|
Join the Pothole Patrol!
The City is kicking-off its annual "Pothole Patrol" as we work to address the potholes that develop over the winter.
|
|
Spring Clean Up
Beginning Saturday April 9th and concluding April 30th, a different section of the City will go each week.
|
|
First Thursday Returns!
Thursday is the first "First Thursday" of the year!
|
|
Mulch, Delivered
Last month the City began mulch deliveries.
Mulch is available in a full or half truckload, and each delivery is $50.
Contact 703-746-HELP to schedule a delivery.
|
|
Time For Kindergarten
If you have a child who will be five years of age by September 30th, it's time to register for Kindergarten!
|
|
Alexandria's Earth Day
The City's Annual Earth Day festival returns on Saturday, April 29th.
The event will be from 10 AM until 2 PM. I'll see you there!
|
|
 |
|
Wednesday is an exciting day in Alexandria. We put our generosity to the test.
Wednesday is
Spring2ACTion. This annual tradition is a coordinated giving initiative to support numerous non-profits that serve our community. Last yea, we gave over $1.3 million to 152 organizations.
Please join me as we work to top that number this year!
Mr. Balas is currently the principal of the school both of my children have attended to and I'm confident he will do an excellent job in his new role at our City's only public high school.
|
Charting Our Fiscal Future
This is now the seventh City budget that I have worked on during my time on the City Council. While I've never had the opportunity to work on a budget when revenues were skyrocketing, some years have been worse than others.
I've tried to have the same approach in each budget; push for efficiency and savings within the operating budget, but maintain strong levels of investment in capital infrastructure.
At various points, this philosophy has gotten me in trouble with people on either side of the debate about the relative size of government. I have generally opposed extensive growth in the operating budget but strongly supported addressing deferred capital needs.
The operating budget provides the resources to fund employees and their benefits. A competitive regional labor market have pushed employment costs higher. That drives our operating expenses to grow at a rate greater than general inflation.
Capital expenditures are the City's investment in our infrastructure. These investments can reduce operating costs, promote economic development and reduce the need for larger tax increases in the future.
Despite large efforts to address deferred capital investment in recent years, the City stands at a crossroads. With a perfect storm of infrastructure needs for school, sewer, city facility, transportation and recreation, the practices of the past will not sustain us in the future.
The City Manager's proposed Capital Improvement
 Program identifies over $500 million of unfunded capital investments despite funding $2 billion of needs over the next decade.
We have to do something dramatically different.
Deferring capital investment further will threaten economic growth and ultimately exacerbate the challenges we face.
From 2002 until 2009, the City was enjoying the run-up in the residential real estate market. Our General Fund budget increased by an average of 6.5% per year. The work force in City Government grew from 2,229 Full Time Equivalents (FTE) to 2,660 FTEs during that period.
In Fiscal Year 2010, the bottom fell out as the Great Recession took hold. The City adopted its first negative budget in at least 40 years, reducing spending from Fiscal Year 2009 to 2010 by over 2%. From 2010 to 2017, the General Fund budget increased by an average of 2.9% per year.
Today, the City workforce is proposed to be 2,563 FTEs, 4% lower than 2009.
Under current rates, projections are that we would experience an anemic 1.8% revenue growth. That would provide an additional $12 million of new revenue.
Sustaining an average budget growth of less than 3% per year with 4% annual student enrollment growth, employee healthcare costs increasing far above rates of inflation, long-deferred infrastructure needs, and ever-escalating funding challenges from Metro is impossible.
Increases to debt service and cash capital contributions to our capital budget require an increase of $6.5 million.
Providing City employees with scheduled merit increases alone costs an additional $5 million.
While not an exhaustive list, those costs alone total $29.1 million of new spending. One cent on the real estate tax rate this year generates $3.9 million of general fund revenue. So that represents nearly 7.5 cents of the real estate tax rate of requested new expenditures.
To address these funding challenges, the City Manager employed a series of efforts, including:
The proposed general fund operating budget is $712.4 million, an increase of 3.5% from Fiscal Year 2017. With revenue growth in the low single digits, the City Manager included a proposed increase of 2.7 cents in the real estate tax rate.
The City Manager's proposed 10 year Capital Improvement Program continued the focus on expanding infrastructure investment. The 10 year plan increased by nearly 20%, driven largely by $368 million to address Combined Sewer projects, an additional $161 million for increases for WMATA capital funding, $144 million of increases for Alexandria City Public Schools capital funding, and $47 million to address City facilities deficiencies.
At the proposed real estate tax rate of $1.10 and including the impact of assessment increases, the average single family homeowner will pay an additional $294 during 2017. The average condominium homeowner will pay an additional $89.
Yet, even with a 10 year, $2 billion Capital Improvement Program, the proposal leaves large gaps in the Alexandria City Public Schools capacity and modernization plans, as well as in City efforts to address deficient municipal facilities.
Knowing that it would be unable to address all our infrastructure needs, Council requested that the City Manager also include a Supplemental capital package. The supplemental package, which could be funded by an additional five cent real estate tax rate increase, a dining tax increase and a personal property tax increase, included $325 million of unfunded capital initiatives.
If the Council were to choose the full supplemental capital package, the average single family homeowner would pay $659 more in real estate taxes alone. The average condo owner would pay $245 more.
Last month, the Council was obligated to "advertise" the highest tax rate that we might consider during this budget process.
The Council voted 6-1 to embark on a new direction.
The City is entirely too small and dense to continue building single use municipal facilities. We must break down the barriers between the City, the Alexandria City Public Schools and other public agencies and use our scarce capital funds to truly collaborate. I'm hopeful this newly proposed process will help facilitate that.
|
Our Potomac River waterfront is the reason Alexandria exists as a community.
The history of our waterfront
is the history of Alexandria. It is what has brought people and commerce to our community for generations.
The implicit compromise of the
approved Waterfront Small Area Plan
was as simple as it was controversial. Can we allow some increased development on three derelict sites in exchange for the following: new waterfront
parks, public accessibility throughout the shoreline, new flood mitigation, environmental sustainability, and economic vitality?
While achieving this vision has not always been easy, we now stand closer than ever.
|
|
Creating Affordable Housing
He laid the blame for these challenges squarely at the feet of local policymakers.
Furman writes
"Zoning restrictions--be they in the form of minimum lot sizes, off-street parking requirements, height limits, prohibitions on multifamily housing, or lengthy permitting processes--are supply constraints. Basic economic theory predicts--and many empirical studies confirm--that housing markets in which supply cannot keep up with demand will see housing prices rise."
All this leads us to the fundamental question about whether Alexandria's efforts to address affordability are helping, hurting or having no effect.
Yet, if Furman and other economists are to be believed, we in Alexandria have never tackled the fundamental root of housing affordability. Most of our efforts are aimed at creating or preserving housing that will ultimately be in the public domain or under nominal public control. However, it is through our zoning authority that we can truly impact housing affordability in privately owned housing.
Obviously zoning restrictions have a place and serve a need for our community. I would also suggest that we have done some things right.
The City has aggressively utilized our land-use authority to:
- limit density
- increase open space
- create new retail
- improve architecture
- improve transportation infrastructure
- preserve historic structures
- develop new public facilities
- create affordable housing
- improve basic infrastructure
- improve public art, and more
At some point, the question becomes whether those efforts are ultimately self-defeating, particularly as it relates to housing affordability?
In June of 2012, the City Council adopted the
Beauregard Small Area Plan which laid out a vision for a 395 acre swath of land constituting a major portion of the City's West End.
As in much of the City, the landowners in the Plan area had millions of square feet of development permitted (5.5 million constructed, 10 million permitted) under their existing zoning, but not currently developed.
Through the planning process, the City attempted to use the incentive of additional development to provide significant public amenities as well as to encourage land-uses other than additional townhomes.
The approved plan provides a funding formula (including developer funding, tax increment financing, and City Affordable Housing Trust Fund dollars) for the creation of at least 800 new units of committed affordable housing, funding for a new fire station, a new "ellipse" at the intersection of Seminary and Beauregard Roads, a new transitway, additional tree canopy, and 44 acres of new open space.
In total, the Plan exacted $150 million of developer-funded public amenities.
Yet it didn't happen.
The change in the parking policy is an example of market based solutions to these affordability challenges. When City Council approved the City's Housing Master Plan, Councilman Chapman and I proposed that the City take a look at expanding our density bonuses for affordable housing.
As we work to implement the City's Housing Master Plan, we must comprehend all of the factors that challenge affordability in the City.
Let me know your thoughts!
|
|
Cleaner Water
Early in the last Council term, the members grappled with the challenges that the City faced from federal environmental regulations. These govern how we handle sewage from homes and businesses. Those efforts culminated in the adoption of the
City's Sanitary Sewer Master Plan. In conjunction with our partners at
Alexandria Renew Enterprises, we are working to implement that plan.
Protecting the historic nature of Old Town is one of the more important obligations of the City Council. However, there is one aspect of our historic infrastructure that must be modernized.
In 95% of our City, stormwater (run-off) is collected and returned to rivers and streams with very little treatment to remove pollutants accumulated from roads, parking lots, and other surfaces upon which it falls. Separately, sanitary sewage is sent to the
Alexandria Renew Enterprises wastewater treatment facility where it is treated and later returned to waterways.
However, in a 540 acre section of Old Town, a Combined Sewer System still collects both sanitary sewage and stormwater together and sends it to the wastewater treatment facility for its final disposition.
In addition to the impact that this has on the cleanliness of our rivers and streams, this type of overflow is strictly regulated by law primarily the Clean Water Act.
Essentially, this permit requires the City to work with the community to adopt a new Long Term Control Plan. The plan reduces
the presence of dangerous bacteria in the flow that is returned to the water. The new plan was submitted to the state last year.
The Plan, to be implemented over the next two to three decades, is a significant undertaking. It will be disruptive to some areas of our City and it will require $125 - $188 million, primarily funded by ratepayers as an addition to bills from Alexandria Renew Enterprises.
The Combined Sewer System has four outfalls:
- CSO-001 which discharges into Oronoco Bay
- CSO-002 which discharges into Hunting Creek
- CSO-003 and CSO-004 which both discharge into Hoofs Run
The permit requires that the City address CSO-002, CSO-003, and CSO-004. While CSO-001 is not covered under the permit requirements, the committee and the City have voluntarily chosen to begin addressing this outfall under this plan.
The plan proposes to use a variety of solutions between now and 2035 to reduce pollution from CSO-002 by 80%, from CSO-003 by 99%, and from CSO-004 by 99%. This would provide for a total pollution reduction of 86%.
This reduction is achieved by:
- Construction of a 10-foot, 1.6 million gallon tunnel to address CSO-003 and CSO-004
- Construction of a three million gallon storage tank to address CSO-002
- New "green" infrastructure (improvements to the permeability of surfaces)
- Targeted sewer separation (typically funded by developers in the context of redevelopment)
In the proposed plan, CSO-001 is addressed by targeted sewer separation and green infrastructure.
In May of last year, the Council approved the draft plan for submission to VDEQ. In addition, the Council requested that our Staff return with recommendations as to how we might speed the remediation of CSO-001.
Last year, our staff accomplished this task. The revisions proposed by the staff accelerated the feasibility study by 14 years. This study would explore where a storage tunnel or storage tank near CSO-001 could be located and the pros and cons of these alternatives.
The revisions also accelerated the assessment of CSO-001 by six years. This assessment would help us determine the sizing of any proposed infrastructure that must be built.
In addition, the revisions proposed greater prioritization of capital improvement program funds for green infrastructure and separation activity in the sewershed.
Ultimately, the cost of the remediation for CSO-001 could total up to an additional $130 million.
The Council ultimately approved these revisions and submitted the revised plan to the VDEQ.
Despite the General Assembly's previous reluctance to assist our efforts, this year there was a flurry of legislation proposed to force Alexandria to further accelerate the remediation of the Combined Sewer System.
A State Senator, Richard Stuart,
proposed one of the more draconian pieces of legislation. As proposed, the legislation would have required the City to bring all four outflows into compliance by 2020, a little over three years from now. From an engineering perspective, that timeline is impossible. To make matters worse, that legislation proposed that if the City fails to comply with the 2020 timeline, we would have ALL state funding of the City removed, including funding for schools, public safety, human services, etc. It is basically the state funding equivalent of the "death penalty," and has never before been proposed.
Thanks to the efforts of Senator Adam Ebbin, the "death penalty" provision was removed, but the legislation that was enacted requires the City to complete ALL work on these remediation activities by July 1, 2025. While I strongly support addressing this issue as quickly as possible, our engineer indicates that this timeline is not feasible.
- This legislation potentially undermines the City's efforts to reduce pollution in the River by forcing us to redo all plans that were under way.
- This legislation undermines the Commonwealth's own regulatory process under the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), which the City has been in FULL compliance with at all times.
- This legislation treats the City differently than every other locality in the Commonwealth.
- This legislation takes an orderly and coordinated approach to address decades of work and mandates chaos and massive disruption to one portion of our City.
The City Manager has proposed a 30% increase in the Sanitary Sewer Maintenance fee that is paid on Alexandria Renew Enterprises bills across the City. The estimates are that ANNUAL 30% increases will be required.
I have suggested to my colleagues that we may want to consider a larger increase this year in order to quickly amass the necessary funds (as well as reduce debt obligations) to address this new unfunded mandate from Richmond.
As we move forward with these important water quality efforts, it will be vital to have true partnership from state lawmakers to continue our progress.
The legacy of this effort will be cleaner waterways for future generations to enjoy.
|
Host a Town Hall in Your Living Room!
My regular series of Town Hall Meetings continue!
You supply the living room and a bunch of your friends and neighbors. I will supply a member of the Alexandria City Council (me) with the answers to any of your questions about our City.
Just drop us a line and we'll get a Town Hall on the calendar! Thanks for the interest!
|
|
Upcoming Issues
|
As an old City we have old laws. I have worked with our City Attorney over the past few years to modernize or repeal several old laws.
While it's relatively easy to repeal anachronistic laws, it becomes more challenging when the laws need to be modernized.
Essentially the 72-hour rule provides that a vehicle cannot be parked on a City street for longer than 72 hours. The rule was enacted to prevent abandonment and long-term storage of vehicles on our streets. Unfortunately, today it is primarily used as a tool in "neighbor versus neighbor" disputes.
From 2000 to 2015, our Police Department has been asked to check a vehicle for compliance 7,500 times and they have issued roughly 1,300 citations for violations. This is a law where enforcement is primarily initiated by complaint. That was true in 87% of the time.
In neighborhoods without off-street parking, the rule can become particularly problematic when residents are on vacation or on a business trip, without any place or anyone to move their vehicle.
With over 3,000 residents and nearly 10,000 employees,
the area the City knows as "Old Town North" is already an important part of our community. It is blessed with access to the Potomac River. It is fortunate to have two significant arts destinations, the
The Art League and
MetroStage. The area is accessible to a variety of transportation options. There is a large redevelopment opportunity on the site of the now-closed NRG power plant.
We are now nearing the conclusion of the planning process, as the draft chapters for the new plan are being released. Draft chapters are now public and available for review for:
The draft lays out a new mixed use future for the existing power plant site. It proposes the creation of an arts corridor, complete with regulatory incentives to maintain arts uses in the plan area.
The draft proposes the creation of a true "eco-district" in the plan area. This concept builds on the
City's Environmental Action Plan to implement a variety of sustainability initiatives in the plan area and in conjunction with contemplated redevelopment.
|
|
|
Nearly two years ago, the Council approved
But most relevant to us in Alexandria, he assigned blame for a lack of housing affordability on local zoning restrictions.
In the summer of 2015,
Unlike most of our recent planning processes, the Old Town North Plan did not begin with a mission or overarching goal. This process began with