APPOMATTOX — Following a brief public hearing Monday where one person spoke, Appomattox County supervisors approved a modest property tax increase and the county’s fiscal year 2009 budget.
Supervisors unanimously set the FY2009 real estate tax rate at 44 cents per $100 of assessed value, an average 2 percent increase for property owners. The county’s $37.2 million budget was initially based on a tax rate of 49 cents, which would have constituted an average 14 percent increase.
Falling River district Supervisor Tom Conrad requested that the county set the tax rate at 43 cents, which would have been a fractional tax cut for those whose properties were reassessed at 78 percent or less than their 2007 value.
“It’s like nothing goes down and we have an opportunity here,” Conrad said. “Let’s set a precedent here and reduce the taxes.”
The current tax rate is 77 cents per $100 of assessed real estate value and the equalized tax rate would have been 43.33 cents per $100 of assessed value.
The county’s budget was adopted with a few changes. Most significantly, supervisors slashed all $291,000 for the county’s capital improvement budget and added about $18,000 to the schools budget in order for the schools to maximize state funding, County Administrator Aileen Ferguson said.
Additionally, new state information estimated that the county would receive about $124,000 less than expected from the state, Ferguson said.
Each cent of the real estate tax rate brings in about $126,000 to county coffers. Ferguson said any shortfall will be made up through existing reserves, but she still needed to calculate what that would be.
While all supervisors supported the lower rate, Wreck Island District Supervisor Gary Wayne Tanner expressed concern that keeping the rate low while tapping reserves could affect the following year’s budget, particularly if the county adopted a land-use tax ordinance.
“I’m not advocating going up, but as honorable as it is to go to 43 cents or 44 cents, I don’t know what that will do to us next year with or without land use,” Tanner said. “We need to be very cautious.”
A land-use ordinance taxes productive farm land at a lower rate than other real estate as long as property owners meet specific criteria. Appomattox is the only county in the region without such an ordinance. That prompted concern last year after the board did not pass an ordinance prior to the 2008 property reassessment, said Tanner, who was elected to the board in November.
County supervisors will revisit whether to hold a public hearing on the land-use ordinance next month, but even if one is passed, it won’t affect tax rates for this year, Ferguson said.
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