On Fairfax's Planning & Budget Can Kicking, Terry Maynard

In a Reston Patch article today about the County's budget problems, one local resident commented, ". . . We can't kick the can down the road anymore," said resident Jenifer Madden. "We need to start to face our fears and our problems.  If we don't, it's going to hurt our economy in a big way." 

In fact, this comment is more true than the Board or county residents, including Ms. Madden, probably realize.  

The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors has been counting on economic development along the Dulles Corridor over the next 20 years, particularly in Tysons and Reston, to be the long-term cash cow that bails it out of an increasingly serious financial situation stemming from excessive spending.  Developers have been whispering in their ears for years that all their intense new development around the corridor's Metro stations will bring in big tax revenues, but that is only a small part of the story, and may not be true. 

No examination of infrastructure costs.  Both the Board and the developers have ignored the costs of the added infrastructure that development will require up to now.  The forecasted costs are looking pretty large.  The Tysons planning committee has put a $2.4B price tag on the costs there alone over the next 20 years--and that's up by half from the County staff’s forecast two years ago.  The Reston TF is still avoiding any thought of implementation issues as it considers overwhelming growth, but ought to be thinking of needing at least half what Tysons will need, maybe more to include the needed new trans-corridor road and pedestrian crossings. So, where is the $4 billion or more going to come from?

Plummeting growth forecasts.  Forecasts for growth in Fairfax County have plummeted in recent years.  The fact of the matter--as forecast by GMU's Center for Regional Analysis--is that the economic growth in Fairfax County looks far less rosy than developers' dreams.

•  In 2008, GMU forecast a 51% growth in population and an 88% growth in jobs for the Tysons planning task force for the 2010-2030 timeframe.

• In mid-2010, GMU forecast 26% growth in population and a 44% growth in jobs--exactly HALF their forecast from two years earlier—for the Reston planning task force over the same 2-year period.

• In October 2011, GMU forecast 13% growth in both population & jobs in its base case (comparable to above) and a 28% & 27% respectively for population & jobs if the County pursued an aggressive workforce housing program.  This forecast accounted for the recession that was over by then.

• In February 2012, GMU reduced its 20-year forecast again, this time by a third:  9% population, 8% jobs in base case; 19% and 18% respectively with a strong workforce housing program.  This accounted for prospective federal spending cuts, they said.

In all, GMU CRA has cut their County population growth projections by up to 82% and their jobs growth forecast by more than 91% over the 2010-2030 timeframe.  Instead of 3-4% growth per year, they are now look at less than 1/2% growth per year. (For more details on GMU's forecasts, click here.)

Exponential toll increases.  In addition, of course, MWAA’s traffic and revenue forecast for the Dulles Toll Road now calls for jacking tolls into the $10-$20 range each way.  It explicitly forecasts up to a 27% reduction in DTR usage, beginning with an 18% usage reduction next year when tolls are forecast to double.  On that basis, we have forecast that some 30,000 vehicles per day will divert to local streets—a number that remains essentially stable through the next two decades.  Nonetheless, over the mid- to long-term, that reduction may partially reflect decisions by people to not take jobs or residence along the Dulles Corridor because of the high tolls, thereby further diminishing economic growth in the Corridor, a factor not figured in any of the GMU calculations.  Certainly property valuations will be less than they could be with more moderate toll hikes, and the possibility exists that property values would decline outside the immediate Metrorail station areas, especially in real terms.

Together, these trends for Fairfax County’s future are extremely worrisome.  Yet, the Board and the County staff have not examined these trends and their potential impacts, at least not in any publicly available assessments.   In fact, they have been blindly kicking the can down the road without seeing the financial cliff in front of them.

Yes, it's time for the Board to take off the blinders and get serious about Fairfax's future financial health.  The Board is NOT doing it well now, if at all.