Fairfax County has adopted its budget! Following two months of quiet deliberation and discussion, the Board of Supervisors voted on Monday and approved, unanimously, a county budget for Fiscal Year 2008, which begins on July 1, 2007. The real estate tax rate of 89 cents per $100 of assessed value is maintained. Braddock District Supervisor Sharon Bulova, who also serves as the Board’s Budget Chairman, observed that the FY 2008 budget was the “quietest, least contentious” in her 20 years in office, despite the fact that the county is experiencing the largest drop in real estate values since the early 1990s. In similar years, she reminded the Board, speakers at the public hearings about the budget numbered in the hundreds. In 1992, there were 495 speakers; in 1997, my first budget, there were 637 speakers in marathon sessions that included hearings on Saturday.
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