Keith Drake, chairman of the Albemarle County Republican Party and leader of the “Truth in Taxation” campaign, says the awakening for him came when he received his property tax bill in January. “You know, they’re going shave a penny or two off the [current rate of 74 cents] and they’re going to call that tax relief and I’m going to get mad,” Drake said to himself. “This time, unless I do something about it, I don’t deserve to get mad.”
He certainly has done something about it, raising hell at county meetings, leafleting cars, organizing others. Even his vehicle has become a billboard in the campaign to change the county budget process, with “58¢” scrawled on the back.
 Keith Drake, chairman of the Albemarle County Republican Party, is campaigning to start the budget conversation with 58 cents. He’s enlisted his car to help the Board of Supervisors meditate on the tax rate. |
Why 58 cents? Because of the average increase of 28 percent in county property values, that’s the real estate tax rate that would equal the revenues previously created by the 74-cent tax rate. Drake admits that the county has fulfilled the letter of the law by advertising a public hearing on the tax rate, but he believes that by having County Executive Robert Tucker prepare a budget using the 74-cent tax rate, they’ve violated the spirit of the law.
Fifty-eight cents “should be the starting point for the budget conversation,” says Drake. “Certainly we are a growing county, we experience inflation and a rate higher than 58 cents may be appropriate. …But that conversation has not been the conversation.”
Even though the supervisors are currently looking at a 70-cent tax rate, Drake says, “To call that a budget cut is just dishonest. It’s more money being paid by the taxpayers.”
What Supervisor David Slutzky finds dishonest, however, is much of Drake’s campaign. “[The Republicans] suggest that we’ve got an out-of-control budget and we’re living fat and happy and spending money like drunken sailors. …They’re leaving off a few details.” For Slutzky, the issue really comes down to the lack of funding out of Washington and, particularly, Richmond.
“I don’t think anybody on our board really likes the property tax system,” Slutzky says. “But because we’re not given the empowerment from Richmond to figure out how to apply the tax burden on the shoulders of the people that cause it, we have no choice. Why doesn’t the Republican Party demand that the Republican-controlled General Assembly properly fund transportation budgets for communities like Albemarle?
“It really makes me mad to see the Republican Party locally blathering on about, ‘We need to have our taxes lowered,’ when they’re the problem. …I’m offended by the intellectual dishonesty.”
A public hearing on the budget and the tax rate takes place Wednesday, April 4, at 6pm in the County Office Building, and adoption is set for April 11. But that won’t end Drake’s campaign. He says they’ll now take on the expenditure side. “We have a few people just chomping at the bit.”
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