Updates from Letty – November 14, 2025

Posted on by Letty Hardi

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,

It’s been a busy and eventful two weeks since my last post. Congrats to the newly elected/re-elected City Council and School Board members and the first woman Governor of Virginia! We also recognized Veteran’s Day and celebrated our board and commission volunteers this week (a plug for vacancies that could use volunteers!). Our meeting this week covered all things transportation and our quarterly review of capital projects – pedestrian safety is one of the top priorities I hear about so you’ll want to read on about the initiatives coming. And we got in one final crosswalk painting project last weekend at Oak St Elementary!

Also – while we’re on the topic of transportation – our Fairfax County neighbors have a study underway on Rt 29 (from our borders all the way to the beltway) with a survey open until December 19. We also have a capital project to add bus shelters and upgrade the Marshall and Greenway intersections along our section of Rt 29 – it’s still in early phases, with design starting this winter and construction in 2029 (transportation projects and grant funding take a long time!)

Join me at my last office hours of 2025 next Tuesday at 5 pm at Harveys. If you’d like to catch me in person another time, just reach out. And next week, our work session will be heavy on our other top priority – affordable housing – please join us or stay tuned.

Look forward to hearing from you.

Best,
Letty

What Happened This Week

(1) All Things Transportation – sidewalk and bike updates

Biking – since adopting the Bike Master Plan last year, we have been making progress on 2 fronts – larger CIP projects and opportunistic projects to add bike facilities when other road projects are underway. There are more details in the staff report, but here’s the quick summary:

  • Large projects – East/West ped and bike connection to the secondary campus is the first priority. A consultant has been hired to develop the design and engage the community, with more concrete discussion on the next steps and preliminary design coming in early 2026. As part of the Bike Master Plan, bike facilities on N. and S. West Streets are also planned, with design and construction after the East/West connection.
  • Opportunistic projects – Bike lanes were added on S. Roosevelt Street in September and bike lanes are planned on W. Annandale Road as part of safety improvements and re-paving happening this month. Staff is also exploring installation of bike lanes on Great Falls Street between Dorchester Road and W&OD Trail as part of Lincoln Avenue Safe Streets project for fall 2026.

Sidewalks – we heard an updated approach to tackle our Missing Links sidewalk program, which is meant to add sidewalks where there are none on either side or missing sections, especially where there are high volumes of pedestrians or connections to commercial or public facilities. (We have separate maintenance programs to handle sidewalk repairs and shaving.) The TL;DR:

  • Sidewalks are complicated and expensive: on average, it costs about $400 per linear foot to install a new sidewalk. And at our current annual budget allocation, we can tackle one block of sidewalk per year. I expect more discussion when we start the FY27 budget process soon.
  • Staff has proposed a new missing link map of sidewalk opportunities (below), with tiers based on constructability, previous requests, and right of way availability.
  • Hillwood Ave – with 910 linear feet of sidewalk, 10 new ADA ramps and 4 crosswalks – is one of the largest sidewalk projects to date and wrapping up this year.
  • 3 sidewalk projects are planned for this coming year based on the prioritization criteria above.

Letty’s Thoughts: following our Complete Streets and Vision Zero discussion a few weeks ago (culminating in a resolution we adopted this week), I’m excited about the projects underway and coming soon – and we have a lot – from small quick builds to large capital projects (see next section). Transforming our car-oriented little city into a “15 minute city” takes time, a lot of money, and patience. We hear loud and clear that our community wants our streets to be more walkable and bikeable, so residents and visitors of all ages and abilities have transportation choices other than getting in a car. And in order to deliver on that vision and get these projects done, a new muscle we’ll need to exercise is how to balance community input with execution. Many of us live near these projects, walk, run, or bike around the city, and therefore have personal experience and input on the public streets. We can keep iterating on designs forever, but we also want to be responsive to the safety concerns and get these important projects built – which means there will need to be some “tops down” initiatives (that incorporate professional engineering standards, industry best practices, and adopted city policies) with “bottoms up” community feedback and we won’t be able to satisfy every suggestion.

refreshed crosswalk paint at Oak St Elementary – increased safety + public art!

(2) Quarterly CIP (big projects) and Council Priorities Update

We also had our quarterly discussion on CIP (large capital) projects and City Council Priorities. With 34 active projects across the city, you can see that about half of them are transportation projects, 25% are stormwater/sewer, and the remainder are facilities and parks. A few highlighted projects that have high community interest or ones you may have seen underway:

We also had our final review of the 2024-2025 City Council Priorities – you can see that while we have some open initiatives, many that we set out and discussed in January 2024 have now been complete! Among others, these initiatives have been completed in the past 2 years: more equitable solid waste strategy, bike master plan, ADA transition plan, adoption of Complete Streets and Vision Zero policies, updated streetscape standards, commercial parking code changes, adoption of a new Affordable Living Policy, and adoption of by right Accessory Dwellings zoning.

Just as important as labeling projects as complete is monitoring the results and ensuring these policies and projects accomplish our original policy goals. And if not, how do we continue iterating and improving to deliver the outcomes important to the community?

When the new Council is seated in January, we’ll continue our tradition of a “retreat” to discuss and plan our priorities for 2025-2026.

(3) FY25 Budget Amendment – final vote

As I wrote about previously, we ended Fiscal Year 2025 with a “surplus” and took the 2nd reading vote on the budget amendment to close out the year and appropriated about $625K to miscellaneous one time expenses, $870K to unassigned fund balance/rainy day fund, $835K to reserves, and $270K to permit fee reserves. Among the new appropriations was $25K split among the three food banks that serve our residents – Capital Area Food Bank, Food for Others, and the Falls Church Community Services Council.

Even though the federal government has reopened and SNAP benefits are supposedly fully resuming next week – there is growing food insecurity across the region. Monetary donations go the farthest and volunteers are also needed to do food deliveries. Their websites linked below have more details.

Capital Area Food Bank

Food For Others

FC Community Services Council

(4) Board and Commission Vacancies

Our local Board and Commissions are a great way to dip your toe in local government – we have several that have current vacancies. We also have several regional bodies that also need volunteers. We rely on our B&Cs for counsel on various topics – from transportation to housing to human services to towing to trees to real estate appeals!

If you are interested but unsure which one to pick, please reach out and we’re happy to find good match for you.

What’s Coming Up:

Monday, November 17 – City Council Work Session*

Monday, November 24 – City Council Meeting*

Monday, December 1 – City Council Work Session (joint with School Board)*

Wednesday, December 3 – Ask the Council Office Hours (City Hall, 9 am)

Monday, December 8 – 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

Letty’s Office Hours:

Tuesday, November 18 (5 pm) – Harvey’s