Sorry to dash the hopes of Orange County residents who’ve been thinking that a “revenue-neutral” property tax rate would prevent a tax hike.
Not in Orange County.
Should the county commissioners vote to proceed with the “neutral” rate in light of the recent property revaluation, the rate would come down from 99.8 cents to 86 cents. However, explains this News & Observer blog about this week’s developments (emphasis is mine):
They were surprised Tuesday to learn that, for county staff, “revenue-neutral” means raising the same amount of money not only from real property taxes but also personal property, motor vehicle and public utilities taxes. Since those latter sources of revenue are all down this year, the county would have to collect more money from real-estate taxes this year in order to collect the same amount of “ad valorem” or total property taxes.
“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.
The unfortunate moral of this story: Don’t believe what commissioners say. Watch what they do.
