Date: Sun, 18 Aug 2013 12:36:20 -0400
From: Diana Haywood
Subject: response to a few points made by Taylor
Taylor Kish, just a few comments are your remarks.
Building green is not just to save cost on electricity. Green buildings save the environment on many other levels too from use of materials, energy used in construction, maintenance, renovation and demolition. This practice expands and complements the classical building design concerns of economy, utility, durability, and comfort. Not all costs can easily be identified on the books as a savings in energy cost – although I am sure it saves there too. Sometimes the savings/ lower environmental impact is what we leave to the next generation.
I looked into ” county property tax bill still reflects your home’s value at the TOP of the housing market rather than the ACTUAL value. ” last year. The explanation I received was that our tax bill is calculated by taking the “value of house” times “the tax rate.” If the value of our houses are now lower then they would have to raise the tax rate to gain the same amount of revenue to pay for our county services.
Since the county commissioners once again declared no tax rate hike again this year then the assessed value could not change to actual or the county would not have enough money for the budget. I was told by the tax department that there is a law that the actual value of the home has to be assessed every so many years which will mean at some point soon in the near future the tax rate will have to go up at the same time the value of our house are accessed lower in order to equal same incoming dollars.
One could argue that the county/state/federal budget is too high to begin with and that we don’t need all the services that we currently have. But, I am not one of them. I see value in living in a country with the benefits and services we have or at least had prior to this legislative session. I don’t want to live like some have envisioned for us.