RCLCo Tax Revenue Forecast for Reston Community Center

At its most recent Board meeting, the RCC Board received a briefing by Robert Charles Lesser & Company, a commercial real estate consulting company, that forecast tax revenues for the Reston Community Center.  That presentation is embedded below.

At this early juncture, we will make two observations.

First, the presentation is based largely on GMU Center for Regional Analysis' (CRA's) forecast for Reston's growth dated July 26, 2010.  As members of the Reston Master Plan Task Force (RTF)--two of whom sit on the RCC Board--know, this forecast was, in fact, generated based on 2008 forecasts for the region and greatly over-states expected Reston-area growth. over the next two decades.

Since the publication of the 2010 forecast, GMU CRA  has TWICE LOWERED its forecast in incomplete presentations to the RTF.  The first of these changes was presented to the RTF in February 2012.  The second was summarized in a DPZ briefing in October 2012.  The graphic below, taken from the most recent DPZ presentation, shows that, over the timeframe of the forecast, intermediate housing demand will be 17% less than the 2010 forecast and intermediate employment growth to be 21% less than earlier forecast.  Although neither the presentation nor DPZ nor GMU CRA provided details on growth in the interim periods (2020, 2030, 2040), the graphs show virtually no growth in jobs and very limited growth in households through 2020--the period of study for the RCLCo presentation.

As such, we believe the tax revenue projections RCLCo provided the RCC Board in its forecast are grossly over-optimistic and misleading.

A second related point is that the tax tables (Exhibit 2) show revenues using both the current tax rate--4.7 cents per $100 valuation--and a rate that has not been used in a decade--6.0 cents per $100 valuation.  We expect that the RCC Board is considering the need to raise the tax rate to 6.0 cents per $100 to finance a new Reston Recreation Center, especially in light of the grossly misleading growth forecast.

   RCLCo Forecast of Tax Revenues for Reston Community Center