The Roanoke County Board of Supervisors will host a public hearing for citizen comments on Tuesday, April 7, at 2:00 concerning 2026 real estate and personal property tax rates in Roanoke County. The hearing will be in the County Administration Building at 5205 Bernard Drive.
The Supervisors will be asking for the adoption of proposed tax rates.
The supervisors are proposing to maintain the current tax rate of $1.03 per $100 of real estate value.
One can claim that Roanoke County real estate taxes are technically not going up because the rate is staying unchanged. However, many, if not all, County residents got notifications in early 2026 that their real estate value assessments had gone way up, some between 5-10%. Thus, even by keeping the rate the same, the ballooning assessments mean County residents must pay more in actual taxes.
Republican voters tend to favor leaner governments and lower taxes. All five members of the Roanoke County Board of Supervisors are Republicans, but with an unchanged rate and higher assessments, the tax burden for residents will continue to get worse. Twice in recent years, the Board of Supervisors actually cut the rate by a bit to partially offset increasing assessments.
On April 28, there will be a public hearing for comments about the County’s proposed operating budget and capital improvement program.
As a reference, here are the rates per $100 of real estate value for some other localities in the area:
- Bedford County: $0.41
- Botetourt County: $0.70
- Franklin County: $0.43
- Roanoke City: $1.22
- Salem City: $1.18
To be fair, surrounding rural areas do not provide the same level of services that Roanoke County provides, for example, curbside trash or brush pick up. Residents of rural counties need to haul their trash to county-provided dump sites or else pay for a private service to come to their driveway. However, such rural counties with far lower tax rates still manage to provide basic services like paved roads, first responders, libraries, government-run schools, etc.
Specifically, Bedford County’s real estate tax rate is only 39.8% that of Roanoke County.
Evidence of Roanoke City’s ailing financial status keeps mounting. Not only is their rate the highest in the region at $1.22 — $0.19 higher than that of Roanoke County, but City residents must pay extra for trash pick up, their school system recently announced they would slash some 170 positions, and City Council recently warned they may need to raise the tax rate in the coming years.
For more information about Roanoke County taxes and the April 7 public hearing, Supervisors can be contacted via here, and Board Clerk Rhonda Perdue can be reached here.
– Scott Dreyer
