Prince William Board split on tax rate, goes home

Prince William County’s elected leaders deadlocked over the tax rate.

The majority Republican’s on the county’s top governing body shot down a motion to stick with a pre-approved five-year plan that would have raised the average home owner’s tax bill by $145, to $3,877.

That increase would have funded automatically funded employee raises, and new investments in public safety, among other items.

Each year Supervisors on the Board must advertise a tax rate for the public to comment apon. Once set, the rate cannot be raised but may only be lowered by the time the budget is approved April 19.

Supervisors in previous years have argued over pennies on the dollar when it comes to setting a rate. Tuesday night Supervisors accomplished nothing and vowed to return 7 p.m. Friday, March 4 to take up the matter once again.

Republicans argued against growing the tax bill by 3.88 percent as outlined in a previously agreed upon five-year-plan, and instead proposed a flat tax that would keep the average residential tax bill in the county at $3,732.

“If we do 3.88, we will increase spending $53 million, not to mention the 30 million we did last year,” said Gainesville District Supervisor Peter Candland.

His motion for a flat tax was defeated in a tie vote with Supervisors Jenkins and Principi, both Democrats, and Nohe Caddigan, Republicans, dissenting. Caddigan complimented the county budget staff on producing what she called a detailed budget proposal that outlined funding needs in the county.

“It’s unfair that they did all this work, it’s like pulling rug out from under them if we [set the tax rate] lower,” said Caddigan.

A lower tax rate is on the minds of the majority of Board Republicans.

“I think what we’re trying to tell these guys is we can get the job done cheaper,” said Board Chairman At-large Corey Stewart.

A total of $28 million in one-time spending for new capital projects, using funds carried over from last year, was included in the proposed county budget. They included spending $40,000 on new surveillance cameras to monitor cash handling areas in the county’s taxpayer services office, spending $472,000 to add four new mental health therapists to help reduce the number of names on a 105-person waiting list, and spend $360,000 for four new 911 call center supervisors, among others.

“With more than $24 million in capital one-time projects, we’re overtaxing our residents by that much,” said Lawson.

Principi urged Republicans to list what they saw as needed budget cuts, but not before motioning to adjourn the meeting after the second failed tied vote.

“Lets have a discussion about what we are going to cut, not hire police, not provide pay raises, easy to propose flat tax but hard to propose cuts that will get us there,” he said.

*An earlier version of this post incorrectly noted property tax revenues were going to be used to fund a portion of  PRTC’s budget gap. Prince William County proposed using $6 million in revenues from the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority to help close PRTC’s $9.2 million budget gap.