Public benefits assistance, child care and senior center support services are just a few of the areas where Fairfax County might pull back on funding, as it seeks to close a $292.7 million budget gap.
If approved, the $59.8 million in potential reductions would be the county’s largest funding cut since it slashed over $90 million in 2009 following the Great Recession, County Executive Bryan Hill told the Board of Supervisors when presenting his proposed fiscal year 2026 budget plan on Feb. 18.
While the $5.7 billion draft budget covers pay raises, county workers fear the proposed cuts, coupled with sweeping layoffs and funding freezes by the federal government, will compound existing staffing challenges when demand for many services, from public safety to basic needs assistance, is already increasing, union representatives say.
“As a county employee, we appreciate that the county is committed to funding the union pay plan,” said Keodavong Zelaya, a human services worker and director on the executive board of SEIU Virginia 512’s Fairfax County chapter. “… But they are really concerned that the proposed cuts will affect employees, how they’re going to process all these services that the residents are needing at this time.”
Demand for human services on the rise
Requests for assistance from the county have “definitely” increased in recent weeks, Zelaya told FFXnow in a March 27 interview.
Some of the influx stems from earlier policy shifts, including the resumption of Medicaid eligibility reviews and the depletion of federal funding to address issues like evictions after the national public health emergency for COVID-19 ended in May 2023.
After peaking at 185,068 cases in January 2024, calls for assistance with Medicaid, food benefits and other public programs dipped slightly by the end of fiscal year 2024 on June 30, but the county already anticipated that caseloads would climb again, according to budget documents for the Department of Family Services (DFS), which includes the public assistance and employment services division.
With inflation trending upward, the rising cost of food, and the number of households experiencing food insecurity, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) caseload increased to an all-time high of 58,958 participants in June 2024 and is expected to continue to rise. Childcare and TANF cases are up as well; while relatively small compared to Medicaid and SNAP, the growth in the workload is significant.
Hill’s proposed budget was formulated before President Donald Trump took office and didn’t take into account the possible impacts of his administration’s ongoing gutting of the federal workforce. Approximately 78,810 Fairfax County residents work for the federal government, and thousands more are employed by private contractors, who are starting to make cuts after losing contracts.
“Now, we have new residents requesting more because they’re losing their health insurance, they’re losing their income to pay for food, the basic needs that their family needs,” Zelaya said.
The proposed FY 2026 budget nixes more than $3 million and 12 full-time positions from DFS, including two workers and $246,071 from the public assistance division. One of the positions is vacant, but the other is an assistant division director for quality and support who oversees 150 staff members.
“Eliminating this position will require the division to restructure in order to evenly align duties and responsibilities,” the budget says. “Losing this position may negatively impact the quality and integrity of the public assistance programs administered by DFS.”
Other potential changes include the elimination of a General Relief for Disabled Adults program that helps people apply for financial assistance, reduced funding for at-risk youth services, and the loss of four human services workers involved in programs that provide employment in the community for seniors and help connect children to medical and dental care.
Services for children, seniors could be reduced
The number of cuts targeting services that assist children, seniors and other populations that are most in need of county support is a major concern for the Fairfax Workers Coalition (FWC), Executive Director David Lyons says.
“That’s what makes it a little worrisome to me,” Lyons told FFXnow. “Of course, there are threats to programs like Head Start due to the federal fiasco that’s going on, and there just seems to be a lot of that in there that focuses on the most needy, or the young population. That’s very troubling.”
On top of the DFS reductions, the Department of Neighborhood and Community Services (NCS) would shed $6.7 million under the proposed budget, more than half of which ($4.1 million) comes from ending funding for middle school summer and after-school programs.
The prospect of losing the Middle School After School (MSAS) program in particular has alarmed Fairfax County Public Schools leaders, staff and families of the 23,800 students who rely on it for academic support, sports and extracurricular activities.
Claire Marsala, a French teacher at Twain Middle School who assists with one of its after-school programs, told FFXnow that staff have discussed continuing to provide programming on a volunteer basis. Teachers involved in the MSAS program are currently compensated on an hourly basis by the county.
“It just wouldn’t be as big of a program, and it wouldn’t be fair to teachers,” she said, noting that she would likely have to find a part-time job to make up for the unpaid work.
That approach also wouldn’t help the 26 after-school specialists who coordinate the programs. Though FCPS provides some funding for supplies, those positions would be cut without the county funding, a spokesperson for the school system confirmed.
A Bridge to Kindergarten program that served 1,600 children as of summer 2023 is also on the chopping block, along with programming for older adults at the Mott Community Center off Braddock Road and the Pimmit Hills Senior Center, which has seen annual visits decline from 14,000 prior to the pandemic to 4,000 today, according to NCS.
The budget would also reduce funding for assistance for adults with cognitive and physical disabilities at the county’s 14 senior centers by $601,994.
While it doesn’t directly serve the public, a proposal to hand off an Employee Child Care Center for Fairfax County government workers and contractors to a private provider is another top concern, says Ellisa Green, who works in human services and serves as SEIU’s Fairfax County board treasurer.
Located in the Pennino Building at 12011 Government Center Parkway, the child care center serves up to 100 children aged 6 months to 5 years. While no reductions would be implemented in the upcoming fiscal year, which starts July 1, the county would cut $860,000 annually — the amount currently spent to subsidize tuition — and 40 full-time staff positions once the service is fully privatized in fiscal year 2027.
Any change that reduces funding for the child care center, whose capacity is already limited, would be “detrimental” to the people who teach there and the county employees who rely on it so they can do their jobs, according to Green.
“There are a lot of services that I don’t think the need is going away,” Green said. “I would estimate that there is and will continue to be an increase in services, and this is certainly not the time to be cutting or reducing funding for the staff who provide those services.”
Cuts could exacerbate existing staffing shortages, unions say
Coming on the heels of $6.3 million in reductions in fiscal year 2024 and $34.3 million in the current fiscal year 2025, the proposed FY 2026 spending cuts decrease agency budgets by 3.4% on average — a less drastic step than the 10% in reductions that Hill had directed each department to identify.
However, FWC and SEIU Fairfax County leaders both say the plans were generally submitted by department heads without direct input from the workers who provide the affected services.
“All of these things can be addressed by simply talking, speaking with the coworkers who are on the ground providing these services,” Green said. “Any one of them will happily tell county leadership what they need more of, where they’re feeling lacking.”
Lyons observed that few of the cuts affect senior administrators, but one of the coalition’s members — a custodian who has worked in the county for 47 years — could be laid off, as some departments trim their maintenance budgets.
In some cases, employees are already handling increased workloads as a result of staffing shortages that emerged before or during the pandemic, according to the unions. Green says she’s heard from workers who feel they can’t take time off “because the staffing is so low that the services might not be able to be provided at a high quality.”
With many vacant positions poised for elimination, any hoped-for relief is unlikely to emerge soon.
“Many of these are long-term vacancies that the county has not been able to fill, either through problems with recruitment or just not paying enough,” Lyons said. “What that means for the workforce that’s still here is they’re working at still a lesser wage, and they’re doing essentially two or three jobs at once, and the pressure increases.”
In a statement, a county spokesperson says agencies were directed to identify potential cuts last summer and had to submit their proposals in September 2024. With agencies varying in size and structure, they used different approaches and processes to gather feedback from staff.
SEIU, the Fairfax Workers Coalition and other employee groups also generally testify at the Board of Supervisors’ public hearings on the budget, which will be held on April 22-24 this year.
“Agency-submitted reductions were prioritized to indicate potential impact,” the spokesperson said. “Key factors considered by the County Executive and budget staff included the effect on residents, potential impact on employees and whether existing services could be scaled or substituted with similar resources. The goal was to preserve core services while addressing the County’s budget challenges.”
Board of Supervisors Chairman Jeff McKay says he has received “a lot of great feedback from the community” on the proposed budget and encouraged all members of the public to continue providing input, which will help guide his priorities.
In addition to participating in the public hearings, community members can weigh in on the budget by contacting the chairman’s office, emailing FY26Budget@publicinput.com, calling 703-890-5898 or taking an online survey that’s open through April 24.
The board will mark up the budget on May 6 and adopt a final plan on May 13.
“This year’s budget process is challenging, as all County agencies have been asked to identify potential cuts,” McKay said by email. “However, we remain committed to ensuring that essential services are available to residents while fulfilling our responsibilities to taxpayers.”
