There are 79 days until the General Assembly convenes for the 2023 session for the second year with Glenn Youngkin in the Governor’s Mansion. Last week, Albemarle Supervisors finalized their list of legislative priorities that they hope to convince legislators to turn into a bill. (2023 Legislative Priorities) (2023 Legislative Positions and Policy Statements)
Supervisors last discussed the list in September and extensively discussed a request to expand the number of virtual meetings an appointed body can have.
Another of the priorities is to request the ability for counties to decide for themselves if they want to hold a referendum on additional sales tax to generate revenue for school construction projects.
“There are currently nine counties and one city in the Commonwealth which enjoy this authority to levy an additional one-percent sales tax which is used exclusively to fund school division capital projects,” said county attorney Steven Rosenberg.
Legislation failed to make it out of a House of Delegates subcommittee last year.
Another priority is to request a change of the eligibility rules for sites to participate in the Virginia Business Ready Sites program. Currently land in most economic development regions must be of a certain size to quality, and Albemarle wants that to be reduced.
“There are not that many properties in the county that satisfy that 100 acre contiguous developable standard,” Rosenberg said.
Albemarle wants to cut that in half to 50 acres and Rosenberg said two Go Virginia regions already have that lower threshold.
“The economic development office (EDO) has identified sites that would otherwise fulfill the requirement but for their acreage,” Rosenberg said. “I will finally add on this item that there is one site in the county that does satisfy the requirement and it’s in North Fork and the EDO is currently working with the University of Virginia Foundation in seeking funds for that site.”
There will be one more discussion of the priorities in November if needed.
See also:
- House subcommittee kills school sales tax bills, February 25, 2022
- Albemarle Supervisors to support legislation to allow advisory body meetings to go virtual, September 13, 2021)
