McKay, Bulova pitch meals tax benefits to area residents

Board of Supervisors Chairman Sharon Bulova, left, and LDACO President Chris Soule, center, look on as Supervisor Jeff McKay speaks Wednesday at the Franconia Govermental Center.

Supporters of the November’s meals tax referendum find themselves in a an awkward position: They need to convince people to vote for a tax increase on themselves.

Supervisor Jeff McKay (D-Lee District) quickly acknowledged this reality Wednesday night to citizens gathered at the Franconia Governmental Center to hear him and Board of Supervisors Chairman Sharon Bulova speak.

“This is a tough issue. It’s never easy to ask people to implement and support a tax on themselves. I mean it’s just inherently difficult,” McKay said at the beginning of the event, which was put together by the Lee District Association of Civic Organizations (LDACO).

From there McKay and Bulova laid out their case for why Fairfax County voters should vote in favor of a 4 percent tax on prepared food on Nov. 8. For McKay, the most important reason to vote for the tax was to diversify the county’s budget revenue in order to pay for education. He said the county is over-reliant on property taxes, and blasted the state for not doing its share to fund schools.

“The challenge we face in Fairfax County … is that the state is not adequately funding education,” McKay said. “The county is left every year with trying to fill the gap.”

Bulova said income from a meals tax, 70 percent of which will go toward the public school budget, would allow the system to catch up with its needs, particularly in the area of teacher pay. She said she was tired of hearing from parents that good teachers in Fairfax are leaving to go to Arlington and other school systems.

“We have lost ground,” Bulova said. “Our teachers are not getting paid what other jurisdictions are paying their teachers.”

Both Bulova and McKay emphasized that nearly 30 percent of the $99 million expected to be raised by the meals tax will come from non-residents of the county. Bulova also noted that Fairfax City, Herndon Vienna, Alexandria and Arlington all have meals taxes, and their restaurant business does not seem to suffer.

Opponents of the meals tax, including many restaurants and chambers of commerce, say the tax unfairly targets one industry and threatens jobs in the county. Anti-tax audience members Wednesday night, however, were more concerned with the school system’s fiscal discipline, and some wondered where the 30 percent of the tax’s revenue set aside for non-school system needs would go.

Bulova said the board had not yet prioritized where the non-education slice of the pie would go, but added that public safety, human services, parks, libraries and property tax relief were the likeliest places to get the additional funding. 

Anna Urman, a resident of the Vantage neighborhood who ran for the House of Delegates last year as Republican, will be voting “no” in November. She says the tax will hurt the neediest families in Lee District.

“[Lee District] has the highest population of low-income people in all of Fairfax County,” Urman said after the meeting. “This is a regressive tax. It’s going to hit those families hardest.”