Fairfax County Public Library (FCPL) officials see a way to avoid considering any serious budget cuts for nearly a decade, but it hinges on a big gamble: construction projects starting on schedule.
For fiscal year 2027, which will begin on July 1, 2026, the public library system is seeking its current funding of $36.5 million after the county directed all agencies stick to their existing service levels, according to a memo submitted by FCPL Director Eric Carzon to Fairfax County Department of Management and Budget Director Phil Hagen on Friday (Sept. 12).
The plan would shift $850,000 from personnel to boost the operating budget to just under $6.7 million in order to address “several critical things [that] are severely underfunded,” Carzon told the FCPL Board of Trustees when presenting his memo at its Sept. 10 meeting.
About $150,000 would go toward library materials, while the remainder would cover a “laundry list” of needs, from inflation and technology maintenance to furniture issues and security guards, particularly a contractor at the Reston Regional Library who was paid last year out of one-time carryover funds.
According to Carzon, FCPL currently receives no money from the county for staff training, relying instead on funds raised by the nonprofit Fairfax Library Foundation and the Friends of the Library. For the upcoming budget, he requested “a modest $30,000 for training,” which would include support for human resources personnel to visit job fairs for recruitment purposes.
At the board meeting, Carzon recalled that Montgomery County Public Library, where he worked before getting hired to run the Fairfax County system last fall, had a $48,000 budget for employee training at one point, “and we thought that was paltry.”
“We have about the same amount of employees [in Fairfax County], so having a training line item is a start,” he said. “So, that is the first component of the budget. It’s probably unusual, just in the fact that I don’t think they’ve seen that kind of proposal from FCPL for many years, but we thought it was a way to sort of address the structural issues with the budget.”
However, County Executive Bryan Hill’s team also instructed all agencies to identify potential cuts amounting to 5% of their budget. That’s less severe than the 10% reductions sought last year, but for FCPL, $1.8 million is still a daunting target.
Given that the $3 million currently allocated to library materials is already “less than half of what it should be,” Carzon told the board that he “wouldn’t dream of cutting the collection budget” unless the county was absolutely desperate, leaving two options — reducing operating hours or closing a branch.
Cutting hours appears to be the less severe option on the surface; it was only two years ago that FCPL standardized its hours after reducing them to manage staff shortages. But the impact would actually be more widespread, because it would require making “some very ugly choices” when determining how to staff branches, Carzon explained.
“What you’re really talking about is, ‘How many staff could we do without?'” the library director said. “And then when you start talking about that, then they’re like, ‘Okay, well, I need to cut hours one day a week at a time,’ and then, if you do that, and you’re trying to also preserve your service on weekends, you end up telling your career staff you get to work Sunday through Thursday now, or we’re going to cut Thursdays, so now, you’ll never have a two-day weekend ever. We’re not going to be able to recruit for that.”
Temporary library closures could help avert permanent one
Recognizing a permanent branch closure as likely a non-starter, FCPL instead sees an opportunity to stave off even contemplating a move that drastic by taking advantage of upcoming renovations that will temporarily shut down some sites, starting with the George Mason Regional Library in Annandale.
Typically, when a branch closes for renovation, its workers are redistributed to other locations. For instance, staff at Vienna’s Patrick Henry Library, which closed in May, moved to a temporary branch at the Cedar Park Shopping Center and to the Kingstowne Regional Library, which is currently under construction and expected to reopen in the coming months.
For George Mason, FCPL is looking at retaining eight career or merit staff members and three pages to support a temporary library that would open before construction begins, possibly next summer. The roughly 13 merit and seven page positions from George Mason that do not get assigned to an interim library would be reassigned to equivalent vacant positions throughout the system, a library spokesperson said.
“Staff at the surrounding branches will be affected. They’ll do things slower, because instead of having 2,000 people come through their door in a day, they might get 2,500 people in a day,” Carzon admitted. “… It is a real sacrifice in service, but it is also, frankly, manageable. So, that’s worth about a million dollars, and we put that up there.”
Looking farther into the future, positions could be similarly reshuffled when the Herndon Fortnightly and Kings Park community libraries come up for renovation — which could be around fiscal year 2029 when George Mason reopens.
Feasibility studies for both projects are now underway, and they’re in line to get $41 million if voters approve next year’s library bond referendum.
With updates to the Reston, Centreville, Chantilly and Sherwood libraries also on the table within the next decade or two, FCPL could have as many as eight consecutive years with at least one branch closed for a capital project, Carzon said.
There’s a risk that the timing might not line up as planned, with George Mason, for example, needing to reopen before the Herndon or Kings Park libraries are ready to close. Carzon also noted that the Kingstowne library will eventually need four more staff members, since some of its positions will shift back to Vienna once the new Vienna-Carter Library is completed.
Fairfax County anticipates that the expanded library will be ready for occupancy in 2027, though construction hasn’t yet started.
Still, reducing personnel in the short term at least, plus putting off addressing some of the lingering operating budget issues, would enable FCPL to meet the 5% reduction target without proposing any completely infeasible cuts.
“Closing a library branch is unlikely to be approved, unless you were a hundred percent desperate,” Carzon said. “So I didn’t feel like it was intellectually honest to put it up there, unless I literally had no other choice. We have another choice … Half of it’s a little ugly, but we’ve survived this long.”
At the Sept. 10 meeting, members of the Board of Trustees thanked Carzon for explaining his budget proposal and, after some discussion, unanimously approved his memo to Budget Director Phil Hagen.
Whether the county actually agrees to any of FCPL’s suggestions remains to be seen. Like the Board of Supervisors and the general public, most employees don’t get a glimpse of the upcoming budget until County Executive Bryan Hill unveils his proposal each February.
The trustees expressed tentative hope, though, that the county supervisors will support the library system based on discussions the two boards had last October at their first joint meeting in three years.
“When we met with them about the budget, they seemed to understand the fact that the cost of books and materials has gone up dramatically,” said Board of Trustees Chair Suzanne Levy, who represents Fairfax City. “And our budget is, what, half what it used to be 25 years ago.”
