it be helpful to be in the staff analysis section? Do you mean like start line 83? Start corner lots? Because there are four items that we said we wanted more discussion on. Yep, yep. So we do corner lots, set back and I size allowance. Very good coverage. OK, corner lots. Sure. OK, so questions for Jack. For comments, Erin? I had a quick one. So the code language actually makes sense to me, but I was confused by some of the depictions on, I guess it's line 380. So I just wanted to confirm for example, model 2 right we're depicting the side yard as the space between the lot line and the pre-existing dwelling but I wanted to make sure that like the side yard is actually as defined in the zoning ordinance so we're showing the side yard as the little box, but the side yard should actually be the entire side between the front yard setback and the rear yard setback. So on these depictions, it's making the rear yard look like 10, 23, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8, like a 90 foot rear yard setback when really that side yard box should be extending much further into the rear yard right in the same way for the side yard on the lot that's like the bottom right of model 2 and like I said I think it's correct in the actual zoning language but I just want to make sure that if we have you know for the final staff report, people looking back at these models and somehow relying on the models to interpret the zoning ordinance, the zoning ordinance like language and definition should control, so my request would be that the yard is actually properly represented on the model to the extent that you can do that for the final staff report if you're tracking what I'm getting at. That makes sense. That makes sense. The only one thing I'll raise is that when you extend that rear yard all the way past in the principal dwelling, then it's perhaps creating a different standard for an accessory dwelling on a corn lot versus to interior lots where you might have a five foot setback. If you're under that height, so if you have two parallel lots, you could build to the five feet from the property line from for an internal lot, in the same sort of position relative to the neighboring single family home, but for a corner lot, that changes just the interpretation a little bit. I just want to flag that. Yeah, I guess I'm just saying when you read the ordinance, like the side yard has a clear meaning in the definitions, and then I would think that that meaning would be how we're applying it to the corner lot provision. And I think it generally works out the same. I guess we're, you know, that the highlighting would look different here in terms of what has to stay at 10 feet versus what has to be at 5 feet. And so I think you're actually applying a different meaning of a side yard in this model then what exists anywhere in the code. Oh, catch it. And I'm okay with the more protective version of this because I don't think it should for the corner lot, for the adjacent house on the corner lot, for example, mattered like where it's sliding based on the development like I think there should be some expectation of where an accessory building could be within the building envelope of the adjacent lot for the corner lot but like I just wanted to flag that this did not seem to be representing what is the actual side yard for purposes of the zoning ordinance. Yeah. But there's agreement on the language. We can look at the graphical, but the language is no need to. I think the point of now is like, is there any desire to change the change the language? Okay. I was fine with it. I just want to make sure that Mr. Sparry's additional concern that if a building is nonconforming it must meet the front yard setback as the primary even if the building is not conforming so if that is that the... That's right, yeah, there's existing provision that says no new buildings can be built, essentially in the front yard set back for in any our districts. And it says, you know, the... Okay, so that addresses that concern. Yeah. Thank you. Anything else on corner lot? Okay. Well, thank you for your work on that with both the neighbors and the the code language and getting us models to understand this too. Okay, let's move on to the next thing then. Setbacks and height. So here we did, this is one we want to get counsel to sort of land on. There's the one the sliding scale option and then there's the eight foot option. I think that sums up what kind of the council was sort of split on last week if I characterize that correctly. So right now the staff recommendation is five feet for 15 foot and height, 10 feet for 20 feet in height, clarifying that 20 feet in height is the one and half stories. So we've eliminated two stories and then a sliding scale for in between. That's correct. That's the staff recommendation. That's the planning commission. And that's the planning commission's recommendation as well. Yes. Okay. Thoughts on this one. Wait, we eliminated two story ADUs. Yeah, we eliminated that. We eliminated 25 feet and two stories. Oh, okay. That was one of the compromises we've made along the way. Yeah, we started off with five foot setbacks for 20 feet. And now we're at five feet for 15 feet. So only one story can you have a five-foot setback. I'll just jump in. I think from the beginning I've said that I've And there's a delicate balance between letting people have be able to develop on their property but also being aware of neighbors. And I do have some concerns about maintaining harmony among neighbors. and five feet to me just does seem like a not big enough setback. I know I've mayor Hardie and I've talked about this. She threw in like, well, if we did five feet, maybe you could require privacy fence or something like that. I don't know where people feel about, you know, I'm not trying to make it too restrictive that people can't buy, build things. But on the other hand, again, just looking at having, you know, we're putting, I'm trying to look at both sides of this, how a neighbor is gonna feel when something's just five feet from the property line. So I'm just throwing that out there. I don't really have any solutions, but this is one that I've had a hard time with. Thanks. I think we have precedent in the past where we've put in screening requirements. And so could we suggest that if you're at five feet, we require privacy fence with some sort of exception that both neighbors don't want the privacy fence you're not required to but the starting point is at five foot to put a privacy fence without address the concern. This is a by-right process sort of that kind of negotiated language would be difficult so it either need to be a requirement or not a requirement. I'll say that it wouldn't address my concern on the setbacks. I mean, I think that we should be at a larger setback. I think that eight feet does seem reasonable. I've consistently had concerns about buy-write, this buy-write application for all residential districts and also buy-write on substandard lots. And so if you're talking about a number of substandard lots and you've already, you know, diminished side setbacks to seven and a half feet, you're not talking about primary dwellings and an R1B district that are 20 feet apart anymore. You're talking about primary dwellings and a third of R1B districts that can be as close as 15 feet together and then you're talking about citing accessory dwellings. Still more closely within those that 15 feet that's already somewhat compromised on a substandard lot. And so I do think that having 15 foot AD, 8 feet a 15-foot AD, 8-foot off, 8-feet off the lot line, for example, responds to keeping ADs basically at the side setback and substandard lots and also addresses sort of the privacy and adjacent lot impacts that we've been talking about throughout this process. I don't think it's unduly restrictive. We've done a lot in this ordinance in moving from internal only ADs with a sub-process, with three-year renewal requirements to interior accessory dwellings, attached accessory dwellings, and detached accessory dwellings. And I don't think that like maybe an overriding or overarching policy preference for detached ADs on the part of the homeowner when they can as easily put an attached AD or have the option for an attached AD means that we should be having the adjacent lots bare some of these impacts that I don't know we've truly captured yet. And it also allows for some of the actual landscaping screening that Urban Forestry talked about in terms of practically how you even get, you know, certain shrubs and trees to grow in areas with setbacks that are that small. So I would be in favor of eliminating five foot setbacks by right, eliminating the sliding scale requirement, which I don't think makes sense in the context of like how we've talked about one story anymore, regardless, like why a person needs a 19 foot AD if it's only one story, doesn't quite make sense to me. And having just eight and 10 for the 15 feet one story, and then you can, you're at 10 otherwise. And if you wanna build a smaller AD, then maybe you can move closer to the lot line, but otherwise you should be at 10 feet. 8 feet or 10 feet. I mean, you'd be at 8 feet, you'd be at 8 for 15 feet and one story. And if you're going higher than that, then you'd need to be at 10 for 1 and a half stories up to 20 feet. So if a person, you're generally at 10, but if a person wants to build a smaller AD, they kind of get the benefit of pushing into eight feet if they want to go to 15 feet in one story. Can we go to line 301 that shows the ratios and what's proposed and what's allowed by right now? That would be helpful as we discuss how you can set back, I think. I think Debbie, you had a comment. And then you talk. Yeah, I guess I am again. I'm thinking about where in my mind, we started this and where discussions of planning commission were about talking about larger ADs, 1500 square feet, ESC actually recommended even higher, but we've come down to 1000, come down from two stories to one and a half, and they're many visual and architectural reasons and technical reasons why you might want that half. We've made changes to where you can put your windows, where how you can look, you know, for at the word, Clare Story. Clare Story. Clare Story. Windows, we have pushed back from what you can already do by right for accessory structure, and I understand there's differences when you have, in theory, when you have people there overnight, but there are many accessory structures that are three feet from a lot line right now that have people who work in the mall day, their studios, their offices, their people in and out. And right now, by right, you can build that three feet away. And I forget what the height is. Twelve feet. Twelve feet. Twelve feet. So, pushing it out, another couple feet for three feet in height, to me, is the same ratio. And we've made concessions on projections. Like I said, on windows. And when you go back and look and see where they've been built, and how many iterations Arlington, Alexandria have gone through to get any kind of production. You know, they've landed in that range that we're talking about right now, so I'm still in favor of five feet. And I actually, I'm not convinced, I guess if you have to have a one or the other about having a fence up or not having a fence up, not everybody will want a fence up. I mean, there are many neighbors who have very neighborly and collegial relationships that want to be able to see each other and interact with each other over a bush or a hedge or whatever. I understand that's not everybody, but there's certainly a number of instances where that's the case, so I wouldn want to require That that's just out off the top of my head discussion point on that I'm about an hour past Okay, other thoughts on heightened setback Justine I Am currently in favor of the staff proposal, as well as the planning commission proposal. But if people feel like the privacy fence is important for them, for the five-foot setback, then I would be fine with that. I, um, as I said last time, I really think a 10 foot setback would be the best. But I know there are people who have concerns with that. So I would be happy with an 8 foot setback. I don't think there needs to be a privacy fence requirement. Part of the reason I like the 8 foot setback is because it does give space for trees to be planted and roots. And as we've heard from people who are concerned about trees, they need more space than 5 feet to thrive there. So I don't think we need to have a privacy fence requirement. I think 8 feet is a good compromise between five and 10. Okay, I still like the staff recommendation and the planning commission one. So if I were to count now, Dave. Do you have thoughts on that? Yeah, I prefer your eight feet or ten feet as a uniform requirement. I'd also like to be able to though if it is eight feet to be able to move it to five feet if there is a permit request that the neighbors are included in. So by right eight feet, but by, I can't think of the word waiver. What's the special issue? It could go to five feet, but it requires working with the neighbor had to make that happen. Working with the neighbor. Would that be a like drawn out process where you have to go before a board and commission? I mean, is there a way where you could go to the permits office and say I have this signature? As you please go through the BZA and the planning commission. As you please would go through several planning process. There's no way to, I think that's a fair amount of time in the cost of the process. Yeah. I'm not sure that we have something like a notification process that's in between that. Usually, you know, notification gets triggered by inaction. A, you know, especially use permit or a grading plan, some additional review that now we're kind of moving beyond the by-right process. So when you get beyond the by-right process, we have especially use pyramid or you have a variance, which is for, you have to demonstrate true hardship for a variance. And so that's kind of the extreme level, especially use permit is sort of the, in between level we have, but again, that adds two to three additional public meetings and cost, but just more, yeah, additional review. Yeah, and there's cost to the city for that process as well. I wish there were a simpler way. That's, yeah. I would agree. There are some cases where the zoning administrator can review waivers, but I don't believe those ever have, and I don't know the legality issues of requiring neighborhood input on something like that either. So either I think the council could sort of give direction on that now. Last time this was discussed, there was kind of three to three, more or less. Or the council could make a motion on the 14th. the way it's written right now is the planning commission recommendation. So if you wanted written with eight foot standard, we would kind of want to consensus of a majority to go in that direction tonight, otherwise it would say is written. I'd also like to make sure that existing buildings, existing accessory buildings could still be converted even if they're not eight feet, five feet, which is what we've talked about before. Right? That would remain. I mean, now you're with an eight foot setback, you're even. So accessory structures right can be built three feet from the property line. So now you're talking about a five foot difference between an existing accessory structure versus a new accessory structure specific kind. But you're kind of widening the gulf between those two uses now. To bring legacy structures. Now the wider difference between... Yes. Is it widening the gulf in your opinion too big of a gulf? Or is it... Well, it just... It's surmountable in all. In terms a structure of the same size, but a different use, it's creating a much different standard. Again, looking at the ratios, like we only require three feet for 12 feet in height. And you can build a 35 foot tall single family home with a 10 foot setback right now. So requiring a one story AD at 15 feet night at eight feet seems quite excessive. The ratios are 0.53. It seems like it would really harm the production and penalize people and prevent people from building them. And that one story option is the one that's probably most commonly used for people aging in place, right? Without the accessibility that. So, yeah. It would really, my opinion, slow down the production of those. So, do we need to do a count, I guess, so that we can give staff some direction when our council starts? Would you a straw poll here? Well, if council doesn't want to be counted tonight then that it could I mean it's not too complicated of an emotion if there's a change of view on the 14th We could we could go either way I heard three for eight to ten feet three for five feet and one for five feet with offense Is that correct? I don't know. We wrote five feet with offense. Is that correct? I don't know. I'm three. We were at five feet with offense and I prefer five feet with offense. And to move a tape feet, I just think that again, you can build a 35 story. 35 story. No, not a 35 story. 35 foot. 35 foot. I'm at my right as well. And then 10 foot setback. And then structure three feet setback. Two or four votes for a five foot setback with offense. Is there a majority? Is that what you said you support that? Yeah. OK, I'm the fourth, I guess. I don't like defense at all. I mean, I prefer to fight you without defense, but. Yeah, it is again. I'm just struggling. We know when we started this process, I was thinking 10 feet and 15 feet. So, you know, for me, it'm getting there. I mean, right as of tonight, I would probably lean towards the eight and 10, but I understand what you're saying, Mayor Harding in terms of, and vice mayor, has got that people could build something and have, you know, so I get that piece of it too. So I am really struggling with this one I have to say. I guess, you know, one of my main point, like I would prefer to have a smaller principal structure and accessory dwelling, then then have tear downs of, you know, I'd like to have some variation and then I think that's what would leave people to do that versus 10 feet, 35, maximizing lots when they have given an opportunity. So I think people are options of what to do with their land. I think this does that, but just one man's opinion. I might be messing things up here. Would there be any interest in an eight foot R1A and a 5 foot R1B? For me my concern is actually more on the R1B than the R1A. I think that the R1B could potentially be two dents in R1B, substandard lots when you're adding accessory dwellings at five feet off the lot line that could have roof peaks at 18 or 19 feet. It is a higher density zoning district. That's what R1B is. Kind of by definition, but it how it all fits is really important. So I'm talking about community characteristics. Again, I think your building coverage limits kind of governs that naturally already, right? Like you're just able to fit less in given that your lots are smaller, but yet you're doing 25% building coverage. So yeah, it's another natural guardrail. So if the council's not, I mean, this is a work session discussion. The council's not ready to sort of decide on this. I think that's okay. I think we could work this. This would, it might be, this is kind of the one issue outstanding, which would be okay for the final night. I have one question on this and that's the sliding scale. So my preference, my strong preference, would be to just get rid of the sliding scale and it's either you're, you're either at five or eight feet, 15 feet in one story and as soon as you go above 15 feet between 15 and 20 with one and a half stories, you have to be at that 10. I don't, and now that, you know, staff has made the recommendation of staying at one story, and you have to be at 10 feet for the one and a half stories. I don't really understand the sliding scale and kind of what it's doing. And I don't think that every foot is really like proportional to a foot and you get a foot because each of those feet is more than a feet in foot in terms of the roof height when you're calculating it off the midline. So can you just, I don't know, address that somewhat if you're capping up to 10 feet at one story what work does allowing 16, 17 or 18, 19 foot, one story, buildings accomplish? It could accomplish different, I suppose, architectural styles, roof styles, particularly with the eve in cornices, allowances, different light options at the top there, or I suppose a chandelier or other sort of internal contents, but in terms of actual livable space, the floors would be kept from from one to one and a half, and again, that one and a half wouldn't be permitted unless you're 10 feet off the property line. I think having seen them elsewhere, every feet does make a difference in terms of where they're sighted. So that sliding scale made a lot of sense to me, and to not penalize people in the middle, right? So if you're at 16 feet in height to automatically then be forced to do a 10 foot set back, really impacts your usable yard. And again, if we want people to put them in a place that makes sense, preserve trees, preserve usable space, that sliding scale, I think makes a lot of sense for these small structures. Okay, sounds like we're punting on this till the 14th. Let's move on to what we do when there's small homes. So first we thought we would go with 50% of a thousand square feet. We're now the staff recommendation, 60% of 1200 square foot homes. I have a question on this one. There's kind of a weird in between between 1200 square foot houses and 1400 square foot houses you actually get penalized. Right because 1200 times 60 percent is 720 square feet is what your accessory dwelling could be. But if you're 1200 and 50,'re then subject to the 50% size, and then your ADU can only be 625 feet. Oh, good math. So there's a whole bunch of, like if your house is between 1,200 and 1,400 square feet, you actually can build a smaller ADU than if you were 1,200 square foot single family home. Primary home. Does that make sense? Yeah. So that doesn't seem really fair. I get the intent, especially seeing the math of how many small homes we have in that percentage of why staff bumped at the 1200, but I don't want to create this weird unfair structure for those homes between 1200 and 1400. And that chart showed us that we had a fair number of those. That then they essentially lose like 100 and some square footage. So I don't know how we solve for that. I don't want idea which I don't love because I don't usually love minimum square footage is do we want to have a minimum square footage so that if you're below 1200 or something you can go up to minimum 700 square feet or but how do we protect against that I guess I'll leave it to that is that There's an issue with if your main house is between 1214 and I don't square feet or up. But how do we protect against that? I guess I'll leave it to that. There's an issue with if your main house is between 1214, 900 square feet, you get penalized in this way of doing it. Right. You could have a you could have a floor. No pun intended of a gross floor area where the exactly where you're describing and that could help address that for the kind of in between homes we're discussing. But then if people want to build something smaller, I don't want to discourage that either so that's kind of this like, if you can live in like 500 square feet, I'm like I don't want to force you to make a 701 but I I didn't know how to solve for that, like again, the 1200 to 1400 people. We could say, you know, instead of whichever small, you could say whichever is greater, so you could have kind of the opposite of, you know, you could put like a ceiling on it in a different way. So you could have like 600 square feet or 12 or 60% of the GFA, whichever is larger. I don't know if you move it up to 1400, then you have the problem with the 1600 feet. Right. I'm fine with that, the whichever is greater 60% or minimum. 700 or something. Yeah, I think that's a good solution. Other thoughts on this one? Yeah, I think you want to encourage whatever small, I mean, if you could have a smaller square footage unit, then I don't want that to... I don't want to minimum, so I think that's a good way of addressing it. Okay. I think that one is salt. Are you ready to move on to rear yard coverage? I know projections. Does everyone find with no projections, except for eaves and cornices. So, planning commission recommended getting rid of the limit, the current limit is 30, that planning commission recommended no limit at all. Staff's recommendation is 50%. Can we scroll to that chart that that was helpful, I thought. That showed how much you could build based on... Does anyone have the line number for Jack or Cindy? That's 484. Jack, what was the size of that? An average accessory structure like a shed, like 280 thumbs-to-arms. Um, uh, It's 239 I think. I can find it. So if you have a shed under the current regulations with a cap of 30% if you have a shed in your backyard you're essentially no R1B lots would build an accessory dwelling. That's what that would mean. Uh, entirely in that area. In that area. And at 50% 900 minus 230 is you know 600 something so that's still a pretty small AD. Yes. So they're already they're still pretty restricted. So we found the average footprint of existing access restructures in R1A and B was 248 square feet. Okay. Okay. So I can see why the Plane Commission recommended no limits to again provide flexibility because many people have sheds and backyards already. So if I'm looking at line 469 the two examples the rear yard is the same for every property right it's the 30 feet from the back fence. The rear yard set back yes it's 30 feet. Okay so no matter what size property you have. I think it's a standard size lot. So if it's because you have lot width requirements too. So that's how that area is calculated. You have minimum lot width times the minimum setback is your X and Y access. And so that's how you get the minimum setback area. And so these models show a standard lot, what's required the minimum requirements for under the zoning ordinance. But you do have several substandard lots in the city where that box is smaller. Okay, but your whole, your entire, the whole lot smaller by definition So thoughts on the staff recommendation at 50% So as I look at line 469 Those two models are either of them showing 50% No, these are showing 60. I believe the 40% current 30% It's showing the 30% so in model 7 you have an existing 248 square foot building and model seven that's in the top right corner so that's existing that's about three feet off the property line and then by you know building coverage you would be looking at an allowance of an additional the the the the the the the amounts shown in red in those models. So the accessory dwelling takes up 24% of that required rear yard area and the existing structure takes up 14%. And so when you put those together, that's over 30%. So that moves you into the model eight positioning where that accessory dwelling moves closer to the principal lot. And so half of it about gets is permitted in that required rear yard because you're not gonna move a shed or something with a cement floor. So the other half gets built in the rest of the backyard where it's not restricted. But so that's what I think moving, and that can be fine if you're not accommodating for other conditions on the lot. That's kind of where more trees or trees or other vegetation may be jeopardized if you're forced to place your accessory dwelling in such a way that is not optimal to your needs. Or just make your backyard plus usable, right? In that if it yeah if you're forced to put that in the more central part of your yard the actual usable usable area of that backyard for recreation, green space also can be shrunk So here's what I'm struggling with and looking at model six as another one And I know what we're trying the the state goal here is we want to make these easily done so that people will be able to do this with the least amount of expense and all of that. But it just seems like some lots just aren't made to have this in it for whatever reason. Like every lot, we can write the ordinance so that every single possible lot can do it. It's not going to work on my lot. The way the shape is, how much we've already used up in house, it isn't going to happen. Other lots, that same size, it might be able to happen. But I just worry that if we say, there's no rear, if we get rid of all the rear yard coverage, as the Planning Commission said, then what we're trying to do is torture the ordinance to make it work in last word really shouldn't work. So I think I'm okay, I think I'm okay with 50% to say, but I feel like saying none is too much. Sure. me overall a lot, maximum coverage. Yeah. Wherever it is, right? And you can put it in the front, so you can't put it inside. But suppose you live behind model six, like suppose you live right behind model six, then all that is right in your own backyard. That's my, you know, again, going back to struggling with the, you know, giving people the ability to build these, but then also, you know, playing devil's advocate and thinking, okay, so now I'm looking at my backyards, my backyard neighbors, their shed and theirU, I'm looking at two structures now. So I think there is a piece of it is, some of this is gonna be it, if the expense of neighbors, I do worry about aesthetics somewhat. So again, for me this is a, I understand why the Planning Commission suggested that. I wouldn't support that because again, I just think it's too much. I could probably go with the 50%, but I am a little bit concerned that, you know, again, neighbors, all of a sudden that, you know, it could change, it could change relationships between neighbors and things. And all of a sudden they're looking at two structures and backing up to their house. So we also could look at, if they tear down the 1200 square foot house in this instance, you could build 35 feet. Five feet further back and you'd have a wall of 35 foot versus 12 foot or 15 foot or whatever it goes to at 5 feet. I mean depending on what the lock average is, but I mean they could choose as both of them out. Like if they want a big front yard, they, you know, you could push that out. So there are a lot of 5 right here, of course. Of course. I mean I'm sure we all have instances of, you know, maybe someone didn't want us to do something away that we did it or our neighbor who did that. But so I guess I just think of that as I think of the lot coverage and the permeability coverage and not having it in the front yard and the side yard as more of the aesthetic. And you know, on the other side of that fence, maybe they too have a shed or they too have a accessory so I think I mean I would personally agree with the planning commission, but you know maybe 50% is literally the halfway compromise of You know of having some alleviating some of the what might feel like crowdedness of multiple structures and similarly, you know, give some flexibility. But also, you know, the, who ever owns this 12-hundreds-square-foot-house also has to look at the shed and the accessory dwelling. I mean, that's, you know, that's what they'll be looking at all every day too. So it's not just a one way mirror to two way. Yeah, I guess I'm more with Laura on this one. I think 50, personally I think 50 is too high. I think I could maybe support 40, but I think that we're kind of prioritizing the homeowner's priority for preference for a detached accessory dwelling over kind of the other impacts. And I think one of the reasons we have setbacks that we have is also because it pushes the building envelope towards the more towards the center of the lot. And you can make exciting decisions within sort of that rectangle, but it means that you might not have the drainage issues or the sending storm water into your neighbor's yard and because we still have this issue about grading plans and they may not be required for some of these, that there aren that there aren't those protections sort of built in in this, and I do think that it isn't as much sort of space and distance if you have new builds going up, you know, you have 60 feet by definition between those houses at a minimum because of the rear yard setbacks or 80 feet of the area of the area of the area of the area of the area of the area of the area of the area of the area of paid a lot of attention to this in terms of just, you know, how much Space is taken up in that rear yard coverage and I do think it makes a big difference to be looking at a shed that takes up a third of the rear yard versus looking up even half or more than that in terms of just like a wall aesthetically and environmental impacts wise. Other thoughts on your lads? And it's not a detached AD or nothing. I mean you can also have an attached AD on your lot. Justine, I'm fine with the planning commission proposal, but I'm also fine with the staff's recommendation. Yeah, I kind of like the planning commission that I could live with 50%. I think again, the point about giving people options about what to do with their land so that the only default is not tearing down is important. And the flexibility, I think, 50 seems like a reasonable compromise. I think, again, the 30% role is contemplated before we agreed conceptually that we wanted to allow accessories. So that was one in the age of just having structures. Garage and said, now we're saying, hey, you're also allowed to have an accessory dwelling. So it makes sense to up that percentage some with some guardrails, 50 feels reasonable. I think if the person has a shed, they also have the option of flipping their shed into an accessory dwelling. So I mean, there, you know, there are other things that they can do, so it's sort of like should you be able to have everything you want in your lot now that you have other options available to you or should you kind of have to make concessions on your own lot in recognition of kind of the changes that we're now allowing. I think I heard four for 50% did I hear that correctly? Or five for 50? Okay, it sounds like we've got majority for 50%. I agree, slightly, let me agree with the 50%. Okay. Okay, what's next, Jack? After. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. What's next, Jack? After a rear lot. Do we have any other follow-ups from the occupancy of four? Yeah, we got four in there. Now we had it. That's a change from last work session, a planning commission recommended three. and it sounded like there may have been consensus for four, for a majority for four. With the second part of the family commission in the next session. It's still no more than eight for the entire property though. That's the clarification we also added. A total eight unrelated persons. Okay. Anything else? We'll be tackled that after the sign ordinance. Yeah. The short-term rental is just a clarification on... There was no change since first reading, right, Jack? That's correct. Because I think the four, I think the four things we said were follow ups, right? Yeah, that's what I have the rest are. Yeah, just clarifications and highlights of things that have been in the code, including a prohibition on short-term rental. One-off-tree parking space to remain for single family home regardless of whether whether they add a accessory dwelling, and then a clarification in one line of the draft code about internal forms only permitted in the RM district. Okay. Good, so we're from four, we're down to one. So we're getting close. Good, we're getting there. I had a couple of questions just on code language. And it's not, you know, I think we can do them pretty quickly. It's just whether intent is fully captured in the code. Is it OK if I go through them pretty quickly? OK. This one may be the longest one. So in general, 982 definition accessory dwelling means I still don't, I guess, see how we're capturing the distinction going forward between accessory dwelling and accessory structure. or we still to have people who are saying that people can occupy accessory structures because those structures don't have a kitchen, for example. I thought our intent was to get everything out of accessories, structures that are... it's either an accessory dwelling for habitation or an accessory structure that is not habitable. Well, there are, yes. So there are certain accessory structures like pool houses that aren't meant for habitation, but do have some of these things. So this is not meant for that. What's meant, you know, obviously to capture our, are those that are meant for habitation, which do require, you know, all those things meant for habitation, like a living or a kitchen and a bathroom at a minimum. OK, but are we defining a kitchen in a way that someone says, I don't have a kitchen, I have a hot plate, and so it's not an accessory dwelling. I guess I'm just wondering, have we captured the intent of this as well as we could in some of these definitions? We can go back to that. I think the rest of the definition is sort of meant to back that up so So in consideration of being laid out, you know, and intended for use, designed or ranged use, or intended for occupancy or living purposes. That second part is sort of meant to reinforce the first part in those interpretations of a kitchen in bathroom. I was led back through. I mean, I guess I wonder whether you've in need containing a kitchen in bathroom, can it just be a complete independent dwelling unit located on the same lot as under the same ownership as and subordinate to a one family dwelling in a designed arranged user intended for occupancy for living purposes. So that you're out of like, how are you defining what a kitchen is. I think part of that maybe meant for enforcement so you have some internal contests that you could point to that are common in you know dwelling units instead of enforcement perhaps being being challenged on every interpretation of an accessory dwelling versus a structure. So some of these things add to that straightforward definition part, and then the second part kind of backs up first part of that. Okay, well I'm raising a concern that I think it's going to be more confusing going forward than we want it to be. So I can just register that and maybe others can think about that definition. For my understanding, I just, I wanted to make sure that I'm clear on this SUP versus variance. that really were just at this point thinking about SUPs for accessory dwellings. So as I now read at line 1035, so this 48 142 that goes to extensions, this doesn't at all apply to accessory dwellings at this point, right? Correct. That was amended to clarify only for principle dwelling in. Okay. And then at line 1076 on powers of the BZA, I'm also now understanding that subsection 3 on the extension of a residential structure because it talks about an existing residential structure that this also doesn't apply to accessory dwellings. Yeah, so I believe that's correct. I'll double check with the zoning administrator that's the correct interpretation. What line was that again? That's line 1076. So I just want to make sure that neither the provision at 1035 or the provision at 1076 apply to ADs. And then on and then what we would be talking about is that the provision starting at 1099 is the criteria by which we're judging, like planning commissions recommendation of BZA's, not we are judging. The BZA is using this criteria to judge, especially use permit application. That's a section. And then are they, Is this, is this subsection B, constraining the BZA's authority at all, for example, so that a pre-existing structure at 12 feet, three feet off the lot line can't exceed 12 feet? Like I don't, I guess I'm concerned that I don't read this provision to constrain the BZA in any way, so that if someone came in with a Sup on an accessory structure that they could basically expand that structure in a way that Kind of doesn't end run around the I see you're you're raising the the point that these two sections might be in conflict with each other or regarding existing accessory structures. I'm more concerned that Subsection B might give the BZA authority that goes beyond what whatever that is division 12. Okay, allow. Remitting expansion of an existing. Yeah, so I don't know if there should be maybe a subsection C here about like, what the parameters of like the nonconforming use should have to be. Because we've been talking about accessory structures three feet off the lot line. So I wouldn't want to see something a shed that's 12 feet, the BZA granting authority for that shed to go up to 16 feet. Because someone says it BZA, I mean I don't know if I would want the BZA or not to, you know, approve the accessory dwelling in the front yard setback. Because it's like non-conforming and there's a little shed that's somehow in front of the house, right? So I think we should think somewhat about whether it makes sense to have parameters that mirror what the ordinance otherwise is generally envisioning in AD to be even if it could be with closer than the setback because of what accessory structures are currently allowed. Now, my understanding, and I'll run this by zoning, who deals with this more on a regular basis. But my understanding is that unless the code particularly permits, especially use permit for an allowance, that's otherwise not permitted. And so that's where the variance realm comes in it's much more stringent And so especially use permit sections only applied to those where it says okay You can do this only with especially use permit if that's not expressly laid out that I don't believe that's Ineligible process and it'll go through the period. I would yeah, I think it would be helpful just to have the zoning administrator I think it's clear that you can have a nonconforming structure that will be subject to an SUP process, but it isn't clear to me. Look constraints around the BZA's authority as to what that nonconforming structure can look like as an AD. Right. Does that make sense? Yes. Okay. I had before raised the HCC District. I was still that satisfied with it. I think it's a process foul. I mean, I don't think this, it never went to harb. It didn't go to the historical commission and we're striking and changing language in the historic conservation cultural district without having any input from the body that oversees that or the people who make determinations. And on, we talk, you know, in the staff report, I guess it says that, you know, only the structures are subject to the ordinance, but the actual ordinance language is that if it's a parcel that has a covered structure on it, then an accessory, an ancillary structure on that lot is subject to harbopruval and can be that 20 feet to the peak, right? And so we're changing that. And I have like pretty significant concerns that we're just kind of having this attitude where it's like not even going to herb for them to look at. They didn't get invited to the planning commission thing. You know, they had a little bit of a back and forth. Their meeting just got canceled today so that I don't think this has gone to them at all. And so, like I don't think we should be striking language from the HCCD ordinance in this kind of way. So I don't know if there's a way you can work with their liaison to get their input. I mean, I can raise it with them. I brought this to their attention a few times already. And then they sort of feel like they're in a holding pattern because no one from staff is convening them in any sort of way to have a discussion on this issue. And then a small thing I have on 1491. I think that internal should be interior just for consistency with the definitions. Sorry, would you mind repeating it? 1491. Yeah. Should be, I think, interior instead of internal, just for consistency with how we defined it earlier. And then on 1731, where we have the cross-reference to the Virginia Code provision, that code provision maybe was updated or something. It seems to have to do with like merchants or lodging. And so I wasn't sure if the correct cross-reference might be 15.2983, which is where the code defines, you know, short-term rentals is not being those rentals for less than 30 days of occupancy or something like that. Right, so that yeah, that section right on its face, the first page, is doesn't reference short-term rentals. This is in reference to this section though, so when it gets into short-term rentals, it's something like 58.1-3510.4 or something, so it's captured within the larger section. Oh yeah, no, I know. Because it's, I looked at the whole area and it's all the stuff on taxation. But even the short term rental goes to like short term rental of a business for tangible personal property. It doesn't go to a short term rental of real property. And so I think that that like within that sequence of 3510, there's no short-term rental definition that actually goes to short-term rentals the way we've been talking about them. And that the short-term rental definition that you probably wanna use for this ordinance is 15.2-983, which is the part that talks about creation of like a short-term rental registry. And even though we wouldn't be, we wouldn't have the registry, it's where short-term rental is defined in the way that we've been talking about it. All right, we will double-check that. Thank you. Okay. on on on on on on on on on on on on on are. So sorry, line 1772. Is there anywhere that we, I know it says that the A.D.s are a conditional use in the RM district. Do you think there's any need in that subsection 11 to include a subsection B, for example, that makes clear that RM interior A.D.s are subject to that B.Z.A. sub process at 48172.5. We can reiterate that, that's yeah, capturing the RM code, but we can say, we can view it down to there. And, there's so fear and it's cross referenced back to like what the criteria that governs it is, it might be clearer to do it that way. And then my last question was just whether this is effective upon passage, for example, or if there's gonna be an effective date, just so that like to the extent there needs to be any in-house training on this or you have about you know 60 days to convene you know those people who are doing review at the Permit desk or zoning administrator or arborist like all the people who are on the form so that everyone's actually clear on this given that across so many different code provisions. I know that our building safety and zoning and permit folks have been talking to each other about this. I can take maybe their temperature about how they feel about that first application coming in whenever that is. So I can definitely check in with them more. They, for instance, had put that form together with the draft CEO before I even had to ask. So if that's any indication of their readiness, then I'm confident that they are, but I'll double check with them. Okay, thank you. And one last thing, it's come up in other other ordinances. I mean, I would actually favor reporting requirement because I would be interested sort of knowing every 12 months, how many applications we've gotten from like what districts and how it's working. So if others would agree, I wouldn't mind putting a reporting requirement in the code. We're capturing that somehow. I think we did that with cottages and we got one project. Yeah, certainly. I think that's a good idea. In general, I think it's a good idea to track whether we're getting the results that we thought we would, right? It's a policy to say that the result in the outcomes is always a good thing. That's good. Because there's always a chance too that we need to revise what we've, what we eventually pass that we've made it too restrictive or too loose or not exactly what people need. So that we get to be able to track in the permit's office what's happening. Not only what's built, but how people are interacting with the ordinance. Thank you. Thanks. So we're going to develop a reporting language in the code. Is that what we're? Was that what we're looking at? I look to staff to figure out where the best place is whether it needs to be in the code or something that staff is committing to do. Okay. Okay. Any other final questions, comments on ADUs? I'll just ask if I can. Okay. Thank you, Jack. Okay. Thank you. Maybe that's a very much final work session. Until April 14th, then we'll talk vote. Okay. Item 11, business not on the agenda. Okay, Mary Beth. I am the Fulstertrape Management for the Cog Farm Committee and attended a retreat in Derwood, Maryland. And I learned all sorts of things about food and food production. But the Farm Committee itself is very focused on food and connecting food to people who need food from the people who are growing the food. And it was a really good opportunity for regional coordination. And people were very alert to what they view as coming, many more coming needs for food that may be coming and how the region is going to work together. So it's a really good organization just to keep, keep pulse up so that if we do run into that we will have that, those connections. I have been lax at attending but I won't go regularly from now on. Any other committee or council liaison reports? Just a reminder there's no mayor's meeting tomorrow because we don't have a fifth Monday. And I hear tell that the GovOps Committee has changed its schedule so if somebody can let me know because we have one scheduled for Wednesday. Is that? I heard that through the grapevine. Yeah, we've laid out a schedule but I don't think there is a meeting this month. I think the next one would be coming up for performance reviews. I'll check with the chair though and get back with the city clerk on that. Okay. Okay, council member comments then. If there's no committee reports, any final comments as we, two minutes on midnight? Okay. Thank you, Council.