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. That was the beginning of City Council's annual budget process, which will culminate in the adoption of the budget on May 4th.

The Council voted to advertise a rate of $1.115, leaving the possibility of a half-cent increase for consideration. Last year was the fifth straight year without a real estate tax rate increase in Alexandria. While there are significant budget pressures on the horizon, specifically the rising debt service associated with large infrastructure projects for the City and our schools, I do not believe a tax rate increase is necessary this year.

We would like your input on the proposed tax rate. On Saturday April 23rd, at our April Public Hearing, the City Council will accept testimony on the proposed tax rate. The public hearing will begin at 9:30 AM. If you wish to address the Council on the proposed budget, you can sign-up to speak online. You can address the Council in-person at City Hall or virtually on zoom.

You can watch the City Manager's presentation of the budget to the public, which was recorded shortly after the presentation to the City Council.

The budget is being built around some of the healthiest revenue growth we have seen in over fifteen years (which has improved further, as discussed later in the newsletter), but also with numerous deferred investments awaiting tax dollars. In November, our previous City Manager presented his initial outlook for the upcoming budget at our annual Council retreat.

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!

Just about two and a half years ago, we were about to celebrate the reopening of Alexandria's Metro Rail stations after a difficult summer of platform improvement work cut Alexandria off from the rest of the system.

Unfortunately, last month WMATA made announcements of large infrastructure work that will again impact the transit connectivity of our City.

Last month, I wrote to WMATA General Manager Paul Wiedefeld urging a delay of any infrastructure work until the 7000-series cars are returned to service, as well as identification of numerous alternatives to protect riders in our City.

Last month, the City Council voted unanimously to issue franchise agreements to both Lumos Telephone and Ting Fiber, Inc, to operate broadband networks in the City. This is a major step in our multi-year effort to bring broadband competition to Alexandria.

In January, the City announced that we had received four proposals from vendors seeking to offer competitive broadband services for our community.

Separate from this process, Verizon began conversion of their existing copper infrastructure to fiber optic cable in some areas of our City. With the completion of this work, they will begin offering Verizon FIOS internet service along with their landline phone service.

Last year, City Council gathered on Eisenhower Avenue to have a formal groundbreaking for the build of our municipal fiber network. Construction is now occurring at 5 different locations in the City.

Over 8 years ago, I proposed that the City develop a broadband plan to help bring true competition to Alexandria's broadband market.

Over a year ago, the City issued a revised solicitation to select a vendor to construct a municipal fiber network to serve City and School facilities around our community. Earlier last year, a contract was awarded to Jones Utilities Construction, Inc to perform this work.

Concurrent with the FY 2017 budget process, the City completed the initial financial estimates for the first phase of the infrastructure build-out .The plan is designed to replace the City's existing connectivity agreement for City facilities with a City-owned fiber network. 

By leveraging E-Rate funding from the FCC, achieving operating savings from the costs of the existing agreement, and the potential for private leases of our infrastructure, the effort may be able to pay for itself.     

One of the core components of the original proposal I made was that the City adopt a "Dig Once" policy.  Essentially that's a policy that makes the City more efficient by leveraging existing underground infrastructure work to add conduit and other infrastructure at the same time. With hundreds of millions of dollars of sewer and transportation work scheduled over the next decade, we should sequence and combine that work to be the most efficient. 

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.

In the fall, I filed a petition with the Virginia State Corporation Commission as part of Dominion's Triennial Review. My petition requested that Dominion's allowed profit be reduced to account for the instability in Alexandria's electricity supply.

I have now written twice to the CEO of Dominion Energy expressing concerns on behalf of Alexandria's residents and businesses. While Dominion has been responsive, we have not seen the necessary action to resolve this instability. In fact, the information Dominion has provided has validated our concerns, in that the data shows that outages are increasing and capital investment has remained flat.

Last month, representatives of Dominion Virginia Power returned to a meeting of City Council. This time, for the first time, they have made commitments to expand investment in the critical electricity infrastructure in Alexandria.

While there remains to be quite a bit of work to translate these new commitments into actual infrastructure projects, this is a positive step forward.

Two months ago, nearly all elected officials in the state were required to submit an annual Statement of Economic Interests. While these documents are subject to public inspection in our Clerk's office, at my request, over five years ago, Alexandria became the first local government in Virginia to post these disclosures online. We may still be the only jurisdiction that does so.

About 18 years ago, Alexandria became one of the earliest jurisdictions in Virginia to post local campaign finance reports online. Anyone can easily review who finances the campaigns of Alexandria's elected officials. 

In 2009, I along with then-Councilman Smedberg and then-Councilman Krupicka, successfully sought approval from Richmond to impose new restrictions on land-use applicants. Specifically, the new laws we adopted require land-use applicants to reveal any financial interests that they might have with policymakers. 

The City also began posting online the reports of our Internal Auditor for public review. 

In January of 2016, the Council adopted a Transparency Resolution to consider ideas for improving transparency in City operations.  The adopted resolution included language that I drafted requesting that our Clerk begin producing an annual report detailing the Council's use of executive session during the previous year. Executive session is a closed meeting of Council, neither televised nor witnessed by any members of the general public, for specific purposes. 

The Code of Virginia strictly limits the circumstances where the City Council can meet in executive session. As a practical matter, the sessions are used primarily to address personnel issues, litigation strategy, and the acquisition or disposition of public property. In the case of the latter two examples, the executive sessions are used to protect the City's negotiating posture and thus protect the taxpayer dollar. 

The latest of these executive session reports is now posted and available for public consumption. It shows that the Council met in executive session 8 times during the last Council term and each vote to go into executive session was unanimous. 

Last month, Arlington County announced the further deterioration of the West Glebe bridge, which separates the Alexandria and Arlington. As a result, the bridge is now limited to a single north-bound lane.

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 last month, 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.

Last month, the City Council received the latest update on our efforts to make Alexandria more resilient to flooding in the face of a rapidly changing climate.

Last year, the City Council unanimously adopted an an ordinance to double our Stormwater Utility Fee. to significantly increase the resources available for investments in our storm sewer infrastructure.

Recently enacted state legislation, sponsored by Senator Adam Ebbin at the City's request, gives the City the flexibility to use these resources to address all of the challenges facing our residents.

This increase will bring in an additional $8.5 million annually and support a newly accelerated 10-year program of investments. While these funds will address many smaller "spot improvement" projects, this funding will allow the City to undertake 11 of the top priority storm sewer capacity projects over the next decade:

In addition to these locally-funded infrastructure initiatives, the City Council voted last July to allocate $5.8 million of our American Rescue Plan funding to address maintenance and investment in our Storm Sewers.

Additionally, we have also successfully sought a Virginia Community Flood Preparedness Grant from the Department of Conservation and Recreation.

Last year, the City launched our new "Flood Mitigation Pilot Grant Program." This new program will provide matching reimbursement grants to property owners making flood resiliency improvements. This is one of the components of our comprehensive approach to addressing the flooding that has impacted our community for decades.

The newly constituted Ad Hoc Stormwater Utility and Flood Mitigation Advisory Group meets regularly to help advise the Council and our staff as we work to implement our flood mitigation plans. 

Alexandria spends a significant amount of money on infrastructure designed to manage water. In February, the City Manager proposed a $2.73 billion, ten-year Capital Improvement Program. Of that, over $365.7 million is to address stormwater and sanitary sewer infrastructure. Alexandria Renew Enterprises, the City's sewer authority, plans another $593 million of capital investments over the next decade, primarily the RiverRenew project to remediate the Combined Sewer (sanitary and stormwater) system that serves Old Town.

Together, nearly a billion dollars is planned for water investments. This spending dwarfs planned investments in schools, transportation and other major priorities. Only a decade ago, planned investments in water infrastructure were less than 10% of this total, but addressing these challenges will require a sustained increase in that investment level of a long period of time.

In 2016, the City conducted a comprehensive Storm Sewer Capacity Analysis. This exhaustive study looked at each of the City's eight watersheds (Backlick Run, Cameron Run, Four Mile Run, Holmes Run, Hooff's Run, Holmes Run, Potomac River, Strawberry Run and Taylor Run) and identified problem areas where current capacity does not meet our 10-year storm design standard.

For development, whether large-scale, mixed-use development or a small residential addition, Alexandria's stringent stormwater requirements stipulate that conditions after development to be the same and oftentimes better than they were. As a consequence, the flooding we have experienced in the City is typically in established neighborhoods, areas of our City where we have not seen new development (aside from infill) in decades. Yet, there may be options to further strengthen these existing requirements. We have sought additional authority from the General Assembly for these expanded requirements.

Alexandria remains one in a relatively small list of Virginia jurisdictions who have a private water utility. Virginia American Water Company (VAWC), a subsidiary of a large national company, provides the water supply to Alexandria's residents and businesses.

As a private utility, VAWC is subject to the authority of the State Corporation Commission (SCC) in Richmond. In November of 2018, the utility filed before the SCC for a rate increase.

In 2019, the City Council voted to intervene in this application before the SCC and oppose this rate increase. 

At the end of 2020, the SCC concurred with the City's position and rejected most of VAWC's requested increase. As such, all Alexandria water rate-payers received a refund retroactive to May 1, 2019. VAWC had originally applied for up to a 15.84% increase. The SCC approved an increase of up to 2.9%.

In November of last year, VAWC applied again for a rate increase, this time seeking a 28% increase in rates and a variety of other charges and rate supplements. If approved, on average, Alexandria residential customers will see their bills increase by about 36%.

After analysis, our staff believes that this rate increase is excessive. On Tuesday evening, the City Council will be considering whether to again intervene with the State Corporation Commission to oppose this proposed rate increase.

Are you interested in harnessing solar power for your home?

Beginning today, you can sign up to participate in Solarize Alexandria.

Solarize Alexandria is a partnership between the City, the Northern Virginia Regional Commission, and LEAP. 

The goal is to increase the deployment of solar power generation in our residential communities. In addition to reducing emissions and reducing your power bill, the City of Alexandria provides a real estate tax exemption for qualifying solar installations.