On Wednesday evening, the City Council will conclude this year's budget process with the final adoption of our budget.

Last week, the City Council held our "Preliminary Add/Delete" worksession. This is where most of the "sausage-making" work of budgeting is completed, as City Council worked to decide what would be in and what would be out of the budget we are poised to adopt. You can watch this full session online.

Per the Council's budget rules, budget modifications must have the support of at least 3 members to be considered during this process. There were 24 different proposals submitted by individual councilmembers to be considered in this year's process.

The City Council did emerge from last week's session with a potential consensus version of amendments. Barring any late-breaking developments this week, this will be the budget scenario adopted on Wednesday evening.

In February, the City Manager presented his proposed Operating Budget for Fiscal Year 2023 (July 1, 2022 - June 30, 2023) and his proposed Capital Improvement Program (CIP) for Fiscal Year 2023 through Fiscal Year 2032.

While the Council voted to advertise a rate of $1.115, leaving the possibility of a half-cent increase for consideration, given recent deliberations, Council is anticipated to adopt the current rate for another year. That means 2022 will be the 6th straight year without a real estate tax rate increase in Alexandria.

This year, conservative forecasting prompted by the uncertainty of the pandemic, has resulted in a very significant series of adjustments as we prepare to conclude this process. The City Manager's adjustments ultimately provided a net increase in projected revenues of $7 million. This did provide the City Council with some additional flexibility as we worked to conclude the process.

The authorized work force in City Government is now at 2,700 FTEs, essentially what it was 13 years ago. That's in spite of the fact that our population has grown significantly during that period of time. 

In additional the budget documents linked above, all questions asked by members of Council during the process are posted, along with answers, online for the public to review. Any request to change the proposed budget must be initiated with a budget question, so it is a good window into the thoughts of your elected representatives. 

Let me know your thoughts!

Late last year, the Alexandria Industrial Development Authority (IDA) closed on the purchase of an 11-acre parcel on the site of the former Landrmark Mall. The purchase of this property was immediately followed by IDA's issuance of a 99-year ground lease of the property to Inova Health System.

Last week, Foulger-Pratt, the private development partner, provided an update on the progress. In less than two weeks, demolition will formally begin on the existing site and construction will follow!

After two decades of discussion about how to redevelop Landmark Mall, the City of Alexandria is finally redeveloping Landmark Mall!

Long sought, this arrangement was named by the Washington Business Journal as the 2020 Real Estate Deal of the Year.

Days before Christmas 2020, the City joined with a few partners, some familiar and some new, to announce the future of the Landmark Mall site. The new development plan will move Inova Alexandria Hospital from its home for the past 60 years on Seminary Road to a new modern facility on the site of Landmark Mall.

The location, one of the largest sites inside the Beltway awaiting redevelopment, will see a billion dollars of new investment, including a new Level II trauma center, medical office buildings, residential, retail, parks, a new fire station replacing Fire Station 208, new committed affordable housing and a new transit hub anchoring the City's new bus rapid transit network, DASH and Metrobus.

In June, the City Council unanimously approved a master plan amendment and rezoning of the site of the existing Inova Alexandria Hospital. This land-use decision was the first legislative action required to bring this plan to reality.

Conquering those obstacles requires a unique partnership and financial arrangement. A local firm, Foulger-Pratt is leading a joint venture in partnership with Howard Hughes Corporation, the current owner of the mall site, and Seritage Growth Properties, the owner of the Sears site. They were able to bring Inova Health System into the arrangement to anchor this redevelopment.

Nearly 57 years ago, then-Virginia Lieutenant Governor Mills Godwin Jr. (later Virginia's 60th and 62nd Governor) came to Alexandria to open Landmark Mall. Today, the work to restore the Landmark Mall site to a productive use of real estate for our City is a top focus for our community.

In June 2013, after taking over ownership of the mall site, the Howard Hughes Corporation received approval by the Planning Commission and City Council for a redevelopment of their portion of the site . A slower than expected leasing market slowed their intentions to redevelop. 

In 2015, Howard Hughes Corporation was back at City Hall to apply for very minor amendments to the approval that was issued in 2013. These changes were approved by City Council in April of 2015.

Sears spun-off a new Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) in 2015 called Seritage Growth Properties to maximize value out of their remaining real estate.  The Landmark Mall Sears store property is now owned by this REIT.  

The Howard Hughes Corporation later announced that it had purchased the Macy's store site. 

The Howard Hughes Corporation subsequently announced that the existing mall site is closing. 

Over three years ago, Council approved revisions to the Master Plan to advance a comprehensive redevelopment of the site.

Early voting begins on Friday and Alexandria Democrats can vote to choose their nominee for the United States House of Representatives.

Alexandria Republicans have chosen a party process to select their nominee.

Due to legislation adopted by the General Assembly in 2021, Virginia's primary date has moved from the second Tuesday in June to the third Tuesday in June.

In September of 2019, the Board of Directors of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (COG) unanimously adopted new regional housing creation targets. This was the first regional commitment to accelerate the development of housing supply as a means to address our region's affordability crisis. 

I served on the COG Housing Strategy Group which developed these recommended targets, along with elected officials from Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia. The groundwork for this effort was laid In September of 2018, when the Board of Directors of COG accepted a report that identified that 100,000 additional housing units will need to be constructed within the region just to meet expected job growth. That is 100,000 units BEYOND what is already planned to be developed. 

A little over 2 years ago, the City Council became the third jurisdiction in the region to endorse these targets. 

HAND, a regional housing non-profit has created its "Housing Indicator Tool" to hold jurisdictions accountable. They recently released the latest update for Alexandria, showing that Alexandria is meeting our regional housing commitments, including the creation of 325 committed affordable units per year.

The recent Amazon and Virginia Tech economic development announcements have stoked concerns regarding the impacts on affordability that may result throughout the region. While analysis shows the potential for impacts on affordability, in a region with over 3.3 million jobs, an additional 25,000 jobs entering the market over a decade is not likely to have a dramatic impact. 

Yet these economic development "wins" have served to shine a light on an issue that has bedeviled our City and this region for decades. As the region's job supply has grown, the housing supply has not sufficiently grown to match. 

While the national media has highlighted the potential impact of this new growth on Arlandria and other vulnerable neighborhoods, the City began this year by adopting the long-awaited Arlandria-Chirilagua Small Area Plan. Housing affordability, specifically strategies to preserve market-rate affordability and create new, deeply affordable, housing units is a focus of this new plan.

Acknowledging that the City's land-use authority is its most effective tool for the creation and preservation of affordable housing, the City launched a comprehensive review of zoning tools available to advance affordability. The so-called "Zoning For Housing" effort is now moving quickly with findings scheduled to come to Council and the Planning Commission over the next few years. 

Last month, our staff held the first community meeting relating to new proposals relating to Bonus Height for the creation of new affordable housing.

Over the last three years, the City has achieved the preservation or creation of just about 1,000 units of committed affordable housing. The last few months have been very busy on this effort:

The pipeline of housing projects between now and 2030 places Alexandria well-equipped to meet our goals.

Last month, the City Manager travelled to the headquarters of the Alexandria Police Department to publicly announce that Don Hayes, who had been acting as our Police Chief for several months, would now become the permanent Chief of the Alexandria Police Department. Chief Hayes is an experienced, dedicated and committed leader for our Police Department, and he will do great things in the role.

We have officers that participate in training designed to address implicit bias in policing. 

In the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, our Police Department and our Sheriff's Department provided summaries of use of force guidelines, procedures and practices for public review and comment.

At various points over the years, I have written in this newsletter attempting to relate the national conversation on policing to our experiences in Alexandria. 

At the end of 2020, the City Council received the initial feedback from our staff on Council efforts to explore alternative response techniques, focused on efforts to use non-police response for quality-of-life complaints, homelessness, behavioral health crisis, intoxication and beyond.

Last September, the City launched the Alexandria Crisis Intervention Co-Responding (ACORP) Pilot Program. This program pairs a behavioral health clinician with a trained behavioral health police officer to respond to calls for service regarding residents in need of behavioral health crisis intervention. This program provides residents in crisis with more specialized services to ensure safety of the individual in crisis and the community.

Shortly after the launch of ACORP, the City Council received an update on the implementation and success of this new program. The City Manager's proposed budget includes funding for a second ACORP team, and the City Council will likely add funding for a third team in the budget with adopt this week.

A year ago, the City Council worked to refine civilian oversight, with the creation of an Independent Community Policing Review Board. At the end of last year, the Council appointed the new members of this board, and they are now working to get organized, draft bylaws and prepare for their important role.

In November of 2020, our staff brought to the Council a study on the costs for implementing a body-worn camera program for the City's public safety agencies. While there has been support on the Council to implement such a program, the funding required has been difficult to prioritize.

With a more modest implementation plan, and Federal dollars advanced by Congressman Beyer, the City is now moving ahead to implement this important transparency and accountability measure.

The City Manager's proposed budget also included five additional positions within the Police Department focused specifically on weapons violations, to continue the progress the City has made in quelling a spike in firearm-fueled violent crime. These new resources will also serve to reduce the strain that these incidents have had on our limited patrol staffing.

The significant transition of returning our students to classrooms full-time in the fall also coincided with another change, the removal of Alexandria Police Department School Resource Officers (SRO) from our middle schools and our high school. Since the mid-1990s, Alexandria has been fortunate to have dedicated SROs that work in our schools to build community relationships and provide a support for our students, the faculty and support staff.

Our community has been engaged in debate about the appropriateness of the SRO program for a few years. There is a national movement working to remove police from school environments.

Ultimately, our School Board took up this issue, and they voted 6-3 to retain the SRO program, but with substantial revisions to the Memorandum of Understanding that governs the program.

During City Council's budget process earlier last year, a majority of the City Council voted 4-3 to remove the funding for the SROs, thus ending the program. I did not support this removal.

Last fall, the City Council voted 4-3 to return SROs to our schools for the remainder of the school year while we considered potential alternatives and other changes to the program in the future.

The Alexandria City Public Schools have created a School Law Enforcement Partnership (SLEP) Advisory Group to help pull together a new consensus on the partnership between schools and law enforcement. Applications are being accepted through tomorrow for this group. You may apply online.

Two decades ago, persistent resident activists, led by Elizabeth Chimento and Poul Hertel, began questioning the health impacts of the coal-fired Potomac River Generating Station, which began operation on Alexandria's waterfront in 1949.

Hilco Redevelopment Partners, a national entity specializing in the redevelopment of aged industrial sites, took control of the property with plans to see redevelopment to fruition.

Hilco has made concept plan submissions and they are preparing to come to the Planning Commission and City Council in June and July.

On Thursday May 12th at 6:30 PM, Hilco will be hosting their 10th community meeting to provide updates on their plans and obtain feedback from the community. You are invited to sign-up to participate!

Fortunately, Hilco is welcomed to Alexandria with an adopted community vision to guide them. In 2017, City Council approved the Old Town North Small Area Plan. This planning document codified a redevelopment vision for the 20-acre power plant site and the area surrounding it.

With the progress of this planning, I am excited to see an ideal partner for the City to turn this former industrial polluter into the sustainable uses of the City's future!

Over 40 years ago, the City Council adopted Resolution 830, which committed the City to "one for one" replacement of any public housing unit that was destroyed by redevelopment. 

As of three years ago, Resolution 830 is no more, replaced by Resolution 2876. The new resolution, endorsed by the City and our public housing authority Board, modernizes the City's commitment to preservation for a new generation of challenges. 

That difficulty was again demonstrated by the announcement nearly four years ago that the Alexandria Redevelopment and Housing Authority (ARHA) and its private development partner could not come to terms to move forward with the redevelopment of the Andrew Adkins development. While not unexpected given the challenges of this project, this was a terribly disappointing turn of events that delayed redevelopment efforts by multiple years.

After a few years of reset after the failure of Andrew Adkins, ARHA is now proceeding with the redevelopment of Samuel Madden and a future redevelopment of Ladrey and the ARHA headquarters site. In both, the goal will be the replacement of the existing public housing with new, modern housing units, as well as the expansion of the affordable and market-rate units on the sites.

The Alexandria Redevelopment & Housing Authority (ARHA) is an independent entity, with a City Council-appointed Board, but separate from the City, that utilizes Federal funding from the US Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD) to provide housing to low-income residents of Alexandria. 

At the federal level, we have seen dramatic changes in how public housing is managed and developed. In the past, the Federal Government had been a proactive participant in bringing about the redevelopment of public housing. This was demonstrated in Alexandria when the City used HOPE VI funding to redevelop 100 units of Public Housing into Chatham Square. This mixed-income development incorporated both market-rate and public housing.    

In 2008, the City Council adopted the Braddock East Master Plan, which called for redevelopment of several aging public housing properties. By allowing additional density near existing transit, it was designed to encourage private partnership in the redevelopment of this housing.    

Aligned with this Plan, James Bland Homes have become Old Town Commons. This redevelopment activity has proven successful in providing a sustainable model for mixed-income housing in our City.  

Last week, Arlington County announced the further deterioration of the West Glebe bridge, which separates the Alexandria and Arlington. As a result, the bridge will now be closing completely for vehicle traffic next Monday, the 9th. It will remain closed until the bridge is rebuilt.

Alexandria and Arlington have five bridges that connect vehicular traffic between the two jurisdictions, all along Four Mile Run:

In the case of the West Glebe Road and Arlington Ridge Road bridges, there are considerable needs. Both bridges were built in the mid-1950s and recent inspections by Arlington County showed that they have large deficiencies. Restrictions on their use are now in place.

At a meeting in March, Arlington provided updates on both projects.

Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) records show that the West Glebe, Arlington Ridge and Shirlington Road bridges are Arlington County's responsibility and the Route 1 and Potomac Avenue bridges are the City of Alexandria's.

Past bridge work has been split between the jurisdictions, but those agreements have never been formalized. With the West Glebe bridge requiring $10 million - $14 million of work and the Arlington Ridge bridge requiring $23 million - $28 million of work, these arrangements are not insignificant.

Through some negotiation between the two jurisdictions, we were able to enter into a new agreement providing for future cost-sharing of all 5 bridges, for maintenance and eventual replacement.

This new arrangement provides that the two jurisdictions will split the costs of the immediate work required to the West Glebe and Arlington Ridge bridges, 50-50.

Going forward, any work on bridges between the two jurisdictions will be split 67%/33%, with the jurisdiction recognized by VDOT as primarily responsible shouldering the larger portion.

This new arrangement ensures that these bridges will be kept in a state of good repair in the future, and clarifies the financial responsibility for doing so. I look forward to both impacted bridges being returned to service as quickly as possible.

In 1998, the Virginia General Assembly adopted the Personal Property Tax Relief Act, which was to begin a process of phasing out the tax altogether, by providing an ever-growing appropriation of state money to local governments until the tax was eliminated.

When state revenues did not materialize in the way the Commonwealth had anticipated, the appropriations to local government were capped and the tax remained in place, albeit at a much lower level. Today, Alexandria receives an annual appropriation of $23.5 million from the Commonwealth. In our Fiscal Year 2021, we collected $36.5 million from vehicle owners, to provide for a total of $60 million of total General Fund revenue.

Almost 15 years ago, during my first stint on the City Council, I proposed that the City consider eliminating the windshield decal used to enforce payment of the vehicle Personal Property Tax. 

In 2019, the City Council voted unanimously to finally end the requirement to display the decal. 

Yet, the pandemic has caused chaos in the used car market place. Last year, many Alexandrians saw increases in the value of their cars. This year, this phenomenon was projected to continue, as the City Manager's proposed budget assumed an 8.5% increase in revenues.

Since the City Manager proposed his budget, jurisdictions across the region, including Alexandria, are learning that this year's increase is expected to be much higher than anticipated, leading to an unexpected, one-time windfall. Current estimates are that vehicle values will increase by an average of 26% for 87% of vehicles in the City. This is extraordinary.