By Brian Trompeter
Longtime Fairfax County observers will recognize this budget tactic instantly: When told to identify possible cuts, choose ones that will cause the most public outcry.
Fairfax County Park Authority (FCPA) did that when proposing $2.4 million worth of potential fiscal 2025 reductions, as requested by County Executive Bryan Hill.
“None of the cuts we are going to present are going to be easy, and all will have a significant impact on the community and our already-stressed maintenance operations within our parks,” FCPA deputy director Sarah Baldwin warned the Park Authority Board on Aug. 23.
Whether any of those cuts will be required remains an open question, but county-government departments and agencies will still have to go through the process of proposing areas to trim.
The Park Authority Board will finalize and endorse proposed cuts Sept. 13 and in October will submit baseline-budget requests to the county’s Department of Management and Budget for review.
Vice Chairman Maggie Godbold (Sully District) said she appreciated how the Park Authority’s starting negotiating position leaned heavily on items desired by the public.
“I’ll never even think about buying a car from you guys,” Godbold said.
County supervisors, whose seats are up for election in November, will start their budget process in early 2025 with a final vote slated for May. Most Fairfax-government tax revenue comes from real-estate taxes, which are a combination of the assessed value of property (to be updated at the start of the year) and the tax rate (to be set as part of the final budget process in the spring).
Park Authority executive director Jai Cole said she was “cautiously optimistic” supervisors would not need to make all 7 percent of the cuts. County Executive Hill’s guidance seemed to affirm that stance.
“Not every reduction submitted will be incorporated in the proposed FY 2025 budget, but the process we are undertaking will allow us to step back and evaluate the services we offer, as well as the most efficient means of offering them,” according to Hill.
The Park Authority’s general fund in fiscal 2024 is $34.3 million; its revenue-and-operating fund stands at $49.1 million. The general fund’s expenses consist of nearly $26.9 million for personnel and a general operating fund of almost $7.46 million.
The budget package “shows how little there is to cut that’s not going to hurt us,” Godbold said.
The budget package “shows how little there is to cut that’s not going to hurt us,” Godbold said.
Of that operating fund, 44 percent – $3,282,450 – is effectively immune from cuts. These items include postage; legal fees, development permits, engineering and project planning; computer replacement; internal technology changes; utilities; fuel; motor-pool vehicles; and vehicle replacement.
That leaves $4,175,699 from which the targeted $2,370,600 in budget cuts would need to be taken. By not considering personnel cuts, FCPA officials “in effect make this a 50-percent budget cut,” said board chairman Kiel Stone (Braddock District).
FCPA officials took two major budget items off the table by not considering saving $500,000 via reducing turf-maintenance contracts for athletic fields or eliminating new funding for the Landscape Legacy Program, worth $750,000.
The potential reductions, worth nearly $2.4 million, would:
• Close 26 stand-alone park restrooms, saving $185,000 and leaving a remaining budget of $102,000 in that category. The only restroom sites that would remain would be at Frying Pan Farm Park; Patriot Park North; Lake Fairfax campsites; Burke Lake’s marina, ice-cream parlor and campsites; and Martin Luther King Pool.
Officials chose those parks because they have campsites and food operations, Baldwin said.
• Eliminate all 139 portable toilets at athletic fields, which would save the entire budgeted amount of $175,000.
• Reduce mowing of park open spaces by one-third, saving $147,333 and leaving $294,667 for that budget item.
• Reduce mowing at athletic fields – 452 owned by Fairfax County Public Schools and 263 by the Park Authority – from eight times per month to five, saving $300,000 and leaving $600,000 in that category.
• Cut by more than half maintenance funding for in excess of 300 miles’ worth of trails, saving $198,399 and leaving $188,300 for that budgeted area. Trails determined to be unsafe would be closed, Baldwin said.
• Trim renovations and maintenance of pickleball, tennis, futsal (a form of indoor soccer) and basketball courts by $200,000, which would leave $90,000 for that budget item. FCPA maintains 409 athletic courts and “the public can expect to see court closings start to occur” because of unsafe conditions, according to the county’s presentation.
• Increase fees for “Rec-Pac,” a six-week-long recreational program for elementary-school-age children, from $3.33 per hour (based on 37.5 hours per week) to the level of Camp Fairfax’s fees ($5.73 per hour over a 52.5-hour week). This would bring in $595,000 more in revenue.
• Reduce the number of Rec-Pac sites from 36 to 27, which would save $275,000 but cut by about 4,000 the number of participating children.
The board also could save nearly $295,000 by:
• Eliminating three new forestry positions, saving $193,974.
• Eliminating a new bamboo-mitigation position for a savings of $100,894. The Park Authority’s bamboo program is mandated and officials have a long list of mitigation sites, said Aimee Vosper, FCPA’s deputy director and chief of business and development.
“If we lose this position, it will be extremely problematic, if not impossible, to make any movement in the eradication of bamboo,” Vosper said.
Several Park Authority Board members were unhappy with the restroom cuts.
“It pains me to see the stand-alone restrooms being closed if we just renovated them all, or most of them,” said board member Ronald Kendall (Mason District). “Is there any potential for us to have volunteers do some of the service so we can keep them operating?”
Kendall agreed with the budget package’s emphasis on trimming new initiatives – such as the bamboo-management and forestry positions – not yet implemented.
Board member Michael Thompson (Springfield District) said Park Authority officials should specify which athletic courts would need to be closed and be open to cutting personnel instead of only reducing services. He also warned against threatening to cut restrooms and portable toilets again.
“This board became famous with the Board of Supervisors for, every time there was a budget issue, threatening the Port-a-Johns,” Thompson said. “Everybody knew it would upset the sports community because it was all the bathrooms at all the fields.”
