I'm not sure if I want to figure it out. Yeah, okay. They're not there, but they're not there. I'm telling you, I'm telling you, I'm telling you. Oh, we should be doing all of this. We will be recording, so they can be recording. I know, but if I watch it, we can have it. If you wanted to, I think you can get it on. It's nice and better. I just saw are some. No, no, this can help me as watching the video later. Okay, I'll have a fight. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. It has an interesting lecture for the staff and the president. I know what you mean. I'm a member of the staff and I was like, who are these two? There's two minutes. There are students from Latins and from many other places. Thank you. Yes, we have a great good evening. Hello, good evening. Are we all ready to get started? Yes. Okay. Welcome to the Monday October 7th work session. Let's get started. Cindy, can you call roll please? Sure mayor. Ms. Connelly? Here, Ms. Flynn. Here, Ms. Scott. Here. Ms. Schreiner. Here. Ms. Dr. Hill. Here, and Mayor Hardy. Here, thank you. Before we jump into the agenda items, I wanted to hold a moment of silence today in remembrance of the anniversary of October 7th, for all the innocent lives of the lost and the trauma in the Middle East. I think as a community, we grieve with everybody and hold space for everyone who's experienced loss, fear, and suffering, and we all wish for peace. I would ask that we join in a moment of silence together. Great. Thank you. We'll be entirely appropriated if this day goes down in memory as a day of infamy not unlike December 7, 1941 or 9-11. Not only for the terrible events of this day, but the killings and the destruction of families, communities, and economies that have followed. Thank you. Quiet. All right. Thank you, Mayor Hardy and Members of Council. First item on our work session agenda is a request by West Falls Development for a 30-day extension for the outside closing date for the senior component of the West Falls project. Joining us at this meeting is William Magger, who's with experience senior living. We also have Mary Beth Aphidusian representing Hoffman Associates. Henry Zhang is our lead staff for this requested amendment to the Conference of Agreement to grant this 30-day extension. The staff recommendation is to review this, discuss this together and schedule it for Council consideration, formal consideration at your regular meeting on October 28th. Mr. Zhang. Yep. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Scho. Good evening, Madame Mayor and members of the City Council. My name is Henry Zayn. I'm the case planner for the West Falls Project. Before I started, I need to let you know there's a color handout which shows the entire West Falls project, the layout. The parcel we're talking about is the under the name of the reserve. That's the D1 parcel. Basically, I will start with the Stafford but line number three. Basically, the council is requested to adopt a resolution also writing the city manager to execute the seven amendment to the comprehensive agreement to extend outside closing date for the senior component from the existing of purpose 31st to November 30th this year. All as Mr. Schell pointed out, this deadline for transferring the one parcel has been amended several times. The current deadline was approved back in 2023 in the Sixth Amendment by the City Council. If you recall that ESL is the senior living developer approved by the Council back in the 5th amendment. This request to extend that line on the 7th amendment is very limited to 30 days only, without any other amendment. Line 29, as stated in the closing date extension letter, which you are finding the attachment number 2. ESL is actively working towards the coasting. Right now they have already put in several applications for building permit. And also they are in the middle of posting full bonds with the city. All this permits currently pending, actually the foundation permit has been approved subject to inspection. This ESB approved back in 2022 in October 24, so it's almost two years now. There's no significant change of the total number of the 12 units. Line 86, given the limited extension of the closing deadline by 30 days only. This proposed amendment doesn't have any significant negative impact on the senior project. In terms of timing line 91, it's immediate. The existing closing date is October 31st, which is quickly approaching. This concludes my presentation. I'm available for a question. Thank you. You know, also noted, Mr. Magger, with experienced senior living is on the call as well, and Mayor Hardy maybe we could invite him if you would like to say anything about this request as well. Sure, welcome. And just as he was turning on his microphone. I might have dropped the call. I'm not sure it looks like he might have dropped off. There he is. Welcome. Can you all hear us? I'm having a hard time hearing every word. I heard you say why it there he is. Okay. So, Mr. Magger, the floor is yours. If you'd like to speak to the request for the 30 day extension or provide any other updates with your progress. And I will note for those in the room, we've gotten a report that the team's audio is having trouble as dropping some words. So I've alerted Sophie. I can't hear every what people are saying it's every other word maybe every third or fourth word I'm picking up. But if the floor is mine I first I want to say thank you to staff for getting us this far. As Henry mentioned, we've made great progress with the SESP. And with our permit applications and so I want to thank the staff for their help. And in terms of progress as we're nearing the finish line and we must close this transaction by November 27th. I want to turn the microphone over to Hunter McLeod so he can give you a little bit more color on the progress we've made even in this difficult capital environment to form the capital to get us ready to close this transaction. Hunter? Yeah. Thank you Bill. Good evening everybody. I'll second Bill and just thanking everybody for their help getting us this far. We have been very busy getting to where we are today. The capital markets seem to be coming back alive and we've identified a lender group and two equity groups to take us to the finish line. With that said, as such things have not moved at the pace that we anticipated, and while everyone is working diligently to close as quickly as possible, at this time we just need a short extension to ensure that we get all parties to the table by the end of November. I think the project has been very well received from all the groups that we've talked to. There's been significant interest in both the capital markets, but also from a resident and neighborhood perspective. We've had a couple of dozen inquiries on deposits already. So I think the project and its infancy is being well received and we continue to work with Hoffman to make sure that this becomes a reality. So that punchline is, you know, we are getting close to the finish line, but we need a few extra days to get us over the home and get this thing closed. Okay, thank you. Questions for the two gentlemen? Okay, I have one. So you said you're close to the finish line, but do you expect, and hopefully not, hopefully the answer is no, but do you expect another extension if we don't get to end of November or is it looking pretty promising? It's looking pretty promising. We don't anticipate another extension at this time unless the markets go the complete opposite direction. So there's always that caveat but as of today we're feeling pretty good about where we are. Okay. Sir Aaron, I had one question in the attachments your letter to the city referenced maybe issues with dominion and the power for the building that was going to necessitate maybe changes in construction plans. And I was just wondering if you could comment on assuming that the date holds what your timeline is in terms of actual construction given some of those issues that you sort of forecasted or foreshadowed? Sure, great question. Yeah, Dominion changed some of the dimensions for their boom length related to the transformer and I won't go out of details, but the short answer is we have come to a resolution with dominion. It's a very painful resolution as we are moving a lot of our underground systems and actually redesigning our SOE and some of our foundation systems. With that said we've made great strides in the last three weeks and we're anticipated to be complete with those changes in the next couple weeks. With the hope of being resumitted to the city to get signed off on all of our permits. I don't anticipate a significant or any delay in that front. So if we close at the end of November, we would like to be moving through it by the end of December. Thank you. Okay, other questions for the applicant or for staff? Okay, I had a 10-general request that we've talked about why it, which was kind of the financial terms. I think related to just West Falls in general, I think it would be helpful to get a refresher of the financial terms and the comprehensive agreement summarizing. So, we'll thank you for that request and that reminder. When this comes to the council on the 28th, in advance of that meeting, I'll have a kind of a memo or a few slides just to summarize the key deal terms to refresh everybody's memory. Great. Can I go ahead, Dave? Thanks, Madam Mayor. I wonder if you could give us a little more explanation of the graphic that has been provided. So as I understand it, the blue, the dark blue spaces have been fitted out for food and beverage, but there's no lease on them. Is that correct? Am I reading that right? Actually, all those listed here, they have the lease already. All those retailers. Pardon? All they have leased signed. The blue spaces have been signed? Yeah. Sorry. All those space was retail names. So those without retail name, that means to still not to sign the least yet. Okay, I'm sorry. I didn't hear what what what does not sign the least yet. Those spaces with the name of the retailer. Uh-huh. Those signed retailers. Right. And then those without have not been signed yet. Right. So the blue spaces that according to the legend here, vented food and beverage, there are no leases for those yet. Unless there's a logo on them. Is that right? That's correct. OK. OK. That's what I had. Thanks. Aaron. Yeah. I'm going to go ahead and see if we can get the address. Okay. That's what I had. Thanks. Aaron. Yeah. So similarly, I guess on the graphic. Why maybe you know the answer to this. Did we. Square away. This landing pad. For the police potentially within West Falls. We have identified the location of the police landing pad as you described it, which is a good description. It will be a functional space where police will have some office space desk for being able to do some work, a parking space for it. And we, I think, is in a fairly satisfactory place right now. And then separately, while we have a Hoffman representative here, can we talk about the condition of the roads around the construction site? I mean, I was, I think it's embarrassing for the city, frankly, kind of at this point in terms of kind of some of those conditions, the fact that we've been waiting as long as we have for the kids, you know, to get across to the school safely. And I was just over there recently. I know I had previously put in a request about some of the dips in the road, especially, going towards Eidelwood sort of direction. So what is it, West? And they were done in terms of patch fillings. And then I was over there, again, on Saturday, and went down into the big metal plate dips. And I think beyond sort of the experience for drivers moving through there, we've heard from other people, like motorcyclists, for example, how they're not even using the road right now, because they don't feel like they can cross safely given kind of all the obstructions in the actual road. And so I think it is kind of an issue that we need to address. And so I don't know if you can give us an update or sort of a commitment on when the roads are going to be in better condition than they are. So I will just, did you want to speak? If you want me to. I mean, she called me up to the table, so I came. Sure. But to you. Go ahead and I might have a word to say as well. Sure. The roads are always the last to go because they had to go a lot of wear and tear while the construction is going on. They are in the, there is a cycle, there is a segment for them in the schedule rather to be completed. The biggest hurdle that has kept things from moving as far forward as we would even like that to see has been the approval of the traffic signals. To them by V.2 of them by the City of Falls Church, the City of Falls Church gave us the approval much more quickly than V.2 of them by the City of Falls Church. The City of Falls Church gave us the approval much more quickly than V.3. We just got those approvals. We finally got the approvals and they're in the queue at the factory for those polls to be fabricated, the light polls or the signal polls rather. And so the V.3 polls on Route 7 are expected to be delivered to the site by the end of January and installed within a month. Not sure yet how long V.Poles will require us to bag them before they usually want them to be bagged until people get used to the lights being there for some period of time. But by the end of the first quarter of this coming year 2025 you should be good to go all the way around the site. And I mean why it or you know if you want to speak further to it I mean we're still talking six months from now in terms of what the current conditions of the road on like root seven and hey cock like versus even starting to make improvements to them. So kind of for me. Well, I think what we were hearing was about having the signals put in themselves. In terms of resurfacing the road, could you speak to the schedule for that? Well, there's still a lot of work to be, you know, to put in the wiring for the signals and what not. And so there's like not a desire to resurface the roads until you've finished all the digging that you have to do in trenching to put the signals and the connecting wiring in place. So it'll all sort of come together at one time, towards the, as I said, the end of the first quarter. So the, in terms, you know, it is definitely dirty, disruptive. It's been very difficult for everybody trying to get through HECOC road in Route 7. We do inspections regularly just for basic safety. And so we watch that every day. We also have V.Dot that is in charge of Route 7, and they do safety inspections on a regular basis as well. So we have maintained basic safety as bumpy and inconvenient as it has been. And so I did want to just provide assurances about that. I had a slightly different question really about Mustang Alley. I think as the days were getting shorter and school starts early, I think it's pretty dark along Mustang Alley and crossing Haycock. And so whether we should do some temporary lighting to help people get across the street there, I think it would be appropriate. So when I was leaving the football game on Friday night, it's also just hard to see it in night. When you're coming over that hill on Heycock with the barriers, and so I just think it would be helpful to have additional lighting as a safety measure for any pedestrians going to the metro or going to school, knowing that we gotta live with us another six months or so. Is there something for staff or the developer team to consider. I think we did have those there during the cold with the darker days last year. Maybe time to bring them back again for. So why don't we follow up and talk about that and we can report back to the council before the 28th. Great. Going back to. Madam Mayor, just another transportation development. Metro has been reallocating the bus routes and 28A will become F20 and it will include a stop at West Falls Church and Cindy's been working on that and so alive for some time. So I wanted to report that good news at 28A route, which is the most popular in the metro system, will be preserved as F20, and it will include a stop at West Falls Church, thereby laying the groundwork for the bus rapid transit. Thanks. Any more reason to have lighting? How soon is that happening? Oh, I just said. Again, and... Well, there's a current stop at West Falls Church Metro, and with the work that the better bus network studies happening, it will remain. It kind of goes down Heycock and loops around eventually when the boulevard's totally done, then it'll go straight from seven to the metro station. So it's not an additional stop? No, it was just initially proposed to be removed, so we had to do some. Yeah, and it gives us some flexibility too to engineer how and where that stop goes and then to lay the groundwork for the bus rapid transit. So. Hey Beth, I had one more question for you. Related to the diagram of your first floor, actually two questions. One is how is, as we look at the project, finishing and then stabilizing. How are, have you started leasing and selling condos, how that's going, and then second is what percentage of the ground floor is leased. It looks like you have lots of names on things, but in terms of first floor ground floor retail leasing, how's that going? If you know percentage roughly. Site wide, you mean? Yeah. Okay. We don't include the reserve ground floor because it still has, you know, two years before it's able to be leased while the A's won A then to build it. So as for this, that is part of Phase 1, but it's just Phase 1 delayed a little bit. But for the rest of it, we're about 70% leased on the retail. There are a couple new retailers that this graphic is a tiny bit old. We had just two leases signed last week, or maybe it was the week before. One at the corner of Leesburg Pike in the entrance to the project. It's currently shown as A1 120, if my eyesight is right. That's going to be Chase Bank. And then at the opposite end of that same building, the other corner, A1170, is a tie restaurant called.Cow. So those two could be added to your graphic when we get the chance to update this hand. We will get you a cleaned up version. And we have quite a bit of interest in the other spaces that are left. Practically every single one so I'm quite and I'm quite encouraged that this will be a very vibrant and active retail environment once we're all finished. Great. And how about on the residential front? How's your multifamily and condo sale doing? The condo sales are we're still not at our 51% to start settlements. We're not quite even halfway there. But lately, we've had a lot of activity, a lot more people that are coming in, doing tours and making appointments to do contracts. So we expect a lot of those appointments to convert into sales or reservations for sales. The alder apartments, the rental apartments, we started our pre-leasing efforts and have a number of reservations for those, I'd say about 15 or 16 units, so far kind of not pushing it yet because we still have a number of hurdles that we have to achieve before we can open the building. So we're just getting the word out. There seems to be a lot of interest. Great. Thank you for those updates. Okay. Well with that, I think that's it for the item then. Thank you for joining us tonight. Thank you, Henry. Thank you for joining us tonight. Thank you, Henry. Thank you. All right. Next item on our agenda is a discussion with staff on options for how we charge and finance our solid waste services. And if I could make just a few introductory comments, then I'll turn it over to our solid Waste Coordinator, Lonnie Marquetti. I do want to note we have our interim director of public works for operations. Mr. Herb Holmes is here in the room with us and our deputy city manager, Andy Young, is also here at the table. Just by way of some introductory comments, this discussion is on the Council's strategic priorities and it's also a discussion that's called for in the adopted solid waste, master or 20-year solid waste strategic plan and it has been for about two decades is a discussion about how we pay for solid waste. And there are two kind of principle concerns that we're trying to initiate a discussion about how we pay for solid waste. And there are two kind of principle concerns that we're trying to initiate a discussion about. One is having incentives to go further in our efforts to divert waste from the incinerator and landfill and towards reducing the, you know, things that go into the waste stream, reusing things and recycling things to lower our costs and to meet our environmental goals. What we'll do tonight is first, we'll just give a kind of a quick, concise overview of our solid waste programs and we'll walk through four options. I wanna say two things. One, the status quo is an option as well. The city currently finances and charges for its solid-way services through general taxes. And we've done that for as long as we've had these services. It is a viable way to do it, and it has some pros and cons. And we'll discuss those. Over the years, some residents who live in multi-family units have questioned the fairness of that way of structuring because they pay the general taxes but are not eligible. Our service is really not set up to serve multi-story, multi-family homes. That's not a unique situation. There are services throughout government that people can't access for whatever reason or another and so that's a concern that's been expressed and the council's wanted to attempt to respond to it but there are, it's not necessarily a unique situation. And then the last thing I'll say by way of introductions is that there is a potential fifth option which was raised by members of the multifamily community about having essentially a rebate to condo owners in lieu of some of the other options that we have here. And discussing that with the city attorney, we don't think that is a viable option under Virginia law. There are examples in DC and some other places where that is done for condo owners, but under Virginia law, local governments are very restricted in terms of ability to do things like that within the tax structure. So that is why that which was an option that was suggested by some in the community is not amongst those four that are listed here tonight. So with that introduction let me just ask Mr. Holmes or Mr. Yang if you had any other introductory comments before we turn it over to the Our staff lead on this line Okay Miss Marquetti thank you for all your work and thought on this and we'll turn it over to you Thank you mr. Shields good evening everyone As why it said we will go through our options. There are four options. So let's get started. Next slide please. This is an overview of our agenda. We will talk about just the program overview, curbside services that we provide, and then we will touch on option one, which is essentially remove the curbside services from the tax rate. Option two will be to implement a pay-as-you-throw system. Option three is to implement a third bin, all just for organic waste. And then option four, we will briefly touch on providing services to multi-family properties. Next slide, please. So the Solid Waste Program overview. So it is out of public works. We provide weekly collection, trash, yard waste, recycle bowls, and opt-in for composting. Special or bulk collections, if you will, are, I mean, it is available for an additional fee, refuse, and we'll just say, solid waste services for all of our city facilities, including street cans and parks, operation of the city's recycling center and coordination for our annual events like the extravaganza and our cleanup events. Next slide, please. So this slide just briefly touches on what residents have what size cards. So currently we have about 2600 residents out of 3000 and 53 current curbside residents that have a 65 gallon cart 3 currently do not have a trash cart. Typically the 117 are for town home users that do not have the storage to be able to store their carts in their small backyards. And then the city we do not charge for cart replacement. So if they're damaged, the car gets stolen, whatever have you. So we replace that at no charge to the resident and that annually is anywhere between 7 to 10,000 a year. Next slide, please. This just lists our solid way services and vendors. We have American disposal that services curbside trash recycling yard waste as well as our city facilities and our street cans. We have WB Wast who services our recycling center compost crew for composting, Fairfax County for our tipping, printing we use Welsh here in the city, ESET also in the city. Solid waste services for collection in our parks is did leak. Next slide please. This is a slide that overviews our tonnage over the span of the five over the past five years. Excuse me. So our most recent data as you can see on the far right is 2023 and then it goes kind of backwards. As you can see, there are some years that we did dip quite significantly low in glass but that essentially coincides with removing glass from curbside. So we started that in 2019. So in 2020-2021 we obviously saw that pretty significant dip. Not only did we just remove glass, but we also, the market also took a pretty big dip and not everything as we were used to recycling was also recyclable. Next slide, please. This is an overview of solid waste cost components, if you will. So for tipping fees, solid waste recycling is 550,000. Tipping fees is about 230. Composting just for the for us to subsidize for curbside is 70,000 miscellaneous costs like cart replacements, sticker purchases, things and that is about 20,000. And then we have curbside leaf collection, which is about 250,000. So that averages out to roughly if we were to take everything listed here, it averages out to be about $370 per customer. Next slide please. Yes ma'am. Lonnie can you just clarify what is it tipping fee what we pay to the Fairfax County dump to dump stuff? What is it so the tipping fee is not only to Fairfax County but also to American disposal and to free state farms What she used to be all sport composting facility in Prince William. So it's all three of those. So can I just make a correction to the chart? The top line should be the curbside collection. So that's 550. And then the tipping fees is 230. Correct. I apologize. The 550 is just for American to provide services. I apologize that that was a typo. The second line of 230 is just tipping fees apologies. But those two go hand in hand. You can't have the yes the correct collection without the tipping fees. Correct. Okay but one is based on number of households that they're picking up from and one is based on volume trash, right? Correct. Wait a minute. Do we pay for the glass recycling? Yes, ma'am, we do. Is that part of that cost in there or is that part of that miscellaneous? I think so. It is not. I did not add anything from our recycling center into this because there was no way to identify what percentage was produced by quote unquote curbside residents, businesses, Fairfax County residents, Arlington, etc. So we left that out. Got it. This was intended to just get at the curbside service, which is the kind of where the equity question has been raised. And one other thing that is not in this is staff costs. And we have one FTE in solid waste, which is our store presenter tonight. And but that in Ms. Marketty serves all programs and serves all residents. So we thought, for just counting curbside, we didn't charge that to rub it that number. Any other questions? Not for now, keep going, please, thank you. Okay. Next slide. So this is option one. It is essentially just to remove curbside services out of the tax fee, or excuse me, out of the tax base, and essentially just charge that as the 370 from the previous slide. I mean, going this route would create some greater transparency equity. The fee would essentially be a separate line, kind of like how Fairfax, Arlington, et cetera, how they do it on their bells. It would just be a separate, solid waste fee or whatever we end up calling it. The challenges are most, most users would essentially see a net increase in expenses. This could essentially create new equity concerns to lower income houses, small houses versus large houses, new admin cost, and possible tax, tax, just kind of like what I said, some homeowners would feel it more than others. Next slide please. So this is a table essentially showing the property value what the property value, what the tax reduction, excuse me, would be if we were to remove two cents from the tax rate. The preliminary solid waste fees, the 370, and then the net impact is what we would first see homeowners kind of experiencing. So if your property value is around 750, you would save 149, but you would essentially see an impact of $218. Again, I would like to profess that this is just preliminary numbers, but it's around these numbers. So the smaller house that you would have the bigger cost, that this program would essentially affect you versus having the more expensive home in the city than you would essentially see a decrease. Next slide, please. The answer. That doesn't make sense. I'm sorry. No, go ahead. Thank you. We'll say our comments afterwards. So option two is to replace the tax with a variable rate, if you will. So the thought process behind this is to really hit at home, if you will, with our environmental goals, if you will. So it would essentially still be, you know, remove the two cents out of the tax rate. We would offer a price incentive. So if you have a smaller cart versus the larger cart, there would also be that cost savings. And it realistically would hopefully entice residents to really reduce and reuse in this. The challenge is this will be a little tricky and we will definitely have some admin costs associated with this, implementing this program will likely result in getting another staff member and this will, if we were to go this route, we would realistically have to do a lot of outreach. So that is the challenge here. Next slide, please. Again, this is preliminary numbers. But this is essentially kind of what we broke it down to be. If you were to have a 65 gallon, again, this would essentially kind of what we broke it down to be. If you were to have a 65 gallon, again, we're just, this is just for illustration, but a 65 gallon would be about 415 versus a 35 gallon would roughly cost you about 230. would essentially entice residents to recycle more, think before they buy and reduce and reuse as much as possible. Next slide, please. This is my favorite one, option three, which is also in our 20 years always management plan that we submitted to DEQ is we chose organic waste to essentially be the stream that we tackle to achieve zero waste. So essentially the thought process behind adding this third bin would be for all organic waste. So it'd be your grass clippings, your food waste. It goes all into one cart. Excuse me, one cart. So instead of two carts, you'd have three. This program, if you will, we would essentially have to investigate, as I mentioned, with 117 customers that have no carts you know offering this program would just kind of cause more problems there so we'd have to investigate some some different cart sizes from them and it is essentially $155,000 to purchase carts initially to implement this program. Next slide, please. So this is the third bin kind of a cost breakdown. So American disposal who is our current curbside hauler would essentially pick up this third bin. So that would have roughly cost about 75,000. I took the average over the span of five years and came up with 50,000 for our new tip fees. Then we have the subsidy that we are paying currently for opt-in curbside comp posters for the 70. So essentially, this would cost customers about $41 per year. I'm, no, 18, I believe, 18. That's also a typo, I apologize. It's written the staff report is 18. Next slide. So this is option 4 is essentially to service multi- or commercial multi-family buildings. There would be a lot of legwork that we would essentially have to do. We would have to get an ordinance. We would have to update the city code. We would have to work with each individual building to essentially figure out if providing services to them would be feasible essentially. There are three buildings currently that it would essentially make sense to offer this service to because they don't, they're not necessarily mix use. So condos without mix use we have three buildings, condos with mix use we have 12 apartments plus three under construction. Next slide, please. So, multifamily cost would essentially cost the city roughly anywhere between 15 to 40,000 per year, per building. Most of these buildings will essentially need the city, roughly anywhere between 15 to 40,000 per year, per building. Most of these buildings will essentially need twice a week, at the bare minimum, twice a week service. We would offer sizes of dumpsters for and eight yards. I would recommend that we do not essentially kind of group and mix use condo buildings mainly because of the fact that most of them have one central location for their dumpster location. So it would almost make it impossible to try to figure out what waste came from what facility, whether it's commercial or residential. So that's something that City Council would have to provide some light on. Next slide, please. So this essentially, we would have some light on. Next slide, please. So, this essentially we would need a further analysis to develop these options more fully. We would need to create a lot of community outreach. There's some technical work, you know, legal aspect, finance, contracting, IT for if we were to go to a pay issue throw system. So tonight for council we are asking for feedback on options to help identify the scope of work for consulting services. We believe that all of these options all one through four will need a consultant to come into essentially help us. Consider a budget amendment for a consultant which should cost about 200,000. And we can, option one, we can essentially implement probably midway through FY26, but there are some complex options that will probably be more towards FY 27. Next slide. And that is it. Great, thank you, Lonnie. And thank you for taking my light bulbs on Saturday too. I appreciate it being able to stop in. Okay. Who's got questions or comments on this one? Go ahead, Marybeth. Lonnie, thanks for that really good explanation. I started this process knowing nothing about this. I feel like you have really given us a good education on how it all works. Thank you. Would we have the opportunity to implement 2N3? Or is it a options 1 or 2 or 3 or 4? Could we do? Yes, you can implement options 2 and 3. Yes. Or 1 and 3 or there could we could end up with a blended version of some of these. Absolutely. Okay. And then this doesn't currently commercial properties all have their own solid waste. Correct. Correct. All commercial properties. properties all have their own solid waste, correct? Correct. All commercial properties. Okay. So this doesn't contemplate that at all. Changing that system. Well, so when we say commercial, for example, apartment buildings, they essentially pay taxes. And, you know, I mean, I assume that they would be part of option four. And then you have condo buildings. For example, part towers, it's just the condo building. But then you have the buy-in, which essentially has the mix use at the bottom. Right. Or excuse me, the commercial at the bottom. So all the commercial, like the businesses. Right. Our excuse me, the commercial at the bottom. So all the commercial like the businesses, we would not provide services for. This would just be for the residential aspect of them. Okay, okay. That's all my questions right now. Okay. Anyone else? Just have a general statement on the pay as you throw or just thinking about implementing Any change to solid waste is as we look at our community energy action plan is like how do you continue to Encent people to to throw away last to compost more and I don't have specifics tonight I On the equity front you'd like to think if you had a smaller house and you used less that you paid less On a and on an environment. I'm on a perspective, you want to entice people as much as possible to use the less, recycle more compost more. So I just kind of have an overarching perspective on what the goals are versus like the tonight, the nitty gritty of dollar per dollar or who does what. But like as overarching goals, I think it's really important that we keep that in mind. That's all I wanted to add to the conversation in the moment. That's where I personally started from as well as like what goals are we trying to accomplish. I think when we put this on the work plan it was coming out of the solid waste 20-year document where we kind of committed to or wanted to go to something like that says, could we be a zero waste community one day, but we weren't quite willing to go there yet? And so I think that would be goal number one, it's just being reminded that recycling frankly doesn't work. And so really it's about reducing and reusing where possible, so how do we decrease our solid waste? And then when we heard from the condo associations, I think it's being more equitable and more transparent. So if we agree that those are three collective goals, I think that would naturally lead us to some options or some combination of options out of the four or five that you've outlined for us, Lonnie. I guess I would suggest us starting there. Like do we agree those are the right three goals and if so, I think the options, at least for me, flow pretty naturally from that. I would agree that those are the goals that we are trying to accomplish. As I mentioned when I was presenting option three which is adding that third organic cart that is very specific into our DQ plan. That is one way stream as the swim pack identified that we could essentially kind of tackle roughly quickly just by implementing this third cart. It would be available obviously to all curbside customers and then we can essentially kind of think about how to offer this to multifamily buildings as well. So I mean I would agree with you. Yeah and I think I saw that Arlington moved to adding a third cart for everybody as well. So I mean I would agree with you. Yeah and I think I saw that Arlington moved to adding a third cart for everybody as well probably with hopes of actually reducing their tipping fees. I think the staff report outlined that it's 155,000 one time for the cost of the new bins and then 55 per year in terms of operating costs increases. Does that also account for hopefully decrease in tipping fees because we theoretically with our less less trash away, right? Well, that is just for organic waste. But in theory, I don't foresee organic waste saving any money in the tipping fees there if anything that would entice more residents to participate in that program. So that would most likely increase. However, yes, on the Fairfax County side that our tip fee should decrease correct Do we have any early data on how much that would decrease whether it offset your 55,000 per year a little bit? I know we do not and that is one thing that the consultant would essentially try to to show us So I think in both cases you're paying tipping fees so you're paying tipping fees if it's going to Fairfax County and if you're sending it to the compost facility we're paying tipping fees for that as well. So for the simplicity of this analysis we considered it a wash. In fact I think we projected a little bit of an increase. I just didn't know whether the net 55,000 was the tipping fees for the new composting or if it included the decrease in traditional solid waste, that makes sense? It does. Like using my household, for example, in the summers, when we have two watermelons a week, it fills up the garbage. So if I compost that, and I don't throw in the trash, that should be less trash, that should save us money in the trash site, even though we're in costs on the composting. So I think to Lonnie's point, that's like the level of detail we didn't get into here that we would want the consultant to help us with. But I wouldn't expect 55 to turn into zero, right? It might have an impact, but I don't think it would make the cost go away. Okay. Justine. I'm not sure as to who Arlington uses for their hauler. We essentially would be taking it all to the same place. It's all going to the same facility in Prince William. But I'm not sure as to who they use as their hauler. And it would realistically depend on what their cost is. So right now in order for us to add this third bin, it could cost us about $2 per stop. So, $350, $300 and $3,053 residents at $2. Okay. Could you talk a little bit about what the complexities are with pay asas-you-through? Why would that require additional staff? Sure. So we would, well, it all realistically, would start with a consultant. And to really identify what, if this program would even suit a small jurisdiction like us, we would have to do a what is called a waste characterization. And that essentially is you have a team of consultants, probably about 10, 15 folks, that essentially would identify tons and tons of our trash on one particular day. So they would identify, okay, we'll add of, you know, ex-tons, ex-tons, recyclable ex-tons, food waste, et cetera. Based off of that, then we could essentially say, okay, well, residents, you know, most of you have the 65 gallon, but most of you can go down to the 35 gallons. So that would essentially help us try to kind of save money in the front end. On the back end, this is something that we would essentially rely heavily on the consultant to essentially suggest what other localities are doing. There are essentially not in Virginia, however, Colorado, for example, just implemented kind of a variable rate based off of your cart. So they would essentially gather all of that data and present it to us, suggest what type of programs we would need because we would essentially have to give information over to the Treasurer's Office every year to kind of get all of that done, to kind of oversee help people with implementing this type of new program. I mean, there's, I'm sure a hundred of other things, but as why I mentioned that solid waste is a team of one. So this would be a heavy lift on top of providing all of my other duties on a daily basis. And in terms of if we were to move forward with the consultation or the people to basically look at you know what these options are, everything if we went forward with let's say I'm picking two and three that would like the soonest that would likely be implemented would be 2027. Yes ma'am. Okay. And if we did go with option two and option three they would probably be implemented at the same time so whatever education, or whatever else that happens, those would be happening together. Yes, ma'am. OK. Thank you. That's all for me right now. Dave? Sure. Thanks, Madam Mayor. And thanks for the work on this. It's always good to examine what we're doing, to determine if there's a better way to do it. I would be very concerned about removing this from the taxes and making it a special fee. I think that would not be well received. On the other hand, there are some potential ideas here that I think merit further work. The composting is in our way to increase that. I also will note that one of the larger expenditures is the curbside leaf collection. And I'm not suggesting eliminating that quickly, but I do know that Falls Church forward has been looking at that. It caused me to do some research, actually. And research is very consistent, I think, with what they're suggesting. I think they'll need to be an education campaign. I think also if you have a lot of mature trees and they have a lot of leaves, it's still potentially, you're going to need to get and move some of them away. But I think there's real potential here to both save money, do something for the environment. So hopefully that would be something we can continue to work through and provide ever better information to the public so we can start to see changes that would be mutually beneficial. So I wanted to call attention to that, and that's $250,000 of the 1.1 million, so it's a significant cost. So I think that's worthy of looking at, I think, the composting to see how we can increase that. The payas you throw may seem like it's a good idea, and I guess I've learned this being a grandparent. Little children, little ones, generate a lot. And I would sort of be viewed as anti-family if we started sort of charging on the basis of that. So bottom line for me is that we keep it in the tax rate and we not try to break it out, but we look where there are potential savings within that. And I'm thinking the curbside leaf collection might be one where we can evolve some significant savings that we look at the composting service. And we see what we can do for some of the 100% condo building see if we're able to generate some savings to produce some service. And if not direct service maybe a joint contract between the various multifamily buildings that we could maybe trigger a forum and bring in maybe our providers to see if there might be some savings that are available through a joint contracting effort. So just a couple of ideas going forward. But I do note that one of the options is maintaining the status quo and we shouldn't forget that. Thank you. Okay. Other thoughts, Erin? and we shouldn't forget that. Thank you. Okay, other thoughts, Erin? Yeah, thank you for kind of setting out the various options here and kind of giving us different things to consider with the cost or preliminary cost estimates. I think I have a similar reaction in terms of, you know, not necessarily wanting to take this out of the general funds like general tax rate to me looking at option, you know, one you it looks regressive and that you're taking it out of the tax rate, but then you know because of the flat fee you're placing a disproportionate burden on those households with lower assessed values. And so the overall out of pocket cost increases. And so it gets that sort of policy rationales behind tax systems generally. And the idea that people are paying into it and you're redistributing fun somewhat for the general welfare of the public in terms of orderly, you know, trash pickup and a sanitary environment and sort of the administrative ability benefits of having like citywide trash collection on a single day, even if not everyone is benefiting from it, like the entire city benefits from like getting through trash collection in the span of six hours, for example, right? So like they're it's it's not sort of a oh not everyone is benefiting this so let's you know put a special Kind of assessment on them the same way that not everyone benefits from the various services that people Generally pay into and that you you know, the general fund covers. So that's kind of my reaction to number one and then similarly to option two, I think you can view it as incentivizing, you know, certain behavior or you can view it as like punitive and kind of penalizing certain behavior or households or as, you know as councilmember Snyder said, if you have a household and maybe you use disposable diapers and where you have a few more members of your household, then you're paying higher fees even though maybe you have five people in your household and another household has too. And the cost per person of the trash they're generating is lower overall, but like you're still paying higher into the system. So I think also just based on administrative ability and the idea that we're going to have to, you know, additionally staff this option to me doesn't seem to have like the benefits as opposed to doing like much stronger education for the community about you know the different ways that you can reduce your footprint and you know including moving from you know generating solid waste or having your you know organic material and food waste in your trash. So I tend to kind of think status quo on the trash collection, recycling aspect of it, but then would like to incentivize the behavior of diverting food and yard waste from the general waste stream. And with the cost estimates of the 155,000, one time cost and then the 55,000 annual cost, would support looking at that more, far more kind of seriously in order to try to see, you know, what that would look like as a citywide, you know, system or partnership kind of with buildings while still being able to provide the third bin, maybe not, you know, cart, but like bin size. Smaller, I mean, I know from our experience, we don't do composting, like in terms of pickup, we just like four times a week walk across to the community center and put our composting in the general community center, you know, citywide composting program and we like have hardly any real solid waste. And so we haven't oversized bin with like, you know, one bag in it, for example, because of everything that we're able to divert into, you know, kind of composting. So would be supportive of looking at that more. As to option four, I do think it's worth kind of examining the condos without mixed use. In my mind, kind of the distinctions are sort of how we've laid them out here. I get that some people might say, why is it that we're servicing residential condos without mixed use and not condos. With mixed use, I think that they're by right residential properties paying property tax versus residential mixed use properties that came in sort of with a special exception in order to be able to build and with that understanding sort of took stock of impacts that it would have on the city and the developers in those instances decided to absorb the trash collection for those buildings, or we negotiated that. So I do think that kind of looking at these three buildings more closely makes sense, along with the kind of composting option number three. I guess I would wonder for the preliminary estimate of 15 to 40,000, kind of where that came from, was that information that the HOAs are kind of condo boards. We're able to provide to us at all or kind of have we had direct conversations with them about what their current fees are and where they fit in on that estimate, for example. Sure. So the cost, excuse me, the cost that is on the presentation is essentially the cost that was given to us by our current hauler, which is American disposal. So it is a combination of costs between the hauling and we are guesstimating at their tip fees. Currently, we do not have any data from any condo buildings at all. So we were just essentially kind of guessing at what what their tonnage would be for the year. And that's how we kind of came up with that buffer. No, so that makes sense. And I think without prejudging it in any way, it would make sense for us to kind of just see as a data point, like what these three condo buildings are paying for. They're, you know, solid waste services right now. And then whether it's a, we might be able to, as Councilmember Snyder said, negotiate sort of a better rate for them. If they were part of sort of the city wide system, or it may be looking at something and saying, look, if they were to move to a cart the size of the library cart, for example, what would an additional pickup mean within sort of the same cycle that occurs at the library or the community center in terms of like the same size truck, the same size cart, so you're not adding any pickup, you're adding a location or three locations to the pickup cycle that's already happening based on the frequency that they may or may not need given the size of the bin relative to their current system. But I think that's all I had. And I guess I hit every option. I would prefer if we could to not complicate this to a degree that we have to pay $200,000 in consultancy fees as opposed to paying $200,000 directly into a composting system. That was my next question. So, I mean, I don't, I would prefer that the takeaway or the direction from council not be, yes, let's go invest $200,000 in a plan as opposed to let's see what manageable options may exist. And in additional data points we can get and what we might be able to implement that's like more manageable while still accomplishing shared goals that we have. Just did it on oh sorry. I was just going to echo that was the same thought I had. I'm like we could pay for the composting bins to be implemented without going through a consultancy. Okay, just, just debilling it. I just had another thought. Can you go back to the slides, Sophie? The one that shows the chart for option one. So I think there's a, I don't think it's in there, it's just in the slides. What's crossed my mind is that the, oh, here we go. Okay. So the people whose property value is $750,000 but have $149 real estate tax reduction. Most of those people that live in condos fall in that $750,000 range. So they would actually have just a negative 149 impact because we wouldn't then be charging them the solid waste fee. We would be reducing the solid waste fee. So I feel like we need another line there. Does that make sense? If we think about someone who lives in a condo and this was brought to us by people who live in condos, who are saying we're double paying, we're paying our real estate assessment rate taxes. And we're not getting the benefits, so we're also paying tipping fees already. So if we're gonna take it out of the tax rate, then those people would just have their taxes reduced by two cents. They wouldn't have an additional solid waste fee. Yeah, except I guess, you know, thinking for like somewhere like Winter Hill, like this could have a big impact on residents at Winter Hill who get trash service and often talk about being cost burdened, for example. Right, right, but I just feel like I guess true. Yeah, but I feel like we need to acknowledge that the people who live in those three condo buildings, if we did option one, would actually have a very large reduction with no additional add it on. That's right. Right? Because they already pay for a con. Because they're already paying for that anyway. So those people would indeed benefit from that So that's the first thing the second one is Could there be a way to Just Reduce the assessments on people that don't get trash picked up so when we do the assessments every year if you live in a condo Your assessment is reduced by X amount of dollars, and then you would pay less taxes because you're not getting trash service. So your assessment is just a little bit less. You mean your real estate property value? Yeah, your property value. So your property value is less because and that would reduce what you're paying to make it more equal. I don't know if that's possible or not possible. But that would be another way to help the specific people who are asking for help. I mean, I'll go out on a limb a little bit. That is the status quo, and if the market is rational, it is already priced in. But we can't under Virginia law tell the assessor to do something special other than record market sales and then make judgments on value based on those market sales. Okay, so but I do think that we do need to take into account that if we're talking about the equity, the people that specifically came to us with this need, this would be helping the people that live in any kind of building, whether it's a mixed use or not mixed use. And I feel like we need to treat them equally and not say, well, you live in a mixed use condo building, so you still have to pay double. But these people live in old condo building and they are going to get a benefit. That doesn't make sense to me. Agreed. So in my mind, I really think option one deserves a little bit more parsing out there to really figure out like who would it affect because if you live in a small winter hill townhouse, how much would that go up for you? And is there a way to make it more equity wise? But I do think option one gets at the problem that we're trying to solve. I think option four just creates a whole giant raft of additional problems that we're bringing onto ourselves in an attempt to get to equity. We're adding more trash service for us. We're adding how much more work for Lonnie just to figure out when, you know, how many different buildings are gonna have their different size dumpsters and will it be twice a week or once a week, that will add a lot of additional costs that are gonna go into the tax rate for all of us to pay for that. So I do feel like that option for just makes things so much more complicated than it needs to be. When the elegant solution is option 1 with some more analysis on how to make sure that the people aren't we aren't double dipping from some people's walls. And then I really do like the adding the organic cart. I think that would be a great addition as well. So those are my thoughts on that one. Is everyone gone once already? Is where I call on people again? Yes, go ahead, justing. Couple quick questions. Was Park Towers by right? Were there no proffers when Park Towers was first before that age? So Park Towers was re-zoned and built in 1963, and we don't have the paperwork on that. Then it converted to condo in 1983, and we actually have a search for any covenants that were associated with that. It has, you know, it wouldn't be unimaginable that the City Council in 1983 would have said something about city services. And so that's why we have put out a request for those documents. I'm not sure we're gonna find them though. At least in the city files, if there's anything recorded, we might have a chance there. Okay, thank you. Oh, and then a slightly separate question. Lonnie, on the, this is on the page, solid waste volume in tons, page six. I was, Council Member Snyder brought up leaves. I was wondering why was there a huge increase in leaf collection in the past year? Is it good harvest? I, herb, I will turn that over to you. Thank you, Lonnie. So, leave collection is sort of a fluid, fluid collection. So, there's no real substance to how we measure leaves. So, you could have, so I can tell you in 2022, we had a very early leaf fall and we had, we had leaves that fell early but however we didn't have the volume that we had last year. So last year we had a late leaf fall and there was actually more. So every year it just, it really just depends. We, and because after the leaves season there are a lot of trees that still have leaves on them that we don't collect them. They end up after maybe mid-January, they end up going into the trash because we say we're done with them so any leaves that you have, whether they're bagged or we've asked you to bag them, take them off the curb, they go into the waste drain. So if we collect them, then we have those years that you have sort of rich years and lean years, right? And it's never a perfect science. I've been collecting leaves now for 20 years. And I've never really had it where it's stable, right? Where it gets stable. 2021, we had a lot of storms and we had a lot of trees that came down in the city. So I leave collection that year was much less than, you know, previous years or even going forward. Interesting. Okay. Interesting. Thank you for sharing that. I appreciate that. Debbie? A couple of random questions. So if we had a third bin back to your point, would that be kind of the compost crew size now, like someone's like a bucket versus the rollout bin, just in terms of people saying, I don't want three big bins, I don't want space for that, I don't want to have the mechanics of moving that. I've been visioning the same size compost crew bucket when you say adding a third bin. Is that right? So the 155 is the cost for 65 gallon bins. American disposal can get us 35 gallon and 65 gallon. But if we were to get the five gallon bins that compost crew currently offers, there's no data or cost on that as of right now. So that's where the 155-pound is just organic matter. You'd have to have a lot of organic compostable diapers to fill up. So I think a lot of watermelons do. So part of this is the, I think for purposes of putting this material together, we went with the 65 gallon bin because it's also intended to replace what people are doing for yard waste today. So if you'll get the little brown bags and put the stickers on them or whatever, like some people do a bunch of that, some people do less of it, but if you're doing that on a regular basis, a much bigger cart makes sense. So that's an element we can dig further into it, but I don't think it's intended to be just a compost crew size bucket for everybody because that wouldn't work for the yard waste portion of the game. Yeah, I guess mine. So, part of the reason this is more affordable, you know, with way it's been presented to you, United, is it's replacing not only the compost cruise subsidy, but it's also replacing some of the yard waste pickup that we do today, right? There's a truck that drives around the city that picks up yard waste from everybody today. So to add the second or the third stops to everybody's home, we got a lower cost because I think the trucks, at least in some volume, are already here. So, anyway, some additional thoughts. Okay, and we can continue to talk about that. You know what the right sizes is, doesn't have to be decided tonight. I was just trying to envision the questions that people have immediately. And I just, I also think it's going to be less desirable to have a 65-gallon yard waste cart versus a smaller cart that you just feel like isn't this giant depth of stuff you're throwing until the time, right? Yeah. But anyway. And in theory, you start start with a more people-composed, you can throw away last. We currently have an option of a 35-gallon. Like, could people, I'm just thinking about as we continue to do more environmental education, and talk about our community energy action plan. Can we get people turning in the 65 gallons for 35 gallon? Like sometimes when you have three other people leave your household, you might have a lot less trash and you know that just might be another whether that's and you know it's a subconscious incentive right to produce your trash. I'm gonna allow, I was like let me sign up, I'll trade mine in tomorrow. Do we have the I mean that is current option like when people buy a new house they have an option get 35. It's been so long since I got my house. All right I think there's some education we can do on that too that would continue to help just chip away at our community energy action plan and then this is a non-secretary, but while I have you on the solid waste, we had some citizens who I gave our business cards to report problems, report challenges with the Winter Hill dumpsters that were then replaced and they were ecstatic that this process worked. So thank you to you, whomever, Lonnie, I don't know if that was you or whomever, Lonnie, I don't know if that was you, or whomever changed out their dumpsters, and they got the message through the right channels. It was like the first time that I had a full cycle of an actual citizen request through that program work, and it worked quickly, and they were super happy and called me within days. So kudos to everybody on that full cycle change. And those are my random things. Oh, no, the last thing was on the leave the leaves. I feel like we need to have a little asterisk on that sign. You're point about, like, if you look at my art, for instance, I've got to leave the leaves sign out. But if you look at the mature trees, they're about, you couldn't drive in the driveway. You couldn't, like, go anywhere if we didn't remove some of the leaves. So I feel like even if you're leaving most of your leaves and you still have some on the curb, it's still making a difference on what goes into the stream. And it's not all on a little banner that has an asterisk on it. Leave most of the leaves, leave as many leaves as you can. I still don't have a pile of leaves in my curb, but I am leaving a lot of them. There might be some messaging there where it's actually Mark Gross said it's leave some leaves, not leave all the leaves. And even if you leave a few more leaves than you did last year, it's still better than that. So hopefully when we look at this bar tour next year, there'll be, you know, it could be notable impact. But to your point, it fluctuates so much. It's hard to have causation, but it's still understood that it's got to be better than putting the curve and calling them away. Thank you for that. Okay. I will go now. I'm glad Mary Beth mentioned the comment about treating everyone who lives in multi-family similarly. I think it would be pretty weird to explain to people, well, you're in an old mix, you've building versus a new one, or you're a by-right building versus special exception I think in general people live in multi-family and I think as we add more multi-family with our housing stock being split 50-50 now I think it's important to think about that equity element So anything that treats kind of multi-family differently. I think feels a little weird to me I Agreed with I think both Debbie and Aaron had said, can we not pay 200,000 for the consultant and start with the compost option? So look more closely at option three, it's kind of an initial step that would help us hopefully divert more of solid waste into organic composting. My second thought had to do with going back to kind of the goals and principles. So if it is about equity and transparency, I personally really like pay as you throw. I know it's more complicated to administer, but it is a lot more intuitive. I think it incents the right behavior for people, which ultimately is what we want, if we want to reduce and reuse our trash. Instead of going to the larger 65 gallon bin, you could also just not drag your bins out as frequently the hardies only drag them out twice a month because we compost a lot so that helps and so that's one way to kind of encourage people to reduce what they use but I in general like the idea of well it needs more exploration of encouraging people to pay for their share of their services right and so as the only person up here with household of five and we generally make a fair amount of trash but but because we compost, we really only have trash every other week. And so I think it's important for people to think about their personal behaviors and what they can do to help with our climate goals. So that probably needs more time to explore and potentially get a consultant, although I do bulk at the idea of spending 200,000 for that if we can more quickly implement the composting option. My third question is how do others do it? So I know Arlington moved to curbside composting with do other people have a flat feed, do people build it into their tax rate. I think it'd be interesting to look at how neighboring jurisdictions have solved this and guessing we are not the only ones. Well we can bring you a chart with all those options. I'm looking at her because I know he has some experience with two of our neighbors and how they handle it. I don't know if you are prepared to speak to it or I mean I can speak to it a little bit so having previously worked for County Valentine in the city of Alexandria. I know in Alexandria this is part of the household style at waste rate so it's all tied in to one in Arlington when I was there, which was a while ago. It was the same. It was tied into the household, it was all waste freeze. And so – Flat fee? It was a flat fee, right. So whether it was leaves, snow, any type of collection, all of that was paid for out of one fee. It was sort of cleaner at that time, because the people didn't have, you know, you knew what you were paying at the beginning of the year or whenever your tax deadline was, you knew what you were paying. So it just, everybody knew when it was due and what it was. Got it. Were we the first jurisdiction that implements stormwater that was variable based on how much impervious surface we had? Which seemed like a really equitable way to do it, right? Like if you have a lot of asphalt and a lot of impervious surface, you're charged more because you're creating more runoff. To me this feels very similar. Like if you were incurring extra costs in the system, you might have to pay more. We weren't the first in Virginia. We were the first in northern Virginia. I know it was bumpy because I remember getting the notification about it, but I think lots of other people have started moving to that model since then, right? If I might, there are differences though. This is taking away a service that's now currently being offered versus the stormwater fee was necessary because of a dramatically increased need. I guess I also on the, on the comparing to neighboring jurisdictions, I also think like we should be careful on economies of scale issues and like shouldn't necessarily say well just because fear facts are Arlington or Alexandria is doing something versus like we're going to compare then maybe we want to compare to like towns that are more like our size and thinking about what are kind of like the expectations in terms of municipal services or what are the expectations given the tax rates that people are paying in different jurisdictions. So if you're paying a much lower tax rate maybe you don't feel kind of the extra fee as much as if you're already paying a much higher tax rate than some of the neighboring jurisdictions and you're getting a small reduction in your tax rate, but you're getting assessed a fee that brings you overall higher than the high rate you were already paying, given that we hear so often from residents who say their cost burdened, I just don't want to oversimplify that by saying we can easily implement it because larger neighbors are doing it already. I was just asking to understand how the region does it not necessarily to compare ourselves. Can we go back to the slide that shows the pay as you throw? I think it had the chart of the cost of what it would look like potentially for like the range from $750,000 to $2.5 million home Every slide 11. So there's an assumption here that obviously if you're in a property that's assessed at $2.5 million you aren't a larger household that's generating more trash, right? So that's the kind of the first assumption there could be a situation where you're a two-person household and a $2.5 million home. You actually don't create that much trash. So we're doing this based on the size of the bin, not on the size of the home. I'm saying that's an important distinction, right? Because ultimately, it is again tied back to how much trash you're generating versus the home. So the concern is about burden on people like think about other ways to divert your trash or create less trash. Okay, so to summarize, I think you heard general support for exploring composting, which is what I think I saw several head nods around and then we're kind of split on next steps with what to do about about do nothing or explore a different payment option between I think what's called option number one and two. Is that a guy? No option that addresses all mixed. No option that addresses all mixed. All corners that are. I think four had some that's accepting it's complicated for was the one where you provide service multi-family but then there was complications between mixed use versus right straight multi-family without mixed use I'm not saying if you're treating them all equally meaning to your points that, that you own a place, to the matter of year, an old mixed user, a new mixed user, or whatever. But there's no option contemplated for doing that. It's too complicated. That's what I hear. Is that right? Yeah, I think option four in general is, we're a little daunted by the complexity of how to get into that new business. Even the idea of trying to do joint procurement that seems very difficult. I guess for option four I would at least ask like to not take it off the table in terms of the information gathering of just finding out like what are those three buildings paying? So we have kind of an idea of what that cost is because I mean you could say there's a difference between even a tax rebate versus if it were $15,000 instead of offering that service, like, is that potentially, like the city could absorb the cost of the service, even if it didn't roll it into its own contract, I don't know. But so, you know, there are different ways to think about it. But I think we should at least, I don't know, have three pieces of data that seem easy enough to get without launching into that whole further examination of the option. A tangential question, Lonnie. Commercial composting has come up among our businesses. I know that some of them had talked to compost crew and I don't know where those conversations ever went, but is that something that they also offered to our small businesses in town? Yes. So, when we did the contract that was effective in July, I made sure to ask for them to build in some type of a discounted cost for commercial. So it is something that they can sign up for and it is offered to them at a discount of cost. Has anyone signed up? That I do not know. I know that lazy mics use this compost crew and Claren Dawn's but I'm I'm unsure as to if they are using it under our contracted rate or if they're just paying whatever price their the composting is. It's great we should let the people know that we actually have a negotiated discount rate. Maybe through the chamber. We can do outreach on that. Through the chamber or through somebody else let them know that this is something the city offers. Great. Thank you. Any final questions or comments? Just on my question about people who would benefit by not having to pay the two cents on their tax rate. And there, how, my question is, I guess, those condo buildings. When you're doing this analysis, can we understand how many people live in those condo buildings and of the people who have the lowest assessments, how many people would benefit from this, I guess, is the question. If we have seven condo buildings or five condo buildings, how many people are homeowners are going to benefit from that? Yeah, I think that's a good point point that benefit was not put into the chart. Everybody would benefit from that to sent reduction, commercial property owners who aren't referenced in this as well. If we just honed in on condo owners. We could probably make some averages and show that as well. Right. I mean, if you look at the assessments. It would still be leaving out other classes of people who had benefit. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, just maybe a more nuanced understanding of what that benefit would be of reducing the tax rate and then changing it to a fee for those who use the service. So Mayor, I will just observe that there's been a wide range of comments and I'm not sure that staff has anything close to guidance from this discussion, which is a concern for you know we do have I think strong you know pretty widespread support for the option three on the the composting service. On this question about whether we should proceed with developing a RFP we wouldn't necessarily issue it but that's a fair amount of work just in of itself and we know it's going to be expensive. We also know going down this path that this is going to sort of open up a whole lot of community discussion. And so I am a bit concerned about going down the path without sort of clarity of the council in terms of where you really want to push this in what direction. And I'm not hearing that from this discussion. So we could, one conversation Sally and I have been having is about having votes at work sessions where council can give firm like votes with direction to staff otherwise we're reading tea leaves and making a lot of assumptions. Would there be any appetite for some straw polling on options just so we can get see if there's some clarity on that or short or we could develop the composting option but set the other options aside for a period of time just to let that sort of let people think about that a little bit more before we take on that scope of work. Does taking on the compost option cost us $200,000 of the consultant? Well, we would probably flesh it out a little bit more in terms of what that program would look like and come back with a strategy on what implementation would be. I think we, Ms. Marquetti, did you think we needed, if we just did composting, would we need consulting services to roll that service out, do you think? Or what are your thoughts on that? If it's just option three adding that organic bin, I would ask for grace of time, but if given the time, then I don't think for that option, no, if it's, if it's that, if we're implementing that as a standalone, I guess I should say, no. No, consult, I think. I think we'll be able to. I think we'll be able to. No, consult, $200,000 for consulting services would not be needed. Right, okay. Seems to me like that's a good interim step because I do think that would give an indication of how much behaviors change, how much trash usage changes. And I think all these options don't get at the original issue in my mind of ensuring that all everybody lives in those condos is treated the same. And that sounds administratively very difficult condos is treated the same. And that sounds administratively very difficult and what sounds to be part of the most complicated part of this process. So, I mean, if you want to go through each one is a straw that whatever works, but I would just net that out from my perspective that I would support moving forward with the organic bins. If we didn't rule that out with a year, I have another year that you study to see what that does to each of the volumes of that, maybe with the leaves. We also have some increase in maybe there. Some behavioral changes that net some different policy options we want to consider in two years time, three years time. That's one out of seven people's opinion. Yeah I'm fine with that. I think it accomplishes if I go back to the original goals we talked about which was reduce our solid waste, more transparency, more equitable. I think it solves one that does not tackle the other two at all. So I'm fine with that as an interim step but it doesn't really address what we originally heard from the people at Park Towers and other condo communities. I'm so. What was the second one you said you said? It was we wanted to reduce solid waste right and we wanted more transparency and more equitable kind of trash. So I like number three I think we should definitely go with the organic, but I do think we should explore option one a little more to really flesh out what the financial consequences are to the whole community. Because again, that was the original reason why we started to look at this was the questions by Kondo Onars. You were removing from the tax rate and just doing a flat fee, removing from a tax rate and then do pay as you throw? No, I think the first step should be removing from the tax rate and doing a flat fee. Or more information about that. So we have more specifics so that we know who will have the biggest effect. Who will, who? Where's the equity piece of it? So the takeaway is to continue to develop the composting program and go back to the drawing board on the transparency and equity issues and continue that thought process and come back for another discussion on that before we launch a consultancy, certainly. We might have some other ideas possibly that come out of some additional discussion. I don't know what those are right now, but it's possible that something new could come up. Can I ask on option one, just like for information purposes, did you like estimate, like take into your calculus the lost like commercial revenues that are going to come from the reduction overall and the assessed rate? Yes. Okay. It was a basic calculation of taking that cost structure of 1.2 million, 1.1, 1.12 million, and then dividing that by $564,000, which is what one penny generates with commercial and residential together. Okay. Is that more helpful now? Yeah, I'm generally in agreement. I want to make clear though that I oppose breaking this out as a separate fee. And I think, you know, other ways to approach the equity issues should be explored way before that. Thanks. Okay. Yeah, ask one question before I'm done. So researching more for adding that third organic car, but the way that it was presented, there is a fee associated with it. So, do you want us to continue building it with this additional fee in mind or? It's a lot of you. It's a lot of you. This is Andy. I think what we would do is go do some more homework and it would come back to you all as part of the FY26 budget discussion. So that would, yeah. That's fine. Does that make sense? Yep. Because you'd nap to net out, yeah. What you're saying is that it's $41 per year in this current to just add the organic bin. Every household would pay $41 more. That was 18. No, no, no. So if we're just doing option number three, the city would need to pay another $55,000 a year in operating costs and we would need some amount of money for bins, which we would discuss further, I think based on tonight's discussion, but those are the two things. So I think based on kind of the homework and things we need to do, the line he was talking about, I think the earliest would be come back to you all with that would be in the FY26 budget. Yeah, you're saying there'd be like a one time outlay for purchasing bins and then you'd need to have the $18 times the 3000 households is a $54,000 like recurrence in your operating costs for every year that you're doing this. Yeah, okay. And we refine the numbers and do some additional homework before presenting that in the spring. But if it's in the tax rate then it's just all calculated in with everything else that we're making decisions on. That's right. Great. Okay. Thank you. All right, thank you, council. and then the last item is a discussion of council salaries and benefits and our city attorney has put together the staff report on this and I'll turn it over to the city attorney. Is Gillette? Hi, good evening everyone. Thank you. Before you tonight is two subjects. One is the subject of council salaries and the other is the subject of council benefits similar to the employment benefits that city employees enjoy. And our recommendation is that those two items most likely should be separated going forward because there are very particular adoption criteria under state code for salaries that don't necessarily apply to benefits. It's certainly Council can choose to keep those two topics running together in a single ordinance, but from a process perspective, it might make sense to separate them. The recommendation, you know, tonight follows some recent state legislation that authorized a increase in council member salaries and those of mayors. The legislation is attached to the staff report and shows that for cities with a population under 15,000. The salary of mayor went from the maximum salary went from 11,500 to 21,000 dollars annually. And the salary of council members went from 11,000 to 20,000 annually. It's possible because this ordinance could not be effective until 2026. I mean, the ordinance could be effective. I mistated that, but the salary increase could not be effective until 2026, which means it's possible that the city could be in a different bracket for population. That bracket is only modestly different than the one I just cited. It would give a maximum salary of 22,000 to the mayor and a maximum salary of 21,000 to other council members. So this, the recommendation before you would be to develop a schedule for the consideration and adoption of these items. And we have crafted a motion which would not necessarily be adopted tonight because it's a work session, but would be recommended for adoption at Council's meeting on October 28th. And that motion would direct staff to develop an analysis of the various employment benefits that could be made available to the city council. And then to schedule that analysis for delivery to council and consideration by council. No later than the council meeting on February 24th of 2025. That's kind of presuming that you are, you know, tying these to, you know, the benefits and salary discussions. That's why that date is kind of far out there. It says I further move that City Council direct staff to schedule the first reading of the salary ordinance for a date such that the public hearing occur no later than the last regular council meeting in May of 2025. And that is because of the timing requirements in the statute, the sequence of events has to be a public hearing council vote general election of council members which does not occur this November, even though we have a special election. The next general regular general election of council members is in November of 2025. The public hearing has to occur and I believe the vote as well four months before the general election. So really you have, I think the end of June is what I calculated. Yes, the end of June of 25 to get the salary adopted. And the effective data the salary can only be effective as early as July 1st of the July following the general election in November 25, which puts the salary effective date at July 1 of 26. So I know that's a lot and it's kind of way far out into the future, but you are approaching it at the right time. And I guess that's all I have to say. I've already gone over the fact that we believe it would be beneficial to separate salaries and benefits in terms of their ordinances and the public hearing that you would need to have on salaries has to occur no later than May of 25 to enable the vote to occur by the end of, you know, to ensure it occurs by the end of June of 25. That is it for the kind of the presentation. And if you have any questions, we're happy to answer. Thank you. Great. Thank you, Sally. I've got questions or comments on this one. So just a clarifying one for me. I think you had mentioned that if our population gets to the next bracket between 15,000 and 1919, 1999, I think it goes up again. So, is that, do we have to get that done through census? Or I guess how do we know when we're, what day is the state code say we need to use? Right, because you won't have a necessarily a census. There is this provision and state code that I came across that says the City Council has the authority to demand account of its population through I believe the Commonwealth Attorney if I'm remembering correctly and that that once it's requested has to be done. the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of I think we need a number on the benefits. If those benefits were maxed out for every member of city council, what would be the cost? I know you can calculate it for employees. I think that's very important in looking at that. Yeah, I think two pieces of data. Maxed out and actuals and projected maximum. So maximum, see if it maxed in and what actually occurred would be three data points, I guess, that one way no minimum. Let me go back to two data points. Actuals and maximum expense. Well, I think the first question is like which one should council be eligible for, right? Because right now I think it's just health health but I think out of the menu that was offered I think we look to staff recommendation that like which ones and then based on those what are the values associated with those? Mary Beth. And then I just wonder about the pension because you don't invest in the pension for five years, right? So it would be. Pensions not eligible. I'll say that's not eligible. Oh it's not eligible. Okay. But the 457 would be. Well it is a little confusing because it says councils authorize the individual code to receive any or all benefits that are provided to the city by its employees. At least there's 457 health insurance and FSA. Yes so the city's pension plan however is a separate legal document with the terms and under the adopted pension plan Council is not eligible because of your point of the temp and term you don't Meet that definition the 4501a would require some additional research to verify under our record keeping the eligibility Most likely and I would just chime into what Cindy saying I don't research to verify under our record keeping the eligibility. Most likely. And I would just chime in to what Cindy saying. I don't, I don't know the process for amending any of those pension plans, but I know we have the retirement board and most likely it would have to go through that group. But if that is something that should be explored, then it could be raised in this discussion and it could be explored and an answer returned to the council. And that is correct. The pension plan is an animal of council that adopts it based on the recommendation of the retirement board. That said, we will have to do legal and fiduciary and evaluation oversight for it because you would be significantly changing the definition of eligible and the overall evaluation of how much contribution needs to go in to the pension plan to keep us over 100% funded by adding additional. So, personally, I think it's odd to have a, if you have to have a five-year period in your elected for a four-year period to expect to anticipate that as a benefit. However, I think the other, like a 457 and an annual, right, you can, you have a job for a year, you can contribute to that. So, like, that makes more sense to me. Yeah, I know it would be nice. And she doesn't make sense to me, but the other three do because there are annual plans that you sign up for and can have a finite period just in terms of, I'm not saying, just make more sense to be discussing than pension. Yeah, and for the pension, we need to start with a significant legal review and there'll be costs. So I would support where you're heading now and we can keep certainly the other as a future option. I guess I'm er, I guess. Yeah, I mean, I think zooming out even further like there's a more fundamental question in my mind about like we're elected officials and should we be likening ourselves to city employees? And I think that there's a difference between us as elected officials and city employees and kind of under state law, we may or may not be able to grant certain benefits, but should think about like, why would we be doing that or does that change the character of sort of the role and does it sort of make council more like enmeshed with the city as opposed to kind of like a governance oversight responsibility and so I'm not like prejudging the benefits issue. I do think it makes sense to treat salaries and benefits differently and under different ordinances. And then it does make sense for sort of transparency purposes to have an ordinance governing benefits as opposed to a sort of administrative authority governing benefits for elected officials and that we should you know kind of think critically about if we're gonna have benefits. How do you classify? Council members and you know what that looks like relative to actual employees of the city government who you're providing benefits to to hopefully incentivize or create kind of lasting relationships or kind of provide incentives to stay with the city sort of over time. Okay, other thoughts? Dave? I guess I have one more thought. Maybe I didn't exactly hear the answer, but the one benefit that I thought really, my view, out of be given serious consideration as workers compensation or independent contractor coverage of some kind because if you're driving to a meeting. And something happens when you're driving to a meeting. You're on your own now, right? Unless we're already covered because we're on city business. So I think that's something that ought to be clarified because that's a potential for catastrophic loss that might not otherwise be covered. Yeah, the city does under our verse insurance, carry public officials liability insurance so that I can confirm for sure you're covered. And I believe if you're on city business or workers' comp, but I'd like to follow up with Sally and Versa on that because we all we all have to go various places as part of a city job and I don't I don't think that's a risk that you assume necessarily and I would add when you're driving your personal vehicle on City Business though the Versa insurance will not cover your automobile your personal insurance We'll cover that our public officials liability would cover everything else and that's one thing We're very careful with our city employees as well because if they're doing their personal vehicle on city business the first insurance is your personal It's good good question. Other thoughts? Okay. I feel like we just took a vote on this one. I had to look back and it was 2022. It was the summer of 2022 before Election of 2022 and then just went and in fact 2024 now is 2022 we voted on it we had to vote before the last For the 2023 election right right and it goes into it went to in fact July first 2024 just now right three months ago That's correct. Right. Okay. Okay. I don't see other questions or comments or just a thought that you have this on this calendar for October 28th. I'm wondering if we can push it later because we have an election in November and this is the kind of thing where you might want to have a full council to be able to vote on. Sorry, I'm kind of lost on where we are. So I mean, we said we sort of have consensus on this and I guess I'm more interested in hearing other people's thoughts. Like it seems as though we have consensus on potentially treating this as two separate ordinances, but I don't know. I would benefit from, I think, more discussion on the salary cap and what we're talking about is potential salaries. Yeah, what's going on right now is I understand it is that we would be directing staff to look into benefits and then propose drafting up an ordinance that would then be voted on June, but before June 30th, 2025, I think is the date. Right, Sally? drafting up an ordinance that would then be voted on in June. But before June 30th, 2025, I think is the date. Right, Sally? On the way back. Right. So to separate. And the ordinance that we attached to the staff report had included salaries at the maximum allowed under law, whether regardless of whether you're under 15,000 in population or over 15,000 in population. And so that the amount I should be discussed by council. You don't need to reach a consensus tonight, the direction that you would be giving staff to develop the ordinance and the public hearing schedule would be given to us by vote on October 28th at your meeting on that date. So we don't need consensus tonight, but if you could start thinking about what salary you would favor and be, you know, willing to give some maybe some more direction on that on the 28th. That would be helpful. But even then if you want to change your mind, you have, you know, many months afterwards to, in a public hearing and a final vote in the first half of 25 to you know to think about this. In that October 28 days where I agree with Mary Beth that it feels appropriate to have the full council seated so maybe we want to wait till November 12th if that's the first regular meeting after the general elections that we have seven of us to give that direction to staff. Yes, there's no urgency and we could do that. Okay. And you want to discuss salary part more, Erin? Yeah, I mean, I think it makes sense. Like if just in the last year we went from whatever it is, 90, 200 to 11,000 and then you're talking about a salary increase from 11,000 to like 20, 90, 200 to 11,000. And then you're talking about a salary increase from 11,000 to like 20,000. You're talking about an 80% increase from like the current to 20,000. And so, you know, I think it just warrants a discussion of, you know, what's the purpose of the salary? What, you know, do we want to accomplish by the salary? And then what kind of, if any, increase makes sense in terms of the salary and where that puts us relative to other jurisdictions are size. And so again, I think it's sort of about like council and kind of what it, you know, what the demands of the physician are and kind of what makes sense in thinking about this as like a stipend versus a salary, for example. And like, I can address that I think it should be a stipend that provides an opportunity for as many people as possible to access the opportunity. And what I mean by that is if you have child care you have to pay for every meeting you go to and that's one to two to three. Sometimes more meetings per week that you can afford to pay child care to support that, or if it's parental care that you need to be caring for, I want it to not preclude somebody from being a council. Nobody's going to be able to live on whether it's 11,000 or 20,000. This is obviously not a salary one could live on. And nobody's doing it to make money to be a large income earner. If you did this by the number of hours that you spend on council, I mean, it's pennies if that per hour, as everybody here puts in a tremendous amount of time. People are doing it for their civic duty. So I think that that's my goal. And I haven't run the math backwards to see what actually would cover that. And it also is, you know, know you got to pay for gas or bus or whatever to get here you have to pay for maybe other missed opportunity like there are opportunity costs to taking this position and I want to ensure that as many people run as possible and that the expense of doing the job is not precluding people from running so So that's like my overarching philosophy. And I also think that is where I stand on benefits as well. If you, you know, the world's changing, it's much more of a gig economy than there was before. The health insurance is an offered to everybody, not everybody has that opportunity. And if that's the reason that somebody can do this job as well, I think that's an important, you know you don't have to take it, you don't have to take the salary, you don't have to take the insurance but providing those as an opportunity for someone who really wants to run and maybe provides a different voice or or just a you know we all have unique voices making sure that all those unique voices are heard that's kind of my philosophy but I don't have it like tonight I think it should be $14,650 number in my mind but yeah I don't know if that's helpful. Yeah no that's what I mean like yeah and I was where I stand have a very like passion passionate feeling about that. No and I get all that and we've had this conversation before about like you know believe and caregiving responsibilities and you know those sorts of costs that add up. I'm just saying that I'm putting it out there that it should be a conversation that we have about what the right number is for what purposes. And is it the salary aspect of the job that's keeping people from running, or is it sort of other aspects of the job that they could seem much more difficult to do that keeps people from running? I imagine it's a common, like everything, it's a combination of all those things, but we have control over one. This is the one we have control over. So that's why I, and we haven't had this opportunity. Like it was $9,000 salary for 2007. I looked it up. 2007 to 2022. So this hasn't even been a conversation we could have. So it is kind of strange to go from 9 to 11. And all of a sudden have $9,000 more of a range to play with. Yeah, I get that. And it's interesting. So why it happened like that? It was obviously suppressed really for quite some, for decades. So just like anything catching up on whether it's teacher salary or our employees, general government employees, like it's kind of catching up on the elected official salaries as well, but 9,000 and one year is a big jump. So like the teachers or like the general government, maybe it's a staged planned increase. So it's also not a huge budget hit. I mean, as a percentage of the budget, it's not a huge budget hit, even if it were 9,000, 9,000, 7. However, the perception of making that big jump, it seems painful, but if you look at it over the history and you were to chart out where it's been, it's been artificially low, in my opinion. Yeah, I thought it was interesting. Like I was looking at the ordinance because the salary cap applies differently to cities, for example, different sizes, versus like towns in Virginia and under the ordinance, it seemed, under, you know, Virginia code, towns actually don't have salary caps. And so I thought it was interesting to look at sort of what towns nearby were paying and they generally, you know, were in the, like, 14 to $15,000 range interestingly enough, like just in January 2024, Vienna raised their salaries. They only raised them to $11,250 for the mayor and $7,500 for council members, Colpepper, I don't know like, current in for example, went from 6000 to 16,000 for their mayor, 15,000 for their council members. Leaseburg seems to be around 16,000 for their mayor, 15,000 for council members. So just, I'm just saying like, kind of, where numbers seem to be in places that haven't dealt with salary caps but are thinking about kind of like what makes sense budget wise for council for example. Sounds are pretty different. They may have dealt with salary caps though. They may be kept where they were the last time. Right. Whatever they have they have a larger population than we do so they may have been able to where we were at 11 they might be at six. No, no I'm saying towns don't get capped at all Yeah, yeah, but I'm saying it then to the day. I'm not yeah, I'm not taking issue with a salary increase I'm just I'm talking about sort of like where should be yeah where should be and thinking about you know Council, yeah, I think we said this when we took the vote in 2022. I think in general, for me, I guess we've talked about wanting to attract more diverse opinions. So like Debbie, I think this is, you know, we don't want this to be something that people can afford because they're independently wealthy or have the most flexible jobs. And so if this is one of the things that an option we should consider. If I might, there's one other consideration, which is what is the nature of the job? Is the job fundamentally a volunteer job where you come forward from the community and you return to the community? Or is it intended to be a job? And if so, when you have a city manager form of government, does that sort, is that sort of salary justified? Does the job justify? Does the job justify that amount? And what are the citizens want? That they feel that it's warranted? These are all just questions. That's kind of where I was going with my questions. When I came on and realized how much time people spent, like if someone were to ask you how many hours a week do you spend on this role? I mean, I don't think 30 hours is one reason, you know, probably average, what everybody spends on that. And for four years, somebody going to do a volunteer job to spend 30 hours plus or minus. I don't know. And it doesn't seem to be a, like maybe in the history of False Church City Council has anybody used it as a springboard for like, I don't see people using it as like a political springboard. I see it's community, it's people who've come from the community who want to serve the community. And for the most part, even when the Council stay in the community and continue to be engaged in boards and commissions and volunteering services. So that's how I see it, the job. Like it's an actual job. Yeah, but I guess that gets back to what I was saying, like, should it be a job? And if it becomes a job that requires that much time, then there's like a whole other segment of the community that you basically exclude from like serving on council. Because you can have a job and be on council at that point. So that's what I mean about like what you know what that makes it going. And that's why I think it's like a reflection is to kind of you know council and you know how we're structured or sort of what it is we're taking on as council versus what's like properly the role of the city to accomplish with oversight, for example, that just I think the conversation about incentivizing people to serve is related, but it's also a different conversation from just like the salary increase. And so I don't think the incentivizing people to serve is solely related to the amount that you're paying them. I completely agree. So I'm not saying solely, it's a factor, it's a factor over which we have control. I don't have control over the outside market forces and how many hours people have to work on their other jobs or anything else like that. We can make us a more attractive option for someone to choose to do this. Okay, other thoughts? Okay. option for someone to choose to do this. Okay other thoughts? Okay, I think the only thing we heard at least me and Marybeth suggested we punt on this till the November 12th meeting Sally. If that's fine. Yes, is there a consensus for that on council? Okay. Okay, so November 12th it is. We will bring this back to you and it might help. Certainly we don't need to wait until February 24th to bring back the benefit information. It might help us to know if you like how many meetings per discussion you think I know it might be hard to judge right now, but do you think we should be thinking that this is a two to three meeting discussion item, the benefits, or one to two? One? I think one feels sufficient, at least for me. With the data. Yes. If you have the data on which ones you think we should be eligible for, what the cost might be, I think we can take care of this in one. Great. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Okay. I think we're already moving on to schedule then, unless there's anything else left on this item. Sally? No, I have nothing else to add. Thank you Okay, since we don't have a mayor's meeting on Wednesday. Let's take care of the bus All right if the council would like I can go through the schedule does everybody have the schedule in front of you There was a stack of them on the table outside If you don't have it, it might be easier for Paul's. Let people grab one. I have it online. Linked on the agenda. Yeah, so please get it up on the screen as well. So that should do it. So we have legislative committee tomorrow morning at 8.30. We will not have the meeting on the 9th then for the normal mayor's agenda meeting. We'll strike that. And then appointment committee at 8 p.m. on Wednesday. The BML conference is this coming weekend. We also have Indigenous Peoples Day on Monday, which is a holiday in the city. October 18th, we'll have the Budget and Finance Committee, and we'll be discussing the sort of having a preliminary discussion of a budget amendment number one, which we'll have on the work session on the 21st. The hotel tax ordinance, there is some state code changes that calls us to need to make a technical correction to our local hotel tax. The parklet naming discussion, actually I think there's been a request to move I think November 4th. That's right. And Title 6 policy and the annual fall search shelter agreement would be on a consent preview. A dinner with Alexandria and Arlington would be on October 23rd at 6.30 p.m. On the 28th at our regular meeting we have a series of proclamations. We would have first reading on the budget amendment, the commercial parking item, the extension of the West Falls senior component, 30-day extension of the West Falls Senior Component 30-Day Extension, the Hotel Tax Technical Correction, and then the two consent items. The November 4th work session, Saigon Boulevard Renaming, Honorary Renaming, the sewer agreement with Fairfax County, accessory dwellings, discussion of code, text, as well as an initiating resolution. We'll have the quarterly CIP report and the quarterly council priorities update and we'll discuss the 2025 General five general assembly legislative program Cindy you see that we have that on the fourth which is a little early yeah November 12th the reception for the new council member at six thirty swearing in ceremony, proclamation for Trans Day of Remembrance and Transgender Awareness, a budget amendment, second reading, the initiating resolution for accessory dwellings and first reading on the text for accessory dwellings for a code amendment. The Saigon Boulevard Honorary Renaming and the adoption of the Ledge Program. And then second reading on the technical correction for the hotel tax. Can I put a point on the November 4th work session for the 2025 General Assembly legislative program. Is that where we may possibly discuss more the possible 15.2, 2304, like if we were to try to get included and will we kind of have information about how that kind of intersects with like our special exception criteria. For example, and if it like shifts kind of how we think about density to like a different model versus this special exception model. Cause it's like basically for anything with an elevator over four stories, we're capped under the current version. And so this would allow us to apply like a density bonus program to bigger buildings where we can't currently do so. So I'm just wondering how they like interrelate. Well they certainly do interrelate and what I'm envisioning that we'd be able to do is just have some discussion about how others have used this authority. But City Fairfax recently got, it was named City Charlottesville's name to 2020. Those are kind of your two most up-to-date jurisdictions that we've been at the staff level reading up on and we want to share what we've learned in terms of how they've used that authority. I don't know Cindy or Sally if you have some other thoughts on that? Yeah we have been doing research so we can do that comparison. The legislative process, of course, is a specific track and it's to give the city more local authority and you have the choice whether and how to do it versus the restriction you have. So it's mirroring state authority for a goal and a vision with all the other stuff that roll into it. Most of the other localities that we've started looking at, they look, it's very specific, this section's very specific to affordable housing and your density. And it specifically says it doesn't override or supersede your other land use and zoning and so forth. So we'd marry them, but About it. So it's like another right something else in the toolbox And then it's this for the city to determine kind of if it has that tool how how do you use it Relative to your other tools or code provisions and we have a lot of good models from the other localities that are utilizing it now, and it eliminates the issues that you had when we were trying to do T zones and your other initiatives while balancing a very restrictive ratio. And it does affect this section would allow single-family detached attach and multi-family, so it allows you to look more holistically, but it doesn't require you to change zoning districts or other requirements within that underpinning. And tomorrow at the legislative committee meeting we will be discussing this as a topic and sort of the legislative process because I'm out of center of sleep and and still like to sign in this afternoon. So we'd have the process as a word for discussion tomorrow. Thank you. All right, then continuing then on the second page and looking ahead to... I'm adding the salary button in the discussion. To the 12th. That's right. So that's just the motion, not necessarily the policy discussion. November 18th, we'll just note November 15th, we'd have a budget and finance committee meeting there and we're anticipating that we would begin starting to talk about financial policies at that point. November 18th work session. So the General Assembly State Code change summary, that's really a look backwards at the last session of the General Assembly and just looking at assessing any new authorities that we've either been granted or have had taken away from us and so we can build that into the council's plan about any changes we want to make locally based on those state changes from last year. The fiscal or financial policies discussion and review. The public the public facilities chapter of the comp plan and an initiating resolution for that comp plan amendment. Then the 24th, right before Thanksgiving Fairfax County sewer agreement, the action on the initiating resolution for the public facilities chapter of the comp plan, and then a resolution on the financial policies. The December 2nd work sessions would be a joint session with the school board for FY 26 budget planning and a discussion of FY 26 budget guidance and then at the last meeting of the calendar year budget guidance resolution, fiscal policy resolution and we kick things off at the beginning of that meeting with a library, a chat to long library service award. We do have some things to plug in that we will do before we have our next agenda meeting on the before the meeting on the 21st, including the towing ordinance changes and a number of these things that are listed at the bottom. One of the ones that I exchanged messages with WIDE on that we had talked about which is complete streets in vision zero. That's right. And so that's one that needs to get added back in. Yeah. And then a breakfast date too. That's a good memory. I knew there was something else. Clearly. Yeah. Breakfast. Why did you catch that? I'm not sure if that's a clerk's thing or if that's out of the city manager's office I have been doing it as a clerks thing I think the clerk might be viewing it as a city manager thing we'll get that straight I have I've been doing a city managers meet up where we don't bring food So we're not as much fun as the mayor's event But we have to serve a round table where people can come in and talk policy or what's happening in the city. That next one is on November 7th. And since everyone's invited to that, it might be good to have a little buffer either well in advance of that or a little bit of time after that just so we don't have to, they're kind of right on top of each other. I only suggestion that we're in the community centers given that they're going to move. And so we're trying to move the breakfast somewhere. So you all tell us the time and we're happy to talk to the police. Well, the last one I think people enjoy it very much. So look forward to that. I'll talk with Celeste and we'll talk with you tomorrow and then that schedule. Thank you. I have a few questions. Can I just related to the budget? Can we have an update since when we ended the budget conversation, we had sort of talked about how much progress public safety police department would be able to make on reaccreditation kind of on its own and sort of where we are with that or whether we may or may not see it kind of as part of the budget amendment conversation depending on like if they do or don't need additional help based on sort of progress to date. What she for has accreditation as a high priority for the department and the whole command staff another city council does as well. He actually took the initiative of using some salary savings in his budget to bring in a term limited part time position of someone who is a accreditation pro, someone who has helped jurisdictions with kind of getting organized for these efforts. So he is actually taking the initiative to do that. I will provide a write-up, sort of give counsel a little bit more information about that initiative, but I think it was a very positive step that the chief took to move that forward. No, that makes sense to me. It was kind of like where I was going in my mind with whether there may need to be like shorter term support for that or kind of, yeah, where that may end up. And then I guess the only other things I had was given the follow up on the road conditions on HACOC and Route 7 in particular. I do think, you know, like the idea of leaving it as is for six months is not great. And even I don't know what the V.inspection timeline has been, but I do wonder, you know, has V.inspected Route 7 recently or is Route 7 due for an inspection given like some of the dips in the road. Like I basically like lost half my bumper on Route 7 this past weekend. So. And then on just citizen comments since we won't be meeting again for some time. I don't know if the city staff had kind of thoughts on the rapid response team and what we might be able to do, kind of given public comment, you know, about Gundry and Ann and Dale and other places. And then also if there's any update about, I've now heard from multiple folks about continuing issues with the Broad and Washington signal timing and inability to get through that intersection, you know, even with two or three cycles going westbound on Broad, kind of as you're going from like Broadmont through. To that, yeah. Confirmed, yeah problem. Thank you. Right. On the citizen requests, I've had a couple people this week tell me that they're excited about the new garage of Broad and Wash and you know We put a lot of effort into making sure that the developer provided EV charging stations and connectivity for the next ones Which is great except that there's no Wi-Fi or there's difficult spotty reception down there and you have to use an app to pay for it. Mm-hmm. So It's great that you can drive up and plug in but then you have to go all the way upstairs And like remember what it is Connect pay for it go back down and like make sure it's connected So if we could ask the developers there's got to be some way to add repeaters or you know some additional Service down there because it kind of defeats the purpose if you get down there and you can't pay for it right when you're there And to that effect I think when we did the tour of Ronwash that they there was definitely discussion about improving the signage down there about where What's public parking and how to access the public parking and that hasn't been put up yet? So we can just get a follow-up on signage in the parking garage for publicly available. Meaning at the entrance? At the entrance and then when you go back, when you go down there, yeah it was like well we're going to color code them or we're going to number them or we're going to make it more obvious and I haven't been down there since but I've had several people tell me it's really confusing the not sure where to park. They're excited at public parking but they're not unsure. So both accessing it either from broad or from the Claren Don side, making it clear where you go for public parking. And I know that Joe Muffler was talking about yeah we understand that was an issue so if we could just get a followup on where the signage is and then a response on the Wi-Fi. That'd be great. Okay. Especially if we can get a dress before the whole food so opens, which you know, see all the signs makes it look like it's going to open tomorrow. But it'd be great to have that. Moving in like the actual like produce stuff. It's kind of exciting to see. But I did hear not till February. Or really? Yeah. February at that. Mm-hmm. February. Really? Yeah. February at that. I thought they were sort of aiming for Thanksgiving. We had a visit from staff of the one in Tyson's there, Tyson Station one. They brought food and they said they're all moving over and they didn't think it would be tough February. So Dave. Yeah, so I think Mayor, you responded as well. Another stop sign running incident under Gunter in Anandale. Frankly, we see stop sign running incidents all over the city. Almost every place is a stop sign that running incidents are endemic. So I wanted to see if Council is okay if I see a CT to take a look at this and if we could ask staff to look at A or their things such as stop sign running cameras or other devices. Now the thought was well you could put lights around, you know, flashing lights around the stop sign. Well, the problem is, you better put those lights everywhere because the stop signs that don't have them then look like a joke to drivers. And then they respond, oh, I love to see the light zoom right through. So I think we need to hunt for something effective. I know my neighbors have a video camera and video, the four ways to stop, I think we've all seen those. I mean, complete with sound effects. I mean, and everybody all across the city is suffering from the same sort of thing. And I think there's also an education element to this. Somehow communicating more broadly to the driving public that we just don't tolerate this kind of thing here. I don't know how you phrase it exactly, but anyway I think we need more thinking here to see are there engineering issues, are there electronic enforcement, and I know even getting speed enforcement is difficult. So I think we can discuss that in the legislative committee. It doesn't mean we shouldn't push for it, but what else can we do? What are other jurisdictions? Have any other jurisdictions? I mean, had any benefit, any positive results from this but I mean it's literally and it's all across the city and it would be great if we could come up with a city wide approach that actually makes a difference. agreed and red light running I think is really good to share about that. Okay, other requests or items bring up for the schedule. Okay, so we covered Broad and Washington because we got public comment about that. We talked about Anandell Gundry, Maple and Broad, why I forwarded to you again. The signal timing issue at Maple and Broad. Anandale and Broad is still at nine seconds for our countdown, Cindy. Same as when we observed it. Yes. We also received a public comment about, or actually it just came to me about Grove Avenue and some bad behavior. It's happening at rush hour times, but I think the chief already responded to that one. received public comment about, or actually it just came to me about Grove Avenue and some bad behavior. It's happening at rush hour times, but I think the chief already responded to that one. So thank you for your staff responding quickly. I think the last public comment we got given that we're not going to have a, I guess our next meeting is a 28th when we was like public comment is there's a giant hole at little falls in the WNOD. I ran past it on Sunday. It is a giant hole. It's covered by a giant cone luckily, but I don't know if it's ours or if it's Nova Parks responsibility. So every, you'll see it every crossing there is that hole. What they're waiting for is the light to go in. And so that's a dominion issue. And dominion is all kind of all hands on deck and Southwest Virginia and other parts of their service territory in North Carolina. So we don't have an ETA for them to get those lights in, but that's the reason why the holes are if we fill them in. You know, find out how long it's going to be. We understand that it's a concern. We need to make sure it's secure. Yeah, as long as it's covered by the giant cone. Yeah, it is certainly unsightly, which we probably can tolerate for a certain amount of time, but unsafe we will not tolerate. Yep, especially if people are riding at night, you don't want to fall into the giant. Okay. Does any of the dominion being pulled elsewhere impact? This is just occurring me now, back to our first topic of the evening on West Falls. Does any of them being pulled to obvious higher priorities impact that work that's happening or that they were discussing on the reserve? Well, I mean, I will say every contractor always struggles with dominion and Washington gas and kind of all the big utility companies. I don't think that's been on the critical path. The traffic signals on Route 7 in particular are way behind schedule because of a slow B dot approval process. But Dominion do in working where they're needed right now, it's not impacting the development at West Falls. The reserve specifically in the 30 day extension that we're discussing. The extension that the Lyca contractor was having to do a lot of, the West Falls contractor was having to do a lot of work for Dominion, not needing Dominion eventually, they'll need inspections. We're gonna see some minor impacts on some of our capital projects where they're designing and doing some of our work. They're out of the area right now. And it's been related to the Founders Row conversion as well, where that work of undergallowing the power utilities there has, I think there's been like a two week delay right now. It's directly related to cruise bin sent out. But that was delayed before the hurricane. We had heard from the neighborhood, from their neighborhood meeting that that was already delayed. It was, but there was additional delay, I guess, as the point. Just trying to make sure I understand what other impacts it has on projects we have ongoing to appreciate the importance of doing the work in Southwest Virginia and North Carolina of course but understanding its impacts on us to or safety like those big holes and whatever else. Two other things I just remembered on the LED light replacement. I've had some residents you know reach out about how it feels significantly darker and you know it's like yeah we don't want too much light and we don't want like light pollution but you know people who have said wow like when I'm walking in the evening now or I'm out for a walk with a dog, it's significantly darker. And that they were questioning whether lights were out, but when you look, it's like the LED at whatever the wattage choice that we made was. And then even drivers have said, I feel like I'm driving down certain side streets now And I have like no overhead lighting. I only have the lights on the car And so I didn't know if that was a like a Inquiry that the city was hearing at all or feedback the city was hearing at all separate and apart from people who had made Remark to me about, just in terms of like, under the opposite. I'm not really in the opposite. Multiple times. So I've heard the direct opposite, that's too bright. And it's going in their windows and why did we have to make those changes? We don't like the color of it. It's too bright. No, I thought I brought it up there just to see what other people had been hearing. And then the other, the other thing that I had was, and it may have just, maybe I wasn't paying close enough attention, but I was driving. I came, I made the left off of broad onto West by Founders Row. So came back behind the back of Founders Row and got to the stop light that set Founders Row west and park because I was going to be going straight down park. So I was stuck at the traffic light, you know, waiting. And I could see the pedestrians crossing because they had the right of way with the countdown. Yeah, at the countdown. Well, coming out of the founders row, like Plaza going towards the W and OD. But I could see the numbers going down in the pedestrians. The pedestrians had crossed already, but two cars were like coming around the corner, coming from Northwest onto whatever you consider that. Like the continuation of Northwest heading toward Broad. And in my mind, I was like, that's strange because although normally you're making the right turn, you see the pedestrians. When you're coming down West, I was actually wondering if the cars had the green arrow to turn right at the same time that the pedestrians had the walk signal with the countdown that they had, you know, like the 15 seconds left because it seemed to me sort of a recipe for getting hit as a pedestrian, like because it's not the same sort of right turn that a car generally makes and an intersection because it's not a hard right. It's that like you have the right arrow to go, not thinking that the pedestrian's gonna have the countdown on the walk signal. So I don't know, you know, it just occurred to me as I was there, like whether that signal was actually functioning. I've given that feedback for a different turning motion. So like if you're on park and you're heading towards your park, your founders on your left, western, or is on your right, people will turn right into the pedestrian. So they'll get a walk signal and you can do a right turn. So in general, I think that's the intersection where pedestrians should get priority and it should be frozen. Yeah, no, and that's kind of the crux of my feedback. And I didn't know if I, if the cars were turning When they shouldn't have been turning or if the cars were turning and it was operating like a hard right even though It it doesn't function like a hard right in the pedestrian So like you're gonna have a higher likelihood of getting picked off by a car the light is the same depending which way you approach it Where I just having observed it enough times I feel like the pedestrian should get the priority and everything should be read. Because there's, which I know may slow things down, and I think the concern is that we would back the traffic up, but there's been enough close calls there that I would do worry that we're letting people do right on greens with a pedestrian signal at the same time. So. It is designed to function like a regular for-legged intersection. So that is a feature. And I think after thinking it through in all sorts of different ways, I think that is the conclusion that that's the safest way to handle that intersection. What we thought was updated after that might get- But take the freeze, everything is an option. The only comment I will make on that is that it is something that traffic engineers worry about is that the traveling public that is trying to get home or trying to get where they're trying to get to, sometimes when it's all red and no one can go, it causes bad driver behavior because people start to get really angry. And that is something that they think about. And so that's just another thing to, when we think about LPI's and other things, that's the other consideration that the engineers have. Because you know, that's what they're doing. But it should cut out one cycle, right? Because if you let all four legs go with green and then everyone's on red, you don't have to wait for the opposite anymore. So it's not like you're adding an extra cycle, making an extra long. That's how scrambles work. I know that scrambles aren't legal in Virginia where you can die the most too. But essentially if you freeze all the car traffic and let everyone cross North-South and East-West at the same time, you've moved one cycle. And so it doesn't actually add car time for people. That makes sense. Let's add scrambles to the legislative agenda. Yes, scrambles when you can cross. Thank you. I love challenges. Apparently they're not legal in Virginia. So they work though. I've walked on one and they don't add more time because then you just... everyone crosses all at once and you don't wait for two cycles. Okay, thanks for bringing that up, Erin. I know we've gotten a lot of feedback about that. Okay, that's a lot of transportation safety feedback. That is honestly the feedback we hear the most about is speeding in neighborhoods, cut through traffic, pedestrian safety. So, running stop signs, running red lights. So. Okay. Okay, well I think that's it for scheduled plus miscellaneous items. Any final comments before we adjourn for a one week break? Except for the Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. And it's kind of a break, yes. At least break from a fall stretch meeting. Till the 30 tomorrow morning for the Ledge Committee and appointments on Wednesday night too soon. And our staff is going to be receiving an award at the VML meeting. That is correct. On Sunday evening. Yeah. Will there be staff members that are receiving? So Emily Baysmore will be there. Cindy will be there. I've had a family obligation pop up and I will not be able to be there. Cindy will be there. I've had a family obligation pop up and I will not be able to be there on Sunday night. Okay. I'm glad I'm only able to be able to be there. She worked hard on that. Great. Thank you all. Have a good night. Thank you. I'm not entirely sure about it yet. Thank you.