Growls

As we Growled on Monday, politicians never have enough of our tax money to spend. Yesterday evening, the County Manager proposed his budget for Fiscal Year 2009. And while the Arlington County Board will tell you they only advertised a 2-cent increase in the real estate tax rate, it means a computed “effective tax rate increase” of 6.2%.

However, that does not include a 1.4 cent increase in the real estate tax for stormwater management and/or  sanitary district, which they also voted to advertise last night. Together that effectively increases the real estate tax rate on residential property of 8%. Nor is the 12.5 cent real estate tax on commercial properties for  "transportation purposes” included in the computed effective tax rate increase.

The bottom line is that the Grand Poobahs on the Board will have more means to slither out of accounting for the real tax burden they impose on Arlington County taxpayers. In dollars, according to Wayne Kubicki, Arlington's Uber-Taxpayer Watchdog, the County Board will have about $63 million more to play with this year, if they approve all advertised tax/fee increases.

The FY2009 budget documents were not available until after last night’s Board meeting concluded at 10:30 pm. If you wish to be alerted to future Growls about the FY2009 budget, e-mail ACTA's president (president + acta.us).

In the meantime, here is the initial FY2009 budget news reports from the Arlington Sun-Gazette, the Washington Post, and Arlington County’s press release. Especially noteworthy in the reporting was the Post's sub-heading -- "decade-long spending spree ends." (emphasis added)

The same as years past, the county budget is available in two large budget books. However, the Manager and Chief Financial Officer are to be congratulated for producing a 114-page executive summary, which may be  far more understandable for citizens not familiar with more arcane format of the larger books. All three documents are available at the Department of Management & Finance’s website.