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Sure looks nice in the rendering.
And the article mentions that population has quadrupled while the public safety folks are cramped into a 50 year old building.
For an 8% property tax increase?
"Poor ventilation in the evidence room on the second floor of the current building results in the lingering, and at times powerful, stench of seized marijuana in the hallway outside the chief's office"
These Money-Hungry people annoy the hell out of me. There is no reason to increase taxes that much. Now, I haven't read the article so I don't know if it's a time-limited proposal (i.e. it is only for a year or two), but it seems excessive.
UNLESS, the 8% hike is calculated from the current percentage. For example, not jumping from, say, 10% to 18%, but 8% of 10 is .08 so now it would be 10.8%
Which one is it?
These Money-Hungry people annoy the hell out of me. There is no reason to increase taxes that much. Now, I haven't read the article so I don't know if it's a time-limited proposal (i.e. it is only for a year or two), but it seems excessive.
UNLESS, the 8% hike is calculated from the current percentage. For example, not jumping from, say, 10% to 18%, but 8% of 10 is .08 so now it would be 10.8%
Which one is it?
It's the latter - it's an 8% increase from the current percentage, from 0.375% to 0.405%. That translates to an 8% increase in the actual tax paid, too: taxes on a $100,000 house would go from $375 to $405 over a three-year period.
Mike-thanks for sharing this! I'm glad that Odom, Crowder & Gaylord feel that it needs to be publically vetted.
I have issues with what I just read in the link. They've nixed the grantite sidewalks - good! That would have sent the wrong message. But, they mention the bldg received gold LEED certification. What they don't mentioned about this is that it comes at a hi cost, you have to apply for this, the Green Building Council doesn't seek you out! They had to have already paid maybe a million dollars for this? While I am a big proponent of Green, I do not see obtaining certification as a good use of the public's money, certifying the building changes nothing about the features but just confirms that they built it to gold standards.
They didn't mention if Wake County Sheriff's dept 911 communications would move there too along with the fire dept's staff(?). If they plan to do this then Wake County needs to kick in their share as the way it reads now, it is for city services which the Raleigh council oversees and Raleigh city taxpayers will be taxed.
Hope they don't try to sell the current police bldg in this economy, otherwise we'll lose a chunk on that too! And, what of the new police district satelite locations? Have we wasted our money on those? The former police chief was all for decentralizing, is Raleigh's and Chief Dolan's vision now to centralize as we used to be? Kinda like Fayetteville St, then Fayetteville St Mall, now Fayetteville St! Long time residents will remember this fiasco
Note that the tax increase isn't just for the building, it's for a $500 million measure that includes the building and other facility improvements.
LEED certification is cheap once you've built the building...fees to the Green Building Council are in the $2,000-$12,000 range. Yes, there are other costs associated with documenting the greenness of the building, but those should be done anyway if you want to make sure you've built what you thought you were building and paid architects and contractors to design and build.
Saturnfan, have you read the comments under the article on the N&O website? Some guy posted that he thinks the cost of this building should not be the sole responsibility of tax paying homeowners and he suggested taxing renters as well! I thought you might enjoy that comment!
Note that the tax increase isn't just for the building, it's for a $500 million measure that includes the building and other facility improvements.
LEED certification is cheap once you've built the building...fees to the Green Building Council are in the $2,000-$12,000 range. Yes, there are other costs associated with documenting the greenness of the building, but those should be done anyway if you want to make sure you've built what you thought you were building and paid architects and contractors to design and build.
Agree, the fees to the green bldg council are not the hi cost. It's factoring in all the other costs that quickly add up. I was involved with a much smaller scale project where I had to determine the costs associated with getting LEED cert. For a $4M project we were looking at around $100k for all associated costs. This was above and beyond what we'd already paid the architect to design the bldg.
I'd like to see Govt continue to trim the fat just as we all are in this economy.
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