BallantyneTown – “Let My People Go”
That would be the new moniker and rallying/battle cry if the brainchild of Mecklenburg Commissioner Bill James, a Republican who represents, in part, the southern wilds of the county ever comes to fruition. From a mass email James launched today:
Mecklenburg needs a new ‘Town of Ballantyne’
If consolidation talk won’t die; Southern residents need Town protection
A push is underway (for the umpteenth time) to ‘consolidate’ city and county governments. The net effect of ‘consolidation’ will be to give the City Council and Mayor totalitarian control over suburban residents. The net result will be a massive tax increase on those in the burbs.
Predictably, the Towns have opposed these efforts because they know how bad life would be under the thumb of a new consolidated City Council. Towns were formed, in part, to escape being under Charlotte’s thumb. Most suburban areas a few miles from the center city are in towns (Cornelius, Davidson, Huntersville, Matthews, Pineville and Mint Hill). There is one very large area of suburbia that is not and it deserves to be protected by forming a new town.
The area south of 51 between Matthews and Pineville – a large portion of which is known as Ballantyne, should be given the option to form their own town and self-govern. Because these folks are in the City they pay a large tax burden that Town residents don’t pay. Because they are mostly Republican they have zero say in City policy that is dominated by liberal Democrats that view them as merely a deep pocket to pay for their social programs. Worse, time and again, Charlotte’s liberals try to come up with new ways to drop low-income housing into Ballantyne something that should be under the control of their own citizens.
The costs of a ‘urban municipal society’ are paid by these suburban city residents; something not paid by Town residents who have a much lower tax rate. The CMPD is mostly an urban police force with a large inner-city presence. The costs of CMPD are primarily paid for by suburban City residents who see little of their tax dollars returned to them.
Suburban residents (Town or City) receive about $3,500 per child from CMS for public education while inner-city residents receive $12,000 per child. A large amount of the funding difference comes from suburban residents in and around Ballantyne.
So, if consolidation is to be discussed; I say now is the time to ‘Let my people go’ (to borrow a Biblical phrase).
The NC Legislature should consider authorizing a ballot vote on the formation of a new ‘Town of Ballantyne’ (with or without the City of Charlotte’s approval).
To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson; “Government that is the closest to the people governs best”.
Bill James
County Commission
District 6
Twitter: @meckcommish
Facebook: meckcommish
Web site: http://billjames.org
That giant sucking gasp of horror you just heard? That would be Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, for all the obvious tax-base, per-pupil-student funding reasons.
And, lest anybody think this is just Crazy Bill spouting nonsense from the hip, the idea apparently has the nascent support of N.C. Sen. Bob Rucho. This from Kaliner over at News 14:
The state would likely need to approve any such attempt. But N.C. Sen. Bob Rucho is open to the idea.
“That is in my district,” said Rucho. “If they were to approach me I would do what I could to assist them in that matter.”
Sen. Rucho said since the GOP took over the N.C. Legislature, it has tried to roll back annexation laws that he said overly favored city expansion.
“There was also a number, I think there were four or five, towns that actually asked for de-annexation,” said Rucho. “And that may be part of what would be required with Ballantyne since it is part of the City of Charlotte right now.”
It is not simply Ballantyne.
“Once I sent the e-mail out, I got responses from people in Steele Creek saying, ‘Well, we’d kind of like to have a town of Steele Creek, too,’” said James.
Think about the doomed deconsolidation push from a few years back, when the powers that be literally had supporters hauled off under guard from the floor of the General Assembly, and you’ll quickly realize the length the status quo herd will go to to protect their vested interests and squash this movement at all and any costs.
Which would be a shame, but about what we’ve come to expect from local GovCo and its jackboot, totalitarian tendencies.
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