Valerie Foushee, chairman of the Orange County Board of Commissioners, is responding to the publicity her board is receiving over this year’s property revaluation and the possibility of an impending property tax hike.
In this letter to the editor of the News & Observer, she (and three other unnamed commissioners) make their usual case that they will try, try, try, try, try — really hard — not to raise taxes. The commissioners, she writes, “remain committed to responding to, and balancing, the needs of all the residents of Orange County.”
Funny that the “balance” she refers to has consistently, year after year, resulted in a hike in the property tax rate. Orange now has the second-highest rate in the state, at 99.8 cents per $100. I can’t tell whether or not Orange commissioner Barry Jacobs is one of the three signers not named by the paper, but here’s what he said just days ago, according to an N&O blog:
“Even by being revenue neutral, the majority of people are going to have a tax increase, even though we said we didn’t want to have a tax increase,” said Commissioner Barry Jacobs.
That’s why I concluded in this blog that Orange County is turning “revenue-neutral” into a tax hike.
