On Tuesday, Fairfax City council members voted 5 to 1 to proceed with the University Drive road extension project despite public opposition. What does this mean? Though the community at large did not support the road extension, council members opted to move forward into the 30% engineering design phase anyway. They intend to conduct additional traffic studies and look at alternative designs; however, it is unclear how flexible VDOT will be on alternatives that differ from what was originally scored and funded. What is the cost? The City will spend $100,000 on the next phase of the project. This is on top of $30,000 already spent to date. If the designs diverge too much from the original proposal, VDOT could reject the plan and refuse to reimburse the city for the $130,000 which would leave city taxpayers holding the bill. Who was the dissenting vote? The lone dissenting vote came from Ellie Schmidt who heeded the pleas of city residents. Schmidt and two other council members are running for Mayor in the February 7th election. If anyone would like a 'Schmidt for Mayor' sign for their yard, please leave a brief "I do" in the comments section on the webpage for this update and I will follow up with you separately.