I can see him. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the March 25th, 2025 legislative meeting. Madam Clerk, please call the roll. Mayor Gaskins. Here. Vice Mayor Bagley. Here. Councilman McGuirey. Councilman Chapman. Councilman Elnubi. Here. Councilwoman Green. Here. Councilman McPike. Here. Okay. Madam Clerk, next item. How long stands your transit company stockholders meeting. Okay, so this evening we are going to begin with our Alexandria Transit Company stockholders meeting. So, Mr. Kaplan, I'm going to turn the meeting over to you at the presiding officer of the ATC. Thank you, Mayor Gaskins. And I'll go ahead and call the meeting to order. This is the annual 2025 meeting of the Alexander Transit Company stockholders. And first I want to just say I haven't gotten chance to talk with most of you in the last few months so congratulations on your election or re-election we will forward to working with all of you. You're all strong supporters of transit. You sit tonight as the stockholders of the Alexander Transit Company or ATC. It's a nonprofit corporation owned by the city that holds the assets of the Dashbuss system. Each of you through the position you were elected to control one share of the company's voting stock. The ATC's bylaws require that stockholders meet once during the first three months of each calendar year to transact the business necessary to continue the life of the corporation. The meeting is presided over by the Chair of the ATC's Board of Directors and I should introduce myself, I'm David Kaplan and I've been on the board since 2011 and I've been the Chair since 2018. We have some board members joining us tonight on Zoom, Jesse O'Connell, Hillary Orren, Steve Clist, and staff present to my left is Josh Baker, our systems general manager and to my right is is Martin Barna, our director of planning and scheduling. Also present in the chamber tonight, I know is our vice chair of the Dash Advisory Committee, Jim Durham. The DAC is a group of transit riders from across the community who advocate for dash and advise staff on policy and improvements to the rider experience. Oh, and I'm sorry, but my colleague, Ajay Shatama, so I was talking to in the back of the chamber, is here as well. Our first order of business tonight is approval of the Board of Directors Slate to serve a one-year term that expires at the 2026 stockholders meeting. The board is currently made up of 11 members, eight city residents, or dash riders, and three city staff. nine of our board members are seeking reappointment to a full term. Steve Klein is the citizen board member announced his retirement from the board this coming July. Steve fills the one resident seat reserved for an individual with transportation industry experience. The board will greatly miss Steve who served 11 years on our board and joined after relocating to Alexandria following a long career managing safety programs with New Jersey Transit. The board will initiate a recruitment to fill Steve's seat in the fall and will bring a nominee forward at the 2026 stockholders meeting. And subsequent to submitting our docket materials, I was advised by Kendall Taylor that Laura Gates would replace her as the city finance designate to the board. And I want to confirm I haven't spoke with City Manager, but I want to confirm that is his intention. And so I would ask for a motion to approve our slate of directors. And you see our names here on the PowerPoint, with the Lordgate substituted as the city finance design. Is there a motion to approve the board of directors? Second. By Councilman McPike seconded by Councilwoman is there any discussion if not all in favor will say aye. Any opposed any abstentions. And our second business item is the appointment of the outside auditor for the ATC. It is our recommendation that the city's external auditor also audit ATC's accounts since the audit can be done without any additional cost or duplication. Is there a motion to approve the outside auditor? So moved. By the mayor, second by vice mayor, any discussion? All in favor? Any opposed? Any abstentions? All right, passes unanimously. So we've reached the conclusion of the business items of the meeting. So now I'll make some brief remarks about the things dash is celebrating, as well as challenges we are experiencing, and we welcome your questions. So first our successes. Our biggest success is that Dash continues to shadow ridership records. FY24 was the system's highest annual ridership. With 5.3 million riders, several of you joined us at a wonderful celebration this past fall at the William Ramsey Rec Center. And we've broken monthly ridership records in many months so far this fiscal year. October of 24 is our new single highest ridership month with 524,000 rides taken on Dash. With increased ridership come challenges with maintaining the rider experience, but last year's customer experience survey found that 95% of our riders said that they were satisfied with Dash. I wanted to also note Dash's receipt of federal grants that we believe are safe. And there was some discussion about this at the budget work session recently. We have a $24 million federal Lono grant for electric buses that grant is marked as obligated. We also had a $1 million community project funding for an en route charger and subsequent to the budget work session staff confirmed that that grant was awarded an FY 24 and not 25 so we believe that we will see that grant. We continue to make improvements in bus stop accessibility and currently 63% of our 600 plus transit stops in the city for Dash and Walmata meat ADA accessibility. This is a 4% increase over the year ago. Ms. Orr reported that our last meeting the NVTA recommended C-MAC money in the amount of $3.5 million to the city for FY31 that would support the installation of bus bulbs, which are basically curb extensions that provide easier boarding and a lighting from the vehicle and prevent other vehicles from blocking the boarding area of the stop. We've done a lot, we, I want to thank Tess and Dash staff for their partnership and collaboration. It's something we've talked about at Stockholders meetings in the past about the need to continue to ensure all of our riders can access Dash. And I think we're seeing some real results and we're looking anywhere we can for repaving and other opportunities to improve stops. And very recently there was even traffic and parking boards, some removal of parking spaces and park bare facts to facilitate improvements to transit stops. So I'm really pleased with the progress we're making there. We've also done a lot of work measuring the impact Dash service has on the city and region. and then finding ways to tell that story in very succinct ways that kind of work in the kind of digestible social media type world that we live in. So these four pages are at your seats at the day-s, and they give stakeholders and advocates data on how Dash is serving the city and improving quality of life. So they break down into ridership category, economic impact, environmental impact, and equity. And one tells the story of the system as a whole in FY 24. And then we took three routes individually. Lines 30, 33 and 34. 30 and 33 receive significant improvements by prior city council and investment additional service. And so we looked at specifically for these routes, how are we better serving the community and what are the advantages, what's the return on investment that we're getting. And line 34, although we didn't change the service, we realigned that route to serve the Potomac Guard metro station, which of course significant city dollars went to, and we've seen enormous success there as well. And so we hope that by providing these, and we've seen enormous success there as well. And so we hope that by providing these, and we're certainly open to your suggestions over what else do you want to see? How can we do this better? We hope that this helps you in conversations with the community to tell the story of what are we getting with the Dash bus system. Now for challenges. So one, of course, is overcrowding. Our base budget allows for something we call Ghost Buses, which are basically on our highest demand individual peak runs. We can put a second bus out on part or all of the route that enables us to pick up the people who would be left behind when a bus is over capacity. So we will continue to deploy those as needed. And I think that helps us to manage some of the capacity that we have. We also look to buy larger vehicles as we're replacing our fleet. And second challenge goes, I think to comment Mayor Gaskin's and others made at the budget work session, which was about the idea of additional discussion and clarity around city goals for dash, our goals for dash, and what our CIP allows. We have a significant bus procurement that's coming in FY27. We do not have an I, we sent a budget letter this past weekend. It said even if we bought all clean diesel buses, we should be buying electric to meet our city goal being all electric by 2037. We would not have enough funding to in order to maintain state of good repair. So we need to kind of talk about how we manage that as well as the new dash network which still has unfunded segments and will have additional segments that are to be funded in FY 27 and 28 as we go from the constrained network which is what we did in22, and are still attempting to fully implement and go to what is the full network. So we need to kind of talk about how we do this, as well as student transportation, which I know the council and the school board are working on. So how can we best kind of meet that discussion? And we think we should approach it in a work session. We would recommend that we do so in the fall. We would start conversations with City Manager Office from our staff now to also solicit from you. What are your priorities, whether the things? And of course tonight we welcome that in your questions as well. How do you want us to kind of approach this and how do we discuss this? But I think it's important for the community to know, can we still meet some of those goals there in the environmental action plan with what's here as well as ensuring that we're serving the community that we have as well. I want to make one other final point and we'll open up to questions which is that our Alexandria Transit Strategic Plan is now open for comment. We used to call it the Transit Development Program and now the state requires that we call it our strategic plan and every year we get comment on what are we doing service wise, what are changes that we're considering, what are we doing to serve the community and people can speak to us about that and we'll have a public hearing at our board meeting in April. Included in that are the three segments, 32, 31 and 34 that no council has discussed the unfunded segments of the network. But also in there is a concept that came out of discussion at previous stockholder meetings that deal with how do we serve our landry? So Councilman McGarry has mentioned at a couple of meetings, you know, our landry has good transit service You have a lot of one-moder service you can get to Boston easily get to Bratwick Road easily get to Huntington easily But you have to pay a fair because these are one-moder routes and of course this was designed before we had you know a fair-free system So how do we ensure that dash from an equity standpoint, serving people in this community? So we looked at four concepts. We said there are routes that... was designed before we had a fair free system. So how do we ensure that dash, from an equity standpoint, serving people in this community? So we looked at four concepts. We said there are routes that come very close or touch the edge of our landry or our terminating Potomac yard. Can we have a concept where we could extend or reroute one of these routes to serve that neighborhood? And so we came up with four alternatives that are in that strategic plan. And we have one that is our preferred alternative, which is taking line 34, which is Lee Center to Potomac Y stops the Potomac yard shopping center currently and instead send that route Out of the shopping center down Reed Avenue turn right on Mount Vernon Avenue and then terminate right over the line in Arlington at the shopping center Has the giant on South Gwee Road this would require operational and some capital investment. The operational investment would be about $600, $4,000. We would have to put one additional bus on this route. And there's a capital project. The city would have to undertake, which involves a redesign of the intersection at Reed and Richmond Highway, because right now you can't go straight across that intersection. TNS has said that's to do. Of course, this is not a discussion about the funding, but that's how we recommend going forward. We could do this in FY27 if the funding is made available, but we wanted to ensure that we were engaging with that part of the community and talking with them about how could dash serve them. We also have to get permission from Marlington because we would be going into their jurisdiction as well. And I think we've had very preliminary conversations with them about that. So that's the state of dash. I want to stop here, take your questions, and thank you for all for your support and your engagement on this important city service. Madam Mayor. Thank you. Well, thank you, Chair Kaplan. This has been, it's really helpful every time we do have a chance to get together. I think the piece I wanted to pick up on was I really appreciate the offer to do a work session. I think one thing is clear is these meetings are too short and the budget, the budget conversations we have, there's not enough time for these deeper discussions. So I personally, I would welcome that opportunity. I think there's maybe two things I would just add. One is you framed it as, you know, can we still meet our goals? And I guess the question that I would really want to dive into is those goals still matter, and they matter if not more, whether that's around sort of realizing the vision of the ATV or electrification goals. So I guess I would love a discussion that's kind of like, what would it take? So what do we need to understand from the capital projects? What do we need to understand from financing? What do we understand from capacity? But kind of really getting a landscape of if we want to achieve the vision, we set out to achieve, what is it going to take in this current context? And I would welcome the fall opportunity. I guess what I would just say is as we're looking at timing, hopefully before November, before we start kind of our next budget Retrie and dialogue so that we can go in with this information. Thank you. And I think we certainly, from our standpoint, can be very flexible in terms of the timing. We'll work with you however you want to do it. not I just would love some follow-up. Given that we't charge fares, and I'm curious how we are tracking our low income riders, our minority riders, our zero vehicle household trips. Where's that data coming from, if not from the purchase of tickets? Good evening, Martin Barron, Director of Planning and scheduling for Dash. So those numbers are based on a customer survey that was conducted back in the fall of 2023. So we were able to get a lot of demographic information about our customers, including low income percentage and ethnicity. So we basically extrapolated that data to the full ridership. Do we do that survey every year? Unfortunately no, the requirement is once every five years, but we tried to do a little bit more often than that if we we can, but it is expensive to do. Yeah, it was a function of cost. Okay, and so we did it in 20, I'm sorry, say 2023. All of 2023, yes. 23, and so now it's 25. So how are there other data points you can use to inform that extrapolation the farther we get from the time of collection. Just to make sure, because ridership is growing as well at the same time. And so I'm curious, is there somebody smarter than me with statistics who's able to extrapolate out the farther we get? So what I described is kind of the full onboard survey survey with you know people with tablets on the on the buses with The multiple languages we have done kind of a lighter version of that in between years So that does give us some insight, you know It's not as comprehensive not a big a data sample, but it could give us some insights for the in-between years No, I appreciate that it's just because it really does help tell the story of so many of like council priorities and what we're doing. So I appreciate having it. Another data point that isn't captured here, but I suspect you might have some data on is youth ridership. That would be a nice data point to have. However, y'all defines sort of youth, whether that's under 21, whether that's under 18, under 16. Is that something y'all are able to capture through the survey or through other means? Yes, that was part of the survey. I would give you a couple seconds. I probably pulled up the number if you were interested. But that's, you know, we have the estimates that we do for ACPS students, but in terms of under 18, that's a number that I can pull from the survey, if you'd like. Yeah, I appreciate that because I think the ACPS number is interesting, but there is more youth ridership than ACPS students, both younger riders and just private school visitors, that sort of thing. The other piece I'd love to know as we talk about equity, if you're able to track it, is individuals with any sort of disabilities. Are we able to service blind passengers, hearing impaired passengers, people with physical disabilities? I've certainly seen the buses kneel. I've seen shaperone groups, you know, alighting the buses, but I'm curious if we have any data on accessibility of the service. You're asking in terms of the riders themselves? Yeah, in whatever way we track it, you know, if it's a percentage of riders or if it's a row a number or just any kind of feedback we get about accessibility, especially as we look to our future capital investments, you know, if we need to be mindful of the types of buses, the way that they're shaped on the inside as the service expands and becomes more accessible, more available. We just want to be sure we have room on board for the passengers who would like to use the service. Yes, we can make sure that that's part of any future surveys. I'm not sure it's part past surveys that we've done. But Josh, I don't know if you want to speak about accessibility as a general priority. No, I think to your point and your question, I think getting an understanding of who's using the service on a broad level and making sure these groups are well represented, it makes sense. and understanding barriers, we are doing a lot. We, as our Chair mentioned, we have some members of our DAC, the Ryder Advisory Committee, which we try to focus conversations around accessibility and understanding challenges in accessing our service at that level. But as far as reporting and those kinds of things, and getting a better and better data and metrics, we certainly can work to find ways to best represent that and illustrate that to you back as stockholders. I appreciate that and I know sort of apologies for all the questions. The last thing I'd ask is something I'm trying to get better about is like who's not reflected here? Like who's not on the bus? Because I appreciate we're very good at capturing who's riding. And again, the data is really commendable. But I just want to make sure that we're stopping and looking at who isn't on the bus. And is it seniors? Is it what group is it that, because we can capture the people that are on? So what is it telling us about who's not on the bus? Is it the visually impaired? Is it non-native speakers, in English speakers? Maybe there isn't anybody. Maybe everybody's riding the bus, and we're checking all the marks. But I'd love for us to have some insight into who don't we see on our bus and why. I wonder too if we can look at data about dot utilization and para transit through Womata as well to see have there been changes in kind of trips where they're going and who's using them because maybe you've seen a decrease as the dash service has become more convenient or maybe there are certain trips that we're not capturing. So just something our staff can kind of dig into. No, I'm thrilled that you just made a connection that I had and which is the Paratransit Challenge that we face as a city. And so if there are improvements, I think we're all interested in, you know, making there, maybe some of the improvements can be made by making the bus system more accessible or just more informationally available to people who are currently seeking Par transit. Thank you, sir. Absolutely. Are there any other questions tonight? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Councilman McGurr. Well, you told me to point it out. Councilman McGurr. Thanks again for being here, Chair Kaplan. Love all the work that you as are doing. Not really even a question. More so of my own curiosity and entry as it's moving forward. But I just wanted to commend you all and say thank you for looking at the potential rerouting. I believe the 34 to go down Mount Vernon Avenue. It's something that I personally have been talking about for several years. And I'm really thankful to you and the board for taking that seriously and looking into it and finding a possible solution which I was looking at the route and giving it that it goes to the giant. It also gives access to another possibility of a grocery store, right? Because currently most folks might go to the food star that might go to the target. The giant offers another opportunity for another place to get food and also to get prescriptions, which was another big deal. When that CVS closed in the middle of our land victory, Laua in the shopping center. So creating that additional access point is greatly greatly appreciated. And I just wanted to say I'm looking forward to. We'll come forward next year. Thank you, Councilman. Certainly something in our work session we will talk about operational, you know, future as well and set something we can dig more deeply into. Councilman Pike. I also really appreciate everything that Dash does to help people in our city move around safely and efficiently and in a way that reduces our carbon emissions. One of my council assignments is I am liaison to the Transportation Commission and Dash's board has a seat on the Transportation Commission that no one has been filling. So on behalf of the Transportation Commission, I'd love to encourage the Dash board to work to fill this seat because this is actually one of the commissions that considers things and sends them straight to council for consideration. So it's probably an effective way for dashes, as voice to be heard throughout our transportation conversations. And I don't want to get too far ahead of this, but Hillary Orr had bought a proposal to our board last month, which is that we could potentially broaden who could be appointed to that seat, looking potentially at a member of our DAC or a member of the community who's excited about doing that because one of the challenges, and I heard this also especially with the planning commission members who are on that board is just is just the time commitment that's involved but we know it is a really important commission. I thank you for highlighting that something we're going to have more conversation about. These are volunteers and I really appreciate everyone who gives of time of their time to serve city, whether it's on the dashboard or any of our boards and commissions. Anyone else? All right. Well, Councilman Onubi. I also, I just want to amplify some of the things we've heard from my colleagues. I really want to thank you guys for all the work they do and Since this one of my first my first meeting here with you guys So want to make sure that I said I really appreciate it. Thank you for all put it But also thank you for what you said earlier measuring impact and telling the story I think that's very important because when we are making tough budget decisions, it's really important to see those numbers and to see how our, their turn on investment and our taxpayer dollars. You just make it easy for us to be able to justify, you know, so I really want to thank you for that and for everyone's time that they put on the board. Thank you and there's a lot of great work on Josh's team to put those together. I think from this feedback, it's something we'll continue to look at how we can make those even better and more useful for stakeholders. Those want to tell the story. I was neglected to mention that you came to council as a member of our Dash Advisory Committee from its inception. We're grateful to you for your service on that body as well. If there are no other business items to come before the stockholders meeting, then I will call for an adjournment. Is there a motion to adjourn the stockholders? So moved. Madam Mayor or second vice mayor? All in favor? Aye. Stockholder meeting is adjourned. I adjourn the gavel to you, Madam Mayor. Thank for having us today. Thank you so much for your time and your presentation. Madam Clerk, next item. Consideration of a close executive session to discuss the investment of public funds where competition or bargaining is involved. Hey, Councilman Aguirre. Madam Mayor, I move that the city council convene and close executive session pursuant to Virginia Code Section 2-3711-86. To discuss, we're considered an investment public funds were competition or bargaining is involved, which made public initially the financial interest of the city would be. and 2-3-7-1-1-8-6. To discuss, we're considered an investment of public funds, where competition or bargaining is involved. We've made public initially the financial interest of the city would be adversely affected. Thank you. Okay, any discussion? All right, there has been an emotion by Councilman Aguirre and a second by Councilman Chapman to convene in a closed executive session. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay? The eyes have it. We are now going to be in closed session until 7 p.m. PN. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. 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I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm sorry. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. 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I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm sorry. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. 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I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to get you a little bit more. I'm going to get you a little bit more. I'm going to get you a little bit more. I'm going to get you a little bit more. I'm going to get you a little bit more. I'm going to get you a little bit more. I'm going to get you a little bit more. I'm going to get you a little bit more. I'm going to get to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. 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I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm sorry. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next one. I'm going to go to the next one. I'm going to go to the next one. I'm going to go to the next one. I'm going to go to the next one. I'm going to go to the next one. I'm going to go to the next one. I'm going to go to the next one. I'm going to go to the next one. But again, I'm just happy to be here. Yeah, I'm here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm here. Yeah. Yeah. I'm I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. like an expert. I'm going to be a little bit more patient. I'm going to be a little bit more patient. I'm going to be a little bit more patient. I'm going to be a little bit more patient. I'm going to be a little bit more patient. I'm going to be a little bit more patient. I'm going to be a little bit more patient. I'm going to be a little bit more patient. I'm going to be a little bit more patient. I have to be a star. I have to be a star. I have to be a star. I have to be a star. I have to be a star. I have to reconvene. I will now entertain a motion to reconvene an open session. Madam Mayor, motion reconvene an open session. Is there a second? Okay, there has been a motion by Councilman McGuirey and a second to reconvene an open session by Councilwoman Green. All those in favour say aye. Aye. Any opposed say nay. Okay the ayes have it. I will now. I move the city council adopt the resolution regarding the close executive session that was previously circulated to the council. Okay. Any discussion? There has been a motion by councilman Aguire and a second by Councilwoman Green to adopt the resolution that was previously circulated to the council. This is a resolution so it is a roll call vote. Madam Clerk please call the roll. Councilman Aguirre. Councilman McGuroy. Aye. Mayor Gaskins. Aye. Vice Mayor Bagley. Aye. Councilman Chapman. Councilman Elnuby. Aye. Councilman McPike. Hey, Madame Clark next item. Woman of silence and pledge of allegiance. Hey, we are now going to... Councilman Elnubi, Councilman McPike, aye. Madame Clerk, next item. Moment of silence in pledge of allegiance. We are now going to take a moment of silence and do our pledge of allegiance. We ask that all who are able history month. Okay, and I, next item. Presentation of a Proclamation honoring women's history month. Okay, and I have asked Councilwoman Green to read this Proclamation. May we have all who are here joining us for the Women's History Month Proclamation? Come to the front. I'm gonna take it out. I'm gonna take it out. I'm gonna to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. a beautiful, just evening, everyone. See, lots of friends, lots of smiling faces. It's just a beautiful, just a beautiful group of people. Thank you for being here to celebrate Women's History Month. I am Councilwoman Jacen Degreine, and I am going to pass the mic around very quickly for everyone to introduce themselves before I read the proclamation. And as we celebrate Women's history month. Thank you. Hi everyone, I'm Victoria Bermuda. As I serve as the Virginia State Advocacy Manager with Holman's Health Alliance. Hello, I'm Ria Simon. I'm the Nova Community Organizer for Planned Parenthood Advocates of Virginia. Hello, Alison Heizer, one of your Alexandria Commission for Women Commissioners. General Fribetti, I'm also an Alexandria Commissioner for Women. Michelle Johnson-Billips, Ditto. Hi there, Lexi White, Chair of the Alexandria Commission for Women. Elizabeth Johnson, Commission for Women, and the Layazan to the Human Rights Kenta set now the Executive Director and founder of Barthin Color. Hi, my name is Dr. Breonna Riddick. I'm the Program Director at Barthin Color. Hi, I'm a new diviner. I used to serve on the commission for women, so I'm just excited to be here today. Hi, Crystal Bransky commission or commissioner for women. Hello, everyone. You bet, Jill. I'm the second vice chair at a commission for women. Good evening. I'm Jen Sto. I'm with the commission for women and I also serve as the liaison to the commission on aging. Hi everyone, I'm W Evans, the division chief of the Sexual Assault Center and Domestic Violence Program for the Department of Community and Human Services as staff liaison to the commission for women. Good evening, Gail Converse, Vice President Alexandria celebrates women. Good evening, Kathy Joseph, there's an F in that. And I'm also a Commissioner for the Alexandria City Commission for Women. Good evening, Maxie Whitkin. Also with the Commission for Women in Alexandria. Shelly Ridgeway. I am a Community Volunteer with Alexandria celebrates women. Diane Schrier, co-president of AAUL Alexandria. We're just celebrating its 80th year this year. And 100th year of AAUW Virginia. Congratulations. I'm Pat Miller, chair of Alexandria Celebrates Women. Good evening. I'm Shannon Steen. I represent the carpenter's shelter. Once again, thank you all for being here. And I must say, I think every month should be women's history month. What about you? Absolutely. There are so many amazing women, past, present, and future here in Alexandria that have done amazing work. You know, when I think about the Mary and Van Landing hands, the Patsy Tisers, the Rosa Birds, people that have done advocacy in this city. We are just, you know, second to none. When it comes to women really getting in the trenches and doing the work from making Alexandria a better place for women. So I thank you for all that you've done. And let's, you know, let's continue to celebrate women and make sure that we make it the best we can be for future Alexandria. Thank you. And I'll read the proclamation now. Whereas the local, national, international contributions of women in history deserve recognition and celebration. And whereas all people benefit from the profound and undeniable impact of the women's rights movement and women continue to make profound contributions to the growth and strength of our city. And whereas the involvement of women in the economic, social, and political spheres have enriched our community and country. And whereas women have inspired and improved this city through leadership and innovation to shape the next generation of female pioneers. And whereas family caregivers approximately 70% who are women are the backbone of the US care system. They help parents, spouses, and other loved ones live an age independently in their homes, providing about $600 billion annually in unpaid labor. And whereas upon completion of a 1974 study on the status of women, the Alexandria City Council established the commission for women in order to eliminate gender discrimination and encourage equal opportunity for women in all aspects of their lives. And whereas, this women's history month, the Alexandria Commission for Women celebrates many vital community organizations, including but not limited to the Alexandria Department of Community and Human Services Sexual Assault Center and Domestic Violence Program, Carpenter's Shelter. Alexandria celebrates women. Whole women's health of Alexandria, friends of guest house, Alexandria Small Business Development Center, the Vola Laws and Breast Cancer Fund, Virginians for Reproductive Freedom, Virginia Reproductive Equity Alliance, and many others that have supported and improved this city through advocacy, resources, and programming to support and shape the lives of women and families of Alexandria, including but not limited to advocating for reproductive freedom locally and across the state, supporting the 2018 Alexandria Commission for Women's Status of Women Report, and providing direct services of supportive resources to improve the lives and health outcomes of women and gender expansive people in Alexandria and beyond. And whereas, I counsel woman, just into green, on behalf of Mayor Alia Gaskins, has achieved of significance a milestone as the black woman, I'm sorry, let me take that back. Whereas Mayor Alia Gaskins has achieved a significant milestone as the first black woman to serve in the capacity of Mayor of the City of Alexandria in its history. Whereas the commission for women seeks to be an advocate for all women throughout the city by championing issues that disproportionately impact women and marginalized communities. In 2025, the commission is committed to educating the public and advancing policy solutions related to survivor support, affordable housing, transportation and reproductive freedom. The commission is committed to highlighting the impact of and needs of all women in the city of Alexandria. And now, therefore, I just enter green on behalf of Mayor Leah Gaskins and on the of the Alexandria City Council do hereby proclaim the month of March as women's history month. In the city of Alexandria and reaffirm the commitment of the city to expand women leadership and involvement and do commend all citizens to commemorate this month and gratitude for those women who have contributed to the life of the city and the nation were all have by right a position of equality, fairness, justice, and freedom. In witness whereof, I have hereon to set my hand and cause a seal of the Alexandria, of city of Alexandria to be affixed this 25th day of March 2025. Thank you. APPLAUSE Madam Mayor, I'd like to move the proclamation, celebrating the proclamation for Women's History Month in this March 2025. Okay, there's been a motion. Is there a second? Okay, there has been a motion and a second. any discussion? Well, I just want to say thank you for all of the work that you do here in our community I think it's so amazing to see so many members of our commission represented here today But also so many partners who help make the work continue and to make a meaningful impact in our city I think it's no secret that many of the issues that we are fighting for on this commission continue to not only be important but are being under attack every day. So thank you for your leadership in raising issues from healthcare to transportation to housing. I know our council is looking forward to continuing to partner with you in this work and looking forward to see how we can make an even bigger difference for the women in our community. With that, there has been a motion by a councilwoman green and a second by a councilman Chapman to approve the proclamation. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed, St. Ne? All right, the ayes have it. And I think we're going to take a picture. All right. All right. All right. All right. Everyone, would this way please? Steps. I don't have a seat. You can finish y'all, we're good. One, two, three, and we're great. Thanks everyone. Okay. You guys, it's nice. It's you. I don't know what it is. Madam Clerk, next item. Presentation of a proclamation. Recognizing Virginia flood awareness week. Okay. And I have asked councilman Chapman to read this proclamation. Although we have joining us for flood awareness week if you could please come to the front. Good evening everybody. So we are here to celebrate and recognize Virginia flood awareness week. Earlier in the month and what I'm going to do is read the proclamation first and then turn it over to Dr. Medina and the wonderful staff and members of our commission. Whereas the city recognizes floods are one of the most natural common natural disasters in the United States and can happen anytime threatening life, public health, property, and the economy. And whereas the city has been experiencing widespread urban flooding due to an increase in the high intensity precipitation events when constant rainfall comes down in a short period of time associated with climate change. And whereas the city has implemented flood action Alexandria as a comprehensive initiative to address flooding issues throughout the city through programmatic operations and capital flood mitigation projects in flood prone areas. And whereas the city's future flood risk will increase as a result of rising sea levels, increased frequency, and intensity of storms as projected by the city's environmental action plan in 2040. And whereas the city joins in partnership with the Federal Emergency Management Agency known as FEMA, and the National Flood Insurance Program. And participants in the NFIP community rating system, whereby city residents purchasing NFIP backed flood insurance received up to a 20% discount. And whereas we invite all Alexandrians to observe Virginia Flood Awareness Week by preparing their homes for floods adhere to prudent land land use planning including the purchase of flood insurance through the national flood insurance program recovered and basements is recognized as limited and whereas we are committed to strengthening our flood mitigation strategies and management and have established the flood action Alexandria initiative to pursue those capital and and programmatic solutions. And whereas the city council approved a resolution on January 26, 2021 to establish an ad-hoc stormwater utility and flood mitigation advisory group and approved a resolution to establish a permanent group on December 16, 2023 to support and advise on the city's flood mitigation efforts. And whereas we recognize the professional staff of the, excuse me, from the Transportation Environmental Services Department of Project Implementation Office of Climate Action and Office of Emergency Management for the important role that they play in making our public infrastructure more resilient and safer for residents every day and especially in times of disaster. Now therefore I on John Taylor Chapman on behalf of Mayor Alia Gaskins, Mayor of the City of Alexandria, Virginia, and on behalf of the entire Alexandria City Council. Do hereby recognize March 9th through March 15th, 2025 as Virginia Flood Awareness Week 2025. Here in the city of Alexandria, and hereby, come in all persons who are committed to and work towards becoming a more resilient city. In witness where I have a year and two set my hand and call the seal of the city of Alexandria to be a fix to this 25th of March. So now that I've read the proclamation, we will hold off on making a motion, but we will turn it over to Dr. Medina to say a couple words and then folks can introduce themselves. Thank you, Councilman. Appreciate it. Good evening, everybody. It's a pleasure to be here this evening and that we are very grateful between the Department of Public Project implementation and transportation and environmental services to receive this proclamation because it really reflects what we're trying to do with this very complex problem of flooding in light of climate change. It's a very complex issue is centuries old and we're fighting it the best way we can which is what everybody as a United Front to face the different conditions that we find in the city and find the right solutions for that was so thank you very much we appreciate it is mayor we appreciate it I'm just going to pass it over to my colleague here just Just whatever. Good evening, everyone. Jesse Maynes, I'm the stormwater management division chief with transportation and environmental services. Good evening. I am Katie Weineck and I am the vice chair of the at Hawks Thronewater Advisory Committee. And I do know, Judy, I'm a member of the committee. Before making a motion I just want to give another, you heard about it in the proclamation, but I do want to give a thank you to the manager and the staff for being supportive of making a permanent committee. It is not always when we always have an opportunity as residents to sit side by side with staff and work through some of the city's problems, particularly flooding. And so being open and accepting of that and having a permanent committee that is going to work through, let's be honest, decades of work that we need to do in this city is a incredible feat that we are going to undertake. And so thank you for being open to being able to do that. At this point, I will go ahead and put a motion on the floor for the proclamation. Okay, sir. There has been a motion in a second, any discussion? Vice Mayor Bagley. I just wanna add one thing to colleagues' comments, which is the residents who came forward as part of this process as well. I think are why this has been such a successful collaboration. And so I just want to acknowledge the deep and serious work that they've done to lead us to make this a permanent committee. So thank you very much to everybody who gave their time. Absolutely. Thank you, Vice Mayor Bagley. I too just want to echo my thanks. I think one of the things that I continue to learn from this committee and from staff is just how we communicate about these really technical and complex issues that may start in one year. But honestly, there's not a shovel in the ground until like three, four years later, but people are facing these issues every single day. And I think that you guys have really helped not only accelerate the work that we're doing, but make sure that residents. the ground until like three, four years later, but people are facing these issues every single day. And I think that you guys have really helped not only accelerate the work that we're doing, but make sure that residents know and can prepare and that they understand the investments that we're trying to move. So thank you all and to the other members of the committee as well. With that, there has been a motion by Councilman Chapman, a second by Councilman McPike, to move the proclamation. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay? The aye of tavet. Thank you. second by Councilman McPike to move the proclamation. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Say nay. The aye is having. Thank you. All right. Are we trying to another? 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 sorry. All right. One, two, three. Great. Thank you, next item. Or reports from members of council and boards commissions and committees council government board of directors, Mayor Gaskins. Okay. I'm going to start with an update from the COG. I just want to say we have a lot of oral reports, so I just encourage everyone to keep them brief but informative. The COG meeting this month was devoted to recognizing the dedication, the professionalism and the service of all of the first responders who responded to the horrific plane crash at DCA. One of the things that I found really interesting was that when you looked at the total response, there were over 90 agencies from DC, Maryland, and Virginia that were involved in the response and that included over 300 first responders. A large part of the recognition, but also the conversation, really focused on the mutual aid agreements that our region shares, recognizing that we spend time sharing resources across our boundaries, we engage in a lot of training and pre-planning, which was critical in order to help us have the response that we did. And what I'll just close with is a quote that I wrote down from one of the speakers, and I think it's really important as we reflect on the heroism and the work that happened, which was, this never stops being a local response. Local government came together to coordinate, to communicate, and to care for families, as well as to ensure that everyone who was impacted was supported and that we could reopen the airport. If we didn't do this every day, and if we didn't have the mutual agreed aid agreements that we had, our response would have looked different, and we would not have been able to respond as quickly. So I too just want to continue to give things, especially to the men and women of our police department, of our fire department, and our other emergency operations who supported these efforts. And I hope that you know we'll continue to work to make sure that we support you as we move forward. With that, Madam Clerk. Sister Citi's committee councilman Chapman. So I don't know if the mayor is going to make some comments about this but our sister city comm in France celebrated its 1000 year anniversary and the mayor and I had an opportunity to travel there to celebrate with them last week. And also to talk about for Khan they wanted to use this as an opportunity to set a new tone for how they work with and work with their sister cities and kind of what to expect for them. And so we had some great conversations with their city staff about what we can look forward to in terms of relationship with Khan as a sister city. Also it gave us an opportunity to talk about what we do with our sister cities not just but how do we structure our sister cities here in the city of Alexandria, as well as remind ourselves that we do have a memo to staff that talks about them coming back to us to look at two additional sister cities. And so hopefully there will be some, well, there will be some future conversations and about what we're doing with the City of Alexandria and hopefully two new societies to celebrate and have and create a relationship with. Thank you, Councilman Chapman for putting this on the agenda. I will just add, you know, it's not always easy to decide to go on these trips because as a council person or mayor, this is a personal expense that you're making, whether it's time away from the family or just the cost of the trip. But I have to say, I think it was one of the most important things that we could do when we were there meeting with them there, meeting with the deputy mayors, something that they talked about with that. At this time in the world that we are in, having international friendships is not just a symbolic gesture, it is critical. And they talked about how important it was for us to be there because they want it to be clear to the world, but we are more than friends. We are partners, we are collaborators, and there's so much we can do to learn from each other. If we had the flood week proclamation, one of the things they shared, as they said, their university in Khan has an entire institute that is dedicated to mapping sort of flood events and how do you prepare what types of centers do you use. And so I think there were a lot of really great conversations and then most importantly, a renewed commitment to friendship, a renewed commitment to sharing of ideas, and a renewed commitment to reminding the world that no matter what else may be going on, that local governments will still find ways to collaborate and do the things that they need to do for their residents. Madam Clerk, next committee. I'll expand your transportation commission, Councilman Chapman and Councilman McPike. I'd like to start. Councilman McPike. I believe John was on an airplane during the meeting so So it was a good and productive transportation commission meeting this past week. Just let me find my notes here. The bulk of the discussion was about the 2026 fiscal year operating budget. There were notes from the commissioners regarding that we set some ambitious goals for dash improvements a few years ago and have been in the process sort of funding those goals one by one but we haven't really started the process going beyond them and there's interest in the transportation commission of seeing us set new transit-oriented development goals and trying to push forward towards them. We'll probably get a letter summarizing that input as a council in the near future. There's also some concern that we have some sidewalk projects that have been moving more slowly than I think certain members of the commission would like to see. And there's a bit of discussion about that. Then the commission moved into its work plan for the coming year, again, sidewalk maintenance became an issue of discussion there, but by and large, they approved the work plan without changes. So we'll be seeing a lot of input on various transportation and transit concerns on the Transportation Commission in the coming months. Hey, thank you, Madam Clerk. Commission on Aging Councilman Aguirre. So the Commission on Aging had a very nice presentation on some of the safety net services that we offer in the city, including Snap and Medicaid, well how we address some of those issues and also some of the potential dangers that we're facing with some of the federal cuts. Additionally, I'll just lost it, but I know that Miss Jane King, who is a former chair of the Aging Commission and member of AARP and former chair of NVAN the city of New York and the city of New York and the city of New York and the city of New York and the city of New York and the city of New York and the city of New York and the city of New York and the availability of fresh fruits and vegetables to old Rolex Andrews. And I think you have next the COG-TPB. Do you want to roll right into that one? Sure. TPB, little sleepy. We basically just passed the unified work plan. We also approved our FY26 Community Connections work program And we started to dip into a little bit of visualized 2050 which Will garner a lot of conversation and then the other thing that I'll add I believe all my colleagues have received information from V. But the 495 Southside Express lanes are coming up once again. And on my seven years on TPP, it was the most highly attended meeting when we had to vote on the Southside 495 Express lanes. So I will definitely keep you all informed, but the meeting that will take place within the boundaries of the City of Alexandria will be on the lease center. And I'll think everybody knows from the day it is but I'm sure not everybody anyway And that concludes my report Thank you Madam clerk, I'll expand your gang prevention task force vice mayor Bagley and counseling on no B All right, I'll take that one to The gang for the Alexander Gang Prevention Test Force met last week. For change, we met at the corner store in Craftsman, a new location. We had a very good conversation. One of the actions from the meeting was a vote on a citywide anonymous notification system. And that recommendation will then go to the staff gang, group on gangs, which is a group of staff members who will be interacting with the gang prevention test force. And this is a new process that we actually talked about, then I'll talk about it in a second. So the idea is to the staff members know what's happening in the city, what is available, what's not where the resources are. So it's now from now on, recommendations from the from the prevention test force will go to that group. And then that group will come back with what the thing next next steps would be and then take it from there. So that's where this recommendation will go next and this system basically aims to enhance public safety by empowering citizens to report incidents anonymously without fear of retaliation. Now we also had a presentation about this new process that I talked about, because it sounded like there was a history of the task force not necessarily understanding, or when they make recommendations, weren't sure how it gets acted upon, or what. So it was an effort to streamline the process, and I think there's a really good process that was put in place which essentially is that group and it will be interacting with the task force. There is some kings to be worked out and I think the general sense in the room was this a good process, this is a good improvement but there's still kings to be worked out in terms of how we're going to communicate and how recommendations will flow between the two, and how things will flow between the two groups, recommendations flowing to the staff group, and then information flowing back to the gang prevention task force. We also had a report from the ECSU about how the probation officers are intervening with youth where they's about gang prevention, essentially, and being more proactive and not just waiting to do something when they see signs. So essentially being in a proactive mindset mindset where they are essentially in a way being required to, if they don't make an intervention justify why they didn't make an intervention. So instead of the other way around, so be more proactive in interventions. We also had a presentation from the Sheriff's Office and they're working on a new system over there to disseminate information about gang related activities and people who get tagged as gang members. So they have the initiative they're working on as well that they talked about in the meeting. And that is pretty much it. Thank you. Madam Clerk. Virginia Railway Express Vice-Mailback. Thank you. VRE Board met Friday morning and one of the factual updates was that ridership is up almost 2000 people a day. So the trains are, you need to be ready to share your seat again to share your row with other riders. I just want to remind everybody of that. Also, there were over a thousand bikes that got on the trains in February, so that was exciting as well given that they've expanded that program. Aside from ridership, which is showing city increases, we authorize several contracts on some exciting projects, finishing the Manassas Park parking garage, the expansion of the Broad Run facility, where there's going to be additional storage and an expansion of the station itself. And we are sort of preparing for what is going to be some big planning sessions coming up with our 2050 plan. So pretty soon, the VRE board will be looking at the vision for VRE through 2050. And there's some pretty exciting slides on the VRE website which shows, you know, the vision for this expanding beyond simply a commuter service, but just something that's regional, you know, a regional passenger rail system that operates in both directions, that operates with more frequency. And really acts as a spine for all of the Metro and bus options that we have in the region. It's really going to be a way to not just get north and south and east and west, but sort of, you know, out into the region everywhere you need to go. So the next few meetings in April and May are going to be addressing that 2050 vision. And yeah, so I'll leave that there. And then I think I have the next one as well. You want to go right into Acap. So the Alexandria campaign on adolescent pregnancy met on the 20th. They shared the good news that they have been approved for their second year of the prep grant and that prep grant is what funds so much of their work. They, I also wanted to promote and share that the youth speak up event will be taking place on April 10th at Patrick Henry from six to eight. And it involves youth panels, it involves Sapka, the Children, Youth and Families Collaborative Commission. There will be eight tables with different topics. And it's really an opportunity for youth to leave the conversation in so many of these areas. And I would encourage anybody who is interested to make plans April 10th from six to eight at Patrick Henry. We also got an update from our peer advocates who are just doing incredible work. They make visits to the middle school where they help educate you. They recently did a lesson on consent. And then finally, I would, I always give an update on the RAPUP Alexandria program. And so I wanted to mention that we have now distributed over 125,000 condoms at the Delpepper Center as part of our RAP up Alexandria program. So way to be safe Alexandria, keep up that safe practice. Madam Clerk. Park Forum Policy Committee. Councilwoman Green. Thank you, Madam Chair. I don't know how I can follow that vice mayor Bagley. But the car, Coug Farm Retreat was last week. And we did a deep dive into our policy information and outreach. And also our 2025 legislative priorities. We did send a letter to Congress asking for an increase in snap funding and expanding access to healthy Free school meals through the community eligibility provision and that's in you know increasingly Important here in Alexandria because 50% of our students in Alexandria city public schools are on free and reduced lunch Our next meeting meeting will be Friday, April 11th. We'll be talking about food waste prevention and composting in the region. Thank you. I guess we can roll right into the naming committee. Do you want to start us, Councilwoman Green? I think Mr. O'Neil, going to start us. Cap. So we also met last week with the street renaming committee. And we talked about the process moving forward for the next three years. Myself, customer chipman, also woman green on this committee. So we still have, we've done, we've had some progress in the last few years of renaming some streets and we still have a big list to go. We thought about how we're going to approach that. We put together a process of we're going to have interns go over the list and see what streets could be easily renamed. I'm not changing too much within the name. I don't make it much easier. We'll also look at the streets that were renamed in because of that resolution or ordinance passed in 1953, potentially after named after Confederate soldiers in general. So we'll probably start with those as well. And we'll look at streets that had names before that. And we'll just switch because those will also be all hanging for that. We can just refer back to the names that they had before then. So we'll get the results of that work in the spring sometime and get that list and then we'll start making some decisions of which ones to start renaming from there. Thank you. And I recognize I skipped the Eisenhower partnership. So we'll do the Eisenhower partnership board of directors with Councilman Green, and then we'll go right into Cog, Chesapeake Bay with Councilman Green. Thank you, Madam Mayor. The Eisenhower partnership had a very successful city managers, successful and well-attended city managers breakfast on March 19th. So Jim, you received high praises for partners. We have a lot of great partners. We have a lot of great partners. We have a lot of great partners. We have a lot of great partners. We have a lot of great partners. We have a lot of great partners. We have a lot of great partners. We have a lot of great partners. We have a lot of great partners. We have a lot of great partners. We have a lot of great partners events that are coming up in the near future. And our next meeting will be in May. And let's see here. Now back to our COG Chesapeake Bay and Water Resources Policy Committee. We had a meeting on Friday, March 21st. I have been very busy with my committees. We approved the Regional Water Quality Management Work Program, and we had a briefing on national infrastructure from the National Infrastructure Advisory Council. We had a deep dive into our federal legislative updates there, and then our next meeting is May 16th. Thank you. Madam Clerk. City School Subcommittee. Okay. I'm happy to start. Councilman Chapman has anything to add. So the City School Subcommittee met yesterday. We begin with our presentations from DASH and ACPS, regarding potential opportunities for secondary schools to have transportation provided by Dash for context so that everyone knows the reason why we're having this conversation in January, Councilional Nubie and Vice Mayor Bagley, they put forth a memo requesting that the manager and staff work to bring data to us to help us understand how do young people currently get to school, where are their opportunities for looking at dash as an option, what potential cost savings might be considered, but really to put together a process and an opportunity for us to learn and understand ways that we can ensure all of our young people continue to get to school safely, while also sort of leveraging some of the other resources and assets that we have into the community. From there, the committee mapped out a process by which we would collect this data and explore and have these conversations. That process was that we would kind of break this into smaller chunks that recognizing this is such a complex issue, having one presentation would not do sort of that exploration justice. Being able to break it apart allows us to really look at things from cost to maintenance to safety to operations. And so we kind of mapped out a process for doing that. This month's presentation was to focus on safety. And so we heard sort of updates on how drivers are trained. We heard updates on sort of the different requirements in the code that ACPS has to navigate as well as the ways in which both organizations respond to incidents on their vehicles. I will say that throughout this process we have tried to also invite in questions and feedback. So I think all seven members of the council who submitted questions, we also received questions from PTAC as well as the PTA at HCHS. I will say the next presentation that we have will be next month and that is supposed to focus on a deeper dive into the routes that our young people currently take and to see where there is overlap or not overlap with dash routes. I want to be honest with the council, this has been a bit of a challenging process. You know, we're trying to do something different and use the City Schools Committee in a way where it allows for more of a work session, where it allows for more exploration and it's not always easy when you try and try new things We're confident that we're going to be able to bring some recommendations back to both bodies But I would encourage folks who haven't been paying attention to the conversation to take some time to watch the meetings to see how The dialogue is unfolding. I think at the end of the day This is not going to be the only complex issue we wrestle with. I think both of our bodies have to come with a curiosity and a willingness to learn and explore these issues because that's the only way we're going to move forward. The second part of the meeting, we had an update on collective bargaining, really trying to understand the school's process and their timeline and how it will move forward. I think a key takeaway from that discussion is that while the schools will be entering into collective bargaining, we too on the city side will also be, we have police fire, and now I'm linking on the third one. Administrative and technical. So over the course of the next several months, we're gonna be looking at four bargaining agreements. And that our bodies, while we have different things to negotiate and we have different things to work on, we have to be in lockstep in these processes because there are going to be fiscal implications for every single contract that is negotiated. And so myself and Councilman Chapman, we ask the manager and the superintendent to come back to us with an outline of how our bodies will work together. What will the timeline look like? What will be the expectations? What will be ways that we can coordinate? And then I think that was pretty much everything that we covered, but I want to open up for our consignment chatman as well. Sure, thank you Madam Mayor. I think also towards the end of the meeting, one of these school board members raised a concern around, I believe it was kind of framed as their staff's capacity to be able to answer city council's kind of budget questions, budget related questions, while we are working with them on a variety of shared services, including the conversation around Dash. And we had a spirited bit of a conversation because as folks from the Dias and the community are aware, the city does engage in a budget process where council members do have the opportunity to ask questions about anything that we are funding, including the schools. And it is the expectation and has been the expectation of Council to receive timely information so that we can make budget decisions. And I think there was a challenge to that. Unfortunately from the school board, at least these members, feeling that they didn't really need to answer council's questions and inquiries. And so we will be, particularly, I will be working with Myleazon to help them understand that during the budget season, when council needs to make appropriate decisions on our budget, we need the best information that we can get. And so getting support and compliance in that aspect to get information that we need is going to be necessary. And frankly, has been necessary and has not always been an issue. And so we don't want it to continue to be an issue. And so we will be communicating. I know I will be communicating with school board members around that and their staff hopefully. Madam, oh, Councilor Nanibe. So if I can just comment on that, especially on the dash part, the joint effort that we are going through with ACPS right now on exploring the dash idea of moving students or expanding the use of dash for moving students. Since I myself and Vice Mayor Bagley brought this forward and we, you know, not speak for my colleague here, but in the spirit of collaboration, wanted to, the two bodies to work together, to explore that data, and to look at all the pertinent information, and problem solve, and see if this is feasible or not. I've been watching the meetings so far, and I just, I would say I'm really frustrated of how our friends at ASPS have been approaching the conversation. I all am hearing is why we can't do this versus how can we figure this out. This is not what I thought we are going to work together, how we're going to work together on something like this, especially that we have challenges when it comes to budget. So we're looking for every way to find efficiencies. So in a year where they're asking us to fund what they're asking for, which goes way beyond what the manager gave them guidance for, at the same time, you know, like bringing up questions that I'm not like, honestly like watching the safety presentation that they had. And some of these questions are coming up now about safety of kids riding dash, when students have been riding dash for years now, and dash was free for for students even before it was free for the public. And then now we're getting questions of like safety about students standing on dash and things like that. I honestly like I would have thought the conversation would be more of how can we figure this out together instead of it sounds more of just identifying challenges and just think about every reason why this may not work. And again, raising questions that why these questions are being raised now. Because we know HPS does not provide transportation for many high school students now, everyone who's within a mile and a half radius of the school, and some of these students, their only options to take that. So now, we're now asking these questions about safety and bringing it up these points. So I'm really hoping that we start having a conversation about how can we do this together and getting the data and all the information that we need to figure this out together. Or I guess as a council will have a decision to make on how we move forward on this if we don't get the information that we're looking for. Because at one point we just have to say enough and this is dragging on for too long. So thank you very much. Yeah I guess what I would just say is, when we had our retreat, our two bodies came together and we identified four areas that we want to work well, three and then we had transportation as well. What we talked about in the committee was that every few months we try and tackle another. Even when we had our budget work session, everyone on this diet. And I think many of our school board partners, we all walked away saying we have to find ways to collaborate. And so I just say maybe, I don't know if city schools is the right format for that. If we need other work sessions, what that can be. But I am all open to suggestions to how we figure out how we work together. Because like I said, these issues are only going to get harder. They all have many layers of complexity, and I think we're gonna have to figure out what is the rights. we figure out how we work together. Cause like I said, these issues are only gonna get harder. They all have many layers of complexity. And I think we're gonna have to figure out what is the right space so that we all get the answers, the information, the data, and the context we need to make informed decisions that best support our young people. Madam Clerk, next item. Or report from the city manager? All right, Mr. Manager, I think you have two special guests for us. Yes, we do. So before I introduce them, I just want to also just give a heads up to the community that we are moving forward with a May 8 economic development summit. And I'm really excited about that, but we also want to highlight that there is a pre event survey That is already out it is in English Spanish, Amaric and Arabic The surveys open until when's day April 16th We have QR codes. I was being distributed across city and ADP channels digitally and in- events. The survey is completely confidential and the results are going to be shared in aggregate at the summit. Later in your docket you also have the opportunity to add a calendar opportunity for Thursday, April 10th at 530 which would be a community conversation about economic development at the Charles Houston Rec Center. And that really is exploring economic development, commercial uses, the types of investments, perhaps, necessary in Alexandria as well as the types of uses that are growing and are emerging in markets that can help generate some quality commercial growth for us. So I just kind of want to highlight those before we get into two really important presentations. We're really fortunate tonight that we have two amazing partners, regional partners for us. And I wanted to introduce Clark Mercer. the executive director of COG. He has over 20 years of experience in public and private and civic sectors, including serving as a former chief of staff for the governor of Virginia, as executive director, he's responsible for pretty much everything that our regional entity, which is so important to this area, manages supporting the board Directors, policy committees, representing COG before a variety of government, business, and other stakeholder organizations. I truly, it's my honor to introduce him. He has a presentation. And then our second speaker is Joe Cannif. She is the senior regional demographer and GIS expert for the Northern Virginia Regional Commission, where she manages the organization's demographics data and GIS programs. Joe has applied her demographic GIS and data management analysis expertise extensively to the realm of government service planning, urban planning, economic development, and resiliency planning. She holds a bachelor of science and geography at James Madison and a master's of science at the University of South Carolina. So we're really fortunate. These are two experts in their field. And I think the discussion tonight and the presentation tonight is really trying to help the community and the council understand a little bit more about the potential federal impacts that are potentially are occurring and could occur in the future particularly as relates to workforce. So I'll turn it over to Clark and then he'll have his presentation and feel free to ask questions and then Jill will take on the second presentation. Thank you city manager and, members of Council. I feel a lot better being next to Jill and in VRC, they are a terrific partner, whether it's working with Jill or Papasaro Dale Medears, their staff is this top notch. So thank you for partnering with the experts here. I also have a handout for the members our Cog Year-Un report, and also a member benefits document, and the member benefits document really in kind of crisp assertive language lets you know what we do for the region and for you as a valuable member of cog which I'm grateful for. Okay. Go back. Okay. So we have a, if you go to COGS website, we have a page that will pop up. And it includes a lot of different federal resources and data. It's a compilation of local and state resources for federal workers, including what you have here at the city of Alexandria, where the governor has in Virginia, Maryland, the mayor, mayor and DC and local governments. It has a running calendar of available resources and events coming up for federal workers. And also includes a pretty deep dive into federal workforce data that you can drill down by locality, by congressional district down to the census track, and some also some economic data that we update monthly, including unemployment data, number of housing permits, a poll, castle, key card data, all different data points that help tell a story about how the regional economy is doing. This is a fairly popular topic, as you know, for your counterparts throughout the region, as they look to put together their budgets, kind of what is the impact of the reduction of the federal workforce, how that will impact you at the local level. So we're going to talk a little bit about that, and a few other topics that councils throughout the region are talking and thinking about. So this chart here goes back to the first Bush administration and shows you that the number of federal workers nationwide has remained relatively stable over the last several decades. It's fluctuated by 10 or 15, maybe 20,000, but for the most part has remained very stable. Of course, the growth of contracted workforce here in the region has done much of the increased work workload that the federal government has asked to be accomplished. The point there is that we've had real stability nationwide and in this region with our number one employer, which is the federal government. This next slide, I did not have not been surprised that this has been a concept that's taken some explaining, particularly down in Richmond, which is there are different data sets you can pull that tell different stories about the number of federal workers that live in Virginia, Maryland and DC. And often cited is a congressional research service report that describes the number of federal workers jobs that are located physically in the Commonwealth of Virginia. of Virginia. So I think Pat and trade office or federal or reserve bank of Richmond. Those are jobs that are physically headquartered in Virginia. The number that you hear located physically in the Commonwealth of Virginia. So I think Pat and trade office are Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. Those are jobs that are physically headquartered in Virginia. And the number that you hear is 140,000 Federal workers in Virginia. There's always an asterisk to these reports. And it's kind of important to read those asterisk. Even that report says, well, 300,000 Federal workers were not sure where they're headquartered. and none of the intelligence agencies report out to CRS. So it doesn't include FBI, CIA, Fort Mead, Langley, DIA. That's an important question to ask where jobs are headquartered because of something where to happen at Patent and Trade Office, it would have a acute impact in that neighborhood. But the question for you that's more important is how many of our residents work a full-time federal job. Non-seasonally adjusted, non-military, non-uniformed, and that number in Virginia is over 300,000 Virginians that work a full-time federal job. That is 10% of the workforce in Virginia. It's over 300,000 Marylanders that work a full-time federal job, and it's a little over 63,000 district residents. So in the district, that's almost 22% of their workforce, our federal employees in Maryland, it's 13% in statewide in Virginia, that number is 10%. And here in Alexandria, 20% of the workforce are full-time federal employees. So the numbers are a lot higher than are often reported, are there coming out of the capital down a rich one. Other partners throughout the region have run unemployment scenarios, and I would, two of those are up here. One is the Urban Institute, which has modeled out a 75% reduction in the federal workforce. Some folks say, well, why model a number that's that high? That is the dojus stated goal is to reduce the federal workforce by 75%. So it seems like we should probably model out what that would look like. And if that were to be accomplished, the unemployment rate in this region would be higher than at the height of COVID, 9.6%. That is not taken into account any federal contractors who lose their jobs, nor is it taken into account the multiplier effect of having good jobs in your community. Economists will argue over what that effect is, but they all agree that when you have a good paying job in a community, it helps spur other paying jobs in that community, dry cleaners, baristas, gym trainers. It's anywhere from 0.4 to 3 to 4, by factor of 3 to 4 when you have a good paying job in a community. So that number that Urban Institute has there is just the reduction in federal employment, nothing for the contracted force, and nothing for the multiplier effect. UVA's Welding Cooper Center, they ran a 10% reduction in the federal workforce, and they suggest that that would be recessionary for Virginia, that a 10% reduction in the federal workforce will result in more jobs being lost in Virginia than would be gained in 2025. So let's dive into those numbers just a little bit. And this is information that I think you all are very familiar with, but on the federal side it's important to think about the buyouts that are being offered, the federal employees, then the second group is these probationary employees, and the word probation and the private sector can have a more negative connotation in the government that means you're new to the workforce or new to a managerial position. And I always say this because the representation, these are all new employees in the federal workforce, but if you are promoted into a management position or if you switch agencies and move laterally, you can be in probation. So there are folks getting caught up in these firings that have been with the federal government for some time. It's easier to fire as we've seen probationary employees, although there are any number of lawsuits and folks coming back to work, so the numbers are a bit confusing. Agencies owed the White House last week their RIF plans, which is reduction in force plans. That takes a little bit longer, but that's a more formal process to identify roles or offices that aren't needed and Once you go through that formal process you can let people go as a result So there's the buyouts the probationary employees and the and the RIFs and I won't try to guess how many folks have been caught up in that there are some estimates but it changes as you see every day. That's kind of one side of this discussion is the number of federal employees affected the other side which is worth talking about as a number of jobs that are available for folks who are being let go in the private sector. Terry Clower at at at George Mason's Charles School does really good work and has kind of taken a look at who's being let go and what skill sets they have and then what jobs are available and doing a match of those two. And his suggestion is at best being charitable, there's a 30% match. So 30% of folks being let go would be able to find a comparable job that's available. Victor Hoskins, who runs the EDA in Fairfax County, will point out that five weeks ago there were 92,000 open jobs in Northern Virginia listed. That number last week was 45,000 jobs. So many of the jobs that federal workers would go look to, to fill be that at consulting firms or contractors, those jobs are either not available, or there's not as many of them as there were a few weeks ago. The state has, through its workforce center, has a Virginia Scott jobs, is a site you can go to and kind of click through to see what jobs are listed. There's about 160,000 jobs listed on the Virginia's workforce site right now. 81% of those jobs are either a minimum wage job or require an advanced certificate or degree. So the number one job available in Virginia right now is a registered nurse. The second most available job is an entry level minimum wage store clerk. In that top 10, it includes some engineer jobs, some computer jobs that also includes a fast food industry. So there's an open question as to the match between who's being let go and what jobs are available. A few additional issues and this was mentioned earlier. So Medicaid for Genius, one of nine states in the country with a trigger law under the Affordable Care Act. Medicaid expansion occurred and the federal government picks up 90% of that bill. The state pays 10%. It's about 630,000 Virginians that get their health care through Medicaid expansion. If that 90% drops, even by 1% to 89%, Virginia loses its Medicaid expansion. So that population would go without health insurance. The Commerce Committee in the House has been asked to cut around 800, between 800 and 900 billion over the next decade. They have purview over Medicaid and Medicare and Medicaid. So while that program has not been called out specifically, it is difficult to arrive at those numbers and not look at that program. So that is an issue that folks are paying close attention to, the benefits and I think Jill has some specific data that aren't here. As does the Capital Area Food Bank, which does great work and they have modeled out some suggested cuts in the House plan to offset the tax cuts being discussed about how many individuals in this region would become food insecure as a result of those cuts. Additionally, they're modeling out the number of federal employees that make under $70,000 who would be a food insecure through losing their jobs. A federal real estate portfolio, I'm not gonna go into great detail here. I think we've seen, well, I think you're well aware that the real estate market itself has not been doing well the last couple of years and that GSA is moving pretty aggressively to list many more properties. There was 400 listed last week and then that list got pulled and then it got reissued. It's an open question what the new administration kind of how deep they will go and putting markets up, patent and trade office here when they renewed their lease last year. They renewed it, but they dropped the millions where feet in that portfolio. Restaurant industry. So last week, the Restaurant Association of Washington met, they released their survey, which 40% of their members anticipate going out of business in 2025. Again, at George Mason, they've modeled a 10% in the federal workforce, and that would be an over a $300 million hit to the restaurant industry as a whole with that reduction. That's restaurants, bars, catering, food trucks. It's just under 90 million a year just to restaurants alone. And the Northern Virginia Chamber suggests that 70% of all hospitality in this region is tied to the federal government. And the last piece here, population growth and immigration, when you look at this region's growth numbers, it is almost completely underpinned by immigration. When you take immigration away and look at folks just moving within the United States, we are either just even or losing population. Obviously there's a lot going on at the federal level with immigration law that could impact those growth estimates. And the other piece which is talking to Jill about this and I was surprised when I heard this from the Northern Virginia Chamber, 40% of international travelers to Virginia are Canadian. So 45% of all international travelers to Virginia Beach are Canadian. And Northern Virginia Chamber is seeing a drastic decline in the number of neighbors to the north visiting right now. So, bracing for budgetary impacts. So, Maryland's session is longer than Virginia's. They're going back and forth with how much needs to be cut in addition to the cuts they're already considering. But around 300 million is what is currently kind of on the table for Maryland. In Virginia, you see both the House and the Senate have committees looking at this. And since I sent this PowerPoint in, Governor Youngkin has cut $300 million from the state budget and suggested that that be put in the rainy day fund for the Commonwealth. And then in DC, the CFO there, Glen Lee, has projected that DC could lose 40,000 federal jobs the next several years, a reduction of 21%. And he has revised the district's revenue projections downward by about 342 million each year over the next three years. Also point out it's been obviously in the press but DC faces some unique issues with its funding in this CR that was passed. The district was treated as a federal agency. So all federal agencies had to go back to 2024 spending levels of the districts in the middle of a budget. That was approved by Congress. It's all of the districts money generated through their own taxes. But when that passed, the district now has to cut a billion dollars by the end of this fiscal year. Unless that gets cleaned up, which remains to be seen if that will happen. And they're also working under a suggestion from the House as well that their Medicaid reimbursement rate be adjusted from what is now 70% to 50%, which would be an additional billion dollar hit to their budget and 400 million dollar hit to their hospitals. So the DC has some unique challenges that it's dealing with right now. Done with all my positive news. But I think it's, I would just go back to the first couple of slides and just the numbers we're dealing with. Because when we hear the 140,000 numbers, it's over double that. There's over 300,000 for jeans that work a federal job. And the COG footprint, an MVR footprint is small. In terms of the geography, it's something like 5% of the geography of Virginia. It's 42% or 44%. It's over 40% of the GDP for the Commonwealth. So this is not an issue that is unique to Alexandria or the DMV. It will have real impacts in an appless and enrichment as well. Well, thank you, Director Mercer. Well, it's definitely not positive news. I think we knew that when you were coming. And part of why we felt it was really important to have you here is because this is the reality and the context with which we are preparing our budget. And we have to understand these things so that we can be thoughtful and intentional in how we respond and support our residents. I do wanna pause Jill before we go to you just to make sure if there are any pressing questions. Councilman Ingari. Director Mercer, first of all, thank you for being here tonight and to our MVRC guests. Thank you for being here as well. Given some of what is already happening and some of what we're forecasting, I feel relatively confident and hopeful that we will still be able to feed people. Being able to house people will be difficult, but I think we might be able to figure that out even if there's emergency actions. What I am extremely, extremely concerned about is the health and well-being of our population here in the DMV. And when you look further more at the health safety net that's being gutted, you know, when we have federally qualified health centers that are receiving funding federally and if that funding is getting cut, I become more and more concerned with where our residents are able to get health care. Because if you lose your job, you're losing your health benefits, you might be able to sign up for Cobra, but Cobra is extremely, extremely expensive. And it's not something that any single jurisdiction will be able to handle by themselves. We have an existing network that is functionally pretty good, but I don't know how we sustain it and keep it standing if we take as big of a federal hit as we're projecting. So I guess I don't know where you are on your trip visiting all the localities in the region, but I would hope that you would stress us a little bit more, and perhaps it's a conversation to be held at COG to see how we could band together if this becomes a case that we need to then be providing the health safety net ourselves. That's a great point. And you know, folks talk about that comparing this to COVID, and there are some at comparisons. It was five years ago when we had the first death at Fort Belvoir and legislatures were wrapping up and leaving town and asking should we revisit our budget assumptions. One of the big differences is that the federal government provided a lot of money to make sure that that safety net state intact. I don't think the expectation is that we'll be here. That's one really big concern. The second is about half the folks that live in this region aren't from this region originally. So if you let get let go from your job and cost of housing is high and cost of living is high, you're having a real conversation about whether you stay in this region. And that has some real long term consequences to our growth. I guess one thing I would just add, Councillor Nagarri, one of the things we talked about in our last cog meeting is that recognizing all of the tight budgets we're in, different jurisdictions are going to be making cuts to different areas that we need some way of sharing that. Like if DC is making major cuts to how they navigate their unhoused populations and fair faxes to, but Alexandria is not, then that may be, you know, a place where we experience greater challenges. And so how are we all sharing where we're making cuts, what changes are happening to our safety nets so that we can coordinate better regionally? We didn't have a good answer on how you do that, and we said we wanted to. I had two quick questions. One was about the Medicaid trigger law. You mentioned that even if it drops like 1%, there would be significant cuts. If it is, are the cuts proportional to the percentage that it is dropped, or it's just any percent, any expansion has gone? It's not proportional, right? If that 9010 ratio changes at all, then that expansion is no longer on the table. Okay, and then the other question, I was shocked when you said 40% of restaurants in the industry are expecting to go out of business this year. I'm just curious if you're hearing from other cogged jurisdictions like programs or things they are thinking about to support our restaurant industry during this time. And I should have noted, and I'd have to check the survey, I think that is limited to the district. That's it, that's it. Yeah. And a conversation I was at the release of that moderated panel for the association. And obviously, the three biggest issue that the association members talk about one is immigration for employees of the restaurants and also folks that come out and eat and whether or not they, we had an immigration lawyer on the panel who's recommending that my clients don't go out and public to eat two or tariffs. Four, I mean there's a suggested 200% tariff on European widening imports. A lot of construction equipment for restaurants, a lot of restaurant equipment. Produced a lot of it that comes from Mexico. And then obviously just the federal workforce. One of the points that was made though was there's some things that are within our control and there's some things that are outside of our control. And this was more focused on the district, but what tax atmosphere exists in the district that they can affect and perhaps improve, recognizing that they're not maybe gonna be able to effectuate the tariff discussion or some of the immigration policy come out the national level. What there are things we can do locally to make life easier for our restaurant owners. And that was the focus of the conversation. Thank you. Any other questions for director, Mercer? If not, we'll go to Jill. Vice Mayor Bagley. It may be, thank you for being here and bringing these sobering slides. I'm curious and it may be too related to tell if there's any expectation that some of these eliminated federal jobs will ultimately be shifted to the private sector. You know, it's just sort of contract work. They're technically not that our jobs anymore, but the jobs still need to be done. I mean, and will are we anticipating any sort of corollary growth in that sector? Well, so a couple quick notes one, and I should have noted this in the presentation. The numbers are hard to get your arms around when it comes to kind of unemployment for a couple of reasons one, if you remember back to COVID, it takes several months for that data really to come out the accurate. Number two, you apply for unemployment insurance based on where you work, not based on where you live. So if you look at Virginia Employment Commission numbers, that tells you a very small part of the story. If you work at USAID and got let go, you apply in DC. You have to fully exhaust all of the income you have from your employer to apply. So many folks get paid out two or three weeks or five weeks, six weeks. And then the last bit, which is kind of the most concern is you have to get let go through no fault of your own. And so many of the emails that are being sent to federal employees cite their performance as cause, or they set up a dynamic where you know, 75 things you did last weekend if you don't, you'll be let go. That is clearly establishing cause and there's not been a clear statement from the White House that they will pay unemployment benefits. And then some people don't apply. There's a cap to unemployment. They may think it's too much of a hassle or stigma associated. So the whole population doesn't apply. So that's one. Two, I showed you that one chart about kind of the stability in the federal workforce and just that the work is only increased, but we're seeing federal contractors being cut even quicker than the federal workforce. It's much easier to cut a contract. And many of the big contractors that you would think would be likely homes aren't hiring right now or putting big paws on their high-irings.. Sometimes Jordan and Virginia thinks it's a little insulated from some of these cuts because of what a heavy defense presence we have. Secretary Hegseth has said that the intention is to cut 8% of the civilian DOD workforce a year for five years, which is actually more than 40%. And they have started cutting into thousands in terms of the civilian workforce for DOD. And if you're going to arrive at those 40% numbers, then the contractors and contracts are also going to be caught up in that. It's a little too early to tell. But if they do what they say they will do, I don't think that the jobs and the consultancies and contracted workforce is going to be there. So. All right. Thank you. Well, we're going to turn to Jill's presentation. But thank you, Director Mercer, for kicking off the conversation. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. that will impact the situation. Thank you. Sorry about that. So I will be speaking about the Northern Virginia impacts and the information we've collected and compiled to date, whereas Clark was speaking about the larger metropolitan area as a whole. And focusing on Northern Virginia is important from especially not only the workforce impacts, but also from just the tax perspective since Northern Virginia has, we have, I believe it is, 47% of our personal income tax of Virginia is from Northern Virginia. So if we have these deep cuts, it's going to certainly affect the budget in Richmond and then ultimately indirectly impacting each jurisdiction up here. So very important to understand the Northern Virginia picture as well, which I'll give you that picture. So to go more, a little more deeply than what Clark went into about these data issues where you're hearing all these different numbers out there. It has become a big question and everybody, and getting confused over these numbers as to which one they should be using to plan appropriately for their budgets and impacts. So, OPM, as Clark was saying, has 145,000 noted for Virginia, federal employment, and those who are working in Virginia. And that's the number that Richmond has been quoting since before December, but that's not actually your best source for this information because it is not including the postal workers. So when you look at the Bureau of Labor Statistics data, which has the county level, that is much higher for. That's $193,000 and it's significantly higher for the U.S. and that is largely due to the postal service being included in the numbers. So when you look at our numbers here shortly, you'll just want to keep in mind these differences and largely the fact that the security agencies are excluded from these numbers. That would include your CIA, geospatial intelligence agency and other security agencies. And then the Census Bureau's data just note that overestimates because that's self-reporting and a lot of people have full-time work that's contracting for the federal government or that's grants for the federal government. So they'll consider themselves federal workers even though they technically are not. And so these numbers, as you see, 4.4 million versus 3 million that the LSS says. So reasons like that, but also because the exclusions of the security agencies are not included. So that's important to understand. And also just to note the Census Bureau's data is the place of residence. So NVRC is monitoring this federal information and tracking the economic conditions and will be over the coming months and year, just as COG is with Washington picture. And you'll find on our federal monitoring website, you'll find all the SNAP benefits, the Medicaid, Affordable Care Act, all those types of programs tracking the enrollment in those programs as well as the unemployment claims and all the labor force data. And that is going to be expanded over time as the needs arise for additional data. And it'll be again at the county level for everybody. And let's see. We have a fact sheet on our website that it's a handout that has been widely used up to the state, including by the state. And this extract is from that handout. This is the Bureau of Labor Statistics Data by jurisdiction in Northern Virginia. And this is the data that is jobs located in the area. And it is excluding the security agencies. So keep that in mind when you see the numbers for, say, Alexandria. Where is this data source is saying that there's about approximately 9,000 jobs located here in the city, which is 11% of all the jobs located in the cities. Whereas Northern Virginia as a whole is 6.3% of jobs are in the federal workforce. So certainly those closer in jurisdictions such as Arlington and Alexandria have much higher concentrations and for obvious reasons because of some of the large federal agencies that are in both of these jurisdictions. We've also got numbers here showing 6.3% of our civilian jobs are total, which I actually mentioned already, but what I didn't mention was the share of our country's federal jobs is 2.7% better in northern Virginia. So that's actually, that seems pretty low. But the better thing to keep in mind is like how concentrated we are in the sector, in the federal sector, because we are highly reliant on the federal sector and contracting for the economy in this region and actually too dependent. So something, you know, everybody's talked about for many years, if not decades, trying to lessen that dependency. And so keeping in mind that dependency, how much we're reliant on it is certainly important as we go through the planning cycle for the impacts. And for the federal civilian jobs located in Northern Virginia that are residents, the people that actually hold them that live here. This is the full time and part time workers that I'm showing here from the Census Bureau's data. And you'll see some differences between what Clark shared and what I'm sharing because he shared the full time, whereas this is the full time and part time for Virginia. So for the full time and part time, 12.5% of Northern Virginia's residents are in the the federal workforce and for Alexandria showing 17% of your population is in the federal workforce. So if all residents in the country, according to the Census Bureau, 4% are NOBA residents. So again, that is an overestimate, the BLS was an underestimate. What we also have on our website are the zip code maps showing the concentrations where the workers are actually living and what you see here is the share of the civilian employment. So the darker red is the highest concentrations, the highest percentages. And Alexandria certainly has some of the very highest shares of concentrations in our region. And when you go to our website, it's an interactive map where you can again click on the zip code if you want to know exactly the exact numbers for each of those zip codes. And we also have the density per square mile which gives a different perspective on how many employees actually are within each of these zip codes. And again the highest concentrations being the inter-jurisdictions such Alexandria and Arlington. So I'll go into some of the unemployment claims, some more details of things to know, go off of what Clark said. Some things to note are, as Clark said, you're filing your unemployment claims in the jurisdiction where you work. So when you see the Thursday news releases from the Department of Labor, that is reflecting that place of work information. But all of the jurisdictions, all of the states are required to exchange their data with each other so that they will know who actually resides in their state that claimed unemployment. And that is that place of residence data is what Virginia works in Virginia Employment Commission release on every Friday, so the day after Department of Labor releases. So they will have different numbers than Department of Labor for the fact that one is place of work for versus place of residence And so what we're talking tracking on our website is the Virginia employment commission Numbers which again are place of residence and that's the trends over time that you'll be able to monitor. So it's kind of hard to see here, but we're really not seeing much in the way of federal claims at this point, as well as much of change in the non-federal claims for each of the states. And that is largely due to the things that Clark was mentioning. So I won't go into those details, but since that was already mentioned, but the numbers are still very low. But we have definitely had the layoffs as we all know, even though it's not showing. And we're showing the states at this point in time and wanted you to be aware that the county level data is being worked on by Virginia works in Virginia Employment Commission at this time. So they should have that ready. They tell me within the next week or two. And once it's ready, that will be on our dash or just start tracking for everybody. And so we also have the continued claims. So I just, just to back up, the last one you saw was the initial claims. That's when that's your first unemployment claim for being laid off. But what if you continue to get the claims every week afterwards until you get a job, you would apply for the continued claims. So these numbers you're seeing here where we had 18,000 continued claims in Virginia approximately. That is the number of people that just keep have gotten their second or some other late claim they can do, they can go up to I believe six months. But this is really the key is tracking this one to know if people are actually getting back into the workforce or not. Since the issue of us only having 30% of our jobs really compatible with what's advertised out there is very concerning. So monitoring this to see if people are actually getting re-employed will be really critical. And there's additional unemployment data that is unofficial that Virginia employment's putting out. The commission's putting out in their weekly newsletters, which is very helpful knowing that there is this delay in the federal worker claims actually showing up in the data. So according to them, we've had, through March 15, since the inauguration, we've had 179 federal claims tied to Virginia and for Virginia federal contractors, 337 to date. One other resource we have on our website that I wanted you to be aware of is the economic tracking report that we currently have in an Northern Virginia static format. That is being worked on and will be released in an interactive county level format in the month of April at some point. So I believe that was our last slide for the Northern Virginia resources that we have. And all the budgetary impacts and all carcass already went into. so I won't go into that. Thank you for your presentation, Joe. We appreciate you being here with us. Any question? I guess one that I have is recognizing earlier it was mentioned. You know, the state has put together a committee to look at impacts across the region. And I know they're coming to Northern Virginia, I think in a couple weeks. I'm just wondering how NBRC or even NBRC and COG are working together to compile this information and make sure that the delegates who are involved in that committee, but as well as others participating in the town hall truly have like the deepest sense of this is what it's going to look like in Northern Virginia and this is how we should be racing for impact. Yes, Northern Virginia Regional Commission is involved in that and has been called upon to be part of that regional meeting that the state will be holding in April. And our executive director is largely handling that issue by working with the mayors and chairs of the region as well as the commissioners to really I think pull together a message that does need to be conveyed to the state. So our executive director, certainly through Chair Chapman of the commission, will be taking care of that. And the data that we collect, they are also collecting that data from us and others. So that's one of their biggest goals right now is to collect the data for analysis. And on the topic of that House Emergency Committee, there are plans for those of you who don't know and aren't aware. They plan to have their report, their analysis done by November 15th and their recommendations out there by December 15th. And Weldon Cooper has been tasked by the state to do the bulk of the analysis. And they have started, Weldon Cooper, that has started to publish some of their analysis. And that reminds me one thing they published this past week that's great to know that nobody else had really had an estimate of is how many contractors that are federal, federally reliant contractors are in Virginia and they said their estimate is more than 400,000 in Virginia. That was information from them as well as they stated that from their analysis, the funds that go from federal contracts in the nation, 15% of it is Virginia contracts of the nation. So that was really important finding, again, showing how dependent our economy really is on this and how we're really going to have to look at our budgets to brace for the impact. And one other thing I wanted to mention since the House Emergency Committee is doing their study. I wanted to mention that Northern Virginia Economic Development and a lion alliance is contracted out to a consultant who is doing a Northern Virginia study. And they are doing like three scenarios or so on what the tax revenue impacts will be to our region. And as much as possible, they've been asked to go down to the county and city levels for their analysis and that analysis will be done by May 15th and every economic development Agency has a staff member involved in that study monitoring the consultants work and I'm involved in that committee as well Thank you I know we're all gonna look forward to that report. I guess one other question I had and then I will go to Councilwoman Green. It was helpful to hear the work we're doing the track on Medicaid and then I know you guys are doing extensive work on SNAP. Is there anyone who's tracking like TANF and Head Start and some of these other critical programs that our residents depend on? TANF that is tracked on our federal monitoring website. At the request of the mayor's and chairs. And the head starts, we have not tracked that, but let me look into that and see if that's something that's readily available for the data and we can start tracking it. Okay, and I guess what I'm getting at is all all, particularly with Head Start, all of the changes that we're seeing in the workforce, you know, families and their childcare, just really trying to understand if there's, and maybe that's not the best data point, but getting a better sense of also, what are the impacts in that area as well, I think would be helpful. Councilwoman Green. Thank you, Madam. Thank you Joe for the information and Clark Director Mercer as well. Yeah we're gonna try and stay positive and uplifted. But it's hard. As I guess I, and forgive me if I missed this, but Clark mentioned that 70% of hospitality business is directly related to the federal government. I would assume that's DC. Do we have those similar numbers for Northern Virginia? I'm not aware of it, maybe Clark knows. 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 sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Thank you both and I'm curious you both referenced one of the challenges in the unemployment tracking is people who are denied for some of these potentially species reasons. But is there any way the data would reveal sort of denied claims and the reason for the denials? I don't think any such data exists, unfortunately. I assume you do know denied claims. I mean, because if you can see claims, can you see their status, or you only know how many claims have been made? We only know from what Virginia Employment Commission publishes, which is the official numbers that have been vetted and approved. They've also got those unofficial numbers that I mentioned. I don't know if Maryland or DC is doing that. But they should have those types of numbers behind the scenes at least for inquiries, for cities and counties to be able to plan. Yeah. Anything to add? And then I just had one last question. I know this primarily because we ask kind of to help us understand the economic impacts, focus on the workforce. I think we also know there's a lot of other things happening as it relates to education climate change, other cuts that have funding implications for our budgets are either of your agencies doing tracking in those areas or if not are there other universities or partners that we should be looking at for those impacts. I would say I know both agencies are looking at climate. We have a NVRC and extensive climate program, very extensive, including the flood awareness week program education as well as Chesapeake Bay and Clean Water Act, many different programs. So I'd encourage you to look at our website to see what we monitor and certainly maybe touch base with us and we can maybe meet personally and share further information with you. So we're in touch with our partners throughout the country. So any metropolitan area that has over 25,000 people has a metropolitan planning organization mandated by the federal government that we coordinate transportation at a regional level. So there's hundreds of MPOs and through Ampo is the kind of national association, through regional councils, as a national association of regional councils. And we're tracking climate pollution reduction grants, EV grants, those are two big areas where we've seen cuts or funding that's been frozen. Cog and DC, we are not as reliant on discretionary grants to fund our base operations, although we have partners throughout the country that are. So just by scale of magnitude, we have a $3 million EV grant at COG. Atlanta has a $37 million grant, right? And so when that grant gets stopped, it affects their operations. We look a lot at transportation formulas. And kind of locally, you know, Metro is obviously a big deal. And there's a bit of a domino effect. So talking about what's happening in DC and if that affects their ability to pay their Metro bill at a certain level that will then have an effect in Maryland and in Virginia as well terms of how they view their bill. So we look specifically at that but then some of the transportation formula dollars and obviously tracking particularly as it comes to transit Right now it's there have not been any calls for a perennial major cuts in that space, but it's certainly something we're paying a lot of attention to. Thank you. Councilman Chapman. Not a question, but more of a comment, particularly for the public. One of the things that first, first thank you to both of you for your presentations and the information that you not only give us today, but as folks who have followed council know that we always give updates from these boards. these boards, a number of us sit on various committees or subcommittees of either organization or both. And both of these agencies are investments that the city makes annually. We pay to be a part of it. And as you can see, it's not just the data and the information that we get out of them. It's about the regional partnerships that all the localities within North Virginia or the greater DMV are working together. And it's frankly times like these, when these relationships, these investments in a planning, a regional planning organization, whether it be the DMV or the North Virginia region, are so necessary because we have the ability to prepare ourselves for what may be coming. And talk to experts about the data that's out there That can allow us and our city staff to make the appropriate adjustments to our budget And so it is timely and necessary for these experts to come and kind of give us this information But as many of you are aware We will connect with, these staffs, and continue to share with the public information and activities and initiatives that each of these agencies are doing. And so I just wanted to highlight the continued investment that the city makes by partnering with these agencies, but being able to get a lot more out of it than we're putting into it. So thank you both. Well with that, we value your time and we don't wanna keep you here all night. So thank you Clark and Jill for your presentations and for the information that you shared with us. Madam Clerk, next item. Action, excuse me, action, Dr. regular consent calendar 10 and 11. Okay. There has been a motion and a second, any discussion? Okay. There's been a motion by Councilman Aguirre, a second by Councilwoman Green to approve the consent calendar. I mean, the consent, yeah, the consent calendar items 10 and 11. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed say nay. The ayes have it. Madam Clerk, doxate them. Consideration of receipt of fiscal year 2025 second quarter. Capital project status report related to city council approved capital projects. I think we have a brief presentation for this one. Good evening Mayor Gaskin's Vice Mayor Bagley and members of council. For the record my name is Dne Codd, on the project director with the Department of Project Implementation. I'm here tonight with Stephanie Defri, this project manager, Lisa Robron, Assistant Director of Project Controls. We are here tonight to give you a background on the system from which the information is pulled to create the quarterly status reports. We will also showcase dashboard clips, highlighting key elements from the quarterly status reports executive summary and then talk about any next steps. Tonight we ask that you receive the information presented. Our focus will be on the high level metrics of the 97 projects being reported. First I will provide some background on the project management system known as Alex PM. Alex PM is the result of the budget and fiscal fairs advisory commissions initiation to enhance the city's management of capital projects. In FY21, DPI conducted skills training for city project managers and developed tools and templates to be used by the PMs. From these developed templates and tools, the project management system Alex P.M. was created in FY 2022. In FY24, DPI conducted training on Alex PM for all city users and started to load the existing projects. So I want to note that the existing projects that were loaded, that the system was designed to oversee the CISMOS complex projects. Each project is evaluated and assigned a designation as green, amber, or red. Red indicating the highest level complexity and green representing the least complex. So for example, projects that are red are very complex with high visibility and will require a high level of oversight. In comparison, an amber project has a moderate complexity level. will, it requires some visibility and has a moderate level of oversight needed. And green projects are relatively straightforward with few complexities unless oversight is needed. Therefore, only those existing projects that were termed to be amber or red were loaded into the system. And in an FY24 second quarter, we began using the Alex PM to generate the quarterly status reports. We would like now for you to turn your attention to the city's infrastructure map and we have provided a link on your presentation. So the project information collected with an Alex PM made a development of the City Infrastructure map possible. Project information is pulled from the Alex PM to create a public facing map that displays project information within the system. Such information that the public is able to access is the project name, location, current phase budget, and current status. Now I'd like to turn the presentation over to Stephanie who will speak on the quarterly report metrics. Thank you, Daphne. So the metrics shown here give a summary of the 97 reported projects, current phases, complexity, and budget for the reporting period ending the summer 31st, 2024. The projects progressed through three phases during its life cycle. You have planning, design and construction. And at the end of the reporting period, we had 25 and planning, 41 in design and 31 in construction. And of those 31 construction projects, six are actually pending final closeout. As Daphne previously mentioned, only Amber and Re complexity projects are managed in Alex PM, with 60 of those being classified as Amber and 37 as Red. Of the 1.12 billion in total plan budget for these reported projects, you can see there's spread across three different phases with the largest chunk being for construction at 74% and the rest being 11 and 15% for planning and design respectively. Of the total plan budget 19% has has been expended, and of the total reported projects 4% are considered to be over budget. Just to clarify what we are considering a project to be over budget is if additional funding is requested above and beyond what was originally asked for. So contributing factors to that could be inflation and marking conditions or changes in project scope or unseen for conditions. We also collect metrics related to schedule. So currently 54% of our projects are on or ahead of their current phase schedule, while 46% are behind. And as you will see in the reports, as you read through them, some typical reasons for these delays tend to be related to procurement, such as longer than anticipated selection of advisory committees or needing to re-bid, or even like unforeseen site conditions found during survey or construction. So with Alex P. M. in place, Project Control staff is able to identify areas of improvement more effectively. One key area identified is the need for more accurate baseline schedules. To address this, DPI will provide additional training on schedule development to the PMs in the coming weeks. Okay, so this slide shows the number of projects by sponsor or owner department. 71 projects are sponsored by programs within transportation and environmental services. While 26 projects come from a variety of other departments across the city. And while projects at the Amber and Red Complexity come from all over the city, there are only five departments that currently manage projects at this complexity level. Project implementation, transportation and environmental services, general services, recreation parks and culture activities and information technology services. And I will hand it back to Daphne Closet. Thanks. So Alex B.M. enables project managers to identify project trends early, allowing them to take proactive measures rather than reacting to issues as they arise. It enhances project coordination across the city and increases transparency in the oversight of red and amber projects. As Alex PM has utilized, we will continue to make modifications to the system to better serve the needs of the city. No action is being requested, council tonight. However staff is here to answer any questions you may have as you receive this information. Thank you. Councilman Channon. Thank you. And I noticed in the presentation or the legislation, excuse me, the information that we received, ACPS, capital projects were included. And I think when I tried to go to the link, it wasn't working, but that's not on staff. I think that's on the ACPS site. They probably moved to Algo, try to find that. But if there is, at all, in the future, if it's possible to have some connecting information that brings it all together, I think that would be helpful to just get a full picture of kind of all the projects, regardless of the agency. That would be super helpful, particularly around the information that you showed here about what's on time and what's delayed, as well as kind of budgetary impacts. I think one of the things that has been useful to look at, particularly for budgetary impacts is, you know, if we know that there is an ongoing issue with tariffs, or there's an issue with the pipeline or a pipeline of materials or things of that nature, just understanding that, not just from the city side, but the school side as well, as we are going to be doing a number of construction projects on that side, I think that would be helpful as well. Thank you. I want to take a moment. I know you didn't actually click through the link, but I wholeheartedly encourage our residents to click through the link. The system is super impressive in terms of ease of use, and I am stunned. I'll be quite honest at how quickly the information populates, just given the number of layers here. I mean, while you were talking, I was turning on and off sanitary sewers and turning on stormwater. I mean, and not turning off the sewers. Let me be clear. But I want to encourage the public because it lays out, I guess, I guess, 39 plus 36 plus 27, almost 100 projects. But then with each of them, when you click on them, you get a snapshot, you get the phase, the budget, current progress, a sentence or two, start date, design date, construction date, but then every single one I've clicked on so far, and I don't know, I did five or six earlier, and I did another five or six tonight, also has a link to a website.. And so is that do all of them presumably have a link to the website with the relevant information? Yes, and if they don't we're working to get them. Okay, I didn't want to oversell, but I haven't found one yet. Okay. But it takes you directly to the website with the relevant information about the project and why I think that's so great is a little bit of a weakness of our city website is that sometimes it is kind of hard to start from the city website and find, you know, where's the Homes Run Trail? I see Jack Rowan sitting there, so Homes Run Trail. You know, where's the Homes Run Trail project? Or, you know, I see Mr. McPike back there. Where's a city hall renovation. And if you just come to this infrastructure projects map, you know where in the city, presumably, this project that you're curious about is, you can zoom in on it, click it, and then it will take you directly to the website. So I think it's depending on how your brain works. For me, this is such a visual relationship to the work in the city. And then it gets you to the website or it gets you to the status or the so I just for all those are responsible for creating, you know, the site and then backfilling the data that it's displaying. I think it's a really, you know, it could host everyone involved because I haven't been able to break it yet. I mean, but I just want to, I genuinely want to encourage, you know, we did the flood action proclamation tonight and referenced, you know, the 10 years worth of capital projects and there's literally a layer in here of storm water management. And you can see all the projects all around the city, you know city in one image. So I don't mean to belabor it, but it's a powerful tool. And I really would encourage residents to find it. Shins comes with a newbie. Hold belabor it a little bit. Can you just reiterate again how can people go to that link from our website, not from the presentation? Because a couple weeks people are not able to pull this presentation up. So how can someone go to our city website and be able to pull the map that this link stinks you to? Yeah, sure. So on the public web page, if you go to, I think it's Project and Plans. If you click click on that it's like the headliner as right there as soon as you open the Project and plans page. Okay well seeing no further. I will entertain a motion to receive The information in the FY 2025 second quarter capital project status report Okay, there was a motion by Councilman McPike and a second by Councilman Chapman any discussion All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Say nay. The eyes have it. Thank you. and a second by Councilman Chapman, any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Say nay. The ayes have it. Thank you so much. Madam Clerk, next item. Consideration of the 2025 City of Alexandria, emergency operations plan. We also have a brief presentation for this item. Good evening. Good evening. Thanks for taking time. I know that I see what I saw. We've been planning to talk about the other afterwards. That's right. I heard it here in the city of my own. Second, Andrew, Mike, on. Let's see. 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've been with the city for a few months since November, so there's been lots of folks who have worked with me on this project, but then prior to my arrival here. So this project... I've been with the city for a few months since November, so there's been lots of folks who have worked with me on this project, but then prior to my arrival here. So this project and this plan that we present before you is the hard work from a lot of our department heads, many of our partners, and a lot of folks throughout the city. Just briefly about me and my background, a very brief prior to coming to the city in November. I've worked for about 35 years in public safety and emergency management. I started in New York City and worked for the FTNY for about 15 years, worked in New Island, Virginia for FX County for a bunch of years. So I've been around the region for about 15 or so years now working in various government capacities and it's a pleasure to join the team here in Alexandria and lead us forward. You know, it's fitting that we just talked about Virginia Flood Awareness Week last week was emergency management professionals week Three weeks ago we had severe weather awareness week and now we're talking about our emergency operations plan So very timely conversation. I think what you'll find as we go through the presentation briefly tonight and having read the plan yourselves The plan is a well thought out product and I think the plan will move us forward and guide our emergency preparedness activities for the coming four years, and give us a good foundation on which to build as we work with various partners going forward. So really briefly, I'll do a quick summary. We'll talk about the purpose of the EOP. We'll go a little bit into this structure and how it's organized, and then I'll highlight some of the major changes since the last revision occurred in 2021, and then we'll come to the end of our presentation. please stop me if you have questions along the way. So this, again, the plan here is being presented to you tonight for hopefully approval and adoption so that we can utilize that plan going forward as our legally binding plan. That plan is again required by code, by state, and by local code, so it's something that we do every four years as required. So what's the purpose of the emergency Operations Plan? Primarily, it really describes where our departments and our various partners, what their roles and responsibilities are during and after emergencies. Who's responsible for what and how those actions are coordinated by the different city leads and the various supporting entities across city government and in the nonprofit and non-governmental sector. There we go. There we go. It describes our lines of authority. It describes how we manage resources, how we communicate, how we coordinate, and really talks a lot about, you know, the structure that's in place prior to after emergency responses. And then, again, as I said earlier, it meets our federal requirements. You know, we obtain many federal grants and grants through the state. The plan is required by federal doctrine, it's required by state and local code, and it also represents best practices. It really aligns with what's being done across the nation in terms of emergency management. And so I think what we've done here is a really good product that hopefully you'll agree will be very useful going forward. The plan is structured in three kind of major buckets. It's a large document. with 174 pages in total, but just to kind of briefly run through what the structure is like. The f***. The plan is structured in three kind of major buckets. It's a large document. It's 174 pages in total, but just to kind of briefly run through what the structure is like. The first 47 or so pages of the document is the base plan. And that's really the primary area where if you didn't know anything about the city of Alexandria and had no sense of our emergency management program, it would give you the basics, demographics, economic information, threats and hazards, population information. All that information is contained in that base plan. So it's very kind of rudimentary. Fundamentally. the basics, demographics, economic information, threats and hazards, population information, all that information is contained in that base plan. So it's very kind of rudimentary, fundamental data that helps you kind of navigate through the rest of the plan as a reader. Then we go down into our emergency support functions and these are the areas where we highlight the different functions that need to be performed during emergencies and we identify the different city departments that are the leads for those functions and the various departments and other organizations that support those functions. And so it gives everybody a sense of who's in charge and then who is supporting them in achieving the various goals and objectives in responding to emergencies. And then we also have our support annexes. Our support annexes really go a little bit further into the weeds and talk a lot about how some of our partners support us with other activities like financial management and volunteer and donations management and to re-removal and things like that that occur typically during and after disasters. And so some of those are kind of tangential activities, but they're very important to be performed and they must be coordinated in a proper way. And so the EOP kind of outlines how that's done and who's responsible for leading those various efforts. This is impossible to see. I know you have it in front of you and has seen it before. This kind of outlines the different emergency support functions and which city departments are the leads for those functions. And then each of those annexes, if you will, will then break out for you the other agencies, the other entities that support those functions. So the two major changes that I want to highlight for you since the last revision. There have been a lot of changes, grammatical, syntactical, nothing significant. But the two big ones that we want to talk about, one is the incorporation of a new construct that was developed by FEMA in the past few years, called our FEMA Community Lifelines. And our community lifelines are the eight major buckets of things that communities need prior to during and after emergencies to be functional and sustainable. Food, water, shelter, health, and medical energy, communications, transportation. These are things that we need to restore as quickly as possible to get our community back to normal after an emergency has occurred. And so having this organizational framework in the plan allows us to both assess and then communicate those issues during and after emergencies, but also helps us to coordinate with our various regional, state and federal partners when we're asking for assistance to help us identify the needs and then look for solutions from our various partners in terms of those lifelines. The second major change is that the LEED agency for emergency support function six, which is mass care, typically known as sheltering or feeding or housing. The LEED for that function has switched. So prior to this current new version of the emergency operations plan, the folks from RPCA, worthy lead or coordinating agency for that. And other agencies including DCHS, community and human services, or support entities. We've flipped that a bit based on the agreement of those agencies that the core capabilities were better aligned with DCHS being the primary and RPCA being a support. So now they have flip roles and they've actually operation on lies those roles through training. We're doing exercises this year with them. And so we're really working to make that granular and operational function that is coordinated by that agency as part of the plan. So those are the two big changes that I wanted to highlight for you all. I'll stop there and ask for any questions. I'll just briefly say that once the plan is approved and adopted, we use a lot of the time after that to roll it out, to work with our department leadership, to work with our stakeholders, our community, and others to really make that plan operation. All we do training, we do exercises. And that becomes our plan of record for use in the future. Thank you all for your time, and I look forward to your questions. OK? Thank you all for your time and I throw into your questions Councilman Ekeary not really question really just comment. Thank you for all the work on this and a quick shout out to the Medical Reserve Corps and Both of which are comprised of residents who volunteer to help with some of these emergency operation plans Which have been put together so thank you thank you for that. And if you're interested in joining, go check out Sirten and Marcy. Thank you, plug, Councilman. And we'll be out here on Market Square this coming Saturday doing outreach during the farmers market and talking about severe weather from 7 a.m. to noon with our Sirten volunteers. So come out and join us and learn about severe weather. Sorry for the plug. Other questions? Oh, city manager. I just, since we have one of Mark's talented staff in the audience, it's really, I spent a lot of early morning calls with our Karish Paul, so I just want to call her out. The continued answer. If you wouldn't come join me, I'd try to get her to come down here. This is a really important work that this team does, and they do really well with it. Mark highlighted that we train on it, but we're going to continue to press into that, particularly with unique scenarios. This region really does have a lot of different dynamics for that. So really fortunately, I have really experts in this area that really helps us a lot. No, I thank you for raising that Mr. Manager and Mark and Curious in the team. I think one of the things that was interesting in my briefing is as soon as we finish this plan, you guys are on to the next plan. And there's an implementation plan and another partnership plan and another piece all to ensure that no matter what happens We are prepared. We are ready. We are trained so with that I will entertain a motion to approve and adopt the 2025 city of Alexandria emergency operations plan second. Okay. There has been a motion by Councilman Chapman and a second by Councilwoman green any discussion. Okay, all those in favor say aye aye any opposed say nay Right the eyes have it Madam clerk next item or reports and or presentations by members of city council Council medicare Thank you Madam Mayor it has been a busy couple weeks. I'm going to try and get through this quickly so we can get out of here. So back on the 13th, I want to give a shout out to Lindsey Lexus. They just opened up their newest building, which had been under construction for a while over there in the Farleton area. Really great to have a business that is not only a good neighbor, but also shares the values of our community. So thank you to them for staying here in Alexandria. On the 14th, I usually go to this event. I didn't get to and I believe our mayor is one of the speakers. So the women's leadership forum held by the Alexander Chamber, always a great event. Men are also welcome. Just want to put that out there because usually we don't show up, but we should help support our women leaders. I also want to give a shout out to the Muslim group at ACHS for hosting their Iftar again this year. Huge turnout. Lots of people, great, it's always great to be sharing culture because the diversity is one of our strengths here in our community. Also, if you missed it, the DPC had a jazz night. It's a great, great event. Free and open to the public, great music, great artists. If you see it coming up on your calendar or on your feed, please check it out. And then on the 16th, I had the opportunity to go right over here to Fairfax County for the State Bus rodeo. If you have not been to a bus rodeo, you are missing out. It is awesome. And on top of that, one of our operators historically does very, very well. And this year, I want to give a big, big shout out to Lana Glover, who was the winner of this year's state bus rodeo, and will be representing us at the International bus rodeo next month. So great job. We have some of the best operators at Dash in the entire state. Moving on to the 18th, the vice mayor and I had the opportunity to go to Patrick Henry to celebrate the completion of the synthetic field. We both came ready with our sneakers. We were going to kick balls and run around with the kids, but the just for the Patrick Henry students, but also for the surrounding community to be able to come and enjoy the fields. On the 19th, I was able to stop by Douglas MacArthur who was hosting our Essential Workers Appreciation Day. We had our essential workers from various different departments that were able to come, interact with the kids, and be celebrated. So a very, very nice event. And thank you to Douglas MacArthur for hosting this year. Also that day, we had the completion ceremony for the Oakville Triangle, where we have the new ANOVA healthplex, a lot of different residences both the department, condo, and town homes. And one of the newest restaurants in Alexandria found new farmers who was the host for the event, great great food. When you get a chance, go check out the restaurant and support a local business. Also, we wanna give a quick shout out to our staff for the city managers pop up budgets that are occurring across the city. I tried to make it to the Pepper Center, I didn't quite make it on time, but thank you for being out there. On the 20th, I had the opportunity to stop by many Howard at their library, check out their old technology display. I did feel a little old when the kids were grabbing rotary phones and even those old big digital cameras. And they're like, what are these things? But had a really good time with the kids explaining the to them how CDs worked and tape recorders and a variety of other things including dictionaries. I was a little disappointed that some of the kids didn't know what big old dictionaries were because they just said, well, we just Google it, but I digress. Anyway, on the 21st, I had the opportunity to go to the Edo Furturo Gala, who was celebrating their 27th career year. They started working here in Alexandria a couple years ago. Really, really great nonprofit. There's a lot of really good work with our students in Alexandria, and across Northern Virginia. If you don't know them, go check them out. Really worth the time if you have time to volunteer with them. Then on the 22nd, this is a, oh man, this is another really cool one. If you guys have not seen a drone soccer match, it is really awesome. It's fast paced. It happens quickly. But I was really excited to be at Virginia Tech Innovation Center to check out the Jones soccer and big, big shout out to our join ACPS middle school team. We had students from Patrick Henry, Jefferson Houston, George Rosh to middle school, and Francis Hammond, all joined together to kind of create an all-star team to go against. Unfortunately, a high school competition, but like Alexandria, we're punching above our weight class and we're fighting hard. So a big shout out to all the students from ACPS that we're participating and we're operators at the Jones Soccer. Also that day, very busy Saturday, the breakwater reception for the new exhibit that is on the waterfront. A very, very awesome thing that we have at the waterfront. We do one every year and shout out to the artist, Nikesha Duret, who is actually local, DC-based. If you haven't had a chance to go to the waterfront, you will have several months to check it out. And lastly, on the 23rd, I had an opportunity to do meals on wheels, which I don't have to say, but is a great program. Many of us participate and was able to get out and are at about delivering some food. And that, oh, last, last, last thing before I forget, because it is tax season. Remember, please take advantage. We have our free tax program. If you qualify, you will get your taxes done completely free. But for Laura Cuerda, she was the Califica for the tenor Sucing Puerzos Etros completa m'integra a tuito por la ciudad. And with that, I am all done, Madam Mayor. I am sad I missed the state radio. I love going to the local one. I didn't even know. Councilor McPike. Just two items. On March 13th, I got to join parents and students from across the ACPS system for the Reflections Art Competition Awards. Reflections is a program run by the National PTA, where students are given a theme and the opportunity to create a work of art in any style, painting, there was music and singing and photography and film. And we had these young people from across Alexandria who entered their art work into this competition. Twenty young people in Alexandria won here at the local level and went on to the Commonwealth level competition, three of our Alexandria students were recognized at the Commonwealth level and went on to the Commonwealth level competition. Three of our Alexandria students were recognized at the Commonwealth level and Ingrid Albers, a student at George Washington Middle School, won outstanding interpretation, which is first placed at the Commonwealth level in photography and is proceeding on to the national competition representing our city and the artistic sort of skills that so many people in Alexandria possess. So congratulations to her and to all the young people who participated in that competition. And finally, for me at least, this coming Saturday, the 28th, if you've got something on your mind and you wanna give us an opportunity to talk to you about, sorry, the 29th, sorry, the Saturday the 29th. We have a town hall at 1 p.m. You can come by the Dell Pepper Community Resource Center and ask questions to the City Council. We will be there and look forward to seeing a good turnout from members of the public at that. Councilwoman Green and then Vice Mayor Bagley. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I just want to give a shout out to our tiny Titans at ACPS's early childhood center, Ms. Jane and Mr. House for having me. We talked about being good citizens and productive members of our community and I tell you if you want to put a big smile on your face, go visit the four year olds at our early childhood center. And I even asked to be someone's grandma. So I enjoyed my visit, and I look to return soon. Thank you. What did you get actually? My colleague mentioned the town hall on the 29th and I just want to invite everybody to the opening ceremony of the Alexandria Little League Which is happening earlier that day where I will be following in our former mayor's footsteps and throwing out the first pitch Which I'm very excited about Yeah, I pull a certain khakis I know But I wanted to mention that. And then, did you want to mention the point? Oh, okay, then I will. Councilman Chapin. Thank you Madam Mayor. I just had one thing to bring to my colleagues in the public's attention. It is the second year that we are calling for requests to acknowledge boards and commissions with the commission of the year, impact awards, those nomination forms are due into the course office by May 1st. And so if you or someone you know is involved in a commission and they're doing great work here in the City Advising Council or otherwise, please submit that commission's name. We did get a number of submissions last year and hope to get more this year because we do have a lot of people as you've seen today and other days doing great work supporting the city organization. Okay, I have one quick one. My first mayoral youth forum will be this Saturday at 930 here at City Hall. So if you are a young person ages 14 to 18 invite you to drop in and join. We had a planning meeting with young people who are interested in supporting and I think we had 43 folks help plan this event. And so it's really, really exciting. I think many of your peers have put together a great agenda for our first forum. And so I really hope to see you there. If you aren't able to make this one, the way it's designed is that every other month, there will be different topics and different agendas put together by the young persons on the planning committee. So if you miss one, you'll still be able to pick up and be able to participate in future ones as well. And if you want more information on how to engage or when the next one is, please email my aid, Christine Macy at AlexandriaVA.com. All right, with that, Madame Clerk, next item. Consideration of City Council schedule. Are there any comments on the schedule? If not, I will entertain a motion. I'm going to approve. Is there a second? Second. There has been a motion in a second. Any discussion? All right. A motion in a second to approve the Council calendar. Hearing no discussion. All those in favour say aye. Any opposed? Say nay. I's have it. I will now take a ask you a question. I'm here to ask you a question. I'm here to ask you a question. I'm here to ask you a question. I'm here to ask you a question. I'm here to ask you a question. I'm here to ask you a question. I'm here to ask you a question. I'm here to ask you a question. I'm here to ask you a question. I'm here to ask you a question. 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