City Council is considering eliminating the property tax window stickers that we all have on our windshields, John Yellig writes in the Progress. Cities across the state are following the lead of Virginia Beach, who ditched the stickers to let the DMV enforce payment at the time of vehicle registration. The city stands to save $42k/year by making the switch, plus untold staff hours that go into dealing with the damnedable little things. A vote will come at Council’s next meeting, in two weeks.
Sideblog
- Some nice pictures: Ghost signs of downtown (Via LoCoHistory) and Duncan Brown's 1980 photos of the Downtown Mall. #
- Charlottesville native Will Frischkorn, racing for Garmin-Chipotle, is kicking ass in this year's Tour de France. #
- The Hook calls the Progress on posting a conservative e-mail forward as a letter to the editor when the paper knew it was was plagiarized. Worse still, it's a terrible letter; why publish it at all? #
- DMB's LeRoi Moore is in the UVa hospital in "serious condition" after getting into an accident on his ATV on his farm. #
- Charlottesville resident Adam Nelson has qualified for the Olympics in the shot put. #
- Council is looking at blanketing downtown with WiFi. I'd go with a mesh network—it's cheaper, and my tests downtown show that it'll work just fine. #
- VDOT is reviewing the timing of lights on 29N. The bad news is that some of these jammed intersections are probably just getting more traffic than they can handle. #
- The Sheltons' apple orchard will begin producing hard cider, with the first batch expected to go on sale in the spring. Oh, hell yes. #
- Crime was down 3% in Albemarle and 7% in Charlottesville last year. Statewide the drop was 1%. #
- Courtesy of Google Books, "Rev. Edgar Woods' 1901 Albemarle County in Virginia" (PDF), his 412 page history of the county. I'm excited about reading this. #
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This is a community news blog about Charlottesville, VA, USA, started in March of 2001. It's run by Waldo Jaquith. It has nothing to do with C-Ville Weekly, the newspaper. Feel free to submit a story.
It’s already being done in Virginia Beach and proposed in Norfolk.
Well it’s about damn time. I’ve had about enough of all the flowers & the frou-frou. Those things are a pain to get off, too.
If Charlottesville gets rid of the stickers, that’ll put lots of pressure on Albemarle to follow suit. Otherwise, they’ll go nuts trying to decide what vehicles to ticket, not knowing whether owners live in Cville and don’t need stickers or live in Albemarle and are just avoiding paying for them.
I think it’s a good idea overall to let the DMV collect the property tax on vehicles. In California the property tax on Auto’s are folded into the registration fees, and paid when you renew. Since it’s a tax that ultimately ends up at the state level (at least in California it was), it only makes sense to eliminate some of the bureaucracy, and let the state collect the taxes directly.
It would’ve been easier if the State of Virginia had taken the initiative to do this statewide, as opposed to having the localities decide piecemeal whether or not they would take on the responsibility. But then again this is the government we’re talking about… so in that respect I’m not really surprised.
The state of Virginia has taken the initiative on this issue. Former governor Jim Gilmer was elected on a pledge to eliminate the car tax state-wide. If there’s no tax, there’s no need for a decal to show you paid the car tax. The decal enforcement process has always been the main complaint. Currently, the state pays about 70% of your car tax. So the state will collect the other 30% for the locality. Now what’s to keep the city/county from requiring a decal just so they can keep us more safe and quickly identify local cars?
“Charlottesville tickets Va. Beach cars: A hundred reasons to do nothing” Sep 8 2004:
http://cvilleindymedia.org/newswire.php?story_id=820