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How many hours do Sheriff John Henry Woodward’s deputies spend policing Rappahannock County’s open spaces and farm fields? What percentage of the department’s time-and budget-do those hours represent?
What percentage of the Washington Volunteer Fire Department’s calls are field and forest fires?
How many of the cases heard by General District Court Judge John Alexander are related to open land as opposed to businesses and residences?
Those are a few of the questions Tamara Vance answered in compiling the Piedmont Environmental Council’s study on the fiscal impact of major land uses in Rappahannock County.
In order to determine fiscal impact, she had to know where the county’s money comes from and where it goes.
She started on the revenue side. The county budget showed what percentage of total revenue is derived from the federal and state governments - all credited to business and residential land uses - and what percentage is raised from local levies. For a breakdown on local sources, she turned to the Commissioner of Revenue’s Office and to the back page, the recapitulation page, in the county’s land book. There, the origin of real estate revenue is detailed; the amount raised by the levy on each category of land- commercial, residential, farm and forest-is given. “That’s the most important part of the revenue picture for rural counties,” Vance noted.
Rappahannock has other local sources of income but the land use category to which each should be assigned was obvious. Professional license taxes were alloted to business (comihercial), motor vehicle taxes to business and residential, utility taxes and bank franchise taxes to business.
Once she knew where the money came from, Vance tracked down where it went. Was it spent for residential land, commercial property or farm fields, forests and open spaces? She took the county budget again. For every expenditure listed, she talked to someone who knew which land use was involved in that expenditure.
The biggest outlay was the easiest. The cost of education, which accounts for approximately 80 percent of Rappahannock’s spending, be
92.6%