Pick your poison – higher real estate taxes or higher electricity bills

Dear Editor:

Supervisor Kershner (Catoctin) recently circulated a message pledging to hold down the County real estate tax rate. On the surface, that sounds great. But, unless the County also takes serious action to control its spending, his pledge is effectively a call for more data centers, more power lines, and higher electricity bills. 

In the last ten years, the County’s annual operating budget nearly doubled – from a little over $1.2 billion to $2.4 billion – and its appropriations for capital projects nearly tripled – from $344 million to $1.3 billion.  

The main reason spending has been rising so fast is that our roads, schools and other public infrastructure, facilities, and services have been overwhelmed by decades of break-neck development. That growth has created what the County refers to as “level of service” deficits, which translates as worsening traffic congestion, over-crowding in schools, water shortages, pollution, and other problems.

To fund all the new spending, County supervisors had to choose between raising our real estate tax rate or finding another source of revenue. The data centers, which generated more than a billion dollars in new revenue in just the past four years, seemed an easy fix.

Unfortunately, the County was completely unaware that there isn’t enough electricity power generation to meet the needs of all the data centers it has already approved, much less all those that are still expected to be built. To do that, power companies will need to build hundreds of miles of huge new transmission lines to bring electricity from coal- and gas-fired power plants in the mid-West across the mountains, through our farmland, historic districts, and residential neighborhoods, to the data centers in eastern Loudoun. 

And Dominion says it will have to double our electricity bills to pay for all the new infrastructure.

Responsible adults understand that nothing is free. As long as County spending continues its explosive growth, we have only two options. Either we’ll pay with increased real estate taxes or with increased electricity bills. One way or the other, we will definitely have to pay.

The only way to escape this dilemma is to get a handle on Loudoun’s out-of-control residential growth, which is what drives the increased spending. When you’re in a hole, you should stop digging.

Whether we do that is soon to be decided. On March 13, the Board of Supervisors is considering whether to approve a series of dense subdivisions on open spaces in our “Transition Policy Area” south of Leesburg. Together, they would generate 21,000 more vehicle trips per day. Children living in those neighborhoods would have to be bussed to distant schools, since the local ones are already over-crowded. A lot more County spending would be needed to make up for these new “level of service” deficits. 

On top of that, current County zoning allows for at least 10,000 more residences to be built in rural Loudoun without any oversight of the impacts. The County is already committed to a $500 million road project north of Leesburg as well as projects to fix the water systems in Waterford and Round Hill. That’s only the tip of the iceberg if the rest of our rural areas continue to experience the same explosive residential growth.

And how will the County pay for all of that? If Supervisor Kershner prevails and our real estate taxes remain “equalized,” it will have to build more data centers to make up the difference. 

A vote for more subdivisions in places where existing roads, schools and other public facilities can’t accommodate them turns out to be a vote for more power lines, more County spending, and higher taxes or electricity bills. 

This has to stop! It’s long past time for the County government to recognize the costs that decades of uncontrolled growth have imposed on us and start managing residential and commercial development responsibly.

John Ellis
Hillsboro