Rich Collins is interviewed in this week’s C-Ville –

It’s a question of having markets work for you. Property taxes are such a big issue for me. Growth costs a lot more than people realize. Your water gets more polluted, your traffic becomes more congested, your schools become crowded, your police force is pressed€”and your tax assessments go up. I’m calling these dramatic spikes in assessment a growth tax.

Maybe you’ve never thought of it that way. Maybe you thought government was being foolish with expenditures, and you couldn’t understand what they were doing with all this money. What they’re doing is trying to accommodate the growth. We need to shift that tax back to those who are creating this cost.

My proposal would provide the option for local government to freeze the assessments. What could happen is that homeowners would not have to pay higher assessments until they sold the place. For newcomers, it would be like a price for admission to a community in which there has been a great investment into water, sewer, schools and an attractive community. I’m strongly in favor of using markets to make long-term changes in our economy.
We need to shift that tax back to those who are creating this cost. – Who exactly is creating the cost? The developers, who may not always be accused of having altruistic motivations, they are not the ones who are creating the market. Those who are coming to the Central Virginia region are providing the demand and the developers and homeowners have the supply. Currently there is a shortage of inventory in our region and the builders are striving to cash in on this shortage. How exactly would Mr. Collins shift the tax with it not negatively impacting all property owners in this region?