Shields Talks Budget at Town Hall Meeting

For the second time this week Falls Church City Manager J. Wyatt Shields discussed his proposed $64.5 million fiscal year 2012, this time at a town hall meeting Saturday. Noting that the budget is a work in progress to be debated and adopted by the council at a later date, Shields said the community had tough decisions to make following the recent economic downturn.

The proposed budget represents 0.7 percent increased spending over the 2011 budget with a 42 percent increase in revenue from building permits. There is an overall $1.2 million spending cut across the board mainly through service reductions, change in employee compensation and elimination of staff positions.

“One major point of this year’s budget is to make every effort to rebuild the city’s financial foundation so that we get to a better place in the future than we are right now,” Shields said “We have gone through some stormy weather with this recession where revenue have fallen off very sharply and as a consequence we have drawn down our fund balances.”

Through a mix of attrition, total elimination, management restructuring and reduced work hours the budget cuts six staff positions and new employees will only be hired if their work reduces expenditure or if there is a dedicated revenue source.

The Mary Stiles Library will cut operational hours from 64 to 55 hours a week.  Two part time librarians, a part time library assistant and a part time page are up for elimination and some other three library positions are facing a reduction in hours. These operational changes do not sit well with library board of trustees member John Lawrence. He said over the last three years the library has faced major funding cuts with the promise to restore lost positions in the next fiscal year, which never happens.

“We have lost staff, we lost book budgets, we have reduced hours,” Lawrence said. “Sunday hours last year were cut even though they were the single biggest most widely used chunk of time because we couldn’t have the staff and a custodian to keep the place neat now we have to take another almost seven percent cut. This is an immense hit.”

Mayor Nader Baroukh said the community meeting was a beginning dialogue about the city budget and there had to be robust discussion in finding a balance in the community.

“What we will be doing over the next several weeks will be taking the budget recommendations by the city manager and the city council and discussing what the values of the city are as reflected in budget,” he said.

The next town hall meeting will be held April 11 and the budget will be adopted on April 25.