Amherst supervisors vote to advertise 61¢ tax rate as budget gap forces conservative plan

The Amherst County Board of Supervisors voted 4–1 on March 3 to advertise a 61‑cent tax rate per $100 of assessed value as it wrestled with a roughly $3–4 million gap between projected revenues and proposed spending.

At a budget workshop, finance staff presented a corrected total expense budget “of just over $73,000,000,” Miss Morgan told the board. That package, she said, includes about $4.1 million in capital improvement requests, 33 new position requests totaling nearly $3 million if all are approved, roughly $450,000 in equipment, a $500,000 contingency and $5.3 million in debt service.

The finance presentation also recommended trimming revenue estimates compared with last year’s proposal — including reductions to personal property receipts and local sales/use taxes and moving federal revenue that had been posted to a state line. “Halfway through the year, we were not even halfway to that amount,” Morgan said of a previous state sales‑tax estimate, and…