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,

I hope you’re having a good summer with rest, travel, or time with family and friends. While City Council is trying out a new summer schedule (2 Monday night meetings per month in lieu of a long recess), my posts will be more sporadic than what you’ve been seeing. So there’s a lot to share and tie you over until August. Three main topics in this post, along with a potpourri of fun things you may have missed if you make it to the end.

1/ Greening of Lincoln – with the tragic flooding in Texas, it’s timely that we also discussed this stormwater + street safety project in work session this week.

2/ Solid Waste – the big topic in front of us in August will be the recommendations from the Solid Waste Task Force on how we pay for trash and how to divert more waste by adding city-wide compost. Read on for updates and how to join their next meeting.

3/ New businesses coming – new openings, new leases, and new build outs underway!

And just because City Council is meeting a little less frequently doesn’t mean you can’t engage! Our next Ask the Council Office Hours is August 6 while my personal office hours will resume in the fall. And if you’ve ever been curious about making public comment (it’s really not scary) or want to support “leaving the leaves” this fall – Falls Church Forward will help you learn how to make public comments next week. Or you can also write to us as always. I look forward to hearing from you.

Best,
Letty

What Happened This Week:

(1) Greening of Lincoln Project

We discussed the latest on the Greening of Lincoln project, which is a combination stormwater and street improvement project (traffic calming and ped improvements). Due to increasing costs (almost 2x) after the more detailed 60% design were completed in the winter, staff has been working on a phased recommendation to deliver the project – tackling the top priority stormwater facilities in 3 areas in Phase A, stormwater and street improvements from West to Greenwich in Phase B, and then Greenwich to Yucatan work in Phases C and D would be on hold until more funding sources can be identified. Phases A and B would begin construction in 2026 sequentially, lasting about 6 months each.

Staff did also commit to implement “quick build” or “light solutions” traffic calming and ped improvements in the Phase C and Phase D areas of Lincoln Avenue (the eastern portions from Greenwich to Yucatan) while we seek more funding.

We also spent a long time discussing many details of the design – width of travel lanes, where traffic calming devices can go, etc which has been an area of high interest for the neighbors.

Letty’s Thoughts: While it’s not ideal to break up the project and not fully deliver the original scope (as I’m a fan of “do it right the first time”) this is a pragmatic approach to tackle acute stormwater needs with the funds we have before costs continue escalating. And while community input on design details are important (and not really feasible until we get far enough with plans that have details), we do need to strike the balance between incorporating input vs trusting the professionals so the project can begin construction.

(2) Solid Waste Task Force

The Solid Waste Task Force has been hard at work this summer, just wrapping up meeting #3 that focused on the possibility of city-wide composting services to those who receive city curbside service (vs the opt in Compost Crew vendor about 500 households currently use). The task force’s meeting materials and video recordings are all available on their webpage if you want to catch up. They have a final meeting on Monday, July 21 that is open to the public to attend or to give public comment – ahead of delivering their recommendations to us in the August 4 City Council work session.

If you’d like to come up to speed – I wrote this post with FAQs back in the spring and the Task Force also penned an open letter to the community here that summarizes the issue and their scope of work.

(3) New Businesses

There are exciting new openings, new signed leases, and new build outs underway. It’s always a good reminder to live local and now there are even more options to try in Falls Church – here’s a snapshot:

(4) Potpourri

Finally, ICYMI – we had special visitors in the city a few weeks ago when we got to tour the Eden Center with the Democratic ticket for Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and Attorney General.

And our new streetscape standards we adopted a few months ago came to life with two new stamped asphalt crosswalks with high visibility markings in lieu of the previous standard of all brick crosswalks. (We have found that over time, all brick crosswalks and sidewalks posed accessibility, maintenance, and cost issues.) The Broad/West intersection work *finally* wrapped up so we appreciate everyone’s patience.

What’s Coming Up:

Monday, July 14 – City Council Meeting*

Monday, August 4 – City Council Work Session*

Wednesday, August 6 – Ask the Council Office Hours (9 am, City Hall)

Monday, August 11 – City Council Meeting*

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