Live in the Town of Vienna? Still hesitating about installing low-flush toilets? Now may be the time to take the plunge.
The Town of Vienna is going through its annual process of setting the real estate tax rate and sewer/water rates.
To cut to the chase
Looks like property taxes on existing residential property in the Town of Vienna will go up about 7% this year. That’s entirely due to increased assessments. So far, there is no proposed change in the real estate tax rate.
Looks like water/sewer bills will go up just over 10% this year, with no end of increases in sight. The “no end in sight” can be inferred from a consultant’s report, telling the Town that they need to keep raising the rates. (Based on this presentation (.pdf), from this Granicus web page.
This is based on the only thing publicly available right now, which is the proposed Town budget.
Source: Town of Vienna proposed 2024-25 budget, page A13, available at this link (.pdf).
You won’t know the official proposed rates for fiscal 24-25 until the Town holds its mandatory public hearings. And then, subsequently, votes on them, to make the final rates.
The Town may have posted a paper copy of the legally required Notice of Proposed Real Property Tax Rate Increase, but that’s not posted on line, as far as I can tell. Presumably, it must be prior to the public hearing. In theory, I could trek down to Town Hall and read it, wherever they have posted a paper copy of it, but that’s not worth the effort. The Town has botched that calculation since the very first year it was required, and they always get the numbers wrong, e.g., Post #1782 , Post #1495, ,Post #1128, Post #218. Worse, the Town gets that notice wrong in a way that consistently understates the true increase in taxes, and they continue to do that despite having been informed of it. That’s shaping up to happen again this year, as they got the hold-harmless tax rate wrong in the proposed budget (listed as 19.1 cents, it’s actually 18.4 cents, based on that section of the Town 2024-2025 proposed budget, page A8.). This year, given that they are proposing to leave the tax rate unchanged, the error in their calculation should be glaringly obvious. But it has been that way in the past, and nobody seems to care. So this year, look forward to the Town telling you that assessments are up 6.5%, the tax rate is unchanged, and therefore total taxes are up (say) 3.5%. If that last figure made no sense to you, then you understand that the Town’s calculations are incorrect. In the past, not only did I bring this to the attention of Town staff, I went to a Town Council member, and even a member of Town Council could not get Town staff to correct the mistake. So I am reduced to documenting that the Town willfully low-balls the estimated increase in taxes, year after year, in this legally-required document. In effect, going nyah-nyah-nyah. And leave it at that. Maybe, at some point, that will come back to bite them. Maybe never.
But for damned sure, if the tax rate is unchanged, then the effective increases in taxes must, by definition, as a matter of math, and as spelled out in the law, equal the increase in assessments. We’ll see if the Town can managed to hit that benchmark this year or not.
The public hearings are scheduled as follows:
- Budget, 4/8/2024
- Sewer and Water 4/8/2024
- Real estate tax 4/29/2024
Those dates were all approved by passing the consent agenda at the 3/18/2024 Town Council meeting. (That was passed at 1:57 into the video of the meeting, available at this reference, on Granicus. If you blink, you’ll miss it.)
As a pleasant surprise, I see that Town Council meeting agendas now have estimated times for at least some items. This is a big improvement over the prior approach, which was simply to list everything and … I don’t know what. Meetings tended to be a bit chaotic. This, along with former Councilman Majdi’s consent agenda, puts us more in line with how (e.g.) Fairfax County handles its business, and is a welcome change.
In a typical year, literally nobody bothers to comment on any of this. Whatever the tax rate, or the sewer/water rate, or the budget, it’s all apparently OK with everybody living here. Or the folks who might care are unaware that the process is happening now, and by the time the Town actually brings this to a vote, it’s too late. But I suspect that the average resident is just too well off for this to matter.
In any case, those are the dates. If you have an opinion, that’s your sole opportunity to be heard.
