There is a good article on the Manassas Council race over on the WaPo.  It’s mostly about Mark Wolfe but it also speaks briefly about some of the other candidates as well.  I guess they will do articles on the others as they have space.  don’t know.

It is my guess that we’ll see a competition between those who believe that the City should take broad-based and bold action on immigration and those who hold a more nuanced view on immigration.  Seeing as how it is the Republican convention, I would expect the views on taxes, etc to fall within a reasonable range but I would be willing to wager that the immigration issue will rule the day.  This is good as immigration is an important issue to Manassas but there are many more challenges awaiting us and I’m hoping that there is as much “vision” in the speeches as there is rhetoric about immigration.  We’ll see.

The General Assembly is kicking around something called a “Homestead Exemption” for Real Estate taxes. The idea is to make up to 20% of your homes value exempt from real estate taxes. The reason for this is because the General Assembly only lets localities set one tax rate for both residential and commercial property. Allowing localities to exempt some portion of residential real estate from taxation is a (convoluted) way to allow a different rate for residential property. This way when real estate values go up, some adjustments can be made to allow residential property to have a lower rate.

I would welcome more flexibility in property tax rates but it seems to me that a more sensible way to fix this is to allow for two different rates. One for residential and one for commercial property but Richmond has become incredibly partisan and putting this issue in terms of an exemption sells better.

As a local elected I wonder, if Richmond is so worried about the tax burden, why don’t they cut their budgets at the state level? The Real Estate tax funds local operations – schools, public safety and other local responsibilities – not state operations. If the citizens of Manassas want the tax rate lower, they will find Council Members whose priorities are lower taxation and more austere budgets. Just askin….