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,

This week’s Council work session went til midnight and covered three topics that will be of much interest – housing, specifically revisiting past zoning changes and seeing if they accomplished the original objectives, closing out the fiscal year and proposed uses of the year end surplus, and bike code clean up and changes, including adding code to allow police to seize “off road vehicles” if they’re being illegally operated (which includes the “e-motos” / electric dirt bikes I’ve received many concerns about). The first is particularly important to me – not just because of the housing topic – but because I think success isn’t just adoption of a policy or finishing a project. It’s seeing whether we actually delivered results. That feedback loop of measuring and analyzing past decisions to inform future priorities is an important way of thinking that I think government should do more of.

It’s been a really busy week with a lot of regional activity – as one of the smallest jurisdictions in NoVA, it’s important we stay connected with the region and learn from others. So read on for those too.

In case you missed it, the city’s two red light cameras have been moved to Broad/Washington and Broad/Roosevelt intersections with the 30 day warning period underway. This is an example where we are more data-driven in our approach to transportation safety – instead of keeping them at their previous locations where they did their job at reducing red light running, we’re moving them to the intersections with higher risk.

Look forward to hearing from you this week.

Best,
Letty

PS Early voting turnout continues to be strong! Since it’s a FCCPS long weekend during Election Day – make plans to take advantage of the early voting this weekend and next week. You can vote early up until next Saturday, Halloween at City Hall.

What Happened This Week:

(1) Housing Outcomes – measure what works and be willing to improve it

We spent a good part of the evening looking back at three zoning changes intended to diversify our housing options with the Planning Commission and Housing Commission: cottage housing, transition zone (aka T Zones), and accessory dwelling units (ADs). I think this kind of retrospective is incredibly important. We spend a lot of time debating zoning changes, often with strong opinions about what might happen. But once the rules are in place and the market responds, we also need to look at what actually happens.

Cottage housing is a good example. We adopted a pilot ordinance in 2017, but nearly a decade later, only one project has been built: the 10-home Railroad Cottages on Railroad Avenue, off the W&OD. The project has some great features, including geothermal heating and cooling, and it created a housing option different from the detached single-family homes that dominate many of our neighborhoods. But the ordinance comes with several restrictions, including a 55+ age requirement, a requirement that sites be within 500 feet of a revitalization district, and a minimum 1 acre parcel size. We heard that at least two other interested projects couldn’t meet the distance requirement. And when you consider how expensive land has become—a quarter-acre lot can cost nearly $1M —it’s fair to ask whether the current rules make these projects financially feasible in the first place.

The T-1 zone has produced more results. Three townhouse projects have been approved, with 32 townhomes built and 15 underway. These projects are generally selling at prices around $1M (which is actually around the city’s median home value), so they aren’t what I’ve called “capital A” affordable housing. But they do offer a different option for people who want to live in Falls Church without buying a detached single-family home and are more affordable than that default option. When we approved the T zone changes in 2023, besides townhomes, we also hoped the zoning flexibility would also created stacked townhomes (aka, 2 over 2s) that are becoming more popular across the region – again, as another diverse housing option that will be more “lower case A” affordable. So far, no one has proposed 2 over 2s in T Zone sites so it merits asking why.

ADs are still a work in progress. We’ve received five applications since we legalized them in 18 months ago, one with a building permit and others moving through the process, with none under construction or even built yet. That pace was roughly what staff expected, but I’d like to understand more about what happens between someone expressing interest and actually building an AD. Are construction costs, utility work, financing, or the 1,000-square-foot limit keeping people from moving forward? Are people building them for family members, rental income, or to accommodate changing needs as they age? ADs can create flexibility for homeowners and additional housing options for renters. But they typically cost at least $350K to build, so we need to understand whether our rules and processes are helping or getting in the way.

Letty’s Thoughts:

Housing supply matters at different price points. When someone moves into a cottage or townhouse or condo, they free up another home for someone else. Those moving chains are one reason adding supply can help ease pressure throughout the housing market, even when every new home isn’t affordable to everyone.

I also want us to revisit some of the concerns raised when the ordinance was first adopted. People worried about parking, traffic, stormwater, and tree canopy. Which concerns proved justified? Which requirements improved the project, and which added costs without delivering meaningful benefits? We also discussed whether the parking requirements in these projects are getting the balance right. We should learn from that experience rather than simply carrying every original requirement forward indefinitely. My view is that we should be willing to revisit these policies based on evidence. We can’t solve our housing challenges by changing zoning alone. But we also shouldn’t assume that a policy is working just because we adopted it. Good policy requires follow-through, honest evaluation, and continuous improvement.

(2) Closing out Fiscal Year 2026 – financials update & budget amendments

Our FY26 financial report showed good results. Unaudited figures indicate that the City brought in about $2.1M more revenue than budgeted and spent approximately $330K less than appropriated (0.3% variance which is remarkable), leaving a net surplus of roughly $2.4M. After accounting for replenishing the various rainy day funds per our financial policies and revenue sharing with the schools ($600K), the city has $1.1M available one time funding or to go into reserves or a combination.

Much of the revenue growth came from taxes and our local economy continuing to exceed expectations. Personal property tax collections, sales tax, and meals tax all came in above budget. Compared with the prior year, meals tax revenue grew 16.9%, sales tax grew 12.7%, and personal property tax grew 14.8%.

These are encouraging numbers. Some of it is inflation but they also reflect economic activity in our community, including growth in restaurant and grocery businesses. But there are important caveats. Our Finance Director cautioned that the unusually strong revenue growth we’ve experienced in recent years may be nearing its end and we may return closer to the 3% growth years.

We also discussed the first amendment to the FY2027 budget (the budget year we’re in right now that started in July 2026) which includes fleet replacement for police, sheriff, public works, repairs at City Hall, city events, and adding more budget to transportation safety and traffic calming. A deferred item from the last budget is $180K for solar panels for the Community Center, potentially allowing the City to take advantage of federal tax credits before the applicable deadline. Besides reducing our greenhouse gas emissions and supporting the city’s climate goals – the cost to moving to renewable energy sources is recouped through utility bill savings.

(3) Bike Laws

We also previewed two police-related ordinances to clean up code for bike usage and taking advantage of state code to allow us to deal with a concern we’ve heard about “e-motos” – not to be confused with e-bikes. The first would align our bicycle and e-bike code with state law and changes on the W&OD. That includes updating definitions to distinguish among different classes of e-bikes (prohibiting Class 3 e-bikes on sidewalks and shared use paths) and removing provisions that duplicate or conflict with state law. The second ordinance, under a 2024 change in state law, allows us to seize off-road motorcycles operated unlawfully on highways, sidewalks, or paths. This is an important distinction from simply issuing a citation: it would give police another enforcement tool when the legal requirements are met.

(4) Regional Activities

I was glad to have shared a stage at Supervisor Palchik’s Green Fairfax Environmental Summit with Congressman Walkinshaw and Senator Salim to discuss the local vs state vs federal role in climate and environmental goals. IMO, local decisions have a huge role! After all, 90% of greenhouse gas emissions come from buildings and transportation and those are directly tied to local land use policies.

Then we officially cut the ribbon with the Northern Transportation Authority (NVTA) on the $15.7M transportation improvements at the western gateway to the city around the secondary school campus and the West Falls project. This $15.7M investment includes upgraded intersections and traffic signals, improved sidewalks and crosswalks, better bicycle and pedestrian access, enhanced bus stops and transit connections, and utility relocation and undergrounding. The city has been fortunate to win grants from NVTA over the years, which helps us take on big capital projects to upgrade our transportation infrastructure to be more multimodal and reduce congestion.

And yesterday, Falls Church hosted regional leaders from Fairfax County, Fairfax City, and Vienna in Senator Salim’s annual summit – discussing taxation policy, transportation, school priorities, cannabis sales beginning next July, and energy policies. As a region, we share many of the same goals and challenges so I appreciated this new annual summit bringing us together to hear from localities and see where we can work together ahead of the General Assembly session in January.

What’s Coming Up:

Monday, October 26 – City Council Meeting*

Monday, November 2 – City Work Session (begins at 7 pm with closed session)

Monday, November 9 – City Council Meeting*

Monday, November 16 – City Council Work Session*

*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 Fall Office Hours:

Wednesday, November 18 – 630-8 pm (Lucky Thai)