Falls Church City Council members appear as divided as ever on how costs for trash collection in single-family neighborhoods should be funded.
At a Monday work session, Council members split almost down the middle on whether to shift to a fee-for-service model or to stick with funding weekly trash services through the city. More specifically, they are still debating whether they can work out details in the few weeks remaining before the city’s Fiscal Year 2026 budget is due for adoption.
The City of Falls Church currently provides once-a-week trash services to about 3,000 single-family residences at a cost of about $950,000 a year.
Shifting to a fee-for-service system would enable county officials to lower the property tax rate by approximately 1.5 cents per $1,000 assessed value.
The proposed annual trash collection fee is about $310 per household. Adding this would create financial winners and losers.
Among the winners: owners of condominiums, apartment buildings, commercial, retail and mixed-use properties, who currently are taxed to pay the costs of trash collection even though they do not participate in the program.
Losers would be those with single-family homes valued at less than $2 million, for whom the new fee for trash collection would exceed what they had been paying via taxes.
Mayor Letty Hardi and Council member Debora Schantz-Hiscott were among those supporting the change.
By moving to a fee-for-service model, “we’re asking people who are receiving services to pay for the service they’re receiving,” Schantz-Hiscott said. “It shouldn’t be subsidized by others.”
But several of her colleagues feared that trying to get this done in just a few weeks, and without robust public discussion, was a mistake.
“It’s too rushed and there’s not enough community engagement,” Council member Erin Flynn said. “If we’re going too fast, we’re going to make mistakes.”
“There’s not been enough community discussion to make a fundamental change like this,” Council member David Snyder added. “What I want is a legitimate public discussion, a much more thorough public process.”
At the end of an animated back-and-forth that lasted until almost midnight, Council members asked City Manager Wyatt Shields to come back with answers to a few specific questions that would guide the next round of discussion.
By the end of the meeting, Shields was signaling concerns about getting a policy ready by the time the budget is adopted in coming weeks.
“There’s going to be a hundred more questions — that’s just the way it’s going to go,” he said.
Shields asked for permission to begin fleshing out the details of a staff-and-resident work group that could study the issue, should Council members opt to take that route.
A study group would be able to provide options that would be considered for Fiscal Year 2027, Shields said. Its work “doesn’t have to stretch out for a whole year,” he said.
Some members seemed warm to the idea.
“This is way too complicated to implement with this current budget,” Board member Marybeth Connelly said in pushing for a study group. Everyone on the Council, she said, “has a different idea” how to address the situation.
Hardi pushed to include an additional $22 fee per household for composting services, while there also was discussion of whether homeowners could pay less by opting for a 35-gallon recycling bin rather than the 65-gallon option.
Throwing a cautionary note into the entire discussion was City Treasurer Jody Acosta, who voiced concern that necessary technological changes to accommodate the change might not be possible in time for tax bills to be printed and mailed in the fall.
Keeping the switch simple by avoiding issues like composting or the size of recycling bins would simplify the process, but “I still would be leery of getting it done by this December’s bill,” she said.
Hardi asked Acosta to mull the intricacies in coming days to see if it would work or not.
Falls Church’s current real-estate tax rate is $1.21 per $100. Under the Fiscal Year 2026 budget that Shields presented, it would drop to $1.185, and if trash-collection costs were removed it could dip to $1.17.
Even if the tax rate dropped the full 4 cents (3.3%), most owners of residential property would still see a net tax increase owing to higher assessed valuations.
Supermarket will be smaller under revamped proposal
Plans for a supermarket in Falls Church’s West End development are likely to be downsized.
But despite the smaller footprint, city leaders do not expect to lose out on any sales-tax revenue.
Fresh Market, the North Carolina-based chain that has agreed to lease the space at the intersection of Leesburg Pike and Haycock Road, has requested to take only 32,900 square feet of the 39,200 square feet set aside for a supermarket in the mixed-use development.
The smaller space would provide a better footprint for the supermarket, a representative for the developer said.
Because the square footage would be lower than the zoning agreement between the city and developer permits, City Council approval is required.
Since the supermarket chain expects to meet the agreement’s minimum sales requirements despite the smaller amount of space, there would be “no net negative impact” in terms of sales-tax revenue, City Manager Wyatt Shields said at a Monday (April 7) Council work session.
Final Council consideration of the request will come in mid-May.
As for the leftover space? It is in the process of being leased for a retail-service use, but negotiations have not been completed.
When open, the Fresh Market will be competing against a long-existing Giant Food supermarket directly across Haycock Road. It joins a growing number of grocery stores in the city.
