The new City Council, who ran on a ticket of transparency, introduced and passed two motions for items not on the advertised agenda. The first was to stop advertising for bids on the George Snyder Trail to allow staff to come up with an alternative plan. 

    VDOT has granted the City of Fairfax an extension until December 31, 2025 to see if they can come up with an alternative to the George Snyder Trail that was approved over a year ago and totally funded by $20M from funds donated as a proffer by the developer of the I-66 toll lanes. The council's dilemma is that the funds disappear if the trail is not completed. Also, the city would likely have to repay up to $3.7M of taxpayer money for the cost incurred for the design plans. 

     The most likely scenario for a new plan would be to eliminate the eastern half of the trail completely. Environmentalists and residents in the immediate vicinity of the approved trail also favor that the western half be designed as some type of expansion of the existing sidewalks on Eaton Place and on Fairfax Boulevard. Both of these streets are very heavily travelled by automobiles at high speeds.

     In essence the George Snyder Trail would no longer afford a parklike safe and pleasant walk or bike through the woods.  This is why we favor maintaining the existing trail plan.

     The second motion that passed was to freeze additional staff activity on the Country Club Hills Trail and the Pickett Road Trail. Both have secured significant funding from state and federal funds. The intent is to kill the Country Club Hills Trail and to take the Pickett Road Trail out of the woods and put it onto the sidewalk on the west side of Pickett Road. Once again, outside funding would disappear at a time when the proposed Fairfax City budget is dictating a dramatic rise in taxes. Under the current political and economic climate the possibility of securing future funding for projects of this type from sources outside the City is in doubt.