Yes, it looks like Falls Church residents will be provided a very small bit of tax relief with the budget that should be approved next Monday night. A half penny on the real estate tax rate will offer about $50 of relief in a year when assessments are still booming, meaning the average residential taxpayer is still going to be hit with tax bills hundreds higher next fiscal year (the first bill due in December). Overall, though, it must be noted the City’s tax rate has been dropped from $1.355 per $100 of assessed valuation to $1.18 in recent years, even while a new state of the art high school was built and major improvements made to City Hall, the Mary Riley Styles Public Library and other City schools.
But in this season’s budget deliberation process, it was noted repeatedly that things will get tougher next cycle as issues of debt and pressing maintenance matters come to the fore.
It is in the context of this that the City government is getting ready to be mired in another great issue, the prospect for redevelopment of the Virginia Village site of 4.5 acres on S. Maple into a major source of new affordable housing. Both sides, the pro-development and the “Not in My Backyard” folks, are set to do another great battle. Just what we don’t need!
The developed majority on the City Council has been aching to do something meaningful to build new affordable housing in recent years. But there is little doubt that NIMBYism is alive and well here, and the result will be a tortured process that may take years. The last time something like this was seriously tried, it took the better part of a decade, and a whittling down of the size of such an effort to barely more than 50 units.
We say now that it would be fruitless to proceed with the current process unless at least 300 units would come out of it. That would be fine with us if it could be engineered. That member of the current City government who decides to champion such an effort should have the project named for her, or him. We’d support that idea. Honestly, given the lip service in support of affordable housing that’s come out from almost everyone on the City Council, any one of such folk could qualify, even if it meant a great conversion moment for one of them.
However, we should not ignore, as this process gets underway, that economic pressures on the City ought to be compelling our leaders to subject that 4.5 acres, and the 4 acres in the Gordon’s Road area, to a new evaluation from the standpoint of their highest and best use from a revenue-generating standpoint. Maybe not a casino or a data center, but what else?
