The UPoR has an editorial out today titled “Secession: Wrong solution to real issue.” What it says is predictable: acknowledges that there’s an issue, then seeks to minimize it, and all the while offering no real solution.
A particularly silly portion:
It wouldn’t even give residents in the area what the most vocal of them want: significantly lower taxes. About two-thirds of the taxes Charlotte residents pay are Mecklenburg County taxes, not city taxes. And the newly incorporated town would have its own taxes. If those were the same as, say, Matthews, the residents would see a tax cut of 10 percent or so. Matthews’ tax rate is 30.25 cents per $100 of assessed valuation, just 13.45 cents less than Charlotte’s 43.7 cents. Including Mecklenburg taxes, which wouldn’t change, that would give the owner of a $400,000 home a cut in their tax bill from $5,014 to $4,476. A small savings, to be sure, but hardly an amount to revolutionize the lifestyle of your typical Ballantyne resident.
$500+ a year — which is an amount that’s going up if Charlotte raises its property taxes to build more stuff that doesn’t help Ballantyne residents very much — isn’t exactly chump change, even in Ballantyne. That’s especially true if you don’t think you’re getting much in return for for those additional tax payments.
The Observer’s solution?
The whole conversation may prove worthwhile if it raises elected officials’ awareness of a real problem: South Charlotte represents about half the city’s tax base. Charlotte needs to work hard not to devolve further into an area with a few haves and many have nots.
Tackling that dynamic is a complex task. But secession wouldn’t address it at all.
Oh, I think that elected officials are quite aware of the issue. After all, it’s what’s behind Curt Waldon’s proposal to raise property taxes to spend nearly $1 billion on build stuff to double done on attracting the “creative class” and/or providing pork to spread portions of the city.
The problem with this approach is that more people with average or above incomes will realize, as some Ballantyne residents already have, that they just aren’t getting value for their tax payments in Charlotte. Which is the real danger to the city and county’s future, not whether Ballantyne becomes a separate town or not.
