The Falls Church City Council voted unanimously Monday night to advertise a real estate tax rate with no increase for the coming fiscal year, setting an early marker as it heads into the final phase of budget deliberations.
The 7-0 vote establishes the maximum rate the Council can adopt when it finalizes the budget later this spring. Under state law, the rate can be lowered but not raised above the level voted on this Monday.
While preliminary, the action signals a clear inclination by the Council to avoid a tax rate increase, and Falls Church Mayor Letty Hardi again intimated her interest in a one cent cut in the rate. In addition to the relief it would provide City homeowners, it would also go further to distinguish Falls Church from the region, where fiscal pressures in Arlington and Fairfax, the City’s immediate and much larger neighbors, are particularly severe this year.
Falls Church taxpayers are reminded that at $1.185 per $100 of assessed valuation, the City’s tax rate has actually declined significantly in recent years, down from $1.355, due to the benefits of the City’s recent-years’ aggressive commercial economic growth.
By contrast, in Fairfax County, leaders are working to close a budget gap approaching $300 million, with tens of millions in reductions under consideration. Among the areas potentially affected are human services programs, including child care assistance, senior services and other public support programs that have seen rising demand in recent years. Fairfax County Public Schools, which accounts for more than half of county spending, is also facing a significant shortfall, raising the possibility of cuts to after-school programs, staffing levels and other support services.
Arlington County faces a smaller but still significant gap, estimated in the range of $30 million to $40 million. While large-scale cuts are more difficult due to the structure of its budget, officials there have signaled that reductions could affect discretionary programs, staffing and the pace of capital projects if additional revenues are not identified.
For Falls Church, the central budget driver remains its public schools, which account for the largest share of city spending. The City operates under a revenue sharing agreement with the schools, which are in themselves now bound by collective bargaining agreements with its employees.
One of the major changes in the City Manager’s current proposed budget is higher than usual salary increases for the police department. Police starting salaries would increase by 14 percent to keep pace with nearby jurisdictions like Arlington, which recently announced a $90,000 starting salary.
Implementing these higher police salaries is estimated to cost the city $400,000. Other city staff are proposed to receive a 4 percent merit-based increase.
To balance the budget while funding these raises, the proposal includes eliminating seven vacant positions, including one school resource officer.
Council members also opted, for now, not to pursue implementation of a Commercial and Industrial (CNI) tax rate, which would shift a greater share of the tax burden onto business properties. While the option has been discussed as a way to ease pressure on residential taxpayers, concerns about its potential impact on the city’s commercial base and long-term economic competitiveness led the Council to defer action at this stage.
Each penny on the real estate tax rate is equivalent to 1-10,000 of the assessed value of a property. In Falls Church, the median home value is $1,073.900, the highest in the region. A penny on that value translates into $107.
The proposed budget documents and discussions indicated that personal property tax rates are currently projected to remain unchanged. While overall tax bills may rise due to a 6.9 percent increase in property assessments, the tax rates themselves are proposed to stay flat.
The proposed FY2027 budget does include increases for sanitation (5%), stormwater (7%), and solid waste fees.
Monday night’s vote reflects an effort to balance those demands while maintaining a measure of tax restraint, even as neighboring jurisdictions move closer to decisions that could reduce services more severely.
The Council will continue its budget work in the coming weeks, including public hearings and work sessions, before adopting a final budget and tax rate, typically in May.
Although the unanimous vote suggests a broad level of agreement among Council members, the most difficult decisions still lie ahead as the city works to reconcile competing priorities.
