Adopting its Fiscal Year 2022 budget Tuesday, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors included in its plan a one-cent real estate tax rate cut to $1.14 per $100 assessed valuation and a half-cent dedicated to affordable housing, a sum totalling about $13 million this year. It also includes a one-percent pay increase for county employees.

Fairfax County, its population over one million, adopted a $5 trillion budget where a penny on the real estate tax rate equals $27.14 million. With residential real estate values rising for an average per single family home of $601,000 to $652,000 between 2019 and 2020, the single penny tax rate reduction does not begin to match the overall increase in taxes owed by the average homeowner.