Leaders in southern Fairfax County are pushing to have another seat added to the county’s Board of Supervisors. The South Fairfax Chamber of Commerce wants the county to create a new district in the Lorton area, now located in the Mount Vernon District. Chamber President Tim Rizer said that many of the county’s districts have grown too large, reducing supervisors’ ability to address residents’ concerns.
Fairfax County last added a seat during the 1990 redistricting. There are now nine members representing individual districts and a 10th member elected at large.
In 1990, Fairfax County’s population was 818,584, which meant that members from individual districts each represented an average of 91,000 residents. By 2009, the county had added about 220,000 more residents, so those same supervisors now represent an average of 115,000 residents.
Rizer’s estimates for the population of the Mount Vernon District are even higher, and, although he praises the work of Supervisor Gerry Hyland, Rizer says it’s time to redraw the lines.
“Gerry has been a phenomenal juggler, but we’re not even sure at this point in time that Gerry will run for another term,” Rizer said. “And even as remarkable as he is, I don’t care who you are, there’s no way to do that perfectly. There’s no way to represent your district well when you have 125,000 residents.”
The South Fairfax Chamber of Commerce will work with the South County Federation, a coalition of homeowners and civic associations, to study the district and devise their own redistricting map, Rizer said. Their version may split the Mount Vernon district in half on either side of Fort Belvoir.
Calls to Hyland were not immediately returned.
Some supervisors have been skeptical of the proposed expansion, citing the expenses of adding another supervisor — each district has a budget of $417,200 for fiscal 2011 — when the county is facing a $55 million budget shortfall. Rizer called the financial concerns a “red herring,” and said the bigger challenge is convincing supervisors to make changes to their current districts.
“There’s never really a good time, just like there’s never really a good time to raise taxes,” Rizer said. “It’s only a good time when somebody wants it.”
