you you you you you you you you you you you You Mr. Schneider, are you present? I am, yes, thank you. Can you hear me okay? Confirmed, yes. And Mayor Hardy. Thank you, Council. Mr. Anderson. Mr. Anderson. Mr. Murphy. Mr. Silverman. Thank you. We have one electronic motion to read. Mr. Schneider, could you please identify your remote location and reason for your participation by electronic means? Yes, thank you very much. At Paris, France, for the meeting of the organization for economic cooperation and development. Thank you. We're going. Personal reasons. I move that City Council approve electronic participation by Dave Snyder in this meeting for personal reasons pursuant to the City Council's adopted policy. Give me a second. Second. Second. Roll call. Miss Connolly. Yes. Miss Downs. Yes. Miss Flynn. Yes. Miss Iskot. Yes. Miss Underhill. Yes. Mayor Hardy. Yes. Thank you. That passes council. Welcome Dave. Thank you. Great. I think our school board friends have to also move on to something as well. Yes, we do have Two items that we'd like to formally approve. We've got a meeting after this and we also have a quick action So we appreciate the time to squeeze this in First we'd like to go ahead and move have a motion for adoption of agenda This ties This will work with the agenda as presented. Thanks, Kathleen. Okay. Second, Lori. All in favor say yes. Yes. Any opposed? All right. And then we'd also, 2.01, we need approval of Superintendent Search firm, which we have selected. So we're going to go ahead and approve that with the contract from the board. So, kind of please have a motion for approval of Superintendent Search firm. Lori. So, please have a motion for approval of Superintendent Search for them. Lori? I move that the school board name HYA Corporation is the Superintendent Search firm thereby authorizing the school board chair to sign the Superintendent Search from Contract. Thank you, Lori. I have a second. Thank you, Kathleen. All in favor say yes. Yes. Any opposed? All right. Thank you. Ready? Great. So again, thank you, the clerks, for the delicious meal, for putting that together. And thank you for our friends who are joining us. And actually, following on Thanksgiving, thanks to all the first responders who worked over the holiday weekend, including our new chief of police who actually didn't get to spend Thanksgiving. So we appreciate that they were able to have a lot of fun. City during Thanksgiving, so everyone had a good holiday. I think this is now my eighth or ninth joint dinner that we've had. And these are always really great productive ways to kind of kick off the budget season. So we appreciate people coming together. I think tonight we have the usual things on the agenda, which is the revenue forecast, which is the longer-weighted thing, enrollment projections, cost drivers. And then I think the top of mind for everybody is that macro economic environment. So we also have our guest, Terry and the audience who will be speaking as well. So we look forward to a good conversation all around. I'm not sure who I hand this off to before we get into business. Actually we have one disclosure statement we need to read before we get into the budget discussion. Mary Beth. The City Council is discussing budget guidance for the City of False Church. I am an employee of the False 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. Okay, thank you. I'm sorry Dr. Waters, I called you Terry's Amonstead. I'll see you guys. I'm going to hand this over to Y and Peter to kind of take it on from here. Well, good evening everybody. Maybe I'll just say a quick word about our discussions before this meeting about how we thought we would approach tonight's content. So Chair Gold, members of the school board, Mayor Hardy, members of the City Council. I'm Wyatt Shields, and the City Manager. It's good to be with you all tonight. We'll hear from the school administration first. We'll start with the enrollment productions. I'll let Dr. Nguyen introduce our guests from the Fuller Institute who will provide a presentation on enrollment and other matters. After the school's presentation on general government, I will provide a very short update on the West Falls project, and specifically on the financials, and how those dollars are being used today to fund the debt service for the high school. Then I'll turn it over to our chief financial officer, Kieran Bawa. She has about 12 slides that is a revenue forecast for the coming year in a very short summary of some of the general government cost drivers. And so that is the order that we discussed, Dr. Nguyen and any other introductory comments. Well, just first of all, thank you so much for the setup this evening and Mayor Hardy and City Council, Chair Gould and School Board. Thank you very much for the opportunity for us to get together. I was thinking back to the times that we have been together. This is I think my eighth one. And I remember being in the small dogwood room downstairs of the old city hall. And I think it was the dogwood room or whatever it was called, but it was tiny. And I just remember the group being really small. And so we've grown in size, but it's consistent with our little city. So that's kind of exciting. But thank you all for the opportunity to share. I'll go ahead and get started if that's all right with you, Mr. Shields. Okay, great. Well, again, just thank you. And a couple of folks I want to thank as we begin the conversation tonight to my left is Kristen Michael. Kristen is our chief operating officer in the City of Falls Church and Kristen is serving as my left hand person as opposed to my right-hand person, but Kristen traditionally has been very, and intimately involved in the budget process, and it's been really thoughtful and helpful working through a lot of the challenges that we tend to find ourselves in as we continue to build our budgets year over year. And Kristen's sort of left-hand person is Michelle Coppick and Michelle's with us this evening. A couple rows back in the blue shirt, blue sweater and Michelle has done an extraordinary amount of work as well. I also would be remiss if I didn't take the opportunity to thank my partner in crime here, Wyatt Shields, City Manager, Wyatt has been as usual a really great partner to work with as the City Manager and as the superintendent and then his partner, Karen Bawa, Karen is back there as well, Karen thank you so much for all of your support as well and then to our leadership team that is with us this evening. We really really appreciate the opportunity to come and have a chance to have a dialogue about about the schools, about our needs as we go forward. But before we get into any of that, I thought I would just start by asking if anybody saw the Washingtonian magazine from December 2024, this month's page 148. If you haven't seen the Washingtonian, the December edition page page 148. It's all about the region, and it talks specifically about Falls Church. And in there, it says that Falls Church is booming. Media and home prices year over year are 31.9% up. And then it said demand has boomed as a consequence of the appeal of the public school system, and restaurants and other developments. So I think that that was a great thing to sort of see in writing as sort of a celebration of the work that all of us do. And I'm marketing back to Mary Beth Connelly's zipper analogy when the school board and the city council work together with the schools and the general government side really wonderful things happen. This evening, I am gonna share our fiscal forecasts, and this year we have a little more clarity than we typically do at this point in time. And the reason that we have a little more clarity than we have in the past years is that there are more baked items in our budget than there have been in the past. And specifically what I mean by that is this past year, and I know there are some members of our FCCEA here tonight if you wave your hands up and give everybody a hello. We collaboratively work through a collective bargaining process last year to land through a collective bargaining process last year to land an collective bargaining agreement which took effect this school year. And so a lot of the items that are in the collective bargaining agreement are somewhat baked in terms of the school systems responsibilities to meet the obligations of that collective bargaining agreement. Additionally, we have some contractual obligations that are currently in place that we feel like we need to continue to take care of, and then we have some current conditions, and then we have growth. So what you'll see tonight are sort of those major drivers of our budget. Again, the collective bargaining agreement taking care of our employees, contractual obligations, current conditions, and growth. So as I talk about these tonight, I will try to hone in on those a little bit more closely. So the first slide always is an appreciation. I think back to the extraordinary work that the school board and the city council and the general government and the school system have done over the last several years. And a lot of the work wouldn't have been possible without the really great relationships that we've all enjoyed over that period of time. Looking at whether it's the growth and development at the high school site, whether it's thinking about the work that we've done with our, with respect to our revenue sharing agree. And, and other collaborations, we are so appreciative of, of our relationship. A couple of things I want to share just right out of the gate, that I think sets us apart from the rest of the state as our schools. And I think that that was evident in some ways in that Washingtonian article, when it came to the fore. For Virginia school districts, Fallschurch city public schools for the 7th year in a row is the number one school district in the Commonwealth of Virginia. We were named the second best district in the DC area to work. Sorry, second best school district in the DC area and the third best district to teach in in Virginia. On top of that, I do want to say that recently within the last three weeks, Oak Street Elementary was ranked as the number one elementary school in the Commonwealth of Virginia, and Mary Ellen Henderson was ranked as the number one middle school in the Commonwealth of Virginia. So when I think about the successes that we have, Again, our schools are extraordinary places and for much of the reasons that I think we all know and recognize it's the people that are in our buildings, our families and it's our community that really have created some pretty amazing and top not schools that all of us can be very proud of. Here are just a couple of curriculum highlights from the 2324 International Baccalaureate continuum schools. You'll see things in here such as our wax museum at second grade, our PYP exhibitions. We had 56 MYP certificate recipients this past year. You'll see the IBR show 200 students participating in the sustainability and community awards and more. I won't go through all of them. But as I think this board, I know this board and I know, I believe that the City Council understands we are one of eight school divisions in the country now that have the International Baccalaureate program pre K through 12 and are considered a continuum district. Then as a consequence of that, we set ourselves apart yet again in many ways. A couple of other just sort of informational points for you. This past year, 2324, 276 students. And in our junior sophomore junior senior class, sat for and participated in IB exams. And that is up from the prior year. We had 941 international baccalaureate exams written last year, which is an extraordinary number, considering the size of our high school. We had 35 different subjects that were exams were written in. And we had a 92% hit rate for IB diploma candidates, meaning that we had 64 students that hit the graduation stage as IB diploma candidates and out of that 59 of them actually earned that recognition through external adjudication by the IB. This year just by contrast we have 74 students that are international baccalaureate diploma candidates and that is the largest group of IB diploma candidates that we've ever had in the city of Falls Church and a lot to be proud of. A couple other things in terms of accreditation. Accreditation is typically a fairly low bar but I think it's important for us to note that accreditation and accountability as all of you I think are aware with respect to your legislative programs is changing in the Commonwealth of Virginia and not in a way that's going to be friendly to schools but some things just to kind of consider here at Oak Street Elementary School 95% of our students passed the English SOL and 94% passed the math SOL at Henderson, 96% in English, 95% in math and at the high school, 96% in English, 98% in math. We had an eight point increase at Oak Street in science last year. We had a 9% increase in chronic absenteeism, which was a state issue over the last couple of years coming out of COVID to the extent that we really don't have a chronic absenteeism issue in the city of Falls Church with that improvement. Nine of nine of our math reporting groups increased this last year or remained at 100% and we had the highest ever math and English rates at Mary Ellen Henderson. So a lot to be proud of there. I won't go into the strategic plan in great detail but I wanted to make sure you all had it. Up here is our mission and our vision and then on the next page you'll see our five strategic focus areas and just very quickly it's I be infused teaching and learning, or IB teaching and learning. Wellness, equity, and belonging, resource management, continuous improvement, communications, and engagement, and investing in our people. So that sort of sets the stage a little bit for where we currently are and where we are existing, and the news is good from the schools. We are, again, the number one school division for the seventh year in a row in the Commonwealth of Virginia and have a lot to be proud of. So I wanna take just a second to run through a couple of enrollment slides and then I'm gonna turn it over to our friend from the Stephen Fuller Institute to talk a little bit more in detail. But let me start with this slide. This is current year enrollment by school. It's a little bit challenging to see, but I would just call your attention to the bottom right hand corner where it says 27, 14. It's the second to last column. That is the highest enrollment that we've ever experienced in the city of Falls Church Schools and the history of city of Falls Church Schools. So I think that in and of itself is something to kind of keep your mind around as we think about this. We've never had more kids and we are really excited about that. There was a variance in projection this past year. We were anticipating to grow by 85 students instead we grew by 80. So there was a slight variance in projection but we are continuing to enroll kids each and every day in our schools, particularly now as people are making moves during the winter holidays and over Thanksgiving. This is a trend, just a graphical, a graphic that shows sort of the trend in enrollment. Again, the 24-25 enrollment is the highest in the history of fall short city public schools. And you can see that trend is going up again as it did starting in 2000 just up to the pandemic. And that's an important piece of information that we did have the pandemic drop off. And then we are continuing to grow again. And so who are we serving? And this is really an important chart for all of us to sort of think about. What you'll see on this chart are some instructional service categories. And these are students that typically require a little bit more effort, a little bit more time and a little bit more staffing on behalf of the city schools to be able to ensure that they're successful. So the first group that you'll see there are students that are economically disadvantaged. These are students that are on free and reduced lunch. Changed from the prior year of 14 percent and we are now at 13 percent enrollment of students on free and reduced lunch and that's the highest rate of poverty we've ever seen in the city of false church schools again in the history of false church schools We saw a growth of students with disabilities And we are now 14.3% enrollment of students with disabilities. We are a destination district for the State Department and for other agencies, particularly if you have a student with the disability and we're seeing a rise in students with disabilities and also a rise in the significant nature of the disabilities that we're seeing. We saw a rise in students from on 504 plans which are not IEP-driven decisions. These are modifications and also some different things that can happen in the classroom, sorry, the word escaped me all of a sudden, but these are accommodations that are students that need accommodation in the classroom and that population grew by 26% and we have now 9.3% of our students are on 504 plans. So when you add that number together with the students with disabilities and obviously the students with disabilities require greater service, it's about 25% of our students have some sort of need beyond just general education. Eastall students, these are students who speak language other than English that are coming to us. The number I want to call out to your attention is that 184. That's the fourth column from the right. That is the highest number of East all students we've ever had in the history of fostered city public schools. You'll see the number of students that are homeschooled. We have less students homeschooling this last year than we had prior year and we have less students that are paying tuition. So the nature and the needs of the students that we're serving continue to be changing, but not to the extent that we can't serve them. We continue to do the very best we can with the resources we have, but I do think from a contextual perspective, it's important to know that when we see increases in students in poverty, students with disability, students with ESOL needs, the requirement for resources goes up. So let me speak a little bit about Weldon Cooper Center. As our board knows, and I think the council knows, we've used the Weldon Cooper Center for the last several decades in terms of planning for growth. Those projections are prepared by the Weldon Cooper Center that is at the University of Virginia. It's also the center that is used to allocate tax dollars from the state to schools. It's important for us to look at because it does include birth data and also membership data from the year but prior. And then they give us what are called progression ratios and you won't be able to see these very well unless you have them on your screen or in front of you. But I think the thing that I think, well, the thing I want to point out that I think is most important is the bottom line and that's the 2024 line. You'll see that if you look at grade one, for example, grade one from the prior year grew from by 13% to 113%, grade two to 102%, grade three, 102%, so on and so forth, all the way up to grade 12, which grew to 101%. The point of this bottom line for your information is that every single grade level in Fall Street City Public Schools grew from last year to this year. And that's important as we think about the distribution of students and how things grow across the division. The last thing I wanna talk about before I turn it over to Dr. Waters is local housing impact. And this is where the gap in information falls with the Weldon Cooper Center. And that is that the Weldon Cooper Center currently shows a projection of an increase of 49 students. However, the one thing that Weldon Cooper doesn't take into account is any impact to local housing. So as we know, we have a number of housing units that are coming online. And so that was the rationale that the City Manager and I had put together a couple of years ago to be able to get the Stephen Fuller Center involved to do a much deeper dive and more granular look at where we are with respect to our growth and enrollment. And I wanna thank Dr. Waters for being with us tonight. He is also responsible for, in a good way, projecting the 85 student growth last year. We missed that mark by five and he's gonna talk a little bit about that, but it was much closer than we would have been, had we used the Weldon Cooper Centers modeling. So at this point, I'll turn it over to Dr. Waters, and then I'll take it back when he's done. Thank you for having me, and thank you for having me back. It's nice to see the school board again. And then most of the city council, I've seen several of you recently. So we're bait, so the broad picture, actually before I get started, is that we're doing the same thing that we did last year, which is typically the case. But the nuances effectively the same thing that we did last year, which is typically the case. But the nuance is effectively the same. And Dr. Nune and talked about it a little bit. But effectively, you are moving back towards pre-pandemic grade progression ratios at the same time that quite a bit of housing stock has come online. So you have two forces moving at the same time. It makes this more exciting to try to forecast this. But my numbers will be notably larger than the welding coopers. And the broadest takeaway that I want you to walk away with is that while doing this, I think my concern in the back of my head is that I'm still below what could be. Okay, so I will walk through what we're going to do and how I did it. I'm happy to take any questions, but the number will be larger next year. And I am somewhat concerned that maybe I've even underestimated, even though it's notably larger than the World and Cooper Center. And I'll walk through why that's the case. So effectively what we're doing is what I've just called the development pipeline method. And so it's just three simple steps. We estimate new housing. This is data that comes from the City of Falls Church. Then we estimate the number of households, which is to say we apply vacancy rates to housing units. And then we apply school generation rates to the housing stock that we effectively built up on this database. So breaking this down a little bit more and I believe you guys have these charts in front of you. So hopefully you can squint or just flip the page. The two things that are coming online this year are that came online this year, brought in Washington, and then West Falls Church should be open any day. I don't follow it quite that closely, but I believe it's open soon. It's a moving target. The two things on these, and then Founders Row is coming on sometime in next year. The two things that I, well actually the only thing that I really want to draw your attention to right now is that I've been watching Broad and Washington just over the last few months and so that opened in June and just watching it over the past few months the vacancy rate has ticked down on this on co-star data if anybody plays around with that for fun like I do where. It's been ticking down from 61.5 percent and today it was at 56 percent. And so broadly speaking this will probably stabilize sometime in late winter or early spring. There are other economic forces at work, which we probably talk about at the end of this, that make this a little even more exciting. And then Founders Row, we've basically just kind of followed along the vacancy rates with the recent additions. So looking out further, and then the other thing is we've, for the long term projections, effectively what the other thing is we've, for the long-term projections, effectively what we've done is just followed kind of the recent patterns, and then just what we know is going to be coming online in the next few years, or what's in the development pipeline. We basically make some assumptions about that, and then just continue out with those assumptions in the long-term future. Based on effectively the current rate of development, you guys do have, I believe, enough capacity in your schools for the foreseeable future. So there's nothing to panic about there. The one thing that we didn't have data on last year, that we have close, that we have better data on, was the development of T zones. And so that was a new policy last year. We had no idea exactly how that was going to play out. Those numbers ticked up a little bit, but that's not going to massively change the estimates. And then so looking out, these are our household estimates. It's a fairly dry routine where we just apply vacancy rates. As Dr. Newton said, false church is an incredibly desirable community. And I'm not here to pander to the crowd. It is just a matter of fact. Your vacancy rate is effectively zero. For all practical purposes, maybe people are on vacation or just not having to be home, you know, type of thing. But you have a very low vacancy rate. maybe people are on vacation or just had not happen to be home, you know, type of thing, but you have a very low vacancy rate. And then so we estimate the school enrollment based on the type of housing stock in the city of Falls Church. And last year we compared it again census data. We did the same thing this year. The school system, Kristen and Kim have a remarkable data set. They should be commended on that. I mean, it's incredibly detailed. You guys have all sorts of stuff in front of you. I can talk about all sorts of decimal points, if you would like. But the data that you all have is dramatically better than survey data from the Census Bureau, so we went with that. That being said, the last bullet point is the most important that is going to be the pre-pandemic generation rates result in higher school enrollment forecasts, and it does appear to be the case that we are moving back to a pre-pandemic generation rate environment. And so that is what causes me concern, or not concern. What I'm trying to be as right as I can, so it's the one thing that's, you know, is the most mystery. And so for that reason, we've again generated two forecasts using two different generation rates. We're using the generation rates for 2024. We look at those particularly for next year, which is at the moment the most important. But then we also use an average of 2018-2019 generation rates for single-family dwelling, condos, apartments, and townhomes. If you can see on the screen or on the paper in front of you, single-family dwelling, condos, apartments, and townhomes. If you can see on the screen or on the paper in front of you, single-family is relatively flat. Those generation rates are little changed. The housing stock and single-family is relatively little changed. Condo apartment, that is going to be where the largest variation occurs. So in particular, if you just look at either one of the condo and apartment lines, what you'll see is the generation rates ticked down from 3.361 down to 0.3, and then the pandemic happens, and we go to 0.25, 0.24, 0.22. That doesn't seem like maybe a lot, but given the number of multifamily housing, either condo or apartments, it makes a really large difference. So that is actually what drives most of the variation. And so for this reason, we've gone ahead and forecast using this pre-pandem, oh, well actually let me say one more thing, and what you'll notice is on the condo and apartment, you get down to .22, it ticks back up to 0.24 in 2023 and then 0.25 in 2024. So it is starting to go back up. This is something that I raised last year. And it was a, it was definitely a thing that we saw last year and it did happen and it very likely can continue to happen this year. Another way of seeing this is by looking at monthly enrollment data. So these data are slightly delayed and they're slightly different. They bounce around a little bit based on people enrolling and disenrolling and so forth and so on. But you're effectively back to pre-pandemic rates at the moment. And what you'll notice is that, oh, and this actually, this also ends in March of 2024. But the thing that I'd like to draw your attention to is the time that I was here last year. So if you look at September 30th, 2023, through effectively the end of the year, what you're noticing is that line is going up. So your enrollments were increasing literally while I was sitting with you last year. There were kids coming to be part of the best school system with the Commonwealth of Virginia. It's a real draw to your community and it was occurring while we were here last year and no housing stock was coming online right then. Which is to say you hold the housing stock constant and school enrollment goes up, that's what's driving this generation rate. Those are just the two bits. Housing stock, it's a number of kids divided by number of houses. Dr. Waters, is it okay to ask questions? I'm gonna give you a moment. So thank you for this. Being a number skeek, I did spend some time looking at this. I think it's slide 47 for those of you looking electronically. So we also have people generation rates, and I think our school friends put together. Is there a reason why you use blended ratios versus the detailed kind of per unit type ratios? Yes, I'm happy you asked. I asked the slashers. I know you did. That's why I was prepared this year. I remember that. So if you look at the second half of the, there's a bunch of decimal points, I don't know what number it is because it's not on here, but if you look at the decimal points on the generation rates on this, the individual unit types, right? Right? I stared at those for a really long time and did all sorts of various blending of them. We did try, I actually went through and did some of the forecasts actually before they were even the school assistant, Kim was in the process of updating the data and I actually just started like guessing at some of them before it happened. So I manually went through. But then we also did try to forecast using those. The issue is that they are just so idiosyncratic and the sample sizes are just so small that it makes it less, it makes it for me it made it far less reliable. And not only that, it actually, these are kind of competing statements. So now I regret being so excited that you asked the question. When you look at them directly, it's just so noisy that it doesn't give you a strong sense of what's going on. But it ultimately provides roughly a similar answer. If you look at all those decimal points, they all generally went up. So it doesn't really matter if you add, if you try to add them up from the bottom or you add them up from the top, but the problem with adding them up from the bottom is because there is so much noise, the trend isn't quite so strong. And we got close enough last year that I hesitated to change it, but I did forecast this a bunch of different ways. And it's settled on the blended ratio just because it feels the most right. The reason why it matters, this is an area that I'm always been really happy to see collaboration between the school and the general government is that from all historical data, I guess we've been doing mixed use development in 20 years now, an apartment is on apartment, right? So if you look at the generation rates, we say Founders Row, Madera, which is stabilized now. So one bedroom has a generation rate of 0.02 as of 2024, 2025. And one stabilized at two bedroom with Dennis 0.6. That's a 30X difference. And so this is why my opinion, the detailed data is really helpful to understand that when you're opening obviously a studio or one bedroom, it generates much different than a two-bedroom with damaged behaves more like a single family home. So given that we have data, I think it's terrific. I appreciate the collaboration with the schools to get to this level of granularity. Because I think for the fiscal analysis that we do with every project, that's where we use this detailed data. Well, so to, to, I'm, for this particular one, this is Chris, I think this is probably Chris's favorite chart. Kim, I think this is your favorite chart too. You guys can both have the same favorite chart. The three bedrooms that you see at the bottom, the dark blue and Pearson, for the units that are coming online with West Falls Church and Broadroom, Washington, we did dig into the co-star data and apply generation rates by unit type and help 2024 enrollment constant and just add it on. Okay, well, what if just those units that are coming on by type, whether or not they have a den makes a large difference, it gives, and that was the lowest number I could come up with. That was 120. So we did use these data, but for the final number it just made the most sense to use the blender ratio. But no, you were spot on. There's a lot of ways that you could go about this. I can keep going if you. You have unblocked someone else's favorite charting map. She'll probably be having to talk to you about it afterward. I assume. So the takeaway here is the monthly enrollment numbers while I was here last year started going up even though nothing had come online during that period. And it is, you know, for various things and you can go through the data that Letti was just talking about and see it for yourself. But another way of thinking about the single family generation right not changing much is that there's just not that much turnover in false church. You guys have about five home sales per month. It's just not very much. People don't want to leave. If you buy a house here, you don't want to leave false church. It is, I'm not here to pander to the crowd. It's very nice. Add it on top of that, the fact that a lot of people refinanced with a 2.7% mortgage rate. They're never moving. They can't afford to move. They like their house. They love their mortgage. There's just very few home sales. So there's not a lot of turnover, which kids then would move into. To your point, Leigh, and this is something that Chris and I talked kind of a lot about is that there was actually like a bump in, there was a surprisingly large number of high school kids that we didn't see for completely unknown reasons. And I spent quite a bit of time trying to track those down. And one of the theories on why there might have been this sort of burst of high school kids would be actually this chart of it is just quite expensive to live here. And so people might not be able to afford a house until those high school years, but then they try to get into the high school. I was never able to track down the exact reason why this happened, although we'd spend quite a bit of time, including asking around some private schools and stuff. Some things are just a mystery. With that being said, so I think that's all the background that I would like to give. What I am forecasting for next year is going to be that top line number, and that will be an enrollment of 2873, which is an increase of 159 students, which is notably higher obviously than the well and Cooper number of 49. So while I got reasonably close this year, I'm sticking my neck out a little further for next year, being so much further off, but what I will say is that I am again concerned that, you know, for the most likely, which is that top line number, I'm using the 2024 enrollment rates. I'm being somewhat conservative regarding vacancy rates with West Falls Church and brought in Washington, which is why I've been watching them at COSAR. It could go much higher. If the generation rates continue to tick back up, particularly in the apartments, that second enrollment number that I've given there, which is the enrollment, 2018-2019 generation rates, that could go up to as much as $29,97. I'm not sure I said it that way, $2,997, effectively $3,000, which would be an increase of 283 students. I'm, there's enough upside surprise there that that very well could happen and watching the monthly enrollment numbers would be a very useful exercise to make sure that there are enough teachers. Making this, and then we've, I did change this year. I'm happy to go directly at it to talk to the school, the board about this. The down ballot, the individual grades, I missed enough on my forecast last year that I actually changed my methodology this year and spent a lot of time staring at those numbers. So I am more optimistic that they're going to be far closer than they were last year. So the bottom number is actually the distribution, the way I shared out the top line number changed a bit. But we're reasonably happy with that. I am happy with those. Looking at these visually, the gray line up top is what I'm talking about with using that pre-pandemic generation rate. So what we did was we went back and said, okay, what would have school enrollment been in 2020, 2021, you know, so forth and so on, had you had the same generation rate as you did in 2018 and 2019. And what you are seeing is that the black line, which is actual enrollment, is starting to move back towards that gray line. The orange line is my best guess, that I'm happy to defend. The welding Cooper number is the blue, is the blue number there at the bottom. Well, the 2714 was the actual enrollment, and the welding Cooper would be that plus 49. I cannot envision a scenario where you have an increase of that few students. So I think it is going to be notably higher. And didn't really matter how I went about it. I could not make the number that small. So I will open it up for questions. Hand in fact, the Dr. Newton, you guys tell me what to do. You can kick me out. The question. I just have one. I have to actually follow my sword because wearing my schools have this morning, I assured Peter that this was the largest enrollment we ever had, it-7-14 but now I see 27-21, 2016. So 27-14 is not the largest enrollment FCCPS ever had. It's 27-21 in like 26. Yeah that was the September enrollment date though. Yeah the month of the year. The 27-14 is the September enrollment date. Right and the 27-21. We've date. Right. And the 2721 is the. We've gone up since. Oh, that was the March. This was the month of the day. Okay. There you go. It's 2721 March enrollment date. Where's that? Okay. I'm happy to go on from here. Okay. Great. Oh. It really is more theoretical and just thinking about housing policy and sending people to stay in their single-family homes when they become empty nesters and to how we, how we and send people to stay because your generation raised a single family homes, they've stayed pretty consistent, but could they even drop if you were better able to maintain non-school age population once, I don't know, say somebody like me, graduates their kids who are lifers and stays on for another 10 years or however long, presumably that would lower your generation rate per single family home. Is that how it happens in other districts that might have not be so expensive for people to stay in their homes? That was an interesting question. I might say that I'll give you an answer whether or not it's going to be satisfactory. I mean, you can report back just It's just thinking future policy and something we've discussed on city councils, how you keep people in past their years where they have students. So it is. I mean, work rates doing it for some, but there's still plenty people as soon as they're kids are out of high school. They're like, can't wait to sell it to the next person. But it looks pretty stable. So I don't know that that's made a huge difference in the past five years. So I hesitate to give the answer, because it's going to be kind of an, I don't know. Do you guys cap, tax rate, they float? So we're born Michigan, like the, your tax can only increase so much per year. And so that has a, and so main, for example, doesn't do this. There are trade-offs to this as with anything. And so the intent of, I used to know the name of it, now I'm blanking on it. Anyway, the intent of it is to keep people in their homes longer, so like your tax can only increase so much. And it does actually do that. But it does have several knock-on effects. I was talking to somebody at a conference, so I actually have not read their papers. So this is a little, I'm getting pretty far out on this branch, is that it does slow economic growth. From personal experience, I have noticed that it has not gone effects regarding the distribution, as you said, of who stays in their home and who leaves. In vacation communities, it tends to, and also gets transferred down to children. You can keep people in their homes, but it has side effects of it starts to make the distribution of who's paying taxes, sort of like buy-modal, where some people who've had their home forever are paying very low taxes to keep them in their homes, but then the newcomers pay very high taxes effectively to make up the difference. That has all sorts of other side effects, but at the regional level, which is generally what we study, our high tax, our high housing rates are already causing, have already caused our economy effectively to stagnate, and we are curious to see how things play out over the next year or two as well. So I'm not sure if that's a great answer, but that's the one that comes off stop in my head. Thank you. And then just two other quick questions now. Or okay. On, can you point me to where we talk about the rate of growth beyond, obviously we're having a huge surge in housing immediately and when we think about future housing like where else could you possibly put more apartments or when we're looking at other types of policies for housing. How are you making those assessments like you're all the way out to 2050? I'm sure it's in here and I missed it. So it's on step one. I try to lay it out in both a detailed enough manner that you can see what assumptions that I've made. And you can poke holes in them and that's perfectly fine. But I mean, effectively, my experience in planning and dealing with planners regionally often is there's a shocking amount of space places. And I think people drive past it so often that you kind of stop seeing it. And so the Gordon triangle, did I get that? I kept calling it the golden triangle last year. That's easy. The Gordon triangle, for example, has quite a bit of space. It is very metro-accessible, so this is a place that could, oh, that is effective. If this comes from our planning department, you're right. This came through effectively what I've done as I've taken the pace of planning over the last, say, 10, 15 years and applied it forward within various constraints. And those constraints have basically been the availability of housing, the rate at the rate at which it is being approved. But really like land, it was pretty in-depth discussions with Paul, who's moved on to Paul Stoddard, who moved on to Alexandria. But it was pretty in-depth discussions with him to try to effectively forecast out those long-term housing. Okay, great, so this is a lot that had come from Paul as well. And then the last part for the moment was looking at the number of our, and I don't know if we have data this granular, but on the our rate of poverty and looking at the new students who have got a huge jump. You know, obviously I spend a lot of time thinking about those students and the family assistance fund in respect of the education foundation. I know that there's a big jump this year. Do we have any idea if these students are, I think the thing of a couple of reasons, are they new to false church? Are there families slipping from where they were socioeconomically before or was that? Do you have any more information or any more granularity or knowledge about how we can support those students or where they're coming from? I don't know that I have any more granularity about the why, but I can tell you that we are supporting those students the same way that we've supported students in poverty previously. The other thought I had was the communications that may have been better. When we went through COVID and everybody was supported through breakfast and lunch from a federal funding side and when that ended, there were folks that were like, oh, this really helped our families, helped our students. And maybe more people were aware of this as a program or as an ability to receive services. Just trying to think, I'm glad I'm thrilled that we're supporting them and I'm confident that you are, but just trying to think through how that might impact our numbers and resources needed to support them. I think we've bounced back from the COVID. I think the COVID number. So I think this is a pretty stable number. In terms of we're not seeing families that sort of waited to see kind of how things were going, which I think you might be getting out a little bit. Remember his cut, but we could, I could check in with our social workers and see kind of if they have a sense of why we're seeing more students in poverty, but I don't think it's because we move from free lunch to having to file the lunch paperwork going forward. Okay. Just thinking about, you know, as we can make other considerations like for the welcoming falls church families and some of the policies that we're attempting just need to keep in mind where that might impact school services. So I think those are all my questions for now. Thank you very much. Laura. Thank you so much, Dr. Waters. When you were talking about the people who might live in their homes for 30 years, and then they finally moved out, and one of the things that it happens in no time, a developer swoops in buys that lot and knocks it down and builds a humongous buy bedroom house. happens in no time, a developer swoops in, buys that lot, and knocks it down and builds a humongous, buy bedroom house. And that is one of the drivers obviously of enrollment. Do you or does the city, why question I'm not sure, but look at how many lots we still have where the land is more valuable than the structure, and project that out is that will be a tear down in a huge house coming up. So they seem to be just one by a member of his cock and I block her two way. What was actually a nice little vacant lock and all of a sudden there's this huge house on it within the past two weeks. So I didn't know if that's something that you know long term. We did not look at that long term. That's an interesting, I could spend the lifetime examining just that. And actually, I think the Washington Post had an article today about, there was a really nice, I forget the name of it, but we did not look at that as the short answer. I will say, the only thing that I'll say on that is that most of their variation is coming out of multi-family. So yes, that is happening, but the big swing was in, it was put out of the multi-family. Okay, thank you. And it turned my code on. I'll show you. Thank you. And I will just add, we do have that data. It's presented in a map form with sort of GIS, sort of heat shading in terms of kind of where those houses are. And we can share that with you. Now having that folded into enrollment projections, I don't think we've taken that step because there's just so many factors it play. It's difficult to do. Yes, I understand that. Why doesn't it want to spend that much time? But it is. Turn it over to you. On a pro bono, a baby story. But it is turn it ever to you. I want to prove on a basic sort of. And Dr. Newton, I had a quick question for you. In terms of, I know we've talked about the, we have the physical capacity. Do you feel that is in each school we have capacity because I've heard sort of that, that things might be getting tied at Oak Street. I believe we have the capacity. I don't know if I haven't walked the building looking at it from a space perspective, but I have seen a number of spaces throughout the building that are being used for things that could be repurposed for classrooms. And I don't see space as an issue. I would say at our secondary schools, when you look at space utilization, most of our teachers have their own classrooms and use those classrooms for five periods a day. And then they're vacant for a couple of periods a day. So there's lots of strategies to use the space most effectively. So I don't anticipate that we have an issue relative to space in our schools. We can accommodate the students that we have an issue relative to space in our schools. We can accommodate the students that we're getting. Thank you. Can I just go follow up on that one? Because I had the same question. I know, you know, when we've talked before, you haven't sort of had the concern about physical capacity and the concern has been more on the, you know, resources for students, for growing student enrollment in the schools and everything that comes with that from teachers and buses and extracurricular curriculars. But when we look at things, and I looked at the cap, like the population enrollment caps at Mount Daniel in Oak Street, and it looks like we're at 74% of what physical capacity could be at Mount Daniel and Oak Street and it looks like, you know, we're at 74% of what physical capacity could be at Mount Daniel or 79% of what physical capacity could be at Oak Street. When you're talking about, you know, getting up closer to what physical capacity is, are you talking about, and in your mind, thinking about holding classroom, because we've talked about this before too, wanting to kind of keep classroom sizes smaller as a hallmark of the district. Are you talking about physical capacity where you're repurposing space and classroom sizes are still low? Are you talking about, as you grow in physical capacity over time that we're really thinking about populating the actual classrooms more than they're currently populated with kids? The prior, not the latter. I don't, I mentioned raising class size as sort of the third rail in the city of Falls Church and something that I'm not interested in looking at. That being said, it's one of the very few ways that we have an opportunity to cut our budget because 85 to almost 88% of our budget is in people. But when I think about our capacity, it's not by raising class sizes and classrooms. It's about utilizing the space that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. Any other questions? School friends? I think that's a good question. School friends? I think that's a good question. School friends? I think that's a good question. School friends? I think that's a good question. School friends? I think that's a good question. in the units up on the West End are within walking distance of the region's best high school and middle school and have you do you think that might tend to increase the pupil generation rate particularly for those unit that's question number one and question number two we talked about facilities and I assume Dr. Noonan will talk about all the professionals, teachers, counselors and others will be needed at these various projection levels which I'd be interested in saying I assume that's coming but I guess the first question is have you it seems to me highly possible that particularly the units on the West End and their hundreds of them, both condos and wettel units may even have a higher generation rate than we see across the city. Thanks. So I'll answer the first one. I think, afternoon, I'll get the second. The West Falls church and the alder, which is the name of the condo, that could go either way. We looked at West Falls Church by, that was, I had mentioned it when he was bringing up the generation rights by, by building type. We actually looked at it not only by building type for West Falls Church, but also by num. We applied bedroom specific generation rates to the number of bedrooms in the unit. So we knew that we're going to be x and n on of three bedrooms, x amount of two bedrooms, x amount of one bedrooms. And came up with, that was where we came up with, you know, when we just looked at West Falls Church in bottom, Washington and used hyper-specific generation rates. That was how we got the smallest number, which I believe was in the mid 120's, which was still notably larger than what UVA suggested. So we looked at West Falls Church really closely, and the thing that I'll say where it could go either way is yes, you could have a scenario where because it is so close to such a desirable high school, it's walking distance to a metro, you could have it be the case that you have more high school kids going into that building. However, on the flip side, it could also be the case that you have somebody working in a professional job that requires two bedrooms. And so I know personally several people who work in the banking industry and they actually have to have a separate room for their work. So they actually rent a two bedroom apartment, even though they're a, what's it called, a dink, a dual income couple, whatever, anyway. So they only need one bedroom. They have no children, but they buy it, they rent a two bedroom so that he can have an office. Because of the other amenities that you have in Falls Church, as Dr. Nune spoke about earlier, including restaurants and this type of stuff, that's also a big draw. This is also part of the reason why there's some senior housing coming online, which we did not include, but there's a lot of reasons to be here. So it could go a bunch of different ways, but I will say that we looked at West Falls Turks and the Adler, very specifically, and it didn't change things dramatically. That is actually part of the reason that like mid 120 number is why I ended up leaning towards up you know 160-ish increase in students as opposed to something closer to 300. So I hope that satisfies that answer. And then the answer to your second question is yes, you bet. That's common. Chair. Thanks. Thanks for all the data. You've printed it into us several times. But I was just taking a look at the students by dwelling unit. And this is probably a useful context for everyone. But in FY 2017, they were about 1,100 students in the total for all multifamily. And that's before, I think, the 455, the Founders' Row in Broad and Washington, they were even open. And so I was just taking a look and seeing what would have happened if those hadn't open and we would have 932 students not kind of in all of total multi-family we have 1025 because there are 93 students coming from those three Apartments and so obviously there's a lot of capacity in the already kind of apartment or already built apartment complexes to Flex a little bit more. We're kind of missing about 180 students since 2017, almost from those buildings. And so, and as you mentioned, there's kind of lots of air, air rates around, kind of estimating specific, specific generation rates from specific units. But I'm curious as to, I mean, given that's an entire grade level, what do the air bands look like around these point estimates? Infinity. So this is... This is where it becomes more art than science. I didn't give you an error band. I'm not going to. Is it going to be the short answer? This is effectively where I've given you kind of the top end of like 299 or 298, whatever it is, because there are several things moving at the same time, and that is where the generation rate, you know, I mean, we could go about it econometrically and forecast it. I think that would only be good maybe for next year. But the issue, my issue with doing something of that nature is just an issue around the generation rate and specifically around COVID. COVID, you know COVID, it's like this it's this unique thing that you don't really know how it's going to truly affect the model. This is why I just stared at the numbers for several weeks, talked Kristen. So the error bars, while I could give you a standard deviation, and that would be fine. I've opted to give you kind of an upper bound and just suggest that this is something that you need to look out for. And I would very much consider watching the monthly enrollment data's. And if it continues to tick up January, February, March, you know, once West Falls Church actually comes online, if that starts to tick up reasonably quickly, then you can start to and look at the other house, you know. I mean, well, the enrollment, I think the monthly enrollment is just, I don't think that's by housing type, but just watch monthly enrollment because that will give you a strong sense of where that generation rate is if it's going to be lower like COVID or if it's going to be pre-COVID. So yeah, I hate to say I'm not going to give you one, but I'm not going to give one because... I'm going to ask you the same question I asked you four weeks ago, but that's four weeks later. Which is the macroeconomics question to the extent you can crystal ball. What is happening across what seems to be happening across the federal government and how that's going to affect not just Virginia in general, but false church, which is its own unique microcosm. Yeah. Yeah. So I'll give you roughly the same answer I gave you for weeks ago whenever it was. Nice to see you again. False and I've told several people this. My opinion in my crystal ball varies subtly from Terry's and I'll make a my boss Terry clover or me. We're both bald and you do. I don't know. We look a lot alike, which is not good for me or him actually. Mine is less dire than his. We'll send out Economy Watch tomorrow, which is going to be hyper abbreviated. It's this monthly thing that we put out. I'm less dire. I think it's going to be flat for the next couple years for all sorts of reasons that I could pontificate on and can. But false church, I think, will be relatively flat. Northern Virginia will be relatively flat. DC could go either way. If you have people on the Metro five days a week, it's going to generate a lot more activity downtown. But then if people get laid off or quit or are shifted out of the area, that would obviously drive down the number of employees downtown. The federal government is not the only one that is mandating five days a week. Amazon obviously also is, from my perspective, I can't imagine a scenario where suburban Maryland does well. So I think that's going to be the, I personally think that is going to be the hardest hits. So that is my opinion. It does, it is less dire than Terry's. I wrote the intro to Economy Watch. He was like, this isn't negative enough and he just deleted it and started over. And he will, and we usually do like, these are the things that we're concerned about in the next couple of months, which is like we're not building enough housing recently, regionally. And so it's just very expensive. But this is a national issue as well. So we're not alone. But Dr. Clawer, along with developers, economic developers from both sides of the river, various leaders from around the region are giving a economic forecast with the Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance Wednesday morning at the Westwood Country Club. You are all welcome to come. It should be exciting and you can listen to Terry's opinions, which are less sort of like blah than mine. But my crystal ball is things are not going to be great. But I can't foresee a just complete decimation of it. I grew up in Michigan, like I know what it looks like, like Flint. You know, that's not going to happen. Actually, the one thing, and I don't know if I told you this last time, I feel like I did. The one thing that Terry and I absolutely agree on, and we saw in the previous federal administration, and this will bleed directly into enrollment numbers, And we saw in the previous federal administration, and this will bleed directly into enrollment numbers, probably not in 20, 20, September, 2025, or maybe 20, 26. The clamp down, and they're getting, obviously, a little bit more vocal about their intentions around it, the clamp down immigration actually hit the DC area pretty hard. And so what we saw was actually the population of region declined. And it's driven by two facts. One, it's extremely expensive to live here. So we've seen now for 11 straight years domestic outmigration. And so that is people moving from a county within the US to another county within the US. That has been going on now for 11 years, I think, 20. And so that is people moving from a county within the US to another county within the US. That has been going on now for 11 years, I think, 20. 12, 13. I'm going to hold me to that. I can look at the chart. I can see it. But what you really see is during the last time the administration was here in 2017, there was a big drop off in net international in migration. And so accelerated domestic outmigration paired with way less in migration actually really stalled out our population. I suspect if I dug around in numbers enough that I could see this occurring. And so that would actually put a little less pressure on school enrollment numbers because it is very expensive to live here. If you have net domestic outmigration, that's going to be fewer people trying to push in. And then the international immigration is going to be like the B poll numbers. Second language stuff. Anyway, that is the one thing that I am certain of is that our population growth will chill out a little bit over the next couple of years. It was a really long-winded answer, I could say more, but I think that's probably how. This is the fact that Fall Church is so geographically contained and has a unitary school system insulate us or make us more exposed? I think what insulates you is the desirability of the community. That is the one thing that insulates you. And Northern Virginia's economy is generally doing better and because you are well embedded within Northern Virginia's economy, that is something that is less of a concern than places in suburban Maryland or even the district. But just the general, I'm not here to touch your horn but you guys are doing a great job both you know the city and the school sites you You guys are doing great. People wanna live here. So I suspect it will continue, but there are a lot of unknowns. Incomolous and a Terry, I'll give you more doom and gloom. Justine. So I have one quick question on the chart that's a little bit up on the current year enrollment, just simply on a definition. FY24, actual versus enrollment as of 930-24. Yes, you keep going up. Actually, maybe it's in Peter's slides. There it is. That's it. Yeah. What? How do you define FY 20 for actual versus enrollment as of 20, 29, 30, 24? Zero September. Yeah, these are all the September, one dates. So it's the September 30, 30, 30, 20, 23 is the FY 24 date. OK, so FY, I got you. So this would be enrollment as of 930, 2024 is FY 25. Yes. Gotcha. Okay. Thank you. I sometimes these FY numbers don't always sink up with me. I'm also wondering, I know that there were staffing reductions during COVID from the school side. Given that school enrollment is similar to where it was eight years ago, do you know how staffing now versus eight years go? We're pretty close. It's about the same level. About the same level. Thank you. Do you have charts on that? I don't. You don't, okay. But if you wanted to submit that as a budget question, we could certainly take a look at it. Thank you. I appreciate that. Are there final questions for Dr. Waters? Okay. Thank you for joining us. I think he's going to finish the presentation. Yep. All right. So where does that where does that leave us? Yeah. Yeah. It didn't go. So where does that leave us? And I just want to say, first of all, thank you for this very, I think, rich and robust conversation. I think it what I'm what I am taking away from all of this and what I took away from the conversation with the school boards several weeks ago and what I've taken away from everything that Dr. Waters has shared is that our enrollment is gonna go up. So we're at this place where are we gonna look at the blue line, the yellow line, or the gray line? And I think the safest, not the safest, the most conservative line, well, actually that's not true. Let me just say this, we're gonna use the yellow line, which is the 28, 73 number for our, is it 28, 73? For our enrollment projection for next year. So when I think about what that means for us, I would just harken back to the way that I sort of set this presentation up. Sort of in a couple of parts. We have the collective bargaining agreement, we have contractual obligations, we have current conditions, and we have growth. So let me start with our contractual obligations. And these are contractual obligations that we agreed to in a really collaborative way with our False Church Education Association. So some of the things you'll see on here, particularly the top four, have been codified in a collective bargaining agreement. And that is that each year, all of our staff will get a step increase. That's something that we've done every year but one. The first year I was here as superintendent, but every year since then, we've done a step increase. We are locked into a cost of living adjustment that's based on the CPI. And this year's CPI taken on October 15th, that's two and a half percent. So that two and a half percent becomes the cost of living adjustment. When you take those two factors into account, that's a roughly 5% increase across the board for all of our employees. Additionally, we offer a 1% match to our 403B plan. And then lastly, we have increased the homebound teacher pay for our teachers. And those are four things that were in the collective bargaining agreement that we feel like were really important for our staff staff but also things that we had done previously and felt confident that we could continue to do. Some additional obligations that we have, we have some members that are on the city retirement and Ms. Mester, thank you for here, work on the city retirement. That cost is going to go up just ever so slightly. We have some members that have left Ballschert City Public schools that are part of a legacy transitional retirement program. We're anticipating a 10% increase in health insurance costs. And then as I mentioned earlier about our special needs students, we have an increasing number of students that need more than the city of Falls Church can offer with respect to the continuum of services relative to their needs. So we are needing to place some of our, more of our students that we have in the past in private day programs. So there is about a $300,000 increase for special education with respect to those private day programs and IEPs. One thing I want to just call the attention to, to the board and to the city council, is that that 5% overall increase for our staff, which is a two, the step increase in the two and a half percent cost of living adjustment, actually is not, doesn't appear to be competitive this year with the region. That is going to potentially present a problem for us going forward. What we did see in the presentation that was done by Fairfax County is that they are anticipating a 7% increase as part of their collective bargaining agreement for all of their employees. And then loud in Prince William County, Alexandria, Arlington also have collective bargaining agreements. And they are looking at pushing between eight and nine percent increases for their employees. So we are on the very, very low end with our obligations as part of our collective bargaining agreement. So I just want to put that out there because for us to remain competitive, we have to give at least this 5% to our employees. The second piece of this is the enrollment growth. And this is kind of Mr. Snyder's question. And here it is, Mr. Snyder. We are anticipating based on the enrollment growth of 159 students that we are going to need an additional four and a half teachers, another school counselor, an additional special education teacher, and an additional paraprofessional to go with it. Additional instructional materials and supplies to accommodate the additional students. Additional money towards an assistant athletic director in our efforts to create a full-time assistant athletic director position because we have many more students that are doing activities and athletics in our schools and we've ever had. Two additional in the transportation office, one bus driver, one bus aid, and an additional car driver. And those car drivers are the folks that are responsible for taking kids back and forth to those private day placements. So that's the enrollment portion of what our needs are. Then we get into our current obligations. And these are ongoing activities that we're doing now, right, as part of our work. We have a psychological services contract. We have added three additional paraprofessionals to take care of the needs of some of our students that have special needs and need some extra support. We've added an additional English speaker of other languages. This was one that actually came out of the ARPA funds that we've been carrying, that we need to turn into a regular full-time position. Considering we have the largest number of ESOL students that we've then we've ever had, a .5 academic advanced academic coordinator. This year we're coming up on our five-year lease renewal for our Apple Macbooks. So we need $123,000 to do that. Additional textbook funds for the additional students. Utilities, property, vehicle, and liability insurance adjustments based on inflation. Converting our assistant legal specialist from an hourly position to a permanent position. So that $27, 750 is a benefits cost. And then finally, we did find some savings in there of salary labs of $344,000 to help offset some of those costs. And then the last piece is enhancements. And these are new things that we need in the system, again, that I would consider part of growth. As I mentioned at the beginning of the conversation, we are one of eight schools divisions in the country that are pre-K-12 international baccalaureate programs. We currently have program coordinator at the high school, at the middle school, and one for all of the elementary schools in the preschool. Last year, this was not a funded position in our budget. We put it back in this year because we have more students at the elementary school than we've had. And we really feel like having a PYP, additional PYP coordinators really important. Based on the number of ESOL students that we are seeing come into our system, particularly elementary school, we would like, we're considering adding a .5 resource and engagement specialist at Mount Daniel Elementary School that doesn't have any apparently liaison there. Looking at $100,000 for school board initiative work that they've been talking about and taking on, and then $75,000 in additional athletic materials and supplies. That is another category that is also part of the growth category. At the bottom you'll see a final bullet that says that we received additional budget requests succeeding a million dollars. That million dollar additional requests did not make it into what I'm going to share with you tonight. Those were additional requests that we received from all of our schools, our teachers, our staff, our principals, and the like. So when we think about our revenue forecast, and this is where it starts to take shape, you now know kind of what our needs are. And now when we of what our needs are. And now when we look at federal dollars, we are expecting our federal entitlement dollars. This is Title I, Title II, Title III, IDEA actually to decrease by about $1,800. So it's super marginal. We can probably be all right with that decrease. Obviously, we don't want it to go down but it will. And then we get into state aid and sales tax and I think everybody in here knows we're in the second year of the state biennium budget. We don't know what's going to happen this year at the legislature. We anticipate that we will get the money that's supposed to be there as part of the second year of the biennium budget. And if we do, we should get a projected increase in state aid of $664,000 and an increase in sales tax of about $31,000. If that gets tinkered with in some way and we don't get those dollars, you'll see what that means to us in terms of a problematic budget, an even further problem, a budget going forward. But we anticipate that we will get those dollars and I'm optimistically hopeful, if those are two words you can put together. So then we look at the FY26 forecasted transfer need. And this is the amount that we need from this general government city council for us to do what needs to be done. So to address the expenditures that I've shown you, these are the collective bargaining agreements. These are the contractual obligations, the current condition and growth to account for growth, we need a transfer of 9.4% unless the state, and that's if the state doesn't come in. I'm hopeful that the state will come in with the money that we're projecting. And if the state does come in with the projected revenue that we're anticipating, we would need an 8.1% transfer from the City Council for us to meet our obligations in the schools. Thinking about it a different way, if we took out those items that would be considered enhancements, also growth positions, but those were the things at the bottom, and I'll talk about those in just a second. So think PYP coordinator, parent resource engagement, specialist at Mount Daniel, school board initiative, and athletic materials and supplies. If we took those off and simply did maintenance of effort, only what we're doing today, next year. And we received the money from the state we would need a 7.5% transfer. That's just to maintain our current effort and serve the additional growth that we are experiencing in the City of Falls Church. So I want to, before I ask questions, I want to call your attention to the one-pager that says estimates for planning purposes only on it. And this one-pager is a really great handy tool for school board members and for city council members to look at, because it's organized in the way that I've presented the information tonight. There's contractual obligations and I would ask you to next to that right collective bargaining agreement enrollment growth and I would ask you next to that green line to write 159 more students current obligations perhaps write something called maintenance of effort and then enhancements I might write something like due to growth. All of those, when you sum total those, end up in the dark green line that says FY26, fiscal forecast expenditure adjustment. For us in the schools, we'll need $4.96 million for us to run our schools with the enhancements and our current obligations. So, that is not an insignificant amount of money. I get that, but I think it's really important to consider that in the context of the growth that we're experiencing. So think about that enrollment growth and then the enhancements that we are also looking at doing as a consequence of the growth. So my last slide, if we can flip back to that, is the budget calendar, actually it's two more. Budget calendar, it's more of an eye test than a slide. So forgive me for that, but you can take a look at that. It does all lead up, all roads lead to May when you all make the final decisions about the budget. Of course, like always, just reminding the City Council, we are about three months ahead of you. So we will go through all of our public hearings, all of our budget deliberations, all of our budget work sessions starting in January. The first meeting that we have in January is the meeting that I will present the superintendent's proposed budget. Tonight really is representative of what that will likely look like because by Virginia code, I'm required to present a needs-based budget. And that's what we will be doing based on what we're currently doing and the enrollment growth. And with that, Mayor Hardy and Chair Gould, we want to just thank everybody again for listening to us tonight, talking about what our needs are in the school division. And also, I hope you hear the excitement that we all have about this growth. I think we're really sort of jazzed about it. And think that adding more kids to our schools just makes for an even more vibrant community. Gives us opportunities to do some things that we might not have been able to do with the smaller population and really think that this is great for the City of Falls Church. So thank you all for for this evening and we're here for any questions that you might have or that well I'm almost said wild and Cooper I'm sorry that Stephen Fuller is you can answer even even the school even the school ones he'll take those you said. Thank you. Why it in current? Okay, thanks. All right, well, Peter, thank you for that. And now, so we're going to do two things. One, I'm going to do a quick summary of the financial terms for the West Falls project. And then, and I'm going to be quick on that summary of the financial terms for the West Falls project and then and I'm going to be quick on that because what people really want to do is here from Kirin and I'm going to be passing out Kirin and slides while I give this summary so don't look at what we're passing out right now Kirin will be talking about it in about five minutes. I make a quick interjection to why. Yes. So for the really boring part about West Falls, the reason I asked for this is because I think at the time, only Mary Beth, me and Dave, were around for this negotiation. I think all of the school warms new since then. And so we thought it was really important to give everyone a refresher about the financial terms of the West Falls project given that's right next to the schools and is paying for the high school, as well as potentially the phase two that was negotiated back in the 2018-2019 era. So we thought this was a timely thing, especially for Peter's last meeting as well. Thank you, sorry why? Thank you, Mayor. And I don't know, am I able to drive with this quicker Sophie or yeah okay And so this is just four slides and let's see if this works. Okay. So this is a very not doing justice to the Marybeth Con calmly zipper. But for those who maybe are not fully aware of it, the West Falls project goes back at least to 2014. And the note worthy part about that is that we did a boundary adjustment with Fairfax County to allow an idea that in fact the school board had to begin with. It was a school board idea to potentially fund the construction of a new high school by offering some acreage of the school campus for economic development. And so that idea was related to the City Council and to the general government. We did push very hard then in terms of the sale of the water system that that agreement include a boundary adjustment to bring general government. We did push very hard then in terms of the sale of the water system that that agreement include a boundary adjustment to bring the school property into the city limits. They would allow us to have control over a project like that. In 2018 we did a lot of planning and in 2017 there was a bond referendum for the high school in the amount of $120 million. And then after that referendum, we got to work. We had actually been working before that referendum of doing all the planning. But the schools issued an RFP for design and construction. And that resulted in Gilbane and that team being selected. And about three months behind the schools, we wanted to be a beat behind the school so that the school planning could be ahead. We issued an RFP for economic development and that resulted in the selection of the Hoffman team that you see building the buildings there today. In 2019 the City Council approved the land entitlements and the comprehensive agreement that has the terms that I'll describe here in 2021 in January, right? On time, the Meridian High School opened, that was a heroic effort and a really well-managed project. That's right. And also in 2021, there were what we call the COVID amendments to the conference of agreement and to the site plan and that results in the terms that will will summarize here and I just double click so I'm probably going to lose that slide. I'm going to go back. Okay so this was in the read ahead materials. The bottom line, the capitalized rent for a 99-year ground lease, where you see the West Falls being built today, the capitalized payments were 25.5 million spread over, with the last payment of a million dollars coming in the budget year that we're about to be talking about and planning for now. There was a profit share provision that was we call the land lift, so the increase in value after entitlements at $817,000 was spread over the final six payments of the base rent. There's a phase two, and I'll show that on the next slide, but that is the sort of bare piece of dirt where the mural is on the backside of the parking garage. And in addition, in the parking lot area of Meridian High School, that also is designated as an office development site. I'll show that schematically in just a moment. That payment is pre-negotiated at $10 million or a praised value, whichever is higher. And then the final base rent is a supplemental payment of $200,000 a year that starts in the budget year that we're talking about coming up 2026. And then that grows at 2.75% per year with a small kicker and 2031 of an additional 30,000. That lasts for the full 99 year terms to the lease. That has about a $90 million nominal value and a $20 million present value. There's affordable housing payments that start once the senior building is completed in FY29 and that's about $230,000 per year, escalating at 3% per year. And then there's a profit share for the condo building, which we'll keep an eye on. And then there's an administrative fee of 25 basis points every time a condo sales sells in the future after the first sellout by the developer. So that will be collected at the same time as recordation taxes are paid. So kind of the basic terms come to $38 million over this about 14 year period that is shown graphically. And then after what's shown on this chart, just the supplemental rent and the affordable housing payments will continue on. There was an economic development agreement associated with this, and this is relevant to our forecast that Kieran will have in just a moment. It was essentially a tax abatement deal, and so that was the essence of it, but it also provided some predictability that was the upside to us Of of knowing what the payments would be however that predictability was undercut by the delay of the senior building So what the agreement called for was a million dollars in 2025 stepping up to 1.5, then two million, then three million, and then in 29, the agreement is finished, we're done, and we're projecting that the property be assess at about $350 million, and that would generate $4.2 million in property taxes. So then that's the end of that agreement, and they'll just pay property taxes. So then that's the end of that agreement, though, just taking normal taxes. With the senior building, now they closed on that last week and they will get under construction. And so we think they will then catch up in the economic development agreement numbers will then be as predicted in 2027 going forward So that 825,000 dollars is our current projection for what West Falls will pay and that will be factored into what Kieran is going to present in the Revenue forecast So that Is the numbers that the the the key thing I think for the school board and the city council to be aware of, is for phase two. That is actually coming up soon. The outside closing date for phase two is June of 2026. The developer has three options where they can pay the city $800,000 and push the closing date out a year. They can do that three times. Those are non-refundable payments, but they get deducted from the $10 million lump sum payment or praise value, whichever is higher. This is something we'll need to start thinking about potentially in the coming months about Phase 2. The one that is kind of most relevant is the office development which is entitled and it is part of the overall ground lease conceived as Phase 2. The requirement is that all of the parking would then need to be provided by the developer in a structured parking lot. So they can build an office building on top of that once that parking is provided. That will be a difficult thing to do and so we'll see how that plays out. But that is something that they are entitled to do and the price is already prenegotiated. So that is what I wanted to cover. And I'd be happy to answer any questions on that. Seeing that, I guess people are, go ahead, Kathleen. I guess I was just curious on your understanding of the likelihood of this happening at all. We're on this timeline. Have you gotten any indication from them? Well, the medical office building we believe we're told is it's all tentated out. It is all leased and they're very enthusiastic about what's happening there. And so they have indicated to us that they are interested in a second building. But that has been verbal and we don't know much more about it than that sort of expressions of things so far working out well. And that second building could be either the two spaces? No, the office would go in the space closest to Meridian. B4. That's right. And the residential, the other spot where the mural is is expected to be residential. Thank you. Good question. And this is I just haven't paid enough attention to the plan for where the mural is. So we know that the school parking currently exists where the office building would go. But like what is happening in the space? Is it becoming a plaza until the residential building goes up? Is it like fenced off and not accessible to the public? Like the area where the residential building could go? What is that going to appear like for the next X number of years? It's going to look much like it does right now. It's going to be a staging area for the construction of the senior building. So not lovely. Now because these dates are coming upon us, I think it's probably going to be used as staging for the senior building up to the point where they now then need to make a decision what they're going to do with it. The other thing that really should have been kind of the lead on this whole presentation is that all these dollars are spoken for. The annual debt service on the high school alone is $6 million a year. In the referendum we said the idea is that the 10 acres would pay a portion of the debt service and we have met that promise. We're recovering right now two-thirds of the debt service through this agreement. The net fiscal impact for this project is projected to be between five and six million dollars per. And so when the taxes come online, it will continue to cover that debt service. All right, so now we'll transition into Curens presentation. And before we do that, I did wanna just say a couple introductory comments and thank Peter for this might be, well, this will, he's announced that this will be his last budget planning session together with us as a group and this partnership that we've had between general government and schools in financial planning has been I think something that is a great legacy. It is a body of practices that are written down. It's not a formal agreement, but it's a body of work that is kind of like British common law. There's precedence now on how we can make our lives more predictable and planful and meet needs. There's so much that happens between general government and schools in the area of public safety with their school resource officers, emergency management, wrecking parks with all the sharing of space. Elections, IT, we share our backbone financial systems with each other. And then of course, partnership and economic development and capital planning. And so by making the budgeting process more predictable and maybe less tense, it really has opened up lots of things that we can do together in a very cooperative way. And that's been a wonderful thing. I've really enjoyed doing that with you, Peter and your team. Karen is going to take it away now, and I always kind of like to steal the thunder a little bit at the beginning. And the bottom line is, as Dr. Waters has said, in response to your question, and he said it last year, the capital region is struggling economically we've been flat for several years in a row and His projection is and what and the fuller institutes projections is is that kind of stagnation economically is likely to continue at least for a couple of years in that regional context the city is growing and we have growth and revenue. Cure is going to show a projection of about 5.5% to 6% growth and revenue for next year and that outperforms just about every other locality and that we're aware of so far far they're all doing meetings like this right now as well and our numbers are higher than theirs are and we have the challenges that come with with growth and we need to meet those challenges so with that healthy revenue growth our costs are higher than that which the economy is providing for us. And so we have a budget gap. And so if the general government side has a very sort of straightforward budget where we handle compensation, inter-jurisdictional contracts, and that's about it, we would have about a $2 million gap between general government and schools together. And so that's what we're going to talk about tonight. And I'll turn over to Karen for more details. Here you go. Good evening, Mayor Hardy, members of the Council. And Chair Gold and members of the school board. I am Karen Bawa, Director of Finance at the city, and happy to bring Fiscalia 2026 projections, revenue projections, along with our budget cost drivers here at the general government and a comprehensive calendar for everybody. So just to keep in mind a few factors that we are bearing to prepare as we get ready to prepare this budget fiscal year 2026. The region is experiencing a moderate inflation, 2.6% CPI increase in the Washington metropolitan area, September 24 over last year. The labor market remains competitive at 2.9%, the Commonwealth of Virginia, the unemployment rates are relatively low and false church even lower at 2.5%. And with the new administration in DC, the change in federal policies could impact potential flow of funds for the local and state governments. With that, I will transition to the revenue forecast. The real estate taxes are projected to grow at 6.9%. All other taxes and these are general fund taxes. I will delve into those in the next few slides, are projected to grow at 3.8%. And overall general fund tax revenues are projected to grow at 5.9% that equates to 5.9 million in new revenue for fiscal year 2026. And as Mr. Shield mentioned, half of this is accounted by new development. Absent this 2.9 million, we would have been a traditional growth of like 3%, close to 3%. And along the lines of the revenue share that we've done in the many years now, so 5.9 million divided 50, 50 split between the schools in general government would make each of our portion to be 2.95 million. And for the schools, this translates to 5.6 percent increase. Moving along. So looking at the regional assessed value, property values, this chart as you can see is evolving. We're still collecting information from neighboring jurisdictions. At an overall level, false church assess values, assessors reporting are projected to increase at 7.8%, which is relatively higher than the data we have for Fairfax County and Alexandria. Residential, again, a growth of 5.4% based on 10 months of sales, real estate sales that we've seen through the end of October is higher than most of the jurisdictions. The Fairfax City, I want to point out includes the new construction and thus the larger number. Commercial including the apartments, we are projecting an increase of 2.4% in our values and the region here is struggling on that front with negative growth. And then a 3.4% increase is projected for new construction, which is about $198,200 million. And that's like 11% of the overall growth. Karen, can I make a quick comment on this? Sure. The reason why property values matter a lot is that real estate taxes are 60% of our revenues. And so this is really important to understand kind of the regional context because I think we're just, as why it's said, we're in a really fortunate state where we're outperforming everybody else. We just don't have that commercial vacancy problem. Especially for our neighbors in Arlington, Alexandria. This is a big deal. So this chart now shows basically a 2026 estimates that we have in assessed value in comparison with the five-year average growth and that's calculated based on January 124 and five years prior. Most of the categories we are ahead of the averages and the last one is the median homeowner tax increase. So with the information that we have here, the projections, an increase of 529 in an average bill. And median home price is $1,000,000 and 11,800. 800. This chart shows a breakdown of the residential commercial and multi-family assessed value trends over the last 10 years. In 2025 total assessed valuation has crossed the 6 billion mark. That's the further right column that you see. And the light blue is a residential portion, the dark blue is the multi-family, and the green is the other general commercial. Karen, am I reading this right that from, I guess, 10 years, we've added $2 billion to the tax base? Correct. And if I'm looking at the charts, a billion of that is for multi-family and commercial. Just pretty much. And some of that I guess is just due to organic increases. But correct. Thank you. Sure. So this is a rather busy table. But at a higher level, total general fund tax revenues are projected to grow at 5.9% strong compared to the region. And overall, the other taxes, the second to the last line, is projected to grow at 6.2% built in there is the hotel tax and the recordation tax. Pending sale of various properties at West Falls, we are projecting those to increase in fiscal year 2026. Meals and business license, we are projecting no growth in those categories and then moving along. We'll take a look, a closer look at four of these charts. The blue line is the budget, and the red line is the actuals. You've done it for all of those four categories, and I'll go straight to the meals, which is of interest, given that we're not projecting here. So for the first three months of the fiscal year, the meal stacks are lagging. We saw that in the first quarter of a couple of weeks ago. And signifying growth levels that are coming closer at pre-COVID rates. And then the fiscal year 2025, the dotted line that we're projecting, it would end at 5.3% increase over 24 actuals. And that's based on the quarter of one report. And then and including revenues from new developments. So if you see the budget line for 2025 that blue dot is higher than where we're projecting it to end, for that we're projecting no growth in that and that accounts for that increase accounts for revenue from the new development. So apps and new developments this could have been a drop in the right protections. Business license. So in fiscal year 24 and 25, 24 actual dropped over 23, if you see that I don't have a flicker that I can point, but the fiscal year 24 actuals are lower than the 23 actuals. So making our projection for 25 a bit higher. And fiscal year 25 projection is at 5.6% increase, which is closer to the three or average, the 5.6%. And for that reason, we are projecting no growth in the business license by general number. I know there's a significant amount of attention in the newspaper about new businesses coming online. I'm just curious why there's no projection and revenue for the amount of attention that we've been reading about all the new businesses can you explain that? So sure, so there is a regular increase that we see in the meals and those averages are like seven, seven percent, like a seven year or ten year average and then we built in projection for new developments. In this first quarter the new, like the Whole Foods projected to open in February, that did factor in our first quarter results. And in first quarter, we saw some flattening of the increase in the meal stacks revenue, the collections. So that protection is what we adjusted downwards and then added the new development revenue from the new development. And then it comes closer to where we are at right now. Maybe one, you know, we have these charts just because revenue forecasts don't matter so much. We have a lot of everyone's interested in them. So we want to be as transparent as possible. And if there are any questions, we can dig into more data. We budgeted aggressively in the current year. That's that's real steep blue line that's going up. We're now revising that downward a little bit based on our actual so far. So our budget, if it's flat, as it's shown here, that blue line flats out between 25 and 26. That still assumes healthy growth from actual to hit that higher blue dot even though from a budgeting perspective it'll look flat. So we're walking everybody through that just to try to be clear, you know, transparent about it. What I think the data is telling us is that are existing restaurant base. They are seeing some reduction in or any rate we're seeing a reduction in tax receipts from our existing restaurant base. That's being offset by growth in the sector that's associated with new restaurants opening up and the whole foods is going to pay a lot of meals taxes with the prepared foods. But that's in some respects coming against a headwind that I think many of our restaurants might be experiencing right now. So from this, just to make sure, out of all the years, we've under counted what we thought we were gonna be collecting except for one year. And but now this year, your significant year, confident that we're gonna significantly underdo We've under counted what we thought we were going to be collecting except for one year. But now this year, your significant year, confident that we're going to significantly under do under count what we projected. Well, if you draw from the orange line up to that new dot, we still need to grow pretty healthily to hit that blue dot in 2026. So you tracking me on that? Yeah, I'm just saying I'm, I mean, okay, so the orange dot is always over the blue dot for almost every year except for one And now we're thinking that Somehow we're gonna be under counting what we're projecting on collecting for this year even though we've always Undercounted except for one year. That's what I'm looking. I'm just trying to make sure how confident are we that we are going to not collect as much as we thought when we've always collected more than we thought for every year except for one year since 2016. That's what I'm asking. What I might say is we certainly undercounted in the bounce back from COVID. No question about that. You can see that in the data. But if you go back pre-COVID, we generally were getting our meals tax numbers. We were nailing it pretty well. So with the 25 budget, we said, Dad, on it, we're going to we're tired of being behind on this and we got real aggressive on it. And now we're a little concerned the data coming in might suggest we were a little bit too aggressive in 25 But well This comes in month to month and we'll share the data as we get it. Okay, great. Thanks. What So that sums up The revenue projections Looking at the cost drivers for the general government, overall, we are projecting a need of 2.94 million. And that does not account for any new positions or new initiatives or expanded service. That 2.94 is broken down into 1.8 million in compensation. 1% compensation is the 285,000. And along with a 10% increase in health premium and some year round adjustments and making one of the positions that was funded for half a year in the current year's budget would require 1.8 million, our positions, three positions, 50% funded, 150,000. And then an increase in Womada and other inter-duer-stictional contracts, and also some internal contracts for utilities and fuel, et cetera. One million placeholder for that would require us. Costs to go up by 2.94 million. And as Mr. Schill said in the beginning, that along with the 4.96 million, the protection from the schools, at the current 5.9% increase in total in general fund revenues, would we're seeing a shortfall at this time of two million. And that brings us to that huge calendar of budget dates. I'll just call out a couple of two important ones after the council's guidance discussion today and then formal guidance adoption next Monday on the 9th. The school superintendent is budget proposal is expected on the second Tuesday in January on January 14th and then the city manager and the school superintendent collectively present their budget proposals on March 24th. An adoption of the City Council's budget is on May 12th followed by the school boards. Adoption on May 13th for a budget that goes into effect on July 1st. And I'll stop there for any questions or clarifications. Thank you, Karen. Laura? Thank you so much, Karen. Ms. Bawa. Actually, this is a question for Dr. Nune. Based on what Mr. Shields and Ms. Bawa was talking about with the surrounding communities, specifically what Mayor Hardy also pointed to with the, we're lucky that we don't have all this office basis that's unoccupied. But, Dr. Noon, I was just curious. I wrote down that you had said that surrounding school systems with their collective bargaining agreements were looking at 7% to all the way to 9% salary increases. How do you think they will be able to meet that considering their in worst financial shape than we are? I don't know. I think because there are collected bargaining agreements in place that some jurisdictions will be looking at raising revenue through tax increases. So that would be your guess, would be that we would have to. Thank you. Just from Ms. Bawa on your slide 13 cost drivers. Dr. In a presented a really detailed description. And I know the schools are a bit ahead of where we are. But with your compensation of benefits of $1.8 million increase. is that a similar percentage increase to what the schools are planning to get? Correct. This is to mirror the 5% that mirrors that. Okay. And that doesn't as you said no new positions initiatives or expanded services so we can assume if we want to do anything new which we all seem to like to do, that would be more than 2940 for the general government. Okay. Erin? Yeah. So I had a similar question to Ms. Connolly. So on the school side, we seem to have a number in front of us that's more realistic in terms of the schools conveying what they think their needs are and whether we'll be able to kind of meet those needs financially is sort of the question we're all kind of looking at and grappling with and on the general government side I guess the number that we're seeing then is simply the maintenance number because I thought in last year's general government presentation, for example, we were talking about, we needed X number of police officers or patrol officers, given the amount of growth we were seeing, for example. And because the police department couldn't onboard X number of officers as easily, right? In one year that it would make sense, for example, to bring the police force that we thought we would need and onboard them, like in fiscal year 26, for example. But you're saying that what you, what you're showing now is just the maintenance number, but when you are presenting your general government budget, for example, is this gonna come in higher or you anticipating presenting a maintenance budget? Despite what we heard kind of the actual needs were on particularly on some like public safety positions. So this maintenance budget, I think it is a 5.6% increase over a current budget. So I have a hard time thinking of that as a maintenance budget. That's a pretty good budget. We have not done the deep dive in terms of really understanding what are our inter-gear structural contracts are going to be yet. We won't know that probably until February. And so there's just a lot of variables so I haven't developed it yet. I'm presenting it this way, you know, partly because we have had several years in a row of pretty significant increases in our budget. And we are still kind of onboarding additional staff and making the transitions that we need to do the ramping up. And there is a lag to that. We had a vacancy report that we discussed with GovOps just last week. We currently have over 10% of our budgeted positions are vacant right now, which is partly because there's been new positions, there were nine new positions in last year's budget. And we're onboarding those. That's a big component of that vacancy number. That's all to say, I don't feel it's irresponsible at this point to present a number at that maintenance level. There will be new facts that we will need to discuss with the council about how we meet our public safety needs, because I do know that those exist and our paving needs. We know that we want to up our paving budget. A lot of things like that are going to be part of the discussion next spring. Just a month through on the government energy action plan, community energy action plan to that list of council priorities that aren't reflected in this particular general government cost drivers per future discussion. But just to be transparent about some of the expectations on funding on the general government side too. Godlar. And I'm sorry, I probably missed this, but in terms of the Womada, I remember reading in the material that the state had provided us, or provided some localities, some support. So is this number, is this a guesstimate, or is this without state aid or? So, Womada itself, a 3% that's typically like what we plan around, is a 200,000 number. Okay. However, the Womada has a gap of 195 million. Okay. The 95 million of that was accounted by help from the federal level, which is absent right now and they're trying to see if they can reach a good the calculations and the jurisdictions and With that it could be somewhere between three to five percent, but we don't know So that's representing their budget in mid-December or a little bit later. Okay, so that's another unknown Okay, thank you in mid December or a little bit later. Okay. So that's another unknown. Okay. This time. Thank you. And if I could just add to the same thing superintendent said, we don't know what the state budget is yet. The second year of the bayenneium has the whole harmless state money. So as long as that stays, the 3% to 5% range holds. And we're anticipating it to hold, but it's an unknown also variable. Thank you. There's a lot of information digest. Questions, thoughts? I think the real challenge is I think Laura hit it on the head, which is, you know know the region I think is going to have a hard time figuring out how to pay for the growth and pay for the budgets that are being requested and I think we're just going to have to stay tuned to what is realistic to do. I think the good news story again in Falle's Church is we are out performing that on Riverdale so the fact that we have 5.9% revenue growth and if absent absolutely new construction, I think in the staff report, it's that we'd be looking more like a 2.9% which is actually much more average with what we historically have seen. So it is a good new story that we have 5.9% to work with. I think there's the big unknown that Dr. Waters talked about is what happens across the river. And that's really top of mind for me. Other thoughts? Okay. Okay. Well, I guess we will break because I know that we all each have separate meanings that we need to handle as well, unless we want to continue the discussion here. Okay. Thank you for this great kickoff and lots of information digest. I guess we'll be following up with more budget questions not going to be in the chat. I'm not going to be in the chat. I'm not going to be in the chat. I'm not going to be in the chat. I'm not going to be in the chat. I'm not going to be in the chat. I mean, that's a lot of fun. I'm not going to be in the chat. I mean, that's really ironic because... I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go that as it's my first time. Yeah. Okay. The two guys are colored tortillas. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. How are you? Are you ready? I'm good. You're doing it like... I'll show you a bit. I'll show you a bit. You know, you're a little bit better than me. It's not like I'm just a little bit better than you. It's not like I'm just a little bit better than you. It's not like I'm just a little bit better than you. It's not like I'm just a little bit better than you. I think that we can be in trouble for it. We're taking border issues and putting it on to just for guys. And I'm just storming. Storming. And we're not going to say that we'll take it. And we're going to say that we'll take it. And we're going to say that we'll take it. And we're going to say that we'll take it. And we're going to say that we'll take it. I'm being true to the people. I'm being honest with you. I just need to be honest with you. I'm honest with you. I'm honest with you. I'm honest with you. I'm honest with you. I'm honest with you. I'm honest with you. I'm honest with you. I'm honest with you. I'm honest with you. I'm honest with you. I'm honest with you. So you're going to think about the policy of the role of my finance. And then they have non-age-shakers, like exclusive personnel. So my finance and economics report, he has to think about that. So thank you. Thank you for the internal school days. I hope that's what you have to talk about. Maybe the higher-end engineers are going to have something spoken for, yeah. And I'm going to be, I'm going, that's also an invention, but if they actually look at it, like if they made it, then you'll see, you'll see, they would actually invest in it. You can take a little course and tell me what I mean, I see two small lines. I said, yeah, it's not a hard one. It's not a hard one. It's certainly not some hard one. It's very worth it. But it's like the most useful tool I just stand there and get my questions. Keep going to the corner. What if we're going to do that? I don't think it would be very difficult. I don't think it would be very difficult. Even on the mask. I don't think it would be a mask. I don't think it would be a mask. I don't think it would be a mask. I don't think it would be a mask. I don't think it forward it to me. I have a comment. I have a comment. I have a comment. I have a comment. I have a comment. I have a comment. I have a comment. I have a comment. I have a comment. Thank you. You can start on Cross Week 2 in New York. I didn't. So was is there a desire to kind of walk through the key elements of the budget guidance from last year and then have a discussion about Changes the council would like to make is that how we'd like to proceed? to me but um I like maybe just the highlights then. Well, I'll send it around and see if we can see. I have a new one with the R. You remember three of the R, but one? Yeah, R, but I can't see that. And we took care of, we'll say A and three B. And B and B and B. Mm-hmm. Well, I'll say usually bullet two is traditionally kind of the most important one. And so maybe we'll come back to that one. What it did stand for last year was in lighter projected growth and assessed value of real estate and associated financial burden on homeowners, the budget should provide options for tax rate reduction while ensuring core government and public education needs are met. So last year was presented at a penny reduction in the council added an additional penny reduction on last year. Kieran, I don't have a slide in for me. What's the tax rate impact to the median home owner bill with no tax rate change with that? 529. 529. And I'm really sure one of the five years is 1,200. And what's the penny on the tax rate? So a penny on the tax rates, about 600,000, 615 and the impact on the average homeowner is about $100 per penny. If it's a state-of-the-state-neutral play, the role of Phil Duncan, you'd have to reduce the tax rate by 6.15 pennies to neutralize the impact on the average household. Hold. The equalized rate. The equalized rate. Sorry, I didn't say that. CPI is like 2.5 to 3%. 2.6. 2.6%. 2.6%. So we are 3% above CPI in terms of like tax bills going up. And I asked very quickly, Laura, since you were most recently doorknocking, when I did a lot of doorknocking, just last year too, people feeling cost burdened was continually like one of the top things. And it reaffaffirm kind of what was in the previous years community survey so I know in in terms of like city services people felt like the city services were lacking in paving and roads and enforcement and various things but in terms of how often feeling cost burden was coming up, was it coming up? Yeah, regularly. No, so that's, I felt that it was mixed. I think some people brought up about the construction and the development that came up quickly, but people thought, well, you know, I also heard that, well, we understand that's important to help bring our taxes down. And then I also heard that while we understand that's important to help bring our taxes down. And then I also heard which is interesting that people weren't so concerned about, you know, someone, a couple of people made a comment that, oh, you know, if the tax rate goes down and pen here too, it saves me $100 over a year or something and I'd rather have better city services. So I think it was a mixed bag. Sorry, that doesn't help. No, that's fine. I think it's just, you know, sometimes I've heard people sort of feel like we say we do a lot of economic development, obviously to diversify the tax base and to make it a more desirable place to live. And oftentimes we say we're adding a lot of housing in order to help offset housing costs, but because we're such a desirable place to live and we're so small, you're not going to saturate the market with such housing that you actually bring housing costs down. We stay relatively, a relatively expensive place to live regardless of the type of housing. And so then on the property owner side, I think there, what I heard was sort of an expectation of given the amount of growth we invite and sort of the promise, so to speak of helping financially, right? That people go, oh, well, why is it that despite the growth or despite you know all the business as I'm Continuing to see my tax rate go up and then I feel like you know the city services side of things is lacking The tax rate goes down to your tax bill goes up because your staffs find out because we brought more people in and we brought the businesses in So your financial gain is years out when you sell your home or when you leave false churches what I feel. And I think many think and that's hard to like, that's hard to wrap your head around that. Yeah, I'm going to see a huge gain or maybe my ears will see a huge gain, but this year I have to pay you know an average of $650. But and I will I think that's like and I will say that more than a handful of people brought up assessments that they think and specifically I remember some I think there was a group in Winter Hill that I don't know if they were going to have legal action or something but definitely there is some people out there who think the assessments is not it's a little loosey goosey. You know, that seems pretty subjective to these folks that I talked to, but I would say there is definitely more than a handful of people who brought that up specifically. Not so much what Ms. Hiscock just said, but just that they thought that, you know, it depends on who's doing these assessments and it's not really an exact science and it's, you know, they don't think that it was accurate so which we can't control officially you know we control the test. I think we can try to blunt those you know growing assessments you know a little bit every year with decreasing the tax rate. Other thoughts? I mean I'm sorry Mary. I was just saying for this number two I mean I'd still like to I'd still like to explore and think about what a reduced tax rate would be because we don't have the details in the general government side. We won't have those for months. I think the guidance that we need to give for next Monday night is to clearly state that we are looking out for our taxpayers best looking at our taxpayers best interest. We do hear that summer cross burden. So what are our options? I don't want to limit our options right from our budget guidance statement. And I also feel it's fair, there's some concern that our conversations with the school board were left until later because we developed our budget guidance later. I want to be really clear from tonight forward that of course I want to support the schools. And of course I want to support general government from tonight forward that, of course, I want to support the schools. And of course, I want to support general government equally at equal measures. I want good staff, I want them well paid, I want the quality services in general government and school side. But I also want to make sure that we're looking at what each of our taxpayers provide. So I want to just kind of put my own personal mark in the stand that I want to look at what that means. And, you know, it may mean we can't do some of the things we want to do. I knew it might come back to where we are with the flat tax rate, but I would like to look at a tax rate reduction and what that does to our budget options. And, you know, whether that's a penny or two pennies, you know, I 1.3, 3 would be two pennies that you lose in the revenue side. So what is that translate into loss services or perception of loss services? And you made a lot of way of saying I'd like to get the option open. I'd like to communicate from the beginning that these are options that we should pursue in my opinion. Other thoughts? Just a quick lecture in my opinion. I guess going into the next fiscal year with a lot of uncertainty on the federal side and what that's going to do to false church city, I would like to have a little bit of flexibility in the budget such that maybe it's something that we could, you know, if it's a penny or two or whatever it is, that we could use for a tax rate reduction or we could use to, I don't know, fund something if we have an emergency or whatever else. So just that there is some flexibility built in and maybe that comes from the tax rate reduction side of something that we just put to the side to say, you know, by the time we get to May, what we might want to do with this. The option of a reduction that you then you get it in May. Yeah, if there was something that came out of expense wise or concerns if things radically changed in the first. Exactly. And I guess I wouldn't want to set taxpayers expectations, you know, I don't know, I think of all the things where we can set people's expectations and then people get disappointed. So setting the school board's expectations, it's setting taxpayers expectations that this would be something that we're being conservative with. And so it may not go back to, if there is some sort of emergency or something that does come up and we do need to use it for something else. The whole kind of like one to two pennies in contingency, don't spend it. And then if things were fine at the federal level, that would be a tax rate reduction, but if we need it, I mean, for something. Or, you know, in May, yeah, something else. I'm sorry about May, this year and May, next year. May of this year. This is setting guidance. This is what made for this budget. Yeah, for this budget. For fiscal year 26. Decision made 25. Other thoughts? Well, I'll chime in with Marybeth Connolly, because Debbie Chan will fill Duncan. The Marybeth Connolly is the beginning line that we have our excellent schools and excellent government services. And is there a way to do that? I mean, we heard Peter's presentation, we heard Kieran's presentation, and we know that there's a lot of variables. And if we reduce the tax rate further, how do we maintain those excellent schools and excellent government services with all the requirements that are there? So I will channel the, we just have to make sure we're funding what we know the needs are. It's really hard at this point in the year to do it because there's so many variables and even the Meals text variable, that just, it just doesn't make sense to me. It just seems like it's going to pick up in the next quarter or the next quarter because of restaurant week or something where that slow start is going to get better because of so many new restaurants opening. So it just seems like the budget news should improve of what will be coming in. I'd like to think about I also have some fears about, and I think that others may have fears and spend less than the first quarter waiting to see what happens to the federal government. And that may be why, you know, this is just purely anecdotal of no data to support it, but that may be why people are spending less going out right now. Maybe they're kind of waiting to see what happened with the election. Waiting to see what happens, you know, of our complete swaths of the federal government going away. I mean, I hope not. I, you know, hope that we're being stable. But those are things to be thinking about. One metric that I wanted to point out, and I did talk to Mr. Gold after the meeting was, at the break time, was that we have seen growth numbers that are higher and can drop with meals and sales, you know, even coming out of COVID. This is the first time a year over your negative growth minus 2.3 percent. That kind of is the first time I'm seeing a drop. And there are talks about amongst forecasts in the region, about some stagnation in the economy. So at this time, that's the data we have. Of course, we'll be doing a second quarter in February and we'll revisit it and that'll all factor into City Manager's presentation in March. But compared to the budget, one can understand because budgets are, we are proposing those and those were done six months ago and if we're not meeting the target, there are factors that can explain that. But a year over year negative growth is something that factor significantly into those projections. Right. Right, no know I understand that, but I'm saying it's just the fact that it is year-of-year negative growth just isn't making, it's not computing in my mind based upon the number of restaurants and the number of people and all those things. So maybe it's just a lag because we're waiting for these new apartment developments to fill up and to have more people eating and maybe that lag will fix itself. And maybe it won't. And I guess we'll just wait and see. The other thing is with this new administration, one of the things that maybe changed back to how it was is the state and local taxes, which is a significant change to homeowners here. Because currently previously, 100% of our local real estate tax was deductible on our taxes. And then with the Trump administration, we were limited, yeah, the salt to $10,000. But now there's talk of the salt going away. That salt cap going away. So that would be a huge benefit to every single solitary homeowner and false church that may come from the federal government. I don't know if it will or not, but it's just something to keep in mind that if it does change, that would be a big tax change. Laura? So I agree with Ms. Hiscock that we, you know, we should definitely have that flexibility to say, you know, there's a lot that's still unknown. You know, we should explore options. But you know, if everything were as it is now, I would say, you know, given the projected enrollment growth and that is, you know, I appreciate Ms. Flynn asking about, people talking with me on the campaign trail, I will tell you that the school families, their perspective is, they're concerned about growth, school growth, and that got that from a lot of people in my own neighborhood, what is happening, what's gonna happen with enrollment growth? So I do, I am a little concerned about cutting the tax rate. I definitely don't want to increase it, obviously, but cutting it. And I was looking at Dr. Newton's budget and, you know, having been pretty well versed in these budgets over the past couple years. And this is, this, even if you took out, I'm just looking, you know, even if you take out, and you look under enrollment growth, you take everything out except the classroom teachers. That's 4.5. You take out his enhancements. He's still going to be around $4 million. So, you know, I don't think, I think if you go pretty bare bones, it's not, I think it's going to be hard for them to get down too much. Again, I think they are going to need more classroom teachers if those enrollment projections hold. I think we're going to have a big problem on our hands with the school community parents. If all of a sudden, you know, we have this development and all of a sudden now, you know, Montenegro classrooms are, you know, 28 kids instead of 22. So I just, I wanted to sort of that out there that I do think that, you know, you look at this budget in front of us on the school side, and even if we were to cut everything of his, except for classroom teachers, cut the enhancement, he's still got, they've still got current obligations, contractual obligations, that sort of thing. So I guess that would be my only concern. And again, there's a lot of unknowns obviously, but if everything were to hold what we're looking at today, I would be, I guess a little bit hesitant to cut that tax rate, thanks. To make sure I'm understanding the chart, so the contractual obligations includes the 5% compensation increase that the schools would like to give, is that correct? Yes, that's correct. Okay, and then a million is for the growth. So for the extra 100, some cases it's a million. I think as your line of thinking was asking Laura, I'm a little skeptical whether the region's going to give a 78%. is having been on the school board when we went through the collective bargaining agreement. There's definitely language in there that says this is contingent on receiving you know the money from city council. So to make sure we have the same numbers in front of us, what is the obligation per revenue sharing the 50-50? Is it splitting that 5.9 million and a half so everyone essentially gets 3 million? 2.95. Correct. So that would be per the revenue sharing agreement in good times and in bad we split 50-50s. That's 2.9 a piece. Okay. And so we're, why it right now is coming in and lying with that and has proposed a superintendent's budget as 2 million above that revenue sharing agreement? Correct. Okay. So the 2 million dollar gap is from the school's request just to be clear that gap that you've identified. Although why it hasn't asked for extra stuff yet. Right. The gap that we've identified today is $2 million from the schools, from their 4.962 request to 50% of the revenue forecast, which is $2.95 million. So that delta is all currently in school requests. Correct. And if we were to, sorry. I was gonna say if you were to fund that delta, that would be a 3.6%, 3.6% increase on the tax rate to just fund the delta as it stands. And if you wanted to fund it, so it was 50-50, it would go up to like a seven percent, seven cents. I mean, give $ million dollars extra to the same. I'm just doing this theoretically but if we're saying everything split 50-50 and we want to increase it the same amount. Oh yeah I wasn't saying that but I see where you're going with it. I wasn't suggesting. Given the line of discussion about one of the findings back then, I don't think there's any universe where we're going to add rights. Forpe. One, yeah, I have different things going on in my head right now. So I like whether this is going to come out as a jumble or not, I'm not sure. So one of the things that's going on in my mind is that I do think we kind of have some explaining to do to the public if the growth, I mean the increase in taxes is generally like $400 or so and we're talking about a $529 increase and they're seeing a lot of things coming online with the expectation that why are we seeing all of these things coming online and I have a $530 increase when I've been only seeing $400 increases and I would like that to not be as high as it is. So I'm in support of trying to find the one or two cents. I guess on the one or two cents is part of the gap that we are seeing. And I didn't take down the numbers quickly enough. Related somewhat to the tax abatement in terms of the delta between what we thought we'd be getting and what we are getting so that we're kind of floating money that we thought we'd be getting from elsewhere to pay for more of the debt service on the schools, which is why we're seeing the like multi-million dollar gap because the timing has now kind of gotten off between the project revenues when we were looking at when the growth was going to be happening versus the financials as they're now coming in with like a three or four year lag. Yeah, so specifically to property taxes there's the $600,000 shortfall basic because of the delay of I think that two big components are the senior and the grocer is also behind. We're talking a penny there. We're like behind out of penny. That's right. Okay. Are we behind the penny because of the Whole Foods too? Well we're talking about next year's budget so Whole Foods. It should all be online for the budget that we're dealing with It's really kind of a data problem. We We were real strong in a forecast for the current year and now we're a little worried about them Just because of the data that's coming in Well that we just, you know, forecast or, forecast or tough, you know? I also just think there's a structural issue where when you open new buildings, your residential opens first, usually they stabilize first. And so you usually have like 12 to 18 months of period of that growing before your commercial completely stabilizes. And so there's always that period where your costs are going to slightly exceed your revenues. And so while the long-term fiscal projections were probably corrupt, you probably have those like seam years where until the commercial fully opens up, you don't get no revenues yet. Yeah, that's a good question. It's a good question. Just a lack there. Justine. When will we get information about what Fairfax and what Arlington like if they actually approve a 9% increase for their schools. Do you know when that informational command? so They but they adopted our budgets about the same time the city council does maybe two weeks ahead Oh, so it'll be late in the process. I'm feeling that these are counties are gonna have very dramatic budgets. Everybody put loud and counting. Dramatic meaning that they're gonna be tight. There's gonna be a lot of press coverage, there's gonna be difficult things to do. Okay, because they have a nine, eight to nine percent ask increase with a three percent negative, you know a decrease in commercial revenue where which is the bulk of the revenue in Arlington and Fairfax, and probably Loudon, I don't know Loudon as well. I mean, that's a, you're not gonna change your, you're not gonna increase taxes 12% to cover the delta. I just can't see that happening, especially if you're trying to bring in new businesses, you're not gonna increase your business tax. Mountains like that. They're good with data centers. Oh, okay. Is it loud because of the data centers? Yeah, 63% of their revenue comes from data centers or some revenues come from data centers. Something like that. I listened to them talk about it. It was shocking. They might be able to fund the school. So they would be the outliers possibly in this circle. Okay. Anyway. That's awful. possibly in this. Okay. Anyway, that's all for the now. Our extended Alexandria Fairfax are going to have hard, really hard budgets. Okay. Especially since they raised taxes last year already. I think there's my opinion less appetite to raise taxes too much again this year. Gotcha. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. First of all, a couple additional comments about regional comparisons. Keep in mind that the tax rates of all those jurisdictions are significantly lower than Falls Church. So even traumatic increases would put their tax burden still significantly below Falls Churches. So, you know, I think we need to be what what I'm looking for is a full analysis and hopefully more than I know there are a lot of unknowns this year but I'm concerned about steadily rising costs which have been totally demonstrated by the schools, occurring when we're claiming wonderful success for our growth on the short term, because the numbers look good right now, but what we're already starting to see is the cost that go along with that growth, they're starting to rise fairly dramatically. So I want to make sure we're managing all this and being totally complete in our analysis, It's fairly dramatically. So I want to make sure we're managing all this and being totally complete in our analysis, just like the regional comparisons. Yeah, for some things we look good. On the other hand, if you look at the basic tax burden, those other jurisdictions are much below the city of Falls Church, even with significant increases. So that would be what I look for is that really a comprehensive analysis here, not selecting one thing versus another. With regard to the guidance, I agree. I want to keep the tax rate issue in there because I think we need to maintain faith with our community that we are going to look at every dollar as important and so it helps demonstrate that. Secondly, I am concerned about when the impact of the new administration, how it's going to unfold and when. And I think we need to start preparing for that. The impact there may be talk early on, but depending on how they're, when they're implemented and how they're implemented, will potentially be a challenge for the region and for us. I think it's an absolute given that we need to maintain class sizes in our schools. And so since our first quality education is fundamental to everything that we do, I think we have to be very mindful of cutting things which are essential to maintaining the quality of the schools. So I want to maintain that. And on the city side, I really want to look seriously at fire protection and EMS services, which I think are rising along with growth. And I'm not entirely sure that we've really planned adequately for that. I think we've looked at the staffing on the police and raised that, and I think that's good. But that would be another element I want to be very careful about public safety. And at the cost of public safety, the increases in public safety are also embedding our analysis on whether growth is paying for growth. And I continue to believe that that's a fundamental issue. And I want a really comprehensive analysis on this to better manage where we go. One other point, I think we're tending to add like every new restaurant, you take the existing revenues and you take their projected revenues. But I think to some extent, even with increased population in the city, that there's going to be some alcoholic cannibalization of grocery stores by the one against the new one, the Whole Foods against the Harris-Teter, one restaurant against the another, and we're treating all this as additive. And I'm not entirely sure that that's an accurate projection as well. So those are just a few comments going forward. But I think the outline of showing that we do care about the tax rate, maintaining the quality of the schools, I think Mary Beth Calle has made that point very clearly, and I totally support that. I also like to say that the quality of the schools. I think Mary Bufkalli has made that point very clearly and I totally support that. I also like Council Member Underhills concern for some sort of caution, if not absolute allocation of funds on a for protection against the worst case. I'm not sure exactly how you do that, but maybe if your analysis proves overly negative, then you could fund some additional things. So those are it, but I think the fundamental message here is that without things changing for the better, there aren't going to be a lot of options in terms of new services this coming year unless we are willing to look at other things to cut. Thanks. Thanks Dave. Can I jump in on and agree with Mr. Schneider on providing the data? I know there's also a tax chart that shows the taxes so you know you look at your house and home assessment, your property tax, your you know what do we include in our property tax you know assess tax like we include our property tax, you know, assess tax, like we include our trash collection, recycling, you know, if we talk about adding a third bin, what's that gonna add to it? And then compare it, because we know that there are certain regions that we are negatively compared to in certain where there are overlay taxes where we're positively compared to. So having a full, I know there's a great chart here in budget center. Yeah, budget Q&A from last year. Just make sure that's accurate for this year and adds in. Maybe it adds in the cost we're talking about for the third bin for mechanics. And just so everybody has an understanding, here's the total tax rate you pay. Here's our average assessment. And then you can look at what the average assessment and average tax rate and determine how we stack up. I think most of that works already done, that's the only thing you think about adding is that. I think everyone else in touch rates went up a little bit, so update that chart. I also think, I think what Debbie just mentioned should be a number in here to look at the solid waste, to change our solid waste practices based upon the conversations that we've had in the last few months. So to take away from that work session was to explore a third bin. Right. Was it? I thought to take away was that that didn't actually solve the problem of the people living in condominiums. It was an interim set. We said we do it for the coming budget but we know that we haven't solved the equity issue but this helps. I thought that's what we said. I mean I would like to go further but I'll agree too. Add a third bin because then it because right now we're subsidizing the cost of compost crew. Right. A fair amount. So this actually takes away that subsidy, but then provides a third vent to everybody, not just people who are subscribed to compost crew. And who pays for that? With the Germans, fun. We're not to pay for it. So we're not actually changing anything, just, right? Yeah. More stuff goes to compost instead of trash. Right, right, right? Yeah. More stuff goes to compost instead of trash. Right, right, right. But financially, it doesn't solve the condo. It doesn't solve the condo issue at all. But you put some of the feedback to the people on the compost. That does compost. Now they get two separate issues. Yeah, two separate issues. But it doesn't solve. Anyway, I would still like to see in there that we think of a better, we include solid waste plan, but I guess that wasn't working out at work session. I thought that was what kind of work session. Well, that would be a big change from the work session. I mean, we went through kind of, what staff's direction on that was, that issue we're gonna set aside and not proceed on that path. So if that were put into budget guidance, then we kind of need to gin that machinery. I just meant the tax. The tax, if we're going to increase taxes, increase the trash removal fee to the end user that adds into your homeowner expense. That's what I was trying to communicate. And in the chart that I know we've seen before, because we don't do an overlay for MetroTexas, like some regions in Tyson's too, some in Ireland to do as well. Yes. So, I guess, we have several budget unknowns right now. One of them is, I guess, Metro funding. Another one is Pearson Square and whether or not I mean that there could be a significant change there. Do you know when we'll have more insight on that or that's just completely up in the air? So, Womata is I want to misspeak but but the deal with the state government was a two-year deal. And so kind of the big planning for changes in the Moumata funding is not for the FY26, but it's really for FY27. Now, there will be the normal increases in Moumata, but nothing is dramatic is what we were discussing last year. Not as dramatic as last year as long as the governor holds that money, which I think the pressure will be to do that, because otherwise you have a dramatic funding cliff in the whole region. So the dramatic funding cliff is in 27, not in 26? So it's not gone. But for 26, when Modus CEO has signaled a minimum of 3% increase, there's have to offset the federal money that was used one time last year to fill the gap. That's not here this year. That's the 95 billion that Ms. Bawa was mentioning that gets spread across Maryland, D.C. in Virginia. And they are changing the bus formulas for subsidy, and they just redid all the bus routes. Those impacts we don't have yet, and we'll have, should have mid-December, and we can analyze it. That's why right now we're looking at a 3 to 5% range for funding increase from Amata. It's not the big gap. And hopefully we solve FY27, but there is an increase of Amata. Mid December to end to December after we have time to analyze it, we should have a better handle on what is proposed in the Amata budget. It won't be adopted officially too much. Okay, thank you. Okay, so. officially to March. Okay. Thank you. Okay. So I have one quick question. So why in so looking you have compensation benefits at 1.8. And so looking at the school's budget, I believe that that between the step increase in the cost of living Dr. Noon said that would be a 5% salary increase. Do you have an estimate of what that would be for a city staff, like what the salary increase would be for them? So we are projecting a 5%, that's what the 1.8. So that is a 5%. Okay, so it would be similar to the raise that the school, the teachers would be good. That is correct. It's just that they have a lot more staff. That's what we've modeled. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Any other, it's a, there are CPI. So that's pretty healthy. What was that? It is a CPI. Which is good. I mean, I might exceed the region too. Yeah, I mean, I would think that's a very positive thing as an employee of the schools or the city. I think having that parity has been important thing that we had for the past five years or so. It wasn't always the case. It's been a good thing. So a couple of thoughts. I guess plus one and the sentiment that I think it goes without saying is we all want excellence in general government services and our schools. I think for me top of mind continues to be taxpayer burden that macro risk that we talked about and the third thing that I talked about the past two years is just because you have 6 or 8% revenue growth doesn't mean you should spend all of it because when you look at your five and 10 year run rates that is not normal. I've been saying this now for several years apparently is kind of normal right now, but when we look historically our growth is more like 3% 4%, and that's what actually it would be without that new construction. So I just continue to worry that if we have budgets that grow 6% 8% every year, that is not sustainable in the long run. And so I would put myself on the camp of holding back one to two pennies, whether that we use that for contingency in light of the macro risk or use it for a taxpayer decrease if things look rosier than thought, when we think. But I just don't think we should be trying to spend a 6% budget growth just because it's in front of us. I know that means hard conversations in terms of how to fund in light of the revenue share and the increase, I think the one heartening thing is that, you know, out of the school ask, a million of it is for enrollment growth and that is covered by the revenue share. It's all the other stuff that we have to figure out a pay for, so that's where I am right now. And I think a lesson learned from last year because I think last year we had just used the words options. Should we be more explicit and say, one, did you pennies for a contingency slash tax rate reduction? Yes, I think so. I think just to be fully transparent that it's something we're exploring. I just don't want the conversation to come March and April to be like, well, we didn't know you're thinking. Right. Why are we doing that? Right, now I think if that's the will of the group. And it may engage people more, you know, earlier in the budget discussion, too, to understand all the factors that are playing in, right? Right. How does it have maybe more engagement from the public and more conversations about where we are? Thoughts on the group on that? I see. I had nods from several people. I would be fine with that as long as we can use those funds for something else if need be. Or I guess my concern keeps coming back to like road paving or like all of these unknowns that are sort of looming ahead of us. Yeah, the unknowns are very intimidating. Yeah. But when you think you have a plan and then all those unknowns are out there. So we call it kind of contingency flash. Yeah. Something else. But I have to feel like we shouldn't be afraid to say we'll keep the read. Flat. I mean, I think that has to be in there too. That's an option. Yeah. It's not, we're not saying we're going to cut. We're saying we want to have some options there. But I think it also is clear, like you close that $2 million gap, should be clear would be a 3.57 cent increase on the tax rate. I had other numbers. Are we done with that one? Can I go on to other? So should we say zero to two cents, like budget options for zero to two to make it incorporate your comment? There it is. Number eight, we mentioned the commercial industrial property tax. Pretty much seven, not doing that yet. So we can, right? Last year we explored it, decided not to do it. That is correct. Is there a chance for you to explore it and decide to do it this year? Should we just take it up completely? I have personally been thinking about it probably as something to keep in mind for FY27 when we have the Womata fiscal cliff. There is a problem with that theory and that is that CNI can't really go directly to cover too much of our OAM money because of legal rules. But it would help some. It could help you know 300 to $500,000 of an increase in OAM. So my thought had been that would be something to think about for 27 if there isn't a grand solution to a amount of funding. So should we take it out this year? Yeah. That's my thought, unless the council wants to take it on to have that additional flexibility. But it... We'll put it up. I think probably all the budget, bullet eight could go, because I don't think we're modest going to be a major issue. Okay. Unlike. I heard. And number seven, the CIP to address our projected shortfalls in FY25. I think we handled that with the budget amendment. I think that bullet probably could go as well. That's what's going to suggest that we address that. You think that sorry for number I don't know where it is if it would be number six or if it's in number nine it's not really affordable housing, but we saw when some of the COVID assistance, and didn't we already have a gap in some of the social services kind of assistance where that budget was growing, but we didn't have as much money as we would have otherwise had. And I do have, again, some concerns when we're seeing sort of numbers of economically disadvantaged students growing that it, obviously, the students are economically disadvantaged, but they're coming from households that are economically disadvantaged. And if you layer on top of that, you know, questions about job certainty or job stability, you know, whether this budget should have some, some more attention to like those sorts of assistance funds, maybe something that we want to include here. So we did have, as a lot of people who are in the area that we are in the area that we are in the area that we are in the funding over there and again we'll revisit it when we do the department budgets and we see if there is room for it to be absorbed. I think specifically our Fairfax County Family Services Agreement came in under budget and so some of that money is gone for direct assistance. So we can look at that. Emergency rent, utility assistance, those were two big chunks of it. So we can look at that. Emergency rent, utility assistance, those were two big chunks of it. And then there was the funding for the Community Services Fund, which was at $85,000 a year for many years in a row. And I think that number is what's in the FY25 budget as well as 85K. That's the competitive grants that nonprofits can be for or apply for. So seven's deleted, eight's deleted. Nine's, I think we wanna keep on in discussing affordable housing, same with government, number 10, government action plan. Number 11, we've addressed some of the, that already on the capacity front, but do we need to discuss debt in this no because this is operating budget? Well, it will be in the capital plan for the sewer fund. I think that will be an important policy discussion that will take on with the Senator Suez, the IP. So just 11 would need to be updated to reflect capacity component and the take. The detention vault. In the take. The detention vault. The base. Number 12, Mary Beth will keep us in there. Keep us honest. 12. Yeah. Yeah, it's evergreen. And 13, obviously, just FYI. I should actually say 20. Six. And then. I should actually say 20. And then. And 14 is probably not needed. Yeah. But one of the things that was in the school budget was the amount of money saved by retirements and that is always a number in there. We'll have that too. Do you have that in your budget as well? Staff savings because we budgeted, we talked about earlier, we're almost 12% on staff right now. Well that's the un-spent this year as you're living for it to the next year, there was like a number like 344,000. That was the, let me find it. It's got a name. Shall we sell this out? Yeah. Can you include our lips? So since they are on a contract. Oh, it's different. It's hard for us to project who all are going to leave next year. But we do factor in our discussions when we meet good department directors. Some understanding, I mean the personnel is fully funded, but we kind of use some of that understanding to fund initiatives in addition. So we don't like fund everything they're asking for, and expect some of it would be absorbed by understanding in their personnel, either from- We know HR, TW, or underspent in fiscal year 25 already, since we don't have anybody in place there. Right. Well, one or two of us, is there a need to increase some of those salaries to recruit people? Because those positions would have been so long had those salaries competitive? HR public works. Those director-level positions are competitive with our neighbors is that. Do we need to increase those salaries to draw candidates to do the work? Well, we did a comprehensive conversation study two years ago. I think we will want to do one next year, sort of three years as decent interval of time. When there is vacancy, we budget at the midpoint. Yes. And so it's kind of a formula and that usually works out. So to change that on a formula basis, I'd have to think that through in terms of what that means. This seems like a long time we've had some of these openings. And is it a salary issue? This is more of a develop session than not, but is that a reason why the candidates aren't coming in that we expect? Is there any to adjust the salaries? Yeah, so that I will just share with the council baked into the number. If you look at the salary growth from year to year, it's not always exactly what you think it is. You know, what everyone's getting is a 5% increase in paid, but in fact, there were reclases, there were internal promotions, there were market rate adjustments. So the numbers oftentimes higher than the policy number, and it's because of all those reasons. Right. Okay. So then number four is the right wording for competitive compensation for our plays. That's right. And number five, do we need to update that at all? Maintaining issues and submitted in the last fiscal year? Like, special events, we can take that out, right? Because we've covered that. That's right. I think that would be one of, there are particular things the council wants to say now, we really expect these things to be funded in the budget. I think five would be a place to say those. I think that's how this bullet has served in the past. The only thing I would add would be paving mainly because I feel like we should have taken care of that with the one-time money we allocated in the budget a minute But maybe it needs to be part of operating as well beyond the 800,000 that we did That's what I was gonna bring up is I know we just got a memo from CACT And I wanted to make sure that somewhere in here we are at least have some flexibility to address what they were asking for Content to be an infrastructure maintenance, but I think it doesn't hurt to call it out specifically because infrastructure could be bridges. Yeah, that was after the taving light and bridge memo we got from Zach. Do we have ongoing funding right now in the budget for paving costs? Yes, okay. We do, but it's we do. That's okay. But it's too low. It's too long getting increased at the pace at which we need to do that. And so we have sort of put a bandaid on that with $800,000 from CAF reserves, but we have a structural problem that we do need to address. We're also still missing our $85,000 tree inventory. And then number nine is the support of housing. I think those are nine and ten are called out and currently affordable housing and the FG action plans are called out. I think it looks good. I know we've edited every single bullet. I see read that we do the beginning here. The only thing I'd add is 15 when we talk about increased tax revenue from growth. I think we also want to talk about a life cycle analysis of that growth in terms of not just the positives but the additional costs. So I think 15 needs a little editing if we're going to keep it in. Would you be satisfied if bit of that today. Yeah. And a father's wanted it and I think it just needs a bit of that today. That's all. And then do we want to include I think about ensuring that the police department is. Composed to just be responding to police department needs. Yeah public safety and addition to police. Yeah, I agree with that. I'd like to spell out infrastructure maintenance, growing, behaving, public safety, walk-by, and micromanability. I don't remember where we were getting at in a project delivery. That was our rapid response team. Yeah. Right. Could I note, on public safety, it's mentioned in the written staff report. We have known for a while that Arlington County changed their staffing model countywide and that impacts station six. We are sitting down with them to renegotiate the, or they have requested a renegotiation of our fire services contract. We don't know yet what the increased cost will be, but we know that there will be one. And, or at any rate, that is the whole point of why they're asking us to sit down. So I'll keep the council informed on that, but that is one of the unknowns that I think could be an issue in the coming budget. So police, fire, EMS, and public safety generally, we'll craft a bullet on those. It's too early to put a number out at this point. It's good thing we're thinking to contingency that maybe. And then the other piece of this that I think is new for us this year is that collective bargaining agreement and what this school has had it under commitments, I think. Contractual obligations. We've never seen a request for salary and step in COLA as a contractual obligation before. What is that? I don't know how much they have to explore with that actually, but. So you can jack a sub-lation. Is there a agreement in the agreement that if they don't, you know, yes, the school board has a contractual obligation to provide that because it's in the collective bargaining agreement. But there is language in there that says it's contingent on receiving that money from the city council. Yeah, so I'm just, you know, I'm looking through that that is interesting, you know, the private day programs. I thought that was interesting. With the IP, that's money to have more students go to outside schooling, so I thought that was interesting. So it is, yeah, I'm gratified to hear that those numbers, that increase total of 5% will be similar to the staff because I think that's important. But again, it's, you know, as always with the school board budget, the majority of their budget is always staffing. So, but I think, Ms. Cali, you're right. A lot of this, that is new language and that's definitely a different approach, I think, than they've done in the past for sure I don't know how I we would draft a bullet around that however unless it would be in the preamble as noting something that's a New feature but I don't know what I just think is something we need to keep in mind to go forward. It's a different kind of contractual obligation than we've grabbed it before. In a way item four kind of addresses competitive compensation and retention. So there. The number six on tax relief program, we did delve into that in details in 25. I mean, do you still want to do it again? And we did find out that we're doing better than most of the terms they're offered in the region. I mean, we can provide. But it's important to just keep an eye out every year. Because if we want to be at parity with, if people are, because of inflation where it was the past couple of years, if people are increasing the relief programs, I'd like to make sure we're keeping up. Great. And you just said that my position is in the end. If it's very included, the logistic, it can be included in the logistic eyes. I don't know what it is. As a policy statement, I think you've all been interested in the area that we want to just sort of have. Okay. Anything else? Okay. Okay. We will try to turn around the drafts so that folks can see it in advance of posting the packet. And if there are any comments on it, it'll be a little bit difficult to deal with them collectively. So we might just have to record the comments and then so that everybody can see them so that they can be discussed from the day as with pre-information in terms of what other people's comments might have been. Great. Normally we talk about again at the mayor's meeting, but we've canceled this Wednesday's because of that economic form. I guess we email comments back to Karen and Wyatt so that you call late them. Yeah. OK. OK. Anything else for tonight? I'm going to leave all over the floor now. We just have one final meeting for Monday. It was just super curious about the Gordon Road Triangle thing versus VML Day and if that's been sorted out. Oh yeah. We flagged that to Y and I don't know whether that. It was brought up in some meeting, I forget now the, Gordon, the ULI tap is when we're all gone. So we're wrestling with that. We did make a scheduling mistake there. So I'm circling back with the team and I'll get more information to the council on that. I think the council would be back on the 31st, which is typically when they report out what their recommendations are, which is a good meeting to attend, but they also are going to be meeting on the 30th. I just need to get more details to what's happening on the 30th. That's when you all would be in Richmond for those who are going. The morning of the day after, right? Yeah, many of you do stay over because of the late dinner and the evening. So that's part of the timing and scheduling we were looking at today. Okay. Is it possible that we have no news or it's probably going to stay where it is? There's some reluctance to move it just because there's a lot of people involved. We're probably the least important. Yeah, that's what I'm just wondering. So I need to get a little more information so I understand all the implications of it and I'll get that to the full council. But there is a conflict. Sometimes it's a two day event, right? It is. Those ULI taps, they have a one day where they bring in a group of people who aren't always all council members. There's like a mix of people, community members, property owners, nearby neighbors, elected officials for the first day and they do like table discussions. And then at the end of the second day is when they bring everybody in for kind of a presentation, right? So maybe it works that way too. I'm not sure. But so do you remember it? That's my memory as well. So some of the input is where you all all going to be in Richmond and you'd be missing out on, but you would get the report on the 30th. I think that's kind of the bottom line with it, but I'll get more details. There may also be an opportunity ahead of time. Right? Are there any interviews that are... Council members to say things if they're not on any of those focus groups. That's right. I think they're All right, thank you council Thank you all the read ahead for the op-ed, and I'll entertain any.