It’s pretty straightforward: When it’s time to adopt a government’s budget, those tasked with doing so are supposed to follow through. But during the May 6 Fairfax City Council meeting – after several weeks of meetings, work sessions, discussions, public hearings, budget scrutiny, and questions to City staff – some on the dais wanted to delay any action by a week.
Normally, the City’s budget-adoption meeting is just a half-hour formality of officially approving something whose details have already been worked out by the Council. Instead, the recent meeting took four, grueling hours – even at times devolving into personal attacks between the members – and included an admonishment from the mayor that City staff and residents were counting on them to do the job for which they were elected.
Granted, five of the six Councilmembers are new to their posts, having been elected in November. But two of the three pushing hardest for a delay previously served on the City’s School Board, and the third served decades in the fields of business, economics and finance.
Despite being assured that they could adopt the budget that night and still amend specific line items later, they resisted. But, said returning Councilmember Billy Bates, “New information is always coming out, and we have residents and staff holding their breath to see what we’re going to do. I don’t know that it’s necessarily healthy to delay that another week, when they were expecting us to make a decision tonight.”
He said he wasn’t aware before that evening of even an intention to delay the budget’s approval. And Councilmember Stacey Hardy-Chandler stressed that, if there was a delay, “I don’t think harm [to City operations] can be avoided.”
Before the members were to vote on the FY 26 budget and CIP (Capital Improvement Program), Councilmember Tom Peterson said that, since he and his colleagues did their final budget markup, April 22, Acting City Manager Bryan Foster had made a change to it and Council had some feedback on it. But Hardy-Chandler said the only major change was a reduction from the amount cut from the Police Department.
As part of making the real-estate tax rate no greater than a 2.5-cent increase over last year, Council had recommended slashing more than $1 million from the police. But after conferring with the police chief and command staff, Foster reduced that amount to $652,000 and notified Council about it on May 2.
Peterson also noted that Fairfax County had released its budget on May 6. Then Councilmember Rachel McQuillen said she wanted more time to examine how it could impact the City, so she wanted to delay approving Fairfax’s budget.
However, explained Foster, “We’re independent of the county, and we have a [school] contract with it based on actual expenses, not what is budgeted. The county appropriates to us a lump sum, and our schools then have the ability to put it wherever they’d like in their operational budget. And historically, the City’s school costs won’t change because of actions the county has taken.”
Agreeing, City Attorney Brian Lubkeman told the Council, “I don’t know what delay for delay’s sake accomplishes, because we have the information needed for you to properly evaluate the budget.”
“I think staff has provided ample information to multiple questions, over a significant period of time, to move forward,” added Hardy-Chandler. “I haven’t heard anything that would support a delay of this process. And in fact, there was a lot of work done to get to this point. The public has also been part of this process; we owe it to them to move forward.”
Councilmember Stacy Hall said she was worried how a loss of federal grant money could affect both the City and county and if the City would have to make resulting budget cuts in the future. But Mayor Catherine Read said Council could still approve the budget as a whole and then later reallocate certain funds within it, as necessary. Foster noted, too, that the City’s Budget Stabilization Fund could deal with unexpected expenses.
McQuillen then made a motion, seconded by Hall, to defer budget adoption until May 13. But Councilmember Anthony Amos didn’t see the value in doing so and thereby “potentially scaring residents.”
Peterson also favored a delay; but Foster said that, even so, the City won’t know the exact amount of the county’s school-contract transfer to the City until after that date. “Procedurally, that’s just how it works,” said Foster. The vote to delay failed, with Read breaking a 3-3 tie.
Again, Foster told Council, “Work on the budget doesn’t stop once you adopt it. We’re always evaluating it and giving you quarterly reports on how revenues and expenditures are trending.”
But, concerned about some of the big-ticket items in the FY 26-30 CIP included in the budget, Hall made a motion to delay the $9 million expansion of the Sherwood Center by a year. Still under consideration, it’s part of a City-county project to revamp both that building and the Willard Health Center.
“It’s a large expense and needs to be considered a little bit more in detail,” said Hall. CFO JC Martinez said doing so wouldn’t affect the FY 26 budget. McQuillen then seconded the motion, which also failed.
“In addition to the $4.8 million in operating costs, my biggest concern is the roughly $50 million the City would have to issue bonds for later this year,” said Hall. “I don’t know that the full, tax ramifications of this have been explored – which could be as much as $4.5 million or $5 million worth of debt annually. So we’re looking at $10 million in debt – which would be an 11-cent tax increase just for that one building – and would be in addition to [other capital projects].”
“We’re continuing to refine the operating costs – we believe those numbers will come down,” replied Director of Community Development and Planning Brooke Hardin. “Regarding the debt-service fees, the City-county agreement provides latitude to both jurisdictions as to when that debt may be released. We’ll be meeting about it with the county this month, and the county said it’ll work with us and be as flexible as it can be.”
Further discussion on the budget then ensued, with Council finally approving it. But a subsequent vote to set the tax rates it had already agreed upon on April 22 failed – leading to an admonishment from Lubkeman.
“You’ve approved the budget and not the tax rates corresponding with it,” he said. “You need to set a [real-estate] tax rate. Ordinarily, in the past, what’s happened is everybody acknowledges there’s been give and take. Not everybody got what they wanted or felt was appropriate. But the intellectually honest thing to do is to approve the tax rate that corresponds to the budget approved by your colleagues.”
“When we met April 22, we worked on the tax-rate increase of 2.5 cents and left the room with an outline of a budget and a tax rate,” said Read. “And now, half this Council has decided they don’t want to make the commitment to that. I find it interesting that half the dais wants to do everybody’s job in this City, except the job of Councilperson – to which they were elected.”
Hardy-Chandler said she, too, thought everything was settled, but now felt “held hostage” that her colleagues’ negotiations and collaborations weren’t done in “good faith.” That being the case, she added, “I’m concerned about the functionality of this Council.”
Still, Peterson wanted more time, and McQuillen said she needed clarification after the county released its budget. Read reiterated that Fairfax is an independent City, with different priorities than the county has. She also said City staff had spent months answering Council’s budget questions.
McQuillen said she’d received several emails that morning from constituents on limited incomes. “They’re concerned about any tax increase because they’re also feeling the inflation in other ways,” she said. “So I have to fully understand what’s going on so I can explain it to them.”
But, said Read, “There are 25,000 people here; so however many people you’ve been hearing from are not the majority. They elected us to make decisions in the best interests of the entire City and all the people who live here.”
In addition, Amos worried about having too low of a tax rate because “next fiscal year’s financial outlook is likely to be worse than this year’s. So we need to be prepared and focus more on cost recovery and economic development.”
Hall said she’d researched the residential projects approved by past Councils and was worried about all the new students they’d yield and the cost to educate them once those units were built and occupied. “The things weighing heavily on me are tuition bills, redevelopment and overdevelopment,” she said.
And with many expensive projects in the CIP, she added, “We can’t continue to just say yes. I intended to vote for this budget, but there’s a lot going on and I don’t know. This is hard, and I don’t want to bite off more than we can chew.”
Amos said that, although Council reached a budget consensus on April 22, “It was clear some people were uncomfortable, including myself.” But Hardy-Chandler said things will always keep happening, and they owe it to their constituents “not to come to a complete stop” when they do. And Read called it a failure for Council not to honor its commitment to the City to adopt a budget and a tax rate.
Some 3-1/2 hours into the meeting, McQuillen asked for a 5-minute recess. Nearly a half hour later, Council returned and McQuillen said she’d spoken with Foster and gotten the clarifications she’d wanted. Council then unanimously adopted the budget and its tax rates, and Read congratulated them for doing so. She also thanked City staff, “who put in extraordinary amounts of time answering questions.”