Fairfax City councilmembers voted unanimously to set the FY2012 real estate tax rate at 93.7 cents and halve the 1 cent originally proposed to fund stormwater projects at a budget meeting Thursday night.
Property owners in the city limits will pay 94.2 cents per $100 assessed value next year.
discussion with a recommended $1 real estate tax rate, 4.5 cents above the current rate. Since then, the City Council have made cuts to department budgets and split the proposed 1 cent stormwater rate in half.
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The halved cent will provide $390,000 for stormwater maintenance projects.
Mayor Rob Lederer said the FY2012 budget process was a difficult one, though not as dire as it could have been.
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"Things started to look up, but we've a long way to go before we're out of the woods," he said after the vote.
Council members cut over $1.2 million from department budgets to reach the approved real estate tax rate. Some of those changes include clipping the minimum fund balance to 10 percent from 10.2 percent, a savings of about $200,000; and freezing salary and benefits for a Parks and Recreation Department position, $57,000.
Many of the budget changes came from updated trend and collections data.
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