An Open Letter to the Board of Supervisors: on schools, taxes, land use and more
By Monira Rifaat
I find it necessary to write to you, rather than rely on short comment periods during public meetings. The county budgeting process needs aligning.
You have heard this from me before: I propose that the county budget and the school budget be approved at the same time. Under the present flawed scenario, the BOS will vote on the school budget, our biggest county expense, without knowledge of final numbers on the projected County revenue for the same fiscal cycle 07-08.
Do you wonder that the county citizens are anxious that the real estate tax rate may have to go up 3 cents from 58 cents on the 100$ assessed value to 61 cents, to generate the $494,000 extra dollars the school board is asking for?
If the BOS can tell us that the county revenue is expected to go up by $500,000 for the fiscal year 2007-08, or that the BOS can find $500,000 worth of cuts with the same revenue as 2006-07, then we should be able to accommodate the request from the superintendent of schools for $494,000 additional funds from the county.
Therefore: Two suppositions are at the heart of the issue here:
1. How to increase county revenue? Our county budget is based on real estate taxation. How long is this sustainable? We have seen young folks leave the county, teachers and workforce unable to live here, elderly folks on social security buckle under the burden of higher real estate taxes.
Has the time come to utter the unspeakable: abolish land use taxation, encourage landowners seeking lower real estate taxes to put their land in conservation easement, such action would benefit our LCI; We would need to find a land trust to hold those easements of 50-100 acres. In the process, would we lose some farmland to development? Undoubtedly. Would we need more schools for more children living in these newly built houses? Undoubtedly. Would our taxes go up to afford to build more infrastructures? Undoubtedly. Would Rappahannock County as we know it today change? YES. We could lobby Richmond to allow us a transfer tax on real estate transactions: let the county benefit from the transfer of these mega-luxury properties. Can the BOS think of other sources of revenue?
2 Now to consider the second supposition: reduce expenses. What happened to the idea floated a year ago to have our budgets examined by a fiscal expert to detect possible inefficiencies?
I say to our elected board of supervisors and to John McCarthy: examine the whole process critically, exercise new creative approaches. Could it be that our zoning and our comprehensive plan are out of touch with reality? Taxes go up, inevitably, that is what we are being told. I say maybe, but let us look at how efficient we are in running the schools and the county, before we demolish what we have worked so hard to create.
I say again: realign the 2 budgets, school and county and approve them at the same time. That would be a step in the right direction.
-- Admin
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