March 8, 2010
Real Estate Tax Rates Proposed – Increase Possible
34 Comments »Official City Press Release;
COUNCIL PUBLIC INFORMATION NEWS ADVISORY
Richmond City Council proposes 2010 Richmond Real Estate Tax Rates
All Citizens invited and encouraged to attend
(Richmond , Virginia) – Today, four proposed options for a 2010 Richmond Real Estate Tax Rate were introduced during the scheduled Richmond City Council Formal Meeting. The proposed options include $1.23, $1.22, $1.21 and $1.19. The current Richmond Real Estate Tax rate is $1.20, which would remain the same if no new rate is adopted. The vote on the adoption of a new rate will be Monday April 12, 2010.
Each year a number of possible Richmond Real Estate Tax Rate options are typically introduced in anticipation of adopting a new Richmond Government Budget (Fiscal Plan) for the upcoming Fiscal Year.
As a real estate tax rate must be set by April 15 annually, and sufficient time must be given between introduction and adoption to allow for review and public comment, a number of rates are introduced at the same time to allow for flexibility in adopting a new rate.
The five options (including the option to remain the same in no action is taken) are in preparation of a forthcoming proposed budget that will be submitted by the Mayor to Council on March 22, 2010. (Note: On February 22, 2010, Richmond City Council (by Ordinance Number 2010-34-40) extended the deadline for the Mayor to submit a proposed budget; from March 6 to March 22 at 3:00 p.m.)
The Richmond Real Estate Tax is the largest single funding source we use to pay for local government services and considerations regarding the rate include a $30 million shortfall in local revenue, which includes expected decreases from state and federal funding sources. Each one cent in real estate tax equates to and estimated $1.9 million in city revenue.
CONTACT For more information, please contact Then Honorable Kathy Graziano, President, Richmond City Council, Southwest 4th District, 804.320.2454 or kathy.graziano@richmondgov.com
BACKGROUND ON RICHMOND REAL ESTATE TAX ASSESSMENTS
As Richmond Citizens, we pool our resources to own and operate our government and decide what public services we want to invest in; the priority (investment levels) for these services; and, how we pay for them. Examples of our services include the management, oversight and delivery of such things as clean/safe water; streets/parks; firefighting/ rescue; trash/sewage removal; laws, police/courts; public transportation; and, our children’s education. Together, we own, operate, use and benefit from these services every day.
We as citizens have determined that a fair way to help pay for these services is for real estate owners to annually contribute funds, based on a percentage of the value of the real estate they own in the city. This process includes that each year, the fair market value of real estate in the city is assessed and the value is set Jan. 1 and an annual Richmond Real Estate Tax Rate is set by Richmond City Council by April 15. This rate is the percentage, based on $100 of value, which a real estate owner will contribute to help pay for government services in the city.
Our real estate tax is the largest single funding source we use to pay for our public services and is used statewide to pay for local services. There are approximately 73,000 real estate properties in Richmond and to help ensure fairness, Virginia State Law requires that Richmond perform annual real estate assessments to determine fair market value.
Real estate owners pay their share annually, based on the value of their real estate and the tax rate by June 15. For example, if a person owns $100,000 in real estate and the tax rate is $1.20 per $100, their share is $1,200 for that year.
Certainly no surprise here.
I predicted a move in some quarters to increase in the tax rate when the property assessment declined for many (not ALL) property owners this year.
What gets up my nose about this is how so many people in a position to influence public opinion took Mayor Dwight Jones’ statement that “We’ll not be able to cut our way out of the recession or tax our way out, so we’ve got to grow our way out,” as an iron clad promise not to raise taxes and never bothered to open the debate about the possibility.
I’m not going to argue overmuch with a potential increase on my taxes. I can eat a couple hundred dollars if it keeps more teachers in the schools, more police on the street and more people to run into my house if it catches fire.
How much would an increase in the RE tax cost? For a $300,000 house, whose value did not change, one cent increase in the rate would raise anual tax bills by $30. For a $200K house, $20, etc. To figure actual impact, compare last year’s assement with current, and last year’s rate to the various levels being considered. The troublesome proposal comes from Ms. Robertson, generally the stalking horse for the Jones Administration, who proposes a three cent increase.
I can eat a couple hundred dollars if it keeps more teachers in the schools
Will it though? Or will it mean that Yvonne Brandon can undo the less-than-$2000 salary cut she’s taking for next year? Or undo the 1% overall cut for the core admin team?
Make no mistake: while the current clowns are running the circus, an increase in real estate taxes will NOT keep teachers in schools.
Area Man, you are quickly becoming one of my favorites commentators.
Or will it mean that we continue to subsidize Center Stage? Or will it mean we pay to clean up the disastrous Broad Street CDA? Or we will it mean that there is a new marketing push for a new Coliseum?
That said,
I would be willing to pay a few bucks extra if it meant that RPS actually gets ADA done for operational school buildings.
Henrico’s rate: $0.90 per $100 of assessed value
Chesterfield’s rate: $0.95 per $100 of assessed value
City rate: $1.20 per $100 of assessed value
Just for comparison.
$200,000 assessment
Taxes in Henrico: $1800 ($150/ mo)
Taxes in C’field: $1900 ($158.34/mo)
Taxes in City: $2400 ($200/mo)
I have other points about crime, schools, the 10.5% city restaurant tax to pay for the Arts Center for which we can’t afford the ticket prices… Y’all are smart though, you already know these things.
And add some more information. 50% of the real estate in the city is non taxable…churches, non-profits, government owned. The poverty rate is 27% in city, so that is another loss in revenue. At the end of the day, it’s where you are happy. I have lived in Richmond 28 years. I have a moderate income. I lived here when the tax rate was $1.43. I don’t want to live in the county. If I were as unhappy as some of these writers, I would move.
“At the end of the day, it’s where you are happy. I have lived in Richmond 28 years. I have a moderate income. I lived here when the tax rate was $1.43. I don’t want to live in the county. If I were as unhappy as some of these writers, I would move.”
This makes me smile. Thank you. We’ve lived in the City for 20 years and wouldn’t want to be in the ‘burbs.
:o)
It speaks well of the City that older folks who’ve lived here for 20 years or more don’t want to leave ( in spite of attempts by the Wilder Admin to force them do so).
However, it does NOT speak well of the City that the younger, more productive and desirable folks are bailing first chance they get (as the late Joe Brooks told me, as soon as their children reach school age).
While I hate to admit it, us old timers are not the future of this City so it doesn’t really matter where we want to live.
The real hope for this City are the youngsters, and being more mercenary and self absorbed than us old timers with a couple of decades of city life experience, they are going to go where they can get the best bang for their buck.
The bottom line, I’d very careful about encouraging our most productive citizens to move out… Far to many of them are already doing that. We don’t need more to follow them.
We love living in the city too. Trouble is, a lot of us are getting so we can’t afford it anymore. My assessment has gone up $65k in 5 years, despite doing NOTHING other than some interior cosmetic work. The assessments in this immediate neighborhood have been scattershot and unevenly applied, but Mr. Hester’s office does not seem to care.
I don’t want to live in the county either- “Death Before Cul-de-Sac” has been my adult mantra- but one more unfounded assessment hike and I may have to.
Guys, not to burst any bubbles, but we already live in the burbs. I mean, admittedly not Brandermill-style burbs, but we’re not exactly downtown either. The whole Hills & Heights area is technically the suburbs.
^^ Yep, there are cul-de-sacs in Forest Hill Farms!
I personally don’t mind paying more taxes as long as the money is spent to maintain what the City has or make it better. Makes me grumpy when I read our city government has spent money for another study on building another structure to attract people in the counties who have made it clear they aren’t interested in traveling downtown to be entertained.
Somewhere near 70,000 folks are paying $75 each to come see “Wicked” this month. I’d venture that most of them do not live in the city.
Paul, what they spend will still not come anywhere near what has been spent in taxpayer money on Center Stage and the Landmark.
Wow, is “Wicked” REALLY going to generate 5 million 250 thousand dollars for the City coffers?
Change the “W” in the show’s name to a “D” and that’s about what CenterStage is doing to this city.
“However, it does NOT speak well of the City that the younger, more productive and desirable folks are bailing first chance they get (as the late Joe Brooks told me, as soon as their children reach school age).”
Over here in Woodland Heights, a street car suburb to be sure, we actually have more an more families staying, instead of fleeing when their reach school age.
Within a block of my home there are 9 families with now-teenage kids who have stayed put. More and more younger parents are desirous of doing the same: where do you think the force behind Patrick Henry comes from?
The fact remains that assessments are tied to real property values, and everyone in Richmond loveslovesloves to know that their house is worth more but then they are SHOCKED when their assessment increase.
If you wanted to buy a house and seen its assessed value remain static you should have moved to California. LOL
Let’s hope PH and RPS can make progress.
The point is made: Richmond needs better schools, not more questionable downtown ‘development’ that lacks ROI.
@tvnewsbadge
3,500 seats x $75.00 x 24 shows * 80% ticket sales = $5,040,000 Gross
That is not Richmond’s take, but shows people will spend suburban money downtown. To do this, they have to brave traffic and parking headaches, getting lost, driving in circles. Imagine what a downtown that was safe, clean and accessible could generate.
@Scott
I hope PH and RPS make progress too. These are not incompatible goals.
Richmond is very accessible, quite clean, and comparatively safe. There is an abundance of parking, traffic is nominal, and given that most of the city is laid out in a grid, it’s difficult to get lost.
The folks who live here already know this. And I suspect that suburbanites are slowly realizing it, too.
:o)
Actually, parking is not an issue with Center Stage, nor is getting lost, nor at night anyway, is traffic.
Fact is Center Stage is FAR more accessible than the malls like White Oak.
Downtown Richmond is plenty clean.
Hello younger generation chiming in here. My wife and I have just sold our home in Cedarhurst. We have been here 4 years. We have a 7 month old and are planning on having another child in the next few years. We WILL be buying in either Westover Hills, Forest Hill or Woodland Heights because we love it here.This is our HOOD. And our kids will go to school here.
I am a firefighter in the County. They have the same if not more crime and school problems then here in the city. I see it first hand. It is a media perception problem. Trust me the near east end and the northside are rough and the schools are not any better then what we have in the city. They are worse!!! The issue is that the county gets the majority of the tax base from huge businesses. That is why the tax rate is lower for home owners. The better downtown becomes the better that the city will be attracting businesses, meaning lower housing taxes for all of us.
So don’t you give up on the new generation down here. The key is that we stay and bring the next set of young home owners down to the city. It is all about dispelling the myth that the city is full of thugs and drugs and more importantly working with the RPD and the community to push the crap out of here so things keep on getting better.
Great post Jeff.
I could quickly list the young families living in/moving back to FH, WH, kids in public schools and thriving, great school at Southampton, great private schools in the cxommunity if that is parents choice. I know a family who just boughta great house in WH, for less than they were paying in rent in Brooklyn. This is a very cool place to live. And Legends is just down the road.
It’s good to hear that so many young parents in the area are electing to send their teenagers to George Wythe High School.
This is a story that needs to get out since so many in the community are totally unaware of this development.
I certainly was not aware of this influx of new blood into this school and would be very interested in hearing the impressions of new arrivals to this facility.
Maybe one or more of these neighborhood blogs can do a special feature.
However, I don’t think you can count private schools as a community asset for reasons made painfully clear during this current economic downturn when many parents who can no longer afford the high cost of private education are panicked at the prospect of sending their youngsters to any city school that is not Mary Munford, Fox (and now Patrick Henry).
As far as a City of Thugs goes, there has never been any truth to that.
Fact is, unless you bring it on yourself by your lifestyle or other actions and use common sense as you go about your daily routine, most residents are as safe here as anywhere else.
Just to clarify if you haven’t caught it before your noble moderator/editor/reporter currently has a child enrolled in RPS. Next year she will be either at Fisher or Patrick Henry. We will not be leaving because we fill the advantages of living in the city outweigh the disadvantages. You will continue to see education pop up quite a bit on here because it is something both Page and I are active in. I don’t know at this point if George Wythe High School would be a good fit for my daughter, I’ll cross that bridge in about 8 years or 9 if she takes after me.
I don’t even want to think about first grade yet, much less high school :)
From talking to other parents, I understand that middle and high school here in the city can be challenging. But regardless of where you live, the parent must be the navigator to ensure their child is learning and happy and in the school that’s right for them. Currently, just like in the counties, your best bet may to get into the gifted and IB programs offered within the public school system.
The more parents that stay in the city with young children, the more likely there will be change at the high school level. And hopefully once Patrick Henry is up and running, there will be people who then help the charter middle school in the works by another group.
And I won’t denigrate parents who stay in the city and opt for private schools either. They have to make the best decisions for their child they can, not be beholden to RPS. AND they still contribute to the city through their property and sales tax and their good citizenship, instead of heading out to the counties and taking their money with them.
A couple of things to remember. Charter schools are public schools. They are open to enrollment from anywhere in the city, sonsistent with class size. The lottery tonight will be for all 150 spots.
Second, Richmond has neighborhood schools now. The day all the parents in the Westover attendance zone choose Westover, the school will reflect the neighborhood, and costs for transportation will drop substantially. The reason children are bused from around the city is that there are not enough children in the neighborhood signed up for the neighborhood school. Same is true for Southampton (a great little school) and Fisher. Remember also that if you chose public education, it’s the effect of a $7-10K pay raise, per child.
I have to admit that it’s been a hundred years since I had to worry about where to send kids to school so I’ve pretty much been zoning out when discussions about eduction come up, but this really is fascinating stuff.
I’m getting a sense from some of the comments here combined with what my young friends with school age children tell me that Richmond is headed toward (if we don’t already have) a dual school system.
It’s certainly a topic that raises many provocative “chicken and egg” questions.
If anyone knows of any objective studies or articles on this subject that explores the issues raised here, I’d really appreciate a link. It’s certainly an issue that’s worth an article or two for one of my blogs.
I’m not sure how it can rightly be considered a dual system when every child in the city is eligible to enroll in any school. A child in the projects can attend mary mumford or PHSSA, if he has family to get him there. That’s one of the shames about the removal of transportation between zones, it did limit access to kids who really could have benefited from a different school. As an aside, PHSSA is actually working on proposals to provide transportation to those who need it most, making it far more inclusive than fox/mumford. But income/race doesn’t indicate where kids will go. It does boil down to the parents and how hard their willing to look at the options and make it happen.
I do not have any kids either, but what gets me is the state of the school buildings.
What good is a ‘world-class’ downtown opera house when many of our open school buildings are badly maintained and are illegal under federal ADA law?
Its criminal and disgusting and must make parents think twice about sending their kids to ANY part of the school system.
This is why as citizens we have to keep the pressure on. Schools before stadiums(or Coliseums)!
And yes, Paul H., Jeff E., and others, we have heard the excuses before- ‘downtown is the crucial center’, ‘the RPS administration is wasteful’, ‘the money from downtown development will SOMEDAY bring more money for schools’, ‘money does not solve everything’, etc., etc.
Got news for you- NO MORE EXCUSES. City Council holds purse strings, and Jewell and others have been covering for Center Stage and other pet projects for far too long.
I say fix the school buildings or bring in the National Guard.
Where Scott’s argument fails is that parents are lining up to send kids to schools in old building, such as Patrick Henry or Fox or Mary Munford…or in the case of private schools, Good Shepherd or Richmond Waldorf. What counts is the quality of education. Virtually every school in the system is accredited. Many of these schools, including those in the Fourth District, are excelling, primarily because parents are involved.
I am of an age that I went to segregated schools. Children in the Seventh grade began to be separated into academic, general and vocational tracks. Talk about dual systems; kids in the vocational tracks were NOT going to be prepared for college. If you were in the academic track (which closely followed income levels), then you learned no life skills, but did get the language, math, science skills that colleges and universities sought. The difference from today is that all this took place in he same building.
Scott, we can “fix” the buildings, but until we get middle class families from around the city into the schools, we fail. BTW, CenterStage, just as Maymount, offers a full spectrum of outreach programs for public school children.
I agree that parent involvement and quality of instruction are important. But its hard to get those things when the basics like buildings are not there.
My argument does not fail: It is unacceptable to have school buildings in the state that they are in while millions are spent on questionable downtown development. This is not just my opinion- this is federal law we are are talking about.
I will give you an example- one of my coworkers was volunteering as a mentor at a Richmond public school but was shocked when he and the kids were told they could not use the bathroom for #2 because the plumbing still had not been fixed for six months. The kids were told and had been told for months to hold it.
This is what Oliver Hill worked so hard for?