When The Examiner reported on a projected budget crunch next year for Alexandria due to a drop in real estate values, local fiscal waste-watchers once again shook their heads in disbelief.

After a multi-year housing boom brought unprecedented revenues into city coffers (the property tax base more than doubled between 2001 and 2006), you’d think Alexandrians would be rolling in leftover reserve funds. Since tax refunds were never on the table, surely the City Council stuck to a sensible diet of moderate budget growth and squirreled away the rest, right? Not so.

Amazingly, Alexandria’s total city and school budget grew 56 percent between 2000 and 2006 (from $361 million to $562 million), far ahead of any reasonable standard such as the percentage-increase of inflation plus population growth.

What did Alexandria residents get out of all that spending? For one, the dubious honor of having this year’s highest public school cost-per-pupil in the Washington area at $18,232, up 14.9 percent from the year before. The money bought laptops for high school students, but drop-out rates remain higher than many other N.Va. school districts.

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We also got a lot of well paid public employees. In 2007, an estimated 67 percent of operating expenditures will go toward employee compensation. The City of Alexandria has around 2,200 full time employees, and thanks to information obtained by The Examiner’s

WECAN project, we know that the average salary is about $60,987, plus benefits. Not too shabby, if you can get it.

Don’t forget about the small outlays that quickly add up. For example, as of November 2006, taxpayers were footing a $95,824 legal bill the city incurred to suppress public input on a Safe Haven shelter project in Old Town. Surely taxpayers could find better uses for these budgetary tidbits — like putting them back on their own plate.

Alexandrians are now being warned by the city that spending will have to be curbed to balance the books. Let’s hope the austerity talk continues, because it probably won’t be long before cries warning of “disastrous” cuts to “critically necessary” programs lead to talk of higher taxes.

As hard as it may be to admit, the government’s challenging fiscal predicament we’re facing is almost entirely a self-inflicted wound. Had new city outlays not consumed recent windfalls from years of rising assessments, there’d be no budget crunch to worry about.

What makes this gluttony possible is 1. the volatile current-market-value system for assessing property; and 2. the lack of any meaningful caps on tax rates or spending. Even with lower tax rates, an upsurge in home assessments often means more revenue for local officials to feast upon. Yet when the housing market gets lean, the money pot empties out while hungry open mouths still clamor for expected outlays.

The binge-and-purge habit is terrible and tragic enough in human beings; conducting the budget cycle in this manner must stop. Virginia should institute property tax limits similar to California’s Proposition 13, which has tamed the burden on homeowners without the dire consequences for public services that the naysayers predicted.

The legislature is already looking at one proposal to move toward a property tax system that pegs taxable values to the sale price of homes, while limiting limits both the increases in assessments and the tax rates. This common-sense reform would provide greater certainty for Virginia’s families while still providing localities with reasonable revenue growth.

Until then, local taxpayers need to attend upcoming city budget briefings and speak up for less spending and lower taxes. It may be a lonely prospect when elected officials view our tax dollars as a buffet waiting to be devoured, but someone has got to make the fiscal menu more palatable for those who have to pay the bill.

Alexandria resident Kristina Rasmussen works for the National Taxpayers Union and is a founding member of Alexandria Taxpayers united.