After a transformative election ousted most of Fairfax City Council’s experienced members, Mayor Catherine Read is pushing for election reforms to improve stability and representation.
Her plan includes adopting ranked-choice voting (RCV) and extending council terms to four years with staggered elections. Read says the changes are needed to prevent the kind of turnover seen this year, which she worries could disrupt long-term city projects.
“I’ve got five brand-new city council members with no experience, and I think that is unprecedented,” she said. “Two incumbents, myself and Billy [Bates], each of us have one two-year term of experience. You’ve basically got people with no experience and knowledge running the city.”
A historic turnout shakes up city politics
Read’s proposal comes after two consecutive election cycles in 2022 and 2024 brought record voter turnout and significant turnover on Fairfax City Council, leaving five first-time members to shape city leadership.
This year, 11 candidates competed for six council seats, unseating two of the three incumbents running for reelection: Jeffrey Greenfield and Kate Feingold. Greenfield, who served on the council from 1994 to 2018 and returned in 2022, lost his seat this year. Feingold, first elected in 2022, served just one term.
City Councilmembers So Lim, Thomas Ross and Jon Stehle, Jr. did not run for reelection.
According to the Virginia Department of Elections, voter turnout in the city jumped from around 20% in past elections to nearly 60% in 2022 and 72% in 2024 — or 13,710 of the city’s 18,995 registered voters. By comparison, fewer than 3,500 residents voted in mayoral races between 2014 and 2020.
Read, who was also elected in 2022, attributes the surge in turnout to a 2021 state law that moved local elections from May to November, aligning them with general elections. While Read welcomes the increased engagement, she’s concerned about how such high turnover affects governance and long-term projects.
She pointed to the George Snyder Trail, a fully funded infrastructure project nearing construction, as an example. Years in the making, the project has faced resistance from community members and candidates.
Her opponent in the Nov. 5 election, Susan Hartley Kuiler, campaigned on potentially canceling it.
“When you’re trying to do long-term projects in the city that take 10 or 15 years, and you’ve got people rolling on and off, and they decide they don’t want to fund the George Snyder Trail or the partnership with the county to build a community center — that is very destabilizing,” Read told FFXnow.
A two-pronged approach
To address these challenges, Read is proposing two key reforms: ranked-choice voting and longer, staggered council terms.
RCV would allow voters to rank candidates by preference. If no candidate receives a majority, the lowest-performing candidate is eliminated, and their votes are redistributed to the remaining candidates based on voters’ second-choice preferences. Read believes the system would result in fairer outcomes, particularly in crowded races where votes can be split among multiple candidates.
However, Read says RCV alone won’t address the instability caused by frequent turnover under the city’s current system, where all council seats are up for election every two years. So, she is also proposing to extend council terms to four years and stagger elections so only half the council is up for election at a time.
“This is not groundbreaking,” Read said. “Manassas has four-year terms, and many jurisdictions around us have made this change over time.”
Under her plan, the mayor and three council seats would be decided during midterm elections, with the remaining seats up for election in presidential years.
Right now, Arlington County is the only locality in Virginia to have implemented RCV in a general election. Other localities, including the City of Falls Church and Albemarle County, are considering adopting the system for their elections.
A spokesperson for Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Chair Jeff McKay told FFXnow the county isn’t considering implementing RCV at this time.
The road to implementation
For Read’s proposed changes to take effect, they would first need to be approved by voters through a public referendum. While the council has the power to amend its charter to make the changes directly, Read said previous councils have resisted the idea.
“I could not get the current council to consider this by-charter change,” she said. “They were not interested. I had people say, ‘Nope. I think two years is fine.'”
If voters approve the reforms, the city would submit a charter change request to the General Assembly for final approval in 2026, with the possibility of implementing the changes that same year.
“If that gets passed and signed off on as a charter change in, let’s say, March of 2026, it would become effective July 1,” Read said. “That stagger and those four-year terms will go into effect in the next regularly scheduled election, which would be November of 2026.”
Fairfax City Council is set to discuss these proposals at a public work session next month on Tuesday, Dec. 3. The session will include an overview of ranked-choice voting, the potential benefits of staggered four-year terms, and how the reforms could shape the city’s future.
“What I hope [for] is a robust discussion,” Read said. “These changes aren’t just about fixing what happened this year. They’re about setting Fairfax up for the future.”
