Fairfax County staff have sketched out details of a series of bond referendums for the next five years that would raise just under $2 billion for facility construction and renovation projects.
With both economic uncertainty and higher interest rates causing headwinds, however, alterations could be possible — even likely.
“Given the fiscal environment we’re in, we certainly have the opportunity to make changes,” Fairfax County Chief Financial Officer Christina Jackson told the Board of Supervisors at a March 24 briefing to its budget committee.
Likely to be left unchanged is a $460 million bond for schools planned for the November 2025 ballot. After that, the tentative package looks like this:
- 2026: $346 million for county projects, including human services, early childhood education, libraries and parks
- 2027: $460 million for schools
- 2028: $200 million to support county commitments to the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA)
- 2029: $460 million for schools
A public safety bond likely would follow in 2030.
In her presentation, Jackson detailed expected changes to what previously had been planned for the fall 2026 county government bond.
Funding for early childhood facilities will be reduced from $50 million to $25 million, with the remainder expected to be held for a 2032 bond.
Proposed upgrades to the Centreville Regional Library would be deferred to 2032, but funding for improvements to the Kings Park and Herndon Fortnightly branches would stay on the 2026 ballot.
The 2026 bond likely now will include $35 million for a new health department laboratory. The current facility, which operates out of a former school building at 10310 Layton Hall Drive in Fairfax City, is the only one of its kind in Northern Virginia and is in need of replacement, county officials say.
For some of its more complex capital projects, the county intends to consider other financing options, such as economic development authority bonds, that count toward its debt ratios but not the $400 million limit on general obligation bond sales.
Priorities for fiscal years 2026 to 2028 include an annex building in the Judicial Center redevelopment, the long-pending Penn Daw fire station, shelter and supportive housing complex, and the Reston Town Center North redevelopment.
The county’s budget guidelines seek to keep total bonded indebtedness under 10% of annual general fund expenditures and below 3% of the county’s total assessed valuation. The current rates are 6.51% and 0.94%, respectively, allowing for additional projects to be added.
At the meeting, Board of Supervisors Chairman Jeff McKay voiced interest in using bonds to pay for local transportation projects, particularly those aimed at pedestrians and bicyclists, in future packages.
“There’s a hunger for other transportation improvement projects to be in our bond program, not just Metro projects,” he said.
Rising interest rates are making it more costly for the county to borrow money, despite holding AAA bond ratings. A January 2025 sale of $400 million in bonds for schools, county capital projects and WMATA had an interest rate of 3.57%, up from 3.27% in 2024 and well above the record low of 1.23% achieved in 2021.
Higher interest rates “have a real impact to our budget bottom line,” Jackson told supervisors.
Still unspent are some of the funds approved by voters as far back as the 2018 and 2020 referendums. County officials plan to seek the Fairfax County Circuit Court’s approval for two-year extensions to sell the remaining bonds from those two years.
Circuit court approval is also required before any future bond referendums can be placed on that ballot. It generally is approved on a pro-forma basis.
Voter approval of bond referendums is typically a given. In the November 2024 election, the county’s $180 million transportation bond received support of 66.3% of the electorate, while the $126 million public-safety bond did even better, earning 69.6% of the vote.
