Norfolk citizens speak: lower the rate

Last night, a public forum was held at Lafayette Winona Middle School on the subject of lowering the real estate taxes. Sponsored by the Norfolk Tea Party II, the forum invited all eight members of council to participate and all but the mayor, who was out of town, appeared.

The Virginian-Pilot has an article here on the event. Comments that made the report:

• Paul Riddick endorsed an 11-cent decrease.
• Councilwoman Daun S. Hester said she supports a 10-cent cut
• Council members Barclay C. Winn, Theresa Whibley and Don Williams endorsed holding residential real estate tax increases to an average of 5 percent.

By my math, holding the real estate tax increase to 5% would mean the rate would have to drop to $1.15, or twelve cents. That’s pretty close to Riddick and Hester.

The mayor has said that he supports a “substantial” reduction in the rate, although he hasn’t quantified “substantial.” And I assume that as a member of the NTPII, Randy Wright wants $1.08.

One other thing:

Yet Winn defended incentives for developers of projects such as Granby Tower, Fort Norfolk Plaza and a Hilton hotel, all announced in the past few months. He said the incentives aren’t coming from real estate taxes but are being generated from tax revenues produced by the projects.

This, as an explanation, makes little sense. The tax dollars collected by the city, including our real estate taxes, all go into one pot that is used to pay the city’s bills. Taking any money from the pot means that there is less in the pot and, therefore, less available to the homeowners for tax relief.

I’m going to give Councilman Wynn the benefit of the doubt here that his explanation was shortened for brevity in the article. I think what he meant to say was that the incentives are being paid out of tax dollars that would not otherwise have been collected but for these projects. That’s what I mean when I talk about “sharing the vision.” Give us the numbers on what these projects are expected to produce as compared to what they are currently producing in their existing states. Then we can see that the dollars are not being taken from our real estate tax contributions to the pot.