Orange County Manager Laura Blackmon will leave her post soon, but she’s going out bucking the county’s years-long trend of hiking the property tax rate. It sits at 99.8 cents per $100 now, but Blackmon is proposing the rate drop to 85.8 cents in the next fiscal year, reports the News & Observer.
Kudos to Blackmon for attemping to put the concerns of strapped families ahead of the spend-and-tax-happy county commissioners. Obviously these same commissioners will have to approve the budget recommendation, but based on the push-back they’ve been receiving over the past several months, this is the best shot we’ve seen in years for a rate reduction. The definition of a “revenue neutral” rate continues to be an interesting one. From the News & Observer:
Property taxes make up nearly three-fourths of the general fund revenue. The revenue neutral tax rate is designed to bring in the same amount of property tax revenue as before revaluation. How your tax bill compares to last year depends on how much your home’s value rose.
Even some county commissioners were surprised this year to learn that homeowners whose houses appreciated at the county average could still see higher tax bills. That’s because, while home values went up, the value of other taxable property such as cars is projected to drop next year.
As Orange and other North Carolina counties prepare their budgets, can citizens be assured their money is being spent wisely and reasonably? JLF’s Director of Research, Michael Sanera, provides some perspective in this interview.
