The focus was on the five larger categories of the direction for the Council’s upcoming year of work rather than on 77 discrete work projects, as was the approach taken last year. So it went with this year’s Falls Church City Council “retreat” Saturday held at the Mary Riley Styles Public Library. The wider categories were identified as housing, multi-modal transportation, economic development, environment and governance.

It was a sunny Saturday morning in the City of Falls Church, a marked change from the snowy, icy conditions that lingered the two weeks before, and the Farmer’s Market across the street in the parking lot of City Hall was teeming and popping, but none of that prevented the seven members of the Falls Church City Council from convening a robust “retreat” in a freshly restored conference room of the newly-renovated Mary Riley Styles Public Library last weekend.

Actually, the opening session of the 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. event involved a lot more people, with a few dozen representatives of the City’s volunteer advisory boards and commissions cramming into the room to receive an overview of the issues before the Little City and to offer some suggestions.

But when they were dismissed after about an hour, the Council settled into some predictable warm-up exercises, designed to loosen minds and