Alexandria Mayor William Euille announced the appointment of members to a committee formed to make recommendations on how to ease the tax burden of Alexandria residents.
In recent years, Alexandria increasingly has relied on revenue from real estate taxes to fund city operations. Euille said the city must work to attract more businesses to provide some tax relief to residents.
The Economic Sustainability Work Group, comprised of community and business leaders from the region, is expected to make recommendations to the City Council by the end of the year on how to expand the tax base by attracting new businesses and retaining existing ones in Alexandria.
“If we don’t attempt to resolve all these challenges now, then it will be difficult down the road to decrease our reliance on real estate taxes,” Euille told The Examiner.
The idea for the work group came from a community summit earlier this year. Euille said he decided to remove all political agendas from the group by keeping elected officials off the panel.
Attracting new businesses is imperative if the city is to remain competitive with other jurisdictions in the region, he added.
Among other groups’ goals are to review and analyze city financial, demographic and economic information, determine Alexandria’s reputation with businesses, benchmark how the city is doingwith business attraction and retention, review case studies of similar cities and explore issues related to affordable and work force housing.
“It’s an opportunity for us to take a step back, reflect on where we want to go and figure out how we’re going to get there,” he said.
James Butler, co-chair of the Alexandria Federation of Civic Associations and work group member, said he believed the group was a way to further the mayor’s economic vision.
“I think this is really related to what the mayor’s vision is and how to move things forward,” he said.
