CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – With diversifying the Albemarle County tax base a repeated top priority of county leaders, County Executive Jeff Richardson on WINA Morning News put some numbers to the story about how the county commercial and industry tax base has shrunk from about 15% of the burden in 2015 down to just over 11% today. This as the population has grown from about 105,000 in 2015 to just over 117,000 in 2024, which creates need for more services. The county has been catching up with increase in public safety services and is in the process of building at least three new schools.

“When we look at our peers across the Commonwealth and neighboring communities, it looks like about an 80-20 split,” Richardson said.

The metric doesn’t just include the growing population or even a shrinking commercial or industry environment.

“It means our residential tax base, both assessment and new homes, have outpaced the growth in business, industry, and commercial development,” Richardson explained.

The path he says staff and the Board of Supervisors is trying to navigate is “doing economic development in a way that is orchestrated where we don’t negatively affect our physical environment, sustainability, our beautiful county”.

“But there are areas within our development area where we need to attract private business investment.”

The hope is getting the residential/commercial tax base balance into 85-15 or 80-20 over a period of time.

“That will lessen the reliance, the stress, and the pressure on the residential taxpayer because I’m hearing from that taxpayer that say ‘I think I’m paying too much in taxes and I think it’s growing too much year over year and the county needs to do something to change that’,”, Richardson explained.

He says the county is making “a scalpel approach” in terms of economic development, and they’re enacting a proven strategy that works.

Richardson notes Albemarle County is crafting a strategic plan, and had just enacted its first economic development strategic plan when he got here in 2017. He said that was pretty late in the game to be the first, but it’s served well for seven years. Now with the help of a consultant, and input from 250 community members’ input, the plan is refined.

“We’re looking at three things: continuing to take advantage of our presence for national security in this region, along with life sciences which connects us hard into our wonderful research University, and it also recognizes our third leg could be agribusiness… with farms and producers and doing everything we can to help them.”

Taxes are an issue in only contested Board of Supervisors race. Fred Missel and Scott Smith want to be the next supervisor in the Samuel Miller District, and they’re talking a similar game when it comes to the tax burden; looking at where Albemarle tax money is spent.

Smith told WINA’s The Schilling Show he wants to freeze taxes and “take a deep dive into where the money is spent”.

“The county has made big investments which they’ve gone over their skis on, and we need to look at some of those.”

Fred Missel, who has evaluated a number of projects as Planning Commission chair, told WINA’s Morning News county leaders need to examine some “metrics”, and measure carefully how they’re spending money. He wants more information flow and transparency to encourage public involvement. County meetings at budget time in the past several years have been sparsely attended and this last budget process as no exception.

“We had nine public meetings on this last budget increase, and the average attendance was nearly twenty people.”