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use. Still, absolutely, the farmer is paying for himself and a little for everybody else.” He doesn’t expect
PEC’s findings to have any impact on public opinion in Rappahannock. “People want services that will take a tax increase but they want somebody else to pay that increase. It’s human nature,” Miller said. “If opponents of land use were interested in the facts, they would have analyzed the situation on their own. They’d know that open space saves them money. Every time a farm is turned into building lots, it costs the taxpayers money. So it’s in their best interest to encourage the farmer to keep farming instead of selling out to a developer. That’s common sense.”
“So many people are misinformed,” said A. Y. Stokes. “I’ve talked to some. I don’t know how to reach them. I can’t get through. There’s a stigma against farmers. And then that tax bill hits them right between the eyes. That has more of an impact than anything you can say to explain (the fiscal impact of Rappahannock’s different land uses).”
Mike Massie hopes that information will sway public opinion back solidly in favor of use value taxation as a tool to preserve and prop ct farm and forest land and Rappahannock - struggling agricultural industry, but he isn’t sure. “When the pocket book is hit hard, people just don’t listen.”
H. B. Wood is more optimistic. He recalled that the county’s old assessment system resulted in de facto land use; farm land was assessed lower than louse lots, pasture land less than cultivated fields, wooded acreage lower than orchards. “We almost had land use - unofficially. But the 100 percent assessment brought the value of farm and wooded land so high, it shifted the tax burden from an equal sharing between houses and farms onto farms and woodlands,” Wood maintained. The adoption of use value taxation did nothing more than equalize the tax burden a little bit, he said. “Without use value, it would have all fallen on the farmer. ”
He believes that the general public perceives farmers as paying little or nothing toward running the county. PEC’s study shows otherwise, “and if people are aware of the facts, they’re less apt to be against use value taxation,” Wood said. “That is, if they’re the kind of people I think they are. If they’re fair people. ”
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