ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, April 4, 1996 TAG: 9604040007
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: TALKING IT OVER
To the editori: HELLO? Can the Roanoke County Board of Supervisors and the county administrators hear us Roanoke County residents?
Are you there? Are you listening?
No more tax increases!
Not this year!
Not next year!
No more - ever!
- Robert and Theresa Wright
Our reply: NO TAX increases ever? Would you be willing to settle for just the next century?
Kidding aside, Roanoke County residents - like suburbanites elsewhere - are confronting an irony. Getting away from city taxes (while staying near jobs in the city) was part of the reason many folks moved to the county. But as the county started to fill up, surprise! It came to look more like a city, and to maintain a city-like level of services - bigger schools, expanded utilities, more police, new parks, and so on - that require a city-like level of taxation.
Tax increases, whether by rising rates or property reassessments, tend to be unpopular. But trade-off strategies to ease tax pressures on county homeowners have proved or could prove equally unpopular: merger with the city (to avoid duplication and improve planning and economies of scale); allowing a decline in the quality of schools (local government's big-ticket item); or greater industrialization (in contrast with residential development, industry pays its way in tax revenues).
Finding the right balance between taxes and trade-offs is a perennial issue. The ultimate question may be how much Roanoke County residents are willing to pay not to have any more tax increases.
- The editors
The last word: ROANOKE County has collected from residents, weary travelers and small businesses more than $74 million the past fiscal year. This was accomplished by using a real-estate tax, personal-property tax, sales tax, business-license tax, motor-vehicle license tax, bank-franchise tax, recordation-and-wills tax, utility-license tax, utility-consumer tax, 911 tax, hotel-and-motel tax, prepared-food tax, machinery-and-tool tax, and other tax, tax, taxes.
The amount is double the $37 million collected 10 years ago. Meanwhile, the county's population increased by only 7,300 during that 10-year period.
School attendance during 1986 was recorded at 13,622 registered students, the highest number during a 10-year period. For 1995, there were 13,541 registered students. The quality of county schools is excellent, and could be made better if each school were given equal money to expand. No section of the county deserves more than the other based on the amount of tax revenue that is collected from that section.
The top 20 businesses with real-estate holdings in Roanoke County paid less than $3.5 million in real-estate taxes for 1995. What kind of trade-offs or incentive packages are offered to large corporations looking to locate in Roanoke County that are worth making residents shoulder the tax burden?
Some of these figures sound unbelievable, but the county did have enough tax money left to print its Financial Report Year End 1995, from which the figures came.
- R.W. and T.W.
Robert and Theresa Wright, who work in clerical jobs with large employers, are tax-poor residents of Roanoke County.
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