Let’s look at real estate tax rates for “FY18,” which must be set at the level required to balance the budget expenditures. Here’s what happened in Wicomico County’s budget and those in its two largest municipalities. Both the County Council and the Fruitland Council managed to reduce their respective tax rates, but Salisbury’s is going up substantially. And Jake Day thinks it’s a “business friendly” place!
In Salisbury, the new tax rate is $.9832, or almost 1% per $100 of assessed value, and about 4.2% higher than last year. Apparently, the so-called businessmen on the City Council – Heath and Boda – did little or nothing to reduce the expenditures proposed by Day.
Meanwhile, the Fruitland Council reduced that Town’s tax rate by almost 1.5%, and the Wicomico County Council, by cutting expenditures proposed by County Executive Culver, reduced the County’s tax rate by almost 1.3% while restoring some of the cuts that he made for items requested by the school system.
The tax rate in Salisbury is now higher than that in Fruitland or Wicomico County, and may be the highest of any municipality in Maryland with the exception of Baltimore City, as Jake Day expands his staff with new hires, just as Rick Pollitt did when he was County Executive and hired a “public information officer” and an assistant for his assistant. Déjà vu.
Yes, Virginia, Salisbury property owners are being screwed once again. What’s amazing is that the local businesses and their Chamber of Commerce are passive about the City’s increasing expenses and tax rate, and even supportive of Day, Heath and Boda. As long as they remain in office, the City’s budget surely will continue to balloon, along with its taxes.
Jack Heath and Muir Boda are businessmen? Do Tell!
ReplyDeleteNot only that, on 80% of the residential properties in Salisbury, real estate taxes are proposed to go from that 1% to 2.5% per $100!!!! So, if you own a house in town you rent out to college students and it's worth $100k, you're going to be paying an extra $1,500 per year in CITY Taxes ALONE! That means raising the rent owed by your Tenants by $180 per month on top of what's charged now since they only stay about 8-9 months a year!
ReplyDeleteThis will take a huge amount of disposable income away from the spending power of 80% of the City residents. Just how do you think that is going to affect local businesses?
You mean DAY 3 of a illegal budget! These dimwitted idiots at city hall have lost their collective minds if they think this will be tolerated. Jake is a one-termer!
ReplyDeleteAlso what this article doesn't tell you is while your taxes go UP your services go DOWN! So you get less and less bang for your buck, kids. Wake up. Time for Day to go! He's a amateurish menace to Salisbury who is ill-advised about how to govern a city. This guy couldn't even run one of those spiffy mobile food vendors that sell food in front the old Courthouse every weekday!
ReplyDeleteWhat dum phuks still own property in Salisbury? Smart people been leaving MD since 2007.
ReplyDeleteAnd coincidentally just as home values are beginning to recover. So once your home recovers to its value you will most likely being paying double what you were paying back in 2009 before the crash.
ReplyDeleteGreat point, 10:55! Day did say that average values were up by $133,000, right? There goes another $200 a month rental hike!
ReplyDeleteOUCCCHHH!!!!!
Doesn't anybody in this loony local government understand the term "spending cuts"?
ReplyDelete