I spend a lot of time dealing with numbers. So it is only natural that the above two numbers jumped out at me. The first, 16,000, is the number of signatures presented to council yesterday by the Norfolk Tea Party II in their effort to convince council that the real estate tax rate should be decreased to $1.08 in ’08.
The second number – 19,298 – is the number of votes cast in this past May’s mayoral election. Those votes represent about 18% of the registered voters shown on this report as of May 2, 2006.
How many of those 16,000 signatures were included in the 19,298 that voted in May? Hard to say. But according to the article, most of the signatures were gathered on Election Day, which I presume means November 7. (I saw a number of them working the polls all over the city.) On that day, 49,487 votes were cast in the Senate race.
The NTP2 website has a chart showing how council has voted over the past couple of years on real estate taxes. The chart, though, is misleading, since for the two years shown, the council voted to reduce the rate, from $1.40 to $1.35 in 2005 and from $1.35 to $1.27 in 2006. However, even with the rate reduction, the real estate taxes paid actually increased because property values increased. So I guess you could say that the council voted to raise the real estate taxes. I don’t necessarily agree with that characterization, though.
In any event, at the top of the chart is: “Are they just another Tax and Spend Politician? Maybe it’s time for change.” On this, I wholeheartedly agree. Perhaps if those 16,000 people who were willing to sign the petition participated a little more in the process by supporting and voting for different candidates, we wouldn’t need the NTP2.
I’m glad that Norfolk turned out 49,4987 votes for the Senate race. I’d be thrilled to see a similar turnout for a local race. It is for this reason that my blog carries the subtitle “All Politics is Local.” Sorry, but a US Senator is not going to be able to reduce my real estate tax burden. Sorry, but a US Senator is not going to be able to reduce the fees that I pay for water, sewage, or trash disposal. Sorry, but a US Senator is not going to be able to tell me that I can have a home-based business in Virginia Beach but not Norfolk.
There are so many things that local elected officials control, but more folks pay attention to the statewide or national stuff than they do the local stuff. It’s all local, folks. And if we want better, then we have to get informed, get involved, and vote.
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
You’ve hit upon one reason Adam Smith recommended a rent tax. It is less volatile than a real estate tax. While rents have gone up, they have not matched the increase in real estate prices.
Great post; biased as I may be. Feckless? Obstinate? These words came to mind looking back on yesterday’s City Council meeting, at the end of which council members had the audacity to encourage the 100+ petitioners present to lobby our state reps instead, as if they’re hands are tied. They cited 1) homestead exemption 2) splitting the tax roll. Both of these are non-solutions on a number of front. Weak. Yeah, that’s another word. Weak. I’m confident voters will remember.
But Jack, a rent tax is not a part of the equation.
Brian – perhaps I am cynical but they won’t remember. By May 2010, the focus will be on something totally different. And the attitude displayed by council of passing the buck to the state reps is a symptom of the disease known as the The Dillon Rule. Funny how they get around it when they can, like the proposed smoking ban but cling to it whenever something arises that they are unwilling to do.
The real estate assessments can be changed to reflect rental value, not “market value.”
Not under current law. And there is no political will to change that.
We have to work with what we have until we get people in place that will try to change the law.
Ah, the perennial problem of getting politicians to do the right thing!
IRT:
“The chart, though, is misleading, since for the two years shown, the council voted to reduce the rate, from $1.40 to $1.35 in 2005 and from $1.35 to $1.27 in 2006. However, even with the rate reduction, the real estate taxes paid actually increased because property values increased. So I guess you could say that the council voted to raise the real estate taxes. I don’t necessarily agree with that characterization, though.
In Virignia state code automatically lowers the tax RATE to offset tax increases when the assessed value of property results in a greater than 1% tax increase over the last assessment.
City Councils/BOSs have to hold a special public hearing and vote if they wish to raise the tax rate higher than the automatic tax hike due to increased property assessments.
It is a fact that Norfolk City Council voted tax increases when the voted to raise the tax RATE to some RATE higher than what the state code automatically lowered the RATE to – in order to keep the tax hike at 1% per year.
This is done to prevent people from being taxed out of their homes.
Example: If the tax rate in 2010 is $1.00 per $100.00 of assessed value and in 2011 assessment increase such that the state code kicks in and automatically lowers the rate to $0.75 per $100.00 of assessed value – and then the Norfolk City Council votes to set the rate to $.90 per $100.00 of assessed value, they have just raise the tax RATE $0.15 per $100.00 of assessed value HIGHER.
Yet politicians like to spin that they LOWERED the RATE – because it was $1.00 per $100.00 of assessed value the previous year.
The point is that voting to keep the rate the same results in a tax INCREASE whenever the tax RATE is not reduced to offset increased assessments that are more than the assessed value of the previous year.
It just appears as if the taxes were not increased from year to year.
The equity in your home does not belong to City Council to spend.
In many cases it is phantom money the taxpayer doesn’t have because their income has not kept pace with the tax hukes due to increased assessed value placed on their homes.
I noticed that Mayor Fraim said that council should listen to what the NTP2ers had to say. He’s smart to realize that 16,000 is a significant number. However, I didn’t hear (and don’t expect to hear) the mayor say that we should reduce the tax rate. Oh sure, they will all vote to reduce the rate to $1.20 or so and then say that they voted to reduce the rate. So, when all is said and done, our assessments will go up 20%, our tax rate will go down 5%, and we will all end up paying 15% more than we did last year.
My name is one of the 16,000 on the petition. I support lower real estate taxes. But I think we have to recognise that we live in a city where a majority of the voters (and most of the special interest groups) want to see more spending. And more spending means more taxation. I find it interesting that the two ward councilmen (Williams and Wright) who seem to favor lower real estate taxes had viable challengers in the May elections. Saunders and Osburn achieved significant vote tallies. Could it be that Wright and Williams are more attentive to voter’s desires, or is it that their constituents are wealthier and more likely to demand lower real estate taxes?
I continue to believe that we will not get lower real estate taxes out of city council until we engage both council and city manager’s staff and SHOW THEM how to trim the budget so that spending and real estate taxes can be decreased. Trimming the low-hanging fruit is one strategy, but it won’t achieve the savings necessary to make a dent in the real estate taxes. We need to look at the big-ticket items in the city budget and begin the process of re-engineering/transforming some of the more bloated items in the city’s budget.
I noted the call from Brian for council to seek the input of the citizens during the upcoming budget process. Amen to that. I’ll volunteer for any citizen’s working group on the city budget.
Merry Christmas
Could it be that Wright and Williams are more attentive to voter’s desires, or is it that their constituents are wealthier and more likely to demand lower real estate taxes?
I suspect it is more of the latter than the former.
Reid – I just found your post in my spam filter. You had two, which looked identical. Is this the one you wanted?
As far as your point: I am well aware of the need for a hearing on the real estate rate. All Norfolkians should be aware of it, since it was an issue in the May campaign. Andy Wallach, who ran in Ward 2, made it an issue, because Norfolk council had not been properly holding these hearings. For the first time, we had separate hearings for the real estate rate and the budget. In the past, the two hearings were combined. And council simply printed a notice in the newspaper about the effective rate (increased values at the current rate) and kept on going.
Call it voting for a rate increase, if you will, but the reality is that the real estate tax is about the only tool in the toolbox of the council. As long as there is such reliance on the real estate tax as a revenue source, the amount of taxes paid will increase. To me, this is a case of attacking the symptom and not the disease. The disease, as I said before, is the Dillon Rule.
Yeah, we can continue to whine about real estate taxes but what we need is more freedom at the local level for revenues. Then we won’t have to rely so much on the real estate tax.
Vivian, sorry about the duplicate posts. As to the Dillon Rule being a “disease”. In my observations the Dillion Rule has saved ‘We, The People’ time and again. I am so GLAD we have the Dillion Rule.
Political corruption at the local level is far more secretive and outlandish in its scope of gross misuse of the power of government. The local yokle backroom powerbrokers would LOVE to have greaters powers at the local level. It makes it easier for them to buy off the political process and abuse local government to line their pockets.
Thanks to the Dillon Rule, the backroom “deals” become far more expensive – and thus “We, The People” have a path for forcing unresponsive local government from abusing the residents and taxpayers.
Franlky over taxation – and the UNCONTROLLED GROWTH in government spending is the “disease” as I see it. Not the Dillon Rule.
Corruption is the core “disease”.
Special Interests have groomed a political process that is designed to produce only viable candidates that are “representatives” of their political backers – candidates that make fine speeches that amount to little more than paying lip service to their non-wealthy and non-politically influential “constituents”.
Sadly, the seats that were intended to hold representatives that sought to do the bidding of their constituency are all too often filled with individuals that serve the “business community” or some “racial constituency” – and not all of the citizens within the borders of the district or city our “representatives” have been granted power to “rule”.
I thought one of the 16,000 said it best recently when noting that giving more license re taxing authority to this City Council is like asking “the wolves to guard the sheep.”
NTP2 efforts are focused on reducing the tax rate, obviously a revenue issue. When formally presenting our petition, however, I called for 1) an “open and transparent budget process, on both the revenue and spending” sides. As Don and Reid note above, the importance of this. City council was also charged to 2) demonstrate more “principled stewardship of the Public Trust. We are not here to grovel, nor should we have to.” 3) to get Busy – straightway, council should charge City Manager to Develop a budget based on a 1.08 tax rate (clear, precise, lazy with the numbers); time is on our side, they are without excuse for not taking action – we are presenting this now, not in April —
– finally, with particular concern about spending, one suggestion was to 4) “est. a standing Commission on Efficiency and Effectiveness, not unlike the one Warner commissioned, chaired by Wilder, 2002 – whereby $1.5 billion of potential savings of taxpayer dollars was identified in the areas of Procurement; Information technology; Real Estate operations and Inventory Management; as well as Human Resources savings.”
Albeit, most the this commission’s suggestions remain to be implemented, the point remains – if $1.5 billion in potential savings can be identified at the state level (biennially), how much can be saved on the local level? Will we ever know absent some political leadership in Norfolk in this area? No.
that is “not” lazy with the numbers” re the city budget — oops. If you’ve read some of the financial reports generated by current city admin/bureaucrats, you understand my concern.
HELLO, EVERONE IN 2008 THIER IS A CITY RACE, I HOPE WE HAVE MORE THAN ONE CANIDATE TALKING ABOUT OUR, -POVERTY OF VALUES- SUCH AS THE RACE PROBLEM, THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY IN OUR CITY, AND CRIME. TAXES COME AND GO BUT THE PEOPLE SUFFER IN MANY DIFFERANT WAYS, IT MIGHT BE TIME FOR A NEW GENERATION OF IDEAS. IF YOU AGREE PLEASE EMAIL ME jackhstiles@msn.com
Jack – Please stop yelling (posting in all caps). Thanks