Blog posts are the personal views of Letty Hardi and not official statements or records on behalf of the Falls Church City Council

Dear Friends,

Thank you for all the kind notes last week. There’s a lot to share with you this week – the topics really illustrate how much of our daily lives are touched by local government and why you should care. Everything from the economic development potpourri (Stratford Garden is officially open and Sweet Leaf coming soon!), pedestrian safety, police staffing, park names, budget amendments, and sewer capacity. (I know – I saved the best for last.)

It’s a long weekend for many with MLK Jr Day on Monday. We proclaimed it a Day of Service to honor Dr King’s legacy. I hope you will join in Tinner Hill’s annual march or some other reflection and community action for more justice. City Council got to work early this year and helped with food distribution to city residents with Capital Area Food Bank this week. We learned that 30% of the region is food insecure and only 5% of the clients are unhoused – which means food insecurity issues are more common than we might think and is actually all around us.

City Council is not meeting next week with the holiday, and I’ll be attending Governor-Elect Spanberger’s inauguration this weekend. You can catch me in person at my January office hours next Wed, January 21 at 12 pm at Harveys and I’ll be back in your inboxes at the end of the month. I look forward to hearing from you.

Stay warm,
Letty

PS – Remember Falls Church Restaurant Week starts in a week. More than 60 restaurants are participating, so I hope you’re hungry!

What Happened This Week

(1) Pedestrian Safety PSA – the City Manager shared this week that there have been more crashes involving cars and pedestrians recently, which is obviously alarming. Traffic safety remains the #1 issue residents bring to the City Council and we hear you. We have been funding multiple projects – some complete and many underway. We also discuss observations and feedback we hear from the public nearly weekly – from large capital projects such as the HAWK signal now on Broad St, transforming the Maple and Annandale intersection to a traffic circle (which is safer for pedestrians), to neighborhood wide traffic calming like in Greenway Downs to responding to feedback we hear from the community with smaller scale, quick projects like the flexi posts that narrow intersections and force cars to slow down at turns. There are also processes in place where cross functional team of staff across public, public works, and planning review crash and other street level data to improve street safety and prioritize the next round of projects.

We are committed to a multimodal city where safety is built into every street, and I expect we’ll re-affirm this as a top priority when City Council has our planning retreat at the end of January.

Letty’s Thoughts: We know there is always more to do and faster, especially because it takes a long time and money to evolve a mostly city designed for cars to be safer for other modes. And car behavior has only gotten worse in the meantime. Engineering solutions with actual street changes – such as narrowing lanes or intersections are ultimately the most effective vs lowering posted speed limits or police enforcement which is only temporary. Check out the helpful tips here.

(2) Budget Amendment

During our work session, we heard a budget amendment request from staff for $300K in general government expenditures (primarily for increased legal services costs) and $1M in school expenditures (primarily for facilities assessment, security, and fixing doors at Meridian High School). The $300K would come from a contingency fund we set aside (Letty note: several of us, including myself, grumbled at the use of contingency because the intent was for two scenarios: if revenues came in lower or our social safety net expenses came in higher due to the economic uncertainty and federal policy changes) and the $1M would come from the school’s fund balance (ie, their unspent money at the end of the fiscal year).

The budget amendment will be officially in front of us at our meeting on January 26 for a first vote.

(3) Sewer Agreement – close to final

For those following the topic of sewer capacity (this post from March 2025 would be a helpful refresher) – we are nearly to the finish line with a better agreement than we initially thought back in March.

The quick TL;DR: the city doesn’t have our own sewer system – we send our sewage flows to Arlington and Fairfax. Every new project pays “availability fees” that go towards additional capacity for that development – it’s part of the planning that happens with every project. Underway over the past few years have been discussions to buy additional capacity from Fairfax with the forecasted growth and/or send more flows to Arlington where we already have excess capacity. The current agreement with Fairfax County has been in place since 1978. The staff report and the presentation from March 2025 explains the issue with peak flows – when there are heavy rain events and stormwater ends up infiltrating into the sewer system, called inflow & infiltration. I&I is a legacy issue that has worsened with heavier rain events.

Previous staff negotiations with Fairfax County to address I&I involved a basin underneath Cavalier Trail Park to capture peak flows, and the new solution involves cost sharing for upsizing a downstream sewer pipe. Besides less upfront cost (estimated $6.8M instead of $10.8M) there are also no long term operating liabilities to the city plus we won’t have to disturb Cavalier Trail Park.

As currently planned, we will use the combination of sewer availability fees to fund the $8.8M for the additional capacity purchase and availability fees + debt to fund the $6.8M to manage peak flows.

(4) Potpourri

• Falls Church Police Update – we heard a brief update from Police Chief Fard about his staff. It’s always challenging to hire police officers and hiring has been a top priority of the department, especially to backfill the School Resource Officer position at the secondary campus. We heard that all the departures from the department have been retirees or voluntary moves out of the region and the importance of competitive pay as other jurisdictions are stepping up their compensation with hefty bonuses in the coming year.
• Board and Commission Assignments – besides our City Council meetings, we also serve as liaisons to various boards and commissions locally and regionally. It’s good to balance everyone’s policy preference and expertise with responsibility sharing and succession planning so that we have multiple Councilmembers versed on a topic. (Personally, I’ve learned so much from having been the liaison to most B&Cs on my time so far!) This is also a good plug to check out our vacancies if you’re interested in volunteering on a board.
• C-PACE – We adopted C-PACE, which is a program that allows private property owners in the City to access financing for green building improvements through a state level program, with no financial risk or obligation to the City. As transportation and buildings make up the vast majority of our greenhouse gas emissions, the more buildings that can go “green” – besides being better for the environment, they’re cheaper to maintain in the long run and this now opens up a lower cost financing tool.
• New park coming soon(ish) and names needed! The property at 604 S. Oak (fka Fellows Property) that we acquired back in 2019 will turn into a park soon with construction starting this spring into 2027. Be on the lookout for a public call for name suggestions for this new public park – the process will follow the city’s adopted code for naming public property.
• Economic Development News – you can find more details in this month’s EDA deck. Two things I’ll highlight:
  • Stratford Garden is now officially opened with our ribbon cutting this week. We appreciate the creative adaptive reuse of the old motel space – we have more and more examples of adaptive reuse (Northside Social, Zoya’s Atelier, Godfrey’s) across the city. Plus, the fact that the owners have doubled down on the city with a second investment (they’re also behind Dominion Wine and Beer) is always a good sign!
  • We also heard that Sweet Leaf is quickly backfilling the space formerly where Smoothie King was. That was met with much fanfare as I’ve long heard requests for more fast casual, healthy options.

What’s Coming Up:

January 26 – City Council Meeting*

January 31 – City Council Planning Retreat

February 2 – City Council Meeting*

February 4 – Ask the Council Office Hours (9 am, City Hall)

February 9 – City Council Meeting*

February 23 – City Council Meeting*

*All Mondays (except 5th Mondays and holidays) at 7:30 pm. You can access the agenda and livestream here, including recordings of past meetings

Letty’s Office Hours:

Wednesday, January 21 (12 pm, Harveys)

Wednesday, February 18 (5 pm, Stratford)