Charlottesville City Council tentatively approved a real estate tax rate of 97 cents for every $100 at Wednesday's meeting. This is a two-cent decrease from last year's rate.
There is still debate among Council members over whether the tax should be cut more in the finalized budget.
Council member Kevin Lynch said the decrease "represents what counselors have agreed so far to cut from the budget."
Though the original proposed budget increased 12 percent from the last year, the tax cut will cause the increase to be approximately 10 percent, Lynch said.
Lynch said the two-cent cut is a good start, but the Council could increase the amount up to eight cents by further reviewing the budget plan for unnecessary spending.
Council member Dave Norris said he expects the two-cent figure to remain fairly stable after future deliberations.
"I don't get the sense that there's a lot of support for future budget cuts, but we don't finalize the budget till April 10," he said.
According to Vice Mayor Kendra Hamilton, the amount of the tax is secondary to the addition of a tax grant program for low- and middle-income residents.
"I think that the tax grant is much more meaningful than the actual number that the taxes are assessed at," she said.
The tax grant program will give homeowners with an income of less than $50,000 between a $350 and $500 rebate on property taxes, Lynch said.
He noted that the purpose of this program is to provide financial relief for homeowners, specifically for residents whose property values are increasing more than their incomes.
"On the tax side, the problem is we have people on fixed incomes ... who are having to face the real risk of moving out of Charlottesville, and that's where I wanted to target even more of the tax relief," Norris said.
According to Off-Grounds Housing Manager Vicki Hawes, changes in the tax plan will not have immediate consequences for students, since most do not own homes in Charlottesville.
"More and more of our students are living in bigger complexes" rather than in houses, she said.
Hawes added that rent has been stable over the last few years, but there is potential for increases in property assessments to negatively affect students living off-Grounds.
"If there's an assessment increase that the landlords are responsible for, the landlords have to make up that difference," she said. "It's not going to be immediate, but it certainly has the potential to affect us."