
{"id":863,"date":"2007-09-06T06:12:39","date_gmt":"2007-09-06T14:12:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/2007\/09\/06\/county-commission-defers-tax-decision\/"},"modified":"2007-09-06T06:12:39","modified_gmt":"2007-09-06T14:12:39","slug":"county-commission-defers-tax-decision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2007\/09\/06\/county-commission-defers-tax-decision\/","title":{"rendered":"County Commission defers tax decision"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong>By Susan Dickson<\/strong><br \/>\nStaff Writer<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Having allowed the deadline for putting a tax referendum on the November ballot to pass, the Board of County Commissioners must now determine whether to put a land transfer tax, a sales tax increase or both on the ballot next May.<\/p>\n<p>The state Board of Elections required counties to decide by September 6 if they were going to put a tax referendum on the ballot for November\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s elections. The Board of County Commissioners took no action regarding the tax option at a work session last week.<\/p>\n<p>In this year\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 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 counties in a deal to turn responsibility for paying for Medicaid over to the state.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>As a result of the budget deal, counties lost state-supplied school construction money this year and will lose some sales tax revenue in coming years. Orange County will lose about $500,000 this year through the changes in funding.<\/p>\n<p>According to county budget director Donna Coffey, the land transfer tax would yield a little more than $4 million in revenue annually, while the sales tax increase would yield just over $3 million.<\/p>\n<p>Most of the commissioners have indicated support for the land transfer tax over the sales tax. Commissioner Barry Jacobs said on Thursday that he would support putting both options on the ballot for consideration.<\/p>\n<p>In addition, Jacobs questioned other board members\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 hesitancy to put a referendum on the November ballot.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think there was anything to lose, because you can put [the referendum] on as many times as you want,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I think we could do it [in November] if we really wanted to do it.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<br \/>\nJacobs also pointed out that if a tax option passed in November, the county could start collecting money sooner than if it passed in May.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We need this,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We need this for a lot of things that we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve talked about that we want to do in this county, a lot of our priorities.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Board Chair Moses Carey said he wanted to make sure that the county had enough time to educate the public about the two taxes before putting either on the ballot for consideration.<br \/>\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think two months is an adequate time to do that,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a price to pay for putting it on [the ballot] if it fails.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Commissioner Valerie Foushee also said she thought the county did not have enough time to run a good education campaign before the November elections.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Knowing that we will have a counter-campaign at the same time, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s incumbent upon us to make sure that the public is as educated about this as possible,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she said.<\/p>\n<p>Commissioner Alice Gordon said that she did not have a preference for putting a referendum on either the May or the November ballots. However, she added that she preferred the land transfer tax over the sales tax increase because it would be less regressive.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I would suggest that we not wait too long,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Gordon said, noting the losses that the county will face from the budget deal.<\/p>\n<p>The tax options were not a decision item on the board\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s work session agenda, so the commissioners took no action.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Susan Dickson Staff Writer Having allowed the deadline for putting a tax referendum on the November ballot to pass, the Board of County Commissioners must now determine whether to put a land transfer tax, a sales tax increase or both on the ballot next May. The state Board of Elections required counties to decide&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863","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\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}