SATURDAY 10/30: Fright Night Monster Bash at State Theatre

For the first time, the producers of the area’s two biggest Halloween Parties are joining forces to the Fright Night Monster Bash, Saturday, October 30, from 8 p.m.-2 a.m. at the State Theatre. Three party floors with huge stage, balcony, and dance floor and three Great Party Bands/DJs:

Herr Metal (80′s Hair Metal Tribute Band),

Dr FU

DJ Howl

$300 cash prize for best costume.

SATURDAY 11/6: Tea and Scones Workshop at Cherry Hill Farmhouse

On Saturday, November 6, at 10 a.m., learn how to make scones, brew the perfect pot of tea, and make foolproof lemon curd in this two- hour hands-on class. Held at Cherry Hill Farmhouse, 312 Park Avenue. The cost is $20 per person. Call 703-248-5171 for reservations.

SATURDAY 11/20: Habitat Restoration at Hamlett/Rees Track

Join the City of Falls Church Habitat Restoration Team in restoring the local ecosystem in city parks. The team will be removing damaging invasive plants as well as planting natives that benefit local birds and butterflies.

For more information about the events or opportunties to do special events like a service project contact Jeremy Edwards, City of Falls Church Senior Urban Forester , 703-248-5016, or email jedwards@fallschurchva.gov.

To get to Hamlett/Rees Track: From West Street head east on Broad Street/Rt. 7. Turn right onto South Virginia Avenue then right again to stay on South Virginia Avenue . Turn onto Rollins. The street dead-ends at the Park. Enter from the end of Rollins Street .

Crime Report for October 19 – 25

 By FALLS CHURCH POLICE DEPARTMENT

October 27, 2010

Larceny – Theft from Motor Vehicle, 1100 blk Jackson Ct, Oct 19, 09:20 AM, sometime overnight unknown suspect took $3 in change from an unlocked vehicle.

Larceny – Theft from Motor Vehicle, 1100 blk Jackson Ct, Oct 19, 07:29 PM, sometime overnight unknown suspect took a Phillips DVD player valued at $199.00, a Kawasaki portable DVD player valued at $100.00 and a Tom Tom GPS valued at $100.00 from an unlocked vehicle.

Destruction of Property, 1100 blk Offutt Dr, Oct 20, 09:33 AM, driver’s side window of a vehicle was shattered by an unknown suspect.  Nothing was taken.

Larceny – All Other Larceny, 100 blk W Annandale Rd, Oct 20, 11:55 AM, fire lane signs were taken from the parking lot of Winter Hill sometime overnight.  Suspect(s) unknown.

Larceny – Theft from Motor Vehicle, 444 W Broad St (Spectrum), Oct 20, 08:42 PM, vehicle’s rear driver-side window was smashed out and a bag was taken.  Suspect unknown. 

Aggravated Assault – 300 W Broad St (Stratford Motor Lodge), Oct 21, 12:47 AM, a 32 year old male of Washington, DC was shot in the shoulder area.  He was transported to Fairfax Hospital, where he was treated and released.  The motive for the shooting is unknown, but does not appear to be a random act.  Investigation continues.

Liquor Law Violations, 400 blk S Washington St, Oct 21, 10:49 PM.  An 18 year old Falls Church woman was arrested for underage possession of alcohol. 

Smoking in Non-Designated Area, 6757 Wilson Blvd (Eden Center), Oct 23, 12:00 AM.  A 37 year old Riverdale, MD man was arrested for Smoking in a Non-Designated Area.

Urinating in Public, 917 W Broad St (El Zunzal), Oct 23, 02:01 AM.  A 21 year old Hyattsville, MD man was arrested for Urinating in Public. 

Larceny – Theft from Motor Vehicle, 1200 blk Ellison St, Oct 23, 03:06 PM, $200 in US currency and a Discover credit card were taken from an unlocked vehicle.  Suspect(s) unknown.

Larceny – Theft from Motor Vehicle, 500 blk Anne St, Oct 23, 07:09 PM, a Dell computer and external hard drive were taken from an unlocked vehicle.  Suspect(s) unknown.

Assault – Simple, 220 N Washington St (The State Theater), Oct 24, 12:57 AM.  A 26 year old Alexandria man was arrested for Assault and Battery.

Driving Under the Influence, 100 blk S Maple Ave, Oct 24, 08:12 AM.  A 34 year old Germantown, MD man was arrested for Driving Under the Influence.

LETTER: Read League Guide and Vote on November 2

October 27, 2010

TO THE EDITORS OF THE FALLS CHURCH TIMES:

The League of Women Voters of Falls Church is celebrating its 60^th birthday this year.  For each of those 60 years, the League has tried to provide nonpartisan, non-biased information to our citizens on issues of vital importance to good governance .The League has always been considered a reliable source of information on a variety of issues including bond issues, referenda, and proposed changes in the City charter, and about candidates in local, state, and national elections.

This election season is no exception.  Please view our Voters’ Guide on our website at www.lwvfallschurch.org for complete information on the candidates seeking election in Virginia ’s 8^th Congressional District and the three proposed amendments to the Virginia Constitution that will appear on the ballot. (Editors’ Note: click on “Read more” to access link.)

Voting is not only a right but also a privilege and a responsibility.  This year marks the 90^th anniversary of the ratification of the 19^th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which gave women the right to vote.  The election is on November 2.  Don’t pass up the opportunity to exercise your right to vote and to participate in our democracy!

Ellen Salsbury, President
League of Women Voters of Falls Church

Letters to the Editor should be submitted to contact@fallschurchtimes.com. They may be on any subject relevant to our City. Writers should include their full name and city of residence. All submissions are subject to editing.

COMMUNITY COMMENT: Constant Tax Hikes Will Hurt City

By RICHARD SOMMERFELD

October 26, 2010

“The City of Falls Church Budget for Fiscal Year 2011 . . . puts the City back on a sound financial footing at a time of dramatically reduced revenues,” said the City Manager in his cover letter to the budget.  Yet, exactly four months later (and three months into the current fiscal year) at the annual Council retreat, the City Manager’s financial overview shined the spotlight on a $1.4 million budget gap.

At the Council’s work session on October 18, the Acting Finance Director addressed the shortfall by saying that the City will have to raise real estate taxes in the second billing this year by 5 cents to close the gap.

If the Council approves a second tax hike this year, our previously approved 16 percent tax increase (then a record) would become a 19 percent adjusted tax increase.  This will mean that the typical tax bill per household will be about $7,459.  How did we get here so quickly when we were supposedly on “a sound financial footing?”

The Long-Range Financial Planning Working Group (LRFPWG) was asked to develop a multi-year budget forecasting model for the City in February, where none previously existed.  When asked to comment on the various draft budgets, we developed budget scenarios that all forecast decreases in real estate tax receipts of between 4 percent and 6.5 percent for the current fiscal year and leveling off in FY2013 before beginning to increase again.  We expected a 2.6 percent annual increase in expenses tied to the then rate of inflation.

On page 3 of the budget, the City Manager said, “With an increase in the real estate tax rate from $1.07 to $1.24, total operating revenues will decline by $2.7 million, or 4.06 percent.”  Buried in the budget notes, however, on page 57 of the City Manager’s budget is an assumption that says, “for planning purposes, both revenues and expenditures are assumed to increase at 3 percent per year . . . .”  The source of the revenue increase was not mentioned.

If one’s revenues are declining by 4 percent, how can one logically assume that revenues will increase by 3 percent for “planning purposes” other than if taxes are raised in the second billing?

At the Council work session on October 18, Council member Lawrence Webb candidly said, “We were doing a push off.  We told the public that there would be an increase [in real estate taxes].  We didn’t want such a high increase in June, to give folks time to prepare for an additional increase.”

Does this mean that the previous Council knowingly passed an unbalanced budget contrary to the City’s charter?  If the previous Council knew the City would have to increase taxes in the second billing, why did it not inform taxpayers of the amount of the increase at the time the budget was passed?

If we thought last year’s budget planning and negotiations were arduous, this year promises to be no cake walk for the Little City, whose own sustainability is more of a challenge than ever before.  Some of the challenges confronting our politicians on both the City Council and the School Board include:

1. The City has been without a Finance Director for five crucial months, and his department was understaffed before the City Manager removed him.  We are going through our annual audit without a Finance Director, and the audit should have been finished well before now.  In fact, the recent quarterly financial report was a first for the City but lacking in comparative data to previous years and variance to budget.

Falls Church, with a $64 million budget, has never prepared monthly budgets or monthly financial reports to manage its finances.  Had the City been analyzing its financial data or preparing graphs, it would have seen six leading indicators for the Great Recession so that it could make operating adjustments.  There is no financial analyst on staff.

2. The FY2010 adjusted ending fund balance was probably closer to 2.3 percent if the June real estate tax receipts for FY2011 were stripped out of the fund balance for FY2010.  Our June tax receipts are meant to begin funding the following fiscal year which starts on July 1.  Nevertheless, the City reported an unadjusted 8.4 percent fund balance.  Was the City also deferring expenses from FY2010 into FY2011 as well?

3. On October 18,  the City Manager indicated that the fund balance was tracking to just 6.4 percent, which is about half of the 12 percent policy set by the Council to help manage City finances and preserve our AAA bond rating.  The Council has five years from the time the fund balance falls below 8 percent to restore it to 12 percent.  Two years is already gone and there is talk about returning to the bond market to fund various capital projects, including schools.

Just to achieve a 12 percent fund balance by FY2014, we will need to increase real estate taxes to $1.585, which is 28 percent more than they are today.

Because the City has a policy to cut expenses or raise revenues to restore the 8 percent minimum fund balance, the City Manager and the School Board are required to act now to restore the fund balance, not wait until January or February, when it’s too late.

4. Further reductions in the operating costs of the City and Schools are necessary.  There needs to be a renewed focus on streamlining organizational structures and processes.  Savings realized in one area could free up capital for other programs.  Both entities can re-evaluate the demand for services, terminate underutilized programs, increase user fees, and undertake cost-benefit analysis for partnering and privatization of public-sector services.

Not all functions should be competitively contracted.  For instance, it is more cost-efficient to buy a street sweeper than to contract the service to the private sector.

5. City policy has set a borrowing limit of 5 percent of the real estate value inside our 2.2 square miles.  If the assessed value is $3 billion, then policy would permit the Little City to borrow $150 million, which is illogical for 4,600 households to service.

If the City went to the bond market to raise $70 million in general obligation bonds, aside from underwriting and placement fees, total annual debt service cost would be $6.5 million (principal and interest), or $1,421 for each of our 4,600 households.  In terms of the tax rate, it would be the equivalent of 23 cents.

6. Falls Church has not yet begun to address the $15.2 million gap in our pension funding and what it will take to close it.  It could add anywhere from 3.6 cents to 11 cents to the current real estate tax bill depending upon the amount of time we are given to fully fund our two pension funds.

To mitigate some of the funding increase, policymakers could allow existing employees’ defined benefits plan to be frozen and replaced with a defined contribution plan.

The City could eliminate opportunities for pension spiking, which is the practice of adding accrued sick, vacation, and other pay categories to an employee’s final year salary to determine pension payments.

The City could adopt the private sector’s market value approach rather than actuarial smoothing over 5 years.

Our pension fund liabilities are currently discounted at unrealistic rates of return, thereby leading to an understatement of liabilities and the subsequent overstating of pension funding ratios.  We could pool or combine our pension plans with other jurisdictions to achieve economies of scale.

In terms of kitchen table economics, what does this mean for the 4,600 households in our Little City?

1. Unless the City Council and the School Board can collectively cut $1.4 million from the current FY2011 budget, households will be handed another 5 cent real estate tax increase, bringing the tax increase to $1.29, up 19 percent in one year—far more than any other jurisdiction.

Less than 15 percent of Falls Church households have incomes of $150,000 or more.  It will hit fixed income residents, and the 60 City employees residing in the City.  They comprise about 30 percent of the City’s workforce.  Our residents are nowhere near as affluent as McLean’s.

2. Unlike households which save for a down payment on a new washer, car, or deck, the City has no plan to save for any down payments for infrastructure maintenance for schools, street paving, city buildings, or even public vehicles like public works trucks or fire engines.  The City needs a capital items replacement fund.

3. Whereas many households have saving accounts they can tap for emergencies, our City has no stabilization (i.e., rainy day) fund, because the City spent $15 million of fund balances over three years.

In order to balance the budget, the City Manager has stripped the capital improvement plan (CIP) of almost any funding, thereby leaving citywide infrastructure needs largely unfunded.  The cost of not maintaining our expensive and aging infrastructure now will cost us far more in subsequent years.

4. If the real estate tax rate rises to $1.585 by FY2014, there’s a distinct possibility that property values, a store of retirement wealth and collateral for home equity lines of credit for many in Falls Church, would flatten or even decline.

In 2004, real estate taxes were 50 percent of revenues, and if the trend continues, real estate taxes will account for 70 percent or more of City revenues.  This will cause the City to rapidly increase taxes to fund its operating deficits, because it has been concentrating, not diversifying, its revenues.  The tax spiral would continue, increasingly eroding household discretionary income.

5. At the current rate of growth, the average household will be paying $9,120 of real estate taxes by FY2013, or 28 percent more than today.  The impact on each household will be about $1,771, thereby lowering annual discretionary income by about 18 percent to $7,918.

Bleak job prospects have caused our households to focus on reducing debt and scaling back consumption, a trend that has caused a drop in sales tax receipts.

Achieving long-term sustainability for Falls Church will require a painful paradigm shift, and the sooner government addresses our Little City’s structural challenges, the better off our residents will be.  Adopting short-term expediency and pushing out decisions is not sustainable in the long-run and will deprive our residents of services they want and deserve.

We will have to reassess our economies of scale, from shared services to possible consolidation.

The Council must adopt a multi-year budget that accounts for funding of schools and providing for infrastructure and the operating budgets to sustain them.  Multi-year budgets would force policymakers to assess revenue/expenditure stability or lack thereof over the long run, deterring one-off, unsustainable expenditure increases.

All stakeholders — the politicians on the City Council and the School Board, employees of the City and our schools, and taxpayers — will have to compromise.

With current debt levels and ongoing economic uncertainty, the political reality is that constantly raising taxes is generally imprudent and detrimental to a sustainable Falls Church.

Richard Sommerfeld is a Partner with Tatum LLC, a management consulting firm, where he works in the Private Equity Practice.  He is also chairman of the Long-Range Financial Planning Working Group for the City of Falls Church.

COMMUNITY COMMENTS are welcome on any subject relevant to the City of Falls Church. They may be submitted to contact@fallschurchtimes.com. Shorter submissions may be published as a Letter to the Editor.

MAN ABOUT TOWN: Get Ready – It’s Coming to an End

By GEORGE SOUTHERN
Falls Church Times Columnist

October 25, 2010

James Thurber (who as a boy spent the summer of 1902 in Falls Church) wrote about the “Get Ready Man”: – a lank unkempt elderly gentleman with wild eyes and a deep voice who used to go about shouting at people through a megaphone to prepare for the end of the world. “Get ready! Get read-y,” he would bellow. “The worllld is coming to an End! “

And yes, I realize that, in Little Falls Church, I’m the modern-day “Get Ready Man.”  That wasn’t the plan when the Man About Town began his weekly musings more than a year ago. The column was intended to be light and whimsical, featuring such City phenomena as the duck tree and what-not, with political comment confined to the City’s ugliest buildings or the failed GEORGE bus.

But the introduction of the Falls Church Times dispelled my innocence (ignorance) of City politics. After only a short exposure to City Hall I was like Adam and Eve eating the apple: “Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked.”

My first “Get Ready” proclamation came on September 21, 2009, when I wrote “Why Falls Church Needs Arlington.” I noted that Falls Church City’s tax rate, at $1.07, was “almost 25 percent higher” than Arlington’s. A year later, our rate is $1.24 and rising. But the tax rate is only a symptom of our City’s systemic problem.

When Hollywood Video filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the board of directors did what every board does in those circumstances: they fired the CEO and announced a restructuring plan. But it didn’t work, because Hollywood Video’s problems were not due to bad management — they were experiencing a “who moved my cheese” situation. The Internet and Netflix spelled the death of brick and mortar video rental stores, and the next to fall will be Blockbuster, which began bankruptcy proceedings last month — concurrent with firing its CEO and announcing a restructuring plan.

Falls Church City is little different. We’ve fired our CEO (mayor and City Council leadership) and begun a restructuring plan. The City’s been downsizing for more than a year, and recently began outsourcing garbage pickup. And if you believe what the ex-mayor’s husband writes (a risky proposition, but he does have a good source), our sheriff’s duties could be transferred to Arlington County and our Commissioner of the Revenue and Treasurer offices could be combined.

It won’t work. Downsize and outsource all you want – the City remains unsustainable.

People refuse to accept this, arguing that Falls Church is no different from hundreds or even thousands of other municipalities currently struggling to balance their books. But as I’ve been shouting through my megaphone, Falls Church is different – very different – from almost any other municipality in the country.  Creating that difference is the state of Virginia, which historically has required its cities to be independent of surrounding counties. That works, more or less, for larger cities like Alexandria, but the knockout punch for small cities came in 1987, when the General Assembly imposed a moratorium on city annexation of county land. (Not that it matters for Falls Church – our opportunity to grow was lost years earlier when Fairfax County developed sufficiently to offer competing services.)

The problem in a nutshell is this: no viable municipality can fund services primarily on the backs of its households. A commercial component – the larger the better – is required. Normally, a commercial sector grows naturally within a municipality. But little Falls Church’s 2.2 square miles are largely residential and becoming more so. We shop across our borders, in Fairfax and Arlington counties, and no “restructuring” can change that.

Unsolvable problems create stress. As our plumber commented upon our purchase of a 1923 beach house, “the fun is just beginning.”  Yes.  Or in the case of Falls Church, the fireworks are just beginning. The acrid smell of gunpowder will be particularly pungent during encounters between the City Council and the School Board. This is most unfortunate, because these are good people. But the School Board faces rising enrollment and a shrinking budget, while the City Council needs to raise the tax rate another 5 cents just to get us through the fiscal year.

And that’s just the beginning — there’s little provision for capital improvements, not to mention school expansion, and City pension contributions are running low as well. Add it all up and you need at least a $1.50 tax rate. Whoops, forgot about the pesky 12 percent fund balance requirement which is still running on empty. Better aim for $1.55.

Foreseeing this, and remembering the English Queen Mary’s marriage for political purposes to Prince Philip of Spain, the Man About Town urged that, to forestall a school war, the former School Board chairman be made the new mayor. Instead, my friend and neighbor Nader Baroukh was anointed – something I wouldn’t have wished on him. He’s doing a great job and I salute him, but, oh dear, the fun is just beginning.

Get readd-y.

Monday 10/25: Open Mic at ArtSpace Falls Church

By FALLS CHURCH TIMES STAFF

Creative Cauldron is hosting The Fourth Open Cauldron on Monday, October 25 at 8:00 pm at ArtSpace (410 S. Maple Avenue).  Both professional and amateur performers — singers, musicians, poets, etc. — are encouraged to register online at www.creativecauldron.org

Everyone is invited to the open mic night as performer and/or audience member.  An accompanist for performers will be provided.  Refreshments for everyone will be available, too.  Suggested donation is $10 at the door.

ArtSpace is located at 410 S. Maple Avenue in the Pearson Square building.  Free parking is available in the garages at both 410 and 400 S. Maple Avenue.

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