you you Thank you. And welcome to troop 140 in the audience joining us for their citizenship batch tonight. Okay, why it take it away. All right, we have two ordinances that Chief Sharam Fard is going to take the lead on both. And the first is an ordinance that would call for the city police department to destroy unclaimed and decommissioned firearms. And the second is an ordinance relating to pedestrian protections and pedestrian safety. Chief Fard, thank you for your work on these. And I will note that I think both are supported by the Sheriff's Department as well. Yes, that police is the lead on All right, so we're starting with the fire arms one Yes, sir Good new mayor vice mayor counsel So teo number two five zero six This is a proposal to change or man city code chapter 28 article 7, section 28-201, title of the destruction of sales of unclaimed firearms. The proposed changes are required that all unclaimed firearms and possession of the city's two law enforcement agencies, the police department and sheriff's office, be destroyed when legally permissible and to prohibit the resilling of decommission service firearms, firearm dealers, and return for rebates or discounts, which is that current practice. The online 20, the false search police department is responsible for the safe keeping of unclaimed firearms including firearms that deemed to be unclaimed property. Those no longer required for criminal prosecution and those obtained during gun buyback program events and those owned by the police department and the sheriff's office. We're both committed to sheriff and I to have ensuring the safe keeping and disposing of these firearms. I'm sure they'll never be involved in future crimes and sustaining injuries or deaths. Line 35. The department and the Sheriff's Office believe that risk of decommission service weapons, firearms being mis far out way any financial incentives there may be for the current practice. We believe that these practices are aligned with our public safety mission and priorities and we ask and recommend that we schedule reading for these ordinance amendments and these city ordinances are under the authority of Code of Virginia 15 to 17, 19 and 15 to 17, 21. And just acknowledge the partnership that I've had with the sheriff on this endeavor of updating the amendment bringing this to your attention. Great. Thank you for that. Vice Mayor. Thank you. I just wanted to thank Chief Fard and Sheriff Kay for their work on this. They're work on the gun bye back program last year which resulted in hundreds of firearms being removed and destroyed that can no longer be on the street or involved in any future crimes. So I'm in huge support of this and certainly don't want to make any financial gains off of what could be a future tragedy. So I'm very happy to move this forward and look forward to voting it into law and ensuring that we in Felsritch City are not propagating any violence with firearms or other weapons that are resold back into the system. So thank you to you all your department and the sheriff's who have been involved in this as well for your leadership and ensuring that this moves forward. It's really important. Thank you. Did it owe that indeed? Aaron? Thank you. And Aleco, Mrs. Guetz, comments and also just agree from a policy and public safety perspective with this. I had one question, which is on 138 subsection D of the ordinance language. This is the provision just about, you know, the destruction within 90 days of, you know, being declared permanently decommissioned. And I just, from practical standpoint, wanted to know, like, is it feasible to have, like, destruction basically occurring on, like, a quarterly basis, given the practical considerations, like the witness requirement and whatever else that like often accompanies narcotics and disposal of narcotics like in the same way, that are you comfortable that like you'll be able to comply with you know the 90-day window that you've provided yourselves? Yeah, thanks, Ms. Flynn, for asking a question for. For that particular line, you say 137, 138. That pertains to only to the decommission service weapons. So there's no legal proceedings for us to be able to meet that deadline. If there are firearms involved in crimes, we do have to go through the Commonwealth Attorney's Office and there needs to be a court order issued. So none of that will occur after those orders are issued by the court. But the decommissioned weapons and we don't buy guns that often. So we'll know well and advance when we have to prepare for a destruction. So thanks for looking after that. I think you said it's like a decade that we haven't purchased anything. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So yeah. Different guns, different times, but yeah. Yeah. Not that often. Okay. We have questions. Okay. I had. Did you have one? I had two. So one, appreciate Debbie and the sheriff and fire police departments were a glass year and gun buy back program. Ideally that would be an annual event that we can support because clearly there was more demand than gift cards and incentives we had last year in resources. So I think there are certainly additional guns we could recover back in the community so it would look to staff for ability to partner with Arlington on that. The second is actually I met an artist out of false church arts last year who was actually taking guns that were in DCA that were kind of similar either decommissioned or unclaimed weapons and actually turning it into public art and she was working on a memorial for victims of gun violence. So that seemed like a potential good use as long as they're getting destroyed and follows the procedures we've outlined. Sure. And so I'm happy to connect the artists with our departments. Sure. That would be great. And if I may, I think this is a good opportunity for me to remind the public that if anyone has any firearms that they want to surrender, maybe it's a former family member. They can just reach out to us. We might not have a gift card for them, but we can facilitate. that they want a surrender. Maybe it's a former family member. They can just reach out to us. We might not have a gift card for them, but we can facilitate taking that firearms off their hand. Just make sure they call us before they come down so we can make sure we do the transaction safely. That's a good PSA next week when we have a schedule for first reading. Just Andy, have one now. Yeah, it's not fully formed, but I'm just wondering if you could maybe address the public generally. What does this program do? So does it make the cost of guns more expensive for people? Because now there are fewer guns on the market. Or what are the general consequences of doing a program like this in terms of the amount of guns that we have. Yeah, what's a small department? We don't have that many guns so I don't think it's going to have any impact on the market. But I don't think it'll have any negative effect on the purchasing market, if you will. It will make sure that not of our guns, whether in our possession or in our ownership, ever end up in the wrong hand and be used in hurting someone. I certainly would want my name attached to that, and I think that gives us all of us the assurance that that won't happen. Thank you. Yep. Other questions? Okay. Sounds like it's ready for first reading then. Thank you. You don't need to get to go yet because I think we still have to talk about pedestrian safety. Yes. Ready for that. 25.07, right? Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Is there a major you want to say anything about that before I start? Well, I will just say thank you for bringing this forward. I know that this authority has existed from the General Assembly for over a year now. But it's good we're taking this action or recommending this action. I appreciate you bringing this forward. Thank you. Yes, I want to thank the city attorney's office have been very helpful in helping us get this to the staff report before you. So, TO2507 is an ordinance to amend the city of code of the city falls to chapter 26, which is a motor vehicles in traffic code. And what we're trying to do here is we are adding an entire new article, article number eight, title pedestrian protection. So within that article we're adding two specific ordinances and these are with key provisions to require that motorists stop and not just yield for pedestrians within Mark Crosswalks at intersections and a provision that police officer cannot stop pedestrians for crossing the street outside of a Mark Crossing and I'll explain that a little bit more in a second and of course the city's authority to install signs at Mark Crosswalks and to assess special fines for violation of those signs. And the authority for this particular action by this city comes under Code of Virginia Title 462, which is the Motor Vehicles Code Substitle 3. And chapter eight is the regulation of traffic. And within that that we have article 16, which is all about pedestrian safety. So where in that article it allows local localities such as ours to enact ordinances that go to provide further safety for our pedestrians on our roadways. So the general assembly did grant local governments that knew authority to enact those ordinances. And there were some additions in July 1 of 23 that changed the code of Virginia requiring vehicles to yield to pedestrians at all crosswalks to a requirement that vehicles stop pedestrians at unsignalized pedestrian crossings on roads with speed limits of 35 miles an hour or less. So, they proposed new sections that we have in a city code, falls closely with the state law provisions, and staff is recommending that we look at these ordinances and have CACT take a look at them and provide reviews and recommendations for enactment. And happy to answer any questions. The one part I said I was going to go back to the part about police not being able to stop pedestrians for crossing the street outside of a marked crossing. So this comes from the special session in 2022 where there was a lot of police reform actions and this is commonly called the J-Walking Code. So that's in state law and we're just bringing that to our city code so far off so we're still familiar with it even more. Laura. Could you provide a little bit more context chief? So what was the reason? I mean, I understand it was mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, action so that pretextual stop for pedestrians will remove the code. Thank you. That's very helpful. Yes, thank you. Dave. Thank you very much, Madam Mayor. This is another example. I think before we're trying to use whatever authority we're given by the state for traffic safety purposes. We've used the reduction in speed limits to 20 miles per hour, for example. So This is another example of using that authority. A couple of questions. First of all, some of the more serious infractions are based upon signs being placed in intersections. Can the city manager tell us about the plans for those signs so that we get the maximum enforcement. And also are there audio visuals or other things that help explain exactly some of the scenarios because a couple of these sections are surprisingly complicated. And we need to make the rules as direct and as simple as possible both for pedestrians and car drivers. So a quick comment chief about enforcement and for the city manager about placing signs so that we can get the maximum enforcement that we can. Who would like to go first? So maybe provide kind of what the signage would be required for adequate financing. I know there's been discussions between the police and DPW about the signage, but I don't know that we have a budget request ready for the council at this point, but Chief, maybe you can describe what that signage requirement is. So I think a lot of the crossing signs that we've seen at crosswalks, outside of the intersections, right, like so there's one out here on Park Avenue in front of City Hall, where it's outside of an intersection. There's signage there and the the language there is to yield, where the enforcement becomes challenging, as has the driver yield or not when there's a pedestrian, right? And a lot of times, it's almost as if, you know, there has to be a collision before failure to yield can be established, right? That's not where we want to be, but where the signage is changed to having to stop at the post to yield, and that's very clear, the vehicle's motion needs to come to a stop. We do have at least one or two of those signs that believe it's on Southwest Street near the county line, but the majority of other signs in the city, outside of intersections talk about yielding so that the changes in the signage would be to that detailed and the enforcement would be a little bit easier. And it also plays into our hawk signals that are coming up since those are mid intersections and for enforcement and then the penalties that the, the state code penalty maximum is $100. Local localities are able to increase that fine anywhere between $100 to $500. So it, you know, that part of it. So I have talked to Mr. Snyder, I have talked to public works about the signage. So that's in terms of costs, we'll have to continue to look at that. I don't think we have a good figure right now, sure. I'm very much like us to move forward because I want maximum enforcement with the number one public safety issue, which we all get is how of control traffic and anything that helps bring that under control and provides a significant enough penalty for violations that it actually will help get enforcement. So perhaps in a future meeting, we could hear what the plans are for the signs that are necessary for enforcement. We'll provide that. What we see in the staff report is that we'll provide that by second reading. We'll provide that as soon as we have it, but certainly you'll have it before you're asked to vote on this after the public hearing. Okay. I could jump in here from what I've seen from other jurisdictions. It's primarily the paddles that are mid crosswalk, that have been changed from yield to stop pedestrians. I know we've had mixed experiences with those paddles because they get hit. I'm over. But I think it's worth looking at those because they do slow people down. Even if they do get hit and it's ashamed I have to replace them, but they are very noticeable when they're mid crosswalk and it says stop. So. Other. just to finish up. I think some clarity here. One thing that I see is, you know, confusion or sort of do I stop, do I not stop, when do I stop? Can I go in front of the pedestrian if the pedestrian is crossing? So anything we can bring some clarity and make it enforceable, I think will benefit both pedestrians and car drivers. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you for that, Chief Hard. I have a few questions. Sure. On line 77, it says pedestrians may cross intersection diagonally when all traffic entering the intersection has been halted by lights, other control devices, or by law enforcement officer. One of the things that we've talked about over time are these are scramble intersections. Is this saying that we would be allowed to have a scramble intersection where all the lights are red and then pedestrians can cross in any direction? I don't think that's what it means. I'd have to ask the engineers exactly the type of design that this may apply to. Okay, because that's something I know a few of us are interested in. I don't think it's included. We just haven't taken the steps to make it happen. TVW has told me Virginia does not allow scrambles. Right. I thought it was over there. Yeah. right. But reading this, it sounds like it does. It means that we won't find them for doing it, but I don't think it, I don't know, whether, question for staff, whether we would still be allowed to pile it as a scramble intersection. Anyway, yeah, that's my question. This could, does this mean we could do something with a scramble intersection? Does it have anything when a pedestrian crossing in a crosswalk? Are the drivers supposed to wait until the pedestrian is completely out of the crosswalk? Or if the driver's in front of one lane? And then goes into the next lane is the driver allowed to go while the pedestrians in the other lane? Are we talking about at an intersection or we talk about a mid block? What kind of any kind of crosswalk? Well, this is the challenge and the enforcement of it. So certainly the police officer can interpret whether the vehicle has yield or not. If it's a stop sign, that the vehicle comes to a full stop. So that's the challenge I was talking about earlier because part of the defense for the driver will be will I yield it? prove I didn't Right, so that's where I was talking about like you almost have to have a Collision before you can demonstrate that there was no yield. I guess my question is how long do they have to stop? Do they have to stop the whole time the pedestrian is in a crosswalk? I think my interpretation is when the pedestrian is safely out of danger of that vehicle. That's OK. But again, ultimately, if a citation is issued, I'm not the judge. Yeah. So that's just my interpretation as a law enforcement officer. Well, the last question is just about drivers' education. Since we have a bunch of teenagers that will get beginning their driver's license soon, is this the kind of thing that when kids are learning driver education, that that would have to be emphasized in false church if we do it in other jurisdictions don't? I think drivers' educations include this particular part, but I feel like I'm being tested. I'm not sure. I'm gonna know. I'm just thinking, as we're talking about, when you're driving, you just sort of get an autopilot. So if things are changing, how are we gonna educate people? I've driven through this crosswalk a thousand times, it says yield, it's in a little red sign. Then the next day it says stop. I might not even really see it. Because it's just still in the red sign with white letters. And I'm not reading it because I'm just driving all out. So I'm thinking about that. Like, education can't be not just for new drivers, but for all drivers. Yeah, if it's a stop, the size of the sign, a visibility, it was a different matter, but if it says stop, I mean, the sign, the size of the sign, the visibility of it's a different matter, but if it's assuming a driver sees the sign, if it says stop, I think that's pretty self explanatory, right? And I think a lot of us in the public can just, if we all use some courtesy and we see someone in a crosswalk, wait for them to clear that's the message I would give to our community is to wait for that pedestrian to clear that crosswalk. So because you never know what a pedestrian is going to do right they may change direction and backtrack so you don't want to proceed until they leave the crosswalk would be my view on that. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Any questions, Erin? I'm going to ask, I guess, a question similar to Mr. Snyder just done how this applies. So when we're talking, yeah, I mean, I agree with everything that's here. But when we're talking about, for example, going from the like yield to pedestrian in the crosswalk to stop, are we envisioning signs like in every instance? Because there would either be a pre-existing stop sign and so you should stop already. Or there's like a mid-block crosswalk that has one of those that would turn into a stop. It would be a stop no longer yield like sign or there or are there instances in which there's an unsigned crosswalk in which you'd now like need to stop. If there's a pedestrian there and like you would hope that as a matter of courtesy right? Before everyone was everyone was preoccupied, text egg while they were driving, it used to be that you'd see pedestrians and you'd slow, or you'd wave the pedestrian across the street if they weren't going to be in danger of crossing. So I'm just trying to figure out the signage versus the application of the rule where you don't necessarily have a sign. Like do we have crossed marked crosswalks that don't have corresponding signs of any kind? Yeah, no I think that's a really good question. pedestrians do not have an absolute right away. You have to cross at a crosswalk so this does apply to crosswalks now if it's at an intersection where there are stop signs, obviously the vehicles need to come to a crosswalk. So this does apply to crosswalks. Now if it's at an intersection, whether it's stop signs, obviously the vehicles need to come to a complete stop. If it's at a signal, you know, if it's red, they need to come to a stop. If they're making a right on red, they need to yield to pedestrians in their crosswalk. So in a crosswalk pedestrians have the right way to some extent. So I think the particular code section is talking about those instances where there is a crosswalk and pedestrian is within that crosswalk. Justine. Thank you so much for bringing this forward. I am really glad to see this coming through. I did have a question about one of the lines, I believe it was line 103. Let me go there. Yeah, that no pedestrian shell enter across an intersection and disregard of approaching traffic. I realize that there's some discretion involved in this, but how do we, how does one determine whether or not discretion was or like disregard was applied by the pedestrian? Are you talking about destruction? I mean, discretion in terms of enforcement? Yeah. I mean, so in terms of no pedestrian shall enter or cross an intersection and disregard of approaching traffic. And you what's line are you? I'm sorry, one of three. One of three. I guess how do how do how would one determine disregard? Well, the challenge for the enforcement part is back under 26-200 and line 81, where no law enforcement officer shall stop a pedestrian for violation of the section. So the next section 26-201 talks about pedestrian right away. So if a pedestrian is entering or crossing a street and disregarding a approaching traffic, so the code section is gonna apply one. If we do have a crash and we're trying to determine fault during that investigation. So I think it would play during that scenario. That's so much in the enforcement aspect of it. I see. OK. And so that would be, if there were to be some sort of crash, did the pedestrian look both ways? I guess there's other things that you would look into. Yeah. We don't advise pedestrians to cross the street outside of a crosswalk. That's just not safe. So we want to make sure everybody's crossing at a crosswalk. Right, but I guess even with a crosswalk, I guess using their, like, are they disregarding traffic if the car is like, you know, within 15 feet or 30 feet or five feet. And so at what point is the pedestrian at fault? That's a good question. Yeah, but I guess so, but it sounds like I guess what I'm hearing is that there's discretion when the investigation is happening. That's right. And there's going to be judgment and you know, on the facts of the case itself. Okay. Right. And then my other question, when it comes to yields, and this was my understanding of yield signs, is that if there is a pedestrian present, you then stop. Does yield mean that you do not have to come to a complete stop? Depends. So if there is a pedestrian across walk and if you are not yielding and you're in danger of striking a pedestrian, then I think that means stopping. So yielding is the yield of right away. So there's going to be a lot of interpretation on the specific merits of the case and the facts surrounding the particular example you might be thinking about. Okay. So basically my understanding from what you're saying is that if a car can slow down such that it doesn't wouldn't obviously get into any sort of crash with the pedestrian then that is still considered yielding even if they don't necessarily come to a complete stop. Well, my interpretation of a crosswalk with a pedestrian that is the vehicle should yield until that pedestrian clears a crosswalk. I think that's the safest thing. Because again, like I explained earlier, a driver can't determine what the pedestrian is going to do. When that pedestrian is in a crosswalk, the pedestrian has to ride away. And drivers shouldn't take a risk, assume that the pedestrian is going to continue to walk one in one direction when they could easily turn around and walk the other direction or perhaps they drop their phone and their keys right so the safest action to accomplish yielding is a wait for the pedestrian to clear the crosswalk before proceeding and so now that would come with we would be be asking drivers to stop. Or that's right. That's right. That makes sense. Thank you so much. I really appreciate that. Sure. Any questions? OK, I have a few. Glad that we actually are not taking out the ability to find people for j-walking. I think that's something that was kind of long overdue and in general support adding this. In light of, I think the hawks getting hopefully power from Dominion in the coming month, and then this change feels like we should roll out to just pedestrian safety education, maybe as a packet. I know O'Conn was planning some videos about how both drivers and pedestrian should deal with hawks because they will be new to us, even though they're used throughout the region. So maybe we could also batch this up as, you know, pedestrian safety big push or social media campaign. So we can really boost awareness of it when both of these changes are implemented. I had a related question. I continued experience and personally, Debbie's gonna make fun of me, because when I run on the streets, people do right on red all over the city. You were in the crosswalk, I've had to leap out of the way, like in the crosswalk several times. Left turns are another issue. I know that left turns are often a cause of conflict, but right on red, frankly, I think the fact that we have four intersections, I think, that are no right on red, whereas the rest of intersections allow right on red, that's pretty confusing for people. Not that I want more signs everywhere, but I do think we should look at potential crashes based on turning vehicles and pedestrians, and how many near misses. So I have not gotten hit, not gone wood, but they're probably a fair number of near misses for people in the community. And so in general, we just ask that we look at, while we are exploring pedestrian safety, turning cars into crosswalks. I think that's as we have more people walking on the streets I imagine that we're going to have more potential conflicts. I appreciate the feedback we have been doing that I submitted a request for several recommendations to DPW several have been approved and we're just waiting for the signs to go up on some of them. Oh, we're going to add more right on red on red on red. Yes, on some of the intersections. So, um, there are- It's like it's worth thinking about whether all the intersections on Broad then would merit it. If we get to a tipping point where you're like, gosh, half of them are going to be no right on red, is it just more confusing to have half no right on red and half that are regular. It's kind of like that park avenue stop sign for the years, park and lead did not have a stop sign and it was just this one weird intersection that did not have it and it seemed to make a lot more sense to finally add that stop sign. So in the spirit of the conversations we've been having internally about vision zero. That is one of the things we're studying just to have that be a citywide policy and we'll provide the city council some feedback on that before we implement it. But that is in engineering as a thought process. And then since I think this code was given to us last year or maybe two years ago, similar to what Dave said, I think it would be great for us to just take advantage of every pedestrian safety authority we have. If there's others in this upcoming session, let's pay close attention so we don't have to wait another year and a half since we got this authority. Okay. And I will note from council, one of the things we're doing with this year's process, the legislative tracking log, which council received an update this evening just before the meeting. We're putting the code section in there. So once all the general assembly and government actions done, we'll see what's passed. And then this is a process, the city and attorney, and I have been working to fine tunes. At the end, we will have flags, key bills, and code section changes for staff to look at to see what needs to come forward. It's a required change or an optional one for council to consider. So that will be on all bills including the safety ones you're discussing this evening. Great. And I was actually Googling Virginia scrambles and actually on route one, VDOT is actually proposing putting in a scramble in a intersection. And so perhaps they are allowed. In which case I would continue to request that we study the possibility of piloting a scramble intersection. Broadwash could be a great one. West and broad is another probably high traffic one. Hecock and seven would be another one where, and again, you're really not getting rid of a whole signal phase because you're letting all cars stop and getting rid of one phase. And so it's actually both pedestrian friendly and should not actually slow down car traffic. So I will send that link over so you all have it too. Okay, thank you. Great. Thank you for all the comments and good discussion on this. Anything else? Okay. Thank you for joining us, Chief. Thank you. Okay, we have one C. Sally? Okay. Thank you. Thank you. As you're aware, and the city has been discussing a proposed accessory dwelling ordinance, and in the course of those discussions, the possibility has been raised of imposing an owner occupancy requirement. I have researched that issue and have provided advice to both the Planning Commission and the City Council. However, that and I think it's known that my advice was that there's legal uncertainties associated with that requirement. And what I'm based on my attendance at the last Planning Commission meeting, that subject that members would like to continue to discuss it. And it's difficult because the conversation is somewhat constrained by the privilege that was attached to the communications I sent to the Planning Commission and to the Council. And I find myself unable to respond effectively to the questions and the comments or to explain my advice due to that privilege status. The privilege that covers those communications is a privilege that belongs to the city council on behalf of the city as a municipal corporation. If the council would prefer to kind of lift that constraint and have a more full public discussion of owner occupancy, it has the authority. The body has the authority to authorize me as the city attorney to publicly disclose that legal advice by waiving the privilege that you hold. In my opinion, the risk of waiving that privilege and of disclosing that advice to the public is low. The communications at issue contained a legal analysis and a case law review, which in my opinion, I would characterize this fairly straightforward as an analysis of zoning law. If the privilege is waived, the consequence to the city is that any person seeking to challenge an owner occupancy provision in if it were included in our ordinance would then have my material as reference on how to successfully challenge that provision. So if it were included in our ordinance, we would have disclosed how to defeat that provision in the ordinance. Other risks include the council's waiver of the privilege as to owner occupancy could be viewed potentially by a court as a waiver of owner occupancy legal advice on other types of ordinances. So if you adopted a short term rental ordinance or other ordinances where owner occupancy came up, we could have potentially waved the owner occupancy legal analysis in that case too. I find that to be unlikely, I think the waiver of a privilege will be construed narrowly, but I just want to make you aware of that potential. The other potential that anything is is unlikely, but you should be aware of, is that legal advice given on the broader topic of accessory dwellings, not just the owner occupancy provision could be found by a court to have been waived by waiving this more limited owner occupancy issue. I also would add that I have not given other legal advice on this accessory dwelling ordinance. So at this time at any rate, that possibility poses no risk of harm. So based on what I've just said, I evaluate the risk of harm to the city from such a waiver as being quite low. And at the same time, I would recognize that there's value in the public understanding the legal arguments of the city. And to the Planning Commission and Council for being openly able to discuss the issue. When you balance that with the low risk of waving the privilege, you know, I think all of those factors can be considered. And I am comfortable balancing all those factors that waiver would not harm the city. So I did prepare a motion if that interests the city council. It's in front of you. I passed them out this evening, that would effectuate a waiver of that privilege. We also need to do our disclosure too. Goodness gracious, thank you for saying that. Yes, this is the item that we're discussing is accessory dwelling units and all but one of our council members and our city manager has a disclosure to make on the topic. So I will yield the floor. Thank you. Let's go ahead and do this now before the discussion. Okay. My answer is, start with the city manager. So as a city manager, I do wanna disclose that I'm an owner of a single family home in the city, along with my wife. I've provided a written disclosure of that. I believe that I can participate at the staff level in a fair and objective way, and I've provided that written statement as well. Thank you. The city council is discussing tonight the proposed accessory to all unit ordinance. I like many other. Thank you. The city council is discussing tonight the proposed accessory dual and unit ordinance. I like many others in the city. I'm an owner of residential property that would be eligible for an accessory dual and unit if the proposed ordinance were to pass. And as a result, my property may realize a reasonably foreseeable director and direct benefit from the ordinance. So after careful thought, I've determined that I'm able to participate in this transaction fairly objectively and in the public interest. The City Council is discussing tonight the proposed accessory dwelling unit ordinance. I like many others in the city, am an owner of a residential property that would be eligible for an accessory dwelling unit if the proposed ordinance were to pass. And as a result, my property may realize a reasonably foreseeable direct or indirect benefit from the ordinance. After careful thought, I've determined that I am able to participate in this transaction fairly objectively and in the public interest. The city council is discussing tonight the proposed accessory dwelling ordinance. I like many others in the city. I'm an owner of residential property that would be eligible for an accessory dwelling unit if the proposed ordinance were to pass. And as a result, my property may realize a reasonably foreseeable direct or indirect benefit from the ordinance. After careful thought, I've determined that I'm able to participate in this transaction fairly objectively and in the public interest. the city council is discussing tonight that their proposed is taking action or potentially will take action proposed relating to the proposed accessory dwelling unit ordinance. I like many others in the city and owner of residential property that would be eligible for an accessory dwelling unit if the proposed ordinance were to pass. And as a result, my property may realize are reasonably foreseeable, direct, or indirect benefit from the ordinance. After careful thought, I've determined that I'm able to participate in this transaction fairly objectively and in the public interest. The City Council is discussing tonight the proposed accessory dwelling unit ordinance. I like many others in the city. I'm an owner of a residential property that would be eligible for an accessory dwelling unit. If the proposed ordinance were to pass and as a result, my property may realize a reasonably foreseeable direct or indirect benefit from the ordinance. Aftercare plot, I have determined that I am able to participate in this transaction fairly objectively and in the public interest. The City Council is discussing tonight the proposed accessory dwelling unit ordinance. I, like others in the city. I'm an owner of residential property that would be eligible for an accessory dwelling unit. If the proposed ordinance were to pass, and as a result, my property may realize a reasonably foreseeable direct or indirect benefit from the ordinance. After careful thought, I've determined that I am able to participate in this transaction fairly, objectively and in the public interest. Thank you. Discussion on what Sally is proposed. Thank you. Laura. Thank you, Sally, so much. I'm, I'll just say I am in support of this. I know when we first began talking about accessor, I guess when I was first selected and really researching this, I was leaning towards having some sort of owner occupancy requirement and you know while I was on school board I always followed our or a council's. And that's why we have council. And listening to you tonight, Ms. Justice, I think you made it very clear that the pros outweigh the cons that there could be some risk, but not a lot. And to me, the benefit of being transparent and helping the public understand why we're making the decisions we're making. So in this case, again, originally I had, was leaning towards unoccupancy, but if the advice of our council is that, legally that might not be in our best interest because we could be opening ourselves up to potential lawsuits, that sort of thing. So based on the legal advice, then I would definitely change my mind, but I would also want to be able to explain that to the public, and that's hard to explain if everything's privileged. So I think that we are able to have more robust conversations both on this council and the Planning Commission, and we're more transparent to help the public understand. So, vitamin supported this. Thank you. Thank you for your comment, Erin. So I guess, I mean, my general view on it is that I wouldn't necessarily like support waving attorney client privilege. I think it's like a general matter. It's an important privilege to retain. I was frankly a little bit surprised at the last planning commission staff report because I actually think it almost went beyond what should have been in the staff report and arguably waived privilege without councils like Direction Earth Authority to do so. And so in my mind, like this came up on tonight's agenda, almost because the privilege had already been waived, frankly, in terms of the amount of information that was in the Planning Commission like staff report as to the legal analysis and as to sort of like city attorney, like bottom line on sort of the position. I think that if there, I think that it becomes difficult because it's sort of like this half conversation that's been in the public and half conversation that hasn't been, and I would have been more comfortable, as I said, to think about the policy considerations, and if there were like a bottom line, the city attorney has advised us this way or that way, not to do that, but a much less comfortable, putting like your legal analysis as an attachment to an agenda item, because then it just invites fly speccing of, oh, what is the city attorney's analysis? And I as a member of the public, can I contact the city attorney about the city attorney's analysis? And it's like, no, you're generally not engaging with members of the public about your analysis and to the extent you have planning commissioners raising, well, other city attorneys or other land use attorneys are giving conflicting advice on this, let's say, like that isn't necessarily a great debate to be having in the public. And it also means that there's like half the debate is happening and then you have sort of the same issue on the other side of someone saying, well, I have this conflicting legal advice, but I don't necessarily feel like I should wave the privilege as to that legal advice, right? So for me, I think like as a broader policy point, like this isn't a great way to proceed or precedent to set in terms of why in certain instances is it more important when all of what council's doing is in the public interest and we have to grapp with difficult decisions and we have to make judgment calls about whether we're going to follow or not follow your legal advice, why in one instance should it be an attachment to an agenda item but in all other instances it isn, and why if we are departing from, you know, everything that the other jurisdictions have like embraced, should be re-putting for example, like a road map of how you challenge every other jurisdiction in Virginia, like out as the false-terged city attorney advice, right? Like I think that there are practical considerations generally and then I think that there's just like, it's maybe not great precedent for us as a body to do. Other thoughts? Debbie? I guess I've just been curious as your reaction to those comments since I'm not a practicing attorney and you both are I defer to your knowledge and I'd be interested to see what you think if you think any differently after those additional comments Those are you know fair points, but it doesn't change kind of my risk of the harm. I don't think, I think the council gets to choose in each and every instance, whether it waves a privilege. Waving a privilege once doesn't mean you've set a precedent that requires you or makes it more likely that you would have to wave a privilege in the future. So in this particular case, because there's so many kind of phantom attorneys in the background, working, and giving conflicting advice that nobody gets to see, and nobody gets to debate, it's made a difficult topic to, it's made it a difficult case. And when I look at the legal advice that's been laid out, I don't see any real risk of harm to the city to have the advice be known. And it would take that real kind of the false constraint and that kind of awkwardness that comes from not being able to say kind of half of it and not other parts of it. It's a very, it's made it difficult to have this public debate. And when I weigh those against each other, given the low risk of harm to the city, it doesn't what what Council Member Flynn said, they're fair points, but it wouldn't change my analysis in this case. Thanks to you both. The thoughts? Dave? So I'm not entirely sure what sort of precedent we're setting here, which concerns me a great deal because I don't think we've ever taken an action like this before and I'm wondering why what the president is saying. I'm not sure what the president is saying. I'm not sure what the president is saying. I'm not sure what the president is saying. I'm not sure what the president is saying. I'm not sure what the president is saying. I'm not sure what the president is saying. I'm not sure what the president is saying. I'm not sure what the president is saying. I'm not sure what the president is saying. For example, for policy reasons, if consistent with those of other major jurisdictions, decided that... is a downside risk if the city, for example, for policy reasons, if consistent with those of other major jurisdictions, decided that that owner occupancy was something we wanted to do, we now got a published legal opinion from the city attorney undercutting that, which would be a significant negative. And I think you pointed that out in litigation. So it's not without downside risks. I'm a little bit I'm a little bit concerned about that as well So other you know, I'm just want to express those those concerns I'm not sure this justifies an extraordinary action. This is a highly political issue right now in the city. And my initial reaction is why now versus many, many other cases where there have been political issues with the city attorney expressing an opinion. On the other hand, I appreciate the role of transparency here. So that's sort of an interesting point. That's already sort of halfway for privilege anyway. So I'm sort of a mixed mind on this at this point. But I don't understand why we're doing it now and I don't understand, I don't understand, frankly, why this circumstance is so unique, but in any event, the request is before us and so I think we need to take action on it. Justine? My preference is to have this as a public discussion. I generally don't think that this is something to hide. These legal arguments are out there. And I think that there's great value in having the public understand the legal arguments and having this discussion and the sunshine and having transparency alongside it. I'll just agree with Ms. Underhill. That was very well said. Thank you. I'm not an attorney. I hear the concerns of the attorneys, but I think the transparency is important. It's been highly discussed in the community and people have come to me and the health care and the health care and the health care and the health care and the health care and the health care and the health care and the health care and the health care and the health care and the health care and the health care and the health care and the health care and the health care and the health care and the health care and the health care and the health care and the health care and the health care What we do see is the decision the legal advice that they got. What we do see is the decision the political parties chose to do. So given that we have our own council and we've gotten advice, I think I would also err on the side of transparency given that it's been discussed already. Separately, I personally just think it's also poor policy and unenforceable and so those should be part of our consideration as always. Like anytime we pass an ordinance, if we can't enforce it, that should be part of our decision-making. But as it relates to the legal advice, I think given what's in front of us, I would like to go forward with the City Attorney's recommendation. Someone have a motion? I move that City Council make available to the public, the privileged communications delivered by the City Attorney to the Planning Commission and to the City Council concerning the legalities, risks and alternatives associated with including an owner occupancy provision within the City's proposed accessory dwelling unit ordinance. Second. Second. Downs on the second call roll please. This Connolly, yes. This Downs, yes. This Flynnnolly. Yes. This down. Yes. This Flynn. Now. This is caught. Yes. Mr Schneider. Abstain. Is under Hill. Yes. They're hardy. Yes. That passes with one no and one abstention. So in terms of next step, Sally, given the planning commissions taking this up on Wednesday, is your plan to discuss this in their meeting or what's the the tactical next step? I would advise them that they are permitted to discuss the information they've received from me and I'll be present at the meeting if they have any questions they'd like me to answer, but they'll be aware that they can discuss those matters. Thank you. Thank you for the discussion on this. Anything else on this one. Okay. Let's move on to the consent items, why? So we are requesting a review of three contract approvals for the consent. One is with a CompASSed Compost crew and the council has had briefings on sort of significant changes to the composting policy. This is not that. This is really just a continuation of the current policy where people can subscribe and pay a monthly fee to be able to have curbside pickup from Compost Crew That contract has been in place for several years, and we anticipated it would stay under 100,000, so we had not brought it to council for approval. Now with a slight uptake in people subscribing, and the normal cost increases, we anticipate that we will exceed the $100,000 threshold and get 110 and the current fiscal year and so we're asking for council authorization for that expenditure. The second is approval of an appropriation under the city's approved capital improvements program to the contractors the contract, is with ComSec Incorporated for keyless access cars at the Aurora House and at the community center, as well as some camera upgrades and system upgrades for the system that works at City Hall, the library, and other facilities as well. So that contract authorization request is for $400,000 and that is a project that is in the Capital Improvements Program. And then the last item on consent is for next week is a contract and the amount of $425,000 in the contract is a 72 hour LLC, DBA national auto fleet for procurement of electric vehicles and hybrid vehicles. This is 100% funded with a grant that the city has received for this purpose. And the vehicles that would be purchased are listed in the staff report and be happy to answer any questions on that. But we are, this is one of our strongest moves we've been able to make so far on our green fleet transition. Schools are a step ahead of us on their school bus programs in terms of the dollar investments, but this will be a significant move for a public works department. The remaining dollars in that grant is being used for charging infrastructure at the property yard. And are those prices fixed on that green fleet? Like that I'm just thinking about the tariffs that are being implemented tomorrow. And what is reading about the price of electric vehicles jumping sky high very quickly. So are those fixed rates in that contractor? This is just an authorization to spend up to that amount. I know they're listed, so I'm sorry if it already said it or not. Let me get back with you on that. I know that there's our prices that are in the contract, but might there be a provision in that contract that says, you know, for, I know that many people are putting in sentences in the all contracts that if that they're held harmless for tariff increases. I'll check for that language. Just have concerns that might not bias what we... I'm excited that this is moving forward, but I have concerns that it may not bias what we thought it would purchase even a couple weeks ago. Now one thing I will say is there are by America requirements in that grant, so it may not be, I don't know what the tariff exposure is, but that is one of the core provisions of that act, and we are in full compliance with those by-america provisions. Great. And then just another comment. I know this is for our current contract with the composting, but I still just want to make sure we're thinking about future agreements with them if we are able to move forward some type of program that opens up to more of our residents or we incorporate into a rate or other things. So that's just a comment versus consent item. Thank you. So we would be able to have that flexibility but that's a separate policy question that'll come at a later date for the council. Okay. Laura. Thank you, White. And the... that will come at a later date for the council. Okay, Laura. Thank you, White. On the, also the composting, I did just notice a typo online 50. It says the contract has an initial term 3 June 31st, 2020, so it should be June 30th. Thank you. Yeah. And then, so just following up on that sentence, so with up to four successive one-year renewal options, is that can that price each year then increase depending on participation? So the authorization is for 110,000. So we would need to come back to you if we're going to exceed that amount. I think within some thresholds, percentage thresholds, let me get back with you before, let me answer the question before next week. Okay. Thank you. And then the other question I had was about the security. And I was just reading through online 15, talking about in October, 2022. And I was just curious. I'm not trying to point fingers or a label, but is the reason that it's taken a couple years? Is it because it was on the CIP track and it was slide, yeah. Put in, yeah, for that cycle, okay, I understand. I'm supportive of this, I think people just, I just recently had traveled to New Orleans. I think we all know about what happened there on New Year's Day. New Orleans City Council was given security recommendations to block those streets and they didn't do it. And so, yeah, I think this is definitely something that we need to move forward on. So thank you very much. I would note that that security audit had a lot of recommendations. We've taken a lot of the smaller actions that didn't need a CFP approval. Right. And so I wanted to counsel to ensure that. Right, just how we slide. Okay, thank you very much. Erin, I just had a, I guess confirmation on the third item on the auto fleet that we would need to do these upgrades regardless, so regardless of what the funding is, we would need to make this investment. Yes, and that's one of the reasons it's taken us a little bit of time to move forward on this purchase because we have older vehicles that are phasing out and this is replacing this. So this is in the normal course of our fleet replacement. So I couldn't actually find the staff report. It's not linked in item on the online agenda. Oh, yeah, I meant to mention that. So I can actually read what the fleet changes were. I picked up the paper copy outside. And so that's why I just looked at it. But it's correct that it's still not there. So it should be added to the online agenda. It just says 425 and I was gonna ask like what are we buying? Yeah, yeah Okay, so it should be added to the online agenda. It just says 4.25 and I was gonna ask like what are we buying? Yeah. Yeah. Okay so it's two Ford e-transit cargo vans. Those are 100% EV. To look at it Cindy. That's not there yet. I can't post. It's two Ford F150 lightning pickups 100% EV and that's six Ford Maverick hybrids and 2 Ford 150 hybrids. And the hybrids, you know, those are for missions that go on longer than your typical battery charge for times when the work is going to exceed what that charge to be and that's why there's the mix Okay Thank you Other questions comments on these three items I was gonna plus one what Debbie said about the third been option so when I did the math the 110 I think it's for $510,000 for compost crews, $582 households, and that works out to be $190 per household that we're subsidizing. And they already pay either $88 a year or 165 a year based on the online information to sign up for compost crew. And so I guess if we have the opportunity to consider the idea of a third bin for all, I don't wanna compare those numbers with what the numbers would be. theoretically you would have some scale, right? If you're doing it across the city and you actually reduce your tipping fees and you have less trash because more people are composting, the math should work out where you would be able to provide that service for everybody without as big of a subsidy per household. I don't think people understand that's $190 per household per year. I think the total cost will go up. The subsidy per household would go down. And just to tag on just to be also long with this is the comments we got from Miss Silverman last go around with what they're paying for regular trash collection. I think that's, I mean, I know they're somewhat different but also somewhat related in terms of outpackage expenses. Yeah, I think there's probably a majority of us that's still interested in exploring the idea of more equity across. Single-family households versus multi-family condos and town homes that don't, that is to pay for it out of their tax rate, but don't get service. That seems to be something that keeps coming up at least for the past several years and it'd be great to tackle that at some point Okay Anything else on the three consent items You know motion It's just gonna be a next week's schedule right. Oh, yeah requests really it's good Do we want to talk about schedule tonight before we go into closed session with Sally? Yes. And then we can cancel the Wednesday morning meeting. Okay, why? So I'm going to need my spectacles to read the smaller print. It's on the screen if that helps. So we do have a... Do you need a bar? I'm squinting. I'm going to soldier on. We're zoom in on this so we can read that. No, I can sit. I think see it coming through. Wow, that's really good. Yeah. That's a bit touchy. So we do have a Gov Ops. One, we will have an event for Jim Snyder tomorrow at 4 o'clock. I just wanted to note that. The clerk, I think, did share that invitation. And then on Friday, we have a GovOps committee. One thing I should, maybe, hold on. Just, let's take it in order here. On the fifth, if we do cancel the mayor's agenda meeting, we do still have a nine o'clock ask the council. So it would be a half an hour later. GovOps on Friday at nine o'clockclock and we'll be talking about process improvements generally and we'll also be talking about a road map on the permitting process improvements. March 10th regular session of women's history month, Brown's hardware proclamation. We'll have the missing link sidewalk plan, a briefing and a discussion. The EVA. Could I stop you? Just so we go chronologically. What's not on there right now is the March 8th pop up resource fair for federal contractors. That's on Saturday. That's right. Saturday 8th. Can I just get a check on who's planning to go? Because I know this. What was on the day? 12field High School. I should be able to have the air in the later. OK. Anyone else? I'm able to go. Part of it. Yeah. Oh my god. OK. There's not meant to be speeches. It really is like a resource information fair. But I think we're just planning to plan for a account and that sort of thing. And will city staff be there? Yes, we'll have city staff, two tables, and the city of false church and then the other look. So you all are able to network and hear issues directly, and it's just important to know sort of the total count of council, but we don't need to know your exact rival time That's 12 to 5. Okay. I did go to when buyer had his staff at the library last Wednesday here. He had office hours. And so I stopped by for good hour and a half. And there was actually a fair number of people who had come with who are Fed workers, either currently still employed or longer employed. And so it's just good to hear from people directly about what their concerns are. So to the extent that you can make it, and make time on a Saturday, I think that's good to hear from our constituents. Thank you. Thank you Cindy for the work on that. I know it's been quick to pull together. So, literally. And we'll add that to the schedule. Thank you. And the city website also has job resources and other resources for members of the community that are impacted by by the workforce reductions at the federal government. So Mayor if I could just confirm I heard three council members attending on Saturday. I'll be there in the first half I think Laura and Mary. And I'm a tentative. And I think they're okay. They're okay. What do you use? Thank you. So the Economic Development Authority, so we'll have missing the missing links sidewalk plan. The Economic Development Authority will be there for their annual report. We have a closed session on the H1B visa question that may not be on the agenda based on tonight's discussion. The two ordinances that we just discussed will be on the agenda. Under other business, we'll have the love sculpture, the three consent items, and then a work session on the accessory dwellings. And the purpose of that is to go through the planning commissions recommendations. I may be calling in for that meeting. I will likely be absent from that. I'll be in Europe that night. I'll try to pull a Mayor Hardy, but I'm not sure if I can. Yes, that's not easy. It was miserable. Dave does it all the time. Yeah. March 17th, sewer capacity purchase agreement, tree canopy code, scoping discussion. Now we'll have a discussion on the community survey report. And we'll have a broad Washington sidewalk easement vacation. I think that's pretty as much as a pre-consent review as that's something that's not terribly meaningful in terms of the pedestrian experience, but it's a technical thing that we need to do. So we're not having budget and finance on the 21st. I thought I had updated the schedule, any right? So that's not on the... Yeah, I think it was just that one that still was still on the, I think, everything else. So there will be a budget and finance committee on April 11th. Yeah. And that will be our third quarter financial report. And we'll have the updated revenue picture for the council to be able to see as you're considering that five 26 budget March 24th Proclamation for equal payday And an initiating resolution for the tree canopy ordinance will present our the school and the city manager's proposed budgets and kick off budget season. We'll have second reading on the two ordinances we just discussed and this sidewalk easement vacation. On March 28th at Claren Don's at 6 p.m. or maybe 6.30 pm there's an event celebrating Brown's hardware. I'm gonna skip to April 3rd, we'll have a budget town hall. On the April 7th work session, we'll have our budget work session with a focus on the Capital Improvements program, final review of the Through-A-Cupacity Purchase Agreement. And then April 14th. Planning Commission will be there for their annual report. First, reading on the budget ordinances and the tax and fee ordinances. Second reading and public hearing on the accessory dwellings. And second reading on the sidewalk easement vacation. That has to be done by ordinance. and second reading on the sidewalk easement vacation. That has to be done by ordinance. Looking ahead to April 21st, a budget work session on operations and strategic priorities, judicial agreement, tenor Hill and Southgate rezoning, and a review of the affordable living policy. I know I asked this before but if there's any way we could have even the day of the school board's presentation so we're not trying to digest it on the fly. I know there's some things that we can look up on the website, the question answers and things like that, but that would be helpful. I know we talked about this, you know, that sometimes like to have the big presentation, but even just a couple hours before the meeting, I think that I think we would be able to have more better questions for the school ward if we had an hour or two just to look at it before digest it beforehand. So our goal this year is going to send everything out on the Thursday packet. Oh, okay. Great. If there's some crisis why that can't happen all that the council and I but that's what we're that's our operating. Thank you. I think we were able to do that last year. Yeah. So that was a nice precedent. Right. Can I ask a question about the schedule? And maybe this came up at last week's meeting that I missed by mistake. Virginia Village, next steps. Yeah. That kind of fell off the schedule again. And I guess I'm interested in, like, even if we're not having a full discussion, some interim update is to to what's going on Is there any work happening? What's the anticipated timeline? So The I've been drafting a memo for the city council that's fairly lengthy to provide some things to think about And an update of the things and staff has been doing so that will be coming to Council shortly, certainly by the end of this week. And I do have some discussions with the city attorney of what can be appropriately discussed in closed session because it is a sort of essentially real estate transactions. But we wanna, there'll be certain things can be discussed in closed session and certain things that probably can't be. We had to just navigate that. And I guess I would ask on that. And we've talked about this before with some of the housing related items that, you know, we just don't get an email to counsel because it puts us in a difficult position when it's not actually privileged communications of not having. I mean, we just had a discussion about transparency. And I will say I get a fair number of questions about what's happening for junior village. And when I get emails to a council email box, that's just kind of like an update. I don't always feel like that's information that I can necessarily like share with the constituent, given the way that it's been shared with council. And so I think that in the spirit of transparency that where they're not like real estate acquisition type items, then there should be a public update. And this is now dragged on, I will say, in somewhat of deliberate use of language for several months, where it's on the calendar, it's off the calendar. I receive public requests about what's happening. I say it's coming up on the calendar. It was postponed on the calendar, and now it's off the calendar again. So I would like there to be much more of a concerted effort given this council's repeated questions about what we're doing on the affordable housing front. And we're now a year plus in to sort of, you know, this work plan, and there's a large affordable housing like component of it, and I feel like, frankly, we haven't been doing what we need to do on this front, and we haven't been like elevating it to the level that it deserves as council discussion. Aaron, do you mean the fields or Virginia, Virginia, or both? Frankly. Both. I think why we talked about getting updates to Council for both. Okay. Other things? Okay. Oh, a couple of things on scheduling. We started talking about vision zero earlier this evening with the chief's presentation. Right at my house, there's a three way stop Columbia and Vambian Street. We've gone through multiple iterations of bumping out curbs, changing striping, asking people to cut things back. And we kind of have these ebbs and flows. The last 20 plus years I've lived there of safety. We've had several near misses again in that area. People just blow through that stop sign on Columbia. I don't know why. I mean, we've made multiple. It goes back to driver behavior. However, that said, I've been discussing with my neighbors vision zero and taking the concepts and applying them across the city and how this should be helping overall, not just individual intersections. And so I was like, it's on our schedule and I see it is, but it's in that to be scheduled. So to the extent you can just give a time frame, like, is that the end of the year, you know, 2020, like when it fits in that would be good to know just because these conversations are happening real time. So my request is to, as you, I know there are a lot of details to work through on Vision Zero and how we would adopt it for false church, but to the extent you can share more of a timeframe that would be great. And then the next scheduling question I have is a CDA community development authority meeting at West Falls. I think we're supposed to have one first quarter-ish. And there was a request for scheduling one, so I don't know who would schedule that or if I should be scheduling. Yeah, I'll take the lead in scheduling that. I think there is a request that there be one in the month of March. And so that I'll get an email out to everybody that's on the CDA. We also, you know, Bob Young was a member of the CDA. And he's no longer with us. Peter Kean is the alternate. And so we'll invite him to the meeting. I don't think he's been active before that I can recall. And so we'll make sure that he has been included in all correspondence, so that will be kind of a new addition to the board. We won't have an EDA member to the board, and we probably should. And so I think it's probably something for the City Council to take up on under appointments. Okay, and that's it. I have other comments that maybe people build more scheduling things first. Just one matter, the legislative committee I think this fence was to not hold the meeting on Wednesday as previously planned, is that right? Correct, I'm recommending canceling the March 5th one and the proposed date would be the morning of March 11th or 12th, pending on committee members availability. Okay, why don't we check on people's availability and get back to Cindy on that? Yeah. Yeah. You should have on the two things that we should have. Either one. There's second. Why do you set up this okay? It's said we're very, very, very sincere, isn't it? Yeah. I just had a little section on the other side. I want to that Councilman will join me for. So March 16th, the city of Fairfax is coming to town in four trails. I had made an informal offer to members of their council just because they're debating several check trail project in Fairfax City. And so their council is going to come in down on Sunday and walk. If you can definitely know the impact on the offers of their view all, I'd like to go for a walk with us too. Also, I'm not getting a requires after walking on Sunday but people would like to join in on this day. It's nice day. They're welcome to do that. It's coming in the weather. Okay. It'll be Sunday, 16th from 2004. And I need somebody to figure out where I am. You need to sit at all, 16th from 2004. Until I get so many to figure out where I am, you need to sit down, you can see through trails, it's a great day, you can go to the floor using it, and then just around and draw a tree to take the proper morning and back up to about two or three miles or so. It's more of an FYI who would like to meet the numbers. I'm sitting here to ask that we've mentioned also the median tax impact. It's a great time for assessments given that our assessment is like higher than our neighbors, even with the proposed two NASA cuts, the tax impact. You So, higher, that's what I mailed and they all were mailed it. I will just throw out this and twerking. you I'm not sure if you're going to have a question. I'm not sure if you're going to have a question. I'm not sure if you're going to have a question. I'm not sure if you're going to have a question. We have, we have that we've got to work the past. Yeah, I used to have it. You said W and other. I just want to couple. Sure. I just wanted to thank you. Last Wednesday, we talked about the Columbia and Cherry Street problem and it was temporarily fixed pretty promptly, like the next day or so. And so thank you for that and encouragement to get that done. And the neighbors will be awaiting the final paving, but now at least it continues to be safe. So thank you for that. I also wanted to just, if you would give a quick update on that poll, like what is the poll on North Washington, it's a different poll that still impacted the city hall and city operations. So there were conversations with Dominion about not having that single tract. And evidently, it still is. Could you give any updates to those conversations with Dominion or give us some sense of how we safeguard. So obviously, just briefly, I'll say a few words and Cindy can provide a little bit more of an update. But yes, it was not the poll that has been struck three times. I was the poll next to it, same effect. And when they do take that power state on for a period of time, but once they replace the poll, they need to de-energize it. And that affected about 300 accounts, including some of her key businesses who were impacted as well and city hall. One thing that was unique about it for us is that we were in the midst of routine maintenance for our backup generator when this crash happened. And so it had some unique negative impacts for us in our network because of that sort of wrinkle for us. It's good that we're doing routine maintenance, but the timing was bad bad. Cindy in terms of discussions with Dominion? Yes, the project that would give us a redundancy off of North Washington and bring it in Park Avenue is designed and the power line will come up in DeCando and tie into the Park Avenue Great Street project and then do a step-down transformer between City Hall and the farmhouse where we already have green boxes. So we have to wait to Great Streets before we get redundancy off those two poles. We have a meeting next week to be able to discuss whether they can proceed up. They've got the design. They're confirming the right away and see if we can bring it in prior to. Originally the plan was tied because a construction would be concurrent. So we're looking at the cost impacts and the timing to proceed it earlier. If we can't pull it up, Great Streets is 2028. Currently working on the review and the access because a lot of the conduit work is funded under the CIP. So we got a segregate out the design and the cost functions. I would say that just doesn't seem acceptable to wait till 2028 to not have city hall go up. Power if this poll continues or two polls continue to get hit. Yeah and I mean I'll I email to Cindy and why it's separately about this because we're one of the 300 households. I think council members, nighters, probably one of them too. That consistently when City Hall goes out, you know, we lost power at 9.30 at night without notice for like an entire eight hours because, you know, it was de-energized and I understand that, but like last year was 16 hours during the middle of winter and then another year, you know, so it's happening with enough frequency that I think we do need to think about, you know, given that city hall is on this line and you have affected neighborhoods, can this get done sooner than Great Streets? And beyond that, you know, is there sort of an O-com mechanism so that when this happens or there's a planned outage or there's, you know, a disruption from an accident that there can be like targeted messaging that occurs so that people have a sense of, you know, how long a fix this is going to be or how long you're potentially going to be, you know, without power. Reviewing both of those items and during the outage, I was in regular communication with Gaston and Kevin. So they're aware of that and we're looking at options for sooner than later. I guess the other question is why are these two poles getting hit four times in a year? And I know we talked about making them more visible. So if we can't fix a redundancy issue sooner, which I can we have people stop hitting the polls? Public Works has actually assessed that and part of the challenge is just the road geometry and speeding and actually was talking to the chief about being more visible out there for enforcement on speeding. I think must have changed, right? Like it's really been four times in a year. Yeah, but nothing has changed. This poll's been there for 50 years. And so it is- Call me Baptist opened the past year, actually. There's a big building. There's a big new building and a big new stop. Like the street actually has changed and that's stretch. And the sidewalk is wider. That's the only thing. Maybe it's visually that you're coming past the church is closer there. I don't know. There's a building that's closer as you drive by. There were accidents prior to it just last fall, we had the three and then this one. So it's definitely an ultimate goal would underground the power line so that they're not the executive goal. Yeah, Dave. Thanks. I'm a dendron. This sounds like a repeat of a conversation we've had before. I would just ask city staff, if you need a formal action by city council or you need any of us there meeting with the minions to underscore the city's priority on fixing this in terms of redundancy. I'm sure many council members would be interested in participating. I know I would. So the other thing is the weirdness about that street is, there's not much of a curb, but there's enough of a curb. If you keep going straight, you're going to hit those poles. So I guess it's too hard for people to go 35 miles or what is a speed limit there? 20, 25? 25? It's too hard to go 25 miles an hour and stay on the street, apparently. So if that's true, then we've got to take some actions to prevent these repeated power outages. And obviously, as an individual, I don't like it, but I'm more concerned about the city's operations. So is there a way by which the council can emphasize that we really want redundancy created here and that it can't wait? I think that point's been made. I would say let us do the meeting and I'll brief Mr. Schoels and then we could circle back. I would say the the minion knows as a priority is the matter of funding and the timing and the the construction so we'll have to see what options that I'll report back to Mr. Shoes. I mean to justify creating redundancy. I know there may be a cost but how many places in the entire Commonwealth of Virginia to have the same poll hit and no action is taken about it with regard to the minion power especially when the polls that are hit are feeding critical governmental infrastructure. So I think the bigger picture is, yeah, we know there's a cost, but arguably this is a justified circumstance under which the condition needs to be adjusted. It seems to me. So again, it's an offer, you know, I know staff has been working on this, but I, we got to move on this somehow. And it really is a, it's not unique anymore. Perhaps it's an opportunity for special legislation at the state level in the sense that when government operations are impaired by a poll that has had certain vulnerabilities exposed that the law is the dominion has to do, fix that situation within a certain amount of time. Like, and that is a public interest that the state might be willing to take up. I guess we'll echo Dave's comment. We're happy to escalate this with our government affairs people in dominion. We see. Thank you. Thanks. Just quick question. Is there something that people if people are driving distracted or reckless or whatever else? Is there something else that they could hit instead of hitting the pole and then causing the outage like could we put like Just a gigantic big barrier there, but Sure, so put something it would be better if they hit a cement wall than if they had the, like, some flexi posts. We have a public work so reassess it. Our former public work director did look at that part of it is the constraint to the lane and then you could have more major physical injuries to the vehicle that they had a Jersey wall versus a pole. So they were trying to sort out options that is pretty constrained other than the reflective tape. We've tried, which is so hard. Counter-intuitively actually creating a pinch point or something else, actually, at least from the research, it makes people pay attention more. And so having some sort of traffic, narrowing, or divers in there will give people the sense of the way you can get attention and not drive so fast and nervous. Narrowing, yes, the Jersey wall in front of the pole though because then you have a car hitting a heavy concrete. So exploring opportunities. You know that, you're in different and makes you go what is this? The limit on north-boshing there is 35 30 I think it's 25 in the city well Not that people go that when we did the Conversion to 20 miles per hour We also had as a process to move that whole section to 25 miles per hour I'll need to check the signage and make sure that happened, but that was the intent. Then goes to 35 once you get into Arlington County, but that was the only like 100 yards in the entire city that was 35 miles per hour, and so we rectify that. Not on South Washington, it's still 30. Oh, 30. Yeah. You talked about taking the 25. That's the policy question. That's the Fairfax County center. No, I'm not. Both, I mean, it's both. But it's, I had thought it was just on North Washington. Sun south as well. Washington is still 30, I think I want to say. Is it, is 29 in our purview to actually do traffic coming and slow it down further with narrowing of lanes, like get the lanes down to 10 feet wide and that would slow cars down maybe. So anything we would do it need to get through Vita But it's part of the North Washington CIP which has some preliminary reviews when we applied to NVTA That is part of the concept of narrowing the lanes so you could allow for either bus rapid transit or shared Mike bus option, so that would be part of the design and the community engagement. So long term, that also would underground improve the intersection for crosswalks and stuff, which would naturally slow down. But what we're talking about is figuring out a way to do something sooner than later on redundancy and some interim safety measures on the road. Yeah, it's interesting. That actually section gets really backed up at rush hour. So I think that's one of the worst congested strips, but this is, you know, at rush hour in the evening heading south. It's backed way up. But I think, you know, I don't think matters. When there's no rush hour, I think people are just speeding down that room, no matter what the speed limit is. Passing is rush hour all the time. Yeah, next one. There you go. There you go. Yeah. OK. Debbie, I think you had other items, right? Yeah. So I just moved some of these to next Monday. But I just wanted to get an update also on As I was going through my email on the signage at West Falls development. We have a big basketball state championship game tomorrow We're gonna have a ton of people in from Other jurisdictions the first time we've ever hosted, which is super exciting But I guess I want to make sure that all of our signage on detours, pedestrians, where everybody's walking, because there will be people who park further away based upon crowds and parking. I want to make sure that somebody has reviewed and made sure all of our pedestrians signage around the West Falls development is up, accurate, safe, just thinking about it, always is important, but in particular, there's a big crowd tomorrow night. Yeah, thanks for that. It was all accurate on Friday. We'll check again and make sure it is. We'll also talk with the schools just to send in the help on community. It's quite windy Saturday. I lifted a few of those signs up. Oh, okay. The pedestrian detours and I just have fallen. At least fallen over after Saturday. And so we can make sure that they're all up and in place and people understand where they're going and that would be great. I'd like to be able to continue to host these kind of things in the future and I think that a good first showing will be great. Quarter final? This is State Quarter final. State Quarter final. I was going to, can I add something there because I was looking at everyone, economic development standpoint that this is like our first opportunity ever to host such a big game in the city of all-search. We've never been able to do it before because we never had a gym the right size before. So it is like the result of our commercial development and it will lead to people coming and visiting false church. I don't know if there's a way to capture that. In some kind of economic development report, but I do think there's a lot of, that would be a good thing to start to do for economic development offices. What are they? We have an EDA meeting during the game. So, so maybe they could go and develop being the or just talking about it. Yeah, the game. Not going to the game. I agree, completely. And hopefully it'll show the West Falls development that in future years. If we have that, when those restaurants are open and even potentially places to stay, if people are coming from multi hours away, they could stay at a hotel that's across the street from the actual game, which I think is going to be pretty cool. Thanks, I'll save everything to else until next week. Thanks, Erin. I can do some of this by email, but I did have one question following up on the parklet discussion. So I had previewed for the Citizens Advisory Committee that there for our house that there was sort of strong views on the various boards and commissions about moving away from sort of naming that these parklets in particular might be geography based and after the newsletter went out with the names of the parklets did receive a couple of comments from Aurora House Citizens Advisory Committee members and reassured them that regardless of the geographically-based names for those parklets that there and the support and the support and the support and the support and the support and the support and the support and the support and the support and the support and the support and the support and point person for that for ensuring that that happens that when those signs go up that that third sign is also part of that and that we just don't lose track of that effort given that the city has been co-ordinated with the family on that installation. And then I think the ceremony will be in April so it would be nice to have it in time for the dedication. So I can follow it with that in a couple of other or how specific questions by email, but wanna just to get that out there given that it was council support for doing that. Vizdi, for that. I think we had even talked about maybe it's even like one as a combined, you know, if that makes it easier, just a combined, you know, sign that has talked about each sort of. I think the EDH tomorrow night's talking about signage because they funded the signage for Mr. Brown's Park and they wanted to be consistent with the other way finding signs. I think the EDH Mar and I it's talking about signage because they funded the signage for mr. Brown's park and they want to be consistent with the other way finding signs. I think their plans to get going on the signs down that we've named them for the other two. We could talk about how to incorporate Christina. That makes sense. And it's you know, you know, he's on anyone, you know, who's here and there at that meeting, I'm just asking that it, you know, stay part of the discussion that we don't drop back to like two signs as opposed to three places that we are marking. I have to, that amount is tomorrow. Okay. Sorry, I just had one other. We have gotten an tremendous amount of email discussion about Library book, a children's library book that was That there were those who didn't want listed. I just wanted to have you reconfirm the process There is a process in place if you don't care for a book That's you know thing. There's a reason a book shouldn't be in our library that there's a process one goes through and then the library board makes a decision. Could you just repeat that out loud? So anybody's listening or paying attention that there is a process and it is being followed and we're not ignoring that. There's a set way of doing that. That's absolutely correct and we are following that procedure. So there has been an appeal made. It went to an appeal board and that decision is now being appealed to the library board of trustees itself. They're planning to have a meeting to hear that appeal on March 26th. And I don't know that there's much more to be said about it other than that, but there I'll stop there. Okay, I just wanted residents to know that they're not being ignored, that there is a policy in place and that it's going through, working its way through the system. So, thank you. Do we know is that defined on the website? Yes. Okay. To the public. That's a good way to, if anyone ever wanted to research it first. Thank you. Other council comments, discussion item? Steve? One quick question. The Fairfax County sewer agreement, which is not scheduled to come up until April I guess. We have a briefing with the council at your next work session on March 17th. Okay, two weeks. Well, that gives us the amount of money involved. Okay. And the bonding and all the rest of that. It's that's an option. That's right. Thanks. One thing that would be great for O-com to plug because I think the changes are happening now is the Momata better bus network, the bus re-haul is happening. So, signage according to Momata is going up now even though the changes are happening till June. So, our popular 28A is turning into the F 20. That's excuse me, F 20, yes. 20. So I think they're apparently gonna go and update all the signs at all of our bus stops. So it would be good to let people know about the rebranding and. Kerry and I are communicating with the OCOM. It'll be the new signage going to F to Stanford for Fairfax County, all-sturch and Fairfax City. Also two of our bus stops will be consolidated because they're too close together and they're not compliant with the city adopted bus shelter plan. So we'll be messaging that. The moment is rolling out the signs over the next three months and we haven't gotten a specific date for like our signs, but as the mayor noted June 29th is when the change will actually be effective. The new signs will include the new bus route name, but the old one too to help in the transition and there'll be a new phone number from momata for writers to call it. They questions. Which bus stops are getting consolidated? Do you know? There is one down by the Raukourt area because it's right near the one closer to the intersection in Taco Bell. And then there's actually one over in the area of we've been talking about North Washington and Power Poles because there's a bus stop at Kaiser and then just a block down and they're too close. They just have flags. Those two just have flags that not shelters. Okay. Any other miscellaneous items before we go into closed session? Okay. Let's someone have a motion to go into closed. I guess this is upon a motion made by Council Member Connelly. Sorry. Seconded by Council Member Flynn. And passed by Votus City Council. when in to close session pursuant of VA code 2-3711A8 for consultation with legal council employed or retained by the City Council regarding a specific legal matter requiring the provision of legal advice by such council. Specifically to receive advice concerning city sponsorship of H1B visas. Council member Connolly. Yes. Council member Downes. Yes. Council member Flynn. Yes. Council member Sean Tiscott. Yes. Council member Schneider. Yeah. Council member Underhill. Yes. Mayor Hardy. Yes. We're gonna go to Oak. Yes. Thank you for doing that. Wait a second. I'm not sure that was what I was supposed to be doing. We do it differently for the electronic participation ones. you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you I'm going to put it in the oven. I'm going to put it in the oven. I'm going to put it in the oven. I'm going to put it in the oven. I mean, if you're going to go to school today. I'm going to go to school today and I'm going to go to tomorrow. I'm going to go to school today. I'm going to go to school today and I trip today and a field trip tomorrow. We always do a field trip. I'm just glad it's going to be a normal tomorrow. 61, 12. You did a great job. You did a great job. You did a great job. Really? Yeah. Different pandas though. They didn't bring the other ones? They bring the same panties. Are we different from the other ones? They give you the same panties. The panty cams back up, it's all on the rage. How long ago? A couple months. A couple months. Oh, interesting. What made that first transfer on there? Right, right, right. Okay. We're ready to come out. We're down with Pam to talk. Okay. Okay. Okay. Oppon emotion made by Councilmember. Is Scott. And seconded by Councilmember. Downs. I got downed Passed by a vote of City Council council reconvene an open session Connolly Yes, down yes Flynn yes, Sean's is got yes Snyder yeah underhill yes, already yes coming out time is 95 Let's do the certification now. Upon a motion made by Connolly seconded by Flynn Upon a firm at a roll call vote and open session it was certified that one only public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements and two only such public business matters as were identified in the motion by which the Close meeting was convened, heard, discussed or considered in the closed session or meeting by the body. Connolly. Yes. Downs? Yes. Lynn? Yes. Sean Ciscott? Yes. Snyder? Yeah. Underhill? Yes. Hardy, yes. Okay, we are back in open session, Council. Someone have a motion. I do. I move to authorize the city manager to proceed as discussed in closed session. Second. All the roll please. Ms. Connelly? Yes. Ms. Downes? Yes. Ms. Flynn? Yes. Ms. Hiscott? Yes. Mr. Schneider? Yes. Ms. Underhill? Yes. Mayor Hardy? Yes. That passes, Ms. Downes, yes, Ms. Flynn, yes, Mrs. Scott, yes, Mr. Schneider, yes, Mr. Underhill, yes, Mayor Hardy, yes, that passes council Thank you council move to adjourn All right. you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you