Our Opinion

Monday night, a group of local business owners presented what they billed as the “Town of Orange Recovery and Reinvestment Act” to the Orange Town Council.
The proposal’s aim was to inject life into the Orange business community by reducing a number of taxes and fees and removing regulations that precede business development. 
Their proposal aims to preserve and create new jobs, promote economic recovery, assist those impacted by the current recession and promote the town and its businesses.
To accomplish these goals, the proposal calls for the town council to take action including:  reducing existing available tap fees by a minimum of 25 percent; reducing water and sewer bills by 15 percent for commercial customers and 5 percent for residential customers; removing any town fees for site plans, zoning fees or special use permits; fast tracking all new site development plans; eliminating the big box ordinance and reducing the meals and lodging taxes by 3 percent.
The premise here is the proposal will send the message that the Town of Orange is open for business.
We’re all for promoting business, we’d just like to see it applied universally. This doesn’t do it for us.
Stimulating business growth is essential to our emergence from the slumping economy. But at what cost?
We keep hearing “Orange isn’t business friendly.” Yet, last month, they town turned down the opportunity to receive federal grant money by designating Route 15 an All-American Road. Had the council approved that designation, it would have made itself eligible for grant money–grant money that would have stimulated tourism, one of our most vital local industries. Nope. The town didn’t want it because it felt the designation would limit what folks could do with their property. In that, they undermined their own efforts to make Orange more business friendly–particularly for those in the hospitality industry, which this proposal seems to want to help.
Certainly, Orange has a higher-than-normal meals tax. We don’t disagree with that. What we do disagree with is that people will suddenly start eating out more in town because the meals tax would be aligned with the county’s and Gordonsville’s. People either are going to eat our or they’re not.
We can’t help but believe the same holds true for lodging. If people want to come to Orange, they will. And judging by the attendance figures at Montpelier, they are. Most of us don’t think about any local lodging taxes until we settle up anyway. At that point, we might grouse or grumble, but that’s the cost of travel. We all pay it anywhere we travel. Orange is not unique in that respect.
The point here is that these are the very people we should be soliciting tax contributions from–out-of-towners who are passing through. They come, they eat, they stay, they fork over some cash and they’re on their way. We provided few services to them while they’ve enjoyed the majesty of Montpelier, the bounty of our vineyards or the history of our battlefields.
Their contributions defray the burden on the rest of us and that’s exactly the kind of reinvestment and recovery we can all benefit from.