Category: Mecklenburg County

Hate tax revaluation time? Then let’s do it more often. Seriously.

Tear-downs that make way for large new houses, like these in the Cherry neighborhood, drive up property values of smaller, older houses nearby. Photo: Mary Newsom

It’s tax revaluation time! Are you excited? We aren’t either. Seeing your property value skyrocket is only fun if you are planning to sell it ASAP.  For most of us who aren’t real estate speculators, higher values don’t mean more money shoots into our bank accounts, because we can’t easily convert property into extra income unless we decide to raise goats, chickens or marijuana in the back yard.

Nevertheless, revaluations are an important equity tool. If you wait years to do them, you’re giving a tax benefit to wealthier property owners with rising values and giving a comparative tax penalty to properties whose values did not go up as much, or not at all.

If that sounds confusing, read on.

Mecklenburg County has been revaluing its property every seven or eight years. That means someone whose mansion was valued at (we’ll keep to round numbers here) $1 million at the last valuation has been paying taxes on that figure,
even though that same mansion is now valued at $3 million. So $2 million of its value has been, essentially, tax free for some of those eight years.

Now, consider someone whose house was worth $100,000 eight years ago and is now worth $150,000. Yes, they’ve gotten $50,000 in value tax free for some of those eight years. But … compare that with $2 million.

Finally, someone whose property value went down has been paying taxes on a value that’s too high. For this particular revaluation there aren’t likely to be many who fit that description, since the 2011 revaluation came amid a deep real estate slump with hundreds of foreclosures, followed by recent years of dramatically higher land prices.

In 1990, then-Charlotte Observer reporters Liz Chandler and Foon Rhee did an exhaustive comparison of land sales prices versus assessed values from the previous revaluation in 1983. They wrote:

“Thousands of Mecklenburg County homeowners will pay more than their share of property taxes this year. And their extra taxes will allow tax benefits for a smaller group of homeowners – most with higher-priced homes. Property is being taxed unfairly because county officials are not keeping up-to-date tax values on homes, according to an Observer study of 3,425 home sales last year. That’s because the tax office only appraises property countywide once every four years.” [In recent years the county has revalued every seven or eight years.]

The reporters explained:

“If the tax burden was evenly spread this year – the last year before a new appraisal – all homeowners would pay taxes on 83 percent of the market value of their homes, the study indicates. But that isn’t the case. Areas where home values have risen sharply are likely to be taxed on less than 83 percent. And slower-growing, low- and middle-income areas are more likely to be taxed on more than 83 percent.”

The Observer research, comparing sales prices to assessed tax value, found that during those years county tax officials generally undervalued commercial property more than residential property. That means residential property owners were, in essence, subsidizing business properties. Commercial properties were, on average, assessed and taxed at 65 percent of their market value, the newspaper found, compared to an overall property valuation countywide of 79 percent of its market value. (County tax officials responded that commercial property was harder to assess.)

Some important caveats are needed:

One: A tax revaluation does not automatically mean everyone’s tax bill rises. Elected officials set a tax rate, and they can lower the rate so that, on average, no one’s bill goes up. But if your property is above or below the average, your tax bill would still change, going up or down, depending. If you’re a politician, you know rising property values will have many voters angry, even before the tax rate is set. So if they’re going to be angry regardless, it’s tempting to go ahead and bring in a bit more revenue by not setting a so-called “revenue-neutral” tax rate, since city and county needs are growing along with the population.

Two: According to analysis from Charlotte Observer writers Ely Portillo and Gavin Off, some of the highest percentage increases in value this year are in close-in, predominantly black areas: Grier Heights, Washington Heights, Druid Hills, Villa Heights and Belmont. “On average, property values in those neighborhoods increased by 126 to 156 percent. Many individual properties doubled or even tripled in value,” the Observer wrote.

That means “equity” in property assessments this year could look inequitable, if low-income and minority property owners are hit with proportionately higher tax values. (See Her home’s tax value nearly tripled.)

There is a better way. Revalue property more often. Every two years would be more equitable and  prevent the heart-stopping (and for some people, budget-busting) increases that come from long delays between revaluations. Since 1983 the county has for a variety of reasons mostly deviated from its every-four-years revaluation goal, although they say they plan to resume it.

The 1990 Observer article found that across the country, many local governments revalue more often than every eight years. The reporters wrote:

“In Phoenix, Maricopa County tax assessor Ira Friedman, said: ‘If you have spiraling increases in values, it makes sense from an equity standpoint to revalue property every year. It’s commonly done nationwide. It’s really a simple system.’ ”

Waiting for the creek to rise

Now demolished, the Midtown Sundries building was in a floodplain and flooded regularly. Photo courtesy Charlotte-Mecklenburg Storm Water Services.

Now and then, during extremely heavy rainstorms, my daughter and I used to hop in the car and drive about a quarter-mile away to see if what we call the Creek House was inundated.
The house was built in the 1990s on a you-can’t-believe-it’s-legal site: within about 6 feet from a small creek.

That creek (one of about 3,000 miles of creeks in Mecklenburg County) has the boring official name of Briar Creek Tributary #1 and is neither large nor impressive. Except during a heavy rain. Then it deepens and widens – muddy and dangerously fast-flowing.

At one point, when the Creek House was being built, it was so close to the creek there was a two-by-four propped between an exterior wall and the far side of the creek.

It was a shocking example of how slack Charlotte and Mecklenburg County environmental regulations were, even though they were in some significant ways stricter than the state’s. I sent a copy of the photo to a fellow I knew in the county water quality program; he used it in a slide show urging Charlotte-Mecklenburg elected officials to require undisturbed vegetative buffers beside creeks. I can’t claim that photo is what led the county commissioners to enact the buffer ordinance. But I hope it helped.

Tonight, in Charlotte, N.C., we’re awaiting what may be 10 inches or more of rain from what’s left of Hurricane (now
Tropical Storm) Florence. Flooding is on everyone’s mind. It’s not likely to be as big a disaster as what we are seeing in Eastern North Carolina. But however bad it is here, it’s probably not going to be as bad as it might have been, because of some welcome environmental regulations and government programs.

Floods here tend to be different from those in North Carolina’s flatter, Coastal Plain, or in Houston after last year’s disastrous Hurricane Harvey flooding. Charlotte is a city of ridges, ravines and creeks, and our rainwater and storm drains head straight into the county’s 3,000 miles of creeks and then, usually rapidly, into nearby rivers.

But we’re also a car-oriented city. We have a lot of pavement: streets, highways, surface parking lots as far as the eye can see. It all creates runoff, polluted runoff.

One inch of rain on one acre of impervious surface pavement creates 27,000 gallons of storm water runoff. A few years back I calculated how much runoff one inch of rain on all of Mecklenburg County’s impervious surfaces would create: roughly 2.4 billion gallons. That’s hard to visualize. Think of it this way. If you put 2.4 billion one-gallon milk jugs atop one another, they’d reach to the moon and halfway back.

That’s one inch. Not 10 inches. It’s safe to conclude that 10 inches will likely cause flooding in places here that don’t usually flood.

As in many cities, in Charlotte people have built a lot of things in floodplains – like that Creek House – because they’re flat, which makes building easier. Houses, stores, offices and parking lots perch next to creeks throughout the city.

Even with a floodplain ordinance – which the real estate and developer lobby fought bitterly – houses are still built in floodplains. Today, though, they’re perched on piled-up dirt so floodwaters don’t get in but are, instead, displaced and spread farther out, thus causing flooding in places that used not to flood. But whatever.

After some heavy rains and floods in the late 1990s, the county began using federal funds to buy flood-prone properties and demolish them. In some spots greenways and eco-gardens have been created.

Will the buffers, the floodplain ordinance and the eco-gardens reduce the flooding? Will the Creek House, after all, survive another torrent of rain? That’s the hope. But for the results, ask me later, after Florence moves on.

The Chantilly Ecological Sanctuary at Briar Creek, in the Chantilly neighborhood, was once the site of an apartment complex that flooded regularly. Today it’s a more natural area, where floodwaters can spread without causing the damages they once did. Photo: Mary Newsom

100 years of N.C. state parks, but never one for Mecklenburg

North Carolina’s Mount Mitchell State Park turned 100 this year. Photo: By Two Hearted River – CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16397075

The 2016 commemoration of the 100th anniversary of North Carolina’s first state park scored a huge win last week with the announcement that 2,744 acres will be added to that first park, Mount Mitchell. That will more than double the park’s size, and is a welcome tribute.

But if you visit the Find a Park website for the North Carolina State Parks Department, you may notice that unlike the Triangle, which boasts five, there is no state park or recreation area in Mecklenburg County, the state’s most populous county and one of the larger ones in size as well (ranking 38 of 100).

But did you know a state park was once proposed for Mecklenburg County? The city-county 2005 plan, dated 1985, proposed a state park in the northeastern corner of the county, east of Davidson. It did not happen. Sadly, that area, which for two decades was protected by the town of Davidson’s decision not to allow sewer service there, is now being proposed for sewer service, which likely means subdivisions, not rural farmland, will be the future.

If you’re in Charlotte, especially in the part of town with the bulk of the population (south and southeast of uptown) you may note Google’s assessment that it’s 45 minutes from Charlotte to Crowders Mountain State Park in western Gaston County, but
that simply proves Google has never actually driven to Crowders Mountain. Google says it’s an hour from Charlotte to Lake Norman State Park, which means it’s really more like an hour and a half.  Those are our state park options, folks. Any others are a couple of hours away unless you are driving at 6 a.m. on a Sunday morning, in which they’re, maybe, an hour and 45 minutes.

About that lost opportunity for a Mecklenburg state park: It says on Page 81 of the Generalized Land Plan 2005: “A major state park should be developed in the Rocky River basin, in the county’s northeast corner, to serve Mecklenburg and adjoining counties. … The county park and recreation department should enter into negotiations with the state and adjacent counties to determine and appropriate size and location.”

And I should lose 20 pounds. Some things just never happen.

I am not sure why Mecklenburg County came up short for state parks. My guess: A combination of the once-Democratic-dominated state government not being fond of the once-Republican government here, added to the likely disinclination of power brokers in “growth is good” Mecklenburg to set any prime chunk of develop-able land off limits to subdivisions.

Could a state park be built here today? I think that train has left the station. Few large sections of the county remain undeveloped. The lake shorelines are in private hands or else owned and preserved by county taxpayers. Indeed, Mecklenburg taxpayers have shouldered most of the load of preserving our parkland and natural areas, helped by a few nongovernment programs such as the Catawba Lands Conservancy. We’re left with just some words from a dusty plan – and regrets.

Clearing the air on the Liz Hair Greenway

Liz Hair Greenway, near Carolinas Medical Center. Photo courtesy Mecklenburg Park and Recreation Department

The cloud of cigarette smoke on the Liz Hair Greenway just below Carolinas Medical Center should be clearing up shortly. If you’ve walked or biked the narrow pavement of that greenway between Morehead Street and East Boulevard, you’ve probably gone past the smokers. They’re mostly visitors or staff from the hospital, which forbids smoking on its property. The greenway is handy, and sometimes the hospital security guards even point it out to smokers.

But Tuesday, Mecklenburg County commissioners passed a new ordinance that makes most government buildings and most parks in Charlotte and Mecklenburg smoke-free. (In Charlotte, the Park and Recreation Department is a county, not a city, agency.)

As a compromise from the original proposal, six county-run golf courses and 18 parks that are considered “regional parks” are exempted. So you’ll still have to choke on second-hand smoke in Freedom Park, Reedy Creek Park and other regional parks.  (A list of those parks is at the end of this post.)

The problem on the Liz Hair greenway stems from both the location of the hospital and the narrowness of the greenway between Morehead Street and East Boulevard. That section was built in 1988, back when many people here considered greenways risky spending. Today, it’s one of the most popular greenways as it connects Freedom Park to the new, wider and more generously landscaped Little Sugar Creek Greenway near the Metropolitan development. It’s narrow and crowded, and that means greenway pedestrians and cyclists are pretty much eyeball to eyeball, and lung to lung, with smokers.

An October 2012 article in the Charlotte Observer, by Michael Gordon, described the scene this way:

“For about 20 paces of shade beneath Medical Center Drive, Charlotte’s health-conscious and not-so-muches squeeze into the same county-owned space. Neither is particularly happy with the arrangement. ‘Generally, I hold my breath when I come through there,’ says Collette Nagy, a Charlotte writer who biked under the bridge late Sunday morning, her dog Pepper riding in a knapsack on her back. ‘But I feel sorry for them. I wish they’d get unhooked. I don’t think verbal abuse will help.’ “
Here’s how Gordon described the scene: “At times, there’s very little room for all the humanity to squeeze through. Around noon, about 10 smokers and their children were sitting or standing around the bridge, as a surge of greenway users – many with their children – dodged and weaved around them. There were near-collisions and some frowns. Even in the open air, the smoke under the bridge can be thick.”

The problem of smokers even drew a mention from a Portland, Ore., visitor, on the website Trip Advisor: “Hold your breath if you cruise past Carolina Medical Center at lunch time – the staff is out smoking on the greenway.”

Regional parks where smoking will still be allowed:

Charlotte’s huge tree loss

A report to be given to the City Council on Monday shows that the city has lost half its tree cover since 1985. Read the report here – it starts on page 70 of the pdf.

The county as a whole has lost 33 percent of the tree cover it had in 1985, the report found.
The study is an Urban Ecosystem Analysis, performed with satellite imagery, GIS technology and American Forests’ software. A major grant from The Women’s Impact Fund made it possible, with help from digital imagery provided by Mecklenburg County, and additional funding from the City of Charlotte and the Blumenthal Foundation.

The report notes: “Charlotte Mecklenburg’s tree cover has declined for the last 23 years and new policies and practices will need to emerge to reverse this trend. Based upon this latest data,
tree canopy in Mecklenburg County has reached the point where further decline will cause the County to fall below levels recommended by American Forests. Charlotte Mecklenburg is now at a crossroads that will set the course for environmental quality for decades to come.”

The city and the county must begin counting trees as part of the essential urban infrastructure. Today they don’t.

Yes, any time a city grows into greenfield areas it will lose large tracts of previously undeveloped woods. The problem isn’t that the city has grown, but that it hasn’t grown smartly – meaning that while plenty of land was targeted for development, no land was set aside for non-development. Other cities have done this routinely, through strategic use of water/sewer service and roads/no-roads policies. Many require parkland to be set aside (or a fee in lieu) with each development. This helps make up for the inevitable tree loss when greenfields get developed.

Not here.