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Our View
Lobbying
This morning a small contingent of county officials
trekked to Richmond on behalf of
Rappahannock County citizens. They are there to attend a Senate Education committee hearing on a proposed bill, SB 559. Their lead speaker, County Administrator John McCarthy, will lend his support to a bill, that if passed, could ease the tax burden on the county for educating its students.
SB 559, sponsored by The Honorable Mark Obenshain, Senator 26th District, is a bill that would increase the size of school divisions who would be permitted to “piggyback” on the local composite index of a neighboring school division, in exchange for consolidation of some services, from the current maximum of 350 students to 1,200 students.
According to a 2005 analysis by the Weldon Cooper Center at UVA, Rappahannock is in the top five counties in Virginia in terms of the relative importance of the real property tax — 70.3 percent of our local revenue comes from real property taxes. (We’re second only to Highland County.) Most other counties get significant revenues from taxes on business properties, but not rural Rappahannock.
The efforts of local officials like McCarthy and Superintendent Chappell should not go unrewarded.
Hopefully, SB 559 will pass and the county will get a calculated boost.
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