The baseline economic scenario
Near as I can tell, the following statements are true:
A small-scale facility such as the one proposed by Vienna will cost about twice as much to operate, per square foot, as the nearby Fairfax REC Centers.
If Vienna merely manages to attract as much revenue as Fairfax does, per square foot of facility, then Vienna taxpayers will cover 50% of the operating costs of the proposed Vienna pool/gym facility. (User fees such as annual memberships will cover the other half.)
This is the scenario — 50% operating losses — now being shown Town Council, on this round of discussion.
With the staff proviso that there may well be enough un-conventional revenue sources to cover the operating losses without using Vienna tax dollars. (Which I read as not specifics, but as a plea not to shut the door on having a pool, until Town Staff have had time to look into those alternative revenue sources, and see if anything pans out.)
That all seems squared away now, in my opinion. I think that’s a realistic view.
Plus the cost of the land. And the cost of building the facility. Both of those capital costs, paid for or to be paid for, by the meals tax.
Which is the proximate issue, for this evening’s Town Council meeting.
Well, so what.
So it costs money. Even tax money. So what else is new. Parks cost tax money. Why not here too?
Turns out, this is a rock best left unturned.
Let me start with a walk on the light side. Only after you look at the Fairfax County Park Authority as a whole do you really appreciate how rational their system is.
Fairfax doesn’t subsidize the operating costs of the REC Centers. That’s not where indoor swimming falls, in their spectrum of subsidy level for recreational activities. On their subsidy-meter, indoor swimming falls at “pays its own way”. Covers operating cost:
- Golf courses cover operating cost, plus.
- REC Centers cover operating cost.
- Events held in the parks cover operating cost, minus.
- Parks (just parks, not “attractions”), are free. They cover none of their costs.
After you absorb that — they chose to make REC Centers cover their own operating costs (or had to, as a political bargain), then it eventually dawns on you that this is why Fairfax has just a handful (9) of gigantic REC Centers. Their best shot at making them self-supporting was by building them big, in the presence of significant economies-of-scale.
Like it or not, REC Centers constitute part of an orderly and coherent enterprise. They have a planned level of subsidy that fits into an overall scheme of recreational activity, from golf to a walk in the park. And the REC Centers appear to have been built at an efficient scale.
Overall, across all its enterprises, the FCPA covers about two-thirds of operating costs with user revenues in one form or the other. For comparison, the corresponding calculation for Vienna Parks and Rec is less than one-third, based on the 2025 Town of Vienna budget, page 101 for the revenue number.)
Then you look at Vienna, and it’s just slap-dash.
Vienna’s subsidy level for this type of recreation isn’t chosen with forethought. It’s going to be whatever the shortfall is, said shortfall likely owing to the inefficient scale of the facility. So it’s 50-percent-ish, not because that reflects some purposefully decision by Vienna that indoor swimming deserves this level of subsidy, but because it’s what we gotta do, financially, to have one these pool/gym things right here in Town.
It’s literally the residual — the afterthought, just like the chosen scale of operation. The Town happened to pick up this particular piece of land, and now because this one-third-scale facility is what fits on that land, you get the resulting high average costs, and because our user fees are effectively capped by what Fairfax charges, that’s why we end up with a 50% subsidy.
Even then, Vienna is wealthy enough, that you could just kind of laugh this off in a “what a first-world problem” kind of way.
But if most of what this does is merely cannibalize membership from the nearby Fairfax REC Centers, all we’re doing is raising everybody’s costs. You’ve pulled people out of an efficiently-sized facility and enticed them to come to yours. Presumably, in order to have somewhat shorter average travel times for those switching to the Vienna facility. And you’ve enticed them to do that by subsidizing your fees, so you appear no more expensive than the further-away REC Centers.
And second, it’s not as if this is an environmentally benign thing to build. My guess, from some projection of the electric bill, it’ll use enough electricity to power 75 homes or so. Between 1 and 2 percent of all the homes in Vienna.
And finally, don’t forget the opportunity cost. What is the point, exactly, of passing a Parks and Rec master plan, like, eh, a couple of months after locking up all your capital, for the foreseeable future, in this pool/gym thing. Is that so you can talk about all the changes you’d like to make, to optimize Vienna parks, but now no longer can?
This ready-fire-aim decision-making is so weirdly a part of the Town of Vienna vibe that we who live here perceive nothing unusual in it. But it’s not until you study the Fairfax County Park Authority that you realize just how well they have their act together. And how little does the Town of Vienna have its act together.
And that’s what did it for me.
You know how deep our thinking goes? It goes as deep as “citizens of Vienna have long wanted a pool”. And that we, could, in fact, have one. It won’t bankrupt the Town.
In the end, it boils down to dumping a whole lot of money into providing services locally, that are already provided nearby. Not cheaper, or better, or really even, different. Just closer. More Vienna-centric.
I’m not seeing the value in that.
But I’ve been using the Fairfax County REC Centers for years.
Vienna pool? Build it, don’t build it, I don’t much care. It’s not going to affect me one way or the other.
