Summary of Proposed Amendment to Fairfax County Budget
Lowers Taxes, Provides $1,600 Tax Credit to Every Household.
-- by FCTA's Jeffrey A. Leach
The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors is currently reviewing a plan (available here) that balances the County budget, lowers taxes, provides a $1,600 tax credit for every County household, and still ends up with a $25M surplus. The proposal addresses several key problems that have created a $271M shortfall that threatens to become a $439M shortfall at a time when the taxpayer base has been steadily leaving Fairfax County, and 17.8% of commercial real estate stands vacant. Sent to all Board members on 15 April and again on 23 April, the proposal was discussed during the County budget hearings held on 22 April. It combines necessary cuts with new revenue streams to finally provide tax relief to County citizens at a time of federal down-sizing and economic uncertainty.
As noted here, between 1985 and 2025, the number of students in the Fairfax County Public School (FCPS) system increased by 44%. During that same period, however, the total number of FCPS employees nearly doubled at 94% (twice the student growth rate), the number of teachers nearly tripled at 186% (over four times the student growth rate), and the number of assistant principals increased at a rate of 306% (nearly seven times the student growth rate).
The amendment returns school staffing, over a period of three years and with early retirement incentives, to a size commensurate with the growth of the actual student population, pointing out that if Fairfax County teachers and leaders in 1985 could, for one-third the cost, run a school system that was nationally-recognized for its excellence (see Dr. David Duke's Education Empire, 2005), then the teachers and leaders of 2025 can and should do the same. This change alone will save the County over $500M per year.
Federal funding to the tune of $168.1M is now in jeopardy due to Fairfax County's controversial policies that discriminate on the basis of race and sex, protect illegal immigrants, and promote transgender ideology, all of which are in conflict with Executive Orders. The amendment removes the offending policies, thus safeguarding the federal funding. It also frees up the $6M currently being spent on these policies, allowing that money to be redirected to services that literally save people from impending death, such as the Clifton ambulance ($1.2M), which is a lifeline to an isolated community with many at-risk elderly residents, and CERT ($34K), an organization of volunteers trained to save lives in emergencies that clocks over 20,000 hours of service annually -- both of which, astoundingly, are currently on the chopping block instead of DEI programs that save no lives and put federal funds at jeopardy.
The school system regularly borrows money in the form of bonding for various projects such as school construction, paying unnecessary interest payments on such loans ($15.3M in the current advertised budget) -- despite the fact that there is already a capitalization plan in which such projects belong and FCPS has several hundred million dollars in reserves. The amendment reduces bonding from 10% to 3%, saving $10.5M in unnecessary expenditures.
Fairfax County currently spends untold millions of tax dollars collected from American citizens to educate illegal immigrants whose families do not pay into the system. The amendment ends such subsidies, the total amount of which cannot be known because Fairfax County leaders actively and deliberately hide such information from the public.
In addition, the amendment proposes creating a tax and regulatory environment that makes Fairfax County more attractive to businesses (e.g., by nixing the meals tax), facilitating conversion of at least 50% of the commercial properties that sit vacant to residences (thus easing the housing crisis while generating new revenue streams that are fourfold that of commercial spaces), maintaining and diversifying investments with reasonable and permitted risk profiles, verifying that the County's contracts with all businesses that sell to the County have been vigorously negotiated to the best price, quality, and terms, and ending translation of County notices out of English, the language that since the beginning of the Republic has been a key factor in integrating immigrants into local communities and binding together our ethnically-diverse population.
If you are interested in contacting your County representatives about this amendment, email them at clerktothebos@fairfaxcounty.gov or call them at 703.324.7329.
Jeffrey A. Leach has worked in business and law for over 30 years. A principal of Nomos Legal Consulting, PLLC, he may be reached at jeffreyleach50@gmail.com.