Supervisors approve new budget
By 3-1 votes Monday evening June 25 with Jackson District representative Ron Frazier voting “no” and Wakefield District supervisor Roger Welch away on a trip, the county supervisors approved a nearly $20.3 million budget the the fiscal year that begins July 1. Mr. Frazier actually made the motion to adopt the budget and then voted against it.
He let other supervisors - Hampton District representative Bryant Lee and Piedmont District representative Eddie Wayland - make the other motions, to approve the appropriations in the budget and set the real estate tax rate at 59 cents per hundred (including four cents for the fire levy) and $4.20 on personal property (including 20 cents for the fire levy). This represents a one-cent increase to the real estate tax.
Mr. Frazier then joined a unanimous board in approving what amounted to a nearly $14,000 increase to that budget that will allow retirees to collect 1.8 percent more from the state retirement system. Other increases requested by Sheriff Larry Sherertz were not approved, but there was no discussion of them. County Administrator John McCarthy said he had sensed that they were not inclined to grant those increases, and he did not include them.
The supervisors also unanimously approved a resolution supporting Fauquier County’s application for a $400,000 grant to construct a “burn building” for training firemen. Mr. McCarthy said the grant was supported by the county’s Fire and Rescue Association because county volunteers have problems getting training in other such facilities farther away and hope to be able to use the one to be built in Fauquier County.
Mr. Frazier said after the meeting that when he first ran for public office he promised that he would not vote for any tax increase he didn’t feel was necessary, and he did not believe the one-cent increase was necessary.
Throughout the meeting there was a humorous theme of bats. Monday afternoon the courthouse was sealed off so that bats (Mr. McCarthy said estimates ran as high as 800 of them) would not be able get back in the courthouse tower once they left for the evening. Several people said they did not want to return to town Tuesday morning and be faced with hundreds of irritated bats unable to get back to their accustomed roosting place. Several speculated that they were the same bats forced out of Town Hall last summer by a similar maneuver.
- By Sharon Kilpatrick
-- Sharon Kilpatrick
Write a comment