BOTETOURT COUNTY, Va. – Despite hours of neighbors expressing their concerns, the Botetourt County Board of Supervisors went ahead with a 70-cent real estate tax rate.
Back in February, residents were shocked to see reassessment values increase the way they did.
Fast forward a couple of months and the county is looking at finalizing its budget. A large part of the budget relies on the real estate tax.
Originally the rate was proposed to decrease from 79 cents to 73 cents per $100 of assessed value. Neighbors grew furious over what they considered a minimal cut. Many argue the tax rate should be set to 60 cents.
“I know people who can literally not afford groceries to feed their kids and can’t afford to pay utilities and not a small amount of people,” Candace Poling said.
On Tuesday the board voted 4-1 to reduce the real estate tax rate. However, the vote followed more than a hour of public comment where nearly everyone spoke about their frustrations with the rate (some people spoke about other agenda items but no one spoke in approval of the tax rate).
While the real estate tax rate went down, the board did vote to increase the meals tax rate 4% to 6%.
“For many of us, we’ve had to cut back on how often we go out to eat. Sometimes I’ll go to Bedford to eat as it is because I don’t like paying meal taxes,” Rick Painter said.
The new overall operating budget for the county totals $90,422,886 an 8% increase from the previous year, mainly due to increased funding for public safety/first responders and Botetourt County Public Schools.
It was for this reason the board needed to vote on a tax rate which would fund the county.
Supervisor Amy White spoke after the vote with those who were still left in the audience, as many people left after hearing the final vote.
“There’s no way we can make that kind of cut without impacting education significantly, without impacting public safety and really impacting services to our county,” White said.
Now several neighbors are holding onto their frustrations to the ballot box. The overwhelming message from the families was to either represent us and our interests, or we will vote you out.