Okay, good evening everyone. We are going to go ahead and call to order our Tuesday April 8th legislative meeting. Madam Clerk, please call the roll. Mayor Gaskins. Vice Mayor Bagley. Here. Councilman Gary. Councilman Chapman. Councilman Elnubi. Okay. Councilwoman Green. Councilman McPike. Here. Okay, Madam Clerk, next item. Approval of electronic Participation Resolution by City Council. Okay, we have one member of the council, Vice Mayor Bagley, who is participating remotely. There has been a motion by Councilman Chapman and a second by Councilman Aguirre. Is there any discussion? Okay, hearing none. This is a resolution. So, Madam Clerk, please call the roll. Councilman Chapman. Councilman Aguirre. Mayor Gaskins. Hi. Vice Mayor Baggley. Hi. Councilman Al Nuby. Hi. Councilman McPike. Hi. Okay. Madam Clerk, next item. Moment of silence and pledge of allegiance. We ask that all who are able please stand for a moment of silence and then join us in the pledge. and the individual, the individual, the individual, the individual, the individual, the individual, Okay. Madam clerk next item. Public hearing second reading consideration of an ordinance on the proposed real and personal property tax rates and proposed effective tax rate increase for calendar year 2025 fiscal year 2026. Okay, so we are now going to dive right into our tax rate public hearing as well as our add delete actually now and later this is just a tax rate. Okay, I'm just our tax rate public hearing. The clerk will call the names of the speakers. Everyone will have three minutes. You can use either the left side or the right side for your testimony. So with that, Madam Clerk, so there are no speakers for number four. So then I will entertain a motion to close the public hearing for the tax rate. OK, there has been a motion by Councilman Chapman and a second by Councilman McPike. Sorry. By Councilman Elnouvi to close the public hearing. Any discussion? All right, hearing none. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those in any opposed, say nay. Aye. The eyes have it. So there's a little bit of a delay with you. All right, Madam Clerk, next item. Public hearing on the FY 2026 City Council preliminary ad delete proposals and the city managers proposed amendments to the FY 2026 proposed budget. budget budget adoption is scheduled for Wednesday, April 30th, 2025. Okay, this is the one where we have a number of speakers signed up. So we are going to dive right into our ad delete public hearing. The clerk will call the first three speakers. Again, you can use either side and you will have three minutes. And there's a little kind of timer right in front of you. So with that, Madam Clerk, do you wanna go ahead and call our first three speakers? Katie Brownback, Michael Rodriguez and Tracy Doll. So I just, okay, good evening. My name is Katie Brownback and I am here to make public comment in support of the $1 million ad for ACPS. I am the parent of three children in the west end. I have a middle schooler at Hammond. I have a second grader at Polk and I have a preschooler who will go to kindergarten next year. I am also honored to serve as the current president of the Alexandria City Council PTA or PTA, which represents over 1,800 parents in our ACPS schools. I want to start by thanking each of you that were on the previous council for the increase that went into the ACPS schools. I want to start by thanking each of you that were on the previous council for the increase that went into the ACPS allocation last year. I also want to thank everyone on the current council for all of the time you spent meeting with P-TAC this year as well as engaging in our schools. I have seen you at PTA meetings. I have seen you at school celebrations and events, including fund runs, essential worker celebration, and at the High School International Night. I acknowledge that this is a difficult year for our city, for federal workers, for our immigrant community, and for countless others. That said, I have heard a few times this budget cycle that we almost figure out how to do more with less. And on one level, I understand that. But there's a limit to how much more school system can do with less when the enrollment is going up by at least 250 students and more than 350 English language learners. There's a limit to how many more kids, a single teacher can have in a classroom and expect academic gains. There's a limit to how many more families a social worker can have on their caseload and still effectively help them. There's a limit to how many more kids we can put in a speech therapist work group and expect articulation issues to be corrected. And that one might not seem like a big deal, but if you can't articulate a sound properly, you're gonna have trouble learning to read. I applaud Dr. Kay Wyatt for asking for what she actually needed this year, instead of just sticking to the city manager's guidance of 2% over last year. Public schools have been underfunded for far too long. We need to give both our hardworking teachers a step increase and add some much needed positions to help support our students better. I encourage you to listen to the January 30th School Board public comment session where students from attendance and workers youth chapter Alexandria United Teens provided testimony asking for more counselors at the high school. One of our young people said, additionally, I believe counselors should hold regular check-ins with students. And this would make them more approachable and give students a trusted source of support hard to do when there aren't enough for the number of students we have. I also recommend that you watch the September 19th, 2024 school board public comment session where social worker Katie Golden shared the challenges of being a single social worker of Patrick Henry were there over a thousand students. We saw the benefits of city council increasing the school budget request last year. Teacher vacancy rates hovered around 1 to 3% this year unheard of a few years ago. Test scores went up, dropout rates went down. There is true positive change happening in our schools. We need to continue this trajectory because I firmly believe that strong schools make strong communities. And on that note, I say thank you and I have high hopes I won't be back next year and we'll just fully fund ACPS from the start. Thanks guys. Thank you Ms. Brownback. I do have a quick question for you. Sure. Thank you. Thank you for your advocacy and your time and all of the work that you and your colleagues on PTAC have put into educating us about the budget. I know the current ad that is proposed is for one time funding, which is often challenging or not used for reoccurring positions or salary increases. This PTAC have an official position or recommendation on if these can't be used for salaries or positions, what you would advocate the money be used for. I do not, but I would say that as a school system, what I have learned is that we only depend on next year's funds in any given year. I have high hopes that at the state level, there will be changes in November that will lead to more school funding and that we will be able to keep positions if we add them this year. And I can't advocate for that until we have a pot of money to advocate for is what I would also say. So like once you approve the add the like the add then we can go to the school and continue advocating. Okay thank you. With that we'll have Mr. Rodriguez and if Tracy doll is here you can can go ahead and come up to this one. Good evening. My name is Mike Rodriguez. Thanks for letting me come speak this evening. I'm here for myself, not for the Civic Association that you might associate me with. I have three students at an ACPS school over at Polk Elementary. I am here to speak in favor of the ad for 1 million to ACPS's budget to help cut some of the shortfall that we have in budget for support staff. I'm mostly here just to echo everything Katie just said. She's gonna, she said a lot better than I can but there are many of us in the neighborhood that do feel that this ad is worthwhile and would appreciate your consideration for it and we appreciate you we appreciate your thoughtfulness about it this year and also rising to the school's districts needs last year as well that's all I got thanks. Thank you for your time. Okay, next Tuesday, can you call the next year's item clerk? Tracey Dahl and Mark. Thank you for your time. Okay, next Tuesday, can you call the next year's Madam Clerk? Tracy doll and Marta scants. We have Tracy online. Okay, and we're going to go right to Marta. All right, hello everyone. My name is Marta Shantz. I am a climate activist here in Alexandria. I also have a son who does speech therapy with ACPS and starts at Brooks in the fall. Today, I'm speaking specifically against the Ad Delete Budget Amendment proposed by Council Member Chapman and co-signed by Council Members Green and El Nubi to reduce the off of climate actions FY26 operating budget by $300,000 or 50%. honestly incredibly and disappointed to to be here speaking today. In a world where efforts to address the climate crisis are getting cut by the federal administration or slowed by the governor's office here in Virginia, the last thing I expected was for the city of Alexandria to propose something of that nature. This feels like some dystopian alternative reality, and I just cannot accept the fact that it would happen here, a city that declared a climate emergency and has goals to reduce emissions 50% by 2030 and approach carbon neutral by 2050. Now the Office of Climate Action has only existed for three years. The first year of the Climate Action Officer wasn't even hired until halfway through the year. The second year, they worked to staff up all of their FTEs. And now in their third year, they're really able to get the ball rolling, but they've paused a few programs to de-risk the city from potentially not getting federal grants that they planned to supplement with existing program funds. So because of that risk of not getting the funding they paused to those programs. So each year the office did underspend its budget, but for different reasons. I don't see this as a pattern of understanding. This is just what happens when you're starting a new program. Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither was the Office of Climate Action. Do I wish they would have spent all of their budget the past few fiscal years? Of course I do. Does that mean the unspent amount should be reduced from future budgets? No. It means I want them to have proper support and staffing to make use of these funds and to optimize their impact. It means I want them to follow their remit and focus on programs that scale impact and prioritize. And. to have proper support and staffing to make use of these funds and to optimize their impact. It means I want them to follow their remit and focus on programs that scale impact and prioritize environmental justice. Now the Office of Climate Action has put in a lot of work to lay the foundation for strong community relations with both residents and with the private sector. And so they've set this office up for success in FY 26. And let me tell you, their plans for FY 26 are pretty incredible. Just a few include working with contractors upstream to scale education outreach incentives to the HVAC contractor market, starting a new multi-family energy efficiency program aligned with the Healthy Homes program, granting funds for energy masters to retrofit more affordable housing units. And this isn't even half of them. I don't want to see this work defunded. Now, I know I won't be the last person today to raise my voice against defunding climate action in our city. And I won't be the only parent to do so either. My son starts at Brooks and the Falls. I mentioned and while I very much support our schools, taking away funding from the city's climate action efforts to do so, is just simply a non-starter. We shouldn't have to pit schools and climb it against each other, and if council is really committed to increasing ACPS funding, I would hope that you all can find a source of recurring funds elsewhere to support this request. So please think about our city's values as you work on these budget ad deletes to make a moral document we can be proud of that funds climate action. Thank you. Thank you. There's a question from Councilman Chapman. Yeah, in your comments and you said funds not, you don't want funds to be reduced in future years. Are you aware that this is a one time one year cut not future focus? Yes, I am aware that this is a one time amendment. However, oftentimes once a budget goes down, it's even harder to raise it back up in future years. So there is uncertainty in that sense. Okay, thank you, Michelle. Do you wanna call the next, I think I see some here. So we'll get the next two speakers and then we can fill both of the, at the hookstrap, David Paladin Fernandez, and Nicole Ratcha. So good evening Madam Mayor, Madam Vice Mayor and Rest of Council Members. My name is Kathy Hokstra. I support what Marta said. And I'm opposed to reducing the Office of Climate Actions budget in 26 per Council member, Chapman's proposed ad delete on cutting half of their budget. So my question is, can you think of any other organization within the city where a council and the city manager let them understand their budget by 85% for two years? I can't. So what are we, the members of this community to think about the seriousness of council and its manager when it comes to declaring a claim or emergency in 2019, but then letting this happen? So a little background, the Office of Clive and Action was created two and a half years ago on September 28th, 22. The former Mayor Wilson made three main points at that meeting when it was created. One, he thanked the Environmental Policy Commission for our thoughtful process and specific suggestions we made regarding how to spend OCA's budget. The City Manager thanked me personally as well. He cautioned however that we must focus on the investments that move the needle and not be distracted by things that don't move the needle. Third, because council was not approving specific projects with specific budget numbers, the onus was on council to regularly update the community and the EPC and how the money was spent. Clearly that didn't happen, at least I don't remember it happening. I think we all share some blame in that. For my part when I was chair of the EPC, I met with many of the council members about a variety of topics. I raised this issue with you, but I didn't have an ask. So when I said, hey, do you know how much money they had spent or not spent, as the case may be, I didn't say, and if they didn't spend the full amount, I expect you to do something about that. So I take the blame for that. On the other hand, with no metrics, no project specifics, no timeline, no budget, from my perspective, and as chair of the EPC, we were routinely getting a list of ever changing potential project that seems to always becoming soon. But instead of focusing what didn't happen, let me turn to potential solutions. I offer the following. All the interested stakeholders should meet to agree on two to three projects, not a laundry list, that move the needle and develop metrics budget and timeline for each and then meet monthly to determine the progress. I continue to feel that it is a folly to use money to support kids' education while at the same time you are condemning them to face a planet that is less safe and more inhospitable. Thank you for your time Miss Okra. Thanks. Okay, we'll now turn to our next speaker, Mr. Hallett and Fernandez. Good day. I'm David Paladin Fernandez and I'm here to advocate in favor of the proposed ads to ACPS's budget. First, on a very high level, I always want to see more money go to our schools and students. The additional money will help ACPS whether the storm for this upcoming year and will go a long way, especially in a budget year as difficult as this one. Speaking of difficult budget years, the second reason I support these ads is because it shows the city's willingness to invest in our schools despite how tight the money is. As we all know, budgets are statements of priorities, and this investment shows that our kids are a priority for our city. Thirdly, the money afforded to ACPS can go to so many different things to help support students. For example, ACPS has an ever-developing middle school sports program that needs equipment, where there is the potential to use this money for recruitment to help attract the best talent to Alexandria. This additional money will give ACPS some extra flexibility in ensuring we meet both students in and out of classroom needs. Finally, and I will be clear that I'm speaking as an individual here, given the trajectory of our larger government and the impact of things like COVID and being being chronically online, it is clear that the long-term solution is investing in education for our young people. Little actions add up to big effects and this extra investment in ACPS is one of those little actions whose impact reverberates for years to come. Good day and I thank you for your time and service to our city. Thank you. Madam Clerk, next to speakers. Nicole Ratchell and Becky Hamer. Nicole online. Yes, hi. Here I am online. Good afternoon, Mayor Gaskins and council members. Thank you for all that you do. I'm grateful that you have to make all these hard decisions and not me. So I'm here for a couple of reasons. I'm here to support the ad for ACPS schools. Last year, you voted to increase the budget. And before that, I worked for ACPS. It took me a long time to get answers from HR. And yesterday I emailed them a question and got a quick response. It was a world of difference. So like David said, little improvements do add up. And through my job, I see the needs across the schools adding to the ACPS budget will hopefully ease school overcrowding in the west end and from the page, it's very among teachers. But we're actually not but and and right I'm not using thoughts anymore. I'm also here it's complicated right to speak against the delete for the Office of Climate Action. I'm I also climate and environment is important to me in my family budget in my family's budget there are nice to have items like vacations and I don't think protecting our environment should be treated as a nice to have. Like vacations are first like the United and took out. It should be treated as a priority. Once you take some money out of a budget, it's incredibly hard to get back in. And this, right, one time 50% reduction will have an impact. We are one car family, and so we try to make our individual impact but we need a city to support to make bigger impacts in reducing fossil fuel dependencies. Marcia mentioned some of the programs like working with contractors before they build to incentivize green materials and techniques. You know some of those projects will be defended for fiscal year 26. So I don't know how to I don't know how to do it, like cut a little bit from everything else for the schools, but please don't cut such a big amount from the office of climate action. And again, thank you for the ad for the dash bus, and I appreciate all you do and and good luck. Thank you. And our next speaker, Becky Hamm. Is she also online? Hello, Becky work. Okay. Okay. Good evening. Mayor Gaskin's and members of City Council. My name is Becky Hammer. And I am also speaking tonight. To oppose the proposal to cut the budget for the Office of Climate Action. This to me, this isn't just a line item. It's a signal about our city's priorities. And Alexandria has long been a leader on climate change, starting with the EcoCity Charter, the Declaration of Climate Emergency, and the adoption of the Energy and Climate Change Action Plan. These were not supposed to just be symbolic gestures. They were commitments to real, sustained progress, and now the Office of Climate Action is the engine driving this work forward. The vast majority of Alexandria and support meaningful steps to reduce our carbon emissions and help our city adapt to the changes that are already underway. We're experiencing extreme heat, flooding, intense storms, and we want solutions. We don't want all of our plans to just be words on paper. The Office of Climate Action empowers residents to take part in their solutions and we need it to ensure that our city continues to make progress. Well, it's true that like others have said, the office didn't spend its full budget last year, it's a new and growing program and it's scaling up. Cutting its funding now, even if it's just for this year, would undermine its ability to meet our city's long-term goals. Those funds should not be diverted, they are needed this year and every year moving forward to support the momentum we've built. This proposal comes at a moment when the federal government is actively dismantling environmental regulations, slashing funding for climate programs, firing scientists, and eliminating resources to help communities become more healthy and resilient. Local leadership matters now more than ever. I know there are many competing demands for funds. I am an ACPS parent too, but this is the worst possible time to cut our local climate budget. If we backtrack from our commitments now, we risk losing ground and wasting time that we don't have. I honestly can't understand why any of our local officials would propose funding cuts that would be right at home in the Trump administration or the pages of Project 2025. I urge council not only to reject this delete request, but to commit to fully funding the Office of Climate Action this year and in the years ahead. This office is essential to our city's future, our safety, and our responsibility to the next generation. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Clerk, next to speakers. Arla Scannis, Tiffany Dixon and James Durham. I see Deputy Knaas, Ms. Dixon, if you're here, if you could go ahead and come to the other podium. Hi, Mayor Gaskin's Vice Mayor Bagley, distinguished members of City Council and City He's a very Manager Farajan. It's a pleasure to be here today. Although most of you present here today already know me, I would like to officially introduce myself for those who do not. My name is Carlos Canas and I am the president of the Alexander Sheriff's Association. I'm truly an honor to be present here before you today. I thank you for allowing me the opportunity to speak here tonight and for giving me the time to discuss my membership's concerns. In recent years, my membership has always had a significant amount of trust in our city council and its ability to always dedicate the utmost effort and thought when addressing our concerns. In the last year's budget proposal, city council presented an add-on, which allowedotted money towards a retention bonus, which specifically included the Ag's and your share of thoughts. My membership truly appreciates the City Council's efforts on this matter. I speak for the entirety of my membership when I say that receiving this retention bonus makes us feel not only appreciated but also valued as one of your three public safety agencies in the City of Ag's and your. Furthermore, it is my understanding that Vice Mayor Bagley has proposed an add-on to this year's budget proposal, which addresses our concerns with our retirement at the Alexander Sheriff's Office. The approval of this add-on would align our VR's retirement plan with the city's supplemental retirement plan. My membership believes that the approval of this add-on will significantly help address our retention and recruitment issues at the Addison and Sheriff's Office. Additionally, I would like to note that my membership is ecstatic to see that the City Council takes our concerns seriously and is attempting to find solutions to an issue we have been aggressively advocating for for many years. My membership in Nice, strongly urge you to please approve this add-on as it would would help us immensely with recruiting and retaining deputies at the Sheriff's Office. Lastly, I again would like to thank the City Council for your attention and efforts at addressing my membership concerns. We continue to have the utmost faith that you will continue to lead our wonderful city in the right direction. The Alexander Sheriff's Office and the Association and its memberships stand firmly behind City Council. Thank you for your time and I look forward to speaking to you in person soon. Thank you. Thank you. Is miss Dixon online? Okay, and we'll do start with miss Dixon. I'm on my. Yes, okay. Here you go. Okay. Yeah. Good evening, Council members. I'm sorry I cannot be with you in person tonight. I am currently attending a redistricting meeting for Alexandria city public schools. Because like many families in our city, the decisions being made in multiple rooms tonight. We'll shape the future my child walks into. But I couldn't let this hearing pass without lending my voice to the cause because it matters deeply to me and so many families like mine. I am what I call a solo black mother to a brilliant black boy. I'm a New York transplant now crowds call Alexandria home. My son is in the fourth grade at Laos Crouch traditional academy and I serve as a board member on the PTA and as I already mentioned, a reddish-themed representative for our school community. Let me paint your picture. Every day I wake up determined to give my son a childhood filled with safety, stability, and inspiration. But I don't have a village. I am the village. And I'm not alone in that. So many parents in the city, especially single parents and black mothers like myself are doing everything in our power to fill the gaps emotionally, financially, and academically. But here's a truth. 4 can't fill the gaps that we, that were never hours to fill. We are asking you tonight to vote for the proposed $1 million ad to the financial year 26 ACPS budget because our schools need the support. Not next year, but right now. We have 357 new English learner students projected to enroll. We have students without enough counselors to meet their mental health needs. We have a CHS class rooms that are first in at the seams. We have families, especially those without generational resources, counting on public schools to be the great equalizer. This ad will help fund the essential positions to have to pay why it requested, like teachers, social workers, and psychologists. These roles are not luxuries, they are survival. The study shows that what we already knew in our hearts, Virginia is drastically underfunding public education, and until that changes at the state level, the responsibilities fall here. And this chamber to do what is just, not what is just possible. I urge you not to pick one priority over another or against another, climate resilience matters, but our children matter to and I believe Alexandria can and must do both. Thank you so much. Thank you, Ms. Dixon. We'll now have next speaker, James Derm. Thank you, Mayor Dascade, and vice mayor Bagley, and other members of Council. My name is Jim Durham. I live in Fort Wayne, Sparkway, and Seminary Hill. Speaking as a member of grassroots Alexandria in support of the proposed and in the lead sponsored by Vice Mayor Bagley, that will provide greater access to Alexandria Dash bus system, particularly for minorities and people living with low income. So we ask that when it comes time, you vote yes for the proposed funding for Dash flight 32, and if it's possible, actually increase that amount. Please also vote no on a proposed transfer of transit funding to non-transfantastic purposes, And I'll explain both these a little bit. But first, I'd like to thank the manager for proposing a budget that recognizes the important of transit as a climate-friendly mobility option and as an investment in Alexandria's economic health. Recent studies showed positive return on investment for every dollar invested in Northern Virginia transit. I asked you to vote yes to fund line 32 for two primary reasons First the funny would enable to ash to be more useful to more people With 30-minute frequency instead of 60-minute frequency of peak A predominant and the people who would benefit would be predominantly a minority population and a higher than average percentage of people living with low incomes. Nearly two thirds, nearly two thirds of the residents in the proposed service area are minorities. Two years, I don't have a perfect example in Alexandria, but two years ago, the council, approved added funding and then the hadn't leaped from 30-minute frequency for another line on Sundays. And a year later, the ridership had doubled because they took the frequency you all, your predecessors took the frequency from 60 minutes to 30 minutes. As far as not reallocating transit funding away from transit, first of all, we have a much higher need for an annual higher rate of dash service increases to build a true high frequency network as envisioned in the Alexandria Transit Vision 2030 plan. Well, let's talk about the 2022 plan. At the current rate, if you were to put $240,000 a year into additional service increases, it would take eight more years. So, 2034, before we reached the 2022 plan of service. So I'm just saying, I very much appreciate the delete and I support it. But long term there's an operational need. There's also a capital need. We're underfunded. We don't have enough buses in the CIP. So not online with a backlog of demand for both operating and capital investment. I don't believe there's any excess funding in the transit funding that the managers said aside. So please vote yes and higher frequency for for line 32, and no to be allocating transit funding. Thank you so much again for all that you do. Thanks. Thank you. Madam Clerk, next to speakers. For being CAF Paul, Jonathan Crawl and ingress Moran. Mayor Gassons by Smeribagli, members of council. Council adopted a policy that cut greenhouse gas emissions by 50%, and it's truly disappointing to see members spend more effort cutting climate funding by 50% than they've spent on cutting emissions. It's truly dystopian while the Trump administration is dismantling progress on climate to see some of you who at least notionally support climate action proposed to doge the city's climate budget. The fossil fuel industry must love to see it. I understand there's some questions around the Office of Climate Actions cautious approach suspending its budget, but now that we have a clearer approach on the federal funding landscape, I assure you our policy goals won't be achieved with fewer city resources. Your role as council is to hold the staff functions of the city accountable to take actions that fulfill the policy goals. The policy goals are clear. 50% green house gas emissions reductions by 2030. The council used to do. When I was chair of the Environmental Policy Commission, there was a body called the Eco City Steering Committee where two council members at the time, councilwoman Pepper, and vice mayor Bennett Parker would sit down with the EPC chair and vice chair and the leaders of the relevant departments and make sure that the policy that the council set was being met with action on the staff level. That's what needs to be reinstated, not a reduction in climate funding. I oppose the $300,000 delete to the OCA budget. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Thank you. Mayor of vice mayor city council. I'm Jonathan crawl. I'm with grassroots Alexandria. And I'm here to first to support the best dash bus. Very simply. It's safer. It's healthier. If we were going to address the climate emergency here in the USA, it is the cities that will do it. We don't expect anything from Washington right now. And Alexandria is a city. We have a role to play. Second one, please do not reduce funding for the Office of Climate Action. People in Fox News world tell us that climate action is some sort of weird far-left enterprise. In fact, polls show that majority of Americans want strong climate action. Please use, if you find other ways to use the climate action funding for climate action, do it, please don't divert it to other things. The third thing I wanted to comment on is, please don't put money into ACPS. As an organizer, I find ACPS to be lacking in transparency and frustrating. And if you can use leverage to get them to be clear about what their programs are, they have great programs, but it's not clear that they're fully implemented and it's not clear how effective they are. They don't report very well on them on specific programs. It's very frustrating. I have a fourth one which has to do with all the things I see it protests about the Democratic Party, but it's a pretty off topic, so I'll leave that to you to help. You all to read in the written remarks. Thank you. Thank you. Madam Clark, next to speakers. In Chris Marmer and How it Why's Jacob Wolf Barnett. I think we have Miss Maran online. Good evening. Mayor Vice Mayor and City Council members. My name is Ingrid Smodan, resident but also staff of tenants and workers united. For many years our communities have been vocal and clear on their needs to fund deeply committed affordable housing. In order to preserve our working class families of color, many of whom earn 40% of the AMI. Unfortunately, most of the city's investment in the past decades have been dedicated to prioritizing units at 60 to 80% of the AMI, which is focused on workforce housing, leaving families behind with no opportunities for deeply committed affordable housing. We recognize that in the 2026 proposed budget, there is 30 million going to many different housing programs and development projects. This is still not enough. Families continue being rent burden and many of these programs are not accessible and or many do not meet the required criteria, which is why we've looked up to you as our city leaders to proactively provide anti displacement programs in order to stabilize our families in this proposed budget. Well, most of you were running as candidates for city council. Many of your campaign platforms were on housing because you recognize the housing prices we continue to live in. It is surprising that we do not seem much initiative to solve this problem. For example, not continuing to expand and fund our rice program, not funding and creating a local voucher program that will truly relieve our families. We understand every budget will be an obstacle, but housing needs to be one of your top priorities. Housing is a universal issue. From our residents who are elderly, seniors who continue to work because they need to pay their rent on time, to our students who emotionally impacted because they have received an eviction notice even though their parents are working to to to three jobs to try to make ends meet and pay their rent on time. If our families have no roof over their heads, the rest is secondary. Let's fun will will truly bring positive outcomes in real measurable solutions for families in our city. To preserve diversity that makes Alexandria a wonderful place to live, we urge you to support the community needs and that includes to support the ad proposal of the Renssel Pilot Substitute Program. Our community knows that real changes happen when leaders take on bull decisions. We hope you take this track in the next few weeks during this budget process. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Weiss. Yes, thank you. And thank you for the honor of being here. It's been a while since I've seen some of you. It's my baptismal presentation. I'm here on behalf of Power Transit. I don't really know where to begin from my heart. It's really saved my life. I have peripheral neuropathy, and I don't know if you're familiar with that. It's a very common disease. Sochi with diabetes and sometimes not. And it gradually just sneaks up your body and eventually, it's very difficult for you to walk and certainly not run and just move around in a lot of pain. And when I discovered Power Transit, which is, you know, is a program that provides free service door to door in Alexandria and then $4 in Arlington and $6 further out and then DC, six stars with an amazing deal, given the price of Uber and Lyft, which is very, very expensive. And also, yellow cab, which I found is very, very expensive. Paratransit is just so vital. I know to my life, and I've talked to many other of my peers who have had a similar reaction. And I've been trying to recruit more and more people to get involved. And also I see occasionally not every time I get arrived, but I see people in wheelchairs and walkers and crutches and you know they're struggling. And certainly it's true that buses are important for environmental purpose. I'm an active environmentalist, but the problem is is that when you have this disease and similar diseases, you know, a bus is a challenge. I mean, some bus drivers when you get on the bus, you know, they've folded for you, others don't. And you go sliding down the aisle, you know, which is humiliating and sometimes painful. And Metro, the train is, you know, again, a wonderful resource, but, but can be dangerous, you know, if the elevator is broken, you have to take an escalator. If you go down one of those escalators, you may never, you may never come back, you know, you may end up in a assisted living for the rest of your life. So for me, it's open up a whole new life. I can get around. I can socialize. I can go to the birch mirror. I can go to Washington. And it's just changed my life. And psychologically, it's very, very important. So I know that Vice Mayor Bagley has a proposal to set aside a contingency in order to evaluate the program. I just, and I appreciate that. I think that's an excellent idea. And I've talked to her about it, and she's assured me that she encourages's you know encourages the program. I have submitted written materials indicating that I think the people who who run excuse me that run the power transit are fantastic people. Great government employees and you should be so proud of them and I'm proud of you guys for doing it, the program. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. Weiss, for sharing your story. I hold on one second. I think there is a question for you, Councilmember. I just wanted to make sure, did you finish your statement? I could have finished your statement if you have it. Well, thank you. That's very welcome. I'm practicing because I do stand up comedy. only get four minutes so I just, this is good practice. Yeah, I mean, I'm pretty much finished. I think that if we work together, you know, as a team, I also was going to mention that I'm a member of the ACPD, the commission on a person's disabled person. So I've gotten involved with that. And I think if we work together with the staff there, they're so responsive and such good people that we can make this Program even better so thank you. Thank you Madam clerk next few speakers Jacob Wolf-Mart, Barnett, Moria McDonald and Sean Cassie is Mr Wolf-Mart net online Okay, then we're gonna move move to Ms. Megdougal. She's online. Hi. Hello. My name's Mwary McDougal. I'm a resident by Bratok Road Metro and also with Grastersale, Alexandria. And I care a lot about our city and therefore our budget because I think it reflects the things that we we value and choose prioritize. And I am thankful that you're letting us all speak and give our input. And I know these are incredibly tricky decisions for you all. I wanted to first thank those council members supporting the increase in funding to allow Gashline 32 to increase service. And I urge the council as a whole to support it. You know simply put more frequent buses are better for everyone. I'm also here to echo Marda and others very well articulated support for the Office of Climate Action. Given the climate emergency declaration that the city made, the larger political environment, I just don't believe this is the time to do or spend less on climate action or to take away resources from the office that was tasked by Council and by citizens with that mandate. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Next we have Sheriff Sean Casey. Good evening, Mayor, members of council. City manager, thank you for the opportunity to speak today. So today I'm speaking to my capacity as Sheriff, also as a lifelong resident of Alexandria, and a 20 year public safety veteran of the city here. So as you all know, or can imagine being a deputy sheriff is a very rewarding job, but it's also a very challenging job. It's mentally and physically challenging, working in the different environments that my folks or staff and tasks to work in can be a challenge, especially in our local jail. What we're dealing with the most vulnerable of our residents who are going through many different challenges, whether it be substance abuse, mental health, or basically just suffering through probably the worst crisis in their life. And it's paramount that, you know, we do everything we can to support them. And that's why I'm so appreciative of Vice Mayor Bagley for sponsoring the ad to align our our city supplemental retirement with our VRS retirement. And I appreciate Councilman Green, Mayor Gaskin's Councilman McPyre can Councilman El Nuby for co-sponsoring that. It's so vitally important that we align these two retirement plans for a couple of different reasons. But for recruitment and retention, it's extremely important. We have a lot of folks who work in the Sheriff's Office who start the career later in life. Our average higher rate is age is 32 years old with most of those folks, not most, but some pushing 40, 50 years old. And so they're coming into life as a second career or, you know, their first profession and the challenges with the way that retirements are currently aligned, VRS will allow them to retire at age 60 with an unreduced benefit, but unfortunately the city supplemental, they have to wait till 65 to get an unreduced benefit. So ultimately, I think it's important that they're able to retire at age 60 with that unreduced benefit. So that way, they're not working past age 60 in a very demanding and difficult profession. I think ultimately that this is be a great recruiting tool for us to go out and find those folks who are looking for that second career, who are a little older, who want to give back to the community to say, hey, listen, we have a plan for you, right? You come in here, you can work 10, 15 years, get vested, and leave at age 60 with an unreduced retirement defined benefit, which I think is, would be really, really positive from that standpoint. From my attention standpoint, we have a lot of folks who are over age 60 right now who are working, who probably wouldn't be if they wouldn't have to be. And that's okay. There's a handful, but I want to make sure we're rewarding those folks and allowing them to have opportunities outside of working at the Sheriff's Office while they're still able to do that physically and then And that's okay. There's a handful, but I want to make sure we're rewarding those folks and allowing them to have opportunities outside of working at the Sheriff's Office while they're still able to do that physically and mentally as they move forward with their life after law enforcement. So ultimately, I know this is a tough budget. I know there's a lot of decisions going on, but I would love to have the Council's full support with this ad. And I really appreciate the opportunity that you all gave me tonight to speak on behalf for this issue. Thank you. excited to be here. I'm very excited to be here. I'm very excited to be here. I'm very excited to be here. I'm very excited to be here. I'm very excited to be here. I'm very excited to be here. I'm very excited to be here. I'm very excited to be here. I'm very excited to be here. I'm very excited to be here. chance to speak. I'm Marguri Rippie. I'm here in my capacity as the Alexandria City High School Advocacy Chair. And I'm also here in my role to represent voices of parents who cannot be here due to working late, putting kids to bed, helping with homework and all the things that parents do. I speak in support of the two proposed operating transfers in the budget to support Alexandria City Public School services for the physical, social, and emotional well-being of youth and their families. As the parent of an Alexandria City high school student, I recognize that the city has many valuable and competing needs in this tight fiscal year. However, I'm here because I honestly believe that investing in the schools is the most efficient cost-effective way to return on investment that you can make in this community. Our schools are havens for families under extreme social and economic pressure. There are first line of defense against the challenges our community is facing. Schools provide food, shelter, learning, friendship, and yet are under increasing stress due to growth in size and complexity. The vibrant nature of our families and community means that we need teachers who specialize in different learning styles and languages and in creative and engaged learning. The proposed additions would support teachers in core learning areas, English language learning, in particular, on special education. The funds would serve our most vulnerable students while supporting students of all learning styles and languages. Without these funds, some of our young people are likely to struggle and our community will struggle with them. Our teachers are doing amazing things in crowded environments. They creatively solve the most incredible challenges each day. I'd invite you to come see them in action sometime. I've seen firsthand the extremely high quality of education they provide, a point on which we should all be proud. Our teachers need our help and support and our community needs to retain their expertise and energy. They serve every aspect of the city from being the first point of contact to help new families adjust to our community, to engaging our students at the highest levels of learning. Please support our schools with a step toward a more complete funding of our schools and families. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Julia Silla. I am a parent of two children in ACPS, a fourth grader at Mount Vernon Community School, and eighth grader at GW Middle School. I'm also the secretary of the Alexandria Council of PTA or PTAC, the group that aims to connect all Alexandria PTA units without reach, programming, and opportunities to have strong parent teacher associations in all of our schools. I'm also a middle school orchestra booster member, a crew parent, and a former member of Alexandria Call Sister Cities Committee. And I mentioned these things today because I'm here to support the $1 million ad in the budget for EECPS. I want to start by thanking all of you for your constant engagement and commitment throughout the year, not only but especially during the budget season. I particularly want to thank you for continuing to push for innovative solutions during a challenging budget environment and also encouraging advocacy at the state level on the large issues facing not only Alexandria but our entire commonwealth when it comes to the EGING school buildings and underfunding that comes from the state. Your proactive leadership is more important than ever. My family is one of many dealing with the loss of not just an income but a career. We're lifted up by the community that surrounds us and most importantly through the care, steadiness, routine, learning and safety that our children receive in ACPS every day from their teachers, administrators, counselors and peers. And while I know that there are a lot of pressures facing Alexandria, our schools are the anchor for so many in our city, and on the front lines of managing the pressures and challenges that students bring to school with them every day. They are the reason we and so many others we know will continue to fight and pivot to stay in Alexandria. What a joy it was last week to have Mayor Gaskin's welcome middle schoolers from Confranced Alexandria where they're attending school and living with Alexandria students and families for a few weeks. This reciprocal exchange is the result of hard work and many years of planning by members of the sister city committee, city staff, leadership, ACPS leadership in teachers, and all of you for believing in the power of international friendships, business development opportunities, and the opportunity to celebrate Alexandria's history and our future as a city. This is representative of many of the volunteer efforts that make our city and schools strong, but it takes more than volunteer hours. My request today for the ad and support of the ECPS budget is in request of critical instructional and student support positions needed to meet enrollment needs for 2025-26, as well as the salary increase that our teachers truly deserve a need. Our students and schools need to continue the commitment to recognizing teachers with longevity and encourage them to stay with ACPS. The best way to ensure our students continued success is to ensure they have teachers and all their classrooms. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, Madam Clerk, next to you speakers. Dala Ki-Apdala Sue, Hayler Brown and Donna Gold. Okay, he's online. Okay. We can whenever you're ready. Hey, can you guys hear me? Yes. Good evening, Madam Mayor, Madam Vice Mayor and members of City Council. Sorry, I'm not able to join you guys in person today, traffic is kind of insane. My name is Abdelah Yabdala, and I'm here today to speak in strong support of the ACPS FY2026 budget. First, thank you for your ongoing commitment to Alexandria's public school. We know this year's budget decisions are especially tough, balancing growing needs with limited is not easy. That said I want to express my appreciation for the ad to support reflecting in the council's preliminary ad delete proposal. The additional funding is a critical step towards helping ACPS recruit and retain student facing staff. Address the bus driver shortage and sustain programs that directly impact our students while being in academic success. With federal funding uncertain and many students still navigating the effects of the pandemic, our city must do more than just maintain. You must invest, and that's exactly where your recent action show. A willingness to prioritize our schools and missed financial uncertainty, your efforts, and trying to fully fund the ACPS budget do not go unnoticed thank you for standing with our schools and have a good day thank you Madame Clerk next speakers Sue Hi LaBron Donna Goll and Caitlin Golden Hi thank you I wanted to thank first the City Council for the important ad for Alexander is City of Public Schools. We appreciate all the time that you took to work with us as we strive to support our growing population. I'm a parent of a ninth grader at the high school and a seventh grader at George Washington Middle School. I'm also part of the Alexander City Council of PTAs and also work with the PTSA, which includes students at the High School. Investing in our public schools will definitely improve our community. And I echo Margaret Ripy's remarks. I'm speaking today in support of the two proposed operating transfers to add funds for ACPS, which are critical to the success of our students and our largest and only high school. These funds will support new student facing teachers and support positions to help address class size, campus transitions, security, special education, and the needs of our most at-risk student population. For example, our new English learning teachers will enhance parent and family engagement, alleviate social worker and other staff workloads, help close achievement gaps, and continue to improve our graduation rates, especially for those that are most at risk. As we expect these needs to increase next year, these positions are critical to ensure our student success. Currently at our high school of 4,600 plus people, we do not have any family reasons. And that's across all four campuses. This is in addition to the fact that the amazing family and engagement center within ACPS is also losing staffing because of their past COVID grant funding. Across the city next year, we're gonna see a 1.5 increase in student enrollment and a higher number needing English and special education services. So many of our teachers, counselors, social workers, families, and so on, etc are all very taxed. We must alleviate their burdens to retain and recruit the best for our community with the possible freeze of federal and state funding for 2026. our at-risk population is further targeted, making these student facing positions imperative. So please support the ads for the Alexandria City Public Schools. And again, I really want to thank you for supporting us, for meeting with us, and then also doing the advocating at the state level. We really appreciate it. Thank you. Next speaker, Ms. Gold, are you in the room? Mayor Gaskins, vice mayor Bagley and City Council members. Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight. My name is Donna Gold and I am speaking as the co-co-ordin coordinator of the Alexandria hub of the faith alliance for climate solutions known by the friendly acronym facts. Facts unites people of faith as well as those who share our values to develop local solutions to the climate crisis. the lead on your agenda tonight that impact how the city will address the council's climate emergency declaration and how we will meet the city's climate change goals. Both of these add delete proposals would reduce funds designated for the work of the Office of Climate Action. While we wish the Office of Climate Action had been able to more quickly implement efforts to reduce energy use and greenhouse gas polluting emissions, reducing its funding now when the Office of Climate Action is fully staffed, finally fully staffed, and organized for greater impact would be a step backwards. In particular, the office's intended focus on helping low-income families and families in multi-unit dwellings live in climate-friendly conditions, reduce their energy expenditures, and increase housing affordability is a high priority for facts. Specifically, one add delete, the add delete that would transfer 300,000 from the office of climate action to increase funding for ACPS. We believe that one of the best things we can do for the children in youth of this city is to ensure they have a future in a livable world. I have stepped off script here for a moment because I stand here as a person who has spent a career in education. My daughter entered ACPS in kindergarten. She graduated in the 12th grade. I was a very active parent and I very much care about the school system. But in this case, I obviously come out that these funds need to stay with the Office of Climate Action. We, the second ad delete that would replace 150,000 from the Office of Climate action in contingency to pay for the Douglas MacArthur Elementary School solar panels and related costs as needed to complete the solar investment in this facility. Speaking to that, while we appreciate that this amendment is consistent with our focus on climate action, we believe that the funds would be better left in the OCA budget for them to complete current project plans. Heck. Further, we think it's worth looking at Senator Evans's SB 1058 and it's- Thank you, Sam. And it's compared. Thank you so much for your testimony. We reached our limit. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you for being here tonight. I think I heard a phone go off a couple times if everyone can just take an extra second to make sure that your phone is silent. Okay. Next speaker. Hello and good evening. My name is Katie Golden and I am the school social worker at Patrick Henry K to eight. Patrick Henry K to eight is a unique and beautiful school that serves children from dozens of countries, immigrants, refugees and long time Alexandrians and spans nine grade levels. We have over 1,000 children enrolled in our school. Some of you know me because I, along with my colleagues and our PTA, have been advocating ACPS to address their issues of equity by adding more student support team members to schools that have high student to staff ratios. This much needed ad money of $1 million proposed by Councilmember John Taylor Chapman is going to be put towards funding additional social workers and psychologists. We are in a time of deep anxiety and national turmoil. Our students are truly feeling this. Anxiety, self-harm, and suicidality, stress from the migration crisis, food insecurity, becoming homeless after an eviction, all of these challenges are daily parts of life for many of my students. Student support team members are the individuals who directly respond to these challenges. These ad funds translate to more children cutting to talk to an adult who cares every day and receiving counseling services. They translate to more families getting help with finding groceries and hearing from someone about their child's attendance. I do this work every day and I know how much it matters. This kind of support is more crucial than ever before. I can fully appreciate that there are questions about how ACPS spends its money and why they deserve another one million to educate our scholars. I too have questions about how these student support roles are going to be parsed out. The current breakdown is lacking. All schools deserve more support. I believe this truly, but Patrick Kennedy, which houses both a middle and an elementary school, is slated to receive only an additional point for a social worker while other elementary schools, with far fewer students are also receiving point 2, point 4 4 and points to social workers. As I said in September, each SST member does something different and social workers play a uniquely important role in the health and well-being of students. As a social worker with a case load of 1,017 students, the highest in the district, the current oversight and rural distribution has me baffled. I think I am likely in agreement with city council members who have question marks over ACPS' ability to put equity into action. The answer to these questions is not less money. It is more accountability. You now have many school board members on the city council who know the intricate workings of ACPS and can create systems to check and support ACPS to do better, serving and protecting all of their scholars. Staff like me and my colleagues, like Katie from PTAG, like other folks who were here speaking tonight, like the Patrick Henry PTA, we will join you in doing the work of holding ACPS accountable for spending this money appropriately and equitably. But we need these funds and we know they will benefit our city's children. Please honor our students' needs and support the 1 million ad for the budget. I invite you to help Alexandria City Public Schools do better because our students deserve it. Thank you. I think Councilor Neubey had a question for you. No, it's okay for the city manager. Mr. City manager, can we get a budget memo from ECPS if you would work with the superintendent to get a budget memo, have how they distribute their support staff on the schools equitably? What's their staffing formula for that and how did it do that? I can ask superintendent to provide that that's a request from you guys to provide that information. Yes, please. I think we have one more speaker. Two more. Two more. Kimberly Ball in Scott am the proud and I'm happy to be here speaking before you tonight. First, I want to say thank you for the opportunity. It is actually my first time speaking in front of City Council as well, although last year my child spoke on behalf of the school system. So I hope I can do her justice and replacing her this year. I also want to acknowledge that you all have a challenging task here at hand. We heard from so many people about the programs that they want you to support and they've been very passionate about it and I would have to say that I agree with all of it and I would hope that you would be able to fund all of that. However, I know that's not possible and so I want to throw my support behind the ads for the Alexandria City Public School System. We do have a tremendous school system, but there are definitely challenges. As you heard so many times already tonight, challenges with our number of teachers and a number of social workers, challenges with class size. But I want to speak a little bit more specifically to what Mr. Chapman has requested in his ad delete, which is in his ad, excuse me, which is about the physical, social, and emotional well-being of our students. I think that's tremendously important. When our students have challenges, whether that's because of their learning concerns or their home lives, they bring those things to school, right? And it makes it for a much more challenging classroom environment, particularly if we have social workers who don't have the resources they need to address those things. Then it ends up in the hands of the teachers in the classroom, which impacts the learning across the board. You've heard from a previous speaker about the fact that many in our community are losing their jobs. I'm one of those people and I know that these things are going to have impacts on our students. And I think we need to be prepared to deal with the changes that are coming to our society as a whole, to our state and to Alexandria Variables more specifically. I think that we're going to end up in a situation where children are bringing those issues that their families have, whether that's about housing or food insecurity. All of those other things end up at the door of our teachers who are then less able to teach in the way that they might otherwise. So I wanna make sure that we're thinking about those things, thinking about the impacts for our students if we're not prepared to address their social and emotional wellbeing, and reflect maybe on what happened with COVID and the impacts that we know that that had when we were faced with that just suddenly out of the blue. This time around we have a little bit more experience, understanding what is happening in the lives of children and what they bring to school with them to address. I want to make sure that we're thinking about those things as we look at how we're spending our money, how we want to support our children who are going to end up being our friends and neighbors employers employees of this wonderful city that we have. They are our future and we need to make sure that we are addressing their needs today so that when it is their turn to stand up and be productive adults and citizens that we will prepare them to do that. Thank you. Thank you Miss Falle and I think your daughter would be proud. With that we have one more speaker, Mr. Barso. Good evening, Mayor Gaskin, and Spice Mayor Bagley, members of Council, and thank you for the opportunity to provide comments today. I'm here to urge you to reject major cuts to the budget for the city's climate action office. The National Oceanic and Amphospheric Administration projects that our area will face more than 4.5 feet of sea level rise along our waterfront by 2080 under a moderately high scenario of greenhouse gas emissions and more than 6 feet under a high emission scenario. Rasmussen area of sea level rise would be limited to under 2 feet. Imagine your city council member in 2080. What difference would having the water level along our waterfront be to an affid or more higher, make to our city and to the budget CF to deal with every year. Alexandria and Sir rightly concerned, a 2023 survey found that 77% of adults living in the 8th congressional district are worried about global warming and 66% say that local officials should do more to address it. And, pertinent to tonight's discussion, I should add that research shows that climate change and the lack of an effective government response is causing a great deal of anxiety and concern among children and youth in the U.S. globally. It has now been five years since council approved a resolution declaring that we face a climate emergency and that emergency continues. Amnesty or concentrations of carbon dioxide are at the highest levels in the past 800,000 years. Each of the past eight years has set a new record for ocean heat content and the rate of sea level rise has doubled since satellite measurements began. I can understand being frustrated by climate projects in previous years not being completed because I've experienced that frustration myself. My friend David Peabody and I worked with a climate action office with ACPS, with Virginia Tech staff and with the Passive House Institute US to develop a grant proposal to establish a regional training center for energy efficient building construction and contracting trades. We were really excited about it, and Ryan Fried participated closely in planning and developing the proposal, despite still being busy hiring staff and getting his office started enough to speed. Unfortunately, we didn't get the grant award we were seeking, but the experience showed me that the Climate Action Office has smart, committed, fully engaged leadership. I may not always track, understand, or perhaps even agree with everything the office is doing, and you may not either, but I'm confident we're pointed in the right direction, and clearly we won't be able to make the kind of progress we need to make over the next year if you slash the Department's budget. Please reject the proposed $300,000 cut in the Climate Action Offices budget. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, I will now entertain a motion to close the public hearing. So I'm going to move. There has been. Sorry, you're just a second too late by smare vaguely. There has been a motion by Councilman McPike and a second by Councilman Al Nubi to close the public hearing any discussion. I will just say thank you to everyone who came today. I'm sure you're wondering what happens next. The council will host our work session on AdDeletes and make our final decisions on April 22nd. I hope you'll be just excited to come back and join us then. With that, there's been a motion in a second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed, St. Nay? OK. The, the eyes have Madam Clerk next item. We may have been on the minutes of the following meetings of City Council, the meeting minutes of February 26th. March 5th, March 10th, March 11th, March 12th, and March 15th. Okay, is there a motion to approve or to adopt the meeting minutes? Okay there has been a motion by Councilman Pike and a second by Councilman Elnubi any discussion all right hearing none all those in favor say aye. Hey, right on time, right on time. Any opposed, they may. I have it. Madam Clerk, next item. Presentation of a proclamation, recognizing Earth Month and Arbor Day. Okay, I have asked Councilman McPike to read this proclamation. If anyone is here joining us for Earth Month or Arbor Day, please come to the front. Hey, Dr. Adda, you need to come on down. All right. Well, thank you all very much for coming down here and representing Alexandria's efforts to protect and preserve our our environment. I'm going to read the proclamation then make a motion, and we'll have a little bit of an opportunity for you all to discuss what you've been working on. So whereas the city of Alexandria recognizes its natural environment is irreplaceable and fragile and must be preserved for future generations. And whereas Earth Day is a national event to increase people's understanding of their environment and mobilize support for its protection. It was first celebrated 55 years ago, March, 1970. And whereas the Environmental Policy Commission was formed 55 years ago, namely January, 1970, beat them actually on that one. The Advising City Council on All Matters Environmental. And whereas the National Arbor Day Foundation has recognized the City of Alexandria as a tree city USA every year since 1983. And by planting a tree every year during Alexandria Earth Day celebrations, the city demonstrates the importance of trees for climate change mitigation, storm water management and the natural environment. And whereas the city of Alexandria faces ongoing threats of climate change through increased heat, flooding, and increased intensity of storms, which disproportionately impacts the lives, health and economic well-being, especially Alexandria's frontline communities, communities of color, and low income populations. And whereas the city's commitment to be an echo city aligns with and is driven by our all Alexandria commitment that Alexandria is a kind, compassionate, fair, just, and equitable city that is an affordable, livable community for all. And whereas the city of Alexandria in collaboration with the Environmental Policy Commission, adopted the Echo City Charter June 2008, the Environmental Action Plan in 2040 in 2019, declared a climate emergency in October 2019, and created the Office of Climate Action in 2023. And whereas the city leads a collaboration across all its departments and in partnership with Alex Renew, Alexandria City Public Schools and other city and community partners to celebrate and recognize Earth Day as we take steps to a greener Alexandria throughout the month of April 2025. Each week of Earth month focuses on our Ecosidie principles and initiatives as we celebrate a month focused on on transportation water resources, energy and climate mitigation, air and land and solid waste. And whereas the city of Alexandria recognize the important role and contribution, which each Alexandria resident can do daily to make the city and eco city. Now, therefore I Kurt McPike on behalf of Alexander mayor, Leah Gaskins and the Alexandria city council to hear by proclaim April 2025 as Alexandria Earth a month and Arbor Day in the city of Alexandria. And hereby command all persons who are committed to and worked towards preserving our environment. The city celebrates Earth Day of promoting activity sponsored by the city and our partners throughout the month of April and encouraging residents of businesses to participate in these environmentally focused events and witness whereof. She is here on Tuesday at her hand and causes a seal the city of Alexandria to be a fix this eighth day of April 2025. So thank you all very much very short and brief proclamation but it's a very big and involved issue which is developed a lot over the 55 years since the first Earth Day was celebrated so I'd love to hear from each of you. Thank you Councilman Jesse May. I'm the stormwater management division chief with Tess. Thank you so much for reading that and I won't since that was long enough. I won't go too far into it. But yeah, there's a lot of things going on for Earth month and it's a great way to kick it off with this proclamation. So please go to the website out there via dot gov slash earth day and you can see all the things that are going on with transportation, with water and all the events that are happening. Thank you so much. And I'm Ryan for the Climate Action Officer. Just want to echo what Jesse said. There's a bunch of great activities going on all month. So please join us for those in May 10th. We have the Eco City Festival celebrating everything that makes Alexandria and the Eco City and all of the departments across the have put in a lot of work to make that a celebration for all of you. And I am Paige Edwards. I am an environmental educator at the Buddy Ford Nature Center also helping organize some of these great events. So I hope you all check them out. Thank you all. Thank you for all your work. I know that last year Alexander's recognized as one of two localities in the region that actually have a growing tree canopy right now. So we are doing a lot of work here in the city to address our climate impacts. And I appreciate all the work that has gone into that effort. And with that metamere, I would move adoption of the proclamation. Okay. Is there a second? There has been a motion by Councilman McPike and a second by Councilman Chapman, Any discussion? Well, I will just say it and I don't think I have this wrong but there are a number of new pieces of artwork downstairs in celebration of Earth Day and I think there's even T-shirt so I will say I will just encourage everyone when you leave here please take a minute to stop by the Vololossian Library, my library, lobby. And you can see all of the beautiful artwork and celebration of Earth Day and some calls to action for all of us as well. With that, there has been a motion in a second. All those in favor say aye. Any opposed, say nay? All right, the I's have it and the proclamation passes. And I think we are doing a photo. I have that. That's it. I think just you send a right-wing proclamation. So I'm trying to. Thank you. Madam Clerk, next item. Presentation of Proclamation Recognizing National Library Week. And I have asked Councilman Aguirre to read this Proclamation. Anyone is here to celebrate National Library Week. Please come to the front. What's the name of the other library? What's its name? You got it, Robert? Perfect. Are you just dropping? Yeah. I just dropped it. Let all our library folks come up here. We got everybody great. So I'm going to go ahead and read the proclamation first and then we're going to pass the mic around and let everybody introduce themselves. Yeah, I think that's, that sounds about right. All right. So whereas the city of Alexandria is foremost citizen, George Washington once said to encourage literature and the arts is a duty which every good citizen owes to his country and Whereas the residents of this city have acted upon this principle to create and support a system of library and information services through the Alexandria library library media centers of the Alexandria city public schools a number of special libraries as well as libraries in private and and parochial schools and institutions of higher education. And whereas these libraries serve as the gateway to information and technology that support the preservation of our democratic traditions and cultural heritage, and whereas libraries have long served as trusted institutions for all members of the community, regardless of race, ethnicity, creed, ability, sexual orientation, gender identity, or social economic status. And whereas libraries of today function as much more than repositories of knowledge, helping residents keep up with changing technology, offering audio books, e-reader materials, free computer classes, hot spots and laptops, community meeting spaces, and access to free online resources. The Alexandra Public Library offers English language learning classes, citizenship classes, story hours, crafting classes, author talks, and numerous other programs while serving as a passport agency for those needing to travel, and partnering with other city departments and agencies to provide employment resources, programs, and access to resources such as immigration red cards, COVID test kits, electricity usage monitors, and safe place access. And, whereas, library media specialists and school librarians are dedicated to helping our children and teens find the resources they need to keep learning thereby safeguarding and preserving intellectual freedoms that ensure an inclusive environment where young minds can create, explore and connect every day of the year. And whereas libraries, library workers and library supporters across the United States will celebrate National Library Workers Day, sponsored by the American Library Association Allied Professional Association, ALAAPA on Tuesday, April 8, 2025. Now therefore I, Kenik Gierre,irre, on behalf of the Leda Gaskins, Mayor of the City of Alexandria, Virginia, and on behalf of the Alexandria City Council, to hereby recognize and proclaim the week of April 6th through April 12th, 2025 as National Library Week. In the City of Alexandria, this year's theme is drawn to the library, which celebrates the diverse ways people utilize libraries. I encourage all residents to support the library's mission to be a bastion of intellectual freedom, where all views are represented and everyone is welcomed. Further, the City Council expresses its appreciation to the dedicated staff of the Alexandria Library, and urges residents to reach out via the library's website, Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms to thank library workers for the essential services they provide. In Witness Wherever I have here on to set my hand and Constance CLC, the city of Alexandria, Virginia to be affixed this eighth day of April 2025. And I'm going to pass it to our director of libraries start with our acting chair of the library board. That's very kind. Thank you very much, customer. And thank you to all our board and mayor on to the city manager for the support of the library budget this year. And I'd also like to thank those Alexandria instead of contributed through the Spring to Action campaign where the library stands grateful. Good evening, my name is Rose Dawson and I have the pleasure of serving as the Library Director for the Alexandria Library System. And on behalf of the staff and the board and the friends, I'd like to thank all of you for supporting Alexandria's libraries in the way that you do. You know, the saying goes that if you can read, you need to thank the teacher. But if you're getting to read whatever you want, you need to thank a teacher. But if you're getting to read whatever you want, you need to thank a library. I'm Dar Davis. I am a friend of the Beetley Central Library. Hi, Patty Riley from the Duncan Friends. Amy and from the Duncan Library Friends. Libby Balkham, board member of Alexandria Library Foundation and company. First Library, Deputy Director of Libraries. Thank you all so much for being here tonight and Madam Mayor with that. I would move the proclamation. There has been a motion by Councilman Aguirre, is there a second? There has been a second by Councilwoman Greene, any discussion? Well, I will just say, I was trying to implement a new rule of only two proclamations per meeting. And then I got a call, but that would mean that we would not have the National Library League proclamation. Ms. Dawson, were we downed? And I also, I realized I could not, we could not not celebrate this occasion. I also say we did not cut anywhere. It's from the proclamation. We did it exactly the way it was submitted to make sure that we really recognize all of the great work that our staff do in the city, that the friends do and our community does to ensure that our libraries remain a place that is safe, open, and where so many in our community can access not only the books they want to read, but also the amazing programming that the team does stay in and day out. So we are really excited to celebrate this week. I hope that everyone will take a look at the website and see all of the many events and activities that you can join in order to help us celebrate the occasion. So with that, there has been a motion by Councilman Aguirre and a second by Councilwoman Green. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay. The ayes have it. The proclamation passes and we will now take a photo. I want my shirt. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, Madam Clerk, next item. Presentation of a proclamation recognizing April as National Volunteer Appreciation. Okay, and I have asked Councilman Chapman to read this proclamation. If you are joining us for National Volunteer Appreciation Month, please come to the front. So Council and Chapin is referring to the fact that in the back of this approximation, there was a special request to list all the volunteers. So there are thousands of names listed. We're just going to read the beginning. But if you have volunteered, your names will be framed. And I think displayed. So everyone will be recognized. Thank you. Do not do that. Good evening, everybody. I'm going to go ahead and read the proclamation then. I'm going to pass the mic over to everyone here if you want to introduce yourself and what organization you're with. Okay. All right. Whereas Alexandria is a city of people who care about their community. And whereas for 45 years, volunteer Alexandria has brought together thousands of residents, local nonprofits, businesses, schools, faith-based organizations, and local government to meet both critical and ongoing needs. Whatever the need, volunteer Alexandria inspires, mobilizes, and connects people to causes. And whereas individuals, families, and groups giving their name, excuse me, giving their time and talents are an integral part of community's kindness and unique spirit of Alexandria. And whereas Voluntary Alexandria is celebrating its many years of recognizing honoring those who have selflessly committed time, energy and skills to support our community and organizations that to help them further their mission. And whereas all who benefit from volunteers including nonprofits and residents will be participating in volunteer Alexandria's annual event, volunteers are the heart of Alexandria to show our appreciation for all of those who have volunteered throughout the year. And whereas volunteers make up an essential part of our vibrant and strong community, when we give back at Unites us, builds social connections and becomes a powerful force for solving problems and meeting challenges. Our city and its organizations have curated a healthy, productive, and humane society because of the efforts and work of our volunteers. Now therefore, I John Taylor Chavin on behalf of Alia Gaskins mayor of the city of Alexandria, Virginia and on behalf of the entire city council to hereby proclaim the month of April as volunteers are the heart of Alexandria among in the city of Alexandria. And I call this observance to the attention of all of our residents and In honoring the 3,000 volunteers of Alexandria, their names are fixed to this proclamation and the city of Alexandria extends its deepest gratitude to each volunteer recognized herein. And witness where I've here in Toosep, my hand and calls the city of Alexandria to be a Fixus Fixed State Day 2025. All right. So instead of reading all the names on this proclamation, I'll turn it over to Carl to introduce himself and we'll work our way down the line. Thank you. Hi, my name is Carl Bach. I'm with the live. I'm also a volunteer with the Snowbody program. Jeff J Jeff Yatzler, friends of Mount Vernon Trail. Cameron Taylor, your friends of the Mount Vernon Trail. I'm Juddys Bell, friends of Mount Vernon Trail, where we've had 586 volunteers this year, including Vice Mayor Bagley. And we know that all the other council members are going to go to Mount Vernon Trail. That will work after this meeting and sign up for an upcoming volunteer event. So we look forward to seeing you on the trail. This is Mary and Brunken. I'm from Volunteer Alexandria. Thank you so much for being here. These are two of our great nonprofits offering volunteer opportunities for the residents of Alexandria. And we are proud to be part of this. I'm Kevin Greenley for the Department of Finance and I'm honored to be vice chair of the voluntary arts and here. to be part of this. And I'm Kevin Greenlee for the Department of Finance and I'm honored to be Vice Chair of the voluntary Alexandria. And as a passport member of the Volunteer of Alexandria gives me great pleasure to see the work continue that Mary and the board are doing to continue to promote volunteerism in our city and make sure that organizations like these have a platform to get new volunteers and continue their great work. So with that, I'd love to put a motion on the table to set the proclamation. Okay, there has been a motion by Councilman Chapman. Is there a second? There's been a second by Councilwoman Green, any discussion? I too just wanna echo my thanks for everything that you do day in and day out from the Mount Vernon Trail. I'll do all of the many, many programs that vary in the team I'm leading through volunteer Alexandria. And I will just put in a plug. I know we've received a number of 3-1-1s from folks in the community asking with everything going on in our world and so many people experiencing loss and needs they never thought they might have to encounter before. People reaching out and asking how they can help. One of the ways that you can help is to go to volunteer Alexandria, look up an opportunity and see the many needs that exist within our city and ways that you can plug in. So with that there has been a motion and a second. All those in favor say aye. Any opposed, say nay. The aye's have it, and we'll take a picture. So I'm going to make sure we don't get hit say hello. I'm going to say hello. I'm going to say hello. I'm going to say hello. I'm going to say hello. I'm going to say hello. I'm going to say hello. I'm going to say hello. I'm going to say hello. I'm going to say hello. I'm going to say hello. I'm going to say hello. I'm going to say hello over to vice mayor Bagley. I apologize. I was not able to attend the last meeting. Yeah, and unfortunately I'm in the same boat. I think we both. We might have been at the same thing. So I'm going to go ahead and ask you to go ahead and ask you to go ahead and ask. I'm going to go ahead and ask you to go ahead and ask. I'm going to turn it over to Vice Mayor Bagley. I apologize. I was not able to attend the last meeting. Yeah, and unfortunately I'm in the same boat. I think we both, we might have been at the same thing that night. So my apologies. We will come through. May perhaps at the next meeting we can redock at this item and give an update once we've checked in with the commission. Thank you. I think you're up next, so why don't you just roll right into the Northern Virginia Transportation Commission? Sure. So the Northern Virginia Transportation Commission just met last week. We got a very positive report from Wormada. Their ridership continues to almost break records. They had their first million trip day, last Thursday, 600,000 on the rail, 400,000 on the bus. It was their second busiest day since the Obama inauguration. So, um, Womata is back. They also recently won an award for their cleanliness levels. So, it's doing well in many ways, both in ridership and in experience. There was talk about more ways that they hope to improve their budgeting through increased automation through signal advances and signaling. And so we are optimistic that the positive trends we're seeing in the will-moderate budget will continue with the increase in ridership, as well as the improvements in the efficiency of the service itself. There was an extended discussion about the situation in DC with how the DC budget is affected by the continuing resolution. And we are all, I think, conscious of how that will impact Maryland and Virginia's role in funding the mod of potentially moving forward. So good news in terms of service, but some tricky news moving forward in terms of funding. On that note, we also got an extended update from Nick Donahue on the DMV moves process. That is the multi-terrestrial effort to address substantial or Yes, sustained funding for Womada moving forward and how to build a model that will allow the entity to continue to grow and invest in capital and invest in its service process. That DMV moves is taking place at the same time as something called SH-28, which is a Virginia exclusive side study that is taking this year to talk about how will Virginia invest in funding moving forward for transit, not just Wilmotta, but transit all around. And we expect to see legislation in the next general assembly in 2026, which will be designed to rethink our long-term sustained funding in transit and transportation in the commonwealth. I'm scanning my notes here real quick. We got another presentation about micro transit about the ways that we, you know, Mr. Weiss was in her earlier and was speaking about the key role that micro transit and para transit plays in his life. And we got it, we got it a presentation on how that program works in various jurisdictions. We also got an update on commuter choice. Alexandria has some very competitive programs vying for commuter choice funding in this cycle. And VRE was there to talk about their 2050 plan, which will be adopted in another few months at NVTC. I'll pause there. I'm not sure. I can't see the dias if my colleague is there with any other comments, but that was NVTC. Okay. Thank you. Madam Clerk, next question. Northern Virginia Regional Commission, Councilor Chaatman and Councilor McGreen. Thank you, Madam Mayor. So I'll talk about what happened today. You had over at the Virginia Tech Innovation Campus, we had the Emergency House Committee on, I forget the full name, but basically you have a selection of general assembly members that have been working to hear from localities and regions of the Commonwealth about the impact of that many of the federal changes are having on the Commonwealth. and wealth. And so a number of leaders and staff, including the mayor, had an opportunity to make, frankly, presentations to that group. To talk to them about what the real numbers and issue and impact are if the government continues to cut federal workers, particularly those who live in Virginia. So I want to hit on some quick key takeaways from members who spoke, including Chair of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors. Virginia is more impacted by federal reduction in workforce in any other state. Best estimates indicate that we are at 10% reduction in the federal workforce and continuing to move forward up. Unemployment claims for Virginia, Maryland and DC residents over the first 13 weeks of 2025. So pass the unemployment claims filed in 2023 and 2024 combined. Approximately half the federal civilian jobs in Virginia, whether full time or pot time are located in North of Virginia. Virginia's federal workforce is distinct, nearly twice as, many are nearly twice as likely to hold a graduate degree compared to other VA workers earn nearly two times more than private sector employees are more likely to work in high paying fields compared to peers nationally. As we, as I just mentioned, Virginia ranks first in the United States also when it comes to federal contracts with $108 billion worth of federal contracts. And this amounts to a population adjusted amount of spending, which is $12,718 per person, substantially above the kind of national average of 2,000 per person. 26 of all state revenues generated by sales tax coming from North of Virginia. And only 30% of the jobs in North of Virginia are comparable to the job loss due to federal production and workforce. I think these are stark numbers and we stark numbers, stark facts. And that's what this meeting really was. It was about local leaders and regional leaders presenting stark facts to this body. It's a bipartisan body, but we want to make sure they understand the real impact of federal changes. And we hope and brought to them from Northern Virginia Regional Commission, as well as local electives around the region brought forward some potential options or opportunities and suggestions for this body to consider anything from increasing the state unemployment benefit that's given all the way to looking at child care. There are a number of recommendations that were given to this group. And so we were thankful to be there to speak about those as well. Councilwoman Green. Thank you, Mary Gaskins. And we just want to thank on behalf of the Northern Virginia Regional Commission, Johnson Chair, but I want to say on behalf of coming for that role. Yeah. Just like I want to say thank you to Congressman Byer, who's just been very accessible, very visible whenever we need him from a commission initiative he's always there. So it's just great to have a Congressman, like Congressman By buyer who's just in this time of crisis there whenever we need him. So we appreciate him greatly. Thank you. Thank you both for your report. Councilman Chapman, thank you for your remarks this morning and to Bob and the entire team at the Northern Virginia Regional Commission. I know the city we submitted comments with really specific data reflecting our concerns here in Alexandria and a lot of that data we were able to pull from NVRC. I guess two things I just wanted to lift up that I think really telling to me from the conversation. There was a little bit of a back and forth about kind of the numbers and where the data was coming from and Cher McKay, he got up there and he said, you know, it doesn't matter which data source you're looking at, the reality is the impact is huge, especially when it comes to Northern Virginia. And that's what we need to be paying attention to. It's the other thing that was really, I took a picture of one of the slides that stood out to me was a slide that said, when you look at local government and the impact of federal spending across our state, $ point four billion dollars of revenue from the federal government comes to Virginia local governments. About three billion of that is federal pass through revenues and then another one point four billion is direct federal aid and 10% of all local government revenues across the Commonwealth comes from the federal government. So just really sobering and alarming numbers. We will continue to engage with the committee. We will continue to lean on NBRC for data and resources as well. Councilman Chapman. And one last thing that the mayor may be thinking of in our conversation as well, there was a point when the chairman of the Northern Virginia Chamber was speaking to the group and talking not only about some of the challenges that we're gonna see in hospitality, but also tourism. And I think for Alexandria, for Arlington, for Washington, D.C., itself, that is going to be another place where we see some extreme challenges. Because we know, and I use the mayor's story as an example, we know that there are frankly, legions of Canadians that are not gonna be coming to the DC area. I wanna say we found out a data point that was lifted up at the meeting was Canadians make up 40% of all inbound travel and tourism to the United States. And so understanding that conversations and positioning in Washington has really is going to make us in this region suffer, particularly in that arena is a scary effort as well. Hey, Madam Clerk, next item. Or report from the C manager? Okay, Mr. Manager, I'm going to turn it over to you. Thank you. So I have one announcement and the good news is Chief Felipe Hernandez is in the audience tonight on a different matter. But I think I wanted to take a moment to highlight for the community and the mayor and council that the fire department under Chief Hernandez's leadership was recently accredited. That is a very significant effort. Agency accreditation is an international recognition of achievement. It's not awarded just as a paper effort. This is a significant effort. It's award agencies to demonstrate adherence to rigorous public safety standards. AFD is currently one of 300 plus agencies accredited internationally. So one of over 300, around 300 internationally. We talk about investments to see is made to apparatus, staffing, filling vacancies. These are all items that were addressed in trying to get to the accreditation process. The long-term benefits will help ensure the fire department is continuing, evaluating their internal processes and adopting industry best standards and practices to enhance the service delivery quality within our community. It also allows myself and the city council the ability to make more outcome-based decisions when it comes to the operations of the Fire Department. I really want to commend Chief Hernandez is a leadership and he and his team did an amazing job. So I want to say that. Thank you. Okay. Well, thank you, Mr. Manager. Thank you, Chief. Thank you to the men and women of AFD for everything. I know countless hours, a lot of extra time, a lot of detailed work went into preparing us for this review and to ultimately helping us achieve accreditation. So we thank you. Okay, Madam Clerk, next item. Action docket regular consent calendar, 931. Hey, I will entertain a motion to approve the consent calendar, items 9 through 21. You're cool. Second. Okay, there's been a motion by Councilman Chapman and a second by Councilwoman Green to move the action consent calendar. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay. The ayes have it. Madam clerk, next item. Contested appointments. Okay. So we have several contested appointments. Just so folks, maybe new are familiar with our process. I'm going to read the names of the committee and then all of the members who receive votes. At the end, I will then announce the name of the majority vote getter and then following the reading of all of the contested appointments. I will ask for a motion to appoint the majority vote getters from each commission. Please note that if you are interested in everyone who applied and the vote tallies, you can find that in the meeting minutes for each applicant so that the information is available to the public. So with that, I'm going to start with the Alexandria Gang Prevention Task Force. There were three applicants to receive votes that is Brian Kirk's and Jasmine Millender and Brian Kirk's received the majority votes and will be appointed to the Alexandria Gang Prevention Task Force. The next is the Alexandria Cohn Sister City Committee. There were three applicants. All three received votes. Alexander Javaris, Michael Kutner, and Laura Radley. And this is for two citizen members, and the two who receive the majority are Alexander Javaris and Michael K Cutner. Next, I'm going to move to commission on persons with disabilities. This is for three citizen members. There were four who applied, all four received votes. That includes Lawrence, Lewis, Shannon, Luellis, Megan, Prince, Donna, Spencer, and the three who received the majority of Council's votes are Lauren Lewis, Shannon Luellis, Megan Prince. Next we have the George Washington Birthday Celebration Committee. This is for one citizen member. There were two applicants, Casey Clark and Jake Preston-weely and Kasey Clark received the majority of votes from the council. Next is the Sister Cities Committee. This is for one citizen member. There were two applicants and Phil DeWatt received all seven votes of the council. Last but not least, we have the traffic and parking board. This is for one citizen member. There were four citizens who received votes of the council that is Eve Anderson, Andrew Justice, Dane Lawrence and Mark Stout and Dane Lawrence and received the majority votes of the council. With, I will now entertain a motion to approve the majority vote getters as read into the record. Okay, there's been a motion by Councilman McPike is there a second? There's been a motion by Councilman McPike and a second by Councilwoman Green to approve the majority vote getters for the appointments as red into the record, including the Alexandria Gang Prevention Task Force, the Alexandria Con, Sister City Committee, the Commission on Persons with Disabilities, the George Washington birthday, the celebration committee, the Sister Cities Committee, and the traffic and parking board respectively. This is a roll call vote, Madam Clerk, please call the roll. Councilman McPike. I also want to be green. I mayor Gaskins. I. Nice to meet you, Mayor Bagley. I. I'm Susan McGuirey. Councilman Chapman. I'm Councilman Elnubi. I. Great. Congratulations to all of our new appointees and thank you for everyone who applied. We appreciate your willingness to serve. Madam Clerk, please call the next item. Alexandria Police Department Public Safety Review in plan. Okay. Mr. Manager, I'm gonna start with you to introduce our update here. Absolutely. So in keeping with Council's direction and initiative to make sure that public safety certainly as a core service is critical to our community. We have a update tonight with our new chief, Chief Tarak Maguire. He's been the police chief since late November of 2025 after a comprehensive and nationwide search and include significant input from the community as well as the department officers as well as other residents and businesses. That nationwide search really resulted in a candidate from virtually every part of this country. He participated through that effort and was fortunate to be selected and we were fortunate to have him. He has over two decades of experience and is a nationally recognized expert for his commitment in enhancing community relations and meaningful engagement as a cornerstone of crime reduction and crime prevention. He comes to Alexandria after serving as the Assistant Chief in Arlington, Texas Police Department, where he had over 11 years of command level experience. During his tenure, he spearheaded a creation of a mentoring program for youth, which is again, one of the council's key priorities, which was a multidisciplinary program that significantly reduced crime rates and garnered national attention from the Department of Justice's COPS Office as a model of 21st century policing. Chief McGuire holds a doctorate in public administration and an MA and a bachelor's from Oklahoma State. We're really fortunate. I know Chief McGuire in his short time here, which is roughly a little more than 100 days. I think tonight he plans to talk a little bit about where we've been in 2024. Talk a little bit more about where we've been in the first quarter of 2025. Some of his listening sessions and discussions with the community wants to share some of the observations and input that he received there. As well as some direction as to where the department is headed. On a personal basis, Chief McGuire has been critical to our executive team. He's participated with all of our department director meetings at a significant level and has really brought us forward with an understanding of how to tie not just the individual department but tie inter-departmental teams together to really deal with some of the issues that we are confronted with whether they be in single apartment complexes or in sectors of our community. So with that I'm going to turn it over to him. I think he's got a team with him tonight but I know it's his presentation. I'm looking forward to it. Thank you, Mr. Manager. Again, Tarr, McGuire, police chief. So Madam Vice Mayor online and council, I am truly honored to present the State of Public Safety on behalf of the men and the women of the Alexander Virginia Police Department and our community. Present with me today are members of my command staff. There are also members that are in our assembly today that are representative of the Police Chiefs Advisory Board, our employee Advisory Board. We also have Dr. Cynthia Lomb from the evidence-based crime policy at George Mason University. Today not only presents an opportunity to speak before you about the state of public safety, but it also affords an opportunity to highlight the great work that the men and the women of the APD has done over this past year and what we are doing today. There are several key takeaways that I want you to understand today. Our presentation will focus on several areas, a summary of public safety efforts in 2024, the execution and outcomes of my 100-day plan, ongoing public safety efforts, and I will discuss a framework for a five-year public safety plan. But here are the key takeaways from me. I hope that you understand that we're doing the work every single day. I want to highlight some of the changes that we've seen in our crime rates. Again, I want to take specific examples of actions that we have taken to outline to better our community thus far. And then again I want you to understand the tenants, not only of evidence-based policing that I will speak about, but how that will overlay with our public safety plan. Now service delivery is the core of police operations. Since 2019 the APD has responded to over 416,000 calls for service, averaging over 69,000 calls for service per year. In 2020 the Department experienced reductions in calls for service due to the pandemic, but we see a year-to-year increase from 23 to So 24 upward. Reflected into where the agency was in 2019. In 2024, we responded to over 72,000 calls for service. And it was an increase over approximately 1200 calls for service from the previous year. In comparison to 2023 to 2024, it had a increase in in Oval Crime. In review of all major crime categories, property crimes were up by 9.5% year over year. But the primary contributor to that increase were lost in the shoplifting. Although there was an increase in the property crime category, the city experienced reductions in robbery and stolen vehicles. In further review, we did see significant progress in the reduction in violent crime. I would like to say that our homicides were down by over 50 percent and our salts were down by average of 6 percent. There's a lot of correlation between our crime reductions, efforts in technology. You heard me talk about this a lot in the community, uh, kind of moving forward, and you're kind of hearing me highlighting it as a tool to help us solve crimes and cases. Simply stated, the technology that we have at APD is a force multiplier. Eight in the turns of crime, creating investigative leads ultimately bringing justice to our community. An example of technology is the department's use of license plate readers, common referred to as LPR, or Flock Safety Cameras. Systems use license plate characters to compare against behaviors of interest that are stolen or wanted persons when a match is identified or officers are alerted. The further more going to the use of these camera systems, every single day in our community, people are entering from other areas of Virginia, they're entering from the DC metro area, they're entering from PG County, and our officers know, due to this technology, when someone enters into our city if the vehicle is stolen or if they are wanted. The AP's, the use of technology is accountable guided by strong policy and ensuring we meet legislative mandates. So for example, House Bill 2724 limits the use of flat cameras for investigative purposes only and identifies data retention's limited to 30 days unless there is an investigative lead. In 2024 technology aided the APD in making approximately 200 arrests, locating 108 stolen vehicles and recovering 11 missing persons and removing illegal firearms off of our streets. With the technology as a tool the the collection of evidence and cooperation from our public, our clearance rates for violent crimes are above the national average. For example, just eight days ago, our officers received a notification of a stolen vehicle entering our city. The vehicle was associated with an attempted murder out of the state of Maryland. Officers initiated a felony traffic stop locating the wanted subject, taking him into custody as he was armed with the weapon. If the officers did not receive the technology notification, it is highly likely that the suspect would have continued to be a danger not only to our community but others. This is an example of the countless notifications that APD receives daily within the increase in safety for our community. This is the type of work that our cops are doing on the streets every single day to make our community safe. Critical to the reduction of crime is roadway safety. It's equally important. I want to show that the U. of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, reports that between 30,000 to 39,000 persons have died in fatal crashes on American roadways. From 2019 to 2023, Virginia averaged 910 fatal crashes annually. Critical to traffic enforcement of public education and effective enforcement. The ultimate goal is to change driving behavior. In 2024, the APD initiated over 10,000 traffic stops. It should all be 7,800 citations and over 2,300 warnings to our residents and people that visit in our city. There were three fatal crashes in 2024. The department continues to be committed to campaign zeroes removed for in 2025. Our traffic enforcement efforts are discussed on a weekly basis, where identifying high crash locations within our city, and we're utilizing data and evidence to deploy our resources. And at the core of our daily mission are the relationship with those we encounter within our communities. Relational police and community engagement is a cornerstone of not only building public trust, but it's also the cornerstone of working with citizens to gain trust for crime reductions. This past year the APD attended over 125 community engagement events, facilitated 12 community cookouts, 140 contact with businesses and property owners throughout the city of Alexandria. And most important is the manager pointed out we are highly engaged with the youth in our community by highlighting several youth programs. You know key key highlights are our national participation and national light out. Our citizens, police academy, where citizens come into our organization, they learn about our department, but they also share exchanges of ideas. In the end of the year, which I appreciate the most when I first arrived here, was the opportunity to attend with the shop with the cop event. As we helped those that were less fortunate in our community. We were continued to boast the community engagement in 2025 and as we're pouring to the community our employees deserve the best high level training to complete our public safety mission. Training not only educates our staff we contemporary're contemporary police and practices, but it also illustrates our commitment to employee development. In 2024, 23 employees participate in graduated and national leadership training programs. Some of those are key programs, such as the FBI Academy, our national institutes, and also SMIP, and APD facilitated training training classes equate into approximately 445 hours for employees in the region. Major training focused on de-escalation, emotional intelligence and crisis intervention. My goal for this organization is to be leading, learning and self-correcting and a top-tier training affords us to do that. Now, the City Manager said I'm the new police chief. It doesn't feel like that anymore, Mr. Manager. I assumed this position in November of 2024, and it was important for me to quickly identify key priorities that would give boys, not only to our employees, but also give boys to our community members to define measurables to evaluate our department and assess how we better engage the community. Those priorities were initially communicated through a hundred-day plan. And as promised this week, those outcomes will be shared. I want to take a few moments to share what the feedback was from internally from our police officers but also share what the feedback was from the community. You know when talking about what do we do well our officers felt like we excelled at community engagement that they have come rotary amongst themselves in their peers and ultimately that the department works very hard and partner together with the community as relates to solving crime. The community share similar views that APD is responsive and timely to cause for service that they have trust in the department and regarding areas of improvement, employees share their desire to improve work-life balance and shift work, departmental communication and investments and employee wellness. The community communicated a desire to see officers, how did there behookers more, and increased foot patrols in communities, increased traffic enforcement and continual efforts to reduce crime and engage youth in our community. And so I just want to take a few moments, just to highlight some of the key outcomes and the work that we've been doing over these past 100 plus days. You know, internally we have set down with our executive team and we're starting to look at every major area of the department. We're looking at our fiscal management areas and ensuring that we're taking the tax dollars and maximizing them from a budgetary standpoint in the way that we should. The second thing is we take a critical review of all of our police units. And we're looking at workload assessments of our personnel to ensure that we're maximizing our efforts and public safety efforts to our community. And what I'm most proud of is when you look in this room and you see members of my executive team, they have worked thoroughly and hard to implement a crime review process. Every single week we are sitting down as a team. We're looking at crime trends with our mid-level managers and our executive staff and we're identifying locations through the utilization of data and practices and making informed decisions to deploy our resources, but also to solve crime. And we're seeing positive results from that. When you talk about workplace equity, many weeks ago you all saw a STEM-to-FOR Amer and reaffirmed our commitment to the 30-30 initiative. But it's greater than that. It's important that we look at our policies and our internal policies and ensure that we are not only being equitable in our practices, but also in our promotional processes and our hiring processes. So I'm very proud of the team for that commitment to that. Right now we've been in significant discussion and I hope by the end of the month that we will pilot a new shift for our officers and attribute to them to come in and about work life balance. And as I stated earlier there are members of a police chief advisory board that represents with our community members of civil rights leaders, faith leaders, those of our medical community and our business community. And most importantly to me, we have also a advisory board of our offices inside the department, line level employees, it gives me an opportunity to hear directly from them about where their concerns are. I want to pause for a few more because this is very important to me and it's very important to the organization. And very important I continue to have community and counsel support on this. Now, officer wellness is so serious. When I was a young police officer and I was working the streets going to tragic incidents, I was just told, hey, this is what police work is, move on to the next area. But research has taught us that officers are exposed to three times to four times as much traumatic incidents as the average person in our communities. And we must take a serious approach to not on the leveraging, the benefits that the city has right now for officer wellness, but to expand those areas for our police officers. I think the bottom line is is that the health here that our officers are, the more better served that they are when they come to work and they serve our community. And so it's important that we focus on that. The last thing I'll say about just kind of the outcomes of our plan, the 100 day plan is, you know, you all talk about all the time and it's so important that we invest in our youth. I know we have a mirrored of mentoring programs within this city, but I also understand the importance of police officers meeting our youth where they are at within our community. And so over probably a month ago, the last several weeks, we are piloting a program at George Washington Middle School, the AIM program that speaks to the Alexandria Initiative on Midsrack. And we have officers in our department that are meeting with young men in the junior high schools over the next nine weeks, and we hope to expand that until the summer. And so why is that important? I said when I was sworn in as police chief, when our police officers go to communities, I want them to see the officers within themselves and that comes through building relationships and generationally it starts to build those relationships with youth in our communities. Again, we will publish the 100-day plan this week. While I'm proud of our efforts, I would also like to highlight our commitment to crime reduction and community engagement and data driven policing. I'm a proud to announce not only that this photo shows our person sitting down and having discussions, but we have implemented a 60 day crime plan. That crime is indicative of predictors of when we see increases in crime. Again, it's we're employing evidence-based policing processes. So when you drive down Keene Street and you see our offices with their lights on in hot spots for temporary amounts of time when you see them exiting or vehicles are walking your stores now they're communicating with store owners whether some of their top items being stolen. When you see them in some of our other high-rise housing areas in our communities. Most recently, looking at the project that we did in Mason and Van Dorn through a Sarah project, that is evidence-based policing. This process right now, we've identified six micro areas within the city. I will say this time and time again, policing tactics have changed. They have to continue to change right and is important that we be precise and we implement precision practices focusing on persons that are in our community to bring harm to individuals and so we're engaging communities in these six micro areas throughout the city and we're yielding we're seeing positive results thus far. A key indicator of success is not only the collaboration of police and bureaus within our department, with our hands on deck effort, with focus prosecution, with repeat offenders, but we're also seeing the efforts and the representation of our crime numbers. Year over year in our city right now, and for the first time that I've been able to equate, crime is down overall, at least by 25%. As you can see by the screen, our violent crimes are down by 43%, our property crimes are down by 23, I'm sorry, 43% our property crimes are down by 23%, and our nuisance and crimes are by 36% overall our crime is down This first quarter of the year About 25% and it's because of the hard work of our officers It's because of our community collaboration and we still got work to do and we're gonna keep moving forward You know, I also said after being sworn in as police chief that public safety outcomes cannot be sold based on crime reduction and programming alone. We know that we will see increases and decreases in crime and we have to continue to work toward improving that area. But the half safe communities it takes collaboration and co-production and understanding that every neighborhood is unique with desired outcomes. Simply stated police cannot safeguard communities alone. It's everyone's responsibility. Police departments that are successful in sustaining crime reductions and improving the quality of life of residents know one thing. Police chiefs know that partnerships are criminologists, and those that have extensive backgrounds and police research, play a significant role in the aid and police agencies, be a safe community. With that in mind, Dr. Long is over my right shoulder, and she's from the center for evidence-based crime policy. And she will be a partner of APD. Working in partnership with Dr. Long, we have continually shared historical public safety challenges and we have began to evaluate long-term crime trends with the goal of developing a five-year public safety plan. Court to this evaluation includes building a framework to develop evidence-based policing in the deployment of our officers, policing strategies, community engagement efforts and evaluation. So I often get asked chief what is evidence-based policing? So I want to provide you a form of definition. It's an approach to policing they use as scientific research, data, and empirical evidence to guide the system making and policing practices. Under this framework, we will employ three action items that I want to leave with you. A first is collecting analyze crime data trends and patterns to inform our police operations. Through crime analysis, we will deploy personnel in programming and continually assess the effectiveness of our tactics and programs to determine what works, what does not work and how we can improve this can be made. The second thing I will share is effective enforcement. Through focus deterrence, this means that we will focus on resources that are directly needed. identifying people who are prolific and law violations, and working with public safety partners through effective prosecution. The other is relationship building and engagement are critical to our success. Again, public safety is co-produced. We will work to develop community crime watch groups throughout our city, and provide the red communication with our officers a geographical basis. That way that those that are in our communities are working with our cops to not only identify problems but work through problems solving together. And then taking these steps APD will establish metrics with GMU, not only centered around crime but also public perception and also integrating feedback loops. As I close, I want to share this. Every single day, the men and women that serve this community go out and risk their lives. They do the work. They do the work in collaboration with our non-swarm personnel. And although I'm the chief, the critic goes to my command staff and officers that are doing the work. Without them, we would not be the brightest police department of that people talk about and send this community. The last thing I'll say is I really appreciate this mayor and council for your support, not only our officers, but your support for our community. Are you always here to me say this? My goal is one Alexandra and one APD. And thank you for your time and I yield any questions. Well, thank you, Chief, for your time. We really appreciate you taking the time tonight to not only walk us through kind of what your journey has been so far, but what you're hearing, but also what we can expect and how we will work to continue to serve and keep our community safe. And I also want to thank you for giving a shout out to the men and women at APD. I know for me whether it's through ride-alongs or just seeing them out in the community, it has been such an honor to interact with your team and your staff and to witness their professionalism, their dedication and their commitment to service. I wanna open it up to my colleagues to questions. Councilman Chapman and then Councilman Gary. Thank you Madam Mayor. Chief, I appreciate the update on kind of the first 100 days. first 100 days, I think I was really, and we've already had our kind of one-on-one meeting about it as well. I think your presentation here highlighted for me, again, the portion about officer wellness. As has been said by many achieve and you've seen said this yourself, Many folks in APD are meeting people on a very bad day. They're on. And so, you know, officers are responding to that and having to sometimes take that home as well. And I'd love to talk to you and command staff as we look to put together our next package for the legislative agenda about how we can talk to the state about needing additional resources, not just in Alexandria for officer wellness, but across the Commonwealth. I think this is something that most likely is shared amongst the localities in various departments. And so how we can kind of build up the support for that around how the wealth, whether in the general similar or otherwise, I think might be an opportunity for us to approach the state to ask for those supports and resources and partnership as well. So thank you for bringing that as one of the main portions and points of your presentation tonight. It's so I appreciate you making that point. You know, I know that, you know, there are legislative items that probably support some type of wellness program through grants. And so we're constantly seeking those opportunities through application. What I will say is that on the initial point, like many other grants, they probably seek an initial pilot or additional resources, but to your point, I think we have to kind of seek legislative support. There are national programs that are defined by legislative support in states that support officer wellness programs where there is funding for police departments. I appreciate your bringing that point up. I know it's important not only to me, but it's important to our officers and community. Before I go to Councilman McGuirey, I did have a question on this. You mentioned that officers have shared ideas for how we can expand our current wellness offerings. Can you just share a little bit about what some of those ideas are or things you think we should be thinking about? Yeah, so you know, one one thing I've been trying to focus on is pushing decision making down and you know, we established a wellness group and some things that the wellness group highlighted, you know, some some departments have, you know, internal clinical psychologist, some departments have kind of kind of workout. that come aside the organization right to assist with the wellness and the working out of personnel. And what some of those programs have saw was not only improvement in the officer's well being, but they saw them get off of medication right because a lot of times shift work is very long and you don't get the opportunities that you may desire of a working person to go to the gym. And then I just think it's just the the internal policies of the police department, especially when persons are exposed to traumatic incidents. And so the wellness group will kind of be working with myself and my staff to bring in persons to you know know, share these particular kind of presentations of what those opportunities are. And then I think we'll have to kind of evaluate it based off what's the best fit for the organization kind of move forward in the future. So I always share with people when you think about, I also want to think about it as mind, body, and spirit, rights or mental health, their physical health health and your spiritual health. And I think that that's what we have been seeing you merge in public safety. Thank you. Councilman Aguirre. Thank you Madam Mayor. And really not a question, just a little bit of commentary. First of all, I agree with the comments made by my college Councilman Chaman, around mental health, but definitely very important because it's not just retention, but we also want to make sure that our officers once they decide to retire, that they're retiring in a good life, right, and able to retire healthy. Also, I really like that you highlighted some of our diversity, especially when diversity at this time is kind of under attack in this country, and you know study after study has shown that diversity just brings a more efficient and better working system, no matter what it is, whether it's the police, the council, local government, private sector, it doesn't matter. So thank you for highlighting that. I'm also going to be looking forward to how we're looking at the use of data, not just for deployment, but also looking at deployment and how we're interacting with our community members. And I really enjoy when I'm in the community with an officer and our community members know who they are, right? They're, hey, officers, someone, so you know, how's it going? I was one of the some of the interactions that I enjoy the most when I see out in the community. And lastly, again, going back to data, I think this is just going to be really, really important. We take a a lot of pride here in Alexandria with being transparent, being accountable. And I know with your leadership, some additional things that will be publishing, as well as sharing the dashboards with a better understanding of how that works throughout our community. So just a lot of things that I think have been a long time coming and I'm very excited to be able to see. So keep moving forward Chief, where we're here to support you. Thank you sir. Councilman on Newbie. Thank you Madam Mayor. Certainly echo everything the mayor said. Thank you so much for your service for everyone the APD service and dedication. You guys keep a safe everyday, putting your lives on the line. We really appreciate it and grateful for that. I have a couple of questions. And when we had the debrief yesterday, you highlighted two important things. I'd like you to highlight publicly one about protecting minorities from hate crimes in Alexandria. The steps you're taking, special religious minorities. And the other one is the work life balance, how you're trying to make that better for our officers, which I think is a great thing because it would also help with recruitment, hopefully. And if you can also, when you talk about work life balance, tell us how that currently compares to the jurisdictions around us. Yes, sir, thank you. So, you know, the state has annually kind of supported funding for religious institutions as a way to kind of hate crime. Right now we have been working to strengthen our partnership with the Anti-Deformation League and as we produce that money to our communities that support security at their religious institutions, and also support security features around their institutions, we also want to provide education to them as well. And so not only are we anticipating doing that, but we have a draft policy on mandatory reporting of hate crimes and hate incidents and so we are kind of working to finalize that policy to ensure that it's replicative of our state legislature and so I'm excited about that because number one what it does is say that it's important to our community if you look several several years back, hate crimes increase in the United States of America by 200% and with us being in the area and the reason that we are in, it is very important that we document hate incidents because they can be predictive factors associated with hate crimes. And so we know that every single day, our department is analyzing and looking at emerging threats in our community. And I believe that we saw that begin to surface around the nation this year. And so we take that very seriously and we have to ensure that number one, even if it does not rise to the level of a crime, that we have the tools and the data and the intelligence so our detectors can make informed decisions so they can seek effective prosecution. The second thing is that our kind of talked about this and the key outcomes in the region. Officers are probably working 12 hour shifts due to being understaffed. You know, there are agencies that are surrounding us, that are down 100 plus officers or more. I'm happy that we're not in that position or condition, but we do have to define what work like balance is for our officers. It's normal in our region to have two weekends off a month and then also have shift overlap. And so we're trying to work to sustain some of those measures. I'm working with the police union right now. We also have a patrol advisory committee. They presented some recommendations. And so we're looking at our resources to ensure that we can effectively execute some of the things that they are recommending and again, we're going to move the agency forward and so you know that is something that is important Councilman as you stated and it's something that we're working through that I highlighted in the outcome. So I appreciate you bringing that comment Councilman Green Thank you Madam Mayor and thank you for the overview chief. We're very happy to have you here and look forward to a continued relationship. And I look forward to even more in-depth data. I guess the next go around. I think you're coming. Are you coming quarterly or? I'm not too late to turn. Okay. All All right. All right. Well, I look forward to additional information. Um, my question revolves, um, around the schools and we get constant questions about safety in and around our schools. I'll just like for you to talk a little bit about, um, you know, the relationship that you're building with them and just your overview of of safety in our souls currently. Yes, so you know I know that there has been long-term conversation about our schools here in the City of Alexandria. One of the fortunate things was is that I had an opportunity to not only visit several schools but I also had an opportunity to walk through the high school, right, both campuses with the superintendent. And I'll be honest, which I was truly impressed. I was truly impressed with the ecosystem of resources that they have to support students. And then, you know, there have been things, you know, back and forth in the media from time to time as it relates to incidents at the schools. Here's what I do know. I do know that that truancy is not a crime, right? And I also know that, you know, as the social contract on policing has changed, right, the social contract and schools have changed. And what I mean by that is when I was a kid and you were out walking, right? And you were caught on caught, true. And those days a cop would pick you up, put you in the car and drive you back to the school right and drop you off and kind of report you. I know there's been complexity right between transitioning between campuses and we have had cops at the Bradley Shopping Center right at and then McDonald's and that has not really been forthcoming with the outcomes that the community desires. And so what I will say is that, you know, working with the City Manager here, talking to the school superintendent as we get through this school year. Number one is important that we work on collaboration, not only collaboration, but we identify key recommendations. I think that have a shared responsibility based off of a role and responsibility. The other thing is that we have SROs in schools and I know that there has been some indifference based off of their roles and responsibilities. But I'm a firm believer that our schools are a community. And I'm a firm believer that our SROs are a part of that community. And I have an expectation that they will work to be a relationship with our students, whether it's a positive contact or if there's a crime that has occurred, although it's something negative, it does not have to be punitive. And so, you know, if I overlay that with the opportunities to be a mentor in programs in our schools, to me, it addresses socially, emotionally, and well-being of our students, with the understanding that we cannot save every student. But if we can impact several students, and we can put them on the trajectory, then that influence of not only web policing means in those schools through community engagement that we can see a reduction in some of the incidents that we've seen in schools. There are going to be incidents that happen, right? I think that that was most ultimately important is that we have ecosystems and ethos in place to address those issues but they were also providing the emotional support for our students as necessary. And so I'm committed to that. I would just highlight this. Not only is public safety a school issue, but also reducing threats as a school issue. And today's time is important that we have preparedness for all of those things, which is why I'm happy that in the last couple of weeks, right? There was a tabletop exercise as relates to active shooter incidents and threats that have released our schools, and they gave us the first opportunity to create collaboration, right with ACPS and our police department and our other emergency management institutions. So I refute that our police department is not a part of the schools. I expect our SROs to be building relationships with our students. This is they would in the community. And again, just reaneraving that when they see them, I want them to see us. And so as you as you said, just about crime, we've got work to do in collaboration with the schools, but I know it's something that we can get accomplished. And we've got identify plan to do it and recommendations to be accountable and be held to. Thanks, Mike. Thank you, Chief. Your team for being here, I appreciate the information and very happy to see the chart showing such as the sharp decline in 2025. Let's hope that that trend continues as we go into the rest of the year. One issue that's been raised by some members of the community to members of council has been some of the racing at night in certain intersections and streets on the city without you know saying anything you shouldn't say but it for the ears of those who might want to engage in such activities could you give us a sense of how the department is trying to get a handle on that. So the first thing I will point out is just what you stated the experience is that you know in the of the night, right, that cars pop up and they show up unexpectedly, and they try to take over intersections, and sometimes they do take over intersections, right, and it blocks officers from getting in and addressing issues. I'll be very candid on this. There is no wind and us chasing around car clubs around the city. But I mean, it creates danger for our officers, right? And it enforces interactions that I believe that are not necessary. Number one, I think to address the issue, intelligence is going to be very important. What I do know is that whether it's a car club or whether it's a racing car club or some of these groups that take over intersections. I write normally that they post information on social media online. Historically police departments have sought and observed these type of incidents and they know by intelligence that they can maybe forecast when they are coming. And then when you look at the region, right, that intelligence is important because they move from city to city to city to city. And so that's number one intelligence is going to be important. I think the second thing is that you have to make the environment uncomfortable for them to engage in, right? And what I mean by that is that is that normally, they may pull up and they may go into a park, right? And so it's important to maybe have some type of barriers where parks close at night, right? So they can't enter those particular areas. And that is kind of like a forced multiplier for deterrence. The third thing that I would just kind of offer up is that we, we, when we have knowledge of that, we have to have a strategy to guide them out of our city. And sometimes that includes being proactive by blocking roadways and taking them, guiding them back on the freeway, but also trying to be able to be very public about it and post on social media. Hey, APD, we're here, right? We know you're coming and that provides preventative communication to them. And so can I say it will not happen that would be very challenging, but can we build intelligence and reach out to the organizer of these events and communicate, you know, what we will not allow in our city? Yes, we can do that. Can we employ intelligence as resources and collaboration with our surrounding agencies? Yes, we can do that. And then finally, I'll say strategically, we have to ensure that we're taking measures to impact them from not coming into our city, but also keeping our office safe. So what I do know is that this is not a new issue, right? It's a nationwide issue, but collaboration with other cities, similar to the last event. There was kind of ongoing communication amongst jurisdictions, but you can't always be the person to the chase. And so we're working with that. We're working with our other surrounding agencies from Fairfax County, the Prince William County. Their their impact in North Virginia all over. And sometimes it's like there are, you know, pop up events, but there's something that we know we need to be working on. I appreciate that answer and I appreciate you highlighting the sort of pursuit angle of it. I think it's important for the public to understand that you all have very strict rules about when you will or will not pursue somebody. And you don't want to create a danger to the public that doesn't already exist by pursuing somebody who hasn't committed a violent crime or something of that nature. Yes, sir. And I think the other thing to point out is, you know, some of these vehicles are high-speed vehicles. So it's a Dodge Charger that may be a souped up Dodge Charger. I would draw a parallel that is like at times a police officer trying to pursue a motorcycle on the freeway. This doesn't make sense. You're not going to catch up to what's important is that you document the information and we retain it and leave it for follow-up for our detectives. So I appreciate you bringing that up. Thank you very much. Okay, I have a couple questions. Yes, ma'am. I'll promise I'll be quick. Early in the presentation, you talked about the work that APD is doing to identify high-crash corridors or intersections. I'm just wondering, I know recently we've provided some grants to transportation environmental services and some other staff within the city around similar efforts. Can you just talk a little bit about how APD is coordinating with the other departments involved in Vision Zero? So I know we've done that historically right over time. And I think we need to kind of work in to improve in that area from a collaboration standpoint. One thing that I will highlight is I've extended some invitation. I will continue to extend some invitation other city departments to our weekly crime review meeting because we're not only looking at crime our traffic captain Reports out on our deployment strategies in those particular areas So for example, you know year over year from last year crashes were down. So I patients were up But we know that when someone loses their life on the roadway, that is very tragic. So I think that that's something that we're going to work to improve upon. I've already been talking to other persons, inviting them to our weekly crime review meeting. As relates to traffic crash and I don't look at crashes on the roadway, but I think it's important for us to forecast when we have high density traffic to speak to when those crashes occur. I think that there have been improvements made in city lighting because driving through our city, traffic does get backed up. But many of our fatalities that are current within our city are pedestrian related. And so again, I think that's an area for us to improve upon and we're trying to work to do that because I think it was a problem within the last couple of years we have zero fighters. No, I really appreciate you lifting this up as an area for more collaboration. I think as we have staff out there conducting walk audits, being able to take kind of the lived experience of pedestrians within our community, combining that with the technical expertise of some of our traffic and engineering staff, and then the first-hand accounts and information that your staff is seeing as well. I think putting all those things together will help us really meet the goals that we're seeking to and ensure that we keep a community where there's zero fatalities. The other question I had, I too really appreciated you putting up the first quarter snapshot and the recognition that crime overall is down. I think at the same time, we still hear from many in our community that they don't feel that. I think every one of us has probably been tagged or received an email about the crime in the city. So I guess I'm just wondering if you could speak to, like what is your plan or staff's plan for communicating that information and help communicating sort of the true state of safety within our city? Yeah, so you know, I acknowledge that crime is down, but for me there's two things, right? There's the fear of crime and the reality of crime. And if you've been the victim of a crime regardless of what the crime numbers say right that impacts your life personally and sometimes it has traumatic effects. You often hear me talk about geographical policing and work into a sign-off just to beat daily right to not only ensure that they build relationship with residents but they're hearing from them directly. I do have a goal once we're able to establish a public safety plan. I know that that's service, you know, council, warm and green say when we're gonna see you again, chief. I'll come by anytime you all would like for me too. But I want our captains, our lieutenants, and our sergeants, right, in those communities, kind of conducting similar to listing sessions, but providing public safety updates about what are going on in those particular geographical areas. In the interim, I think that we have to utilize our public safety platforms more to connect with people. But I'm committed to us improving in those areas, but I believe it's going to come through geographic policing to where we take these numbers to the community and they can ask our questions and also give us their direct experiences. That'll be a part of our public safety plan. Great. Now I echo probably where councilman Green is going with this. I think it's great to have a plan. It's another to see to see the results. And I think being able to have, I don't know if you talked about metrics, new metrics being created from the plan, being able to have enhancements to our current dashboards or communications to that work, communicating those. But also, like you said, communicating the stories and seeing people to really change the perception as well. The last thing I had was just a comment and it relates to your points about geographic policing. I really appreciated the example you gave about officers on King Street. I know we are really fortunate as a community to have such a thriving and unique group of women business owners up and down and throughout Old Town, many boutique owners who have only one or two employees. We continue to get emails and calls from them that they too have been victims of larceny and other crimes. And so I guess it's just a request that as your team is out up in a long King Street, if they can make an effort to go in and out of those businesses and build those relationships and even help, and we've received some requests request that they're even interested in training. Like how do you set up your store? How do you make it safer when you just have one employee? So wherever we can build partnerships in that way, I think that would be great. but they're even interested in training. Like how do you set up your store? How do you make it safer when you just have one employee? So wherever we can build partnerships in that way, I think that would be great. No matter, Mayor, we will absolutely do that. And I'll share a fun and store with you. Count as we adapt to change in the organization. I share it in the last crime review meeting that the kind of complaints that I want is that we're seeing too much, right? And I spoke to early because I got that complaint last week from a business owner. And so, you know, we're going to continue to work to build those relationships as absolutely important until your point, matching what I stated earlier that we've got to identify other successes than crime reduction because people feel how they feel and their feelings are based off of their experiences and so we're absolutely committed to building those relationships in the community. Thank you. Any further questions? Okay well with that I don't think there's a voter anything for this item we just want to thank you again and thank you to all of them and women who are sitting here with you. I see several throughout our chambers. So thank you for your time and for the work that went into also helping and supporting the presentation. But thank you, Chief. All right. Madam Clerk, next item. Or reports and or presentations by members of city council. Council Councilman Gary. Thank you Madam Mayor. I will try to keep it quick. So wanted to give a shout out to our HR department and the leadership panel, the fourth annual women and leadership panel that the city hosted at the Nanny Lee Center. It was very, very informative. And Director Gordon was also very humorous. So very much enjoyed it. And I hope everyone that attended was able to glean at least some vital information that will help them in their career paths as they're moving forward. The senior services had their gala. So I just want to say congrats to senior services of Alexandria for another successful gala. On the 31st, I was able to stop by Alexandria Renew for the ribbon cutting for the 5th floor where we are moving some of our transportation environmental services staff to and just goes to show the further collaboration between both the city and Alex Renew. So thank you again to Alex Renew for opening up space for our TNES staff. On the second, AEDP had a town hall around navigating the economic challenges for businesses amid the federal policies that are occurring. I know the mayor gave some opening remarks and Councilman Chapman was able to join us as well. Very interesting and always very good to hear directly from folks being impacted, especially right now our businesses and what they're with their fears or their concerns or the commentary is and how we can try and support them and moving forward. And also the connections that are made just by showing up to some of those things because there were a couple of business owners that connected with each other and saw that there would be some synergy. Also a big shout out right across the street from City Hall. Friends to lovers bookstore has reopened after a devastating fire. They have a bigger, brighter, better new space. If you haven't had a chance to go check it out, check it out. They've got some really great books and they're going to be having some really fun activities happening there as well. So one more time, shout out to friends to lovers bookstore. That same night was able to stop by spring to action for the kickoff party. So just want to remind everybody that we have spring to action tomorrow. Look at everybody for some confirmation. Spring to action is tomorrow. So we had the kickoff party last week. So everybody was being able to donate all the way up through the ninth. So please, if you have a favorite nonprofit or organization in the city, please make sure to look them up and spring to action to be able to support them. On the fourth, I was able to stop by the Taste of Literacy hosted by the English Empowerment Center. It's really great to be able to see some folks that I hadn't seen in a while. This is a group that I've been working with for a long time and just scheduling conflicts and allow to show up. But again, English Empowerment Center does a lot of really great work with our immigrant communities and helping to teach English skills. So thank you again for another wonderful taste of literacy. And then I was blown away that night. I was able to stop by the high school at the main campus on King Street for International Night. We had a wide array of fashion, of culture, of music, of dance, song, poetry. It just really, really highlighted the rich diversity of not just our high school but our community and how beautiful it is. So shout out to all the students that helped put that together and that participated in international night. On the fifth, I stopped by the 160th commemoration of the Brushen River Branch Hospital along with the Vice Mayor. There's a lot of really cool stories that they were able to find out because there were ledgers that actually say, and sorry, this is a hospital during the Civil War times. So the ledgers would actually say where social came from, what battle they were in, how they were injured, if they survived or not, and then where they were marching off to afterwards. So really, really great bit of history there. As always, Alexandria Rich, Rich in history. So another example there. After that, I wrote over to Alex Alfred Street Baptist Church because our police review board was hosting an informational session. So again, I'm really good to be able to hear directly from individuals about how they feel about what we're doing here in the city. So thank you to both the police review board and our independent police auditor for putting that together and listening to our residents. And then I rounded the night off on the fifth at George Washington Middle School to enjoy a wonderful wonderful wonderful play, The Crucible, which a lot of commentary that is actually significant to today as well. Shout out to Emmett and all the other students who brought together this wonderful play. And lastly, today I was joined with the mayor and I don't know if anybody else was able to make it down to Ben and Jerry's for free scoop day. But we were scooping ice cream for a cause and the cause for today down in Old Town was for child family and network centers. So really great group here in the city, CFNC, doing a lot of really great educational work for early ed, which is good dovetail into just mentioning, I got selected to be a part of the first cohort for the Virginia Hunt State Fellow, policy fellows, and it is talking about basically education from cradle to career, and our first session was held down in Richmond where we were specifically talking about early education. And lastly, my last plug because next week is the last day, Texas, Texas, Texas. If you have not had chance to do your taxes and you qualify, the city will do your taxes for free. I myself was able to participate and enjoy that service. Una vez más, si usted no ha hecho sus taxes para este año. Y si usted califica, la ciudad se lo hace gratuitamente. And with that, that is my report, Madam Mayor. Well, congratulations on your fellowship. And to anyone who doesn't know about Pennsylvania Gearies, secret ice cream scooping skills, you were so good at it. If somebody literally told him that is a perfect cone, and if somebody who scooped ice cream for years, I didn't get that compliment. So I feel I feel some type of way about it. But it was a lot of fun. And I think, oh no, it just ended. I was going to say people could go. But you just missed it. Are there other or report Councilman Green? Thank you, Madam Mayor. I just want to say congratulations to all the organizers and volunteers of the Alexander the Dog Walk, which was last Saturday. It was such a good time. And it gets bigger and better every year. And we're just so thankful that we have activities like that for our four-legged friends and families to attend. So thank you to them and I want to give a huge shout out to the seventh grade AVID class at Jefferson Houston K-8. AVID is such a wonderful career in college readiness program that really encompasses some of the best and brightest in Alexandria City public schools and the kids are just amazing to talk to and get to know. And I'm very thankful that they invite me back each and every year. So a huge shout out to Ms. Richardson's seventh grade, Avit Class, at J.H. Thank you. Other oral reports. Okay, Madam Clerk, next item. Consideration of City Council schedule. Okay, I'm going to call. I know Vice Mayor Bagley had a conflict she wanted to flag on the schedule. So I'm going to turn her over to her. Thank you, Mayor Gaskin. I just wanted to, we had, I think, tentatively calendar, May 22nd for our next town hall. But I think there is a conflict that I assume many of us are going to have with that date. So I wanted to flag since it's already on our calendar, either indicating tonight that we're gonna look for a new date and revisit that perhaps at our next meeting and see if we can update that town all day and just let the public know that the May 22nd date they see on the calendar is likely to be pushed out another week or two until we can find the new date. I'm happy to have more discussion on that tonight but I just just wanted to flag it for those who might have looked at the look ahead calendar. Other questions, comments? I think many of us know the conflict. So I guess I would ask staff if you could just circulate another date for the Maytown Hall, and then we'll make sure we identify that in enough time to get that notice. Okay, if that is there a motion to accept the calendar? All right, there's been a motion in a second. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Any opposed? All right, the eyes have it. Madam Clerk. Oh, I think it's a jerk. Is there a motion to adjourn? So, Bo. There has been There has been a motion by Bixfair Bagley, a second by Councilman Chapman to adjourn tonight's meeting. All those in favor say aye. Any opposed, say nay. Ies have it. Have a good evening everyone.