Okay, it is seven o'clock, so we're going to go ahead and get started with work session number four for context. We are going to start with the departments that were originally scheduled for this meeting. I think each has one slide that kind of summarizes key highlights and people can ask questions. for that department while we're on that slide. Then we'll go into some of the departments that we did not cover in the last meeting, and then we'll go into some of the departments that we did not cover in the last meeting. And then we will go into, there were several other departments that while they don't have slides, we still wanted to touch on. Those include the city attorney's office, finance, general services, management, and budget. And then after that, anything that we did not get to, we will make space so that we have time to go through that. I think that is everything. So with that, I will turn it over to Deputy City Manager Emily Baker to frame this work session. Good evening, Mayor Gaskin. Members of City Council, Emily Baker, Deputy City Manager. We have assembled departments here this evening. We have slides, but we're going to try to hit on these highlights quickly. And the department heads will be here to answer any questions that you have. And I'm going to hand it over to our first department head. Jack Brown here representing the Department of Parks recreation parks and cultural activities. All right, thank you for having me this evening. So again, Jack, we're on the interim director for the Department of Recreation Parks and Cultural Activities. So we have a few highlights here. So a couple of our service reductions are actually efficiencies. We were not really aware of what they would cost to operate. The mini Howard Pool when it first opened. So we did our best to estimate. We found that we estimated fine. So these reductions represent that reduction to more efficiently operate that facility. We've also been able to identify some efficiency reductions with our seasonal staffing. Primarily, this is around the special events. Many of the events now don't need as much support. Many of the programs are actually providing additional services to support themselves, so we are being able to reduce there. Then we also have a few fee adjustments each and every year that we do, provide some fee increases, after we do some market rate studies, we look around and also through request. A few of those are here. We have actually had a lot more requests to enhance some of our park and indoor facility rentals. So we will be purchasing indoor moon balance equipment and so forth and then being able to rent those out for additional revenue. Our youth sport fees will see an increase in their participation fee this year. We also get requests for audio equipment and many of our indoor rentals. So this would be additional revenue with regard to that type of rental service for the community. And then a variety of other usage fees, totaling about $85,000. So these will be revenue offsets for the Department of Recreation. So with that, if there's any questions, glad to help. I know I had a few, I don't see any right now. The fee study, the market rate fee study that you guys do, is that done annually or what's the frequency? Yes, not a formalized market study, but we annually we will look at other jurisdictions to see what they're offering in terms of, you know, rentals to say competitive so we don't become too high, but also when there is additional fees and you know in terms of staffing costs and of that type we make those type of adjustments. Okay, and were there other fee adjustments proposed that we're not taken in this budget? Yeah. Okay, and then I was curious, I know, I think it was last budget, we approved a waiver of fees for low income youth during the summertime. I was just wondering if you had any data on how many kids we've been able to serve through that and what's the actual cost been to the city. Yeah, we could provide that information. I don't want to gas, but yes, we still have the fee waiver and we can provide information on that. Okay. Thank you. Would that just be for the summer of 2024? I guess since we passed it. Oh, okay. Yeah, we can do that. Okay. Councilman Onibe. Thank you Madam Mayor. The youth sports fee increase like ballpark, what's the average increase? Actually on the call I have on Lordderm and she might be she's on the Zoom networks and maybe she can answer some of these questions for you. Are you able to join us? Yes, I believe I am. Can you hear me? The fee increases is $5. It's going up from $95 to $100 to participate in youth sports. So it is not a substantial fee increase and financial assistance is still available for all participants. Go ahead, thank you. And just to build off that, where does that, do you know where that puts us kind of in the marketplace for another region? It's on average, we're pretty similar. We keep it consistent across the sports, either for the sports that our PCA manages directly. We're very close to others, but it does not include our affiliate programs. And so we don't include that in our comparison. But for recreation level, and that's what these are, these are the recreation level leaks. We're very comfortable, slightly lower, but still comfortable. One of the questions for you Jack, with the the many hour pool, and maybe too early to kind of know this, but do we feel that we have, because that's a shared relationship between the SPS, or are we getting kind of what we want out of that relationship as a release of the pool usage? I would say generally yes. It's still evolved, because again, the you know not all of the program for the school has actually materialized yet so there are there are some down times during the day so if we want to try to bring in community use during the day we'd have to kind of have some more conversations they see PS so it's evolving. Councilman McPike. I probably could have answered this question if I'd gone back to previous budgets, but on the performance indicators on the jump down to me was the drop from 46,000 households registered with RPCAs, registration and reservation system in fiscal year 23 to 30,000 hours. That's just because where we are on the year when these numbers were collected because we still have half the fiscal year to go. No, actually that reduction was a result of us upgrading our software. Okay. So we updated our recreation software and as part of that we went through and purged. There were some duplicates, you know, sometimes, you know, one spouse will register than another and we ended up having duplicate households within the system. There are some that, you know, kind of just stop coming. So that was a way for us to clean that up. We'll move on through the upgrade process for the program. So it's a more accurate measure. Yeah, right? Let's get, shouldn't be a red arrow then. And do we have turf synthetic turf installations this year, replacements of natural turf synthetic? Yeah, so we are getting ready to open up the Patrick Henry on site. That is now done. will be opening up Hensley Park. That's one of our newer reservations, which will be opening later this spring. That will be one of that'll be our first full-size softball synthetic curves. So that'll be opening and many however to still on schedule to reopen this fall. They say late summer, but it's likely to be early fall and that'll be a synthetic curve field. That'll be lighted as well. That will reopen reopen and we're also in the final stages of starting to get the solicitation out to convert the armor set ill booth park for natural grasses synthetic turf we hope to have that done probably by mid to late fall probably early winter of next year or this year maybe you know say the November December time frame thank you very much um councilman anduirre. Director Brone, for the cricket activities that we're trying to handle, is there any additional funding that's needed or are we able to kind of pick care of that with existing resources? Right now we're good. Yeah, so we have our staff. We did pay a contractor to come in to lay out the base, and we're able to maintain that weekly, but we will need to upgrade that facility there. We'll need to do some turf enhancements, which we can do in house. Thank you. Thank you, director Brown, and now we will move to TNES. Good evening. I'm sorry. So today I'm going to be talking to you guys a little bit about some highlights within test and there are supplemental reductions and some alphia adjustments that we identified for fiscal year 2026 proposed budget with that. I want to start off with some of the supplemental that we identified. The first one is a $50,000 request in order for us to proceed with a comprehensive plan that that includes City's Curbside Composting Program as well as the recycling glass drop-off locations. What we want to do there is synergize some of the services by integrating the dark waste and the food waste collection citywide and that will allow us to continue to promote sustainable waste management. We have also made a request for $75,000, and that's to provide additional training for our equipment operator on new hires and existing equipment operators, and that's to continue the culture of safety. I think some of you are aware that we have been talking about electrically floors and the vending of the gas leaf floors. And with that, this is a supplemental of $25,000 to replace or exist in equipment. And I think previously we have shared that we have started with our replacement within test. And that is my understanding that my partner departments, RPCA and general services, will be receiving a similar allotment so that we can start facing out the systems. And then the final supplemental is for an additional full-time employee position for a noise inspector and approximately $130,000. And this is an effort to assist with cross-departmental enforcement, not only with noise but potentially with with the the Vanina of the gas leaf floors as well as um in your dumping and the new program at mountain burn and vendor program and then lastly i want to talk a little bit about two efficiencies that we identified within our department and that's the credit card processing um cost um that used to be part of the city's budget and now with the change from the parking meters to the mobile application, the city no longer gets charged for the credit card processing fees. So that's an approximate $60,000 efficiency. We also identified about 235,000 inefficiencies within the general fund. And this is a result of the waste disposal service agreement between the city, the county of Arlington and Reeworld. And that is because starting October 1st, 2025, we will no longer be required to pay the TPU fee. So that allow the city general fund for about $235,000 in efficiency. I'm sorry, reduction. Within our department we do have two fee adjustments proposed for fiscal year 2026. The first one is the residential permit parking fee, which increases the one vehicle parking permit from $40 to $55. The second vehicle from $50 to $75. And then any additional vehicle after the second one, it will go from $152 to $250. And then the last fee adjustment proposal is under the stormwater utility fee, and that's an additional 5% that will take us on 324 to approximately $340 a month. And with that, we're available for questions. Okay, sorry, I'm baggly. Thank you. And thanks for sort of identifying the opportunities you identified here and just couple couple check my map. But basically the four editions identified are equal to the two efficiencies identified. So then my question is that $200,000 in anticipated additional revenue generated by the parking fee adjustment is that money just kind of being absorbed into other increased cost or those increased revenues something we can point to. That just goes contribute to the general fund. It's just part of the overall general fund revenue. Okay and the numbers you landed at and apologies I didn't grab my book on the way in but the do they put us, how do they put us now in comparison to our neighbors? And we're talking about the parking fees, right? They're actually, they placed us an alignment. We actually looked at Arlington DC and Annapolis, and in Arlington, the first vehicle is $40. And DC is 50 and Annapolis is 55. That's for the first vehicle. And then for the second vehicle is 55 75 and 75. So we are uncertain an alignment. And the last time that we actually increase was back in 2018. So it's been a one now. I appreciate that. I'm supportive of this effort. Can I ask about something beyond this slide? Yeah. Anything in the perfect. Okay. I wanted to ask about do street and motion. And I'm curious maybe this is more of like a budget question for some follow up recognizing. You know, We had a vote in November that resulted in guidance that was not one of sort of the two options that had been, you know, sort of worked up to that point. And I think what I'm curious about both from a process perspective, just for the manager and for your department. Like when do we get our next update? But in terms, and like where do street and motion sort of those projects are that we signed off on in November? But the budget related part of this is did the revisions or the resulting, you know, guidance that the council gave in November, what impacts it any did it have on the overall costs of the project? Is that clear? Is that a vote? I think it's a clear question. I'm not sure that I can answer. No, I guess that's important. But I think the first part is, yes, council did it give us direction back in November. and currently the staff is working on attaining the consultant for the design services. So I'm hoping maybe within the next few months we can provide an update to council if that is the request. Okay I mean I wouldn't anticipate that the the resulting guidance would dramatically change the costs. Having said that, it would be nice to sort of get an updated cost analysis on what we did, you know, approve. Yes, and we need to make work. We need to make the project work within the budget that we have. So the budget that we have, that's going to be that design based on additional guidance received my council. my council. And I guess what I'm poking out a little bit is the guidance we gave kind of pulled the project back a bit of and so what I'm curious about is if the project was scoped at 75 million or you know, just throwing out a number. If the consultant comes back with it's now a $56 million project, what opportunities does that create within your budget? I'm not trying to take dollars from tests but just poking just poking at that a little bit. Thank you. Funds for McPike? When looking at the residential refuse fund, I notice that we've kept the the fee at $500 or double unit. But obviously the cost of providing that service has gone up every year because it does. And what we're doing is we're using $1.5 million more out of our fund balance to sort of make up that difference. Do we consider raising the fee so we wouldn't have to dip into our fund balance with that degree? Here's the chart. I can answer that question. And so I'm Tarns Moran, the Deputy Director of Transportation and Environmental Services, waste and traffic management specifically. But we did talk about raising the fee. We talked about reducing the fee because of the co-vantage of re-wield tipping fees. And where we landed was to keep it flat. Because we have a number of different things that are happening in the compost, as well as with curbside, yard waste recycling, as well as the driver incentive and so on and so forth. So did want to keep it flat. When was the last time we changed the fee? It was in, I believe it was in 2022. So the last time we actually increased the fee was for, it was a part of the compost pilot program. The previous, the city mayor at the time actually put in a budget question and increased it to the company for companies. Thank you very much. Consumene Geary. Random question around the leaf blowers. Are we going to try and change everything out at once or do you think we'll kind of phase it because just given the way technology changes and advances, you know, we reserve some of the money to purchase some of the things that gets newer and better later on. We're just talking about the city equipment right now. Yeah. Yeah. I think for tests, we may potentially be able to do the the entire replacement next fiscal year. And I believe that in my conversations with our PC and general services, it will be the next the same thing. Okay. Yeah. And I said like to to my point, I was just kind of saying, I get replacing the whole the whole inventory of equipment, but at the same time, you know, given the advancements in technology and the fact that batteries might get better or lighter or the machine might be able to blow air longer, whatever, right? Yes, and the other thing is that we need to consider is that in RPC they do have a contractor, so we need to take into consideration them. But to your point, we are currently doing computer engagement. So as we hear their feedback, it is it is a good idea to start thinking about what's out there. I think that that made me think I think the other thing we might want to think about is if we replace all of them at the same time and they all break at the same time or have the same life cycle, then we have to replace them all again. So I would be curious to you in some of the phasing. This is probably a budget memo, but I'm curious, given that we had more snow-related emergencies this year, I'm just curious kind of how the costs that we had to expend, especially when we had to activate the emergency operations center, how that compared to previous years and how we're thinking about budgeting for the fact that we may see more frequent and intense snow-related storms moving forward. I think we would like to take that question back and make sure that we give you the right numbers. Can I just ask a little bit more on the leaf lowers because direction we got from council was go very fast in regard to the change out of city equipment. Would you raise a great question? Is there a consensus generally about adjusting the schedule? Because the schedule we're on right now is change out every piece of leaf-blowing equipment as fast as we can. But the technology does change year to year in that space. Vice Mayor Bagley. I guess if we were to incorporate that fact into our turnover, minimally, we need to be in compliance at the same time as the rest of the city. I mean, that's so, I still stand by like as aggressively as possible, you know, sort of, but I understand the point about like not having our entire fleet wear out in the same year and having some pacing in, but we certainly want to be queuing ourselves up to be in compliance at the same time as every other business, you know, in the city. So perhaps maybe staff can come back with sort of, this is how many we have. We propose replacing 75% of them in the first go, and then another 25, and we can discuss further. Councilman Aguirre. I guess also to that point, I know storage could be an issue, but if we have enough storage space, just to keep a couple in case of emergency, you know, then that kind of helps out with that little situation too. Other questions for TNES? Councilman Elnubey. It looks like we're, are we adding glass recycling locations? I know they're up in in the first line so are we adding and I guess my bigger question is do we like have a plan to expand the program or are we evaluating as we go and what kind of data or feedback are we using as we evaluate what do we need to expand and where do we need to expand? So I'm going to let Torrance bit more about it. This is for a comprehensive plan and it's specifically also to address the needs of new locations. So right now our glass recycling program, we have four glass recycling dropoffs, including moms organic that would make it five. And right now we don't really have a lot of representation in the West End. And we've had some feedback from residents about adding additional glass recycling drop off containers. But before we just decide to add them at the request of the residents, we would like to do an analysis or study and that's what this would basically allow us to do is that it would look at our existing drop off locations and see where we have expansion or we have capacity to add because we do have to consider turn radius of vehicles and things like that parking spaces. in order to accommodate additional containers. And this study would allow us to look at the West End as well as all Town and other areas so that we can determine where the best place to put additional glass recycling drop off containers would be. Perfect. Thank you. Yeah, I was going to say the West End needs, but that's exactly the answer I was looking for before we just start throwing out. Like, yeah, we don't have here, but we don't have here either. So thank you. Thank you both. We are now going to move to housing. Thank you. Thank you. Helen McElvin, the city's housing director. And I'm pleased to be with you tonight and also appreciate your. Various city currently. So I think this slide that you've now seen several times over the last few weeks gives a very good illustration of how the work that the office of housing does is an important part of a much larger ecosystem that supports housing initiatives and supports for residents related to housing stability. I think I would highlight that except for our activities related to affordable housing development, most of the expenses you see here are really related to staff and our administrative fees are rent. But with regard to affordable housing development, annually we have about $11 million, and that comes from a number of sources. Of course, the restaurant meals tax, a million dollars that was intended to be used to attract Amazon and continues as part of our housing strategy to meet housing needs of our workforce, the Housing Trust Fund, which are developer contributions, which come when projects receive their COs, and then about a little over a million dollars in federal funds. Our office has been very fortunate in being able to leverage city investment and get a variety of philanthropic and third-party resources to carry on our housing work. So I think I look forward to your questions tonight. And I have my life line here with me in the form of Eric Killer, who is the housing deputy director. Any questions or a director, my name comes from Chapman. So if I recall, the one penny goes, the full one penny doesn't go to affordable housing. It goes to, I mean, there's a piece of it that's kind of torn off to whether for staffing or for other uses, is that correct? We are back to a full point. And that does go primarily towards our projects. Yes. Just wanted to make sure. Councilman McPike. That was basically my question, but I also have a budget question asking exactly that. So thank you for that preview. Thanks Mayor. So the point for seven that goes towards eviction prevention. I'm curious if we're concerned to what extent is that a flat amount from one budget year to the next. And if it is, are we concerned about rising rent rents meaning we serve fewer people. Well those are funds that are typically administered through DCHS we collaborate closely with them and I will say over the last few years from a variety of sources we have ended up with funds that we have on occasion been able to provide to them to support their eviction prevention efforts for a while. We had different CDBG funds and other things that were allowed to be used that way. But currently those, that is a fund that I believe has occasionally been refreshed or added to over the years and response to need, but my sense is that it's been relatively steady. Yes, we have Director Garvey. Screen. Garvey, I'm the Director of the Department of Community and Human Services. And we certainly we had, you know, during COVID significant increases with both state funding and ARPA funding. And also we have had increases within the city budget. And so we have a lot of things to do with the COVID significant increases with both state funding and ARPA funding and also we have had increases within the city budget in the past but this the amount that we're seeing here is is fairly consistent as Helen has shared. I guess a follow-up question on that I know we've set aside several contingencies. Is this a I guess is this a use that should we see increased need in this area that is a space where we might be able to shift and adjust funds as well. Yeah, I think you could. There may also be depending on how the end of the year goes, maybe a little bit of room there, giving our vacancy rate. So there might be two pieces there. Vice mayor Beckley. Just to continue the dialogue on this point, to the extent that we may have a rise in unemployment, you know, sort of a new, just like with the pandemic, we had new people all the same with food insecurity. I anticipate there might be new households who haven't tapped into programs like this in the past potentially. So I just sort of agree. And I, you know, if the manager can sort of keep us in the loop and about ways in which this is an area, we can be flexible on. And, you know, even after the budget has passed or however we craft that fund to be responsive, to be sort of nimble in this area. Yeah, that sounds good. I would just also give you just a little bit of seed. I think that the homelessness, I think we need to watch that one too. And both of that in eviction prevention are probably two examples where you could see a fluctuation upward. And we'll try to bring that forward to you with some options as we start to see some things like that. That would be appreciated. Two other follow-up questions in this space. I know we received an email a while back that several of the refugee resettlement agencies their payments have been stopped. There's a number of families they're supporting. I'm just wondering given that federal change are we starting to see an increase in those families coming to aspirental assistance or do we have another set of funds or resources we can help to support those families? Well that was the group I had in mind when you were first talking about it, but Kate, that again, it might be something you're more on top of tonight. We are working with Nova Raft and we'll be, you know, and continuing to communicate with the other refugee resettlement agencies. And so we have been able to support families thus far to really prevent any evictions from moving forward, but there is definitely potential there for increased need and demand. But at this point, we have a good process to work together to get funds out and also to work with the management companies. But it is an evolving situation without a doubt. Thank you. And then the other question I had, I know as a council, we've also had a lot of questions about housing quality, and we were really excited about the Healthy Home Work. While I recognize the report, I think comes out later. I'm just curious if any funds are anticipated in this budget to support some of the recommendations that you guys might come forward with for the healthy homes work. Not in this budget, but we are working very closely with the health department on the healthy homes initiative along with other departments. And I think where you might be likely to see some recommendations is in that first bundle of recommendations that we bring to you as part of housing 2040 in December. But that and that would likely reflect, you know, our work together with code and with the health department and with again with DCHS. Thank you. Councilman on the be.. So my questions around something we heard about public testimony and Saturday, premier fee waivers for affordable housing projects. Is that a tool that we use, looked into using, how useful is it if it's used? So we did look at that as part of the 2013 housing master plan. At that time, there was a decision made not to provide that development fee relief. We are doing an analysis of that again. And, you know, basically some of those fees support planning operations and and other departments that we would need to know and be able to report to you the impact of that fork on fee income or revenue. I think, you know, it's something that would be very popular. I know the sewer tap fee, which I know council a long time ago, wanted all users to pay. That's currently about $8,000 a unit. So that adds a lot of cost to a project. With our affordable housing projects, we are loaning them the money, sort of taking it from one back pocket and putting it in another. But I think, you know, I'll just say in prior years there was a desire that we not treat affordable housing differently. I think for all of us, obviously a bigger challenge is how we get our pipeline, you know, to move a little bit because any efficiencies or savings are still thwarted when we get to the actual development. And, Councilional, maybe I do have a budget memo on this. And Director McLean had mentioned that this might also be something we look at in December. So part of my memo asks like, what is the cost to do it now? What is the cost to do in a couple of months? And what is the cost if we were to wait until December if we wanted to pursue this? Yeah, as part of that package of financial tools, we would look at this because obviously it would have a financial savings and impact to the project. Yep. Got it. Thank you. Um, Councilwoman Green. Thank you, Madam Mayor. And sorry to jump back, but I wanted to clarify on the healthy homes initiative. Is there no money at all? A lot of for that program. Um, not within our department per se. Okay, thank you. And not in the upcoming fiscal year. Thank you. Other housing questions? Councilor Chapman. Question on that one. In terms of the Healthy Health Loans program, when a number of those services were delivered with it, was there, I know we subsidized a lot of it. But was there a certain price point that we understood those package of services to cost. So if somebody in the private sector wanted to straight out purchase these type of programs to have somebody come into their home and do that. Before, do we know what that cost is? You know, I have seen that cost because we've joined in submitting grants applications, but I would say that's probably a question better answered by AHD. I can ask them to do that. Okay, I think that's all of the questions. Thank you. Thank you very much. And next up we have Dash. I think all folks are coming like two by two. Eric, you're going to come up here next. So, see you in the evening. Well, good evening, Madam Mayor, members of Council. Good to be here. Thanks for having us, Josh Baker, General Manager of Dash. To my right, I have our CFO, Edward Ryder. We're here to answer any questions you have. Our slide is very simple this year. Um, we are seeing an increase in our budget year over year, primarily because of the cost of our collective bargaining agreement. This is the final year of our current CBA. And we also have been dealing with inflationary costs, particularly related to supply chain issues around maintenance, maintenance equipment and parts. But that is all that we focused on, keeping the lights on and the people in the seats so we can move Alexandria. So that's what we focused on and that's what we're doing. Yeah, thank you for bringing that up. We have a 0% vacancy rate in our bus operator pool right now. We're very, very proud of that. It has been something we've been working on for many years. And we are still actively recruiting for some mechanics. So if you know anybody who's interested, please let us know. We'll teach them how to turn a wrench, but, but no, we're doing great. And we really are happy about that. I see Councilman Alnubi, then Councilman McPike, and then Vice Mayor Bagley. I had several questions, but on the last point, you said, so you provide trainings for people to become mechanics. Because when you said that, I remember that on the point before we have a lot of afghan refugees that are looking for jobs coming in, So if there's a job that can provide them training, that would be very helpful. Yeah, we're working on building out some apprenticeship programs that are related to that development. We do bring people in with limited experience to our entry level positions. See mechanic is sort of the starting place. If they've got a little bit of experience, we'll teach them more. We're also looking at possibilities for schooling and other programs. So we welcome anybody at this point. It's still a bit of a work in progress. Yes, that's the goal. That's why I wonder if there would be opportunities to partnership with organizations like like raft, no veraft and others. And it needs. And ACBS of course, I mean, yeah, but nover raft also because it came out earlier and I know, you know, a lot of our free shoes are looking for jobs. So I wonder if there would be an opportunity there. Kudos on the zero percent baking serate. It's amazing. I wonder if part of it because we have collective bargaining agreement that makes it desirable job. So how far along are we in the new dash bus network implementation? So it's a good question. We are still missing some improvements that are called for the 2022 network. There's a 2022 and a 2030. And the 2022 network has a couple of unfunded improvements. There is a budget question and a memo coming out that will have that table that we produce each year that just keeps that on the radar so that we understand there are fiscal limitations. but we just want to make sure everybody stays informed as to what those improvements are, and they are ranked as well in priority order. So we'll be providing that to you. Great, thank you. I'm glad someone put in that budget question because I only asked about one line, but then I was looking at prior years and I saw that that question get submitted every, what's submitted in a prior year, but like all the lines. So I really appreciate that that question was put in. Otherwise, I would have asked for that memo. Thank you. We're on again. Just because it's a question that sometimes comes up from the public, where are we to drop fair free service? What would be the upfront cost of putting fair equipment back into our buses? We're looking at probably eight to ten million dollars of capital equipment costs. And that is to equip the entire fleet with fair collection equipment as well as there's some ongoing operational cost associated with fair collection. The other contextual piece there is that at our very best, when we did collect fairs, many years ago, the very best we did was about 3.5 million in revenue. So yeah, it would take three years to pay out before when you start thinking about the cost of equipment nowadays and technology. So with the probably significant ridership drop in the you know related increase in individual vehicle travel and the exhaust and pollution that comes from that. A lot of calculations that we do when this question comes up also speaking to your point, the loss of riders. You know, we're breaking records every month. Still this month, still this year, we're still going higher and higher. And so you would definitely see that fall off. Yeah. Which would mean that you couldn't expect to bring in the revenue for the number of passengers you're carrying today. Yeah. We were talking about carbon costs at one point. I think that if you were a factor carbon costs and the social cost of the carbon that fair-free dash has proved to be pretty economically efficient way to handle things. Speaking of just efficiency, though, where are y'all? I know this is the operating budget discussion, but on the CIP side, where are y'all on bus electrification? That's a good question. Electrification of the fleet still has a goal of 2037 to be 100% electric. The reality is that's becoming more and more to become a clear struggle considering the costs rising costs of everything and maintaining state of good repair. We currently have 14 electric buses in the fleet. We have a low-no grant, federal grant, low-emission, no-emission. I believe 35 million, 28 million. 28 million. A federal funds that are they are, we have those federal funds. We have those federal funds. Well, every day I'm exchanging emails, making sure they stay there. From everything that we can see, we're in good shape for those funds. From the grant agreements and everything else, it's hopefully going to stay under the radar. And that is the next round of electric vehicles. Outside of that, we don't have a clear path to continue purchasing electric vehicles at this point in time. Again, primarily because of costs, and we are very focused on maintaining state of good repair. So when we get to that point, we're going to see where we all are and we're going to make some decisions about how that needs to look going forward. I'll make the shameless plug that transit is the environmentally best environmental whether it's electric or not. It's incredibly efficient and more environmentally environmentally conscious than than driving. That's right. That's right. And even an electric car when you factor in the the cost of Carbon cost of creating that car later driving Transit wins and we are still moving forward with our facility expansion and the charging infrastructure Components and those are all part of those federal grants as well as some state grants through smart scale. And that state money is very solid. And we again feel as good as one can feel right now about the federal money. And I think that we're continuing to push forward very quickly to make sure we show progress and that that's really benefiting everyone. Thank you. Councilman Alnubi had the follow up on this topic and we will go to Vice-Mayer Bagley and then Councilman Green. Yeah, real quick, on the fair topic and the fair boxes because this came up in the work session with ACPS and a question came up Are you guys planning to put fair boxes back in? Even if it happens which there are no plans for it to happen. Before we even had Dash free, were it students writing for free? I'm not mistaken. Yes, we had students write a free program prior to Dash going. So even if, again, we're not planning to put Fairboxes back, but even if it happens, students can still write for free because they were writing for free even before we took the Fairboxes out. That's right. Thank you. We'll come back. So popular. That's what happens all the time and I forget about the original. So just wave at me. I think you're in and to follow just with the, um, so it's not just re-equipping, but it's also collecting the actual fair. If anybody's using money, right? So is that captivated into that 80, 10 million? Or is it would that be a separate cost on top of that? There would be ongoing operational costs of counting and collecting the money. And we have to be very aware of the fact that our community is used to and expects to ride dash for free these days. It is the second most important survey response that we get when we ask what makes you ride Dashmore or made you ride it if you didn't ride it before is fair free. The number one most important is high frequency service and service improvements. And I think the last thing we've gotta be aware of is that in the transit industry, collecting fairs is incredibly difficult right now. And we know that our friends at Womada struggle daily in actually collecting fairs. Yeah. There to be paid. Yeah, and that Womada too, the operating costs just to collect the coins and the dollars and to safely move it from one place to another is for sure a large operating cost that has to be dealt with daily as well. I guess one more time. So short answer, I guess it would be an additional cost to that each 10 million. Yes. Yes. How's woman green? Thank you Madam Mayor. I'm curiousity. How many electric buses will 28 million get you? I'll find the number that we had in the grant be different than what we end up with, but do you remember the number in the grant? Yeah, so the grant was for 13 electric buses and then five electric trolleys. And we do, we are moving forward first with the King Street trolleys becoming fully electric. That's the first part of the project. And the 28 million also included training in all of those other programs. So it wasn't just for the capital. Yeah, thanks for pointing out there's there's $1.5 million set aside for training and professional development primarily for our maintenance teams in the technology, which has been a struggle since the day we started with electric vehicles. So there's a great investment in that grant for that type of development. I smear bagley. I mean, with colleagues like these, what questions are left for our that system? I kind of love it. I, I want to just second sort of the point about fair collection, but I'll make it in one final way, which is there's also dwell time improvements. I just have to assume with the elimination of fares, you can get in and off both doors. There's less of that pausing. And so I know that's incremental and it's hard to measure, but I understand just from other MBTC conversations and with other transit agencies. And I'm seeing some nods from you guys, but there's there's literal operational efficiencies and reductions in points of conflict between operators and riders by eliminating fears as well. So that is that a fair sort of statement about another sort of benefit of that choice we made? Yes, coming higher you to come speak for Dash. You've done very, very well. I couldn't have done better myself. You're exactly right. And the dwell times are a major factor. And that is something that we had worked to scale down even before we went fair-free. We were the first system to eliminate on-bus reloading of SmartShiftCards, which was a dwell time issue. And that was many years ago, which had an impact. But we are all door boarding and alighting, which really improves particularly because we are moving so many students. And when the students are waiting at the bus stop, they're ready to get on. We open the doors, or all three doors on a number of our buses, people board and alight simultaneously, that really helps us you know, thank you for for that. And hopefully that's meaningful to to the constituents in the city. And the last question I had, it's getting back to sort of the electrification point. And obviously the purchasing of the fleet is challenged by funds, but also like literally the pipeline. I think there's only like two companies that build these. That's right. That's a challenge as well. Are y'all concerned at all about infrastructural challenges, funding wise, on this conversations about in-root charging or maybe at landmark or other opportunities down the line to have some in-route opportunities? Are there grant opportunities for that? Is there regional partnerships that y'all are pursuing to keep that in the mix? Well, we are hopeful to have the first on-route charger in Virginia. Not going, what if we can do it? Thanks to Congressman Byer and the community. What's the name of the program that he funded it for us under used to call it earmarks, but I don't think they call it that. Community project funds. Any project funds? Thank you. I should have asked all community project funds in the fiscal year 2025 budget were just removed by the House continuing resolution, unfortunately. I don't know if that's one of ours. Well, anyway, we're going to do. This is a timely question, unfortunately. I don't know if that's one of ours. Well anyway, we're going to do the timely question. Yeah, on route charging is an important part of our full bill out of the electric fleets. And it's something that we're still looking at various grants and ways to accomplish that. And I think there will be partnership opportunities. I know the NBTC has been working hard on researching those opportunities for the Northern Virginia systems to work together and partnership on that. I appreciate that and I think there are various budget questions in, but I know the council for last three years has inched us towards that 2020 vision, you know, to full implementation. So appreciate looking forward to your memo, and I know it also includes sort of that equity scoring. So looking forward to that. Thank you. I guess kind of piggybacking on that, I know with our environmental policy plan, the goal is that come in 2027, we will stop purchasing diesel buses. Is that correct? Can you just talk a little bit about kind of the planning from here to there and how we're thinking about the type of additional resources, especially if grants are not available, like the scale of resources needed to meet that goal. I mean, I think candidly it's alludes to my earlier statement, which is if we can't do that, we need to focus on state of good repair and whatever way we can do that. I think the city manager and I have had some great conversations and are very aligned on the priorities and I want to thank him and the team for the support and trying to figure out the CIP in that regard. I know the CIP is very constrained and has a lot of challenges as far as that funding is concerned. In the out years as far as bus replacements, we are short funded at this point. I don't think that's anyone in this room's fault. You know we certainly everyone's been trying to figure that out. As far as what we're doing at Dash we're just continuing to try to look at opportunities within the state. We are also pivoting some of our grant applications on the federal side to make sure we're focused on that state of good repair and where those opportunities might exist. I'm not sure I don't know if there's anything you might want to add, but I think that's where we're at. But, you know, outside of our operating funding, this is the next place we've all really got to focus to figure out what do we do to move forward. And I will just simply add also the factor of, we all need to understand that not only inflation has been a challenge, but back to your comment about the number of manufacturers in the industry, we're down to two at this point. There were three, there is technically a third, but they're not viable at this point. The largest manufacturer of buses in North America is a Canadian company. And they have the largest capacity and all of their manufacturing plants are in the United States. But they have, they have, let us know via a letter that there are potential impacts for them. The other manufacturer, which we also purchased from, has much lower capacity as far as production is concerned. So it's more years out, so we're going to have to be monitoring that as far as keeping up with state of good repair. I guess there's a lot there. This isn't probably a budget memo, but maybe this is something when we have our stakeholder conversation in a couple weeks. I think given all of the federal changes you just mentioned, I think given some of the changes we're seeing with smart-scale applications and our competitiveness there, I'm wondering like if there's a larger strategic conversation we can have around given our goals and we still want to meet those goals, what must be true and like what other factors or vulnerabilities do we need to start considering and how we think about those moving forward? Because that's many pieces I heard from policies to grant changes to tariffs to materials. And I think we just need a much larger conversation on that. Certainly. Councilman Chapman. Madam Mayor, I'm glad you said that. I think one of the things that I was thinking about and just reading up on was our transportation improvement. Like tip money, I guess the set aside that we have for transportation and we haven't, I guess that hasn't moved since 2015 it says. And you know, is that a part of that discussion is, you know, setting aside an additional amount for, you know, enhanced transportation projects or programs like fair free or increase amount of funding or whatnot kind of part of that conversation and how we look at our real estate taxes as well. Not the expert on the tip funding. I don't know if Edward, do you want to speak to that or if anybody else wants to? I know our chief infrastructure and development officer, Raymond Moy has been tied in to the tip funding a little bit. I can't speak for him exactly how we're strategically looking at that, but I know it's come up before. I just, yeah. Yeah. I think if we, if we have that kind of bigger broader conversation, I would assume that would be one of the opportunities, but it probably has its own pros and cons about how it can be used, what it can be used for, and if it can help with a sustainable level of. Yeah. I think so, tip is fairly comprehensive. We use it in conjunction with some of our other sources at MBTA and MBTC and kind of all of those in the general fund all piece together to address all, you know, a number of transportation and transit needs. The, and we have multi-year plans for those, you know, which is I think is an important element to this is that we've, you know, we've taken steps to sort of plan out the sources and uses of those funds. And they're fairly well balanced at this. We've identified uses of those sources. So I think we can certainly, we look at them every year and that can be part of the conversation is do we want to think about how we're using those funds and make changes to them, but they are, it would be a rearrangement of things. There's not untapped tip funding out there that we can do that we can. I think the reason I'm kind of talking about this because as I hear all of us comment on kind of the fair free dash model that we're frankly for a better word kind of stuck in now because of any if we go to non-fair free, obviously has a number of challenges but we don't have a and staff I guess can correct me from wrong, we won't have a consistent stream of revenue that doesn't touch General funds, right? And so the thinking or at least my early thinking is if we looked at every arrangement with an increase in tip funding We could pull that out of our General Fund dollars, which I'm assuming we're gonna start to need over the next course of years, especially if this program, fair, free, is something that we are gonna consistently use. I guess to me, it sort of makes sense, but obviously I think the broader conversation has needed, but I think that's an area to go to if we see that it could work. Yeah, I guess, again, I don't know if the stakeholder meeting is the right place for this, but I think like Dash and us, we're gonna have to grapple with the fact that our policy goals and the current reality are pretty far apart right now. And I think we need some dedicated space to have these conversations. So I know that's coming up in a couple of weeks. Maybe we can look at that as part of the agenda And if that's not the space, then let's figure out how we all get together sooner than later. And that's it. Yeah. If I could just add one thing that you made me think of, Councilman Chapman, the federal dollars that are distributed throughout the country from an operating perspective, federal operating funding, formula dollars are driven by ridership, population density, and other factors. Dash's ridership has contributed, the growing ridership will contribute to growing federal dollars coming to the region. Now that's all divided up, you know, through NVTA and HTC, there's a lot of complications, and I think the manager and I both get a little dizzy over sometimes, but the reality is we're benefiting those programs. And we're helping to drive those numbers. That will be, there will be a delayed effect of that. But I think over time, we will see that impact also helping the region. So that's just another way to think about it in the context of how this is helping to bring more money to the region. Actually, adding on to that as well. In another funding source is the, the RPT, the state, state operating funding. All dashes expenses go into, essentially calculating that reimbursement and while that reimbursement, which is averaged about 10 million a year the last few years, doesn't go directly to offset the general fund's contribution to Dash. It does go to offset some of the other expenses like the contribution to Lomao. So that's another funding source that Dash contributes to the calculation. So from Tavit. Yeah. So for Morgan, I will figure out if this needs to actually be a budget memo now or something with more information later when we have a kind of whole or bigger discussion. I would definitely be interested in kind of what the interplay is between a kind of consistent of the workforce consistent level of funding of tip versus what's in kind of the general fund, kind of understanding if we did X amount more in that set aside, what that would mean for the general fund and possibly free up for the general fund. I don't think that's a this year question because if I'm correct, when we decided on kind of our early, when we advertised that would have had to be in that advertisement correct. That's correct. If you were going to increase the real estate tax to say increase that 2.2 cents, then yeah, if that would, that would have needed to be advertised. If you were going to increase the 2.2 cents, that would be within the existing rate, that would be the expense of something else. That's right. I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm ready. if you were going to increase the 2.2 cents, that would be within the existing rate, that would be the expense of something else. Right, very much. Okay. Okay. Thank you. We are now going to item to talk about and one efficiency and one proposed cut. So we'll start with the positive, which is the new initiative. We identified an opportunity to continue to grow Alexandria's Businesses. As a key part of the city's economic strategy, I would like to say we were patient in that we put this together last fall before we knew how important continuing to grow small businesses would be in terms of the economy based on everything else that's now happening. And so the new initiative described here is to create a business accelerator where we would focus on businesses with a high propensity for growth. We have rebuilt our entire small business team over the last two years. And I think we have a lot of services that are focused on existing businesses who need and want to grow in scale. People with a business idea who need to formalize that business idea and think about resources, but a space that we're missing are existing businesses that could scale really quickly and grow really quickly. So think small technology firms, professional services companies, people who are not necessarily like in a lifestyle sort of business but could really grow. And so the idea here is to add some capacity for that particular audience. We would focus on industries where Alexandria has a competitive advantage. And that there are a lot of things that could fall into that category based on the changing dynamics here in Alexandria. Workforce available, types of people who now might be starting businesses based on the fact that they don't have jobs elsewhere. So the idea is that the funding would be focused on mentorship training, networking and potential funding. We have operated a program like this in the past and a big lesson learned, not only by us but by is when you do a program like this, stay away from having to spend money on real estate. And so the concept here is to use existing facilities, whether they be city facilities with some capacity or private facilities that would have an interest in having activity like this. So think about co-working spaces, maker spaces, businesses who have some excess real estate and would benefit from having people coming through their space. So the funding would go directly to the businesses and the services being provided to them. None of it would be overhead for an actual physical space. So that is the supplemental that has been included in the city manager's budget. The two items below are the cuts that we put forward. The first is an efficiency reduction, really exciting things like changes to our copiers and phone system where we have found some savings. The second is a cut in our targeted business attraction. It's about 25% of the money that we spend to leave this region to call on businesses. And we have changed our model over recent years. We used to do some of that on our own. We did a lot of research. We would go and call. Now we really leverage our regional and state partners and go on either specific trips or conferences with them. And we this would cut that by by about 25%. Health's been a Gary. Thank you Madam Mayor. and we this would cut that budget by about 25%. Health's been a Gary. Thank you Madam Mayor. Ms. Langer, I've got nothing against the small business incubation and acceleration. In fact, I'm excited about it. I do however have a concern in tracking of dollars. If we're doing this, I wouldn't be able to see or point to a report. Says this is where this money went for this business and this is what they did with it. Because I know that we gave some money not too long ago and I still like to know how some of that was spent. Councilman McPink. I would this compare to like the small business development center that used to exist under the chamber. So this one, I would say a more the SBDC, which then ultimately came over and was run underneath ADP was replaced by our small business program. So all of the services that were provided during under that structure are now provided by the city through AEDP small business team. This is more comparable to we ran an organization called Capital Post for many years, six years where veterans and military spouses were able to come and start businesses in Alexandria. So they were the the type right it was it was for a particular audience who had business ideas and you put them into a cohort and you give them services. Throughout this region, I'd say 10 years ago to maybe like four years ago, there were a number of accelerators around. There was something called 1776 and downtown DC that was really popular. There were some government contracting ones in Crystal City. It was very, you know, it was what everyone was doing. And again, I think there's still a need for us to provide very targeted services to cohorts. The lesson learned is the way to do it most efficiently is to no longer pay for the space. And I think even more so now in a post-COVID world, people don't necessarily need, they don't need to go to an office every day to work, right? Especially if you're doing a startup and you're growing, you need a space to come and convene and meet with your cohort or get your services or meet with your mentor, but we don't need to have a paid space like we did with Capital Post. And our learning with Capital Post is that we used a federal grant to do that. And that covered a lot of that expense. And then all of the money that the city ended up putting in really was directly to the businesses. We're just kind of peeling out that location space now in this model. Yeah, it's interesting. And I do think that I appreciate what you're focusing on here. We talk about these sort of things. I often think of a project in my bosses congressional district, which is called a food hub, where literally it's like a space the city owns, and they have eight or nine slots for businesses, people who have ideas for new restaurants to come. They can pay a limited amount of rent to get that space, and they test their, their, their, their sort of restaurant out. And if it works, then the local Riverside Economic Development Office helps them find a space at the city. So I look, I'd love to see something like that in this region. That's not what this is. This is different. But I do think that I appreciate that you're going in that business direction. I will say, though, it could be that as well. As we look at assets that the city has in spaces that other businesses have where they might have some capacity, it's not inconceivable for us to think that a small cohort could be food base. I look at the large vacancies we have at a Keene Street in Washington and wonder what could possibly retail wise fit in some of those giant spaces today but maybe, you know, eight little stationary food truck type things could. I guess just to follow up on this one, I'm curious how many businesses do we expect we might be able to help with 200,000 ours. I think it will depend. It will depend on what we end up focusing on. If we are providing, providing what I would call professional services to professional service companies, we can probably reach more than if we then focused on say 10 to 15 food businesses. It will depend on how we structure it. I think when we wrote this up, we anticipated somewhere between 25 and 35 businesses realistically. Okay. And with that, let's say we were able to do 25 to 30 about how much of the funds do you think will go directly to the businesses? And now you mentioned the potential funding opportunities. Yes. So we are not envisioning this as cash to a business or working capital or anything. We are envisioning this and where it has been most successful is when we pay for things that they otherwise would pay for and we're able to pay for those things in scale. So an example would be paying an accountant to do tax returns for a cohort of businesses or building a website for a company and then letting them move forward with the maintenance of it. And so we're paying the vendor. It's a direct outlay that they otherwise would have made, but we're not giving the money directly to the business. Okay. And then I know you mentioned there's a lot of different paths we could take and you and I were at a chamber meeting and there's a lot of different paths that we want to take. Like how will we narrow that down? Are you guys thinking like an internal team that's going to come up with criteria for like these are the industries where we can have the greatest thing for our buck? Is there an application brought yet? Just how will we decide where we can be most rich with this money? So if we were doing this alone, we would probably look at we have done some work on what types of businesses are best positioned to grow quickly here in Alexandria based on the talent that is here. And there's some really nerdy things like location quotient and things like that economists have done. It's what has informed our overall strategy and what type of businesses we're trying to attract. So we would likely focus on those sorts of businesses., I will say sitting here, that world is changing a bit because a lot of that had to do with people providing contracts and business to the government. And that's where a lot of those growth categories were in cyber technology and GovTech in general. And so I would say that if this moves forward, we would spend the next couple of months leading up to the new fiscal year, really taking a look at where we think high growth will be given the changing economy. And alternative would be if there was a particular audience or type of individual that we wanted to help, that could be another way that we would form cohorts. We, you know, in the past, have worked on immigrant owned businesses. We have worked on women owned businesses. I mentioned this whole program we did for veterans and military spouses, but I could also see us working on displaced federal workers. So it's sort of. both could be true and there could be multiple cohorts based on the direction of council. And then do we, sorry, I have one more in this. I don't know. I'm curious. So I know recently we were learning about like the one start center and some of the other efforts. Are there ways that like some of the services in here can be paired with some of the services there? So like folks folks who go through the cohort, they get accelerated permitting or they get some other like Access or resources that also help make this a benefit and stretch the limited dollars Sure. Yes. I think they should good I think though they need to go together um, I think Who's ever in this program our goal would really get them all the way through to expansion. Or some type of additional monetization and that wouldn't, that would allow us to use that second piece with the expedited permitting. We have some funding that's in the budgets for that as well. I did want to say one thing about the food because I think that's something that's a little different, but it fits. You call that real estate assessment. One of the things we're gonna be looking at is the first floor of Pepper Center, which has the former restaurant. That space probably lends itself to something along lines, Kurt with Council Member of Pike, which you said, that's a little separate than this, but it also belongs together. So I just want to highlight that too. But I think on the expedite permit, they would go together. So I have other questions, but I follow a bunch of hands. I'll go on to councilwoman Green, vice mayor Bagley, Councilman Chapman. Thank you, and lovely idea on the be here with you. I'm very happy to be here with you. I'm very happy to be here with you. I'm very happy to be here with you. I'm very happy to be here with you. I'm very happy to be here with you. I'm very happy to be here with you. I'm very happy to be here with you. I'm very happy to be here with you. what would be a spend. And to be honest, I think our original write-up was larger than this. And yes. And then we scaled it down to, frankly, be cognizant of the fact that the city manager, we also have cut that, right? At what we had spent on recent programs where we built websites for a cohort of businesses. We've looked at, we looked back to our days running capital post and some of the programming that we had done there where we paid for consultants to come in and teach people. I'm going to get this wrong, but like, six sigma, lean design thinking, all sorts of things that a lot of high growth companies. So we looked at what some of those vendors cost back then and essentially put piece those together to come up with a round number. So I have two questions. One is similar to the question asked earlier about the Healthy Homes program. We're having our economic summit on May 8th. Do we have some money at your mark for lack of better word for the resulting recommendations? Or I mean, we don't know what they'll be yet, obviously, but how do we have that conversation, potentially in this budget for some implementation? I don't mean to like, you know, but have y'all given that some thought? Is there any flexibility in the budget that you've carved out for next year? Right, to do that? I mean, I'll give my thoughts and then Jim's shaking and said no. But it's a great, we just, yeah. We're struggling along the finance. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think some of the things that might come out of the economic summit could redirect ADP's business attraction effort and small business efforts as an example. So there are baseline funding that we have, and we might change our tax or decide to try things differently based on the feedback from the summit. If there are large things that come out of the summit about how the city uses real estate and things like that, no, there's nothing in this budget proposed for that. Yeah, well, what is though is let's say the summit comes down targets a specific set of emergency, merging industries with specific companies that we think have potential to grow. That's not a lot right now in the United States. And that's the case, then we do have that million dollars that allows us to go and do some different way of approaching the recruitment of that. So that's really intended to be very targeted with a singular focus of bringing business here for either employment or some type of captured value. Okay and now I appreciate that and obviously not every recommendation will have a financial cost to me some of them your point, but I was just curious if we thought about that. And then, I want to just talk about Old Town North, Arts District for a moment. There's been a lot of work put into that over the last year and a half, some with differing results. And I wanted to just get like a temperature check on terms of our, to what extent have we had to use outside resources to develop some of the agreements that we've had to develop to develop maybe new agreements that might prove necessary. Are y'all staffed up to do that in house? house, you know, are we budgeted just sort of for the consulting fees that may be involved in sort of the financing agreements or some of them more creative agreements that we might, you know, be looking at moving forward. Great. budget to sort of for the consulting fees that may be involved in sort of the financing agreements or some of them more creative agreements that we might be looking at moving forward. Right. So to date, everything that has been done in Old Town North has been done with an existing budget resources. and I would say it includes ADP staff working as ADP but also supporting the industrial development authority. The City Attorney's Office has been involved in review of existing legal memorandums and then the planning staff has also been involved. I believe that all of us are working within those boundaries and see a path forward. We have some new projects coming forward. We know what changes need to be made and the current expressions of interest that we put out. We built that as sort of a marketing campaign that ADP does multiple of over the years. So I think we have the right resources. The only thing that was special in the past was we did use ARPA funding to facilitate the two spaces that had been built. One for Art League and the second is still earmarked for the venue space. If there was a desire to help other spaces in the future, there is no money for that to help with tenant improvements. And I think, no, I appreciate you kind of walking through that because that's a little bit what I was getting. We had some resources on the two projects that are delivered or attempted to deliver first. We don't have resources like that moving forward. Morgan, as a budget question, just to kind of have it in black and white, do you think we can just do an itemized list of the projects in North Old Town that have sort of, you know, invoked the art, density, bonus, their status and any money either spent or earmarked for those programs. Thank you. It doesn't have the money spent, but I was going to say director more it sent us a Memo that has a chart of at least the projects the amount that was approved so that might be a We just had a call Councilman jama Thank you Madam I think councilman green got a little bit of my question in terms of the Incubator acceleration program is is that something that can be scaled as well, or is it really, you know, 200,000, naturally? Yes, no, I think it absolutely could be scaled. We are, we're thinking about that as two distinct cohorts. So either two very different industries or two different audiences. If we were to add on, I'm trying to think of a good analogy or an example. So say one cohort is around professional services, people who are growing technology companies or consulting firms, et cetera, focused on a particular set of criteria. If we then wanted to add a second cohort, say, and run two in a year, that wouldn't be a complete doubling of costs because we would have some of the same kind of consultants, but we could potentially serve twice as many people. A lot of what we did during the veterans program is we did start to run cohorts around the same time. You know, think about it as somebody pursuing a graduate degree. Right. And they're going at night. A lot of the people who will be doing programs like this will either be running a business during the day and doing this at night and or holding down a job and starting up, you know, a new company. It would be great if you could work with Morgan to let us know kind of if we wanted to scale it up or scale it down what that could look like and what that would be. Councilman Elnubey. Thank you, Madam Mayor. And on that point, but also to Councilman, a year's earlier point, I think it will be helpful to see what the return on investment looks like for a program or like that, and I know if we thought about it or are beginning to think about it. But so when you come back to us asking to scale it up, when you come back next year, you can tell us like yes, this succeeded and this how much money this produced or this you know saved us, whatever metrics we can look at to really be able to quantify the impact of this money. So we can maybe double it or triple it or say no, it's not working, you know, so something's tangible. Okay. So I had a question that I completely different. Oh, sorry. Can I just don't think I gave a full answer on the summit. So we talked about the specific of what could happen there, but also the redeployment of our resources. I mean, it may result, frankly, in us readjusting how we do do something. So the same thing holds true on the small business. You know, when you think about those are really two very targeted focused things that Council wants to do. You know, we may need to readjust how we do some things and let's take planning for example, we may need to set up a very specific team. It does nothing but assist a small business to try to accelerate that as it relates to what Stephanie talked about. So it's some of those pieces together and the same thing with the summit. We may find that we need a different level of push in a different direction or some different directions. We have the ability to redeploy. I think that is something that we'll need to bring back to council after the summit. So my question was going to be on empty office basis. And I was just wondering, I guess kind of if you could speak to what is our strategy, are there any dedicated resources we have to be able to support getting lead. I know it's a really, really hard time, but like, are there any customized things that we have in Alexandria to help position us in a already difficult time? Right. So right now we. So filling office space has always been a traditional core responsibility service, effort marketing of ADP. And unfortunately in the past four years, it's become very difficult because everyone is trying to fill office space in a world where everyone is sort of downsizing. Up until last August, we had the healthiest vacancy rate in the region. Some of that is because we had the smallest amount of office space, compared to, you know, compared to places like downtown DC and Fairfax County. But our office vacancy rate was considered healthy. The PTO gave back a third of their space last August and that really jumped our numbers up pretty considerably. That said, at the end of last year, the previous Council approved the conversion of an empty office building, which was about the exact same size, so that our numbers came back and were still in the healthy range. Now we are facing a world where our most consistent tenant, the federal government, is likely going to continue to downsize. And so our immediate challenge and what we are working on is working directly with the property owners who hold federal leases to talk through the, you know, their rights as less or less. and to understand what our risk profile is with that category. What we are seeing though with with other office tenants who are not federal government is that they are continuing to leave space as leases become are rolling. They are looking at their footprint and they're right sizing and what that means has meant for the last three or four years has been mostly downsizing. What we were seeing just in the past, I'd say, six months, is a little bit more consistency in terms of the amount of space that they're taking, but they're taking the opportunity to upgrade the space and move to more transit oriented or ammonitized. So from the city's perspective, and for me, I think ADP's perspective if we're, you know, kind of responsible for vacant office, we want to continue on our path of identifying buildings that should and could convert to residential because they are no longer considered viable. And what that means is they're not transit oriented or their footprints don't work, floor plates don't work, they're not amentatized. And the city has been a leader in doing these conversions. And so continuing to get what we consider obsolete converted, our challenge though will be, we don't have a whole lot of new office space that is modern. And so as companies or government want to come back and take office space, our options are somewhat limited. And in a world where construction is so expensive, we find ourselves in this position where in order to have new office space built, we will likely have to consider participating financially. And that is a conversation I think we have had with previous councils. There has not been any new office built in Alexandria that didn't include some sort of city participation. Whether that was bond financing, whether it was allowing for a tax abatement, whether it was for a user who themselves is tax exempt. And so by us kind of agreeing for them to build office took a piece of property off the tax rolls. So I think continuing to have that conversation or challenge will be to get new office built in an environment where that is probably probably the use that is least financeable in this market. And I don't just mean in this DC market, I mean this country's market. So that was very long winded, but multi-faceted. No, it's helpful to hear how we are thinking about it. Yes. There also is the repositioning of some of the entitlements. You're gonna see an enhanced focus in that, I think, in a couple of the areas. I know one is Potomac Yard, but there's a couple others that I know are being considered. And that represents a different way of what is that future vision to the property owners. I think that could be interesting. And then this, I have no idea if this is successful or not, but this is a different type of vacant space. But I was reading in the district, they had this pop up permit program, where you get a space for a year as long as it was minimal to no construction. And what they put in is like you got a review in 15 days or less, you got all of these approvals that expedited inspection to be able to get in and like activate that space. I guess I'm curious have we ever experimented with something like that? If so, did it work now? Like, um, and okay, so we did. Sure. Yes, we, um, we ran a program called popup ALX. Uh, if you Google it, it's probably still in the SEO. Um, and, uh, uh, the, uh, the challenge that we faced is that we were able, you know, are permitting and code departments were able to really flex, to move really quickly. Our challenge is someone needs to hold insurance for the space. And in these scenarios, the natural person to hold that insurance is the property owner, but that is an expense. And in some ways, it's an expense that they undertake to ensure and the space, like ultimately what they want is a long-term tenant. And so their space is being taken up by somebody who's frankly not really paying much rent and is taking up their space. So in our previous iteration, ADP took on two spaces. We leased two spaces and immediately turned them into pop-ups. And we took on the expense of the insurance and we then managed the businesses that went in. It was successful. One of our popups was Old Town Books, who is now a beloved full-time, you know, unsubsidized tenant. We also ran a rotating popup of kind of smaller vendors. I would say that has now been taken up by businesses that are unsubsidized like Made in A, Alexa and Made in Virginia, but we were sort of the precursor of those. But again, very nuanced, the challenges were around insurance and really making it worthwhile for the property owner because you're taking their marketable space off the market. Other questions for ATP? Okay. Thank you, Stephanie. Of course. Thank you. All right. We are now moving to drumroll. Is it Alexandria? Good evening, members of Council, Tadaliri, President and CEO and CEO at Visit Alex Andrew, nice to be with all of you tonight. So three bullet points to walk you through this evening. The first is an advertising supplement to help maintain our position in the competitive tourism landscape. Tourism is indeed an expensive business. We have done much to create conversations with new markets, new audiences, with your investment. We're very proud of that. And this money would go to help maintain those conversations that we've built since the pandemic. The two reductions that you see the first of visitor guide reduction of about 50,000 copies. We produce about 200,000 copies each year of our visitor's guide. So this is certainly a reduction of that, but still allows us to, with a refocused kind of initiative of distribution, still create those conversations those conversations with visitors up and down the I-9-9-9-9-9-9-9-9-9 is a trade show reduction simply reducing the number of trade shows and meeting planner events that the team goes to here again with the change of meetings and events, especially since the pandemic, we want to make sure that our team is redeployed and refocused on those markets, those types of conference and meeting business that does well here in Alexandria. And as part of that, then making sure that our trade shows and the things that we host here in the destination are reflective of that sort of redeployment. So those are my three bullet points. Councilor Elnubey. Thank you. The Visitor Guide. So we're reducing the copies. I wonder if there are alternatives to the Visitor Guide, maybe digital alternatives, like maybe QR codes in hotels or wherever people are going to like download an app or just go to a web page or something. And that hopefully fills in this gap, but it eventually drops this number to zero where we don't need to spend money on copies anymore. Yeah, absolutely. I thought for sure that with a pandemic that print would go by the wayside and in fact it kind of actually rose a little bit. So that's kind of interesting. Still the point is an important one. And something that we do offer a digital visitors guide on our website. And then there's multiple options to drive to that digital guide through different advertising that we do, social media and so forth. So we do offer both print and digital. And are we like said, I don't know if you thought about the QR code idea specifically, but if that can be placed in places where tourists stay or go, so they have quick access to it and you know, If they hadn't learned about it before, they see it in front of them and can access it. I appreciate that. That's a really good idea. I'm Captain Aguirre. One part, building off of that, and one part, thinking on the other side of it, because I like having paper. I don't know how much you know, you know, how is it several pages right the visitor guide? Yeah, because I'm wondering if going the route of what Council Member on Newbies A and is if we do like a one piece pamphlet that has a QR code that made a couple things that way they're still paper in location. So people can look at stuff. But secondly, and this might be a little bit silly, but I like the idea of having stuff outside of Alexandria in a long line, 95 corridor. So I don't know if there's a way that we potentially reduce some of the numbers that we use locally. And then there'll be a couple out in some of those other places. I mean, I don't know what the numbers are in terms of usage here locally and what the usage is in some of the other places. But I like having that spread. But if it's not cost efficient, then so be it. But I just wanted to throw that out there for you to show you that. I'm Mary Bagley, Councilman McPike, Councilman Green. And apologies if I've missed it in the list of questions that my colleagues have submitted already. But I think in years past, we've had a budget memo that's sort of broke down the ROI on investment, marketing, dollars, and how y'all, so can we update that memo? It's on the list. Is it on the list? Okay, sorry. No, I appreciate that. And I didn't know, and part of why I'm curious about the update is the marketing methodologies are changing. I mean, I attended that great presentation with all the data about where people come from and how they find us. And so I'm curious if as we choose different sources to spend money on, whether that's social media pushes or paper pushes if that tweaks the ROI at all, and on different methodologies. So I was just curious about that. And then I guess I just want to take a moment to say I happen to Claire was wearing that great visit Alexandria prior shirt at the presentation And I stopped into the the shop and got my own the other day But I want to just put a compliment your staff though because when I walked in I got three immediate welcome to Alexandria From all the staff there and and sort of chuckled none of them to knew who I was which I thought was kind of funny Which is fine, but but it was just kind moment. It was a great, yeah, it was like a secret shopper, but it was nice. It was all three of them. Welcome down to Andrea, and can I help you find something? And so it was a good little secret shopper experience. And now I have my own pride t-shirt for our Pizzoale Andrea. But thank you. I appreciate the conversation that Councilman on Newby and Council Member Geere had regarding the brochures. We print 200,000 of these. Do we know how many of them end up in the recycling bin at the end of the year when there are hotels that we send these out to? I like, well, this is out of date. I don't have that exact number for at present. We're actually... We asked them to count exactly how many they... I mean, we also endeavor to be truly green. Right, no, I really want to live by that. And so we want to really reduce spoilage. Yeah, and I only ask because I think that we can probably hit the same number of locations just reducing the amount we give each location because there's definitely some surplus at the end of the year. And I do think that the idea of integrating a QR code information, hey, there are regional seasonal things to happen now in Alexandria. Scan here to see them because y'all's website is very interactive and usable on the phone. And it's not like in one of those websites you got to sit on a computer and get the full functionality. So leveraging that and the fact that they can be more specific to the time of year the people are coming is probably valuable. Sure, thank you. Councilman Green. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Question one, trade show reduction. And just to be clear, this is your team going to trade shows. That's right. In working in this industry, I know how important trade shows are. So does that take in the 24,, take up the entire budget? No, not at all. Oh, okay. Not at all. It's a fraction of what the total budget is. We agree that especially on the sales process and in this industry, relationships are absolutely key. So we do not want to replace that face-to-face. What this does is more kind of target and refocus our team. Our team is working through a redeployment of our sales team at present and this will reflect that redeployed team. You know, the other impact, of course, these days are government meetings, something we rely on heavily here, which also factored into our decision to put this forward as a reduction because this is something we are already starting to see. That's not to say that we won't attend government, you know, kinds of trade shows or other things, but really refocus our team on those trade shows that are the most productive for us. Great. And then just one more question. the supporting advertisement, the 250,000, is there a breakdown on what the 250,000 issues for? It's a one time investment. That's right. We don't have a breakdown of that at present. Most of the money that we've received in this way in the past has gone to paid marketing, advertising, video production. We've also made an investment. Our marketing is increasingly smart and being able to allow us to really target and retarget folks that we've created conversations with. And so that is also part of how we see using this money. One of the things I was curious about, I know within your members you've represented a lot of different industries. Do you collect data on the breakdown of like how much you spend in marketing hotels versus restaurants versus small business retailers? We do not. We subscribe to a rising tide lifts all ships sort of mentality. We really have seen great success in destination marketing, leading with the brand image of the destination first and foremost, and including each of those different sectors that you're referencing there. Is that kind of a best practice, like an industry best practice? It is. I guess I'm also curious. Given that though, I think we do have like some really unique pieces here, especially like our retail community. Are there any specific campaigns or targeted funding efforts you expect in the next year? We have been in market with our best CEPSH campaign for about three years. And so what's one of the things that the team is currently working on is to update that and look at some, you know, the here again, the momentum that we've created some of the conversations as I say that we've created and in that I think there's a great opportunity for us to do a little bit more focused whether by sector or, you know, otherwise otherwise, some kind of surfacing some stories and some uniqueness, additional uniqueness about our destination, whether that's again, by sector. Another area that we've had great success on is our neighborhoods. We saw that very clearly come out in our visitor profile study that just came out. Neighborhoods, if I'm not mistaken, was number two. Number two or number three in terms of some of the things that our residents, or excuse me, our visitors are appreciating about us. So that's another way that we're very proud of some of the work that we've done in that space. Yeah, I guess I raised it just because I think we are hearing on the other side, just individual businesses who are feeling really hurt and they're navigating all these changes and they're trying to figure out how do we continue to draw people to the thing that you can only get here in Alexandria and I feel like as we think about the neighborhood campaigns or the Shish campaigns where there are also opportunities to like lift up specific experiences and shops that you can get anywhere else. I agree and I think you know too also I've asked the team to work on content development content as king and marketing, making sure that whether it's the stories of the business owners, whether it's their unique American story. Certainly the products that they have in their stores those are rife with opportunities for us to really look at and double click on in terms of exploring that more. those stories are compelling to visitors and do indeed set us apart so I couldn't greet more. I think those stories are compelling to visitors and do indeed set us apart. So I couldn't greet more. And then I guess the last question I had, and then I think I saw a hand over there. There's another role you guys have started to play that we don't talk about as much, which is the role in events within the city. And at our first budget hearing, we got a lot of questions about parades. I'm just curious kind of like, what is the long-term vision for the role of visit Alexandria in events? To be determined. And all of you, thank you for your participation in our strategic planning initiative. As you guys know, this has been an endeavor of this organization has not gone through for a while. And so I think that that the answer to that question will come out of that strategic planning process. This is again, this is not just a tourism and Demick industry sort of thing. It is really encompassing of we pulled over 500 people on the survey alone. that are inclusive of not only the tourism industry, but also education and nonprofit and other kind of sectors in the destination to help inform what our role to your question should be with events. Can you remind me when the plan will be completed? It will be ready in the late spring, so may ratified at the June board meeting. So after the budget. Okay, I don't yet know more going to have to ask this question, but I guess if your role might change, I think events, especially some of the parades play a critical role in what we think about as to why people come here. And so making sure we are adequately budgeting for the staffing and the capacity that's needed to carry those forward, or even other events that we have not had before, but that we're thinking about having. I just want to make sure we're thinking about that holistically. I couldn't agree more. So I don't know what the question is. You're very good. But I think there are a couple of. No, don't know the question is been answered. There are we have a couple of questions related to. Parades and special events and also events DC model like that. So I think we can fold this discussion into those existing.. Thank you. Other councilman Chapman? Thank you, Madam Mayor. A couple of them. And I guess I'll start. I didn't have that on my list, but I'll start with that one. And I guess you're probably already aware of this, but I submitted a budget question about kind of looking at additional models, particularly for the events and parades, sort of like a ALAB, events DC and how much that would cost. I guess I don't want to get ahead of kind of what you guys have planned for the strategic plan, but are you, is the group looking at any type of changes to modeling of what we have in terms of a DO and additional supports or staffing focus or even like a whole new organization. Specific to events or just in general, I guess. I hear again, I think that the key leaves will be easier to read once the strategic planning process is unfolded and viewed because then we'll know how we need to re-shape as kind of a big word, but re-re-re-focus the organization accordingly. Okay. Couple of things I had. Is there a, we talked, I think, in response to another council member's question about how kind of the federal meeting space is probably going to be very challenging for a number of years. Is there an alternative that a new part of the industry that we can go after, even if it doesn't fully replace, it allows us to kind of take our focus off of that, knowing that that is going to be struggling to look at something else and maybe make additional investments in that area. Without a doubt, and that's part of the sales redeployment that we're looking at is not simply a redeployment, but really looking at where those that meetings business is coming to us from, both in market and in vertical market in this way. Government meetings aren't completely gone. Some are maybe trending that way. There's also reductions, but there's some corporate meetings, for instance, association meetings, for instance, at least at this point, are two areas of some strength in the meetings market. market is part of how we're looking at this redeployment. Okay. Could I add to that? So in addition to that, I think maybe not immediate, but or long-term experiential destination driven tourism. I think, think you know that's one of the things that in our community really looking at what assets again do we have to sell for a three day trip here. We do really well with what we have, but we are missing a few pieces, an experiential entertainment value. Those represent great opportunities. If you look at how well we've done on this historical history and this historical museum and all that component, that's market is really well, but imagine that coupled with some experiential entertainment focused attractions that could really help not just grow our revenue stream, but grow our tourism grant. So that compounds things. And I know this team would be very successful in that we, that is probably part of our longer term strategy. I suspect that also come out of the economic development summit as an area of target. So those things are all going to work together. And then in terms of restructuring how we implement those things, I think that will also come. So there's really three pieces. Yeah. I think one of the. I was just going to say to piggyback on that, you know, as the as ADP is working on the economic summit, I had an opportunity to be interviewed by the consultants and we had some very productive, interesting discussions to that end to the city managers note there about what might we be able to envision creating here to expand the tourism product is exciting. One of exciting. One of the things that I thought about, I can't remember when this was created. I think it was the tourism improvement district. There was something else that was created pretty recently that would allow us. I don't know if it's flexibility. I know tourism improvement district would probably if if we put one in, it's kind of like a bid where we could lovey some type of tax to do that. Has there been conversations within the board about that or any opportunities there? Not at present, that is one of the fire focus areas of the strategic planning process is not specifically a TID, although that's certainly in our sites as something we should look at. But it is one of the focus areas that will come out of that strategic planning process, really diversifying, looking to diversify our funding. Okay. And the last thing, much smaller thing, with the closure of King Street, the 200 block, I think we're doing that pilot until September. Something like that, the fall. Is there any look at kind of expanding the visitor center out to the street? Because right now everybody walks up the stairs and goes in, but with the closure of that street, it's probably an opportunity to be outside or what that could look like, as there's been any thought to that. There's been thought to it. We've talked about it. We don't have the budget to do what we think would be commensurate with a visitor experience. We talked with other sort of neighbors on the block and we would do a share of one of the buildouts or something. So to date, we haven't pursued it much further than those sort of initial discussions, but it is something we've toyed with, you might say. Thank you. Yeah. That's it. OK. Thank you. Thank you. So we are going to now. Oh, I'm sorry. We'll get to the next. Oh, okay. Councilor McPike, Councilman Aguirre. Any economic development section on the fact of the page regarding ADP and Visited Alexandria is the other economic development activities that we have, including $148,092 for King Street Court or Tree Lighting. How do we spend $148,000 on tree lights? Are they special lights that George Washington made? And that's why we put them in old town. No, the other economic development. I think that's just a, well, yeah, it says right up of the budget, the other economic development includes the, the additional funding that we put in for the exp, it does. The provider and the other item, I think that, but it says right here, King Street Quarter treelighting, $148,000. Yeah, I'll have to go back with that is, we're not spending that on tree lighting. Well, the annual expense to keep that program alive is quite expensive. Yeah, we have to flip it out at least twice a year. Here are regular repairs that are needed for that program. It's a labor intensive, right, in order to get that done. So it is costly. I can imagine it is. And I just, you know, obviously we like the lights, the community likes the lights. I would say perhaps there could be some sort of business network in a district along the King Street corridor that could perhaps take that way off the city directly. So the businesses that are benefiting most from the lights would be the ones helping to keep those beautiful $148,000 clearly made of crystal lights in those trees and maybe people throughout the city aren't necessarily paying that cost them. So it's $140,000 given the budget that we're in right now. We're going to continue. We're not going to take the lights out, don't police any emails. But that's a lot of money. And And I think that there might be other things that we could be spending this money on if we had another entity to help take this burden off the city. That seemed like a lot. Councilman, a carry. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Councilman, remember, Bagley actually jogged my memory about something. Secret shoppers, are we still doing that in RPCA? Secret shoppers? I don't believe it's formalized. I'd have to verify that. Yeah, because I remember my first year on council, we had actually talked about this and then that we had not been doing any shopping in different languages. Did you go back and take a look at that, see what we're doing or not doing? And I don't know if that potentially turns into a bunch of level from there. Thank you. Okay, we're going to go to work session number three city clerk. Madam Mayor, I just want to clarify. The development infrastructure team were done for the night. Well, let me, sorry, let me just quickly. Yeah, does anyone have any other questions for the development team? So code was probably the only person we didn't get to. Code. Code. Director Fields, you might be getting called back. Vice mayor wants to ask. Why don't we do Vice Mayor Bagley? We're going to bring up code and then we'll come back to this. Sorry. Sorry. Madam Mayor. I have. I have a question for library. Oh, and we're going to keep Ms. Dawson here. Just for a little bit. All right. We'll do code libraries and then I love it city. And now, um, I swear back. Yeah. Um, well, thank you for being here and I caught you as you were trying to get out the door. But um, so, so I don't want to ruin the suspense. This is, this is mostly I wanted to take a moment to highlight something. Just think for the public and from the budget and let you maybe just expand on it a little. This council invested in some new positions and a new position in code. In our first term, I can't remember which year we did it. Was it just the last count? Yeah. And there was a lot of feedback from the community about that we heard, I think, several of us about the need for more proactive inspection the city, more just monitoring of sort of living conditions. And we touched on this during the housing conversation. And I just honestly just wanted to take the two or three minutes here because some of the statistics are really worth noting. We went from 209 pro-active inspections to 1,646. I think if I'm pulling the right number, we improved our seven day inspection rate from 71% to 82% and our maintenance and nuisance inspections went up by almost 3000 as well over the year and and yet there's not a substantial budget you know impact so I just thought it was important just take a moment and let you maybe just speak to sort of how that was accomplished and what you're looking for in the year ahead with your staff. I appreciate that very much. Vice-Maria, Greg Field, Director of Code Administration, you know all that work just goes into the team, right? I mean of course thank you for allowing us to add our program administrator for that program. It really has turned things around if you recall. At that time, we had to replace our entire team of property maintenance inspectors. And so it was quite a challenge. But fortunately, we are able to have some great hires and the team has really embraced it. You know, we look for people who care, you know, care about people, care about living conditions and these folks do. And so they, it's showing in the numbers now. And of course, we're continuing to look for ways to improve that partner with with healthy housing and those type of things. So, no, we appreciate that very much. And we're looking for efficiencies. We've already developed a new automated program for our inspections. So all that can be done online and making it easier for the managers and the property managers. We're getting ready. We're putting together now and I don't want to speak to SEM, but we're doing a preliminary look at a program to do some proactive outreach and partner with housing and the health department and whatnot to speak to the communities directly about some of the things they can do to help with some of the issues that they're running into every day. And can you just speak to the language capacity that you've developed in the department and is an ongoing effort to sort of maintain that capacity? Yeah, absolutely. So again, the program administrator is bilingual. And so that's very beneficial. We run into some of the issues that we see. And then we also have two inspectors in that program. They're also bilingual. We continue to look for that. And they're actively participating in the translating programs that we have as well. And so yeah, we'll'll continue in that regard. But it really is beneficial. It puts people at ease, and it helps them understand that we're there to help, and we're there to give them some benefit to their living conditions. Maybe this is a question for more than manager of the Chief Entie-Endham. The changes that we're making for this inter-departmental collaboration involve the director's office as well to sort of maximize if he comes, you know, if one of your inspectors is out on a maintenance issue, observes a noise issue or observes a planning issue, this is part of that work, that inter-departmental work. And so, okay, and so we're trying to, that's an efficiency as well. I think we're trying to create between code planning and tests. Yeah. Okay. Also how do you... Yeah. Well, thank you. I didn't mean to keep you here 10 a month, but I wanted to acknowledge the work. Sorry, appreciate that. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. And now we are going to turn to libraries. What did he? What did he? Half the team was running. Good night. Councilman Aguirre. Director Dawson, think you'd be in tonight. I don't know if this question is actually directly for you, for general services or for the city manager. There's a lot of construction that's been happening at Beatley. And I feel that some of it has either stagnated or not been moving. I don't know if you can give any comment on that. And then my follow up question is actually a budgetary question related to that. Rose Dawson Director of Library. Thank you. So yes, the council will recall that the library has what's taking place over at the Beetley Library, which is called the Amelope Project, and it was designed to help close off all of the leaks, the different ways water was managing to get into the building, and that project has been taking place for the last year. Our friends group has become a bit concerned about the amount of time that the project has been taking, as well as some of the delays and some of the work and the coordination that's going on based on the fact that as you know the weekly libraries heavily used and so when we don't have access to the meeting room then we at least needed access to the reading garden so that we could maintain some of the programs that we were offering. And unfortunately, we have run into the challenge and the problem, which both of them are unavailable. And one last question among construction. So the parking lot is finally done, correct? Correct. But it's not fully available, if I recall. The part of the contract allowed for the contractors to put some of their equipment so that it was more convenient for them to access. Yeah, so I guess if I'll question to you Mr. Manager is this a budgetary issue? Is this an oversight issue? Do we need to find a new contractor? Are we staying on timeline? Are we way behind? Can you give us a little bit of update on that end? How about if I come back to you with an answer on that? The last I had heard they were on correct timeline, but not positive of that. I guess when you get back to us with that information, if there is a monetary issue, if we can do a budget memo on it, otherwise, if we're not on timeline, what are we doing? Thank you. I do know that the door issue has been fixed, I'm told, ready for the book sale. I was in DC at a DMV library summit today with 10 other jurisdictions as we discuss and I'll fill out going on with libraries after announcement on Friday. So I do have a picture from staff that there were some challenges with the door, but I'm assuming that that's going to be addressed. Can we just go ahead and take a look at the door again. I'm just on the issues. Yeah, I mean, the email I got from Jeremy this morning when I made sure he said it was all done. So I'll drive back tomorrow. I'll tell you what, I will go back and ask him to go out there and go meet with Rose and her team and make sure it's totally fixed. Thank you, Mr. Manager. Okay, thank you, Ms. Dawson. We will now turn to our safe clerk. I am here one enjoying everybody getting to do the seven, seven questions that we always have to do. And two, just for whatever questions you have for me and Gloria sit and see Clark. Question. Councilman Aguire. It may not be the best time considering some of the situations we're in, but as a city, we like to represent the city in a good way. And sometimes when we have visiting dignitaries or if council members are going to see other dignitaries, we like to have some items to be able to provide. recent years I know that our inventory has been a little low. I guess how much additional funding will we need to be able to improve some of that situation? Well, that depends on what you want to buy. If it's pins and pencils, $1,000 if it's crystal, it's more, you know. I guess can we have like some options to take a look at? Sure. Yeah. Councilwoman Green. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Madam Clerk, could you please tell me what fees are for professional services? Sure so that's the fees that you see here the manager asked for a 2% reduction. This is not quite 2% so we took out of the city clerk's budget fees for legal ads because it's covered in your budget so it's not something that won't happen if I take it out of my budget. So we cover your fees. Well it's your fees. Okay that money was in your budget. Our budget got it. Okay thank you. Yes. I guess along those lines it would it be possible to get kind of a more detailed breakdown of all of the different things that go into the council's overall budget? Okay. Are there other questions for Councilman Geary? Last question position wise, I know that that third position are we good on that third position? Is there anything that needs to happen with that third position? So right now we still have the part time position. It works because the person that's in it, she's in school. So she can part time works for her, but at some point, maybe not. In the next couple of years, I can see that meaning to be a full-time position because boards and commissions takes up all of my deputies time and she assists her. So if I need the deputies, assist me, I can't. I can't pull her off of that right now. I have to think about that. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. We're now going to move to the city manager's office. And I do know there were several questions for the office of climate action. So this would also fit within the broader city manager's office. Questions? Councilor Nicari. Mr. Manager, how are you doing on people? You need anybody else? What is your ideal staffing structure? That's much more professional. How are you doing? Thank you for asking. Now, we are short short one deputy chief manager that position is funded. We would expect to recruit that this spring. Frankly, we were being a little slow trying to see what perhaps needs might be and what may be focused. That position might take. We also have a strategic initiative as officer position that we are looking to fill as well. We converted from a fellow position to strategic officer position, help us on some of our project management skills. So those are two positions that have not been filled. Those have been difficult and we need to get moving on that. We also, as you know, we're short to support positions. The good news is both positions have been filled. Let's fingers crossed, with really pretty quality individuals who, and I know at least one of them comes on the federal side. So I think that helps a lot. And put those together that does help some. I think, depending on where council might be on other main focal areas, there might be a need to make some adjustments. Our legislative director position is under recruitment right now. It has a significant candidate pool. As you can imagine, probably more significant today than it was, even yesterday. So we got a few of those things at place. Our race and social equity team is fully staffed and Ryan's team is fully staffed. Good to hear because good to hear about this. For positions being filled as well, because that's going to be my follow-up question. Once you get those other two positions filled, if you have enough support behind you guys. Yeah, I think since it also supports climate action and it supports race and social equity, we would be looking at another position down align, but frankly given the budget situation. I think we would need to ask for that some point in the future. Thank you. I guess two follow up questions. The legislative director position. Is that in vision to be solely a legislative director? Or would it also fill an assistance manager position? Like it did previously. It would be a legislative director position. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. also fill an assistance manager position like it did previously. It would be a legislative director position, not a assistance manager position. Now, when they have capacity, we would want them to do some of the enterprise program work that we need to do, but for the most part it would be legislative focused. Okay. And then I know the current sort of picture you gave us is based off of like one additional deputy. Do you have a sense given like the number of departments, the way we're growing? Is that kind of the ideal structure for you or do you anticipate a time where we might need more than one deputy? Yeah, that's a wonderful question. I think four deputies works well into the future. But what would be the challenge would be some ability to have an assistant to? I'm not a this assistance to the manager level and the deputy city manager level. The model that I work off of is typically the deputy city manager and assistant to roles assistant to allows for project management to grow into a more senior lever focus and that gives us a session planning. We're fortunate that we have Julian as one of our assistant city manager so he's somewhat of a unique first position here. I'm not looking to create that. I'm looking eventually to have four deputies with assistance to that can grow into positions of further authority. A good example. We have one of our staff members right now that is growing into the roles of that type of position.. So you'd be assistant to it and then eventually hopefully become a WC manager here. Other questions for the City Manager's office including the office climate action. Are you ready? You're ready to send it? Yeah, five to seven minutes budget question. Okay. Your email said to add it to the agenda. I mean, the budget. I figured out just to the budget. Well, any other question? Thanks for your back. Just, you know, this office was created. I think originally in the FY 23 budget. You came on in calendar year 24, I believe. 23 was the 23. So can you just give us as we were waiting on the budget question, I know my colleague asked, but can you just give an overview of the positions now as allocated to your office, which are full, which are pending, sort of how your staff presently. So we are fully staffed as of about a year ago. We had, so when our office was created, it had seven positions, five of which were moved from other departments into the Office of Climate Action and two were new. My position and our, it was called a Public Affairs position then we've changed that to community engagement and climate justice manager. So now we're fully staffed. The climate justice manager was the last position that we hired. And so we have been fully staffed for about 13 months now. And I'm just my brain is just to a total blank. Oh, and what I'm curious about is you, in the relocation of those employees from other departments, has there been, you know, are there any costs or sort of processes associated with sort of removing them from where they were, bringing them into your office, and then reintegrating reintegrating your office back into those related departments. I don't know about cost. I think there has been, I mean, it's been a learning curve for us because the positions have been longstanding, but the people in the positions have not. So the vast majority of staff with the climate action office have been there two years or less. So I think we have one position who has been there a little bit longer than two years, and that's our energy management analyst. Everyone else is relatively new, so we had our green building manager, our energy manager, WISNU, our sustainability coordinator, all those positions that have happened new. So the benefit is that they had existing portfolios of work to do do because those positions existed. That allowed us as being part of the city manager's office to keep pushing into other departments and then pulling back from them as well. So we have a really good feedback mechanism there. So that's allowed us to have a lot more exposure than we probably would have if we had just been created as a new office. Do you anticipate, Um, kind of quite a sticky happening. I listened to your answer. And then like, um, because I'm actually listening, I forget the follow up question that I was planning to ask. Um, plan in this whole thing. Yeah. Um, uh, uh, green building policy in the answer you were giving. Um, can you just update us on when we anticipate that? Cause that's been a major project. Yeah. You'll get an email this evening, asking if you want briefings on our updated green billing policy. So, and we're hoping to give briefings to council as interested. And then we'll go to the advisory group and public comment in the next separate weeks. Thank you. Oh, your hand. Okay, councilman O'Neal. This could potentially be a budget memo. Director out. Shirt services with ACPS, they used to have a position for essentially climate initiatives and savings on sustainability. I don't remember the exact title, but the energy manager. And we we get a budget memo? I guess we'll have talks to ACPS, understand if that position is still vacant, if it's still there, what are the doing I believe don't quote me, but based on the Q&A's from school board members, they're currently outsourcing that. So I would understand the cost of outsourcing that. And if we have capacity in the city to do some sort of shared services to save that cost potentially, I don't know if you have any info on that, but I'd like that much of memo. Yeah, we can look into that. And we definitely talk with ACPS regularly about their facilities. We have a lot of shared facilities. So with our office, the Energy Manager and the Department General Services, their energy team. Also, there's a group of three or four folks within the city that work with ACPS pretty closely on facilities. So there's definitely a good relationship there that can continue to build. So could we do we potentially, well, I mean, if we're going to potentially propose that we do shirt service in that area, do we have the capacity, does that should be the first question? Do we we have the capacity to be able to help them there? If we're going to tell them, like, hey, we can see through that cost. I mean, it would depend on how much they're doing now. We definitely have capacity to help, to pick a couple of buildings and talk about where we can make some better focus and what, where some opportunities are there. So we definitely have some opportunities there. They have a really high quality facility staff, as you know, who are doing great work on their buildings, what we would be able to do is help with access to additional programs and talking through like energy costs and those kinds of things. We'd be able to help them with that if they're interested. And one thing that Ryan had a highlight but he and his team are really pretty good and creatively finding funding. And I think that is something not just federal grant funding, but tax-based funding and some things like that that are pretty effective. I think that's an area of specialty that he and his team have. It'd be very difficult to duplicate that. So I think there is definitely some synergy in terms of using the talent we already have and place the war pain for. That skill set isn't just in facilities, it's in other areas. Yeah, that's a good point. We've talked with ACPS about a, there's a direct pain incentive program, which the city will be getting, We think about $300,000 from the IRS because of some investments that we've made and largely with the work of Kendall's team and the EP planner. You might just take a minute to explain that. Sure. That's a, again, this is what I wanted to highlight. Yeah. You're much more. This is what I wanted to highlight. So, yeah, happy to. one minute Lee, one minute, what this is and how much money you just found for us. Yeah. So, the city has been investing quite a lot in our electric vehicle fleet and expanding that and putting in new chargers and the inflation reduction act provided some tax credits for that. They created what they call the direct pay program for nonprofits and government organizations to actually file a tax return and get some money back from that so they can get that. So through the purchases that we've made in our electric vehicle charging infrastructure and through, and for electric vehicles directly, we'll get back. It's being processed by the IRS now. It's overdue. So they will give us our money and interest, but it's going to be about $300,000 for this filing that we made. And assuming those continue, we can expect somewhere between one and $200,000 a year just for our electric vehicle incentives. The good news is that the incentive for solar and geothermal is considerably higher and that's up to 30% tax credit. So the geothermal installation at Douglas MacArthur would be eligible for that because it's in service. So ACPS can apply for that. You get a 30% tax credit for that back into their fund. And then when many Howard goes online, that would also. And then depending on the path they use for their solar panels at both Douglas MacArthur and many Howard, they would be able to get 30% back for those as well. So that's a significant reduction in the capital costs that would be going into those. And also for the city, any place where we're looking at putting G. O'Fermall or solar panels, which solar panels were looking at everywhere through the environmental action plan, we'd be looking at those as well. So I think we've talked before about that one point staff coming back to us with the progress on the shared services conversation. So I would really like an update on that specifically. See where we are and what the conversations look like. SBS, and if we were able to save them some money or help them get some grants or what can we do together? So like an update on that. Because it sounds like a great potential and opportunity there. And I don't know if this is a budget memo, but I think a lot, maybe more than I've heard in past years, we have said, have learned that around the term shared services. And I imagine there's also probably like legal components and other implications that have to be considered, so it might be helpful to kind of understand in A to Z, even if there's a budget savings, what would it take to get from what this point to there? Any more questions for the City Manager's office? Okay, we're now going to thank you. We're now going to move to communications and community engagement. Mayor Gassen's good evening. I just wanted to circle back from the dash presentation just to clarify that the charging stations were FY 24 earmarks not 25 just for awareness. Okay. Scott lots of good news. Any quick, okay, I have a question. Yeah. I was, I was, I did not attempt at what? Thank you for being here. Good evening Mayor and members of council. Council member Pike, Vice Mayor Bagley. Thank you. When we're having the council meetings, they are live streamed on the city's website. Are they, and they and on cable television Are they live streamed anywhere else at that exact time? No, they're not is it a technical or financial reason that we don't Liesing them to our YouTube page I Can find out okay, and if it is a financial reason could we get a budget memo on that? I don't believe it's financial. Yeah, think it's probably technical. Yes so I can find out specifically that. The most technical issues is also in the end financial so but yeah it's curious because we do get a lot of questions from the public about you know why isn't this here and I think it'd be you know you sort of be where people are but I appreciate that that's all I have. Thanks for your back, Lee. Thank you. I think this council sort of again expanded and invested some additional funds in this office, recognizing like just the need to reach more people more creatively. And I was just wondering if you could just give us a quick overview on any current vacancy where we are in that process and how your sort of reallocated positions are working. Right now the Office of Communications and Community Engagement has 17 positions total. We are currently recruiting for on the public safety side. A public information officer for the police department, which has been in recruitment for over a year. We've had several rounds of interviews there, couple of offers extended, rescinded, and we are hopeful that a current candidate will be able to complete the process. In the office proper, we have a strategic communications, under the strategic communications team, a language access coordinator that job description has been revised and we are currently in the second phase of recruitment on that. So the panel interviews will start this week. In the content team, we have a communications officer position that is ready for recruitment or interviews. So we will start those within the next week or two. We already have many applicants there, so we're ready to begin interviews there. So three out of 17. We also have the community engagement positions that we're on hold, but we will be ready to begin recruitment there within the next month or so. And that is for the manager and one of the specialists. So just to speak to those are three in the field engagement engagement positions. Frankly, we struggled a little bit with what did that, who is the highest priority for those positions? Certainly multilingual things like that. Alitia has worked through and has developed job descriptions for each one of those disease or new positions. And I think we're ready now to go ahead and get those things, recruit those positions recruiting. I guess building upon that, can you share what is the vision for those positions now versus potentially what it was when we put that on the budget? I think I think they're similar to what is when I proposed that to the council. It was sort of the combination of neighborhood organizers, meets omnibutsman position, really trying to focus attention in a couple of key areas, but we weren't necessarily reaching the community as well as we would like. They would be multilingual or bilingual. That essentially is what the job description ended up being, but it also has an element of digital communication as well as perhaps some vision related to assisting with troubleshooting. And I think that's probably the nuance of the positions. Alif, do you wanna add to that? I think the basic components are relationship building, outreach, building trust, planted in certain sections of the city, working with community- with communities, specific communities and residents in terms of programming, ensuring opportunities for more structured feedback in terms of policy and decision-making for our departments, as well as the council. I think that's about it. I guess I'm right over there. I guess I maybe this is it's not a budget but I'd want to learn more because I think since we put those in we've also been thinking about other positions or we added other types of outreach positions in different departments and I just wonder like how they will be, what function this will play that is different from some of these other investments. I also, before we would hire these, one of the things I noticed in the budget book with the performance measures, is it mentions relationships as like a top priority for this department, but there is no performance indicator on relationship and kind of the community piece. So I think if we're gonna put these positions in, we gotta have a track, like we gotta work with your team to figure out what's the right tracking mechanism so we can evaluate how those relationships are being built. That's a minute, Gary. And, sorry, let me, I had to- Yeah, but that's directly related. Okay. Okay. So, I think I wouldn't touch first on what you said about evaluation. You know, community engagement is relationship building is really, really difficult to try and quantify. So I just want to be careful when we're looking at that and how we're going to try and create it because being effective doesn't necessarily mean. Oh look, I've got this new person today and this new person not next week and this other new person the month after, right? The effectiveness and quality of those relationships and engagement, I think, are very important. Are we getting the people that we want to certain meetings, are departments getting, I have a feedback that they were hoping for. And again, this is kind of what I did for 10 years. And it was always difficult to try and justify my position, even though you could clearly see the results that were happening. So I want to just put that out there. I lost my train of thought thing. It is all right if I just piggyback on that idea because I do see these positions as bridges between government and our community members and when we can be data driven with these roles and send them out into the community and start creating that trust that Elite Thea mentioned and track, are we bringing people to register for our programs? Are they showing up to council meetings? Are they showing up to public hearings? Those are ways that I think are very effective in saying, are we in the community? Are we bringing people to government? That's how I see these roles functioning. We're also bringing government to the people. Exactly. Exactly. And now I remember the other things that I was going to say. So thank you for that. No problem. So I remember you also, Madam Mayor, you had mentioned about other positions and how they're coordinated. So in Fairfax County, I'm not gonna say every department has an outreach arm, but a lot of different departments have outreach arms. And so they coordinate, they have a monthly meeting, and actually here in Alexandria, ooh, 10 plus years ago, I used to go to some of those meetings, but that kind of went to the wayside. But the health department is the one that was kind of convening it because they were the ones I were kind of doing the most of the outreach within their other departments I was joined. And I remember very vividly being but the health department is the one that was kind of convening it because they were the ones that were kind of doing the most of the outreach, but then there are other departments that were joined. And I remember very vividly being at the health department because I got stuck in the elevator. But it was for some of those outreach meetings. So just wanna put that in the context again. So we get to that point, but absolutely not awesome. if we have other positions, we want them working together. Yes. If I may. So one thing I didn't mention when identifying the distinctions between or additions to the job descriptions is like an intra city or department collaboration and requirements and then just following up on what Ebony said in terms of feed bet loops, not just in terms of community engagement, but across all of our programs, trying to establish feedback forms. How did you hear about this? What was that that will be able to also track the source of the origin from where that information is coming? Yeah, no, and I agree, I should say, when I'm looking at tracking, I'm looking at exactly what direction of plumbing was bringing up. I don't think this is widgets of how many community meetings said they host, but it really is. I think the perfect example, can we when we went to the arrive presentation, and you were like, how do we capture the number of new relationships that were built through this program? And we had no metric to be able to say that. And I think if we can get really good at that, that is the difference between meaningful engagement and just during engagement. And to me, Like if these folks can set the standard for that, then I see an opportunity to train out the departments, to coordinate with other departments, and to really make sure that anyone who interacts with us, it's like a same quality experience. And so I just think it's a missed opportunity that we don't have it here, or even just to like as a communication to the public, like we are measuring this, this we are thinking about this so I'd love to see that. You will find in our promotional materials over the past 14 months or so you'll see more QR codes popping up. We are tracking behind the scenes being able to see when people are SCPP where they coming from the same thing on social media and that is something that we've rolled out citywide, especially during the 275th, that was really our test case for being able to track how our communications really penetrates the community. Yeah, and if we already have that infrastructure, I don't know who makes the decisions about the performance indicators that are in here, but I think if we've already set up the systems, then like we could pilot a metric to put it there. Councilor McGreen. Thank you, Madamette. All great discussion. Just from our own clarification, how long were the positions on hold? We began recruitment for the community engagement manager in late 23. We went through the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the We began recruitment for the community engagement manager in late 23. We went through the entire process with that pool of candidates and I was ghosted and that was probably around March 24 and after that We had a discussion with the city manager's office to reevaluate the position. Okay, thank you. And then it's one manager and two coordinators. That is correct. All right, thank you. Other questions? Okay, thank you. Thank you. Sorry. With the reduction in the interpretation and translation services, all means will still be covered with interpretation. And that is correct. Okay, just the cost savings. That is correct. What we found is the bilingual pay program from a translation side, which we were heavily outsourcing before. We've been able to pick up through the expansion of the program more employees are participating in that now. We are working to expand it to include interpretation to do that in house as well. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We're going to mount move to information technology. Good evening, Vanetta Pledge, our Information Technology Services. I can go over the three bullets on the slide. First is our cable television franchise agreement. We did the 15-year term in 2011, So now we're up for renewal with Comcasts. And the funding will be used for expertise to help us do a technical audit as well as a financial audit. And then we'll negotiate terms with Comcasts and do another 15 year agreement. And we're also working with the City Attorney's Office. The next one is reduction in software. So basically what we did is we looked at our entire tech portfolio. We look at it, give it take every two years or so. And then we say, okay, we might have two products, and then we might find out in the marketplace that actually there's one product that could do two things. So what we do then is just buy another solution, and we absorb that, and then we're able to adjust the budget as we go forward. So those are some of the reductions that you see today. Then lastly, we support and the Cybersecurity Collaborative, basically it's a website that provides industry best practices and it's basically a reference for our security team. We feel like now at this point, we don't need to continue to pursue that opportunity. We've gotten our investment in our 24-7 monitoring environment. We're actually sending that up now and that's really where we need our investment. So we can make sure that we have our eyes 24-7 on our environment in the event we should have a cyber security incident. I had a quick question and then Councilman McPike and then Councilman McGuiri. I don't know if this was just like for last week, but almost every single one in the human resources and human services. There's a line that says, you know, movement of software to the ITS department or changes in the integration. Can you just talk about like is there a system-wide thing happening within that silo? Is that all the same types of services? So what we do typically, it was we used to say okay we bought a service and we're going to build back the department space in the number of licensing that they used. But then when we would do that then we'd have to go to the department, get all these org numbers, pay for the fee, then turn around give that to finance for them to cut the check basically to the vendors. So when we talk with finance and OMB, I said, is there a way to streamline this and make it less tedious for staff to have to go and say, give me every one in your department, give me all the line numbers to charge, and then make sure we have the funding for any so on top of that, then every budget year, we would say if there's any increase, then we have to tell those departments to budget the increase if they forget or something should happen. So it's just really tedious for us to go back and forth. So no way for us to get volume discounts and enterprise licensing is for us to just consolidate, have one fund, and then we'll look at every department and still say, these are the users you're licensed for. This is how much this service is going to cost. It's things like Adobe. We use another software called Smartsheet. We use another software called ShareFile. So it's a plethora of solutions. We also do VoIP. I love that word. Okay. We also use Telecommunication charges across departments. So it was a better way for this to streamline. And then the City Manager also enacted us to do more governance over our technology and what our portfolio looks like. So with this, then that way if there's enterprise software solutions, we're talking to the department heads is saying, okay, we as a city exercise this solution is this in the best benefit for all of us stakeholders to exercise. And then we get volume discounts as well. So. And were those departments kind of the last to migrate to that system? I didn't notice it as much for the divisions that we discussed today. We just did it. This is the first year that we can solidate all of them, put them basically an ITS based budget. So that's the reason why you see it across all those departments that we would charge back to if that makes sense. Okay. Thank you. It's basically happening in most, if not all departments, but only the larger departments. Does it really register as a number worth mentioning? Okay, thank you. That's a couple. Councilor McPike. Yeah. I actually had a couple questions. We're along the same lines so that you covered a lot of it. The software and application reduction there, when you're combining, you know, taking two functions and finding one software program that offers both of them, there's some retraining cost related to that, correct? It depends because we are in so case in point we have Microsoft productivity suite. We have the team using SharePoint now. We have the team using OneDrive. We have the team using Email. So solution already included all these modules. It was just us making sure staff was aware that this is the available for them to exercise. So when we went to the pandemic, the first thing we did was said, everyone needs to use teams and then everyone needs to have a team's meeting link. That was a quick training. Everyone's like, oh, I do is click and I'm in a meeting. So it just depends and we want to make sure we're taking at most advantage of these software packages. So we're getting most value, right? Is the city using or evaluating any artificial intelligence tools for any of its functions? Great question. So what we're using artificial and machine learning for is against our judicial systems. So we're replacing Alexandria's justice information if you will. Systems been in place 20 years, that's 40 years worth of data, and we're retiring that now. So part of that was to do in a data exchange hub, which basically we're saying we're taking all the data from both police, sheriff, court case management system, data from Commonwealth Attorney, CAD, 911. So case some point, we just did a training with the sheriff's office and they're really excited because they were able to see from having that data. If I'm going here to serve a warrant, I also notice, you know, I'm going here to do an eviction. And at the same time, I noticed as a person in that house that has a warrant for their arrest. So now they have more intelligence before they go to a scene. We also overlay that with geospatial data. So now if you're in the police department, you can say, okay, there's crime that's happening in this block. It's dealing with car break ins, but now I can look and say it's someone that has a tattoo on their hand. So then they can say tattoo crimes anyone in jail, anyone has been released from jail and uptick and they can overlay all that data to get a good insight. Is there activity that happening? Is there people that I could talk to that might make, you know, match up with this makeup. So we're doing our best to also align the data so they have intelligence if it's the same person. So if someone gets arrested, sometimes you'll see Sally Jones, maybe she has a false ID or a fake name, and then we'll see her court and she has a different name and then we're recognizing from that she could have been married, she could have been divorced. But now we can merge all that day together and we can say this one person, the machine learning will say this one person and all this content looks like it aligns to this one person. And then staff manually accepts that it's one person. We don't, right? You don't see that to the. Right. But before we got to that, that was a manual process. Someone had to trigger the court to say, I think this person is the same person I seen yesterday, and then someone had to go in and say, let me look at the records and see to the fingerprints match the date of birth, all the information we have, line up to say that is one person. And then they're able to get more intelligence around metrics. So when I was talking to the team, the police department might say, I pulled someone over and it's three tickets. The court might say, but that's just one court case. A f***. metrics. So when I was talking to the team, the police department might say, I pulled someone over and it's three tickets. The court might say, but that's just one court case. But for us, we are just giving you the data and however you want to define your metrics is fine for you. But that way we can have more intelligence on how many interactions are we having in the courthouse? How many people are going to jail? How many people are being connected with the police for whatever the case may be, and then they can have more intelligence around it. So it's been pretty powerful tool so far. We're still deploying it because we self-defense the prosecutor model, the war and Spodrol, but it's given us way more insight into all that data that the system houses. That sounds great. It sounds like it's creating some real efficiencies there and a lot more thoughtful and carefully considered than just slapping chat GPT on every computer. So thank you very much for that work. That's interesting. And as you sort of look at these tools and consider them for city operations in ways we can improve efficiency and you know, reservists to residents, I think the council would love to be kept aware of those sorts of things. I already got seven dream projects. Yeah, I think everything you just described is not fully captured in just one sentence in this paper and I think being able to understand how investments like that not only produce savings, but also improve how we're interacting with residents, improve staff time, and being able to come speak about that is something that would be really helpful for. In this case, keeping people safer. Yeah. We also have an AI policy. Oh, yes. It really helps govern how we apply this. Russ is suddenly in a safe way and that wrote it. With input from the rest of the industry, of course. Yes, I got a little nudge to get on it. I don't have any cure. Thank you. Dr. Pudger, are we safe? I'd say, let me let me, I say that jokingly, but really, I don't I guess I'm getting that is, you know, are we staying up to date with some of the, you know, I don't fully understand all this. This is why I try to ask this question every other year, keeping up with the latest dangers, but also I think a year or two ago, I asked our partner agencies, are they upgrading up to par? How are we looking on that front? And then lastly, how are we looking internally with making sure that, because sometimes we make ourselves vulnerable if we click on a fishing scam or something like that. So I guess it's kind of like a three-part question. I'm gonna try to remember each part. So I'll start with the partner agencies. I did get feedback from some of the partner agencies and they sound like they have pretty decent programs. I would say the ones that we more directly work with, we do give them a lot more feedback to say, okay, we're sharing data. You have access on our network. Let's talk about our controls and let's figure out how we implement better controls. So I'm still in working with a partner agency on some of those controls that need to be put in place. I think when we're talking about the staff and security, I think now maybe we're very heightened from the standpoint I sent an email about training and everyone asked me was it efficient attempt? So I really appreciate that staff has paid attention. There is staff, you know, if it has a sense urgency, people might respond to it and continuing to remind people if it has a sense urgency, pay attention to that content. And you can always pick up the phone. I think making sure people have two means to verifying information is really better than just having one than just, I got an email, so I responded back. I got a text message, I responded back, but are you actually engaging in having a conversation, devalued the information that you're about to share is what you should do. I think our investment in our cyber program is pretty strong. We do do cyber security awareness training. We do, we invested in a new tool that we use for remote work for staff. That allows us to have way more visibility and staff our network. They're always on, but it also allows us to be always on from the standpoint we can make sure our units are getting updates. We understand the security on these units. We're more engaged in making sure that we're managing all of our endpoints. If we do, we do recognize we have opportunities to improve when it comes to some software programs. Case in point, we do have hardware that's antiquated, like we're replacing our gas pumps. So when you replace that, then you also need to make sure you update that software. So in those cases, when we recognize it's an active project, it'll take longer to actually meet the product roadmap. We'll put in more heightened controls around those systems to make sure we have more awareness and we're more security around it until we can retire that software. We did hire, I got a note from my lifeline here. We did hire, we did hire new chief information security officer. And the reason why this is a unique and exciting experience, he worked at University of Virginia as a Chief of Major Security Officer. So now he has a broad understanding of you're dealing with workers that are in all types of facets and he can bring all that knowledge to us and help us think through your work with the social worker, your working with someone who will be in the field on a mobile device. How do we want to make sure any of those interactions are secure and how do we want to pay attention to any controls that we need to put in place to make sure that we have increased security? So I think as having his knowledge as well as our experience with how our staff work. So mobile now is really impacting our ability. Sorry, time's up. Oh. Time for councilman to get rid the trash. So it's, I think it's great from that standpoint, that vantage point. I think we have great investment in the tool sets that we're exercising. And yeah, I mean, we risk, we're monitoring the reductions from the federal government as it deals with those agencies that are focused on cyber security. And we're thinking about how that'll impact us, but I think we have good partnerships with COG and others in the region that we can collaborate with as it relates to cyber. that's great to hear, you know, sometimes I feel like we should have everything, like the Forner's downstairs and not connect to anything, but you know, I know that's not the reality. So let's get to hear that we're staying up to date and investing heavily on it. We're doing our best. Councilwoman Green. Thank you. All right thank you. I was just wondering do you have any vacancies in your department that you're actively recruiting for? I believe I have four, but I'm actively recruiting four. Okay, and they three, three are almost recruited four. Okay. One is going to be followed up after these three get filled, and then I just, why didn't just learn this March someone's going to leave so then I'd be at I actually said the end of the month. Okay. Thank you. Vice Mayor Bagley. The AI answer I think was really interesting and maybe even worth like a presentation at some point. You know what I mean down the line just a bit of a community. Oh no. Oh good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No I just think this is the sort of thing that like doesn't really get an opportunity you know and and I think it's a safety measure and it's obviously a good use of IT But I couldn't help it here that it sounds like maybe the next opportunity to apply would be in the three-one one space If that feels like a good fit for some like predisposed, you know like obvious like here's a resource for you know Stormwater credits, you know like you seem to be asking about necessarily. I know how hard the people in that office work to craft really good responses. But so I guess if there's a question, do you have a vision for the next place to implement it? And might 311 be one of those locations? We could explore 311. I think right now the city has me in a few projects. We've been talking with a university about AI, exploring what we could do there. DHR approached me and we were having a conversation with Virginia Tech and what we could do with their computer engineering program and what we could do with potentially some type of data model. So right now we've been basically vetting ideas and coming up with use cases that make the best sense and then thinking through how we would sustain it. So I think right now that's where we're talking with a couple different department heads and Kate Garvey, social services, thinking through how you would work up through eligibility to make sure if someone comes in for services you could say these are all the things that would be available to you to make sure that they can have access. Okay, thank you. You're welcome. Okay, so to my colleagues, it's 9.50. What was left was city attorney, finance, general services, management and budget. Do folks still have questions for any of those? If so, we'll just, we're just going to plow there. Yeah, the super quick one for Director Rout. I'd like to use the flowery language that the mayor has written down, but how you doing? He's doing all right. We're doing very well. Thank you very much. We are a fully staffed. We don't have any vacancies right now. And we have a budget reduction, which is some temporary services, which I think we can manage with. So we're good. Thank you. Sounds good. Thank you. General services, anybody? Okay, finance, anybody? We got two. So Councilman Aguirre and then Vice Mayor Bagley. They up here? And you on the phone? There we go. There we go. There's director Taylor's on the phone. Director Taylor, a similar question that asked the city manager and director out, but I was also looking at, I think you guys took out a vacant position. So I'm assuming you guys are doing okay and that taking out a vacant position. So I'm assuming you guys are doing okay, and that taking out that vacant position will affect in a way timing in terms of having a wait in line to pay bills or do anything else. No, thank you. Kendall Taylor, Director of Finance. A number of years ago, we made a couple changes. One was the elimination of the decal, and that has eliminated the need for people to come in. But one of the really big things that has really changed the foot traffic for coming into City Hall is what council did a couple years ago where we took all the cars that were valued below $5,000 off the tax rolls. And so that eliminated a third of a third third of the vehicles. And that really does minimize some foot traffic. And so we've been watching, we watch it out at the west end, and we believe, I mean, there's still tax accounts to be worked and processed with back room processing and things like that, but the number of people walking in the door to City Hall to conduct business with us has dropped dramatically. Thank you. Vice Mayor Bagley. It's a little bit of that question, which was with the impending move or sort of the elimination briefly of the, you know, the cashier's positions and such here at City Hall. I'm just, um, are we confident and comfortable that the staffing locations and levels will be sufficient to maintain, you know, what what has been to date a really strong sort of collections and customer service program. Where are you now my assistant director of revenue, Kevin Greenleaf? He will always make sure whether it's the phones or the desk traffic is staffed. We've got people that he will take off what they're doing to work on the phones or remove people from desk work to the counters based on those peaks and valleys that we have, you know, closer to October 5th. We have a lot more traffic when the bills go out for real estate. There's a little bit more. B poll was just due. And so we just, I guess you call it dynamic support and staffing. So we're comfortable that we have what we need both right now and at the West End. But we'll always keep an eye on it. And we've asked our positions years down the road or in the past where we see what we need, but we're also, I believe we're putting nimble. And we've had a program and now it's blending in my mind a little bit. We had a program where we're using interns to help assess. Oh, Sure, we do each year. We have them do two things. They come in this summer right after college, let's out though, mid, may, to late, may, and they basically have two tasks. They catch up on our scanning. There is a lot of paper in my shop. And so they've got this scanning piece of making sure we've got all of our Returns the tax relief files any of that in place, but then we also ship them outside and they They take our tax role and they go in the different commercial sectors to see how does what we believe is happening in a business Compared to what's actually happening. And so they'll notice, they notice three things in the past couple years where they've gone out. Either a business is totally gone or a business is operational, but there are no people in it or kind of their sign is on the door, but then they're in a various state. So they're able to bring all that intel back and then the business tax team works the information. And we will be doing that again this year. You're welcome. Oh, sorry, I saw your pin. Oh, you do. Okay, Councilor May. L may be. That's okay. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Director Taylor, you touched on the tax exempt cars under 5k when council put that few years back. I wonder if it's worth revisiting those tiers because cars have appreciated significantly. I wonder how many cars are left under 5k now. So given the great appreciation of car prices, if it would be just makes sense to revisit those brackets. Just a little bit. I'll get Evan cracking on that right away. Yes, we can certainly look at what we've got in this system and kind of what we need to be the case when we consider that proposal and just how anything's changed today. For happy to produce what we can. Thank you. All right, last but not least city attorney's office any questions. She is online. Yep, I'mron. It's the same question. How's your office looking? You guys keeping up with workload, that type of stuff? We are fully staffed. We've got 11 attorneys, including myself and five support staff. So no problems in that area. And even if I don't think we need another position right now, but even if we did, we don't have the space, the space we were using up all of the space that we have downstairs. That's all from me. Thank you. Okay, everyone. We made it. Okay. Oh, we did not make it yet. I'm so in a game. Sorry. I forgot something for my notes. Mr. City manager. I was looking at general services and there was a saving for studio staff. Because, of course, when we leave this building, it's not going to be a need. What happens to that custodial staff? Are we going to work with contractors to try and place them in another building that we have? Yeah, we have, I believe plenty of needs. Probably some would go to the Pepper Center. Some would go to perhaps park some rec centers, things like that to continue to improve our facility work. So yeah, they would have, they'd be redeployed. Wonderful to hear you. I was a little concerned because some folks have been working here for a long time. I don't make sure that we're keeping that in mind. Yeah, I think that's how we plan to do that. Okay, so moving forward, I do think this new format, we got through a lot more. So I think for for the next one, let's continue with just like one slide per department. I will send everybody the list of departments for next time, bless you. There are less so that we can prioritize. And because we are in the noticing window, we are moving till six o'clock next time. So thank you everyone for powering through. We'll see you at six o'clock on Wednesday, the 26. Thank you everyone.