“Here we go again,” my normally cheerful husband grumbled as he dropped our property tax bill into the mail the other day. Property taxes are a sore topic for us, not because we don’t like paying them, but because the home we own in Loudoun County, Va., is not nearly worth what the county has assessed it for -- and this is after we appealed and received a lower bill.

We know our property value well because we’ve been trying to sell it for months -- and like many homeowners across the country, we’ve seen the housing market go from bad to worse to even worse. We only wish we could sell our home for what the Loudoun assessors say it’s worth.

Homeowners aren’t the only losers in this market -- many of the public school systems that rely on property tax revenues to fund their programs may take a big hit as well. Loudoun, one of the fastest growing jurisdictions in the country, already has had to postpone several much needed school construction projects. Neighboring Fairfax County, another fast growing district, may not see any increase in their education budget in fiscal 2009 because tax revenues are expecting a shortfall, according to the Washington Post.

The rapid increases in home prices in recent years allowed many Virginia localities and others across the country to lower their tax rates as assessments increased. But nobody likes tax increases, so it’s going to take a while for this to even out. In the meantime, this situation shows the need for a better school finance system, one that is equitable, fair, and reliant on stable revenue source, not a fluctuant property tax.

I wrote about the possibility of a property-tax funding crisis for School Board News (www.nsba.org/site/page_sbn_issue.asp?TRACKID=&CID=682&DID=9461) last year, and I will continue following this issue. If you would like to share a story (or buy a lovely three-bedroom home in Loudoun County), please reply to the link below.

Joetta Sack-Min, Associate Editor