Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, June 20, 1995 TAG: 9506210027
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Why wouldn't a landscape maintenance worker be disgusted at the thought that a private country club is being subsidized by taxpayers, many of whom don't earn in a year the $15,000 it costs for the club's initiation fee alone?
Why wouldn't most anyone be angry?
Yet, according to The Associated Press, 19 members-only private clubs in Virginia are enjoying a property-tax break under a state law meant to encourage the protection of farmland and open space. One, Hunting Hills Country Club, is in Roanoke County.
Other private courses get the tax break as well, but they at least are open to the public. Anyone so inclined can pay a fee, get in line for a tee-off time and play a round of golf.
Farms aren't open to the public either, defenders of the clubs' tax status argue. True. But of the four types of land that localities can tax based on a use-value assessment - agricultural, horticultural, forest and open space - only open space is required by law to serve some public purpose.
The intent of Virginia's use-value assessment law, which allows (but does not require) localities to reduce the taxes on any or all of these types of land, is twofold.
Where development is pushing up the market value of land, it is intended to prevent taxes from exceeding the return on agricultural, horticultural or forest land, so that property owners who want to continue to work the land are not forced to sell.
It is intended to protect open space if that space is devoted to a public purpose or is open to public use.
Members-only country clubs might slip through a legal loophole by opening to the public one day a year, but this is a ploy only a lawyer could love.
Or private golf courses, open to the public or not, could argue that they serve a public purpose simply by being, that their open spaces make the entire community more attractive. If they are located where they are visible to the public, they may be right.
But, while protecting green space is a legitimate public concern, the scant resources available for this would be better spent on valued land in actual danger from the bulldozer. Most golf courses hardly need the public's assistance to stay viable.
The public has no interest in lowering their taxes at the cost of a heavier tax burden on itself.
by CNB