Staring down a $190 million budget gap, County Administrator Tim Hemstreet had a lot of cost cutting on his plate when he started in December.

He implemented a budget that cost many Loudoun government jobs, but also restored the county’s bottom line, he said in front of a crowd of approximately 200 business men and women at the Loudoun County Chamber of Commerce’s PolicyMaker Series breakfast last week.

The county is “living within our means” and has a balance sheet where the revenues equals the expenditures, he said.

But a new Department of Economic Development strategy that is “structurally balanced” will be the biggest aid to Loudoun in the future. Although land development applications have slowed down, he said, it behooves the county to support the One Loudoun and Kincora mixed-use developments along the Route 28 corridor because they will be the “dictator of current and future success of the county.”

Mixed-use and commercial development amount to long-term revenues for the county, he said. Residential growth raises the needs for services such as law enforcement, fire and rescue personnel and schools that cannot be paid for by real estate taxes, he said.

Finally, Hemstreet encouraged the business leaders and county officials to support Loudoun’s rural economy because employees and their families enjoy open land. And, open land doesn’t require services, he said.

Moving forward, Hemstreet said the Department of Economic Development will go after the businesses they have targeted for the county, support Loudoun’s existing businesses and cultivate the rural economy.

Contact the writer at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).