THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, November 27, 1995 TAG: 9511270077
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
LENGTH: Medium: 65 lines
Five months ago, South Boston became the first city in Virginia to revert to a town. Now, Charlottesville and a few other small cities are considering ceasing to exist.
A small band of Charlottesville residents says it has collected 1,700 of the 2,750 signatures needed to start the legal process, called reversion, for the city to become a town. If the switch is approved, Charlottesville would become part of Albemarle County.
Other cities pondering reversion include Fredericksburg, Winchester, Petersburg and Martinsville. The possibility has terrified county officials near those cities, who fear the counties would have to assume added financial burdens when a city becomes a town.
Moving to town status has certain advantages for cities, which are prohibited from annexing land to expand their tax bases and find it increasingly difficult to finance all the services required by residents.
``The handwriting is on the wall,'' said Robert McNergney, a Charlottesville resident who is pushing for reversion. ``Taxes are much higher in the city than the county. There are a lot of indications that eventually we are not going to be able to afford the social services that we provide.''
Albemarle County Executive Robert W. Tucker Jr. said the county Board of Supervisors is opposed to Charlottesville's reversion and has set up committees to study the fiscal impact if it happens.
``We would be looking at about a $3 million deficit,'' Tucker said. ``We'd have to pick up social services, their courts, education. We'd have to make it up by reducing expenditures on our side or by a rate increase for our taxpayers.''
In every other state in the nation, residents of cities and towns also are residents of counties.
But in Virginia, cities are independent of the counties in which they sit.
Many of Virginia's independent cities were set up 40 or 50 years ago, when residents of burgeoning towns began clamoring for more services and better schools than the then-rural counties were willing to provide.
That's what happened in the city of Falls Church, which incorporated in the late 1940s primarily for the purpose of starting a school system.
``We have the personalized approach to education,'' says Merni Fitzgerald, vice mayor of the 2.2-square-mile city of 9,600.
Fitzgerald says Falls Church has never considered reverting to its one-time town status.
But many aging cities across the state are finding it financially difficult to go it on their own.
``If you don't have an expanding tax base, you are locked in financially,'' said Ed Daley, the city manager of Winchester, which has begun to look at the possibility of reversion.
The reversion process can be started by a city council or, as in Charlottesville, by a petition of 15 percent of the registered voters. A special three-judge panel appointed by the Virginia Supreme Court decides whether to approve the change.
The Virginia Commission on Local Government reviews the reversion application and makes a recommendation to the court.
In the South Boston case, the only case so far, Halifax County officials tried to impose conditions on the new town, but the court rejected them all. by CNB