Hang onto your wallets, Virginia Beach. The city's bean counters are eyeballing your back pockets.
Just three months into a new fiscal year, which saw real estate tax rates shoot up by a whopping 6 cents, Beach honchos are preemptively moaning about a budget "shortfall" next year.
Let's be honest, shall we?
There is no shortfall. Or budget deficit. City officials are simply planning to spend more than the city will take in next year.
When families have budget problems, they cut frivolities and get the bills paid.
Not municipalities.
They're run by politicians who don't know how to prioritize and who pretend they can't shift money from one area to another. When money's tight, they make a few cuts then find creative ways to squeeze a little more loot out of taxpayers.
You've been warned.
Beach staff cautioned the City Council on Tuesday that the city was facing a $33 million shortage next year. The "shortfall" is blamed, in part, on increased costs from the Southeastern Public Service Authority, combined with sluggish growth in revenues.
Wait one minute. Wasn't that ugly trash fee supposed to help pay SPSA?
Until 2012, Virginia Beach treated garbage removal the right way: as a core city service covered by property taxes, like schools and public safety.
With dire warnings about a looming increase in the cost of regional garbage collection, the city imposed a monthly $10-per-household trash fee in 2012. The next year, the city brazenly increased it to $21.36.
When I talked to her Thursday, the city's Director of Finance, Patricia Phillips, said even that hefty amount won't cover next year's SPSA bill.
So on Tuesday, City Manager Jim Spore announced a citywide hiring freeze and other belt-tightening measures designed to save the Beach between $300,000 and $800,000 per month.
I hesitate to point this out, but this former English major can do basic math and using Spore's most optimistic numbers, the hiring freeze will save the city only a little more than $7 million during the remainder of this fiscal year.
Not nearly enough alone to cover next year's planned overspending.
You know what's coming in the spring: Another tax increase. Or trash fee hike. Or an exciting new way to wring a little more money out of beleaguered taxpayers.
"They're softening people up for a tax increase," Councilman John Moss said Thursday.
This is getting to be a habit at the Beach. A bad one.
In 2012, the real estate tax rate jumped 6 cents and the City Council imposed the 10-buck-a-month trash fee on Resort City households.
In 2013, the real estate tax rate was lowered 2 cents, but the trash fee more than doubled.
In 2014, the real estate tax rate was untouched, but the personal property tax rate went up.
In 2015, City Council sharply increased the real estate rate 6 cents again - in part to pay for the $300 million-plus light rail project that hasn't yet been approved. It also changed the tax relief program for seniors and the disabled.
No sooner had Deputy City Manager Dave Hansen begun picking lint out of his empty pockets on Tuesday than he declared one project safe from the new austerity measures.
Light rail, of course.
He told The Pilot that Virginia Beach uses "dedicated revenue streams" for that astronomically priced project and that money can't be shifted into the general fund.
Maybe Hansen can't move the money, but the City Council surely can.
There is nothing to prevent the Beach from reallocating loot set aside for light rail this year to more pressing needs. Did I mention that the rail project hasn't even been approved?
On Thursday, Moss told me he's prepared an ordinance that calls on his colleagues to remove $10 million in the current budget for the purchase of light-rail cars.
Here's a prediction: Moss's common-sense proposal will be voted down later this month.
"I probably won't get a second," he admitted.