The front page of Sunday’s Washington Post (below the fold) featured this article on the fiscal challenges facing Fairfax County, VA. No longer the bleeding edge of the suburban frontier in Northern Virginia, Fairfax County now must deal with the rising costs of maintaining the lifestyle it marketed to residents: good schools, good parks, low taxes and low density.

Antonio Olivo writes:

A population that is growing older, poorer and more diverse is sharpening the need for basic services in what is still the nation’s second-wealthiest county, even as a sluggish local economy maintains a chokehold on the revenue stream.

Since the 2008 recession, local officials have whittled away at programs to the tune of $300 million. They now say that there is no fat left to trim.

Instead, they are searching for ways to raise taxes, draw new businesses and revitalize worn neighborhoods. Their effort mirrors the struggle of aging suburban communities nationwide, as a turn-of-the century economic boom settles into a sluggish post-recession status quo.

Few greenfield development opportunities remain; the county’s older facilities are at the end of their useful lifespans and must be replaced. Demographics are changing. Now the bill is coming due. Fairfax is coming to terms with what Chuck Marohn of Strong Towns termed the suburban growth ponzi scheme.

Olivo’s article highlights several anecdotes of the fiscal struggle:

• Shorter hours of operation for libraries
• Deferred maintenance for government vehicles
• Shrinking benefits for public school employees
• Growing backlog of park maintenance needs

The basic business model for suburban places like Fairfax relied on low costs to provide a high quality of services at low tax rates and with relatively low productivity from the land (e.g. low density development). As those once high-quality facilities need replacement, as operating costs rise, the business model previously fueled by growth on the suburban edge has no place left to go.

Some of those amenities seem wildly implausible today: eight different Fairfax high schools had planetariums built into the structures:

Fairfax built state-of-the-art planetariums at eight of its high schools decades ago, an embodiment of the county’s belief that the sky was the limit.

Now the equipment is out of date… Astronomy teacher Lee Ann Hennig has been promised a new digital projector for the planetarium at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, part of a $90 million renovation project that, among other things, is supposed to bring new labs for neuroscience and oceanography to the elite magnet school.

When part of the attraction of suburbia is getting more for your money – more square footage, a bigger yard, a bigger garage – it’s not hard to see that mentality of suburban excess creep into government spending. Installing a planetarium in each of eight (“the greatest concentration of planetaria in the United States except for Dallas, Texas”) high schools instead of funding one facility and send students on occasional field trips? It’s not only a large capital cost, but the indefinite obligation to maintain and operate those facilities.

In addition to those challenges on the cost side, Fairfax is facing revenue pressures as well. Homeowners are weary of property tax increases, and commercial property tax revenues have yet to fully recover from the Great Recession:

Cuts in federal spending — about $1.5 billion less in Fairfax than in 2010 — have emptied out office buildings, leading to a 16.5 percent vacancy rate that is the highest since the 1991 recession. Since 2013, commercial property taxes have dropped $23.2 million.

Much of that drop in commercial property value is tied to the massive shift in favor of Metro-accessible office locations and walkable places – away from suburban office parks. Fairfax is wisely focusing redevelopment of their metro-accessible places into a denser, more fiscally sustainable urban model, but this is big lift.

And demographics are changing: there’s more poverty, more diversity, and an older, grayer population. This mirrors national trends (for more, see this three part series from Amanda Kolson Hurley in Citylab; including an interview with Myron Orfield, a scholar who has long forecast the need for a change in the suburban business model).

Fairfax is left with three basic options:

1. Urbanize: redevelop in a denser, more efficient pattern (both for tax revenues and for providing services)
2. Raise taxes to continue providing high quality services, despite increasing costs
3. Muddle through

The most likely path will involve bits from all three. Fairfax is lucky to have some assets to urbanize around and a stronger regional real estate market to fuel that transformation; other suburban jurisdictions around the US aren’t so lucky.