Updates from Letty – February 14, 2025

Posted on February 14, 2025 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,

In recognition of Valentine’s Day, this week’s post is themed around #LocalLove. We officially celebrated Creative Cauldron in their new permanent home yesterday and saw the beginning of the transformation at the Stratford. As we all look to rest and recover this long weekend, this post will have a lot of good content to catch up on what’s happening with your local government:

Local input: various surveys where the city is seeking your thoughts
Local progress: the city’s Year in Review – a lot happened in 2024!
More good stuff to come: From our meeting, an update on a mental health professional/police co-responder model, new bikeshare locations, and a sneak peek at the city’s newest playground equipment. And the always-popular economic development update – aka, what is opening, when, and where plus a FAQ I regularly field

Along the lines of #LocalLove – if you’re looking to channel your despair into action, local government can be a bright light. Falls Church Forward will be putting together a “Civics Bootcamp” on March 23. A great way to learn about local government, how it works, and how to get involved. Sign up for more details.

We’re taking next week off with the holiday and will be back in action on February 24. In the meantime, my February office hours will be next Wednesday, February 19 at 5 pm at Harvey’s. Look forward to hearing from you soon.

Best,
Letty

What Happened This Week:

(1) Surveys Galore

Community Survey 2025 – as you recall, we started a biannual community survey in 2023 and somehow it’s been 2 years already! (If you’re curious about our 2023 survey results, my post from May 2023 covers it. The top line was that 89% rated overall quality of life as good and 90% were satisfied with services provided by the city.) If you get a call, text, or email from Probolsky Research in the coming weeks – please respond. More info here.

Restaurant Week – it’s a wrap! We hope you enjoyed some good meals and good deals. And hopefully our local small businesses felt the love during this slower time of year. We’d love to hear your input so we can keep improving for next year.

Accessory Dwellings – in addition to all of the community meetings over the past year, we’re collecting a final round of input via an online survey. This has been the next incremental step in the city’s strategy to diversify our housing options. If you missed the meetings, I encourage you to get informed and then share your thoughts.

(2) 2024 Year In Review … and what are your priorities?

The annual Year in Review is a concise summary of the key policy changes, new programs, and new projects that have been achieved over the past year – where your tax dollars have been at work based on the key priorities we’ve heard from the community. (Don’t worry if you missed this in the flurry of 2025 – this is part of my long weekend reading too!)

Letty’s Thoughts: it’s hard to see progress when we’re managing the day to day so this is a good recap of all that we accomplished together in 2024, around the central mission to deliver a high quality of life for now and future generations of Falls Church residents. Local government is a bright light right now. As I believe in always raising the (high) bar for ourselves, this is a good time to hear your thoughts and priorities ahead of our budget season starting soon. Your property assessments will be in your mailbox in the next week. Email or come speak to us.

(3) From our meeting

A few highlights from our meeting this week of good stuff to come:

New bikeshare locations funded by grants
A preview of new playground equipment coming to Berman Park
Update on the mental health professional/police co-responder model that we started exploring in 2022 as part of implementing the Marcus Alert. More discussion to come as we consider how we might fund the suggested resources in the upcoming budget cycle.

(4) Economic Development News

From the February EDA (Economic Development Authority) meeting, here are highlights of what’s coming to Founders Row, West Falls, and the city’s first food hall coming soon to the Eden Center. Also including data for a FAQ I regularly field – why we’re building housing plus misconception that our buildings are vacant. You can see that all of our multi family buildings are full and leasing quickly (anything above 90% is considered fully occupied) as we continue to be a desirable place to live. We look forward to welcoming new neighbors and customers for our small businesses!

You can see the full deck here.