PORTSMOUTH, Va. (WAVY) – Portsmouth residents can expect a one-time, five-cent reduction in their real estate taxes.
City Council moved unanimously on Tuesday night on a consensus item to add that 5-cent reduction to the $1.30 per $100 current tax rate in the proposed fiscal year 2023-24 budget.
Budget Officer Trey Burke says the reduction won’t impact city services proposed in the budget, but there will need to be a 1-time fund balance reservation of $3.6 million.
“What this will do is make sure the budget is structurally balanced if the reassessed land book comes in lower than anticipated.”
This all comes after citizen complaints about hikes in real estate assessments, which led to the firing of the former city assessor.
Other local cities have seen assessments jump as well, but Portsmouth Interim Assessor Janey Culpepper said she continues to find errors in how this year’s assessments were done. She said two weeks that she had adjusted 1,000 parcels of land so far since taking over, for a total of $182.79 million in reduced assessed value.
Tuesday night’s consensus did not officially lock in that one-time tax rate change. Council still has to vote to formally approve the proposed budget in May.