It’s very nice that the Winston Salem Journal is so concerned about the tax burden on newly annexed citizens:
The newly annexed citizens will be paying city – and county – taxes for generations to come. The proposal would just be a wise and compassionate way of easing the hit of the first taxes. As it is now, annexed property owners will have to pay 21-months worth of city taxes in January 2008. That’s because annexation takes effect Saturday, and the city has to wait until the next annual billing cycle to collect taxes on the remainder of this fiscal year.
The newly annexed citizens will need al the help they can get, because they’ll soon be paying to relocate the city’s maintenance yard to make room for a road linking MLK Drive and the Piedmont Triad Research Park at an estimated cost of $26 million.
There are just a couple of problems, though:
…..Extra planning time had been needed so engineers could figure out how to accommodate the rail line and because traffic estimates for the proposed road came back higher than expected. The estimates forced officials to rework designs of the roadway’s interchange with U.S. 52 to handle more traffic.
The city doesn’t have any property on hand that it could use to house everything now contained at city yard.
That’s why officials are going to consider buying new property or splitting the services up into more than one place.
Does this make sense?
