December 16, 2025 Council for Economic Opportunity - Dec 16, 2025

meeting

Fairfax County Board Committees 1h 30m 5 speakers 8 agenda items transcribed 2 days ago official recording ↗

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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.

What is the purpose and agenda of the Council for Economic Opportunity meeting?

Dan Stork 0:03

And a quiet falls over the the the committee. Uh hey morning everybody. Glad to have you here. It's a beautiful, cold, invigorating morning. Hopefully you all had your chance to to uh breathe that cold air and get that extra oxygen in your your brain because you're gonna need it this morning because we've got a lot of things we're we're gonna be talking about. And we we absolutely have an interactive meeting which is unusual for all of us. Um but the first thing I want to do is is in addition to to call the meeting in order. I want to welcome the members and also um and guests and turn this over to uh Chairman McKay for just a minute.

Jeffrey C. McKay 0:39

Thank you, uh, Supervisor Stork and thank you all uh for joining us here this morning. Um I did want to uh share with everyone how pleased we are uh to have with our Braddock d to have with us our Braddock District uh supervisor elect Rajna Sizemore Heiser who is here and joined us at the table. And so uh Congressman Walkinshaw says he left everything in Braddock district in perfect condition, so this should be easy. Uh but in all seriousness, uh we're glad to have her. Uh her swearing in is later today. And so she is here today as a guest of the Board of Supervisors since she hasn't been sworn into office yet, but will be joining us uh throughout the day and and we're delighted to have her here. And then secondly, um I am gonna have to leave the meeting early.

Jeffrey C. McKay 1:25

Uh as the board knows we lost uh good good friend uh of ours here in Fairfax County in Harry Glasgow and I'm gonna be speaking at his celebration of life and so I'll be leaving here uh shortly to head out to that and we'll rejoin uh the board later this morning. But uh thank everyone for coming today. Um the last thing I wanna mention is the the subject on our agenda about employer perspectives on housing. uh is particularly important to me and to the board. Um as you all know, we have some robust housing goals in Fairfax County and are making uh great strides in the area of affordable housing. Uh we had a board matter to revamp uh all of our affordable housing initiatives in Fairfax County, modernize them.

Jeffrey C. McKay 2:07

We don't take for granted that we're making good progress. We know that there's still a lot more to do. Um our Deputy County Executive Jen Miller, who's uh with us as well, uh is leading a team of county staff folks to come back with formal recommendations uh to us uh next year and are really looking forward to that, but certainly want to make sure that employer perspectives on this issue are part of the conversation because we've said from the beginning on affordable housing, uh government can't and shouldn't uh do it alone. Uh we know we are tens of thousands of houses behind demand, which is a good thing 'cause people want to live here. Uh the bad thing is a lot of people who want to live here are not coming here because they can't afford to.

Jeffrey C. McKay 2:47

And we need to be way more robust, in my opinion, way more aggressive when it comes to zoning and way, way more welcoming for density in areas of the county where we can attack this housing issue. And so we're gonna rely on our private sector. Uh for profit developers, our private sector not for profit uh developers, our non profit organizations who help support our affordable housing initiatives and the businesses in Fairfax County for ideas so that we're all uh hands on deck to attack this issue as a community as opposed to just a government solution. And so I'm looking forward to uh that conversation, even though I won't be in the room, I'll be listening uh to the board meeting and uh this will be an ongoing initiative of our board uh working with all of you moving forward.

Jeffrey C. McKay 3:32

And so with that, uh thank you all for being here and I will turn it back to Supervisor Stork.

Dan Stork 3:38

Thank you, Chairman McKay. And he identified, frankly, the core of the meeting today, which is about housing, and we'll we'll be looking for your uh input on that. But I also wanted to uh to take a moment to talk about the forward movement of the AI coalition, which was formed out of our previous meetings and discussions.