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You can fight it all you want...but I bet Charlotte wins. Hope not for your sake...but who has ever won fighting annexation in Mecklenburg County?
Some of our best friends are building there...closing in Jan/Feb 2009...roads did seem to be in pretty bad shape out there. Very convenient to I-485 though.
Unincorporated Meck Co. tax rate: 1.0175 per $100
Charlotte tax rate: 1.2973 per $100
So for a $200,000 home (remember, tax value, not purchase price):
Taxes outside of the City limits: $2,035 per year
Taxes inside the City limits: $2,595
Increase of: $560 ($46.67 per month)
I wouldn't be surprised if most mortgages in the Berewick neighborhood already collect escrow as if they were annexed...for the simple reason of everyone has known or expected annexation any year now, and it's easier to get it up front than to tell folks their mortgage is going up $47 per month.
Plus some parts of Charlotte have an additional tax too. We have an extra tax to live Uptown inside the I-277 Loop (ZIP 28202). Not fair...but that is life!
I have posted about this in two other threads too, but I live in Berewick and have no problem with the annexation. Every Berewick homeowner should have gotten a packet from the city that goes into great detail about the annexation. If you haven't received it, I'm sure there's someone you can contact at the city who could hook you up. I do not believe it is fair to expect things like fire and police protection, road improvements and infrastructure if you are not willing to help foot the bill. Like several others have said, the amount is not going to be that much, and we already pay $250/year for trash pick up, so it's really not going to sting. I don't think we were told before we bought here about the future annexation, but we looked into it ourselves and found out it was a possibility, so we were ok with it.
FYI the new towncenter will NOT be built until the roads are completed, and the tax dollars are going towards the roads...so if you have a complaint about the towncenter not being built yet AND the annexation, you need to check yourself. I'm done with my lecture! (this was not aimed at anyone in particular!)
Because your not asking the taxpayers for a dang thing. Least that's what your status bar says.
I don't live there anymore, so I paid 11 years worth of taxes to Charlotte, never used the public schools, never got street lights, and had to wait 25 minutes for the police to come when someone was breaking into my house.
eta: I DID pay for the streetlights on my own street, so I DIDN'T ask the taxpayers (or the city) for anything, did I? Besides, what would be the point? I'm not a bank or a hall of fame.
My wife and I don't have and won't have any kids, so no public schools for us, either. Does that mean we don't owe the same amount of tax that our neighbors are paying? Absolutely not.
Suck it up, for crying out loud! Guess what, you're funding the local public schools with the taxes wherever it is that you're living now, too.
Honestly, do you only post in this forum to complain about how bad Charlotte was in your experience? Obviously it's a good thing you moved...
The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department serves Charlotte and unincorporated Mecklenburg County, so police service won't change. What will change is that it'll be paid for by city taxes rather than the police supplemental tax (Law Enforcement Services District Tax) that people in unincorporated areas pay. Tax rates are:
Charlotte:
.4586 - city property tax
.8387 - county property tax
--------
1.2973 - total rate
Unincorporated area:
.1788 - Law Enforcement Services District Tax
.8387 - county property taxes
--------
1.2973
The city will put up street lights on telephone poles for free. The decorative street lights cost extra. Someone has to pay for them. You developer probably paid for them. In my neighborhood, the homeowners association paid to have decorative street lights installed. The difference is that the city pays for the electricity. Your homeowners association probably pays the electric bill now. After annexation, the city will pay the electric bill.
Water and sewer services won't be different, except that CMUD provides water and sewer services through lines that were paid for by your developer. The city will pay to add lines to newly annexed areas that don't already have water and sewer services.
The Dixie River Road and Shopton Road realignments at Steele Creek Road are being paid for by city bond money. The city started planning these changes several years ago, while the area was still quite unincorporated. One the page that's linked above (home (http://www.charmeck.org/Departments/City+Engineering/See+Our+Projects/Transportation/home.htm - broken link)) there's a link to Dixie River Road. This page hasn't been updated for a while, but construction on the Shopton Road realignment appears imminent.
Your developer is paying for quite a few road improvements within and adjacent to Berewick. After annexation, the city will take over maintenance.
A lot of city services happen automatically. (You'll have a garbage can and recycling bin dropped off in front of your house a week or so before June 30.) Others you have to work for. When my neighborhood was annexed in 2001 I was on the phone the next day asking about street maintenance, speed limits (Under state law, if you don't have speed limit signs, the legal speed limit on your streets is 45 mph. After annexation, the speed limit will be 35 mph. Residents can petition the city to change that to 25 mph and put up signs.), and street lights. Here's what I wrote about annexation in 2005 when your neighbors in Stowe Creek were being annexed: Steele Creek Residents Association.
North Carolina law allows cities and towns to expand their boundaries out to encompass new development. I think this is a good thing. Folks move to places like Berewick because of jobs, shopping, and other amenities in Charlotte. They're part of the physical city and it's appropriate that they be part of the legal city as well. A poster above described the situation in Orlando. The situation in South Carolina is similar. Annexation there is difficult and cities annex a parcel at a time. Some place look like checkerboards. I don't know how they function. I'm always amazed that people move close to Charlotte and then are surprised when they get annexed.
The City Council doesn't always go with staff recommendations.
A few years back residents in a proposed annexation area in the Mallard Creek area argued that the city's numbers were flawed and that the area didn't actually meet the state development requirements. Annexation likely would have resulted in a lawsuit. The city backed off for a few years until a few more residences were built in the area.
In the recent round of annexations, the city council rejected staff recommendation to annex into Cabarrus County. Based on the recent public hearing, they'll also likely pull out a family farm from annexation. But Berewick is a big place with a lot of houses. The likelihood that the city council will delay annexation is approximately 0%. Welcome to Charlotte.
My wife and I don't have and won't have any kids, so no public schools for us, either. Does that mean we don't owe the same amount of tax that our neighbors are paying? Absolutely not.
Suck it up, for crying out loud! Guess what, you're funding the local public schools with the taxes wherever it is that you're living now, too.
Honestly, do you only post in this forum to complain about how bad Charlotte was in your experience? Obviously it's a good thing you moved...
I never said I shouldn't pay property taxes, just that I never benefitted from them. I know it's crazy to think that the city might use property tax dollars to pay for good roads, good schools or actual police protection.
BTW, I have three children. I would just never have sent my children to my local schools in Charlotte. We moved because the children's tuition kept increasing and we just couldn't swing it anymore. One by one I watched my neighbors move away as their children reached school age, so I was not alone in my assessment of our schools. I honestly can think of only one family left in Mecklenburg county that attended preschool with my children - the rest moved to Ft. Mill or Union county.
I was in Charlotte the other night, and after I spent over an hour on Providence Road going from Sardis Road to the Arboretum, I thought, "Nope. I don't miss this."
I post in this forum to give people a realistic view of life in Charlotte. I can't help it that my experience wasn't good regarding the way the city or school systems are run.
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(this was not aimed at anyone in particular!)
. Least that's what your status bar says.
