Armed with 1,200 pages of petitions with 10,466 signatures of Augusta County residents, Churchville attorney Francis Chester filed a lawsuit this morning in Augusta County circuit court against the Augusta County Board of Supervisors and Commissioner of the Revenue Jean Shrewsbury.
Petitions that were circulated the past two months protested the 2009 real estate reassessments because of the downturn in the economic climate, and asked supervisors to roll back assessments to 2005 values.
Even as requests to sign petitions continue on an almost daily basis, it was amazing to receive over 10,000 signatures. A crowd of 1,000 people had never turned out before to protest their assessments as they did at the March 11, 2009, BOS meeting. No one expected 600 people to turn out for an informational townhall meeting with five days notice in February ... but they did.
With tax protests and revolts going on nationwide, Augusta County residents are not alone. Today, Francis Chester has taken the next step in the process of the people addressing their government officials.
1 comment:
Just curious, what is his legal strategy? On what basis and under what va code violations is he filing his lawsuit?
Certainly, if his legal argument is simply "I have 10,500 signatures..." he will not go very far, and waste alot of time and money.
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