After Albemarle County executive Bob Tucker finished his hour-long budget presentation for Fiscal Year 2010-2011—the proposed grand total is $293.85 million, for you eager readers—he asked members of the Board of Supervisors if they had any “general questions.” Board chairman Ann Mallek responded first: “Sobering news.”
Likely, plenty of tax payers will pore over Tucker’s 240-page budget recommendations to sober up for the first public hearing on the recommended county budget, scheduled for March 3. The budget—available in its entirety online at albemarle. org/budget and covered on c-ville.com last week—arrives at $10.3 million less than last year’s adopted budget. And while a drop in real estate assessments and a tax rate of 74.2 cents per $100 will likely lower taxes for a majority of county residents, the recommended budget also includes those other, less pleasant types of reductions.
While county schools are slated to receive 61 percent of expenditures, the state is still considering changes to the composite index that determines school funding.
“Remember, state funding is a moving target,” says Peter Wurzer, director of research for the Albemarle Truth in Taxation Alliance, about education funds. “Every time you turn around, it’s going down.”
Twenty-three additional government staff positions will be eliminated, frozen or offset, making for a total of 78 positions suspended in some form or another since 2007—a return to 2002 staffing levels. Five police officer positions remain frozen. Both the Scottsville and Crozet libraries would see 5 percent cuts, county beaches would see reductions in operating hours, and Albemarle’s Capital Improvements Program would stick solely to maintaining infrastructure.
Wurzer says that concern over the county budget is “something that really has to bring us back to virtually questioning every assumption that we make when it comes to spending.”
“If you’re going to ask me the obvious question of what I think the tax rate should be, frankly I don’t know,” he adds. “That’s what this budget process is all about.”
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