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, I’ll share a few updates on capital projects around town – the construction for a new greener, geothermal HVAC at the Community Center is now underway and the actions we took this week for the Maple & Annandale roundabout project. Capital projects often get a lot of questions and interest because they’re a very visible update of our infrastructure and investment in the community’s priorities.

Also – have you been following Ranked Choice Voting (RCV)? This different way of voting has been discussed a few times by the City Council over the years. With the General Assembly’s permission to localities to adopt RCV and Arlington and Charlottesville’s lead on RCV – I am eager to keep exploring. I joined a meeting this week to learn more so will share my takeaways with you.

I hope you have a restful, reflective holiday weekend and have an opportunity to honor Dr King’s legacy in your own way, whether that’s joining in a service activity or other civic engagement. We will be back on January 27 with final vote on the Bike Master Plan and a work session on Accessory Dwellings (see here for the presentations and additional opportunities if you missed the recent open houses). If you’d like to catch me sooner, I’ll have my January office hours next Tuesday at 9 am, Cafe Kindred.

Stay warm,
Letty

What Happened This Week:

(1) Maple & Annandale Roundabout / Traffic Circle

This week we voted unanimously to authorize staff to proceed with eminent domain (condemnation) for a small sliver of land and award the construction contract for the traffic circle project proposed at the Maple & Annandale intersection. Long-time readers may recall that I last wrote about this in January 2022*, when staff presented options between a traditional intersection and a traffic circle, and we chose the traffic circle. For a refresher, this is a good primer on why roundabouts / traffic circles are safer for drivers and pedestrians, improve traffic flow, and cut emissions. For a longer discussion, this is a more in depth, recent article.

For the condemnation decision – staff presented the thorough history of the project and we discussed the outreach attempts over the past 18 months. Condemnation of private property is a serious decision and only meant as a last resort. We voted to undertake condemnation proceedings to acquire about 1100 square feet of land at the corner with a value of $135K or so in order to proceed with the project.

For the $2M contract authorization, we also discussed the specific design components of the roundabout, including converting the brick sidewalks and crosswalks to a more accessible option and higher visibility “zebra stripes”. For pedestrians, there will be ped buttons to turn on rapid flashing beacons to cross, pedestrian refuge islands, wider sidewalks, ADA compliant curb ramps, and better lighting. With much lower car speeds through a traffic circle, this will be safer intersection overall. For bicyclists (as S. Maple has 1 of the 3 dedicated bike lanes in the city), I suggested adding small ramps so bicyclists could more easily dismount onto the sidewalk as has been suggested by our bike advocates, but TBD whether the design can be changed.

*Letty’s note: I agree the current intersection is in need of serious upgrades – there aren’t ped signals, the crossings are long, and I’ve experienced many near misses as a pedestrian. And there is a fair amount of cut through traffic and speeding through to Winter Hill. The concept of a roundabout at Maple & Annandale actually dates back to various City plans from 2005, 2007, and 2014 and in 2020, funding was secured – this is how long transportation projects sometimes take, especially if we’re using grant funding!

(2) Community Center HVAC Upgrade

If you’ve been by the Community Center recently, you’ll notice that it looks different! Construction is underway to upgrade the HVAC system to geothermal. As I shared last year, the $4M project will be a cleaner option that supports our climate and energy plans to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, not to mention long term utility and maintenance cost savings. We appreciate everyone’s patience with the disruption to the Community Center and programming. The project team and Rec and Parks staff have worked hard to plan this in phases to minimize the disruption. See here for updates to the Community Center schedule until the project completes in June.

(Note we are taking advantage of federal tax credits to help offset the initial upfront cost which made the upgrade to geothermal comparable in cost to a traditional system. This may be something you want to consider in your own home or business – find out more information in the city’s One Stop Shop on how you can take advantage of various programs.)

Other Capital Projects – if you’re interested in other capital projects across the city (and we have a lot in flight – spanning transportation, facilities, stormwater, parks…), City Council has a quarterly discussion about our Capital Improvements Program (CIP). Our last one was in November and I expect we’ll have our next discussion in February.

(3) Ranked Choice Voting (RCV)

Ranked Choice Voting is picking up steam across the US and in political discussions as a proven and powerful tool for a more representative democracy (here’s a quick 2 minute explainer video and a FAQ document from the Virginia Department of Elections). It’s different than traditional single-choice / winner-take-all voting, which can sometimes result in the election of a candidate who earned only a small percentage of the vote. Proponents also explain that RCV encourages coalition building, lets voters support who they really like without fear of “wasting” their vote, and prevents candidates with similar profiles from “splitting their votes”.

In Virginia, the General Assembly passed HB1103 in 2020, giving cities and counties the option to adopt Ranked Choice Voting for local governing bodies, such as city councils or boards of supervisors. Arlington County implemented RCV for the first time in the 2023 Democratic Primary Election and used it again in the November 2024 General Election for the County Board race. Charlottesville will be using RCV in 2025. Currently, RCV is only allowed for city and county councils and boards, and not for school boards or constitutional offices, although Senator Salim’s SB1009 bill up for consideration right now would expand to all local offices.

Want to learn more? I found the resources on Ranked Choice Virignia, a non partisan, non profit, helpful and you can sign up to stay involved. While RCV been used successfully elsewhere and across the world, it feels different and will need a lot more community awareness and education. I’d welcome your thoughts!

What’s Coming Up:

Monday, January 27 – City Council Meeting*

Monday, February 3 – City Council Work Session*

Wednesday, February 5 – Ask the Council Office Hours

Monday, February 10 – 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, January 21 – (9 am, Cafe Kindred)

Wednesday, February 19 – (5 pm, Harveys)

Friday, March 21 – (12 pm, Clare and Dons)