By Debbie Hall
A grassroots effort is underway to put the Food and Beverage Tax back on the November ballot and make voters understand it is a way to help alleviate the increasing tax burden on local residents.
Wren Williams, who is helping to organize the effort, told the Board of Supervisors Wednesday that proceeds from the tax could be used to generate additional revenue from tourists and other visitors to the county.
The supervisors approved a motion to increase the real estate tax by .11 cents, from .57 cents to .68 cents per $100 of assessed value, to help make-up a more than $3 million deficit.
But Williams said the real estate tax would need to increase by double that amount — .22 cents per $100 — “to get us back to a balanced budget. My understanding is with the .11 cents increase, we will still run a deficit of $1.5 million.”
After hearing department heads present their respective budget proposals for the upcoming fiscal year, Williams said there are few expenses to cut without jeopardizing public safety, state and federal funds and other basic services.
Although the Food and Beverage Tax — often called the meals tax — “has been brought up before and defeated many times, so many times that the Code of Virginia was changed to bar the supervisors from placing it on the ballot, there is a loophole” that allows the voters of the county to petition the court and ask for a referendum.
Williams’ petition was approved in circuit court, and now he and others are collecting the signatures needed to add the referendum to the ballot, he said.
“If you see these petitions, you must sign and vote yes on this property tax relief that we’re putting forth. This is not just another tax. It hopefully will eliminate the burden that we’re all going to feel if we don’t find alternative sources of revenue,” Williams said.
He explained that if residents fail to generate additional revenue from other sources, the real estate taxes will continue to increase, “not only this year, but again next year and possibly the year after that,” he said.
Williams also noted the Food and Beverage Tax will allow the county to collect taxes on alcoholic beverages sold in the county. However, the tax does not extend to nonprofit organizations, he said.
“Fire departments and churches are specifically exempt from the law. They are able to serve the first three meals free of any tax, and on the fourth if they’re making more than $100,000 on a meal, then they are taxed,” he said. “I think we’re not going to find ourselves in any hot water on that one.”
He noted many other localities currently have the tax in place, including the Town of Stuart, the City of Martinsville; Henry, Floyd and several other counties “are all taxing at the same rate.
“When we eat there, we’re leaving our money for them to spend on their schools, their roads, their EMS services,” Williams said, adding “the best part about the meals tax is that we’re able to pick up the loose change of those visiting our county.”
Tourists visit the Blue Ridge Parkway “all summer and into the fall, and this weekend was Martinsville race weekend,” Williams said, adding that visitors would “have been dropping off their change in this county for us to use towards our budget.”
Instead “of continuously raising real estate taxes in this county, we have to find more money from somewhere, and my preference would be nonresidents of our county,” Williams said, adding that he is not advocating giving more money to the county, but rather “supplementing the revenue generated by taxes with revenue generated by the meals tax.”
Approval of the measure “is something that we need as a county. It is something that we as voters can do all by ourselves, without the board, without the administration,” Williams said. “It is on us to pull together, and we can pull ourselves out of this mess so that we can get additional revenue to pay off our debt.”
Williams asked anyone interested in helping with the effort to look for updates in The Enterprise, on social media and in communities.
“We’re going to be coming around to different communities and talking about this topic, and we’re going to be going over some of these myths that we’ve heard,” Williams said. It’s important that everyone knows this is not just another tax.”
