The Big Hurt
More than 88,000 households can look forward to a tax increase in excess of 20 percent if the county board approves a rate-neutral budget being pushed by Commissioners Chairman Jennifer Roberts. That number would drop to just shy of 60,000 households facing a 20 percent or more tax hike under a revenue-neutral budget plan.
The county budget office’s latest numbers show the tax impact under three scenarios: the county manager’s recommended budget, which drops the existing property tax rate by about a penny, but because of revaluation would still see county coffers filled with more loot and a majority of households paying more in taxes; a revenue-neutral plan, which would drop the existing rate by about 5-cents; and a rate-neutral plan, which would hold the current property tax rate steady at 83-cents per $100 assessed value.
On the higher end of the scale, more than 12,500 households would see their taxes skyrocket in excess of 75 percent under a rate-neutral plan, with 8,322 seeing a full 100 percent hike.
Commissioner Bill James, a Republican who has been pushing for a revenue-negative budget, broke down the number of households in line for a tax increase under both a revenue- and rate-neutral plan, along with the percent of increase likely in store for household tax bills:
At revenue neutral (158,272 households would see an increase):
above 5% tax increase – 128,262 households
above 10% tax increase – 102,326 households
above 15% tax increase – 78,389 households
above 20% tax increase – 59,772 households
above 30% tax increase – 48,095 households
above 50% tax increase – 19,430 households
above 75% tax increase – 10,092 households
above 100% tax increase – 7,028 households
At the current rate (194,067 households would see an increase):
above 5% tax increase – 166,885 households
above 10% tax increase – 137,894 households
above 15% tax increase – 112,441 households
above 20% tax increase – 88,412 households
above 30% tax increase – 68,260 households
above 50% tax increase – 27,408 households
above 75% tax increase – 12,759 households
above 100% tax increase – 8,322 households
“I have been trying to get this (information) for months to show why revenue neutral is no ‘deal,’” James writes in an email. “To prevent massive tax increases requires revenue NEGATIVE. It isn’t that just ‘rich’ homes are facing larger tax bills – it is the staggering number of households that will have huge percentage increases.”
In response Roberts, a Democrat who has been leading the charge for a rate-neutral budget that would siphon millions of additional dollars from the pockets of taxpayers, offers this: “Bill, Are you working on a list of those services, departments, programs that you would cut in order to lower revenues to that extent?”
One should hope that James is, along with the board’s other fiscal conservatives, and that a sane spending plan will soon be forthcoming from that side of the aisle. Otherwise, grab your wallets.
To that point, when school board member Trent “Call me Parks” Merchant opines that he still doesn’t “understand how it’s egregious to ask” commissioners to shell out an additional $50 million for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, the answer is found buried under the thousands of households facing higher property taxes.
Making the request advances the notion that CMS needs, absolutely must have an additional $50 million in local dollars. And it gives tax-and-spenders like Roberts the ammunition they need to hoist the same misguided notion on the public: it’s for the children.
But it’s not. Not when school board members like Merchant and Tim Morgan continue to ask for more money, even as CMS continues to spend millions of dollars on unproven testing schemes and pour millions more into administrative outposts as teachers are pink-slipped and children are crammed into larger classes.
That’s anything but for the children. And Merchant and Morgan and the rest of the school board majority that played the gimme game should have sense enough to realize, by now, that throwing money at CMS does not work.
So yes, certainly, if the tax hike looming on the horizon comes to pass, blame Roberts and the Democrat majority on the county board. But remember it was folks like Merchant and Morgan who set the stage for Jenny & The Debts to play their tune.
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