Soaring real estate assessments are pressuring Fairfax County's Board of Supervisors to cut the tax rate more than its advertised 10-cent reduction, members said yesterday.
Democrats and Republicans on the board said they now are supporting an additional 3-cent trim, pushing the $1.13 tax rate to $1 per $100 of assessed value.
County Board Chairman Gerald E. Connolly said he believes that a 13-cent rate cut is sustainable.
(Larry Morris--The Washington Post)
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The supervisors touted the proposed reduction as "historic," pointing out that the tax rate would be a record low in Fairfax. Although that would be true, property tax bills would be higher because of skyrocketing assessments last year.
Even with a 13-cent decline in the rate, the owner of a home assessed at the county average of $444,766 would pay $4,448 in property taxes, or $408 more than last year.
But this week's budget hearings, a time when advocates for a range of causes lobby the board for funding, could alter the rate-slashing mood of the supervisors.
"We may hear testimony that's so compelling that we may change our minds on what to do," Chairman Gerald E. Connolly (D) said. "If I were to be convinced that 13 cents was not sustainable -- and I happen to believe that it is sustainable -- but if evidence came to my attention to the contrary, well . . . no one on the board wants to cut the tax rate and only have to raise it again in future years."
The additional 3-cent reduction is being considered because of a windfall from real estate recordation fees and the cigarette tax, both of which were increased last year after the General Assembly granted localities new taxing powers. But the supervisors also could spend that money on a variety of causes, including affordable housing, programs for the mentally disabled and or higher salaries for the sheriff's department.
The county also received about $25 million more than it had projected this fiscal year from other real estate fees and the collection of delinquent taxes. The county executive recommended allocating that money for nine projects, including new fire and rescue equipment ($2 million), a book-buying program for a new library in Oakton ($3.5 million) and the widening of Stonecroft Boulevard ($500,000).
But several supervisors said they are leaning toward passing over those proposals to push the tax rate down by the full 13 cents instead.
Supervisor Sharon S. Bulova (D-Braddock) called the budget "a sea change from years past" because sources of revenue other than residential real estate rose. Commercial real estate, for instance, rebounded after a three-year slump and gained 12.7 percent in value.
Overall, the county's proposed budget calls for spending $3 billion, an increase of about $200 million from last year. Notable among the increases is a boost in school spending, which would increase 8.4 percent to $1.43 billion, comprising nearly half of the budget.
After a study found the salaries of firefighters and police officers to be below average for the region, County Executive Anthony H. Griffin proposed raises of between 7 percent and 12 percent. That has incited the sheriff's department to request similar raises, even though its staff is among the highest paid in the region. Griffin proposed a 3 percent raise, but officials from that department have argued that their pay has long been on par with their counterparts in the police department.
Other lobbyists are working to push their agendas before the board during the public hearings, which began last night and will continue today and tomorrow. Anti-tax activists held a small rally yesterday to call for an even larger rate cut.
James T. Parmalee, president of Republicans United for Tax Relief, called the 13-cent drop "too little, too late."
