Leaders in Fairfax County, Virginia, got their first presentation of the proposed budget for fiscal year 2023, and it includes fully funding the school district’s request and an employee compensation package.
County Executive Bryan Hill presented the FY 2023 Budget to the Board of Supervisors Tuesday, and he said that he is cautiously optimistic that the county is turning a corner on the pandemic and heading to economic recovery.
“This budget reflects our optimism but also our commitment to wise investment in county priorities, including our workforce,” Hill said in a statement.
The proposal includes no change to the current $1.14 tax rate but also an allocated balance of $80 million to be used at the board’s discretion. The main driver behind a 6.83% projected general fund revenue increase is the county’s strong real estate market, according to a county news release.
“Those revenues are up because real estate property values are sky high in terms of assessment,” Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Chairman Jeff McKay told WTOP. “When values are high, revenue is high.”
The revenue increase, however, translates to a 9.57% equalization rate (the market-driven property value change), which would mean a $666 average property tax bill increase at the proposed tax rate.
“Most people in Fairfax County are not interested in moving. And so for those people who aren’t interested in moving, raising assessments high, like we’ve seen over the past year, creates … a lot of additional revenue for counties, unless we adjust the rate downward,” McKay said.
One of the things the board will do, McKay said, is to reduce the rate, which he admitted will create a tax increase for most residential property owners in the county. “But it will be less than that which was included in the county executive’s proposal today.”
The challenge, McKay said, is how to adopt a tax rate that funds county operations fairly but also provides some tax relief to sky-high residential real estate assessments, which, he said, is the driver in where revenue increases are coming from both in real estate and personal property.
The proposed budget also funds Fairfax County Public Schools’ request of $2.285 billion. It represents 52.4% of General Fund disbursements in the budget. Most of the funding will be designated for the schools’ compensation program.
“Recruitment and retention have been issues for both schools and the county,” the county said.
“What most people don’t understand is when the state says they’re raising teacher pay, what they really mean is Fairfax County has to come up with a lot of money to increase teacher pay because the largest share of that is paid for by the county, not by the state. So, in order for us to get the tiny amount of state matching funds, we have to increase teacher pay,” McKay said.
Recognizing the challenge county agencies are having with recruitment and retentions, the board directed that the budget prioritize employee compensation. The total proposed pay increases average 6.16% for non-uniformed merit employees and 7.86% for uniformed merit employees.
Other items in the budget include investments on affordable housing, opioid use prevention efforts, public safety staffing, and the new language access program. You can find out more about the proposed budget on the Fairfax County website.
Budget committee meetings will take place in March and April, with public hearings scheduled April 12 to 14. The board meeting to make changes to the budget is scheduled for April 26, with adoption scheduled on May 10.
WTOP’s Scott Gelman contributed to this report.
