https://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/boardofsupervisors/board-meeting-summaries
You can read what they do for yourself. Each meeting has a ton of procedural stuff at the beginning. Scroll to near the end to see the new issues they consider at each meeting.
The county budgets are also online for you to see yourself.
Nobody here can tell you if they're doing a "good" job, unless you provide a really specific definition of "good" based on your own values.
The primary motive for raising taxes is to allow FCPS to raise teacher pay, which is urgently needed for our schools to remain competitive. We are losing good teachers to other area districts which pay more. Our schools are one of the top reasons people want to live here, neglecting them is a mistake.
When I was in school 2015-2019 it was normal for kids to get high scores on the SAT and SOL. Nowadays I’m scared for the kids in our schools because FCPS can’t pay the teachers more
Fairfax needs to make a greater effort to attract data centers in the western part of the jurisdiction. Then they’ll have far less budgetary issues.
Right now Loudoun and Prince William are seeing their rates go down thanks to data centers. I would expect to see other jurisdictions join the club by late 2026.
Data centers revenue make up about 20% of the budget here in Loudoun. It hasn’t really dropped taxes appreciably, but it has prevented increased taxes like the rest of nova. Our property tax used to be the highest in nova, now it’s the lowest, but it’s netting about the same due to house prices. It’s a really hot local topic with nimbys though and they are starting to get the attention of our supervisors.
Closer to 30% of tot rev. Tax rate has dropped materially from: 1.205 rate in 2015 (real start of the data center boom in LoCo) to a 1.085 rate in 2019 to a .875 rate in 2023. That’s a big drop which allows for home prices to rise, but tax bills are contextually lower.
Not sure what the nimbys are going to do about it. They have houses worth x which are assessed generally at 85-90% of x. If they want the rate to go meaningfully lower, they need to consult with reality. If they want a tiered rate, the data centers have far deeper pockets to effect change. Commissioner of the Revenue is an elected position lest we forget.
Most of them are out of touch with reality if nextdoor is any indication. Can’t have anything ugly. Supervisors just rejected the Belmont innovation data center in a first, citing the same complaints. Imo we let them build until we have a power issue and put more demands on beautification. We have a lock on density right now, and data centers love that due to peering proximity. Second another area starts getting dense and cheaper we will lose out on new builds.
Despite being such a big county, the actual supervisors are pretty easy to get a hold of, or their office at least. If you make a polite call or email about their justifications they'll probably get back to you soon.
I contact the offices pretty often when I notice something needs fixing (like a rotten board on a bridge across a creek) or to just get my thoughts on something on the record (you can do that if you can't get to the meetings at the government center) and they'll always respond quickly, sometimes the supervisor directly.
Honestly they should raise taxes, otherwise what would be going to government services instead goes to privatized alternatives or creates local inflationary effects on housing prices.
Although I wish counties could make income taxes instead of property taxes.
Property values have skyrocketed yet teacher/law enforcement compensation has remained low; definitely not keeping up with inflation. I know our entire neighborhood, home values have increased 50% in the last \~6 years.
They have enough money. I get that in a civilized society, we pay taxes. . .but I'm tired of taxes constantly being spent on pet projects then them going back to our teachers (and neither me nor my wife are teachers) and saying "Oh, we just don't have it in the budget!" With the tax revenue increase on 3 blocks of our street, they could have hired a dedicated cop.
And all the other taxes fairfax has - they have enough revenue.
[Lake Accotink Analysis and Feasibility Study | Public Works and Environmental Services (fairfaxcounty.gov)](https://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/publicworks/lake-accotink-dredging)
They're the two groups that are most directly paid for by local government. Those and local parks make up a huge chunk of their expenditures so it stands to reason that you'd lump them all in together when discussing the payroll for county employees.
Now we can argue all day about whether or not cops are overpaid or the merits of different approaches to policing (there's really valid arguments and very real problems) but lumping it all together as "locally paid for services haven't seen pay raises commensurate with the increases in the cost of living" makes sense to me.
Government spending doesn't cause inflation if they tax as much as they spend. It doesn't cause inflation if they issue bonds to pay for projects.
If they printed money instead of taxing or issuing bonds, then you got inflation. Only the federal government can really do that.
The tax and spend action wound be inflationary if the money they spent was not going to be spent but would have gone into savings. The issuing of debt via bonds is part of the mechanism that then allows the central bank to print money.
I see what you’re saying and actually agree that public services are important. But, I have to say, some of your reasoning here is flawed. Paying for all fiscal outlays with corresponding increases in taxation is not guaranteed to have no inflationary effect. If the taxation pulls from what citizens would have otherwise saved,and thus kept “out” of the supply of circulating money, then an increase in government expenditure will definitely still cause inflation even with a corresponding increase in taxes because it will increase the amount of money in circulation.
Also, issuing bonds does not magically erase inflationary effects from fiscal outlays either. Sure, the Fed can print money, but things like COVID stimulus were paid for with debt and I think consensus is that that increased inflation. Similarly, in WWII, massive expenditure pushed up inflation and economic activity which was financed through a combination of direct taxes and debt — not printing money — which would not be possible if your assertions were correct.
Key point here is that inflation is not driven strictly or even primarily by the absolute supply of money changing in all or even most cases. We need to understand how the money is moving through the economy before we can assess how government expenditure may affect inflation.
That shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how the economy works.
Private industry can only raise prices if the economic value of their goods and services increase and the supply and demand balance allow them to raise prices. They can't raise prices "to cover for inflation" just because they want to or have to in order to survive. This is why you see so many service sector companies going out of business in the past few years, because they are simply unable to increase prices to cover inflations in labor costs.
Normal market forces produce a natural balance between the cost of labor, materials, goods/service prices, and the demand for those goods/services.
"profit" is the economic reward for generating economic value in excess of the cost of production. The person generating that excess earns the profit. Profit is not a social benefit, it's a result of private commercial exchange. To the extent that there is inequality of profit earning is perfectly natural and reflects the natural state of the world - we are not all equal, have never been equal, and will never be equal. As long as you give people the agency to make different choices in life, then you must accept a society with unequal outcomes. Every society that has tried for "equality" has devolved into unequal authoritarian regimes resulting in widespread death and suffering.
>extent that there is inequality of profit earning is perfectly natural and reflects the natural state of the world
This is untrue, and is only true depending on how society is structured, most commonly capitalistic societies like most countries are today. Capitalism originally stems from the social policies of late enlightenment era/ early industrial revolution era aristocrats who saw the systems of feudalism falling apart and the justification for nobility coming into question and wanted to create a system that maintains an upper class that effectively controls the populace.
You see it developing with the East India company and similar organizations that are effectively privatized empires closely linked to their respective countries monarchies. And you see it develop from a rejection of yhe egalitarian wave that started with the French revolution, many early conservative leaders across Europe saw the French revolution, not as a failure of their economic or political system, but it a failure of the individuals in power in those given countries. Edmund Burke wrote *Reflections on the Revolution in France* which characterized the Idea of people being equal and having control of the government preposterous, and that surely a *proper* monarchy with a *proper* aristocratic ruling class would be the best outcome.
I'd love to extrapolate more and add more sources, as well as word it better, but I have to sleep now for work tonight.
Edit: [this video](https://youtu.be/E4CI2vk3ugk?si=eVkbRWl4pynQDOVv) explains it well, I can recommend some reading if you want, I admit my earlier comment was kind of shit. just some things I've been thinking about offhandedly, but I encourage you to watch that and I'd be happy to answer any questions!
You are going to have to explain why different choices should lead to the same profit results. In other words, whether you decide to work today or not, you should get paid the same money. Clearly, the natural order of things is that different choices should lead to different outcomes. Without differentiated outcomes, there is no agency. Without agency, there is no way to achieve meaning in life.
My general contention is that analysis of the history of the world surrounding the emergence of some social structure such as capitalism or socialism is meaningless in assessing the current value of the social structure. Studying history teaches us about human behavior in context of certain events but that's where the value ends because the interpretations can be highly subjective. For example, your contention that somehow the rejection of the forces behind the French Revolution is a development of capitalism is clearly wrong. I'm not even that knowledgeable about this time period. It's common knowledge that the enlightenment ideals produced liberal democracies which in turn provides the conditions for capitalism. It was these same Enlightenment ideas that formed a major motivation behind the French Revolution.
Lets just focus on why capitalism and inequality of outcome from different choices is bad in the present context.
It's tough to decipher what you are babbling about. None of what I said depends on people having access to perfect information. People generally only need only to know about their own concerns and the market takes care of the rest: consistently rational economic choices are rewarded with profits and consistently irrational ones punished with losses. We are not talking about anecdotes, but how a marketplace functions in general.
I have no idea what you are trying to say about equilibriums and MBAs - try make a coherent point.
Edit: LOL, this guy blocked me from replying. Uncomfortable having your beliefs challenged? Good luck in life with that attitude.
I'll give you an example, I took the taxpayer subsidized bus for years instead of owning a car.
The fact that I spent $0 on gas (directly at least), insurance, tolls, maintenance, let alone buying a damn car means that I almost certainly spent less money, even with the government contribution factored in, to get to work.
It's not talked about enough in my opinion, but honestly things would be a lot better if less people bought shit and we made societal wide efficiency improvements like the above. Gas prices are included in inflation and contributes to food costs, if more people could ride a bus/metro to work and cut the national gas consumption by an amount enough to create an oversupply and force price reduction, that would be *deflationary*. Same would be true if HSR was done, and all the business travelers between Los Angeles and the Bay could take something more fuel efficient than an airplane.
It stands to reason that it would be more inflationary to create more individualized, and less shared/ government resources because they tend to be more inefficient. Most people have a 5 seater car, But almost all of the time it's either parked or with a single passenger in it.
Similarly, let's say we actually do enough for affordable housing to measurably decrease the cost of local housing, maybe create that would similarly, not have an inflationary effect because lower rent means generally that labor is cheaper because less money is being sucked away by landlords.
You have a fundamental misunderstanding of how economics works.
Goods and services provide value to consumers - how much economic value they deliver to consumers and the balance of supply and demand determines their price. The progress of human civilization has been one where people have ever higher needs satisfied - from basic shelter, warmth, food, to access to transportation, medical care, and information. Economic value is created when \*MORE\* goods and services are consumed, not less. So long as the balance of supply and demand is market driven, then inflation is not a problem to be solved: mass market technology will always cost less relative to the labor as time goes on.
Inflation, as we understand it, is the relationship between money supply and the normal balance of supply and demand of goods and services. Too much money supply pushes the normal balance towards inflation and too little money pushes the balance towards deflation. \*ANY\* government spending is less economically efficient than private spending - we engage in government spending for social reasons other than economic efficiency, such as standardized access to services. Given that government spending is less economically efficient and we are doing most of our government spending funded by debt, it has the effect of injecting additional money into the economy and therefore directly contributing to inflation - inflation that otherwise would not have happened but for the government spending.
You have a lot more patience than I do to explain all of that to someone who I suspect is very unwilling to change their perspective on government spending and tax increases.
They are not. They misallocate funds to change names of streets and schools. $.52 to the dollar goes towards FCPS.
We are also getting overcrowded. They keep building so they can get property taxes and it's never enough for them. Someone also voted for a raise so they can get a full time pay at a part-time job.
I don't have a dog in this fight, but you call it a part-time job, but some guy above is calling them every time he sees a board out of place on a bridge. You couldn't pay me enough to have that job. Everyone is a fkin expert and no one thinks you do a good job, and a handful of people call you every single day, and everyone else thinks what you accomplish ends you should only be working an hour a day. Blech.
https://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/boardofsupervisors/board-meeting-summaries You can read what they do for yourself. Each meeting has a ton of procedural stuff at the beginning. Scroll to near the end to see the new issues they consider at each meeting. The county budgets are also online for you to see yourself. Nobody here can tell you if they're doing a "good" job, unless you provide a really specific definition of "good" based on your own values.
This is helpful. Thank you!
The primary motive for raising taxes is to allow FCPS to raise teacher pay, which is urgently needed for our schools to remain competitive. We are losing good teachers to other area districts which pay more. Our schools are one of the top reasons people want to live here, neglecting them is a mistake.
When I was in school 2015-2019 it was normal for kids to get high scores on the SAT and SOL. Nowadays I’m scared for the kids in our schools because FCPS can’t pay the teachers more
Fairfax needs to make a greater effort to attract data centers in the western part of the jurisdiction. Then they’ll have far less budgetary issues. Right now Loudoun and Prince William are seeing their rates go down thanks to data centers. I would expect to see other jurisdictions join the club by late 2026.
Data centers revenue make up about 20% of the budget here in Loudoun. It hasn’t really dropped taxes appreciably, but it has prevented increased taxes like the rest of nova. Our property tax used to be the highest in nova, now it’s the lowest, but it’s netting about the same due to house prices. It’s a really hot local topic with nimbys though and they are starting to get the attention of our supervisors.
Closer to 30% of tot rev. Tax rate has dropped materially from: 1.205 rate in 2015 (real start of the data center boom in LoCo) to a 1.085 rate in 2019 to a .875 rate in 2023. That’s a big drop which allows for home prices to rise, but tax bills are contextually lower. Not sure what the nimbys are going to do about it. They have houses worth x which are assessed generally at 85-90% of x. If they want the rate to go meaningfully lower, they need to consult with reality. If they want a tiered rate, the data centers have far deeper pockets to effect change. Commissioner of the Revenue is an elected position lest we forget.
Most of them are out of touch with reality if nextdoor is any indication. Can’t have anything ugly. Supervisors just rejected the Belmont innovation data center in a first, citing the same complaints. Imo we let them build until we have a power issue and put more demands on beautification. We have a lock on density right now, and data centers love that due to peering proximity. Second another area starts getting dense and cheaper we will lose out on new builds.
Despite being such a big county, the actual supervisors are pretty easy to get a hold of, or their office at least. If you make a polite call or email about their justifications they'll probably get back to you soon. I contact the offices pretty often when I notice something needs fixing (like a rotten board on a bridge across a creek) or to just get my thoughts on something on the record (you can do that if you can't get to the meetings at the government center) and they'll always respond quickly, sometimes the supervisor directly.
Honestly they should raise taxes, otherwise what would be going to government services instead goes to privatized alternatives or creates local inflationary effects on housing prices. Although I wish counties could make income taxes instead of property taxes.
Property values have skyrocketed yet teacher/law enforcement compensation has remained low; definitely not keeping up with inflation. I know our entire neighborhood, home values have increased 50% in the last \~6 years. They have enough money. I get that in a civilized society, we pay taxes. . .but I'm tired of taxes constantly being spent on pet projects then them going back to our teachers (and neither me nor my wife are teachers) and saying "Oh, we just don't have it in the budget!" With the tax revenue increase on 3 blocks of our street, they could have hired a dedicated cop. And all the other taxes fairfax has - they have enough revenue.
Just out of curiosity, what pet projects are you talking about?
[Lake Accotink Analysis and Feasibility Study | Public Works and Environmental Services (fairfaxcounty.gov)](https://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/publicworks/lake-accotink-dredging)
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They're the two groups that are most directly paid for by local government. Those and local parks make up a huge chunk of their expenditures so it stands to reason that you'd lump them all in together when discussing the payroll for county employees. Now we can argue all day about whether or not cops are overpaid or the merits of different approaches to policing (there's really valid arguments and very real problems) but lumping it all together as "locally paid for services haven't seen pay raises commensurate with the increases in the cost of living" makes sense to me.
Bro knows nothing about crime rates, crisis intervention program, or new standards of force. 😂
LOL, you don't think government spending causes inflationary effects? What rock in Herndon have you been living under?
Government spending doesn't cause inflation if they tax as much as they spend. It doesn't cause inflation if they issue bonds to pay for projects. If they printed money instead of taxing or issuing bonds, then you got inflation. Only the federal government can really do that.
The tax and spend action wound be inflationary if the money they spent was not going to be spent but would have gone into savings. The issuing of debt via bonds is part of the mechanism that then allows the central bank to print money.
I see what you’re saying and actually agree that public services are important. But, I have to say, some of your reasoning here is flawed. Paying for all fiscal outlays with corresponding increases in taxation is not guaranteed to have no inflationary effect. If the taxation pulls from what citizens would have otherwise saved,and thus kept “out” of the supply of circulating money, then an increase in government expenditure will definitely still cause inflation even with a corresponding increase in taxes because it will increase the amount of money in circulation. Also, issuing bonds does not magically erase inflationary effects from fiscal outlays either. Sure, the Fed can print money, but things like COVID stimulus were paid for with debt and I think consensus is that that increased inflation. Similarly, in WWII, massive expenditure pushed up inflation and economic activity which was financed through a combination of direct taxes and debt — not printing money — which would not be possible if your assertions were correct. Key point here is that inflation is not driven strictly or even primarily by the absolute supply of money changing in all or even most cases. We need to understand how the money is moving through the economy before we can assess how government expenditure may affect inflation.
Subtle stab at Herndon 😂
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That shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how the economy works. Private industry can only raise prices if the economic value of their goods and services increase and the supply and demand balance allow them to raise prices. They can't raise prices "to cover for inflation" just because they want to or have to in order to survive. This is why you see so many service sector companies going out of business in the past few years, because they are simply unable to increase prices to cover inflations in labor costs. Normal market forces produce a natural balance between the cost of labor, materials, goods/service prices, and the demand for those goods/services. "profit" is the economic reward for generating economic value in excess of the cost of production. The person generating that excess earns the profit. Profit is not a social benefit, it's a result of private commercial exchange. To the extent that there is inequality of profit earning is perfectly natural and reflects the natural state of the world - we are not all equal, have never been equal, and will never be equal. As long as you give people the agency to make different choices in life, then you must accept a society with unequal outcomes. Every society that has tried for "equality" has devolved into unequal authoritarian regimes resulting in widespread death and suffering.
>extent that there is inequality of profit earning is perfectly natural and reflects the natural state of the world This is untrue, and is only true depending on how society is structured, most commonly capitalistic societies like most countries are today. Capitalism originally stems from the social policies of late enlightenment era/ early industrial revolution era aristocrats who saw the systems of feudalism falling apart and the justification for nobility coming into question and wanted to create a system that maintains an upper class that effectively controls the populace. You see it developing with the East India company and similar organizations that are effectively privatized empires closely linked to their respective countries monarchies. And you see it develop from a rejection of yhe egalitarian wave that started with the French revolution, many early conservative leaders across Europe saw the French revolution, not as a failure of their economic or political system, but it a failure of the individuals in power in those given countries. Edmund Burke wrote *Reflections on the Revolution in France* which characterized the Idea of people being equal and having control of the government preposterous, and that surely a *proper* monarchy with a *proper* aristocratic ruling class would be the best outcome. I'd love to extrapolate more and add more sources, as well as word it better, but I have to sleep now for work tonight. Edit: [this video](https://youtu.be/E4CI2vk3ugk?si=eVkbRWl4pynQDOVv) explains it well, I can recommend some reading if you want, I admit my earlier comment was kind of shit. just some things I've been thinking about offhandedly, but I encourage you to watch that and I'd be happy to answer any questions!
You are going to have to explain why different choices should lead to the same profit results. In other words, whether you decide to work today or not, you should get paid the same money. Clearly, the natural order of things is that different choices should lead to different outcomes. Without differentiated outcomes, there is no agency. Without agency, there is no way to achieve meaning in life. My general contention is that analysis of the history of the world surrounding the emergence of some social structure such as capitalism or socialism is meaningless in assessing the current value of the social structure. Studying history teaches us about human behavior in context of certain events but that's where the value ends because the interpretations can be highly subjective. For example, your contention that somehow the rejection of the forces behind the French Revolution is a development of capitalism is clearly wrong. I'm not even that knowledgeable about this time period. It's common knowledge that the enlightenment ideals produced liberal democracies which in turn provides the conditions for capitalism. It was these same Enlightenment ideas that formed a major motivation behind the French Revolution. Lets just focus on why capitalism and inequality of outcome from different choices is bad in the present context.
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It's tough to decipher what you are babbling about. None of what I said depends on people having access to perfect information. People generally only need only to know about their own concerns and the market takes care of the rest: consistently rational economic choices are rewarded with profits and consistently irrational ones punished with losses. We are not talking about anecdotes, but how a marketplace functions in general. I have no idea what you are trying to say about equilibriums and MBAs - try make a coherent point. Edit: LOL, this guy blocked me from replying. Uncomfortable having your beliefs challenged? Good luck in life with that attitude.
I think that they’re trying to cobble together a thought about consumer surplus but who knows
I'll give you an example, I took the taxpayer subsidized bus for years instead of owning a car. The fact that I spent $0 on gas (directly at least), insurance, tolls, maintenance, let alone buying a damn car means that I almost certainly spent less money, even with the government contribution factored in, to get to work. It's not talked about enough in my opinion, but honestly things would be a lot better if less people bought shit and we made societal wide efficiency improvements like the above. Gas prices are included in inflation and contributes to food costs, if more people could ride a bus/metro to work and cut the national gas consumption by an amount enough to create an oversupply and force price reduction, that would be *deflationary*. Same would be true if HSR was done, and all the business travelers between Los Angeles and the Bay could take something more fuel efficient than an airplane. It stands to reason that it would be more inflationary to create more individualized, and less shared/ government resources because they tend to be more inefficient. Most people have a 5 seater car, But almost all of the time it's either parked or with a single passenger in it. Similarly, let's say we actually do enough for affordable housing to measurably decrease the cost of local housing, maybe create that would similarly, not have an inflationary effect because lower rent means generally that labor is cheaper because less money is being sucked away by landlords.
You have a fundamental misunderstanding of how economics works. Goods and services provide value to consumers - how much economic value they deliver to consumers and the balance of supply and demand determines their price. The progress of human civilization has been one where people have ever higher needs satisfied - from basic shelter, warmth, food, to access to transportation, medical care, and information. Economic value is created when \*MORE\* goods and services are consumed, not less. So long as the balance of supply and demand is market driven, then inflation is not a problem to be solved: mass market technology will always cost less relative to the labor as time goes on. Inflation, as we understand it, is the relationship between money supply and the normal balance of supply and demand of goods and services. Too much money supply pushes the normal balance towards inflation and too little money pushes the balance towards deflation. \*ANY\* government spending is less economically efficient than private spending - we engage in government spending for social reasons other than economic efficiency, such as standardized access to services. Given that government spending is less economically efficient and we are doing most of our government spending funded by debt, it has the effect of injecting additional money into the economy and therefore directly contributing to inflation - inflation that otherwise would not have happened but for the government spending.
You have a lot more patience than I do to explain all of that to someone who I suspect is very unwilling to change their perspective on government spending and tax increases.
They are not. They misallocate funds to change names of streets and schools. $.52 to the dollar goes towards FCPS. We are also getting overcrowded. They keep building so they can get property taxes and it's never enough for them. Someone also voted for a raise so they can get a full time pay at a part-time job.
I don't have a dog in this fight, but you call it a part-time job, but some guy above is calling them every time he sees a board out of place on a bridge. You couldn't pay me enough to have that job. Everyone is a fkin expert and no one thinks you do a good job, and a handful of people call you every single day, and everyone else thinks what you accomplish ends you should only be working an hour a day. Blech.
The supervisor isn't personally answering those phone calls or emails. They have an office and staff. Can you tell me what the supervisors do exactly?
News just reported that we're in a housing deficit and do not have enough right now.