City Beat
By Emily Battle
In case you need to blow off some steam...
July 3, 2009 2:25 pm
Those of you who didn't make it to the various hearings on the budget and tax rate might be interested to know that you will have an opportunity to stand before at least two of your local elected representatives while they're held captive in a metal cage over a vat of water down on Sophia Street tomorrow. You can even throw things. No, this is not vigilante justice for the recent tax hike. It's the Rappahannock-Fredericksburg Rotary Club's annual Dunk Tank, a fundraiser that is part of the July 4th Heritage Festival downtown. Matt Kelly is scheduled to be in the tank from 3 to 3:30 p.m. and Tom Tomzak will be in the hot seat from 11:30 to 11:45 a.m. (He will then make his son fill out the last 15 minutes of his shift.) Spotsy readers might want to know that Hap Connors is scheduled to fill the noon to 12:30 shift. And to avoid getting an e-mail from Matt Kelly about this, I will point out that he voted against the recent real estate tax hike and the budget that it funds (Tomzak voted for both.). Kelly did make the suggestion that led the council to raise the meals tax rate, though, for what it's worth. Happy Fourth!
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Tags:
budget
Dinty Moore's closing today after 73 years
July 3, 2009 10:27 am
If you want to start your July 4 weekend off with a big home-cooked meal, your last chance to dine at Dinty Moore's Restaurant will be lunch today. The small family-run restaurant at 1607 Princess Anne St. opened for business on July 1, 1936. Many of the regulars who have kept it going over the years are just learning today about the closing. Cleo Moore, daughter of Anne and Dinty Moore, who started the restaurant, said that just like many other businesses, her restaurant is a victim of the current economic downturn. Read more about this in tomorrow's paper.
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Tags:
Princess Anne Street
Holiday week tidbits
July 1, 2009 10:12 am
- The Courtyard by Marriott hotel on Caroline Street officially opens for business tomorrow, according to Tommy Mitchell, one of three partners who developed the hotel. There will be a grand opening July 8. Look for more on this from business reporter Cathy Jett later this week. Almost a year ago, the hotel looked like this: 
[This was taken in August of last year. I have since gotten a better cell phone camera.] - The recession is making cities more attractive, according to a story in today's Wall Street Journal. The draw comes from people who want to eliminate their commute from the suburbs and folks who are stuck in homes they're underwater on. It also comes from people looking for jobs and others who need services, so it brings some costs and rewards. This story was about larger cities. Fredericksburg is the hub of its own region, but it's also been considered an "exurb" (Seriously, is that really a word?) for the DC area, so you could put us on both sides of the scenarios discussed in this story. - The American Canoe Association is looking at potential downtown digs this week, according to Executive Director Martin Bartels. The association is still raising money and making plans to build a permanent national headquarters and paddlesports center in Celebrate Virginia, on land given by the Silver Cos., but it's looking for an interim location that could allow it to have more visibility in the community. Learn more in Friday's business section.
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Tags:
cities,
Courtyard by Marriott,
Celebrate Virginia
Why is that road into Wegmans closed?
June 29, 2009 4:21 pm
 With all the traffic jams I've seen inside Wegmans over the past week, it's natural that people want the roads leading to the store to flow as freely as possible. We've been getting a lot of questions about why the intersection of Gordon W. Shelton Boulevard and Fall Hill Avenue is blocked off.
That intersection can't open until the Silver Cos., the developers of the entire Celebrate Virginia complex, build a stoplight there (Can you really imagine turning left out of there without one?). According to Charlie Kilpatrick, Silver's vice president for commercial construction, the developer is still working to get easements on the land across Fall Hill Avenue, which it does not own, so that it can install parts of the traffic light there. This light will be designed to accommodate the future development of the land across the street, and the planned widening of Fall Hill Avenue, whenever that happens. (Business writer Cathy Jett wrote about the property across Fall Hill from this intersection, which is owned by the Graves family. Read that story here.)
Kilpatrick said Silver is still in negotiations to get those easements. He wasn't sure exactly how long that would take, but once the developer has access to the property, it should take about three weeks to build the stoplight. After that, the intersection should be fully functional for left and right turns. We can't say the same for the intersection of the deli counter and packaged meat aisles inside the grocery store.
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Tags:
Celebrate Virginia
Regionalism: Like getting France and Germany to cooperate?
June 29, 2009 11:35 am
VCU urban studies professor John Moeser gave a speech to a coalition that lobbies for Virginia cities earlier this year that appeared as an op-ed in the Richmond Times Dispatch yesterday. The premise is nothing new to anyone who has observed local government in Virginia: The walls between cities and counties cause big problems, but to fix those problems, local elected officials will have to get over their own self-interest and start thinking bigger. There are not a lot of direct incentives for local elected officials in Virginia to act regionally. Moeser writes: The answer won't be found in another study. In the space of 10 years, we've had seven studies of one kind or another by some state-level urban task force or special commission. The result? Cities still face the same problems. So do the fast-growing counties. State laws and regulations continue to strip both types of localities of any flexibility in resolving many of their problems.
He encourages those involved to look to the folks who laid the groundwork for the formation of the European Union--work that involved getting France and Germany to look beyond their own self-interests after World War II--for inspiration. Last week, I was doing some research for a project we in the newsroom are working on this summer. Looking at fiscal 2008 data from the state's Auditor of Public Accounts, I ranked all of our area localities based on their per-capita costs of government services. According to the 2008 data, Fredericksburg spends more money per capita on judicial administration than any Virginia locality but Emporia. It ranks fourth in the state in per-capita spending on public safety. Fredericksburg topped all of our regional localities on per-capita spending in every area but education (I'm still looking at that one, though, because I suspect there may be some state money in the county totals.). Moeser also touches on the fact that independent localities lose out on the economies of scale they could take advantage of if they spent money as part of a larger local government buying group: Even before the meltdown, it made little sense for each city and county to operate as if it were a separate nation-state. It makes less sense now! Why, for example, does each school district buy its own fleet of school buses when the combined school districts of metropolitan Richmond could place a single order and reduce the unit cost? Why can't state government, which is constitutionally responsible for all local government, demand a similar change in intergovernmental relationships as the national government is demanding of our financial markets and automobile industry?
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Tags:
cities,
General Assembly
Loose ends: budget and what's happening on the riverfront
June 24, 2009 11:41 am
A restaurant owner told me this morning she thought the council was a little "sneaky" in approving the 1 percent meals tax hike in the waning days of the budget discussions after taking a vote earlier not to raise that tax. (And if you haven't read it yet, the story on the final budget vote is here.) She asked if there was anything restaurant owners could do about the meals tax hike now, and I told her there's an election in May 2010 and the council usually starts talking about preliminary budget stuff in November. We're still waiting to see whether council members really follow up on discussing how they dole out money to nonprofit groups outside of City Hall (A spending category that makes up a very small percentage of the overall budget, but sure takes up a lot of time at meetings.). The list of groups the city funds now has evolved over the years, and every individual council member always has his or her own ideas of whether it's a good list or a bad list. For example, George Solley this year proposed cutting the Fredericksburg Area Museum's allocation by less than had been proposed, and Matt Kelly has thrown out several lists of allocations he thinks are a little suspect in years when the city is supposedly focusing on "core services" (see the latest version of that list here). Neither Kelly nor Solley could get much support for their ideas. A few other loose ends from last night: - We wrote here that the city is going to move forward with some preliminary work on the riverfront park it's been buying land for on Sophia Street. This work was talked about at a work session last night. Here is a detailed list of what this work will include. - The council appointed Todd Williams, Fredericksburg market president for Wachovia, to the Economic Development Authority. - There was a really long discussion last night about whether the city should allow beer to be sold and consumed in the Maury playground, next to Maury Stadium, during the Mark Newton Homecoming Pickin Party, an event that is being held as a fundraiser for JM athletics. The council ended up approving that proposal on a 5-2 vote, with Brad Ellis and Hashmel Turner opposed, but neighbors are wary of how this event will affect them. The council has to take one more vote to approve this ordinance change, and we'll have more on this soon.
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Tags:
budget,
riverfront
Big Sunday outing
June 22, 2009 10:37 am
I've been away for the past week, but yesterday, after getting back to town, I decided to visit the Wegmans parking lot. Upon arriving at the parking lot, I realized that actually setting foot inside the store would need to wait until four police cars were no longer required to contain the crowds. Overflow parking was nearly filling the Expo Center parking lot, which I could see after I spent 15 minutes trying to get out of the Wegmans parking lot. I even saw a few people walking to the store from Central Park. After all this excitement, I went to Giant because I needed to do some grocery shopping. With all that activity in the parking lot, though, you'd think Wegmans would be well on its way to hitting the sales threshold it needs to collect its annual share of the 10-year tax incentive package Fredericksburg approved to lure the mega-grocer here. Here's a story from August 2007, when that package was approved. If you need a refresher, here's the basic explanation of the deal: The city has offered to waive $1.7 million of the grocer's business license taxes over a 10-year period. To start taking advantage of that waiver, Wegman's must generate at least $300,000 in tax revenue, so the city would get at least $130,000 in new money. Wegman's predicts its Fredericksburg store will generate $60 million in annual sales. That would bring $600,000 a year to the city in business license taxes.
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Tags:
Celebrate Viriginia,
incentives,
economic development
Commonwealth's attorney only contested race in Fredericksburg this fall
June 10, 2009 3:23 pm
Last night was the deadline for candidates in the November elections to file their paperwork. In Fredericksburg, the only local races are four of the five constitutional officers (The circuit court clerk's term won't be up until 2011.). All of those are uncontested races with incumbents running for reelection except for the commonwealth's attorney's race. Incumbent LaBravia Jenkins will face challenger Joseph "Jeh" Hicks in the race for that office. Jenkins beat Hicks and Stafford County prosecutor Eric Olsen in a special election last December to fill what remained of Charles Sharp's term after he was appointed to the Circuit Court bench. The race was tight. Hicks came in second in the vote tally by 33 votes, with Olsen in third another 26 votes behind Hicks. The other three races will be uncontested incumbents breezing to another term (unless something happens in the write-in department). Those officials are Commissioner of the Revenue Lois Jacob, Sheriff Paul Higgs and Treasurer Jim Haney.
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Tags:
elections,
constitutional officers
How much are taxes really going up?
June 10, 2009 9:30 am
The folks who spoke at last night's public hearing talked about the council's proposed 26 percent increase in the real estate tax. That number comes from comparing the current, pre-assessment rate, with the proposed, post-assessment rate. It appears again in Chamber of Commerce President Bob Hagan's letter to the editor warning council members that this decision would disproportionately hurt business owners. The actual percentage of tax increase that individual property owners will see varies greatly. In the numbers I looked at, I found that owners of Central Park townhomes would see a 16 percent tax decrease. The Silver Cos. would see an increase of as much as 88 percent in the tax bill for property in Celebrate Virginia. Homeowners in Great Oaks and the Preserve at Smith Run would see tax reductions in the 10 to 20 percent range. Some of the commercial properties on Caroline Street would pay 15 to 25 percent more in taxes. But the point Hagan was trying to make, and much of the debate last night, was over how to spread the burden equitably between two broad classes of property owners-commercial and residential. In an e-mail exchange with council members (responding to a question from Tomzak), Hagan explained why the 26 percent number is appropriate when talking about business properties. He wrote: The increase for residential property is 6.8% thanks to the OFFSETTING DECREASE in assessment. The increase on commercial property is 25.9% because there was NO offsetting decrease in assessments. That means it is not ‘just an increase of $0.045’ but an increase of $0.145 to business property owners. The math is the increase from the current rate of $0.56 to $0.705 ($0.145) divided by the current rate. That is $0.145 divided $0.56 or 25.9% which was rounded in the letter to 26% Commercial property assessments were essentially flat. Hence the tax increase to anyone with a flat assessment amounts to 26%. (Residential property owners whose assessments dropped by the average, would, of course, expect to see an increase of $0.045 over the equalized rate of $0.66 for a total of 6.8%. The ‘equalized rate’ for businesses that have a flat assessment would be to keep the current $0.56. For business property owners therefore, the 26% or $0.145 is entirely a tax hike). Again, I appreciate the question since it helps to demonstrate the inequity resulting from only looking at an “equalized” rate that applies to residential property whose value FELL, but having to apply the same rate to both residential AND commercial property.
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Tags:
real estate tax
Tomzak's "philosophical statement"
June 9, 2009 8:58 pm
Five people spoke at tonight's tax rate hearing, all telling the council members that the rate hike would hurt businesses disproportionately and keep families from spending money that contributes to tax revenues. Before the hearing, though, Mayor Tom Tomzak asked every council member to go around and make a "philosophical statement" about the budget. (For a minute, I feared this would extend the meeting until 1am, but apparently nobody but Tomzak felt like sharing.) Tomzak then read a wide-ranging collection of thoughts, touching on the following areas: On help from the state: "We are located by two affluent counties. … For every dollar we pay in education we get 20 cents from the state. For every dollar they pay in education they get 75 cents from the state." On downtown: "Yes, there are storefronts that are closed down there, and they’re closed out in central park, too, which is a greater source of revenue for the city." On the decline in the sales tax as a percentage of city revenues, which has been due in part to competition from neighboring retail developments: "The competition is not going to go away. We are going to have to get into tourism. We must go aggressively forward with the infrastructure. Our needs are significant." On how far government can (or can't) cut: "When somebody calls 911 at three in the morning and smells smoke or hears a banging on the door, they can’t hear an answering machine. We have to sustain public safety and we have to sustain a national class school system. It takes us a lot of money to train a fire fighter and train a policeman …and we are going to lose them to up north if we keep playing politics with city personnel." On outside agency funding, which he first said needed to be prioritized toward human services agencies, but now doesn't want to touch, at least for this year: "We cannot prioritize these things in a vacuum. ... This year, I’m not going to cut off the battered women, the children in need, the other things, throw old people out into the street. That’s just not going to happen." Vote coming later on tonight.
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Tags:
Tom Tomzak,
budget,
real estate tax
Counties: Don't call us Fredericksburg!
June 9, 2009 3:26 pm
Jonas Beals reports that Stafford County officials are concerned that they could be losing tax payments to Fredericksburg because businesses in the county that have Fredericksburg in their mailing address are getting confused. As we've reported before, this has been a concern in Spotsylvania recently, and in fact the city had to return about $400,000 in mistaken tax payments to Spotsy last year. Dan Telvock has reported that Spotsylvania thinks the solution could be changing the two ZIP codes that have Fredericksburg mailing addresses to unique non-city addresses, so no one would think they were in the city. But while county officials don't want businesses mistakenly paying taxes to the city, some businesses don't want to lose the identity that a Fredericksburg address gives them. Beals writes: In fact, the “Fredericksburg” designation may be a benefit to some Stafford businesses. Deputy County Administrator Tim Baroody cited hotels as one business that would prefer to have a “Fredericksburg” designation.
A few years ago, I covered President George W. Bush's speech at the Yak-a-Doos on U.S. 17 in Stafford. Somebody told the White House pool reporters that they weren't technically in Fredericksburg, and they all spent about five minutes obsessing over what to put in their datelines. Falmouth? Stafford? Yak-a-Doos? It was entertaining, but not productive. (And confusion remains among out-of-town reporters. In a story today, the Washington Post talked about the GM Powertrain plant as if it was in the city.) Locality identity is a constant problem in City Hall, where callers will often go into long tirades about problems they're experiencing, only to give an address with a non-city ZIP code (anything other than 22401). That's why the city's redesigned Web site includes this page. But as Beals writes, the whole question of what name goes on a mailing address might be a matter of local preference, with maybe just a little bit of inter-jurisdictional rivalry thrown in for good measure: “It’s a matter of identity that is important to me,” Supervisor Paul Milde said. “It’s time for Stafford to take its identity back.”
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CNN stops at 2400 Diner
June 8, 2009 10:21 am
CNN anchor John King's "State of the Union" news show aired a brief discussion with three Fredericksburg area residents yesterday, taped over plates of food at the 2400 Diner on Princess Anne Street. It appears CNN chose Fredericksburg because of GM's announcement last week that it would close the GM Powertrain manufacturing plant in Spotsylvania by the end of 2010. The discussion wasn't very long, and included talk about national and world issues. Mary Stram, one of the panelists, mentioned the proliferation of vacancies downtown as an indicator that the economy still has a ways to go before recovery. You can read the entire transcript of Sunday's show here. The above photo was submitted by CNN, and shows King, Stram, GM employee Melvin Carter and local attorney Tim Barbrow.
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About Emily Battle:
Emily Battle covers Fredericksburg government for The Free Lance-Star.
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City Beat is a companion to the Fredericksburg government coverage that appears in The Free Lance-Star. Look here for background, extra information, documents and tidbits that didn’t make it into the print edition. And please, feel free to leave your comments. Follow City Beat updates on Twitter at twitter.com/citybeatblog.
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