Fairfax County is moving ahead with a plan to staff a new office dedicated to combating homelessness, including paying its director six figures, while the county grapples with a $648 million budget shortfall.
Supervisors are scrambling to find ways to trim spending amid an ongoing housing crash and drop in property tax revenue, which already has prompted a round of employee furloughs and hiring freeze. County officials are expected to roll out a fiscal 2010 budget later this month that includes deep cuts to services, with a possible tax-rate increase and layoffs.
A week ago, the board appointed Freddie Mac Foundation official Dean Klein to head the Office to Prevent and End Homelessness, which supervisors created in the fall, but had left vacant. The new office is composed of a staff of three, funded by reallocating existing resources. Klein will be paid a $125,000 salary.
The county’s two Republican supervisors are protesting the plan, arguing the move undercuts Fairfax’s effort to cut spending.
“Now’s not the time to be adding a $125,000 executive director position and standing up a new office, at a time of furloughs and layoffs,” said Republican Springfield District Supervisor Pat Herrity. “It’s like repaving your driveway while your house is burning.”
The initiative will focus the county’s efforts at reducing its homeless population, which tends to hover around 1,900 to 2,000 individuals, and won’t involve new funding, said Deputy County Executive Verdia Haywood.
Having a staff dedicated to fighting homelessness is increasingly important at a time when more residents are losing their homes to foreclosure, said Chairwoman Sharon Bulova, a Democrat.
“We’re not the kind of community where I want to see people freezing in the woods,” said Bulova, who defeated Herrity in a special election for chairman this month.
But starting a new program, however well-intentioned, will simply shift a greater burden of cuts onto existing services, said Sully District Supervisor Michael Frey, a Republican. All agencies, including police, fire and rescue and mental health services, have drawn up plans to trim as much as 15 percent of their budgets.
“The fact that we’re now designating these three positions for a new office means that somewhere else will have to absorb a cut it otherwise shouldn’t have,” Frey said.
