The Alexandria City Council held a public hearing on January 26, 2026, at the Del Pepper Community Resource Center. The meeting covered a wide range of items including consent items, development proposals, a BAR appeal, the Torpedo Factory Art Center lease, the Tall Ship Providence agreement, and a major Green Building Plan. Public comments focused heavily on ICE collaboration, divestment from companies involved in human rights abuses, and sustainability.
I guess before we get started, what I would just say is as always our goal is to make sure that we are able to run an efficient and effective meeting. And so we will not tolerate any disruptions. We you are able to hold signs, you're able to snap. Um, but we ask for please keeping a side conversations to a minimum. We also ask for no shouting, no yelling, and especially in this space, just be mindful of those who are around you and their ability to see and engage in the hearing as well. If we reach a point where there are disruptions, I'll give a warning, and then if um I need to, then um I'll give another warning, and then um, if it continues, you may be asked to leave. So with that, we're going to turn to um item three, which is the public discussion period. As is our practice, we take the first fifteen speakers, and then we'll go into our public business, and then if there are more speakers that we did not get to, we'll come back to those at the end. And that I don't have yet a copy of all those speakers, and I think the clerk is getting hers updated, so we'll we'll we'll do our best and adjust as we go. But let me then say, I guess, Madame Clerk, do you want to call the first speaker? Okay. John Lawrence. And then it will beep whenever you're finished. So thank you for being with us, John. Okay. Thank you, um, Madam Mayor. Thank you, everybody. Um, I love the new digs, so I'm sorry, you're going to be here for years, I guess. Um, and congratulations, Mr. Mr. McPike for your uh your primary win. So I'm sorry to see you go, but uh glad you're moving up. Um, I'm my name's John Lawrence. I'm the chair of the juvenile detention commission. We run the detention center out at Landmark as well as the juvenile shelter shelter care next door. And like I said, a year ago when I first came up here, I wanted to make sure that you heard from us on a regular basis, hopefully, good things. And today I basically have nothing but good things. Um, first of all, our our family days once a once a month, we have two-hour session where kids can bring in three to four family members at once. They're all in the gym and they get access to their kids in an environment that's like out at a regional park where you're having a picnic with friends and family. And they've gone on for 15 months and they're incredible. Uh Thanksgiving, the kids arrange the table, the length of the gym, and one long table, and then two little spurs out there and me being clueless. I walked in and I looked at one kid and I said, Why is it like this? And he said, It's a tea for Thanksgiving. And I felt like an idiot. Um, but it was just huge. The the food was great. Everybody went home with two bags of food and a frozen turkey. So they had a Thanksgiving dinner guaranteed the next week. Uh Christmas. Even bigger, lots of presents. We had a 30-person choir doing Christmas hymns. Christmas, Christmas carols, sorry. Um, and uh the families got to take home bags of presents that could be put under the tree from the kids to the family to keep the connection. Um the best news is you all know how much I hate the concrete slabs the kids sleep on in every jurisdiction. Um, in one unit, they are all gone. We're down to repairing the floor, repairing the walls, and then paint. We have all the furniture in some of the halls look like a hoarder's paradise because we have so many huge boxes that you're walking down these concrete, you know, corridors, but you have walls that are cardboard. But um, that will be done soon, and then we'll open that unit and then move along and get all four of them done in the next few next few months. So that's that's been wonderful. Um also last spring I came here and I told you about how Annie Rainey, the director of shelter care, had found extra VJ triple CA money, which was money that other jurisdictions hadn't used.