Augusta County approves budget, but without body and dashboard cameras, real estate tax increase
VERONA — Heading into the Augusta County Board of Supervisors regular meeting Wednesday night, the county’s fiscal year 2024 budget included body and dashboard cameras for the Augusta County Sheriff’s Office and a one-cent increase on the property tax rate.
Two hours later, the board walked out of the meeting with an adopted budget — but without the cameras and the property tax rate increase.
The conversation began with Supervisor Scott Seaton moving to approve the advertised budget, which included the cameras and tax increase. Seaton believed the cameras would be a benefit to both the community and the sheriff’s deputies, and cited the results of an Augusta County community survey.
That survey was conducted between July and December of 2022 with 801 respondents, and 65% of those surveyed say they completely support body and dash cameras for the sheriff’s deputies. An additional 21% said they “mostly supported” the idea. When it came to the question of funding for the cameras, 47% said they completely supported using county funds on the project while an additional 26% said they “mostly supported” the idea.
The board voted against Seaton's motion. Only Seaton and Supervisor Pam Carter voted in favor. Immediately after, Supervisor Gerald Garber motioned to adopt the original proposed budget, which did not include the cameras. That vote passed, and in the ensuing minutes the board voted to revert the real estate property tax rate to 63 cents per $100 of assessed value. The one cent real estate tax increase had been in place to fund the cameras.
That means that tax rates across the board on real estate and personal property will not be increased in the county for fiscal year 2024.
Garber addressed the survey with The News Leader, pointing out that the 801 people surveyed only make up a fraction of the county’s total population. During the meeting, he brought up a public hearing on the body cameras where he felt most speakers were against them.
“Bottom line is, if you’re going to have a public hearing and you ask for input, then you should listen to what your people say,” he said. “And by and large, my people said, at this time, no, which is why I got there.”
That underlies what Garber felt was a general discomfort amongst residents about the idea of cameras. The issue generated plenty of heated conversation over the last two years, and he felt that people had the idea they were getting “beat on” about it.
“I had a lady who wrote me a four-page letter who said she was in favor of the body cameras, she supported the sheriff’s office, but she thought we were being bullied and shouldn’t do it at this time,” Garber said.
He has spoken with current and retired law enforcement officers, and he found it interesting that even those professionals were split on the body camera issue. Despite all of that, he doesn’t believe that body cameras will never come to Augusta County.
“I think it will come, I feel sure it will. I don’t think it’s like we’re adamantly opposed,” Garber said.
But when the cameras will actually be funded remains to be seen, as Shull told The News Leader he was hoping for additional support from the state.
“The state hasn’t mandated it yet,” he said, laying out his hopes for the future of the camera issue. “I’m kind of sitting waiting on the state to mandate it and then once they do, hopefully they’ll help fund it and we’ll move on from there.”
Supervisor Jeff Slaven believed that the timing just wasn’t right for a tax increase, especially with the county in the midst of a reassessment. However, he recognizes that change may be coming in the future.
“We had a budget that was balanced so we could move forward without messing with the taxes to at least get it through our reassessment and be fair to property owners,” Slaven said. “We’re probably going to have to make some changes, but it didn’t have to be now and we need to have the values of the property before we could make a better determination and set the rate.”
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—Akhil Ganesh is the Government Reporter at The News Leader. You can contact him at aganesh@newsleader.com and follow him on Twitter @akhildoesthings.
This article originally appeared on Staunton News Leader: Augusta County approves budget, but without body and dashboard cameras, real estate tax increase
