Blog posts are the personal views of Letty Hardi and not official statements or records on behalf of the Falls Church City Council

Dear Friends,

Happy May! For those with kids in schools as well, you’ll sympathize that May feels like the December calendar. Solidarity if you’re also juggling a lot right now.

Two main topics I’ll share – we’re nearing the finish line on budget (thank you for all the input I’ve personally received) with budget “markup” next Monday night, where we make final adds/deletes. We have the benefit of watching our neighbors adopt their budgets so I’ll share how that shapes my thinking. And I’ll share my answer to one of the questions at last night’s budget town hall – how can one stay aware and involved with local government? I’ll share a comprehensive take on all the options out there but in case you haven’t heard, Falls Church Forward has just rolled out AI summaries for all public meetings!

Enjoy the weekend. As always, if you have thoughts on the budget or any city issue, don’t hesitate to reach out. These conversations are ongoing — and your input helps shape what comes next.

Best,
Letty

What Happened This Week:

(1) FY27 Budget Continues

If you missed my post last week – that included a deeper dive on where we stand on budget, including our sunnier than expected revenue picture – I recommend starting there to catch up. I frequently hear and get asked “how does all of this commercial growth help my taxes?” so I tackled that FAQ in last week’s post as well.

This week, we had another long midnight meeting where we heard public input and deliberated on advanced funding for solar panels for the Community Center, budget requests from the Sheriff, how to fund street maintenance, and next steps on Virginia Village, now that we authorized the hiring of a consultant to proceed with the project. (I’ll write more about Virginia Village next week.)

Letty’s Thoughts

We have the benefit of watching our neighbors’ budgets wrap up first – Arlington increased their real estate tax rate 2 pennies, Alexandria is keeping their tax rate flat (but increasing smaller taxes and fees), and Fairfax will be lowering their tax rate by a quarter penny when they adopt next week.

While paying attention to real estate tax rates is one metric to benchmark with our neighbors, I actually have a few other hot takes, especially having had deeper conversations with my regional colleagues:

• Macro issues: this was an especially helpful comparison why Arlington had to raises tax rates while Fairfax decreased. The TL;DR: Arlington has more exposure to commercial real estate which continues to face challenges and Fairfax implemented a meals tax last year as a new revenue source. Falls Church is a hybrid of those two – we have even less exposure to commercial real estate than Fairfax and we’ve had healthy local taxes with new businesses and mixed use projects coming online.
• Tax bill impact: again, while tax rates are a simple way to benchmark, everyone is sensitive to tax bill impacts (tax bill = tax rate x assessments). The year over year tax bill increase is a metric we’ve begun to use the past few years. Falls Church has among the highest assessment increases in the region – our budget is largely where it is because we have a strong real estate market where sale prices continue to rise. That’s great for your property values, but only if you are selling!
  • In Arlington – even with two penny increase, their median tax bill will increase $537 over last year.
  • In Fairfax, the median tax bill is expected to increase $337 over last year with their quarter penny decrease.
  • In Falls Church, if the tax rate stays flat – the median tax bill increases $611 over last year.
• Caution and FY28 worries: everyone is concerned for our residents and businesses feeling the crunch now and the uncertainty and how the regional economy ahead. Affordability has been front and center in their deliberations. No one is able to fund everyone’s desires and in fact, all of our neighbors are making serious cuts in staff and programs in order to balance their budget. And everyone already is looking ahead and believes their FY28 budgets will be even tougher.

While budget season is the time we hear from everyone in city departments and schools with their budget asks, our role on the City Council is to govern and balance all the stakeholders across the city. I continue to want to be fiscally conservative as well as think about long term sustainability in budget growth, with a half penny reduction on the tax rate. A half penny represents about a $50 decrease in tax bills for homeowners, but more importantly it’s a way to curb operating budget growth.

If you have opinions about this year’s budget – whether it’s the tax rate, budget priorities, or otherwise – please chime in.

(2) Walking Office Hours & Traffic Calming

Shout out to the entire Grove Ave neighborhood for joining me at my walking office hours last week on the W&OD with NOVA Parks. I know transportation safety continues to be a top priority across the city – I’ve relayed the feedback I heard to city staff and analysis for potential improvements is underway.

(3) Stay Informed and Getting Involved

This is a great segue to one of the questions we heard at last night’s budget town hall – how to stay informed about local government issues and how to get involved. You don’t need to walk with me to make your voice heard! This has been important to me. I sincerely believe that local government works best when it reflects the people it serves. The more (informed) voices we hear, the better the outcomes. And it’s important for local government to be accessible beyond formal Monday night City Council meetings because I know how hard it is to juggle those with jobs, kids, and other commitments – not everyone can participate in the old school way of 3 minute public comment at City Hall. I have tried to push for and model new ways of engaging the past 10 years that now many others use, which is great! It’s the combination of this belief + practices in broad, deliberate engagement that makes Falls Church civic life so vibrant.

Below is my take – from easy to harder – on how to stay informed and get involved:

• Falls Church Alerts – if you haven’t signed up for the city’s emergency alerts, you should do it now. This provides critical information in a variety of situations, including severe weather, road closures, missing persons etc.
• Report an Issue – new and improved RequestTracker to report non-emergency maintenance issues, submit public comment easily.
• Focus on Falls Church eNewsletter – every Friday, this newsletter delivers city news straight to your inbox. Note that you can also get newsletters from various departments too – Rec and Parks, Library, Economic Development.
• City Website & Social Media – the city website has been redesigned to be more accessible and user friendly, with the most searched for information more accessible. There can be a lot of misinformation out there, so I encourage you to check the city website as a first step. (My personal caution is that social media is an unreliable and inconsistent way to get your news because the algorithms prioritize things differently for everyone so you may not see it even if it’s posted.)
• My blog – if you’re already reading this, you know about this! I’ve written this newsletter style blog now for almost 11 years (this is post #413) as a way to provide my take on City Council business, what you should pay attention to, and provide everyone an opportunity to directly hear my thoughts in advance of votes, ask questions, and shape my thinking before any decisions. This was never meant to be a 10 year endeavor but now that I’m here, I find it a valuable weekly process. It forces me to know the issues, crystallize my thinking, and be able to somewhat succinctly share pros and cons. I write and publish these regularly enough where your input to me can actually influence a vote and you can understand my approach (vs monthly or sporadic blasts where you’re really just getting informed or called to activate). Readership has grown through word of mouth over the years so if you find it valuable, do share with others. You can also follow me on my city Facebook page. (Brevity is not my strong suit so I don’t do Twitter, Bluesky, etc)
• Attend/watch city meetings (30 min-3 hour commitment) – they’re all posted on the City website. And per open meeting laws, agendas are posted 3 days in advance so you can scroll and determine what you might be interested in joining in advance. City Council meetings and a few others are also streamed live, so you can also watch from home. We also often have public comments at those meetings so they’re a good opportunity to share your thoughts.
• NEW AI meeting summaries – Falls Church Forward (in full disclosure, a civic group I co-founded) has leveraged AI to provide summaries of all city meetings if you don’t have time to watch or read about the meetings. The summaries are fact-based and #AgendaFree so that you can be in the know and make informed decisions on the issues most important to you. You can find out how to get the summaries in the FCF May newsletter here (and you can also join FCF).
• Office Hours or 1:1 Meeting (30 min-1 hour commitment) – I hold personal office hours and a few years ago, we implemented “Ask the Council” office hours the first Wednesday mornings of every month. Coming soon will be after work office hours. I’ll share the schedule when we have those. These are a good way to meet with Councilmembers and allow you to have a back and forth dialogue without the formality of a Monday night meeting. If those times don’t work for you, you can always contact us individually to meet.
• Be a joiner – civic group and/or City Board or Commission (1-2 hour monthly commitment, some B&Cs are more) – while I’m partial to Falls Church Forward and have a vision for a high sense of belonging, connection, and engagement across the city and why that’s important for democracy (see our Civics Bootcamp, Welcome Kits, and Neighborhood Ambassadors), we have a variety of other organizations around the city – school PTAs, run clubs, environment, social justice, and more. And city boards and commissions offer a good way to dip your toes in being a part of local government – you can apply based on your professional experience or personal interest. We have B&Cs from transportation to economic development to housing to history and more. B&Cs are mostly advisory to the City Council, but some have a statutory and more formal decision-making role.

What’s Coming Up:

May 4 – City Council Work Session* (budget mark up)

May 6 – Ask the Council Office Hours (9 am, City Hall)

May 11 – City Council Meeting* (budget adoption)

May 18 – City Council Work Session*

May 26 – City Council Meeting*

*All Mondays (except 5th Mondays and holidays) at 7:30 pm. You can access the agenda and livestream here, including recordings of past meetings