Break Up Fairfax County and other DC Metro counties.

[Anonymous]

I agree about MOCO. The bussing situation, time that schools start, closing schools down county for snow events up county, etc. So many inefficiencies and it should be smaller.

[Anonymous]

Problem is not the size of the county but the incompetents that are elected to run it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In Fairfax we have total Democratic hegemony and they constantly let the Franconia, Mason, and Mount Vernon Districts rip off the rest of the county.

There is a Republican supervisor on the board.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In Fairfax we have total Democratic hegemony and they constantly let the Franconia, Mason, and Mount Vernon Districts rip off the rest of the county.

There is a Republican supervisor on the board.

1/10 is not enough to encourage meaningful dialogue and moderation of policies. They basically rubber stamp everything.

[Anonymous]

Whatever happened to the idea of seceding from Virginia and creating a new state, North Virginia. This would create hundreds of new government jobs staffing the new state legislature and county governments.

[Anonymous]

Greatly increase the county legislative reps & BOE seats to make them more individually/local-communuty responsive. Make planning boards similarly elected instead of appointed. Get rid of at-large seats which only reinforce majority hegemony. Elect them every 2 years. Pay these elected reps well enough to make the job full time at a reasonably professional level. Counter the increased cost of their salaries with lower allocations for legislative staff, since they wouldn't need as much outreach support to cover their smaller constituencies. Force the above with ballot initiatives.

Side benefit: special interests that end up with outsized influence from their campaign contributions would see that influence diluted.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In Fairfax we have total Democratic hegemony and they constantly let the Franconia, Mason, and Mount Vernon Districts rip off the rest of the county.

I would not include Mason District in that quagmire. The Mason District rep was the only one to even bring up a special tax district for the original Mount Vernon HS repurposing scheme which was an endeavor led by Karen Corbett Sanders pre school board.

Franconia and Mount Vernon got the Saudis out of the site, an addition at West Potomac, orchestrated the sale of public land next to a school, Carson MS, to te Saudis.

That is major stuff. Each of those 2 also has high schools with contiguous boundaries where 1 is "Cinderella" and the neighbors are the favored.

[Anonymous]

This is what NJ did....tons of people fled the city and argued incessantly about crime, schools, etc. And you know what happened in NJ? Boroughitis:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boroughitis

What it ended up resulting in in NJ is every single locale needing a town council, an independently funded police/fire/trash/school, etc. That's why property taxes in NJ are ASTRONOMICAL.

Becareful what you wish for, OP. In the end you'll get what you want, but the law of unintended consequences takes over and you get MORE govt, MORE red tape, and MORE taxes to fund it all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Greatly increase the county legislative reps & BOE seats to make them more individually/local-communuty responsive. Make planning boards similarly elected instead of appointed. Get rid of at-large seats which only reinforce majority hegemony. Elect them every 2 years. Pay these elected reps well enough to make the job full time at a reasonably professional level. Counter the increased cost of their salaries with lower allocations for legislative staff, since they wouldn't need as much outreach support to cover their smaller constituencies. Force the above with ballot initiatives.

Side benefit: special interests that end up with outsized influence from their campaign contributions would see that influence diluted.

Yeah, and guess what happens, more boards, more councils, etc etc after breakups mean more pols. More pols mean more govt salaries and lifetime pensions and retirement healthcare plans you now have to fund. That means a doubling, tripling, or quadrupling of propety taxes and local taxes/fees.

You people never learn lessons from what has already been done before...aka New Jersey.

I can't wait until this happens and then people piss and moan about $50, 60, 90, 100+ k property tax bills per year like NJ.

[Anonymous]

OP: are you trying to double your property taxes? Look at New Jersey and New York - all these little towns have their own school districts, police forces, pension liabilities, garbagemen, etc. You'll be paying $22K in property taxes for every $1M of assessment value.

[Anonymous]

No thanks... last thing I want is higher taxes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Greatly increase the county legislative reps & BOE seats to make them more individually/local-communuty responsive. Make planning boards similarly elected instead of appointed. Get rid of at-large seats which only reinforce majority hegemony. Elect them every 2 years. Pay these elected reps well enough to make the job full time at a reasonably professional level. Counter the increased cost of their salaries with lower allocations for legislative staff, since they wouldn't need as much outreach support to cover their smaller constituencies. Force the above with ballot initiatives.

Side benefit: special interests that end up with outsized influence from their campaign contributions would see that influence diluted.

Yeah, and guess what happens, more boards, more councils, etc etc after breakups mean more pols. More pols mean more govt salaries and lifetime pensions and retirement healthcare plans you now have to fund. That means a doubling, tripling, or quadrupling of propety taxes and local taxes/fees.

You people never learn lessons from what has already been done before...aka New Jersey.

I can't wait until this happens and then people piss and moan about $50, 60, 90, 100+ k property tax bills per year like NJ.

Not exactly. Don't balkanize into smaller districts. Still have one Board of Supervisors (or County Council), one BOE, etc., but have more members of each accountable to fewer. Don't allow seniority to confer, institutionally, greater power. More pols, yes, each with salaries, but lower than current for the county legislators (BOEs need bumps, though) and with lower numbers of staff (offsetting the increase in legislators), as they'd be expected to handle more direct interaction with constituents since the constituent-legislator ratio would be lower. And each pol would have less concentrated power.

New Jersey, as another poster mentioned, followed the balkanized, town-by-town path. That's the one with more councils, etc.

[Anonymous]

Hah, no one in power would choose this. Currently they run a county of 1mln people. Do you think they'd agree to run a smaller county of 300k instead?

Also the other counties in the state would be against this, as it would over-represent that (former) county in the state senate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Greatly increase the county legislative reps & BOE seats to make them more individually/local-communuty responsive. Make planning boards similarly elected instead of appointed. Get rid of at-large seats which only reinforce majority hegemony. Elect them every 2 years. Pay these elected reps well enough to make the job full time at a reasonably professional level. Counter the increased cost of their salaries with lower allocations for legislative staff, since they wouldn't need as much outreach support to cover their smaller constituencies. Force the above with ballot initiatives.

Side benefit: special interests that end up with outsized influence from their campaign contributions would see that influence diluted.

Yeah, and guess what happens, more boards, more councils, etc etc after breakups mean more pols. More pols mean more govt salaries and lifetime pensions and retirement healthcare plans you now have to fund. That means a doubling, tripling, or quadrupling of propety taxes and local taxes/fees.

You people never learn lessons from what has already been done before...aka New Jersey.

I can't wait until this happens and then people piss and moan about $50, 60, 90, 100+ k property tax bills per year like NJ.

Not exactly. Don't balkanize into smaller districts. Still have one Board of Supervisors (or County Council), one BOE, etc., but have more members of each accountable to fewer. Don't allow seniority to confer, institutionally, greater power. More pols, yes, each with salaries, but lower than current for the county legislators (BOEs need bumps, though) and with lower numbers of staff (offsetting the increase in legislators), as they'd be expected to handle more direct interaction with constituents since the constituent-legislator ratio would be lower. And each pol would have less concentrated power.

New Jersey, as another poster mentioned, followed the balkanized, town-by-town path. That's the one with more councils, etc.

FCC has a population of 15k with a real estate tax rate of 1.23% Fairfax County has a population of 1.15M with a real estate tax rate of 1.14%. The economies of scale for local governments are negligible or nonexistent after they get to medium small size in the 15-25k population range. Prince William, Arlington and Loudoun all have lower real estate property tax rates than Fairfax. If anything Fairfax county actually has the opposite problem, it is too big. Our county has already moved into the diseconomy of scale area of the cost curve where government spending becomes more wasteful with increasing population size.

[Anonymous]

So maybe my dense, small. trending older part of Montgomery County can break off from the rest — and use our tax dollars for something other than educating other people’s kids? When I first read this, I was very much against it, but after reflecting on it a bit, it would depend on the boundaries. Maybe my taxes would drop, and what’s left could be used for other things.