By Staff Reports
In his reelection bid for the Mayo River District seat on the Patrick County Board of Supervisors, incumbent Lock Boyce cited high taxes as the most important issue.
Boyce, who is seeking the post against challenger C. Clayton Kendrick Jr., said the county’s budget also is out of control.
To trim expenses, Boyce, 68, said “I would take a very hard look at emergency management. Everybody is going to go up in the air and say, ‘we need to spend all this money. We’re doing so good with this paid ambulance service.’” But he said three years ago, emergency management cost the county about $400,000 a year.
Now, “it’s up to almost $2 million. We were told by the auditors that per capita, Patrick County spends more money on public safety than practically any other locality on the state,” Boyce said. “Our volunteers are doing a great job, and really the only volunteer agency that a paid service can compete with is JEB Stuart” Rescue Squad.
That agency, Boyce said, is “covering 100 percent of their calls and they’re doing that with a stipend system. Which I recommended a stipend system and pushed it. However, I didn’t get a second to try it. But that would have cost us about $400,000 a year. It would have paid every volunteer on an ambulance a certain amount per call, plus it would have paid for all of the training.”
Tourism is another area that Boyce targeted for cuts.
“TAC is wasting a tremendous amount of money,” Boyce said of the Tourism Advisory Council. “How do you justify giving” existing businesses funds to use for tourism, he asked. “This is money we need, (money) the taxpayer needs in their pocket. You shouldn’t have to be a privileged character in Patrick County or a friend of somebody’s to get grant money, and we shouldn’t be giving rich people grant money.”
The Patrick County Economic Development Authority (EDA) is next on his list.
“I’ve been unsuccessful in really getting under the hood of the EDA and finding out what their actual finances are. They’re very defensive about it, but it’s public funds,” Boyce said of rents collected by the agency. Rent proceeds “belong to the county … and it should accrue back to the county.
“Most of the people I talk to in Patrick County are aging, over 65 and either retired to Patrick County or retired in Patrick County, and have worked their entire lives for small piece of land and a house, and they want to be able to maintain that land and that house until the end of their days. I think that’s a reasonable thing for them to ask of this county,” Boyce said. “The plan was raising real estate 20 percent this year and 20 percent next year. That is heartbreaking. People will lose their land and their houses.”
“Studies have shown the Number 1 reason businesses relocate is the real estate tax rate, he said. “They look at schools, crime, public safety, (but) all of that comes later. That’s why Texas is so successful” at job creation. “They’ve got no income tax and they have very low or no real estate tax in many of their localities.
“Let’s get realistic here. We have basic obligations to fill. We have to educate the children as well as we can, and we have to provide public safety, and that’s pretty much it,” Boyce said. “But it has gotten to be that to meet those basic jobs is sucking up most of our revenue.”
In addition to schools and the debt for a school renovation project, Boyce said the county must pay the courts, constitutional officers “whatever they ask, and we have to pay for fire and rescue. … I think we have to be cautious in how we spend money over and above our obligations. I know that its popular in some areas, but paying for Spooktaculars … we just cannot afford it. We are creating a situation that is really hurting a large percentage of our population.
In terms of tourism, Boyce said “they holler about the Blue Ridge Parkway, but does the success of the Blue Ridge Parkway have any small thing to do with anything that Patrick County Tourism ever did? No. Or how about Primland? No. But what do we do? Well, we take money away from poor people on fixed incomes and we give it to rich people just cause they’re our buddies,” Boyce said. “That’s no way to run a government, and I’ve noticed every other candidate running, the first thing they say is they’re in support of the EDA and they’re in support of the tourism, and neither one of those things has done anything for the average Patrick Countian.”
“The Transient Occupancy Tax is taking in less than $400,000 per year, yet the tourism budget is up over half a million. It supposedly is to be paid totally by the Transient Occupancy Tax. The money’s coming from somewhere and I think it’s coming from our general fund,” Boyce said. “We should get 100 percent of that money back. You look at that and start figuring you can start whittling down some of the emergency services stuff, and you figure you can cut tourism and you can get into the EDA and find out how much money they’ve got at their disposal and what they’re spending it on.
“Then, go line by line through the budget in open session like we did every year before this year and I believe the tax increase can be cut in half,” Boyce said. “We’re stuck with a tax increase of some kind” mainly due to health insurance and related costs for county employees, but he added “that’s not a Patrick County problem and the county cannot do away with providing employee insurance. Maybe we can look at something in which we split insurance (costs) with them.”
Boyce said he has nine children and five ex-wives. He owns and operates Boyce Holland Veterinary Services. While he does not have a lot of time for hobbies, Boyce said he enjoys reading, being outdoors, and his favorite pastime “is to saddle up and head up into mountain on a horse, but I haven’t had the opportunity to do that like I’d like to.”
