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,

This has been a challenging year for federal workers in our region (and in Falls Church, 16% of our workers are feds). Many have lost their jobs and organizations tied to federal contracts are struggling. The current government shutdown adds more uncertainty, threatening families’ ability to pay rent, mortgages, tuition, and even buy groceries. The loss of federal employment affects us all – local businesses, services, and families feel the ripple. If you are impacted, please check out the local support and tax relief programs for residents facing hardship.

This week, I’ll share more about 3 topics – all of which have more nuance than the headline:

• The city’s year end finances – you’ll hear the headline that we ended the year with a “surplus” (which is better than a deficit) but it’s not that simple
• FCCPS now also has their official 2025 enrollment numbers – enrollment is still flat as I shared a few weeks ago (and in fact, we have 2 fewer students than last year)
• Tree canopy targets for commercial/mixed use projects

Many of us will be in Roanoke for the annual Virginia Municipal League conference with the other local electeds across the Commonwealth and we have no City Council meeting on Indigenous Peoples’ Day. You can catch me in person at my October office hours next Thursday, October 16 at 12 pm, The Happy Tart before we resume City Council meetings on October 20.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Best,
Letty

PS – We’re just over 3 weeks until Election Day and there are still more opportunities to get informed. In particular, there will be a forum for School Board candidates on Tuesday October 16 and City Council candidates on Wednesday October 22.

What Happened This Week

(1) FY25 Year End Financial Review

Every fall we close out the city’s fiscal year (that ended on June 30.) You can see the staff report and the presentation, but here are the top line results:

• “Surplus” – We ended the year with a $2.3M surplus (about 2% of the budget), but it’s not from tax revenues. In fact, local tax revenues came in below expectations. We have a surplus due to slight underspending + higher revenues from misc items like investment returns (aka, interest rates have stayed high so the city is earning more interest than expected) and fines.
• Local tax revenues – we are keeping a close eye on the local economy and sales, meals, and business taxes are a good barometer of consumer sentiment (local taxes make up about 30% of our budget – again a good reminder to shop local!). While these categories of revenues are growing over last year, they did still come in below our original budget expectations. In particular, three areas:
  • Sales tax is up 4.6% over last year. Within sales tax, grocery sales were up 6% over last year while online sales declined 6.5% – which supports the hunch that everyone still buys groceries even during downtimes, but online shopping is more discretionary.
  • Meals tax is up 2.9% over last year. Last December to February were worrisome, but meals tax rebounded in March to June 2025. Dining out is often one of the first discretionary spending items to be pinched during tough times, so we’ll continue to monitor closely.
• Warning signs – besides local tax revenues above, we are cautiously monitoring other indicators – how many people are seeking social safety net services and tax relief.
• What’s next – staff has presented us recommendations of what to do with the $2.3M surplus, a combination of new appropriations and majority to be put in reserves which remain very healthy – we’ll deliberate and vote on that in October and November. There will not be a year-end revenue sharing with FCCPS because the agreement calls for sharing only when there is a surplus in organic tax revenues.

(2) 2025 School Enrollment

I get asked about this nearly every month and there is usually a misunderstanding – so skip this section if you already know the headline. School enrollment is actually flat this year – there is not massive increases in school enrollment. Per the official September 30 stats as shared in the School Board agenda this week, we’re actually down 2 students compared to the 2024 enrollment numbers (2712 students vs 2714 last year). While enrollment does fluctuate over the school year, this is still surprising given the projection of 6% enrollment growth (+158 students).

Nearby Arlington Public Schools is also seeing declining or flat enrollment plus nationwide declining birthrates and obviously regional economic upheaval – so there are likely broader trends at play that need more analysis. In particular, note that our elementary grades are now all below 200 students – which is quite small compared to the grades in middle and high school and will have implications as those younger grades get older.

(3) Commercial Tree Canopy

A healthy urban forest matters for many reasons – stormwater runoff, biodiversity, cooling/shade – and in Falls Church, they are an iconic part of our streetscape as we were the first Tree City USA in Virginia. That said, we’ve always negotiated tree canopy in mixed use/commercial projects on a project by project basis. This week, we discussed adding a 10% tree canopy minimum for commercial projects – which is the current maximum allowed by Virginia code – which I expect will be done without much fanfare.

Two nuances:

• You can see that we’ve had a mix of tree canopy %s achieved across projects without the 10% – so hopefully the new 10% will be a floor for future negotiations where we can only go up.

• The community pays a lot of attention to commercial tree canopy because those projects are highly visible in our main corridors. However, note that commercial land is only 23% of the city’s land and majority of the land is single family neighborhoods where by right teardowns disturb far more land. As I shared last year, new residential construction has impacted about 100 acres of land in the city over the past 20 years – which is nearly 3X the amount of land impacted by commercial, mixed use development (about 38 acres) through the special exception process over the same time period. In residential construction, we are only allowed to require 20% canopy to be achieved within 10 years and we’ve all seen the clear cutting that happens to make way for bigger homes.

What’s Coming Up:

Monday, October 20 – City Council Work Session*

Monday, October 27 – City Council Meeting*

Wednesday, November 5 – Ask the Council Office Hours (City Hall, 9 am)

Monday, November 10 – 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:

Thursday, October 16 (12 pm) – The Happy Tart

Tuesday, November 18 (5 pm) – Harvey’s

candidate forum

office hours