Town Hall Meeting Follow-Up

Thanks again to everyone who attended our Town Hall meeting Monday evening. Many of you shared your perspectives on how you felt ATTA could be even more effective at spreading its message and helping you better understand how the county budget process works. Here's a list of enhancements we've made to the Research section since Monday's meeting:

• Our Research section is now split between ATTA-created resources (newsletter, presentations, etc.) and external resources
• You can now download the School Board's Resource Management Review
• We've put up a guide on how to track down county Department organizational charts
• The Virginia Constituent Viewpoint's hotline number has been posted, along with how to determine who your legislator is and what other methods are available to get in touch with him/her
• We've posted a link to RichmondSunlight.com, a terrific resource for statewide legislative information
• Details on where to find the county's past and present budgets are available
• We've linked to where you can find ATTA's PAC disclosures in the public record (courtesy of the Virginia Public Access Project)
• We will post Peter Wurzer's presentation from Monday in very short time, so subscribe to our updates either by feed or email to receive an update as soon as it's posted.
  

In addition, the contact form has been updated so you can fill in your address if you'd prefer to receive ATTA's publications by regular mail.

Thanks again for all your support and comments/suggestions. If you happened to miss our meeting or have other comments/suggestions to share, please contact us, we'd love to hear from you!

Welcome ATTA Town Hall Attendees!

Thank you to everyone who came out tonight to ATTA's Town Hall meeting. There's so much at stake in this year's budget cycle, and we need your enthusiasm and support to help make sure it's a successful budget cycle for Albemarle County taxpayers.

Since this is likely your first time visiting the site, take some time to look around. Be sure to sign up for ongoing updates so you will always know what events are coming up, when ATTA is in the news, when the latest newsletters and research are available, and many other benefits. You can receive email updates, subscribe in a feed reader, or bookmark us.

Note a few items as you browse our site:

• Since this site is brand new, the "Search" functionality is still evolving. As the site grows, this functionality will greatly improve.
• Past and current presentations to the Research section will be added soon.
• Short biographies of ATTA's leadership team are coming shortly to the About page.
• If you'd like to financially support ATTA's efforts, please do so now! We currently cannot accept donations online but are hoping to do so in the future. For now, all you have to do is complete the donation form and mail to the address indicated.
• Please contact us with any questions, concerns, suggestions, or comments you have about ATTA, the website, or anything else.

Thanks for stopping by! We hope to see you at the Board of Supervisor's Public Budget Hearing #1, currently scheduled for March 5th at 6pm. View our calendar for a full schedule of events.

What Happened in 2007

For those not familiar with ATTA's success in its inaugural year (2007), below you can find a handful of news articles outlining what issues were at stake that year, and how ATTA drove the public discussion:

• 3/8/07 - "County Tax Talk Heats Up", Daily Progress
• 3/20/07 - "GOP Wants Straight Answers", Daily Progress
• 4/5/07 - "Another Budget Outcry", Daily Progress
• 4/7/07 - "School's Community Program Challenged", C-ville
• 4/9/07 - "County Attacked for Tax Rate", C-ville

NBC 29 Chats With Peter Wurzer

With Albemarle County budget planning in full swing, ATTA's Director of Research Peter Wurzer talks with NBC 29 about the dangers of focusing on how the county can get more money to cover its shortfall, instead of focusing on how current funds are being spent.

ATTA February Newsletter Now Available

You can now find the February ATTA newsletter over in our publications section. Keith recaps ATTA's 2007 success and discusses the challenges of the 2008 process, while Peter presents his humorous (and shocking) "What Were They Thinking" analysis of county government's spending.

Stay tuned as we'll be adding much more material to the publications section over the next couple months.

Upcoming ATTA Town Hall Meeting - 2/25/08

We hope to see you at our upcoming town hall meeting Monday, February 25th at 7pm at Lane Auditorium in the Albemarle County Office Building (click here for map). Peter, Keith, and Christian will discuss recent developments in the budget process, upcoming budget meetings, and what's at stake this year. They will also be happy to answer any and all questions presented.

See you there!

Welcome to ATTA's New Website

The Albemarle Truth in Taxation Alliance is thrilled to share its new website with you. Please make full use of our website to learn more about the county budget process and stay up to date on everything happening with ATTA.

On the right sidebar you'll see the various ways you can stay tuned to ATTA news, oftentimes without even having to visit our site! You can subscribe to ATTA news via an RSS reader, receive periodic email updates, and/or bookmark us to your favorites. If you're active in social networking or bookmarking sites, the bookmark link provides many other avenues for you to share what you find hear across the web.

Whether you're wanting to browse our publications, make a donation, volunteer your time, or learn everything there is to know about ATTA, you've come to the right place. Questions, concerns, or comments? Feel free to contact us anytime.