Sally knows that the way to stop rising property taxes is by supporting economic development. It is essential that we raise our business revenue above 11%. For a county our size, business revenue should be closer to 20%.
4 ways to support increasing business revenues:
- Supporting Businesses & Entrepreneurship – Ensuring adequate space is available and increasing financial and technical support.
- Upward Mobility – Job training, career pathways, and fair wages.
- Living Where You Work – Ensuring employees can afford homes in the county.
- Reducing Barriers to Success – Creating an environment where businesses that start here can stay here.
Supporting Businesses and Entrepreneurship
We need diversification of industries, and a thriving community of small businesses. In the bioscience sector, this means making sure there is lab space and room for businesses to grow here, and not need to relocate. For agribusiness, we need investment opportunities and updated zoning modifications to support a successful modern industry. We need to allow rural businesses the freedom to have diversified income opportunities.
Upward Mobility
We need to increase opportunities for apprenticeship and on-the-job training and align our certification and technical trainings with the needs of the industry. We have the population needed to supply the workforce demands; we just need to make sure that our training and certification programs are meeting the needs of the industries, and that business leaders are able to participate in creating these career pathways. We need to continue working with and investing in our regional workforce development partners like UVA, PVCC, Virginia Career Works, CATEC, and ACPS. We need to make sure that employees are trained for the positions needed, and that they are able to earn a competitive salary.
Living Where You Work
The workforce demographic of 25-44 is underrepresented in Albemarle County, and we have too many industries that are going to be affected by retiring employees in the next few years. In order to target this age group, housing must become more affordable. Home values in Albemarle County are 30% higher than Virginia’s average, rent prices are 9% above the state level, and nearly 1 in 5 households spends more than 30% of their income on housing. If we want to create a long-term workforce of people who can work and live here, they have to be able to afford homes, both through having high wages and lowered home prices.
Reducing Barriers to Success
Prioritizing the economic development that we need in Albemarle County means looking at reasons businesses don’t stay here and working to address some of their concerns.
We need to streamline the development process so that our project timelines are comparative to surrounding localities, update our regulatory process to remove hurdles for small business owners, and ensure that we have commercial space for businesses to grow. We also need to reduce housing costs, support employee development, and create an environment where businesses can find the capital support they need to develop into sustainable companies.
We do not have to balance our budget on the backs of homeowners and landlords.
We need to support economic development and a diversified tax base in order to make Albemarle County affordable and accessible.