you you And renew the lock-ass for us to keep going. Okay, I'm got that heart with. Perfect, perfect. This is our show and it'll just keep going. of it closed with. So whether you're in a human experience, a community, or even a country that feels stuck in a bad rerun, I hope you can get past this test and see that while it may be frustrating, it's also a gift. It's not the end of the story. Your story has been renewed for another season and you get the grace and the ability to try something different. So as we go into this retreat, there will be moments where it's uncomfortable, there will be moments where it's frustrating, there will be moments where it's touchy feeling, but I hope that you will push past when it's uncomfortable, that you will push past the frustration, push past the exhaustion, know that we're here to support each other and that we were all called to be a team and to execute for such a time as this. So with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Bri who is our amazing facilitator who's gonna take us on this journey. Thank you so much. Well hi everyone, my name is Bri Fouse. Hold on please. Okay, can y Okay. You all hear me. Great. Briefhouse. It's great to meet you. See you all again. I just want to start by saying the Accenture team is really honored to be facilitating this workshop with you all. Okay. We keep going. on. We're really excited to be here. It's been great getting to know all of you in our one-on-one interviews. So I am part of the organization at Accenture called Accenture. Oh, is that better? Okay. So I'm part of the group at Accenture called Accenture Song, which is our creative strategy part of Accenture. And my background is actually in design, an experienced design. So I'm going to stay all the way back here. So we're going to be doing a design thinking workshop. The first question I like to ask is raise your hand if you consider yourself a designer. Both. Okay, we've got a few designers over here. And I'm going to ask, by the way, my workshops are very interactive. There's not a lot of like me talking at you. What makes you think of yourself as a designer? Go ahead. I make things up in my head. That was a perfect answer. Yes, thank you. Go. Let's go down the line. I'm always thinking about the user experience and the way people integrate into a process. Perfect. I don't know if the design work. That we know engineer. Oh, yeah. Yes. 100%. I did graphic designing college. And that's how I got through my last years of college. So we got a table of designers over here. That's great. Well, let's do this again. Raise your hand if you've ever creatively problem solved. Okay, well, congratulations. You're all designers because really all design is is creatively problem solving. you're all designers. We're going to do a lot of design type activities today and we'll get more into what that means in just a second. Okay, I'm clicking. Okay, there we go. No. Can you, yeah, let's just do one more? Awesome. Alright. All right. So we're going to do a quick introduction of who your facilitators are today. So I introduce myself. My name is brief house. I'm part of Accenture song. And I lead all of our resident experience work for the Commonwealth of Virginia. And I'm going to pass it over here. We'll go to Danielle first go ahead. that the strategies to focus on how the sector of work will be. Again, the fluctuation of the mechanism, and I found Virginia, I let me go right, I prepared a ticket or two and a half. I'll be a librarian at Alibis here. Basically, as well. Hi everyone, I'm Joe Piers. I'm from the go to the office. I'm going to go to the office. I'm going to go to the office. I'm here to help you along this journey over the next two days. Shabby Po. I'll just do a couple slides for you. I'll just do a couple slides for you. Okay, just, yeah, let's just do go a couple slides forward. All right, one more. I'm going to go ahead and do that. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. While we're getting that figured out what we're going to do, the next activity is a quick intro of all of us here at the front table. What I want you to do is grab a sticky pad. You're going to write down on one sticky what you plan to give to this workshop and what we plan to get from this workshop. And one word is fine. We'll just take very nice. This is not a very quick. I have to be. Oh, there we go. Now it's up. Let's just heat it down there. All right. So what we're going to do is quickly go around and you're just going to say your name, your role and then what you will give, what you'll get. And I'm going to grab the studies as you tell me. So let's start. I'm serving. No. Any more questions? You're hosting. You're hosting. You're hosting. You're hosting. You're hosting. You're hosting. You're hosting. You're hosting. You're hosting. You're hosting. You're hosting. You're hosting. You're hosting. You're hosting. You're hosting. You're hosting. You're hosting. You're hosting. You're hosting. You're hosting. You're hosting. You're hosting. You're hosting. Okay, so your campaign title just to title. Sorry, just to green. Focus is what I'm giving, motivation is what I'm getting. All right. Okay, let's just go around here. Oh, likes, likes. Jack, okay. I don't know, can I hear you? I'm asked. No. Okay. I'm here, here, finally. And I, some of my colleagues here, I plan to give my attention and to get inspiration. Oh, I love it. I hope to. But actually, you know what? Yeah. You come up and put it on here because I can't walk over there or else. You know, that's a crazy feeling, I'm sorry. Go ahead. I'm going to come to Don Chapman and I'm going to give time and I'm going to give understanding Oh, look at it. All right, come on up. Come on up and put it up here. All right, can I? Press gold. Let's see what we travel over the length. There you go. I was working. So I'm gonna give it a full attention and I'm going to get clear on where we need to focus on it. Nice. All right. I'm Bill W. Beak, council member and I will give my honest opinion on positive energy. And I hope you have some full solving. All right. All right, go ahead. I don't have anything. I don't really do well with this sort of all this stuff. So, you know, maybe like, can you give a chance to know who goes? Thank you, everyone. For the quick intro and telling us what you hope to give and get. So I feel a lot of focus, my full attention. That's great. We want that and you're hoping to get motivation inspiration. You're going to get that lots of inspiration coming over the next few days. I'll keep it back one. Okay. All right. So quickly we're going to go over some ways of working. So, she, she, for just a second, but we'll come back from that promise. So these are things I just want you to keep in mind as you proceed through the next two days. Use open minded and divergent thinking divergent thinking term is in design and it just means we're going to be coming up with lots and lots of ideas. And then we're going to have a moment where we all come together and meet narrow those ideas. So it's kind of hard sometimes to be in that divergent mode, but just know we're going to come back. We're going to converge, but try to stay open minded use divergent. Next one, bring positive energy and contributions. I think someone, I think, can't you said that positive energy. Nope. I've done you said that. Very sure. It was them though. Alright, so that's what we want. Positive energy and contributions. And then finally, this is a safe space. We, you know, we're, we do this all the time. You facilitate these workshops. You can, you know, say whatever's on your mind. What's with you for a set plan? Oh sec. But I'll just say there's no bad ideas here. We want to hear everything. That kind of goes along with the divergent thinking. You want all the ideas. So the only question to challenge to that is because this is a public meeting. The public is watching. We hate it. Our media is watching. I don't necessarily know if I would necessarily agree that you can't have a bad idea that it's not been taken for a ride. So I do want us to be conscientious of that fact. Okay, that's a really great point. Thank you for having me. Go ahead. I was in the air, we are aware that that is one of the limitations of being able to just freely and create a thing what we are going to work to do is clarify what some things just a thought or idea. I guess I would modify. We can't create a fully safe space. We are creating every space. I also say as much as I definitely want everyone to bring their positive energy and try something new. I know everyone's dealing with a lot in different ways. So if you need to step out, you need to eat, if you need to just take a minute to reset. So you can fully be here. I think that's all appropriate for us. Please, please Okay, I'm going to go ahead one. Oh, okay, go back. Sorry. So yes, you might be wondering why on earth there is an Elmo right here. So Elmo, ELMO stands for enough, let's move on. Sometimes when we do workshops like this, we can get off topic, we can, you know, be going on and on and on. I know someone doesn't like where parking was. We're not going to use that word here. What we're going to do is you're going to get the Elmo's thrown at you. So we were going down a rabbit hole and it's like we had to save this earn under time. You might get the Elmontos that you, and you're allowed to toss it at your other colleagues. I actually have an album with anybody. It's always like the participants, like the workshop participants, Elmoy and each other. So just so, I'm gonna keep you right here. Okay, I can stretch it right. He's full of glass. Okay, let me go ahead one. Okay, so now we're going to go into our first section which is called Alexandria Unpact. Actually, I get to sit down for this and you're going to hear from some of your colleagues. Awesome. I think Jim is up first and the point of this is we can't make big ideas or think about where we want to focus if we are not all clear about the conditions with which we cover. So these are going to be a little bit of rapid fire but it is focused on helping set the stage for the state of the city and the context that we are having. Actually sorry before you get started there's one little thing I forgot to mention we are on a schedule right now these three hours today so everything is timed out perfectly. I brought my handy dandy gone so if So if you hear the gong, that means we gotta move on to the next thing. Go for it. Great. Hello? Okay. So, I did want to take a couple minutes to talk a little bit about what we did. At least from my perspective, the status that he looks like right now. So that process, I'm gonna talk a little bit about where our community reception is right now. We'll talk a little bit about the economy. We'll talk a little bit about where we see ourselves in our revenue forecast, and then we're gonna highlight a few of the considerations as we move forward and think about it. But before I do that, I do wanna say thank you to the councilor. These can be difficult. I know the week that you had, the couple of weeks that you had, and the ability to spend time helping guide the community in terms of what we need to enter our organization. That's what we feel is really an important so thank you very much. So, all right. And again, I thought there's a little bit, this is a really good thing. We did an annual survey of our residents and there is some incredibly positive things to There's this. There's also some things that I lighted that like all organizations we can do better. Some lock better, some a little bit better. But I think it's really important to kind of just reference this in terms as we think about the state of the city going forward. And this is not the end of all either. This is a perception survey. It's a point in time. A lot of our arts and organizations do regular survey and regular feedback and things like that. But I think it's indicative of the quality of our organization. When you see 90% of Alexandria as a place to live, that's a satisfaction name. I've worked 30-80 years in this business and worked in many cities, some of the best in the country. I've never seen a number like that. And that's probably 25 surveys, annual surveys. Never seen a number like that. That's really positive. And it's also particularly positive because it tells me that the community, which frankly is demanding and passionate, also recognizes when things work out really well. I think that's really positive. The sense of safety, you all know there's 77% sense of safety and outtaining overall, you know, the arrest or the unfortunate incident against airlines, but every day this is a safe city. It doesn't mean that we don't have crymelons that we absolutely need to work through, but it does point to that. And I like this very much, particularly because this is an area that does have a water transancy nature, free out of four expect to stay in Alexandria five years. And if you think population, we're getting younger and older. That's pretty interesting. Again, I made on-hand a go about my own thoughts on how we fit. I think this is really indicative. So the red dots represent the sea of Alexandria. The dark blue is the Atlantic region and the light blue is on a natural level. As you can see, we all perform virtually everything as the Sea of Alexandria, place to visit, place to live, place to work, all the FC services, place to raise a family, a children rather. The one area that we need to work through is by street hire. And that's a function, frankly, of the cost of living in this region, not just Alexandria. Since then, we've worked with City and so the staff here, and this has been a really difficult last couple of weeks. We have great staff, we have amazing staff. We're going to make mistakes, we're going to make the wrong decision, but it's going to be an incredibly rare situation where you don't see about the caring spirit, you don't see about the professionalism that it's exhibited. And I think our residents are recognizing that 72% satisfaction rate, typically you would see that number if it's in a really good city in like the 50% 55% range. Cost per service is 63% overall customer service by our city employees. My city employees are also including all our arteries because I think this to start a really covered everything from A think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think So, average what we can do better, right? That sort of represents an opportunity. You know, the improvements we've made in 3-1-1 things like that, really making a difference, but there's probably more that could be done. Particularly as you think about technology as an emergency trend, how are we applying a, how are we applying technology to maximize our staffing model, right? And then in response to this request, ending this for a presentation, good opportunity for improvement. Yeah, those are representative opportunities where I think there's probably pockets where our response of this needs to be strengthened. Core value functions, culture resources. You can see the range of these things. I've had to spend a lot of time on them, but these are really pretty positive. You can't, if there's does not mean that we don't have the ability and need to improve, but it does represent the quality of the services that are provided. And you, we're back to going to the budget process. And the budget is what makes the ability for us to do some of the things that we need to do. So this year's budget is going to be very difficult. So kind of as you think about all the yet is and how you want to approach that. There's a fiscal component obviously of that as well, but as you can see, there are a lot of really positive things here. Some of the concerns, though, local concerns here, natural concerns over rising cost, growth, and climate change, some water management, flood control, this perfect situation we are going to have to flooding probably this weekend with rain. Some of our growth and education, education, availability of affordable housing that's not one of the top items you're going to hear in your conversations with people is how can you make a more affordable to live here? That's really more in cost-eliving the expense of here. I would tell you one thing that we do need to do well better is to explain that decision is council's making to help make it easier to afford to live here. For instance, the free dash service, some of the discounts that we do, the tax reductions for persons with disability, seniors, military families, things like that, Those all contributed to helping. And then if you look at our services that we provide, just probably one of the few cities that we'll work in the neighborhood of 160,000 people, we have more human and social services that I can think of for any city that's on that, that's really impressive. And then you kind of see where we sit. So we are behind in these areas, in terms of perception. Remember, this is a perception server. Okay, so bottom line on the survey, a lot of really good things, feel very good about a place to live, a place to visit, a place to work here, but there are areas of our organization or areas of our service that we can do in approval time. So on the website, really a pretty strong residential market still is softening a little bit, but it's still strong. Whole values are expected to appreciate 4 to 5% in 2025. Any big growth is going to potentially be similar, but you're going to see a bullet later that highlights what happens nationally is so uncertain that that could have a incredibly detrimental effect on our housing and our appreciation. And there's no way to determine that right now. We've got to prepare for both low situations. High demand low supply, we have limited industries, so our value is pretty strong and it's a desirable location. That's not changing. Any investments we're making in, new school construction, waterfront, more investment and taking care of infrastructure, those all contribute to the quality. But the commercial survey, we are in that much definitely going to talk about the economic, but we've talked about this before. We have to have all the commercial world to balance us out. Our hospitality and commercial properties, they're relatively strong. I'd say the commercial probably are not here way as strong. The office market, as you know, it's dropped substantially. But in the hotel market, it's pretty strong.. Part of that, again, it's a very desirable place to take two, three day trips. It's easy, right? Real estate trans and multi-family is stabilized. You remember last year we had a drop in our value. That's increased. And I think that stabilized. You're going to hear that in the budget process. My tax revenue in the personal property states strong. They're all with the local tax revenues are leveling off. Well, I'm basically debuts some of our revenue last year. We've also paid more for services and more for equipment, more for supplies. I think the basic timeline is the growth is going to be slow and steady here. And that's a big challenge because we're going to need to accelerate some of that. A couple of economic indicators in the United States. We still have a strong finish in 2024 from a job growth standpoint. Our unemployment level in our standards is very low. Again, all these slides right now, there is a tangible risk, and that is what's happening at the administration level. That can change all of these slides directly in the wrong direction. You can see interest rate cuts. Here is the wise is really the tariff, I think it was announced today. You know that is a detrimental policy to how we would approach economic development in our country. So we're going to have to look at where there are opportunities to address how to balance out what has happened in there and then some of the broad policy shifts. How I would say here is again, I think it's just debt and stability and some more virgin economies. That's really poses some challenges to our global growth. We and civil rights and civil rights and civil rights and civil rights and civil rights and civil rights and civil rights and civil rights and civil rights and civil rights and civil rights and civil rights and civil rights and civil rights and civil rights and civil rights and civil rights and civil rights and civil rights and civil rights and civil rights and civil rights and civil rights and civil rights and civil rights and civil rights and civil rights and civil rights and civil rights and civil rights and civil rights and civil rights and civil rights and civil rights and civil rights and civil rights and is a perception is pretty positive. We are strong fiscal year we continue to be both policies that the council put in place in the past but it's all our being in here to that is made a huge difference in how we can manage through storms and turbulence difficult situations and I think that's real positive. I would see it out that this budget that you'll receive in February is going to be a very tight budget. I just counsel gave direction on my 2%. I've tried to adhere to that move things around a little bit here and there. And we have our very hard with our budget office to try to do as many great things I think the committee we want to see but there are definitely going to be reductions and changes in that environment and we're hopeful that that will change over time but I kind of I'll leave you that the budget will be a solid budget it'll be a strong budget it. I better well not be an everything but. All right. Thank you. Think topic to cover in tennis. Exactly. this is going to be a big category. So I'm trying to think about what you are going to accomplish today and keep it in the categories. And so there are lots of ways to measure economic development. I think these are the three major ones of focus. We think about our real estate tax base and I think given everything that the energy just walked you through, this is really the most meaningful letter that we can call to really make big swathes, which we really need to do. When we start to talk about life, we'll get a slice here. Relic occupancy is another thing that is an easy number for us to be able to share about the help of the economy. So think about weekly rates, rental rates, things like that. And then the last piece is really how many jobs and economic opportunities are here for the people who live in Alexandria. Jobs should they want to work somewhere and they didn't come and opportunities to actually open businesses be entrepreneurs to create wealth in a different way. This is probably the most disgrossing chart that you all have gotten used to seeing. This is the real estate tax space. And this summer has gotten further and further apart. This access has been growing in many years that I've been here. The new one is here is that the way that this chart reads technically, multi-gently, is part of our commercial tax space. But for this chart, we're showing that is particularly residential. And so the amount of real estate tax revenue that the city is capturing on an annual basis just for commercial is just under 18%. And we right now are operating and we should have said this at the very beginning. We're operating under kind of an economic development strategy that was set back in 2009. And the idea, one of the big ideas back then was that we were trying to get these lines, you get closer to 50-50. You can see we're nowhere close to that, but we're actually moving in the wrong direction. And some of that has to do with longer term trends, but I would say that this acceleration over the past few years is realistically related to the way that people use commercial space in a post-content of the growth. For very long time, our strategy has been build office to grow commercial. And I think that is something strategically that we really needed to be thinking about. And we've been trying to talk more about over the last year. What other sorts of courses we used to should we realistically be attracting to Alexandria in the world where office is not going to grow with the piece that we needed to grow? The good news is that we've been a leader in getting rid of some of our old office buildings. We've gotten rid of some of the biggest ones and most recently just a couple months ago, we made a big the swaning on 5,000 one Eisenhower which represents a big part of our agency. The bad news is that everybody else is... We're out of some of the biggest ones and most recently just a whole month ago we made a big dissuading on 5,000 one Eisenhower which represents a big part of our vacancy. The bad news is that everybody else is catching up to us. You might have heard things like office to anything. Some of our competitive jurisdictions are trying to catch up with us to get rid of their obsolete office stock and they're using incentives and inducements to do that. We don't necessarily need to do that too much because we did have a jumpstart but what we now need is new commercial to be built and constructed because of that this mix. This is why. Don't expect use to internalize all of this but the big takeaway is that every new thing that gets built in Alexandria does generate net positive tax revenue for the city but the commercial uses that you see listed out the top require the least amount of services in return. As of the net to the city is higher, we get to keep it spending on things that the city needs and wants to build. The real basic way to think about this is about human beings. Human beings who live in the city require services. It's what we're here to do. Human beings who come to the city to recreate or go to an office building don't really require many services from us. And so that's why these numbers are different for each use. This is a study that we did as a city a few years ago. So this is the basis for some of your decisions that it continues to be really important. I have two slides just on the office market and the retail market just to kind of keep you and expect you to reall of this. But the big takeaway is that the last number you saw for office vacancy were could have been here. It was about 15.5% and a year ran out 20%. The main reason for that is because two big buildings in Carlisle that were released by the federal government were given back to us in the third quarter. And so that represents 800,000 square feet of empty space. So when we get big chunks of that back, you see that number go up. So the news is that that number also includes 600,000 square feet, I-1000, I-1000 power, which at the end of last year, the previous council approved to be converted to residential. Until there's sort of a shoveling around, that number stays in our vacancy rate, because circumstances change. And so until that number, until that building actually gets under construction, we'll continue to show that in the vacancy rate. But we'll see, I mean, these are very big chunks of building that are available, and we'll be sitting in our vacancy until and if we find other users or another user. And I put this chart in here just to give you an idea of what the average rental size is. It's going to take us a lot of 11,000 square feet heels to start to chip away as some of these big chunks of bacon property. For a retail perspective, we're a lot better, a lot healthier. We always have it. It's difficult for me to have big numbers to show with you, up to show you because it's hard to track all of the small spaces that are around the city and most of our partners who do commercial real estate honestly only track a whole town as a market as a retail market in Alexandria. But on this chart the takeaway should be there's a lot of activity breaking news, there's new bakery coming into the big fire hook, just announced that today. But we're constantly seeing retail churn. That's not an area that we necessarily have a whole lot of problem with. What's important, though, is that we are building a lot of new retail space in all of these new buildings that get built. Almost everything will one of them has ground floor retail. And so keeping up and making sure that we have new businesses, not only national and regional chains, but also local businesses able to move in, is an important piece of our overall economic development kind of posture. So I wanted to give you a visual again, as you think about strategically we do and what what kind of work we do. On any given day, we are constantly trying to build a funnel, a pipeline of businesses that we are trying to attract to Alexandria. And we go through this space where we talk to anyone and everyone are essentially in this kind of market. our goal is if somebody is showing any sort of interest, we will talk and we will evaluate and see if we have the right real estate or the right project. As part of that engagement, we also try to figure out if they're a bit fit. And if they need, you know, this sort of our desired outcomes, in terms of job creation and investment, and the type of real estate that we have, we do all that to make our beautiful diligence, then we enter into negotiations, and then finally we get a commitment. And projects that follow this are the big ones, like the Virginia Tech Innovation Campus and the National Science Foundation Headquarters, but they're also some of the small ones. We worked to create lost boys' item, which is a retailer that went through the same process. Hotel Heron, which was extremely complicated to get a hotel use here. So I wanted to share this as an acknowledgement that work goes through a multi-stage cycle. It takes many, many years, but our goal is always keep this pipeline full and the spinal full so that things are coming through on a regular basis. These are things that we talked about in the past, but wanted you all to keep this top of mind that we don't just do this in a vacuum, that we have some guiding principles that have been set by previous councils in our community. This is probably a good time to mention that we are embarking on a larger community conversation around these sorts of principles to make sure that we're updating them and that they still reflect the entire community's priorities. We're gonna be doing an economic summit in this year where to come on that. But generally, the idea is that we only want to invest in projects that kind of we are our social and community needs in terms of generating revenues to pay from the other services that we need to provide, but that also we're not ever doing anything that compromises the cities overall, or an evil standing that we invest in things that we believe will spin off other activity. And that we invest in things that we believe will spin off other activity, and that we are looking always to diversify our tax base. And so in this instance, I think really thinking outside of the office box is going to be really important for us. These are the two examples of projects that we have pated on, there's a long list. And as I said, Lincoln here at Virginia Tech is very capable of down here on the bottom is the art lake and old sun north, a project that we have stepped into to subsidize and make happen because it's a priority in that part of the city. The top is a much larger project in August hospital and kids Kinser Center at West. And so finally, this is a meant to explain that we continue to look for catalysts in other parts of the city, but our really main areas where we need and want to see growth are here, Potomac Yard, even around Carlyle and Eisenhower, and then as we go out Eisenhower Avenue around the bit or Metro Station, does it mean that there will be other opportunities that might present themselves? But those are the core areas for growth. And as we're thinking about how and where we need to grow, which I hope is one of the conversations you're going to have, really solidifying this vision that our community understands that not only do we expect growth, we need that growth in order to continue to be sustainable. So that I will turn it over to Helen who's going to'm using the powder. I'm doing to use the I'm Helen Madden in your housing director. So first thank you very much for inviting me to provide an update on the state of housing and Alexandria in in 2025, we are nearing the sunset of the city's 2013 housing master plan. The city council's leadership guidance from the city managers office and the support of our community, which understands the housing affordability and access. Our key to Alexandria's human infrastructure and its economic success. I am proud to report that we are on track to meet the goals established in the 2013 plan, specifically the creation of new committed affordability in 2000 units, which we call CAUs, or committed affordable units. In addition, the city has implemented nearly all of the regulatory planning, programmatic, and financial tools identified in the plan. And with optimistic confidence, we have endorsed the aspirational target set in the 2020 regional housing initiative 2, which would bring an additional 2250 Committed of Worm four units and workforce units by 2030. In fact, we are on track to meet and see that. Recently at 5,000, one Eisenhower, Council took all new action with our future in mind, locking in affordable workforce and rent control units in exchange for a martial tax abatement. Because you understand that our ability to preserve housing affordable at a range of price points now creates the stock that will help our children and grandchildren call this city home to. One needs to look no further than our robust housing pipeline to see that Alexandria is in the business of implementing its housing vision. It shows that we can meet and exceed our housing goals as city and third resources are secured. For this reason and others, Alexandria's innovation and successes are well regarded throughout our region. In less than a month, in a very challenging financial market, we will have five projects under construction. From Saunce to Seminary Road to the Arlanda Cooperative, the Pendleton Rooming House and Winter Place. On the end of 2025, we hope to add over to Avenue Samuel Madden and Lodre to that list and we have a list of other preservation and new construction projects that you're working hard now to move forward. Community creativity collaboration and accountability are the hallmarks of Alexandria's approach and our work together. We do this partnership. We do this work for partnerships with other city departments with mission driven nonprofits like housing Alexandria with housing authority and with private developers both in our negotiations during the development process as well as through public private partnerships that leverage our collective strengths. We urge her and her strong working relationships with funders like HUD, Virginia Housing, the JVG Social Impact Fund, and our cold Lucas Campbell, as well as with Amazon's Housing Equity Fund, all of which have provided significant grants and loans. Bear investments have a bolded thus to think and do bigger. And I can think of a better example than the city's highest housing priority, the San Sanaja projects at the corner of Leibh and Mount Vernon in Arlandria. In consultation with the community, this project will deliver 474 affordable rental units with 25% of work to house shelter incomes at 40% of the AMI. M58 will provide affordable first-time ownership opportunities to those who would other be marginalized. And it's also providing commercial space includes medical and dental clinics, retail, affordable pre-cand-acare, and city flood space, which will bring Alexandria to the community. Our buffons have been deployed here to provide infrastructure and benefits current residents as well as future development. And we're the $100 million of soft loans and grants, third-party grants funded the whole first year of construction before other equity and debt was closed on last month. Housing's close collaboration with planning and zoning on multiple city-wide, South Patrick Street, or Landria, Alexandria West, so many for housing housing for all, and now Duke Street has fostered a culture where production and preservation housing affordability is maximized in the development process and even greater opportunity for integration as possible through the new one-star initiative and plan policy work that will be taking on in housing 2040, which is a housing master plan update. In Virginia, the interests of planning and housing are not naturally or pledges lately a lot. So I want to acknowledge and thank my friend Carl and his whole team for the success of our work together. And we very often go in meetings where people say our housing and planning directors don't talk. And of course, we talk all the time. So creation and investment of dedicated funds by council has been critical in reaching our goal. The real estate tax pay for housing, the restaurant meals tax, our annual Amazon $1 million increment, along with all of the other housing press funds federal lines and now a CBBG section 108, These, along with moving housing funds into the CRO demonstrates that how is the area of use housing as critical infrastructure. And the other point I want to address is accountability since day one of the Housing Master Plan, we have measured our progress and implemented on quarterly basis through reports to any hat and updates to the city dashboard. This. We have measured our progress and implemented it on quarterly basis through reports to A-HAC and updates to the City dashboard. This practice has helped guide data informed decisions and investments. We have understood where we are hitting the mark and where we were fallen short and needed to correct our course. The 10-year CIP for Timer has also helped us to be flexible when being nimble counted, whether funding sans-sayonaja over multiple budget years, or advancing funds to preserve parks now in 2020, enabling the city and its partners to compete with the market to secure 326 units that otherwise would have been lost to affordability. Well, our 2013 Housing Master Plan, which was the first in the region, made the connection between housing and economic development at our midpoint check-in at the Housing Summit in January 2020. We made a commitment equity, our commitment equity and housing for all explicit. Since then, we have intentionally focused on housing for those with the greatest need and the fewest options. Very low income households are now served through our residential T-Family Zone, Pile of the rental assistance subsidies, and the additional funds that that the city puts into projects, every project to ensure that there are units of variable at 40 and 50% of the area meet income. For our next ability, housing, including projects with shelter homes in Alexandria through our using DVDHS vouchers to help house persons with intellectual and developmental disabilities and our persons who are recovering from substance abuse and through our seminary road project. And also, response to new homeownership options that help address historic racial, social, and economic inequities. Our initiatives have also led us to enhance outreach so that we can ensure that those who are impacted by our housing and community development activities are not just engaged but they're at the table and the support of community partners like tenant workers united, African communities together CCNA and other social service organizations as well as how it's in real-space community has amplified our efforts. Since the community conversations that require the our our land and the Greenland to place. We really viewed housing as housing plus. What wraparound services and amenities enhanced self-sufficiency. What services help households accumulate wealth of entertain and grow youth lower barriers to success. As Jim mentioned in his remarks, not only is the city making housing more affordable, is taking important proactive steps to make our community more affordable, with services like workforce development, the free dash service, the Healthy Homes Initiative, and the constellation of support, it's offered by DCHS. A really good example of a big learning for housing occurred when we set up the city's emergency rentals assistance program in the first few weeks of the pandemic. Our program became a national model because it was all based on how to re-lower the barriers to access. And how can we get to yes and stabilize housing for city residents and maintain the operations of our garden properties. Sam, from 20 other departments, train mine to operate the program. And during 2020, we use city money as well as money. So we got from the federal government that we were able to reprogram for this purpose to keep 6000 Alexandria households safely housed. Thousands and worth string COVID strengthened our strategic relationships and heightened our awareness and understanding of the challenges many residents face when it comes to the intersection of housing health and the condition of our rental stock and has the even greater collaboration among DCHS health department code and other departments. Right now, housing 2040, an update to our 2013 housing master plan is underway. And so you will receive a presentation at an upcoming legislative meeting and housing will bring draft recommendations and a draft plan as well as the first bundle of potential actionable items to you and the community in the fall. These recommendations will be based on the housing needs assessment that was presented in September, as well as ongoing discussions and studies regarding a range of topics from homeownership, job data policy proposals and verifications to strengthening the city or our collaboration and to do financial tools like tax evading and so forth. I'm wearing the 2013 plan. House in 2040 will specifically focus on addressing challenges faced by Alexandria Richards, who comprise approximately one half of our households. Giving Richards a more fair footing will likely require a multi-year commitment to legislative changes focused on moderating rents and fees assuring the habitability and river pair of housing enhancing communications and responsiveness with property owners and protecting tenants rights in cases of evasion or development and redevelopment. In phase two, which is currently planned for 2026, there will be deeper knives on complicated issues like preservation strategies and tools to strengthen our age and condominium communities. Very often, the only opportunity people have for first time homeowners partnership in our city, as well as expanding alternatives for senior housing plus care. These topics deserve our attention and time and look forward to engaging in our community. We have submitted a question for your input later, but I'd like to close now with words the record of the 2013 plans introduction. And these were said by a stakeholder and our very first meeting in our process. When we talk about the number of units and what's been lost, let's not forget that what we are really talking about is people. This perspective has grounded our work over the last 12 years. And I want to commend you for your heart, for housing. Thank you for your commitment and investment making space for all of our neighbors. I think it's Alexandria Superpower. So thank you. Dr. Res. Thank you very much. Okay. I didn't think necessarily it was a form of presentation, presentation, but this high is supposed to be some good way. So again, I am David Rose. I'm the director of the Health Department for the Iowa Sanctuary Health District. And today we're going to be briefly discussing health and community conditions in Palmyth Sanctuary. All right. We're going to start with some quick definitions. How faculty, how faculty is achieved where everyone has the opportunity to have their optimal health. Now, that's regardless of their own personal story or behavior. So what does that look like for example? Well, say every community has a rec center. Every community has affordable and accessible health include options. Health disparities, obviously differences and health between groups of people and social drivers are factors of influence people self. They're also known as social determinants, the conditions and plus the title of this particular section. The focal drive is those the community level factors and conditions, environmental people, work, live, play, et cetera, that affect their health, functioning, and quality of life. There are five domains to these social drivers. There's economic stability, there's access to education and quality of that education, access to health care and its quality, the built environment, and then social community context. Those are human interactions. So things like social isolation, civic engagement, and discrimination. So you see now, you see the source there, indicate the percentage of population in each census track with an indicated driver and dark, but the color of the higher the percentage. And so I just chose several of these various places. So racial and ethnic minority says unemployment crowding, no high school diploma. And what you'll see is the darker areas and sort of have a theme, right? These maps... as unemployment, crowding, no high school diploma. And what you'll see is the darker areas that sort of have a theme, right? These maps could look basically the same for other conditions such as lack of dental visits in a year or age or pro-bacall or record goal screening. So you'll see on the west end, you'll see on the north, northeast section city, see along, as in how you'll see various places, there's sort of a pattern think probably you'll see various places. There's sort of a pattern that you'll see. So how does that translate to help outcomes now, let's get you. And again, this is data from 21, 22 of Berkfist or the CDC's telephone survey at Health Status. This is about the time when we were still in the midst of COVID, the Omicron. Peek was the early 2022. So impacts people going out, getting health care, also about things. But finally, you see obesity, asthma, of new teeth, vaguism, and I chose several. But you see now we can start talking about disparities. And these are multi preventable differences in the burden of disease or quality of health outcomes experienced by populations with multiple barriers. So for example, the disparity would be, say, for example, you look at asthma, not above the top right corner, it would be no surprise to know that hospitalizations for asthma in 2 to 3, or 4 are the highest rate in the city, where 302 are the lowest. And that's example of disparity. So let's bring it home. What's the big picture? So here's something else I have in Paris in the 2015 to 2019 data for two selected census tracks and then this is from the Northern Virginia Health Foundation's great work on premature that across the region. You see her wide gap in premature death rates, multiple dental, and these two census tracks that are not too far apart action. You recognize them from their names there. And then also that wide gap in social drivers in your income, education, health, or access in terms of insurance and race and ethnicity between these two areas. So a community self is shaped by more than health caterer. And almost every indicator there are differences in health outcomes depending on your raise, your age, ethnicity, and obviously your geography. And so back in 2019, well, I killed it. Back in 2019, we had a community-centered data-driven process to look at the health community health assessment for Alexandria. Out of that was developed a community health improvement plan. That's our chip. I did not mean to go to the floor. Sorry. 2020, I did not press anything. I'll put this down. Out of that came the community of a group plan which partnership with Health Bureau of San Andrea and Health Department are managing. We have dozens of organizations, community members who are in the process of maintaining that plan. And the development of the health assessment in all substantial process that was engaged in 2019. We're looking at qualitative and quantitative data. As part of the qualitative data, you see a three question questionnaire that was distributed across the city and 40 unique locations in the performance outreach in those areas. The three questions relate to the biggest health issue in your area. That's question number one, number two. Our strengths of your community, number two, and number three, what would be the most impactful improvement for health? And we have a unit select three in any of those categories. And so we also made it available online, and we received over 2000 responses. And the distribution of the responses, in terms of where in the city, mirrored the distribution of population message so feel pretty good about that. In a process, we also collect the demographic data. The usual things you might think about age, race, stip code, those are things that are also functional, this ability status, gender, sexual identity, home language, household size, and such as that education. And so, I'll hit this one. Okay, I'll hold through all of those, you see the top 10 to question number one, the health issues, top 10 to question number three, community health improvements. How long did the top five, because unfortunately inadvertently, you may have seen where I'm going with this. But those are the top five right there. Mental health, alcohol, substance use, obesity, physical activity violence, chronic health conditions, and on down, and on the other side you see anywhere from safe, healthy, affordable housing, all the way down to support for basic needs. I ask you to again to note those that highlighted because now we can aggregate this data by Zidco. Remember those maps that showed you earlier in terms of the social drivers. Only have the aggregated by ZIP code. You see there's some similarities, absolutely, but you also see unique challenges experienced by the individuals of those communities residents. And so you'll see, for example, in O2 and 11, I mean, 12 and 11, dental problems that you won't see in those highlighted blue from the chart before. And you'll see in yellow the ones that are different from the top five overall. And those answers change, not just by zip code, but by race, age, functionality, language, different sorts of experiences that people have, so different top health issues. And here it goes to make a point, a little bit firmer, where we aggregated it by income. Remember that was one of the demographics that we collected. And so again, you'll see that there's some similarities in particular mental health and substance use across the board, being fairly high as challenges of people are seeing. But if you look, for example, the difference is under 100,000 of those dental problems start to kick in. You'll see those are very prominent. And again, these are the top five. That's $100,000. I'm $100,000 a year. That will probably disappear from the top five. But you start to see other concerns, climate change, food insecurity, and other sessions. And so we take this information, we'll take this information, and coming out with the new community health assessment, utilizing that information, or the quantitative and qualitative data, including feedback from walk and talk to these four native of the list to develop a new community health improvement plan, again with community members, agencies here, community organizations and such, it will be community driven, community centered and data driven. And thank you for your time. We do have a question to be pondered by the group. Thank you. Well, first I just want to say thank you to our presenters. It's great to learn a little more about where I live and see snapshot across the residents of a section and development housing, health and community. So thank you. We have three questions here. The first one related to what we heard from Stephanie around the commercial growth. And we impact on the text text base. So I wanted to give Council members a chance to read through the first question and then reflect on the sharing of reflections with the broader group. When I was thinking of this first one, I thought it was a good two-parter for a start. What goals should the city accept or accept for commercial growth and then how do you achieve rebalancing the task case leveraging investment in the cities. So with that, I'm volunteers to share immediate reaction ready. a broader reflection on what you heard from Stephanie. Thank you again to staff for the presentation. I would love this slide. If they have an already mentioned and I guess I'm going to say something that's not directly responsive first. What was fascinating to me throughout the presentation is the same map over and over. And it's a housing map over and over. No matter whether you slice it on health issues or a forward like if you keep seeing the same housing, it keeps them back to housing. And and I think that's gonna inform these for me. A lot of people talk about the end of the day tomorrow in terms of like the goals for commercial growth and expectations of, I mean, I think we need to, at least get this conversation going, I will say that we need to start from a place where we assume we will need to be a part of the investment for the sub-city and work from there. I mean if you assume that that's going to be a baseline for any significant opportunity and always poke prod, you know, see how we can minimize or re-arrange or be creative with what that is. But I think if we start and if we start our community from a place that that's not a baseline and we're constantly going to be creative about what that is. But I think if we start, and if we start our community from a place that that's not the baseline, and we're constantly gonna be in dialogue with our community about why is the city, why are we putting our money into this, and why are we putting our stuff city into this? So I would like to see a framing emerge from this weekend that is in part, if my colleagues agree that that's sort of the default position and start to socialize that in the broader community, that we will absolutely entertain opportunities that don't require city investment and subsidy, but that in the current economic realities, in the reality of office, in the competitive place in which we live, where our neighbors are trying to, you know, who are the same people. I'll log that sort of to start the conversation. Hey, Raches. Thank you for kicking us out. And thank you, Sam. I have a lot to do. A presentation this format but everyone did really well. I think a couple of reflections, picking up where you started, I think it's almost offensive. Like, in some ways, you gotta put in money to make money and like we have a lot of services and needs that are getting more and more expensive. So how are we strategic with the resources we do have in order to leverage them to of additional development. I think that is something that's definitely on my mind. I think the other things that I took away from Stephanie's conversation was the question of like how and where are we growing and what does that look like because to me if we have strategic nodes where focus on then those happen in the same nodes where we're thinking about a library or thinking about the school or thinking about a rec center. They can't all be in different places across the city. But if we know we're getting growth in specific areas we're going after growth in those places. How is our alignment across? I think the other thing and I'm going to ask councilman Rechampion for reminding me this is a question. This is not something I'm saying should be, but I'm very curious of the term office to anything. And what are the other things? What does that mean and where other city's doing in terms of facilitating those changes? Thank you. For the question, question and the same thing you have echoed in my shout out for staff. Thank you for the good presentations that are possible. I would, on the first question, especially commercial growth. As that was presenting, I started thinking about, I know the Eisenhower Valley, for example, was not included there, but I think the way we think about this is where the potential is in the city and where are we underutilized. In my opinion, for example, Eisenhower Valley is underutilized and one thing specifically and most of the commercial world we'd be thinking differently. So for example, I think when I had this conversation of the watermark for example, I would really utilize that space and how can convert it in a way maybe within the same use, like this that I have in a watermark, so you stream months out of a year, how can we use that space, problem inside is that a year? How are we going to water our collectible resources? People can come to Alexander for stays spent money then leave. I think that we are in that direction and this is the direction he needs to move into. Figure out where our potential is and where the area is going to go is a very fine real state, very underutilized area. So realizing where these areas are and how can we capitalize how we can start moving. I guess subsidy, of course, may have to be part of that, but we need to be very clear with the community. What are we getting out of it? We try to get it transferred. As we can. I understand sometimes we can't be for final everything at least from the beginning. Sometimes we have to discuss the example sessions and all that, but as much as we can try to show our community what we're really netting and gaining out of these fields. I think from the get-go as much as the service we can, that would help bring people along with us. If I'm in, I think in terms of the goal, so we said, I think it has to be once I think it's similar for us to say like a single, I think we look down at the neighborhood level. One of the things that I think we need to reset for this community is what the various neighborhoods are gonna look like as it relates to the growth and the opportunity for a classroom or for different uses. And I think there's not gonna be this obvious target of all time. And so I think we need to really set that the distinct picture for different communities, particularly as you said, as in how Valley, what is the Valley going to look like in 20 plus years? I do think we have opportunity there that we have not taken advantage of yet because I think there are some projects and opportunities that we can do there. But on the ground, I think one of the things from the conversations around the arena is that people felt this community was going to look a lot different than it potentially could. And I think there's a disconnect there as well. As we talk about the same investment, I think a reminder of the data point, I think might be off by a couple of years, but I think it's in the last maybe 20 years, 15 years, something like that. Every project that we've had has been, has had some level of city investment. So I think we talked to our community about the fact that this is the new norm. It's not just the new norm here, all the other is the new norm in competitive economic development across the country. And so expecting some big organization to come here and say, hey, we're willing to do everything for free without kind of your investment of some form of fashion. I don't think it's realistic. I think what we can do is continue to shape what the city investment is. And so maybe it's not straight dollars, maybe it's infrastructure like we've done with, I know that things of that nature. And so talking to the community about what city investment looks like and how it functions for the future, I think is what we could do. I do think as we try to rebalance the tax rates, I do think it might not be realistic to forget to 50-50, but I think we do need to have an aggressive percentage that we want to see. and maybe an aggressive percentage is in certain types of economic development uses. I think we unfortunately our history around entertainment has gone in the opposite direction where we've lost Golden Alley's and movie theaters. I think it's that major. And so maybe looking at the entertainment style of uses and and setting a certain percentage for that type of use and hopefully attracting folks that might want to have entertainment uses and seeing the spin-off from that might be useful for what we do in the future. Great. So Mary, kind of an emphasis on the practice solution that websites might not fill, shall can put it out of Sandra. I think we've done for one more. Well, we're sitting here today and we're actually looking over an area of the city that we thought would be something very different. When it was, when they out, then what it was, this was a shopping area that was supposed to be here for 10 years. And it's it's great to go to college at this point in terms of the age, maybe the drink. And that's, you know, that's the challenge that we have. And we had a big idea that we discussed about catalyzing the sort of element of the fact that five years point in terms of catalyzing point, when we talk about that being an area like Los Angeles, they are actually when they build the parking. And they find all that infrastructure to make that happen. And how do we find those things that we can do in space like this, in space like Eisenhower, uh, Valley to catalyze the development one because we both be able to question which are probably important. They cost money. And we're leaving on this first one because right now, uh,, you know, 72% of the order is quite very tired. I can do math right now, 80% of it. Um, historically far, our residents and we have to be able to read out that. So setting a goal, I do think we have set up some of the children and knowing what it really is to want to be, you're able to come table. And I think that's something that we need to get to. Hopefully that economic science, something like that to put our ourselves to hold ourselves, give the community a bond into it. So they'll accept that you have to be comfortable and we're putting our dollars down, tell them generate this, and I don't think you need to be your dollar, stay in your pocket in a few years, that balance back to where it should be. They always said no parking lot. I just want to lose what folks are saying. The same way, the substation. In the metro station, I mean, we should really put a complex station points on this goal. In the next year, we will not year. In the appropriate time great time for you, because that being teleph, we want to set some targets for economic development in different sectors and how we would work backwards to achieve that in the type of city money that might be necessary, or the different types of incentives or city participation that might be needed for you to chose. Great. I'm gonna work it out loud. I'll allow that. I think the Council of Member of Tenants, when earlier about people that are watching this, the economic and the community beyond our residents that are watching this, people of business owners are watching this and real estate developers are watching this. So that's a context too's a context too, as we're talking about this, business conversation is indicating, you know, our desire to be a landing place for other businesses. So I just, like, I appreciate the reminder about, you know, residents are watching and but also like potential new businesses are watching and editors are watching. So I think it's important also that we continue to make clear we are open for business in Alexandria. Thank you. That's a great good close. This question. So I know that we're running a little over all time so I don't think we're going to have time to go through the next two questions but I do think that they're important as we continue on. Oh, that's all right. Close this out. Third question. Yeah. So, so we was back that there was a push to have health and all the policies and you know part of that that was unfair is that you can just expect the health department to do everything around that. And then we we our all of Alexandria. We have our research of the Black we now have the sir. And we decided in the last console to use equity as a lens. And so I think that third question. At least for me, I feel that I can say that we've been doing that. That we've been looking at the different factors, have you always been able to accomplish it, probably not? I think about what the mayor just said around the house and that some of these notes really haven't been able to do some of that. I think about some of the developments and we haven't been able to put a school or library or a rec center. So I think we need to do a little bit of jump matters up there. but I know what I'm thinking about this. I'm always thinking about it holistically and how much we can impact all of these different sorts of determinants as well. Maybe we're talking around the non-parking lot by Grabb, but I have everyone to call it. It extends beyond just the first? So maybe it's kind of taking that same methodology that we're talking about and thinking about questions to and thinking about questions for you. So with that, I'm going to hand it over to Bray. All right, so how are you guys feeling? Do you need a break? Okay, we'll take a five in a break. Come back in five minutes, okay? Don't be late. If you hear the gong, that means we're starting. It's like a theater. Some days. I know what. I'm following you. I'm following you. I'm following you. I'm following you. I'm following you. I'm following you. I'm following you. I'm following you. I'm following you. I'm following you. I'm following you. I'm following you. I'm following you. I'm following you. Yes. I'm sure I can. I'm sorry. Have you heard of Jonathan? It looks like that. Yes. Is this where you go? Yeah. Oh, it's running perfect. I'm sure. I can't look. I saw it. I'm sorry. That's just a kitchen. I mean, also, how do you get the turquets? Okay. I put that in like next time. So I was just thinking it's almost like a program charter. So I really think you're obviously getting left. I'm just like crazy. I just want to see people doing what they're doing. I'm just like, I just want to see people doing what they're doing. I'm just like, I just want to see people doing what they're doing. I'm just like, I just want to see people doing what they're doing. I'm just like, I just want to see people doing what they're doing. I'm just like, I just want to see people doing what they're doing. Oh, that's so cool. Yeah, we have a lot of fun. I'm just like, cringey. Right, so it's got a lot of singing in it. Oh, you'll make sure it's hot in here. She's updating the draft now. But now, starting now, I'm about to hear from everybody. I know. That's why I just said, I never made the mic. There's a lot of things to talk about. Yeah. Is the camera's wrong? So I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I wrong. So I'm going to have to get it out. I'm going to have to retire tonight. So I'll come out and do my thing. But do you know what time we'll be able to make? I have I'm going to miss the five year background. I'm probably going to be around that time. Thank you. I appreciate it. I'm so far you've done. Great. I'm quite over it. I mean, they are all here. I'm not taking the words, I'm not taking the air. I'm going to put it in the middle. I'm going to put it in the middle. I'm going to put it in the middle. I'm going to put it in the middle. I'm going to put it in the middle. I'm going to put it in the middle. I'm going to put it in the middle. I'm going to put it in the middle. I'm going to put it in the middle. I'm going to put it in the middle. I was doing. I'm going to see. I'm going to go to the bathroom. Okay. I'm going to do a the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to start with the first one. I'm going to start with the first one. I'm going to start with the first one. I'm going to start with the first one. I'm going to start with the first one. I'm going to start with the first one. I'm going to start with the first one. I'm going to start with the first one. I'm going to start to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay., this one. That's just an audio. Oh, that's great. Can you remember? Let me see. I'm just going to get this. Okay. Let's see. Okay. It seems like we have to do more a problem. I know it's a How does it actually a I know it's a I know it's a I know it's a I know it's a I know it's a I know it's a I know it's a I know it's a I know it's a I know it's a I know it's a I'm sorry. All right, we right. Right, exactly. And that's a little good. It's all hard. It's right there, beautiful. It's a little darker. It's a lot better. Okay. All right. This is helping. Okay. All right. All right. Thank you. I think this is going to work better for me. The knee, um, little thing. Thank God. Okay. Here we go. Alright. So, um, I want to look at the agenda before we get into the rest of our activities. So up here, day one. Here we are. all day. So you don't even need to worry about that right now. We're just in day one. We did our welcome and intros. We just did our Alexandria unpacked session, which was all about what is the current state of the city. We just took our little break. Next, we're going into a visioning activity. So based on everything you just heard about the current state of the city, what do we want the future state of the city to be? And what is the legacy that you wanna leave as a council, a city council? Then what we're gonna do is we're gonna introduce some community member personas, you are actually going to create your own community member personas. And then finally at the end of the day, we're going to do what I call a gallery walk. I'm probably wondering what these big posters are over here. We're going to, in groups, go to each poster and on each poster is one of the current City Council priorities and we're going to have a discussion around refining those priorities and everyone will get a chance to visit each priority. So before we move on to our visioning activity, I just want to ask because I know we're a little rushed to get to our break. So anything else, anyone who feels, you know, was left unsaid, where you know anything anything that's burning in your brain you want to make a call. Is there anything else anyone feels, you know, was left unsaid? We're, you know, anything, anything that's burning in your brain, you have, you want to make a comment on related to any of the topics that we covered in the Alexandria unpack session. Going once. Remind my colleagues and our and our visioning that we're starting from a good place in many ways. You know, I mean, just to like that's we are positioned to do more to do better. And But I feel like if we accept some of the data that was presented and like to Council McGuerey's point about the way we've started to think better about like equity in our place making, like we don't have to course correct entirely. We have to refine and prove move further. That that's at least what I'm trying to think about. But maybe that's part of the visioning. So. I guess something that I would be thinking about as part of that discussion, if we're starting from a place of refinement and correction, I think what was particularly studying to me is the data that we saw from Dr. Rose and just getting down to, it's one thing to have like a high level strategy for any of the areas we care about. It's another to say for this neighborhood, for this community, for this income bracket, like this is what we need to do. And I think for me, continuing to see the same disparities or the same issues in the same areas, every single map, every single issue, that to me means that while things are going really well for some, there's still so many we're leaving behind. And so I guess it's part of the vision. I hope we're gonna dive into then what needs to be different or what is holding us back from making the difference for that. Thank you. Okay, so with that spirit, we're going to move into our next activity, which gotta go forward a little bit. Okay, so this is called our time capsule visioning. Kirk here, I told you there's gonna be a time capsule. Here it is. Okay, so what we're going to do is we're going to split into pairs. We will have a group of three each pair is going to get a prompt card. Actually, if you guys don't mind passing out one of each card. You're going to work in your pair to fill out the card. Each card has a different prompt on it. We'll spend about, yeah, you'll get about 10 minutes to write your answer. And then we're going to come back together. We're going to share out to the group and then we'll have a discussion and then we'll have some time for you to refine what's on your card. Okay, so groups we're going to do to at the end here we'll do to here and three all right. So one of each. So one legacy. No, no, no, no, Okay. So each group is one. One. So not good. Here, but just one. No, no, no, no. That was not good. Just minutes. You might not need ten minutes. Okay, so we're going to be putting these cards into a time capsule. So imagine you're looking back what values did we lead with as a council? Okay. Okay. Okay. Actually. Yeah. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. 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I'm going to go to the next page. I'm going to go to the next page. I'm going to go to the next page. I'm going to go to the next page. I'm going to give it to me. I'm taking to add a little bit of salt. I'm going to add a little bit of salt. I'm going to add a little bit of salt. I'm going to add a little bit of salt. I'm going to add a little bit of salt. I'm going to add a little bit of salt. I'm going to add a little bit of salt. I'm going to add a little bit of salt. I'm going to add a little bit of salt. I'm going to add a little bit of salt. I'm going to add to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the see if I can get it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to do a little back to the next slide. I'm going to go back to the next slide. I'm going to go back to the next slide. I'm going to put some more of them up. Okay. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm sorry. So I'm sorry. Oops. That's easy. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Thank you. Oh, that's it. Let's see. Yeah. Okay. I'm going to start with the first one. I'm going to start with the first one. I'm going to start with the first one. 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I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I think they're just listening. We're gonna vote for Frank. Oh no! This is an adrift bike. Not this one. Come back. Now it's better off. Where you guys drive these off? Okay. All right. Okay. Okay. All right. Okay. So that's it. That's all questions. This is called an inner pops. We're going to take one go at something. You get a feedback. Yeah. That's what we're going to do. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. in time, we are going to be putting these prompt cards into a time capsule box. We'll hand them over to the mayor and then the mayor can decide, you know, when you'd like to open that back up again. So let's start over here. What was your prompt? What impact to be hoped to achieve? What positive change do we set out to create for the people of Alexandria, how did we envision making life better for residents in future generations? So not nothing too bigger. Go ahead. All right, give us your answer and try to do it under 60 seconds. Go to intentionally and demonstrably improve the what now I'm kidding. To intentionally and demonstrably improve the way people move around Alexandria. That's right. We preserved a level of affordability and accessibility in our housing markets. Our policies and development have reduced health inequities across the city. And the burden on real estate taxes to support our city is reduced in favor of business development and by being a desirable place to start or grow a business. What a great job. Yes. Yes. All right. Critique crew over here. Any comments? Feedback thoughts? Additions, subtractions. I thought that was great. One thing for consideration. Thanks guys. Yeah, edit. I'm reflecting on the areas of the survey that we seem to not do as well on, and particularly seniors and children. And I wonder if, as we work to be more targeted in our investments, while we wanna do those things for everyone, do we want to also specifically call out for children, for seniors, and maybe for those facing the greatest health disparities, or were the neighborhoods that are furthest behind in those things. That was great. Anyone else have a critique over here? I already kind of forgot half of what you guys said, but but that's why it's written down so we can go back and look at it. You say correct me if I'm wrong, but I think part of the way in which we did allow that was also through our communication and engagement. So that would be my not even a critique, but like more like an add on. Love it. All right. We're going to move on. Do you all want to go next? What legacy did we hope to build? What lasting contributions did we want to leave behind? How will our work continue to shape the future of Alexandria after our term ends? And our answer was an Alexandria on a firmer financial footing than today through a more diverse revenue base and a broader local economy, the lasting contribution and the continuing impact would be that getting our city onto a firmer economic path and fiscal path over the course of this term, you know, terms to come, would ensure that we have future funds to do the things that you're talking about, that we have a CIP which our CIP is based in part on the revenue, the land value, real estate values that we have having greater capacity for school construction for stormwater issues so that when people come to us with ideas on how to combat climate change and improve public safety, we have the resources available to us to try to engage with those ideas because some of these challenges have a high dollar mark. So I think the, you know, we're saying the largest legacy we could leave is correcting a bit of that chart that we saw earlier and getting us on to a firmer financial footing to help ourselves achieve things we want to do. But also to help future councils have the resources they're going to need. Now the stuff is going to be. Critiques. And you know they could have just nailed it and we can move on. I'll be honest with you, I think they did. I mean, the way the way Kurt played that out, I think the best legacy that we can let we can leave is kind of the economic sustainability of the city, particularly if we have righted the ship and we're now going in a direction where we're closing that gap. I think many councils have tried. And so if we're able to do that, I think that really sets the city up in a great way. Amazing, great job team over here. Oh, can I keep? Oh, so close. And I know everybody's gonna have something to say once we talk. So I would agree with all that and not so much a critique, but again, an add-on in an equitable way. Yeah Group go ahead Just listen to it like So I don't get hit a bit like this. What values did we lead with? What core principles guided our decisions? How did we ensure our leadership was rooted in integrity, equity, and the service to the community? We didn't really writes sentences. We just wrote single words and stuff. Equity, creativity, such innovation, growing in the same direction, call out injustice, representation, justice, sense of fairness, urgency. And this is a big one that we talked about because I feel that because of the councils recently, we've prioritized things to really push change, accountability and transparency. And just have fun, you know, have some joy in this, normalizing it and that creates a model for future generations. All right, so now what we're going to do is you're going to take maybe two minutes. Oh, I'm so sorry. I actually, that was so good. I skipped the critique. Okay. Any critiques, any thoughts, additions? Okay. That's a good one. That's a good one. Anything else? So it's interesting. I think one thing in Kenik's sort of comment to us about engagement, you know what I mean, that was sort of the piece missing on ours. The mayor's comment earlier sort of in response to my comment about, are we going in the wrong direction and who are we serving? I think that's part of our like communication and engagement obligation and challenge that I'd love to have solved 30 years from now because I think that's part of our communication and engagement obligation and challenge that I'd love to have solved 30 years from now, because I think what that's scratching at is I think we're doing a lot of things in the right direction, but we have to bring everybody along to understanding why, and then we have to do better in areas where we're not. So it think I agree with a lot of the values there. And I think what I was trying to express, when I said I think we're heading in the right direction earlier was that I think our values are aligned. You know, and I think our values are in the right place. So how do we better educate everybody who maybe wonders why we're making certain choices and then how do we refine those choices, improve them, correct them, where they're allowing ongoing inequities. So it's a little bit responsive, you know, to sort of, but in the process of what canex to us, I, that's what it triggered for me. That was great. Anything else? Yes. Is this a rebuttal? Yeah, not even that. I just, I just wanted to say that one of the things that I've really enjoyed about the last council and when I'm looking forward to it, this council is that how well we work together and we compliment each other and that when one of us says something, it triggers in our mind something else and it's not necessarily a critique, but hey, this is how we can do it better. And so like that's something that I am talking about joy. So yeah. That's cool. That was really sweet. Okay All right. So now what we're going to do, you got your critiques, your feedback. We're going to take a minute or two to review what your critiques were, and then you're going to rewrite your answer to the prompt. All right. Ready and go. You guys do not have to do full sentences. Your question is literally what value, so it's just one word. Sorry. It's 5 or 2. So, let's get started. Okay. I'm going to do a we're going to go around one more time. You're going to read your prompt, read your refined answer, and then you're going to come put the card in the time capsule. Ready? Go ahead. Okay, so to incorporate the mayor's feedback about children and seniors and sort of, you know, where the area is, we refined our statement to say what impact do we hope to achieve to intentionally and demonstrably improve the way all people, at all abilities and ages move around Alexandria, just to be more intentional about where we are in that. In terms of responding to areas on the survey and sort of we remembered that education was on there, housing affordability, we cost of living. We sort of added into our policies and development how reduced health and educational inequities across the city just to kind of add in that layer. We didn't make any change honestly to preserving a level of affordability accessibility in our housing markets because that's just such a constant refrain. So I'll pause there. Great. All right. Come on and put it in the time capsule. You might need to fold it to fit in there. Okay. Let's go over here. Who wants to go next? Go for it. We did not use complete sentences, but we made some visual cues on the paper. So it says we will lead with these values and it's still the same list but we added the word engagement. And then we said how and in the how we put we will do this by being clear about who we are serving and why. And we will listen and incorporate the ideas we hear from each other. Beautiful. All right. Fold it up and put it in. Okay, over here. A major revision of an Alexandria on a firmer financial footing than today through a more diverse revenue base and broader more equitable economy. And then highlighted the items that we discussed otherwise. Great. All right. Her folded up and put end of the day. And I think we'll get into this in the prioritization. I think sometimes we have too many priorities. And we have like way too much that we were trying to hold. And we can't do it all, especially when we heard in our state of the city. there's going to be some tight-tip choices. I would hope that we could come back and ask ourselves the question, okay, does this achieve our goal of making us more accessible? If not, it might need to go to the substation. Does this, does this achieve, does this help us get on more equitable footing, or is this going to put our financial footing at risk? If so, it might need to go off. So I will try not to open it all the time, but I just might give some reminders. I think it's a great idea to open it. Maybe every once in a while to check in. Oh yeah, there you go. To check in on how you are doing toward those goals you set for yourself. Okay, so we are running behind in times. So we're actually, oh, can we get there? Oh, technical issues. Okay. We were going to do an activity where we introduce to you some Alexandria community member personas in design thinking. We have a philosophy called human centered design, which means we're always putting the humans at the center of everything that we do of our problem solving process. And the best way to do that is to go out and talk to the humans you're designing for. And then one way we represent the humans we're designing for is by creating personas. So we created some Alexandria community member personas that we're going to use to inspire you as you start the priority refinement activity. And I will briefly show them to you, but we're not going to have time for you all to make your own personas. So what I want to say is, we're about to show you three personas that represent some different types of people that live in Alexandria. It's not going to be representative of every type of person that lives in Alexandria, but it's just a method of kind of immersing yourselves in the lives of the community members that you're serving. How's it going? I don't have a very good singing voice, I'm sorry. Okay, maybe we'll come back, we'll come back to the personas. Okay, we're going to move on to our priority refinement activity that's going to go bring us all the way into tomorrow actually. So this is just the beginning of priority refinement. We're going to do our priority gallery walk. So what we're going to do is you'll notice that there are posters over here with the current city council priorities on them. There's five posters, five priorities. We're going to get into small groups again. Groups of two, two and three. You can keep the same groups. And let's just do that to keep it, make it easy. Keep your same groups. You're going to start at one of the posters. You're going to get eight minutes at the poster and you'll have a facilitated discussion with one of us. You'll hear the gong and then you're going to move to the next poster. You need to bring your stickies, a permanent marker, and the dot stickers. Makes sense for now? Oh no. We have extra. Okay, and let me just explain. You're gonna be thinking about in brainstorming what's working and not working about the current priority. You're gonna be leaving sticky notes on the poster. Then you're gonna rotate to the next poster. Well, one group may have already been at that poster, So there's already going to be a bunch of stickies on it. Instead of creating a sticky that says the exact same thing or something similar to what someone said, you're going to use your dot stickers green means I agree with this. Yes, plus one. Yellow means I don't know if I agree with this, we need to have further discussion. Okay. All right. Let's do. All right, on he do want to go to the second one and then Danielle, you want to go to the third one. All right, so let's get up in our groups, find a poster with a facilitator and we're going to start. you you you you you you you you I'm hearing some really great conversation, but not seeing a lot of sticky group one over here. I don't know. She's getting already on her bed. I just knew I was going to do it. one over here. Okay. Okay. Yeah, they're doing it. You what? Hi, this is for you in case you hear any good. Oh, oh sure. Okay, yeah, they're doing amazing. You guys are actually. four minute warning make sure you get to the bottom section called the refinement section. I'm going to go to the next page. I'm going to go to the next page. I'm going to go to the next page. I'm going to go to the next page. I'm going to go to the next page. I'm going to go to the next page. I'm going to go to the next page. I'm going to go to the next page. I'm going to go to the next page. I'm going to go to the next page. I'm going to get the Thank you. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. 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Keep them up. Oh, he's armed. He's ready. Okay. So that was great. You all, you had a chance to review the current priorities to come up with some refinement ideas to give feedback to your colleagues refinement ideas. We're just going to open it up now. We have about 15 minutes to any just thoughts and reflections, anything that came up for you while you were working on the current city council priorities. Yep. Yep. So something that came up in our group was that there are a number of things that we are already doing in each of these buckets. The challenge is though, who are we missing or who are we not doing them for, and that it feels like we are holding way too much. So you may have noticed a lot of stickies where we were like take it off, strike it, it wasn't because it's that important. I think we were feeling like we're just doing too much and are we doing it well? I'll add to that. One thing we looked at and talked about is like, where can we share services with someone else who's doing it better. So we looked at translation, for example, we thought, maybe we're not doing that well, but I was like, well, ACPS does it on more regular basis? Why can we find an opportunity where we can share that service with ACPS and unload that from us, have them do it, and we can do this applies for some other areas. Yes, I mean, to that point and the way that that point, I think surfaced with the three of us was the neighborhood concept, like getting back down to, we can set broad city goals, but then the problem is when we achieve them, we might have entirely left out communities. Like, you know, we have lifted up the communities that maybe were easiest to lift up because they were showing up to programs and receiving services because they're already tapped in. And so if we recognize, and again, just in the spirit of brainstorming, you know, if we recognize that if we make some more neighborhood-specific goals, they may in a way lower our overall sort of goal or outcome, but they will have addressed an equity. I mean, if neighborhood A is behind by 50 points, and neighborhood B is behind by 10 points in whatever metric, we could raise the city's outcome by 10 points and all the benefit went to that neighborhood. So how do we maybe think about more neighborhood specific approaches? And we all benefit, but we're measuring it a little differently and we're targeting it a little differently just in the spirit of like, you know brainstorming and thinking about the broadness of our goals. I think as I was walking around and we often went to the sheet where there was nothing up there. So we were able to fill it up very well because we do so much well in Alexandria. It's just how can we do those things better and how can we bring in more revenue in order to do that? That's what kept coming to my mind. We do so many wonderful things and we're always figuring out ways to do things better, but how can we do that with additional revenue? Just kind of to add on and I think you see this from a number of the posters is that I think the thing that pops out for many of us because of feedback because of how we think about kind of the way forward is what needs to be fixed, not just a lot more than what's working. I think there's a lot of things working that we kind of gloss over on these because it's easier for us to hone in on what we need to focus on. And I, you know, if I was to show this to the public or show this to our broader staff, I would wanna make sure I kind of give that disclaimer. We're doing a number of great programs. We're doing a number of great initiatives. We have some great staff, but because the intention of this conversation is to look forward and what we need to fix, you're not going to kind of see that equitably laid out here. You're going to see our honing in on what we need to focus in on and what we think we need to work on. So just to kind of keep that in mind. But I think that's a really good point for communicating this. If we get to a point where we are disciplined and like this is our North Star, this is what we're gonna do. I think we have to be able to show the data of here's how we were able to make that decision. We've had winds in X, Y and Z area, so we can pivot to focus on some of these other things. Or we are doing well in that we can keep sustaining those, but this is where the deeper in Bethlehem has to go. Okay, anyone else have any just general thoughts? Because I'm going to zoom in on a couple of the yellow dots. OK, so just as a sneak peek for tomorrow, again, we're going to split into small groups. And you each are going to get a chance to write out the new refined priority using all the feedback that are on these posters. So we got to make sure we talk through these yellow dots for when you're filling it out tomorrow. So for eliminate community disparities, we had a sticky in the refinement section that says neighborhood goals versus city goals. And I think that's what we were just talking about. There is a yellow dot on it. So is there anything anyone wants to bring up related to that? I'm going. but yeah, start it. So free. I don't know about that mom. Oh, okay. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. But it's similar. It's similar. It's similar. It's similar. It's similar. It's similar. Or... Oh, okay. So for the, yeah, that top one. Yeah, you might read it now. We haven't executed on neighborhood level solutions. So that's related. Yeah. So I slightly disagree, but I also agree in a certain sense, right? I disagree in that we have a very good example from the smaller area plan we did for 2D level, which was done entirely in Spanish, where we did a very excellent job at a neighborhood level. Now, so that's where I disagree, but where I agree is that the consistency with which we do some of this engagement, I think that's where we're lacking at times. And sometimes that could be capacity. Sometimes that's funding, they give you a variety of things. I think back to the root one, sure, rats, like that's another example of very good neighborhood hyper focused, but we had additional funding right for that. We had additional staff, we had additional capacity. So I think it's nuanced to me. So that's why I put the yellow dot there. And so I think when I wrote that, I was focusing on the disparities in terms of the data, in terms of the impact changes. Not necessarily the communication. I would agree with you in terms of seeing that improvement, seeing that we're kind of lowering the barrier for people to get information and understand it. But when it comes to kind of those maps that we saw, those maps haven't changed in years. And so it's looking at specific areas and specific neighborhoods about have we seen that change in a kind of David data driven way? If I could. So I really like this line of dialogue because I think it's getting at the heart of like the tension between where we do well and then where we have trouble recreating it or doing it repeatedly. And like when housing director McElvain was up here talking about the housing targets we met and others we have, I'm sure those were built out of, like we didn't just pick a number. I'm sure those were built out of these neighborhoods, need a certain amount. And so the overall number is X. And so we are in a way to your, you know, I mean to your point, we are being neighborhood specific and yet to Dr. Rose's point somehow we're still seeing these persistent inequities. So to the extent we continue to refine priorities, you know, how can we design priorities that are not so high that they result in the inequities that get reflected and whether that means being more specific with certain targets, you know, whether it's housing targets, whether it's rec center targets, whatever, but that's the tension that I just felt over and over again, you know what I mean in a way. And we talk about economic development. I think even Stephanie didn't intend to do this, but she sort of pointed out one organization only tracks old down from an economic. So how do we even know how we're doing on the West End Court or an economic development if we're not tracking it? So there are these little micro examples of this tension between overall city successes to point to, but neighborhood inequities that persist. Okay, we have one more yellow sticker on one of the refinement ideas all the way down here. I'm over here now. And it's on the community connection priority. Someone put an idea for refinement. We We need to hyper-focus on most marginalized and there's a yellow sticker on it. Anyone want to talk about what we need to discuss. Yeah, so I put that one there because I want to understand, as we say, we're going to hyper-focus on that, kind of with the trade-offs or in doing that. What the outcomes that we need to see with that hyper-focus, what is that mean? Are we now going door to door in a certain area? What does that like? Because I think we have a lot of tools for communication, but when we say we're now gonna hyper-focus that in a certain area, what does that mean? And what does that mean for resources? So that was one that we did. And I don't know that we mapped out, thanks, thanks. That was one that I did. I don't know that we've mapped out what it would look like. I think that where it was coming from was exactly what you said. We have so many tools to communicate. We do a ton of communication. And when we get a presentation, it'll say we did xpopups, x emails, this, this, this, this. But we don't always have that. But like, who did we miss as part of that? And was there a different strategy? Could we have done less of those engagement activities? Because in this case, like, what we're about to do affects apartment, affects renters who live in this area, this, like, should we have done door to door then? Like, maybe it was a better use of time because they're going to be most impacted than to do the e-news and everything else. I don't know what the... this should be have done door to door then. Like maybe it was a better use of time because they're gonna be most impacted than to do the e-news and everything else. I don't know what the trade office, I think they would absolutely be one. I think we were trying to get at, there's so much happening, always so many things going on. Are we doing the right engagement for the group that is most impacted. I think as we think about how to reach the most marginalized hyper focus, just the fact that we were able to deliver the message that that message was received. I think about bandwidth. When I have 10 emails, I'm going to scan through them, right? And the more I have on my plate, I work to, in like our marginalized communities, right, there were two jobs, have childcare, they're challenging all these things. They may get the message, but what's going to make them really pay attention to the message and engage with us. So I think that's part that we really need to think about as we hyper focus on marginalized communities. We have a whole activity tomorrow around messaging, so let's remember that for sure. Okay, go ahead. It's funny because I sort of paused at that post it as well because it's one of those areas where there may be a more intentional time and cost. But it like my example when you were talking just then was like rather than doing a whole bunch of other things if we just gave up eight hours of staff time to sit in the lobby of the Graham. Do you know what I mean all day? And just acknowledge that like there's a time value of that staff person's time, but they are more likely to have, you know, 40 human interactions, documentable, you know, human interactions than maybe an E news and social media and you know, a QR code posted outside the building. And I applaud staff who over my first term, I saw trying so many different things and adding in so many things. But I think that's a little bit maybe of what both of you are getting at is like consider the audience and consider rather than doing five or six different things, which clearly we've asked you guys to do. But maybe recognize but maybe recognize we need to recognize that when staff says to us, we didn't do every option on the menu because we thought that a full day onsite with two staff members, including a Spanish-speaking person, you know what I mean, was the most effective way to get real feedback. And we just have to be receptive to that if we agree. Also, I would add, like sometimes even if you do that, they may not engage because it's just again, it's the issue number 100 on my list that I don't even have the time to think about or educate myself about, you know, even if it's something we really need their feedback on, but it just, it doesn't, it doesn't register at that point, so I'm not going to engage. But maybe on another issue, that's really front and center, they will engage. So also thinking about that way. But I think this is also one that when we take the time to slow down and pause, I think it allows us to pivot in ways that can be better and more impactful. So I'm thinking of Alex West where there was an engagement plan, there was a system for we're going to do this, this is not, got in and to Abdel's point, a number of people who came were ready to talk about their rent, ready to talk about worries around eviction, all of these things that are not necessarily a part of a master plan. And so we had to pivot and do several other engagements first in order so that they could be able to have those immediate basic needs to address and then talk about longer-term visiting. But I think if we have too many different goals and 18 different ways of engaging, then we can't we can't ever stop to do that and say like, well, have we actually reached you? Are we actually having that conversation? Any final thoughts? The first three hours of tomorrow is refining them even further, so you'll have even more time to think about it and come back and refine further. Yeah. OK. We have about five minutes left. We're going to do a very quick wrap up activity. And I'm going to hand the mic over. So first of all, we just want to thank you all for your time and your participation. We hope that this was a valuable experience for you and it'll continue into tomorrow. So to close out today we were thinking many exercise would be to go around the table and just share one word that captures or reflects how you fill out the workshop, what you learned. Just one word, try to get you guys out of time. Exactly. We can either go around the room or start anywhere. He gave it a chance. Yeah. Let it go. Way to go. I would just say this is, you know, this is a beginning where we got a whole another day. Yeah. Collaborative. There you go. Oh. Oh. I think that's what you needed to me. I think I need to of a new one now. Same word. I'm not saying. We would be completely collaborated on that. There you go. I'd say I actually enjoyed it. It was fun. Very good. Yes. Talk to you up to here. I'm sorry. Kirk is still thinking. You know where. Just sent it back to you. Well, well. Um, right. Over your opening words. Oh, that's a good one. Focus. Yes, I was very focused. I'll say with that, that's good. There you go. Yes, that's good. All right. Okay, well that's a wrap on day one. And we'll see you all back here. Thank you.