THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, May 12, 1996 TAG: 9605100173
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 08 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Focus: On the Street
SOURCE: Bill Reed
LENGTH: Medium: 65 lines
Now that local elections are over, folks in Virginia Beach can concentrate on something guaranteed to make their blood boil.
Tax increases.
If you've been paying any attention at all to the local budget preparations recently, you may have picked up on the fact that property owners are in for a real estate tax increase of some sort.
Three different figures have been tossed around in recent weeks. All of them have been influenced - mainly in the upward and outward mode - by last year's $12.1 million school budget deficit.
The options offered are these:
A 12-cent increase proposed by the outgoing School Board to fund a ``fully loaded'' luxury model school budget that weighs in at $400 million. It would pay for all programs sought by new Superintendent Timothy R. Jenney, including a 5.3 percent raise for all employees and the expansion of certain school programs.
A 7.4-cent ``midsize'' increase, seen as ``acceptable'' to Jenney. This would balance a $393 million budget, and Jenney says the option wouldn't involve cutting school programs. This choice gives school employees a 3.3 percent raise and replaces some teachers with paraprofessionals - whatever they are.
A 3.2-cent ``compact'' increase, which school officials say would balance a bottom-line $385 million budget. It would, they say, eliminate growth in magnet school programs and increase the need for more funding to educate more than 800 new students who will be added to city classroom rolls next year. This option gets the nod from City Manager James K. Spore.
No tax increase.
This option is the favorite of the masses. It won resounding approval from 80 percent, or 355, of the people who responded to a Beacon-sponsored Infoline poll last weekend.
What the no-tax folks may have forgotten, however, is that their property values already have been increased this year by the city assessor's office. Increases ranged from 4 to 52 percent. This means that without a tax increase the real estate levies on Virginia Beach homes will go up anyway.
Pile a tax increase on top of that, and you're talking real fireworks in the next council and School Board elections. One thing politicians don't like to hear at election time is idle chatter about tax increases. They get real nervous when they get the blame for them and for good reason. Voters get real surly at tax time.
The Infoline poll revealed that some people actually favored tax increases. Thirty-three people said 12 percent hike would be just dandy. Eleven preferred a 7.4 percent increase and 43 said they wanted a 3.2 percent increase.
These people are being hunted down as we speak. If apprehended, they will occupy specially reserved padded rooms at the Eastern State Hilton.
City Council members got an earful from the public Thursday at a full-blown hearing on the proposed $898 million budget for 1996-97. Speakers of all temperaments had little over 3 minutes each to blow off pent-up, tax-induced steam and they acquitted themselves admirably.
It all may be for naught, however. It looks like the fix is in for a 3.2 percent real estate tax hike. That decision and approval of a new city budget will be on the Tuesday City Council agenda. by CNB