February 2006 Archives

I haven't talked to anyone that isn't in assessment shock. Loudoun County mailed tax assessments to property owners last week and it seems there may be a storm gathering. According to the County Assessor half the county's residential property owners assessments rose more than 28%! That is after double digit increases the last three years. Even our Board of Supervisors are experiencing "shock and awe." The Leesburg Today reported these figures for our nine supervisors:

Supervisor	Jan 2005	Jan 2006	% Increase
Jim Burton (Blue Ridge)	$644,000	$991,900	54%
Jim Clem (Leesburg)	$420,000	$530,500	26%
Eugene Delgaudio (Sterling)	$236,100	$346,700	47%
Sally Kurtz (Catoctin-our district)	$466,380	$619,600	33%
Stephen Snow (Dulles)	$540,700	$683,800	26%
Mick Stanton (Sugarland Run)	$381,400	$510,600	34%
Bruce Tulloch (Potomac)	$541,800	$689,000	27%
Lori Waters (Broad Run)	$483,900	$642,300	33%
Scott York (At Large)	$418,200	$560,400	34%

To keep the average tax bill from increasing, the board would have to lower the tax rate from $1.04 per $100 to $0.81, according to the news article. The County Administrator has proposed $0.97 with many new school and transportation projects.

There are reports of heavy phone traffic to the assessor's office. Surprised? Not me. Appeals may reach a record this year. It will be interesting to see if any of our board members appeal their assessments.

My overall assessment went up 20%. The land portion went up 41%!!!!!!! The good news is built up equity. The bad news is the computation of assessed value (it is supposed to reflect some percentage of market value).

Are you shocked. Post your comments by clicking on the comment link below.

All of us should have received the Notice of Public Hearing concerning the Proposed Zoning Changes Affecting Your Property issued on January 23, 2006. As most of us know, Loudoun County is embroiled in bitter disputes over the zoning, packing density in the east while keeping the western part of the county more open.

Raspberry Falls was zoned AR1 before and continues to be zoned AR1 in the proposed amendment. Besides that, the community was planned back in the early 90's and was theoretically "grandfathered" before being rezoned in 2003-2004 under the last Board of Supervisors. Although, rule changes significantly delayed the building of our community pool.

While these zoning amendments do not directly effect the residents of Raspberry, they will effect most of the undeveloped land along the 15 corridor. The good news is we won't have high density development adding to the traffic congestion on Route 15.

A copy of the mailing can be downloaded here (pdf file).