By Letty Hardi, Mayor, City of Falls Church

Editor’s Note: The following is the transcript of remarks by Falls Church Mayor Letty Hardi upon her election Monday night.

It’s an incredible honor to be able to serve the city that has been home for me for over 20 years, my family’s for 45+ years, and more so to be mayor. Thank you to Marybeth and all the other really kind words from the others. It’s a full circle moment as Marybeth and a few other women over eight years ago were the ones who first encouraged me to run at all, so I’m grateful to them for not just talk about making room for others but continuing to live it and be deliberate in lifting up other women.

This is a pinch me moment — that this first generation immigrant, first to go to college in her family where English was not her first language gets to do this job and try to open doors for others.

It’s not lost on any of us that the dais looks different tonight.

We have two people of color, three immigrants, some of us with business, private sector backgrounds, some of us with young kids, some even a grandchild now, and tenures spanning from eight days to nearly 30 years (congratulations Mr. Snyder on both fronts), and yes, the obvious — we have a new, groundbreaking historic Council with six women up here.

A warm welcome to Erin and Justine — fresh ideas and new skills are important as we all seek to represent our growing and changing community, continuously improve the city we all love, and live up to the legacy of Carol Delong who recently passed and was the first woman mayor of FC.

To borrow the word from Taylor Swift — this is a new era. And this new era represents a huge responsibility and privilege. We have the opportunity to do this differently.

By now, everyone knows that I am the most reluctant one up here, as I much prefer to stay behind the scenes and focus on getting things done. I’ve been challenging myself to reflect on where we’ve come as a city in the past decade, where we go from here, the strengths of this team and our professional staff, and how I can play a part, staying true to myself and our community values.

Over the past six years, we’ve been on an incredible journey of getting caught up on on capital infrastructure — working hard to expand and build new schools, parks, sidewalks, a library, a city hall, stormwater, sewer, bridges, and other infrastructure that has raised the quality of life. There’s been a lot of building. We’ve persevered through a global pandemic, while diversifying our tax base and revitalizing the city, adding new housing that is welcoming new neighbors, who are then in turn supporting our flourishing business community.

It’s evident with our bustling cafes and vibrant, busy sidewalks — our little city is growing up.

Because of that hard work, we are fortunate to be on solid financial footing. Instead of raising taxes to pay for everything, we’ve actually lowered our taxes ahead of schedule and still have more than healthy reserves that we started deploying to meet the community’s needs. That hard work also affords us the opportunity to make investments in the future and keep balancing our responsibility to taxpayers.

And as our city grows up, we need to make those investments internally and externally.

One of many things I’ve learned from my years in the business world is that you don’t wait for a crisis to make your business more robust. As our city grows up, we can be more well managed — from improving both internal and customer facing processes so we keep offering excellent little city services, to developing/tracking/measuring our progress against goals via metrics so we can celebrate successes, to growing and developing talent in our workforce with fulfilling jobs to better serve our community, and succession planning across the city so we’re planning not just for the here and now.

For the community — let’s reflect on our values as a community and decide how we will leave the city better for the next generation. Let’s live up to our welcoming, green, progressive values — if we strive for greater racial, socioeconomic, and generational diversity — we need to make room at the table. If we want to be more walkable/bikeable, sustainable city, it requires real investments towards that future. And we should be realistic — there will need need to be some hard tradeoffs, not to mention time and patience to keep evolving from a car oriented 1940s suburb.

And above all, as we work towards a more equitable city for future generations, let’s remember it shouldn’t be based on luck or privilege or just because you’ve made it in.

On that note — I have been so fortunate to have learned and worked with various Councils in the past eight years, all with an amazing level of dedication, professional expertise, and passion. As I think about what helped us be successful as a team — it centered around one thing: positive intent.

And that starts with us.

I ask that the community and this body do our best to grant each other the assumption of positive intent. We are all up here because we truly love Falls Church and are dedicated to improving it. We need to remember that we bring a good complement of perspectives and skills. And when harnessed, we can be the most effective together.

How we act up here sets the tone for collaborative discussions with each other and among the community. People are watching us. We should model the behavior we want to see.

I remain anchored in the belief that we may not always agree — which is actually healthy — but if we stick to facts and civil debates to policy and share our thinking along the way, we can respect each other’s positions. And even if those positions may be different when it comes time for a vote, we can still unify around the outcome.

And here’s my commitment. I will keep doing the Letty things that you’ve come to expect:

You have my commitment to make local government transparent and accessible — whether that’s with my blog that I’ve kept up for over eight years, regular office hours, and keep putting in the work and time in building relationships in the community with residents, businesses, and our neighbors.

You have my commitment that I’ll keep learning from others and being thoughtful about every vote I cast — doing my homework, asking questions, and seeking out the voices we don’t traditionally hear from.

You’ll also see us sharing the responsibilities of mayor and doing some things differently. We each have a vote and a voice. And to that end — I’m committed to a more egalitarian City Council and moving forward as a team, in collaboration with our School Board, Planning Commission, and our other boards and commissions and the community.

Again, I’m grateful for the opportunity to serve Falls Church in this hallmark 75th year. Thank you for entrusting us with the responsibility. We have steadily delivered real results across the City and laid the groundwork for more progress ahead — and I remain optimistic about our future. I look forward to working with my colleagues in moving the city forward. Let’s get back to work.