The budget adopted by the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors in May includes the first real estate tax rate increase for several years. Eighty-percent of revenue from the four cent hike will go toward public safety.
A report on grant activity between January 1 and March 31 offers details about how some of that money will be used to begin covering the cost of paying new firefighters that were initially hired using funding from the the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
“As those grants feather away, for the local government to step in and to take that burden over,” said County Executive Jeffrey Richardson when he introduced the budget in February.
Albemarle County received several SAFER grants with SAFER being an acronym for Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response…