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Abigail Spanberger Watches as Virginia Local Taxes Explode Under “Affordability” Promises
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Hey everybody, we’ve got the most diverse board ever. We’ve never seen diversity like this. This is fantastic. It’s so many different people coming on to to serve the community and be elected and hold power over people in the community. But isn’t it always interesting that especially for Northern Virginia and the cases that we’re seeing the most diverse boards and councils and diversity is always equates to us the taxpayers paying more in taxes. Folks, in this video, we’re going to dive into
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the tax hike the Stafford County Board of Supervisors just put on its residents. And the way it’s being described in the media is somewhat innocuous. Only four cents, only four pennies, but really what it is, it’s a tax increase of more thousands of dollars more a year on average for the average homeowner. Some more, some less, but we’re going to get into what it means for you. And of course, we’re seeing this not just in Stafford County, but in in pretty much all Northern Virginia jurisdictions from Fairfax,
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Prince William, Fredericksburg, across the board. We’re seeing it as as as local officials say it’s time for you to pay to pay more. All the while, the Abigail Spamber or the Democrat who ran on affordability is standing back and watching everything in Virginia from health care to groceries to now local to energy to to power become more expensive. All under the guise of making life for Virginiaians more affordable. Stay with me, folks. I’m Uriah Kaiser. I’m the founder and publisher of Ptoic Local News. As I
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always declare in the top of these videos, this is an opinion video, so you can expect opinion from this video. We do our reporting over on ptomiclo.com, which is it’s not biased. It’s straight up facts. We cover a lot of local government meetings. So we we try to uh provide exactly what happened in the order that it happened and who said what and provide uh the round uh just unbiased coverage in our news reporting at ptoiclo.com. And as you know journalism comes in two parts. It is news reporting informed reporting and
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informed opinion. And that’s what you’re going to get on this video. And if you don’t want that by all means there are many more videos on the internet you can go and watch at any time. But if you want to stick around and find out what’s going on, I certainly appreciate you having like I I certainly appreciate you being here. And if you want more local news, go to our website and get our daily news email, ptoiclocal.com. Sign up for our 4M daily news email, and never miss a local headline.
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All right, let’s get into the article here. Uh, resident, I just want to stay in my home, the board. The best I can do is a 57% tax increase since 2021. Lisa V stood before the Stafford County Board of Supervisors on April 28th and described a lifetime spent in the county she loves. She moved here as a 10th grader, rode the school bus past the neighborhood she dreamed of living in, and eventually made Clear View Heights her home. But as property taxes have continuously gone up and up, Va says now
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a retiree on a fixed income, she told supervisors the increases may soon put staying here in Stafford County out of reach. This is the place I’m going to live and die, she said. And now that might not happen. Her plea came during public comment at the board’s special meeting on Tuesday night, right before supervisors adopt a calendar year uh 2026 real estate tax increase of 0.9675% of the $100 of the assessed value. The rate lowered the advertised rate, this is what they were going to hike the rate
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up to to 0.985. and that the the lower rate passed on a 4 to3 vote. Democrats voting in favor of hacking hiking taxes up on Stafford County residents. Pamela Young voting no on the tax increase. Young joining uh Crystal Venucc and Daryl English on the board passing the no vote. The decisions the decision affects thousands of homeowners like Voss. Real estate taxes remain the primary way Stafford residents fund police, fire and rescue, schools, parks, and other essential services. Even as the commercial tax
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base grew 9% above the national average of 8%, residential properties still continue to shoulder the burden. Supervisor Christopher Nooch highlighted the heavy impact on residents, citing the commissioner of the revenue data. In 2021, the average taxpayer on a home assessed under $500,000 paid $2,994 in annual real estate taxes. Under the new rate, that same own homeowner will now pay $4,764. That’s a $1,770 annual increase, folks. I don’t know if you got a raise this past year that gave
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you an extra $1,770 in your pocket. If you did, great. Good for you. That’s fantastic. I know we didn’t get it. And I know that our electric bill has has gone up. Our usage has remained the same. Our insurance rates have certainly gone up. We are definitely paying more insurance than we were a year ago. Groceries are more. Uh gas at $4.20 a gallon here where we are. That’s definitely more. So I I don’t We’re all paying more. And this is what the uh the local leadership in Stafford County
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wants to to put this burden on taxpayers. And and here’s their explanation for it. Supervisor Tanisha Allen, who represents the Griffith Widewater District, presented detailed growth statistics during the meeting, noting Stafford’s population has grown from 128,000 in 2010 to 171,000 today. They’ve added 14,000 new residents since 2020 since the census. She outlined major budget drivers including a $15 million to open three new schools, new new fire stations, additional coverage in uh the area, fire coverage,
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additional school resource officers, and more public safety. Chairman Deontay Diggs, who himself is a county employee who works for the sheriff’s office, and supporters described the budget as quote unquote skinny down. It’s a skinny down version that still addresses long overdue infrastructure needs. And when it came time to vote, you can see the division on the board. You have the Democrats up here, Deontay Diggs, Vice Chairwoman Maya Guy, Tanisha Allen, Kesha Evans. She’s a new one newer on
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the board. She they all voted yes, you can afford the 17 nearly $2,000 a year more in property taxes because we’re investing. We’re growing our county. and we don’t want to hear anything else about the fact that you can’t stay in your home, that you’re coming here and pleading with us to say, “Hey, you know what? That’s a lot. Is there anything that you can do to save off this maybe not jack up taxes nearly $2,000 just on my home?” We’re not talking about insurance. We’re not talking about
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groceries or gas or electricity. All of that going up. All of that’s up. No, we’re just talking about what the county can get, what what these Democrats on the board just voted to take from your wallet, to take from your family because they’re investing. They’re spending the money. There’s no cuts that can be made. There’s no there’s no pushing that any of that off. They want the money. Now, vice chairwoman supported the final vote. Dr. Pamela Young voted against the tax
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increase concerns about the burden on homeowners, seniors, and fixed income families. Uh look, you know, if you’ve been following my this channel, if you’ve been following PTOIC local, we have been critical not not only of all the supervisors, but and especially Dr. Pamela Young, who who to this day has never submitted to an interview with us. And I actually sent Dr. Young an email when the day after this vote was taken thanking her for sticking up for taxpayers, you know. So, so we have our
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history here at the the PTOIC local trying to talk with Pamela Young. So, but but I think I wanted to do that because we need to hold our elected officials accountable, but we also need to praise them when they do right by the residents, when they do right by us. So that’s why I sent that email over to her. Who knows if she read it. She probably just deleted it as soon as it came in. But at any rate, I did send that over thanking her for voting uh in the in the no on this because this is a major major tax increase. And now now
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now families are going to have to figure out what they’re going to do uh to uh to cut back to do less fewer activities for their children. few activities as a family. Uh I mean in these types of situations, especially seniors, they start prioritizing medication over eating. They start looking at what they can cut in their budget. They’re already trim fixed income budgets and so they’re going to start cutting back potentially food so they can have their medication or vice versa. Uh you’re also going to
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start to see a increase in animal surreners at the shelter. Yeah, sure. That’s it’s great that you’re investing in all these things, but uh you better this is what we’ve seen time and again when the cost of living goes up. People tend to surrender their animals because just like seniors, they’re making choices whether or not they’re going to eat or the dog is going to eat, whether the cat is going to eat. And many times, uh people unfortunately surrender those animals to the county animal shelter.
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So, we’ll be watching over the next few months to see exactly uh what the uh county animal shelter uh starts posting. Uh and uh we’ll we’ll tell you, we’ll bring you that story because they’re going to be asking for help. They’re going to be asking you who’s been asked to pay more to come and take these animals out of the shelter and come adopt them and and do what they do what they do. And thank thank goodness we have the shelter workers there who do what they do and take care of the
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animals, but unfortunately, they all can’t be saved. And folks, we’re seeing this across the board. Yeah, sure. It’s it’s happening Stafford. It may in Stafford, but Fredericksburg City also passed a 4 cent tax hike on their residents in Prince William County. Uh you saw in the budget, if you see our coverage here on PTOIClo.com, one week they were going to cut taxes. They were going to give taxpayer homeowners an average of $145 back on their tax bill. They were going to cut cut taxes essentially. And the next week
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they came back and said, “Fooled you. We were just joking. We’re not going to do that. We’re not going to do that. That would be absurd to cut taxes by that much.” So they they they short they they closed the gap in the amount of taxes. I think it came down to be about $90 back, may maybe a little less. Uh because people put pressure on them to and these are the schools rounded up the the schools in that county started uh they fired up their propaganda arm. They started sending out emails to parents,
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get the parents fired up, get the say that this the the in Prince William County, they were going to cut their funding, which it wasn’t a cut. It was actually money that the school division had not budgeted on, they were not realizing, they had not counted on that money. When they found out that they weren’t going to get as much as they thought they were entitled to get, then they then they armed up their propaganda arm and flooded the board and pressured the board to go back on some of the many
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of the tax decreases that the board had promised, including a meals tax. Right. Prince William County is the only county in the area uh is the most recent county in the area to institute such a meals tax. It’s a four. Now it’s 3% on whatever you buy at a restaurant. No matter what restaurant you go to, they were going to shave it back to two. The only county that is actually shaving back, cutting back its meals tax because now they have all these data center taxes that supposedly are going to make
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things better supposedly are going to relieve the pressure on homeowners that bear the burden of funding local government. None of that has happened. Uh and they opted after they promised, “Yeah, we’re going to cut this back. We’re going to cut the meals tax back. They didn’t do it. They left it right where it was. Fooled you. We weren’t going to do that. That’s not what we That’s not what we’re here to do. We’re here to We’re here to levy taxes and make you pay. That’s what we are here to
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do. And of course, all of this coming under the guise of affordability. Now, you remember Abigail Spamberger, Governor Spanberger ran under making things more affordable. And since she’s taken office, we have seen anything but things becoming more affordable. Again, groceries continue to go up, gas go up, the amount of of the electricity bills going up because data centers continue to flood Virginia. We have more data centers than any other locality in the world. And there and she Abigail Spamberger and Democrats in the House of
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Delegates show no signs of wanting to repeal the tax breaks that they give to these the world’s largest companies. Amazon, Google, QTS, Compass, Iron Mountain, you know, the name the names go on and on and on, but in fact they are the richest companies in the world. yet they’re getting these tax breaks to come in, tap into our grid, and because they need infrastructure in which to do that, Dominion passes the cost to build that infrastructure on to you and me, the rateayer. And so we continue to see
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increased power bills and once a state that had relatively cheap electricity. So all that’s gone and and all the while we are seeing this go up. we are seeing where these same supervisors have endorsed Abigail Spamber, the affordability queen. Here’s uh Stafford County uh supervisor Pamela Young. That’s her endorsement right there. Uh here is one uh this is their picture. This is Young right here on the right. Obviously Spamberger there in the center. That’s uh that’s a Stafford
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County School Board member. And then that’s Maya Guy. She’s the vice chairwoman of the Stafford County Board of Supervisors. There’s her endorsement of Abigail Spamberger. So, the list goes on and on of all of these uh local locally elected supervisors that have endorsed the affordability queen, Abigail Spamberger, uh and who promised to make things more affordable for all Virginiaians. But what we’re seeing is quite the opposite. And it starts right here in at home at the local level where
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supervisors, these elected supervisors are raising our taxes like they’ve never been raised before. Again, 57 Stafford County 57% tax increase since 2021. It’s unsustainable. It it really is. And you have you have you have people who work inside the local government, not elected officials. Uh these are people, these are employees, these are staffers. And they push these elected officials to to purchase more, to grow their programs, to to to invest more into their government programs. And these people
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who have the majority on these boards, they say, “Sure, absolutely. That sounds great. Wouldn’t it be nice to have? Those are great to have. We’re investing in our communities. So, who’s going to pay for it? You and me.” Folks, if you like this video, if you had what I if you like what I have to say, please like the video and subscribe.