BoCC passed sales tax referendum for Nov 2011

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1st vote was on a proposal by Commissioner McKee to move it to May, 2012 primary election.   It was defeated 3-4 (Foushee, Gordon, McKee voted for). 2nd vote was for original proposal to have the referendum in Nov, 2011 (will open polling places out in the county just for that one item).  Passed 5-2 (Jacobs, Hemminger, Pelissier, Yuhasz, Gordon voting for)

I find it sad that this vote (already voted down once in 2010) is being brought back up. The timing is unfair to county residents. The last vote was defeated by county voters overwhelmingly. Now knowing that only municipal elections are on the agenda for 2011 and the turnout for the county will be very low, the BOCC is pretty much assuring a win. Talk about skullduggery and disenfranchisement.This is how Wake school board got into the predicament they are in. Elections were held when turnout is low and an highly organized minority took over the election nad school board. This tax will only give them very short relief and a few 100,000's of dollars. It does not do anything to address the long term problem of heavy reliance on residential property tax and shafting people with higher than average house valuations as well as guaranteeing exponential tax growth (with revaluations) in higher than average property value. Next year the BOCC will be back in our property tax back pocket adding more to our over taxed property.I believe a good solution would be to spread the burden out by pursuing new methods of tax revenue generation they can utilize such as (sales, income, real estate transfer(republicans already doing a job eliminating this one) and even charging families a little more to educate their kids currently in the system, real estate tax relief for fixed income families, property) in one comprehensive package educating tax payers about the positve potential effects on reducing porperty taxes. Many of these suggestions are highly unpopular but we can't go on with the system we have now, It is now and will turn Orange county into a place where only the rich can live.   

Thankfully the BOCC is leaving us an out. We can shop for much of our non food stuff outside the county if this goes through.

Maybe you meant rural residents? The fact that the majority of county residents happen to also reside in a municipality does not make them non-residents. It may seem like an unimportant semantic distinction, but I think it matters. I am a county resident too, and expect the BoCC to represent my interests just as much as rural voters expect them to represent theirs. I'm not sure having the referendum on the ballot this fall is the best idea, but then, last fall's results were also probably influenced by heavy Republican turnout due discontent at the national level. It's basically impossible to hold a referendum without it being influenced by the other races on (or not on) the ballot, except by holding it as its own separate election, which is costly. That said, I have no idea whether or not I'll support the tax until I hear the specific plan for how it will be spent.

Even heavy Republican turnout in Orange County is always dwarfed by Democratic party voting.

Your right, I used wrong semantics meant county residents outside municipalities. I agree with Mark, based on historic voting In Orange County there is a very low probability that republican turnout can influence an election.

Majority of the speakers were just completely anti-tax (several dozen folks clapping every time, including some wearing FreedomWorks shirts they've kept since the confused revaluation cycle).   

There are way more residents in Orange County of all walks of life and political persuasion then people associated with FreedomWorks that feel they are in a real bind with the way Orange county relies on property taxes to pay the bills. I would say the majority of the 1000's of people turning out in the so called "confused revaluation cycle" had nothing to do with Freedomworks or even knew or cared what the organization is and WERE not confused over the shafting they got with their property tax growth as a result of annual regular growth and astronimcal revaluation growth.

Did they specify the uses for the tax?

The discussion came from Will Raymond, who suggested 1/3 for economic development and 2/3 for human services increases.  I also added that Justice United supports the economic development and education components as clear priorities, but we need more specifics to help sell this. oh, and there was a guy from Carrboro who asked that emergency services be included to fix our response time problem. The BoCC discussion seemed to indicate economic development and education will be focus.  But there wasn't a vote on it, only a work item for staff to get some direction.Interesting to note that library was not mentioned by anyone.  There was a comment that last time there were too many items on the list (and thus harder to explain all the percentages), so I'm guessing those smaller items won't be included this time.

Economic development is a meaningless term by itself. So is education for that matter.

the education portion of the allocation was supposed to go toward years-long deferrment of facilities maintenance. I hope they will keep that aspect of the plan. Children should not be sitting in classrooms full of mildew and mold.

 

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