The Waynesboro News Virginian (h/t SWAC Girl) has performed two great services today. First, they called for Augusta County Supervisors to stick to the post-assessment equalized rate and save Augustans from a property tax increase:
Supervisors, if they felt the pain, could ease it by voting to reduce the tax rate to keep revenues level with last year, something Tracy Pyles of the Pastures District has urged but has failed, so far, to gain backing for from the other half-dozen members of the board. That would require Augusta to survive, somehow, on $43.3 million in property tax revenues. Getting by with the same or less is the task of taxpayers. Forgive them for feeling the government they fund ought do likewise.
I wish the editors of our local paper here in Spotsylvania (The Free Lance Star) had been so wise.
The other important thing the WNV editors did was set the bar for the equalized rate. If it must be tweaked in the future, so be it, but there is at last a number around which a stand can be made:
Virginia law includes a windfall provision requiring that the rate initially be adjusted to prevent revenues from increasing by more than 1 percent after a reassessment. Supervisors then can vote to adjust the rate. Logic, fairness and simple awareness of the unique circumstances of our day require that supervisors leave the rate alone after the initial adjustment, which by our calculations would lower taxes from 58 cents to 46 cents per $100 of assessed value.
So there it is – the upper bound (as the statisticians would say) of acceptability for Augusta taxpayers: 46 cents.
Not a penny more.
Again for those of us outside Augusta, this is still a crucial fight. All local governments will probably have at least one official looking to raise property taxes this year – with or without an assessment. They will look to Augusta, because if a county thisRepublican – with a Republican majority on the BOS, no less – ends up with a tax increase . . .
That is a train we cannot allow to even warm up, let alone get moving.
[...] to this point, I was of the belief that a simple equalized tax rate would go a long way to solving the problem. Then I read this from the Waynesboro News-Virginian: [...]