For helping to bring the annexation debate to the forefront.
Bribing the City of Charlottesville clearly made sense when the agreement was made; it’s time to revisit the debate.
The agreement ended Charlottesville’s annexation of County land and was approved by County voters in a referendum on May 18, 1982. Soon after it went into effect, the General Assembly placed a moratorium on further annexations in Virginia. Charlottesville will receive $13.6 million in revenue sharing funds from the County in FY2009.
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Slutzky encouraged his fellow Supervisors to stop discussing the legalities until a closed session could be held, but made the observation that revenue sharing means the County has an effective tax rate (this year) of 58 cents per $100 of assessed property. According to the formula that calculates the payment, ten cents per $100 goes to the County.
An agreement made a generation ago surely warrants revisiting once in a while, if only to reaffirm its efficacy.
We share many things now – merging would hopefully simplify the political process and remove some of the divisiveness that currently exists. I’ve long thought that the two localities should merge … why not?
For some background –
The Daily Progress, the DP again, Cville Tomorrow and Jennifer’s blog.
Technorati Tags: albemarle, charlalbemarle, charlottesville, growth area, politics
What would be a more equitable way to reimburse the City for the County’s use of the City’s resources? Merging, as you very well know, is not a reasonable option for our communities at this time (look at the differences in the budget debate). Ken Boyd is trying to score political points for something he knows is easy to do-pick on the city for taking “our” money- build a road to go around Cville and then we can talk about the annexation agreement.
Jim its very rare your posts upsets me- congratulations! Hope your presentation went well this morning.
Yay! I upset Jennifer! 🙂
I think it needs to be considered – at least have the conversation in open public dialogue rather than hiding behind closed doors.
But – if we had fewer politicians involved I think we’d all be better off. I’d also like to see BoS become a full-time, paid position. Part-time just isn’t sufficient to fully comprehend all that goes into it.
The City uses County resources as well, though. We share roads and need to operate as one community.
Maybe merging isn’t the answer, but at least let’s have the debate. Politics are different today.
Hmmm … what can I write next to upset Jennifer?
Thanks – I’m working on a post about the presentation, too.
So, if the agreement is reconsidered, does that mean that:
– The county will start bearing the costs of special ed for their own children instead of shipping them to the city?
– The county will actually build their own *paid* fire department?
– The county will actually start to fund and implement their own public housing needs?
– The county will start to fund their own parks and recreation system so the city doesn’t have to provide softball parks for the county?
The revenue sharing deal was a stroke of genius on the part of county leaders when they managed to convince city voters to buy into it. The county has been successfully “oursourcing” all of it’s expensive problems to the city for years – this went hand in hand with 70s white flight – and sending all of it’s citizens who need “services” to the city for years. If you think this imbalance has decreased over the past thirty years…well, wake up. The county has a very good deal right now, and continues to.
I’m actually in favor of reversion precisely because the current arbitrary political boundaries don’t match economic boundaries and create the current ‘arbitrage’ gaming of the system. The Schools are an area where substantial improvements would result from both the reduction of redundancies and the demographic blending.
Ken Boyd should be careful, lest he gets what he wishes for.
I agree — about KB getting more (or less) than what he wishes for. Imagine how flush the city tax base would be if C-ville could annex portions of the hi-dollar business areas with which the County has ringed the city since the agreement was enacted. County got open space, city dwellers got Putt Putt and the like.
Another wishful thought: City annexes, shrinking tax base becomes a non-issue, and we roll back the higher density (9-stories!) building ordinance pushed through by Maurice Cox, Kevin O’Halloran, and Jim Tolbert!
Better be careful what I wish for…
Ted – Long time no comment. Thanks for stopping by.
I still think that merging the two communities should be seriously debated. Lacking a comprehensive understanding, I’d like to see the pros and cons of all sides before deciding one way or another.
There seems to be a lot of duplication of efforts by both governments, and efficiency should be the goal of all involved.
We’ll talk about bringing UVA more into the fold later.
Jim, we got an actual copy of the agreement up on our site now. Grabbed it from the County archives:
http://www.albemarletruthintaxation.org/blog/2008/03/citycounty-revenue-sharing-101.html
Outstanding. Thanks, Joel!