McLean Citizens Association (MCA) board members on April 3 approved a resolution urging Fairfax County officials to limit spending increases for at least the next five years.
The county’s general-fund expenditures “have risen more rapidly than inflation, enabled largely by rising tax revenues on residential properties,” the resolution read. “At the same time, adverse trends that impose growing fiscal challenges have emerged or become impossible to ignore.”
MCA leaders recommended the county’s Board of Supervisors develop a fiscally sustainable five-year strategic plan, starting in fiscal 2025, to set property-tax levels that would limit residential-property-tax increases to an amount no higher than the inflation level recorded in the preceding 12 months.
This could be accomplished by identifying ineffective programs and “less necessary” (not necessarily vacant) positions and increasing the number of county auditors, the resolution read.
Officials also should consider gathering and publicly posting information on county job attrition, hiring and vacancies to find which positions are hardest and easiest to fill, and then adjust compensation for those posts, according to the resolution.
Officials should develop “robust” performance measures for all county agencies and offices – especially those that have few or no such existing standards – and eliminate positions and ineffective programs based on those data, MCA’s resolution read.
The county should evaluate all direct, indirect and contingent short- and long-term costs of proposed developments and programs, as well as regularly assess and adjust service fees to ensure those costs are covered, MCA leaders said.
Among worrisome trends, they said: Declining commercial-property values and tax revenues are increasing the burden on homeowners.
Louise Epstein, who chairs MCA’s Budget and Taxation Committee thanked many MCA members and Fairfax County staff for their contributions to what she called a comprehensive, forward-looking resolution.
Committee members “wanted to send a clear signal to the Board of Supervisors about planning ahead for the future, because we saw all these rising expenses coming ahead of us,” she said.
