Tonight’s Guilford County commissioners’ meeting was full of interesting stuff, the least of which turned out to be the budget discussion. Yeah, I realize I said earlier that the budget discussion would be interesting, and there was lots of colorful rhetoric. But in the end it was the same old stuff: Seemingly endless debate over a million here and a million there in a half-billion dollar budget.
Yeah, three cents is better than seven cents short-term, but taxes will just continue go up long-term. As he usually does this time of year, Commissioner Steve Arnold puts things into perspective:
When you increase the tax rate, with the the view toward getting more money, you are in effect saying that you want to see government grow and you want to see personal freedom and individual liberty reduced. As a principled conservative, I’m always opposed to that…….From Steve Arnold’s perspective, the tax rate needs to be about 50 cents. Reductions need to be made that are significant. Government in Guilford County is way too big. Tax rates are way too high. Government needs to be funding Guilford County responsibilities and….arts funding is not a government responsibility. Many of these CBO functions are not government responsibilities….
Schools (are), but our public school system has an approach that is so top-down and politically-oriented that, though they are extraordinarily well-funded publicly, they produce very poor results, and the real clientele, the parents and the students, are getting less than they deserve from the school system. We’re now producing high schools at $60 million apiece, way, way beyond reality…..I commend my colleagues for reducing the tax rate…..but it’s not what it should be, and to maintain fidelity to conservative principles, I’ll vote against the budget tonight.
Update: The Locker Room’s Chad Adams has a different take, saying Guilford’s budget makes a bold statement.
