Loudoun County’s rejection of a proposed meals tax was championed by local residents and restaurants, but will leave local officials looking for different ways to temper a near $200 million budget deficit in fiscal 2010.
“It was very gratifying to see that,” Leesburg Councilman Ken Reid said of the decision. “It was a very poorly thought-out referendum by the Board of Supervisors to ask people to pay more for restaurant meals.”
More than 80,000 voters opposed the measure, or 70.07 percent, and about 34,000 supported it, with only absentee and provisional votes remaining to be counted as of Wednesday.
“It kind of leaves us in the same position we’ve been in, with most of the burden lying on the residential property tax,” said Vice Chairman Susan Klimek Buckley, D-Sugarland Run. “The meals tax would have provided another source of revenue … that would have gone directly to the schools. We remain at the starting gate and did not move forward.”
She said she does not anticipate property taxes increasing as a result of the failure of the meals tax.
In other ballot measures, voters passed bond referendums totaling $104 million for new school construction — an elementary school in Ashburn/Dulles to open in 2010 and a high school in Dulles south scheduled for 2011.
But Reid said it was a mistake to tie up debt for county schools, and he thought property taxes could rise with the county facing a $176 million deficit.
“I’m afraid so,” he said. “Because the Board of Supervisors is just going to cut so much. Assessments are going to be down.”
A meals tax already exists in the towns of Leesburg, Purcellville, Hamilton and Middleburg. Reid said the Leesburg tax is used to ease the town’s dependence on property taxes to generate revenue.
Although the meals tax had the support of the majority of supervisors, as well as County Superintendent Edgar Hatrick, support never attracted the kind of cohesion of those opposing the tax.
“The wrong way, the wrong time, when people are struggling right now,” Reid said.
