The Virginia Watchdog

5/29/09 - REMEMBER TO VOTE Tuesday, JUNE 9th. Here's who The Virginia Watchdog is endorsing for the Primary

Come to a meeting on June 11th at Bass Pro

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COMING SOON... How many Hanover citizens were recently misled/lied to by the Hanover County Chief Assessor and the Board of Equalization? Working on it now...

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Our tax dollars at work...

* Times are tough for most of us, but Cold Harbor Board member Elton Wade is raking in the dough

* Salaries of county employees. These lists are well worth looking at. Some of these folks got over 7+% increases in their salaries...and some salaried employees were paid five digit figures for overtime...

* Hanover County School employee salaries (UPDATE: 4/21/09 - Dale Theakston and the Hanover County School office re-thought this and gave us a new file which allowed us to protect employees' last names. So the old file has been removed and the new file has been put online.) . Dale Theakston at Hanover County School Board office today told us they couldn't format the xls file they sent us like how the admin. side of the county did, so we cannot protect last names like we did in those files. On page 38 at the top of the page is the Supt. of schools, Stewart D. Roberson, who is making a total of $240,828 which includes deferred retirement pay and also a car allowance. He is making just a few thousand dollars less than the Supt. for Chesterfield County schools which has 59,257 students (as of Feb, 2009). Hanover County only has 19,629 students as of Feb 2009. Read a Richmond Times-Dispatch article about area pay for big wheels.

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"Spot" assessing info...

* As a result of "spot" assessing, some of us are getting the shaft when it comes to real estate taxes...(read more)

* Here's a piece that Mark Holmberg of WTVR did on one Hanover subdivision that received increases this year called "Assessments shoot up..."

* Look at this list for the Board members, County Administrator... and Lt. Governor. They received NO increase this year in their reassessment... and neither did these county big shots who live in Richmond, but 14% of Hanover's parcels got an increase which means an increase in taxes we have to pay...

* NEW!!! 3/25/09 - If you were reassessed this year, here is how you are grouped in "neighborhoods" and this shows how many sales there were in 2007 and 2008. This document is the key to knowing which neighborhoods consist of which parcels or subdivisions. Some "neighborhoods" are stand alones and some "neighborhoods" are three or four subdivisions grouped together like, for example, neighborhood "140700" consists of Forest lake Hills, Knollwood and Pearsons Corner subdivisions which are combined into one "neighborhood" with 305 parcels. This information was provided to us by John Nelms, Chief Assessor for Hanover County as was this particular document which shows which "neighborhoods" were increased in value for 2009 (all the ones in black) and which ones were lowered (ones in red). (Notice what the Assessor calls this document: "2009 Reassessment Neighborhoods"). Only 23% of the county was reassessed this year. Out of that 23% reasessed, 6,000 were increased in value by the Assessor and 4,000 were lowered. So is it true that the Board of Equalization members don't know about these "neighborhoods?" The Virginia Watchdog has filed a Freedom of Information request to listen to the Board's hearings that took place today. We'll see if they are telling the people who filed for hearings the truth...

* NEW!!! 4/01/09 - NOTE TO HANOVER CITIZENS: If you find a "factual" error in your reassessment, you can get it corrected at any time. For example, if the county has you down for three bathrooms and you only have two, then you are being over assessed and can get that mistake corrected immediately. Or if you find any other type of factual error regarding your house or land, you just have to make the county assessor aware of the mistake. Your assessment information can be found on the county's GIS system in the "Mapping and Data" section and then look under "assessments." Have any trouble, email us and we'll find it for you and email you back.

Return to HOME PAGE or go to our NEWS ARTICLES archives for information and articles about the SSNs/online records issue...