It is veritably an “embarrassment of riches” for the City of Falls Church as deliberations have begun on the next government and school operating budgets for the coming FY26 fiscal year that begins this July 1. As reported elsewhere in this edition, the overall budget has swelled to $138.3 million and projected continued growth suggests this is nowhere near abating (when the News-Press started in 1991, the size of the annual budget was around $22 million).

Questions that will be raised between now and when the F.C. City Council votes to formally adopt its new budget in May will center on an unusually high growth of City employees, especially in the police department, and school personnel, which is the main driver of all budgets of this kind everywhere. On that score, we look forward to comparisons of the City’s managed growth with other comparable jurisdictions in the wider region. We are confident that this kind of data will demonstrate just how well the Falls Church government has conducted its affairs as representative of our 15,000 residents and exploding numbers of businesses.

The spectacular economic growth here has been the result of deliberate policies at City Hall over the last more than two dozen years. That growth is now being shown most remarkably in the dense development of the 10 acres adjacent to the new high school at the City’s West End. While there always has and always will be those who object to such growth, who harken back to a fantastical notion of the lazy old days when Falls Church was barely even a village much less a robust “Little City” like it is now, election after election here, including on referenda, has demonstrated that Falls Church’s current path has the support of a solid majority of citizens over decades.

There has been a simple genius here lying behind where we’ve come as an independent jurisdiction, and it is borne out in how pressing for welcomed economic growth has enabled the growth of the City’s absolutely stunning school system that is now a fully integrated preschool through 12th grade International Baccalaureate curriculum-based machine.

We need to be reminded often that the “product” that the booming economy of seemingly little Falls Church delivers to the nation and the world are droves and droves of smart and caring young people with a capacity, individually and collectively, to be globally transformative. If this tough old planet we’re on is going to be capable of making a difference in the cosmos, it will be by systems like Falls Church’s being able to engage in species renewal, such that the old ways of doing things like dependence on fossil fuels, will be effectively eclipsed by the creativity of new upcoming generations.

Yes, Falls Church is punching way above its weight class in addressing humanity’s collective challenges to forge a better, more sustainable and contributive globe. In this we are all contributors.