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A REAPPRAISAL of Rappahannock County estate got under way March 7 with what amounted to a strong invitation to the Supervisors to consider land use taxation as a means of “saving” county farmers.
Ben Forberg, director of the State Division of Real Estate Appraisal, said he was neither endorsing nor condemning Virginia’s relatively new land use tax procedures, but he stated:
“It is just a question of time before most of our counties will be on this land use plan—if farmers are going to survive in Virginia.”
Counties which adopt land use enabling legislation can tax agricultural horticultural and forest land based on their use, as opposed to the traditional assessment basis of “fair market value.” Some “open space” and recreational uses also qualify under a complicated system of formulas.
Nearby counties which have adopted land use taxation are Fauquier, Loudoun and .Prince William. In those counties, residential development pressures resulted in such high open land assessments that many farmers were either forced out of business or reduced to marginal operaHnns
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