Fairfax residents: Call or email your supervisors

BudgetBy David Alpert (Founder) February 22, 2010

The Fairfax County Board is going to review their proposed FY2011 budget tomorrow, and will advertise maximum tax rates and fees

, possibly closing the door on the opportunity to realistically contribute more to WMATA. Please call or email your Supervisor and Chairman Bulova today to ask them to advertise a higher cap with room for transit contributions.

In Virginia, once a county advertises maximum rates in a public hearing, they can’t raise them. That means that if the budget proposal as advertised doesn’t contain any more money for transit, the only way to contribute more is to cut something else.

Arlington chose to advertise a higher rate than necessary, to maintain flexibility as they finish the budget process. Fairfax should do the same.

Advertising a higher rate, of course, doesn’t force the Supervisors to set taxes or fees at those levels. Like the WMATA public hearings that let riders choose between fares and service cuts, advertising a higher cap would let Fairfax residents also weigh in on higher taxes and fees versus deep transit cuts.

What the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors needs to do tomorrow is to keep its options open. For jurisdictions to contribute enough to avoid service cuts, Fairfax County would need to pitch in $9.26 million. Please ask your Supervisor and Chairman Bulova to advertise a higher cap tomorrow that has room for the $9.26 million in WMATA contributions.

If you don’t know your district, you can look it up on the interactive map tool or use the PDF map.

Update: The Fairfax County Board has told us that they are not going to formally advertise the rates until March 9th. However, it’s still helpful to email your Supervisor now, because we need them to advertise high enough rates at that time, and it’s not very far away.