When the Herndon Town Council was debating how to fund the Dulles Rail Project last December, the council chambers were jam-packed with concerned citizens, business leaders and government officials. Because Herndon is a town, its support was integral for the project to move forward.
In Reston, there was no such crowd of prominent officials packing into the debates over the project to extend Metrorail to Reston and Herndon. As Reston is not a town, residents have no legitimate political representation apart from one supervisor on the Board of Supervisors and the Reston Association, which is a homeowners association.
Now, partly because Reston has little voice in the $1.9 billion project that will certainly affect residents and the community, several prominent Restonians are renewing a call for Reston to incorporate as an official town.
"Metro is barreling down the track at us at this point and we need more political clout to protect ourselves," said Mike Corrigan, a candidate for RA's Board of Directors who is running on a platform to reevaluate Reston's governance.
THIS IS NOT the first time the question of Reston's governance has been thrust into the public debate. In 1980, Reston residents rejected a referendum to incorporate as a town by a substantial margin. The referendum's defeat is generally blamed on a fear among voters that added government would increase taxes during the economic recession of the time.
Eight years later, the issue was revisited when a task force of Reston residents produced a report that weighed the pros and cons of staying the same, becoming an extended tax district, becoming a town, and becoming a city.
Following the release of the 1988 report, a group of citizens called the Reston Forum convened and decided that becoming a town was both the most attractive and viable option of governance for Reston's future.
The push to incorporate as a town began moving forward, but when members of the Reston Forum began writing what would have been Reston's Town Charter, internal disagreements caused the group to shelve their plans for the foreseeable future, said Suzi Jones, the chair of the governance task force in the late 1980's and the current president of RA's Board of Directors.
"We just kind of ran out of steam and we kept running into opposition," Jones recalled. That opposition came primarily from the Reston Chamber of Commerce because incorporating as a town would levy additional taxes on Reston businesses.
Today, Corrigan and others are blowing the dust off the 1988 Report to the Reston Community on Governance Options, seeing it as the essential first step toward eventually incorporating as an official town.
CONTRARY to popular perception, becoming a town would not necessarily add another layer of taxes on the average Reston homeowner. RA dues, which currently cost the typical RA member about $415 annually, are not tax-deductible. If Reston were to incorporate as a town, advocates say, the dues would be changed to deductible real estate taxes.
By converting from RA dues to real estate tax, the average Reston homeowner in the 32.75 percent combined federal-state bracket would lower their taxes by $136. After deductions, that would equate to $279 in total out-of-pocket expenses.
Assuming a new town government would incorporate most of RA's functions and no new major expenses are added, Reston residents could actually pay less for a municipal government, said John Knapp, an economist at the University of Virginia.
In fact, converting to a property tax system from the flat RA assessment would actually equalize the contributions made from residents of different income levels, Knapp said. Property taxes are tied to the value of the home, while RA dues are the same for almost everyone.
While equality is in the eye of the beholder, property taxes theoretically cause wealthier residents to help subsidize citizens who earn a lower income, Knapp said.
ALSO, BECOMING a town would broaden the tax base by collecting revenue from Reston businesses. RA dues are only collected from Reston homeowners, so businesses are exempt from the annual fee.
In the 1988 report, the task force estimated that a town government would collect $2.4 million in revenues now accruing to Fairfax County from business license and motor vehicle fees, ABC profits and other taxes. That number would be significantly higher today because Reston has grown exponentially since the 1980s and there are more than twice as many businesses.
The Reston business community would be ardently opposed to another layer of taxes, said Tracey White, president of the Greater Reston Chamber of Commerce.
Reston businesses already expect to pay higher taxes because of the Dulles Rail Project and because of the potential roll-back of industrial tax breaks being considered by the General Assembly. Even more taxes from incorporating as a town would be met with animosity, White said.
"Raising taxes is not a popular thing right now," she said. "Timing is everything and I don't think our businesses want another tax at this snapshot in time."
By broadening the tax base to include businesses and by changing to property taxes from RA dues, Reston would be implementing a more fair system of taxation, Corrigan said.
"I think it's more equitable," Corrigan said. "I don't think rich people should pay less on average than poor people."
THE MAIN impetus for the discussion of incorporating as a town, however, is to grant Reston the political legitimacy enjoyed by Herndon and other nearby towns, such as Vienna.
Gerald Volloy, the executive vice president of RA, said that at the public meetings over the Dulles Rail Project, he saw frustrated Reston residents and businesspeople lament that they had no say in the process.
"Some of them felt irritated that in order to have their voice heard in a public forum, they had to go to Herndon," Volloy said.
RA, as a homeowners association, does not enjoy the same status as a municipal government would before the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors or any other executive or legislative body. Though RA is one of the largest homeowners associations in the country, it carries the same level of status as any other homeowners association or civic organization.
Reston has 56,400 residents and almost 3,000 businesses, which makes Reston larger than any town in Virginia and bigger than most cities as well, according to the U.S. Census. It makes little sense, advocates say, that such a large entity lacks legitimate political status.
"We really are the economic engine for the county and for the state. Yet, when elected government officials come together to decide our fate, we don't have a seat at the table," said Vera Hannigan, a candidate for the Lake Anne/Tall Oaks district seat of RA's Board of Directors who helped author the 1988 governance report.
Reston citizens are primarily represented by a member of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, two members of the General Assembly, and federal elected officials. By incorporating as a town, decisions concerning Reston would be executed faster because county, state or federal bureaucracy would be avoided, Hannigan said.
Reston could have more say in planning and zoning decisions, large infrastructure projects and taxation, she said.
"We'd become masters of our own fate," Hannigan said.
A TOWN GOVERNMENT would not be required to provide any more services than RA already offers, according to Ted McCormack, deputy director of Virginia's Commission on Local Government.
"For any community that wants to incorporate, there's nothing that says you have to do this or you have to do that," McCormack said. "There's no mandate, per se, that says a town has to provide what services."
Though Herndon has its own police force and provides other municipal services, a Reston government could fold in most of the functions of RA and other organizations such as the Reston Community Center's Board of Governors, according to the 1988 report.
Were such a government created, it would probably be managed by an elected, non-partisan town council headed by a mayor, McCormack said.
For such a governing body to be formed, Reston would have to clear several substantial hurdles. Both the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors and Virginia's General Assembly would have to approve the incorporation. Then, Reston voters would have to approve becoming a town in a special referendum.
Del. Ken Plum (D), who represents Reston in the House of Delegates, said the General Assembly would not support incorporation unless Reston residents were solidly in favor of incorporation and the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors gave their stamp of approval as well.
Public support would be difficult to come by, Plum said, because the simple desire to have greater political status will not be perceived as a good enough reason for potentially higher taxes.
"You've got such a high level or government service and action already," Plum said. "It's difficult to show there's a need for another level of local government."
However, if Reston residents decide they want to be an official town, Plum said he would help further the process in Richmond.
"I've always maintained that whenever there's a groundswell of support, I'd be more than happy to carry it along," he said.
That groundswell of support has not been evident in the past. In both 1980 and 1988, the push to incorporate as a town did not succeed because the public was not united behind the effort, said Frank de la Fe, the Hunter Mill representative on the Fairfax County Planning Commission who also served on the 1988 governance task force.
"I certainly don't think any new effort would have much more success," he said.
The authors of 1988 governance report also identified public apathy as the one major roadblock to success. Reston residents are generally happy with the ways things are, the report said, so why fix what isn't necessarily broken?
"Short of the Wiehle Avenue dam breaking or our (Fairfax County) supervisor totally ignoring Reston's needs," the report said, "it is doubtful that given the present apathy, sufficient momentum could be generated to wage a successful referendum."