Arlington County Budget Situation
The front page of this week’s Arlington Sun-Gazette brought some relatively good economic news, at least for Arlington County taxpayers, i.e., that economic conditions for the county had stabilized. According to Scott McCaffrey’s report:
“The worst may not be completely over, but the county government's budget situation hasn't deteriorated significantly over the past month, County Manager Ron Carlee told County Board members on Dec. 15.
Carlee held firm to his previous projection of a $14 million fiscal shortfall during the current fiscal year, and a projected $40 million gap in the fiscal year beginning next July.
“We are not seeing conditions worsen,” Carlee said.
"Preliminary residential real estate assessments show that the average decline among existing homes will be a little over 2 percent in 2009, which Carlee termed “really quite extraordinary” given the state of the real estate market in many other localities.
“We were concerned that we would see declines of up to 5 percent,” he said.”
For more detail on the county budget, visit the Department of Management & Budget’s budget webpage (most items require Adobe Reader to access) that includes the Manager’s briefing to the County Board on October 21, 2008 and the Manager’s December 15, 2008 “Budget Update” memo to the Board if you prefer the full details. On December 2, the County Manager provided the Arlington County Civic Federation a “fiscal state of the county” (requires Adobe Reader).
What’s the outlook on taxes, then. According to the Sun-Gazette:
“Carlee again signaled that he would propose both service cuts and an increase in real estate tax rates to cover the shortfall.”
That would channel the Board’s guidance for the FY 2009 budget, which required the Manager to propose “a balanced and sustainable base budget within existing tax rates.” Today's Washington Post had this bad news for taxpayers:
"Homeowners whose property values have plummeted as much as 40 percent are unlikely to see a corresponding drop in their real estate taxes next year, and some might face a tax increase as the counties surrounding the District struggle with huge budget shortfalls."
The best observation about Arlington’s budget situation was provided by today’s Mallard Fillmore cartoon strip, which has Mallard saying:
“Across the coutry, property values are falling . . . property taxes are rising . . . reassuring all of us that, no matter how bad things get . . . the government can always make them worse.” (emphasis added)