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I'm largely with Carlingtonian on these issues, though I agree that some symbols of priority mismanagement have gotten more attention than their portion of the budget may seem to warrant.
I think Arl residents appreciate good services and are willing to pay for them. Increasingly, though, we have reason to distrust the board and question whether they are good stewards. The total tax bill (income) is important to homeowners (and to the County). Residents have an avenue to express concern about spending in ways other than moving out, and C described one of them.
Arlington spends over $19K annually per student in its school system and well over half the budget goes for schools IIRC, much more than in other jurisdictions. Why? Are they spending this money wisely? They are able to do this in part because < 20% of households have kids in the public schools. Although residents continue to support referenda, it is only a matter of time before residents will begin to question this more complex and less obvious spending issue.
Infrastructure needs are perceived as not being met by many, and many believe the board has been deaf to neighborhood voices about overdevelopment and other issues. Thus the bus stop etc issue is a symbol of a pattern. And more specifically to your point in your last post, from what I've read, the cost of additional "super" bus stops was expected to be well over $500K. If you presume that R&D costs were inappropriately allocated to the first, then the $500K is less than the cost per remaining stop. Many residents believed even that was far too high for the product and service received, and residents effectively forced the County to reexamine the plans for other stops. Again, the issue is not age, lack of sophistication, unwillingness to pay for good services, etc. It is whether the board etc are managing income and expenses wisely.
I hope the above didn't sidetrack your thread, Tysons. If I were a Loudoun resident, I would expect to pay a lot for transportation for school kids, especially since the proportion of households with school age kids is high. But maybe by making it more explicit, through separating the fee and charging primarily the users would help drive home the point re: sprawl.
I hope the above didn't sidetrack your thread, Tysons.
Not at all. I always enjoy reading your comments, as well as Carlingtonians. It is a bit of a tangent likely needing its own thread so I wont follow up. But I agree with a lot of what both of you are saying (and am playing a bit of devils advocate) but also disagree with some.
Loudoun schools aren't bad yet, they will be at the pace they are going within the next decade. Fairfax has equally "socialist" tendencies as Arlington, I never made the case Fairfax schools are bad.
I think you're probably right here. This whole situation has me thinking the same thing.
I'd like to chime in with some real-world examples of RE taxes in great school districts from other areas around the country, with homes that I've known personally.
Overland Park, KS (Johnson County, the "Loudoun" of Kansas City)
Home: 5,660 square feet / .38 acre parcel / $500k current market value / built in 1986.
Numbers: $348,000 tax assessed value (2013) / $59,980 Land Value / $4,600 RE Tax bill for 2013.
Ashburn, VA (Loudoun County)
Home: 4,500 square feet / .28 acre parcel / $700k current market value / built in 2011.
Numbers: $572,000 tax assessed value (2014) / $180,600 Land Value / $6,600 RE Tax bill for 2014.
Oddly enough, the tax assessed value (Loudoun) for 2014 is close to what I paid for the house in 2011. Both of these settings are far more similar than not. Both are suburban "sprawl" locations. Both have the same demographic profiles. Johnson County 20 years ago, is what Loudoun County is now. However, budget was never an issue for Johnson County. Schools were never in harms-way of the red ink. And, certainly nobody had to pay to ride the school bus or "tuition" for a full-day kindergarten class. Infrastructure was concrete (more expensive) and in great shape (remains so to this day as well). New schools continue to go up throughout Johnson County as we speak. Additionally, when you look at the whole state of Kansas in general, Johnson County tax contributions covered the majority of state funded projects. Furthermore, it was always cheaper to buy a car (taxes) on the KS side instead of the MO side as well.
Now, an "urban" setting example, where I lived prior to moving to Loudoun. I would put this closer to an Alexandria example for comparison purposes:
Glen Ellyn, IL (DuPage County - 20 miles straight west of downtown Chicago, with metro-rail access).
Home: 1,772 square feet / .16 acre parcel / $400k current market value / luxury renovated 2007.
Numbers: $143,820 tax assessed value (2013) / $56,750 Land Value / $12,175 RE Tax Bill for 2013.
Nickle & Dime fees all the way down to $3.50 per yard bag per week for grass clipping pick-up (had to buy stickers and have them on your bag for collection to occur). Schools were decent, but old and out-dated. Crime was low due to heavy police presence. Home prices ranged from $4m to $140,000. Glen Ellyn is a Top-5 location in all of Chicago, and likely #1 on the western side of Chicago. That being said - I sure am glad I rented while living there instead of buying. The owners of that house paid over TWICE what the house is worth today in 2007. They'll own that thing for a long long time. Well over half of the rent was to cover the taxes alone. In addition, after nearly 3 years there, when we moved here, both of my cars were looking at well over $2,000 each in repairs from the Chicago infrastructure (roads). Wheels mostly bent and damage to suspension, including to the Toyota 4Runner (they run those things through rivers for cryin' out loud!)
Loudoun schools aren't bad yet, they will be at the pace they are going within the next decade. Fairfax has equally "socialist" tendencies as Arlington, I never made the case Fairfax schools are bad.
Seriously? I wouldn't put too much money on that.
Now that we have a Fairfax poster impugning the future of Loudoun schools, it's probably only a matter of time before someone from Loudoun - on C-D or elsewhere - finds an opportunity to point out the difficulty that Arlington has in locating and agreeing upon sites for new schools to relieve increasing overcrowding, and someone from Arlington finds an opportunity to highlight growing class sizes in Fairfax and the fact that an increasing percentage of resources in Fairfax are spent educating ESOL students, a significant percentage of whom will never see a high school diploma.
Every local jurisdiction has some issue that someone can cite as purported evidence of a failed policy or poor planning, yet NoVa schools continue overall to outperform those in most parts of the state and country. You can make a big deal out of the prospect that Loudoun families might have to pay for bus service in the future, but someone in Loudoun could point out that Loudoun just opened a new high school this fall, while some Fairfax schools a few miles from Tysons are crying out for renovation.
From what I've read, Arlington has the lowest RE tax of all the NOVA jurisdictions which makes the whole assessed value v size of tax argument moot. I thought it was interesting that the most liberal jurisdictions have the lowest rates, but I guess not surprising given the fact that they have higher-valued homes.
To support Tyson's position, and I think the writing is clearly written on the wall about Loudoun County's future, is that it needs more commercial space and employment centers to balance out the tax revenue stream. The thing that is different between Johnson County, KS vs Loudoun County, VA and DuPage County, IL as mentioned in my examples above, is that Johnson County has a very attractive employment base. You live in Johnson County not only because of the nice, manicured suburban setting, but your job is also likely there too. In Loudoun, you live there because of the bang-for-your-buck on housing. Same with DuPage County (and, the fact that Cook County is horrible). You can see this in the population stack for Loudoun County, primarily located along the Fairfax line. Without more employment centers in Loudoun to generate additional tax revenue for the county itself, reliance will have to be on the personal side of tax revenue. Since the income taxes and personal property taxes are not nearly as bad as several others, something has to give soon. Look at the example of Glen Ellyn, IL in my previous post! A $143k assessment with a $12k annual tax. We don't want that in Loudoun.
That being said though, given the rural setting of Loudoun in general, and the fact that a PRIVATE road runs right through the heart of the most heavily populated part (not an expense to the state/county), I think there is likely some mismanagement of funds going on out there. Let us not forget the wealth statistic of Loudoun to the rest of the country either. But, until the commercial aspect can catch up, the only way out of a budget crisis is to either raise taxes (and hurt values via the balance), and/or continue to develop it to attract more residential units who will pay into the tax bucket as well. I'd say they're hoping for the later of the two at the moment. TE isn't wrong here folks, when he gets going about how Loudoun is a pick-pocket of Fairfax. I live in Loudoun. I pay RE taxes to Loudoun. I work in Fairfax. I pay income taxes to Virginia to support all of the VA counties.
If all things were equal, I would argue that the values for housing of Fairfax should not be anywhere near those of Loudoun. It is the commute that makes the difference. I cite as an example, a 2,000 square foot 30-year old brick ranch home that clearly needs another $200,000 in upgrades and deferred maintenance for $650,000 vs. a brand new 4,000 3-level new home (granted, vinyl siding) for $650,000 just 15 miles away.
I waiting to hear how density in Fairfax County is helping their school woes.
After a series of cuts to this year budget, class sizes overall will grow across the county. The $2.5 billion budget included $96 million in cuts and eliminated more than 700 staff positions.
Last year’s battle over the budget between the school board and the supervisors likely will continue in intensity this year, as the school system already has predicted a multi-million dollar shortfall for fiscal year 2016. Teachers last year urged the school board for higher raises through rallies and demonstrations. It is likely that the teachers will come out again this year for better pay as Fairfax County lags in the Washington area in average compensation.
They are garbage because the ones that have become highly politicized (million dollar buses and artisphere as you point out) make up .01% of an annual budget.
Did you actually do the math, or is that number one you came up with for dramatic effect? Not that it really matters--because this is beside the point.
But going back a bit: The actual cost of the bus stop is in fact $1 million:
To be fair, that article says the County's cost for this one bus stop is "only" $200,000.
These things add up: $268 million for a streetcar--and that's ArlCo's own figure, btw--when BRT would suffice; a bus stop that costs the same as a new Lamborghini; a $1.2 million dog park; the embarrassing failure that is the Artisphere (which cost us $2.3M in FY12 and $1.6M for FY13--etc. Even if the percentage of the County's massive budget is not huge, these projects are surely the telltale signs of other waste that isn't as obvious. The County does not spend money judiciously.
Your claim that there is no connection between rising taxes and rising spending is like saying a university's rising tuition has nothing to do with its administrators' huge salaries, nor massive construction of fancy new dorms. Just a coincidence!
Quote:
Originally Posted by tysonsengineer
... but then again the street car proposals sure have a lot more to do with metro like proposal (which you say you support) than these other much smaller proposals.
So if I support any transit project anywhere, I must support them all? The Metrorail system generally was a good thing. The massive development that followed it has not always been good; in my view, it's gotten way out of hand. But even putting that aside, just because the Metrorail system made sense doesn't mean every other transit project anyone can come up with makes sense.
Quote:
Originally Posted by tysonsengineer
There is no correlation between the million dollar bus stops and what your tax rate is.
How do you know? You are assuming that the County Board raises tax rates and refuses to return unspent money to the taxpayers every fiscal year for some other reason. If these same people are the ones supporting those expensive projects (and they are, except for two of them), then would they not logically use those expenditures as the justification for higher taxes? This guy (whom I surely do not agree with on many things) makes a very good case:
Adding the equivalent of R&D into what something costs to implement is not how ANY industry in the world operates. R&D is recouped obviously.
What?! R&D is not recouped by anyone except the manufacturer. The County is the customer--not the one selling the $1 million bus stop and making money on it. Just as a giant defense contractor recoups its R&D money through sales to the Federal Government, so will the company making these bus stops--which, by the way, do not even provide adequate shelter from the elements.
Quote:
Originally Posted by tysonsengineer
BTW, as a person who is stuck in Fairfax's non-real time information bus network you couldn't possibly be showing your age more...
Haha! Really? That's your argument--"You're old"?
Quote:
Originally Posted by tysonsengineer
...and your lack of understanding of how good transit works.
Uh, I actually worked directly in the transit industry for several years. Have you?
Quote:
Originally Posted by tysonsengineer
I have a bus that comes ever 6 minutes that I do not ever use (the circulator) because there is no real time info on it. Where as I use a bus that comes ever 30 minutes that has real time because I can make decisions on when to get it. That means that very expensive bus goes almost completely unused. While the cheaper route gets the most bang for its buck.
Just because you don't consider it to be "good" transit unless it has a real-time electronic schedule display doesn't mean everyone else agrees. And clearly most people don't--or they wouldn't be riding all those buses and trains that make you wait without knowing the exact minute the thing is going to show up. Normally, you seem to be a big supporter of transit--except in the case of this $1 million bus stop, whose existence you're asserting is proof that transit without real-time info provided by the locality is not usable.
You keep getting sidetracked by facts you don't want to admit are facts. Your overall point in this thread has been that sprawl is costing Loudoun County's citizens. As I said, I'm for trying to limit sprawl, but this is a weak argument, based on a false premise. People live out there because they get more bang for the buck.
The article you linked in your first post states that the Loudoun government is considering the pay-to-ride school bus scheme to make up for budget cuts. It does not go into why they Loudoun cut its budget in the first place. It is quite a leap to assert that any cuts they might have made must be due to having lots of detached houses and being so far outside the Beltway.
Last edited by Carlingtonian; 11-17-2014 at 03:42 PM..
Reason: Oops--the Clarendon Dog Park was "only" $1.2 million.
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