With the heightened uncertainty derived from mass and sudden layoffs of federal employees hitting Northern Virginia particularly hard, it was a full house at the meeting of the Falls Church City Council’s Budget and Finance Committee this morning at City Hall, and the news from the second quarter financial report and of news of real estate assessments in the City released this week augured well, at least for the City in comparison to its regional neighbors.

      The overall assessed values showed a whopping 10.5 percent increase over a year ago, with more than half the increase coming from commercial real estate growth, the City Council will be contemplating a 2.5 cent real estate tax cut, the group was told. Present were all but one member of the City Council, including Mayor Letty Hardi and Vice Mayor Debbie Shantz-Hiscott, and all were in the crowed conference room except for Marybeth Connelly, who was among a hefty contingent on folks who participated online.

      Mayor Hardi said it was important to emphasize how the recent years’ strong commercial development gains in the City will make matters relatively smooth for the City taxpayers, with prospects for 5.9 percent growth in both the City and school budgets to go along with the 2.5 cent rate decrease. Sixty-five percent of the budget growth is coming from real estate, and half of that is from new construction, she noted.

     While Council member Erin Flynn cautioned that the new growth comes with added costs, those present were told that most of the costs of infrastructure improvements, such as for solid waste, had become necessary prior to the latest spate of development.

     One of the biggest beneficiaries of the growth premium is the City schools. Superintendent Dr. Peter Noonan was patched into the meeting remotely, along with two leading members of the School Board, and said that they will do well with a projected 5.9 percent budget increase, even though that would be slightly less than the amount Noonan said would be needed last month.

     :Noonan praised the “revenue sharing” agreement that has smoothed over budget deliberations in the City since being implemented in recent years. It means that the hikes for both the City side and school budgets are projected to be the same 5.9 percent. That assurance for the City schools is not something the City’s neighboring school systems will be able to enjoy, he noted, forecasting that overall revenue prospects for Fairfax, Arlington and Alexandria will be “nothing close to” Falls Church’s, with the result that the school budgets in those places will face cuts,” he predicted.

      Falls Church City Manager Wyatt Shields said that tax rates around the region will be challenging, with a flat rate projected for Arlington and a 1.5 cent increase for Fairfax being proposed, but at the expense of big cuts for their schools. “Watch what happens in Arlington and Fairfax” to their school budgets, he intoned, “They’ll get slammed.”

     “We’d be in big trouble without the development growth we’ve had,” added Council member Laura Downs. Mayor Hardi expressed concern that the Council needs to plan ahead for next year, however, when a return to more normal growth at about 3 percent can be expected. “We’re not going to have this rate of growth every year going forward,” she said.

      But the uncertainty factor looms over all, given the federal layoffs and the fact that for every federal employee job, as for every federal employee job, three to four other jobs are impacted, Sluggish growth in the City’s meals tax in the first six months of the current fiscal year despite the opening of a spate of new restaurants is also concerning, it was noted.