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Mr. Chairman and Members of the Board,

Thank you for holding this hearing. I'm Arthur Purves, president of the Fairfax County Taxpayers Alliance.

The FY2025 Carryover Package should be a year-end review. It should compare actual and budgeted expenses. It doesn't. It does not show the FY2025 approved budget. Instead, it compares actual expenses with the revised budget from the Third Quarter Review and gives the impression that actual expenses were less than budgeted expenses. That is false. Actual county General Fund Expenditures exceeded the budgeted amount by $25 million. Actual Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) Operating Budget Total Disbursements exceeded the budgeted amount by $34 million.

The carryover package should also compare actual expenses for the past two years. It doesn't. It does not show the FY2024 actual budget. Between FY2024 and FY2025 actual county General Fund Direct Expenditures increased 7.5%. Actual FCPS Operating Budget Total Disbursements increased 6.8%. Over the same period inflation plus Fairfax County population increased only 3%. That county and school spending increased twice as fast as population and inflation is a case study of out-of-control spending. The result is out-of-control real estate taxes, which have been increasing three times faster thanhousehold income for the past twenty-five years.

The primary reasons for soaring spending and taxes are the soaring cost of pensions, above-inflation raises for 40,000 county and school employees -- without regard to merit, medical insurance, and increased special needs, ESL, and low-income school enrollment, possibly due to the county's sanctuary policies.

Stop raising estate taxes faster than household income, which has only been increasing at about the same rate as inflation. The average real estate tax increase should not exceed $220. For the past four years the average tax increase has been $500.

With smaller tax hikes, raises would be about the same as inflation instead of 4 percent. To have raises that exceed inflation, run a business-friendly county and quality schools so household incomes increase faster than inflation.

This is possible. For the county, do faster permitting and inspections and cut taxes. For schools, raise third grade arithmetic and reading achievement of low-income students by bringing back drill and phonics. The tragedy is that the school board does not believe that low-income children can learn. However, Maria Montessori, Marva Collins, and Siegfried Englemann's DISTAR curricula proved they can learn.

FCPS, while doing nothing about arithmetic, is implementing phonics. However, it's a low priority. All third graders are not expected to read at grade level until 2030, and there's no goal to improve the reading of middle and high schoolers who were subjected to anti-phonics curricula.

Rein in spending. A lot of carryover money is for "encumbered expenses", i.e., things which are ordered but not yet paid for. How much of these encumbered expenses were unnecessary last-minute expenditures to use up year-end money? Is overtime checked? Are welfare rolls vetted?

The county allocates millions of carryover dollars to "cost escalation". For example, the county is incurring a million-dollar overrun on the realignment of Old Courthouse Road in Vienna. The Taxpayers Alliance asked for the budget and schedule status of all county capital projects. No budget and little schedule data were provided.

FCPS carryover justifications are superficial. The schools' carryover balance is $342 million. Rather than return it to taxpayers, FCPS wants to spend $173 million on schools and multi-year projects and justifies it in one only one sentence. By contrast, the entire county carryover spending is much less, $124 million, and the county takes 25 pages to justify it. FCPS also wants to spend $72 million on outstanding encumbered obligations, and again justifies it with just one sentence, while the county justification for its encumbered spending is five pages.

If the carryover items were important, they should have been in the adopted budget. Return the carryover balances to the taxpayers like Governor Youngkin just did. Taxpayers need the money for gas and food.

Thank you.