Fairfax County residents could see their property taxes increase by $666 on average, based on a proposed budget presented by County Executive Bryan Hill today (Tuesday).

Covering fiscal year 2023, which starts July 1, the nearly $4.8 billion spending plan maintains the current tax rate of $1.14 per $100 of assessed value, but it comes amid what Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Chairman Jeff McKay called “sky high” residential property assessments.

According to the county, 92% of households saw an increased assessment in 2021, so if the flat tax rate is approved, most households will still be paying more in real estate taxes, which are the county’s primary source of revenue.

“These numbers are staggering. They’re historic,” McKay said, noting that not everyone will be able to afford them.

However, potential relief could come from nearly $80 million in unallocated funds that the proposed budget leaves to the board’s discretion.

The board agreed to expand a tax relief program for older adults and people with disabilities in December, but multiple supervisors suggested that more assistance will be needed.

“It’s going to cause a lot of pain,” Lee District Supervisor Rodney Lusky said of the increased assessments.

Dranesville District Supervisor John Foust said property taxes are not the long-term answer for funding the county government, suggesting that the board might want to assess whether it proceeds with the amount proposed for public schools.

While the school board adopts its own budget, the county is looking to give Fairfax County Public Schools its requested $112.65 million increase for a full budget of nearly $2.3 billion — a 5% uptick from the previous year, according to the county.

At the same time, Hill said the economic uncertainty caused by the pandemic has begun to dissipate, putting the county in a much better position than previous years. As a result, the budget could address ongoing concerns, such as providing competitive compensation to staff.

The county is facing challenges in terms of retaining and recruiting workers, with a current vacancy rate of 10%, Hill estimated. The proposed budget adds 109 positions, primarily to support new facilities, workload requirements, and continuing county initiatives.

“Fairfax County deserves a budget which invests in good, safe jobs for all workers, and quality public services for all working families,” Tammie Wondong, president of the Service Employees International Union’s Fairfax County government chapter, said in a statement. “Frontline workers throughout our community need affordable health care, need to keep up with the cost of living, and need safe working conditions.”

The Board of Supervisors passed an ordinance in October to let unions collectively bargain, but it’s still going through a lengthy process to determine representatives for police, fire, and other government units.

As it currently stands, the proposed budget includes a 4% raise for all employees, though Hill suggested some groups, such as uniformed responders, could see as much as a 7.8% increase.

“Today, we’re sitting in a much better position, a place of stability, that we have not really had the benefit of in the past couple years,” McKay said. “This is the first step of a very lengthy process.”

Hill’s proposal also increases refuse rates for households from $400 to $475, quarterly sewer base charges from $36.54 to $40.14, and service charges per 1,000 gallons from $7.72 to $8.09.

The county is slated to advertise proposed tax rates on March 8, with public hearings coming April 12-14. The board will mark up the budget on April 26 and adopt it on May 10.

The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors expressed solidarity with the local Jewish community today (Tuesday) after dozens of anti-Semitic flyers were found in a Wolf Trap neighborhood over the weekend.

Reiterating a statement released on social media yesterday (Monday), Chairman Jeff McKay characterized the flyers as a backlash to the county’s embrace of religious diversity during the board’s meeting this morning.

“It’s not by accident that sadly Fairfax County is targeted by this hateful propaganda, because we are proud in our county to have the largest Jewish congregation in Virginia,” McKay said.

The Fairfax County Police Department confirmed yesterday that it is investigating the 70 to 80 anti-Semitic flyers reportedly found in the 1400 block of Laurel Hill Road on Sunday (Feb. 20).

The flyers were reported by a community member who found one in a plastic bag weighed down with corn kernels on his property, according to police.

The FCPD said it has increased patrols in the neighborhood, which is on the south side of Route 7 near the McLean Bible Church. It is also working with the Anti-Defamation League and the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington to raise awareness.

Calling the perpetrators “despicable people,” Dranesville District Supervisor John Foust advised community members to contact the police if they have any information about the flyers, especially surveillance video that may have captured their distribution.

FCPD Organized Crime and Intelligence Bureau detectives can be contacted at 703-802-2750. Tips are accepted anonymously through Crime Solvers by phone at 1-866-411-TIPS (866-411-8477), text (type “FCCS” plus tip to 847411), and online.

Detectives are still working to determine where the flyers came from, and it’s unclear so far why the Wolf Trap neighborhood was targeted, FCPD spokesperson Sgt. Ian Yost told FFXnow.

Fairfax County is one of several communities across the country hit by anti-Semitic flyers this past weekend, from Bowie, Maryland to California’s Bay Area, Colorado, Texas, and the University of Illinois.

Yost says Fairfax County detectives are collaborating with regional and local partners to see if there are any commonalities across the reported incidents.

McKay noted this morning that Fairfax County has seen these “scare tactics” before. Just last summer, flyers attributed to Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan were discovered in the Springfield and Sully areas, specifically targeting members of the county’s school board.

Anti-Black hate crimes and incidents tend to be the most prevalent in Fairfax County, according to police data, but there were also 22 anti-Jewish incidents reported between 2018 and 2020.

These acts won’t be tolerated and strengthen the county as people stand in solidarity with the Jewish community and all religions, McKay said.

David Taube contributed to this report. Photo via FCPD/Facebook.

The omicron surge continues to subside in Fairfax County.

The Fairfax Health District, including the cities of Fairfax and Falls Church, reported 95 new COVID-19 cases today (Tuesday), making it the first day with fewer than 100 new cases since Dec. 11, when there were 69 cases.

The county is now averaging 131 cases per day for the past week — the lowest seven-day average since Nov. 30 (123 cases).

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s data tracker, the level of COVID-19 transmission in the county has dropped from “high” to “substantial” for the first time since the week of Nov. 21-27.

The CDC measures community transmission levels based on the number of new cases per 100,000 people and the percentage of positive tests over the past seven days. Fairfax County’s current case rate of 99.1 per 100,000 people comes just under the 100-case threshold that separates the high and substantial categories.

The 5.77% seven-day testing positivity rate falls within the “moderate” threshold, but the community transmission level is determined by the higher metric.

There has been a total of 175,747 Covid cases in the Fairfax Health District since the first infected resident developed symptoms nearly two years ago. The district has seen 4,370 people hospitalized by the disease caused by the coronavirus and 1,402 people die.

The seven deaths reported today bring February’s death toll up to 115 people, shedding more light on the damage caused by the omicron and delta variants of the virus.

With the winter COVID-19 surge easing, vaccination activity in the district has plateaued, according to the Fairfax County Health Department.

There are 961,599 residents — 81.2% of the population — who have received at least one vaccine dose, including:

• 90.4% of people 18 and older
• 96.5% of people aged 16 and 17
• 92% of 12-15 year olds
• 51.3% of 5-11 year olds

Exactly 868,169 residents, or 73.4% of the population, are fully vaccinated, including 82.2% of adults. About 40% of Fairfax County residents, including 49% of adults, have gotten a booster or third dose.

Life is starting to return to Urbanspace.

Hastily created in the wake of Isabella Eatery’s collapse, the food hall opened on the third floor of Tysons Galleria in December 2018 with promising reviews and a handful of local restaurants that built up loyal followings — just in time for COVID-19 to grind business to a halt in the spring of 2020.

Some tenants, like Andy’s Pizza and Donburi, have reopened, while others, including Stomping Ground and Hei Hei Tiger, shuttered either permanently or temporarily, leaving much of the 41,000-square-foot space empty and darkened.

That is expected to change soon, according to Candice Mensah, founder and owner of the Ghanaian food stall Hedzole.

A regular presence at the Springfield Town Center and Mosaic District farmers markets, Hedzole is expanding with a pop-up in Urbanspace that will open in early March, Mensah announced on Feb. 12.

It will join Andy’s Pizza, Donburi, Twelve Twenty Coffee, the British restaurant and bar London Chippy, and the most recent addition, Empanadas De Mendoza, which opened in December. She says there are other vendors on their way as well, either on a permanent basis or as pop-ups.

“The second week of March, that’ll be the official kick-off of Urbanspace being fully open,” Mensah told FFXnow.

Tysons Galleria owner Brookfield Properties and Urbanspace did not return requests for comment by publication time.

Born in D.C. and growing up in Alexandria, Mensah’s journey to Tysons Galleria began in her mother’s kitchen, where she ate and learned to cook traditional Ghanaian dishes like jollof rice, okra stew and waakye.

Mensah’s parents both immigrated to the U.S. about five decades ago from Accra, the capital of Ghana. The word “Hedzole” means “freedom” in Ga, a language spoken by the Ga-Adangbe ethnic group indigenous to that region.

Inspired by the response to her mother’s food at international festivals hosted by the family’s church parish, Mensah dreamed of opening a restaurant, but she didn’t realize she could make it a reality until 2018, when she struck up a conversation with the owner of a Cuban restaurant while visiting a friend in New York.

“I was telling him about my dream of one day wanting to have a restaurant but not having a culinary background, and the words that he said to me was, ‘Just do it,’” she recalled.

Though skeptical that the process would be so simple, Mensah started looking at local farmers markets and eventually introduced Hedzole at the annual Taste of Springfield festival in June 2019.

Described by Mensah as a “contemporary approach to traditional Ghanaian cuisine,” Hedzole utilizes a fast-casual model where customers start with a rice base and add proteins and a soup or sauce. Aside from the protein options, the ingredients are all vegan, and meals come with sides of cabbage and plantains.

The result provides enough variations to appeal to both traditionalists and newcomers. Mensah wants to bring her culture’s food to new audiences, while also pushing back against the perception of African cuisine as hard-to-find or inaccessible.

With one of the largest Black immigrant populations in the country, the D.C. area has a thriving community of African restaurants, particularly around Alexandria, in downtown D.C. and Maryland, though they remain rarer in the Tysons area.

“They’re there, but they’re not always maybe in settings where all of us go to, and that was another thing that was important to me with Hedzole,” Mensah said. “I wanted to be in spaces where all of us are, so all of us can experience Hedzole.”

Conversations about bringing Hedzole to Tysons Galleria began prior to the pandemic, but the past two years gave Mensah time to refine the menu and expand her customer base, thanks to the uptick in popularity of farmers markets as one of the few public activities available in summer 2020.

Depending on how well the Urbanspace pop-up does, Mensah could land a permanent spot in Tysons Galleria, allowing her to focus on Hedzole full time. She currently juggles it with her day job in the health care consulting industry.

“Hedzole has been running during the main farmers market seasons from summer to early winter, and then pretty much goes into hiatus after the winter,” she said. “I wanted the opportunity to see what it would be like in a brick-and-mortar, to get that experience in order to transition into taking this full time.”