WHAT ABOUT THOSE TAX MAPS?
Lately there have been a couple of instances of property owners’ not being notified of actions that may affect their properties. Last winter some property owners along South Poes Road protested that they were not properly notified about an application to create a commercial dog kennel. And just last week (Aug. 13), some owners adjacent to the proposed Ben Venue Rural Historic District complained that they were not notified of the proposal. The common denominator in both cases seems to be how properties are identified using the county’s tax maps.
So what’s the problem? And just what are the tax maps anyway? The following
facts were gleaned from a series of conversations with Commissioner of the Revenue Beverly S. Atkins and County Administrator John McCarthy:
• The tax map book is as thick as the New York City phone directory and as big as a desk. Each page displays a section of Rappahannock County and its land parcels.
• Atkins and her staff maintain them, updating them when plats and deeds are provided.
• The maps were created decades ago as a general visualization of properties in the county.
• Some properties that have belonged to families for generations may not have plats or deeds. Over time, the families may have split off parcels that are poorly described, have not been surveyed, and may or may not have been recorded. The maps of those parcels are less precise.
• In the 1980s the county started requiring that plats be recorded with the deeds, so anything entered from the 1980s to today is fairly accurate.
• Some county, state, or federal actions require that affected property owners and adjacent owners be notified (e.g., special-use and special-exception permit applications, the Ben Venue Rural Historic District nomination).
• Every attempt is made to identify the properties and adjacent properties when notification is required, but sometimes owners get missed because not all parcels have had a modern survey.
• Converting the paper maps to a digital geographic information system (GIS), an idea the planning commission is studying, won’t necessarily make the maps more precise. It will only digitize the existing information.
• You will receive your tax bill, Atkins says, because the county’s list of property owners is comprehensive.
Converting the paper maps to a digital geographic information system (GIS) won’t necessarily make the maps more precise. It will only digitize the existing information.