Apr 28 2008
Albemarle Land Use Tax
I really liked the following from Keep land-use taxes in Albemarle:
Removing land-use tax does not pass the fairness and logic test.
A suburban acre supports two or three houses, which require education, police and fire services, while one unimproved rural acre requires none of those services and maintains the open space and beauty that all want.
To tax a farm, even a non-working one, the same as a city parcel IS illogical. I don’t quite like the statement “that we all want” however. True, no one is anti-beauty, I bet there are plenty of people that would prefer more development (assuming that translates into a larger supply of houses).
Okay, first of all, there are alot of myths floating out there about land-use valuation. It is my understanding that the BOS is not seriously considering getting rid of the program but rather tightening the requirements to make sure people are actually farming. Frankly I’m not sure how a “non-working farm” qualifies farm at all. That just amounts to the poorer half of the county paying the wealthy landowners taxes for no good reason.
In terms of the “cows don’t go to school” argument, I’ll repeat Dennis Rooker’s response that it is bogus economics. The question you have to ask yourself is what happens when that land is finally developed? Sure, it may have sat out there for twenty years as open space under land-use, but suddenly developing it all at once causes a huge tax burden and makes planning near impossible. If it had been gradually subdivided over twenty years the cost to the public would be far less, since roads and other infrastructure woudfl be expanded gradually. Instead, developers wait until the market is at the highest point of demand (while being subsidized by taxpayers to do it) then create a situation where overnight the county has to pay for more roads, schools, water and fire services. This is effectively what is happening with Buscuit Run. So… the end result is that cows and “unused farmland” don’t save the county money when the ultimate plan is to put families on it that will drive cars and have kids that do go to school.
Correction. I realize now it was Slutzky, not Rooker who commented about “Bogus Economics”.