Category Archives: Government

Transparency When No One’s Looking

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Last night we had a public meeting for the Lewisville Planning Board so that we could explain the access management ordinance that we've been working on for the town the last couple of months.  One person from the public showed up and since she represents a coalition of realtors and developers she was essentially paid to be there.  Now I know this stuff can be dull as dirt, but this is where the rubber hits the road.

Let's put it this way.  If you plan on building in Lewisville in the future and you want to know where you can access a road from your property, i.e. build a driveway, and you want to know what kind of driveway you can build, how far away it has to be from your neighbors' driveways and other details then you might want to take a look at what we're doing.  Or if you want to redevelop your land, you might want to know how the new ordinance will affect you.  Whatever, this is the kind of stuff that directly affects people but even when we advertise the meetings, as we did this one, people generally don't show up in droves.

Access management is just one of the things we're working on right now.  Because our Town Council declared a six month moratorium on development until we can get some new ordinances in place we're meeting every week to work on an access management ordinance, a stormater/watershed ordinance and a multi-family housing ordinance.  All of these will affect propert owners in one way or another so I would recommend that people check in on our meetings to see what's going on. 

Now, we're by no means the final word on these ordinances.  We'll eventually send our recommendations to Town Council and they'll make the final decisions, but most citizens don't realize that by the time it gets to the Council a ton of work has already been done and they've missed some golden opportunities to influence the ordinance before it even gets to the powers that be.  Every one of our public meetings has a public comment segment and we really do welcome any feedback we can get.  In fact we've already incorporated changes to our early drafts of the ordinances thanks to the feedback we've gotten from people who attended earlier sessions.

If you're a resident of Lewisville or are a business owner in Lewisville you really should check out what we're doing so you can be part of the process.  Don't wait until everything's 99% done and you have to fight the inertia of a downhill train.  It's not too late.  We continued our deliberations until our next public meeting which is May 13 at 7:30 at the community center next door to the library.  Hopefully we'll see you there.  If you'd like to catch up on what we've been doing you can check out our minutes here.

Good Points and Historical Perspective About Revaluation

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One of the things I love about this blog is that I often hear from people with different viewpoints and who really get me thinking with their comments or emails sent in response to something I've posted.  Dwight Defee sent me an email about my Revaluation post from March 29 and I liked it so much I asked his permission to post it here.  He graciously said yes so here it is:

This is response to your post of March 29, 2009.
 
Jon.
   I can’t say that I disagree with you about annual appraisals: However, if that happens you and I had better be prepared for higher tax valuations and higher taxes annually.  Even though annual valuations would reflect more accurate property values, who’s going to pay for the additional cost associated with such an accelerated project?  We will, of course, because we are property owners and we are asking for additional services provided by the County Tax Assessor. In North Carolina, Counties are considered a political subdivision of the State.  The State requires Counties to revalue Property every eight years but permits more frequent valuations. 
   Quite a number of years ago ( I was a county employee at the time) the Tax assessor, Harvey Pardue, recommended that the County move from an eight year valuation cycle to a four year valuation cycle.  He was hailed as a hero by the Utilities and Business communities and as a demon by residential property owners. The reason for this, as I understand, is that utility and business property was valued annually and residential property was valued every eight years. Since this was a period of growth for our County, Utilities and Businesses were clearly paying more than their “fair share” of the tax burden.  When Harvey retired, his assistant, Jack Sprinkle, continued the quadrennial valuation schedule but was able to reduce costs with technological advances.  After Jack’s retirement, Pete Roda took the reins as Tax Assessor/Collector and in my opinion has done a good job.  As a former associate of Harvey, Jack, and Pete, I say unequivocally that I have the utmost respect and admiration for the job that they performed for the County.
   Now if you can convince the County Commissioners to provide for annual valuations, I’m sure Pete can handle the job…BUT…you and I had better be ready to help foot the bill for more employees (think salary & benefits), more space and equipment (think office space, desk, computer, etc), Transportation (some of these people have to visit property sites across the County), and other employee expenses that I can’t enumerate at this time.
    Sorry to be so verbose but I needed to respond to a person quick to criticize professionals employed by public entities which are governed by officials elected by the likes of you and I.
 
Dwight Defee
Former Personnel Director
Forsyth County, NC


Here's part of my reply to Dwight that explained a little better (I hope) what I'm thinking when I say that annual revaluations would be better than every four years:

Dwight,
Thanks very much for the email.  I think you make very good points and I have to say that I agree with you. I thought about the extra staff too but I figure that it will be paid for by the extra revenue the county would see.

In retrospect one of my errors is that I came across as thinking that I blame Mr. Roda or the other folks doing the work. I don't. I always assumed that they were working within boindaries set by the
legislature. In other words if they calculate the property values using a formula it is one they've been given and they do the best they can. But that's not how I said it and that's my fault.

I actually think that if the revaluations were done annually it would work out best for everyone, just like I believe that a flat income tax of 10% on everyone without any deductions would be better for everyone and meet the country's needs (but that's a whole other topic).  I also agree with you that we'd have to be prepared to closely watch our commissioners and the tax rates they apply to us.

I want to emphasize what I wrote in that second paragraph: I absolutely agree with Dwight that the assessor is doing his job very well.  As far as I know he doesn't get to decide how or when revaluations are done, he simply makes sure his office carries out their mandate efficiently.  What I'd like to see is that the people who do decide how revaluations are done find a way to do revaluations that are more representative of a properties real current value.  Okay, I'm now off my soapbox.

Revaluation

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The Winston-Salem Journal did a big front page piece in today's paper about Forsyth County's property revaluation.  I've written before about my take on revaluation, but I want to re-emphasize my two main problems with how the county is handling the process:

  • Revaluations should be done annually, not every four years.  One reason for this are that you are more likely to get an accurate reflection of a property's current value, and not a value skewed by a housing market that was hot three years earlier and is significantly cooler now.  Another is that you spread the tax gains (and pain) over time, which is better for both the government and the taxpayer.
  • But given that the county is doing revaluations every four years they should at least come up with a formula that weighs the change in the marketplace.  My understanding is that they are taking the average home sales for a certain area over a set amount of time, which I believe is the five year assessment period.  If your neighborhood had 200 home sales in the first 3 years of the assesment period and home prices were rising, but then only had 50 home sales over the last year of the assessment period while home prices were falling then the average would skew to the higher prices of a rising housing market that no longer exists.  That means your home value will not accurately reflect its current value in the home valuation, but rather an average of its value over the five year period.  What makes that inherently unfair is that you will be stuck with that higher valuation for five years, even if the value continues to decline.

The potential saving grace of the process is that the county commissioners determine our tax rate so they can lower the tax rate in order to lower the tax burden of higher property valuations.  Still, since most people don't trust politicians this is small comfort to most.  

Another point: when the property valuations are low at the beginning of the valuation period and then there's a sharp increase in the property values the county actually misses an opportunity to capture that increase in terms of tax revenue.  If we moved to an annual revaluation they could capture those increases in real time and even if the commissioners lowered the tax rate they would most likely still see an increase in tax revenue, but they would probably have fewer complaints from homeowners because the revaluations would more accurately reflect current values and would thus seem more reasonable.  Also, instead of seeing large changes in value from one revaluation to the next we'd see gradual changes that are easier to swallow.  

Talking About Driveways

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Last night we had a public meeting of the Lewisville Planning Board to show the public an early draft of the access management ordinance we're working on for the Lewisville business district.  In a nutshell we're trying to plan for what we think will be some pretty significant growth through the 2035-ish timeframe and trying to make sure our Unified Development Ordinance (UDO) is up to the task of managing that growth.  A big part of the future plans are to build a parallel road to Shallowford Road (the main drag through town), turn make both roads one way with two lanes, to build some connector roads between the two and to put in a couple of new traffic circles at entry points on either end of town.  That's the big picture, but as with most things in life the real work is in the details. 

Until we started this process I didn't understand the impact of driveways on traffic design.  Simply put you have to make sure that driveways, or road cuts, are spaced far enough apart and far enough from intersections so that they don't create a hazard by having people exiting and entering the roadway in close proximity to each other.  It sounds mundane, but if you've ever tried to enter a busy roadway from a parking lot that happens to be too near an intersection with cars turning into your path then you'll know why we're spending so much time on this.

As you might expect we ended up with quite a few comments from the 20+ members of the public who attended the meeting.  There was some understandable concern about the increased traffic through town, about motorists speeding even more than they do if we go to two lanes in each direction and about the impact on commercial property.  All were valid concerns and I think Marty Myers, our town planner, did a good job answering them.  Since we're only at the draft stage of the process we'll be able to incorporate any changes that might need to be made based on the feedback we get, but based on last night's meeting I think we've made some really good progress. 

Followed by a Foxx

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My Blackberry beeped.  I looked at it.  The message from Twitter: "Virginia Foxx (virginiafoxx) is now following your updates on Twitter."  As much as I've written about disagreeing with my Congresswoman I have to say that I'm flattered that she'd bother to follow me.  If I was in her shoes I'd have completely ignored me.  Welcome Congresswoman Foxx, and whether or not we agree on anything I'm glad to know you're listening. Now about that stimulus bill…

Bipartisan Sleaze

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Have you heard about the latest high-end scam artist?  No, not Madoff, but this joker Sir Allen Stanford who is accused of running an $8 billion fraud that on the surface sounds an awful lot like Madoff's scandal. Part of the emerging Stanford story is his soft money donations back in 2000 to prominent Democrats, and I think it's an important reminder because it reminds us that the sleaze in Washington is bipartisan.  The next time you hear someone slamming all Republicans or all Democrats but giving their side a free pass please remind them that the problem isn't the parties it's the politicians.  As a breed they make ambulance chasers look good by comparison.   

Forsyth County Property Revaluation: Whether Now or Later We’re Going to Get Hosed

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I have a prediction: there's going to be an absolute crap-storm when Forsyth County does its property tax revaluations, whether it's this week or in two months.  The county commissioners heard last night from the fellow in charge of doing the revaluations and he told them that he'd heard from an expert that because they'd already announced the revaluation schedule there was nothing in the state's statutes that allows them to delay the revaluation.  After reading that my first question was, "Is there something in the statutes that disallows them from delaying the revaluation?"  But after mulling about it a moment more my second thought was, "Even if they delay it six more months will it make that big of a difference?"

Here's my rationale.  They did a good thing by waiting for all the 2008 data to be in before doing the revaluation because the real estate market tanked in the last part of the year.  That said, from what I've read they only use sales data to determine the property value which means that there's no way to capture the actual loss in the value of our property.  In other words if the houses in my neighborhoods can't sell, and I mean literally can't because there are no buyers out there, and the most recent sales occured earlier in the year how is the assessor going to see that houses that sold for $250,000 last March would only fetch $215,000 this March?  Also, as I argued in an earlier post, if they take the average of the sales over the last four years, and there were hundreds of sales at the higher prices from 2005 through 2007, but only a handful at the lower 2008 price then the prices will be skewed higher.

All this leads me to the following: the revaluations do a better job of capturing an increase in property value because increased prices generally occur in a hot market with lots of sales.  As more sales occur the prices rise and they push the valuations up.  But when a market cools prices might fall but they aren't reflected in the valuations because no one can sell their houses thus the losses in value are hidden.  I might be able to claim that the realistic market price for my house is only a certain amount, but since there's no empirical sales data showing that houses in my neighborhood would sell for that, because there are very few or no sales, then as far as the assessor is concerned my property value is frozen at the higher rate.  My valuation may not have gone up any more from its high, but it almost certainly hasn't gone down to the true market price.

That's why it doesn't really matter if the revaluation comes this month or in July. For all intents and purposes our property values are frozen at an artificially high amount.  If the commissioners really wanted to be fair they'd talk about lowering the tax rate, but since they're staring budget deficits in the face there's a better chance of me becoming Pope than that happening.  Another thought: why not do the revaluations every year?  That way you can adjust to any rapid rise or fall in property rates and set taxes on current market values.  I think residents would prefer either of those proposals to the current system.  I'm not saying they'd like it, they'd just hate it less. 

Sen. Burr: No Raises for Congress

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From Sen. Richard Burr's blog:

It’s easy for Members of Congress to spend the people’s money without much thought to the overall cost–just look at congressional pay. As the law is currently written, Congress has to hold a vote to disapprove an automatic pay raise. As you can guess, these votes don’t occur too often. In fact, a raise has only been disapproved once since 2000, and only six times total since the law was established in 1975. To help bring some perspective to those who are crafting the law, I am introducing an amendment to the “stimulus” legislation that would eliminate automatic congressional pay adjustments. With every American family tightening belts in these tough times, Congress needs to follow suit. 

Since Sen. Burr is a home boy from Winston-Salem and a Wake Forest grad I have a pre-disposition to liking him, but it's his approach to his position that I've really liked.  I think this is a very smart amendment, especially considering what Congress is asking everyone else in the country to sacrifice to get the economy turned around.  Yes it's largely symbolic, but that's the point.