A signal mast arm so corroded that it has been considered unsafe for over three years to load up with any more signage sits at the Falls Church intersection of W. Broad and N. West Streets.
This is while street maintenance efforts in the City of Falls Church are facing a $700,000 cut in funding in the City Manager’s proposed budget, and at the budget work session of the Falls Church City Council Monday, Council members expressed serious concerns about the City falling further behind on street paving, sidewalk repair and signal light maintenance issues.
A growing backlog of untended projects drew explicit expressions of dismay by Council members Justine Underhill and Arthur Agin at the work session, with Agin saying he was unaware that last year’s funding level for the work was only a one-time allocation, dropped by the $700,000 this year due to the drop in the City’s investment income.
“We’re leveling off at a low level, and we need to get out of this hole,” Agin said. On the other hand, the City staff offered that there are only two persons at City Hall assigned to working on such things. “We need to set priorities, because we can only do so much,” Amanda Stout Brain, the City’s director of public works, said.
“We’re obviously not going in the right direction now,” noted Vice Mayor Laura Downs. “If we don’t keep up, in 20 years we will have a real mess on our hands.”
The cut in funding is due to the fact that a $710,054 grant to repave N. Washington St. between Park Ave. and the City line will be undertaken this spring, and not renewed.
“There is a significant amount of work that needs to the done here to avoid putting good money after bad,” Council member David Snyder said. “If this is really a long-term problem then we need to figure out how to address it.”
Underhill asked whether bonding for making improvements would be feasible, but City Manager Wyatt Shields said that the City bond policy is that a loan repayment be done before the benefits of using the funds expire.
“We don’t love that we’re going backwards on this, because we’re also going backwards on sidewalk repairs, too,” said Mayor Letty Hardi.
Hardi also noted the more urgent problem may be the deteriorating condition of signal lights around the City. She cited the Planning Department report that there are some mast arm signal lights that have become seriously rusted, such as the one at the intersection of W. Broad and West street.
“This is more of a public safety problem than some potholes,” she observed. “This is an alarming condition,” she noted.
The problem was identified in a 2023 assessment of 10 of the CIty’s 38 mast arm signal lights. The deterioration of the Broad and West mast arm is so severe that it can not hold any additional signage, such as no-turn or red signs, it was noted.
That mast arm was determined to have less than a 10 percent useful life left, according to the study.
City Manager Wyatt Shields said he would return with proposals to stretch the paving budget further in time for final Council budget consideration in May.
But given economic realities, something else may have to be cut to fund additional paving. “It’s a challenge,” Shields said of the city government’s fiscal situation.
The additional funding provided for fiscal 2026 has allowed the city to pave nearly 3.9 lane-miles of roadway, up from 2.2 lane-miles in fiscal 2025.
“We are making really good headway,” deputy public-works director Tara Hoff told Council members. Hoff said staff would work with whatever budget number materialized.
Vice Mayor Downs cited the lack of timed signals on N. Washington near W. Broad in front of Clare and Don’s has caused traffic to back up there, and suggested it get priority attention. Hardi cited problems at the intersection of Park and Maple, which will eventually be addressed by the Park Avenue “Great Streets” project, but in the meantime have been subjected to considerable deterioration.
Agin cited the broken lights at Lincoln and Great Falls that went unrepaired for months, and also the deterioration of the Oak Street bridge that occurred before it was finally addressed
Hardi hailed the Smart Cities grant that is in the process of improving the coordinated signalization of W. Broad.
This spring’s paving schedule includes five segments, 6,486 feet, with improvements to include ADA curb ramps at intersections. Anne St. between Jackson and Knollwood, Knollwood Dr. between S. Spring and Timber, Parker Ave. between Kent and Timber, S. Spring St. between Parker and Jackson, W. Oak St. from N. West and Walnut, the intersection of Great Falls and Little Falls, Park Ave. from N. Washington to the Kaiser garage, and a big pothole on N. Maple near Park.
It was noted that while 283 potholes in the City were repaired in FIscal Year 2025 using 4.5 tons of asphalt, in the current fiscal year, only 42 potholes have been fixed using one ton of asphalt.
