Fairfax County Board Chairwoman Sharon Bulova is using her position to encourage a greener bent to the county’s business community, but without some of the perks — and expenses — of ultra-green Montgomery County to the east. Bulova has convened a Private Sector Energy Task Force, government-ese for a table full of business, academic and local government representatives talking together about how to waste less energy while avoiding prohibitively high costs of construction or operation.
The group will focus much of its brainpower on the county’s new developments and redevelopments, such as the new city planned for the Tysons Corner of the near future.
“We’re doing as much as we can to make our [county] buildings energy efficient, and in fact much of the private sector is there already,” Bulova said. “But we can probably go a little further.”
Virginia state law, however, prevents Fairfax from going as far as neighboring Montgomery County. Fairfax can encourage environmental stewardship by, say, allowing a green-certified building plan to add an additional floor, but it can’t offer the kind of tax incentives Montgomery does to accomplish the same goals.
Montgomery businesses can receive up to $5,000 for landscaping to provide better stormwater management, for example. And the county will use federal stimulus dollars to offer a green retrofitting rebate to businesses and multifamily homes.
Fairfax Supervisor Michael Frey, R-Sully, said the county’s restrictions on taxing might not be such a bad deal for taxpayers.
“I think that the business community and the development community understand the need for energy efficiency, and they’re doing it because it saves them money,” he said. “If we follow that with tax breaks, we’re throwing money away.”
In both counties, the traditionally right-leaning chambers of commerce have supported the moves. In Fairfax, chamber President Jim Corcoran will sit on Bulova’s task force.
Speaking as a true chamber cheerleader, Corcoran said, “what I feel most comfortable about going into this is that there’s not a more progressive place to do business in the U.S. today than in Fairfax County.”
