Downs, Murphy Slated to Show at Community Center

Tonight, Thursday, Sept. 26, the first of two face-to-face encounters between the two candidates seeking to fill an unexpired term on the Falls Church City Council will be held, starting at 8:00 p.m. in the Senior Center room at the F.C. Community Center, 223 Little Falls St., behind City Hall.

According to the event sponsors, the F.C. League of Women Voters (LWV) and the Village Preservation and Improvement Society (VPIS), both candidates who have qualified for the ballot, Laura Downs and John Murphy, will be present to share their views on why they should be elected to fill the vacancy.
Open for free to the public, the audience will be invited to submit questions to the candidates in writing.
The two candidates are on the ballot in the election that is already underway. With Nov. 5 the official election day, early voting and mail-in options are already available. In Falls Church, according to Voter Registrar David Bjerke, more than 300 votes were cast on the first day of voting last Friday in his office at City Hall, and another 55 ballots were received as of yesterday through the mail.

That means that fully five percent of registered voters in the City have already cast their ballots. The number is up dramatically from last year, as well. The 300 total votes cast so far compares to the 200 cast when the pandemic was still a factor, Bjerke noted.

Both Downs and Murphy have been spotted sitting in at City Council meetings in the last two weeks.
Downs comes to the race as the elected former chair of the Falls Church City Schools board. Murphy, a board member of VPIS, has served as chair of the Board of Zoning Appeals.

A second direct encounter between the two candidates is set for Tuesday, Oct. 15, at the monthly luncheon meeting of the Falls Church Chamber of Commerce at the Italian Cafe.

The current vacancy on the Council was caused by the sudden resignation of Council member Caroline Lian, who was discovered to have failed to provide full information about her employment when she filed to run for the office.

The term for that seat will expire at the end of 2025, meaning that it will again be contested along with two others next year in the November 2025 local election. In that race, the seats currently occupied by Vice Mayor Deborah Shantz-Hiscott and Council member David Snyder will also be contested.

Meanwhile, a new potentially controversial local issue on zoning changes to allow or encourage “accessory dwelling units” in the backyards of single family homes in the City was the subject of a public information “open house” last night at City Hall, and it will be presented again this Sunday, Sept. 29, at 2 p.m. at the Mary Riley Styles Public Library.

At last Monday’s Falls Church City Council meeting, a number of citizens showed up to comment on the Greening of Lincoln Avenue issue and the bike master plan proposal, neither of which is going to be finalized anytime soon. Concerns for Lincoln Avenue came from citizens who live on the street, including the prominent Mike Curtin, nationally recognized head of the D.C. Central Kitchen, concerned about plans to reduce the number of public parking spaces under the plan.

On the bike plan issue, Brian Pendleton, president of the Falls Plaza Homeowners, expressed concern for the proximity of the proposed routes to homes along the way, while others spoke in favor of the plan to devise a safe bicycle route from the center of the city to the secondary schools campus at the far west end.

City Manager Wyatt Shields recognized the recognition the City received from the Virginia Municipal League for its communications effort around its East End Small Area Plan, noting that City senior planner Emily Bazemore developed and championed the effort. The effort was aimed at overcoming misinformation about the City’s plans for the Eden Center, one of the most active commercial centers of the Vietnamese-American community on the East Coast. The fears of a gentrification that would displace the center were addressed by four pop-up informational events held to dispel such fears at the Eden Center.

City Attorney Sally Gillette reported on the formation of a “conflict of interest working group” composed of the city manager, clerk and attorney to establish protocols to encourage awareness and support for state conflict of interest guidelines, and to address the difference between statutory conflicts of interest and what are often called politically motivated “appearances” of conflicts.

City chief financial officer Kiran Bawa presented the Fiscal Year 2024 year end financial report which showed, among other things, robust increases in revenues from meals taxes and interest rate-sensitive investment revenues, resulting in another year of a net surplus for the City of $449,000.

While tax revenues over budget was $1,890,000, $993,000 of that was needed to replenish the “unassigned fund balance” policy of 17 percent of annual revenues, and the 50-50 revenue sharing agreement with the City schools left $449,000 for a net surplus.