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person and prove it. The people pretty much leave the equalizers alone to work in peace for several months.
The confusing figures are seen and discussed by enough people to begin to make sense, or, at least, an understandable picture. Some who are damaged are denied any help. Some do receive a fair share of help. And a few, spared by the disaster, seem to receive some aid anyway. Things don’t seem quite fair.
Alot of Rappahannock folks are mad. They waited patiently — even trustingly'—from last January until now for the Equalization Board to play fair with them, and left it alone to do its job. No public attention to the Board’s work was made until the May 13 Rappahannock News story—this after three months of Equalization Board hearings.
A small percentage of property owners—just ten percent of all tax cards on file, many of which belong to one owner—was "equalized." More than 90 percent was not. These landowners h*ve received only the original Hall assessments of land and buildings. They were provided with no detail as to how Hall figured the gross values. To learn this, they would have to go in person to the Commissioner of Revenue office, locate their cards, figure them out, then do the same with neighbors’ cards. The few with the nerve and know-how to do this, talked. The word got around. Feelings of betrayal began. More came to see their cards. More felt wronged.
Some people who had trusted the process and never complained are among those most wronged: they have been left with higher property values than comparable properties lowered by the Equalization Board—and may not even know this yet; or they were raised by the Board to “balance” a neighbor who complained; or they
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