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rather than its far higher market value. Thousands of acres of Rappahannock land now are under LUV.
What the official data show is this: The total value of land in the county at last tally was 144.8 million dollars. Of that, 45.7 million dollars' worth has been exempted from taxation by LUV. That 45.7 million amounts to 31.6 percent of the county’s total land value.
How much in taxes does this involve? By official count, $213,362 in real estate taxes now is being lost each year. That is the equivalent of 10.7 cents in the tax rate. Without LUV, the rate would be 39.3 cents.
The tax increase to pay for LUV, we regret to report, has been deliberately hidden from the taxpayers by the Supervisors - presumbably with the most honorable of intentions. Again, the official record discloses the facts.
Back in 1982, when the Board was fixing the budget for the year ending in 1983, the county had just shifted to a 100 percent assessment basis and LUV was taking hold for the first time. When the Board came down to fixing the tax rate, it found that the 48-cent rate required to meet the budget demands would involve a sizable increase in actual dollars of tax on real estate not shielded by LUV. The Supervisors were reluctant to disclose the fact that the major part of that increase was due to LUV.
So the issue was deferred. The Board set the rate at 32 cents, rather than the required 48 cents, and drew $318,014 out of the surplus to fill the gap. The rise to 42 cents and then to 50 followed inevitably as the budget was made to reflect the full cost of sacrificing nearly a third of the real-estate-tax base to LUV. (The county’s independent auditors, unwilling to be made a part of this procedure, included in their own statement an account of the Supervisors’ action. It’s there for all to read in the budget message for 198283.)
None of this implies any criticism of Land Use Valuation, a program adopted deliberately to make farming less costly in an effort to keep land in agriculture and preserve the rural character of our county. Yet it must have been obvious that the loss of nearly a third of the county’s land-tax base would have to be paid for by rate increases on properties not sheltered by LUV.
If the Supervisors had not obscured the facts in 1982, the taxpayers now would be aware that most of the increase in our tax rate has gone to pay for LUV and most or all of the rest has gone to offset inflation, with little if any real increase in support of education and other public services by property owners.
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