CCA Meeting Tonight, 13 March 2014

In Crozet by JimLeave a Comment

From the CCA newsletter: On our website, CrozetCommunity.org. is the agenda for tomorrow’s (or today’s) Thursday, March 13 meeting. We’re pleased to welcome Albemarle County Police Officer Andy Gluba, to talk about community policing, safety, and preparedness.   We also welcome Kim Guenther, the new Crozet …

Crozet Library Seeking Funding for More Library Hours

In Crozet, Library by Jim4 Comments

Received via email. This is the Albemarle County Budget.

Dear friends of Crozet Library,

The Albemarle County Executive’s proposed budget for FY2015, released recently, includes increased funding for the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library. Those increases cover:

1. Mandates required by the County’s requested changes to the revised regional agreement,
2. Additional costs due to the development of the new Northside Library,
3. Salary increases to bring JMRL staff pay closer to comparable County positions, part of a multi-year effort,
based upon the County’s recommendation of a professional salary comparison.

The budget presentation cover (screenshot attached) features our beautiful library and the community-volunteer-staffed Book Brigade.

What the proposed budget does not include: the $34,000 in funds needed to increase the hours the Crozet Library is open.

The County built it; we furnished it; and the community is using the library in unanticipated numbers. The librarians donated their time (and creative planning) to staff Exam Cram during the WAHS and Henley exam week and the library was filled with teens.

We are grateful for the support of the County and we know they have heard often from this community about the need for increased hours. We hope that hearing from the community now will help the Supervisors realize they could make a large number of Western Albemarle citizens happy with a relatively small amount of money.

If you care about increasing the hours the library is open, now would be the time to contact the Board of Supervisors with your concerns. Here’s how:

Tabor Closing (Temporarily) 10 March

In Crozet, Streetscape by JimLeave a Comment

So … those of you/us who live off of Park Road, Jamestown, etc and Westhall, Parkside Village … traffic’s going to be interesting when Tabor closes. Let’s make sure to keep patronizing those in the Square! via email (for those who don’t know where Tabor …

A Police Substation in Crozet?

In Crozet by Jim4 Comments

Update 2/27/14 – Turns out this was requested by the Albemarle County Police Department but it was not funded by the County. More to come … Maybe I’m mis-reading the County budget (I don’t often look at them, so I reserve the right to be …

Crozet Neighborhood Assessments – 2014

In Crozet, real estate by Jim6 Comments

Note: If you find errors, please please please let me know.

Albemarle County real estate assessments are out … did yours go up? Go down? Questions about your assessment? Ask me … quickly (434-242-7140. I’m a real estate agent by the way). The deadline for challenging your assessment is this Friday, 28 February. The 2014 Real Estate Assessment Form can be downloaded at Albemarle County’s site.

I chose nine Crozet neighborhoods as a sample. I wanted to choose Laurel Hills but because some of those have been renovated over the years, I didn’t think they would provide the relative homogeneity that I was looking for. If it wasn’t so darn labor- and time-intensive I would have done more neighborhoods.

What do real estate assessments mean?

5 Reasons why real estate assessments matter: (more thoughts on the value of assessments)

1) The County bases their budget on property tax revenue.
?2) The assessed value is the value upon which property owners pay taxes. These values are a backward-looking assessment.
?3) Buyers look at assessed values as a measure of market value … but really, it’s a point in the equation, but are neither a definitive point nor a necessarily accurate one.
?4) Also – “Virginia, unlike some other states, by Statute requires localities to assess property at 100% of fair market value, based on an objective analysis of the property’s fair market value…”
?5) Sellers look at assessed values and wonder if buyers will think that the assessment means their home is worth X (it doesn’t).

From my professional capacity, I place little to no value in real estate assessments when seeking market value. When I see a property marketed as “below assessed value” or “new assessed value is $10k higher!” I think only that that means a property’s real estate tax bill will be higher or lower.

Thoughts on some of the Crozet neighborhoods’ assessed values:

– Old Trail was all over the board – from 44% decrease to nearly 400% increase. I removed these outliers from the equations. Assessed values ranged from $175k to over a million dollars.

– Parkside Village was up about 15%. Despite its being one of the best located neighborhoods in Crozet, some of the houses increased in assessed value by 20%. Reasonable?

– Highlands is the only neighborhood that declined in assessed value. An aging housing stock is likely to blame.

– Western Ridge (the second largest neighborhood behind Old Trail) – ranged from -4.17% to +13.44% – is essentially flat.

Note on my math – – I pulled the crazy outliers – -50% and +400% for example – and then averaged the delta column. I thought about doing a weighted average but went with this method. See the link above, please check my math and let me know what’s better and where I screwed up. 🙂