On February 27, 2026, the Alexandria City Council held its first budget work session of 2026, focusing on the proposed Capital Improvement Program (CIP) and general fund revenues. The session included presentations on the 10-year CIP, revenue forecasts, fee adjustments, tax rate options, economic development initiatives from the Alex Forward framework, and a legislative update from the Virginia General Assembly. No formal votes were taken; council members provided direction and requested follow-up memos on several items.
Okay, well, good evening, everyone, and welcome to our first budget work session of 2026. Tonight's topic is the proposed CIP and revenues. With that, I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to Director Route. That's correct. Good evening. Tonight's work session is on the capital improvement program. Revenues, we'll give a brief overview, and then we have a few fee adjustments. Um we want to discuss and also options for tax rates. Um we have a presentation on how it's hoarded and economic development and um a legislative update from the General Assembly session. Um we'll wrap up with the budget calendar. So we'll start with uh Arthur Wicks and the CIP. All right, good evening. Uh so we're gonna go through the proposed fiscal 2027 through 2036 uh capital improvement program tonight. Just wanted to note there's a few slides in here. Uh Jim already presented on them last night. We're just including them here. I'm gonna breeze through them pretty quickly, but because it's a CIP work session, be good to have that all together here. Okay, so uh as Jim mentioned last night, our 10-year proposed plan is 2.01 billion dollars with a year one capital budget of 238.7 million dollars. Um for the overall 10-year plan, this is down about 3% from the previous approved capital plan. Um, that's largely a function of fiscal 26's capital budget was a pretty big appropriation year, it's about 205 million dollars. The year 10 we've added to the plan is less than that, it's about 165 million. So, really most of that decrease is just the fact that what we added to the end was less than what we took off the the front of the capital plan. Uh this is our proposed CIP by uses. Um, really the only note I want to make here um that I don't think the manager touched on last night was within that $629 million dollar wedge for transportation, about 30% of that uh nearly 200 million dollars is our uh well amount of capital subsidy. So the money we pay into our regional transit network. One second here. We can go backwards. There we go. Um, so the guidance that the city manager gave to departments and the schools back in the fall, and that was reaffirmed as part of your uh the budget guidance, really called for uh a CIP that continued to execute the plan we had approved. Uh, and really not looking at a lot of changes, and if you did make changes, uh kind of staying within your levels. So, really, I just want to touch very briefly on three kind of exceptions or highlights and explain what's going on there. Um, because really beyond that, the CIP, there is not much in the way of material change from what we had approved in our plan last year. Um so the first of those items is affordable housing. Um, and really uh the difference here is is a more matter of how funds are being characterized in the final appropriation. So uh in previous years, there was the one percent meals tax dedication, which uh went from the general fund to the housing fund to the capital fund and was projected out 10 years. Then there was the dedicated penny. Uh portions of it were used to pay debt service and housing position costs and the operating budget, and the rest went to the housing fund and stayed there. And really now we're just moving that over to the capital fund. It makes managing how we lever how we use these funds and leverage funds uh in a more consistent way. It also lets us project out that what that dedication is gonna generate over 10 years. So if you look at the affordable housing section of the CIP, you'll see that the real estate real estate tax dedication is about 4.1 million going into the capital funds, and fiscal 27 is projected out uh over the 10 years. Between that, the meals tax dedication and the $1 million of cash capital we dedicate annually as part of the Amazon HQ2 agreement. Uh, that's a total of $126 million dedicated to affordable housing projects in the CIP. Mr. Wicks, I just want to make sure I'm tracking correctly though. So the real estate I get is now going straight to the CIP, but the meals tax will still follow the same path of housing than CIP. So two steps. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.