Reply to Elrich proposes MoCo property tax increase

Forum Index » Metropolitan DC Local Politics

Reply to "Elrich proposes MoCo property tax increase"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Cut the friggin school budget.  If times are tough for the country, then local govts need to stop spending money and increasing salaries.  Period. MCPS doesn't get to keep increasing spending ad infinitum despite economic conditions.  In fact, they should cut salaries.

Spending has little correlation with educational outcomes after a certain point. Why can countries like Sweden, Japan, South Korea, China, and Singapore produce a far better educational product than US public schools while spending 2-3x less?  Most of the money in systems like MCPS go entirely to an over bloated bureaucratic mess that pays 100s and thousands of unnecessary people crazy salaries with cushy pensions. Then they have to hire consultants for $2000/h to come up with a modernized curriculum teaching math, even though math needs no updating, and then spend even more money on more consultants to study  the potential impact and long term outcomes.

Cut and fire 80% in MCPS. Reduce taxes, make MoCo a better place to do business. [/quote]

They can't.  State law requires them to maintain at least the same per pupil spending as the year before.  There is no way for the power of the purse, in this respect, to demand efficiencies.  [/quote]

Blah blah blah.. then change state law rapidly. It shouldn't be hard.  Dems constantly tell us it can't be done, yet as trump showed, you can actually enforce immigration law, without massive reforms, overnight.  MoCo needs massive austerities, IMMEDIATELY. They're going to blow up the enire ccountry because they still can't wrap their brain around the big picture - the flow of easy money is over.  The govt left the area.  There are no more jobs. The county is about to become Baltimore. Austerity NOW.[/quote]

What did we do in 2008 during the recession? Were we temporarily exempted from the maintenance of effort funding rule?[/quote]

Stop trying to compare to 2008. This is far worse. MoCo could still suck the govt teat in 2008.  This is different. The govt is gone. Permanently. This is an existential crisis, yet progressives in the county think they can continue to tax and spend the same way as if nothing has changed.

It's like losing your job, ignoring that you have more income, then taking a huge $10,000 vacation on a credit card.  On what world would that make sense?[/quote]

This is right. Montgomery County’s biggest employer is cutting its workforce by 20 percent. It’s also cutting grants and contracts that will result in more job losses.

What did your council members do yesterday? They spent yesterday expanding a subsidy for developers that was already set to cost the county $2.6 billion. Most residents won’t even be able to afford the new housing, so they’ll be subsidizing housing that is too expensive for them to live in.

The county council will vote to raise your property taxes in a few weeks. At the same time, they’re rushing to exempt developers from property taxes, so the only people the council actually listens to will have no reason to care about property taxes because they won’t have to pay anymore. [/quote]

Yeah.  The Council committees that met last Thursday advanced the "Payment in Lieu of Taxes" (PILOT).  This is a mechanism authorized by the state generally intended to be much more targeted.  Prior PILOTs applied to far fewer properties, abated taxes for a much shorter period, had a more representative payment to get the offset, didn't offset 100% of the tax, abated a lower percentage as time went on, etc. -- not that those, themselves, consistently ended up being effective for the County (though great for the developers!).

What they have, here, is a huge giveaway, and there will be lots of playing with numbers (e.g., claiming vacancy at an atypical/opportune time, perhaps encouraging office tenants [i]out[/i] to get to the qualifying 50%).  With our ever-bemoaning the lack of businesses in the county, maybe we should be letting the high vacancy rate work to have the cost of office space come down, bringing [i]jobs[/i] here as businesses eventually found a lower total burden than setting up shop elsewhere.  There is little in the bill ensuring the benefit wouldn't go to development that would happen organically/without the need for the incentive.  There's no annual or total cap-- limits on the amount of available tax abatement would tend to incentivize faster movement towards development in order to be in line in time to benefit, right?  But that wouldn't be quite the gift they are looking to place at developers' feet, now, would it?  It is more of a a sledgehammer than a scalpel, though I'm sure the Council will characterize that as necessary against their sky-is-falling backdrop.  The rest of us will end up paying for it all, of course.

Friedson and Fani-Ganzalez were victory-lapping pretty early in the session, with the latter taking [i]her[/i] turn, this time, to state the expectation that this is only the beginning.  (AHS and more are a-comin'!  We'll Thrive 2050 dontcha know?)  That aside was as part of a condescending dismissal of amendments offered by Sayles, letting her know that her expressed interest in actually [i]affordable[/i] housing (e.g., MPDUs) might be addressed sometime [i]after[/i] her developer & building owner friends got theirs.  (Get in line, poor people, and know your place!)

Sayles was the only one to point out the super-fast scheduling of the bill (and the rest of the More Housing N.O.W. package) with concern about the lack of adequate public awareness/input. Her offered amendments were avoided via a lack of seconds from anyone on the committee with a single exception.  That was to sunset the bill after [i]10 years[/i] unless re-upped.  Why would it take that long to see if it was working or needed adjustment?!  Wouldn't we see in 3-5?

Meanwhile, Friedson was happy enough to drone on in his usual wonky, but politically astute, way -- never addressing true concerns and offering a [i]whole 2.5% more[/i] (to 17.5%) to the workforce housing requirement.  That was a trivial way to head off Sayles' 30% suggestion.  (Hey!  If we start at a ridiculously low 15% and then offer a nudge up from that, maybe the public will buy the line that we've address concerns raised!  Same deal as they moved from a ludicrously long [i]twenty-five years[/i] of tax abatement to one of "only" twenty.)

Stewart clearly was all in with the way she ran the meeting, putting Sayles in her place by cutting off her more holistic/convincing prepared remarks in favor of addressing amendments piecemeal.  She even failed to properly characterize one of Sayles' proposals, missing her suggestion to split the requirement, at whatever percentage, evenly between "workforce" housing (affordable to those making 60% AMI) and MPDUs (for those less fortunate).

Glass asked a "helpful" leading question that let them explain the "need" for this bill to be expedited -- ostensibly to line up in implementation timing with the zoning bills, which, by statute, can go into effect sooner than proposed tax legislation.  This provided preemptive cover against the concern that the bill hadn't had nearly enough time for public review, given the significant amount being offered to developers.  No mention of simply delaying the zoning pieces by a few months, instead, (or just allowing them to have different effective dates) to keep things from being rushed through.

In the end, in addition to the 17.5% and 20 years, a Glass amendment to gift this to already-approved projects without litmus (you'd think projects submitted for development approval might not need the incentive, at least not in all cases...) was adopted, along with some technical recommendation by staff.

Balcombe threw in her support with general language about needing to make the PILOT unrestrictive enough to incentivize, though neither she nor anyone else provided analysis of why 17.5% and 20 years weren't too generous.  Katz was a useless waffle, saying exactly nothing substantive while rambling towards a throw-up-his-hands conclusion that they just [i]must do something[/i] to spur housing development -- without offering or supporting anything significant to hone the legislation.  The words of these two presage the all-too-usual path for developer giveaways -- enough votes, either as co-sponsors or as assenting head-in-the-sand types, either to pass something that doesn't require executive approval (as with the Zoning Text Amendments) or to override Elrich's veto (as might be presumed, here).

This afternoon, the Friedson/Fani-Gonzalez AHS/More Housing N.O.W. show is continuing with the big one (for now, anyway) -- Zoning Text Amendment 25-02, pushing all that increased density along corridors in current detached single-family-home zones.  Artie Harris (Planning Board Chair) and Jason Sartori (Planning Director) are, of course, among those in attendance as Council staff and those two Councilmembers downplay each concern in opposition brought forth at the public hearing and deflect ineffective questioning from Jawando, avoiding any meaningful mitigation.[/quote]

With the $100 million+ price for the PILOT, why wouldn’t they just make all the existing housing cheaper by lowering property tax rates instead of doing a full exemption for just some properties? [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics