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,

We are in the quiet-ish “lull” ahead of budget season, but a few topics to call out from our work session this week. We are poised to greenlight the micromobility one-year pilot (aka scooters) again. We had a lengthy discussion about the next steps for Virginia Village so whether you are a neighbor or someone who cares about more affordable and diverse housing options in the city, you should read on. And 2026 real estate assessments are now out – the real estate market continues to be strong in Falls Church so read on to understand what that may mean for your property taxes (or your rent) this year.

I look forward to hearing from you about the topics above – or others. We do have a regular meeting next week so as always, we welcome public comment at the beginning of the meeting or check out our “open door” office hours schedule below.

Best,
Letty

PS – Early voting starts today for the April 21st Special Election on the redistricting Constitutional Amendment: Should the Constitution of Virginia be amended to allow the General Assembly to temporarily adopt new congressional districts to restore fairness in the upcoming elections, while ensuring Virginia’s standard redistricting process resumes for all future redistricting after the 2030 census?

What Happened This Week:

(1) Shared Micromobility Pilot, aka Scooters 2.0

As I wrote about in my February post (and actually pre-Covid when we started a pilot that unfortunately had no takers), City Council has had a long standing priority to encourage multi modes of transportation. Since 2019, the scooter industry has stabilized, neighboring jurisdictions have had them in operation, meanwhile Falls Church has become a donut hole where scooter companies cannot operate because they don’t have operating agreements. That means that for people who are riding on the W&OD into Falls Church or coming in from Arlington or Fairfax at our other borders, their scooters stop working or they are unable to park them inside City limits.

Since our February work session, staff has had additional discussions in our boards and commissions, with broad support to try another one-year pilot. The staff report is very thorough – with a lot of research and learnings from other jurisdictions and all of the FAQs around how to manage speeds, parking of scooters, violations, how they’ll interact on sidewalks vs streets, etc. The main change since our February discussion is raising the rental age from 16 to 18 in line with scooter companies and neighboring localities’ rules.

Letty’s Thoughts: I know anytime we’re about to try something new or if you have one bad experience, there is natural apprehension about how it will work – and scooters are one of those examples. Staff has done a commendable job researching, thinking through how this pilot will work, and plans to monitor the pilot. Thank you for the comments I’ve received to date – the main concern I’ve heard is around scooters on sidewalks. Of course the gold standard would be to have scooters in dedicated bike lanes, separate from car traffic (we need more of those!) and on low speed, low volume streets, scooters can be mixed with car traffic. But on busier streets where scooters riders don’t feel safe mixing with car traffic, scooters will be allowed on sidewalks. There will be rules around speed and commonsense, courteous behavior expectations, such as announcing when you’re approaching or even dismounting if there are pedestrians nearby. The age difference to operate a car (16) vs to operate a rental scooter (18) gives me pause – when a car is arguably a much more dangerous machine to drive! In any case, I plan to support this pilot to create more ways of getting around – let’s how it goes and we can make tweaks to the program based on what we learn.

(2) Virginia Village – what’s happening when and where, and what’s next?

We also had a lengthy joint work session on Virginia Village with the Planning Commission and Economic Development Authority (see my February 2021 post that announced the first acquisition). Since 2021, the city through the EDA has been slowly acquiring more of these quads on S. Maple with the intention of affordable housing preservation and an eventual long term redevelopment of the property for affordable and mixed income housing. To date, the city has acquired 9 of the 20 quads, using a combination of mostly grant dollars and some local funds.

Back in November, staff had proposed a roadmap for the coming 2 years and this week, we discussed the near term timelines, specifically what will happen in March and April (community discussions, reconciling the small area plans with current needs and goals) and then issuance of a RFP for bids by interested developers this summer. I encourage you to review the staff report which is quite thorough or the presentation materials. See below for the proposed community engagement plans.

A few things to note from Letty:

• Staff has already been engaging with the immediate residents of the Virginia Village neighborhood, as well as adjacent Winter Hill and Tinner Hill Heritage Foundation.
• The schedule is ambitious in order for any developers to apply for the next round of Virginia’s LIHTC application deadline (low income housing tax credits – the predominant way affordable housing projects are financed) in March 2027.
• While the schedule is ambitious, note that any possible redevelopment is many years away. The city has an existing relocation policy already, but any displacement of current residents would be at least 4-5 years away.
• As a first step, we’ll be voting next week to “initiate” the process to update our long range planning documents that include the Virginia Village site. Much work and community discussion went into them (see S. Washington plan and Downtown plan) at the time, but since the plans were last touched 12+ years ago it’s important to reconcile those documents with new goals and community needs such as the Affordable Living Policy we adopted last summer. This updating process this spring/summer will not be a total re-write of those documents will be a “small area plan lite”.

(3) 2026 Real Estate Assessments

This year’s real estate assessments are out. The TL;DR is that the Falls Church market remains strong, and since real estate makes up nearly 60% of our revenues – this is important.

Overall, the real estate tax base is increasing 6.9% over last year (5.3% from market appreciation, 1.6% from new construction). Overall residential real estate values have risen 7.2% (6.2% market growth and 1% new construction) over the past year, with variations for single family, townhomes, and condos. Overall commercial property values have increased 6.5% (2.3% market growth and 4.2% new construction). Further, multi-family property (aka, apartments) values have experienced similar growth of 6.3% (4.8% market growth and 1.4% new construction) over the past year.   

Letty’s Thoughts:

• Note that the City Council does not control these assessed values. They are determined independently by our real estate assessor on an annual basis, based on what is fair market value as of January 1 each year (a little different if you’re a commercial property). The City Council sets the tax rate, so even if the tax rate remains flat at $1.185 – your tax bill (and potentially your rent if you live in an apartment building) will increase due to increased assessed values.
• This is a frequent community concern I hear, and I am sensitive to the growing tax burden. Even though we have steadily decreased the tax rate 17 cents to somewhat offset rising assessments since 2020, I am cognizant that your tax bills are still growing year after year. And taxes are part of the affordability concern that is widely discussed right now especially in light of the broader economic worries for the region. This year, there is talk about increasing various tax rates in Falls Church – which I hope would be a last resort after we seriously look at trimming costs.
• While our 6.9% assessed value growth is likely the highest in the region (see Arlington’s property assessments – they’re seeing 1.1% growth overall, with residential at 3.2% and commercial at -1.5% – which means their budgets, ability to fund core priorities, compensate staff, etc are that much harder) – I am also cognizant that 23% of our increased values in real estate tax base is due to new construction. That has implications for future years when we have few commercial projects in the pipeline.

What’s Coming Up:

March 9 – City Council Meeting*

March 16 – City Council Work Session*

March 23 – City Council Meeting* (budget presentation)

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

Office Hours:

Letty’s Walking Office Hours – Friday, April 10 (5 pm, Broad St / Howard Herman Trail)

Letty’s Jogging Office Hours – Friday, April 17 (12 pm, Library)

Letty’s Walking Office Hours – Friday, April 24 (5 pm, W&OD / West End Park)