Francis Chester has cost Augusta County taxpayers $7000 to date

After doing some digging, I found out that the total costs of defending the taxpayers against the assessment lawsuit as of the middle of this month were approaching $7000. For a county where the taxpayers have to watch every dime, this is not insignificant.

What total will be enough before Mr. Chester is done with us? $10,000? $20,000? Its not hard to see that if this drags out through next year that the totals will reach that and and much more.

How much money is Francis Chester costing Augusta County taxpayers?

The landowners, who under the direction and advice of Francis Chester have sued the County to roll back their tax assessments to the 2005 levels, are not the only taxpayers in this county. I do not think Francis Chester is a hero. I think he is wrong. He has a right to petition the government but where does that leave the rest of us? All taxpayers bear the burden of any legal costs to defend themselves against this suit, to say nothing of the costs of subsidizing the plaintiffs’ tax burden if the suit succeeds. I’m going to do some digging to find those #s.

The assessment does not reflect the actual methodology used to arrive at each taxpayer’s burden. That is done through the budget process (total budget x proportion owed through real estate tax /# of landowners). The county will collect the same amount of tax from taxpayer Doe no matter what Doe’s assessment is at. If his tax assessment is artificially high, he is subsidizing another’s tax burden and if his assessment is artificially low, others are subsidizing his.

The assessment merely attempts to occasionally reflect the changing market conditions. Any attempt to arbitrarily change it for a select group of people merely shifts the tax burden onto the rest of us.