Alexandria Budget Facts

--The City Council adopted a FY 2008 Approved Operating Budget of $519.5 million, an increase of $21.8 million or 4.4% over last year’s budget. The 2008 budget spends more than the target budget set by Council last November by $10.6 million.

--The FY 2008 property tax rate is 83 cents per $100 of assessed value, up from the 2007 rate of 81.5 cents.

--The budget increased vehicle registration fees by $10 a year.

--The average residential tax bill in calendar year 2005 was $4,035. In 2000, the average bill was $2,157.

You can find a more detailed 2008 budget overview here.


                                 The Taxes We Pay in 2008:        
                            





                              Where Your Taxes Go in 2008:





Access budgets from years past at the Budget Archive.


How has the housing boom affected property taxes?

Take a moment to read this short article by Dr. John Knapp, tax expert and professor at the University of Virginia.  As he explains:

Obviously, Virginia local governments have taken advantage of the housing boom to increase tax collections. Theoretically, local governments did not have to set rates that would yield large gains in revenue. They could have adjusted their rates downward so that tax collections would not grow rapidly. In fact, many cut their rates, but because of the inflation of residential values, tax levies grew strongly even with lower nominal rates.


Resident Survey Results

In September 2006, the Center for Research & Public Policy (CRPP) conducted a 2006 Community Survey among residents of Alexandria, with a sample of 1001 residents and +/- 3% margin of error.

In an open-ended question format, respondents self-selected taxes as the second-most important issue they are concerned about (16%, up 3.9 points from 2004), only second to traffic. When asked by the pollsters, over half said taxes were a serious problem.

84.9% of respondents indicated that services in relationship to the taxes paid were very good or good, but 10.7% suggested poor or very poor.

Over half, 56.8%, suggested the City should keep service and taxes at about the level they are currently. Another 17.3% would like the City to decrease taxes even if it has to reduce services. And 15.2% suggested taxes be increased with an associated increase in levels of service. Some, 10.7%, were unsure.

You can read more by clicking here.


Alexandria School Spending

The Washington Area Boards of Education puts out a comparison of local public school spending.  You can read the 2007 version here.

Alexandria has this year’s highest public school cost-per-pupil in the Washington area at $18,232, up 14.9 percent from the year before. The money bought laptops for high school students, but drop out rates remain higher than many other NoVA school districts.

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The Arlington Sun Gazette published an article comparing financial data for Washington area school districts. This is what they discovered:

* Cost per Student: Alexandria: $19,341 -- a 6.1% increase 
                                     Arlington: $18,563 -- a 3.3% increase
                                     Fairfax: $13,407 -- a 4.3% increase

Please click here to read the full article.

Charts and graphs demonstrating Alexandria's increasing tax collections and spending: