The following remarks were delivered at the conclusion of Monday’s Falls Church City Council vote on the Fiscal Year 2027 budget by F.C. Mayor Letty Hardi:

“To echo my colleagues’ comments, first of all, congrats to David and Art for your first budget, and congrats, Wyatt, on your final one. And thank you for all the public comment that we’ve received. And for all the hard work behind the scenes as well – I know that budgets are never easy and budget seasons are really intense. That starts with staff, even back before December when we had our first discussion.

“Not to disparage any of that hard work, this was actually not a hard budget. We’ve had three rounds of good news, and I want us to pause to recognize that because it’s important to set the stage for the future.

“I remember when we sat together in our December meeting – ‘the only thing that’s certain is more uncertainty’ was the headline. And then it turned out that our residential assessed values came in quite strong, like almost twice what our neighbors were seeing. And then our commercial assessments in February turned out actually better than we thought. And then in April, we saw that our Q3 local revenue results were better than what we had a year ago, when it required us to adjust our budget mid- season.

  “This good news is because we have been ‘the Little City that could’ – the investments we made in diversifying our tax base with mixed use development and the desirability of the city has grown beyond the schools’ reputation. The growth of the city is paying off. I know we’ve had some surprise expenditures this year, but in terms of revenues, we actually have a pretty good news story. And the half penny tax cut is a small nod that we should be able to reduce the tax burden because of that growing revenue.

“I think that’s important to acknowledge as we wrap up this year, because as we’ve seen from our neighbors, they’ve had a much harder budget season. There are a lot of headwinds in the region that I want to make sure we don’t forget. Locally, we’re not going to have as many new revenues with no commercial development coming online next year. So we should go into this year expecting that FY28 is going to be harder and I want us to keep a few things in mind:

“First, this year we have mostly been debating new spending decisions. How are we going to spend the better than expected revenues? We really haven’t had to actually make any expenditure cuts beyond the ones that the city manager and school board originally proposed. And so that is an important muscle we need to keep in mind, because if future revenues are not going to be growing at 6 or 8 percent as we’ve had this year or the past several years – how do we live in a 3 percent revenue growth year?  What really are our priorities if we have to live in that kind of revenue constrained environment?

“Second, I’m feeling deja vu from 2017 when we had ambitious capital needs and had to figure out how to afford those through more constrained operating budgets.  As we’re expecting this facilities conditions assessment at the end of this year – and I expect we might get some big bills from that – how do we balance those costs with operating budgets?

“Third, which relates to the earlier point – how do we really do true needs based budgeting? Many of us, I think nearly unanimously, have said we should revisit revenue share and see how it can be more flexible in light of both the economic headwinds as well as the capital and operating needs. The needs across the city are not always going to be 50/50, and I think revenue share with the schools needs be modernized to account for that. And I’m glad this summer that the Budget and Finance Committee is going to take a look at other revenue levers – hopefully we don’t use any of them. But I do think it makes sense be proactive this summer to look at what those levers might be should we need them.

“Fourth, finally, as I reflect on my 11th budget – I’ve realized that for the seven of us up here, it’s always natural to respond and fund the most important and urgent things – what are the most pressing or acute needs we hear about? But I think it is equally important for the governing body to think about the important, but not so urgent, priorities that are long term, generational investments for the city. And I think doing our part on climate change is one of those. We’ve had some very good advocacy this budget season on the community center solar project. One idea that we can look at outside of budget season is, how do we look at a report card, similar to what we’re looking at for housing or for transportation improvements so that investments to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions continue to get attention from us every budget – not just when we have strong advocacy. That is something future generations are going to look to this City Council to have made serious progress on.

“Overall, I think this is a balanced budget and doing a lot of good here. There’s always going to be unfunded needs, but I do think that this one overall balances a lot of what we’re trying to accomplish in the community, while being pragmatic and realistic about what’s coming ahead. I want to thank my colleagues and the community, for joining in the discussions and all the hard work. I think 104 questions in our budget Q&A – the most ever – clearly reflects how much this Council likes to dig in, asks hard questions, and really makes sure that we’re being good stewards of taxpayer dollars and reflective of community priorities.”