Queen City Aims To Retain Its Tops-in-Taxes Crown
City Manager Curt Walton this week pitched a $1 billion budget plan that calls for a 4-cent property tax hike, a 9-percent increase that would surely help Charlotte remain a contender in its apparent bid to have its citizens continue shouldering the highest total tax burden in the state.
Walton and city staff said the tax hike is necessary to fund an aggressive capital campaign, to the tune of $926 million for myriad projects spread over the next eight years, which they contend is needed to help Charlotte reverse a trend that has seen a suburban surge in population base and affluence as inner-city and urban-ring neighborhoods struggle. This from the Charlotte Business Journal:
To illustrate some of the concerns, Walton and the city outlined economic ravages affecting a large, crescent-shaped area surrounding the small clump of south and south central neighborhoods that account for half of the city tax base. Beyond those slivers of affluence and areas near Lakes Norman and Wylie, the middle class is shrinking, bringing problems such as poverty and lower academic achievement to the fore. Property values have declined in many swaths of the city at the same time food stamps and free and reduced school lunches rose at an accelerated rate.
“We’re at a tipping point,” Walton says. “Some time in the next five to 10 years, we will be at that fulcrum. There’s no way to really know, when did Detroit get on that tipping point? Or when did Cleveland? And what caused it? We don’t really know. But declining populations and declining property values would have been factors.”
At a tipping point? How about past one, as taxpayers who for years have been soaked to foot the bill for expanded city services, so-called affordable housing and neighborhood development, and uptown baubles continue to flee. A tipping point? How about when residents from a whole swath of your major tax base are planning to essentially secede from the city and form their own town.
Indeed, when Anthony Foxx was elected mayor he said it was time to set things right and change the fabric of the city. How’s that working out:
And just for kicks, let’s recall that the Charlotte-metro unemployment rate is again topping 10 percent, a great time for local GovCo to suck even more money out of your wallet. The city’s proposal would tack an additional $80 a year on the tax bill for a $200,000 home; jumping to $160 on a $400,000 home, and $240 on a $600,000 home.
The city’s proposed spending spree on the back of a tax increase is nearly as egregious as it was predictable in a non-election year for councilmembers and mayor, who let the county board do the dirty work for them last year with a massive revaluation tax jolt. So back-to-back scores all round on the tax front. Well played.
Walton’s proposed capital program, which calls for placing bonds on the ballot every two years between this November and 2020, includes the standard assortment of infrastructure, but with a splash of several big-ticket items to include:
The vaunted Foxx/Faux streetcar to nowhere rolls in at $119 million; there’s $102.5 million for infrastructure to grace the light-rail line extension to UNCC; $170 million to pave the way for a so-called Innovation Corridor in northeast Charlotte; $35 million for the Cross Charlotte Multi-Use Trail, a continuous bikeway path extending, as the name implies, across Charlotte from Pineville to the Cabarrus County line; $34 million to upgrade traffic signals; $60 million for sidewalks; $64 million for a new joint communications center to handle 911 and 311calls; $43 million for infrastructure upgrades to compliment an inter-modal station at the airport; and $25 million to turn Bojangles Arena and Ovens Auditorium into a “destination-defining amateur sports complex.”
The whole packet is being pitched with the spiffy moniker of “Investing in Corridors, Increasing Connections & Improving Communities – a collaborative, holistic approach to capital investment.”
The council is slated to powwow again on April 11 for another budget retreat, followed by a May 29 budget public hearing and a budget adoption target date of June 11.
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