With election day fast approaching, I want to link to some audio and video provided by Charlottesville Tomorrow of a couple of candidate forums, for those of you who don’t yet know who you’ll vote for.
There’s audio and video of the David Wyant / Ann Mallek candidate forum held in Earlysville last week. It’s twenty minutes long, and a full transcript is provided.
Then there’s audio of the City Council forum held in Greenbrier last week. That’s an hour and a half long, includes a transcript of highlights, and video will be provided soon.
For Crozet residents it’s a simple test. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me. I sure by now Mr. Wyant’s voting record has shown residents that he needs to be replaced. He supported the County position that the Crozet Master Plan supports a population of 24,000. Of course the County has never produced any evidence of this and at the recent Crozet Community Association meeting Ken Schwartz, the architect for the Master Plan, admitted he told the community and board that the plan was designed around a buildout of 12,000 residents.
If you listen to his radio ads, he’s touting himself as a tax cutter, when in fact all of the supervisors up for reelection have voted for budgets that have raised taxes by double digits in 2005 and 2007. They vote for one development after another and when the county tells them how much it’s going to cost they tell the county it’s too much and then they cut services from the budget. Growth area residents get it from both ends, uncontrolled growth and lack of infrastructure and services.
If you need anymore evidence of why we need change, just look where the money is coming from. The three amigos are all getting large amounts from the development community and why not, they never met a development they couldn’t vote for.
The video for the Greenbrier Neighborhood Forum has now been posted.
If taxes have to go up, most people would prefer it to occur as a result of their property being assessed at a higher value and the BoS setting the rate lower, but not low enough to offset the rise in the assessment. That’s exactly what we’ve seen happen over the last 4 years.
If you want to see your property value decline and tax rates increased by the BoS to make up for plumetting values, then by all means vote for Mallek and the other Democratic Earth First! no-growthers.