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In Stafford, a taxing workload Assessments
Holiday is a workday for land appraisers
Date published: 12/27/2005
By EDIE GROSS
With a holiday declared at the Stafford County Government Center, phones didn't ring there yesterday.
Lines didn't form at office counters. And in-boxes didn't fill with urgent e-mails.
The day off for county employees turned out to be a perfect day to work for its property assessors.
Holed up in the Commissioner of Revenue's conference room, county Assessor Dick Jones Jr. and Deputy Assessor Terrence Murray pored over spreadsheets and colorful tax maps showing land values and zoning codes.
The values of some 45,000 residential and commercial properties must be calculated by early January. Coming in over the Christmas holiday ensures that it gets done, Jones said.
"We don't have to fool with the telephones," he said. "It gives us the ability to work and think."
The money Stafford raises in property taxes--$92.2 million last year--is the single largest source of local income for the county, said Revenue Commissioner Scott Mayausky, who also was working yesterday.
While the Board of Supervisors sets the tax rate--97 cents per $100 of property value right now--appraisers in Mayausky's office compute the value of each piece of property every two years.
The growth in Stafford is so dynamic that appraisers are working on those biennial calculations almost constantly. But since the property values must be current as of Jan. 1, they wait until right about now to assign dollar figures.
The last time they reassessed property in 2004, the average Stafford home was worth $240,000, up 37 percent from $175,000 two years before.
Mayausky, Jones and Murray said they aren't sure just yet what property values will look like for 2006. It's a safe bet that they're rising, though some neighborhoods will experience larger increases than others.
"People banter around the word 'market' like it's one market across the nation," Murray said. "Even within Stafford County, we have submarkets. We're dealing with microeconomics, not macroeconomics."
In addition, development in Stafford has broadened the tax base.
"We're not really seeing a slow-down here in Stafford," Jones said. "We're now classified as Northern Virginia, and the Northern Virginia market has definitely come to Stafford."
It's also come to other nearby communities. In November, property-owners in Fairview Beach learned their assessments would increase an average of 130 percent over 2001 values.
Read more stories about Stafford
Date published: 12/27/2005
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