A new day?

Every tax that local governments raise on an already strapped populace, enables the U.S. military machine to keep stealing our tax money. People need to understand that it is the War Machine that is the cause of our financial problems.

It's the only way that people will understand the root of the problem.  In effect, raising local taxes damps down anti-war sentiment. We need an awakening to the widespread ill effects of war.

Terri - maybe you should rephrase your statement to read: "None of the tax money we pay to local governments goes to the war efforts." However, about $2600 on average is spent on the military for every citizen of the U.S. I know that you, like most of us who live here, are not the kind of person who is in favor of drones operated from bunkers in New Mexico killing innocent people in Afghanistan or putting young people in hellish situations that result in more suicides than combat deaths. It's not a strecth to look holistically at our tax revenues and think about effective distribution.On "ignoring economic development" - we hear that all the time as a Chamber talking point, but it just doesn't square with the facts. It's obviously a big discussion, but economic development has occurred (maybe not the sprawling North Raleigh or Durham type - are they lowering taxes in Wake & Durham?) within some different parameters. Too many economic ventures to name in just the past ten years. Why does Roger Perry choose to pursue large developments here? Is it because he likes the challenge of doing business in a place where, according to the Chamber's hyperventilations, the policies are designed to discourage business?  

The cries for finally having actual "economic development" in Orange County almost sound faith-based. What county has the appropriate economic development/taxation model that is being called for? One qualification - it has to be a place where  healthy people would want to live.

After all the the discussion from Orange County citizens about our runaway property tax growth in the past few years and what a burden this growth puts on the middle and lower class, all I hear from our commissioners is how can we spend this money. They know we have a huge problem in the growth of the share of total revenues that property tax generates. Nowhere have i heard anyone say that maybe we should use this money for property tax relief rather than just inventing new ways to spend it. Even though I think we need to spread the tax burden using things like sales tax, increased impact fees, transfer tax, I can't support a sales tax until they take a good hard look at property tax relief. I don't think grabbing new revenue and just spending it is good policy in these economic times.

I don't understand the logic of putting a sales tax increase on the ballot one-two years before the regional sales tax increase to fund public transit is scheduled to come up.  It doesn't make sense to me, as these types of sales tax increases aren't terribly popular to start with.  Having two sales tax increases in a row just doesn't seem likely.

The transit tax referendum is likely to be Fall 2011. Wake and Orange decided not to vote on a general sales tax before that. The transit tax vote can be in one, two, or all three of the counties.

I'm told the NC Education Lottery $ can only be used for "buildings and facilites" (not what a lot of people thought the lottery money was for).  If that's the case why would any tax referendum $ need to be used in that regard?  Also, why is the county government using $ to "educate" the county residents about the upcoming tax referendum?  Wouldn't that money be used better in a different way?