I first published this on RealCrozetVA, but this is an important conversation for all Albemarle residents, as well as those considering moving to Albemarle County.
Crozet – Image from Charlottesville Tomorrow
The tweets from Neil Williamson, of the Free Enterprise Forum, from the 7 December Albemarle County Board of Supervisors meeting were interesting.
Sean Tubbs with Charlottesville Tomorrow has more.
Short question – would you be willing to pay more taxes to fund infrastructure improvements?
Say … $100/year?*
(Illustration: For a house assessed at $350,000, an increase
of 2.8 cents on the tax rate would equate to an annual
increase of $98.00; a 1.6 cent increase on the tax rate
would equate to an annual increase of $56.00. )
A few points from the County presentation: (I highly recommend you read the whole thing)
- Services districts are a tool that have been authorized for decades
- The general purpose of a service district is to provide additional, more complete or more timely services of government than are desired for the locality or localities as a whole
- Service districts are geographic areas composed of less than all of the County’s territory, and whose boundaries are established by the Board of Supervisors
- The Board may levy and collect an annual tax on real property within the service district to pay for the facilities authorized to be provided in the district
- The tax is an ad valorem tax
A few relevant Crozet tweets and points
@cvillenewscom @CrozetGazette @cvilletomorrow excellent point would take VA state legislature to make that even possible @Steve_Landes ?
— Crozet Wx (@Crozetwx) December 8, 2016
@Crozetwx @CrozetGazette @cvilletomorrow @Steve_Landes Yes. If Crozet's Delegate & Senator patroned the bill, it would pass.
— cvillenews.com (@cvillenewscom) December 8, 2016
Relevant Crozet stories from 2007 and 2016
- Should Crozet Become a Town? – from 2007’s cvillenews story.*
- What would Crozet’s budget look like if we were a town?
Important note – When people refer to Crozet as a “town,” they are wrong.
*This is why permanent URLs are important. I’m looking at you, Daily Progress and Albemarle County, the websites of the dead links.
some of the examples above both in the Arlington area and in Albemarle county of taxes levied to the service district are services, even though physically positioned in that district, positively affect most of the residents of the entire county i.e “places 29”, “Midlothian expressway landscaping” Therefore services like those should be paid for by the entire county.
1 – I mostly agree.
2 – I think part of the rationale is that the Crozet area, for example, needs more infrastructure, and those citizens are demanding them … if they can pay directly to ensure the needs are met, more power to them.