
{"id":21582,"date":"2011-10-27T12:41:12","date_gmt":"2011-10-27T16:41:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/?p=21582"},"modified":"2011-10-27T12:41:12","modified_gmt":"2011-10-27T16:41:12","slug":"from-the-editor-a-tax-for-the-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2011\/10\/27\/from-the-editor-a-tax-for-the-future\/","title":{"rendered":"FROM THE EDITOR: A tax for the future"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been a lot of talk about the quarter-cent sales-tax referendum lately, and with that, promises of jobs and funding for schools. <\/p>\n<p>Some hard-working residents of this county are skeptical about handing over more of their dollars to local government, and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s understandable. With no sign of this economic downturn making a change in the right direction any time soon, budgets are increasingly stretched and taxpayers are wary of anything that might further tighten their belts. <\/p>\n<p>But it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s important to remember where the roots of this referendum lie. <\/p>\n<p>In the 2007 state budget, the legislature gave counties the option of a 0.4 percent land-transfer tax or a quarter-cent sales-tax increase to help compensate for money taken away from them in a deal to turn responsibility for paying for Medicaid over to the state. Out of that deal, counties lost state-supplied school-construction money that year and sales-tax revenue in subsequent years. <\/p>\n<p>County leaders have proposed the quarter-cent sales-and-use tax \u00e2\u20ac\u201c\u00c2\u00a00.25 cents on a $1 purchase, or 1 cent on $4 \u00e2\u20ac\u201c\u00c2\u00a0that is projected to raise $2.5 million annually, and have pledged to devote 50 percent of funds raised from the tax to economic development and 50 percent to schools. The economic-development portion of the money would go to funding infrastructure improvements needed to recruit new businesses and expand existing ones; funding for business loans and grants to grow businesses in Orange County; targeted business recruitment, retention and expansion efforts; and community branding and marketing.<\/p>\n<p>To be honest, while a little vague, that sounds pretty good. <\/p>\n<p>The schools are the pride and joy of this county, and their capital needs \u00e2\u20ac\u201c facilities improvements, new equipment, etc. \u00e2\u20ac\u201c\u00c2\u00a0have fallen to the wayside as budgets have tightened. This money would help ensure that our kids can continue to attend schools that meet their needs and keep them safe.  <\/p>\n<p>And the economic-development districts of this county have been waiting more than 20 years to see any action. County leaders are poised to make some real moves toward building the infrastructure needed to draw in businesses to those districts that will create jobs and increase tax revenue, lessening the huge burden on property owners. Those new businesses could pay back the county\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s initial investment and more, funding our schools and all those great things that make Orange County what it is well into the future. <\/p>\n<p>Some will argue that any sales tax is regressive, and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s true. But as the county\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s budget is further gripped by this economic downturn \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and the misguided Republican leadership in the General Assembly eliminates funding from safety-net programs and leaves our most vulnerable residents left to fend for themselves \u00e2\u20ac\u201c\u00c2\u00a0our county truly needs the funding. <\/p>\n<p>Moreover, as home to a major state university, this county has thousands of residents who don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t own property, and thus don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t share as much of the tax burden as their property-owning neighbors. In addition, alumni of that university and hundreds of thousands of other visitors \u00e2\u20ac\u201c\u00c2\u00a0more than 1.7 million in 2010 \u00e2\u20ac\u201c come to Orange County every year, injecting capital into our stores and restaurants (to the tune of $144 million last year), and thus into our county\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sales-tax funding. Let them share a little more of that burden too. <\/p>\n<p>We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got some smart people at the helm of this county, and we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got to trust that our county government \u00e2\u20ac\u201c which has worked hard to stave off property-tax increases the past three years running \u00e2\u20ac\u201c would use these precious funds wisely. <\/p>\n<p>Times are tough, and people are hurting. We trust that the county will use the funds to create jobs, keep our school systems some of the finest in the country and increase tax revenue from economic development, keeping Orange County the best it can be for years to come. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been a lot of talk about the quarter-cent sales-tax referendum lately, and with that, promises of jobs and funding for schools. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21582"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21582\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21583,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21582\/revisions\/21583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}