January 15 - 21, 2026
Falls Church, Virginia • w w w . fc n p . c o m • Free
Founded 1991 • Vol. XXXV N o . 49
The City of Falls Church’s Independent, Locally-Owned Newspaper of Record, Serving N. Virginia
Restaurant Owners Meet With F.C. Council
GALA RIBBON CUTTING
Sound Alarms, Look for Ways to Boost Revenues by Nicholas F. Benton
Falls Church News-Press
As the second annual Falls Church Restaurant Week approaches, running from Jan. 23 to Feb. 1 with over 60 local participating establishments, restaurant-related issues, namely, what it will take to adequately support them all, are coming front and center in the Little City. An historic meeting of representatives of a dozen restaurants and the entire Falls Church City Council and key City Hall staffers was squeezed into The Swamp room at Clare and Don’s Beach Shack last month to share thoughts and concerns, and a follow up meeting is set for sometime next month. One of the issues that drove the meeting was the poorly-notified fact that after two dozen years, the annual New Year’s Eve Watch Night celebration was called off, an annual event that helped fill a number of downtown restaurants to overflowing as thousands of folks from all around the region piled into the closed streets at the intersection of Routes 7 and 29 to hail the drop of the City’s old
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Meridian High’s Lasso Student Newspaper Pages 18-19.
A LARGE CONTINGENT of Falls Church City community leaders and employees of the newly-opened Stratford Garden restaurant on the repurposed site of an old motor inn gathered in front for a ribbon-cutting ceremony and to pose for this historic photograph. The Stratford joins the growing list of outstanding eateries assembling in the Little City. (Photo: Gary Mester)
F.C. Schools Need Base 5.04% Increase, Dade Says
by Nicholas F. Benton
Falls Church News-Press
At Tuesday night’s yearbeginning organizational meeting of the Falls Church City Public Schools’ elected School Board, vice chair Kathleen was elected its new chair, and Anne Sherwood its new vice chair, both by unanimous 7-0 votes. The elections followed by a week the election by the Falls Church City Council of Letty Hardi as mayor (for a second term) and Laura Downs and vice mayor. And, as Ms. Downs pointed out in a note to the News-Press yesterday, it may well mark for the first time ever
that women have held all four key positions in the 78-year history of Little City, certainly the case since the school board became an elected office in 1994. The important business in Tuesday’s School Board focused on the upcoming budget cycle, for which challenges exist due to the impact of federal layoffs and cutbacks in the Northern Virginia region. “Uncertainty” is the watchword for this period in the process, and it takes from the guidance provided to the board by the City staff in last month’s joint meeting, where the City’s new chief finance officer David
So presented the prospects for the new year as a range from a 0.6 percent increase in overall revenue to a 4 percent increase, depending on what revenue numbers show from real estate assessments due in February and what other revenue options show in the coming period. Alicia Prince, the FCCPS’ chief operations officer, told the board Tuesday that the recent years’ pattern has been that 81 percent of its operating revenues come from the City, 15.6 percent from the state and less than 1 percent from the federal government. The recent years’ revenue sharing agreement with the City
of Falls Church is that 50 percent of the revenues from taxes are shared with the schools, an agreement which began in Fiscal Year 2019 and has led to a period of unprecedented concord in the City compared to heated competitions for funds before. But this year, new FCCPS Superintendent Terry Dade told the School Board Tuesday, a “maintenance effort” for the budget for the coming year would require a 5.02 percent increase in funds from the City. That is a budget without any new enhancements, but which
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