Falls Church property owners are probably getting a tax cut, though it’s not as high as initially proposed.
City Council has tentatively settled on a rate of $1.20 per $100 assessed valuation, down from $1.21 in the current fiscal year.
City Manager Wyatt Shields had originally suggested dropping the rate to $1.185 in $133.8 million draft Fiscal Year 2026 budget in late March. At a Monday work session, he said the local economy is likely “going into some difficult headwinds,” leading to the change.
Council member David Snyder pressed for a larger cut — perhaps 1.5 cents — citing the impact of higher taxes on homeowners. Others said they were willing to come down from the current rate, but not by as much.
“I can live with a one-cent reduction,” Mayor Letty Hardi said.
Earlier in the budget process, Council members had advertised no cut in the existing rate of $1.21, an action that set the maximum rate for the coming year but allowed for a lower rate to be adopted.
All of the proposed rates would leave nearly all Falls Church homeowners with higher tax bills in the coming fiscal year, owing to assessments that rose an average of just under 7% this year.
A one-cent cut in the rate would result in a 4.7% increase in the median tax bill for homeowners, from $11,714 to $12,266. Even with a 2.5-cent cut, the rate would still have grown 3.4% to $12,114, according to city data.
At the work session, Shields laid out several budget cuts that could be implemented to balance the books with the one-cent reduction. He also recommended leaving a contingency fund of about a half-million dollars in place for a few months to see where the regional economy goes.
What to do with the contingency funding “could be a September conversation,” he said.
“We can put that money to work for the taxpayers at that time, or we can hold onto it [if] the headwinds are going against us,” he said.
Among items listed as “possible” cuts as Council members gear up for final action on May 12: elimination of the position of director of community planning and economic development services and elimination of funding for a Watch Night celebration on New Year’s Eve.
Any cut in the tax rate would make the city school system receive slightly less than the approximately $55.5 million transfer that Shields initially proposed, city officials told ARLnow.
Council members said they expected the School Board to try and make needed cuts from its largely finalized FY 2026 budget. If school leaders could make the case that they tried but couldn’t find cuts to make up the shortfall, they might not have to reduce spending, several Council members said.
Snyder said he hoped that school leaders and the broader community would understand the gravity of the situation, with the city and region seeing increased unemployment and other ripple effects from the Trump administration’s recent decisions.
“We’re showing discipline,” Snyder said of the city’s budgeting. “We’re making cuts that we don’t want to make, but we realize things are probably going to get worse rather than better.”
