Supervisors approve $22 million Fiscal 2009 budget and 1-cent increase in real estate tax rate
By James P. Gannon
After debating ways to avoid a property-tax increase, the Rappahannock County Board of Supervisors Tuesday approved a $22 million budget for the year starting July 1 and a one-cent increase in the real estate tax rate–a 1.7% hike.
The vote was 4-1, with Supervisor Roger Welch of Wakefield District voting against both the budget and the tax increase. Welch urged the supervisors to make an across-the-board cut in the budget–one affecting all departments–large enough to avoid any property tax increase this year, but found no support for his eleventh-hour appeal.
The increase raises the county’s overall real-estate tax rate to 60 cents from 59 cents per $100 of property value. For a home and lot valued at $300,000, the increase will add $30 to the homeowner’s annual tax bill.
Tuesday evening’s budget-adoption meeting was conducted in a nearly-empty courthouse before an audience of two news reporters and one other citizen. The board had previously held its public hearing on the budget, which was also sparsely attended and produced little public comment.
The board first took up the adoption of the proposed $22 million budget for Fiscal Year 2009, which triggered a brief, rather low-key discussion of possible ways to cut spending in order to avoid a tax increase.
Supervisor Bryant Lee of Hampton district noted that he previously had raised the question of postponing plans for a new government office building on Bank Road near Rappahannock National Bank as a way of avoiding a tax increase. But he said that information provided by County Administrator John McCarthy had convinced him that postponing that project would simply increase its eventual cost.
“We would be going backwards and not saving taxpayers any money,” he said. “I would like to do away with the one-cent (tax increase) if there is a way possible, but I haven’t found a way to do it.”
That prompted Welch to say it wasn’t necessary to target one area of the budget to cut. “We could do it straight across the board, and nobody would notice it,” Welch said.
“We do have a lot of people in the county who can’t afford any more taxes,” Welch said. “We run for election and say we don’t want to increase taxes and still we do it” year after year, he added. “I don’t think we should have an increase.”
Welch found some sympathy for his view, but no support for his across-the-board cut. “I don’t disagree that the one cent does bother some people,” Edward Wayland, Piedmont District supervisor said. But he added, “I think we have to be fiscally responsible to the county and do our business. I think the one cent is fiscally responsible. Nobody sitting up here wants to increase taxes.”
“I feel it is too late for that,” said Ron Frazier, Jackson District Supervisor, referring to an across-the-board cut. “If we were going to do that, we should have already done it.” Lee agreed that “at this point”–a week before the fiscal year begins–an across-the-board cut for all departments would not be a good idea.
The board then voted 4-1 over Welch’s dissent to adopt the budget as advertised. A separate vote on setting the tax rate including the one-cent increase produced the same result, with Welch again dissenting.
The only new program in the budget is a $30,000 initiative to promote tourism in Rappahannock County. No supervisors spoke against that program, but McCarthy said in a memo sent to supervisors before the meeting that he had heard “some negative commentary” about the new spending, prompting him to argue strongly for its approval.
In his memo, McCarthy noted that the county collects over $140,000 a year from the meals-and-lodging tax largely paid by visitors yet the county historically has provided “less than $5,000 per year in funding for any tourism-related activities.” Every nearby county spends much more on promoting tourism, he said, even though tourism and agriculture are cited in the county’s Comprehensive Plan as the two main pillars of its economic development.
“All our economic development eggs are in agriculture and tourism, and frankly, we spend nothing to turn that meals and lodging tax, and the employment that derives it, into a real moneymaker,” McCarthy wrote. “This project leverages local money and state money, and will signal strongly our desire to grow those businesses that return so much to the community while demanding little in the way of services.”
The $30,000 tourism initiative will allow the county to contract with Laura Overstreet, who has spearheaded the tourism program for the City of Alexandria, to serve as a part-time co-ordinator of county tourist-promotion efforts. It will help fund development of a county-wide tourism website promoting local businesses and activities, linked to the state of Virginia’s tourism website, the main portal for tourist information for Virginia.
The budget includes a 3% pay increase for county employees effective in December, equivalent to a 2.3% increase on an annual basis.
Total spending in the new budget is $22,021,815, representing a relatively large increase of $1.7 million or 8.5% over the $20.3 million budget for the year just ending. The total was swelled, however, by several large, one-time capital-spending projects, including the renovation of the old Scrabble School building to be the county’s Senior Center, the closing of the last waste cell at Amissville landfill, and a project to mark Civil War Trails in the county.
Most of the spending for those projects is coming from grants or from surplus revenues and did not require any increase in the tax rate. The approved one-cent increase is specifically intended to fund the county’s new emergency radio communications system for law enforcement and fire and rescue services, which are adopting a more modern 800-megahertz system to replace the current obsolete system.
-- James P. Gannon
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