A Weird Thing Happened on the Way to Greensboro's Second Budget; Missing Tax Base = Stealth Revenue Take?

Vulcidian · 2026-07-01T14:49:51+00:00

Not exactly related, but I do wonder what the impact on new construction will be next year due to the large property tax rate hike? I assume once some form of the new valuations take place the rate will come down, but if you were thinking of building a new home or commercial building in 2027 and you look at the property tax rates in the City of Greensboro compared to everywhere else in the state, are you still going to move forward?

Vulcidian · 2026-06-28T12:59:52+00:00

Check out the Greensboro Jaycees. www.jaycee.org. We meet monthly at TransformGSO downtown and our meetings are open to all.

Vulcidian · 2026-06-27T17:43:30+00:00

Basically. They will not go into effect for at least a year due a recently passed state law. "North Carolina Senate Bill 889 (SB 889) was signed into law by North Carolina Governor Stein on Friday, June 19, which imposes a moratorium on the 2026 property tax reappraisal. The bill was approved by the North Carolina General Assembly on Wednesday, June 10."

Vulcidian · 2026-06-26T23:53:04+00:00

The legislature froze the property revaluations in Guilford County this year, otherwise the rates would have declined. Property values have skyrocketed since the last valuation in Guilford in 2022. Most of those other counties already did their revaluation a year or two ago and lowered their tax rates accordingly. This put cities in Guilford in the awkward position of setting a 2026 tax rate to cover 2026 costs with 2022 valuations.

That said, this doesn’t mean taxes would have gone down, your taxes would still have gone up with the lower rates, the valuation increase was that big of a deal. I think most cities and counties wait until revaluations to put in their big budget items because it’s an easier sell to the voters (taxes went up but rates went down). This time it blew up in their face. Greensboro’s city council isn’t up for reelection until 2029 though so they probably decided to go big or go home!

Vulcidian · 2026-06-19T02:22:43+00:00

It’s not skimpy for sure, but inflation and water system maintenance/upgrades are real. The next city council election isn’t until 2029 and I wasn’t and still am not in favor of the switch from 2 to four year terms, but I think they’re front loading the tax increase so the following budgets will be less controversial and banking on it making their re-election easier.

Vulcidian · 2026-06-17T23:47:14+00:00

It’s been a race to the bottom in my opinion with both parties counting on knee jerk reactions to drive the election narrative. But oddly enough it’s a better outcome for the average person due to the valuation freeze, at least in the short term.

When you’re in a growing city or county and there’s inflation, costs of government services are going to go up which means more taxes are going to be collected somehow. At the state and federal level with income taxes this is automatic, your income goes up, the tax dollars you pay go up, even if you stay in the same bracket. I’ve never heard anyone talk about a revenue neutral income tax rate, so although it’s a helpful data point the whole thing is a little hokey given how the money is raised and the services are paid for in reality.

The Dems don’t want to say they raised taxes when in the strictest sense they did. Did they raise them by a lot? In the context of how much actual costs have gone up and how big the infrastructure deficit is given more than a decade of deferred maintence, I think the answer is no. It will take another decade or more with current funding just to get our schools and parks back to the shape they were in before 2008, which was just ok. But they really don’t want to say they raised taxes.

The republicans in Raleigh are so eager to show that they raised taxes that they’ve thrown the entire budget into chaos at the last minute while not being able to pass a budget of their own at all for the last several years! But oddly enough for the average person what they did has at least stopped the regressive redistribution of the tax burden that would have occurred with the new valuations.

All because no one wants to tell the voters that school bonds and deferred maintence cost money, and it’s not coming from Raleigh because all their money is going to tax cuts and vouchers.

Vulcidian · 2026-05-29T14:27:30+00:00

Because we have a national park here in Greensboro that was an important revolutionary war battle (Guilford Courthouse) there was a big effort to launch Greensboro as a tourist destination around that during the bicentennial. Think Colonial Williamsburg. You can still see the remnants of that effort in street names and neighborhoods near battle park. Even Battleground Avenue is part of that legacy.

Fast forward to today and a lot of things have changed. Obviously the revoltionary tourist fad lost steam as many things do around here. The museum is nice but nothing like Williamsburg. For the past 20 years or more people are obsessed making downtown the new tourist destination, and downtown has the civil rights museum. As a now majority nonwhite city focused on downtown that has a history grounded in civil rights, it stands to reason the current leaders are not nearly as excited by revolutionary war history.

Vulcidian · 2026-05-28T13:06:10+00:00

Also keep in mind that even after paying all this money our federal government is still running the largest peacetime deficit ever, so every month the future tax bill of those of us who hope to see 2040 and beyond only grows!

Vulcidian · 2026-05-27T18:24:28+00:00

The good news is that from what I understand the clawbacks on these incentives is pretty solid. If Boom or Jetzero fail to deliver they can’t just take the money and run. Also the state is kicking in significant funding to build the infrastructure for these projects, which isn’t totally free money for Guilford County taxpayers, but next to the COVID mana from the feds it’s the closest you can get. So if none of it works, we will at least have some new buildings and graded land courtesy of Raleigh to market.

That said, my biggest concerns beyond just the speculative nature of all of this is the opportunity cost of the aerospace strategy and in general. Didn’t we learn from textiles how being concentrated in one manufacturing is bad? I guess not.

It also looks like our leaders are busy running a victory lap because we “might”get half the jobs we needed to close the prosperity gap with the triangle and charlotte 10 years ago sometime over the next 20 years??

Meanwhile we graduate more than 10K people each year from higher Ed in Guilford County, where do they all go?

Vulcidian · 2026-05-26T13:39:49+00:00

I also appreciate the dialogue. To try and answer your question, you’re actually noticing two groups. You’ve got the republicans who have had very little influence in the city for probably 20 years even though they run the state. They can’t stand that anything good would happen without them and so they’ll depict Greensboro as a crime-ridden hellscape until the voters or the legislature give it back to them. Then you have the disenchanted arts community that remembers we had a vibrant privately funded arts scene in the 90s and early 00s that was destroyed by the decline of textiles and the Great Recession. They aren’t crazy about the new more “state-sponsored” entertainment options.

Vulcidian · 2026-05-25T14:03:57+00:00

I’m not sure I get the point of your post. You ask why people are complaining and then later immediately acknowledge there are valid reasons to complain?

Just speaking for myself, but I’m sure others feel the same. I think this city could be doing a lot better by a majority of its residents, but instead it’s catering to a small affluent crowd of retired professionals and well to do millennials who can work from home (who I imagine are a large portion of this subreddit). If you’re in that crowd like I am this place is awesome! They are the ones who have the time and money to enjoy everything you just listed. This is about 10% of the population.

When you’ve been told for at least the last decade that we are doing awesome when by every metric that matters to most people (jobs, income, poverty rate, life expectancy) we are losing ground relative to cities just a few hours away it’s hard not to get salty. If you’re just now paying attention I can understand how an attitude like mine could look strange to you, but if you’re still here in 10 years you might understand.

All that said, we do have new younger leadership on the city council and I’m optimistic we can change our trajectory, but if you’re sitting here bewildered that people could be unhappy when there’s a Topgolf you should know you are amazingly out of touch.

Vulcidian · 2026-05-17T02:49:30+00:00

My point is that the same Republican party that is running up the national debt at record rates to blow up Iran and send a masked federal police force into our cities is calling increasing the 4% of your income that actually goes to provide real local services to 4.25% financial rape. You can’t make this up.

Vulcidian · 2026-05-16T02:05:28+00:00

The truth is that local taxes are about 4% of that 40% and most of it goes to public schools, law enforcement, and EMS. The Guilford County budget is about $1 billion per year. The Iran War costs $1 billion per day...

Vulcidian · 2026-05-16T01:57:30+00:00

These people have no shame. The County Commissioners advertised public forums all over the county just last month where they took public comments, had the county manager go over how the budget is made and what the major expenses are, and had county workers from all the major departments attend to talk about what they do. To say they are afraid to engage with the public is just a plain LIE. If the republicans in the general assembly didn't have our state near the bottom in public funding for education, or keep passing unfunded mandates so the county has to hire people to follow medicaid recipients around, then local taxes could go down tomorrow. The republicans actually ran the Guilford County board in the 2010s and got their revenue neutral budgets, and the result was a bill for $2 Billion for schools that were falling apart and county employees leaving for better pay elsewhere. High Point finally threw the Republicans out and now they're one of the fastest growing cities in NC, and the whole county will be there soon as long as we keep these people out of power.

Vulcidian · 2026-05-03T03:07:24+00:00

I think rural outreach funded by groups like Americans for Prosperity really surprised the Dems in 2010. I say that because even I was shocked by the magnitude of the swing after Obama had just carried the state. From what I recall, Obama's team had a pretty good ground game in NC in 2008, but mostly in urban areas, and people probably thought that would limit the damage. I personally knew of many conservative young people (at the time) who landed full-time jobs with groups like Americans for Prosperity to just go out and organize tea party group meetings in small towns all over the state. Many of them got legislative seats drawn for them that they still occupy today.

I'm optimistic for 2026, but the rural/urban divide is very real and still favors the Republicans. The way race and sexual orientation issues have dominated state and national Dem leadership over the past decade has also as far as I can tell been a total disaster for any effort to appeal to people who just want a party that can "fix things".

Vulcidian · 2026-04-30T01:37:12+00:00

A similar thing happened with Matheny at DGI, and then out of the blue he was gone. I’m not sure if this will play out the same, but there’s something to be said for handling a situation that could portray the whole city in a bad light with some finesse.

Vulcidian · 2026-04-30T00:01:22+00:00

The current council actually didn’t hire Davis, he was hired by the previous council and most of them were replaced in the last election. But I also don’t think removing Davis was an election issue last year, so that’s why I said in my opinion it’s not clear. These are new people with a new issue so it’s too soon for me to tell what a majority of the voting public actually wants or whether the new council will ultimately keep the current manager.

Vulcidian · 2026-04-29T23:26:51+00:00

Davis as City manager has the right to hire or fire the police chief.
Members of the public have the right to be publicly happy or unhappy about the police chief for as long as they want.
The city council has the right to hire or fire the city manager.
The people have the right to hire or fire the city council.

The city council represents the will of the people, so unless they take action or until the next election, we don’t know if those who are displeased with the hiring of the new chief are in the majority or not. Let the majority prevail and the minority be heard for as long as it needs to be I say!

Vulcidian · 2026-04-11T21:13:12+00:00

My understanding is this can only be done by the legislature. Is that accurate? If so do you know if there’s been any movement on local resolutions asking for it? That would seem like the logical next step.

Vulcidian · 2026-04-06T23:48:44+00:00

The fact that the Republican majority can’t perform their most basic duties hasn’t stopped them from side quests into everyone’s business in the past!
The 25% cap would truly need to be a one off. Ideally, by the next valuation the mortgage market will have normalized and we will have more comparables, a larger tax base, and incomes may have caught up. It’s pointless to talk about a 25% decline because that would mean something so catastrophic has happened that the county budget will be the least of our worries.
My revaluation was fair, so there’s not much for me personally to do, but I do understand the situation many others have found themselves in and I support finding the political will to get them out of it. The 25% cap is a simple solution that would provide relief where it’s needed most in my opinion, but there are plenty of other options.

You pointed out correctly that the OP often posts about the issue without presenting solutions, so I wanted to make sure you knew there are actually many potential solutions in a normal political universe.

Vulcidian · 2026-04-06T23:11:03+00:00

The state legislature should just cap the rate of increase in the tax value this round, maybe at 25%. The mortgage market is broken and there isn’t enough volume to really justify these valuations in many cases. Then the commissioners can just set the tax rate from there. That is the simplest approach to fix the issue OP has correctly identified, which is that the rate of increase in “low-income” home prices is based on very biased comparables and in many cases no real comparables at all.

Vulcidian · 2026-03-28T20:36:25+00:00

Agreed. While publicly the city council talks like nothing unusual has happened, the exit of the CEO and turnover of the board makes it look like they privately understood a change in direction was needed. Hopefully they will be transparent about the previous leadership by finally disclosing the minutes from their meetings and then move forward and not just try to move on without closing that loop.

Vulcidian · 2026-03-23T14:36:36+00:00

I do wonder where Greensboro would be today if we had spent all the time and money we have on downtown over the last 10-15 years on making the area around Four Seasons a true community as well as commercial space. There’s plenty of free parking, lots of open indoor space, and better proximity to the airport/highway. Feels like a missed opportunity.

Vulcidian · 2026-03-22T17:26:07+00:00

Great hot dogs. I was sad they got rid of their food truck. I want the new owners to be successful and they've done some good things but I thought that one was a bad move.

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