Fairfax County’s budget hearings this week drew the sparsest crowd in years, according to the board’s budget chair, a turnout that could indicate dim hopes for funding during the current fiscal crunch.
The three-day exercise came to a close Wednesday night on the proposed $5.8 billion budget, which includes a $3.3 billion general fund. Fairfax County Supervisor Sharon Bulova, who has chaired the budget committee since 1989 with a short interruption in the mid-1990s, said this year has brought fewer speakers than any she can remember.
The light turnout parallels the grim fiscal picture for the proposed fiscal 2008 budget, which is engineered to keep the county running amid a flattened housing market. Revenue from real estate taxes, which makes up about 60 percent of the county’s general fund, showed only a modest increase this year. Officials have said major program expansions in the current climate are unlikely.
“I think people’s expectations are reasonable regarding the amount of money that the county is expecting to have because of that property values that are pretty stagnant,” she said. “I think [County Executive] Tony [Griffin] has done an excellent job, despite the fact that we have lower revenues than in years past.”
The hearings nevertheless drew a broad spectrum of groups to remark on the spending plan or ask for more money.
Child-care advocates pushed for the county to put an additional $6 million to maintain its subsidized daycare rolls, an issue that has churned locally over the past year after federal funding cuts threatened to push 1,900 Fairfax County children from the program. County officials, however, said they have found the funds to forestall any cuts to day care rolls, though the program will shrink through attrition.
The board will vote on the budget on April 30.
