Falls Church City Manager Wyatt Shields has recommended the F.C. City Council adopt a “budget guidance” document at its meeting this coming Monday which calls for the manager to “present a budget in which real estate revenues are not required to increase more than 0 percent” in Fiscal Year 12 over the current fiscal year. The puzzling sentence structure has left some observers scratching their heads. If the word “not” was moved down the sentence, it would read, “are required to increase not more than 0 percent,” which would clearly mean that net revenues from real estate taxes shall not be more than for the current year. On the other hand, the sentence in its current form could be interpreted to mean the opposite to that.
