Coraggio Consulting
Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Health and Safety Committee, Tuesday, June 13, 2023

Date: Tuesday, June 13, 2023
Place: Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, Virginia
Length: 1h 24m (video)
Official meeting video (Fairfax County): https://video.fairfaxcounty.gov/player/clip/2921
Official Board of Supervisors page (Fairfax County): https://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/boardofsupervisors/

Machine transcript (speech-to-text) produced by Coraggio Consulting. Not an official county record. Names and numbers may be misspelled; check the video at the timestamp before quoting.
Speech-to-text: whisper.cpp, model large-v3-turbo. Produced 2026-11-03. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:00:04] all right good afternoon i hope everyone had a good lunch break we are back today for the health and human services committee meeting um we do i think have a pretty exciting agenda today um we will be starting off with prosa which is the parks recreation open space and access report I'm very excited that we have with us Park Director Jay Cole and Stephanie Cornejo from Long Range Planning from FCPA.

[00:00:40] We will also have a presentation from Tom Barnett and Jill Clark on Fairfax County's extreme heat response, and I know that's been an ongoing process. And really appreciate the feedback and support and advocacy from many of our main advocates in the county, making sure that we take some of what's been very effective in our hypothermia programs and see what can be done with our extreme heat programs, especially as we're seeing more of that these days.

[00:01:09] And then at the end, we will hear from Deputy County Executive Chris Leonard a little update on what's upcoming for our fall HHS meeting, both on the Medicaid unwinding, the preparation that has already happened and is happening in the county, as well as our continued work for children and adolescent mental health, which I know is our critical topics that we focus on here.

[00:01:34] We also focus on the Joint Skipped Committee that Supervisor Lesk and I serve on, and hopefully we'll adjourn at 2.45. So to that, let me turn it right over to the Park Authority, but first let me see, Chris Leonard, do you have any now opening comments?

[00:01:53] that's how we like it J Cole it's all you good I have to look at the clock good afternoon everyone we're really pleased to bring you our park recreation open space and access strategy this is born out of our strategic plan and it's our really phenomenal way of using data-driven analysis to determine how to provide our services how to develop parks to the best of our ability to be able to serve everyone, and I'll get into a little bit of practicality after Stephanie goes through the presentation, and I'll just turn it over to her.

[00:02:33] Thank you, Jay. So as Jay mentioned, we're spearheading PROSA because of the Park Recreation System Master Plan goals, the Park Authority Strategic Plan goals and objectives, and also to advance the County Strategic Plan priorities. And so with that in mind, PROSA is a strategy to improve a path forward for park access and also improve a balance of recreation experiences.

[00:02:54] And to get there, we'll identify gaps in 10-minute walk access to parks. We'll also identify the types of complete park experiences, that is to say the major experiences that residents and stakeholders enjoy in parks, such as active recreation, contemplative and passive recreation, social recreation.

[00:03:11] And we'll also examine habitat connectivity. And then we'll take all that data and factor it through an equity lens. And that is to say using demographic information and socioeconomic data to help analyze and prioritize needs and priorities. And then we'll look at these components a little bit more closely in a moment.

[00:03:30] We also would like to highlight there are two main phases of public engagement for the process strategy. Our first phase just wrapped up at the end of December, where we asked the communities about their values, understand the barriers that they experience and perceive when accessing parks, and then also about the park experiences that they enjoy, like, again, active recreation, passive experiences, enjoying nature, and other types of recreation.

[00:03:56] And one of our public engagement goals is to ensure that our engagement is capturing diverse voices in the community. So we've been hosting focus groups in between Phases 1 and Phase 2. And the second phase will take place in the coming weeks, in June, July, where we will release key draft excerpts of the process strategy and get public feedback on them.

[00:04:15] And core elements of our public engagement include our project website that hosts a lot of information, meeting recordings and other resources. We're hosting virtual community meetings and having community surveys. and we're also conducting in-person outreach across the county at community events one event in each board of supervisor district and then we're also continuing to promote our multilingual toolkit so we're including toolkits that are downloadable on our website and we're sharing with residents and stakeholders in the top four languages spoken of fairfax county and then we'll also continue to have our flyer and survey of it survey available in those languages so turning to

[00:04:54] our 10-minute walk analysis, our goal is to identify which households cannot and can access an FCPA park within a 10-minute walk from their home. So in fact, 52 residents can access one or more FCPA parks in that 10-minute walk time frame, meaning that 48% of residents do not and do not currently have the 10-minute walk access. We know this is a national best practice and standard and will identify geographic priority areas to improve walk access to FCPA parks and by opportunities to increase that. Turning to the second component of PROSA, once you get to that park, what type of

[00:05:28] experiences are you having? And so we're looking at complete park experiences consisting of active recreation, passive contemplative experiences, social recreation, and natural cultural recreation. And for this component of PROSA, we're identifying which park sites and which areas do and don't have access to these type of experiences. And this will help us understand the balance of recreation and where we could be helping promote and have access to these other types of recreation across the county. And then third, we'll look at habitat connectivity and identify opportunities to

[00:06:03] improve habitat health and where we can expand habitat connectivity through existing parkland or potential future parkland acquisitions. And all that to say, most importantly, we will use an equity lens to analyze and prioritize projects. We'll use One Fairfax as a foundation and using One Fairfax's tools and data. And we'll build from the county's vulnerability index as a foundation for our analysis and findings.

[00:06:28] So all that said, let's zoom in to an example here. So we're going to look at the North Hill Park area. And in the center of the park, the center of the map, you'll see kind of an almost rectangular park. Sorry, forgive me if there aren't labels there.

[00:06:44] That center of parkland is North Hill Park. And it's just about northeast of Huntley Meadows. So on the bottom left-hand part of the map, that's a little small stretch of Huntley Meadows there just to help orient us across from North Hill Park at the center. there is Route 1 and the Denny's, and then further south is the Costco and Walmart. And so additionally, just orient us to North Hill Park. It's just south of it. We have an affordable housing development taking place there. That's currently, that's just wrapped up. And so now that we have some context on the area, I'm going to add in the opportunity areas. So you'll see in

[00:07:22] the hatched markings on the map, those are opportunity areas are high and very high index block groups which represents high and very high vulnerability and again they're called opportunity areas because this is where we have the greatest opportunity for impact for our residents and so now we're going to also layer in on the right-hand side oh sorry about that another component of the prosa approach is to include density and understanding where residents the density of where residents are living and so what I'll do next is layer in our 10-minute walk

[00:07:58] shed. So as you can see, the orange component that's just spread out, it's not a perfect shape because it's taking into account crosswalks, the street network, other barriers that took place. And now what we'll do is we'll go ahead and fold in a few park entrances that are currently being constructed at North Hill Park and to show and represent how that improves 10-minute walk access.

[00:08:21] So I'm going to go toggle back and forth for a moment here. But as you can see by adding these park entrances, identifying opportunities to improve access. We've increased opportunities for residents to access parks. And in this particular area, that new 10-minute walk access improves access to about 4,000 residents because of the higher density areas nearby the park.

[00:08:40] And so with that, kind of thinking about the approach, we know that this particular example, and mind you, North Hill Park, the construction of that was decided long ago, but wanted to put into, take into account here the different pro-cell lenses and how they factor in and are applied. So taking into account the 10-minute walk, it improves 10-minute walk access for residents. Also, this particular project improves complete parks because while there weren't any park amenities at this site until recently, they're currently in construction. It improves access to sport facilities and contemplated passive experiences and playgrounds. And then

[00:09:18] also includes our equity lens here because it's taking place in an opportunity area and improves access and opportunity area so um another forgive me i'm new um so could you go back one side so another thing you know everybody every um district has that marquee park and they're all different so whether or not it's clemmy john tree or huntley meadows or green spring gardens or

[00:09:49] or lake akatink um they have generally speaking a mono um park experience so it's great if you live live within walking distance to Huntley Meadow and that's fantastic but Huntley Meadow there's not playgrounds there's not places that you can play baseball or softball so we have to factor in this complete park experience make sure that all of our parks are serving residents from eight months old to 80 years old so we want everything we want to pack as much stuff in parks while still being sensitive to the natural environment so that's one of the main focuses that we have you can go to Patriot Park north but playgrounds very important there

[00:10:29] Some place for the surrounding community to be able to recreate to make sure that all of our parks are serving all of our residents. So when we're doing the prescriptions, I call them prescriptions, and so when you look at PROSA, you see a gap.

[00:10:46] So you might see a gap in the 10-minute walk, and there are multiple different prescriptions that can fill that gap. The biggest one, the heaviest lift, is acquire new parkland, build a new park. We can't go there all the time. We only have X amount of acquisition dollars, X amount of CIP dollars.

[00:11:03] Sometimes it's adding a park entrance or a trail. Sometimes it's reducing a barrier that might not be our barrier. It might be a crosswalk for a DOT road to make a safe crossing. PROSA factors in barriers. It doesn't just, if a park is next to 495, which a lot of years, or 66, it stops there.

[00:11:25] People can't cross the road. not as if a pedestrian crossing on 495 is something doable. But in general, if there's a road and there's not a safe crosswalk and we can put in a safe crosswalk, it could open up that park for a 10-minute walk for a significant amount of residents.

[00:11:44] Sometimes it's the park's equivalent of infill development. We have a park. How do we put more stuff into that park? Depending on how much population it's serving, there are parks that have what I call high carrying capacity. So there are parks that are going to serve 150 people or 200 people, and that's great.

[00:12:00] But there are other parks that serve a lot of people. And so the more people that that park serves, either because it's a regional-type destination or because it's in a high-urban, high-population-dense area, we want to put as much stuff in there as possible, which is also going to affect our – when we look at the maintenance scores And we want everything to be accessible and open and useful to as many people as possible.

[00:12:28] There are parks that serve thousands of people. So infill development, that's the middle one. How do we take a mostly active park that just has ball fields and add in other things, playgrounds, trails, a bench to sit and read your book, someplace contemplative?

[00:12:45] Every park within a 10-minute walk should be able to have something for everybody in the community. And it's also very important that we leave unprogrammed areas because it's not my job to tell everybody how to recreate 100% of the time. So unprogrammed open space that's just sod, flat sod, people can play soccer, people can play hit a cricket ball, people can play Frisbee, people can sit and read a book, people can have a picnic.

[00:13:09] So that's the best bang for our buck is really looking at these prescriptions in a continuum to see which is the best. Can we add a natural surface trail? No. Can we have a hard surface trail and keep on going down? And the last one would be acquiring new parkland and building an entirely new park.

[00:13:25] There are times when that's necessary because there aren't any parks in the immediate area. So, again, process and practice, this is just how we analyze our CIP and our categories. There are six major categories.

[00:13:42] Repairs and renovations, that's our fixing what we have. land acquisition, natural and capital, natural and cultural resources, new parks and facility projects. So repairs and renovations are our deferred maintenance. Land acquisition, we have roughly $10.5 million. That's 10 acres. That's one park. So in a CIP cycle, when we're building, when we're purchasing enough land for one local park, we want to make sure it's the right park in the right place. Natural and cultural resources, work plans, new parks and facility projects, we do about five to six parks. In a six-year CIP, we can do about Five to six parks, depending on how large they are.

[00:14:22] When you're doing five to six parks, you want to make sure you're renovating the parks that give you the best bang for your buck in terms of the population centers. Minor new construction is where I was talking about that infill development. We can do about four to five projects, new picnic shelters, new hard surface trails.

[00:14:38] So we want to make sure that those minor new construction infill projects are opening up more of the 45% of residents who don't have a 10-minute walk to parks. And then major new facilities, that's the Audre Moores, the Mount Vernon's, those projects as well.

[00:14:55] So that kind of gives you an idea of how we would use the PROSA data into practice as to analyzing our work program and analyzing our plans for new parks and new facilities. And with that, we would be happy to take any questions. All right.

[00:15:11] Well, thank you so much for the very brief presentation. I know there's quite a bit in there. And I'll go ahead and start, turn it over to the Chairman, or go ahead, Mr. Chairman. Thank you very much, and definitely an excellent presentation. I do have a couple of questions, and I know this is new.

[00:15:30] You know, we haven't done anything like this before. Frankly, it's refreshing to see us look at the facilities this way. I guess, you know, the concern I have about parks not operating in isolation, so you're doing this analysis, which is very good. You mentioned a couple times, you know, in terms of walkability, that you may identify other projects.

[00:15:51] And what I'm trying to figure out is how your information, it's not in the pros and practice chart, how you take things like that and coordinate and prioritize and help with DOT or other county agencies that might need to play the lead to help parks achieve some of their walkability goals.

[00:16:11] And then related to that, you know, are we doing any crosswalk between this and other county-owned land that's not in the park authority's control, where there might be a real opportunity where we might own property, it's not really being used for anything productive.

[00:16:27] How do we put that into a productive use? Is that a part of this outside of what is already owned by the park authority but owned by the county? So the original PROSA gets us from 30,000 feet into 10,000 feet. And then we're going to start analyzing. As much as I would like every single place that, excuse me, where people recreate to be a Fairfax County Park Authority park, that's not the case.

[00:16:49] People use school playgrounds. People use, NCS has outdoor facilities, HOAs. Reston is a really good example. We can't, we looked at PROSA and just looked at the boundaries of rest and it would look like all of, you know, Supervisor Alcorn's residents have no access to outdoor space. And that's not, that's not the case.

[00:17:05] So this is, you start off and then you keep funneling in to smaller and smaller views. until you get to the answer because we don't want to spend the whole goal of this is to really be able to put a fine point and identify what the issue is regardless of where it lives. We also don't want to be renovating a NCS playground at this, NCS, I thought it was not Jamie, an NCS playground that's right next to a park authority playground when they both need to be done, but let's try to serve another place so that we can be serving a whole bunch of people in a different direction so yes we're we are going to be analyzing this i've been speaking to a lot of supervisors

[00:17:45] about analyzing the bos land to see how much um that for habitat connectivity i do believe that my opinion is it's not in conservation unless it's owned by the park authority because a lot of things can change in a long and in a long time so how do we get that that connectivity in there and then we can put natural surface trails to really connect neighborhoods you know along quarters yeah that answers your question real opportunity here to work with those other county agencies and just want to make sure that that was happening especially on the you know walkability piece and how people gain access to parks i mean i can think of a number of facilities where

[00:18:22] for decades we've had parks but no way for pedestrians to get there and yet they're in high density areas and so i think it's really critical that we take this data and work with our partners in DOT or whatever agency it is that has a cure for this and that we're on the same team working towards the same solution. And it may come not in the bond priorities of the park authority, but in another county agency, but may further the benefits of the park authority. And so I just wanted to make sure that that's on the radar. And then secondly, and I think the probably the crux of this that I think most people want to hear is once you have done, you know, this pros

[00:19:00] analysis, how are you going to prioritize, I mean, you talked about this informing the prioritization, but what are the elements of the prioritization going into this? In other words, if you've identified areas that are completely underserved, how are you going to rank those in terms of opportunity against an area that may be underserved but just marginally, you know, may not have the most profound lack of access?

[00:19:27] Are you going to order those or are you going to, you know, try to tackle, say, the top 10, 15 facilities with the lowest scores? Help me understand, once we have gone through this PROSA process and you have these relative scores or challenges, I should say, with some of these locations, what is the next step after that in terms of how that informs the prioritization of the bond categories?

[00:19:54] So to finish answering your first question, I'm sorry I forgot this. Exactly what you said is why we just hired a trail manager who is going to be looking at the brains of our trail network and connections to exactly what you're saying, working with FCDOT, working with VDOT and other entities to really get those connections because we can't do it by ourselves and we're not helping anybody building trails to nothing that don't connect at other places.

[00:20:21] And so sorry to add on to the first answer. So what this is going to lead into is our CIP work program. So what it's going to lead into is looking at parks that we, let's just take the five to six new parks that we can build.

[00:20:38] Let's get the list of 20 that people have been talking about and let's analyze, put them through PROSA and see what we're talking about. Is one park, maybe lower quality, but there's four other walks, 10-minute walks there that this that that residents can go to what's the socioeconomic you know neighborhood versus another park that has nothing there everybody doesn't have a 10-minute walk it's really is a machine where you can put it in stephanie has you know ingeniously built a machine and depending on what question you ask can she so it's not always the highest equity area or the highest area of opportunity because they might have lots of parks you know maybe it's the highest income area with

[00:21:17] zero access to parks with a very high population. So there's 100,000 people who live someplace, they need access to parks too. That would win out over an area that might be in a high equity area, but that has a lot of access to parks. So it really is looking at, based on park quality, making decisions. And then ultimately, when we're doing our infill projects or other projects, it's putting it into ProSo to say, okay, I have $100 to spend by the end of the week. Where do I spend the hundred dollars and looking at these are the seven projects which one gives us the best bang for our buck we're hoping to get another hundred dollars next week but we really need to

[00:21:56] be clicking off to make sure that that math that stephanie has created that 45 is shrinking every year to be where the majority of park of the county regardless of where you live has access to 10 minute walk to a park okay that's great i just asked the question mainly because we we want this data to guide decisions about investments we make towards equity, but we also don't want to put ourselves in a straitjacket that when an opportunity comes along that gives you a great bang for buck but may not score particularly high on here, that we also factor that in, and this is guidance, not necessarily straitjacket, and I appreciate that, and thank you.

[00:22:36] All right. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me follow up on those excellent points, and then I will turn to Supervisor Faust and work our way up. And I think really addressing, well, number one, I think this is absolutely the direction we need to be going, right? We're a very large county, and we definitely know that there are areas that have one beautiful park not away, but the majority of my community does not have that 10-minute or five-minute drive access to it, and so what else is available, whether it's in Providence or in one of our neighboring districts. I think in addition to really thinking about long-term and then what does it mean you know in every single part of the community a couple of

[00:23:16] all questions would be there's definitely the bond and the other county properties but as you know some of us are looking at quite a few redevelopments developments and areas where and I know we're looking at the urban parks and and the planning commission will be looking at that but as we have redevelopments come forward. As you know, in the past, I think we've created the requirement, not the not required, the proffer requests that give us little things, and I think you agree with this, don't necessarily give the community what it's looking for. So I think I have a two-part

[00:23:53] follow-up question would be, number one, I know you've done some community input, but what is the plan as we continue through the process for continued community input and feedback on what we're looking at what they they see that is needed or already there or not needed and then number two to better understand the timeline as we're going through because as we look at okay this crosswalk is not safe because hey there's a crosswalk but you really need a light or a rapid flashing beacon or you need lighting xyz how do we make sure that we can address that more quickly so i think those

[00:24:27] are my two big follow-ups is the community piece as we move forward and then the timeline for this so we can understand as we look at proffers and other areas where we are and how we come back to to prosa as we're as we're looking at those i feel like i'm in congress whispering um so right right now um maybe i don't want to be in congress right now right now um uh we have mapped the fcpa Park parks in the global countywide. But again, that gets you the 36,000 foot view and then

[00:25:05] we're getting into 10. So as we get closer in, then Stephanie doesn't have to necessarily go in and put every single privately owned publicly accessible park on a dot. So we can have a square and we're dealing with a proffer and Tyson's and then she can go in and manually put in and then do the analysis on the walk shed for the complete parks answer is it's not our because the entire county is different and every community wants something different and so when we're talking about those categories of active contemplative passive recreational amenities there are lots of categories that fill that we're not saying playground we're not saying baseball

[00:25:45] field or soccer field we're saying active and it could be a playground it could be baseball it could be a track it could be a lot of things that fill that that active role and that gives us a lot of flexibility when getting in the program of requirements for any particular park is what, oh, we're going to have a picnic shelter, check off contemplative. We're going to have a hard surface shell, check off, you know, active. So we can, okay, now we are leased up to a complete park and we can add other things like dog parks and, you know, whatever else the community wants. But we know that there's at least something there for everybody from eight months to eight years old.

[00:26:17] And I appreciate it because my only follow-up is, and that's great, and I'm hoping that as we go through this and hopefully soon there's either a tool or a process that as we're working with the community and we're hearing requests that we can come back and say well we have this checklist or we have this person in the park authority who can help the community as I know you have a lot of parks that we're looking at to really look through and make sure that we're actually going to ask for something that's really needed versus it sounds great on paper and the great thing about having in-house staff, I mean, Stephanie's your lady. So she built it, own it. It's a machine that can put in whatever question. So really, it's give us the question that

[00:26:57] you want answered. We can put it through PROSA and give you our planning analysis for that. The other thing is to sort of bridge you and Chairman McKay's question, what we could do is we could come back at a certain amount of time and show you what have we found are the biggest barriers for trails and transportation. He started three days ago, so I'll give him a little bit of time to get up to speed, but that could be if you're really interested in the barriers, and then we can strategize from that then on how we break those barriers without building another park or investing in a whole other piece of property.

[00:27:31] Sounds great. Thank you so much. Ready to look at the tool soon. Let me turn it over to Supervisor Faust. Thank you. Several of my questions have been answered as a result of your questioning, but I would say it would be helpful when you've identified all these parks, where they're at and so forth, to show us where the school facilities are and NCS facilities. Also, some of the most densely populated areas may have, because of the relatively new developments, they may have

[00:28:10] significant park facilities as part of the development. That should be identified as well, I would think. We don't want to duplicate what we're getting through the proper system. It wasn't clear to me, but I think the question may have been answered already.

[00:28:31] The access, pedestrian and bicycle access should be considered. That would not, I would hope, not come out of the park budget. I mean, that would be things you'd be identifying for us and working maybe with our transportation people, ped-bike people to, because, you know, they're the types of things we don't have to wait for.

[00:28:57] We should get, you know, identify them and get them in line. And the, one of the challenges we've had, I mean, I had in McLean, for example, when we're trying to add facilities that I think were really important from a community standpoint was advocates who did not want to lose a single tree.

[00:29:28] And so, you know, if you were talking about going in and, you know, adding facilities that don't exist in some of these parks, you're probably going to impact some trees. I would suggest we have a plan, you know, as to if we have to lose a tree, how we're going to replace it, where we're going to replace it, you know, or the parts of the county that, because, you know, I sympathize with that.

[00:29:55] But, you know, you can't, if you're going to have active recreation, there's going to be an impact sometimes, but we should mitigate that impact. I think you're taking me down a road that might get me in trouble.

[00:30:11] I agree 100% with you. The building that we're in had trees on it at some point in time. We can't stop development because there's trees. We should be very thoughtful and careful about making sure that we're not recklessly designing places to take out the largest trees.

[00:30:29] We can pinpoint areas that are not high forest quality and then protect the areas that we'd like to protect and expand them. And there's a lot of things that we can do. We are very good at designing around the natural environment. It's what we do. We try not to develop a park that has no natural areas.

[00:30:46] That's the contemplative aspect of things. We don't pinpoint a tree to take out. But there are times that we do have to remove trees in order to provide the recreational services to the county. But replanting and other mitigations are really key there. Thank you.

[00:31:01] Thank you. Supervisor Lusk, did you have your hand up? Hey, guys. A little slow now. Just going to make a point that I appreciate the pro-subjectives and will acknowledge that in my own community we do have areas where there is very little recreational facilities and that we have a number of the measures that you're going to be looking at, income, access. I mean, I think there's going to be a bunch of check marks in a couple of

[00:31:37] the communities that I represent. So I know that we'll have to figure out, and I heard this very clearly, this idea about how you prioritize. But I guess there will be a point where we'll have to figure out how we pay for some of these facilities as well. So I think there might be a larger question on the funding later is a part of this initiative, and I would say that that might be something that we have to give some thought to as a part of this process as well.

[00:32:07] So, thank you. Thank you. Excellent point, Supervisor Lusk. I think I had Supervisor Gross next. Thank you. I have a couple of questions and a couple of comments. On the, just as an example of North Hill Park, you've got several little stars for access points in the park. Parks generally have a main entrance that is provide some sort of access but also to a certain extent sometimes security. So because our parks are usually closed, most of our

[00:32:42] parks are closed at night unless they've got lighted fields and so forth, I think that security might be something that it's not necessarily been discussed here but security may be something that we really need to look at, because even though you have additional access points to a park, it could be an attractive nuisance. So as you're looking at this, I think that security should also be part of your estimation, part of your investigation, because we don't want to have unauthorized persons creating mischief in our parks. We've had enough of that. And so I think

[00:33:20] we do have to keep that in mind. Jay, you had mentioned, I'm looking at your prescriptions list, and when you talked about crosswalks and so forth, I'm thinking, well, we have a perfect example with the Annandale Greenway, connecting two parks, Green Spring Gardens and Annandale Community Park, about four miles apart, and figuring out, and the community figured this out, how you can get from one park to the other walking on some parkland, some trails, some public right-of-way, and creating

[00:33:54] that necklace of green spaces, which I think could be used. Now, we're not there yet. It's been proposed where there's some work going on to actually accomplish it with wayfinding and so forth, but it's a good template, I think, to use for other places in the county to see where you've got the connections between maybe a couple of good-sized parks and how easy it might be to do that green necklace of connections.

[00:34:25] So I would like to see that incorporated in some of your planning because I'm not sure that other locations, unless you've got a really active civic group that wants to find these, it may not be as readily apparent and it really just takes a little bit more drill down.

[00:34:45] So that may be something, you know, we could have a whole, it's not a trail network necessarily, it's a green access piece. So I wanted to put that out there. I would say that not every park should have a playing field or even a playground. And we need to make sure that in the discussion with the community that certain things are outlined as these are givens. We know that everybody wants to have a playing field nearby. But just because this is a location closest to your house doesn't mean it's going to have a playing field. Because I think we don't want

[00:35:24] to lose the sort of jewel-like opportunities in our parks like Green Spring Gardens, which is fabulous and close to walking distance for a lot of folks, but is not designed, was never designed, will not be designed to be a full service athletic and recreational facility. It's there for something else. And so I hope that we will make that point clear as we're having those

[00:35:58] conversations with the community. And my last piece would be, if you have parkland and we want to make it attractive and for folks to come, it has got to be maintained. It has got to be maintained um we have wonderful parks and you know people walk in they see the garbage overflowing the restroom isn't isn't clean um our parks are loved to death but it's going to mean that we need much much much more maintenance and maintenance crews because if we lose the people that we're

[00:36:34] trying to attract to our parks because they are not in pristine condition um then all of this is for naught. So that's an issue. And I won't even go into forestry crews, Jay, at this particular point. But I do think that maintenance, and I think this summer is going to be a really good indication of, you know, how are we able to maintain what we do have? And that isn't just making sure that the lawns are mowed. It means that we need to pay attention to all the stuff

[00:37:06] that makes it shabby one thing i did want to say is um remembering the the buckets of order so green spring gardens i would consider a complete park because it has a very um um accessible and trail system so you can go and you can walk miles and miles and miles and get um that's right your your steps in so that's active um social there's places that you can sit and talk and have a picnic and obviously the entire garden is is contemplative so it doesn't have to be one prescription for active it can be a lot of things based on the type of park clummy is another example you can get all

[00:37:43] three of those experiences at clummy um with the picnic shelter plus the track around plus the playground so you can get a complete park that that looks completely different from each other based on the type of park that you are in the community that you're in but i totally i completely agree so so the definition of a complete park in your mind is one thing a definition of a complete park in the community's mind might be something else so we need to be able to marry those together. So everybody understands that this is what we're trying. This is our goal. It's not going to be the same for each and every location, which is something you did say. Thank you.

[00:38:21] Thank you. And I think those are really helpful points. I'm glad you brought it up because it can get a little bit confusing, especially if we know certain parks, what they offer. Green Springs is where I go with my mom and my daughter. It's definitely a multi-generational, wonderful place to be not a place to go and play sports that's right if grandma wants to take the grandchild to a park they want to be able to have a place to sit and watch the child play they don't want to necessarily have to be in the in the playground themselves and so absolutely it did bring up a point sorry and i'll go to a rock and shower reminder some places um and i'm thinking of

[00:38:55] of colmar where you've had um something that had become a community used sports field that Don't go there, Jalia. Don't go there. I'm going, so where I'm getting at is that when we look at the definition of complete parks and what's needed in a community, I think it is important to keep in mind that having that, how far is access to a complete park, to fields, to basketball courts, to the different amenities that community is looking for and is wanting for that.

[00:39:30] Public health is the way I look at it, the ability to be able to recreate, to have access to recreation for that community. And for the safety piece, I have some parks that are, you have to cross the very dangerous street to get there, right? And so when we look at safety and security, making sure we're looking at the ability to get there and to be safe while you're there as well as getting there.

[00:39:52] And again, in the community, if there is a field to play on three blocks away, that's fine. It's not going to be on the corner where you live. It's going to mean you can walk to it someplace else.

[00:40:07] So we have to be very careful about that piece, too, because it's within walking distance. It may not be the same location that you've always been to, but it's right there close by. And if it's not safe, we should make it safe together. And everybody can get there. All right. Thank you. Supervisor Rockenshaw. Thank you, Madam Chair.

[00:40:24] And I really appreciate the rigorous approach to this and just following up on the maintenance topic. And we all know that maintenance, I mean, it's a budget challenge to keep up with the maintenance needs. I do think there's maybe an opportunity here and maybe you're already doing it.

[00:40:43] But from my perspective, you know, it's probably like everyone. There are some parks in the Braddock District where if a piece of gravel is out of place, I'll get 15 phone calls. you probably will as well. And then there are some parks where there may, and I'm not talking about Lake Akatink here, but there are other parks, especially smaller parks, where there may be maintenance issues that are long standing that linger for weeks or months until one of us

[00:41:17] happens to hear about it or stumble upon it. And, you know, differences in terms of some communities feel more empowered or more engaged than others, certain parks attract people from across the county and others are more neighborhood focused, but I think it's going to be really important that we maybe in this process find a way to make sure there's an equity lens on those day-to-day maintenance issues.

[00:41:44] I'm not even talking about replacements and large-scale renovations, but just making sure that if there's a maintenance issue, it is identified as quickly in Park A as it would be in Park B. And we want squeaky wheels to get the grease, but we want all the wheels to get grease. And what's the system to make sure that that happens? And can this be a tool to help us do that?

[00:42:11] So you are singing my song completely. Think of this as your tool to be able to also do that, especially when it's in terms of projects that utilizes, you know, CIP dollars. I call it the machine and the broken fence, right? Somebody calls you up because it's in a specific neighborhood who knows who to call and who to talk to, and the fence is broken. Should we fix the fence? Of course we should fix the fence, but we should also find the four other fences that are broken that don't have people who are calling in, and the fence, the people calling in should not automatically go to the top of the fixing the broken fence list. So my answer back to you would be, yes, Supervisor Waukesha, I'm on it.

[00:42:50] It's the third one that we're going to be doing, you know, in this week behind this one and this one because of X, Y, and Z. And it really helps us get to this data-driven approach to looking at things and not leading with a lot of sometimes the noise, which ends up creating an inequitable park system.

[00:43:10] And I'm a little bit off the topic maybe, but what is our system, do we have a good system to identify the other three fences? so come on. I knew we brought her here for a reason. Good afternoon, Sarah Baldwin, Deputy Director of Operations, including maintenance. I would say our biggest challenge right now is staff. You know, we have a vacancy rate within our staff of 40 percent. A lot of that is maintenance. We also have cut our maintenance significantly over the years, and we're just

[00:43:45] trying to rebuild. And so, yes, there is a system in place, but right now we just don't have the staff that we need to have eyes on the parks that that we need to um so we do count on the residents to bring issues on trails to bring issues regarding trash um all issues in the park to to us um so our staff visit the parks a couple of times a week to manage trash but it's not enough so they're going in most of our maintenance crews spend three days a week just picking up trash within the parks. So that leaves two days a week to do everything else in terms of maintenance

[00:44:24] within the parks. And we just don't have the manpower that we need to be able to provide the preventative maintenance that I think we all desire within the park system. All right. Thank you, Supervisor Stork. Thank you very much. And thank you for the excellent questions. Thank you for the excellent report. This is very, very helpful. I think it's invaluable. And I appreciate the standards for park maintenance and have like really three questions i'm gonna ask them quickly the first one is maybe a comment which under equity analysis one of the biggest things i didn't see

[00:45:02] here which to me is maybe the most important because it kind of brings all the pieces together which is health and longevity and we know certain parts of the county people are less healthy now why that is is i'm sure a myriad of reasons but but to have that as be one of the equity analysis tool. I urge you to add that in because that data is out there. I mean, the census data and others can, and we know that that's, and again, it's not just whether they have a park or not, we get it, but it's one more element, and I think in that process to help people be healthier and be

[00:45:36] induced and enticed to come out and exercise a little bit more. The other thing is that I think huge in this process is institutional restrictions and i would add to that neighborhood restrictions or community restrictions since you brought up north hill i want to mention that in particular when north hill was first being designed by the park authority they frankly had very they had a fence around the property and frankly i didn't see any places for people to enter if you didn't come from the correct side of the park i mean it gets to the point that you're making jay a little bit

[00:46:14] earlier which is just having an open the fence can reduce that from you know 15 minutes to five minutes or whatever but the institution problem wasn't just the park authority and frankly it took a little bit of a supervisor hammer and I know that all of us at times have been there to to kind of push this along I demanded a meeting with the park authority and the other part of the process was the Fairfax County Public Schools because it's right adjacent to schools. And Bryant High School, there are issues that the school doesn't want to open it up.

[00:46:47] So you have these two institutions that have their own kind of way to approach this. And so we have to have a system that automatically makes that the default, right? Access openness makes it the default. Tell me why it's going to be less secure or whatever that we can't do that. And then opening up the communities around there because the communities have their own fences, et cetera.

[00:47:10] And the last point on that I wanted to make is there's some beautiful trails that I would love to see us move forward with, and I realize money is a key part of it, but money isn't the only restriction. We have communities where they just don't want those people walking through their community, and that's just the bottom line.

[00:47:25] And because it's going to increase crime or other people that I don't know are going to be there, and we have to, I think in my mind, we have to take a position on that as a county to say we want to do the right thing long term and that we recognize there's that initial challenge but we know that the important thing is that over time that we we get that done and the last item was and I realized this potentially can be an unequitable thing but we have I think in most of many of our parks we have people who really want to adopt that park and want to make a difference and and I think we need I know we need to encourage it even though we recognize

[00:48:05] that some parks maybe aren't going to have those the kinds of people stepping up to do that is there a system that we have for how we and I know we have that in certain places is there a system that we go do to encourage the formation of those and I realize they're going to be ebbs and flows that you'll have something that lasts for a while we had one at the federal park Fort Hunt Park that lasted for a long time eventually it went away because frankly Fairfax County or the Park of National Park Authority didn't nurture it in my mind so what's how do we do that what do we do and I think baking some of that into this is I think important So we have a couple of mechanisms.

[00:48:43] We have our longstanding Mastenberg grants that allow people to come in and do a match in a particular community. I mean, that's a good way of being able to adopt. I think that one of those things is what this does is it really provides the data that's necessary to make, I'm going to go back to your trail statement question, to make that decision as to whether or not to put the trail in.

[00:49:06] This is not just a pretty trail that we're showing, it's numbers. there are people associated with this trail will open up access to these five things to this many people and then then um making a a data-driven decision as to whether or not to put it out there and expanding the amount of people that you're bringing in and not just the localized community but everybody who would then have access to that trail um so back to your uh your second part the mass and brook grants are are a good way you know adding value to our parks is really great with private citizens. I, you know, welcome any and all money that comes in from other places. What I want

[00:49:42] to make sure of, however, is that everything shifts. And so maybe that those private dollars can get the park or the playground up higher in the priority list because now you don't have to wait for the other three. But some of those dollars that are allocated that park now needs to shift because we want to make sure at the end of the day that no matter what mechanism we're talking about it. We take a blank map and we just look at the park system that I cannot predict the quality and quantity of parks in any area based on the race and demographics of that area. So even if

[00:50:16] it's a private people, we want to make sure everybody has access to a quality park system no matter where you live. I encourage you to have a system that has a cookbook of how you can get folks in communities to create their own friends of that particular park because I understand that can help at least the budget in other ways and pick up trash if nothing else right because that's a key part when people have pride they they do more thank you uh supervisor stork and i know definitely work that needs to continue to be looked at um i am looking at the time it is almost 2 30 i think i have two more supervisors who'd like to speak so i'm going to ask if you could

[00:50:54] um very quickly very quickly um we'll hold off with responses until um they've both spoken This is a request. So as you go from the 10,000 foot and on down, use this as an opportunity to break down stovepipes. It was talked about earlier, the school facilities, homeowners association infrastructure, not just in Reston, but Reston is a great example.

[00:51:16] Also Nova Parks and also Town Parks, Vienna, Herndon. And with the slide nine in mind, this is the prescriptions, the money slide. Let's also be smart about it. I think this is an opportunity for MOUs, reciprocal arrangements, frankly, to leverage others' investments in park systems in order to get complete parks, as well as to create trail systems that actually will connect.

[00:51:42] If it's ours, great. If it's Nova Parks, fine. But having that formalized, I think, would go a long way. Also, to addressing the maintenance issues that was addressed. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Alcorn. Supervisor Herdy. Yeah, I'll try to be quick. But, I mean, maintenance isn't as sexy as building new stuff.

[00:52:00] It's just not. But we need this same thoughtful approach on maintenance. It's something to leverage on what supervisor walk and shelves at. That's the number one thing I hear from parks. It's why I took $150,000 out of my budget and put it into Burke Lake Park, because, frankly, it needs a lot more than that.

[00:52:19] And it's our number one park. It's our most used park. People walk to it, drive to it, everything else. But that's why I proposed a reserve out of our carry forward. I think we need to address it. It's the first I've heard that we got a 40% shortfall in staff. If we got a 40% shortfall in maintenance staff, then we need to start contracting out or figuring out what to do to address some of those.

[00:52:42] We spent all morning, I suggest you go back and look. I don't know who does the hiring, whether that's coming through us or you do your own. Yeah. We had a great session this morning talking about the creative things we're doing in hiring. suggest somebody go back and take a look at those.

[00:53:01] But we've got to get better in maintenance. All right. Well, thank you so much. Really want to thank Jay and Stephanie. Wonderful to see you both in the work you're doing. I know we're excited to continue to make improvements. We have excellent parks and looking at the access and equity and complete parks and the complete system for the whole county, whether they're owned by you or anyone else.

[00:53:23] I think it's the right way forward. So thank you very much. Very much appreciate that. We will follow up, and now we will turn over to a very different topic. We have Tom Barnett, the Deputy Director of Housing and Community Development, and Jill Clark, Health and Human Services Policy and Planning Manager for Neighborhood and Community Services.

[00:53:46] We'll be giving their presentation on the county's extreme heat response and what is being done with that. And then we'll follow up with a very brief update from Chris Leonard on our upcoming fall HHS meeting. Tom and Jill, take it away.

[00:54:03] All right. Good afternoon, and thank you for this opportunity to update the board on our preparations for responding to extreme heat this summer, particularly in protecting unsheltered Fairfax County residents. Jill and I will be reviewing the work being done to evaluate and plan and implement all the recommendations coming out of a diverse work group of partners.

[00:54:27] So as you will remember, the NAACP raised concerns at the end of the summer of 2022 regarding unsheltered Fairfax County residents who are particularly vulnerable to the effects of extreme heat because they are outside often day and night and exposed to the heat.

[00:54:45] The heat and emergencies are very real. When you look at the summer of 2021, you saw, as was reported in the news in the Phoenix area, 130 homeless individuals died due to extreme heat. And the heat dome that settled over the northwest, which doesn't traditionally see that sort of extreme heat, saw hundreds of people pass away due to the extreme heat.

[00:55:08] So obviously Fairfax County is not immune to the changing climate. The resilient Fairfax plan adopted in 2022 by the board demonstrates the county's commitment to adapt and become more resilient to changing climate-related conditions such as extreme heat, severe storms, and flooding.

[00:55:28] So in response to the local concerns, a heat emergency response work group was formed in August 2022 to enhance the county's approach, building on what was already working and finding ways to improve. In March of 2023, and after many meetings, the workgroup's recommendations were shared with the board and are now being implemented for this summer.

[00:55:50] As you can see from this slide, the workgroup and its four committees included a robust membership across many different county departments, as well as key partners and representatives from the homeless service providers, the faith community, and advocates from health, housing, human services, public safety, communications, transportation, facilities, this was a comprehensive effort to better understand the need, gaps in services, and what could be done better to protect unsheltered residents. The workgroup quickly realized that before forming any plans, it was

[00:56:28] vital to hear directly from people who were experiencing homelessness and were directly impacted by the heat. The workgroup's outreach and communications committee coordinated a survey of unsheltered residents covering their needs and how they respond to the extreme heat staff and volunteers at 10 drop-in centers and shelters as well as a large encampment site administered the surveys over a one-week period in 2022 september specifically and a total of 81 residents responded to the survey in the responses you could hear the challenges they experienced both in terms of

[00:57:07] discomfort and real negative health effects from the extreme heat, including nausea, shortness of breath, exhaustion, asthma attacks, inability to eat, as well as sunburns and rashes. So based on unsheltered residents' feedback, the workgroup developed a set of recommendations across four areas that would significantly enhance the county's response to extreme heat and protect unsheltered residents. Jill and I will provide more details across these four areas in the remainder of the presentation from communications and outreach, transportation,

[00:57:43] the county infrastructure and response, and supplies and distribution. But first, an important part of the county's planning and implementation is setting a clear threshold to activate the extreme heat response. The county is using the heat advisory, excessive heat watch, and excessive heat warning alerts issued by the National Weather Service as thresholds for activation.

[00:58:09] The alerts will enable the county to activate its response quickly and consistently based on national subject matter expertise and building on the messaging that's already widely shared among the public. As you can see in the slide, it is the heat index and not the simple air temperature that will determine activation.

[00:58:30] The heat index is often called the feels-like temperature and includes the effects of the of relative humidity. In fact, a heat advisory could be issued with an air temperature in the 80s, as the humidity is often high enough to do that. So first of all, in the first of four improvement areas around communications and outreach, we learned through the unsheltered resident survey that most respondents actually have a phone with internet access and actually prefer getting information about resources and heat alerts via text messages and emails.

[00:59:06] Therefore, we realized that we could quickly and directly communicate with people experiencing homelessness by using a new dedicated channel of Fairfax alerts for those residents, as well as homeless service providers. Similar to how any county resident can receive alerts about weather, traffic, or public safety, unsheltered residents can now be notified when the county activates its heat emergency response.

[00:59:33] Of course, we need unsheltered residents to sign up and be prepared. To do this, we are engaging in a robust public outreach campaign through the staff at local emergency shelters, drop-in centers, and street outreach teams to inform sheltered or unsheltered residents of the service, encourage them to sign up, and provide assistance in the registration process where it's needed.

[00:59:56] Eye-catching posters and flyers like what you see in the slide were created in multiple languages that explain how individuals can be prepared for the heat, register for the Fairfax alerts, and the warning signs of heat exhaustion and heat strokes.

[01:00:12] Next up, Jill will continue with details about enhancements to transportation options. Thank you, Tom. And so as we looked at enhancements, particularly for our designated cooling centers, we also wanted to address some of the barriers in getting to them.

[01:00:27] And we want to ensure that unsheltered residents can get to one, and the cost of a bus fare is not a deterrent. And so a special thanks to our colleagues in FCDOT for partnering with us. And they provided us with 3,000 postcards, 2,000 in English, 1,000 in Spanish, that have two free connector bus rides on each card.

[01:00:52] AND THOSE HAVE BEEN WIDELY DISTRIBUTED TO OUR HOMELESS SERVICES PARTNERS AS WELL AS IN THE BACKPACKS THAT WE'RE DISTRIBUTING OUT TO UNSHELTERED RESIDENTS THIS SUMMER AND THEN THEY WILL ALSO BE ON HAND AT ALL OF OUR DESIGNATED COOLING CENTERS THIS SUMMER AND IN RECOGNITION THAT NOT ALL UNSHELTERED RESIDENTS HAVE ACCESS TO FAIRFAX CONNECTOR THEY MIGHT BE CLOSER TO a metro bus line or they cannot ride the bus for a variety of reasons, we've also given

[01:01:25] our homeless services partners some preloaded TOPS transportation debit cards so that way for those who cannot use Fairfax connector that there is still a way to access transportation to get somewhere on those very hot days without cost being a barrier.

[01:01:49] And so, like in previous years, all county facilities that are open to the public can be used by residents to come in for cooling. But for this summer, as an enhancement, we have designated 47 county facilities, which include all libraries, all of our community centers, rec centers, and the human services regional offices.

[01:02:11] And what that means is that in addition to being able to go into any county facility that's open to the public that these 47 locations have staff that are prepared to activate our heat response so that they are trained on being welcoming and prepared when someone comes in the door. We received some feedback on the survey about how some residents who came in in the past did not feel, you know, comfortable or that they should be there. So we have been working with our

[01:02:44] county agencies that are designated county cooling centers this summer. And so staff are prepared and that they're welcoming. Each facility will have is equipped with a supply kit that has water as well as sunscreen, insect repellent, body wipes, and bus passes. And, you know, and when they come in, what the expectations is, is that residents will be shown an area that they can sit. Obviously, it will vary by center in terms of, you know, if that looks like a

[01:03:19] specific meeting room or if it's another, you know, location in the center, you know, with camps and other activities going on. It's going to vary by location in terms of what that looks like. But consistently, we want to make sure that people are welcome. And then when they are heading out, that they are offered some additional water, some sunscreen and insect repellent wipes and other supplies before they leave the location.

[01:03:46] And thanks to our colleagues in GIS, we now have a map with all the designated coolings that are locations, which is located on the county's Extreme Heat webpage. And this will be particularly useful for residents in finding other locations that may be open during the evenings and on weekends.

[01:04:06] For instance, if we're under a heat advisory on a Sunday and we have a resident who perhaps normally uses the Thomas Jefferson Library, they'll be able to see other nearby options such as the Providence Rec Center that they could go to instead.

[01:04:28] And as part of our enhancement, we purchased and distributed supplies that are intended to make being outside more comfortable this summer. And we used the survey responses to identify the specific supplies to get. And most of those items are single-use and/or lightweight portable based on the feedback that we received.

[01:04:51] For instance, the reusable water bottles are collapsible and foldable. We have the cooling towels and sun hats that can be rolled up easily rather than handing out bottles of sunscreen and insect repellent. We have purchased single-use packets of sunscreen and individual wipes to make it easy for people to have the supplies that are needed without being, you know, having to worry about, you know, having the space with their other possessions that they are, you know, have with them. And instead of giving out, for instance, bottles of Gatorade, we provided individual powdered drink packets that they can just add to a

[01:05:30] a bottle of water. And so these supplies, along with bus passes, and we have handheld fans, have been packed into drawstring backpacks and are being distributed by our homeless services partners and our outreach workers. And in addition, the locations like our emergency shelters, drop-in sites, wellness and recovery centers also have extra supplies of those single-use items so that way people can replenish as needed throughout the summer.

[01:06:04] And in terms of next steps, so we are -- want to track usage throughout the -- we know that this is our first year doing a very enhanced response this summer.

[01:06:23] And so we are going -- one of the things that the staff at the designated cooling centers will be doing is tracking usage. And then we will be also having periodic check-ins with our stakeholders and partners who participated on the work group to ensure that any, you know, thing that needs to be addressed, you know, during the summer, we can do that quickly.

[01:06:50] And then we will, after summer is over, we're going to have a debrief with all the county agencies and our community partners involved, and then, of course, report back to all of you in terms of, you know, lessons learned and things that we may address in the future.

[01:07:08] So thank you all for your support with this effort, and we look forward to hearing any feedback or questions. Well, absolutely. First of all, I really want to thank you, Jill and Tom. And Jill, this is, I only have one question because I think you really have done a very thoughtful process. You've gone into addressing what the need was, what the ask was from our community advocates, and how to kick it off, I think, to a really thoughtful start. I'm excited to see. It's like packing up kids for camp. You've got all the supplies in there, and really thinking

[01:07:45] about how can we really support our community members during the summer, I mean, during the summer, and to think about how do we track usage, how do we survey, how do we work with our partners? And then how do we come back to our board? I think you really have all of that there.

[01:08:01] And my only question, thinking even beyond that, and it might have been in there when you talk about other locations. So I know we have a very robust hypothermia program in the winter, and we have a whole set of faith communities that support that work and nonprofits. So I'm wondering if some of those choose to opt in or if we've done outreach to them to say we have these available, if we can also kind of bring them into the loop if they are interested in being part of this experience.

[01:08:33] Thank you for the question, Supervisor Pouchek. I think the faith community is already significantly invested in this project. The Rising Hope Mission Church is a great example, and they have really a whole large group through Ventures and Community that will be participating in this.

[01:08:49] The NAACP's faith community connections and housing group is also very invested in volunteering and providing donations to some of these cooling centers. We also welcome more participation. This is just the beginning.

[01:09:05] We're focusing on county facilities and other important partners that serve directly people experiencing homelessness. But we want to hear from more if there's interest in doing more. So please, any connections would be helpful. Excellent. So then because of your ask, if you could just share with us any information we can easily share out.

[01:09:24] I love your bus passes. all the information you're providing so we can make it easier and share out and do our own outreach and hear from the community, including the map of the sites we already have. I love the bus passes. I think making it easy, having a card, and having the different options is excellent.

[01:09:40] So absolutely, if you can follow up with information for us to share out, that would be wonderful. Will do. So to that, let me turn it over to the chairman and then any colleagues. Thank you, and excellent presentation. Glad to see us at this point on here. and clearly you've given a lot of thought to this, and we appreciate that.

[01:09:57] I guess kind of piggybacking on what Supervisor Powchick was talking about, the people who aren't literally homeless that we hear a lot about but are housing insecure or who may need access to some of these same things but might not need access to a cooling center, do we have a program with our nonprofits to provide these types of supplies to their clients who, you know, may not be able to crank their AC or may not have AC at home but aren't homeless or who might need some of these products as well?

[01:10:36] Is that something that we're giving some thought to moving forward or not? Because that's kind of outside of the spectrum of literally housing them during a heat emergency. But, you know, to a certain extent, if we can help some people stay in their homes comfortably who otherwise would be coming into one of these facilities.

[01:10:55] I think that's something we need to give a little bit of thought to. I can say that the Department of Family Service has a number of cooling assistance programs to help with costs and other types of needs around cooling.

[01:11:12] I don't know if we've discussed specifically supply distribution to people in housing, but that's something we can talk to our partners about. It's just something to think about or a way for some of those nonprofits that deal with some of these clients who are housing insecure but maybe not literally homeless.

[01:11:28] I think it's a group of individuals that, you know, we need to not forget about. The other piece is we've given a lot of thought to where the facilities are in the county, but have we given as much thought to where the people are who are homeless?

[01:11:44] I mean, we know that there are concentrations of areas in the county, and have we kind of mapped out where those population concentrations are? and kind of custom-tailored something for those areas? I mean, I'm thinking we clearly know of the one in Reston.

[01:12:00] We know of some pockets along the Route 1 corridor, some areas of Central Springfield, some other areas in the county where, you know, it's not sporadic, where there are pretty high concentrations of homeless individuals that we have mapped. Have we considered that and where these locations are and how we designate them?

[01:12:20] Absolutely. There are three primary ways to get these supplies. to individuals who are homeless. The shelters, obviously, daytime drop-in centers such as the Lamb Center and some of the wellness centers around the county, but also the street outreach teams are regularly visiting locations where we know there are steady encampments, and so they are ones that will be bringing the supplies directly to people and making sure they have transportation to get to cooling centers on hot days.

[01:12:50] So we are always interested in knowing if we're seeing new locations but they of course are doing conducting outreach every day across this county and looking for those sites and regularly visiting them. Yeah I think I think that's important because I know you know even in the past where we had this challenge with the heat index before and we didn't have a program like this in place one of the fundamentals that was difficult for us to sort through is we were telling people county facilities are cooling locations but there wasn't really any way to describe to them, you know, what time they close, what parts of those buildings are open to the general public versus what parts are not.

[01:13:29] You know, I think some organization and some better messaging on what a cooling center is and as you have, you know, kind of put these tiers in place, which I think are important, a better, easier way for people to understand the difference between county facilities being open to the public and what a designated cooling center is and how to get there and what that means because you have what it means in terms of the features of the cooling centers but a lot of people don't know what the hours are what the access is going to look like those are the pieces

[01:14:03] that I think you know we we just need to be good ready prepared to message out in advance of when one of these heat emergencies comes in to make it easy for people to understand where it is they can go thank you sir chairman thank you mr. chairman um I have supervisor Alcorn and then supervisor Thank you very much, Chair Palchuk.

[01:14:25] So definitely steps in the right direction, particularly for the daytime cooling transportation. I think that's really good news. I appreciate also the answer on collaboration with the faith-based community and some of the review processes that are put in place. But we need to do more, particularly for overnight accommodation.

[01:14:46] We are doing this for families. We're not doing it for singles. And, you know, in the summer months, you know, it's really hot at night sometimes, and it's also stormy. And, you know, if we can't do overnight accommodations for everybody that we were doing during the pandemic, then we should be doing it at least for some targeted singles.

[01:15:10] And I think we can be smart about that, but we really need to do more than this. Again, good steps. I'm very happy we're doing this, but let's see what more we can do. Thank you. thank you supervisor thank you so alcorn supervisor stork thank you chairman um i'm really i'm i'm struggling with this a little bit i see in the in the flyer it's ten to three i i just heard supervisor alcorn talk about families and didn't identify individuals i i guess i'm i'm at a loss

[01:15:48] because we clearly have people who are going to need more than that and and aren't going to fit into families. I mean, we have, obviously, I know from my office, we have a regular basis. We have some folks who visit us, and we're not a designated cooling location.

[01:16:06] And as actually, my greeter, office manager, has one of the questions she asks in here, well, am I supposed to then tell them, no, they can't stay here and escort them somewhere? And if they won't go, what do I do? So we have folks who regularly kind of stay around our office, and we obviously encourage them not to unpack all the things on the main sidewalk that leads into the building, but at the same time, we are looking for ways to accommodate their needs.

[01:16:39] So I think I'm looking for more direction, and I know there's no perfect in this. I know that we've made this is a great step forward. I don't want anybody to misunderstand my comments today, but I also see a lot of questions that I don't know how to answer.

[01:16:56] And I know my staff feel similarly because we're on the front lines of a lot of these issues and we want to make a difference. We want to be welcoming. At the same time, we want to make sure that we get folks at a place that they can truly be supported for the most of the day.

[01:17:13] So thank you, and I guess we'll stay tuned and share with us how else we can better learn how to address the needs that are clear for us. Thank you. Thank you, both Supervisor Stork and Alcor.

[01:17:28] And we certainly share the concerns for folks who can't access shelter and are working every day to try to provide more capacity through existing facilities improvements, as well as finding new housing opportunities for people to create some throughput capacity, it is a challenge.

[01:17:45] We appreciate that. Help us with that. Yeah, because, I mean, I don't think everybody's in this situation yet, but it's coming. I mean, the numbers are up. A long-awaited pop in our homeless population is here, and so we're seeing it.

[01:18:02] I agree. I think our numbers are undercounted at this point in time, and I don't see that changing in the near term. Absolutely. You're absolutely correct. I also think both that and a little bit of the challenge of having health human services separated from housing right now is that a big part of it is in the Lamb Center's work is how do we get to that long-term? And, you know, these are Band-Aids, right? So how do we continue to invest in and focus on both the Band-Aids, the immediate needs, but also the longer-term needs that are housing, right? We know that the

[01:18:37] housing need continues to rise and will continue to rise. So a lot of work ahead, not just for you. I think it's all of us here, right? I know we put the burden on you, and I think you've made excellent first steps in moving in this direction in addition to the work that's already being done.

[01:18:53] And I think we look forward to seeing how this works, how we can enhance it and improve this program, as well as continuing to invest in our longer-term needs in housing. So thank you both so much um jill and tom for your presentation and your work um so with the final five minutes we have today uh i will turn it over to chris leonard to give us a little update on what we will be seeing on october 17th sure thank you supervisor pelczyk and just thanks again for that feedback this is this is a significant enhancement we're doing this summer so really appreciate any feedback today and certainly throughout the summer as the board will recall we'll talk about unwinding

[01:19:32] here first. And this is just really brief. As the board will recall, in January and in May, we sent out memos outlining where we were with the unwanted process. Well, it started last month. Last month's memo that we sent was pretty detailed. Over 100,000 applications are going to require a new renewal over the next 12 months. It's certainly a heavy lift, but it is one that we've known is coming. We've been working on this for over a year. I do want to highlight the work of the Department of Family Services staff and leadership developing a whole operational plan

[01:20:07] to make sure we're as ready as possible. And I have no doubt that we're more ready than maybe some of our sister jurisdictions within the county, within the state, within the Commonwealth. And a lot of that is because of, or all of that is because of the support you provide on a regular basis to our social services network. So thank you. In October, one of the things we want to make sure we can do to you is provide a some data so in October we'll be able to provide four or five months of data of how we're doing how that's working so I wanted to highlight that but one

[01:20:43] big takeaway that I want to give you and we've confirmed this through Richmond that there's not a constituent that if they're not seen by our staff for renewal because maybe they were supposed to be in May and they got pushed to June or July and got pushed to August they're not going to lose their benefits until somebody talks to them.

[01:21:04] So some, and we have highlighted this, that there are going to be folks as part of this renewal that will lose benefits. That much is known. That's one of the reasons why the Department of Family Services staff is approaching this holistically. So we're looking at the individual in the households from a standpoint of do you have food needs, do you have transportation needs, workforce needs, what do you have, not just the Medicaid renewals. So we're going to be doing that. But just to reassure folks, if you start getting phone calls, certainly if you get phone calls, you can let me know, you can let Michael

[01:21:38] Beckett know, and his team will be right on it. But it should be some reassurance that if you know that your renewal is due in June, and nobody's contacted you, it's not like July 1, you're going to, something's going to happen to your benefit. So I wanted to leave you with that today. And if there's any reason for us to update you, either there's something changed in the state or anything that we're seeing as problematic, we will certainly immediately electronically notify you via memo like we always do. So, I wanted to highlight that. The next piece is, and as you all will certainly recall, because this was just last month, as part of the budget adoption and budget

[01:22:15] guidance, you gave direction to the Community Services Board to provide enhancements, ideas for enhancements, resource ideas for enhancements to the children and adolescent mental health. So that will certainly happen. That will happen, and you'll see that at the end of July.

[01:22:33] But in October, we'll have an opportunity to discuss a little bit more detail in terms of what that will look like. But certainly, we'll comply with the Board's budget direction in July, but we'll make sure that we're going to be talking about children and adolescent mental health for foreseeable future unfortunately because everything that we all talked about three years ago that this was going to be uh quite a challenge coming out of it from our from our kids uh we're seeing that one of the other things in october we'll be able to come back to is in the beginning of the school year we'll be releasing last year's um you survey data and i've said this since i've been in fairfax

[01:23:12] that is a gold mine of information that is what our kids people ask me um from other jurisdictions what's the sample size and i said everybody everybody you have to opt out eighth tenth and twelfth so from that standpoint we'll have a really good look as well um certainly we're we're also unfortunately seeing it our k through six k through seven so we'll have some information on that but that youth survey will be able to help inform our discussion in in october as well so i just wanted to share those highlights thank you and i appreciate that chris and i know october 17th feels like a very long time away so i know um if we have to reconvene or if you do have any electronic information I know we're still waiting on the state budget

[01:23:51] and I hope there's more in there for some of these issues both of those actually issues that you just brought up so if after next Tuesday we do hear more information and are able to share more back with the board or jump on that I think that would be very beneficial for absolutely without a doubt will do thank you so much alright with that we are adjourned and I believe we probably need five-minute break before, sorry, safety and security is the new name of the committee.

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