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                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, April 17, 1993                   TAG: 9304200407
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

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ROANOKE CITY'S LAND SWINDLE

ON A RECENT local newscast, I viewed our mayor, David Bowers, proclaiming the need for the reassessment of local property taxes on lands within city limits presently zoned agricultural and for these lands to be rezoned commercial so as to provide a larger tax base. Under the pretense of increasing the number of available acres for development and a broader tax base, it is not hard to see that this so-called need amounts to a blatant land grab through real-estate taxation - just as in the case at Hilton Head Island in South Carolina. The property taxes in the island area increased so dramatically that the local people who lived and grew up there could no longer afford to pay the exorbitant real-estate taxes. What were these hard-working people to do? They could not afford the high taxes so they sold and moved on.

The only difference between Hilton Head and Roanoke is that the rising cost there came with wealthy neighbors moving in. Here in our Gotham, it is the direct result of a greedy city bureaucracy that beholds a means of pilfering this acreage through an instant tax hoax - the likes of which has not been viewed since Caucasian men swindled land from the Native Americans.

I don't know who owns these properties, but I sympathize with them. I know the difference between right and wrong, and this is wrong! Furthermore, this not knowing or ignoring the difference between right and wrong seems to be a trend on the national, state and local levels of government. The majority of citizens are fed up with it. Such actions, I hope, shall be totaled and those parties accountable shall be evaluated on their performance in the next election. DANIEL P. HUGHES ROANOKE

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