OPINION:
Apparently, the leaders of Fairfax County, Virginia, don’t care that people are losing their jobs. This week, its board of supervisors passed a tone-deaf budget that includes a 4% meals tax. The county’s residents voted against the regressive tax in 1992 and 2016. We are now left wondering whether, in addition to his taxpayer-subsidized car and last year’s 45% salary raise, Board Chairman Jeff McKay will enjoy personal housecleaning and groundskeeping services at the expense of his constituents.
Fairfax County’s elitist, out-of-touch leaders have a spending problem, not a revenue problem. They could begin by cutting McKay’s ridiculously high part-time annual salary ($145,000) and extra benefits. From there, they should cut the unnecessary “Circles of Memory” COVID-19 memorial that will cost the taxpayers several million dollars. The endless fat in the county’s $5.7 billion budget is in desperate need of an external audit.
As the county’s federal employees and contractors are losing their jobs in droves, this year McKay and his fellow Democrats on the board are also increasing our real estate taxes by an average of $499 per household. Ironically, our incompetent local leaders are calling the real estate tax increase a “rate cut” because the amount isn’t as much as they had initially proposed in the February budget ($638 more per household).
Fairfax County’s FY2026 budget is a product of poor, selfish leadership and fuzzy math.
STEPHANIE LUNDQUIST-ARORA
Springfield, Virginia
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