Best is asking Mercer to speak up
Robert Moore
Herald Staff
rmoore@harrodsburgherald.com
David Best has been Mercer PVA for 12 years and this is the most challenging state budget cycle he’s ever seen. He encourages Mercer residents to make their voices heard in Frankfort. (Photo by Robert Moore)
Mercer County Property Valuation Administrator David Best is trying to get the word out about the impact state budget cuts could have locally.
The state government already cut funding for PVA offices across the Commonwealth by 5.1-percent in December. If the proposed budget is passed, there would be another 23.5-percent cut, putting 250 of the nearly 600 people who work at PVA offices across the Commonwealth out of a job.
Best said there are currently three deputy PVAs working at his office. If the cuts go through, he’d have to lay off one of them. He would also lose a half-time position that is currently unfilled because he can’t afford to fill it.
Best and his staff process over 3,000 properties and 30,000 vehicles every year. For every dollar his office spends, they return $62 to state and local governments, he said.
“PVAs are revenue producers,” said Best, who said his office had returned $70,000 of the $81,000 they received from the state government this year. “Why would you cut revenue producers?”
The duties of the PVA include assessing tangible and real property in a county, which is used by taxing districts—including the City of Harrodsburg, the Mercer County Fiscal Court, the City of Burgin, the Mercer and Burgin Independent School Districts, the Mercer County Public Library, the Mercer County Fire Protection District, the Mercer County Extension Office, the Mercer County Conservation District and the Mercer County Health Department—to set their tax rates each year.
To learn more, check out next week’s issue of the Harrodsburg Herald.
