Estimated Orange County property valuations for 2009 have now been published and may be accessed here:

http://gis.co.orange.nc.us/land/search.asp

My estimated valuation increased by about 33% over my current valuation and by about 62% over the 2004 valuation, yet it still remains slightly less than what I actually paid for my house three years ago.

Update: The county suggests using http://server2.co.orange.nc.us/Addresses/ for faster GIS searching.

Via the News of Orange:

Thursday, July 24. The Orange County Democratic Women will meet at 7:30 p.m. at the Chapel Hill Museum, 523 E. Franklin St. in Chapel Hill. The monthly meeting will focus on taxes and comparing the priorities of national political parties. The guest speaker will be Meg Gray Weihe, policy analyst with the N.C. Justice Center’s Budget & Tax Center, who will speak on “Why Tax Fairness Matters.” For more information, call Anne Thomas at 929-0547.

Hillsborough budget proposal calls for tax rate increase of nearly 8%

http://www.newsobserver.com/politics/story/1073114.html

Proposed $18.5 million budget would raise Carrboro tax rate 4.9%

http://www.newsobserver.com/politics/story/1073116.html

notable quotes:

"The economy has really made it difficult," said Peterson, who noted that Chapel Hill and Carrboro also are facing local property tax-rate increases.

 -- Hillsborough Town Manager Eric Peterson

"I don't recall, at least in recent history, a more dim outlook in terms of revenue projections," -- Carrboro Town Manager Steve Stewart.

I just got a robocall from a group calling itself "Citizens for a better Orange County" that opposes the Transfer Tax. It calls the tax the "Home Tax," which is clearly wrong on two levels. Firstly, the proposed tax is on all land sales, and secondly it is an attempt to falsely personalize this tax for local homeowners. Oh, and it fails to mention an important detail: the tax rate would be 0.4%. That's right: four tenths of a percent. That's one thousand dollars on a $250k hypothetical home. Sounds like too much money? Well, what are the alternatives? If this is defeated, the only two alternatives that have been seriously discussed are a sales tax (the most regressive tax possible) and a property tax increase. A property tax increase would be a home tax. Everything about the robocall was misleading and dishonest.

[Cross-posting a good story about push-polling on the Transfer Tax (which the commissioners discuss tonight)at BlueNC by Greg Flynn.]

Orange County residents have been on the receiving end of dubious push poll telephone calls recently, described by one recipient as:

...what may very well be the most egregious violation of research ethics I have every experienced. The questions were all about transfer tax in Orange County and it was sleazy. The company was named TDM Research in Birmingham

TDM Research, associated with Democratic political consulting firm The Tyson Organization, whose clients include Bob Etheridge, has been responsible for other dubious push polls in Florida and Virginia in the past.

Take this with a big grain of salt, as the study comes from the right-wing John Locke foundation (who are constantly in the papers, in spite of the fact that they have shown that ideology trumps ethics in their "research").

According to the Locke Foundation, the per person tax burden in other towns amounted to:
[- $2,424 Holly Springs;]
- $2,198 in Morrisville;
- $2,055 in Chapel Hill;
- $1,991 in Durham;
- $1,976 in Cary;
- $1,945 in Hillsborough;
- $1,935 in Carrboro;
- $1,891 in Knightdale;
- $1,875 in Wake Forest;
- $1,866 in Fuquay-Varina;
- $1,816 in Raleigh

On Tuesday August 16th the Orange County Commissioners will make a decision about how to address the funding disparity between our two school systems. The current plan is to put a district tax on the ballot this fall, and let county school district voters decide for themselves.

According to the Chapel Hill News, the entire Orange County School Board opposes this referendum. And County Commissioner Moses Carey says "Obviously, what the school board thinks is important, but we won't base our decision solely on what they think."

Should the commissioners assume that the county school board is the voice of the people and abandon the referendum, or should they take the attitude that this is an activist school board that may not reflect the will of the people, and go forth with the referendum?

The Herald this morning reported that Carrboro is requesting that the legislature grant authority for two tax increase. The funds are apparently needed to support rising costs for the bus system.

The first is a doubling of the motor vehicle license tax to $30 per vehicle. In one sense, this seems sensible to add costs to a behavior that you want to discourage to fund one you want to support. Nonetheless, this is a regressive tax. The only people the extra $15 might hurt are those truly at the margins financially. Still, I wouldn't quibble over $15.

More problematic is the second proposal which is to increase the sales tax from 2.5% to 3%. The sales tax is notoriously regressive. Carrboro's working poor will be hurt by this tax.