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,

May is a packed month for everyone and this year has been no different, so I’ll keep this short and sweet. We’re in the final weeks of budget season as we continue deliberations. If you missed last week’s post about the budget curveball, I suggest reading last week’s post first for context. Next Monday night is our “budget mark up” session where Councilmembers will discuss specific adds/deletes to the budget based on the past several months of work sessions, town halls, public hearings, and input from the community. The main theme from our discussions has been “balance” – you’ll see we are trying to balance strong funding for schools, transportation safety and other community priorities (based on the community survey), above average compensation for city and school employees, ease tax burden on residents, and responsibly budget by preparing for likely skinnier budgets in the coming years. You can continue sharing public comment via email, at our office hours next week, or in our final public hearing on May 12. Read on for budget compromises, the proposed markups for Monday night, and data to correct a common misconception about school enrollment and capacity.

While the April Fitness Challenge has wrapped up (have you redeemed your prizes?), I hope you keep up those healthy physical and mental health habits all year round and support our local fitness businesses. If you see me today walking with a large group, we’re welcoming a delegation of electeds and staff from Sacramento, California for a walking tour of the Little City!

Take care,
Letty

PS – If you’re not yet signed up for the city’s weekly e-newletter Focus on Falls Church, you might be missing upcoming news and events like tomorrow’s Falls Church Arts Day, a regional job fair, Bike to Work Day, and more.

What Happened This Week:

FY26 Budget

The annual budget process is one of the most important responsibilities of the City Council every year. Our role in the budget is to care for the entire city, be responsive to community’s priorities, and be good stewards of taxpayer dollars – especially being mindful of the growing challenges in the the DC regional economy, households, and what a reasonable pace of growth looks like in the coming years.

In our work session last week, we discussed multiple revenue and expense levers proposed by staff to address the $1.2M revenue shortfall due to lower than projected sales and meals taxes, the leading indicators of consumer sentiment.

Earlier in the budget season, due to high property assessments and commercial growth coming online – City Council had planned to reduce the tax rate 2.5 pennies to moderate the impact of tax bills which were still projected to increase 3.5% over last year’s tax bills. Given smaller revenues to come, a majority of Councilmembers compromised and were comfortable with a smaller tax rate reduction of 1.5 cents – requiring a reduction of $570K out of the $130M total annual operating budget – balancing the considerations for taxpayers, schools, and general government budgets. Per the revenue sharing arrangement with the schools, it would require the general government and schools to share the $570K, or finding savings of $285K each.

You can see the specifics we’re considering for the general government budget in our budget markup document for next Monday – which includes a position reduction, elimination of Watch Night, de-prioritizing a few playground upgrades while bumping up safety net funding.

Letty’s Thoughts:

I have appreciated the public comments we’ve received to date – I’ve been reading all of them and making my way through and responding to each, as I try to do with every public comment. One common misconception I’ve read across from fellow parents is about concerns for school enrollment and school capacity. I’ve written about this multiple times in my regular FAQ posts (October 2023’s is the most recent). Yes, while we’re expecting 154 students, or 6% increase, in the coming school year – school enrollment has actually been relatively flat nor has mixed use projects to date resulted in explosive school enrollment.

Historical School Enrollment: I blog about this every year with the popular “where students live” analysis, but this is a good historical view that came from FCCPS. Two notes: you can see that we’ve now bounced back from the Covid years drop in enrollment and overall enrollment has been quite flat. And you can see that the majority of our students (blue, green, purple) live in existing housing stock and mixed use buildings (orange) have contributed 7-10% of total student enrollment over time. Of course being a small school system, changes in enrollment are impactful which is why we collaborate and pay such close attention.

School Capacity: it’s notable there are no school capacity projects in the Capital Improvements Program (CIP) at all. That’s because FCCPS projects having enough capacity until 2045 (see page 220 of the schools budget)! That’s notable but not surprising given how much investment we had put in school capacity with the expansion of Mt Daniel in 2018 and the new Meridian High School in 2021.

What’s Coming Up:

Monday, May 5 – City Council Work Session* (budget markup)

Wednesday, May 7 – Ask the Council Office Hours (9 am, City Hall)

Monday, May 12 – City Council Meeting* (final budget adoption)

Monday, May 19 – City Council Work Session^

Tuesday, May 27 – City Council Meeting

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

Letty’s Office Hours:

Wednesday, May 21 – 5 pm (Walking Office Hours – meet at Cherry Hill Park)