That’s what Hanover’s seven supervisors faced last week as they tried to find the middle ground between department budget requests and citizens’ demands for tax relief.
So they chose to add two cents to the County Administrator’s proposed three cent real estate tax rate reduction, probably satisfying almost no one completely.
It’s a cycle that feeds on itself, with no end in sight. A prosperous, safe county like Hanover, with a good quality of life and an excellent school system is not likely to see property values level off anytime soon.
More folks will want to move here, driving up the selling prices for new and existing homes, and thus assessments, and thus tax bills, putting more pressure on fixed income homeowners and demands for service from county agencies.
There simply was no magic wand available for the supervisors to wave to change this basic equation.
If any new supervisors are seated next January, in addition to Tim Ernst’s replacement in Ashland, they are likely to face the same set of problems the current crew faced, unless the General Assembly gives counties some new way to raise money, an unlikely prospect.
Looked at one way, it’s Hanover’s great good fortune to be facing the problems brought on by its success.
Although it’s surely painful for homeowners facing rising tax bills, would they rather be living in a declining community in homes with falling value that no one wants to buy ?
I doubt it.
