|
|
||
Date published: 12/15/2008
Kudos to Stafford Supervisor Paul Milde, ["Control growth? OK, but do it transparently," Dec. 8] for standing up for commonsense growth control. In the last year, I have received no fewer than five notices of pending action by Stafford County concerning new ordinances involving my property. Thank goodness I had already pumped my septic tank due to a pump failure. There was no consideration for the size of the family occupying the home served by the septic tank. The daily fine alone for not being in compliance is enough to send one into bankruptcy. Potomac Creek flows through my property and was already protected with a 100-foot perimeter for the creek and wetlands surrounding it. Then came the Potomac Creek Resource Development Protection area. There goes another 35 feet surrounding this area. Stafford is taking property rights away from landowners 35 and 100 feet at a time without any compensation. The kicker is that I applied for property tax reassessment since a quarter of my property contains wetlands associated Virginia law allows counties to adjust What Stafford fails to realize is that Yes, Virginia, there is a Scrooge, and it's Stafford County. Sylvia Van Dyke Stafford
it just remained unspent or never existed. The bottom line is
the taxpayer did not have to contribute that $50MM to the
county coffers to be available for spending. Since I don't
know any more about the 50MM than I read here my story
makes sense. No doubt, knowledge of the details would
make my head spin. Let's leave it at that.
It is a false assumption that the $50M was saved. In fact more than that share was spent by the county. For example, in 2008 the county adminiistrator with the approval of the BOS overspent revenue by about $7.4M. The schools actually saved money since by law they cannot have a deficit !!!!
Sylvia, I can relate to your wetlands. I have a part of my property that is a swamp and another part that is clay from top down. There is no county sewer running along the road (not that I want it). Now, the property, as I am told, regardless that no one ever can build on it, is assessed " AS IF" I could build or sell to build!! The county has already said I can't build because of the clay/swamp.
Somebody tell me how that is some form of sane reasoning.. I forgot, it's Stafford assessing.
but it always amazes me how people think that throwing money at a problem is a magic fix it. Stafford Co. does have dedicated employees, and yes, they could make great use of a budget increase (can't anybody?)...but just look north Dean. Nationally, DC schools are probably at the top of per pupil expenditure but are among the lowest in test scores. These are tough times for everybody, so it's time to pull up the boots and suck it up! Whining about what we don't have is never productive.
It is her land. She bought it, she paid for it, she pays taxes
on it, and the county takes away her use of it, but not the
tax burden. They did that in the soviet union too. I can look
at your house too and enjoy it...even though I don't own it,
but at least I don't have to pay tax on it.
By the way..DEAN Fetteroff, thanks for letting the people
keep the $50 million bucks, that was very large of you.
Especially since you managed to do an excellent job of
teaching the kiddies...without that 50 mil.
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||
