The state’s representatives and senators have gone on vacation this week, leaving behind the 500-page proposed senate budget, a grab-bag of policy changes and new laws that reporters and state residents are still poking through.
Reporters keep finding what they refer to as “little-noticed provisions,” and one would affect special tax districts like Wake Forest’s Downtown Municipal Service District created in 1988 to assess taxes and use the proceeds to built off-street parking, the lot between South White and Brooks and bounded by Jones and Wait avenues.
The proposed change was inserted by Sen. Trudy Wade, a Greensboro Republican who also sponsored and pushed for the changes in the Greensboro City Council which were approved by both houses of the General Assembly recently.
Wade’s change would take the responsibility of dissolving special tax districts away from municipal governments and give the registered voters living in such districts the ability to petition for a referendum and then vote on whether to end the special tax and the services it provides.
Wake Forest almost certainly will not be affected because, according to the information provided by Wake Forest Finance Director Aileen Staples, there may be only four people living downtown – two renting an upstairs apartment and two (or more) living in a house on the corner of Jones and Taylor. Of course, only one would constitute the 15 percent needed to call for a referendum. None of the property owners live in the downtown tax area, which was carefully drawn to exclude residential areas.
The district runs along both sides of White Street from just north of Spring Street down to the N.C. 98 bypass. It includes all the land between White Street and Franklin Street, but there are only two small district sections on the east side of Franklin Street.
The district has been headed by a nonprofit organization, the Downtown Revitalization Corporation, but in 2013 the name was changed to Wake Forest Downtown to better reflect the group’s mission and town branding. WFD’s board of directors with the town’s Downtown Development Director Lisa Hayes, continues to plan for façade improvements, wayfinding signs, special projects, festivals and events, seminars and collaboration with downtown stakeholders to serve the district. In addition, WFD is recognized as a North Carolina Main Street City, as well as receiving recognition for the last few years as a National Main Street program through the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
The tax rate for 2015-2016 is 14 cents per $100 of assessed value. The taxes yield $75,900 this year with other financing sources bring the total to $112,725. The money will be spent this way: $15,000 towards continued façade improvements downtown, $60,000 to offset a portion of the debt service for the White Street Streetscape, $10,000 for sign replacement at the underpass, and $27,725 for advertising downtown events.
Wake Forest has also been impacted by the General Assembly’s redistricting for school board seats and county commissioner seats and by the end of municipal business taxes, though that was negligible. We will wait to see how the possible change in sales tax distribution affects counties and how additional sales taxes will affect businesses and individuals.
So far our representatives and senators have not reached down to change the way the town elects its mayor and commissioners, but they have given themselves 45 days to deal with the budget. Lots of time for more tinkering with the bloated budget bill. After all, it already includes blocking media access to public records such as the governor’s travel schedule out of concern for terrorism, a portion that could “drive bank traders out of Charlotte,” according to The Charlotte Observer, and the few lines which would deny state-paid health retirement benefits to teachers and state employees hired after January 2016. That should surely help with teacher recruitment to offset all the teacher assistant positions the budget cuts.
