Thanks in large part to the declining real estate market, Prince William County officials are saying that property taxes will need to go up substantially over the next several years:
Prince William County residents will see an increase in next year’s property tax rate, no matter what.
County officials estimate that real estate values will drop by 14 percent on average, requiring at least a 13 cent increase to the 78.7 cent property tax rate to keep revenue stable. But to properly staff public safety agencies, pay for technology upgrades and build roads approved in a 2006 bond referendum, the tax rate would need to be closer to 95 cents. And to fund the county schools plan, the rate would need to grow to nearly 99 cents, for a $257 increase in the average tax bill.
And, as the article notes, those projections don’t include the costs associated with enforcement of the county’s illegal immigration policies, which the Board of Supervisors is set to vote on this week.
Despite what Supervisor W.S. Covington III (R-Brentsville) termed a “pretty scary” outlook, the chairman of the Board of County Supervisors, Corey A. Stewart (R), refused to consider a less-expensive, staggered implementation of the illegal-immigration crackdown. A vote on the program is set for Tuesday.
“It all has to do with priorities,” Stewart told the board.
“All you are doing is a quick shot,” Supervisor John D. Jenkins (D-Neabsco) said to Stewart. Jenkins said he favors the staggered plan, in which officers would be hired and trained as money becomes available.
Vice Chairman Martin E. Nohe (R-Coles) noted that the police’s illegal-immigration plan would cost $2.8 million in each of the next five years. “We just spent the last six hours discussing how we don’t” have the money, Nohe said.
Stewart proposed using money in the county’s contingency fund for the program, which would cover it for fiscal 2008 but offered no solution for paying for the program in the following years. “We’ll have some tough decisions to make,” he said.
The contingency fund, usually used in emergencies, is a percentage of the budget that the board sets aside. The fund has about $796,000; it would drop to $221,000 if Stewart’s proposal is approved.
And then what would you do, Chairman Stewart, if a real emergency arose and the contingency fund had been bled nearly dry to implement an ordinance that could very well end up being struck down by the Federal Courts ?
At the same time that the County is saying that it has to raise property taxes to make up for a decline in the real estate market, they are also set to vote on a proposal that would make it more expensive for builders to do business in Prince William:
Washington DC -
Prince William County Supervisors will consider imposing the state’s highest impact fees on developers Tuesday night under a plan to substantially boost local road and school funding.
Supervisors delayed raising the fees 36 percent from $37,719 per home to $51,113 per home in the summer and decided to revisit the debate after analyzing the real estate slide for several months.
At the time, county budget analysts were expecting a 2 percent decline in real estate values this year, not the 14 percent tumble that has occurred.(…)
Homebuilders say the increase would discourage new development and hit them at the worst possible time.
They warn that last year’s increase from about $23,000 per home to the current rate is cutting into their profit margins and is partly responsible for the dearth of new development proposals.
“With the $38,000 impact fee now, it wouldn’t make sense to bring a project to the market,” said Jason Dalley, vice president for the Prince William chapter of the Northern Virginia Building Industry Association. “Going to the $51,000 impact fee is just unexplainable.”
Which only means that the market will continue to be soft, and property taxes will continue to go up.
