ARARAT, Va. — Though she has no “agenda” in seeking the Dan River District seat on the Patrick County Board of Supervisors, Janet R. Epperson has identified several key issues during her candidacy — especially high taxes.

That is the “number one concern from everyone I’ve spoken to,” Epperson said during an interview this week in preparation for the 2009 county election on Tuesday.

“What you’ve got is farmland being taxed at a very high rate,” said Epperson, 65, a “downtown Ararat” resident who is running against Roger T. Hayden of Claudville for one of five seats on the Patrick Board of Supervisors.

In discussing how a recent jump in property taxes has provided a hard hit to the economically depressed county, Epperson said she knows of one farmer in the district whose tax bill ballooned from $3,200 last year to $5,700 for 2009-10.

Epperson and Hayden are seeking to replace present Dan River District Supervisor Jonathan Large, who opted not to run for another four-year term this year. The sprawling district includes the Ararat, Claudville and Willis Gap communities.

With taxation continuing to be a reality right along with death, Epperson said present unrest over taxation in Patrick stems from a recent controversial property reappraisal that significantly inflated county land values. The reassessment led to crowds of citizens attending several supervisor meetings to voice their displeasure.

But in the end, inflated tax bills resulted, and it wasn’t so much that they rose, but how they did so, in Epperson’s view.

“Our taxes have not gone up in years, so they really needed to go up,” explained the candidate, who owns a business called Tax Help along with a small apartment building, and is president of the Dan River Park Association.

“There was no disagreement about an increase,” Epperson continued, but a major dispute over the land values on which the tax rate is based. Virginia counties are required to have a property revaluation at least every six years, with the most recent reassessment in Patrick conducted by a New Jersey firm.

Epperson said it was as if the resulting spike in land values was based on the real estate market in New Jersey rather than a sparsely populated (less than 20,000) county in southwestern Virginia. “It’s really made the taxes extremely high,” she said.

The candidate believes hitting citizens with such a large hike all at once was wrong. “It would have been better if they just gradually brought it up,” she said of the tax billing.

County Expenses

Along with the level of taxation facing Patrick citizens, Epperson is concerned about where those dollars go.

One specific area she mentioned is the county’s solid-waste, or garbage-disposal, program. Since Patrick doesn’t operate sanitation trucks of its own, residents must transport their trash to a transfer station at Stuart, the county seat. Those in the Dan River District have the option of using a private business, Rural Services Inc., for collections.

“We’re paying over $600,000 a year to truck our solid waste to Amelia, Va.,” Epperson said. She advocates seeking a less-costly alternative for the county, while pointing out that a “Catch-22” is involved due to the large Waste Management corporation owning many of the landfills in surrounding areas.

A related factor is improving the county’s recycling efforts, which Epperson said would reduce the volume of garbage to be handled. Along with additional recycling resources, citizens need more education about the practice, in the candidate’s view.

Combined with the issue of solid waste is the “waste” Epperson believes exists in certain county-funded programs. “I really think that part of the reason our taxes are so high is because there’s a huge amount of waste in government,” she said.

One such area cited is the Patrick County School System, which receives 71 cents of every tax dollar. Saying the system is “administration-heavy,” Epperson also said she objects to a practice in which local educational leaders don’t return money left over at the end of the year, as required, but find a way to spend those funds instead.

Meanwhile, programs such as parks and recreation receive less than 1 percent of the budget, and Patrick is sorely lacking in services for senior citizens, Epperson charged.

She considers the spending ratios out of balance and, if elected, pledges to evaluate the entire county budget in an effort to eliminate waste and make the funding fairer for all concerned.

One idea Epperson has for keeping citizens informed about such matters is having the agendas for both supervisor and school board meetings published in advance on the Internet as well as in print.

“I think that the biggest challenge for government is communication. Those who are elected to public office need to listen and respond to the citizens in their district.”

Job Alternatives

Agreeing that a need for jobs is a problem that can’t be ignored in Patrick and other communities, Epperson said the county must be realistic in its expectations.

“The trouble with Patrick County, and Ararat, is that we have no infrastructure,” she explained. “It’s hard to get a big company, or a company, to move there when there is no sewer and no water. How do you get anybody to locate there?”

Stuart has the advantage of its own municipal utility system, but that does not exist in the rural Dan River District. “So the question is not how do you attract jobs,” Epperson said, “but how do you provide the infrastructure that would attract a company, and that’s a hard question.”

Acknowledging the difficulty of refocusing local residents away from manufacturing employment, “because that’s all they’ve ever done,” Epperson said the Dan River District should utilize the resources it has.

“I’m looking at all the beautiful scenery and all the things we do have to offer,” she said. “I think that maybe what we need to look at is a tourism/retirement economy more than a manufacturing economy.”

By drawing in retirees, no strain would be placed on schools or other county programs, “but they bring in their money,” Epperson said. “They use local stores and local people.”

She added, “There’s all kinds of ways to develop the Dan River District, if you think about it.”

Patrick County has a rich history, which has long been a focus of local efforts the candidate considers worthy. “But we’ve never concentrated on our future, and that’s where we need to go,” Epperson said. “You’ve got to look forward.”

District Neglected

If elected as a supervisor on Tuesday, Epperson said her goal would be to represent the interests of the Dan River District while also working with those from other areas of Patrick to improve the county as a whole.

“I believe that I would be a really good representative of the people of this district,” she said. “Especially when you go to Stuart, we often feel like our voices are not heard ... and they pretty much ignore us.”

People in the county seat tend to consider the Ararat area a suburb of Mount Airy, “and that’s the way it’s been for years,” the candidate added. “But the truth is, our taxes are going to Stuart and we really need representation.”

Epperson believes she’s qualified to provide such representation, despite being “a transplant” due to moving here in 1991 from Florida and growing up in Michigan, where she graduated from Marygrove College in Detroit with a bachelor’s degree in art. In the years since, her occupations have included teacher and designer.

“Once I moved here, I decided I was never going anywhere else,” she said.

When the supervisor post came open this year, Epperson decided to run for the office to help the community she loves. “There aren’t a lot of people wanting that position, and I thought that I would just do a really good job of representing the citizens.”

She continued, “I have a pretty strong voice and I’m a very good listener. I really have no agenda — I’m strictly running to represent the people in my area. I don’t have anything to lose or anything to gain from this office.”

The candidate has a plan for learning what concerns the public, which mirrors her view that involvement by the people is needed to help supervisors meet the many challenges facing the county and their individual districts.

“If I am elected, I will hold public meetings at least four times a year in order to listen to the citizens of the Dan River District, learn their concerns and get their input and ideas,” she said. “I will be elected to represent the citizens, not a special group or one cause.”

Epperson recognizes a need to look out for the Dan River District, but also sees the necessity of working with the other supervisors. “They are all out for their district. They want to get as much for their district as they can,” she said. “But I think there is a greater good that you’ve got to look at.”

People in Patrick County are a diverse group composed of both mountain residents and flatlanders, whose views long have been fragmented to a certain extent. Epperson said her experience in leading the development of Dan River Park from scratch would be a plus in this regard.

“I don’t know if I can change that,” she said of the fragmentation, “but I’m good at getting people together and have them work for a common goal.”

Contact Tom Joyce at tjoyce@mtairynews.com or at 719-1924.