Are all Montgomery County residents citizens of Christiansburg or Blacksburg? NO!
Are all Christiansburg or Blacksburg residents citizens of Montgomery County? Yes!
The tax revenue to the County go to provide services to ALL citizens of the County whether they live in the County proper, the Town of Christiansburg or the Town of Blacksburg. The taxes revenue to the Town of Blacksburg and/or Christiansburg go to provide services that the Towns provide above and beyond those provided by the County.
A bit simplistic I know, but I hope this gets the idea across. (Following population estimates provided by Google Public Data and Wikipedia)All of the 89,967residents of Montgomery County est. from 2008 , even if they live in Christiansburg or Blacksburg contribute to the tax base of the County through real estate tax or sales tax. This money is used to pay for maintenance of County roads, Schools, General Fire Rescue, Sheriff’s Office, Court, Jail, Garbage, Libraries, Salaries to employees, and a lot of other aspects of just living in the County.
Blacksburg (41,796 **remember there is a large portion of that number who are students as VT has the largest full-time student population in Virginia with over 30,000 full-time students) and Christiansburg (2008 est. of 19,477). The population of the towns provide revenue to cover the cost of such issues as storm water management, water, sewer, garbage, economic development, tourism, town planning, town codes enforcement, salaries to employees, etc.
In order to be fair, you need to remove the 30,000 in student population from the County population and Blacksburg. So population estimates would be something like: County 60,000, Blacksburg 12,000, Christianburg 19,000. Unfortunately, the old census data is way out of date. With the new census data, it will be easier to come up with some more accurate guess-timates of those numbers (if everyone fills out the census forms!). Anybody out there want to challenge the numbers here, feel free just please remember to cite your source. I need to be able to go get those numbers from someone!
Where is all of this going? Well, how about we look at the Old Blacksburg Middle School that is being discussed right now. What are they going to do with the building? This topic has been tossed around long enough it has turned green and upchucked!
For the last 10 years, the Town of Blacksburg has been pushing to have the County give them the property so they can use it as they wish. According to the Roanoke Times Article “Future unclear for old Blacksburg Middle School” people in Blacksburg think it is entirely appropriate for the County to give them property worth $4,400,000.00. Now, this is for property that the taxpayers all over the County paid for so that people in Riner, Elliston, and Shawsville, Christiansburg, Blacksburg (and throughout the County) can say that they paid for part of the building and land.
Now, if the County gives the land and building away, it is a net loss to the County. If the County sells the property, all proceeds are required to go back into the fund for Capital Improvement – stuff like repairing other schools and covering the cost of new schools having to be built as population increases. If you are a taxpayer, you are invested in this process. How do you want your investment returns used? Should they be given away to Blacksburg or should they be sold for the most amount of money? Something in between only makes sense to me if the property becomes commercial and there is a agreement with the Town and County to share the revenues. However, Blacksburg is having a hard time filling spaces these days and that could mean the County would get a portion of nothing equal to nothing!
I think the safest bet is to sell to the highest bidder, then step out of the way and let Blacksburg deal with the purchaser. Of course, that means that Blacksburg can keep the property value dropped as low as possible by not allowing re-zoning.
Maybe you don’t have an opinion right now, but I bet you will have one when property taxes in the County have to go up in order to offset lost revenue from other sources. Who knows, maybe there are a lot of Blacksburg residents who would rather see the property sold with proceeds going back to the County rather than have property taxes at the County level go up.
Guess we’ll have to wait and see. Maybe I need to start attending those Board of Supervisor meetings to see if members are responding to needs of the County or to needs of Blacksburg.
Heck, if Blacksburg wants playing fields, etc. they can pay for them. If Christiansburg can manage to build an Aquatic Center, I’ll bet Blacksburg can manage to maintain a green field for rugby, soccer, dog walking, etc.
One key point I’m hoping to make here is that the population numbers don’t really tell the whole picture. If you’re listening to arguments from either side or somewhere in the middle of all this discussion, be careful to pay attention to which numbers are used. More specifically, the Towns do not ‘own’ the schools. The schools are County property. If the Towns want the benefits of owning such properties, they will have to become Cities and pick up all the costs related to having a school system of their own. EVERY school in Montgomery County is equally important! Every child in Montgomery County is equally important! The decisions made concerning this property will have a long-term impact on the school system and on the children. Hopefully, the right decision will be made.
