Proposed county budget would raise taxes
County Executive Bryan Hill presented a budget proposal for FY 2025 to the Board of Supervisors Feb. 20 that calls for a 4-cent increase in the property tax rate, partially funds an increase for public schools, and raises employee compensation.
“This would be the first real estate rate increase in six years, and it is not a conclusion that I reached easily,” Hill told the board. But it’s necessary “to maintain the quality workforce and dependable services upon which our residents rely.”
“We are seeing some residential growth, but our commercial values have declined, resulting in an overall real estate growth of just over 2.7 percent.” Hill said. “Paired with significant expenditure pressures – particularly for employee pay and benefits, transportation requirements, and continued inflationary impacts – balancing this proposed budget has required difficult decisions.
The Board of Supervisors is scheduled to authorize advertisement of the FY 2025 tax rate on March 5. Real estate assessments have risen, too, meaning residents can expect a bigger tax bill this year.
Fairfax County Public Schools had requested a 10.5 percent increase, or $254 million, in the amount of funds transferred from the county.
The advertised budget proposed by Hill calls for a 6.8 percent increase in school transfer funds ($165 million).
The county has urged the state to provide additional funding to schools, based on a study by the General Assembly’s Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission that found Virginia’s per-pupil funding is 14 percent lower than the national average.
Related story: Tax bills likely to rise
The largest funding category after schools is county compensation, with a $148.1 million proposed increase over FY 2024. That amount includes funding for merit, longevity, and a partial market rate adjustment of 2 percent. The MRA for FY 2025 is calculated at 4.1 percent and would require an additional penny on the tax rate to fully fund.
The FY 2025 budget is the first to include compensation increases for public safety employees as determined by the collective bargaining process. County staff negotiated with the Southern States Police Benevolent Association and International Association of Firefighters on behalf of the county’s law enforcement officers, and fire, EMS, and public safety communicators, respectively, to arrive at new agreements.
The budget also includes significant expenditures for employee benefits, particularly for the county’s defined-benefit retirement plans, with over $31 million in required increases for the police, uniformed, and general county employee plans. Two of the three systems experienced returns well below the 6.75 percent assumed rate of return this past year.
The proposed budget includes a net increase of $37 million for Metro, which is facing a $750 million shortfall.
Tax rates would be increased for sewers, trash collection, and leaf collection.
Fees would be increased for athletic fields, services provided by the Health Department, senior centers, zoning applications, and fire marshal permits.
Some of the funding increases proposed by Hill include the following:
- $850,000 to support the creation, rehabilitation, and preservation of affordable housing.
- $1.20 million for park maintenance and infrastructure upgrades.
- $400,000 for bamboo mitigation in parks.
- $530,000 for probation counselors to address the growing numbers of non-violent offenders experiencing a mental health crisis.
- $1.24 million to support collective bargaining.
- $480,000 for election expenses, including same-day registration.
The budget calls for a net decrease of $33.82 million and 84 positions.
The board will hold public hearings on the budget on April 16-18 and will adopt a budget on May 7.
This is how the Board of Supervisors does sleight of hand. Last year they told taxpayers that they lowered our taxes (reduced the mileage rate) knowing full well that the fair market assessments all property went up significantly so that it was actually a tax increase- just not as big as it would have been. Doing this mind you when giving themselves a pay raise (as I recall each member of the board can have outside employment income as the job was set up to be part time). Now everything costs more (highest rate for groceries in since 1997), and the bills of past promises on pensions is starting to come due combined with poor investment performance, the schools quality has not improved but there is a never ending need for more, and core county services have declined or been horribly governed (trash collection challenges). Now the manager it proposes a double hit with outright tax increases knowing the assessments are to also go up for a double hit. I have never yet heard of the Board seriously looking at its or the school budget and refocusing on core missions and cutting extras that people (parents) should do for themselves and their children. Fairfax and Annandale are great places to live but the county government is dragging it down with their poor governance (can’t say no to the interests groups special asks and pet programs) and constantly unneeded spending (COVID-19 memorial as a reminder). Good Grief.
Sleight of Hand? Look elsewhere; there’s no deceipt here. EVERY citizen who owns a home and pays taxes should readily understand the dual roles of property assessments and tax rate (millage) in determining one’s RE tax burden. It’s not rocket science.
To believe the job of a FfxCo Supervisor is or should be part-time is laughable. It’s not just full-time, it’s way past that. FfxCo isn’t some quaint town in flyover country. Supervisors oversee a county with over 1M citizens, 12K county employees, and a $4B+ budget. And the pay raise to which you refer averaged out to less than 4% per year since their last raise 8 years prior – hardly the gravy train critics characterize it as.
You’re spot-on about the overall burden of county pensions. During the County Executive’s budget presentation a couple days ago, Supervisors McKay, Walkinshaw and Herrity commented about recent, and apparently significant, underperformance of county retirement plans. This may require substantially larger County contributions to maintain adequate funding. Stay tuned; this will be worth watching.
A big issue in all this is that the Commonwealth’s Dillon rule restricts FfxCo powers of taxation. FfxCo therefore must lean extremely hard on Real Estate taxes, because they can’t tax income. RE taxation is a wealth tax that unfairly hits fixed-income retirees. If you have an issue with this, you should contact your State General Assembly rep and our Governor to get this fixed. By-and-large, Fairfax County too often gets the shaft from the Commonwealth; e.g., the state’s education contribution to the County is criminally deficient. That doesn’t excuse misguided/unnecessary spending (I’m with you on the COVID memorial), but getting appropriate respect and reimbursement from our State government is a problem that really needs fixing.
The deception is in how the Board described the mileage reduction last year, bragging about how they provided a tax cut in campaigns and press releases (those that do not directly pay real estate taxes are far less likely to understand what you pointed out should be known). Spending is out of control on extras. Thus, thank goodness the state puts some constraints on the tax and spend for special programs/projects of counties like Fairfax. The Board of Supervisors has never seriously acted or considered self-restraint on spending & I’ve yet to see real change and cuts ever. Also, IF Members of the Board can still have outside employment then that is ripe for conflicts of interest at best & corruption at worst. As I recall Mason’ new supervisor was keeping his other job. Your comment about “fly over” parts of our country seems to be full of contempt, presumptuous, and sad. Many places in the country that you call “fly over” are managed so much more efficiently than Fairfax.
Really? “full of contempt, presumptuous, sad”? C’mon, dial down the pearl-clutching. I was ONLY differentiating between running a large and complex municipal enterprise vs. running a small town government. It’s a HUGE difference, and you know it.
And if you don’t directly pay real estate taxes, of course you “are far less likely to understand what you pointed out should be known.” If you are a renter and don’t directly receive the bill, I wouldn’t expect you to pay much attention to what the BoS might or might not say about a millage rate.
“IF Members of the Board can still have outside employment then that is ripe for conflicts of interest at best & corruption at worst.” Yeah, it would be great if politicians didn’t have outside employment, but even if they didn’t, that doesn’t mean they aren’t subject to conflicts of interest. Even the Springfield Supervisor has outside employment.
Look, we just had an election. EVERY BoS seat was up for grabs, and the electorate spoke. The voters apparently preferred the current course and didn’t see a compelling reason to change to the alternative.
You’ll have an opportunity over the next month or so to weigh in on FfxCo’s FY25 budget. Every supervisor is holding a budget town hall to listen to their constituents. Attend one, or write your representative and outline the change(s) you want to see. But either way, do yourself a favor – have concrete and specific examples of what you want changed. Plead your case. But don’t just howl at the moon, voicing some all-encompassing strident ideological view. You’ll just be ignored or marginalized, if not outright dismissed as little more than someone who only wants to vent and spew.
It’s clear you have an opinion, and one that I believe should be heard. Re-read my response to your first post. I sided WITH you generally about county pension issues and specifically about the COVID memorial. Despite evident ideological differences, there ARE common areas for agreement. But when you reflexively assert “thank goodness the state puts some constraints on the tax and spend for special programs/projects”, do you see that you’re just locking yourself into RE taxation as the predominant funding source for the County government? Why would you want to do that?
The voters are fools and highly susceptible to propaganda. Just look at all the bandwagons everyone has jumped on since 2020… and then realized they were duped. It’s a sad and embarrassing time to be an American.
I wounder if commercial real estate values have decline because of the high level of residential taxes, making the county a less desirable place to live and thus less desirable for businesses.
Spending is the problem – not how much income is coming in – grow up Progressives living in lala land – No New Taxes!