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Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS)
McDaniel on FCPS budget
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Anonymous
I sense a lot of sock puppeting on this thread but needless to say shoring up the budget by kicking families out of their current schools is ultimately a self-defeating strategy, whether the goals are budgetary or, more likely, social. |
Anonymous
So your position is that the school board has the courage to take student’s as proverbial hostages unless the state pays more. Wow. |
Anonymous
That’s why flat no raises is what we need now. Stop the waste. |
Anonymous
When we get home from a long day and picking up kids, most of the time we pick up food bc there isn’t time to cook. So now they want to put more tax burden on those where both parents work. It’s not discretionary, it’s how we can maintain our house with so much to juggle. |
jvmorgan
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I remember hearing this argument a lot in 2016. Usually in the third-person, but sometimes in the first person. I sympathize, of course. I have kids and sometimes none of the adults have the energy to fix them something to eat. Fortunately, they’ve old enough that we can get away with telling them to fix something for themselves. But younger kids . . . meh. Anyway, regardless of whether a household tries to mitigate a meals tax by preparing meals at home more often, or just has to pay that additional marginal expense for meals they just don’t have the energy to make for themselves, a meals tax provides savings for Fairfax County residents compared with raising the same revenues through real estate taxes. Visitors to Fairfax County would be expected to contribute to about 30% of the revenues generated. What this means is savings across the board for Fairfax County residents (at the expense of visitors to Fairfax County (sorry)). For lower-income households (those with incomes below $30k), a meals tax would cost about half as much as the real estate tax would cost in order to generate the same revenue. For upper-income households ($200k or more), a meals tax would cost about 75% the cost of equivalent real estate taxes. Of course, if the contribution from visitors turned out to be less than 30%, those savings would be reduced. But even if only 5% of revenues came from visitors to Fairfax County, upper-income households would break even and lower-income households would realize savings relative to the equivalent in generating revenue through real estate taxes. |
Anonymous
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FCPS has to operate with its means, and reduced revenues associated with declining commercial real estate values (from COVID-induced telework and remote work) necessitated that action be taken to increase revenues or reduce FCPS operational costs.
Had residents previously voted to approve the meals tax, or had the State agreed to provide requested funding, there is no chance this board would have taken up 8130. They would have kicked the can down the road again. There are perhaps a few members of the board that support 8130 out of some desire to improve social equity, but other members supported it who could not give a #]^#*{ about social equity. Moving 8130 required the mutual support or “alliance” of the social equity supporters and the members who see a budgetary / fiscal cliff rapidly approaching. |
Anonymous
Interesting. But does PWC have equitable taxes, fees, services based on addresses or zones? FX does not for trash, bond projects, special tax districts etc. 7-10% of FX base residential RE rate goes to bond repayments. Political bond projects or those without special tax districts cause lack of build where needed. https://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/taxes/real-estate/tax-rates PWC has 2 IB HS- 1 east 1 west, transport provided for those who need it based on sending school zones. IB costs more than AP. And the cost for the Programme which had junk results like most in FCPS? 2022-23 VDOE for PWC IB at 2 sites totaled 35 senior diploma candidates and 20 diplomas. Lewis 3/6 Mount Vernon 4/15. Supertest didn't work. ARL IB was 95/96 so that opt in worked. |
jvmorgan
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Again, I am not an expert on Prince William County. But since discussion had touched on the Prince William County real estate tax rate, I thought it would be relevant to point out that Prince William County joined Alexandria, Arlington, City of Fairfax, Falls Church, Herndon, Leesburg, Manassas, Manassas Park, Town of Vienna in adopting a meals tax, making it the latest county in Northern Virginia to use a meals tax to diversify its tax base. |
Anonymous
Is this suggesting meal tax in lieu of real estate tax? I find that hard to believe. I pay mover 2x in taxes from 2018. They raise it every year beyond a merit increase at work. No way they don’t hit us again with more. |
jvmorgan
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“Diversify” not “supplant.” Your post highlights an important advantage of a meals tax: it is based on what your household chooses to spend (which even with inflation, is unlikely to spike significantly beyond what your household would likely spend given your household’s income) rather than on the market value of your home (which can fluctuate for reasons outside your control). Jurisdictions that have a meals tax also appear to modify their real estate tax rates more slowly. So the combination of a real estate tax and meals tax would likely create more predictably, not just for the Fairfax County in terms of revenues, but also for households in terms of costs. |
Anonymous
I posted about IB and FX tax rates per zones. FX meals tax would not diversify but rather supplant existing taxes. Breaking out the 1 penny for stormwater is now over 3 pennies and a separate line item from the residential RE tax rate. A presentation about 10 years ago by Corbett Sanders on repurposing Old Mount Vernon HS [pre her tenure on SB] had 1 very interesting comment/question from Penny Gross-D-Mason BOS. That was about instituting a special tax district to pay the bonds. Reston CC build with bond money was the impetus for that special tax district. My property taxes pay for bond $ on the Wst Potoamc expansion which as per McKay had Mount Vernon open capacity as the elephant in the room. 2 examples of how a residential RE property owner in for example Herndon or Reston is paying extra inequitably. Note some Magisterial Districts have county operating trash/recycling. Current annual cost for that is a few hundred less than if you were a new private hauler customer [less stable service] with a contract between you and the hauler. ARL contract/s are with private haulers and the county bills the property owner. |
Anonymous
There will be some transportation savings. A bigger issue is that immigration laws in our country are broken and don’t work. We can’t afford to keep taking more and more students who don’t speak English. The costs of educating ESOL and other disadvantaged students are sky rocketing and the real estate taxes associated with them don’t come remotely close to supporting any of the expenses. |
jvmorgan
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It would be up to the Board of Supervisors to determine whether a Meals Tax would both diversify any partially supplant real estate taxes or merely diversify tax revenues. I really don’t know what they will do, if anything, once they get County Executive Hill’s report. If you have ideas, definitely bring them to the attention of your supervisor and/or the chair (or even the County Executive if you think they would be material to his report on how to diversify the tax base). |
Anonymous
| If Kyle McDaniel wants to use his School Board seat as a platform primarily to argue for a meals tax and the election of other Democratic candidates to office (see his Twitter page), that's fine with me. What I don't like is the all-Democratic School Board using kids as bargaining chips by unleashing Reid to propose unwanted county-wide boundary changes and then arguing they are compelled for budgetary reasons to do so, when that's clearly not the case. |
Anonymous
Seems like taxes go up every year. More than my raise if I even get one. There shouldn’t be a tax decision without a vote. |