By Brian Trompeter
Fairfax County residents and businesses looking to install electric-vehicle (EV) charging equipment will be able to take advantage of county fee waivers through October 2025, following the Board of Supervisors’ March 19 extension of a pilot initiative.
The county since October 2022 has exempted the installation of EV-charging equipment from building- and electrical-permit fees, in hopes of encouraging more people to switch to EVs.
Supervisors voted 9-1 to extend those exemptions, which otherwise would have expired May 1 this year, through Oct. 31, 2025.
County staff will collect additional data on the fee exemptions during the extension period and conduct another publicity campaign to alert the public about the waivers, concentrating especially on “high vulnerability” parts of the county.
Staff will report back to supervisors four months before the new exemption deadline and provide metrics on the number of EV-charging installations and budget impacts to the Department of Land Development Services.
Recent extensions of federal electric-vehicle tax benefits to used vehicles, as well as price reductions for new ones that have occurred in recent years, have “put these within reach to more people in our community than ever before,” Board of Supervisors Chairman Jeff McKay (D) said.
During the first year of the exemption period, the county issued 856 residential permits for installation of EV-charging equipment and another 38 for commercial sites. (New parking garages were not included in that total because they require a more general type of electrical permit.)
Ninety-five percent of the residential installations were at single-family homes, county staff said. The number of commercial permits issued during the initial 12 months was double that of the 19 recorded in 2021, they said.
Permit fees for EV-charging installations at commercial sites cost about $421; residential installations cost about $127. The county in the first 12 months of the fee-exemption period lost an estimated $124,968 in revenue. Those losses likely will increase in coming years, officials said.
Supervisor Patrick Herrity (R-Springfield), who cast the lone vote against extending the waivers, said the fee losses would need to be absorbed by other applicants.
“This is not without cost,” Herrity said. “This is going to impact other fees and we do have an affordability issue in Fairfax County.”
Fairfax Supervisor James Walkinshaw (D-Braddock) suggested the county survey people who take advantage of the fee waivers to see whether those exemptions were a key factor in their decision-making process.
