COMMUNITY COMMENT: Voters Will Support Hard Choices
BY DAVID CHAVERN
As many people know, I describe myself as a Republican although, as with all such labels, it covers a pretty wide area. I am definitely from the libertarian, free enterprise, socially moderate (dare I say liberal) end of the spectrum. Personal freedom tied with personal responsibility. Limited but effective government, fiscal responsibility, etc.
Folks at this end of the spectrum are generally not in favor of higher taxes — but I have always been willing to pay for what I benefit from. I also know a good deal when I see one. All of my local taxes are spent within 2.2 square miles of my home, and I like the services they buy for me and my family. Good schools, responsive police, rapid snow clearance, leaf mulch, the rec. center, etc. The distance between my payments and my benefits is very small. Further, as a former Falls Church City Council member, I have a good sense as to how the City government and schools operate — and I have generally been very impressed. Despite all of the ill-informed protestations to the contrary, there isn’t a lot of fat in our local government. The City government budget has been flat, in real terms, for many years now — and the School budget is almost entirely driven by the market rate for good teachers (which is easily and objectively determined). There is no magical pot of gold there.
Further, as a former “politician” (such as I was) I can tell you that the vast majority of the voting public wants excellent local services and is willing to pay for them. To anyone who hopes to run on a cut-the-budget platform — I say “good luck — and good-bye.” This community will flatly not abide any significant cuts to services, most particularly at the schools. You can agree or disagree, but I tell you that it is a fact.
Which leads me to our current budget challenges. It will be very hard and painful for all involved — but at the end of the day the Council should just raise the tax rate enough to maintain services and move on. The additional tax rate number will be huge in historic terms (I am guessing an increase of in excess of 20 cents to the tax rate) — but the real dollar impact for most people will be a small price to pay for maintaining one small island of excellence (or, at least, goodness) while all of the surrounding areas slash and burn.
I am going to ask Council to do the right thing, and the hard thing. The voters will support you in the end, even if a few people try to take advantage of the situation and demagogue you for it.
David Chavern is a former member of the Falls Church City Council.
A similar version of this commentary was previously posted on Blueweeds.
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By (see byline)
December 3, 2009
I agree with David. In my December 1st comments to “MAN ABOUT TOWN: A City in Retreat” I detailed my belief that we have to raise the tax rate to retain services and school quality. Depressed real estate assessments mean the actual financial impact to homeowners is much lower.
But I also said that with a higher tax rate we need committments from council to improve our financial management and really look at outside contracts and how our staff is organized. Are our resources/staff being used effectively?
We need to be in a better place soon with school infrastructure and expansion issues waiting in the future.
I also posted on the Dec 1st article. Depressed assessments mean I would still have to pay more in taxes….maybe the $1200.00 range rather than $1400.00…that’s still a whopper in my book and has a significant impact on my household budget. Sounds to me like folks are floating the $1.30 tax rate possibility so a “reduction” to $1.20 sounds like a deal. I attended all the town hall meetings and budget work sessions before last budget was set. Town halls seemed to have many attendees voicing concerns about tax increases. Many noted money to pay for taxes would have to come from somewhere…this included reducing money spent in the city for dinner, entertainment and other activities. I have no idea if this actually happened or not but it is an additional consideration…..like the law of unintended consequences.
As we move forward I’m sure we will have ample opportunity to have our many voices heard.
The general sentiment is that property values in the City have gone down and so raising the tax rate will actually just keep the revenue steady. For example, if they raise the tax rate from $1.07 to $1.20 and your house was assessed at $600,000 last year and $535,000 this year then you’ll end up paying the same tax: $6,420.00.
Using this cool tool: http://property.fallschurchva.gov I poked around and looked at some assessments around town. I noticed a lot of properties where the assessment remained unchanged from last year (like most of the houses in my neighborhood). I noticed a few assessments that went up and many where the assessment dropped a little. I didn’t notice any where the assessment dropped enough to keep the tax bill flat (if the rate goes to $1.20) – it looked like everyone would be paying at least a little more than last year.
Actually, I made this little worksheet that you can use to do your own calculations: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=t9×2K1ZMqT8eSrZE28eoGSA&output=html
Mr. Rankin and Ms. Teates make a fair point by suggesting that a reduction in assessments cushions the blow. But even a steady property tax bill can be onerous during a recession. Many people are financially more stressed. Stock market or real estate investments may be down, and people have lost jobs or accepted wage cuts.
When real estate assessments decline, I think it’s fair to assume that most people also would expect (and appreciate) a decline in their property tax bill.
Mr. Siegel,
I don’t disagree with your point – but there’s no magic formula here. If we’re all putting in less money (in taxes) then something has to give on the other end (services).
I think my main point on all this is that the property assessments are all over the board. The general statement that most property assessments in the City are down doesn’t seem to be true (I’d love to see someone with direct access to the data run some reports – what percent of residential properties decreased in assessed value versus stayed the same or increased?).
Another group that’s been supporting hard choices has been our city and school employees. For example, the School Board has received more than two dozen ideas for budget savings from the support employees, and included on the list is a pay and hiring freeze. Of course, they know that lots of other folks outside the public sector are enduring great hardships at this time, but it’s still quite heartening to see the great dedication and unselfishness of our city’s workforce.
Next time you have the chance, please express your appreciation for their fine work and community spirit.
Since David posted a version of his comments from Blueweeds, here is part of my response:
What has me agitated about our process is the continued references to unspecified “options” for major cuts to unspecified programs or personnel. I have tried to offer up specific items, so we could have a transparent discussion of tangible ideas. There is a very broad consensus in the City that we do not want to see major cuts in areas like Schools, Public Safety or Parks and Recreation, so we are left to do our due diligence in areas like employee compensation and benefits in order to see that the inevitable tax increases are balanced against sacrifices from all of the relevant stakeholders.
What is different this year is the divergence in the impact on different classes of property. as was pointed out Single Family homes are not declining, while Condos continue to lose value and commercial property is in free fall. This means that a 10¢ (9.5%) increase to equalize RPT revenue from last year would fall entirely on SF properties and result in a substantially lower tax bill for commercial owners. And this is not to suggest that 10¢ would solve the problem, but just as I said the other night it would be a more sensible point of departure for a reasonable discussion.
David is right that the magnitude of RPT rate increase necessary to come close to solving the problem without major service cuts is 20¢, meaning a $1,000+ increase in the median SF tax bill. This level of increase would produce $3M in the FY10 budget, which would (1) allow reconsideration of the CIP freezes and/or rebuilding the fund balance, (2) produce $3M in the Winter 2010 billing and (3) produce perhaps $3.1M in the Spring 2011 billing (assuming a modest aggregate assessment recovery or a smidgen of new development). This would reduce the projected “gap” to under $2M, although it is worth pointing out that the gap assumed a certain amount of pain particularly on the school side already.
What I have heard from citizens is that the Council should be seeking to preserve what we have and that people are willing to pay more rather than see wholesale cuts that will undermine the very reasons why we all live here. I hope we can find ways not to resort to a tax rate increase at this level (2¢ on the meals tax might reduce the 20¢ to 17¢), but the list of short-term alternatives is diminishingly small, and I have yet to hear any specific idea from anybody of specific cuts that would go beyond the proposals implemented by the City Manager to address the FY10 shortfall.
Dan,
Specifically, I would like our outside contracts assessed to make sure we are getting the best pricing for our outsourced functions. I would like to see an assessment of moving our courts to Arlington in terms of the future upgrade costs we will have to occur to meet the standards the court wants. We have a lot of police and sheriff personnel, I would like to see our numbers benchmarked against similar sized cities. I would like to see an assessment of our need for an offsite IT director if all in-house IT needs are serviced by onsite contractors. Could someone at city hall manage the IT contract?
I would like to benchmark our Recs & Parks fees against other community centers. I think many of current classes are cheaper than Arlington – at least that is what I have heard from Arlington parents. Could we raise the fees 5%? Are the current fees offsetting the facilities and staff costs (registation help, etc.)?
And frankly, I would like to compare our support staff/paraprofessionals to classroom teacher ratio to Arlington. My children have and are fully taking advantage of the enrichment our schools have because our classroom teachers have strong support staff/paraprofessionals helping them, but if you start counting the pictures in the Mt.Daniel lobby it seems to be 1:1. How much of the school salary line is for support staff and how much for classroom treachers? Could we afford to pay our teachers better if we adjusted the support staff ratio?
And, by the way, I have no problem dropping the Halloween and Easter candy events. My kids have enough candy. But we really enjoy the other events – Fall Festival, Memorial Day, Watch Night, Farm Days and they bring business to the city by pulling in citizens from around us to spend money in the city.
That’s a few of my specific questions/thoughts.
Speaking of Farm Days (and events like that), what cut does the City get from the overpriced pony rides and moon bounces? Can we shop that contract around to make sure we’re maximizing our revenue?
Great comments, here — and as this issue moves forward I hope the debate stays at this level — informed, thoughtful and realistic. As I am an ex-Council member, I can be sharper than Dan is saying that the one kind of completely unhelpful, and all too common input, is along of the lines of “we are in this mess because of you knuckleheads and if I was in charge I would be able to find savings easily.” While I will admit to being a knucklehead, most of the Council and staff aren’t and they are honestly trying to addressing these very, very complex challenges.
As to a substantive matter regarding the school budget, a few things to keep in mind: (i) it is the very largest moving piece of the entire budget (and the only one that has be growing at all in real terms), and (ii) the school budget is almost entirely driven by people — pay and benefits. The non-personnel side of the school budget is deminimus in the scheme of things. Worth examining — but not where you would find any real savings.
Thanks again for the quality of this discussion.
Also, this ended-up being a nice cross-fertilization between FCT and Blueweeds, at the suggestion of FCT staff. I would encourage Mike and the FCT to continue to find ways to interact productively (if not agreeably). The two sites do very different things but both add a lot of vibrancy to discussions about our community. Between these two sites and the News-Press, we should feel pretty lucky about the outlets this community has for expression and the close examination of issues. — David
I agree with David and especially Melissa. Good points all around. The News-Press says “Dear Friends—Thanks for your submission of this “letter to the editor.” Our policy, which is standard newspaper policy, is to print only letters that do not appear in other publications. We noted this identical letter was posted on a local blog today. Given that, much less the fact this would be appearing a full week later in our paper, we can’t use this letter. However, if you would like to craft a new letter to submit to me, alone, I will be happy to consider publishing it. Thank you, Nick Benton.” So I am not sure how cooperation can occur. I would rather everything in one spot than to try and keep flipping around. Is his quote really true “Standard Newspaper Policy”???
The Washington Post wants exclusive letters: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/edit/letters/letterform.htm
Same with the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/lettertoeditor.html
That’s where I stopped my research.
I’ve also struggled with the fact that the same conversation ends up happening in several places. I’m not sure what to do about that though. I do wish everyone provided an RSS feed of comments and not just articles (The FCT provides both – thanks!).
Re. the News-Press, I think that is probably standard newspaper policy, but that is probably also part of the reason why the newspaper industry is failing. Newspapers create and publish orginial content — and, whether you agree with Nick or not, we are fortunate to have a paper in town that is devoted to covering just our issues.
That being said, newspapers are not an interactive or particularly vibrant media. It’s “wait a week to read the letters in the paper and then wait another week to read the reactions.” I think he would be well served to find ways for the News-Press website to better interact with — and react to — the FCT and Blueweeds.
For example, if the piece that I posted (or any other piece) was of thought to be of general interest, maybe the NP website could talk about it as well as the various comments and reactions — with enable links all around.
Anyway, I am not a media guy, but we have three decent outlets going in the City and there should be a way for all of them to be vibrant and successful.