The 2012 election season is in full swing now, with signs supporting candidates popping up in yards and along the highway. Political ads are proliferating in newspapers.
Next week is the first of the forums for candidates for the Dare County Board of Commissioners to answer voters? questions.
The eight candidates vying for commissioner seats from four districts will appear at a debate, sponsored by the Outer Banks Voice and Max Radio of the Carolinas, on Monday at 7 p.m. at the Ramada Plaza in Kill Devil Hills.
Later in the month, the League of Women voters will sponsor two candidate forums for county commissioner candidates. The first will be Thursday, Oct. 18, at 7 p.m. in the Nags Head commissioners room, 5401 S. Croatan Highway. The second one will be on Sunday, Oct. 21, from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Avon Volunteer Fire Department.
The candidates for the board are: District 1: Republican Richard Johnson, Democrat Alfred Jackson, and write-in candidate Sandy Semans Ross; District 2: Democrat Robert Muller and Republican Robert Woodard; District 3: Democrat Warren Judge; District 4: Democrat Allen Burrus and unaffiliated candidate Kevin Conner.
You might want to mark your calendar now to attend one or more of these events because we face an issue next year that will affect our pocketbooks and about which there has not been a lot of discussion so far.
Your property is being revalued by the Dare County, and you will be notified after Jan. 1 what the new value of your property is. The Board of Commissioners will be setting a new property tax rate next spring that will be effective July 1.
Those of us who live and work in Dare County are most likely to see our property taxes increase.
Here is the brief explanation of why this is.
Dare County is required by state law to revalue property at least every eight years, though it can do so more often. The last revaluation was effective Jan. 1, 2005 before the bottom started dropping out of the housing market.
Several years ago, Dare County started the process of revaluation to reset property tax rates, but postponed the process when it became apparent how low property values had fallen, how much the property tax base had shrunk, and how much taxes would have to be increased to support the current level of government spending.
The commissioners decided to put off the process as long as possible to give the housing market time to recover.
Now they can put it off no longer. On Jan. 1, 2013, it will have been eight years since the last revaluation.
Currently, those in a position to know say that the drop in property values overall in the county has been about 30 percent.
The current general fund budget is about $101 million, about half of which comes from property taxes. That?s about $50 million. A 30 percent reduction would result in a $15 million shortfall.
Many folks don?t see this as a problem because believe the ?revenue-neutral tax rate? will even things out.
By law, a revenue-neutral tax rate must be identified ? a rate that produces the same amount of revenue as in the current budget.
In the days of the housing boom on the Outer Banks, all properties were increasing in value, and revaluations did not result in large property tax increases for most of us.
The problem now is that property values have plummeted, making some tax increase necessary to keep the current budget and its level of services.
But the bigger problem for those of us who live in work here is that values have not dropped evenly throughout the county.
Rental cottages on the oceanfront, which carried us all when building there was booming, decreased in value the most, as much as 50 percent, according to some estimates.
The value of houses in the island?s villages has decreased, but not as dramatically as properties on the oceanfront.
The result is that those of us who live and work here will shoulder a larger percentage of the tax increase.
Even with a property tax increase, if you own a $1million house on the oceanfront that is now worth only $500,000, you will probably pay less in taxes. Few residents live on the oceanfront.
If you own a $300,000 house in the village and your value decreases by just 10 percent to $270,000, you will probably pay more.
But how much more is one of the questions we all should want answers to as we elect our county leadership.
If county officials have looked ahead at the decreased value of property and the county?s budget and made any estimates at what we looking at, they haven?t said little or nothing about it.
Cutting the budget is definitely an option.
However, when you are talking about $15 million — or 15 percent — of the total general fund budget, you just can?t make it up by using fewer stamps or recycling paper clips.
Laying off county workers is not a good option. County government is one of the largest employers in Dare, and layoffs would result only in higher unemployment and more residents at risk of losing their homes.
But there are options — some possible reductions or new revenue sources.
In a very good blog on the subject, Sandy Semans Ross, a retired newspaper editor and write-in candidate for the District 1 commissioner seat, suggests a few:
Reductions in the county work force may be possible as employees retire or take other jobs.
Is it possible employees can be shifted from one department to another that is severely understaffed?
Could staffing savings be achieved if employees worked a 40-hour week instead of 37.5 hours a week? Or if they got 10 vacation days instead of 12, which is more than most in the private work force gets?
Take a hard look at departments that have been less transparent about where the money goes, and Ross singles out the Health Department.
The county could look at the one-cent occupancy tax now dedicated to beach nourishment. At this point, is it feasible to seek a change in legislation to allow at least a portion of the tax offset increased services needed for tourists?
You can read more of her thoughts on her blog page, http://writeinsandy.blogspot.com/.
Ross and others suggest that the county?s economic base needs to be diversified to make us less reliant on tourism. It?s a great idea, but few specifics have been proposed so far.
Make no mistake about it ? there are hard decisions that will have to be made about Dare County?s 2014 budget. No matter what, they are decisions that will probably be painful for some in our community.
That?s why it is important for you to get involved, ask questions, seek solutions, have your voice heard.
And if you hear candidates propose glib and easy solutions that will trim great chunks of money from the county budget with no pain, don?t believe them.
There will be nothing easy about this process.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Click here to read a question-and-answer about revaluation on the Dare County website or to view to a short video the county has produced on the subject.
