Tag Archives: Virginia Beach

In Virginia Beach: Hang On to Your Wallets

Posted on March 6, 2023 by | 70 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

How to ruin an otherwise lovely early spring-like weekend, Virginia Beach-style:

Send out real estate assessments that show double-digit increase in the value of property (that’s a good thing, by the way) and a huge jump in taxes.

That’s not good.

Yep, many of us opened our mail on Saturday and wished we hadn’t.

While it’s nice that the city assessor believes property values are soaring, we all know what that means: the city council will quietly vote to “keep” the tax rate the same as last year and the year before, and then pat themselves on the back, crowing:

WE DIDN’T RAISE TAXES.

Ahem. Yes they did. They do it every year, just a little sleight of hand.

Let me explain: if your assessment rose 20% – as mine did – and the council votes to keep the rate at 99 cents per hundred dollars of assessed value rather than cutting it to a rate that would keep revenue about where it was last year – your taxes are going up.

A lot!

Look, rising assessments are a good thing. For most of us, our homes are our biggest assets. No one wants their asset to lose value.

If your stocks go up but you leave your money in the stock market, you aren’t taxed on unrealized gains. You’re taxed when you sell shares.

But when assessments skyrocket and you stay in your home, you’re being taxed on your “wealth.” In the parlance of the world of finance, you’re paying taxes on unrealized capital gains. Continue reading →

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Taxpayers Fund Biden’s Disruptive Campaign Stop in Va Beach

Posted on March 2, 2023 by | 36 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

As usual, some local news outlets missed the real story.

They were so starstruck by President Biden’s taxpayer-funded, Republican-bashing campaign stop in Virginia Beach on Tuesday that they didn’t notice that the city ground to a halt for hours Tuesday afternoon.

It was a giant clusterfart.

From one end of Virginia’s largest city to the other, traffic was gridlocked. Businesses lost money, appointments were missed and untold gallons of gas were wasted as fuming motorists stewed in traffic, unsure of what was going on.

A nuclear attack? A massive 100-car-pile-up? Fugitives on the loose?

Nope, just the president on a last-minute trip to Virginia Beach to rant about how the GOP wants to slash spending on health care.

Several television stations reported on the bumper-to-bumper traffic caused by rolling closures along the interestate. The print media? Nah. Not that I could find, anyway.

Biden flew into Oceana NAS around 2 p.m. and his motorcade headed to the Kempville Rec Center on Monmouth Road, 10.4 miles away, where he made a speech. Secret Service and various law enforcement agencies whose task it is to protect the life of the president, ordered parts of the interstate closed. Continue reading →

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Farewell to the Conscience of Virginia Beach City Council, John Moss

Posted on January 2, 2023 by | 9 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

If you were in Virginia Beach on Wednesday morning, November 8, 2022, you could almost hear the sighs of relief.

That collective exhalation came from the cronies on city council who would no longer have to deal with Councilman John Moss, who came in second in a three-way race for the newly created District 9.

The other members would no longer have to squirm when the Republican pointed out that his colleagues deceived the public when they boasted that they’d held the line on property taxes by keeping the RATE static. Rising real estate assessments in the city meant taxes WENT UP for most residents, he always pointed out.

Holding the line would mean lowering the rate.

Moss was right, of course. But it seems you really can fool most of the people most of the time.

Beyond that, city council would no longer have to deal with a budget wonk who was skilled in monetary matters. He was not content, as they were, to let city staff cook up spending plans with excesses that necessitated the falsehood about taxes staying the same.

Year after year Moss accused the city budgeteers of deliberately funding vacant positions, using the loot as a slush fund for their pet projects.

And year after year, Moss’ “revenue neutral” budget proposal died with little or no support from his colleagues.

Beyond that, the local newspaper often ignored Moss, sometimes treating him as a kook, adding to the perception that he was simply a gadfly who’d managed to steal a seat on this body filled with friends of powerful developers and entertainers.

Truth was, Moss had served the people since he was first elected as part of a good government slate in 1986 with a mission to slow down the rampant construction of homes that were springing up in a hodgepodge fashion around the city. Uncontrolled growth contributed to the flooding crisis that the city experiences today. Continue reading →

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