The Council Connection
your connection to City Council by Mayor Justin M. Wilson
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The Rescue Plan In Alexandria |
In March, President Biden signed the American Rescue Plan into law. This sprawling and comprehensive piece of legislation provides significant resources to Alexandria's residents, our businesses, our schools and our local government.
The American Rescue Plan included three criteria for how the local government funds may be used:
- To respond to the public health emergency with respect to Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) or its negative economic impacts, including assistance to households, small businesses, and nonprofits, or aid to impacted industries such as tourism, travel, and hospitality
- For the provision of government services to the extent of the reduction in revenue of such metropolitan city, nonentitlement unit of government or county due to such emergency
- To make necessary investments in water, sewer, or broadband infrastructure.
This is a "once in a generation" infusion of money for Alexandria's City government and our school system. We must ensure that we not only spend every penny that the Federal government has provided to our community, but we also must use these resources wisely and to the long-term benefit of our community.
While we continue our focus on the resources that will be directly appropriated to our local government, we must also commit resources to ensuring that each of our residents and our businesses avail themselves of portions of the legislation that might benefit them. The Rescue Plan is a large piece of legislation and our government can assist our residents and businesses in navigating its complexity.
From the beginning of this crisis, it has been clear that the two levels of government, local and state, who are required to balance our budgets annually, could not address the immense financial need that has been created. Only the Federal Government could provide a sufficient amount of money to address some of these challenges.
- $8.9 million was utilized for the City's COVID-19 response (City staffing, PPE, public health investments, etc)
- $4.1 million was utilized to address food insecurity in our City
- $6.5 million was utilized for emergency rental assistance and eviction prevention efforts
- $5.5 million was utilized for grants to small businesses
- $2 million was utilized to provide resources to non-profits addressing need in our City
- $800,000 was utilized to provide childcare to families in need
While we have expended significant amounts of money to address this crisis, the largest financial impact on the City has been the loss of revenue. The CARES Act funds were not allowed to replace the revenue that the City lost, but it did help us support the residents and businesses who are suffering during this time. The American Rescue Plan, however, does provide the flexibility to expend funding to address the significant revenue loss the City experienced.
As we put COVID-19 behind us, the hardship faced by our residents and businesses will continue for a while to come. The City will continue to find ways to provide the support required. I am hopeful we will take this opportunity to use these resources to wisely shape our future.
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Landmark Mall Redevelopment |
The site, 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.
This will not only revitalize a site that many had given up on, but will also provide a catalyst for redevelopment and enhancement throughout the West End of our City.
Despite over two decades of decline, it is not a mystery why we had been unable to spur redevelopment on this site in the past, It is a complicated site, with a complicated ownership structure requiring significant infrastructure investment.
The City will finance some of the infrastructure improvements required on the site and we will purchase the future hospital site to lease back to Inova. Inova's proceeds from selling their existing site on Seminary Road is financing their expenses related to the move.
There is no clearer demonstration of the City's financial challenges than the predicament that has faced Landmark Mall.
At the City's tax rate in 2000, these three sites alone generated $1.25 million in real estate tax.
Today, the three properties are assessed at $25.2 million, $14 million, and $12.6 million, respectively. They generate about $500,000 in real estate tax today, less than half of what it used to be.
To make the situation even more severe, real estate tax is only a portion of the picture. The reduction in revenues from sales tax, dining tax, and other business taxes has also been dramatic at this site.
While no one should be convinced until they see bulldozers knocking down the existing mall site, we have finally assembled a partnership, financing and a plan to revitalize this site. Landmark Mall redevelopment has been complicated from the beginning, but I believe we can be cautiously optimistic that it is finally coming together with this exciting partnership.
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Community Health Improvement |
At the beginning of October of 2019, a little over 100 Alexandrians gathered at a public meeting to discuss our recently released Community Health Assessment.
This assessment compiles a variety of data from throughout our community to gauge the health of our residents.
The document itself reminds us that there are real and significant disparities in health around our community. The uncomfortable realities revealed by the report are that socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, national origin, education and even a resident's zip code can predict, among many other factors:
- Life Expectancy
- Access to healthcare, including mental health services
- Hospitalization rates
- Experiences with chronic conditions
- Cancer outcomes
- Fitness levels and obesity rates
- Access to healthy food
Little did we know at that point in October of 2019, that a little over 5 months later, we would begin the most dramatic demonstration of the impact of health inequities in our lifetimes, with the onset of the deadly pandemic. COVID-19 exploited and exacerbated the inequities that the Community Health Assessment had documented.
Yet the purpose of the assessment was not simply to identify these disparities, but instead actively seek ways to ameliorate them. Fortunately we know how to address these disparities. In nearly every plan the City has, from land-use plans, to park plans, to pedestrian and bicycle safety plans, to early childhood initiatives, school nutrition efforts, mental health reforms, etc, we are working to narrow these disparities.
Last month we released the follow-on to the assessment, the Community Health Improvement Plan. The community input received told us that by prioritizing housing, mental health and poverty, we can best address these community challenges. As such, the plan presented detailed and specific policy initiatives aligned to those priorities.
While preparing and presenting this plan is a significant step forward for our community, we must now ensure that the plan turns to action and is not left on the shelf.
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A little over a decade ago, the City adopted its latest Transportation Master Plan. At the time, the plan was a significant transition in that it shifted from a plan focused on roads and vehicle traffic, to a plan that prioritized transit.
One of the most significant changes that came from the 2008 Master Plan was the designation of three transit corridors for high-capacity transit. The three corridors were Transit Corridor A, which was nominally north to south on Route 1 on the east end of the City, Transit Corridor B, which was intended as east to west on Duke Street and Transit Corridor C, which was north to south on the west end of the City using Van Dorn and Beauregard.
Transit Corridor B, the Duke Street Transitway, will be the final corridor implemented. A year ago, the City received $75 million in regional funds from the NVTA to bring this new transit to reality.
High capacity transit provides our residents with alternatives to congestion and delay. I am optimistic as we work to bring these projects to reality.
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Ultimately, the City's actual bond issuance will be quite a bit lower, as we work to align the borrowing to the actual timing of when the resources will be needed on each project. Our staff will work to find the right timing, but the next bond issuance is expected to be this fall.
In October of last year, S & P Global Ratings and Moody's Investor Services both reaffirmed the City's bond ratings of AAA and Aaa respectively. The confirmation of these ratings, in advance of last year's refunding of $46.1 million of existing debt, allows the City to access the lowest possible borrowing costs, saving the taxpayers millions over the life of our bonds.
A municipal bond refunding is essentially the municipal version of a mortgage refinancing, where the City is taking advantage of lower interest rates and replacing portions of our municipal debt with new debt at lower rates.
Through a competitive bidding process, the City awarded those new bonds to Morgan Stanley at a true interest cost of 1.54%. This new debt will result in a net present value savings of $2.4 million. That savings will ease the burden on taxpayers as we address the financial shortfalls over the next few years.
Much like individuals must have a credit check performed before acquiring a mortgage, a car loan, or a new credit card, the City must go before Standard & Poor's and Moody's to have the two organizations assess whether we are doing a good job managing the City's finances.
Our capital budget is funded primarily through a mix of debt and current year funding also known as "cash capital." Relating this to your home mortgage, the cash capital is the down payment. We also pay interest each year on the debt that was issued in previous years.
In issuing the City's rating, Moody's wrote: "Alexandria's financial position will remain stable given a trend of operating surpluses and improving cash and reserve levels, management's conservative budget assumptions, and future tax base growth."
Standard & Poor's similarly cited that "We view the City's management as very strong, with strong financial policies and practices..."
Alexandria is very conservative with our use of debt.
The median for other similarly rated and sized jurisdictions is 2.42%.
In fact, in the Standard & Poor's analysis, they noted that the City was rated higher than the "sovereign" (the US Federal Government) because "we believe the City can maintain better credit characteristics than the U. S. in a stress scenario."
Debt is a tool that allows us to balance the costs of large capital investments across the generations of Alexandria taxpayers that will benefit from them and to pay for our investments from the returns we reap from them.
It is important for us to maintain the careful stewardship that will protect our taxpayers and our City's infrastructure long into the future.
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Potomac Yard Metro/Reducing Wetlands |
Less than a year from now, the new Metro Rail station at Potomac Yard will open for business!
On the front page of the Final Environmental Impact Statement for the Potomac Yard Metro Station are the seals of four entities: Federal Transit Administration, Department of the Interior, WMATA and the
City of Alexandria. Later in the report there is additional input from the US Army Corps of Engineers, the US Environmental Protection Agency and the National Capital Planning Commission.
The breadth of the entities involved clearly demonstrates the complexity of the project. This project is deeply complex and has been challenging to bring to reality for decades.
In 2008, along with then-Councilman Rob Krupicka, I proposed a new start to efforts to bring Metro to Potomac Yard. We included language in the City's Transportation Master Plan explicitly calling for a new station at Potomac Yard. We also tied the construction and funding of Metro to the development occurring in the Yard.
The result is a funding plan for Potomac Yard Metro that not only leverages the development activity in Potomac Yard, but also does so without requiring the contributions of General Fund taxpayers.
The total project budget is $370 million:
I am excited to see this project come to reality.
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I have now been a part of adopting eleven City budgets as a member of the Council. Each year, I try to find new ways to engage residents in the process, and increase transparency and understanding of budget priorities and trade-offs.
Modeled after the Federal Taxpayer Receipt , this website will take the assessed value of your home and detail how much of your real estate tax is going to the various programs and services of City government.
We entered Fiscal Year 2022 this morning. Accordingly, we have updated the receipt to reflect the newly enacted budget. Give it a try and let me know how you like it!
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Northern Virginia Families for Safe Streets (NoVA FSS) is releasing an updated Near Miss / Dangerous Location Survey, which allows community members to report dangerous incidents on streets, sidewalks, and trails.
In partnership with the Virginia Tech Graduate School of Urban Planning, whose students helped upgrade the survey, as well as regional advocacy groups, this application will be able to collect and analyze vital pedestrian / vulnerable road safety data and share this information with the relevant municipal staff in each jurisdiction. The survey allows people to report specific location, circumstance of the danger, and other details of the near miss. Powered by Geographic Information System (GIS) technology, the survey provides a wealth of data and analysis that will be used to advocate for:
- Improved road infrastructure,
- Increased police vigilance at specific locations,
- better traffic safety regulations
- the Vision Zero goal of zero traffic fatalities and serious injuries in Alexandria, Arlington, and Fairfax.
People can submit data through the survey anonymously or can opt-in to share their information to be included in any reports to authorities. The survey can be accessed online.
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I try to keep politics out of this monthly newsletter.
If you have not been receiving my campaign updates and you wish to receive information on this new campaign, please drop my campaign a line and we'll get you on the list for the campaign.
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Paid for by Wilson For Mayor | www.justin.net |
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