Montgomery County should fill half of its $300M budget gap next year with new tax revenues, teachers union says
by Andrew Ujifusa | Staff Writer
"Taking a "balanced approach" to the projected $300 million gap between county expenditures and revenues next year would help to spread the burden more evenly across the county, said Doug Prouty, president of the Montgomery County Education Association (MCEA).
Prouty has been lobbying council members making that exact point. A good starting point for negotiations, he said, would be for the council to find $150 million in new property or other tax revenues, to go with $150 million in budget cuts, Prouty said."
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And in other breaking news, the sun rose today and dog bites man.
Here is one idea for the "new property tax revenues" that Prouty is asking the council to find: Tax the cell phone tower sites that MCPS is leasing to cell phone companies. The cell phone companies are supposed to pay property tax for use of these sites, but MCPS didn't tell the Maryland Department of Assessments and Taxation about the leases, according to a recent Examiner article. Hence, for many years, the county and the state have been losing out on property tax revenue that should have been collected from Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T, and other cell phone companies.
ReplyDeleteAnd what about getting the $1 million back that the county taxpayers invested in the Peary High School site?
ReplyDeleteExcuse me Apple Ballot folks, but you all just ran to Annapolis and demanded that the Peary High School building be GIVEN AWAY FOR FREE. Taxpayers got ZIP! Thanks to the intense fast-tracking advocacy of the Apple Ballot candidates from Montgomery Co. right up to the Governor.
The public was locked out of speaking to the Governor on this issue! (Locked out of hearing room!)
How much could taxpayers have gotten for the Peary High School building? $10, $20 - $30 million?
The fact that taxpayers had invested $1 million in that building - to the benefit of a private school - was never made public until a Freedom of Information Act request unearthed that news.
Flush our money away and then come back and raise our taxes??????????????????????????
Here is another idea for "new property tax revenues": Montgomery County could resume its practice of appealing the assessments of high-value properties. The county used to have a standard practice of appealing the assessed values of approximately 100 homes that they believed were the most under-assessed each year. During the latter years of the Duncan administration, the county stopped doing the appeals for reasons that have never been revealed.
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