By Brian Trompeter
Vienna Town Manager Mercury Payton’s nearly $53.8 million proposed budget for fiscal year 2025 calls for no change in the real-estate-tax rate and 4-percent raises for most town employees.
Under Payton’s budget, which is 7.5 percent higher than last year’s, the town’s real-estate-tax rate would stay steady at 19.5 cents per $100 assessed valuation. But residential-property owners on average would pay $2,204 (about 6.5 percent more) because of higher property assessments. Each penny on the tax rate equals $707,100 in revenue.
Vienna officials have cut the real-estate-tax rate by 3 cents since 2022 and anticipated lower revenue growth when calculating this year’s budget, Payton said.
“We were measured in how we approached our rate reductions,” he said.
Total assessed property values in the town rose $338.2 million (5 percent) this year, with residential properties increasing 6.2 percent and commercial ones going down 1.6 percent. The town had a 6.1 percent commercial-vacancy rate as of December 2023, which was nearly two-thirds lower than the 17.2 percent reported by Fairfax County.
Vienna residents also pay Fairfax County real-estate taxes. County Executive Bryan Hill’s proposed fiscal 2025 budget seeks a 4-cent rate increase to $1.135 per $100 assessed value, which if approved by the Board of Supervisors would extract $524 more from the average household.
For the second straight year, Vienna’s average residential assessments have topped $1 million and properties worth $1 million and above now constitute 36.4 percent of the town’s housing inventory. Another 30.5 percent of residential properties are valued at between $800,000 and $1 million and 26.7 percent are worth from $500,000 to $800,000. Just 6.5 percent of Vienna’s residential properties cost a half-million dollars or less.
Vienna’s housing stock is fairly old overall, with 57 percent of units built in the 1960s or earlier. Forty percent of the town’s commercial and office buildings are that old.
Town officials expect higher residential and commercial property assessments will bring in about $660,000 more revenue this year. Officials also anticipate collecting $554,000 (7.6 percent) more in revenue from local taxes and $259,000 (19.7 percent) more from parks-and-recreation fees, as that department’s programs remain quite popular.
The general fund would rise 4.9 percent to $31.5 million under the town manager’s budget. General employees would receive a 3-percent market-rate adjustment (MRA), plus a 1-percent merit increase.
As they have in recent years, sworn law-enforcement personnel – who are in demand regionally – would do even better with a 3-percent MRA and 2.5-percent step increase, for a total hike of 5.5 percent. The town also would pay police officers working the night shift $2 more per hour.
This year’s proposed compensation increases are lower than last year’s.
“I feel it’s competitive with the region and can be sustained in future years,” Payton said of the pay package, adding that flat health-insurance costs helped make it possible.
The pay differential between police and general town employees has not proved divisive, he said.
“Our employees have high respect for what law enforcement does for the town and its residents,” Payton said. Police and other town employees “have a healthy respect for one another,” he said. “The [pay] disparity is not that great.”
The proposed budget calls for 200 full-time employees, including one more position for an Information Technology Department staffer to address technological coverage during the police department’s night shift.
Vienna’s water-and-sewer fund would rise by about $1.16 million (9.5 percent) to offset higher costs for wholesale-water purchases, sewage treatment, indirect expenses and debt service.
Fairfax County collects a tax of 3.25 cents per $100 assessed value for stormwater-management efforts and Vienna receives a portion of those revenues. The town’s stormwater fund would rise 2.4 percent to $752,040 under Payton’s proposed budget.
The budget would be balanced using $300,000 from the town’s $1.1 million revenue-stabilization fund.
