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Is It Effective?
H. L. Man waring of Woodville asked the supervisors to assess the effectiveness of land use taxation and ag districts in meeting the Virginia General Assembly’s stated goal of preserving and protecting the state’s agricultural land and farming industry. Is land use keeping land in farming ’‘and if so, is that advantageous? Or is it better to have all the reaches up to Red Oak Mountain covered with houses?” he questioned.
The disappearance of agricultural land to roads, developments, parking lots and shopping centers is “becoming something of an epidemic,” Manwaring said. It’s not just a Rappahannock County problem, it’s a state and national problem, he added. Land use is a means to combat “the tremendous pulling power of $2,000 an acre” that a farmer can receive by selling out to development, Manwaring concluded.
Recalling statements from Rappahannock’s former delegate, George Beard, Robert Eastham said that Rappahannock has no commercial or industrial base on which to shift the burden of taxes deferred thrugh the use value program. Without that broader base, “you’re only transferring the tax burden from some citizens to others,” Eastham said.
He called for the board to stand by its original intention voiced when general use value was adopted in 1981 of studying and reviewing the program after a one-year trial period.
With county expenses rising, “no one should be allowed to pay less taxes in 1982 than they did in 1981,” he insisted, adding that use value recipients had seen their tax bills go down in that period by 50, 60 and in some cases, even 70 percent.
Are They Farmers?
Ninety percent of Rappahannock’s tax payers are assessed at fair market value while 10 percent have a portion of their taxes de
88.2%