Patricia Addresses the Board of Supervisors...

As promised per my post below, here is Patricia's eloquent and heartfelt statement below to the Board of Supervisors from Monday night...

Dear Members of the Board,

I am Patricia Phillips -- resident and taxpayers in Loudoun county the last 21 years. I am a co founder with Nicholas Graham of the Loudoun Coalition Against the Food Tax. I realize you have a very challenging job ahead of you to manage the county’s budget during an economic downturn. Everyone knew last year when you were running for office that there would be a very large drop in the real estate tax revenues due to the decline in home values, and that planning the budget would be a huge challenge.

I want to encourage you to make the tough choices necessary to balance our county budget. When I ran for State Senate last year, I took a leave of absence from my work which significantly impacted our family household budget. We found we could cut back significantly -- and stay a healthy and happy – We focused our income on core responsibilities food, shelter, clothing, But everyone in our family supported the effort, and no one complained.

If the meals tax is defeated – that gives you permission to cut discretionary program. We’ve got to fund necessities first, and leave for another day the non-essential but nice programs. But don’t put core responsibilities of local government first on the list.

Now certainly the population grew 68% since 2000 and the CPI increase 27.3%. THEREFORE, you would expect the Loudoun County Budget to increase – but the budget budget grew 2 and half times the combined increase in population and CPI – by almost 240%.

I suggest you begin with asking the budget staff to go back to the 2000 budget and increase it proportional to the population increase, and increase with the CPI – and use that for your baseline budgeting to deal with the austere challenges of this years budget.

Thank you…