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,

It’s the final weekend before Election Day and Falls Church has already hit 51% turnout as of yesterday – way to go! Today and tomorrow will be the last days of early voting if you plan to vote before next Tuesday. A few call outs for you this week:

• November is Live Local Month – this is now an annual tradition, but hopefully easier than ever as we add more local businesses to patronize – whether it’s restaurants, entertainment, health care, or shopping. And this matters: we continue to enjoy strong revenues because of our economic development and local spending (read on about the budget amendment we voted on this week.) Help promote living local by tagging your social media posts with #LiveLocalFC.
• Police Department 2023 Annual Report – this is a worthy read. I’m grateful for the transparency and engagement from our public safety team. TL;DR: we continue to be a very safe community despite national rhetoric about crime. Traffic safety is the top priority I hear, so I encourage you to read on for those stats and actions our police are taking, including citations that begin this week with our new speed monitoring program in school zones.
• Key Votes – we also took votes on the parking requirements and the first of two votes on the budget amendment so read on for quick discussions on those.

My website had brief issues last week so if you missed last week’s post – which had updates on new business openings, a shout-out to the young journalists at The Lasso, and more – everything should be up and running now.

Best,
Letty

What Happened This Week:

(1) Police Department 2023 Report

In my 8+ years on City Council, this is the first in depth annual report we’ve received from our Police Department, so kudos to our new Chief of Police for engagement with the community, transparency into the department’s priorities, and data driven decision-making. There are more details in the report, but here are the highlights:

Crimes – crime rates in Falls Church have largely held steady – we have crime rates below the state and region and in fact, we have the second lowest per capita crime rate in Northern Virginia. Group A includes more serious crimes (such as murder, rape, robbery, etc.) that are classified into one of three subcategories: Crimes Against Persons, Crimes Against Property, and Crimes Against Society. Group B offenses tend to be more minor in nature (such as loitering violations, disorderly conduct, driving under the influence, etc.)

Calls for service – as we grow our population, monitoring calls for service is important. The chart below shows the breakdown between community-initiated calls vs officer-initiated.

Traffic Safety – as this is the top priority we hear from the community, the data below is important (Letty’s note – as we continue to improve walkability/bikability and encourage more people use our streets in modes beyond motor vehicles, our community’s expectations for safer streets will continue to grow). Note that traffic and crashes have increased the past few years, returning to not only pre-Covid levels and in some cases worsening which is an unfortunate state and national trend. Enforcement has stepped up in 2024, along with the other “E’s” – education and engineering of our roads. It was reassuring to me to hear from Chief Fard about promising improvement in the metrics so far in 2024. There is also strong cross-department collaboration, especially using accidents and near miss data, on how to improve traffic safety.

We also discussed the status of the recommendations from the Use of Force Review Committee that was chartered in 2020 following the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and other Black lives, re-accreditation, stop sign running, and a co-responder model to better respond to mental health crises.

(2) Parking Requirements

We voted unanimously 6-0 to relax parking requirements for the first 1200 square feet for commercial uses, informed by recommendations by our boards and commissions, the Chamber of Commerce, and data from various parking studies. (See my July 2024 post for more in depth discussion – this doesn’t mean a business doesn’t have to provide parking at all! Shopping centers, large buildings, and buildings with parking agreements are also excluded.)

Contrary to popular belief, it’s important to note that various parking studies have repeatedly said we don’t have a serious parking shortage and the challenge is helping people navigate to available spaces, with signage, shared parking, and other technology.

Letty’s Thoughts: Right sizing parking requirements, which were largely developed in the 1960s when Falls Church and other nearby communities were car-oriented suburbs, is important. Providing parking is costly and often a barrier for small businesses from opening, especially in older spaces where we want to encourage adaptive reuse and building preservation. We will keep evolving to be a more multi modal city with walking, biking, transit options so people have safer and greener choices for getting here and getting around. We will be balancing several other desires: welcoming visitors/patrons outside of the city who may need to drive and considering more productive, vibrant, and environmentally friendly uses of our streets vs asphalt car storage (eg, outdoor dining!)

We will monitor the changes following this week’s vote, which I hope will be the first incremental step in modernizing our old parking code.

(3) Budget Amendment

We also voted 6-0 for the first of two votes on a budget amendment deploying $3.5M of the $5M year end surplus, with $1.6M going into capital reserves. It largely reflects what we discussed in work session last week, where we recommended $1.5M to proceed to design and construction of a park at the Fellows Property which we acquired in 2018, and $300K for design for the prioritized bike routes.

What’s Coming Up:

Monday, November 4 – City Council Work Session*

Wednesday, November 6 – Ask the Council Office Hours (9 am, City Hall)

Tuesday, November 12 – City Council Meeting

Monday, November 18 – City Council Work Session*

Monday, November 25 – 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:

Thursday, November 14 – Letty’s Office Hours (9-10 am, The Happy Tart)