Planners

Planners

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Miriam Harris of Huntly said, “I want to know what he means, ‘farmland is something to look at’?”

“We don’t know what the land is worth. We have 10-year-old figures on production,” Col. Bingham explained.

“Anyone who has lived in the county knows what the land is worth,” Mrs. Harris said. “Unfortunately it’s worth too much for something else and not enough as farmland. If we let it go to something else, we’ll lose Rappahannock County.”

Noting that the federal government and the state give vastly different estimates of the county’s current population,. Mr. McCarthy said that the 1990 census figures won’t be out until 1991 and the results of the new agricultural survey until 1992. “The plan has to be amended every five years. Here we are in 1989, already four years late. If we say to someone, ‘No, you can’t rezone,' and if we don't review the plan, we have no leg to stand on.”

Planning Commission Chairman Allen Stokes noted that some of the studies in the document are based on 1986 data and said the planners did consider changes thatTiave occurred since 1980, “when making our judgments."

Mr. Olson said, “It would be nice if we had all data up to 1989, but a lot of the 1980 data is probably pretty close. Any court in which a challenge to the data is brought will look at the data and say it is the best the county can do.”

‘Can't we have more time?’

Lorraine Early of Amissville commented, “I haven’t had a lot of time lately; is there a time limit we must get this thing done by? This is something we’re going to have to live by. Can’t we have a little more time?”

Col. Bingham said, “Culpeper published theirs in the paper. It’s taken four years to do it. At least give people in the community time to digest it.”

Mrs. Early asked if the plan could include a chart on agricultural subsidies from the federal govern■ment that farmers get for not growing crops and a chart showing land in land-use taxes, “so people can see it in black and white. I have nothing against Ag Districts or Forestry Districts and keeping the land as rural as possible, but there is a discrepancy in the tax base.”

Mrs. Early said she had read somewhere that someone had said, “Cows don’t ride school buses. I pay more money for our business land than Dr. ID-ebser or any of them who have these large farms. The base should be a little more equal. There shouldn’t be a problem paying for a child’s education. Cows do cost something.”

(According to tax records on file at the Commissioner of Revenue's office, taxes on the commerciallyzoned 15.12 acres in Amissville owned by Mrs. Early and her husband John, where Countryside Floor Fashions is located, were $1,600 in 1988; Dr. Werner Krebser paid $4,020 in taxes that year on his 668acre farm near Huntly.)

Capital improvements added

Robert Darby said, “I’m curious