The two members of the Falls Church City Council who are insisting that the difficulties being anticipated with this next fiscal year’s budget that will be hammered out over the next five months are due to the City’s rapid economic growth are dead wrong, and they should well know it.

No, the Little City’s impressive growth has not created what will most certainly be a challenge to balance revenues with costs for the fiscal year that will begin next July 1. On the contrary, but for the growth, the difficulties that the Council will face to balance the budget would be much worse than they will be.

At present, it looks like the Council may have to increase the real estate tax rate by two cents (per $100 of assessed valuation) above its current $1.21. This follows recent years’ major cuts in the rate from a peak of $1.355 only three years ago, even while taking on the costs of a brand new high school and major renovations to City Hall and the library. This Monday, the Council took action with a unanimous vote to issue a “budget guidance” that opened the door for a possible modest rate increase.

The pressure on the budget comes not from Falls Church’s growth but from factors influencing the wider region, and the nation as a whole. It will become clear in the next months that surrounding jurisdictions will be facing budget woes far more severe than Falls Church’s. Stagnation in the commercial real estate market, in particular, is the biggest culprit, along with inflation and major upward pressures on home prices, single family home prices, in particular.

Quite the contrary to what the two Council members said on the matter at the meeting this Monday, it is Falls Church’s stunning growth which will be insulating City taxpayers from more severe impacts facing the wider region, while continuing to maintain the best school system in the commonwealth and one of the half dozen or so best in the nation.

Ironically, it is the result of last year’s first ever collective bargaining outcome between employees and the administration of the Falls Church City Public Schools that will also insulate City residents and taxpayers from the downside of what may be coming next year. That is to say, insofar as the agreement stands as a bulwark against pressures to cut teacher pay, it protects the City’s Goose That Lays the Golden Egg, its first-rate school system.

Less than perfect aspects of the City’s infrastructure do not play a major role in the value assessment of the City in the minds of the region, not in the way that the recognized superior quality of the school system does. So sticking with the formula that has worked so well for Falls Church the last quarter century, of promoting economic growth to build and maintain the high quality of its schools, remains the best way forward.