December 11 - 17, 2025
Falls Church, Virginia • w w w . fc n p . c o m • Free
Founded 1991 • Vol. XXXV No. 44
The City of Falls Church’s Independent, Locally-Owned Newspaper of Record, Serving N. Virginia
F.C. Council HOLIDAY MAGIC Adopts New, Cautionary Guidance Big Budget Gap to Be Focus of Coming Year by Nicholas F. Benton
Falls Church News-Press
Burdened by preliminary projections of a revenue gap for the coming fiscal year of between $2.7 and $5.4 million due to wider conditions impacting its local economy, the Falls CHurch City Council voted Monday to adopt a “guidance” document for upcoming budget deliberations filled with cautionary language. In its background statement to the resolution, the Council noted, “The revenue forecast this year is marked by an unusually high degree of uncertainty in the national and regional economy and in the national political climate.” It goes on, “Given the amount of policy change happening at the federal level, which can have a significant impact on the Washington area regional economy, historical data is less useful as a point of reference when trying to predict future years. A more pragmatic approach is to provide a range of where revenue may land, and refine the forecast as additional revenue data becomes available.
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MADELINE’S CHRISTMAS, now an annual holiday “learning theater” favorite at Falls Church’s Creative Cauldron, runs through Dec. 21, with special cabaret performances each weekday night in the coming week, as well. (Photo: News-Press)
3 Amazing F.C. Women Feted for Their Service
by Nicholas F. Benton
Falls Church News-Press
Three extraordinary women, each who have served Falls Church for decades in vital roles, were honored this week in recognition of their departures from their current roles. Falls Church’s Vice Mayor Debbie Shantz-Hiscott and veteran City Electoral Board chief Rene Andrews were feted at Monday’s meeting of the Falls Church City Council, and longtime Meridian High School music instructor and band leader Mary Jo West was rec-
ognized by the Falls Church School Board at its meeting this Tuesday. All three women have contributed enormously to the Little City, Schantz-Hiscott was recognized for her years as head of the Falls Church Education Association prior to her election to the Council in a special election in 2020 and then to a full term in 2021. Andrews began serving on the electoral board in the early 1990s and has continued to the present, assuming its top leadership position as the Little City has consistently led the state in voter turnout per-
centages, and West has become a legend at the high school for the work she’s done with the instrumental music program there, achieving many regional awards and creating from among the students a bonafide jazz ensemble that roamed the entire community performing. She continues on with the Little City directing the all-volunteer Falls Church Orchestra. . Monday night, the recognitions of Shantz-Hiscott and Andrews came in the context of the formal swearing in for new four year terms of the four members of the Council elected
in November, including incumbents Marybeth Connelly, Laura Downs and David Snyder and newcomer Arthur Agin, who was the winning candidate among those who ran to fill the sea vacated by Shantz-Hiscott’s decision not to run again. In hailing Schantz-Hiscott, Mayor Letty Hardi introduced a distribution of pink caps not only to her colleagues, but to the City staff present for the meeting and for anyone in the audience who wanted one. Salutary remarks were deliv-
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