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Message from
Supervisor Kauffman

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Message from the Chairman

I have just a couple quick notes for you this month.

First, don’t forget our annual kid’s Easter Egg Hunt on Sunday, April 23 at 2:00 at the Mansion.

Second, don’t forget our semi-annual community yard sale on Saturday, May 6 from 8:00 – 3:00. As usual, we will put an ad in The Post and put our sign up at the entrance to our community. The fee is $2.00 per house, which we will be around to collect during the day.

I also want to make one last comment regarding The Examiner newspaper. The vast majority of Stoneybrooke residents favored getting rid of the free delivery, which we were able to do. The problem lied in the fact that The Examiner contracts with carriers to take “X” number of papers who must then find neighborhoods to deliver the papers. Despite numerous calls to The Examiner by many Stoneybrooke residents asking them to cease delivery to their homes, the deliveries continued. When I spoke to the route “owner,” I was told that because we would no longer allow her to deliver 300 papers in Stoneybrooke, she would be forced to find another neighborhood to deliver them. Thus, Stoneybrooke had been “marked” and delivery would not have stopped until many of you made an issue of it. Thank you!

I have one final note, and an important one at that.

As you know, Stoneybrooke is beginning to experience a problem with large construction trucks, boats, trailers, and other “illegal” vehicles being left on our streets. I use the word “illegal” as the parking of these items is indeed a violation of Fairfax County ordinances. You are asked, again, to move them. The Stoneybrooke Board will be meeting in May and will be making decisions regarding how to proceed for residents who do not comply.

All for now,
Mike

Message from
Supervisor Kauffman

The proposed County budget for fiscal year 2007 makes for some challenging reading. My staff and I are looking at it very carefully with an eye to finding additional savings that will allow us to further lower the real estate tax rate and maintain needed services. (An overview of the County Executive’s proposed FY2007 budget is available at http://fairfaxcounty.gov/news/2006/058.pdf.)

As I study this budget, I think it falls short in two areas. First, I need assurance that we are fully using our technological infrastructure to streamline and consolidate the services we deliver—without continually adding employees. Second, in many ways we are still taking a business-as-usual approach rather than looking to partnerships and innovative programs that would allow us to lower costs, maintain and even expand services where ultimately needed.

There are some common sense savings to be found in this budget and I’ve identified close to $30 million in cuts that could allow us to reduce the property tax rate below the proposed $ .93 cents per $100 of assessed value. Here’s a sample of what I’m looking at:

1. Courthouse Expansion: By now, our investment in technology should be giving us the economies of scale to accommodate this expansion without adding additional positions.
2. Medically Fragile Homeless Care Program: We don’t need to add positions if we can work with senior nursing students at George Mason University and the NOVA Springfield Medical Education Campus to handle this new service.
3. Geographical Information System (GIS) Specialist for Housing: The County Board has spent considerable time and effort streamlining County agencies and moving away from the silo approach to providing services. Our GIS staff should be capable of handling the needs of all our agencies.
4. Information Technology Funding: There’s nice to have and there’s have to have. We should reduce the proposed increase by $6 million or hold to last year’s rate of investment, whichever is less.
5. Community Funding Pool: We should reduce the proposed general fund transfer from a 10 % increase to a 6% increase, similar to our school guidelines.
6. Discretionary Board Member Capital Funding: Eliminating this proposed $10 million expenditure alone would cut the property tax rate by half a cent.

Last, but far from least, it’s time to take another hard look at merging duplicative school and County services, especially in light of the projected technology investments by both organizations. We last did this in FY1997. Nine years later, it’s time to take another look.

March SCA Meeting Minutes

Click here to find out what happened at the March meeting.