Coraggio Consulting
Manassas City Council 12/8/2025

Date: Monday, December 8, 2025
Place: Manassas City Council, Virginia
Length: 4h 16m (video)
Official meeting video (Wistia / RegionalWebTV): https://fast.wistia.net/embed/iframe/mkwyt3xzdf

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 2026-10-17. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:00:03] of 2025 calling the meeting to order mr smith please call the roll mayor davis younger present vice mayor wolf here council member ellis council member smith present council member osina here council member vasquez luna council member hudson here the quorum is present thank you very much if you're able to please stand with me for the invocation and the pledge of allegiance Dear God, as we enter into this season of thankfulness and holiday gatherings with our

[00:00:39] families and friends, we are so very thankful for each and every resident who chooses our city as home. We ask for your continued protection of our staff, our schools, our teachers and students, our council members, and especially our men and women in uniform who serve to protect us, putting themselves in harm's way each and every day to ensure our safety. Please help us to continue to show love and kindness toward one another and all that we do and say as we enter a new year we remain forever grateful for all things amen please join me in the pledge of

[00:01:11] allegiance be seated thank you want to welcome everyone again to our last council meeting of 2025 we have some electeds in the audience of course our treasurer miss patricia ritchie folks is here because she's going to be sworn in tonight welcome ma'am and we have school board members here as well we'll hear from a little bit later as well we have our vice chair Jill

[00:01:48] Spall is here as well as miss Dana miles is here from the school board I don't see anybody else so I want to make sure I don't miss anybody but thank you for being here we have a really full agenda tonight along with the swearing in presentation several public hearings and a closed session we thank you for joining us tonight especially in person and those of you who are joining us from on TV and social media.

[00:02:12] We welcome you to the meeting as well. We'll start with our council time and I'll call on Councilwoman Vasquez Luna first tonight. - Thank you, Madam Mayor. Welcome everybody. I hope you had a great Thanksgiving and a great weekend celebration of our holidays.

[00:02:30] I'm thankful for the hard work from our first responders. I believe the work from the police department was a key. this weekend, and that helped even the call to keep everybody safe.

[00:02:47] But I'm glad about all the hard work they do to make sure that our events go through with no incidents. And even when it does happen, I'm very thankful that everybody is safe.

[00:03:05] I want to make sure that I welcome Mets. We're gonna hear from Mets. And also Baldwin, you know, my kids attended both schools and I'm really proud. I know many of you and I'm so happy to see you here and hear from the schools.

[00:03:26] I'm honored to be part of this council and to be able to join the commendation for my dear friend and like a sister, Cherry Tates, Masia Hamby. I welcome the family and you know she will be forever loved And I thank you to our mayor and this council for the leadership and making this happen.

[00:03:51] And for me, it's a personal, I know it's a legacy. Everybody may have been taught, or you may remember, even if you don't recognize the name, but you may remember her. And I believe we can all continue to leave her, continue to keep her in our hearts, but live in a way that we can remember How she was always there for us and how she made us feel, which is today so important to me.

[00:04:23] There is so many things, you know, efforts. I believe it was 700 and more pages that we have been working on to read through the weekend. But so many great information. I would say sometimes as a council member, I get also the news from Facebook or other means.

[00:04:47] I wanna make sure that you know that, you know what, I tried to share it and they were here and we will continue to provide the necessary information. I've been blessed to work in different boards this year.

[00:05:06] And I'm looking forward to continue. sorry about my voice i'm looking forward to continue to work next year and as we continue not only to move forward the agenda for our city for residents for businesses for the visitors but also as a region everything we do it does affect the region as a whole and we want to make it better one of my big goals for running for office one of them was you know about keeping manassas attainable i know it's different than affordable but i believe we can make a difference

[00:05:45] i'm so happy that we're going to hear something uh tonight um also one of the big things that i can think of right now this year it was the community community center and i call into each one of you not only to share but also to try to attend their events so we can uh let our family friends and visitors know about what they do and whether it's a movie night or different events there are great uh events not only for um youth but for the family as a whole so i hope you uh consider that through

[00:06:23] the holidays and through uh while you're hosting uh visitors also if you want to stay warm you can also attend our beautiful museum so i just want to make sure that you know i invite that i i pray that you continue to be safe and enjoy our city through this weather don't forget that we do have hypothermia center where people that need it they can get warm up and it's right there the community center it's important that we continue to be one city as santa claus said saturday with

[00:07:01] the feel of a small town even though we're a city and that we are true neighbors and continue to look out for each other so i want to thank this party for all the hard work this year and uh especially the staff for everything they're doing uh for our city for our residents and visitors thank you vice mayor mark thank you i know we've got a long agenda so i'll be brief uh on a personal level just so i can go home of course i have to remind everyone that uh with the holiday season is the nutcracker coming up northern virginia's largest performing professional performing arts event

[00:07:40] at the hilton um and we hope everyone will come out but more importantly just wishing everyone a great holiday season uh we've been blessed and and i know it's tough times and difficult times for a lot of people but we're all here we're all safe it's a blessed season and it's time to enjoy that thank you very much thank you councilman Ellis thank you mayor um i want to thank everyone uh who worked so hard to make our special holiday weekend in the city of manassas so festive and fun

[00:08:15] We were one of the few localities that kept it going with that little bit of snow and we got a nice write-up about that that was nice to see. I also think the parade had the best theme this year. It was elfin around Old Town and it was so fun to see all those little elves running around, everybody dressed up. I love that theme.

[00:08:35] I also want to talk about Cheryl Messiah. She has always been a friend to all of us. I'm a Rotary member. She was a fellow Rotarian with the motto, Service Above Self, and she definitely lived that motto.

[00:08:57] She was very sweet and caring. She was a leader in scouts. She brought the children over to our apiary at Liberia many times just to let the beekeepers teach kids about pollinators. And I just always appreciated her company. She was always kind and giving.

[00:09:18] I went to visit Van Meter's new Ashberry that opened up. The models are now open. It's with Van Meter and Lenar, and they are selling the units over there on Grant Avenue. They're very beautiful. Snow, we were all out doing the ribbon cutting.

[00:09:36] It was very nice. So I just want to wish everyone a happy holiday as we wrap up the year, and happy new year. I hope everyone has a happy, healthy new year. I have two weddings to plan next year for two of our seven, no, six daughters.

[00:09:53] I have one son. Two of our six daughters. I have two weddings. So please keep me in your prayers. Thank you. You meant that. Councilman Smith. Thank you. May I take a point of personal privilege and just say good evening to Joanne Bernarice.

[00:10:09] God bless you. She's my mentor, people, and I'm sorry. I apologize. I do not apologize for recognizing her. Madam Mayor, just briefly, as Councilman Will indicated, we do have a full agenda and a lot of the things that we've done won't get mentioned.

[00:10:25] But I do have an observation. Over the last few weeks, this council, from the newest councilwoman, Hudson, to one of the older, and you, as a group, we've been engaged in what I would call quality of life-related issues on behalf of the city.

[00:10:48] And those activities have really been heartwarming, but there have also been moments in which we proudly represent the city and our commitment to ensuring that there is a good quality of life.

[00:11:05] We've gone from welcoming new businesses to celebrating successful businesses and partying, like at parades and so forth. So I've been proud and very happy this week. And I was reminded personally today by my, you know, just thinking through things, when you first came, your commitment, even as a council member, was to always work to serve this city, this community, because it's your home, your parents' home.

[00:11:40] Well, I have to believe that Mr. and Mrs. Davis are smiling down today because I'm as proud, well, they are prouder than I am because you're their off job, but I am very, very proud today to be associated with this council and you as mayor because, again, your commitment from the start was to promote the city and in many ways it becomes the destination place of visiting or just coming and enjoying or helpfully living or starting a business here.

[00:12:16] And the proof in that, I think a good testament to that occurred very recently. And I want to congratulate you and thank you as a citizen and as a member of this council. But I think it's a proud honor. You're the first that I'm aware of, definitely the first mayor, maybe one of the first from Northern Virginia.

[00:12:36] But Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger requested that you serve on her transition team committee. And I think that's a proud moment. And so I just want to thank you and acknowledge that. And with that, that ends my prepared remarks.

[00:12:59] Thank you. Thank you very much for that, Ralph. I really appreciate that. Councilman Osino. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. You know, it's always sad when you lose one of our residents in the course of a year and over time here.

[00:13:16] And some residents, when they leave, leave a bigger void, and one of those is Cheryl Macias. Do I know how much she did in this community? And when you've heard how many things and how many people have spoken about her, from being a mentor to the scouts to Rotary, just as some examples along the way here.

[00:13:41] And, you know, her loss is a great tragedy to our city or leaves a big, big empty spot here along the way here. But it is kind of a reminder that all of us can step in and fill that space along the way, and she can be a guiding light on that.

[00:14:04] So I'm glad we'll be recognizing her in a little bit here. A shout out to our fire chief, Chief Mills. He's celebrating a work anniversary this month, isn't he? right? January. January. All right. Well, see, I'm ahead of it because I saw my Facebook memories that we were recognizing you in December here. So, all right. Almost a work anniversary. Nonetheless, he's still here and working, and we do appreciate his work in that regard. My thanks to all those who put together Friday's tree lighting ceremony and Saturday's Christmas parade. These events

[00:14:42] happen every year, but they don't come together without a lot of behind the scenes planning and many volunteers helping out. They are a perfect example of how every day is a chance to make the city a little bit better. And I know everyone who got to see, participate in some small fashion would agree. Also gratitude to our Manassas City Police for their response to last Friday's a driving incident adjacent to the Kortnoff tree lighting area. Thankfully, there were no injuries, just property damage, but our officers' training paid off in their response,

[00:15:22] keeping a bad situation becoming more tragic. Ed and I had, my husband Ed and I had a fun time at Bristow Station's Christmas party Saturday evening. I'm always comforted by the love and laughter in our neighborhoods, and this event was no exception. And lastly, as a gentleman, D.M. Dellinger, wrote, this is my wish for you. Peace of mind, prosperity throughout the year, happiness that multiplies, health for you and yours, fun around every corner, energy to chase

[00:15:57] your dreams, and joy to fill your holidays. Happy holidays, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, and anything else that I may have left out. Please be safe and enjoy the holidays, look forward to seeing everybody at our january meeting uh where we start again do this all one more time again thank you mayor thank you councilman hudson thank you madam mayor it is hard to follow such a joyful closing remark that councilman oscina just made um and uh while i also share in the sentiment of truly truly missing miss cheryl macias um i don't really have anything else unique

[00:16:35] to share this night so i will get us onto the agenda thank you madam mayor thank you um thank Thank you all, and thank you, Ralph, very much for your remarks. I really appreciate it. And you forgot Feliz Navidad. Get him, Sonia. Get him later. Again, echoing everyone else's comments about our tree lighting and our parade, and aside from the incident that happened that is now, I understand, on the news and spreading around, we are very thankful that it was not much worse.

[00:17:03] So, again, our police officers, all of our responders, We are so grateful for the training that they received. And like I always say, it starts at the top. So when you have the best, we have the best on display when we do have an incident. And we're just so very thankful here in the city for who we have on board as police officers and our protection.

[00:17:27] HMI volunteers, parade committee, anybody who touched anything with our tree lighting and our parade, thank you, thank you, thank you, one and all for all of your efforts in making sure that we had successful back-to-back events that is not easy to do and we sincerely appreciate everyone helping out I for the fifth year held my if I were mayor essay contest and I had this year over 100 entries these are fifth graders in the city who write essays about if they were mayor and I will post the essay along with the winning candidate but she was there on Friday night and

[00:18:05] helped light the tree with santa evelyn young um was the first place winner second place was lucas gomez menjavar eli and third place went to andrea corvera rivera and what's so great about that is they are all from baldwin look at her the principal um all from baldwin um intermediate so just so so it's just so heartwarming their essays were all wonderful so they will all be at school board meeting tomorrow night so i'll be there with all three of them um tomorrow night as they get recognized and um i see dr newman back there in the back thank you for coming tonight

[00:18:41] as well so i want to just quickly thank the interfaith council and social services for feeding over 400 people um at our friendsgiving food lion donated food we had several churches come together and they donated food and we were able to get out 400 bags of groceries to folks so so they could have their Thanksgiving meal on Thanksgiving Day.

[00:19:01] And like everyone else, I wish you all a very, very, very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to one and all. And thank you all so much for coming out tonight. And with that, I'll turn it over to City Manager Steve Burke. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Our utility customers may have noticed an earthy taste or odor in the city's water recently.

[00:19:19] This is due to elevated levels of organic compounds in Lake Manassas that typically occur during seasonal changes. There is nothing, the water is still safe, it just has an odor to it. Once we became aware of the compounds, our water treatment staff have been using activated carbon to reduce the levels of organics in our processed water, and we're continuing to monitor the lake for its stabilization.

[00:19:44] And the city is also evaluating an intersection safety monitoring program at a few of our non-signalized intersections that was offered by a private firm. The program monitors intersections to identify speeding, failure to stop, or failure to yield to pedestrians.

[00:20:00] And the city will be receiving the data to determine if we should pursue working with this firm in the future. Our ice skating rink will continue to operate until January 4, 2026. Our city offices will be closed Wednesday, December 24, and Thursday, December 25, in observance of Christmas.

[00:20:19] The city will also be closed Thursday, July 1, in observance of New Year's. The City will host the Holiday Train Show from December 10th to the 14th at our Community Center. And then on Saturday, December 13th, you can enjoy the Train Show and Cookies with Santa from 3 to 5 p.m.

[00:20:37] Please visit the City's website for information about programs offered at the City's Community Center that include Toddler Drop-In Program, Lego Club, Indoor Soccer, Yoga, Zumba, and Movies. And finally, on behalf of the City staff, Happy Holidays.

[00:20:54] That's all I have, Madam Mayor. Okay, thank you. Any questions for Mr. Burke? Okay, if not, we'll move forward to the swearing-in ceremony. Is Jacqueline here? Oh, there she is, yep. Trisha Ritchie folks being sworn in. She was reelected as our city treasurer back in November.

[00:21:12] I solemnly swear.

[00:21:37] I solemnly swear. To support the Constitution of the United States. To support the Constitution of the United States. And the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Virginia. And the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Virginia. And to faithfully and impartially.

[00:21:53] And to faithfully and impartially. Discharge all the duties. Discharge all the duties. Incumbent upon me. Incumbent upon me. As the treasurer. As the treasurer. Of the city of Manassas. Of the city of Manassas. To the best of my abilities. To the best of my abilities.

[00:22:09] So help me God. So help me God. John, you look like a preacher. I just want to say a few words.

[00:22:25] And that is, I am so excited to be able to serve you for another four years. I thank you so much for the fact that you've given me that chance. And that lets me know that not only do you like the job that I'm doing, but we will continue to do a good job and just get it better.

[00:22:44] And I would like to have my staff that fooled me, didn't let me know when they were going to be here, to please stand. Thank you.

[00:23:00] So, Diana, Jatel, Cassie, and my chief, Andrea Evans, I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for them. So, thank you all very much. You got to get back to work, so thank you for that.

[00:23:23] All right, next on the agenda, we have presentations. And item 1.1 is Manassas City Public Schools, school presentation from Metz Middle School. And our vice chair, Jill Spall, is going to introduce the principal and take it from there.

[00:23:39] Thank you for being here. Good evening. Can you hear me? Good evening, mayor, vice mayor, members of council. It is my absolute pleasure to introduce Juliet Finnegan, a dynamic, student-centered leader who brings energy, insight, and heart to everything she does as the leader of Metz Middle School and our beloved Manassas City Public Schools.

[00:23:59] Juliet Finnegan has served across northern Virginia as its teacher, a dean, assistant principal and now two times principal at mcps she carries that experience with a clear purpose to build strong schools where every child is known supported and inspired to grow her leadership is marked by collaboration positivity and a relentless belief in what our students and staff can achieve please join me in welcoming Juliet Finnegan a passionate advocate for METS

[00:24:27] and a true partner to our community good evening madam mayor council members and members of our community. I am Juliet Finnegan, the very proud principal of Mets Middle School.

[00:24:45] Thank you for the opportunity to share some of the incredible work happening at Mets Middle School. Tonight, I want to spotlight three initiatives that truly embody our belief in access and opportunities: our student-led coffee cart, our brand new weight room, and the Origin Project.

[00:25:06] One of the most joyful moments each week at Mets is watching our structured program students run our student-led coffee cart. What may look like a simple cup of coffee is actually a powerful learning experience. Our students take ownership of meaningful tasks, preparing beverages, greeting staff, making deliveries, and each interaction builds their confidence. They are practicing communication, money handling, following multi-step directions, and working collaboratively as part of a team. These are skills that prepare them for lifelong

[00:25:45] independence and future employment we've taken great care to make the experience inclusive and authentic students use social scripts visuals and for some communication boards and assistive devices after our first coffee cart day we reflected and made adjustments students are now going to use real coins instead of tickets or tokens to strengthen functional math and problem solving. This project also brings together students. Peer buddies from Ms. Lewis's class partner with our structured program students, creating natural opportunities for friendship,

[00:26:24] team-making, and empathy. Instructional assistance helps students who may need additional support with transition or task steps, ensuring every student can participate meaningfully. This work represents what access and opportunity can look like in a school. Students discovering their strengths, building independence, and seeing themselves as valued contributors to their community. Another exciting highlight this year is the opening of Mets Middle School's first ever weight room, a dedicated space that

[00:27:00] is already transforming wellness and learning for both students and staff. For our eighth grade students, the weight room is directly aligned to Virginia's HPE 8 standards of learning, allowing students to understand fundamental resistance training, learning proper techniques and safety, applying fitness concepts, creating personal wellness goals, tracking progress, and developing lifelong healthy habits. Having access to this space also eases congestion in the gymnasium, giving students more room to participate in differentiated, intentional fitness activities that meet their individual needs. The weight room

[00:27:40] is also a very valuable resource for our staff wellness as well. Before and after school, staff have access to the equipment to support their physical health, reduce stress, and build camaraderie with colleagues. A healthier staff strengthens the overall health of our school community. Looking ahead, this space will expand opportunities for athletic program, conditioning sessions, and future student wellness programming. The weight room represents a commitment to expanding access and opportunity, giving every student and adult in our building a place

[00:28:14] grow stronger, build confidence, and prioritize wellness. Finally, I want to highlight a powerful literacy and storytelling initiative, the Origin Project. This project gives our English learners at METS the opportunity to take ownership of their stories and decide how their stories are going to be shared with the world. Students engage in each part of the writing process: brainstorming, drafting, revising, and publishing. Through this work, students explore their

[00:28:48] personal heritage and identity, share their authentic experiences, and develop as creative writers. The project connects students with professional authors, strengthening social-emotional learning, and builds community partnership.

[00:29:04] It also challenges our students to think deeply and critically about their lived experiences. On December 11th this week, we will welcome our families and community members to hear 10 of our students present their stories aloud. Stories that are honest, moving, and full of heart.

[00:29:23] Once writing is complete, we will review the entries and submit those that meet the criteria for publication. Our hope is to see as many med students published as possible. The Origin Project celebrates the idea that every student has a voice worth hearing and that opportunities begin when we give them the platform to use it.

[00:29:44] These three spotlights, the coffee cart, the weight room, and the Origin Project are very different initiatives, but they all share the same purpose, to expand access, create belonging, and open doors for every METS student.

[00:30:00] At METS, we believe that opportunity isn't something that students earn, but it's something that they deserve. And we're committed to building a school where every student in every program has the support, resources, and the experience they need to thrive.

[00:30:15] Thank you for your continued partnership and for this opportunity to share the great things happening at METS Middle School. Great. Thank you. Thank you very much. Anyone have any comments or questions from Ms. Finnegan? Okay. Thank you so much for being here.

[00:30:32] Next on the agenda is item 1.2, school presentation from Baldwin Intermediate. Ms. Miles, Dana Miles from the school board, is going to introduce the principal there. Good evening, Madam Mayor Davis-Younger, Vice Mayor Wolfe, and esteemed city council members.

[00:30:50] I'm proud to introduce Dakota Jackson, who proudly serves as a principal of Baldwin Intermediate School at Monasa City Public Schools. She's a graduate of the Johns Hopkins University, where she earned her Master of Education and secondary education with a concentration in special education.

[00:31:06] She also holds an education specialist degree from Old Dominion. She began her career in 2013 working as an English and special education teacher and then went into school leadership in 2019. In 2023, she came here to Manassas City Public Schools through the MAPS Collaborative Program, coaching teachers across the division.

[00:31:28] and shortly thereafter was honored to be selected as the principal of Baldwin Intermediate School. And she leads a dynamic and diverse learning community there. She's deeply committed to fostering equitable, high-quality learning experiences for all students and values strong partnerships with family, staff, and community leaders.

[00:31:47] And her focus this school year is building a learning culture that lasts. Dakota is also a proud mother of three children, including a first-grade Baldwin Elementary Rocket. She is grateful for the opportunity to serve this community and looks forward to continuing to work collaboratively with the school board and city council to ensure excellence for every student.

[00:32:10] Without further ado, here's Dakota Jackson. Thank you. Good evening, Madam Mayor, and to all of our other council members, Mr. Wolf, City Manager Burke.

[00:32:26] Thank you guys so much for having me here to present with you tonight and to share a little bit about some of the things that we are doing here at Baldwin Intermediate this year. Tonight, I would like to focus on our culture at Baldwin. It is a point of pride for me.

[00:32:41] I've had the privilege of selecting the majority of our staff here at Baldwin Intermediate. And as I was sharing with school board member Miles, it is a huge focus of ours to ensure that there is a culture of learning that lasts at Baldwin Intermediate. New for this school year, I would like to take a moment to virtually introduce you all to our assistant principal, Mr. David Keiling.

[00:33:04] He joined us this year after serving as the health and PE coordinator for Manassas City Public Schools, and he has been a very welcome addition to our staff. He has jumped right in to working and understanding how our school works, how our staff works, and how our kids learn. And he's doing an amazing job this year. We're very proud of him.

[00:33:22] He cannot be here tonight, but I did want to take a moment to introduce you to him. Some continued highlights and some new highlights for Baldwin Intermediate School Year is we are still doing our monthly newsletters. We are sending those out to our community members every single month to keep our parents and our families up to date with the events and the initiatives that we're leading at Baldwin Intermediate.

[00:33:44] We have Friday folders, principal updates, and we are utilizing our school website as a means of communication at all times. Something that we started and are continuing to do are our monthly Togo Awards for our students, and that is a huge part of our culture of caring. Our staff and our support staff around the building, Every single month, each nominate one child that we call our unsung heroes.

[00:34:08] Those are the kids that are doing the right things all the time and sometimes aren't recognized for it. We wanna make sure that even if they're just hanging out in the middle of the group, that they're getting that recognition as well. And that's become a really big point of focus for us. Our students really love and enjoy receiving that recognition.

[00:34:25] We are still continuing to focus on students by individual name and need for personal success. Last year, we were privileged enough be able to pilot the summit k-12 program for our esol learners this is directly tied to their weta access test and it predicts and tells us how they are going to perform while also strengthening their foundational skills and speaking reading writing and really just performing well in english we are also continuing our after school boot camps we have opportunities for our students to stay after school four days a week at any point in time for additional help with academics they don't need to qualify they can simply just stay and we will always have a staff member

[00:35:04] available for them and then we are still continuing to focus on community engagement our final meeting our final pep meeting of the year is tomorrow that is our parents as educational partners and they come in every single every month to meet with our staff and really learn how they can become more engaged and involved in their child's learning and this year typically our monday market ends in the summer right after we come back to school August we have carried that through and we are continuing to do our Monday market which allows us to help feed our families in the community that are struggling with food and security this year we have carried it all the way through December thanks to

[00:35:42] our community partners who have been able to continue funding that and making sure that we're able to provide families with food we are very proud of that and that is something that we hope to continue to expand on so that our families know that the school really is the center of their community. New for Baldwin this year I am proud to share with you our vision. We took quite a long time when I became principal to really craft this out. This was a work of labor and love and we were able to come up with this with students, staff, and parents.

[00:36:13] And so we put this together as a vision for what everyone who plays a role in our school wants for our children. So our new vision for the 25-26 school year and beyond is empowering every student to discover their voice, embrace their potential, and thrive as lifelong learners in an inclusive and innovative community. How are we going to do that? What's our mission? We're fostering academic success and excellence through personal growth by engaging through student-centered learning experiences. This year we were very proud, you'll see this on the

[00:36:49] the next slide to invite a local author who wrote the Magic Book of Light, Miss Margie Hamner-Coles, into our building so that our students firsthand could have the experience of not only reading a book but meeting the actual author who wrote the book and learning about what it meant to become a writer. And so that was a really meaningful experience for them. We take taking those experiences that mean a lot to them and making them real and true very seriously. We are cultivating a diverse and supportive environment that celebrates every students strengths and their individuality. We are inspiring curiosity, creativity, and resilience

[00:37:25] to prepare our students for future challenges and we're building strong partnerships with our families, local community members, our city council members to support our students overall success and their well-being. And it's not just about the kids because without an amazing staff we won't have amazing kids and so we are continuing professional development in-house for our staff.

[00:37:46] This is an addition to the professional development that the city already offers our staff. We're fortunate at Baldwin to be fully staffed this year, but we do have some younger teachers who are still learning in their craft. And so how are we supporting them in the building? We are offering bite-sized professional development to all of our teachers this year.

[00:38:05] Every teacher received a copy of Seven Steps to a Language-Rich Classroom, making sure that in every class our students are making sure that they're using language as much as possible. The more they speak, the more they read, the more they write. We are also following the division's plan for sources of strength to make sure our students are feeling comfortable and they have coping skills and that they are feeling like they have a strong foundation for their academic success when we look at the student's overall well-being. And then there's some other ones that we're taking into account as well, some Teach Like a Champion, some other developments that we're making sure our staff feel really comfortable and confident when they're standing in front of our

[00:38:42] children in teaching. And I think that a lot of these efforts have really helped out. We had a 92% retention rate at Baldwin Intermediate from the 24-25 school year to the 25-26 school year. And as I just mentioned, a highlight for us this year, this was really special for me and for a lot of our kids. We heard some amazing things after this. We invited Ms. Hamner Coles in.

[00:39:13] She is a local author based out of Wharton, and she wrote The Magic Book of Life. It pairs very nicely with our Sources of Strength curriculum and teaching our kids that there is strength within them to overcome their problems or to overcome their perceived barriers and that they can meet those challenges and rise above. And she was able to come in and we did stations. I had students say Ms. Jackson, I think I'm going to start coming to school now. And I thought, okay, we don't have assemblies every day, but I really want to see you here. So it taught me that the more experiences we create for them, the more engaged they will truly be in the learning. I had a student come in the very next day and say, I already bought the second book. And that was really, really

[00:39:52] inspiring for me because we are in a digital age where kids are putting down books and picking up tablets. So to see them loving reading is really special. So there is a part two and we hope to invite her back and also to continue to work with more local authors. As Madam Mayor just told us, Yeah, there you are.

[00:40:12] We did participate in the If I Were Mayor contest. I'm not gonna brag, but I am very proud that we had three winners from Baldwin this year, and they are all pictured above. As Madame Mayor said, they will be at the school board presentation tomorrow. They are very, very excited, and Eleanor was also able to participate in the tree lighting.

[00:40:31] That was a highlight for us. Writing is a focus, so to see so many Baldwin students willingly and excitedly engaging in a writing contest As a former English teacher, that was very special for me as well. And last but not least, I know you've got a long agenda tonight, but I really want to take a moment to invite everyone in here out to our first annual community breakfast event.

[00:40:54] We will be hosting Breakfast with Santa this Saturday at Baldwin Elementary and Baldwin Intermediate. It is going to be a joint effort between both schools. We will be feeding the community, so come see Principal Rupert and I. We're going to be serving up some pancakes. Mr. and Mrs. Claus are going to be there from 9 to 12.

[00:41:11] Some of our esteemed school board members are also going to be there. We will be giving away some raffles, there will be some giveaways, some door prizes, craft ornament stations. It's completely free to the community. We were fortunate to receive a $10,000 donation from two different educational foundations that we would like to honor.

[00:41:34] And it's a work of love. We have over 50 volunteers that are gonna be here this Saturday. This is something that we are hoping to continue as an annual community tradition. I know there are many other things happening in the city on Saturday, but if you'd like, bring your little ones by. There will be plenty for them to do, music, and of course food, so we invite you to come in.

[00:41:55] We feel like everyone could use a little bit of cheer this holiday season, and if you would share in that, we would love to have you. That is it for us at Baldwin Intermediate. Thank you so much for having me tonight. I appreciate you, and I'm looking forward to continuing to work with each of you as partners in our students' success.

[00:42:11] Thank you. - Thank you. Yeah. - And I am now going to introduce to you our sixth grade choir students under the direction of Mr. Darrell Fuller.

[00:42:30] Come on down. - Come on down. - They have put together, they have put together a musical selection for you tonight. They are very excited to come and sing for you.

[00:42:46] And I hope this is just a little bit of a preview of what you will see on Saturday this week.

[00:42:50] everyone a selection from our sixth grade baldwin intermediate choir mr fuller take it away give

[00:46:39] them a few minutes thank you all so much for being here and miss jackson we feel your passion thank you so much for all you do um for the students at baldwin and for the community looking forward to the the breakfast that's going to be great thank you for doing that thank you so much for being here okay next on the agenda and i'm going to have the whole council come down front As we read the commendation honoring the life and legacy of Ms. Cheryl Tate's Macias Hamby.

[00:47:08] And the family is invited to also. We're going to come down.

[00:47:31] Hello, hello.

[00:47:59] Hold it here. Anyone else that wants to join up that is like family, EJ, if you want to come up, you can as well. We're just so grateful to be able to do this to recognize Cheryl.

[00:48:21] We had a celebration of life. She wanted a party, and we had that on, what was that, the 15th of November, and family was there, friends. It was a packed house. Exactly what she tasked me to do was to celebrate her life.

[00:48:37] She didn't want crying. She didn't want people sad. She wanted people to celebrate her life, and I think we did that in style. So I'll read the accommodation, and then I know some of you did already speak about Cheryl, but if the family wishes to say anything, they may do so at that time as well. The accommodation reads, whereas the city of Manassas recognizes and honors individuals whose lives reflect exceptional service, leadership, and dedication to the greater good.

[00:49:03] And whereas Cheryl Tate's Macias Hamby, born December 21, 1956, to the late Marguerite Barry Robinson and Edward Whitfield Tate Sr., devoted her life to public service, community leadership, and the empowerment of others.

[00:49:20] And whereas for 17 years, Cheryl served Congressman Mickey Leland and Tony Hall, including senior staff service with the House Select Committee on Hunger, where she advanced policies addressing hunger, poverty, health, housing, and rural development.

[00:49:41] And whereas during the Clinton-Gore presidential transition, Cheryl helped identify candidates for federal leadership roles, leading to her appointment as deputy assistant to the president and chief of staff for presidential personnel in the White House, where she supported the administration in building an ethical and effective public service team.

[00:50:05] and whereas Cheryl's federal service also included leadership roles at the Farm Credit Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, culminating in her return to the Farm Credit Administration as Chief Operating Officer, where she guided programs that strengthened rural communities and America's farmers.

[00:50:28] And whereas after her federal service, Cheryl continued her lifelong commitment to community leadership through Scouts BSA, where she received the District Award of Merit and the John Jenkins Scout Award through the Rotary Club of Manassas as immediate past president and District 7610 Assistant Governor, and through her service as an appointed member of the Manassas Regional Airport Commission, where she contributed her expertise and dedication to supporting the city's continued growth and vitality.

[00:51:03] And whereas Cheryl was further honored with the John and Ernestine Jenkins Community Service Award by the Prince William Democratic Committee, as well as the Paul Reed Award for Outstanding Volunteer from the Manassas Park City's Democratic Committee, recognizing her years of civic leadership, voter engagement, and service.

[00:51:22] And whereas Cheryl's integrity, grace, and devotion to uplifting others touched countless lives and left a legacy that continues to strengthen the city of Manassas and all who knew her. Now, therefore, I, Michelle Davis Younger, mayor of the city of Manassas, Virginia, and on behalf of the Manassas City Council, do hereby commend Cheryl Tate's Macias Hamby and honor her lifetime of distinguished service to her nation, her community, and her family while extending deepest sympathy and gratitude to her loved ones for sharing her gifts of leadership and compassion with the world.

[00:52:01] We're so grateful for Cheryl. We loved her. You know that. We love you, too. So did you guys want to say anything? Do I know you? For loving Cheryl, thank you. Thank you, because she loved you guys, and she loved her commitment to the city, to her rotary couch.

[00:52:25] She wanted to do good. Thank you for loving it. Jessie. I can't say much, because I will cry.

[00:52:45] But he said good stuff, and I back it. Back to Madam Mayor. Anyone else? I know some of you on council already said some things. So I don't want to make sure I don't want to miss anybody. So we have other commendations here, too, so we can take to the other members of the family that are here.

[00:53:01] But thank you all for coming down for us with this. And Cheryl certainly deserved it. And we definitely miss her every single day. And just thank you all for coming out, that we're here to witness this with us tonight. So thank you for coming out, too, Dwight.

[00:53:17] I know it's tough still. So thank you for being here to do this. All right. Thank you.

[00:53:22] Next on the agenda, we have item 1.4,

[00:53:59] The AvPorts LLC presentation update on airport commercial service development and Mr. Mark Ricks is here to help us with that, the CEO of AvPorts. - Thank you, Madam Mayor, Mr. Vice Mayor, members of the council, I'm honored to be here.

[00:54:17] I'm particularly honored to be here after that wonderful commemoration of a woman who I never had the opportunity to meet, but I understand was a member of the airport commission. I'm Mark Ricks. For the last six months, I've been the CEO of AvPorts. We are the private developer and lessee of passenger service facilities at Manassas Regional Airport.

[00:54:36] I wanna acknowledge that while I'm the one up here speaking, obviously this is a partnership between AvPorts and the airport staff led by its director, Juan Rivera, who's up here now, who is a fabulous partner in this undertaking, runs a tip-top, top-notch airport, and has been a fabulous partner for our company.

[00:54:58] I'm gonna move through this content quickly. a lot of information on the slides. I won't go through all of it word by word, but if there are any questions now or in the future, obviously I'd be glad to answer them. So I'll first introduce myself. I want to share a little bit about how we tell the airport story, for example, when we're in meetings either with airlines or on Capitol Hill, and then of course I want to give you, most importantly, a project update. Very briefly on AvPorts, we are the nation's most experienced and entrusted third-party airport manager and operator we've been around for nearly a century more than 600 people

[00:55:33] operating airports around the country and then there are two projects where like Manassas we are developing Passenger service facilities or airports obviously Manassas and then New Haven Connecticut is our other flagship project When we tell the story of the opportunity here at Manassas Airport One of the ways we do that is with this slide, which, if you look in this table, compares the Washington-Baltimore metropolitan area to one larger one and one smaller one.

[00:56:04] The larger one being the New York metro area and the smaller one being the Boston metro area. And if you just focus your attention on that bottom row of the table, which has the number of commercial airports in each of those three regions, you'll see one of the reasons why this airport is so important, not just to Manassas, but to the larger metro area.

[00:56:22] And that's because, whereas you have no fewer than eight commercial airports serving the greater New York area and five serving the greater Boston area, there are just three serving this metropolitan area. And each of those airports has some specific issues that create challenges.

[00:56:38] Obviously, Reagan National Airport is essentially at capacity, making it difficult to bring in new, really impossible to bring in new entrants. Dulles is not at capacity, but its cost per employment is high, and obviously you have a couple of incumbent airlines there that make it very difficult for new entrants.

[00:56:58] And then while Baltimore, BWI, has a lot of opportunity and low-cost carriers, it's obviously not convenient to much of the region, including this region, of course. And when you think about the geography of this area, there's a big chunk of the D.C. metro area, this southwest portion of the metro area that is especially underserved, Particularly if they're looking for access to low-cost carriers, you know, BWI, while theoretically achievable, you know, you're going to take longer driving there than you will flying some places.

[00:57:29] And so, as we say, the regional airport here in Manassas is closer to 1.5 million residents. It's really an area that needs more air service and another opportunity for residents and businesses alike. So when we think about the Manassas Airport, we think of it as an opportunity not to build something that's going to rival the BWIs, Dulleses, or Reagans, but one that can accommodate market access for new carriers, including but not limited to low-cost carriers, while to some extent relieving congestion at Reagan and Dulles.

[00:58:01] It's still less than 30 miles from downtown D.C., and of course has direct rail access via VRE. And an important metric that we think about is so-called curb-to-gate, from getting dropped off by your family member or by a for hire vehicle at the curb to arriving at your gate what might that time be and we are targeting 7 to 12 minutes that's important when you think about the drive time for example from this part of the area to Dulles it might not seem that much longer than getting to Manassas but you know I can attest our offices are literally on the property of Dulles Airport and I still need to leave my office an hour before my flight to make

[00:58:38] sure I make it because that curve to gate time is just so extraordinarily long So when we think about the convenience of this airport, it's about its proximity to where people live, but it's also about the speed with which people can move from their car to the gate that we think is going to be extremely attractive.

[00:58:55] I want to spend a couple minutes talking about the design of the facility. I want to stress that our focus to date has been predominantly on the program, i.e. how the building functions, how big it is, what shape it is, what facilities it has. our focus to date has not been about the exterior aesthetics that being said I understand there has been feedback to date about the exterior aesthetics how it fits with the existing terminal how it fits with the rest of the airport and how it fits with the environment here at Manassas so I will share some of our thinking in progress about that design against the backdrop of some important

[00:59:31] considerations both architectural context and cost so our design philosophy is you see these three bullet points here delivering essential service with modern aesthetics creating a welcoming gateway with quick access and minimal stress and importantly managing costs in order to maximize affordable air travel options one mistake that we think is very important to avoid that you see in some other parts of the country is thinking about airports predominantly as opportunities for let's call it grand civic architecture as opposed to what they really should be thought of I think which is transportation gateway gateways and the

[01:00:10] mistake we want to make is that when you're not conscious of cost that flows through to ticket prices a good example of that is LaGuardia Terminal B in New York near where I live was a four point one billion dollar project that while beautiful didn't add any gates doesn't allow you to travel any place that you couldn't travel to before they spent that four point one billion dollars and at least one airline has announced that they cut back service at that terminal by 80% because it became so expensive to operate there. So we think we can create a modern building, an efficient building, a welcoming building, but importantly, a building that manages costs

[01:00:47] in order to maximize affordable air service. Notwithstanding the fact that I'm in the airport business, I know that people don't come to our airports for the architecture. They come to our airports because that's where the planes are. And the more destinations and the more affordable airfares that our airline partners can offer, the better. This is not a design view. This is a program view as i said earlier just to highlight that the project has three components so you're looking roughly east you can see the existing terminal building there in the center and then you can see the white building here which is the terminal you can see just beyond it the short-term parking spaces and then you really can't see in this rendering the remote

[01:01:27] parking which would be across the street that's the basic program what we're going to offer this plan view is I know impossible to read the point being you're gonna have all the what you should expect to have in an airport from check-in counters to TSA screening to baggage drop-off and handling concessions and you're gonna have four aircraft boarding positions four gates with an appropriately sized hold room and concessions so that's the basics of the program at least in phase one what's not shown on this rendering is on the north side of the existing

[01:02:01] terminal building. As traffic requires, we do have both the right and the obligation to build a phase two, which could further expand the airport, obviously the creation of more gates. But we're just focusing here on phase one at the moment. So when we talk about architectural context, now shifting gears away from program into the design, again, I just wanted to share a little bit of the thinking of our architecture team as to how we try to integrate this new building into an existing context that's pretty complicated you have the existing terminal which is predominantly brick but does have all of these modern features as well with the canopy and even more modern features on the side

[01:02:41] that faces the airfield and then immediately adjacent there is a an FBO which is obviously exclusively modern not dissimilar from another nearby FBO which again is exclusively modern and in fact this modern sort of pre-engineered metal building is the dominant character at this airport and then of course you have the Manassas context you know known for you know history and this leafiness and this beautiful green I think one of the ideas that our architecture team has that I quite like is when you think about what's the right color scheme for this airport you see these trees and this grass you know their theory that I happen to agree with is that building off of that you know

[01:03:19] really lush green whether it's the trees whether it's the grass they've come up with a particular palette that you can see here that they call HEF, which is the airport code, green, and using that as a feature of this new terminal. And in fact, it also happens to draw from some of the green color that's on the existing building, where in addition to the brick, you have that white metal and that green color that takes cues from the existing building.

[01:03:44] And then we also have the notion of finding ways to incorporate some of that brick from the existing building into the design of, as I said, will be predominantly a pre-engineered metal building that's consistent with the rest of the airport but we think with some brick inlays and the paving and other accents we can carry through some of the brick themes from the existing building so this is one view from the south that you might imagine that brings together the new building and some of the green coloring that we talked about with the existing building that canopy that you see we think should be aligned with the canopy of the existing terminal and we think we can bring that green color palette into

[01:04:21] the inside linking it to the outside linking it to the broader manassas context so again that's just some work in progress we'll be happy to take feedback i expect we won't have time to do that tonight unless you'd like to do that but happy to to hear from you all in the future some other updates as you may know in order to transition this airport from a general aviation airport to a scheduled passenger service airport the airport needs an airport operating certificate called a Part 139 certificate. It's not an easy thing to obtain, but thanks to the airport director, Juan, and his team, they do have, as you may know, a letter from the FAA confirming

[01:04:59] compliance with those standards. It's really an extraordinary accomplishment. The FAA does not issue these certificates on anything approaching a regular basis, and the fact that they not only passed the inspection, but did so with flying colors, I think is extraordinary. That's why the FAA said we commend the city, by which they mean the airport, Juan, and the airport team for the progress made throughout this process. So huge kudos to Juan and his team. I won't go through all of these bullets on the environmental review, but as I think you may know, an environmental assessment is in progress. This is a really laborious, painstakingly detailed process that

[01:05:35] seeks to understand any potential environmental impacts associated with the development of this terminal. And I'll just take you to the bottom line, which is that we are anticipating or targeting what's called the finding of no significant impact roundabouts April which will allow us to proceed into construction let me speak for a moment about air service which i'm sure is of interest to everybody we you know one of our jobs in addition to permitting and delivering this building is attracting airlines to serve it we will be either have been are now or will be in dialogue not only

[01:06:10] with the airlines you see here but with any number of airlines not listed here it's going to be a process you should expect to see us launch the airport with one or at most two airlines and then once air service demand at this airport is proven I think we can expect to see other airlines follow but again launching a brand new passenger service airport is is an abnormal thing to do if you look at that third box it's hard to get a precise number on this but we think this will be one of only about five new scheduled passenger airports this century so it doesn't happen very often and on the one hand that's exciting but on the other

[01:06:47] hand airlines don't readily jump into serving in airport where there isn't proven passenger demand what I'm going to show you now is for illustrative purposes I'm going to show you how the evolution of routes at this airport might evolve and I stress might it depends on how you know which airlines choose to serve the airport and how they choose to serve the airport but it gives you a sense that this airport won't ramp up from zero to nothing you know in a matter of a couple months it'll take a couple of years but but this you know by way of example at New Haven Airport when we took over management of that airport

[01:07:23] there was essentially one destination served out of New Haven Tweed Airport and now there are 33 unique destinations about four years later and we have similar aspirations for this airport so initially you might imagine you know one nearby destination we showed HVN which happens to be New Haven because it's our airport but you wouldn't be surprised to see an airport like orlando which is mco be an early destination obviously given the number of tourists that go from all over the country to to the parks and then what you should begin to see ramp up from there is a lot of southern you know flights

[01:07:57] to the south as you would expect to the vacation destinations in florida and the carolinas and maybe some trips out to vegas or chicago midway where people can get connections to the rest of the country. But what we really hope to see over the course of the first five years is not just that north-south traffic, but that east-west traffic allowing people to get all the way to the west coast. So that's our aspiration. As I said, if we were to show you the route map for New Haven, it would have quite a bit more destinations on the airport than are seen on this map. And we think there's an exciting opportunity to do the same thing here at Manassas.

[01:08:34] Last but not least, in terms of the schedule, again, I won't take you through all the details here there's a series of milestones i'll call your attention to the last item on this table which is the item people probably care most about when might i be able to catch a flight out of manassas airport and the answer is spring of 2027 uh so roundabouts 18 months from now is what we're targeting and we think it's achievable it's you know it's hard work each and every day but um but it's work we're excited to do and i think you know when this community it's already a fabulous community and when residents and businesses can connect to other parts of the country seamlessly

[01:09:10] we think they're even more exciting times ahead so happy to answer questions but also knowing you have a tight agenda happy to take those questions at a future date thank you mark thank you for the presentation very informative council members questions comments mr osina um this is either for you or mr. Rivera so where do we stand on our new control tower because marks it's great to have lights but you gotta gotta get them landed and good evening madam mayor members of council mr. Sina we are in the environmental

[01:09:50] process the final draft was submitted to the FAA in fact in the last week the design is at 70% it will be completed by January so construction we hope pinning on FAA funding to hopefully get started sometime in early 27 about the same time that airline service will be cranking up we'll probably be doing construction on that tower and it takes about 18 months to complete the tower

[01:10:24] and then tear down the the so we're looking close to 29 probably when you get that tower up and running and it'll be located where it's on the west side of the airport on the south side of the airport on the southwest side excuse me okay so thank you the process of a tower again not a whole lot of them built every year in the in the United States so this is going to be a tower that is going to be lasting us into the future it's going to have a simulator in it so

[01:11:03] that the air traffic control folks can learn more about some of the newer air traffic controls controllers will be able to come to Manassas and actually utilize the the simulator so a lot better than what we we have now so mr.

[01:11:20] Smith as a follow as a follow-on to the question about the tower we will not be lacking and any significant service using the existing tower until the until 2029 mr. Smith no sir the tower the controls that controllers we have now the size of our tower no problems at all handling the traffic that we have currently the problem we have with our tower right now it was built in in the early 60s brought to Manassas and it is it just doesn't meet the needs of size and everything but the controllers top-notch that we have at Manassas and

[01:11:59] they're going to definitely be able to handle anything that we have from an airline service standpoint thank you thank you madam mayor I truly appreciate the update I'm looking forward to whether it's the Delta JetBlue American Airlines United or Breezy, either airline or any other one, they are, you know, it will be great for businesses and for residents and visitors. I do believe that even though those are like

[01:12:37] vacation places where people from the area might want to go, I believe that they will also fulfill the need for the people to come and visit our area. I recall hearing the people will come to the airport because it's where the airplanes are and I do understand that and I didn't take time to that but I understand what is coming from. I was making most of the comments.

[01:13:09] I believe that our general aviation and the city and everybody involved with the airport has done a great job on how the airport look up to today, the infrastructure that we have, and I hope that it's no erase to, I hope that we can maintain that.

[01:13:32] And I hope that, you know, the comments made, it's not a reflection to having a cheap view, whether it's in the outside or the inside. But I'm looking forward to it, and I do believe that we will become even a better destination having the access and having the flights that will, of course, within time, continue to grow.

[01:13:59] My ask will continue to be to advocate for local businesses. I believe local businesses are looking forward to an opportunity to enhance the travel experience. And they're waiting. Some of them already signed up for the form, or at least it was provided.

[01:14:15] So I just want to make sure that it's not forgotten. I know we still have time, but then sometimes it feels like time goes by so fast. And this is exciting time. I also recall one of only five new scheduled passenger airports this century.

[01:14:32] So as we do it, you know, for our city means so much. It's an economic enhancement. It can make a difference, but also it will bring more traffic. It will bring more visitors. It will bring, it has a different component.

[01:14:49] And to me, it's very important that it looks a way that not only visitors can enjoy, but also the people that live here, that will use it, residents and business alike, can also be proud of the location like we are right now. Thank you, Madam Mayor.

[01:15:05] - Thank you. Any other comments or questions? All right, thank you so much for being here. Appreciate it. Next on the agenda, item 1.5, is the UOSA presentation. Do you wanna come forward? - Hi, Brian. - Thank you for being here.

[01:15:21] - Thank you. Thank you, Madam Mayor, Vice Mayor, City Council, and Mr. Burke for the opportunity to come and talk to you today. I am Brian Steglitz. I am the Executive Director of the Upper Aquaman Service Authority. We are the folks who provide wastewater treatment services to you and your community.

[01:15:41] A little bit of background on UOSA for some folks maybe in the audience aren't completely familiar who we are the area outlined in red is the area we serve so it includes the city of Manassas City of Manassas Park portions of Fairfax County and portions of Prince William County we're a 50 million gallons per day facility and we are part of what we call this one water system in northern Virginia so the effluent from UOSA is part of the drinking water supply for Fairfax water who serves about 2 million people in northern Virginia the are just drinking water utility in the state we serve about just over a half a

[01:16:18] million people and our as you've had some of you have had the opportunity to visit our facility recently you understand how infrastructure intensive it is and we have a two-year capital program of nearly 50 million dollars to continue to invest in the infrastructure that provides wastewater treatment services for your community and the others we serve we've just finished our board has just adopted a strategic plan I brought some copies I'll leave with your city clerk so you have your hands but this is an element of our strategic plan our vision to be globally recognized for protecting the region's water resources and mission is that we are a

[01:16:56] regional water recycling facility that protects public health and the environment as trusted stewards of our most precious resource water so what i'm here to talk to you for a few minutes today about is our jurisdictional cost allocation project um this is something that i was as i've I've been leading ULOSA now for about a year and a half, so I'm a little bit still new to the organization.

[01:17:18] But one of the things that I heard from the jurisdictions that we serve is take a look at the rate structure, how we charge for services. We recognize that given the fact that we are treating water to a very high level, it has a significant cost.

[01:17:34] And obviously that cost gets carried through to our customers who live in your community. So we're very sensitive about that. We wanted to make sure that we're using best practices in terms of profit service principles we evaluate that we address equity there are services that we provide that maybe not all the jurisdictions that we serve use and making sure that those costs are appropriately allocated we want to make sure that we are taking care of what the growth in the customers that we serve regions are of course protecting the environment and meeting the needs of all of our customers so those are the basis for driving this this effort and the outcome of that

[01:18:13] were a few things that we are proposing to change in terms of the structure and how we charge for our services. I'll go through each of these pretty quickly but there's three areas where we thought there were opportunities to make some improvements. One is our septage receiving facility so in addition to providing municipal wastewater treatment we receive septage delivery to our facility. We receive about a thousand to thirteen hundred loads every month so it's a pretty heavily used portion of our capacity but not all of our jurisdictions that we serve are using that the same but those costs are

[01:18:51] distributed based on the proportional ownership of the facility not based on usage that's something that we want to address with modifications in the future to our rate structure so the folks who are using the septage receiving facility are paying for it septage has a lot higher concentration so the cost to treat it is also a lot greater than what's coming in through the municipal sewer system the other thing that we have hoping to address through some changes in our rate structure is capacity loaning so different and i'll show you a slide on this later in the presentation but different jurisdictions are using different amounts of their capacity some have excess some have exceeded their

[01:19:29] capacity and when jurisdictions who have exceeded their capacity are potentially using capacity that's owned by others and there should be a mechanism for sharing that for covering the costs for folks who are exceeding and distributing that more equitably across the customers we serve so there's an opportunity to make some adjustments there and then the last item with we get recommendations from from all of the folks that we serve was how we bill for our reserve maintenance services so this is a capital charge we use to reinvest in our equipment the costs associated

[01:20:05] with that across the year tend to cycle up and down based on the spending of those throughout the year. And what we've heard feedbacks from some of the jurisdictions we serve is it's challenging to plan for that because it's unpredictable. So we've looked at other ways that we can predict and sort of smooth out the billing of that. And we've already implemented those changes and the feedback we've heard is that's working for all of our jurisdictions.

[01:20:30] So that's been already a successful result of this effort. A couple other things that were looking at where are there opportunities to incentivize infiltration into the collection system when it rains rain water can get into the sewer system and that drives some of the infrastructure size so we're looking at can we have a rate structure that potentially incentivizes control of infiltration the collection system how we handle capacity increases so if jurisdictions that are growing? How do they get charged for the services for, in other words, who's paying for

[01:21:08] increases in capacity? And then the last piece is there's been a change in what our sewage looks like over time. With conservation-based incentives, we're seeing less flow used in home fixtures.

[01:21:24] That's resulting in a higher concentration of waste, and we need to reallocate the load removal capacity of the existing plant to align with the hydraulic capacity so lots of things that we looked at as part of this project those other last three bullets are things that we identified that how we're handling currently in the rake structure seem to meet the needs of our customers so we're not proposing any changes there so in parallel with this we also have been looking at is there a capacity in the plant that we could tap with some minor capital improvements we had in our

[01:21:59] capital improvement plan a project of almost 200 million dollars to expand the capacity of the plant city of manassas and prince william together have committed to paying for those increases those two jurisdictions have needed but what we found is there may be some ways to do this more cost effectively by investing strategically in portions of the plant to realize some latent capacity that already exists.

[01:22:28] We did that through some modeling, some stress testing of the plant, and our consultant has developed a bunch of projects that will help tap that capacity at a significantly lower cost. This is a good outcome for all of the customers that we serve.

[01:22:46] So what you're looking at here is what the opportunities are for when we can realize some of the latent capacity that we found through this re-rating analysis. So across the top, I know it's difficult to see, but those are all the jurisdictions we serve and the acronyms.

[01:23:03] So COM would be City of Manassas. And then down the vertical column are some of the parameters that we're regulated on that we need to meet in terms of our treatment capability of the plant. And you'll see a bunch of red squares, and those red squares indicate jurisdictions that have exceeded their allocation for each of those different parameters.

[01:23:26] So Prince William has four of the parameters that they have exceeded their capacity of, and City of Manassas currently has one, which is ammonia. So our plans for the future, which involves some capital projects that we have on the docket, as well as the methanol feed facility, which is currently a project that has been completed that the City of Manassas paid for.

[01:23:54] The yellow boxes on the right indicate result of once we implement these projects and they're realized what the load allocations look like for each of the jurisdictions and you can see the red boxes go away which means we're able to capture existing capacity with some improvements and we'll get all of the jurisdictions to operate within their allocations and the city of manassas is well positioned with the investment that they've made in the methanol feed facility to have significant capacity available regarding nitrogen

[01:24:28] removal which is really the focus of that project so this is the this is the outlook for the future incorporating the capital improvements that we're planning on so the last slide i want to show is just what's the road map from here we have completed this jurisdictional cost allocation study we shared all the results with all the jurisdictions we received that feedback we're finalizing this re-rating project report and looking at how we can reallocate the loads that

[01:25:00] we have realized and redistribute that to all of the jurisdictions so you will have the benefits of the additional capacity that we've been able to find in the plants and then our plan would be to meet with each of the jurisdictions over the course of the beginning of the next calendar year to talk about what changes we want to make to the service agreements in order to incorporate the recommendations on how we're going to re-look at some of these areas about how we're going to charge differently for things like the septage receiving facility and capacity sharing those

[01:25:37] would be coming to all the jurisdictional governing boards on councils towards the end of next year for their review and i know i went through a lot fast but i'd be happy to answer any questions if you had and also be happy to come back when we have more to talk about maybe next year thank you thank you for that uh any questions council members ms vasquez thank you madam mayor a couple of things on the one in the schedule but first i want to say thank you i enjoy the campus tour i don't know if it was because um councilmenosina was with me but i really had a great

[01:26:13] time so uh thank you for that and important information my only question is uh in the current it looks like we exceeded two which that will be the one above ammonia is this 115 right so above ammonia is nitrogen total nitrogen so they're related and the boxes that are in red currently our service agreement requires jurisdictions that exceed their allocation three months in a row so three consecutive months so the 115 means you have exceeded your total

[01:26:48] nitrogen allocation for not three months but probably one month or two months so it doesn't trigger the need for capital investment all right thank you so much i appreciate vice mayor yeah first off my appreciation to board and staff for working on the capacity issues that is something that's one of those little details of local government that citizens don't really focus on but it's has a potentially huge financial impact to the community so any work there is appreciative i am curious and i don't expect you to have the number right now though um fairfax water

[01:27:22] since they're getting all the uh the result of our product shall we say uh what is the percentage of uosa's total revenues that are paid by fairfax water for their uh for the fresh water that they're receiving so the the cost model which is set up in our service agreement is that the services that uosa provides are paid by the jurisdictions that are using the service so Fairfax Water doesn't have any financial contribution to UOSA's treatment. Very good. Thank you.

[01:27:53] It's all based on the... And City of Manassas' portion is I think you're 17%. Thank you. Any other questions, comments? Thank you so much for being here. Appreciate it. We look forward to seeing you again.

[01:28:08] We do have... We provide tours so folks want to visit maybe after the breakfast with Santa. People want to see wastewater. Have you come by. Thank you. only if you warm up the weather thank you next on the agenda is item 1.6 the electoral board election update and i have susan reed on here to as staff to help us with that good evening madam mayor and city council members and city manager burke i'm here this evening with my electoral

[01:28:46] board they're going to give you a presentation a recap of this last election also we do have a letter of appreciation for our election officials and other departments with the city that assist us with elections that we would like to present and have put in the minutes of the meeting.

[01:29:04] I have two board members here this evening, Secretary Pam Kinchlow and our chair, Rick Hepburn. He's going to be giving the recap. I'm kind of excited about it. last election was our second largest turnout for the governor's race since the city became a city in 1975. The one to beat was in 1993 and it had a 51% turnout.

[01:29:32] We had a 48% turnout for this election. So I'm going to hand it over to Rick Hepburn. Thanks Susan. Your Honor, City Council and the city staff, as As Susan said, I'm Rick Hepburn, your Chair of the City of Manassas Electoral Board.

[01:29:54] Pam Kincheloe is with me here tonight. Harry Clark could not make it here. Harry has one more month, basically at the end of this month, and he'll be done with his term. Pam's got one more year, and I've got two more years to serve on the board. First, I want to recognize Susan Reed, your General Registrar and the Director of Elections, and her Chief Deputy, D.J.

[01:30:15] Jakadev, who is here as well tonight, who have done an absolutely outstanding job in executing two flawless elections in 2025. They lead a team of over 100 election officials and election technicians who I call super citizens, because these folks, they have to do two really hard jobs. One, they have to face the public, the voters, and that's not easy. And they also have to execute about an inch thick of law on the Virginia code.

[01:30:45] So my hearty congratulations to them and that's where this letter of appreciation to them. Madam Mayor, if I could give it to the clerk and we can enter into the minutes. So what happened, and I'll just fly through some of these here.

[01:31:05] There's the staff there and us. So what happened in this last election? In the city, out of a total of 24,297 registered voters, 11,767 voted, and that was that 48% voter participation that Susan mentioned.

[01:31:24] And for the governor's race, just so you know, there was 4,429 early votes, and that's what happened over at the registrar's office. We had that police over there. 1,270 were mailed in, the absentee ballots, and then 5,815 were election day.

[01:31:45] So you can see it's kind of split half and half of what's early and mailed in compared to election day. And you can see from the 2024 presidential election that we saw 60% participation there and then it goes down to just a little less than 50.

[01:32:07] There was a slight decrease in overall voter participation compared to 2021, the last editorial election. You can see from the voting methods chart, and that's the next one here, that the early voting for the general election was just less than 40%, mail-in just over 10%.

[01:32:25] We're seeing about 10% mail-in. It's pretty consistent. And election day, like I said, was about 50% of that vote. That is an increase on election day voting and a decrease in early voting compared to the presidential election. And like I said, mail-in is pretty stable.

[01:32:43] Regarding the voting methods, again here, for the 2025 compared to the 2021 gubernatorial election, There was a decrease in in-person election voting by about 5% not too much early voting Increased about 5% and mail-ins stayed the same overall since 2020 early voting percent has hovered around the 30 to 40 percent Area this chart shows what early voting occurred at the registrar's office And this is day by day from the beginning you can see right away We got about 200 some voters come into the restaurant's office and I leveled out about a hundred a day

[01:33:21] That's still quite a few then this exponential growth at the end and by the way that 500 on the end that was that Saturday before election same time as the veterans parade And I must thank you Steve for arranging parking across the street We actually had the voters go kind of snug next to the building We had to keep them away from the campaigners and also everyone watching the parade and actually worked out Well, I do not see any impact of the Veterans Day Parade on voting, which I was kind of concerned about.

[01:33:54] Next one here just shows Sunday voting in 2025. So I decrease obviously from the presidential and the next slide here is on what we call same day registration. This is probably one of our bigger challenges we have to deal with because you see here, it was about only 25%, 85 in the lower right there is what we saw for same day registration.

[01:34:20] But I must say that the same-day registration means somebody comes in. The worst case is they've not registered before. And they come in five minutes to seven, and they want a registered vote. And basically, if we can't get all the details there that they're in the book, they're not in the poll book, then we have to give them a, but they have an opportunity to vote provisionally.

[01:34:45] And then it has to come back to the registrar's office, that form. We have to check with Richmond, can they vote? And then within a week, the electoral board has to review every single one of them after the Registrar's Office processes it. We have to decide whether to let that vote go or not.

[01:35:02] I think we only had 10 rejections out of over 100 of those. We try to give the voter the benefit of the doubt, let it go through, but some things they just have to do. So looking ahead at 2026, wow, it's going to be busy over there at the Department of Elections.

[01:35:20] So this is the survey was done before. But in 2026, basically what's happening here is you could have four elections. Because the first one is if they have to deal with changes to the Virginia Constitution and that would be possibly in April.

[01:35:39] And then you have the primary for, you have to at least have the Senate in June. Then if there's new districts that has to be, if that's approved, that'd be approved election in August with you know that's the House of Representatives and then we have the midterm so what that means is we're going to be in that office a lot over there executing elections and so it's going to be very very busy so I do have a couple asked and kind of keep going here that just shows of course the election sequence coming up the referendum will be in April probably and

[01:36:15] that's we have three members of council coming up in November and then we have of course three members of the city of school board also coming up in November so busy 2026 so I'll put a little ad out there for our citizens get involved we need election official especially with four elections I'm a little concerned people won't commit to four elections so more volunteers the better anybody wants to help out over there we can certainly use it and I've been working with of course our city manager Steve Burke and just I'm a little concerned about the

[01:36:50] space we have over there when you ran run half of our voters through that little Bobby over there it's a little tough to keep the security of the vote because you're kind of facing backwards I think we've got to work on the arrangement I appreciate what Steve's done to get Susan an office upstairs we got the museum kind of out of part of the building but I think finding a place ultimately is big enough I know Manassas Park has a bigger area for the registrar's office and it's just that would really help we just got to watch good the volume big especially we're doing four elections okay my second ask

[01:37:27] is really deal with the voting machines we are gonna have to replace about 22 machines in the next year because the software will not that's going to be certified will not work on our existing machines and I am seeing a couple of these machines kind of fail every time we test that we go through what's called the logic and accuracy testing that the electoral board personally approves, and we look at it, these machines that are put in service are good.

[01:37:57] And it's not a problem with the election, but I lose a little redundancy. So really put the requirement to the council, if you could do it, is to get us the new machines as soon as possible. I know they're not cheap, but we're gonna need 'em for sure.

[01:38:13] We're gonna run these machines. I'm, these machines are run a lot. So with that, I just want to say that it's an honor to be the chair of the electoral board and appreciate Pam's great job many years, one more year to go, and what Harry's done. And we have two jobs.

[01:38:30] We have to instill voter confidence in the process, and we have to execute the Virginia election code to the best of our ability. And I'm going to one more push. We need more volunteers. But thank you very much. Thank you. Any questions, council members?

[01:38:46] Mr. Smith, comment. Thank you, sir. Thank you so much for your service and for this year and the ease in which, from our perspective, the ease in which the election was conducted. As an early, early advocate of jurisdiction to be allowed to address challenges that voters could face on Election Day, I sincerely appreciate your staff's efforts and the extra headaches that it present for working with those voters on early voting, Sunday voting, Saturday voting.

[01:39:20] and so forth. It's absolutely critical to the city, to the state, and to the nation that everyone be allowed the opportunity to exercise their constitutional right and the gifts from the Constitution. So every year I praise, I work with the Electoral Board as an election official many years before I got into being elected, and I've often said that we, I know we have the best electoral board in the state and having worked election issues, if you will, in several other

[01:39:57] states in the past. I know we have the best election board among those states. I would mention to say we probably have one of the best in this nation, and we should be very proud. The attitude, every staff that Susan has brought through has had the dedication that she and other leaders have poured, and I thank you for continuing that. It's obvious that they still routed around with changes and so forth I'm just so very proud of our electoral board and I hope the staff realizes how much we appreciate their their sincerity thank you thank you councilman Smith really appreciate that

[01:40:36] any other miss Ellis thank you Rick and the register of staff I really do appreciate how also everyone works together you know it's a it's a good team effort you can tell there's there's a good culture there I do recognize your challenge with space, and I hope that we can do something about that.

[01:41:00] We'll talk to Mr. Burke about that. It's a really difficult space also in the outside for voters sometimes. I feel it's dangerous, you know, the traffic crossing the street and crossing the parking lot entranceway.

[01:41:18] But I know that when I went in to vote early this cycle, You all look like you're, you know, just struggling with space. So I think that is something we definitely have to address. And I appreciate all your hard work. Thank you. Ms. Councilman Ellis, appreciate it.

[01:41:33] Ms. Vesquez. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I do want to not only appreciate the board, but the staff and every volunteer. I believe you mentioned 175. I mean, to me, it's a small stipend, but it's more the act of them being there and making sure that their work makes a difference in the process.

[01:41:54] So I will, you know, just like you did, I will ask, you know, everybody to try to get involved. Involved is a long day, but it is worth giving back to the community because I see it as a volunteer. I did it for about 10 years in different localities, and I do concur, Councilman, that we do have not only the best staff at the board, and I'm looking forward to the next year.

[01:42:21] I know it's early, but I will be asking when we come back for the budget about making sure that we do have the Saturday and the Sunday voting. And I know it's early, but I believe it's important, and it gives an opportunity to our residents to also be there.

[01:42:37] So thank you, great results. I think nobody has mentioned how early and how fast you put out the information and how accurate so i truly appreciate the hard work of everybody and especially those adele thank you that's one luna thank you thank you any anyone else okay thank you so much for the report and for all you all of your hard work from the staff we really appreciate you guys so thank you thank you for being here and i may appreciate it okay next on the agenda is item 1.7 the annual comprehensive financial report and auditor's

[01:43:16] findings for fiscal year ended june 30 2025 miss bergeron is here thank you and good evening madam mayor members of council um andrew gross nickel from the audit firm of robinson farmer cox is here tonight to present the audit firm's report and findings related to our fiscal year 2025 financial audit of the city and i will stand rest ready for any questions after his presentation thank you thank you for your thank you for your time this evening uh just have a brief presentation that i'm going to go through related to the results of our audit process for the year

[01:43:54] into june 30th 2025 and a couple of financial highlights as well so we were engaged to perform a financial statement audit for the year into june 30th 2025 that audit was subject to auditing standards generally accepted in the united states of america specifications of for audits of counties cities and towns that are issued by the auditor of public accounts of virginia the standards for financial audits contained in the government auditing standards issued by the comptroller general as well as provisions of the uniform guidance act which is

[01:44:30] related to federal awards the big picture results of our audit process and main byproduct of our work are what we refer to as our audit reports or independent auditors opinions in the case of the overall audit report and we have three such audit type reports that we issued for the year into June 30th, 2025.

[01:44:54] The first of those is the opinion on the financial statements itself. We issued what is termed a unmodified opinion, which is essentially a clean opinion on the financial statements is what you're looking for. That report is, I like to say, on the numbers related to the financial statements, really on the financial statements and the financial figures contained therein.

[01:45:17] There was a language included in the opinion report this year relative to the adoption of another accounting principle you know the governmental accounting standards board been quite active over the last 20 years or so and in issuing different accounting pronouncements and so this year was no different there was a pronouncement GASB 101 related to compensated absences it changed the way that localities measure leave that has been earned and is either going to be used in future periods or eventually potentially paid out at some point to folks that separate from employment.

[01:45:56] This was one that pretty high on the scale of importance as far as impact, impacted most counties, cities, towns, authorities, boards, and commissions, and was something that staff within a locality had to do a decent amount of work to kind of come up with this new calculation methodology, which city staff was certainly working hard on that throughout the year leading up to the final field work so that we had everything we needed to help implement that new standard.

[01:46:25] So we do always highlight any of those significant accounting principle adoption items in the report, but that is just informational, basically letting everyone know, hey, they adopted this. It's not anything that we consider a modification.

[01:46:42] Actually says our report is not modified with respect to this matter and the implementation of that new standard. The second report that's an auditor-type report that's contained in the financial statements is the report on internal control over financial reporting and on compliance.

[01:46:57] A lot of folks will refer to that as either the government auditing standards report or the yellow book report. It is on internal controls and compliance rather than the actual numbers in the financial statements. We did not note any material weaknesses or significant deficiencies in controls.

[01:47:13] So, again, that's a good or clean report from a yellow book or a government auditing standards report. And then the last auditor-type report that's contained in the ACFER for the year ended June 30, 2025, is the compliance report for each major program and internal control over compliance under the Uniform Guidance Act.

[01:47:33] So as you're all familiar with entities, it could be a government, it could be a nonprofit, authority board commission that expend over $750,000 a year of federal awards, have to undergo what's called a single audit or a uniform guidance audit, where the auditor selects using a different set of criteria required by them to select a group of the programs for that fiscal year and audit them based on the standards that are set forth by whichever ultimate granting agency is in charge of that major program.

[01:48:12] And so we would note if we had any material weaknesses or significant deficiencies related to the federal programs that we tested for that year, we would note that in the Uniform Guidance Report. And I'm pleased to report we did not have any material weaknesses or significant deficiencies to report related to the major programs that we tested from a federal expenditure standpoint.

[01:48:36] Communication items, we did issue a governance letter, just a standard letter. Basically, it has the communication items that were required to communicate at the end of any engagement, things like we did not have any disagreements with management, management did not consult with other accountants on accounting-related matters.

[01:48:58] It highlights, again, that we implemented GASB 101 in the financial statements. It discusses what standards the audit was conducted under and things of that nature. So all just standard communications, nothing out of the ordinary when it comes to the governance letter.

[01:49:16] Just a few slides that I'm going to go through briefly related to some of the financial highlights for the year into June 30, 2025. And I have a few charts and graphs to highlight a couple of those major items.

[01:49:31] So the first slide that I have is just the level of unassigned fund balance. And so you can see that the city maintains a 20% unassigned fund balance in 2025 was no different when it comes to the amount of unassigned fund balance.

[01:49:48] And so out of fund balance, you can have monies that are non-spendable, restricted, committed, assigned, or unassigned. And so based on external or internal factors, things fall into those buckets.

[01:50:04] in the residual fund balance that is not earmarked in one of those other categories as the unassigned bucket. And so that's where that 20% comes from. Now, what that equates to in dollars, you'll see here, and 20%, when we say 20%, it's 20% of the city revenues. And the total unassigned fund balances, you'll see from a financial actual number figure in 2025 that made that up was $33.42 million you'll see in comparison that unassigned fund balance for the previous year was 32.32 see it's trending up a little bit as revenues you know go up to to maintain that 20 percent

[01:50:44] unassigned fund balance kind of that rainy day amount you have to kind of you know increase the unassigned bucket to still stay in compliance with maintaining that that target that you're trying to set forth the next graph that i have shows the net program cost by function these governmental functions you'll see that we have general government public safety public works health and human services culture rec and community development education and then interest on long-term debt you'll see that for 2025 the largest piece of this pie chart was education

[01:51:22] you will also see public safety as the second biggest piece of the puzzle and then the other other pieces of the puzzle that are in there we will we will see here in a moment when we get to the school funding slide that there's a little anomaly in this in the pie this year because there was bond proceeds that were transferred over to the school board where the city has to issue the debt transfer the money to school board that shows up in the financials as additional contribution but it's not for you know just their operating day-to-day operations so we'll We'll splice that out in another graph here momentarily.

[01:52:00] And then on the revenue side, we have a pie chart that breaks down the main types of revenues and what your split is between those. So 56.1% of the governmental activities revenue for the year in June 30, 25 was from property taxes.

[01:52:18] And then the next two biggest buckets were 16.7% from program revenues, which is basically your charges for services and grants and contributions. And then your third bucket that was very similar to that program revenues bucket is your other local taxes, and that's things like meals license, business licenses, sales tax.

[01:52:41] So those three buckets make up a large proportion of the overall governmental activities revenue for the city. The next slide that we have is on business types. So that previous slide was on like your general fund, your special revenue funds, your capital projects funds.

[01:53:01] Those are all governmental type activities. But then business type activities are classified separately from governmental in the financial statement models of governmental accounting. And they comprise your activities of electric, water, sewer, airport, storm water, and solid waste.

[01:53:22] And so on this chart, you'll see a little graph where the blue line on each of these types of proprietary or enterprise revenues represents the program revenues, and then the green is the expenses. So for all of these segments except the non-major fund, which is your solid waste fund, your revenues exceeded -- your program revenues exceeded your expenses there, and the solid waste fund is just a small delta where the expenses were over the revenues for

[01:53:54] 2025. This next chart relates to those other local taxes that I mentioned and so we show the three largest types of other local taxes for the city and then the blue line there is kind of all the rest of the other local taxes in aggregate.

[01:54:15] So red, there is sales tax. Meals tax is green. The yellow or orange-ish is the business license tax. And then again, the blue is all the remaining. And so you can see the trend analysis there. Sales tax very steadily going upwards over the last four years.

[01:54:39] And most of those other categories having a very similar trend analysis over the last four years as well. Now, this is the chart that I alluded to briefly a few minutes ago, and so this is for the Manassas City Public Schools intergovernmental support.

[01:54:58] And so this is, you know, the vast majority of their funding comes from the city and then federal and state revenues. And so the green bar there, you see it for each year, is the amount of funds that were supporting the city schools from the federal and state government.

[01:55:17] things like Title I and Title VIB and child nutrition, basic aid, and other state revenues and things of that nature. And then the shaded blue line there or component are the different local funds.

[01:55:36] And you'll see for this year we had actually three different shades of blue there. And so the bottom blue shade there is your normal local funding for operating support for the schools. And then the light, or I would say Carolina blue there on the next part above the first blue is basically the local support through paying the debt service for the MCPS.

[01:56:09] And so the local transfer used to be that the money was transferred over and sort of transferred back And now the city just pays those debt service payments And so it's kind of treated as extra support through paying the debt service And then that that larger piece that's a little bit of a darker blue on the top there that only shows up this year relates to again the bond proceeds from this year's bond issuance where the city has to the schools cannot under Virginia law cannot issue their own debt and so the

[01:56:46] city issues the debt and then transfers the funds over to the schools and so it has to show up in the financials as essentially a contribution of the proceeds from from the debt issuance over to the school the next chart that I have here is just shows the change in net position for the city and this is the city as a whole including the governmental and business type activities that I mentioned earlier and so net position when we refer to that that includes you know full accrual basis all of your assets and liabilities for the city everything sort of measured all these new GASB things from the last

[01:57:23] you know several years pension and other post-employment benefits and you know the GASB 101 leave and leases and subscriptions and everything and so under that model this is the last four years what the change in the net position has been each year. 2025, the total net position increased by 1.87 million, or about 0.3% from the prior year. And then this chart is a chart on assets to liabilities.

[01:57:54] And as the note says there, the assets to liability ratio majors the extent to which the government has funded its assets with debt and other liabilities. The higher percentage, the more equity the government has in its assets. And as the note alludes to it, there's little anomaly on this chart as well because in 2025 the governmental percentage decreased because bonds were issued for manassas schools and the city currently has the liability while the school has the cash that was as an asset that was that has not yet been spent related to that so that will probably sometimes in these different trend analysis uh charts there are things that are you

[01:58:34] You know, in financial statements, you tend to normalize, and over time, these things will kind of filter out, and you'll probably get back to a trend in a few years where the charts are very similar to what you had before this year related to the assets and liabilities.

[01:58:54] With that, I'd be happy to open it up to any questions that you had for myself, and I'm sure Diane would be happy to take any that are more directed towards that. Thank you, Andrew. Any questions for Mr. Osina? Oh, I looked down here first, so you okay with the time going?

[01:59:13] Oh, you want to go? Oh, you don't? Oh, okay. Mr. Osina. Thank you, Mayor. Yes. Mr. Grossnickel, could you go to the slide that has a title, Net Programmed Costs?

[01:59:32] Oh, there we are. Now, if I understood you correctly, looking at this pie chart here, and I'm looking at, education 54.4 percent and if I tell me if I heard correctly that that includes the local bonds for school construction that correct all right are you are you able to tell me what the percentage would be if you took out the local bonds for school construction in terms of what was spent for the schools that would be

[02:00:09] about $62 million divided by $150 million, put my skills 40 percent, around 40, 45 percent. Okay, around that amount. Okay, very good. Okay, thank you, thank you.

[02:00:29] Now, and just to clarify, the net program costs are the total governmental or total expenditures for these functions, or expenses for these functions, because this is a full accrual piece.

[02:00:45] minus the charges for services that are related to those, minus the grants and contributions, both operating and capital, that are related to those. If you get a chance when you want to look at Exhibit 2 in the financials, you'll see how that works. And then below that, so obviously we say this is net program costs.

[02:01:05] You know, the city didn't have a decrease in position of $200 million. The delta is then filled by mainly your local taxes. So while these costs are paid that don't have revenues that are specific to those functions that help offset those costs, they're funded by real estate taxes, personal property tax, local taxes, some grants and contributions that are what we call not specific to an individual program.

[02:01:36] program, they're more general in nature, and so that's kind of the makeup of how you then pay for these costs outside of their individual functions, since this is, as it says, net costs, not total costs. And so this, again, just focusing on the education and taking out the local bonds costs there, that is just the city share.

[02:02:06] Yeah, that's what you're saying. That is not including federal, any federal education, you know, expenses or state or anything like that. This is what the city is, basically the city is basically the blue, the bottom blue bar on that other chart that I showed.

[02:02:28] It's the money that you've sent. It's not looking at their total expenses. It's looking at what the city has supported. So it's that bottom blue. Okay. Call it a sea blue. Yes, I know what you got to get. Carolina blue that'll work whatever yeah whatever okay very good thank you very much thank you vice mayor yeah if I might just related to this slide in the future I might suggest you put the X actually access to zero because I wouldn't want people to think the state of the Commonwealth is giving three

[02:03:04] times to our schools and what the city is you just look at the chart you just look at the colors it's misleading okay yeah it's just hard to get the numbers to all fit on there where we use it up here it matters any other questions thank you so much for your presentation okay thank you you goodness all right no questions what i am no all right

[02:03:42] thank you so much thank you for being here and move us forward to the item two on the agenda consent agenda call on vice mayor wolf for that motion madam mayor i move the approval of the Consent agenda and dispensing with reading of the ordinances. Second. Okay, the motion by Vice Mayor Wolfe, seconded by Councilman Smith to approve our consent agenda.

[02:04:00] Any discussion? Hearing and seeing none, Mr. Smith, please call the roll. Vice Mayor Wolfe, yes. Council Member Smith? Yes. Council Member Ellis? Council Member Osina? Yes. Council Member Vasquez-Luna? Yes. Council Member Hudson? Yes.

[02:04:16] The motion carries. All right, thank you for that. That moves us forward to item three, our public hearings. we do have sign up sheets for the public hearings in case anyone missed it they are separate from the public comment sheet so make sure you're signing up for public hearing if you're here to speak for that tonight separate from the public comment sheet so find your item that you wish to speak on and you can do that at this time i'll go over the procedures for public hearings i will read the newspaper ad certification for public hearings then staff will present the issue for consideration and the council then has the opportunity to ask questions then i will open the public hearing for public comments we will

[02:04:55] make sure not to miss anyone who wishes to speak regarding a public hearing item and then the public hearing is then closed or continued and action is scheduled to be taken by the council at the next regularly scheduled council meeting so with that i'll read the newspaper certification statement which says as the mayor i certify that newspaper advertisements for the public hearings listed on tonight's agenda were published in conformance with the requirements of general law and city ordinances as the mayor I further certify that an affidavit of publication is before me which is signed by an authorized

[02:05:34] representative of the Prince William Times newspaper which states that the advertisements appeared on the required dates and there's that mr. RC area is here to help us with item 3.1 which is public hearing the ordinance to amend Chapter 58, Article 1, relating to hours of operation for commercial car washes.

[02:05:55] Welcome, sir. Your Honor, members of council, good evening. The first public hearing for you this evening is a proposal to amend the city's noise ordinance, the noise ordinance specifically governing the operation of commercial car washes. This is an issue the council has been working on at the request of residents, primarily in the Bristow Station neighborhood over the last year.

[02:06:14] As a little bit of background, car washes on the land use side operated as an as-of-right-use up until about two years ago when council changed the requirements for a special use permit. There are about 10 car washes operating in the city, and four of those operate by right on the land use side, which means that there weren't additional conditions imposed upon them when they were approved.

[02:06:35] Obviously, noise complaints asked council to work with staff on what potential we could do to address some of these noise impacts since the zoning codes grandfathered these uses. Working with the city's attorney's office, we determined that we could, through the noise ordinance impose hours of operation and working with council the ordinance before you would impose the operation of staff and unstaffed car washes within 100 feet of the nearest property zone for residential use to be prohibited between the hours of 10 p.m. and 7 a.m.

[02:07:05] so that matches the council's updated noise ordinance from about two years ago 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. is generally the restriction when we talk about hours of operation when we don't want things to be noisy. So the ordinance is before you for a public hearing this evening. Happy to answer any questions. Thank you, Mr. Arsheri. Any questions from council members on this item? Not the public hearing is now open. I do not have anyone signed up, but if there's anyone that wishes to address this public item, public hearing item, you may come forward at this time. If you would give us your name, please.

[02:07:37] Mr. Jay Sarin. I'm the owner of the Car Wash 8929 Godwin Drive, which was just mentioned. So we are one of the probably only car wash which is self-serve car wash in Manasseh City, which is not staffed, and it's basically people go in there, pay, it kind of operates like a vending machine, but you go in, you pay, and you use it, and you leave.

[02:08:06] And looking at this ordinance, the way the building is set up, the way the equipment is set up, there is no way for us to comply with this ordinance because the equipment cannot be shut down for a certain time-like period. The facility is not staffed. The only thing we could shut down, there are two automatic bays that our computerized have timers in there that we could shut down, that we have already worked with City of Manassas Police and shut those down.

[02:08:38] So for us to comply with this, physically impossible situation. The building is open and there are no gates or how would I say, doors to the base in five of them.

[02:08:54] And for us to comply with this is physically impossible. And there is no equipment made anywhere in the United States for that kind of service which can shut down at a specific time and start at a specific time. And the building is not set up like that.

[02:09:12] people go there all the time and we have no control over it so thank you sir i have no idea how to comply with this i've been trying to work with the residents who are next to us and city police has been working with us and we have always been compliant but this situation puts us in a situation where we have no way to comply thank you thank you for your comment there anyone else that wishes to speak come forward?

[02:09:45] Common.

[02:10:01] So I'm glad the car wash owner came tonight to this hearing. There is a way that those car wash bays can be shut down.

[02:10:16] In fact, according to Lieutenant Hilton, the owner has an app on his phone that you shut him down. Well, I will also say that I have e-mail traffic with Lieutenant Hilton going back three years where I believe there may have been a handshake agreement, if you will, in which those two car washes that are automatic would be shut down to help the Bristow Station community.

[02:10:47] That was forgotten. Our community is seeing a large amount of cars coming through there, through that thoroughfare at all times of the day, all times of the night. When they created the second automatic car wash about three years ago, the noise from that particular car wash has been extreme to the point where Lieutenant Hilton has measured it over near Burnside and it's still 60 decibels 65 decibels with that I'll also ask that

[02:11:23] the council look at their noise ordinance because it used to be that if it was next to a residential community the lower number was the one that was used which would have been 50 to 55 decibels on that so the last matter we had was a few weeks ago in which lieutenant hilton stated that there was the doors were open on this automatic car wash my understanding is that squirrels chewed up the wiring and that the doors were left wide open for three weeks i don't know if the car wash

[02:12:00] owner wants to say anything about that please and the uh that's a simple matter is i've done some research in the last three years we've had about two car washes open they all shut down around seven to eight o'clock at night there are no car washes in manassas city that that are open 24 hours at all uh and i would also say that the nearest our our neighborhood was last built in 1984 the

[02:12:32] townhouses and uh this is uh this car wash is 20 feet from the nearest car wash um earlier on in September, there was a petition that was circulated through McDowell Common Residence. Approximately 15 to 20 people signed that.

[02:12:52] Those that were the most impacted by the noise of this car wash, including the white house on the corner of 8959, including the yellow house that's on the corner of 8955 also. That gentleman actually moved out of our community and moved to Warrington and the house is vacant. Thank you.

[02:13:13] Thank you, Mr. Kelly. Is there anyone else who wishes to speak on this item before Mr. Suri comes back up? Ms. Farkel-Green. I'm Mayor and Counsel, Lynn Farkel-Green, an Assa City resident. I wanted just to reiterate what Mr. Keller was saying.

[02:13:31] I recall when I was on council meeting with, and I know Mr. Osina did too, meeting with those residents, meeting with the police. And so this has been an issue for far more than a year. I would say three to five years these residents have been coming to council in various capacities talking about the diminished quality of life that they suffer based on this noise and so I understand the business owner does not staff this maybe this there's a potential for a job opening there I don't know but what I will say is when we talk about quality of life in Manassas City this is something that no longer fits and we do need to align the noise

[02:14:10] ordinance with this business the folks that have to deal with the noise we talked about when i was on council um a fence trees all types of things that were supposed to help remedy the noise and it hasn't so i would really encourage you to vote for a noise ordinance here and i would ask that you put yourself in the situation that if you had this business in your backyard because literally it's in their backyard how that would impact you if you had children if you had a different kind of work schedule and you need to sleep there is no rest here and it is a very difficult challenging situation when you talk to

[02:14:48] the residents directly and you go all times of the day all times of the night to meet them to hear it doesn't matter about the sound decibels I've been there with the police to talk about the sound decibels it is a challenge so I think the neighbors really really really need you to vote for this tonight thank you thank you mr. sorry if you want to come back if there's no one else that wishes So I wanted to clarify a couple of things that they have mentioned.

[02:15:18] One is the specific machine they mentioned that was creating noise, and that's why we were having an agreement with the Manasseh City Police. So there was an incident there. They chewed up the wiring, and then we had to order some parts, so it was left for about two weeks.

[02:15:34] That was an issue. But I want to explain what it is. It's a dryer when the car washes, and the dryer comes on after the car is basically washed. It comes for about 50 seconds, like a cycle of the dryer, and that bait historically sees 10 cars a day.

[02:15:55] So it's like less than 9 minutes in a 24-hour cycle that dryer comes on that they have a biggest problem with. And as we had a handshake agreement with city police, we want to live with the neighbors, we don't want to bother them.

[02:16:13] At the same time, the business has to sustain, and whatever agreement we had, we have always honored it. That automatic base that I can shut down, I have control over it, I have it shut down for the last three years almost. On the other ones, the self-serve industry is as such.

[02:16:31] The revenue is not there to support employees. People pay $2, $3, $4 to wash the car. We cannot have employees there. If we have to pay employees, the business will shut down because there is not enough revenue to pay employees there all the time. That's how this industry operates nationwide.

[02:16:50] And that's the only one left here in Manasseh City. All the other car washes are stopped tunnels. They are like $20 million enterprise. They charge $50, $60, $70 to wash a car, not like us, $2, $3, $4. So for us to survive, there is no option.

[02:17:10] If I have to stop it, I cannot sustain it. And I've tried to work with them all the time. Whenever they had an issue, we have always listened. And this is only particular this one individual have a vendetta against that.

[02:17:27] And the first time I met him here, and I've always worked with Lieutenant Hilton. Whenever he calls me, we always work together and solve the issue. But now this thing, if this comes into an issue, I have no way of complying. How can I shut it down?

[02:17:43] I have no control over those equipment on that side of the bay. The biggest issue they have with that dryer that is already shut down at 10 o'clock. Thank you, sir. One more time. Oh, Chris.

[02:17:59] One more comment. I live 75 feet from this car wash. The vacuums are not shut off. The automatic car wash bays are not shut off. This needs something put in place that says, do this.

[02:18:16] In the past, we've been told, call the police. Call the police. I would hope that the police would have something better to do. Let me offer a solution. Certainly there's some money somewhere where we could put a yellow gate like you would put at the end of a church entrance for this gentleman.

[02:18:35] So that when the one person that's working at the car wash leaves about 11 o'clock, he parks his car next to the building and he leaves about 11 o'clock at night. That person can shut the gate at the very end and at the end he can say, come back tomorrow with a smile.

[02:18:55] Car wash is closed. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else who wishes to come forward on this item right now? Okay. Now I will, is there a motion to close the public hearing? Yes, yes ma'am. Oh, okay. I move that the public hearing be closed and that this be continued to our January 12th, 2026 meeting for discussion and a vote.

[02:19:21] Second. We have the motion by Councilman Lucina, seconded by Councilman Smith to close the public hearing and move this item forward to our next city council meeting in January. Any discussion? Hearing and seeing none, Mr. Smith, please call the roll.

[02:19:40] Councilmember Ocina? Yes. Councilmember Smith? Yes. Vice Mayor Wolfe? Yes. Councilmember Ellis? Yes. Councilmember Vasquez-Lona? Yes. Councilmember Hudson? Yes. The motion carries. Thank you so much, Mr. Arciaris.

[02:19:55] Item 3.2, public hearing for ZTA number 2026-0001, zoning text amendments for data center slash industrial standards. Your honor, members of council, I'm pleased to be before you this evening to present the work of the Planning Commission and staff over the last several months to take a long look at the city's existing regulations for data centers and large industrial uses in general with some recommendations on how we can improve our industrial codes.

[02:20:24] As a little bit of background, this is obviously an issue that's being discussed throughout Virginia, throughout the nation, how to properly regulate data centers in particular. A little bit of background for the city. Data centers are currently permitted by right as a form of warehousing and distribution in our light industrial heavy industrial and airport zoning districts there are currently three projects the and i'll bring up the map i'll talk to you through these the brick yard project which is online that's off of godwin drive the two projects at the corner of wellington and noakesville road are nearing completion that's labeled as aws and formerly the technology drive

[02:21:00] self-storage property and down in the lower corner there in yellow is the airport data center site that is beginning construction this month as we speak. I also wanted to hover on this map for a little bit because this gets into a little bit of the patterns of development that we're seeing and why this is an issue and why it could be an issue in the future if we don't tighten up some of our regulations.

[02:21:21] So this is the western end of the city. Historically, our patterns of development, our industrial land has been concentrated around the railroad tracks. And on the western side of the city, you can see that we have a pattern of large campus-style, larger lots where data centers in general and larger industrial structures can be accommodated on larger lots they're not up against residential neighborhoods there's some separation provided by the railroad tracks and even some of the natural features like winter's branch we have obviously have other industrial users out there we have the airport we have micron lockheed martin so to date staff through our administrative processes have

[02:21:57] been largely successful in working with these developers to try to mitigate some of the impacts that we're all concerned about and i'll cover those in a minute but as an example although not required currently by code staff has successfully worked with all these debate data center developers to provide noise impact studies and noise mitigation that was a voluntary concession that we worked with through the site plan process but one that we think it's time to be codified and the other reason we think it's time to take a long hard look at our industrial standards this is the eastern side of the city so again same same pattern of historic pattern of development along the railroad track you can see that light blue and the dark blue this is our zoning map by the way

[02:22:36] dark blue being our heavy industrial zoning the light blue is our light blue is our light industrial zoning you can see along on the eastern side of the city whereas you have a much larger campus style on the western side as i mentioned on this side you're in much closer proximity to residential there's it's a much more concentrated existing patterns of development where we did have we do not have any data centers proposed at this time but we did have one here some of the stuff that we've been able to negotiate voluntarily working directly with the data centers might be more difficult to achieve so with that we work with the planning

[02:23:10] commission over the last several months to take a look at all of our industrial standards our zoning codes are actually pretty light when you get into the basic regulations we have a the list of uses that is permitted by right and then we have a 75 foot height cap a 25 foot setback if you're up against a residential neighborhood within that box and that box was deliberately designed many many years ago to allow maximum industrial development you can do a lot you can have some pretty large structures so obviously as the planning commission looked at this they broadened it to say what other uses might be picked up and might make sense not just

[02:23:46] to look at the data center use but to take another warehouse and distribution example another amazon out there an amazon distribution center they also could potentially have a lot of land use impact so the planning commission's philosophy was yes we're looking at data centers but also look at at our existing by-right uses and make sure that our standards are applied equitably to any potential long-range development that can have some negative impacts.

[02:24:11] So what is proposed in the Zoning Tax Amendment are new standards, we're addressing the location and make screening of mechanical equipment, clarifying that of course mechanical equipment needs to be screened, making sure that it's located to the side and rears of structures. Noise example I gave before is codified, so the requirement for certain uses to provide a noise study and then actually to provide the mitigation that the noise study recommends is codified their architectural standards for the first time again a 75-foot structure can look like a very big box if you don't have some requirements to break up the facade and add a little bit of architectural style to it we've been successful in getting some of that out of the current data

[02:24:47] center developers but again having this codified prevents a future developer who doesn't necessarily want to work with the city staff to have to follow some sort of codes and then the biggest one is we are recommending additional setback adjacent residential and educational uses as i I mentioned in your current code that's 25 feet planning commission is recommending up to 125 foot setback depending on the height of the structure so tied once you go about 25 feet the setback would increase two and a half times for every foot of height you go so that will give you that additional setback against those residential neighborhoods and prevent us from having a data center or another large industrial user looming over a residential

[02:25:23] existing residential neighborhood we are proposing now to separate the data center use as a separate definition obviously it doesn't make sense to keep in the warehousing and distribution definition any further the Planning Commission has recommended this time because we have added all the land use standards that we can think of in terms of address that they remain by right in the I1 and I2 they would become prohibited in the airport zoning district so that's the recommendation before you this was heard by the Planning Commission in November with a recommendation approval by 401 and staff recommends adoption proposed text amendments for this evening my recommendation is to hold a public hearing close the public hearing and set action for a work session.

[02:26:02] I believe it's 1:13, so we can discuss these standards in a work session prior to scheduling a vote on first rating. With that, I stand ready for any questions. - Thank you, Mr. Sarceri. Questions, comments, anything? Ms. Ellis?

[02:26:18] - You said you're redefining, redefining from manufacturing to just, what, data center? Like, what's the-- - There would be a separate definition for data center proposed in the zoning ordinance. So it's currently just a considered a form of warehousing and distribution. 10 plus years ago, when we wrote that definition, we weren't thinking about data centers, but at this point it needs to be separately defined and by right or especially this permit.

[02:26:44] - Any other questions or comments before I open? - Okay, the public hearing is now open. I do not, for this item, I do not have anyone signed up, but if there's anyone who wishes to address the council at this time on this item, please come forward.

[02:27:00] Okay, is there a motion? - Madam Mayor, I move to close the public hearing to schedule for discussion at the January 13th work session? - Second. - What's the date, I'm sorry. - January 19th, work session? - According to the calendar, it's the 13th.

[02:27:16] - Yeah, I'm too sorry. - 19th would be better, or 20th would be better. - 19th is a holiday, work session is the 13th. - 13th, yeah. - I just wanna make sure it's right. - Yeah, 13th. - So, okay. - 13th.

[02:27:31] - And who's second, I'm sorry. - Sonia. - Sonia, okay. So we have a motion by Vice Mayor Will was seconded by Councilwoman Vasquez Luna to close a public hearing and further discuss this item at the January 13th, work session any discussion hearing and seeing none mr. smith please call the roll vice mayor wolf yes council member vasquez luna yes council member ellis yes council member smith yes council member elcina yes council member hudson yes motion carries okay thank you so much for that that moves us forward to item 3.3 the public hearing for ordinance number 0 2026-443 conveyance

[02:28:09] of property the landing at cannon branch to good housing virginia llc first reading mr small is here to help us with that good evening madam mayor members of council i'm patrick small city's economic development director i'll give you a brief overview of a very exciting project that has the ability to be uh transformational albeit a first step uh in the city's goals to address some of the housing issues that we have here in the community following me will be mr kim hart a representative

[02:28:43] from good housing uh to discuss the project uh their company and the proposal specifically so the piece of property that we are talking about uh this evening is the former dmv building at the intersection of gateway and godwin boulevard in the landing at cannon branch what we are proposing is a contract between the city and good housing that would sell that piece of property to the developer for three million dollars and the developer would construct 100 attainable housing units using state financing as well as some city support and i think this is important

[02:29:22] to note while we are talking about executing a contract this evening the contract is subject to a financial structure being arranged with the city that financial structure will be a subsequent part of your budget conversations so uh regardless of of um whether you end up adopting the contract in january or not well if you adopt the contract in january there will still be further conversation and public discussion about this project delaney cannon branch is a master planned community it is

[02:29:56] one uh that we began developing almost 12 years ago in conjunction with our development partners buchanan that project had previously been under contract to learner and i know i'm repeating some of what we discussed uh when we talked about the house or the hotel contract that you voted on second reading this evening to consummate but this is another element of that project excuse me that was included in that master planning process a decade ago i think it's important to note that the property we're talking about has been master planned by the city for

[02:30:35] residential use for well over a decade the project prior to Buchanan was approved for over 1,000 residential units in 2015 when the City Council adopted its contract with Buchanan we downsized that project to 500 residential units a considerable amount of commercial hospitality retail and and other components being a part of that project.

[02:31:04] Of the original 500 housing units, Stanley Martin built 275 of them on each side of the road that is opposite from the stormwater detention pond, leaving us with about 225 residential units that are entitled for this property.

[02:31:25] Specifically at the time, council identified the former DMV site as a place for some or all of those residential units and withheld that piece of property from the Buchanan contract so that you could have a conversation like we are having this evening.

[02:31:42] A conversation that hopefully will involve thoughtful debate, input from the public, and ultimately allow us to move forward with meeting some of the community's needs. Now you may hear some people say, "This seems to be moving quickly."

[02:32:00] assure you it's not this will be a deliberative process but I wanted to remind everybody that we've been talking about this property for a decade and its use for residential development City Council has been talking about attainable housing for a long time as well you've taken some significant steps with the hiring of a housing coordinator with the establishment of a housing trust fund with some of the rental and homeowner assistance programs that we've started

[02:32:30] But tonight we're talking about a significant and large step forward in developing the type of housing units that will be accessible to those in our community who serve us in our police department, in our fire and rescue organizations, in hospitality businesses, and others.

[02:32:52] It's frequently called workforce housing, attainable housing. Regardless of what you call it, it is housing that is developed for the lower middle and upper lower income strata of our community who, as we all know, are priced out of northern Virginia and in many cases priced out of Virginia altogether.

[02:33:16] So a few more points. Again, we're talking about 100 units. We're talking about a piece of property that is about three acres in size. It will go next to the Hilton Home 2 Suites. It's a project that will house not just the city's workforce, but the workforce of employers like our hospital, our retail, and our hospitality industries.

[02:33:42] These are projects. This is a type of project that is supported by your comprehensive plan, in addition to being supported by the master plan. projected benefits of this development include taking a piece of property that is currently tax exempt by virtue of its city ownership in generating property tax revenues in the amount of about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year so there's no public subsidy or waiver of the property taxes that this developer will be required to pay so the city will receive those revenues going

[02:34:18] forward the financing structure I mentioned we'll talk a little bit more about during your budget cycle or should you wish to ask questions tonight happy to address them we'll be using capital reserve funding as well as proceeds from the sale of the property again we've identified a developer that we believe is a quality developer I am in a business as many of you know where I kiss an awful lot of frogs before we come to you with a prince or princess so

[02:34:55] you know back in January at your last City Council retreat you charged us with finding a purchaser for this piece of property as well for the people's property across the street this property next door as well as the balance of the landing, but this was a specific topic that you retreat. You directed staff to go out and identify residential developers for this property. We have had a lot of conversations between then and now with developers before we identified good housing. We spent a lot of time talking to them about their proposal. I know they've had the opportunity to meet with each of you and to show you their product

[02:35:35] as well. So if there are no questions for me before we introduce Kim, I'm happy to come back up to the podium after he speaks or subsequent to the public hearing. It's your pleasure, Madam Mayor, but if you'll indulge me and please allow the proposed purchaser, Good Housing, to come and present with you the project specifically that they're proposing.

[02:35:56] Thank you, Mayor. Madam Mayor and members of the City Council, I'm really glad to be here tonight.

[02:36:12] It's been a while working on this project, and we're excited about it. I don't think I was ever a frog, and I want to say I never did kiss Patrick, So we'll do the best I can since there. Is this my clicker? Is this high? There we go.

[02:36:33] I'm Kim Hart. I've been building attainable housing for about 25 more and more years now. And I've built over 1,000 units in Loudoun County. I've built more attainable housing in Loudoun County than any other attainable housing developer.

[02:36:50] I am on a team with Good Housing, which includes both Colin Stiles, who's with me tonight, and also John Pellerito, who couldn't be here tonight. They are both long-time market rate developers of residential who also have a long history in land acquisition and entitlements.

[02:37:07] And we're trying something new here, which is to put both market rate and attainable together to really try and get the best of both worlds. So that's why we're here to meet with you tonight. My record, as I said, I've got over 19 projects under my belt so far and over approaching 1,200 units.

[02:37:26] I think that probably the reason you want me here is because I've spent the last 15 years trying to learn how to do low-income housing tax credits, which is really complicated, and that's where the money is to help bring attainable housing to your jurisdiction.

[02:37:42] Just a couple of recent projects that have already been delivered. Here you see on the top Ashburn Chase, which is on Route 7 across from the hospital next to Whole Foods. That project was delivered a few years back, and as you can see, it's a nicely designed architectural building, certified green building.

[02:38:03] Just below that on the slide, you see the project we just opened on Waxpool, at the corner of Waxpool and Loudoun County Parkway. And as you can see, that's got a lot of solar cells on top. This is one of the largest solar arrays in Loudoun County.

[02:38:19] That solar array provides all the energy for all the public spaces of the building and all the lighting around the whole building. So we're proud of that one. Other projects that are under development right now, and I'm probably showing you these projects just to see that we try and do really good architecture.

[02:38:38] We spend a lot of time trying to do really good architecture. We use really good materials. These are buildings we want you to be proud of in your community. atlantic boulevard which is near dulles airport that's 80 units under construction right now all of these are certified green buildings this one will be certified by at least two if not more by green building certification agency cedar terrace right below that is on property owned by toll brothers along route 50 right where home depot is and clear springs which is the one on

[02:39:13] the bottom is a project we're just trying to get started it's in design right now it'll be 180 units As you're taking the greenway into Leesburg, if you go look just to your left, below Heritage High School, there's a very large piece of property there where we will provide all the affordable for that project.

[02:39:34] Who lives in, what is affordable housing today? I always put this slide up because it is no longer Caprini Green. This is the best example I can find of a completely failed federal policy from the 60s and 70s where they took people who were largely unemployed, supported entirely by subsidies, put them all in one building, had incredibly high unemployment, and then didn't give them enough money to take care of the property.

[02:40:05] They haven't built these since the 1980s. They don't build them anymore. They're going away as fast as they can. These buildings, those that still exist, are either being torn down or replaced. This is not where we're going. But unfortunately, it was this kind of failed policy that put a really bad taste in a lot of people's mouths that lingers to this day.

[02:40:27] So let me reassure you, this is not what we're going to do. So who lives in affordable housing today? Well, this, I'm back to Ashburn Chase. You know, this opened in 2020, I said, Certified Green Building. You know, we serve those in area median income between 30% and 60% of the area median income, which means that at the low end of that scale, if there's a retired person or household on either Social Security, state rental assistance, if there is a voucher, if they have a voucher from their jurisdiction, we will accept it and let them live with us.

[02:41:02] They can have an income as low as $26,000 a year. On the other end of the scale, if you have a family where you've got two adults and some children, and they're both wage earners, we can have up to $70,000 a year or even a little bit higher.

[02:41:17] so the point is these are folks that are working that pay rent but this is probably the most important slide that I ever take around this is the slide that I take every HOA meeting because there's always somebody at the HOA meeting that says we don't want those people living next door to us and so I take out this slide and I say okay this is a demographic of the property that I built at Kinkora which is right where Route 28 hits Route 7 north of Dulles Airport This is 96 units and it's 96% of the residents are employed.

[02:41:55] The only ones that aren't employed are those that are either retired or on some sort of disability. I can't read this slide to you. I'm sorry it's an eye chart for those of you in the audience. I'm happy to provide it later. But basically this lists all of the 96 or more jobs that are represented by the folks that live here.

[02:42:15] here. And there's nobody on this chart that you don't want to have living next door. So this is who lives in attainable housing today. Patrick already talked about the property we're proposing to help you develop at the corner of Godwin and Gateway, the old DMV building. We're still in conceptual development. It looks like it's going to be a U-shaped building to fit the lot the way it sits. It's going to have, we think, we hope we're going to help define that corner. As I said, four stories, surface parked, 100 units, about 150 spaces, and it'll have at least 7,000

[02:42:54] square feet, that shaded orange area, and the building is an amenity space, which will include at least 1,000 square foot community room. We also have an exercise facility and a computer room for kids that need help to school work or anybody that's looking for a job.

[02:43:11] So we're excited. This is a great lot, a great position. It's one in two bedrooms. We think that this market is going to cater to young working people and young families. That's why we're going with one or two bedrooms in this proposed property.

[02:43:28] This is a rough rendering of what the project might look like. We're still working on our elevations, of course. We'll be working with you on that. But this is something of what it can look like. As I've said a lot about the building so far, as Patrick said, almost 300 acres.

[02:43:49] It's parked at 1.5 spaces per unit, which is plenty. I actually need less than that, so this will be over-parked. This will not be trespassing parking on anybody else nearby. While this is up, I did want to touch on just two points about how we run a property.

[02:44:07] First of all, we have professional property management, both the property manager and assistant property manager. That company that we hire has to be certified by Virginia Housing as acceptable to them to run the property. That property management company certifies all the applications.

[02:44:25] Anybody that applies has to go through both a criminal background check and a credit check before they're allowed to live with us. They then monitor occupancy to make sure that there's no overcrowding in the units. Anybody that's visiting the unit for more than two weeks gets a call from our property manager to say, if you're moving in, you have to be on the lease and you have to go through the same certification process.

[02:44:50] there's no overcrowding allowed second of all we will also provide we also have in this property professional resident services we'll have a an employee whose time will be spent helping those that live with us be successful they help organize after-school programs they help organize any kinds of food support that people might need help them find jobs keep in touch with the neighborhood lots of community services be in touch with the community services that are provided that's

[02:45:26] not paid for by out of the rent that's paid for by us because helping residents stay in their unit is good business you reduce turnover you help people be successful and that helps them pay their rent on time so that's why we support resident services i'm not going to dwell on this slide too long except to say you have to remember that area median income is a chart It changes depending on how many persons are in the household and what percentage of AMI they serve.

[02:45:53] What this chart tells you is that for us, a one-bedroom, one-bath unit, probably around 800 square feet at the lowest entry level of our property is probably going to rent somewhere in the neighborhood of $1,200 a month. On the other end of that, a two-bedroom unit, probably 1,100 or better square feet.

[02:46:16] For somebody up to 70% of AMI resident, area median income could be over $2,100 a month. Those rents are still, by our judgment, somewhere between 30% to 40% or 50% below market. This is my last slide.

[02:46:35] I just wanted to put it up. This project is a $37 million project. This is 100 units. This is a very significant project. As you can see, any project is the three basic components are land, construction costs, and the cost of money and soft costs to do the project.

[02:46:57] As I've said before, we're purchasing this land at about $3 million, so it's not a gift from the city. But we are being able – the way – I can't rent below market if all of these components have to be purchased at market.

[02:47:16] I don't get any break on construction. I pay for the same for a two-by-four and a yard of concrete that everybody else does. So in order for me to provide a tenable housing at 30% to 50% below market, I have to get a break on the land, and I have to get a break on the cost of money in that bottom blue chart.

[02:47:33] The city is providing the break on the cost of the land, and I go out and raise money through the various tax credit programs and low-interest loans that you're hiring me to go find that for you. As Patrick said, we're going to be discussing with you what your contribution is going to be to this project.

[02:47:55] We're estimating that between the loan that you're going to give back to us and other finances that you might provide, you're perhaps in the range of putting up about $6 million for this project. But this is a $37 million project.

[02:48:11] That other $31 million is what you're hiring me to do is go out and find that through low-income housing tax credits, through low-interest loans, and through other state and federal grant opportunities, I'm hoping to bring at least $5 back or more for every dollar that you put in.

[02:48:29] And with that, I will happily, there's our contact information. I'm happy to answer any questions that I could. Thank you. Thank you so much for the information and for the presentation. And Ms. Hudson has her hand up already. So, questions?

[02:48:44] I do. Thank you for your time. I think that there, as you said, are a lot of misconceptions about attainable housing and about this process in general. You said a couple terms that if it was my first time hearing them, I don't think I would understand, so maybe some points of clarification could be helpful.

[02:49:01] You talked about that this, I believe you said this building, maybe you said your other buildings, but that this building would be market rate and attainable together. Is that right? Or is that what you said for the other buildings? I'm sorry, I said that the skills of the team have all those skills, but this project itself will be only attainable housing.

[02:49:19] Only attainable, okay. 100%. And so can you, and so as we look at this slide, 11 of 13, the one with the proposal projected range of rents, again, if this was my first time seeing this, I think it would be rather confusing.

[02:49:34] So can you kind of talk about the application process and how, from your perspective, an 800 square foot apartment could be $1,200 for one renter versus $1,900 for another renter? and just talk about that application process, how you verify that these are working people, how you verify that they have incomes, and then that you, well, now I'm explaining it, and then that you award them this rent.

[02:50:01] But can you talk a little bit about that? Sure. All great questions. Thank you for all of them. I hope I can remember them all, so help me out here. All right. Basically, when the project nears completion, we announced that we're going to be open for business, And that means that those that would like to live start coming and putting their names on the waiting list.

[02:50:23] As they, when we get to occupancy, we then start through the waiting list. And everybody that's applied has to go through, as we've said, a criminal background check, credit check. And all of their income has to be third-party verified. That's a very, very difficult and substantive process.

[02:50:42] And we hire professionals to do that. What that tells us is that that renter or that household is in a, I call it a band. It means that they have enough income from their work to be able to afford the rent, but they're not making, they don't have such a high income that they don't qualify for this unit.

[02:51:03] What Virginia Housing is saying to us, if they want to be able to rent this unit, They have to be in that bandwidth that says their income is not more than 60% to 70% of the area median income. Yeah, and I put that bottom chart up there because it's – my wife says I can clean out every cocktail party.

[02:51:27] I'm so boring on affordable housing, but please hang in here with me. That chart is there to say that it's published by HUD. It comes out every year, typically in April, and it looks at the area median income in our area.

[02:51:43] We're part of the Washington greater metropolitan area, so even though your incomes aren't quite as high here as they might be in other parts, you're still in that greater area, so these numbers apply. And as of this April, a family of four at 100% of the area median income is making $163,900.

[02:52:06] That is a lot of money. That's one of the three highest in the nation. So that's the market that your renters are competing in. Now, what Virginia Housing says is those that we're going to rent to cannot exceed typically 60 percent, although we're going to try and do a special program that gets a little wider band.

[02:52:29] We're going to try and get up maybe as high as 70 percent of income and as low as 40 percent. That's the bandwidth that we're looking for, and it typically covers hourly wage workers pretty much. Another question, if I may, Madam Mayor. And so how can you, as the building owner, make that decision or balance that out, if you will?

[02:52:55] You can explain this to me. I just want the residents to hear it. Sure. Virginia Housing sets the rules. We're applying to them for tax credits. So if they're going to help fund this project, they want to make sure that anybody who applies fits in that category where they can afford the rent but they're not making too much. So we're simply enforcing their rules, and we enforce that by making sure that anybody who applies to us presents us with all their, income records so we can verify that their income is certified and we we are some very sophisticated people go through all those records and make sure they fit within that band thank you sir thank you

[02:53:30] madam thank you i hope miss vesquez luna and then vice mayor thank you madam mayor i i do want to have the opportunity to highlight a couple of maybe known workforce or workforce of the employment categories because sometimes we don't think about who could benefit and we're talking about you know in your current uh one about clerks uh property manager cleaner tool uh booth workers i won't mention all of them but i i think it is important to um to see who could benefit from these uh

[02:54:06] educations we have teachers for educators cashiers retails and and all different uh categories i truly appreciate the tour. I was able to join the tour and I think to me it was an eye-opening not only meeting new managers but understanding how it works. As a single mother I believe that you know security and a dignified place to live is important. I do believe that many single mothers or small families will benefit from this. So for me it's you know it's great and I want to make

[02:54:43] sure our our residents here and and listening now or later are able to to see that because that wasn't you know part of the presentation but I truly appreciate it for me you know part of the core responsibilities and core responsibilities as a council member is the quality of life and the well-being of the residents and you know this you know it's important part of my priorities it has been through all these years to make a difference.

[02:55:16] We won't resolve Northern Virginia, or Virginia attainable housing, but we do will make a positive difference if this was to happen and to move forward right here in Manassas City, which is important.

[02:55:33] It won't resolve everything, but it will be helpful for those that need the most. Thank you. - Vice Mayor. - Well, first off, just a clarification. I mean, you've got it on the chart, but, again, the AMI bands you're looking at for a family of four is between $65,000 and $114,000.

[02:55:52] So these are not people that are obviously are destitute, have no income. But, Kim, could you talk to us a little bit about the difference between priority and preference and how you are planning to manage the priority placement for the public service workers and or city residents?

[02:56:14] Thank you. I missed that in the presentation, so I appreciate you asking that question. We have to have our marketing plan approved by Virginia Housing, and so we have to be very careful how we write that. Virginia Housing will allow a preference for only certain groups, especially those with developmental disabilities, others, and they define what those categories are for them.

[02:56:48] That means if it's a preference, you have to hold that unit open and it can only be rented by that category. That's very, very restrictive and highly controlled by Virginia Housing. On the other hand, we think what's – and we do at some of my properties have a few of those units set aside for the development of disabled, and we will look into seeing if we can do that here.

[02:57:12] Much more important for a jurisdiction like you is what we call priority, And that means that we have to write our plan carefully, and it has to be approved by Virginia Housing. But we can give priority to those that live or work within the city of Manassas.

[02:57:31] And with that, we can help to find first responders, police, teachers, whatever. And we will be working with you and with Virginia Housing to write that priority and get it approved by Virginia Housing. And that's the way. And it's quite simply the way it works.

[02:57:47] and I did this successfully at all of the properties I did in Middleburg in that area when I was leader of the Windy Hill Foundation. What it means is that if an applicant comes in and says, I am somebody that meets your priority, then we put them on the priority list, and as we start renting property, and anyone else who comes in who's not goes on the second list that's under that, and as units come empty, we keep working down the priority list, and we take care of the priority list first, and uh if i'm suspecting what will happen here is other other places there are so many other

[02:58:26] priority lists we never get we never run out but uh we fill from the priority list but should we ever run out of priority list then we get to the everybody else and yeah as i said you have to be very careful how you do that so you don't violate any violate any of the fair housing rules but that's i've done it successfully in in my other properties that i had in when i was with windy hill in middleburg and that's what we're going to try and do here thank you just again another point of information if i remember correctly starting pay for a new teacher in the monastic city schools is second only to prince william county in northern virginia but that's 65 000

[02:59:01] a year say again starting pay for a new teacher inexperienced teacher is 65 000 in our schools it is now yeah yeah yeah it's uh that's why we're trying to we're trying to help the the really entry-level folks and the and the and the folks that usually have to have roommates to make it to make the rent to pay the rent you know it's tricky in northern Virginia thank you thank you mayor yes I had the pleasure to tour

[02:59:40] your communities and Loudoun and you know I have to say I was impressed and the management was very good I have voted for attainable housing in our city in 2023 it was killed by the rest of council and it was a project that was in this historic banassas with no commitment of funds by the city where the builder was going to rehab the units

[03:00:11] next to the school with busing parks walkability services and that was a good project because of the location so where i know you're a reputable company i just the location is what is a problem because if we are truly trying to serve our population with attainable housing we don't have services there for them i mean we were considering putting social services out there

[03:00:49] and it was denied because there's no there's no busing no transportation no walkability and that's why we decided to keep social services you know down in the city so you know I agree we do have a need for housing and you have a good product but I am really concerned that it's the wrong location we had a transportation committee meeting and they said they will not have busing there any time in the near future we

[03:01:22] heard from residents walkability to the met not in the metro the VRE is unsafe there's no playgrounds the units can hold up to four adults for two bedroom if I recall in the tour and we have 1.5 spaces per unit there's no parking out there now you know maybe in the future that will change I don't know but right now I'm just afraid we're checking a box and saying we were doing attainable housing, but we're not considering how we are serving the people that we're trying to

[03:02:00] give an opportunity to by really putting them in a food desert. There's really nothing out there. If you have, if everyone has a car, yeah, you can go find food, you know, walk across the street and go to two silos, but I'm telling you, that's not affordable to get a lunch over there.

[03:02:24] So that's my real concern. I'm also concerned about the funding you know the city would have to put six million dollars into this and it would be a return I think over 20 to 30 years if I recall at a three percent rate and we have you know that money invested in a higher rate now it's hard to calculate that really you know how that would be a possible loss or gain really we do have a housing trust fund with two million dollars and you know I talked to some

[03:02:58] members up here about you know if we actually do this we're going to come from the housing trust you know instead of our capital reserves which is that really your problem you know you're trying to get the money that's our problem how are we going to get the money um but i'm not seeing that direction so that's that's my uh issue you know we're we are the affordable community in northern virginia already we are uh but we continue to raise our tax bills every year which is making it unaffordable you know so we have a lot of other things to work on you know the part like i said i'm

[03:03:35] very impressed with it with your uh your projects that you have i just think that we're rushing to this we have other locations i mean a company like yours could buy a parcel we could help fund it doesn't have to be city owned you know there's all ways to do it we have mathis avenue coming up that we agree we would like to have attainable housing uh they say 10 years but i thought we'd never see it ever in my lifetime so you don't know how things are going to move um that's kind of my position on this uh i really would like to see us move more in the direction of trying to help

[03:04:14] people with home ownership as opposed to a discount rental rate so i'm um you know i'm hoping that we can have a second reading on this not just conclude tonight on this because i think we have a lot of questions and i am very anxious to hear from our public i can only respond to two or three of those I'll just say, I'll just be brief.

[03:04:39] I think I understand where your position is. If the potential clients for this effort obviously have to be working because we've talked about that criteria.

[03:04:54] So as we speak, 90%, 99% already commute to a job in the city. We're not talking about people that have to find new transportation when they move off of Wellington Road. These are people that have been employed, and employment will verify these are firefighters who are driving from Front Row, West Virginia, and so forth.

[03:05:22] Thank you, sir. I'll wait for the rest of your answer. I think you have an observation. That would be interesting. Well, as the vice mayor pointed out, we're not at the low end of the income scale here. We're trying to find housing for folks that are really nice if they could live where they work.

[03:05:44] And so that's sort of the first thing we're after. This is not permanent supportive housing. This is not highly subsidized housing. This is for folks who are working at the wages they can have to have the jobs that I think you would like to have in the community.

[03:06:01] So that's who we're focusing on. They do all have cars. We are still not truly an urban area out here, nor are we even in Loudoun County. Folks do have jobs. They just don't have as many cars as a full market rate unit might have.

[03:06:20] I have several properties. I've done parking studies at three of my biggest properties, and the usual parking ratio I need is 1.1, 1.2, maybe as high as 1.4. We're actually parking this one at 1.5, so there will be plenty of space here for those cars to park.

[03:06:38] We will have a playground. I didn't say that going on, but if we were to go back to the square here, just outside of that little orange square is where we are going to have a playground for the kids, as well as a community room inside.

[03:06:55] So we do have amenities on the site. I agree with you. It would be nice to have some more eating and retail options on this site, and hopefully as we bring some added folks to this site, maybe that can start to get up to where that can happen.

[03:07:12] And we would certainly like to share in your view of making that happen. Walkability is baited greatly. I wish every site were perfect.

[03:07:28] This one is not as walkable as I would like it to be. But our first job is to sort of supply homes for people. And I think we're going to try and do that. And I do believe they'll have cars. Rental versus for sale.

[03:07:51] That's a big debate everywhere. It's a big debate we're having in Loudoun County right now. If we were to provide these kinds of subsidies in a for-sale unit, whoever gets that unit is going to really have won the golden ticket, and they're going to hang on to that unit with all they can for probably the life of that program, which will be 20 or 30 years.

[03:08:16] You've helped one family. When you build a rental unit, life changes. People come and go. They move out. Our turnover rate is probably in the range of 15% or 20% of those units a year. You're going to help somewhere between, I don't know, 15 and 30 families over the life of this project as opposed to helping one.

[03:08:38] So I believe you should have both, not one or the other. These are the rentals that help folks at the start, and you should have programs like down payment assistance or interest rate buy-down or loan guarantees.

[03:08:56] Other programs can help purchase. Tonight's goal is rental, and I think it's a really important one for helping a lot of folks that need it. Just one other thing, Madam Mayor. I researched your company.

[03:09:11] I did the tour. I have a conversation with you, and I mentioned to you and the others on the staff that I'm impressed with your intention to address both sides, not in my backyard, how to misunderstand it and create a stigmatism, but also many features and the practices of your company address the stigma that's imposed on the person that's being housed.

[03:09:42] You make them feel like they are, quote, somebody, and you address their needs, that they are in a house, in a housing situation, and they should be proud of where they are because they're there on their achievement. So I commend your company for adjusting it from both sides.

[03:10:01] The person who lives in it has to deal with they think I'm this or they think I'm that. And then the person who lives there has to realize that their property value doesn't necessarily go down because you're in a housing unit that someone can afford.

[03:10:17] So thank you for your approach. And as we look forward to the future, look further at this, hopefully in discussions with our neighbors, our residents, can get them down to the stand. the key purpose and the negativity.

[03:10:33] There's a lot of meaning when you did the short slide, the brief talk about that Bermuda Green. There's a lot of meaning in when you said we don't do that anymore and we have corrected terrible policy when that building was brand new.

[03:10:52] The policy was flawed. So thank you, sir. That's Gaslona. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I just want to say for me, it brought dignity, respect, and security. Everything that I learned from the different, already in place, campus or different places that you have built and have had.

[03:11:19] The other important part is the way the community comes together. And I do truly believe this will give them a break and an opportunity for them to become self-sufficient and become homeowners in part of the plans and the classes and the other information that's provided.

[03:11:42] We also providing in the city as well now, it's that. It's to get them to a level where they can, you know, own their place and move on. But, yes, again, I have to say, you know, dignity and respect security. And also, to me, it's very important to be a good neighbor and you have a great neighborhood nearby, which is, you know, over 200 units already.

[03:12:08] So, you know, I will say I can't wait to see the full potential of Cannon Branch. I cannot wait to see everything the prior council's dreamed for to happen there. I believe it will take a couple of years, but I think this will fit well with that.

[03:12:27] - Thank you. Any other comments or questions? - Mr. Alcina. - Could I ask Mr. Arcieri to come up to answer one or two questions for me? - Thank you. - You're off the hot seat right now, yeah.

[03:12:43] All right. In the city of Manassas, Mr. Arcieri, are house, rent, rental houses, people who are renting versus people who own their houses, which one is more cost burdened by their?

[03:13:02] - There's a higher number of households, rental households that are cost burdened in the city. - And to that point, at the Housing Advisory Committee meeting last Tuesday, we had Jill Kenneth, who is the chief demographer for the Northern Virginia Regional Commission, pulled statistics for that committee, and it demonstrated that someone renting in Manassas with a household income under $35,000,

[03:13:35] 98.4% of them are cost burdened versus those who are homeowners under 35 at just 91, which is pretty high for both. But unfortunately for renters, it continues.

[03:13:52] If you're 35 to 40, almost $50,000 and you're a renter, their cost burden, 90.9% are versus if you're a homeowner at $35,000 to $50,000, drops to 71. So we do have a situation where right now those who wish to rent in our city are the ones that are probably having the most difficulty in terms of being, you know, cost burden.

[03:14:21] We do have, you know, folks in that sense. So to Kim's point here, rentals can be of help, I think, to recognize you're going to be helping a group, renters versus owners, that has certainly not been assisted for some time now along the way here.

[03:14:45] So I just want to appreciate you raising that point, or at least so I can make the illustration. Thank you. Mayor, thanks. Any other comments or questions? Where did we go? Oh, well, the leases on these are one-year leases that people sign, and Kim, have you?

[03:15:09] They're one-year leases, I believe. They are, yeah. He gave me a thumbs up, so I got that one right. So at the end of that year, what happens? I'm just curious, like. So they have, you know, they go through a standard, and Kim's giving me this, I'll just take over for Kim for a moment.

[03:15:25] So you have the option to renew your lease. I think the big thing that we get a lot of questions on on the staff level is what happens if your income goes up and you no longer are at those thresholds? And the answer is you get to stay in the apartment if you so choose. You can stay if you so choose. So you don't get – if you get a raise, you don't get booted out of the apartment because you no longer meet the income threshold.

[03:15:44] We get that question a lot. So I'll let Kim talk about the product. Well, my thing was just the least – because I know I heard one year. And so you just reapply. Is that how it works at the end of the year? I don't know how it works. so we like to do a one-year lease so if there's a problem we just don't renew the lease it's often very hard in Virginia to get folks evicted and if there's bad behavior it's sometimes it's really

[03:16:17] hard to get it out so that's why you do a one-year lease okay the the lease automatically renews and so they don't have to go through the whole certification process but the units are inspected every year, and they do have to meet housekeeping standards and all of that.

[03:16:36] But importantly, we don't throw anybody out if they start to do better. We find that if they're really doing better, they usually move on to something else on their own and free up that unit. And that's what you want. The call I hate worse to get is from an employer that says, I've got a great employee.

[03:16:58] I just tried to give him a raise, and he said no because he'd get kicked out of his apartment. I said, well, I have to talk to him because it's not true. Thank you. Thank you. Go ahead, Mr. Alcena, then Ms. Ellis. So, Kim, so maybe I have misspoken to some residents on this point here.

[03:17:19] So the leases renew automatically. You do check their income, though, correct? Well, we keep track of where it is, but we don't throw them out if their income improves.

[03:17:35] Right. And let's say they're no longer within that bandwidth. We still aren't going to throw them out. What happens to their rent? Well, the rent is established. The rent doesn't change based on their income level. The rent is set for the unit. They have to be in the bandwidth to live there.

[03:17:53] Now, the rent will typically go up every year by a little bit. Typically, we tend to track consumer price index. So our rent increases each year are watched over by both Virginia housing and the tax rate investors.

[03:18:10] So rents do tick up as normally as they would over the course of the years. But if their income exceeds that bandwidth in the second year, we don't throw them out. They're allowed to stay. At the rent they've been paying?

[03:18:26] At the rent that everybody would pay for that size unit. We don't adjust the rent based on their income. The rent is set by the type of unit, the size of the unit. All right. And you have a resident manager, but you also have a resident services manager.

[03:18:45] Is that correct? What does that second person do? Well, the second person is there to help improve the quality of life of everybody that lives with us. They tend to provide programs, after-school programs for the children. They also keep track of services residents may need if they're having trouble financially.

[03:19:07] They may get them counseling on that, how to do budgeting. They can also seek grants, help them go out and seek community help from the community. Their job is to help people not get in such a jam that they have to be thrown out or have to leave.

[03:19:24] We like them to be successful. And they also just organize programs to be part of the community. The reason I put this up, Ashburn Chase, I forget, I think you brought it up. That's Ashburn Chase on Route 7.

[03:19:42] It's part of a Toll Brothers community. The folks that live next door each have individual four-story condos, each with their own elevator. They sell for a million dollars or more each. There was lots of concern whether those two communities could live side-by-side without bad reactions one to another.

[03:20:05] I'm happy to report that our resident service manager reached out to the HOA community next door I invited them over. We have a community room they don't. They're invited over to come and use our community room if they want to. But more importantly, they met our families, our kids, and this year before school started, the HOA bought a backpack and all the school supplies for every one of our kids.

[03:20:31] That's the kind of relationship that we like to build with our neighborhood if we can to help be successful all the way around. Also, they have a pickleball court that's very attractive to our kids, And so to help prevent our kids from, like, maybe helping themselves to that play area when they shouldn't, they're now offering pickleball lessons for our kids.

[03:20:55] So that's how we try to work that out, Tom. Councilman. Okay. I also asked some questions to our staff about some things.

[03:21:13] I just want to confirm with you. So once the project is complete, you can sell that. building right you're not you're not under contract to keep owning it you could sell it but it would have to continue the use of as affordable housing I'm just trying to understand how that all works well we're owners we're we we buy for the long haul you know the the contract that we sign with

[03:21:48] attracts credit investors mean that that we are going to be in a contract relationship with them for at least 15 years. The contract we signed with Virginia Housing means that it's going to be affordable for at least another 15 years on top of that.

[03:22:04] So it's going to be guaranteed affordable for at least 30 years through the extended compliance period. At the end of that period of time, you know, we will be negotiating with you a right of first refusal if you want to consider that.

[03:22:23] Or, you know, if you don't want to exercise that, then we are free to sell it. But I would say that it's also important that at that point, that is a great way to have a property that then becomes affordable for those in what they call the missing middle.

[03:22:39] It can then become a rental at a slightly higher rate but still affordable less than 100% of AMI. So the contract is a 30-year contract, but you do have the freedom to sell it if you wanted to sell it.

[03:22:56] It's very difficult to do that, especially within the 15-year compliance period. That's very, very seldom done. Okay. The other thing, and you might have answered this question. I wasn't real clear on this, though. If after a year for that low qualifying salary of $26,000, if somebody drops below that, it moves their job, you know, or they're just below that $26,000, do they have to leave?

[03:23:27] That is an unfortunate circumstance. That's part of the whole question of rent burdened. We have a policy that we like to have all of our renters not pay more than 30% of their gross income for their rent plus their utility allowance combined.

[03:23:50] That's the standard. If they fall a little bit below that, our policy is to work with them to try and not have them leave. The most difficult situation is if two folks go together, and between them they can afford the unit and afford the rent, but one roommate moves away, leaving one that really can't afford it, that's a situation where they do have to leave.

[03:24:15] Sounds like another problem. Yeah, it seems a little strange that if people go above the income level they can stay and keep the lower rate. I don't know. It seems like it's a very unbalanced formula there to me.

[03:24:34] I know that we are looking at some federal funding cuts. We talked about that. That's another concern, just so that I can get that off my chest, about putting $6 million into this project with unknown federal funding cuts. That's all I have.

[03:24:51] Thank you. Any other comments or questions? Okay, I will now open the public hearing for this item. I do have two people signed up, which I'll call on first. We have Chris Markowitz, if you're still here.

[03:25:09] Thank you for your patience. - Vice Mayor, members. My name is Chris Markowitz, I'm here today, there this evening to ask you to delay the vote on this.

[03:25:28] At this point, the community has not been given adequate information about how this project could affect our daily lives. We're looking at the terms of the traffic conditions, strain on public services, environmental impact, and changes to the character of our neighborhoods.

[03:25:49] Voting now without complete understanding of these issues could be irresponsible. Just looking for a current, I know this project has been discussed for 10 years. When was the last review of all of these public works in congestion last week then?

[03:26:11] Also requesting that council arrange a direct meeting between the communities that are impacted, specifically landing Cannon Branch with the developer, get some clear answers and the opportunity to address any concerns before the decision is made.

[03:26:29] Something that we have discussed a little bit was potential of RHOA being part of the annual review of the property to make sure that the overall community standards are being maintained.

[03:26:48] Short delay is a reasonable step to ensure transparency, accountability, and sound decision-making. I ask the council to please delay the vote on this until we can get the different public work reviews and discuss with the developer.

[03:27:09] Another concern that we have is the potential issues with fire department, police department, and emergency services. Will this impact them in a negative way?

[03:27:26] Having the additional residents, that's all I have. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for your comments. Next I have signed up is David Curley. I'm sorry if I'm not saying that right.

[03:27:41] David, come on down. Good evening, Madam Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Council.

[03:27:58] A lot of new information today. I could probably take this a million different ways, but I'm going to stay focused and keep it in the three minutes. Getting the abridged version here. come before the council today as a resident of the landing at cannon branch this is the community that both the city and buchanan partners have consistently over promised and under delivered while the goal of affordable housing is noble they're absolutely a real cost it is the landing at cannon branch who will bear all of those costs in 2015 the stanford stanford university school of

[03:28:35] business did a 10-year study on the impact of low-income housing on surrounding neighborhoods and i quote in higher income neighborhoods those with median incomes above fifty four thousand dollars now granted this is 2015 money housing prices declined approximately 2.5 percent within a tenth mile of a project and in the high income areas you saw a strong housing price drop very locally and then it radiated outward over time the price effects remain even after 10 years

[03:29:11] there are several other concerns regarding this project i'll start here number one per city council all of the good housing previous projects were built in conjunction with the surrounding neighborhoods it was a partnership with the surrounding housing developer and many shared amenities as far as i know this is the first project where it is being placed directly next to an established neighborhood and we have been giving nothing but shifting and obfuscated details and zero community input we were told at the meeting across the street from our neighborhood

[03:29:49] that this would not be section 8 housing but on good housing's own presentation they say that they do accept section 8 vouchers with the complete lack of transparency we don't know who to believe the story changes every time it's told the actual proposal number three the actual proposal for the landing at cana branch has 150 parking spaces for 100 units i mean that's laughably inadequate i don't know i mean there's no public transportation there i don't know the other properties the gentleman mentioned that are parking at 1.2 but i would love to know if they

[03:30:26] have a metro or buses or even a sidewalk right next to them number four i've come to find out doing all this research that the terms workforce housing affordable housing and attainable housing have very specific definitions and this is being sold to us as workforce housing but this project absolutely does not meet that definition number five this project does absolutely nothing to encourage home ownership and encourages lifetime renters manassas park actually has a program which supports their workforce entry into home ownership.

[03:31:03] I suggest we look at a model like theirs instead of this one. Is that my three minutes? Ten more seconds? Go ahead. All right. We have been misled on multiple occasions to the true nature of this proposal. I urge you to vote no on this proposal as it currently exists.

[03:31:22] We've already reached out to set up a meeting with the developer to have our concerns addressed and allow time to listen to the voices of our community. We're asking you to take our concerns into consideration and give us a chance to have a voice in this project or any other Proposed projects which would directly impact our largest investments our homes at least postpone this vote until we've had a chance To have some any input. Thank you for your time. Thank you, sir Thank you. Anyone else that wishes to address council come on down. Just give us your name, please

[03:32:07] My name is Mandy Fisher, and I live in the landing at Cannon Branch directly across from this proposed project. And unlike some of my neighbors, I am fully in support of workforce, attainable, affordable housing. I work in social services, and I have worked with the Healthy Families Program doing home visits for the last 15 years.

[03:32:23] And families do need programs like this. However, what I have seen is that the devil is in the detail. And too many of these buildings are built with low-quality materials that don't have soundproofing, a lack of parking, a lack of amenities. And then you want to throw in shift workers who work restaurants at night, law enforcement who work overnight, young families with children.

[03:32:46] And you put the mom with two toddlers or law enforcement who work overnights, it's a bad scene. You put in a bunch of restaurant workers who come home at 2 a.m., 3 a.m., there's no parking. It doesn't work. And so I support the concept, but I really want you guys to look at the details and to watch what my neighbors said, ask for resident input.

[03:33:09] And I would also encourage you, if you haven't, talk to some of the current and past residents from this company's building. There are some very concerning reviews on many of their sites. So I just, again, ask what my neighbor said for more time, more information, and more transparency.

[03:33:27] Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else? Please come forward.

[03:33:41] So my name is, hello, my name is Robin Johnson, and I'm here in support of the Workforce Housing Project at the Landing. And I'm reading because otherwise I'll get off on a tangent, and I know I'll go past my three minutes. My passion is children, youth, and families at risk.

[03:33:58] I firmly believe that stable housing plays a vital role in helping to mitigate that risk. That is why, in addition to serving on the advisory board for the city's Department of Social Services, Dr. Curvin, I also applied to join the housing advisory board.

[03:34:14] Furthermore, as someone who's commuted to Tyson's Corner for over almost 35 years, I recognize the significant benefits of residing near your workplace, particularly for educators and first responders thank you thank you anyone else wishes to come forward good evening madam mayor city council members this is a necessary investment by the city for our community to remain a community we are losing our youth our young adults the survey

[03:34:53] that Mr. Arcieri talked about in response to Tom's question. Councilman Acina, excuse me. We are losing our people from 18 to 54. From 2020 to 2024, we are down in each of that demographic.

[03:35:12] The only demographic that's staying are us old folks, the 55 and up, because we have our house already, we own it, we've got that 2.3% mortgage, so we're not going anywhere. If we don't want to turn into an upside-down community with no youth, no vitality, no nightlife, we need to invest so that our kids come home, our youth come home, our teachers can stay and become a part of our community, our firefighters, our public safety people can be part of our community.

[03:35:44] That's what makes a community a community where people work, live, and play together. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else? Good evening, Madam Mayor and Vice Mayor and members of the Council.

[03:36:05] I'm Alan Muchtank. I live in this city on Park Street. I don't have a strong view for or against this project, but I do want to agree strongly with what Councilwoman Ellis said, that this is probably the wrong location. There's too much density for this location that doesn't have any transportation other than driving.

[03:36:26] I think one of the things or a couple of things that you learn from this type of attainable housing is, number one, you need subsidies, and number two, you need density. And throughout the time that I've been living in the city, time and again, properties that are closer to the downtown area that have transportation are being approved with too little density.

[03:36:49] The Manassas Shopping Center parcel, for example, is about one-third, the proposal that was put out to the public was about one-third of the density of this project. And I think if we really want to have affordable housing, we need to have the density and we need to have it in transit accessible areas with bus service and VRE thank you thank you mr. much new anyone else my name is Jill Spall I live at 10407 Spragans Court I just together a couple notes I didn't plan to speak tonight but

[03:37:24] my passion is the operation caring for you put a microphone down a little bit so I just have to go my passion is the caring for the kids of Manassas City public schools and I want to keep our teachers happy. I want to keep our staff happy. The starting salary of a new bachelor's degree teacher is actually closer to $60,000. I know several kids

[03:37:59] from the class of 2017, 2018 that are very happy to work here where they grew up, but they all live in their parents' basements, you know, so they're going to be happy for a little while, but I just I didn't hear a lot of people talk about teachers. I heard a lot of people talk about other people.

[03:38:15] But I'm going to be very committed to getting our – it's a huge recruitment tool for our new teachers, and that happens every single year that we need to recruit new teachers. And so I hope that you will consider this project or another project like it.

[03:38:32] Sorry, my notes messed up, but thank you for listening. Thank you. Do you want me to sign? No, I got you. Thank you. Anyone else? Just give us your name, please. I'm Mary Lee, and I live in the land of Cannon Branch, and I just really wanted to bring some clarification to some of the things that the gentleman said in reference to tax credit and the workforce housing.

[03:39:04] First, I wanted to start off with who stated that, sorry, about the recertification or the qualification. The qualification for the tax credit is, yes, it's the median income, and it has to be a minimum and a maximum.

[03:39:27] Virginia housing doesn't make that. HUD makes that ruling, and how much the median income is for the Northern Virginia area, Washington, D.C., and Baltimore. After the resident qualifies the first year, the income of that resident can go up or down, and they will not get thrown out of their housing, correct?

[03:39:54] but it still puts a cost burden on the resident if they do lose their income. Secondly, recertification is done annually and they have to meet the annual certification.

[03:40:11] However, if the owners choose or can prove to HUD that they qualify for a waiver, they can have a waiver where the resident will self-certify for up to five years.

[03:40:33] The owner stated, and I may have misheard him, but he said that he gets no benefit, but as a tax credit affordable housing, he would get 15 years of tax credit, and then another 15 years, the project is in an extended use stage.

[03:40:57] Someone then asked what, I think Madam Ellis asked, what can the owner or developer sell? Can the owner sell the property?

[03:41:12] Well, the owner can choose to sell after the extended use and it could go to market or it could go to another affordable housing. But then they would have to do a rescindification so they would have to re-qualify everyone that is still in the project first and then that owner then would get tax credits.

[03:41:39] If the tenant goes over the 140% ruling of income, they would then have to let that owner stay there but rent to the next qualifying tenant that would meet the guidelines of the income.

[03:42:07] The important part of tax credit is what the owner selects on his 8609 when he establishes the set aside. That is gonna be key.

[03:42:25] I am in affordable housing. I have been doing it for over 20 years. I think that workforce housing should be closer to transportation, closer to grocery stores where the need will be met for the person and not put a cost burden on them.

[03:42:47] Build affordable condos for sale If you're gonna build something on that land, bring home ownership to Manassas. Thank you for your time. - Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Lane. Anyone else who wishes to give me the-- - In Castle, can you hear me?

[03:43:08] Okay. - Let's give us your name, sir. - Madam Mayor, Jacques Perrault. I am a neighbor of Laney and Canyon Branch. I've been original owner of Laney and Canyon Branch, and the developers sold us a bill of goods they have not delivered or still have no interest in delivering.

[03:43:27] I have three young children. I bought the home to raise my children there. My two children go to the school systems. We are looking for neighbors that invest in our community. We are paying taxes. We are improving our home.

[03:43:44] We are making all to make the community better. And we were promised restaurants and a community feel, and none of that has been delivered with this builder. Even when we went to the meeting recently, about two weeks ago, said workforce housing and when i brought up that was this affordable housing they said no no no no this is workforce housing and workforce housing has certain requirements it's usually 80 percent of the median not 40 percent um again i agree with you affordable housing workforce housing

[03:44:22] but usually it's mixed in with high residential apartments as well usually it's dedicated to to 70 apartments out of 200 units at that point. I think we are looking for investment in the community and this is not investment in the community and it's not the right place.

[03:44:44] I agree with Ms. Ellis where this is just not the right place and we need more time to look over the proposal and make the right decision for this site. Thank you for your time. - Thank you, sir.

[03:45:00] Anyone else? Can you just give us your name, please? - Madam Mayor and Vice Mayor and Council, thank you for having me today.

[03:45:19] My name is Letitia Spaulding. I am a preschool teacher and commute to the Ashburn area where the median is higher for pay. But I stand here as a resident, also original home buyer at the landing of Canyon Branch, was also promised so many things and under-delivered have so many frustrations after last two weeks ago meeting and feeling promises yet again and then hearing something completely different here today and it's just quite honestly super disappointing as a resident to be downplayed yet again

[03:45:58] and I 100% agree with council Ellis it's just not the location I grew up severely poor in section 8th housing can't fight for it enough for our community across the street where there is no sidewalks there's no playgrounds our playground in our community is not even the size of this room like and it's going to be the place where the kids come to play and they deserve to play there but there's not even a sidewalk for them to walk to get to our playground like it's just I really really urge that this vote not be made today and that more community comes together and hears the real voices the

[03:46:38] real people the teachers the preschool teachers my husband who's you know law enforcement and the other people in our community who have worked so hard to get to where we are today to afford that townhome here in the city of Manassas and have worked to really stay there and we want to keep our community safe happy healthy and thriving thank you so much for your time thank you anyone else

[03:47:02] I live down the street from Cannon branch and I just want to let you know that the residents reached out to me over the past week just frustrated a lot of them are a little bit disappointed as you're hearing tonight that they were sold a bill of goods that's what they keep telling me and you know that I know that the vision for that area has not produced

[03:47:39] what was sold to folks who purchased there. And they are just asking this evening for you to delay your vote. And for the first portion of your public hearing, you spent almost an hour talking amongst yourselves, most of you talking about how great this is. So what I am asking you to do is listen to your residents, listen to your voters and your taxpayers. Delay the vote tonight so that some of these questions can be fleshed out. I do think it is the wrong location. I think we all agree that we have been wanting affordable or attainable or workforce housing or some type of definition therein that gets us to where we want to

[03:48:18] be as a city but when you are talking about this type of project every detail does matter and the location matters most and so I am asking you as a Manasseh City resident to delay your vote tonight and to consider some of those topics that were brought up I would also like to point out that it is very challenging to talk about workforce housing when when you look at the data you see maybe 24 total people that would fall into that category and we did have a project previously that would have more a more like better aligned with

[03:48:56] workforce housing so from my purview I would support workforce housing but I would want there to be a way that we can make sure it is for the workforce and and especially with the priority of the city workforce. So that is a challenge, and I think with the fair, you know, the equal opportunity and fair housing laws that we have in place to prevent discrimination, that is where your challenge is gonna be with a project like this.

[03:49:22] It just is. I think Mark Wolf has said it before, the definition of affordable housing will never align when you have six people in a room. And you know, I didn't like it when he said it then, I don't like it now, but yet it's where you are. So if we could just have a little bit more discussion of it, I would really appreciate it.

[03:49:38] Thank you. thank you anyone else wishes to come forward for this item okay if not is there a motion please madam mayor move to close the public hearing schedule for vote at the january 26th meeting okay we have the motion by vice mayor wolf and seconded by councilman vasquez luna to close the public hearing and schedule the vote for our next regularly no no january 26 sorry meeting

[03:50:14] any discussion and seeing mr smith oh miss ellis so is january 26th considered the second reading no rumor that gives the time any other discussion comment if not mr smith please call the roll vice mayor wolf yes council member vasquez luna yes council member ellis no council member smith

[03:50:49] yeah council member elicina yes council member husson yes motion carries okay thank you for that and that moves up i gotta make up my computer here uh moves us forward to item 3.4 on the agenda public hearing ordinance number 0-2026-452 award of a franchise agreements to high flying hangars of virginia llc for lot w-2 for the construction and operation of various size box style aircraft hangars at the manassas regional airport mr rivera good evening uh madam mayor uh members

[03:51:28] of Council, Mr. Burke. This public hearing is to review proposals that we receive for parcels located at the Manassas Regional Airport. I'm going to start off with W-2 because there's a few facts that I'm going to cover. It just makes more sense to go with W-2. First of all, the location of the parcels, W-1 and W-2, are on the west, the northwest side of

[03:52:01] the airport. That is where the new road, Aviators Avenue, has just been built. There's two parcels. Parcel W-1 is one acre and W-2 is 6.1 acres. We solicited it for proposals to develop the lots W-1 and W-2 on the west side of the airport. They're located at 10501 Observation Road and we put it out for 75 cent a square foot we received two proposals that were received by City

[03:52:40] Council and opened by the mayor on November 10th at the appointed time in place proposals were received from high-flying hangars of Virginia and HEF JPC hangars or APP Jet Center HEF bid on both lots or high-flying hangars bid on both lots and they bid $0.80 per square foot. APP only bid on lot W1 and they bid the minimum bid of $0.75. So the apparent bidder or highest bidder for both lots at the time was

[03:53:19] high flying hangers with the $0.80 per square foot. On November 13th, I received an email from High Flying Hangers with an attached letter stating that they had withdrawn their bid for W-1 due to a clerical and mathematical error in their submission.

[03:53:39] So after consulting with the city attorney, it was determined that High Flying Hangers could withdraw its bid for lot W-1. So therefore, we ended up with APP becoming the only bidder for lot W-1 and High Flying Hangers was the only bidder for lot W-2.

[03:54:00] So an overview of the proposal that high-flying hangars submitted, the proposal was found to be a responsive proposal. The proposal meets the airport's master plan and strategic plan and the airport layout plan as well.

[03:54:20] They propose to build 39 box-style hangars, aircraft hangars. The units will be 50 by 40s, which will be 29 units, and 10 60 by 60 units. Again, their bid price was $0.80 per square foot.

[03:54:38] First-year rent will be $188,832.60, with an annual escalation of 2.9%. Total investment in this proposal is $15 million. Completion time would be 10 to 18 months once they got the franchise signed.

[03:54:57] There were no exceptions in the bid proposal, and no funding is required from the city or the airport. This is the proposed layout of the hangars on the site. As you can see there, they are proposing to build 39 total hangars.

[03:55:17] Here's an example of hangars that they have done at other airports. High-flying hangars have done multiple hangars, not outside of Virginia, in Maryland, New Mexico, Arizona. So they have plenty projects that they have completed successfully.

[03:55:41] That's all I have, Madam Mayor. - Okay, thank you, Mr. Rivera. Any questions or comments for Mr. Rivera? And if not, is there... Oh, I'll open up the public hearing, I'm sorry. Public hearing for this item. I don't have anyone signed up, but if there's anyone who wishes to speak at this time, please come forward on this item.

[03:56:03] If not, I'll entertain a motion. Madam Mayor, move to close the public hearing and schedule for a vote at a later date. Second. Hear the motion by Vice Mayor Wolfe, seconded by Council Member Vasquez-Luna to close the public hearing and schedule a vote to be determined on this item.

[03:56:19] Any discussion? Hearing and seeing none, Mr. Smith, please call the roll. Vice Mayor Wolfe? Yes. Council Member Vasquez-Luna? Yes. Council Member Ellis? Yes. Council Member Smith? Yes. Council Member Alcina? yes council member hudson yes the motion carries okay item 3.5 public hearing ordinance number oh 2026-451 order for franchise agreements to have jpc hangar llc for lot w1 for the construction operation of a box style aircraft hangar with adjoining office space at the manassas regional airport rivera thank you madam mayor i'm not going to go

[03:56:58] through was the other presentation on here there were two separate ones oh this is the second one okay i'm going to skip through the first part of it because it basically states everything that I've already talked about so the proposal for APP they also were found as a responsive proposal met all the requirements spelled out in the RFFP the proposer meets the their development also meets the airport master plan strategic plan they proposed to build an 80 by 80 or 6400 square foot box hangar with an adjoining three hundred and six three thousand six hundred and

[03:57:35] square feet office building the building will house ATP flight school and an FBO annex their bid is 75 cent per square foot first year's rent would be thirty two thousand six hundred and seventy which would also escalate at two point nine percent they also plan on leasing at least twelve tie-downs from the airport that equates to another 13,680 dollars annually total investment is estimated to be two million dollars with a 16 to 18 month completion time no

[03:58:11] exceptions on the bid as well and no funding required for the city or the airport this is the layout of their proposal as you can see there they got ample parking lot for the flight school and then they'll have a small area for a a FBO Annex with ramp space.

[03:58:33] And there is a slide of the building. I stand ready to answer any questions you may have. - Thank you, Mr. Mayor, any questions? Okay, I'll now open the public hearing again. I do not have anyone signed up to speak on this item.

[03:58:48] If there's anyone present who wishes to address this item, please come forward at this time. Okay, is there a motion please? - Madam Mayor, move to close the public hearing and schedule for a vote at a date to be determined. - Second. - Uh-oh.

[03:59:04] it to rally we have the votes by um we have the motion by vice mayor wolf seconded by councilman ralph smith to close the public hearing and to take up this item at a later date to be determined any discussion hearing and seeing none mr smith please call the roll vice mayor wolf yes council member smith yes council member ellis council member osina yes council member vasquez luna yes council member hudson yes motion carries all right thank you so much that takes care of

[03:59:38] um section four on the agenda with those items being deferred as well as item 4.3 being put to a vote on 126. so we don't have to go through those three the next item on the agenda is public comment time and at this time we welcome residents and community members who wish to speak about services policies and affairs of the city manassas anyone who has not requested additional time four days prior to this meeting from the city manager we have a timer and your comments will be limited to three minutes we appreciate the time you have taken to be here a reminder that council does not engage in back and forth conversation with speakers during this time the lack of an immediate response

[04:00:17] to your comments should not be taken as a lack of interest or concern as we have staff present taking notes and will respond to your concern in a timely manner when you approach the podium give us your name and we would appreciate it if you would provide us with your address so that we may properly follow up with you in a timely manner but you are not required to give us your full address you may simply state that you are a city resident or state which city you live in we ask that you please be respectful in presenting your comments to not only council members but to those residents and community members who are also present with that i have the sign up sheet here and i'll call off the names first for that and then invite anyone else who wishes to come forward

[04:00:55] to they may do so at that time i have i think he's already gone jay sarov i guess he was the car wash guy i think i think he's gone and robin johnson i don't see her and chris keller are the three names that i have here but if there's anyone present who wishes to address council for public comment time please come forward good evening ma'am jenna plebniak and i am a resident of the city of manassas

[04:01:34] wow just pushed off two votes for the airport that doesn't directly involve the residents to a later date and then these people that were here you got to see our city council at work and the date that you made a date for that for january 26th the city's getting wiser so i didn't pray at the last meeting we need prayer now more than anything and god's even on overload with what's going on in the city there's so many projects going on so many um oh it's for the future it's

[04:02:10] for this and for that, people come and talk and decisions are made without listening to the people. So, you know, I'm just asking, please, all of you, open your hearts. We're at Christmas time of year. God is very ever-present for all of us and for you to listen to the people, communicate with them, hear them, hear what they're saying. This is our city and it's being run, I don't know, I don't know, I have no words for how it is. I just brought my $3,000

[04:02:47] check over for my taxes and young people can't afford to buy houses. And it seems to be the plan, not only in our city but across the country. And it's wrong. It's wrong. People are going to rise up and things are going to change. And may God help us all with it because that's who's going to change it all. We don't have people here that are changing it.

[04:03:10] So I ask that you all just check your heart. Make sure you're doing the right thing for all of us. And I ask this through the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. Thank you, Ms. Plavniak. Anyone else?

[04:03:30] Hey, guys, and I was a late night. I'm for Calgary and Manassas City resident. I just did want to talk really quickly. Thank you for delaying the vote until the end of January.

[04:03:46] That is a long time, even though it does not seem like a long time. So I do appreciate that. I think what people get frustrated with is something that I have talked about for a long time. and I know some people still like to, I don't know, get frustrated with me that I bring it up, but the public hearing process is the only process where our residents have the ability to really participate in the process.

[04:04:13] And when it doesn't feel transparent and when it feels rushed no matter how many years somebody in a job, in a desk, in an office here has been working on it, when that homeowner or that resident gets wind of the project and specifically the public hearing, and they feel unheard, it's a very isolating experience, period.

[04:04:37] That is their lived experience with their interaction with you and with our staff and with whoever's trying to do something great or not with our city. And so it becomes a situation where working with our residents who are here while we are trying to do new things, innovative things, take care of those who maybe have to leave the children of those here and those who might want to work here when we disregard those who live here it diminishes our quality of life period the end I don't know how else to put that into

[04:05:14] words for you because I have sat where you sit and I know some people don't like me to share that but that was my experience one of my greatest joys was to try to bring what happens there to what is experienced here. And when we rush that process or we cut out the residents, the public hearing process doesn't work. And by default, by the time our residents get involved, most of the projects are at 60% or more done and nobody wants to start over. So in these moments, taking the time to talk to our residents, giving them some perspective of what the process is, reaching out to them after,

[04:05:54] it's apparent that you are all trying to do that because I sat there. So when I hear your questions or I hear you trying to extract information. It's apparent to me what you're doing. But to the regular person, that doesn't feel like that's what you're doing. It feels like you've already made a decision and you already know what you're going to do and it doesn't matter what they have to say.

[04:06:14] So please continue to try to bridge the gap between what you do and what our residents are saying to you, especially when some of these projects are exciting or they check the box to what you've been trying to do for many, many years. I'm not trying to fault you for that.

[04:06:30] I'm just trying to say this remains one of the most frustrating processes from a resident's perspective in the political environment that you are in. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Forkelger. Anyone else? Mr. Muchnick? Good evening again.

[04:06:53] Alan Muchnick. I live in the city on Park Street. Just wanted to speak briefly about this Sudley Road third lane project, which is nearing completion. At the northern end of that project, there's a gap of about, I don't know, 50 or 100 feet, where it's in the county, but it's adjacent to where the construction is occurring, but there's no sidewalk.

[04:07:14] And I asked the project manager some time ago, why aren't you building a sidewalk? Why are you leaving a gap in the sidewalk when you're doing this project? Well, this is state money. A lot of it was provided by the actually transit from the county from another 20th project. And anyway, they said, well, there's a vacant parcel there, and I guess they have a site plan in the county and they would be required to proper a sidewalk when they developed that property. But with all this construction going on, all the money and all the mobilization out there, why can't they build a sidewalk to connect? They're waiting for a sidewalk. I've been living

[04:07:51] in the community for 11 and a half years. There's been no sidewalk there. No way to cross Sudley Road at Gotland Drive, Rolling Road, and now there will be. But if there's any way that you can get a sidewalk even if you just throw down some cold patch asphalt i mean get it put a sidewalk in there so people who are rolling down there with baby carriages or bicycles or wherever they're doing to you know to get where they're going uh if they could just have the decency of having a continuous sidewalk thank you thank you mr much miss layman good evening diane

[04:08:29] lane a resident manassa city i appreciate the passion and the concern of the residents of the landing i appreciate that they feel they were hoodwinked that is a emotional response and a a very personal response as the city we need to make business decisions and tactical decisions minus those emotions and that is hard i understand that my other concern is that the perception that

[04:09:04] this is a race to a solution is unfair to the housing community that has been working on this for multiple years that it is trying rental yes is a short-term solution it serves multiple people to use the gentleman's analogy from earlier but we are not going to fix 15 or 20 years of not addressing a housing situation overnight and the Housing Advisory Board which this or this body chartered is looking at what are the solutions we should be looking at for

[04:09:44] affordable housing what are the solutions we should be looking at before increasing homeownership what are the solutions we should be looking at to place housing and work and transportation co-located next to each other etc that report is due to you this year in excuse me next year in October so we are looking at other solutions beyond just this one but you have to start with one thank you thank you anyone

[04:10:17] else we should come forward okay if not we'll move forward to item six authorizing a closed meeting Call on Mr. Brown for item 6.1, resolution number R-2026-457.

[04:10:37] Good evening, Madam Mayor, members of council. You have three items scheduled tonight for a discussion in closed session. One, the qualification of applicants for appointment to city boards and commissions. Two, the performance of specific appointees to boards and commissions.

[04:10:54] And three, the resignation of a specific city employee. All of those topics are eligible for a discussion in a duly convened closed meeting of City Council. To convene that closed meeting, I would recommend your adoption of Resolution No. R-2026-457, Resolution authorizing a closed meeting of City Council.

[04:11:19] Madam Mayor, so move. Second. We have the motion by Councilman Ocina, seconded by Councilwoman Vasquez Luna, to approve resolution number r2026-457 authorizing a closed meeting any discussion hearing and seeing now mr smith please call the roll council member osina yes council member vasquez luna yes vice mayor wolf yes council member ellis council member smith yes council member hudson

[04:11:48] yes the motion carries thank you so much mayor members of council immediately following a closed session state law requires you to certify that the only matters that you discussed were considered in the closed session for those which were identified in the motion convening the closed session and which are exempt from open meeting requirements under state law that certification is contained in

[04:12:23] resolution number r-2026-458 resolution certifying a closed meeting of city council which i recommend for your adoption madam mayor and so move second the motion by councilman osina seconded by councilman vasquez luna to approve resolution number r2026-458 certifying a closed meeting any discussion hearing and seeing now mr smith please call the roll council member osina yes council member vasquez luna yes vice mayor wolf yes council member ellis yes council

[04:12:59] member smith yes council member hudson yes the motion carried all right thank you so much mr Thank you, Madam Mayor, I move Resolution R-2026-435, where we make the following appointments.

[04:13:16] Appoint Brian Masick to the Solid Waste Committee as a regular member for a term beginning December 8, 2025, ending June 30, 2027. Point Eileen Presser to the Manassas Regional Airport Commission as a regular member for a partial term ending June 30, 2028.

[04:13:34] Appoint David Kaiser to the Joint Recreation Center Advisory Board as the staff appointee for a term ending June 30th 2029 David the motion by Councilman Osina and seconded by Councilman Vasquez-Lona to approve the appointments as read. Any discussion?

[04:13:53] Hearing and seeing none, Mr. Smith, please call the roll. Councilmember Osina? Yes. Councilmember Vasquez-Lona? Yes. Vice Mayor Wolfe? Yes. Councilmember Ellis? Yes. Councilmember Smith? Yes. Councilmember Hudson? Yes. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Osina. Again.

[04:14:11] Thank you, Madam Mayor. I move the adoption of Resolution R-2026-436. And please bear with me. I think it's important that I read the whole thing so it's in the record. Whereas Section 2-301 of the City of Manassas Code of Ordinances requires that members of all boards, commissions, committees, and authorities regularly attend scheduled meetings and provides that a seat may be deemed vacant if a member is

[04:14:37] 1. Absent from three consecutive regular meetings without emergency circumstances approved by City Council or 2. Absent from 50% of meetings within any six-month period for any reason and whereas the following individuals have failed to meet the minimum attendance requirements established by City Code 2-301 and therefore their seats are eligible to be declared vacant.

[04:15:02] Christy Dunleavy, Cemeteries Committee, Chaz Balkenbush, Manassas Business Council, Jose Arguleta, Manassas Business Council, Talia Conroy, Manassas Business Council, Brendan Sivalia, Parks and Recreation Committee, Leah Sanders, Planning Commission, Erica Laus, Commission on Agent, and we also in this resolution propose to eliminate two positions on the Manassas Business Council.

[04:15:31] Second, pretty much my Councilman Ossina seconded by Councilwoman Hudson to approve the termination of appointments and reduction in the number of seats on the Manassas Business Council. Any discussion? Hearing and seeing none, Mr. Smith, please call the roll.

[04:15:49] Councilmember Ossina? Yes. Councilmember Hudson? Yes. Vice Mayor Wolfe? Yes. Councilmember Ellis? Yes. Councilmember Smith? Yes. Councilmember Vasquez Luna? Yes. Motion carried. Thank you. Is there anything else to come before the council? If not, we are adjourned.

[04:16:06] Thank you.

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