Editor, Gazette-Journal:

This past supervisors’ meeting was critical to the Gloucester property owners, having just realized an increase in their assessment values.

Some went up, some went down—but the overall value in the county increased by $2 million-plus in taxable receipts. Speaking at the virtual public hearing (which out of 37,000 citizens there were only two), I informed the supervisors that the need to be incredibly careful in how they handle this proposed change to the tax structure was of utmost importance—due to our financial and employment situation, not to mention the dilemma our small businesses are experiencing.

As usual, as in most cases they were blind, deaf and could care less how the proposal for establishing our Real Property tax base was to be established for the next 12 months. In case you were not aware, the new rate staying in line with the assessment was set at $0.659. The current rate is $0.695. Not much if you look at it one item at a time, but in ...