THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, November 17, 1995 TAG: 9511170678
SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER PAGE: 02 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ELIZABETH THIEL, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 71 lines
City Council Tuesday vowed to push local representatives to the state legislature for new laws that help localities like Chesapeake handle the rising costs of government.
As part of a 31-item legislative wish list, council will ask the 1996 state General Assembly for the power to levy fees on developers to offset the impact of growth on schools and roads.
Council also wants the state to help Chesapeake pay for some items that are dear to the hearts of local residents, such as school construction projects, the city's Health Department, the new Chesapeake Museum and Information Center and computers at Tidewater Community College's Chesapeake campus.
Council further is asking legislators to help localities shoulder increasing financial burdens by: giving them more power to find creative ways to finance roads; either avoiding expensive mandates on localities, or granting localities more authority to generate revenue to meet such mandates; giving localities a percentage of the proceeds from the Virginia lottery; and keeping the business, professional and occupational license tax.
Gov. George F. Allen has advocated doing away with the license tax, a move that most localities have opposed. In Chesapeake, the tax accounts for $11.5 million of the budget.
Some Republicans on council objected to interfering with the governor's plans to do away with the tax. Vice Mayor Robert T. Nance Jr. said he trusted the state not to take away the money without giving localities another revenue source to make up for the loss.
Councilmen W. Joe Newman and John E. Allen said the tax was unfair and unfriendly to business.
``I don't want the city to take a $12 million hit in revenues, but I think there's a better way to generate revenue,'' Allen said.
Nance, Newman and Allen voted against the six-member majority of council in asking the state to preserve the license tax.
The council was unanimous, however, in its vote to push the state to give Chesapeake $48.2 million for building projects for local schools. The state traditionally has played little role in the financing of such projects, and an outright appropriation of the money would be unprecedented.
Councilman John W. Butt, although voting to include the request in the council's legislative wish list, called it a ``pipe dream,'' because if legislators agreed to pay for Chesapeake projects, they would open themselves up to requests from localities statewide.
The wish list signals council's intention to demand from legislators the power to get a handle on the city's burgeoning growth.
Council members decided not to shower legislators with a laundry list of growth-control measures, such as a request to give Chesapeake the authority to pass an ordinance to delay new residential development until there are adequate public facilities such as schools and roads to support it. Legislators and developers statewide traditionally have resisted such ordinances.
Instead, council will unite behind a proposal to impose impact fees on developers. Such fees would be limited to $3,000 per residential unit.
``The impact fee across the board is probably the fairest way'' to handle growth, Nance said.
Council declined, however, a request by some citizens to ask the General Assembly to amend the city's charter to allow for the recall of council members and the mayor. The provision also would have allowed citizens to petition for ordinances the council refuses to pass, or to petition for the repeal of ordinances citizens aren't happy with.
Allen, Butt, Nance, Mayor William E. Ward and Councilman Dwight M. Parker voted against including the recall provision in the legislative wish list.
KEYWORDS: CHESAPEAKE CITY COUNCIL by CNB