Letters to the Editor: May 1 – 5, 2016
News-Press Math Is Off In Regards to City’s Fund
Editor,
Your 28 April editorial claimed if the City’s fund balance were cut from roughly $14.7 million (17 percent of the annual budget of $87 million) to $10.4 million (12 percent of $87 million), this would free up an additional $4.3 million for spending this year and again in every year thereafter. If we carried this lower $10.4 million balance into the next budget year, and again raised and spent another $87 million, how would we access yet another $4.3 million without cutting the fund balance to $6.1 million?
The extra spendable amount each year is roughly 5 percent (17percent – 12 percent) of each year’s budget increase, not of the total. You may disagree with Council’s decision to maintain the 17 percent ratio, but to write that they were misled is to insult their intelligence.
Jon Ward
Falls Church
I Just Don’t Understand the Thinking
Editor,
Reading the FCNP one gets the impression that the Scrooges on the FC Council are dumping on the teachers. I particularly liked your paraphrase of Dr. Jones: “symbolic goal of no real estate rate hike.”
There is nothing symbolic about a property tax rate increase particularly on top of a required annual valuation which results in an automatic property tax increase even without a change in the rate.
The FCNP has been leading the cheering for all the new development which, as I recall one story, led to 70 percent of last year’s increase in property valuation. Perhaps it is past time for the City Manager to re-examine the premise that new development leads to increased revenue without a parallel increase in new costs. The continued increase in school enrollment strongly suggests either an increase in population within the city or massive fraud in registration. I am not a long term resident having lived here only six years, but the City Manager has requested rate increases in five of the six. The cow of property owners cannot be both milked and butchered.
Henry J. Gordon
Falls Church
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