'Taxpayers left holding the bill'
Betsy Mayr
2008-04-08 21:09:20
The legacy of speculative real estate development came back to haunt us last week. Faced with rising county service needs from new residents and plummeting property assessments, the Board of Supervisors approved a tax rate increase to address a $250 million budget shortfall.After years of a reckless pace of development pushed on us by speculative developers, the bill is coming due. Too many houses equals slower sales and declining property values. New houses also cost more in county services than they provide in tax revenue, and thanks to Virginia law, we the taxpayers are left holding most of the bill. Loudoun's experience brings back memories of Fairfax County in the 1970s and 80s -- rapid residential growth followed by related jumps in the tax rate.
Loudoun was the nation's fifth-fastest growing county between 2000 and 2007. The last Board of Supervisors alone approved 14,324 new houses. When added to earlier approvals, 27,000 houses are now in the pipeline to be built. While growth in the Washington region averaged 1.5 percent per year, Loudoun's annual growth rate has been around 8 percent. This has resulted in an increased demand for services, including the construction of 30 to 40 schools over the next 10 years.
Fortunately, Loudoun residents were largely successful in fighting over the last four years to prevent another 80,000 houses from being added to the existing pipeline of approved units. Voters also elected a bipartisan slate of supervisors committed to a more sustainable rate of growth.
Now our challenge is to work together as a county to address the growth that's already coming while meeting the needs of our existing communities. I hope you'll be part of the dialogue going forward.
Betsy Mayr is the treasurer of Voters for Loudoun's Future and a 26-year resident of Leesburg. VLF is a bipartisan political action committee, which supported smart growth candidates in the last election. VLF took no position on the budget or tax rate.