Coraggio Consulting
Manassas City Council 1/23/2026 Retreat, Friday, January 23, 2026

Date: Friday, January 23, 2026
Place: Manassas City Council, Virginia
Length: 6h 6m (video)
Official meeting video (Wistia / RegionalWebTV): https://fast.wistia.net/embed/iframe/m6iax1ridr

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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[00:00:02] So with the snow event that's being predicted for the weekend, we believe the streets will be in fair condition on Monday. However, they're still predicting potential for sleep and ice on Sunday.

[00:00:19] So I wanted to see if you all would be interested in simply canceling Monday night's meeting and then transferring everything from the 26th agenda to the February 9th agenda, just to err on the side of caution, or if you wanted to wait until Monday to make that call, if we make the call today, we can get the word out today over the week and give people plenty of notice about the meeting delay.

[00:00:49] So I just wanted to see if there was any conversation you all wanted to have. Mostly.

[00:01:09] Now, if we could spend the night home. The night of full house. Yeah, they seem pretty dumbfounded, but I'm thinking pretty certain on this one, so. Unless we don't get anything. Well, even though, again, I'd rather get the word out earlier than wait until Monday night and ask everybody to say you knew it was coming.

[00:01:30] Why didn't we? Can the commissioner say something? No. No. But Tim can. The school board instant came out of here.

[00:01:45] Yeah. It did. The school will be closed, sure. But if the city is not, and I am fully supportive of the city being open, So our employees will go to work, but our council can't go that easily.

[00:02:05] Mayor, if I may, not that. There are some events where the public attends, and it is a matter of the public attending here. My explaining that, why don't you have to explain it to your staff?

[00:02:22] I don't have it right now. I don't have to do anything. The city manager will take care of it. my response to that would be if it were simply a snow event I believe our crews will have the streets clear on Monday with the potential for frozen rain and sleep that's a different animal it's not simply just pushing it's actually having to put chemical down to get the ice off the streets so again recognizing that the meeting invites our residents there I can't guarantee today that the

[00:02:58] streets will be in a good condition to allow them to arrive as safely as we would want so again I don't see it as an issue with council as much as just being overly cautious with the public and rather than waiting till Monday and saying oh no we want you to stay off the streets this is just letting them know there is no meeting Monday night we are deferring all actions until the February 9th meeting and sure that it is safe for everyone.

[00:03:30] And when I'm meeting in 30 years, it's a little bit of a perception. I agree with the city being open 100%, but it's just a perception.

[00:03:46] To Tim's point regarding the staff needing to get to the building, to Tim's point about staff needing to get to the building, do they have the option to assess Monday morning and if they don't feel it's safe for them in their particular neighborhood at that time?

[00:04:05] All staff has the opportunity to stay home. The direction that is given to all of our department heads is that be flexible with staff. If they feel that they can't come in safely, allow them to either take time off or to have a delayed time coming in, so long as we have a skeleton person.

[00:04:26] We at least have one person. It always amazes me during snow events that there is always one or two or five individuals that will come in to either make payments, put in a permit application, try it.

[00:04:49] So we don't require everyone. Someone doesn't feel that they have, because they live outside of our community, they don't have a safe route in, we give them that flexibility. We also offer to the department heads that if they feel that getting to utility paint center, getting to city hall, if their function would be better served by doing a delayed start, so long as they work with our social uh public affairs department to get that message out we do

[00:05:21] give them that flexibility as well there's been a few there are actually several days to see that staff meeting all of the department's ability to adjust their schedule as long as it is

[00:05:48] appropriately in public i do apologize for giving you all a preview yesterday diane has prepared a very good overview of where we're at and what is being presented today

[00:06:22] is our best guess as of today and there will be assignments um we have received budget requests from our departments we are still working on where first are so the revenue items that we'll

[00:06:41] be discussing are they are not that we have this is conservative and it will become rosier as numbers are are fine but this is just where we feel we're at to give you a picture good morning

[00:07:19] point of clarification does staff get to use yesterday's safe words or is it just for

[00:07:36] um like the city manager said these are preliminary conservative estimates we still have several expenditures to refine um revenue sources to look at but i wanted to cover some of our bigger revenue sources and estimates on these bigger revenue sources none of this is actually a surprise we've been talking about it the common theme has been once the construction of data centers the initial construction piece has completed we expect a couple revenues to return to their normal we've been seeing one-time influxes and B pole licenses needed to be obtained in

[00:08:16] order to construct data centers and sales tax is related to those that construction as well so once those are complete in the ground we and have been have been anticipating those revenue sources to return to a normal level of growth I've also been cautioning that our interest and we're lucky that we're not budgeting some some of these things that our interest is absolutely going to come down. You've seen the rates have been lower from this time period as through December of 25

[00:08:50] compared to December of 24, where almost the rates we're earning are a full, almost a full percent or 100 basis points lower than the prior period. So we are seeing the rate reductions play out. And remember, we're also seeing a decreased balance in cash that we're sitting on as projected as planned because we're spending down our bond proceeds as we should be and we're spending the 50 plus million dollars of ARPA as we should be that we were also earning interest on. So that interest for us is a good thing. We knew it was going to come back down and that we're definitely

[00:09:27] starting to see play out. Do I think in the current year 26 and possibly 27 we will still have more than budgeted? Yes, absolutely. And so what that's been doing is going into your capital reserves and allowing for you to do some large capital projects in lieu of having to issue debt that is funded by the tax rate. We also, oh, I'm not even on my slides yet. Sorry,

[00:09:57] hold on. That was my intro. That was an intro, sorry. So up here, I put some stuff of what's doing well, areas to be cautioned about. And some of the big unknowns are the assessed values. And I'm going to have Tim speak to some of those shortly. But what's doing well are the three things mostly that I just talked about due to the interest earnings and the construction of data centers. That's why you see sales, B-Poll, and interest earnings up there. You'll also see in the areas of caution, for all the reasons I just stated, the sales in the B-Poll. Because

[00:10:36] we are having that we are not budgeted up to that level which is good we are treating them like they're one-time revenues and I'll go into some information on those specific and show you some trends in those revenue sources shortly meals tax is still an area of growth for us and what we are seeing is it's still growth but the growth is slowing and that's a national economic projection for every locality in the United States. Everybody is saying local governments will see slowed growth. While still growth, it's going to be slowed growth.

[00:11:15] None of that is a surprise either. We do have the unique position here, though, of some of those being triggered by the initial construction of those data centers. So there are some anomalies in some of our revenues. But the national trend and projection was the growth we had previously seen started to end in December 2025 regarding oh and machinery and tools is up there as something that's doing well because we have that agreement work for that to increase four percent every year so

[00:11:50] that's a good trend that we always have going on and as always the caution of any state or federal threats is always out there we still have the continued threats of federal revenues for sure for schools for social services and the state threat for social services which actually I'm not sure is a threat anymore I think it's actually has come to fruition on the assessed values which the commissioner is here to talk a little bit about I need to remind you they're not complete yet but we do have the real estate general appreciation that we're that is

[00:12:27] still unknown and any new construction that may be coming online and Tim can talk to that a little bit more but I do want to tell you the last I don't know what he what he's projecting yet in new construction over the past so left this year that we're in there was 52 million in new construction assessed value I'm sorry 52 million assessed value in new construction the year prior I think was $70 million, but the last time we saw something super significant was $100 million in FY2022, and I believe that was when the Micron expansion came online.

[00:13:06] And $100 million of assessed value for the general fund with a tax rate of $1.75 generates one, I'm sorry, $1.7 generates $1,070, generates about $1,000,000 for the general fund and then some for the fire rescue levy, too.

[00:13:30] So that's $100 million for every $100 million of assessed value. You generate about another million dollars at that flat tax rate in the general fund. And let's see. Data center personal, so regular personal property.

[00:13:46] The commissioner, I believe, is back to the regular level of growth, roughly 2% to 3%. We have been seeing some influx in the vehicles at one point. We are all aware of that. trend has leveled and data center personal property more to come on those unknowns from the commissioner and if he doesn't mind and one of the other things when we get to the slides I have some specifics on sales people and meals

[00:14:22] for us to look at and one of the things the commissioner has highly prepared for us is some trends showing the and we'll get to we won't jump right in with those but some trends showing the meals tax growth citywide versus old town restaurants for some comparison but if you wanted to talk to him about assessed values that would be helpful um it'd be nice next year if we delay this a week because in a week i'm going to have solid numbers for you right now all i've got

[00:14:56] our estimates I think a safe number for real estate appreciation is 4% the entire real estate value in the city is going to go up at least 4% any more than that I would be hesitant to tell you now because all the numbers are not in you know everything is collected and collected and collected and collected in the last week is when everything's put together and we find out where we are exactly. And so I'm worried to go in more than 4% right now. Chances are

[00:15:32] it could be a little bit more, but not necessarily. As far as real estate, new construction, again, still waiting for all those numbers to come in. Carol has not gotten to me the data centers that are under construction yet. Those will have increased substantially over last year's values of that property, what that number is, it's hard to tell because they're not completed. As we all know, they don't have electricity. And our new, we have worked very diligently with Loudoun

[00:16:09] and Prince William County to come up with our, the way that we are going to be assessing the data centers. And a lot of it has to do with power. And those data centers, not only are they not using any power, they don't have any power. But the other data center you know it does have power and we're using that as the basis of their assessments and this is the first time we've ever used this and we are very confident of our numbers coming forward however it is the first time it

[00:16:45] is based on the way it's done in Prince William and Loudon which are the front runners in data centers in the world in America but in the world so we're using their formulas. However, we've never done it. And on their formulas, you input all of your numbers. All of our numbers have been very conservative. So we feel quite safe in what's going to be coming forward for those assessments. But again, we've never done this. And believe it

[00:17:19] or not, banks and data center associations and that industry has deep pockets. So I'm also So, not worried, but aware of the fact that they may end up going to circuit court on this and challenging our assessments.

[00:17:41] But I feel very confident that we have been very conservative on our numbers and we should be okay with those. So don't get alarmed if that comes about the circuit court because, like I say, their money is endless.

[00:17:59] and so they may challenge that, but I feel confident that we'll be okay with those numbers. The model they do is not a new model for them. No, yeah, none of this is new, and it's been challenging for it, and it's worked.

[00:18:15] So we've been very conservative in the way we've done things, because the last thing we want to do is to tell you that we're going to get X amount of money in revenue from something, and then get challenged, and it goes to B amount of number from X.

[00:18:32] So we've been very careful on that, and that's part of the new construction. Personal property, Diane's hit on that. Cars are doing what they're supposed to do. You know, my first year, they hit us like a ton of bricks, but now it's just usual.

[00:18:51] However, it could go up a little bit more. We still weren't waiting on those numbers, obviously, because they're even later than real estate numbers. But, boy, the price of cars, new cars, if anybody buys a new car, It's going to raise ours up a little bit, but I still don't think it's going to be substantially different than we're used to.

[00:19:12] Data center personal property. The first thing I did at the beginning of this year was send a letter to Digital, who owns the data center at the Brickyard, and they have assured us that their space is 100% rented to a bank because I wanted to know,

[00:19:36] I think we've decided also that the amount of electricity they're using doesn't necessarily mean that the whole space is being utilized, but maybe it is. Lord knows they won't let us in there, but I have been assured that there is no other renters in there, so a bank is renting the entire property.

[00:19:58] The personal property on the other data centers, from Christmas to the 5th of January daily or every other day, I drove around the new data centers. And I don't think there's any chance that they have any computers or anything else in there.

[00:20:14] They're not in a state to have put in millions and millions of dollars into their building as of January 1. So there'll be no personal property computer tax coming out of the other data centers this year either, which we kind of anticipated.

[00:20:31] But I have somewhat verified that with my own eyes that when there's mud around the outside of a building, they're not putting in a million dollars worth of computers in there. So I feel safe on that. What else am I supposed to hit on that I didn't?

[00:20:48] That's it. Thank you. Okay, thank you. No, I'm not leaving yet. I'm so tempted to recognize, but I don't want it. Yeah. The real estate, you're talking about possible breaking for lawsuits, challenging assessments.

[00:21:16] I mean, you're not saying that's something we have to worry about, but they have a feed pocket, like you said. We need to be aware of the possibility. So for data centers or any business property, when you do the value, do they take into account at all the purchasing price of that property?

[00:21:37] Yes. Because when they're buying it at like $4 million an acre or whatever. Right. For a data center, we even do for other commercial properties. But again, like I said in the past, most of your commercial properties are valued on income basis.

[00:21:54] That's why we ask for income and expense reports from businesses, and that's the way that the industry does that. It's done on the income approach. However, if you sell a property, it weighs in into the value.

[00:22:13] It's all put in cost, sales, and income are all used on commercial property, But the income approach is the biggest factor on...

[00:22:29] When you get an assessment on your business property, current property, it's usually broken down land and building. So that land figure is based on income? No, the building, mostly the building, is based on that. So if they're paying 4 million acre for the land, I don't see how I can challenge that.

[00:22:48] I mean, yes, it could, but... They can challenge you on anything. And the fact is, is that just because they paid that for, what can they sell that for? And they sell it for $4 million an acre. And if they can't, then the value is not $4 million an acre necessarily.

[00:23:05] We know it is because that's what they're going to use it for. But you have to be able to prove that and you have to be able to say that I can resell that for $4 million an acre. And if you can't resell it for $4 million an acre, the actual fair market value is not $4 million an acre.

[00:23:22] Okay. And then one other question. You said you have no access to that data center with the bank. We've been in. Oh, with the bank? No. So, I mean, why is that? Because I know a business gets an audit from the city to go check out the property equipment in there.

[00:23:42] I didn't know you could say you can't come in. I didn't know either. But they do, and they'll take you to court. And for us to go into that data center, if me and my assessors, not my assessors, but my business personal property people went in there and look around, there's no chance of upping their personal property.

[00:24:09] And the brickyard data center, there's no reason to go in there. It doesn't matter what's in there. What they look for. What they look for. Challenge reports. I mean. Oh, we do. We actually asked them last year, the auditor went and we audited everything they had.

[00:24:36] And they had receipts for everything they purchased. Because again, if a bank is in there and they lease their equipment, like a lot of data centers do, the leased equipment is taxable, no matter who's using it. Because the bank would not own that.

[00:24:52] The leasing company would own that. And we got receipts for all of those, everything that was in there, that they paid for all of that. And that's part of the reason our sales tax went up, because that stuff was all purchased. It was not leased.

[00:25:09] General Assembly is hopefully looking at that whole structure with banking. There is a bill on the, because as far as the research I have done, back in 82 or 84 is when the bank franchise tax went into effect.

[00:25:25] And what that is, is that a bank in our city now pays bank franchise tax in lieu of personal property tax, okay? They didn't think it was fair that they paid both, so they paid one in lieu of the other, depending on their deposits.

[00:25:48] So that's what they pay. When you look at the, and this is just me and my opinion on this, you look at the data center out there, they do not pay personal property tax because they are a bank. They pay bank franchise tax in lieu of that.

[00:26:07] Well, there's no deposits at the data center. So as far as I can see, they're paying nobody anything. And that's why Senator Rome and Delegate Maldonado have put in legislation to rescind that for data centers.

[00:26:30] It's fine for a branch. They're paying taxes. And the branch could be down in the standard. Right, so we get no benefit. Like the branch, just because they have their servers. Oh, you mean the one in the data center.

[00:26:46] Right. It doesn't mean the branch is in Manassas anywhere. Well, but I believe that the information in that data center, the bank that's in there is a, at least, nationwide bank.

[00:27:02] Right. So there's data in there from all over the country, not just local branches. And nobody goes, I haven't gone in there and deposited $100. So, they're paying no bank franchise tax out of there either, as far as I can see. Side comment to that. Bank franchise fees are not really a major revenue source for us.

[00:27:27] We're roughly $700,000 on a good year in collections in the city. Roughly in a good year. Last year it was $680,000 to be more exact.

[00:27:43] I just wanted to agree that it would be good to push this conversation and possibly the whole retreat until after these numbers are in so that we can have a more thorough and decisive time it would be just about a week we'll have all these in that is part of the conversation for saturdays

[00:28:14] we want to have a discussion because we we agree yeah i'd love to in a week i will relay to y'all what our numbers are and you know for you guys it's just the entire value of what what billions

[00:28:33] of dollars in value if the city has and uh i'll have that in about a week sure and speak with certainty that's right okay so two of the biggest revenue sources we have are the real estate taxes and

[00:29:11] the personal property taxes so there's that's why i'm saying big things we have coming are unknown the other three large ones we have are sales tax the business license tax and the meals tax. I'm going to show you some trends and charts on those starting with sales tax. So if you look at the top chart, I was going to get up there on point but I can't even reach so it won't even matter. But if you look at the jump between, so see the steady growth that was going on until 25

[00:29:44] and I think that's going to come in with a huge jump too in 26 and that we believe, Tim and I believe is related to data center construction activity. We have had the last three months in sales tax activity are the highest collection months that we've historically ever had. That could also mean there's a refund that is possibly happening at some point. Somebody's paying to the wrong locality. That has definitely happened when we see. But I was just checking

[00:30:17] and i saw um that december has apparently come in and it's the highest month we've literally ever had with 1.8 million dollars um and that that's just really really really high so that's why um you see those huge jumps and i do still project definitely high in 2026 but we can't budget that way sorry yes it doesn't oh it doesn't man no i know it doesn't it doesn't that it works up there it doesn't work here yeah and my pointing. Let me just try.

[00:30:56] Do you want me to stand up there and point for you? Yes. Yeah, Tim would be a good one. Let me try. I apologize. I just thought I'll have to get up there for a minute. I don't know why. She's like, hey, a chart. General pointing to chart. She still can't reach us.

[00:31:14] Oh, yeah, guys. So these... You're going to go to school? No! So those two years in those bar charts, I think, are still going to be high, which is why I put up some three-year average, five-year average. Look at the past three-year average. It's pretty high. And then just the five-year is just factoring in the regular growth, which I believe was the previous.

[00:31:45] I'm getting dizzy. So I think safely we can budget still growth an additional $365,000 dollars um in that for 2027 um but i am worried when that starts to drop and we get back to our regular norm but i i don't think we're in a declining um sales tax situation we had one year

[00:32:13] in 24 where we actually didn't make budget by a slight amount um so if you look here thank you If you look here, this is crazy.

[00:32:30] If you look here between 23 and 24, I mean, that was virtually flat. So then to jump up here to 25 and what I project for 26 is some anomaly going on.

[00:32:48] That's not going to be the norm. However, good news, we can still safely budget some growth in there. And what will end up happening with this, as we've been doing, treating this as one-time sources, will end up lapsing into capital reserve for you to be able to spend on capital projects that you have upcoming.

[00:33:06] It will show in a different slide, which helps you not have to raise taxes or fund debt service in the future with tax rate. Any question on sales?

[00:33:21] I have a question. So you referred several times to the norm. So give me a number. What is the norm? Where on there is the norm? I don't know. How do we know? You say it'll go, you're predicting it'll go back to the norm.

[00:33:41] A normal level of growth, 2 to 3% growth. So when do we have 2 to 3% growth? When are the data centers substantially done being constructed? No, no, I don't mean in the future, in the past. Up to 24.

[00:33:57] Oh, up to 24. That is 2% to 3% right there, from 21 to 24. This was almost flat between 23 and 24. So, yeah, there is some fear that it could level, level, not grow level.

[00:34:13] But I don't think so. I don't know. I don't know yet. You just look like you've been responsibly and conservatively budgeting. Love to see a budget less than the actual. Okay, can we go up to B-Pol?

[00:34:43] Same sort of setup. No, no, no. Same sort of setup. If you notice, and it's the same logic, businesses needing licenses for the construction.

[00:35:00] If you notice here, the drop from 22 to 23 is concerning. We actually had a reduction and I suspect that is because the Micron construction project had completed and then this dropped down to what would be a norm and then start picking back up for the data center construction. So yes, we can probably safely budget some additional

[00:35:32] revenue, but look at this in 2025. I mean, that's a lot of revenue and I don't even know and I won't know because it all comes in March 1st, what we get in 26. So this is what I have to project off of. There's no monthly coming in data to really give me an indication. So this is conservative for 26. This has to be an outlier. I mean, that's a significant amount of revenue that came in last year from having gone to a decrease a slight increase to that

[00:36:12] jump is again to working with the commissioner related to construction activity we believe what is the what is the income difference between and we'll talk specifically about data centers the income difference between while they're under construction and then once they're done or like how are we how are we getting oh no no once they're done because then that's a lot of computers

[00:36:46] but like how are we getting income off of the construction well everybody that's working there has to have a business license and has to report what they're doing and so they pay on that so it's not like land-based it's just like the number of businesses number of businesses yeah number of businesses required to do the actual construction yeah depending on Something similar is actually, Matt's reminding me, we are also seeing similar activity in one-time permits needed for this construction.

[00:37:26] So I think in 2025, we ended the year with an additional million dollars in permit fees that were needed to obtain for this construction. That's not the normal level of permit fees for us.

[00:37:41] So the more that can be treated as it really is, one-time revenue, the better for us. that gets us out of a potential future deficit when we do stuff like that. Any further questions on BPOL?

[00:37:57] I can move to meals tax, friends, Matt. Oh, you already did it, thank you. This is just, this is just a trend.

[00:38:13] This has nothing to do with, I don't believe, construction activity, and these are our trends. Tim is handing out some specific data where you can see that the growth is starting to slow, but it's still growing.

[00:38:30] It's still a healthy revenue source for us. So that's very good news. And did you want to talk about it? Well, as far as the Old Town Only there, right, it has gone up from 24 to 25.

[00:39:00] Realize that there were restaurants that were added halfway through the year of 24 So they all at the 24 only had half of that revenue to where if you take those out Those restaurants out of 25 and out of 24 there was actually a decrease in revenue of the existing Restaurants in Old Town, so it's not really when you change the number inputs It changes the out as well.

[00:39:38] So there were three, two substantial restaurants and one-third restaurant that went into effect midway in the 24 year. These are calendar years. And 25, the last one wasn't due until before this was made.

[00:40:01] So that's why it's an estimate on December of 25. But if you took those restaurants out, there is a decrease in Old Town for the ones that were existing, all of 24 and all of 25. Mr. Birkin, I met with Miguel, and his report in Old Town was just one of your information, because it kind of ties in the first Fridays that if it wasn't for first Fridays, that number would be significantly lower, and that they were having double-digit number of people through the door,

[00:40:39] declined so around the 16 to 18 percent less people through the door and that if it wasn't for first Fridays it all kind of ties in to what Tim was saying about the only a 1% increase with three more restaurants yeah yeah so it's a little bit of a misnomer here if we didn't have those new restaurants in there. It was at, I think, 7.25. You take those three restaurants out of both equations, and

[00:41:16] the existing restaurants were down 7% in meal stocks, by no fault of mine. I didn't plan it. I'm going to jump to large upcoming capital projects that we have going on in the next five

[00:41:51] years, and what the plan was for funding. Purple in FY2029, you see the purple bar and you see the purple writing. That was our next planned bond issue that is already built into the existing tax rate. It doesn't need a tax rate increase. That's through our debt service plan that we've been planning for. That's roughly $38 million bond sale. The funding source that we

[00:42:27] would have for the other projects we have going on would be capital reserves. So all those one-time revenues that we just discussed on the previous slides going into capital reserves helps fund those. The issue we run into as you can see between FY30 and FY31 is the projects proposed in FY31 we would have to make decisions because we would a deplete all capital reserves barring any other money which we think it will, lapsing into capital reserves, and not have enough to do all of those.

[00:43:06] So I do still think we will be adding to capital reserves at some point with these revenue sources we just discussed. Interest will likely still be pretty good this year, and same with those sales and meals.

[00:43:22] So that's out in the future, but that's what it looks like with today's numbers. And Matt can discuss some of these large projects that we have going on now in this fire plan, I'm sorry.

[00:43:37] So right now, for the upcoming budget, the two that are being discussed, obviously, is the parking garage at City Hall. The city's contribution to the public piece of that. And that's something we've been planning for for more than a decade, that we needed a second deck on the north side of downtown to offset some of the parking imbalance.

[00:43:54] The $3 million is a loan. would go into the discussion we've had about how to uh what to do with the good housing project should it be approved so we are doing some planning around that that again would in theory generate a record to be a loan it would be repaid and come in as income that could be reinvested into housing priorities or other other projects that council saw fit so that's actually out as a capital reserve but it comes back to you it's not just gone once it's spent 29 are placeholders obviously fire station one is the number one priority the replacement of that facility tied

[00:44:32] into that is obviously fitting it in on the community center property so there's some money to set aside and again this is just a preliminary number we have a lot of planning that goes into this but this is just a rough idea of how you would divvy up the funding um we've set aside some money for the next round of park improvements i'll talk this afternoon a little about the park master plan that we're about to undertake and then some money left over uh right now sitting on the work that would need to be just ongoing maintenance and upgrade to the public work and utility yard.

[00:45:01] Again, FY29 bond issuance, but this is a general idea of how staff would recommend we divvy up a bond sale. And then as we get into 31, like Diane said, there is space on the City Hall property for an annex. That's how we've always planned it, but we'll get into some other conversations about that.

[00:45:18] Again, FY31, and remember, on top of not knowing what else will shellapse into capital reserves we have uh you know ongoing discussions about disposition of city property a lot of that money should we sell the old pe site that money would go into capital reserve so that's not accounted for when you see that bar go red that's unknown to this point but obviously there's discussions this council has had prior councils about starting to dispose of some of the property required so something that money would obviously hopefully by 31 go back into that bar and move it

[00:45:52] And another piece that's unknown right now, but good news on this front, interest rates. As they continue to decline, you can afford more to borrow in the existing framework that we have set up with a lower interest rate.

[00:46:10] Yes, we're not earning as much in the bank, but for our borrowing, you can potentially increase your borrowing amount to fill in some of these gaps with lower interest rates. won't know anything like that until we actually get within months of planning for that bond sale though so it's not it's today's picture it's not meant to be horrible news it just means we need to let some of these have some good growth one time go into capital reserve so we can do this or make decisions on some projects or hope for lower bond interest rates all sorts of things

[00:46:50] at play here it's just a today picture and um probably worst case scenario i would say worst case scenario well just to put on your radar that there are a number of major projects that we are admitted to pursuing in the future and then diane and matt are looking at how to finance them just so you're aware and we get to the point of 28 29 30 budgets we'll be in a better position to to let you know where we are fiscally to afford whatever we need to do.

[00:47:27] We are aware of the issue, and we're just letting you know that we are aware, hope to be in a better position in the future to give you more accurate financial... The one piece I missed on the City Hall Annex, it's timed roughly for planning purposes to when the lease of social services runs out, which is a seven- to ten-year lease, now six to nine years at this point.

[00:47:54] So that's why we're starting to think about FY 31 and FY 26. 26, but that's the next five-year plan for us, 27 through 31. Sorry. No, and that's a good point. I hope you continue to remind us, because I will forget, and it would be helpful to understand.

[00:48:14] A lot of planning has to go before these things go on. Had not heard mention, I just want to verify that we are in this, We will continue to be making a contribution to the schools for the purposes of, quote-unquote, school construction each year.

[00:48:36] I mean, that's being planned. The debt service funds for schools and city are planned and continued to continue. And I know it grows every year. Do you happen to know offhand what the 27 amount will be?

[00:48:54] debt service for yeah so that the 27 debt service amount for school existing debt and planning for future will be 6.6 million contribution for school that service and that is split between the school board and no that's just for schools for cities it's 5.2 million per city there's a there's a total for

[00:49:23] debt service for future and for existing of roughly 12 million dollars all right how do i explain this so there there is a contribution would be called school construction we agreed back in fiscal year 21 that schools would put in a portion and we would put in when i say we the city would put in a portion and it totaled six million dollars oh yeah okay yes this is how we

[00:50:02] were starting up the debt service that's right and the real effect of that was this is how we were paying for the dean elementary school so in the year right and if i'm off you'll correct me but in fiscal year 21 it was six million then in the sub the next fiscal year it was six million something and then the next year it was it kept growing in other words so what i'm asking is in

[00:50:36] fiscal year 27 that number would be six million blah blah blah or seven million blah blah blah six million what it kept growing though six point six no it's six million six hundred forty seven thousand dollars what it would be for 27 correct okay thank you sorry now another number though is what is actually so remember the debt service plan is a plan that it will have fund balance in and it's using some fund balance to pay for the, so it's a whole plan.

[00:51:13] So I think in, let me just pull something, one second. So they'll actually be, that fund is in a position that it's utilizing some of that stockpile money to pay the debt service I'm doing now.

[00:51:28] Yeah, understood. And the next time, the next bond sale will be planned for, or is available to be done for the school's 10 years from, so 34, 2034-ish.

[00:51:44] Okay, thank you. I should say the only reason I bring that up is, one, to remind us all, and two, I think that's an important aspect of our financial planning to be able to gradually set aside money for the purposes of school construction along the way rather than have a sudden another another jump in those two plans for debt service schools and city are well planned out that is one area or very

[00:52:20] they're very very strong in the plans. Can you speak to the public works and utility portion that Matt had said it's a bit left over for the facilities I guess just wanted to know how that how that's where that comes from and what that's for it there's long-term needs of the public works and utilities yards so you have the water and sewer department public works and electric out there a lot of it is storage and just gradual improvements to storage they have a long-term plan quite honestly at this point as they develop those

[00:52:56] plans we just wanted to for planning purposes for today we wanted to leave some money set aside to cover what they might need out there also most buildings when you get into building a where most Most of the staff is building B where purchasing is. All those buildings are aging and are going to need investments. So we didn't want to, as much as I would just put it all in the parks and the parks director series.

[00:53:17] But we know that there's other facility needs out there. So for planning purposes, we wanted to leave some money set aside to address just the long-term needs out there. Yeah, the main building is approaching 45 to 50 years in the end of it. I think there is plans for expansion of it, anticipating future staffing needs out there, as well as Matt indicated, just some general improvements to the storage.

[00:53:42] And we don't have a firm handle on it. That's why it is out. I guess the thought behind the question is just wondering if that number should be planned higher. There are important investments that keep the city functioning.

[00:54:00] And as much as I do love our parks, I like our water and electric. Right. And so this is the bond issuance. There's other funding. When you see the full capital plan, we also use what's called PAYGO, which is, you know, every year we set aside some of the general fund money that goes into the public works yard. The water and sewer and electric funds also pay into that. So if you're doing a covered storage area for electric equipment, the electric fund is going to pick up a pretty piece of that cost as well. So it's not the only money that goes into that plan.

[00:54:34] When you see the current adopted CIP in the new one, you'll see each year there is an investment going into that yard. We just wanted to, for planning purposes, have an extra slit of money set aside, knowing that there's some big things out there that $200,000 or $300,000 is set aside each year isn't going to cover.

[00:54:51] So they'll have, again, on the $28 million, there's going to be some refinement as we develop a couple of the parks master plan, And as we develop what public works needs and staffing changes as we refine the cost systems for the fire station and what it's going to take to take off a piece of the community center to fit the fire station, those numbers will slide.

[00:55:13] So don't consider those the final number. It's all within that $38 million context of what we're starting to plan. And again, for even more context, we actually just got done doing some interior rehabilitation of their primary building, moving offices so they're better consolidated, as well as doing some technology improvements in the main conference room, which definitely makes it a much more functional and 21st century building.

[00:55:45] So we are making small, minor improvements as needed, but there is a plan that we will need some significant expansion. I have a question. The housing project, so it's $3 million. $3 million comes from capital reserves, and that is when the payback is going into a housing fund is likely to try to keep that going.

[00:56:17] That's the idea. I mean, remember, there's $3 million from the land sale and $3 million from capital. So you're talking conceptually about a $6 million loan that will generate, that will pay back that money, and then that money, in theory, staff's recommendation would be rather than having to go into capital reserves or the general fund every time we want to do a housing project would be to set up the fund to become sustaining.

[00:56:37] That's what most jurisdictions in Northern Virginia have done in order to address some of their housing needs. And then remember, your housing board is meeting throughout the year, so they're going to make recommendations on how that money might be spent in future years. Ultimately, council will have to make a decision each year to spend those proceeds, whether it's a grant or another project.

[00:56:58] So that's $3 million. Okay, so there's another $3 million. And that's coming from, okay, that's not coming out of anything else. That's the developer's money, good housing's money for the sale of the land we're paying, they're paying the market rate.

[00:57:14] That's $6 million investment from the city total. With the $3 million investment and then $3 million of the developer's money, which rather than going into your capital reserves, they've asked you for, when we said, you know, creative financing, they said they could take the $3 million.

[00:57:31] okay um and i guess i can talk to economic development about this or whoever's handling yesterday we had talked about other projects like possibly mathis you know some other uh ideas of housing projects so if we're looking at like investments or that kind of money certainly we're not going to generate that with interest on three million it's going to have to continuously come out of something you know if that's the type of deal that that project is looking for

[00:58:04] in the future as well i'm just i'm just like talking you know it's a huge uh and we'll talk more about math this afternoon but yes at some point if the desire of the community and the council is to do another project similar to this those financing discussions will have to happen again there's no jurisdiction the local jurisdictions they have to have skin in the game in order to make these projects work and so good housing gave you a creative way to you know have an opportunity to make a first investment I honestly the city doesn't have tons of these projects out there but I think

[00:58:42] the conversation will definitely occur again when you get into the Mathis project what that might look like but I would say we will have similar conversations with whoever council chooses that developer to you know come up with a similar financing package but my goal is obviously not to always have to go into a ask for the capital reserve or the general fund going forward and it's six million dollars that's being invested here so capital reserve balance does that affect our bond rating yes yeah absolutely so as it depletes our bond rating can be jeopardized yeah especially on that

[00:59:19] part down there will i mean it will be jeopardized down there and then another question why uh i guess I should add this, but why do we take bonds out, like for the utilities and public works? Why are we taking a bond at one time and then capital reserves another?

[00:59:37] Is it based on, is it bonds for buildings? Is that why we take bonds versus capital reserves? What's the difference? Like why? We have a bond, a debt capacity. We can't exceed something to, we can only borrow so much to maintain our bond rating.

[00:59:53] And so what Diane has established is this is the amount that we could borrow comfortably and still afford the debt service on it. So that's one of the limiting factors that we put in. We look at how much money we have in the bank, how much money we can get a loan for, and then try to make that.

[01:00:12] And that amount is already built into the existing tax rate. Could you sell more and raise the tax rate to cover it? probably I'd have to work through our debt limits and other things to consider. Could that go away if a bunch of money was in capital reserve?

[01:00:29] Yeah, but lots of things could change on that. But it's not project-type specific. Okay, okay. And then the $5 million for the PA Center, what is that exactly going to be? It's a combination of demolition, site prep. It's really a $25 million project.

[01:00:46] You combine the fire station and the community center together. Get ready for the fire station. and then the other big one that we we've talked about is at some point the hvac system for the community center is designed for a 1960s middle school so we'll need to replace that we'll have substantial substantial savings on the operating side when we do that you've seen the it looks like the boiler room the titanic at this point so that that will be a significant operating and we're actually initiating the design at this point five five years in advance knowing that this project is

[01:01:16] coming down so let's just go back to the housing project just to elaborate the reason we are putting in the three million dollars in the land sale is not because we feel like good guys here but that allows the in this case with housing but a portable attainable housing developer access financing

[01:01:52] from Virginia Housing which has that as a requirement. Virginia Housing is the big gorilla that has the greatest source of money. So if you get that money the developer has to put a financing package together that includes some kind of, as you say, skin in the game from the locality.

[01:02:13] That will be true for any future attainable housing project that wants to access Virginia housing financing which is substantial and probably without it no project would be built in substantial size there's going to have to be a discussion about will the locality participate you're not going to be successful virginia housing good housing will not be successful with their private investors they go out and raise their own private money it's also federal money

[01:02:46] so there's a but in order to compete the reality today is that the locality has to have a kind of We can do small, you know, we can look at a unit here, a unit there, but to do the big stuff and do something that is going to benefit that's 100 units with the priority we've talked about for city employees, to do something big, you're going to have to look at whether you want to make local investment.

[01:03:11] And it's a lot, so the money comes back. and if I were looking at this on a percentage basis our percentage the city's investment that percentage-wise is in the single digits when compared to for instance Virginia housing which is clearly in the double digits and very high one more reminder but it is a loan we will be being paid back for this Outweigh with interest as well.

[01:03:44] Over 30 years. Over 30 years. With interest. Any other capital questions? Can I go to my fund slide? Oh, you already changed it? Yeah, I had the funds and I thought you wanted to move.

[01:04:02] So remember, these are our estimates for next year as of right now. We are still refining and reviewing the revenue. That real estate growth in there is based on what Tim had previously said.

[01:04:18] four percent growth in the revenue hopefully that is higher and helps to fill in some of this gap in the past two years the overall assessed assessed value growth has been between six and seven percent don't know yet where that's going to be that's why conservatively that number is a four percent on the expenditure side in a typical year we have the from the bottom up, the operating increases, the school funding commitment, and the

[01:04:55] personnel costs. The anomaly this year, unfortunately, is the social services revenue shortfall that we are seeing. Still grasping the order of magnitude of that. We think it's going to be something significant, but that is the outlier in that. We always have operating increases, personnel cost increases, and school funding commitments those are the pieces of this that are not shocking scary or like they're the norm for us the social services shortfall is is unfortunately the outlier of what

[01:05:32] we're dealing with and that's on the expenditure side because it comes as an expenditure to social services to cover their revenue shortfall from the general fund to the social services fund Yeah, a little bit, but is Nicole going to talk more later?

[01:05:58] Does this have for me, does Public Safety and Health and Nicole will be here? But high level from where I stand, we are seeing an increase in CSA-mandated expenditures for particular cases, individuals.

[01:06:17] I believe there are two out-of-state, high-cost, high-dollar students. We have it in our system and also revenue shortfalls from the state. They changed their funding formula, reduced our share by 8% or by 8%. None of this, I believe, include none of what we're seeing yet is a federal reduction.

[01:06:46] Yes. This is just state reductions in revenue and the CSA case. That's really, and other than that, they have standard increases in personnel costs just like every other department.

[01:07:02] But the big, that's a big hit or unknown or issue for us to tackle this year. What was the CSA to the department member that was $300,000? Oh, six, yeah, something huge.

[01:07:19] I want to say it's almost a million dollars. A million dollars a year. Yes. That's one case. That was a new case. Yeah. One case is, I thought, $750,000.

[01:07:38] A new case is just over $700,000 for one child. Thank you. Thank you. That's okay. class ready because everyone fucked up she did it well i'll have to summary you too see the teacher in me is coming out now i'm separating it so looking at this bar graph the school funding

[01:08:10] commitment is a three percent increase what is personnel costs what percentage increase not a percentage increase we're we're i'll get into some more nuances of that in a few slides but it's a two million dollar plug number we don't know what percent we can afford within that yet and that's not only salaries that's also benefits and i'll talk a little bit about salary benefits in a second but that right now we're estimating somewhere around costs of two million dollars

[01:08:45] right now we'll get into this some of that two million is assigned to the state transitioning some of the retirement cost additional transition to us yeah i'll i'll get into it it's these are the things we should have talked about at that legislative break with didn't well unfortunately we really weren't aware of the extent of it until

[01:09:19] it really did come as a surprise to us as well because exactly i mean when when the state does these things and then they they tout saying how we are saving residents taxpayers money and so forth and just shifting burdens here financial burdens from one entity to another that they weren't explicit about that it was there was going to be an increased burden to the localities right okay yeah they they actually in this particular case and it may in this

[01:09:57] situation with our retirement rates how did it as in the long run it's going to save money and that's not starting yet it wasn't ever it wasn't ever a huge this This is going to be, it was packaged differently, that we were not, and a couple of, I'll just start talking about it.

[01:10:31] So newer employees into the retirement system, the contribute, they changed plans over the years. There's like a plan one, plan two, and what we call a hybrid, and I believe a couple of versions of that hybrid.

[01:10:49] So newer people to the system are in what they call a hybrid plan. There was about a 4% shift of funding from the state to the locality, about 3.5%, 4% from the state to the locality for those hybrid plans.

[01:11:07] So what's happening is as we bring in new people, new to VRS, younger people that haven't been in the VRS system, we're seeing that shift over to a little bit higher percentage of what we would calculate for benefits for an employee.

[01:11:25] We had been running in the past between 36% and 40% of your salary is attributed to benefits. And now we're shifting more towards 40% to 44%. The average last year, and this is because of this change, bringing on the newer people into the hybrid system, The average city-wide percent for benefits went up, it was calculated at about 42%.

[01:11:58] So remember, we had been always planning on 40%, and we had some wiggle room in there because some employees are 36, some were in a range there. So 40% was the safe planning number. That safe planning number is going up to around 42 or more, 42 conservatively percent, conservatively.

[01:12:22] So that is because of this hybrid shift. In the long run, they're saying that it will decrease the contribution rates for the Plan 1 and Plan 2 employees.

[01:12:37] We just got our rates the other day, and that rate went up. from a small amount from 14.88 to 15.01 so again haven't seen that happen yet but in the long run it should bring that percent down a little bit in the long run again I don't know when that long run is but that was something we were not excited to see and not really planning for because that

[01:13:06] that is not saving us money yet um so percent of for salary increases don't even know yet because we have to deal with that those are some of the numbers are still working that's great i appreciate that and so operating increase is that can you give a percentage for that um no and that those are numbers we're still working on that's roughly two million dollars as well we have a lot of our IT contracts are going up and all of our contracts. Contracts going up. I'm

[01:13:44] hoping that's high. I'm hoping that two million is a high number and we can refine that down lower. So hopefully some of these costs come down. I worry though that whatever I can come down on an operating cost just moves up into the personnel costs once we work through those numbers. So these are just estimates.

[01:14:05] still tons of work that we're doing on refining these costs and then the school percent is a three percent which is roughly two million dollars so just happen to be a lot of these boxes are about two million social services is a little bit high more than that projected right now again still working up through analyzing all of that data too the other thing to take away from this slide is recognizing that there is always there there is a small difference in

[01:14:41] expenditures and revenue without the social services show as we're seeing real estate and other tax growth leveling out and not going at the higher five to six percent for real estate in the future budgets we will have to start looking at potentially areas to cut or to reduce funding towards to make that balance because we've been very lucky in the past of experiencing revenue increases that will allow us to maintain competitive salaries to the cost of

[01:15:19] living of all of our operations. We are nearing the point that that will be a challenge in the upcoming year. And to echo that, I keep up with from the rating agencies that we're rated by what their projections are and nationally they're coming flat out and saying local government challenges revenue growth won't be as good expenditures won't be lower because of it but also they're worried that the healthy reserves that a lot of localities have built up will have to be drained

[01:15:56] to to account for this and I don't think we're in that position where we're draining reserves to balance operating. So I think, yes, that's a national projection, but I still think you're in a good position, strong position for that. And then what Steve was just saying is that, no, you're right, that's what the long-term trend is shaking out to look like, the discrepancy between revenues and expenditures, but that's assuming we don't solve for 27. Once you solve for 27 which is what we're working on that shrinks a little bit more a lot

[01:16:34] more actually it shrinks by 4 million dollars if you saw that I would have the same thought as mr. Burke was saying that the without the social services these are very similar columns I think it's also important to note that the scale is only by 5 million so it's not so what is what is that number difference that are about four million okay so you can see right there the 167 versus 163 yeah yeah so okay

[01:17:06] and as we flesh out the numbers it could be a little less than yeah correct um well two things number one obviously we are blessed um in the out years because we do know we are going to see significant growth in revenue incremental growth in revenue uh that will cover the shortfall and put us in a better position as opposed to most other localities uh the issue with regard to social services first off is that a maybe this is a default question is this based off the proposed

[01:17:44] yonkin budget or is this are we actually already seen this is this why it's off yonkin's fy 27 budget or is it actually 26 number it's going to csa is by a percentage so they reimburse our cost of a percentage that percentage has never changed it's the fact that the cost for csa has been going up so our portion has increased as well so there was a reduction in some of our

[01:18:21] reimbursements so yeah if there is an adjustment in in how the general assembly develops a budget that would be wonderful to the city but unfortunately we're having to base our budget on So one of the things we're looking at is, I'm going to call them categories that the state will pay for.

[01:18:44] Are we exceeding those categories? So it's the, are we going well and above than what we need to to provide those services? Not all we get for or against that yet. I'm saying we are giving these children the utmost top of the line of services at the only place that offers them, but the state only pays for certain services.

[01:19:10] Well, yeah, okay, but that's, there's two different things here. So there's the one-off children, but then there's just the ongoing, essentially everything else. It was my understanding that the change in the state government was actually driven by changes in the federal reimbursement of the states.

[01:19:30] Nicole, we'll get into all of these social services changes and proposed changes this afternoon. I don't want to take away her time that we've prepared her to address with me.

[01:19:47] She's the subject matter. And along those lines, if I could, those are only the changes that are direct impact to social services at the city. We are unaware of potential impact at the federal level for education.

[01:20:04] So there's also, you know, we are projecting 3% continuing to go to the schools. there could be another potential impact to food services budget that is reimbursed at the federal level that would directly impact the students.

[01:20:23] So, you're correct. Something's out there at the federal level that we just-- - For Nicole, too, but I'm curious, this funding is just for individuals that are treated, correct, like when they become adults, but it's not.

[01:20:47] - Well, that would be a question for Nicole, because we don't know who you are doing what you want. there's there's a point not when i would have thought that the funding there is a we don't know the ages to take a guess if i remember correctly but again she'll have the details i believe the one case that we spend a lot of time talking about is 16. so we are paying for another

[01:21:26] five or six years of those costs to continue yeah the other one just came in i don't know yeah and part of the additional cost is not only the services that are provided to the child but

[01:22:04] there's also transportation for the family to visit the house um we've talked through some of these but the next two slides that will um i will be wrapping up with are just different things that we're watching and concerned about and trying to figure out how they impact our next our 27 budget and the future competitive salaries is always going to be something we have to monitor and address we've done a lot with salaries we have to monitor what other localities are doing and try to

[01:22:40] keep the competitiveness up that we have been fortunate enough to bring ourselves up to i've talked about the retirement funding shifts social services potential revenue fed loss tariffs and inflation that's particularly seen in the area of utilities which we'll talk about tomorrow um that's where we are noticing some of that um reduced grant opportunities um one of the

[01:23:14] things we're seeing is some reduced grant federal grants related to fire rescue services and some of the um northern virginia particularly the northern virginia area like shared services type not brance william county shared services but some like joint what do we call them area initiatives um for response stuff what's the proper wording emergency responses particularly our emergency management coordinator and some other efforts and shared efforts that go on in

[01:23:49] the region um have lost their grant funding and we will be required in order to be a participant in those pretty valuable services will be required to come up with money to be able to stay in some of those but overall reduce that's that's the biggest area of reduced grant opportunities but overall we're just seeing in general less opportunities to apply for grants I talked about slowing revenue growth projections real estate relief impacts we changed the elderly can the elderly

[01:24:27] relief and then we have the veterans relief always that that we have to adjust so I'll have to adjust the actual revenue projections that we bring in base it's not a simple calculation of here's the assessed values here's the tax rate you have to account for collection rates and relief given out in those calculations too we're fortunate enough that we have the treasurer has a super high collection rate. I mean, we're in a given year. I want to say she's, I think she's

[01:25:02] sold herself short the other day at her presentation. She said she is 98%. That's on the current year when you factor in what she's collected on previous year, she's almost up to a 99.97 collection rate. We're really, really, really lucky with that. But I still have to account when you're talking a percent or something off of hundreds of millions of dollars you know we still have to factor that in so I will need to calculate what the real estate actual amount

[01:25:35] generated with the factoring and the impacts will be going going forward we already talked about data center personal property tax rate revenue when is it coming what are we doing with it those those are things that are always out there for us um other rate increases so remember we have in particular the fire rescue levy that's where some of these northern virginia initiatives um programs that were involved in coming that's where our emergency management um uh director is is

[01:26:10] housed so that'll and remember last year we had two we added two f two more ftes out of two out of the three were not funded yet of those firefighters to cover engine what number by 501 so we have to pick up the funding in the levy for two two positions possibly a third likely a third for our emergency management coordinators so and as always we do still have the overtime issue in the

[01:26:47] fire fund of coverage needed by our existing firefighters and our overtime costs are high to be able to keep our engines staffed to what the fire rescue chief has said is the minimum staffing yeah yep he'll be here to discuss more of that but over time three positions and other initiatives plus remember they have salary and benefit things too i at this time i'm not sure that we don't

[01:27:22] how to say that we i mean we need probably a levy increase or to consider that at some point soon possibly next year um utility rates increases that will be discussed tomorrow but remember we saw the presentation from the consultants last year um solid waste rate increases um every time we go out for bid for a new contract that doesn't go down that goes up so not sure when that we're still evaluating that but that's something that comes every time we go out for to get a new

[01:27:58] contract storm water rate increases are possible as well um in the area i believe of capital captain man can talk more about that yeah but we we're we're finishing up our survey of the entire storm water system it's over a half million half million linear feet of pipe there's a lot of pipes that are reaching the end of a useful life so one of the things you'll be seeing in the budget of the proposal is take a look at the commercial rate not the residential rate to start addressing

[01:28:34] those pipes obviously my perspective is trying to avoid a manassas park type situation where a pipe blows out in the road washes out so and so we're just we need to talk about additional funding and i'm looking at doing that on the commercial side because we're adding a lot of commercial impervious covering the city um the school's alternative education program that's an area will have that will have to be addressed at some point remember they are piloting it with use of reserves um where

[01:29:10] where the future of that goes will be a decision everyone will have to make um i know we've talked about the possibility of the vehicle decal fee being eliminated so that's something out there that we're keeping track of, and then we talked about the potential for state elimination of the car tax.

[01:29:30] If they eliminate the car tax, we could just pick it up as a local tax. That's one of the discussions of it being allowed to do that. But remember, they give us relief to the tune of $3.786 million to offset some of that, to offset some of the rate.

[01:29:50] I can't imagine they would say, we're getting rid of the car tax, you guys can do it, but we're still giving you $3 million. I don't know. They could, but I don't know. So that's something also that we have as a potential issue.

[01:30:06] Potential. It hasn't happened yet. Thank you, Madam Mayor. And I know a lot of this is more like FYI. I just want to make sure, well, that, the stormwater survey, will that be ready by the time, finalized and ready for the results by the time we get to the budget session?

[01:30:29] It will not be completely finished. We have done enough survey to know, and I actually planned out to show you just what we're already seeing. It's going to be, this is a multi-year problem, but I have plenty of projects to show you, None of these projects come in at under a million dollars.

[01:30:49] Your rate does not support what we're going to need to do, not just what the system is. And that's a potential for the next bond issue. Probably the best thing for the buck in that fund is an increase to support another bond for the stormwater rate, possibly.

[01:31:15] But that's something that's also being evaluated. It might not be an FY27. thing that is certainly out there and that would be shared services specifically to counties plans for the jail and official um yes so on shared services i usually have that up as a huge um issue for us to deal with for 27 um given that our jail population has is has decreased and it

[01:31:52] It has been down for two years now, still down. I think we will have enough budget capacity in there to cover any increases in the other shared services. So that's why it's not a huge issue for next year.

[01:32:09] However, I don't have a bill for anything yet on the regular shared services. So if that comes in much higher, that could be an issue. Well, again, the other piece is the capital. project that the county is moving forward on without any consultation with us.

[01:32:31] That's the one we pay, what, 6.7% of capital costs? I think that's, yeah. We have the inter-verisdictional quarterly person coming up in February. I think that's an important conversation because it's not only the capital cost, it is going to increase the personnel and operating costs.

[01:33:01] Sheriff's Office is going to add, Commonwealth Attorney is going to add, Judges are going to add, it's a big hit. I don't know, I mean, sometimes we give information from individuals, like everybody, and I did see the Commonwealth Attorney asking for a lot of employees, and even though we're, you know, too lost enough, we are very fortunate.

[01:33:30] So those things, I know that I don't bring it up, But as I hear them, if it comes to me, it's something that you know it works. We can have an impact, even though we don't have, until we get to the table, things on it. But this, I don't want to be feeling like a, you know, I know the staff works with them day and day and hour, and they know how, especially last year and last project.

[01:33:56] So I just want to make sure that, you know, when it comes to us making decisions, that's how I feel. But I think I'm confident in the words that I'll monitor and I'll monitor what they're doing to make sure that we keep those costs low.

[01:34:12] So if you'll recall, the county prepares their bill to us with a population-based convoluted formula that includes overhead and cost allocation.

[01:34:29] and a few five years three years i'm not sure years ago the percentage increase to us was something like 20 and i flat out told them we can't pay this i mean this is outrageous and so they came to a handshake agreement with us in the park that they would limit our increases until we have this group meeting and come to a better conclusion on what we're paying for to CPI, which roughly, that increases about 3%.

[01:35:01] There's a different finance director there now. I have not heard anything that's going on. I'm hopeful. I think the city manager has talked to the county administrator that they're still planning to do that. I haven't received any information from that, but I'm planning on another 3% increase.

[01:35:22] Again, different, should I not be? I'm hoping that they're still in that because we have not solved that problem yet. I love your optimism. I love your optimism.

[01:35:39] God bless you. Max 3% is what I'm planning for.

[01:35:57] Don't keep working.

[01:36:09] Go ahead, Doug. Give me some paper.

[01:36:36] I will do a little paper, too. What else do you want? I'll never do that. I'm going to do it. I think it's your man. I don't know what they're going to do. I'm going to do it.

[01:36:44] Thank you.

[01:37:35] that may not be publicly accessible leading up to decisions in this nature um what foia covers

[01:38:11] FOIA covers all city government officials, staff, appointed bodies, and to a certain extent, even the people that are submitting FOIAs themselves. Those are all city records that come into the city government that if they're stored digitally, in writing, handwritten notes, audio recordings, videos, Any public record is covered under FOIA so long as it's acted as city business.

[01:38:48] So just keep that in mind. For example, with this retreat, any notes that you're taking, any documents that land in front of you, if they're not already public information, that information is FOIA. I've kind of already explained that point, but yeah, just remember documents are FOIA.

[01:39:14] text messages are foiable, emails are foiable, written notes are foiable, even drafts of notes are foiable. So yeah, just keep in mind so long as you're acting in the interest of the city, the information provided to you is foiable. So getting into some of the logistics as me kind of taking over as FOIA officer last year and what I think is very important to discuss

[01:39:48] with you all is kind of a little bit of the process that we have started as of the middle of 2025. We have a detailed breakdown of how when FOIA requests come in, how they're routed through departments and what people's specific roles might be. So me, myself, I am the acting FOIA officer for the city. If you receive a request for any kind of documentation,

[01:40:24] and it doesn't even have to say FOIA in general, just documentation or record or any kind of requests like that, you should contact me first and I will start the FOIA process of coordinating with the individual to get them the record on note. We also have FOIA coordinators, which is a title for the staff underneath me in public affairs. So Kara and Lisa may also be coordinating on my behalf as FOIA coordinators to keep the process moving along, reaching out to the FOIA

[01:41:02] liaisons who are basically individuals in each department that we route the specific request through to get fulfillment within the 5 to 12 business day window that we have to provide records just going over public record again it's really anything that's documented via city business responsive records are records that meet the request of the requester for documentation

[01:41:38] you've gone over that FOIA legal framework if you don't know located and listed online via the FOIA council there's a whole entire document that details what foia is kind of how we enact the five-day response window to try to provide foia records what exemptions are in place and so on and

[01:42:13] so forth it's also listed in the virginia state code so all of that information is online and accessible to you once again process when someone is requesting a record of you contact me as the FOIA officer I'll assign it out to a coordinator or myself to reach out to a liaison and then we try to get the FOIA completed within the

[01:42:46] request window that we have again you can contact me directly or you can contact social media at manassasva.gov which covers all staff and someone should be able to assist you with um starting the FOIA process and handling it from beginning to end um exemptions um that kind of just give you a little bit of safety and concerns when FOIAs are coming in

[01:43:22] anything that's attorney-client privilege is covered under exemptions and will not be released to the public proprietary proprietary business information that's discussed leading up to decisions can be considered exempt so anything that would hinder security or the operations of the city would be exempt personal contact information of residents or u.s city officials would be exempt and conversations unrelated to city business if they're asking for something

[01:43:58] random like your grocery list or I don't know who you're dating or whatever that information exists not related to city business and one thing to note that we are really trying to lean into this year that we haven't really done consistently over time is making sure that we

[01:44:29] account for the city's time and labor put into FOIA requests. So as you know, with a lot of the conversations, typically when I've been coordinating with you all, I've been trying to say if it requires a certain amount of time or labor, let me know that time and labor ahead of time before we facilitate even looking at records because we need to account for that because it's fiscally responsible as ourselves as city stewards to make sure that we're taking account of that

[01:45:05] time and that is covered under FOIA. And then just with FOIA as far as just conduct is if you receive any email or request for a record again respond to me individually do not respond to the personnel let your coordinators and liaisons do that on your behalf and then don't don't

[01:45:37] do anything with your records until consulted by the coordinator or the FOIA officer and so one thing that I think will be very beneficial for council or mayor and council specifically is if you haven't already taken the local officials course through the virginia council or foil council i highly encourage that they already

[01:46:08] have their time um times up for the year um so uh find a date that works for you and uh yeah rsvp for it it's something that i think is very encouraging i unintentionally sat in on one one time and you get to meet a lot of different council members and elected officials such as yourself that have questions that you may be asking so it's a it's a resource to that nature so if you've taken one in the past or you haven't taken one yet I highly encourage

[01:46:48] taking a course and connecting with other officials like yourself and the Virginia FOIA Council to get more in-depth information. And on that note, I'll just leave this section with any questions. I know I kind of breezed through things fairly quickly, but I just want to make sure that before we hop off of this presentation and move over to some of the

[01:47:15] metric-based information and answer anything. Just one layer. Jeremy, are you tracking the House bill, I think it's a House bill that would limit the cost by Senator Garland has got that in there so that I know you're working hard to recover costs but the state may be going the opposite direction. Are you following that one?

[01:47:46] I am not, but I will make sure that I get a product. Is her bill, it's for the disclosure of a couple of different things.

[01:48:05] You're saying reducing, but she was saying the hourly rate for the employee and to be upfront about how much it's going to cost. She also wanted a few things in there, right?

[01:48:22] Yeah, there's a lot that she talked about. At least I haven't read the bill, but more about the conversation I had limiting what you can charge by the hour, also putting the cap on the charge. So there were a lot, I'm not sure it all goes through, but I think either way, it's going in the opposite direction than Jeremy's trying to do.

[01:48:59] So recently the city has shifted to trying to put through all of its intake through the FOIA form that we have online, but we've also learned that the FOIA forum also allows us to track record internally, which streamlines information that we can provide to you all for contextual purposes

[01:49:38] to figure out what information people are asking for inside and outside of the city, as well as maybe trying to even plan how we can better make information a little bit more publicly accessible. Just a brief recap of last year's numbers, we received 402 FOIA requests.

[01:50:01] That was a significant increase from the year prior where we received somewhere around 350. I expect this year we're probably going to receive, oh, thank you, sorry.

[01:50:20] I anticipate that we'll probably receive even more as January is already showing that we are far exceeding last year's numbers. But for a breakdown, typically what you'll see as far as what people are requesting, we get our most requests from police, community development, and fire and rescue.

[01:50:44] For police, it's typically citation-type information and requests for body-worn camera footage, incident reports, incident logs, and it's really dictated upon, I guess, how much police activity is happening within the month, which dictates how much FOIA requests that we might see coming into the office.

[01:51:10] versus community development, whereas most of that information will typically result in people who have interest in moving into the city for any particular reason, looking for building data, environmental reports, and things of that nature to best help them make decisions on whether the city might be beneficial to them.

[01:51:37] And then fire and rescue is pretty much the same. Typically what we see from them is just code enforcement type reports just checking in thereof of information in lieu of community development.

[01:51:53] So they're pretty much caked into that section quite a bit. But then you also get requests for incident reports and et cetera. And then, as I said, most of the requests that we have coming in just this month can be seen as people within the state of Virginia requesting information.

[01:52:18] Those typically outside of the state are either requesting information from a police interaction or requesting information of community development. And with those that request information out of state, unless it's a police matter that happened within the state of Virginia or some city business that they were related to, those are typically denied.

[01:52:51] Most people submit the request via Virginia. Again, department breakdown, this is just basically saying how many requests have come through just this month by department, follows trend from last year, police being the highest, community development is slightly down, and fire is slightly up, but those are our core three that you'll typically see.

[01:53:19] And then as far as responsive records, or sorry, fulfillment itself, we're providing more responsive records than not. Responsive and partially responsive take up a third, and then the other third is either denial or non-responsive record.

[01:53:42] As far as invoicing thus far, we've sent out an invoice of about $219 just in January. That will typically and probably increase, but we're tracking that information as well through the metric-based system.

[01:54:04] And on that note, I'll just leave it at questions that you might have. What is a non-responsive record is when the city cannot find a document, or there is no document to provide, so that's a non-responsive record.

[01:54:36] Sometimes FOIA does not require us to create a new document. Sometimes people will say, I want a document that has X, Y, and Z. If we don't have that, we can say, well, we've got an X, Y, but we don't have the Z.

[01:54:53] So it's one of those that catch-22. If they're very specific about what they want, that may not exist. And typically that can come in the form of people requesting a report of lists, for example.

[01:55:10] Like, I want a list of all conversations that happened between X party and X party. We don't have to provide that via a physical list. We don't have to provide the documentation of the list. But if we can export, like, not necessarily a list of conversations, but a list of information, then, like, that is a responsive record.

[01:55:38] which we can provide clarification to the party in question to kind of get to the root of what they're looking for, but if they're really holding firm to lists and et cetera, then we can say we have no responsive record because we do not keep a list of the information that we're looking for.

[01:56:00] Yes. It's a combination of things that makes a document boilable in its own body. Let's say there's a document that's clearly not a document of record.

[01:56:18] it's just having to be misfiled or displaced on something property or file that the government owns. Does that make it a document, a FOIA document or is it a fact of both things? Is it where it is and what it is or is it simply the type of document?

[01:56:37] If it's a document that doesn't have to do with city business, then probably would be a non-responsive record. example someone from the Virginia Department of State sending notice of a record via email to the city just to advise the city that something is changing may not be a responsive record but then again typically they're not really looking for those records but if it is a record that has to do with the

[01:57:17] city and has city business then yes that would be a record that we have to provide. I'm not sure if that answers your question. And for purpose of for you, you treat text messages as documents, you treat text messages as documents. So then, if I texted Tom and it's really about catching around him for a

[01:57:52] show, but I made the mistake of texting him on my government phone, and it's simply just that basic message that would not be for you. so uh you said to catch a show yeah that would that would not constitute a responsive vector because it does not do it if i could interject as well because the legal answer is usually uh maddeningly it depends if that conversation that you're having

[01:58:30] with your colleague is in the midst of a longer text thread and the requester wants between certain dates usually it and it shouldn't matter if it's on your personal or your government if it is city business so you have to take the request in its totality and oftentimes you have to look at the complete conversation redact extract what might also contain a conversation whether mistakenly or not about an upcoming vote or a meeting or something that might pertain to

[01:59:06] city business so that's where we kind of get into a gray area where it needs to be reviewed as I'm sure Jeremy's done on a case-by-case basis. And that can get tricky. So it really does depend. The constituents don't need to know about the show you're seeing with Mr. Osina, but there could be other factors in the play.

[01:59:27] Well, in that scenario, then, if I actually text him on my personal phone to ask him for a ride over that as soon as he's going somewhere, and then in that conversation I say, oh, by the way, what do you think of? And we don't get into substance, I'm sorry, but it is government-related.

[01:59:43] So then my phone now becomes... Absolutely. You have to be very careful. Or a personal social media account versus the official government account. And that's what is determined by case law. You go through the actual process of a judge looking at all the records and saying, well, even though this is on his personal account or his personal device, it is related to public business or vice versa.

[02:00:12] So when we get a request, Jeremy notifies us that we've got a request when we have to turn on a record. I need to then look at my personal, see if I have government, and look at government, or, yeah. Yes, you do. Yes, you do.

[02:00:28] And that's why, and part of Jeremy's training and trainings we've done with the city attorney's office, you have to save your records, you have to exercise caution. You don't want to be devious, but there's a difference between having a, you know, constituents will often ask, I need the phone record. I don't know of anyone who records their calls and the contents of their conversation. You might have a private conversation. You don't

[02:01:00] remember what occurred, and that's not a public record. But you have to be very aware, and it only gets more difficult with the explosion of social media and all these forms of communication that

[02:01:16] I was just going to say, so I attended the elected leaders conference that VML put on early January, I think the first full week of January, and at that they had FOIA training and COIA training, but anyway they had handouts and then I asked Eric to forward the link to all these handouts back on January the 13th, which I think he did that day or the day after.

[02:02:00] so if you want to check your email you'll see a link all the handouts from that conference which included uh one on the freedom of information acting pretty extensive because it talks about not just FOIA requests but what constitutes a meeting and as a for instance and whether you've got to keep attendance and access to the meetings and stuff of that sort which i found very interesting along the way to that particular case so remind you you've got a really longer list to look at

[02:02:38] you want plus we need to have training the foyer evaluatory council is requiring that elected officials close some key appointed people have to have training every two years

[02:03:05] i can ignore you the presentation is everyone up with you all right you heard that deputy city attorney i can ignore the clerk i'm just noticing the high volume in the police department like i have two questions about that um when i guess the easier question is is there like a deadline or like you know can you can you be asking for like you said dash footage or body cam footage whatever

[02:03:39] from 5-10 years ago or like does it have attention records that we have to adhere to so from my experience the majority of these cases and requests the information a good portion of it we already make public right so you don't even have to ask for a FOIA it's already there the other one is what we have found is a lot of defense attorneys instead of doing the subpoena to get the information they apply to FOIA because it's an easier process for them.

[02:04:13] However, if it's an active court case, it's not subject to release. So there's a lot of reasons why it's kind of muddied up. And I think that speaks to my next question is, like, is Jeremy responsible for navigating all of that police?

[02:04:32] Or is there somebody on the police department that works? officer police records that is white person most the time he lets me know when the information is available and if say an attorney really wants something of that nature he can get a public version of it but he won't get or will be directed to the courts to issues and historically uh because you weren't here so when body worn cameras were funded and supported by then council one of the

[02:05:09] things we did make sure we asked for was an additional i.t person that's assigned from it to the police department their old job is to redact the body one games so all the faces get redacted so it's a full-time job i guess we have one more question because this is a lot and you You know, we're talking about accounting for the time that our staff is putting into it

[02:05:42] and talking about, like, kind of attorneys using this as an easier way of gathering information. I mean, should we – should the state look at not allowing it to be that way?

[02:05:57] Not that I don't want people to get information, but it's just interesting that if, like, an attorney of law has two routes, that they can choose an easier route at the cost of a locality. believe what I probably should have said if I didn't is they think it's an zero a lot of times we deny it as well but if it's my philosophy is and so that makes it ours is if we can give it to you easily we give it to you we don't fight it so if my folks can do it with a couple clicks of the

[02:06:31] computer they would rather just do that it just makes a better working relationship so I would tell you right now it's not a problem. If it becomes a problem, we'll bring it to you and let you know about it and get it at the legislative office. And then I get one last question. Just because I think it's interesting that the police number is so, so much higher than everything else.

[02:06:53] Oh, and I've known that I've spoken up and forgot one question. Oh, yeah. Has this traditionally been the highest first portion of the police request? I've never really seen the status of it as interesting.

[02:07:12] Thank you. Thanks for having me. Is everyone comfortable?

[02:07:33] Jeremy, do you have the clicker? I can throw it to you if you want. I don't want it on camera that I can't catch. I don't want it on camera that is . Yeah, I don't want it. Anomalies.

[02:07:48] I don't want to. Council member Hudson asked me a question. um jeremy's one of the things that jeremy has done since he came into public affairs is create both the uh build for the future and break by brick report you get those monthly so we included the most recent version just as opposed to older retreats where i grown through 50 slides on the capital projects we want to transition that is something that gets published monthly for the entire community so we're trying to give council and the community up to date on those reports

[02:08:22] They're in your packet in reference, and if you have questions when we get to community development, I can take you through those. But I think what Jeremy's created has been really a real improvement over, you know, making sure that we're getting as much information on capital projects and development and economic development projects out there publicly and updated every month.

[02:08:41] So, I'm going to take you through three-part items. They're really informational today. One will require action, but this is just a bit of a background because, you know, like doing master planning and planning in general and now that we've completed our comprehensive plan update as I've mentioned our park master plan which is the document that kind of sets up the strategic goals for the department is about 10 years old so we are at the point where we need to update that plan we've accomplished almost everything that was in that plan

[02:09:18] including community center Dean Park Annenberg you name it things that we envisioned ten years ago through a variety of actions by council and others we have achieved everything so the plan is done which means we need a new plan so the advisory here is that over the next couple months you will see advertising for a series of community meetings that parks and rec committee and HRV will be hosting so for council member Ellis and they will be in the lead in terms of helping staff develop this plan of course the first piece is going to be community meetings. We'll do community meetings into the summer. There'll be

[02:09:56] online pieces if you can't attend them. The community meetings will be based around all the elements of parks and recs, so recreation, the parks themselves, the historic sites, something on events, and then something on athletics and programming. And from that, then parks and rec and HRV will help stout synthesize new goals and actions for the department to carry out the next year.

[02:10:16] We'll also get into things like a level of service, what kind of facilities are we going to need to be thinking about and that ties into the conversation we just had on where our capital budget might need to be for the next 10 years that'll be synthesized and you can see this runs all the way through 2027 so retreat next year early next year I'll be I'll be providing updates throughout the year as we hit milestones but there'll be a final plan for the council to take a look at with me probably sometime in early 2027 so this is just an advisory item that you're

[02:10:51] to see our next round of community conversations focused around parks and recreation and of course individual council members of the council has items that you need the department to be thinking about and the committee to be thinking about as they develop a plan please share those with me now or individually and both we have a lot of things we know we need to update and um fully anticipate will be as successful over the next 10 years as we have been in the last 10 with parks

[02:11:16] and rec so any questions on this all right this is the gmbl license so this is one year ago we in our last retreat we said that we needed to make some updates to the gmbl license you tasked the incoming city manager and i to work with gmbl on a more sustainable license and the draft which is the next three pages i'll just take you through the changes this will come to you as an action item i guess now at your february 9th meeting with any other comments we get now um as i i think i've

[02:11:54] shared with some of you and city manager and i met directly with the chair and vice chair of gmbl we talked about different changes where we could improve the existing agreement they went back to their board with a draft they gave us a few more changes so it's all been incorporated and accepted into the license agreement so what we're proposing is a five-year license um one year with four renewals uh the biggest changes in here so the first one in red um with the city the way that certain the way it basically the license in general what's called exclusive use of our

[02:12:28] e.g. smith park or e.g. fifth ball complex um in the past gmbl set the schedule and then there was available space it's been very difficult for us to access it basically we'll get a call a day or two before um you know seat in school is a good example hey we have a we need a game can we get active in the field and it's very convoluted we have to go to gmbl they're not full-time rec professionals so they don't always get back to us um can we use the space sometimes we're successful sometimes they're not so working with gmbl we're proposing is taking a better way to manage available

[02:13:02] excess capacity at these fields which is after april 1st the city retains its right to use our own fields for other fields and we'll continue to work with gmbl for that scheduling process but that's just really a technical cleanup uh the biggest item in here is item number three um starting with the fall season city residents remember there are about 70 80 kids in gmbl will receive a 25% discount on the registration fees and we're also been working with GMBL you'll see some advertising that GMBL will actually take on some recreation programming on behalf of the city

[02:13:39] as I mentioned we're proposing extending the term of the license and the last piece we're clarifying we already have a representative on behalf of the city manager this was a really positive conversation when Steve and I had this conversation with Colby and the board they said this is something we've been thinking about for a long time having a much more direct presence on the board against the city park owned by the city of Manassas so having a much more direct representative on the board again non-voting acknowledging that this is a those are the changes that staff has worked the GMBL I stand for any questions otherwise I would like to move forward on

[02:14:18] February 9th with a new license thank you so on page three or four here about term of license agreement. The license may be renewed, blah, blah, blah. What is the deadline to renew, not renew? We typically have the conversation each year with GMBL. So this is, first off, this is a return to prior licenses. We're usually for five-year terms. When the micron option came up, we started going to one-year terms. This is more of a return to the regular order. We typically start the conversation with GMBL in December or January.

[02:14:57] The fields open up for citywide our field system opens up for registration for leave on February 15th. So we always need to, we always have the conversation with GL in December or January. Are there any changes we need to make for licenses or any other changes we need to address.

[02:15:18] So that's typically in the regular order. They have a conversation with my staff. We send the agreement to the city manager in theory and then the city manager. And it will typically coincide with their submission of what dates they will be wanting to put in.

[02:15:36] So there's the item three on page one of the contract where they have to tell our parks and rec staff, these are the specific dates that we plan to have practices, games, things of that nature. So the renewal will go in combination with this is the dates that we will need the facility.

[02:16:00] So, like Matt said, it's much before March, because that's when we're basically locking in the dates that they would be interned. In reality, our Recreation Department is in continuous contact with Jim Hill. No doubt. The reason I shouldn't say the reason.

[02:16:18] The question still is, to me, there ought to be, Deputy City Attorney, a date that says, by this date, It can be phrased a lot of different ways, but by this date, the city will have exercised its right not to renew or renew.

[02:16:42] Otherwise, it renews for another year. I don't see any not aware that there is a date certain that says this thing is being renewed or not renewed.

[02:17:02] but in fairness to them and the license agreement is for gmdl so they know so they they they can make their plans that that's all i understood but as matt was saying the the last line of that item 16 on the third page we have the option of giving them a two-month we need to where would i find that 60 days notice prior to march first page three thank you okay that's what i was after and very good job the other thing is that

[02:17:42] it's incumbent upon them to get this license renewed so yeah they they they historically have been very good about coming in i didn't know that i was more just thinking for their benefit protection what have you along the way that's all in reality it's considered termination council would receive notice well before that you have represented which i truly believe but i want to make sure i it's it's out there that the changes in one or three in particular and uh 16 obviously

[02:18:22] and then and especially 21 have not only been discussed with the gmbl board of directors gmbl board of directors has agreed to these changes correct they're fully aware and they have agreed to it all right there we go thank you very positive conversation matter I've never been twice they went back to the board so it's been a really updating the agreement was overdue and it's been a really good comfortable yeah

[02:19:00] might have covered this I might have missed it so what they you have in the red line for them to submit like complete use schedule do they include with certain weather conditions if they have to reschedule like days or dates that they would use They will most likely submit a very conservative schedule that blocks off more than they're actually using.

[02:19:26] We've had this conversation about how it works and that what it really does, the big change here, is that we know even with weather built in, because every year the city rents out the bills every year, there are certain blocks of time that are just not being used even with weather delays. Big change here is it's very hard for us to get access to those blocks without going back and forth.

[02:19:46] They're scheduling who, again, are part-time, not even part-time, they're volunteers. So this just gives us, the city rec department already leases out all the fields, rents out the fields citywide. We can look at these very specific blocks and make them available to all the other city users who we get as a request.

[02:20:03] But in reality, when they give us their schedule, I fully expect they're building in weather-related, which they already do, into their schedule. It's really much more of a technical change and just simplifying the back and forth between Mr. Kaiser, our rec manager, and the NBL schedule. It's got a benefit. Remember, a lot of demand for these fields are really going to simplify that process when you see the school or the other folks out there and say, hey, we just need to get on the field for two hours.

[02:20:31] And it doesn't preclude GMVL. And if there was a date that they had not requested, if it's available, they just simply contact Parks and Rec and say, hey, whether this, that, or other, can we use it for this day or this week? That's a good point. They said, hey, we absolutely need one of those blocks that we made available to you.

[02:20:48] Again, with the exclusivity of the license, they would still have that first come. Is there any other big city that we do this, or is it just the rental part now?

[02:21:04] Stonewall Park swim team has a similar license. That's done administratively because they don't get the fee. So the reason council gets this license is because you're waiving rental fee. Stonewall pool they actually every year they get exclusivity for practice but they pay the rental fee. So it's a little different but that's the other group that has a

[02:21:30] annual license. Just getting back to Matt's community meetings for the update to the Matt grant getting to the question of our public affairs staff. Part of what Matt will include and we do in all of our communications translation services that will either be provided through

[02:22:03] current staff that have pushed out of the field, or we would contract it with a firm specific to where we're at with a former translator position.

[02:22:21] We are re-evaluating to expand it to be more of a Jeremy and DART is rewriting job description, so that it's more of a person that, rather than just working at a desk to develop the social media across the public announcements, They're actually tended to be out in the community, talking with residents, talking with businesses to say, how are we doing?

[02:22:59] What else can we do? Are there any areas that we're not reaching that would be beneficial? So we're trying to have a more forward-facing individual in that department so that we can better connect with the community, have them as a more formal point of contact into our public affairs office.

[02:23:22] We are incorporating into that job description that additional languages is a desired skill. Until we actually advertise it, we won't know the core of candidates, but that is specifically something that we are looking for.

[02:23:42] Then along with that, our IT department is investigating new digital translation services. Now there's headphones and things that will provide you instantaneous translation.

[02:23:59] We are actually looking at having a permanent installation at the City Hall Council Chambers. But public affairs also, I don't know if you all remember when we had community affairs, our former translator would actually do live translation and we had headphones that people could pick up at the beginning of the meeting.

[02:24:24] We're also looking at what we can do as far as a digital translator that could then feed into those headphones So that we would have that live translation ability when we have remote public. Thank you, Madam Mayor. And I appreciate it. I love when we are bringing out technology in.

[02:24:44] I want to say we can perfectly translate and still be offensive as a body, culturally offensive. So it can be like, you know, grammatically correct, it can be offensive or it can be a different message.

[02:25:02] I'm welcomed all and I appreciate it, I do feel like every way that we can do and for me it's not only a response, I believe we have a thriving, I believe it's Indian American community that is growing and flourishing and you know that might even make a higher meeting that we have and I don't, you know, I don't believe that we'll be able to meet you know meet everybody where you need to be met because a lot of them they already bring somebody to me but i really want to be with you um i don't want to go boxers i want to make sure that he's

[02:25:40] there something and you know it will be amazing uh you know you know someone that is rooted in the community they can see um you know they can uh sort of promote not only the events that we have I believe our amazing police department has done a heavy lifting, but even still I think right now there is some resources that are impossible to use because not everybody knows about it.

[02:26:14] I won't make it long, but I actually say that I was from everything, but I do believe that we need to be mindful that there is no machine or no good translator that can, you know, do a better job in some ways. uh connect to this thing to um underground and what it's supposed to like and i hope these also uh maybe stripes on you when we celebrate our our when we do events for our different uh you know proclamations that we do or different celebrations because you know it's not about being big but it's

[02:26:53] about being successful and i want to you know and i believe that this person can take the time because I have seen you in different minds, and yeah, thank you. And honestly, that was one of the reasons that we were looking at the digital was because we recognized that it's not only Spanish that will need to be providing translational services, and so the digital translation would offer us the ability that whatever language is necessary, we might be able to fill that.

[02:27:31] One more. This is again just information only because I think a number of council members have asked what we're planning for the America 250 so this is again information of Keisha and her team Mary Helen at the museum will pull together what we plan to do so again this is just for counseling in the packets what the year looks like to be promoted in public affairs and do our parks and recs but we have quite a quite a bit planned including a signing of the Declaration of Independence by the anyone who wants to on July 4th anyone in the community who wants to put their

[02:28:10] name on our Declaration of Independence, so we have some fun little exhibits planned for the year. Again, questions or feedback, just talk to myself, and Keisha and I will work on those throughout the year. Yeah, we're going to get the...

[02:28:25] Yeah, that's just for y'all to know what's going to be coming up over the next time now. In addition to that, the...

[02:28:43] Our public works are adopting a red, white, and blue color steam for all of the flowers that we receive. Also, Public Affairs is working on 250, a banner that has put a Manassas flare to it, but it will probably incorporate the Virginia 250, but we'll have Manassas with it.

[02:29:07] So we are looking at developing the banners throughout the community. And if there's any suggestions of other things that we could do, please let us know. I've had people reach out and say, can I help with 250? We are. Stay tuned.

[02:29:23] We are always looking for volunteers at Parks, Culture, and Rec. There's a form online at www.sba.gov/volunteer and we are always looking for volunteers at our parks and museum sites. Absolutely. One more, one more.

[02:29:40] Look at the signs down as well. Dang! He sent himself in the head. Did you get it, Tim? It's 12 o'clock. We're going. Siri is gone there. Okay. Oh, thank you. All right, so next is planning and development.

[02:29:59] No, we're ahead. So parking is not? I'll take it away. Apparently, this is now planning and development issues. Because I'm in charge of doing the math, Gary. It's not that easy. Tom, will that be on the parking?

[02:30:15] I think I'm going to raise my hand. I'm going to ask for it on parking now. So this is good information. So we have, working with Patricia's office, been able to get the updates on how many passes we've sold with the new three pass limit in place in zone one parking. If you add it all up, we have a decrease of over 500 spaces. But let me just back up. When we looked at the numbers in 2024, based on the number of, and you just applied a three pass cap, we could have expected a decrease of 250 passes sold. Just saying in 2024, as many houses

[02:30:55] had more than three passes it would equal 250 the numbers we have in front of us that if you add it all up we've sold 539 fewer passes with the new policy in place so double roughly what we could have estimated looking at the 2024 numbers so overall looking positive from the numbers side obviously we need to spend some time through parking enforcement seeing what this actually looks like in reality the neighborhood clearly some of the neighborhood some of the folks who we're buying three passes are buying two and some of them are buying two or buying one so there's been some other behavioral changes um how does those numbers again translate into the field we

[02:31:34] don't know yet the chief has some stuff in the pd presentation about parking enforcement which we cover separately at this point our recommendation just moving forward for the rest of the year is again focus on enforcement um seeing if there's other other things we we're doing incrementally are there other policy changes we may want to consider and then on supply side uh public works and my staff are taking a look at if there's any areas again remember the overall number of public parking spaces compared to what is in the HOA neighborhoods is relatively low but we are looking at opportunities to increase supply along Liberia, Breeden Avenue for Point of Woods East but overall the

[02:32:12] numbers are you know if you take 2024 numbers we were overselling 3 to 1 supply to demand we're down to 2 to 1 that has changed as of January of 2000 numbers are moving in the right direction the policy appears to be having the effect that we've attended and more to come on this one.

[02:32:39] The first one is all of these ones have pretty much HOA parking, but this is the extra parking for their homes. But I believe some of them have two, some of them have one, or they all have two.

[02:32:58] They all have two assigned to a tent. all of these neighborhoods the big background this was all these neighborhoods were built under Prince William County regulations primarily in 1970 when they were doing a two per unit regulation that's lower than what we would require today so that some of them like Bristow Station has visitor parking Point of Woods has a little they all have a little bit of visitor parking but not enough to address current modern co-ownership or car ownership I should say so we're providing that additional little additional spaces but the public streets It's because largely these are private streets.

[02:33:34] Public streets don't give you that much overall supply. Other, and not to resolve it, but more to bring it out. When you appointed the green ones, I don't know why I was sure they were appointing the other spaces. There is a space in between, maybe just two of them.

[02:33:54] I'm not sure if all of them have, like, I don't want to say green spaces, but it's spaces. There's no use as recreation or anything. It's just a space that they sit potentially in the future if they decide. be part of fulfilling the need for parking, right?

[02:34:11] - Yeah. - And I don't know why that came up when I saw the green line. - Well, you know, Bristow Station has taken upon themselves as an HOA to add additional spaces on their common area. That is something that has absolutely allowed you to work with a little bit of the development process, depending on how big you want to go.

[02:34:27] But, you know, Bristow Station has been successful in adding additional visitor spaces. We've had conversations with Point of Woods about doing the same, and with Point of Woods East, takes a little bit of money on their end to add on the private side but we're also looking internally at how we in my engineering department how we can simplify some of the regulations major ways don't have unlimited money to go out and hire a full-blown engineering design so i have some things in the works with the engineering department to make it even easier for some of these neighborhoods to on their end you know match and try to increase their supply and they also have the rv boat

[02:35:04] parking that we've encouraged them to at least open up part of that to get them expanded either visitor and or the homeowner buy an extra pass internally for them yeah we spend a lot of time blocking the neighborhoods and identifying just the paint you can go in and decide you know a lot of these things they haven't looked at their parking supply side internally in 30 years so that's very easy for my staff to say hey have you looked at you don't need 30 rv spaces anymore so So let's get some visitor parking here.

[02:35:34] Ultimately, the HOA has to work through their internal rules to make some of those changes. But it's overall very encouraging. The HOAs are working with us on their end. And we've made some changes to hopefully get our parking situation more under control. Are we getting any complaints from NSR?

[02:35:54] If we are getting any complaints from there now that we have a reduction rule, are we capturing anything that comes to the pressure assault? Any type of complaints that they're not able to get more to the community? I just want to make sure, you know, that their connection is there, that you'll be receiving more.

[02:36:15] Yeah, I'm not sure that Patricia's had any. I know we have worked and met between all of us. We have spent a great deal of time talking to Andrea, and I have not heard anything about complaints from residents. I think what you and we did a very good job at, made the decision last year, immediately started notifying and giving everyone notice so they had a year to plan for this and i think that has really assisted us in knocking down potential complaints and the last one um

[02:36:53] the majority of complaints i get they have been about cars or filling spots for you know when you go to work there's people leaving a car to you know to save us and they in this part of the days use uh in order to be able to see two cars later i do have complaints about a couple of bikes you know to say they are no more and even though i'm not looking to have a 24-hour staff to check on parking but how can those complaints be addressed because we do have place and you know

[02:37:33] two things matt and i just had the discussion remember this i think it's important for us to remember this just went into effect january 1st so we're just starting the enforcement side of it but we just spoke about going back and evaluating and looking at can we designate motorcycle parking which takes up less space which will then free up additional space or spots

[02:38:07] for cars the other problem you you identify here is true people will move from the street but then they will in most cases bring the car that they parked inside the hoa bring it to the street save that for friend spouse significant other wait for them to get home from work and then switch the cars back out it is a public street the parking within uh regulated times so in in we don't have

[02:38:40] mr burke probably knows the property we don't have designated 20-foot parking it's kind of parked so that has been a concern several of the hoas have brought up last year so what we've asked them from the police department is let's let's get this program up and running uh see what the impacts are before we go to the next phase but in addition to the motorcycle we're going to speak with Public Works and streets about going back and looking at sight lines and seeing if we can either extend additional parking or in

[02:39:18] some cases as you just got an email they want parking taken away because of sight lines so we'll go back and evaluate both of those as well thank you I will say later, too, to what Sonia was saying, at least on Confederate Trail in Bristow Station, I don't recall, but I would imagine the same as on Burnside, which are the two public streets.

[02:39:46] They have marked parking spaces, so, you know, they have put a line in so you know what the parking space is. So, I guess I've seen the same sort of thing, guess where, where, as you say, they try to reserve and they sort of make a kind of straddle, but there are no lines when I, what I've done, sir.

[02:40:08] No, it's not like, from mine, I love it. So, all my complaints are from around my area, and the other are in the weeds. So, thank you, I read that email too. There's one neighbor that I can speak to.

[02:40:24] So, Matt, I just want to read this thing here, correctly here. So, after selling the, having the new Zone 1 parking policy in place what the red represents is a reduction of the of the passes it still is showing in each of these three neighborhoods that the number of passes purchased under the zone one parking policy

[02:41:03] of 2026 that we still have they still exceed the number of available public spaces correct two to one to simplify we're still selling two to one more passes than available spaces on the public that's right and I okay so what I see in red is but that number in red shows it actually went down the okay based on that policy much more than would have anticipated by just running the math on what we sold in

[02:41:39] So we're waiting to see the unintended consequences or one that we probably could predict it is you will probably start seeing more zone 2 requests coming in as potentially some of these are moving into a single family and we've seen a couple of those already come in ahead of time.

[02:42:10] so and that's the way it was supposed to work right uh if there's a problem let the residents bring it to us uh if that occurs okay gotcha so even though these statistics are saying that even if you have a zone one sticker you may not be able to find a parking space on the public street in that particular neighborhood correct along the way and am i safe and i just quickly doing the math

[02:42:48] am i safe and saying that had the zone one s limit which is three right now correct been reduced to two we'll see even more of a reduction correct to the point where it might be that everybody who buys a zone one parking space that was two passes might actually find on street parking in their respective neighborhood yeah if you go to two you're going to get closer to getting a one-to-one ratio yes thank you okay all right that's all thanks

[02:43:43] but yes my expertise are more than point of wood east and then point of wood And I know that we still get a lot, you know, like we get information, but I believe, you know, the president is doing great and, you know, I continue to support, but most of what I hear from me is from the point of what is or point of what's.

[02:44:08] And your statement is correct. That was one of the things we talked about last year of if you went to two, what would be the consequences of that? We as a body decided to do three, see what the results were, and then we can come back and evaluate it and see if you wanted to reduce it to two.

[02:44:28] Just a bit on housing.

[02:44:45] You'll see in your agenda two bills are referenced. Two bills are moving through the General Assembly. They're referenced by number. There is actually, when you take a step back, quite a few pieces of legislation moving through the General Assembly to address affordability and affordable housing.

[02:45:02] Because we're early in the session, there's a lot of stuff that we'll make it out of the committee. I can provide separately. I haven't had a chance to do this where we are as we move into the legislative session. As you prepare to go down to Richmond and have conversations with your delegates, what I want to flag for you is there are some very good bills.

[02:45:21] The bill sponsored by Senator McPike that gives Manassas the same affordable housing authority as some of the other jurisdictions have had for years. That's a great bill. Making sure all the jurisdictions in Virginia have the same toolbox. That made it through the General Assembly last year and was vetoed, so I fully expect that's going to move through again.

[02:45:41] There are a number of bills, though, and again, they may not make it out of committee, so we don't need to pull the panic alarm yet, that have unintended consequences of usurping local authority over land use. So there's one bill, I hope it doesn't make it out of committee, that would eliminate parking ordinances throughout the Commonwealth.

[02:46:00] So you would eliminate your ability to regulate parking. There's another bill that seeks to, anywhere we have commercial zoning, by right, allow multifamily housing without jurisdictional review. So it would essentially override all of your commercial zoning.

[02:46:16] There's a lot of ideas about how to increase supply. But for the purposes of today's conversation, and again, I will provide more details with my association, the APA, and others kind of evaluate these bills. When you meet with your legislatures, the two things I would impress on is one side does not fit all.

[02:46:34] So writing a bill for the entire Commonwealth for every jurisdiction, what works for Fairfax County does not work for Manassas. Manassas is very good, very thoughtful. Land use regulation is a very good process if someone wants to. proposed housing that's my argument on that one and then just things that while the goal of increasing supply is obviously something that we're all talking about simply just voiding city zoning ordinances for the sake of housing will have unintended consequences overriding your comprehensive plan overriding your height limitations your density limitations there will be some very interesting unintended consequences so I'll provide details to the city

[02:47:13] managers of offices bills start to come out of committee and there's a lot of good bills on the state side of increased funding to Virginia housing and allow the jurisdiction to look at other programs and tap into resources which are good stuff so my association is saying there will be bills inactive to deal with affordable housing so we just got to keep an eye on and you as the body keep an eye on your legislatures some of the ones that might mess things up from what I do every day, considerably.

[02:47:42] So, Senate Bill 1313 and 18-4 direct and deal with the full housing. Yeah. And the patrons, do you have any of them? So, Senator McPike is the patron of 1313.

[02:48:00] I have a much longer list. 1313. So, House Bill 4 is a really interesting bill that would give the jurisdiction the right of first refusal. Remember, we have quite a few low-income housing tax credit properties that will come off the rolls that would allow the jurisdictions and tools to at least consider whether we want to bring another developer in to preserve affordability.

[02:48:24] That seems like it's a good bill as written. It doesn't mandate you to do something. It gives you another tool in the toolbox. And then, Steve, correct me if I'm wrong. It's 1313, I believe. Is that McPhype, Jeremy? McPhype's bill? I might be. I'll have to double-check which one that is.

[02:48:40] but the one i've been tracking most closely it's my list says sb 74 which is the standardizing affordable pool across jurisdictions i just don't want to provide you all like a big list and they don't make it out of committee because there's no need to get over until we see where where the general sums up there will be legislation so we just got to keep an eye on um when you when you were talking about a possible bill to eliminate parking parking ordinances so i think like richmond

[02:49:18] in the city they do have like zero parking like they don't even don't build an apartment zero parking as of the city of manassas okay okay but that is with i mean they have better mass transportation in richmond than we do yeah the one that's my concern about one size fits all it works in the city of richmond or in arlington county or alexander may not work in the city of manassas certainly when you go outside of our downtown new development we do do parking analysis so when you know the parking garage proposal at city hall comes online we will be looking at their

[02:49:54] parking zero is for existing the stuff that was built 100 years ago but yeah i don't think one size fits on i think we are still a suburban community so eliminating our parking minimums would have some very interesting unintended consequences i think the development community still can provide parking but i do not agree with anything that usurps your ability as a governing body to regulate your local range.

[02:50:20] It could also drive people out, you know, if they can't park their work trucks or whatever, you know, they'll go somewhere else. In general, the market's going to correct for a bill like that. I'm actually more concerned about something that just goes into the Liberian corridor and says, thou shalt, without any jurisdictional oversight, turn it into a multifamily, without any ability for us to look at land risk impact.

[02:50:43] Those things scare me. Any other questions on this? Basically, this is just to put it onto your radar.

[02:51:07] The state has adopted ADA requirements that go beyond just the standard website. We're in the process of updating our website so that all the documents can be viewed by anyone that has visual and paramount specific standard for standard language on our website.

[02:51:37] So the state has called signage of that nature.

[02:52:01] Most of the physical signs that we have are in braille so that the digital signage directs in some form. And the reason that we bring this forward is that we don't know what final solution will be there will that there will be a cost to some of this transition we already have budgeted funding to update the city's website we had not anticipated

[02:52:39] doing all of the digital signage in any of our buildings so we'll be we are about it it is our

[02:53:34] discussion of where we are with the mathis shopping center i'll play a supporting role well good afternoon and thank you for allowing me to join you once again at your retreat

[02:54:14] for those of you who don't know i'm denise harover i was the chair of the city of manassas eda i'm no longer the chair carmella patrick is but i've had the pleasure of working with matt and roadside on the community conversations regarding mathis avenue for the last year just a little reminder of what we did we were asked to go out and meet with the community and get input on what potentially could be done at mathis avenue shopping center we held two meetings last summer we held a

[02:54:51] joint meeting with city council in november and then we had a follow-up with the community in november to go over not only their final vision but we also incorporated some of the feedback that that we got from city council at our joint meeting.

[02:55:10] That's the history. We had over a hundred folks participate. Fantastic turnout, especially at the last meeting where we were bringing back to them the options that we had created with them in mind and their feedback as well as yours.

[02:55:26] When we held the meeting in November, I asked everybody who had actually been to any of the community conversations where the 75% of the people in the room had raised their hands. So really good input. A few key takeaways from the citizens' input, and some of this also mirrored what council had talked about.

[02:55:47] Everyone was very keyed in on height. Nobody wanted anything higher than the General Messenger. They wanted to see open space, parks. They did want to see some retail come back in that area, but clearly not entirely retail.

[02:56:04] They were looking at areas of shopping, dining, plazas. So a lot of what they put in, we worked with them at a table with some maps and came up with the first idea was to create a linear park that would give us separation between the existing residential and clearly what's gonna be a more denser opportunity on the shopping center property.

[02:56:35] So this linear buffer had two purposes. A, it was to create a bit of a buffer between us and the existing towns. But there was also the idea that it could actually create potentially a, if you will, park setting that could connect Annaberg to Liberia House.

[02:56:55] Thinking future forward planning. How to connect the Liberia House through Mathis to Annaberg. clearly we have sidewalks reaching to downtown. I think the linear park is a little hard to visualize. So what we've done is we're providing a section here. So this is the existing townhouses.

[02:57:21] So if you think about the back of the shopping center, we have existing parking. Our side would become alley and we would actually create 30 feet of trail and landscaping. So it's not just an eight-foot trail. It's 30 feet, so it would allow for a 10-foot walking slash bike trail and landscaping. So this really helps, if you will, soften the impact of anything that we propose

[02:57:53] on the shopping center side and how it will feel from the existing residential. I know you all are familiar with the townhouses on Portner. They're shorter townhouses. Anything we do is clearly going to be a little larger than that so this is intended to be a buffer if you look at the plan really what what our vision is and trying to think about the future is looking at it in sections and when you look at it in sections we're trying to create not just the park but how can we activate

[02:58:32] each of these sites and what pieces can we use to activate these sites when we met with the community, it was really important for them to have a pedestrian park slash plaza. So we kind of dropped that in first. One of the things we worked on with our transportation engineers of the city was to limit the number of access points coming off Mathis Avenue. So we started building the framework, if you will, with the limited access points and the park. And this was one of

[02:59:07] the first iterations that we came to a consensus on when we were meeting with the citizens. They wanted some mixed use along Mathis Avenue, and they wanted some townhomes. We did have some affordable or slash mixed used four-story buildings, but as you can see, the numbers are low. You're talking about a total of about 164 units and 51,000 square feet of commercial.

[02:59:39] I believe Council Member Wolf pointed out when we did our overview with you. Those weren't the numbers he was thinking of. Even though we think this really shows what the citizens are interested in, we heard Council say, we need to push it up a little bit, Mr. Council Member of Sina.

[03:00:03] You wanted some wow. So we went back to Roadside and we said, okay, here's your license to do bigger and better. And what they did is they came up with what I would call the Concept C Wow Factor.

[03:00:20] What this does is takes us up to 354 units and 44,700 square feet. We have options to increase the number of units. It all will be predicated on parking decks.

[03:00:39] What we task Roadside with doing is look at this and tell us what we can park surface, which is what you saw on the first one with 160 units. Now we're looking at how can we get this with parking decks. So on this particular slide, you can see we have mixed use.

[03:00:58] And then these can all be residential buildings on either end with parking decks. We could do first floor retail with residential above. If you look at this, you can move these pieces that we have listed into anything.

[03:01:16] The thought was you'd want to try to keep your retail and mixed use all in one area. But how we frame it, we could conceivably move the pieces. What we were tasked with was trying to get more oomph and try to increase the number of units.

[03:01:37] This is what it looks like from the 3D model. So as you can see, we're taking the corner here, which I know throughout our entire process, Mr. Small was right on the money. This is the best corner of this project from Sudley Road.

[03:01:56] What we did is we tried to do that corner and emulate it on the other end. We decided to try to take the entire area along Portner and activate that as a park. That gives you a big park space. If we don't like the park space, we can easily go back to residential along Portner.

[03:02:17] We could look at single-family detached or towns along Portner, but the community's input was they wanted to see some park space other than just what I would call your retail plaza. We do have, is there a, is there a...

[03:02:37] You don't want to know if we're having Diane. No, you don't. Big stick. Give him the flag. You're twice as tall as Diane, so... The buildings in the back, again, we can look at those as mixed use.

[03:02:55] You could look at this building in the middle. You could look at that as one user, say theater, you know, like an Alamo theater. You can take the pieces and we can look at them in various ways. But what we tried to show you here, parking deck, full build out, if you will, not exceeding more than five stories.

[03:03:18] And this is what we got. I believe we all want to be sensitive along Portner Avenue because we have an existing residential neighborhood down that road. To that end, we've also limited any of our connections.

[03:03:33] We have really cut down on the through roads that would go and exit onto Portner. We did meet with Colonial Homes. Their HOA, of course, their number one concern was, are you dumping traffic on Portner next to our house?

[03:03:50] So we worked very hard. The linear park really provides that break, and we even had various iterations that would limit if we would even have access through our project to Portner at all. It's not necessary.

[03:04:07] I also think it's also very respectful of that neighborhood. I have worked the Christmas parade for many, many years. Portner is a busy road. It is a very busy road and with all the parking along Portner, speaking of your parking, it has already got its challenges with that cross traffic coming through.

[03:04:27] We don't need to add any more to Portner from this particular project, especially if this project is a destination or brings people from the outside area. What was really interesting is when we met with the community in November, we showed them the three different concepts and we asked for their feedback.

[03:04:49] and unanimously everybody voted on the bigger wow more units parking decks the full the full wow so clearly the heights were not as big a concern as they had originally been in the summer when we met with folks and maybe it's because they had more time to actually think about it and then seeing it in 3D and realizing what we're doing is we're putting the higher buildings along Mathis and then we're stepping it back so that as you get closer to the residential, you're not

[03:05:29] going from residential to the highest building on the shopping center property. It is stepping in this order. So I believe that the folks understood that and appreciated it and also realized if you want to maximize this site we are going to have to go higher and truly maximizing it with parking decks will get you more units potentially more retail and opportunities as well a few of the things that everybody did discuss at that meeting is they would love to see

[03:06:04] opportunities for affordable housing they would love to see opportunities for over 55 I believe given the opportunity, Commonwealth Senior Living and Patrick Small would turn this into a senior living over 55 community since they just redid the entire Annenberg Manor, if you will, or I'm sorry, old merchant, Kayton Merchant House.

[03:06:32] so those two items were probably top of mind for a lot of the feedback that we got from the citizens that came out again this is concept C but what we did is we took out the parking decks and excuse me one parking deck and as you can see that really does bring down the number of multifamily units that you can do so the more units you want on this site the more parking deck ish you're

[03:07:06] going to get. We tried to keep the commercial at about 40,000 square feet. We felt that that was a reasonable number given the fact that we took, we've had feedback from a number of the existing tenants at Mathis Avenue Shopping Center and we assumed if all the ones that want to be in the new development were to be there, we would need 40,000. The other reason, so the reason we worked a little bit on the alternative just to add a little bit of color to it is because structured parking is expensive. So depending on the timelines that the community is expecting,

[03:07:42] council is expecting for redevelopment, two parking structures at current market costs is going to make redevelopment of the site that much longer. So we wanted to have roadside play a little bit with the corner site, the very valuable site in some of the conversations we've had with Commonwealth about, you know, does it make sense to try to push two decks or one deck?

[03:08:02] Again, big picture, as Dean said, mix and match is where we're going with the master plan overall. There's going to be a developer that comes in, in theory. They're going to come back to council and say, this is what works. This is what doesn't work. We can give you redevelopment in five years.

[03:08:18] We can give you redevelopment in 20 years if you insist on more structured parking. It's just we're working on flexibility and trying to have some market reality. We don't want to have a repeat. If you go all the way back to 2002, 2003, the original sector plan for the densities were so high, what council adopted back then, that plan sat on the shelf for the last 25 years.

[03:08:41] We're trying to balance vision with some economics as we move forward. And to Matt's point, if I were to put my developer hat on now and look at this through my developer lens, this would be the corner that I believe would be the first to want to be developed.

[03:09:02] highest profile, best visibility. And quite frankly, with a project like this, you're going to want to start on one end or the other and work your way through. So I believe this would be probably the most favored. And then as that gets developed, and let's just assume it's somebody like a Buchanan at the landings where they realize they're going to develop all of it infrastructure-wise, but they've got a user, let's call them Commonwealth, for the first section, and then they find a user to potentially do residential out of the gate along the back.

[03:09:41] Because as we all know, residential money gets you money quicker, so that the minute you have that residential up, you're getting money back in your coffers to offset your infrastructure. So I believe this will actually end up getting developed in sections. This section would have to go as one because of the plot if we were to have a plaza but again all these pieces you can move them around what we have to figure out as or as council sees fit in the future what should be

[03:10:15] the main focal point here should it be residential should it have some mix of retail in it um clearly the office market is not of interest um unless we had one big user that came out of the gate and said, we'll take this nice big corner and we're going to pay you market rate office, that would be fantastic. But the reality is, is the feedback is everybody's comfortable with a mix, what that mix looks like. I think this is a great starting point for conversations,

[03:10:52] but clearly in the next four or five years, the market can change again. And we may be looking at needing more affordable housing and less retail. But at least you have options and something to start looking at to work with. To give you some idea of the scale of the plaza that we're showing on this plan, there is the Harris Pavilion. So again, it would be a major focal point in the middle, a gathering area, not just for the folks that are visiting the center, but the folks that

[03:11:27] live there and that's it in a three-dimensional view if you will so at this point we're looking for any additional feedback or if it or if we could just say we've put a pin in it then what we'll do is let roadside go ahead and finish up their work and put the final draft study back together they would like to do their final presentation would probably do a joint

[03:11:58] city / EDA if necessary depending on if there's a lot of changes or none at this point so I'm happy to answer any questions so first of all I understand about the parking deck so has any consideration been given to podium parking you know so these residential structures being on podium parking on

[03:12:33] you know, the first level and then the residential on top to help, A, reduce some of that surface parking? Of course, that could be looked at. It is not uncommon to have your first level podium parking with your four stories of residential above. In these cases, we were activating, we wanted to see what it would take to maximize the density so that we were using all of the space available in the residential buildings to get you the higher numbers, and the parking

[03:13:12] decks would then be fully used. But yes, that is definitely something that can be looked at. To me, that's just another option. Oh, yeah. A big piece of the master plan, sorry, just to lock down, you know, the general land bay concept, the concept of where the open spaces go.

[03:13:29] So when we communicate back to developers, there's certain pieces we want to have locked down before we say, hey, council, we have someone we think you should consider. I think a lot of the building heights, podium, parking, that's the stuff that the developer is going to say we can do X, Y, and Z. But we want to have the grid locked down, the transition to the neighborhood locked down.

[03:13:48] I don't want to go to council and say, well, they just blew up all this work and they're going to come in with something that just doesn't make sense and they want to pitch that to you. So that's a big piece from the staff's perspective is getting the key pieces locked down and then you'll see a lot of flexibility on the podium.

[03:14:06] We're going back to the hybrid slide, please. Concept C hybrid, yes. What I liked about Concept C was the other thing beside the wow factor.

[03:14:22] I talked about creating neighborhoods within this. We're creating a new place, but within there, how people are going to live in the future in ways that we create a way that encourages interacting here.

[03:14:40] And so on the far left, we used to have, in Concept C, on the far left, it was, the buildings were basically in a C. Follow me so far, Denise? Mm-hmm. Okay. So now, in the hybrid, because of the surface, parking, so forth, we've gotten rid of, we now have a lopsided L, and we have a unit that's in, like, section over in the back there as residential. And I'm wondering, well, not wondering, I'm thinking that that

[03:15:17] should be moved over to the lopsided L to create, again, going back to the idea that we're trying to get people to interact and not just come in to the row of houses and maybe talk to your neighbor on one side or the other, but really trying to get people to interact a little bit more along the way here so moving that over and whatever parking you give up by moving that that piece over you you recover where the piece in the back there is getting moved

[03:15:57] moved from so to speak here and and to explain in making this hybrid as you can see we did cut off access to portner all together on this particular hybrid uh this park is intended to serve not just this neighborhood but be a public park and that is why we have actual parking available at the park we're showing it with parking we don't have to provide parking but we're showing it with parking and like matt mentioned we can shift pieces that that is not the issue we we could

[03:16:30] definitely design this council member osina with with that kind of idea in mind so let me let me stop them so I don't run into what happened before. What is being asked of us on council right now? What are we being asked to do on this? Because if you're asking me do I like what I see right now, I say no. If you're just saying I'm sharing this with you and something else happens that does not involve anybody from city council offering any thoughts along the way, I need to

[03:17:09] know that capital part as well so I zip it for a moment so I know what what it is I have to defer the staff as to what do you want we're looking at moving forward with concept C but with some of the realities of the market we wanted we want roadside to design the final master plan with some flexibility understanding that if you council wants to go ahead and just have structured parking or service parking we can put that into the plan but we we did this exercise again to show you that you're going to get developers that come in with variations on concept c so this is we want again when you mess with this corner it picks up a lot more surface

[03:17:49] parking and you kind of picked up on we had that conversation with roadside a c would be the c would be nice here but you run into a parking issue so we need to build into the master plan we have not worked out with roadside but i didn't want to drop it on council without having this discussion there if you want to move it along faster you're going to need some flexibility in that concept C. I don't know what that looks like. I can't tell you what a developer is going to walk in the door with or multiple developers but the conversation with council you can say we're just going to go ahead with concept C but you need to have an understanding that is going to draw out

[03:18:27] the redevelopment of this, likely draw out the redevelopment of this project so we'd like to build some flexibility in the concept C to consider the mix and match I think that's a fair I think that's a fair statement and like I said one of the things we kind of need to start focusing on is what is the pressure point is it more units or retail what what is the end goal and I know that goal will shift over time but today we're trying to kind of put together a final study so that we can

[03:19:05] get it start looking at it with the development community to start getting some input and interest so that's like you do want input absolutely from absolutely right so like your comment about getting more to see that's something we can work into the final concept not those are the kinds of questions yes so this is concept feedback as well in working with Father Ramon at the Don Bosco Center he works with a bunch of students in our community and

[03:19:45] And one of them is working on a project to see where park space is in relation to residential and trying to make park space within a mile and a half of all residential.

[03:20:01] So they're thinking a lot about parks. I don't have any numbers of where this is compared to other places. But my point is when they saw this concept C, they said from a youth user perspective, this park is unsafe because it's right along Sudley Road, which is one of our main corridors.

[03:20:24] Balls kicked that way, kicked over even a fence you could put. You've got kids that are on the corner of Sudley and Portner. So their recommendation, which I'm going to deviate from, was to put a park right in the middle of everything. And I was like, that's probably not going to be economically feasible.

[03:20:41] But what I do think is economically feasible and safer would be to switch that park space next to O'Reilly in that back corner. And what I think that would do is also support the existing residential behind it and then create a more closed-in park space.

[03:21:00] you know if you were to flip this picture per se and then like Tom is saying move that residential closer to the other residential I think you both create neighborhoods you have a good size and safe park I think it's a decent balance of green space with you know the other development I think from what I can tell I think council would love to have two parking decks in this but I don't know that it feasible so for me like moving forward would be besides flipping that park would be to perhaps present or to have these two options in our pocket like the

[03:21:38] one that has two parking decks and then the one that has these pieces and only shows one parking deck and like if that is you know what we're you know we're striving for that too but if that's not gonna be realistic then having this as a a as a more realistic second option um but i would like to also add in switching the park to that side i think it would also be really great to get a really cool wow worthy mural on o'reilly like right up against that park i'm imagining i think could really like add some flavor and um

[03:22:14] some wild impact to that and bring the two communities together and bring the two communities together like you know that really that that would i think make that park space safer and just more um for both of the communities and as i mentioned the pieces are interchangeable yeah so we could conceivably look at that what does that mean for a long partner it could be townhomes it could be multi-family it could be a two-story multi-family those are the things we can definitely look at is that park drop it next to O'Reilly's you won't lose all of your

[03:22:52] residential up front but I like the way you're you're thinking in terms of okay if that becomes one of our we need to have this which it sounds like everybody likes some of this to be park space and you know just to think about what's the safest way to do that. Thank you.

[03:23:13] Madam Mayor, you know, I love it. I really wasn't sure if we were being asked, you know, to provide, you know, feedback. But yes, I would like to see as many students as possible for me, not only 50 plus, but also accessible for the staff, you know, workforce is also important. And I know that's, you know, within the numbers, or maybe in the future.

[03:23:44] I do believe that the park will be great. I don't know if I want to call the linear park, but, you know, I see it, you know, I think it's great. But we are going to have the masses, you know, different masses that will, you know, it will enhance things already.

[03:24:04] So, other than the bus work, I'm not sure if we, you know, to call it a park. But I appreciate it. I believe for me, like my experience before moving to the city, that is a gateway and I don't know if as a resident I would be more attractive to live in that area on the other side.

[03:24:23] I think if you are a business, you want to be in the corner, you want to have easy access with a lot of more visibility. And I do believe the plaza will be a while. My concern, you know, right there on the L or the something else, is that that could be more business.

[03:24:47] But I think the concepts are great. It's just moving pieces. I do concern, you know, if the residential is built first and there is no class motivation to build the plaza and then you're gonna have the residents living there and no amenities closed, which, you know, I know we'll get to that later, but yes, I would love to see the park move to a different location.

[03:25:21] To me, I would like, two things that I have thought about it, but one, it will be more residential in the top part, but that will be too far from what you have, and then the business and the front, or have more residential than the other side.

[03:25:37] To me, I believe, because it's high density or thicker, you'll be able to have more residential units. For me, the quantity or the number of units is very important.

[03:26:01] First off, I start with realizing all this is conceptual and is intended as guidance for a future developer, not fully written, this is what shall be built.

[03:26:22] When I said that, a couple of things, I'll disagree with Ashley about the park, and I appreciate the feedback. I think if you put the park over by O'Reilly's, you're essentially hiding it.

[03:26:39] And it is less accessible to the broader community. And I appreciate the concerns that were expressed. And I think that could be engineered so that we don't have bubbles bouncing in the subject or everything.

[03:26:59] The other thing I would push back on a little bit is, I don't see this as a very much a commercial entity going forward i don't think it's going to be viable as commercial uh it's not going to kill running a business and the one thing you do have is a degree of visibility in the street that's going to be gone so you're going to be most of your commercial is going to be

[03:27:31] buried within the project somewhere coupling that with rents that are going to be necessary by new construction pricing there is a darn few existing tenants that will be able to afford 35-40 dollars and just i the plaza was built in a timely place where it was the place in the masses wonderful opportunity that's no longer going to be the case it's not a destiny

[03:28:07] this will not be a destination today i mean this ends up being primarily a residential you know eighty percent ninety percent presidential hopefully you have some restaurants and some amenities but that's not going to drive the bus here uh so if you're doing that i would actually propose i would show this with both parking decks and have a developer come back to me and say why he can't do it or what he would need from the city to be able to do the two parking decks because

[03:28:43] this was you know clearly seen without the parking decks you left in existence any any meaningful and essentially turn this into just a large town home development. I don't think that's what anyone really envisions here.

[03:29:02] So that would be my feedback. Again, realizing this is a 30,000-foot overview for five to ten years from now when someone shows up and says, hey, I'm going to build some houses.

[03:29:21] The other piece, though, I would put in this is a really effective learning from Cannon Branch and other developments. We got to be really explicit in the caveat. Yes, you start with residential, but you build everything at the same time. I'm sorry. I'm not going down this road again. If you can't do that, do that. Move on, because otherwise it'll never happen.

[03:29:47] And to your point, Council Member Wolf, we were really looking primarily at retail fronting along Mathis and flanking whatever central plaza or gathering space, very condensed area so that conceivably the whole rest of the project, and that retail could be first floor.

[03:30:11] Oh, no, I prefer retail, but again, you're relying on deck parking. Correct. That is the driving factor here if you want to maximize density. Excellent. Thank you. I really like the linear park.

[03:30:28] I like that that's encouraging the walkability, connecting the community behind it. I would like to see more heads to homeownership in this site.

[03:30:45] You did have some pound homes, and I guess you could have condos in the residential or two-over-twos or pingbacks whatever they call them um i just want to make sure that we are going to add residential we are giving options to our residents for ownership as well because we just have more apartments i you know there's not a lot of opportunities for them to go anywhere from there that you know um the park trying to get the scale of that i know you share like the harris pavilion

[03:31:23] so I'm assuming that site is probably the size of the Harris Pavilion site. The park on the corner is actually larger than the Harris Pavilion site. It's about twice that size. It's huge. So maybe we could add some townhounds over there as well.

[03:31:40] I don't know. Which we did show in an earlier version where we did have towns on that corner. Park space as well. Because we do have Attenborough Manor like a half a block away. As much as I want more park space, you know, we do have a big park right down there.

[03:32:00] I also, if you go back to the sea, if we do something with the residential where it's condo or condo, this is, of course, up to the developer, like maybe have their facing the linear park, like the entrances and the parking back, just to have a nicer, you know, just to see it.

[03:32:25] I like the two parking decks, personally. I think we're going to need them. You know, as we move forward, there's that deck there on the corner. That seems like it would be really important as we are doing more events at Attenberg as well. You know, if we can have this public, you know, who knows what would happen.

[03:32:43] I'd like to see more public parking in there as well. And then the second one could be more for just the residents. I just would like to see more home ownership options. But is the market, you know, as Mark is saying, you just have to say, this is really what we want so we can get it move in the park sorry move in the park like Ashley said I'm not opposed to that idea I I think you don't know it's there you know I mean it was sort of the neighborhood that it's in and then

[03:33:21] maybe you do some more with that corner there with Thank you, Madam Mayor, looking at the homeownership, I believe it's over 70.2 rates of homeownership.

[03:33:39] I do want to ask to the community vitality what we see with me. If I believe part of the deficit, it's more about apartments than homeownership. home monitoring. I do want our seniors and our new homeowners to have like that, what do they call it, like a step closer to ownership. So like if you were to own a condo, it's your first step to get closer to move on in a home.

[03:34:06] Yeah, it started, yeah. So those are, but to me, those are things that are important to me because of serving the community. But I'm looking into the community, probably I think, well, what was the uh the main need when you look at the overall efficiency yeah i mean in general the city has a home ownership rate that exceeds both the state and national average um so that's that's good that's about 72 but in multi-family and the big renters in the city in in the greater of a necessary are our cost burden when we look at what's called cost burden paying more than 30

[03:34:45] of your income it's the rental side that is struggling much more than the home ownership side. We can include, and our housing board is looking at addressing home ownership through all the tools as they kind of develop the path forward, but right now, the market is struggling on the rental side and the cost burden on the rental side, so that's why you're seeing a lot of initial emphasis, not just Manassas, but region-wide on looking at the multifamily product. It's also what the market is building right now, so. Well, and to your point, Councilwoman, what we heard from

[03:35:17] the citizens is we need more housing and whether that comes in the form of apartments, condos, townhouses, single-family detached. Clearly, if you want dents, you're going to have condos and apartments made available. And obviously, in any discussion with any developer, the city can have their terms and conditions on it, but the market is going to dictate whether you have a for sale product or for rent product one of the things I heard

[03:35:53] several times in our community meetings that I absolutely resonated with is we did not have enough young people in the room we did not have a lot of 25 or 26 year old people in the room giving us feedback and they're actually the ones that are probably gonna be more impacted or benefit from whatever does happen here in the future but what I can say I hear a lot throughout my industry is I'd like my son or daughter to be able to move it move back to town and be able to afford to live somewhere and that only happens with affordable

[03:36:30] product a few things to keep in mind when you start talking about attainable housing a lot of those programs won't share parking decks they can't again if it were condo they're not going to share their parking deck so these are the kind of things if you're thinking that you know we want to have some sort of reciprocal use then that becomes a different discussion with a developer it could become a private public partnership of some sort but just keep

[03:37:09] in mind your attainable housing programs can become very you know the rules are the rules are the rules the developer does not get to do anything but live by what they're told we show the elevations we have to build it the way we show it so a few things i think that will be very important here is some sort of not only vision but design and style so that we have something that is done consistently across the board unless you want a patchwork and and you can put that into place but just to give you the overall and i appreciate the feedback and

[03:37:46] And clearly those are things that everybody sees something differently, so. I do believe that even if you put it like this, I think it's still when the developer comes around they're going to continue to push for higher density.

[03:38:08] So that's why I like the target or the space and, you know, and I think it will be better to just consider having full growth. I think I'd be comfortable with, you know, with going forward with them, because I think there will be changes, and they will continue, they will, when they come, they will push for hires, and those are important.

[03:38:31] Thank you. - Thank you, Mr. Smith. - Yeah, let's read that. We're much impressed with concepts. See, typically the flexibility part is supervised. I, very much like the thought processes, they're not these difficult examples, Councilman, Huston, and Councilman Wolfgate.

[03:38:52] Those thought processes of good possibilities with the flexibility that's available come back with some possibilities within that. I mean, the part, yes, where should we fence how to get best places.

[03:39:09] So I would recommend that we look at C with input on flexibility. At some point in our life as a city, we would have to come to grips with density in terms of density is there, density is this, and we're not going to expand and try to adjust density because we're only creating more density.

[03:39:34] So I don't know that I would let it be how my priority that concept that anything in the master's shopping center is going to be answered to our density problem. Therefore, we should have lots and lots of units, smaller apartments so we get 400 in there.

[03:39:54] I don't think we should. It should not be one of our objectives is to fully address our housing need. It's a beautiful space. it would do that and just make the whole strip house I'd like the multiplicity that we would lean into it and again I put this on the fact that flexibility and the mixture.

[03:40:20] I would throw out that in my mind it may be beneficial rather than focusing on visual to come up with a list of required items for the development, requested or desired,

[03:40:38] Basically required no more than three stories on any residentially facing building, no more than five stories on Mathis, whatever requirement you would want for either affordable housing or senior housing, the minimum square footage for a park, a requirement that there's a 30 foot buffer along the residential, a requirement that there's so many square footage of commercial, a requirement that there is a business I forget what you call the little area.

[03:41:17] Rather than focusing on pitch and kind of how everyone's saying, well, we want flexibility, I think it would be better for a developer to know what council is focused on, what you're willing to work with them on, and then that would allow developers the ability to look at it with their eyes rather than, and then include Concept C as this is, you know, our perfect, but however you can translate our required into campus like that it might it might allow us to better interact with the

[03:41:55] commercial the development community so are you proposing this be a topic for a work session what I would what I would hope for is if individually you know before a work session if y'all could develop what your must-haves would be what your wants would be and what your wishes would be yes sir I think that would be a discussion with the EDA, but probably a good thing for a joint meeting with the EDA so that you guys, ultimately it's the EDA that's going to be taking this to the development

[03:42:34] community. I have no problem sending you thoughts, but I do think we should regroup to discuss this. I don't want this just coming in and then I look at the list later and I say, you know, suggested this or you know how did this get goes on to them so I understand you want to move the process along in such a way that's organized and so forth and that would give cogent incisive

[03:43:10] directions of the EDA into the film community that I am wearing my green hat and I am processing and therefore I thought you were suggesting a process that might as good as those which what we can work on is the EDA is putting together what we've heard as the

[03:43:45] wish lists that incorporate not only what we've heard you talk about but the the points from the citizens as well that I think are all kind of integrated here it's just we can put them together and with my developer hat on making sure that we're including the things that we know that the parking decks for instance the park so we're happy to work on that and work with mr. Burke to get something back to you

[03:44:28] no that's fine we currently we still have about 70% of the center actually is that the same tenants have been there we do have two or three tenants that have renewed up to three years our our directive from City Council has been and continues to be that we will not have any leases extended past December of 2030 there are several that do extend past that naturally Rappaport is working on the number one complaint that we heard about where the trash corrals we

[03:45:03] are going to get reduce the number and have all the students use the same trash service probably with the exception of fiesta so we're continuing to try to keep the parking lot in good stead we have the police department making regular patrols we are looking at putting additional lighting and cameras as we

[03:45:26] get pricing so so far so good we have an operating report that we get monthly that I'll be happy to make sure that you get a copy of and we'll show you what the revenue is coming in here today yes ma'am it is in our agenda package we - Yeah, there's actually an executive summary

[03:46:06] on the first page of the operating report that also gives you the highlights of any lease activity as well. - Just a comment. - Thank you. Thank you for all the work. I know that you have, both of you have been on.

[03:46:22] You know, I'm, you know, please take my these years, you know, appreciation to everybody in the team. I, you know, I think we have come a long way and, you know, If you're listening to the public itself and everybody here, you know, it's very important.

[03:46:43] Well, thank you. We have a very good team. Mr. Nail is staying on the vice chair. Yes, Mr. Nail is staying on the vice chair. You're not getting rid of me. I'm also serving on the housing advisory committee, so you'll see me in that capacity next.

[03:46:59] Clearly, I like you guys. Thank you. Who would like this? I do want to make sure that we are clear on what the expectations are from the council as far as where we are in the timeline for next steps.

[03:47:29] We've got the roadside map. We should probably talk about that a little bit. I also want to know, just to make sure that we're clear, is the council going to provide us through Mr. Burke a list of these things we will then compound with our list then as we've said we would have a joint session to further discuss those things and then bring roadside into that to continue Matt just trying to figure what's next and also how much time 30, 60, 90 or where are we?

[03:48:04] Yeah, Denise is going to put together a list of not only what's been discussed here, but also what's been collected around the community.

[03:48:20] And I'll just remind the council, roadside contract is not open-ended so we do need to bring this piece to inclusion so yeah so with the with what council member hudson suggested the city manager janees and i will come back and we will come back to you kind of with the beginnings of the final master plan but it's going to have concept c in the lead it's going to have again the things that we've talked about included in

[03:48:58] council media can add it to track and we'll bring it to a conclusion this concept and then that'll be what we talk to the development community about what do we absolutely have to have um and then have to count on our wolf point let the developers tell us why they can't do it or where they need the wiggle

[03:49:24] all right this is something where i'd like council direction to move forward this document is the master plan as proposed by buchanan so we've had a lot of conversations in the context of the second hotel and the concept and the conversations about the csc site um that we've had three community meetings to date with the neighborhood and of course we've answered a lot of questions and your what was your january 26 packet we've provided all of the information that we've gone back and forth with the community on in the neighborhood and answered a lot of

[03:50:02] questions on the good housing proposal that's not what we're here about tonight the thing that we We realized in multiple conversations with the landing at Cannon Branch, there are certain frustrations in this neighborhood that we cannot solve for, and the biggest one is, and Council Member Wolfe just hinted at this, the phasing of this site.

[03:50:19] We all know our frustrations with the brewery site. We all know what happened there. So the challenge, as we've talked to Cannon Branch, was how do we restart this development? So we went back to Buchanan, Buchanan's got a little more than a year left on their master development agreement.

[03:50:34] how can we get commercial out here and what can we do with the available density because rooftops in theory generate commercial so remember 500 units overall it's been master plan like that for more than a decade big portion of that is developed good housing is proposing 100 that leaves you to 15 give or take we said okay here's your challenge Buchanan partners we want commercial the neighborhood wants more green space keep that in mind how do we restart the master plan so if you think about the existing master plan, this is a square. Basically, it has all two,

[03:51:12] more than that, 200 units concentrated at the corner. Buchanan said, what if we shift some of the residential density away from there, spread it out a little bit, less concentrated? We said, okay, does that get us commercial? We've gone back and forth on that. And then the master plan, I think this didn't come across in the last neighborhood meeting, master plan actually doesn't include the concept of a another park area in it so he went back to Buchanan and said we would like to see a community park both for this side of the development but also you know add additional green space that the entire neighborhood could use so going back and forth

[03:51:48] this is the master plan that Buchanan has drafted the idea here in orange is your phase two so phase one is obviously true and the 20k building that's all existed phase two is the apartments the the leaving multifamily at the corner and then shifting multifamily but also and most critical is getting those next pieces in place the commercial the trail and the waterfront part so that's the concept before you the ask of the staff is this requires a proper amendment requires us to actually open up the underlying zoning that has to be initiated by the three owners of the

[03:52:26] site so that's the city the accountant partners and actually the true hotel there's three land donors aren't there currently. My request is that we move forward with initiating the proper amendment. In other words, letting the city manager sign off on the zoning application at this point. It will go through the full public hearing and rezoning process. It'll go through staff review.

[03:52:45] It will go through the planning commission, public hearing. It'll go through council public hearing like any typical rezoning. But because you're a landowner, I don't just sign a rezoning application without having an initial discussion. But again, my message to the neighborhood is we've heard your frustrations with the commercial we've heard your frustrations with needing more green space this is our attempt to solve that and move forward and hopefully get things moving out there um i think that unless i'm missing something patrick i think that covers our our discussion for today we've been working very hard with the neighborhood to try to get this moving forward

[03:53:20] again thank you um just a thought again on the rendering um if you're coming from 28 on godwin I mean, we've got a lot of entrances into this parcel. Just having two entrances before you get to Godwin isn't, I mean, it just seems like an opportunity for more backup to have so many entrances into this parcel.

[03:53:46] They're both getting right in and right out at this point. I mean, I know, but you can still. They shouldn't, I mean, from a traffic perspective, I don't think you, because it's too land right, I don't think you're going to have a significant impact. We can, that's been master planned for the entire duration. I don't see there being an issue, but it's something we'll keep an eye on.

[03:54:04] There really isn't a lot of opportunity to add turn lanes, which would, and we could add some more right, but left, you're not going to get that kind of backup. At two lanes, there is decent capacity at Godwin. Another thought, I know more units is a goal, but I just want to, I know Matt and I have spoken about this, but I guess I wonder how much more we can do before we need another high school.

[03:54:31] And I just think that we need to always be kind of having that in the back of our mind that we just have one high school. I'll just give you that big, and this is another thing that we have tried to, we don't do a good job of getting across.

[03:54:48] Because this is a master plan since 2000 and what year, Patrick? 2015, when the schools do their growth projections, when we do facility planning with the schools, they're actually working off of this master plan. So 500 units, which is a significant decrease from the previous master plan, has always been the number.

[03:55:05] So those 500 units go into our water and sewer calculations, our road designs, our school capacity, our facility capacity. High school, we are watching high school growth. All schools at all grade levels currently have capacity, a lot of capacity.

[03:55:22] What you have invested in at Dean's school on the elementary school provides significant new elementary school capacity. So we are in good shape on the numbers side from a capacity of your existing school facility, especially when Dean comes online. It's always something we absolutely have to keep an eye on and work with the schools.

[03:55:39] The schools, frankly, need to develop a new capital plan at some point because we're working off of one that's starting to age. But there is, at this point, capacity, and we do work very closely when they do their enrollment projections to give them not just this. So you go back to the previous presentation, we have told them to plan for a lot more density along MAPIS, and that's built in theory into their enrollment capacity.

[03:56:01] Yeah, we spend a lot of time on the back end and working through COG and some of our other organizations feeding all of our best guesses into a lot of different modeling. So to your point about the enrollment, sorry, it comes to me, the school enrollment has been very steady throughout, you know, even at the high school, you know, it goes up a little, it goes down, but if you do like a 10-year thing, it's amazing, you would think.

[03:56:37] I understand, and I understand why the public will say, don't ring Ashbury, but my school is going to be crowded, but the enrollment has been very, very steady along the way. So, Matt, the orange, that's orange, correct?

[03:56:57] Correct. All right. So down by the retention pond there, two buildings, there's a left and a right. Yeah. The one on the right is a commercial building, which has not been built.

[03:57:14] Correct. And the one on the left is the proposed apartment. Correct. And I see all these squiggly lines and so forth. Did that suggest to me that there's an idea of what that's going to look like already, or was that just those lines that Porter is a placeholder of something?

[03:57:35] We're going to go with a placeholder, and then remember, in your existing rezoning, you have an additional design control, the way you've set this neighborhood up. So you see the design. You've given yourself the power of architectural control, which we don't have yet to share with you. But they have some concept.

[03:57:51] We haven't seen those elevations. They'll be part of what you see as we move forward. standard rezoning process so design is going to be part of that process all right so i i can ignore the the the outline because that really is not based on anything other than a placeholder based on based on the unit count what the design looks like if you have feedback whether it's now or before we get through the process but i want council to understand the treated kind of like your standard rezone if we move forward so let the staff and then the planning commission do their thing and work in design of course if you see something you don't like let me know

[03:58:26] the reason behind all of this goes back to what I was talking about over at Mathis Avenue is I look at the landings at Cannon Branch and I basically see me a subdivision yeah very impersonal subdivision having walked in all that sort of stuff over time and what have you and here's our chance I again not now focused on livability not just affordability livability and how do I get

[03:58:59] people wherever they live to to interact and how can we not keep doing the same old personal stuff and so that would be that's why I asked and with the suggestion that are there ways to create I know there ways I would like to see ways to design that so encourages some some whatever I call it livability and You know, I could draw something, but I'm not the one going to be building it either.

[03:59:30] So that's all I wanted to know. And then obviously the park area that's not in the current plan has been a long-term discussion with us in Buchanan about doing something more along the water. The trail is nice and the trail will get used, but also adding significant new open space into the development.

[03:59:49] So piecing those two together to increase livability, and then you, in theory, have commercial on the other side of that. So this was a design proposed by Buchanan Parkers. Is that correct? This is up with your city input. Significant staff input, yeah.

[04:00:04] The goal being here is that it's not just apartments. Remember, here's the big picture. It's not just apartments. We will not be taking something forward to you that doesn't include as part of, if you move the density, we want the green space. We want significant progress on the commercial side.

[04:00:20] We're going to need them to move forward on some of the road and parking infrastructure. We need to get this moving. And again, this is their best proposal to get the commercial moving. Patrick wants to. The only thing that really is significantly changing on here is moving those 100 units over to that other thing.

[04:00:42] Barnett has pointed out, the whole thing is approved for 225 units additionally. Good housing only wants 100. All 225 were programmed on the corner where good housing is proposing.

[04:00:57] Do you have 125 units to put somewhere or nowhere? What we in Buchanan are suggesting is that you take those 100 units and put them over where the brewery was previously planned on a property that Buchanan already owns.

[04:01:13] But fundamentally, none of the rest of this really changes. You still have retail along the waterfront. You still have some office space. You have potential future parking decks. So that purple, that phase three, still preserves the balance of what was needed.

[04:01:28] again the proper amendment is only necessitated by moving those apartments originally approved this development locked them into that hardcore park easiest thing to build out of those three the commercial building the park and the apartments when i say easiest meaning first

[04:02:00] so your hotel your second hotel yeah um is in we finished second review of the site plans who are waiting on their final changes to come back they could be closing within the next few months on that and under construction in the spring good housing you're familiar with their plan you'll hear more about it when we conclude the rezoning process or the sale process rather but they're looking at a groundbreaking spring of 27 somewhere thereabouts so those pieces assuming you approve

[04:02:39] good housing are kind of locked in and moving forward. To go through the rezoning process could be a six-month engagement with Buchanan. They would then go through the site planning process, so you're probably 12 months to 18 months away from seeing the apartments come online.

[04:03:00] Along with the apartments, we want the trail built. Buchanan's agreed to do that, so not just the piece along their frontage which is what they would normally be required to do but taking it from where the overpass is on the far side of the project on the left all the way along the waterfront and bringing it up and tying it through phase three along the cemetery back into godly so they will build that entire section of trail they have also now agreed to do that little park in the middle which would be you can picture in your mind's eye the buildings out there now with the

[04:03:37] concrete patio in front of it. That park would be roughly next to and in front of that concrete area. So in between the apartments, as you can see, and what will be a second building in front of what I'm calling the chamber building now, a second 10,000 square foot building. So if you can't agree to do the trail, the parklet, and we are leaning on them to do the second 10,000 square foot building and you know if we can get a tenant or find a third party developer to do that while we're doing the process and we'll just proceed with that. The proper amendment locks down

[04:04:17] the park and the trail. One thing you will absolutely see in the final document it will be that no park, no apartments. They're going to be tied by the rezoning document. This was always sort of envisioned to be not necessarily a park and open space kind of community gathering place but a place where you would go, where I and my family in Wellington might drive or take Winter's Branch Trail over here.

[04:04:46] And one of those buildings along the waterfront might be an ice cream store with, you know, a patio in front of it and landscaping and walkability and a sort of public kind of meeting and gathering place around commercial, not necessarily around parks, So an activity center, if you were, or so than a park.

[04:05:07] But the park allows for some programming out there. You can do small events with musical performances that would, you know, be something that would appeal to the residents across the street as well as the residents internally.

[04:05:24] Not trying to compete with Harris Pavilion. It's still your gem, but somewhere supplemental. And not trying to compete with that monstrosity across the streets. - The parcel down there that he wants to put, their apartments, right, so why isn't that attractive?

[04:05:55] Why isn't commercial attracted to that site? I mean, what were the problems there? - That's you, Mike. - What we have failed to establish out here a sense of place and that sense of place is what would appeal to the mom-and-pop type retail restaurant shops that we've always envisioned out here so you know

[04:06:33] we had a very heated meeting Steve and Matt and I with Buchanan the purple area over there on Godwin where they basically came in and pushed for the opportunity to do a commercial building right up there on godwin we said okay what might that look like and they said well we think we can fill that overnight great with what starbucks bank fast food you know appealing to the traffic that's going along godwin we looked at them and said no that's not what the community envisioned for this development so lacking the visibility of god

[04:07:12] lacking a desire to put your typical anywhere usa retail and fast food in this project you've got to build a place that people want to go to you do that partially or could have done that previously by installing the fountains in the lake which would have given you appeal that's been held up by some dredging projects that are pending for the lake as well and you could have done it by building the trail around the lake as we talked about in years previously which also has some

[04:07:47] challenges not the least of which is cost so absent that bringing these people in here getting that density starting the sense of place the good housing project two hotels the commercial building and the apartments i'm hopeful i can't promise you i'd love to i believe that that will trigger the sense of place and the development that we haven't been able to take so what's the height requirement or maximum that he could do there well the apartments yeah they're proposing four story

[04:08:22] right now it's 120 units so it's roughly the well it's the same number of units roughly that good housing is doing um journal messenger downtown's 95 units um so think of it in sort of the context of what you have around again remember beginning what the request tonight is starting the rezoning process all these things get fleshed out just like any typical rezoning but right now we're talking about a four-story why don't we say mixed use have a commercial on the bottom floor

[04:08:54] or we could have like plaza there some small restaurants for that site be opposed to that But that's a great piece. The problem is you run into a parking garage.

[04:09:16] And at one point you propose that with mixed use of our board, put it with a construction parking lot. There's no reason we can't have the conversation again and take a look at what that might look like or even build flexibility into the development agreement. I would encourage you.

[04:09:32] I mean, yes, we're also part of the development process, but this is counsel as you put your land use hats on the approval of a proper amendment so yeah there's some there's some flexibility we can build into the document and canon can put a big few space in there and we can get it leased up but it won't sit empty and we will certainly explore that and give you that as we move forward in the process and the purple future development that means it's up in the air if it would be commercial residential no commercial there's no there's no proposal at this point to lift the 500 cap to add anything more than has already been approved out there we literally are just shifting again

[04:10:10] the concentrated density at the corner and splitting it into two i actually think there's something to be said first and we've seen better results from doing smaller multi-family projects splitting it into two buildings i think you're going to get a little more activity actually across the entire site if you think about the original concept of having everything at that corner this is actually going to give you a little more vitality most likely just by having two two smaller buildings because if he's interested in the residential and then you have you know mixed use with the bottom commercial it might attract businesses how big is the

[04:10:48] park when you're thinking scale I just don't know if I have it slide up they have they've done some concept planning it's I don't have the dimension

[04:11:08] give me yeah I have to get you to mention we're early in the process again that we're trying to keep it going at this point and try to answer some of those really the concerns from bring forth the rezoning to the staff planning Commission and ultimately the City Council.

[04:11:42] I'm looking forward with some flexibility. I do like how he's feeling . But yes, I'm looking forward. But I do want to be mindful in the process of the purpose, which is the future development.

[04:12:05] There is no restrictions on what that could be. That would be my-- As we go through the process, you know, that's not going to be limited. The only limitation we intend to keep unless council wants to go there, which I don't get the sense, is that we're not lifting the residential cap.

[04:12:22] So the way we write profits, the way we do zonings, is it's non-residential. If the mythical office building falls out of the sky, all the better. But the pad sites are there, and then the deal will expire, and then we will have pad sites ready to go for future uses, whether they're commercial, office, and anything non-residential under the sun that fits into your zoning.

[04:12:50] Got my headline? I think the match show is over. And there's Patrick's. Oh, I don't know what the bosses want. Do you want to go forward just to the old plan? There.

[04:13:13] Basically, what we wanted to do is just let you all know that the airport and airports are proceeding to commercial operations early next year to the first quarter. As part of that this year, we were able to obtain the FAA Part 139 inspection task, so that was the first step in making sure that Juan's crew is operating

[04:13:46] airport as a commercial facility. We've also started relocating some of the tie-downs that are in the area where the terminal will be constructed and operations will go. So in order to maintain the general aviation operations, we had to move some of the aircraft that were completed.

[04:14:14] Construction aviation was working through leases that would allow for additional use for grounds, additional rehabilitation to some of the taxiways that will facilitate continued commercial operations.

[04:14:43] Juan's crew is working with Chief Mills as far as there is a patient project of the commercial coming online.

[04:15:00] important to let y'all know that the city is working towards getting commercial operations through airports. One day you speak, I'm going to address it. Are there any other situations

[04:15:34] possible to try to get for the fire department? Is there any relationship with this? Yes and no. Chief Mills will get into that. Chief Mills is working towards getting all of his firefighters are airport ready. Unfortunately, that is translating into the continued overtime issues.

[04:15:58] we have so yes we are working with them uh chief keen has a couple of his staff working with them as far as how we will be able to and part of the the red operation cost that you saw in diane's bar graph we are looking to have to add an additional nine or two to meet the requirements for security of the terminal so

[04:16:34] yes sir there is close coordination both of the chiefs have their staff that are meeting regularly with juan and his crew as well as some of you they got up there it is coming together still a few things that need to happen we are hoping within the next month and a half to two months to have We had a ribbon cutting on the new ARC facility out at the airport.

[04:17:03] We had, we're relocating where the fire response crews are located to put them in a better location to respond. Now that we're going to commercial, there is specific FAA requirements as to how quickly we can respond to any location at the airport, so, for the other projects that's going to be.

[04:17:24] - I just had to say, Colin, to block the thing. That's happened to be asking a question. You know what, I was going to suggest that a break. I have to take an emergency NVTA meeting and this will take over when y'all come back from break in about five or ten minutes.

[04:17:45] So he'll be in charge. Oh, did you ask me that one? If we need to. You still can talk about the air convention. I thought we'd like to do that. Well, I think I've seen in the news, you know, about the ministry. And, you know, it was great, but as a council member, you know.

[04:18:10] Well, the airport commission, of course, had requested that the city consider changing the name. The Airport Commission did discuss it, and they are coming up with a couple of recommendations that we will be bringing to you all in March.

[04:18:31] So, it's not that we're trying to not include you, but we did not know until the Airport Commission had come up with their recommended name changes. It is something you said it would be coming to us.

[04:18:48] It is. The Air Force Commission made recommendations of the public setting that every board watched and was part of it. Related to that, it was on the agenda that we got, which is why I went to the meeting.

[04:19:07] I'm quite honest, because I saw it on the agenda being discussed. There was many things listed, and I wanted to know more about it. But yeah, you know, it would be like any other committee having a discussion, and some of it gets into the media, and we hear about it along the way.

[04:19:28] But there is a process, as you know, with our committees. They discuss things, empower them to do that. Just like utilities had a discussion about what Anna's going to be talking about tomorrow, about the rights here. So it didn't happen to get it in the news, but could have, you know, that discussion, like the Utility Commission, and, you know.

[04:19:53] Yeah. They didn't read the agenda. I wanted to say the reason why we didn't make it through all of us. And I don't understand, but, you know, I've seen some stuff, and that's why I read the minutes, and that's why we all do our own way to be involved.

[04:20:31] But the reason, you know, I love the info. The reason why I couldn't serve the info and the request is to come to my brother with that. Well, and it ultimately has to come to council and whether or not council wants to prove or disprove, it will be coming to you all.

[04:20:56] A general discussion, it won't go directly to a please vote. They have three options and they want to proceed. And now my last thing when it comes to that is this, like when we talk about the EDA, whether you are successful, or are infantile not being necessary, or we'll just, you know, here to ratify what is it.

[04:21:22] So that shows the other things that have happened before, that's why I'm saying, of course, when you think about the races, you come, I mean, you still, isn't this the beginning of 14 sessions that we will have come to our budget?

[04:21:40] I wanted to make sure that you know that I'm going to start meeting and things like that are important for us. Five minutes. You didn't get out.

[04:21:56] Yeah, I failed them. I got to go. Hey, Matthew. Matthew. When you finish there, can you come over here for a moment? All right, we're going to come over.

[04:22:12] I don't know what it means. It's like loaded. You know, I think it's ordering me around. It is. I'll probably go last because I'm going to mess it up. I don't know. Not at all. Good. Good to see you. Okay. Okay.

[04:22:31] Nice to meet you. I hope that helped you out. Okay. I hope that helped you out. I think we are way ahead of the end, right?

[04:22:46] Yeah, no, we're still ahead of the end. No, and I'm not, never, no, never. For sure, for sure. Oh, did I? Okay, here you go, Dr. Shep. All right, thank you. Thank you, thank you, Dr. Shep. So, hey, you got my text about that car that was back in the street?

[04:23:04] It's a number, but now we're... I thought they said, don't say it's... Okay, I know, I was, you know, at Georgetown South. at least two weeks ago or something like that back then i had a picture and i've been sitting there a whole week and i know it came out of those that's why i put my name on it that's where it came and eventually what i wanted to find out is the car finally moved neither i nor my husband saw what happened i haven't heard and i was curious to see was it because many years ago there was a car that had been parked on our street and stayed there for over a week and

[04:23:43] then finally we called it and what we found out was someone had test drive a car from a dealership had done some stuff and abandoned the car there and and i didn't know if this is some of it yeah and i would put that to you so that's why not everybody's out there just a little just for my I don't know. Not super urgent in what happened.

[04:24:10] It was packed in backwards. And the license plates were up to date, but the inspection sticker was not. And it was just like, it was the weirdest thing. Like, what's going on here? Maybe the plates didn't belong.

[04:24:28] That's all. If you happen to think about it. I'll see if I can get something. All right. I wasn't going to bug you and call you back. Did you see my text? No. I sent you a text. He filmed this part, and he talked about having some wine.

[04:24:45] It's going to be Tommy the Shark Theater. Ah, that's what I sent you. I said, I want you to pull the little puppets, okay? Anyway, I know you guys got to have a secret. That's right. Okay. Well, the thing is, it ain't too cheesy, right?

[04:25:01] Yeah, we had two calls for them to tell me it's going to snow. Apparently, it's one-on-one. Yeah, still snow, huh? Yeah. Now, have they had an opinion as to when and how much the ice?

[04:25:17] So right now they're saying that we're going to get snow first. We could end up with anywhere from 7 to 11 inches. And then tomorrow or Sunday afternoon, our heaviest is going to be from tomorrow night around 11 or 12 up through May the morning, maybe early afternoon Sunday.

[04:25:38] that it's going to turn to ice for the remainder. - I'm shaking my nose. - I'm shaking my nose, I'm shaking my nose. - I'm praying, but they said it could be in work of the floor. - Yeah, I'm just saying. - Now, what they're also trying to imagine in the morning, how far the warmer air comes up, it could be all sleet versus ice, which is more beneficial because it falls to the ground.

[04:26:04] - Yeah, okay. - Either way, we're getting something that's not snow. - Good, well, not good. but we'll deal with that. No, it's snow to begin with and then it ends with ice or sleep. Still the six days and then the sleep and then the seven go away.

[04:26:23] Seven go away. Yeah, I think they just came up with that on the way into work or something. In other words, they don't know until it happens. That's the best job in the world, man.

[04:26:41] Mother nature. That was one thing in Australia. They never had it right. It was super fun. I don't know where to put them after this.

[04:26:57] Well, I'll take them for a minute tomorrow. We'll pass for five minutes. Yeah. There you go. Let me do it. I thought y'all were taking the bear pet for the frowning. Well, I have a little second bar for you.

[04:27:15] How are you, Bailey? Good. How are you doing? Good. You're doing a lot of work. Yeah, it's a small spot. I'm going to put you in there. You guys, we're going to put overdrive, too, and we have one of our pieces of paper? We're putting fire department and overdrive.

[04:27:34] We're so well prepared, it doesn't phase us. It's just another day in the office.

[04:28:27] Oh, yeah.

[04:29:10] That's right. You should have said. Somebody do hold together. New sheriff. Yeah. I feel like E.W. Vineyard is at the Washington airport.

[04:29:31] I think it is one of them. That would be my chance. But I care about the airport. I'll kick it off for you there, Vice Mayor.

[04:29:59] Hear the snoring kick in.

[04:30:15] Alright, hand me that gavel because if there are three of us, we have a forum here. Shall we adjourn? Do I hear a motion? Make things happen here.

[04:30:33] You know what? All about the process. Yeah, you might want to. You're all about the process.

[04:30:49] You're all about the rules. I'm down to June, man. That's a close line. He just seemed a sad look on his face when all he had was a ginger ale. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Unordered. That's true. Right.

[04:31:10] You ain't gonna do it. Feel uncomfortable? Right. If you, as you go through and... Ginger and me doing this, it was real bad. Right. Generally, you'll find there is a similarity.

[04:31:26] Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I think so. I've heard of that before, but I haven't done it, so it was kind of neat. That's the standard size of it. Yeah. That's the one they gave me.

[04:31:42] That's the standard size of it. Yeah. I like it. The big dog. Oh, I'm just standard.

[04:32:12] Maybe it's the weather. I'm starting to. All right, we're going to, we're going to round out the general fund today with, uh, that's right, time to get your attention.

[04:32:51] We're going to round out the general fund discussions with the troublemakers. It's going to be public safety and health. You've heard the reason I say troublemakers. I think we're going to round it all out with everything you've heard, everything from the developments to what Diane talked about.

[04:33:07] Obviously, there are some challenges in the budget with public safety and health, but there's also going to be some opportunities there for you to make some decisions on the services you provide to your community. I'm going to hit a couple of highlights before Nicole starts off with social services.

[04:33:26] You've already heard about CSA, the Child Safety Act. That is one of our biggest concerns. I know you had some questions. Nicole will be able to hopefully answer some of those. We also know about some of the lack of funding coming through the pass-through there for social services.

[04:33:44] When Eddie gets up or Chief Mills gets up, he'll talk about some of the services. A couple of key things. I really think you need to try to latch on to when your fire department was built, it was built as a career staff supplemented by volunteers, which means it was never staffed appropriately to give you 24-7.

[04:34:09] So what you'll hear from Eddie, or Chief Mills, sorry, Chief, is it is actually staffed, his FTEs are at the bare minimum. What does that mean? That means if one person calls in sick, takes a day off, or goes to training, there's no capacity.

[04:34:30] Somebody has to come in for overtime. So your difference there, if you look at a patrol squad, we have the capacity. Two, three people can be off where they're training sick, and we're still at minimum staffing. So he has been trying for the last year working with you, and you approved the one position in the budget, approved the other two positions but unfunded them that is still just to get you to the minimum staffing to staff engine 501 so that's a lot but i think the history there for you to understand is

[04:35:05] it's not built for what your true needs are where we're at today and there's a cost associated with that the thing i want to compliment you on some of the problems that we've had in the budget is retention of staff chief mills is close one or two positions to be in one position to being fully staffed your police department is fully staffed we have no opening first time in over 10 years and you're the only department in northern virginia that's fully staffed that is

[04:35:39] part of that is your credit right last year and the year before you've put a lot of effort into pay and retention of staff citywide it's not just public safety or social services it has been citywide and that is also one of the challenges in the budget how do we compete and stay competitive so we're not constantly rolling over positions so all of those are challenges but also opportunities for you to make some decisions as we move forward that's it i'm going to try to get us out of the quick talking we're going to turn it over to nicole so she can go over the social services

[04:36:19] we'll jump into chief mills and then i'll wrap it out with the police department hello everyone i know it's been a long day and i know that we talked about uh social services we kind of work session i'm just trying to give a broad stroke or overview um so this is kind of like a re-dip and going back down and drilling on in into the dollars and cents um that we said that that we would kind of wait and having some of those discussions with.

[04:36:47] And specifically, what we're looking at has not changed. Literally, we were having to make real switches on the dime. And so when we talk about the real switches on the dime, it's as to where our programming has changed.

[04:37:04] So let's talk about CSA. I prefer for us to have, like, a dialogue, because I know that this is some of the questions that you have. Our big goal with the Children's Services Act is really being able to provide services for kids, okay?

[04:37:19] So there are two different ways in children being identified. You have through the school system, you also have through social services as to them needing specific services. This is when a child has been identified and having specific needs. It could be mental health, it could be behavioral, it could be physical disability, any of those things that would fit into a file

[04:37:42] That also being said, you look in the opposite side as to where children come into social services, they have pervasive needs as well. A lot of trauma, sometimes the separation from the family, not being able to be reunited with the family.

[04:37:59] So these are our most vulnerable children, okay? At the end of the day, there is policy that's in place from federal government all the way down saying that we will take care of our children.

[04:38:16] That's all that Children's Services Act is. We will take care of our children. When we say that we will take care of our children, that is providing whatever program we need. Those assessments are our objective. We have licensed psychiatrists, psychologists, we have the school system, we have input from family members. It's a comprehensive team, a comprehensive approach in saying it must be that this child receives these things.

[04:38:45] And we're looking. When I say looking, that means social services comes into place as to, okay, we've looked at resources in our community. From looking at the resources in our community, we do not have the capacity. We look outside and keep going further out and further out.

[04:39:04] When we start moving further out, there is input that comes from the state. The state is saying, yes, we truly agree that this child needs these services. When the child, you know, we're trying to manage those behaviors, we tend to have that child kind of in the queue.

[04:39:20] What can we do until? So we're moving rapid. It's like rapid fire. Within a matter of days to maximum weeks that we have to have that child placed appropriately. That being said, we have to deal with what bed space is available. We also have to look at the level of compliance, policies, whether or not it needs to be a one-on-one care, whether or not it can be a group setting care.

[04:39:44] It's looking at all those parameters. What will it take for this child to thrive, to grow, develop appropriately? It is not the easiest. Why? Because we're looking at a child and we're saying, we can't put a price tag on a child because we can't.

[04:40:01] But there is a price tag on the program. Throughout the last, I would say, 5 to 10 years, there's been a steady increase regarding our placements for children. It is a cap of 5% as to where the program is able to increase those that's within the state of Virginia.

[04:40:23] Outside the state, there is no cap. And even within the state, the 5% cap means that even if the provider asks for more funding, which most students, we still, at the local level, would have to provide that additional funding So it is a precarious balance as to where you have multiple planning stages.

[04:40:46] You have on the school side the IEP and the programming. For social services, we take the child through a family advocacy partnering team. That means everybody gets at the table and says this is needed from family, from psychiatrists, from doctors, you name it, they all get together and say this is a necessity.

[04:41:04] it's a necessity it then goes to CSA funding. That's where CPMT comes in. And so what our ultimate goal is we're we're not the sayers of oh what services we're the sayers of oh what's the price tag that comes along with the program. Where we move into looking at now is that I know that folks are like man this is a million years ago you know COVID is done we're good. Well guess what we're still seeing the residuals there we still have pervasive needs because we have a delay of

[04:41:41] some of the children that have come into our services we also are seeing significant needs as to levels of trauma and so that part of being able to work with the child and help them progress and grow now that the ultimate goal every time is to return that child back home our goal is to get the child back home. So if we can obtain that goal, meaning in a short period of time, short burst, then we're capable of getting the services that's needed, look at it on an ongoing basis. That could be every three months, that could be every six months, that could be one

[04:42:19] time a year, depending on the needs of the child. And from there, assess the ongoing needs. We receive reports monthly as to how the child is doing. We also have as to where for our children us coming through directing the social services aspect they're receiving as to where the social worker is out at a minimum as to once to twice a month and visiting the child in that particular setting on top of the facility review so we manage and looking just at the facility are they doing what they need to do and then we also manage and look as to whether or not they're addressing what the needs of the child are and that's two separate systems within dss to ensure that comprehensively

[04:42:59] yes we place the child correctly yes the services need to continue yes we're trying to get the child back and that is it takes a full team i mean it's it's a tall feat and being able to get it done um sometimes which we hope for you know to be limited sometimes that requires support from outside of state because there is no placement that's willing to take the child within state

[04:43:26] that being said yes there is a larger price tag and so a lot of that that we're looking at you know for us we cannot predict we don't know when children are coming into care and we don't know their particular needs so our first 90 days is just assessing us for what the child needs are and then they're going back finding a placement even when we find the placement they're having to prove to us through assessment that this is the right place it's much that it's not an epp um in

[04:44:03] the state we're you know in looking which is what we always do but outside it's a little pricier average for one of our children you know as you can see is roughly a little over 52 000 and that is per month um that being said just one child you know with a race of needs and as we're looking at it we actually have a district child that has been placed out of state as well which we're doing the steps as to what that final price would look like for a program so it's trying to

[04:44:39] find that balance um but i wanted to kind of stop and see what questions that you all have and then i can go back into the next pieces on the cfa excellent um you mentioned uh obviously trying to keep the children in state for programs when possible, you mentioned that they can be denied from admissions.

[04:45:03] And is that due to anything other than capacity? It is. It's rather not the unique criteria. Sometimes when we're looking for a placement, it may say as to where this is a group or cognitive setting where the child will have, say, like a one-to-five ratio.

[04:45:21] The child may not be appropriate for that. Or it could be as to where you have their more intensive services as to where it could be a one-to-three ratio. We can pull all the way down as to where it's a one-to-one ratio.

[04:45:38] But what you also have to look at, which is what you said, is the level of availability. Just like every other state, we're all looking, every social service department is looking for these placements. It is very challenging. There have been many providers that have got particular services because the level of liability that comes along with it, the ongoing pieces regarding the documentation, keeping the workers, the retention.

[04:46:05] We're seeing retention concerns. You should see on the other side the levels of retention. We have, I call it a luxury of receiving, you know, additional wonderful benefits from the city. Not every organization outside that's for profit defeats those type of benefits.

[04:46:23] And that's something that you have to look at in trying to find that balance when it's working with that organization. So, yeah, we have that. We also have, which is the feedback. Will the child apply? Sometimes it's also looking at whether or not the placement is a good match for the child himself.

[04:46:43] It may look good on paper. We go out, we do the review. You look at all those pieces and it's like, oh, it's not going to be, you know, a good fit. Go ahead. Are you, I have to say, the way you talk about it and some investments, they go on fire and know they have to be out of space?

[04:47:08] The question that we had earlier, they just want to get a term. So the age is from whenever they come in to up to 21? It would be up to 21. Because depending on their mental capacity, it can go a little, it can exceed and go a little.

[04:47:35] Thank you, Vice President. So you say in your first paragraph, eligible children may need intensive services to help them safely remain in the home and community. So funding out of state, i.e. placement, no longer has them in the home and their community, does it?

[04:47:56] So how does that jive? We have done everything to keep them at home and live in the community. It is the last resort in taking them outside of the home.

[04:48:12] And then it's even furthest off is taking them outside. That is absolutely, we have gone back through. We actually have a list of criteria going through that we have to ensure that we have reached out to every compatible facility in the state.

[04:48:31] We start small, we keep moving out, we keep moving out. We have to report back on an ongoing basis as to, okay, this area, this territory, no one will take them. If we go further out, this territory will no longer take them. We're finally outside and out of state and getting a place here.

[04:48:49] So we start small. Are there any limits on the amount of money the intensive service may charge in state? No, sir. What we have is that there is, what done, just to be clear, 100% funding does not come from the city.

[04:49:12] It is roughly a 50-50 match. So you have dollars that's coming down that's unlimited through CSA, unlimited funding. We no longer have a budget through CSA, but it is a 50% match rate. And I'm just giving you just the ballpark, 47, you know, but it's a 50-50.

[04:49:32] And so that's how it's been set up. And so, yes, when you look, it is unlimited. Yes, we can, you know, the state, federal government, we'll send the money down. There's no problem with that part. It's the match rate that comes through our city.

[04:49:48] And the match rate is set by the state? The match rate is set actually through CSA. And that's a quality. CSA is a state agency? Yes. Okay, so it's set by the state. Okay, so that agency makes that determination that it will be a 50% using your example.

[04:50:05] When it comes to out-of-state placement, what is the match? 50%. 50%? Yes. That CSA will match 50%. Okay, gotcha. Thank you. All right. Very good.

[04:50:22] Three times. So the CSA, the children that it services, it's behavioral health. Is that correct? Mainly. You have behavioral health. You have, well, when I say behavioral health, that's inclusive of mental health.

[04:50:43] So you have diagnosis with the child. And when you say $51,695 per month, is that just the local match or is that the total?

[04:50:59] Like you were saying, I think that the state pays 50. Yes. So the 50% is the $51,695 per month. So it's like $102,000 per child. I understand HIPAA law, but are we able to see the breakdown of that?

[04:51:21] expenses and what they are covering we have a breakdown that is reviewed on an ongoing basis when we're normally working that is addressed through our cpt as to where we go through those numbers on an ongoing basis so that's reported back through to city council as to if there's any questions or concerns but through our cfa um for our cpt meeting on those numbers this is this is the virginia law but yet they make the local government pay 50 percent you know there's

[04:51:57] no way to get virginia to make a change unless you have like a general assembly lobby for it yeah if any kind of breakdown at all i think that would be helpful

[04:52:41] Our current fund balance is, we look at the larger numbers, and just kind of going through. Right now, we have obligated funds of $2,424,212,356.

[04:53:00] We have a fund balance right now of a deficit of $3,571,917,456. Our max rate is $1,370,917,456.

[04:53:16] We have a breakdown that we do every, every week. - What I would say, one of the meetings are trying to explain this program.

[04:53:46] This is mandated state law. The federal legislation says that these expenses are just absolutely not for the community.

[04:54:03] That would be very helpful to help the average citizen understand whatever we end up with in a budget perspective. This is a large driver of what it does this year. and education for everyone going forward.

[04:54:22] You've got other parts to discuss? Yeah, I have one. I keep going. There's one point that I do think Councilman Chusa had it, but I think Councilman Chusa was referring to CSA as an agency, but it's not as much an agency as it is just a state law, and the money is coming back from the state.

[04:54:46] So this is, I'm not going to get me wrong. So taking that point, then, you're right, because I thought it was an agency, so the law states made the decision of the 50% match, which can be changed by the General Assembly and the Governor's assignment.

[04:55:07] That's what I'm hearing. That is a tall order. It could be done, but it could be done, but it's a very tall order. I just wanted to make sure that it wasn't worded like, this is a program that we're bought into, but a law that we are required to do this.

[04:55:24] just wanted to make that clear that clarification yeah the other thing you need to get back to about the communication and i just googled this um it talks about local funding for csa what google schools schools fund from multiple sources in a single spot pot to purchase services for eligible children which makes it sound like this massive pot of money not that it's a 50 match

[04:56:00] Our next piece just for folks to be aware of which we talked about was regarding SNAP so we have policy changes that's related to the SNAP overview and really dollars and cents as to what we're looking at at the end of the day there is a SNAP payment error rate SNAP curve okay for SNAP curve what it's looking at at this point in time there is 270 million dollars that is We need to pay that if we do not get below 11% error.

[04:56:37] If we don't get below 6% error rate, right now our current error rate is 11%. That means that at the end of this fiscal year, it will be $270 million. Statewide.

[04:56:54] That's statewide. You're having to look at it on an ongoing basis as to what that means for us. policy changes that they have kind of put in place, which is ensuring that any exemptions for work has been reduced. It's also the expansion of the general work requirement age. So it's moving from 54 to 65, so you still have to work in receiving SNAP up to the age of 65. And then you also have the dependent

[04:57:26] extension reduction. It was at age 18, it has now been reduced. I'm sorry, it is, it was, sorry, the reduction was at the age of 18, meaning that they were able to remain on SNAP. Now it's only to the age of 14, so your household members have been reduced. So this is something that you have to look at. When we're working, we're having to verify all of those pieces. Those verifications require what? Time. You're having to go back and add in the average case of processing for a SNAP case, which is around about, I'd say, 35 minutes, 35 minutes

[04:58:04] for an employee to move from beginning to end if they have all the documents. Now we have to stop in the middle and say, oh, do you have some additional documents? Then from there, go back to that case and work it. So it's not just looking at, oh, the increase of funding, it's also the increase of hours that the worker will need to complete. There There's no overtime that is coming from the state.

[04:58:27] We are already on non-existent budget, and it does not seem like we will be moving forward to receiving fiscal funding from the state future years. So because of the $270 million that they have to sit and have contingent waiting just in case we're unable to get to that 6% error rate.

[04:58:48] That also being said, as we're moving with this, it's just trying to take that moment and saying, okay how can we be able to work together well that being said the state came out with the additional pieces in addressing as to letting us know that regarding the work hours we're receiving these additional trainings that come along with it for support i will truly say our team has been very successful we have been able to keep our error rate at three percent so it's not Plus, we're still doing well, we're 3% and below.

[04:59:25] So we'd like to continue with keeping that. I do know, like I said, it will create additional hours that individuals can need to work in getting that done. So just putting that out there as well. So any questions on the SNAP part?

[04:59:41] - Sorry, the Mayor has got to clarify. The SNAP requirements were changed the Trump administration made. The state's error rate is 11%. target is 6% and we're at 3%. You have what's considered the big 20. The big 20 will be the heavy hitters. Those are the larger localities that have the largest impact when it comes to our air freight. So that would be the Prince Williams, that would be the Fairfaxes, etc. So we're on

[05:00:19] target. Our last is looking at, well actually it's two additional, we have our pass-through freight just letting folks know as we talked about the state meeting to figure out how to come up with the additional 270 million dollars as contingency they passed along an increase in our pass through what does pass through mean pass through is when our funding the state provides a set amount of funding for each budget line once we exceed that amount those numbers have been set for we don't

[05:00:59] know how many years i would say at least 40 years um and following that being said um thank you that being said with looking at that our biggest piece that we have right now is that it is an additional 90 million dollars that the state is trying to locate um so so you have the pastor that has been increased by eight percent so as we move into pastor meaning that when the budget comes down we have exhausted all the funding those numbers have been set in place like i said for a couple

[05:01:36] of years uh you know a couple when i say a couple i say 40 to 50 years in looking at it and so once we are receiving that information we try to get it budgeted we move forward but then what happens is that once we begin to exceed that means that the rate changes so it may be that the state is saying, oh, for this position, you have an 87%, meaning that all that we would need to pay is the additional 13%, and I'm just giving you rough figures.

[05:02:08] But when we move into pass-through, that means that the state says, oh, no, we're going to reduce this down as to where the state may only pay 40%, okay? So these numbers fluctuate when we go and we find to identify what the needs are.

[05:02:24] Why? Because we cannot target and say, okay, we know that there are going to be five kids that need this particular care. Or we know that for benefits it's going to take seven different workers a million to process those cases because we don't know how many applications are coming in. So it's finding that balance.

[05:02:42] We currently, as an average, are now going into pass through around about the end of November, beginning of December. So that's roughly six months as to the volatility as to those numbers. So we have pass-through that was 100% funded, that's now all the way to 0% funded.

[05:03:01] So just trying to put that information out there for folks to be aware of. And again, this is a federal mandate imposed upon the state that state social services has been passing through locality.

[05:03:25] Because this is actually, the reality is a change in the reimbursement rate that feds to the state. The state is trying to zero out. What you have, and the state will come back with a conversation saying that it is federally based funded, locally administered, locally administered.

[05:03:49] And so where there is a gap, it is for the locality to pick up. Very low. In S, your estimate, your guesstimate, the typical impact of this is?

[05:04:13] The typical impact, bottom line dollars, would be roughly... that we're looking at for total impact for all these needs combined would be roughly 2.5 million in the upcoming fiscal year that's like three four cents on the tax rate

[05:04:50] Yep. Or in other perspectives, the principal and Kennedy faces the same issue, the third number is more than ten times already. Right, yeah. We did a check, checking just to see informally where other localities were.

[05:05:12] Some are at 5 mil, some are at 3.5 mil, so... It is called the "B" . So, happy and sad.

[05:05:31] Wait, I didn't see the slide with the good news. Good news! Really? Question, question! That's the good news. Kick it down the road, we can't.

[05:05:46] The good news is we are continuing to serve children. Yeah, I appreciate that. We will continue with those services. We're timely, we're still moving. We're timely, we're still moving. 14 are still even somehow between 14 and 8, I don't know, all of a sudden for four years we've got to feed them less than you did the first 14 days. It's working.

[05:06:10] We're making it work. I will say the wonderful thing about the city of Manhattan is the community resources team and being able to look at it. The schools, like I said, on an ongoing basis, they have it to where you can come and they will feed children after hours for dinner, free.

[05:06:25] So those are some of the things that's out there in the community. Also, working with the interfaith coalition, the churches, they stepped up to the plate significantly. They stepped up. Yeah, so it is a, you know, all hands on deck. You know, it is one of those of being able to ensure that we're working together.

[05:06:45] And it's really taking the resources and, you know, making those dollars rich. And I would add to this list groups like, you know, Georgetown South does a program, CFH does a program,

[05:07:17] that Thomas does, you know, I mean, on Saturdays along the way, you know, but, you know, even seeing with Northern Virginia Food Rescue, financial benefit, you know, we've got to have money to operate, like the food bank sort of thing, so to have any of these sources, businesses like Amazon, step up, you know, provide money, but.

[05:07:58] The staff itself, they have really stepped up to the plate. They're, I mean, they're, oh, we've got to make certain about this error rate.

[05:08:15] Oh, we've got to make certain that, you know, we're getting these documents on time. You know, because simple things of missing, you know, oh, well, you know, you missed one day. One day is the coffee shop. Okay. And so they're doing their job. They're really stepping up. They're really giving the services.

[05:08:31] They're getting it out there. And they're networking. Because without them, you know, we wouldn't know about the interfaith coalition. we wouldn't know about House of Mercy. There are actually only boots on the ground doing the work in making things happen and giving them services for the kids.

[05:08:47] We actually have one, I'll give you one anecdote with our child that we just placed out of state. We had a worker who volunteered. He said, "I'll take it." He ran and he flew in one day, down to Atlanta, back up to Atlanta, got the child placed, looked at, made certain for, he reviewed with the support of the state.

[05:09:07] all those pieces were done. And that's looking at levels of success. Why? Because we look at our resources and we try to make certain that there's a balance of health and safety and a balance of cost in ensuring that they're doing what they need to do.

[05:09:23] - And Mr. Burr, I've been a long ago when the report is given a speech to the leadership that's going on in DSS, and that's a new challenge.

[05:09:47] - Pardon me, pardon me. - So, is there anything else

[05:09:58] To be honest, I'm one of those, and I clearly read, but I go through and I project it.

[05:10:35] We look at those pieces, we talk to the stage, we look at the federal guidelines that's coming down. And at the end of the day, most of it we have been able to do it. Throughout the years, we've made it work. This is just a huge shift.

[05:10:52] And that being said, it's nothing different than we've had to do in the past. But it's one of those that's all coming at the same time. And I think that that's the piece that we need to look at it. So at this point in time, you know, this is a huge shift.

[05:11:09] Understandably so, this is a huge shift. But, you know, once we make the shift, we should be good for years to come. So that's what we're looking at, is being able to, we have good staff. The staffing ratios are looking, you know, very promising.

[05:11:26] Our goal is just making certain that at the end of the day that they can do the work that if you need it. Okay, good afternoon.

[05:11:45] I just want to go over some of the things that we currently face, things that are out of our control and things that we're going to face in the future. Apparatus and equipment are big challenges for us now. The cost of replacing a piece of apparatus has went up four to five times its cost in about three and a half years.

[05:12:16] To give you an example, the rescue engine that we paid for four years ago and just put in service, if we bought, that was $980,000, that same engine would cost us $1.3 million today with a delivery time of about three and a half years.

[05:12:40] So one of the things that we are doing is not looking at a single manufacturer, which appears to have been done in the past. We're looking at all the manufacturers to see what they can deliver, what their delivery times are, taking a look at our apparatus, what works for our community.

[05:13:03] We don't need silver bells on it, things like that, that have been in the past. That doesn't impact our ability to do our job. So we're looking at how we can reduce the cost of them, but still be able to serve our community in the greatest way possible.

[05:13:20] To give an example of that, with the lead times, if we needed a piece of apparatus to be replaced in 2032, based on our fleet replacement plan, we have to work with Diane's team, get a PO in place, and that PO has to be in place, guaranteeing that money in 2028.

[05:13:49] so that we can reserve a place on the assembly line until they get to us. Now, that's a challenge nationwide. And as everybody continues to purchase fire apparatus, it doesn't matter if it's an EMS unit, if it's a ladder truck, it's going to take time.

[05:14:12] But that's how far in advance we have to plan these things now and come to finance, come to the council, and explain why we do these things. This is what we're facing. Overall technology with our radios, our self-contained breathing apparatus, our cardiac monitors, our light pads, the technology is moving so quick with that that we make a purchase three years down the road.

[05:14:42] They upgrade the technology, and then they tell us we'll continue the service contract for the duration of what came with it, but then we're cutting it off. So we're in a position then at that point to where we either upgrade to the new equipment or we're sitting there without a maintenance and service contract.

[05:15:06] They're willing to repair things for us, but at an astronomical cost, where with the service contract, they have to come service it, make sure it's functioning properly. But once that runs out, it's not available to us unless we upgrade. So that's a challenge.

[05:15:23] Our radios that we put in service last year, we have a feature in that. We did put in a supplemental request. It's $11,000 per year. But the way that radio is designed to work so that we can maintain radio contact with all of our personnel inside an immediate dangerous-to-life environment, it will switch back and forth between a cell tower signal and cellular signal.

[05:15:58] About three months ago, Prince William County had one of their towers go down because, as everyone knows, we're on Prince William County's dispatch as a unified dispatch center. Well, we have different radios than Prince William PD does. Prince William PD was operating on cell phones with communications because they don't have that technology.

[05:16:23] When we purchased our radio, we purchased them with that technology to be able to implement that. And at no time, and we purchased the same radio as Prince William County did. At no time during that tower outage did any radio traffic get lost on the fire and rescue side because it would kick to a cell phone signal.

[05:16:49] We never lost communication with personnel inside dangerous environments. So that is something that changes rapidly. But if we maintain that, that's something the radios we purchased, they were expensive when we bought them, but we also have the capability of upgrading them when they change.

[05:17:12] So that's a whole lot cheaper than it is replacing the whole fleet of radios. Staffing, everyone here knows the challenges we face with that, with the staffing of Engine 501.

[05:17:29] I will say that with the help of HR, the assistance that everyone on this council has given us is greatly appreciated.

[05:17:45] Allowing us to implement the lateral transfer policy, bringing people in from other departments has been a great help. I believe I stood in front of you last year on my annual report reporting nine vacancies.

[05:18:01] We have been able to get that down to one right now. We've been fully staffed three times for two days, and then somebody would resign. It just happened to us again. Last week, we were fully staffed. We just had a guy resign.

[05:18:18] He's going back home to Vancouver, Washington, where he got hired. So we're back to one. But the other thing that I've been able to figure out, we have a lot of positions that a staffing factor was not used.

[05:18:34] And what happens with the staffing factor? If we did a one for one staffing factor, then anytime someone's off, that's immediate overtime. But we have to train people.

[05:18:51] Based on the work schedule that we work, we do the 24 hours on, 48 hours off with a Kelly day. And for those who don't understand what a Kelly day is, Um, the council member Hudson here was assigned Kelly day on Wednesday, any day she was scheduled to come to work on her rotating shift on Wednesday, she's off that day.

[05:19:17] It's not a free day off. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act law, anytime shift work firefighters work more than 212 hours in a 28 day cycle, you are obligated to pay them overtime.

[05:19:33] So if we didn't have that Kelly day, they would be working a 56 hour work week. So that would be 12 hours built in overtime, every person, every single paycheck across the entire year.

[05:19:50] So what the Kelly Day does is offsets that to bring them below that threshold. But it also allows them to have a five-day break because you have the two days off from your 48 hours from the shift you previously worked, then you get your Kelly Day.

[05:20:08] Now you would fall back into two more days off. once a month they're getting a five-day break. So when we look at that and we look at the staffing factor for every single position to account for training leave, the Kelly days, we have two days of annual leave. We start every day with a minimum of five people off. It takes 1.41 bodies for every

[05:20:40] position that we're obligated to staff. And under the NFPA standard, which recommends four, but no less than three, if I don't have at least three people on that fire truck every day, it's out of service. It cannot respond. So when we look at a staffing factor, it takes 4.23 people for me to minimally staff every piece, every fire engine, ladder truck. Medic units, because I have to have

[05:21:17] two. I've got to have an ALS provider and a BLS provider on that unit. It takes 3.24 people per unit for me to properly staff that so when i look at the number of positions that we have not everything has been built out with staffing factor if you look at the history of the department as chief keen mentioned this was a volunteer department supplemented by career staff who worked seven to five monday through friday then all the holidays evenings and weekends were covered

[05:21:56] with volunteers i was one of those for many years and we had a very very robust volunteer department we don't have that now it's very hard to get people to volunteer anymore the training demands it takes over 200 hours of training to become a minimum staffing firefighter that's a lot to ask of somebody who wants to serve their community to walk in the door and say yeah two years from now

[05:22:31] you'll be valuable to us but right now you you get to ride and stand that that's not conducive to people so when we look at that the script that we have to flip now is we are a career department supplemented by volunteers of what very few we have left so we have to just approach this as we're not that volunteer department anymore and we have to address this and properly staff what we we have the other staffing positions that we have that never had a staffing factor was all of our

[05:23:10] battalion chiefs and our ems supervisors the battalion chief is responsible for command and control 100 accountability of everything that's going on that on that fire ground including the location of personnel and what they're doing so without having that staffing factor when a battalion chief is off we train captains to be able to fill that role but then when that captain has to go fill that role. We also have senior firefighters that are trained to be in

[05:23:48] charge of that fire truck. So when they move up through that cascading effect, I now have a vacant firefighter seat sitting back there that costs me overtime to make sure that fire truck goes out the door. So I start every day with three people I have on Kelly Day, the two allotted annually spots, and then I have positions that were never properly funded with a staffing factor that rolls me into overtime every day. Plus the mandatory training we have to meet to maintain our medical

[05:24:26] training. We're obligated by OSHA to have a minimum of eight hours per year on self-contained breathing apparatus and rapid intervention mayday type training for rescuing downed firefighters. Those are all things that are mandatory that cannot be interrupted training. I can't have them come sit in training and running calls. The State Department of Health doesn't allow for that.

[05:24:52] OSHA doesn't allow for that. It has to be uninterrupted training for me to count that to meet their required training hours, which is a condition of their employment. So we have to make sure that's done. Looking at our battalion chiefs, we need battalion aides, which has never been brought up. Everything that I just mentioned about the responsibilities of the battalion chief,

[05:25:24] By asking them to drive that vehicle every day, listen to that radio while responding to an emergency and keeping track of everything that's going on on a rapidly evolving situation of an immediate dangerous to life and health event is putting those battalion chiefs in a bad situation because they can't pay attention to where everybody is, what everybody's doing, and pay attention to all the other cars on the road and what they're doing.

[05:26:01] going to do while they're responding to that incident so looking at moving forward uh Mr. Burke has asked me to put together a staffing plan and what our needs are which we are working on but as we look at moving forward when we look at the cost of the salary the benefits of each one of these individuals that we are short there's also a cost of about fifteen thousand dollars to outfit that

[05:26:38] firefighter and each firefighter is mandated under NFPA to have two sets of turnout gear so that when one becomes contaminated with the toxins of a fire the smoke that they're exposed to they have the ability to go back and we have the proper washing machines in the station and they can clean their gear that's all part of the cancer reduction risk to the firefighters that have been

[05:27:09] put in place that we have to meet. So we talked about the engine staffing of Engine 501, and this is for 2025. And each one of these broken down, you can see that the amount of the overtime that we had, the time that it was unstaffed, we

[05:27:41] were able to have five months that Engine 501 was staffed every day of the month. But there was a cost to doing that. Not only is there a financial cost, but But the other thing we have to consider is the wear and tear on the personnel that we have.

[05:28:03] To work back-to-back 24-hour shifts is asking them to do a lot. We have to get past that. It creates injuries.

[05:28:19] Right now I have five people off on injury leave to compound what other days I have off. And the more we work these folks, the more prone they are to injury due to fatigue. There's a lot of studies that have been done now indicating that the minimum time required for full recovery after a 24-hour shift is 72 hours, which has also prompted a bill that has been introduced as of January 19th in the House, I think it's HR 1333, which is

[05:28:59] going to task the Virginia Department of Fire programs with strongly encouraging jurisdictions to implement work weeks not to exceed 42 hours for all-paid firebots. That was introduced on January 19th.

[05:29:20] But when we look at Engine 501, as Chief Keen brought up, last year you graciously approved reposition, but we only funded one of them. So that still leaves me at a deficit for ensuring Engine 501 is staffed 24 hours, 7 days a week.

[05:29:42] And that's why we see certain months that it was unstaffed. But we also, you can see in June, July, that the numbers went up because that's when the kids are out of school.

[05:29:58] These people are spending time with their children during the summer. They're taking family vacations. Those things are going to continue to happen if we don't address this. And we all own it because we're all aware of it.

[05:30:24] So looking at some of our administrative positions, the fire marshal's office used to have five personnel assigned to it. Now they have two. So their staff has been cut by 60% over the years.

[05:30:42] I don't know why it was, but it is. When I came here, I started digging into how many buildings we had in the city, how many were getting inspected, how the inspections were being done. And what I was able to find out is we were only getting about 52% of the buildings in the city inspected that needed to be inspected.

[05:31:04] Now, the majority of those were the ones that carried the most hazards with them because they were the ones that required permits because of cooking, welding, auto repair, those kind of things. So they were the most dangerous ones.

[05:31:21] But we had a large portion of them that weren't. If you remember, I spoke about we were going to implement our fire safety survey program, getting operations out to be able to do that. So we made some headway with that.

[05:31:37] Last year, we were able to get roughly 65 or 66% of them done. So we're making headway. But they also have to train. They have to go to emergencies, all those things.

[05:31:53] So they're juggling getting these things done as they're keeping up with the other things they have to do also. So it's not going to be a fast process. So looking at that, if we're going to really attack that problem, and I think some of it also goes into part of our economic development, our community risk reduction, if we're able to say that we are definitely a fire safety community, then that's attractive.

[05:32:27] It improves our ISO rating. If we can improve our ISO rating, insurance rates come down. the citizens for our business owners so it all ties in to being able to show we are truly a fire safe community data analysis we all know the importance of data analysis i i have a a administrative

[05:32:58] coordinator who has put in a lot of effort to understand the data that i want the data that i need to provide you with informed decisions and we're investing in getting her the training to do that but that's only adding to whatever her duties already are because I've already asked her to assist the fire marshals with their data entry so they can be in the field a little bit more

[05:33:31] and to collect data so looking at our administrative positions we need to take a look at those to be more efficient in what we're doing in a timely manner and again not put too much workload on one individual I spoke about training the one thing there is the Department of Fire programs is constantly upgrading classes they used to allow us to do refresher classes to upgrade well they

[05:34:08] don't allow that anymore you've got to take the full class if they change a combined space class We have to take the full class. We can't just upgrade to what the new steps and procedures are. This is just looking at the drop-off in the number of volunteers that we have.

[05:34:32] You can see the Greater NASA Volunteer Rescue Squad has dropped off. I don't think they've staffed a BLS unit since January 7th was the last time they came in. So we don't have the BLS services that we had from them anymore either. That must be you.

[05:34:56] if that was your last one yep so is there any any questions anybody would like me to answer yeah chief on your last slide uh about the volunteer staff these are when i blow this up these are percentages so they they have based on the contract they have with the city how many hours they are responsible for each month and that's the percentage that they're meeting those hours. So what this tells me is that in September, the volunteer fire company had no one, zero percent

[05:35:35] in September and October. So we, for two months, had no participation in volunteer fire company. Correct. And you also saw in the earlier slide that the percentage of unstaffed time was higher because if I already had with the people I had on the injury leave, the people I had in training, If I have to go accessible in overtime because I have to balance something there and we overspend our overtime budget, I have to make the decision to either staff or unstaff that.

[05:36:12] And that's a hard thing to do sometimes to say, no, we can't do that. We've already got seven people on overtime. Before you give that away, so could you go to the slide where you show the month of supplemental staff, overtime, Okay.

[05:36:40] Explain to me what IMC takes January in 69.10. Okay, so what the supplemental staff is, is based on our ability to fill our vacancies and the way we have people distributed across the four shifts.

[05:36:58] There are days, because we may not have everybody, there may not be anybody on annually, we may just have people on their Kelly days. we're able to help supplement engine 501 on those days because we have an extra person that doesn't cost us overtime so that's helpful but sixty nine point ten of what is is it sixty nine point ten percent of that month the supplemental

[05:37:35] staff helped yeah that so these are percentages yeah okay that's what I needed to know so i understand that so i appreciate all the information what have you it's very useful it's important to hear it um so what's the ask we're working we're looking ahead to the budget the ask is is that um as i put together my staffing plan and rough numbers that i have

[05:38:06] i'm about 22 personnel short 22 people yeah all of them are firefighters not admin so yes using Operations has got to be the first thing that we deal with, making sure that we're getting out of the door.

[05:38:27] That's always my priority. So how about an operations? You're short. 22? 22 people, operations. To properly staff and allow people to be off for training. And then there wouldn't be any overtime.

[05:38:44] We'll never get completely out of overtime because the staffing matrix does not account for injured firefighters or people calling sick. It accounts for annual leave that is approved every year.

[05:39:03] We know how many people can take off every year. We know how many people are on Kelly Day. We can't control who calls in sick. We can't control who goes on FMLA. That's out of our hands. FMLA?

[05:39:20] That's federally mandated leave that people are allowed to take. So we're not, those are things that we have to absorb that are out of our control. So if someone calls in sick, they put in for FMLA, they're entitled to 12 weeks of it.

[05:39:40] So if they take the full 12 weeks because of the birth of a child or to care for a loved one, I'm back filling their spot every day for 12 weeks. Mr. Osteen, I'm sorry, can I jump in and help answer the question that you asked, what's the ask?

[05:39:55] Yeah. So the ask is just information right now. So what we have asked, Mr. Burke and I have asked Chief to do is develop a three to five year staffing plan so you will be able to hear and plan out over the years.

[05:40:11] Right now in our planning documents for the budget that Mr. Burke will hear, we're planning on the emergency manager and the two approved but unfunded firefighters until we can put that plan in front of you so you have a forward-looking document and can think ahead instead of trying to do it in the backwards so it's just more information at this point you'll agree with that yeah okay gotcha I don't want to be sure everybody's not that I tell that you sir

[05:40:50] and my ask is this is because we had because of the lack of volunteers we are moving forward to you know having the full responsibility and making sure that it's the staff and so we could say the the new needs and and and those positions that might be you know not funded now it is because we haven't been able to attract volunteers like back in the day

[05:41:22] um okay so going back telling us preparing us for staffing plans instead we know you pretty much You know that essentially we need for every three firefighters, three people in the parking area that we should add from 65 plus or minus to 87, you know, probably.

[05:41:54] Yes, because if you use a 1.41, it's almost a 1.5 ratio. Curiosity, and I know it wouldn't have physically, maybe for the last calendar year, you know, the amount of overtime parking?

[05:42:11] For 20, 25? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Do I know the 20, 25 miles? It's consistently been around a million dollars since 2026.

[05:42:30] So I realize, and I appreciate your point, you will never not have overtime. Because of just the structure of the organization. But it should never be as high as it is now. So a million people essentially is 8 to 10 FBE.

[05:42:49] Question. You mentioned ALS and VLS. what do they mean? ALS is advanced life support that's our paramedics and the BLS is the basic life support and the volunteers the Greater Manassas Rescue Squad provided all of our BLS service and now because they just don't have volunteers that's a service that we've lost which also adds additional workload on our paramedics running calls that they normally wouldn't run because their

[05:43:26] basic level calls but then it also ties that medic unit up and makes them unavailable for a critical call like a heart attack or stroke something along those lines usually do I know that you see this at least once a year where it shows I have a map where the calls are going that you're called out to if you get a call and you're available you all respond if we're the closest one if we're

[05:44:01] the closest unit because the computer-aided dispatch system has what they call the AVL which is the automatic vehicle locator and when they put the address in all the units that show us in service able to respond when they put that in based on the type of call they hit select and recommend and it gives them a menu that drops down and it shows them by mileage or time however they configure it if they need an ALS unit what is the closest ALS

[05:44:37] unit. If they need an engine, what is the closest engine? And that's the whole purpose of the computer-aided dispatch, is to make sure you're getting the closest resource to that emergency. Do you feel like it's, and that's the same with Prince William County, they'll respond to something in Manassas City or Manassas Park will respond to Manassas City if they're the closest available.

[05:45:01] Do you feel like that kind of works out even with departments responding? We hear reports every Monday morning from Prince William County, and what I do is I break it down I'm able to go through look at all the calls I get five different reports it shows me how many times we go to Prince Wayne County how many times we go to Manassas Park how many times they each one of those jurisdictions comes into the city and then I look at the total number of calls for the city of Manassas units for the month and then I look at how many times we go to the county how

[05:45:35] times we what our total calls were and it'll fluctuate but generally we do we spend depending on the station 21 goes into the county more because they're so close to the county that some of their first do is in the county but they're normally about 38 39 percent in the county and then engine 501 sometimes is as low as 16 percent in the county so and then I add them all together to come

[05:46:12] up with an overall percentage and we're normally somewhere around 28 or 29 percent for a total department responding into the county from per week and the biggest thing we see from the county right now is their basic life support uh units coming in because we don't have one anymore so they're coming into the city probably 23 to 28 times a week yeah because when when we looked at

[05:46:47] our response package reduction to try to get the right resource to the right call now the way that they've reclassified some of the calls if there's a basic life support unit within six minutes of that call then instead of running our als unit they will bring that bls unit in to answer that call but if it's greater than six minutes they would dispatch our als unit being closer if they they were eight minutes out, but yet it's 23, 28 times a month, I mean a week.

[05:47:27] That's why we share the same dispatcher, I guess. Yeah. Thank you. Well, I think Mr. Burke started it off by saying it's not all bad news, so I'm hoping that we can leave here.

[05:47:57] We winded up today with a little positive. Some of it comes back to Ms. Vasquez's concern of what are we doing in zoning and our crime rate and the things we're moving forward with. Our number one issue we're dealing with, or we'll deal with, is going to be retention of staff.

[05:48:15] Bragging that we're fully staffed, fire department's closed, citywide we're doing much better. But that really is our challenge. You got us to where we're competitive, but as we move that watermark up, everybody around you moves it up. We moved ahead of Prince William.

[05:48:32] Prince William is now redone theirs. They're going to be about $10,000 starting salary above us. arlington county is now good thing you're sitting down 90 000 starting salary alexandria is moving up as well so in the past you've been a training ground for those jurisdictions our goal right now is to build an organization where people want to be here they want to stay here and they want to work in our community because the kind of policing we are doing so one of the things i took a look at once i returned to the police department is what do we need to do to build our organization

[05:49:09] out and recommit ourselves to the future of the policing in Manassas. So we're calling it a renewed commitment to community policing because as you know we are already very committed to it. We just need to renew it with our new staff and roll that out and build it out.

[05:49:26] That was step one. Some of this you've heard before, the purpose of getting this high level information to you today. So as we release it, like you talked about with the fire department, we don't want that to be the first time this body is seeing this or hearing this. So what we did going back to July, spent some time rewriting the mission, the vision, and the values, but we added a leadership statement so as we have our young leaders moving up, they understood what we were expecting of them and letting them know that really good ideas come from every level of the police department.

[05:50:02] It doesn't always come from the top, it can be the newest officer walking in the door that sees things differently we need to respect that honor that and take a good look and listen to it that's already been implemented part two of it which we've already released to you was a reorganization of the police department knowing that we are changing we're adding airport commercial passenger service the type of calls we've had to handle always try to keep you up to date with those you you've seen some of our barricades so it wasn't adding new personnel it was just

[05:50:41] reorganizing the police department so that we can get more accountability and more services in a better fashion to our community so we broke out from three divisions really we added the special operations which is helping manage that airport security plan it also involves the traffic services section which you all hear that Traffic is one of our biggest complaints that you and I hear about.

[05:51:09] Just had a fatal accident, so it's trying to build those highway safety programs out and all of our specialties. The other one is succession planning. One of the things we went back and looked at is 32% of our sworn staff had five years or less.

[05:51:29] That's 32% department-wide, but when you put that in the patrol services, the ones in uniform, ones that Captain Hyde here is now overseeing, that's well over 50% of the officers on the street have less than five years. It takes at least three years to really learn how to do this job appropriately. So we, I need to set, look at that, how are we going to build this out, make sure that we are building better leaders and better officers throughout the department so they can serve our community better. So we're developing in a whole succession plan so that we and you were in a good

[05:52:08] place for the future of building this out. So that's part of this identifying and mentoring our future leaders and the progressive training for the department. We also have to look at this and how our police beats. Historically these are well over 20 years old. They were originally built around our schools, school, elementary school districts. To be honest with you, I took a look at that with that new crime map that we put out. That's old. It's not good data. It's not fitting

[05:52:43] our city. We also know that we have new communities coming in. We just spent today talking about Mathis Avenue. That's going to change that whole group that's at the top. Ashbury is going in right off a grant. That's another new community. MIFCO coming to Old Town. The landings, that is a fairly new community. And then we have the airport coming in. Those don't align with the old beats, so we know we need to do something different. And if you look at that in a linear

[05:53:16] fashion, you see that really the center district going through Old Town is an area that we probably need to look at so one of the things we're going to spend the next few months on is redefining our police beats in these neighborhood teams and how we are going to get that out and better serve and better track the calls for service in each community so the first thing we're going to do we already did phase one phase two is going to be these crime maps that we got to put in place

[05:53:53] get that out to you and communicate it to the public we're going to do that by meeting with our hoas because that is going to change how we communicate and split it up with them having some town hall meetings that'll help us explain to our community and listen to them on what their needs are and explain to them that splitting this up getting semi away from these old school districts is going to help us better serve them and isolate the needs in each community a little better getting it out on social media and then working with our schools as well because

[05:54:32] your districts are always changing i move fast for that or any questions about that that portion of it you've seen some of this in the in the monthly updates as well this person gets you out of here by four o'clock. This is something exciting going back to Ms. Vasquez Luna's question earlier. This is something that we think we are doing well. We told you we were going to do this pilot program

[05:55:06] to see if we could better respond to some of the community complaints. This is a success story for the city of Manassas. It's bridging the gap of the police department and the residents a little faster. And it's how do we serve our residents for some of these complaints that they've had that they felt were going overlooked, right? Cars parked in the front yard, trash, maybe some homeless issues that we're dealing with. Captain Hyde took control over this working with Matt

[05:55:41] and his people. I really want to give Carlos and his group working directly with Captain Hyde. I think we were pleasantly surprised at the results of this. So it's really meant so our residents know that their voices are heard and their concerns are heard and that how do we attack some of these lower-level issues that makes our community feel unsafe, even if there's not a crime feature associated with it, it does pose this fear of crime.

[05:56:18] So these are some of the examples that they worked with. The pictures here are showing some illegal dumping. They worked directly with the Georgetown South community. It increased the reporting from the residents.

[05:56:38] The illegal dumping kind of ended immediately. So now they're trying to build a plan of how they stop that from occurring in the future and get the information out. but the success here is the coordination between the police department code enforcement and public works when when the police department first dealt with this issue and this complaint came in the entire situation that they had was resolved with our public works within 48 hours so we got the complaint they put a plan together they responded got it taken care of then is still working with

[05:57:17] the community manager to ensure that that's not continuing on a regular basis it kind of goes back to the old broken windows theory right you have a house with broken windows or abandoned car in a neighborhood then people think it's okay to break windows out of houses and leave abandoned cars in the neighborhood it's a very old theory but this is what we believe was happening here people saw a couple of tires somebody i can put my tires over here there's that's where you put your use tires at it's a very expensive thing to deal with the other one here is you see some old asphalt

[05:57:55] again public works anna and her team down there immediately responded those are our streets owned by the city we went down there and we got these things picked up and cleaned up um this is this is one miss luna you you've talked about adding zoning so really captain hyde and carla's matt's team really came up with this idea we know parking enforcement is in our community Matt's people are tied up handling complaints they don't always have the time to be proactive riding around the

[05:58:35] community looking for things to find our parking enforcement is in the communities every day so we work and train them they're not issuing the violations what they're doing is notifying the resident of the violation, and then it gets filed back with zoning, so then they follow up to ensure that it's cleaned up. This has been extremely successful. Our parking enforcement, U.S. Captain Hyde, was the same thing. They actually have been very excited about this part

[05:59:10] of it as they're in and identifying. So as we come into the spring, they're also going to be doing some of the high grass complaints and then they file them. Then it goes to zoning. Zoning follows up. They don't have to go find it. They know the violation is there and they ensure that it's been taken care of. Again, success story. Things not siloed. It's about your entire city of Manassas team working extremely well together to address some of these low-level code enforcement violations

[05:59:45] without a cost to our residents right we don't need to add more staff about organizing and being working together as a team and just really changing the way we communicate it um this is bringing nicole's team in this is on the human aspect of it it was a homeless person that was pretty spry of wanting to stay in his tent collecting money off the side of the road

[06:00:21] and again working this time it was public works uh social services our new housing coordinator everyone coming together working with this gentleman trying to find him the resources to get him in a better place he was 100 resistant didn't need our help didn't want our help but we finally got him to a place uh to where he could have a a better in my word better life that doesn't

[06:00:52] necessarily mean that that's we feel he has now the services he needs yeah so he was a veteran as well so we really got him the resources to put him in a better place here we are i was bragging about social services earlier in the work they do you were now they're in on this team this was almost every aspect of the city working together to help this gentleman get to a better place and this was one of the complaints that you received by email of both a homeless camp and

[06:01:30] a gentleman on the side of the road stopping traffic so it was one of those emails that someone saw they complained to to the mayor and council via email we responded to it and got it taken care of any questions about this program we're going to continue and build on it in the future so we think it's a success we're going to keep it in place and do a probably a better job of tracking some of the complaints to report back to okay moving on with some of the parking

[06:02:07] enforcement data that matt covered earlier so we wanted to take this just kicked off january but we wanted to see you know how quickly we were going to be able to get the enforcement up again communicating to our residents and their hoas we were going to begin this in january one of the things again working with IT and getting our in-car cameras have the technology now to read the tags as they're going by because this is a nighttime enforcement action so now our the technology is

[06:02:47] there worked with IT and GIS to lay out these different zones so at nighttime when the officers are doing parking enforcement it's really the ai that's doing it the the cameras are reading the tags it notifies the officer if it's a zone one or zone two violation there they can drive down the street and see so within 10 days i know we say january 1st to the 16th we really didn't get it up and

[06:03:19] running until after the first week. So at the end of 10 days we had 46 violations in zone one. So again we're excited about being able to use the technology and being able to respond again to the complaints that our residents have made a little bit quicker. You'll see more of this data in the annual report that we have coming up at the end of February. Any questions about parking?

[06:03:53] Go to some positive news. The data is not set. This isn't just a very rough estimate. The final numbers we won't have really crunched until later in the month, but the initial assessment is that all offenses are down about 25 percent. So double-digit crime reduction and part one offenses which is your serious usually crimes against a person is down

[06:04:26] about 18 percent so really positive news that is a message across really northern virginia that the crime is down but here in the city of manassas you and i hear it all the time see it read it on social media not factual we always have to say that was we are always fighting back and trying to correct the information that's out there crime was not on a rise you have single incidents that get a lot of attention and make people feel the crimes on the rise but the data is here it's

[06:05:05] going to end up being double-digit crime reduction for calendar year 25. i think that is the positive news for you for me for the department in our overall community that's it i told you guys and we'll talk fast.

[06:05:24] - 3:50, Mr. Burke, I'm next to go. - Thank you. - Any questions? Thank you, Chief. - Again, I think the partnership between PD,

[06:05:46] code enforcement, force, social services.

[06:06:07] - 30, again? - 30, 30. - Start at a roll call, right? - Start at a roll call.

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