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Fairfax Park Authority outlines sliding-fee plan to expand access; asks board for phased $12 million implementation
Summary
The Fairfax County Park Authority presented an equity implementation plan centered on a sliding-fee scale, pilot results from Sully Community Center, and a proposed five‑year rollout costing $12 million (implementation) with staff and outreach costs phased into the FY26 budget process.
Jay Cole, executive director of the Fairfax County Park Authority, and Sarah Baldwin, deputy director of operations, presented the Park Authority’s equity implementation plan to the Health and Human Services Committee on Feb. 4, outlining a five‑year, phased approach to a countywide sliding-fee scale.
The plan aims to reduce cost and familiarity barriers to parks programming and to boost participation by lower-income residents. “During the summer of 2024, we conducted an extensive outreach effort…Those were cost, distance, and familiarity,” Sarah Baldwin said when reporting results of community engagement and the Sully sliding-fee pilot.
Why it matters: The Park Authority’s data showed programs that already used sliding-fee subsidies — for example, the Sully Community Center pilot — attracted substantially higher shares of nonwhite and lower-income participants than standard Park Authority programs. Implementing a sliding-fee scale at…
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