Nearly 7,000 foreclosed homes will cost Prince William County $2 million more than expected for mowing lawns alone.

The cash-strapped county already has been overwhelmed with hundreds of complaints triggering an emergency request for extra funding.

The avalanche of vacant homes could result in mowing of 2,700 lawns three times this year, which would be an enormous increase over the 140 lawns mowed last year.

“We got 500 complaints in three weeks,” said Michelle Casciato, director of the county’s Neighborhood Services Division. The department received fewer than 500 grass-related complaints all last year.

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The problems are so severe, Casciato said, that the issue could dominate the division’s time, even as neighbors are raising concerns about graffiti on vacant houses.

Casciato proposed reversing the county’s new lawn-mowing laws to prompt action after grass grows to 18 inches, up from 12 inches.

“We need to ask, ‘Are we only in the grass business?’ ” Casciato said.

County Executive Craig Gerhart scrapped a proposed budget request in the fall to more than double the size of the department over the next five years to reflect a huge increase in neighborhood complaints, citing the county’s fiscal woes.

Mowing each lawn costs $259, whether it is a 2-acre plot or a town house, the high cost triggered by the challenge of mowing 18-inch grass.

While the county sticks the property owner, typically a bank, with the bill, the county would need to front the costs, just after passing what several supervisors called a “crisis-year” budget that cut millions of dollars of county spending.

Supervisors are preparing for thousands of citizen complaints, as delays executing the lawn mowing and other foreclosure-related problems could take six weeks or longer.

“[Residents] don’t want to hear we have 7,000 foreclosures, they want to hear about what’s happening in their neighborhood,” said Supervisor Martin Nohe, R-Coles.

dgenz@examiner.com