No Projected Pay Increase for City Employees

The single largest increase in Fairfax City's Fiscal Year 2014 budget proposal is the employee retirement funds, which are projected to cost $2 million more next year due investment market swings

Fairfax City Manager Bob Sisson’s $176 million budget blueprint for next year — an increase of 8.6 percent from the current fiscal year — leaves pay and benefits for the city’s 430 employees will remain unchanged.

The city currently contributes 12.54 percent of the qualified employee’s salary to Virginia Retirement System. A proposal to add a cost-of-living adjustment for city employees was eliminated from the proposed budget due to financial constraints, Sisson said.

The city manager wants to add one sanitation driver, at a cost of about $46,000 a year, to assist with an increased work load resulting from about 400 additional homes within the 23,000-resident city.

Public Safety

The manager recommended level funding, of about $12 million, to maintain the city’s 28-officer police department.

The department last year recorded an increase in the number of criminal cases assigned to detectives as well as an increase in the number of calls for service.

The department anticipates answering about 14,000 calls for service this year.

The number of citizen complaints/internal affairs cases investigated is expected to remain at about the pace of last year, when the department investigated 56 such cases.

Serious crime decreased by about 9 percent last year, officials said.

The Fire Department would also see level funding under the manager’s proposal, at about $12.8 million to fund the 60-firefighter department.

More on budget:

Propose Real Estate Tax Hike Could Cost City Taxpayers Hundreds Next Year