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The Conservative Case Against the Suburbs

Not to mention that the Wake County taxes are in addition to city taxes, which are not an issue in unincorporated areas of Granville, Johnston, Franklin and Chatham County. Just ignore an entire sovereign to make the facts fit your conclusion. Help yourself. But again, if you don't think that people vote against poorly run government with their feet, keep being surprised when it happens again and again.

I'm sure there are some people that move elsewhere when they are unhappy with poorly run government. Is Wake County poorly run? I don't know much about the specifics. I wouldn't call floating a tax increase in a joint meeting with the school board in January as poorly run. Hell, budget requests aren't even in from departments yet and I doubt they have much on revenue projections on property and sales tax other than preliminary stuff. Now, if the budget process goes through and cuts are never considered and taxes are raised, then you may have a reason to be upset.

I'd argue that many people don't vote with their feet by moving, but rather voting in the next election. Didn't the Board just switch majorities? Were voters unhappy with the previous group running the County?

I'd also argue that if I am in a city and paying city and county taxes (and receiving city and county services), than it's going to take more than one entity messing up to cause me to move. Plus, maybe I like city services and don't want to live in the unincorporated areas in the surrounding counties. Maybe their school systems suck and I have kids and want to keep them in the better system, even if I hate the decisions made at the local level.

Finally, if people are moving out of the area due to the way the county is run, I doubt it's enough to make much of a difference. Wake County is one of the fastest growing counties in the state so I'm sure for every person leaving, there are others coming in to buy property and pay taxes.

Anyway, too long, didn't read but I'd wait until the budget process sees its way through to May/June before drawing conclusions on the Wake County Board of Commissioners not considering all options when balancing the FY 16 budget.
 
I'm sure there are some people that move elsewhere when they are unhappy with poorly run government. Is Wake County poorly run? I don't know much about the specifics. I wouldn't call floating a tax increase in a joint meeting with the school board in January as poorly run. Hell, budget requests aren't even in from departments yet and I doubt they have much on revenue projections on property and sales tax other than preliminary stuff. Now, if the budget process goes through and cuts are never considered and taxes are raised, then you may have a reason to be upset.

I'd argue that many people don't vote with their feet by moving, but rather voting in the next election. Didn't the Board just switch majorities? Were voters unhappy with the previous group running the County?

I'd also argue that if I am in a city and paying city and county taxes (and receiving city and county services), than it's going to take more than one entity messing up to cause me to move. Plus, maybe I like city services and don't want to live in the unincorporated areas in the surrounding counties. Maybe their school systems suck and I have kids and want to keep them in the better system, even if I hate the decisions made at the local level.

Finally, if people are moving out of the area due to the way the county is run, I doubt it's enough to make much of a difference. Wake County is one of the fastest growing counties in the state so I'm sure for every person leaving, there are others coming in to buy property and pay taxes.

Anyway, too long, didn't read but I'd wait until the budget process sees its way through to May/June before drawing conclusions on the Wake County Board of Commissioners not considering all options when balancing the FY 16 budget.

Wake County Schools are an assignment cluster. Children are political footballs. Kids get shipped all over the place because people whose kids have graduated and moved on scream and fuss every time other people's children aren't used as objects to make them feel better about the segregated schools they went to 50 years ago. This is viewed as some form of progress.

There are ten families in our neighborhood. None of them go to the base school. Zero.

eta: People don't mind paying their share of taxes. Most people who pay taxes don't mind paying more than their share of taxes. You start screwing with the schools and sending taxpayer's kids to nonsensical places to stroke the political beans of aging hippies who sent their own kids to private schools, people will opt out of public schools in your county.
 
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Wake County Schools are an assignment cluster. Children are political footballs. Kids get shipped all over the place because people whose kids have graduated and moved on scream and fuss every time other people's children aren't used as objects to make them feel better about the segregated schools they went to 50 years ago. This is viewed as some form of progress.

There are ten families in our neighborhood. None of them go to the base school. Zero.

That's a school board issue I'd assume? Hasn't that board turned over a few times the last few election cycles?

That brings up an interesting dynamic. Say the Wake County Board of Commissioners wants to fund something to help the school system. They appropriate the funds but actually have basically no control on how the school board spends those funds.
 
jhmd is complaining about school choice?
 
I thought his district had choice.

Either way, he has balls. Move away from established infrastructure to get away from Those People. Bitch about paying taxes for new infrastructure.
 
jhmd is complaining about school choice?

The lack of school choice, for our family and every family, but feel free to take the position opposite the facts if it suits you. Also, you may wish to look up the definition of "assignment", so that this clarification in the future will no longer be necessary. Here to help.

We had choice, but the board flipped and meaningful choice is now gone. Taxes are going up, though, so there's that. See if you guys can put on your codebreaker hats and figure out why people move to the suburbs.
 
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I changed my mind. I really do want to know whether (a) the last decade of GOP-led Wake county commissioners failed to root out the waste in the county budget or (b) all the fat has now been cut and it's time to raise taxes to accommodate the far-flung infrastructure irresponsibly subsidized by the last decade of GOP-led Wake county commissioners.
 
How developed are these areas on the other counties borders that people are moving to? Again, I'm not as familiar with Wake County and that area but in my travels unincorporated areas aren't developed enough to really be considered suburbs.
 
The lack of school choice, for our family and every family, but feel free to take the position opposite the facts if it suits you. Also, you may wish to look up the definition of "assignment", so that this clarification in the future will no longer be necessary. Here to help.

We had choice, but the board flipped and meaningful choice is now gone. Taxes are going up, though, so there's that. See if you guys can put on your codebreaker hats and figure out why people move to the suburbs.

You've been talking about the virtues of school choice in your district for years.
 
How developed are these areas on the other counties borders that people are moving to? Again, I'm not as familiar with Wake County and that area but in my travels unincorporated areas aren't developed enough to really be considered suburbs.

the answer is that most of Wake County IS a suburb of Raleigh. Which is why it is so funny that JHMD keeps insisting that county-wide taxation will make people flee "to the suburbs". They're already IN the suburbs, and building out those unsustainable miles of infrastructure and far-flung schools, police departments, and fire stations is exactly why Wake County finds itself short of tax revenue.

The surrounding counties are heavily suburbanized as well (Chapel Hill and Durham to the West especially) and as noted in this very thread, have higher tax rates than Wake already. So these putative tax-hating ex-ex-suburbanites will have to move to some eastern NC swamp county if they want to get away from the evil taxman.
 
If jh would work hard enough to afford a house ITB, he wouldn't have to bitch about school choice. #bootstraps.
 
the answer is that most of Wake County IS a suburb of Raleigh. Which is why it is so funny that JHMD keeps insisting that county-wide taxation will make people flee "to the suburbs". They're already IN the suburbs, and building out those unsustainable miles of infrastructure and far-flung schools, police departments, and fire stations is exactly why Wake County finds itself short of tax revenue.

The surrounding counties are heavily suburbanized as well (Chapel Hill and Durham to the West especially) and as noted in this very thread, have higher tax rates than Wake already. So these putative tax-hating ex-ex-suburbanites will have to move to some eastern NC swamp county if they want to get away from the evil taxman.

jhmd, if you need any recommendations on where to live in Edgecombe County, I can hook them up for you.
 
If jh would work hard enough to afford a house ITB, he wouldn't have to bitch about school choice. #bootstraps.

I tend to blame other people's privileges for my shortcomings. So far it's not working out, but that's no reason not to keep trying.
 
If you live in Raleigh, you gotta live ITB. None of the Brier Creek Panera Bread bullshit.
 
I thought everyone knew that Fayettenam, Columbia, and Macon were the three biggest shitholes in the southeast*.



*not including the entire state of Florida
 
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