By Heather Michon
Correspondent
The Fluvanna County Board of Supervisors met on Wednesday (April 9) for a public hearing on the equalized real estate tax rate.
Director of Finance Tori Melton told the supervisors that the total assessed value of real property had increased by 22.5 percent in the biannual assessment. However, some individual homeowners saw increases of over 40 percent.
Unlike some other Virginia counties, Fluvanna equalizes its real estate tax rate after an assessment, shifting a value that provides the same projected revenue as the rate approved for the start of a fiscal year.
In April 2024, the Board of Supervisors approved a real estate tax rate of $0.844 per $100 of assessed value. The equalized rate will drop to $0.689–at least for the next two weeks or so.
Reassessments are usually completed in the fall, but Pearson’s Appraisal Service could not finish the work until late January.
So, the equalized rate will only be in effect until supervisors approve the Fiscal Year 2026 (FY26) budget and set the tax rate on April 23. The maximum advertised real estate rate was set at $0.750 in March, and cannot go above that amount.
No vote was needed to approve the equalized rate; a public hearing is a legal requirement any time a reassessment increases the total property tax levied by one percent or more.
After the public hearing, the supervisors briefly discussed land use valuation.
This is a special assessment method used in Virginia to tax specific types of real estate based on their use rather than their market value. It encourages land preservation, mainly agricultural, horticultural, open space, and forested land.
Landowners received a reduced tax bill for preserving their land under approved uses. As a result, the county takes in less tax revenue than it would under market rates.
A county report from 2018 stated that 109,947.79 acres in Fluvanna were enrolled in the Land Use Taxation Program. This represented 60.92 percent of the county’s total acreage.
Some residents had raised concerns about this loss of potential tax revenue, but Chair Christopher Fairchild does not see the program ending any time soon.
“There’s not many things that I’ll publicly say as far as how I’m going to vote before I get there, but I can’t imagine there’s anything in this world that would make me vote to get rid of land use,” he said. “I think it’s one of the great tools we have to help keep our rural community and to help keep our taxes down.”
“I understand when people disagree, and we’re 28,000 people with a bunch of different perspectives,” he added. “But we want to make it clear to the citizens that I don’t see anything coming that is going to change that, at least in the near future. Certainly not with my vote.”
