Sorry for slow posting, I’ve been pretty much out of action due to a bum back.  I injured my back years ago helping a local non profit move air conditioners and ever since then my back goes out of whack about once every eighteen months.  This time is unusually bad.  Hopefully it will come back together this weekend.

 

UPDATE:  Still in pain but it is getting better.  Thanks to everyone who wrote to wish me well.  I’ve an appt. with a specialst next week.  I’ll get there….:)

We had our initial budget meeting last week.  The Commissioner of Revenue is estimating that residential Real Estate values have dropped about 16%.  We don’t know how much yet as the value is set as of Dec 31.  This means that the tax RATE will probably be increased if the City is to spend the same amount in the coming year as this year.  This does NOT automatically mean that the amount of money you pay in taxes will go up.  This is what I was getting at when I was quoted for the Washington Post.

Will the total amount of taxes paid by our citizens go up?  It is hard to tell right now.  The tax rate increase just to get the City back to a flat budget is somewhere around 17 cents (as shown in the WaPo).  A flat budget means the City has the same amount of money and you pay about the same amount of taxes as you did the previous year.
The City Manager is already looking for ways to save money in the current year in order to make next year a little less problematic.

For my part, I believe the rate has to float up and down.  Just because home valuations rise and fall doesn’t mean that we have to automatically gut the budget (in bad years) or spend the surplus (in good years) for no other reason than values change (when values rose in 2005, the rate came down about 15 cents).  We can trim the budget and be smart about our expenditures but the City still has schools to run, a government to operate and public safety people to pay.  We cannot just stop doing these things.