Fairfax County’s plan to tap a handful of funding pools to pump up the county’s budget has budget chairwoman Sharon Bulova worried.
Bulova, who represents the Braddock District, said the single-shot plan could leave little room in the coming years should the decline in home values and overall revenue continue.
It’s a debate that is playing out across the state among legislators and local elected leaders: how much to drain reserves to close an immediate deficit when larger shortfalls could be on the way.
County Executive Anthony Griffin’s proposed budget for fiscal 2009 draws about $24 million left over from the current year’s budget, a $4 million balance in technological support for police and fire dispatch, and $5 million from a fund used to pay down county projects, according to Deputy County Executive Ed Long.
“That’s a one-time expenditure,” Bulova told The Examiner on Tuesday. “That helped [Griffin] balance the budget this year … those sorts of things are not sustainable as far as looking for ways to bring down the cost of providing services, if we know that we’re going to have a reduced stream of revenue for the next couple of years.”
Fairfax has had to resort to other maneuvers to close a more than $100 million deficit, including a proposed 3-cent property tax increase, 4 percent cuts to agency personnel budgets and slashing salary increases.
The Virginia General Assembly, after much deliberation and squabbling, resolved last week to pull $350 million from the state’s “rainy day” fund to combat a three-year $2 billion shortfall. Price William County supervisors opted last month to drain their reserve fund by almost $800,000, leaving it almost empty, to fund their new crackdown on illegal immigration.
The Fairfax board can’t tap its own $100 million rainy day reserve because it hasn’t met the necessary 1.5 percent decline in revenue this year, Long said.
