Montgomery County’s expected tax increases
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A once rural county becomes urban, but its leaders have not accepted the fiscal realities that entails.
Few Montgomery County residents will like county staff’s recommendation that supervisors increase the property tax rate by 2 cents and the personal property tax rate by 10 cents. “The taxes are too high,” some will shout. “This doesn’t go far enough to fund basic public services,” others will declare. Goldilocks will be scarce.
Everyone in the county should have seen this coming after supervisors last year approved the largest property tax increase in decades, but one that still was not large enough to meet needs. Last year’s increase of 12 cents per $100 of assessed value brought the rate to 87 cents, and most of the new revenue went to pay for schools.
March 6, 2013 - 6:52 AM
Montgomery county wants to be an extension of Northern Virginia with their high taxes, but have the benefits of rural SWVA. I would like to see the areas that the author is using to compare with Montgomery county taxes.
The press talks about greedy people, they should also talk about greedy government. How much tax is enough?
When teachers have to ask parents to donate basic supplies like white-board pens, Clorox wipes, and Kleenex, then it’s not enough. Have the MCPS misspent or mismanaged any funds? Probably, but from my viewpoint as an involved parent, what I see is teachers working very hard to provide educations to students, many of whom are getting less and less at home. You can argue that per-pupil funding has remained essentially flat, but schools now are expected to do much more than they were in the past. More paperwork for teachers, more programs for disadvantaged kids, and of course more security. Did you know that about 40% (two in five) of the school-aged children in Virginia are eligible for free or reduced-price lunches, and that Montgomery County is right at that average? The surest and best way to help families elevate themselves from poverty is to provide their children with the best possible educations. It’s not greed so much as ignorance and short-sightedness that lead state and local governments to underfund schools.