Christiansburg Town Council to Look at City Status and Moving Meeting Dates.

May 6, 2012

Carol Lindstrom Christiansburg, VA, Citizen Participation, Economic Development, Education, Local Government, Your Tax Money , , , , , , , , Comments Off

It came as a bit of a surprise at the end of the May 1st Town Council Meeting when Councilmember Steve Huppert requested that the Town Council again look at moving their meeting dates so that they do not conflict with the Montgomery County School Board.

I’ve been supporting this move for some time now. It has become even more important to me now that the Town of Christiansburg is making it’s own videos of meetings. You see, I’ve got this camera that for several years now I’ve been using to record Christiansburg Town Council Meetings. It’s gathering dust. I haven’t figured out how to be 2 places at one time, but I would love to be able to provide for the Montgomery County School Board what I provided for the Town of Christiansburg, citizen recorded public meetings of the School Board posted online to share with the public. The decisions made by the School Board AND their discussions/deliberations are just too darned important not to provide access to citizens. If the Town of Christiansburg moves it’s meetings to another date, it will mean that I lose more nights of prime-time TV (like I have time to watch that anyway), but it would give me a wonderful opportunity to learn more about the School Board and to be able to share that information here.

Then, came an even bigger surprise when Councilmember Cord Hall asked that it be put on the agenda of the next meeting to begin discussions of the Town of Christiansburg moving to City status. Wow! I’ve heard this discussed previously and I had been against such a move. However, now that I’ve had some time to really look at a LOT of budget numbers for a lot of different jurisdictions, I’m no longer sure that this is not the best move that Christiansburg could make. Christiansburg is growing and even in this “down” economy, continues to grow. Christiansburg has a tremendous retail base for which the taxes are now directed to the County School System.

Christiansburg also has superb resources in the Recreation Center and Aquatic Center that could be used with a City School system and we could become the home of future Olympic Champions!!! Christiansburg citizens already take great pride in the schools located within it’s boundary even though those schools are part of the Montgomery County School System. How much greater would that pride be in a situation where they were truly Christiansburg Schools!

Christiansburg citizens would have control over their schools! They would have their own School Board, and we know how to use our votes to get the biggest bang for our voting “buck”. We would have to have our own library. Maybe one with more computers and greater public usage? It would be responsible to the citizens of Christiansburg, not to the whims of the County.

Perhaps more importantly, our elected officials would have more control over services. We’re already “donating” money to social services, the library, and other such services. There is grant money and other resources available to Cities that is not available to Towns.

But, all this really means is that an honest and true cost-benefit analysis would need to be done. It would need to be done without any bias and, for me, that means contacting the Weldon Cooper Center (Economic and Policy Studies section). This is not a decision to be taken lightly, nor is it one to be discounted out of fear of the unknown. I hope Town Council will take a serious look at this, but as far as I can see, with the research that I’ve managed to do, Christiansburg is in the perfect spot to go to City Status. All of those jurisdictions who have dropped or are planning to drop back from City to Town status have not had the retail network that Christiansburg has (with more to come) developed. We’ve got it and we should maximize the use of it by keeping that money here.

 

County vs Town Taxes…Back to the Basics on the Old Blacksburg Middle School

December 6, 2009

Carol Lindstrom Your Tax Money , , , , , , , , , Comments Off

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.