ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, April 6, 1997 TAG: 9704070049
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
In City Council's talk of cutting Roanoke's real-estate tax rate by a penny or two, something's missing - a focus on the city's current and future needs.
ROANOKE'S municipal finances are not in a crisis, but they may be at a crossroads.
Down one path is a city willing to address squarely its shortcomings and invest wisely in its own future, even if this means maintaining or bolstering local tax revenues. The destination of such a city is future prosperity and an excellent quality of life.
But Roanoke could find itself on a different road if City Council deems lowering the real-estate tax rate to be the No. 1 municipal budgeting priority. Such a road could lead toward a less desirable destination, including at some point a genuine crisis.
While a decent case can be made for reducing localities' dependence on property taxes, that case is properly made not in city hall but at the statehouse. Before Roanoke or any other Virginia locality could substitute another broad-based tax - say, a local surtax on the state income tax - for at least part of the real-estate tax, General Assembly authorization is required. Such authorization is not on the horizon.
Instead, any new local taxes to replace revenues lost by a real-estate rate cut would have to be narrow, industry-specific levies - such as utility taxes on cellular phones and cable TV service - that are no less problematic than the real-estate tax.
If Roanoke's rate were particularly onerous or a great deal higher than the rates of its suburban neighbors, the picture would be different. But at $1.23 per $100 of valuation, or $861 per year for a home valued at $70,000, that is not the case.
Meanwhile, conspicuous by its absence in the tax-cut talk is a proper focus on the current and future fiscal needs of the city.
How good do Roanokers want their schools to be? Why is Roanoke dilly-dallying in developing a greenways system and in fixing up its existing parks? How will Roanoke fund a capital-outlay wish list running in the tens of millions of dollars - and if some items on the list are to be scrapped or indefinitely deferred, which ones? What more should be done to preserve and rehabilitate Roanoke's housing stock, to make Roanoke's streets and neighborhoods safer and more pleasant, to build on downtown's role as the urban heart of Southwest Virginia?
Such issues are not exclusively about spending public dollars, but they do involve public dollars. A council that applies its budget-making energies to these questions, and not just to nicks in the real-estate tax rate, would be a welcome sight.
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